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Debt Rattle December 15 2024

Dec 152024
 
 December 15, 2024  Posted by at 10:35 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  79 Responses »


Pablo Picasso The classical head 1922

 

• Self-Deportation Comes To Washington Ahead Of Trump’s Return (JTN)
• Trump Invites World Leaders, Not Their Messengers, To Inauguration (JTN)
• ABC To Pay Trump $15 Million For Defamation, Issue Apology (ZH)
• Biden Planning Last-minute Ukraine Arms Surge – CNN (RT)
• Biden Aims to Go Out With a Bellicose Bang (Ottenberg)
• Trump Calls For Ending Daylight Saving Time (JTN)
• Biden Never Considered Specifics of the 1500 Clemency Cases He Commuted (PJM)
• Macron To Push For Sending EU Troops To Ukraine (RT)
• More Regions Could Be Added To Russia – Medvedev (RT)
• Serbian President Vucic Confirms Moscow Trip For WW2 ‘Victory Day’ (RT)
• Trump Says No to ‘Foolish’ US Missile Attacks on Russia (Lauria)
• Syria Will Be Chaotic For The Foreseeable Future – John Mearsheimer (RT)

 

 

 

 

George

Rogan

Watters

Siri

RFK Amish

 

 

 

 

Spring self cleaning.

• Self-Deportation Comes To Washington Ahead Of Trump’s Return (JTN)

Government bureaucrats are abandoning ship ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House, anticipating either their termination or an intolerable upending of the status quo at their agencies. Trump has vowed to thoroughly overhaul the executive branch agencies, in part through his new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The duo have called for drastically reducing the size of the government bureaucracy by encouraging voluntary departures through the end of remote work and the relocation of key agencies out of the D.C. area. Thus far, it seems to be Trump’s appointees, and the prospect of working under them, that is doing much of the heavy lifting in driving out longtime agency employees. Former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., for instance, caused such an uproar within the Department of Justice over the prospect of his confirmation as attorney general that it prompted a litany of headlines about “anxiety” within the DOJ and potential mass retirements.

Though Gaetz withdrew his nomination, the phenomenon appears to go beyond the Florida lawmaker and high profile officials have resigned from other agencies ahead of their impending replacement. Trump’s backup pick of ex-Florida AG Pam Bondi appears to have DOJ officials quaking in their boots. Some key government officials, including those whose posts are not necessarily tied to political appointments, have taken it upon themselves to exit government service in light of the initiative and Trump’s return. Wray replaced James Comey as FBI director after Trump fired Comey in his first term. Wray could have conceivably stayed on for a few more years as the office has a ten-year service limit. But Trump previously made clear his dissatisfaction with Wray and nominated Kash Patel, a stalwart loyalist and former federal prosecutor at the U.S. Department of Justice to succeed him.

Rather than face termination, Wray resigned this week and cleared the way for Trump to put Patel in the post. Despite some internal agency grumblings, Patel seems to have a clear path to confirmation, with even moderate and neoconservative lawmakers expressing optimism that he will secure confirmation to the post. Wray’s management of the FBI came under intense scrutiny from conservatives, especially during the Biden administration, over its apparent politicization and targeting of conservative parents and Christians as potential “domestic terrorists.” . Patel, for his part, has previously described a system within the bureau wherein those responsible for mistakes often receive promotions to mask broader FBI errors.

“Every person implicated in your mistakes has an interest in covering up what they did, so they will promote you. That means the people at the very top are usually the most immoral, unethical people in the entire agency,” he wrote in his 2023 book “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy.” Patel has vowed a large-scale “house cleaning” effort to reform the bureau and is thoroughly on board with relocating portions of the FBI out of D.C. FAA chief Michael Whitaker announced on Thursday that he would resign in January, after serving since October 2023. The job is typically a five-year post and Whitaker’s departure opens the path for Trump to pick a replacement. His resignation led to bipartisan disappointment in light of broad approval of his handling of the position.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, for instance, said that Whitaker had “ably led the agency during a challenging period” while Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., called his resignation “unfortunate.” The FAA chief works with the Secretary of the Department of Transportation, an ordinarily non-contentious post that has attracted attention under the Biden administration amid train derailments and mass airport disruptions and closures. “This has been the best and most challenging job of my career,” he said. Trump has nominated former Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wisc., to serve as Transportation secretary, but has yet to announce a successor for Whitaker. Gensler announced in late November that he would step down on Jan. 20, despite his term ending in 2026, NPR reported at the time. Security and Exchange Commision (SEC) chairs serve a five-year term and the president can’t technically fire Gensler, despite his vow to do so. His resignation solved that issue for Trump, who nominated Paul Atkins to replace him.

“Paul is a proven leader for common sense regulations,” Trump said. “He believes in the promise of robust, innovative capital markets that are responsive to the needs of Investors, & that provide capital to make our Economy the best in the World. He also recognizes that digital assets & other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before.” Throughout Gensler’s tenure, he came under repeated scrutiny from Trump Media & Technology Group CEO Devin Nunes, who accused him of politicizing the SEC to slow-walk the company’s merger with Digital World, which ultimately went through after lengthy delays. That merger permitted the company to appear on the stock exchange and resulted in Trump making billions.

Though not a voluntary departure, Democrats lost another key official they had hoped to keep in place during Trump’s second term this week when independent Sens. Joe Manchin, W.V., and Kyrsten Sinema, Ariz., joined with Republicans to tank Lauren McFerran’s renomination to the National Labor Relations Board. The vote ended her tenure and cost Democrats their majority on the panel. The panel is a key intermediary between unions and the firms that employee their members. Republicans will accordingly have an opportunity to confirm two members to the panel and claim the majority on the board. The narrow, 49-50 vote saw Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, fly from Mar-a-Lago to vote, The Hill reported.

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It’ll be busy.

• Trump Invites World Leaders, Not Their Messengers, To Inauguration (JTN)

Up until now, formal international representation at U.S. presidential inaugurations has usually been limited to ambassadors and other diplomats. National leaders have preferred one-on-one meetings with the incoming U.S. leader in the weeks and months following his installation rather than being another face in the crowd. That precedent will be broken on Jan. 20, 2025. The international guest list for Donald Trump’s inauguration as the nation’s 47th president is still not firm five weeks out. But indications are that – despite some high-profile leaders who said they won’t come – it’ll be the largest gathering of national leaders in Washington at least since the state funeral of George H. W. Bush in 2018. Reports are that Trump and his team have extended multiple invitations to world leaders, either directly or indirectly as the 78-year-old Trump looks to use the event to pat international friends on the back and strengthen ties with others.

The most notable head of state likely to be at the capitol on Inauguration Day is Benjamin Netanyahu: Israeli media reports the country’s prime minister is leaning toward coming to Washington, D.C. to help welcome Trump back to the White House for his second term. If Netanyahue does make the trip, it will be amid high tensions in the Middle East and despite a warrant for his arrest for alleged war crimes issued by the International Criminal Court that is binding in 124 countries (Israel and the U.S. are not among the them). Almost sure to come are Argentinian President Javier Milei and Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister. Milei and Meloni are both eager to strengthen ties with the White House: Milei attracted headlines last month when he enthusiastically danced to “YMCA” – the unofficial Trump anthem – while visiting the president-elect in Mar-a-Lago last month.

Regarding vocal supporter Meloni, Trump cut off an Italian reporter asking about her this week to gush, “She’s fantastic. She’s a fantastic leader and a person!” Viktor Orban of Hungary has met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago twice since July, and he is a good bet to come back in January, while there are reports that Trump personally called Nayib Bukele of El Salvador to invite him to attend. Donald Trump Jr. attended Bukele’s inauguration as his father’s envoy in June and it’s hard to imagine the El Salvadorian wouldn’t come to D.C. Among those unlikely to show up at the inauguration are Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. It is confirmed that Trump invited Xi to the Jan. 20 event even as ties between the countries were strained by Trump’s threats of record high tariffs on Chinese goods. But while the invitation is seen as having some symbolic value experts say there is little chance Xi would accept.

“Can you imagine Xi Jinping sitting outdoors in Washington, D.C., in January, at the feet of the podium, surrounded by hawkish members of Congress, gazing up at Donald Trump as he delivers his inaugural address?” the Associated Press quoted former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Danny Russel as saying. Russian media, meanwhile, has reported that Putin has not been asked to attend. Trump and Putin have had strong ties dating back to their bilateral summit in Finland during Trump’s first term. But asked whether Putin had received an invitation to the inauguration this week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said only, “No, he has not” without elaborating. Putin’s absence may open the door for Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky to further lobby Trump for the U.S. to continue supporting his country’s war effort against Russia.

There is no formal indication that Zelensky will attend the inauguration, but the Ukrainian has been working hard to curry favor with Trump since his election victory – including a trilateral meeting this week in Paris during the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral. There, Zelensky thanked Trump for his “strong resolve” to end the 30-month-old war even though it is far from certain Trump would do so in Ukraine’s favor. The third leader in the Trump-Zelensky trilateral in Paris, for the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral, was French President Emmanuel Macron, the event’s host. As with Zelensky, it does not appear that Macron has formally been invited to the event, but, also as with Zelensky, Macron has rarely passed up an opportunity to cozy up to Trump in recent weeks despite past political differences.

Macron was the first world leader to formally congratulate Trump on his electoral victory in November (beating Italy’s Meloni by six minutes), and in Paris this week he showed he was willing to work with Trump despite the president-elect’s low approval levels in France and Macron’s domestic political challenges.

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“After Trump sued for defamation, Stephanopoulos was a pissy little midget..”

• ABC To Pay Trump $15 Million For Defamation, Issue Apology (ZH)

ABC News and star anchor George Stephanopoulos have reached a settlement with Donald Trump for $15 million, after Stephanopoulos asserted that Trump was found “liable for rape” in a civil case while interviewing Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) last March. After the network played a clip of Mace discussing being a victim of rape, Stephanopoulos asked: “How do you square your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony we just saw?” “You’ve endorsed Donald Trump for president. Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape,” the host continued, referring to the case brought by Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll. During his contentious discussion with Mace, Stephanopoulos repeated the claim 10 times despite the fact that a jury only found Trump liable for “sexual abuse” – which under New York law is distinctly different from rape.

“After the federal jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse, but not rape, Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in a later ruling that just because Carroll failed to prove rape “within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’” [..] The settlement was publicly filed on Saturday, revealing that the two parties have come to an agreement and avoided a costly trial. According to the settlement, ABC News will pay $15 million as a charitable contribution to a “Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for Plaintiff, as Presidents of the United States of America have established in the past.” Additionally, the network will pay $1 million in Trump’s attorney fees.” -Fox News

After Trump sued for defamation, Stephanopoulos was a pissy little midget – telling CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert that he wouldn’t be “cowed out of doing my job because of a threat,” Fox notes further. “Trump sued me because I used the word ‘rape,’ even though a judge said that’s in fact what did happen. We filed a motion to dismiss.” “The settlement came after U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisette M. Reid recently ordered Trump and Stephanopoulos to attend an in-person deposition hearing next week ahead of the Dec. 24 deadline for the defendants to file a motion for summary judgment, in order to avoid a trial.

In his lawsuit against Stephanopoulos and ABC, Trump was represented by Florida attorneys Alejandro Brito and Richard Klugh, who also represent the president-elect in his legal case against CNN. The settlement with ABC was filed in the Southern District of Florida Federal Court where both parties signed and agreed to the terms.” -Fox News. The settlement is the latest in a string of legal victories for Trump – ranging from the dismissal of his 2020 election fraud lawsuit, to his classifieds records case. Trump was also granted a request to file a motion to dismiss in his New York ‘Stormy Daniels’ case. Trump is separately suing CBS News for $10 billion in damages over “deceptive conduct.”

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“Washington reportedly plans to deliver “hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, thousands of rockets, hundreds of armored vehicles, and other critical capabilities” between now and January 20..”

• Biden Planning Last-minute Ukraine Arms Surge – CNN (RT)

The outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden is preparing a significant surge in weapons deliveries to Ukraine in the final weeks of his tenure, a senior official told CNN on Thursday. President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized Biden’s handling of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, and campaigned on a promise to resolve the hostilities “within 24 hours.” However, since his election victory in November, he has not disclosed any detailed plans for achieving that goal. The US Department of Defense “is undertaking a historic effort to move massive quantities of weapons into Ukraine in the next five weeks,” the unnamed official told CNN. Washington reportedly plans to deliver “hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, thousands of rockets, hundreds of armored vehicles, and other critical capabilities” between now and January 20, when Trump returns to the White House.

According to the source, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is leading an interagency effort to facilitate the deliveries. In November, he directed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to “accelerate” the movement of various arms, including armored vehicles and missiles. The unnamed official stressed that despite the increased military support, there are no American troops deployed in Ukraine, and that this situation will not change. Since the start of the conflict, US weapons have been transported to Ukraine via Europe, but the upcoming surge will reportedly involve a substantial number of flights and sea vessels to ensure swift arrival. On Thursday evening, Biden authorized a new $500 million weapons package for Ukraine, which includes air defense, artillery, drones, and armored vehicles.

Since the escalation of hostilities in February 2022, the US Congress has approved over $174 billion in aid to Kiev. Biden has also given the greenlight for Ukraine’s strikes deep into Russia using US-supplied missiles. Trump has slammed the decision as “a very big mistake”. In an interview with Time magazine earlier this week, he said such attacks are only “escalating this war and making it worse.” That echoed the view of Moscow, which has repeatedly warned that long-range strikes will only worsen the conflict and be seen as NATO’s direct participation in the hostilities. “In this case we take the same view of the reasons for the escalation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday, adding that Trump’s opposition to Ukraine’s use of American long-range missiles “appeals” to Moscow.

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“..dozens of Americans have or will be coming home in body bags, and U.S. weaponry got crushed and surprise! Not a peep in U.S. corporate media..”

• Biden Aims to Go Out With a Bellicose Bang (Ottenberg)

Having failed thus far to ignite Nuclear Armageddon, what’s up next for the U.S. military industrial complex? I’ll tell you: New bases in Europe, 47 of them, to be exact, in Scandinavia in coming years. That’s Joe Biden’s legacy, a blood transfusion to NATO’s moribund carcass by adding Finland and Sweden and thereby ballooning the Empire’s global military footprint, a footprint of over 800 imperial foreign military bases already bankrupting us Welp, we’re gonna get 47 more, per journalist Patrick Hennigsen, and they’re gonna be near Russia. If you’re a Finn or a Swede, you might want to consider emigrating, since the pusillanimous NATO to which you now belong has set you up as a tripwire for the Atomic Apocalypse. That’s Biden’s legacy. Don’t think for a minute these bases make anyone safer. Quite the contrary. Besides being hugely provocative and thus endangering the local population, the bases’ U.S. soldiers are in harm’s way.

Moscow eloquently demonstrated this on November 25. That was when Russia retaliated for recent ATACMS assaults, manned and operated by U.S. personnel. Most of that personnel are now dead. That’s because Russia shot its unstoppable Iskander missiles at the launchers, killing at least 30 U.S. operators. Also “up to 40 fighters, mostly from the U.S. were eliminated in a missile strike on a command center…in the city of Kharkov on November 25,” RT reported November 28 [“Russian Defense Ministry reveals response to long-range Ukrainian strikes”]. This is the fate that may await U.S. soldiers on foreign military bases, because Russia’s extensive weapons menu is chock-a-block with all types of hypersonic missiles against which the west is defenseless. And Washington’s so busy provoking Moscow, that the kremlin will much more eagerly share this technology with its allies – China, Iran and North Korea – than it did before Joe “War Is My Legacy” Biden idiotically triggered Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

So dozens of Americans have or will be coming home in body bags, and U.S. weaponry got crushed and surprise! Not a peep in U.S. corporate media. That’s because our news outlets report American, ahem, “Ukrainian” strikes on Russia, using our vaunted but really mainly symbolic ATACMS, and report it with great fanfare, groveling before supposed superlative American weapons, but the consequences? The punishment? Not so much, since, Gee, that might make Biden and by extension Washington look bad. Can’t have that in American legacy news media. But hey, the Hindustan Times reported it, with headlines, like, “Russia Reduces Ukraine’s Western Weapons to Rubble,” and “Ukraine Loses All ATACMS, Storm Shadows? ‘NATO Train’ with Long-Range Missiles Blown Up by Russia.” How reassuring to know some nations still have a free press, even if they are halfway across the globe.

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He wants the time to stop changing twice a year, whether that’s the “old time” or “new time”.

• Trump Calls For Ending Daylight Saving Time (JTN)

President-elect Donald Trump on Friday vowed Friday that the Republican Party would work to end Daylight Saving Time. “The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation,” Trump posted on Truth Social. The Senate, in March 2022, passed legislation to making Daylight Saving Time permanent, though it did not become law. “I think the majority of the American people’s preference is just to stop the back and forth changing… but beyond that, I think their preference is, certainly based on today’s vote and what we heard certainly is to make daylight saving time permanent,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said at the time.

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It could only be messy.

• Biden Never Considered Specifics of the 1500 Clemency Cases He Commuted (PJM)

A “Massachusetts woman on Biden’s clemency list was sentenced for ‘lethal’ fentanyl trafficking conspiracy,” according to the Boston Herald. She led a “large-scale criminal enterprise that reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits and caused untold misery.” “Former Dixon Comptroller Rita Crundwell stole $53 million from the little town, a crime so notorious that a documentary was made — highlighting that she perpetrated the largest case of municipal fraud in American history,” reports Politico. Perhaps most incredibly, the “Cash for Kids” judge in Pennsylvania who wrongly sent dozens of minors to a for-profit prison and got kickbacks for it, was released without any examination of the facts of his case.

“The White House commuted the sentence of the judge at the center of a notorious ‘kids-for-cash’ scandal without considering the specifics of his case, beyond whether it fit into a broad set of criteria,” reports Politico. We can assume the rest of the cases of the 1500 prisoners were also examined just as thoroughly. The governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, strongly disagreed with Biden’s decision to commute the sentence of former judge Michael Conahan, who was convicted in 2011 and sentenced to 17 years, only to be released to house arrest during the pandemic. “I do feel strongly that President Biden got it absolutely wrong and created a lot of pain here in northeastern Pennsylvania,” Shapiro, a Democrat, said at an event on Friday. Conahan, he said, “deserves to be behind bars, not walking as a free man.”

The mother of one teen wrongly sentenced by Conahan who then committed suicide, Sandy Fonzo, said she was “shocked…and hurt” by Biden’s clemency. “Conahan‘s actions destroyed families, including mine, and my son‘s death is a tragic reminder of the consequences of his abuse of power,” Fonzo told a local publication. “This pardon feels like an injustice for all of us who still suffer. Right now I am processing and doing the best I can to cope with the pain that this has brought back.” Rita Crundwell, the Dixon, Illinois comptroller who stole $54 million to fund a lavish lifestyle of expensive homes, dream vacations, and some serious bling, was sentenced to 20 years. She served less than half that time. “With my deteriorating health condition and the danger of the Covid 19 pandemic, I feel like I have been given a death sentence,” she wrote to the judge, asking to be released during the pandemic.

Chicago’s WGN reported Thursday: “The judge denied release but the following year the Bureau of Prisons put her on home confinement even though she had only served less than half her sentence. Former US Marshal Jason Wojdylo met with Crundwell in prison several times as he worked to sell her assets.“She conveyed to me more of a sense of disgust that she had been sentenced that long,” he said back in 2021. “She was very visibly shaken by the fact she was serving a nearly 20 year sentence.” So she’s not sorry about her crime. Shouldn’t “remorse” have been one of the top criteria Biden should have looked at? With Biden’s mania for being “the first, “the best,” “the biggest,” and “the most,” it’s not surprising that he and his aides gave little thought to the specifics of the cases, as long as they “fit into a broad set of criteria” for release.

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What a broken record sounds like in French.

• Macron To Push For Sending EU Troops To Ukraine (RT)

French President Emmanuel Macron plans to urge EU leaders to send a peacekeeping mission to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire with Russia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported on Friday, citing sources. The force would be tasked with observing a truce, if peace talks between Moscow and Kiev are successful. According to the US state-funded news outlet, the French leader plans to discuss the issue at next week’s EU summit. The idea of sending Western peacekeepers to Ukraine was reportedly pitched by US President-elect Donald Trump at his December 7 meeting with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky and Macron in Paris. According to an earlier report by the Wall Street Journal, Trump has been drafting proposals for a diplomatic solution to the conflict, and wants European nations to play a leading role in monitoring a ceasefire.

The idea was later discussed by British and French officials, according to media reports, and Macron was said to have presented it to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk during their meeting in Warsaw earlier this week. Tusk, however, said no such plans are in place “for the time being” for either Poland or the rest of the EU. Warsaw, one of Kiev’s staunchest backers, will assume the EU Council presidency next month. Discussions on the topic are reportedly still at an early stage, and it is unclear which countries could be involved, and how many troops. A number of EU officials have also cautioned that it is premature to discuss peacekeepers’ deployment at this stage in the conflict. The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, stressed on Thursday that Russia and Ukraine first need to agree to a ceasefire for any peacekeeping missions to be possible. She also noted that it would be “up to every single European country” to decide whether to participate in such an effort.

Sources told Radio Free Europe the matter is currently being raised to lay the groundwork for discussions with Trump, to ensure the EU’s presence at potential peace talks. The US president-elect has repeatedly pledged to end the Ukraine conflict within 24 of returning to the White House. His pick for special envoy on Ukraine and Russia, retired Army General Keith Kellogg, is reportedly among the authors of a draft peace plan that would freeze the conflict along the current line without recognizing Russia’s sovereignty over territories claimed by Ukraine, while suspending Kiev’s NATO membership bid. Russia has repeatedly ruled out freezing the conflict, insisting that a settlement is only possible if Ukraine withdraws its forces from Russian territory, including former Ukrainian regions, and if the goals of Moscow’s military operation – including Ukraine’s neutrality and demilitarization – are met.

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“This experience may be in demand in the future if new regions very close to us appear in our country, because this is possible..”

• More Regions Could Be Added To Russia – Medvedev (RT)

The Russian Federation could welcome more territories into the country in the future, former President Dmitry Medvedev suggested on Saturday during the ongoing United Russia party congress. Commenting on the ruling party’s efforts in helping to incorporate and develop the new regions that have joined the country, Medvedev, who currently serves as the deputy chairman of the nation‘s security council and the head of the United Russia party, suggested that this experience could one day come in handy again. “This experience may be in demand in the future if new regions very close to us appear in our country, because this is possible,” he noted.

In 2022, four former Ukrainian territories, including the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, held public referendums where they decided to break with Kiev and become part of Russia. Before that, in 2014, the citizens of Crimea, a historically Russian region, had voted to leave Ukraine and return to Moscow. Ukraine and its Western backers have refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of these referendums; Kiev has continued to claim authority over these territories and vowed to retake all of them. Moscow however, has repeatedly urged Kiev to accept the new realities “on the ground,” with President Vladimir Putin calling the complete withdrawal of all Ukrainian forces from all Russian territories a key prerequisite for peace talks.

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“..he intends to attend the parade so long as “the end of the world doesn’t happen.”

• Serbian President Vucic Confirms Moscow Trip For WW2 ‘Victory Day’ (RT)

The leaders of Slovakia and Serbia will travel together to Moscow to attend the May 9 Victory parade next year, President Aleksandar Vucic confirmed on Saturday in an interview with the news channel TV Informer. Both Vucic and Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico had previously been personally invited by Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend the celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War. Last month, Vucic said that he intends to attend the parade so long as “the end of the world doesn’t happen.” In a statement on Saturday, the Serbian president highlighted the importance of May 9 as the day of celebration of the WWII defeat of fascism, and stated that he will attend the celebrations together with Fico. The plans of the two leaders to conduct a joint visit to Moscow for the celebrations were initially revealed last month by Fico.

At the time, he also emphasized that the USSR had played a key role in liberating both Slovakia and Serbia from fascism and that his and Vucic’s visit would symbolize their recognition of the historic defeat of Nazism. Previously, Vucic had also stressed that both Serbia and Slovakia would not allow history to be rewritten and would work together to “defend the achievements of the fight against fascism and Nazism,” adding that the peoples of the two countries will always respect those who fought for the liberation of Europe. Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has stated that the number of leaders and high-ranking officials invited to next year’s May 9 celebrations is comparable to the last BRICS summit held in Kazan. Vladimir Putin has already invited the leaders and military units of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) countries, which include Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

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“..after his party lost the White House in November, Biden suddenly reversed himself on his sensible positions..”

• Trump Says No to ‘Foolish’ US Missile Attacks on Russia (Lauria)

President-elect Donald Trump accused the Biden administration of “escalating this war” in Ukraine and “making it worse” by allowing U.S. long-range ATACMS missiles to be fired from Ukraine deep into Russia. “I disagree very vehemently with sending missiles hundreds of miles into Russia,” Trump told Time magazine in an interview published on Thursday. He said: “Why are we doing that? We’re just escalating this war and making it worse. That should not have been allowed to be done. Now they’re doing not only missiles, but they’re doing other types of weapons. And I think that’s a very big mistake, very big mistake.” Last Thursday former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter was on a day-long venture in the labyrinth of House office buildings on Capitol Hill to lobby members of Congress and their staffs to prevent the U.S. from attacking Russia with ATACMS.

That alone, Ritter argued, would reduce the threat of a nuclear exchange with Russia, which had warned would be possible if the missile attacks continue. Among the steps Ritter recommended to Republican Congressmen was to get word to Trump’s transition team to get Trump to make an immediate statement that after he is sworn in he will order a cessation of ATACMS being fired into Russia. Such a statement from Trump, Ritter argued on Capitol Hill, would lessen tension with Moscow over the ATACMS and possibly avert catastrophe. Trump’s comments to Time was what Ritter had in mind. Trump said: ”I think the most dangerous thing right now is what’s happening, where Zelensky has decided, with the approval of, I assume, the President, to start shooting missiles into Russia. I think that’s a major escalation. I think it’s a foolish decision. But I would imagine people are waiting until I get in before anything happens. I would imagine. I think that would be very smart to do that.”

Just two months ago, in September, President Joe Biden had bowed to the realists in the Pentagon to oppose allowing long-range British Storm Shadow missiles from being fired by Ukraine deep into Russia out of fear it would lead to a direct NATO-Russia military confrontation with all that that entails. Putin warned at the time that because British soldiers on the ground in Ukraine would actually launch the British missiles into Russia with U.S. geostrategic support, it “will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.” That was a clear warning that British and U.S. targets could be hit. Biden thus wisely backed off.

It was the second time that Biden had sided with the Pentagon against the neocons in his administration when it came to avoiding direct war with Russia. The first time was in March 2022 when his neocon Secretary of State Antony Blinken stepped out of line to announce that the U.S. would give NATO-member Poland a “green light” to send Mig-29 fighter jets to Ukraine to enforce a no-fly zone against Russian aircraft. Members of Congress and the media then piled the pressure on Biden to approve it until cooler heads at the U.S. Defense Department, the greatest purveyor of violence in history, stepped in to stop it. Biden ultimately sided with the Pentagon, and he couldn’t be more explicit why. He opposed a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine fighting Russian aircraft, he said, because “that’s called World War III, okay? Let’s get it straight here, guys. We will not fight the third world war in Ukraine.”

But then, after his party lost the White House in November, Biden suddenly reversed himself on his sensible positions and defied the Pentagon to roll the dice that Russia’s warnings are bluffs that won’t lead to nuclear conflict. While he previously would not even authorize British long-range missile attacks into Russia in September, let alone U.S. ATACMS, he authorized the ATACMS, risking Russia taking direct action against U.S. targets. It remains to be seen if Trump’s words can reassure the Kremlin. Of course it was Trump who provided Ukraine with lethal aid. Barack Obama had refused, saying Ukraine was not a vital U.S. interest, as it was for Russia and there was no point in angering Moscow. Obama also worried that U.S. weapons could wind up in the hands of “thugs” — i.e., Azov, neo-nazi types in Ukraine.

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“These journalists understand full well, most Americans understand … that the US is supporting terrorist..”

• Syria Will Be Chaotic For The Foreseeable Future – John Mearsheimer (RT)

Syria is set to go through a prolonged period of chaos now that Bashar Assad’s government has fallen, John Mearsheimer, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, has predicted. Last week, opposition forces, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) jihadists, launched a surprise offensive across Syria and took control of its major cities, including the capital Damascus. The erstwhile president has since resigned and sought asylum with his family in Russia. In the latest episode of Going Underground, published on Saturday, Mearsheimer suggested that it’s hard to imagine that a “coherent government” will soon be formed in Damascus that would be capable of controlling the entire country.

“How this all plays out moving forward is almost impossible to say, other than it looks like there will be considerable chaos in Syria for the foreseeable future,” the professor said, noting that the sudden regime change is only a “short-term success” for those who had backed the opposition forces, primarily the US. “We [the US] basically threw our lot in with a number of Al Qaeda and ISIS operatives and they won,” Mearsheimer said, adding that the White House and American media were now doing everything they can to “clean up” HTS leader Mohammed al-Jolani, who is still an internationally wanted terrorist and has a US-issued $10 million bounty on his head. “These journalists understand full well, most Americans understand … that the US is supporting terrorists” despite the media trying to portray the HTS victory as a positive development, the professor said.

As for how the HTS had managed to overthrow the Syrian government, which had for years been assisted by Russia and Iran, Mearsheimer suggested that the country’s military had long-standing critical issues that Assad had failed to address and was “hollowed out” and simply “couldn’t stand up to the rebels.” The professor claimed that while the fall of the Assad government was not a critical loss for Russia, it could prove to be an “existential” development for neighboring Iran and prompt Tehran to fast track its development of nuclear weapons. He admitted, however, that the country’s leadership has yet to make any indications regarding such a move and it would still take it several years to develop this kind of capacity.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

SNL

 

 

Chongo
https://twitter.com/i/status/1867645755907092909

 

 

Voi

 

 

Bunting
https://twitter.com/i/status/1867924825143971840

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle December 13 3024

Dec 132024
 
 December 13, 2024  Posted by at 10:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  60 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Women running on the beach 1922

 

• Marc Andreessen Gives Insider Peek At DOGE Decisions (ZH)
• ProPublica Pats Itself On Back After Hegseth Hitpiece Humiliation (ZH)
• Trump Says He Will Not ‘Abandon’ Ukraine (RT)
• West Will ‘Betray’ Ukraine – Fico (RT)
• Strikes Deep Into Russia ‘Big Mistake’ – Trump (RT)
• Trump Wants EU To Send Troops To Ukraine – WSJ (RT)
• Six Major NATO States Sign Document On Ukraine’s Accession Plans (RT)
• The Centrists Cannot Hold (Patrick Lawrence)
• Trump Invites Xi To His Inauguration – CBS (RT)
• Trump Says RFK Jr. Will Study Link Between Childhood Vaccines and Autism (ET)
• Meta Donates $1Mln to Trump’s Fund as Part of Effort to Mend Ties (Sp.)
• Biden Pardons 39, Commutes Nearly 1,500 Sentences (JTN)
• Argentina’s First Budget Surplus in 123 Years (Martin Armstrong)
• The Kremlin’s Oprichniki Versus The General Staff’s Prigozhniki (Helmer)
• Netanyahu’s Trial: Corruption, War Crimes, And An Israel In Crisis (Cradle)
• Vultures Feed On The Carcass Of Syria (Pepe Escobar)
• The US and Israel Destroyed Syria and Called it Peace (Jeffrey Sachs)

 

 

Lavrov

No, it’s time to leave the wartime mindset behind.

Kash


https://twitter.com/i/status/1867191997871841365

Rogan

AI

Van Jones

Inauguration

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marc Andreessen fuels the optimism about the process that will lead to Trump II. Formidable people galore.

“He will happily talk to distinguished visitors about who the Vice President should be, and then he’ll ask the caddy.”

• Marc Andreessen Gives Insider Peek At DOGE Decisions (ZH)

Billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen gave a wide-ranging interview to Free Press’s Bari Weiss, confirming his involvement with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and sharing behind-the-scenes insights on working with President-elect Donald Trump. Andreessen discussed his role in assisting Trump with assembling the next administration and provided a glimpse into what it’s like to spend time with the incoming commander-in-chief. During the two-hour conversation, Andreessen also revisited his experience with Biden administration officials, claiming the government expressed the orwellian desire to take “complete control” over AI development in the United States.

“I’m an unpaid volunteer,” Andreessen said when asked by Weiss about his reported involvement. A recent report from The Washington Post revealed that Andreessen, along with fellow Silicon Valley titans Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, is contributing to the ambitious program. Andreessen outlined DOGE’s two chief objectives: slashing spending and reducing regulations. “There’s basically two big parts to it,” Andreessen explained. “One is they’re going to do a top-to-bottom review of government spending, and they’re going to cut as much cost as they possibly can. They have a whole theory and strategy on that.” “In conjunction with that and related to it, they’re going to do the same thing for regulations,” the billionaire continued. “They’re going to do a top-to-bottom review of the regulatory—what they call the regulatory state or the administrative state.”

“The connective tissue there, that they don’t talk about in public, is actually quite important. A lot of the reaction of the Doge from institutional Washington is like, well, that’s impossible, you can’t do that; there are all these laws, statutes, and regulations,” he added. Andreessen, along with his A16z co-founder Ben Horowitz, endorsed Trump during the final stretch of the 2024 election. Since Trump’s victory, Andreessen revealed to Weiss that he has spent a great day of time at Mar-a-Lago and the Palm Beach area, assisting the 47th leader of the free world with assembling his administration. While Andreessen said he has spent “maybe half [his] time” at Mar-a-Lago since the election, he is quick to clarify his position: “I’m not claiming to be in the middle of all the decision-making, but I’ve been trying to help in as many ways as I can,” the tech titan told Weiss.

Andreessen explained that his contributions focus on areas where his expertise aligns with Trump’s agenda, including tech policy, business, and economic development. “When I talk about these things, it’s around, as I said, tech policy, business, economics, and then, you know, the health of the country, the success of the country,” he noted. Andreessen shared his observations of Trump’s warm personal approach, highlighting qualities that he believes are often overlooked by his Democrat critics. “Everybody says this who meets with him, but he’s an incredible host,” Andreessen remarked. “For however people think, whatever, he’s an incredible host. He runs his own private worlds.” What stood out most to Andreessen was Trump’s ability to connect with people from all walks of life.

