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Debt Rattle July 27 2024

Jul 272024
 
 July 27, 2024  Posted by at 8:34 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  42 Responses »


Vasily Polenov Christ among the teachers (doctors) 1896

 

• Harris Coronation Demonstrates America’s Democratic Deficit (Manley)
• Trump Slams ‘Politicized’ FBI (RT)
• FBI Wrong About Assassination Attempt – Trump’s Doctor (RT)
• Saving Our Democracy (Kunstler)
• Trump Vs the Deep State: Would Former President Shift US Foreign Policy? (Sp.)
• Pompeo Tries to Hijack Trump’s Peace Push (Sp.)
• Secret Service Opted Out of Drone Surveillance Before Trump Shooting (Sp.)
• Zelensky Now Wants Peace, Or Rather Another Piece Of The Action (SCF)
• Zaluzhny’s Message Pleasing For Western Elites, Terrifying For Ukrainians (RT)
• Von der Leyen’s Legacy (Dionísio)
• To Hell With The Will Of The People (RMX)
• Netanyahu Angry After Meeting With Vice President Harris (ZH)
• China Throws Clout Behind Palestine (Pepe Escobar)
• Russian Central Bank Hikes Interest Rate To 18% (RT)

 

 

 

 

Border czar

 

 

Ben Carson
https://twitter.com/i/status/1816526225659019296


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Willie Brown

 

 

 

 

“We are now – the Democratic Party – going to have a presidential nominee who nobody voted for to be president.” “There’s not one voter anywhere in the country this year or in 2020 who said ‘I want Kamala Harris..”

• Harris Coronation Demonstrates America’s Democratic Deficit (Manley)

Over the weekend, US President Joe Biden bowed out of this year’s presidential race and in the same swift move endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris while transferring his campaign funds to her. While the VP is not the official Democratic nominee, many Democratic lawmakers and elites have already endorsed her candidacy. A recent article by activist and former Green Party vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka considers the Democratic Party’s substitution of Kamala Harris as its presumptive presidential nominee and the development’s significance within the US political system. “The gangster move by the oligarchs that control the Democrats stripped away any pretense that any real structures of democracy exist in that party,” Baraka suggests. The article argues that special interests appear to hold sufficient power to remove a presidential nominee and quickly fill that role with whomever they choose.

On Thursday, writer and activist Margaret Kimberley joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program to discuss the current crisis of democracy in the US as well as Nicaragua’s struggle against US intervention as they recently celebrate 45 years since the Sandinista revolution, which ushered in a government the United States deems to be undemocratic. “If this happened anywhere else in the world, we’d call it a banana republic,” Kimberly said of Joe Biden’s replacement. “We’d say it was authoritarianism. We’d say it’s not democratic. All of those things apply here, except we’re talking about this country. We see how undemocratic the system is, how undemocratic the Democratic Party is.” “They pushed Biden through, they rigged it for him four years ago. They lied about his health for the past four years. Told us not to believe our lying eyes when we could see his declining state of health.”

“And when they saw the failure of their plan, they unceremoniously shoved him under the bus. They have anointed Kamala Harris. Everybody fell into line. Millions of dollars for her campaign and all because rich donors, the people that Ajamu points out really run the Democratic Party, had a change of mind about who the nominee ought to be,” she concluded. Baraka argues that for nearly two years, it seemed obvious that “Biden would not be a credible candidate in 2024 due to his noticeable cognitive decline and the ineptitude of his administration”. Baraka suggested Biden was coerced into taking part in a debate against Trump in order to hasten his removal as the Democratic Party candidate. “They knew they could not go forward with him and they went along with this early debate to try to speed up the process and get rid of him before the convention,” Kimberley suggested. “I also believe they thought Trump would be out because of all these criminal charges.

I think they thought Trump would be out. He either wouldn’t run again or that Republican voters would turn to someone else, and they would be running against a Republican with less of Trump’s popularity.” “But, all of this happened because of corruption. And I think that’s the way we should discuss it, that these are the people who run everything, and the last thing they want is for the voters to have a choice,” she argued. “We are now – the Democratic Party – going to have a presidential nominee who nobody voted for to be president.” “There’s not one voter anywhere in the country this year or in 2020 who said ‘I want Kamala Harris,’” Kimberley emphasized. “Despite misgivings that many Democratic voters have about her, they’re going to go along,” she claimed. “The panic, the fear of a Republican victory, a Trump victory no less, is something that most Democrats will just get behind. So I think she has a chance to win, especially with the money, the corporate media, and all Democratic politicians being behind her.”

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He doesn’t accuse them (yet) of plotting the shooting.

• Trump Slams ‘Politicized’ FBI (RT)

Former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has slammed the Federal Bureau of Investigation as being politicized and incompetent at its job. Testifying before Congress on Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said he wasn’t sure whether Trump had been hit by a bullet or something else at a campaign rally two weeks ago. “I think with respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s [a] bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,” Wray told the lawmakers. Wray was unsure about the bullet but seemed sure that President Joe Biden was physically and cognitively fine, until Biden dropped out of the race, Trump said in a post on his platform Truth Social, late on Thursday. “That’s why he knows nothing about the terrorists and other criminals pouring into our country at record levels,” Trump continued. “His only focus is destroying J6 Patriots, raiding Mar-a-Lago, and saving Radical Left Lunatics, like the ones now in DC burning American flags and spray painting over our great National Monuments – with zero retribution.”

”No wonder the once storied FBI has lost the confidence of America!” the former president added. Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered in Washington on Wednesday to protest the address to Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Some of them publicly burned the American flag, while others defaced several monuments with pro-Hamas slogans. The FBI rounded up thousands of Trump supporters who protested outside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, as Republicans tried to object to declaring Biden the winner of the 2020 election, citing numerous irregularities. In August 2022, the agency raided Trump’s Florida residence in search of classified documents. The Supreme Court later ruled that prosecuting him for official acts was unconstitutional. The Mar-a-Lago raid and the crackdown on January 6 protesters were repeatedly brought up as reasons why local and state law enforcement around the US no longer trusts the FBI, according to a report compiled by a group of current and former agents.

The Bureau is increasingly viewed “as a partisan federal agency motivated by a political agenda,” said the report, which was presented to Congress earlier this week. Insisting that Wray was “wrong,” Trump said it was indeed a bullet that had nicked his ear at the Butler, Pennsylvania rally. “There was no glass, there was no shrapnel,” Trump posted, adding that the FBI “never even checked” into it. The idea that Trump may have been injured by something else, or not at all, has been a popular conspiracy theory among Democrats online. Some people have claimed that he faked the ear injury, while others speculated that a shard from the teleprompter broke off and nicked the presidential candidate. Such rumors have persisted even though a New York Times photographer captured the bloodied bullet as it streaked past Trump and into the crowd behind him.

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“..there is no evidence that it was anything other than a bullet,” and that “Director Wray is wrong and inappropriate to suggest anything else.”

• FBI Wrong About Assassination Attempt – Trump’s Doctor (RT)

The New York Times and Donald Trump’s personal physician have both concluded that the former president was struck by a bullet, and not “shrapnel” as FBI Director Christopher Wray suggested. In testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Wray told lawmakers that “there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that, you know, hit [Trump’s] ear” when a gunman opened fire on Trump at a campaign rally earlier this month. Wray’s statement appeared to validate theories circulating online since the shooting, which claimed that Trump was stricken by a piece of broken glass from his teleprompter rather than the would-be assassin’s bullet. After venting at Wray on his Truth Social platform on Friday, Trump shared a letter from his physician, Ronny Jackson, who stated that “there is no evidence that it was anything other than a bullet,” and that “Director Wray is wrong and inappropriate to suggest anything else.”

“Having served as an Emergency Medicine physician for over 20 years in the United States Navy…I have treated many gunshot wounds in my career,” Jackson noted. In an article published later on Friday, the New York Times concurred with Jackson. “A detailed analysis of bullet trajectories, footage, photos and audio by The New York Times strongly suggests Mr. Trump was grazed by the first of eight bullets fired by the gunman,” the newspaper stated. A 3D model of the rally grounds plus a “trajectory analysis show that the bullet traveled in a straight line from the gunman to the bleachers, clipping Mr. Trump on its path. This suggests the bullet was not deflected by first striking an object that would have then sprayed Mr. Trump with debris,” the newspaper explained.

The gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, killed one spectator and injured two others before he was shot dead by Secret Service snipers. Before he was led away from the stage by Secret Service agents, Trump rose to his feet and pumped his fist in the air, his ear visibly bleeding and his face streaked with blood. In the days after the shooting, Republicans fiercely criticized the Secret Service for failing to secure Crooks’ rooftop vantage point, despite it being around 150 meters from the stage where Trump stood, and for apparently disregarding reports of an armed Crooks crawling around on the roof minutes before opening fire. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday, a day after telling the Oversight Committee that she took responsibility for the “most significant operational failure at the Secret Service in decades.” “The biggest mistake they made is allowing me to go,” Trump told Fox News on Thursday “They shouldn’t have let me go on the stage. Different groups of people knew there was some nut job on the roof.”

Bullet?!

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“Joe Biden” will go down in history as the worst of all 46 US presidents.”

• Saving Our Democracy (Kunstler)

However it happened this week, “Joe Biden” passed the blowtorch to a new generation and got himself gone from the political battlefield. Delegates to the coming Democratic National Convention (August 19) were duly notified of the selected replacement, Veep Kamala Harris, and ordered to line up behind her. Not a peep of disagreement was heard among them. Amazing that no one had a different idea. Thus, is democracy saved. The curious details around this event remain shrouded in mystery. Reporters for The New York Times and the WashPo could not be bothered to inquire, and their readers are not inclined to ask how all this came to be. It just is. In a culture with no sense of consequence, things just happen or un-happen. It is your duty to recognize that the wind now blows from another direction and bend with it. One thing was obvious: the long-running prank of pretending that President “Joe Biden” is sound-of-mind fell apart after his mortifying appearance on the debate stage June 27th.

Apparently, every last captain and foot-soldier in the Democratic Party ranks was taken completely by surprise to see their champion flicker out in real time, like a forty-watt bulb that has done years of duty on the front porch and suddenly leaves you in the dark. Three weeks followed with “Joe Biden” boldly campaigning as if nothing had happened. (Perhaps his mind did not register that things had changed.) And then there was the weird tweet on “X” Sunday afternoon when the whole country was outside waterskiing, grilling weiners, carjacking, and yelling at ballparks, and the deed was done. Someone, possibly even “Joe Biden” himself, wrote a letter pasted into the tweet that declared he was bowing out of the race.

The White House staff didn’t even know until it was up-and-posted. Rumor had it that Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama read the riot act to “JB”, who was refusing to follow the script. There were plenty of carrots-and-sticks to finally lever his obdurate ass into motion: not least must have involved any pending legal outcome of the family’s influence-peddling operations, whispers of new whistleblower accusations about offshore bank accounts, perhaps with sweeteners in the deal as to how much schwag the clan could still hold onto in the end.

Then, the valedictory speech on Wednesday, sort of a proof-of-life exhibition, to verify that Sunday’s janky tweet to the nation was for real. You heard a Homeric recitation of “JB’s” signal achievements in office, every one of them demonstrably false. He did not keep our country out of war, or grow the economy, or keep inflation down, or beat Big Pharma, or build anything, or defend personal freedoms, or “make it clear there is no place, no place in America for political violence or any violence ever.” (In fact, the very next day, Thursday, pro-Hamas mobs attacked US Park police and vandalized federal property at Washington’s Union Station, and on Friday all charges were dropped against them — while scores of J6 Capitol trespassers rotted for years in the DC jail.)

What “Joe Biden” actually accomplished in office was the near-total wrecking of the USA. He torpedoed the authority and legitimacy of just about every federal agency, turned the Department of Justice into a Gestapo, seeded the federal court benches with Woke lunatics, allowed an invasion of perhaps 20-million border-jumpers (including many thousands of professional terrorists), coerced injections of an ineffective and injurious vaccine into millions of citizens afraid of losing their livelihoods, promoted gross medical experiments on sexually troubled children, invited drag queens and mentally-ill degenerates to cavort in the White House, spent borrowed money at a rate that propelled the national debt past the event horizon into a black hole, made the seeking of incompetence the number one priority of the Pentagon, provoked a war in Ukraine that now teeters on the hazard of a nuclear exchange, and allowed the CIA to complete its takeover of the US government. “Joe Biden” will go down in history as the worst of all 46 US presidents.

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“..with hawks like Mike Pompeo and avowed anti-interventionists like Tucker Carlson each holding court..”

• Trump Vs the Deep State: Would Former President Shift US Foreign Policy? (Sp.)

The Republican Party’s apparent divisions were on full display during its recent convention in Milwaukee, with hawks like Mike Pompeo and avowed anti-interventionists like Tucker Carlson each holding court. A sea change has taken place in the way the US electorate discusses issues of foreign policy over the last decade. Former President Donald Trump spoke with distinctive brashness on subjects assumed to be beyond political debate in Washington, such as the United States’ fraught relationship with Russia and the country’s role as self-appointed “policemen of the world.” On the other side of the aisle Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders enjoyed a similar populist appeal, alleging “massive fraud” in US military spending and questioning former President Barack Obama’s effort to overthrow Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

The mandarins of the US foreign policy establishment have spent the last several years attempting to put the genie back in the bottle, returning to a time before the prerogatives of the “Deep State” were openly speculated and commented upon, but the influence of Trump’s candidacy and tumultuous time in the White House is still felt years later. As Vice President Kamala Harris solidifies her position as President Biden’s Democratic heir apparent, speculation has emerged over the possible foreign policy of her administration and how it would differ from that of a second Trump term. Former Ukrainian diplomat and whistleblower Andrii Telizhenko joined Sputnik’s The Backstory program this week to comment on the matter and discuss prospects for peace as fighting between Moscow and Kiev continues. “Everybody saw it coming,” Telizhenko said of Biden’s decision to end his candidacy for reelection Sunday amid concern over his age and mental acuity.

“The deep state in the Democratic Party used him and used his problems within his family [with] his son Hunter to keep him in place, to use him and his health to keep America in place, to bring this war with Russia.” “They don’t need him anymore,” he concluded. “That’s why they made the change from one lame duck for another lame duck that is going to be fully controllable.” Harris, who previously served as California’s state Attorney General before a four-year stint in the US Senate, has been noted for her relative lack of formal foreign policy experience. Some commentators have looked to her advocacy on immigration policy under President Biden to attempt to decode her broader outlook on global affairs. One analyst speculated she would initially rely on Biden’s foreign policy team, while others suggest she would continue her predecessor’s strong support for Volodymyr Zelensky, who has ruled Ukraine without an electoral mandate since the end of term in May.

Republicans frequently allege President Biden’s support for Kiev is influenced by his son’s financial ties to the country as a former member on the board of the troubled Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Others suggest he is simply too old to manage the task of overseeing complex matters of foreign policy. Biden is often considered a neoconservative, a term used to describe a muscular US foreign policy that has traditionally found favor in both major political parties in the United States. His promise to restore a more traditional approach to international affairs is perhaps best exemplified by his reliance on figures like Secretary of State Antony Blinken and former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland.

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“..let Ukraine borrow as much as it needs to buy American weapons to defeat Russia.” This, he claimed, would “send a clear signal to Mr. Putin that he will never win.”

• Pompeo Tries to Hijack Trump’s Peace Push (Sp.)

Donald Trump has bragged that he could end the Russia-NATO proxy war in Ukraine with a couple phone calls, saying his main priority is to stop “people dying.” The GOP nominee for VP, JD Vance, has talked about the conflict’s cost to taxpayers. But there are many figures in the Republican establishment looking to prolong the crisis at all cost. Former CIA director and secretary of state Mike Pompeo has outlined a neocon Republican playbook for the Ukraine crisis in the event that Donald Trump returns to office, calling for a rebranding of US military and economic assistance to Kiev as “lend-lease,” and inviting Kiev into NATO “as soon as possible so all European allies assume the burden of protecting it.” Pompeo’s proposal, entitled “A Trump Peace Plan for Ukraine,” assures that Trump’s return to the presidency would not mean stopping Ukraine funding or negotiating directly with Moscow to end the fighting. On the contrary, he suggested, a Trump administration would pursue a “strategy for victory” that’s lacking in the current administration.

The neocon plan proposes a global effort led by the US and partners in the Middle East to bring down energy prices and “squeeze” Russia out of energy markets, imposing “real sanctions” on Moscow to replace the current “good on paper but…hollow” ones Pompeo says are in place today, ramping up NATO defense spending to a minimum of 3 percent of GDP, and lifting “all restrictions on the type of weapons Ukraine can obtain and use” against Russia. Central to Pompeo’s plan is the proposal for a $500 billion “lend-lease” program for Kiev, which, in his words, “instead of saddling US taxpayers with more bills,” would “let Ukraine borrow as much as it needs to buy American weapons to defeat Russia.” This, he claimed, would “send a clear signal to Mr. Putin that he will never win.” Pompeo’s vision for a post-conflict Ukraine includes building up Kiev’s military potential against Russia, refusing to recognize Russia’s new territories, “demilitarizing” Crimea (whatever that means), giving seized Russian Central Bank assets to Kiev, and inviting Ukraine into the European Union.

Pompeo did not elaborate on how a second Trump administration might achieve any of these goals. Moscow has stressed that it would never accept Ukraine in NATO, and the recently leaked peace deal that was agreed in the spring of 2022 (and sabotaged by the West before it could be realized), signaled demands by Russia that Ukraine limit the size of its military, recognize the Donbass Republics, repeal discriminatory language laws, ban the glorification and propaganda of Nazism and neo-Nazism, and (together with its Western patrons) scrap sanctions. Pompeo’s treatise, penned together with lobbyist, CNN commentator and Trump 2016 campaign advisor David Urban, strikes a decidedly more aggressive tone than the former president or his pick for vice president, JD Vance, have taken on the campaign trail.

Trump has repeatedly promised to stop “the horrible war with Russia and Ukraine,” vowing to start the peace process on election night if he wins, but has remained light on the details of how he might achieve this goal. People familiar with the plan have reportedly said that it will include pressuring Kiev to give up territory, sparking panic among some at the Pentagon and neocons in both parties that such Ukrainian concessions would mean “Putin would win.”
Trump said last week that he had a “very good phone call” with Volodymyr Zelensky, and that Zelensky had “congratulated” him on becoming the Republican nominee and surviving his recent assassination attempt. “We agreed with President Trump to discuss at a personal meeting what steps can make peace fair and truly lasting,” Zelensky said in a follow-up social media post.

Zelensky got in trouble with Republicans earlier this month over comments in a CNN interview from earlier this year in which he suggested that JD Vance doesn’t understand the situation in Ukraine, and that Kiev doesn’t “need any rhetoric from people who are not deeply in the know.” Vance, who has positioned himself as an America First Republican, argued in an op-ed in the New York Times in April that the biggest reason the US shouldn’t continue to support Ukraine is a basic “math” problem revolving around the fact that “Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field, even with draconian conscription policies,” and “needs more materiel than the United States can provide.”

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“..US Secret Service repeatedly denied offers from a local law enforcement partner to utilize drone technology..”

• Secret Service Opted Out of Drone Surveillance Before Trump Shooting (Sp.)

The probe into the attempted assassination of Donald Trump has uncovered new details of the botched security operation at the Pennsylvania rally. Republican Senator Josh Hawley has submitted a letter to the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with shocking details that the Secret Service – responsible for ensuring the safety of the former president’s life – “repeatedly” turned down offers by local police to carry out drone surveillance of the area. “The night before the rally, US Secret Service repeatedly denied offers from a local law enforcement partner to utilize drone technology to secure the rally,” the senator wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, citing information from a whistleblower. The whistleblower also alleged that it was not until after the deadly shootout that the Secret Service went on to use drones to record the area, Hawley noted.

Hawley had previously quoted the whistleblower and spoken out against the officer who left the very spot from which the assassin targeted Trump. The officer allegedly left the roof of the warehouse because it was “too hot.”
“It is hard to understand why [the Secret Service] would decline to use drones when they were offered, particularly given the fact USSS [US Secret Service] permitted the shooter to overfly the rally area with his own drone mere hours before [the] event,” the Republican senator elaborated further. Hawley also went on to mention that the whistleblower believes that using drones would have helped neutralize the sniper. The shooting took place on July 13 at a Trump rally in Butler, the US state of Pennsylvania. Trump sustained a gun wound to his right ear and was briefly hospitalized. Thomas Crooks, 20, killed a member of the audience and injured two others in the crowd before the Secret Service neutralized him. The FBI is investigating the incident as an assassination attempt and potential domestic terrorism.

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“The NeoNazi regime has to be liquidated, Ukraine is never to join NATO, and all of the Ukrainian forces must fully withdraw from the five territories that are now legally part of the Russian Federation, including Crimea and Donbass. If the Kiev regime wants to negotiate this capitulation, then Russia’s terms are already on the table..”

• Zelensky Now Wants Peace, Or Rather Another Piece Of The Action (SCF)

All of a sudden, it seems, the Kiev regime wants to give peace a chance. This week, the so-called president Vladimir Zelensky was telling the Vatican envoy Cardinal Pietro Parolin that it was urgent to find a peaceful end to the conflict with Russia to spare further loss of life. “I think that we all understand that we must end the war as soon as possible, of course,” Zelensky told the Vatican secretary of state during a meeting in Kiev. Only a few months ago, Zelensky rebuffed calls from Pope Francis for a diplomatic settlement to the worst war in Europe since the Second World War. And earlier this month, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was similarly disdained when he visited Kiev to appeal for a negotiated end to the conflict. Suddenly, though, there is a decided change in tune coming out of Kiev. The day after Zelensky issued his purported concern for peace, the Kiev regime’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba flew to China to meet Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat.

“The Ukrainian side is willing and ready to conduct dialogue and negotiations with the Russian side,” Kuleba announced. “I am convinced that a just peace in Ukraine is in China’s strategic interests, and China’s role as a global force for peace is important,” he added, by way of ingratiating himself with Beijing. Earlier this year, China and Brazil jointly proposed a plan for peace negotiations. That proposal was dismissed out of hand by the Kiev regime. What’s going on here is a cynical move by the Kiev regime to extend its survival and corruption racket. Zelensky and his cronies have gotten obscenely rich from siphoning off the hundreds of billions in military and financial aid that the United States and its European NATO lackeys have showered on Ukraine to fight a futile proxy war against Russia. After two and a half years of war and more than 500,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers – many of them forcibly conscripted – the writing is on the wall. The NATO proxy war is a historic loss of monstrous dimensions.

Russia has gained the upper hand militarily – as many independent analysts had predicted – and it will not back down until all of its goals are achieved. The NeoNazi regime has to be liquidated, Ukraine is never to join NATO, and all of the Ukrainian forces must fully withdraw from the five territories that are now legally part of the Russian Federation, including Crimea and Donbass. If the Kiev regime wants to negotiate this capitulation, then Russia’s terms are already on the table, as outlined by President Vladimir Putin last month.

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“..he called on his audience to see Ukraine as a laboratory where the West can develop its future military technology..”

• Zaluzhny’s Message Pleasing For Western Elites, Terrifying For Ukrainians (RT)

[..] Zelensky’s Ukraine, as represented by his former rival and current ambassador Zaluzhny, is the wet dream of the West’s mobilizers: a personalistic, at best semi-authoritarian regime, with no free media or opposition. And the fact that they have no shame in calling that sort of state a “democracy,” complete with the usual “vibrant” civil society, proves that they would not hesitate to do the same at home. If Zaluzhny’s ideas about what should be done to society are stunningly imitative, his take on the military meaning of the Ukraine War seems at least more original, if a little bombastic. He believes that the “changes which were invented on the battlefields of the Russian-Ukrainian war” are very likely to “determine the outlines of wars and the art of war in the 21st century” and to “become the foundation of the entire global security system of the future.”

Zaluzhny is probably wrong on the facts there. As I have long argued, the genocidal slaughter committed by Israel in Gaza is more likely to leave a deeper imprint on the future of “warfare” (for want of a better term). We are already seeing attempts to derive “lessons” (all the wrong ones, rest assured) from it by Western think tanks such as the RAND Corporation and, indeed, the very same RUSI where Zaluzhny gave his speech. But let’s set that aside and focus on what the former commander-in-chief believes to be the main military lesson of the Ukraine War. Driven by the need to survive on the battlefield, Zaluzhny argues, Ukrainian forces have invented and applied new technologies while adapting their structure and tactics to them. For him, this war therefore marks a transition, starting and foreshadowing decisive future developments. In particular – and this is a key phrase in his sales pitch – these technologies are supposed to offer a way to “fight and win against stronger armies in the 21st century.” (By “stronger,” the general here clearly must mean “larger,” because if he literally meant “stronger” – as in also technologically stronger – his statement would be self-contradictory and absurd.)

Now compare this with what the new chief of the UK General Staff, General Ronald Walker had to say at the same RUSI Land Warfare Conference. Walker also delivered a stern warning about a dangerous world out there, i.e. Russia and China, and promised to triple the effectiveness (“lethality”) of British forces within a few years, without asking for more men. His miracle fix to do so: new technology that, Walker says, will enable his army to defeat much larger forces. See a difference compared to Zaluzhny’s promises? No? Exactly. Once again, the obliging Ukrainian delivered exactly what his Western listeners wanted to hear. By now, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has publicly agreed with Walker. Congrats, General Zaluzhny: bullseye in crowd-pleasing. Yet, once again, there is a less farcical side to Zaluzhny’s somewhat crude opportunism.

In essence, he called on his audience to see Ukraine as a laboratory where the West can develop its future military technology. Ukraine, he admitted, cannot “scale up” its inventions and innovations made in the midst of battle. Yet its Western “partners” – “users” would be a better, more honest term – have the resources needed for such upscaling, “but there is no applied and practical field to test them.” In other words, Ukrainians can keep dying, while the West can field-test new military technologies. And make no mistake: Zaluzhny does not believe that fewer Ukrainians will be needed because the new technologies will replace them. The whole meaning of his labelling the current war merely “transitional” and not yet one of “the future” is to strand Ukraine in the worst of both worlds where, as he admits, “the only way out may be to increase the number of human resources involved in hostilities.”

And there you have it. Ukraine’s real future, according to Zaluzhny, is one where more Ukrainians will be fed into the meatgrinder of a losing war, but on the upside, the meatgrinder will be constantly modernized and updated with the newest ways of killing and dying, compliments of the West. It is one thing that this fantasy of a forever war as a forever laboratory will not come to pass. It is another that it is the real message – if you pay attention – of Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief and current ambassador in London, and future who-knows-what, when speaking to an elite Western audience. One of Ukraine’s tragedies is being abused by the West; the other being betrayed by its own leaders.

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“Ursula von der Leyen is making Europe poorer, less independent and more dangerous. Much more dangerous.”

• Von der Leyen’s Legacy (Dionísio)

The mainstream political class of the European Union, and its member states, has predictably ended up prolonging the agony, decadence and subservience of European affairs to U.S. interests. And now, for another five years, we will have to live, again, with Ursula von der Leyen. Moreover, in the future, we will all remember her speeches on “value chain security”, in which Ursula’s great merit was to further reinforce the world’s dependence on Chinese value chains, demonstrating that, contrary to what she announces with as much anger as hatred, her tariffs, sanctions and conditioning cause us as much pain as they relieve the others. In the EU, in 10 years we will have given up the largest reserve of mineral, food, energy and raw materials in the world and, unless an uprising begins, we will also have given up the largest consumer market on the planet and the one that will grow the most in the coming years. These are von der Leyen’s great merits!

Given this record, you might think that the next five years would see a reversal of course. But no. Ursula von der Leyen will continue to infight against the EU’s own peoples, telling them one thing and doing the opposite, and one of the areas in which we can see, without any reservations whatsoever, that the European Union – this European Union – has given up on its indigenous peoples, is in relation to what is currently one of the main sources of social tension: immigration. Classifying the current situation of the European labor market as being affected by serious “labor shortages”, the European Commission’s communication, entitled “Strengthening the social dialogue in the European Union: harnessing its full potential to manage just transitions”, is clear about von der Leyen’s intentions in this regard.

Don’t let that the apparently rational discourse fool you: “strengthening the social dialogue” should be read as “guaranteeing social peace in the face of measures that will further squeeze wages and living conditions”; “harnessing its full potential” should be read as “increasing the reserve army of labor to contain wage growth”; and “managing fair transitions” should be read as “ensuring that everyone will be forced to adopt the EU’s economic and social model, without reservation”. As always, by wrapping her draconian intentions in occasional discursive flourishes, Ursula von der Leyen is making Europe poorer, less independent and more dangerous. Much more dangerous. Every time she opens her mouth, it’s best to interpret her words as having a hidden meaning, which is often the opposite of what she actually said.

On the road to increasing the exploitation of Europe’s peoples, the European Commission rightly begins by noting the demographic changes that have taken place in recent decades. Europeans are simply having fewer children. The result is that the native European working population has been shrinking and the forecast is that, today, being around 265 million workers, in 2040 this figure will be around 250 million and in 2050, 240 million. In other words, a reduction of one million per year. Faced with a problem of this magnitude, the long-term consequences of which will not only be the reduction of native peoples, but also the emergence of vast deserted and unused areas, the perishing of certain cultures and traditions, would require an in-depth study and measures capable of reversing the trend of population decline and falling fertility and birth rates.

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“The Ursulas announced that, in their opinion, the sovereigntist faction — largely created by Viktor Orbán— is far-right and, as such, anti-Europe, anti-progress and anti-humanity, and therefore should be quarantined, isolated and suffocated..”

• To Hell With The Will Of The People (RMX)

The globalist left is increasingly unscrupulous in its disregard for the voters’ choice. The third-strongest faction, the Patriots for Europe, will not have a single official in the European Parliament. It won’t happen, because the globalist-Jacobin majority —which, for the sake of simplicity, is mostly called “the left” — is violating all written rules and customary law and ignoring the will of the people and has now prevented it. The Ursulas announced that, in their opinion, the sovereigntist faction — largely created by Viktor Orbán— is far-right and, as such, anti-Europe, anti-progress and anti-humanity, and therefore should be quarantined, isolated and suffocated. There is no talk of their deportation yet, but based on the dynamics of events, this may even happen in a few years. So the Patriots get nothing, let alone positions — perhaps even eventually a few bullets, like Fico and Trump. This is how people’s representation “works” for the champions of democracy in Brussels.

In fact, one of the pillars of Ursula von der Leyen’s forthcoming five-year EU commission presidency will be to break down resistance to the imperialism of the EU, to remove the veto of small states, especially the meddling Hungary. If there is no veto, everyone will do what the big ones want. In other words: “Shut up!” Now, imagine for a moment that in the Hungarian parliament, opposition parties could not nominate vice-presidents to head the House, could not have committee chairs and vice-chairs. Obviously, the problem is with the Hungarian conception of democracy, but in this country such a thing has not even been thought of — neither during the period of left-wing nor right-wing governments did anyone think of such a despicable act, such disregard for the will of the electorate. But Brussels has done so without scruples. They take part in this disgusting act and in the meantime, act as if nothing had happened, as they continue lecturing us about democracy, the rule of law, checks and balances.

Where is the respect for the will of the voters? The rule of the people? The principle of popular sovereignty? Of course, we Hungarians have a dictatorship on the rampage, where even with a two-thirds majority from Fidesz, there is always an opposition leader (this time Zoltán Sas, a Jobbik member of the National Security Committee), not to mention the opposition deputy speakers of the National Assembly and many other officials. So goes the trampling of voters by the European People’s Party (EPP). In order to give the globalists a majority, Manfred Weber, with the spine of a snail, has teamed up with the Bolsheviks — as if he had just been ordered to do so by text message. He lured the more naive right-wingers to his side with blatant lies and nationalist promises, only to be swept away by the left’s agenda.

Even though his voters are fed up with illegal migrants, Weber and his crew do not care — with their approval they will continue to fly and ship millions of Africans and Asians into the continent because the population replacement must continue. Weber is like a hijacker: He has hijacked the right-wing vote. If I say that this figure is a fraud, a scoundrel traitor, a moral lunatic, I am certainly putting it too mildly.

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Think she’s already taking over?

• Netanyahu Angry After Meeting With Vice President Harris (ZH)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was angered by Vice President Kamala Harris’ on-camera statement following their Thursday meeting, and he now says the words threaten to sabotage any potential peace deal with Hamas. Diplomats speaking with Axios said Netanyahu’s criticism stems from Harris speaking as if a ceasefire and hostage exchange would mark the final end of the war in Gaza, whereas Israel’s position has all along been that counter-Hamas operations could resume even if a hostage deal is reached. Following the Harris-Netanyahu meeting which lasted about 40 minutes, the Vice President said “It is time for this war to end in a way where Israel is secure, all the hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity and self determination.”

She added: “And as I just told Prime Minister Netanyahu it is time to get this deal done. Let’s get the deal done. So we can get a ceasefire to end the war. Let’s bring the hostages home. And let’s provide much needed relief to the Palestinian people.” Israeli officials told Axios that the Biden meeting was much more constructive than the one with Harris, but that they were “caught off guard” by Harris’ follow-up statement: “The Israeli officials said Netanyahu and his team were caught off guard by Harris’ on-camera statement and taken aback by its tone, which they said sounded much more critical than Biden’s. “Harris’ statement after the meeting was much more critical than what she told Netanyahu in the meeting,” one Israeli official claimed. According to more, “The Israeli official also said Netanyahu was unhappy with the fact that Harris criticized Israel publicly for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and for killing civilians, especially at the current timing amid the hostage deal negotiations.”

But an aide to the vice president said he has no idea what the Israeli side is talking about and emphasized the private meeting between Harris and Netanyahu was “serious and collegial.” So for now, it appears Netanyahu is ready to blame lack of progress in a ceasefire on VP Harris, and the current chaos of American politics after Biden bowed out of the presidential race. Israeli officials have tried to push a narrative that says a truce deal is impossible if there is any daylight in messaging between Washington and Tel Aviv. But what Israel wants is a perpetual ‘blank check’ from the US taxpayer (akin to Ukraine’s Zelensky), and makes a lot of noise and complains bitterly in any instance where US leadership is not 100% on board, or issues some degree of criticism of Israeli military action.

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“Now compare China’s diplomatic coup with the US Congress giving 58 standing ovations to Israel’s psychopath-in-chief peddling the notion of genocide as a wellness treatment…

• China Throws Clout Behind Palestine (Pepe Escobar)

The Beijing Declaration, signed earlier this week, constitutes yet another stunning Chinese diplomatic coup, but the document goes far beyond affirming China’s pull. The gathering of representatives of 14 Palestinian factions to commit to full reconciliation showed the entire world that the road to solving intractable geopolitical problems is no longer unilateral: it is multipolar, multi-nodal, and features BRICS/Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member China as an inescapable leader. The concept of China as a peacemaking superpower is now so established that after the Iran–Saudi Arabia rapprochement and the signing of the Beijing Declaration, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba chose to tell his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing that Kiev is now finally ready to negotiate the end of the NATO–Russia proxy war in Ukraine. Palestinians who came to Beijing were beaming. For Fatah Vice Chairman Mahmoud al-Aloul, “China is a light. China’s efforts are rare on the international stage.”

Hamas spokesman Hussam Badran said the Palestinian resistance movement accepted the Chinese invitation “with a positive spirit and patriotic responsibility.” All Palestinian factions have reached a consensus on “Palestinian demands to end the war,” adding that the “most important” part of the declaration is to form a government that builds Palestinian national consensus to “manage the affairs of the people of Gaza and the West Bank, oversee reconstruction, and create conditions for elections.” Wang Yi cut to the chase: the Palestinian issue, says the Chinese foreign minister, is at the core of everything in West Asia. He emphasized that Beijing … has never had any selfish interests in the Palestinian issue. China is one of the first countries to recognize the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] and the State of Palestine and has always firmly supported the Palestinian people in restoring their legitimate national rights. What we value is morality and what we advocate is justice.

What Wang did not say – and didn’t need to – is that this position is the overwhelming BRICS+ position, shared by the Global Majority, including, crucially, all Muslim countries. It’s all in a name – everyone in the foreseeable future will note this is the “Beijing” declaration unequivocally supporting One Palestine. No wonder all political factions had to rise to the occasion, committing to support an independent Palestinian government with executive powers over Gaza and the occupied West Bank. But there’s a catch: this will take place immediately after the war, which the regime in Tel Aviv wants to prolong indefinitely. What Wang Yi left somewhat implicit is that China’s consistent historical position supporting Palestine may be a decisive factor in helping future Palestinian governance institutions. Beijing is proposing three steps to get there:

First, a “comprehensive, lasting and sustainable” ceasefire in Gaza as soon as possible, and “access to humanitarian aid and rescue on the ground.” Second, “joint efforts” – assuming western involvement – toward “post-conflict governance of Gaza under the principle of ‘Palestinians governing Palestine.’” An urgent priority is restarting reconstruction “as soon as possible.” Beijing stresses that “the international community needs to support Palestinian factions in establishing an interim national consensus government and realize effective management of Gaza and the West Bank.” Third, help Palestine “to become a full member state of the UN” and implement the two-state solution. Beijing maintains that “it is important to support the convening of a broad-based, more authoritative, and more effective international peace conference to work out a timetable and road map for the two-state solution.”

For all the lofty aims, especially when it is patently clear that Israel has de facto buried the two-state solution – as witnessed in the Knesset’s recent vote to reject any Palestinian state – at least China is directly proposing what the Global Majority unanimously considers as a fair outcome. Also important to note is the presence of diplomats from China’s fellow BRICS members Russia, South Africa, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, alongside diplomats from Algeria, Qatar, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Turkiye at the signing of the declaration. Now compare China’s diplomatic coup with the US Congress giving 58 standing ovations to Israel’s psychopath-in-chief peddling the notion of genocide as a wellness treatment. Bibi Netanyahu’s hero’s welcome in Washington takes the notion of collective psychopathology to new heights. And yet complicity in the Gaza genocide is not exactly an exception to the rule when it comes to American political leadership.

