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Debt Rattle November 4 2024

Nov 042024
 
 November 4, 2024  Posted by at 9:22 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  42 Responses »


Berthe Morisot After luncheon1881

 

• Trump Could Become Second JFK – Medvedev (RT)
• Can A Tsunami of Trump Votes Give Power Back to the American People? (PCR)
• Trump’s Supporters Deserve A “Smack” – Biden (RT)
• I Shouldn’t Have Left The White House – Trump (RT)
• Rogan Exposes Democrats’ Plan To Destroy American Democracy (ZH)
• The Latest Harris Campaign Gaslighting Is Comedy Gold (Margolis)
• “We’re Not Going to Allow Them to Steal it”: Raskin (Turley)
• AI Will Kill Writing – Scientist (RT)
• The Internet Is Getting Flushed Down Orwell’s Memory Hole (ZH)
• The BRICS Summit Should Mark the End of Neocon Delusions (Jeffrey Sachs)
• Ukraine’s Territorial Losses Are Its Own Fault – Lavrov (RT)
• 101 Staff Members Accuse BBC of Pro-Israel Bias – Media (RT)
• UK FM Blames Civil Unrest In Europe On “Russian Disinformation” (ZH)
• Zakharova: Ukraine Took Back Just 279 POWs, Although 935 Were Offered (TASS)
• British King ‘Making Millions’ From Secret Property Empire – The Times (RT)

 

 

 

 

Polls

https://twitter.com/i/status/1853115111336276152

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Elon PA

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“..if he really attempts to [end the Ukraine conflict], he could become a new JFK..”

• Trump Could Become Second JFK – Medvedev (RT)

Should Donald Trump be elected US president and attempt to end the Ukraine conflict in earnest, he could end up sharing the fate of John F. Kennedy, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has claimed. He also argued that relations between Washington and Moscow will likely remain highly strained regardless of who comes out on top in the November 5 presidential election. During the course of his campaign, the GOP candidate has repeatedly vowed to put an end to the bloodshed in Ukraine in short order, if elected. However, he has not provided any specifics. His Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, has suggested that Trump would essentially force Kiev to surrender. Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has also expressed skepticism regarding the Republican nominee’s ability to stop the conflict overnight, noting that no “magic wand” exists with which he could do so.

In a post on his Telegram channel on Sunday, Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, wrote that Moscow does not have high expectations regarding the outcome of Tuesday’s US presidential election. He argued that “for Russia, the election won’t change anything, as both candidates’ stances completely reflect the bipartisan consensus that our country has to be defeated.” According to Medvedev, while on the campaign trail, a “somewhat fatigued Trump” has been dishing out “banalities” regarding peace prospects for Ukraine, and his supposedly good relations with world leaders. However, if elected, the Republican “would be forced to observe all of the rules of the system,” and would be “unable to stop the war. Not in a day, not in three days, not in three months.” “And if he really attempts to [end the Ukraine conflict], he could become a new JFK,” the former Russian president warned.

John F. Kennedy, the 35th US president, was assassinated in 1963. As for Harris, the Russian official dismissed her as “stupid, inexperienced [and] controllable.” Medvedev alleged that if elected, she would be a mere figurehead, with other officials and members of former President Barack Obama’s family pulling the strings. In an exclusive interview with RT earlier this week, Medvedev stated that “if Western countries, especially the United States, had had enough flexibility and wisdom to make a security agreement with Russia, there would have been no special military operation [in Ukraine].” He said that the US and its allies failed to realize this in time because “they’re in the habit of bullying everyone into submission,” and operating “on the principle of American exceptionalism and the primacy of US interests.”

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“I caution Trump that he cannot merely make Kennedy and Musk advisors. He must give them an executive power base by putting them in charge of the agencies.”

• Can A Tsunami of Trump Votes Give Power Back to the American People? (PCR)

The Democrats are set to steal the election. They have everything in place except enough votes to hide their theft. Watch the video of the Trump Grand Finale, listen to the speeches by Robert Kennedy and Tucker Carlson. Marvel at the massive audience. It appears that Americans have cast off their insouciance and are going to take back their country from the two corrupt political parties, both of which have unleashed evil on America and the world. The American ruling elite, which is evil beyond comprehension, will not take kindly to their loss of power and exposure of their crimes. The FBI, CIA, NSA, Secret Service, and Clinton murder machine only have to assassinate four people–Trump, Bobby Kennedy, Tucker Carlson, and Elon Musk–and the country is back in their hands. Considering the extraordinary support that both Trump and Bobby Kennedy extend to Israel, it is unclear how an America that supports and enables the Genocide of Palestine can be made great again.

I do have to say that I am disturbed by Trump seeing Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea as enemies that he will be tough with. This leaves Trump susceptible to neoconservative influence. If Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are our enemies, it is because Washington made them enemies. It is not Russia that pulled off a Maidan Revolution in Germany and then used a Russian installed puppet to cause problems for NATO and the EU. It is Washington that used Ukraine to do that to Russia. It is not China that offshored its manufacturing to the US and then blames the US. It was not Iran that initiated 24 years of war in the Middle East. It was the US and Israel. It is Washington that has done everything possible to isolate and demonize North Korea for 70 years.

There is one threat in making American great again, and that threat is restoring American militarily dominance. The neoconservatives will use this American desire not only to foment wars but also in the name of national security to restore the spying, the restraints on free expression, and the name-calling that have eroded our civil liberties. “You are with us or against us” will be used to silence the voices of peace. Will MAGA Americans understand that a country can be great without being a hegemon? Permit me to explain that when Trump says there will never again be rallies like his MAGA ones, he is not being egotistical or claiming that no future candidate will be as popular with the people as he is. Neither is he giving assurance that he will not hold Third Reich style rallies. He is saying that once power is restored to the people, in place of political rallies there will be meetings to work out how to best get America back on course.

With Trump in the Oval Office, Elon Musk as Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Robert Kennedy as head of the Food and Drug Administration, Tucker Carlson as White House Press Spokesman, General Flynn as Director of the CIA, Edward Snowden as head of the National Security Agency, John W. Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute as Attorney General, Michael Hudson as Secretary of the Treasury, and Tulsi Gabbard as Secretary of State, there is a chance that America can be rescued and restored. These appointments might be too imaginative for Trump, and if Trump were to make them would the corrupt US Senate confirm them? I caution Trump that he cannot merely make Kennedy and Musk advisors. He must give them an executive power base by putting them in charge of the agencies. Otherwise, they will be cut out of the action by those in charge. If Kennedy and Musk are merely to give advice, they will soon quit out of frustration.

I caution Trump that he cannot give Scooter Libby a pardon and leave his January 6 supporters imprisoned. He cannot leave the attorneys legally harassed who collected evidence that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats. There are a lot of people on his side who need rescuing. If Trump’s ego or stupid advisors cause him to be magnanimous to his deadly enemies who tried to assassinate him both politically and physically, he will fail. I think Trump has won the election. Nevertheless, the Democrats might try to steal it again, orchestrate an “insurrection,” invoke Pentagon Directive 5240.01, and prevent Trump from being inaugurated. We must keep in mind that the inauguration of a president comes two and one-half months after his election. There is plenty of time for Democrat and ruling elite mischief. The high and mighty have committed so many crimes that they are vulnerable if Trump regains the presidency. In many ways, for the ruling elite this election is an existential matter.

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He likes talking tough. Think he ever won a -fair- fight in his life?

• Trump’s Supporters Deserve A “Smack” – Biden (RT)

US President Joe Biden has condemned Republican nominee Donald Trump’s promise of lower taxes for high earners, and lashed out at “macho guys” who support such ideas. He made the remarks during a campaign stop in his birthplace of Scranton, Pennsylvania on Saturday, in support of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for the November 5 election. “There’s one more thing Trump and his Republican friends want to do. They want to have a giant tax cut for the wealthy,” Biden told the local chapter of the carpenters union. “Now, I know some of you guys are tempted to think it’s macho guys,” he continued in an apparent reference to Trump’s supporters.

“I tell you what, man, when I was in Scranton, we used to have a little trouble going down the plot once in a while. These are the kind of guys you’d like to smack in the ass,” he said while gritting his teeth and clenching his fists. “By the way, I’m serious,” he added. Throughout his presidential campaign, Donald Trump has proposed various tax cuts along with tariff increases on imported goods. This includes a 20% reduction in corporate tax rate. He also pledged to eliminate tax on overtime pay and on tips for service workers, and to make Social Security benefits for seniors tax-free.

Earlier this week, Biden caused an uproar when he branded Republican supporters “garbage,” accusing Trump of dividing the country “based on the race.” The White House later edited the transcript, claiming that there was “a difference in interpretation” while Biden said his comment was in response to “hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporters at his Madison Square Garden rally.” Both Democrats and Republicans have frequently engaged in harsh rhetoric, with Trump often describing Harris as a “low IQ individual,” calling her policies “plans of a simpleton” and the vice president accusing the former president of constantly lying and branding him a “petty tyrant.”

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“..the US has turned “a failed country” under the leadership of an “incompetent group of fools.”

• I Shouldn’t Have Left The White House – Trump (RT)

US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said that he regrets leaving the White House after losing to Joe Biden in 2020, reiterating his claim of “stolen elections.” Speaking at a campaign rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania on Sunday, two days before Election Day, the former president said that the US has turned “a failed country” under the leadership of an “incompetent group of fools.” He went on to accuse the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris of being unable to prevent the flow of illegal migrants across the border with Mexico. “We had the safest border in the history of our country, the day I left,” Trump said. “I shouldn’t have left. I mean, honestly, because we did so, we did so well.”

Trump labeled the Democratic Party a “corrupt machine” and claimed that the integrity of the election could only be guaranteed if US states only use paper ballots and require voter IDs. “In California, you are not even allowed to ask for a voter ID. They are only doing it because they want to cheat,” he suggested. Trump has never admitted that he lost the 2020 election, despite courts failing to find evidence of widespread voter fraud. He eventually stepped down as president after a crowd of his supporters stormed the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021, briefly interrupting the certification of Biden’s victory.

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“”There’s a significant number of these people that are illegal immigrants that have made their way to swing states. And then there’s been calls for amnesty..”

• Rogan Exposes Democrats’ Plan To Destroy American Democracy (ZH)

“Undeniably,” admits Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman to podcaster Joe Rogan, “immigration is changing our nation.” The two men spoke about a wide variety of political topics ranging from how Donald Trump won in 2016 to how immigration stands as a key issue in the election today. Specifically, Fetterman played the Democratic Party card, claiming that Republicans in 2024 “had an opportunity to do a comprehensive border-bipartisan-and that went down because Trump, he declared that that’s a bad deal after it was negotiated with the other side.” Rogan then brutally ‘fact-checked’ the stammering senator, pointing out the reality that that the deal made many concessions that Republicans concerned about the border found to be unacceptable. “But, didn’t that deal also involved amnesty,” responded Rogan,”and didn’t that deal also involve a significant number of illegal aliens being allowed into the country every year?”

Silence from Fetterman. Rogan continued: “I think it was 2 million people. So still the same sort of situation. And their fear is exactly what I talked about, that these people will be moved to swing states and that that will be used to essentially rig those states and turn them blue forever.” Finally, the PA Senator responded “I’ve never witnessed those kinds [illegals voting] of a thing… I don’t think there’s that level kinds of organization.” But Rogan once again would not allow the politician to ‘lie’ pointing out that “there is an organization that’s moving these people [illegals] to swing states.” “There’s a significant number of these people that are illegal immigrants that have made their way to swing states. And then there’s been calls for amnesty. There’s been calls for allowing these people to have a pathway to citizenship and allow them to vote.

The fear that a lot of people have is that this is a coordinated effort to take these people that you’re allowing to come into the country, then you’re providing them with all sorts of services like food stamps and housing and setting them up and then providing a pathway to amnesty. And then you would have voters that would be significantly voting towards the Democrats because they’re the people that enabled them to come into the country in the first place, first place and provided them with those services. This is a big fear that people have and that you’re rigging this system and that this will turn all these states into essentially locked blue like California is.” Fetterman’s responds: “undeniably,” adding that “immigration is changing our nation.” “I haven’t spent a lot of time in Texas but it’s very clear that immigration has remade Texas and I think it’s generally, it’s a good thing.”

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“The only thing the Harris campaign has functional at this point is a bulls**t machine that is dutifully repeated by the legacy media as if fact.”

• The Latest Harris Campaign Gaslighting Is Comedy Gold (Margolis)

The Harris-Walz campaign claims late-deciding voters are breaking their way, and by a lot. Former Obama campaign manager and current senior advisor to the Harris-Walz campaign made a rather bold claim on X/Twitter on Friday. According to Politico, Plouffe’s comments “echo[ed] those shared by senior campaign officials earlier Friday on a call with reporters.” “We have believed all along that there were still undecided voters here, and that the close of this race was really, really important,” said one of the senior campaign officials, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the state of the race. “And we are seeing that be the case as we are closing out in the last week.” The official said that a recent focus group with undecided voters in a battleground state showed that the racist, misogynistic and vulgar language at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in New York over the weekend isn’t just impacting Puerto Rican and Latino voters, but undecided voters as a whole.

“It really kind of crystallized for them the choice in their minds between the vice president, who they’re seeing talk about being a president for everyone, someone focused on them and solving their problems, and Trump, and these really kind of dark, divisive language and events and activities,” the official said. “We don’t always see, when we’re talking to swing voters, anything that you can really see them kind of finalize their point of view or finalize their opinion.” According to the Harris campaign, we’re supposed to believe that a comedian’s joke holds more significance than pressing issues like the economy, immigration, and foreign policy. During a 2WAY livestream, Mark Halperin took aim at the media for uncritically accepting David Plouffe’s claims, saying the assertion “seems questionable on the face.”

He argued that proving whether undecided voters were truly swayed by the Madison Square Garden event would require precise analytics, but that hasn’t stopped the media from treating Plouffe’s statements “like it’s a fact” despite lacking hard evidence. Halperin also shared that, based on his conversations with the Trump campaign, they believe undecided voters lean 2-to-1 in Trump’s favor. He may not believe that’s entirely true, but was clearly less convinced by Plouffe’s suggestion, which Halperin believes was intended to create a “bandwagon effect” for Kamala, shifting the narrative to portray her as gaining momentum. Consider this: if the Access Hollywood tape couldn’t derail Trump’s campaign in 2016, there’s little reason to believe that a comedian’s joke at one of his rallies would, either. Americans recognized Trump’s comments as “locker room talk” back then, just as they understand that a comedian known for crude humor is simply aiming for laughs.

When Halperin asked Trump’s campaign advisor, Chris LaCivita, for his take, LaCivita responded bluntly: “What the hell is he going to say? He’s losing? Fact of the matter is David can’t do anything but bulls**t until Tuesday because we are kicking his a**. The only thing the Harris campaign has functional at this point is a bulls**t machine that is dutifully repeated by the legacy media as if fact.” In the end, both campaigns believe, or are at least claiming, that they have the edge with late-deciding voters. Ignore it all. Just get out there and vote, and make sure every Trump supporter you know votes.

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“This could prove a long night, if not a long week.”

• “We’re Not Going to Allow Them to Steal it”: Raskin (Turley)

On Bill Maher’s HBO Show on Friday, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) appeared to repeat his reservation about accepting a Trump win in the presidential election. Raskin said that Democrats will only support a “free and fair election.” Trump was widely criticized for the same position when he said “If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results.” Raskin previously said that he would not guarantee certifying Trump and that, if he wins, he may be declared as disqualified by Congress: “It’s going to be up to us on January 6th, 2025 to tell the rampaging Trump mobs that he’s disqualified. And then we need bodyguards for everybody and civil war conditions.” Raskin went on HBO to repeat his reservation on accepting the results of any Trump victory: “When I say we will support a free and fair election, no, we we’re not going to allow them to steal it in the states, or steal it in the Department of Justice or steal it with any other election official in the country.

If it’s a free and fair election, we will do what we’ve always done. We will honor it.” Remarkably, as the audience applauded Raskin, Maher added “That is the Democrats’ history: They honor it. That’s the big difference between the parties.” However, that is not the history and Raskin knows it. The certification of President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election was opposed by Democrats and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) praised the effort of then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) who organized to challenge. Jan. 6 committee head Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) voted to challenge it in the House. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) sought to block certification of the 2016 election result.

Raskin also insisted on CNN that the effort to prevent citizens from voting for Trump is the very embodiment of democracy: “If you think about it, of all of the forms of disqualification that we have, the one that disqualifies people for engaging in insurrection is the most democratic because it’s the one where people choose themselves to be disqualified.” Democrats not only sought to strip Trump from the ballot this election, but sought to cleanse ballots of 126 House members. We are already seeing an ominous uptick of challenges, which I discuss in my column this weekend. There are also new allegations of systemic fraudulent registrations in multiple districts. Raskin presumably expects any voters to protest “peacefully” if they are declared the losers.

I am leaving for New York today to join in the coverage. This could prove a long night, if not a long week.

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“Some 86% of students use AI in their studies..”

“There will still be smart people, but only those who choose to be.”

• AI Will Kill Writing – Scientist (RT)

The use of Artificial intelligence (AI) for writing both at work and in school will result in the majority of people losing the skill in several short decades, Paul Graham, a computer scientist and author, has warned. This will create a problem because writing means thinking, Graham, a veteran investor and cofounder of Y Combinator, a startup accelerator and venture capital firm, believes. “The reason so many people have trouble writing is that it’s fundamentally difficult. To write well, you have to think clearly, and thinking clearly is hard,” he said in an essay posted on his website last week. However, the development of technology has allowed people to outsource writing to AI.

There’s no longer a need to actually learn how to write, or hire someone to do it for you, or even plagiarize, the English-American scientist wrote. “I’m usually reluctant to make predictions about technology, but I feel fairly confident about this one: in a couple decades there won’t be many people who can write,” Graham said. It’s common for skills to disappear as technologies replace them; after all, “there aren’t many blacksmiths left, and it doesn’t seem to be a problem,” he admitted. But people being unable to write is “bad,” he insisted. “A world divided into writes and write-nots is more dangerous than it sounds. It will be a world of thinks and think-nots,” Graham believes.

It won’t be an unprecedented situation, he observed, referring to preindustrial times, when “most people’s jobs made them strong.” “Now if you want to be strong, you work out. So there are still strong people, but only those who choose to be,” Graham said. In his view, it will be the same with writing. “There will still be smart people, but only those who choose to be.” Some 86% of students use AI in their studies, according to a recent survey by the Digital Education Council. While 28% of them resort to technologies to paraphrase documents, 24% use AI to create first drafts, the study has found.

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“For the first time in 30 years, we have gone a long swath of time – since October 8-10 – since [the Wayback Machine] has chronicled the life of the Internet in real time..”

• The Internet Is Getting Flushed Down Orwell’s Memory Hole (ZH)

We interrupt today’s important election coverage for a story that could have impacts even longer-lasting than President Kamala Harris’s first ten-trillion-dollar budget. I’ll wash my keyboard out with soap later for typing the phrase “President Kamala Harris.” When the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine was hacked in early October, it looked at first like just another email-and-password smash-and-grab. But that was followed up by repeated Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that crippled the service. The Internet Archive was hit again on Oct. 20, “this time with the threat actors gaining access to their Zendesk support email system.” The Wayback Machine came back but as a read-only service. What that means is, while you can search archived webpages from before the attacks, “you can’t currently capture an existing web page into the archive.”

That matters bigly. When the New York Times, Washington Post, or anyone else stealth-edits a news report to hide the truth, you could still find the original on the Wayback Machine. That’s no longer true. “For the first time in 30 years, we have gone a long swath of time – since October 8-10 – since this service has chronicled the life of the Internet in real time,” the Brownstone Institute reported this week. As of this writing, fully three weeks of web content have not been archived. What we are missing and what has changed is anyone’s guess. And we have no idea when the service will come back. It is entirely possible that it will not come back, that the only real history to which we can take recourse will be pre-October 8, 2024, the date on which everything changed. But it gets worse. Google killed off its cache feature — similar to the Wayback Machine — right around the time the Internet Archive got hacked. Coincidence? Probably. But I’m making a tinfoil hat, just in case.

The White House just got caught altering Presidentish Joe Biden’s “garbage” remarks. “Nothing to see here,” Sean Davis quipped, “just the Biden-Harris administration deliberately falsifying federal records.” They got caught this time, and sources like X still have the original video. But what happens next time, when some politician or MSM editor waits until the furor dies down before making their stealth edit — and there’s no Wayback Machine to catch them? Wikipedia is the defacto internet encyclopedia but has proven time and again to be biased at best and subject to stealth edits at worst. More people are using AI to perform their web searches and summaries for them, but the large language models are scraping data from sources increasingly subject to manipulation.

