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Debt Rattle March 26 2024

Mar 262024

March 26, 2024 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:29 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, blob, bond, ceasefire, Crocus, Engoron, Letitia, neurowarfare, Security Council, SPAC, Trump 70 Responses »

Hieronymous Bosch The Haywain Triptych c.1516

• UK Court To Issue Ruling On Julian Assange Extradition Tuesday Morning (ZH)

• Trump Bond Reduced To $175 Million At 11th Hour (ZH)

• Trump Net Worth Tops $6.4 Billion On SPAC Deal (ZH)

• Musk Reveals Major Political Flip (RT)

• The Nuland – Budanov – Tajik – Crocus connection (Pepe Escobar)

• The American Explanation For The Moscow Terror Attack Doesn’t Add Up (Trenin)

• ‘Kill Them All’ – Medvedev Enraged By Moscow Terror Attack (RT)

• ‘Kill Them All’: Inside the Israeli Blockade on Gaza Aid (Loffredo)

• UN Security Council Demands Immediate Gaza Ceasefire As US Abstains (AlJ)

• Macron’s Punctured Balloon of a ‘Geo-Political EU’ (Alastair Crooke)

• Single EU Army Unrealistic – Borrell (RT)

• In Blob We Trust (Kunstler)

• January 6th Continues to be a Tragedy in the Eye of the Beholder (Turley)

• Weaponizing Reality: The Dawn of Neurowarfare (Pabst)

Dana White
https://twitter.com/i/status/1772322279566823708

Get Trump
https://twitter.com/i/status/1772331781724774609

Watters Trump

The Democrats were prepared to climax today – anticipating a huge Trump loss in his civil fraud case today. Their bubbles burst when his bond was slashed… and he ended up making billions. pic.twitter.com/NPMcxy4e5a

— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) March 26, 2024

Tucker Trump

Jonathan Karl says Tucker Carlson told him Trump is ‘far more radical’ on Ukraine than he lets on in public:

“He said Trump agrees with me far more than he lets on in public. He’s far more radical on this than he lets on in public.”

pic.twitter.com/cBJ2ehoYdL

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) March 26, 2024

Tucker Tulsi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1772403117423829205

The ruling will come at about the time I post this. Say a prayer for Julian.

• UK Court To Issue Ruling On Julian Assange Extradition Tuesday Morning (ZH)

A Decision on extradition to the US following last months court hearing where lawyers for Julian Assange detailed evidence of a "truly breathtaking plan" by the CIA to murder the publisher will be given tomorrow, 26th March, 10.30am, Royal Courts of Justice, London #FreeAssange pic.twitter.com/GpWVMANJSq

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 25, 2024

On Tuesday London’s High Court will finally rule on the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The court is expected to deliver a decision on if he can appeal his extradition to the United States, where he would face espionage and related charges for publishing state secrets. WikiLeaks has said the written ruling is expected to be delivered by 10:30 am London time (6:30am ET). After this, all his appeal opportunities in the UK legal system will have been exhausted. Stella Assange, his wife, has warned that if the court rules against Assange, he could be on a plane to US soil days following. He would be removed from the high security Belmarsh prison for a trial in the US on espionage-related charges and publishing state secrets, where a 175 year jail sentence would await him.

WikiLeaks has been urging all Americans to put pressure on the Biden administration to drop its case against Assange by calling House representatives and telling them to support H.Res.934. The bill, introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) requests that the Biden White House halt the proceedings against Assange. The bill reads: “This resolution expresses the sense of the House of Representatives that regular journalistic activities, including the obtainment and publication of information, are protected under the First Amendment and that the federal government should drop all charges against and attempts to extradite Julian Assange.” Editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks Kristinn Hrafnsson has commented on what Assange’s prosecution and possible extradition means for the future of press freedoms.”It cannot be underestimated, the effect that it will have,” he said.

“If an Australian citizen publishing in Europe can face prison time in the United States, that means no journalists anywhere are safe in the future.” However, as we detailed last week, the Biden administration might be looking for a way to bring the 14-year long legal drama to an end. A last Wednesday WSJ report said, “The U.S. Justice Department is considering whether to allow Julian Assange to plead guilty to a reduced charge of mishandling classified information, according to people familiar with the matter, opening the possibility of a deal that would end a lengthy legal saga triggered by one of the biggest classified intelligence leaks in American history.” A plea deal means the whole crisis for him and his family could finally come to an acceptable and peaceful end after all of these years.

“Justice Department officials and Assange’s lawyers have had preliminary discussions in recent months about what a plea deal could look like, according to people familiar with the matter, a potential softening in a standoff filled with political and legal complexities,” according to details in the WSJ report. “The talks come as Assange has spent some five years behind bars and U.S. prosecutors face diminishing odds that he would serve much more time even if he were convicted stateside.” In February of this year, Assange’s cause received a big boost when his native Australia issued formal request to the US and UK that charges against Julian Assange be dropped. The motion adopted by Australian parliament at that time emphasized “the importance of the UK and USA bringing the matter to a close so that Mr. Assange can return home to his family in Australia.”

“The new order also stayed Engoron’s order barring Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump from serving as officers and directors of New York companies for two years..”

• Trump Bond Reduced To $175 Million At 11th Hour (ZH)

A New York court of appeals has significantly reduced the bond required to stop his properties from being seized by authorities from $454 million to $175 million, in order to appeal his New York civil fraud trial. The decision by a five-judge panel of appellate court judges, comes after the real estate mogul’s lawyers argued that it was “impossible” to obtain an appeal bond of $454 million after approaching over 30 surety companies without success. Trump also said he would have to sell properties in a “fire sale” to raise cash. Had the court denied Trump’s request, and he had failed to obtain the full bond amount, Trump was at risk of losing his bank accounts, followed by some of his properties.

His attorneys had asked the appeals court to either waive the bond requirement or reduce it, arguing that the $464 million judgement against Trump and his family was likely to be overturned on appeal.v In the Monday decision, the appeals court also stayed Engoron’s ruling barring Trump from serving as an officer or director of a NY company for three years, and which had barred Trump and his corporate defendants from applying for loans from New York lenders over the same period. The new order also stayed Engoron’s order barring Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump from serving as officers and directors of New York companies for two years. Trump has 10 days to post the bond.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1772318816485392427

Letitia
https://twitter.com/i/status/1772291761718882432

“..it seems that Biden’s campaign staff – which even former President Barack Obama essentially admitted are total morons, need to go back to the drawing board..”

• Trump Net Worth Tops $6.4 Billion On SPAC Deal (ZH)

Former President Donald Trump’s net worth topped $6.4 billion on Monday following the completion of a 29-month-long SPAC deal involving his social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, as well as the reduction of the bond due in his NY civil fraud trial in order to appeal a $454 million verdict. And while Trump’s gains on the SPAC deal with Digital World Acquisition Corp may just be on paper (and any meaningful sales when his six-month lockup expires would likely tank the price), the $4 billion boost was enough to include Trump in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which tracks the top 500 wealthiest people in the world.

Earlier on Monday, Trump was granted a vastly reduced bond requirement of $175 million in order to appeal his NY civil trial over his real estate. In response, Trump quickly said he would post it. The completion of the SPAC merger came despite last-minute lawsuits from investors and executives, as well as a settlement with the SEC. The timing couldn’t be worse for Democrats – as the 2024 Biden campaign picked this moment in time to copy Trump’s name-calling strategy, dubbing the former president “Broke Don.” While that was based on a recent campaign finance report showing that Biden out-raised Trump in February, it seems that Biden’s campaign staff – which even former President Barack Obama essentially admitted are total morons, need to go back to the drawing board. Or not… as long as curbside voting and uncreased 2am ballot drops that nobody is supposed to discuss are a thing.

“I think we need a red wave or America is toast..”

• Musk Reveals Major Political Flip (RT)

The US needs a red wave and will be finished if the Republican Party does not prevail in the 2024 presidential election, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday. The billionaire, who had previously revealed he voted for Joe Biden in 2020, has since criticized the incumbent US president and clashed with his administration. Musk has repeatedly criticized Biden’s handling of the Southern US border crisis and has accused Democrats of being “controlled by the unions.” “I voted 100% Dem until a few years ago. Now, I think we need a red wave or America is toast,” Musk wrote on X. According to media reports, the entrepreneur became increasingly critical of Biden after Tesla, the top-selling electric-car company in the US, was excluded from a White House summit on EVs in 2021.

Last year Musk revealed that he had doubts he’d be voting for Biden in the 2024 presidential election. As of yet, however, he hasn’t endorsed Biden’s rival Donald Trump. “I think I would not vote for Biden,” Musk told a DealBook summit in November, adding “I’m not saying I’d vote for Trump.” Earlier this month the New York Times reported that Trump had met with Musk in Florida, as the former US president seeks a major cash infusion for his reelection campaign. Musk confirmed the meeting but maintained that he is not donating to the Republican’s campaign. “I was at a breakfast at a friend’s place and Donald Trump came by, that’s it,” he told former CNN host Don Lemon last week, adding that Trump had not requested any financial assistance. “I’m not paying his legal bills in any way, shape or form. And he did not ask me for money,” Musk said.

“A classic false flag, with the clueless Tajiks under the impression that they were working for ISIS-K..”

• The Nuland – Budanov – Tajik – Crocus connection (Pepe Escobar)

Ukrainian intel, SBU and GUR, have been using the “Islamic” terror galaxy as they please since the first Chechnya war in the mid-1990s. Milley and Nuland of course knew it, as there were serious rifts in the past, for instance, between GUR and the CIA. Following the symbiosis of any Ukrainian government post-1991 with assorted terror/jihadi outfits, Kiev post-Maidan turbo-charged these connections especially with Idlib gangs, as well as north Caucasus outfits, from the Chechen Shishani to ISIS in Syria and then ISIS-K. GUR routinely aims to recruit ISIS and ISIS-K denizens via online chat rooms. Exactly the modus operandi that led to Crocus. One “Azan” association, founded in 2017 by Anvar Derkach, a member of the Hizb ut-Tahrir, actually facilitates terrorist life in Ukraine, Tatars from Crimea included – from lodging to juridical assistance.

The FSB investigation is establishing a trail: Crocus was planned by pros – and certainly not by a bunch of low-IQ Tajik dregs. Not by ISIS-K, but by GUR. A classic false flag, with the clueless Tajiks under the impression that they were working for ISIS-K. The FSB investigation is also unveiling the standard modus operandi of online terror, everywhere. A recruiter focuses on a specific profile; adapts himself to the candidate, especially his – low – IQ; provides him with the minimum necessary for a job; then the candidate/executor become disposable. Everyone in Russia remembers that during the first attack on the Crimea bridge, the driver of the kamikaze truck was blissfully unaware of what he was carrying,

As for ISIS, everyone seriously following West Asia knows that’s a gigantic diversionist scam, complete with the Americans transferring ISIS operatives from the Al-Tanf base to the eastern Euphrates, and then to Afghanistan after the Hegemon’s humiliating “withdrawal”. Project ISIS-K actually started in 2021, after it became pointless to use ISIS goons imported from Syria to block the relentless progress of the Taliban. Ace Russian war correspondent Marat Khairullin has added another juicy morsel to this funky salad: he convincingly unveils the MI6 angle in the Crocus City Hall terror attack (in English here, in two parts, posted by “S”). The FSB is right in the middle of the painstaking process of cracking most, if not all ISIS-K-CIA/MI6 connections. Once it’s all established, there will be hell to pay.

“..Moscow would be removing one of its most important self-imposed constraints – not to touch Kiev’s senior leadership..”