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That’s gotta hurt a little bit.

• Russian Central Bank Hikes Interest Rate To 18% (RT)

The Bank of Russia has raised its key interest rate from 16% to 18%, citing inflationary pressures. Domestic demand continues to exceed the economy’s capacity to produce goods and services to meet it, the regulator said in a statement on Friday. Inflation has accelerated and is running substantially above the bank’s April forecast, the statement added. The Bank of Russia has “substantially revised” its projection, predicting an overall rate of 6.5-7.0% in the current year. Inflation in June stood at 8.6%, more than a double the government target of 4%. If the interest rate had not been raised, Russia would have risked lurching into stagflation, central bank chief Elvira Nabiullina said at a press conference following the announcement. The term refers to the combination of slow economic growth, high inflation, and high unemployment.

The key rate will remain high “for as long as necessary” to bring inflation down to the government target of 4%, Nabiullina stated. A further tightening of monetary policy may be necessary, she added. The central bank said the latest rate hike will help bring inflation down to 4.0-4.5% in 2025.The Bank of Russia previously raised the key interest rate in December. A 100 basis points increase to 16% per annum was the fifth hike in a row since the summer of 2023, when the basis was at 7.5%. The central bank also cited economic indicators from the second quarter of this year as showing that the Russian economy continues rapid growth. Consumer activity remains high against the backdrop of significant growth in household incomes and consumer confidence, the regulator said. Russia’s GDP grew 3.6% in 2023 compared to the previous year. In April, the International Monetary Fund projected 3.2% growth for the country’s economy for 2024. The Bank of Russia will hold its next key rate review meeting in September.

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Cow rope

 

 

Beware
https://twitter.com/i/status/1816754521940410795

 

 

Beethoven

 

 

Eagle crow

 

 

Blue whale
https://twitter.com/i/status/1816697594707411345

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle December 2 2023

Dec 022023
 
 December 2, 2023  Posted by at 9:31 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


Claude Monet The Magpie 1869

 

• The Real Kissinger – My Memories of Henry (Paul Craig Roberts)
• How US Broke Kissinger’s Efforts to Improve Relations With Russia – PCR (Sp.)
• Henry Kissinger: The War Criminal Who Saved The World (Scott Ritter)
• US Pushing Nuclear Arms Race ‘Can Only Have Tragic Ending’ – Scott Ritter (Sp.)
• Israeli Army Plants New Fake Hamas Atrocity Story (Cradle)
• US Needs Gaza War to Destabilize BRICS, Greater Eurasia – Pepe Escobar (Sp.)
• Tik Tok Under Western Pressure To Censor Pro-Palestine Voices (Cradle)
• Israel Irate Over Spanish PM Support For Palestine (Cradle)
• Israel Planning Global Assassination Campaign – WSJ (RT)
• US Aims To Halve Russia’s Oil, Gas Revenues By 2030 (TASS)
• Trump Can Be Sued For Capitol Riot, Court Rules (RT)
• The Curious Fraud Case Against Trump Just Got ‘Curiouser’ (Turley)
• The Magic Moment (Kunstler)

 

 

 

 

Tucker Elon

 

 

The way I see it, there is one huge problem with the cybertruck: everyone will want one. It doesn’t rust. It lasts a lifetime.

Tesla would have to produce a million a year at least, and they don’t have the capacity.

 

 

 

 

Ocampo

 

 

Hannity

 

 

Ukraine does not have enough Firepower – Douglas Macgregor

 

 

Nap Mearsheimer

 

 

 

 

Taibbi+

 

 

 

 

 

 

The condemnation of Kissinger after his death is pretty much everywhere. Which makes it interesting that two people who actually knew him, Paul Craig Roberts and Scott Ritter, have their own, different, opinions.

• The Real Kissinger – My Memories of Henry (Paul Craig Roberts)

Henry Kissinger at 100 years of age left the world he temporarily altered for the better after watching the neoconservatives in the Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden regimes wipe out his accomplishments. Kissinger and President Nixon were men of peace. They inherited a disastrous war–Vietnam–that they had no hand in making. President John F. Kennedy intended to stop the war before it could get started, which was one of the reasons he was assassinated by the CIA, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secret Service. The Soviet Threat had to be resisted even at the cost of President Kennedy’s life and the trauma inflicted on what was still in those days a free nation. President Nixon and Kissinger also had to restart the efforts of President Kennedy to defuse the dangerous tensions of the Cold War that both the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam war brought to the surface.

The pursuit of detente by the Nixon administration produced the Strategic Arms Limitations Agreement and created a working relationship between Washington and Moscow. Nixon’s opening to China might have prevented another war. Nixon and Kissinger’s achievements in defusing the Cold War were unrivaled until President Reagan and Soviet leader Gorbachev ended the Cold war. The Clinton regime violated the word of the George H.W. Bush administration that in exchange for the Soviet Union permitting the reunification of Germany, the US would not move NATO one inch toward the East. All subsequent US regimes exited from all of the arms agreements that had reduced tensions and created a bond of trust between the nuclear superpowers. This bond is especially important, because of the numerous false warnings from warning systems.

The consequence of unraveling the work of Nixon, Kissinger, and Reagan is the total lack of trust today between the US and Russia. The situation today is far worse than it was in the darkest days of the Cold War.As an insider I well know that the problem of conservative presidents, such as Nixon and Reagan, in easing tensions with Russia is that their conservative base is suspicious of the effort. I well remember that Reagan’s efforts at detente with the Soviet Union were suspected by Reagan’s conservative base. Conservatives worried that a former movie star was not a match for cunning communists, and that America would come out the loser. Nixon faced a worse problem. He was trapped by President Johnson’s regime in a gratuitous war that could not be won. But if he left without winning he would endanger his base of support.

The problem of the conservative base is the reason both Reagan and Nixon spoke aggressively, thus causing the leftwing to see them as warmongers. The dilemma Nixon and Kissinger faced is the reason for the Cambodian bombings. They were desperate to get a situation from which they could exit the war without it being interpreted as a defeat by their political base. They were trying to use force to achieve an honorable exit, but the enemy would not give it to them.The leftwing, of course, unable to comprehend the conundrum, interpreted Nixon and Kissinger as war criminals. This erroneous interpretation has held to the present day. Today I still encounter American conservatives who claim that Reagan won the Cold War. This is nonsense. Reagan told those of us involved that the purpose was to end, not win, the Cold War.

Conservatives justify Reagan as the winner of the Cold War, as the man who collapsed the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union collapsed three years after Reagan left office. No one, including the CIA, expected the collapse of the Soviet Union. It caught the US government off guard. The Soviet collapse occurred because hardline members of the Politburo, who feared Gorbachev was liberalizing too rapidly, placed Soviet President Gorbachev under house arrest. It was Gorbachev’s arrest that led to Yeltsin and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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“..the consequence of the “breakdown” of the work of Nixon, Reagan, and Kissinger today is “a complete lack of trust between the United States and Russia.”

• How US Broke Kissinger’s Efforts to Improve Relations With Russia – PCR (Sp.)

The collapse of the legacy of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who sought to improve Soviet-American relations, as well as the policy of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, has led to the fact that trust between Washington and Moscow is completely absent today, Paul Craig Roberts, former assistant Treasury secretary, told Sputnik. According to Roberts, who personally knew Kissinger, the achievements of Nixon and Kissinger on the issue of détente between the US and the USSR “were unrivaled” until President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev ended the Cold War. “The (Bill) Clinton administration broke its word, given by George W. Bush. The Bush administration said that in exchange for the USSR agreeing to the reunification of Germany, the US would not move NATO’s borders one inch eastward.

All subsequent US administrations have withdrawn from arms agreements that served for reducing tensions and forged bonds of trust between the nuclear superpowers,” Roberts said. According to the former Treasury Department official, the consequence of the “breakdown” of the work of Nixon, Reagan, and Kissinger today is “a complete lack of trust between the United States and Russia.” “The situation today is far worse than even in the darkest days of the Cold War,” Roberts stressed. Kissinger’s death was announced on November 29. The former secretary of state gained fame as one of the most influential political figures in the United States, leaving a significant mark on the history of diplomacy. Despite his advanced age, Kissinger commented extensively on current international events, including the situation in Ukraine.

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“..without Henry Kissinger, there probably would have been no INF treaty, no START treaty, no SALT agreements, no ABM treaty—no arms control. Without Henry Kissinger, there would very likely have been a nuclear war.”

• Henry Kissinger: The War Criminal Who Saved The World (Scott Ritter)

To be honest, as I entered the US Marines after graduating college in 1984, I didn’t give Henry Kissinger much thought—he was, from my perspective, a relic of the past, a bad national nightmare who, like his boss, Richard Nixon, was fading into the pages of historical irrelevance. And then, in early 1988, everything changed. I was taken from the deserts of southern California, where I had been perfecting skills associated with the Marine Corps mission of closing with and destroying the enemy through firepower and maneuver, and dispatched to Washington, DC, where I was made part of a team that would implement inspection tasks associated with the implementation of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.

As I learned more about the treaty, and its relationship to the history of US-Soviet arms control, the name Henry Kissinger kept popping up. Kissinger, it turns out, was the Godfather of US-Soviet arms control, the man who crafted the anti-ballistic missile treaty, considered one of the foundational agreements which defined the strategic relationship between the US and Soviet Union. He was also the driving force behind the policy of détente between the US and Soviet Union which led to an end to the nuclear arms race and heralded in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) which eventually turned into the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). The INF treaty was a byproduct of the vision set forth by Henry Kissinger. I often speak of the importance of the INF treaty in preventing nuclear war, and remain convinced that without it, a nuclear conflict between the US and Soviet Union was inevitable.

It turns out that without Henry Kissinger, there probably would have been no INF treaty, no START treaty, no SALT agreements, no ABM treaty—no arms control. Without Henry Kissinger, there would very likely have been a nuclear war. Following my assignment as an arms inspector in the Soviet Union, I returned to the Marine Corps, where, from August 1990 until August 1998, my life was defined by Iraq—first through Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm, and then later, as a weapons inspector with the United Nations tasked with overseeing the disarmament of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs. Once again, Henry Kissinger disappeared into the background, only to reappear in the summer of 1998 as one of the “foreign policy experts” who articulated openly about the need to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

Following my resignation from the United Nations, in August 1998, I received an invitation from Teddy Forstmann, one of the founders of the private equity corporation Forstmann & Little, to fly to Aspen, Colorado, to speak as part of an annual policy discussion forum that brought together the “best and the brightest” in the world under a single roof where the issues of the day would be addressed. Among the notable people present was none other than Henry Kissinger. I had the opportunity to rub elbows with Mr. Kissinger on several occasions during the Aspen forum. We talked, of course, about Iraq—this was pre-9/11, pre-WMD fabrication, where the issues revolved primarily around Saddam Hussein and the threat he posed to regional peace and security. But most of all we talked about arms control, and the importance of preserving the legacy of disarmament that had been started under the Nixon administration, but which seemed to be slipping away under Bill Clinton’s watch.

I last saw Henry Kissinger in May 1999, at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner. Mr. Kissinger was attended to by a retired Secret Service officer whom I had met at the Aspen event. After the dinner and speeches, he approached my table and told me Mr. Kissinger wanted to speak with me. I was ushered to a side room, where the famous former diplomat was waiting. “I wanted to continue our conversation,” Kissinger said.

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“..in less than a year, the Chinese are not only producing that chip, but better chips, because they were compelled to do it themselves..”

• US Pushing Nuclear Arms Race ‘Can Only Have Tragic Ending’ – Scott Ritter (Sp.)

In early November, a scheduled test of an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) by the United States ended in failure as the Air Force was forced to prematurely self-destruct the missile in mid-flight. The Pentagon said it was “due to an anomaly” during the test.The nuclear-tipped missile has been in service since 1970, having its service life extended several times after the end of the Cold War in 1990, which caused the US to de-emphasize strategic missile production. A new system, the Sentinel ICBM, is currently being developed to replace the Minuteman III, but isn’t scheduled to fully replace the older missile for another decade.

However, when the Sentinel and other nuclear-capable weapons, such as the B-21 Raider bomber, finally enter service, they’ll already be outclassed by Russian and Chinese counterparts, since those nations have already achieved nuclear superiority over the US, Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, told Radio Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Thursday. Ritter recently authored an article on Consortium News titled: “The End of US Nuclear Superiority.” “The United States has a nuclear deterrence model called the Triad. There’s three legs to the triad: there’s the manned aerial bomber leg that consists of B-52H bombers and B-2 bombers; there is a sea leg, submarine launched ballistic missiles, the Trident IIs carried on board the old Ohio-class submarines; and then there’s the ground leg, which consists of 400 Minuteman III missiles that are loaded into silos across the Midwest of the United States,” Ritter explained.

“The Minuteman III is a very old missile. It’s been refurbished. It’s had its fuel scraped out, new fuel put in. But the bottom line is, it’s reached the end of its usefulness in this test. You know, it’s a test that the Air Force carries out periodically that’s designed to show the reliability of the Minuteman III system. Well, it failed. And so what we have here is a Cold War relic that is on life support and it may not be able to do the job that it’s supposed to do.
“Then you compare and contrast this with the Russian missiles that are being fielded now, two in particular: the Sarmat missile, which is a heavy intercontinental ballistic missile carrying multiple warheads, including the Avangard hypersonic maneuverable warhead. It also can be fired, because of its range, over the South Pole, which means it comes into the United States from a direction that our early-warning radars aren’t situated – all our radars are oriented toward the North Pole, the traditional entry route of Russian missiles if there was to be a war.

There’s the Yars missile, which is not only road-mobile, but also could be fired from a silo. And the Yars missile can carry the Avangard hypersonic maneuverable warhead.” “The Avangard is a warhead that’s designed to defeat any missile defense system in the world. It was developed by the Russians in response to the decision by President George W. Bush, back in 2002, to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and therefore begin deploying ballistic missile defense systems that the Russians deemed to threaten the notion of strategic parity, meaning that the United States fielded a missile defense system capable of shooting down Russian warheads and fielded systems that could allow for a preemptive first-strike. The United States may believe they can nullify Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrent and therefore push Russia around any way they want. That’s unacceptable to the Russians.”

[..]“Look at The Economist, the hard Russophobic magazine. The cover[says]: ‘Is Russia winning the War?’ Oh, yeah. ‘Did we get it wrong?’ You’re damn right you did. Everybody got it wrong. The Russian defense industry right now is orders of magnitude advanced over ours. They are producing new systems, modern systems, systems that are derived from experiences of less than a year. Like I told you, the B-21 is a 10-to-15 year old design. The Russians are putting out new things. Look what we did with China: we’re trying to strangle their chips, saying they will never be able to develop a certain size chip. And so we cut them off from the lithographic machines from the Netherlands and from this supply and that supply, and in less than a year, the Chinese are not only producing that chip, but better chips, because they were compelled to do it themselves. And they are so far ahead of us in terms of other technologies.” he said.

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“Haaretz journalist Chaim Levinson also investigated the claim and said, “I checked. Did not happen.”

• Israeli Army Plants New Fake Hamas Atrocity Story (Cradle)

The Israeli military is seeking to manipulate Israeli journalists to plant false stories of Hamas atrocities in the media. On 28 November, Israeli journalist Yishai Cohen published video of an interview in which an Israeli soldier claimed that dead “Babies and children were hung in a clothes line in a row,” in Be’eri, a settlement near Gaza that was attacked by Hamas on 7 October. Cohen later deleted the video, as the claim could not be confirmed, but the video garnered hundreds of thousands of views on the social media site X during the eight hours it was online. Other X users continued to share the clip after Cohen deleted the post. One X user criticized Cohen, writing, “How do you upload such a video online without having 100% certainty? Why is everything here amateurish and crooked?”

Cohen, a journalist for the Hebrew language Kikar HaShabbat news website, explained his mistake, saying the interview was offered to him by the Israeli army spokesperson. “I did not know the interviewee before. A representative of DoC was present in all the filming and approved the broadcast,” he said. “After posting the promo, there were complaints, so I immediately deleted it within minutes. And yet, even this morning, the IDF [army] spokesman refrained from claiming that this was a false story. By the way, the interviewee insists that the story is accurate and there was even another witness to this.” Haaretz journalist Amir Tibbon criticized Cohen for taking the soldier’s word, and not confirming the story, especially as only one child was killed in the area in the kibbutz in question.

In response, Cohen explained that, “I admit that I didn’t think it was necessary to check the truth of a story brought by a lieutenant colonel, a general officer of the Gaza division, and also accompanied by a representative of the DoC. Why would an army officer make up such a horrific story? I was wrong.” Cohen was among the Israeli journalists who debunked the previous claim that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies during the 7 October surprise attack. A volunteer from United Hatzalah rescues service, Asher Moskowitz, had claimed he was at the Shura military base when bodies were arriving. He claimed that “Most of the bodies from Kfar Aza were burned, but what I saw with this body— it was relatively complete, but hard like a rock, and on its stomach was the sign of a heating element, like a half a circle or a big chain.”

Moskowitz continued by saying that someone from Chevreh Kadishah [the Israeli military organization that prepares bodies for burial] told him that “based on the signs on the body, it looks like they put him inside the oven alive,” and that “they found the baby dead inside the oven.” However, the Jerusalem Post went on to report that no journalists have been able to verify the claim, including Cohen of Kikar HaShabbat news website. Cohen tried to confirm the story with the Israeli military, another rescue service called Zaka, the Shura military base, and other sources, but was unable to. Haaretz journalist Chaim Levinson also investigated the claim and said, “I checked. Did not happen.”

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“..the Americans are being slowly, but surely and very forcefully expelled from the big Eurasia by the Russia-China strategic partnership..”

• US Needs Gaza War to Destabilize BRICS, Greater Eurasia – Pepe Escobar (Sp.)

The Biden administration needs an Israeli victory in Gaza in order to undermine BRICS and other economic integration initiatives led by Russia and China, veteran geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar told the New Rules podcast. “This is an American diversionist tactic to once again go against BRICS multipolarity, especially given the fact that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates now have a very graphic, tangible opportunity to link themselves to the birth of the new Eurasia when they become members of BRICS,” he said. Escobar noted that during the G20 summit in New Delhi in September, the United States and Israel unveiled the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) initiative. The project, Escobar explained, seeks to bypass China’s Belt and Road Initiative and transform Israel into a key energy and logistical hub.

Notably, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech at the UN General Assembly later that month, he presented a map of the “New Middle East” without Palestine. This was no accident, according to Escobar. “The impression that [Netanyahu] gave all of us who follow international relations is that they created this IMEC idea on the fly and they needed to start implementing it in some way. And part of it was ‘Okay, let’s rekindle the war in Israel-Palestine because then we offer the Israelis or the Israelis offer themselves the possibility of solving the Palestine problem.’ Because this comes with another element: the Ben Gurion Canal, which is an old idea first floated in the 60s of building a canal where Israel has control and not the Egyptians. So you transfer all the connectivity and all the trade from Suez to the Ben Gurion Canal.”

Escobar predicted that although the Israeli government is facing growing international criticism for its actions in Gaza, the Biden administration is unlikely to abandon the IMEC initiative. “This [conflict] proves once again that the US will never leave West Asia…The region is absolutely essential for the empire, considering that the Americans are being slowly, but surely and very forcefully expelled from the big Eurasia by the Russia-China strategic partnership – by their trade deals, their multilateral organizations and economic integration projects. All that goes completely against American domination of Eurasia.”

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“Attitudes among young people skewed toward Palestine long before TikTok existed..”

• Tik Tok Under Western Pressure To Censor Pro-Palestine Voices (Cradle)

TikTok’s Chief Executive Officer Shou Chew recently met 40 business leaders, including many from the tech field, who sought to push for the app to take “a more neutral stance” on the campaign of genocide unfolding in the Gaza Strip, Bloomberg reported on 30 November. The meeting included other TikTok executives and several investment partners, who forwarded a letter signed by 90 professionals in an effort to get TikTok to “uphold its commitment” to “prevent harm,” according to investment partner Anthony Goldbloom. Signatories of the letter expressed that they felt the app was violating this clause as claims of “antisemitism” have increased since the 7 October Hamas-led Al-Aqsa Flood operation.

TikTok denied political bias in the app’s algorithm. “Attitudes among young people skewed toward Palestine long before TikTok existed,” a press release by the app says. “Support for Israel (as compared to sympathy for Palestine) has been lower among younger Americans for some time. This is evidenced by looking at Gallup polling data of millennials dating as far back as 2010, long before TikTok even existed.” The push to silence voices in support of Palestine has been prevalent since the beginning of the war. There has been a slurry of anti-Palestinian propaganda that has been used to justify the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip. Media campaigns like “Facts for Peace” have sprung up to bolster the Israeli image in the public eye by seeking million-dollar donations from some of the world’s biggest names in media, finance, and technology.

Israel, in an act of domestic image boosting, has also banned news outlets like Al-Mayadeen from reporting within its borders, claiming such a thing would “jeopardize” the state image. DeclassifiedUK examined the headlines of multiple legacy papers and found that “the mechanics of the western press’ dehumanization of Palestinians in death and life are revealed as clinical and routine.” “In the UK-US mainstream media, Israelis die actively. They are either killed or murdered by Hamas,” the news outlet writes. “Palestinian civilians, by contrast, die passively – and yet it is they who have done most of the dying since 7 October; over ten times the number of Israelis killed.”

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“It is in Europe’s interest to address this issue out of moral conviction because what we are seeing in Gaza is not acceptable..”

• Israel Irate Over Spanish PM Support For Palestine (Cradle)

Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced on 30 November it was recalling its envoy in Spain, Rodica Radian-Gordon, for consultations following remarks made by the country’s prime minister. The Spanish ambassador in Tel Aviv was also summoned in protest to the comments. “Because of the outrageous remarks by the Spanish prime minister, who again repeated baseless claims, I have decided to summon the Israeli ambassador in Spain for consultations in Jerusalem,” Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said. “Israel is acting, and will continue to act, according to international law, and will continue the war until all the hostages are returned and Hamas is eliminated from Gaza.”

While speaking with a local broadcaster on 30 November, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez expressed “serious doubt” that Israel was carrying out its assault on Gaza in line with international humanitarian law, particularly given “growing numbers of children dying.” The Spanish prime minister also called on the EU to recognize an independent Palestinian state. “It is in Europe’s interest to address this issue out of moral conviction because what we are seeing in Gaza is not acceptable,” Sanchez said. The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the Spanish premier’s “shameful remark on a day in which Hamas terrorists murdered Israelis in our capital, Jerusalem.” The comments came the same day as a shooting operation in the occupied holy city, which resulted in the deaths of four settlers. The Hamas fighters behind the attack were killed at the scene.

Sanchez’s comments were not his first on the current war raging in Gaza. Last week, the prime minister accused Netanyahu of “indiscriminate killing” and suggested his country may unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state. Representatives from several EU countries, including Ireland and others, have strongly criticized Israel’s war on the Hamas movement in Gaza. In October, over 800 EU officials wrote in a letter to the head of the bloc, Ursula von der Leyen, that they “hardly recognize the values of the EU” and reject the “seeming indifference demonstrated … by our institution towards the ongoing massacre of civilians in the Gaza Strip, in disregard for human rights and international humanitarian law.”

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They knew about it for a year, but they only started making plans after the fact?

• Israel Planning Global Assassination Campaign – WSJ (RT)

Israeli spies are preparing to assassinate Hamas leaders living in Lebanon, Türkiye, and Qatar once the war with the militant group is over, officials have told the Wall Street Journal. The operation was reportedly planned more than a month ago, but postponed so that hostage negotiations could take place. The Israeli intelligence services began drawing up plans for the assassination campaign after Hamas’ October 7 attack on the Jewish state, the American newspaper reported on Thursday, citing the anonymous officials. Some reportedly wanted to embark on the campaign immediately, but were ordered to wait so that negotiations to free the roughly 240 hostages held by Hamas could progress. The killings have been authorized by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the officials said, adding that it is now a matter of when, not if, the campaign will begin.

While such operations are usually planned in secret, the Israeli government has explicitly warned that it intends to kill Hamas operatives outside of Gaza. Before the officials leaked the story to the Wall Street Journal, Netanyahu declared last month that he had “instructed the Mossad to act against the heads of Hamas wherever they are.” Answering directly to the prime minister’s office, Mossad is Israel’s foreign intelligence and covert operations agency, roughly analogous to the American CIA. The agency has a long history of assassinations on foreign soil, some of which have escalated into major diplomatic incidents. Famed for capturing Adolf Eichmann – a Nazi officer and leading organizer of the Holocaust – in 1960, Mossad failed to kill many of the Nazis it hunted in the decades immediately after World War II, despite having an extensive hit list to work through.

The agency launched a letter-bombing campaign against former Nazi scientists working for Egypt’s rocket program in the early 1960s, but the operation was called off by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in 1963 after multiple targets escaped and at least five Egyptian workers were killed. In a multi-decade clandestine operation launched after Palestinian militants killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, Mossad agents killed 18 people suspected of involvement in the massacre. One of those killed was a Moroccan waiter in Norway, an incident that led to the arrest and sentencing of five Israeli agents by the Norwegian authorities.

More recently, Netanyahu ordered Mossad to assassinate Hamas co-founder Khaled Mashal in Jordan in 1997. The two-man assassination team was captured after one sprayed a toxin into Mashal’s ear, and Jordan threatened to shred its peace treaty with Israel in response. The diplomatic standoff was defused when Israeli agents delivered an antidote to the toxin and Netanyahu agreed to release dozens of Palestinian prisoners, including Hamas imam and co-founder Ahmed Yassin. Mossad agents were also caught using forged Irish, British, and Australian passports for an assassination operation in Dubai in 2010.

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How’s that going so far?

• US Aims To Halve Russia’s Oil, Gas Revenues By 2030 (TASS)

Washington is aiming to halve Russia’s oil and gas revenues by the end of this decade, Geoffrey Pyatt, US assistant secretary of state for energy resources, told the Financial Times. Western sanctions on Russia’s oil came into force on December 5, 2022. The International Energy Agency has forecast that its oil and gas exports could fall “by at least 40-50 per cent by 2030” if western sanctions on Russia’s energy industry are maintained, FT said. “This is something that we’re going to have to stick to for years to come,” as long as the Ukrainian conflict continues, Pyatt said. “We’re going to do everything we can to help make that true,” he was quoted as saying.

“The goal of these sanctions is to change Russia’s behavior,” the official added. Sticking to sanctions against Russia “has enormous geopolitical implications in terms of <…> Russia’s ability to use its energy as a strategic asset,” Pyatt noted. In December 2022, the European Union stopped receiving Russian oil delivered by sea, while G7 countries, Australia and the EU imposed a price cap for it, setting the ceiling at $60 a barrel. It is banned to deliver or insure more expensive oil.

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“Trump’s lawyers have argued that speeches on “election integrity” are “at the heart of his official responsibilities as president,” and are therefore protected from legal consequences..”

• Trump Can Be Sued For Capitol Riot, Court Rules (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump is not immune from being sued over his alleged role in instigating the January 6, 2021 riot on Capitol Hill, an appeals court in Washington DC ruled on Friday. Democrats and Capitol Police officers took legal action against Trump in the wake of the violent protest.In a unanimous verdict, the court rejected Trump’s argument that “presidential immunity” forbids him from being held liable for the events of that day, which took place while he was still in power. In a speech to his supporters before the riot, Trump told them to “fight like hell” against his election loss, but to do so “peacefully and patriotically.”In the ruling, Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan wrote that the president “does not spend every minute of every day exercising official responsibilities,” and “when he acts in an unofficial, private capacity, he is subject to civil suits like any private citizen.”

A trio of lawsuits brought by Democratic lawmakers and US Capitol Police officers allege that Trump’s ‘fight like hell’ speech encouraged the mob to storm the Capitol, and should pay damages. Two officers injured during the riot are seeking a minimum of $75,000 from the former president.Four people died during the protest, all of them Trump supporters. One woman, an Air Force veteran named Ashli Babbitt, was shot dead by a Capitol Police officer during a scuffle near the entrance to the House chamber. The court’s decision paves the way for these lawsuits to go ahead, and could also influence the outcome of a criminal case brought against the former president by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

In August, Smith charged Trump with conspiracy to defraud the US, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights, making the same argument that Trump’s speech provoked the storming of the Capitol. Trump’s lawyers have argued that speeches on “election integrity” are “at the heart of his official responsibilities as president,” and are therefore protected from legal consequences. Trump himself has dismissed Smith’s case as a “pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election.”

Trump is currently the frontrunner to take the Republican Party’s nomination for next year’s election. However, the former president faces multiple legal obstacles. Smith is overseeing two criminal cases against Trump, the second concerning his alleged mishandling of classified documents. In addition to the three civil suits concerning the Capitol riot, Trump is being sued by New York Attorney General Letitia James for allegedly inflating the worth of his business empire, and faces charges in Georgia for allegedly trying to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state. Finally, Trump is being tried in New York for his alleged misreporting of “hush-money” payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Trump insists that all of the cases against him are part of the same overarching, Democrat-led plot to sideline Biden’s leading opponent ahead of the 2024 election.

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“..James wants dissolution and crippling damages, and that could trigger a higher-court review…”

• The Curious Fraud Case Against Trump Just Got ‘Curiouser’ (Turley)

“Curiouser and curiouser.” Those words from Alice in Wonderland seem the only apt description of the case unfolding in the New York courtroom of Justice Arthur F. Engoron over the alleged fraudulent practices of former president Donald Trump, his family and his business. The charges brought by New York State Attorney General Letitia James were curious from the start. James had run for office on the pledge that she would hunt down Trump, a promise that apparently thrilled many New Yorkers. However, she brought a civil case based on Trump over- and under-estimating the values of his properties. As some of us have previously stated, there do appear to have been assets that were inflated or deflated in value. That may be a common practice in New York real estate, but it is not a good practice.

Indeed, I believe a penalty is warranted for such practices, but those should be uniformly imposed and would be a fraction of the fortune sought by James in this case. The evidence shows that banks made money on these loans, which were paid off either early or on time. In fact, none of the banks complained about the Trump organization’s estimations, which were accompanied by a warning that the banks should not rely on those estimates. Moreover, James is seeking to kill a corporation once viewed as iconic in New York, not just by denying the certificates for the Trumps to do business in the city but by imposing $250 million in penalties for money that no one actually lost. That all became curiouser this week when two bankers were called by the defense.

Rosemary Vrablic and David Williams worked on Deutsche Bank loans to the Trumps for years, and they testified that the banks made millions and viewed Trump as a much-sought-after “whale” client — what Vrablic described as a “very high net-worth individual.” Williams testified that net worth is “subjective” in such documents as property valuations and are offered as mere “estimates.” It is not uncommon for a bank’s estimates to differ from a client’s. Vrablic wrote emails at the time about the benefits to the bank in dealing with the Trumps, as well as pitches to the family that the bank was happy to extend conditions which allowed added benefits of “flexibility, rate and service” to get the business relationship. Justice Engoron seemed irritated by the testimony, however, and when Trump counsel asked why the bank was so eager to secure future loans, Engoron snapped back: “They’re trying to make money. Why wouldn’t they be interested?”

The real question here is James’ overriding interest in killing the company. Engoron has already declared that Trump is guilty of fraud, and he is now weighing the massive penalties sought by James — and eagerly supported by many New Yorkers. That eagerness could prove the court’s undoing, however. Some of Engoron’s earlier orders are currently under review. Yet it is James’ demand for the effective dissolution of the corporation and $250 million in penalties that could push this case beyond the curious to the unconstitutional. It is relatively rare for civil damages to trigger constitutional review, and it is still far from clear that this case will rise to that level. The New York law is unique in allowing massive penalties without the loss of a single dollar by a bank. However, James wants dissolution and crippling damages, and that could trigger a higher-court review.

[..] In the Trump case, the banks made money. It would be akin to the car owner’s value going up with the paint job but still hitting BMW with punitive damages. James is known for her embrace of nuclear options when it comes to political opponents or groups. She previously sought to persuade a court to force the dissolution of the National Rifle Association. The question is, what happens if she finally has found an enabling judge in Engoron? The testimony of the bankers highlights how out of proportion this effort has become. One would expect the banks to have sought action as the aggrieved parties if they had suffered losses as a result of Trump misconduct. They did not. While they discontinued working with the Trumps after the start of the New York criminal and civil actions, they have remained silent.

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“Years before the Covid-19 fiasco, Mr. Kirsch gave MIT $2.5 million to build a new lecture hall. Then, during Covid-19, Mr. Kirsch asked MIT to allow him to stage a lecture about his findings. The MIT administrators refused to let Mr. Kirsch speak in the lecture hall that he paid for.”

• The Magic Moment (Kunstler)

History is a trickster. It unfolds emergently with uncanny creativity, often blindsiding humanity with the unanticipated consequences and non-linear outcomes of previous unfoldings. So, here we are now in a Second Civil War. Really? “Between whom?” you might ask. Between truth and untruth. Between a sociopathic bureaucratic blob steeped in lies and a citizenry obliged to live and die by the blob’s lies.Case-in-point: the emergent evolution of US public health agencies, the CDC, the FDA, the NIH, the NIAID and their many fiefdoms, into a gigantic engine of death fueled by incessant and persistent lying. The people running these agencies lied to you about the creation and origin of the novel corona virus, SARS Covid-19. Then they lied about the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines created as the sovereign remedy for Covid-19. They also lied about and suppressed actual effective treatments for the disease they invented and loosed on the world and then coerced the whole medical establishment into breaking its Hippocratic oath (first do no harm) to administer vaccines that killed.

They lied about these things knowingly. And through the whole three-year episode, US public health has hidden the data about Covid and the vaccines while aggressively lying about it and punishing American citizens who found ways to expose the truth. The vaccines have killed an estimate 670,000 Americans and 17-million world-wide, consensus figures arrived at by citizens devoted to uncovering the truth. One of these is independent researcher Steve Kirsch, a Silicon Valley billionaire who invented the optical mouse. In 2021, after noticing a strange pattern of early deaths and injuries in his own circle of acquaintances, Mr. Kirsch devoted himself and his fortune to uncovering the truth about the Covid-19 vaccines. Mr. Kirsch describes himself as “a nerd,” by which he means that he is good at math and at assembling bodies of information using rigorous statistical analysis that present a coherent picture of reality, a.k.a. the truth.

Last night, Thursday, November 30, Mr.Kirsch gave a talk at his alma mater, MIT, in Cambridge, Massachusetts on what the best available statistics tell us about the Covid-19 vaccines (for instance, that so far they have killed more Americans than World War Two). The talk was live-streamed on the Rumble platform (YouTube scrubbed it). There is an interesting story behind Mr. Kirsch’s event. Years before the Covid-19 fiasco, Mr. Kirsch gave MIT $2.5 million to build a new lecture hall. Then, during Covid-19, Mr. Kirsch asked MIT to allow him to stage a lecture about his findings. The MIT administrators refused to let Mr. Kirsch speak in the lecture hall that he paid for. Mr. Kirsch went public with that, embarrassing the university, and under new MIT President Sally Kornbluth, the Institute relented.

Prior to the November 30 talk, Mr. Kirsch sought to share his data with eminent MIT professor Robert Langer, winner of countless awards for advances in the biotechnological sciences. Dr. Langer runs a research program that his MIT webpage describes as follows: “The group’s work is at the interface of biotechnology and materials science. A major focus is the study and development of polymers to deliver drugs, particularly genetically engineered proteins, continuously at controlled rates and for prolonged periods of time.” Sounds like Dr. Langer would be intimately acquainted with the mechanisms of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines, especially the development of lipid nanoparticles that facilitate the delivery of the mRNA message into their targeted cells. Dr. Langer declined to see the data or to meet with Mr. Kirsch. At the beginning of his talk, Mr. Kirsch offered some speculation as to why Dr. Langer might demur to see the data or meet with him. Turns out it is because Dr. Langer sits on the Moderna board of directors.

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“Ducks are only in a row when in motion” – Isaac Newton

 

 

Patrick Moore

 

 

 

 

 

 

Always stay a sucker for the simple things.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1730616494646866334

 

 

Cat

 

 

Self similar

 

 


The American yellow warbler is known for its beautiful yellow and greenish-golden plumage. It is generally resident in the mangrove swamps. Roughly 60% of its diet is caterpillars

 

 


Short Eared Owl

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle November 17 2023

Nov 172023
 
 November 17, 2023  Posted by at 9:22 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  34 Responses »


Jackson Pollock The Deep 1943

 

• Former Israeli PM Calls To Oust Netanyahu, ‘Extremist’ Allies (Cradle)
• Iran Will ‘Do Whatever It Takes’ To Help Hamas – Top Commander (RT)
• Western Elite Ignoring Pro-Palestine Protests May Be Fatal Mistake (Blankenship)
• Just How Many Faked Videos by the IDF Can Western Media Handle? (Jay)
• CIA Chief’s Ukraine Visit Linked to Looming Palace Coup Against Zelensky (Sp.)
• CIA’s Desperate Gambit in Kiev (The Islander News)
• End ‘Magical Thinking’ About Russia’s Defeat – WSJ essay (RT)
• US Abrams Tanks Made No Difference – Zelensky (RT)
• Xi Outmanuevers Biden in San Francisco (Pepe Escobar)
• China Seeks Neither Hegemony Nor To Wage War With Anyone — Xi Jinping (TASS)
• Rand Paul Wants Federal Prosecution of Fauci for COVID Coverup (ET)
• No Charges Likely In Biden Classified Document Scandal (ZH)
• Should Joe Biden Be Banned? (Turley)
• Appeals Court Lifts Trump Gag Order In NY Fraud Case (ZH)

 

 

 

 

UN Palestine

 

 

Jimmy Dore

 

 

 

 

Tucker Iran

 

 

McGovern

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Netanyahu has lost the trust of his citizens, the trust of the international community, and most seriously – the trust of the Israeli security system..”

