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Debt Rattle September 24 2024

Sep 242024
 
 September 24, 2024  Posted by at 8:33 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  61 Responses »


René Magritte Where Euclid walked 1955

 

• The Madness of Antony Blinken (Lauria)
• Wheezing Past the Graveyard (Kunstler)
• “Have The Doors To A War Without Limits Been Opened?” (Alastair Crooke)
• DoJ Releases Trump Assassin’s $150,000 Reward To “Complete The Job” Letter (ZH)
• The Supreme Crisis of Chief Justice John Roberts (Turley)
• Musk’s X Caves In To Brazil (RT)
• Dear Readers, Tyranny Is Upon Us (Paul Craig Roberts)
• West Has Halved Financial Aid To Ukraine (RT)
• Ukraine Conflict Could Persist Beyond 2026 – UK FM (RT)
• Zelensky Has Chosen Escalation – Moscow (RT)
• Zelensky Aiming To ‘Trump-proof’ Aid – The Times (RT)
• New Car Registration Levels Crashing In EU (RT)
• Macron Calls For New World Order (RT)
• Erdogan Weighs In On Failure Of Türkiye-mediated Ukraine Talks (RT)
• Will a BRICS Bretton Woods Take Place in Kazan? (Pepe Escobar)

 

 

 

 

Bret

 

 

RFK MAHA


https://twitter.com/i/status/1837904332827906457

 

 

JDVance

 

 

Vivek will be a force

 

 

Pelosi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1838099477221015938

 

 

Gaetz

 

 

Taxes
https://twitter.com/i/status/1838218305498149181

 

 

 

 

“Blinken and the British are trying to lead us to the brink.”

• The Madness of Antony Blinken (Lauria)

On March 7, 2022, two weeks after Moscow entered the civil war in Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CBS News from Moldova that the U.S. would give NATO-member Poland a “green light” to send Mig-29 fighter jets to Ukraine to enforce a no-fly zone against Russian aircraft. U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer then also backed the no-fly zone. But within days the Pentagon shot down the idea as it engaged in a consequential battle with the State Department and members of Congress to prevent a direct NATO military confrontation with Russia that could unleash history’s most unimaginable horrors. A no-fly zone “could result in significant Russian reaction that might increase the prospects of a military escalation with NATO,” according to then Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. President Joe Biden was caught in the middle of the fray. Pressure on the White House from some members of Congress and the press corps was unrelenting to recklessly bring NATO directly into the war.

Biden ultimately sided with the Defense Department, and he couldn’t be more explicit why. He opposed a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine fighting Russian aircraft, he said, because “that’s called World War III, okay? Let’s get it straight here, guys. We will not fight the third world war in Ukraine.” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin backed him up: “President Biden’s been clear that U.S. troops won’t fight Russia in Ukraine, and if you establish a no-fly zone, certainly in order to enforce that no-fly zone, you’ll have to engage Russian aircraft. And again, that would put us at war with Russia.” (The administration plan was, and apparently still is, to bring down the Russian government through a proxy counteroffensive and an economic and information war, not a direct military one.) Blinken, who stepped out of line to speak above the heads of the president and the Pentagon, lost that round. It’s surprising he kept his job. But he survived and now he’s come back for more.

Blinken’s recklessness emerged yet again last week when he peddled a story — eagerly picked up by The Guardian and The New York Times — that Biden would approve a British request to fire its Storm Shadow missiles deep into Russia. The Guardian story on Sept. 11 said: “The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, gave his strongest hint yet that the White House is about to lift its restrictions on Ukraine using long-range weapons supplied by the west on key military targets inside Russia, with a decision understood to have already been made in private. Speaking in Kyiv alongside the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, Blinken said the US had ‘from day one’ been willing to adapt its policy as the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine changed. ‘We will continue to do this,’ he emphasised.” To fire British Storm Shadows, Ukraine would have to depend on British technical soldiers on the ground in Ukraine to actually launch them and on U.S. geolocation technology.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz revealed those British soldiers are already in Ukraine. In other words, it would be a NATO attack on Russia, dressed up as a Ukrainian one. It would mean the U.S. and Britain were at war with Moscow, something Blinken seems to want and said was going to happen. The next day Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that launching such missiles into Russia “will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.” Nevertheless, The New York Times ran a story on the same day with the headline: “Biden Poised to Approve Ukraine’s Use of Long-Range Western Weapons in Russia.”

The Guardian added: “British government sources indicated that a decision had already been made to allow Ukraine to use Storm Shadow cruise missiles on targets inside Russia, although it is not expected to be publicly announced on Friday when Starmer meets Biden in Washington DC.” Blinken’s words evidently raised British Prime Minister Keir Starmer‘s hopes that he would satisfy his desire to strike Russia with his nation’s arsenal of long-range missiles, despite Putin saying that meant direct war with NATO. Blinken and the British are trying to lead us to the brink.

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“Ukraine was not a problem for anyone until we made it a problem on-purpose.. [..] Ukraine could, in theory, revert to not being a problem for anyone again. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

• Wheezing Past the Graveyard (Kunstler)

What could go wrong? Probably more than you might imagine. We have just turned the corner into autumn. Now, things get serious, even gravely dark. America has never been so into dancing skeletons and morbidity. The small-town yards are filling up with inflatable signifiers of hell and death. Don’t you wonder what all this signifies besides good old family fun? The zeitgeist maybe having a little sport with us, you think? We are chiefly preoccupied with our badly dysfunctional self-governance, of course, and the method for periodically revising it, which we call an election. Nobody has confidence in the process, which has acquired so many layers of absurd, needless complexity for the sole purpose of perverting the outcome that every lawyer in the land will have a hefty guaranteed annual income in the probably futile effort to sort it out come November 6. There is your hell-scape, with overtones of death on a pale horse. . . and all. Chaos. . . riots. . . anarchy. . . civil war.

The threat of World War Three may have abated for the moment, but in a peculiar and disconcerting way, viz. a coup in the executive branch. The gadfly Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, long ago chief-of-staff to Sec’y of State Colin Powell, reports that the Pentagon has cancelled “Joe Biden,” that is, taken him out of the decision-loop for anything. Well, you ask yourself, how is it possible he had even remained remotely close to any decision-loop this long, in any case, given the problem of his obviously broken brain? But now, it is unofficially official: just eat your mint-chocolate ice-cream and shut up, and let Dr. Jill run those “cabinet meeting” photo ops.According to Col. Wilkerson, Sec’y of Defense Lloyd Austin told the “president” to his face that there will be no flinging of US-supplied long-range missiles from Ukraine “deep into Russia,” as the neocon-infested White House been chattering about endlessly.

Wiser heads deep in the DOD HQ have decided the matter. Lump it, if you must, Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan. The Russians’ “red-line” on such a caper is so wide you can see it from the International Space Station — that is, if you’re an astronaut marooned up there due to combined NASA/Boeing incompetence. . . but that’s another story. Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer was all revved up for the missile operation and flew to Washington for a one-to-one meet-up with “JB” to get the go-ahead. The Brits are avid for another World War. The last two went so well for them that they kissed their vast empire goodbye. Now they want to kiss goodbye their sceptered isle itself, which has almost no economy left and is overrun by cultural hostiles who are not into Shakespeare.

The Brits’ floundering government is a posse of monomaniacs fixated on defeating Russia which, at this point in history, is like a dormouse (Glis glis) facing down a brown bear (Ursus arctos). “Joe Biden,” reportedly “furious” at losing his executive power, was constrained to tell Mr. Starmer that the missile strike op was off, which left the UK PM miffed that he had crossed the ocean for no reason. Who knows, the Brits are so nuts these days that perhaps they’ll try to pull it off on their own. Mr. Zelensky, the no-longer-elected leader of Ukraine was begging them to try it because Ukraine has nothing left. NATO as a whole really has nothing left, either. Not much of a combined military, scant munitions left in the cupboard, and no will to wage war among the depressed citizens of its member nations.

There is nothing left except to come to terms on a settlement that will leave Ukraine not a member of NATO. The entire affair has been a humiliation for NATO and America, especially for the “Joe Biden” management team (whatever it actually consists of these days). The longer they refuse to engage in talks, the less of Ukraine will be left as a sovereign entity — having proven to the world that its sovereignty rests solely on its capacity to be used as a catspaw by the American neocon / intel blob. You’re reminded that for seventy years prior to 2014, Ukraine was not a problem for anyone until we made it a problem on-purpose — our purpose being idiotic and malicious — and Ukraine could, in theory, revert to not being a problem for anyone again. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

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“It is probable that we shall see more such hypersonic missiles flying – immune to air defences – should this war escalate, and Iran intervene..”

• “Have The Doors To A War Without Limits Been Opened?” (Alastair Crooke)

For the last year, both Israel and Hizbullah have avoided major escalation by observing unwritten rules of engagement or ‘equations’ between the parties, such as not targeting civilians. That is now over. In his first speech since the devices blew up on Tuesday and Wednesday, Sayed Nasrallah, the Hizbullah leader, conceded that his group had “endured a severe and cruel blow”. He accused Israel of breaking “all conventions and laws” and said that it would “face just retribution and a bitter reckoning”. But he did not describe how Hezbollah might retaliate; “nor did he discuss the time, nor manner, nor place” of it ocurring. Nasrallah warned: “The enemy declares as its official goal to return the settlers to the North. We accept the challenge: You will not be able to return to the North. In fact, we will displace more Israelis from their homes. We hope Israel enters Lebanon, we are waiting for their tanks day and night: We say, ‘welcome!’”.

There is some point to this remark. From the outset, Hizbullah was configured militarily more for all-out war with Israel, than the limited tit-for-tat, calibrated war – which never played best to Hizbullah’s strengths. Clearly, a new phase of war has begun, and to underline this point, Israel began one of its heaviest strikes on Israel after Nasrallah’s speech on Thursday night. U.S. Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin reportedly informed leaders of Congress that evening about his fear of an imminent Israeli offensive into Lebanon. Nasrallah’s assessment of coming war is fully shared by at least some senior Israeli military commanders, albeit by no means all. Several profess the belief that war with Hizbullah could extend into a regional war – and lead to the collapse of Israel. However … “You don’t do something like that, hit thousands of people, and think war is not coming”, said retired Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi, who leads the Israel Defence and Security Forum, a group of hawkish former military commanders.

“Why didn’t we do it for 11 months? Because we were not willing to go to war yet. What’s happening now? Israel is ready for war”. “There’s a lot of pressure from the society to go to war and win”, said Avivi, the retired general. “Unless Hezbollah tomorrow morning says, ‘OK, we got the message. We’re pulling out of south Lebanon’ – war is imminent”. A poll in late August by the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank, found that 67% of Jewish respondents thought Israel should intensify its response to Hizbullah. That includes 46% who believed that Israel should launch a deep offensive striking Lebanese infrastructure, and 21% who seek an intensified response that only strikes on Hezbollah’s infrastructure. General Avivi’s remarks likely reflect an underlying reality that had become only too clear: Amos Hochstein, the U.S. Envoy, has failed to achieve any ‘diplomatic’ progress towards a Hizbullah withdrawal from the south of Lebanon.

In parallel, U.S. officials, (according to the WSJ) now concede that a Gaza ceasefire is ‘out of reach’ for Biden; and that, equally, Israel’s military attrition on southern Lebanon that had resulted in the displacement of 80% of its inhabitants had achieved nothing. Israel’s northern residents also remain displaced. It seems, therefore, that Israel is set on a path to wider conflict. A taster has already been given: On 17 September, the Houthis fired a missile at a target close to Ben Gurion airport. The missile covered 1,300 miles in less than 12 min, which is to say, it flew at hypersonic speed, approaching Mach 9 – untouchable by air defences – and struck its target. It is probable that we shall see more such hypersonic missiles flying – immune to air defences – should this war escalate, and Iran intervene. What is paradoxical (as so often in conflict) is that the exploding pager operation seemingly was entirely fortuitous in terms of the timing. It was not planned specifically to move Israel to a new phase in the Lebanese conflict:

“High-level regional intelligence sources told Al-Monitor that the decision to carry out the operation was “forced” on Israel following an intelligence lapse … The Israeli military’s original plan was to explode the devices in the event of a full-blown war with Hezbollah in order to gain a strategic edge – but not to detonate them on Tuesday”, the sources added. “However suspicions from at least two Hezbollah members caused the Israeli security establishment to agree to a premature execution of the plan. After a Hezbollah member in Lebanon suspected foul play with the pagers several days ago – that person was killed, the sources said … [and the plan was] ultimately executed. The subsequent decision to trigger the radios to explode was said to be driven by the expectation that after the pager detonations the radios would fall under suspicion”.

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He smells too much like an intel asset. Doesn’t have a penny but moves to Hawaii. Yet, spends his time in Ukraine. Then offers $150,000 for a murder.

• DoJ Releases Trump Assassin’s $150,000 Reward To “Complete The Job” Letter (ZH)

Former President Trump’s would-be assassin Ryan Wesley Routh wrote a chilling letter admitting he failed in trying to take the life of the former president, and offering a reward for anyone who can finish the job… The note was addressed to the “World” and reads: “This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you. I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster. It is up to you now to finish the job; and I will offer $150,000 to whomever can complete the job,” according to court papers. Routh dropped off a box at a person’s home that included the letter, the court documents state. As Jack Phillips reports at The Epoch Times, law enforcement officials were contacted on Sept. 18, or three days after he was arrested, by a person who said that Routh dropped off the box at his location in the months prior to the incident. The witness opened the box after learning of Routh’s arrest, finding ammunition, phones, and various letters.

Prosecutors said the note and other evidence found at the scene show a need for Routh to be detained while the government builds its case against him. A detention hearing is scheduled for Monday morning at a federal court in Florida. “Because the facts are offered for the limited purpose of supporting the United States’s request for pretrial detention, the facts in this written proffer do not set forth all of the information and evidence known to the United States in this ongoing investigation,” the court documents state. Prosecutors found “a notebook with dozens of pages filled with names and phone numbers pertaining to Ukraine, discussions about how to join combat on behalf of Ukraine.” “He [the former President] ended relations with Iran like a child and now the Middle East has unraveled,” Routh wrote in one of the documents, according to the court papers. “Everyone across the globe from the youngest to the oldest knows that Trump is unfit to be anything, much less U.S. president. U.S. presidents must at the bare miminum embody the moral fabric that is America and be kind, caring and selfless and always stand for humanity.”

Cellphone records from two of the recovered phones show that Routh traveled from Greensboro, North Carolina, to West Palm Beach on Aug. 14, 2024, prosecutors wrote. Further, on “multiple days and times from Aug. 18, 2024, to Sept. 15, 2024, Routh’s cellphone accessed cell towers located near Trump International and the former president’s residence at Mar-a-Lago,” the filing said. A cellphone that was recovered by authorities showed a Google search of how to travel from Palm Beach County, Florida, to Mexico. Federal officials also found a list with dates in August, September, and October as well as venues where the former president had appeared and was scheduled to appear, prosecutors say. During his first court appearance last week, Routh declared that he had no assets and only owned two trucks worth $1,000. In a 2023 book that apparently written by him, Routh also wrote that he had no bank account and no retirement savings.

Posts made by Routh on X and other social media sites show that he was an avid supporter of Ukraine in the ongoing Russia–Ukraine conflict, even posting images and videos of himself in Kyiv and other areas in Ukraine since the war started. He also made critical comments about the former president, including several in July that referenced the first assassination attempt. Routh faces federal firearms charges in connection to the Sept. 15 incident. Prosecutors say that Routh, 58, camped out near Trump’s Florida golf course for 12 hours before his gun barrel was spotted by a Secret Service agent, who then fired at the suspect before he fled the scene. Authorities also discovered an SKS-style rifle with 11 rounds, including one round in the chamber, according to the court papers. Officials previously said that the suspect did not fire any shots and had no direct line of sight to Trump, who was golfing at the time of the incident. The former president also was not harmed.

In July, Trump survived his first assassination attempt and was shot in the ear by a gunman who fired at a rally while he was speaking in Butler, Pennsylvania, prompting questions about the Secret Service’s ability to protect him. The FBI said that when its agents attempted to interview Routh after he was detained on Sept. 15, he invoked his right to an attorney. Routh has not entered a plea. Finally, Matt Walsh brings up a crucial point about the release of this letter: “They didn’t release the Covenant shooter manifesto because they were allegedly afraid it would inspire more shootings. And yet within a week they release a letter from Trump’s would-be assassin where he openly encourages more shootings and offers to pay for them.” Routh is set to appear in federal court on Monday for a detention hearing after the attempted assassination on September 15 at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. Better keep an eye out for ‘Jack Ruby’-esque followers…

Routh

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“..calling for them to be more aggressive against the conservative justices and even calling for Congress to cut off their air conditioning to make them retire.”

• The Supreme Crisis of Chief Justice John Roberts (Turley)

Chief Justice John Roberts has always been “a man more sinned against than sinning.” That line from Shakespeare’s “King Lear” seems increasingly apt for the head of our highest court. Roberts was installed almost exactly 20 years ago and soon found himself grappling with a series of controversies that have rocked the court as an institution. He is now faced with another monumental scandal, after the New York Times published leaked confidential information that could only have come from one of the nine members of the court. By most accounts, Roberts is popular with his colleagues and someone with an unquestioning institutional knowledge and loyalty. He is, in many respects, the ideal chief justice: engaging, empathetic, and unfailingly respectful of the court’s justices and staff. Roberts has been chief justice during some of the court’s most contentious times. Major decisions like overturning Roe v. Wade (which Roberts sought to avoid) have galvanized many against the court.

According to recent polling, fewer than half of Americans (47 percent) hold a favorable opinion of the court (51 percent have an unfavorable view). Of course, that level of support should inspire envy in the court’s critics in Congress (18 percent approval) and the media (which only 32 percent trust). Some, however, want to express their dissatisfaction more directly and even permanently. This week, Alaskan Panos Anastasiou, 76, was indicted with 22 federal charges for threatening to torture and kill the six conservative justices. Another man, Nicolas Roske, 28, will go on trial next June for attempting to assassinate Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. In the meantime, law professors have rallied the mob, calling for them to be more aggressive against the conservative justices and even calling for Congress to cut off their air conditioning to make them retire.

Politicians have also fueled the rage against the court. On one infamous occasion, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) declared in front of the Supreme Court, “I want to tell you, [Neil] Gorsuch, I want to tell you, [Brett] Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.” Yet, it is what has occurred inside the court that should be most troubling for Roberts. On May 2, 2022, someone inside the court leaked to Politico a copy of the draft of the opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe v. Wade. It was one of the greatest breaches of ethics in the court’s history. The subsequent investigation failed to produce any charges for the culprit or culprits. Now, the New York Times has published highly detailed accounts of the internal deliberations of the court. The account seemed largely directed at the conservative justices and Roberts.

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They appointed a legal representative. “Musk claimed that de Moraes threatened to arrest the company’s legal representative if X did not adhere to court orders…”

• Musk’s X Caves In To Brazil (RT)

Social media platform X says it is moving to comply with demands issued by Brazil’s Supreme Court in hopes of reversing a nationwide ban ordered by Justice Alexandre de Moraes last month. For nearly three weeks, X has been inaccessible to Brazilian users. Using a VPN to access the site carries the threat of a fine of almost $9,000. That’s after de Moraes, the country’s top judge, banned the platform for failing to censor accounts that “spread disinformation.” The platform’s owner Elon Musk, a vocal advocate of free speech, has until now refused to back down, describing de Moraes’ orders as an attempt to censor voices on his platform and calling the justice “an evil dictator cosplaying as a judge.” However, on Friday, X’s legal representatives announced that the platform has taken steps to comply with the Brazilian court’s demands to help resolve the impasse and get the ban on the site lifted.

These steps include paying the fines X owes, blocking the accounts that de Moraes had previously accused of propagating misinformation and of undermining Brazilian democracy, and naming a legal representative in the country. Under Brazilian law, in order to operate in the country, foreign companies are required to have a representative who would assume all the legal responsibilities of the firm locally. X had such a representative until mid-August when it decided to close its offices and fire all its staff in the country. That was after Musk claimed that de Moraes threatened to arrest the company’s legal representative if X did not adhere to court orders.

On Saturday, Brazil’s Supreme Court confirmed X’s moves and gave the company five days to file all the necessary paperwork validating its new legal representative. It also reiterated its orders to block the accounts that had previously been indicated in a probe into hate speech and misinformation, and to pay fines totalling over $3 million. It’s unclear which particular accounts have been targeted, as the probe is confidential. The dispute between Musk and Brazilian authorities began in April when de Moraes ordered X to delete the accounts of several supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, calling them “digital militants” who spread “disinformation” about himself and the court. Musk refused, saying this would violate Brazilian laws.

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“If you don’t support those who are opposing tyranny, tyranny is what you will have..”

• Dear Readers, Tyranny Is Upon Us (Paul Craig Roberts)

Dear Readers, Truth is being dispelled from the Western World. Truth diminishes by the day. It is not only happening in America but also throughout America’s empire. In Great Britain it has become a criminal offense to protest Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians. In Germany it is a criminal offense to challenge Zionist history of the Second World War. In France if you are the owner of a social media site that permits free speech, you are detained, subject to investigation, and possibly indicted. In the United States if you challenge an official narrative you can be declared a domestic terrorist and have your passport and personal possessions confiscated. Of course, extremely few Americans do challenge official narratives. Americans learn to live a safe life by accepting whatever the authorities say. Don’t rock the boat and get in trouble. Do as your peers do. This well ingrained attitude is a recipe for tyranny, into which America is falling.

When you can’t tell the truth without bringing trouble upon yourself, there must be a reason: truth is dangerous to the authorities, so truth is demonized as disinformation, false news, Russian disinformation, espionage, offensive, racist, domestic terrorism. Little wonder that truth is disappearing from the Western World. It is certainly not welcome. The risk of saying it is growing. No university will support the truth. No foundation will support the truth. No official media will support the truth. No bar association, no medical association, no political party will support truth. Fewer and fewer courts will support the truth. Truth is on the verge of extinction. It is being replaced by official narratives. These official narratives are bringing you tyranny. If you don’t support those who are opposing tyranny, tyranny is what you will have. Tyranny is much closer than you think.

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” Just over a week ago, the Ukrainian government adopted its draft budget for 2025, indicating a deficit of 75%.”

• West Has Halved Financial Aid To Ukraine (RT)

The flow of Western funds into Ukraine’s state budget has almost halved compared to last year, the Russian newspaper Vedomosti has calculated after reviewing data from Kiev’s Finance Ministry. Between January and June this year, the US and its allies, who have been backing Kiev throughout its conflict with Moscow, financed only 27% of the country’s budget expenditure, compared to 50% in the first half of 2023, the paper said in an article on Monday. In monetary terms, Western financial aid to Kiev decreased from $19.1 billion to $10.6 billion, during that period, Vedomosti noted. According to the article, authorities in Kiev are expected to attract $37 billion in outside loans in 2024 to cover the budget almost entirely, but in the first half of the year they managed to receive only a quarter of that sum.

At the same time, the burden on the Ukrainian budget is increasing, as the cost servicing previously accrued debt has soared from $900,000 to $5.2 billion this year, the paper said. This is more than total expenditure on education, healthcare and supporting the economy combined, it stressed. Analysts who spoke to Vedomosti suggested that postponing payment deadlines and debt restructuring would only allow Kiev to delay a default but not to avoid it. Ukraine is insolvent and will not be able to pay back its foreign loans, they insisted. Just over a week ago, the Ukrainian government adopted its draft budget for 2025, indicating a deficit of 75%.

According to a report in the Sunday Times, continued international financial aid for Kiev is among the key pillars of Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s so-called ‘victory plan.’ Zelensky is currently in the US, where he is expected to present his initiative to President Joe Biden, members of Congress, and to both 2024 election presidential contenders – Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. He claims the scheme could allow the conflict between Russia and Ukraine to be concluded the end of this year if Washington and its allies make “quick decisions” on boosting its support for Kiev. Russia’s first deputy permanent representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, has said Moscow is unaware of the contents of Zelensky’s proposals and that it has not been invited to discuss them. “It is hard for us to understand what is on the madman’s mind,” he remarked.

W. 2008

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“This is a critical time for nerve and guts and patience and for fortitude on behalf of allies who stand with Ukraine..”

• Ukraine Conflict Could Persist Beyond 2026 – UK FM (RT)

The fighting between Russia and Ukraine is likely to rage on for at least another two years, the UK foreign secretary has predicted. David Lammy gave a speech at a conference of the governing Labour Party in Liverpool on Sunday, stressing Britain’s commitment to supporting Kiev. He noted that the government has committed to providing Ukraine with £3 billion ($3.99 billion) in military aid annually “for as long as it takes.” On the same day, the foreign secretary attended an event on the sidelines of the conference, warning that the hostilities could persist into “the back end of 2025 into 2026” and beyond. The hardship and challenges arising from the Russia-Ukraine conflict are set to become “deeper and harsher” in the coming years, he said, as quoted by the Guardian. “This is a critical time for nerve and guts and patience and for fortitude on behalf of allies who stand with Ukraine,” Lammy insisted.

The foreign secretary’s remarks apparently referred to the unwillingness of US President Joe Biden’s administration to allow Ukraine to use Western-supplied weapons for long-range strikes into Russia’s internationally recognized territory. Moscow has warned that giving such permission, which Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has been demanding for months, would make NATO countries direct participants in the conflict and be met with an appropriate Russian response. “There is a very real-time discussion across allies about how we can support Ukraine as we head into winter,” the British foreign secretary noted. However, he refused to reveal details, saying that would only “only aid [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”

Lammy’s view on the likely duration of the fighting appears to clash with plans set out by Zelensky – who claimed last week that he had developed a scheme to end the hostilities by the end of this year if the West makes “quick decisions” on increasing its support for Kiev. The Ukrainian leader is now in the US, where he plans to show his so-called ‘victory plan’ to Biden, members of Congress, and both presidential contenders – Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Russia has never set deadlines when it comes to the conflict with Ukraine, and has repeatedly said that its military operation, which started in February 2022, will continue until its goals are achieved. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated on Sunday that “there is no alternative to our [Russian] victory.”

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“It is hard for us to understand what is on the madman’s mind.”

• Zelensky Has Chosen Escalation – Moscow (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky chose the path of escalation when he ordered Kiev’s forces to enter Russia’s Kursk Region, Moscow’s first deputy permanent representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, has said. On Sunday, Zelensky arrived in the US, where he is planning to meet with US President Joe Biden, members of Congress, and both presidential contenders – Kamala Harris and Donald Trump – to present them with his ‘peace plan,’ which he recently renamed a ‘victory plan.’ According to Zelensky, the scheme could end the conflict between Moscow and Kiev by the end of this year if the West makes “quick decisions” on increasing its support for Ukraine. Polyansky told RIA Novosti news agency on Monday that Russian authorities “judge what the others do by their actions, not by their words. This means that he [Zelensky] clearly chose the path of escalation when he invaded Russia’s Kursk Region.”

“I think this was the best reply to everybody who hoped that the Ukrainian leadership was striving for peace,” he stressed. The Ukrainian military entered Kursk Region on August 6, in the largest attack on internationally recognized Russian territory since the outbreak of the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022. The Russian military quickly halted their advance and has reported the recapture of more than a dozen villages in the past few weeks. However, Kiev’s forces remain in control of part of the region, and the fighting continues. According to the latest data from Russia’s Defense Ministry, Ukraine has lost more than 16,000 troops and several hundred units of military equipment, including 126 tanks and 95 armored personnel carriers, since the start of the incursion.

Moscow is unaware of the content of Zelensky’s ‘victory plan’ and has not been invited to discuss it, Polyansky said. “It is hard for us to understand what is on the madman’s mind. We do not know what Zelensky is planning, and there is a lot of hype around him being here [in the US] and about what he will or will not offer,” the diplomat stressed. Speaking about the outcome of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev on Sunday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated that “there is no alternative to our [Russian] victory.”

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“..the idea that Ukraine would not achieve a full victory over Russia is “awful” and “unacceptable..”

