no fly zone Archives - The Automatic Earth

On CNN: “I doubt the New York indictment would have been brought against a defendant whose name was not Donald Trump.”

pic.twitter.com/7t7B8fHjbN

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) May 12, 2024

Tucker vax

Ep. 105 Few people know Justin Trudeau better than his own brother. Here’s what he says about him. pic.twitter.com/9nIcCWZFYO

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) May 12, 2024

Feynman
https://twitter.com/i/status/1789633440129908765

Germany’s in no position to enforce it.

• German MPs Suggest NATO Impose No-Fly Zone Over Western Ukraine (RT)

German lawmakers from both the ruling coalition and the opposition support the idea of NATO imposing a no-fly zone over western Ukraine amid the conflict with Russia, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) has reported. For its article on Saturday, the paper asked members of parliament about the proposal, earlier floated by the defense minister’s chief of staff, Nico Lange, who suggested that Russian missiles and drones targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure and military installations could be shot down from the territory of neighboring Poland and Romania. According to Lange, this would lead to the creation of a 70-km-wide safe zone on the border between the EU and Ukraine, while also allowing Kiev to re-deploy its own air defense systems, which are in short supply, from the west of the country to the front line.

“Defending the airspace over Ukraine from Poland and Romania should not be ruled out in the long term,” Anton Hofreiter, a member of parliament for the Green Party, which is part of the German coalition, told FAZ. However, such a move is “not up for debate” at the moment as the current priority for the West is to supply Ukraine with “significantly more” arms and ammunition, he stressed. Marcus Faber from the Free Democratic Party (FDP), also in the ruling coalition, agreed that the “airspace over the Ukrainian border regions” could be “protected by air defenses on NATO territory.” According to Faber, this would only be “possible” if the West can secure enough ammunition for the air defense systems. A lawmaker for the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Roderich Kiesewetter, also said Kiev’s Western backers could shoot down Russian drones over western Ukraine. “This would relieve the Ukrainian air defense and enable it to protect the front,” he explained.

Kiesewetter recalled how the US, UK and France assisted Israel with countering a large-scale bombardment by Iran in April, saying it showed that countries can provide such help to their allies without actually becoming “a party to the conflict.” In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that the US-made F-16 fighter jets that the West is planning to supply to Ukraine will be targeted at airfields in NATO countries if they are going to operate from there. Earlier this week, Russia said it would conduct tactical nuclear weapons drills as a warning to the US and its allies not to escalate the Ukraine conflict. The announcement followed a suggestion by Poland of potentially hosting US nuclear weapons, and remarks by French President Emmanuel Macron about the possibility of sending French and other NATO soldiers to Ukraine.

Won’t shoot down a thing.

• David Cameron: NATO Won’t Shoot Down Russian Missiles Over Ukraine (Sp.)

Moscow earlier warned European leaders from intentionally stirring up tensions around the situation in Ukraine now that they know perfectly well that the Kiev regime is on the verge of total breakdown. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron has ruled out the possibility of NATO forces intercepting Russian missiles over Ukraine. Speaking to The Times, Cameron cited “many” allegedly “non-escalatory things” the UK “can do,” like supplying anti-tank weapons, tanks, and long-range artillery to the Kiev regime — military aid that Russia has repeatedly warned would only exacerbate the Ukraine conflict. “But the one thing we have to try to avoid is NATO forces in conflict with Russian forces,” Cameron stressed. “And that’s why, from the start, I’ve said I don’t think we can do a no-fly zone or NATO interception into Ukraine.”

At the same time, he argued that with NATO soldiers “not directly fighting off” Russian servicemen, any aid to Ukraine by the alliance is “acceptable. The British foreign secretary spoke after an array of German MPs backed the idea of NATO “cross-border” anti-aircraft units downing Russian missiles in Ukrainian airspace, something they claimed could “relieve the burden on Ukrainian air defenses and allow them to protect the front line.” Nico Lange, senior researcher at the Munich Security Conference, earlier insisted in a televised interview that NATO allies should use their “numerous” Patriot anti-aircraft systems to destroy “all Russian missiles and drones” over Ukraine from the territory of Poland. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov pointed out that Europeans are deliberately stoking tensions over Ukraine because they realize that Kiev’s forces face a complete collapse amid Russia’s ongoing offensive. “The moment is very important and, of course, this is very provocative on their part,” Peskov warned.

“..NATO allies should use “the numerous” Patriot anti-aircraft systems to down “all Russian missiles and drones” over Ukraine from the territory of Poland…”

• Ukraine’s Air Defense From NATO Territory? German MPs Give the Green Light (Sp.)

Despite Western aid, the Ukrainian military is reportedly already running low on air defense systems as Russian forces continue to successfully advance on several key areas of the front line. Several German MPs have approved the idea of Western “cross-border” anti-aircraft units shooting down Russian missiles over Ukraine n”This would relieve the burden on Ukrainian air defenses and allow them to protect the front line,” Roderich Kiesewetter of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) argued, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper. He referred to the US, the UK and France helping Israel repulse Iran’s massive missile attack in April, which Kiesewetter claimed shows that “the involved states do not necessarily have to become ‘warring parties’ to a conflict.” Agnieszka Brugger of the Alliance 90/The Greens party insisted that “it’s OK to station air defense systems at the borders of Ukraine’s neighboring nations so that the western parts of the country can also be protected.”

“Ukraine’s air defense from Poland and Romania should not be ruled out in the long term,” Brugger’s colleague Anton Hofreiter said. But this is “not up for debate” currently because the current priority is to deliver “significantly more” military equipment and ammunition to Ukraine as part of Western aid, he added. “The airspace over the Ukrainian border regions” could in principle “be protected by air defense systems stationed on NATO territory,” Marcus Faber from the Free Democratic Party said. But he admitted that “[air defense] batteries and rockets are already in short supply.” The remarks come after Nico Lange, senior researcher at the Munich Security Conference, stated in an interview with the Tagesschau TV news program that NATO allies should use “the numerous” Patriot anti-aircraft systems to down “all Russian missiles and drones” over Ukraine from the territory of Poland.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has, meanwhile, stressed that Europeans are deliberately stirring up tensions around the situation in Ukraine because they realize the fact that Kiev faces a complete collapse. “The moment is very important and, of course, this is very provocative on their [Europeans’] part,” Peskov added. The Washington Post earlier reported that Ukraine’s “dwindling air defense capabilities are showing vulnerabilities, as more Russian missiles and drones are able to hit targets such as [Kiev’s] critical infrastructure facilities.” Western countries have ramped up military and financial aid to the Kiev regime since the start of the Russian special military operation, with Moscow condemning the ongoing assistance as proof of a NATO proxy war with Russia.

He had the job since 2012. Major shuffle.

• Putin Removes Shoigu As Russian Defense Minister (RT)

President Vladimir Putin has proposed that Sergei Shoigu be replaced as Minister of Defense of Russia by acting First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov, the Federation Council said on Sunday evening. Shoigu has been appointed Secretary of the Russian Security Council. Senators are scheduled to engage in consultations regarding the nominees put forth by the president during committee sessions on May 13 and during a Federation Council meeting on May 14, as announced by the upper house of the Russian parliament.

No further alterations have been made to the roster of candidates Putin has submitted for cabinet positions. His nominations include Vladimir Kolokoltsev for the position of interior minister, Alexander Kurenkov for minister of emergency situations, Sergey Lavrov for foreign minister, and Konstantin Chuichenko for justice minister. Denis Manturov, who served as deputy prime minister and head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade during Putin’s last term in office, has been nominated for the position of first deputy prime minister.

New Defense Minister Belousov is an economist.
“..the need of “making the economy of the security bloc part of the country’s economy.”

• Putin Proposes Belousov As Shoigu’s Replacement: About Cabinet Reshuffle (TASS)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed appointing Andrey Belousov, who previously served as the first deputy prime minister, as Russia’s new defense minister. Russia’s current defense chief Sergey Shoigu will replace Nikolay Patrushev as the Security Council Secretary. Other heads of security ministries and services, as well as Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, will retain their posts in the government. The president has also proposed appointing Boris Kovalchuk as the Chairman of the Accounts Chamber. This post has been vacant for one year and a half. TASS has summed up information about the cabinet reshuffle.

Sergey Shoigu, who has headed the Russian Defense Ministry since 2012, has been appointed Secretary of the Security Council. Putin has proposed appointing Andrey Belousov as Russia’s new defense chief. Belousov earlier served as minister of economic development, Russian presidential aide for economic issues and the first deputy prime minister, who oversaw the economic bloc. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the decision to appoint Belousov as the defense minister is linked to the need of “making the economy of the security bloc part of the country’s economy.” Now the budget of the defense ministry is nearing the level of the 1980s, “which is not critical but <...> extremely important.”

Chief of Russia’s General Staff Valery Gerasimov will retain his post, Peskov stressed. Belousov’s appointment “will in no way change the current coordinate system” in terms of defense issues, he noted.As the Russian Security Council Secretary, Shoigu will among other issues oversee the work of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, which recently became directly subordinated to the president. Apart from that, Shoigu will also become the president’s deputy in the Military-Industrial Commission. Now Putin is its chair, while Dmitry Medvedev is his first deputy in this body.

Patrushev was relieved from his duties in connection with his new post, according to the presidential decree. The Kremlin will announce further details about his new position “in the coming few days,” Peskov said. Putin has proposed that the other heads of ministries and agencies of the security and foreign policy bloc should retain their posts. Thus, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Internal Affairs Vladimir Kolokoltsev, Minister of Emergency Situations Alexander Kurenkov and Justice Minister Konstantin Chuychenko will keep performing their duties. Other officials who will retain their posts are Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service Sergey Naryshkin, the heads of Russia’s Federal Security Service and Federal Protective Service, Alexander Bortnikov and Dmitry Kochnev, as well as the head of National Guard (Rosgvardiya) Viktor Zolotov.

Alexander Lints will remain head of the Main Department for the President’s Special Programs (he is in charge of developing and implementing the state policy in the field of mobilization issues and planning respective events). Putin has also proposed appointing Boris Kovalchuk as the Chairman of the Accounts Chamber. This post has been vacant since November 2022 when Alexey Kudrin tendered his resignation. The chairman of the Accounts Chamber is appointed by the Federation Council. Kovalchuk was one of three candidates suggested for the president by Russia’s upper house speaker Valentina Matviyenko. In 2010-2024, Kovalchuk was Chairman of the Board of Inter RAO. In March 2024, he was appointed deputy head of the control directorate in the Russian presidential administration.

“Conflicts today are won by those “open to innovations,” presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said..”

• Kremlin Explains Decision To Change Defense Minister (RT)

Andrei Belousov would be the best person to deal with the issues faced by the Russian military nowadays when it comes to their economic needs, the Kremlin spokesman told journalists on Sunday. Earlier, President Vladimir Putin named the former first deputy prime minister as his pick for the defense minister’s position. An economist by education, Belousov has long worked with the Russian government in various capacities but had previously dealt with civilian matters only. He served as Russia’s Economic Development Minister between 2012 and 2013 and worked as the president’s economic aide between 2013 and 2020 before taking over the position of the first deputy prime minister, which he held until May 7. When asked about the seemingly unconventional choice for the head of the defense ministry, Peskov replied that the “battlefield is now dominated by those who are more open to innovations and are [ready] to introduce them in the fastest way possible.”

The Kremlin spokesman also said that, with the Russian military budget rapidly growing, “it is very important to integrate the economy of the [military] into the national economy.” According to Peskov, the Russian military budget has grown from 3% to 6.7% of the national GDP since the start of the Ukraine conflict. It was not “critical” for the Russian economy but the situation still started to resemble the late Soviet era, when the USSR’s military expenditure amounted to 7.4% of its GDP, he added. Such a situation was still “extremely important” and demanded an adequate response from the authorities, the Kremlin spokesman added. Belousov is not just a “civilian person,” Peskov maintained, adding that he had proven to be “quite successful at leading the Economic Development Ministry” and then worked as an economic aide to the president “for a long time.” “The Defense Ministry should be absolutely open to innovations, to the introduction of the most advanced ideas and the creation of conditions favorable to economic competitiveness,” the Kremlin spokesman said.

Earlier, the Russian Federation Council revealed that Putin had proposed replacing the current acting defense minister, Sergey Shoigu, with Belousov. The Senators are scheduled to consider the nominees put forth by the president on May 13 and 14. Shoigu was appointed Secretary of the Russian Security Council by a presidential decree on Sunday. Commenting on the appointment, Peskov said that the former defense minister would act as the deputy head of the defense industry committee. Shoigu has a good knowledge of the field since he’s already been “deeply involved” in the work of the Russian defense industry and “is well aware of the production rates” required of each specific enterprise, he added.

New blood all along…

• Russia’s Top Security Official Dismissed (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree appointing Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu as secretary of the Security Council, where he will replace Nikolai Patrushev, the Kremlin said Sunday. Another decree suspended Patrushev from his post. According to Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Putin opted to assign a “civilian” to lead the Defense Ministry, citing the necessity for the agency to embrace innovation and progressive concepts. Peskov further mentioned that Shoigu, in his capacity as secretary of the Security Council, will serve as the president’s deputy within the commission on the military-industrial complex.

The Kremlin’s spokesman added that Valery Gerasimov, the head of the General Staff of the Defense Ministry, will remain in his current role. Peskov noted that it will be revealed in the coming days who Nikolai Patrushev’s successor will be after his departure from the position of Security Council secretary. It was previously revealed that among the candidates nominated by Putin for cabinet positions in the government reshuffle, acting First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov was tapped to take on the role of Minister of Defense. During the president’s most recent term in office, he oversaw the socio-economic sector.

“..Bragg first has to show Merchan that someone claimed to have evidence directly tying Trump to an intentional fraudulent scheme to conceal a crime. Thus far, Bragg is not even close..”