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“Time has run out on the neocon delusions, and the U.S. wars of choice..”

• The BRICS Summit Should Mark the End of Neocon Delusions (Jeffrey Sachs)

The recent BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia should mark the end of the Neocon delusions encapsulated in the subtitle of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book, The Global Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. Since the 1990s, the goal of American foreign policy has been “primacy,” aka global hegemony. The U.S. methods of choice have been wars, regime change operations, and unilateral coercive measures (economic sanctions). Kazan brought together 35 countries with more than half the world population that reject the U.S. bullying and that are not cowed by U.S. claims of hegemony. In the Kazan Declaration, the countries underscored “the emergence of new centres of power, policy decision-making and economic growth, which can pave the way for a more equitable, just, democratic and balanced multipolar world order.”

They emphasized “the need to adapt the current architecture of international relations to better reflect the contemporary realities,” while declaring their “commitment to multilateralism and upholding the international law, including the Purposes and Principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations (UN) as its indispensable cornerstone.” They took particular aim at the sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies, holding that “Such measures undermine the UN Charter, the multilateral trading system, the sustainable development and environmental agreements.” Time has run out on the neocon delusions, and the U.S. wars of choice.

The neocon quest for global hegemony has deep historical roots in America’s belief in its exceptionalism. In 1630, John Winthrop invoked the Gospels in describing the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a “City on the Hill,” declaring grandiosely that “The eyes of all people are upon us.” In the 19th century, America was guided by Manifest Destiny, to conquer North America by displacing or exterminating the native peoples. In the course of World War II, Americans embraced the idea of the “American Century,” that after the war the U.S. would lead the world. The U.S. delusions of grandeur were supercharged with the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991. With America’s Cold War nemesis gone, the ascendant American neoconservatives conceived of a new world order in which the U.S. was the sole superpower and the policeman of the world. Their foreign policy instruments of choice were wars and regime-change operations to overthrow governments they disliked.

Following 9/11, the neocons planned to overthrow seven governments in the Islamic world, starting with Iraq, and then moving on to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. According to Wesley Clark, former Supreme Commander of NATO, the neocons expected the U.S. to prevail in these wars in 5 years. Yet now, more than 20 years on, the neocon-instigated wars continue while the U.S. has achieved absolutely none of its hegemonic objectives. The neocons reasoned back in the 1990s that no country or group of countries would ever dare to stand up to U.S. power. Brzezinski, for example, argued in The Grand Chessboard that Russia would have no choice but to submit to the U.S.-led expansion of NATO and the geopolitical dictates of the U.S. and Europe, since there was no realistic prospect of Russia successfully forming an anti-hegemonic coalition with China, Iran and others. As Brzezinski put it:

“Russia’s only real geostrategic option—the option that could give Russia a realistic international role and also maximize the opportunity of transforming and socially modernizing itself—is Europe. And not just any Europe, but the transatlantic Europe of the enlarging EU and NATO.” (emphasis added, Kindle edition, p. 118) Brzezinski was decisively wrong, and his misjudgment helped to lead to the disaster of the war in Ukraine. Russia did not simply succumb to the U.S. plan to expand NATO to Ukraine, as Brzezinski assumed it would. Russia said a firm no, and was prepared to wage war to stop the U.S. plans. As a result of the neocon miscalculations vis-à-vis Ukraine, Russia is now prevailing on the battlefield, and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are dead. Nor—and this is the plain message from Kazan—did U.S. sanctions and diplomatic pressures isolate Russian in the least. In response to pervasive U.S. bullying, an anti-hegemonic counterweight has emerged.

Simply put, the majority of the world does not want or accept U.S. hegemony, and is prepared to face it down rather than submit to its dictates. Nor does the U.S. anymore possess the economic, financial, or military power to enforce its will, if it ever did. The countries that assembled in Kazan represent a clear majority of the world’s population. The nine BRICS members (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa as the original five, plus Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates), in addition to the delegations of 27 aspiring members, constitute 57 percent of the world’s population and 47 percent of the world’s output (measured at purchasing-power adjusted prices). The U.S., by contrast, constitutes 4.1 percent of the world population and 15 percent of world output. Add in the U.S. allies, and the population share of the U.S.-led alliance is around 15 percent of the global population.

The BRICS will gain in relative economic weight, technological prowess, and military strength in the years ahead. The combined GDP of the BRICS countries is growing at around 5 percent per annum, while the combined GDP of the U.S. and its allies in Europe and the Asia-Pacific is growing at around 2 percent per annum. Even with their growing clout, however, the BRICS can’t replace the U.S. as a new global hegemon. They simply lack the military, financial, and technological power to defeat the U.S. or even to threaten its vital interests. The BRICS are in practice calling for a new and realistic multipolarity, not an alternative hegemony in which they are in charge.

American strategists should heed the ultimately positive message coming from Kazan. Not only has the neocon quest for global hegemony failed, it has been a costly disaster for the US and the world, leading to bloody and pointless wars, economic shocks, mass displacements of populations, and rising threats of nuclear confrontation. A more inclusive and equitable multipolar world order offers a promising path out of the current morass, one that can benefit the U.S. and its allies as well as the nations that met in Kazan. The rise of the BRICS is therefore not merely a rebuke to the U.S., but also a potential opening for a far more peaceful and secure world order. The multipolar world order envisioned by the BRICS can be a boon for all countries, including the United States. Time has run out on the neocon delusions, and the U.S. wars of choice. The moment has arrived for a renewed diplomacy to end the conflicts raging around the world.

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“The longer the Ukrainian leadership, with Western support, keeps scuttling one agreement after another, the less territory remains under its control..”

• Ukraine’s Territorial Losses Are Its Own Fault – Lavrov (RT)

The more agreements with Russia and other parties the Ukrainian government violates, the less territory will remain under Kiev’s control, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned. During his speech at the 16th Assembly of the Russian World in Moscow on Saturday, Lavrov reiterated the country’s readiness to search for a diplomatic solution to the conflict with Kiev. According to Moscow, an integral part of the political settlement should be “protecting the rights and freedoms, as well as the legal interests of the Russian people and Russian speakers… alongside ensuring Ukraine’s non-aligned, neutral, and non-nuclear status, and eliminating any and all threats to Russia’s security that may come from within its borders,” he said. “Acknowledging the actual state of affairs on the ground is of paramount importance,” the minister stressed. Lavrov urged Kiev against delaying the launch of substantive negotiations any further.

“The longer the Ukrainian leadership, with Western support, keeps scuttling one agreement after another, the less territory remains under its control,” he warned. “Had they honored their commitments in February 2014, nothing would have happened, and Crimea would still be part of Ukraine. However, they chose to break the agreement because they couldn’t wait to seize power,” the foreign ministry recalled. On February 21, 2014, at the height of the Maidan protests in Kiev, an EU- and Russia-brokered deal to deescalate tensions was struck between Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovich and the opposition. However, the coup leaders violated it almost immediately, with the head of state being forced to flee the violence the next day. The regime change in the nation’s capital prompted Crimea to hold a referendum the following month, in which the peninsula’s population voted overwhelmingly to reunite with Russia.

“Had it [the Kiev government] honored the Minsk Agreements in February 2015, Ukraine would have still kept all its territories within its borders, including all of Donbass (Crimea was already gone by that time). They chose not to implement these agreements and not to grant a special status to a portion of Donbass,” Lavrov continued. The Minsk II deal, the guarantors of which were Germany, France and Russia, introduced a ceasefire between the authorities in Kiev and the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, and was intended to pave the way for administrative and political reform in Ukraine as well as for autonomy and local elections in the Donbass republics. In December 2022, former Chancellor Angela Merkel and former President Francois Hollande, who helped broker the accord, admitted that it had been nothing more than a ruse to help Ukraine buy time and prepare for a future conflict with Russia.

“Their third chance came up in Istanbul in April 2022,” when Russia and Ukraine last sat at the negotiating table, the foreign minister said. Russia, which initially expressed satisfaction with the results of the meeting and withdrew its forces from the outskirts of Kiev as a goodwill gesture, later accused Ukraine of backtracking on all progress achieved in Türkiye, saying it had lost trust in Kiev’s negotiators. Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed earlier this year that, during the talks in Istanbul, Ukraine was willing to declare military neutrality, limit its armed forces, and vow not to discriminate against ethnic Russians. In return, Moscow would have joined other leading powers in offering Ukraine security guarantees, he said. According to the Russian leader, Kiev withdrew from the talks on the order of its Western backers. “Without a doubt, today looks quite different from April 2022,” Lavrov said, referring to any future negotiations with Kiev.

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“..holds itself to very high standards, and we strive to live up to our responsibility to deliver the most trusted and impartial news.”

• 101 Staff Members Accuse BBC of Pro-Israel Bias – Media (RT)

Dozens of BBC employees have accused the British state broadcaster of exhibiting pro-Israel bias in its coverage of the Gaza conflict, The Independent reported on Saturday. The newspaper, citing a letter allegedly sent to BBC Director-General Tim Davie, said the appeal was also publicly signed by other media representatives, including broadcaster Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, who previously served as senior minister of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs. The Independent claimed that accusations of partiality were levelled at the BBC by 101 staff members, who chose not to reveal their identities. The letter allegedly highlights a lack of “fair and accurate evidence-based journalism in coverage of Gaza.” BBC employees urged the organization to report “without fear or favour” and to “recommit to the highest editorial standards – with emphasis on fairness, accuracy, and due impartiality.”

The letter allegedly stressed the need to make it clearer in BBC reporting that Israel is preventing foreign journalists from accessing Gaza, and to provide more historical context behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Independent quoted an anonymous BBC employee, who signed the letter, as saying that “levels of staff confidence” are unprecedentedly low, with some of colleagues having “left the BBC in recent months because they just don’t believe our reporting on Israel and Palestine is honest.” Another supposedly told the newspaper that they “see that we are losing the trust of audiences across the world.” The unnamed signatory cited headlines that often leave out Israel, in an apparent attempt to deflect blame.

A BBC spokesperson has rejected the allegations of bias, stressing that the broadcaster “holds itself to very high standards, and we strive to live up to our responsibility to deliver the most trusted and impartial news.” Meanwhile, in September, The Telegraph published a report pointing to a “deeply worrying pattern of bias and multiple breaches by the BBC of its own editorial guidelines on impartiality, fairness and establishing the truth.” According to an analysis prepared by a group of lawyers and data scientists, the broadcaster exhibited anti-Israel bias in its output on television, radio, podcasts, websites, and social media over a period of at least four months in the wake of the deadly Hamas incursion into Israel on October 7, 2023. The BBC has dismissed the findings, calling into question the reliability of AI tools employed by the researchers.

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“..Russia is involved in psy-ops as any country at war would be. That said, so is David Lammy and his ilk and they aren’t only at war with Russia, they’re also at war with the UK and EU populace.”

• UK FM Blames Civil Unrest In Europe On “Russian Disinformation” (ZH)

The majority of official surveys monitoring American and European support for Ukraine are many months old now. The last time we saw a flurry of polling on the issue was this summer and the media has been rather quiet on the issue since. Why? Because public support for the proxy war is in steep decline. The last numbers show that 52% of Americans no longer want additional funding for Ukraine. With Donald Trump increasingly likely to return to the White House in 2025 the Ukrainians are already preparing for steep cuts to military aid (the US provides the vast majority of arms to Ukraine). This leaves the EU to pick up the slack. However, Europe simply doesn’t have the capacity to provide enough military aid to make a difference in the war and is currently discussing schemes to transfer frozen Russian assets to the effort while simultaneously scaling back their own funding. Central EU nations like Germany are already cutting their contributions in half in the coming year.

The decline in aid follows two important factors: Public support for the war in America and Europe is waning. And, Ukraine is clearly losing the conflict with their defensive lines in the east collapsing. Ukraine has received well over $200 billion in the past two years from NATO nations, which eclipses Ukraine’s annual GDP of around $160 billion. In other words, the war cannot continue without NATO. The disconnect between US and European governments vs the desires of the general public could not be more obvious. Even the Washington Post admits: “As they signaled enduring support for Ukraine last week, European leaders worried about how long they can sustain it…” “European leaders promise to support Ukraine as long as it takes, but they are increasingly threatened by public fatigue, a weakening of the political center and the prospect of Trump’s return…”

“More than 20 years into Russia’s war, public fatigue risks taking hold in some countries. Some European leaders are now in politically precarious positions and more constrained in what they can do. And across the continent, parties from the hard right to the hard left are pushing narratives against sending cash or arms…” In the UK and Europe, protests have erupted over a number of problems, most importantly the threat of mass immigration from third world countries and the deliberate agenda to erase traditional European culture. Some of the unrest has also been related to the Ukraine war and ongoing discussions about “conscription” among government officials. The UK Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, is one of many bureaucrats that are trying to lump all civil actions together, labeling them a “threat to democracy.” The narrative also seeks to tie these events to “Russian disinformation.” In other words, according to David Lammy the public is being brainwashed by Vladimir Putin into protesting and this is a strategy by the Kremlin to sow discord within Europe.

The U.K. government sanctioned three Russian agencies and their senior executives this month, accusing them of orchestrating disinformation campaigns and seeking to fuel anti-Ukraine protests across Europe. The Social Design Agency (SDA), Structura National Technologies, and Ano Dialog, alongside their directors, are accused of spearheading a vast malign online network commonly known as “Doppelganger.” The network used deceitful tactics… to mask the truth around Russia s illegal invasion of Ukraine and distract from the true nature of the war, the U.K. Foreign Office said in a statement Monday. Lammy and others claim this constitutes a “threat to democracy” and he says he will take action to shut down all sources of disinformation. To be sure, Russia is involved in psy-ops as any country at war would be. That said, so is David Lammy and his ilk and they aren’t only at war with Russia, they’re also at war with the UK and EU populace.

It should be noted that Lammy is becoming a regular fixture at The Atlantic Council, which has been deeply involved in the escalation of Ukrainian tensions with Russia for over a decade. He is also on the advisory board for the European branch of the Council On Foreign Relations. His relationships with globalist institutions helps to explain his hostility to conservative and anti-progressive movements. As Lammy argues in his recent conference with Ukrainian officials, any sense that allies are not united ‘only benefits Putin.’ Clearly this “unity” must also extend to the civilian population (by force if necessary), otherwise Lammy and his cohorts look rather ridiculous. The tactic of attaching all civil dissent to the schemes of a foreign adversary is a tale as old as oligarchy. It’s a way for governments to negate or dismiss public opposition to policy without losing face, because they can claim all the dissent is astroturf created by malicious foreign agencies.

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“These are practically 700 people who could have returned to their families in Ukraine..”

• Zakharova: Ukraine Took Back Just 279 POWs, Although 935 Were Offered (TASS)

The Russian Defense Ministry offered to hand over 935 Ukrainian prisoners of war this year, but Kiev took only 279 of them, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. “This year, the Russian Defense Ministry handed over to the Coordination Headquarters for the Handling of Prisoners of War a proposal to give back 935 Ukrainian prisoners of war to the Ukrainian side as part of exchanges,” the diplomat said in an online news conference. “How many of this number of people do you think the Kiev regime took back? I will emphasize they are its own citizens. Only 279.” “These are practically 700 people who could have returned to their families in Ukraine,” Zakharova went on to say.

“They were simply shrugged off by the Kiev regime, and yet its representatives continue to travel to Canada and around the world and supposedly call on, and negotiate with the international community for mediation efforts and, as [former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry] Kuleba said, for protection of Ukrainian nationals in Russia.” The spokeswoman called such actions of the Kiev regime “political tourism on the blood of its own citizens, its own servicemen.” “Not those who have been experiencing hatred for years, not the thugs who are ready to kill everyone with weapons in their hands – both Russian citizens and residents of the African continent, as it now turns out, but those whom they literally forcibly mobilized, telling them that Ukraine must be saved, sending them into these human wave attacks. They are not interested in their fate,” Zakharova said.

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Stuck in the Middle Ages.

• British King ‘Making Millions’ From Secret Property Empire – The Times (RT)

King Charles III and his son Prince William have contracts with UK taxpayer-funded public services, charities, government departments and even a prison, which help them earn millions every year, the Sunday Times has claimed. That’s in addition to the so-called sovereign grant the royals get from the government. In 2023 alone, Charles and William’s “private fiefdoms,” the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall – raised £27.4 million (over $35 million) and £23.6 million ($30 million) respectively for the British royal family, the newspaper found as part of a joint investigation with Channel 4’s Dispatches program. The paper said Saturday that they used the royal addresses to uncover their business contracts and discovered how the duchies are making money “via a series of commercial rents and feudal levies on land largely seized by medieval monarchs.”

Dubbed “Duchy Files,” the investigation claims to have found that King Charles and Prince William “charge for the right to cross rivers, offload cargo onto the shore, run cables under their beaches, operate schools and charities, and even dig graves.” “They earn revenue from toll bridges, ferries, sewage pipes, churches, village halls, pubs, distilleries, gas pipelines, boat moorings, opencast and underground mines, car parks, rental homes and wind turbines,” The Times claims. Some 5,410 landholdings and properties are held by the royal duchies, the investigation claims. For instance, a deal with an NHS foundation trust will reportedly pay the King’s Duchy of Lancaster £11 million ($14 million) over 15 years to rent a warehouse for ambulances. Prince William’s Duchy of Cornwall receives £1.5 million ($1.9 million) a year from the Ministry of Justice for using Dartmoor Prison, The Times claims.

The duchy of the King’s eldest son, the Colonel-in-Chief of the Army Air Corps, also charges the military “for the right to train” on its 67,500 acres of land in Dartmoor. The sum it gets has not been revealed. The estates also rent out over 900 residential homes and farms to tenants, according to the report. The duchies, both established in the 14th century, are operating as commercial landlords, but are exempt from paying tax on their corporate profits, the paper notes. The King and Prince pay income tax voluntarily at the highest rate, 45%. In 2022, the last time King Charles published his tax filings, he paid 25% of the £23 million ($30 million) in duchy profit “because he deducted expenses he considered related to his official duties,” The Times pointed out.

The “Duchy Files” investigation marks the first time that the complete list of property holdings for the two royal estates has been made public, the paper says, adding that even the British parliament was denied access to it. “The ancient property empires that fund the King and the Prince of Wales have remained a closely guarded secret within the royal family and its small circle of advisers for centuries,” it claimed. The two duchies are separate from the Crown Estate, a vast property business owned by the British monarch but run independently. Because of its soaring profits, the taxpayer-funded sovereign grant that pays for official royal duties will rise from £86.3 million ($111 million) in 2024-25 to £132 million ($170 million) in 2025-26.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Whats Ur name?

 

 

Thank you
https://twitter.com/i/status/1852753037242319021

 

 

Performer

 

 

Deer brush
https://twitter.com/i/status/1852760089603813813

 

 

Octopus

 

 

Turtle

 

 

Jesus
https://twitter.com/i/status/1852973368519152063

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle August 4 2022

Aug 042022
 
 August 4, 2022  Posted by at 9:07 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  37 Responses »


Wooden statue of priest and scribe Ka-aper Egypt, ca. 2465-2323 BC (originally plastered and painted )

 

• Siemens Explains Russian Gas Supply Shortfall (RT)
• Gazprom Warns It Can’t Accept Key Turbine (RT)
• German Artillery Donated To Ukraine Failing After Just Weeks Of Use (RMX)
• Russia Ready For Peace On Own Terms – Kremlin (RT)
• German Ex-Chancellor Offers Solution To EU Energy Crisis (RT)
• US Is ‘Directly Involved’ in Ukraine War – Russia (Antiwar)
• Russia Accuses Ukraine Of Mistreating POWs (RT)
• National Crisis Team To Distribute Scarce Dutch Water (NOS)
• DOJ Subpoenas Trump White House Counsel Pat Cipollone (Hill)
• DOD ‘Wiped’ Phones of Senior Trump Officials, Jan. 6 Communications (ET)
• Elites Prepare To Drop Hunter Biden in a “Controlled Demolition” (Turley)
• German Mask Mandates for Those Who Refuse A 4th Dose in the Fall (Eugyp)

 

 

 

 

Eva

 

 

 

 

Doocy

 

 

 

 

Ali

 

 

 

 

Still want to blamePutin?

“Only one turbine is currently operational at the facility, [..] while five turbines are needed for the natural gas pipeline to pump at 100% capacity.”