• Former Israeli PM Calls To Oust Netanyahu, ‘Extremist’ Allies (Cradle)

Yair Lapid, former Israeli prime minister of the Yesh Atid opposition party, called on 15 November for Benjamin Netanyahu to be replaced as premier. In an interview with Hebrew news outlet Channel 12, Lapid said: “The public has lost faith in Netanyahu … we can’t run an extended [military] operation with a prime minister we do not have faith in.” Lapid called for the prime minister to be replaced by another member of his Likud party without carrying out an election. “What we need is a national rehabilitation government. We need to begin the repairing and healing process,” the former prime minister said. Lapid said his party would be fully willing to join a new government still led by the Likud, but it is not the right time for elections in Israel. The opposition leader did not name any Likud figure he sees fit for the premiership.

“I think at the end of the day, I’m worried about the real issue, and the real issue now is for us to have a functioning government.” “Yesterday on Channel 12, I explained that the time has come – we need to establish a national reconstruction government. Likud will lead it, Netanyahu and the extremists will be replaced, and over 90 MKs will be partners in a coalition of healing and reconnection.” In a long thread on the X platform, Lapid praised the army and its operation in Gaza and reiterated that the war would be a “long and complex” one. “The Israeli public is showing resilience, and civil society has mobilized in the thousands … The weak link is the government, and especially the prime minister … Netanyahu has lost the trust of his citizens, the trust of the international community, and most seriously – the trust of the Israeli security system,” he said.

Lapid’s words come as recent polling has indicated a significant increase in mistrust and bitterness toward Netanyahu. According to a Maariv poll from last week, only 26 percent of Israelis believe Netanyahu is suitable to be prime minister. Another recent poll shows that 76 percent of Israelis want him out of office and that 44 percent hold Netanyahu responsible for what happened on 7 October. Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert said last week that Netanyahu is “a danger to Israel.”

Netanyahu is Finished | Jeffrey Sachs

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Soleimani’s successor.

• Iran Will ‘Do Whatever It Takes’ To Help Hamas – Top Commander (RT)

The head of Iran’s elite Quds Force has vowed to do “whatever it takes” to back Hamas in its war with Israel, claiming that the Palestinian militant group is headed for an “impressive victory” in Gaza. In a letter addressed to the commander of Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Quds Force leader Esmail Qaani declared that Tehran and its allies “will not allow this brutal enemy and those standing behind him to conquer Gaza and its heroic people.” “We will do whatever it takes in this historic battle,” Qaani said, adding that Hamas had “proved to everyone that the resistance in Gaza is capable of initiative and innovation, while maintaining its organization and field capabilities.”

Published on Thursday by the state-backed Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), the letter comes just one day after Reuters reported that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had informed Hamas that his country would not get directly involved in the Gaza war. Instead, Khamenei reportedly restated Iran’s long standing “political and moral support” for Hamas, but ruled out military intervention. Earlier on Thursday, however, top Hamas official Osama Hamdan dismissed the Reuters story, telling IRNA: “Instead of providing information, this news agency has published worthless lies.” He added that such reports are intended to harm the image of Hamas and its allies in the “axis of resistance” – a network of Iran-backed militia groups in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza.

Iranian officials have yet to comment on the Reuters report. Qaani went on to congratulate the Palestinian armed faction for an “impressive victory and qualitative achievement that is unprecedented in the history of the conflict,” assuring that “Your brothers in the resistance axis stand united with you.” The Quds Force is the foreign operations arm of Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), responsible for military and intelligence missions beyond Iran’s borders. Qaani took over the force in 2020 after his predecessor, Qasem Soleimani, was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad.

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“The fact that he is staying firm on his position with Israel, despite protests from his own party and reportedly his own staff, is a grave mistake.”

• Western Elite Ignoring Pro-Palestine Protests May Be Fatal Mistake (Blankenship)

In recent days, there has been a wave of pro-Palestine protests across the world as violence in Gaza escalates in the wake of an Israeli invasion and bombing campaign that has killed thousands, including many women and children, in response to the deadly terrorist attack by Hamas on October 7. One of the key questions is, will this actually amount to any change in so-called Western democracies that are standing behind Israel’s onslaught? It depends on the country; however, largely, the answer is no – at least for the countries that have the most pull over Israel’s position. In the United States, lawmakers from the ruling Democratic Party are reportedly ducking calls from concerned constituents who are calling for a ceasefire. President Joe Biden, when asked by reporters if there was any possibility for a halt to the violence, said, “None. No possibility.”

This is worrying because, in principle, in a democracy, politicians are supposed to respond to the will of constituents. They are also supposed to bend to popular will, given that their electoral odds hinge on the opinions of voters. Arab Americans, including in key swing states, are fed up with the Biden administration’s policies in general – but also particularly with its dealings with Israel. Support for Biden among them now stands at a mere 17%, and 40% are inclined to vote for Republican former President Donald Trump in the 2024 election, according to a poll conducted by the Arab American Institute. Massive protests, calls for voters, and the very real possibility that Biden’s position on Israel could forfeit the upcoming 2024 presidential election to Trump, the likely Republican Party nominee, show that Western democracy – especially in the US – is in shambles.

When politicians ignore popular will, it shows that there is a serious crisis with the ordinary function of supposedly democratic institutions. At the same time, it must be noted that Biden has not shied away from his pro-Israel leanings. To quote then-Senator Joe Biden, a self-described Zionist, from 1986, “There’s no apology to be made [for supporting Israel]. None. It is the best three-billion-dollar investment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.” Still, as a unity president (at least in theory), Biden has a responsibility to shirk ideology in order to preserve democracy – especially when it is under full-scale assault by an opposition party that casts doubt on the legitimacy of elections and does not believe Biden was rightfully elected. The fact that he is staying firm on his position with Israel, despite protests from his own party and reportedly his own staff, is a grave mistake.

The situation in Europe is also more nuanced. Here we are seeing countries, like the Czech Republic and Hungary, remain steadfast in their unwavering support for Israel despite some opposition, and the former has even outlawed pro-Palestine demonstrations. French President Emmanuel Macron recently urged Israel to stop bombing Gaza – but he is also facing open criticism from his own ambassadors for his support for Israel. France has also outlawed pro-Palestine protests. But some countries, like Ireland and Spain, are openly critical of Israel and are considering cutting diplomatic ties. If nothing else, this disunity demonstrates the fragility of a common EU foreign policy framework. This is especially the case given the fact that Ursula von der Leyen, the unelected president of the European Commission, has proven to be a US-infiltrated, hypocritical pro-war demagogue.

What’s clear as day in the current situation in the Middle East is that each and every day that the attack on Gaza continues, it becomes more difficult to morally and logically justify the common Western position of supporting Israel no matter what. The rest of the world sees this and is taking note, understanding the days of Western hegemony are numbered. Moreover, the leaders who are holding firm on the pro-Israel line despite immense and unprecedented public pressure are inadvertently eroding the very fabric of the fundamental institutions of Western society. As a growing number of people in the West become jaded with democracy, or, in the case of the EU, become skeptical of Brussels, the leaders who ignore their constituents only have themselves to blame.

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“..you won’t have to wait too long before another seamless transition takes place between what US media is ‘reporting’ and what Hollywood will soon produce.”

• Just How Many Faked Videos by the IDF Can Western Media Handle? (Jay)

The war in Gaza is going into the history books for setting precedents for many things. But perhaps it might not be such a watermark which too many journalists will remind you about, but fake news on a whole new scale which we haven’t seen before, will be one of them. How do westerners who watch their evening news take our mainstream media journalist in Israel seriously? Firstly, most of them aren’t even inside Gaza but comfortably ‘embedded’ with Israel’s IDF usually in lux accommodation which has been arranged for them, while IDF propagandists feed them nuggets of prepared fake news during the day while they dine as guests of the army. Our western journalists are so embedded that what they are presenting is not even news each night but a narrative which they have been hearing all day. And in some cases, seeing.

Part of the IDF’s mantra when handling the press is to show them video clips they have in their possession. But so far there is no scepticism as to the validity of this material shown by the journalists. Remarkably, British journalists like Douglas Murray – who seems to be one of the very few inside Gaza – tell Piers Morgan during a live interview, while coming under fire, that the Palestinians deserve the absolute ‘collective’ obliteration as the raw video clips he saw of Hamas fighters on October 7th murdering Israeli civilians were doing so while showing ‘glee’. This is a good example of what happens to western journalist who gets too close to those doing the ‘media handling’. It’s subtle and you have to look closely, but there is a seamless transition from where the journalist crosses a line and becomes the propagandist for this hosts. Remarkably a couple of Palestinian Hamas fighters phoned their parents in a state of glee after they murdered Israelis and this is enough to dehumanize them and deem them worthy of mass annihilation.

And how can we even trust anything the IDF press team are feeding western journalists? Their track record is appalling when it comes to faking video and audio clips. The most recent IDF soldier showing us some hospitals where he shows what looks like a lift shaft but is presented as a Gaza tunnel might be regarded as par for the course. But wait. Soon our man is standing in the hospital where in one room some arms and ammunition is laid out on the floor. And we are expected to believe that this shows that Hamas was using the hospital as a base. Even the events of October the 7th are still to be regarded with heavy scepticism when it is revealed that the so-called massacre at a music festival was actually done when the IDF arrived with tanks and shot at anyone driving in a panicky way in their cars to flee. Western journalists seldom report the policy that Israel has towards its own people who are taken captive: when possible kill them ourselves.

But any two-bit journalists could have seen by looking at the twisted metal of the cars at the pop concert that this damage was not done by light arms fire, say, from AKs but from much heavy calibre equipment. It’s a similar pantheon of lies when we watch a video of a doctor talking softly about how much the IDF have tried to help the hospitals by trying to donate diesel. You know the sort of thing. Didn’t take too much time for online sleuths to expose the doctor as a second-rate Israeli actress. Israel calls Hamas animals and as we have seen intends to wipe as many off the face of the earth so that Gaza can be retaken and new settlements can be built. But is the barrage of fake videos intended to fool the West? So far, mostly they are ridiculed within minutes of being posted and so can only be assumed that they are created for the Zionists supporters around the world who need something to grasp, to justify the holocaust which we are witnessing each day.

But the role played by western media in not using them as subjects in reports is disgraceful. Some might even argue that the journalists themselves are complicit in the genocide as the mass slaughter of civilians can only be carried out when Israel has the guarantee from the west of no war crimes being charged and that media don’t (or can’t) report on just how far faking the news has got in Israel. It has reached a whole new level and only made possible by the big media outlets not calling them out. Why should we be shocked or even surprised to learn that all of CNN’s footage and reports are checked before they are aired by the IDF themselves. We are literally watching an illusion each night by CNN journalists ducking and diving while they do their pieces to camera. And you won’t have to wait too long before another seamless transition takes place between what US media is ‘reporting’ and what Hollywood will soon produce.

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“Anyone who doesn’t bow down to the dictator that Zelensky has become, is found guilty of being treasonous to the emperor.”

• CIA Chief’s Ukraine Visit Linked to Looming Palace Coup Against Zelensky (Sp.)

Washington’s spymaster has flown to Ukraine in secret to stamp US authority on the power struggle within the Kiev regime, says a security expert. CIA Director William Burns reportedly flew to Kiev on Wednesday for “urgent and secret” meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Security analyst Mark Sleboda told Sputnik that Burns’ visit “dovetails” with this week’s visit to Washington by Andriy Yermak, “Zelensky’s powerful, grey, cardinal, chief of staff” to meet US Secretary of State Antony Blinken — who duly uttered pledges of continued military support for Kiev in the US proxy conflict with Russia. “The general assumption is that this has to do with the growing rift between Zelensky, the president of the Kiev regime, and [Valery] Zaluzhny, the regime’s top general,” Sleboda explained, noting that Western mainstream media were “openly now reporting about the rift and speculating that they are on the verge of some type of open conflict.”

He pointed out that the US was already pressuring its client state in Ukraine to hold a presidential election on schedule by March 31 2024 — “with the intention of replacing Zelensky, who may appear to have lost confidence, with Zaluzhny.” Zelensky called off that election last week, claiming the ongoing fighting and the secession of four regions to Russia in 2022 made it impossible. “First he said: ‘OK, if you pay for it’. And then last week it became: ‘no, no elections’,” Sleboda said. “And now Zaluzhny’s top deputies, those close to him, we’ve had one fired. We’ve had another one blown up at his birthday party by either a moronic accident or a targeted political assassination by those close to Zelensky.” The analyst speculated that Burns’ intervention could have one of two aims: either “tamping it down or settling it or whatever, but saying that this is not acceptable, this is the road to disaster and your patron does not allow this, stop fighting — or they’re telling Zelensky to go away.”

Along with the attacks on Zaluzhny’s faction, officials are also going after anyone deemed sympathetic to former US president Donald Trump — who asked Zelensky to investigate his rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter for possible corruption over their deep involvement in Ukraine. Two politicians and a former prosecutor have recently been charged with treason for assisting Trump’s personal lawyer, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, in his own probes in the Biden family’s dealings. “This is what the Kiev regime charges everyone with. They charged the leaders of the three largest opposition parties in the country — before two of them were banned,” Sleboda stressed. “Anyone who doesn’t bow down to the dictator that Zelensky has become, is found guilty of being treasonous to the emperor.”

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“Is the pursuit of a NATO foothold in Ukraine worth the cost? The very existence of NATO itself may well be the cost. ”

• CIA’s Desperate Gambit in Kiev (The Islander News)

The arrival of CIA Director William Burns in Kiev signals a critical juncture in the Ukraine conflict. As the situation intensifies, Burns’ urgent mission is a stark indicator of Ukraine’s dire state. The Zelensky regime, once propagated as an emblem of resilience, now teeters on the brink of collapse, overwhelmed by insurmountable casualties and internal strife. This visit raises a crucial question: Is Ukraine on the cusp of a necessary capitulation, or is a coup on the horizon? Amidst these high-level meetings, the on-ground reality in Ukraine is catastrophic. The country has cycled through 3 armies, now relying on an untrained and under-equipped force consisting largely of older men, women, and youths.

This strategic dilution is no accident but a calculated Russian tactic: a meat-grinding strategy designed to deplete Ukraine’s military strength and incite political chaos in Kiev. As tensions escalate, an internal power struggle unfolds. Zelensky, in a bid to consolidate power, appears poised to purge key military figures, including Zaluzhny. This move would destabilize the already fragile military structure, further diminishing its capacity to withstand Russian advances. Meanwhile, Zelensky’s admin grapples with allegations of corruption, with reports of rampant graft and theft, potentially affecting the flow of vital aid. In this high-stakes environment, Burns’ role is beyond mere diplomatic support.

His presence underscores a broader strategic dilemma: whether to continue propping up a faltering regime or recalibrate US policy in the region. With Washington’s ambitions to embed NATO in Ukraine, the implications of Burns’ visit are profound. How will the US navigate this precarious situation, and at what cost? As the war reaches an inevitable tipping point, one must ask: Is the pursuit of a NATO foothold in Ukraine worth the cost? The very existence of NATO itself may well be the cost.

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“The technocrats responsible for running the Russian economy have proven themselves to be resilient, adaptable, and resourceful..”

• End ‘Magical Thinking’ About Russia’s Defeat – WSJ essay (RT)

Western leaders must give up their “magical thinking” about defeating Russia in Ukraine and shift to a strategy of long-term containment against Moscow, an analysis published by the Wall Street Journal has concluded. “What Western leaders conspicuously haven’t done is level with their publics about the enduring nature of the threat from an emboldened, revisionist Russia,” Eugene Rumer and Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote in an essay published on Thursday. “They have indulged all too often in magical thinking – betting on sanctions, a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive or the transfer of new types of weapons to force the Kremlin to come to the negotiating table.”

The Washington think tank’s authors noted that contrary to the hopes of Western officials who speculated that Russian President Vladimir Putin would be ousted in a “palace coup,” Moscow has maintained popular support for its Ukraine strategy while overcoming efforts to cripple its economy. “More than six months before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin signed off on a new national security strategy for Russia,” the op-ed said. “The main thrust of that document was to prepare the country for a long-term confrontation with the West. Today, Putin can tell the nation that his strategy is working.” Although Rumer and Weiss claimed that “none of this should come as a surprise,” the WSJ is among the Western media outlets that have built up hopes for a Ukrainian victory since the conflict began. However, the tone of media coverage has shifted amid Kiev’s battlefield struggles in recent weeks, acknowledging that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky faces wavering allies, enormous casualties, and growing fissures within his leadership team.

One of the most somber articles was posted late last month by Time magazine, which had named Zelensky its “person of the year” just last December. “Exhaustion with the war rolls along like a wave,” Zelensky told the publication, referring to the sharp decrease in Western enthusiasm for the Ukrainian cause. Speaking to The Economist earlier this month, Valery Zaluzhny, Kiev’s top general, admitted that the situation on the battlefront had reached “a stalemate.” The WSJ essay said there are no indications that Russia is losing the conflict, which has become a “war of attrition.” Putin’s hold on power has only strengthened, and Russian defense contractors are outperforming their Western counterparts in producing weaponry. The Russian economy has withstood US-led sanctions, the authors noted. “The technocrats responsible for running the Russian economy have proven themselves to be resilient, adaptable, and resourceful,” the two analysts said. “Elevated oil prices, driven in part by close cooperation with Saudi Arabia, are refilling state coffers. Ukraine, by contrast, depends heavily on infusions of Western cash.”

Weiss and Rumer called for a shift to a long-term containment strategy because “there should be no illusions that any possible combination of short-term steps will be sufficient to force Putin to abandon his war.” The new strategy would involve continuing Western sanctions, isolating Russia diplomatically, and strengthening NATO defense capabilities, as well as “mitigating all of the damage – diplomatic, informational, military and economic” caused by the war. The op-ed stressed that Western leaders used a similarly long-term approach during the Cold War, rather than unrealistically betting on an “overnight collapse of the Soviet system.” However, the analysts advised against fighting another Cold War. “Embarking on a global competition with the Kremlin would not be a wise investment of US prestige or resources. It would consign us to a pointless game of whack-a-mole against any and all manifestations of Russian influence,” wrote Rumer and Weiss.

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Hoocoodanode?

• US Abrams Tanks Made No Difference – Zelensky (RT)

The M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks provided to Ukraine by the US have hardly made a difference on the battlefield, President Vladimir Zelensky said in a discussion with journalists from several African nations published by his office on Wednesday. Zelensky explained that the batch of 31 vehicles, which were fully delivered by mid-October, is too small. While praising the American weapon’s quality, he said, “So far, I can hardly say that they play a particularly important role on the battlefield. There are too few of them.” “For better or for worse, we have many different kinds of tanks,” the Ukrainian president said, describing the US-provided variant as but one part of the fleet.

These remarks align with what Col. Martin O’Donnell, a US Army Europe and Africa spokesman, told the media as he confirmed the completion of Washington’s handover of the units to Kiev. He said, “The Abrams tank is one hell of an armored vehicle, but it’s not a silver bullet.” In January, the US agreed to supply Ukraine with enough Abrams tanks to arm a single battalion as part of its military assistance against Russia. The delivery started in September and was completed a month later. Previously, the Pentagon argued against sending the tanks, saying that Abrams was too difficult and expensive to operate to be of much use to Kiev.

The range of weapons sent to Kiev by its Western donors has been described as a “zoo” by Ukrainian troops. According to Western media reports, this variability causes issues with the compatibility of munitions, adds to the challenge of repairing damaged hardware, and makes training soldiers on how to operate weapon platforms more cumbersome. The Ukrainian military has incorporated a diverse range of armored vehicles into its arsenal, including French AMX-10RC fighting vehicles, German Leopard tanks, British Challenger 2 tanks, and American Abrams tanks. These supplies were anticipated to enhance Kiev’s capabilities for breaking through Russian defensive lines during the summer. However, the anticipated counteroffensive did not yield the desired success. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reacted to the news of the Abrams tank’s arrival in Ukraine at the time by stating, “These will burn too.”

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“All of the above of course assumed The Mummy knew where he was and what he was talking about, “off the cuff”, and not dictated by his ubiquitous earpiece.”

• Xi Outmanuevers Biden in San Francisco (Pepe Escobar)

All those previous elaborate plans unraveled, in a flash. A tentatively rosy scenario turned into a film noir. The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s response was as sharp as a Dashiell Hammett one-liner – and contextualized: this was not only “extremely wrong” but “an irresponsible political manipulation”. All of the above of course assumed The Mummy knew where he was and what he was talking about, “off the cuff”, and not dictated by his ubiquitous earpiece. The Xi-Biden drama, lasting a little over two hours, was not exactly a remake of “Vertigo”. Washington and Beijing seemed quite cozy jointly promising the proverbial promotion and strengthening of “dialogue and cooperation in various fields”; an intergovernmental dialogue on AI; drug control cooperation; back to high-level military-to-military talking; a “maritime security consultation mechanism”; significantly increasing flights by early 2024; and “expanding exchanges” in education, international students, culture, sports, and business circles.

The Hegemon was far from having a priceless Maltese Falcon (“the stuff dreams are made of”) to offer Beijing. China is already solidified as the world’s top trading economy by PPP. China is advancing at breakneck speed on the tech race even under nasty US sanctions. China’s soft power across the Global South/Global Majority increases by the day. China is co-organizing with Russia the concerted drive towards multipolarity. The White House readout , as bland as it might seem, actually gives away the key part of the plot. Biden – actually his earpiece – underscored “support for a free and open Indo-Pacific”; the defense of “our Indo-Pacific allies”; the “commitment to freedom of navigation and overflight”; “adherence to international law”; “maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea and East China Sea”; “support to “Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression”; and “support for Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism”.

Beijing understands in detail the context and the geopolitical overtones of each of these pledges. What the readout does not say is that Biden’s handlers also tried to convince the Chinese to stop buying oil from their strategic partner Iran. That’s not gonna happen. China imported an average of 1.05 million barrels of oil a day from Iran over the first 10 months of 2023 – and rising. US Think Tankland, always excelling in misinformation and disinformation, believed in their own childish projection of Xi playing tough guy against the US in Asia, knowing that Washington can’t afford a third love affair, sorry, war front on top of Ukraine and Israel/Palestine. The fact is Xi knows all there is to know about imperial, rotating Hybrid War fronts, plus others that can be powered on at the flick of a switch. The Hegemon continues to provoke disturbance not only in Taiwan but in the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, India, and continues to flirt with possible color revolutions in Central Asia.

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“China does not seek spheres of influence, and will not fight a cold war or a hot war with anyone..”

• China Seeks Neither Hegemony Nor To Wage War With Anyone — Xi Jinping (TASS)

China has no desire for hegemony and will not wage either a cold or hot war against anyone, Chinese President Xi Jinping said after talks with US President Joe Biden in San Francisco, Xinhua news agency reported. “Whatever stage of development it may reach, China will never pursue hegemony or expansion, and will never impose its will on others,” Xi Jinping said at a meeting arranged by a number of US organizations. “China does not seek spheres of influence, and will not fight a cold war or a hot war with anyone,” Xinhua quoted the Chinese leader as saying.

The talks between the Chinese and US presidents are their seventh official interaction since January 2021, when Biden became president. The two countries’ heads met in person for the second time (the first meeting was last November on the Indonesian island of Bali). Xi Jinping is visiting the US for the first time in six years. During the visit, he is scheduled to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

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“Why is [Dr. Fauci] so wedded to trying to make you believe it came from the animal kingdom and not the lab? Because he funded the lab.”

• Rand Paul Wants Federal Prosecution of Fauci for COVID Coverup (ET)

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has said he’s pursuing federal criminal action against Dr. Anthony Fauci for perjury before Congress. In an interview on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” with Jan Jekielek, Dr. Paul said he has asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to prosecute Dr. Fauci for giving false testimony during multiple congressional hearings. “We haven’t had a lot of luck,” Dr. Paul said. “Garland is not paying attention to the referral, but [Dr. Fauci] did lie to Congress.” The Epoch Times reached out to Georgetown University, where Dr. Fauci is employed, for comment but didn’t receive a reply by the time of publishing. In July, Dr. Fauci joined the university as a distinguished university professor in its school of medicine’s department of medicine.

Dr. Paul alleges that Dr. Fauci—and multiple other parts of the federal government—engaged in an “extensive” coverup of the origin, threat, and potential treatments for COVID-19. The senator said he detailed the two-year misdirection in his book “Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up,” which was published in October. “Virtually everything they said in private, they said the opposite in the public at the same time,” Dr. Paul said. As early as February 2020, Dr. Fauci and other scientists convened and discussed their conclusion that the genetic sequence of the virus that causes COVID-19 appeared to have been manipulated in a lab to make it more infectious to humans. They were doubly concerned because they knew that the Wuhan, China, lab performed gain-of-function research.

Dr. Paul also alleges that many of the scientists involved in the U.S. public health response to COVID-19 were “funding the lab in Wuhan.” “They actually have a direct conflict of interest because they are the ones that will be culpable,” Dr. Paul said. “Why is [Dr. Fauci] so wedded to trying to make you believe it came from the animal kingdom and not the lab? Because he funded the lab.”

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“..while Hur’s investigation may not lead to criminal charges, the political and public scrutiny over the matter is far from over..”

• No Charges Likely In Biden Classified Document Scandal (ZH)

Following a ‘thorough investigation,’ special counsel Robert Hur is unlikely to charge anyone in connection to President Joe Biden’s classified document scandal, according to multiple reports citing sources familiar with the matter. Hur’s report is expected to sharply criticize Biden and his aides for their handling of classified documents – the standard treatment for the protected establishment class whose name doesn’t end in Trump. This outcome raises obvious questions DOJ sham investigations – for if a Special Counsel’s probe into potential mishandling of sensitive national documents results only in criticism and no legal repercussions, what message does it send about accountability at the highest levels of government?

Hur’s investigation, which began in January following his appointment by Attorney General Merrick Garland, has spanned nearly a year. It has involved interviews with around 100 Biden aides, including the President’s embattled son, Hunter Biden, who himself faces unrelated legal troubles following an indictment on federal gun charges. Biden himself was interviewed last month. “The president has been interviewed as part of the investigation being led by Special Counsel Robert Hur,” reads the statement from the White House Counsel’s Office spokesperson Ian Sams (the guy who lied and had a meltdown over Hunter Biden’s $260K in Chinese wires). Of note, Hunter Biden listed Joe’s Wilmington, Delaware home – where a bunch of classified documents were found, as his address when he received above mentioned Chinese wires, due to the Biden family’s dealings with CCP-linked businessmen.

[..] Notably, the investigation has also involved discussions with Secretary of State Tony Blinken, former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, as reported by WSJ. These high-level interviews underscore the gravity of the investigation and the potential ramifications it could have had. The House Oversight Committee wrote a letter to Hur in October requesting information on whether President Biden possessed classified documents related to his son’s foreign business dealings. The classified documents discovered at the Penn Biden Center and Joe Biden’s Delaware residence date back to his vice presidency and decades-long senate tenure.

Kathy Chung, a Defense Department aide and former Vice President Biden aide recommended by Hunter Biden, was one of the individuals who handled classified documents, according to the Oversight Committee. -Daily Caller As the DOJ investigation winds down, the House Oversight Committee has vowed to continue its quest for clarity and accountability. Former White House Counsel Dana Remus was subpoenaed to appear for a deposition to answer questions about the handling of the classified documents. This move indicates that, while Hur’s investigation may not lead to criminal charges, the political and public scrutiny over the matter is far from over. So yes, corrupt administration investigates itself – finds no wrongdoing worth pursuing. End of story.

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“No level of censorship seemed to be sufficient for President Biden, who once claimed that social media companies were “killing people” by not silencing more dissenting voices..”

• Should Joe Biden Be Banned? (Turley)

An internal State Department dissent memo was leaked this past week, opposing the Biden administration’s position on the war between Israel and Hamas. What was most notable about the memo is that some administration staffers accused President Joe Biden of “spreading misinformation.” It was a moment of crushing irony for some of us who have written and testified against the Biden administration’s censorship efforts. The question is whether, under the administration’s own standards, President Biden should now be banned or blacklisted to protect what his administration has called our “cognitive infrastructure.” For years, the administration and many Democrats in Congress have resisted every effort to expose the sprawling government censorship program that one federal judge described as an “Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”

As I have written previously, it included grants to academic and third-party organizations to create a global system of blacklists and to pressure advertisers to withdraw support from conservative sites. Most recently, a House Judiciary Committee report revealed another layer of this system, described as a “switchboarding” role for the censorship system by channeling demands for removal or bans from state and local officials. This switchboarding process was confirmed by Brian Scully of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), during prior court testimony. CISA’s director, Jen Easterly, previously declared the administration’s intent to extend its role over maintaining critical infrastructure to include “our cognitive infrastructure” and combating not just mis- and disinformation but also “malinformation,” which CISA describes as “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”

As a result, over the last four years, researchers, politicians, and even satirical sites have been banned or blacklisted for offering dissenting views of COVID measures, climate change, gender identity or social justice, according to the House Judiciary report. No level of censorship seemed to be sufficient for President Biden, who once claimed that social media companies were “killing people” by not silencing more dissenting voices. Now, though, President Biden himself is accused — by some in his own administration — of spreading misinformation and supporting war criminals. The five-page State Department memo was signed by 100 State and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) employees and was accompanied by a social media post by a junior foreign affairs staffer, accusing Biden of being “complicit in genocide” in Gaza. The memo accuses Biden of “spreading misinformation,” citing his Oct. 10 speech supporting Israel, and accuses Israel of committing “war crimes and/or crimes against humanity under international law.” It also accuses Biden of ignoring facts — a classic justification for past administration demands to censor figures — on the number of Palestinian casualties.

Democrats face a nightmare of allegations of disinformation on both sides of the war and other issues. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and numerous media outlets have been accused of spreading disinformation about Israel killing hundreds with an airstrike on a Gaza hospital. Former CIA director Leon Panetta, in an interview on Fox News, stood by disproven claims about Russia faking Hunter Biden’s laptop. There is, of course, not even a whisper (let alone a loud demand) for censorship or suspension of any of these figures or outlets, because that is not how the administration’s policies over “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation” — what it terms “MDM” — work. The administration at one point insisted that it would police this “MDM space” to target views on a sweeping range of subjects, including racial justice and the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. So what will the Biden MDM space-rangers do with President Biden? The obvious answer is, “Nothing.”

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“In short, the entertainment factor with Trump’s NY trial just went up immeasurably.”

• Appeals Court Lifts Trump Gag Order In NY Fraud Case (ZH)

A New York appeals court judge on Thursday temporarily lifted a gag order preventing former President Donald Trump from commenting on court staffers in his civil fraud trial. Trump was gagged last month by judge Arthur Engoron, and later fined $15,000 for violations after he talked trash on social media about the Judge’s top law clerk. On Wednesday, Trump’s attorneys filed a lawsuit against the trial judge – arguing that the Engoron had abused his power. In response to the request, Judge David Friedman of the state’s intermediate appeals court scheduled an emergency hearing Thursday afternoon around a conference table in a state appellate courthouse just a few miles from Engoron’s courtroom, where he granted their request.

“Ruling at an emergency hearing Thursday, Friedman questioned Engoron’s authority to police Trump’s speech outside the courtroom — such as his frequent gripes about the case on social media and in comments to TV cameras in the courthouse hallway. Friedman said that while it’s true that judges often issue gag orders, they’re mostly used in criminal cases where there’s a fear that comments about the case could influence the jury. Trump’s civil trial doesn’t have a jury. Trump lawyer Christopher Kise said after Friedman ruled that the appellate judge “made the right decision and allowed President Trump to take full advantage of his constitutional First Amendment rights to talk about bias in his own trial, what he’s seeing and witnessing in his own trial — which, frankly, everyone needs to see.” -AP

Vivek
https://twitter.com/i/status/1725009663924604970

“I don’t see a reason for restrictions because Ms. James is continuing to disparage my client,” said Trump attorney Alina Habba, referring to NY Attorney General Letitia James, who is prosecuting the case. In staying the order, Trump can now freely comment about the court and its staff while the appeals process plays out. Separately on Wednesday, Trump’s legal team urged Engoron to stop the case immediately, arguing that his appearance of bias “threatens both Defendants’ rights and the integrity of the judiciary as an institution.” “This constitutional protection is at its apogee where the speech in question is core political speech, made by the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, regarding perceived partisanship and bias at a trial where he is subject to hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties and the threatened prohibition of his lawful business activities in the state,” the filing continues. In short, the entertainment factor with Trump’s NY trial just went up immeasurably.

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Kirsch
https://twitter.com/i/status/1725058928415764975

 

 

 

 


Jacana father shields his offspring

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle October 30 2023

Oct 302023
 
 October 30, 2023  Posted by at 8:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  43 Responses »


William Blake Europe Supported by Africa and America 1796

 

• Leaked: Israeli Plan To Ethnically Cleanse Gaza (Cradle)
• Israel Faces ‘Near Impossible Task’ in Gaza (Scott Ritter)
• Netanyahu Strengthened Hamas to Discredit Palestinian Cause (Sp.)
• 2 Billion Will Die in New War Cycle – Charles Nenner (USAW)
• India’s Solidarity With Israel Is Untenable (Bhadrakumar)
• Israel Scaled Back Gaza Ground Campaign After US Intervention – NYT (RT)
• EU May Become Complicit In ‘Genocide’ – Spanish Official (RT)
• EU No Longer Independent In Politics Even In Europe – Medvedev (TASS)
• Western Media ‘Cancel’ the Ukraine Conflict (SCF)
• Trump’s ex-Russia Expert Predicts Big Changes In ‘International Order’ (RT)
• Israel-Hamas War A Conflict Between ‘Civilization And Savagery’ – Trump (RT)
• US Judge Reinstates Gag Order on Trump in Federal Election Case (Sp.)
• Jack Smith Quietly Withdraws Second Subpoena in Trump Probe (GP)
• China’s Local Governments Are Out Of Money (SCMP)

 

 

 

 

PCR

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trump

 

 

Bibi NL

 

 

 

 

“..the ten-page document is authentic but “was not supposed to reach the media..”

• Leaked: Israeli Plan To Ethnically Cleanse Gaza (Cradle)

Israeli culture magazine Mekovit published on 28 October a leaked document issued by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence recommending the occupation of Gaza and total transfer of its 2.3 million inhabitants to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. The document, issued on 13 October, identifies a plan to transfer all residents of the Gaza Strip to North Sinai as the preferred option among three alternatives regarding the future of the Palestinians in Gaza at the end of the current war between Israel and the Hamas-led Palestinian resistance. The document recommends that Israel evacuate the Gazan population to Sinai during the war, establish tent cities and new cities in northern Sinai to accommodate the deported population, and then create a closed security zone stretching several kilometers inside Egypt. The deported Palestinians would not be allowed to return to any areas near the Israeli border.

The existence of the document does not necessarily indicate that its recommendations are being implemented by Israel’s security establishment. The Ministry of Intelligence, headed by Gila Gamliel of the Likud party, does not control any of Israel’s intelligence agencies, but independently prepares studies and policy papers, which are distributed for consideration by the government and its security bodies. However, recent statements by Israeli government officials and actions by the Israeli army in Gaza suggest the plan is indeed being implemented. Since 7 October, Israeli officials have repeatedly issued warnings to Palestinians to move to southern Gaza in advance of a looming ground invasion. Israel has imposed a total siege on Gaza, cutting off food, water, fuel, and electricity. The siege, combined with intense Israeli bombing that has killed over 8,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, threatens to make Gaza uninhabitable.

An official at the Ministry of Intelligence confirmed that the ten-page document is authentic but “was not supposed to reach the media,” Mekovit noted. According to a right-wing activist, the document from the Ministry of Intelligence was leaked by a member of Likud. Leaking the document was an attempt to find out whether “the public in Israel is ready to accept ideas of a transfer from Gaza.” The document unequivocally and explicitly recommends carrying out a transfer of civilians from Gaza as the desired outcome of the war.

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“..it is highly likely that Hamas will be able to hold off a concerted Israeli assault..”

• Israel Faces ‘Near Impossible Task’ in Gaza (Scott Ritter)

If one combined the above ground rubble of Monte Casino with the below-ground tunnel network of Iwo Jima, you might approximate the hellish scenario awaiting Israel in Gaza. Over 500 kilometers of tunnels dug in under the 360 square kilometers that comprise the Gaza Strip, these tunnels are purpose built, designed to serve as transportation corridors, command centers, supply depots, dormitories and hospitals, defensive positions, and in support of offensive action. Simply put, there has never been a military operation against a target such as the one presented by Hamas in Gaza. Israel has trained a small number of its elite special forces to carry out limited-scope operations in an underground environment.

These operations, typically involving hostage rescue or direct action (i.e., eliminating a high value target), are conducted under very controlled circumstances, with the attacking forces proceeding only when the circumstances support a favorable outcome. As such, the experiences of these troops are counterproductive when it comes to transferring knowledge to the conventional forces that would bear the brunt of any Israeli assault on Gaza. Simply trying to navigate the rubble-strewn streets of Gaza will be a nearly impossible task for the Israeli troops. The going will be slow, and the Israeli infantry will have to operate dismounted, exposing themselves to sniper fire and ambushes. Israeli vehicles will find themselves hemmed in without the ability to maneuver, making themselves vulnerable to mines, improvised explosive devices, and anti-tank weaponry. Close air support under these circumstances will be very difficult, effectively neutralizing Israel’s greatest advantage.