• The Appearance of Michael Cohen: A Wreck in Search of a Race (Turley)

Michael Cohen is to criminal justice what car crashes are to Nascar: few want to admit it, but he is the perverse draw for the wreck-obsessed. The difference is that Cohen was already a rolling smoking wreck when he pulled up to the track. Even for those of us who have long been critics of this case and its dubious legal theory, it has been surprising to see that the prosecutors had no more evidence than what which we previously knew about. The assumption was that no rational prosecutor would base a major criminal case virtually entirely on the testimony of Michael Cohen who was just recently denounced by a judge as a serial perjurer peddling “perverse” theories in court. The calculus of Alvin Bragg is now obvious. He is counting on the jury convicting Trump regardless of the evidence. He believes that all he needs is to check the boxes on the elements of the crime, no matter how unbelievable the vehicle.

The reason is that Bragg likely fears a directed verdict more than a jury verdict. After the government closes its evidence, the defense will move for a direct verdict on the basis that the evidence is insufficient to sustain a conviction. In other words, when the prosecution rests this week, Trump’s counsel will stand and ask Merchan to end the case before it is even given to the jury. Many of us agree with that assessment. After three weeks of testimony, there is still confusion on what crime Trump was allegedly seeking to cover up. Bragg has vaguely referred to using the denotation of payments to Daniels as “legal expenses” as a fraud committed to steal the election. However, the election was over when those denotations were made.

Moreover, many believe that such a characterization for payments related to a nondisclosure agreement was accurate. (Hillary Clinton’s campaign claimed in the same election that hiding the funding for the Steele dossier as legal expenses was perfectly accurate). Judge Juan Merchan, in my view, has failed repeatedly to protect the rights of the accused in this case. However, he can claim that there was enough alleged to give Bragg the chance to make his case. Thus far he has not done so and, if he is truly neutral, Merchan should grant the motion.

Bragg is counting on not only a motivated jury but a motivated judge to keep this anemic case alive. All he hopes that he needs to do is get this to a Trump-loathing jury to set aside any reasonable doubt. To do that, he found the ultimate motivated witness with a record of saying whatever serves his interests and those of his sponsors. Even with a New York jury, however, you cannot assume that every juror will jettison doubt when it comes to the unpopular defendant. Yet, Bragg first has to show Merchan that someone claimed to have evidence directly tying Trump to an intentional fraudulent scheme to conceal a crime. Thus far, Bragg is not even close. Indeed, many of his witnesses helped Trump more than they hurt him on the actual charges. Bragg started with testimony on the killing of a story by David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, on an uncharged transaction to kill a story of a Trump affair with a different woman, Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model.

The relevancy was marginal but the testimony backfired in that Pecker admitted that Trump told him that he knew nothing about any reimbursement to Cohen for any hush money. He further said that he had killed or raised such stories with Trump for decades before he ever announced for president. He also said that he had killed stories for other celebrities and politicians, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tiger Woods, Rahm Emanuel and Mark Wahlberg. For good measure, Pecker noted that Cohen often exaggerates and became loud and argumentative. Witnesses said that Trump likely had a mix of motivations including sparing his family from embarrassment. Daniels’ own counsel contradicted the prosecution’s reference to the payment as “hush money.” Prosecutors now need Cohen to check virtually every box on his own. It is not enough to say that Trump wanted the hush up the alleged affair. That is no crime and NDAs are common and legal.

“..Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted on Sunday that Israel has failed to show any “credible plan” to get civilians out of harm’s way..”

• Lindsey Graham Urges Israel To Bomb Gaza Like Hiroshima (RT)

Israel must do whatever needs to be done to win its “existential” war with Hamas, just like the United State was “justified” to disregard civilian casualties when it droped nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) has claimed. The Israeli military is facing increased international scrutiny as its military operation in Gaza enters its eighth month, claiming the lives of more than 34,000 Palestinians. However, Graham argued in an interview with NBC News on Sunday that Hamas is to blame for the bulk of civilian casualties, and urged Israel to continue fighting until a decisive victory is achieved, no matter the cost. “When we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor, fighting the Germans and the Japanese, we decided to end the war by bombing Hiroshima, Nagasaki, with nuclear weapons,” Graham stated.

“So, Israel, do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state. Whatever you have to do,” he added. While Graham did not call for the use of actual nuclear weapons in Gaza, he made a similar controversial comparison during a subcommittee hearing earlier in the week, referring to Israel’s war with Hamas as “Hiroshima and Nagasaki on steroids.” The White House recently suspended the supply of some of the larger-payload bombs that Israel could use in its new offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, outraging West Jerusalem’s staunch supporters. “Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war they can’t afford to lose, and work with them to minimize casualties,” Graham said.

Washington has acknowledged its “reasonable” concerns that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) may have violated international humanitarian law while using American weapons, but a new US State Department report failed to pin-point any specific violations. Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted on Sunday that Israel has failed to show any “credible plan” to get civilians out of harm’s way. President Joe Biden vowed not to support a “major” military operation in Rafah with US weapons, but indicated that Israel’s “limited” invasion has yet to cross Washington’s red line. On Friday, Israel’s war cabinet approved a “measured expansion” of the ground operation in Rafah, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledging to continue the military campaign and “fight with our fingernails” even without US weapons.

Lindsey Graham went more berserk than usual today, screaming about the Holocaust and how Israel should do exactly what the US did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "The Republican Party is with Israel, without apology!" he declares, expressing profound relief that Trump heartily agrees pic.twitter.com/FP0h7GiGXV

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) May 12, 2024

“Sail away. Be Stoic. The complete antidote to the current insanity.”

• We Should All Be Stoics Now (Pepe Escobar)

The great dilemma across the modern West that opposes free will – so eulogized by the bourgeois revolution – to the Law of an Omniscient God, omni-powerful, Mesopotamian, would seem quite pathetic to the Stoics. They would say there’s no problem in solving the exercizes of human will within a framework of possibilities created by an original Higher God; and the same applies for the lesser gods, local, regional. The result is the enchainment of Destiny. And on this enchainment, the Higher God exercizes His will. Seneca, in his Epistles, presented us with how Cleanthes approached this tension between human will and divine will with a remarkable sense of humor:
Destiny (or Zeus) conduces those of good will;
Those of bad will, He drags.
(Epistles 107.11)

So we started with the sound of the wind in the Gulf of Morbihan evoking Plato’s pneuma; but the synchronicity had actually started days before in Rio, when prior to one of my recent conferences in Brazil I was presented with a precious essay by Ciro Moroni who essentially revived Pearson’s nearly forgotten 1891 gem. I read Moroni’s essay on a flight to Salvador, the Brazilian Africa, and in a white fort facing the deep blue South Atlantic sea, silently praised his role as part of the “educated people’ that Western civilization cultivated until the mid-20th century”. This column owes as much to an educated man in Rio as to classicist Pearson and the Stoic posse. Until recently, across the collective West, Stoics were packaged in a bundle, alongside Epicureans and Skeptics, as if they were mere variations of a quite eclectic period, Hellenism.

These three philosophical strands would look like the equivalent of a cultural response to Platonists and Aristotelians, who would be credited as the foundational currents of Hellenism in Greek philosophical literature in the 6th, 5th and 4th century B.C. In an essay on the Stoics included in my previous book, Raging Twenties, I noted how the great ascetic Antisthenes was a companion of Socrates – and a precursor of the Stoics. The first Stoics took their name from the porch – stoa – in the Athenian market where Zeno of Citium used to hang out. Stoic specificity is a must. The collection of Stoic theses established by its founders was replicated for at least 5 centuries, non-stop, by authors from Athens and Alexandria to Rhodes and Rome – all the way to the Prince of the Romans, Marcus Aurelius, who wrote, in Greek, a devoted dissertation on the Stoic conduct.

Stoic tradition got some bashing by Plutarch because they did not actively participate on public matters and on war. But then Marcus Aurelius broke the mold – in an epic way. He was one of the five “enlightened” and quite successful emperors of the Antonine dynasty. Marcus Aurelius was an active Prince; a roving leader of this troops in several ops in the Danube; and while camping, he found time to write the legendary Meditations. Then we have Panecius from Rhodes – who was at the top around 145 B.C. Panecius was quite influential in Rome, and is considered a peripatetic Stoic-Platonic synthesizer, anticipating the way more famous Antiochus, who brought the stoa into the Academy, trying to show that Stoic beliefs featured heavily in Plato. By the way, the translation of stoa to porticus in Latin gave us “porch” in English and “portico” in Portuguese and Spanish.

Today we know there was a massively important movement of scientific, geographic and historical expansion of a new Greco-Roman synthesis from 200 B.C. to the year 200. This period may be easily compared to the Renaissance (roughly 1450-1600). Stoic themes are absolutely determinant in the Greco-Roman renaissance – even if they were traditionally obscured by Platonic theology or Aristotelian science. They were also neutralized in logic and epistemology by skeptical rhetoric and philosophical pessimism, and underestimated in ethics by Christian religious propaganda. Well, never underestimate the power of Heraclitus. Zeno and Cleanthes directly used Heraclitus to formulate their theses. Later on, Plotinus would come up with a legendary quote: “Ethereal Fire lies down, transforming itself”.

Jean-Joel Duhot, writing on Epictetus and Stoic wisdom, noted that Stoicism is not materialism: that would only make sense under the Platonic perspective of the rejection of matter. Anthony Long, an expert in Hellenistic Philosophy, got closer: Stoics are not materialists. They would be better described as vitalists. The Way, the Stoics tell us, is to own only the essentials, and to travel light. Lao Tzu would approve it. Wealth, status and power are ultimately irrelevant. Once again, Lao Tzu would approve it. So let’s finish, inevitably, where we began: by the sea, the wind – pneuma – on our sails. And let’s remember the Syrians – in many aspects quintessential Pilgrims of the Sea. Via Syrian colonies, papyrus, spices, ivory and luxury wines spread out all the way to, for instance, Bretagne. In Naples, Palermo, Carthage, Rome, even the Sea of Azov, Syrians and Greeks have been prime historical pilgrims on an ever-renewed Maritime Silk Road. Sail away. Be Stoic. The complete antidote to the current insanity.

Happy donkey

I've never seen a happy donkey before.. my life is complete pic.twitter.com/nEY72AJ2Co

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) May 12, 2024

Old friends
https://twitter.com/i/status/1789739411913003206

New fear

New fear unlocked pic.twitter.com/H6JNKH4QCO

— Crazy Clips (@crazyclipsonly) May 12, 2024

Manta

Huge oceanic Manta Ray spotted near Trinidad. There is a shark of scale. pic.twitter.com/e9GFXQOhBw

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) May 12, 2024

Water has memory
https://twitter.com/i/status/1789339242323235231

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Debt Rattle August 24 2022

Aug 242022

August 24, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: Crimea, Fauci, Meta, Moderna, NATO, natural gas, no fly zone, pubs, Trudeau, Twitter, Xi, Zelensky 66 Responses »

Edouard Vuillard The flowered dress 1891

• Ukraine Will Seize Crimea ‘By Any Means Necessary’ – Zelensky (RT)

• No-Fly Zone (Schryver)

• Evidence Of Ukrainian Shelling Of Zaporozhye Provided To UN

• In Memoriam: Daria Dugina (Batiushka)

• German Military Stock At Its Limit After Supplying Ukraine – Der Spiegel (RT)

• World in the Process of Bankrupting – Bill Holter (USAW)

• China’s Growth Sacrifice (Stephen S. Roach)

• Biden’s War On Natural Gas Will Kill (Shellenberger)

• Norway Wants Facebook Fined For Illegal Data Transfers (Pol.eu)

• Rand Paul Lays Groundwork For Potential Fauci Probe (RT)

• Twitter Whistleblower: Company Hid “Extreme, Egregious, Deficiencies” (ZH)

• Trudeau Building Huge New Facility For Ministry of Climate Change (TCS)

• Study Links Genetic Code of Covids Spike Protein To Moderna Patent

• More Than 70% Of Pubs Do Not Expect To Survive Winter As Energy Costs Soar (G.)

White House Lied
https://twitter.com/i/status/1562189675791466498

Tucker Atlas

Dr. Scott Atlas: Fauci's leadership is the greatest debacle in modern public health history pic.twitter.com/sKQU6AhuNi

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) August 23, 2022

Yeah, Russia’s going to give up its warmwater port after 95% of Crimeans voted to join them. Zelensky, too, wants to fight until the last Ukrainian.

• Ukraine Will Seize Crimea ‘By Any Means Necessary’ – Zelensky (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky announced on Tuesday that Ukraine will take the Russian territory of Crimea, by military force if necessary and without consulting any country, including Kiev’s Western backers. The Ukrainian military’s strikes on the peninsula have thus far been limited. Speaking at the so-called ‘Crimea Platform’, a Ukrainian-organized gathering of 60 nations and international organizations that back Kiev’s claim of sovereignty over Crimea, Zelensky said that “Ukraine is strong and powerful enough” to make the idea of a “Ukrainian Crimea” a reality. “We will return Crimea by any means that we consider correct, without consulting with other countries,” Zelensky said, according to Strana.ua, a Ukrainian news outlet.

“I know that Crimea is with Ukraine, [and] is waiting for us to return. We need to win the fight against Russian aggression. Therefore, we need to free Crimea from occupation.” Considered Russian land since imperial times, Crimea was an autonomous republic within the Soviet Union until it was appended to the Ukrainian SSR by Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev in 1954 for logistical reasons. The peninsula remained in Ukrainian hands after the fall of the USSR, until its people voted overwhelmingly to join Russia in 2014, after the Kiev government rejected a number of plebiscites during the 1990s aiming at re-establishing Crimea as an independent republic. The US-led NATO alliance considers Crimea to be “illegally annexed” Ukrainian territory, and has demanded that Moscow return the region to Ukrainian control.

A US official told Politico last week that Washington has given Ukraine its blessing to strike targets of its choosing in Crimea. Kiev’s military has carried out a number of these strikes in recent weeks, including a drone attackon the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol on Saturday. Explosions at military sites on the peninsula have been blamed by Russia on Ukrainian “sabotage,” but Kiev has neither officially confirmed nor denied responsibility. With its forces tied up fighting Russian and allied troops in Donbass, Ukraine has relied on drones to carry out its sporadic attacks on Crimea. The aim of these attacks is “not military, but psychological,” Crimean official Oleg Kryuchkov stated after Saturday’s strike, adding that owing to their small payload of explosives, drones are unable to inflict extensive damage.