• Siemens Explains Russian Gas Supply Shortfall (RT)

The compressor station at the starting point of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany is severely short of functioning equipment, according to turbine manufacturer Siemens Energy. Only one turbine is currently operational at the facility, Siemens Energy CEO Christian Bruch said on Wednesday, while five turbines are needed for the natural gas pipeline to pump at 100% capacity. Bruch’s comments come after the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited a Siemens Energy site in north-western Germany, where the firm is keeping a turbine that was due to be returned to Russia after repairs in Canada. “It is in our best interest, with support from the German government, to return this turbine to Russia,” Bruch said. In recent weeks the flow of gas to the EU via Nord Stream 1 was reduced to roughly one fifth of capacity, following a delay in the return of the first Siemens turbine and the shutdown of a second one, which is due for an overhaul.

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“..several engines at the compressor station are currently idle due to emergency failures, since Siemens has not repaired them..”

• Gazprom Warns It Can’t Accept Key Turbine (RT)

Western sanctions make it impossible to properly return a turbine for the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, Russian energy giant Gazprom claimed on Wednesday. The missing equipment has been the key reason for supply cuts. Siemens Energy CEO Christian Bruch earlier said that the German company had fulfilled all conditions for sending the repaired turbine back to Russia. According to Bruch, the company is “extremely interested” in advancing the process and blamed missing documents from the Russian side for the delay. “The sanctions regimes of Canada, the EU, the UK and the inconsistency of the current situation with the current contractual obligations on the part of Siemens make the delivery of the 073 engine to the Portovaya [compressor station] impossible,” Gazprom said on Wednesday.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited the Siemens plant in Mülheim an der Ruhr on Tuesday and inspected the Nord Stream turbine located there. According to Scholz, the turbine is ready for operation and could be sent to Russia. In mid-June, Gazprom reduced gas supplies via Nord Stream to 40%, as the German-based Siemens had not returned the turbine in time after repairs in Canada, due to the sanctions. At Berlin’s urging, Canada agreed to send the equipment to Germany, and then on to Russia. On July 25, Gazprom confirmed that it had received documents for the turbine from Siemens. On July 27, Russian gas supplies to Europe via Nord Stream dropped to 20% of their maximum level, due to Gazprom decommissioning another gas turbine engine at the Portovaya compressor station.

Vitaly Markelov, deputy head of Gazprom, said that Siemens was not fulfilling its obligations to repair faulty engines for Nord Stream. According to Markelov, several engines at the compressor station are currently idle due to emergency failures, since Siemens has not repaired them. On July 29, Markelov said that the delivery of the turbine from Canada to Germany, instead of Russia, did not comply with the contract. In addition, he said that Gazprom has not received from Siemens a complete package of documents that allow the transportation and repair of engines for the gas pipeline.

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These are not made by Siemens.

• German Artillery Donated To Ukraine Failing After Just Weeks Of Use (RMX)

Barely a month since their delivery, the first German armored self-propelled guns have already ceased service in Ukraine, according to a report by German newspaper Der Spiegel. The German Ministry of Defense was informed by Kyiv last week that an error message appeared on the cannons and that several of them needed to be repaired. According to the Bundeswehr, the reason behind the malfunction may be that the Ukrainians are firing the guns more intensively than the technology is capable of. This means that the stress on the loading systems may be too high. Another problem could be that the soldiers reportedly fire the units from too far away with the special ammunition; the smart grenades used by these cannons were meant for shorter-range, precision hits.


The Bundeswehr explained that misuse of the weapons could have contributed to a more accelerated wear and tear. Despite the problems, however, they agreed to supply Ukraine with additional weapons packages. At the same time, the arming of Ukraine by the West raises several problems. The unlimited flow of weapons can see arms easily end up on the black market or lost. Several European countries have already warned that weapons have on occasion been redirected to other nations. The authorities in Sweden, for example, revealed that anti-tank weapons have already appeared in the circles of criminal gangs in Sweden. Meanwhile, security policy expert Robert C. Castel drew attention to the fact that Western weapon systems — the Javelin anti-tank missile and the Stinger anti-aircraft missile — can be used against civilian and industrial targets as well as military ones. According to him, it is only a matter of time before these weapons deliveries have unintended consequences. These weapons could still be lurking somewhere in Europe for many decades, as the modern equivalent of mines and air bombs left over from the World Wars, he added.

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“..the Ukrainian side is well-aware of our terms. One way or another, they will be fulfilled..”

• Russia Ready For Peace On Own Terms – Kremlin (RT)

Ukraine can end the ongoing conflict at any time by conceding to Russia’s conditions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday. “Russia is ready [for a peace deal], the Ukrainian side is well-aware of our terms. One way or another, they will be fulfilled,” the official told journalists. Peskov went on to explain that back in late March the two countries were close to settling their differences in a way that was acceptable to Russia, but the draft agreement prepared during a meeting in Istanbul was torpedoed by the Ukrainian side.


Kiev broke off talks with Moscow after accusing Russia of committing war crimes, an allegation that Russia said was based on fabricated evidence. The Ukrainian leadership has since insisted that negotiations can only be resumed after Russia is defeated on the battlefield with the help of Western weapons. Dmitry Peskov also commented on the recent visit to Moscow by former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who, the Kremlin spokesman confirmed, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Despite media speculation that the former German leader could serve as a mediator in the Ukraine conflict, the 78-year-old “expressed no desire” to do so, Peskov said.

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Schroeder is still on Gazprom’s board. He is the chairman of the board of Nord Stream AG and of Rosneft. Ideal mediator for peace.

• German Ex-Chancellor Offers Solution To EU Energy Crisis (RT)

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has offered “the simplest solution” to Europe’s current energy crisis – to switch on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Nord Stream 2 “is ready,” the former chancellor told German magazine Stern in an interview published on Wednesday. “The simplest solution would be to put the Nord Stream 2 pipeline into operation. If things get really tight, there is this pipeline, and with both Nord Stream pipelines there would be no supply problem for German industry and German households.” he said. Otherwise, “you have to bear the consequences. And they will be huge in Germany, too,” Schroeder warned.


The Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline runs under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, beside the currently operational Nord Stream 1 route. Its construction was completed last September but the pipeline was denied certification by Germany prior to the crisis in Ukraine. The German government has repeatedly said that launching Nord stream 2 now is out of the question. In recent weeks, Russian energy supplier Gazprom reduced the gas flow via Nord Stream 1 to 20% capacity citing technical problems with Siemens turbines at a compressor station. According to Schroeder, the reduction is Siemens’ fault as the company failed to return a turbine from repairs in Canada on time. Ottawa eventually returned the part to Germany, that was held due to sanctions on Russia, after bowing to pressure from Berlin.

Read more …

“I can’t tell you whether [we are directly tasking] British and American satellites, but we have very good satellite imagery..”

• US Is ‘Directly Involved’ in Ukraine War – Russia (Antiwar)

The Russian Defense Ministry on Tuesday said Washington was “directly involved” in the war in Ukraine after a Ukrainian official detailed Kyiv’s cooperation with the US before launching strikes with US-provided HIMARS rockets. Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, told The Telegraph that Ukrainian officials consulted with US officials before launching HIMARS strikes and that the US has veto power over the attacks. Skibitsky insisted that the US wasn’t providing “direct targeting information,” but suggested Ukraine was using satellite imagery provided by the US and Britain. “I can’t tell you whether [we are directly tasking] British and American satellites, but we have very good satellite imagery,” Skibitsky said.


Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, said that this cooperation “proves that contrary to the assurances by the White House and the Pentagon, Washington is directly involved in the conflict in Ukraine.” The comments from the Russian Defense Ministry highlight the danger of the US’s deep involvement in the war, which risks provoking a response from Moscow. Russian officials have cited US military aid as a reason to push further into Ukrainian territory. After Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, the US expanded intelligence sharing with Ukraine’s forces, and US officials have bragged to the media that this cooperation helped kill Russian generals and sink a Russian warship. Although the claims were not verified, the comments themselves were major provocations toward Moscow.

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Amnesty has also accused Ukraine of using “human shields”.

• Russia Accuses Ukraine Of Mistreating POWs (RT)

Moscow has scrupulously observed the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners, while the government of Ukraine has tortured, starved and deprived of medical care the Russian soldiers in its captivity, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Wednesday. The West’s unwillingness to hold Kiev accountable has resulted in violations and outright crimes, Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin told reporters. Russia has taken “painstaking” steps to observe the Geneva Convention on the treatment of POWs, among them holding more than 40 weekly meetings with representatives of the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and establishing a medical commission on seriously ill and injured prisoners. So far, 18 such prisoners were sent back to Ukraine, General Fomin said.

There have also been 27 exchanges of POWs and the bodies of dead servicemen, while the ICRC has received more than 1,500 letters home from the Ukrainian prisoners. Detained Ukrainian soldiers can also make phone calls to their families, Fomin said, all in accordance with Article 71 of the convention.Fomin’s press conference came after the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said it was appalled by a video allegedly showing a Russian soldier castrating a bound and gagged Ukrainian captive. In a statement on Friday, the commission reminded everyone that “torture and summary executions of prisoners of war” are war crimes. The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s office has launched an investigation into the video, to establish where and when it might have taken place.

The Russian general did not address the video directly. He did, however, say that while Russia has treated its prisoners in full accordance with international law, Ukraine has not. According to a survey of exchanged service members, both Russian and those of the Donbass republics, 81% of the prisoners were subjected to beatings and other physical violence, while 55% were forced to film propaganda videos. Some 46% received no medical care, 79% were given no opportunity to contact relatives, and 19% were given poor or insufficient meals. One detention center, run by the Ukrainian security service SBU in Kiev, gave captives only 50 grams of porridge, a piece of bread and a glass of water a day, while keeping them blindfolded.

Fomin also brought up videos circulating onlineshowing “torture and abuse,” as well as extrajudicial executions and “monstrous acts of violence” against Russian and Donbass POWs. “Ukrainian Nazis” have also attempted to extort the families of captives for ransom, he said. Russia has regularly informed the international humanitarian structures of Ukraine’s behavior, with requests to influence the Kiev government, but to little or no effect, Fomin said. In addition to the mistreatment of prisoners, according to the Russian military, Ukrainian forces have been using civilians as human shields, as well as using Western-supplied weapons and banned ordnance – such as cluster munitions and landmines – to target civilians in the Donetsk and Lugansk republics. The international community has turned a blind eye to these atrocities, Fomin said, allowing them to continue.

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The country is made of water.

• National Crisis Team To Distribute Scarce Dutch Water (NOS)

As of today, the national Water Shortage Management Team (MTW) determines how scarce water is distributed in the Netherlands. Due to the ongoing drought, there is now a “de facto water shortage”, says Minister Harbers of Infrastructure and Water Management. At the moment no additional measures are needed to prevent problems, but if the drought continues, they will soon. What exactly those measures entail is still unclear. The situation is now so serious that decisions have to be made that go beyond the regions, water boards and stakeholders. It is the task of the MTW to coordinate this. Rijkswaterstaat, the water boards, drinking water companies, provinces and the ministries involved are represented in the team. In this way, decisions can be taken about measures more quickly and more tailor-made, says Harbers.


On July 13, we scaled up to level 1 (impending water shortage) and now to level 2 (actual water shortage). The drought is caused by the high evaporation rate in the Netherlands and the low supply of water from abroad via the rivers. Minister Harbers assures that, despite the drought, sufficient drinking water is and will remain available. But according to him it is important that the Dutch are conscious of their tap water. “Everyone can contribute. That is why I ask all Dutch people to think carefully about whether they should wash their car or fill their inflatable pool completely.” Several water boards have already taken measures in recent weeks. For example, in some areas there is a ban on spraying for agriculture and industry and locks may be used less frequently by shipping. The water level in the IJsselmeer is also kept as high as possible and pumps and pumping stations have been used in some places to better distribute the water.

Read more …

Mike Davis on Twitter: “The Biden Justice Department is now subpoenaing the prior Counsel to the President. His communications are clearly protected by Executive Privilege. Attorney General Merrick Garland is causing tremendous damage to the Presidency. Biden will regret this.”

• DOJ Subpoenas Trump White House Counsel Pat Cipollone (Hill)

Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone has been subpoenaed by the Justice Department in an investigation increasingly involving former President Trump’s closest advisers, according to reports from multiple news outlets. The subpoena comes as the Justice Department has been bringing other White House officials before a grand jury in its probe into Jan. 6. Cipollone would be able to offer considerable insight into actions at the White House both leading up to and on Jan. 6. His testimony before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack indicates he had numerous concerns about the former president’s plans for the day and how he responded to the riot.

The Justice Department has already brought two former advisers to then-Vice President Mike Pence before a grand jury. It has also executed search warrants on Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department assistant attorney general who Trump weighed installing as attorney general so he could forward investigations into the president’s baseless claims of election fraud, along with John Eastman. Eastman, a former law professor, crafted memos for the campaign advising they submit alternate electoral certificates and that Pence buck his ceremonial duty to certify the election results. [..] Jan. 6 committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told reporters last month that DOJ had asked for transcripts with the panel’s investigators tied to Trump’s plans to transmit fake elector certificates to Congress.

But the interest in Cipollone suggests the probe could be more wide ranging, especially following reporting by The New York Times indicating that federal prosecutors are beginning to more seriously discuss directly investigating Trump’s actions. Earlier testimony before the House Jan. 6 committee indicated Cipollone pushed back against a plan to issue an executive order allowing the seizing of voting machines. According to testimony from White House aide Cassidy Hutchison, he also expressed legal concerns over Trump’s plans to march to the Capitol, warning they could be charged with “every crime imaginable.” And in a portion of his taped deposition played in the committee’s final hearing of the summer, Cipollone was also shown saying he pushed Trump to call off the mob if his supporters storming the Capitol.

Read more …

“when an employee separates from DOD or Army he or she turns in the government issued phone, and the phone is wiped”

“U.S. Secret Service text messages sent on the day the breach had also been deleted.”

• DOD ‘Wiped’ Phones of Senior Trump Officials, Jan. 6 Communications (ET)

Some senior Trump administration officials had their phones “wiped” by the Department of Defense (DOD) and the U.S. Army after the former president left office, meaning messages that were sent around the time of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach are no longer accessible, court filings show. The DOD acknowledged that the phones belonging to former Pentagon officials had been wiped as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by American Oversight, a non-profit watchdog organization. American Oversight had sought the communications that those officials had with Trump, former Vice President Pence, Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, or anyone communicating on their behalf on Jan. 6.

The watchdog group submitted the FOIA requests pertaining to the records on Jan. 12, 2021, six days after the breach of the Capitol building. Specifically, FOIA requests sought communications from former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, former chief of staff Kash Patel, and former Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, Paul Ney, the Defense Department’s general counsel; and James E. McPherson, the Army’s general counsel. However, in a court filing roughly a year after the request, the Army stated that “when an employee separates from DOD or Army he or she turns in the government issued phone, and the phone is wiped” and that “for those custodians no longer with the agency, the text messages were not preserved and therefore could not be searched.”

The court filing noted, however, that “it is possible that particular text messages could have been saved into other records systems such as email.” The DOD’s admission in the filings creates further transparency issues regarding the Jan. 6 select committee’s investigation into the events of that day in 2021 and how the government responded. It also comes shortly after it was revealed that U.S. Secret Service text messages sent on the day the breach had also been deleted.

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“..if a plea has already closed the case, the legal blowback could be confined..”

• Elites Prepare To Drop Hunter Biden in a “Controlled Demolition” (Turley)

I previously wrote a column on the one year anniversary of the Hunter Biden laptop story that marveled at the success of the Biden family in making the scandal vanish before that 2020 election. It was analogized to Houdini making his 10,000-pound elephant Jennie disappear in his act. With the help of the media, the Biden trick occurred live before an audience of millions. The problem is the public can now see the elephant. That is why the media is now recalibrating. That was most evident in the recent statement of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman that “I know The New York Times felt it didn’t pursue it originally as much as it wanted to; then it followed up, as I recall.” Friedman does not explain what overrode that journalistic interest in the story or why the “follow up” came a year after the election of Joe Biden.

It appears that President Biden is no longer seen as a political asset with most Democrats refusing to publicly support him in his promised reelection bid. Biden now could endanger Democratic control of Congress. The question is how to drop Hunter (and even his father) without causing damage to the media, the Democrats, or others in Washington. It requires a controlled demolition. The most important thing is to control the blast. By refusing to appoint a special counsel, Merrick Garland has effectively blocked the risk of a report on the extensive influence peddling, including the repeated references to President Biden. the “Big Guy” is discussed in emails as the potential recipient of a 10 percent cut on a deal with a Chinese energy firm as well as other benefits. Emails also refer to Hunter Biden paying portions of his father’s expenses and taxes. Recently, there was additional support showing that “the Big Guy” was indeed Joe Biden.

The problem is that embarrassing evidence is mounting by the day. That includes the recent disclosure new open influence peddling by Hunter, referencing access to his father. [..] In other words, the case can then be collapsed by triggering a smaller explosion. Rather than pursue wider conspiracies connected to the influence peddling, Hunter could be indicted on a few tax or lobbying counts. That would allow for a plea bargain that would allow the media to focus narrowly on those counts and not the broader influence peddling by the Biden family. Of course, controlled demolition can at times take an unexpected turn. The greatest danger is that either house of Congress could flip to GOP control. That would open up the entire matter to congressional investigation. Yet, if a plea has already closed the case, the legal blowback could be confined. The key to political controlled demolitions “to ‘implode’ the building, that is, make it collapse down into its footprint.” The footprint is now Hunter Biden, confining the implosion to him while leaving the media and establishment untouched.

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If these clowns don’t make energy and food available and affordable, they won’t make people wear masks.

• German Mask Mandates for Those Who Refuse A 4th Dose in the Fall (Eugyp)

Our clown health minister Karl Lauterbach and our useless liberal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann have finally agreed on draft legislation to replace our current Infection Protection Act, which expires in September. As predicted, the compromise is masking and not much else. Specifically, the federal states will receive the option to impose indoor mask mandates, with exceptions for those who can present negative tests, or who have recovered from infection or received vaccination within the past three months. As Julian Reichelt notes, masks will thus become a compulsory (if temporary) label for everyone who refuses dose number four.

My greatest regret about the law, is that it frees the tested and the recovered from mask requirements. I’d prefer that only the vaccinated present bare faces in public, so that they can be subjected to the proper contempt. I was going to write more about my outrage at this ongoing farce, but I find myself too depressed to do so. Instead, I’ll just draw your attention to a small item of vaccinator comedy (h/t Marcus Klöckner), in the form of this otherwise standard job ad for a postdoctoral historian in Austrian history at Kalgenfurt University in Carinthia. At the end is this little nugget:

“The University is aware of its social responsibility in the era of COVID-19. This is demonstrated by the high proportion of fully immunised persons among students and employees. For this reason, continual willingness to be vaccinated against COVID-19 is expected for those entering employment with the University.”A great many academic institutions (and adjacent professions) will now subject themselves to an indefinite festival of annual vaccination with novel mRNA cocktails against a pervasive respiratory virus that is no more dangerous than the flu. This won’t stop SARS-2 and it won’t make university instruction safer; it’ll just kill a few people, make a lot of others sick for no reason, and alienate reasonable employees who don’t like massive bureaucratic organisations rooting around in their personal medical decisions. Great plan. Good luck with that.

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Dutch farmers

 

 

 

 

Gervais

 

 


Red-eared Firetail

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 31 2022

Jul 312022
 
 July 31, 2022  Posted by at 8:34 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  46 Responses »


Edward Hopper Sailing 1911

 

• The End of Castle Europe and the First Day of Freedom (Batiushka)
• World Economy At Risk Of Deglobalization – IMF (RT)
• Tweaking The Dragon’s Tail To Ignite A Terrible Fire With China (Larry Johnson)
• New Chinese Aid For Syria Sets Off Alarms In Israel (BD)
• Japanese Firms In No Rush To Leave Russia (RT)
• Kiev Knew Prison It Shelled Held Ukrainian POWs – DPR (RT)
• Zelensky and US To Blame For ‘Bloodbath’ In Donbass – Russia (RT)
• British Boats Assist In Transporting Russian Oil (RT)
• UN, World Economic Forum Behind Global ‘War on Farmers’ (ET)
• Zelensky’s ‘Elite Kraken neo-Nazi Battalion’ Destroyed – Russia (RT)
• Gas Levy Could Triple Household Heating Bills In Germany (ZH)
• Biden Admin Quietly Builds More Border Wall Amid Migration Surge (JTN)
• Covid Reinfection Rate With Paxlovid Is More Than 40%, Not 2% As Marketed (DM)
• Italian Court Orders Analysis Of mRNA Vaccines (Muac)

 

 


Victor Orban

 

 

We never tested them

 

 

Check the date

 

 

Body bags

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..the three aims of the Allied Special Operation in the Ukraine [..] have had to be extended..”