If Israel does not sync its above-ground actions with a simultaneous effort to defeat Hamas’ underground tunnel-based defenses, then the situation above ground will become even more precarious, with Hamas emerging from tunnels behind the Israeli forces, cutting them off and inflicting heavy casualties. But Israel is going to be operating largely blind underground, probing into a tunnel network designed by Hamas to protect against any such effort. Israel’s best bet would be to simply locate tunnel entrances and seal them off, leaving the Hamas forces underground to die of thirst, hunger, oxygen deprivation, or disease. But this will require the physical occupation of every square meter of the city, an immensely difficult problem from both a logistical and operational standpoint. It will also expose more Israeli forces to harm, resulting in a dramatic increase in casualties.

By reacting to the Hamas attack of October 7 in the way it has, Israel has literally walked into a trap designed by Hamas to defeat any Israeli incursion. Israeli forces are neither trained, equipped, organized, nor motivated to carry out the kind of brutal, bloody, and physically demanding combat that will be required to defeat Hamas above and below the ground in Gaza. Israeli political and military leaders have boxed themselves into a corner with their aggressive winner-take-all rhetoric. But now that the time has come to pay the price of their collective verbiage, the question becomes is this a price Israel is willing and able to pay?

The answer is probably no. Israel has defined victory as being predicated on the total defeat of Hamas as a military organization. This is most probably a mission impossible. Hamas, therefore, emerges victorious simply by surviving. Given the strong defensive position Hamas finds itself in, through a combination of its immense tunnel network and the destroyed urban environment brought on by Israeli bombardment, it is highly likely that Hamas will be able to hold off a concerted Israeli assault until which time the Israel Defense Forces, like the German Pioneer battalions in Stalingrad, exhaust themselves on the field of battle.

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“Netanyahu and Hamas are political partners,” declared a recent article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “and both sides have fulfilled their side of the bargain.”

• Netanyahu Strengthened Hamas to Discredit Palestinian Cause (Sp.)

In contrast to the secular Fatah and PFLP, Hamas is an explicitly Islamist group. The political party began to gain support in Palestinian society for their provision of social services and leadership of armed resistance. However, international support for the Palestinian cause was damaged as the United States, the UK, and other Western powers designated Hamas as a terrorist organization, a label that increasingly stigmatized supporters of Palestinian liberation, especially after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The deeply polarizing nature of Hamas and their tactics began to be recognized as politically useful by certain enterprising figures in Israeli politics. “Netanyahu and Hamas are political partners,” declared a recent article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “and both sides have fulfilled their side of the bargain.”

The article goes on to document some of the ways Netanyahu has materially supported the armed group during his over 16 years as Israeli prime minister, including allowing untraceable cash contributions to Hamas from Iran and Qatar. In the latter country, Hamas’ leader Ismail Haniyeh is allowed to operate freely. Israel tightly controls who and what is allowed to enter into Gaza, but the Qatari envoy is permitted to arrive with suitcases of cash to fund Hamas’ operations. The Israeli government often argues Hamas invests money in building military capability rather than providing social services in Gaza. The free flow of funds to the group, overseen and approved by Israel’s hands-off approach, ensures that this continues.

Netanyahu retains his useful talking point demonizing the terrorist threat while Hamas periodically rebuilds its capability to wage war, providing justification for Netanyahu’s hardline approach. “Netanyahu is the one who turned Hamas from a terror organization with few resources into a semi-state body,” noted Haaretz, emphasizing that the group’s rule in Gaza politically isolates Palestinians in the enclave from those in the West Bank. In case the politically symbiotic relationship weren’t clear, Netanyahu made it explicit during a meeting with members of his Likud party in 2019: “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support the bolstering of Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy, to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

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“.. I don’t know how many of them are in there already. They are catching Iranians on a terror list. How did Iranians get to Mexico?“

• 2 Billion Will Die in New War Cycle – Charles Nenner (USAW)

Renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner has been warning a once every 120-year war cycle is coming, and with hostilities in the Middle East, it is clearly here. This cycle is for big wars such as WWI and WWII. These two wars were part of one big war cycle according to Nenner, and history is now repeating. Keep in mind, this war cycle comes with many countries in possession of nuclear arsenals. Nenner explains, “If you do cycles on war games and war cycles, you can calculate how many people are going to die in such a war. We discussed this in the past, and it now looks ugly. We are talking about a lot of people. There are so many things bad going on in the world, so I would like to not to tell you the number.”

Nenner has said this war cycle will top all other war cycles in body counts. Nenner predicts, “This war cycle is going to be worse than World War II. So, the question is what do we do and where do we go? A lot of my clients are not interested in ‘how do I make money,’ but where should we go. So, I am studying where are the best places to go. This is what I am trying to find out, and I have been very busy with this.” Back to the death toll that Nenner knows is coming. So, I ask again, how many people will die in the current war cycle? Nenner blurts out, “It could be a quarter of the population of the world.” That’s roughly 2 billion people that could be killed in the current war cycle. Nenner goes on to say, “This may not be in the next war because this is going to continue for many years. It could be in the war after this.

What I see now is the Chinese going to the Middle East and the United States helping Israel because if they don’t do that, nobody would trust the United States anymore. I guess the Chinese are going to watch how tough the United States is going to be because, otherwise, they take over Tiawan just like that. They may still do it because everybody is busy with Ukraine and Israel. . . . The U.S. is going to have to prove themselves, otherwise, they will be laughed off the world.” Nenner also sees a war cycle coming to America through the Southern U.S. border. America will be attacked like never before in this war cycle. Nenner says, “There will be terror attacks in the U.S. and maybe much more because I don’t know how many of them are in there already. They are catching Iranians on a terror list. How did Iranians get to Mexico?”

Nenner thinks the dollar is stable–for now. Interest rates are going to continue to climb but will take a short downward path in the near term. Inflation is going to be going back up soon. Nenner is not a long-term buyer of stocks, and he still thinks the Dow’s downside is 5,000 and global war could take it there in a hurry. The greatest depression in history is still a few years away, but Nenner is 100% sure it is coming. Nenner’s cycles say it will most likely happen in the 2027-2028 time period. Nenner does like gold and silver and thinks gold will be well over $2,500 per ounce within a year and a half. Nenner’s best financial advice is “buy the 2-year Treasury,” and lock in a 5% return with zero risk.

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“..Qatar and Israel had once collaborated since the mid-nineties to prop up Hamas as an Islamist antidote to the secular-minded PLO..”

• India’s Solidarity With Israel Is Untenable (Bhadrakumar)

The Indo-Israeli fusion through the past decade hasn’t gone unnoticed in the Muslim countries. They resent it, perhaps, but it may not surge into view because Arabs are a hospitable people. That said, their resentment may surface if push comes to shove and their core interests are involved. The US-Israeli attempt to put the lid on the region’s growing strategic autonomy is one such core issue. It is far from the case that the regional states — be it Qatar, Iran, Egypt, Syria or even Turkey — do not understand that the Biden administration’s grandiloquent idea of a India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor is in reality a wedge to disrupt the nascent trends of unity among regional states so as to insert Israel into the regional processes and rekindle the flame of sectarian schism and geopolitical rifts, which the US invariably exploited to impose its hegemony in West Asia historically.

That is why, the three-way Qatar-India-Israel tangled mess of espionage, which should never have been allowed to happen, becomes a litmus test of mutual intentions in the geopolitics of the region. Lest it is forgotten, Qatar and Israel had once collaborated since the mid-nineties to prop up Hamas as an Islamist antidote to the secular-minded PLO under Yasser Arafat. In a recent interview with the Deutsche Welle, former Israeli Prime minister Ehud Olmert disclosed, inter alia, “We know that the Hamas was financed with the assistance of Israel— for years — by hundreds of millions of dollars that came from Qatar with the assistance of the state of Israel, with the full knowledge and support of the Israeli government led by Netanyahu.” That convergence — rather, Fustian deal — ended in 2009 following the three-week Gaza Massacre by Israel, whereupon, Doha drew closer to Tehran.

Nonetheless, a pragmatic relationship continued, and in 2015, the Qatari government facilitated discussions between Israel and Hamas in Doha in search of a possible five-year ceasefire between the two parties. Suffice to say, the Indian diplomacy is swimming in shark-infested waters. The news from Doha this week is a wake-up call. Equally, our public discourse on Hamas as a terrorist organisation and our branding of that national liberation movement is surreal, to say the least. Although it may be difficult today for the government to openly deal with Hamas, it shouldn’t be that we lack a proper understanding of Islamism. If ever a Palestine settlement comes to fruition, Hamas will have a lead role in it as the fountainhead of resistance. India’s political elite must bear in mind this reality. Eliminating the Hamas from the political landscape is no longer possible, given the massive grassroots support it enjoys among the Palestinian people, which is of course a proven fact in the successive elections held in Gaza and West Bank.

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The US makes the decisions.

• Israel Scaled Back Gaza Ground Campaign After US Intervention – NYT (RT)

The Israeli military has limited the scope of its “expanded” ground operation against the Palestinian armed group Hamas in Gaza following consultations with senior White House officials, the New York Times reported on Saturday, citing sources. According to the paper, the initial plans “alarmed” officials in Washington, who voiced concern that they “lacked achievable military objectives,” with fears that the IDF was not yet prepared for a full-scale ground assault. However, an unnamed US government source told NYT that after discussions with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other officials “the Israelis improved and refined their plan” for the offensive. As a result, the report said, the IDF’s actions in Gaza have so far been “smaller and more narrowly focused” than Israeli officials initially proposed to their US counterparts.

Numerous US officials and former commanders told the outlet that “Israel appeared to be conducting a phased operation” with reconnaissance units probing Hamas positions in Gaza for potential weaknesses. According to the article, however, Israel’s decision-making process was also influenced by deliberations concerning hostages held by Hamas, as well as by a rift in the country’s leadership over how, when, and even whether to kick off the operation. Commenting on the progress of the battle, IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Sunday that the country’s military had “expanded the entry” into the Palestinian enclave overnight. “We are progressing through the stages of the war according to plan,” he said, adding that the IDF is “gradually expanding the ground activity and the scope of our forces” in the area.

Earlier this month, several media outlets reported the US was exerting strong influence on Israel’s plans, with Bloomberg describing it as “deeper and more intense than any exerted by Washington in the past.” Several outlets said the US also wanted the IDF to delay its incursion to gain more time to secure the release of more than 200 hostages held by Hamas. US President Joe Biden, however, rejected the notion that Washington was pressuring Israel to postpone the ground campaign, saying that “the Israelis can make their own decisions.” So far, the hostilities have claimed the lives of more than 8,000 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis. After West Jerusalem announced the “complete siege” of Gaza, the UN warned on Wednesday that the humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian enclave had reached an “unprecedented point.”

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“Israel believes that its international alliances guarantee its impunity.”

• EU May Become Complicit In ‘Genocide’ – Spanish Official (RT)

Spanish Social Rights Minister Ione Belarra has urged European leaders to take immediate action against Israel, including severing diplomatic ties and imposing economic sanctions, amid the intensified bombing and expanded ground operations against Hamas militants in the besieged Palestinian enclave. She also called for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be prosecuted for the alleged war crimes committed against civilians in Gaza. “After this hellish night in Gaza, I have a very simple but very important message for European leaders. Do not make us complicit in genocide. Act. Not in our name,” Belarra said in a passionate video message on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday.

More than 8,000 Palestinians, including 3,342 children, have been killed in Gaza since Israel’s air campaign began, according to the latest figures from the Gaza Health Ministry. The unprecedented Hamas raid into Israel, as well as hundreds of rocket strikes on Israeli territory earlier this month, left around 1,400 people dead, while some 230 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage, according to the Israel Defence Forces. Addressing the severity of the current situation in Gaza and Israel’s disproportionate retaliation, the minister highlighted the termination of internet and telephone services in the strip, claiming that the move “has a very clear objective” of guaranteeing that “Israel commits crimes against humanity without consequences.” “Our inaction is turning us into accomplices,” the minister stressed, arguing that “Israel believes that its international alliances guarantee its impunity.”

“We have to act now, tomorrow will be too late,” she continued, voicing her message to the EU leaders: “Cut diplomatic relations with the State of Israel. Carry out exemplary economic sanctions against those responsible for this genocide. And without a doubt, let’s take Netanyahu before the International Criminal Court, so that he can be tried for what he is, a war criminal.” She also appealed to EU citizens to take to the streets and raise their voice so that “this genocide” comes to an end. The IDF escalated air and ground attack on Gaza on Friday, causing a near-total communication blackout. Connectivity was partially restored over the weekend, but the Israeli blockade of Gaza continues; Netanyahu announced the “second stage” of the war against Hamas on Saturday.

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“..Let them console themselves with the thought that they are no longer dependent on energy from hated Russia..s”

• EU No Longer Independent In Politics Even In Europe – Medvedev (TASS)

The European Union has lost its geopolitical autonomy not only in the international arena but even in Europe, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said. “Whatever European leaders might be saying, de facto the European Union cannot act independently not only in the international arena but even on the European soil. Practically all EU countries are standing upright before the United States and Great Britain and have begun to obediently fulfil their orders to support the Nazi regime in Kiev. And now they are fulfilling any orders whatsoever,” he wrote on his VKontakte account. According to Medvedev, dreams about the European Union as a pillar of the world order have vanished as the European Union “has lost its international authority of a mediator in any conflict.”.

Europe’s energy cooperation with Russia has been frozen for a long time and now the European Union is living through difficult time, Medvedev said. “Europe has gelded itself, bloodily and unanesthetized, having refused from energy cooperation with our country. It has been spoiled or frozen for a very long time. And America is rubbing its hands as it sells its LNG to Europe three times over the price,” he wrote. He noted that Europe’s largest economies, which used to be the European Union’s growth drivers for years, have demonstrated a dramatic slump and would recover very slowly, if ever. “And this is a bad outlook for weaker countries of Western Europe. Difficult times have come for a long time,” he wrote.

He drew attention to the fact that the European Commission has downgraded the economic growth forecasts for the euro zone in 2023 from 1.1% to 0.8%. “Inflation in many EU countries is off the charts. Food prices are going up and will continue to do so,” he noted. Touching on other aspects of everyday life in Europe, he noted that no one can guarantee that the coming winter will be warm and mild. “And this means that tariffs for heat and all other things will go up. And American LNG, which is sold to Europe thrice the price, will be of little help. Europe has finally dropped the price policy which ensured Europe’s prosperity a couple of year ago. This time has gone. Let them console themselves with the thought that they are no longer dependent on energy from hated Russia,” he added.

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“..and then just like that there is a void in any attention to what had been previously billed as an existential crisis for Europe and Western democratic civilization…

• Western Media ‘Cancel’ the Ukraine Conflict (SCF)

Every media outlet around the world has been transfixed by the barbarity, albeit differing in their perspective on how much blame to apportion to the Israeli regime or to the Hamas Palestinian militant group that triggered the escalation in violence with its mass killings of 1,400 Israelis on October 7. (It is now becoming clear that many of those deaths were actually caused by the Israeli military using indiscriminate excessive lethal force.) In any case, the point here is how remarkable is the sudden cessation in Western media coverage of the war in Ukraine. For the past three weeks, there has hardly been any mention of that conflict. This peremptory absence is phenomenal. For months on end, the war in Ukraine was given non-stop, saturation coverage – albeit with an anti-Russian propaganda spin – and then just like that there is a void in any attention to what had been previously billed as an existential crisis for Europe and Western democratic civilization.

It’s not as if the hostilities in Ukraine have really diminished. Far from it, the battling between the NATO-backed Kiev regime forces and the Russian military has been as fierce as in previous months. Over the past week alone, it is estimated that more than 2,000 Ukrainian troops were killed by Russian forces on the frontlines in the Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. How is that absence in Western media explained? Part of the “cancelling” of the Ukraine conflict in Western media coverage is due to the failure of the NATO-backed counteroffensive that was launched in early June. That military venture was hyped as the expected breakthrough against Russian forces after months of heavy weapons supply from NATO leading up to the counteroffensive. The gambit has been a disastrous anti-climax in NATO terms.

Up to 90,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been lost in four months adding to a total of 400,000 Ukrainian military deaths over the entire conflict so far. The great NATO surge has been an abject calamity. Russian defense lines all along a swathe of former Eastern Ukrainian territory (now part of the Russian Federation) reaching down to Crimea and the Black Sea remain formidably intact and invulnerable. The expenditure of $200 billion in military and other aid by the United States and the European Union for propping up a corrupt Nazi regime in Kiev can now be seen as the biggest farce and scandal of modern times. The Western governments and their servile media must therefore not let the Western public see this grotesque waste of money and human life. Public attention must somehow be diverted to avoid the resounding political repercussions.

The slaughter of Palestinians going on in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank territory is a global shame that certainly deserves priority attention. A ceasefire must be called immediately and the mass murder and siege must end. Palestinian rights must be defended and a proper peace settlement to the conflict must be pursued urgently in a genuinely brokered legal and diplomatic framework – not the disingenuous process that Washington and the European Union have been peddling for decades. However, even the extensive Western media focus on the violence in Gaza is not out of a genuine concern for facts, let alone truth or justice. It is, as usual, a cover-up for the Israeli regime’s crimes and the complicity of Western states in the decades-long genocide against the Palestinians. A genocide that has going on for 75 years since the creation of the Israeli state in 1948 by British and American subterfuge as our columnist Finian Cunningham contended this week. No, the Western media saturation coverage of terrible events in Gaza over the past three weeks is driven in large part by the onerous need to divert attention from the scandal and debacle of NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine.

The quickness and expedience of canceling Ukraine as a story by Western media and their governments is a powerful demonstration. The purported concerns about Ukraine were never about principle or the alleged narrative of defending democracy. If there was any credible substance to that narrative then how is it dispensed with so readily? It is something to behold how Western media have simply dumped Ukraine as if it were damaged goods of no longer any use, or, worse, a soiled rag. It is a further diabolical tragedy in the long-suffering of the Palestinian people. Not only are they being annihilated, starved and denied their basic human rights by the Western-backed Israeli regime. Their suffering is also poignant proof of the callous deception and criminality of the United States and its Western partners in Ukraine.

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mamamamamamama My Fiona

• Trump’s ex-Russia Expert Predicts Big Changes In ‘International Order’ (RT)

Fiona Hill, the one-time Russia guru in US President Donald Trump’s administration, has posited that the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Israel portend seismic geopolitical shifts that Moscow sees working in its favor. “These could be global-system-shifting wars, something like World War I and World War II, which reflected and produced major changes in the international order,” Hill said in a Los Angeles Times interview published on Sunday. “In a sense, the Hamas attack on Israel was a kind of Pearl Harbor moment. It opened a second front.” The first front in today’s geopolitical conflagration was the Russia-Ukraine conflict. With the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel triggering a new war in the Middle East, the situation became more complicated. Hill did not spell out how she sees the two conflicts changing the international order, but she said Russian President Vladimir Putin sees “everything trending in his favor.”

“This helps Putin,” Hill said of the Israel-Hamas war. “It’s going to distract the United States and European supporters of Ukraine.” Hill argued that the US and other Ukraine backers “put too much weight” on the foundering Ukrainian counteroffensive that began in June. “This is going to be a long war,” she said. “Putin thinks we will give up if he holds on long enough.” The Russian leader also is waiting for the 2024 US election, which could result in Washington cutting off aid for Ukraine if Trump wins back the presidency, Hill suggested. She added that the US presidential race is worrying for US allies: “If the rest of the world thinks every time a new government comes along, we are going to tear up agreements we just made, we won’t be looked at as a very reliable partner.”

Russia, China and Iran are aligned against Ukraine and against Israel, Hill said, and the conflicts have brought Beijing and Moscow closer together. US President Joe Biden’s administration should counter that troubling trend by mending ties with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government, she suggested. “We’re not going to have any hope of curtailing Russia’s options and getting the Middle East to calm down if we have a super-antagonistic relationship with China,” she said. Hill, who testified against Trump during the then president’s 2019 impeachment inquiry, previously advised former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Washington and its Western allies have been fighting World War III against Russia “for a long time,” without being aware of it, she said last month in a New Yorker magazine interview.

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“I’ll be implementing strong ideological screenings for all immigrants coming in..”

• Israel-Hamas War A Conflict Between ‘Civilization And Savagery’ – Trump (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has condemned Hamas as “monsters,” framing the Palestinian militant group’s war with Israel as a conflict between “good and evil” and vowing to rid America of immigrants and foreign students who sympathize with jihadists. Speaking on Saturday at the Republican Jewish Coalition summit in Las Vegas, Trump vowed to stop the “mass importation of anti-Semitism” into the US if he’s re-elected as president in 2024. He blamed Hamas for all of the deaths that have occurred on both sides – numbering over 1,400 in Israel and 8,000 in Gaza – since the group’s October 7 attacks on Israeli villages triggered the region’s latest war. “Every single life that is lost in this conflict is on the shoulders of Hamas, Hamas alone, and I think you have to really add in the word Iran…,” Trump said.

“There can be no sympathy, no excuses, and no escape for these monsters. We will do what has to be done.” The Hamas attacks, in which hundreds of Israeli civilians were killed or kidnapped, proved that the group’s conflict with West Jerusalem isn’t a battle between “equal sides,” Trump said. He added, “This is a fight between civilization and savagery, between decency and depravity, and between good and evil. There is no comparison between a group that worships death and a group that cherishes life and cherishes our nation.” Trump is polling as the leading Republican candidate to face his successor, President Joe Biden, in the 2024 election. He argued that in the wake of the Hamas attacks, Biden has “turned a blind eye to the greatest outbreak of anti-Semitism in American history.”

The ex-president lamented the “pro-jihadist” protests occurring in major US cities and on college campuses amid the Israel-Hamas war. He blamed Biden’s administration for letting in “colossal amounts of jihadists” as refugees or foreign students. “They’re letting them in at levels that nobody’s ever seen before,” he said. “We cannot allow that to happen, and we don’t want to be like Europe, with jihadists on every corner.” Trump promised to reimpose the travel ban that he instituted shortly after taking office as president in 2017, which restricted entry to the US by travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries. He also claimed that he would deport foreign nationals who protested in support of Hamas and would ensure that jihadist sympathizers won’t be allowed to enter the US. “I’ll be implementing strong ideological screenings for all immigrants coming in,” Trump told the audience. “If you hate America, if you want to abolish Israel, if you sympathize with jihadists, then we don’t want you in our country, and you’re not going to be getting into our country.”

Pro-Hamas foreign students who joined the protests also will be targeted with cancellation of their study visas, Trump said. “Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you.” He also vowed to threaten colleges and universities with the loss of federal funding and academic accreditation if they don’t “purge” their campuses of “anti-Semitism and pro-terrorism.” Trump argued that the attacks on Israel wouldn’t have happened if he had been president, just as he previously claimed that he would have prevented the Russia-Ukraine conflict. “For four years, you didn’t have any of these problems,” he said. “Think of it, you wouldn’t have Ukraine, you wouldn’t have Israel being attacked, you wouldn’t have inflation, you wouldn’t have anything.”

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A travesty indeed.

• US Judge Reinstates Gag Order on Trump in Federal Election Case (Sp.)

A federal judge overseeing former US President Donald Trump’s federal election subversion case has reinstated a gag order that had earlier been issued against the one-time commander-in-chief. The late Sunday ruling also saw US District Judge Tanya Chutkan deny a request by Trump lawyers to prolong the earlier gag order freeze, explaining it would instead remain active while it’s reviewed by a federal appeals court. Chutkan issued the gag order at the behest of the US Department of Justice before temporarily halting it on October 20 as Trump’s lawyers filed an appeal and argued it was vaguely worded. The matter has remained a heated topic of debate among lawyers, with representatives for the former president arguing it bars Trump from his First Amendment rights and acts as a hitch as he undertakes his 2024 reelection effort.

Prosecutors have underscored that regardless of Trump’s 2024 bid, he does not have clearance to issue public remarks that appear to threaten any individuals tied to the election interference case. Trump appears to have publicly responded to the development on social media, writing in a Truth Social post: “The Corrupt Biden Administration just took away my First Amendment Right To Free Speech. NOT CONSTITUTIONAL! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.” The weekend decision now puts the former president under two gag orders that prevent him from discussing any aspects of his legal cases with the wider public. The second gag was implemented as part of Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York, which has so far prompted two fines to be issued over violations.

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“..and 6 other process crimes stemming from his conversations with his lawyer..” (?!)

• Jack Smith Quietly Withdraws Second Subpoena in Trump Probe (GP)

Special Counsel Jack Smith quietly withdrew two subpoenas to Donald J. Trump for President Inc. and Save America within the last week. Jack Smith recently expanded his investigation into Trump’s effort to challenge the 2020 election and is focusing on Trump’s fundraising efforts. President Trump raised more than $250 million after the 2020 election to investigate rampant Democrat vote fraud. Jack Smith was investigating whether Trump defrauded investors when he raised money to investigate 2020 election fraud. The New York Times reported:

“Federal prosecutors have quietly withdrawn a subpoena seeking records from former President Donald J. Trump’s 2020 campaign as part of their investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s political and fund-raising operations committed any crimes as he sought to stay in power after he lost the election, according to two people familiar with the matter. The decision this week by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to effectively kill the subpoena to the Trump campaign came on the heels of the withdrawal of a similar subpoena to Save America, the political action committee that was formed by Mr. Trump’s aides shortly after he lost the race in 2020. The rescission of the subpoenas to Donald J. Trump for President Inc. and Save America was an indication that Mr. Smith’s office was slowing down or even closing its monthslong inquiry into whether Mr. Trump’s political operation broke any laws by citing baseless claims of election fraud to raise money. The withdrawal of the subpoena to Save America was first reported last week by The Washington Post.”

Jack Smith indicted Trump on 37 federal counts in Miami in June. Trump was charged with 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information and 6 other process crimes stemming from his conversations with his lawyer. In August Jack Smith hit Trump with 3 additional charges in the investigation into classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago. The superseding indictment, filed in the Southern District of Florida, claims Trump was part of a scheme to delete security footage from Mar-a-Lago. Last month Trump was hit with 4 counts in Jack Smith’s January 6 case up in DC: Conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

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“..the core is the fact that local governments are out of money. And the core reason for that is the downturn in the real estate market.”

• China’s Local Governments Are Out Of Money (SCMP)

China’s top leaders are expected to gather in Beijing for a key financial conference this week, with debt risks and strengthening the supervision of the Communist Party set to be top of the agenda, sources familiar with the details said. The closed-door, two-day national financial work conference is scheduled to start on Monday, one source said. China’s top leaders, state executives, regulators and senior bankers have gathered every five years since 1997 for the conference focusing on financial policies and development. The last national financial work conference was held in 2017. “[The conference] will primarily focus on resolving debt. At the moment, the most important thing is to resolve the debt problems,” one of the sources said.

“Of which the core is the fact that local governments are out of money. And the core reason for that is the downturn in the real estate market.” Another source added that strengthening the leadership of the party, as well as financial discipline in the areas of local government debt, would be given emphasis at the conference. The prolonged downturn in the property market has triggered rising concerns over its impact on local government revenues and outlook for the world’s second-largest economy. In 2018, the central government demanded local authorities stop accumulating so-called hidden debts – informal channels of borrowing often through local government financing vehicles (LGFVs). LGFVs are hybrid entities that are both public and corporate and were created to skirt restrictions on local government borrowing and have proliferated since the global financial crisis in 2008.

However, LGFV debt level remains elevated, and the IMF estimated that their total debt had swollen to a record 66 trillion yuan (US$9 trillion) this year, more than double the 30.7 trillion yuan in 2017. “In the end, the central government may have to bail them out,” a second source said. “This is why relevant personnel in the financial sector have to be dealt with, to prevent new aid from being abused.” On Tuesday, Beijing approved the issuance of 1 trillion yuan (US$137 billion) of sovereign bonds, with the funds from the sale to be transferred to local governments to support reconstruction and improve disaster prevention and relief capabilities.

The new issuance, approved by the National People’s Congress, will raise the budget deficit ratio to about 3.8 per cent of GDP – well above the 3 per cent target set in March. “I think one key objective of the conference is to manage systemic risk. That is, to contain the risk from the property sector and the LGFVs, preventing such problems from causing systemic risks,” said Zhang Zhiwei, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Mad
https://twitter.com/i/status/1718528593972838851

 

 

 

 

Raup snails

 

 

SphereVegas

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle October 28 2023

Oct 282023
 
 October 28, 2023  Posted by at 8:32 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  48 Responses »


Francisco de Goya Saturn Devouring His Son 1819–1823

 

• The Gods Are Going Against The Chosen People (Helmer)
• One Mistake Before Armageddon (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Gaza Suffers Near-Total Information Blackout (RT)
• Biden Inches Towards Military Disaster in Middle East (Sp.)
• Israel Bombing ‘Everything But Hamas In Gaza’ – Jackson Hinkle (RT)
• Erdogan’s Deafening Silence On Palestine (Karan)
• Orban: EU Not Dare to Admit Ukraine Cannot Win on Battlefield (Sp.)
• Israel To Pass Law Allowing State To Kill Its Own Citizens (RT)
• Israel Military Shelled Israeli Citizens With Tanks, Missiles on Oct. 7 (GZ)
• China To Snub Zelensky’s ‘Peace’ Meeting – Bloomberg (RT)
• Hungary, Slovakia Blocked €50 Billion Ukraine Aid – Politico (RT)
• Speaker Johnson Plans Separate Votes On Ukraine, Israel Aid (ZH)
• Biden Likely Guilty of ‘Impeachable Offenses’ – Speaker (Sp.)
• AG Garland Should Rein in Jack Smith’s War on Free Speech (Turley)
• President Trump Destroys NYC Judge Engoron After Case Collapses (GP)

 

 

 

 

Ritter Monumental Oversight

 

 

 

 

Gabor Maté


https://twitter.com/i/status/1712402483115614498

 

 

 

 

Baroness

 

 

China UN
https://twitter.com/i/status/1717682784125198354

 

 

Don’t look away

 

 

 

 

“..the genocide of at least a million Palestinians in lives and displacement. The war to do that has now become an international war – and this is a war the US cannot sustain.”

• The Gods Are Going Against The Chosen People (Helmer)

The Palestinian strategy against Israel is aimed at destroying Israel’s capacity to survive in its present state in a long war. This means attacking the invincibility of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and theur so-called Iron Dome defence; this began with the cross-border offensive on October 7, and continues with daily drone and artillery attacks on targets inside Israel, as well as resistance to IDF incursions in Gaza. The plan also means exposing the weakness of the state’s infrastructure and economy; extending the battlefield across all of Israel’s territory – the ports, power plants and electricity grid, communications, and financial markets — making the cost of occupation of the Arab territories unendurable. In a long war, two of Israel’s leading exports earning more than 40% of the state’s trade — diamonds and tourism — face ruin.*

“The Israelis cannot withstand one year of fighting in a war,” Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein told his general staff in 1983 during a discussion of planning for a regional war of the Arabs against Israel.** In the forty years since then, the evolution of military technology and tactics has expanded the power of small national liberation armies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, of proxy principals like Iran, and of the strategic balancing role of Russia and China. Their combination now has shortened the Zionist state’s endurance in a long war, and that of its proxy principal, the US. The Israelis and the Jewish diaspora comprehend this reluctantly. For them, the short war must be correspondingly shorter. This means the genocide of at least a million Palestinians in lives and displacement. The war to do that has now become an international war – and this is a war the US cannot sustain.

As a Pentagon insider said publicly this week, “because there are so many draws on the logistics and support infrastructure of the Pentagon, we’re not prepared to go in in a concerted way. What we are seeing right now is death by a thousand cuts. Our adversaries know we are stretched so they are going to make us stretch even more, so we can respond even less.” The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Maria Zakharova, acknowledged the point in Moscow on Thursday: US naval, air force, and marine reinforcements deployed around Israel and Gaza are “American tactics to strengthen their own security (this is how it should be interpreted) at someone else’s expense.” They are backfiring on Washington’s capacity to defend US forces in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and in land bases in Syria, Iraq and Jordan. “On the contrary,” Zakharova added, the US military deployment “will further rock the situation in the Middle East, create additional tension that can spill out beyond the region.”

Zakharova’s warning came in the Moscow afternoon. By then Russian Foreign Ministry officials had held meetings with a Hamas delegation, and officials from Iran, Egypt, and Kuwait. Across the city at the same time, President Vladimir Putin held telephone talks with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Kremlin communiqué reported: “Russia and Turkiye have practically overlapping positions.” Israeli and US-led media censorship and propaganda are concealing the breadth of impact of the Palestine warfighting plan, and the deepening military and economic weaknesses of the Israeli state. The longer the war continues, the plainer the evidence is on the battlefield that the single-state scheme of Israel and the US is no longer possible. Whether Israel and the US can be compelled to withdraw to the 1967 borders and a new Palestinian state created with partition, demilitarisation, and international security guarantees – the basis of the Russian position announced again on Thursday in Moscow — remains to be fought over. In this long war, the gods do not favour the Chosen People.

Read more …

“The White House fool, his insane neoconservative regime, mindless European puppets and whore Western media have convinced Russia that there is neither intelligence nor reason to be found in the Western World..”

• One Mistake Before Armageddon (Paul Craig Roberts)

Each of us faces each day threats to our health, happiness, and life. Overarching it all, we collectively face death from nuclear weapons. The development of nuclear weapons was a human stupidity. They cannot be used, but their existence threatens the life of the planet. So why have them? Accident, emotional response, loss of reason are all human faults that can come into play at any time. During the 20th century Cold War these dangers were underlined by the Cuban Missile Crisis. President Nixon led the way to sanity with arms control agreements with the Soviet Union and his opening to China. Presidents Carter and Reagan kept the momentum going for reduced tensions and peaceful coexistence. The turnaround came with the Soviet collapse.

The neoconservatives took advantage of Russian weakness and prevailed on President Clinton to break the promise given by the George H.W. Bush administration to Gorbachev not to move NATO to Soviet borders if Gorbachev permitted the reunification of Germany. The George W. Bush and Obama administrations continued the hostile policy that Clinton renewed. Today all the arms control agreements that reduced tensions and the danger of nuclear confrontation are erased. The last one–never ratified by the US–was revoked by the upper house of Russia’s parliament last Wednesday. Tass, the Russian news agency, reported that “Achieving the goal of preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons is not deemed possible in the current international situation, given the destructive position of the United States.”

Also last Wednesday Gilbert Doctorow reported from the Russian media that Russia had just completed a successful test of its land, sea, and air launched nuclear missile triad. “Considering the location of the missile launches and the radius of possible strikes, it does not take much imagination to conclude that the enemy being attacked was the U.S. of A. . . . The capability being tested was for a massive retaliatory strike.” The White House fool, his insane neoconservative regime, mindless European puppets and whore Western media have convinced Russia that there is neither intelligence nor reason to be found in the Western World and Russia has no alternative but to prepare for war.

I have long warned that this was the conclusion toward which our irresponsible leaders were driving the Russians. What this means is that the slightest mistake, the slightest false warning can now ignite nuclear Armageddon. Meanwhile the media focuses on political gossip, Americans scroll their cell phones and complain about inflation, and the threat to the existence of life on earth goes unremarked.

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#StarlinkforPalestine?!

• Gaza Suffers Near-Total Information Blackout (RT)

Internet and cell phone services working in the Gaza Strip on Friday night, after Israel “expanded” its military operation against Hamas militants in the Palestinian enclave. The largest telecommunications provider in Gaza, Paltel, has announced “a complete severance of all communications and Internet services” due to intensified Israeli strikes. “The intense bombing in the last hour caused the destruction of all remaining international routes linking Gaza to the outside world,” the company said. Netblocks, a company that tracks internet connectivity globally, confirmed the information blackout, calling it “the largest single disruption to internet connectivity in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict and will be perceived by many as a total or near-total internet blackout.”

Multiple international media, including RT, have partially lost contact with their crews and stringers on the ground. The head of RT Arabic, Maya Manna, said there was no contact with correspondents and photographers operating in the Palestinian enclave as of Friday evening. The sole message came from an RT stringer in the area, describing a “very violent bombing.” “I don’t know what to do with my children and my family. Everyone is afraid, everyone is terrified, and there is screaming everywhere in the Gaza Strip,” Masoud, a local reporter, told RT. According to an NBC News crew member, who was also able to message colleagues, “all internet, electricity and everything” has been cut off. “The situation we’re in is difficult, so difficult and very dangerous. We’re being extensively shelled by artillery and by air,” the unnamed staffer said.

The UN children’s agency also lost contact with their colleagues in Gaza, with UNICEF chief Catherine Russel saying she was “extremely concerned about their safety and another night of unspeakable horror for 1 million children in Gaza.” The international healthcare charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said there was no contact with some of their Palestinian colleagues. “We are particularly worried for the patients, medical staff and thousands of families taking shelter at Al Shifa hospital and other health facilities,” MSF said, expressing deep concern over the situation around one Gaza’s biggest medical centers.

Israel previously accused Hamas of turning hospitals into “headquarters for their terror,” referring specifically to Al Shifa, and even published an “illustrative video” which supposedly points out the “different locations in and under the hospital which are being used to plan and implement terrorist activities.” Meanwhile Hamas claimed that by cutting off communications from the Gaza Strip, Israel is attempting to “cover up the crimes of the occupation without any oversight or accountability,” and tries to “create an image of victory,” a senior official, Osama Hamdan, told Al Jazeera.

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“So you have a single weapon, a single carrier, a single ship, which carries on itself almost $20 billion worth of military assets and could be taken out by two or three missiles..”

• Biden Inches Towards Military Disaster in Middle East (Sp.)