“He treats everybody the same and talks to everybody,” Andreessen said. “He will happily talk to distinguished visitors about who the Vice President should be, and then he’ll ask the caddy.” Reflecting on his involvement in the transition process, Andreessen noted the exceptional caliber of candidates he encountered. “The caliber of a lot of the people that I’ve met has been very high,” he said, adding that recent appointments, particularly at the next level down in staff positions, have included “very impressive people.” Addressing concerns about whether qualified individuals might hesitate to join a Trump administration due to the controversies surrounding his previous term, Andreessen said he has observed the opposite trend: “I think the flow of qualified people from outside the system now is actually much stronger.”

Yet another mainstream media narrative busted. Addressing also reiterated that his support for Trump stemmed from a series of “horrifying” meeting in which Biden officials expressed plans to control AI. “They said, look, AI is a technology basically that the government is going to completely control,” Andreessen revealed. The officials explicitly discouraged the idea of entrepreneurial ventures in AI, stating, “Don’t start, don’t do AI startups… it’s not something that we’re going to allow to happen.”

Read more …

The last gasp of the anti-Pete move?

• ProPublica Pats Itself On Back After Hegseth Hitpiece Humiliation (ZH)

Leftist attack dog ProPublica seemed unfazed by the widespread ridicule it faced on social media after its botched attempt at a smear campaign against Pete Hegseth backfired. The publication had plotted to accuse Hegseth of falsely claiming he was accepted into West Point. In response, Hegseth got ahead of the publication and shared his acceptance letter confirming that he had been accepted into the military academy—though he declined the offer. In a now-viral tweet, Hegseth wrote, “We understand that ProPublica (the Left Wing hack group) is planning to publish a knowingly false report that I was not accepted to West Point in 1999.” Hegseth also shared his letter of acceptance signed by Army Lieutenant General and then-West Point Superintendent Daniel Christman.

As criticism mounted against ProPublica, its editor, Jesse Eisinger, attempted to defend the outlet but inadvertently made the situation worse. He claimed West Point had falsely informed the publication that Hegseth was never admitted to the military academy. “We asked West Pt public affairs, which told us twice on the record that he hadn’t even applied there,” Eisinger wrote on X. “We reached out. Hegseth’s spox gave us his acceptance letter. We didn’t publish a story. That’s journalism.” Despite Eisinger’s attempt to save face, Hegseth’s defenders said the real story ProPublica should have published was that West Point had incorrectly discredited Hegseth. Initially, ProPublica quoted West Point as stating, “According to the admissions office – Hegseth had not applied for admission to the U.S. Military Academy.”

After being pressed for clarification, West Point admitted: “A review of our records indicates that Mr. Peter Hegseth was offered admission to West Point in 1999 but did not attend West Point.” West Point confirmed Hegseth had been offered admission for the class of 2023, issuing a statement to correct the record. “An incorrect statement involving Mr. Hegseth’s admission to the United States Military Academy was released by an employee on December 10, 2024,” the academy said. “Upon further review of an achieved [sic] database, employees realized this statement was in error.”

The academy added it was taking “this situation very seriously” and issued an apology “for this administrative error.” ProPublica’s failed attempt to smear Hegseth appeared to be part of a broader campaign aimed at thwarting his nomination as the next secretary of the Department of Defense. Trump announced his decision to nominate Hegseth following his landslide victory in the 2024 presidential election. Despite relentless media attacks on Hegseth’s personal life, the president-elect has stood by his side. “He will be a fantastic, high energy, Secretary of Defense,” Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier this month, later adding: “Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that!!!”

Geraldo

Read more …

“I disagree with the whole thing because it should have never happened..”

• Trump Says He Will Not ‘Abandon’ Ukraine (RT)

The US will not cut all aid to Ukraine as part of brokering peace with Russia, President-elect Donald Trump has claimed. Time magazine published an extensive interview with Trump on Thursday, after naming the former-and-upcoming US president its 2024 Person of the Year. Among the many topics they touched on was Ukraine, with the outlet repeatedly asking whether Trump would “abandon” Kiev by cutting off Washington’s aid. “I want to reach an agreement, and the only way you’re going to reach an agreement is not to abandon. You understand what that means, right?” Trump replied. The unnamed interviewer apparently did not understand, and repeated the question. “Well, I just said it. You can’t reach an agreement if you abandon, in my opinion,” the president-elect said. Trump also explained why he was reluctant to get into any details of his peace proposal.

“The reason that I don’t like to tell you this is that, as a negotiator, when I sit down and talk to some very brilliant young people… when I start I think I have a very good plan to help, but when I start exposing that plan, it becomes almost a worthless plan,” he told Time. The US Congress has approved over $180 billion in military, humanitarian, and economic aid to Ukraine. Washington also provides targeting and intelligence information to Kiev, while insisting that none of this makes it a party to the conflict with Russia. Moscow has repeatedly warned the West against such escalation, to no avail. “I disagree with the whole thing because it should have never happened,” Trump said about the conflict. He has maintained for years that the Russia-Ukraine conflict would not have escalated had Joe Biden not replaced him in the White House in 2021 and allowed things to get out of hand.

“It’s crazy what’s taking place. It’s crazy,” Trump said about the fighting, lamenting the large number of casualties on both sides. “We’re just escalating this war and making it worse.” Last week, the Pentagon announced another $1 billion in military aid to Kiev, while the US Treasury sent $20 billion in loans, intended to be written off and secured by frozen Russian government assets. Moscow has called the move blatant theft and announced there would be consequences.

Read more …

“..Ukraine “has allowed itself to be dragged into this adventure that cannot end well for the country.”

• West Will ‘Betray’ Ukraine – Fico (RT)

Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico has claimed that the West will betray Ukraine by agreeing to a redrawing of the country’s borders. Attempts to weaken Russia through economic sanctions have also failed, he added. While Slovakia is a member of both the European Union and NATO, its government has consistently dissented from the blocks’ policies on the Ukraine conflict since Fico assumed office, after which he froze Bratislava’s military aid to Kiev. In May, Fico was shot multiple times at close range by a man who later told police that he was motivated by the prime minister’s refusal to send arms to Ukraine. In an interview on Tuesday with Brazil’s Folha de S. Paulo daily, Fico said that the West had hoped to weaken Russia by means of the Ukraine conflict but had failed. “The Russians are gaining more and more territory [and] the sanctions are not working,” he argued.

According to the official, Ukraine “has allowed itself to be dragged into this adventure that cannot end well for the country.” Fico claimed that Kiev “will lose territory,” possibly up to a third of its land, and “will not be invited to NATO.” The Slovakian head of government added “I believe that the Ukrainians will be betrayed.” The official also predicted that some sort of security guarantees would be offered to Kiev, “such as the presence of foreign troops” in Ukraine. The official also predicted that some sort of security guarantees would be offered to Kiev, “such as the presence of foreign troops” in Ukraine. Addressing Kiev’s NATO aspirations, Fico insisted that on his watch, Bratislava would oppose its accession to the US-led military bloc. The prime minister noted, however, that he has nothing against Ukraine joining the EU.

Fico insisted that there can be no military solution to the Ukraine conflict, with Kiev and Moscow needing to negotiate at last. He also noted that it is unrealistic to expect Moscow to give up Crimea or the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics at this point. The official went on to express cautious optimism regarding US President-elect Donald Trump’s “constructive approach” toward ending the bloodshed. Fico told Brazilian reporters that he wants to “bring relations with Russia back to normal,” emphasizing the need to restore dialogue with Moscow. “And I assure you, once the war is over… it will be ‘business as usual.’ Everyone will go there [Russia], everyone will want to buy and sell,” the Slovakian prime minister concluded. Fico claimed that he supported the ‘Friends of Peace’ initiative led by China and Brazil, and pledged to “offer all our modest capabilities to be able to support this plan in various forms.”

Read more …

“..such attacks are “just escalating this war and making it worse.”

• Strikes Deep Into Russia ‘Big Mistake’ – Trump (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump has criticized Ukraine’s strikes deep into Russia using Western-supplied weapons, saying that they only escalate the conflict between Kiev and Moscow. Trump made the statement on Thursday in an interview with Time magazine, which named him the 2024 Person of the Year. “I disagree very vehemently with sending missiles hundreds of miles into Russia. Why are we doing that?” he asked rhetorically. According to the president-elect, such attacks are “just escalating this war and making it worse.” “That should not have been allowed to be done… And I think that is a very big mistake, very big mistake,” he said of strikes deep into Russia’s internationally recognized territory.

Trump returned to the issue later in the interview, saying that “the most dangerous thing right now” is the fact that “[Ukrainian leader Vladimir] Zelensky has decided, with the approval of, I assume, the President [Joe Biden], to start shooting missiles into Russia.” “I think that is a major escalation. I think it is a foolish decision,” he stressed. The US president-elect’s comments came a day after the Russian Defense Ministry reported that Ukrainian forces had fired six US-supplied ATACMS missiles at a military airfield near the southern city of Taganrog. Two of them were shot down and the rest were diverted using electronic warfare during the attack, the ministry said. The fallen debris resulted in some injuries and minor damage to two buildings and several vehicles, it added.

On Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia’s response to the strike on Taganrog “will follow at the time and in the way that will be deemed appropriate. But it will definitely follow.” In late November, Russia used its new Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile system for the first time, striking the Yuzhmash military plant in the Ukrainian city of Dnepr. According to Moscow, the deployment of the state-of-the-art weapon was a response to Washington and its allies allowing Ukraine to target internationally recognized Russian territory with the long-range weapons they supply to Kiev. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned at the time that if Ukraine’s attacks deep inside Russia continue, Moscow reserves the right “to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow the use of their weapons against our facilities.”

Read more …

No can do.

• Trump Wants EU To Send Troops To Ukraine – WSJ (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump has proposed that EU members send peacekeepers to Ukraine to monitor a potential ceasefire with Russia, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. Trump ran for the White House on the promise of negotiating a swift end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, but has been reluctant to reveal any specific proposals since winning the election. Speaking with French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky last Saturday, Trump argued that “Europe” should play the main role in monitoring a ceasefire and that no US troops would be involved, the Journal reported, citing “officials briefed on the meeting.” The Journal’s sources claimed that the proposal “started as quiet discussions between British and French officials about the possibility,” before including Trump, Zelensky and other governments.

According to one source, Trump also pushed the EU to demand that China pressure Russia to end the conflict, suggesting the use of tariffs as leverage. Discussions are still at such an early stage, according to the Journal, that the questions of which countries would be involved, with how many troops, and any US role in supporting the mission, remain unresolved. The hypothetical peacekeeping or monitoring mission in Ukraine would not be under NATO command but would involve troops from member countries of the US-led bloc, according to the unnamed officials, who admitted this was something they were not sure Russia would accept. It was likewise unclear whether Washington’s European allies would be able to spare the soldiers or have the political support at home for such a mission.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has invited the leaders of the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Poland to meet with Zelensky in Brussels to discuss security guarantees for Kiev, two officials told the Journal. According to unnamed aides, however, Trump is not “wedded” to any particular plan for ending the conflict and “hasn’t thought deeply about the issue” as he prepares the handover of power on January 20. Russia has repeatedly said that Ukraine’s association with NATO would be a threat to its national security. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has described Ukraine’s membership in the bloc as “categorically unacceptable” to Moscow, citing it as one of the major causes of the current conflict.

Read more …

The EU is a warmonger cabal.

• Six Major NATO States Sign Document On Ukraine’s Accession Plans (RT)

Six European members of NATO have released a joint statement backing Ukraine’s plan to join the US-led bloc, and promising to support the peace terms offered by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky to Russia. Moscow has previously rejected Zelensky’s insistence on restoring Ukraine’s 1991 borders as unacceptable. The foreign ministers of the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Poland signed a declaration after meeting with the Ukrainian leader in Berlin on Thursday. “The goals of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace for Ukraine and durable security for Europe are inseparable. Ukraine must prevail,” the statement said. The countries pledged to support an end to the conflict in accordance “with full respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” “We reaffirm our commitment to President Zelensky’s Peace Formula, as a credible path towards a just and lasting peace,” the statement read.

Kiev’s backers vowed to “support Ukraine on its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership,” as well as “its path towards accession to the European Union.” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga thanked the six nations and the EU for “candid discussion and readiness to take concrete steps.” He called for additional sanctions, targeting Russia’s metals sector, shipping, and banks. “We are closely monitoring the increase in trade with the countries that have not imposed sanctions on Russia,” Sibiga said. The meeting in Berlin took place amid uncertainty over whether US President-elect Donald Trump will continue the previous administration’s unconditional military and financial aid to Kiev. Trump, who takes office on January 20, has described Zelensky as “the greatest salesman on Earth” and promised to do his best to quickly end the conflict through diplomacy.

Although he has not yet produced a concrete plan, during the presidential campaign he appeared open to pressuring Kiev to start negotiations with Moscow. Trump has also blasted outgoing President Joe Biden for allowing Ukraine to use American-made missiles for strikes deep into internationally recognized Russian territory. “I think that is a very big mistake,” he told Time magazine in an interview published on Thursday. Russia has rejected Zelensky’s ‘peace formula’ outright, insisting that a peace agreement could only be reached on its terms. Moscow has stressed that Ukraine must renounce claims on Crimea and four other regions, which voted to join Russia in 2014 and 2022. The Kremlin has also said Ukraine should drop its plan to join the US-led military bloc in favor of becoming a permanently neutral country. President Vladimir Putin has cited NATO’s expansion eastward and military cooperation with Ukraine as one of the root causes of the current conflict.

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“..it is difficult to overstate the arrogance of a president who operates with so profound an indifference to his electorate.”

• The Centrists Cannot Hold (Patrick Lawrence)

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…”

A lot of us are familiar with these lines from Yeats’s thoroughly anthologized and often-quoted The Second Coming. How can they not come to mind as the French government of Emmanuel Macron, the centrist par excellence, falls in a heap of high-handed hubris? Everyone in Paris is blaming everyone since the Macron government’s energized opposition in the National Assembly forced Premier Michel Barnier from office with a vote of no confidence last week. The truth is that Barnier is a casualty of his own political camp — an arrogant “center” that is not, in fact, the center of anything. It is composed of neoliberal ideologues who hold themselves as high as falcons above voters, refuse to hear them and wage war to remain in power even when they are voted out of it.

What is unfolding now in France is unfolding one or another way across those Western powers that form the walls of the neoliberal fortress. You see variants in Germany, Britain and, understood properly, in the United States. The center is not holding but the center insists on holding. Neoliberalism, after decades during which it has prevailed without effective challenge, is now critically threatened on all sides. And its defenders are fighting a ferocious battle to preserve its ideological primacy. In effect, the Emmanuel Macrons and Michel Barniers of the Atlantic world are destroying what remains of democracy in the name of defending it. It is important to understand this in the clearest possible terms, given what is at stake. It cannot lead anywhere other than some form of authoritarianism unless the Macrons, the Barniers and their kind are turned back or otherwise subdued.

Isn’t this already evident? It can lead, to look at the question another way, to what could easily turn into political anarchy, and this will not be so “mere” as Yeats imagined a century and a few years ago. Macron, a former merchant banker, “president of the rich” as the French call him, is a laboratory specimen for his imperious insistence on the neoliberal orthodoxies. He decided to risk snap elections last summer after his Renaissance Party was trounced in European Parliament polls. Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National won 30 seats, with 31% of the vote. La France Insoumise, France Unbowed, Macron’s leftist challenger, took nine more seats. Renaissance went home with 13 seats, 14.6% of the vote. Macron, ever out-of-touch, calculated that snap legislative elections would restore the balance of power in his favor.

In the National Assembly elections last June and July, Macron was outdone once again. The Nouveau Fronte Populaire, a leftist alliance formed just weeks before the polls, won 188 seats, Le Pen’s National Rally 142 and Macron’s centrist alliance 161. In sum, no party had the 289 seats required to achieve a legislative majority in the 577–seat Assembly. The leftist front was the surprise winner, and National Rally had the most votes of any single party. Both then demanded, altogether rightfully, the president name a new premier from their ranks. So did Macron’s anti-democratic defense of French democracy begin — or continue more pointedly, better put. He refused for two months to name anyone to Matignon, the prime minister’s residence and office.

And his eventual choice of Barnier, a conservative dedicated to neoliberal austerity and the European Union’s technocracy, was an in-your-face rejection of last summer’s election results. It is interesting to consider what Macron charged Barnier with accomplishing. In the Assembly he faced hostility to Macron’s centrist regime over both shoulders — either from the left (the Nouveau Fronte Populaire) or from the populist right (Le Pen’s Rassemblement). Barnier’s job was to navigate this stony political terrain while sustaining Macron’s neoliberal economics. I would have called this a mission impossible, a fool’s errand, given the two opposition blocs held 330 seats between them. But it is difficult to overstate the arrogance of a president who operates with so profound an indifference to his electorate.

Read more …

Good move.

• Trump Invites Xi To His Inauguration – CBS (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump has invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to attend his inauguration on January 20, CBS News reported on Wednesday. The offer was made in early November, shortly after Trump’s election victory, multiple sources told the media outlet. It remains unclear whether Xi has accepted. In a recent NBC News interview, Trump said he “got along very well” with Xi and that they had communicated the previous week. Trump’s team has suggested hosting other leaders at the Capitol on January 20, in addition to Xi. While ambassadors and diplomats are typically invited, State Department records since 1874 indicate that no foreign leader has ever attended a transfer-of-power ceremony. The apparent olive branch to China comes despite Trump’s incoming administration featuring several hawks on Beijing, including Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state.

The president-elect has vowed to hit the country with an “additional 10% tariff, above any additional tariffs” unless it takes action against the trafficking of fentanyl, a major contributor to the opioid crisis. During his campaign he threatened tariffs in excess of 60% on US imports from China.On Tuesday President Xi Jinping warned that neither side will emerge victorious in the event of a trade war. Xie Feng, China’s ambassador to the US, read a letter from Xi at a US-China Business Council gala in Washington on Wednesday, emphasizing the importance of dialogue over confrontation, and calling for mutually beneficial cooperation rather than zero-sum games. Xie urged against decoupling supply chains, while US Ambassador to Beijing Nicholas Burns cautioned that Beijing sometimes tries to “sugar coat” the competitive nature of the bilateral relationship.

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Of course he will. Good on him.

• Trump Says RFK Jr. Will Study Link Between Childhood Vaccines and Autism (ET)

President-elect Donald Trump said on Dec. 8 that he will give Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the freedom to investigate the potential link between vaccines and autism if the latter gains Senate confirmation to become secretary of health and human services (HHS). Kennedy has said for years that autism is likely tied to childhood vaccines. He was nominated to serve as HHS secretary by Trump last month and has promised sweeping changes to agencies under the HHS department, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The NIH supports and funds research into autism, as well as potential new vaccines. Kennedy told The Epoch Times in September that he would revamp the NIH to focus on the causes of autism, autoimmune diseases, and neurodevelopment diseases instead of developing drugs and serving as an incubator for pharmaceutical products.

In a Dec. 8 interview on “Meet The Press,” Trump noted that autism cases have increased in recent decades. When asked if Kennedy would explore the issue, Trump said he is “open to anything.” “When you look at some of the problems, when you look at what’s going on with disease and sickness in our country, something’s wrong,” Trump said. “I think somebody has to find out. If you go back 25 years ago, you had very little autism. Now you have it.” CDC information shows that about one in 36 American children today has an autism diagnosis, compared to one in 150 in the year 2000. Fighting chronic disease, improving children’s health, and addressing corporate influence on government agencies were vital parts of Kennedy’s campaign platform when he ran for president as a Democrat and then as an independent.

Kennedy suspended his presidential campaign and backed Trump in August. He told The Epoch Times that it was a “heart-wrenching decision” and a necessary step toward achieving his mission of saving Americans from the chronic disease epidemic. Under the “Make America Healthy Again” campaign, Kennedy intends to curtail what he calls the chronic disease epidemic by addressing the so-called corporate capture of federal health agencies and removing toxic chemicals from the nation’s food supply, among other objectives.

Read more …

That’s $1 million for Zuck vs $260 million for Elon Musk.

• Meta Donates $1Mln to Trump’s Fund as Part of Effort to Mend Ties (Sp.)

Meta* has confirmed a $1 million donation to US President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, signaling a significant shift in CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s approach to the incoming administration, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. The donation is a notable departure from Zuckerberg’s previous stance, especially considering his contentious relationship with Trump during the election campaign. Trump had previously threatened to retaliate against tech giants he perceived as undermining his campaign. The paper also reported that as Republicans prepared to take control of both the White House and Congress, tech CEOs were recalibrating their strategies in anticipation of new regulations that could impact their businesses. However, Zuckerberg’s outreach to Trump was not an isolated incident.

The report also noted that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who has been critical of Trump in the past, had recently congratulated him on his victory and expressed optimism about the new administration. The report said Zuckerberg’s efforts to forge a stronger connection with Trump included a private dinner at Mar-a-Lago. During the two-day event, Meta’s senior policy executives engaged with key figures in Trump’s administration, including his nominee for secretary of state, Senator Marco Rubio. The tech industry has often found itself at odds with Republican leadership, particularly under Trump’s administration, which frequently criticized social media platforms for perceived bias against conservative viewpoints. In the wake of the 2020 election and the January 6 unrest, the tech entrepreneur banned Donald Trump and some of his supporters on Facebook. In October 2020, both Facebook and Twitter censored the much-talked-about story of Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell.”

Read more …

What a mess.

• Biden Pardons 39, Commutes Nearly 1,500 Sentences (JTN)

Just days after pardoning his son Hunter in a widely unpopular move, President Joe Biden on Thursday issued the most sweeping one-day clemency in modern U.S. history by pardoning 39 Americans and commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 others. The actions were announced in an early morning statement from the White House that signaled more acts of clemency could be coming before Biden leaves office on Jan. 20. “As the President has said, the United States is a nation of second chances,” the statement said. “The President recognizes how the clemency power can advance equal justice under law and remedy harms caused by practices of the past.” Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 individuals who were placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic and who have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities for at least one year.

The pardons went to 39 nonviolent offenders, including some convicted of drug crimes. “These actions represent the largest single-day grant of clemency in modern history,” the White House said. The sweeping grant came just 11 days after Biden erased the felony tax and gun convictions of his son Hunter with an unpopular pardon opposed by a majority of Americans, including some prominent Democrats. It also comes as some around the president urge he issue preemptive pardons for members of his party, his administration, or federal bureaucrats who might face prosecution in the next Trump administration. According to the White House statement, those receiving clemency Thursday included:

A decorated military veteran who now assists fellow church members who are in poor health;
A nurse who has led emergency response for several natural disasters and helped spearhead vaccination efforts during the pandemic;
An addiction counselor who “volunteers his time to help young people find their purpose, make better choices, and refrain from destructive behaviors and gang involvement.”

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“Imagine inflation cooling in February at 276% — the situation was dire..”

• Argentina’s First Budget Surplus in 123 Years (Martin Armstrong)

Argentina has posted its first budget surplus in 123 years after President Javir Milei took office and demanded an abrupt halt to government spending. Governments worldwide should carefully take note. Milei proudly announced: “The deficit was the root of all our evils — without it, there’s no debt, no emission, no inflation. Today, we have a sustained fiscal surplus, free of default, for the first time in 123 years. This historic achievement came from the greatest adjustment in history and reducing monetary emission to zero. A year ago, a degenerate printed 13% of GDP to win an election, fueling inflation. Today, monetary emission is a thing of the past.” Economic emissions should become a coined phrase as it is far more harmful than anything government is currently trying to conquer.

Argentina was forced to stop printing money back in 2022 after inflation surpassed 60% in July of that year, and their currency became utterly worthless. The central bank raised rates to nearly 70% to no avail as government continued borrowing. The problem with socialism is that they eventually run out of other people’s money. The government was spending over $6 million daily on social programs, but the poverty rate continued to rise, and around 57% of the working population could not find jobs. There were mass strikes since their money could not fund basic goods. Even if they could find employment, what incentive would the people have when the currency is worthless? Since they had no way to pay off their debt, the government simply continued to print more and devalued its own currency in the process. Javir Milei was called a right-wing extremist for denouncing socialism and promising to curtail government spending and social programs.

He understood that socialism COULD NOT WORK. It took President Javier Milei of Argentina a mere two months to push his nation into a surplus. The Economy Ministry declared that the government posted a $589 million surplus back in April, the first surplus in a decade. Milei referred to the government as “a criminal organization,” and recognized that the public sector needed to shrink as 341,477 people were on the government payroll when he took office. Referred to as the “gnocchi” after the Italian pasta dish that is commonly served on the 29th of the month, the same day as payday, are the individuals in Argentina on the government payroll who do absolutely nothing. They were installed by politicians in exchange for favors. Critics claim he is firing at random, but the Milei Administration has assured the public that selecting those who will be laid off will be an “extremely surgical task, done so as not to make mistakes.”

Milei has already eliminated useless agencies such as the Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Labor, and Ministry of Social Development. In his words, Argentina is currently a poor country and cannot afford these departments that do absolutely nothing to improve the nation’s economic conditions. He has cut the Cabinet in half and no one has noticed a difference. Milei removed price controls and devalued the currency by 54%. Transport and fuel subsidies were eliminated. It was noted that these measures would at first hurt PPP before the economy could begin to heal. Imagine inflation cooling in February at 276% — the situation was dire. The International Monetary Fund awarded Argentina a $44 billion credit program. The nation is beginning to stabilize very slowly, and it took decades of deteriorating economic conditions for someone to come in and clean house.

He has called his measures a form of “shock therapy” for Argentina’s economy. Milei agreed to devalue the nation’s peso from around 350 to 800 pesos per USD. He has eliminated quotas on imports and exports and removed the licensing that was difficult to obtain. There is a temporary rise in taxes for non-agricultural trade that brings it on par with industry standards. Transportation and energy subsidies have been eliminated. Milei is the same man who stood before the crowd at Davos and criticized their glorification of socialism. “The main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism,” Milei said to a hostile crowd at Davos. “We’re here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world—rather they are the root cause.”

Those in charge want us to believe that capitalism equates to greed while collectivism is seen as a form of social justice but, of course, requires the money of others. Free enterprise is under constant attack, and Milei is one of the only world leaders fighting for its existence. “Social justice is not just. It doesn’t contribute to the general well-being,” Milei said to Davos, citing that socialism is “intrinsically unfair” and forces the state to attack the people for taxes. “Can any of us say that they voluntarily pay taxes?” he asked the crowd. He was once called the Donald Trump of Argentina. We can hope that Donald Trump will take swift action to reduce government spending. DOGE appointee Elon Musk congratulated Argentina’s president when news of the budget surplus broke. Unfortunately, America is too far in the hole to recover by slashing programs or cutting government. It would be a massive step forward but our deficit has been permitted to run wild for too long to be tamed.

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“..the situation can be redeemed in the Ukraine. This means the complete and comprehensive defeat of the enemy there.”

• The Kremlin’s Oprichniki Versus The General Staff’s Prigozhniki (Helmer)

The defeat of the Russian army in war discredits, not the soldiers who fought and died, but the commander-in-chief and the generals who were in command. Defeat on the battlefield also destroys Russian military honour as a political force in the country, just as its opposite, victory on the battlefield, threatens the civilian commander-in-chief with his replacement by a soldier hero. To protect himself from his triumphant, and also from his disgruntled officers, the commander-in-chief may make his generals scapegoats for the defeat. Joseph Stalin had begun shooting scapegoat officers before the German invasion of June 21, 1941, and then accelerated his purge in the weeks which followed. In 1946, in the aftermath of the Red Army’s victory over Germany, Stalin neutralized Marshal Georgiy Zhukov (for the second time), stripping him of his command powers and sending him into internal exile, all for purely political reasons. Stalin had allowed Zhukov to lead the victory parade in Red Square but only after Stalin had tried himself and failed to stay in the saddle of the white horse.

Stalin’s jealousy of Zhukov’s domestic popularity was compounded by his (not unreasonable) fear of a military putsch and of the Caligula Cure. For most Russians – and this has been a consistent finding of public opinion polling by the independent Levada Centre of Moscow – the President’s popularity, public trust, and approval of his performance run about 10 points ahead of the Russian trust in the Army. However, the two support each other on the upswing in the polls when there are victories to celebrate; and then on the downswing when there are defeats, rising casualties, and war fatigue across the countryside. Between 2022 and now, for example, Russian approval of Putin has risen to the 80% level; for the Army approval has also risen to about 70%. It is the conclusion of the Kremlin and of the General Staff, therefore, that they should either hang together or if not, they will hang each other.

Having opposed but obeyed Putin’s orders forbidding them to fire on Israeli aircraft attacking Syria, or on Turkish ground operations in and around Idlib, Moscow sources believe the General Staff have now told Putin much more than the refrain, he’s heard many times before, “We told you so”. This time the General Staff assessment of the invasion of Syria, refusal of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) to fight, and the replacement of the Assad regime in Damascus is that grave damage has been done to the protective alliances which Russia has been promoting in Africa, the Americas, China, and North Korea.

“We just have to accept that Iran and Russia have been comprehensively defeated in their non-fight, “a well-informed Moscow source says. “It is the worst defeat of Russia by the Turks in history. If Putin goes on now to make significant concessions in an Istanbul II negotiation with [President Donald] Trump, that will be the cherry on top of the Turkish halva. We are thinking this; no one is saying it. In the end, a defeat in Ukraine is all we care about. If Putin fails to deliver that, then he has a much bigger problem than the one he has just retreated from. Yes, this is a huge dishonour for us, but nothing is served by talking of it. Still, the situation can be redeemed in the Ukraine. This means the complete and comprehensive defeat of the enemy there.”

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“..domestic and international pressure had escalated so much that Netanyahu ran out of excuses by the time he attended yesterday’s hearing..”

• Netanyahu’s Trial: Corruption, War Crimes, And An Israel In Crisis (Cradle)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s entrance into a Tel Aviv courtroom yesterday was anything but understated. Facing trial as the first sitting prime minister prosecuted for corruption, Netanyahu seized the moment to brand his ordeal a “witch-hunt.” Outside the courthouse, tensions simmered as some 100 protesters gathered, blaming him for the deaths of Israeli war prisoners in Gaza, while an equal number of staunch supporters faced them across a police barrier. The embattled premier, set to testify over three days before facing cross-examination, continues to vigorously deny attempts to evade trial since his 2019 indictment on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. Accused of accepting gifts from wealthy businessmen and granting favors to media moguls in exchange for positive coverage, Netanyahu had ignored his lawyer’s advice to step away from politics at the time.

Declaring on the eve of his hearing that he had “waited eight years for this moment to say the truth as [he] remember[s] it,” Netanyahu launched a preemptive attack on the judiciary, police, and media in a televised press conference on Monday. His critics, however, swiftly countered. Opposition leader Yair Lapid condemned Netanyahu’s self-serving focus amid mounting war casualties, calling his press conference “a shameful collection of lies.” Lapid accused Netanyahu of deploying “every trick possible” in his delay tactic to avoid facing justice, saying the prime minister had prioritized personal survival over the country’s security and stability. He even blamed him for the 7 October Palestinian resistance’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, “the [subsequent] war, and the fact that the kidnapped people have not yet returned.”

For nearly five years, Netanyahu maneuvered to postpone this judicial reckoning, citing COVID-19 disruptions, procedural delays, and political gridlock during repeated elections as reasons to delay the hearings. After securing a hardline coalition in December 2022, he intensified efforts to undermine and politicize the judiciary system, proposing “reforms” that sparked mass protests throughout 2023. Those protests dwindled only after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, when Netanyahu’s response – an unprecedented and brutal military campaign – rightfully drew accusations of genocide and war crimes from the International Criminal Court (ICC). By the time he entered the underground, secured courtroom, the prime minister was under mounting pressure at home and abroad. Together with his former defense minister Yoav Gallant, he faces the allegations of war crimes – the first of their kind within the western alliance of states – along with the repercussions of a collapsing economy and the mass “displacement” of settlers in the north due to Hezbollah’s early involvement in the regional conflict.

But domestic and international pressure had escalated so much that Netanyahu ran out of excuses by the time he attended yesterday’s hearing to spin his side of the story in Tel Aviv. The Israeli prime minister walked into the courtroom with an ICC arrest warrant hanging over his head for war crimes in Gaza, and a broad international consensus that Israel is guilty of apartheid and genocide that has left nearly 45,000 Palestinians killed, the majority of them women and children. Yet, of more concern to Israelis has been the fleeing of nearly half a million Israeli Jews from the occupation state, the potentially permanent displacement of a quarter of a million from the Gaza and Lebanese border since October 2023, tens of billions of dollars in economic losses, and the shuttering of up to 60,000 businesses in 15 months of war.

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“..this is the NATO/Israel combo demilitarizing the former Syria – with not as much as a peep from anybody in the Arab world and the lands of Islam..”

• Vultures Feed On The Carcass Of Syria (Pepe Escobar)

The standard modus operandi of the Hegemon is always Divide and Rule. Cornered by the inexorable rise of the multi-nodal (italics mine) reality, they saw an opening for an imperial reboot, betting everything on establishing the “Greater Middle East” outlined still during the Cheney era. The iron axis of Straussian neocons, Zio-cons and Old Testament psychos in Tel Aviv is no-holds-barred obsessed on destroying the Axis of Resistance, using their transnational network of bloody killers to extend chaos and sectarian civil war all across West Asia. Throughout this ideal scenario they dream of mortally hitting the head of the snake: Iran. Sultan Erdogan, playing the role of useful patsy, has proclaimed:”A “bright period” for Syria has begun.” Indeed. A bright period for Black Flag head-choppers and Tel Aviv bombers and land grabbers – feeding on the carcass of Syria.

The Old Testament psycho-pathological killers, via over 350 strikes, have totally destroyed all the military infrastructure of the former Syrian Arab Army (SAA); weapons factories, munitions, bases, fighter jets, including the Mezze air base in Damascus, Russian anti-ship systems, ships themselves (in Lattakia, close to the Russian naval base) and air defense positions. In a nutshell: this is the NATO/Israel combo demilitarizing the former Syria – with not as much as a peep from anybody in the Arab world and the lands of Islam, starting with the Black Flag killers that have taken Damascus. Couple that with trademark land invasion/grabbing, and Tel Aviv officially declaring a definitive annexation of the Golan – which legally belongs to Syria and whose restitution has been demanded by the UN after the 1967 war.

In parallel, Turkish aviation bombed the former Russian-Syrian base in Qamishli, in the extreme northeast. The pretext: prevent that weapons would be grabbed by U.S.-backed Kurds and assorted Arab tribes. For the Russians this may not have been a big deal – as there was enough time to evacuate precious assets from the East of the Euphrates. Russia has given asylum to formidable, and crucially uncorruptible, Suheil al-Hassan – a serious candidate to top military tactician and strategist in the world today. Russians bet on him as early as in 2015 – and provided for his personal security. Nobody in Syria enjoyed Russian bodyguards – not even Assad. He was the only commander who won de facto battles during the 10 days of the Fall of Syria.