Zelensky ruled out the prospect of a ceasefire on Tuesday, telling the summit that Ukraine would not freeze the current front line to “calm down Russia.” Moscow has repeatedly blamed Kiev for the breakdown of peace talks earlier this year, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accusing Western governments of “keeping Ukraine from any constructive steps”toward a peace settlement.

Roger Waters Ukraine

Roger Waters: "NATO doesn't want the war in Ukraine to end. There's huge fortunes to be made. They will fight until the last Ukrainian." pic.twitter.com/Nbp6PYCeF5

— Sarah Abdallah (@sahouraxo) August 22, 2022

Sounds impressive.

• No-Fly Zone (Schryver)

I’ve become increasingly intrigued by the fact that western military analysts – even among those not burdened with the epidemic strain of virulent antipathy towards Russia – have not spoken much (if at all) about what I consider to be quite arguably the most impressive revelation of the war in Ukraine. In addition to imposing a virtual “you fly, you die” rule against the Ukrainian Air Force and the various drones they employ, the Russians are, with a formidable array of air defense systems of varying capacities, routinely shooting down: ballistic missiles, MLRS rockets, HARMS anti-radiation missiles, and even artillery shells. They are also effectively employing a variety of electronic counter measures to: block signals to GPS-equipped ordnance; spoof the targeting radars of both satellites and radar-equipped missiles, and otherwise confuse the variety of targeting technologies employed in both older Soviet and American weapons being fielded by Ukrainian forces.

This is an absolutely unprecedented achievement on the battlefield. Neither Israeli nor American systems have ever demonstrated the capability to routinely shoot down advanced missiles or rockets of any type. Iraqi Scud missiles defeated the American Patriot missile defense system, as have much cruder missiles fielded by the Houthis in Yemen against Saudi targets ostensibly protected by American-provided US air defense systems. More relevantly, Iranian missiles have proven to be much more formidable than was previously believed. And although it remains uncertain (or purposely unacknowledged) that US air defense systems were in the vicinity at the time, Iran dropped a couple dozen of their home-made ballistic missiles with 1000 lb. warheads within 5-meter circles at the US air base at Ayn al-Asad in Iraq during their “Vengeance for Soleimani” strike in January 2020.

This is particularly embarrassing for the US, because they had prior warning, hours in advance, that a missile strike would be launched against Ayn al-Asad. Even in strictly controlled tests against advanced ballistic missiles, the successful interception rate for US Patriot and THAAD (TerminalHigh Altitude Air Defense) systems falls far short of impressive. And yet, after a handful of successful early strikes by Ukrainian forces, the Russians have now shot down the overwhelming majority of the Soviet-era Tochka-U ground-to-ground missiles Ukraine has fired over the course of the past six months. The Tochka-U is a reasonably formidable weapon. Mach 5.3; 150 meter accuracy; variable warhead. But other than a single ammo dump strike, there have been no successful Tochka-U hits on Russian targets since the third week of March 2022. Dozens have been shot down.

By comparison, the US ATACMS missile is almost twice as large as the Tochka-U, with a longer range, but considerably slower speed (Mach 3+). There is little reason to suppose the ATACMS can succeed where the Tochka-U has failed – at least if it is used against targets covered by Russian air defenses. But, of course, it’s not just the ballistic missiles Russia is shooting down. They have been shooting down Ukrainian artillery rockets from the beginning of the war. And most recently, they are shooting down an impressive percentage of the HIMARS GPS-guided GMLRS rockets when they challenge air defense coverage areas. And just in the past week, as yet unconfirmed evidence has emerged of a US HARMS (high-velocity anti-radar missile system) missile shot down by Russian air defenses. I suspect we’ll see additional evidences of that capability in weeks to come.

But what must be understood is that no military on the planet had, previous to the war in Ukraine, consistently demonstrated the capability to do what Russia has been doing routinely for the past six months: imposing from the ground what amounts to a reasonable facsimile of a no-fly zone over those areas of the battlefield where it has chosen to mass its air defenses.

“..Moscow had given assent to the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the Zaporozhye NPP back in June, before the Ukrainian drone, artillery and rocket attacks began.”

• Evidence Of Ukrainian Shelling Of Zaporozhye Provided To UN

Russia has submitted photographic evidence of Ukrainian attacks on the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant to the UN Security Council and the General Assembly, ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said on Tuesday. He also briefed the Security Council on the most recent attacks, some of which involved NATO-supplied weapons, and insisted that Russia does not use the site as a military base. “Despite the false statements of the Kiev regime and its backers, Russia has not placed heavy weapons on the territory of the ZNPP and does not use the station for military purposes,”Nebenzia said during the council’s emergency session on Tuesday afternoon. “The Russian Ministry of Defense is ready to provide the IAEA with high-resolution images, which show that weapons, especially heavy ones, are not placed on the territory of the station,” he added.

In addition to the photographic evidence of Ukrainian shelling of the plant, Nebenzia entered into the record a timeline of strikes, named the Ukrainian artillery unit involved, and specified which strikes featured M777 howitzers given to Ukraine by the Pentagon. “It seems that our colleagues exist in some kind of their own parallel reality, in which the Russian military shells the NPP it is protecting, using American systems at that,” Nebenzia said. Contrary to insinuations by Kiev and its Western backers, Nebenzia noted, Moscow had given assent to the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the Zaporozhye NPP back in June, before the Ukrainian drone, artillery and rocket attacks began.

Nebenzia blamed the US and its allies for tolerating “criminal” behavior by Ukraine – from the shelling of the Zaporozhye NPP to the car bomb that killed Russian journalist Darya Dugina in Moscow over the weekend, and was cheered by some NATO officials he mentioned by name. The Zaporozhye plant is located in Energodar, a city in southern Ukraine under the control of Russian troops since March. The plant’s civilian staff continued operations unhindered until the artillery attacks began in July. Kiev has denied responsibility for the attacks and accused Russia of shelling the nuclear site to discredit Ukraine, but also of placing troops and heavy weapons inside the NPP’s perimeter and thus making it a legitimate target.

Both Dugin and Dugina are being renounced in the western press as “ultra-nationalists”. Strange term. Sort of like “America First”.

• In Memoriam: Daria Dugina (Batiushka)

The news of the Western-sponsored terrorist murder of Alexander Dugin’s daughter, Daria, has shocked us all. Of course, in one sense it is no different from all the other brutal murders carried out by drone by the Obama regime, or the CIA’s disposal of countless human-beings under their puppet regimes from the Philippines to Vietnam, from Italy to Latin America, from Greece to Africa, and in many other countries over the last three generations. Nevertheless, it concerns me more personally, as I know her father. I first met the Russian Eurasianist philosopher Alexander Dugin in London in 2005. He and I were two of the four speakers at an International Conference on the European Tradition.

My approach was spiritual and so politically neutral, his approach was that of a right-wing academic. But regardless of that, we were heading in the same direction and, all the more as I was the only Orthodox priest present, we sympathised. I was able to speak to him between talks and we had a photograph taken together. Alexander went on to become quite well-known on the academic and political philosophy circuits internationally. His influence on President Putin has been much exaggerated by the ignorant and hate-filled Western media which has decided (or rather been ordered) to cast him as ‘Putin’s adviser’, but that is another story. In fact, Alexander was a theoretician. However, as such his books, articles and talks were always stimulating and thought-provoking and will continue to be so.

It is my hope and prayer that the sacrifice of his daughter, Daria, which leaves him heart-broken, as it would any father, will not make him bitter. Rather it will inspire him to purify and refine his thought further, so that his influence through her will be ever greater. Below I attach the talk I gave that day, seventeen eventful years ago. I dedicate it to Daria.

“The capability profile of the Bundeswehr (German military) can and should temporarily take a back seat to the sustainability of Ukraine in the current critical situation. Because Ukraine’s survival is in Germany’s security policy interest..”

• German Military Stock At Its Limit After Supplying Ukraine – Der Spiegel (RT)

Germany cannot deliver more weapons to Ukraine without depleting its own stocks, its defense ministry has said. Despite the military reaching the “acceptable limit” of what it can send, Chancellor Olaf Scholz is under intense pressure to keep the arms flowing to Kiev. “We went to the acceptable limit when selling Bundeswehr stocks,” a spokesman for Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht told Der Spiegelon Monday, a day after the German news outlet published a guest article from lawmakers Kristian Klinck, Sara Nanni, and Alexander Mueller calling for Germany to up its weapons deliveries to Ukraine. “The capability profile of the Bundeswehr (German military) can and should temporarily take a back seat to the sustainability of Ukraine in the current critical situation. Because Ukraine’s survival is in Germany’s security policy interest,” the trio, who represent the three parties in Germany’s coalition government, wrote.

Since the beginning of Russia’s military operation in February, Chancellor Scholz has come under persistent criticism for his apparent reluctance to gift Ukraine with the weapons it has requested. While Berlin has sent artillery pieces, shoulder-fired rockets, and anti-aircraft tanks, Ukraine has asked for more air-defense systems and an artillery radar system, both of which have not yet been shipped. Germany’s military was in a severely depleted state long before February, with a 2019 report revealing that fewer than 20% of the country’s 68 Tiger combat helicopters and fewer than 30% of its 136 Eurofighter jets were operational. The report also found that ammunition stocks were low and soldiers were missing essential gear, including boots, clothing, and bedding.

Despite Scholz announcing an ambitious program of rearmament in March, and despite the fact that the Bundeswehr’s budget has increased from €37 billion ($36 billion) in 2017 to €50 billion ($49 billion) this year, the military has not yet remedied these deficiencies. As far back as March, Lambrecht was describing the Bundeswehr’s stocks as “exhausted,” and Scholz has also had to balance his stated desire to support Ukraine’s forces with his insistence that Germany shouldn’t send equipment powerful enough to escalate the conflict. The situation is further compounded by Germany’s promises to replenish the stocks of its allies, who are sending their own stocks of heavy weapons to Ukraine in exchange for replacement equipment from Germany.

Despite these limitations, Scholz recently insisted that Berlin supplies “a lot of weapons”to Kiev, and will continue to give Ukraine “what it needs for its defense.” Scholz made these comments after retired Bundeswehr general Klaus Wittmann accused him of a lack of “leadership” and of appearing “intimidated” by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“All you have to do is wake up in the morning and read the news, and you know it has gotten worse than the day before. That’s day after day.”

• World in the Process of Bankrupting – Bill Holter (USAW)

Precious metals expert and financial writer Bill Holter says, “nothing is getting better” and points out the proof is everywhere that we are clearly headed for a financial calamity, the likes of which we have never seen before. Holter, who is also a precious metals broker, is seeing a big pick-up in business because big money is looking for a place to hide in the physical world. Holter explains, “We are getting more orders and larger orders. I think this is natural because I think people know something is wrong, and when something is wrong, you want to get defensive. I think people are finally making the connection the world is in the process of bankrupting, and you want your capital in something that cannot bankrupt. By definition, that is gold and silver.”

Holter says evil is trying to take over everywhere. Holter contends, “The consensus is the fact that we have a 2nd Amendment and we still have guns here is the only reason they have not snapped the trap shut yet. The United States is ‘the last bastion.’ Just look at Australia. Look at New Zealand. Look at Canada. Look at Britain. Can you have guns there? No, they have taken them away. What did they do? They forced the population into lockdown. They forced the population to get the jab. The result is you are going to see the West vastly depopulated and degraded in the next 1, 2 or 5 years. They have total control over their population. Whereas, that is not the case yet in the U.S.”

Holter has long said when the overloaded debt system breaks, it will break “fast and ugly.” “Credit will dry up overnight,” and “The world runs on credit,” according to Holter. His math shows a dark time ahead even for the prepared. Holter explains, “All you have to do is wake up in the morning and read the news, and you know it has gotten worse than the day before. That’s day after day. I have talked about ‘Mad Max’ for several years. When I first started talking about it, I got all kinds of grief, and they called me a nut case. It is certainly looking more and more now as the likely scenario. It just goes back to the West and, including China, it is not in the West, but it too is extremely levered (or indebted). When you over-lever a financial system, you over-lever an economy. At some point, the only thing that can happen is something bad. It’s either default or hyperinflation of the currency to pay the debt back. As far as timing, I would be shocked if we make it through the end of this year and people would still consider the system normal.”

When the system does break, that’s when it turns “ugly.” Holter explains, “As far as how are things going to work when this thing goes down? My question would be is anything going to work? Will your bank be open? Will your broker be open? Will there be a store open or a restaurant or any place to buy goods? That gets back to Jim Sinclair’s ‘Get out of the System’ (GOTS). Become your own central banker. Stock up on the things you think you are going to need. Is it going to last two weeks or two years? It could last two years. One thing for sure, our life in the United States is going to be drastically changed to a lower standard of living. . . . You are watching the breakdown in real time.”

“Xi’s focus on ideology speaks much more to the resurrection of Mao’s legacy than to continuity with the Deng era.”

• China’s Growth Sacrifice (Stephen S. Roach)

Since the days of Deng Xiaoping, economic growth has mattered more than anything for China’s leaders. The 10% annualized hyper-growth from 1980 to 2010 was widely seen as the antidote to the relative stasis of the Mao era, when the economy grew by only about 6%. But under President Xi Jinping, the pendulum has swung back, with 6.6% average growth from 2013 to 2021 much closer to the trajectory under Mao than under Deng. Some of the slowdown was inevitable, partly reflecting the law of large numbers: Small economies are better able to sustain rapid growth rates. As China’s economy grew – from 2% of world GDP in 1980 at the time of the Deng takeoff to 15% when Xi assumed power in 2012 – an arithmetic slowdown became only a matter of time. The surprise was that it took so long to occur.

It is possible to quantify the foregone Chinese output from the slowdown. Had annual real GDP growth remained on the 10% trajectory under Xi, rather than slowing by nearly 3.5 percentage points since 2012, the Chinese economy today would be a little more than 40% larger than it is. Yet the China slowdown is far more than an arithmetic event. Three powerful forces are also at work – a structural transformation of the economy, payback for past excesses, and a profound shift in the ideological underpinnings of Chinese governance. The structural explanation puts an optimistic spin on the slowdown by framing it as the byproduct of a strategy aimed to improve the quality of economic growth. By staying the course of hyper-growth for too long, China became increasingly afflicted with the “four uns” of former Premier Wen Jiabao – an economy that was unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated, and (ultimately) unsustainable. Rebalancing was the only way out – especially if it led to greener, consumer-led, and services-intensive growth that addressed the twin goals of balance and sustainability. If slower growth was the price, it was well worth paying it.