Tehran has so far moderated its response to US and Israeli actions during the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, ignoring efforts by Tel Aviv to goad the country into a military response by attacking Iranian allies in Syria and Lebanon, and snubbing threats by loudmouth officials and lawmakers to bring the war home to “Iran’s backyard.” Instead, Tehran has joined countries such as Russia, China, Brazil, and Turkiye in calling for an immediate ceasefire. Netanyahu cabinet minister Nir Barakat threatened last week to cut off the Iranian “head of the snake” and launch attacks against the Islamic Republic if Hezbollah tried to open a second front against Israel from the north. Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden on Wednesday said he had issued a “warning” to Iran’s supreme leader that if Iran “continue[s] to move against” American troops in the Middle East, the US “will respond, and he should be prepared.”

But as observers with an understanding of Iran’s military capabilities observe, tackling Iran would be unlike anything either Israel or the US have ever attempted, with the Islamic Republic’s combination of natural defensive geography, powerful indigenous military-industrial complex, advanced missile and drone programs, and readiness to defend its interests even against much more powerful foes making it an extremely difficult target. The centerpiece of the US forces deployed to the Middle East amid the Palestinian-Israeli crisis are the USS Gerald Ford and USS Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike groups. Each armada theoretically has enough firepower to level a small country, with each carrier carrying a complement of up to 90 combat aircraft, and the giant warships themselves flanked by between four to six cruise missile-equipped destroyers.

The armadas are certainly no threat to be taken lightly, but do have important weaknesses when stacked up against countries with modern missile capabilities, transforming into “white elephants” from a bygone era, says veteran military analyst and best-selling author Andrey Martyanov. “In terms of their real power projection,” carriers “are big fat sitting targets against modern weaponry such as anti-ship missiles and hypersonic missiles,” Martyanov told Sputnik’s New Rules podcast. “In this respect, they are not a real asset, but rather a liability against any major power such as Russia or China,” the observer explained. “In this particular case, those aircraft carriers and their battle groups, which usually comprise two or three ‘Aegis’-carrying destroyers – they are not really any more a serious military asset except for their ‘fear factor’…They could be sunk or basically disabled, and that’s pretty much it,” he said.

The same can be said even for a mid-tier military power like Iran, given its vast arsenal of thousands of medium and long-range ballistic and cruise missiles, and recent development of a hypersonic missile known as the Fatah. Many of these weapons are theoretically in range of US warships, plus dozens of US bases dotting the Middle East – some of them conveniently just across the Persian Gulf separating Iran from the Arab Gulf oil states. “Iran will be able to deliver both an asymmetric and a very symmetrical” response, Martyanov observed. “Iran has a vast number of highly sophisticated, highly developed ballistic missiles… And they have a vast number of cruise missiles. [The response] can be very symmetrical. And every single air base, military base of the United States will be under attack.”

Combined with carriers’ vulnerabilities is their massive cost, Martyanov said, pointing out that the new Ford-class carrier alone costs some $13 billion, plus $5-6 billion for its complement of aircraft. “So you have a single weapon, a single carrier, a single ship, which carries on itself almost $20 billion worth of military assets and could be taken out by two or three missiles such as Zircon or Kinzhal. Can you imagine the impact, apart from the fact of them having a very serious cultural and mental influence within the United States? The loss of a single ship can escalate… to the nuclear threshold because of the political, emotional, cultural and of course military impact of such a loss. Don’t forget, you also have more than 6,000 people on board this carrier,” the observer stressed.

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“..targeting various civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, UN and Red Crescent facilities, mosques, churches, homes, and even evacuee convoys..”

• Israel Bombing ‘Everything But Hamas In Gaza’ – Jackson Hinkle (RT)

Israel’s claims that it is only bombing Gaza to eliminate Hamas are “insane,” political analyst Jackson Hinkle said in an interview with RT on Thursday. He argued that Israeli forces appear to be focusing on targeting the civilian population of Gaza in their ongoing campaign. “They’ve bombed everything but Hamas inside of Gaza,” the host of ‘The Dive with Jackson Hinkle’ said, accusing Israel of targeting various civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, UN and Red Crescent facilities, mosques, churches, homes, and even evacuee convoys. The analyst suggested that this is because Israel does not want a Palestinian state, and that the true purpose of its operation in Gaza is not to defeat Hamas, but rather to force Palestinians out and take over the enclave “once and for all.”

“The reason why they’re doing all of this is that they know they can’t defeat Hamas. That’s why they haven’t gone into Gaza. They know that if they will, they’ll probably have a response from many Arab states, and maybe Iran as well. They know that in a war of that magnitude they wouldn’t win,” Hinkle claimed. He argued that while Israeli authorities have attempted to paint Hamas as being aligned with or comparable to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), Israel’s own actions in Gaza seem to closely resemble terrorist tactics. Commenting on Washington’s announcement that it will “stand forever” with Israel and President Joe Biden’s proposal of a $14 billion package of military aid to the Jewish state, Hinkle called to “defund Israel” and “defund Ukraine” as well.

“Why is it that US taxpayer dollars are going to nations like this? Or more importantly, nations that are committing such horrific war crimes on a daily basis,” Hinkle questioned. He stated that the US is currently experiencing a crisis on its own southern border and is dealing with over 500,000 homeless people, 60,000 of which he claimed are veterans. “It makes no sense to me that we’re doing this and Joe Biden just sent about 900 US Marines to Israel,” Hinkle said, adding that he believes “we’re about to see a very big war.” The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been relentlessly bombarding Gaza for almost three weeks, following the October 7 surprise attack on Israel by Hamas, which claimed 1,400 lives. The Gaza Health Ministry has since reported that Israeli strikes have killed over 7,000 people. On Friday, the ministry published the names of 6,747 people, including 2,665 children, it claims have been killed by the IDF. It noted that the list is incomplete as many bodies remain unidentified or missing.

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When the Arab world gathers, Erdogan will be there. Turkey has a formidable army.

• Erdogan’s Deafening Silence On Palestine (Karan)

At this juncture, Turkiye’s stance on the Palestinian issue lags behind that of many Arab states. Israel, with the backing of the US, is pushing for the “evacuation” of Gaza’s civilian population to facilitate its ground military operation, forcing Egypt and Jordan, key regional players, to reject plans for this forced and seemingly permanent displacement of Palestinians. Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi have explicitly rejected this demand, deeming it a red line. Qatar, a financial powerhouse for the Muslim Brotherhood, and Turkiye, once seen as its political representative, now play more static roles in regional affairs. Erdogan’s involvement in Syria, while eroding Turkiye’s historically supportive position for both Fatah and Hamas in the Palestinian struggle, has contributed to a regional realignment in which Iran has grown stronger.

Erdogan, once known for his vocal opposition to Israel, is now positioned as a “peace mediator.” Several geopolitical, political, and economic factors underlie this transformation. The influence of the Muslim Brotherhood has significantly declined after a tragic decade of “Arab Spring-ing,” and Erdogan now needs the support and cooperation of Egypt and the Persian Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia. He also aims to strike a delicate balance with the US and the EU. His foreign policy motto now revolves around mediation, which has been evident in various conflicts, such as Libya and Ukraine — where Turkiye played a key role in grain distribution. Domestically, Erdogan faces challenges too. Public discontent is growing due to the influx of refugees, as anti-Arab sentiments deepen in Turkish society.

Erdogan’s failed Ottomanist aspirations have given rise to a resurgence of secular Turkish nationalism among the younger generation. The Turkish left, with its history of supporting the Palestinian struggle for a nation-state, protests against religious-based policies, now positioning itself against Islamist perspectives. In these circumstances, Ahmet Davutoglu, the former architect of the disastrous West Asian foreign policy, and now the leader of the opposition Future Party, said the following: “I knew a leader, a leader I was proud to be with, a leader who made my heart flutter when he said ‘One minute’ and when everyone was threatening him, I said ‘Mr. Prime Minister, don’t worry. You made history today. We will do what is necessary’ and I made him apologize to Shimon Peres. Today, my heart cannot accept that that leader has been silent for 10 days. My heart does not accept that he did not come out and shout, ‘O Israel’.”

This reflects the sentiments of many AKP supporters when Davutoglu expressed disappointment in Erdogan’s relatively muted response to the Gaza war. Ironically, the Islamist Turkish president’s policy approach today is more realpolitik than the idealism inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood. While some of his supporters at home and abroad may yearn for the fiery rhetoric of the past, Erdogan’s current approach seems to prioritize stability, economic interests, and a balanced foreign policy over Palestine.

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Who writes these headlines ?

• Orban: EU Not Dare to Admit Ukraine Cannot Win on Battlefield (Sp.)

Ukraine will not be able to win on the battlefield, all military experts are already talking about this, but only politicians do not dare to admit it, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday. At the beginning of the conflict, the victory for Kiev seemed like a realistic scenario, but now it is absolutely obvious that this will not work out and the Ukrainians will not win at the front, the prime minister said. “This is what all the military experts say and write, but politicians do not dare say that they chose a bad strategy,” Orban told a Hungarian radio broadcaster. Orban further suggested that the current leadership of the European Union should be replaced, as it is not able to cope with crisis situations.

There are now “not good enough leaders” in Brussels who cannot solve the problems that have arisen in connection with the conflict in Ukraine, the leader said. “Maybe in times of peace, when the water is not rough, the wind is not blowing and you can sail on a boat, they are good leaders. But now, during a storm, huge waves, when pirate ships are encountered, we will not be able to prosper with this leadership, that is for sure. Change is needed in Brussels,” Orban said. Ukraine launched its much-touted counteroffensive attempt early in June, and quickly ran up against solid Russian defenses and minefields. According to the latest data, the Kiev regime lost over 90,000 troops.

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“..The easing of live-fire rules was proposed by right-wing National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir even before the surprise attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7..”

• Israel To Pass Law Allowing State To Kill Its Own Citizens (RT)

The Israeli government is set to allow police to use live fire against protesting Israeli citizens who block roads or entrances to towns during the “multi-front war” being waged by the country, public broadcaster Kan has reported. Under the new rules, the police will only need permission from a senior officer before shooting to kill, the broadcaster said on Thursday. Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has already agreed to fast-track the legislation, which might be introduced as soon as Sunday, it added. The easing of live-fire rules was proposed by right-wing National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir even before the surprise attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, in which 1,400 people were killed by Palestinian militants.

Ben Gvir told Kan in early October that he was “not ashamed to act, to make it so that it will be easier for our police officers to shoot those who threaten them.”According to the minister, changing the rules is “very important” as it would protect officers and allow them to carry out their duties more effectively. Kan had previously reported that the police leadership and National Security Ministry had been concerned that Israeli citizens of Arab origin could block army convoys in case of a military escalation with the Palestinians or with Lebanese armed group Hezbollah. Arabs make up 21% of Israel’s population of 9.8 million, according to government data.

The discussions stemmed from the outbreaks of violence in cities with mixed Arab-Jewish populations in May 2021 during Israel’s 11-day war with Gaza, the report said. Israeli police currently rely on non-lethal means to disperse riots and can only employ live rounds if they feel that their life is in danger. Such rules were introduced after large-scale protests and inter-communal violence in Israel in October 2000, during which 12 Arab Israelis and one Palestinian were killed, and an Israeli Jew lost his life after his car was stoned by Arab rioters. The commission that investigated the police response to the unrest ruled that the use of live fire against the demonstrators had been inappropriate.

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“..the commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”

• Israel Military Shelled Israeli Citizens With Tanks, Missiles on Oct. 7 (GZ)

Israel’s military received orders to shell Israeli homes and even their own bases as they were overwhelmed by Hamas militants on October 7. How many Israeli citizens said to have been “burned alive” were actually killed by friendly fire. Several new testimonies by Israeli witnesses to the October 7 Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel adds to growing evidence that the Israeli military killed its own citizens as they fought to neutralize Palestinian gunmen. Tuval Escapa, a member of the security team for Kibbutz Be’eri, set up a hotline to coordinate between kibbutz residents and the Israeli army. He told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that as desperation began to set in, “the commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”

A separate report published in Haaretz noted that the Israeli military was “compelled to request an aerial strike” against its own facility inside the Erez Crossing to Gaza “in order to repulse the terrorists” who had seized control. That base was filled with Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers at the time. These reports indicate that orders came down from the military’s high command to attack homes and and other areas inside Israel, even at the cost of many Israeli lives. An Israeli woman named Yasmin Porat confirmed in an interview with Israel Radio that the military “undoubtedly” killed numerous Israeli noncombatants during gun battles with Hamas militants on October 7. “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” she stated, referring to Israeli special forces.

As David Sheen and Ali Abunimah reported in Electronic Intifada, Porat described “very, very heavy crossfire” and Israeli tank shelling, which led to many casualties among Israelis. While being held by the Hamas gunmen, Porat recalled, “They did not abuse us. We were treated very humanely… No one treated us violently.” She added, “The objective was to kidnap us to Gaza, not to murder us.” According to Haaretz, the army was only able to restore control over Be’eri after admittedly “shelling” the homes of Israelis who had been taken captive. “The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri residents were killed,” the paper chronicled. “Others were kidnapped. Yesterday, 11 days after the massacre, the bodies of a mother and her son were discovered in one of the destroyed houses. It is believed that more bodies are still lying in the rubble.”

Much of the shelling in Be’eri was carried out by Israeli tank crews. As a reporter for the Israeli Foreign Ministry-sponsored outlet i24 noted during a visit to Be’eri, “small and quaint homes [were] bombarded or destroyed,” and “well-maintained lawns [were] ripped up by the tracks of an armored vehicle, perhaps a tank.” Apache attack helicopters also figured heavily in the Israeli military’s response on October 7. Pilots have told Israeli media they scrambled to the battlefield without any intelligence, unable to differentiate between Hamas fighters and Israeli noncombatants, and yet determined to “empty the belly” of their war machines. “I find myself in a dilemma as to what to shoot at, because there are so many of them,” one Apache pilot commented.

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“..a major international meeting of security officials..”

• China To Snub Zelensky’s ‘Peace’ Meeting – Bloomberg (RT)

China is likely to skip a major international meeting of security officials in Malta this week devoted to resolving the Ukraine conflict, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. The gathering, which is expected to be attended by representatives of more than 50 nations, will revolve around the Kiev-backed “peace formula” that is rejected by Moscow. According to people familiar with the matter interviewed by the agency, participants in the summit, which will be held on Saturday and Sunday, will include, among others, members of the G7 Group, Qatar, South Africa, India, and Türkiye, while several other countries, such as Brazil and Chile, are expected to join online. Andrey Yermak, the head of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s office, said on Friday that it would address several points of Kiev’s “peace formula,” including food, energy and nuclear security, humanitarian issues, as well as “the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.”

The ten-point plan, which was first floated by Zelensky last year, also demands that Russia withdraw its troops from territory that Ukraine claims as its own, and calls for the establishment of a tribunal to prosecute Moscow for alleged war crimes. Russia has repeatedly dismissed the proposal as unacceptable, calling it a sign that Ukraine was not serious about the talks. Bloomberg notes that Beijing’s possible no-show at the meeting would be a “disappointment” for Zelensky, who had hoped to drum up support for his initiative at a summit that is seen as a platform for Ukrainian officials to make a pitch to countries that have remained largely neutral on the conflict.

The Malta summit is set to follow similar gatherings in Denmark in June, and in Saudi Arabia in August. While Russia was not present at either, China attended the latter with Beijing’s Foreign Ministry saying at the time that it helped “to consolidate international consensus.” Moscow has said that it sees no value in Ukraine peace talks that exclude Russia. Commenting specifically on the Malta summit on Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called it “pointless and counterproductive,” adding that those who designed the summit’s format rely on “blackmail and threats” to lure in as many neutral countries as possible. Since the onset of the Ukraine conflict, China has refused to join Western sanctions against Moscow, suggesting that the crisis was partly caused by NATO’s expansion after the end of the Cold War.

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“.. the EU’s strategy for Kiev “has failed” because Ukrainians will not win on the front lines and Russian President Vladimir Putin will not go away..”

• Hungary, Slovakia Blocked €50 Billion Ukraine Aid – Politico (RT)

The prime ministers of Hungary and Slovakia opposed a €50 billion ($52.8 billion) aid package for Ukraine during the European Union summit on Thursday, Politico reported, citing an unnamed diplomat. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban reportedly argued that the bloc’s support for Kiev isn’t working, while Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico referred to concerns over corruption in Ukraine. On Friday, Orban told Kossuth Radio that the EU’s strategy for Kiev “has failed” because Ukrainians will not win on the front lines and Russian President Vladimir Putin will not go away. Fico, who on Wednesday became Slovakia’s prime minister for the fourth time, campaigned on a pledge to end military support for Ukraine and criticized sanctions on Russia. Commenting on the EU summit, Fico wrote on Facebook that “Slovakia will have its own opinion in Brussels from today.”

He also noted that he had informed European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that “the new Slovak government will not support Ukraine militarily,” and will focus only on humanitarian aid. Following Fico’s appointment as prime minister, Orban has gained an apparent ally in his stance against Brussels over the Ukraine conflict. Last week, the Hungarian prime minister met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The move prompted an “emergency meeting” of NATO envoys in Budapest over “deepening relations” between the EU state and Moscow. Speaking to the press after arriving for a summit of EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday, Orban insisted he was proud to have good relations with Moscow, adding that while most bloc members were pursuing a “war strategy,” Hungary had a “peace strategy.”

Securing Western support has also become more challenging for Kiev, whose counteroffensive is “six to nine months behind schedule,” according to Mikhail Podoliak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Since October 7, when the Hamas-Israel conflict escalated violently, Ukraine has faced potential competition for aid and attention from the West. As President Joe Biden’s administration struggles to win approval from US lawmakers for additional military and economic aid to Ukraine, this week a group of Republican senators introduced a bill to split aid to Israel from the money for Kiev. Senator Roger Marshall, who is sponsoring the legislation, argued that help for Israel should not be used as leverage to send tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine.

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Note: it’s the Ukraine aid that is the problem, not the Israel aid. Almost funny. Opinions overtaken by reality.

• Speaker Johnson Plans Separate Votes On Ukraine, Israel Aid (ZH)

In what would be a major setback for the War Party’s increasingly desperate effort to perpetuate the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson says he wants to break up President Biden’s $106 billion funding request that combines controversial Ukraine aid with widely-supported funding for Israel. Johnson told Fox News on Thursday that he’s met with Biden and has informed White House officials that “our consensus among House Republicans is we need to bifurcate those issues.” Reflecting growing Republican legislator skepticism about the Ukraine war — and sagging support among citizens of all political stripes — Johnson said, “We want to know what the object is there, what is the end game in Ukraine. The White House has not provided that.”

Biden’s $106 billion funding request, which packages aid to Ukraine and Israel with other vote-baiting allocations, was preceded by a rare Oval Office address in which Biden made the case for pouring more weapons and money into both countries. In addition to saying the aid was necessary to defend two democracies, Biden added a new spin to his Ukraine war pitch by saying the spending would be a boon to US arms manufacturers. sTacking Israel aid to the Ukraine request is a political play: The great majority of both Republican and Democratic legislators would hate to be on the record as voting against Israel aid. Of the $106 billion, $61.4 billion would go to Ukraine — where President Volodymyr Zelensky’s much-hyped 2023 counteroffensive resulted in a net loss of territory to Russia — and just $14.3 billion would end up Israel.

Biden’s combo package is also in danger in the Senate. On Thursday, a group of GOP senators introduced a stand-alone bill that would only authorize money for Israel, and none for Ukraine. “My colleagues and I firmly believe that any aid to Israel should not be used as leverage to send tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine,” said Kansas Senator Roger Marshall. He sponsored the Israel bill along with Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, Texas’s Ted Cruz and Utah’s Mike Lee. That goes against the wishes of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who, like Biden, wants to leverage the Israel lobby’s grip on legislators as a means of forcing his colleagues into voting for Ukraine money. The practice of pushing all-in-one mega-bills in front of legislators for a straight up-or-down vote without amendments is one of the grievances that led to the ouster of former speaker Kevin McCarthy. By breaking up Biden’s requests, new Speaker Johnson can also claim that he’s moving the House toward better governance. We’ll see how long that lasts.

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“We are going to follow the truth where it leads, engage in due process… The evidence is coming together.”

• Biden Likely Guilty of ‘Impeachable Offenses’ – Speaker (Sp.)

Newly-elected House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson weiged in on the ongoing congressional probe into Joe Biden’s alleged influence-peddling abroad, and the GOP efforts to impeach the Democratic POTUS. Evidence may prove that US President Joe Biden committed “impeachable offenses,” the Louisiana Republican who was recently elected House Speaker has stated. “If in fact all the evidence leads to where we believe it will, that’s very likely impeachable offenses, that’s listed as a cause for impeachment in the Constitution… Bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors,” Mike Johnson stated in a US media interview. Johnson, who himself sits on the House Judiciary Committee, referenced James Comer (R-Ky.), Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, and his investigation, emphasizing that documents and bank records accumulated were the reason why the House shifted into the impeachment inquiry stage on the US President, adding: “We are going to follow the truth where it leads, engage in due process… The evidence is coming together.”

Further along in the interview the host voiced the view, shared by increasingly many House GOP and rank-and-file Americans, as per polls, that 80-year-old President Joe Biden has been struggling cognitively. To this, Mike Johnson agreed, and responded by referring to this as a “concerning reality.” “If you look at a tape of Joe Biden making an argument in the Senate Judiciary Committee a few years ago and you see a speech that he delivers now, there’s a difference. Again, it’s not a personal insult to him. It’s just reality,” stated Johnson. The new gavel-holder in the House also summed up his current vision of the Biden administration as a “failed presidency.” Regarding Johnson’s determination to proceed further with the GOP resolve to impeach Joe Biden, Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee told US media that in his opinion the new Speaker “is more than happy to move forward, and will move forward, and the only question is the timeline.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene agreed, adding: “I definitely think he’ll be supportive.”

Mike Johnson

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“It is the type of blind purpose that leads — as it did in the McDonnell case — to a unanimous ruling against you on an otherwise divided Supreme Court.“

• AG Garland Should Rein in Jack Smith’s War on Free Speech (Turley)

In 2016, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion overturning a conviction that the Department of Justice (DOJ) had seemed willing to secure at whatever cost to the rule of law. The case involved the prosecution of former governor Bob McDonnell (R-Va.), and the lead DOJ prosecutor was now-special counsel Jack Smith. The court dismissed the “tawdry tales” offered by the DOJ and declared that it was far more concerned with the damage that Smith was causing to the legal system with his virtually limitless interpretation of criminality. The rebuke came to mind this week as Smith continued his unrelenting effort to gag former president Donald Trump before the 2024 election. Some of us have previously denounced the gag order issued by U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan as unconstitutional, but even that order was more limited than what Smith had demanded.

Even the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a leading critic of Trump, has come out against Smith’s efforts as an attack on the First Amendment. Undeterred, Smith now wants to reinstate and expand the gag on Trump, citing Trump’s comments about his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who reportedly has been given an immunity deal by Smith. (Meadows’ lawyer disputes those reports.) Smith wants to bar Trump from criticizing any witnesses as well as the prosecution and the court. That would include criticisms of former Vice President Mike Pence, currently one of his opponents for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, on his allegations linked to the earlier election. Of course, gagging Trump will not materially affect the jury pool in the case. The Smith prosecutions are one of the biggest issues in this election.

Moreover, it will not protect potential witnesses from withering criticism in the middle of an election that could turn on the public view of these cases. Indeed, Smith has insisted on trying Trump before the election but now also wants to prevent him from speaking fully about the case before the election. Trump alone would be gagged, even as other politicians and pundits debate the merits of the cases and the countervailing allegations of the weaponization of the criminal justice system. The prior order issued by Judge Chutkan is shockingly vague and overbroad. It bars Trump from “targeting” Smith or his staff or potential witnesses or the “substance of their testimony.” It leaves an undefined and uncertain line as Trump campaigns on what he (and millions of citizens) view as the abuse of the criminal justice system to target President Biden’s main political opponent.

Smith would add to the scope and ambiguity of the order in his latest motion. He is arguing that the court should “modify the defendant’s conditions of release … by clarifying that the existing condition barring communication with witnesses about the facts of the case includes indirect messages to witnesses made publicly on social media or in speeches.” Consider that for a moment: Smith would treat comments about witnesses, such as Meadows or Pence, as an effort to communicate with a witness. Thus, Smith continues to litigate with a sense of utter abandon, showing his signature lack of concern for the implications of his legal arguments. It is the type of blind purpose that leads — as it did in the McDonnell case — to a unanimous ruling against you on an otherwise divided Supreme Court.

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Wishful thinking?! The case continues… He’s now called for Ivanka to appear…

• President Trump Destroys NYC Judge Engoron After Case Collapses (GP)

President Trump used his Constitutional right to Free Speech on Friday to go off on the crooked Judge Arthur Engoron, New York State Attorney General Letitia James for continuing this lawfare suit against President Trump and his family after the star witness testified this week that there is zero evidence that President Trump misrepresented the value of his assets to gain business loans for his company. There is no victim in this lawsuit. President Trump paid off each loan and the banks admitted they would readily loan him money for future projects. Engoron is the same bizarre and unhinged judge who opened the garbage trial against Donald Trump and his business empire by giggling to the cameras.

The case never should have been filed. This is lawfare at its worst. The prosecution even had the gall to suggest that Mar-a-Lago, one of the most expensive properties in the world, was only worth $18 million. This judge and this lawsuit is a sick joke. It appears the only criminal activity in the case was by Letitia James after she misrepresented the numbers and filed an outrageously dishonest suit against Trump and his business empire with no evidence. Trump went off on Truth Social on Friday, saying the judge “HAS GONE CRAZY IN HIS HATRED OF “TRUMP.”

President Donald Trump: The Attorney General case against me in New York State just lost its STAR witness, SleazeBag former attorney Michael Cohen (he was disbarred for lying, and more!), who admitted to lying in this case and clearly stated that I did nothing wrong. The unhinged Judge, a highly political and fully biased Trump Hater, refused to dismiss this HOAX of a case, and has lost all CREDIBILITY. Likewise, he refuses to accept the decision of the Appeals Court, a first in New York. He should be ashamed of himself for having ruled against me before the trial even started, and for not dismissing this RIGGED WITCH HUNT now that the facts are known and that their star witness has been totally discredited, actually ADMITTING TO LYING. It is a Travesty of Justice for all to see. Businesses are fleeing “the least business friendly State in the Nation!” Racist Attorney General Letitia James should focus on record setting Murder and other Violent Crimes, something she cares, or knows, nothing about!

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Yeadon

 

 

 

 

Shoebill

 

 

Strandbeest Roboticss
https://twitter.com/i/status/1718162059504787517

 

 

Sound waves

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle October 8 2023

Oct 082023
 
 October 8, 2023  Posted by at 9:17 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  43 Responses »


Leonardo da Vinci A Copse of Trees 1508

 

• Biden Blames The Press For Bad Poll Numbers (RT)
• Biden Mulls Asking $100 Billion Check For Ukraine – Telegraph (RT)
• Will Donald Trump Win by Waging War on American Institutions? Sp.)
• Appeals Court Rules for Trump Amid NY Fraud Trial (ET)
• Judge Who Will Hear Trump’s Jan 6 Case Is the Pot Calling Him Black (Kelly)
• Western Officials Pressure Media On Ukraine’s Battlefield Failures – WaPo (RT)
• Medvedev Blames US for Israel-Hamas Fighting (RT)
• Hezbollah Next To Attack? War Could Spiral Into Biggest In Decades (ZH)
• Time to Tell America’s Climate Cult ‘Stop!’ (ET)
• Bill Maher: “Democrats Look Like Sanctuary City Hypocrites” (ZH)
• One Year On, EU, US Collude To Sweep Nordstream Under The Rug (Bowes)
• ‘No Lives Were Saved’ by COVID-19 Vaccines, 17 Million Deaths (ET)

 

 

 

 

How Bad is US intel on Ukraine?

 

 

Macgregor: The Russians Press On And Take Odessa

 

 

 

 

Buffett

Rand Paul Fauci
https://twitter.com/i/status/1710475596466147791

 

 

RFK

 

 

4 short years ago, we had:
Peace in Europe
Peace in the Middle East
1% inflation
$1.75 a gallon gasoline
2.5% mortgage rate
A growing economy
Full employment
What the hell happened?

 

 

Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones. But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die.

You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said.” We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized.

 

 

 

 

Biden has 98% of the media on his side. But that’s apparently not enough.. His poll numbers have nothing to do with not knowing where he is half the time, it’s uber-friendly media still not being friendly enough.

“You turn on the television, and there is not a whole lot about ‘boy saves dog because he swims in the lake.’ It’s about, ‘somebody pushed the dog in the lake.’ I mean, I get it.”

• Biden Blames The Press For Bad Poll Numbers (RT)

US President Joe Biden has argued that Americans aren’t recognizing his strong performance on the economy heading into the 2024 election because of media negativity. Biden touted the latest US employment report in a White House press briefing on Friday, then suggested that public perceptions of the economy have been dimmed by the negative tone of media coverage. “You all are not the happiest people in the world, which you report,” he said. “And I mean it sincerely: You get more legs when you report [that] something is negative. I don’t mean you’re picking on me. It’s just the nature of things.” The president made his comments on the same day that a Real Clear Politics poll showed that his approval rating had dropped to 40.5%, the lowest level since August 2022. An Economist/YouGov poll released on Wednesday showed that only 16% of Americans believe the US economy is “getting better,” while 56% see it as “getting worse.”

Perhaps even more concerning for Biden, voters perceive that his top Republican rival in the 2024 race, former President Donald Trump, is superior on handling the economy, inflation and border security, among other key issues. Trump has a 23- to 24-point lead over Biden on the economy and inflation, according to a Marquette University poll released this week, and he leads by 19 percentage points in voter confidence in his ability to create jobs. Biden leads by nine to 15 points on abortion policy and climate change. Biden’s Democratic Party is also taking a beating in public perceptions on the economy. A Gallup poll released this week found that Republicans had a 14-point lead over the Democrats in terms of public confidence in their ability to keep the nation prosperous. That margin marked the largest lead for the Republican Party since 1991, Gallup said.

Biden told reporters that, while his positive economic message isn’t getting through to some voters, the many Americans landing new jobs “feel better about the economy.” He added that the media’s negative tone is to be expected: “You turn on the television, and there is not a whole lot about ‘boy saves dog because he swims in the lake.’ It’s about, ‘somebody pushed the dog in the lake.’ I mean, I get it.” Critics have long accused major media outlets of favoring Biden and other Democrats after years of vilifying Trump. “Corporate media’s behavior as we head into 2024 – their willingness to endlessly lie, propagandize and be more overt in their liberal political activism – will shock even the most jaded haters,”independent journalist Glenn Greenwald said earlier this week.

Read more …

“one-and-done”.

• Biden Mulls Asking $100 Billion Check For Ukraine – Telegraph (RT)

US President Joe Biden is reportedly plotting a potential “one-and-done” Ukraine aid request that would be so big that he wouldn’t need to seek any more funding approvals from Congress until after the 2024 election, The Telegraph has reported on Saturday. The new Ukraine aid request could be as large as $100 billion, enough to avoid continued legislative controversies that could hinder Biden’s re-election bid next year, the British newspaper said, citing people familiar with the White House discussions. Such a proposal would dwarf the $24 billion funding request that US House lawmakers stripped out of the stopgap spending bill that they passed last week to avert a government shutdown.

“The big package idea is firmly supported by many throughout the administration,” the newspaper’s source said. “Supporters of Ukraine want this to be a one-and-done, big bill, and then not have to deal with it until after the next election.” Biden’s administration is scrambling to find temporary ways to keep the money and weapons flowing to Kiev, supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russian forces, until a major aid bill is passed by Congress. For instance, a US State Department grant program could reportedly be tapped to provide about $650 million in funding. The White House officials were quoted by the media as saying that only a few weeks remain before a potential lapse in Ukraine funding, which they have warned could have devastating consequences on the battlefield.

Republican lawmakers have become increasingly critical of Biden’s Ukraine policy, with some arguing that massive aid to Kiev is only prolonging the bloody conflict at the expense of bigger domestic priorities. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was voted out of his leadership post earlier this week, the first such congressional ouster in US history, reportedly after some of his fellow Republicans heard that he had promised Biden a separate Ukraine aid bill to be approved after passing the stopgap funding measure. The Biden administration won’t decide on whether to propose a one-and-done aid package for Ukraine until after a new House speaker is elected, possibly next week, according to The Telegraph’s report. Getting a $100 billion bill passed might require the president to make concessions to conservative Republicans on such issues as illegal immigration.

US Representative Lauren Boebert, one of the Republicans who have been critical of Biden’s Ukraine policy, suggested in an interview on Friday that the new House speaker might have to pledge opposition to passing more funding for Kiev. She noted that a majority of Republicans in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted against a $300 million Ukraine aid bill last week. “For the first time, we saw that Ukraine funding alone does not have a majority of the majority’s support,” Boebert told US podcast host Steve Bannon. “Any speaker has to recognize that and not allow more funding for Ukraine to come to the floor. We are absolutely tired of spending it.” Congress has already approved four rounds of Ukraine funding, totaling about $113 billion. The Pentagon warned last week that it had exhausted “nearly all available security-assistance funding for Ukraine.”

Read more …

“The courtroom has replaced his rallies and that’s what the next 14 months are going to look like. He’s a showman; he loves this s***. This will be his campaign and it could work.”

• Will Donald Trump Win by Waging War on American Institutions?

Observers saw shades of Trump’s victorious 2016 campaign as the former president spoke to US media outside of a New York courtroom this week. “It’s a scam, it’s a sham,” said the former president to reporters huddled outside of a Manhattan courtroom. “It’s a witch hunt and a disgrace.” The tenor of his comments was familiar as he opined on the civil fraud case that saw him accused of inflating the value of his businesses by millions of dollars. But the subject of his ire was somewhat new. A longtime critic of the United States’ media and political establishments, former president Donald Trump has recently added the American judicial system to his list of targets in a campaign season that once again seems poised to position the iconoclastic businessman as an outsider candidate.

It’s a role Trump is all too eager to play. He briefly waded into US politics in 2000, forming a presidential exploratory committee and promising to challenge the then-bipartisan consensus around free trade, among other issues. He waged his 2016 campaign against perhaps the most well known living representative of the Washington political establishment (former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton). And he spent his turbulent four years as president constantly at odds with detractors from all sides of the political spectrum. Now Trump can add judges and prosecutors to his long list of adversaries. “Every time he’s in a courtroom, he’s campaigning,” said Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman from Illinois who became a fierce critic of Trump from within his own party. “The courtroom has replaced his rallies and that’s what the next 14 months are going to look like. He’s a showman; he loves this s***. This will be his campaign and it could work.”

Trump’s civil case compounds his recent legal woes, which include 91 criminal charges from four separate indictments and another civil trial that saw the former president held liable for sexually abusing and defaming columnist E. Jean Carroll earlier this year. Then, as now, he decried the case as part of a witch hunt to derail his 2024 presidential candidacy. The legal proceedings create an unprecedented dynamic in next year’s campaign. In any other election, with any other candidate, they might spell certain doom. Yet Trump currently remains the overwhelming favorite to win his party’s presidential primary. Most recent polling shows him running even with Biden in the general election, if not leading him. In 2020 Trump ran as an incumbent, forced to defend his political record and handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. But recently, events have conspired to once again give him the aura of an outsider, running against a political figure who was first elected to national office in 1972.

In the context of 2024’s presidential contest, the judiciary becomes just another aspect of Trump’s audacious challenge to America’s political and social system. Polling has long shown sharply declining trust in a broad swath of US institutions. Congress, the presidency, and the Supreme Court remain among some of the least-respected institutions in American public life, but most others fare no better. Such wide skepticism could create the perfect environment for Donald Trump to triumphantly return to the White House. But whatever the outcome of next year’s contest, the American public may be ready for deep reform in almost every corner of society. Whether our institutions permit such change may dictate their very survival.

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“If the statute of limitations is applied correctly, the majority of the prosecutor’s claims are “subject to dismissal as untimely..”

• Appeals Court Rules for Trump Amid NY Fraud Trial (ET)

After a hearing on Friday, an appeals court granted a stay, or pause, on a judge’s order that former President Donald Trump’s businesses be dissolved. This was only a partial victory for President Trump, as the appeals court said the trial that began this week could continue. The prosecutors had opposed the request for a delay, accusing the defense attorneys of attempting “to sow chaos” and disruption. The Trump Organization issued a statement after the pause, calling the judge’s order to cancel the Trumps’ business certificates “overzealous.” “Judge Engoron’s order erroneously sought to adjudicate the rights of non-party business entities that employ nearly 1,000 hard-working New Yorkers, have never been accused of any wrongdoing and, were never given their day in court – in clear violation of their fundamental Constitutional rights and Due Process. We will continue to vigorously defend our company and our incredible employees from this politically-motivated persecution,” the statement reads.

President Trump’s attorneys appealed the civil fraud case against him on Oct. 4 and Oct. 5, filing a 1,154-page document in a bid to pause the currently ongoing trial. “[New York] Supreme Court’s Sept. 26 and Oct. 5, 2023 decision impose unauthorized, undemanded, overbroad relief without proper factual or legal predicate, which will result in significant, irreparable harm,” states the reason for requesting a stay on the case. President Trump had already previously sought to delay the trial, and the appeal had been denied just days before the trial began. New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron’s Sept. 26 decision not only found President Trump liable for fraud, but ordered the dissolution of the Trump Organization and related LLCs, which means the 45th president will lose his entire real estate empire in a matter of days unless the appeal is granted. Furthermore, attorneys argue, hundreds of employees will be affected.

