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Winslow Homer Salt Kettle, Bermuda 1899
Colbert
Yep! pic.twitter.com/ZmRi1rq3tl
— Johnny Midnight ⚡️ (@its_The_Dr) August 18, 2024
No plan
CNN: How Kamala Harris's Campaign Unraveled Before The Iowa Caucus
"She's not able to articulate a consistent and compelling message."
Kamala Harris dropped out of the 2020 primary race before voting began because she was so unpopular among Democrats.
She then hit a 28%… pic.twitter.com/ryXgHfYAIF
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) August 18, 2024
Patent
BOMBSHELL REPORT: Video emerges of Kamala Harris openly telling a crowd she will STEAL A COMPANIES PATIENT and take it over..
“I will snatch their patent, so that we will take over.”
“I have the will to do it!”
— Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto) August 17, 2024
Flynn
The United States intelligence community, both inside and outside, are the ones manipulating the outcome of what we are going to face over the next couple of months.
Click the link below to view my complete interview with @piratemoneyx:https://t.co/WFya7jvsH7@FlynnMovie pic.twitter.com/SQyCvBemyK
— General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) August 18, 2024
Millennial
https://twitter.com/i/status/1824896826019127689
She could be president without ever getting a single vote.
• Democrats Could Make Kamala Harris President Before Election (MN)
An opinion piece in The Hill posits that Democrats could spring the ultimate October surprise by making Kamala Harris president before the election in November. Douglas MacKinnon notes that “This is already the most surreal presidential election of our lifetimes,” and that it could get even more bizarre. He adds, “I wrote several times in this space over the last two years that I never believed Biden would be the nominee, and I was proven right. I also honestly believe Trump will pull away from Harris come September and October.” “So, what then? How would the Democrats and the Harris campaign react to that?” MacKinnon wonders.
He suggests that “At some point, might it become politically expedient to the Democrats to elevate Harris to the presidency for the remainder of the campaign?” adding “Is anything off the table in this weird election cycle? I don’t think so.” As is well documented, Democrats could invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Biden from office. But at this point, it would be clearly a political move. Biden has not been running anything for three years anyway. MacKinnon suggests the 25th may not even be needed, noting that Biden could even enter the Democratic National Convention and say “I’ve had it. I’m done. I am resigning from my office and going back to Delaware.” It’s a bit far fetched, but who knows with the state of this election cycle.
Nearly a year ago, I predicted that Kamala would briefly become president just before the 2024 election.
The Hill is just now figuring it out… https://t.co/jhmwEDYiY2 pic.twitter.com/o8A5EiM9gV
— Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) August 18, 2024
“I think we’d all do well to put away the memes and get serious about making sure that we make this a November 5th to her not to remember..”
• What If Kamala Harris Isn’t an Idiot? (Tom Luongo)
On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, after a coup against their former standard-bearer Joe Biden, we face a very disturbing question. What if Kamala Harris isn’t the idiot the media has made her out to be? Harris was clearly chosen for this role. She’s been groomed for it for nearly two decades. She isn’t the best of a list of bad choices. The Democrats drove the good choices from the party and blocked others becoming a part of it. There were no Democratic primaries, folks. She was placed as Biden’s Vice-President to have the inside track on this gig when they decided Joe finally had to be dragged from the stage. The coup was penciled in on the Gantt Chart at Evil Corp. Central for the weekend of July 13th. In 2020, Harris voters roundly rejected her for President, getting zero delegates before being roasted by Tulsi Gabbard. She dropped out despite being the darling of the media and the donor class. Going into those primaries, she was the establishment’s pick.
Once she failed they moved to Plan B: rig the game for Biden. They said, “We’ll install a mushroom so corrupt we can make him do whatever we want Joe just wants his money and his ice cream.” So you force Harris onto Joe. Or the other way around… never mind she’s too old for him. Meanwhile Harris waited. She let Joe take the heat. She said little, did less and then is installed, tabula rasa, into a campaign just days after a failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump to steal even that thunder. We were never allowed to discuss her culpability, along with the cabinet, as to how Biden could have been running the country for the past three years without them invoking the 25th amendment out of pity for the man if nothing else. Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot Democrats don’t have emotions other than hate and envy. She was installed as the candidate to front-run an insurgency at this week’s convention by Hillary Clinton and her merry band of Neocons. Don’t expect them to take this sitting down, there are likely to be some sparks this week in Chicago, even if they don’t turn into a bonfire.