The more weapons are poured in, the bigger the territory becomes.

• The End of Castle Europe and the First Day of Freedom (Batiushka)

It has now been officially admitted that the three aims of the Allied Special Operation in the Ukraine, the liberation of the Donbass, and the demilitarisation and denazification of the Ukraine, have had to be extended. This is firstly because of the resistance of the Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev to the liberation of the peoples of the Ukraine and secondly because of the support given to that regime by pro-Nazi regimes. Those regimes, known as ‘The Collective West’, are the regimes, representing only 13% of the world population, which have extended the war, both in time and in space.

This change was implicitly confirmed on 28 July by Dmitry Peskov, Press Secretary to President Putin, who declared that ‘the whole of the Ukraine needs to be denazified’. This means that most, or even all, of the Ukraine is going to be liberated, not just the Crimea, the two provinces of the Donbass and the surrounding four provinces of Kharkov, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson and Zaporozhie. These fully- or partly-liberated provinces are being attacked from further away: clearly their liberation will not be complete until those attacks from further away have been stopped, even if that means proceeding right to the Ukrainian border with Poland. (And if NATO countries dared attack the liberated Ukraine from within their borders, then…).

As for the second aim of demilitarisation, which is ongoing in the Ukraine and has reached a high level as a result of the Russian destruction of military hardware and those willing to use it, it too has had to be extended. The extension is necessary because of the military hardware being sent to the Ukraine from the rest of the Collective West, that is, from Non-Russian Europe (just over 50% of European territory) and from the USA. Both have begun sending the Ukraine their weapons for destruction by Russia. However, the third aim, of denazification, both in the Ukraine and, as we explain below, even more in the rest of Non-Russian Europe, is far more complex. Let us explain this through what may at first seem to be rather academic historical considerations concerning English and Western history. Please be patient. There is a point to this.

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You make that sound like it’s a bad thing…

• World Economy At Risk Of Deglobalization – IMF (RT)

Russia’s military operation in Ukraine and the subsequent Western sanctions on Moscow might push the global economy into geopolitical fragmentation, the IMF warned in a report published on July 26. “A serious risk to the medium-term outlook is that the war in Ukraine will contribute to fragmentation of the world economy into geopolitical blocs with distinct technology standards, cross-border payment systems, and reserve currencies,” the report states. According to the IMF, such a split would prevent the global community from jointly addressing global problems. “Fragmentation may also diminish the effectiveness of multilateral cooperation to address climate change, with the further risk that the current food crisis could become the norm,” the authors of the report warn.

The report notes that traditional economic and financial risks have been exacerbated by the conflict in Ukraine and its repercussions. Such risks currently include the effect of tighter monetary policy, slowing economic growth in China and rising energy prices. However, according to the report, there is “limited evidence of reshoring,” or trade deglobalization, at the moment, and overall, global trade “has been more resilient than expected since the start of the [Covid-19] pandemic,” which can be taken as a positive sign. Still, the IMF predicts that increasingly tight sanctions on Russia will eventually result in a drop in Russia’s oil exports to the global market and a “decline to zero” of Russian gas exports to Europe, which in turn would make “inflation expectations more persistently elevated” across the globe and tighten financial conditions as governments attempt to deal with rising prices.

“In this scenario, the shock would have a widespread impact, as higher global commodity prices and tighter monetary and financial conditions would affect almost all countries, albeit to different extents. Europe would be particularly affected in this scenario, with 2023… near-zero regional growth,” the IMF states. Still, according to analysts, “taming inflation should be the first priority for policymakers”despite the costs of tighter monetary policy, as “delay will only exacerbate [the costs].”

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Pelosi just released a doc stating which places she will visit. Taiwan is not on it.

• Tweaking The Dragon’s Tail To Ignite A Terrible Fire With China (Larry Johnson)

The next two weeks could be two of the most dangerous in the history of the United States because it appears Joe Biden and his clueless national security team are bumbling their way towards a showdown with China that is fraught with the peril of war. The Chinese Government now rejects the One China Policy that has been the foundation of U.S./Chinese relations for 43 years. CSIS boils it down nicely: When the United States moved to recognize the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and de-recognize the Republic of China (ROC) in 1979, the United States stated that the government of the People’s Republic of China was “the sole legal Government of China.” Sole, meaning the PRC was and is the only China, with no consideration of the ROC as a separate sovereign entity.

The United States did not, however, give in to Chinese demands that it recognize Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan (which is the name preferred by the United States since it opted to de-recognize the ROC). Instead, Washington acknowledged the Chinese position that Taiwan was part of China. For geopolitical reasons, both the United States and the PRC were willing to go forward with diplomatic recognition despite their differences on this matter. The Chinese are now unyielding on their claim of sovereignty over Taiwan. It does not matter any more that Washington threatens action if China takes any steps to impose its “sovereignty”, China is going to demonstrate its sovereignty. One way it may do this is to deny Nancy Pelosi and any other dignitary from Washington, DC from flying to Taiwan and setting foot on “Chinese territory” without the permission of Beijing.

The United States does not have an embassy in Taiwan. It has a consulate, which is subordinate to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. In other words, any official visit by a U.S. official must have country clearance from China. Got it? What makes the current situation so dangerous is that the Commander of US Forces in the Indo-Pacific region (aka INDOPACCOM) has ordered the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group to the South China Sea as a “show of force.” This is a deliberate act to demonstrate to the Chinese that they have no sovereignty over this territory. The Chinese reaction to this provocation is alarming:

“The Chinese Army urged citizens to “prepare for war” in a social media post Friday that garnered thousands of likes, according to the state-sponsored Global Times. Chinese officials have issued stark warnings of possible conflict should House Speaker Nancy Pelosi follow through with her promise to visit Taiwan in August, pledging a “forceful” response. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) 80th Group Army’s post received over 300,000 thumbs-up on China’s social media platform Weibo within 12 hours “amid high morale among Chinese soldiers,” the Global Times said. “We must bear in mind the fundamental responsibility of preparing for war and charge on the journey of a strong army,” the 80th Group Army posted in a comment that received 8,000 likes”, according to Global Times.

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“..the aid “aims to improve local network infrastructure, especially in those areas hit hard during the Syrian crisis since 2011.”

• New Chinese Aid For Syria Sets Off Alarms In Israel (BD)

A recent announcement of Chinese aid for Syria is setting off alarm bells in Israeli security circles. During a July 20 ceremony held in Damascus, an announcement was made that Syria will receive advanced communications equipment from China. According to the official announcement, the aid “aims to improve local network infrastructure, especially in those areas hit hard during the Syrian crisis since 2011.” Signed by Chinese Ambassador to Syria Feng Biao and Chairman of Syria’s Planning and International Cooperation Authority Fadi Salti Al-Khalil, the deal specifies that the equipment will be “delivered in two batches” to the Syrian Communications and Technology Ministry.

Relations between Israel and China are cordial, if somewhat strained in recent years by US pressure on Jerusalem to limit ties with Beijing. So on the face, having China in Syria is not in and of itself a major concern for Israel. But the economic or military improvements China could bring to Syria’s military is a reason for concern. Israeli defense sources told Breaking Defense that the exact type of the communication systems to be supplied to Syria is not clear, but it is expected to be of a type that will fill current gaps in Syria’s military communications network. And, the sources worry, this could be only the tip of the iceberg of Chinese assistance for Syria’s effort to rebuild its armed forces.

“We have indications that Chinese experts visited in recent months some Syrian military installations that were damaged heavily during the civil war,” one source said. “We believe that many [facilities] of the Syrian army will be rebuilt by the Chinese, who have the capability of bringing in thousands of workers to complete the work in the shortest time.” That source also warned that the Chinese may try to sell the Syrians some of their defense systems, which could complicate Israeli operations in Syria. “The Russian-made systems used by the Syrians are almost useless dealing with advanced weapon systems like those used by Israel,” the source noted.

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“..just 5% of Japanese companies that had operations in Russia have left [..] This contrasts with 46% for the UK, 33% for Canada, and 27% for the US.”

• Japanese Firms In No Rush To Leave Russia (RT)

Japanese companies are no in a hurry to quit the Russian market, amid fears of being unable to return and having to find new suppliers, the Japan Times reported this week, citing a survey from the statistics center Teikoku Databank. According to the report, within the past month no Japanese companies have announced a suspension or cessation of operations in Russia. Since Russia became subject to numerous sanctions due to its military operation in Ukraine, 74, or about 40%, of the 168 listed Japanese companies working in Russia announced intentions to leave the country. Of these, however, most said they would only halt some form of operation, while a mere five companies said they would withdraw from the Russian market completely.


According to the survey, Japanese companies attributed their reluctance to withdraw from Russia to fears of losing their niche in what they consider an important emerging market and potential difficulties in finding alternative suppliers. Earlier this year, reports emerged that the Japanese government had urged the conglomerates Mitsui and Mitsubishi to retain their stakes in the Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) project Sakhalin-2, which now operates under a new Russian operator, in order to ensure continued LNG flows. Also, a number of Japan’s major automakers, including Toyota, have suspended their activities in Russia over the past several months but have not yet closed their businesses in the country.Western sanctions against Moscow have forced many international companies to quit the Russian market. However, according to a Yale University survey, just 5% of Japanese companies that had operations in Russia have left, which is tied with Italy for the lowest shares in the G7. This contrasts with 46% for the UK, 33% for Canada, and 27% for the US.

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Gonzalo Lira @GonzaloLira1968
Azov Battalion POWs were killed with HIMARS rockets.
HIMARS are targeted by the Americans only.
Americans are providing targeting intelligence.
Americans deliberately targeted Azov Battalion POWs for assassination.
Not their first rodeo. The US did the same in Syria.

• Kiev Knew Prison It Shelled Held Ukrainian POWs – DPR (RT)

Kiev knew exactly where Ukrainian prisoners of war were being held when it ordered a strike on the detention facility in Donbass, Eduard Basurin, the spokesman for the army of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), claimed. The attack on the prison near the village of Yelenovka on Friday morning claimed the lives of 53 people, with 75 more injured, according to the DPR. The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that the facility had held members of Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, whose fighters surrendered to Russian and Donbass forces during the siege of the Azovstal steel factory in Mariupol. The battalion is notorious for having fighters with nationalist and neo-Nazi views. “I would like to note that Ukraine itself determined the place of detention of prisoners of war, so they knew exactly where they were kept and in what place,” Basurin told journalists without elaborating.

The DPR’s ombudswoman, Darya Morozova, explained that Ukrainian authorities had previously insisted Yelenovka’s facility be a detention center for Ukrainian prisoners of war. “It was discussed, it was their proposal. That is, they knew perfectly well where the prisoners were being held, at their own request. That’s how cynically they took the lives of 50 of their own officers and soldiers,” she told Izvestia newspaper. In Basurin’s opinion, the prison was targeted “after the Ukrainian prisoners of war began to talk about the crimes that they had committed on the orders of their commanders.” As the orders to conduct those crimes, according to Basurin, had been issued by Kiev, the Ukrainian “political leadership” ordered the strike on the detention center using US-made HIMARS multiple rocket launchers “to hide those crimes about which Ukrainian prisoners of war began to speak.”

“I would like to note that even the lack of ammunition did not stop them from shutting the mouths of those Ukrainian prisoners of war who began to tell how they killed, where they killed and why they killed the civilian population,”Basurin said. He echoed the earlier remarks by DPR head Denis Pushilin, who claimed that the Ukrainians “deliberately” targeted the detention center in order to kill Azov members who had been providing accounts of possible war crimes committed by their commanders. Kiev has categorically denied these allegations and accused “the Russian occupants” of carrying out the strike. According to a statement by the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Facebook, Russia’s aim was to accuse Ukraine of committing ‘war crimes’.

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“..after the Ukrainian prisoners of war began to talk about the crimes that they had committed on the orders of their commanders.”

• Zelensky and US To Blame For ‘Bloodbath’ In Donbass – Russia (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is personally responsible, along with the United States, for the fatal shelling of a detention facility in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed on Saturday. According to the ministry’s statement, a missile strike using US-made HIMARS multiple rocket launchers on a prison near the village of Yelenovka killed 50 POWs, while 73 were hospitalized with severe injuries. The ministry added that the remains of 48 Ukrainian prisoners of war were found and extracted from underneath the rubble, while two inmates succumbed to their wounds on the way to a medical facility. “All political, criminal and moral responsibility for the bloodbath against Ukrainians is borne personally by Zelensky, his criminal regime and Washington, which supports them,” the statement reads.


Earlier this week, Eduard Basurin, the spokesman for the DPR’s army, said that Kiev knew exactly where the POWs were being held, because Kiev “itself determined the place of detention.” The DPR official also noted that the prison could have been targeted by Kiev in order to hide atrocities “after the Ukrainian prisoners of war began to talk about the crimes that they had committed on the orders of their commanders.” The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that the facility had held members of Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, whose fighters surrendered to Russian and Donbass forces during the siege of the Azovstal steel factory in Mariupol. Kiev has categorically denied these allegations and claims Russia is responsible for the strike, saying that Moscow sought to blame Ukraine for committing ‘war crimes’. Russia and allied forces have repeatedly accused Ukraine of shelling civilian infrastructure with various heavy weaponry, including HIMARS.

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There’s still money to be made…

• British Boats Assist In Transporting Russian Oil (RT)

British-crewed ships have participated in transporting Russian crude oil to Asia, The Independent revealed on Friday, claiming that the “small part” they play in the chain indicates “huge holes” in the Western sanctions on Moscow. A joint investigation of The Independent and the website Global Witness found that at least twice in May, British-crewed vessels based in the Suffolk town of Southwold “sped out from nearby harbours to help transfer Russian oil between vast tankers.” One boat was sent by a British company called STS Marine Transfers to move 14,000 tonnes of Russian fuel oil from one foreign tanker to another, while another, a catamaran called Endeavor that belongs to a company known as Wood Marine, delivered supplies and took the tankers’ crews ashore. The oil transfers took place outside UK territorial waters.

“After refuelling, the two tankers carried 165,000 tonnes of Russian fuel oil – worth more than £165m – onwards to the Persian Gulf and Singapore,” The Independent said. According to the outlet, the transfers “are one link in an international chain” that has helped Russia to quickly shift oil sales to Asia, as European buyers cut back. When approached by the journalists, one of the operators of the British ships said their boats just provide “a taxi service at sea,” and therefore there is no obligation to check where the oil comes from. Another company said it was complying with all international laws and regulations, and had not renewed its contract with cargoes originating from Russia.

“The exact number of transfers of Russian oil that have taken place off Britain’s coast is not known. They are not illegal, and there is nothing stopping British companies from taking part, but they are an indication of huge holes in Western sanctions,” the investigators claim. They added that, as “global shipping is among the most opaque and least accountable industries in the world,” and many things are happening “beyond the reach of individual nation states,” the industry significantly undermines Western countries’ ability to put pressure on Russia. The G7 has said it is aware of the problem and plans to introduce a price cap which would allow Western nations to curb Moscow’s oil revenue. The bloc has also been trying to lure China and India, major buyers of Russian crude, into joining the deal.

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“..High-level Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members within the U.N. system helped create the SDGs..”

• UN, World Economic Forum Behind Global ‘War on Farmers’ (ET)

The escalating regulatory attack on agricultural producers from Holland and the United States to Sri Lanka and beyond is closely tied to the United Nations’ “Agenda 2030” Sustainable Development Goals and the U.N.’s partners at the World Economic Forum (WEF), numerous experts told The Epoch Times. Indeed, several of the U.N.’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are directly implicated in policies that are squeezing farmers, ranchers, and food supplies around the world. High-level Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members within the U.N. system helped create the SDGs and are currently helping lead the organization’s implementation of the global plan, The Epoch Times has previously documented.

If left unchecked, multiple experts said, the U.N.-backed sustainability policies on agriculture and food production would lead to economic devastation, shortages of critical goods, widespread famine, and a dramatic loss of individual freedoms. Already, millions of people worldwide are facing dangerous food shortages, and officials around the world say those are set to get worse as the year goes on. There is an agenda behind it all, experts told The Epoch Times. Even private land ownership is in the crosshairs, as global food production and the world economy are transformed to meet the global sustainability goals, U.N. documents reviewed by The Epoch Times show.

As explained by the U.N. on its SDG website, the goals adopted in 2015 “build on decades of work by countries and the U.N.” One of the earliest meetings defining the “sustainability” agenda was the U.N. Conference on Human Settlements known as Habitat I, which adopted the Vancouver Declaration. The agreement stated that “land cannot be treated as an ordinary asset controlled by individuals” and that private land ownership is “a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth, therefore contributes to social injustice.” “Public control of land use is therefore indispensable,” the U.N. declaration said, a prelude to the World Economic Forum’s now infamous “prediction” that by 2030, “you’ll own nothing.”

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He’s on a photoshoot.

• Zelensky’s ‘Elite Kraken neo-Nazi Battalion’ Destroyed – Russia (RT)

Russia’s armed forces destroyed the Ukrainian president’s ‘elite assault battalion’ and dozens of fighters from the notorious Kraken neo-Nazi formation, Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said on Saturday. Providing an update on the progress of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, Konashenkov said that on July 28, at the Krasnoarmeysk railway station in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the Russian military conducted a direct strike “with a high-precision air-based weapon” on a train transporting “an elite assault battalion of the 1st Separate Brigade of the President of Ukraine.” “More than 140 nationalists were killed on the spot. About 250 more militants received injuries of varying severity. All military equipment that was in the echelon was disabled,” Konashenkov stated.

The next day, in the area of Bogodukhov in Kharkov Region, Iskander missiles hit the hangars of a meat processing plant where the Kraken nationalist formation had set up a temporary base, according to the military spokesman. “More than 30 Nazis and 10 units of military equipment were destroyed.” Kraken calls itself a special reconnaissance and sabotage unit under the Ministry of Defense, operating separately from the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Moscow has accused the battalion of committing several war crimes since the beginning of the conflict. Also on July 29, Russian forces destroyed 30 Ukrainian servicemen, a warehouse with rockets for Grad combat vehicles, and military equipment in the settlement of Yasnobrodovka in the DPR.

In the area of Artemovsk, according to Konashenkov, Ukrainian losses amounted to 50 servicemen and eight units of military equipment. “In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, the following have been destroyed: 261 aircraft, 145 helicopters, 1,644 unmanned aerial vehicles, 361 anti-aircraft missile systems, 4,190 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 772 combat vehicles of multiple launch rocket systems, 3,217 field artillery guns and mortars, as well as 4,573 units of special military vehicles,” the general said.

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“..The levy should be accompanied by a relief package for lower-income households, otherwise the new charge could lead to a “social catastrophe..”

• Gas Levy Could Triple Household Heating Bills In Germany (ZH)

Germany plans to introduce a levy for all its gas consumers beginning in October as the government looks to avoid a wave of collapsing gas-importing and gas-trading companies amid record-high natural gas prices, a new bill seen by Reuters showed on Thursday. Russia is further reducing flows via Nord Stream this week, to just 20% of the pipeline’s capacity, days after restarting the link at 40% capacity after regular maintenance. The German government has already intervened to rescue energy group Uniper, Russia’s single largest gas buyer in Germany. Uniper—and many other German gas traders and suppliers—have been reeling from reduced Russian supply and soaring prices of non-Russian gas.

Germany and Uniper agreed last week on a $15 billion bailout package, including the German government taking a 30-percent stake in the company and making more liquidity and credit lines available to the group. Under the plans of the government, all consumers of gas, including households, will have to pay an additional levy, which will go to support Germany’s gas importing companies, which struggle with a lack of Russian gas and sky-high prices of non-Russian alternatives. The details of the bill are set to be announced next month. Households and industrial consumers are expected to pay the levy through September 2024, according to the draft Reuters has seen.

“One doesn’t know exactly how much (gas) will cost in November, but the bitter news is that it’s definitely a few hundred euros per household,” German Economy Minister Robert Habeck was quoted by Reuters as saying on Thursday. Marcel Fratzscher, president of DIW, the German Institute for Economic Research, told Düsseldorf’s Rheinischen Post newspaper that German households should prepare for at least tripled costs of heating on gas. The levy should be accompanied by a relief package for lower-income households, otherwise the new charge could lead to a “social catastrophe,” Fratzscher added.