• Zelensky Aiming To ‘Trump-proof’ Aid – The Times (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky will request NATO-type security guarantees for Kiev and other irreversible commitments when he meets US President Joe Biden this week, The Times reported on Sunday. Zelensky will also seek endorsement for Ukraine’s ongoing incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region and access to “specific” advanced Western weapons to be used against Russia, the British newspaper claimed. Each point is reportedly part of what Zelensky has termed a ‘victory plan’ in the conflict with Moscow. His aim is to increase the pressure on Russia to the extent that it is coerced into signing a peace agreement on Ukrainian terms, The Times explained, citing its analysis of public remarks and several anonymous sources. Zelensky has publicly stated that his plan would allow the conflict to end this year, although The Times claims it would take at least two more years to implement.

The key issue for Kiev is preventing Donald Trump from reversing commitments to Ukraine, should he be reelected as US president in November, the newspaper added. The Republican nominee and his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, have suggested that their administration would force Kiev to make painful concessions in order to end the hostilities. However, the idea that Ukraine would not achieve a full victory over Russia is “awful” and “unacceptable,” Zelensky told the New Yorker magazine ahead of his trip to the US this week. The Ukrainian leader has promised to brief Trump and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Haris, on his ‘victory plan’. Prior to Kiev’s incursion into Kursk last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered an immediate ceasefire in return for Zelensky renouncing Ukraine’s bid to join NATO and removing all troops from Russian territory.

Officials in Moscow have said they would accept a peace deal along the lines that the two nations agreed in 2022, before Kiev made a U-turn and opted to seek a military victory, reportedly after being prompted by the West. A NATO diplomat told The Times it is “clear that the Ukrainians will not be able to drive the Russians out,” although accepting neutral status and ceding territories “would be a disastrous outcome” that “can definitely not be the basis of the negotiation.” Moscow has said it will not take part in a ‘peace summit’ proposed by Zelensky for later this year, describing it as “fraudulent.”

Read more …

Bankrupted themselves over Ukraine.

• New Car Registration Levels Crashing In EU (RT)

The EU market for new cars saw its biggest drop in over two years in August, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA). Registrations of new automobiles fell 18.3% year-on-year across the bloc, with double-digit losses in the region’s three major markets: 27.8% in Germany, 24.3% in France, and 13.4% in Italy, according to the ACEA’s latest data. Spain, the fourth largest car market in the EU, saw a 6.5% decline. Only four EU member states posted slight growth in new car registrations last month, namely Poland, Slovenia, Cyprus, and Malta, according to ACEA data. Most of the new cars delivered across the bloc were petrol-fueled (33.1%), with hybrid-electric vehicles (HEV) close behind at 31.3%.

The share of new battery-electric cars (BEV) in the EU car market fell to 14.4% from 21% recorded in August 2023. Deliveries of BEVs have been declining for four consecutive months this year, contrasting sharply with steady growth throughout 2023, notes ACEA. The association unites Europe’s 15 major car, truck, van and bus makers. The bloc-wide decline followed Brussels’ introduction in July of provisional tariffs on BEVs made in China and imported into the EU. Following an anti-subsidy probe, the European Commission concluded that the BEV value chain in China benefits from “unfair subsidisation,” which is causing “a threat of economic injury” to EU BEV makers.

Read more …

Join BRICS.

• Macron Calls For New World Order (RT)

French President Emmanuel Macron has called for reform of the current “unjust” world order so that humans can coexist more peacefully. He outlined his vision on Sunday as part of the international ‘Imagining Peace’ gathering in Paris, which brought together leading political and religious figures. Speaking before the Catholic community of Sant’Egidio, Macron said “We must be imaginative enough to think about the peace of tomorrow, a peace in Europe in a new form.” If the European continent is to become more stable, everyone should acknowledge that it is “neither quite the EU, nor resolutely NATO,” he stated. “We will have to think of a new form of organization for Europe and rethink our relationship with Russia” after the Ukraine conflict is over, the president added. Macron has sent mixed messages regarding the hostilities between Russia and Ukraine as the conflict evolved over the years.

In 2022, he drew criticism from fellow Western officials for urging them not to “humiliate” Russia. In early 2024, he said the West should not rule out the deployment of NATO troops on Ukrainian soil – a proposal that multiple other national leaders have rejected. The speech comes as Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky is set to meet US President Joe Biden to present his so-called ‘victory plan’ – a purported roadmap to pressuring Russia into conceding defeat. He wants permission to conduct long-range strikes deep inside Russia with Western weapons as part of the plan. France is among a handful of nations that have donated such military hardware to Ukraine in the form of SCALP/Storm Shadow cruise missiles, which the country produces jointly with the UK.

British officials have supported Kiev’s request to strike Russia, but the ultimate decision is understood to be in Washington’s hands. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that any such attack would be considered an act of war by NATO member states. In his speech, Macron claimed that the global system created in the wake of World War II was “incomplete and unjust,” because many modern nations did not even exist at that time and don’t have a proper place at the table. He said international bodies, such as the UN, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, should be reformed accordingly. Russia is among a number of nations that have declared a goal of reducing the influence of Western-dominated institutions in global affairs with a view to creating a multipolar world order.

Read more …

“..certain lobbies did not want these efforts to achieve their goal..”

• Erdogan Weighs In On Failure Of Türkiye-mediated Ukraine Talks (RT)

Talks in Istanbul to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in March 2022 did not achieve their goal because certain interests were opposed to a peace deal, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has revealed. Erdogan addressed those negotiations between Moscow and Kiev on Monday during a press conference at the Turkish House in New York, as he was highlighting Ankara’s positive role as an intermediary in various conflicts. “We have made efforts to establish a just peace since the beginning of the [Ukraine-Russia] war, and we continue to do so,” he said, as quoted by Anadolu news agency. “The negotiations in Istanbul have proven the success of Türkiye’s active role. However, certain lobbies did not want these efforts to achieve their goal,”Erdogan added.

The 2022 negotiations between Kiev and Moscow to resolve their differences culminated in a draft treaty. If implemented, Ukraine would have agreed to become a neutral nation with a limited army in exchange for international security guarantees. Shortly after the document was signed by heads of the respective delegations, Kiev made a U-turn and declared military victory over Moscow as its only option in the conflict. The policy change was prompted by a visit to Kiev by then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a Russia hawk, who told the Ukrainians to keep fighting, according to Ukrainian MP David Arakhamia, who signed the draft treaty on Kiev’s behalf. Moscow believes that Johnson ordered Ukraine not to compromise, since the West is interested in inflicting maximum damage on Russia regardless of the cost paid for it by the Ukrainian people.

Johnson has claimed he simply advised Kiev not to trust the Kremlin and that his words did not amount to an instruction. Having left his position in September 2022 following a wave of domestic scandals, Johnson remains a vocal advocate for pumping more arms and aid into Kiev. Unrestricted Western support will “send the crucial message to the Kremlin” that it cannot have a say on what is happening at its doorstep, he argued in an op-ed just published by The Spectator magazine. Erdogan is visiting the US to take part in the UN General Assembly. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky is set to promote his ‘victory plan’ on the sidelines of the event. He is scheduled to first present his proposal to US President Joe Biden.

Read more …

“What’s at stake is the extremely complex design of a brand-new financial system – decentralized and using digital technology.”

• Will a BRICS Bretton Woods Take Place in Kazan? (Pepe Escobar)

With less than a month before the crucial BRICS annual summit in Kazan under the Russian presidency, serious informed discussions are raging in Moscow and other Eurasian capitals on what should be at the table in the de-dollarization and alternative payment system front. Earlier this month Andrey Mikhailishin, head of the task force on financial services of the BRICS Business Council, detailed the list of top projects under consideration. They include:
• A common unit of account – as in The Unit, whose contours were first revealed exclusively by Sputnik.
• A platform for multilateral settlements and payments in BRICS digital currencies, connecting the financial markets of BRICS members: that’s BRICS Bridge, which bears similarities with the Bank of International Settlements-linked MBridge, already in effect. That will complement intrabank systems already in action, as in Russia’s SPFS and Iran’s CPAM settling financial transactions – and 60% of their trade – in their own currencies.
• A blockchain-based payment system that entirely bypasses the US dollar: BRICS Pay. Arguably 159 participants may be ready to adopt this sanction-evading, similar-to-SWIFT mechanism right away.
• A settlement depository (Clear).
• An insurance system.
• And crucially a BRICS rating agency, independent from the Western giants.

What’s at stake is the extremely complex design of a brand-new financial system – decentralized and using digital technology. BRICS Clear, for instance, will be using blockchain to record securities and exchange them.
As for The Unit, the value of the common unit of account is pegged by 40% to gold and by 60% to a basket of BRICS member’s national currencies. The BRICS Business Council considers The Unit a “convenient and universal” instrument, since a unit can be converted into any national currency. That would definitely solve the nagging problem of exchange rate volatility when cash balances accumulate from settlements in national currencies; for example, a mountain of Indian rupees used to pay for Russian energy.

Who Do I Call to Talk to BRICS?
I asked a very direct question to two Russian analysts, one of them a finance tech executive with vast experience across Europe, and the other the head of an investment fund with global reach. Considering the sensitivity of their posts, they prefer to remain anonymous. The question: Is BRICS ready to become an actor in Kazan next month, and what should be on the table in terms of the strategy to establish an alternative payment system?

The Answers. Analyst 1:
“Time has come for BRICS to become a real actor. The world demands it. The leaders of BRICS countries clearly understand it. They have the moral power and the political will to set up an organization to provide a number for BRICS to be called in – that’s the best question for the upcoming summit.” The analyst is referring to what could be dubbed “the Kissinger moment”, when Dr. K famously quipped, in the Cold War era, “when I want to talk to Europe, who do I call?”
Now to Analyst 2:
“For a BRICS agreement amongst countries to mean something, countries need to agree on a framework of action and that means accepting some responsibilities in exchange for certain rights. And it sounds there’s no better way to achieve that than to arrive at mutually agreed obligations on settlement of financial transactions.” One of the analysts added a very important, specific point: “By now the situation is pretty clear, to properly address the issue of cross-border payments. The best mechanism should be based on the New Development Bank (NDB), given that Russia has a mandate to propose the new president of that organization. Whoever the candidate will be, cross-border payments should be at the top of his agenda.” The NDB is the BRICS bank, based in Shanghai. The analyst hopes this decision on the future of the NDB will be made before the BRICS summit: “Given the diplomatic and political considerations, the candidate should be made known, formally or informally to the member countries.”

Read more …

 

 

 

Obamagate
https://twitter.com/i/status/1838041585583337978

 

 

Obama Bieber
https://twitter.com/i/status/1838028542421909561

 

 

Cat tail
https://twitter.com/i/status/1838108949125448085

 

 

Pick up a duck

 

 

Cold
https://twitter.com/i/status/1838247556981080212

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle October 24 2023

Oct 242023
 
 October 24, 2023  Posted by at 8:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  47 Responses »


Joseph Mallord William Turner Wreckers, Coast of Northumberland 1834

 

• A Blueprint For The Complete Ethnic Cleansing Of Gaza (Ofir)
• Israel A ‘Nuclear Wildcard’ On ‘Dangerous Road To Armageddon’: Macgregor (ZH)
• The Existential Trap – The Pentagon Has Just Fallen Into It (Helmer)
• US Fears Israel Has No ‘Clear’ Plan For Gaza Invasion – NYT (RT)
• New World Order Won’t Be Built By US – Kremlin (TASS)
• Biden’s Taunt to Show Him the Money May Have Just Backfired (Turley)
• Halloween Parable (James Howard Kunstler)
• Revelations About Dugina Murder Mean ‘CIA Knows War in Ukraine is Lost’ (Sp.)
• EU’s Borrell Asks Media ‘Not To Forget About Ukraine’ (RT)
• Orban Blasts EU As ‘Parody’ Of USSR (RT)
• US Treasury Deficit Doubles as Biden Bankrolls Foreign Conflicts (Tweedie)
• Imran Khan Charged Over Exposing Alleged US Meddling (RT)
• More Americans Are Rejecting the Constitution and Embracing Violence (Turley)

 

 

 

 

Alastair Crooke

 

 

,,what Arafat walked away from in July 2000″

 

 

Carter 2013

 

 

 

 

Hadid
https://twitter.com/i/status/1716320417613250799

 

 

Marine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How and why does Egypt have 10 million available apartment units?

• A Blueprint For The Complete Ethnic Cleansing Of Gaza (Ofir)

The Hamas attack on Israeli towns surrounding Gaza on October 7 has provided a pretext for an unprecedented, genocidal revenge campaign by Israel involving the massacre of now nearly 5,000 Palestinians, including over 2,000 children – and that may only be the beginning. Now, an Israeli think tank with ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is promoting plans for the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza. On October 17, the Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy published a position paper advocating for the “relocation and final settlement of the entire Gaza population.” The report advocates exploiting the current moment to accomplish a long-held Zionist goal of moving Palestinians off the land of historic Palestine.

The report’s subtitle makes it clear: “There is at the moment a unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the whole Gaza Strip in coordination with the Egyptian government.” The Misgav Institute is headed by former Netanyahu National Security Advisor Meir Ben Shabbat, who remains influential in Israeli security circles. The Institute’s former chairpersons and founding associates include Yoaz Hendel (chair 2012-19), a right-centrist who was Minister of Communications intermittently in the years 2020-22; Moshe Yaalon, former Defense Minister (note that both Hendel and Yaalon have become opposed to Netanyahu in the recent years); Moshe Arens, also former Defense Minister — and other top political personas. The main arguments of the report, which the Institute highlighted on social media upon the report’s release, are translated as follows:

• There is a need for an immediate, viable plan for the resettlement and economic rehabilitation of the entire Arab population in the Gaza Strip, which sits well with the geopolitical interests of Israel, Egypt, U.S.A. and Saudi Arabia.
• In 2017 it was reported that in Egypt there were 10 million available apartment units, of which half were built and half under construction. For example, in two of the biggest Cairo satellite cities, “October 6” and “Ramadan 10” there is an immense number of built and empty apartments under governmental and private ownership as well as empty lots for building that would in total suffice the housing of about 6 million residents.
• The average cost of a three-room apartment of 95 square meters for an average Gaza family of 5.14 people in one of the two mentioned cities stands at $19,000. In calculating the total population that resides in the Gaza Strip, which stands between 1.4-2.2 million people, it is possible to assess that the amount that would need to be transferred to Egypt in order to finance would be around $5 to 8 billion.
• An encouraging injection to the Egyptian economy at this magnitude would provide an enormous and immediate advantage to [Egyptian President] El-Sisi’s regime. Such money sums, compared to the Israeli economy, are miniscule. The investment of a mere few billions of dollars (even if it is $20 or 30 billion) in order to solve this difficult issue is an innovative, cheap and viable solution.
• There is no doubt that in order for this plan to be enacted, many conditions need to exist in parallel. At the moment, these conditions exist, and it is unclear when such an opportunity will arise again, if at all.

It appears that this ethnic-cleansing plan is based on a similar logic to that of the “Abraham Accords,” involving the infusion of massive sums towards despotic regimes to write off the Palestinian issue. But this time, it is not just about slow annexation and bantustanization through “economic peace” — but advocating for the complete population transfer of Palestinians from Gaza. It is not the first time that suggestions for a full ethnic cleansing have appeared from Israeli analysts or even politicians. In the midst of the 2014 Gaza onslaught, Moshe Feiglin, who was then part of Likud and deputy chair of the Knesset, sent Netanyahu a public, 7-point proposal for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. He repeated the genocidal advocacy in 2018. Feiglin is now a libertarian politician. In a recent interview on Channel 14, Feiglin called for a “Dresden” on Gaza (referring to the WW2 firebombing of Dresden in February 1945, killing some 25,000 people) — “a storm of fire on all of Gaza!” he proclaimed, demanding to “not leave stone on stone” and emphasizing “total fire!” and “the end of ends!”

Read more …

Türkiye and Russia to become involved.

• Israel A ‘Nuclear Wildcard’ On ‘Dangerous Road To Armageddon’: Macgregor (ZH)

Tucker Carlson sat down with Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.), who laid out a disturbing scenario in which the United States could quickly be pulled into a direct conflict with Iran, Russia and China over Israel’s anticipated response to the October 7 Hamas attack. Carlson starts off highlighting Lindsey Graham, who vowed; “…if Hezbollah, which is a proxy of Iran, launches a massive attack on Israel, I consider that a threat to the… state of Israel, existential in nature. I will introduce a resolution [in] the United States Senate to allow military action by the United States in conjunction with Israel to knock Iran out of the Oil Business…” Carlson then asks: “So what would war with Iran mean? Well, it’s hard to know because virtually no one who’s talking about it in public is operating from a deep interest in America’s interest. Is this good for us, or is it not?”

If, as Sen. Graham suggests, we start bombing critical infrastructure in Iran, Macgregor warns “the destruction would be wholesale” as Iran would target “all the bases we have in Iraq and Syria – with around 1000 Americans – would be targeted… and this time accurately.” According to Macgregor, “The chosen destination” if we continue on this path, “is Armageddon,” and the implications (of which nobody seems to be considering) for the United States, Europe, and the Middle East are grave. For example, “just on the economic side, about 20% of the world’s oil passes through the Straits of Hormuz every month – probably 25% of liquefied natural gas, and you’re talking about shutting down 2 to three million barrels a day of oil from Iran. “You know this entire region is involved in the war. This is not an Iranian Monopoly by any stretch of the imagination,” he continued.

The two also discussed how one of the primary challenges of in contemplating war with Iran is the unpredictable nature of such conflicts. Economic sanctions, which have been the go-to strategy for years, have failed to cripple Iran’s military capabilities. When military force comes into play, a whole new set of unknowns emerges. The U.S. military, as it stands, may not be adequately prepared for such a conflict – particularly if the enemy has new weapons systems and capabilities. “We’ve had the luxury of sitting around forward operating bases and striking opponents that were armed with AK-47s, and command detonated mines and the occasional mortar or rocket. Very, very low-intensity combat,” he said, referring to the types of engagements the US military has grown accustomed to.

According to Macgregor, “This is a high-end, conventional war that we’re looking at, with the potential to go nuclear – which, obviously, I don’t think we or the Russians want to happen, but we have the wild-card in Israel. They do have a nuclear capability.” “We don’t know what the trip wire is for them to employ such a weapon. At that point of course, all bets are off and I think most of the world would turn against Israel. Right now, they just have to worry about the Muslim world against them,” he continued, explaining that by focusing on Hamas and Hezbollah as immediate threats, the broader implications are obscured. For example, attacking urban environments such as Gaza comes with a high risk of civilian casualties – the consequences of which would catastrophic, both morally and strategically.

“Hezbollah has a very large operation in Mexico,” says Macgregor. “There are no doubt many, many Hezbollah agents inside the United States. We can only begin to imagine the kind of trouble they could cause.” In the midst of all this, the question arises: How will a war with Iran affect American domestic politics? History shows that war is often used to stifle dissent, but in today’s connected world, censorship can only go so far. Public opinion, initially in favor of violence against Hamas, may wane as the conflict escalates and images of destruction flood the media. “But what’s most important, I think, for Americans to understand is, if we attack Iran on the basis of Hezbollah’s alleged willingness to attack Israel, if Israel gets into a real shooting war with Hezbollah, they have the largest armed forces in the region.”

Read more …

“..the entire portfolio of US air defence systems is being defeated..”

• The Existential Trap – The Pentagon Has Just Fallen Into It (Helmer)

“In a small change that could have major meaning,” Pentagon officials are telling their press, “the U.S. is changing its plans for the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group. The change could place the strike group in waters where Chinese warships have been active in recent months. Last week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that the Eisenhower strike group would head to the eastern Mediterranean instead of Europe as had been planned. Sailing in the eastern Mediterranean would have put the strike group to the west of Israel. But that plan changed after a week in which U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq came under fire from Iran-backed militias, and a U.S. Navy ship in the Red Sea downed missiles launched from Yemen…On Saturday, Austin said in a statement the strike group will now go to the ‘Central Command area of responsibility.’ Central Command covers a vast amount of Middle East territory, including the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.”

The purpose of “these steps,” Austin said, is to “bolster regional deterrence efforts, increase force protection for U.S. forces in the region, and assist in the defense of Israel.” The priority order is a switch. Israel comes last – Iran, Russia and China come first. For the first time too, the US command has acknowledged what President Vladimir Putin meant when he said in Beijing last Wednesday, October 18, that he has deployed MiG-31s armed with Kinzhal missiles within range of the Eisenhower. Austin added for Sunday television viewers in the US: “If any group or any country is looking to widen this conflict and take advantage of this very unfortunate situation that we see, our advice is: don’t. We maintain the right to defend ourselves, and we won’t hesitate to take the appropriate action.”

The US doctrine of self-defence while attacking states like Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Somalia isn’t new. In September 1969, when Libyan Army Captain Muammar Qaddafi took control of his country, he carefully skirted the US Air Force (USAF) base at Wheelus (Mellaha), which was stocking nuclear weapons at the time; Qaddafi then squeezed the US forces out of Wheelus over twelve months, but the USAF evacuated its nuclear weapons swiftly. Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon don’t have time; the Israelis even less. But Austin’s rush to change the sailing orders for the Eisenhower and fly THAADs and Patriots to US bases in the Arab territories reveals he’s short of time too. This is because the entire portfolio of US air defence systems is being defeated. The Russian Kinzhal has defeated the US Patriot batteries around Kiev; the Hamas swarms of drones and rockets defeated Israel’s Iron Dome on October 7. THAAD has been tested in combat once, against a Houthi missile, rocket and drone attack against Abu Dhabi targets in January 2022. “Several were intercepted, a few of them [weren’t].”

Read more …

Bakhmut on steroids.

• US Fears Israel Has No ‘Clear’ Plan For Gaza Invasion – NYT (RT)

US officials have expressed concerns that Israel has no workable plan for sending ground forces into Gaza, and are questioning whether the IDF can achieve its goal of annihilating the Hamas militant group without the right preparations, according to the New York Times. In recent discussions with his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has emphasized the need for “careful consideration” before launching a ground campaign in the densely populated territory, the New York Times reported on Monday. “The [US] administration is also concerned… that the Israel Defense Forces do not yet have a clear military pathway to achieve Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal of eradicating Hamas,” the outlet said, adding that “In conversations with Israeli officials since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, American officials said they have not yet seen an achievable plan of action.”

Although the White House has maintained that American officials are not making decisions on Israel’s behalf, the Pentagon has reportedly dispatched three-star Marine Lt. Gen. James Glynn to advise the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on urban operations. The officer previously led US special operators tasked with fighting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), and before that served in Fallujah, Iraq during some of the most vicious house-to-house fighting following the 2003 US invasion. Glynn will reportedly advise Israeli forces on “how to mitigate civilian casualties in urban warfare,” according to the Associated Press, which cited an unnamed US official. However, National Security Council Coordinator John Kirby told reporters on Monday that American advisers will not serve in a combat role, and would merely consult with Israeli commanders. Another unnamed official told the New York Times, meanwhile, that Glynn would not remain on the ground in Israel should a ground invasion begin.

During a call with Gallant on Monday, Defense Secretary Austin reportedly emphasized “the importance of civilian protection,” and “encouraged” the Israeli military to “conduct their operations in accordance with the law of war.” The IDF has already come under fire from some human rights groups for indiscriminate strikes on civilian structures in Gaza, which have left at least 5,000 Palestinians dead and thousands more injured, according to local officials. Some 1,400 in Israel have been killed since the latest round of hostilities erupted on October 7, when Hamas launched one of its largest terrorist attacks to date. Hundreds of thousands of residents in Gaza have been displaced amid the violence, with many in dire need of aid, also prompting warnings of a looming humanitarian disaster from the United Nations and other organizations.

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“..has a US-centric world order in mind.” “That is, a world that revolves around the United States. This will no longer be the case..”

• New World Order Won’t Be Built By US – Kremlin (TASS)

The Kremlin endorses US President Joe Biden’s statement that the world is in need of a new order, but Moscow does not agree that such an order can be built under the auspices of Washington alone, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the media. “We absolutely agree with Mr. Biden. This is a rare occasion when we absolutely agree with what he said. Indeed, the world is in need of a new order, [but one] based on entirely different principles [than what the US promotes],” he said. The Kremlin believes that any future world order must be free of any attempts to concentrate all control mechanisms in the hands of a single country and of all attempts by a single power to impose its will and its decisions on other countries.

“There should be a world order based on international law, not on ‘rules.’ It should be based on mutual respect, mutual benefit, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, and so on,” Peskov enumerated. The Kremlin disagrees, however, with Biden on the other part of his statement, Peskov continued. “Mr. Biden also said that the United States is capable of building such an order. We disagree with this part of his statement,” Peskov said. He stressed that the US, “one way or another, whatever world order it may be talking about, has a US-centric world order in mind.” “That is, a world that revolves around the United States. This will no longer be the case,” he stated.

Read more …

The Biden team is insulting what’s left of the intelligence of the American people.

• Biden’s Taunt to Show Him the Money May Have Just Backfired (Turley)

“Where’s the money?” That laughing quip from President Joe Biden was his surprising reaction to the disclosure that a trusted FBI informant had conveyed an alleged bribe worth millions, paid to Joe Biden by a Ukrainian businessman. Biden seemed almost to morph into the Cuba Gooding Jr. character in “Jerry Maguire,” getting Tom Cruise’s character to chant “show me the money” over and over again. Much like in the movie, the pundits and politicians picked up the refrain, insisting that nothing matters unless critics can show a direct payment to Jill or Joe Biden among the millions sent to Biden family members. At the same time, they opposed any investigation by the House. Now, the House Oversight Committee committee has released evidence of one such transfer that might even satisfy Cuba Gooding, Jr.

The payment occurred in 2018, after the president’s brother, James Biden, received $200,000 from a company called Americore. James has long been criticized for raw influence peddling, and Americore was one of the companies where he had reportedly suggested access to sell to his brother. On March 1, 2018, Americore wired James the money to his personal rather than his business account. On the very same day, James wrote a check in that same amount to the personal bank account of his brother Joe, who had left office as Vice President and was widely discussed as a possible candidate for the presidency. James listed the money as a “loan repayment.”

“Loans” have long been a source of controversy with the Bidens. IRS whistleblowers, for example, detailed how Hunter took massive payments from corrupt foreign sources and listed them as “loans,” despite no evidence of repayment or any standard loan agreement. He allegedly neither paid them back nor paid taxes on the money. Even if Joe Biden did loan almost a quarter of a million dollars to his brother, it would raise concerns over whether this disbursement came while he was vice president. The payments could have given Joe Biden an interest in not just the influence peddling of his brother but also the viability of this company.

The White House has insisted that it was a loan to his brother that was repaid. But if there is no evidence of an actual loan, it would constitute a payment from an influence-seekling company to Joe Biden. At a minimum, the payment shows the fluidity of the accounts and finances of the Biden influence-peddling operation. While I have long criticized influence peddling by both Republicans and Democrats for decades, the Bidens constitute a class to themselves. The House committees have now traced millions of dollars passing through a labyrinth of shell companies and accounts to Biden family members, even grandchildren.

Read more …

“..V. Putin is not the enemy of Western Civ, he’s one of its last remaining defenders..”

• Halloween Parable (James Howard Kunstler)


The Dead Rise on John Streets

You might have noticed that the massive investment in Halloween yard shrines by families growing broke in America reflects the ghoulish convergence of malevolent events undermining and overtaking what used to be normal life in this land. Nothing is normal anymore. The groaning mummies, howling werewolves, and shrieking skeletons are trying to tell us something. The message might be: detach from reality long enough and death comes creeping ’round your door. You see where consensual madness has gotten us? Believe enough things that are not true and nemesis comes roaring in, all fangs and claws, to gleefully shred you. So. Maybe it’s time to stop believing things that are not true. Start with the first principle of US life in our time: that anything goes and nothing matters.

This proposition has ruled for as long as most of us can remember. Consequence was exiled on Main Street so you can get away with anything now — until you discover that, somehow, everything is broken. Your livelihood is broken. Your community is broken. Your household is broken. Your car is broken. Your children are broken. Your health is broken. Your faith is broken. Your country is broken. Here’s a first principle worth considering: court death and it will oblige you. Granted, there is a certain libido for nonexistence in the human psyche because life is so hard sometimes that you yearn to be relieved of it. But not everyone in America seeks to walk that way. Probably fewer than half of us. So why do we allow that other half to drag us to the bone orchard?