So, that leads me to ask my question, not because I think Harris is some latent IQ160 or anything. I asked my question because this is a woman who faced zero real voters and is one vote-rigging operation away from the presidency. So, maybe she’s a genius when measuring her political intelligence. What if we’ve all been led down the primrose path of stooping to Trump’s level coming up with cute memes about her vast collection of knee pads or her inappropriate laughter at tragedy? What if that is exactly the means to lull us all into thinking there’s no way anyone will vote for this woman? And if this was any normal (a nebulous term these days at best) election, I would agree with you. But, for 90% of the fifty elections the US is going to hold for its president, who you vote for doesn’t matter. This is, as always, a five state race. All that matters is printing/counting the right number of votes in those five states and the rest is just a Benny Hill skit. Harris chose uber-commie and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate to what, exactly? Shore up the only state that voted for Walter Mondale in 1984? Really?
No, it was to do a few things: • Signal that they didn’t need Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro to win there. • Continue Obama’s antipathy towards Israel. They don’t need “The Jews” anymore. • Put the Quarter-Black HR Nanny in charge of the cucked White Guy. After that, all you have to do is use AI and special effects to make fake crowds supporting fake polls and faker ads to sell everyone on the idea that this woman is what Americans want to rule them over this… The sad part is that too many people still think this is all just part of the game. But it isn’t. It’s nothing more than the same playbook run in 2020 to create just enough plausible deniability that Harris can win this election before they steal it and dare us to do one damn thing about it. Or did you miss how upset the French and British are at their recent outcomes? So, Kamala cackles her way through scripted interviews. She and Walz dance around bringing “joy!” to the world. But when you actually get her talking about policy, about what she believes in, the cackling stops, the fangs come out, it’s just communism all the way down.
I was asked by Sputnik News to comment on her announced economic plan. In short, it’s the same warmed-over ‘Eat the Rich,’ politics of envy the Democrats have used for decades to set the table for a class war where the soon-to-be permanent underclass is used to finish off destroying the middle class so that they both can live in squalor and be thankful for whatever thin gruel is left over. Those that don’t like it can go die in a meat grinder overseas somewhere else. Hey, at least it’s ‘3 hots and a cot’ right? Or is her ascension to the throne the moment when everyone gets just uncomfortable enough for the wolf to come out in a few million of us? No, I don’t think Harris is at all stupid. And I think we’d all do well to put away the memes and get serious about making sure that we make this a November 5th to her not to remember.
Who’s doing the counting?
• Illegal Border Crossings in US Miraculously Drop to Four-Year Low (Sp.)
The crisis at the US’ southern border with Mexico has dogged the Biden administration throughout its tenure in office. In the run-up to the 2024 election, the Harris campaign and friendly media have gone to great lengths to downplay the vice president’s once much-touted status as the administration’s “border czar.” US Customs and Border Patrol’s migrant encounter numbers along the southwestern border with Mexico have hit a four-year low, new figures suggest. “In July, the Border Patrol recorded 56,408 encounters between ports of entry along the southwest border,” the agency said in a press release, referring to the border between Mexico and the US states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. CBP said its “operational statistics” for last month “show a significant decline in migrant encounters during the first full month after a Presidential Proclamation issued June 4, 2024 by President Biden to temporarily suspend the entry of certain noncitizens across the southern border.
US Border Patrol encounters in July were 32% lower than in June 2024 and were the lowest monthly total along the southwest border since September 2020.” Last month’s figures are also “lower than in July 2019, and lower than the monthly average for all of 2019, the last comparable year prior to the pandemic,” the agency added. Biden’s June proclamation moved to restrict asylum eligibility for illegal aliens entering the United States via the southern border, with some 92,000 individuals ejected from the US and sent to their home countries on 300+ repatriation flights – with removals ballooning to their highest level since 2010. The proclamation came after years of increasingly harsh criticism of Biden’s border policy by Republicans, and fears among Democrats that the issue may cost them the White House in November. A Fox News poll this week found that some 87% of would-be voters consider the situation at the southern border a serious concern, with 44% dubbing it an “emergency” and 43% a “major problem,” and the issue found to be a concern among all demographics, including among black Americans, Hispanics, women, and registered Democrats.
Some 71% of respondents blamed the Biden administration for failure to enforce the border, with 57% also saying that former President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans deserve some of the blame for blocking legislation on comprehensive immigration reform. The border crisis is tied with abortion at 14% as the second most important issue in this year’s election behind the economy (38%). The Biden administration facilitated the crisis at the southern border almost immediately after entering office in 2021 by moving to repeal a series of hardline Trump-era immigration directives and vowing to scrap Trump’s signature border wall in favor of a digital “smart wall” which never materialized. An estimate earlier this year suggested that over 7.3 million illegal aliens had entered the United States since Biden took office in 2021.