[..] My biggest mistake was to minimize the consequences of Xi Jinping Thought. Xi’s focus on ideology speaks much more to the resurrection of Mao’s legacy than to continuity with the Deng era. Under Xi, China’s new era is more about the supremacy of the Party, with an associated emphasis on power, control, and ideological constraints on the economy. Unlike the China of Mao, when there wasn’t much growth to sacrifice, there is far more at stake today for the world’s second-largest economy. With the upcoming 20th Party Congress likely to usher in an unprecedented third five-year term for Xi, there is good reason to believe that China’s growth sacrifice has only just begun.

‘Wait. These are 20-year investments and Biden is saying that in 5 to 10 years these investments will go bad. So what should we do?’”

• Biden’s War On Natural Gas Will Kill (Shellenberger)

Over the next several years, millions of people will die from hunger-related diseases, cold temperatures, and air pollution as a direct result of natural gas shortages. All of those deaths have been going down over the last several decades. But shortages of natural gas, gas-derived fertilizers, and electricity shortages will result a reversal of those trends. And the higher-than-normal death toll will continue so long as the world fails to produce sufficient natural gas to meet global demand. President Joe Biden could prevent a significant number of those deaths but his policies restricting natural gas production and exports will increase them. The U.S. is already the largest natural gas exporter in the world and it could produce and export far more.

The problem is that the Biden administration is refusing to grant permits for production, pipelines, and export terminals. And it is working through federal agencies to discourage private sector investment in natural gas. Biden administration officials point to rising liquified natural gas (LNG) exports to Europe, provisions in the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that tie renewable energy production to oil and gas production, and a permitting reform proposal proposed by Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), which may pass Congress and be signed by Biden at the end of September, as proof that Biden increasing natural gas supplies.

But rising LNG exports are mostly the result of policies put in place before Biden took office, IRA increased the cost of natural gas leases on federal lands without requiring a significant expansion of them, and Manchin’s permitting reform proposal currently under consideration does not amend or update any of the statutes the Biden administration has put in place, which restrict natural gas production, transport, and export. A high-level Washington, D.C.-based lobbyist for the oil and gas industry told me that, as a direct result of Biden administration policies, private sector investment in LNG is being throttled. “The LNG industry is going to investors to invest in these facilities but investors are saying, ‘Wait. These are 20-year investments and Biden is saying that in 5 to 10 years these investments will go bad. So what should we do?’”

“Meta could also still appeal a finalized Irish decision, which would again delay the need to trigger a Facebook and Instagram blackout in Europe.”

• Norway Wants Facebook Fined For Illegal Data Transfers (Pol.eu)

Facebook owner Meta Platforms should be fined for continuing to shuttle Europeans’ personal information to the United States in violation of a landmark EU court ruling, Norway’s data protection authority has told its peer regulators. “There would be little or no incentive to act in accordance” with EU data transfer laws if regulators don’t impose a fine on the U.S. tech giant, Norway’s authority Datatilsynet said in a partially redacted document obtained by POLITICO under freedom of information laws. The authority is one of a handful of European regulators responding to the Irish Data Protection Commission’s draft decision from July that orders Meta’s to cease its use of a legal instrument called standard contractual clauses (SCCs) to transfer data across the Atlantic — everything from family pictures to payroll information.

The Irish draft decision implemented a 2020 court ruling in which the European Court of Justice nixed an EU-U.S. data transfer deal called Privacy Shield and tightened requirements to use other data transfer mechanisms like SCCs because they would expose Europeans to intrusive U.S. surveillance. “Based on the facts of the case, we do not see how [Meta] could have continued its personal data transfers following the Schrems II judgment had it acted in accordance with the GDPR,” the Norwegian objection reads. It said it thought Meta’s violation of EU data transfer rules is “particularly serious.” The Norwegian document suggests that the regulator wants to go further than the Irish Data Protection Commission, which in July decided to block Meta’s EU-U.S. data transfers but made no mention of a fine for the violations.

“While orders, limitations and bans generally seek to ensure that future data processing of personal data takes place in line with the GDPR, sanctions such as administrative fines are directed towards violations in the past and carry a punitive element,” it reads. Meta has repeatedly said that a decision blocking its transfers would force it to shutter its Facebook and Instagram offerings in Europe, but a final decision is months away. The Irish regulator is required to feed other European regulators’ comments, including Norway’s, into its decision, and may have to a trigger formal dispute resolution mechanism if it can’t resolve the objections, which would delay the process by at least another month. Meta could also still appeal a finalized Irish decision, which would again delay the need to trigger a Facebook and Instagram blackout in Europe.

“The American people deserve transparency and accountability from the NIH regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, regardless of Dr. Fauci’s future employment plans..”

• Rand Paul Lays Groundwork For Potential Fauci Probe (RT)

Fresh from vowing to investigate chief White House medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci for his role in the Covid-19 pandemic, Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has demanded that President Joe Biden’s administration preserve documents and messages that could become evidence in the potential probe. Paul, who has sparred with Fauci in Senate hearings over government funding of potentially dangerous virus research, sent a letter to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Tuesday, calling for the Covid-19 czar’s documents and communications to be saved. The demand came one day after Fauci announced that, effective in December, he would step down as Biden’s chief medical advisor and as director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Navarro Fauci

Peter Navarro suggests Fauci may get "political asylum in communist China" and the government should "take that SOB's passport".
Source: https://t.co/qhdBCD4GZ6 pic.twitter.com/hlV4ZjFgp6

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) August 23, 2022

“Fauci’s resignation will not prevent a full-throated investigation into the origins of the pandemic,” Paul said after the doctor’s announcement on Monday. That will include testimony under oath concerning discussions about the possible leak of Covid-19 from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, he said. The senator previously accused Fauci of directing public funding to gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab and lying about it under oath in congressional testimony. “Dr. Fauci misled the American people on public health guidance throughout the pandemic, lied to Congress under oath, and funneled tax dollars to fund dangerous research in communist China,” Paul told the Daily Caller on Tuesday.

However, Republicans will need to win back control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections to force such an investigation. Paul said in February that he would subpoena Fauci’s records if Republicans retake the Senate. In a CNN interview last month, Fauci said there was no reason for such a probe. “But if they want to, go ahead. My records are an open book.” Paul requested in Tuesday’s letter that the NIH preserve all documents, data and messages created by or shared with Fauci relating to Covid-19, including NIAID-funded research. “The American people deserve transparency and accountability from the NIH regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, regardless of Dr. Fauci’s future employment plans,” he said.

Other Republican lawmakers accused Fauci of timing his exit to just before a potentially GOP-controlled Congress starts work next January. “Dr. Fauci is conveniently resigning from his position in December, before House Republicans have an opportunity to hold him accountable for destroying our country over these past three years,” Representative Andy Biggs (R-Arizona) said on Monday. “This guy is a coward.” He added that Fauci will be held accountable whether or not he remains in public office.

Sen. John Kennedy Fauci

Sen. John Kennedy gives his prediction of what will happen to Fauci if Republicans take back Congress. pic.twitter.com/zBPYppye53

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) August 23, 2022

“..rewarded executives cash bonuses up to $10 million to increase the number of daily users..”

• Twitter Whistleblower: Company Hid “Extreme, Egregious, Deficiencies” (ZH)

Following the Washington Post’s story on the Twitter whistleblower complaint, Elon Musk’s legal team said they want to interview the former head of security Peiter Zatko. CNN’s Donnie O’Sullivan tweeted moments ago that Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro wants to speak with the Twitter whistleblower: “We have already issued a subpoena for Mr. Zatko, and we found his exit and that of other key employees curious in light of what we have been finding.” One day after Elon Musk’s legal team subpoenaed former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey as part of an ongoing effort to fight a lawsuit by the social media company to force the billionaire to move forward with the $44 billion acquisition deal.

The Washington Post released a new report alleging executives deceived federal regulators and the company’s board about “extreme, egregious deficiencies” to combat hackers. WaPo cited a whistleblower complaint from the former head of security Peiter Zatko who said some of the company’s servers are running out-of-date software, and executives withheld critical information about data breaches. Bezo’s news outlet interviewed more than a dozen current and former employees about past deficiencies. The complaint was filed last month with the SEC, DoJ, and FTC. It said thousands of employees had access to core company software, which led to data breaches and hacks of high-profile users.

WaPo said the whistleblower document alleges executives prioritized user growth over reducing spam and rewarded executives cash bonuses up to $10 million to increase the number of daily users. The complaint noted Chief Executive Parag Agrawal was “lying” when he said in May the company was “strongly incentivized to detect and remove as much spam as we possibly can.” In a WaPo interview, Zatko said his decision to reveal Twitter’s failures to the public is an extension of his previous work exposing security flaws within the company.

WEF crown prince.

• Trudeau Building Huge New Facility For Ministry of Climate Change (TCS)

The Ministry of Environment & Climate Change Canada (ECCC) is building a new facility in Winnipeg that will be home to a firearms armoury, interrogation rooms, biological labs, media relations offices, “controlled quiet rooms,” and intelligence facilities. The plans, which were drawn up by a firm in Winnipeg, open a window into Trudeau’s future plans for Climate Enforcement. Down the hall from the proposed “Firearms Storage” rooms are several evidence rooms, interrogation suites, and adjacent recording rooms.According to a recently posted Indeed.com ad, the Ministry is searching to recruit a battalion of Climate “Pollution” Officers, a unit within the coldly named “Environmental Enforcement Directorate.”

If you emit too much carbon or use too much fertilizer, you may just be on the Climate Communists’ hit list. The entire facility that was leaked to The Counter Signal is sketched to be over 50,000 square feet, will house hundreds of ECCC staff, and will also be home to weather forecasting staff. The Impact Assessment Act (IAA), which was quietly passed in the final days of Trudeau’s majority government, grants sweeping power to Ministerial “Enforcement Officers.” But, until now, little has been explained about where and how Climate Police will be deployed. The IAA empowers agents of the Ministry of Climate Change to enter premises without a warrant to “verify compliance or prevent non-compliance with [the Act].

Trudeau’s Climate Police may enter any project location that affects the environment to take photographs, access computer systems and communication devices, and “direct any person to put any machinery, vehicle or equipment in the place into operation or to cease operating it.” Climate Police may also prohibit access to the location entirely. It seems to be no coincidence that this Climate Police armoury was placed in the heartland of agricultural production in Canada. This information comes just days after agents dispatched by ECCC were accused of trespassing on private land in Saskatchewan to collect Nitrogen samples, the newest target of Trudeau’s climate change agenda.

A one in 3 trillion chance, but still contested.

• Study Links Genetic Code of Covids Spike Protein To Moderna Patent

• Genetic match discovered in Covid’s unique furin cleavage site on spike protein • Matched genetic sequence patented by Moderna for cancer research purposes • Researchers say one in 3 trillion chance Covid developed the code naturally • Critics of the study are sceptical of its author’s conclusions, suggesting that the sequence match is not as rare as has been claimed.

Fresh suspicion that Covid may have been tinkered with in a lab emerged today after scientists found genetic material owned by Moderna in the virus’s spike protein. They identified a tiny snippet of code that is identical to part of a gene patented by the vaccine maker three years before the pandemic. It was discovered in SARS-CoV-2’s unique furin cleavage site, the part that makes it so good at infecting people and separates it from other coronaviruses. The structure has been one of the focal points of debate about the virus’s origin, with some scientists claiming it could not have been acquired naturally. The international team of researchers suggest the virus may have mutated to have a furin cleavage site during experiments on human cells in a lab.

They claim there is a one-in-three-trillion chance Moderna’s sequence randomly appeared through natural evolution. But there is some debate about whether the match is as rare as the study claims, with other experts describing it as a ‘quirky’ coincidence rather than a ‘smoking gun’. In the latest study, published in Frontiers in Virology, researchers compared Covid’s makeup to millions of sequenced proteins on an online database. The virus is made up of 30,000 letters of genetic code that carry the information it needs to spread, known as nucleotides. It is the only coronavirus of its type to carry 12 unique letters that allow its spike protein to be activated by a common enzyme called furin, allowing it to spread between human cells with ease.

Analysis of the original Covid genome found the virus shares a sequence of 19 specific letters with a genetic section owned by Moderna, which has a total of 3,300 nucleotides. The US-based pharmaceutical firm filed the patent in February 2016 as part of its cancer research division, records show. The patented sequence is part of a gene called MSH3 that is known to affect how damaged cells repair themselves in the body.

“One operator said they had been quoted a cost for their energy that was nearly six times higher than on their current contract..”

• More Than 70% Of Pubs Do Not Expect To Survive Winter As Energy Costs Soar (G.)

Britain’s independent brewers have urged ministers to step in to save the sector, as research revealed more than 70% of pubs do not expect to survive the winter if nothing is done to ease energy costs. In a letter to the chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, independent brewers on Tuesday called for immediate government intervention, warning a once thriving cottage industry was now facing “grave uncertainty”. They said the impact of surging energy bills was being compounded by a fall in sales as households seek to save money, shortages of equipment such as kegs, cans and CO2 gas, and a poor hop harvest pushing up prices. “We have entered one of the most challenging times for the brewing sector,” the Society of Independent Brewers said, in a letter also signed by the chair of the Campaign for Real Ale.

“Small brewers are reporting that their energy bills are doubling or trebling, putting their future ability to brew at risk”. The warning came as pub operators reported similar rises in energy costs, with reports that some suppliers are refusing to offer new contracts to the sector because they fear pubs may not be able to pay their bills. More than 35% of operators said they had seen their utility costs double, while 30% said their costs had tripled, according to a survey for the trade publication the Morning Advertiser. One operator said they had been quoted a cost for their energy that was nearly six times higher than on their current contract – with the price per unit shooting up from 14p to 83p. Almost three-quarters of respondents said they would not be able to afford the increases.