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Karine Jean-Pierre is ridiculous.

• Biden Admin Quietly Builds More Border Wall Amid Migration Surge (JTN)

The Biden administration is quietly funding the completion of a segment of Trump’s border wall in Arizona amid an unprecedented influx of migrants crossing the nation’s border with Mexico. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas authorized Customs and Border Protection to fill gaps in existing barriers near the Morelos Dam outside of Yuma, Ariz., the New York Post reported.The department cited health and hazard concerns should migrants attempt to enter the U.S. via that route, saying the area “presents safety and life hazard risks for migrants attempting to cross into the United States where there is a risk of drownings and injuries from falls. This area also poses a life and safety risk to first responders and agents responding to incidents in this area.”


Some Republicans supported the decision to complete the portion of the border wall. “This may very well be the first time Biden has made a decision based on the actual facts, and the fact is an open border is a dangerous border,” Georgia Republican Rep. Austin Scott told Just the News. In a Thursday press conference, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre denied the administration was completing Trump’s border wall. “We’re not finishing the wall,” she said, per the Post. “We are cleaning up the mess the prior administration left behind in their failed attempt to build a wall.” Record numbers of migrants continue to surge across the southern border as the administration struggles to process the influx.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1553150314206957568

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“..Paxlovid can cause this issue by suppressing patients’ immune systems too early..” Say that again?!

• Covid Reinfection Rate With Paxlovid Is More Than 40%, Not 2% As Marketed (DM)

Joe Biden has been re-infected with COVID after taking an anti-viral drug that leaves patients running a 40 per cent risk of flare-up of the virus shortly afterwards. Taking Paxlovid leaves COVID sufferers in danger of testing positive for the virus again very quickly after clearing their initial infection. When Paxlovid came to market in December 2021, studies from Pfizer indicated that only 1-2 percent of patients who took the drug tested positive for Covid again shortly after finishing their dosage. But other experts say the rapid reinfection rate is closer to 40 per cent, and that Paxlovid can cause this issue by suppressing patients’ immune systems too early, meaning their own bodies are unable to get a handle on COVID.


Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a prominent cardiologist and professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University Hospital tweeted: ‘I think this was predictable.’ He continued: ‘The prior data suggesting ‘rebound’ Paxlovid positivity in the low single digits is outdates and with BA.5 is likely 20-40% or even higher.’ In a memo released by the White House, Dr. Kevin O’Connor said that the president will continue to isolate, just like he did when he first tested positive on July 21. Dr. O’Connor also said that the president would not be prescribed Paxlovid again.

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“Know what proteins are present in the vaccine..” Google translation.

• Italian Court Orders Analysis Of mRNA Vaccines (Muac)

An Italian court seized by an individual opposed to anti-Covid vaccination has ordered the laboratory analysis of messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, we learned this Saturday from the plaintiff’s lawyer. The court in Pesaro, near San Marino (east), has commissioned an expert to identify the contents of the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech messenger RNA anti-Covid vaccines . These analyzes will be carried out in September, said lawyer Nicoletta Morante. According to her, this is “a first in Italy, and perhaps in Europe”. The complainant, who has already contracted the disease in the past, is a fifty-year-old working in particular in education, and whose activity in Italy is subject to the vaccination obligation. Refractory, he is under administrative sanctions, according to Me Nicoletta Morante.


In addition to “he asks to establish whether vaccinating people cured of Covid satisfies the good administration of medicine”, he wants to know what proteins are present in these vaccines and whether they contain “excipients for non-human or dangerous use. for health,” according to a summary of the complaint. The messenger RNA treatment allows the cells to reproduce proteins present in the virus – the “antigens” – in order to accustom the immune system to recognize and neutralize it. In support of the civil complaint presented to Pesaro, the lawyer produced the opinion of a medical researcher, presented as an independent virologist, who believes that mRNA vaccines do not fulfill the protective function for which they are injected. . These vaccines, he writes in the complaint, “do not have the declared functional conformation” and the immune response they engender “is ineffective”.

Nanowires

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WEF Ardern

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 30 2022

Jul 302022
 
 July 30, 2022  Posted by at 8:27 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  54 Responses »


Claude Monet Impression, sunrise 1872

 

• Europe Hypnotized Into War Economy (Vilches)
• Russia Claims Ukraine Had A Reason To Kill Its Own POWs (RT)
• Russia and Ukraine Trade Blame Over Prison Blast (BBC)
• Ukraine and Russia Trade Blame For Attack Killing Mariupol Prisoners (WaPo)
• Ukraine Is ‘Shooting Blind’ – Top Official (RT)
• A Panicking Biden Administration Seeks Talks With Russia (MoA)
• West Prepares To Plunder Post-war Ukraine (MP)
• Gazprom Explains Gas Flow Reduction To EU (RT)
• American Diplomacy as a Tragic Drama (Michael Hudson)
• Playing Chicken with the Fates (Kunstler)
• David Lynch Tells ‘Zelensky’ To Have A Beer With Putin (RT)
• Trump Warns Something Worse Than Recession Is Coming (ET)
• Health Care Workers Settle COVID Shot Mandate for $10.3 Million (Bridle)
• Triathlete, 27, Becomes 5th Toronto Area Doctor To Die In July (TSun)
• Meta from 5th Most Valuable Stock to 11th In 10 Months. $647 Billion Lost (WS)

 

 

Read at least twice.

 

 

Winter is coming
https://twitter.com/i/status/1552787710187917312

 

 

Share of countries with 6%+ CPI

 

 

Bro Bridle
https://twitter.com/i/status/1552918465312342017

 

 

CannoneerMarine thread

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jorge Vilches has it exactly right. Europe is shedding infrastructure and deals for which they have zero replacement: “without which Europe as we know it will cease to exist.”

• Europe Hypnotized Into War Economy (Vilches)

Thirty two years ago Germans enthusiastically took down the Berlin wall. Now, captured by cunning Anglo-Saxon global elites, Germans are helping other European “useful idiots” to erect a much higher and thicker wall to cut themselves off from Russia leading them into a war economy. But as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has warned… “the approach has clearly failed — sanctions have backfired — and our car now has 4 four flat tires” … Question: vehicles don´t carry more than 2 spare tires on them, do they? So, one quick and innocent way to explain such unfathomable European miscalculation is to assume the EU leadership is immersed in a deep hypnotic trance and just blindly following US-UK instructions under Stoltenberg-Johnson war-mongering policies.

The supply lines that up to 2022 successfully linked Europe and Russia took decades of very hard work to develop. This now means that almost all of such over-abundant contracts necessarily have no effective substitute because (a) no other vendors have such high quality at low price plus decades of vetting and proven experience + (b) the un-replaceable short freight distance and shipping time from nearby Russia. So, by definition, both (a) + (b) mean that today no equivalent supply lines could ever be found no matter how much Europe tried simply because it would be either too soon or too far …and always too hard and too pricey. So short cuts will be taken and corners rounded-off…. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

The impact of the above cannot be overstated though as the now-broken Euro-Russian supply lines were essential for the Just-In-Time strategy that Europe and world markets still require and cannot wait years to develop and iron out. Logistics 101: proven experience and performance with excellent price plus quick delivery from nearby sources cannot be substituted fast enough, or possibly ever. On purpose, Europe´s worst enemies couldn´t have inflicted worse harm than what a US-UK mesmerized Europe (what else ?) is doing to itself. So EU sanctions are now cutting off dozens of key and highly varied Russian produce without which Europe as we know it will cease to exist. This involves foodstuffs, minerals of every sort, energy re oil & gas & coal & refined products thereof, etc., etc., plus key technologies and products from space rocket engines to nuclear fuels.

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It’s quite simple. If the attack was done with HIMARS, it’s the Ukraine. WaPo fantasizes that Russians transported HIMARS pieces from elsewhere to the crime scene, but Ukraine was shelling this site for months. Only now, they have the HIMARS to do it with.

• Elena Evdokimova @elenaevdokimov7· May 17!!
Ukrainian artillery has been shelling the DPR village of Elenovka with BM-21 Grad. It is the settlement, where the prisoners have been transported from Azovstal. Looks like the deliberate attempt to destroy their own surrendered units.

• Azov POWs are extremely high value assets to Kremlin propagandists. Capturing Azov neo-Nazis & putting them on trial to justify Russia’s invasion has been a top propaganda priority from start. It’d be bizarre for RU to bomb & eliminate their prized pr assets before show trials.

• So they’re really going with the theory that Russia shelled a prison on DPR territory to kill Azov militants whom they could have just as easily publicly hanged to the thunderous applause of virtually everyone in Russia & half of Ukraine?!

• Russia Claims Ukraine Had A Reason To Kill Its Own POWs (RT)

Kiev’s forces shelled a detention center holding Ukrainian POWs early Friday morning to “threaten” their own troops who may want to surrender, the Russian Defense Ministry has claimed. “A large number of Ukrainian servicemen are voluntarily laying down their arms, and know about the humane treatment of prisoners by the Russian side,” the ministry said, calling the attack “outrageous.” Authorities in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) said that the death toll in the missile strike has grown to 53, while 75 were wounded. DPR Deputy Information Minister Daniil Bezsonov posted a graphic video on his Telegram channel, which shows multiple mutilated and charred bodies inside the destroyed building. According to Russia’s Defense Ministry and local authorities, Ukrainian troops used US-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers to strike the detention center near the village of Yelenovka.


The ministry said the facility held members of Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, whose fighters surrendered to Russian and Donbass forces during the siege of the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol. The battalion is notorious because it includes fighters with nationalist and neo-Nazi views. Speaking to Russia’s TV Channel One, DPR head Denis Pushilin claimed that the Ukrainians “deliberately” targeted the detention center in order to kill Azov members who had been providing testimonies about possible war crimes by their commanders. The Ukrainian military released a statement on Friday, accusing Russian troops of shelling Yelenovka. Moscow destroyed the prison in order to pin the blame on Kiev, as well as to “hide the torture of prisoners and executions,”the statement alleged.

HIMARS
https://twitter.com/i/status/1552948606214225920

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“Russia accuses Ukraine of being willing to massacre its own prisoners of war, saying Kyiv insisted that prisoners from the Azov Battalion be housed in this particular warehouse.”

• Russia and Ukraine Trade Blame Over Prison Blast (BBC)

Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other for a rocket attack that killed dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war in the occupied part of Donetsk region. Ukraine says the prison was targeted by Russia in an effort to destroy evidence of torture and killing. For its part, Russia said the prison camp in Olenivka was hit by Ukrainian precision rockets. Unverified Russian video footage of the aftermath shows a tangle of wrecked bunk beds and badly charred bodies. An adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky said the scene looked like arson, and that a missile strike would have scattered the bodies. Those detained are said to have included members of the Azov battalion, who were the last defenders of Mariupol and whom Russia has sought to depict as neo-Nazis and war criminals.


Ukraine’s new Prosecutor-General Andriy Kostin said he had opened a war crimes investigation into the blast. His office added that it believed about 40 people were killed in the strike and 130 were injured. Daniil Bezsonov, a spokesperson for the Russian-backed separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, said the strike had been a “direct hit on a barracks holding prisoners” and the number killed might increase. Russia’s defence ministry said the strike had been carried out with US-made Himars artillery and it accused Ukraine of a “deliberately perpetrated” provocation. The ministry produced fragments of what it said were rockets fired by the Himars system.

HIMARS
https://twitter.com/i/status/1552992046402658311

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I include the BBC and WaPo takes mostly to illustrate how they have manipulated the perceived views.

The neo-nazis are now “the famed Azov Regiment” …“whom Russia has sought to depict as neo-Nazis and war criminals.” , and the HIMARS systems “are helping shift the tide of the war in Ukraine’s favor”.

• Ukraine and Russia Trade Blame For Attack Killing Mariupol Prisoners (WaPo)

Dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war from the famed Azov Regiment were killed Friday in a strike against their detention center in the Russian-occupied eastern region of Donbas, but it was unclear how the attack happened or who carried it out. At least 53 POWs were killed and 75 injured in the strike, according to Darya Morozova, an official for the Donetsk People’s Republic, the pro-Russian breakaway region where the prison is located. Ukraine and Russia traded blame for the strike, with each saying the other had carried it out to silence the prisoners. All or most of the POWs were members of the Azov Regiment who had surrendered when Russian troops captured the city of Mariupol in May after a two-month siege. Their fate had been the focus of fraught prisoner-exchange negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv.

Russia’s Defense Ministry accused Ukraine of carrying out the attack using U.S.-supplied HIMARS — High Mobility Artillery Rocket System — launchers, which are helping shift the tide of the war in Ukraine’s favor. The ministry framed the incident as “a bloody provocation” intended to discourage Ukrainian soldiers from surrendering. Russian media commentators suggested that Ukraine hit the detention center to stop the prisoners from providing testimony to interrogators about war crimes committed by Ukrainian forces. Ukraine denied any involvement and accused Russian forces of carrying out the attack, which it called a war crime. Ukraine did not conduct any shelling or artillery strikes Friday in the vicinity of Olenivka, the town where the detention center is located, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a post on its Facebook page.

Rather, the General Staff said, it was Russia that staged the attack and used it “to accuse Ukraine of committing war crimes as well as to cover up the torture and execution of prisoners.” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, in a posting on his Twitter account, called on the world to condemn what he called a “petrifying war crime” and a “brutal violation of international humanitarian law.” Ukrainian officials also questioned whether the incident had been caused by an artillery strike at all. Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, tweeted that explosives specialists who had examined images of the burned-out detention center believe that the destruction may have been caused by an explosion or fire “inside the building itself, rather than the result of shelling.”

Videos of the aftermath of the blast broadcast by Russian media outlets show a tangle of twisted, burned metal bunks inside a blackened warehouse-like structure with a large hole in its roof. Charred bodies and body parts are strewn around the wreckage Russian media outlets also posted photos showing what they claimed were fragments of HIMARS rockets found at the scene. It wasn’t immediately possible to verify that the shards had been fired by HIMARS launchers, but a senior Defense Department official in Washington pointed out that Russia could have gathered them from attacks elsewhere. “The Russians have a lot of pieces of HIMARS. The Ukrainians have been sending a lot of HIMARS their way,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to brief the media. He cautioned against reaching any conclusions on the limited information available.

Yelenovka

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“..Kiev needed about 50 HIMARS for effective defense, and a least 100 for “an effective counteroffensive.”

• Ukraine Is ‘Shooting Blind’ – Top Official (RT)

US-made HIMARS are “a good first step,” but Kiev needs the means to take accurate shots, a senior Ukrainian official has said The deliveries of US-made HIMARS rocket systems are “a good first step”, but the West did not provide Kiev with the necessary technologies to accurately hit targets, a high-ranking Ukrainian official complained in an interview published on Thursday. “HIMARS and heavy artillery are a good first step, but if we do not have the technology to find and correct targets for artillery strikes, then we’re just shooting blind,” Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser at the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, told Newsweek magazine.

Earlier this month, Vadim Skibitskiy, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Directorate of Intelligence at the Ministry of Defense, claimed that Kiev views the Crimean Peninsula as a legitimate target for long-range weaponry, including US-made M142 HIMARS and M270 MLRS, supplied by Western powers. His words were echoed by Alexey Arestovich, a top aide to President Vladimir Zelensky, who said that the Ukrainian military would target the Crimean Bridge as soon as Kiev obtains the capability to carry out such a strike. Russia pushed back on these threats, with Mikhail Sheremet, an MP who represents the region in the Russian parliament, warning Kiev that retaliation will be so harsh that Ukraine will never be able to recover from it. In his telling, the would-be strike will be followed by “a crushing blow to decision-making centers in Kiev, military infrastructure and arms-supply logistics channels.”

[..] On Friday, Russia’s Ministry of Defense and DPR authorities accused Kiev of having used HIMARS to target a prison holding POWs, killing 53 and wounding scores more. Ukraine rejected the claim and pinned the blame on Russian troops. According to the Pentagon, as of July 22, the US has provided Ukraine with 16 M142 HIMARS systems, while the UK has provided another three launchers capable of firing the same munitions. Earlier this month, Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov said that Kiev needed about 50 HIMARS for effective defense, and a least 100 for “an effective counteroffensive.”

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“..Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov was too busy to talk with Mr. Blinken now.”

They did talk yesterday. But Blinken is not very important.

• A Panicking Biden Administration Seeks Talks With Russia (MoA)

The New York Times reports of a potential prisoner swap between the U.S. and Russia: “[T]he Biden administration has proposed trading the merchant of death for the imprisoned basketball player as well as a former marine held in Russia on what are considered trumped-up espionage charges. In the harsh and cynical world of international diplomacy, prisoner exchanges are rarely pretty, but unpalatable choices are often the only choices on the table. Whether the swap would go through remained unclear. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken made the offer public in part to reassure the families of Brittney Griner, the basketball player, and Paul N. Whelan, the former marine, that the administration is doing all it can to free them. Russian officials, who have long sought the release of the arms trafficker Viktor Bout, confirmed the discussion on Thursday but said Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov was too busy to talk with Mr. Blinken now.”

Typically prisoner swaps are not talked about publicly before they happen: “Some veteran hostage negotiators were perplexed that Mr. Blinken made the offer public. “It is baffling why the U.S. would announce this proposal in the midst of the negotiations,” said Rob Saale, the former head of the F.B.I.-led Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell. “If you’re in sensitive negotiations why would you want to air this out publicly? It makes me wonder if the Russians haven’t already declined the deal.” Mr. Saale suspicion was justified as the Washington Post now reports:

“The Biden administration disclosed publicly that the United States had made “a substantial offer” to Russia to secure the release of two American prisoners because closed-door negotiations had stalled, an administration official said Thursday. The administration hopes public pressure will lead Moscow to engage in negotiations resulting in basketball star Brittney Griner and security consultant Paul Whelan being released from Russian prison, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations. U.S. officials say they have tried for weeks to broker the releases of Griner and Whelan. But the lack of progress, and the prospect of Griner soon facing conviction and sentencing on drug charges, prompted the administration this week to make the negotiations public.”

I do not understand why the administration had started such negotiations even before the Griner court case has been closed. In general such prisoners will only be pardoned and released to the other side after they have been sentenced. Anything else would raise accusations of executive interference in the judicial process. The Brittney Griner case, over admitted smuggling of cannabis oil, is still in court. The Russian government will obviously refrain from doing anything about her before the judicial process has ended. One suspects that the prisoner exchange is much more about Paul Whelan, who likely is a CIA asset.

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They’ll have to settle for what Russia leaves them. And that’s not what they counted on.

• West Prepares To Plunder Post-war Ukraine (MP)

While the United States and Europe flood Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars of weapons, using it as an anti-Russian proxy and pouring fuel on the fire of a brutal war that is devastating the country, they are also making plans to essentially plunder its post-war economy. Representatives of Western governments and corporations met in Switzerland this July to plan a series of harsh neoliberal policies to impose on post-war Ukraine, calling to cut labor laws, “open markets,” drop tariffs, deregulate industries, and “sell state-owned enterprises to private investors.” Ukraine has been destabilized by violence since 2014, when a US-sponsored coup d’etat overthrew its democratically elected government, setting off a civil war. That conflict dragged on until February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded the country, escalating into a new, even deadlier phase of the war.

The United States and European Union have sought to erase the history of foreign-sponsored civil war in Ukraine from 2014 to early 2022, acting as though the conflict began on February 24. But Washington had sent large sums of weapons to Ukraine and provided extensive military training and support over several years before Russia invaded. Meanwhile, starting in 2017, representatives of Western governments and corporations quietly held annual conferences in which they discussed ways to profit from the civil war they were fueling in Ukraine. In these meetings, Western political and business leaders outlined a series of aggressive right-wing reforms they hoped to impose on Ukraine, including widespread privatization of state-owned industries and deregulation of the economy.

On July 4 and 5, 2022, top officials from the US, EU, Britain, Japan, and South Korea met in Switzerland for a so-called “Ukraine Recovery Conference.” There, they planned Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction and performatively announced aid commitments – while salivating over a bonanza of potential contracts. New NATO candidates Finland and Sweden committed to assure reconstruction in Lugansk, roughly 48 hours after Russia and separatist forces announced the region had fallen fully under their control. But the Ukraine Recovery Conference was not new. It had been renamed to save the expense of a new acronym. In the previous five years, the group and its annual meetings were instead referred to as the “Ukraine Reform Conference” (URC).