Amidst a torrent of doom and gloom, what’s taking place, fast as lightning, is NATO/Israel feeding on the carcass and dividing a dead nation with a gaggle of useful idiots and puppets – from fake woke Salafi-jihadis to Americanized Kurds. Obviously a collective IQ lower than any room temperature prevent this mob from realizing they are fighting for the same Suzerain. Tel Aviv goons have advanced their blitzkrieg across the Damascus countryside and may be as close as 15 km to the south of the capital; a classic lebensraum gambit, part of their colonial project, coupled with obtaining maximum leverage on the Lebanese flank. This is absolutely crucial, and extremely worrying for the Axis of Resistance: now all of southern Lebanon is exposed to a massive attack by the Israeli occupation – as the fertile plains between Chtoura in the Beqaa valley and Aanjar not only hold precious natural resources but provide a direct drive to Beirut.

In parallel, Black Flags have taken over Damascus. There are massacres all across the spectrum – including religious leaders and scientists but mostly former Army officials, former members of Syrian counter-espionage, even civilians accused of being former military. His Eminence, Sheikh Tawfiq al-Bouti, son of the famous sheikh Muhammad Said Ramadan al-Bouti, a former imam of the venerable Umayyad mosque, was assassinated in his Damascus madrassa. Scorpions are predictably turning on each other; rival terror gangs to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) demand that Jolani’s goons liberate their members imprisoned in Greater Idlibistan, and now threaten to attack HTS. In Manbij, Turk-backed terrorists openly kill Americano-Kurds in hospitals. Syria’s north and northeast are mired in total anarchy.

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“..Before the U.S.-Israel campaign to overthrow Assad began in earnest in 2011, Syria was a functioning, growing middle-income country..”

• The US and Israel Destroyed Syria and Called it Peace (Jeffrey Sachs)

In the famous lines of Tacitus, Roman historian, “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.” In our age, it is Israel and the U.S. that make a desert and call it peace. The story is simple. In stark violation of international law, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers claim the right to rule over seven million Palestinian Arabs. When Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands leads to militant resistance, Israel labels the resistance “terrorism” and calls on the U.S. to overthrow the Middle East governments that back the “terrorists.” The U.S., under the sway of the Israel Lobby, goes to war on Israel’s behalf. The fall of Syria this week is the culmination of the Israel-U.S. campaign against Syria that goes back to 1996 with Netanyahu’s arrival to office as Prime Minister.

The Israel-U.S. war on Syria escalated in 2011 and 2012, when Barack Obama covertly tasked the CIA with the overthrow of the Syrian Government in Operation Timber Sycamore. That effort finally came to “fruition” this week, after more than 300,000 deaths in the Syrian war since 2011. Syria’s fall came swiftly because of more than a decade of crushing economic sanctions, the burdens of war, the U.S. seizure of Syria’s oil, Russia’s priorities regarding the conflict in Ukraine, and most immediately, Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah, which was the key military backstop to the Syrian Government. No doubt Assad often misplayed his own hand and faced severe internal discontent, but his regime was targeted for collapse for decades by the U.S. and Israel. Since 2011, the Israel-U.S. perpetual war on Syria, including bombing, jihadists, economic sanctions, U.S. seizure of Syria’s oil fields, and more, has sunk the Syrian people into misery.

Before the U.S.-Israel campaign to overthrow Assad began in earnest in 2011, Syria was a functioning, growing middle-income country. In January 2009, the IMF Executive Board had this to say: Executive Directors welcomed Syria’s strong macroeconomic performance in recent years, as manifested in the rapid non-oil GDP growth, comfortable level of foreign reserves, and low and declining government debt. This performance reflected both robust regional demand and the authorities’ reform efforts to shift toward a more market- based economy. Since 2011, the Israel-U.S. perpetual war on Syria, including bombing, jihadists, economic sanctions, U.S. seizure of Syria’s oil fields, and more, has sunk the Syrian people into misery.

In the immediate two days following the collapse of the government, Israel conducted about 480 strikes across Syria, and completely destroyed the Syrian fleet in Latakia. Pursuing his expansionist agenda, Prime Minister Netanyahu illegally claimed control over the demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights and declared that the Golan Heights will be a part of the State of Israel “for eternity.” Netanyahu’s ambition to transform the region through war, which dates back almost three decades, is playing out in front of our eyes. In a press conference on December 9th, the Israeli prime minister boasted of an “absolute victory,” justifying the on-going genocide in Gaza and escalating violence throughout the region:

“I ask you, just think, if we had acceded to those who told us time and again: ‘”The war must be stopped”– we would not have entered Rafah, we would not have seized the Philadelphia Corridor, we would not have eliminated Sinwar, we would not have surprised our enemies in Lebanon and the entire world in a daring operation-stratagem, we would not have eliminated Nasrallah, we would not have destroyed Hezbollah’s underground network, and we would not have exposed Iran’s weakness. The operations that we have carried out since the beginning of the war are dismantling the axis brick by brick.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Buffalo herd

 

 

Graze

 

 

Baby hippo

 

 

Cat?

 

 

Orca
https://twitter.com/i/status/1866933591050985706

 

 

Not good

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 30 2024

Nov 302024
 
 November 30, 2024  Posted by at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  47 Responses »


Rembrandt van Rijn The Adoration of the Magi 1634

 

• What Part of Mandate Don’t You Understand? (James Howard Kunstler)
• West Plotting To ‘Occupy’ Ukraine – Russian Intel (RT)
• Lights Out In The Ukraine, In General Kellogg’s Brain Too (Helmer)
• Zelensky Offers To End ‘Hot Phase’ Of War In Exchange For NATO Membership (ZH)
• Deaths of Western Fighters In Ukraine Is ‘Dangerous Escalation’ – Orban (RT)
• Boris Johnson Calls For NATO Troops On The Ground In Ukraine Yet Again (ZH)
• Donald Trump Won’t Be Able To Quickly End The Ukraine Conflict (Poletaev)
• “This Week, The Second Trump Trade War Started” (Philip Marey)
• Trump Admin’s DOGE Efficiency Push Now Reaching State Level (JTN)
• China Could Devalue Yuan To Spite Trump – JP Morgan (RT)
• Time for Starmer to Be Honest About What Net Zero Means (Morrison)
• Epps Loses Defamation Case Against Fox News (Turley)
• Ceasefire Falters as Israel Launches Airstrikes on Southern Lebanon (Antiwar)
• Merkel Blows A Hole In Washington’s Nord Stream Narrative (Marsden)

 

 

 

 

Miller

Hammer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1862319620511711653

Elon

RFK

Hillary

Hazel

Saylor
https://twitter.com/i/status/1862180941319610644

 

 

 

 

“This version of Trump knows what buttons to press, he knows where the bodies are buried, he’s absorbed their worst and now he is about to throw it right back at them.” — Jeff Childers

• What Part of Mandate Don’t You Understand? (James Howard Kunstler)

You have every reason to believe that this arrogant, malicious, leviathan government, and the vicious intel / lawfare blob at its vanguard, is about to be turned upside-down, inside-out, and sideways. Every appointment by Mr. Trump is a dose of chemotherapy to this malignant beast, aimed at all its diseased organs. The rogue cells within are going to die hard, struggle against their extinction, shriek and thrash as the treatment proceeds. That is, if it is allowed to proceed. And so: rumors arise of a coup to prevent it from happening. The benchmark version goes like this: “Joe Biden” keeps up his stupid provocation of Russia with those medium-range ATACMS missiles until Mr. Putin is forced to respond with a strike against a NATO member, say, a military base in Poland used to stage and target the ATACMS. Under NATO’s Article Five — an attack against one is an attack against all — Europe and the US must go to war against Russia.

This becomes the pretext for “Joe Biden” to declare an extraordinary emergency (or Kamala Harris, if “JB” can be shoved out under the 25th Amendment). The inauguration of the newly-elected government must needs be postponed. . . . Such a move would surely provoke a domestic insurrection against the leviathan and Civil War Two would be on. Or else you might expect a swift counter-coup out of the US military not playing along. Mr. Putin, too, could demur from playing the game, that is, just not go for the bait, refrain from striking any NATO territory. After all, his beef is officially with Mr. Zelensky’s Kiev government. Russia could just pound Kiev until that government ceases to exist. So far Mr. Putin has carefully refrained from destroying the historic city center, mainly hitting power plants to turn off the heat and light to make life extremely uncomfortable in the Ukraine capital with winter coming on. But he could level the city.

The choice is Mr. Zelensky’s, and has been for months as his forces, armaments, and prospects dwindle. He could suspend hostilities, go to talks, even raise a white flag and put an end to the needless suffering. Under no circumstances will he get the Donbas or Crimea back. I doubt that Russia wants to take over the rest of Ukraine, considering the cost of having to support it indefinitely. Better that it should remain a sovereign state and look after itself — but neutral, demilitarized, and, if you like, de-Nazified. You understand that these will be Russia’s final terms? And that there is nothing unreasonable about them? In short, the hypothetical coup would fail, and the Ukraine war will end, and Mr. Trump will get inaugurated if he is careful to avoid the blob’s assassins until January 20.

As for Rep. Jamie Raskin’s scheme to prevent a Trump swearing-in on account of him being “an insurrectionist,” you can file that under “dumb-shit grandstanding.” So, the new government will come in, the new department chiefs will get into office, and the leviathan will get the therapeutic treatment it deserves. Outside of these criminal proceedings, the rest is executive process — just firing a lot of dead-weight and bureaucrat officials who contribute nothing but inertia and impediment to the normal functioning of a society. And deconstructing whole agencies. The blob will likely attempt to block that effort by marshaling its own allied lawyer army to bombard the courts with suits and writs. If the Trump team does its work carefully, with scrupulous attention to correct process, that offensive can be overcome and worked-around.

After a while, we’ll discover just how much government is really necessary, sort of like Twitter did, after Elon Musk fired 80-percent of the loafers on his payroll. Since so much of the US economy has shifted insidiously into government, this downscaling is apt to be painful, but especially for the local economy of Washington DC, which is to say, a grift economy of overlapping rackets. Upgrade a few laws and whole industries — such as lobbying by military contractors — might be wiped out. But you have to ask: how was that ever a good thing? For now, we give thanks that important changes are probably underway. Stolen liberties will be returned. You will be free to succeed or fail in a society of voluntary transactions. That was always the essence of being an American, not being a client of a fake therapeutic state, savior of all, but really just protector of its own.

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You would get full NATO troops right next to Russian troops. Bad idea.

• West Plotting To ‘Occupy’ Ukraine – Russian Intel (RT)

The West is secretly planning to occupy Ukraine and freeze the conflict with Russia by deploying tens of thousands of supposed peacekeepers to the country, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has said. In a statement on Friday, the spy agency cited intelligence sources as saying that NATO is increasingly in favor of halting the hostilities along the current front line, as the US-led military bloc and Ukraine have come to realize that they are failing to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia. Freezing the conflict would allow the West to rebuild the shattered Ukrainian military and “prepare it for an attempt at revenge,” the SVR stated. It further claimed that NATO is already setting up training centers to process at least one million Ukrainian conscripts. A possible respite would also help the West restore Kiev’s military industry, which has been regularly battered by Russian missile and drone strikes, the SVR added.

“To solve these tasks, the West will need to essentially occupy Ukraine. Naturally, this will be done under the guise of deploying a ‘peacekeeping contingent’ in the country… According to the plan, a total of 100,000 so-called peacekeepers will be deployed in Ukraine.” According to the SVR, the plan would also involve Ukraine being partitioned into four large occupation zones. Romania would take the Black Sea coast, Poland would control Western Ukraine, and the UK would occupy the north, including Kiev. The central and eastern parts of the country would be taken by Germany, the agency claimed. The SVR also alleged that Germany plans to revive practices implemented by the Nazi regime during World War II to “police” Ukraine. In particular, Berlin wants to create special “death squads” made up of Ukrainian nationalists to maintain order in the occupied territory, the statement read.

“Does Russia need such a peaceful settlement option? The answer is obvious,” the SVR said. The statement comes after French newspaper Le Monde reported earlier this week that France and the UK have “reactivated” a discussion on a potential troop deployment in Ukraine. Earlier this year, French President Emmanuel Macron insisted that the West should not rule out this option to keep Russia in check, despite strong pushback from numerous NATO allies. Moscow has repeatedly signaled its opposition to freezing the conflict, insisting that all the goals of its military operation, including Ukraine’s neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification, must be met. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has stressed that while there is no consensus in the EU on sending troops to Ukraine, “there are some hotheads.”

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“..the career military experience Kellogg brings to his new job is “losing, not winning on the battlefield..”

• Lights Out In The Ukraine, In General Kellogg’s Brain Too (Helmer)

The damage assessments of yesterday’s November 28 electric war strikes against targets across the Ukraine spell the countrywide collapse of electricity supply before January 20, when the new Trump Administration will take office. By then, the Russian General Staff will have deprived Keith Kellogg, the retired US Army general newly appointed to serve as Trump’s negotiator for end-of-war terms, of the options he has publicly declared for himself, and also for Trump, in their war to make America great again in Europe. “The Mayor of Kiev told us this is genocide,” Kellogg said in interview with Fox News.“Now we are right on the cusp…This is going to be a fight to the end… Again, as I said, I think it’s a fight to the finish…Why this is important geo-strategically is that if we [US] can — if the Ukrainians can defeat Russia in the field, and evict them from the Donbass or the Crimea, Putin falls. It changes Europe for a generation to come…So one of these two sides is going to win. I don’t think there’s going to be anything to negotiate.”

Kellogg said this in February 2023, after he had returned from a sponsored trip to Kiev and to the eastern region of the country. Subsequently, he was paid to write an end-of-war strategy paper for Trump to use during the last months of the election campaign this year. This focused on attacking the Biden Administration for weakening the US and the NATO allies on the battlefield, and also in Europe. Trump’s “geo-strategic” priority remained, Kellogg wrote, to prevent “Ukraine fatigue among the Europeans, threatening to leave the United States, once again, as the primary defence contributor to Europe and further straining America’s ability to maintain its own critical defence stockpiles.” Negotiating to prevent the US from losing its military dominance in Europe, and to conserve the forces and weapon supplies “needed in other conflicts, especially if China invades Taiwan” are Kellogg’s running orders from Trump.

Russian sources say that reviving the Reagan Administration’s “Star Wars” weapons systems to combat Russia’s Kinzhal and Oreshnik missile advantage is the unstated “geo-strategic” priority, not only of Kellogg but of others in the Trump administration. They believe Elon Musk will lobby the president to make himself “chief US rocketeer to get a trillion-dollar contract to build missiles to counter us. But if they want a new arms race, they are already trailing. They will lose in space what they’ve already lost on the ground.”

According to a US veteran of the Afghanistan War, the career military experience Kellogg brings to his new job is “losing, not winning on the battlefield. He’s a typical empire enforcer. The last time Kellogg fought a competent military force, it was the Vietnamese, and Kellogg lost. For Trump to pick a man whose military victories are the invasion of Panama, the defeat of Iraq in Gulf War-1, and running a nuclear war bunker with Paul Wolfowitz during 9/11, tells you that it’s lights-out in the minds of both the soldier and his commander.”

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He’s supposed to negotiate with Russia. But this is a negotiation with NATO.

• Zelensky Offers To End ‘Hot Phase’ Of War In Exchange For NATO Membership (ZH)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he’s willing to end the “hot phase of the war” with Russia – including ceding captured territory – in exchange for NATO membership that includes Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders. “If we want to stop the hot phase of the war, we need to take under the Nato umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control,” he told Sky News, adding “We need to do it fast. And then, on the occupied territory of Ukraine, Ukraine can get them back in a diplomatic way.” Zelenskyy said that a ceasefire was needed to “guarantee that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will not come back” to take more Ukrainian territory,” or that “he [Putin] will come back.” In short, to end the war, Zelenskyy wants the thing that started the war.

The comments are a drastic departure from previous statements – as Zelenskyy has long-asserted that Ukraine’s sovereignty is non-negotiable, including over Crimea. Putting things in recent perspective, Zelenskyy’s comments come as NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte admitted to Fox News that Ukraine is not in a strong enough position to negotiate an end to the war, explaining that there is not enough battlefield leverage to “prevent the Russians from getting what they want.” “I think that’s crucial that we have a good deal because the whole world will be watching what type of deal will be struck between Russia and Ukraine when it comes to it,” Rutte said. “We have to make sure that Ukraine is in a position of more strength than they are at the moment,” Rutte continued, “so that a deal can be struck which is favorable not to the Russians — and therefore to China, North Korea and Iran — because they all will be watching.”

It also comes amid pressure from the Biden administration to lower the draft age in Ukraine to 18 so it has enough troops to continue fighting Russia, aka more meat for the grinder. Former British PM Boris Johnson – who allegedly scuttled early peace talks in Turkey that might have ended the Ukraine war – has called for NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine, again. Johnson also asserted that if Russia gets the upper hand in the conflict then Britain may deploy it’s forces regardless in order to “defend Europe.” Ukraine’s eastern defenses are currently being overrun by ongoing Russian attrition tactics. This reality in combination with Trump’s avalanche election win seems to have triggered establishment ghouls into a frenzy of escalation with Joe Biden giving the greenlight on long range missile strikes coordinated directly by NATO forces.

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They’re offering up their troops to initiate a war.

• Deaths of Western Fighters In Ukraine Is ‘Dangerous Escalation’ – Orban (RT)

The reported presence of Western soldiers among the casualties in Ukraine marks a dangerous escalation and risk of an “expansion of the war,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said. In an interview with Kossuth radio on Friday, Orban described the current state of affairs as paradoxical, stating that while peace appears closer than ever, the situation has never been as dangerous. “According to Russian reports, American and French soldiers died in airstrikes carried out by the Russians on the territory of Ukraine. That means there are Western soldiers there,” he said. Earlier this week, Moscow launched a series of retaliatory strikes in response to Kiev using Western-supplied long-range weapons for attacks inside Russia’s internationally recognized borders.

This came after Washington removed restrictions on Ukraine’s use of ATACMS for such strikes. Russian forces hit the positions of US-made missile launchers and facilities hosting foreign instructors and mercenaries, the defence ministry said. Moscow has repeatedly said that foreign military personnel are fighting alongside Ukraine’s regular army and participating in cross-border raids. According to the foreign ministry, a group of fighters eliminated during an incursion into Bryansk Region last month included US, Polish, and Canadian citizens. In Orban’s view, the presence of Western troops “clearly shows the danger of escalation, and thus the expansion of the war.” Russian officials have repeatedly described foreign mercenaries operating in the conflict zone as a “legitimate target” for the military, while accusing NATO of direct involvement in the hostilities.

During the interview, Orban also criticized the EU for prolonging the conflict, referring to a resolution adopted by the European Parliament on Thursday to expand military aid to Kiev. This included additional supplies of long-range missiles. He called the move “depressing,” as it indicates that many EU leaders “want to continue the war and even increase its intensity.” He also highlighted a lack of an immediate impact on the Ukraine crisis from the election victory of Donald Trump in the US, who promised to end the conflict in 24 hours, and noted that the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden maintains its pro-war stance. Moscow considers the Ukraine conflict to be a US-driven proxy war against Russia, which has escalated into a de facto global confrontation, after Western nations authorized Kiev to launch long-range attacks deep inside the country using donated weapons.

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“The majority of the US and European public have confirmed time and time again that they will not support direct conflict with Russia.”

• Boris Johnson Calls For NATO Troops On The Ground In Ukraine Yet Again (ZH)

After months of rumors surrounding possible peace talks in Turkey that might have ended the war in Ukraine not long after it reignited in 2022, multiple sources confirmed that British Politician and former PM Boris Johnson showed up in Kyiv to dismiss the negotiations and told the Ukrainians “let’s just fight”. These sources include David Arahamiya, the leader of Ukraine’s ruling party, Tory MP Nadine Dorries and Vladimir Putin himself. Johnson continues to deny the peace deal claims and “fact checkers” engage in extensive mental gymnastics to argue that there was no “official deal” put to paper, therefore Johnson didn’t sabotage anything. In other words, if a politician ruins a peace deal in its infancy before it is drafted then he’s not culpable for the war that follows. The bottom line? Johnson, a prominent British official with ties to NATO, showed up in the middle of early negotiations and told the Ukrainians to fight instead of pursuing peace.

This alone would have given the Ukrainians a false sense of security that NATO forces would intervene and fight for them. Boris Johnson would go on to promote a surge in military recruitment in the UK, and supported calls for conscription from military officials. He has also suggested NATO boots on the ground in the region on multiple occasions – A move that would immediately be seen by Russia as an escalation to world war. In a recent interview with the Daily Telegraph, the former British PM promoted the idea of British forces entering Ukraine as a part of a “peacekeeping plan.” The presence of any NATO country’s troops in Ukraine, even those not on the front line, would be seen as a tip-toe towards direct confrontation by the Kremlin. In early November, Johnson argued that if Donald Trump pulled US support for Ukraine in order to force a peace deal, Britain might send troops into the fray.

The argument sounds like a thinly veiled threat: If the US tries to force a peace deal, then Britain will send troops, escalate the war and ensure that no peace is possible. Johnson also asserted that if Russia gets the upper hand in the conflict then Britain may deploy it’s forces regardless in order to “defend Europe.” Ukraine’s eastern defenses are currently being overrun by ongoing Russian attrition tactics. This reality in combination with Trump’s avalanche election win seems to have triggered establishment ghouls into a frenzy of escalation with Joe Biden giving the greenlight on long range missile strikes coordinated directly by NATO forces. To be clear, Ukraine is not part of the EU nor is it a member of NATO. NATO warhawks like Johnson have consistently claimed that Russia’s intent is to invade greater Europe (domino effect propaganda similar to the Vietnam War), yet there is still no evidence to support this.

The western media has spent the better part of the conflagration claiming that Russian forces have been chewed up beyond repair in Ukraine; at the same time they suggest Russia somehow has the strength to invade the EU. The majority of the US and European public have confirmed time and time again that they will not support direct conflict with Russia. They will not volunteer to fight in such a war and will not submit to military conscription. Around 70% of Americans say they prefer negotiations to end the war. Only 10% of Europeans believe Ukraine can win and 52% of Ukrainians say they want negotiations and a quick end to the war. Despite this, establishment politicians continue to ignore the overwhelming calls for peace in Ukraine.

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We can not be sure.

• Donald Trump Won’t Be Able To Quickly End The Ukraine Conflict (Poletaev)

Nuclear deterrence is often viewed as an impenetrable barrier, akin to a fortress that, once breached, will lead to catastrophic destruction. However, the Ukraine conflict illustrates that it works more like an immune system: while threats may penetrate, a strong system can still deal with the infection without collapse. Russia’s nuclear deterrence has been effective in keeping the West at bay, ensuring that military aid to Ukraine stays at levels that do not provoke Moscow’s direct retaliation. As Russia’s “nuclear immunity” holds, the West continues to try to find weaknesses in the system, but the Kremlin’s resolve remains firm. Yes, the globalist West continuously searches for a weak spot in Russia’s “immune system.”

And yes, the “infection” is spreading: battles rage in Kursk Region, drones fly thousands of kilometers into Russian territory, and now there are also long-range missiles. However, none of this poses an existential threat, and Moscow is successfully battling this infection. For example, two years ago, there were neither missiles nor drones striking Russia, yet the country was much closer to military defeat than it is today. Putin’s demonstration of the Oreshnik missile system, including its hypersonic capabilities, should not be viewed as a final warning. It is, rather, another indication that Russia is ready to defend its interests. The Oreshnik missile serves as a powerful reminder of Moscow’s military capabilities, but its true purpose is to maintain deterrence and remind Western leaders of the limits of their involvement.

The most ambitious scenario would be to sign a comprehensive agreement with the West, dividing spheres of influence and addressing the issues outlined in Putin’s December 2021 ultimatum. This would mean creating a new security architecture in Europe that acknowledges Russian interests and reassesses the outcomes of the Cold War. However, this goal is hardly attainable under current conditions. A more realistic scenario involves a limited agreement with the West regarding Ukraine. While this seemed improbable six months ago, it is now being seriously considered. Talks began even before the US elections. Leaked information suggests that the West may propose a ceasefire along the front lines and a 20-year moratorium on Ukraine’s NATO membership.

Moscow, however, demands Kiev’s disarmament and political neutrality. The fighting will likely continue until these contradictions are resolved. The final choice is one without any significant agreement, similar to the post-2008 events in Georgia. Ukraine’s military defeat would become a political victory. If Kiev’s reliance on the West wanes, Ukraine, like Tbilisi, would abandon its hostile stance toward Moscow to avoid further military losses and recover its economy. This third scenario has become more likely as Ukraine faces growing challenges on the battlefield and the West reduces support. The reality is that a relatively stable agreement with the West regarding Ukraine can only happen if Kiev renounces its antagonistic policy toward Russia.

For this solution to unfold, the West must avoid direct intervention and refrain from increasing military aid to Ukraine. This is Putin’s strategy – as he holds no illusions about Trump or the possibility of a diplomatic resolution. Why? Because an agreement is only possible when contradictions are resolved, but the fundamental issue between Russia and the West remains unresolved: neither side is ready to accept Ukraine as part of their opponent’s sphere of influence.

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Canada, Mexico and China.

• “This Week, The Second Trump Trade War Started” (Philip Marey)

This week, the second Trump trade war started. On Monday, there was some market relief after Trump’s announcement on Friday that he would nominate Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary. However, that changed on Tuesday after Trump made his tariff threats to Canada, Mexico and China. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum did not take long to make her own threat of retaliatory tariffs against the US. On Tuesday she said “if there’s a tariff, another one will come in response.” However, on Wednesday, Sheinbaum and Trump had a telephone conversation that she called “excellent” and he “very productive.” Sheinbaum had assured Trump that migrant caravans are no longer reaching the US-Mexican border and she also said that they had discussed increased security cooperation. US-Mexican security relationships had soured after the US had lured a Mexican drug lord out of the country into US custody, without informing Mexican authorities. This led to a split in the Sinaloa cartel and an internal battle of several months that has left more than 400 people dead.

In contrast, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau avoided confrontation and on Tuesday he said he had held a “good” conversation with Trump on Monday night shortly after the Truth Social post and that “we talked about some of the challenges that we can work on together.” On Wednesday, Trudeau met virtually with the provincial premiers to discuss a “Team Canada” approach to Trump’s tariff threat and to stress the importance of unity in Canadian reactions to Trump’s tariff threats. To get Michael Moore’s take on an escalating US-Canada conflict, I would suggest his 1995 film Canadian Bacon. China, which is blamed for not doing enough to stem the outflow of precursors to fentanyl, reacted calmly. On Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry said that the US should “cherish” China’s goodwill over the issue and added that China was willing to continue working together.

Of course, the Chinese reaction is likely to be more forceful if the tariffs are actually implemented. Trump’s beef with Canada, Mexico and China is about fentanyl trafficking and illegal immigration. In his first term, Chinese companies did not only supply the precursors, but also fentanyl itself. Trump was successful in getting the Chinese to regulate the production and sale of fentanyl in China. However, production shifted to Mexico, with Chinese companies providing the chemicals needed to make fentanyl. In 2019, Trump also threatened Mexico with tariffs unless migration was reduced. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador succumbed to US pressure and deployed the Mexican military to the borders.

Immigration was a major campaign theme during the US presidential election and the tariff threat is only the beginning of a likely ambitious effort to stem the flow of illegal aliens into the US. While the President-Elect arguably has a strong mandate from US voters to enhance border security and deport undocumented immigrants, these policies will pose challenges to many US businesses. As we showed in Trump border policy and immigrant labor supply, food & agriculture and construction are especially vulnerable given the high dependency on undocumented immigrant labor. While there are still many unemployed US citizens who could do the work, most of them do not find the jobs that undocumented immigrants do very attractive. Therefore US businesses that depend on immigrant labor should prepare for possible labor shortages.

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“Delivering on Government Efficiency..”

Don’t get in Elon and Vivek’s way.

• Trump Admin’s DOGE Efficiency Push Now Reaching State Level (JTN)

A Wisconsin group is asking its state government to undergo spending and staffing reviews similar to those the incoming Trump administration intends to conduct with a newly created agency that will be led by successful entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The Trump agency is named the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Musk, a billionaire, owns Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX. Ramaswamy is also an entrepreneur and reportedly worth hundreds of millions. The request from the Wisconsin’s Institute for Reforming Government is not entirely new. It was conceived last year but revived as Republican Donald Trump campaigned, then won the presidency on such promises as cutting jobs, replacing career civil servants with federal appointees and relocating government offices.

The institute’s plan focuses on reducing the number of full-time state employees by finding redundancies and contracting for professional services and The group has also proposed scaling back state agencies in the Wisconsin capital of Madison and moving state workers into the communities their department serves, creating less office space while making remote work more accountable. “With renewed attention on right-sizing government and reducing unnecessary bureaucracy at the federal level, it’s time for state lawmakers to seriously rethink how state agencies operate as well,” said Chris Reader, the institute’s executive vice president.

“We released a plan to rethink, reorganize, and modernize state agencies in 2023. It was DOGE before DOGE was cool. With voters distrusting the bureaucracy, [Democrat] Governor [Tony] Evers and lawmakers have a great opportunity in 2025 to listen to voters and reimagine state government.” Unlike the federal effort, whose leaders say they won’t be working with Congress to reduce the federal spending and staffing levels, IRG is calling for state representatives to lead the effort to reduce government spending.

However, within days of Trump winning the presidency on Nov. 5, then naming acolytes Musk and Ramaswamy to lead DOGE, the GOP-led House announced it had created the Delivering on Government Efficiency, or DOGE, subcommittee for the next Congress and that another Trump loyalist, Georgia Republican Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, would lead it. The Wisconsin group said that its polling shows that 73% of residents agree that state agencies should review new regulations before they are enacted and that 67% favor having regulations expire after seven years unless they are re-approved by the legislature. The group is also calling for Wisconsin to create one-stop shops with a single digital portal for government services.

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They did it in 2018-19, so it would be no surprise.

• China Could Devalue Yuan To Spite Trump – JP Morgan (RT)

An anticipated shift in trade policy during Donald Trump’s second term as US president, including a drastic hike in tariffs on Chinese products, could see the yuan depreciate by up to 15%, according to JPMorgan Chase, as cited by Bloomberg. In a note dubbed “Bracing for a storm” seen by the outlet, the analysts projected US import taxes on Chinese goods to be raised to 60% from the current 20% mark, with fresh levies to also hit imports from Malaysia and Vietnam. The Chinese government could devalue the yuan in response, and impose retaliatory tariffs to support the national economy, the strategists suggested , forecasting that China’s GDP growth next year could slip nearly one point to 3.9%, in spite of the possible measures.

JPMorgan highlighted that a potential devaluation of the yuan by 10-15% is “significantly less than the 28-30% that could be expected if China’s central bank were to rehearse the 2018-19 playbook, when it allowed currency depreciation to offset 70% of the rise in US tariffs.” In 2018, Trump raised tariffs on Chinese goods to 20% from 3%. Earlier this month, the yuan fell to its weakest level against the dollar since late 2023 amid uncertainty over Trump’s victory in the US presidential election. On Thursday, the Chinese currency traded at nearly 7.25 yuan to the greenback.

Earlier this week, Trump – who will take office on January 20 – pledged to introduce 25% import duties on all products from Canada and Mexico, along with increasing tariffs on Chinese imports to 30%. JPMorgan expects emerging economies, particularly manufacturing exporters such as Malaysia, Vietnam and Mexico, to be the hardest-hit by a US-China trade war. The analysts stressed that the affected states are likely to lose global market share, as Beijing would redirect exports toward other emerging markets. India would feel the least impact, the economists predict.

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“..a 30% reduction in energy demand. After 2030, consider that all beef, lamb and dairy will be banned and “replaced by new diets”. Then there is a massive 45% cut in most common building materials..”

• Time for Starmer to Be Honest About What Net Zero Means (Morrison)

Earlier this week the Labour backbencher and Chairman of the U.K. Parliament’s Energy Committee Bill Esterson noted that people will have to adjust their habits to meet Net Zero emission goals for 2030. Such honesty, emerging as it does from the Parliament of Net Zero nodding donkeys, is to be applauded. As far as it goes. Try a 30% reduction in energy demand. After 2030, consider that all beef, lamb and dairy will be banned and “replaced by new diets”. Then there is a massive 45% cut in most common building materials such as cement, along with a similar reduction in road freight traffic. The attack on farming will be remorseless with fertiliser restriction halving “direct emission” from the soil. To sum up: widespread rationing and blackouts along with food, holiday and travel restrictions, all within about 60 months.

Look at what they fund and write and whom they consult, not what they say, is the best advice to counter all the whoppers that are being told about Net Zero. Sir Keir Starmer’s statement at the recent COP29 that he didn’t want to tell people how to live their lives can only be explained by noting it came from a British Prime Minister who has difficulty telling a woman from a man. Thankfully we have the Government-funded U.K. FIRES project to give us an honest heads-up on the near-term implications of Net Zero. All of the substantial reductions in energy, food and industrial materials mentioned above arise from its “pragmatic approach”. Its evidence-based conclusions rely on technologies that are available today. It excludes processes such as carbon capture and hydrogen that have yet to be proven at meaningful scale.

Its conclusions warm the hearts of the most committed green ideologues. Its reports also happen to be the most honest representation of the horrors that await if the Net Zero fantasy ever becomes a reality. By 2028 a total of seven million heat pumps will need to be installed and massive retrofits undertaken in domestic homes. Meanwhile, all rented and non-domestic properties will need to be EPC A rated by 2030. The desire to “manage land use for Net Zero emissions” means a massive cut in chemical fertilisers, so expect food supply to fall off a cliff. U.K. FIRES notes, correctly, that there is “insufficient time for the planning, development and construction of new large-scale infrastructure to contribute to the 2030 target”.

Again correctly, it is observed that increased use of wind and solar power creates a problem with intermittency. “Eventually, this must be addressed by either demand-shifting or storage,” it states. Storage at scale is more or less impossible with current technology, and another word for “demand-shifting” is rationing. To enforce these consumption restraints across the broad range of modern industrial lifestyles, a “whole society” approach must be mobilised. U.K. FIRES received a £5 million grant from the British Government and its warnings – or should that be wishes – about 2030 are contained in a report called ‘Minus 45’ prepared ahead of the Glasgow COP26 in 2021. It is based on a U.K. Government promise to reduce carbon emissions by 45% from 2018 to 2030. Its recommendations are relevant today, not least because Starmer tried to curry favour at the recent COP29 in Baku by promising to reduce emissions further.