• The American Explanation For The Moscow Terror Attack Doesn’t Add Up (Trenin)

Ukraine, true to form, and alone among the nations of the world, has suggested that the Crocus City atrocity was an operation carried out by Russia’s own secret services, launched to facilitate a further tightening of the political regime and a new wave of mobilization. Clearly nonsensical, this interpretation invoked in many Russian minds the old proverb, “liar, liar, pants on fire.” Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his five-minute address to the nation on Saturday, refrained from rolling out the Kremlin’s own version. His words and his demeanor were calm, but the style of his remarks was stern. Those behind the attack “will be punished whoever they are and wherever they may be,” the president declared. The direction of Putin’s thinking was revealed by the two facts – not conjectures – he raised: that the terrorists, having fled the scene of the assault, had been apprehended not far (100km or so) from the Ukrainian border, and that “information” had been obtained that they intended to cross the border into Ukraine, where “they had contacts.”

At this point, nothing is firmly established. The results of the Russian investigation will be enormously important. If Moscow concludes that the attack was conceived, planned, and organized by the Ukrainians – say, the military intelligence agency GUR – Putin’s public warning would logically mean that the agency’s leaders will not just be “legitimate” targets, but priority ones for Russia. Since an attack of such gravity would almost certainly have required the approval of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, the “guarantee” that Putin informally gave to foreign leaders (including Israel’s then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett) that Russia would not target Zelensky personally, would presumably be lifted. If so, Moscow would be removing one of its most important self-imposed constraints – not to touch Kiev’s senior leadership.

Two separate articles on two separate topics saying ‘Kill Them All’. Sign of the times.

• ‘Kill Them All’ – Medvedev Enraged By Moscow Terror Attack (RT)

The perpetrators and masterminds of Friday’s deadly terrorist attack at a Moscow concert venue must be killed without mercy, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has claimed. At least 137 people have been killed and over 180 were wounded when several men armed with assault rifles opened fire inside the Crocus City Hall and then proceeded to set the concert venue ablaze. Four men suspected of carrying out the attack have been captured. Two of them have confessed in court, and are set to remain in custody until late May. They all face life in prison. “Everyone asks me. What to do? … Should they be killed?” wrote Medvedev, currently deputy chair of the National Security Council, in a Telegram post on Monday. “It should and will be done,” he stressed, adding: “It is much more important to kill everyone involved. Everyone. Who paid, who sympathized, who helped. Kill them all.”

Medvedev earlier stated that “Terrorists understand only terror in response” and that “all of them must be found and mercilessly destroyed as terrorists – including officials of the state that committed such an atrocity.” The former Russian president vowed to “avenge each and every” victim of the Crocus City Hall attack, regardless of country of origin and status, insisting this “is now our legal and main goal.” Medvedev’s comments come amid growing calls among the country’s lawmakers to restore the death penalty, which has effectively been banned in Russia since 1996. While the Russian criminal code technically has a provision for capital punishment, courts are de facto banned from handing down such a sentence.

Cultivated hatred.

• ‘Kill Them All’: Inside the Israeli Blockade on Gaza Aid (Loffredo)

Setting out on a bus caravan through illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, Loffredo arrives at the Kerem Shalom crossing to Gaza, filming Israeli citizens as they physically block trucks loaded with flour and other essential goods. There, a reservist who served in the military assault on Gaza confesses to an array of war crimes, including blowing up the offices of UN centers dedicated to providing food to the local population. Loffredo then joins nationalists on a march toward Gaza, where they hope to establish new settlements after the population is violently driven out.

Too much pressure for the US.

• UN Security Council Demands Immediate Gaza Ceasefire As US Abstains (AlJ)

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) demands an immediate ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the release of all hostages as the United States abstains from the vote. The remaining 14 council members voted in favour of the resolution, which was proposed by the 10 elected members of the council. There was a round of applause in the council chamber after the vote on Monday. The resolution calls for an immediate ceasefire for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which ends in two weeks, and also demands the release of all hostages seized in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7. “The bloodbath has continued for far too long,” said Amar Bendjama, the ambassador from Algeria, the Arab bloc’s current Security Council member and a sponsor of the resolution. “Finally, the Security Council is shouldering its responsibility.”

The US had repeatedly blocked Security Council resolutions that put pressure on Israel but has increasingly shown frustration with its ally as civilian casualties mount and the UN warns of impending famine in Gaza. Speaking after the vote, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield blamed Hamas for the delay in passing a ceasefire resolution. “We did not agree with everything with the resolution,” which she said was the reason why the US abstained. “Certain key edits were ignored, including our request to add a condemnation of Hamas,” Thomas-Greenfield said. She stressed that the release of Israeli captives would lead to an increase in humanitarian aid supplies going into the besieged coastal enclave. The White House said the final resolution did not have language the US considers essential and its abstention does not represent a shift in policy.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the US failure to veto the resolution is a “clear retreat” from its previous position and would hurt war efforts against Hamas as well as efforts to release Israeli captives held in Gaza. His office also said Netanyahu will not be sending a high-level delegation to Washington, DC, in light of the new US position. US President Joe Biden had requested to meet Israeli officials to discuss Israeli plans for a ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, where more than 1 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering. White House spokesperson John Kirby said the US was “disappointed” by Netanyahu’s decision. “We’re very disappointed that they won’t be coming to Washington, DC, to allow us to have a fulsome conversation with them about viable alternatives to them going in on the ground in Rafah,” Kirby told reporters.

Tucker Israel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1772273844591489260

“..Ukraine tries to retreat into unprepared and near indefensible terrain..”

• Macron’s Punctured Balloon of a ‘Geo-Political EU’ (Alastair Crooke)

The general view in Europe was that Macron was playing complex mind-games, firstly with the French people, and secondly with Russia. Nevertheless, it seems that there could be some substance to Macron’s sabre-rattling: The French Chief of Army Staff said he has 20,000 troops ready to be inserted in 30 days. And the Head of Russia’s SVR Intelligence Agency, Naryshkin, more modestly assessed that France seemingly is preparing a military contingent for sending to Ukraine, which at the initial stage, will be about two thousand people. Just to be clear however, even a 20,000-man division by standards of classical military theory is supposed to be able to hold at maximum, a 10km-front. An insertion of two or twenty thousand French troops would change nothing strategically; it would not halt the vastly larger Russian steamroller, grinding on westwards. So what is Macron playing at? Is this all bluff, then? Likely, it is part ‘grandstanding’ by Macron, pre-occupied to present himself as ‘Mr Strongman Europe’ – particularly toward his French constituency.

His posturing comes however, at a more significant conjunction of events for the so-called ‘Geo-political EU’: Clarity: Light has pierced, and has illuminated a space hitherto occupied by shadows. It is now as clear as it can be – after Putin’s overwhelming win in elections on a record turnout – that President Putin is here to stay. All the western shadow-play of ‘régime change’ in Moscow simply shrunk to naught in the bright light of events. Snorts of anger can be heard from some quarters in Europe. Yet they will subside. There is no choice. The reality, as Marianne newspaper, quoting a senior French officer, derisively noting in respect to Macron’s Ukraine’s posturing: “We must make no mistake, facing the Russians; we are an army of cheerleaders” and sending French troops to the Ukrainian front would simply be “not reasonable”. At the Élysée, an unnamed advisor argued that Macron “wanted to send a strong signal … (in) milli-metered and calibrated words”.

What pains the EU ‘neocon ever-hopefuls’ more is that Putin’s clear electoral victory coincides, almost precisely, with an EU (and NATO) humiliation in Ukraine. It is not just that the AFU appears to be in a cascading implosion, but that the retreat is accelerating, as Ukraine tries to retreat into unprepared and near indefensible terrain. Into this grim EU prospect is that second shaft of clarifying light: The U.S. is slowly but surely turning its back on the financing and arming of Kiev, leaving Europe’s impotence exposed for all the world to see. The EU simply cannot substitute for the U.S. pivot. Yet more hurtful for some is that a U.S. retreat represents a ‘punch in the guts’ for much of the Brussels leadership, who had fallen on the Biden Administration with almost indecent glee, upon Trump’s leaving of office. They used the moment to proclaim the cementing of a pro-Atlanticist, pro-NATO EU. Now, as former Indian diplomat MK Bhadrakumar perfectly defines it, “France [is] all dressed up – with nowhere to go”:

You just take more EU taxpayers’ money and hand control over it to Americans.

• Single EU Army Unrealistic – Borrell (RT)

The EU must increase its military strength and internal cooperation, but that does not mean it should aspire to a single army, the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, has said. In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday, the foreign policy chief insisted there is a “strong consensus” among EU members on boosting the bloc’s defense capabilities, both in terms of its military industry and armed forces. “This is not a question of creating the singular European army,” Borrell said, adding that all 27 EU members are free to decide their own defense policies. Instead, the armies of EU members need to be “more interoperational” in order to strengthen the bloc’s defense, the diplomat argued.

“They have to create a European pillar inside NATO. Europeans have to take more responsibility for our defense,” Borrell stated, adding that this includes fostering a close partnership with the US within NATO. “We have to increase our military capacities… But it is utopical to believe that we are going to cancel the 27 armies to create a single one. What we have to do is to be more realistic,” Borrell said. The bloc is well aware of the harsh realities of the modern world and is preparing accordingly, he added. In January, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani publicly supported the creation of a joint European army, an idea that has been debated for several years, arguing that the force could be used for peacekeeping missions and conflict prevention.

The proposal, however, met resistance from several EU members, including Denmark and Poland. Copenhagen argued that “NATO is the cornerstone of our collective security,” and that defense remains a matter of national sovereignty. Warsaw insisted that EU action on defense must be complementary to NATO efforts. Since the start of the Ukraine conflict, EU member states have considerably ramped up defense spending, with plans to increase it to €350 billion ($380 billion) in 2024. In recent weeks, several Western leaders have also called on the bloc to prepare for a full-scale war with Russia, which they claim could break out within the next few years. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow has no plans or interest whatsoever in attacking NATO countries. Moscow, however, has for years voiced concern about the expansion of the US-led military bloc towards its borders.

“..the blob is our government now; there is no government except the blob..”

• In Blob We Trust (Kunstler)

You’ve got to ask yourself: really, who seems to hanker more for a red-hot World War Three, “Joe Biden” or Vlad Putin? Since “Joe Biden” is only a figment of American politics, first you’d have to ask: a figment of what? Answer: A figment of our greater intel blob, led, of course, by the Central Intelligence Agency. Which is to say, the blob is our government now; there is no government except the blob. We are the United Blob of America! In Blob We Trust should be printed on our money. That being the case, blob policy rules. And since deception is one of the blob’s chief duties, we mere sniveling citizens should expect to be deceived at every turn about everything. So, when the blob’s news cut-out, The New York Times, serves up a comprehensive history of the gang known as ISIS-K Monday morning after the Moscow Crocus Concert Hall Massacre, you might suspect that some deception is afoot.

ISIS-K immediately took credit for the Crocus Massacre. K stands for Khorasan, a set of provinces in eastern Iran, leaking over into Afghanistan and Pakistan. ISIS-K supposedly evolved out of the original ISIS that sought to establish an Islamic caliphate out of Iraq and Syria. After Mr. Trump broke it up in 2019, the gang regrouped in K-land, deeper in central Asia. Curiously, this ISIS-K has carried out attacks against Iran, where it lives. Go figure. . . . Its progenitor, the plain old ISIS-no-K was responsible for the horrific Bataclan Theater massacre in Paris, 2015 and the suicide bombing of the Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena, UK, 2017. They’re sort of the Concert-Massacres-R-Us of terror orgs — you really couldn’t find a better patsy for the Crocus op.

Is it as simple as that? Not if you consider Scott Ritter’s theory that the first ISIS was a creation of the CIA, with the mission of ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, considered by the blob to be an uber-bad dude, largely for enlisting Russia’s help in ending Syria’s civil war. And if you can actually figure out what Syria’s civil war was about, other than a US blob op to gain control of Syria and its oil, you could win a MacArthur Genius Prize. But you might also ask: did the United Blob of America hire ISIS-K to slaughter 137 Russian civilians Saturday night? And also: did it do so directly or indirectly, through cut-outs?