Do you see what it means to get your mind right when times get hard and the path is uncertain? Everybody knows that a ghoul was installed in the now-haunted White House. And everybody knows that the method of his installation was a fraud, a gigantic falsehood. The catch is that the fewer than half of us liked it that way, they celebrated it, did a victory dance, and then rubbed it in with prosecutions against the rest of us who saw exactly what happened and didn’t like it. They acted like it didn’t matter what you saw. They tried to control the transmission of ideas and sentiment about these matters by placing half the CIA and the FBI on Facebook, Twitter, and Google.

Nice try, but only cads and fools think that you can stuff reality in a black box, lock it up, and throw away the key. Reality has Houdini-like powers to escape because reality is true magic. Reality is the ultimate super-power. Reality is not some asshole in a spandex suit with a cape and a mask. Reality is the white light that reveals the world. Reality is telling us that the war project in Ukraine started by the neocon pseudopod of our Deep State blob is not working out. The fiasco could not be more rank. Instead of weakening Russia, it crippled the USA. V. Putin is not the enemy of Western Civ, he’s one of its last remaining defenders. Was it not in everyone’s interest that for seventy-five years Ukraine existed as an inert borderland, making trouble for nobody, itself especially? Could we not respect that reality and leave it alone?

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“..hey, look, here’s all the good stuff we tried to do. And it’s not our fault. The Ukrainians sometimes went off the reservation and did bad things.”

• Revelations About Dugina Murder Mean ‘CIA Knows War in Ukraine is Lost’ (Sp.)

Over a year has passed since the assassination of Daria Dugina, a journalist and the daughter of the renowned Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin. Recently, a surprising admission about the culprits of this heinous crime was made by a US newspaper. While the Kiev regime has so far denied its involvement in Dugina’s murder, the Washington Post has reported citing its sources that the assassination was orchestrated by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU). The newspaper’s sources also alleged that the US Central Intelligence Agency has invested a lot of money and effort since 2015 to turn Ukraine’s intelligence services into “potent allies against Moscow.” Commenting on this development, retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official Larry Johnson suggests that the timing of the WaPo’s revelations may not be coincidental.

“You have to ask yourself, why was this published now? Because this was not just created on a whim. There is a purpose behind this. I take it as an indication that the CIA realizes that the war in Ukraine is lost and that it’s not going to succeed,” he told Sputnik. “Therefore, they’re starting to put out their story about, hey, look, here’s all the good stuff we tried to do. And it’s not our fault. The Ukrainians sometimes went off the reservation and did bad things.” According to Johnson, the CIA should probably seek to distance itself from the crimes committed by the SBU and Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, who seem increasingly focused on assassinating people they brand as enemies of Ukraine. “If you’ve got people that are doing things that you see as counterproductive to your policy and in this case actually murdering journalists, that is a violation for the CIA. But again, the CIA has their persons within the ranks who find ways to excuse that, justify and say that it’s okay,” he remarked.

Referring to the part of the newspaper’s report that broached the subject of the CIA providing training to Ukrainian intelligence services, Johnson wondered aloud what exactly did this training involve, seeing how the techniques mentioned in the article – for example, the way the bomb that killed Dugina was smuggled into Russia – have little to do with actual intelligence work. “The goal of intelligence is to recruit people from the other side who have access to information you want and cannot get through any other means. And you want to recruit them and have them provided that information without tipping off the other side that you have access to that information,” he explained. Johnson also said he thinks “Russia has far better human intelligence on what Ukraine is going to do than Ukraine has on what Russia is going to do.”

Regarding the potential risks Ukrainian intelligence services may present to those who support them, Johnson described them as minimal, noting that the problem may arise “if members of the GUR or SBU feel that they were betrayed by the West.” “And then there’s always the possibility that they could try to seek revenge out of that. But again, I think this decision to publish this story is all about, I think, the end game of U.S. policy in support for Ukraine. It’s not the flag in a problem per se, but it’s just the CIA basically saying, here’s what we’ve tried to do and it’s not our fault,” he surmised. Daria Dugina was murdered on August 20, 2022, when an explosive device that had been planted in her car detonated. An investigation conducted by the Russian authorities established that the bomb was planted by Ukrainian national Natalia Vovk who worked for the Ukrainian special services, the mastermind behind Dugina’s murder.

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What a disaster EU “leadership” is.

• EU’s Borrell Asks Media ‘Not To Forget About Ukraine’ (RT)

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has urged the media not to shift all of its attention away from Ukraine and onto the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Speaking ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Monday, Borrell told reporters that Ukraine “continues to fight” and said Kiev would be on the agenda for the discussions. “Do not forget about Ukraine,” added the diplomat. Borrell also noted that ministers would discuss the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as European sanctions against Russia. During his brief exchange with reporters, Borrell primarily spoke about the fighting between Israel and Hamas, while none of the journalists present asked about the Ukraine conflict.

Despite previously expressing solidarity with Israel, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has lamented that this month’s escalation in the Middle East has diverted the spotlight away from his country. “If international attention shifts away from Ukraine, one way or another, it will have consequences,” Zelensky warned in an interview with France 2 earlier this month. “The fate of Ukraine depends on the unity of the rest of the world.” US officials have declared that they will continue funding Kiev and Israel, with US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen insisting that Washington “can certainly afford” two wars.

She also admitted that direct US economic aid to Kiev was “what enables them to fight this war.” Ukrainian Defense Ministry official Gennady Kovalenko told the Washington Post earlier in October that Kiev “depends 100% on the United States.” US President Joe Biden is reportedly planning to ask Congress to approve a new $100 billion aid bill that would include funding for Israel and Ukraine. However, a report by Axios last week suggested that the Pentagon has decided to give Israel tens of thousands of 155mm artillery shells that were originally intended for Ukraine.

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“For Westerners, freedom means escape — get rid of yourself, get rid of what you were born into, change nation, change gender, change identity.”

• Orban Blasts EU As ‘Parody’ Of USSR (RT)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has marked the anniversary of his country’s failed 1956 uprising against the USSR by accusing the European Union of seeking Soviet-like dominance in trying to strip Budapest of its identity. “Today, things pop up that remind us of the Soviet times,” Orban said in a speech on Monday in the western Hungarian city of Veszprem. “Yes, it happens that history repeats itself. Fortunately, what once was tragedy is now a comedy at best. Fortunately, Brussels is not Moscow. Moscow was a tragedy. Brussels is just a bad contemporary parody.” Orban said Brussels has tried to impose a model of liberal democracy that the Hungarian people have rejected.

He added that although the EU’s domineering methods harken back to the Soviet era, the bloc is not able to rule with an iron fist. “We had to dance to the tune that Moscow whistled,” Orban said of Hungary’s four decades under Soviet control. “Brussels whistles too, but we dance as we want to, and if we don’t want to, then we don’t dance.” Hungary’s October 23 holiday commemorates the start of a 1956 revolution, which was crushed by Soviet troops after just 12 days. Orban typically gives a speech to supporters on the holiday and has previously used it to make comparisons between Soviet oppression and EU tactics. Last year, he predicted that the bloc would end up like the Soviet Union.

Orban has clashed with the EU on anti-Russia sanctions, illegal immigration, and LGBTQ “propaganda,” among other issues. Just last week, he roiled Western allies by meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing. He has called for seeking a negotiated end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict and has argued that sanctions against Moscow have made citizens of EU countries poorer. The PM suggested in Monday’s speech that Hungarians have a different view of freedom than their Western allies. “For Westerners, freedom means escape — get rid of yourself, get rid of what you were born into, change nation, change gender, change identity.” He added that for Hungarians, freedom is a “life instinct,” and they’re not willing to give up their identity. “The thought of not being a man, a Christian and a Hungarian is like tearing our hearts apart.”

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Money grows on trees.

• US Treasury Deficit Doubles as Biden Bankrolls Foreign Conflicts (Tweedie)

US President Joe Biden’s appeal for cash to arm Ukraine and Israel could meet resistance from Congress thanks to the runaway federal budget. Treasury department figures released late last week showed the government deficit had hit almost £1.7 trillion, up from £1.37 trillion a year earlier, a 23 percent increase in the public debt — although lower than the $2.78 trillion left by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. The news was worse than it sounded however. The 2022 deficit included the budget for Biden’s student loan repayment program, money that was never spent as the Supreme Court struck it down. The treasury then claimed those unspent public funds as a “saving” in 2023 — meaning the true deficit doubled from $1 trillion in 2022 to $2 trillion this year. That news came a day before Biden asked Congress for a $106 billion emergency foreign military aid budget.

The lion’s share, $61.4 billion, is earmarked for Washington’s proxy conflict with Russia in Ukraine, while another $14.3 billion is to arm Israel for its latest attempt to destroy the Hamas movement in the besieged Gaza Strip. That request dwarfs the $77 billion in arms and cash gifted to the Kiev regime since the start of Russia’s de-Nazification operation in February 2022. Economist Sergio Rossi told Sputnik that the mounting deficit would make it harder for Biden to persuade Congress to approve his $100 billion budget request for more arms to Ukraine and Israel “in light of the problematic economic situation and outlook for the US stakeholders, namely, households, firms, and a variety of financial institutions.” “Usually, when the domestic economic situation worsens, these stakeholders and their political supporters reduce the volume of foreign aid, to focus on supporting their own national economy first of all,” Rossi said.

He said the funding the conflict in Ukraine — while preparing for a Pacific showdown with China over Taiwan — had already put too much strain on Washington’s finances before the Palestinian Hamas movement launched a surprise attack into southern Israel. “The US government cannot continue financing two military conflicts, particularly if the latter will continue without any foreseeable peaceful agreement before long,” Rossi stressed. “There are already signs that the political consensus for such a financial support is diminishing across the US economy, notably where both the labour and the product markets are in a difficult situation for a number of middle-class workers and several small or medium-sized firms.” The state of the US economy was “worrying,” he said, and the outlook for the next two years was “even worse,” thanks to “global macroeconomic issues related to different geopolitical problems.”

The “mushroom” of ensuing inflation has badly affected consumer purchasing power. “As a result, firms’ investment is discouraged, both because of this inflationary pressure and the Fed’s repeated increases in the policy rates of interest.” “The US economy is even closer to a recession than it was one year ago,” Rossi warned, although “there is no potential risk of a default of the US federal government.” He pointed out that Congress could simply raise the public debt ceiling and the US Federal Reserve could buy up government bonds as an effective loan. “This, however, is a time bomb that eventually can burst, particularly once some viable and credible alternative to the US dollar will emerge across the global economy,” Rossi said. “The BRICS community could provide such an alternative in a not-too-distant future.”

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Khan=Trump.

• Imran Khan Charged Over Exposing Alleged US Meddling (RT)

A special court in Pakistan formally charged former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his then-foreign minister on Monday with breaching state secrecy laws. The charges stem from their alleged conspiracy to reveal what Khan characterized as US interference in orchestrating his removal by political opponents last year. Special Court Judge Abual Hasnat Zulqarnain lodged indictments against Khan and Shah Mahmood Qureshi concerning the so-called ‘cipher case.’ The allegations revolve around their purported unlawful retention and public disclosure of a classified document, which Khan’s side is said to have had the necessary cipher to decode. Pakistani media reports suggest that additional individuals, including Khan’s aide Muhammad Azam Khan and former Federal Minister Asad Umar, may also face charges in the ongoing investigation.

The document in question is a diplomatic cable sent by then-Pakistani Ambassador to the US Asad Majeed Khan after his March 2022 meeting with two senior US Department of State officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu. Various media sources, including The Intercept, reported that Lu criticized Imran Khan for adopting an “aggressively neutral position” on the Ukraine conflict that erupted in late February of the same year. Unlike the United States and its European allies, the Pakistani prime minister refrained from siding with Kiev. Instead, he conducted a scheduled visit to Moscow and declared during a rally that Pakistanis were not “slaves” to Washington, defying Western criticisms.

The US official reportedly discussed the no-confidence vote against Khan, which he was facing in parliament at the time. If it were to succeed, “all will be forgiven in Washington,” Lu was quoted as telling the ambassador, while if Khan stayed in power, Islamabad would supposedly face “isolation.” The US government denied that anything said by Lu during the meeting amounted to taking a position on who should be in power in Pakistan. Khan was ousted about a month after the meeting and has since been charged with a number of crimes, including some related to terrorism and corruption. He has claimed that his political opponents seek to bar him from the upcoming parliamentary elections with Washington’s blessing. Notably, after Khan’s downfall, US-Pakistani relations experienced a period of thawing.

Islamabad received an unexpected windfall this July when the International Monetary Fund extended a $3 billion bailout. The Intercept claimed that the US backed the rescue in exchange for Pakistan agreeing to supply munitions worth $900 million to Ukraine. The Pakistani government has denied the reported arms sale ever taking place.

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“..called upon President Joe Biden to defy rulings of the Supreme Court that he considers “mistaken”..

• More Americans Are Rejecting the Constitution and Embracing Violence (Turley)

A recent startling poll shows that a majority of voters not only view the opposing party as a threat to the nation but justifying violence to combat their agenda. The poll captures a crisis of faith that I have been writing about for over a decade as an academic and a commentator. Many now question democracy as a sustainable system of government. It represents the single greatest threat to this nation: a citizenry that has lost faith not just with our system of government but with each other. The polls by the University of Virginia Center for Politics shows a nation at war with itself. Fifty-two percent of Biden supporters say Republicans are now a threat to American life while 47 percent of Trump supporters say the same about Democrats.

Among Biden supporters, 41 percent now believe violence is justified “to stop [Republicans] from achieving their goals.” An almost identical percentage, 38 percent, of Trump supporters now embrace violence to stop Democrats. Not surprisingly, many of these people have lost faith in democracy. Some 31 percent of Trump supporters believe that the nation should explore alternative forms of government. Roughly a quarter (24 percent) of Biden supporters also question the viability of democracy. Faith is the one thing that no system of government can do without. Without faith in the underlying values of a constitutional system, authority rests on a mix of coercion and capitulation.

For years, I have written about this growing loss of faith and how it has been fueled by our intellectual and political elites. In the echo chamber of news and social media, citizens constantly hear how the opposing party is composed of “traitors” and how the constitutional system works to protect enemies of the people. Viewers now get a steady diet of figures like MSNBC commentator Elie Mystal who called the U.S. Constitution “trash” and argued that we should simply just dump it. In a New York Times column, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for the Constitution to be “radically altered” to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”

Georgetown University Law School Professor Rosa Brooks went on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” to lash out at Americans becoming “slaves” to the U.S. Constitution and that the Constitution itself is now the problem for the country. They are part of the radical chic that has become the norm in academia — and widely embraced by the media. According to these law professors the problem is not just our Constitution, but constitutionalism in general. Others have argued that key protections or institutions should just be ignored. In a recent open letter, Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet and San Francisco State University political scientist Aaron Belkin called upon President Joe Biden to defy rulings of the Supreme Court that he considers “mistaken” in the name of “popular constitutionalism.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

100 years
https://twitter.com/i/status/1716383954943578623

 

 

WHO

 

 

Switzerland grants diplomatic immunity to WEF
https://twitter.com/i/status/1716394092098097201

 

 

Snake spider

 

 

Riomaggiore
https://twitter.com/i/status/1716533959905972281

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 2 2022

Nov 022022
 
 November 2, 2022  Posted by at 8:33 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  70 Responses »


Balthus Girl at a window 1957

 

• Pentagon Confirms US Boots Are On The Ground In Ukraine (ZH)
• Outrage Ensues After The Atlantic Suggests ‘Amnesty’ For Pandemic Authoritarians (ZH)
• We Need Covid Accountability, Not Amnesty (QTR)
• New World Order: The West Will Have To Live Within Its Means (Karaganov)
• Zelensky ‘Nullified’ Grain Shipping Deal – Russian Duma Speaker (RT)
• There Will Be No Deal – Zelensky Broke The Rules! (Milacic)
• Russia Offers Alternative To Ukraine ‘Grain Deal’ (RT)
• Russia Demands Black Sea Corridor Guarantees From Ukraine (RT)
• Russia Responds To Kiev’s Nuclear Plant ‘Hypocrisy’ (RT)
• Blue Checkers Revolt Over Musk’s Threatened Monthly Charge (Turley)
• UK Households Face ‘Very, Very Hard’ Winter – National Grid (RT)
• Cockamamie Story (Kunstler)
• The Tale of Two Greedy Landlords (Catte Black)
• Censorship and Suppression of Covid-19 Heterodoxy (Springer)
• Fatal Flaw: 42% False Discovery Rate for SARS-CoV-2 nonQ-RT-PCR Test (PR)

 

 

 

 

 

 

GW

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..this is the start of perhaps inevitable ‘mission creep’..”

• Pentagon Confirms US Boots Are On The Ground In Ukraine (ZH)

Two bombshell reports by the Associated Press and Washington Post Monday and Tuesday have confirmed that the United States has boots on the ground in the Ukraine conflict. Crucially, these troops are performing tasks separate from mere embassy security. The American troops are said to be performing “inspections” of US weapon caches after last week the State Department and Pentagon unveiled a new plan to track US-supplied weapons in efforts to implement accountability for the billions of dollars worth of arms and ammunition transferred to Ukrainian forces since near the start of the war eight months ago.

“A small number of U.S. military forces inside Ukraine have recently begun doing onsite inspections to ensure that Ukrainian troops are properly accounting for the Western-provided weapons they receive, a senior U.S. defense official told Pentagon reporters Monday,” the AP/WaPo reporting revealed. A Pentagon briefing confirmed this “small” contingency of troops has been advised to not do inspections “close” to the front lines of fighting: The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide a military update, would not say where the inspections are taking place or how close to the battlefronts the U.S. troops are getting. The official said U.S. personnel can’t do inspections “close to the front lines,” but said they are going where security conditions allow.

There have already been “several inspections” overseen by U.S. Defense attache and a US Office of Defense Cooperation team based out of the Ukrainian capital. The report underscores that “U.S. President Joe Biden has ruled out any combat role for U.S. forces inside Ukraine.” However, what’s clear is that despite the White House’s ruling out of “combat” troops, this is the start of perhaps inevitable ‘mission creep’ – as has been seen in other conflict zones (such as Syria). If US troops are doing inspections of Ukrainian arms and ammo, and presumably Russia is currently targeting any and all Ukrainian military bases, this puts American troops and assets in Russia’s crosshairs, greatly increasing the possibility that the US and Russia could stumble into a direct shooting war.

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“Hey I’m sorry we scared the hell out of you & lied for years & persecuted & censored anyone who disagreed but there was an election going on & we really wanted to beat Donald Trump so it was important to radically politicize the science even if it destroyed your children’s lives.”

• Outrage Ensues After The Atlantic Suggests ‘Amnesty’ For Pandemic Authoritarians (ZH)

The Atlantic has come under fire for suggesting that all the terrible pandemic-era decisions over lockdowns, school closures, masking, and punishing an entire class of people who questioned the efficacy and wisdom of taking a rushed, experimental vaccine – for a virus with a 99% survival rate in most, should all be water under the bridge. “We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID,” writes Brown Professor Emily Oster – a huge lockdown proponent, who now pleads from mercy from the once-shunned. “Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward,” she continues. Except, they weren’t “in the dark” about Covid.


There were numerous sources pointing out the actual science that ran contrary to the mandate claims, and they were deliberately silenced by a vast media campaign. Evidence suggests that media platforms worked in tandem with Big Tech, the CDC and the Biden Administration. It was not a simple matter of overreaction, there was collusion to remove all counter-information. Nice try, Emily. As the Daily Sceptic’s Michael P. Senger puts it: “There’s a lot wrong here. First, no, you don’t get to advocate policies that do extraordinary harm to others, against their wishes, then say, “We didn’t know any better at the time!” Ignorance doesn’t work as an excuse when the policies involved abrogating your fellow citizens’ rights under an indefinite state of emergency, while censoring and cancelling those who weren’t as ignorant. The inevitable result would be a society in which ignorance and obedience to the opinion of the mob would be the only safe position.”

And look at that ratio: In one epic Twitter thread, Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Matthew J. Peterson (@docMJP) excoriates Oster’s entire premise; “Hey—sorry you lost your job b/c of the vax that doesn’t work and your grandmother died alone and you couldn’t have a funeral and your brother’s business was needlessly destroyed and your kids have weird heart problems—but let’s just admit we were all wrong and call a truce, eh? It’s too bad we shut the entire economy down & took on tyrannical powers that have never been used before in this country—looking back, you should have been able to go to church and use public parks while we let people riot in the streets—but it was a confusing time for everyone.

Hey I’m sorry we scared the hell out of you & lied for years & persecuted & censored anyone who disagreed but there was an election going on & we really wanted to beat Donald Trump so it was important to radically politicize the science even if it destroyed your children’s lives. OK, yes we said unvaccinated people should die & not get healthcare while never questioning Big Pharma once but we are compassionate people which is why even though we shut down the entire economy we also bankrupted the nation & caused inflation. You’re welcome! Let’s be friends.”As QTR’s Fringe Finance notes, Oster’s plea for the decency that her ilk failed to offer up to most Americans during the throws of the pandemic comes at a point where the Covid narrative has been all but lost by the Democrats and the mainstream media.

There have been several recent large wins for the unvaccinated who had the constitution and backbone to stand up for themselves throughout a year of being constantly berated and ferociously scorned as second class citizens.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1587148452055629826

Read more …

Starting with Emily Oster and the Atlantic..

• We Need Covid Accountability, Not Amnesty (QTR)

And now Emily Oster has the gall to write a ho-hum style piece calling for “amnesty” with nary a worthy apology to be seen? Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to see any common sense making its way through the cracks. I support the apologies to the unvaccinated and the court rulings because I think they are just. I haven’t been gloating about them because I’m over the topic in general and because I’m simply ready to move on and not dwell on it. But the same hubris and arrogance that caused all of this poor decision-making to begin with is still dripping off of The Atlantic’s latest “mea culpa”, which makes an attempt to rewrite history and trivializes the trauma many endured. “Some of these choices turned out better than others,” the article casually writes at one point.

At another point, like an alcoholic who can’t stop himself from taking another swig from the bottle, it begrudgingly has to make a perfunctory and obligatory reference to “misinformation”: We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty. We can leave out the willful purveyors of actual misinformation while forgiving the hard calls that people had no choice but to make with imperfect knowledge. Instead of an apology, we are left with this kumbaya moment: The standard saying is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop as well. Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward.


The Atlantic article can lead me to only one conclusion: many of the left simply don’t know how to apologize. After all, it wasn’t enough to tell honest people that they were wrong during the course of the pandemic for decisions that turned out to be right, The Atlantic now wants to tell them they’re wrong again if they don’t forgive those who made their lives hell over the last two years. A little tip for The Atlantic: next time, write a piece focused on apologizing instead of issuing orders about exactly how, when and why people should be forgiving you. In case you didn’t notice, it was trying to micromanage other peoples’ lives that got you in this mess in the first place. Talk to us when you offer up accountability, not amnesty.

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Professor Sergey Karaganov, honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and academic supervisor at the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow

• New World Order: The West Will Have To Live Within Its Means (Karaganov)

We are living in a dangerous period, on the brink of a full-fledged third world war that could end humanity’s existence. But if Russia wins, which is more than likely, and the hostilities do not escalate into a full-blown nuclear conflict, we should not look at the coming decades as a time of dangerous chaos (as most in the West are saying). We have been living in this period for a long time. It will be, if we choose a world of constructive creation and the attainment of freedom, justice and dignity by peoples and nations. The old system of institutions and regimes has already collapsed (freedom of trade and respect for private property). Meanwhile, institutions like the WTO, the World Bank the IMF, the OSCE and the EU are, I am afraid, reaching their last years.

New bodies are beginning to emerge to which the future belongs. They are the SCO, ASEAN+, the Organisation of African Unity and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The Asian Development Bank is already lending many times more than the World Bank. Not all new institutions will survive, and let us hope that a number of them will survive, especially in the UN system, which urgently needs reform to primarily represent the Global Majority in the secretariat, rather than the West. The main thing is to prevent a losing West from stalling history or derailing it through a world war. Not only Global Majority countries, but Western countries can live quite happily in this world.

The West will simply lose the opportunity to plunder the rest of the planet and it will have to shrink a bit. They will have to live within their means. I am afraid that this new world taking shape now will be created beyond my intellectual or physical life. But my young colleagues and certainly their children will see it. But this beautiful vision has to be fought for, first of all by preventing a third world war, because of the attempted revenge of the West. Again, it was in Europe that the first two world wars were unleashed. Russia is now fighting, among other things, to ensure that the prerequisites for a third are not ripe. But conflicts will occur in an era of rapid change. So the struggle for peace should be one of the main themes of our intellectual community and the world at large.

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Wonder how this will end.

• Zelensky ‘Nullified’ Grain Shipping Deal – Russian Duma Speaker (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has rendered the internationally brokered grain shipping agreement void by using the safe passage in the Black Sea to strike Russian warships, Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, said. Moscow claims that Kiev dispatched attack drones via the route designated for grain vessels. “The resumption of the grain deal is impossible as long as the safe corridor is being used for terrorist attacks,” Volodin wrote on his Telegram channel on Tuesday. “With his actions, Zelensky has nullified all of the agreements that were brokered by Türkiye and the UN. ”The senior legislator said the use of the safe corridor for the attack on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is “unacceptable” and that the grain agreement “cannot exist on the old terms.”

Under the deal struck in July, the sides agreed to unblock the export of grain and other agricultural products from Ukrainian ports. Ukraine, a major producer, is among the vital suppliers of wheat, corn, and barley. On Saturday, Moscow accused Kiev of sending aerial and seaborne drones to strike warships in the city of Sevastopol in Crimea, which hosts a naval base. A minesweeper was damaged in the raid, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. The ministry claimed that the drones moved along the corridor set up for grain ships, and that one device may have been launched from a civilian vessel hired to transport grain. Moscow also said that a British Navy unit masterminded the attack. London has dismissed the accusation. Russia subsequently announced the closure of the corridor on Monday.

Zelensky accused Russia of blackmail and “deliberately exacerbating the food crisis.” Speaking to reporters on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that only 3-5% of grain that had been shipped through the safe corridor went to poorer countries. The UN, however, reported last month that 27% of the ships went to “low and lower-middle income countries” such as Egypt, Kenya, and Bangladesh. It said that 26% went to “upper-middle income countries” such as Türkiye and China, while 47% went to “high-income”nations such as Spain and Italy.

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“Western insurance companies, despite official permission, refused to insure cargoes of food and fertilizers from Russian ports under various pretexts.”

• There Will Be No Deal – Zelensky Broke The Rules! (Milacic)

Just a few hours after the attack by sea “drones” on the ships of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation in the early morning of October 29, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced the suspension of the “grain deal” – an agreement that had been in force since July 22 of this year. The fact that Russian military claims that naval drones have passed through the territory included in the “grain deal”, where there is no Russian fleet – it only made that decision stronger! The “grain deal” allowed Kyiv to freely export grain from the Black Sea ports under the auspices of the UN, in exchange for some easing of sanctions against Russian exports of grain and fertilizers. Formally, this agreement was strictly humanitarian and its sole purpose was to provide grain to the countries of Africa and Southeast Asia, dependent on food imports.

During the passage of the Bosporus, ships traveling from Ukraine and back were examined by UN inspectors to exclude the possible import and export of prohibited goods. But the Kremlin did not receive its benefit from the deal … Ukraine, having unblocked the export of grain by sea, at the same time was able to unload land communications and receive a significant income from the export of agricultural products. In addition, its Western partners were once again able to resell Ukrainian grain, which, with the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, rose significantly in price. But Russia continued to face difficulties in securing the export of its grain. Western insurance companies, despite official permission, refused to insure cargoes of food and fertilizers from Russian ports under various pretexts.

At the same time, information was increasingly appearing in the media that American and European authorities were putting significant pressure on insurers. Naturally, Moscow was more and more dissatisfied with the terms of the deal concluded before November 19 and doubted the possibility of its extension. The attack on Sevastopol gave the Kremlin a great trump card – the deal was instantly suspended, although the Russian fleet did not suffer significant damage. The military response of Russia also followed very quickly, the communications center and the base of the special forces of the Ukrainian fleet in Ochakiv were destroyed. However, both the attack on the Russian base and the actual breach of the deal with Russian exports are just the tip of the iceberg.