“Supreme Court clearly does not comprehend the scope of the chaos its decision has wrought,” the filing reads, describing the summary judgment as a “miscarriage of justice.” President Trump’s business certificates have already been canceled, and the judge’s Oct. 5 order requires him to notify the court before applying for a new one, even outside New York. His sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., executive vice presidents in the Trump Organization, face similar penalties. The buildings they stand to lose include Trump Tower, 40 Wall Street, the Seven Springs family estate upstate, and private residences belonging to Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. The case began when President Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen made claims that his boss inflated his net worth. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who declared that she would sue the former president for fraud when she was campaigning for her position, brought forth a civil lawsuit in September 2022 accusing him of defrauding the state by artificially inflating his net worth to get more favorable terms from insurers and banks.

[..] A June appeals court decision had defined the statute of limitations to allegations from 2014 onwards. The prosecutors’ original lawsuit covered the decade from 2011 to 2021. During the trial, the judge acknowledged the statute of limitations, but said he would allow evidence from before 2014 if the prosecutors could connect it to later crimes. The prosecutors had argued for bringing in this evidence under the “continuing wrongs doctrine.” In the appeal, President Trump’s attorneys argue that the doctrine does not delay or extend the period allowed, citing other court rulings. Furthermore, the court is now treating the individual financial statements as “separately actionable claims,” rather than “continuing wrongs,” they argued. If the statute of limitations is applied correctly, the majority of the prosecutor’s claims are “subject to dismissal as untimely,” they argued.

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“On numerous occasions, the judge has insisted the 2020 election was legitimate and fully vetted by the court system – a claim disputed by Trump that lies at the heart of the case she is now hearing..”

• Judge Who Will Hear Trump’s Jan 6 Case Is the Pot Calling Him Black (Kelly)

At her first appearance in the criminal case against Donald Trump for his alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya S. Chutkan repeatedly warned the former president’s lawyers that politics would not be tolerated in her courtroom. But even as she warns Trump about his “inflammatory” language, Chutkan has routinely issued politically charged rulings and made incendiary statements of her own while presiding over some 30 cases involving Trump supporters charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, melee at the U.S. Capitol. These include her public assertions that the 2020 election was beyond reproach, that the Jan. 6 protests were orchestrated by Trump, and that the former president is guilty of crimes. She has described Jan. 6 as a “mob attack” on “the very foundation of our democracy.”

Chutkan’s strident language raises questions about her impartiality in handling the case against the presumptive GOP nominee for president in 2024. Chutkan blamed Trump for the Jan. 6 violence while sentencing Robert Palmer, who pleaded guilty in June 2021 to one count of assaulting police officers with a dangerous weapon (a fire extinguisher). In that case, Palmer’s lawyer sought a reduced prison sentence by echoing the judge’s view of Trump. “Mr. Palmer went to the Capitol at the behest of the former president,” attorney Bjorn E. Brunvand wrote in a December 2021 sentencing memo to Chutkan. “Like many others who participated in the Capitol riot, Mr. Palmer blindly followed the many figures who falsely but persistently claimed that the election had been stolen from the president.”

Palmer apologized to Chutkan for his conduct and begged for mercy. His plea fell on deaf ears. Chutkan expressed no sympathy for Palmer, whom she sent to prison for more than five years. Chutkan’s references to the former president aren’t the only area of concern for Trump. Her comments from the bench also suggest that she shares the same view of Jan. 6 as the man prosecuting Trump in her courtroom, Special Counsel Jack Smith. Tasked by Attorney General Merrick Garland with investigating “whether any person or entity unlawfully interfered with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or the certification of the Electoral College vote held on or about January 6, 2021,” Smith indicted Trump in the District of Columbia on three conspiracy counts and one obstruction count last month.

Throughout the 45-page indictment, Smith repeatedly accused Trump of knowingly promoting falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election. Chutkan clearly shares that view. On numerous occasions, the judge has insisted the 2020 election was legitimate and fully vetted by the court system – a claim disputed by Trump that lies at the heart of the case she is now hearing. She has accused individuals who believe the 2020 election was “stolen” as promoting “conspiracy theories.” In the case of Donna Bissel, who pleaded guilty to the nonviolent petty offense of “parading” in the Capitol, Chutkan cited Bissel’s personal beliefs as reason to sentence her to 14 days in jail rather than impose the three-year probation sentence recommended by prosecutors.

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Here, too, the regime has 98% of the media on its side. But that’s not enough..

“..urged the media to depict Ukraine’s faltering counteroffensive in a more charitable light..”

• Western Officials Pressure Media On Ukraine’s Battlefield Failures – WaPo (RT)

Western officials have urged the media to depict Ukraine’s faltering counteroffensive in a more charitable light, the Washington Post has reported. The US newspaper claimed the efforts are aimed at preventing a decline in public support for providing further military aid for Kiev in the coming months. In an article on Saturday, the Post alleged that “Ukrainian and Western officials in recent weeks have focused on reshaping the narrative” amid Kiev’s underwhelming progress so far. The implementation of the supposed new strategy presumably has to do with increased criticism in some Western countries, which has called into question the continuation of military aid for Kiev.

According to the media outlet, while Ukraine’s Western backers are publicly putting a brave face on the counteroffensive, privately they are increasingly concerned that the conflict could become a frozen one, with Kiev’s forces unable to breach Russian defenses. The Post noted that several Western officials had recently paid an unusual amount of attention in their press briefings to the way the media is covering the Ukrainian military’s progress. In one example cited by the newspaper, an unnamed official urged journalists to “lift up the conversation a bit” and stop focusing too much on the day-to-day developments on the ground, lest they miss the “fuller picture.” The same official also reportedly tried to lower expectations in the briefing, saying that a Ukrainian victory would not necessarily mean the recapture of “every bit of territory by X date” – despite Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s insistence that this is the only acceptable scenario.

Ukrainian officials have been limiting journalists’ access to the front line, citing security reasons, the Post continued. Special officers are making sure that sensitive topics, such as Kiev’s losses, are kept quiet. Late last month, the New York Times reported that a slowdown in the counteroffensive “comes with huge risks for Ukraine.” The newspaper explained that “if it looks unlikely to recapture large areas of the country, Western support could wane, either through lack of political will or unwillingness to donate more weapons.” Meanwhile, Kiev’s already slow progress may be further impeded by autumn rains in the region, the NYT pointed out, adding that such adverse weather conditions would make the ground almost impassable for heavy Western-supplied tanks and other hardware.

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I could add 1,000 words to the 1,000,000 already written in the past 24 hours. But for now I’ll stick with Macgregor’s ”Make peace, you fools.”

• Medvedev Blames US for Israel-Hamas Fighting (RT)

US foreign policy is partly to blame for the latest violent flare-up between Israel and the Palestinians, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has suggested. The official, who is currently Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said Washington should have channeled its energy into ensuring a lasting peace in the Middle East but chose to focus on Ukraine instead. Commenting on Saturday’s escalation between Israel and the Hamas militant group from Gaza, Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel that these events were predictable. “This is what Washington and its allies should have dealt with,” he explained, adding that the Israel-Palestine conflict has lasted for decades, with the US being a “key player there.”

According to Medvedev, instead of this, “these morons got involved in our region and are actively helping neo-Nazis, pitting two close peoples against one another.” The former president brought his remarks to a conclusion with the thought that “apparently only a civil war on US territory” would help quell “America’s manic passion for igniting conflicts all around the planet.” On Saturday morning, Hamas militants launched a massive attack on Israel, firing thousands of missiles and then breaching the border fence and overrunning multiple Israeli towns bordering the Gaza enclave. According to Israeli emergency service Magen David Adom, at least 40 Israelis have been killed and 740 others wounded. In his address to the nation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country is at war. He also vowed that the “enemy will pay a price like they have never known before.”

An IDF spokesperson revealed that fighting is ongoing, with Hamas militants still present in multiple localities. Meanwhile, the Israeli air force has conducted air strikes on Gaza. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has insisted that the Palestinian people have a right to defend themselves against what he described as the “terror of settlers and occupation troops.” The White House issued a statement, condemning what it termed “unprovoked attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians.” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin reassured Israel that the US’ commitment to its security remains “unwavering.” In the coming days, he promised, the Pentagon will “work to ensure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself and protect civilians from indiscriminate violence and terrorism.”

Read more …

Kim Dotcom: “Understanding the Hamas attack on Israel: Iran is aiming for a confrontation with Israel and the US. The success of Russia in Ukraine is encouraging Iran to undo decades of hostile US foreign policy in the Middle East. A bankrupt US Govt has just been invited to another war. The timing is opportunistic. The US Govt is forced to print trillions of USD as it struggles to raise new debt. Another war would lead to a significant increase in inflation and an accelerated economic decline of the US.

If Iran mines the Strait of Hormuz the global energy crisis would become critical. The Biden administration has used the majority of US oil reserves to stabilize domestic oil prices. Iran can increase the pain for the US Govt significantly. Ukraine is turning into a major defeat for the US and NATO. A new front in the Middle East would accelerate the US decline. The US Govt and its western partners simply cannot afford it. Russia and China would benefit most. Iran understands this and is playing into the hands of its partners.”

• Hezbollah Next To Attack? War Could Spiral Into Biggest In Decades (ZH)

It appears at the very least, we are in the midst of a third intifada. But one big question will linger in the coming days and weeks as Israel is sure to escalate its response into a ground invasion Gaza: will the war escalate beyond Gaza and southern Israel? Already both Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran have sent “congratulations” messages to Hamas and the Palestinians. Hezbollah’s statement in particular condemned Arab states who have normalized relations with the Jewish state. The Wall Street Journal reports on Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah’s statement as follows: “Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which like Palestinian militant groups also vows Israel’s destruction, praised the operation by Hamas inside Israel, according to Arab media. Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah said it served as a warning against recognizing Israel.

“It sends a message to the Arab and Islamic world, and the international community as a whole, especially those seeking normalization with this enemy, that the Palestinian cause is an everlasting one, alive until victory and liberation,” Nasrallah said in a statement.” At the moment Israel’s northern border with Hezbollah remains quiet, but if a shooting war starts out of southern Lebanon, Israel will find itself in a war on two fronts. Already there are allegations from Western pundits that Iran is financing this expanded Hamas operation… [..] A potential broader war could also draw in Syria, given already Israeli jets have struck the country almost on a weekly basis. Israel has long said it is attacking Iranian targets and assets inside Syria. If Hezbollah and Israel enter a war, this would increase the likelihood of it expanding into already war-torn Syria.

Mashiach

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“..the first city in America to [insert costly, new, crackpot, ‘green’ energy notion here].”

• Time to Tell America’s Climate Cult ‘Stop!’ (ET)

Rishi Sunak, Britain’s Tory prime minister, seems to have bravely adopted at least some of that mission by challenging Britain’s radical climate agenda. It’s a lesson for the United States. Addressing Britain’s sanguine climate policy, Mr. Sunak said, “there’s nothing ambitious about simply asserting a goal for a short-term headline without being honest with the public about the tough choices and sacrifices involved and without any meaningful democratic debate about how we get there.” Mind you, Mr. Sunak isn’t what the climate cult types call a “climate change denier”; far from it. But he understands that aspirations without means are merely pipe dreams. And he also understands that imposing climate mandates without public discourse or debate is antithetical to the democratic principles that underlie his republic, as they do ours.

Unfortunately, the mismatch between means and aspirations, as well as the disregard for democratic principles, characterizes much of what passes for the national climate policies of both the UK and the United States. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency set the CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards for model year 2026 automobiles at 55 miles per gallon for sedans and 39 mpg for trucks and light-duty trucks/SUVs. Those are enormous increases of 25 percent and 28 percent, respectively, just since 2020. The clear intention in raising the CAFE standards so quickly is to force consumers into buying new cars that are either fully or partially electric, hybrids, or fully electric. But there’s clear resistance, as reflected even by Kyle Bass, an avid environmentalist and chief investment officer of Conservation Equity Management, a private equity fund focused on “facilitating conservation investment”: “The advertised ranges of EVs have turned out to be pure fantasy (we own two Teslas). After a couple of years, the batteries degrade even more (think about your iPhone). I will never give up my combustion engine.”

State and local governments in so-called “blue” states have been even more aggressive in forcing radical lifestyle changes on the people in their jurisdiction. In New York, for example, it’s something of a race to “make history,” with elected officials lauding the city’s status as “the first city in America to [insert costly, new, crackpot, ‘green’ energy notion here].” For example, in a social media post on June 27, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul lauded an expensive “congestion pricing” tax scheme that the city will impose next year, whereby drivers who go below 6oth Street in Manhattan will have to pay a congestion pricing toll of $26 to “reduce fuel consumed and pollutant emissions.” “New York City is leading the nation by becoming the first city in America with a congestion pricing program—setting the standard in the fight for cleaner air, better transit, and less traffic,” Ms. Hochul wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “As we so often do here in New York, today, we’re making history.”

Another “green” initiative bans new construction in New York City from having natural gas hookups, even though natural gas reserves are estimated at 300 years and natural gas burns far cleaner than many alternatives. New York’s legendary pizzerias, some serving pizza from coal-fired ovens for more than a century, will likely be forced to adopt electric pizza ovens. Another initiative will force New Yorkers to hold onto their garbage for up to a week for mandatory composting of organic waste, since the city’s plan only allows for compost pick-ups just once a week. Imagine the smell. And the vermin!

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“New York City is very expensive. You are better off going to a more affordable city”..

• Bill Maher: “Democrats Look Like Sanctuary City Hypocrites” (ZH)

Real Time” host Bill Maher blasted President Biden and ultra-radical progressives for their massive policy U-turn on the southern border this week. He said border state Republicans who bused migrants to sanctuary metro areas (mainly in the Northeast) “called the Democrats’ bluff about sanctuary cities,” and the Democrats “look like sanctuary city hypocrites.”

“Here’s how serious the situation is: You know, they’ve been busing the migrants to the cities now. They kind of called the Democrats’ bluff about sanctuary cities, and they said oh, you love them so much? Here you go. And the cities don’t like it so much. NYC Mayor Eric Adams said this is going to destroy our city … Eric Adams … went to Mexico today. He’s going to Mexico, Ecuador, and Colombia, I think door-to-door, no, really, just to tell people personally, we don’t have room, I’m not kidding, don’t come. That’s pretty amazing. No, he’s telling these people, we don’t have room. This is New York City. Don’t you know our catchphrase? We’re the Little Apple. And our theme song, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere, so go anywhere, don’t come here,” Maher said in his opening opening monologue on Friday evening.

Maher continued, “The border crisis has become a national crisis. It was always something like oh, it’s down there, and yes, it’s bad. But it’s – and now it’s all over the country because they’ve been busing the migrants and so forth.” He said this all “feels like a disaster for the Democrats.” The Biden administration’s reversal to now support former President Trump’s southern border wall comes as radical progressives, for years, called anyone who praised Trump’s wall ‘racist’ and other terrible names. The policy U-turn by the president and radical leftists comes as it appears polling data is not moving in their favor ahead of the election cycle, as disastrous open border policies have transformed many metro areas into chaotic areas that resemble third-word-like conditions. [..] Maher said, “Trump today said he wants Biden to apologize because it looks like Biden was adopting his policy. This does not look good for the Democrats.”

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“More than a year after these attacks, it’s apparent that the manner in which this reality has been suppressed is possibly more sinister than the attack itself.”

• One Year On, EU, US Collude To Sweep Nordstream Under The Rug (Bowes)

It’s been more than a year since one of the biggest pieces of energy infrastructure in Europe was destroyed in what can only be described as a terror attack. One would imagine that no stone would be left unturned to investigate a crime of such magnitude and attribute responsibility. You would also think that the countries that stood to lose most from Nord Stream’s destruction would be at the forefront of these investigations. Well, welcome to the Europe of 2023 where, in a weird case of Stockholm syndrome, it seems neither the alleged perpetrator nor indeed one of the main victims wants any more “trouble” when it comes to Nord Stream. The consensus is to let sleeping dogs lie, and considering the evidence of US involvement in the attack, that’s entirely unsurprising.

On September 26, 2022, the world’s news feeds erupted with reports of the powerful explosions which tore the landmark Russian-German gas pipelines apart, dealing a devastating blow to Berlin’s, and by extension the entire EU’s, energy security. Within a couple of days, Western media had seemingly solved the mystery. Publications such as Politico eagerly proclaimed that “Everything is pointing to Russia,” embracing the utterly delusional anti-logic that would make it plausible that Russia would destroy a piece of its own energy infrastructure that had been bringing it steady income. This reality, widely accepted by objective, nonaligned observers, was however lost on a slew of NATO-, US-, and EU-aligned commentators and officials. A mere four days after the explosions, US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told the BBC that it “seems” Russia was behind the destruction of its own multibillion-dollar investment.

When we roll the clock forward to today, it is now patently clear that Western media have been tasked with memory-holing the entire Nord Stream affair, with Germany, Sweden, and Denmark quietly conducting separate “investigations” which conveniently exclude Russian officials while also remaining strangely low-key in Western newsfeeds. These obviously declawed investigations continue as it is increasingly accepted in the West that Russia had nothing to do with the sabotage, it now being obvious that the US and/or a proxy partner were actually behind this terror attack on European soil. More than a year after these attacks, it’s apparent that the manner in which this reality has been suppressed is possibly more sinister than the attack itself.

An often-overlooked element of the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines is the devastating environmental impact that resulted from the explosions. Over 100,000 tons of methane gas was released into the atmosphere as four huge blasts tore through the two pipelines. A far less well known, or publicized, fact is that these pipelines were laid near an area where tons of toxic chemical weapons waste from the First World War had previously been dumped. The scale of the resulting short- and long-term impact on the seabed and atmosphere is difficult to establish, but both this and the single-biggest release of methane into the atmosphere in recent history seem to have gone generally unnoticed by the Green lobby in the EU and US. Anyone doubting the influence of this bunch should recall that on Joe Biden’s first day in office, he canceled a huge pipeline project, Keystone XL, jeopardizing thousands of construction jobs in what was seen as payback to environmentalists, whose cash and influence had been critical in his narrow electoral success.

The silence of the Green lobby on the catastrophic impact of the Nord Stream attack thus seems all the more unusual. Environmental activists across the US have rallied around calls to prevent the construction of pipelines in various regions, citing their negative environmental impact, but those same people seem remarkably quiet when it comes to the biggest pipeline-related environmental catastrophe in decades. The lack of any significant challenge regarding this act of eco-terrorism speaks volumes about the West’s selective approach to the Ukraine conflict. Green moral outrage is instantly shelved once Russia or China is the target and not the perpetrator.

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There is a video with this, but I couldn’t find an embeddable version. Go here to watch.

• ‘No Lives Were Saved’ by COVID-19 Vaccines, 17 Million Deaths (ET)

A new scientific report challenges the idea that COVID-19 vaccines have prevented deaths after researchers assessed all-cause mortality in 17 countries and found COVID-19 vaccines did not have any beneficial effect on reducing mortality. Instead, researchers found that unprecedented peaks in high all-cause mortality in each country—especially among the elderly population when COVID-19 vaccines were deployed—coincided with the rollout of third and fourth booster doses. The report, published Sept. 17 by Correlation Research in the Public Interest (not yet peer-reviewed), quantified the vaccine-dose fatality rate (vDFR) for all ages—which is the ratio of inferred vaccine-induced deaths to vaccine doses delivered in a given population.

After analyzing mortality data, the researchers calculated a mean all-ages fatal toxicity by injection of vDFR of one death per 800 injections across all ages and countries. This equates to 17 million COVID-19 vaccine-related deaths worldwide from 13.25 billion injections as of Sept. 2, 2023. “This would correspond to a mass iatrogenic event that killed (0.213 ± 0.006) % of the world population (1 death per 470 living persons, in less than 3 years), and did not measurably prevent any deaths,” the authors said. They found the overall risk of death induced by COVID-19 vaccines is 1,000 times greater than previously reported in data from clinical trials, adverse event monitoring, and cause-of-death statistics obtained from death certificates.

All-cause mortality is the death rate from all causes of death for a population in a specific time period. This is the most reliable data for detecting and epidemiologically characterizing events driving death and for measuring the population-level impact of any surge or collapse in deaths from any cause. “All-cause mortality is a good feature to use in statistical medical analyses since there is no ambiguity in whether someone has died or not,” Stephanie Seneff, a senior research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told The Epoch Times in an email. “It is highly disturbing that these authors have found a consistent trend among seventeen countries showing a significant increase in all-cause mortality coinciding with extensive COVID vaccine rollout. Their estimate of one death for every 800 injections globally is alarming.”

[..] “There is no evidence in the hard data of all-cause mortality of a beneficial effect from the COVID-19 vaccine rollouts. No lives were saved,” Denis Rancourt, co-director of Correlation Research in the Public Interest with a doctorate in physics, told The Epoch Times in an email. “On the contrary, the evidence can be understood in terms of being subjected to a toxic substance. The risk of death per injection increases exponentially with age. The policy of prioritizing the elderly for injection must be ended immediately.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ibex
https://twitter.com/i/status/1710560060710019158

 

 

Dog star

 

 

 

 

FishingVillage
https://twitter.com/i/status/1710598084231671813

 

 

Wall building
https://twitter.com/i/status/1710614273930490009

 

 

Cat shades
https://twitter.com/i/status/1710692933215600738

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle April 19 2023

Apr 192023
 
 April 19, 2023  Posted by at 8:57 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  43 Responses »


Ito Shinsui Snowy night 1923

 

• China Offers To Facilitate Israel-Palestinian Peace Talks (AP)
• Macron’s Yet-to-be Drafted Peace Plan: Long-term Guarantees To Kiev (TASS)
• Russia ‘Winning’ Fight Against Ukraine – Retired US Army Colonel Macgregor (RT)
• Lloyd Austin: ‘We Won’t Be In A War With Russia’ (Az.)
• Russian Forces Control Almost All Of Bakhmut – DPR Head’s Advisor (TASS)
• Kiev ‘Pissed Off’ UN Chief – WaPo (RT)
• Leaked Document Reveals the US Spying on the UN Secretary-General (Antiwar)
• White House: China Wants To See Dollar Weaken As Reserve Currency (Az.)
• BRICS To Pass G7 In Economic Might – Bloomberg (RT)
• Can BRICS Weaken the Dominance of the IMF and World Bank? (Baroud)
• Russian Envoy Slams Die Welt Over ‘Kill Putin’ Quote (RT)
• Russia Officially Rebukes UK Envoy Over Remarks On Journalist’s Verdict (TASS)
• EU Funds Enslavement Of African Migrants In Libya – UN (GZ)
• Trump Says Disney ‘Destroying’ Florida Governor DeSantis (RT)
• Then There Were Nine (Turley)

 

 

 

 

Elon Tucker

https://twitter.com/i/status/1648488786056151041

 

 

 

 

CO2

 

 

Maddow leaks

 

 

 

 

China has solved problems in Yemen and Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia. And seemingly without major issues. If they succeed in the Israel-Palestine talks, they will be the new world leader.

• China Offers To Facilitate Israel-Palestinian Peace Talks (AP)

China’s foreign minister told his Israeli and Palestinian counterparts that his country is ready to help facilitate peace talks between the two sides, in its latest effort at mediation in the region. In separate phone calls to the two officials on Monday, Qin Gang expressed China’s concern over intensifying tensions between Israel and Palestinians and its support for a resumption of peace talks, the Foreign Ministry said in statements issued late Monday. Last month, Saudi Arabia and Iran reached a deal in China to restore diplomatic ties that were cut off in 2016. It was a dramatic moment of diplomacy for China that Beijing touted as evidence of its ability to be a diplomatic player in the Middle East. Qin stressed in his talks with Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen that Saudi Arabia and Iran have set a good example of overcoming differences through dialogue, a statement about that phone call said.

He told Cohen that Beijing encourages Israel and the Palestinians to show political courage and take steps to resume peace talks. “China is willing to provide convenience for this,” he was quoted as saying. Israel and the Palestinians have not held substantive peace talks on ending the century-long conflict in over a decade. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is committed to expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank — which most of the international community considers illegal and an obstacle to peace — and several of his key allies are staunchly opposed to the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Cohen expressed his country’s commitment to reducing tensions, but said the problem appeared to be difficult to resolve in the short term, the Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Qin and Cohen discussed “the importance of maintaining quiet at the Temple Mount, particularly in the final days of Ramadan,” the Muslim holy month, but made no mention of peace talks with the Palestinians. It said that Cohen conveyed “the threat that we see in Iran’s nuclear program” and called on China to help prevent Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Qin also told Palestinian Foreign Affairs Minister Riyad al-Maliki that China is willing to play an active role in the resumption of talks, a second statement said. On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin confirmed Qin’s outreach to the two officials. “It is never too late to do the right thing,” he said.

This month, violence in Israel and the West Bank has increased, touched off by an Israeli police raid on Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site, the compound home to the Al-Aqsa mosque. The Israeli military struck sites linked to the Palestinian group Hamas in southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip after militants in the two territories fired rocket salvos at Israel. The mosque sits on a contested hilltop revered as the third-holiest site in Islam and the holiest site in Judaism.

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Compared to China’s initiatives, Macron looks defunkt. His “peace plan”: “Future measures will be aimed at upgrading Kiev’s armed forces. NATO members are also working to ensure steady supplies of weapons and military equipment.”

• Macron’s Yet-to-be Drafted Peace Plan: Long-term Guarantees To Kiev (TASS)

French President Emmanuel Macron’s yet-to-be drafted peace plan, which he hopes to negotiate with China, would be based on long-term security guarantees for Ukraine, Bloomberg said, citing sources. The agency speculates that the plan would be based on long-term security guarantees to Kiev. However, as the report specifies, Western countries also plan to discuss the details of support for Ukraine at the NATO summit in Lithuania due in July. Future measures will be aimed at upgrading Kiev’s armed forces. NATO members are also working to ensure steady supplies of weapons and military equipment.


Macron has reportedly instructed his adviser Emmanuel Bonn to stay in touch with the head of the office of the Chinese Communist Party’s Foreign Affairs Commission, Wang Yi, in order to formulate a program that might serve as the basis for future negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. During his state visit to China, Macron told Chinese President Xi Jinping that he counted on Beijing’s mediation in settling the Ukrainian conflict. Le Monde has said that Macron’s visit to China has failed to bring about any change to Beijing’s position regarding the Ukrainian conflict and Russia.

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“The Ukrainians themselves know the truth. They’re in a very terrible position right now.”

• Russia ‘Winning’ Fight Against Ukraine – Retired US Army Colonel Macgregor (RT)

Russia is defeating Ukraine and the recent leaks of US classified documents will not change the outcome on the battlefield, retired US Army colonel and former Pentagon adviser Douglas Macgregor has said. “I think the Russians are winning anyway, and the Russians know the truth,” Macgregor said in a video uploaded to his YouTube channel on Sunday. “The Ukrainians themselves know the truth. They’re in a very terrible position right now. We’ve been pushing them to launch this massive offensive in the spring,” Macgregor argued. “And, frankly, [Ukrainians] don’t have the forces, they don’t have the resources to make a difference at this point. They really need to fall back and defend against the Russians, who are ultimately going to attack in May and June.”


The documents dumped online sometime this year and recently discovered by news organizations include US intelligence dispatches and documents purported to be the Pentagon’s daily reports on the Ukraine-Russia conflict. According to a file dated February 28, Western countries have been training and equipping nine Ukrainian brigades for a counteroffensive slated for April 30. The same document said that three more brigades were to be formed “internally” in Ukraine. Ukrainian officials have said in the past that offensive operations would depend on the supply of tanks and other heavy weapons from the West. Prime Minister Denis Shmigal confirmed on Monday that the counteroffensive would begin “in the nearest future.” He rejected the idea that Kiev was being pressured from abroad regarding the timetable.

Doctorow

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Denial is useless. Who’re you gonna fool?

• Lloyd Austin: ‘We Won’t Be In A War With Russia’ (Az.)

“We are not in a war with Russia, and we won’t be in a war with Russia,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in an interview with The Washington Post. Asked what happens if Ukraine doesn’t succeed in pushing back Russian front lines and reclaiming significant territory, the Pentagon’s top official deflected.

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90%, from 80% a week ago.

• Russian Forces Control Almost All Of Bakhmut – DPR Head’s Advisor (TASS)

Russian forces have taken control of almost 90% of the city of Artyomovsk (called Bakhmut in Ukraine), Yan Gagin, an advisor to the Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DPR) leader, told TASS on Tuesday. “The Wagner private military company controls about 90% of Artyomovsk and its advance is inevitable,” he said. Wagner PMC founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said on April 11 that Russian forces controlled more than 80% of Artyomovsk, including all administrative buildings. Gagin specified that Ukrainian troops were booby-trapping and blowing up major infrastructure facilities before leaving the western outskirts of Artyomovsk.


“The Ukrainian armed forces are okay with using scorched earth tactics. This is what they did in Volnovakha and Mariupol, and now, they are blowing up and booby-trapping major infrastructure facilities in Artyomovsk before retreating from the western outskirts of the city. A local community center was one of the buildings that they blew up recently,” Gagin noted. Earlier, he told TASS that Ukraine was redeploying troops to Artyomovsk but the majority of new soldiers were getting killed on their approach to the city. Artyomovsk, located in the Kiev-controlled part of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), is an important transport hub in terms of Ukrainian military supplies. Heavy fighting is raging in the area.

Prigozhin
https://twitter.com/i/status/1648084845682196485

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“Zelensky “sprung the event” on Guterres, the newspaper said. The president’s aides later spun it to imply that the UN chief was “congratulating military personnel on one side of the Russia-Ukraine war.”

• Kiev ‘Pissed Off’ UN Chief – WaPo (RT)

President Vladimir Zelensky ambushed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres with a surprise ceremony in Kiev during which the Ukrainian leader awarded medals to female soldiers, the Washington Post has reported, citing alleged US eavesdropping on the UN chief. Guterres’ reaction to the incident, which took place during his visit to the Ukrainian capital on March 8, was described in one of the slides purportedly leaked by a US National Guardsman who had access to classified US intelligence. The secretary general apparently discussed his experience privately with his spokesman Stephane Dujarric. Zelensky “sprung the event” on Guterres, the newspaper said. The president’s aides later spun it to imply that the UN chief was “congratulating military personnel on one side of the Russia-Ukraine war.”

Guterres “emphasized that he made a point of not smiling the entire time,” according to the US document purporting to describe the conversation. Footage of the ceremony, which took place on International Women’s Day, indeed shows Guterres maintaining an expressionless face as Zelensky awarded decorations to uniformed female troops. He offered a small nod and a brief smile to the ladies as he shook their hands while standing on the stage alongside the Ukrainian leader. Dujarric confirmed to the Post that his boss was “unpleasantly surprised” by the event, to which he did not consent in advance. Washington’s apparent snooping on the UN leader fits a long record of clandestine activities by the US and other Western powers, the Post noted.

Last week, a BBC report based on another slide from the same trove described the US’ displeasure with efforts undertaken by Guterres to deliver on his promise to Russia to facilitate exports of its food and fertilizers. The pledge was part of the so-called Black Sea Initiative, which allowed Ukrainian grain to be shipped out by sea. The UN chief’s attempts to deliver on the promise were “undermining broader efforts to hold Moscow accountable for its actions in Ukraine,” the slide said. Dujarric commented on the BBC report, stating that Guterres was “not surprised by the fact that people are spying on him and listening in on his private conversations.” “What is surprising is the malfeasance or incompetence that allows for such private conversations to be distorted and become public,” he added.

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“Washington’s apparent snooping on the UN leader fits a long record of clandestine activities by the US and other Western powers, the Post noted.”

• Leaked Document Reveals the US Spying on the UN Secretary-General (Antiwar)

Classified documents allegedly leaked by Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira have revealed that the US is closely spying on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and is not happy with his engagement with Moscow. Several documents detail Guterres’ communications, including one that accuses him of “undermining” efforts to take action against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. The document addresses his communications with Moscow regarding the grain deal that unlocked Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. To broker the deal between Moscow and Kyiv, the UN agreed to help facilitate the export of Russian fertilizer and grain, which has been hindered by Western sanctions despite exemptions for agricultural goods.

The document reads: “UN Secretary-General Guterres is taking steps to accommodate Russia in an effort to protect the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI), which he considers a pivotal UN success and key to addressing global food insecurity, and his actions are undermining broader efforts to hold Moscow accountable for its actions in Ukraine.” The document was likely written either in late February or early March before Russia and Ukraine agreed to extend the grain deal on March 18. It says in early February, Guterres “urged Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in a letter to renew the BSGI before its term expires on March 18 and Guterres emphasized his efforts to improve Russia’s ability to export, even if that involves sanctioned Russian entities or individuals, according to FISA-derived signal intelligence.”

Signal intelligence refers to information obtained by intercepting communications. In response to the revelation that the US was spying on Guterres, his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told Al Jazeera that he is “not surprised by the fact that people are spying on him and listening in on his private conversations.” “What is surprising is the malfeasance or incompetence that allows for such private conversations to be distorted and become public,” Dujarric said. Other documents detailed private communications between Guterres and his deputy.

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Solution: more debt?!

• White House: China Wants To See Dollar Weaken As Reserve Currency (Az.)

White House economist Jared Bernstein said there was “some evidence” that China wants to see the dollar weaken as the international reserve currency, and urged Congress to raise the US debt ceiling to protect the value of the dollar, Report informs referring to Reuters. Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told a Senate Banking Committee hearing on his nomination to head the body that US control of the world’s reserve currency offered benefits, including the ability to impose sanctions, as Washington had done on Russia over its war against Ukraine.

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Nominal GDP includes a lot of unproductive work (like people sitting through meetings all day long). Once we ditch that, the situation looks much worse for the G7.

• BRICS To Pass G7 In Economic Might – Bloomberg (RT)

The BRICS group – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – is expected to increase their share of the global economy to nearly 35% by 2028, Bloomberg reported on Monday. According to the outlet’s calculations based on the latest IMF data, this year, the BRICS countries will contribute 32.1% of the world’s growth, compared to the G7’s 29.9%. The Group of Seven nations (G7), consisting of the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan, is considered the most advanced economic bloc of countries on the planet. The report indicated that in 2020, the contribution of the BRICS countries and the G7 to global economic growth was equal, and from that moment on, the performance of the Western countries has been declining. By 2028, the G7’s contribution to the world economy is predicted to decrease to 27.8%.

Bloomberg calculations show that China will be the top contributor to global growth over the next five years, with its share set to be double that of the US. China’s share of global GDP expansion is expected to represent 22.6% of total world growth by 2028, the outlet wrote. India is projected to contribute 12.9% of global GDP. “In total, 75% of global growth is expected to be concentrated in 20 countries and over half in the top four: China, India, the US and Indonesia. While Group of Seven countries will comprise a smaller share, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and France are seen among the top 10 contributors,” the outlet wrote. A recent study by a UK-based macroeconomics research firm has also found that the gap between the two groups in terms of global economic weight is expected to continue to grow.

The analysts noted that China and India have been experiencing robust economic growth, and more countries are interested in joining BRICS. Earlier this year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that “more than a dozen” nations have expressed interest in joining BRICS, including Algeria, Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran, Egypt, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Bangladesh have acquired equity in the New Development Bank, the funding organization of BRICS. Last year, BRICS countries proposed the creation of their own currency in order to move away from the US dollar and the euro in mutual transactions.

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“There may be an obsession in America about Chinese activity on the continent, but there is no such obsession here..”

• Can BRICS Weaken the Dominance of the IMF and World Bank? (Baroud)

For decades, the US’s greatest weapon has been its dollar which, with time, ceased being a normal currency per se, to become an actual commodity. Wars have been fought to ensure countries, like Iraq and Libya, remain committed to the dollar. Following the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Baghdad returned to selling its oil in US dollars. This struggle over the dominance of the dollar was also painfully felt in Venezuela which has the world’s largest oil reserve, yet was reduced to abject poverty for attempting to challenge the supremacy of Washington its currency. Though it will take time, the process of lessening the reliance on US dollars is now in full swing. On March 30, Brazil and China announced a trade agreement that would allow them to use the two countries’ national currencies, the yuan and the reais, respectively.

This step shall prove consequential, for it will encourage other South American countries to follow suit. But that move was neither the first, nor will it be the last of its kind. One of the main decisions by finance ministers and central bank governors of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) following their March 30-31 meeting in Indonesia is to reduce their reliance on the US dollar. They agree to “reinforce financial resilience … through the use of local currency to support cross-border trade and investment in the ASEAN region.” This too is a game-changer. The BRICS countries, in particular, are leading the charge and are set to serve as the facilitator of rearranging the world’s economic and financial map. While the West is busy trying to keep its own economies afloat, it remains wary of the changes underway in the Global South. Washington and other western capitals are worried. They ought to be.

Following a meeting between US President Joe Biden and 40 African leaders at the White House last December, it was clear that African countries were not interested in taking sides in the ongoing war in Ukraine. Consequently, US Vice President Kamala Harris flew to Africa on March 26 to meet African leaders, with the sole purpose of pushing them away from China and Russia. That effort is likely to fail. A perfect illustration of Africa’s refusal to abandon its neutrality is the press conference between Harris and President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, on March 28. “There may be an obsession in America about Chinese activity on the continent, but there is no such obsession here,” Akufo-Addo told reporters.

To argue that BRICS is a purely economic group is to ignore a large part of the story. The timing of BRICS’ expansion, the stern political discourse of its members, potential members and allies, the repeated visits by top Russian and Chinese diplomats to Africa and other regions in the Global South, etc., indicate that BRICS has become the South’s new platform for geopolitics, economy and diplomacy.

Read more …

It’s become normal.

• Russian Envoy Slams Die Welt Over ‘Kill Putin’ Quote (RT)

Germany’s Die Welt daily “hit rock bottom” in its anti-Russian zeal last week, the Russian ambassador to Berlin, Sergey Nechaev, said on Monday, in response to an interview with American columnist Fred Kaplan in which he said the “easiest way” to end the Ukraine conflict is for someone to “kill Putin.” Die Welt has left “this de facto call for murder” unredacted and uncommented on and even used it as a headline, Nechaev wrote in a damning post published on the embassy’s Telegram account. The envoy was apparently referring to Die Welt’s Twitter account, which used the “killing” quote to draw attention to the interview with Kaplan on its social media. “It is unfortunate that some German media keep crossing all the lines and hitting rock bottom,” the ambassador said, adding that “although this is outrageous, it is no longer surprising.”