One blob weakness is that it can’t resist the impulse to telegraph its plans ahead of some dastardly act. Both “Joe Biden” and State Department war-hawk Victoria Nuland verbally signaled the op to blow-up the Nord Stream gas pipelines well before the act. Before “retiring” (or getting cashiered) from State this month, Ms. Nuland warned Russia to expect “some nasty surprises” in the days ahead. Was she fired for opening her big mouth? Now, a photograph has surfaced of one of the captured Crocus perps, Shamsidin Fariduni, posing in the Crocus concert hall date-stamped March 7. A set-up? A deep fake?

In any case, on March 8 the United Blob State Department issued a warning to Russia’s foreign ministry that something wicked was coming their way, and likewise warned our diplomatic personnel to steer clear of concert halls and other public venues. Was the Crocus op already well in motion? And was the blob trying to cover for Ms. Nuland’s big mouth by warning about something that was too late to stop? Whatever else you think about the Russians, they are not dumb bunnies. You can be sure they are carefully putting together the puzzle pieces, having already been careful to take the suspects alive. They were, incidentally, all in one car driving toward the Ukraine border when apprehended by Russian police. That is being considered “a clue” as to who their handlers are. But then, who is Ukraine’s handler? (Cue: thinking music.)

“To start to call opponents or critics terrorists has long been a problem on both ends of the political spectrum.”

• January 6th Continues to be a Tragedy in the Eye of the Beholder (Turley)

For years, I have maintained that January 6th was a disgraceful riot but not an insurrection. That issue came to a head with the litigation over disqualifying former president Donald Trump and similar calls to block dozens of Republican incumbents from ballots. Now, the protest that became a riot has been elevated from an insurrection to a terrorist attack. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and other democrats are using the description despite no one being charged with insurrection or terrorism. On Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez declared to CNN host Jake Tapper that “We’re talking about an individual who ordered essentially a terrorist attack on the Capital of the United States in order to retain power.” In fairness to Ocasio-Cortez, she is not alone in such characterizations. For example, many of us were surprised when FBI Director Christopher Wray condemned the January riot at the U.S. Capitol as “domestic terrorism.” From a strictly legal basis, it was wildly inaccurate, in my view.

Liberal publications like Politico have railed against the Justice Department for not charging terrorism. That has been supported by some law professors. Those charged for their role in the attack that day are largely facing trespass and other less serious charges — rather than insurrection or sedition. While the FBI launched a massive national investigation, it did not find evidence of an insurrection. While a few were charged with seditious conspiracy, no one was charged with insurrection. Trump has never been charged with either incitement or insurrection. The media has fueled these claims. One year after the riot, CBS News mostly downplayed and ignored the result of its own poll showing that 76 percent viewed it for what it was, as a “protest gone too far.” They argue that this riot could simply be treated as “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.” However, so could other protests that result in property damage and criminal acts.

We have seen other legislative proceedings shutdown by protesters with members removed from the floor. The question is where to draw the line to avoid the arbitrary classification of some protests as terrorism and others as unlawful access or trespass. Nancy Pelosi called protesters at her home Russian plants. Politicians called a protest on the Tennessee House floor “an insurrection.” Such rhetoric excess easily inflames the public, but it creates lasting erroneous views of the law. That in turn can pose a real threat to free speech as the line between demonstrations and terrorism are blurred. Ocasio-Cortez’s view of what constitutes the crime of terrorism is dubious for many, particularly after she declared that racketeering is not a crime. However, there is pressure to ramp up rhetoric as we approach the 2024 elections. To start to call opponents or critics terrorists has long been a problem on both ends of the political spectrum.

“..the ethical ramifications of BCIs and other emerging neurotechnologies don’t stop at the consumer market or the workplace..”

• Weaponizing Reality: The Dawn of Neurowarfare (Pabst)

Billionaire Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface (BCI) company Neuralink made headlines earlier this year for inserting its first brain implant into a human being. Musk says such implants, which are described as “fully implantable, cosmetically invisible, and designed to let you control a computer or mobile device anywhere you go,” are slated to eventually offer “full-bandwidth data streaming” to the brain. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are quite the human achievement: as described by the University of Calgary, “A brain computer interface (BCI) is a system that determines functional intent – the desire to change, move, control, or interact with something in your environment – directly from your brain activity. In other words, BCIs allow you to control an application or a device using only your mind.” Developers and advocates of BCIs and adjacent technologies emphasize that they can help people regain abilities lost due to aging, ailments, accidents or injuries, thus improving quality of life.

A brain implant created by Swiss-based École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne (EPFL), for example, has allowed a paralyzed man to walk again just by thinking. Others go further: Neuralink’s goal is to help people “surpass able-bodied human performance.” Yet, great ethical concerns arise with such advancements, and the tech is already being used for questionable purposes. To better plan logistics and boost productivity, for example, some Chinese employers have started using “emotional surveillance technology” to monitor workers’ brainwaves which, “combined with artificial intelligence algorithms, [can] spot incidents of workplace rage, anxiety, or sadness.” The example showcases how personal the technology can become as it is normalized in daily life. But the ethical ramifications of BCIs and other emerging neurotechnologies don’t stop at the consumer market or the workplace. Governments and militaries are already discussing — and experimenting on — the roles they could play in wartime.

Indeed, many are describing the human body and brain as war’s next domain, with a 2020 NATO-backed paper on “cognitive warfare” describing the phenomenon’s objective as “mak[ing] everyone a weapon…The brain will be the battlefield of the 21st century.” On this new “battlefield,” an era of neuroweapons, which can broadly be defined as technologies and systems that could either enhance or damage a warfighter or target’s cognitive and/or physical abilities, or otherwise attack people or critical societal infrastructure, has begun. In this exploration of the race to apply the latest neurotechnologies to war and beyond, I investigated how the neuroweapons of tomorrow, including BCIs that may allow for brain-to-brain or brain-to-machine communication, have the capacity to expand conflicts into a new domain — the brain — while also bringing a new dimension to both hard- and soft-power struggles of the future.

CO2 has never driven temperature changes in the past. Never.

"The question of whether CO2 drives the climate is easily resolved. You can look back in time over hundreds of millions of years—CO2 levels have changed radically many times. Did this cause temperature change? No, absolutely not. CO2 has never driven temperature changes in the… pic.twitter.com/jYWnNhI1U9

— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) March 25, 2024

Obamacare
https://twitter.com/i/status/1772279457711034482

Clock

Real Time, art installation by Maarten Baas, features manual creation and erasure of clock hands each minute.

The "Schiphol clock" has a man painting minutes on a translucent screen, actor Tiago Sá da Costa recorded for 12 hours to create the video.
pic.twitter.com/9FrEav2VIC

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) March 25, 2024

Safe

A magnificent safe.pic.twitter.com/gjDAZ814Km

— Figen (@TheFigen_) March 24, 2024

Pelican

This man helping a pelican with fishing wire stuck to its beak
pic.twitter.com/aHE4zUmIaP

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) March 25, 2024

Cheetah

Meet Kiki: Just a pregnant special needs cheetah who learned to sit from meerkats pic.twitter.com/HHcVyE50SF

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) March 25, 2024

Kung fu master

This monkey looks like a Kung-fu master pic.twitter.com/KmcHywdyTt

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) March 25, 2024

Boop

Predators exist

Hooman: boop pic.twitter.com/dXs4auRNWH

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) March 25, 2024

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Debt Rattle August 11 2022

Aug 112022

August 11, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:40 am Finance Tagged with: excess deaths, FBI, food poverty, NATO, Security Council, subpoena, swamp, Trump, Zelensky 38 Responses »

Vincent van Gogh Kingfisher by the Waterside 1887

• FBI Trump Raid Exposes Washington’s Secrecy Shams (Bovard)

• An Informer Told the FBI What Docs Trump Was Hiding, and Where (NW)

• Mar-a-Lago Search Shows the Swamp’s Trump Obsession (WSJ)

• Trump Got Grand Jury Subpoena In Spring, Voluntarily Cooperated (JTN)

• Trump Raid Deathblow to Democracy – Martin Armstrong (USAW)

• Millions Will Freeze This Winter; Or Fall Into Debt To Avoid Doing So (Every)

• Energy Costs Pushing Europeans Into Food Poverty – Bloomberg (RT)

• Only NATO Could De-Militarise Itself! (Tweedie)

• Why Have I Stopped Posting Maps Of The Situation In The Ukraine (Saker)

• West Would Love To Fight Russia ‘To The Last Ukrainian’ – Moscow (RT)

• Ukraine, West Must Be Held Accountable For Nuclear Powerplant Attack (Ritter)

• Russia Summons UN Security Council Over Nuclear Emergency (RT)

• Zelensky Makes Prediction On Conflict’s End (RT)

• Contenders For Boris Johnson’s Crown Stress Fealty To Israel (Cook)

• UK Excess Non-Covid Deaths Top 12,500 in 14 Weeks (DS)

• Cumulative Number of Case Reports Reported to Pfizer for BNT162B2 (Smalley)

Kash Patel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1557007621403643906

Seagal

Zelensky was implicated in crimes against humanity" – the first shots from the documentary by Steven Seagal, who visited the pre-trial detention center in Yelenovka today pic.twitter.com/aXJ8dCNHXA

— Bethany cox CorbynOutrider# (@ARTESOSCURASBOO) August 10, 2022

“President George W. Bush in 2001 issued an executive order that “effectively rewrote the Presidential Records Act, converting it from a measure guaranteeing public access to one that blocks it..”

• FBI Trump Raid Exposes Washington’s Secrecy Shams (Bovard)

FBI agents raided Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home Monday reportedly looking for boxes of classified material that Trump allegedly removed from the White House when his presidency ended in January 2021. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said the raid showed the Justice Department’s “intolerable state of weaponized politicization.” Trump is accused of violating the Presidential Records Act. Congress enacted this law in 1978 after former President Richard Nixon claimed his secret Oval Office tapes and other records were his personal property. The law asserted, “The United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records.” “The Presidential Records Act is critical to our democracy, in which the government is held accountable by the people,” Archivist of the United States David Ferriero declared earlier this year.

In reality, the Presidential Records Act is the Presidential Damn-Near-Perpetual-Secrecy Act. Former presidents pocket multimillion-dollar advances for their memoirs while their records are mostly quarantined for decades from the citizens they often misgoverned. The Nixon Library did not release the final batch of his secret tapes until 2013 — 39 years after Nixon was driven from office. The Lyndon B. Johnson Library delayed releasing the final batch of his secret tapes of presidential conversations until 2016 — 47 years after he left office. President George W. Bush in 2001 issued an executive order that “effectively rewrote the Presidential Records Act, converting it from a measure guaranteeing public access to one that blocks it,” as law professor Jonathan Turley noted. Congress overturned parts of that order in 2014.

Obama White House lawyers repeatedly invoked the Presidential Records Act to “delay the release of thousands of pages of records from President Bill Clinton’s White House,” Politico reported. At the end of his presidency, Barack Obama trucked 30 million pages of his administration’s records to Chicago, promising to digitize them and eventually put them online — a move that outraged historians. More than five years after Obama’s presidency ended, the National Archives webpage reveals that zero pages have been digitized and disclosed. People can file requests via the Freedom of Information Act (a law Obama helped wreck) to access Obama records, but responses from presidential libraries can be delayed for years, even more than a decade, if the information is classified.

But what were they looking for? And did they get it?