Almost the entire European continent is now operating at electricity prices above EUR 600/MWh

This is roughly equivalent to $1000 (!) per barrel of oil

The last decade average cost of electricity was in the EUR 20-30/MWh range

Not sure a few hikes are going to fix the EUR here pic.twitter.com/4MoYU0fK2a

— Alf (@MacroAlf) August 23, 2022

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Debt Rattle March 6 2022

Mar 062022

March 6, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:30 am Finance Tagged with: CDC, energy, immunity, license to kill, NATO, neo nazis, no fly zone, Putin, singularity, Zelensky 79 Responses »

Marcel Duchamp The chess game 1910

• Why Putin Invaded Ukraine – And What’s Really Going On (Maajid Nawaz)

• War, Conflict & Enemies of Truth (Brenner)

• Not Exactly Chernobyl (Dmitry Orlov)

• How Russia Will Counterpunch the U.S./EU Declaration of War (Escobar)

• US/NATO Is in the Grip of a Demonic Death-Wish (Edward Curtin)

• Zelensky And The Fascists (MoA)

• Putin Will Declare War On Any Country Creating A Ukraine No-Fly Zone (ZH)

• When Ukraine Was Mightier Than China (Bivens)

• Germany Warns Against Ban On Energy Imports From Russia (DW)

• ‘Key To White Survival’: How Putin Has Morphed Into A Far-right Savior (G.)

• Most Already Had Robust Immunity (Girardot)

• License to Kill (Steve Kirsch)

• CDC Admits They Lied, And Granny Died (Denninger)

• On the Cusp of an Economic Singularity (Doomberg)

Why RT got banned?!
https://twitter.com/i/status/1500057418235006979

Bryce Mitchell
https://twitter.com/i/status/1499995755515465730

Mandela

Nelson Mandela spells out who poses the biggest threat to humanity. Spoiler alert, it ain't Russia. pic.twitter.com/EjpDXKXWBS

— Chris Williamson (@DerbyChrisW) March 5, 2022

“Ukraine had a long history of cultural and political ties with Russia, dating to Kievan Rus of the 10th century that was founded by the Rurikid dynasty from Swedish vikings..”

• Why Putin Invaded Ukraine – And What’s Really Going On (Maajid Nawaz)

To emphasise, this article serves to analyse how to prevent the danger of World War III. Its purpose is not to defend Putin’s actions. To understand the conflict requires understanding the recent history, and what Russia’s national interests are in the region. Ukraine had a long history of cultural and political ties with Russia, dating to Kievan Rus of the 10th century that was founded by the Rurikid dynasty from Swedish vikings. It had been formally a part of the Russian Empire since the 18th century and remained in its sphere of influence. In 2010 Ukraine elected the pro-Russia Yanukovych as their president. Leaning towards Russia as he did, the new president Yanukovych was however not the US establishment’s preferred candidate. In 2013, Yanukovych cancelled an association deal between Ukraine and the EU.

In short, such an action required a response. With the second largest oil reserves in the world, and by controlling most of Europe’s gas supplies (which pass through Ukraine) Russia was perilously close to creating a Eurasian superpower to rival the US and end the hegemony of the US petrodollar. This is something that was recognised by Trump, despite the now proven hoax that he was captured by Putin. The US response came in 2014 as a Western backed bloody Maidan uprising (Putin would call this a coup) led to a change of regime. This uprising was backed and funded by the US establishment and her allies. Most worrying of all, it was perpetrated by the Neo-Nazi group Svoboda, founded by Andriy Parubiy.

Despite corporatist media denials, the neo-Nazi nature of Ukraine’s new pro-American regime is by now well established. With western backing, Svoboda swiftly began raising the armed neo-Nazi Azov battalion, which now serves as the Ukrainian National Guard. The US was arming the Nazi Azov battalion for three years, until it finally ended the open part of this cooperation in 2018. “House-passed spending bills for the past three years have included a ban on U.S. aid to Ukraine from going to the Azov Battalion, but the provision was stripped out before final passage each year…The Azov Battalion was founded in 2014, and its first commander was Andriy Biletsky, who previously headed the neo-Nazi group Patriot of Ukraine.

Several members of the militia, which has been integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard, are self-avowed neo-Nazis..Last year, online posts by the militia’s news service showed members testing U.S.-made grenade launchers at a firing range. The posts have since been deleted”. Canada, surprise surprise, was also involved in this arming and funding of Ukrainian Nazis. Replete with Western funds, the group promptly appears to have begun organising Nazi summer camps for children. As well as organising street patrols for Nazi blackshirts in order to maintain their grip on power. And mass Nazi rallies, glorifying Nazi collaborators. Russia responded to this regime change by helping Crimea secede, and by recognising Luhansk’s and Donetsk’s independence. The above is the background to the eight year war that had been waging in Donbas, which you would be forgiven for not knowing about due to a corporatist media blackout.

Maajid

pic.twitter.com/izncIjwu6Z https://t.co/SfkzsY4DiY

— Maajid أبو عمّار (@MaajidNawaz) March 5, 2022

“Two-way mendacity between the chief executive and the so-called Fourth Estate. Cozy.”

• War, Conflict & Enemies of Truth (Brenner)

Here’s a stark example. On March 2 Biden was asked whether Russian forces are deliberately targeting civilian areas in Ukraine, the president says, “It’s clear they are.” An outright lie – picked up and transmitted without comment. The wrinkle in this instance is that this is the same lie that the MSM had been disseminating for days. Two-way mendacity between the chief executive and the so-called Fourth Estate. Cozy. Those who know better will be kept at bay – non-persons. So, we read in the august New York Times that Russia launches missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, while civilian casualties mount and the Russian offensive on Kharkiv stalls. All nonsense, all lies. Never corrected. They are just sub-heads in a fictional story designed to mythologize, to entertain, and to control thought. Straight out of 1984; who needs censorship?

A body politique incapable of enunciating and observing reasonable ethical standards of behavior should still find it within itself to engage in an honest discussion and debate on matters of supposed national consequence. Ukraine has shown, once again, that the U.S. is not so capable. Why does a president so casually lie in public? Well, for one thing, long experience tells him that he could get away with it. After all, most Americans still take at face value whatever they are told about the international scene despite their being lied to and deceived by their leaders. They lied about WMD in Iraq; they lied about the reception to be expected from the Iraq people, they lied repeatedly about the insurrection, they lied repeatedly about torture, they lied about General David Petraeus’ magnificent Iraqi national army that fled before Mosul.

Douglas MacGregor

“Oh I think Zelensky is a puppet & he is putting huge numbers of his own population at unnecessary risk… and quite frankly what comes out of Ukraine is debunked as lies within 24-48 hours” Retired US Army colonel Douglas MacGregor on Fox News pic.twitter.com/x4Hj8c0qWZ

— Maajid أبو عمّار (@MaajidNawaz) March 5, 2022

“..the rest of the world, which will still have to listen to fake news of Europe’s largest nuclear plant being blown up by evil Russians.”

• Not Exactly Chernobyl (Dmitry Orlov)

I guess I’ll have to keep publishing some short notes on the situation in the Ukraine, since it’s all over the news and most of that is fake news. Overnight there was a ridiculous amount of noise about Zaporozhskaya AES, which is the largest nuke plant in Europe. President Zelensky proclaimed that it is the new Chernobyl and that all of Europe will need to be evacuated. He was obviously drunk at the time. What actually happened was: At 11:11 AM Moscow time (about an hour ago) the authorities of Zaporozhye Region announced that Zaporozhskaya AES is under control of the Russian forces. At 6:20 AM Moscow time the fire at the administrative building at Zaporozhskaya AES was extinguished with no casualties. It was probably set on purpose to create the media picture of “Europe’s largest nuke plant on fire!”

At 5:36 AM Moscow time the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that the fire in the area of Zaporozhskaya AES did not affect any of the main equipment at the plant. At 4:47 AM Moscow time president Zelensky goes live to announce that the Russians are trying to create a new Chernobyl. A likely story, that. Between 3:51 AM and 3:59 AM Moscow time fire crews were on site putting out the fire. Apparently, there wasn’t a lot for them to do. Between 2:00 AM and 3:30 AM Moscow time there was a shootout at the power plant’s administrative building. Somehow it resulted in a fire at the administrative building. So much for a new Chernobyl.

In other news, this morning the Ukrainian army launched a rocket attack on the headquarters of the Ukrainian Nazi “Azov” battalion. Ten Nazis were killed in the attack. This was punishment for their refusal to follow orders. In other news from this morning, Russia’s media watchdog, Roskomnadzor, is tightening up control by shutting down sources of disinformation and enemy propaganda, including: • Facebook • Meduza • BBC • Deutsche Welle • Radio Free Europe. Previously, “Echo of Moscow” and “Dozhd” were shut down. What this means is that fighting fake news in Russia is going to get a lot easier. Of course, it doesn’t mean anything for the rest of the world, which will still have to listen to fake news of Europe’s largest nuclear plant being blown up by evil Russians.

Yesterday’s negotiations between the Ukraine (the regime) and Russia resulted in an agreement on humanitarian corridors so that civilians can get out of cities where there is fighting going on. The problem with that is that the remaining Nazi battalions don’t particularly obey orders from the regime and like to use civilians as hostages and human shields. In all, the Russian demilitariazation campaign is going according to schedule. Ukraine’s nuclear installations are passing under Russian control undamaged. Infrastructure damage is quite limited (unless it is military infrastructure, in which case it gets blown up).

As far as denazification—the other goal of the Russian campaign—people are scratching their heads trying to figure out what that means and how it might happen. On the one hand, the Russians know them by name, face, voice print and perhaps even fingerprints, so it’s just a matter of hunting them down. On the other hand, the high-ranking Ukrainian Nazis and their families are currently fleeing the Ukraine and filtering out to the surrounding countries while simultaneously trying to organize terrorist attacks within Russia (unsuccessfully so far). To add spice, Ramzan Kadyrov, the intrepid Chechen chieftain, promised to track them down and kill them wherever they are. “We are everywhere in the world,” he said.

“Russia will be showing the way: only self-sufficiency affords total independence.”

• How Russia Will Counterpunch the U.S./EU Declaration of War (Escobar)

Michael Hudson told me, “the U.S. and Western Europe expected a Froelicher Krieg (“happy war”). Germany and other countries haven’t begun to feel the pain of gas and mineral and food deprivation. THAT’S going to be the real game. The aim would be to break Europe away from U.S. control via NATO. This will involve “meddling” by creating a New World Order political movement and party, like Communism was a century ago. You could call it a new Great Awakening.” A possible Great Awakening certainly will not involve the NATOstan sphere anytime soon. The collective West is rather in serious Great Decoupling mode, its entire economy weaponized with the aim, expressed in the open, of destroying Russia and even – the perennial wet dream – provoking regime change.

Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the SVR, succinctly described it: “Masks have dropped. The West is not just trying to enclose Russia with a new ‘Iron Curtain’. We are talking about attempts to destroy our state – its ‘abolition’, as it is now customary to say in the ‘tolerant’ liberal-fascist environment. Since the United States and its allies have neither the opportunity nor the spirit to try to do this in an open and honest military-political confrontation, sneaky attempts are being made to establish an economic, informational and humanitarian “blockade”’. Arguably the apex of Western hysteria is the onset of a 2022 Neo-Nazi Jihad: a 20,000-strong mercenary army being assembled in Poland under CIA supervision. The bulk comes from private military companies such as Blackwater/Academi and DynCorp.

Their cover: “return of Ukrainians from the French Foreign Legion.” This Afghan remix comes straight from the only playbook the CIA knows. Back in reality, facts on the ground will eventually lead entire economies in the West to become roadkill – with chaos in the commodities sphere leading to skyrocketing energy and food costs. As an example, up to 60% of German and 70% of Italian manufacturing industries may be forced to shut down for good – with catastrophic social consequences. The unelected, uber-Kafkaesque EU machine in Brussels has chosen to commit a triple hara-kiri by grandstanding as abject vassals of the Empire, destroying any remaining French and German sovereignty impulses and imposing alienation from Russia-China.

Meanwhile, Russia will be showing the way: only self-sufficiency affords total independence. And the Big Picture has also been keenly understood by the Global South: one day someone had to stand up and say, “That’s Enough”. With maximum raw power to back it up.

“If Russia had such missiles encircling the United States from Cuba, Mexico, and Canada, what American would find it tolerable?”

• US/NATO Is in the Grip of a Demonic Death-Wish (Edward Curtin)

Not wanting to sound hyperbolic, but I am starting to conclude that the nuclear madmen running the U.S./NATO New Cold War they started decades ago are itching to start a nuclear war with Russia. Their hypocrisy and nihilistic thirst for death and destruction are so extreme that it boggles my mind. They accuse Russia of starting a New Cold War when they did so decades ago and have been pushing the envelope ever since. Now they act shocked that Russia, after many years of patience, has struck back in Ukraine. In 2017, Oliver Stone released his four part interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Putin Interviews were conducted between 2015, the year after the US engineered the coup d’état in Ukraine installing Nazis to power in that country bordering Russia, and 2017.

Stone was of course bashed for daring to respectfully ask questions and receive answers from the Russian leader who the American media has always cast, like all the mythic bogeymen, as the new Hitler intent on conquering the world, when it is the United States, not Russia, that has over 750 military bases throughout the world and has attacked Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria – the list is endless. In his Putin interviews, Oliver Stone, a man of truth and honor, lets viewers catch a glimpse of the real Vladimir Putin and the matters that concern him as the leader of Russia. In 2018, I wrote of those interviews: . . . he [Putin] makes factual points that should ring loud and clear to anyone conversant with facts. One: that the US needs an external enemy (“I know that, I feel that.”).

Two: the U.S.A. engineered the coup d’état in the Ukraine on Russia’s border. Three: the US has surrounded Russia with US/NATO troops and bases armed with anti-ballistic missiles that can, as Putin rightly says to Stone, be converted in hours to regular offensive nuclear missile aimed at Russia. This is a factual and true statement that should make any fair-minded person stand up in horror. If Russia had such missiles encircling the United States from Cuba, Mexico, and Canada, what American would find it tolerable? What would CNN and The New York Times have to say? Yet these same people readily find it impossible to see the legitimacy in Russia’s position, resorting to name calling and illogical rhetoric. Russia is surrounded with US/NATO troops and missiles and yet Russia is the aggressor.