After Biden announced last month that he would not be seeking a second term, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’s campaign sought to distance the candidate from her status as the administration’s “border czar” – a title bestowed on her by US media in March of 2021. Harris’ handlers have gone to stupefying lengths to dismiss the “border czar” moniker, to the point where some media have released “fact check”-style articles assuring that Harris was never really a “border czar,” despite ample reporting from 3.5 years ago using the epithet to refer to her. Donald Trump and his allies have dubbed the situation at the southern border a “disaster” and an “invasion” that could “destroy our country.” Some have also attacked those mainstream Republican lawmakers who voted for nearly $100 billion for wars earlier this year abroad while consciously ignoring the border crisis.
Beyond my understanding.
• Free Abortions Fully Booked At Democratic Convention (RT)
A mobile clinic offering free abortions and vasectomies outside the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago was fully booked out even before the event got underway, organizers have announced. Conservatives have mocked the party for “neutering” its voters. Planned Parenthood, the US’ largest provider of abortions, declared on Wednesday that it would be sending a mobile clinic to Chicago for the DNC on Monday and Tuesday. Parked outside the convention, the clinic will offer “free vasectomies and medication abortion,” the organization announced on X, adding that there would be a waiting list for vasectomies.On Sunday, the day before the convention is set to begin, Planned Parenthood announced “all free vasectomy and medication abortions are filled.” Conservative pundits and social media users ridiculed the idea of parking an “abortion bus” at the DNC.
“The average Democrat man is masked, vaxxed and rendered infertile via Planned Parenthood abortion food truck,” The Columbia Bugle, a right-wing news account, tweeted. “Democrats busy deleting their next generation from existence,” conservative writer Peachy Keenan wrote, adding: “I mean, okay.” “I thought this was fake but it’s not,” Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene commented on Saturday. “Planned Parenthood is going to provide free vasectomies and abortions at the Democratic National Convention this upcoming week. It’s hard to even comprehend and it’s truly heartbreaking. Being a mother is the most precious gift, choose life.”Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s candidate for the presidency, has urged Congress to pass a law guaranteeing nationwide access to abortion.
Her opponent, former President Donald Trump, appointed the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, a 1973 ruling that de-facto guaranteed the right to abortion under the Constitution’s right to privacy. However, Trump is less hardline on the issue than many Republican lawmakers, and supports the rights of individual states to set their own abortion laws. Trump helped draft the Republican Party’s platform, which was published after its convention last month. For the first time in four decades, the platform does not call for a nationwide abortion ban, instead stating that the GOP will “oppose late-term abortion while supporting mothers and policies that advance prenatal care, access to birth control, and IVF [fertility treatments].”
“If Ms. Harris really believes in this price-fixing, she lacks the most basic understanding of economics..”
• ‘Deeply Flawed’ Judgment: Experts Slam Kamala Harris’ Economic Program (Sp.)
Kamala Harris’ plan is based on the idea that state intervention can fix almost everything in the economy, including soaring prices – a notion questioned by many familiar with social sciences and history. The price ceiling for grocery stores proposed by US presidential candidate Kamala Harris will surely lead to shortages, The Wall Street Journal says in an editorial article titled “Kamala Harris endorses Nixonomics.” The authors accuse the US VP of having a poor understanding of how the economy works and dubbed her stance left-wing populism that has never worked out. “If Ms. Harris really believes in this price-fixing, she lacks the most basic understanding of economics,” the article reads. According to the outlet, Richard Nixon, the 37th POTUS, was the only other president who attempted to introduce a price ceiling, and the policy ended badly.
“He [Nixon] had to stage a humiliating retreat amid shortages and market dislocations, and prices immediately soared when controls were lifted,” they recalled. Kamala Harris is not learning from her own mistakes, the article suggests. During her term as second-in-charge after Joe Biden, inflation has soared, and as a result, Americans are struggling with high prices. Yet Kamala Harris believes the situation can be fixed with more cash injections into the US economy – a move that could cause prices to skyrocket, including the real estate market. “The Biden-Harris inflation has made homes unaffordable for most young families, and her brainstorm for that is . . . more subsidies,” the article says. However, the authors suggest Kamala Harris may have said what she did simply in order to buy public support – and if that is the case, “her cynicism is also telling.” But if she plans to walk the walk apart from talking the talk, her intentions reveal “a candidate whose economic judgment is deeply flawed,” the article concludes.
“..saying that she’s going to lower the cost of food and housing starting on day one, but day one for Kamala was three and half years ago, so why didn’t she do it then?”