• An Informer Told the FBI What Docs Trump Was Hiding, and Where (NW)

The raid on Mar-a-Lago was based largely on information from an FBI confidential human source, one who was able to identify what classified documents former President Trump was still hiding and even the location of those documents, two senior government officials told Newsweek. The officials, who have direct knowledge of the FBI’s deliberations and were granted anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters, said the raid of Donald Trump’s Florida residence was deliberately timed to occur when the former president was away. FBI decision-makers in Washington and Miami thought that denying the former president a photo opportunity or a platform from which to grandstand (or to attempt to thwart the raid) would lower the profile of the event, says one of the sources, a senior Justice Department official who is a 30-year veteran of the FBI.

The effort to keep the raid low-key failed: instead, it prompted a furious response from GOP leaders and Trump supporters. “What a spectacular backfire,” says the Justice official. “I know that there is much speculation out there that this is political persecution, but it is really the best and the worst of the bureaucracy in action,” the official says. “They wanted to punctuate the fact that this was a routine law enforcement action, stripped of any political overtones, and yet [they] got exactly the opposite.” FBI decision-makers in Washington and Miami thought that denying the former president a photo opportunity or a platform from which to grandstand (or to attempt to thwart the raid) would lower the profile of the event, says one of the sources, a senior Justice Department official who is a 30-year veteran of the FBI.

The effort to keep the raid low-key failed: instead, it prompted a furious response from GOP leaders and Trump supporters. “What a spectacular backfire,” says the Justice official. “I know that there is much speculation out there that this is political persecution, but it is really the best and the worst of the bureaucracy in action,” the official says. “They wanted to punctuate the fact that this was a routine law enforcement action, stripped of any political overtones, and yet [they] got exactly the opposite.”

Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson Goes SCORCHED EARTH: The FBI is BEYOND REDEMPTION. The agency must be BROKEN UP and its functions farmed out. pic.twitter.com/a4aCnUuiWg

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 10, 2022

“That is how they see us—destabilized and vulnerable. Our opponents are redoing their global risk-reward ratios. Incredibly, we are doing this to ourselves.”

“Trump II would be a four-year civil war. The Swamp wouldn’t drain. It would deepen. The rancor could drown us all.”

• Mar-a-Lago Search Shows the Swamp’s Trump Obsession (WSJ)

Let us assume that for 99.99% of the U.S. population in early August 2022, the last thing on their mind was Mar-a-Lago. Instead, a short list of real things preoccupying Americans would include inflation, crime, battles in Congress over spending, Ukraine fighting World War III for us in Europe, and China conducting massive live-fire military exercises around Taiwan. So it came as a surprise to discover Monday evening that the Justice Department and FBI decided the most important thing in the world just now was raiding former President Donald Trump’s estate in Palm Beach, Fla. Among other thoughts, a three-letter acronym starting with W comes to mind. Forgive me for not spending more than a moment on the legal niceties of this event—the applicability of the Presidential Records Act, that it had be about “something big” involving classified documents, or that no one, including a former president, is above the law. They are all beside the point.

You can hate Donald Trump until your eyes pop out, but let us be clear: He was elected the 45th president of the U.S. He served four years in office. No former president who was disliked by many—not Clinton, Reagan nor FDR—had his home invaded by a squad of FBI agents. This should never happen in the U.S. End of discussion. But it did happen. The Trump raid is now a wall-to-wall political disaster for the United States, doing more damage, if that’s possible, to the country’s internal divisions and even creating external risks. Consider the current spectacle the U.S. is presenting to foreign adversaries. Multiple members of the sitting president’s own party in the past week—such as Joe Manchin and Jerry Nadler—have openly abandoned Joe Biden for an election that is two years off. Days later, the previous president comes under explicit attack from the FBI.

Imagine what we would think of the stability of China or Russia if events like this were happening to Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin. That is how they see us—destabilized and vulnerable. Our opponents are redoing their global risk-reward ratios. Incredibly, we are doing this to ourselves. Correction: They are doing it to us. Who are “they”? They, as of Monday, are who much of the political right says they are—the Swamp, the Deep State, the Regime, the Establishment. [..] A second Trump term isn’t the last thing this country needs. But it’s about second to last. The raid on Mar-a-Lago proves that Trump Derangement Syndrome won’t go away until Mr. Trump is out of elective politics. Trump II would not be a replay of Trump I, a more substantive, policy-driven presidency than his critics will admit. Trump II would be a four-year civil war. The Swamp wouldn’t drain. It would deepen. The rancor could drown us all.

“I mean, if the subpoena worked the first time, then presumably a second subpoena would work the second time if there were remaining documents.”

• Trump Got Grand Jury Subpoena In Spring, Voluntarily Cooperated (JTN)

Two months before his Florida home was raided by the FBI, former President Donald Trump secretly received a grand jury subpoena for classified documents belonging to the National Archives, and voluntarily cooperated by turning over responsive evidence, surrendering security surveillance footage and allowing federal agents and a senior Justice Department lawyer to tour his private storage locker, according to a half dozen people familiar with the incident. While the cooperation was mostly arranged by his lawyers, Trump personally surprised the DOJ National Security Division prosecutor and three FBI agents who came to his Mar-a-Lago compound on June 3, greeting them as they came to pick up a small number of documents compliant with the subpoena, the sources told Just the News, speaking only on condition of anonymity because the visit was covered by grand jury secrecy.

The subpoena requested any remaining documents Trump possessed with any classification markings, even if they involved photos of foreign leaders, correspondence or mementos from his presidency. Secret Service agents were also present and facilitated the visit, officials said. Trump signaled his full cooperation, telling the agents and prosecutor, “Look, whatever you need let us know,” according to two eyewitnesses. The federal team was surprised by the president’s invitation and asked for an immediate favor: to see the 6-foot-by-10-foot storage locker where his clothes, shoes, documents and mementos from his presidency were stored at the compound. Given Trump’s instruction, the president’s lawyers complied and allowed the search by the FBI before the entourage left cordially.

Five days later, DOJ officials sent a letter to Trump’s lawyers asking them to secure the storage locker with more than the lock they had seen. The Secret Service installed a more robust security lock to comply. Around the same time, the Trump Organization, which owns Mar-a-Lago, received a request for surveillance video footage covering the locker and volunteered the footage to federal authorities, sources disclosed. The disclosure Wednesday to Just the News raised immediate new questions in legal and congressional circles about the necessity for the subsequent raid, including whether the judge who approved the warrant new of the earlier cooperation.

“The more we learn, the more confusing this gets,” George Washington University Law professor Jonathan Turley told Fox News program Hannity. “….Did they relay this history to the magistrate? That, according to these sources, that the president had cooperated. ”I mean, the idea that he was subject to a subpoena, complied with a subpoena, didn’t challenge it, voluntarily showed the storage room to the agents, followed their advice, secured it to meet their demands. All of that is hardly a basis for saying now we need to send in 40 FBI agents on a on a raid,” he added. “I mean, if the subpoena worked the first time, then presumably a second subpoena would work the second time if there were remaining documents.”

“worried about civil war or extreme civil unrest in 2023 in America.” Armstrong is seeing a “world war coming in 2024 or after.”

• Trump Raid Deathblow to Democracy – Martin Armstrong (USAW)

Armstrong says the Democrats are in “dire straits” at the polls–and they know it. Armstrong thinks the Trump raid by the FBI is an act of desperation, and it will “backfire,” but that’s not the only play in the Democrat playbook for the midterms in November. Armstrong says, “I have been warned that the Democrats have been maneuvering, and the reason they are allowing all the illegal aliens to come in is they intend to allow them to vote. You already had the Justice Department go after one state that said you had to prove you are an American to vote, and they filed a suit against them saying that they violated their civil rights. At that stage of the game, hey, all of Europe, Australia, everybody should just send in a vote.”

Armstrong’s says forget what the mainstream polls are saying about voter support for Democrats and Joe Biden because the real numbers are much lower than the public is told. Armstrong’s “Socrates” computer program shows Joe Biden has just 12% of support in America. Maybe this is why Democrats are desperate and realize they have to cheat and break the law to stay in power. It’s not going to get any better, and the entire world is in the same sinking boat. Armstrong says, “We basically are sitting here in the middle of the collapse of Western civilization. It’s socialism that is collapsing because these people have done nothing but borrow money to bribe them to vote for them . . . There is no way to pay it back, and they had no intention of paying it back. . . . Europe is, just forget it.

You have emerging markets collapsing around the world because to sell their debt, they had to put it into dollars. Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Pakistan, Argentina are falling apart on a global scale.” Armstrong thinks the dollar will be strong for now and not to expect a collapse in the USA anytime soon because America will be the last man standing. That said, Armstrong does see the possibility of a “stock market collapse in September.” Armstrong is also “worried about civil war or extreme civil unrest in 2023 in America.” Armstrong is seeing a “world war coming in 2024 or after.” Armstrong also said, “My computer warns that there may not even be an election in America in 2024. It’s reaching that critical period. So, this raid on Trump is like throwing down the gauntlet. Everything is gone.”

“Yet the declassification of such documents is the president’s prerogative, in which case the issue may not be as it appears.”

• Millions Will Freeze This Winter; Or Fall Into Debt To Avoid Doing So (Every)

UK household power bills are now likely to soar to as much as £4,200 from January, a staggering increase. Indeed, the government, which is not going to do anything about it until a new PM is chosen, holds a “reasonable worst case scenario” (that is “highly unlikely to materialise”) for losing a sixth of the electricity grid, meaning enforced blackouts that will close down rail networks and public buildings. What is highly likely is that millions will freeze this winter; or fall into debts to avoid doing so; and the result will be deflationary demand for everything else, along with cost-push price increases for everything; and yet government help will just mean the latter inflation and less of the former.

(Relatedly, yesterday on Twitter I saw more bitter political satire speaking to how inflation is being handled in the UK, ostensibly through the eyes of a media correspondent from Papua New Guinea. It begins: “To the island of Shakespeare, where energy companies ring 400% profits, and energy consumers are reduced to ringing Jeremy Vine. In the home of blank verse, nobody can afford to use a meter.” It only gets better from there.) But don’t worry: headline inflation is slightly lower this month. Meanwhile, other headlines are about the FBI’s raid on former President Trump’s home. It would appear the potential crime is the removal of classified documents from the White House, a serious, albeit obscure, charge. Yet the declassification of such documents is the president’s prerogative, in which case the issue may not be as it appears.

Clearly, the raid has implications for 2024 because if found guilty, Trump could be barred from seeking federal office. At the same time, the (social) media coverage is again exposing deep polarisation. We have the *very* valid argument that all are equal before the law (even Hunter Biden and Hillary Clinton); on the other, muttering that “If they can go after the former president, they can go after anyone.” Even neutral (and some anti-Trump) observers say that unless concrete charges emerge, all the raid will likely do is cement Trump’s base. The parallel with the inflation print is that what we see right now is not necessarily what we are going to be seeing in the medium-term.

“We’re not running a casino. We’re making food, which gives us a big responsibility to get it right.”

• Energy Costs Pushing Europeans Into Food Poverty – Bloomberg (RT)

Food producers across Europe are contending with soaring energy prices, with that increase quickly felt in the pockets of consumers grappling with a cost-of-living crisis, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. According to the report, citing a Bank of England forecast, a third of UK households are set to spend more than 10% of incomes on energy, and now surging grocery costs are driving up food poverty. “It is the domino effect that has happened with us having to take a huge increase on energy,”Ryan Peters, managing director of Brioche Pasquier UK, told the outlet. “We have to try and raise our prices to retailers a little bit, and unfortunately that goes on to consumers,” he said. Kona Haque, head of research for commodities trader ED&F Man, warned: “I think the worst is still to come as energy prices rise. This winter will be a game changer and processing costs will likely go up.”