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Siemens has eliminated no more than a quarter of the identified malfunctions at the Nord Stream turbines. Correspondence regarding the repair of engines will be made public via media.
– Deputy Chairman of Gazprom Markelov

• Gazprom Explains Gas Flow Reduction To EU (RT)

Gazprom has published some of its correspondence with Siemens as it blames the German company for a reduction in gas flow Russia had to reduce its gas flow to Europe through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline due to turbine malfunctions, Gazprom Deputy Chief Executive Vitaly Markelov said on Friday. The issues are due to Germany’s Siemens company – which produces the turbines – failing to fulfill its commitments, he told the Rossiya 24 TV Channel.
Siemens has so far eliminated only one-fourth of the total number of discovered malfunctions affecting its turbines, Markelov said. On Wednesday, the Nord Stream 1 operator Gascade reported that gas flow through the pipeline had been reduced to one-fifth of its maximum capacity. A day before that, Gazprom warned that it would have to stop the operation of its second Siemens turbine for an overhaul.

After the switch-off, gas flow through Nord Stream 1 was not expected to exceed 33 million cubic meters per day. The move came as the energy giant was still waiting for another turbine for the pipeline that was due to arrive from Germany after undergoing maintenance in Canada. “Our European partners accuse us of reducing gas supply to Europe without sufficient reasons. Yet, nothing can be further from the truth,”Markelov said, adding that it was the company’s Western partners who “fail to fulfill their obligations – contractual obligations – for the compressor station maintenance.” According to an earlier report by business daily Kommersant, several turbines at the Portovaya compressor station located on Russia’s Baltic coast are in need of servicing.

The current licensing agreement allows Siemens Energy to accept five more turbines for maintenance work before the end of 2024. “We call on our partners to resolve their own issues as soon as possible,” the deputy CEO said, adding that the gas supply to Europe would then “go back to normal in no time.”Markelov added that his company planned to release part of its correspondence with its Western partners to the public. Some documents were published hours later. The reduction of supply from Russia has led to a spike in gas prices in Europe, which rose by more than 20% to over $2,500 per thousand cubic meters on Wednesday. European leaders then blamed Russia for the gas price hikes.

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“What is euphemized as U.S.-style democracy is a financial oligarchy privatizing basic infrastructure, health and education.”

• American Diplomacy as a Tragic Drama (Michael Hudson)

As in a Greek tragedy whose protagonist brings about precisely the fate that he has sought to avoid, the US/NATO confrontation with Russia in Ukraine is achieving just the opposite of America’s aim of preventing China, Russia and their allies from acting independently of U.S. control over their trade and investment policy. Naming China as America’s main long-term adversary, the Biden Administration’s plan was to split Russia away from China and then cripple China’s own military and economic viability. But the effect of American diplomacy has been to drive Russia and China together, joining with Iran, India and other allies. For the first time since the Bandung Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in 1955, a critical mass is able to be mutually self-sufficient to start the process of achieving independence from Dollar Diplomacy.

Confronted with China’s industrial prosperity based on self-financed public investment in socialized markets, U.S. officials acknowledge that resolving this fight will take a number of decades to play out. Arming a proxy Ukrainian regime is merely an opening move in turning Cold War 2 (and potentially/or indeed World War III) into a fight to divide the world into allies and enemies with regard to whether governments or the financial sector will plan the world economy and society. What is euphemized as U.S.-style democracy is a financial oligarchy privatizing basic infrastructure, health and education. The alternative is what President Biden calls autocracy, a hostile label for governments strong enough to block a global rent-seeking oligarchy from taking control. China is deemed autocratic for providing basic needs at subsidized prices instead of charging whatever the market can bear.

Making its mixed economy lower-cost is called “market manipulation,” as if that is a bad thing that was not done by the United States, Germany and every other industrial nation during their economic takeoff in the 19th and early 20th century. Clausewitz popularized the axiom that war is an extension of national interests – mainly economic. The United States views its economic interest to lie in seeking to spread its neoliberal ideology globally. The evangelistic aim is to financialize and privatize economies by shifting planning away from national governments to a cosmopolitan financial sector. There would be little need for politics in such a world. Economic planning would shift from political capitals to financial centers, from Washington to Wall Street, with satellites in the City of London, the Paris Bourse, Frankfurt and Tokyo.

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“Turns out that Agent Brian Auten was also involved in favorably vetting the Steele Dossier when it was used to justify FISA court warrant..”

• Playing Chicken with the Fates (Kunstler)

How is it that the Hunter Biden laptop, stuffed with incriminating memoranda of bribery, treason, and diverse felonies, and in the FBI’s possession for two-and-a-half years now, just sat gathering dust in some sub-sub-basement cubby-hole — while “Joe Biden,” the putative president (or, more likely, the enigmatic claque behind him) was allowed to carry out a demolition of America’s economy and culture? The answer is one Brian Auten, FBI Senior Analyst, who engineered a scheme to label Hunter’s laptop “Russian disinformation,” which allowed FBI Director Christopher Wray to throw a switch that turned off any further inquiry in the matter beginning in August before the 2020 presidential election.


In turn, other senior FBI officials had all the documents pertaining to the decision process on that matter locked up in a special file that would never see the light of day. Auten’s action led to the release of a letter signed by “fifty former intelligence officials” labeling the laptop as a Russian disinfo op — which became the basis for social media to conspire to censor any discussion of the laptop and its contents. And so it was that a political puppet deeply in the pay of foreign interests got shoehorned into the White House. Well, that and widespread election fraud. Turns out that Agent Brian Auten was also involved in favorably vetting the Steele Dossier when it was used to justify FISA court warrants against figures in Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, part of the RussiaGate operation that disordered and disabled President Trump’s entire four-year term. Well now you know. Perhaps Special Counsel John Durham knows this, too. (If he didn’t before, he must now.)

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Lynch is not as crazy as Stephen King.

• David Lynch Tells ‘Zelensky’ To Have A Beer With Putin (RT)

Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky should have a beer with his Russian counterpart Putin and talk peace, American filmmaker David Lynch insisted in an “interview” with Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus. The first fragment of the interview was published on the Russian video hosting website RuTube on Thursday, while the full-length version is expected to be released in the coming days.= Speaking to whom he thought was the Ukrainian leader, the Twin Peaks director insisted that the only way to end the ongoing military conflict between Russia and Ukraine was through peace. Lynch said it was his “job”to inform Zelensky about “technologies” that exist for achieving a lasting peace and that these methods were far more effective than “war and murder,” referring to letters he had previously sent to the Ukrainian president.

“Now is the time for peace, and the technology to achieve true peace exists. You need to use them and form such groups of experts on a peaceful settlement in the interests of Ukraine,”he noted. Vovan and Lexus, posing as Zelensky, asked the filmmaker whether he thought there should be direct talks with Putin in the interest of reaching peace, to which Lynch emphatically replied “Yes!”, stressing that there were a number of ways to do so, such as an ordinary telephone call or a virtual dinner with a couple of beers. Lynch insisted that during the conversation over beer and dinner the two presidents could come to a mutual realization that they are both human beings and would be able to discuss the problems between their countries.

“Think peace, think friendship” urged the filmmaker, calling on Zelensky to “stop” the current crisis, talk to Putin, and think about how to get along and help each other. The conversation with Lynch comes a week after the duo’s prank with American horror writer Stephen King, whom they also tricked into believing he was talking with Zelensky. During the call, King praised WWII-era Nazi collaborator and war criminal Stepan Bandera as a “great man” and compared him to US founding fathers Washington and Jefferson. The writer later admitted that he was pranked and claimed that he didn’t actually know who Bandera was or what he had done.

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Depression.

• Trump Warns Something Worse Than Recession Is Coming (ET)

Former President Donald Trump has warned that America’s economy is on track for a bigger disaster than a recession, with his remarks coming shortly before government statistics showed GDP printing negative for the second consecutive quarter, which is a rule-of-thumb definition for a recession. “Where we’re going now could be a very bad place,” Trump said at a rally in Arizona last week. “We got to get this act in order, we have to get this country going, or we’re going to have a serious problem.” The former president singled out the collapse in Americans’ real wages, a historically depressed labor force participation rate, and the Democrat push for the Green New Deal that he said would crush economic growth.

“Not recession. Recession’s a nice word. We’re going to have a much bigger problem than recession. We’ll have a depression,” the former president said. Trump’s remarks came several days before the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released data showing that real U.S. GDP fell by an annualized 0.9 percent in the second quarter after contracting 1.6 percent in the first quarter. Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth are a common rule-of-thumb definition for a recession, although recessions in the United States are officially declared by a committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) using a broader definition than the two-quarter rule.

[..] In his remarks, Trump also took aim at President Joe Biden’s handling of the economy, blaming him for soaring inflation. “Biden created the worst inflation in 47 years. We’re at 9.1 percent, but the actual number is much, much higher than that,” Trump said. While the former president didn’t provide his own estimate for the true rate of inflation, an alternative CPI inflation gauge developed by economist John Williams, calculated according to the same methodology used by the U.S. government in the 1980s, puts the figure at 17.3 percent, a 75-year high. Trump also said that persistently high inflation combined with an economic slowdown has put the country “on the verge of a devastating” spell of stagflation, which is a combination of accelerating prices and slowing economic growth.

Inflation is “going higher and higher all the time,” Trump said, adding that it’s “costing families nearly $6,000 a year, bigger than any tax increase ever proposed other than the tax increase that they want to propose right now.” In Trump’s first full month in office in February 2017, the headline Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation gauge came in at 2.8 percent in annual terms. While the CPI measure fluctuated during his tenure, the highest it ever reached was 2.9 percent in July 2018, while in his final month in office, January 2021, inflation clocked in at 1.4 percent. Under Biden, inflation has climbed steadily, soaring 9.1 percent year-over-year in June 2022, a figure not seen in more than 40 years.

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$25,000 each. Hmm. Still, this may spread like wildfirre.

• Health Care Workers Settle COVID Shot Mandate for $10.3 Million (Bridle)

Today, Liberty Counsel settled the nation’s first classwide lawsuit for health care workers over a COVID shot mandate, for more than $10.3 million. The class action settlement against NorthShore University HealthSystem is on behalf of more than 500 current and former health care workers who were unlawfully discriminated against and denied religious exemptions from the COVID shot mandate. The agreed upon settlement was filed today in the federal Northern District Court of Illinois. As a result of the settlement, NorthShore will pay $10,337,500 to compensate these health care employees who were victims of religious discrimination, and who were punished for their religious beliefs against taking an injection associated with aborted fetal cells.

This is a historic, first-of-its-kind class action settlement against a private employer who unlawfully denied hundreds of religious exemption requests to COVID-19 shots. The settlement must be approved by the federal District Court. Employees of NorthShore who were denied religious exemptions will receive notice of the settlement, and will have an opportunity to comment, object, request to opt out, or submit a claim form for payment out of the settlement fund, all in accordance with deadlines that will be set by the court. As part of the settlement agreement, NorthShore will also change its unlawful “no religious accommodations” policy to make it consistent with the law, and to provide religious accommodations in every position across its numerous facilities. No position in any NorthShore facility will be considered off limits to unvaccinated employees with approved religious exemptions.

In addition, employees who were terminated because of their religious refusal of the COVID shots will be eligible for rehire if they apply within 90 days of final settlement approval by the court, and they will retain their previous seniority level. The amount of individual payments from the settlement fund will depend on how many valid and timely claim forms are submitted during the claims process. If the settlement is approved by the court and all or nearly all of the affected employees file valid and timely claims, it is estimated that employees who were terminated or resigned because of their religious refusal of a COVID shot will receive approximately $25,000 each, and employees to were forced to accept a COVID shot against their religious beliefs to keep their jobs will receive approximately $3,000 each.

The 13 health care workers who are lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit will receive an additional approximate payment of $20,000 each for their important role in bringing this lawsuit and representing the class of NorthShore health care workers. Liberty Counsel will receive 20 percent of the settlement sum, which equals $2,061,500, as payment for the significant attorney’s fees and costs it has required to undertake to sue NorthShore and hold it accountable for its actions. This amount is far less than the typical 33 percent usually requested by attorneys in class action litigation.

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Not sure if No. 6 is also from Toronto.

“In all four cases, their hospitals made it clear their deaths “were not related to the COVID-19 vaccine.” Made it clear how? Where are the autopsies?

• Triathlete, 27, Becomes 5th Toronto Area Doctor To Die In July (TSun)

The fifth GTA doctor to die in July “radiated positivity” and “lived a vibrant and active life.” But what the world lost in the sudden and tragic death of Dr. Candace Nayman was a woman who had dedicated her life to the health of children. The 27-year-old, who was a resident doctor at McMaster Children Hospital in Hamilton, collapsed while swimming as she competed in a triathlon on Sunday. She subsequently died on Thursday. Friends kept an around-the-clock prayer vigil for the much-loved Nayman who lost her fight and, at her request, had her organs donated to help others.She was “the loving daughter of Nicole and Gary, and the sister of Lauren, her twin, and Maurice, as well as partner to Seth Kadish,” reads an obituary on the Benjamin’s Park Memorial Chapel.

A triathlete, Dr. Nayman routinely commented on social media about her love of training and racing. “Candace Brooke Nayman passed away Thursday, July 28, 2022 competing and doing what she loved,” her obituary states. Family, friends and peers gathered Thursday for her funeral, which has not only shaken her family but rocked the already shaken medicine fraternity. “Everyone in the pediatrics department here at McMaster University and McMaster Children’s Hospital is devastated by the loss of Dr. Candace Nayman.” said Dr. Angelo Mikrogianakis, the chief of pediatrics at Hamilton Health Sciences’ McMaster Children’s Hospital and St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton. “Candace was an aspiring pediatrician who exemplified hard work, radiated positivity, lived a vibrant and active life, and had a positive impact on her fellow residents, colleagues, faculty and patients.”


[..] Four other local doctors have died this summer. Trillium Partners staff physicians Dr. Jakub Sawicki, Dr. Stephen McKenzie and Dr. Lorne Segall died last week, just days after the tragic death of North York General Hospital’s Dr. Paul Hannam, an Olympian who died during a run at 50 years old. In all four cases, their hospitals made it clear their deaths “were not related to the COVID-19 vaccine.”

6 Canadian doctors

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Zuckerbucks.

• Meta from 5th Most Valuable Stock to 11th In 10 Months. $647 Billion Lost (WS)

Despite the rally on Friday, the shares of Meta Platforms lost more ground, falling 1.0% to $159.10 at the close, and more after-hours, same price where the shares had first been on July 13, 2017. Five years of nothing, with an exciting roller-coaster-ride in between. Four years and two months up, 10 months down. Since the peak in September 2021, the shares have plunged 59%. Meta still doesn’t qualify for my growing list of Imploded Stocks, for which the minimum requirement is a 70% plunge from the peak, but it’s working hard to get there (data via YCharts):

The market value plunged from $1.077 trillion in September to $431 billion today. So, $647 billion have vanished in 10 months. This is no biggie obviously because people who bought the shares at the IPO for $38, and thereby participated in the biggest tech IPO in US history at the time, still made 318% at today’s price, and the shares could fall another 50%, and they’d still make a ton of money. Those who bought in 2021, OK, win some, lose some. And this dump in market cap caused something else to happen over the past two days: While other stocks surged, Meta fell out of the top 10 most valuable companies in the US, into 11th place, behind Visa (data via YCharts):

Back in September 2021, Meta, with a market cap of $1.077 trillion, was the fifth most valuable stock by market cap in the US. Easy come, easy go (data via YCharts):

Despite the summer rally, the Nasdaq composite is still down 23.6% from the peak in November, and lots of stocks slid, skidded, and plunged, and this re-arranged the deck a little among the top 11, but left the top four in the same position. There are a host of reasons for Meta’s plunge, including that the shares should have never shot up in this crazy manner in the first place. But hey, this was the pandemic, the Fed was printing money hand over fist, the Fed’s interest rates were near 0% even as inflation had begun to rage, and nothing mattered, everything shot higher. To the moon!

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Tamara Lich

 

 

Dutch farmer

 

 

Holland

 

 

It would be good if the farmers, or someone else, can keep the WEF forum out of Holland.

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Debt Rattle July 29 2022

Jul 292022
 
 July 29, 2022  Posted by at 8:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  38 Responses »


Odilon Redon Sunset n.d.

 

• Ukraine Shells Prison Holding POWs – Donbass Official (RT)
• US Should Not Fund Ukrainian ‘Blacklist’ (Scott Ritter)
• Provoking Beijing (MoA)
• UK Official Says Nuclear War Threat Higher Than During the Cold War (Antiwar)
• US GDP Drops 0.9 Percent In Second Quarter (PM)
• ‘Horror Chart’ Suggests Germany On Brink Of Huge Energy Crisis (RT)
• Hanover Becomes First German City To Ban Hot Water In Public Buildings (DM)
• EU Ban On Russian Gas ‘Impossible’ – Austria (RT)
• EU Gas Solidarity Complicated By Lack Of Fuel Sharing Deals (R.)
• Worst Is Yet To Come From Trudeau Liberals (Jordan Peterson)
• Bill Barr To Merrick Garland: Appoint A Special Counsel Already (Fed.)
• Joe Biden Met With 14 Of His Son’s Business Associates (RT)
• They Can’t Let Him Back In (Michael Anton)

 

 

 

 

Never forget

 

 

 

 

Don’t miss O’Looney


https://twitter.com/i/status/1552438998009790465

 

 

Hesitancy

 

 

 

 

Breaking, not confirmed.

• Ukraine Shells Prison Holding POWs – Donbass Official (RT)

Dozens were killed after Ukrainian forces struck a jail with POWs in Donbass, local official says Ukrainian troops shelled a prison housing POWs in Yelenovka early Friday morning, Donetsk People’s Republic Deputy Information Minister Daniil Bezsonov wrote on his Telegram channel. “There was a direct hit at a building with prisoners,” Bezsonov wrote. “The results as of now: 40 killed, 130 wounded.” The minister added that he believes Kiev used US-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers for the attack. The facility reportedly housed Ukrainian fighters captured by Russian and allied forces during the siege of the Azovstal steel mill in the city of Mariupol.

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“Many on this list are citizens of the United States, some of whom, like me, have taken an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

• US Should Not Fund Ukrainian ‘Blacklist’ (Scott Ritter)

Dear Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, and Congressman Tonko, My name is Scott Ritter. I am a New York State resident, currently residing in the Town of Bethlehem, in Albany County. My family and I have lived at our current address since July 2000. I am writing to you in your collective role as my elected representatives in the United States Congress, specifically regarding H.R. 7691, the Additional Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2022, which became Public Law 117-128 on May 21, 2022, which each of you voted in favor of. I draw your attention to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, specifically the following language: “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

By enacting Public Law 117-128, you appear to have abrogated your Constitutional responsibilities in so far as you may have, in fact, made a law which both abridges the freedom of speech and a free press by enabling the Government of Ukraine, through the use of US taxpayer dollars appropriated under Public Law 117-128, to publish a “blacklist” singling out US citizens as “Russian propagandists” for exercising their Constitutional rights pertaining to free speech and a free press. The “blacklist” in question was published on July 14, 2022, by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation, and consists of a list of politicians, academics, and activists who the Center claims promote “Russian propaganda.” Many on this list are citizens of the United States, some of whom, like me, have taken an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.

While the specific criterion used by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation for selecting persons for inclusion on this “blacklist” is not known, in my case the Ukrainian government appears to have taken umbrage against my articulation of Ukraine as a NATO base of operations, my analysis of the Bucha Massacre in early March which assigns responsibility to Ukrainian security services, and my description of the current Ukraine-Russian conflict as a “proxy conflict” being waged on behalf of the United States. Whether one agrees with my positions on these and other matters pertaining to Ukraine is not the point; by articulating my views, I am exercising my rights under the Constitution of the United States. While the Government of Ukraine is free to express its opinions regarding my viewpoints as it sees fit, the Government of the United States, by using funds appropriated by the United States Congress, should not facilitate the actions of the Government of Ukraine in this regard.

[..] As a constituent whose name has appeared on a so-called “blacklist” published by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation, my personal and professional life has been, and continues to be, detrimentally impacted by the chilling effect of being labeled a “Russian propagandist” for simply exercising the right to free speech guaranteed by the United States Constitution. Moreover, Ukraine has a history of converting “blacklists” of this nature into “kill lists”, where those who speak out against the policies of the Ukrainian government are being murdered or threatened with violence.

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Nancy missed the past 30 years.