Kaplan made the statement in response to Die Welt’s question about the “most plausible scenarios” of ending the military conflict between Moscow and Kiev, which has now been ongoing for now than a year. “The easiest way for this to end is for someone to kill Putin,” Kaplan stated, adding that a “new leader” could them come to power, who would declare Russia’s military operation in Ukraine “a folly” and gain the support of the Russian elites to end the conflict. The American journalist and political scientist said he does not believe that Moscow will prevail, adding that otherwise the conflict could last “for years” and potentially end with an agreement that would involve the US and China as “guarantors.”

The US columnist also admitted that Kiev is fully dependent on US aid and that a halt to this assistance might force the Ukrainian government to “strike a deal” with Moscow. “Without the US assistance, it [Ukraine] would not last long,” he said. Die Welt’s choice of a quote has also been met with criticism on social media. One person accused the outlet of being “no longer above … an incitement to murder.” “Is it a call for murder?” another person asked, warning that killing the Russian president could also bring “hardliners” to power in Russia, potentially putting the world on the brink of a nuclear war. The German media outlet has not commented on the criticism so far. Neither the text of the interview nor the Twitter post has been altered in any way as of the time of this writing.

Read more …

“..indicates London’s clear violation of the fundamental principles of the 1962 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and runs counter to the status of the British diplomatic mission in Moscow..”

• Russia Officially Rebukes UK Envoy Over Remarks On Journalist’s Verdict (TASS)

Russia has issued a stern rebuke to British Ambassador to Moscow Deborah Bronnert over her remarks as well as statements by senior British Foreign Office officials regarding the court verdict handed down in the case against journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza (designated as a foreign agent in Russia), the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. “On April 18, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned British Ambassador to Moscow Deborah Bronnert to issue a protest to her against her unacceptable remarks as well as the provocative statements made by the highest officials of the British Foreign Office following the Moscow City Court’s verdict handed down in the case of Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian national convicted of high treason and making false reports about the Russian Army,” the statement reads.

The ministry added that London’s reference to the fact that Kara-Murza holds British citizenship was “legally null and void” under Russian jurisprudence. The Russian Foreign Ministry also pointed out that Moscow viewed foreign diplomats’ calls for revoking the verdict as blatant interference in Russia’s domestic affairs. “Such disrespectful behavior indicates London’s clear violation of the fundamental principles of the 1962 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and runs counter to the status of the British diplomatic mission in Moscow,” the statement added.

According to the ministry, Bronnert was informed that British officials’ attempts “to lecture Russia on respect for human rights” were unacceptable as the international community was well aware of London’s disregard for human rights issues. Russian Ambassador to the UK Andrey Kelin said earlier that the Russian Foreign Ministry had strongly protested to Bronnert, pointing out that “the activity staged by the British, the Americans and the Canadians yesterday morning is regarded as blatant interference” in Russia’s internal affairs.

Read more …

Legacy of the west. Of course they will turn to China.

• EU Funds Enslavement Of African Migrants In Libya – UN (GZ)

An investigation by the United Nations has concluded that money provided by the European Union to state entities in Libya has facilitated crimes against humanity ranging from forced labor and sexual slavery to torture. Through its financial support of the Libyan Coast Guard and the Libyan Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration (DCIM), the European Union has aided and abetted crimes against humanity, according to a recent UN report. On March 27, 2023, the United Nations released the findings of a three-year investigation, confirming that “arbitrary detention, murder, rape, enslavement, sexual slavery, extrajudicial killing and enforced disappearance” has become a “widespread practice” in the once-prosperous nation of Libya, which was plunged into civil war by NATO’s regime change war over a decade ago.

While crimes against humanity were found to be widespread throughout the country, the report homed in on the plight of migrants and blamed the European Union for enabling the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity to enact abuses against Africans seeking asylum in Europe. The report stated in its introductory section: “The Mission found that crimes against humanity were committed against migrants in places of detention under the actual or nominal control of Libya’s Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration, the Libyan Coast Guard and the Stability Support Apparatus. These entities received technical, logistical and monetary support from the European Union and its member States for, inter alia, the interception and return of migrants.”

In other words, rather than directly intercepting migrants traveling by boat to Europe, the European Union has outsourced the dirty work to the Libyan Coast Guard. Once the coast guard detains the migrants, they are sent back to Libya and transferred to both official and “secret prisons” where they are often exploited for financial gain through forced labor, ransom, or sexual slavery.

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Woke.

• Trump Says Disney ‘Destroying’ Florida Governor DeSantis (RT)

Former President Donald Trump says Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is “being absolutely destroyed” in his months-long battle with Disney, after the governor unveiled a new bill that would give state officials more authority over the company’s massive Disney World amusement park. Trump took aim at DeSantis in a social media post on Tuesday, calling his feud with Disney unnecessary, while condemning the governor’s new legislative effort as a political stunt. “DeSanctus is being absolutely destroyed by Disney. His original PR plan fizzled, so now he’s going back with a new one in order to save face,” he said, using a disparaging nickname for the governor.

The former leader went on to predict that Disney – one of the state’s largest employers – would cut off investments in Florida “because of the governor,” suggesting the company “could even announce a slow withdrawal or sale of certain properties, or the whole thing. Watch!” While DeSantis has not announced a 2024 presidential campaign, he is expected to run for the White House and is widely considered Trump’s main Republican rival. On Monday, DeSantis announced a bill that would rescind an agreement Disney struck with state officials earlier this year, which granted Disney free rein to develop the district that hosts its Walt Disney World theme park and its related resorts. While DeSantis previously appointed officials to head up a new state board to oversee the district, the deal with Disney was completed before they began their roles, effectively circumventing the board in giving the company full developmental powers.

“They negotiated with themselves, to give themselves the ability to maintain their self-governing status. Now that’s in direct defiance of the will of the people of Florida,” the governor told reporters on Monday. “They thought that they could create some type of development agreements that would essentially render everything that we did null and void and put them in control in perpetuity for this. Well, that’s not going to work.” DeSantis’ row with Disney kicked off last year after the company publicly opposed his ‘Parental Rights in Education’ bill, which barred certain public school teachers from classroom discussion or instruction related to sexual orientation or gender identity. Dubbing the act the ‘Don’t Say Gay bill’, Disney said it “should never have been signed into law” and vowed to fight for its repeal.

The governor argued that Disney’s statement “crossed the line” and slammed the company for working to “repeal substantive protections for parents.” Since then, DeSantis has sought to strip Disney of its broad authority over the district housing its theme park, and more recently, requested an inspector general probe into Disney’s development agreement with the state for potential criminal or civil violations.

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“It is illegal to give a member of Congress or a president even $100 to gain influence. However, you can literally give millions to their spouses or children..”

• Then There Were Nine (Turley)

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has revealed that there are not three but nine members of the Biden family that may have benefitted from suspected influence peddling efforts. For those of us who have long criticized the corrupt practices of the Biden family, the identity of these other family members is intriguing after the Committee secured new bank and financial records. Democratic members again insisted that there is no need to investigate such influence peddling. The new information on the Biden family is due largely to the takeover of the House by the GOP. Previously, Democrats blocked efforts to investigate influence peddling by the Biden family for years. After assuming control of the Committee. Comer sought suspicious activity reports sent by banks to the Treasury Department alerting of potential criminal activity in transactions involving President Biden’s family.

He stated on Monday that “We’ve identified six additional members of Joe Biden’s family who may have benefited from the Biden family’s businesses that we are investigating, bringing the total number of those involved or benefiting to nine.” Those are six names are in addition to three Biden family members and two associates previously linked to payment from China in 2017. Three million was wired Biden family associate Rob Walker in March 2017, who then allegedly divided and distributed the funds later. There remains an “Unknown Biden” who received four payments in 2017 totaling $70,000. The investigation into the Bidens has made many in the Beltway uncomfortable. Influence peddling has long been the favored form of corruption in this city, but few families seem to have cashed into the extent of the Bidens.

I frankly do not understand the willingness of so many Democrats to cover for the Bidens. Democratic members have gone all in with censorship, but this is an effort to scuttle investigations into corruption that may have resulted in millions of dollars going to Biden family members. The Biden family has long been associated with influence peddling to the degree that they could add an access key to their family crest. Influence peddling has long been a cottage industry in Washington. For decades, I have written about this loophole in bribery laws. It is illegal to give a member of Congress or a president even $100 to gain influence. However, you can literally give millions to their spouses or children in the forms of windfall contracts or cozy jobs. James Biden has been remarkably (even refreshingly) open about marketing his access to his brother.

Former Americore executive Tom Pritchard and others allege that Biden openly referenced his access to his brother and his family name in his pitch for clients. James has faced a wide array of litigation over allegedly fraudulent activities as well as a personal loan acquired through Americore before it went into bankruptcy. Hunter worked with his uncle but also branched off on his own in the family business. While his father recently emphasized that his son was a hopeless addict, that defense stands in glaring contradiction to the fact that he maintained a multimillion-dollar influence-peddling scheme. The question is why foreign figures (including some associated with foreign intelligence) rushed to him international money transfers and complex deals worth millions from Moscow to Kyiv to Beijing.

[..] Many Democrats and legal experts have objected that influence peddling is not a crime. However, it is corrupt and squarely within the oversight authority of Congress. Indeed, if it is not a matter for criminal charges, such congressional action may be the only way to force accountability for corrupt efforts to sell influence and access.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Happy dog day
https://twitter.com/i/status/1648374882726559746

 

 

Walter

 

 


While it may look at first glance like a composite image, this mind-bending picture by Kenichi Ohno and titled “Gap”, is a real single-exposure photo and not the result of Photoshop manipulation

 

 

Armadillo
https://twitter.com/i/status/1648377460201865244

 

 

Nemrut

 

 


Given its transparent body, the glass octopus, Vitreledonella richardi, remains one of the most elusive creatures of the deep sea. Rare photos such as this reveal an array of opaque organs and a glimpse of its unusually shaped eyes

 

 

Draco

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle May 18 2021

May 182021
 
 May 18, 2021  Posted by at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Gustav Klimt The Park 1909

 

• Texas Reports Zero COVID Deaths 2 Months After Biden Said ‘Neanderthals’ (NW)
• 42% Of Russians Do Not Want To Be Vaccinated Against Covid-19 (Tickle)
• Learn From History – Or Repeat It (Denninger)
• The False God (Jim Kunstler)
• Dutch Municipalities Spy On Citizens On Social Media (VK)
• Q&A With Antonio Garcia-Martinez (Taibbi)
• US Blocks New Draft UN Statement On Mideast Violence (MSN)
• You Are Writing History With Your Bloody Hands -Erdogan to Biden (ZH)
• Earth and Humanity: Myth and Reality (Nate Hagens)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Riddle me this, Batman.

• Texas Reports Zero COVID Deaths 2 Months After Biden Said ‘Neanderthals’ (NW)

Texas Governor Greg Abbott caught heat from Democratic lawmakers when he announced on March 2 this year he would fully reopen the state by the next week. Mississippi lawmakers declared a similar reopening plan about the same time. The idea was to get more people acclimated back to normal life, including businesses at full capacity and sports arenas full of fans again. For Texas, the governor wanted businesses back at 100 percent and placed filled up again, from school halls to dance halls. President Joe Biden called such reopening plans as “Neanderthals thinking.” “I hope everybody has realized by now these masks make a difference. We are on the cusp of being able to fundamentally change the nature of this disease because of the way we are able to get vaccine in people’s arms,” Biden said in the White House on March 3.

“The last thing we need is the Neanderthal thinking that in the meantime everything’s fine, take off your mask, forget it. It still matters. … It’s critical, critical, critical, critical that they follow the science.” Texas blazed its own path and reopened for business, and the Texas Rangers had a ballpark full of cheering fans for its home opener last month. On Sunday, just a couple of hours after a major PGA event in Dallas and the NCAA FCS college football national championship in Frisco, Abbott reported that the state had no COVID-related deaths the previous 24 hours, and that the seven-day positivity rate was the lowest it’s been since records have been taken—which was March 2020.

Biden expressed disappointment in those states that had plans to fully reopen, saying the goal was for every American adult to receive vaccinations before starting big gatherings, with a target date of July 4 for families to get together and celebrate. “We’ve been able to move that all the way up to the end of May to have enough for every American, to get every adult American to get a shot,” Biden said in March. Biden was 0-for-2 against Texas when, after the Rangers baseball organization said it planned to open at full capacity following Abbott’s executive order, the president called that decision a “mistake.” Rangers general manager Jon Daniels shrugged off that comment and said he still hoped for a full venue on opening day, which he got.

Read more …

Herd immunity.

• 42% Of Russians Do Not Want To Be Vaccinated Against Covid-19 (Tickle)

A Russian survey has revealed that more than two-fifths (42%) of citizens do not intend to be vaccinated against Covid-19 “under any circumstances,” a result that may explain the country’s poorly performing inoculation program. Conducted by recruitment company Superjob’s research center, the survey also revealed that one-in-five (20%) unvaccinated Russians would get jabbed if it meant they could travel abroad. The poll came after Greece’s announcement that they would be willing to accept tourists vaccinated with Sputnik V. The results found that 18% of Russians yet to be inoculated plan to get the shot even without any other incentive. Some 42% said they absolutely do not want to get vaccinated, even if it is the only option for a trip to another country, and 20% found it difficult to decide.


The results from this survey may go some way to explaining why the Russian vaccination campaign has gotten off to a slow start. In late April, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said more than 11.1 million people have received the first shot of a Covid-19 vaccine, with 6.8 million fully inoculated. The country’s authorities do not regularly release data, but the latest aggregated figures on the unofficial website gogov suggests that the current figure of people to have received both jabs is now around 9.8 million. Russia has approved three domestic Covid-19 vaccines, with Sputnik V being the most well-known. The vaccine has now been registered in 66 countries, having most recently passed tests in Ecuador.

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“That sort of cult game is how you wind up turning a nation into Jonestown.”

• Learn From History – Or Repeat It (Denninger)

Adults live in reality where facts are collected, hypotheses are formed, tests are made against said hypothesis and then the results are published. Then, reasoned adults make their own decisions for themselves and their families, weighing personal risk and benefit based on those published results. Children and psychotics live in a fantasy world where they believe you snap your fingers and get what you want. When you allow either of the latter two to ascend to positions of power and influence within government your entire nation is standing on a ledge believing you can fly. There are myriad examples of this, such as believing you can replace combustion fuels with batteries and solar cells or wind turbines; this is crazy-land nonsense as nobody has figured out how to violate the laws of physics, and you just saw a small version of it with the Colonial pipeline.

There’s a virus going around, I hear, that has a near-zero death rate in children but in fantasy-land we must stab them with a dangerous drug lest they get infected with something that they may have already had and won’t hurt them anyway. We refuse to adult and admit that roughly a third of the people who died were within six months to a year of their “use by” date, living in rest homes where half of those admitted die within six months and at least three quarters of the rest who succumbed had destroyed their bodies on purpose, making themselves vulnerable to what, in almost everyone else, is a case of the flu. Rather than deal with these facts, which were known almost immediately in 2020, we instead engaged in a mass-delusional episode akin to putting magic mushrooms in the nation’s water supply, and led the public to believe they’d all die unless they walked around with diapers on their face scared of non-existent snakes coming out of the roadway that were going to spit venom in their mouth.

Worse, when people got said flu we told them there were no treatments which was a knowing lie and let a bunch of ghouls chortle at the $30,000 they were going to get for a toe-tag in a few days while your grandmother choked to death on her own spit. We’re still doing the same damn thing not just here but in fact worldwide so we can scare people into being stabbed on a subscription basis for immense profit with an unknown risk of pulling the black ball and killing a huge percentage of the public. LSD is a hell of a drug and I don’t give a crap what you do with or to yourself but the effects of same, no matter how the crazy got in one’s head, have no place near or on the levers of power. That sort of cult game is how you wind up turning a nation into Jonestown.

For half a million Americans or so over the last year Jonestown has already arrived and now we’re playing the same game without about half the population while attempting to enlist children in drinking the KoolAid. It’s grape-flavored; go ahead and take a big slug. I promise it won’t hurt. Much.

CDC admits at least 94% of Deaths from Corona Virus were wrong.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1394417021333524484

Read more …

“..insufficiently tested exotic experiments desperately employed against something that looks more and more like a bio-weapon that the government itself was complicit in creating.”

• The False God (Jim Kunstler)

[..] as the time-frame for inflation compresses, the people notice that their money won’t buy what they need, and they get restless, perhaps dangerously so. In the process, the government begins to look incompetent, on top of the usual perception that it is corrupt, and before you know it, legitimacy slips through the widening cracks of the floor. Until now, the authorities have been successful in pitting citizens against each other, and the ill-will unleashed has been spectacular. But the memes of “white supremacy” are so obviously dishonest that they’ve only succeeded in hugely pissing off the substantial demographic of white people who struggle desperately to remain employed, housed, mobile, and capable of raising children who are not being driven crazy.

The coronavirus situation is not so reassuring. We are one more serious up-wave of illness from tanking whatever remains of this vaporific economy. An emerging pattern suggests that higher vaccination rates might generate new-and-improved iterations of the disease more efficiently — just as the government tries more aggressively to sell vaccination to the public. The public is also noticing the alarming statistics, and many remain unconvinced that the vaccines are even vaccines in the usual sense, but rather insufficiently tested exotic experiments desperately employed against something that looks more and more like a bio-weapon that the government itself was complicit in creating.

My state of New York is supposedly “reopening” today. Who’s not longing to get back to “normal?” But who’s not a little anxious that mixing normally with other people won’t start the whole cycle all over again? And, anyway, who doesn’t wonder whether normal is really a thing of the past now, disappearing in the rear-view mirror? Just as the hopeful meme floats over the Internet that the storm is over, we fail to see that there’s a larger storm of history whirling around us that we’re only in the eye of.

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Google translate. Spied on by nincompoops.

• Dutch Municipalities Spy On Citizens On Social Media (VK)

Dutch municipalities monitor citizens on social media on a large scale. They use fake accounts for this, a method that municipalities are not allowed to use. This has emerged from research by the NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences and the University of Groningen on behalf of the Police and Science research program. Municipalities keep an eye on Facebook groups, Twitter profiles and other social media to gain insight into possible disturbances such as riots and demonstrations. Municipal officials are often unaware that they are breaking the law, the investigation shows. More than half do not know which rules and protocols apply. The results are based on answers to a questionnaire of 156 of the 352 Dutch municipalities.

Almost one in six of the municipalities surveyed uses fake accounts, a method that only police and intelligence services are allowed to use under strict conditions. In some cases, city officials enter private Facebook groups under false names. For example, at the time of the refugee crisis, an official writes to have secretly joined private Facebook groups to see “what’s going on”. Municipalities search online for social assistance fraud by searching for extra earnings on Marktplaats. Social media is also used to check flight stories of asylum seekers. Searching online under fake names, storing personal data and entering private groups are a serious infringement of citizens’ rights, says Bart Custers, professor of Law and Data Science at Leiden University. “It is simply prohibited. Municipalities are not allowed to play for the police or intelligence service. ”

Arbitration and serious privacy violations lurk. Custers: “If the government goes online with a fake account, it is working under cover, for example, the police must ask the judge for permission. This is not the work of municipalities. “Moreover, there is a risk that personal data will leak. “There seems to be hardly any discussion within municipalities about what is and is not allowed,” says Willem Bantema, responsible researcher and sociologist of law at NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences. The research shows that in about one third of the municipalities no data protection officer is involved in online monitoring, although this is required by law. According to the researchers, small and medium-sized municipalities in particular do not comply with the rules. Large cities generally have better policy in order.

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“Do you realize if an artist went into producing their art, whatever it is, literary or nonfiction or whatever, and thought about the consequences, the art would be total shit?”

• Q&A With Antonio Garcia-Martinez (Taibbi)

After training generations of Americans to forego personal lives and work their brains to mush in service of bigger profits, corporate leaders are waking up to find their companies staffed by people so psychologically dependent upon validation from work that they’re a net minus from a production standpoint, forcing bosses to beg them to shut up, go home, and get lives. Not many modern Americans know how to do any of those things, however, as can be seen in cases like that of Garcia-Martinez, where 2,000 employees claimed to be literally incapable of sharing a vast corporate structure with someone who once wrote a book containing passages they might have disagreed with, if they’d actually read it.

“The thought of conflating your entire political, moral, social, family, and religious being with your professional persona,” Garcia-Martinez says, “I think is extraordinarily fraught and difficult.” Another irony: despite the progressive sheen of these campaigns, Slack agitation doesn’t represent a resurgence of labor. Unions used the strength of the whole workforce to protect the rights of the individual employee, among other things insisting that management not act without due process, evidence, etc. Slack, as has been seen in cases like Antonio’s, or the oustings at the New York Times of editor James Bennet and reporter Donald McNeil, often urges companies to bypass process and act in the heat of the moment. In any case, it’s a weird kind of liberalism that tries to override management to get employees fired, but that’s where we are in the modern American workplace.

I asked Antonio about these and other issues, from his perspective: TK: You’ve had multiple careers, and clearly took writing seriously. How will episodes like this affect people who might try to write or take creative detours in their careers? Antonio Garcia-Martinez: Kat Rosenfield was tweeting about this and I love her and it’s great that she’s defending me. Do you want art? People are saying, “Well, you should have realized the consequences… I feel like saying: “Do you realize if an artist went into producing their art, whatever it is, literary or nonfiction or whatever, and thought about the consequences, the art would be total shit?”

Looking at it bigger, there’s a lot of political ideologies like Nazism and communism that thought that art should be subservient to politics, and that art can only serve a political end. Those movements did not end well. I don’t think we want that in our liberal democratic society. I think that’s a bizarre ideological way of looking at the world, from the wokesters who treat this as a quasi-religion.

Read more …

3 times now.

• US Blocks New Draft UN Statement On Mideast Violence (MSN)

The United States on Monday blocked — for the third time in a week — the adoption of a joint UN Security Council statement calling for a halt to Israeli-Palestinian violence, triggering a new emergency closed-door session set for Tuesday. The text drafted by China, Tunisia and Norway was submitted late Sunday for approval Monday by the council’s 15 members, as Israeli jets continued to pound the Gaza Strip and the death toll from a week of violence passed 200. The United States indicated that they “could not currently support an expression” by the Security Council, one diplomat told AFP. The Norwegian diplomatic mission to the UN announced that the Security Council would hold a new emergency closed-door meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Tuesday — its fourth since May 10.


“The situation on the ground continues to deteriorate. Innocent civilians continue being killed and injured. We repeat: stop the fire. End hostilities now,” the delegation said on Twitter. The Security Council has held three emergency meetings on the escalating violence in the past week, the latest on Sunday, without reaching a common position — with Israel’s main ally the United States accused of obstructionism. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric underlined the importance of taking a consolidated position on the conflict. “I would really restate the need for a very strong and unified voice from the Security Council, which we think will carry weight,” he told a press conference.

Read more …

Yeah, get Erdogan some support. Well played.

• You Are Writing History With Your Bloody Hands -Erdogan to Biden (ZH)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday blasted the Joe Biden administration for standing idly by while the civilian body count piles up in Gaza after one week of unrelenting Israeli airstrikes. And even more than this Turkey is outraged over new reports that Biden approved a $735 million dollar weapons sale from the United States to Israel. “You are writing history with your bloody hands,” Erdogan said in remarks addressed to President Biden. The stinging rebuke came after a meeting with this cabinet over the continuing Gaza crisis. Turkey has long been a staunch supporter of Palestinian rights, though Erdogan’s rule has in recent years seen relations with Israel reach a low-point given the hardline Islamist leanings of his Justice and Development Party.

The Hill reports of the massive US weapons sale to Israel that “A majority of the possible sale is of Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions, equipment that can make unguided bombs dropped from aircraft into guided missiles, the aide confirmed.” “The window for Congress to block this sale is for all intents and purposes closed,” The Hill wrote, also noting outrage among a handful of Democrat progressives. Following a meeting with his Cabinet, Erdogan issued a rebuke to the U.S. president, saying: “Now, unfortunately, you (Biden) are writing history with your bloody hands with this event (in which) Gaza is being attacked with seriously disproportionate force causing the martyrdom of thousands of people. You have forced us to say this.”

And specifically on the new reports of Biden-approved weapons sales to the Jewish state, Erdogan scolded further: “Today we saw Biden’s signature on weapons sales to Israel,” Erdogan said in reference to US media reports of a new arms shipment approved by the Biden administration. “Palestinian territories are awash with persecution, suffering and blood, like many other territories that lost the peace with the end of the Ottomans. And you are supporting that,” Erdogan said. This apparently marks the end of previously reported attempts of Erdogan to reach out to the administration, following warmer (despite at times tense) personal relations with Trump, given that Monday’s comments mark the harshest words Erdogan has unleashed on Biden since his January arrival in the White House.

Read more …

Good friend Nate sent this. Really, Nate, 3 hours?

• Earth and Humanity: Myth and Reality (Nate Hagens)

This video is a condensation of 15+ years work exploring the human predicament. This talk outlines some core myths and stories in modern culture and contrasts them to our underlying biophysical (biological and physical) realities. There will be a web portal in near future going a bit deeper on these topics for use in education and outreach on societal interventions. Here is the chronological myth order and time stamp. They can be watched in any order, but this order makes the most sense (so we decided).

Read more …

 

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“Close up of a wolf spider.”

 

 

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Debt Rattle May 15 2021

May 152021
 
 May 15, 2021  Posted by at 9:03 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  26 Responses »


Wassily Kandinsky Contrasting Sounds 1924

 

• Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Reprograms Innate Immune Responses
• Long Covid-19 Linked To Early Aging Of Immune System (CGTN)
• Pandemic To Be ‘Far More Deadly’ This Year – WHO (Y!)
• Delay Child Vaccinations And Share Jabs With Covax – WHO (BBC)
• India Variant Could Seriously Disrupt Lifting Of UK Lockdown (G.)
• Failed Biden Nominee Neera Tanden Hired As White House Senior Adviser (F.)
• The Age of Fear (Whitehead)
• On the Hypocrites at Apple Who Fired Antonio Garcia-Martinez (Taibbi)
• Remember It’s a Sin to Kill a Mockingbird (Turley)
• Carbon Pricing Isn’t Effective at Reducing CO2 Emissions (INET)
• Escalation In Palestine – Hizbullah Is Ready To Join The Fight (MoA)
• Israel, the Big Lie (Chris Hedges)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Burr

 

 

This is the scary part. This is why we should not use untested substances on hundreds of millions of poorly educated people.

• Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Reprograms Innate Immune Responses (MN)

Researchers in The Netherlands and Germany have warned that Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine induces complex reprogramming of innate immune responses that should be considered in the development and use of mRNA-based vaccines. Jorge Domínguez-Andrés and colleagues say that while the vaccine has been shown to be up to 95% effective in preventing infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and subsequent COVID-19, little is known about the broad effects the vaccine may have on the innate and adaptive immune responses.

In the current study (not peer-reviewed*), the research team from Radboud University Medical Center and Erasmus MC in the Netherlands, and the Helmholtz-Centre for Infection Research (HZI), Hannover Medical School (MHH), and the University of Bonn, in Germany, confirmed the efficacy of BNT162b2 vaccination at inducing effective humoral and cellular immunity against several SARS-CoV-2 variants. However, they also showed that the vaccine altered the production of inflammatory cytokines by innate immune cells following stimulation with both specific (SARS-CoV-2) and non-specific (viral, fungal and bacterial) stimuli.

Following vaccination, innate immune cells had a reduced response to toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), TLR7 and TLR8 – all ligands that play an important role in the immune response to viral infection. Neta and colleagues also found that cytokine responses to fungi were increased following vaccination. The mRNA BNT162b2 vaccine induces complex functional reprogramming of innate immune responses, which should be considered in the development and use of this new class of vaccines,” writes the team.

Read more …

More immune system perils.

• Long Covid-19 Linked To Early Aging Of Immune System (CGTN)

New studies show the effect of severe cases of the virus on the immune system and the premature aging of T-cells suggest a possible explanation for Long COVID-19. According to one publication, three months after patients have been discharged from hospital many showed signs of “premature immunosenescence” – the age-related decline in the body’s ability to form a defence against viruses and other illnesses. Researcher Niharika Duggal of the University of Birmingham said this included the loss of “naive” immune system cells (which have yet to be used in the body’s response), with an accumulation of “memory” B and T-cells, which circulate in the body holding the information to fight against a pathogen.


These symptoms are usually seen in people over 60 years old, but they were spotted in several COVID-19 survivors. It has been previously proved that traumatic injury and chronic disease can cause premature immune system aging, but this research is the first to argue a viral infection does the same. However, the research is still at an early stage and one researcher suggested it could be cause, rather than effect. Janet Lord of the University of Birmingham, explained: “Analysis of people in the UK … who developed COVID-19, showed they were biologically 10 to 14 years older.” She said it’s possible that patients who show prematurely aged immune systems may have caught the virus due to a weaker system – rather than the virus severely damaging the body’s immune response over a long period.

Read more …

Fear campaign?

• Pandemic To Be ‘Far More Deadly’ This Year – WHO (Y!)

The World Health Organization issued a grim warning on Friday that the second year of Covid-19 was set to be “far more deadly”, as Japan extended a state of emergency amid growing calls for the Olympics to be scrapped. “We’re on track for the second year of this pandemic to be far more deadly than the first,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The mood also darkened in Japan where the coronavirus state of emergency took in another three regions just 10 weeks before the Olympics, while campaigners submitted a petition with more than 350,000 signatures calling for the Games to be cancelled. With Tokyo and other areas already under emergency orders until the end of May, Hiroshima, Okayama and northern Hokkaido, which will host the Olympic marathon, will now join them.

Japanese public opinion is firmly opposed to holding the Games this summer. Swiss tennis great Roger Federer said Friday that “what the athletes need is a decision: is it happening or isn’t it?” “I would love to play in the Olympics… But if that doesn’t happen due to the situation, I would be the first to understand,” he added. The pandemic has killed at least 3,346,813 people worldwide since the virus first emerged in late 2019, according to an AFP tally of official data. India meanwhile started deploying Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, the first foreign-made shot to be used in the country that has been reeling from an explosion in cases and deaths.

The first token batch of Sputnik vaccines — reportedly 150,000 doses — arrived on May 1 and a second delivery is expected in the next few days. A number of leading India-based drugmakers have agreements for local production of Sputnik V with the aim to produce over 850 million doses of the jab per year. India has been adding roughly as many new Covid cases daily as the rest of the world put together.

Read more …

Forget about herd immunity through vaccines. Not going to happen. Your immune system will have to do the job.

• Delay Child Vaccinations And Share Jabs With Covax – WHO (BBC)

Wealthier nations should postpone plans to give children and teenagers Covid vaccines and instead donate supplies to low-income countries, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) says. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Friday urged countries to supply more vaccines to the global fair-access scheme Covax. The international distribution of Covid vaccines remains vastly uneven. Since the first vaccines were approved in December, wealthier countries have bought up most of the supply. Many are racing to vaccinate as much of their population as possible. Speaking at a virtual conference in Geneva on Friday, the WHO’s Dr Tedros said he understood why some countries wanted to vaccinate children and adolescents, but said “right now, I urge them to reconsider”.


“In low and lower-middle income countries, Covid-19 vaccine supply has not been enough to even immunise healthcare workers, and hospitals are being inundated with people that need lifesaving care urgently,” he said. Last week, US President Joe Biden laid out plans to begin coronavirus vaccine shots for 12- to 15-year-olds as soon as possible. He also said he hoped that 70% of US adults would receive at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine by 4 July, when American families are expected to come together to mark Independence Day. Meanwhile, Canada has authorised the use of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine for children aged between 12 and 15. The province of Alberta, which has the highest rate of the virus in the country, has already started offering the jabs to citizens over the age of 12. In Switzerland, some places began offering Covid vaccination appointments to 16-year-olds last week.

Read more …

Still makes me cringe: “..allowing people to meet in groups of six indoors ..”

• India Variant Could Seriously Disrupt Lifting Of UK Lockdown (G.)

The final stage of the lifting of coronavirus lockdown restrictions across England could face “serious disruption” due to the India variant, the prime minister has warned, as he announced plans to accelerate the vaccine programme to curb its spread. Boris Johnson said the gap between the first and second Covid jab would be cut from 12 weeks to eight for all over-50s and the clinically vulnerable, admitting: “The race between our vaccine programme and the virus may be about to become a great deal tighter.” He announced that the army would be deployed to two variant hotspots – Bolton and Blackburn with Darwen – to help with vaccinations, and urged residents in those areas to “think twice” before taking advantages of the freedoms allowed again from Monday.


Johnson said plans to ease restrictions on 17 May – allowing people to meet in groups of six indoors – would go ahead, but that the variant “could make it more difficult” for the final stage of unlocking to proceed on 21 June. He said the India variant appeared to be “more transmissible” than the dominant strain in the UK, which originated in Kent, but that it was not yet clear by how much. If it is significantly more, then, he warned, “we’re likely to face some hard choices”. “I have to level with you that this new variant could pose a serious disruption to our progress and could make it more difficult to move to step four in June,” Johnson said. Asked whether the lockdown easing would have to be paused during a press conference, he added: “The truth is, we cannot say for certain … The situation is very different from last year, we are in the throes of an incredible vaccine rollout … We just have to wait and see … We rule nothing out.”

Read more …

“Tanden’s new post will not require Senate confirmation.”

• Failed Biden Nominee Neera Tanden Hired As White House Senior Adviser (F.)

Neera Tanden will have a place in the White House after all following the withdrawal of her nomination to lead the White House Office of Management and Budget, with President Joe Biden on Friday hiring her as a senior adviser on Friday, according to a White House official. Tanden, the former president of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, will be charged with handling the White House’s response to Republican lawsuits before the Supreme Court seeking to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.


Tanden has also been tasked with reviewing the United States Digital Service, an Obama-era White House office that oversees federal websites and consults with federal agencies on technology. Tanden’s nomination was derailed when Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a crucial vote for any Biden nominee in an evenly divided Senate, announced his opposition over her social media posts disparaging Republicans. Tanden failed to make up the votes on the Republican side, having previously slammed critical swing votes like Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) in tweets. Tanden’s new post will not require Senate confirmation.

Read more …

“We allowed them to languish in schools which not only look like prisons but function like prisons..”

• The Age of Fear (Whitehead)

Young people will find themselves overtaxed, burdened with excessive college debt, and struggling to find worthwhile employment in a debt-ridden economy on the brink of implosion. Their privacy will be eviscerated by the surveillance state. They will be threatened, intimidated and beaten by militarized police. They will be the subjects of a military empire constantly waging war against shadowy enemies and government agents armed to the teeth ready and able to lock down the country at a moment’s notice. As such, they will find themselves forced to march in lockstep with a government that no longer exists to serve the people but which demands that “we the people” be obedient slaves or suffer the consequences. It’s a dismal prospect, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, we failed to guard against such a future. Worse, we who should have known better neglected to maintain our freedoms or provide our young people with the tools necessary to resist oppression and survive, let alone succeed, in the impersonal jungle that is modern America. We brought them into homes fractured by divorce, distracted by mindless entertainment, and obsessed with the pursuit of materialism. We institutionalized them in daycares and afterschool programs, substituting time with teachers and childcare workers for parental involvement. We turned them into test-takers instead of thinkers and automatons instead of activists.

We allowed them to languish in schools which not only look like prisons but function like prisons, as well—where conformity is the rule and freedom is the exception. We made them easy prey for our corporate overlords, while instilling in them the values of a celebrity-obsessed, technology-driven culture devoid of any true spirituality. And we taught them to believe that the pursuit of their own personal happiness trumped all other virtues, including any empathy whatsoever for their fellow human beings. We have allowed them to be manipulated by a corporate culture that simply wants money and control. However, as Aldous Huxley warned: “The victim of mind-manipulation does not know he is a victim. To him, the walls of his prison are invisible and he believes himself to be free.”

Read more …

I know little about the situation, but I love Taibbi’s love of the man.

• On the Hypocrites at Apple Who Fired Antonio Garcia-Martinez (Taibbi)

I’m biased, because I know Antonio Garcia-Martinez and something like the same thing once happened to me, but the decision by Apple to bend to a posse of internal complainers and fire him over a passage in a five-year-old book is ridiculous hypocrisy. Hypocrisy by the complainers, and defamatory cowardice by the bosses — about right for the Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style era of timorous conformity and duncecap monoculture the woke mobs at these places are trying to build as their new Jerusalem. Garcia-Martinez is a brilliant, funny, multi-talented Cuban-American whose confessional memoir Chaos Monkeys is to big tech what Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker was to finance.

A onetime high-level Facebook executive — he ran Facebook Ads — Antonio’s book shows the House of Zuckerberg to be a cult full of on-the-spectrum zealots who talked like justice activists while possessing the business ethics of Vlad the Impaler: Facebook is full of true believers who really, really, really are not doing it for the money, and really, really will not stop until every man, woman, and child on earth is staring into a blue-framed window with a Facebook logo. When I read Chaos Monkeys the first time I was annoyed, because this was Antonio’s third career at least — he’d also worked at Goldman, Sachs — and he tossed off a memorable bestseller like it was nothing. Nearly all autobiographies fail because the genre requires total honesty, and not only do few writers have the stomach for turning the razor on themselves, most still have one eye on future job offers or circles of friends, and so keep the bulk of their interesting thoughts sidelined — you’re usually reading a résumé, not a book.