• Trump Blasts Harris On Inflation (RT)
US Republican nominee Donald Trump has hammered Vice President Kamala Harris over the Biden administration’s record on inflation, and likened a campaign pledge she recently made to rein in price growth to measures used in communist nations. Speaking on Saturday at a rally in northeastern Pennsylvania, the Republican nominee mocked his rival for her vow to pass the first federal ban on price gouging on food if she is elected president. “Right yesterday Kamala laid out her so-called economic plan, saying that she’s going to lower the cost of food and housing starting on day one, but day one for Kamala was three and half years ago, so why didn’t she do it then?” Trump exclaimed. Earlier this week, Harris pointed to the cost of items such as bread and ground beef, claiming that large food manufacturers are boosting profits and accusing some grocery chains of not passing along savings to customers.
TRUMP: “Yesterday, Kamala laid out her so-called economic plan—she says she’s going to lower the cost of food and housing starting on “Day One”. But Day One for Kamala was three and a half years ago… Why isn’t she doing it now?”
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 17, 2024
The Republican nominee blasted his rival’s “socialist” approach to price controls, calling her “comrade Kamala,” and adding that she had gone “full communist.” “It will cause rationing, hunger and skyrocketing prices,” he said. “Just like [the Biden-Harris administration’s] Inflation Reduction Act, which is one of the great scams of all time. Inflation has been so bad, it’s gone up much more than 50%. They say 30%, 40% — many more people are being devastated.” Trump stressed that the “radical liberal policies” of recent years under the administration of President Joe Biden have caused “horrific inflation” that has decimated the middle class and “gutted the finances of millions of American families.”
“They have no idea, they’re grossly incompetent people. Real incomes are down by over $2,000 a year. Think of that, minimum, and ours up five times that amount, more than five times that amount. Her price hikes have cost a typical household a total of $28,000, and that’s called the Kamala Harris inflation tax. She was there for everything.” Price growth spiked to 9.1% year-on-year in June 2022 before beginning to subside as the Federal Reserve embarked on a series of interest rate hikes. Nevertheless, annual inflation had remained at over 3% before dropping to 2.9% this past July, the first time it has dipped below the 3% mark since March 2021.
“The United States has been in a state of chronic excess of expenditures over income for almost a century..”
• US Budget Deficit Rises to All-Time High Under Biden (Sp.)
The US budget deficit during the presidency of Joe Biden has hit the all-time high at $6.6 trillion, according to Sputnik calculations based on data from the US Treasury Department. The US government’s expenses over three and a half years under Biden exceeded revenues by $6.6 trillion — the highest in the entire history of these statistics. Thus, in 2021, the indicator amounted to $2.8 trillion, or to 13% of GDP. The following year, the negative balance decreased to $1.4 trillion, or 6.3% of GDP, but last year it increased to $1.7 trillion, or 7.6% of GDP. Over the first six months of this year, it amounted to $758.2 billion, and the share of GDP on a rolling annual basis was 5.5%. His predecessor, Donald Trump, accumulated a total deficit of $5.6 trillion. At the same time, under Trump, there was a maximum annual negative budget balance of $3.1 trillion, or 15.5% of GDP, in the coronavirus-peak year of 2020.
Barack Obama became the only American leader in this century who managed to reduce the US budget deficit by the end of his presidency, to $2.2 trillion from $5.1 trillion under George W. Bush. However, Bush was the last president under whom the US budget posted a full-year surplus of $130 billion in 2001. The United States has been in a state of chronic excess of expenditures over income for almost a century; the last time there was a long period of surplus was from 1920 to 1930. The only US leader after World War II with a budget surplus was Harry Truman (1946-1950), and the largest government spending surplus was under Ronald Reagan at $1.34 trillion. The US finances such a gigantic budget deficit from the national debt, which in July for the first time exceeded the $35 trillion mark, and just two weeks later grew by another $160 billion.
But Hungary cannot stop them?
• Poland Allows Border Guards To Shoot At Migrants (RT)
Polish President Andrzej Duda has signed legislation that expands the use of weapons by the military, police, and border guards, and exempts them from criminal liability for employing live fire, his office has said. Duda approved the ‘Act on Support for the Activities of Soldiers and Officers’ on Wednesday as Poland celebrated Armed Forces Day, the head of the presidential office, Malgorzata Paprocka, announced on Thursday. The new law allows the military to take part in operations within the country in peacetime and sets out the rules for the use of firearms in these situations by troops. Among other things, it introduces an amendment to the Polish Criminal Code that excludes criminal liability if a soldier guarding the border fires a weapon in order to protect their life or the life of another person, even if it is done in violation of the existing rules.
According to Duda, the legislation “will allow the border and other places to be protected even better, even more efficiently, while also increasing the safety of the Polish soldier.” The country’s parliament, the Sejm, passed the bill mid-July, a month and a half after a Polish soldier succumbed to his injuries after being stabbed by a migrant through the fence erected by Warsaw on the border with Belarus. In June, three Polish troops were detained for firing warning shots at the border. Two of them faced accusations of abuse of power and endangering the lives of others. The Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Michael O’Flaherty, urged Warsaw against introducing the changes, saying in a letter that “international law requires states to reduce as far as possible the adverse consequences of the use of force.”