Europe’s largest sugar beet producer Suedzucker AG has reported its first quarter revenues had been hit by a “substantial rise” in raw material, energy and packaging costs. Companies turning soybeans, rapeseed and sunflower seeds into cooking oils have reportedly been slowing output in the UK and Europe and shifting production to other regions with lower energy prices. Meanwhile, energy-intensive food factories across the continent could be forced to shut down if natural gas shortages spark rationing, Bloomberg warned. “Just like people are grappling with their home budgets, we’re having to manage highly volatile energy and input costs, making sure every penny our business spends and gets as income is actively managed in real time,” Tate & Lyle Sugars senior vice president Gerald Mason was quoted as saying by the outlet. “We’re not running a casino. We’re making food, which gives us a big responsibility to get it right.”

“..the stream of announced (if not yet delivered) “packages” of military aid is really starting to scrape the barrel of NATO inventories..”

• Only NATO Could De-Militarise Itself! (Tweedie)

In their rush to arm the Ukraine since before the start of Russia’s ‘demilitarisation’ operation there, several eastern member-states have managed to demilitarise themselves without Moscow having to lift a finger. Poland has sent 232 T-72 main battle tanks, almost half its entire tank fleet, over the border into the Ukraine. The Donbass militias have already captured some examples with almost no miles on the clock. Warsaw has ordered 1,000 K2 ‘Black Panther’ tanks from South Korea and 366 M1 Abrams from the US as replacements, but deliveries won’t be completed until 2026. The Czech Republic has reportedly handed over all 15 of its Mi-24 helicopter gunships — one of the types Russia is using to pound the Ukrainian army — along with 56 infantry fighting vehicles, 40 self-propelled artillery vehicles and 20 Grad-style 122mm multi-launch rocket system (MLRS) trucks.

After donating an S-300 surface-to-air missile (SAM) system, neighbouring Slovakia is weighing up sending its one squadron of 11 MiG-29 fighter jets. The government is seeking guarantees from neighbouring countries that their air forces will defend its airspace until it can find replacements if it decides to give up its entire fixed-wing combat capability. Meanwhile the defence ministry has ordered 14 F-16 multi-role fighters from the US — an aircraft from the 1970s that the MiG-29 was built to outfly — but the first aircraft won’t arrive until 2024. At least the Slovaks had the sense not to give up 30 T-72s after Germany only offered them 15 Leopard-2 tanks to replace them.

And just last week it emerged that North Macedonia, one of the newest balkanised statelets in the Balkans, transferred four Su-25 ground attack jets it bought from the Ukraine in 2001 back there, along with 31 Russian T-72s — disbanding its army’s only armoured battalion in the process. In return, the US will give the country’s army some Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, an oversized four-seat jeep with just enough armour to stop a rifle bullet. If Russia really did decide to roll the tanks into the former Warsaw Treaty countries, like their increasingly-hysterical politicians claim Moscow is planning, they would likely face little more opposition than infantrymen armed with rifles and machine-guns. The battalion-sized ‘tactical groups’ of troops from the US, UK and other ‘big boy’ NATO members stationed in eastern Europe would make no difference. They’re only there to provide the pretext for ‘escalation to the nuclear threshold’, as Andrei Martyanov says.

In fact the stream of announced (if not yet delivered) “packages” of military aid is really starting to scrape the barrel of NATO inventories. The UK announced on July 21 it was sending 20 155mm self-propelled guns — although those had already been accounted for months earlier when they were bought from Belgium’s reserves. The Ministry of Defence also pledged 36 105mm (four-inch) artillery pieces, not even more the much-vaunted six-inch (155mm) M777s partly made in the UK. The 105mm shells hold about a quarter as much high explosive as the 155s, and can reach a maximum 12 miles compared to 19 for the bigger guns. The US has promised four more of the holy HIMARS, plus another 72,000 155mm shells for guns which have mostly been bombed already. Russia also claims to have hit six out of the 12 HIMARS launchers the US has already sent — and which have failed to turn the tide of the war.

“..Russia is not engaged in a war against the Ukraine, but against the entire united and consolidated West…”

• Why Have I Stopped Posting Maps Of The Situation In The Ukraine (Saker)

Did the Russians expect such a massive reaction from the West? The term “expect” is very misleading. That is not how these things work. Operational and strategic plans are not based on a single scenario which you “hope” will materialize. Here are also two things which we should always remember: • It is the job of the intelligence agencies and the operations planning departments to prepare and model for as many possible scenarios (or scenarii?) as reasonable imaginable. • Operational and strategic plans do not deal with tactical issues and they CONSTANTLY change depending on a feedback and decision making loop.

One example: Putin admitted during a TV interview that when the Russians moved into Crimea he had placed Russian nuclear forces on maximal alert. Does that meant that anybody in the Kremlin or the General Staff “expected” the US to nuke Russia? Of course not! But they DID consider that possibility and took the needed action to try to prevent it. Same here. I am very confident that the Russians were fully prepared for the West’s insane and, frankly, suicidal reaction to the SMO. In fact, that “maximal” response was one of the MANY contingencies which the Russians must have prepared for. As a former intelligence analyst, I can tell you that military analysis does look at as many options as possible and then the operational planning folks make their own preparations for any contingency.

It is now abundantly clear that the West is determined to fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian. Hence the truly idiotic order given to the best and most capable Ukrainian forces to not engage in a mobile defense but to hold their ground in the Donbass until they are totally destroyed. Furthermore, it is also abundantly clear that the western countries are willing to destroy not only its own economies, but the entire international financial system to try to hurt Russia (and China) as much as possible. In other words, Russia is not engaged in a war against the Ukraine, but against the entire united and consolidated West.

“We understand very well that we are not fighting against Ukraine in the Ukrainian territory, and certainly not against the Ukrainian people…”

• West Would Love To Fight Russia ‘To The Last Ukrainian’ – Moscow (RT)

Ukraine’s leadership has sold out its own people to fight on behalf of NATO against Russia, Sergey Kirienko, the deputy head of the administration of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said. He added that Western nations are happy to see Ukrainians die as long as it serves their interests. “We understand very well that we are not fighting against Ukraine in the Ukrainian territory, and certainly not against the Ukrainian people. The entire NATO bloc is at war with Russia in Ukraine with Ukrainians’ hands,” Kirienko said in a speech on Wednesday. He blamed the government in Kiev for the violence, accusing it of offering the country and its people to be sacrificed in a “fundamental confrontation of the Western community against Russia.”

“NATO will gladly fight against Russia ‘to the last Ukrainian’ as they say themselves without hesitance. Why not? They don’t feel sorry about it.” Kirienko was addressing a forum for young Russian political scientists, which launched this week in the Moscow Region. Speaking via video link, he told attendees that it will be up to them to find new ideas and narratives to help the country take a prominent place in the future world, the shape of which is being determined by the ongoing conflict. The Russia-West stand-off goes far beyond the kinetic conflict in Ukraine, the official said. Unprecedented economic sanctions imposed by the US and its allies on Moscow and “info-psychological attacks” directed at it are essential parts of the conflict too, he noted.

Moscow’s opponents had miscalculated when they decided on their response to Russian military action in Ukraine, Kirienko said, citing classified Western documents. “They seriously debated in early March whether they needed five million people protesting in the streets in Russia or should better go for ten million and when to expect that: by the end of March or in mid-April at the latest,” he said. The planners believed that Russia “would be too busy to defend its geostrategic interests” when facing the anticipated protests, he added. Despite this, Kirienko advised against relaxing, saying that the pressure on Russia will remain high and may become more efficient. Moscow’s opponents “are pretty smart and competent people, who can learn from their mistakes,” he said.

“..Russia has extended its own invitation to IAEA monitors to visit the powerplant and summoned a UN Security Council meeting to discuss the situation..”

• Ukraine, West Must Be Held Accountable For Nuclear Powerplant Attack (Ritter)

The Ukrainian attack on the Zaporozhye nuclear facility was, in typical Orwellian fashion, forecasted by the United States four days before it took place. During an August 1 news conference at the United Nations, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia of using the nuclear facility as a base from which it conducted artillery strikes against Ukraine. Blinken declared that the act of firing artillery rockets from proximity to the nuclear power plant was “the height of irresponsibility,”implying that these rockets could land on the power plant itself. Blinken also added that the Russians were using the nuclear facility as a “nuclear shield” which prevented any Ukrainian attack out of fear of striking the nuclear reactors.

Blinken’s brazen parroting of Ukrainian government talking points was made more absurd by the absolute dearth of evidence to back up his powerful pronouncements. Normally, when someone of the stature of the Secretary of State speaks in such a public manner about issues of this importance, there is some intelligence information that is released – for instance, overhead imagery showing Russian troop locations near the Zaporozhye nuclear plant – to sustain the allegation. No such data was provided, however, because Blinken had ceased functioning as the head of the American diplomatic service, and instead was functioning as little more than a Ukrainian propagandist. For its part, Russia has made it clear that there were no Russian forces located in the vicinity of the Zaporozhye nuclear facility save for a small contingent of troops for security purposes (it is, after all, an active nuclear power plant.)

Again, while Russia can clearly provide overhead imagery of its force disposition in the vicinity of the plant, operational security precludes it from doing so. It is, after all, the job of the accuser to provide the evidence of a crime, not the accused. Blinken’s August 1 statement served as the initiation of a public relations campaign which culminated in the Ukrainian artillery attack on the Zaporozhye nuclear facility. The goal of this campaign appears to be twofold – first, to put Russia in a bad light, and second, to allow Ukraine to accomplish that which it could not achieve through military force – the eviction of Russian troops from Zaporozhye. The calls for international intervention emanating from the West point to a concerted effort in promoting a pro-Ukrainian narrative even when all parties know the underlying facts sustaining this narrative are not true. To counteract that, Russia has extended its own invitation to IAEA monitors to visit the powerplant and summoned a UN Security Council meeting to discuss the situation.

When’s the last time Ukraine said anything true?

• Russia Summons UN Security Council Over Nuclear Emergency (RT)

Russia has summoned an emergency session of the UN Security Council to discuss the situation at Ukraine’s Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, which has been the subject of regular shelling attacks. Moscow wants the chief of the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to brief the council on the situation. The move, which was reported by Russian media on Tuesday, was confirmed by the deputy head of Russia’s mission to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, who said the public needed to learn about “Ukrainian provocations.” The meeting is expected to take place on Thursday. Russia says Ukraine has been responsible for a series of drone attacks and artillery strikes at the nuclear site. The latest shelling was reported last weekend.

Kiev denies the allegations and claims that Russia has shelled the facility itself to discredit Ukraine. Kiev’s National Security Council has also alleged that Moscow was using the power plant as a military base, keeping heavy weapons and personnel there. The IAEA has not had access to the site since before the Russian-Ukrainian conflict escalated in late February and relies on reports from Ukraine to assess the situation on the ground. The Zaporozhye plant is manned by Ukrainian nuclear workers despite being under Russian control. On Saturday, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi expressed the IAEA’s concern over the artillery strikes, stating that they underlined “the very real risk of a nuclear disaster that could threaten public health and the environment in Ukraine and beyond.”

“I condemn any violent acts carried out at or near the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant or against its staff,” he stressed. Grossi is expected to lead an inspection of the facility for an independent assessment of the situation and verification that non-proliferation safeguards remain in place. The Zaporozhye plant is the largest in Europe and stores tens of tons of enriched uranium and plutonium in its reactor cores and spent fuel storage, according to the IAEA. The watchdog chief earlier said he was alarmed that the security of the radioactive materials may be compromised amid Russian-Ukrainian hostilities.

“..if the leadership in Kiev really decided to use force against the peninsula “the Day of Judgment will come to them all simultaneously – a swift and hard one.”

• Zelensky Makes Prediction On Conflict’s End (RT)

Ukraine will keep fighting against Russia until it regains control over the Crimean Peninsula, President Vladimir Zelensky has promised. “This Russian war against Ukraine, against the whole of free Europe, began with Crimea and it should end with Crimea – with its liberation,”Zelensky said in a video address on Tuesday. “Crimea is Ukrainian, and we’ll never give up on it,” the president vowed, insisting that the peninsula, which overwhelmingly voted to reunite with Russia in a 2014 referendum in response to a coup in Kiev, has been “occupied” by Moscow all those years. There will be no peace in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean regions “as long as Russia is able to use our peninsula as a military base,” he claimed.