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His wife is upset?!

• Epps Loses Defamation Case Against Fox News (Turley)

Just months after a judge dismissed Nina Jankowicz’s much-hyped defamation lawsuit against Fox, a federal district court judge in Delaware, Judge Jennifer L. Hall, has dismissed Ray Epps’s defamation lawsuit. The Jan. 6 rioter said the network falsely identified him as an FBI informant. U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer L. Hall granted Fox News’ motion to dismiss the suit. In the original complaint, Epps made a defamation per se claim and a false light claim. Epps and his wife have clearly been through a nightmare of threats and innuendo. However, this public controversy was discussed by various networks and the Jan. 6th Committee. It was also a matter of legitimate public debate and commentary, with people on both sides expressing their views on the evidence and underlying allegations.The problem for the court was trying to draw a line when coverage and commentary becomes defamation on such subjects.

The chilling effect on free speech can be immense. The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that tort law could not be used to overcome First Amendment protections for free speech or the free press. The Court sought to create “breathing space” for the media by articulating that standard that now applies to both public officials and public figures. The status imposes the higher standard first imposed in New York Times v. Sullivan for public officials, requiring a showing of “actual malice” where media had actual knowledge of the falsity of a statement or showed reckless disregard whether it was true or false.Now based in Utah, Epps alleged his life was upended after former Fox host Tucker Carlson repeatedly described him as a federal agent who helped instigate the attack on the Capitol, which was an attempt to stop the certification of the election of Joe Biden.

The breathing space cuts both ways. In reporting on the dismissal of the Epps lawsuit, it is notable that the Associated Press is still referring to Jan. 6 as an “insurrection” rather than a riot. Curiously, when you hit the link on “insurrection,” it goes to an article on the dropping of the Smith case, which notably did not charge Trump or anyone else with insurrection or even incitement. Yet, the AP is still reporting “the insurrection” as a fact. The dismissal of Jankowicz directly addressed the dangers of using the courts to try to silence your critics. The case backfired on Jankowicz in prompting a court to expressly state that what she has been advocating is censorship. After holding that people are allowed to criticize Jankowicz as protected opinion, the court added:

“I agree that Jankowicz has not pleaded facts from which it could plausibly be inferred that the challenged statements regarding intended censorship by Jankowicz are not substantially true. On the contrary … censorship is commonly understood to encompass efforts to scrutinize and examine speech in order to suppress certain communications. “The Disinformation Governance Board was formed precisely to examine citizens’ speech and, in coordination with the private sector, identify ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation.’ … that objective is fairly characterized as a form of censorship.” Jankowicz previously solicited significant contributions on the promise of this ill-conceived lawsuit. Nevertheless, Jankowicz is still being touted as a hero and enlisted to explain how to combat “disinformation.” The calls for greater censorship are likely to only increase after the election. However, we have seen figures like Hillary Clinton call on Europeans to force the censorship of Americans.

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“Israel says ‘suspects’ in vehicles violate ceasefire by trying to return home..”

• Ceasefire Falters as Israel Launches Airstrikes on Southern Lebanon (Antiwar)

The Israel-Lebanon ceasefire began Wednesday morning. Less than two days later, it seems to be faltering, with multiple reports of Israeli attacks across southern Lebanon, and claims of violations by both sides. Israel carried out an airstrike against the outskirts of Baysariyeh, which is near Tyre. They confirmed the attack, saying they were targeting a Hezbollah storage facility after seeing “terrorist activity.” They added in their statement that they were “acting to enforce violations of the ceasefire.” Though the claims of violations are coming from both sides, so far it is only Israeli forces whose violations actually involve firing. Lebanese people continue to try to return to their homes in the south, despite Israel’s military forbidding them to do so. There are multiple reports of Israel carrying out artillery shelling against towns and villages across southern Lebanon this afternoon.

Strikes were reported against the towns of Halta, Taybeh, Khiam, and Rmeish. In Rmeish the attack damaged a supermarket and a home. Three were injured in Taybeh. There were also reported Israeli tank shellings in several places, including the village of Markaba. In that incident, a car was attacked and multiple civilians were wounded. Israeli ground troops also opened fire on vehicles multiple times across southern Lebanon, incidents which happened both on Wednesday and Thursday. Israel presented the people they were shooting at as a “number of suspects,” and said that any vehicles in southern Lebanon amount to a ceasefire violation. There is no indication vehicles are actually forbidden by the terms of the ceasefire. Shooting at people, as Israel has been throughout the day, is plainly a violation, however.

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“I felt that the United States was mobilizing its formidable economic and financial resources to prevent the business ventures of other countries, even their allies..”

• Merkel Blows A Hole In Washington’s Nord Stream Narrative (Marsden)

Angela Merkel has just dropped a smoking gun into the pages of her new book. According to ‘Freedom: Memoirs 1954-2021’, published on November 26, Berlin was fully aware that Washington wanted to kill off Nord Stream. And that it was just using Russia as a scapegoat to steal a massive new energy market for itself. “The United States argued that its security interests were affected by the building of the pipeline because its ally Germany would make itself too dependent on Russia. In truth, I felt that the United States was mobilizing its formidable economic and financial resources to prevent the business ventures of other countries, even their allies,” Merkel writes. “The United States was chiefly interested in its own economic interests, as it wanted to export to Europe LNG obtained through fracking.”

This pretty much establishes that it was by premeditated design that Washington leveraged the Russian military operation in Ukraine as a convenient pretext to turn economic competitor Germany – and the EU more generally – into a vassal. But Merkel’s successor, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and the rest of the German and European establishment, acted like Joe Biden was just coming to their rescue out of benevolence when he offered to sell them LNG to replace Russian gas – which turned out to cost several times the price, to the ongoing detriment of German and European industry and citizenry. Biden had stood beside Scholz at a White House podium in February 2022, talking like a mafia boss, saying that “there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2” if Russia enters Ukraine. Then the pipeline just mysteriously blew up in September 2022. Germany still hasn’t found those responsible, though.

Hey, how about this guy who was standing right next to your chancellor? German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier awarded Biden the Order of Merit in October, citing Germany’s “friendship” with the US, and telling Biden that “under your leadership, the transatlantic alliance is stronger and our partnership is closer than ever.” Yeah, close. Like family. Where you can help yourself to stuff that isn’t yours and wreck it – like an entire German car industry or a pipeline. Or where you can disapprove of a relationship – like the one that Germany had with Russia. Or maybe one can even do both of these things at the same time, like Miami-based American businessman, Stephen Lynch, seems to be attempting to achieve by asking for the US government’s approval in bidding on Nord Stream 2, majority-owned by a subsidiary of Russia’s Gazprom, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Now that Washington’s meddling has bankrupted the pipeline project and it’s set for the auction block, guess Lynch figures that maybe he can squeeze in between Russian gas and Germany’s desperation for cheap supply, with Uncle Sam’s blessing. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for American and European control over European energy supply for the rest of the fossil-fuel era,” Lynch told the WSJ. It’s also a chance for US interests to profit from, and exert control over, both the EU and Russia, by wedging themselves between the two like they’re a chaperone on a teenage movie date. “I haven’t heard of Gazprom wanting to put gas transportation infrastructure in the hands of the USA,” the Kremlin has said, putting a damper on Lynch’s ambitions, which are perfectly aligned with what Merkel now says has been America’s objective all along.

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Detox

 

 

Nerves

 

 

Antlers

 

 

Siblings
https://twitter.com/i/status/1862557640880239046

 

 

Hoover Dam

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle September 27 2024

Sep 272024
 
 September 27, 2024  Posted by at 8:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  59 Responses »


Pablo Picasso The bathers 1918

 

• Ukraine ‘Is Gone’ – Trump (RT)
• Trump Agrees To Meet Zelensky (RT)
• Trump Pushes Narrative That Iran Is Trying to Kill Him (Antiwar)
• US Doesn’t Want Ukraine In NATO – Erdogan (RT)
• Biden Behind Nord Stream Sabotage – Russia’s Top MP (RT)
• NATO Outlines Plans In Event Of War With Russia (RT)
• Biden Drains Remaining Ukraine Aid Funds (RT)
• US Congress ‘Happy to Be Lied to’ in Service of American Imperialism (Sp.)
• Moderator for VP Debate Tied to Donations for ‘Lincoln Project’ (HUSA)
• Former CDC Director Robert Redfield Praises “Make America Healthy Again” (ZH)
• The Assault on America’s Defining Principles (Turley)
• What Happens if We Hold College and Nobody Comes? (Turley)
• Taxes and Tariffs and Trade: Trump’s Plan To Bolster The Economy (JTN)
• FBI Claims it Doesn’t Have DNC’s Jan. 6 Pipe Bomb Footage (HUSA)
• Appeals Court Seems Skeptical of New York Civil Fraud Suit Against Trump (ET)
• FBI Specialist Urges Americans to Prepare For Hardship (MN)
• Boeing Machinists on Strike Have a Historic Opportunity (Sawant)

 

 

 

 

Trump ad

 

 

Melania

 

 

Holistically


https://twitter.com/i/status/1839095068537532889

Bidenomics

 

 

Rogan Chamath

 

 

Eric Adams
https://twitter.com/i/status/1839436032888221900

 

 

Bug
https://twitter.com/i/status/1839019582985744422

 

 

RFK food

 

 

Loverboy

 

 

Ballots
https://twitter.com/i/status/1838887620253728832

 

 

USB stick

 

 

 

 

“Millions and millions of people, including all of these great soldiers, they’re dead. Those gorgeous buildings with golden towers are demolished and lying broken on their side. Ukraine is gone. It’s not Ukraine anymore. You can never replace those cities and towns.”

• Ukraine ‘Is Gone’ – Trump (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has hammered Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky for refusing to negotiate with Russia, arguing that the country is now “obliterated” while Kiev is reduced to sending “young children and old men” to the front lines amid its conflict with Moscow. Zelensky is currently visiting the US to attend the UN General Assembly in New York and pitch his so-called ‘victory plan’ to key figures in President Joe Biden’s administration. Republican lawmakers, however, have condemned Zelensky for publicly criticizing Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance. He incited further ire among Republicans when he appeared at an event at a munitions plant organized by Pennsylvania Governor Joshua Shapiro, a key ally of Trump’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

At a rally in North Carolina on Thursday, Trump accused Zelensky of “making little nasty aspersions” toward him, before turning to the Ukrainian leader’s handling of the conflict with Russia. “The country is absolutely obliterated,” he declared. “Millions and millions of people, including all of these great soldiers, they’re dead. Those gorgeous buildings with golden towers are demolished and lying broken on their side. Ukraine is gone. It’s not Ukraine anymore. You can never replace those cities and towns.” “And Biden and Kamala allowed this to happen by feeding Zelensky money and munitions like no country has ever seen before,” he continued. “But now Ukraine is running out of soldiers. They’re using young children and old men because their soldiers are dying.”

While the Ukrainian military does not publish casualty figures, the Russian Defense Ministry has estimated Kiev’s losses at around half a million men. Ukraine’s manpower shortage has been well documented by Western media outlets, and the country’s top general acknowledged earlier this month that recruits are often sent to fight after as little as six weeks’ training. Trump argued that Biden and Harris could have “easily” struck a deal with Russia to prevent the conflict from ever starting. Instead, through “a lot of bad statements and stupid statements,” Biden “egged it on.” “And we continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal,” Trump said, referring to Zelensky. “Any deal, even the worst deal, would have been better than what we have right now.”

Russia and Ukraine reportedly agreed to a peace deal during talks in Istanbul in 2022. The agreement would have involved Ukraine declaring military neutrality, limiting its armed forces, and vowing not to discriminate against ethnic Russians. In return, Moscow would have joined other leading powers in offering Ukraine security guarantees. However, Zelensky withdrew from the talks at the last moment. According to Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia, former US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, and several Ukrainian media reports, the US and UK were instrumental in convincing Zelensky to abandon negotiations. Trump maintains that he would settle the conflict “in 24 hours” if elected president this November. Zelensky, however, has stated that the former president “doesn’t really know how to stop the war,” while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that he doesn’t “think there is a magic wand” that can stop the fighting overnight.

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“Any deal, even the worst deal, would have been better than what we have right now.”

• Trump Agrees To Meet Zelensky (RT)

US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has announced he will meet with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky on Friday in New York. Zelensky has met with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is the Democrats’ candidate for the presidency in the November election. He has also sought a meeting with Trump. “I will be meeting with him tomorrow morning at around 9:45 at Trump Tower,” the former and possibly future US president announced at a press conference in New York City on Thursday afternoon. Earlier in the day, Trump had posted a message from Ukraine’s deputy ambassador to the US, relaying Zelensky’s request for a meeting, to his TruthSocial platform. “Dear Donald, I hope you’re doing well. I recall our recent phone call – it was really good,” Zelensky wrote. “All of us in Ukraine want to end this war with a just peace. And we know that without America this is impossible to achieve.

That’s why we have to strive to understand each other and remain in close contact.” “You know I always speak with great respect about everything connected to you, and that’s how it should be,” the Ukrainian actor-turned-politician wrote, adding that he would “really like for our meeting to take place.” The request came after Trump criticized the “little nasty aspersions” Zelensky had made about him and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, in an interview published last Sunday. At a campaign rally in North Carolina, Trump described Ukraine as “absolutely obliterated” and accused Biden and Harris of “feeding Zelensky money and munitions like no country has ever seen before.” “We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal,” Trump said, referring to Zelensky. “Any deal, even the worst deal, would have been better than what we have right now.”

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Not a very high level of credibility. Who feeds him this? Warmongers?!

• Trump Pushes Narrative That Iran Is Trying to Kill Him (Antiwar)

On Wednesday, former President Donald Trump pushed a narrative being spread by US intelligence officials that Iran is trying to kill him even though there’s no evidence of Iranian involvement in either attempt on his life. Trump’s campaign said they were briefed on the alleged Iranian threat by officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is led by Avril Haines. “Big threats on my life by Iran. The entire US Military is watching and waiting. Moves were already made by Iran that didn’t work out, but they will try again,” Trump wrote on X after the briefing. “Not a good situation for anyone. I am surrounded by more men, guns, and weapons than I have ever seen before.” The claim that Iran is plotting to kill Trump was first made by a CNN report back in July, following the assassination attempt by Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was shot and killed by the Secret Service.

The report acknowledged there was no evidence Crooks was linked to Iran, which was reaffirmed on Tuesday by intelligence officials speaking to The New York Times, who stressed there was no Iran connection to the July shooting. The Times report also said there was no evidence that Iran was connected in any way to Ryan Routh, who was arrested on September 15 and recently charged with attempting to assassinate Trump. Routh is a staunch supporter of the Ukraine proxy war and traveled to the country to help recruit fighters for the Ukrainian foreign legion. Despite the lack of evidence, Trump suggested at a campaign event on Wednesday that Iran might have been involved in the two assassination attempts. “As you know, there have been two assassination attempts on my life that we know of, and they may or may not involve – but possibly do – Iran,” he said at an event in North Carolina.

“If I were the president, I would inform the threatening country, in this case Iran, that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens,” Trump added. The claims about Iran come amid soaring tensions in the Middle East as Israel has dramatically escalated its bombing campaign in Lebanon, a situation that could potentially turn into a full-blown war between the US and Iran. But Iran’s actions over the past year have shown they’re not interested in war with the US. For example, when Iran launched a reprisal attack on Israel in response to the bombing of the Iranian consulate in Syria, Iranian officials said they warned the US 72 hours in advance. The US denied the claim, but Turkey and Jordan confirmed they were given notice, which would have gotten back to the US. Iran and the US also engaged in indirect negotiations in Oman to avoid escalation.

Iran’s new president, Masoud Peseshkian, has also taken an extremely diplomatic tone toward the US since coming into office and wants direct negotiations with Washington. “We are not hostile towards the US. They should end their hostility towards us by showing their goodwill in practice,” Pezeshkian said last week. “We are brothers with the Americans as well.” Members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) occasionally vow they will take revenge for Trump’s assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who headed the IRGC’s Quds Force. But in response to recent allegations, Iran has said Trump should be punished for the killing in a court of law. “These accusations are unsubstantiated and malicious,” Iran’s mission to the UN said in response to the CNN report in July. “From the perspective of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Trump is a criminal who must be prosecuted and punished in a court of law for ordering the assassination of General Soleimani. Iran has chosen the legal path to bring him to justice.”

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“..the US, first and foremost, does not want to see Ukraine as a NATO member. And many NATO countries do not want Ukraine to be a member-state.”

• US Doesn’t Want Ukraine In NATO – Erdogan (RT)

The US is the main opponent of Ukraine joining NATO, although many other countries in the bloc are also against Kiev’s potential membership, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said. While Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s so-called ‘victory plan’ stresses NATO accession, Erdogan told NBC News on Wednesday that “the US, first and foremost, does not want to see Ukraine as a NATO member. And many NATO countries do not want Ukraine to be a member-state.” Zelensky is currently in the US, where is he promoting the plan and is scheduled to meet with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington on Thursday. “These are not questions to be rushed,” he added. “And when making our minds, when we are taking our decisions, we always take into consideration the stance of other NATO member states, we discuss those possible questions around the table and make the final decision accordingly,” Erdogan stated.

When asked directly if Ankara would accept Ukraine in NATO, Erdogan replied that “we are going to follow the developments, the deliberations, and reach a final decision accordingly. These are not decisions to be rushed in an excited way.” He also spoke about Türkiye’s ties with Russia, describing them as “multidimensional, political, economic, cultural, defense industry related. There are many dimensions, dimensions there and our solidarity, our interaction, has been going on and economically every day, these relations are expanding.” A unanimous decision by all members is required to expand NATO. Finland and Sweden, who became the latest nations to join the bloc in 2023 and 2024 respectively, had to overcome strong initial opposition from Türkiye, which accused them of harboring members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), considered a terrorist group by Ankara.

A senior US State Department official told AP on Tuesday that the political element of Zelensky’s ‘victory plan’ focuses on how to assure the Ukrainian population that they will be welcomed into Western institutions such as the EU and NATO, assuming they continue to fight Russia or if a negotiated settlement with Moscow is achieved. NATO declared at a 2008 summit in Bucharest that Ukraine, along with another former Soviet Republic, Georgia, would join the US-led bloc at some stage. After the conflict between Russia and Ukraine broke out, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and other officials repeatedly claimed that Kiev was on track to becoming a member, but never announced a specific timeline for accession. Moscow, which views NATO as hostile and vigorously opposes its eastward expansion, highlighted Kiev’s aspirations of joining the bloc as among the main reasons for launching its military operation against Ukraine in February 2022.

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Yet another narrative (retelling) pops up: “..a privately-funded operation masterminded by a now-disgraced Ukrainian intelligence officer..”

• Biden Behind Nord Stream Sabotage – Russia’s Top MP (RT)

US President Joe Biden “was behind” the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz helped him tank his country’s economy in the aftermath, Vyacheslav Volodin, the head of the Russian State Duma, has claimed. The senior legislator commented on Thursday on the second anniversary of the explosions, which disabled the undersea connectors built to deliver Russian natural gas directly to Germany, noting the failure of European investigators to name the culprit. There have been accounts in the media suggesting possible scenarios, “which were occasionally laughable,” he said. “Washington and Biden personally were behind the Nord Stream bombing. His interest was to cut Western Europe off from cheap Russian gas and force it to buy it from America at a price three times higher,” he said.

The German economy took a hit and is now in recession due to a loss of competitiveness, Volodin added, “which means that the people of Germany were punished instead of Washington, as Biden and Scholz took money out of their pockets.” “You cannot pin this one on some ‘pro-Ukrainian group’ and civilian divers,” Volodin stressed. On Tuesday, the German news outlet Der Spiegel published its latest retelling of the events of September 2022. It mostly repeats the story that a privately-funded operation masterminded by a now-disgraced Ukrainian intelligence officer conducted the sabotage with the blessing of former General Valery Zaluzhny. The Western press has been repeating similar versions of this story for months. Spiegel claimed to have identified the divers, saying that most were civilians, but the group was led by a commando.

The operation was first contemplated years before the outbreak of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine in February 2022, it stated. Pulitzer Prize-winning US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh alleged that Biden had ordered the sabotage of Nord Stream in a February 2023 article. He said US military divers had secretly planted explosives to destroy the pipelines at a significant depth, using a NATO exercise in the Baltic Sea as a cover. The White House has denied the accusations, but Russian officials have called the story plausible. Prior to the destruction of Nord Stream 1 and 2, senior US officials, including Biden, had issued threats to destroy the Russian-German pipelines.

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They’re trying to sell a story: “..a large number of frontline casualties without the capability to airlift them for treatment..”

• NATO Outlines Plans In Event Of War With Russia (RT)

NATO would have to deal with a large number of frontline casualties without the capability to airlift them for treatment in the event of a major war with Russia, its logistics chief has said. Lieutenant-General Alexander Sollfrank, the head of NATO’s Joint Support and Enabling Command (JSEC), outlined the difficulties that troops would face in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday. “The challenge will be to swiftly ensure high-quality care for, in the worst case, a great number of wounded,” Sollfrank said. The environment of a hypothetical conflict with Russia would be completely different from what the US and its allies faced in Afghanistan and Iraq, he added. Unlike insurgents in the Middle East, Russia has the military capability to threaten NATO aircraft, Sollfrank noted, predicting that medical evacuations would have to be conducted on the ground.

“For planning reasons, all options to take a great number of wounded to medical installations need to be considered, which includes trains but potentially also buses,” the NATO official said. Ukraine is currently using hospital trains to evacuate injured troops from the front line, as reported by CNN earlier this month. The NATO logistics command, which is based in the southern German town of Ulm, recently staged an exercise based on coordinating medical evacuations, Reuters said. JSEC contingency plans would require a legal foundation for issues such as the expedited transportation of narcotics across national borders, Sollfrank said. He also called for a ‘military medical Schengen’ – similarly to how the bloc needs a ‘military Schengen’ to rapidly deploy troops and weapons to the eastern flank, according to the official.

The US and its allies have claimed that Russia may be planning to attack NATO, and that the West can delay or prevent that outcome by arming Ukraine. The bloc has been expanding in Europe for decades, in violation of assurances given before Moscow agreed to German reunification in 1990. The Russian government has cited NATO’s approach to its borders and the bloc’s intention to add Kiev to its ranks as key causes of the Ukraine conflict. Officials in Moscow have denied having any aggressive intentions toward NATO, which they consider a hostile force that must be deterred.

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“The mechanisms allow payments to arms manufacturers and permit weapons to be drawn directly from American military stockpiles..”

• Biden Drains Remaining Ukraine Aid Funds (RT)

US President Joe Biden announced nearly $8 billion in military aid to Ukraine on Thursday, releasing the remaining funding authorized by Congress. Lawmakers recently declined to extend the availability of certain funds beyond next week’s deadline. The funding includes $2.4 billion under the Pentagon’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and $5.5 billion under the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA). The mechanisms allow payments to arms manufacturers and permit weapons to be drawn directly from American military stockpiles. The latter sum was set to expire at the end of this month, which marks the end of the fiscal year in the US. The White House had hoped that the US Congress would allow the PDA money to be spent at a later point. However, legislation passed on Wednesday did not include any such clause, reportedly following resistance from Republicans skeptical of the continued bankrolling of Kiev.

Biden announced the decision on military aid during a meeting with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, who is in the US to promote his ‘victory plan’ in the conflict with Russia. Zelensky has said he wanted the US president to be the first to see the proposal as it heavily relies on American aid. According to the Wall Street Journal, US officials have previewed the plan but found it “unimpressive.” The US president said Kiev will receive an additional Patriot surface-to-air system, more munitions and drones, as well as a new capability, the AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW). The glide bomb has a range of up to 130km when dropped from a high-flying aircraft. Some supporters of Kiev’s cause have criticized the 11th-hour drawdown of funds by Biden. Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican from Missouri, claimed it was “typical of this administration to wait until the last possible moment to announce full use of the PDA.”

Zelensky’s visit also triggered complaints from members of the GOP, after he criticized the Republican presidential ticket and visited an ammunition factory in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, without a single Republican official present. Senior party members have accused the Ukrainian leader of campaigning for the Democrats. They also alleged that the Biden administration facilitated potential meddling in the 2024 presidential election by organizing Zelensky’s Pennsylvania visit and spending taxpayer money on it.

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“..most of Congress was very happy to be lied to and would have denounced Blinken for the truth.”

• US Congress ‘Happy to Be Lied to’ in Service of American Imperialism (Sp.)

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is facing calls to resign after a damning report suggested he willfully misled Congress to keep US military aid flowing to Israel. Analysis by the investigative reporting nonprofit ProPublica revealed that Blinken defied the findings of multiple government bodies that concluded Israel was deliberately blocking humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Blinken ignored the advice of multiple officials with the State Department and US Agency for International Development (USAID), testifying before lawmakers that Tel Aviv was not interfering with the flow of aid. US law forbids the provision of military equipment to any country obstructing American humanitarian assistance. Journalists Dan Lazare and Robert Fantina joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Wednesday to discuss the scandal, which has led the director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations to call on Blinken to resign.

“This is business as usual,” said Fantina. “The United States doesn’t respect international law and doesn’t respect its own laws if those laws somehow get in the way of its quest for power and profits. So the fact that Blinken lied to Congress, blatantly lied – and this wasn’t something that was inconsequential, this caused the starvation, the continued starvation and the slaughter of innocent people.” “We’ve said before that the United States is enabling this genocide by continuing to arm Israel and by increasing its arms shipments to Israel,” he continued. “So the fact that Blinken is lying should really surprise no one. Other international organizations that aren’t affiliated with any nation have said repeatedly for months that Israel is blocking humanitarian aid. And yet the United States denies this, or at least Blinken did.”

The human rights organization Amnesty International affirmed Israel was stemming the flow of humanitarian assistance earlier this year, characterizing Tel Aviv’s actions as a “tightening” of its “16-year-long suffocating blockade” of Gaza. Israel has tightly controlled the amount of food and other basic necessities allowed to enter the Palestinian territory since June 2007, when it decided to dismantle its settlements in the Gaza Strip. However, Israel has exerted control over the strip of land, which is considered sovereign Palestinian territory under international law, since 1967, when it seized land intended to form the basis of a Palestinian state in the region. The US has served as the country’s strongest backer in the decades since, with Israel becoming the United States’ largest cumulative recipient of foreign aid. Observers claim the US backs the country as a crucial beachhead in a geopolitically vital region where Israel serves as a proxy for US interests against Iran and other adversaries.

“Israel is engaged in a brutal war, which is now spreading dramatically and it will continue doing so,” said Lazare, claiming Israel is inarguably using the flow of humanitarian aid as an instrument of war. “It’s all irrelevant. I mean, war is the cessation of law, and, therefore, calling on warmakers to obey the law strikes me as kind of contradictory.” “If you’re acting on behalf of the [US] government or any kind of imperialism, you are free to lie to Congress at will, the laws against lying to Congress only apply to those which the empire sees as a threat,” posited host Garland Nixon. “Congress does not mind being lied to if it thinks it benefits the empire,” Lazare agreed. “In general there are lies Congress likes and lies Congress doesn’t like. And, therefore, it’s Congress’ power of decision, power to decide which lies are okay and which lies are not. And generally the okay ones are those that further America’s imperial ambitions.” Sam Perlo-Freeman, a researcher with the group Campaign Against Arms Trade, agreed, claiming simply, “most of Congress was very happy to be lied to and would have denounced Blinken for the truth.”

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“..it quickly became clear that some of its members were growing increasingly unhinged with Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

• Moderator for VP Debate Tied to Donations for ‘Lincoln Project’ (HUSA)

The husband of one of the two moderators in next week’s CBS News debate featuring vice presidential candidates J.D. Vance and Tim Walz appears to have made two donations of $250 apiece to the controversial Lincoln Project during the 2020 election. Records from the Federal Election Commission show that Ali “Yado” Yakub, the husband of Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan, contributed on July 2 and Sept. 26 of that year to the anti-Trump super-PAC. Voting records confirmed that the address listed was the residence of Yakub, who was registered as a Republican, and Brennan, who was registered as an independent.Many have observed that registration offers no indication about political preference, with Democrats during the recent primary—in which President Joe Biden ran largely uncontested—frequently changing their party identification to vote against Trump.

Yakub also made contributions to ActBlue in 2019, including two that were earmarked for the primary campaign of future Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Headline USA reached out to both Brennan and Yakub by phone and email but received no response. The Lincoln Project—founded by high-profile NeverTrump ex-Republicans Rick Wilson, George T. Conway III, Steve Schmidt, Reed Galen, John Weaver and Jennifer Horn—initially appeared to be a sort of principled response by members of the GOP establishment to Trump’s takeover of the party. However, it quickly became clear that some of its members were growing increasingly unhinged with Trump Derangement Syndrome.

The group lost all credibility when, in January 2021, allegations emerged that co-founder John Weaver had engaged in sexual impropriety with young, male staffers and had allegedly solicited boys as young as 14. The bombshell led to an exodus of the group’s more influential figures, such as former John McCain campaign chief Steve Schmidt, who had become a registered Democrat the month prior. Only two of its charter members—Rick Wilson and Reed Galen—are currently associated with the group, which has grown more radical and outlandish, notoriously engaging in a stunt in which it staged a fake neo-Nazi rally and attempted to blame Trump supporters.

It also has run ads pushing blatant disinformation, such as attempting to suggest that Trump would monitor and arrest people for attempting to obtain an abortion. Trump has repeatedly emphasized that the issue is now at the state level and will remain so if he is re-elected, while noting that he personally favors exceptions for abortions in a set of specific, narrowly tailored circumstances. Moreover, the Lincoln Project has sought to falsely tie Trump to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which he has repeatedly disavowed and denied any association with. The project launched in April 2023, well before Trump was the presumptive nominee, and was designed as a series of policy proposals for use by whichever candidate prevailed.

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“Maybe it was a warning sign when big pharma and the feds pushed Ozempic as the ‘wonder shot’ to end the obesity crisis..”

• Former CDC Director Robert Redfield Praises “Make America Healthy Again” (ZH)

Former CDC Director Robert Redfield, who served during the Trump administration, wrote an editorial in Newsweek praising President Trump’s decision to join forces with Robert Kennedy Jr. to “make America healthy again.” “We know chronic disease is more than 75 percent of the country’s $4 trillion annual health care expenditure. Unfortunately, we have become a sick nation. We’re paying too much for chronic disease, and this must change. It’s time to make America healthy again,” Redfield wrote in the op-ed published on Tuesday. After more than four decades in public health, Redfield believes the former president “chose the right man [RFK Jr.] for the job” to combat the processed foods industrial complex, which has ignited an obesity crisis across the Heartland.

“For instance, obesity in American children has increased dramatically since John F. Kennedy’s presidency, from around 4 percent in the 1960s to almost 20 percent in 2024,” he said, adding, “The causes of childhood obesity are complex, but a primary origin is clearly the modern American diet of highly processed foods.” He explained the causes for this obesity crisis are primarily due to “special interest and corporate influences on our federal agencies.” Redfield pointed out that “Kennedy is right” about the corporate capture problem of federal agencies.

Kennedy is right: All three of the principal health agencies suffer from agency capture. A large portion of the FDA’s budget is provided by pharmaceutical companies. NIH is cozy with biomedical and pharmaceutical companies and its scientists are allowed to collect royalties on drugs NIH licenses to pharma. And as the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), I know the agency can be influenced by special interest groups. Redfield acknowledges that agency capture is a serious issue, highlighting that federal agencies responsible for regulating food and medicine are possibly compromised by the food industrial complex and big pharma. Maybe it was a warning sign when big pharma and the feds pushed Ozempic as the ‘wonder shot’ to end the obesity crisis instead of promoting exercise and safe, clean food.

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Enemies of the Constitution. They will end the country.

“..an explosion of books and articles laying out a new vision of “democracy” unconstrained by constitutional limits on majority power..”

• The Assault on America’s Defining Principles (Turley)

Kamala Harris declared in Tuesday’s debate that a vote for her is a vote “to end the approach that is about attacking the foundations of our democracy ’cause you don’t like the outcome.” She was alluding to the 2021 Capitol riot, but she and her party are also attacking the foundations of our democracy: the Supreme Court and the freedom of speech. Several candidates for the 2020 presidential nomination, including Ms. Harris, said they were open to the idea of packing the court by expanding the number of seats. Mr. Biden opposed the idea, but a week after he exited the 2024 presidential race, he announced a “bold plan” to “reform” the high court. It would pack the court via term limits and also impose a “binding code of conduct,” aimed at conservative justices. Ms. Harris quickly endorsed the proposal in a statement, citing a “clear crisis of confidence” in the court owing to “decision after decision overturning long-standing precedent.”

She might as well have added “because you don’t like the outcome.” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) has already introduced ethics and term-limits legislation and said Ms. Harris’s campaign has told him “that your bills are precisely aligned with what we are talking about.” The attacks on the court are part of a growing counterconstitutional movement that began in higher education and seems recently to have reached a critical mass in the media and politics. The past few months have seen an explosion of books and articles laying out a new vision of “democracy” unconstrained by constitutional limits on majority power. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley law school, is author of “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States,” published last month. In a 2021 Los Angeles Times op-ed, he described conservative justices as “partisan hacks.”

In the New York Times, book critic Jennifer Szalai scoffs at what she calls “Constitution worship.” She writes: “Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us; a growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it.” She frets that by limiting the power of the majority, the Constitution “can end up fostering the widespread cynicism that helps authoritarianism grow.” In a 2022 New York Times op-ed, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for liberals to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.” Others have railed against individual rights. In my new book on free speech, I discuss this movement against what many professors deride as “rights talk.” Barbara McQuade of the University of Michigan Law School has called free speech America’s “Achilles’ heel.”

In another Times op-ed, “The First Amendment Is Out of Control,” Columbia law professor Tim Wu, a former Biden White House aide, asserts that free speech “now mostly protects corporate interests” and threatens “essential jobs of the state, such as protecting national security and the safety and privacy of its citizens.” George Washington University Law’s Mary Ann Franks complains that the First Amendment (and also the Second) is too “aggressively individualistic” and endangers “domestic tranquility” and “general welfare.” Mainstream Democrats are listening to radical voices. “How much does the current structure benefit us?” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) said in 2021, explaining her support for a court-packing bill.