The law could lead to the disproportionate use of force and abusive incidents not being properly investigated, O’Flaherty warned. The leader of The Left parliamentary group, Anna Maria Zukowska, was also among the critics of the legislation, saying in the Sejm that it violates the constitution. According to Poland’s principal law, the priority is the protection of human life, not the border, she argued. An influx of migrants on the Poland-Belarus border has continued since 2021. Warsaw has accused Minsk of deliberately organizing asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East and sending them towards Poland in what it calls “hybrid actions aimed at destabilizing Poland and other EU member states.” The authorities in Minsk have denied these claims.
“..perhaps it was a blessing that [Ursula von der Leyen] was kept out of the spotlight, given that she has her fair share of graft allegations and cases pending against her.”
• EU Warns Elon Musk Again, Fears Far-Right Groups’ Narrative (Jay)
The EU has just scored a double whammy against itself as yet another letter sent to Elon Musk blows up in its face. Just recently an official working in its highest echelons sent a warning letter to the billionaire pointing out that his social media platform X needs to moderate some of the content it’s allowing to be posted. The letter, written by Thierry Breton, the EU’s Internal Market commissioner in charge of enforcing the draconian Digital Services Act (DSA), insisted that Musk had an obligation to censor potentially “harmful content” on his platform. But what is “harmful” content in the view of the EU? In real terms, the harmful content which is spooking the European Commission is from far-right groups – as Brussels sees these groups and their expansion as an existential threat and believes they need to be silenced.
Musk, since taking over Twitter and rebranding it simply X, has allowed a number of these activists and organisations the freedom of expression believing that it is important to allow all political voices to have a platform to spout whatever they want. The Commission seems to be setting itself up for a huge fall with Musk determined to expose it and its dirty games it plays with huge corporations – in a bid to control more and more of the information that social media platforms circulate. The EU wants to police the internet and, like the U.S., has a series of new rules in place which will effectively allow it to shut down those on social media whose content does not correspond with its own narrative. Yet this letter from Breton is not the first and it would appear that the European Commission has a fatal attraction to Musk who seems hell-bent on humiliating Brussels in the months to come.
In July, Breton announced that the European Commission considered X to be in violation of the DSA and claimed it was poised to his X with massive fines unless it agreed to restrictions on “hate speech” and “misinformation.” According to Musk, there was a dirty deal on offer by the Commission. “The European Commission offered X an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us,” Musk wrote in response. “The other platforms accepted that deal. X did not.” Breton vocally denied the existence of such an offer, but Musk replied he was looking forward to “a very public battle in court, so that the people of Europe can know the truth.” These two letters show that the European Commission considers both Trump and far-right groups on X to be a major obstacle to its ambitions and even its longer-term stability.
Presently, the European Commission is frantically backpedalling and carrying out a face-saving operation as if it were to be established that doing such dirty deals in smoke-filled rooms with huge U.S. firms was the norm, the fallout and damage to the EU’s reputation could be immeasurable, perhaps prompting a mass resignation of all its commissioners like in 1999 when they had to resign under a cloud of corruption allegations. Some may argue that Ursula von der Leyen is also inept for not even being in the loop about the French letters but few would be shocked to learn that she has an ephemeral control of the Commission even on a good day and perhaps it was a blessing that she was kept out of the spotlight, given that she has her fair share of graft allegations and cases pending against her.
“..the few “rabid” nationalists remaining in Ukraine “no longer set the trend,” therefore, the country has been “de-nazified..”
• Most Ukrainians ‘Hate’ Zelensky – Lukashenko (RT)
The Ukrainian government is out of touch with its own people, who do not want to die in the conflict with Russia, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said, adding that Vladimir Zelensky has lost the support of the majority of the people. In an interview with Russia 1 TV released on Sunday, Lukashenko claimed that Kiev’s neo-Nazi ideology does not resonate with the population of the country. “There are no longer any Nazis,” he said, arguing that the few “rabid” nationalists remaining in Ukraine “no longer set the trend,” therefore, the country has been “de-nazified” – one of the stated goals of Moscow’s military operation in the neighboring state
According to Lukashenko, around 70% of Ukrainians “hate Zelensky because he promises one thing and does another; because people are dying.” He did not elaborate on the statistics behind his estimates, but noted that his nation has recently faced a large inflow of Ukrainians of fighting age who are “fleeing from the war” with their families.Belarus provides some of them with work and accommodation, Lukashenko said, while others have moved on to Western nations. “Out of them, 99% are men who do not want to fight.” Poll results published by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology in early June indicate that around 43% of Ukrainians believe democracy is in decline under Zelensky. Of those, 28% blame the government, while 11% pointed to the conflict with Russia as the main cause.