“The fascists in Ukraine are relatively few. But they have the guns and they will kill anyone who opposes them and their aims.”

• Zelensky And The Fascists (MoA)

On February 19, at the hight of the fire, Zelensky gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference. He prominently mentioned the Budapest Memorandum under which the Ukraine had given up the nuclear weapons it had inherited from the USSR*: “Since 2014, Ukraine has tried three times to convene consultations with the guarantor states of the Budapest Memorandum. Three times without success. Today Ukraine will do it for the fourth time. I, as President, will do this for the first time. But both Ukraine and I are doing this for the last time. I am initiating consultations in the framework of the Budapest Memorandum. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was commissioned to convene them. If they do not happen again or their results do not guarantee security for our country, Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt.”

One of the package decision Ukraine took in 1994 was the entering of Ukraine into the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Russia understood Zelensky’s remark in Munich as a threat by Ukraine to acquire nuclear weapons. It already has the expertise, materials and means to do that. A fascist controlled government with nukes on Russia’s border? This is not about Putin at all. No Russian government of any kind could ever condone that. I believe that this credible threat, together with the artillery preparations for a new war on Donbas, was what convinced Russia’s government to intervene by force. On February 22 Russia recognized the Donbas republics as independent states. On February 24 Russian troops crossed the borders into the Ukraine.

The aim set for the Russian military is to de-militarize the Ukraine and to de-nazify it. The first is easy to understand. The Russian military will simple destroy or disable all heavy weapons the Ukraine has. The second aim requires more explanation than the above interview with Dmytro Yarosh. As the Grayzone notes: “In November 2021, one of Ukraine’s most prominent ultra-nationalist militiamen, Dmytro Yarosh, announced that he had been appointed as an advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Yarosh is an avowed follower of the Nazi collaborator Bandera who led Right Sector from 2013 to 2015, vowing to lead the “de-Russification” of Ukraine.” The threats from the fascists make it impossible for any Ukrainian politician to implement a sane policy that would lead to peace in the country. The fascists in Ukraine are relatively few. But they have the guns and they will kill anyone who opposes them and their aims.

They have been put into important state positions. (Besides that oligarchs like Kolomoyskyy pay and use them for their own purposes.) The problem is that such ideological groups, once firmly established, tend to grow. The Right Sector is holding ‘patriotic’ summer camps for young Ukrainians and the Ukrainian state is financing those. They are successful and Ukrainian youths is looking up to them. These developments are what Russia is afraid off. As Patrick Armstrong wrote at the start of the current intervention: “What [Putin] is talking about is what the Soviet Union tried to do from 1933 onwards: namely to stop Hitler before he got started. This time Russia is able to do it by itself. In other words, Putin feels that he is making a pre-emptive attack to stop June 1941. This is very serious indeed and indicates that the Russians are going to keep going until they feel that they can safely stop.”

“That very second, we will view them as participants of the military conflict, and it would not matter what members they are..”

• Putin Will Declare War On Any Country Creating A Ukraine No-Fly Zone (ZH)

Ukraine’s President Zelensky and his top officials have over the past days been very openly urging a US and NATO imposed no-fly zone over the country, which would effectively bring American forces into a direct shooting war with Russia. On Saturday Russian President Putin issued a stern threat to any external power thinking about intervening by sending direct military forces. Putin made clear a no-fly zone would result in the Kremlin’s immediate declaration of war on any country intervening in such a way. The AP reported and translated his fresh comments made before civilian aviation industry members and pilots as follows: A no-fly-zone would spell war for any third party who tries to enforce one over Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has said. Speaking at a meeting with female pilots on Saturday, Putin said Russia would view “any move in this direction” as an intervention that “will pose a threat to our service members.”

“That very second, we will view them as participants of the military conflict, and it would not matter what members they are,” the Russian president said. Further he addressed the ratcheted up sanctions on Russia from the West, which are now serving to isolate Russia almost on levels akin to the US sanctions regimen on Iran – with of course the important exception that the US has not yet directly targeted Russian oil and gas exports. “Sanctions against us are like declaring war on Russia,” Putin said additionally in the meeting with military members. He further painted a positive picture of Russia’s strategy and military operations on the ground, at a moment many Western officials and pundits in the media have pointed out major problems for the invaders as Ukraine mounts a fierce ground resistance…

“The average annual income for an entire household in recent years hovered around $2,000. (Or about $38 a week — how’s that for a paycheck?)”

• When Ukraine Was Mightier Than China (Bivens)

When the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine’s nuclear inheritance was second only to Russia’s. It included more than 2,600 (!) tactical weapons (for battlefield use), more than 1,200 on ICBMs, and a nuclear-armed bomber force. It was an arsenal larger than the arsenals of China, the U.K. and France combined. Ukraine gave it all away. That was a more hopeful time; the Chernobyl power plant disaster in the 1980s had turned many there against all-things nuclear, and the weapons seemed like an expensive headache. They were handed over to Russia to decommission and dismantle. It seemed logical since Russia already held all of the command and control infrastructure, as well as all facilities to design and manufacture warheads, enrich uranium, and dismantle decommissioned weapons.

In exchange, Ukraine got the Budapest Memorandum, a 1994 document in which the United States and Russia pledged to respect Ukraine’s borders; to never use military force against Ukraine; and to initiate UN Security Council actions and other consultations if those pledges were ever breached. The memo fell short of a full treaty, was filed away and essentially never heard from again. Isn’t it funny how a formal document like this is now meaningless “because it’s not a treaty.” It was signed, in public ceremony, by top government leaders, as part of an incredibly solemn matter — Ukraine handing over all nuclear weapons in return for security guarantees. But it’s not a ratified treaty. So, oh well. Next time you sign something Ukraine, get a lawyer!

Contrast that with official attitudes toward a mere public assertion in 2008 — in paragraph 23 of what was basically a press release — that Ukraine will someday join NATO. That is not a treaty either, but somehow it’s worshipped like holy writ. It’s a press release summary of a meeting we Americans never voted on. Yet Washington’s more rabid foreign policy circles have long insisted upon it as a point of honor, and the White House refused to renounce it even unto the last days before the Russian invasion. In the years after Ukraine handed over its nuclear weapons, that poor nation became ever more dysfunctional, corrupt, chaotic. The average annual income for an entire household in recent years hovered around $2,000. (Or about $38 a week — how’s that for a paycheck?)

“If you want to hurt Putin a little, then save energy..”

• Germany Warns Against Ban On Energy Imports From Russia (DW)

Germany is currently still dependent on Russian fossil fuels, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Thursday. He spoke out against a ban on energy imports from Russia in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “I would not advocate an embargo on Russian imports of fossil fuels. I would even oppose it,” he said after meeting German business leaders. “We need these energy supplies to maintain the price stability and energy security in Germany,” Habeck added. A shortage in supply could threaten social cohesion in Germany, he warned. Habeck stressed Germany “must free ourselves” from imports of Russia’s gas, coal, and oil. In February, Germany stopped the controversial Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. It has since joined other European nations in introducing a raft of sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

Berlin even overturned its longstanding practice of blocking weapons exports to conflict zones. Habeck, however, said Germany has already begun to feel the effects of those decisions. “The impact of the sanctions and of the war on all sectors of the economy is so strong that we can fear a big impact,” Habeck said. The minister said any hopes that Europe’s largest economy would return to post-pandemic levels later this year were dashed. “We had hoped that we will experience an upswing this spring, a recovery phase. But now we have the consequences of the war,” he warned. Habeck urged consumers do their bit by reducing consumption. “If you want to hurt Putin a little, then save energy,” he said.

For the MSM, the narrative demands that Putin is an evil white supremacist. Never mind that it’s exactly what he’s fighting.

• ‘Key To White Survival’: How Putin Has Morphed Into A Far-right Savior (G.)

“Can we get a round of applause for Russia?” asked Nick Fuentes, on stage last week at a white nationalist event. Amid a roar of applause for the Russian president, just days after he invaded Ukraine, many attendees responded by shouting: “Putin! Putin!” It would be easy to dismiss the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC) in Orlando, Florida, as a radical fringe. But speeches by two Republican members of Congress – one in person, the other via video – guaranteed national attention and controversy. The backlash showed how the war in Ukraine has exposed the American far right’s affinity with Putin. That affinity is complicated by the tortured relationship between Russia and former president Donald Trump, whose rise Moscow supported with a covert operation to undermine US democracy.

Fuentes, a notorious antisemite, created AFPAC to coincide with the more mainstream Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where Trump was the headline speaker last Saturday. At AFPAC, Fuentes introduced the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who would this week interrupt the State of the Union address, rising to yell “Build the wall!” as an objection to Joe Biden’s immigration policy. But here she did not interrupt to object to the chanting of the Russian president’s name. “I don’t believe anyone should be canceled,” Taylor Greene told the attendees of the white nationalist conference. She lashed out at a wide range of topics from Marxism to cancel culture but avoided the invasion of Ukraine, saying even less on the topic than Russian state media.

Devin Burghart, executive director of Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, said: “In the world of the white nationalists, you are seeing a lot of support for Putin, as expressed by the cheerleading at AFPAC over the weekend.” Others agree, pointing to a shared socially and culturally conservative ideology, disdain for democratic systems and appreciation for a “strong man” form of government. There was also the fact that it was the current Ukrainian government whom Trump attempted – and failed – to bribe to investigate his political rival Biden: actions which led to his first impeachment.

But do they still?

• Most Already Had Robust Immunity (Girardot)

Collectively, research and the pharmaceutical industry has been making the same mistake on Covid-19 as these well-intended smart American airforce engineers did nearly 80 years ago. They have essentially focused on the wrong information, the non universal part of the genetic material of the virus, which has been found to mutate the most. In January 2020, SARS-Cov2 was rapidly sequenced (see illustration), and immediately the research community started investigating its novelty (the red dot areas). How was Covid-19 unique? and different from SARS-Cov1? What was its mode of action?… Naturally, research started focusing on the now infamous Spike protein, the foundation for these upcoming mRNA and viral vector vaccines.But everyone was oblivious of the elephant in the room: Covid-19 shares 65-82% genome with other Coronaviruses!

Why is this so critical? Roughly 21,000 nucleotides are shared between SARS-Cov2 and other HCovs. And mild forms of coronaviruses, common colds, are permanently circulating the planet and have been infecting people for centuries: Billions of people have had to gain immunity against the most immunogenic parts of this long string of common RNA. Past infections have had to act as “vaccination campaigns”, only with a universal stable material: immunising against COVID-19 even before it ever existed. The concept is well known: it’s a phenomenon called “Cross-immunity”.Working in biotech, I am a big believer in biotechnology and the future of mRNA/DNA vaccines, notably in the fight against cancer. And if one believes in mRNA vaccines for Covid; one necessarily needs to believe that past coronaviruses have already immunised a big part of the population. They are based on the same underlying immunological processes.

As I have already described in several articles, beyond the breadth of antigen targets (larger from natural immunity), the main difference currently between current vaccines and natural immunity is the fact that natural immunity provides not only systemic immunity – like vaccines – but also sterilising mucosal immunity for a limited period (<2yrs) – which the vaccines do not provide unfortunately. The most prominent and visible clinical evidence of that sterilising immunity was the wide pervasiveness of the asymptomatic population witnessed throughout the globe, notably in very dense regions like Asia and Africa. Indeed, density-induced incidence levels are so high that a form of permanent immunity seems to exist in these countries through the form of a mucosal sterilising immunity

Makary masks kids

How masks affect speech & language developement pic.twitter.com/2xn3snXp1X

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) March 5, 2022

“Is there a viable cause of action to stop any of this? I haven’t found it.”

• License to Kill (Steve Kirsch)

The most frustrating thing about this pandemic is that there is no doubt that the drug companies have killed over 150,000 Americans, yet nobody with authority to stop these vaccines wants to talk about the evidence. The vaccine program is done under the pretext of saving 10,000 lives (the Pfizer Phase 3 trial showed the drug saved approximately one COVID life for every 22,000 people fully vaccinated for the COVID variants existing over 1 year ago), but nobody really wants to look at the excess all-cause mortality caused by the vaccines (aka “the collateral damage”). Is there a viable cause of action to stop any of this? I haven’t found it. The law shields the drug companies, and everyone associated with the vaccination process from all liability. They basically have a license to kill.

The CDC should be criminally negligent for not recognizing the obvious safety signals. However, because they are an authority in the minds of the court, they can do no wrong. There is a “reasonable minds may differ” defense here and our courts believe that the CDC has reasonable minds. So how can there be negligence when reasonable minds don’t find a safety signal? It’s the perfect crime. You can literally get away with murder. People are being killed but nobody is being charged with a crime, AFAIK. Are there any district attorneys or state or federal prosecutors that can find a viable cause of action? The evidence of harm has been hiding in plain sight including:

An estimated reportable adverse event rate of 20% of those fully vaccinated (there are over 200M vaccinated, 1M VAERS reports and VAERS is at least 41X underreported)

An estimated death due to vaccine of over 150K Americans

Embalmers reporting up to 93% of cases have telltale blood clots associated with the vaccine

Blood before/after vaccination is visually very different

Rates of myocarditis as high as 2% (Monte Vista Christian School and a private conversation with a DoD doctor)

Rates of neurological damage as high as 4.5% (Israeli MOH survey).

A minimum of 30% (Peter Schirmacher’s study) to 93% (Bhakdi’s study) of deaths post vaccine attributed to the vaccine

A post-marketing survey disclosed by Pfizer consistent with the VAERS data reports

An estimate of deaths and URF by Joel Smalley using death data in Massachusetts that confirms earlier numbers (Joel calculated a URF of 41, matching mine exactly as well as a deaths per million doses (dpmd) of 945 which is even higher than the 411 dpmd calculated by Mathew Crawford).

The Skidmore paper, “How Many People Died from the Covid-19 Inoculations? An Estimate Based on a Survey of the United States Population,”

German insurance company data estimate done by Mathew Crawford yielding an estimate of 120,000 deaths in the US caused by the vaccines

Blood clots

“..the odds that bad things will happen goes up exponentially..”