“I don’t think it does.” Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said at the Democratic National Committee’s “LGBTQ+ Kickoff” that “we’ve got to reimagine” democracy “in a way that is more revolutionary than . . . that little piece of paper.” Both AOC and Ms. Robinson later spoke to the convention itself. The Nation’s Elie Mystal calls the Constitution “trash” and urges the abolition of the U.S. Senate. Rosa Brooks of Georgetown Law School complains that Americans are “slaves” to the Constitution.

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“..many departments have purged their ranks of Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians.”

• What Happens if We Hold College and Nobody Comes? (Turley)

In the 1930s, Bertolt Brecht asked “What if they gave a war and nobody came?” As someone who has been a teacher for over 30 years, I find myself increasingly asking the same question as trust and enrollments fall in higher education. Trust in higher education is plummeting to record lows. According to recent polling, there has been a record drop in trust in higher education since just 2015. Not surprisingly, given the growing viewpoint intolerance on our campuses, the largest drops are among Republicans and Independents. There has been a precipitous decline in enrollments across the country as universities worry about covering their costs without raising already high tuition rates. From 2010 to 2021, enrollments fell from roughly 18.1 million students to about 15.4 million. There are various contributors to the drop from falling birthrates to poor economic times.

However, there is also an increasing view of higher education as an academic echo chamber for far left agendas. For many, there is little appeal in going to campuses where you are expected to self-censor and professors reject your values as part of their lesson plans. That fear is magnified by surveys showing that many departments have purged their ranks of Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians. In my new book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss the intolerance in higher education and surveys showing that many departments no longer have a single Republican as faculties replicate their own views and values. One survey (based on self-reporting) found that only nine percent of law professors identified as conservative. Some anti-free speech advocates are actually citing higher education as a model for social media in showing how “unlikeable voices” have been eliminated.

Many of those “unlikeable” people are now going elsewhere as schools focus on degrees in activism and denouncing math, statistics, the classics, and even meritocracy as examples of white privilege. Schools offering classic education are experiencing rising enrollments, but the growing crisis has not changed the bias in hiring and teaching. Despite repeated losses in courts, universities and colleges continue to deny free speech and diversity of thought. The fact is that this academic echo chamber may be killing educational institutions, but the intolerance still works to the advantage of faculty who can control publications, speaking opportunities, and advancement with like-minded ideologues. We have seen the same perverse incentive in the media where media outlets are seeing plummeting readers and revenue.

Journalism schools and editors now maintain that reporters should reject objectivity and neutrality as touchstones of journalism. It does not matter that this advocacy journalism is killing the profession. Reporters and editors continue to saw at the limb upon which they sit due to the same advantage for academics. For reporters, converting newsrooms into echo chambers gives them more security, advancement, and opportunities. Recently, the new Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis was brought into the paper to right the ship. He told the staff “let’s not sugarcoat it…We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.” The response from reporters was to call for owner Jeff Bezos to fire Lewis and others seeking to change the culture.

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“I will give you the lowest taxes, the lowest energy costs, the lowest regulatory burden and free access to the best and biggest market on the planet, but only if you make your product here in America.”

• Taxes and Tariffs and Trade: Trump’s Plan To Bolster The Economy (JTN)

In a bid to build a broader coalition, former President Donald Trump has outlined a vision of tax cuts, import tariffs, and “reciprocal trade” to preserve and restore American industries. Since coming down the escalator of Trump Tower in 2015, the Republican standard bearer has espoused unconventional trade policies and dragged much of the GOP kicking and screaming toward protectionism. His tenure saw the U.S. renegotiate trade agreements with its neighbors, resulting in the United States, Mexico, Canada Agreement (USMCA), while also waging a trade war with China seeking to curb some of Beijing’s abuses. His signature tax plan, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, saw the doubling of the standard deduction and the reduction of the corporate tax rate to 21%. As he has sought to contrast himself with Harris, Trump has highlighted both elements of his economic plan and doubled down on the tax cuts and tariffs approach.

“So, as your president, here is the deal that I will be offering to every major company and manufacturer on Earth,” he said at a Tuesday event in Savannah, Ga. “I will give you the lowest taxes, the lowest energy costs, the lowest regulatory burden and free access to the best and biggest market on the planet, but only if you make your product here in America.” “It all goes away if you don’t make your product here and hire American workers for the job,” he warned. His message, so far, appears to have resonated with working class voters, notably the traditionally Democratic-leaning union workers. After internal polling showed that its members decidedly favored Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters declined to endorse a candidate, marking the first time in decades that the union had not backed a Democrat for president.

In recent weeks, Trump has unveiled a litany of tax relief proposals, most of which involve either simplifying the system or eliminating taxation on certain sources of income entirely. Speaking at a New York rally last week, Trump vowed to restore state-and-local-tax (SALT) deductions for federal tax returns in an about-face after signing the TCJA, which imposed a $10,000 cap on SALT deductions. “I will cut taxes for families, small businesses and workers, including restoring the SALT deduction, saving thousands of dollars for residents of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and other high cost states,” he said. Earlier this month, he pledged to eliminate all taxes on overtime work as well, saying “[t]he people who work overtime are among the hardest working citizens in our country … It’s time for the working man and woman to finally catch a break.”

Trump has also promised to end taxation on Social Security benefits, a proposal that has drawn broad support from the public across most age brackets, according to recent polling. Among the most notable of his campaign pitches, however, has been a pledge to eliminate taxes on tips, which he announced at a June rally in Nevada in a bid to win over service workers in the critical battleground. Separate from pledging further tax cuts, he has also made the TCJA a central fixture of his campaign. Many of the act’s cuts are set to expire next year and he has begun to focus on the adverse impacts for taxpayers of permitting those cuts to sunset.

Using information from the Tax Foundation, the Trump campaign this month launched a website, dubbed kamalataxincrease.com, breaking down the average cost to tax-paying families by state. The site estimates that a Harris-proposed tax plan would cost families an average of $2,580.57 in additional taxes per year. The TCJA lowered the corporate tax rate to 21%, but Trump vowed to go further in his Tuesday speech, promising a “manufacturing Renaissance” through a “15% Made in America tax rate.” “We’re cutting the business tax from 21% to 15% which makes us the most competitive tax anywhere on the planet, but only for those who make their product in the USA. See, that’s an incentive,” he said. “[P]eople are going to be pouring in. Companies are going to be pouring in.”

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They’re trying to run out the clock. “Massie then called for answers on the matter before Election Day.”

• FBI Claims it Doesn’t Have DNC’s Jan. 6 Pipe Bomb Footage (HUSA)

The FBI has claimed that it doesn’t have the Democratic National Committee headquarters’ security footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill uprising—footage that would presumably show the discovery of a pipe bomb that was allegedly planted outside the DNC the night before. The FBI’s admission was revealed in a Friday letter from Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari to Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky. In that letter, Cuffari said he asked the FBI to review the DNC security videos from Jan. 6—but was told that the bureau doesn’t have that footage. “On March 18, 2022, the FBI informed DHS OIG that it did not have any video footage from January 6, 2021,” Cuffari told Massie.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1838980352901079550

The letter to Massie was revealed Tuesday, the same day Revolver News published a report suggesting that the DNC pipe bomb footage was tampered with. Revolver reported that an unnamed DHS-OIG official viewed the DNC footage, and said that the footage clearly shows the pipe bomber planting a device on the evening of Jan. 5—something that the footage released by the FBI to the public doesn’t show. Revolver also reported that the DHS-OIG official had to go to the DNC to view the footage—raising questions about why the FBI doesn’t have video of one of the most significant crimes from the whole Jan. 6 fiasco. “We can only conclude that either the FBI is lying and did have footage, or they’re telling the truth and for some reason deleted the footage,” Revolver wrote on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris continues to be tight-lipped on the subject, despite the fact that her motorcade drove past the DNC pipe bomb on Jan. 6.

Harris left the Capitol at 11:21 a.m. arrived to the DNC at 11:25 a.m., but the nearby pipe bomb wasn’t discovered until 1:07 p.m. by a plainclothes Capitol Police officer. Some J6 researchers argue that Harris’s silence on the issue suggests that the U.S. government is engaging in a coverup with the pipe bomb case—perhaps because a government asset planted the bombs, or for some other unknown reason. On Tuesday, Massie raised that possibility again. “It’s almost as if they don’t want to know. Can you rule out that there were any confidential human sources involved in the whole pipe bomb thing?” Massie asked DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Horowitz said he didn’t “recall” whether any government assets were involved, but he’d have to go back and refresh his memory. Massie then called for answers on the matter before Election Day.

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“Mar-a-Lago is worth $18-26 million”. That alone closes the case.

• Appeals Court Seems Skeptical of New York Civil Fraud Suit Against Trump (ET)

Appeals judges in New York fielded multiple questions to the New York Attorney General’s Office on Sept. 26 indicating that they were skeptical of its application of an anti-fraud law to former President Donald Trump’s business practices. The questions came during oral arguments over Trump’s claims that the state Supreme Court erred in handling the civil fraud case, which resulted in a $489 million penalty for the former president. Trump’s attorney in the case, D. John Sauer, told a five-judge panel in the court’s appellate division that the judge and prosecutors flouted time limits on the claims involved. He noted that Attorney General Letitia James’s office pressed an overly broad interpretation of legally punishable fraud and that, regardless, the former president hadn’t committed fraud in his dealings with banks and others. Some of the judges questioned whether the state was acting within the bounds of its authority or had a legitimate interest in bringing the suit.

Justice David Friedman pressed New York Deputy Solicitor General Judith Vale on whether there was any precedent for the attorney general suing over transactions involving sophisticated parties where neither “lost any money. “Every case that you cite involves damage to consumers, damage to the marketplace. … We don’t have anything like that here,” Friedman said. Vale argued that “there was absolutely a public impact and a public interest here.” “There are at least four different public harms from the kind of misconduct here,” she said. Vale also said that “when risk is injected into the market, that does hurt the counterparties and it does hurt the market as a whole.” Justice Peter Moulton asked, “How do we draw a line, or at least [put up] some guardrails to know when the AG is operating well within her broad, admittedly broad sphere of 63(12)?”

Moulton was referring to New York Executive Law 63(12), which is the statute James used in suing Trump. The statute allows the attorney general to apply for court intervention when “any person shall engage in repeated fraudulent or illegal acts or otherwise demonstrate persistent fraud or illegality in the carrying on, conducting or transaction of business.” Part of Sauer’s argument was that the attorney general’s conception of fraud was too loose and noted that no one was victimized by Trump’s conduct. At one point, he told the court that under existing precedent, “there has to be a capacity or tendency to deceive, or atmosphere conducive to fraud.” “And what we’ve pointed out is that you have a situation where there were no victims, no complaints,” he said, also saying that Trump’s business partners did their due diligence.

Presiding Justice Dianne Renwick was skeptical that the statute required some kind of harm in order to prove fraudulent activity. She read the relevant portion of the statute and told Vale: “I don’t read harm or threat of harm in that, but the other side is saying that that is to be read into this statute. “Are there any cases where the language harm or threat to harm limits the scope of the attorney general?” Vale said that there weren’t “as to liability and not in cases like this where what the attorney general is seeking injunctive relief and disgorgement.”

Trump is currently facing a disgorgement of $489 million with interest accruing by the day. During oral arguments, Vale encountered multiple questions about the appropriateness of the disgorgement. Moulton told Vale that the disgorgement amount was “troubling.” “How do you tether the amount that was assessed by [the] Supreme Court to the harm that was caused here, where the parties left these transactions happy about how things went down?” he asked. Vale responded that “disgorgement looks at taking the gain away from the wrongdoer.” Although the amount was high, she said that “there was a lot of fraud … and illegality.”

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Posted the video yesterday. Here’s some backgroud added in.

• FBI Specialist Urges Americans to Prepare For Hardship (MN)

A former FBI specialist who was persecuted for questioning January 6 said during a hearing with lawmakers on Capitol Hill that Americans should stock up on food and prepare for hardship. Marcus Allen, a former FBI staff operations specialist, told the Judiciary Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government that he was deliberately targeted by higher ups for asking why there were so many federal informants in the crowd at the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. “The FBI questioned my allegiance to the United States, suspended my security clearance, suspended my pay and refused to allow me to obtain outside employment or even accept charity,” Allen testified The feds came down hard on Allen after he sent an email on September 21st, 2021 which his supervisors claimed contained hyperlinks to “extremist propaganda” from “questionable sources”.

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who testified alongside Allen, is investigating the FBI’s security clearance and adjudication process, including the targeting of “political conservatives who were seen as loyal to Trump or resistant to COVID-19 vaccine mandates.” “There are no words strong enough to describe the impact the FBI’s lies about me have had on me and my family,” said Allen during an emotional statement. “The stress has taken a toll on our health and our children have suffered, traumatized by the thought of our door getting kicked in or Dad not coming home.” Allen added even more ominously: “This is a warning, to the American people I say.. I personally have no confidence the FBI will reign in its own conduct.” However, it was Allen’s final comments that raised many eyebrows.

The former FBI staffer urged Americans to use their right to vote despite any doubts they may have about election integrity. “My other recommendations are in the natural order,” Allen continued, “Arm yourself and know how to defend yourself, make three to four friends in your neighborhood and promise to come to each other’s mutual aid in times of hardship.” “And during the great depression, people stocked up their pantry, so I think that’s a good practice especially in our economic times, and make sure you have three to four months of food,” he added. Allen also urged Americans to pray and read the bible regularly.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1838976194433405052

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Boeing can’t afford any of this.

• Boeing Machinists on Strike Have a Historic Opportunity (Sawant)

In a potentially game-changing move, 33,000 Boeing machinists in the Pacific Northwest, unionized with IAM District 751, are on strike after rejecting the company’s initial insulting contract offer. A stunning 96 percent of the rank and file voted to go on strike, marking a sea change for the fight of working people at Boeing. For decades, Boeing’s executives and wealthy shareholders have, with the active help from Democrats and Republicans in Washington state and Washington D.C., enforced a decades-long brutal regime that has thrown both workers and safety standards under the bus in favor of short-term profit maximization for themselves. The strike offers an opening for the company’s workers to win historic gains and begin rebuilding a fighting union with a militant, active rank-and-file membership.

Like workers everywhere, Boeing machinists are fighting for decent wages and benefits in the face of the sky-high cost of living. The workers are demanding a 40 percent wage increase, which is the bare minimum they need given the ground they have lost in past sell-out contracts from the bosses, combined with historic inflation levels and high living costs in the region. They are angry at Boeing’s shell games, including the attempt to take away their annual employee bonuses (called “AMPP”), which they were promised in return for being forced to accept higher healthcare costs in a past contract. They are also demanding an end to the intolerable regime of mandatory overtime, which is running rampant at Boeing, denying workers the right to a life outside of work. The machinists are also fighting for a restoration of defined benefit pension, and full and retroactive reinstatement of pension for all workers.

The initial contract offer from the Boeing bosses came nowhere close to meeting these demands. What Boeing touted as a 25 percent raise over four years in the contract offer is, in reality, much less. When coupled with the cost of living and the removal of the annual AMPP bonus, the proposed raises don’t even make up for recent and future inflation, much less the severe blows from past contracts. The offer also fails to restore workers’ pensions.Since the strike began, Boeing has been forced to release a second contract offer, which includes a 30 percent pay increase over the next 4 years, up from 25 percent in the last offer. The strike has also forced Boeing to back down from their attempt to take away workers’ annual bonuses. But this new offer is still far less than what workers have been demanding and what they need, and workers immediately responded both on the picket line and in social media with their strong opposition to this totally inadequate offer, saying they must continue the strike.

The union leadership has now come out with a statement that says as much also, and which condemns the disgraceful way in which Boeing has attempted to undemocratically circumvent the union with this offer. Because of this, they are rejecting this new offer outright.In the Seattle area, a job at Boeing used to be highly sought after — it was a path to decent wages and benefits and relative stability. A common phrase among workers was “If it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going.” With the attacks over the last 15 years, many new Boeing workers are instead being paid less than the Seattle minimum wage, and the company has had higher and higher turnover. These attacks on the workforce have gone hand-in-hand with the corporation’s major struggles in recent years with safety and quality control.

The strike comes in the wake of the machinists being sold out in a spectacularly shameful deal made over a decade ago in November 2013 by Boeing executives and shareholders with the Democratic Party-dominated Washington State Legislature, and Democratic Governor, Jay Inslee. The defined benefit pension plan, won by the unionized machinists in previous decades, was eliminated in one fell swoop. A defined benefit plan, which is currently accessible only to a small proportion of the workforce in the private sector and which was won through labor struggle, is a plan that guarantees retired workers a decent income for life. This was replaced by Boeing with a far weaker 401(K) retirement system that leaves workers at the mercy of the ups and downs of the stock market. This dramatically undermines annual retirement income, as well as shifting the risk away from the executives and major shareholders of big corporations like Boeing onto the backs of working people.

The Democratic Party justified this historic attack on both the Boeing machinists and working people statewide by claiming that it was necessary to save jobs. Boeing executives had carried out public extortion, threatening to take away the final assembly of the 777X aircraft out of Washington state, which would eliminate an estimated 10,000 union jobs. State and local Democrats from across the region insisted that the machinists accept the contract, and scandalously told them that if they didn’t, they would be responsible for not only the loss of their own jobs, but also the broader economic repercussions if Boeing were to move future production out of state.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Shots

 

 

Hurricane


https://twitter.com/i/status/1839079306586386738

 

 

Not impresssed
https://twitter.com/i/status/1839397581476257900

 

 

Jaguar

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle September 25 2024

Sep 252024
 
 September 25, 2024  Posted by at 8:26 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  43 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Harlequin and woman with necklace 1917

 

• America Must Get Out of Ukraine – Trump (RT)
• Zelensky ‘Greatest Salesman In History’ – Trump (RT)
• America The Unready (Paul Craig Roberts)
• ‘Peace’ Has Become A Swear Word – Hungarian FM (RT)
• Trump: DOJ, FBI ‘Mishandling, Downplaying’ Second Assassination Attempt (JTN)
• Trump’s Protection To Be Enhanced – NBC (RT)
• Trump Urged Use Of Troops To Protect Capitol On Jan. 6, But Was Rebuffed (JTN)
• Zelensky Leaving Ukrainians to Die for BlackRock, Deep State (Miles)
• Russia Wins Ukraine Conflict Despite ‘Best’ US, NATO Weapons – Ron Paul (Sp.)
• ‘Israel Dying From One Thousand Cuts’ (Manley)
• Thirst For Money Enriches Oligarchs, But Bankrupts Europe (SCF)
• European Union Morphs Into NATO’s Financial War Machine (SCF)
• America In Collapse Plays World Leader (Pacini)
• Non-Citizens Added To States’ Voter Rolls Through DMV (JTN)
• Not Just Springfield, Haitians Being Flown To Small Towns Nationwide (Blankley)
• EVs “Up To Twice As Expensive” To Run As Regular Gas Cars In The UK (ZH)

 

 

 

 

Poll

 

 

Unrealized Gains Tax

 

 

RFK diabetes

 

 

2020

 

 

Trump states

 

 

O’Leary

 

 

John Paulson

 

 

Endorsed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I think that we’re stuck in that war unless I’m president. I’ll get it done. I’ll negotiate; I’ll get us out. We gotta get out..”

• America Must Get Out of Ukraine – Trump (RT)

The United States needs a clear exit strategy for the conflict in Ukraine, former President Donald Trump told a campaign rally, insisting that neither current US leader Joe Biden nor his Democratic rival Kamala Harris has any such plan. “Biden and Kamala got us into this war in Ukraine, and now they can’t get us out. They can’t get us out,” Trump told the crowd in Savannah, Georgia, on Tuesday, reiterating his promise to end the conflict as soon as he is reelected. “I think that we’re stuck in that war unless I’m president. I’ll get it done. I’ll negotiate; I’ll get us out. We gotta get out. Biden says, ‘We will not leave until we win,’” Trump argued. “What happens if the Russians win? That’s what they do – they fight wars. As someone told me the other day, they beat Hitler; they beat Napoleon. That’s what they do. They fight. And it’s not pleasant,” Trump said.

At another campaign rally on Monday, the Republican claimed that Zelensky wants his rival to win “so badly” because, as long as Democrats remain in power, the Ukrainian leader walks away with $60 billion every time he comes to the US. Zelensky is currently in the US, where he is expected to meet with President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and members of Congress to present them with his “victory plan,” which, rather than involving talks, revolves around somehow forcing Moscow into submission. Ukrainian officials also claimed that Zelensky had planned to see Trump; however, a Trump campaign official told AP that no such meeting has been scheduled yet.

During Zelensky’s stay, the US intends to announce another $375 million batch of military aid to Ukraine, AP reported on Tuesday evening citing anonymous sources in Washington. The package would include missiles for HIMARS launchers, cluster bombs for Ukrainian fighter jets and other ammunition, which will come out of the US military stockpiles. By the Pentagon’s account, the US has provided Ukraine over $56 billion in direct military aid since February 2022. In April, the US approved a $61 billion military aid package for Kiev after months of opposition by some Republicans. Ukrainian officials are concerned that Trump could cut the steady flow of US military aid.

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“He wants [Harris] to win this election so badly, but I would do differently – I will work out peace..”

• Zelensky ‘Greatest Salesman In History’ – Trump (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky wants Kamala Harris to win the election “so badly,” former US President Donald Trump told a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. The comment comes after the Ukrainian leader cast doubt on the Republican candidate’s claims that he could promptly end the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Trump has insisted that he would tell Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky to “make a deal” to end the hostilities. “I think Zelensky is the greatest salesman in history. Every time he comes into the country, he walks away with $60 billion,” Trump told his supporters. In April, the US approved a $61 billion military aid package for Kiev after months of opposition by some Republicans. Ukrainian officials are reportedly concerned that Trump could cut US military aid. “He wants [Harris] to win this election so badly, but I would do differently – I will work out peace,” Trump added.

Zelensky called Trump’s claims into question in an interview published in The New Yorker magazine on Sunday. “My feeling is that Trump doesn’t really know how to stop the war, even if he might think he knows how. With this war, oftentimes, the deeper you look at it the less you understand,” he said. The Ukrainian leader is currently in the US, where he is expected to meet with President Joe Biden, members of Congress, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, to present them with his ‘victory plan.’ While the details of it are not clear, Zelensky told ABC News that his plan is aimed at “the strengthening of Ukraine” and its army to “push [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to stop the war.” The end of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev could be closer than one might think, according to Zelensky. “That is why we are asking our friends, our allies, to strengthen us. It is very important,” he added. Trump has said that he will “probably” meet Zelensky during his visit but no date has been scheduled.

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PCR never contemplates the option that Putin didn’t think Russia was ready for a bigger battle.

• America The Unready (Paul Craig Roberts)

Andrei Martyanov, an emigre from Russia, writes books about military strategy and America’s lack of one. He does his best to make us aware that if we are to find ourselves at war with Russia, we need better strategic thinking than we have. His latest book, America’s Final War, published by Clarity Press, tells us that the West is unprepared for the conflict the West is fomenting with Russia. Martyanov is contemptuous of American military thinking and the American echo chamber that passes for thought. Consequently, the establishment will ignore him and continue on its mistaken path. Martyanov uses Washington’s response to Russia’s Special Military Operation in Donbas to illustrate his point. Much of the book is his defense of his view of the conflict. Martyanov was the leading dissident to the view of Western pundits that Russia would be defeated and Ukraine would be victorious. The West’s propagandistic response to the conflict contributed to the West’s misunderstanding.

Believing its own misrepresentation of the conflict, the West continued to convince itself that just a little more Western intervention would turn the tide. Add this weapons system. Then this one. Then F-15s, and at the present time the Western idiots are deciding whether the US and NATO will launch long-range missiles into Russia from Ukraine. Such a desperate measure, which Putin said would mean the US and NATO are at war with Russia, is a powerful indication that Ukraine is defeated, just as Martyanov said would be the case. Martyanov is protective of Putin. I think because Putin did not invade Ukraine and immediately overthrow the neo-Nazi Regime Washington has established there. Instead he limited Russian arms to clearing Ukrainian forces out of Donbas, a former Russian territory that Soviet leaders attached to Ukraine. Putin has accepted numerous insults and provocations without expanding the war beyond his Special Military Operation. It is Putin, not the West, who has resisted the expansion of a limited conflict into a wider war.

I join Martyanov in admiring Putin for his concern with the life of humanity. Where I depart from Martyanov and Putin is that I regard Russia’s victory in Ukraine as tactical, not strategic. It is in strategy that Martyanov sees Russia’s advantage. Putin’s strategy was to avoid wider war by limiting the conflict to clearing Donbas, a Russian area of Ukraine, of Ukraine forces that were killing Russian people. I appreciate the good will in Putin’s decision, but he misread his adversary, and his decision was a strategic error of potentially immense consequences. To keep the US/NATO from becoming ever more involved in the conflict and, thus, ever widening the conflict, Putin needed to quickly prevail. He could not do this without attacking Kiev, preventing the government from continuing the fight, and sealing Ukraine’s borders with the West.

Thus, Putin’s Special Military Operation guaranteed increasing Western involvement, more casualties, and a wider war which, if Washington joins the European and British decision to fire missiles into Russia, brings us World War III. This is a total failure of strategic thinking on Russia’s part. How do we explain this? I think that Martyanov is correct that Russia has a war strategy whereas the West has bluster and delusion. But why didn’t strategy come into play in Ukraine? How did Putin convince himself that he was going to keep Ukraine out of NATO simply by evicting Ukrainian forces from Donbas? One possible answer is that Putin did not realize who the enemy was. It was not the puppet in Kiev. The enemy was in Washington, London, Berlin, Paris. Did Putin only see the enemy in Donbas? Did he not know that he was at war with the US and NATO?

The neoconservative doctrine that the principle goal of US foreign policy is the prevention of the rise of any country that can serve as a constraint on American unilateralism is perhaps too absurd for the Russians to take seriously. This policy declaration is known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine. It has been in effect since 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, which removed constraint on US unilateralism. In public statements Putin shows awareness that Washington expects Russia, China, and Iran to accommodate themselves to Washington’s “rules based order.” Washington’s rules, of course. This is not subject to discussion and negotiation. It is a requirement. Not realizing the implications of this requirement is the mistake of the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian governments.

Putin

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“Diplomacy should provide the tools for international policy-making, which should be based on dialogue… We must cease attempts to discredit those arguing for peace..”

• ‘Peace’ Has Become A Swear Word – Hungarian FM (RT)

It is wrong that “peace” has become a curse word in international politics, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has insisted. The fighting between Russia and Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East are at risk of escalating and could “undermine global security at any moment,” Szijjarto said in his speech at the Summit of the Future at UN headquarters in New York on Monday. Humanity could be faced with two “sad” scenarios if tensions keep mounting: the outbreak of the Third World War or the world being divided into blocs again, he warned. The question now is whether such outcomes could be avoided and “whether the global pro-peace majority can ensure that the word ‘peace’ is not used as a swear word in international politics,” the foreign minister stressed.

“European politicians usually argue in favor of diplomacy and peaceful solutions to certain wars if they are far away from Europe, but nowadays, unfortunately, a war is going on in Europe, and those who argue in favor of peace are immediately stigmatized, attacked and criticized,” he said. According to Szijjarto, those who are calling for a diplomatic solution to the Ukrainian crisis are being “branded [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s puppets and Russian spies, even as Europe is itself adding fuel to the conflict.” The international political system must undergo a fundamental change for the current problems to be resolved, and the UN has “a major role” to play in this, he argued.

“Diplomacy should provide the tools for international policy-making, which should be based on dialogue… We must cease attempts to discredit those arguing for peace,” he stressed. Unlike most EU member states, Hungary has refused to supply weapons to Ukraine during the conflict with Russia, criticized the bloc’s sanctions against Moscow, and consistently called for a diplomatic solution to the crisis. In July, after Budapest had assumed the European Council’s half-year rotating presidency, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban embarked on a ‘peace mission’ in an attempt to settle the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. He visited Ukraine, Russia and China, as well as met with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in the US.

His plan reportedly includes making concessions to Russia regarding NATO expansion in Europe, which Moscow has listed as one of the key reasons for launching its military operation in February 2022. However, Orban’s initiative faced harsh criticism in Brussels, with the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, insisting that the Hungarian PM was “not representing the EU in any form” and European Council President Charles Michel labeling the peace mission “a problem” and saying that it was “not acceptable.”

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They have enhanced the charges now.

• Trump: DOJ, FBI ‘Mishandling, Downplaying’ Second Assassination Attempt (JTN)

Former President Donald Trump on Monday issued a scathing statement against the FBI and Department of Justice, accusing them of “mishandling and downplaying” the second assassination attempt against him. Trump became the subject of an apparent assassination attempt in mid-September while golfing at his Palm Beach course. During that incident, the Secret Service engaged with an armed suspect after an agent noticed the barrel of an AK-47 protruding from the bushes where he was hiding. The suspect fled and authorities subsequently arrested Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, in connection with the incident. Routh currently faces gun charges for possessing a firearm while a felon and possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. “The Kamala Harris/Joe Biden Department of Justice and FBI are mishandling and downplaying the second assassination attempt on my life since July,” Trump said.

“The charges brought against the maniac assassin are a slap on the wrist. It’s no wonder, since the DOJ and FBI have been coming after me nonstop with Weaponized Lawfare since I announced my first Historic Campaign for the Presidency.” Trump further accused the DOJ and FBI of a “conflict of interest” and insisted the agencies were obsessed with “getting Trump.” He then insisted that state authorities would bring a more rigorous prosecution. “If the DOJ and FBI cannot do their job honestly and without bias, and hold the aspiring assassin responsible to the full extent of the Law, Governor Ron DeSantis and the State of Florida have already agreed to take the lead on the investigation and prosecution,” he added. “Florida charges would be much more serious than the ones the FBI has announced. The TRUTH would be followed, wherever it leads.”

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First, ‘only a sitting president gets max protection’, then ‘he already has the same protection’, and now even ‘that protection has to be enhanced’.

• Trump’s Protection To Be Enhanced – NBC (RT)

Security around former US President Donald Trump will be heightened in light of the recent assassination attempts on the Republican presidential nominee, NBC News reported on Monday citing a Secret Service official. Trump was targeted during a rally in Pennsylvania in July, when a lone gunman managed to fire several shots at the former president, grazing his ear, killing one audience member and injuring another two. Earlier this month, another would-be assassin, 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, was arrested by the Secret Service after being spotted near a Trump-owned golf course in Florida apparently trying to take a shot at the former president. The would-be assassin was found with a Soviet-made rifle and a backpack full of armor plates.

“Given recent events, the Secret Service is taking a heightened posture in its protection of the former president,” an agency official told NBC News. According to the outlet, the new security measures have already been put in place and could be seen on Monday when Trump got off his plane in Pennsylvania with a Secret Service agent following closely behind him. Last week, the US House of Representatives also passed a bill to boost Secret Service protections for all presidential nominees, including Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris, and their running mates.

Specifically, the new bill requires that the Secret Service apply “the same standards for determining the number of agents required to protect presidents, vice presidents, and major presidential and vice presidential candidates.” “We as a federal government have a responsibility to ensure the safety and the well-being of these candidates. One of them is going to be president, and the election should be decided by voters at the ballot box — not by an assassin’s bullet,” Congressman Mike Lawler, who introduced the legislation, told reporters on Friday. “If the argument by the Secret Service is that they don’t have enough resources or they don’t have enough manpower, then that needs to be addressed immediately,” he said.

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“..civilian leadership at the Pentagon admittedly openly they would not comply with Trump’s wishes..”

“..President Trump banter that you all are familiar with, and in no way, shape, or form did I interpret that as an order or direction..”

• Trump Urged Use Of Troops To Protect Capitol On Jan. 6, But Was Rebuffed (JTN)

Then-President Donald Trump gave clear instructions to Pentagon brass days before the Jan. 6 riots to “do whatever it takes” to keep the U.S. Capitol safe, including deploying National Guard or active-duty troops, but top officials did not comply because of political concerns, according to transcripts of bombshell interviews conducted by the Defense Department’s chief watchdog that shine new light on government disfunction ahead of the historic tragedy. Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff, confirmed to the Pentagon inspector general three years ago that during a Jan. 3, 2021, Oval Office meeting Trump pre-approved the use of National Guard or active duty troops to keep peace in the nation’s capital on the day Congress was to certify the results of the 2020 election. Milley’s interviews were among several key to transcripts obtained by House Administration Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., and shared with Just the News.

“The President just says, ‘Hey look at this. It’s going to be a large amount of protesters come in here on the 6th, and make sure that you have sufficient National Guard or Soldiers to make sure it’s a safe event,’” Milley told the inspector general in one of two interviews he did in spring 2021 during a probe of the Pentagon’s response to Jan. 6. Milley said then-Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, himself a former general, assured Trump there was an adequate safety plan for Pentagon assistance to Washington, D.C. “Miller responds by saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got a plan, and we’ve got it covered.’ And that’s about it,” Milley recalled. Milley confirmed a second time during the interviews that Trump was clear in his wishes. “It was just what I just described, which was, ‘Hey, I don’t care if you use Guard, or soldiers, active-duty soldiers, do whatever you have to do. Just make sure it’s safe,” the general told the IG.

The transcripts of Milley’s April 8, 2021, and April 16, 2021, interviews confirm reporting by Just the News two years ago that Trump wanted troops to keep the capital city safe. But other transcripts gathered by Loudermilk during his subcommittee’s ongoing probe of Jan. 6 security failures show civilian leadership at the Pentagon admittedly openly they would not comply with Trump’s wishes, with some saying they did not like the optics of armed soldiers or Guardsmen roaming the Capitol with weapons during what was supposed to be a peaceful transition of power.

[..] ex-Defense Secretary Miller told Congress that Trump gave a specific number of troops he wanted to see made available for security ahead of Jan. 6. “The President commented that they were going to need 10,000 troops the following day…I interpreted it as a bit of presidential banter or President Trump banter that you all are familiar with, and in no way, shape, or form did I interpret that as an order or direction,” Miller testified. But Milley, the former Joint Chiefs chairman, said he did not recall that number ever being uttered in the meetings with Trump. “There was no discussion of 10,000 troops,” the retired four-star general said.

The transcripts also provide some hints that top Pentagon officials personally disliked the 45th president. For instance, former Acting Secretary Miller at one point compared the former president to Cuba’s most infamous communist leader, the late Fidel Castro. “Everyone was like, ‘Did you listen to the President’s speech?’ I’m like, ‘The guy speaks for 90 minutes, it’s like Castro or something. No. I’ve got work to do,” Miller told the IG at one point.

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“Zelensky… could have stopped this war before it started..” [..] “That’s why he has to continue this rhetoric, to stay in power.”