Almost half of the respondents said that economic conditions, including transparency and the government’s fairness towards businesses, have worsened during Zelensky’s rule. Zelensky remains in power despite his term officially expiring on May 20. He canceled this year’s election, citing martial law which he imposed due to the conflict. Russian President Vladimir Putin has argued that the Ukrainian leader’s legitimacy as president has expired. According to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Zelensky’s approval rating stood at 17% even before his term formally ended. “Over 70% of the public distrusts all Ukrainian media, while about 90% would like to leave the country,” the SVR said in May, adding that the situation has sparked concerns among Kiev’s Western backers as well.
“..Putin said there can be no talks with those “who conduct indiscriminate strikes on civilians.”
• Moscow Denies WaPo Claims About Secret Russia-Ukraine Talks (RT)
Russia and Ukraine have not been involved in any “direct or indirect” talks that could have been derailed by Kiev’s cross-borer incursion into Kursk Region, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told journalists on Sunday. She was asked to comment on a Washington Post article which claimed, citing sources, that the Ukrainian attack thwarted secret indirect negotiations between Moscow and Kiev regarding a potential moratorium on striking energy infrastructure. The supposed talks were said to be mediated by Qatar, the outlet wrote on Saturday. “No one has derailed anything,” Zakharova said, explaining that the two sides have not discussed any “security regimes” for critical infrastructure facilities. She went on to say that threats to energy facilities such as the nuclear power stations in Zaporozhye and Kursk come from Kiev, not Moscow.
Earlier, a Russian journalist had reported that Kiev was plotting a “false flag” attack involving a dirty nuclear bomb either at the nuclear plant in Zaporozhye or Kursk. Commenting on the matter, the Russian Defense Ministry said it takes such reports seriously and vowed a swift and harsh response to any such attacks. Moscow has called on the UN to condemn the alleged plot, while Kiev has denied the claims. According to Zakharova, Moscow and Kiev have not engaged in any talks since spring 2022, except for prisoner exchanges facilitated by third-party mediators. Peace talks held over the first months of the conflict collapsed after Kiev withdrew from them due to what Moscow claims was Western interference. Ukraine had “all the chances” to resolve the conflict through negotiations, the spokeswoman said. Moscow repeatedly stated that it was ready to enter into negotiations at any moment as long as the situation on the ground was taken into account.
Kiev banned any talks with the current Russian leadership at the national level through a presidential decree signed in 2022. The move came after four former Ukrainian regions voted overwhelmingly to join Russia. This June, Moscow put forward another peace initiative, Zakharova noted. At the time, President Vladimir Putin said Russia was ready to immediately open peace talks with Kiev if it withdrew its troops from the four regions that joined Russia in 2022 and committed to maintaining neutral status. According to Zakharova, Kiev reacted to this “goodwill gesture” by launching an incursion into Kursk Region, where Ukrainian forces were “deliberately killing medics, rescuers, and volunteers, as well as attacking civilian transport.” In the wake of the attack, Putin said there can be no talks with those “who conduct indiscriminate strikes on civilians.”
“..the SS battalions in the Baltic States (as in the Netherlands, Belgium and France) consisted of volunteers, that is what is said in their files. In Estonia it consisted of 70,000 men who joined the SS.”
• The Baltic States And Finland Are Ruled By Nazis (Sonja van den Ende)
This article will show you how much the Baltic states and Finland have been radicalized and can be called fascist states, they themselves call it democracy, not realizing that they are fascist and follow the principles of National Socialism as was preached by the German political party NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) which was led by Adolf Hitler in the 1930s and 1940s. Recently there was yet another incident, one of many, this time in Estonia, where in the town of Johvi the monument of two SS veterans from the Second World War was taken out of the cellars of the museum, cleaned up and put on display again. Georg Sooden was a volunteer in the SS 20th Estonian Division (The Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS).
About 70,000 mostly volunteers fought in this battalion, mainly against the Russian Red Army, notably in the battle of Krivasoo. Georg Sooden was killed in this battle as was his comrade Raul Jüriado also mentioned on the monument. A member of the Johvi council inaugurated the monument. In the Western information and/or media there is hardly any talk about these kinds of incidents and in particular the Baltic States have always defended themselves with the argument that they were “forced” to fight for the Nazis. But the Germans are known for their accuracy to document everything, so they did in this specific topic as well, the SS battalions in the Baltic States (as in the Netherlands, Belgium and France) consisted of volunteers, that is what is said in their files. In Estonia it consisted of 70,000 men who joined the SS.