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“Currently, Russia is “not ready to say” what conditions would have to be met for it to resume its participation in the deal.”

• Russia Offers Alternative To Ukraine ‘Grain Deal’ (RT)

Russia is ready to provide poorer grain-importing nations with supplies from its own stocks to replace Ukrainian exports, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Monday. Earlier, Russia suspended its participation in the so-called “grain deal” with Ukraine following an attack on its navy base in Sevastopol. “We can guarantee the Russian side’s readiness to compensate for the missing [grain export] volumes from its own stocks,” Peskov said. Earlier, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said Moscow would continue to support African nations despite halting its compliance with the pact. The Kremlin spokesman also said only a tiny portion of all Ukrainian agricultural products exported under the deal were destined for the poorest nations anyway, while “not-so-poor nations located in Europe got the rest.”

Moscow also believes that the grain deal between Russia and Ukraine, which was reached in Istanbul with UN and Turkish mediation, is now in limbo for security reasons. “The deal could hardly be implemented when Russia says it cannot guarantee maritime security in the designated waters” of the Black Sea, Peskov said, adding that the implementation of the agreement is now “much more risky, dangerous and not guaranteed.” The Kremlin has not said the deal is dead altogether, however. Moscow is “still in contact” with other parties, including the UN and Türkiye, Peskov said. Currently, Russia is “not ready to say” what conditions would have to be met for it to resume its participation in the deal.

Under the agreement reached in July, Russia provided a secure “grain corridor” through the Black Sea waters to facilitate the exportation of Ukrainian agricultural products. The agreement was praised as critical for easing the global food crisis and helping the world’s poorest nations to avoid starvation. Last week’s decision by Russia to halt its compliance with the deal caused a grain price surge. Moscow suspended its participation in the deal last week after a massive drone attack on its naval base in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the naval drones launched as part of the attack used the grain corridor to reach their targets and one of them may even have been launched from a civilian vessel supposedly chartered to ship Ukrainian grain.

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“Moscow is now ready to supply African nations with “large volumes” of grain and fertilizers out of its own stocks for free..”

• Russia Demands Black Sea Corridor Guarantees From Ukraine (RT)

Kiev should provide “real guarantees” that it would not use the Black Sea corridor created as part of an Istanbul grain deal in its military activities, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a phone conversation on Tuesday. The two were discussing the circumstances that could convince Moscow to return to its own commitments under the agreement. Russia indefinitely suspended its participation in the deal last week following a massive drone attack on its naval base in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol. Some of the naval drones launched by Kiev allegedly used the Black Sea grain corridor’s security zone to close in on their targets, according to the Russian military.

“It is necessary to conduct a detailed investigation of … this incident, as well as to get real guarantees from Kiev that it would rigorously abide by the Istanbul agreements, including the non-use of the humanitarian corridor for military purposes,” the Russian president said, according to the Kremlin’s press release. Russia would only consider re-opening this corridor if that happened, Putin added. He also pointed out that the part of the deal that involved lifting restrictions on Russia’s own agricultural and fertilizer exports had never been implemented. The corridor was touted as a way to secure food supplies to the neediest nations as a matter of priority. But this goal has not been reached in the three months since the agreement was established, Putin noted. “Moscow is now ready to supply African nations with “large volumes” of grain and fertilizers out of its own stocks for free, the president confirmed.

The Russian military closed the Black Sea grain corridor on Monday, arguing that its security could not be guaranteed while Kiev used it for military purposes. Moscow had previously blamed Ukraine and UK Navy specialists for the attack on Sevastopol. London has dismissed the accusation. The Russian Defense Ministry said that the corridor would stay closed at least until all the circumstances of the attack were established. Russia has also repeatedly said that it has not left the deal entirely but only suspended its own commitments under the agreement. In the wake of Moscow’s decision, the UN insisted that “food must flow” regardless of the circumstances. Civilian vessels “can never be a military target or held hostage,” the UN coordinator for the Black Sea grain initiative, Amir Abdulla, said.

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“Ukrainian troops are shelling the region almost on a daily basis, threatening the lives and safety of people, but they keep silent about it, while expressing concerns about the fish..”

• Russia Responds To Kiev’s Nuclear Plant ‘Hypocrisy’ (RT)

Kiev’s accusations that Moscow is responsible for an alleged environmental disaster at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant sound hypocritical, given that Ukraine has been constantly targeting the facility, Vladimir Rogov, a member of the administration of Russia’s Zaporozhye Region, said on Tuesday. His statement comes after the Ukrainian state-owned operator, Energoatom, claimed that Russian actions had led to a massive die-off of fish in the facility’s cooling pond.Rogov denounced Kiev’s accusations as the “wildest hypocrisy that knows no bounds.” “Ukrainian troops are shelling the region almost on a daily basis, threatening the lives and safety of people, but they keep silent about it, while expressing concerns about the fish,” he told RIA Novosti.

Moreover, he noted that the plant’s energy units had been shut down precisely because Kiev’s forces have been constantly targeting the area around the facility. On Monday, Ukraine’s Energoatom said that the shutdown of the plant’s energy units had resulted in a decrease in the water temperature in the cooling pond, which led to “mass fish death.” The fish had been “performing a sanitary function” by destroying the green algae and cleaning the cooling tubes of the turbine condenser, it said. However, Ukraine had gone to great lengths to paralyze the plant’s operations and prevent it from coming online again, according to Rogov.

The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which is Europe’s largest, has been under Russian control since March. Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin officially placed the facility under Moscow’s management. The Russian leader signed the relevant order as Moscow was finalizing the accession of Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions, as well as the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, to Russia following referendums that overwhelmingly supported the move. Russia has on numerous occasions accused Ukraine of shelling the Zaporozhye facility, warning that the attacks could lead to a nuclear disaster. Kiev has denied the allegations, blaming Russia for the shelling instead.

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“Musk is looking for ways to reduce the dependency on advertisers and many of us would support that effort.”

• Blue Checkers Revolt Over Musk’s Threatened Monthly Charge (Turley)

As a regular MSNBC pundit is calling for Elon Musk to be stripped of his citizenship for trying to reintroduce free speech protections to Twitter, the new owner is outraging blue checkers by suggesting a monthly charge for verified users. Figures like CNBC’s Jim Cramer declared: “I’m not paying them anything. They should pay me.” Some of us would be willing to pay an added monthly fee to support a true free speech alternative on social media if Musk keeps his word. Of course, for full disclosure, I would first have to get a blue check to get charged for a blue check. I have been barred from being verified for years by Twitter despite being a columnist for newspapers like USA Today and the Hill as well as a legal analyst for CBS, NBC, BBC, and now Fox over the last two decades.

I have been ranked in the top five law professors on Twitter, but I was still turned me down over a dozen times under multiple categories. I have previously joked about the bar on verification and I am not sure how much the blue check honestly does for individuals. Indeed, there are some advantages. I can presumably deny prior statements since they were made by an entirely unverified person using my name for over a decade. Yet, as a long-time critic of Twitter’s censorship system, there has been a long curiosity over the denial. Musk has indicated that he is now looking into such concerns and there may be greater transparency in the weeks to come. However, Musk is looking for ways to reduce the dependency on advertisers and many of us would support that effort.

Recently, General Motors suspended advertising on Twitter until it can evaluate the implications of Musk’s new policies. Some of us immediately criticized the action by GM over the move. The company had no problem with supporting Twitter when it was running one of the largest censorship systems in history — or supporting TikTok (which is Chinese owned and has been denounced for state control and access to data). Twitter has been denounced for years for its bias against conservative and dissenting voices, including presumably many GM customers on the right. None of that was a concern for GM but the pledge to restore free speech to Twitter warrants a suspension.

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“..rolling blackouts could happen during “those deepest darkest evenings in January and February..”

• UK Households Face ‘Very, Very Hard’ Winter – National Grid (RT)

Many British households will struggle to pay energy bills this winter that could be double what they are accustomed to despite a government price cap, the National Grid’s CEO, John Pettigrew, has warned. In an interview with the Financial Times on Tuesday, he said he was “under no illusions” and that Brits would find the upcoming winter “financially very, very hard.” “Even with the [taxpayer-funded] price cap this is a doubling-up of what people are used to paying for their energy bills,” Pettigrew said, adding: “Therefore, inevitably there are going to be people who are going to struggle.” The British government has capped the unit cost of energy until April, meaning that an average household would pay about £2,500 ($2,885) over a year on average.

But last winter the equivalent amount was £1,277 ($1,474). Each household will also receive a £400 rebate on utility bills with additional means-tested payments through Social Security benefits. However, that will still be unable to make up the difference given the soaring energy prices. Pettigrew said the National Grid was working on a number of emergency plans to protect the UK against a shortfall of energy from Europe. Earlier, the grid operator’s boss warned that the country could face power cuts on “really cold” evenings this winter due to Europe’s continuing energy squeeze. He said that rolling blackouts could happen during “those deepest darkest evenings in January and February,” likely between 4pm to 7pm.


Such measures were “unlikely,” according to Pettigrew, who warned, however, that there were potential scenarios where Britain’s power generators would fail to secure sufficient supplies from Europe. Normally, during the coldest months and extreme weather events, the UK imports gas and electricity from continental Europe for its gas-fired power plants. However, this year European countries are themselves facing a severe energy crisis exacerbated by anti-Russian sanctions and a sharp decrease in Russian energy supplies.

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Top spot for craziest story.

• Cockamamie Story (Kunstler)

So far, police have not disclosed how DePape journeyed from Berkeley to Pacific Heights at 2:00 o’clock in the morning, about fourteen miles. Did he walk from Berkeley across the Bay Bridge and then halfway across town? Mr. DePape is apparently also known to the police as a gay hustler, that is, a person who sells sex for money. Unless I’m mistaken, the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) has a detective department — experienced men and women who go around the city seeking clues, evidence, and testimony in order to make sense of perplexing crimes — and then solve them! Shall we assume they are on-the-job? Now, Paul Pelosi, 82, who made a $300-million fortune running a car service (also shrewd investments in real estate and the stock market), has been in quite a bit of trouble this year.

On May 28, 2022, he was arrested for Driving Under the Influence (DUI) in Napa (near a vineyard estate he owns with Nancy) when his 2021 Porsche crashed into a 2014 Jeep driven by one “John Doe” (as the police identified him). KGO-TV, ABC’s affiliate in the San Francisco area, said that there was a second person in the Porsche with Pelosi at the time of the accident. He has never been identified. In August, Mr. Pelosi was sentenced to five days in jail, a fine of roughly $7,000, a three-month drinking-and-driving course, eight hours of public service, and having an “interlock” device installed on his car that would require him to blow into an alcohol sensor before the engine can ignite. By any chance, were the Napa Police or the County Court contacted in the matter at some point by the US Capitol Police or the FBI? We may never know.

If David DePape didn’t walk fourteen miles from Berkeley to Pacific Heights, or take a cab (expensive), how did he get there? Here’s a theory: he rode the BART subway from Berkeley to the Church Street and Mission station in the city, a five-minute walk to the Castro, San Francisco’s fabled gay district. Sometime before 2:00 a.m. closing time, he met up in a bar there with Paul Pelosi, who drove DePape to the Pelosi house in a car not equipped with an interlock device. That is to say, David DePape was let into the house by Mr. Pelosi. The police and the news media have theorized that DePape broke into the place by smashing a glass door in back. Uh-huh…. Ask yourself: would there not be an alarm system at least on all the ground floor windows and doors in the house? Would there not be security cameras on the back side of the house — the side that burglars might prefer, if they could get over the wall?

Would the Speaker of the House, with a discretionary budget on top of a $300-million fortune, and in a time of epic political rancor, not have a team of security guards in place at her private home? Initial news media chatter had both DePape and Paul Pelosi dressed in their underwear, struggling over a hammer which turned out to belong to Mr. Pelosi. Not until the police entered the house did DePape wrest the hammer from Mr. Pelosi and commence to brain him with it. What does the arrest report actually say about the two men’s state-of-dress? It is not public information. How and why were the police just watching until DePape assaulted Mr. Pelosi — who was hospitalized afterward and had surgery on his cracked skull? (Uh, how did a blow that literally broke his skull not kill the elderly Mr. Pelosi?)

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“what would we do without the Banker to guide us!?”

• The Tale of Two Greedy Landlords (Catte Black)

Once upon a time in a land far away and in a time of plenty there were two rich and prosperous Landlords who each owned large and spacious adjoining buildings wherein many people lived. The apartments were warm and comfortable and every week there was a market where grain was brought from Landlord B’s land and fruit and meat and vegetables from Landlord A’s. While wood from Landlord B’s copses kept the Communal Woodpile stocked with seasoned logs. Everyone was happy. The Landlords were both friends with a Banker. The Banker was richer than both the Landlords combined and in fact he owned their houses and their land and watched carefully what they did with them. And one day he invited them to a sumptuous dinner at his house and said “things could be better”.

“How could things be better, friend Banker?” asked Landlord B, “there is food in our granaries and money in our coffers, and everyone is happy”. “Your people are charged too little for too much luxury. They expect fuel for their stoves and food in their markets, and are never grateful enough to you for your kindness.” The two Landlords looked at each other and realized this might be true, for they rarely disagreed with the Banker. “Yes,” said Landlord A, sadly shaking his head, “our people are feckless children that never give enough thanks for our largesse, but alas, what can we do?”. “They need to be taught their place”, the Banker said. “They need to pay a proper price for what you provide and learn to be grateful. You should triple the price of food from your farms and fuel from the Communal Wood Pile”.

The two Landlords looked at each other in apprehension. They were greedy and liked the sound of this very much, but they were also cowards. “But”, said Landlord B, “but if we do that they may just become annoyed and might refuse to pay or break our windows or our bones and then we will be worse off not better!” This was true. And caused the Landlords to shake their heads regretfully. But the Banker was cleverer than either of them. He merely smiled. “They are children”, he said, “and children require stories in order to learn about life’s harsh truths. So, you will tell them a story”. The two Landlords looked at him, but did not understand.

“You will tell them there is a new and terrible plague which has broken the Supply Chain and consequently fuel and food are three times more expensive!” “But…but there is no new and terrible plague”, stammered Landlord A. “Of course there is”, smiled the Banker, “why else would hundreds of people be dying?” “But hundreds of people are not dying”, stammered Landlord B. “Of course they are,” smiled the Banker, “how could they not when there is a new and terrible plague?” They looked at him for a long time before gradual understanding dawned, and their puzzled frowns turned to smiles. “Of course!” they said in unison, “what would we do without the Banker to guide us!?”

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Pierre Kory, MD MPA @PierreKory:

A high quality Sociology journal finally publishes the truth about what happened in Medical Science during Covid.
Phenomenal paper.
Cue censorship by mass media and social media.
Hope Chief Twit starts making changes fast.

• Censorship and Suppression of Covid-19 Heterodoxy (Springer)

Abstract: The emergence of COVID-19 has led to numerous controversies over COVID-related knowledge and policy. To counter the perceived threat from doctors and scientists who challenge the official position of governmental and intergovernmental health authorities, some supporters of this orthodoxy have moved to censor those who promote dissenting views. The aim of the present study is to explore the experiences and responses of highly accomplished doctors and research scientists from different countries who have been targets of suppression and/or censorship following their publications and statements in relation to COVID-19 that challenge official views.


Our findings point to the central role played by media organizations, and especially by information technology companies, in attempting to stifle debate over COVID-19 policy and measures. In the effort to silence alternative voices, widespread use was made not only of censorship, but of tactics of suppression that damaged the reputations and careers of dissenting doctors and scientists, regardless of their academic or medical status and regardless of their stature prior to expressing a contrary position. In place of open and fair discussion, censorship and suppression of scientific dissent has deleterious and far-reaching implications for medicine, science, and public health.

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Ouch.

• Fatal Flaw: 42% False Discovery Rate for SARS-CoV-2 nonQ-RT-PCR Test (PR)

We have just published a new study that shows that nonQ-RT-PCR (non-quantitative RT-PCR testing as used to diagnose COVID-19 from 2020 to the present day suffers a flaw that ultimately draws into question all of what has been reported on COVID-19 by official channels, including the results of COVID-19. Specifically, assuming a 5% prevalence rate, the high false discovery rate (42%) of the use of nonQ-RT-PCR means


1. For every 50 true positives out of 1,000, a total of 86 people with or without SARS-CoV-2 infection or residual fragments will be reported. Of these, 36 of these will be false positives.
2. For every 50 true positives, 86 people without SARS-CoV-2 infection or residual fragments will be have to be isolated/quarantined. Of these, 36 will not be infected.
3. For every 50 true positives that are tested and found positive in-hospital, 86 people with or without SARS-CoV-2 infection or residual fragments will be told that they “have COVID-19”. If the 36 false positive patients are hospitalized with other COVID-19 patients, they will likely then contract a SARS-CoV-2 infection.
4. The number of “cases” via positive PCR has been overstated by a factor of 72% (the original post read “80:1” assuming a prevalence of 5%).
5. This is true for generic case reporting up until May 2021 when CDC decided to reduce the PCR cycle threshold value (Ct) for the vaccinated to less than 27, leaving the unvaccinated rate biased by high false discovery rate of arbitrarily high Ct, biasing all reported rates in these two groups favoring cases in the unvaccinated from that point on.
6. This +72% bias is true in any clinical trial or any study that used arbitrarily high Ct values, INCLUDING THE VACCINE STUDIES. As a direct result of this fatal flaw, combined with CDC’s gaff “PCR+ = COVID-19″? There are no credible COVID-19 vaccine trial data.

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Rogan list

 

 

 

 

Malone

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle June 18 2022

Jun 182022
 
 June 18, 2022  Posted by at 8:22 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  36 Responses »


Paul Ranson Apple tree with red fruit 1902

 

• Putin Claims New World Order, Blasts The West For ‘Insane’ Sanctions (ABC/AP)
• Putin Says Sanctions Cost EU $400BN, Warns Of Severe Fertilizer Shortage (ZH)
• Biden Told Secretaries Of Defense And State To Tone It Down (NBC)
• Two Awkward Biden Moments Draw Online Scrutiny (JTN)
• Macron Bends to Pressure, Now Says Ukraine ‘Must Win’ War With Russia (Celente)
• Pro-Ukrainian, but Anti-Nazi (Batiushka)
• How Low Can You Go? (Jim Kunstler)
• Last Tango in Washington? (Brenner)
• The Ukrainian Endgame: An Imperfect Peace Is Better Than Endless War (Bandow)
• US Drone Sale To Ukraine Hits Snag (R.)
• Stephen Colbert Staffers At House Office Charged With Illegal Entry (Fox)
• Hunter Biden’s ‘Troubling’ Connection With Big-Name Hollywood Lawyer Probed (ET)
• Deflationary Tsunami On Deck: Tidal Wave Of Discounts And Crashing Prices (ZH)
• Britain Orders Extradition Of Julian Assange To United States (ABC.au)

 

 

 

 

Never sick

 

 

 

 

Clare Daly

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..came to think of themselves as God’s own messengers on planet Earth..”

• Putin Claims New World Order, Blasts The West For ‘Insane’ Sanctions (ABC/AP)

In one of Vladimir Putin’s most substantial addresses since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the Russian President used his nation’s pre-eminent investment conference as an opportunity to lash out against his Western enemies. After a lengthy denunciation of countries that he claims want to weaken the Russian state with “reckless and insane” sanctions, President Putin used the stage at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum to lambaste the United States. “[The United States] declared victory in the Cold War and later came to think of themselves as God’s own messengers on planet Earth,” he said. In his 73-minute speech, he also said Russia was taking its place in a New World Order in which rules would be set by “strong and sovereign states”.


After sending troops into Ukraine in February, Russia came under a wide array of international sanctions, with hundreds of foreign companies also suspending operations or pulling out of the country entirely. But Mr Putin said these attempts to damage the Russian economy “didn’t work”. “Russian enterprises and government authorities worked in a composed and professional manner,” he said. “We’re normalising the economic situation. We stabilised the financial markets, the banking system, the trade system.” While Russia’s projected inflation rate has fallen marginally, Mr Putin conceded that the current projected annual rate of 16.7 per cent is still too high. Mr Putin also vehemently defended his country’s actions in Ukraine, as Russia has contended that its neighbour posed a threat due its desire to join the NATO military alliance.

Putin Spief

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From the PR team: “We all know that Ukrainians are ready to die for the European perspective. We want them to live with us the European dream.”

• Putin Says Sanctions Cost EU $400BN, Warns Of Severe Fertilizer Shortage (ZH)

Ukraine just got a big boost for its EU membership bid on Friday, with the 27-member nation bloc’s executive giving full support for its candidate status. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced for the first time that the commission recommends “that Ukraine is given candidate status. This is of course on the understanding that the country will carry out a number of further reforms.” She said further while speaking from Brussels, “In the view of the Commission, Ukraine has clearly demonstrated the country’s aspiration and the country’s determination to live up to European values and standards.”

Von der Leyen included further: “We all know that Ukrainians are ready to die for the European perspective. We want them to live with us the European dream.” “Yes, Ukraine should be welcomed as a candidate country — this is based on the understanding that good work has been done but important work also remains to be done,” von der Leyen said. The day prior, on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi traveled to Kiev by train where they delivered a unified and “strong signal of support” to Ukraine amid the Russian invasion. They publicly backed Ukraine’s path to the EU, urging “immediate EU candidate status.”

[..] Russian President Vladimir Putin in statements issued the same day as von der Leyen’s EU candidacy preliminary approval announcement stressed the growing ‘cost’ to Europe over its intransigent pro-Ukraine position and anti-Russia sanctions. He estimated that the European Union will incur “losses of at least $400 billion” due to its multiple waves of sanctions imposed on Moscow thus far. He once again rejected responsibility for the global economic downturn, stating instead that inflation, energy costs and food crisis are all linked to the West’s policies. He further predicted a potentially disastrous development for the global food supply, already under threat, according to news wires:

“Putin predicted the fertilizer shortage could push food prices even higher, adding that Russia could boost its exports of fertilizer and grain. He also claimed that “gloomy forecasts” about the state of the Russian economy did not come true and that his government has successfully stopped the rise of domestic inflation.”

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Back in April.

• Biden Told Secretaries Of Defense And State To Tone It Down (NBC)

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken had taken off on separate flights from southeastern Poland after their risky, high-stakes visit to Kyiv when they were conferenced into a phone call from President Joe Biden. During their whirlwind April trip, Austin appeared to expand the U.S. goals in Ukraine, saying publicly that the administration wanted the Ukrainians to win the war against Russia, not just defend themselves, and that the U.S. hoped to weaken Russia to the extent that it could not launch another unprovoked invasion. Blinken had publicly aligned himself with the remarks. Now Biden wanted to discuss the mounting headlines that resulted. Biden thought the secretaries had gone too far, according to multiple administration officials familiar with the call.

On the previously unreported conference call, as Austin flew to Germany and Blinken to Washington, the president expressed concern that the comments could set unrealistic expectations and increase the risk of the U.S. getting into a direct conflict with Russia. He told them to tone it down, said the officials. “Biden was not happy when Blinken and Austin talked about winning in Ukraine,” one of them said. “He was not happy with the rhetoric.” The secretaries explained that Austin’s comments had been misconstrued, another senior administration official said. But the displeasure Biden initially conveyed during that phone call, the officials said, reflected his administration’s belief that despite Ukrainian forces’ unexpected successes early on, the war would ultimately head in the direction it is now in two months later: a protracted conflict in which Russia continues to make small and steady advances.

U.S. officials are increasingly concerned that the trajectory of the war in Ukraine is untenable and are quietly discussing whether President Volodymyr Zelenskyy should temper his hard-line public position that no territory will ever be ceded to Russia as part of an agreement to end the war, according to seven current U.S. officials, former U.S. officials and European officials. Some officials want Zelenskyy to “dial it back a little bit,” as one of them put it, when it comes to telegraphing his red lines on ending the war. But the issue is fraught given that Biden is adamant about the U.S. not pressuring the Ukrainians to take steps one way or another. His administration’s position has been that any decision about how and on what terms to end the war is for Ukraine to decide.

“We are not pressuring them to make concessions, as some Europeans are. We would never ask them to cede territory,” one U.S. official said. “We are planning for a long war. We intend to prepare the American people for that, and we are prepared to ask Congress for more money.”

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“A staggering 47% of responders “strongly” disapproved of his performance.”

• Two Awkward Biden Moments Draw Online Scrutiny (JTN)

Amid reports of record low approval ratings for his performance in office, President Joe Biden drew online scrutiny for two awkward moments which have fueled renewed concerns over his fitness to lead. On Thursday, Biden offered somewhat blunt condolences for the passing of Jo-Ann Stores CFO Matt Susz, who died suddenly the day before. In a White House speech addressing efforts to curb inflation, Biden ripped international shipping companies but paused briefly to address the head of the company, saying “and by the way, my sympathies to your family of your CFO, who dropped dead very unexpectedly.”

The ungentle “dropped dead” description of Susz’s death, prompted a torrent of jokes and criticism with many Twitter users disapproving of Biden’s tone and word choice while others made references to oft-repeated concerns that the president may be experiencing mental deterioration. In a Friday episode, first lady Jill Biden abruptly yanked her husband away from reporters as he attempted to answer questions about rising inflation. The Bidens, and first cat Willow, were on their way to their home state of Delaware for the long weekend. “It should not be this high,” he said to reporters, per the New York Post. “They’re making exorbitant profits, number one. Number two, I’ve contacted them, my team has, to ask what their plans are and to give any suggestions they have.”

“Number three, I think we’re going to be in a position where we’re gonna,” he continued before his wife pulled him toward the plane, firmly stating “we gotta go!” The Friday episode also attracted a flurry of mockery, with commenters taking the first lady’s assertive role in the moment as evidence of the presidents “cognitive issues.” Others took issue with Biden’s routine departures from Washington to his home state. Biden’s approval rating stood at 39% on Friday, per a USA TODAY/Suffolk poll. A staggering 47% of responders “strongly” disapproved of his performance.

Biden oil

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“Any world leader who does not vow complete loyalty to Zelensky’s effort to win back every inch of his country is met by anger in the Western media..”

• Macron Bends to Pressure, Now Says Ukraine ‘Must Win’ War With Russia (Celente)

French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday passed the litmus test during a high-profile meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv when he told reporters that Ukraine must defeat Russia in its war. Macron was joined by Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The three took an 11′-hour train ride to Kyiv. They were also joined by Romanian President Klaus Iohannis. “We saw a devastated city and traces of barbarism. And also the heroism of Ukrainian men and women who stopped the Russian army when it went to Kyiv. Ukraine is resisting. She must be able to win,” Macron said after a a tour of Irpin. The French president came bearing gifts. He promised Ukraine six massive truck-mounted artillery guns so “Ukraine alone can decide its fate.”

Any world leader who does not vow complete loyalty to Zelensky’s effort to win back every inch of his country is met by anger in the Western media that has become nothing more than mouthpieces for governments that hate Russia. Macron felt the wrath when he said, “We must not humiliate Russia so that the day when the fighting stops we can build an exit ramp through diplomatic means. I am convinced that it is France’s role to be a mediating power.” Dmitro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister, took to Twitter at the time and posted, “Calls to avoid humiliation of Russia can only humiliate France and every other country that would call for it.” Even after the visit by the four European leaders on Thursday, Ukrainian leaders still insisted on not giving up an inch of territory.

Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai told the Associated Press that the visit would not yield progress if the leaders ask Ukraine to sign a peace treaty with Russia that involves giving up territory. “I am sure that our president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is not going to make concessions and trade our territories. If someone wants to stop Russia by giving them territories, Germany has Bavaria, Italy has Tuscany, the French can concede Provence, for instance,” he said.


It’s the little people!

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Batiushka is an interesting writer. Here (s)he takes things a step further. Can we follow?