• Zelensky Leaving Ukrainians to Die for BlackRock, Deep State (Miles)

While politicians wage a propaganda war to ensure continued funding for the Western proxy conflict against Russia, average Ukrainians are left to suffer for the sake of powerful outside interests, according to one whistleblower and former diplomat. Analyst Andrii Telizhenko, who previously served in Ukraine’s government but fled the country after facing opposition to his anti-war beliefs, joined Sputnik’s The Final Countdown program Monday, lamenting the fate of hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainian men and women who have sacrificed their lives for the intractable US-backed conflict. The former government official said Kiev has lost 970,000 troops since 2022, confirming previous analysis that has placed the number of Ukrainian deaths during the conflict at close to one million. “Zelensky… could have stopped this war before it started,” said Telizhenko of the controversial figure, whose constitutional mandate as president of Ukraine ended in May. “That’s why he has to continue this rhetoric, to stay in power.”

“He can’t [negotiate] because he’s owned by the West, by Washington, by London, by BlackRock, by the military industrial complex, so they’re not gonna let him do that,” he continued. “They are making money out of this war and getting everything they can out of Ukraine and out of the resources that Ukraine has. So he has no other possibility. He could have stopped it as soon as he became the president in 2019.” “He could have [granted] Donbass… autonomy without losing hundreds of thousands of lives,” the former diplomat noted, faulting Zelensky for not following through on a peace plan reached with Russia in Istanbul or implementing the Minsk Accords after campaigning on the issue in 2019. Ukraine’s Western allies have intervened multiple times to prevent Ukraine from reaching a peaceful resolution to its differences with Russia, most recently when the Zelensky regime took part in talks with Moscow after the launch of its special military operation.

The United States intervened to put an end to at least two separate rounds of peace negotiations, according to testimony from former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and revelations about the role played by former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Neoconservative elements in Washington have long sought to respond to the perceived threat of Russian military and diplomatic power, but the interests of large Western financial institutions in seeing the proxy war continue have received less attention. The US investment firm BlackRock and Delaware-based bank JP Morgan have launched a massive fund for public and private interests to invest in Ukraine’s reconstruction, it was announced earlier this year. It has been estimated that some half a trillion dollars could be sought to help the country rebuild. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has emerged as one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent supporters, working behind the scenes with a number of wealthy donors to help Democrats craft campaign strategy as the party ultimately chose to replace President Joe Biden on the presidential ticket.

The investment firm was subjected to significant criticism from Republican presidential candidates during the party’s primary earlier this year; BlackRock has publicly supported progressive-leaning environmental, social, and governance (ESG) corporate principles and has made Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) the largest recipient of its campaign contributions. “Zelensky is… destroying his own country, leaving people to die for BlackRock, for Washington, for London – and Lindsey Graham confirmed it,” Telizhenko claimed, referring to the hawkish senator’s unyielding support for the proxy conflict. “Ukraine has trillions of dollars… worth of resources. That’s why we’re fighting this war. This is why Zelensky has to continue this war.

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“The US government’s “obsession” with Ukraine is going to “get us all killed..”

• Russia Wins Ukraine Conflict Despite ‘Best’ US, NATO Weapons – Ron Paul (Sp.)

Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine is succeeding despite the regime in Kiev receiving billions of dollars in weapons from the United States and other NATO allies, former US Congressman Ron Paul said on Monday. “The fact is that Russia is winning the war despite hundreds of billions of dollars and the best weapons systems from the US and NATO countries. Each new shipment of increasingly sophisticated weapons does not produce battlefield victories for Ukraine. It only produces more dead Ukrainian soldiers and more profits for the weapons manufacturers,” Paul said in a column for the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

The world narrowly avoided nuclear destruction last week due to the Biden administration reportedly denying Ukraine’s request to strike deep inside Russian territory, Paul said. However, previous requests by Ukraine have been initially denied then granted later, Paul added. The US government’s “obsession” with Ukraine is going to “get us all killed,” Paul said. US arms manufacturers are the driving force behind the country’s interventionist foreign policy, Paul said. It is “madness” to risk the future of the US for wars that have nothing to do with the country and serve no national interest, Paul said. The statement applies to both the conflict in Ukraine and conflicts in the Middle East, according to Paul.

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“Now what the Hezbollah are sending in are just rockets. They haven’t really put into effect their high precision missiles that they have yet.”

• ‘Israel Dying From One Thousand Cuts’ (Manley)

Israel and Hezbollah have now entered a stage in their nearly year-long conflict that reports say is verging on a full-out war. Citing Israel’s military, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that “dozens of warplanes” struck southern Lebanon on Saturday night into Sunday morning. In response to attacks on Lebanon’s communication devices, Hezbollah targeted Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems which is one of the developers of its Iron Dome air-defense system over the weekend. Hezbollah also said that they targeted Israel’s Ramat David Airbase near Haifa.Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, joined Sputnik’s The Final Countdown on Monday to discuss the increasing hostility between Israel and Hezbollah.

“[Displacing people is a] major problem for the Israeli government. That’s why they’ve now decided to put Gaza aside and start extending northward because they need to try to reopen that northern part. Because you got increasingly disgruntled population of Israelis, many of whom are saying they’re never going to return. Now, the Israeli government’s got to find room for them and new placement,” Maloof explained. “They have to pay for it and it’s draining the Israeli economy.” A week ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet made the decision to initiate the return of residents to the north of Israel an “official war goal”, BBC reported. About 60,000 people were evacuated from the area due to the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel as the conflict in the Gaza Strip nears its one-year anniversary.

During a military parade in Tehran on Saturday which commemorated the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, Iran revealed a new solid-fueled ballistic missile dubbed the Jihad (Holy War). The missile has a reported range of up to 1,000 km and was designed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ aerospace division, Sputnik reported on Saturday. “[Iran is] going to have to respond sooner than later because Hezbollah is, I should say Lebanon, not just Hezbollah, but Lebanon is now being attacked with missiles, soon to be with ground forces. That’s from reports that I’m getting there. There are troops coming up from Gaza as well as tanks being rolled into the northern parts to enter southern Lebanon,” the analyst explained.

“So, this is getting [riskier] by the day. It isn’t just, as I said, a tit-for-tat. Now it’s escalating on a daily basis, and that portends something very serious,” the expert said. “…this [conflict] could extend because I also see we’re going to have the Iraqi Shia and the, potentially, the Iranians and the Yemenis coming in on this,” he added. “Now what the Hezbollah are sending in are just rockets. They haven’t really put into effect their high precision missiles that they have yet. And, they may be doing some around the Haifa area. I understand that Haifa has been hit pretty much, but all news about that has been blacked out.”

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“By continuously and incessantly sending weapons, the German company has managed to escape a serious financial crisis..”

• Thirst For Money Enriches Oligarchs, But Bankrupts Europe (SCF)

There are many reasons why Europe wants to prolong the war in Ukraine. Irrational liberal ideology and commitment to the project of a unipolar global order are undoubtedly the most important reasons. However, business and private profit cannot be ignored. According to many recent reports, there has been a huge increase in the profits of military-industrial companies in a number of Western countries, which explains the thirst for war of the pro-Ukrainian oligarchies. One of the most notorious cases of this war profiteering is taking place in Germany. The military giant Rheinmettall is seeing its profits growing amid a wave of systematic support for the Kiev regime. By continuously and incessantly sending weapons, the German company has managed to escape a serious financial crisis and now has a chance to once again rank among the world’s leading defense companies.

Rheinmettal ‘s business was in a bad way. The company was on the verge of abandoning the military sector to focus on civilian production, since most of its profits were coming from the production of automobile parts. However, Germany’s participation in military assistance programs led the corporation to revitalize its production of weapons and ammunition, once again becoming a global giant in the sector. Armored vehicles, tanks, ammunition, artillery pieces and air defense systems are some of the products in Rheinmettal’s current industrial catalog. After making adventures into industrial base projects on the Polish-Ukrainian border, the company is now working on opening a new factory in Saxony, where it expects to produce more than one hundred thousand artillery shells per year. Obviously, the German state is interested in these profits.

Recently, an action plan by the German government was announced to use part of the profits of Rheinmettal for reindustrialization projects – which seem more necessary now than ever, since Germany has been the country most affected by the anti-Russian madness. It only remains to be seen how this reindustrialization will be possible without Russian gas and cheap energy. In short, Germany believes it is profiting from the war. But this calculation is wrong – as well as dangerous and irresponsible. The profits do not go to the German people, but to a small number of defense oligarchs who employ an absolute minority of German society. Furthermore, the real economic revival is minimal, since the constant demand for weapons requires a systematic production routine that hinders any research project in technological innovation. In other words, Rheinmetall – as well as the entire Western military-industrial complex – is doomed to continually produce the same type of equipment according to its current samples, without any relevant innovation.

Industry without innovation has little chance of long-term success. Western weapons, which have already proven to be largely unsuitable for the Ukrainian battlefield, are likely to become increasingly obsolete, and there will be no capacity for technological renewal, since, thanks to anti-Russian sanctions, the precarious European society is reaching a pre-industrial stage of development. And, still on the subject of sanctions, it is important to emphasize that increased spending on the military industry could be a ticking time bomb for a country without reliable sources of cheap energy. After the blockade of Russian gas, Germany has been experiencing a period of profound energy instability, depending on unusual alternative sources to meet its needs – such as burning wood or buying American gas at exorbitant prices. This scenario is completely inconsistent with a situation of economic development and stability.

Germany will discover an old lesson in economics: the private profits of the oligarchies do not reflect a real situation of economic development and social well-being. Without solving the problems generated by sanctions – which obstruct technological innovation – and without relieving the pressure on the systematic production of weapons, not even constant demand will be able to save Germany and the whole of Europe from a deep crisis. Despite the profits, aid to Ukraine remains an obstacle to European economic progress, pleasing only transnational oligarchies.

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The arms industry loves the Baltics.

• European Union Morphs Into NATO’s Financial War Machine (SCF)

Two key posts – in foreign and defense policy – reveal the militarist and anti-Russia direction of the European Union. Ursula Von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission – which works as the executive branch of the European Union – announced her new team of commissioners for the next five years. Taking over as foreign affairs minister for the 27-nation bloc is Kaja Kallas who is a staunch Russophobe and vigorous supporter of Ukraine. Kallas has called for more EU and NATO military funding for Ukraine to “defeat Russia” and the break up of the Russian Federation. The former Estonian prime minister has led the movement to destroy Soviet Red Army monuments across the Baltic states. (This is while her investor husband continues to profit from doing business with Russia.)

Working closely alongside Kallas will be another rabid Russophobe, the former Lithuanian prime minister Andrius Kubilius, who is taking up a newly created EU post as defense commissioner. The creation of that post is an alarming sign of how the EU bloc has transitioned from a trade and political union to a military organization. But what’s even more alarming is the assigning of such an anti-Russia hawk as Kubilius to oversee military policy. At a time when relations between the EU and Russia have become so fraught with tensions, the European bloc is giving politicians from hostile Baltic states a driving seat to push relations even further towards conflict. Indeed, the first announcement Kubilius made as the prospective new defense commissioner was that the European Union would likely be at war with Russia in the next six to eight years. That assessment is shared by Kaja Kallas.

Kubilius said the sole focus during his tenure is ramping up military spending by the EU nations to boost NATO and aid Ukraine. He said that he will be working closely with foreign policy chief Kallas to tap funds. What this means is that the European Union is moving towards making it mandatory for national budgets to allocate more to military procurement. That’s a breakthrough for all the worst reasons. Kubilius is reportedly aiming for a budget of €500 billion over the next five years to be spent on the military by the EU. That increase would represent about half of the projected EU total budget. His comments indicate the purpose of the massive redirection of finances – to boost NATO. Kubilius noted that “the European Union has instruments to get larger financing, which NATO doesn’t.”

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“..the masses have been fed an education that has resulted in a general impoverishment, a sudden lowering of skills and irreparable cultural damage..”

• America In Collapse Plays World Leader (Pacini)

American officials have sacrificed national security for decades in pursuit of national superiority. Further arms supplies to Ukraine will not guarantee victory for Kiev, but will only lead to escalation. This is not in the interest of the U.S., which should first and foremost take care of its own population. Some might ask the American political leadership – of whatever faction it is – whether they have realised that the U.S. is no longer the boss of the world. If the answer is no, an extensive update dossier would be needed, to be delivered very quickly to the desk of the president on duty. There is no more time. We repeat: there is no more time. The United States is in the midst of a political crisis afflicting the entire West (which happens to be directly influenced by the USA) and has not yet managed to resolve it.

This poses a major disadvantage internationally, because all around there is a world that is moving forward, in a multipolar key, with a large number of governments and peoples who no longer want to remain under the heel of the invader and who are rebelling, some through markets, some through partnerships, some through revolutions. In all of this, the U.S. is in the midst of a social crisis that mirrors the unprecedented political one. The demise of the West, as Oswald Spengler put it, is louder than people think. Nobody cares about Americans any more, because there are basically no politicians who have America at heart any more, while they rather have their own interests at heart. This process of separation of governance-representation-people is one of the most delicate points of a transition phase that will lead the whole of humanity to have to rethink the political processes through which societies organise themselves.

The problem is that the U.S. is still an imperialist political system with tentacles all over the world, and the dollar has been the main currency dominating the planet for almost a century, so the consequences of this debacle will be equally unprecedented. The final metastasis of a sick society cannot be avoided. The American generational problem is very much reflected in the country’s foreign policy: while it is true that there is a masterful consistency with the long-term planning that was established at the beginning of the 20th century, it is equally true that things have not gone as strategists and analysts expected. Reality must now be reckoned with. The U.S. has a very exclusive, lobbying, elitist education system linked to a few power groups, whose dependence on the ‘matrices’ of London and Tel Aviv makes the success of candidates complex. Many are called but few are elected, to paraphrase the well-known gospel verse.

Instead, the masses have been fed an education that has resulted in a general impoverishment, a sudden lowering of skills and irreparable cultural damage, starting a process that is self-perpetuating through its own successes (which are actually failures). Who will think about Americans in the future? Not even the current election candidates have managed to find the minimum number of successors. While the belligerent rhetoric continues, the U.S. is being destabilised by an unprecedented illegal immigration, settling social protests with violence or a few doses of new cheap psychotropic drugs, producing some new mass entertainment to keep the protest within tolerable limits. Perhaps nobody really cares what will happen in the ‘New World’ across the Atlantic Ocean. Or perhaps they care enough to let the murderer die his own death.

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“We have hundreds where they actually mark on the form, ‘hello, not a citizen,’ and they still get registered to vote..”

• Non-Citizens Added To States’ Voter Rolls Through DMV (JTN)

Non-citizens have been added to several states’ voter rolls largely through motor vehicle departments, sometimes even after they have explained that they are not U.S. citizens. States have been discovering non-citizens on their voter rolls over the years, with many being added through the “motor voter” process at motor vehicle departments that began with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA). If non-citizens are seeking to become naturalized citizens, then being illegally registered to vote can prevent that from occurring. An election integrity group has examined states’ voter rolls for years, finding many non-citizens who are illegally registered to vote across the country. J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), said on a Just the News special report with The Association of Mature American Citizens to be aired Tuesday that non-citizens had been registered to vote in Pennsylvania for decades.

“Pennsylvania had been registering non-citizens, by admission – this wasn’t some conspiracy on the internet – and they admitted they had been registering non-citizens for 20 years at PennDOT, and it was a glitch, they called it,” Adams said. “So we use the National Voter Registration Act to go in to try to get the records of how bad the problem was, the records of how they fixed the problem, or allegedly fixed it, and they’ve been stonewalling us for about seven years.” He explained that PILF had oral arguments earlier this month before “the Third Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, defending our win. Hopefully, eventually, Pennsylvania coughs up the records.” In 2017, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, a Republican who was a Philadelphia city commissioner at the time, told a Pennsylvania Senate committee that there were over 100,000 matches of voter registration records to state driver’s license numbers with Immigration and Naturalization Service indicators.

The matches don’t mean that all of those people were registered to vote, but Schmidt argued: “We’re not talking about an insignificant number here. We’re talking about a potentially very significant number of thousands and tens of thousands.” The Pennsylvania Department of State announced in September 2017 that records indicated 1,160 non-citizens since 1972 had requested their voter registrations be canceled. Meanwhile, in California, PILF filed a federal lawsuit in February against the Alameda County Registrar of Voters for allegedly violating the NVRA by not disclosing records of foreign nationals registering to vote and voting for more than 20 years. Non-citizens have been placed on voter rolls through motor vehicle departments by lying about their citizenship, Adams also noted. “[W]e’ve collected over the years of the data on how non-citizens get in, and it’s largely by not telling the truth in the motor voter process. And it includes people here on green cards, people here legally,” Adams added.

“Most of the people who get registered to vote, according to the data we’ve collected, are actual, legal residents, like 90% of them, 95%. And so they get sucked into the system, through motor voter, through DMV, and they get registered to vote that way, and it’s a big problem,” he continued. However, sometimes, non-citizens still get on states’ voter rolls despite explaining their citizenship status. “People get registered to vote when they tell, on their voter registration form, the election officials, that they are not a citizen,” Adams said. “We have hundreds where they actually mark on the form, ‘hello, not a citizen,’ and they still get registered to vote,” he explained.

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“The TPS (Temporary Permanent Status) program “came from the White House and is a Homeland Security policy..”

• Not Just Springfield, Haitians Being Flown To Small Towns Nationwide (Blankley)

Haitians are not just arriving in Springfield, Ohio, but also in small rural towns nationwide as a result of several Biden-Harris administration policies. Since fiscal 2021, more than 485,000 Haitian illegal border crossers, a record, have been reported by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The overwhelming majority were reported this fiscal year, nearly 216,000, compared to 48,727 in fiscal 2021. Since fiscal 2021 through August, the majority have been apprehended at the southwest border of nearly 262,000, followed by nearly 221,000 nationwide and nearly 2,300 at the northern border, according to the data. Additionally, since July, 205,000 Haitians have been released through the CHNV parole program, according to CBP data. Of the more than 765,000 illegal foreign nationals released into the country through the CBP One app, the top nationality is Haitian.

Through these programs, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas also extended Temporary Permanent Status to them and granted work authorization. All of these programs are illegal, state attorneys general who’ve sued to stop them, argue. U.S. House Republicans also cited them as among the many illegal actions Mayorkas caused them to impeach him. Mayorkas has since only expanded the programs and extended TPS. When responding to the Haitian influx, local officials claim Haitians are there to work and are contributing to society despite claims by residents to the contrary. The city of Springfield claims a “surge in our population over the last several years, primarily due to an influx of legal immigrants,” suggesting that Springfield “is an appealing place for many reasons including lower cost of living and available work.”

Springfield Mayor Bob Rue has said “my hands are tied in many ways” about the influx of Haitians, pointing to a designation they were given by the Biden-Harris administration. The TPS program “came from the White House and is a Homeland Security policy,” he said at a recent city commission meeting. Springfield residents have argued the overwhelming majority of Haitians are enrolling in welfare and not working; have caused increased crime and there aren’t enough police to deal with it; and residents are being killed by Haitian drivers. Rue has expressed concerns about the dangerous driving conditions, saying, “I have almost been hit myself.”

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“..rapid chargers cost 24.1p per mile, while slower chargers cost 16.4p per mile. This is roughly double the cost of a diesel car at 12.5p per mile, with petrol cars costing 14.5p per mile.”

• EVs “Up To Twice As Expensive” To Run As Regular Gas Cars In The UK (ZH)

As if the EV boom needed another nail its in coffin, the UK has now produced figures showing that driving and electric vehicle is “up to twice as expensive” as driving a regular gas powered car. Data from the app ZapMap has confirmed that operating an electric vehicle (EV) can cost over 24p per mile, compared to 12.5p per mile for a diesel vehicle, according to Yahoo Finance and The Telegraph. And charging an EV at a rapid or ultra-rapid roadside station can reach up to 80p per kilowatt hour. According to calculations by The Times, a typical electric car travels 3.3 miles per kWh, making rapid chargers cost 24.1p per mile, while slower chargers cost 16.4p per mile. This is roughly double the cost of a diesel car at 12.5p per mile, with petrol cars costing 14.5p per mile.

A round trip from London to Penzance would cost £148 using rapid chargers, compared to £77 for diesel and £89 for petrol. Charging at home is much cheaper, costing less than a third of rapid chargers. ZapMap noted a 5% rise in rapid charger prices over the past year, despite a 30% drop in electricity wholesale prices and falling oil prices, the report says. The Yahoo report says that even drivers using slower public chargers, which can fully recharge a vehicle in about 30 minutes, pay more per mile than petrol or diesel users. The number of rapid and ultra-rapid charging stations in Britain has risen by 40%, now exceeding 12,500. However, electric car sales have slowed, making up 17.2% of new registrations in 2024, down from 18.7% in late 2022. Currently, rapid chargers cost EV drivers 24.1p per mile, while slower chargers cost 16.4p per mile.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Meloni

 

 

Shepherd

 

 

Diabetes

 

 

Bees

 

 

Tiny house dragon

 

 

Cats

 

 

Kitty

 

 

Evzones

 

 

Ali

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle April 5 2024

Apr 052024
 
 April 5, 2024  Posted by at 9:02 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  51 Responses »


Jan van Eyck Crucifixion and Last Judgement 1430

 

• New York Judge Calls Trump Jan. 6 Case ‘Federal Insurrection Matter’ (ET)
• Judge Denies Trump First Amendment Challenge to Georgia Election Charges (ET)
• The Trump-Proofing Checklist (Manley)
• Ukraine ‘Will Become a Member of NATO’ – Blinken (RT)
• NATO Exists To Respond To The Conflicts Caused By Its Own Existence (Sp.)
• Enlargement Made NATO Hostage to Agenda Pushed by Eastern Europe (Sp.)
• Russia and NATO Already In ‘Direct Confrontation’ – Kremlin (RT)
• Lavrov Says Obvious That Ukraine Involved in Terrorist Attack in Crocus (Sp.)
• ‘Stop Lying,’ Russia Tells US (RT)
• Kiev’s Backers Fear Frontline Breach – Media (RT)
• Why Are Central Banks Buying Gold? (Martin Armstrong)
• “Is He Blackmailed?” MTG Questions Speaker Johnson (ZH)
• Europe’s Identity Crisis (Patrick Lawrence)
• The European Union’s Fires Where Freedom Burns (Hugo Dionísio)
• Canada’s Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland Diagnosed With Progressive HPD (Helmer)

 

 

It’s so easy to confuse me…

 

 

Peltz Musk

 

 

Galloway Escobar

 

 


WikiLeaks Ukraine Cable from 2008 written by CIA director William J. Burns, then US ambassador to Moscow

 

 

Macgregor
https://twitter.com/i/status/1775830366622024005

 

 

CNN

 

 


Foreign-born population growth:
Barack Obama: 68,000 per month
Donald Trump: 42,000 per month
Joe Biden: 172,000 per month

 

 

Trump UN
https://twitter.com/i/status/1700360281698791655

 

 

Obama

 

 


Elon Musk: “Bet you didn’t know that this administration is flying hundreds of thousands of illegals into America using your tax dollars …”

 

 

 

 

A judge who confuses the case beforee him with a parallel case? Seems a very strange mistake.

• New York Judge Calls Trump Jan. 6 Case ‘Federal Insurrection Matter’ (ET)

On April 3, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan denied a defense motion to adjourn the upcoming trial scheduled for April 15, and in his order, referred to former President Donald Trump’s case before the Supreme Court as the “Federal Insurrection Matter.” “Defendant fully briefed the issue of presidential immunity in his motion to dismiss the matter of United States v. Trump, US Dist Ct, DDC 23 CR 25, (TSC) (hereinafter “Federal Insurrection Matter”) on October 5, 2023,” Justice Merchan wrote. Justice Merchan is presiding over one of four criminal cases against President Trump. This one is a state case, where Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has charged President Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records, alleging a scheme to influence the 2016 elections. The other case in question charges President Trump with four counts of obstruction and conspiracy for his acts on Jan. 6, 2021, but it does not allege insurrection in the indictment.

Special counsel Jack Smith is prosecuting the case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and trial proceedings have been stayed as President Trump pursues an appeal on grounds of presidential immunity. Counsel for President Trump in the Manhattan case brought the federal case up recently in requesting that the trial be delayed, arguing that the presidential immunity they raised in state court will soon be under review by the U.S. Supreme Court. On April 25, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on “whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.” The presidential immunity defense is one President Trump has raised in several of his cases, and attorneys in other cases have requested additional hearings and delays in anticipation of a Supreme Court decision. It is unclear why Justice Merchan would use the “insurrection” as shorthand for the federal case.

The only appearance of the word “insurrection” is in a quote in response to an attorney saying there would be “riots everywhere” if President Trump remained in office. In response, one of the unnamed co-conspirators tells him, “Well, [Deputy White House Counsel], that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.” Separately, critics of President Trump have colloquially referred to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, as an “insurrection,” resulting in a wave of almost 100 state-level lawsuits to disqualify him from the ballot over the past half year. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court heard another case involving President Trump and ruled that states have no authority to disqualify a federal candidate in elections. However, it would be unlikely that the judge confused the two cases, as President Trump did not argue presidential immunity in the ballot disqualification case, and the Supreme Court issued a ruling ending the challenges on March 4. Defense attorneys in the Manhattan case are also renewing requests that the judge step down, arguing that he has shown partisan interest.

Last August, Justice Merchan rejected an initial motion for recusal. He stated that his small-dollar donations to President Trump’s political opponents and his daughter’s employment at a marketing firm, which has received millions from those campaigning against President Trump, would not affect his ability to try the case impartially. However, Justice Merchan recently broadened a gag order to prevent President Trump from discussing the judge’s family members. The move follows President Trump’s renewed grievances about the judge’s daughter helping to campaign for politicians such as Vice President Kamala Harris and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). Defense attorneys made another request that the judge recuse himself on April 1, arguing that the judge’s family has commercial interests that “are benefitted by developments in this case that harm President Trump’s penal interests.”

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I was wondering if, like Fani and her boytoy, the judges in various Trump cases have also had 8-hour sessions at the White House. How would we ever find out?

• Judge Denies Trump First Amendment Challenge to Georgia Election Charges (ET)

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee has denied former President Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss charges under the First Amendment, noting that the way the challenge was brought limited the arguments that could be made. “Without foreclosing the ability to raise similar as-applied challenges at the appropriate time after the establishment of a factual record, the Defendants’ motions based on First Amendment grounds are denied,” the judge wrote in an April 4 order. President Trump is being charged along with 14 others of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act for their actions in challenging the 2020 election results. He had brought a First Amendment as-applied challenge, arguing that everything he said listed in the indictment was protected by the First Amendment.

The defense also touched on making a First Amendment facial challenge, arguing that the charges were overly broad and the statutes may be unconstitutional. But when such a challenge is made before trial, the only record of facts that can be used is the indictment itself. The allegations must be accepted as fact at this stage. Much of President Trump’s speech is cited as part of the RICO charge, in which legal acts and truthful speech can be listed in order to show that an “operation” was in place, prosecutors explained. The First Amendment does not protect speech “integral to criminal conduct, fraud, or speech presenting an imminent threat that the government can prevent,” the judge wrote. Political speech is protected, as is communication to government officials, but protection “does not extend to allegedly fraudulent petitions,” the judge wrote. In the indictment, prosecutors allege all included speech was tied to criminal conduct and the furtherance of a conspiracy.

Defense attorney Steve Sadow argued that President Trump’s speech could not be prosecuted for falsity, and argued that courts have recognized that even false speech must be protected, as free debate cannot be free from error. However, the judge found that prosecutors did not bring charges because the speech was “false” but because President Trump allegedly “knowingly” and “willfully” acted in a way that “impacted matters of governmental concern.” As for proving out that intent, that was a matter for trial, he added. “The allegations that the Defendants’ speech or conduct was carried out with criminal intent are something only a jury can resolve,” the order reads.

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“The US has used the group to funnel tens of billions of dollars in weapons and other equipment to Ukraine. But NATO may bring the group under its control should Ukraine lose US support..”

• The Trump-Proofing Checklist (Manley)

Mainstream media has dubbed a new proposal a way to “Trump-proof” aid for Ukraine. Some foreign ministers, however, have made it clear that any funding that moves NATO closer to war will not be supported. NATO foreign ministers met Wednesday to discuss a proposal by NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg for a €100 billion ($108 billion) five-year fund for Ukraine. The move comes as Europe fears the return of a Donald Trump presidency. The former US president has said he will not aid Ukraine in their conflict with Russia if he is elected, according to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. “What is obvious is that we need new and more money for Ukraine. And we need it over many years. And the whole idea of now discussing a framework, commitments and an institutionalized framework, for the support is to ensure more predictability and more confidence that the money will come every month, every year for the long haul,” said Stoltenberg before the meeting.

The Ukraine Defense Contact Group was first created in the early weeks of the conflict by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and then-Joint Chiefs Chair General Mark Milley. The US has used the group to funnel tens of billions of dollars in weapons and other equipment to Ukraine. But NATO may bring the group under its control should Ukraine lose US support. “We need to shift the dynamics of our support,” Stoltenberg said. “We must ensure reliable and predictable security assistance to Ukraine for the long haul… less on short-term offers and more on multi-year pledges.” But foreign ministers have reportedly warned that putting together such a fund would not be easy. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto “firmly stated Hungary will not back any [NATO] proposals that might draw the alliance closer to war or shift it from a defensive to an offensive coalition,” government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said on X.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said he and others warned against duplicating efforts between bilateral, European Union and NATO aid. In early March, former President Donald Trump met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. According to Orban, Trump will “not give a penny into the Ukraine-Russia war and therefore the war will end” as its “obvious that Ukraine on its own cannot stand on its feet.” Stoltenberg concluded at the end of the summit that NATO will make its final decision in July. A consensus between its 32 members will be required before they can move forward with such a decision. As NATO marks its 75th anniversary this week, Russia has accused the military alliance of returning to a Cold War mindset. Late last year, US legislators passed a law requiring congressional approval should any US president attempt to pull the country out of NATO.

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Note that he doesn’t say when.

• Ukraine ‘Will Become a Member of NATO’ – Blinken (RT)

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has capped a meeting of NATO diplomats by doubling down on an issue that helped trigger the Russia-Ukraine conflict: allowing Kiev to join the Western military alliance. “Ukraine will become a member of NATO,” Blinken told reporters on Thursday in Brussels. “Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership and to create a clear pathway for Ukraine moving forward.” Blinken made his comments as NATO foreign ministers completed a two-day meeting to rally more international support for Kiev. He spoke at a press briefing alongside Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, who argued that Ukraine “deserves to be a member of NATO.” The Ukrainian diplomat added, “This should happen sooner rather than later.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned for the better part of two decades that NATO’s eastward expansion undermines Russian national security and that moving the bloc’s forces into Ukraine would cross a “red line.” NATO-Russia relations have deteriorated so much amid the current Ukraine crisis that the alliance is now in “direct confrontation” with Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. The determination of NATO members to back Ukraine remains “rock solid,” Blinken said at Thursday’s press briefing. “We will do everything we can; allies will do everything that they can to ensure that Ukraine has what it needs to continue to deal with Russia’s ongoing aggression.” The top US diplomat also urged Congress to approve $60 billion in additional aid to Ukraine. The proposal has been stalled by rising opposition from Republican lawmakers since last fall. The administration of US President Joe Biden has already burned through $113 billion in previously approved Ukraine funding.

US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said in an interview on Wednesday that the latest aid bill is likely headed for passage when Congress goes back into session next week. The Georgia Republican argued that Washington’s escalating “proxy war” in Ukraine is making Americans less safe and pushing the world closer to World War III. Reacting to Blinken’s statement on Thursday, Greene reminded her 3.2 million followers on X (formerly Twitter) that under the NATO charter, an attack on one member is considered an attack on all. “Making Ukraine a member of NATO means that the US will be going to war against Russia, as mandated by Article 5,” she wrote.

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“We could exit this tragedy by reaching out to Russia to negotiate a new inclusive European security architecture devoted to reducing security competition instead of imposing hegemony..”

• NATO Exists To Respond To The Conflicts Caused By Its Own Existence (Sp.)

Exactly 75 years ago, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded by the US, Canada, and several Western European nations, with the main aim of deterring and confronting the USSR, their former Second World War ally. After the Soviet Union’s collapse in December 1991, the conditions for a new inclusive security architecture in Europe and beyond emerged, according to Glenn Diesen, professor of international relations at the University of South-Eastern Norway. “After the Cold War, we developed the format for a new inclusive security system,” Diesen told Sputnik. “The Charter of Paris for a New Europe in 1990 and the establishment of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in 1994 were both based on the [1975] Helsinki Accords, and embraced the principles of sovereign equality, indivisible security, and ending the dividing lines in Europe.”

The Helsinki Accords, signed during the Cold War by the US, Soviet Union, and several European countries, led to greater cooperation between Eastern and Western Europe. Even though the agreements weren’t binding, they significantly contributed to the détente between the East and West. Instead of building on that momentum, the US saw the end of the Cold War as the beginning of its unipolar moment, according to the professor: in 1992, George H.W. Bush proudly declared that the US had “won” the Cold War during his State of the Union address. “The US also developed a security strategy based on hegemony, which required expanding NATO and thus cancelling the pan-European security architecture,” Diesen said. “NATO therefore transitioned from a status quo power to a revisionist power. NATO required a new purpose, which became ‘out-of-area’ military interventionism and expansionism.”

The next 30 years saw a string of NATO overseas military campaigns, neither of which has seen a comprehensive resolution, resulting in the creation of hotbeds of instability instead. “During the 1990s, NATO turned from a conceptually defensive organization into an openly aggressive organization when it entered the Yugoslav wars and waged a massive bombing campaign there,” Gilbert Doctorow, an international relations and Russian affairs analyst, told Sputnik. “More generally, the United States was at this time preparing NATO to move out of its core geography in Europe and to assist US plans for global domination in the Middle East in the succession of regime change operations and open invasions that the United States planned and led.” Doctorow highlighted that these “out-of-region NATO operations were one disaster after another, ending in the withdrawal from Afghanistan after participation in a 20-year-long war directed by Washington.”

Meanwhile, the alliance’s seven waves of post-Cold War eastward expansion accelerated tensions in Europe, according to the Norwegian academic. “Reviving the bloc approach to security and competing over where to draw the new dividing lines has been the primary source of conflicts in Europe for the past three decades and eventually resulted in the Ukraine war,” Diesen said. The academic pointed out that “by going along with NATO expansionism, the Europeans allowed their continent to be re-divided and remilitarized, which has predictably doomed Europe to greater irrelevance.” He projected that Europe “will undergo systemic economic decline and become painfully subordinated to the US.” “We could exit this tragedy by reaching out to Russia to negotiate a new inclusive European security architecture devoted to reducing security competition instead of imposing hegemony,” the professor emphasized.