In Latvia it was the 1st Latvia 15th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS together with the 2nd Latvia 19th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS it was called the Latvia Legion and consisted of 87,500 men. Lithuania did not officially have a Waffen SS battalion, but called itself the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force. But there was something else, something very terrible about the Lithuanians, most of them collaborated as policemen and carried out raids on Jews, Communists and dissidents. Almost all Jews of Lithuania were killed in the second world war, by Lithuanians, who carried out the executions. Lithuania is the southernmost of the Baltic states. During the Holocaust, about 90 percent of all Lithuanian Jews were murdered, one of the highest victim rates in Eastern Europe, the Netherlands had the highest victims rate of Western Europe.
In 2023 the BBC conducted an investigation in Lithuania and made a documentary (Dailymotion) in which the presenter went in search of the horrors of the Holocaust and found out that almost all Lithuanians were involved in the Holocaust and to this day it is NOT ALLOWED to be talked about. Also, all the SS bataljons mentioned were perpetrators in the siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and Operation Barbarossa in Russia, killing and murdering Russians, Jews, Communists and dissidents. But history is being rewritten, Latvia (and the other states as well) is trying to do this with the help of all kinds of European Union funds. Latvia is a full member of the EU and can simply continue to spew its Russian hatred, conceal and justify the Holocaust committed by its own people. There is a whole site created with the help of the EU about the Baltic States with information (revisionism) about the Baltic States, the foundation is paid by the European Union. No word about this revisionism which took place after their independence in 1991 by other Western EU states.
Finland is a different story, they didn’t have such a big SS battalion during WWII, but since WWII they represent a fascist attitude, both politicians and citizens, especially against Russia. Recently, Finnish President Alexander Stubb spoke on CNN and stated “I felt that there was a potential existential threat coming from Russia”. An interview on his return to politics. He literally says in the interview that the “road to peace goes through the battlefield.” He is bragging along and says that Finland has the highest percentage in Europe, about eighty percent who are willing to die for their fatherland. Referring to the fear he says, fear lives in Finland when “Russia (always referring to President Putin) invaded Ukraine”. He also says that Finland tried to cooperate with Russia after the Cold War (1991) but it didn’t work, because Russia is not a “normal” state that respects the law!
Under threat: 80 percent of its grain production, 70 percent of its dairy supplies and 40 percent of its meat supply.
• Hezbollah Has $150 Bln in Israeli Infrastructure in Its Sights (Sp.)
Tensions between Israel and the Lebanese political and militant group Hezbollah are a hair’s breadth away from a full-scale war amid back and forth border skirmishes, Israeli threats of an “extremely powerful” military operation and the assassination of a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut last month. Hezbollah reportedly has enough missile and drone firepower to wipe out up as much as $150 billion of key Israeli economic, industrial and food-growing facilities and assets in the country’s northern regions if tensions escalate into a full-scale confrontation. Estimates by Iranian media suggest the Lebanese militia’s capabilities threaten the “economic heart of Israel,” an area in the country’s north accounting for some 80 percent of its grain production, 70 percent of its dairy supplies and 40 percent of its meat supply.
A Hezbollah response to aggression targeting Israeli agribusiness giants like Tnuva or Adom may “paralyze” Israel’s food market, the report suggests. Over 60 percent of Israel’s oil refining and fuel production capacity is said to be concentrated around Acre Port, about 35 km south from the Lebanese border. That puts those sensitive economic targets in range of nearly all of Hezbollah’s known arsenal of missiles and drones. Drones have proven highly effective in overcoming Israel’s sophisticated air defense network — which is designed to handle an array of high-speed ballistic and cruise missile threats, but has proven less efficient in targeting slow-moving aerial vehicles flying close to the ground. Hezbollah released a video Friday showing off a large underground missile base, with the video said to send a “clear message” to Israel that “the resistance in Lebanon today” has weapons, equipment, capabilities and capabilities “stronger than at any time” since its creation.
Footage shows a tunnel network wide enough to drive rocket-launching trucks through, and disguised launch sites from which missiles can be launched without their carriers having to emerge to the surface. “Israel will face a destiny and reality it didn’t expect any day. War with [Hezbollah] extends across all of Palestine from the Lebanese border to the Jordanian border. To the Red Sea, to Kiryat Shmona, to Eilat,” the group warned. “These targets are in our possession, and these missiles are placed, deployed and focused on targets in perfect security,” the text accompanying the video added. Israeli media dubbed the clip “just the tip of the iceberg,” as far as Hezbollah’s true capabilities are concerned, with Jerusalem Post contributor Seth J. Frantzman suggesting the militia tends to play “its cards close to its chest, revealing its capabilities slowly and only showing a part of what it has.”