However, Zelensky acknowledged that it was currently “impossible to say” when exactly will Ukraine be able to reclaim Crimea. “But we’re constantly adding new components to the formula of liberating” the peninsula, he added. Last month, Ukrainian deputy defense minister Vladimir Gavrilov claimed that Kiev is going to use Western-supplied weapons to destroy the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which is based in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol, and take the peninsula back. Such an operation is going to be carried out “sooner or later,” he told the UK media.

Other Ukrainian officials also came up with threats against Crimea recently, one of them being Zelensky’s top aide Alexey Arestovich, who said that Kiev could strike the 19-kilometer-long Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea to Russia’s Krasnodar Region as soon as it gains technical capability to do so. Moscow has been insisting that Crimea is well-protected from any attack by the Ukrainian side. However, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who is now deputy chair of the country’s National Security Council, warned that if the leadership in Kiev really decided to use force against the peninsula “the Day of Judgment will come to them all simultaneously – a swift and hard one.”

“If there is a hell on earth, it is the lives of children in Gaza.” That hell is entirely manmade – by Israel.”

• Contenders For Boris Johnson’s Crown Stress Fealty To Israel (Cook)

Israel unleashed a surprise wave of air strikes on Gaza last Friday, the two remaining Conservative politicians vying to replace disgraced Prime Minister Boris Johnson publicised letters vowing fealty to Israel. Their timing underscored the degree to which British politicians on both sides of the aisle have now joined their American counterparts in making commitment to Israel a defining issue in their campaigns for highest office. Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, and Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, trumpeted their pro-Israel credentials over the weekend, as Israel killed 45 Palestinians, including 16 children, and injured hundreds more. Israel said several Islamic Jihad leaders – the intended targets – were among the dead. A ceasefire went into effect late on Sunday night.

As expected, western leaders came out solidly in support of Israel, even though on this occasion there was not even the pretence that Israel was “retaliating” for rockets fired out of Gaza. Israel initiated the hostilities, claiming its strikes were meant to prevent an alleged attack by the Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad with an anti-tank missile. One can imagine how politicians in the United States and Europe would have reacted had a Palestinian faction justified firing rockets into Israel unprovoked on the basis that it wished to deter future Israeli air strikes. But in any case, if deterrence really was Israel’s aim, its attack had precisely the opposite effect. Entirely predictably, Islamic Jihad responded by firing hundreds of rockets into Israel.

In fact, though it is never mentioned by western politicians or media, Palestinians, unlike Israel, actually have a right in international law to resist Israel militarily – and not only because Israel has been belligerently occupying their lands for decades. Israel has additionally subjected Gaza to a 15-year blockade that has tightly controlled who and what is allowed in and out of the tiny, heavily overcrowded coastal enclave. Gaza has been left in ruins by a series of Israeli attacks over more than a decade – what the Israeli army calls “mowing the lawn”. Gaza’s trapped 2.1 million inhabitants suffer serious shortages of food, clean water, medicines and electricity. Malnutrition and poverty are endemic. Last year, the head of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, observed: “If there is a hell on earth, it is the lives of children in Gaza.” That hell is entirely manmade – by Israel.

Where’s the research into the vaccines?

• UK Excess Non-Covid Deaths Top 12,500 in 14 Weeks (DS)

There have now been 12,517 excess non-Covid deaths registered in England and Wales in the 14 weeks since April 23rd, according to the latest official data from the Office for National Statistics, released on Tuesday. In the week ending July 29th, the most recent week for which data are available, 11,013 deaths were registered in England and Wales, which is 1,678 (18%) above the five-year average for the week. Of these, 810 mentioned COVID-19 on the death certificate as a contributory cause and 531 mentioned COVID-19 as underlying cause, leaving 1,147 deaths from a different underlying cause. Note that this was the week following the brief but intense heatwave (with recorded temperatures topping 40°C for the first time in some areas), so some of these will be heatwave deaths, as will many of the additional Covid deaths (being people who happened to have Covid at the time).

At the Daily Sceptic we have been following what appears to be a correlation between the spring fourth dose booster rollout among over-75s in England and a wave of now over 12,500 non-Covid excess deaths that are currently unexplained. If all of these deaths were a result of the spring boosters (of which 4,201,990 have been delivered up to July 29th) it would be a rate of one every 336 doses. That figure is likely an upper bound, as not all the additional deaths may be due to the boosters (some may be due to the pressures on hospitals and emergency services, for example). We saw last week that these U.K. data are broadly in line with data from the Netherlands, as highlighted by leading vaccine scientist Dr. Theo Schetters.

Deaths by date of occurrence spiked even further in the week ending July 22nd, which is likely to be connected with the heatwave of July 18-19th. One oddity is that the spike began in the previous week, before the heatwave occurred, the reason for which is not immediately obvious. More generally, excess non-Covid deaths have remained at a high level as the spring vaccination campaign has wound down, meaning the close correlation has not continued. This may be an indication of ongoing vaccine injury, perhaps in conjunction with injury from previous Covid infection, or of the operation of another cause which has not yet been identified.

Here is some research. From Pfizer itself.

• Cumulative Number of Case Reports Reported to Pfizer for BNT162B2 (Smalley)

Obtained by Freedom of Information request from the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration because that’s the only way to get public data nowadays. I manually converted the PDF to a datafile so anyone can analyse the data for themselves. This is the data that Pfizer has. If you were responsible for reviewing this, what action would you take?

Through 15th April 2022 (around 16 months):
• Total cases reported 1,348,078.
• 75% of cases reported are under the age of 65.
• Over 68% of cases are female.
• 387,675 (29%) of cases are described as “serious”.
• 17,156 reported cases for pregnant or breastfeeding women.
• 45,523 paediatric cases.
• 4,563,768 adverse events (average 3.4 per case).
• 646,837 nervous system disorders.
• 503,108 musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders.
• 299,486 gastrointestinal disorders.
• 209,213 skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders.
• 176,907 respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders.
• 162,086 reproductive system and breast disorders.
• 114,375 cardiac disorders.
• 93,097 blood and lymphatic system disorders.

Syria oil

New footage of a US military convoy smuggling stolen oil out of Raqqah, Syria.

The US army has been consistently looting the country's oil and smuggling it into their Iraq bases.

Washington steals over 80 percent of Syria's oil output per day
MORE https://t.co/s1z2uIjzJk pic.twitter.com/ko7EsxTRdh

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) August 10, 2022

Ode to Joy

Beethoven’s Ode to Joy is about bringing people together and not about division, Mr Sunak!pic.twitter.com/eTkIrxiJYe

— Fred Wuest (@WustFred) August 9, 2022

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Debt Rattle April 6 2022

Apr 062022

April 6, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:37 am Finance Tagged with: adverse events, cartoon, Durham, hypersonic, Milley, Pfizer, Psaki, Security Council, Shanghai, Sussman, Zelensky 49 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Standing nude 1928

• Zelensky Tells Security Council that “Russians Killed for Pleasure” (GR)

• Biden’s Folly In Ukraine (Gen. Douglas Macgregor)

• …But It Rhymes. Russia, Ukraine and Nazi Europe Mark II (Leslie)

• Gen. Milley Says Risk of Conflict ‘Between Great Powers’ Is Increasing (Antiwar)

• Australia, US, UK Military Alliance to Develop Hypersonic Missiles (Antiwar)

• What Would It Take for Military Spending in America to Go Down? (Astore)

• Jen Psaki Should Resign (WE)

• Pfizer Hired 600+ People to Process Vaccine Injury Reports (CHD)

• President Xi Faces An Impossible Dilemma In Shanghai COVID Outbreak (ZH)

• 10,000 Health Workers Sent To Help Control Shanghai Outbreak (AP)

• Durham Lowers the Boom on Former Clinton Counsel Michael Sussmann (Turley)

• Sussmann Doesn’t Want Steele Dossier Brought Up During Durham Trial (WE)

• ‘If I Did 1/100 Of What Hunter Biden Did, I’d Be In Jail’ – Eric Trump (JTN)

• When A Country Is Destroyed By Its Own Propaganda (Ugo Bardi)

The west: “Russia executed 410 people in Bucha!!!”

Russia: “No we didn’t, but we’d be more than happy to convene the security council and open up internationally recognized institutional channels for thorough investigation.”

The west: “No”

Gonzalo Lira “YouTube bans any open discussion about the Bucha false flag”

We live inside a cartoon.

• Zelensky Tells Security Council that “Russians Killed for Pleasure” (GR)

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has shown the UN Security Council on Tuesday a harrowing video from Ukraine in an apparent attempt to embarrass Russia and rally world opinion. The clip lasted about a minute and showed image after image of dead Ukrainians – including some burned and disfigured bodies. Speaking to the Security Council for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, he said Russian troops have killed civilians and raped women. Zelensky’s comments follow his visit to the town of Bucha on Monday, where the bodies of dead Ukrainian civilians were seen. He claimed that in the town people were shot in the street, in their homes, thrown into wells, and crushed by tanks in the middle of the road “just for the pleasure” of the Russian soldiers.

“The Russian military searched for and purposefully killed anyone who served our country,” he said, as Russia’s UN ambassador was looking on. Joe Biden called for Vladimir Putin to be tried for war crimes on Monday following the killings of civilians in the city of Bucha, Ukraine. Biden said the images coming from Bucha warranted calling Putin a “war criminal,” adding, “but we have to gather the information. We have to continue to provide Ukraine with the weapons they need to continue the fight and we have to get all the details so this can be an actual…war-crime trial.” “This guy (Putin) is brutal and what’s happening in Bucha is outrageous and everyone’s seen it,” Biden said.

Meanwhile, the United States ambassador to the UN called for Russia’s expulsion from the UN Human Rights Council. “Russia should not have a position of authority in a body whose very purpose is to promote respect for human rights. Not only is it the height of hypocrisy, it is dangerous,” Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said addressing the Security Council Tuesday. “Every day, we see more and more how little Russia respects human rights,” she added. “Russia’s participation on the Human Rights Council hurts the Council’s credibility. It undermines the entire UN. And it is just plain wrong.”

“Moscow can no more lose the war with Ukraine than Washington could lose a war with Mexico.”

• Biden’s Folly In Ukraine (Gen. Douglas Macgregor)

Americans find it difficult to determine whether the Biden administration’s policy decisions regarding Ukraine are the product of a deliberate strategy, extraordinary incompetence, or some combination of both. Threatening Russia, a nuclear armed power, with regime change and then annunciating a nuclear weapons policy that allows for the United States’ first-strike use of nuclear weapons under “extreme circumstances”—responding to an invasion by conventional forces, or chemical or biological attacks—suggests President Biden and his administration really are out of touch with reality. American voters instinctively grasp the truth that Americans have nothing to gain from a war with Russia, declared or undeclared. A short trip to almost any supermarket or gas station in America explains why. Last week, inflation hit its highest point in nearly 40 years and gas prices have skyrocketed since the conflict in Ukraine began.

Thanks to the Western media’s non-stop dissemination of unfavorable images of Russia’s leaders and its military, it would appear that President Biden is able to espouse any narrative that suits his purpose. Obscuring the true origins of this tragic conflict, however—NATO’s eastward expansion to include Ukraine—cannot alter strategic reality. Moscow can no more lose the war with Ukraine than Washington could lose a war with Mexico. Ukraine’s proximity to Russia gives Moscow unconstrained and immediate access to Russia’s reserves of military manpower, equipment, and firepower. Notwithstanding Moscow’s determination to avoid unnecessary collateral damage to Ukraine’s population and infrastructure, Russian Air and Ground Forces are at liberty to methodically destroy Ukrainian resistance in detail.