• CDC Admits They Lied, And Granny Died (Denninger)

In fact we now have a very high level of evidence that the manufacturers, including specifically Pfizer and Moderna, gamed the trials by at least deliberate refusal to look. We know this because the trial in young people showed that protection goes negative within just a couple of months, that is, it makes you more likely rather than less to get infected. But the trials were designed only against symptomatic disease, they deliberately did not do surveillance testing on a regular (e.g. weekly) basis in the trial subjects to see if the shots were sterilizing and if they made infection more-likely in the first few weeks, they deliberately ignored or hid adverse events including deaths that were not reported where the public could see them and the doses were set inexplicably high which produced an antibody titer that, coincidentally, lasted the required three months to get the EUAs but were basically worthless or even enhanced infection by six months and the trial was….. coincidentally….. three months.

It was claimed this was not “gene therapy” yet the head pharmacy person from Bayer just said in public that it is, which of course we all knew if you had any sort of competence in reading anything because the jabs all were designed to be taken up into your cells and hijack their genetic machinery to make spike proteins. That’s gene therapy by definition yet if you say that on Twitter it gets your post restricted and if you say it on a Google ad-supported site or on Youtube it draws either a black ball ban on advertising or a strike on your channel — or even a ban. Yet it is absolutely true — and has always been true. The media won’t allow this to be discussed because they know damn well that the public perception is that gene therapy is a last resort sort of thing (e.g. if you have cancer) because it is dangerous and thus the public would refuse to take them.

Drug companies run trials for every single drug they produce. They are THE subject-matter experts in doing so because they have done it dozens or hundreds of times. This means they are in a perfect position to design trials to fit the test and if, in that environment, you give them a liability shield so they can’t be sued if they designed to the test and bad things happen the odds that bad things will happen goes up exponentially. I warned people repeatedly that I saw discontinuities in the public trial data — that is, intentional omissions that, were I trying to design an honest trial to prove that a given therapy was sterilizing and thus would increase public safety, not just personal safety, I would have included. I also pointed out that surveillance for adverse events, specifically full blood work before and after injections, would have almost-certainly detected the most-severe adverse events before the EUAs were issued and that work was intentionally not done because the “test” that the FDA set forth did not require it.

Chip Roy

Alarming… pic.twitter.com/jIJXvkAA1f

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) March 5, 2022

“If $20-30 trillion or more of global GDP spurns the preexisting reserve currency, is it still the reserve currency?”

• On the Cusp of an Economic Singularity (Doomberg)

The simple truth of a singularity applies whether it occurred in the past or will in the future: what transpires on the other side is unknowable from here. Given the horrific and still-unfolding events of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the West’s collective response to it, one can’t help but wonder whether we are on the cusp of an economic singularity in which the laws and bedrock beliefs that formed the foundation of international economic order for decades break down. The consequences are similarly unknowable, but we suspect a great reset may indeed be upon us. Even if a ceasefire is announced moments after we publish this piece, shocking damage to the global economic system has undoubtedly already been done and certain genies won’t easily be put back into their bottles.

Before proceeding, we should state clearly that what follows is not a critique of the Western response to the invasion but rather an assessment of the potential first- and second-order consequences of these historic moves, as well as speculation on where some of the harshest economic crises might manifest in the near future. While we join in the hope that these measures achieve their desired direct effect, there’s no denying these are truly unprecedented times. The most stunning move by the US and its allies was cutting off the Russian central bank’s access to most of its $630 billion of foreign reserves. Without access, one wonders if these funds are really “its” reserves at all? What is ownership without access? No matter how justified that move might seem today, there’s no escaping that this action will reverberate for years to come. In a blunt opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal titled “If Russian Currency Reserves Aren’t Really Money, the World Is in for a Shock,” reporter Jon Sindreu had this to say about how central banks everywhere must now view their reserves:

“Many economists have long equated this money to savings in a piggy bank, which in turn correspond to investments made abroad in the real economy. Recent events highlight the error in this thinking: Barring gold, these assets are someone else’s liability—someone who can just decide they are worth nothing. Last year, the IMF suspended Taliban-controlled Afghanistan’s access to funds and SDR. Sanctions on Iran have confirmed that holding reserves offshore doesn’t stop the U.S. Treasury from taking action. As New England Law Professor Christine Abely points out, the 2017 settlement with Singapore’s CSE TransTel shows that the mere use of the dollar abroad can violate sanctions on the premise that some payment clearing ultimately happens on U.S. soil.” In for a shock, indeed.

In essence, Sindreu’s piece argues that this move substantially increases the risk that the US dollar loses its privileged status as the global reserve currency and, at a minimum, likely ensures a polarization of the global economy into at least two camps – the West in one and Russia/China/Iran/Saudi Arabia plus other targeted or aligned countries in the other. If $20-30 trillion or more of global GDP spurns the preexisting reserve currency, is it still the reserve currency? If reserves can be negated overnight, are they even reserves? How many other countries must hedge against the possibility of similar sanctions? Should we add India to the list?

And you thought you were rid of him…

Convoy

Has your favorite news outlet been covering this massive US convoy, or nah??#thepeoplesconvoy pic.twitter.com/dUhFmdSOvE

— Ivory Hecker (@IvoryHecker) March 6, 2022

Celente

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Debt Rattle March 5 2022

Mar 052022

March 5, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:42 am Finance Tagged with: cheerleaders, fertilizer, food cycle collapse, NATO, neo nazis, no fly zone, Putin, WEF, Zelensky 44 Responses »

Vincent van Gogh On the outskirts of Paris 1887

• Russia “Recommends” Fertilizer Makers To Halt All Exports (ZH)

• No More Russian Dressing For You! (Jim Kunstler)

• Ukraine’s NATO Membership ‘Will Not Take Place’: German Chancellor (ET)

• Zelensky Slams NATO Over Refusing To Implement No-fly Zone Over Ukraine (Hill)

• How Ukraine’s Jewish President Zelensky Made Peace With Neo-Nazis (GZ)

• Zelenskyy Losing Ground (CTH)

• Zelenskyy Is Tied To Klaus Schwab, Justin Trudeau, And Other Global Elites (LSN)

• Bill Clinton Relaunching Clinton Global Initiative (Fox)

• Western Media Are Acting As Cheerleaders For War (Cook)

• War-Profiteering Gangsters Will Kill Us All Unless We Unite (Roger Waters)

• Grave New World: The Soft Tyranny of Tomorrow (Charles)

Really?

Ukrainian family
https://twitter.com/i/status/1499915842477248515

Where’s Tony Fauci?

Where's Tony Fauci? pic.twitter.com/lN43XmijxH

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) March 5, 2022

@RT_com’s account has been withheld in Portugal, Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Germany, Greece, Romania, Netherlands, Bulgaria, Austria, Luxembourg, Latvia, Denmark, Lithuania, Croatia, Estonia, Cyprus, France, Spain, Belgium in response to a legal demand.

Here’s our real problem. $1,000 monthly grocery bills.

“Complete food cycle collapse”.

Watch the bottom video.

• Russia “Recommends” Fertilizer Makers To Halt All Exports (ZH)

Those who have it, are no longer giving it away, and those that don’t will soon find themselves in the middle of an epic food crisis. Just hours after we reported that Russia effectively banned exports of fertilizers, moments ago Hungary – one of Europe’s most grain rich nations – has circled the wagons and realizing which way the wind is blowing, just announced that it will banning all grain exports effective immediately, in a statement . Expect wheat prices, already at record highs, to promptly double from here in the next few weeks as the world realizes the extent of the global food crisis that is coming. Our suggestion: buy flour, rice, barley and any other grains you can now, rather than waiting one month to buy them because you have to.

This morning we listed some of the countries that are dangerously (and almost exclusively) reliant on Russia and Ukraine for their wheat imports, highlighting Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia and others… which are facing an “Arab Spring” style food crisis (and potential uprising) in the coming weeks unless the Ukraine conflict is resolved. And unfortunately, we can now confidently predict that the coming food crisis will strike every country that is using food fertilizer – which is all – because moments ago, Russian Interfax reported that as part of Moscow’s countersanctions, Russia has recommended fertilizer makers to halt exports, a move which will sent not only fertilizer prices orbitally higher, but all food prices will soon follow.

*RUSSIA RECOMMENDS FERTILIZER MAKERS TO HALT EXPORTS: IFX *RUSSIAN MINISTRY CITES LOGISTICS ISSUES ON FERTILIZERS: IFX. Worse still, natural gas is required in the manufacturing process for most nitrogen/fertilizer products and so the recent surge in European NatGas prices to record highs will only exacerbate the cost of fertilizer from any halt from Russia… all hell is about to break loose not only among food producers, but soon, in your local grocery store once US consumers realize that food prices are about to double, triple and x-ple more

Complete food cycle collapse

"The price of #wheat between now and the end of the year is going to quadruple."

"China is facing a complete food cycle collapse…" pic.twitter.com/1alpMHZsa6

— Real Vision (@RealVision) March 4, 2022

“Covid-19? A mega-crime of mass homicide spawned by a matrix of pharmaceutical racketeers, corrupt government officials, and accomplice news organizations.”

• No More Russian Dressing For You! (Jim Kunstler)

Who in the US government, from our founding in 1789 to 1991 — while Ukraine was part of Russia in one way or another — gave a passing thought to Ukraine? Answer: nobody. And then, after the crack-up of the USSR, Ukraine was “in play,” culminating in the 2014 CIA-sponsored “color revolution” that ousted then-president Viktor Yanukovych, who was inclined to join Russia’s Eurasian Customs Union of trade relations rather than the US wished-for NATO or EU. And ever since then it has been one American intrigue after another — including a brisk trade in grift and bribery by the Biden family, the Clinton syndicate, the next-gen of Kerrys, and other entitled elites from over here selling their influence.

And now the economic sanctions on Russia, which are sure to blow back on the countries issuing them. Europe has to pretend that it doesn’t need Russian oil and gas, that it doesn’t need cheap uranium to run their nuke power plants, that they don’t need the Baikonur Cosmodrome to launch their satellites, and so on. More likely, these moves will accelerate the collapse of Western Civ’s banking system, stock and bond markets, and erode the US dollar’s role as the global reserve currency — a longstanding “exorbitant privilege” for getting stuff from all over the world in exchange for promises to pay some Tuesday in the distant future. The reader may ask: why does this blog appear to take Russia’s side in the current conflict against the US and our supposed allies?

Answer: Why would you trust a government (ours) and its captive news media after years of their blatant lying and tyrannical over-reach? These parties appear to be at war against their own people, that is, against us — certainly more than Russia is. Especially in the historic moment when all our mendacious “narratives” are being exposed as false? Russian Collusion? Indictments underway and more to follow. Covid-19? A mega-crime of mass homicide spawned by a matrix of pharmaceutical racketeers, corrupt government officials, and accomplice news organizations. Stolen elections? Don’t, for Gawd’s sake, even try looking at the slime trail of evidence. I won’t bother listing the many transgressions of Wokery against our culture and history. And all of sudden, it appears a lot of American citizens have had enough of being fucked around. I’m with them.

Now consider this: What if it turns out that Russia can complete its Cleanup-in-Aisle-Four operation relatively quickly, with a minimized loss of life and damage to the everyday infrastructure of Ukraine, and arrange things there afterward so that Ukraine is not a menace to anyone, either Russia or the West? I sincerely believe this is their intention — just as I sincerely believe that their leadership is actually sane, and ours appears not to be. Perhaps Russia will even offer Ukraine (or its re-arranged regions) assistance in recovering from the foolishness it played along with to its own sorrow? What if Russia actually has no intention of starting World War Three? Will we keep trying to start it anyway?

Or EU.

• Ukraine’s NATO Membership ‘Will Not Take Place’: German Chancellor (ET)

Ukraine’s membership is not on The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)’s agenda, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Friday. “I also made it clear in Moscow and in my visit that this option [Ukraine’s membership of NATO] is not on the table and will not take place,” he said during an interview with German public broadcaster ZDF. “I said publicly that we all know that Ukraine’s NATO membership is not on the alliance’s agenda today,” he added. “That was understood by the American president, that [was] also understood by the French president.” Scholz said he shares Russian President Vladimir Putin’s security concern and clarified to Putin that Ukraine will not be allowed to join NATO.

“The Russians were worried about the control issue of their security. [Putin was worried] that NATO has a military setup and rockets in Ukraine targeting Russian territory. That is why we tried to make it clear that this will not occur,” he elaborated. Ukraine’s pursuit of NATO membership appeared to be one of the core disputes that caused the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. In February 2019, then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a constitutional amendment committing the country to becoming a member of NATO and the European Union after the parliament passed the bill. Poroshenko told the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine days after he signed the amendment that joining NATO was a guarantee of security for Ukraine.

On the Russian side, Putin says Russia needs to lay down “red lines” to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO saying that Ukraine’s growing ties with the alliance could make it a launchpad for NATO missiles targeted at Russia. The United States and other Ukraine alliances have tried to avoid war by deescalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine. However, the Kremlin criticized the United States and NATO for failing to address the fundamental security concerns of Moscow, demanding that NATO stop its eastward expansion and that strike weapons not be deployed near Russia’s borders.

No-fly zone equals WWIII. Someone would have to shoot down Russian planes. Ukraine has no planes to do it with.

• Zelensky Slams NATO Over Refusing To Implement No-fly Zone Over Ukraine (Hill)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday slammed NATO as being “weak” and “underconfident” for refusing to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine as his country fights in “the worst invasion since World War II.” In a Facebook video shared and translated by Axios on Friday, Zelensky said Ukrainians have fought fearlessly against Russians invading their country — and will continue to — but have been thrown into “nine days of darkness” without assistance from NATO. “Knowing that new strikes and casualties are inevitable, NATO deliberately decided not to close the sky over Ukraine,” Zelensky said in an emotional video address. The president urged NATO to think about “all those people who will die because of you.”