“Estonia, Finland and the Netherlands have led the charge in cashless payments. In these countries, cash accounted for less than half of P2P transactions..”
• Many Germans Remain Uneasy Over Prospect of Looming Digital Euro (Sp.)
The European Central Bank began the “preparation phase” for the rollout of its ‘digital euro’ central bank digital currency (CBDC) scheme last October, but has held off on its implementation. In April, Deutsche Bundesbank president Joachim Nagel assured that “it may take another four or five years before [the CBDC] is actually implemented.” Cash-loving Germans are leading the charge in opposition to the digital euro among Europeans, with just under half saying they “probably” or “definitely” won’t use the new payment system if or when it arrives. A survey by the Forsa Institute for Social Research and Statistical Analysis on behalf of Deutsche Bundesbank found that while 15% of respondents said they “definitely” would use the digital euro, and 35% are ready to give it a whirl, 25% “definitely won’t use” it, and 24% “probably won’t use” it. One percent of respondents were undecided. The representative survey queried 2,012 people this past April.
Germans are among the leaders in Europe when it comes to the ‘cash-is-king’ mentality, holding on to 500 euro notes long after other EU members’ central banks had dropped them. In 2019, a Bundesbank poll found that 88% of Germans would continue to prefer paying cash even after the 500 euro bill was no longer issued, with the note popular for large purchases. In the EU, the share of cash in P2P payments was above 80% in Germany, Cyprus, Slovenia, Greece, Italy and Austria in 2022. Estonia, Finland and the Netherlands have led the charge in cashless payments. In these countries, cash accounted for less than half of P2P transactions, according to European Central Bank data.
Germans and other Europeans have an array of concerns regarding CBDCs, from privacy and control over finances to fears of overdependence on technology in general.The European Central Bank’s assurances that the new currency will remain private and secure using encryption and hashing don’t seem to assuage concerns, particularly among older generations. The European Central Bank is expected to make a decision on whether or not to implement the digital euro scheme by late 2025, although some of the region’s top bankers suggest its implementation may be put off, possibly until closer to the end of the decade. Unlike decentralized digital currencies like Bitcoin (which come with their own risks) CBDCs have garnered their share of criticism related to their centralization – specifically fears over finance-related censorship, increasing centralization and politicized control over spending and savings.
Proponents say the technology will promote innovation in payments, keep central banks central to monetary systems, encourage “social responsibility,” including through the potential programming of currencies to be spent only on a list of approved goods or services, ease the doling out of government assistance, and potentially even simplify financial transactions between countries as a workaround to sanctions. In the US, where opposition to state economic control is even stronger in some states than in European countries, opposition to CBDCs has taken on a political dimension, with former president and Republican nominee for president Donald Trump embracing Bitcoin and vowing to block the creation of a digital dollar on the campaign trail.
All their “leading”politicians are hated.
• UK PM’s Approval Rating Down 26 Percentage Points Since Election (Sp.)
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s approval rating has fallen 26 percentage points since early July when he took office and 10 percentage points since early August, a poll conducted by the Opinium market research agency and The Observer newspaper has found. “Starmer’s net approval ratings are -7%, down 10 points from +3 at the beginning of August and down a hefty 26 points from +19% in his first approval rating as PM,” Opinium said on X on Saturday. In addition, 29% of Britons have a less favorable view of the Labour Party since its election victory, while 24% tend to view it more favorably, the poll showed. At the same time, former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s rating is at -30%, according to the survey. On August 11, The Telegraph newspaper reported that Starmer’s approval rating had fallen to its lowest level since the election amid widespread unrest in the country, citing a survey by sociological and consulting firm Savanta.
On August 6, YouGov released a study showing that almost half of the British population thought Starmer was doing a poor job in dealing with mass unrest. In late July, mass protests broke out in many cities in the UK after a 17-year-old teenager attacked children with a knife in the city of Southport. Three children were killed, several more children and two adults were taken to hospital in critical condition. The protests escalated into clashes with police and riots after rumors that the attacker was a refugee. It later became known that the attacker was born in the UK to migrants from Rwanda. Hundreds of people were detained, dozens of police officers were injured during the riots organized by supporters of far-right groups.
Gervais
https://twitter.com/i/status/1824901315069460939
Driftwood
https://twitter.com/i/status/1825135492444094845
Dog with shoes
Imagine telling this story without proof:
“I didn't go to work because a cat fell on my head and then a dog with shoes tried to do me justice.”pic.twitter.com/a4J7fZNU4c
— Learn Something (@cooltechtipz) August 18, 2024
Ducks
Ducks protecting young penguin from predators pic.twitter.com/Dx3CothiiP
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) August 18, 2024
Bridge
https://twitter.com/i/status/1825166657922171050
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