• Pro-Ukrainian, but Anti-Nazi (Batiushka)

The problem has never been one of Ukrainians. The problem has always been that of the spiritual disease of Nazism. And that is what it is – a spiritual disease. Once the soul of the Ukraine has been liberated from this disease, in other words, once it has been denazified, a New Ukraine will be born. It may well take the form of a Protectorate centred around Kiev and speak a mixture of Ukrainian with Russian and Surzhyk (Ukrainian Russian). It will have secure borders and its people will be patriotic Ukrainians, not in some racist way that denigrates others, but in a positive way that respects others. Once freed of parasitic oligarchs and corruption, the naturally rich New Ukraine could have a brilliant future and take a positive part in the Concert of the Nations.

Once it has been understood that there is no problem with the Ukraine or Ukrainians, but only with Nazism, there may take place other Special Operations in other parts of the world. China may soon launch an Operation in Taiwan to free the ethnic Chinese there from the Nazism of its US-appointed elite. As for Russia, it has not yet finished the job in the Ukraine, where the task is constantly being extended because the Nazi West keeps sending long-range missiles and artillery to Kiev. As long as these weapons are in use, firing on Donetsk or anywhere else in liberated territory, the war will be extended and continue. Russia may physically have to liberate the whole country, mobilising more forces beyond the small expeditionary force it originally sent.

And then if Western aggression continues, it may have to launch other operations in Moldova and the Baltics in order to liberate those peoples too from NATO Nazism, from their corrupt US-appointed elites and EU exploitation. It may have to rebuild them, so that their peoples, economic refugees from corruption living now in Western Europe, can gratefully come home. Beyond that, as regards Western Europe in general, it too will surely one day find itself liberated one way or another from transatlantic tyranny and threats, safe under the Russian security and nuclear umbrella. Someone must defend Western Europe from the threats which for the moment are still coming from outside Afro-Eurasia, which is 86% of the world. Only Russia can do that. Russian troops once liberated Berlin and Paris. Will it have to happen again and maybe this time be extended to include Rome, Madrid and London?

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“..our Ukraine project “to weaken Russia” brought on an epochal shift in the balance of power to our enormous disadvantage.”

• How Low Can You Go? (Jim Kunstler)

Lots of things are going south all at once: the stock markets and bond prices, Bitcoin is doing a vanishing act. The Colorado River reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, are so low that, by September, both water and electricity may run out for a vast region that includes Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Southern California. The housing market is tanking (suburbia’s business model is broken). Whole herds of beef cattle roll over and die out on the range. Fertilizer is scarce. Food processing plants get torched by the dozen. Shortages loom. The oil-and-gas industry is getting killed four ways: 1) our stupid Russia sanctions queered longstanding global distribution arrangements; 2) the industry is starved for capital; 3) depletion is seriously kicking in; and 4) “Joe Biden” and the knuckleheads running the EU countries are trying to kill it so as to usher in a Green New Deal that just doesn’t pencil-out.

The car dealers have no new cars on their lots, and pretty soon they’ll run out of decent used cars — which, these days, are often priced higher than the non-existent new cars. How’s that for a business model? Plus, the financially beaten-up middle-class can’t afford cars in either case, and increasingly can’t qualify for car loans. The airline industry reels with a sucking chest wound due to a pilot shortage (thanks to vaxx mandates) and the high cost of jet fuel. The trucking industry’s business model is also broken with diesel fuel over six dollars a gallon — the cost of delivery exceeds the value of the cargo. America runs on trucks and if they stop running, so does everything else. Replacement parts are growing scarce for every mechanical device in the land. It’s getting harder to fix anything that’s broken.

“Joe Biden’s” proxy war against Russia in Ukraine isn’t working out. It was flamboyantly stupid from the get-go. We deliberately broke the Minsk agreements for a cease-fire in the Donbas to goad the Russians into action. NATO didn’t have the troops or the political mojo to back up its US-inspired bluster. Our financial warfare blew back in our faces and actually benefited the Russian economy and its currency, the ruble. The billions of dollars in weapons we’re sending into the war are easily interdicted in transport, or else are getting loose in a world of non-state maniacs ranging from the Taliban to al Qaeda to drug cartels. Meanwhile, Russia steadfastly grinds out a victory on-the-ground that will leave it in control of the Black Sea and will reveal the USA’s lost capacity to impose its will around the world. In other words, our Ukraine project “to weaken Russia” brought on an epochal shift in the balance of power to our enormous disadvantage.

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“..you are stuck with the albatross of a truncated, bankrupt Ukraine hung around your neck.”

• Last Tango in Washington? (Brenner)

Reality has a way of catching up to us. Sometimes it comes via a sudden shock — Sputnik or Tet. Sometimes it creeps up incrementally — as in Ukraine with each thousand round Russian artillery barrage and the steady rise of the ruble now 25 percent higher than at the onset of the crisis. Dim the lights, the party’s almost over. But that is not the end of the affair. Whatever the exact outcomes, there is no going back to the status quo ante — the world, especially Europe, has changed in fundamental respects. Moreover, it has changed in ways diametrically opposite to what was desired and anticipated. The West has been inhabiting a fanciful world that could exist only in our imaginations. Many remain stranded in that self-deluded mirage. The more that we have invested in that fantasy world, the harder we find it to exit and to make the adjustment — intellectual, emotional, behavioral.

[..] Necessity is the mother of invention — or so it is said. However, grasping what is “necessary” can be a very slippery business. An actual recasting of how one views a problematic situation normally is a last resort. Experience and history tell us that, as do behavioral experiments. The psychology of perceived necessity is complex. Adversity or threat in and of itself does not trigger improvisation. Even the survival instinct does not always spark innovation. Denial, then avoidance, are normally the first, sequential reactions when facing adversity in trying to reach an objective or to satisfy a recognized interest. A strong bias favors the reiteration of a standard repertoire of responses.

True innovation tends to occur only in extremis; and even then, behavioral change is more likely to begin with minor adjustments of established thinking and behavior at the margins rather than modification of core beliefs and patterns of action. Those truths underscore the American dilemma as the Ukraine venture turns sour on the battlefield and your enemy is faring far better than expected while your friends and allies are faring far worse. Russia has blunted everything thrown at them – to the shock of Western planners. Every assumption underpinning their scorched-earth assault on the Russian economy has proven mistaken. A dismal record of analytical error even by C.I.A. and think tank standards.

Off-the-charts forecasts on the country’s economy, and the global impact of sanctions, crippled Washington’s plan from the outset. Tactical initiatives of a military nature have proven equally futile; another 1,000 vintage Javelins with dead battery packs will not rescue the Ukrainian army in the Donbass. So, you are stuck with the albatross of a truncated, bankrupt Ukraine hung around your neck. There is nothing that you can do to cancel these givens — except a direct, perhaps suicidal test of force with Russia. Or, perhaps, a retaliatory challenge elsewhere. The latter is not readily available — for geographic reasons and because the West already has expended its arsenal of economic and political weaponry.

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Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and a former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan.

• The Ukrainian Endgame: An Imperfect Peace Is Better Than Endless War (Bandow)

For good reason, then, Americans worry about deepening US involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian war. While it is unsurprising that Kyiv and its Washington factotums advocate going all in, even risking escalation of the conflict, doing so is not in this nation’s interests. Unfortunately, President Joe Biden’s recent article in the New York Time did little to ease public concerns. Especially his promise not to “pressure the Ukrainian government – in private or public – to make any territorial concessions.” The US and Europe should focus on ending, not winning, the war. The longer the conflict goes, the more it will devastate Ukraine and undermine the Ukrainian state. The economic harm to the allies and beyond also will grow, weakening support for Kyiv.


An American attempt to carry Ukraine to victory is more likely to encourage Putin to double down, perhaps even using nuclear weapons, than meekly yield. Washington’s goal should not be to save the Russian dictator from personal humiliation, which retired diplomat Dan Fried deemed “risible,” but to forestall Putin from engaging in dangerous escalation to prevent personal humiliation. Life is unfair, President Jimmy Carter once observed. That is especially true when it comes to international affairs. In a perfect world Ukraine would recover its territory, including that seized in 2014, collect reparations from Moscow, and frame Putin’s written apology for invading. However, none of these should be Washington’s objective. The US should promote a stable, peaceful settlement, one that keeps the Pandora’s Box of nuclear war closed.

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“..reviewed higher up the chain of command at the Pentagon..”

• US Drone Sale To Ukraine Hits Snag (R.)

The Biden administration’s plan to sell four large, armable drones to Ukraine has been paused on the fear its sophisticated surveillance equipment might fall into enemy hands, according to two people familiar with the matter. The technical objection to the sale was raised during a deeper review by the Pentagon’s Defense Technology Security Administration charged with keeping high value technology safe from enemy hands. Previously the plan, which has been circulating since March, had been approved by the White House, three people said. The plan to sell Ukraine four MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones that can be armed with Hellfire missiles for battlefield use against Russia was first reported by Reuters earlier in June.


The objection to the export of the drones arose due to concerns the radar and surveillance equipment on the drones could create a security risk for the United States if it fell into Russian hands. The sources said this consideration had been overlooked in the initial review but came up in meetings at the Pentagon late last week. “Technology security reviews are a standard practice for the transfer of U.S. defense articles to all international partners. All cases are reviewed individually on their own merit. Through the established process, national security concerns are elevated to the appropriate approving authority,” said Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough. The decision on whether or not to continue with the deal is now being reviewed higher up the chain of command at the Pentagon, but the timing of any decision is uncertain, one of the people a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

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Adam Schiff did it.

• Stephen Colbert Staffers At House Office Charged With Illegal Entry (Fox)

The U.S. Capitol Police arrested a group of staffers with CBS’s “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” after they allegedly illegally entered a U.S. House of Representatives office building on Thursday night, Fox News has learned. The group of seven people were arrested in the Longworth House Office Building after being escorted out of the Jan. 6 committee hearing earlier in the day because they did not have proper press credentials, according to sources. The same group resurfaced later on Thursday night after the Capitol complex was closed to public visitors and Fox News is told that they took videos and pictures around the offices of two Republican members of Congress, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy R-Calif. and Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo.

A senior source in the U.S House of Representatives told Fox News that seven individuals associated with Stephen Colbert’s show were arrested. The group was unescorted and charged with illegal entry to House office buildings after hours. Fox News is told that the “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” team applied to get press credentials for the Jan. 6 hearing, but the House Radio/TV Gallery rejected the request because they are not considered “news.” The issue didn’t go to the Radio/TV Correspondents Association, which usually handles credentialing. In addition to a regular Capitol Hill press pass, a special “overlay” is required for members of the press who want to be in the room for the Jan. 6 Committee hearings.


Members of Colbert’s team could have been in House office buildings if they were invited, which they were. Fox News is told that Colbert’s team conducted interviews earlier on Thursday with members of the Jan. 6 Committee, including Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. and Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla. They also interviewed Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass. [..] “On June 16, 2022, at approximately 8:30 p.m., U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) received a call for a disturbance in the Longworth House Office Building. Responding officers observed seven individuals, unescorted and without Congressional ID, in a sixth-floor hallway. The building was closed to visitors, and these individuals were determined to be a part of a group that had been directed by the USCP to leave the building earlier in the day,” the statement says. “They were charged with Unlawful Entry. This is an active criminal investigation, and may result in additional criminal charges after consultation with the U.S. Attorney.”

Tucker Colbert

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“We are investigating the domestic and international business dealings of President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to determine whether these activities compromise U.S. national security and President Biden’s ability to lead with impartiality..”

• Hunter Biden’s ‘Troubling’ Connection With Big-Name Hollywood Lawyer Probed (ET)

The ranking member of the House’s principal oversight committee has launched a probe into a Hollywood lawyer’s “sudden patronage” of Hunter Biden allegedly involving financial and pro-bono legal support. “We are investigating the domestic and international business dealings of President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to determine whether these activities compromise U.S. national security and President Biden’s ability to lead with impartiality,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, wrote to Hollywood attorney Kevin Morris on behalf of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in a letter dated June 14.

“Your sudden patronage of the President’s son, enormous financial contributions to President Biden, and outsized role you are taking in defending against both congressional and criminal investigations raise serious concerns about whether you are providing in-kind contributions to President Biden’s re-election efforts,” Comer wrote. Morris is known for negotiating a $550 million licensing deal for the creators of “South Park” and has won a Tony award as a co-producer of the Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon.” His law firm has represented Hollywood celebrities including Chris Rock, Scarlett Johansson, and Matthew McConaughey. Comer’s letter came after a New York Times report in early May that alleged that Morris has taken on a “financier, confidant and would-be avenger” for the president’s son.

The latter is under federal investigation into his tax payments and alleged foreign deals with entities affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records, Morris donated $2,800 to Joe Biden’s campaign “Biden for President” in October 2019, and a total of $55,000 in 2020 to the American Bridge 21st Century Political Action Committee, which supported Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. The New York Times reported that these donations occurred before Morris met and developed a relationship with the president’s son. According to Comer, the oversight committee Republicans are “particularly troubled” in seeing Morris’s alleged role in “attempting to personally shield Hunter Biden from congressional and criminal investigation.”

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You won’t know what hit you.

• Deflationary Tsunami On Deck: Tidal Wave Of Discounts And Crashing Prices (ZH)

Three weeks ago, we showed readers what happens when the infamous “Bullwhip effect” reversal takes place by presenting the unprecedented surge in the “Inventory to Sales” ratio for a broad range of US retailers covering the furniture, home furnishings and appliances, building materials and garden equipment, and a category known as “other general merchandise,” which includes Walmart and Target. Since then, this ratio has only gotten even more extended, and as shown below it is now at the highest level since the bursting of the dot com bubble! What does this mean for retailers and the price of goods? Three weeks ago we said “Think: widespread inventory liquidations” and added…

To be sure, not every product will see its price cut: commodities, whose bullwhip effect take much longer to manifest itself, usually lasting several years in either direction, are only just starting to see their price cycle higher. However, other products – like those carried by the Walmarts and Targets of the world – are about to see a deflationary plunge the likes of which we have not seen since the global financial crisis as retailers commence a voluntary destocking wave the likes of which have not been seen in over a decade. Today both Wall Street and the mainstream media have caught up, with both predicting unprecedented deflationary price cuts in the coming weeks.

We start with Morgan Stanley’s bearish strategist Michael Wilson, who in his latest bearish weekly note (available to pro subs) focused on shrinking margins in general, and on retailer discounting in particular, and wrote that while there is a modest pick up in over sales, the far more concerning issue is that “inventory across the sector is up about 30% YOY and sales growth is up about 0% YOY translating to approximately 30% YOY of excess inventory” and while mark down/margin pressure did not hit in 1Q it should hit June/July. Indeed, “store checks show that aggressive discounting has already started as of the Memorial Day holiday weekend. Discounting pressure could accelerate through July.” And since more retailers are now discounting, “companies are having to offer even bigger discounts to compel consumers to buy, and it is a race to the bottom in margins in order to clear through inventory.”

It gets much worse, however, because courtesy of the delayed nature of the bullwhip effect, Morgan Stanley thinks it will be some time before retailers can cut back on forward inventory orders! Companies are no longer in a position to order 6 months in advance because of delays in the supply chain, and are currently working with about an 8 month lead time. Shockingly, this means decisions today to cut forward orders could begin to eliminate the inventory problem in 1Q23, but not likely before then.

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“The elected Prime Minister stated that it’s time for Julian to come home..”

• Britain Orders Extradition Of Julian Assange To United States (ABC.au)

The British government has ordered the extradition of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to the United States, but WikiLeaks said it would appeal against the ruling. Home Secretary Priti Patel made the decision after Mr Assange was denied a Supreme Court appeal back in March. That case related to Mr Assange’s physical and mental health, and the US government won after offering assurances he would not be held in solitary confinement. The Home Office said in a statement: “The UK courts have not found that it would be oppressive, unjust or an abuse of process to extradite Mr Assange. “Nor have they found that extradition would be incompatible with his human rights, including his right to a fair trial and to freedom of expression, and that whilst in the US he will be treated appropriately, including in relation to his health.”

The decision is a big moment in Mr Assange’s years-long battle to avoid facing trial in the US — though not necessarily the end of the tale. The 50-year-old Australian still has 14 days to appeal against his extradition based on issues like freedom of speech, arguing the espionage charges against him are politically motivated. “Today is not the end of the fight. It is only the beginning of a new legal battle,” Mr Assange’s wife Stella said. Ms Assange also called for Australian Prime Minister Albanese to apply some pressure. “Our expectation as a family is the Australian government will do whatever it takes to get him home,” she said. The Australian federal government says it will continue to offer consular assistance to Mr Assange.


“We will continue to convey our expectations that Mr Assange is entitled to due process, humane and fair treatment, access to proper medical care, and access to his legal team,” said a joint statement released late on Friday night from Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus. “The Australian government has been clear in our view that Mr Assange’s case has dragged on for too long and that it should be brought to a close. “We will continue to express this view to the governments of the United Kingdom and [the] United States.” Independent MP Andrew Wilkie has labelled the decision by the UK government to green-light the extradition as an “outrageous betrayal of rule of law, media freedom and human rights”. “The elected Prime Minister stated that it’s time for Julian to come home,” Mr Wilkie said, “enough is enough, that he couldn’t see what was served by Julian remaining in prison.

Stella Moris

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Debt Rattle March 27 2022

Mar 272022
 
 March 27, 2022  Posted by at 8:33 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  36 Responses »


Jean-Francois Millet Harvesters Resting1850-53

 

• All Hell Will Break Loose For Humanity (Von Greyerz)
• President Biden Chillingly Declares a New World Order (Maajid Nawaz)
• Suggesting Kremlin Regime Change, Biden Says Putin ‘Cannot Remain in Power’ (CD)
• On NATO Membership And ‘Core Principles,’ The US Treads On Thin Ice (Snider)
• Biden Tells US Troops They’ll Be In Ukraine In War Gaffe (NYP)
• Sean Penn Calls For Oscars Boycott If Zelensky Not Given Chance To Speak (NYP)
• Naming Names (Kunstler)
• Fauci Finally Admits Natural Immunity Is Superior (NP)
• Covid Vaccines Killed At Least 61,000 Americans Aged 25 – 44 In 2021 – CDC (DE)
• Farmers on the Brink (Doomberg)
• The Marriage of Julian Assange (Chris Hedges)
• Free, Enduring Love (Craig Murray)

 

 

 

 

India anchor

 

 

COVID cases in the UK:

22 March 2021 – 5,342
22 March 2022 – 94,524

 

 

“Over 50 years later that gold window is still temporarily closed with fatal consequences for the US and the world.”

• All Hell Will Break Loose For Humanity (Von Greyerz)

We are now at the end of an era of economic and moral decadence in a debt infested world built on false values, fake money and abysmal leadership. All hell will break loose. The consequences will be fatal for the world. There are eras in history which have produced great leaders and thinkers. But sadly, the current era has produced nothing of that kind. The end of an economic cycle produces no great leadership or statesmanship but only incompetent leaders. Looking at the Western world, the only notable statesman in the last few decades in my view is Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. But political leaders are of course instruments of their time. Sadly times as the current don’t produce Superior Men.

As Confucius said: “The Superior Man thinks always of virtue, the common man thinks of comfort.” It is the buildup of a massive debt mountain which has given the Western world a false comfort based on false values. As I have pointed out many times, the US has increased its debt every year since 1930, with a couple of minor exceptions in the 1950s and 1960s. The Clinton surpluses in the late 1990s were fake and in fact deficits. In history, when there is undue economic pressure, starting wars is popular and often felt necessary. It is convenient to blame the war for the increasing debts. The Gold Standard was an excellent method for preventing governments to spend money they didn’t have. Since money couldn’t be printed at will, deficits then had to be financed by settling debts in physical gold.

As Nixon in the late 1960s had to meet the US debts to France in gold, he decided in 1971 to close the gold window temporarily. He clearly didn’t want to hand all the US gold to de Gaulle. Over 50 years later that gold window is still temporarily closed with fatal consequences for the US and the world.

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“Due to greed, corruption and unaccountability leading to the cover up of global mass-embezzlement, our current financial system is in its death-throws.”

• President Biden Chillingly Declares a New World Order (Maajid Nawaz)

That’s it. The president has confirmed something that, up until now, was laughed at as the paranoid delusions of the “weak” minded, those whose perennial curse is that they see a kaleidoscope where others only see isolated dots. This week, President Biden confirmed to business leaders that we are at an inflection point, and there will be a New World Order. For some reason, he felt the need to couple this announcement with the number of people that he believes usually die when such historic turnings occur: 60 million. It’s not rocket science. World Orders are built around the financial system. Historically, this would usually only change through war. By way of example, the end of World War II heralded the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), agreed at Bretton Woods.

This established the modern financial system by linking global currencies to the US dollar and – at least until 1971 – the US dollar to gold. “The countries that joined the IMF between 1945 and 1971 agreed to keep their exchange rates (the value of their currencies in terms of the U.S. dollar and, in the case of the United States, the value of the dollar in terms of gold) pegged at rates that could be adjusted only to correct a “fundamental disequilibrium” in the balance of payments, and only with the IMF’s agreement. This par value system—also known as the Bretton Woods system—prevailed until 1971, when the U.S. government suspended the convertibility of the dollar (and dollar reserves held by other governments) into gold.”

After 1971, and due to Nixon’s alterations, global currencies remained linked to the US dollar, but the US dollar was pegged to absolutely nothing. This is how – right up until now – the US Federal Reserve had a monopoly on global monetary policy. Due to greed, corruption and unaccountability leading to the cover up of global mass-embezzlement, our current financial system is in its death-throws. This was largely caused by boom-bust cycles, and our policy responses to them, such as ‘quantitative easing’ or money printing. But unlike after WWII, this time an alternative exists in the form of decentralised crypto currencies.

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“..whenever the United States tried regime change, it didn’t turn out very well, and has never been tried with a nuclear power..”

• Suggesting Kremlin Regime Change, Biden Says Putin ‘Cannot Remain in Power’ (CD)

Bucking those who warn that a push for regime change in Moscow could prolong the war in Ukraine and intensify the suffering of its people, U.S. President Joe Biden appeared to openly call for the overthrow of Russian Vladimir Putin on Saturday during a speech in Warsaw, Poland. While applauding the international unity that has mobilized to condemn and push back against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a war now entering its second month, Biden suggested it has now become intolerable for Putin to remain. Near the very end of his speech, Biden declared, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

The remarks were the most explicit yet from the U.S. president that he sees no future for Putin as Russia’s head of state, but the comment also raised immediate alarm bells among those who recognized that such rhetoric could make it harder to a negotiated peace settlement to take hold or for the diplomatic strategy known as the “Golden Bridge” which would allow for a dignified exit from hostilities. In a Democracy Now! interview that aired Friday, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis explained why Putin must be given a viable exit strategy—not because he isn’t a contemptible war criminal, which Varoufakis readily admitted—but because it would be the fastest way to end the invasion and mass slaughter of innocent Ukrainian civilians.

According to Varoufakis, and others who share his concerns, the idea of a western-imposed regime change strategy aimed at the Kremlin could “be catastrophic for the people of Ukraine.” “What is exactly the aim?” asks Varoufakis during the exchange. “Is it regime change in Russia? Well, whenever the United States tried regime change, it didn’t turn out very well, and has never been tried with a nuclear power. This is like playing with fire, or nuclear fire, I should say. If it’s not regime change, what exactly is it?” In his assessment, Varoufakis said that if Biden and his NATO allies are “not leaving any room for a compromise” with Putin, then they are “effectively jeopardizing the interests of Ukrainians, because a quagmire in—an Afghanistan-like quagmire in the Ukr

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“Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he has “understood that NATO is not prepared to accept Ukraine.”

• On NATO Membership And ‘Core Principles,’ The US Treads On Thin Ice (Snider)

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is illegal and needs to be condemned. But the United States should also be condemned for asking Ukraine to keep its aspiration to join NATO alive while at the same time spurning that aspiration. Indeed, the United States doesn’t want Ukraine to reach a settlement with Russia that sacrifices the principle that nations have a right to determine their own alliances, a principle that the United States is not nor ever has itself recognized. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said this week that “President Zelenskyy has also made it very clear that he is open to a diplomatic solution that does not compromise the core principles at the heart of the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.”

According to Price, those core principles at the center of this conflict are “that each and every country has a sovereign right to determine its own foreign policy, has a sovereign right to determine for itself with whom it will choose to associate in terms of its alliances, its partnerships, and what orientation it wishes to direct its gaze.” So the stated U.S. policy is that Ukraine can make a sovereign decision to join NATO and no country can close the door. But that is exactly what the United States has done. It has created the illusion of an open door for its international audience while closing it firmly shut. President Biden has said that “the likelihood that Ukraine is going to join NATO in the near term is not very likely.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said that “the question of [Ukrainian] membership in alliances is practically not on the agenda.” He emphasized the point by adding that “is not even on the agenda.” Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he has “understood that NATO is not prepared to accept Ukraine.”

So on the one hand, Price says Ukraine is free to join whatever alliances it wants, but President Biden and other NATO countries say joining the alliance isn’t going to happen. Zelensky himself has expressed his frustration with this hypocrisy. “I requested them personally to say directly that we are going to accept you into NATO in a year or two or five, just say it directly and clearly, or just say no,” he said on March 20. “And the response was very clear, you’re not going to be a NATO member, but publicly, the doors will remain open.” It is not true that any country has the right to join NATO if it chooses, nor is NATO obliged to accept anyone who wishes to join. Membership has to be at the invitation of NATO, and NATO members have to agree unanimously: any one country can say no. And NATO is under no obligation to extend an invitation to a solicitous country. The NATO treaty says only that it “may then be invited to join,” and that there is no guarantee.

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One too many gaffes?

• Biden Tells US Troops They’ll Be In Ukraine In War Gaffe (NYP)

President Biden told US troops in Poland Friday that they will witness the bravery of Ukrainians fighting off Russia’s invasion “when you’re there” — making a significant gaffe after he previously said the US must stay out of the European conflict to avoid triggering “World War III.” Biden made the remark while addressing members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division after lunching on pizza and posing for selfies with dozens of paratroopers at a mess hall in Rzeszow, southeastern Poland. “You’re going to see when you’re there, and some of you have been there, you’re gonna see — you’re gonna see women, young people standing in the middle in front of a damned tank just saying, ‘I’m not leaving, I’m holding my ground,’” Biden said.


JoeBiden “Digs In” to that PIZZA PIE like an ANIMAL before the Soldiers got any. In the military, the senior officer always eats LAST!

A White House official quickly clarified that Biden wasn’t changing his stance on deploying the military into Ukraine. “The president has been clear we are not sending US troops to Ukraine and there is no change in that position,” a Biden spokesman told The Post. Biden also said during his remarks that the US was working to “keep the massacre from continuing” after more than 3.7 million Ukrainians fled their country during the month-old war. The Biden administration has supplied arms to Ukraine’s beleaguered military, but the president personally nixed a Polish proposal to transfer 28 Soviet-designed fighter jets to Ukraine with US help. Biden said that US facilitation of the transaction could trigger a new world war. Although Biden spoke as if US troops were heading into Ukraine, he repeatedly ruled out that possibility in prior public remarks.

US troops in Ukraine

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Is this what mass psychosis looks like?

“..Penn, 61, has won two Oscars and vowed to “smelt mine in public” if Zelensky is snubbed by the Academy..”

• Sean Penn Calls For Oscars Boycott If Zelensky Not Given Chance To Speak (NYP)

Sean Penn is calling on Hollywood to boycott the Academy Awards if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is denied a chance to speak at the red-carpet event. “I would encourage everyone involved to know, though it may be their moment, and I understand that, to celebrate their films, it is so much more their moment to shine and to protest and to boycott that Academy Awards,” the controversial actor said in an appearance on CNN Saturday afternoon. Penn, 61, has won two Oscars and vowed to “smelt mine in public” if Zelensky is snubbed by the Academy. The Ukrainian leader has been in talks with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to make a video appearance during Sunday’s broadcast of the Oscars ceremony.


Penn met with Zelensky while in Ukraine in February, when he was filming a documentary about the nation’s tensions and now war with Russia. Oscars ceremony co-host Amy Schumer floated the idea of having Zelensky speak at the event last week, People reported. “It is my understanding that a decision has been made not to do it” Penn said of having Zelensky speak. “If the Academy has elected not to do it, if presenters have elected not to pursue the leadership in Ukraine, who are taking bullets and bombs for us, along with the Ukrainian children they are trying to protect, then I think every single one of those people and every bit of that decision will have been the most obscene moment in all of Hollywood history.”