• Provoking Beijing (MoA)

Yves Smith is aghast about the U.S. eyepoking of China: “The neocons above all seem unable to process that the days of US hegemony are over. It boggles the mind that they are not just eyepoking but escalating greatly with China via the still-planned Pelosi visit to Taiwan in August. As we’ll explain, China is fully cognizant of the fact that Pelosi is number two in line after Harris should something happen to the increasingly addle-brained Biden. And they don’t buy for a second that Pelosi is operating without the explicit approval of the Administration. Note that it’s entirely possible that Pelosi revived her Taiwan trip plan (recall she put it off after coming down with Covid) all on her own. The Pentagon gave her a face-saving out by saying they didn’t recommend it. China, which is routinely screechy when it is upset about what it perceives to be foreign transgressions, has managed to find new registers in its objections the proposed Pelosi visit.”

Pelosi is not only number two in line but has been hostile to the Chinese government for more than 30 years. In 1991 she and two other members of Congress made a stunt on the Tiananmen square where two years before protests had taken place. The multiday protest in the square had ended peacefully. But outside of the square bloody riots took place over several days and nights during which hundreds of soldiers and rioters got killed. The protest and riots had been a U.S. instigated color revolution attempt with the father of the color revolution concept, Gene Sharp, being personally in the Beijing and consulting the protest leaders. After the attempt had failed the CIA organized the exit of hundreds of protest leaders and agents to Hong Kong where they formed the base for the 2020 color revolution attempt there. Lots of those ‘activists’ have now moved to Taiwan.

In 1991 Pelosi and two congressmen unfolded a banner on Tianamen in front of the international media that said: “To those who died for democracy in China.” Police immediately intervened and ended the stunt. The stunt had a positive echo in U.S. media (Note: The video title says it is 1989 but the announcer says it is two years later). Pelosi may think she can recreate another positive media echo by traveling to Taiwan. But the China of 2022 is no longer the China of 1991. It is now the world’s biggest economy and its military force rivals the one the U.S. has. It no longer condones eyepoking and ‘human rights’ stunts. It knows a U.S. provocation when it sees one. In the 1950s and 60s the U.S. financed terrorism in Tibet. In 1989 it coached and financed a bloody color revolution attempt in Beijing. In the 1990s it brought Islamist terrorism to Xinjiang. In this century the U.S. instigated several periods of riots in Hong Kong.

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“..during the Cold War, there was an “understanding of the Soviet doctrine and capabilities — and vice versa” because they kept more negotiation channels open.”

• UK Official Says Nuclear War Threat Higher Than During the Cold War (Antiwar)

British National Security Advisor Stephen Lovegrove warned on Thursday that there is a greater risk of nuclear war today than there was during the Cold War due to a lack of communication channels. “The Cold War’s two monolithic blocks of the USSR (Soviet Union) and NATO — though not without alarming bumps — were able to reach a shared understanding of doctrine that is today absent,” Lovegrove said. He said during the Cold War, there was an “understanding of the Soviet doctrine and capabilities — and vice versa” because they kept more negotiation channels open. “This gave us both a higher level of confidence that we would not miscalculate our way into nuclear war,” Lovegrove said.

“Today we do not have the same foundations with others who may threaten us in future — particularly with China,” he said. Today, there is only one remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the US and Russia, the New START, which limits the deployment of nuclear warheads, bombers, submarines, and missiles. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the US has abandoned diplomacy with Moscow, and US officials have said they can’t imagine negotiating a replacement of New START before it expires in 2026. The US has no nuclear arms control treaties with China, which has a vastly smaller arsenal than the US or Russia. Current estimates put Beijing’s arsenal at around 350 warheads, while the US has 5,550 and Russia has about 6,200.

During the Trump administration, the US tried to get Beijing to take part in trilateral arms control talks with Moscow and Washington. But China has little interest in such talks while its arsenal is so much smaller. If the US were serious about getting China involved, it would need to work with Russia to significantly reduce its stockpiles. Besides the lack of communication, the risk of nuclear war is significantly higher today because the US is funding a war on Russia’s border and helping Ukraine with intelligence to carry out attacks on Russian forces. The US is also stoking tensions with China by deploying more military forces in the South China Sea and increasing support for Taiwan.

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What Is A Woman? – Part 2

• US GDP Drops 0.9 Percent In Second Quarter (PM)

The Bureau of Economic Analysis has released their report on the second quarter GDP. “Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 0.9 percent in the second quarter of 2022, according to the ‘advance’ estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP decreased 1.6 percent.” By standard definitions, two consecutive quarters of declining GDP growth indicates that a nation is in an economic recession. President Joe Biden said on Monday that the US is not facing a recession. “We’re not going to be in a recession, in my view,” Biden said. “The unemployment rate is still one of the lowest we’ve had in history. It’s in the 3.6 percent area. We still find ourselves with people investing.”

“The decrease in real GDP reflected decreases in private inventory investment, residential fixed investment, federal government spending, state and local government spending, and nonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by increases in exports and personal consumption expenditures (PCE). Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased,” the BEA reports. The White House last week adjusted the definition of recession to distinctly not mean that two consecutive quarters of declining GDP growth is a recession. “While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle,” the White House wrote.


“Instead, both official determinations of recessions and economists’ assessment of economic activity are based on a holistic look at the data—including the labor market, consumer and business spending, industrial production, and incomes. Based on these data, it is unlikely that the decline in GDP in the first quarter of this year—even if followed by another GDP decline in the second quarter—indicates a recession,” the White House said.

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Zschaepitz : “This horror chart suggests that #Germany is heading for a huge energy crisis. Not only are gas prices near record highs, but electricity prices in particular are signaling stress.”

• ‘Horror Chart’ Suggests Germany On Brink Of Huge Energy Crisis (RT)

Germany is heading for a “huge energy crisis,” a senior editor at one of the country’s most influential newspapers, Die Welt, warned on Wednesday. “Not only [are] gas prices near record highs, but electricity prices in particular are signaling stress,” Holger Zschaepitz, a senior editor on the daily’s economic and financial desk, wrote on Twitter. In what he called a “horror chart” that he posted with his tweet, Zschaepitz showed that the price of electricity had reached almost €400 per megawatt hour on the energy exchange, or €0.40 per kilowatt-hour. If consumer prices reflected such market rates, Germans would be paying around €0.80 per kilowatt-hour rather than the current €0.30, including taxes and fees. However, such a sharp increase would be socially explosive, Zschaepitz suggests.

Meanwhile, in such a case energy companies would no longer be able to produce competitively, he adds. Electricity prices in Germany are influenced by the price of natural gas, which is the source of 15% of the country’s electricity, according to official statistics. Gas prices have nearly quadrupled this year, primarily due to shrinking flow from Russia, the continent’s major supplier. The price crunch has already led to a partial nationalization of one of Germany’s largest energy supply companies. The German government announced last week it would acquire a 30% stake in Uniper after the company asked for a bailout, citing “extreme financial pressure” caused by the reduced Russian natural gas deliveries.

The curtailment of gas flows meant that rather than being able to fully rely on its long-term contracts at a fixed price, Uniper has recently been forced to buy gas on the spot market at a much higher price to make up for shortages. According to a recent report by Bloomberg, European energy firms are racking up debt to cover the soaring costs, with their liabilities having reportedly reached over $1.7 trillion.

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Shoot. Foot.

• Hanover Becomes First German City To Ban Hot Water In Public Buildings (DM)

The Germany city of Hanover has become the first big city in Europe to ban hot water and central heating in public buildings in response to Vladimir Putin’s weaponizing of gas supplies. The drastic step comes as Germans have been told to expect sky high electricity bills and sweeping gas rationing measures that will affect their day-to-day lives. In a sign of things to come, Hanover, the capital of Lower Saxony in the north west of the country, will cut off the hot water in public buildings, swimming pools, sports halls and gyms. Other desperate gas-saving measures include switching off public fountains and blacking out night-time lights on major buildings such as the town hall and museums. The city’s mayor, Belit Onay, spoke of an ‘imminent gas shortage’ that meant they had to reduce the city’s energy consumption by 15 per cent.


The plans call for shutting off heating within public buildings between April and September each year, and thermostats set at just 20C (68F) for the rest of the year, although there will be some exemptions. There will also be a ban on portable air conditioners, heaters and radiators among the general populace as the average German begins to pay a price for standing up to the Russian dictator. The panic among European states – especially Germany – will likely come as music to Putin’s ears, as he is seen to be cutting energy supplies in retaliation for countries that have supported Ukraine after he invaded the country. Germany, like most of Europe, has been enjoying a hot summer which should soften the blow of the cold showers, but public officials are introducing the measures now in fear of what awaits them when the season turns.

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“..the German industry also depends on it, and if it collapses, the Austrian industry will also collapse, and we will face mass unemployment..”

• EU Ban On Russian Gas ‘Impossible’ – Austria (RT)

The European Union cannot ban Russian natural gas, as the step would harm EU members more than Russia, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer warned on Thursday, as cited by Austrian media outlets. Chancellor Nehammer made the comments during a visit to Vienna by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. “Sanctions must hit those against whom they are directed more, but not harm those who decide them,” Nehammer told the Austria Press Agency. A ban on gas supplies from Russia – an idea that has been circulating within the EU since Moscow started its military operation in Ukraine – would lead to a domino effect in Europe, the Austrian chancellor suggested.

“Austria’s position is that an embargo on gas is impossible. Not only because Austria depends on Russian gas, the German industry also depends on it, and if it collapses, the Austrian industry will also collapse, and we will face mass unemployment,” Nehammer said, as cited by Lenta.ru. Viktor Orban criticized the gas rationing plan approved by the EU – which aims to reduce gas consumption within the bloc by 15% from August to March next year – earlier this week. According to the Hungarian PM, the mandatory rationing of natural gas is “the first sign of a war economy,” and warned of a possible recession and unemployment in Europe.

Europe has seen reduced gas flow from Russia – a major supplier – due to technical issues at a major pipeline. Nord Stream 1 is currently operating at 20% capacity. The reduction comes as the continent is trying to top up its gas reserves ahead of the heating season. The EU pledged earlier this year to end the bloc’s reliance on Russian energy. A partial embargo on oil was agreed upon, but several rounds of sanctions have not included similar restrictions on Russian natural gas.

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The EU is made up of bureaucrats, so of course pratical things do not get done.

• EU Gas Solidarity Complicated By Lack Of Fuel Sharing Deals (R.)

The European Union clinched a deal this week to cope with a gas supply crisis, but to make it work member states need to establish bilateral pacts to share gas and, right now, most have no such agreement in place. Only six such deals have been secured, leaving most of the EU’s 27 countries without firm terms on how and when they would share gas in a supply crunch, or the financial compensation they would give or get for doing so. “[Bilateral deals] are really … the only thing that will hold at the end of the day if there is a real supply crisis,” Christian Egenhofer, associate senior research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies, said. “They organise the legal stuff, the compensation, the financial but also the infrastructure constraints,” he said.

Fearing Russia may completely halt gas flows, EU countries agreed on Tuesday to curb their gas use by 15% over winter, to fill storage and free up fuel to share around in a supply crisis. But it is up to individual countries to sort out how that sharing of fuel will happen in practice. EU laws oblige member states to send gas to a neighboring state whose households or essential services like hospitals face a severe shortage. To make that happen, governments arrange bilateral deals. However, just eight countries are covered by the six agreements so far – including between Germany and Austria, Estonia and Latvia, and Italy and Slovenia. “This is not sufficient,” EU energy policy chief Kadri Simson said last month, urging countries to arrange more.

A handful of countries are negotiating new two-way agreements, government officials said. A German-Czech deal is due to be signed by winter, and Germany is working on further agreements with Poland and Italy, its economy ministry said. But some countries heavily reliant on Russian gas – such as landlocked Hungary, which opposed this week’s deal – have none. Italy and France are the EU’s biggest gas users after economic powerhouse Germany. Italy has just one bilateral deal on emergency gas sharing and France has none. A senior Italian official said the country was negotiating a deal with Greece on gas storage.

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“I simply cannot believe that this absolute failure of economic policy is now being trumpeted as a positive accomplishment.

• Worst Is Yet To Come From Trudeau Liberals (Jordan Peterson)

I have had the great privilege of travelling to 40 American cities in just about as many states and to 15 European countries in the last four months, in the waning days of the great COVID panic, and I have learned many things about our great and self-conscious nation. First: I have not travelled anywhere else where the citizens and the government are more neurotically “concerned” about the pandemic. It may have escaped Canadians’ notice, but virtually nowhere else in the developed world is it now required to wear a mask, as is still mandatory in many of Canada’s airports and on flights out of our benighted country. There is absolutely no excuse for this, except the punitive self-righteousness of the Trudeau Liberals.

What else might you expect, however, from a government that also includes Chrystia Freeland, a deputy prime minister who has bragged about her colleagues’ appalling economic performance, claiming that it is actually good for Canadians to empty their wallets at the gas pumps, because of its implications in fighting the “climate emergency.” I simply cannot believe that this absolute failure of economic policy is now being trumpeted as a positive accomplishment. Here’s a hint for you saintly progressives: if you cared about the poor (the real poor, not the hypothetical poor you are hypothetically saving in the future), you would seek to drive down the cost of energy — energy that is precisely equivalent to work and, therefore, to the wealth that ameliorates poverty.

Second: it is almost impossible to overstate the degree to which Canada’s international reputation has been damaged by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The Americans I have talked to (including people very well-placed politically on the Democratic and Republican fronts alike) listen in disbelief when I recount the claim brought forth by the Trudeau Liberals: that the trucker Freedom Convoy was financed by Americans hell-bent on bringing about a Jan. 6-style insurrection in Ottawa. Who would benefit from that, even in principle? Even if the Americans (Republican MAGA-types, say) cared about us — which they don’t — why in the world would they want to destabilize Canadian democracy? What’s the motive, to justify the crime? There is none. Even the American Democrats think that idea is insane.

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Barr 180º.

• Bill Barr To Merrick Garland: Appoint A Special Counsel Already (Fed.)

Recent developments warrant the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, former Attorney General William Barr says. “[I]ntervening events, especially recent reports about FBI whistleblowers and the possible reach of the investigation, warrant adding the protections of special counsel status to assure that key decisions are made independently without political ‘favor,’” Barr told The Federalist. President Joe Biden’s son Hunter has been under federal investigation since 2018 for issues related to his foreign business practices, including obtaining investments and board positions from politically compromised figures in communist China and other trouble spots. Multiple U.S. attorney’s offices were tasked with components of the investigation, with the Delaware office being the lead.

Hunter Biden’s problems became much more public with the news that he had left a laptop full of incriminating information at a computer repair store in Delaware. That news was then suppressed by Democrat-allied intelligence officials falsely claiming it was Russian disinformation. This week, multiple FBI whistleblowers, including those in senior positions, accused FBI headquarters of “improperly discredit[ing] and falsely claim[ing] that derogatory information about Biden’s activities was disinformation, causing investigative activity and sourcing to be shut down,” according to a Monday letter from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. That fact, as well as concern over the investigation’s complexity and scope, convinced the former attorney general of the need for a special counsel.

By highlighting the apparent breadth of the still-pending investigation into Hunter Biden’s affairs, Barr’s comments confirm concerns of three insiders, reported by The Federalist on Wednesday, that “the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office investigating Hunter Biden lacks the wherewithal and resources to adequately probe the dubious financial dealings of the Biden family and their business partners.” Barr’s view that a special counsel is now warranted to continue the investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings represents a change from the position he took in December 2020.

During a December 21, 2020 press conference, when asked whether he agreed with Republicans that a special counsel was needed to handle the Biden investigation, Barr negated the idea. “I think it’s being handled responsibly and professionally currently within the department, and to this point I have seen no reason to appoint a special counsel, and I have no plan to do so before I leave,” the outgoing attorney general told reporters.

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Get that counsel.

• Joe Biden Met With 14 Of His Son’s Business Associates (RT)

Despite repeated denials that he ever spoke to his son Hunter about the latter’s overseas business dealings, Fox News reported on Thursday that President Joe Biden met with at least 14 of Hunter’s business associates from the US, Mexico, Ukraine, China and Kazakhstan. Abandoned in a Delaware computer repair shop some time before the 2020 election and unearthed by the New York Post, Hunter’s laptop contained presumed evidence of numerous foreign deals in which businessmen offered tens of millions of dollars for introductions to Joe Biden, as well as graphic proof of Hunter’s drug use and dalliances with prostitutes.

“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Biden insisted in 2019. When last month Britain’s Daily Mail published a 2018 voicemail featuring Biden speaking to Hunter about a deal with Chinese oil firm CEFC, the official line remained the same, with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying that “what the president said still stands.” Fox News’ latest report casts serious doubt on Biden’s denial. According to the news site, Joe Biden met with Mexican businessmen Miguel Aleman Velasco and Miguel Aleman Magnani in 2014, giving the pair a tour of the White House. A year later, Biden reportedly spoke by video with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and all three Mexicans – whom Hunter was doing business with or in negotiations with at the time – visited them at the vice presidential residence in Washington DC.

In a text message found on the laptop, Hunter told his business partner, Jeff Cooper, that he had spoken to his father about the deal involving Slim. Joe Biden also reportedly met with former Colombian President Andres Pastrana Arango and Eric Schwerin, another of Hunter’s business partners, in 2012, before dining with Arango and Juan Esteban Orduz, a Colombian businessman, later that same day. Files from the laptop show that during a single dinner in 2015, Joe Biden met with Hunter’s business associates from Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia, including an executive from Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company that paid Hunter a reported $50,000 per month from 2014 to 2018 to sit on its board. The following day, the Burisma executive emailed Hunter, thanking him for “giving an opportunity to meet your father.”

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Anton is a former Trump WH adviser.

• They Can’t Let Him Back In (Michael Anton)

Why? They say Jan. 6. But their determination began much earlier. And just what is so terrible about Trump anyway? I get many of his critics’ points, I really do. I hear them all the time from my mother. But even if we were to stipulate them all, do Trump’s faults really warrant tearing the country apart by shutting out half of it from the political process? Love him or hate him, during Trump’s presidency, the economy was strong, markets were up, inflation was under control, gas prices were low, illegal border crossings were down, crime was lower, trade deals were renegotiated, ISIS was defeated, NATO allies were stepping up, and China was stepping back (a little). Deny all that if you want to. The point here is that something like 100 million Americans believe it, strongly, and are bewildered and angered by elite hatred for the man they think delivered it.

Nor was Trump’s record all that radical—much less so than that of Joe Biden, who is using school-lunch funding to push gender ideology on poor kids, to cite but one example. Trump’s core agenda—border protection, trade balance, foreign restraint—was quite moderate, both intrinsically and in comparison to past Republican and Democratic precedent. And that’s before we even get to the fact that Trump neglected much of his own agenda in favor of the old Chamber of Commerce, fusionist, Reaganite, Conservatism, Inc., agenda. Corporate tax cuts, deregulation, and bombing Syria: These are all things Trump’s base doesn’t want, but the oligarchs desperately do, which Trump gave them. And still they try to destroy him.

Again, why? I think it’s because, while Trump’s core MAGA agenda is decidedly not outside the historic bipartisan mainstream, it is well outside the present regime’s core interests. Our rulers’ wealth and power rise with open borders, trade giveaways, and endless war. Trump, at least in principle, and often in practice, threatens all three. The old America—the one in which Republicans cared about the heartland and weren’t solely valets to corporate power, Democrats were pro-worker and anti-war, and Bill Clinton and The New York Times could advocate border security—is in the process of being replaced, if it hasn’t already been, by one in which there is only one acceptable opinion on not just these, but all other issues.

Anti-Trump hysteria is in the final analysis not about Trump. The regime can’t allow Trump to be president not because of who he is (although that grates), but because of who his followers are. That class—Angelo Codevilla’s “country class”—must not be allowed representation by candidates who might implement their preferences, which also, and above all, must not be allowed. The rubes have no legitimate standing to affect the outcome of any political process, because of who they are, but mostly because of what they want. Complaints about the nature of Trump are just proxies for objections to the nature of his base. It doesn’t help stabilize our already twitchy situation that those who bleat the loudest about democracy are also audibly and visibly determined to deny a real choice to half the country. “No matter how you vote, you will not get X”—whether X is a candidate or a policy—is guaranteed to increase discontent with the present regime.