“Because of your weakness, because of your disunity, all the alliance has managed to do so far is to carry fifty tons of diesel fuel for Ukraine,” he said. “Is this the alliance you were building?” A no-fly zone, implemented to prohibit enemy aircraft from flying into a region and attacking, would cut off Russian air support and blunt the advance of Russian troops toward Kyiv. The Biden administration, along with the NATO security alliance, has so far rebuffed Ukrainian calls to establish a no-fly zone over fears that it could spark a direct military confrontation between the U.S. and Russia. “It would require, essentially, the U.S. military shooting down Russian planes and prompting a potential direct war with Russia, the exact step that we want to avoid,” press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Thursday.

In his video address, Zelensky disputed the fact that it would result in a direct confrontation between NATO countries and Russia, calling it “self-hypnosis.” “I do not know how you can protect and whether you can protect NATO countries,” Zelensky said. “You will not be able to buy us off with liters of fuel for liters of our blood.” NATO is adamantly opposed to dragging out a large-scale war in Europe. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said “the only way to implement a no-fly zone is to send NATO fighter planes into Ukrainian airspace, and then impose that no-fly zone by shooting down Russian planes.” “We understand the desperation, but we also believe that if we did that, we would end up with something that could end in a full-fledged war in Europe,” the NATO chief continued.

“..Russian troops bear down on cities like Mariupol, which is effectively under the control of the Azov Battalion..”

• How Ukraine’s Jewish President Zelensky Made Peace With Neo-Nazis (GZ)

Back in October 2019, as the war in eastern Ukraine dragged on, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Zolote, a town situated firmly in the “gray zone” of Donbas, where over 14,000 had been killed, mostly on the pro-Russian side. There, the president encountered the hardened veterans of extreme right paramilitary units keeping up the fight against separatists just a few miles away. Elected on a platform of de-escalation of hostilities with Russia, Zelensky was determined to enforce the so-called Steinmeier Formula conceived by then-German Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier which called for elections in the Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. In a face-to-face confrontation with militants from the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion who had launched a campaign to sabotage the peace initiative called “No to Capitulation,” Zelensky encountered a wall of obstinacy.

With appeals for disengagement from the frontlines firmly rejected, Zelensky melted down on camera. “I’m the president of this country. I’m 41 years old. I’m not a loser. I came to you and told you: remove the weapons,” Zelensky implored the fighters. Once video of the stormy confrontation spread across Ukrainian social media channels, Zelensky became the target of an angry backlash. Andriy Biletsky, the proudly fascist Azov Battalion leader who once pledged to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen,” vowed to bring thousands of fighters to Zolote if Zelensky pressed any further. Meanwhile, a parliamentarian from the party of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko openly fantasized about Zelensky being blown to bits by a militant’s grenade.

Though Zelensky achieved a minor disengagement, the neo-Nazi paramilitaries escalated their “No Capitulation” campaign. And within months, fighting began to heat up again in Zolote, sparking a new cycle of violations of the Minsk Agreement. By this point, Azov had been formally incorporated into the Ukrainian military and its street vigilante wing, known as the National Corps, was deployed across the country under the watch of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, and alongside the National Police. In December 2021, Zelensky would be seen delivering a “Hero of Ukraine” award to a leader of the fascistic Right Sector in a ceremony in Ukraine’s parliament. A full-scale conflict with Russia was approaching, and the distance between Zelensky and the extremist paramilitaries was closing fast.

[..] Hours before President Putin’s February 24 speech declaring denazification as the goal of Russian operations, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “asked how a people who lost eight million of its citizens fighting Nazis could support Nazism,” according to the BBC. Raised in a non-religious Jewish family in the Soviet Union during the 1980’s, Zelensky has downplayed his heritage in the past. “The fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults,” he joked during a 2019 interview in which he declined to go into further detail about his religious background. Today, as Russian troops bear down on cities like Mariupol, which is effectively under the control of the Azov Battalion, Zelensky is no longer ashamed to broadcast his Jewishness. “How could I be a Nazi?” he wondered aloud during a public address. For a US media engaged in an all-out information war against Russia, the president’s Jewish background has become an essential public relations tool.

“..two attempts may have involved anvils dropping from cliffs, though one of them could have been a piano.”

• Zelenskyy Losing Ground (CTH)

Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reportedly survived three, yes three, assassination attempts in the past 48 hours, per Fox News and Lindsey Graham’s BFF, Sean Hannity. According to U.S. officials, a shadowy Kremlin-linked squad known as the Wagner Group, were behind the objective. While details from the U.S. intelligence community are sketchy, two attempts may have involved anvils dropping from cliffs, though one of them could have been a piano. The third attempt appears loosely connected to the notorious Acme TNT gang who have been directly linked to Wile E Coyote; a dubious conspirator currently being investigated by Interpol.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration, along with the NATO security alliance, has rejected Zelenskyy’s demands to establish a no-fly zone over fears that it could spark a direct military confrontation between the U.S. and Russia. This has angered the modern Churchill in a T-shirt, who railed against NATO after the last refusal: WASHINGTON DC – […] “Knowing that new strikes and casualties are inevitable, NATO deliberately decided not to close the sky over Ukraine,” Zelensky said in an emotional video address. The president urged NATO to think about “all those people who will die because of you.”

“Because of your weakness, because of your disunity, all the alliance has managed to do so far is to carry fifty tons of diesel fuel for Ukraine,” he said. “Is this the alliance you were building?” (read more) Meanwhile, the 20-mile-long Russian convoy of heavy equipment that was a few miles outside of Kyiv a week ago, is still a 20-mile-long Russian convoy of heavy equipment that is still a few miles outside of Kyiv. The Washington Post is now reporting, tomorrow a 20-mile-long Russian convoy of heavy equipment will be located just a few miles outside of Kyiv.

“..Kaleniuk is not just a journalist, but a member of the WEF and runs initiatives backed by Soros throughout Eastern Europe.”

• Zelenskyy Is Tied To Klaus Schwab, Justin Trudeau, And Other Global Elites (LSN)

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stated that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was one of the reasons he got into politics. After leaving his career as a comedian and entertainer and becoming Ukraine’s president in April 2019, Zelenskyy hailed Trudeau as “one of those leaders who inspired” him “to join politics,” when he became Ukraine’s president in 2019. While Zelenskyy has shot to stardom from relative obscurity from the perspective of the West since the Russo-Ukrainian conflict became international news last week, his admiration for Trudeau comes as less of a surprise when looking into his background.

Like Trudeau, Zelenskyy is an acolyte of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum, the globalist organization behind the now-infamous “Great Reset” agenda, which tells the world that by the year 2030, “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.” The ubiquitous support for Zelenskyy by the elite, including support from “defund the police” and Black Lives Matter leftist mega-donor George Soros, Trudeau, American President Joe Biden, and all sides of mainstream media, has led many to question the true motivation behind the West’s condemnation of Russia and a concern that a push for yet another foreign war involving the West is underfoot.

On Tuesday, for example, Ukrainian journalist Daria Kaleniuk made an emotional demand to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, asking him to instruct NATO to enter the war in Ukraine. After the event was praised in Western media, reports surfaced showing that Kaleniuk is not just a journalist, but a member of the WEF and runs initiatives backed by Soros throughout Eastern Europe. While many are skeptical of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his former ties to the KGB, scrutiny of the other side of the conflict seems absent in mainstream outlets which has worried many considering the radical nature of the WEF and their Great Reset goals.

The zenith of cynicism?

• Bill Clinton Relaunching Clinton Global Initiative (Fox)

Amid the Russian war on Ukraine and the coronavirus, former President Bill Clinton announced Friday that the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) is resuming full operations after largely shuttering in early 2017. Clinton made the announcement in an open letter in which he also announced a meeting in New York City in September for members of the “CGI community.” He said the pandemic and the Russian war on Ukraine are the two major events that spurred him to bring back the initiative that’s been effectively dormant for years. “The COVID-19 pandemic has ripped the cover off of longstanding inequities and vulnerabilities across our global community,” Clinton said.

“The existential threat of climate change grows every day. Democracy is under assault around the world, most glaringly in Ukraine where Russia has launched an unjustified and unprovoked invasion that has put millions of lives in grave danger.” The CGI faced scrutiny during former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign for its significant international donations – which some said could create conflicts of interest. Clinton lost the 2016 election, but the Clintons still followed through on mass layoffs of their foundation’s employees in January 2017. “A new chapter of the Clinton Global Initiative is beginning,” a video teasing the restart of the charitable effort said Friday. “And the need for cooperation and coordination has never been more urgent.”

Well, that’s news…

• Western Media Are Acting As Cheerleaders For War (Cook)

Britain and other European states have chosen to fuel the fires of resistance in Ukraine by sending it weapons that can only lead to greater loss of life, especially of civilians caught in the crossfire. One might have expected the British media to examine the ethical implications of such a policy, and the hypocrisy. But not a bit of it. In fact, much of the media have not only been acting as lobbyists for more weapons to be sent to the Ukrainian army, they have whipped up support for civilians in the UK to get more involved in the fighting. That has been the case even after No 10 distanced itself from comments by Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, that Britons should be encouraged to volunteer for Ukraine’s so-called “international legions”, supposedly to defend Europe.

Her position was in conflict with usual government practice, which has treated those heading off to fight in war zones in the Middle East as terrorists. Shamima Begum, who went to Syria aged 15, has been stripped of her British citizenship and denied the right to return for doing what Truss has proposed in Ukraine. Nonetheless, that did not dissuade the BBC from travelling to Essex to meet “Wozza”, a supplier of surplus British army kit he has been selling cheaply to Ukrainians in Britain so they can head off to the battlefront. Wozza was shown tearing off Union Jack insignia from uniforms so Ukrainian militiamen could use them.

Compare that with the treatment of an entirely peaceful form of resistance by westerners in solidarity with the Palestinians, the international Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) movement. It has been treated as barely better than terrorism, with bans on support for BDS across Europe and the US. It is hard to remember in all the media agitation over Ukraine that this sympathetic coverage flies in the face of its reporting conventions. It is inconceivable, of course, that Britain would ever send arms to help, for example, Gaza liberate itself. For that reason, the media will never have the opportunity to exercise their vocal chords in outrage at such a development.

“That, of course means standing with the Russian people and the Ukrainian people, the Palestinian people, the Syrian people, the Lebanese people, the Kurds, African Americans, Mexicans, Ecuadorian rainforest dwellers, South African miners, Armenians, Greeks, the Inuit, the Mapuche and my neighbors the Shinnecock, to name but a few.”

• War-Profiteering Gangsters Will Kill Us All Unless We Unite (Roger Waters)

I figured something out after tossing and turning all night. We on the left often make the mistake of still looking upon Russia as a somewhat socialist enterprise. Of course, it isn’t. The Soviet Union ended in 1991. Russia is an unadulterated neoliberal capitalist gangster’s paradise, modelled during the time of its horrific restructuring under Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999) on the United States of America. It should come as no surprise that its autocratic, and possibly unhinged leader, Vladimir Putin, has no more respect for the UN Charter and international law than recent presidents of the United States or prime ministers of England have had. (For example, remember George W. Bush and Tony Blair during the Iraq invasion.) I, on the other hand, do care about international law and the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and can unequivocally state that if I had been eligible to vote in the General Assembly on March 2, I would have voted with the 141 ambassadors who supported the resolution condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and demanding that it withdraw its armed forces.

Would that mean the General Assembly had a mandate to govern, sadly it doesn’t, which means it’s even more beholden on all us freedom-loving, law-abiding anti-war activists to stand shoulder to shoulder with all our brothers and sisters all over the world, irrespective of race, religion, or nationality, in pursuit of elusive peace. That, of course means standing with the Russian people and the Ukrainian people, the Palestinian people, the Syrian people, the Lebanese people, the Kurds, African Americans, Mexicans, Ecuadorian rainforest dwellers, South African miners, Armenians, Greeks, the Inuit, the Mapuche and my neighbors the Shinnecock, to name but a few.

Hmmm. Moderna’s 70% shareprice loss is real. Their realm looks over. Same with Pfizer. See: Thomas Renz, Edward Dowd.

• Grave New World: The Soft Tyranny of Tomorrow (Charles)

The Frankfurt School predecessor and Marxist author Walter Benjamin was fascinated by the curious transformations of capitalism from the mid-to-late 1800s, when Marx wrote, to the early 20th century of Benjamin’s day. In the industrial era Marx observed, commodities were primarily viewed as raw materials and basic goods. Marx focused on production. By Benjamin’s time commodities had been transformed into “objects of consumption.” Objects of desire, in other words. Benjamin had discovered something: consumerism had been born as a primary driver of capitalist production. Commodity fetishism had fundamentally changed, coming to resemble the consumption-driven manias we see today. Benjamin’s biographer called the evolving commodity fetishism, “a delusional expression of collective utopian fantasies and longings.”

With the advent of advertising, consumer packaged goods lifted capitalism to new heights. Benjamin witnessed a sea-change. And yet what has happened since Benjamin’s death in 1940 has been nearly as convulsive as that which the German philosopher saw. The pandemic has illustrated the value of two very basic functions of modern consumer capitalism that evolved after Benjamin: one is planned obsolescence and the other is artificial need. The former is most evident in the cycle of vaccinations that have descended on the population. First, it was two doses of a single vaccine. Once it was shown that protection waned quickly, and the vaccine neither prevented infection nor provided enduring immunity–both promised by authorities in the run-up to the rollout–a further booster shot was introduced.

In some cases, Israel for example, two boosters were recommended, the final one belatedly shown to be barely effective. Big Pharma likely knew this was going to happen. The other vaccine targeting a respiratory virus, the flu shot, provides only modest protection. Non-sterilizing vaccines are said to wane rapidly in their efficacy for a variety of reasons. Some would also argue that these vaccines have created an artificial need as well, for healthy people. The overall Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) is less than one percent, raising the question of why there has been such a push to immunize the world against such a mild respiratory virus. Big Pharma was well aware of this, too, but happily sponsored mainstream media stories that ratcheted up popular fears to the level of hysteria and mass hypochondria.

It is no surprise that a rolling calendar of immunizations is being introduced for the global population. Pfizer has noted profits of $18 billion in 2021 and projects $34 billion in 2022. Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are likewise in the pink. Some 37 vaccinations are already on the books for healthy children. Endless upgrades and novel technologies are introduced that obsolete previous versions. Payments to biddable media outlets ensure artificial needs are generated to provide a large consumer market.

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