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The list is long.

• Naming Names (Kunstler)

With the Russian operation in Ukraine alarming the populace, you might have forgotten the late Covid-19 epidemic that provoked so much public hysteria and government policy overreach. Stuff happened during those two-plus years of Covid-19, and, even with Ukraine blaring from the cable news channels, Covid-19 stuff is still happening. Vaccine mandates are still in force, in New York City, for instance — except for performers and ballplayers, who are exempted now, as announced this week by Mayor Eric Adams. If you detect any specious reasoning behind that diktat, at least you know who made it happen.

But so many other things just happened with Covid-19, rather serious things, and no one has had to answer for them, certainly not Dr. Anthony Fauci, who just days ago talked up another booster shot of his obviously defective mRNA “vaccines.” Dr. Fauci proposed that despite a raft of emerging statistics from the life insurance realm that indicate a shockingly high number of mysterious all-causes deaths for people in the prime of life. Several conditions appear to be killing them: 1) blood clotting in the capillaries of various organs, apparently caused by the “vaccine’s” main active ingredient, spike proteins; 2) heart inflammation (pericarditis and myocarditis); 3) a mystifying array of neurological afflictions; and 4) switched-off immune system toggles, including the cellular mechanism for preventing the growth of cancers.

This developing picture of a public health catastrophe, growing more robustly detailed by the week, has somehow not alerted the general public, not least because the entire public health officialdom does not want them to know about it. In fact, as averred to above, they are all still busy promoting the “vaccines” which are responsible. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the CDC, is rather well-known — though her duties appear limited to the public impersonation of a “concerned mom” — but whoever heard of Rebecca Bunnell, PhD, Director of the CDC’s Office of Science? Does Science play any part in the emerging disaster of sharply rising all-causes deaths? It would be good to know, don’t you think? Anyone heard from Daniel Jernigan, MD, Deputy CDC Director for Public Health Science and Surveillance (DDPHSS)? You’d think he would be out there surveilling things.

How about Brian C. Moyer, PhD, Director of the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. He would be in charge, presumably, of the VAERS system, which tabulates adverse vaccine events. That system evidently under-reports adverse events by a shocking amount — some say only 1 percent are ever recorded. Why is that? Because it is a website that is so notoriously ill-designed and hard to use that the CDC pledged to fix it more than ten years ago and never got around to it. Why is that, Dr. Moyer? Has anyone asked him? I don’t think so.

Kunstler

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“This is how humankind evolved to live in the presence of pathogens.”

• Fauci Finally Admits Natural Immunity Is Superior (NP)

Dr. Anthony Fauci has finally admitted that natural immunity against COVID is actually far superior than any experimental jab will ever be. In an interview on March 23, 2022, Fauci finally let the following slip: “When you look at the cases they do not appear to be any more severe [than Omicron] and they do not appear to evade immune responses either from vaccine or prior infection.” Infowars.com reports: What’s critical here is not his debatable claim about vaccines but rather his offhand remark about prior infection. It was tossed off as if: “Everyone knows this.” If so, it is no thanks to him, the CDC, or WHO.

To be sure, everything we’ve known since two years ago – if not 2.5 thousand years – is that immunity from prior Covid infection is real. Vaccines have traditionally been a substitute version of exactly that. Brownstone has assembled fully 150 studies that demonstrate that immunity through infection is effective, broad, and lasting. Had that messaging been around during lockdowns, the attitude toward the virus would have been very different. We would have clearly seen the present reality from the beginning, namely that endemicity generally arrives in the case of a new virus of this sort due to exposure-induced population immunity. This is how humankind evolved to live in the presence of pathogens.

If we had widespread public awareness of this, the public-health priority would not have been locking down people who can manage exposure but rather alerting those who cannot to be careful until herd immunity in one’s own circle of contacts has been realized via meeting the virus and recovering. To those who say that is dangerous, consider that mass exposure is precisely what happened in any case, stretched out over two years rather than occurring in a single season. This delaying of the inevitable might be what allowed for variants to emerge and take hold in successive rounds, each new one hitting naive immune systems in ways that were difficult to predict. Flatten the curve amounted to “prolonging the pain,” exactly as Knut Wittkowski predicted in March 2020.

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“There’s more and more evidence coming to the front that this is part of some sort of bigger grand plan.”

• Covid Vaccines Killed At Least 61,000 Americans Aged 25 – 44 In 2021 – CDC (DE)

An analysis of figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) database has revealed that 61,000 people, supposedly in the prime of their life, aged 25-44, died of vaccine-related causes in the U.S. in the fall and winter of 2021. Edward Dowd, a former BlackRock portfolio manager, made the appalling revelation during the March 10 episode of “The Alex Jones Show.” According to Dowd, an investment adviser on Wall Street, an insurance industry expert who is part of his team stumbled upon the buried truth when, looking for something else, he broke down the CDC figures by age and created his own baseline death rates from there. Showing charts the actuarian plotted from the figures, Dowd pointed at chart four as the punch line.

“Basically, you see that millennials experienced 84 percent excess death in the fall and winter of 2021. So excess deaths accelerated when mandates and boosters hit,” Dowd told Jones. “And this age group is important because they’re healthy. And you can’t say that they, you know, miss their cancer screenings. This is ages 25 to 44. So this is just devastating evidence that the vaccines are causing this age group to die at an accelerating rate. “I know I showed percentages in that chart, but the actual bodies are 61,000. That’s the Vietnam War event that just occurred to the millennial generation – 58,000 died in the Vietnam War.” Dowd said he’s certain the vaccines are the culprits because the acceleration started in the summer when the mandates started hitting in August and September last year.


“And then [President Joe] Biden came out [announcing the mandates]. And boosters were also authorized and started happening. So let’s call this what it is. This is death by government mandate or democide, death by government. That’s what’s going on here.” The insurance companies have pointed at the alarming spike in vaccine-related deaths before, but the government refused to heed the warning and proceeded with the mass injections. Dowd could only speculate on why the “pyschos” in government did this. “Well, there’s two ways to look at this. Just good old-fashioned power and greed, or there was a plan hatched by some very evil people. I’m going with power and greed for now. But you know, as we roll through this very active fraud, it’s being exposed. There’s more and more evidence coming to the front that this is part of some sort of bigger grand plan.”

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“Key sources of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous – important inputs into soil fertility, crop yield, and plant maintenance – have all gone vertical.”

• Farmers on the Brink (Doomberg)

While the concept of a perfect storm is often too casually assigned in popular culture, it is difficult to find a more apt description of what has been unfolding in the global agriculture markets over these past several months. The tempest caused by the European energy disaster has merged with the hurricane of consequences flowing from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, forming the genesis of a generational crisis in food that will leave few unaffected. While we’ve been warning about just such a scenario for some time, after spending the past two weeks traveling across the US Midwest and conferring with our contacts in the agricultural sector, even we are a little spooked by what we’ve learned. In a financial crash, the correlation between all asset classes converges to one.

The coming crash in global food supply will be driven by a similar phenomenon across virtually every input into farming – they are all spiking to historic highs simultaneously, supply availability is diminishing across the spectrum, and the time to reverse the worst of the upcoming consequences is rapidly running short. Other than that, things are great. We begin with the price of fertilizer, which has been soaring to record highs across the globe. Key sources of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous – important inputs into soil fertility, crop yield, and plant maintenance – have all gone vertical. Ammonia is derived directly from natural gas, and the price of natural gas outside of the US has gone vertical. It’s no surprise that the price of ammonia has tripled over the past twelve months.

Belarus is the third-largest supplier of potash in the world and its state-owned miner, Belaruskali, declared force majeure after sanctions were imposed by the US and Europe. The number two supplier of potash globally? Russia. Perhaps front-running the Russian move on Ukraine, China halted phosphate exports last fall in an effort to ensure adequate domestic supply.

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“It’s a part of the ongoing mental torture that even on his happiest day they will at the last moment strike off guests on his guest list just to mess him about..”

• The Marriage of Julian Assange (Chris Hedges)

I am standing at the gates of HM Prison Belmarsh, a high security penitentiary in southeast London, with Craig Murray, who was the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan until he was fired for exposing the CIA black sites and torture centers in that country. Inside the prison, Julian Assange and Stella Moris are being married. Craig and I were on the list of the six guests invited to the wedding, but the prison authorities, in an example of the institutional sadism that characterizes all prisons, denied us entry. Craig, who was to have been one of two witnesses, was informed that he could not enter because he would “endanger the security of the prison.”

Craig came down from Edinburgh by train. I flew over from New York. We would at least be at the entrance of the prison with the some 150 Assange supporters. Craig, dressed in full Scottish regalia —and a kilt he admitted he had to have expanded every few years to accommodate his broadening girth — made a fashion statement and perhaps a point about Scottish independence. He was outdone by Stella, who wore a flowing ice lilac A-line bridal gown, corset with plastic stays so she could pass through the four metal detectors, and veil designed and donated by fashion designers Vivienne Westwood and Andreas Kronthaler.

“It’s a part of the ongoing mental torture that even on his happiest day they will at the last moment strike off guests on his guest list just to mess him about, just to try and make things as unpleasant as they can possibly make them,” Craig laments. “We shouldn’t be surprised. It’s a piece of the unnecessary cruelty with which he has been kept from the start. Why on earth is he even in a maximum security prison built to house terrorists? I’m quite amused by the explanation that I endanger the security of the prison. I feel quite flattered by this. I couldn’t understand it all until today when, of course, it occurred to me that I look incredibly sexy in my kilt and they thought a prison riot might ensue.”

The day is bittersweet. Julian may never be able to live with his wife and family. Yet it is an affirmation of love and commitment and hope carried out in a small side room with folding chairs and a laminate table. The prison authorities denied Julian and Stella the use of the chapel. The ceremony was witnessed by six family members, including Julian and Stella’s two young sons, one of whom fell asleep and the other of whom was preoccupied with a paper plane and tried to turn on one of the alarms. Two guards were stationed in the room. There was no reception. There was no cake. The prison denied Julian and Stella’s request for a photographer. A guard took a few pictures, but prison authorities told Julian and Stella they could not be posted on social media or shared with the public.

They were allowed to kiss. This prompted the older boy, Gabriel, to say, the family told me, “Oh, that’s a sloppy one.” Afterwards, the Catholic chaplain, who had the foresight to bring a white tablecloth and candles, gave them his blessing. Julian and Stella were given half an hour together in a crowded visitors hall. And then Julian, prisoner A 9379AY, was escorted back to his cell to the applause of the prisoners on his tier.

Hedges

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The guards have much more humanity than their “superiors”.

“The guards who conducted Stella through the jail did so as though they were the escort of a Queen.”

• Free, Enduring Love (Craig Murray)

By Stella’s side stood Julian Assange, whom she described to me as “simply the love of my life”, resplendent in a kilt, shirt, tie, and waistcoat, again specially designed by Vivienne Westwood in a purple based tartan, and featuring hand embroidery, lacing and cloisonne buttons. Unlike Stella’s dress, which she later showed us in detail, I have not seen the kilt but am told the design is relatively traditional. There was a two minute delay at the start of the ceremony as Julian had no sporran, and his brother Gabriel, resplendent in full highland dress for the first time, removed his own sporran and put it on Julian. Both Julian and Gabriel are proud of their Scottish heritage, in each case through their respective mothers. The British authorities had done everything they could firstly to prevent, and then to mess up, this wedding.


Permission to marry had first been formally requested of the prison service in 2020, and in the end was only granted by involving lawyers and threatening legal action. There followed a whole list of antagonisms on which I shall not dwell, one minor example of which was banning me from the wedding and then lying about it. But now, on the wedding day, the ordinary, working staff of the prison were delighted to be hosting such a happy event. The searches of the bride were distinctly token and friendly. At the security checks, Julian and Stella’s three year old son Max managed to tangle himself so comprehensively around the legs of one guard that he fell over, and the large guard and small boy then had a hilarious mock wrestle on the floor. The guards who conducted Stella through the jail did so as though they were the escort of a Queen.

Gates and steel doors opened before the procession and were locked again behind them, until deep in the bowels of this maximum security prison they arrived in a banal room, oppressive and completely windowless, with plain magnolia emulsioned walls. It was about twenty feet by fifteen feet, and is used as a store room for the adjoining Chaplaincy. At the back of the room were piles of Muslim prayer mats, boxes of red-jacketed Christian hymnals, stacks of cheap chairs and folded trestles. From which that one cheap trestle had been set up, and a single row of eight chairs in front of it. Present were Julian and Stella, and their permitted limit of six invited guests. These were Stella’s mother Teresa and brother Adrian, Julian’s father John, brother Gabriel, and Julian and Stella’s two children, Gabriel (4) and Max (3).


One of the torments had been that the UK Ministry of Justice insisted that the two tots counted against the six person limit, contrary to the prison’s original advice. Also in the room were the registrar who conducted the civil wedding, the Catholic chaplain and two prison guards, one for each door. Julian was able to hug and hold each of his family as they arrived, even though that was very much against the rules. That kind of physical comfort is something he will have been craving for years, and all eyes were full of tears. Julian’s father John was alarmed by his appearance. Julian was a stooped figure, and worryingly thin, even though obviously very happy in the moment.

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Scott Ritter

 

 

Boop

 

 

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Debt Rattle March 24 2022

Mar 242022
 
 March 24, 2022  Posted by at 8:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  42 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Weaver 1884

 

• Biden Says US Must Lead ‘New World Order,’ Lead it Where Exactly? (Celente)
• Pentagon Drops Truth Bombs to Stave Off War With Russia (Lauria)
• Putin’s Bombers Could Devastate Ukraine But He’s Holding Back (NW)
• Sanctioning Russia Could Topple The West (Fazi)
• WIll Poland Invade The Western Ukraine? (Saker)
• Lavrov: Peacekeeping Effort Could Result In Direct Clash With NATO (JTN)
• Ukraine Says Russia Is Holding Aid Workers Captive In Mariupol (JTN)
• How Russia Got Stronger As Bidens And Clintons Got Richer (JTN)
• The Death Of The Supreme Court Confirmation Process (Turley)
• Anger Towards the Unvaccinated was Intentional Psychological Manipulation (NE)
• “Dictatorship Of The Worst Kind” – Trudeau Lambasted In EU Parliament (TNC)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GPS
https://twitter.com/i/status/1506882331537248256

 

 


Nigeria: 206M people, only 4.4% fully vaxxed, zero deaths and 87 daily cases

 

 

The official government li(n)e
https://twitter.com/i/status/1506403090379026436

 

 

“Lead it?” Where? Down the crapper!”

• Biden Says US Must Lead ‘New World Order,’ Lead it Where Exactly? (Celente)

What’s the big headline making the news last week? “BIDEN: AMERICA WILL LEAD NEW WORLD ORDER.” In his speech, President Joe Biden declared, “Now is the time where things are shifting. There’s going to be a new world order out there and we’ve got to lead it.” “Lead it?” Where? Down the crapper! America’s roads are rotted, bridges collapse, archaic subways and rail systems crumble, the middle class evaporates as 61 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, people can’t afford to buy homes or afford to pay rent, etc., etc. Q. And who is the “we’ve” that “got to lead it”? A. The Republican and Democratic crime syndicate… people like Joe Biden who’s been sucking off the public tit for 50 years and championed the sending of our jobs overseas and making the billionaires richer and the Bigs bigger.

Yet, as the nation descends, there is always more money to enrich the military/industrial/intelligence complex with over $1 trillion per year dumped into their coffers. Name the war that the D.C. Gang started since the end of WWII and assess the cost benefit analysis. Here are a few: • Korean War: Lost • Vietnam War: Lost • Afghanistan War: Lost • Iraq War: Lost • Syrian War: Ongoing Bloody Disaster • Libyan War: Ongoing Bloody Disaster • Yemen War: Worst Humanitarian Disaster on Earth. Therefore, with a stellar track record of monumental failures, why would anyone with a brain bigger than a pea believe or follow warped-brain politician’s war dictates… politicians who shoot off their fat mouths to start wars, but never shoot a rifle to fight the wars they start?

[..] As we reported last week, with significant percentages of the world’s corn, wheat, barley and fertilizers unable to be shipped out of Russia and Ukraine—and/or sanctioned—food and fertilizer prices have sharply spiked since the Ukraine War began: Wheat is up almost 22 percent, barley 32 percent and fertilizers jumped by 40 percent. The two nations accounted for 75 percent of the world’s sunflower seed oil, 32 percent of the barley, 30 percent wheat and 17 percent of corn exports. And over the past year, barley prices rocketed up 82 percent, wheat prices spiked 69 percent and corn prices jumped 36 percent.

“Ukraine has only compounded a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe,” said David M. Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program. “There is no precedent even close to this since World War II.” Beyond WWII, as we reported, the COVID War destroyed the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people. The imbecilic, non-scientific draconian lockdown mandates pushed hunger up 18 percent… from 720 million to 811 million people according to the UN. And now with the Ukraine War raging, the United Nations said its implications on the global food market would push up an additional 13.1 million people into hunger. “We’ll be taking food from the hungry to give to the starving,” Beasley said.

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“This suggests to me, at least, that Putin is not intentionally attacking civilians..”

• Pentagon Drops Truth Bombs to Stave Off War With Russia (Lauria)

Western corporate media, depending almost exclusively on Ukrainian sources, report that Russia is losing the war, with its military offensive “stalled,” and in frustration has deliberately targeted civilians and flattened cities. Biden has bought into this part of the story, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal.” He has also said that Russia is planning a “false flag” chemical attack to pin on Ukraine. But on Tuesday, the Pentagon took the bold step of leaking two stories to reporters that contradict those tales. “Russia’s conduct in the brutal war tells a different story than the widely accepted view that Vladimir Putin is intent on demolishing Ukraine and inflicting maximum civilian damage—and it reveals the Russian leader’s strategic balancing act,” reported Newsweek in an article entitled, “Putin’s Bombers Could Devastate Ukraine But He’s Holding Back. Here’s Why.”

The piece quotes an unnamed analyst at the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) saying, “The heart of Kyiv has barely been touched. And almost all of the long-range strikes have been aimed at military targets.” A retired U.S. Air Force officer now working as an analyst for a Pentagon contractor, added: “We need to understand Russia’s actual conduct. If we merely convince ourselves that Russia is bombing indiscriminately, or [that] it is failing to inflict more harm because its personnel are not up to the task or because it is technically inept, then we are not seeing the real conflict.” The article says: “As of the past weekend, in 24 days of conflict, Russia has flown some 1,400 strike sorties and delivered almost 1,000 missiles (by contrast, the United States flew more sorties and delivered more weapons in the first day of the 2003 Iraq war). …

“A proportion of those strikes have damaged and destroyed civilian structures and killed and injured innocent civilians, but the level of death and destruction is low compared to Russia’s capacity. ‘I know it’s hard … to swallow that the carnage and destruction could be much worse than it is,’ says the DIA analyst. ‘But that’s what the facts show. This suggests to me, at least, that Putin is not intentionally attacking civilians, that perhaps he is mindful that he needs to limit damage in order to leave an out for negotiations.’” These Pentagon sources confirm what Putin and the Russian Ministry of Defense have been saying all along: that instead of being “stalled,” Russia is executing a methodical war plan to encircle cities, opening humanitarian corridors for civilians, leaving civilian infrastructure like water, electricity, telephony and internet intact, and trying to avoid as many civilian casualties as possible.

Until these Pentagon leaks it was difficult to confirm that Russia was entirely telling the truth and that corporate media were publishing fables cooked up by Ukraine’s publicity machine.

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If Russia hasn’t done what Americans would do, it must mean they are failing…

• Putin’s Bombers Could Devastate Ukraine But He’s Holding Back (NW)

Over the course of almost four weeks, missiles fired at Kyiv have been scarce. Ukrainian media have reported just more than a dozen incidents involving Russian cruise and ballistic missiles intercepted over the city and its closest suburbs since February 24. And all of them, U.S. experts say, have been clearly headed for legitimate military targets. “The fact that the mobile S-300 SAM systems are still operating is a powerful indictment of Russia’s ability to conduct dynamic or time-sensitive targeting,” the Atlantic Council asserted this week in a military brief. The DIA analyst disagrees: “For whatever reason, clearly the Russians have been reluctant to strike inside the urban megalopolis of Kyiv.


“Yes they might not be up to the U.S. task [in dynamic targeting] or in establishing air superiority … But this is the Russian air force, subordinate to the ground forces. And this war is different: it’s being fought on the ground, where everything strategic that Russia might destroy in front of its forces—bridges, communications, airfields, etc.—also becomes unusable to them as they move forward.” From the very beginning of air strikes, both U.S. analysts agree, some of the limited air and missile attacks have also had some internal logic. Take, for instance, the airfield at Hostomel, northwest of Kyiv. It wasn’t directly attacked because Russia initially used it to land paratroopers, with the hope of advancing to the capital city. Instead the airfield and the surrounding countryside became the scene a major battle, as Ukrainian forces mounted a fierce defense. In the south, Kherson airport also wasn’t attacked. The reason has become clear: Russia is now using that very airfield to stage its own forces.

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“..the main source of Russia’s foreign-exchange reserves — oil and gas exports — has been excluded from the sanctions..”

• Sanctioning Russia Could Topple The West (Fazi)

So what should we expect from the sanctions? Western pundits and commentators have little doubt: the sanctions will hamstring the Russian economy, sow discontent among the Russian people and elites alike, and possibly even cause the downfall of the Putin regime. At the very least, we’re told, they will hinder Russia’s war efforts. But history suggests otherwise: see Iraq, or more recently Iran. Far more likely is that this turns out to be the latest Western strategic miscalculation in a long list of strategic blunders, of which the United States’ inglorious withdrawal from Afghanistan is just the most recent example. After all, Russia has been preparing for this moment for quite some time.

Following the first wave of Western sanctions, in 2014, and partly in retaliation against them, Putin embarked on what analysts have dubbed a “Fortress Russia” strategy, building up the country’s international reserves and diversifying them away from US dollars and British pounds, reducing its foreign exposure, boosting its economic cooperation with China, and pursuing import substitution strategies in several industries, including food, medicine and technology, in an effort to insulate Russia as much as possible from external shocks. True, Putin made the mistake of leaving around half of those reserves parked in foreign central banks, resulting in these now being confiscated. But nonetheless Russia still has access to more than $300 billion in gold and foreign-exchange reserves — more than most countries in the world and more than enough to cushion any short-term fall in exports, or prop up the rouble (for a while).

Moreover, the Russian central bank reacted to the sanctions by stopping capital flows out of Russia and nationalising the foreign exchange earnings of major exporters, requiring Russian firms to convert 80% of their dollar and euro earnings into roubles. It also raised interest rates to 20% in an effort to attract foreign capital. These measures are aimed at bolstering the rouble’s value and providing a flow of foreign exchange into the country. They appear to be working: while the rouble is around 40% of its value since the start of the conflict, the Russian currency’s free-fall seems to have come to a halt for now, even registering an uptick over the past two weeks. For the time being, Russia’s financial account — the difference between the money flowing in and out of the country — is far from disastrous.

Let’s not forget that the main source of Russia’s foreign-exchange reserves — oil and gas exports — has been excluded from the sanctions, for obvious reasons: for most European countries, Russia accounts for a huge part of their oil and gas imports (and other staple commodities), and there’s simply no way of replacing those energy sources from one day to the next. In short, Russia runs no risk, in the short term, of running out of reserves and not being able to pay for its imports. But even assuming that the West decided to put a stop to all its imports from Russia overnight, there’s no reason to believe that this would bring the Russian military machine to a halt. The notion that “we are financing Russia’s war by purchasing gas and oil”, as the Finnish prime minister recently stated, is fundamentally misplaced.

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A translation at the Saker. Not clear from what.

“..if the Baltic statehood develops in the same direction in which it has been developing for the last thirty years, then sooner or later the denazification operation is inevitable.”

• Will Poland Invade The Western Ukraine? (Saker)

the pro-American European lobby is in a state of unstable equilibrium; it wants to intervene in this conflict, but is afraid. The Americans do not yet give sufficient guarantees. Biden is now going to Poland to talk about exactly this, and we’ll see what he tells them. Well, I think not now, not now, but in general, given what trends have prevailed in the Baltics. Sooner or later the denazification operation will have to be carried out, because, as the history of Ukraine shows, living next to the Nazi state, even if it is small, means everything equally uncomfortable. Just because we are two different systems, we are on different sides of good and evil, and we will always be in confrontation with each other, and confrontation with the state that is on our borders will always be used by our enemies, regardless of who is this enemy at the moment.

Therefore, naturally, if the Balts do not take it reasonably, then sooner or later they, just like Ukraine, will ask for the denazification operation. Ukraine asked for a long time, in fact, persuaded for 30 years. Therefore, Ukraine began to prepare for a war with Russia from the first day of its Independence. It was, by the way, her idea-fix. Well, it was getting ready, getting ready, now 30 years have passed – she got ready. Finally, she asked for the war. By and large, the Balts behave in the same way. They now think that they are covered by NATO and the EU, but as the practice of recent years has shown, this is a very unreliable umbrella.

It is unlikely that anyone will be especially tense and risk a major war for the Baltic states. Moreover, there is always a casus bellum. It’s just that now, of course, Russia is too busy to go to the Baltic states. If only they won’t interfere with Russia on their own along with the Poles. They once tried to attack Belarus. They can repeat. If they themselves do not get involved in this matter, then the problem, the Baltics, is a problem of the distant future. During this time, they can change their minds, correct themselves, establish normal contacts, and choose other politicians. But if the Baltic statehood develops in the same direction in which it has been developing for the last thirty years, then sooner or later the denazification operation is inevitable.

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“Sending NATO peacekeepers to Ukraine would lead to a direct clash between the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the alliance.”

• Lavrov: Peacekeeping Effort Could Result In Direct Clash With NATO (JTN)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned this week that if NATO sends peacekeepers into Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion, that action will lead to a direct military confrontation between Russian and allied forces. According to the Russian state news agency TASS, Lavrov said Wednesday morning, “Sending NATO peacekeepers to Ukraine would lead to a direct clash between the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the alliance.” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations eliminated the possibility of the U.S. becoming part of a peacekeeping operation inside Ukraine, reiterating that the Biden administration will not send American troops into the country under conflict.


“We don’t want to escalate this into a war with the United States,” said Thomas-Greenfield. “But we will support our NATO allies,” adding that President Biden “has made clear that if there is an attack on any of our NATO allies, under Article 5, that we will support those countries and defend those countries.” The war has been going on for about a month as Russia’s far larger army continues to fight for control of Ukraine’s major cities. In the past days, the battle for Ukraine’s strategic port city of Mariupol has grown increasingly fiery. Thus far, the resistance effort from Ukraine has been unexpectedly fierce, though western experts warn that the Ukrainian’s longtime outlook against Russian forces may spell trouble.

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Just The News, a right wing unit, has trouble positioning itself. They must be both anti-Biden AND anti-Putin.

• Ukraine Says Russia Is Holding Aid Workers Captive In Mariupol (JTN)

Speaking Tuesday night in a video address to his nation, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russian forces of seizing a humanitarian convoy in Mariupol.Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said the Russians are holding captive 11 bus drivers and four rescue workers as well as their vehicles. Zelenskyy said the efforts to establish stable humanitarian corridors in Mariupol, which has been under heavy attack, are being “foiled by the Russian occupiers, by shelling, or deliberate terror.” A senior U.S. defense official told the Associated Press that Russian ships in the Sea of Azov are adding to the shelling of Mariupol, a strategic port city.


On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Russian military operation is unfolding “strictly in accordance with the plans and purposes that were established beforehand.” He added that Putin’s aims are to “get rid of the military potential of Ukraine” and to “ensure that Ukraine changes from an anti-Russian center to a neutral country.”

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Uranium One. Nuff said.