NATO exists to respond to the conflicts caused by its own existence,” Diesen explained. “The problem now is that NATO is returning to great power conflicts with the same disastrous approach to security, based on hegemony rather than mitigating security competition.” Despite the Western mainstream media claims that the North Atlantic Alliance is united like never before amid the Ukrainian conflict, it is in fact not true, according to the professor. “There are great tensions within NATO that simmers below the surface, and I do not think the hatred of Russia is enough to ensure unity after the war is over,” he said.

Tucker Ukr

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“..classic tail-wags-the-dog situation..”

• Enlargement Made NATO Hostage to Agenda Pushed by Eastern Europe (Sp.)

The decades-long NATO expansion to all of Central and Eastern Europe has turned the United States into a hostage of the agenda pursued by Eastern European allies in a classic case of “tail-wags-the-dog,” James Carden, former adviser to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the Department of State, told Sputnik. The United States together with 31 other NATO members is celebrating the alliance’s 75th anniversary this week. “NATO expansion has turned what once arguably (pre-March 1953) could have been called a defensive alliance into a (post-1992) classic tail-wags-the-dog situation,” Carden said. That has resulted in the former Soviet and Warsaw Pact states “pushing their parochial agenda on the United States,” he said. “Not a good state of affairs but here we are,” Carden concluded.

Even at the height of the Cold War, and a quarter century before the peaceful disintegration of the Soviet Union, NATO’s tendencies to over-extend itself to the east and become a tool for the continued US domination and micro-management of Europe had been noted by the great, visionary French statesman President Charles de Gaulle, Carden pointed out. “Over-extension is the core issue, identified early on by no less a statesman than de Gaulle, who intuitively understood that the opening of the European Economic Community (ECC) to the United Kingdom (UK) would introduce an American Trojan horse into the most sensitive issues of European economic affairs,” he said.

For years, Moscow has objected to NATO’s continued expansion and military buildup near Russian borders. Ukraine’s plans to join the bloc were among the reasons why Russia launched its special military operation in February 2022, President Vladimir Putin said. In response to the latest NATO enlargement, Russia will station its troops and strike systems near the borders of Finland and Sweden, Putin said in a March interview with Rossiya Segodnya Director General Dmitry Kiselev for the Rossiya 1 broadcaster and RIA Novosti.

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“NATO continues to fulfill its purpose, which currently, however, in no way contributes to security, predictability and stability on the continent, but on the contrary is a destabilizing factor..”

• Russia and NATO Already In ‘Direct Confrontation’ – Kremlin (RT)

The current state of relations between Russia and NATO can be described as a “direct confrontation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. He claimed that the US-led military bloc has been a destabilizing force in Europe rather than ensuring the continent’s security. He made his comment on Thursday, as the bloc marked 75 years since the signing of its founding document, the North Atlantic Treaty. Since the start of the Ukraine conflict, NATO has provided Kiev with billions worth of military aid and weaponry, as well as sharing intelligence and helping to train Ukrainian troops. “The bloc itself is already involved in the Ukraine conflict. NATO continues to move towards our borders, expanding its military infrastructure towards our borders… In fact, our relations have now descended to the level of direct confrontation,” Peskov said at a press-briefing.

He stated that the organization had been created as an “instrument of confrontation” in Europe, and is fulfilling its purpose to the detriment of the entire continent. “NATO continues to fulfill its purpose, which currently, however, in no way contributes to security, predictability and stability on the continent, but on the contrary is a destabilizing factor,” Peskov explained. Multiple Western leaders have warned that Russia may attack NATO once the Ukraine conflict is over. Moscow has repeatedly dismissed those claims. Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month that talk of a potential Russian attack on NATO countries is simply propaganda by their governments aimed at scaring their own population to “beat the money out of them.”

Moscow has for years voiced concerns about NATO’s expansion toward its borders, viewing the US-led military bloc’s policies as an existential threat. However, it has also warned that NATO’s more pronounced involvement in the Ukraine conflict, in particular, the possibility of a troop deployment to the front lines, would be seen as an intervention. This, according to an earlier statement by Putin, would take the conflict “one step shy of a full-scale World War III.”

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“Now they want to turn voluntary military assistance to Ukraine within NATO into mandatory military assistance..”

• Lavrov Says Obvious That Ukraine Involved in Terrorist Attack in Crocus (Sp.)

It is obvious that Ukraine was involved in the terrorist attack in the Crocus City Hall concert venue on March 22, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday. “This terrorist attack, as you know, is now being actively investigated by the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor General’s Office, other competent authorities. It is already obvious … that there was a Ukrainian trace, especially since Ukraine’s involvement in many other terrorist attacks on Russian territory is no longer in doubt,” Lavrov said at the round table with ambassadors of over 70 countries dedicated to the Ukrainian crisis. On March 22, several armed men broke into Crocus City Hall and started shooting at people. They also started a fire in one of the auditoriums, which was full of people ahead of a concert. The attack left 695 casualties, including 144 dead, according to the latest data from the Russian Emergencies Ministry.

The four main suspects in the case — all of them citizens of Tajikistan — tried to flee the scene in a car but were detained and charged with terrorism. Russian authorities believe their plan was to flee to Ukraine, where the masterminds of the attack had arranged a safe haven for them. An investigation is underway. Providing aid to Ukraine is planned to be made obligatory for NATO members, Lavrov added. “Now they want to turn voluntary military assistance to Ukraine within NATO into mandatory military assistance. To force all NATO members through strict discipline to sign up for the mandatory provision of funding and weapons to the Kiev regime,” Lavrov said at the round table with ambassadors of over 70 countries dedicated to the Ukrainian crisis.

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A hard habit for them to break:

“Russia is not a pariah,” Blinken stated, and “the idea has never been to exclude [it]..”

• ‘Stop Lying,’ Russia Tells US (RT)

The US mantra that Russia must change its behavior to improve relations with the West disregards the fact that Washington has for years willfully ignored Moscow’s core interests, Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov has said. Moscow’s envoy was responding to comments by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken who told French broadcaster LCI on Tuesday that he did not rule out a possible meeting between President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, despite the current standoff over Ukraine.“Russia is not a pariah,” Blinken stated, and “the idea has never been to exclude [it],” while insisting that Moscow is responsible for the current rift with the West. “If policy changes, we don’t rule anything out. The problem is that we don’t have any proof, for the moment, that policy is changing.” It was not Moscow that “moved its war machine to NATO’s borders” and spearheaded unprecedented economic and personal sanctions, Antonov added.

“Everything that is happening now is the exclusive choice of the West, which has trampled on the basics of diplomacy, the principle of indivisibility of security and has been abusing the trust of the Russian Federation for many years,” the envoy claimed. For relations to improve, Western countries “should abandon illusions about the possibility of inflicting a strategic defeat” on Russia and learn to respect other nations’ interests, the ambassador stated, adding that Moscow does not accept “attempts at dictatorship” and the US desire to impose its values on others. President Putin said in December that Moscow is open to improving relations with the US, but that this process depends on fundamental changes in Washington’s policies and a desire to seek compromise. Russia has for years voiced concern about NATO’s expansion toward its borders, viewing the US-led military bloc’s policies as an existential threat. Putin, however, has repeatedly said Moscow has no plans to attack NATO.

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“..the Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), stated on Tuesday that Moscow “does not have resources” for a major push forward..”

• Kiev’s Backers Fear Frontline Breach – Media (RT)

There are growing concerns both in Ukraine and among its Western backers that an expected Russian offensive this summer could break through the country’s defenses, Western media have reported. Kiev has been complaining for months that a shortage of weapons from the West has put it at a massive disadvantage on the battlefield against Moscow. President Vladimir Zelensky told the Washington Post last week that his forces may have to retreat further to reduce the length of the front line and the amount of munitions and men needed to hold it. “If [the line] breaks, the Russians could go to the big cities,” he warned. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that the ratio of artillery shells fired by Russia compared to Ukraine has increased from 3:1 to 7:1 since the beginning of the year.

Sources told the outlet that concerned foreign donors intend to improve the ratio to 7:3, as Western-donated weapon systems are supposedly superior to Russia’s. An even gloomier prediction came from Ukrainian military officials, who spoke to Politico on condition of anonymity, and warned that the front line may collapse. Russia’s advantage in weapons and manpower means that it will likely be able to “penetrate the front line and to crash it in some parts,” one of the officers said on Wednesday. “There’s nothing that can help Ukraine now because there are no serious technologies able to compensate Ukraine for the large mass of troops Russia is likely to hurl at us,” a top military leader said. The warning came from officers who served under Valery Zaluzhny, who was the commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces until Zelensky replaced him in early February.

Prior to that, the pair had clashed publicly over whether the hostilities with Russia had reached a stalemate, which was the general’s assessment. The officers cautioned against underestimating Russia’s ability to adapt and counter new military capabilities provided by the West to Ukraine. They “are always studying. They don’t give us a second chance. And they’re successful in this,” one of them said. Even now, Russian forces are laying the groundwork for engaging F-16 fighter jets, which Kiev is expected to eventually deploy, the report said. Domestically, the Ukrainian government has been downplaying the risks that a Russian offensive would pose. Its information warfare service, the Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), stated on Tuesday that Moscow “does not have resources” for a major push forward.

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“..You simply do not buy the debt of your enemy. Central banks are buying gold because the USD is political..”

• Why Are Central Banks Buying Gold? (Martin Armstrong)

Investors’ curiosity has peaked as central banks are increasing their gold purchases. We are not going back to a Bretton Woods type situation and that is not the issue. You must understand that gold is neutral. Central banks are buying gold because the Neocons have weaponized the dollar. Russia was removed from the SWIFT system, and private citizens’ assets were confiscated. When Russian assets were removed from SWIFT, a threat to the world was issued to say, “Hey, if you don’t do what we tell you to do, we will take you out of SWIFT.” This is not the end of the dollar. Money continues to pour into US equities, particularly the Dow. Why? When the drum of war is beating, major institutions rush to move their money into a safe haven, which happens to be the US at this point in time.

The big money is not purchasing start-up equities on the Nasdaq, for example, as they will not take that risk. Our computer model indicates the Dow will continue rising into 2032 as it remains one of the last safe havens. The West has become extremely aggressive in its geopolitics. You simply do not buy the debt of your enemy. Central banks are buying gold because the USD is political. There is a stark difference between short-term and long-term bonds. The central banks have zero control over the short-term and that is how this whole QE fiasco began as central banks began purchasing long-term debt in an attempt to reduce long-term interest. Why would you buy long-term when war, the primary driver of inflation, is looming? This is a serious situation that the neocons who have weaponized the dollar simply do not understand.

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GOP picking one Trojan horse after the other…

• “Is He Blackmailed?” MTG Questions Speaker Johnson (ZH)

Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) suggested that House Speaker Mike Johnson is being “blackmailed” because of his “complete departure” from Republican concerns, saying the Louisiana Republican “has completely changed his character.” “Mike Johnson has completely changed his character in a matter of about five months after he has become speaker of the House,” Greene told Tucker Carlson in a recent episode of Tucker Carlson Uncensored Carlson pointed to Johnson’s meeting with Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky – after which Johnson said that the second congressional recess ends, “his number one priority at a moment when the U.S. is being invaded” is to ” send that $60 billion to Ukraine, possibly as a loan.” According to Carlson, Johnson won’t come on his show to explain, while Zelensky also refused to discuss his position:

They’re not grateful now. So we sent a message to the speaker of the House and asked him to come on and explain why, when the majority of the Republicans he represents both the voters and members of Congress, opposes why he would join with Democrats to do the one thing that Americans don’t think we should do, which is send another $60 billion to pay the pensions of Ukrainian bureaucrats and fund a doomed war. Why are you for that? And of course, he hasn’t responded. We also sent multiple requests to Zelensky himself for an interview to explain his position. Of course, he ignored that as well. Greene echoed Tucker’s concerns, saying “It’s outrageous.” When you saw Zelenskyy right there on that interview talking about, oh, we’re going to lose territory. Oh, we really need this money. This $60 billion should have been approved yesterday.

Let me tell you, we are losing our country to the illegal invasion that’s happening every single day at our southern border. And I am so pissed off about it because the American people are pissed off about it. And while our so-called Republican speaker of the House is only working with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and Ukraine First Mitch McConnell and the white House and Jake Sullivan, who he talks to on the phone all the time. We are angry and people have had it. Greene said this “needs to end,” but Johnson “has has made a complete departure of who he is, and what he stands for and to the point where people are literally asking, is he blackmailed?” When Carlson asked her to expound, Greene said that she has “no idea” if that’s the case, but asks: “What radically changes a man. I mean, if we break down the the second part of basically an omnibus, let’s let’s break that down.”

Greene cited Johnson’s funding of “full term abortion clinics” despite being pro-life, doing “nothing for the southern border” – particularly on the heels of Laken Riley’s murder at the hands of an illegal, which followed “a video that was running on loop on social media, where illegal aliens had rushed our border, ran over Texas National Guard.” “He did nothing to secure the border. It’s the number one issue in the world. He completely changed who he was. Funded the FBI, gave them a brand new building, fully funded the Department of Justice that is persecuting everyone on the right and actually targeting our presidential candidate, for for election this year. Literally trying to put him in jail the rest of his life. We don’t know who Mike Johnson is anymore. So there’s no, I can’t comprehend it,” Greene continued.

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“To militarize as much as it needs to,” he wrote, “Europe needs its citizens to bear higher taxes or a smaller welfare state.”

• Europe’s Identity Crisis (Patrick Lawrence)

It is many years now since the French, bless them, revolted as Disneyland Paris arose near the previously uninvaded village of Marne-la–Vallée–Chessy. Soon enough came the Disney Hôtel New York, the Disney Hôtel Santa Fe, the Disney Hôtel Cheyenne, the Disney Newport Club, the Disney Sequoia Lodge, Disney Village, Parc Disneyland, Parc Walt Disney Studios. Let us not omit Star Wars Hypersonic Mountain among these monuments to the Americanization of Europe. Blocking imports of American “culture,” and we need the quotation marks, is among the world’s more quixotic undertakings, given the failure rate. But losing the battle against the infantilization of European sensibilities seems the least of the Continent’s worries at this point. The irrational Russophobia, the proxy war in Ukraine, the disruption of the Continent’s natural place as Eurasia’s western flank, the conjured-from-nothing “threat” of Russian expansionism, support of Israel’s siege of Gaza: These are U.S. imports, too, and Europe finds itself in crisis in consequence of them.

Who are we, Europeans now ask in one or another way. What have we made of ourselves? Are we always to be America’s obedient underlings, taking all orders and refusing none? What has become of us in the 21st century? European social democracy in its various forms has been vulnerable to the attacks of market fundamentalists and neoconservative ideologues for many years. Now the apostles of “savage capitalism,” as its Latin American casualties call it, and their warmongering siblings begin, this time in the name of Cold War II, what appears to be their final assault. Europe has vacillated between two contradictory impulses — asserting its sovereignty and succumbing to an undignified dependence on American power — since the mid–Cold War years. Charles De Gaulle was the last European leader to stand with conviction for the Continent’s independence and autonomy.

But Gaullism is no more than a faint and far-off light around Europe today. I reluctantly conclude that, in the moment of truth now upon it, the Continent will make the unwise choice, a self-condemnation that could endure for decades to come. A long-evident divide between Europeans and those who purport to lead them now widens. The former defend what remains of the socially advanced state erected across the Continent during the first postwar decades. The latter are poised to tear it down to import a version of America’s military-industrial complex precisely as The Walt Disney Company brought Sleeping Beauty’s Castle to the French capital’s outskirts. “Europe’s leaders have woken up to hard power” is the headline atop a commentary Janan Ganesh, a Financial Times columnist, published on this topic last week. “To militarize as much as it needs to,” he wrote, “Europe needs its citizens to bear higher taxes or a smaller welfare state.”

This is bitterly succinct. Europe’s leaders and the media that serve them are in the process of normalizing the “need” to turn Europe into a warrior state in the American image — suffused with animus and paranoia, beset with “threats,” never at ease as the social fabric deteriorates.

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Taking it all to 2030.

• The European Union’s Fires Where Freedom Burns (Hugo Dionísio)

It is in Brussels that we find the symbolic center to which we must be loyal. The “Ukrainian project”, for the idolaters of european central power — and their followers — which is based on the bodies that make up the European Union, has a founding dimension, having become the ultimate symbol of the regime; a regime that no longer asserts itself by what it is, but by what it defends as the ultimate symbol of Russian antagonism: support for the Kiev regime. The more rigid, uncompromising and demanding you are in your support for Kiev, the more anti-Russian you became. And that’s the ultimate proof of loyalty. Is that a reason to say that this EU is no longer the same. Or is it, now, what it should be from the very start?

Presented as a peace project, but which ended up financing the war, even the most absent-minded passer-by in Brussels won’t miss the regime’s ultimate symbol. Since February 25, 2022, Brussels has been a city bathed in blue and yellow. From billboards to public works fences, everything seems to denounce the single truth to which we must be loyal. Zelensky’s Ukraine is indeed a member state of the EU! The legitimacy that it lacks in formal law, it has in the manifestation of symbolic paraphernalia and in the persecutory frenzy with which the European institutions embrace its protection. By dispensing with the usual access procedures, which only aim to give some formal legitimacy to a whole phenomenon (Ukraine on the “fast track” to the EU) that is observable in fact, Ukraine benefits from a whole altar that is the ultimate symbol of this idolatrous fundamentalism and this de facto adoption.

Nothing is more overwhelming than a trip to the central square of “Luxembourg”, where the European Parliament is located, under the watchful eye of a vigilant European Commission and a European Council commanded by far more distant powers. Yellow and blue are so intensely prominent here that we seem to be both in the sky and close to the sun. They say they are the colors of the EU… Their presence has never been as strong as it is today. Ukraine and the EU are also intertwined in color. Zelensky’s image stands out from this sea of colors, flooded with messages like “stand with Ukraine” or billboards saying “the brave people of Ukraine, represented by their president (…)”. As if to prove that what is outside, emanates from within, the Ukrainian state, without other democratic backing than that generated by the immense propaganda that floods our senses, even has its space in the very hemicycle of the European Parliament.

In addition to all the simultaneous translation booths for each of the languages that make up the European project, the “Ukrainian project” also has its own. Even if it has no MEP’s. Even the 50 billion euros recently approved by the European Council for the remaining 4 years of the Multiannual Financial Framework (which normally runs until one year after the nominal period, which is 21-27), taken from the respective financial cake, seems to reproduce, more or less, what a country with 35 to 40 million inhabitants and a per capita income below the European average would receive. In other words, not even the funds are lacking for the development of the goals of the 2030 strategy. Now, tell me Ukraine isn’t a member state?

Read more …

“Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD)”

“– Incurable Unless She Takes The Prime Ministry From Justin Trudeau..”

Freeland is of Ukrainian origin.

• Canada’s Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland Diagnosed With Progressive HPD (Helmer)

In two public performances of less than two minutes apiece, Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister, Finance Minister, and leader of Canada’s war against Russia, has demonstrated bizarre facial and upper torso symptoms. Political analysts and psychiatrists have been asked if they believe Freeland is suffering from a clinical pathology or drug abuse. Cocaine use has been ruled out. According to a medical psychiatrist, “the display [of symptoms] is remarkable. And just as remarkable, they disappear when [Freeland] takes the tribune from the prime minister and starts to make a speech herself. The control of torso, eyes, and speech she shows then is not consistent with chronic cocaine use.” The source, who specializes in treating drug addiction, says that Freeland’s display of symptoms does not reveal the twitches, tics, or other involuntary muscular movements usually seen with cocaine users. “What can I make of the relentless movements,” the source commented.

“[They] are more or less non-stop and they serve to draw attention away from everybody but herself. In her speech, there was no restlessness. It was fluent and clear. But she was the centre of attention then. It seems to me that with all her restless movements taking so many different forms she could still be the centre of attention…In some ways she was like the child who must always have attention.” Another expert source believes Freeland’s symptoms have been diagnosed clinically in the US as Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD). This has been reported in a research paper published in January of this year: “a chronic and enduring condition marked by a consistent pattern of attention-seeking behaviours and an exaggerated display of emotions. Typically emerging in late adolescence or early adulthood, individuals with HPD are often characterized as narcissistic, self-indulgent, and flirtatious. Individuals with HPD may feel undervalued when not in the spotlight, leading to a persistent need for validation…People presenting with HPD typically demonstrate rapidly shifting and shallow emotions that others may perceive as insincere…

Women are four times more likely to be diagnosed with histrionic personality disorder than men.” Canadian political analysts report that Freeland’s condition has long been recognized among male voters; less so among female voters. The analysts also note that as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau loses general voter approval, and also the support of his Liberal Party constituency, Freeland’s ambition to replace him before the national election next year, is becoming more obvious. Her HPD symptoms, the sources say, become extreme when she appears in public with Trudeau, revealing her impatience to replace him. In this personal contest of wills and of political power in Canada, the national and provincial polls are showing that the looming defeat of Freeland’s side in the war against Russia, the partition of the Ukraine, and the loss of more than C$4 billion in Canadian military donations to Kiev, are making no (repeat no) difference to the election outcome in Ottawa.

Freeland’s career to promote herself and the neo-Nazi ambitions of the Ukrainian community in Canada – the largest Ukrainian diaspora outside the country identifying as anti-Russian – has been documented in this archive. Her grandfather, Mikhail Chomiak’s career as a profiteer and propagandist of the ethnic cleansing of the Ukraine and murder of Russians, Jews and Poles, was documented from January 2017; Freeland and her supporters have dismissed this record, including US Army intelligence and Polish police files, as Kremlin propaganda. The recording of Freeland’s facial and torso displays have not been noted in Canadian politics before. Layman observers have suspected the display to be symptomatic of drug use, particularly of cocaine. The standard lists of symptoms of cocaine use include restlessness, agitation, irritability, tremors, involuntary muscular spasms, and volatile behaviour, such as temper tantrums. Sources who have worked with Freeland in the past note that her screaming fits were commonplace.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

VdB
https://twitter.com/i/status/1775594138378854503

 

 

Aaron Russo

 

 

Bachmann

 

 

Worm

 

 

Max

 

 

Kitten

 

 

Bath
https://twitter.com/i/status/1775918366290493661

 

 

Baby
https://twitter.com/i/status/1775628060366090723

 

 

 

 

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Ukraine Intel Prepares for Worst Case Scenario

Mar 012024
 
 March 1, 2024  Posted by at 12:09 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  6 Responses »


Gilles Mostaert Sodom and Gomorrah 1597

 

Inevitably, we have “rumblings” in the ranks. Not every Ukrainian is suicidal, or a proponent of (more) meat grinders. Here’s Andrew:

 

 

Andrew Korybko:

 

The Ukrainian Intelligence Committee warned in a Telegram post about the worst-case scenario that could happen by June whereby a Russian breakthrough across the Line of Contact (LOC) merges with protests over conscription and Zelensky’s illegitimacy to deal a deathblow to the state. They predictably claimed that those protests, along with claims of growing fatigue inside Western and Ukrainian societies plus civil-military tensions in Kiev, are just “Russian disinformation” even though they all veritably exist.

“Zelensky Is Desperate To Preemptively Discredit Potentially Forthcoming Protests Against Him” and that’s why he claimed in late November that Russia is conspiring to orchestrate a so-called “Maidan 3” against him, which is what the Intelligence Committee explicitly referred to in their post. Their warning also came as Ukrainian media reported that Zelensky plans to ask the Constitutional Court to rule on holding elections during martial law in order to retain legitimacy after his term expires on 20 May.

The preceding hyperlinked report from Turkish media also mentions how “opposition party leaders Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko proposed forming a coalition government to avoid a crisis of legitimacy” but were rebuked by National Security Council chief Danilov. What’s so interesting about this proposal is that it was first tabled by an expert from the powerful Atlantic Council think tank in an article that they published in Politico in mid-December in order to serve that exact same purpose.

This reminder and the subsequent proposal by those two opposition party leaders debunks the notion that questions about Zelensky’s legitimacy are solely the result of “Russian disinformation” just like a top European think tank’s latest poll from January debunks the same about fatigue over this conflict. The European Council on Foreign Relations, which can’t credibly be described as “pro-Russian”, found that only 10% of Europeans think that Ukraine will defeat Russia.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the Congressional deadlock over more Ukraine aid proves that such sentiments are shared in the halls of power, and those who hold these views understandably don’t want to continue throwing hard-earn taxpayer funds into a doomed-to-fail proxy war. Western leaders as a whole, however, are clearly panicking over the latest military-strategic dynamics that followed the failure of Kiev’s counteroffensive last summer and Russia’s recent victory in Avdeevka.

That’s why many of them debated whether to conventionally intervene in Ukraine during Monday’s meeting in Paris that was attended by over 20 European leaders. French President Macron said that this can’t be ruled out despite there being no consensus on the issue, which his Polish counterpart confirmed was the most heated part of their discussions that day. This prompted strong denials from all other Western leaders who claimed that they’ll never authorize this, but their words can’t be taken seriously.

After all, the worst-case scenario that the Ukrainian Intelligence Committee warned about and is actively trying to discredit as supposedly being driven solely by “Russian disinformation” could push them to conventionally intervene in order to avert the state’s collapse and an Afghan-like disaster in Europe. NATO is unlikely to sit idly on the sidelines if Russia steamrolls through the ruins after breaking through the LOC by sometime this summer, hence why a conventional intervention truly can’t be ruled out.

It would be very unpopular in the West as proven by the previously mentioned think tank’s latest poll and the ongoing Congressional deadlock over Ukraine aid, but that doesn’t mean that the elite won’t do it since they don’t take public opinion into consideration when formulating foreign and military policy. Even so, the large-scale protests that could follow in Europe are something that the elite want to avoid, but they might still risk them in order for their geopolitical project in Ukraine not to be totally for naught.

Average folks outside of Ukraine can’t shape the course of events, but those in that country could play an historical role if they revolted with the support of friendly elements in the military-intelligence services like those that surround former Commander-in-Chief Zaluzhny. They’d be putting their lives on the line since the SBU abuses, jails, and kills dissidents, but enough of them are evidently ready to do so as suggested by the Ukrainian Intelligence Committee’s frantic efforts to discredit them.

It’s too early to predict whether they’ll revolt, let alone at the scale and for the duration that’s required to depose Zelensky with a view towards immediately resuming peace talks since the CIA-backed SBU could scuttle their plans by arresting their leaders (especially those in the military-intelligence services). If they do and this coincides with Russia breakthrough through the LOC, however, then it could swiftly bring an end to this proxy war provided that there are friendly elites willing to risk their lives as well.

Considering the global significance of this conflict, what’s regarded as the worst-case scenario from the perspective of the ruling Ukrainian elite and their Western masters is therefore the best-case scenario for the rest of the world. In the event that Zelensky is deposed and peace talks immediately resume right as Russia breaks through the LOC, then NATO might not feel as pressured by its security dilemma with Russia to conventionally intervene in Ukraine, thus reducing the risk of World War III by miscalculation.

 

 

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After Russia’s Capture of Avdeevka

Feb 192024
 
 February 19, 2024  Posted by at 2:11 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  6 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Red Vineyards at Arles 1888

 

 

Interesting assessment fom Andrew, but I have my doubts. He sees Germany take a leading role in Europe, but I think it’s in no position to do that, neither militarily nor financially. How the mighty have fallen.

 

 

Andrew Korybko:

 

Russia finally captured the Ukrainian fortress town of Avdeevka following a protracted battle that ended in Kiev’s chaotic retreat and the abandonment of its wounded troops. The timing took place as the Western elite met in Germany for this year’s Munich Security Conference over the weekend, which conveniently enabled them to plan their next moves in this proxy war. No significant financial or military aid is expected, however, despite Ukraine’s newly clinched security pacts with Germany and France.

Rather, as was explained here earlier in the month when analyzing the latest Biden-Scholz Summit in DC, the West’s focus will be on the long-term containment of Russia in Europe beyond the borders of that former Soviet Republic. To that end, Germany’s role as the US’ preferred “Lead From Behind” partner in the EU will become more prominent, which will take the form of connecting the “military Schengen” with the revived Weimar Triangle in order to accelerate the construction of “Fortress Europe”.

The preceding three hyperlinked analyses explain these concepts more in depth as well as their relationship, but they can be summarized as Germany exploiting its comprehensive subordination of Poland to resume its long-lost superpower trajectory after a nearly eight-decade-long hiatus. The reason why the West’s attention will turn towards accelerating this geostrategic shift instead of clinging to its proxy war on Russia via Ukraine after Avdeevka is because it’s now clear that the latter is a lost cause.

Russia already won the “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with NATO that Secretary General Stoltenberg declared almost exactly one year ago as proven by the counteroffensive’s failure and the subsequent reversal of this conflict’s dynamics whereby Ukraine is now once again on the defensive. Former Command-in-Chief Zaluzhny’s replacement Syrsky explicitly admitted this last week before the disastrous retreat from Avdeevka, which is regarded as Kiev’s last major fortress in Donbass.  

The stage is now set for a forthcoming Russian offensive that could steamroll through the rest of this region in the best-case scenario from Moscow’s perspective and the worst-case one from the West’s. That’s not to say that this will indeed happen because the so-called “fog of war” makes it impossible to accurately discern Ukraine’s full defensive capabilities behind the Line of Contact (LOC), but it’s not without reason that the West is panicking and Zelensky decided to blame them for his latest defeat.

He complained that a so-called “artificial lack of weaponry” was responsible in an allusion to the congressional deadlock over more Ukraine aid, which Biden agreed with to pressure his political foes. Navalny’s unexpected death on Friday was taken advantage of by anti-Russian hawks to demand that the House pass the Senate’s proxy war funding bill when it resumes its session later this month, but even if it’s approved, the problem is that the US has already expended its stockpiles.

While it’s possible that it could dip into those reserves that it’s saved for meeting its national security needs and coerce its vassals into doing so as well, the fact of the matter is that the counteroffensive’s failure in spite of much larger aid given to Kiev up until then suggests that this won’t make a difference. Whatever might be sent would be used solely to hold the LOC as long as possible and prevent a Russian breakthrough in order to perpetuate the stalemate that Zaluzhny was the first to admit had set in by fall.

Truth be told, that description was inaccurate since the LOC continues gradually moving westward and the pace might speed up after Russia’s capture of Avdeevka. President Putin already signaled that he won’t stop until his security guarantee requests are met through military or diplomatic means after recently regretting that he hadn’t ordered the special operation to begin sooner and saying on Sunday after the fall of that Ukrainian fortress town that victory is “a matter of life and death” for Russia.

It remains unclear when and on what terms the conflict will end, but the writing is on the wall and it clearly reads that Russia’s security guarantee requests will be met to some extent or another, ergo why the West is now planning for a decades-long “confrontation” with Russia per Stoltenberg’s own words. Therein lies the significance of the geostrategic shift that was identified earlier in this analysis regarding Germany’s role as the US’ top “Lead From Behind” partner for containing Russia in Europe.

In furtherance of that goal, NATO’s continental-wide “Steadfast Defender 2024” drills – the largest since the end of the Old Cold War – will be aimed at optimizing the partial implementation of the “military Schengen” between Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands, which France is expected to soon join. The Baltics will likely also participate as well given that they require support for building their so-called “Baltic Defense Line”, which could extend up to the Arctic if Finland gets involved too as expected.

The revived Weimar Triangle comes into play since Germany requires French backing because Berlin can’t realistically do all of this on its own, which in turn necessitated Poland’s military subordination to its western neighbor via the abovementioned logistics pact between them. A military corridor from France to Estonia, which could reach Finland via Denmark-Sweden (the second of whom is a NATO aspirant and expected to join this new “Schengen”), is therefore taking shape before the world’s eyes.

Russia’s capture of Avdeevka will therefore reverberate across Europe by accelerating the implementation of these long-term containment plans seeing as how NATO’s proxy war on it through Ukraine is obviously a lost cause after the fall of that former Soviet Republic’s latest fortress town. It’s this geostrategic dynamic that observers should pay more attention to than anything else since the resumption of Germany’s long-lost superpower trajectory is a development of global significance. 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle February 19 2024

Feb 192024
 
 February 19, 2024  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  35 Responses »


Assange – by Mr. Fish

 

• Julian Assange’s Final Appeal (Chris Hedges)
• We Have Seen Assange’s Plight In A UK Prison (RSF)
• 2024: The Year from Political Hell – Martin Armstrong (USAW)
• The Genocide of the West (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Biden & Blinken – Rule of Illegal Power Over Rule of Law (Ralph Nader)
• Western Europe Could Become The New Ukraine (Bordachev)
• Everything Happening in Ukraine Matter of Life, Death for Russia – Putin (Sp.)
• Denmark Will Give All Its Artillery To Ukraine – PM (RT)
• Biden Offered Prime Time Russian TV Slot (Sp.)
• French “Democracy” Establishes Medical Tyranny (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Von der Leyen Wants Second EU Term – Bild (RT)
• Netanyahu To Be Ousted – Israel Media (RT)
• ICJ to Examine 57 Years of Israeli Occupation of Palestine (Wilkins)
• Hunter’s Lawyers Balked at Kevin Morris Laptop Conspiracy Theories (Turley)

 

 


Anthony Bourdain: “Today nearly everything is made in China — except for courage, it’s made in PALESTINE!”

 

 

Assange

 

 

 

 

Tucker invasion

 

 

Mike Benz
https://twitter.com/i/status/1759213479817334819

 

 

 

 

Ted Cruz

 

 

Gorka Taibbi

 

 

 

 

God have mercy.

• Julian Assange’s Final Appeal (Chris Hedges)

If Julian Assange is denied permission to appeal his extradition to the United States before a panel of two judges at the High Court in London this week, he will have no recourse left within the British legal system. His lawyers can ask the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for a stay of execution under Rule 39, which is given in “exceptional circumstances” and “only where there is an imminent risk of irreparable harm.” But it is far from certain that the British court will agree. It may order Julian’s immediate extradition prior to a Rule 39 instruction or may decide to ignore a request from the ECtHR to allow Julian to have his case heard by the court. The nearly 15-year-long persecution of Julian, which has taken a heavy toll on his physical and psychological health, is done in the name of extradition to the U.S. where he would stand trial for allegedly violating 17 counts of the 1917 Espionage Act, with a potential sentence of 170 years.