Russia’s commodity-based economy, with its abundance of food, energy, minerals, and other resources, creates enormous strategic depth for Moscow on the Eurasian landmass. These resources make Moscow Beijing’s natural strategic partner, thus securing Moscow’s Asian border. Moscow’s role in stabilizing Central Asia also makes Russian strength indispensable for the success of China’s Belt and Road Initiative rooted as it is in the historical Silk Road, linking the economies of East Asia to Europe, Africa, and the Near East. At the same time, Washington’s frequent use of financial sanctions have severely weakened, if not wrecked trust in the U.S. led global financial system. It is far more likely that countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa will either bypass sanctions to buy discounted Russian and Belorussian commodities or simply refuse to enforce them.

To minimize the impact of financial sanctions imposed by Washington and the European Union, Russia began “de-dollarizing” its economy years ago. Unburdened by the kind of odious sovereign debt that plagues Washington, Moscow has been able to stabilize the ruble with interest rate increases, and links to gold reserves. Now, de-dollarization is spreading. China, India, and Saudi Arabia are introducing de-dollarization policies as an anti-sanction measure. Saudi Arabia’s offer to sell oil in Chinese yuan raises real questions about the future of the petrodollar. Despite Japan’s public display of solidarity with Washington, Tokyo really made its bed with Eurasia when Tokyo signed on to membership in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Program (RCEP), the world’s largest trade bloc. Predictably, Tokyo already declared it will not ban Russian oil and natural gas imports and Japan will continue to work with Russia on important joint economic projects.

“Do you see the core and the rings? Do you see the suppression of everything Russian (Hitler never banned Russian music) and the weaponisation of the despicable ukro Nazi ideology? History might not repeat but it has just provided the rhyme of the century.”

• …But It Rhymes. Russia, Ukraine and Nazi Europe Mark II (Leslie)

Before I set off on my brief journey through history, there is a general point I want to address: There is a lot of anxiety floating around. Well-meaning people (including yours truly) are riding the waves of war, experiencing exaltation and dejection with every Russian triumph and setback. This is completely understandable and I would be less than honest if I did not admit to being utterly exhausted by worry and seesawing emotions. At the same time, I’ve come to understand one thing. My willing Russia to win will not make one bit of difference – well, perhaps it might. Russia is what it is – a great, fascinating, freedom-loving land of endless steppes and kind people whose mission is to rid the world of evil, full stop. As such, Russia must prevail, and it will.

However, such a great accomplishment – that no other country or civilization is close to being able to emulate – must come at a cost. This means that Russia’s struggle will (as always) involve setbacks, errors, losses, treachery and perhaps even tragedies. This is not something the Russians or their supporters want to countenance but please, hear me out. I am trying to desensitise you to the maelstrom of emotionally-charged information that can be very harmful if digested uncritically. Be strong but be prepared – like Russia – to sustain emotional losses that this long and immensely dangerous undertaking must produce. In the end, all we have is the belief that good must prevail and we should let that belief carry us all the way to victory.

[..] It was only the heroic offensive by the Red army that broke the back of the Euro beast – at a very high cost. However, not even they could break the back of the fanatical Ukrainian Nazis who continued with open terror until about 1956 and then went underground to await a fresh opportunity. Ukrainian terror against Russians which started in the 1910s has never stopped. Funded and supported by the Vatican, Austria-Hungary, Imperial Germany, Hitler’s Germany and Poland, the UK, US and West and the current German state, the Ukrainian Nazi virus was released again as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed (note the similarities with Yugoslavia and Croatia). Many Russians refused to see the truth and continued to support the increasingly anti-Russian ukro regimes in the name of “brotherhood” inculcated during Soviet times.

This is a simple replay of 1918, 1939, 1945 and 2014 when the Soviets/Russians forgave their hangmen only to have to fight the same battle again and again. This fully explains President Putin’s demand for a full denazification of the Ukraine. I can only hope that he completes this historic task fully. Can you see it yet? Do you see the geopolitical pattern that is currently forming? A deeply Russophobic Euro Reich centred on Germany, France and the Vatican (with a wholehearted Anglo-American support) is rapidly being turned into an anti-Russian fortress. Do you see the core and the rings? Do you see the suppression of everything Russian (Hitler never banned Russian music) and the weaponisation of the despicable ukro Nazi ideology? History might not repeat but it has just provided the rhyme of the century.

And he’s stoking it.

• Gen. Milley Says Risk of Conflict ‘Between Great Powers’ Is Increasing (Antiwar)

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley warned Congress on Tuesday that the chances of a “significant international conflict between great powers” are increasing. Milley warned that both China and Russia are threats to the so-called “rules-based” global order. “We are now facing two global powers: China and Russia, each with significant military capabilities both who intend to fundamentally change the rules-based current global order,” Milley told the House Armed Services Committee. “We are entering a world that is becoming more unstable. The potential for significant international conflict between great powers is increasing, not decreasing.” The hearing was focused on the Pentagon’s $773 billion budget request for 2023, part of the $813 billion in military spending President Biden has asked Congress for.

Milley said the budget is in alignment with the new National Defense Strategy (NDS) that was recently briefed to Congress but has yet to be declassified. In a fact sheet on the new NDS, the Pentagon named China as the top “threat” facing the US military, while Russia was second. The US military’s shift in focus towards “great power competition” was first outlined by the 2018 NDS, which put China and Russia as equal concerns. The Pentagon has plans to boost the US military’s presence in the Asia Pacific to counter China and in Eastern Europe to face Russia. While done in the name of deterrence, US military buildups in the regions will only make a conflict more likely. This is demonstrated by the fact that one of Russia’s main justifications for invading Ukraine was Kyiv’s alignment with NATO and the military alliance’s presence in the region.

Miles behind China and Russia. But trillions more for Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon.

• Australia, US, UK Military Alliance to Develop Hypersonic Missiles (Antiwar)

The US, Britain, and Australia announced on Tuesday that they will work together to develop hypersonic missiles under the recently created AUKUS military alliance. President Biden, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the plan in a joint statement. The leaders said they are “committed today to commence new trilateral cooperation on hypersonics and counter-hypersonics, and electronic warfare capabilities, as well as to expand information sharing and to deepen cooperation on defense innovation.” US military leaders have been calling for more investment in the development of hypersonics and other advanced weaponry, which they see as vital for competing with China and Russia.

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) said Tuesday that the US Air Force recently successfully tested a hypersonic cruise missile made by Lockheed Martin. The AUKUS military pact was signed by the three countries last September and is focused on increasing military technology ties to counter Beijing. Under the deal, Australia will get access to technology to build nuclear-powered submarines, which could be used to patrol waters near China. When asked about the AUKUS hypersonic plan, China’s UN Ambassador Zhang warned that such measures could lead to a crisis similar to what’s happening in Ukraine. “Anyone who do not want to see the Ukrainian crisis should refrain from doing things which may lead the other parts of the world into a crisis like this,” he said.

Nothing that I can see.

• What Would It Take for Military Spending in America to Go Down? (Astore)

I have a question for you: What would it take in today’s world for America’s military spending to go down? Here’s one admittedly farfetched scenario: Vladimir Putin loses his grip on power and Russia retrenches militarily while reaching out to normalize relations with the West. At the same time, China prudently decides to spend less on its military, pursuing economic power while abandoning any pretense to a militarized superpower status. Assuming such an unlikely scenario, with a “new cold war” nipped in the bud and the U.S. as the world’s unchallenged global hegemon, Pentagon spending would surely shrink, right? Well, I wouldn’t count on it. Based on developments after the Soviet Union’s collapse three decades ago, here’s what I suspect would be far more likely to happen.

The U.S. military, aided by various strap-hanging think tanks, intelligence agencies, and weapons manufacturers, would simply shift into overdrive. As its spokespeople would explain to anyone who’d listen (especially in Congress), the disappearance of the Russian and Chinese threats would carry its own awesome dangers, leaving this country prospectively even less safe than before. You’d hear things like: we’ve suddenly been plunged into a more complex multipolar world, significantly more chaotic now that our “near-peer” rivals are no longer challenging us, with even more asymmetrical threats to U.S. military dominance. The key word, of course, would be “more” — linked, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, to omnipresent Pentagon demands for yet more military spending.

When it comes to weapons, budgets, and war, the military-industrial complex’s philosophy is captured by an arch comment of the legendary actress Mae West: “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.” Even without Russia and China as serious threats to American hegemony, you’d hear again about an “unbalanced” Kim Jong-un in North Korea and his deeply alarming ballistic missiles; you’d hear about Iran and its alleged urge to build nuclear weapons; and, if those two countries proved too little, perhaps the war on terror would be resuscitated. (Indeed, during the ongoing wall-to-wall coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, North Korea did test a ballistic missile, an event a distracted media greeted with a collective shrug.) My point is this: when you define the entire globe as your sphere of influence, as the U.S. government does, there will always be threats somewhere.

But who still recognizes why?

• Jen Psaki Should Resign (WE)

The career path of White House press secretary-turned-TV pundit isn’t new. Tony Snow worked for Fox News and then moved to the George W. Bush White House. Dana Perino did the reverse. But never before has a chief press secretary for the president of the United States leveraged the position to negotiate a career move to cable news. That’s exactly what Jen Psaki has done, according to Axios . Psaki will soon be heading off to what’s likely a very lucrative contract with MSNBC. The White House press secretary should have resigned last week when this news broke. Let’s be clear — this is an unprecedented breach of public ethics. Unfortunately, most of Psaki’s colleagues in the press briefing room seem to be OK with it. Psaki was only questioned briefly by CBS News reporter Ed O’Keefe on the possible ethical ramifications of these negotiations.

Then everyone simply moved on. Psaki’s move and the media’s nonchalant apathy about it explain so much about what is wrong with the incestuous nature of the Washington media’s relationship with the Biden White House. In turn, it helps explain why the public reputation of both institutions is hovering somewhere just above the popularity of bubbling street sewage. That media watchdogs such as CNN’s Brian Stelter see no conflict of interest here speaks more about corporate media’s agenda bias than it does about Psaki. It’s worth noting that Psaki is a former CNN contributor, serving the network after leaving the Obama administration’s State Department.

Psaki is not a free agent a la the world of sports. Her podium is not for sale to the highest media bidder. Any job in the executive branch is a job paid for by the people. But we know what comes next. Psaki will move from spinning for the Biden White House in the White House to spinning for the White House at MSNBC. And think about this: Psaki has been in her role as press secretary for just a little over a year. That means negotiations with MSNBC likely began not soon after she started! Consider something else: What’s the likelihood that NBC White House reporters Peter Alexander or Kristen Welker will aggressively challenge someone they know that they’ll soon share office space with? The very possibility of this concern is outrageous by itself. Equally absurd is the hypocrisy.

They know much more about adverse events than they let on.

• Pfizer Hired 600+ People to Process Vaccine Injury Reports (CHD)

Pfizer hired about 600 additional full-time employees to process adverse event reports during the three months following the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of its COVID-19 vaccine, newly released documents reveal. According to the documents, Pfizer said, “More are joining each month with an expected total of more than 1,800 additional resources by the end of June 2021.” The information was contained in a 10,000-page document cache released April 1 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and made public as part of a court-ordered disclosure schedule stemming from an expedited Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The latest revelations appeared in a document, “Cumulative analysis of post-authorization adverse event reports” of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, highlighting such adverse events identified through Feb. 28, 2021.

The document was previously released in November 2021, but was partially redacted. The redactions included the number of employees Pfizer hired and/or was planning to hire. According to the unredacted document released April 1: “Pfizer has also taken a multiple actions [sic] to help alleviate the large increase of adverse event reports. This includes significant technology enhancements, and process and workflow solutions, as well as increasing the number of data entry and case processing colleagues. “To date, Pfizer has onboarded approximately 600 additional full-time employees (FTEs). “More are joining each month with an expected total of more than 1,800 additional resources by the end of June 2021.”