• How Russia Got Stronger As Bidens And Clintons Got Richer (JTN)

By 2010, the Obama-Biden-Clinton Russian reset was in full swing. The administration put forth a mutual nuclear disarmament treaty known as “New START,” which, while noble in its declared intentions, risked weakening a compliant partner such as the United States while strengthening a Russia not constrained by the rules. Another deal that Obama, Biden, and Clinton gave the Russians was called the “123 Agreement,” which allowed state-owned Russian entities like nuclear behemoth Rosatom to sell nuclear materials directly to U.S. utility companies. This deal continues to pay huge dividends to the Obama Foundation’s top donor, Chicago-based Exelon Corporation. And President Biden has allowed that deal to survive even during the Ukraine war, exempting nuclear fuel sales to U.S. utilities from his recent sanctions targeting Russian energy imports.

Meanwhile, the U.S.-driven 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, and other so-called denuclearization efforts with Libya and North Korea, effectively sent hundreds of thousands of tons of uranium to Russia for enrichment — a huge cash and energy windfall for Putin. On top of these nuclear handouts, the Obama-Biden-Clinton team gave Russia one of the biggest prizes of all: Uranium One. Before the Russian takeover, Uranium One was a Canadian company that mined Uranium around the world. It had assets on at least three continents — Eurasia, Africa, and North America. Its assets in Wyoming, Utah, and other states constituted approximately 20% of U.S. uranium capacity and meant that the Obama-Biden Committee of Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) would have to sign off on the deal. They could have said no, but the deal was approved.

Investors in the deal had funneled $145 million into Secretary Clinton’s family foundation. Its approval helped to give Russia a near-monopoly on global uranium production. After investigative reporter and author Peter Schweizer broke the Uranium One story in 2015, a State Department under secretary, Jose Fernandez, took the blame. Fernandez later landed a “very rewarding” position at the Clinton-connected Center for American Progress. Fernandez has now come back through the revolving door and is a top official in the Biden State Department.

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“First, I put on my socks, then my pants, then my shirt, then my jacket … and then I am fully dressed.”

• The Death Of The Supreme Court Confirmation Process (Turley)

“This is not a normal day for America. We have never had this moment before.” Those 15 words from Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) captured the historic confirmation hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman nominated to the Supreme Court. In other respects, however, the hearing was an all-too-familiar moment, particularly in its lack of substantive legal discussion. The Jackson hearing continued the rapid reduction of the range of questions for nominees, leaving these hearings as little more than performance art for senators and an endurance test for nominees. The hearing was impressive in the ability of senators to move effortlessly between diametrically opposing positions. For those with memories extending back to 2020, there were turns that were enough to snap your neck.

In Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s hearing, members like Sen. Chris Coons (D-R.I.) declared: “What’s at issue is her judicial philosophy.” Yesterday, during Jackson’s hearing (around the 6:30 mark), Coons declared: “I don’t believe that ‘a judicial philosophy’ is always all that meaningful.” It was clear from the outset that Jackson would not discuss her judicial philosophy on interpreting the Constitution or statutes — the very issue Democratic senators cited in voting against Barrett in 2020. When asked about her judicial philosophy, Jackson responded with a discussion of her “judicial methodology.” Indeed, on the second day of questioning, Jackson told Sen. Grassley that “I do have a philosophy. My philosophy is my methodology.” It is akin to asking someone about their preferred clothing style and having them respond, “First, I put on my socks, then my pants, then my shirt, then my jacket … and then I am fully dressed.”

Given that evasion, it was not surprising that Coons felt compelled to say judicial philosophy was really not that important and the key all along was methodology. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) agreed. After labeling Barrett an unacceptable “originalist,” she now dismisses originalism and judicial philosophy questions for Jackson (around the 8:48 mark) because “I do not find labels particularly useful.” In reality, it did not seem like any substantive answers were “particularly useful.” I have complained about that lack of substance in prior hearings where nominees discussed favorite movies and baseball but not long-held principles of constitutional interpretation. The Ginsburg Rule — enabling nominees to refuse to answer questions about their positions on particular rights — has reduced confirmation hearings to the nutritional value of a Slurpee.

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“They were unsure whether saying “get vaccinated to protect others” would increase willingness to vaccinate.”

• Anger Towards the Unvaccinated was Intentional Psychological Manipulation (NE)

As the first wave of the pandemic died down in 2020, the narrative was already being pushed that vaccines were the only way out. However, even before it was clear that the vaccines would predominantly be mRNA based, many were rightly hesitant to receive a novel vaccine that had been produced at warp speed. With The Science™ so convinced that their solution was the only solution, something had to be done to increase uptake. Even though there were many opposing opinions (that were ignored), it was thought that without high rates of vaccine uptake, the pandemic would likely be prolonged. Something had to be done about vaccine hesitancy, so along came Yale University with a study which began in July 2020.

The study, which was not published online until October 2021 (once everyone was vaccinated) was to test “how persuasive messaging affects COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions”. Recent studies had shown that explaining vaccine herd immunity increased willingness to receive a vaccine and reduced the time people would wait to get vaccinated. However, other work found that prosocial appeals did not increase vaccination intentions and prosocial concerns were absent in densely populated areas. They were unsure whether saying “get vaccinated to protect others” would increase willingness to vaccinate. The authors of the study suggested that something else would be needed to get people to encourage others close to them to get vaccinated and to hold negative judgments of those who don’t get vaccinated.

“Viewing vaccination through the lens of a collective action problem suggests that in addition to increasing individuals’ intentions to receive a vaccine, effective public health messages would also increase people’s willingness to encourage those close to them to vaccinate and to hold negative judgments of those who do not vaccinate. By encouraging those close to them to vaccinate, people are both promoting compliance with social norms and increasing their own level of protection against the disease. Also, by judging those who do not vaccinate more negatively, they apply social pressure to others to promote cooperative behavior. This would be consistent with theories of cooperation, like indirect reciprocity or partner choice, that rely on free riders being punished or ostracized for their past actions to encourage prosocial outcomes. Thus, effective messaging could have outsized effects on promoting vaccination if it both causes people to vaccinate themselves and to encourage those around them to do so.”

Promotion of fear

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Kolakusic is fast becomig everyone’s favorite European.

• “Dictatorship Of The Worst Kind” – Trudeau Lambasted In EU Parliament (TNC)

Croatian Member of European (MEP) Parliament and former judge Mislav Kolakusic called Prime Minister Justin Trudeau out to his face in Brussels on Tuesday, savaging Trudeau over “civil rights violations” against Freedom Convoy protesters. Speaking before the European Parliament, Kolakusic accused the prime minister of engaging in a “dictatorship of the worst kind” by using the Emergencies Act to crush peaceful demonstrations. Kolakusic’s speech followed Trudeau’s own address to the parliament, where the prime minister had sounded off on purported threats to democracy posed by freedom protesters. Kolakusic responded to Trudeau’s claims through a Croatian translator.

“To defend our rights and the rights of our children, which we have acquired over the centuries, many of us – including myself – are willing to risk our own freedom and our own lives,” he said. “Unfortunately, today there are those among us who trample on these fundamental values.” Kolakusic then turned to face Trudeau. “Canada, once a symbol of the modern world, has become a symbol of civil rights violations under your quasi-liberal boot in recent months,” he said. Kolakusic went on to blast Trudeau for the militarized crackdown on Ottawa protesters where one woman using a walker had been trampled by a police-mounted riot horse. He also referred to how Trudeau had used the Emergencies Act to freeze the bank accounts of convoy protesters and donors.

“We watched how you trample women with horses, how you block the bank accounts of single parents so that they can’t even pay their children’s education and medicine, that they can’t pay utilities, mortgages for their homes. To you, these may be liberal methods, for many citizens of the world, it is a dictatorship of the worst kind. Rest assured that the citizens of the world, united, can stop any regime that wants to destroy,” said Kolakusic.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1506702485225938949

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When you zoom in, you realise that these black horses are actually the shadows of Zebras

Photo by Beverly Joubert – taken above the shallow waters of the Makgadikgadi Pan, a salt pan in Botswana – NatGeo 2018 Wildlife Photo of the Year

 

 

Black Rock

 

 

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

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 26 2021

Aug 262021
 
 August 26, 2021  Posted by at 9:21 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  83 Responses »


Vasily Polenov Christ among the teachers (doctors) 1896

 

• 67% Of UK Covid-19 Deaths Since February 2021 Were Vaccinated (DE)
• McCullough: ‘The Vaccines Are Failing’ (CHD)
• 2 Things MSM Didn’t Tell You About FDA’s Approval of Pfizer Vaccine (CHD)
• Comparing SARS-CoV-2 Natural Immunity To Vaccine-induced Immunity (Medrxiv)
• Safety of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine in a Nationwide Setting (NEJM)
• Real-World Study Links Pfizer Vax to High Risk of Myocarditis (MPT)
• Delta Will Charge Unvaccinated Employees $200 Per Month For Health Plan (AP)
• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Bans Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates (TT)
• New Zealand Could Be Split Into North And South Island Bubbles (G.)
• Origins of SARS-CoV-2: Window Is Closing For Key Scientific Studies (Nature)
• Early Wuhan COVID Samples Contained Genetically Modified Viruses (ET)
• Tucker Carlson Warns “Elitist Dems” Want You To “Shut Up And Obey” (SN)
• “I Was Living Like Scarface” (MPN)
• “Leftie” Is Now A Slur In Working-Class Towns (G.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comment on the same Public Health England (PHE) briefing the Daily Sceptic addressed yesterday, saying “Calculating the vaccine effectiveness against Delta infection in the over-50s [..] gives a figure of just 15%..”

• 67% Of UK Covid-19 Deaths Since February 2021 Were Vaccinated (DE)

The latest Public Health England report on Covid-19 infections, hospitalisations, and deaths show that the Covid-19 injections do not work, and quite possibly make the recipient worse if exposed to the alleged Covid-19 virus due to the fully vaccinated population accounting for 21% of all infections but 58% of all Covid-19 deaths. PHE release a technical briefing on Covid-19 variants of concern every two weeks, and the 21st update released on the 20th August 2021 provides further proof; just as previous reports have, that the Covid-19 vaccines are in fact increasing the risk of hospitalisation and death, rather than reducing it by the 95% claimed by the vaccine manufacturers.

According to the report since the 1st February 2021 and the 15th August 2021 there have been 183,133 confirmed cases among the unvaccinated population, an increase of 32,079 on the last count made in the previous report where the confirmed figure was 151,054 up to the 2nd August 2021. There have also been 26,194 confirmed cases among people who had received a single dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, 21 days prior to their positive test, an increase of 2,176 on the last count made in the previous report where the confirmed figure was 24,018 up to the 2nd August 2021.

Confirmed cases among people who had received a single dose of a Covid-19 vaccine more than 21 days prior to their positive test total 62,763 up to the 15th August 2021. This is an increase of 17,674 on the previous report where the confirmed figure was 46,089 up to the 2nd August 2021. Finally, the latest report reveals that there have been 73,372 confirmed cases of the Delta Covid-19 variant among the fully vaccinated population, an increase of 26,364 on the last count made in the previous report where the confirmed figure was 47,008 up to the 2nd August 2021.

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Are we getting McCullough overkill?

• McCullough: ‘The Vaccines Are Failing’ (CHD)

Why is the world experiencing such a “prominent outbreak” of the Delta variant when so many people have been vaccinated? Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough addressed those questions and more on the “RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast.” New research shows people who are vaccinated against COVID are more susceptible to the Delta variant, said McCullough, pointing to a pre-print study by the prestigious Oxford University Clinical Research Group published Aug. 10 in The Lancet. The paper’s authors demonstrated widespread vaccine failure and transmission under tightly controlled circumstances in a hospital lockdown in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. The study found vaccinated people carry 251 times the load of COVID-19 viruses in their nostrils compared to the unvaccinated, the study found.

“They had an outbreak and they locked down the hospital where the workers could not get out,” said McCullough. “They were assiduously checking the workers and testing them for COVID, as well as doing sequencing.” The researchers found workers were still getting COVID during the lockdown period, said McCullough, and they were passing it to one another. The study’s big finding is their calculation of viral load, McCullough said: “This group had actually calculated viral load from oral and nasal secretions in the past. The viral load was 251 times that of the previous unvaccinated era where they had used the same methodology. So, they had previous workers and patients who had COVID-19 before any exposure to the vaccines. And now the vaccinated were carrying a massive viral load and passing it to one another.”

The efficacy for the Pfizer vaccine is measured as being anywhere from 17% to 42% effective. “These levels are far below the 50% regulatory standard to even have a vaccine on the market,” said McCullough. Regardless of the variant or the vaccine, McCullough said the bottom line is that “the vaccines are failing.”

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“If it doesn’t say Comirnaty, you have not been offered an approved vaccine.”

• 2 Things MSM Didn’t Tell You About FDA’s Approval of Pfizer Vaccine (CHD)

Monday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a biologics license application for the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine. The press reported that vaccine mandates are now legal for military, healthcare workers, college students and employees in many industries. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has now required the vaccine for all teachers and school staff. The Pentagon is proceeding with its mandate for all military service members.

[..] First, the FDA acknowledges that while Pfizer has “insufficient stocks” of the newly licensed Comirnaty vaccine available, there is “a significant amount” of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine — produced under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) — still available for use. The FDA decrees that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine under the EUA should remain unlicensed but can be used “interchangeably” (page 2, footnote 8) with the newly licensed Comirnaty product. Second, the FDA pointed out that the licensed Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine and the existing, EUA Pfizer vaccine are “legally distinct,” but proclaims that their differences do not “impact safety or effectiveness.”

[..] EUA products are experimental under U.S. law. Both the Nuremberg Code and federal regulations provide that no one can force a human being to participate in this experiment. Under 21 U.S. Code Sec.360bbb-3(e)(1)(A)(ii)(III), “authorization for medical products for use in emergencies,” it is unlawful to deny someone a job or an education because they refuse to be an experimental subject. Instead, potential recipients have an absolute right to refuse EUA vaccines. U.S. laws, however, permit employers and schools to require students and workers to take licensed vaccines. EUA-approved COVID vaccines have an extraordinary liability shield under the 2005 Public Readiness and Preparedness Act. [..] At least for the moment, the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine has no liability shield. Vials of the branded product, which say “Comirnaty” on the label, are subject to the same product liability laws as other U.S. products.

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices places a vaccine on the mandatory schedule, a childhood vaccine benefits from a generous retinue of liability protections. But licensed adult vaccines, including the new Comirnaty, do not enjoy any liability shield. Just as with Ford’s exploding Pinto, or Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup, people injured by the Comirnaty vaccine could potentially sue for damages. And because adults injured by the vaccine will be able to show that the manufacturer knew of the problems with the product, jury awards could be astronomical.

Pfizer is therefore unlikely to allow any American to take a Comirnaty vaccine until it can somehow arrange immunity for this product. Here’s what you need to know when somebody orders you to get the vaccine: Ask to see the vial. If it says “Comirnaty,” it’s a licensed product. If it says “Pfizer-BioNTech,” it’s an experimental product, and under 21 U.S. Code 360bbb, you have the right to refuse. If it comes from Moderna or Johnson & Johnson (marketed as Janssen), you have the right to refuse. The FDA is playing bait and switch with the American public — but we don’t have to play along. If it doesn’t say Comirnaty, you have not been offered an approved vaccine.

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Vaccinated people are 13x more likely to get infected than those with natural immunity.

• Comparing SARS-CoV-2 Natural Immunity To Vaccine-induced Immunity (Medrxiv)

Reports of waning vaccine-induced immunity against COVID-19 have begun to surface. With that, the comparable long-term protection conferred by previous infection with SARS-CoV-2 remains unclear. Methods: We conducted a retrospective observational study comparing three groups: (1)SARS-CoV-2-naive individuals who received a two-dose regimen of the BioNTech/Pfizer mRNA BNT162b2 vaccine, (2)previously infected individuals who have not been vaccinated, and (3)previously infected and single dose vaccinated individuals. Three multivariate logistic regression models were applied. In all models we evaluated four outcomes: SARS-CoV-2 infection, symptomatic disease, COVID-19-related hospitalization and death.


The follow-up period of June 1 to August 14, 2021, when the Delta variant was dominant in Israel. Results: SARS-CoV-2-naive vaccinees had a 13.06-fold (95% CI, 8.08 to 21.11) increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021. The increased risk was significant (P<0.001) for symptomatic disease as well. When allowing the infection to occur at any time before vaccination (from March 2020 to February 2021), evidence of waning natural immunity was demonstrated, though SARS-CoV-2 naive vaccinees had a 5.96-fold (95% CI, 4.85 to 7.33) increased risk for breakthrough infection and a 7.13-fold (95% CI, 5.51 to 9.21) increased risk for symptomatic disease.

SARS-CoV-2-naive vaccinees were also at a greater risk for COVID-19-related-hospitalizations compared to those that were previously infected. Conclusions: This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity.

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New England Journal of Medicine. Israel study. Drowning in numbers.

“Vaccination was most strongly associated with an elevated risk of myocarditis, lymphadenopathy, appendicitis, and herpes zoster infection”

• Safety of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine in a Nationwide Setting (NEJM)

Table S6 shows the effect of SARS-CoV-2 infection on the incidence of various adverse events. Infection substantially increased the risk of many different adverse events, including myocarditis (risk ratio, 18.28; 95% CI, 3.95 to 25.12; risk difference, 11.0 events per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 5.6 to 15.8), acute kidney injury (risk ratio, 14.83; 95% CI, 9.24 to 28.75; risk difference, 125.4 events per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 107.0 to 142.6), pulmonary embolism (risk ratio, 12.14; 95% CI, 6.89 to 29.20; risk difference, 61.7 events per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 48.5 to 75.4), intracranial hemorrhage (risk ratio, 6.89; 95% CI, 1.90 to 19.16; risk difference, 7.6 events per 100,000 persons;


95% CI, 2.7 to 12.6), pericarditis (risk ratio, 5.39; 95% CI, 2.22 to 23.58; risk difference, 10.9 events per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 4.9 to 16.9), myocardial infarction (risk ratio, 4.47; 95% CI, 2.47 to 9.95; risk difference, 25.1 events per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 16.2 to 33.9), deep-vein thrombosis (risk ratio, 3.78; 95% CI, 2.50 to 6.59; risk difference, 43.0 events per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 29.9 to 56.6), and arrhythmia (risk ratio, 3.83; 95% CI, 3.07 to 4.95; risk difference, 166.1 events per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 139.6 to 193.2).

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About that same Israel study.

• Real-World Study Links Pfizer Vax to High Risk of Myocarditis (MPT)

The Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine was found to be associated with a threefold increased risk of myocarditis, according to a real-world case-control study from Israel. Vaccination had a strong association with an increased risk of myocarditis (risk ratio [RR] 3.24, 95% CI 1.55-12.44), as well as increased risks of lymphadenopathy (RR 2.43, 95% CI 2.05-2.78), appendicitis (RR 1.40, 95% CI 1.02-2.01), and herpes zoster infection (RR 1.43, 95% CI 1.20-1.73), reported Ran Balicer, MD, of Clalit Health Services in Tel Aviv, and colleagues.

However, in a separate cohort, infection with SARS-CoV-2 was associated with a higher risk of myocarditis (RR 18.28, 95% CI 3.95-25.12), as well as other cardiovascular complications, including acute kidney injury (RR 14.83, 95% CI 9.24-28.75), pulmonary embolism (RR 12.14, 95% CI 6.89-29.20), and intracranial hemorrhage (RR 6.89, 95% CI 1.90-19.16), the authors wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine. They noted that vaccination was “substantially protective” against anemia, acute kidney injury, intracranial hemorrhage, and lymphopenia. Balicer’s group examined data from the largest healthcare organization in Israel to compare incidence of adverse events among vaccinated individuals versus unvaccinated individuals, and estimated the effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection on these adverse events.

Participants in the vaccination cohorts were 16 years old and older, had been in the health organization for a full year, had no prior COVID-19 infection, and had no contact with the healthcare system in the last 7 days. Notably, populations with confounders, such as healthcare workers, long-term care facility residents, or people confined to their home for medical reasons, were excluded.

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As vaccinated people are 13x more likely to get infected than those with natural immunity. Logos.

• Delta Will Charge Unvaccinated Employees $200 Per Month For Health Plan (AP)

Delta Air Lines will charge employees on the company health plan $200 a month if they fail to get vaccinated against COVID-19, a policy the airline’s top executive says is necessary because the average hospital stay for the virus costs the airline $50,000. CEO Ed Bastian said that all employees who have been hospitalized for the virus in recent weeks were not fully vaccinated. The airline said Wednesday that it also will stop extending pay protection to unvaccinated workers who contract COVID-19 on Sept. 30, and will require unvaccinated workers to be tested weekly beginning Sept. 12, although Delta will cover the cost. They will have to wear masks in all indoor company settings.

Delta stopped short of matching United Airlines, which will require employees to be vaccinated starting Sept. 27 or face termination. However, the $200 monthly surcharge, which starts in November, may have the same effect. “This surcharge will be necessary to address the financial risk the decision to not vaccinate is creating for our company,” Bastian said in a memo to employees. The surcharge will only apply to employees who don’t get vaccinated and won’t be levied for spouses or dependents, a Delta spokeswoman said. [..] Bastian said that 75% of Delta employees are vaccinated, up from 72% in mid-July. He said the aggressiveness of the leading strain of the virus “means we need to get many more of our people vaccinated, and as close to 100% as possible.”

“I know some of you may be taking a wait-and-see approach or waiting for full (Food and Drug Administration) approval,” he told employees. “With this week’s announcement that the FDA has granted full approval for the Pfizer vaccine, the time for you to get vaccinated is now.” A growing number of companies including Chevron Corp. and drugstore chain CVS announced they will require workers to get vaccinated after Monday’s FDA decision. United and Delta already require new hires to be vaccinated. Two smaller carriers, Hawaiian and Frontier, have said they will require either vaccination or regular testing for current employees. Other major U.S. airlines, including American and Southwest, said Wednesday that they are encouraging employees to get vaccinated but have not required it.

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“Vaccine requirements and exemptions have historically been determined by the legislature, and their involvement is particularly important to avoid a patchwork of vaccine mandates across Texas..”

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Bans Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates (TT)

Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday announced an executive order banning COVID-19 vaccine mandates regardless of a vaccine’s approval status with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He also said he was adding the issue to the agenda for the current special session of the Texas Legislature. The order comes two days after the FDA granted full approval to the Pfizer vaccine. That raised questions about the fate of a previous Abbott order that prohibited vaccine mandates, but only for those under emergency authorization. Abbott’s latest order is simple, saying “no governmental entity can compel any individual to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.” The order preserves exceptions for places like nursing homes and state-supported living centers.

At the same time, Abbott asked lawmakers to consider legislation addressing whether state or local governments could issue vaccine mandates and, if so, which exemptions should apply. “Vaccine requirements and exemptions have historically been determined by the legislature, and their involvement is particularly important to avoid a patchwork of vaccine mandates across Texas,” Abbott said in a statement. Lawmakers are currently in their second special session, and time is limited to make progress on the 17-item agenda that Abbott previously announced. The House finally restored quorum last week after Democrats staged a nearly six-week protest of the GOP’s elections bill, and the current session is set to end Sept. 5.

Abbott’s last order regarding vaccine requirements, issued July 29, said “no governmental entity can compel any individual to receive a COVID-19 vaccine administered under an emergency use authorization.” While there is a new state law that acted as a backstop for Abbott’s previous order if a vaccine received full approval, it was not as sweeping as the order and left the door open to new mandates. There specifically appeared to be the fresh potential for cities, counties and school districts to require their employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19. San Antonio Independent School District had already announced mandatory employee vaccinations, prompting a lawsuit from Attorney General Ken Paxton. District officials said Wednesday they will move forward with the mandate — despite Abbott’s latest order.

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Says the “Covid modeller”. Get a life.

• New Zealand Could Be Split Into North And South Island Bubbles (G.)

A Covid-19 modeller has suggested New Zealand’s North and South islands could become separate bubbles as the country grapples with a coronavirus outbreak, although South islanders with hopes of being fully released from lockdown should not hold their breath just yet. New Zealand is battling to contain an outbreak of the Delta variant that swiftly led to a nationwide, level four lockdown – the highest setting – which has been extended until at least the end of the week. There are now 210 cases in the community. Auckland – the largest city, where the majority of cases have been detected – will remain in lockdown until the end of the month.


There have been no cases in the South Island, but the 20,000-strong list of close contacts linked to the current outbreak extends across both islands. Around 120 people, who were potentially exposed to the virus at locations in Auckland, are isolating in the South Island. Auckland could expect to stay in lockdown for a number of weeks , but a North Island and South Island split could make sense, Covid-19 modeller at the University of Auckland, Shaun Hendy, told TVNZ. “I think at this stage, a North Island and South Island split is probably what we’d be looking at,” Hendy said. In order for the alert levels to drop in the South Island, any wastewater tests would need to come back clear, Hendy said.

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Daszak gets another shot at whitewashing Daszak, and Nature provides a podium to do it on.

• Origins of SARS-CoV-2: Window Is Closing For Key Scientific Studies (Nature)

Our group was convened by the World Health Organization (WHO) in October 2020. We have been the designated independent international members of a joint WHO–China team tasked with understanding the origins of SARS-CoV-2. Our report was published this March1. It was meant to be the first step in a process that has stalled. Here we summarize the scientific process so far, and call for action to fast-track the follow-up scientific work required to identify how COVID-19 emerged, which we set out in this article.

The window of opportunity for conducting this crucial inquiry is closing fast: any delay will render some of the studies biologically impossible. Understanding the origins of a devastating pandemic is a global priority, grounded in science. We, all the members of the international expert team, each submitted detailed, confidential statements to the WHO on potential conflicts of interest, including funding, collaborative studies, public statements and other issues around the origins of COVID-19 that could be perceived as conflicts. After the WHO had reviewed these, team members were appointed in their individual capacity, not as representatives of their employers.

So far, our mission has been guided by terms of reference agreed between the WHO and China in 2020, before our involvement1. These terms tasked us with making a detailed reconstruction of the early phase of the pandemic, beginning in Wuhan, China, where the first known cases were reported. Our mandate was to conduct a collaborative study with leading scientists in China to review data they had generated on the basis of initial questions from the WHO. We refined the generic list of questions described in the mandate into a detailed workplan described in the mission report.

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Bet this is also Daszak.

“We found genetic manipulation of the Nipah virus, which is more lethal than Ebola.”

• Early Wuhan COVID Samples Contained Genetically Modified Viruses (ET)

Samples from early Wuhan COVID-19 patients show the presence of genetically modified Henipah virus, an American scientist has found. Henipah was one of the two types of viruses sent to China by Chinese-born scientists from a Canadian laboratory at the centre of a controversy over the firing of the scientists and collaboration with Chinese military researchers. It is not clear whether the virus found in the Chinese samples is related to the virus samples sent by the Canadian lab, which were shipped in late March 2019. The finding was confirmed for The Epoch Times by another qualified scientist.

The evidence was first found by Dr. Steven Quay, a Seattle-based physician-scientist and former faculty member at the Stanford University School of Medicine, who looked at early COVID-19 samples uploaded by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) shortly after China informed the WHO about the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. The samples from the patients, who reportedly were found to have an “unidentified pneumonia disease” in December 2019, were uploaded to the genetic sequence database, GenBank, on the website of the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH). Quay says that while other scientists around the world were mostly interested in examining the genome of SARS-CoV-2 in the samples uploaded by the WIV scientists, he wanted to see what else was in the samples collected from the patients.

So he collaborated with a few other scientists to analyze sequences from the samples. “We started fishing inside for weird things,” Quay told The Epoch Times. What they found, he says, are the results of what could likely be contamination from different experiments in the lab making their way into the samples, as well as evidence of Henipah virus. “We found genetic manipulation of the Nipah virus, which is more lethal than Ebola.” Nipah is a type of Henipah virus. [..] Documents released by the Canadian government state that the WIV’s intended use of the virus samples sent by Canada was “stock virus culturing,” which in simpler terms means storing the viruses while keeping them alive. Genetic manipulation would not be within the scope of this description.

Read more …

Worth watching.

• Tucker Carlson Warns “Elitist Dems” Want You To “Shut Up And Obey” (SN)

Fox News host Tucker Carlson issued a stark warning Tuesday, emphasising that “we’re seeing now what happens when countries tolerate authoritarians, even for a moment” as people worldwide are being told to submit to increasingly draconian “rules” in the wake of the pandemic. Carlson noted “Has there ever been a clearer window into the society they’re trying to build? Our formerly middle-class nation now has a serf class. They’re the ones wearing the masks, being forced to take drugs they don’t want, being told not to communicate with one another, except through digital channels the Democratic Party controls.”