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Gerry Ritz

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle March 28 2022

Mar 282022
 
 March 28, 2022  Posted by at 8:02 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  51 Responses »


Salvador Dali Hallucination. Six Images of Lenin on a Grand Piano 1931

 

• Biden Confirms Why the US Needed This War (Lauria)
• Propaganda Does Not Change The War – The Ukraine Is Still Losing (MoA)
• A Manufactured World Crisis (Rockwell)
• Springtime for GloboCap (CJ Hopkins)
• Video Surfaces Showing Ukraine Military Torturing Russian POW’s (CTH)
• WWIII Has Begun – Gerald Celente (USAW)
• “The Adults in the Room” are Always the Most Colossal Screwups (Tracey)
• India Is Snapping Up Cheap Russian Oil, And China Could Be Next (CNBC)
• House Republicans Will Subpoena Hunter Biden (NYP)
• Shutting Down Canadian Pipeline Would Cost US Consumers $23.7 Billion (ET)

 

 

Domestic support

 

 

OpenVAERS
https://twitter.com/i/status/1508112293648818177

 

 

“..we do not have a strategy of regime change in Russia, or anywhere else, for that matter,” the last words inserted for comic relief..”

• Biden Confirms Why the US Needed This War (Lauria)

The U.S. got its war in Ukraine. Without it, Washington could not attempt to destroy Russia’s economy, orchestrate worldwide condemnation and lead an insurgency to bleed Russia, all part of an attempt to bring down its government. Joe Biden has now left no doubt that it’s true. The president of the United States has confirmed what Consortium News and others have been reporting since the beginnings of Russsiagate in 2016, that the ultimate U.S. aim is to overthrow the government of Vladimir Putin. “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said on Saturday at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. The White House and the State Dept. have been scrambling to explain away Biden’s remark. But it is too late.

“The President’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” a White House official said. “He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.” On Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “As you know, and as you have heard us say repeatedly, we do not have a strategy of regime change in Russia, or anywhere else, for that matter,” the last words inserted for comic relief. Biden first gave the game away at his Feb. 24 White House press conference — the first day of the invasion. He was asked why he thought new sanctions would work when the earlier sanctions had not prevented Russia’s invasion. Biden said the sanctions were never designed to prevent Russia’s intervention but to punish it afterward. Therefore the U.S. needed Russia to invade.

“No one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening,” Biden said. “That has to sh- — this is going to take time. And we have to show resolve so he knows what’s coming and so the people of Russia know what he’s brought on them. That’s what this is all about.” It is all about the Russian people turning on Putin to overthrow him, which would explain Russia’s crackdown on anti-war protestors and the media. It was no slip of the tongue. Biden repeated himself in Brussels on Thursday: “Let’s get something straight … I did not say that in fact the sanctions would deter him. Sanctions never deter. You keep talking about that. Sanctions never deter. The maintenance of sanctions — the maintenance of sanctions, the increasing the pain … we will sustain what we’re doing not just next month, the following month, but for the remainder of this entire year. That’s what will stop him.”

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“NATO: 7,000 to 15,000 Russian troops dead in Ukraine” – AP

“Russia’s Defense Ministry just announced that as of today 1,351 Russian servicemen have been killed..”

• Propaganda Does Not Change The War – The Ukraine Is Still Losing (MoA)

Here are my own takes: The Russian forces around Kiev are making no offensive moves but defend against minor unsuccessful counterattacks from the Ukrainian side (see below). I have seen no hint that Russian forces strives to get into Kiev. It would be too costly to do that and for little strategic gain. But the forces east and west of Kiev are binding a big part of the Ukrainian army and prevent it from sending reserves towards Donbas. Yesterday an air attack or missile strike destroyed the largest Ukrainian fuel depot left near Kiev. The Ukrainian army will soon lose its mobility (if it hasn’t yet done so). Kharkiv is about to get encircled. Dnipro is a strategic target that the Russian forces will like to isolate or take by coming up from the south on both sides of the Dnieper river as well as from the north.

Russian forces destroyed a railway station between Dnipro and Donbas from where resupplies were flowing to the Ukrainian forces fighting there. After large progress yesterday Mariupol is now in a mop-up situation. The Azov forces still there have no chance to survive. Russian passage through Mykolayiv towards Odessa has proven to be difficult. Artillery is now softening up the Ukrainian defense lines. There are unconfirmed reports of large Ukrainian losses in Mykolayiv (300+) due to a missile strike on their barracks. The U.S. has tried to use yesterday’s NATO and G-7 meeting to push the Europeans towards sanctioning Russian hydrocarbon exports. It also tried to attach China to Russia and to get the Europeans to sanction its biggest trading partner. Both attempts failed. There will be no additional sanctions on Russia. And while the NATO communique mentions China it only urges it to leave its neutral position. Everyone knows that that is not going to happen.

The only thing NATO agreed on is the release of a new load of fresh propaganda. “NATO: 7,000 to 15,000 Russian troops dead in Ukraine” – AP. A senior NATO military official said the alliance’s estimate was based on information from Ukrainian authorities, what Russia has released — intentionally or not — and intelligence gathered from open sources. The official spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by NATO. Andrei Martyanov looks back at the casualties Soviet forces suffered in 1943 when they liberated Donbas from then still first class German Wehrmacht forces. Back then there were more than 1,000,000 Soviet soldiers involved against some 600,000 Germans. Some 1,600 Soviet soldiers were killed each day in fierce fighting.

We are now supposed to believe that the much smaller operation against a less fierce and less capable enemy in the Ukraine is killing 550 Russian soldiers per day? That’s obviously nonsense. As one anonymous Pentagon officer said about the NATO number: “We continue to have low confidence in those estimates” For the record Russia’s Defense Ministry just announced that as of today 1,351 Russian servicemen have been killed and 3,825 wounded. (The losses of the Lugansk and Donetsk militia are not included in those numbers.)

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“Unlike what has just happened, the Ukrainian attack did not result in US sanctions on Ukraine. There were no meetings of the UN to condemn Ukrainian aggression.”

• A Manufactured World Crisis (Rockwell)

Few people today ask the most important question about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Many people want America to stay out of the fight, but even they don’t ask the vital question. Why does the world face a crisis today? Why has a border dispute between Russia and Ukraine escalated to the point where people fear nuclear war? The answer is simple. America, under the “leadership” of brain-dead Biden and the forces controlling him, has done this and, by doing so, brought the world to the brink of disaster. As always, the great Dr. Ron Paul gets it right: “Three weeks into this terrible war, the US is not pursuing talks with Russia. As Antiwar.com recently reported, instead of supporting negotiations between Ukraine and Russia that could lead to a ceasefire and an end to the bloodshed, the US government is actually escalating the situation which can only increase the bloodshed.

The constant flow of US and allied weapons into Ukraine and talk of supporting an extended insurgency does not seem designed to give Ukraine a victory on the battlefield but rather to hand Russia what Secretary of State Blinken called ‘a strategic defeat.’ It sounds an awful lot like the Biden Administration intends to fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian. The only solution for the US is to get out. Let the Russians and Ukrainians reach an agreement. That means no NATO for Ukraine and no US missiles on Russia’s borders? So what! End the war then end NATO.”

Let’s look at an analogy that will help us understand Dr. Paul’s point. For years, the Ukrainian government has attacked an area in the Donbas region that has seceded from Ukraine and formed an independent, pro-Russian, republic. Just before Putin moved against Ukraine, Ukraianians increased the scale and scope of their attack. Rick Rozoff describes what they did: “Two-thirds of Ukrainian army servicemen have been amassed along the Donbas contact line, Eduard Basurin, spokesman for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) militia, said on Thursday.

“Another three brigades are on their way [to Donbas], which is 20,000 to 25,000 troops more. The total number will reach 150,000, not to mention the nationalists. This is about two-thirds of Ukrainian Armed Forces’ personnel,” Basurin said on the Rossiya 1 television channel (VGTRK) on Thursday. Ukrainian troops are stationed along the 320-kilometer front line, he said.” Unlike what has just happened, the Ukrainian attack did not result in US sanctions on Ukraine. There were no meetings of the UN to condemn Ukrainian aggression. There was no talk of world war. On the contrary, Ukraine government used American weapons in its attack and asked America for more weapons to continue their attack. Let’s listen to Rick Rozoff again: “The Armed Forces of Ukraine used the American anti-tank missile system Javelin in the hostilities in Donbas. This was announced by the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Kirill Budanov in an interview….

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“..It’s New Normal Spring! The birds are buzzing! The bees are chirping!”

• Springtime for GloboCap (CJ Hopkins)

In the blink of an eye, without missing a beat, both the white-supremacist Putin-Nazis that plagued Democracy throughout the Trumpian Reich and the Covid-denying Anti-Vax Nazis that plagued the New Normals throughout the Global Pandemic were seamlessly replaced by the GloboCap Nazis … but, the thing is, the GloboCap Nazis are the good guys, and the Putin-Nazis and Anti-Vax Nazis are … well, I guess they’re still technically Nazis, except for the fact that they aren’t actual Nazis and are mostly just regular working-class people, whereas the GloboCap Nazis are actual Nazis (i.e., Sieg-heiling, Jew-hating, Hitler-worshiping Nazis), who the US military and Intelligence community, NATO, and assorted private “military advisors” have been funding, arming, and otherwise supporting since the 2014 Ukrainian “revolution” (i.e., coup) that they orchestrated to destabilize Russia as part of that global Clear-and-Hold operation (which operation, of course, doesn’t actually exist, and is just another conspiracy theory disseminated by Putin-Nazi traitors like me to erode support for the GloboCap Nazis, who are really just wholesome young Aryan boys who are trying to defend Democracy from Evil, and cleanse their country of the Jews and the Roma, and exterminate the Russian race, starting with the children, apparently).


[..] Or … wait. Sorry, I got all confused again. These are the good Nazis … the GloboCap Nazis! The actual Nazis, not the fictional Nazis. Or … wait, no … never mind. I mean, it’s not like it really matters anyway, right? The point is, it’s Spring, and the goat-footed balloon-Man whistles … no, strike the balloon-Man. This is not the time for balloon-Man references. It’s New Normal Spring! The birds are buzzing! The bees are chirping! The ICBMs are tumescent with rocket fuel and throbbing in their silos! The New Normal masses are out prancing around with their “vaccination passports” and medical-looking masks, in their official neo-Nazi Azov hoodies, waving their Ukrainian flags, and otherwise desperately trying to pretend that they haven’t just been colossally mindfucked by GloboCap for the last two years!

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One more penny of support for Ukraine after this, and we’re done.

“Ukraine is taking wounded captured Russian soldiers laying them out and shooting them in the legs and groin. While they are bleeding out, they’re putting bags over their heads and kicking them in the face until they die. This is Zelensky’s Ukraine in all its glory.”

• Video Surfaces Showing Ukraine Military Torturing Russian POW’s (CTH)

[..] as the narrative from the media propaganda machine continues to frame the Ukraine military as ‘freedom fighters’, they are now faced with videos surfacing showing Ukraine military regulars torturing Russian prisoners of war (POW’s). This is problematic for both NATO and Ukraine, as they must protect the image of the Ukraine military in order to maintain public support and funding. The videos of the torture are graphic and very disturbing to watch, and I would not recommend watching them if you are not comfortable seeing men get shot, brutalized and beaten. They are graphic, bloody and violent. However, the torture itself, while censored for political need, aligns with the official NATO and Big Tech position that advocacy for violence against Russians is sanctioned.


The first video shows Russian soldiers with canvas bags placed on their heads and then beaten in the face with rifle butts. The prisoners are shot in the kneecaps and genitals, and they are left on the ground to bleed to death. Several vans then arrive at the Ukraine military compound in Kharkiv (roughly 20 miles from the Russian border), and as each POW is removed from the van they are shot in the knees. A second video shows Russian POW’s lying face down in a paved courtyard, or compound, and then being shot in the knees from the rear. Apparently, one of the videos contains Russian soldiers who were part of a reconnaissance mission in the region and were captured. The Ukraine military gleefully torture the captives and record their endeavors for posterity. It was the Ukraine military units bragging about the torture that exposed their brutal behavior. All of the scenes are gruesome in the extreme.

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“..in the commercial real estate market in NYC alone, only 35% of the office space is being rented. That means 65% is vacant, and it’s the same all over the country.”

• WWIII Has Begun – Gerald Celente (USAW)

Renowned trends researcher and publisher of “The Trends Journal,” Gerald Celente, has long said “when all else fails, they take you to war.” To say our world is failing is a profound understatement. Celente proclaims, “World War III has begun. . . . I was born one year after the end of WWII, and crazy people will take you to war in the blink of an eye. . . . The war criminals are leading us into another war.” Celente says the reason for war usually surrounds a failing economy. This time is no different. Celente explains, “I have been saying that when all else fails, they take you to war. What followed the Great Depression? War. What followed the dot com bust? More war. That’s right. Georgie Bush’s ratings were way down, and the Nasdaq was down 66% before 9/11.”

Celente goes on to point out the economy in the USA is failing. For proof, look no further than the “16% inflation” destroying paychecks of Americans, especially at the gas pump. Celente also says in the commercial real estate market in NYC alone, only 35% of the office space is being rented. That means 65% is vacant, and it’s the same all over the country. Celente predicts, “We are headed for an economic calamity the likes of which we have never seen in our lifetime. They are getting our minds off it with the war in Ukraine. . . . You know, I wrote in the magazine in the beginning of the year, we said that the Covid war would wind down by late March and mid-April. It’s winding down. . . . So, now, as we said in the magazine, we went from the Covid war to the Ukraine war, and now to world war.

We are headed to World War III. . . . There is not a peep about a cease-fire. Biden is only bragging about more weapons being sent in. Biden says we are going to defeat the Russians. We are not backing down. No one is talking about a cease-fire, and no one is talking about peace. If we don’t unite for peace, we are all going to die in war.”

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“..a series of Biden remarks that are far more insane — and far more consequential in their insanity — than anything Trump ever managed to blurt out.”

• “The Adults in the Room” are Always the Most Colossal Screwups (Tracey)

There was a recurring theme during the presidency of Donald Trump that went something like this: Trump’s most impetuous and destructive instincts — particularly in the realm of foreign policy — were being nobly restrained by the so-called “Adults in the Room.” Thank heavens! These impressive “adults,” a cadre of seasoned military men serving in Trump’s administration, included James Mattis (Defense Secretary), H.R. McMaster (National Security Advisor), and John Kelly (Chief of Staff). Their presence in the halls of power was supposed to be taken as a profound relief: whether you feared Trump would conspire with Vladimir Putin to collapse “the rules-based international order” — likely because you heard that phrase intoned on some Think Tank webcast — or simply believed that Trump was nuts, you could rest assured that the fate of the Republic would be protected by this crew of Serious Adults watching gamely over Trump’s shoulder. If any crazy ideas got into his head, such as withdrawing US military personnel from overseas deployments or forging a diplomatic accord with Russia, they’d spring boldly into action and put a stop to it.

[..] The “adults in the room” mentality would subsequently take on an electoral personification in the 2020 candidacy of Joe Biden. After four years of Trump’s reckless and volatile tweets, Biden solemnly pledged to “restore honor and decency to the White House.” He assured a weary electorate that under his tutelage, Americans could once again be confident that their Commander-in-Chief would conduct himself with care and rigor on the world stage. The immense foreign policy expertise Biden garnered over his multi-decade career made him perfectly suited to such a weighty task. With all the chaos left in Trump’s wake, “the next president will face the enormous responsibility of picking up the pieces of America’s foreign policy,” Biden regularly declared on the campaign trail.

Well, in the past few days, Biden has faced his biggest test yet on this score. And behold the result: giant new “pieces” of foreign policy carnage splattered all over the place, thanks to a series of Biden remarks that are far more insane — and far more consequential in their insanity — than anything Trump ever managed to blurt out.

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Sanctions don’t matter much for sales. Other than they raise prices and enable Russia to sell at huge discounts, and still get the same net revenues.

• India Is Snapping Up Cheap Russian Oil, And China Could Be Next (CNBC)

There’s been a “significant uptick” in Russian oil deliveries bound for India since March after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began — and New Delhi looks set to buy even more cheap oil from Moscow, industry observers say. China, already the largest single buyer of Russian oil, is also widely expected to buy more oil from Russia at deep discounts, they say. This could mean higher crude prices to come. Major oil importing countries such as India and China have been grappling with higher crude prices, which have soared since last year. While oil prices have been volatile in recent weeks, swinging between gains and losses, they are still around 80% higher compared to a year ago.


“We believe that China, and to a lesser extent, India will step up to buy heavily discounted Russian crude,” said Matt Smith, lead oil analyst at Kpler. This would mark a stark contrast from the rhetoric across major world powers and companies which are eschewing Russian oil. As a result of Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified war on Ukraine, the U.S. has hit the rogue country with sanctions on energy, while the U.K. plans to do so by the end of the year. The European Union is also considering whether to do the same. But sanctions would leave a gap in the market with Russia finding itself with excess crude it’s unable to sell, analysts said.

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My bet is they won’t be able to keep it under wraps. Question is timing. It’s already been two years.

• House Republicans Will Subpoena Hunter Biden (NYP)

If the GOP retakes control of Congress, Hunter Biden will be hauled before the House of Representatives and forced to reveal the identity of “the big guy” and address other unanswered questions about the contents of his infamous laptop, Republicans said. “We will subpoena Hunter Biden,” said House GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik bluntly in an interview with The Post. Hunter Biden, 52, abandoned his laptop at a Delaware computer repair ship in April 2019. The hard drive contained years’ worth of emails, texts, legal documents and photos detailing Hunter’s prolific international business ventures. Shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac gave the hard drive to the FBI and eventually offered a copy to former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.

The former mayor ultimately handed it over to The Post, which published an expose a month before the 2020 presidential election. The story of the laptop was falsely dismissed by much of the media as Russian propaganda and censored on Facebook and Twitter at the behest of the Democratic party. Last week the New York Times finally admitted the hard drive was real and at the center of a sprawling federal investigation into the president’s son. “It should concern every American that they did this for the Biden family’s financial gain, which came at the cost of our national security,” Stefanik said of the laptop evidence. The latest threat from GOP leadership comes amid growing calls by Republicans nationwide for a broad new inquiry into the president’s son.

“The big guy” — a mysterious moniker found on the hard drive — is described as a partner in a Chinese business venture entitled to 10 percent of the profits, according to a laptop email from Hunter Biden’s business partner James Gilliar. The big guy’s share was to be held for him by Hunter. Hunter Biden has never voluntarily explained who “the big guy” is — and has never been asked the question in multiple friendly interviews. “That’s one of the critical questions — perhaps the most critical question,” said Stefanik, adding that she believes “the big guy” was Joe Biden. Tony Bobulinski, another Hunter Biden business partner who appeared frequently in hard-drive emails, has said there is “no question” President Biden was “the big guy.”

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a 4.5-mile section of a pipeline

• Shutting Down Canadian Pipeline Would Cost US Consumers $23.7 Billion (ET)

A recently published analysis by a consumer advocacy nonprofit maintains that shutting down a 4.5-mile section of a nearly 70-year-old pipeline that spans the Great Lakes from Wisconsin to Ontario would impose $23.7 billion in higher fuel costs for families and businesses in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Consumer Energy Alliance’s (CEA) 14-page report estimates closing Canada-based Enbridge Energy’s Line 5 pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac, which connect Lake Michigan to Lake Huron, would spur regional fuel price spikes of between 9.47 and 11.66 percent “independent of any other market conditions, such as the surge in fuel prices observed over the past 12 months that are tied to international oil markets and logistical challenges caused by the pandemic.”

Enbridge and the state of Michigan have been engaged in litigation for more than a year over the pipeline after Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in November 2020 revoked the pipeline’s original 1953 lakebed easement and ordered the pipeline shut down by May 2021, citing the risk of a spill in the ecologically sensitive straits. Enbridge ignored the order—the pipeline is still funneling 540,000 barrels per day (bpd) of light crude oil, light synthetic crude, and natural gas liquids (NGLs) through the straits—and petitioned to have the case heard in federal courts. In October, the government of Canada backed Enbridge in its challenge and invoked a 1977 pipeline treaty with the United States to demand bilateral negotiations at the federal level.

In November, a federal judge transferred Whitmer’s suit out of Michigan’s courts. That suit was subsequently dropped but a similar lawsuit filed by Michigan Attorney General Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel remains in state courts, although a ruling is pending regarding its jurisdictional status. Built in 1953 by Bechtel Corp., the Line 5 pipeline is actually two 20-inch-diameter parallel pipes with an enamel coating three times thicker than a typical pipeline. Enbridge maintains there has never been a leak in its 69-year operational existence.

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