The unredacted version also revealed the number of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses shipped worldwide between December 2020 and February 2021: “It is estimated that approximately 126,212,580 doses of BNT162b2 [the Pfizer EUA vaccine] were shipped worldwide from the receipt of the first temporary authorisation for emergency supply on 01 December 2020 through 28 February 2021.” The number of shipped doses previously was redacted.

“..backing down from its lockdown in Shanghai would mean admitting that the “Zero COVID” approach has been an abject failure..”

• President Xi Faces An Impossible Dilemma In Shanghai COVID Outbreak (ZH)

In the span of just over a week, CCP authorities have gone from denying plans for a citywide lockdown of Shanghai to announcing what was supposed to be a two-part staggered lockdown – to simply locking down the entire city and sending in the military and a contingent of medical workers as locals accuse the government of violating its social compact to put the people’s interests first. Now, as the entire city of roughly 26 million faces what’s already shaping up to be the most punishing lockdown in China since the original three-month Wuhan lockdown nightmare, Nikkei reports that Beijing has found itself in an incredibly difficult position. On Sunday, Shanghai counted 9,006 mainly asymptomatic infections, more than two-thirds of the national tally.

The reason the situation in Shanghai presents such a difficult conundrum is that backing down from its lockdown in Shanghai would mean admitting that the “Zero COVID” approach has been an abject failure. But continuing with the heavy-handed lockdown risks spurring even more unrest – something the CCP has bent over backwards to avoid. For the CCP, it’s an impossible dilemma. Already, social media has been flooded with reports of locals dying from neglect as hospital resources have been stretched thin (and not from COVID; it’s other ailments that are killing people now). While the entire city has been locked down for less than a week, many individual residential compounds have been locked down for much longer – some since mid-March.

“It is so uncharacteristic of Shanghai to have to go through this,” said Zhong Lei, a teacher in the city, whose residential compound was locked down even earlier, in mid-March. On Tuesday, authorities reiterated that they must try to keep the city’s port and its factories running at full capacity. But accomplishing this – as we have already reported – will require even more draconian measures like forcing workers to essentially live inside the city’s factories.

10,000 health workers for a city of 25 million.

• 10,000 Health Workers Sent To Help Control Shanghai Outbreak (AP)

China has sent more than 10,000 health workers from around the country to Shanghai, including 2,000 from the military, as it struggles to stamp out a rapidly spreading outbreak in its largest city under its zero-COVID strategy. Shanghai was conducting a mass testing of its 25 million residents Monday as what was announced as a two-phase lockdown entered its second week. Most of eastern Shanghai, which was supposed to re-open last Friday, remained locked down along with the western half of the city. While many factories and financial companies have been allowed to keep operating if they isolate their employees, concern was growing about the potential economic impact of an extended lockdown in China’s financial capital, a major shipping and manufacturing center.

The highly contagious omicron BA.2 form of the virus is testing China’s ability to maintain its zero-COVID approach, which aims to stop outbreaks from spreading by isolating everyone who tests positive, whether they have symptoms or not. Shanghai has converted an exhibition hall and other facilities into massive isolation centers where people with mild or no symptoms are housed in a sea of beds separated by temporary partitions. China on Monday reported more than 13,000 new cases nationwide in the previous 24 hours, of which nearly 12,000 were asymptomatic. About 9,000 of the cases were in Shanghai. The other large outbreak is in northeastern China’s Jilin province, where new cases topped 3,500. The Shanghai lockdown has sparked numerous complaints, from food shortages to limited staff and facilities at hastily constructed isolation sites. Some people who tested positive have remained at home for extended periods because of a shortage of isolation beds or transportation to take them to a center, the business news publication Caixin said.

Lying to the FBI…which was busy propagating its own lies.

• Durham Lowers the Boom on Former Clinton Counsel Michael Sussmann (Turley)

In a Monday night filing, Durham revealed that he has an incriminating statement by Sussmann that dramatically undermined his defense. In the text message, Sussmann denied that he was representing anyone before his critical meeting with the FBI. He then repeated the false statement in that meeting as he pushed a false Russian collusion claim against Donald Trump. Sussmann has been seeking the dismissal on the single charge under 18 U.S.C. 1001 for lying to the FBI in a meeting with the then-FBI General Counsel James Baker. In the indictment, Sussmann is accused of “mak[ing] a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement or representation” in conversations with Baker. Durham argued that “the defendant provided the FBI General Counsel with purported data and ‘white papers’ that allegedly demonstrated a covert communications channel between the Trump Organization and a Russia-based bank.”

That institution was Alfa Bank and Sussmann’s effort paralleled the work of his partner at the law firm Perkins Coie, Marc Elias, in pushing the Steele Dossier in a separate debunked collusion claim. The FEC recently fined the Clinton Campaign and the DNC for hiding the funding of the dossier as a legal cost by Elias at Perkins Coie. The Clinton Campaign’s Alfa Bank conspiracy was found to be baseless but the FBI did not know that it was being offered by someone being paid by the campaign to spread the claim. Had they known, Durham alleges the department might have been able to avoid the investigation costs and effort spent on the Alfa matter.

Sussmann has sounded a lot like Michael Flynn in court as he argued that this was trivial and inconsequential comment. On Monday night, Durham lowered the boom. He revealed that, before the meeting, Sussmann sent “the same lie in writing” that his effort was “not on behalf of a client or company.” Durham is seeking the introduction of a text message to Baker that said: “Jim—it’s Michael Sussmann. I have something time-sensitive (and sensitive) I need to discuss. Do you have availability for a short meeting tomorrow? I’m coming on my own—not on behalf of a client or company—want to help the Bureau. Thanks.” Thus, Durham writes that “on September 18, 2016 at 7:24 p.m., i.e., the night before the defendant met with the General Counsel, the defendant conveyed the same lie in writing and sent the following text message to the General Counsel’s personal cellphone.”

He was actively pushing the dossier. The campaign paid for it.

• Sussmann Doesn’t Want Steele Dossier Brought Up During Durham Trial (WE)

The Democratic cybersecurity lawyer charged by special counsel John Durham with lying to the FBI about working for the Clinton campaign doesn’t want British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier brought up at the trial following indications from the special counsel that it will be. Michael Sussmann was indicted last year on charges of concealing his clients, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and “tech executive” Rodney Joffe, from FBI general counsel James Baker when he pushed since-debunked claims of a secret backchannel between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa-Bank. He has pleaded not guilty. Steele created his now-discredited dossier after being hired by opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which was itself hired by Perkins Coie and Marc Elias, the general counsel for Clinton’s campaign.

Durham appears to be building a case that many collusion claims can be sourced back to Democratic operatives or linked to the Clinton campaign. Sussmann’s lawyers asked a federal judge on Monday to preclude three categories of evidence: the gathering of domain name system data by Joffe and others; the accuracy of that data and conclusions based on it; and “Christopher Steele and information he separately provided to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (including the so-called ‘Steele Dossier’).” The defense team argued: “The single false statement charge brought against Mr. Sussmann surely does not flow from the gathering of data, the accuracy of that data, the accuracy of the conclusions based on that data, or any information Mr. Steele may have provided to the FBI.”

The lawyers argued Sussmann did not have “any awareness” that Steele was “separately providing information to the FBI.” “The Special Counsel has not charged a substantive scheme to defraud the government, nor has he charged a conspiracy to defraud the government,” Sussmann’s lawyers argued. “The manner in which the data was gathered, the objective strength and reliability of that data and/or conclusions drawn from the data, and the information that Christopher Steele separately provided to the FBI all have no bearing on the only crime the Special Counsel chose to charge.” Sussmann’s lawyers said that during a phone conference last month, Durham indicated that “he intends to introduce evidence and argument pertaining to reports and information” that Steele provided to the FBI, adding that Durham “presumably” intends to call Steele as a witness.

Anyone want to question this?

• ‘If I Did 1/100 Of What Hunter Biden Did, I’d Be In Jail’ – Eric Trump (JTN)

Eric Trump, son of former President Donald Trump, called out what he sees as a double standard between him and President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. “If I did 1/100 of what Hunter Biden did, I’d be in jail for the rest of my life,” Eric Trump told NTD’s “Capitol Report.” Records Just the News obtained Wednesday show Hunter Biden and his business partners attempted to make millions off of the first Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014. A report surfaced Monday that the Secret Service is paying more than $30,000 per month to rent a mansion in Malibu to provide security for Hunter. A retired intelligence officer told Just the News that the U.S. government was concerned the contents from Hunter Biden’s laptop could compromise the first family. “The mainstream media hasn’t mentioned Hunter Biden’s name in 258 days. There’s a serious problem with that. They let him skirt by. They carry Joe Biden’s water,” Eric Trump told NTD over the weekend.

“Based on their approval rating, [the mainstream media] is really damaged because they’ve got 7 percent approval rating in this country. It’s horrible,” he said. “People don’t trust them anymore.” He also said that the establishment media has been covering up for Hunter Biden’s father. He told NTD that if Donald Trump had said 1/100 of the “stupid things” that President Joe Biden has, the media would call for him to be removed from office under Article 25. “But again, they’re on that side, and they’ll do anything to cover up for him and let him get away with just about anything under the sun,” Eric Trump said. “You don’t have equal scales of justice in this country. You don’t have equal media coverage,” he said. “The media is the propaganda wing of the left-wing party. And I think that [has] become very clear to all Americans.”

“..their destiny was in the “place in the sun,” the way Ethiopia started to be described (as if Italy didn’t have enough sun)..”

• When A Country Is Destroyed By Its Own Propaganda (Ugo Bardi)

let’s put ourselves in the shoes of British admiralty in the 1920s. We have this problem. This British-created creature, Italy, that was supposed to be just a counterweight against France, now has started to behave like a golem. And to disobey her creators. It needs to be controlled before it is too late. Fine, but how? We already said that at, the time of the unification of Italy, the French ruler, Louis Napoleon, had been controlled by using a beautiful woman. But Mussolini didn’t seem to be the kind of man who would easily fall under a woman’s spell. He was closer to the prototypical “mad dictator,” more interested in power than in sex. So, to influence him, one needed to use his craving for power. As we enter this line of thought, we find an interesting event.

In 1925, there was an “exchange of notes” between Britain and Italy regarding Ethiopia. Known as the “Anglo-Italian Agreement” it essentially said that Ethiopia was part of the Italian sphere of influence. This agreement had a deep strategic significance. Essentially, the British were telling Italians, “go ahead, you can do whatever you want in Ethiopia. We won’t stop you” Perfidious Albion? I think so. VERY perfidious. We cannot know what went on inside Mussolini’s mind but, by 1932, he had taken the fateful decision of accepting Britain’s offer and invade Ethiopia. A major propaganda campaign started with the idea of convincing the public that Italy had a manifest destiny that consisted in re-creating the Roman Empire, and that this could be done by conquering Ethiopia and getting rid of the inferior races who lived there.

It involved slander campaigns against Ethiopia, scientific studies showing the inferiority of the black races in comparison to the white ones, and how modern Italians were the true heirs of the noble Roman warriors who had created and defended the greatest empire in history. That kind of thing. The slander campaign implied painting Ethiopians as insects to be exterminated with insecticides (it was done for real, using chemical weapons). After three years of campaign, the Italian public was completely bamboozled into believing that, yes, their destiny was in the “place in the sun,” the way Ethiopia started to be described (as if Italy didn’t have enough sun). You have to read the documents of the time to understand how well it worked. People were completely hypnotized. Just imagine yourself in 1934 asking the question, “you know, folks, before we attack Ethiopia, wouldn’t it be a good idea to carry out a cost-benefit analysis?” And you would have discovered that propaganda reduces the level of the discussion to that of the most stupid person involved in it.

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