He continued, “We now have two groups of Americans, not a broad middle. The favored and the unfavored. The saved and the damned. The vaccinated and the unvaccinated. That’s how the architects of all this see the country.” Carlson also pointed to former NSA head Michael Hayden’s assertion that Trump supporters should be sent to Afghanistan to die. “That’s how contemptuous they feel about you,” Carlson noted, adding “Shut up and fetch another glass of Riesling, serf. And be sure not to breathe on me, or you’ll be deported.” “These are bad attitudes and are accelerating. How far can this go, you wonder?” he questioned. Carlson also described some of the insane policies being put into place in Australia and New Zealand, describing them as akin to North Korea.

Read more …

“Holy cow, I was living like Scarface…I was paying out anywhere between $300-400,000 per week to $5 million per week at times. All in cash.” Matthew Hoh, U.S. Marine Corps Captain and former State Department official

• “I Was Living Like Scarface” (MPN)

The conflict in Afghanistan — for the U.S. at least — appears to be over. Essentially admitting defeat, American planes are beating a hasty and ignominious retreat from Kabul, with images of the withdrawal bearing a striking resemblance to those from the fall of Saigon 46 years previously. As the Taliban complete their takeover, many Americans are wondering what it was all about. For what, and on what, did the United States spend more than $2 trillion? A newly published study from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) — a U.S. government body — lays bare the waste and corruption of the whole affair, drawing parallels with famous satires such as “Catch 22” and “M*A*S*H*.” Uncompromising in its frankness, the 124-page report outlines the incompetence, venality and dark absurdity of the whole endeavor.

“When you look at how much we spent and what we got for it, it’s mind boggling,” one senior Department of Defense administrator admitted to SIGAR in 2015. Congress founded SIGAR in 2008 to provide neutral and objective oversight into the U.S.’ handling of Afghan reconstruction programs. The new report is the latest — and perhaps most critical — of 13 yearly offerings analyzing U.S. efforts in the country. At no point did the U.S. truly control all of Afghanistan. But officials in Washington wanted to see quantifiable results. In a region where American troops were barely able to leave their bases without being attacked, “cash spent” became one of the few concrete metrics commanders could report back with any accuracy. As the report concluded:

Perversely, because it was the easiest thing to monitor, the amount of money spent by a program often became the most important measure of success. A USAID official told SIGAR, ‘The Hill was always asking, ‘Did you spend the money?’…I didn’t hear many questions about what the effects were. Program budgets were massively expanded, often over the objections of USAID and others on the ground, who argued that inundating the country with dollars was not truly winning hearts and minds, and was a wasteful and ineffective strategy. There was no incentive to report on financial excesses, fraud or abuse, and barely any oversight over where the money was actually going. Contractors, NGOs and others who were aboard the seemingly endless gravy train also kept quiet as they stuffed their pockets with billions of dollars of public money.

MintPress spoke to a person who had been a central part of this bizarre story. Matthew Hoh was a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps and an official with both the Department of Defense and the State Department, spending almost 12 years in the U.S. military and government focusing on Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2009, he resigned from his position in the State Department in Zabul Province, Afghanistan, over U.S. policy in the country. “The way to prove that you were doing your job was by spending money,” Hoh told MintPress, continuing: Money being spent on an institutional level was a metric of success. Somehow in the minds of the U.S. political leaders, in Iraq and Afghanistan, dollars spent equated to things being constructed and effective counterinsurgency [against the Taliban]…But the Taliban themselves were taking the money! The Taliban guys were doing the construction work. It was absolutely nuts!”

Read more …

I don’t have time for the very few.

• “Leftie” Is Now A Slur In Working-Class Towns (G.)

In 2011, Sam Fender was, by his own admission, “a little stoner” who had flunked out of his A-Levels in his hometown of North Shields, living with his mother in a flat with black mould on the walls. A decade later, he’s one of the UK’s best and most successful singer-songwriters: his 2019 debut album Hypersonic Missiles went to No 1, he won a Brit award, and his knack for writing songs about 21st-century disaffections marked him out from cheerier peers such as Ed Sheeran and George Ezra. His second album Seventeen Going Under, a superb record that channels the sound of Bruce Springsteen and the War on Drugs into an examination of his family, youth and frailty, is out in October.

[..] You’ve also written about politics – Aye, from the new album, is probably the angriest song you’ve ever written.

Because of the polarity between the left and the right, I don’t feel I have an identity with politicians on either side. The left wing have abandoned the working classes, and with a lot of the left – I don’t want to sound like Piers Morgan when I say this – I feel like there is too much nitpicking and stupid fights, especially online. But I hate the Tories with a passion. I was raised to hate them, I still hate them, and I always will. They clearly know who they stand for and they don’t represent people like us. A quarter of the kids in working families in my region are in poverty. Nobody sticks their neck out for the north-east. The line in Aye – “I don’t have time for the very few” – that’s the one thing that always going to be my main gripe on this planet, the sheer disparity between the 1% and the rest of the world. These culture wars are valid wars that need to be fought – there’s a lot of bigotry, a lot of racism and homophobia. But in order to get the Tories out, you’ve got to start representing the working class people of this country.

The right are sitting back and laughing, sweeping up every election. Blyth Valley up here went Tory. It’s a shipbuilding town. That’s insanity. Working-class people up here think the Tories are on their side – which shows how completely the left have fucked themselves. I’ve had arguments with people who say Jeremy Corbyn’s a twat, regurgitating Daily Mail headlines that he’s a terrorist sympathiser. I’m like: how? Tell me in your own words. And they go, “Ah you’re just one of them lefties”. “Leftie” is now a slur in working-class towns – what happened there? It upsets me that we’re in a place where the media have so much control over these blokes who have grafted all their life in a system that would benefit them if someone like Corbyn was in.

Read more …

 

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New South Wales. New World Order.

 

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle April 28 2021

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


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

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

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

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

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


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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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


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

Read more …

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

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

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


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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Don’t Look Now (Jim Kunstler)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

Smear sells.

• The Deep State Targets Matt Gaetz (AG)

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

Read more …

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

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

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


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

Read more …

 

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It’s a New World Order, Alright

Sep 152019
 
 September 15, 2019  Posted by at 2:17 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  5 Responses »


Pavel Filonov The Kolkhoznik (Member of a Collective Farm) 1931

 

Those winds just keep on shifting, no matter that the western press either doesn’t see them shift, doesn’t recognize them for what they are, or chooses to ignore them. But these winds bring tidings of a tectonic plate-shaking shift in the global political climate.

The fires in Saudi oil installations, whether they were caused by drones or missiles, and whoever fired those, are a major story, and rightly so, because they could shake up economies in drastic ways. But they may still, not be the biggest story after all.

Last Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his intention to annex the Jordan Valley (already occupied territory, 65,000 Palestinians and 11,000 Israeli settlers live there). He did that to steal votes from the far right in next Tuesday’s (Sep. 17) Knesset election. “Bibi” also called Donald Trump his “friend” every second word for that same purpose. Trump responded in kind. He may come to regret that. Choose your friends wisely. Bit of background from RT:

 

US, Israel Talk About Mutual Defense Treaty – Trump

The US and Israel are discussing a mutual defense treaty that would further cement the already “tremendous” alliance between the two countries, President Donald Trump has revealed. “I had a call today with Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss the possibility of moving forward with a Mutual Defense Treaty, between the United States and Israel, that would further anchor the tremendous alliance between our two countries,” Trump tweeted.

Trump voiced not-that-veiled support for Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections in Israel. “I look forward to continuing those discussions after the Israeli Elections when we meet at the United Nations later this month!” Trump wrote. The support surely comes in handy, as Netanyahu’s backing appears to be quite shaky. The September 17 polls are the second snap legislative elections this year after Netanyahu failed to form the government back in April.

The outcome of the upcoming vote is hard to predict, as Netanyahu’s party, Likud, has almost equal support as their main opponent the Blue and White led by Benny Gantz, opinion polls show. Netanyahu was quick to respond to Trump’s announcement, lauding the prospects of the alliance and managing to call the US president a “friend” twice in a single tweet.

[..] Israel was one of the first major non-Nato ally (MNNA), a designation that goes with a whole set of benefits, such as generous loans, a priority in delivery of various military surplus, possession of war reserve stocks of Pentagon-owned hardware outside US military bases (Israel is said to have at least six sites) and others.

Yet in 2014 the US enshrined Israel into a new class of ally – a major strategic partner. The new designation, which is a step above MNNA, was basically established specifically for Israel. It greatly expanded the US wartime stockpiles in Israel from $200 million in value to a whopping $1.8 billion. Under the Trump administration, the trend has continued, and in 2017, the US established its first permanent military base – an air defense facility – in Israel.

A second thing Bibi is trying to do to win Tuesday’s elections is intimidating the prosecutors who are on his tail for three different cases or fraud. He has a grand plan to become immune from this prosecution (basically, become King Bibi), but he must win the election to execute it. Haaretz is Israel’s oldest newspaper, but it’s not Bibi’s biggest fan(club):

 

Netanyahu’s Plan to Escape Trial, in His Own Words: ‘Time for Them to Be Frightened’

Immediately after the last election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined to members of his inner circle a plan to extract him from facing trial. The plan was based on obtaining immunity from the Knesset and passing legislation to prevent the High Court of Justice from removing that immunity. If his bloc wins 61 Knesset seats next week, Netanyahu will presumably resort to this rescue plan. For him it will be the Day of Judgment.

“Stop being frightened. It’s time for them to be frightened,” Netanyahu told his confidants, referring to justice officials, headed by Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit and State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan, who have decided to indict him in three cases, subject to a hearing. Netanyahu told his confidants why he insisted on his destructive plan, telling them he had lost all confidence in the legal system on all levels – the attorney general’s office, the state prosecutor and the court system.

“They want me in prison,” he told one of his cronies, noting that if he were indicted that would indeed be the result – not because he had crossed a red line, but merely due to the jurists’ collective hostility toward him and his ideology. Netanyahu appears to wholeheartedly believe himself to be a victim, framed by prosecutors and that Mendelblit, who is weak, doesn’t believe in them at all, but couldn’t withstand the pressure.

In his interviews with the police Netanyahu acted like a hunted man. “It’s a wacky conception,” he told national fraud squad chief Koresh Bar-Nur in January 2017. Bar-Nur came to Netanyahu’s residence with a team of investigators to question him under caution on Case 2000, involving a bribery deal Netanyahu allegedly negotiated with Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon “Noni” Mozes.

 

And that wasn’t all. To court the right wing vote, Bibi also planned to bomb locations in Syria controlled by “Iran-backed” Assad troops, right about right now. And he needed permission from Vladimir Putin to do that. So he flew to Moscow, did a bunch of photo-ops with Putin to show Israeli voters he’s an important statesman, but all he got was a big load of coal in his stocking. Putin said: we’l shoot you out of the skies if you dare. And do note: this is not the first time.

In other words, Bibi was deeply humiliated one week before the election he so deperately needs to him to stay out of jail. Now tell me, which western paper or TV channel did you read or watch the news about this in/on? Remember, this happened before Trump announced his Mutual Defense Treaty with Bibi. By the way, what does that “Mutual” mean anyway, that Israel will save America? This is from Zero Hedge:

 

Israeli Attacks On Syria Halted After Russian Threat To Shoot Down Jets

According to reports in both Israeli and Arabic regional media, Israel this past week was preparing to expand major airstrikes against “Iran-backed” targets in Syria, but Moscow imposed its red line. The Independent has published a story describing that Russia’s military in Syria threatened to shoot down any invading Israeli warplanes using fighter jets or their S-400 system.

The Jerusalem Post, citing sources in the UK Independent (Arabia), writes just after the latest meeting in Sochi between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin: “According to the report, Moscow has prevented three Israeli airstrikes on three Syrian outposts recently, and even threatened that any jets attempting such a thing would be shot down, either by Russian jets or by the S400 Anti-aircraft missiles.

The source cited in the report claims a similar situation has happened twice, and that during August, Moscow stopped an airstrike on a Syrian outpost in Qasioun, where a S300 missile battery is placed.” Netanyahu’s hasty trip to meet with Putin on Thursday – even in the final days before Tuesday’s key election – was reportedly with a goal to press the Russian president on essentially ignoring Israel’s attacks in Syria.

Citing further sources in the British-Arabic Independent Arabia, The Jerusalem Post continues: According to the Russian source, Putin let Netanyahu know that his country will not allow any damage to be done to the Syrian regime’s army, or any of the weapons being given to it… Israel sources cited by the Arabic newspaper described Netanyahu’s attempts to persuade Putin as “a failure”. This in spite of Netanyahu telling reporters after the meeting that his relations with Moscow were stronger than ever.

[..] The Russian source said: “Putin has expressed his dissatisfaction from Israel’s latest actions in Lebanon” and even emphasized to Netanyahu that he “Rejects the aggression towards Lebanon’s sovereignty”, something which has never been heard from him.

Putin further stated that someone is cheating him in regards to Syria and Lebanon and that he will not let it go without a response. According to him, Netanyahu was warned not to strike such targets in the future.

 

 

This is where and how the winds -and with them the tectonic plates- have shifted. And don’t underestimate it. Bibi can presumably count on Trump more than any other US President in his time, and the US is supposedly this almighty force, also in the Middle East, but today Putin just tells him “don’t you dare!” Putin refuses to let him touch Assad’s territory and -Russian- weapons.

The clincher is those weapons have become so sophisticated that Bibi, Trump support or not, puts his tail between his legs and flies back, hoping nobody notices what shape he’s in. And in that humiliation, Lebanon is the cherry that Putin puts on top of the pie. “Now that you’re here, I want you to stop harassing Lebanon too. Yes, now you may go.” Lebanon must have stunned Bibi.

What these shifting winds tell us is that the shots in that part of the world, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, (I wouldn’t go as far as including Iran and Saudi Arabia just yet) are no longer called by Bibi or the US. The main reason, as we’ve mentioned often before, is that Russian weapons have become so powerful.

Because as also previously discussed, Russian arms may well be -far- superior to American ones, which in turn in due to the US arms industry developing weapons for profit, vs Russia producing them to defend itself. Putin outright humiliating Bibi Netanyahu may be the first real obvious consequence of that.

This is something that will play out over a long time, but it may change the global political climate dramatically very rapidly. Mike Pompeo can try to blame Iran for whatever it is that happened to Saudi oil facilities, but for the US to attack Iran, which may be the reason for that blame game, it would need to ask Putin for permission, just like Netanyahu did.

And why would Putin give that permission? That’s a real good question. Mind you, Netanyahu may on Tuesday get the Knesset seats he needs to stifle the investigations against him, and to annex the Jordan Valley, but he will still have to ask permission if he has big dreams. And neither Trump nor Jared Kushner nor anyone else can help him there.

The US neocons have been talking about a New World Order for decades. Well, now they got one.

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 23 2018

Aug 232018
 
 August 23, 2018  Posted by at 9:28 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  6 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Seated woman 1903

 

 

 

• The Weaponization of the Dollar (Lebowitz)
• Turkey’s Lira Crisis Was Written In Istanbul’s Skyline (G.)
• U.S.-China Trade War Escalates As New Tariffs Kick In (R.)
• Shooting War With China More Likely Than You Think (Rickards)
• Wall Street Marks Longest-Ever ‘Bull Market’ (AFP)
• Saudi Energy Minister Denies Aramco IPO Will Be Called Off (R.)
• Australia In Crisis As Prime Minister Faces Down Political Coup Attempt (G.)
• Trump Says He’s Considering Pardon For Manafort (R.)
• Making Plans For A New World Order (Heiko Maas)
• Italian Prosecutors Investigate Salvini’s Bar On Ship Arrivals (G.)

 

 

“..the true all-in cost of borrowing was not 5% but 54%.”

• The Weaponization of the Dollar (Lebowitz)

China, Turkey, and Iran are all classified as emerging markets. While the classification is broad and includes a diverse group of countries, these countries have many things in common. One is that their currencies, for the most part, are not liquid or highly valued. Thus, they heavily rely on the world’s reserve currency, the U.S. dollar, to conduct international trade. As an example, when Pakistan buys oil from Qatar, they transact in U.S. dollars, not rupees or riyals. To facilitate trade efficiently, these countries must hold excess dollars in reserve. In almost all cases, emerging market nations rely on U.S. dollar-denominated debt for their transactional needs.

Dollar-denominated debt is currently the cause of much economic pain for Turkey. To understand why, we present a simplified example. Suppose on January 1, 2018, a Turkish corporation borrowed $100 million U.S. dollars with an agreement to pay it back with interest of 5% on August 15th, 2018. The company, as is typical, converts the loaned dollars to Turkish Lira. On August 15, 2018, the company will convert the Lira back to dollars in order to pay the principal and interest due on the loan. The following graph charts the Turkish Lira versus the Dollar over the life of the loan.

On January 1, 2018, one U.S. Dollar was worth 3.79 Lira. Over the next eight months, the U.S dollar appreciated significantly versus the Lira such that one U.S. dollar was worth approximately 5.81 Lira. As such, the company will now need 5.81 Lira to purchase each dollar it needs to repay the loan. Due to the strengthening of the U.S. dollar versus the Lira over the time period of the outstanding loan, the company would need 584,282,000 Lira to pay back what was originally a 378,750,000 Lira loan. In other words, the true all-in cost of borrowing was not 5% but 54%.

Read more …

“90% of the credit in Turkish real estate companies came from loans in foreign currencies.”

• Turkey’s Lira Crisis Was Written In Istanbul’s Skyline (G.)

From a distance, Esenyurt, a newly built up neighbourhood on the edges of Istanbul, looks a bit like Hong Kong or Dubai, with a bustling downtown of shiny skyscrapers. Upon closer examination, however, you notice that tower after tower stands incomplete, lacking windows or furnishings; others are only half-occupied, their windows dark after nightfall. “In the residential areas, 100% of the construction has stopped,” says Mohamed Karman, a local estate agent, from his small office in the central square of Esenyurt. “Do you know why? The materials. Everything is in dollars, you pay in dollars.” The crash of the Turkish lira last week after two years of steady decline spooked global markets – but anyone looking at Istanbul’s skyline would have been far from surprised.

Everywhere you look in the city, evidence of a debt-fuelled construction boom abounds: new skyscrapers frame the horizon, huge shopping malls dot the streets and among several megaprojects is a new airport, set to be the world’s largest. Funding for this construction frenzy has been at the heart of Turkey’s economy, accounting for up to 20% of the country’s GDP growth in recent years, and employing around two million people. In a parallel to the 2008 financial crash, the boom was funded by low-interest loans and ballooning debt. Property developers funded their buildings with cheap loans in foreign currencies – and will be struck particularly hard by the lira’s collapse, as those loans grow harder to repay every day. According to government statistics, at the end of 2016 nearly 90% of the credit in Turkish real estate companies came from loans in foreign currencies.

[..] The Istanbul Sapphire – one of the tallest buildings in Europe when completed in 2011 – was financed through loans worth 164m lira in 2013, 154m of which was in US dollars. That loan would now cost around 539m lira.

Read more …

Is this the best they can do?

• U.S.-China Trade War Escalates As New Tariffs Kick In (R.)

The United States and China escalated their acrimonious trade war on Thursday, implementing punitive 25 percent tariffs on $16 billion worth of each other’s goods, even as mid-level officials from both sides resumed talks in Washington. The world’s two largest economies have now slapped tit-for-tat tariffs on a combined $100 billion of products since early July, with more in the pipeline, adding to risks to global economic growth. China’s Commerce Ministry said Washington was “remaining obstinate” by implementing the latest tariffs, which kicked-in on both sides as scheduled at 12:01 p.m. in Beijing (0401 GMT). “China resolutely opposes this, and will continue to take necessary countermeasures,” it said in a brief statement.

“At the same time, to safeguard free trade and multilateral systems, and defend its own lawful interests, China will file suit regarding these tariff measures under the WTO dispute resolution mechanism,” it said. President Donald Trump has threatened to put duties on almost all of the more than $500 billion of Chinese goods exported to the United States annually unless Beijing agrees to sweeping changes to its intellectual property practices, industrial subsidy programs and tariff structures, and buys more U.S. goods. That figure would be far more than China imports from the United States, raising concerns that Beijing could consider other forms of retaliation, such as making life more difficult for American firms in China or allowing its yuan currency to weaken further to support its exporters.

Read more …

“The U.S. will win this trade war because Xi does not want to lose his throne.”

• Shooting War With China More Likely Than You Think (Rickards)

The mainstream media narrative about the U.S.-China trade war implies that Trump is on a highly damaging ego trip and China holds all the cards. The exact opposite is true. Trump has ample financial warfare weapons including tariffs, penalties, bans on direct investment, improved cybersecurity, forced divestiture and freezing of assets. Meanwhile, China has almost run out of room to impose tariffs. Further, they will invite retribution if they try to devalue their currency further. China’s vulnerabilities run deeper than that. The U.S.-China trade war comes in the aftermath of a Chinese Communist Party conference that made Xi Jinping dictator for life and enshrined his doctrines on the same level as Mao Zedong.

Once Xi got these powers, he proceeded on a disastrous policy course that has resulted in a slowdown of the Chinese economy, higher debt defaults, lost investment opportunities in the U.S. and declining hard currency reserves. The knives are now out in Beijing. Reports are circulating that Xi’s opponents are questioning his judgment and the wisdom of expanding his powers at such a critical time. Many are starting to blame Xi for the trade war almost as much as they blame Trump. Xi still has torture, firing squads and concentration camps at his disposal, but the notion of a unified, coherent leadership structure in Beijing is now seen to be a myth. Trump will keep up the pressure; he never backs off and always doubles down.

It will be up to Xi to blink and acquiesce in many U.S. demands. The U.S. will win this trade war because Xi does not want to lose his throne. Yet there will still be material damage to the global economy and lasting animosity between Xi and Trump.

Read more …

Party.

• Wall Street Marks Longest-Ever ‘Bull Market’ (AFP)

Wall Street graduated to the longest-ever “bull market” Wednesday, a run that began amid extraordinary crisis-era monetary policy and which experts think could persist at least a while longer. US President Donald Trump cheered the news after the S&P 500 closed for the 3,453rd straight time without a drop of 20 percent over the more than nine-year stretch. “Longest bull run in the history of the stock market. congratulations America!” Trump said on Twitter shortly after the closing bell. The marathon run comes amid signs the US economy has accelerated this year after a long period of slow but steady growth. Experts say trade wars and higher interest rates are among potential threats to the persistence of the bull run.

Market watchers liken the landmark to other stock market records, such as when the Dow hit 25,000 points for the first time. Investing in stocks remains concentrated among the wealthiest, with many Americans still hesitant to buy stocks following the 2008 financial crisis. While financial experts are well aware of the durability of the current stock market cycle, the record is “news more to Main Street than to Wall Street,” according to Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley FBR. The S&P 500 finished the day down less than 0.1 percent at 2,861.82. When stocks fall at least 20 percent below their previous record, they enter a “bear market.”

Read more …

But several people insist it is. it’s just that it can’t be announced right now.

• Saudi Energy Minister Denies Aramco IPO Will Be Called Off (R.)

Saudi Arabia’s energy minister denied a Reuters report that state oil giant Aramco’s initial public offering will be called off, in a statement issued early on Thursday. “The government remains committed to the initial public offering of Saudi Aramco, in accordance with the appropriate circumstances and appropriate time chosen by the Government,” Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said in a statement released on Saudi Press Agency. Reuters reported on Wednesday that four senior industry sources said Saudi Arabia has called off both the domestic and international stock listing of Aramco.

Read more …

Oz politics is so bad it’s not even funny.

• Australia In Crisis As Prime Minister Faces Down Political Coup Attempt (G.)

Australia is on the brink of having its sixth prime minister in a decade after a chaotic, internecine coup attempted, but failed, to topple the incumbent Malcolm Turnbull on Thursday. In a media conference during which he refused to resign, Turnbull called on his challengers to prove he had lost the confidence of his own party, and made a thinly veiled swipe at influences “outside the parliament”. The reference was widely interpreted as an attack on the power of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation newspapers and TV channels, which have consistently campaigned against him. “The reality is that a minority in the party room supported by others outside the parliament have sought to bully, intimidate others into making this change of leadership that they’re seeking,” Turnbull said.

The leadership brawl stalled political business on Thursday morning when the government voted to shut down the House of Representatives until 10 September, unsure it would be able to command a majority on the floor of the House, and unwilling to face questions from the opposition after at least 13 ministers tendered their resignations. Since 2007, no Australian prime minister has served a full term in office, with four cut down by their own parties while in office, earning Canberra the title of “coup capital of the Pacific”. Turnbull survived Thursday, but appears almost certain to lose the prime ministership to a party room vote, likely as soon as Friday.

Read more …

But not today, for sure.

• Trump Says He’s Considering Pardon For Manafort (R.)

U.S. President Donald Trump said he would consider pardoning his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was convicted on Tuesday of bank and tax fraud, according to a Fox News reporter who interviewed Trump. Fox News reporter Ainsley Earhardt said Trump told her in an interview on Wednesday that “he would consider” pardoning Manafort.“I think he feels bad for Manafort. They were friends,” Earhardt said in an appearance on Fox News’ “Hannity” program on Wednesday night.

Fox News has been airing excerpts of the interview with Trump, which is scheduled to be shown in its entirety on Thursday morning. The excerpts have not included a clip of Trump saying he would consider pardoning Manafort. Manafort was convicted on Tuesday of two counts of bank fraud, five counts of tax fraud and one charge of failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. In a tweet on Wednesday about the verdict, Trump called Manafort a “brave man” and said, “I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family.”

Read more …

Maas is the new German foreign minister. His proposal for an alternative SWIFT system launched a debate. But really, “new world order”?

• Making Plans For A New World Order (Heiko Maas)

It starts with us exposing fake news. Like this: If the current account balance of Europe and the US includes more than just trade in goods, then it is not the US that has a deficit, it’s Europe. One reason is the billions in profits that European subsidiaries of Internet giants such as Apple, Facebook and Google transfer to the US every year. So when we talk about fair rules, we must also talk about the fair taxation of profits like that. It is also important to correct fake news because it can quickly result in the wrong policies. As Europeans, we have made it clear to the Americans that we consider the withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran to be a mistake. Meanwhile, the first US sanctions have come back into force.

In this situation, it is of strategic importance that we make it clear to Washington that we want to work together. But also: That we will not allow you to go over our heads, and at our expense. That is why it was right to protect European companies legally from sanctions. It is therefore essential that we strengthen European autonomy by establishing payment channels independent of the US, a European monetary fund and an independent SWIFT [payments] system. The devil is in thousands of details. But every day that the Iran agreement lasts, is better than the potentially explosive crisis that threatens the Middle East otherwise.

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Let the courts decide.

• Italian Prosecutors Investigate Salvini’s Bar On Ship Arrivals (G.)

Italian prosecutors have opened an investigation into the illegal detention of 177 migrants onboard a coastguard vessel that the minister of the interior, Matteo Salvini, refuses to allow to land. The Ubaldo Diciotti has been docked for 48 hours at the port of Catania, Sicily, but the migrants have not been allowed to disembark without having certainties from Brussels on their distribution to other countries. The investigation, conducted by the prosecutor of the city of Agrigento, was launched against “unknowns” but it is clear that if the magistrates were to go ahead with a judicial proceeding, Salvini would end up under investigation, being the only one responsible for the landing ban.

“I heard that the prosecutor’s office in Agrigento has opened an investigation,” said Salvini in a recent video on Facebook Live. “I also heard that the suspects are ‘unknown’ at the moment. But I’m not unknown. My name is Matteo Salvini, I’m the minister of the interior. Come on, try me too, I’m here.” The Ubaldo Diciotti docked on Monday night in the port of Catania but the migrants, including 29 unaccompanied minors, were refused authorisation to disembark. The ship picked up 190 people on 15 August from an overcrowded boat about 17 nautical miles from the Italian island of Lampedusa. Thirteen of them were evacuated for emergency medical treatment.

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