Chaos Monkeys is not that. Garcia-Martinez is an immediately relatable narrator because in one breath he tells you exactly what he thinks of former colleagues (“A week before my last day, I had lunch with the only senior person at Goldman Sachs who was not an inveterate asshole”) and in the next explains, but does not excuse, the psychic quirks that have him chasing rings in some of the world’s most rapacious corporations. “Whenever membership in some exclusive club is up for grabs, I viciously fight to win it, even if only to reject membership when offered,” he wrote. “After all, echoing the eminent philosopher G. Marx: How good can a club be if it’s willing to have lowly me as a member?”

The irony is that if Garcia-Martinez has a failing as a writer, it’s that he’s too nice. Universally, the best writers are insane egomaniacs obsessed with staring at the great mirror that is the page. Garcia-Martinez, on the whole, would rather be sailing. I believe the reason he decided to go back to tech is that he preferred a quiet life of flying a desk to make mortgage payments to the never-ending regimen of self-salesmanship that the literary life requires (and which, again, is the easy part for most egocentric writers).

Read more …

And these people never happen to think of book burning?

• Remember It’s a Sin to Kill a Mockingbird (Turley)

We have previously discussed efforts to ban classic books, including To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Lee’s book has been banned in states from Mississippi to California. The work, which exposed the deep-seated racism in our society, has been denounced as “violent and oppressive for black students.” I have opposed such efforts. Now, Loudoun County teacher Andrea Weiskopf has publicly called for the book to be banned in my neighboring county of Loudon. The reason? The character Attitus Finch is white and therefore the book is nothing but a “white savior” tale that traumatizes black students. The remarks reflects a harmful but growing movement to ban such books in public schools. The attack on this book in particular has left many of us dismayed. As Atticus himself said “remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”


Weiskopf told the board that not only is this classic work harming students but that, if any member does not accept that premise, they should not be making any decisions on book selections. ANDREA WEISKOPF: “It’s funny how they are so afraid of having their children seeing another view of sexuality, gender or religion…If you want to talk about books that are assigned, let’s read To Kill a Mockingbird together. If you aren’t able to consider the racial trauma this assigned book causes black children with its white saviorism, then you have no business discussing any books.” Her diatribe reminds me of the observation in the book that “It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.”

Read more …

Use less energy, only solution.

• Carbon Pricing Isn’t Effective at Reducing CO2 Emissions (INET)

How does carbon pricing affect macroeconomic balance and ultimately CO2 emission? What about electric vehicles that are now being promoted by the Biden administration? Economists’ standard advice for controlling global warming is to impose a high price on emitting CO2, which is said to discourage carbon-intensive activities and induce carbon-saving technical change. In a recent review of the New Deal, William Janeway (2021) draws a distinction between efficient and effective policies. He comes close to economist-speak by describing efficiency as a low-cost means for moving toward a desired goal. Whether an efficient intervention will be effective in reaching the goal is another question altogether. In the short- to medium-run, raising carbon prices within a politically acceptable range may be efficient at inducing macroeconomically small changes in the structure of the economy and level of emission.

But the move will not be effective, because the changes will remain small for at least three reasons. Energy constitutes a relatively small proportion of economic activity. It is crucial for the functioning of the macro system, but usually is not the tail that wags the dog. Carbon pricing brings in the “little triangles” of economic welfare analysis applied by Arnold Harberger (1954, 1971), which are not significant in terms of GDP (James Tobin, 1977). The reason, as illustrated below, is that the percentage change in, say, gasoline demand in response to a higher tax is the product of a negative price elasticity of demand which is a fraction of the percentage change in price, typically less than 100%. The product of two fractions is smaller than both, meaning that the demand response is weak. Even if the magnitude of the long-run elasticity is bigger than the short-run value (say -0.4 < -0.2 or 0.4 > 0.2), the conclusion remains.

Finally, following Harberger and lurching into jargon, economists usually assume that the proceeds of a tax are passed in “lump sum” fashion back to consumers. This transfer produces an “income effect” stimulating demand for all goods including gasoline. The increase can partially offset the price-induced demand reduction due to “substitution” of other goods for lower purchases of gasoline. Substitution effects almost always dominate income effects, so that most of the transferred income gets spent on non-energy goods and services. Total gasoline consumption still declines.

Somewhat similar reasoning applies to electric vehicles (EVs). They have a great advantage in delivering around 70% of the energy they use for moving the vehicle as opposed to 25% for internal combustion engine (ICE) counterparts. But the electricity has to come from some source. As of now 60% of the energy going toward electricity generation in the USA comes from fossil fuels. Unless that share is substantially reduced, EVs will not shift energy accounting by very much. They are efficient in reducing end-use of petroleum in the transport sector, but not effective in controlling CO2. Details appear below.

Read more …

Moon of Alabama with an original take.

• Escalation In Palestine – Hizbullah Is Ready To Join The Fight (MoA)

The current war the occupiers of Palestine wage on the indigenous population has some unusual features. While the conflict was, without doubt, started by the colonial occupiers the course of the recent escalation seems to be managed by the resistance side. It may well be part of a larger plan. The Israeli army had for some time planned a large scale 30-days long maneuver to rehearse an attack on Hezbullah in Lebanon. Last week Hizbullah reacted to that: “The Lebanon-based Hezbollah terror organization has announced it is on high alert following the IDF’s launching of its largest-ever military exercise. The IDF launched on Sunday its “Chariots of Fire” month-long exercise simulating war on several fronts, and primarily against Hezbollah in the north, including the massive firing of missiles and rockets from all arenas on the home front. This is the largest and most comprehensive IDF maneuver in its history…”

[..] With unrest in Jerusalem, pogroms in Israeli cities, a potential third intifada in the occupied West Bank and a ground invasion of Gaza the Israeli army will be very busy. If it comes to that during the next few days the time could be right for Hizbullah, already on full alarm, to step in and to attack the occupation on the grounds that it is holding. Nasrallah’s speech last week can be understood as an announcement of such a step: “My last message will be for the Israelis themselves. I tell them this: you know well, in your heart of hearts, whether it is based on your religious texts or doctrines, on your books or your prophecies, and also based on what some of your leaders and experts say, and also some of your religious authorities, you know (very well) that this entity (Israel) has no future, that it is on the verge of extinction and that it has little time left to live, very little time. Therefore, in this battle you are wasting your energy, and your young people are wasting their youth and their blood, in vain and to no avail.”
…
We believe in this near future (where Israel won’t exist anymore), we believe in it very firmly, and this faith is not based only on religious and ideological bases, but is based (above all) on the data, on the events which occur, especially on those of the last decades, the last years and on what will happen (soon) in this region.”

It is possible that Netanyahoo had planned the original escalation in Jerusalem to stay in office: After four elections Israel still has no new government. Prime Minister Netanyahoo is on trial for corruption. A larger war that can be spun into a victory could help him to avoid a judgment and gain votes for the likely soon coming next election. It that was his plan he has achieved a first step towards it: “Yamina party leader Naftali Bennett has taken “off the table” the option of forming a government without Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, due to the ongoing military conflict with Gaza terrorists, a political source says. Bennett has renewed his negotiations with Likud due to the emergency situation, and teams from both parties met today, the source says on condition of anonymity.

But it is not Netanyahoo who can decide when the missiles from Gaza will stop flying. It is not Netanyahoo who can control the Palestinian youth. The escalation dominance is not in his hands but in the hands of the resistance. It is the resistance that decides when the conflict ends.

Read more …

Hedges has been there, done that.

• Israel, the Big Lie (Chris Hedges)

I spent seven years in the Middle East as a correspondent, four of them as The New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief. I am an Arabic speaker. I lived for weeks at a time in Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison where over two million Palestinians exist on the edge of starvation, struggle to find clean water and endure constant Israeli terror. I have been in Gaza when it was pounded with Israeli artillery and air strikes. I have watched mothers and fathers, wailing in grief, cradling the bloodied bodies of their sons and daughters. I know the crimes of the occupation—the food shortages caused by the Israeli blockade, the stifling overcrowding, the contaminated water, the lack of health services, the near constant electrical outages due to the Israeli targeting of power plants, the crippling poverty, the endemic unemployment, the fear and the despair. I have witnessed the carnage.

I also have listened from Gaza to the lies emanating from Jerusalem and Washington. Israel’s indiscriminate use of modern, industrial weapons to kill thousands of innocents, wound thousands more and make tens of thousands of families homeless is not a war: It is state-sponsored terror. And, while I oppose the indiscriminate firing of rockets by Palestinians into Israel, as I oppose suicide bombings, seeing them also as war crimes, I am acutely aware of a huge disparity between the industrial violence carried out by Israel against innocent Palestinians and the minimal acts of violence capable of being waged by groups such as Hamas. The false equivalency between Israeli and Palestinian violence was echoed during the war I covered in Bosnia.

Those of us in the besieged city of Sarajevo were pounded daily with hundreds of heavy shells and rockets from the surrounding Serbs. We were targeted by sniper fire. The city suffered a few dozen dead and wounded each day. The government forces inside the city fired back with light mortars and small arms fire. Supporters of the Serbs seized on any casualties caused by Bosnian government forces to play the same dirty game, although well over 90 percent of the killings in Bosnia were the fault of the Serbs, as is also true regarding Israel. The second and perhaps most important parallel is that the Serbs, like the Israelis, were the principal violators of international law. Israel is in breach of more than 30 U.N. Security Council resolutions. It is in breach of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that defines collective punishment of a civilian population as a war crime.

It is in violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention for settling over half a million Jewish Israelis on occupied Palestinian land and for the ethnic cleansing of at least 750,000 Palestinians when the Israeli state was founded and another 300,000 after Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank were occupied following the 1967 war. Its annexation of East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights violates international law, as does its building of a security barrier in the West Bank that annexes Palestinian land into Israel. It is in violation of U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 that states that Palestinian “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.” This is the truth. Any other starting point for the discussion of what is taking place between Israel and the Palestinians is a lie.

Read more …

 

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Debt Rattle August 14 2020

Aug 142020
 
 August 14, 2020  Posted by at 9:46 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  16 Responses »


Marlon Brando screentest 1951

 

• US Obesity Epidemic Threatens Effectiveness of Any COVID Vaccine (KHN)
• Israeli Hospital Trials Fast Saliva Test for COVID-19 (R.)
• The Pandemic and Medicare for All (TMI)
• NYC Is Dead Forever. Here’s Why (Altucher)
• What Kamala Harris Really Thinks of WikiLeaks (Lauria)
• Some Questions About Kamala Harris’ Eligibility (NW)
• China’s Banks At Risk As $500 Billion In Non-Performing Loans Revealed (SCMP)
• China’s Debt Collectors Flourish As Consumers Flounder (R.)
• US Seizes $2 Million From Terror-Linked Cryptocurrency Accounts (CNBC)
• United Arab Emirates Sells Out Palestine For Israel (EI)
• Experts Debunk Claims of GMO Crops Success (OffG)
• Ford Is Slashing 10,000 Jobs, 6 Factories In Europe (ZH)
• 7 Million Jobs At Risk, European Airlines Could See “Further Declines” (ZH)
• Volume of Greek Air Traffic Plunged 74.3% in 2020 (GR)

 

 

I was reading a piece by law professor John Eastman yesterday, before the entire left stumbled over each other to condemn it. I was thinking in my innocence that it’s interesting to know if questions over who’s a “natural born citizen” in America have ever truly been settled by politics or courts.

But I’m naive, and it’s attack time. They will defend Kamala Harris with all they got, with the entire MSM serving as their bullhorns. Which means Trump and his people have no choice but to go after her with all they got. Still, remembering the Obama birther fiasco, do they really want to die on this hill? Can’t we just leave it to the court system and legal experts? Or simply answer Eastman’s questions?

It’s all among signs of things to come between here and Nov. 3. Bill Barr yesterday promised that a first news flash from the Durham investigation into Russiagate origins will come out today, and that all of it will before Nov. 3. US elections are really just entertainment. Opium for the masses. Clickbaits, drama, anger, scandal. And I always thought it should be about people.

 

 

Not much movement in the numbers. We’re stuck in a broken record, with no progress anywhere. Not good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are 328 million Americans. 74 million of them are children. That leaves 254 million adults, of which 107 million are obese, or 42%. 42.4% have a BMI over 30. 9% are morbidly obese.

From this point of view, COVID is hardly the worst threat to either the people or the health care system. Or, to put it another way, it’s the people themselves that are the threat to the health care system.

Again, take high fructose corn syrup out of the diet, and you solve a huge chunk of that problem. Ban stuff that kills people, or make it much harder to get.

• US Obesity Epidemic Threatens Effectiveness of Any COVID Vaccine (KHN)

For a world crippled by the coronavirus, salvation hinges on a vaccine. But in the United States, where at least 4.6 million people have been infected and nearly 155,000 have died, the promise of that vaccine is hampered by a vexing epidemic that long preceded COVID-19: obesity. Scientists know that vaccines engineered to protect the public from influenza, hepatitis B, tetanus and rabies can be less effective in obese adults than in the general population, leaving them more vulnerable to infection and illness. There is little reason to believe, obesity researchers say, that COVID-19 vaccines will be any different. “Will we have a COVID vaccine next year tailored to the obese? No way,” said Raz Shaikh, an associate professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

“Will it still work in the obese? Our prediction is no.” More than 107 million American adults are obese, and their ability to return safely to work, care for their families and resume daily life could be curtailed if the coronavirus vaccine delivers weak immunity for them. In March, still early in the global pandemic, a little-noticed study from China found that heavier Chinese patients afflicted with COVID-19 were more likely to die than leaner ones, suggesting a perilous future awaited the U.S., whose population is among the heaviest in the world. And then that future arrived.

As intensive care units in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere filled with patients, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that obese people with a body mass index of 40 or more — known as morbid obesity or about 100 pounds overweight — were among the groups at highest risk of becoming severely ill with COVID-19. About 9% of American adults are in that category. As weeks passed and a clearer picture of who was being hospitalized came into focus, federal health officials expanded their warning to include people with a body mass index of 30 or more. That vastly expanded the ranks of those considered vulnerable to the most severe cases of infection, to 42.4% of American adults.

Read more …

More rapid testing. Good. Bring it. Test yourself everyday at breakfast.

• Israeli Hospital Trials Fast Saliva Test for COVID-19 (R.)

A newly developed saliva test aims to determine in less than a second whether or not you are infected with the novel coronavirus, Israel’s largest medical center said Thursday. Patients rinse their mouth with a saline wash and spit into a vial. This is then examined by a small spectral device that, in simple terms, shines light on the specimen and analyzes the reaction to see if it is consistent with COVID-19. With machine learning it gets more accurate over time. Eli Schwartz of the Center for Geographic Medicine and Tropical Diseases at Sheba Medical Center, who is leading the trial, said it was easier to use than PCR swabs commonly used to detect COVID-19.


“So far we have very promising results in this new method which will be much more convenient and much cheaper,” he said. The center said in an initial clinical trial involving hundreds of patients, the new artificial intelligence-based device identified evidence of the virus in the body at a 95% success rate. Amos Panet, an expert in molecular virology at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, said he would like to see more data and comparisons with existing tests before making a final judgment. The amount of virus present in saliva increases as patients get sicker, he said, and a big challenge is to detect in “people who are borderline.” “It will be a game changer only if we see validation of this technology against the current technology,” he said.

Read more …

Would M4A benefit the obese and hence diabetic? A long time ago, someone said: we’re raising a generation of blind amputees. How would a health care system deal with that?

• The Pandemic and Medicare for All (TMI)

When the novel coronavirus first arrived in the United States, it spurred on remarkable message discipline among America’s political class. The consensus that emerged on both sides of the aisle dictated that no matter what happened, Americans ought to be glad they do not live in a country with socialized medicine. At the final Democratic presidential debate on March 15, former Vice President Biden pointed to COVID numbers in Italy as evidence that not only was Medicare for all not a solution to the crisis, but it would put the country at greater risk. “With all due respect for Medicare for all, you have a single-payer system in Italy,” the former vice president said. “It doesn’t work there. It has nothing to do with Medicare for all. That would not solve the problem at all.”

Weeks later, in early April, Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden echoed the sentiment in a Twitter spat with a Medicare for All supporter. “You might want to check out the death rate in France before you think the form of health system is the answer here,” she tweeted. Not long after, the Washington Post ran an op-ed by former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen declaring the COVID-19 pandemic was “an indictment of socialized medicine.” “If you think today’s pandemic bolsters the case for socialized medicine, then ask yourself a simple question: If you came down with a serious case of COVID-19, would you rather be in an Italian hospital or an American one?” the piece opens, before lauding Biden’s debate answer.

Such arguments were never fair — the pandemic was only just starting in the United States, while COVID-19 had indeed rampaged across Europe, there were contributing factors like years of austerity and a lack of supply chain redundancy in the modern globalized economy. But now, just a few months later, these arguments completely and utterly fail. New infections are still surging in the U.S. while countries with national health care programs have long since gotten a handle on the virus. On Tuesday, the U.S. reported more new COVID cases in a single day than Italy, France, and the U.K. reported last month combined, and roughly 45 percent of their total deaths.

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Nice account from James Altucher. is he just getting old, or is New York really beyond salvation?

• NYC Is Dead Forever. Here’s Why (Altucher)

People say, “NYC has been through worse” or “NYC has always come back.” No and no. First, when has NYC been through worse? Even in the 1970s, and through the 80s, when NYC was going bankrupt, and even when it was the crime capital of the US or close to it, it was still the capital of the business world (meaning: it was the primary place young people would go to build wealth and find opportunity), it was culturally on top of its game – home to artists, theater, media, advertising, publishing, and it was probably the food capital of the US. NYC has never been locked down for five months. Not in any pandemic, war, financial crisis, never. In the middle of the polio epidemic, when little kids (including my mother) were going paralyzed or dying (my mother ended up with a bad leg), NYC didn’t go through this.

This is not to say what should have been done or should not have been done. That part is over. Now we have to deal with what IS. In early March, many people (not me), left NYC when they felt it would provide safety from the virus and they no longer needed to go to work and all the restaurants were closed. People figured, “I’ll get out for a month or two and then come back.” They are all still gone. And then in June, during rioting and looting a second wave of NYC-ers (this time me) left. I have kids. Nothing was wrong with the protests but I was a little nervous when I saw videos of rioters after curfew trying to break into my building. Many people left temporarily but there were also people leaving permanently. Friends of mine moved to Nashville, Miami, Austin, Denver, Salt Lake City, Austin, Dallas, etc.

Now a third wave of people are leaving. But they might be too late. Prices are down 30-50% on both rentals and sales no matter what real estate people tell you. And rentals soaring in the second and third-tier cities. I’m temporarily, although maybe permanently, in South Florida now. I also got my place sight unseen. Robyn was looking at listings around Miami and then she saw an area we had never been to before. We found three houses we liked. She called the real estate agent. Place #1. Just rented that morning 50% higher than the asking price. Place #2. Also rented (New Yorkers – “they came from New York for three hours, saw the place, got it, went back to pack.”). Place #3. “Available.” “We’ll take it!” The first time we physically saw it was when we flew down and moved in. “This is temporary, right?” I confirmed with Robyn. But…I don’t know. I’m starting to like the sun a little bit. I mean, when it’s behind the shades. And when I am in air conditioning.

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All US politics is united against Julian Assange.

• What Kamala Harris Really Thinks of WikiLeaks (Lauria)

During a September 2017 U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee debate on an intelligence bill a line was inserted that said WikiLeaks “resembles a non-state hostile intelligence service” and that the U.S. “should treat it as such.” “This language would help investigators secure the authorization needed to surveil those U.S. citizens thought to be associated with WikiLeaks,” a McClatchy report quoted a government lawyer as saying. “You need to show that someone is an agent of a foreign power,” said the lawyer, Robert Deitz, who held senior legal positions at the Pentagon, the CIA and the National Security Agency. “It’s possible that Assange has colleagues in this country that they need to focus on,” McClatchy quoted Deitz as saying, “noting that such action can only be done under court order.”

The non-state hostile agency phrase was directly lifted from a scurrilous speech by Mike Pompeo in his first address as CIA director. The language survived the committee and made it into the bill voted on by the full Senate. But before it did two senators raised objections to it. One was Ron Wyden of Oregon. The other was Sen. Kamala Harris of California, the presumptive Democratic vice presidential candidate in November’s election. According to the McClatchy report, “Harris declared that she is ‘no supporter of WikiLeaks,’ which she said had done ‘considerable harm’ to the United States. But the clause on the group is ‘dangerous’ because it ‘fails to draw a bright line between WikiLeaks and legitimate news organizations that play a vital role in our democracy,’ according to her remarks for the record.”

Harris left no doubt that she is an enemy of WikiLeaks, as is her running mate, Joe Biden, who agreed it was more like a high-tech terrorist organization that Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers. Harris made clear she cared only about establishment media (which almost universally undergirds aggressive U.S. foreign policy) and was worried about it getting caught up in a WikiLeaks dragnet. She said she wants a “bright line” between publications such as The New York Times and WikiLeaks. Except, there can be no such legal line drawn as both establishment papers, like the Times, and WikiLeaks have done the exact same thing: possessed and published classified material.

Because there is no legal distinction, the Obama administration, which desperately wanted to indict WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, backed away citing its “New York Times problem.” The Trump administration had no such qualms and had Assange arrested in April 2019 and indicted on conspiracy to commit computer intrusion and 17 counts of the Espionage Act. The only bright line that can be drawn is political: a decision by the Department of Justice to not prosecute big media but to prosecute WikiLeaks for the same “crime”, which conflicts with First Amendment press freedoms. This is what Harris was calling for: Protect the state-managed corporate media but go after a serious publication that dares to reveal crimes of the U.S. government, which Harris wants to protect. In other words, for the same activity, the Times is afforded First Amendment protections, but WikiLeaks is not.

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There are questions one can’t ask.

• Some Questions About Kamala Harris’ Eligibility (NW)

The fact that Senator Kamala Harris has just been named the vice presidential running mate for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has some questioning her eligibility for the position. The 12th Amendment provides that “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.” And Article II of the Constitution specifies that “[n]o person except a natural born citizen…shall be eligible to the office of President.” Her father was (and is) a Jamaican national, her mother was from India, and neither was a naturalized U.S. citizen at the time of Harris’ birth in 1964. That, according to these commentators, makes her not a “natural born citizen”—and therefore ineligible for the office of the president and, hence, ineligible for the office of the vice president.

“Nonsense,” runs the counter-commentary. Indeed, PolitiFact rated the claim of ineligibility as “Pants on Fire” false, Snopes rated it simply “False,” and from the other side of the political spectrum, Conservative Daily News likewise rated it “False.” All three (and numerous others) simply assert that Harris is eligible because she was born in Oakland—and is therefore a natural-born citizen from location of birth. The 14th Amendment says so, they all claim, and the Supreme Court so held in the 1898 case of U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark. But those claims are erroneous, at least as the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment was originally understood—an error to which even my good friend, renowned UCLA School of Law professor Eugene Volokh, has fallen prey.

The language of Article II is that one must be a natural-born citizen. The original Constitution did not define citizenship, but the 14th Amendment does—and it provides that “all persons born…in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.” Those who claim that birth alone is sufficient overlook the second phrase. The person must also be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, and that meant subject to the complete jurisdiction, not merely a partial jurisdiction such as that which applies to anyone temporarily sojourning in the United States (whether lawfully or unlawfully). Such was the view of those who authored the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause; of the Supreme Court of the United States in the 1872 Slaughter-House Cases and the 1884 case of Elk v. Wilkins; of Thomas Cooley, the leading constitutional treatise writer of the day; and of the State Department, which, in the 1880s, issued directives to U.S. embassies to that effect.

The Supreme Court’s subsequent decision in Wong Kim Ark is not to the contrary. At issue there was a child born to Chinese immigrants who had become lawful, permanent residents in the United States—”domiciled” was the legally significant word used by the Court. But that was the extent of the Court’s holding (as opposed to broader language that was dicta, and therefore not binding). Indeed, the Supreme Court has never held that anyone born on U.S. soil, no matter the circumstances of the parents, is automatically a U.S. citizen.

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I’ve said it often before: none of this means much without also tallying shadow banks’ numbers.

• China’s Banks At Risk As $500 Billion In Non-Performing Loans Revealed (SCMP)

China’s top banking regulatory official said on Thursday that the country’s banks have to deal with 3.4 trillion yuan (US$489.5 billion) worth of non-performing loans in 2020 – flagging a big risk for the banking system in the world’s second-largest economy. The total marks a hefty increase from 2.3 trillion yuan in 2019, and the value of bad loans could be even higher in 2021. Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, said in an interview with the official Xinhua News Agency that the increase in non-performing loans (NPLs) – loans in default or close to default – will put huge pressure on the country’s banks, especially small and regional ones.

“As many loans are rolled over [in 2020], some problems will only emerge next year,” Guo was quoted by Xinhua as saying, adding that a rebound in bad loans is “inevitable” since the coronavirus shock has adversely affected so many companies. The warning by Guo, who is also the Communist Party secretary at the People’s Bank of China, came at a time when many of the country’s small banks are facing a moment of reckoning after years of undisciplined balance sheet expansion, as well as instances of fraud and corruption. Meanwhile, Guo said, Chinese banks have improved their loan structure – with more lending going toward manufacturing, infrastructure, technology and small businesses.

Guo added that Chinese banks are now being told to enhance their support of small businesses. In addition, he said he will encourage banks to invest more in corporate bonds. According to official statistics from Guo’s agency, the NPL ratio in China was among the lowest in the world. The ratio for Chinese commercial banks rose 0.03 percentage points in the second quarter to 1.94 per cent at the end of June. But hidden bad loans, if exposed, could easily wipe out bank profits and erode capital bases. In the first half of this year, the combined profits of Chinese banks dropped for the first time in more than a decade – falling 9.4 per cent to 1 trillion yuan in the first half of the year, government data shows.

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So, question is: who are the shadow banks’ debt collectors? Vinnie the Kneecapper and his friends?

• China’s Debt Collectors Flourish As Consumers Flounder (R.)

It’s not a good sign for any economy when debt collectors are booming and in China right now, the industry is on a hiring spree. Whole Scene Asset Management, a debt recovery firm based in the southern province of Hunan, plans to double staff numbers to 400 people this year as it expands into new cities. “Debt collection companies have been mushrooming,” said company founder Zhang Haiyan. “And with bad loans growing this year, everyone is adding new hands.” Rival Bricsman is also hiring – hoping to boost headcount of around 1,000 by 400-500 this year after landing a deal to collect delinquent consumer loans for China Minsheng Bank (600016.SS), people with knowledge of the matter said, declining to identified as they were not authorised to talk to media.

Bricsman, which is based in the eastern province of Jiangsu and counts other large banks amongst its clients, did not respond to a request for comment. As increasing numbers of consumers struggle with lost income in an economy battered by the coronavirus and U.S-China tensions, a burgeoning wave of non-performing loans is sparking concern among lenders – both at specialist consumer financing firms and traditional banks – and even among debt collectors. China is the midst of “an unfolding debt crisis”, says Joe Zhang, a business consultant and until last month vice chairman at the country’s largest debt collector YX Asset Recovery. The delinquency rate for consumer debt is climbing and collecting on those loans has become much harder, he added, estimating that at some weaker non-bank consumer lenders, soured loans may account for 30% to 50% of their portfolios.

[..] Chinese consumer debt has ballooned over the past five years, fuelled in part as banks scrambled to issue credit cards, with outstanding debt for bank-issued cards doubling to 17.6 trillion yuan ($2.5 trillion). Internet-based consumer financing, which is only lightly regulated, has also grown – by a dizzying 400 times to nearly 8 trillion yuan since 2014, according to the Guanghua School of Management. And Chinese household debt – including mortgages and unsecured consumer loans – has swollen to levels equivalent to nearly 60% of GDP, up from 18% in 2008, the peak of the global financial crisis.

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300 anonymous accounts?!

• US Seizes $2 Million From 300 Terror-Linked Cryptocurrency Accounts (CNBC)

The Justice Department said it dismantled an elaborate cyber campaign used by overseas terror organizations to finance their operations and seized $2 million from more than 300 cryptocurrency accounts in what it described as the largest-ever seizure of its kind. The Justice Department said three overseas terrorist groups — al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing; al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS — used cryptocurrencies and social media to raise funds for their terror campaigns. “It should not surprise anyone that our enemies use modern technology, social media platforms and cryptocurrency to facilitate their evil and violent agendas,” Attorney General William Barr said in a release.


“As announced today, we will seize the funds and the instrumentalities that provide a lifeline for their operations whenever possible,” he added. “Terrorist networks have adapted to technology, conducting complex financial transactions in the digital world, including through cryptocurrencies. IRS-CI special agents in the DC cybercrimes unit work diligently to unravel these financial networks,” Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin said in a release. In one of the cases, the U.S. secretly took over websites that were operated by al-Qassam Brigades and monitored those who thought they had opened up their cyber wallets to the terror group but instead donated money to an account controlled by the U.S. government, according to court documents unsealed Thursday in the District of Columbia.

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Successfully dividing the Arab world’s support for Palestinians.

• United Arab Emirates Sells Out Palestine For Israel (EI)

The United Arab Emirates and Israel have agreed to full normalization of relations, bringing their decades-long clandestine dealings proudly into the open. The so-called “Abraham Accords” sealing the deal were brokered by US officials. The deal is named for “the father of all three great faiths,” David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, told reporters at the Oval Office on Thursday. Religious and cultural tolerance is often used by Arab states and Israel to mask their efforts to normalize ties. Painting conflict in the region as stemming from a lack of understanding among religions is also a way to obscure its true origin: Israel’s violent dispossession of Palestinians and ongoing military occupation and steady ethnic cleansing of their land.

In exchange for normalization, Israel agreed to suspend plans to annex large swaths of the occupied West Bank “and focus its efforts now on expanding ties with other countries in the Arab and Muslim world,” according to the joint statement. However, this is spin. In reality, it was the United States that put Israel’s annexation plans on ice weeks ago. In fact, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed his commitment to annexation shortly after the announcement of the agreement. The UAE is merely using the American-imposed freeze as an opportunity to bring its secret ties with Israel dating back to the 1990s into the open. These secret relations have included military and intelligence cooperation and even joint military exercises.

[..] Relations between Israel and Gulf States including Saudi Arabia and the UAE are founded on a mutual enmity towards Iran. Liquidating Palestinian rights and bypassing the Palestinian issue is seen as key to building up this anti-Iran alliance under American oversight. Annexation, moreover, would only be a formal rubber stamp for what Israel has been doing on the ground for decades: stealing land, forcibly displacing Palestinians and building colonies in flagrant breach of international law. This violent colonization has never ceased and will not stop as a result of this agreement.

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India is Monsanto’s wet dream.

• Experts Debunk Claims of GMO Crops Success (OffG)

On 6 July 2020, an article extolling the benefits of genetically modified (GM) crops appeared on the BloombergQuint website based on an interview with Dr Ramesh Chand, a member of the key Indian Government think tank Niti Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India) . On 17 July, another piece that placed a positive spin on GM crops and gene-editing technology (Feeding 10 Billion People will Require Genetically Modified Food) appeared on the same site. According to Prof Andrew Paul Gutierrez, Dr Hans R Herren and Dr Peter E Kenmore, internationally renowned agricultural researchers, the pieces reported “sweeping unsupported claims” about the benefits of and need for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and related technologies in agriculture in India.

The three academics felt that “a responsible and factual response” was required and have written a letter – containing what could be described as the definitive analysis of Bt cotton in India – to Dr Ramesh Chand, Dr Rajiv Kumar (Niti Aayog Vice Chancellor) and Dr Amitabh Kant (Niti Aayog CEO). Chand is reported as saying that there is no credible study to show any adverse impact of growing Bt cotton in the last 18 years in the country (India’s only officially approved GM crop). This is simply not the case. Moreover, Gutierrez et al argue that all of the credible evidence shows any meagre increases in cotton yield after the introduction of Bt cotton in 2002 were largely due to increases in fertiliser use. Before proceeding, it is pertinent to address the claim that ‘feeding 10 billion people will require genetically modified food’.

If we take the case of India and its 1.3 billion-plus population, it has achieved self-sufficiency in food grains and has ensured that, in theory at least, there is enough food available to feed its entire population. It is the world’s largest producer of milk, pulses and millets and the second-largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, groundnuts, vegetables and fruit. However, food security for many Indians remains a distant dream. Hunger and malnutrition remain prevalent. But that is not because farmers don’t produce enough food. These problems result from other factors, including inadequate food distribution, social and economic policies, inequality and poverty. It is a case of ‘scarcity’ amid abundance (reflecting the situation globally). India even continues to export food while millions remain hungry. Productivity is not the issue.

And while proponents say GM will boost productivity and help secure cultivators a better income, this too ignores crucial political and economic contexts; with bumper harvests, Indian farmers still find themselves in financial distress. India’s farmers are not experiencing hardship due to low productivity. They are reeling from the effects of neoliberal policies and years of neglect. It’s for good reason that the calorie and essential nutrient intake of the rural poor has drastically fallen. Yet the pro-GMO lobby has wasted no time in wrenching these issues from their political contexts to use the notions of ‘helping farmers’ and ‘feeding the world’ as lynchpins of its promotional strategy.

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Everything travel related is getting hammered. There is no telling when it all will be back, or if it ever will. Bailing out the firms involved seems an awful waste of money. You do that for firms that have a future, not those that have a past.

• Ford Is Slashing 10,000 Jobs, 6 Factories In Europe (ZH)

The auto industry continues to grapple with one of the worst recessions ever for the notoriously capital intensive sector. Ford, which feels like it has been in the midst of a yearslong “restructuring” that has never fully panned out or ended (and has involved numerous CEOs), continues to make major changes to its global personnel to try and find the right mix for its business going forward. This means that 10,000 positions are now being cut across Europe, the automaker disclosed yesterday. Ford is also going to be reducing the number of its plants in Europe to 17 from 23, the company revealed in a JP Morgan conference presentation on Wednesday.

In a slide called “Ford Euope: Road to Sustainable Profitability”, the company also disclosed it would be discontinuing underperforming vehicles, like its C-MAX and Grand C-Max. The company also plans on “leveraging” its relationship with VW. The company says it is on track to deliver on its 2020-2021 CO2 targets without credits or penalties and 13 new electic vehicles will be on sale by the end of 2020, up from just 5. This news comes days after it was announced that Ford would be replacing its CEO on relatively short notice. Ford said days ago it had tapped Jim Farley to replace a relatively still-newly appointed Jim Hackett as CEO. Hackett replaced former CEO Mark Fields and, for the most part, has failed to inspire confidence during his tenure at Ford.

Ford is currently in the middle of an $11 billion restructuring that is supposed to help to accelerate its development of new vehicles, including hybrids and EVs. Hackett had only just started with Ford back in 2017 and has said he will retire effective October. General Motors is following with a C-suite shakeup of its own, as its CFO leaves after just two years to work at a fintech startup. The company announced earlier this week that John Stapleton, GM North America chief financial officer, has been named its acting global chief financial officer, effective Aug. 15, after the resignation of the company’s current CFO, Dhivya Suryadevara.

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Isn’t that what we wanted? Less flying, less pollution?

• 7 Million Jobs At Risk, European Airlines Could See “Further Declines” (ZH)

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) published a new report Thursday that warns the virus-induced downturn will continue to pressure air passenger numbers, employment and economies across Europe. IATA said passenger flights are expected to decline by 60% in 2020, resulting in millions of job losses in the aviation and tourism industries. IATA issued a similar warning of what has been announced by airlines, of which, complete recovery in passenger demand might not be seen until 2024. “The near-term outlook for recovery in Europe remains highly uncertain with respect to the second wave of the pandemic and the broader global economic impact it could have. Passenger demand in Europe is expected to recover gradually and will not reach 2019 levels until 2024. -IATA

IATA’s job loss estimate was increased by 17% from its June report, from 6 million to 7 million, mostly because the highly anticipated V-shaped recovery has failed to materialize. “It is desperately worrying to see a further decline in prospects for air travel this year, and the knock-on impact for employment and prosperity. said Rafael Schvartzman, IATA’s Regional Vice President for Europe. Schvartzman said, “It shows once again the terrible effect that is being felt by families across Europe as border restrictions and quarantine continue. It is vital that governments and industry work together to create a harmonized plan for reopening borders.”

If another wave of the virus were to hit Europe, justifying nationwide lockdowns, it could intensify the recession. Though the German tabloid newspaper Bild has said: “There will be no second hard lockdown in Europe because that would lead to a monster recession that would not be accepted by the population.”

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20% of Greek GDP is tourism. So are at least 20% of jobs.

• Volume of Greek Air Traffic Plunged 74.3% in 2020 (GR)

A report came out on Thursday confirming the worst fears of Greek economic experts, stating that the country had seen a drop of 74.3% in the number of passengers who had traveled through their airports so far this year. This amounts to only 9 million air travelers who had used airports in the country so far in 2020, a staggering drop of almost three-quarters of its business. The number of international visitors coming into Greek airports this year so far amounts to 1,126,429, a stunning decrease from last year’s banner tourism season, which saw a total of 4,096,657 international arrivals. Although very disappointing, the numbers did not come as a shock to any in the sector, due to the punishing effects of travel bans imposed on many nations because of the coronavirus pandemic.


According to Greek media reports, the Civil Aviation Authority, or CAA, reported the precipitous drop in business in the first seven months of this year relative to the numbers seen in 2019. For the month of July 2020 alone, the high season for summertime travel to the country, passenger traffic at Greek airports had decreased 72.6%. During the month of July, a total of only 2,722,854 million passengers came through Greece’s airports; in that same period, there was a precipitous drop of 72.5% in the number of foreign arrivals. This means that there were fewer passengers overall in the first seven months of 2020 than there had been in the month of July only in 2019.

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