Julian’s “crime” is that he published classified documents, internal messages, reports and videos from the U.S. government and U.S. military in 2010, which were provided by U.S. army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. This vast trove of material revealed massacres of civilians, torture, assassinations, the list of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay and the conditions they were subjected to, as well as the Rules of Engagement in Iraq. Those who perpetrated these crimes — including the U.S. helicopter pilots who gunned down two Reuters journalists and 10 other civilians and severely injured two children, all captured in the Collateral Murder video — have never been prosecuted.

Read more …

Christophe Deloire is secretary-general and Rebecca Vincent is director of campaigns at Reporters Without Borders (RSF) .

• We Have Seen Assange’s Plight In A UK Prison (RSF)

Given the high stakes for journalism and press freedom, we have been dismayed to be confronted with extensive barriers to our UK-focused work on Assange’s case. Our prison visits followed months of fighting for access after the prison arbitrarily barred us in April 2023, when we were refused entry for a vetted prison visit on the grounds that the prison had received “intelligence” that we were journalists. As a non-governmental organisation (NGO), our role differs from that of journalists. We sought access to discuss our advocacy efforts directly with Assange rather than to interview him for a media report. Over the next four months, we sought legal advice, submitted subject access requests, secured an intervention by a member of parliament, and engaged in extensive correspondence with Belmarsh. In August 2023, the block on our access was finally lifted, and we became the only NGO that has been able to visit Assange in prison.

This is not the first time the British system has created obstacles to our work on Assange’s case. We have experienced extensive and evolving barriers to accessing court hearings as NGO observers, often having no choice but to queue outside for up to five hours, very early in the morning and sometimes in freezing temperatures, to secure one of the few spaces in the public gallery. At one point during the pandemic, we were threatened with arrest simply for queueing to get into court. This absurd series of restrictions meant that RSF was the only NGO to monitor the full proceedings. We have not experienced such barriers, which effectively violate the principles of open justice and the right to a fair trial, in any case we have monitored in any other country. But these difficulties are nothing compared with the violations Assange has faced directly, including the fact that he has not been allowed to attend court hearings in person since 6 January 2021 – the last time he was seen outside prison walls.

Prisons are always grim places, and high-security Belmarsh is no exception. It’s hard to describe how Assange himself is faring in this environment, which is a stark contrast to his previous life of freedom, or even to his years at the Ecuadorian embassy. Assange’s worrying state of mental health, and his risk of suicide, have been well-documented in the medical evidence presented to court. But he is still very much involved in his case and fighting for his future. These visits allowed us to discuss and evaluate Assange’s situation with him, and RSF’s interventions led to him finally being permitted a typewriter, which he had been requesting for three years. On our last visit in January, he was clearly unwell and in pain, with a broken rib due to excessive coughing from a respiratory illness. It is a bleak and unjust situation, but it’s also clear how much worse the conditions of extradition and long-term detention in the US would be, which he may not survive.

Of course, Assange should not be in prison anywhere – not in the UK, nor the US, nor Australia, as was suggested to the UK court by the US authorities. No one, anywhere, should be targeted for publishing information in the public interest. Assange should be immediately released – perhaps through a political solution if not the courts, given the political nature of the case against him. The possibility of extradition is dangerously close. From 20 to 21 February, a panel of two high court judges will consider Assange’s final application to appeal against the order for his extradition. Any grounds that are rejected this time cannot be further appealed against, leaving the European court of human rights as his only further recourse.

In the meantime, Assange is in a high-security prison nearly 4,000 miles from the epicentre of the case, reading through a pile of books in his cell, finally typing some letters, and chatting with the few visitors who manage to navigate the myriad obstacles to get in. He has referred to his possible extradition as “Day P” – the day he might be put on a plane. It remains to be seen whether the British judiciary will deliver some form of justice at this late stage by preventing extradition, or whether the UK will become the country that enables a historically damning blow to press freedom, and the right of all of us to know.

Read more …

“60% of the world is going to the polls in 2024 to vote for a new government. You might as well throw them into a tumbler, shake well and see what comes out.”

• 2024: The Year from Political Hell – Martin Armstrong (USAW)

Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong is predicting political turmoil, civilian unrest, war and a big economic downturn in 2024 in a new report called “The Year from Political Hell.” It’s not just a US election year, but it is an election year for more than half of the world. This is a global phenomenon which no one can be sure of the outcome. Armstrong explains, “This is not just the United States election. This is what you hear on the news locally. However, step outside this country, and, for example, Indonesia just voted in a leftist government. You have the EU going for elections. You have on May 2nd all the local elections in Britain. You have Russian elections on May 7th. 60% of the world is going to the polls in 2024 to vote for a new government. You might as well throw them into a tumbler, shake well and see what comes out. I mean it’s all over the place.”

On the war front, get ready for more mass killing, and don’t be surprised if it goes nuclear. Armstrong predicts, “There will be nuclear weapons. The neocons keep telling people on Capitol Hill that Russia would never use a nuke because they know we would use them back. That is nonsense! If you are about ready to conquer somebody, and this is all they’ve got left, they are pushing the button. . . . These people, all they want is war. They don’t care. They really do not care. They don’t care about the economy. They don’t care about anything.”

Armstrong says the coming war will make the economy “crash in 2024” as people get scared, spend a lot less and save a lot more. Armstrong says, “What we are looking at is a contraction in spending because of uncertainty. This is what these neocons are creating, and they don’t want to listen to anybody, and it is just their agenda, and they don’t care what happens to the country. . . .We are looking for a contraction of 12% to 18%. GDP is not going to be rising, but you are going to find inflation still rising.” Armstrong also says to look for “a rebellion in government debt” as people lose faith in governments around the world. This rebellion in government issued debt will include US Treasuries, according to Armstrong. This means interest rates will continue to trend upward and not downward.

On volatility in the markets, Armstrong predicts, “Look for volatility to start around July, and there may be some false flags too.” Armstrong continues to say Trump is still looking like he can “win in a landslide in 2024,” but expect the Deep State to pull every dirty trick in the book to keep him out of office. Armstrong points out, “If Trump gets back in power, they are all fired. . . . They know they are losing power. Instead of reforming and doing the right thing, they clamp down and they think they can retain power by pressing us even more. Sorry, but that’s what creates revolution.” In closing, Armstrong says, “Pretty much everything is going wrong for the Deep State. . . . confidence in government has collapsed everywhere.” This is what makes the Deep State Dems, RINOs and Neocons very dangerous. By the way, Armstrong says he would be a buyer of physical gold to hold as a core asset.

Read more …

“From the Woke perspective, which has risen to the ascendancy in the intellectual outlook in the West, all normal people are undesirables..”

• The Genocide of the West (Paul Craig Roberts)

Are NGOs another example of liberal goody two shoes good intentions going wrong, or are they an organized plot against white countries? Whatever the answer, NGOs have certainly done enormous harm to white countries. After many years of negligence, Putin finally partially cracked down on Western-financed NGOs that were organizing disruptive events in Russia and creating the image of Putin as a dictator. Putin’s government required foreign-financed NGOs to register as foreign agents. Documented reports from independent journalists have established that NGOs are spearheading the immigrant-invaders who are overrunning the United States. As I recently reported, NGOs are actually recruiting “people of color” into the ranks of immigrant-invaders, providing them with transportation, money, and maps of the pathways to the US border that are supplied with accommodation, food, and health care.

One of the most important NGOs underwriting the immigrant-invaders seems to be the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), of which the current director of the US Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, himself a Jew, was a board member until December 2020. According to an article on substack, HIAS has received $100,000,000 from the US government in the past three years. If this is true, then the Biden regime is underwriting the immigrant invasion with US taxpayers’ money. The long-term, ongoing invasion of the EU and UK has benefited enormously from NGOs, especially from the moral support the NGOs provide for the invasion and for their work in conditioning Europeans to accept immigrant-invaders as the moral thing to do. You might remember the reports of the German women whose reward for welcoming the immigrant-invaders was to be raped by them. When the women complained of being raped, they were branded “racists.”

The story is the same in Sweden and Norway. NGOs are largely a post-1990 phenomena. Recently there have been reports of the impact of foreign-funded NGOs in diversifying Ireland’s population and transforming its culture in Woke directions that elevate the legitimization of sexual perversion above Christian morality. US billionaire Chuck Feeney has underwritten pro-immigrant-invader NGOs in Ireland. In Ireland NGOs have been successful in bringing abortion in under the cover of human rights. Other NGOs focus on legitimizing sexual perversion, such as Lesbians In Cork. In other words, the NGOs serve as weapons with which to revolutionize society and to replace natural life with Woke ideology and its amoral and immoral values.

Every Western country is being watered-down with diverse elements that destroy the unity of the country, turn it into a tower of babel, replace sexual and Christian morality with legitimization of sin, and transform traditional citizens into undesirables, arrogantly rejecting the majority as Hillary Clinton did Trump voters when she branded them “Trump deplorables.” From the Woke perspective, which has risen to the ascendancy in the intellectual outlook in the West, all normal people are undesirables. Consequently large numbers of NGOs have been, and are being, created, and huge sums are being funneled into them to take our culture away from us. No one is funding a countervailing effort. Indeed “our” governments provide matching funds for the NGOs. This is what I mean when I speak of the genocide of the West.

Read more …

“..this lawless, Israeli government-indentured Congress which refuses even to demand a ceasefire..”

• Biden & Blinken – Rule of Illegal Power Over Rule of Law (Ralph Nader)

Among the puzzling questions that the media chooses to ignore is asking high government officials why they are exercising the illegal use of power that violates the rule of law which they are required to obey. This week, the Veterans for Peace (VFP) made it very easy for reporters to pose questions by sending an open letter (See veteransforpeace.org) to the Inspector General of the U.S. State Department and Antony Blinken, Secretary of State, invoking several U.S. statutes that require the “termination of provision of military weapons and munitions to Israel.” Josh Paul, a former senior official in the State Department’s office charged with reviewing weapon transfers to foreign countries, said: “The Secretary and all relevant officials under his purview should take this letter from Veterans for Peace with the utmost seriousness. It is a stark reminder of the importance of abiding by the laws and policies that relate to arms transfers.”

What laws are being violated by the State Department daily as it approves ships and cargo planes full of weapons of mass destruction to be used in Israel’s war crimes and genocide against hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s civilians, mostly children and women? These are the laws highlighted in the VFP letter:
• The Foreign Assistance Act, which forbids the provision of assistance to a government which “engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”
• Arms Export Control Act, which says countries that receive US military aid can only use weapons for legitimate self-defense and internal security. Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza goes way beyond self-defense and internal security.
• The U.S. War Crimes Act, which forbids grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, including wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and unlawful deportation or transfer, perpetrated by the Israeli Occupying Forces.
• The Leahy Law, which prohibits the U.S. Government from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights.
• The Genocide Convention Implementation Act, which was enacted to implement U.S. obligations under the Genocide Convention, provides for criminal penalties for individuals who commit or incite others to commit genocide

Under these laws, the State Department has a “Conventional Arms Transfer Policy” which, the letter notes, “prohibit [U.S. weapons transfers when it’s likely they] will be used by Israel to commit … genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, [including attacks intentionally directed against civilian objects or civilians protected] or other serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights laws.” The VFP letter continues, “Dozens of authoritative complaints and referrals made by hospital administrators in Gaza, as well as by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Palestine Authority, South Africa, Turkey, Medicins san Frontieres, UNRWA, UNICEF, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the Norwegian Refugee Council and the World Food Programme have confirmed that there is an ongoing human rights and humanitarian disaster due to Israel’s cutoff of water and electricity, deliberate destruction of sewage infrastructure and delaying of aid shipments by Israeli forces.”

If you are wondering why these laws are not being enforced – the answer is that individual citizens or groups of citizens do not have any “legal standing” to sue Secretary Blinken, according to the U.S. Supreme Court. Only a Committee of Congress, backed by a Senate or House Resolution, can take the State Department to federal court. That action to enforce Congressionally passed and enacted laws is not likely to happen in this lawless, Israeli government-indentured Congress which refuses even to demand a ceasefire. Mike Ferner, VFP National Director, observed “Just as any good soldiers can recognize when they are given an unlawful order, we believe some State Department staff are horrified at the orders they’re given and will decide to uphold the law, find the courage to speak out and demand an end to the carnage.”

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“..journalists are persistently interested in the topic of a ‘potential war with Russia’ because they see it as a good selling point to their readers..”

• Western Europe Could Become The New Ukraine (Bordachev)

A side effect of the tragic Ukrainian problem for Russian foreign policy is that it helps us to understand the degree of economic and moral decay that our other Western neighbors would have to reach in order to pose a threat to our security. It is these two factors – impoverishment and spiritual decline – that create a critical mass necessary for an adventurer to drag his country into a destructive conflict. So far, as public opinion polls show, the citizens of Western European countries do not see any potential for aggressive behavior towards Russia. Despite the fact that some NATO military leaders and even politicians have suddenly started talking about the possibility of a military conflict, the inhabitants of its member states in Europe do not perceive Russia as a threat at all. Therefore, they have no feelings of aggression towards us. However, this state of affairs could change, and the most important thing is not the geopolitical situation, but the internal situation of our neighbors to the West.

The military-political conflict between Russia and NATO over Ukraine has been accompanied by hostile rhetoric in the media and political circles of Western countries that is unprecedented by the standards of recent decades. We can see how this goes through stages. It is not difficult to see the distribution of roles among the various representatives of Russia’s adversaries in Europe and North America. Now, for example, representatives of military structures are the most active. Literally every week, the Russian media discusses another statement by a British, Danish, or Dutch commander on the alleged inevitability or high probability of an armed conflict between Russia and NATO within a few years. With the same frequency, new NATO ‘secret plans’ for war with Russia are leaked to the Western European media. As a rule, they are poorly adapted to the mass-reader scenarios of yet another hypothetical exercise. The question inevitably arises – should we take all this at face value? So far, there seems to be a certain cunning in such statements.

Especially since the main organizers of the Ukraine crisis – the Americans – prefer to remain silent on the matter and are not throwing around theories about the likelihood of a direct armed conflict with Russia. The situation is fundamentally different for Washington’s European allies. First of all, Western European military and political leaders act with no formal accountability for their words. Since all security and defense decisions within NATO are made by the US, any general or politician in Europe can say whatever he wants; his words mean absolutely nothing in practice – especially since military spending is in the hands of the civilian authorities, and they are in no hurry to spend money on military exercises. Secondly, it is clear to Western European military leaders that politicians are in no hurry to fulfil the promises they made in the early stages of the conflict. As early as March 2022, for example, the German chancellor loudly proclaimed a U-turn in Berlin’s defense policy, an increase in real spending on armaments, and a build-up of military forces.

So far, nothing has been done, and the state of the German economy is not conducive to new spending that goes beyond supporting the welfare of citizens and the corporate sector. Thirdly, journalists are persistently interested in the topic of a ‘potential war with Russia’ because they see it as a good selling point to their readers. And the generals have to answer direct questions that European men in uniform, due to their lack of intellectual flexibility, cannot delicately avoid. And generally speaking, their job is to prepare for war, even if they know they will never have to fight it. Civilian heads of military departments also fall for this bait. A few days ago, for example, journalists had to literally torture the bellicose meaning out of an interview with Poland’s new defense minister.

It should be noted that officials directly involved in US military planning, as well as representatives of Eastern European countries, are more circumspect in their statements. Even officials and military officers from the former Baltic republics of the USSR have not yet issued statements of comparable alarm to their counterparts in Western Europe. Nor does NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg speak of a direct armed conflict as a foreseeable probability. American restraint and better coordination between the US and those which directly represent its interests in Europe are probably at work here. Of course, German, Swedish, Dutch, and Danish generals cannot count on the same quality of communication with Washington that Warsaw has. And the Americans themselves, to their credit, are rather cautious when it comes to strategic issues – despite their adventurism and constant desire to test Russia’s patience ‘on the ground’.

The assessments of European generals and officials are even more contradictory when compared with the opinions of their populations. The Bundeswehr general’s comments on the likelihood of war with Russia were published alongside the results of an opinion poll showing that 71% of Germans do not consider Russia a military threat. The annual Munich Security Conference, the West’s main ‘production meeting’ on its relations with the rest of humanity, has produced a report devoted in part to Western Europeans’ attitudes to various threats. Observers have already noted that Russia has fallen to ninth place on the list of ‘threats’ this year. Clearly, the Western European populace no longer feels that Russia threatens them in any way. More importantly, they have no reason to be aggressive towards Russia themselves.

The real causes of major armed conflicts such as world wars are always linked to socio-economic factors. For the naturally cautious German nation to become a bunch of cannibals, it first had to sink into the economic misery and moral oppression of the 1920s. Before that, demographic growth and the unresolved social problems of industrialization created the necessary mass of people willing to kill and die on the fields of the First World War.

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“For them [the West], this is an improvement in their tactical position. While for us it is fate, it is a matter of life and death,..

• Everything Happening in Ukraine Matter of Life, Death for Russia – Putin (Sp.)

Everything that is happening in the Ukrainian direction is a matter of life and death for Russia, it is the fate of the country, whereas for the West it is only a matter of their tactical position, Russian President Vladimir Putin said. “I think that for ourselves, and even more so for listeners and viewers abroad, it is important to understand the course of our thoughts, to understand our condition, to understand how sensitive and important this is for our country — everything that is happening in the Ukrainian direction. For them [the West], this is an improvement in their tactical position. While for us it is fate, it is a matter of life and death,” Putin said, commenting on the historical part of his recent interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson. Last week, Putin sat down for an interview with Carlson, discussing the Ukraine conflict, the Nord Stream sabotage, Russia-NATO relations, artificial intelligence, and other topics. The interview has attracted huge interest around the world. The video has been viewed 202 million times on X. On YouTube, the video has been viewed over 17.4 million times.

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“..other EU member-states should follow suit..”

• Denmark Will Give All Its Artillery To Ukraine – PM (RT)

Denmark will transfer all of its artillery to Ukraine, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said during a panel debate at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday. According to her, despite production issues, Copenhagen and the EU in general have enough arms stockpiled to supply the country with the necessary weaponry. Kiev has increasingly complained of personnel and ammunition shortages on the front lines, appealing to its Western supporters for more financing and arms. However, Brussels is yet to finalize its next aid package, while the EU’s earlier pledge to provide Ukraine with one million artillery rounds by March this year has not been met. “If you ask Ukrainians – they are asking us for ammunition now, artillery now.

From the Danish side, we decided to donate our entire artillery to Ukraine,” Frederiksen stated, adding that other EU member-states should follow suit. “I am sorry to say, friends, but there is still ammunition in stock in Europe. This is not only a question about production because we have weapons, we have ammunition, we have air defense, that we don’t have to use ourselves at the moment, that we should deliver to Ukraine,” she said. Frederiksen noted that it would be ineffective to wait for the US aid package to come through to make decisions on supplies to Ukraine. US lawmakers failed to approve additional funding of around $60 billion for Kiev before going on winter break, and are expected to resume discussions on the package on February 28.

“We have to speed up and scale up, no matter what will happen in the US. We as Europeans need to be able to protect ourselves, and to protect ourselves we need to deliver what is needed in Ukraine now. The responsibility for Europe has to be in Europe and we have to do more,” she stated. Denmark is among the major suppliers of weapons to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. It also spearheaded an effort to help Ukraine procure F-16 fighter jets and train its pilots to fly the warplanes last year, and is a member of the so-called ‘drone coalition’, a recently-formed group of countries that has pledged to give Kiev one million drones to fight Russia.

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“..on Russia 1, the country’s most popular TV channel.”

• Biden Offered Prime Time Russian TV Slot (Sp.)

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin sat down for an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson to discuss the Ukraine conflict, the Nord Stream sabotage, Russia-NATO relations, artificial intelligence and other topics. Dmitry Kiselev, general director of the Rossiya Segodnya media group — Sputnik’s parent company — said he had sent a request to the White House for an interview with US President Joe Biden. “We believe that our countries lack the ability to listen and hear each other, and we believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin has set a worthy example by agreeing to an interview aimed at the American viewer,” the letter said. “The interview is planned to be conducted by me, Dmitry Kiselev, CEO of the Rossiya Segodnya Media Group and host of the highest-rated Sunday news and analysis program Vesti Nedeli on Russia 1, the country’s most popular TV channel.”

If it goes ahead, the interview would be translated into foreign languages and distributed on Sputnik’s Telegram channel, the ria.ru website, and numerous media platforms and social networks of the media group in Russia and around the world “In general, in a good way, US President Biden must respond to all this. The best and most spectacular option for the White House would be a mirror interview with a Russian journalist. As we have a saying, waiting for an answer, like the nightingale of summer,” Kiselev said in his program.

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“Does the Kremlin comprehend that its de-nazification agenda cannot be limited to Ukraine but must be applied to the entirety of the Western world?”

• French “Democracy” Establishes Medical Tyranny (Paul Craig Roberts)

Professor Michel Chossudovsky, director of Global Research, has examined the new French law that defines dissent from official medical narratives as a “sectarian aberration” and criminalizes dissent from medical narratives, such as “the mRNA vaccine is safe and effective.” The law also creates a new crime called “provocation to abstention from medical care.” A French citizen is guilty of a crime if the person refuses a vaccine or medical treatment handed down by authorities. Had the law been in place during the mass vaccination campaign with the deadly mRNA “vaccine,” all who refused would have received three years imprisonment and paid a 45,000 euro fine. This ensures that next time everyone will receive the “vaccine,” because if you refuse you will be imprisoned and the prison rules will require you to be “vaccinated.”

The new law also protects the pharmaceutical corporations from any accountability for the deaths and health damage their lies caused by criminalizing French citizens–including doctors and medical scientists–who speak against the Covid-19 “vaccines.” This demonstrates the power of Big Pharma over democracy, which with this death blow given to free speech and medical fact no longer exists in France. This is a very serious development. It is an official act by an alleged “Western democracy” that criminalizes truth. For example, French medical scientists who find that the mRNA “vaccines” result in death and health injury will be imprisoned if they report their findings. The new French law takes the determination of medical fact out of the hands of medical scientists. The “fact” henceforth is whatever Big Pharma’s paid shills among politicians and medical “authorities” say it is.

Something similar has occurred in Germany. The distinguished German attorney Reiner Fuellmich was about to file a lawsuit supported by thousands of medical doctors and attorneys against the mRNA manufacturers when he was kidnapped by the German state and imprisoned in Germany where he is currently standing trial on trumped up charges brought by what appears to be paid “witnesses.” This is not the way democracies operate. As I have written on many occasions, Western countries have ceased to be democracies. The people have no voice. The countries are governed by the agendas of the elites and powerful corporations with the money to purchase the laws that serve their agendas and interests. The people who run for office are the people approved by these elites. Trump was the exception, and look at what has happened to him. The ruling elite have made their point: “Cross us and we will destroy you.”

Western governments serve at the expense of the people the material interests of the powerful and ideologies such as the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset.” Dutch and Irish governments are dispossessing under the rubric of “global warming” farmers of their flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, thereby driving up food prices by curtailing the supplies of meat, milk, butter, and cheese, while simultaneously allowing entry to hordes of immigrant-invaders whose support the people are forced to undertake. Today a “Western democracy” is an institution that forces citizens to support interests that are not their own. We are now witnessing, with the new French law, with the German government’s kidnapping of Reiner Fuellmich, with the American persecution of medical scientists who truthfully reported the mRNA danger, the Stalinist indictments of President Trump, and with media that no longer serve as watchdogs over the government but as propaganda ministries for government lies, the legalization and institutionalization of the tyranny that has displaced democracy in the Western world.

A large percentage of Western peoples are so indoctrinated and brainwashed that they do not see what is happening. Moreover, Western countries having been turned into towers of babel means there is no social unity, which makes it impossible to oppose the tyranny as some of the diverse elements see tyranny useful in suppressing political and ideological opponents. In the US the Democrats’ policy of wide-open borders for “people of color” but not for whites is dispossessing Americans of their own country. Despite public opposition to the policy, it has moved into high gear with, according to official numbers, entry each year of immigrant-invaders in numbers equivalent to 12 cities the size of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There is no doubt whatsoever that the goal is to replace the white American population who are powerless to do anything about it. Meanwhile the Western governments foment wars with Russia, China, and Iran and expect the demoralized citizens they are dispossessing to supply the army. Does the Kremlin comprehend that its de-nazification agenda cannot be limited to Ukraine but must be applied to the entirety of the Western world?

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She’s addicted to power.

• Von der Leyen Wants Second EU Term – Bild (RT)

Ursula von der Leyen will formally announce her candidacy for a second term as president of the European Commission on Monday, German tabloid Bild has reported. Von der Leyen has already hinted that she seeks a second term, promising on Saturday to appoint a dedicated “defense commissioner” if she holds on to her office. To secure a second term, von der Leyen will first have to be nominated by her faction in the European Parliament, the centrist European People’s Party (EPP). Speaking to Reuters last month, EPP lawmaker Daniel Caspary said the party would nominate von der Leyen at a congress in March, “if that’s what she wants.” Should the EPP emerge as the largest party in June’s European elections, which it is projected to do, von der Leyen’s candidacy would then be put before the European Council.

From there, a majority vote by the council’s 27 members followed by the parliament’s final approval would see the German installed for another five-year term at the helm of the commission. Opponents of von der Leyen, chief among them Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, will have few opportunities to stymie her nomination. Despite the fact that Hungary will hold the council’s rotating presidency after the elections, no one member state can veto a majority vote in her favor. Additionally, the EPP is a big-tent organization of centrist and center-right parties, meaning potential dissenters like Italy’s Forza Italia will be easily overruled by von der Leyen’s Christian Democrats and their allies. Von der Leyen has already strongly suggested that she will seek a second term. “If I would be the president of the next European Commission, I would have a commissioner for defense,” she said at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, without spelling out what this commissioner’s responsibilities would be.

Since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine began, von der Leyen has positioned herself as one of Kiev’s most ardent Western backers. She has authorized 12 packages of sanctions on Russia, overseen the dramatic expansion of the so-called ‘European Peace Facility’ – a €12 billion ($12.9 billion) fund used to funnel weapons to Ukraine – and hurried Ukraine’s bid for EU membership through the normally drawn-out application process. So antagonistic is her relationship to Moscow that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reportedly forbade US President Joe Biden last year from endorsing her bid to succeed Jens Stoltenberg as secretary-general of NATO. According to Germany’s Welt newspaper, Scholz felt that von der Leyen’s hardline anti-Russian stance “could prove to be a disadvantage in the long term.” Von der Leyen will return to Berlin from Munich on Sunday, and is expected to announce her candidacy after a discussion with her fellow Christian Democrats on Monday, Bild reported.

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“..last thing we need right now is elections.”

• Netanyahu To Be Ousted – Israel Media (RT)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not be able to retain power after the country’s military has concluded its operation against Hamas in Gaza, Ynet media outlet has claimed, citing anonymous sources within his Likud party. Amid mounting calls for early elections, the Israeli leader insisted on Saturday that now is “not the time for politics,” suggesting that the next vote will take place “in a few years.” Multiple opinion polls have demonstrated that Netanyahu’s approval ratings and those of his Likud party have been on the decline since Hamas militants conducted their deadly surprise incursion into Israeli territory on October 7, 2023. Back in December, the Israel Democracy Institute, citing survey results, claimed that more than two-thirds of Israelis want general elections to be held as soon as hostilities in Gaza are over.

A survey conducted earlier this month showed that opposition parties would secure as many as 75 of the Israeli parliament’s 120 seats if elections were held now.In its report on Saturday, Ynet quoted an unnamed senior member of Likud as predicting that “whoever was prime minister on October 7 will finish his post at the end of the war.”Another staffer from Netanyahu’s party allegedly contended that no matter “how much Netanyahu postpones the end and how much he doesn’t want to, at the end of this war we will go to elections.” According to the media outlet, the anonymous Likud bigwig added that the prime minister would be forced to call a snap election either by members of his own political force or by other parties making up the ruling coalition, with everyone understanding that “this is what’s going to happen.”

Speaking at a press conference on Saturday, Netanyahu dismissed calls for a snap election, insisting that a vote for the Knesset should take place as scheduled, that is, in October 2026. “I suggest we don’t concern ourselves with that during the war,” the prime minister said, arguing that the “last thing we need right now is elections.” Netanyahu warned that internal political division in Israel would play into the hands of Hamas. The opposition Yesh Atid party released a statement describing the prime minister’s comments as “another performance by an unfit prime minister who, by all accounts, has long lost the public’s trust and continues to flee from the responsibility of the greatest failure to the Jewish people since the Holocaust.” “Israel needs change. Elections are the order of the day,” the party argued.

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“..a week of hearings on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of Palestine..”

• ICJ to Examine 57 Years of Israeli Occupation of Palestine (Wilkins)

More than 50 countries are set to participate in next week’s hearings at the International Court of Justice focusing on Israel’s illegal 57-year occupation of Palestine, a forum that follows the Hague tribunal’s finding last month that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide in occupied Gaza. The ICJ—also known as the World Court—will hold a week of hearings on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, which dates to the Israeli conquest of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, Syrian Golan Heights, and Egyptian Sinai Peninsula during the 1967 Six-Day War. “The International Court of Justice is set for the first time to broadly consider the legal consequences of Israel’s nearly six-decades-long occupation and mistreatment of the Palestinian people,” Human Rights Watch senior legal adviser Clive Baldwin said in a statement.

“Governments that are presenting their arguments to the court should seize these landmark hearings to highlight the grave abuses Israeli authorities are committing against Palestinians, including the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.” The West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights remain under Israeli military occupation six decades after their conquest. The United Nations—to which the ICJ belongs—and many international NGOs contend that, despite removing its troops and settlers from Gaza two decades ago, Israel continues to occupy Gaza by controlling the besieged enclave’s airspace, territorial waters, and the entry and exit of people and goods. Since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have killed or wounded more than 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza while forcibly displacing around 90% of the population. Numerous Israeli leaders have called for the renewed physical occupation, Jewish resettlement, and ethnic cleansing of the strip.

During the current assault on Gaza, occupation forces have also killed at least 388 Palestinians, including 99 children, in the West Bank, according to U.N. human rights officials. Israeli settlers have for decades been steadily colonizing the occupied territories under the protection of the IDF, while ethnically cleansing Palestinians whose lands and homes they steal. Next week’s hearings come on the heels of the ICJ’s provisional ruling last month in a case led by South Africa—which will be the first nation after Palestine to present at next week’s hearing—that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide in Gaza. The tribunal ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to adhere to its obligations under Article II of the Genocide Convention.

Earlier this week, South Africa urgently appealed to the ICJ to act amid the looming threat of an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah. More than 1.5 million Palestinians, most of them refugees ordered to flee to the south of Gaza by invading Israeli forces, are crammed into what is now one of the world’s most densely populated places. On Friday, the ICJ declined to take any additional action against Israel, while reiterating that the “perilous situation” in Rafah “demands immediate and effective implementation of the provisional measures indicated by the court” in last month’s ruling.

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“..including the threat from Morris to sue me for defamation if I continued to raise ethical concerns over his conduct..”

• Hunter’s Lawyers Balked at Kevin Morris Laptop Conspiracy Theories (Turley)

We have previously discussed the controversial representation of Kevin Morris of Hunter Biden, including the threat from Morris to sue me for defamation if I continued to raise ethical concerns over his conduct. Now a report by the New York Times suggests that even Hunter’s other lawyers had concerns over Morris’s claims, particularly the fostering of a conspiracy theory to deny the authenticity of the infamous laptop of Hunter Biden. According to the New York Times, Kevin Morris “quietly pushed a complex theory under which the repair shop was a front and the information had been made public through a cast of characters including a psychiatrist who had treated Mr. Biden’s addiction using ketamine therapy and the Trump-allied operative Roger J. Stone Jr.” That is notable because many in the media picked up on the conspiracy theory despite ample evidence that the laptop was genuine.

Indeed, a similar theory was contained in the now debunked letter of former intelligence officials just before the election — a letter widely used in the media to effectively shutdown coverage. Some later admitted that they assumed the emails were genuine. The Washington Post’s Phillip Bump and others pushed the conspiracy theory. Indeed, in 2021, when media organizations were finally admitting that the laptop was authentic, Bump was still declaring that it was a “conspiracy theory.” Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Bump continued to suggest that “the laptop was seeded by Russian intelligence.” What is equally astonishing is that in 2023 the Post expressly stood by Bump’s reporting on the laptop and other debunked claims. The media report suggests that Chris Clark and Joshua Levy stopped working on the case as the false claims were being pushed. It is not clear if they support the reporting in the Times. Levy reportedly exited from representation in March 2023 after “unease and dissent” over the Hunter Biden legal team and its direction.

Clark withdrew shortly after he admitted that Hunter’s notorious 2017 WhatsApp text demanding money from a Chinese businessman was genuine. In the message, Hunter literally describes his father sitting next to him to drive home the threat, declaring “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled…I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight…I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.” Morris has increasingly appeared to be something of an enabler for Hunter, reinforcing a persecution complex while funding his lavish lifestyle. What is striking about the report is that the conspiracy theory is precisely the type of disinformation that the Biden Administration has alleged against critics to seek their censorship, throttling, and banning on social media.

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Dog turtle

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 5 2024

Feb 052024
 
 February 5, 2024  Posted by at 9:52 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  43 Responses »


Giovanni Battista Tiepolo Allegory of the Planets and Continents 1752

 

• Beijing Powerless As Chinese Stocks Crater (ZH)
• Brzezinski’s Barbaric Dream. A Broader War, “Spreading Towards Iran” (Stea)
• US Not Prepared for War Against Iran and ‘Axis of Resistance’ (Sp.)
• EU Needs An Enemy – Kremlin (RT)
• EU Gives Zelensky Life Support for Himself and His Regime. But .. (Jay)
• EU Citizens’ Taxes Going To Terrorists – Moscow (RT)
• Possible NATO Corps Deployment to Ukraine May Become ‘Suicide Mission’ (Sp.)
• What Powerful Force Prevents the US from Defending its Borders? (PCR)
• Shrinking Populations Fuel Divisive Politics (NYT)
• Facebook: Tool for State Censorship, Goldmine for US Intel (Sp.)
• Get The Zuck Out Of Here: 20 Years Later (RT)
• Novichok Public Inquiry Turns Into A Secret Farce Before It Begins (Helmer)
• E Jean Carroll Lawyer Says Trump Used Coded Version Of C-Word Against Her (G.)
• Musk Took Drugs With Tesla, SpaceX Execs – WSJ (RT)

 

 

Congresswoman Luna about the new bipartisan Senate bill:

 

 

Farmers

 

 

 

 

Weinstein Border

 

 

RFK Jr
https://twitter.com/i/status/1754107987000500379

RFK/Smith

 

 

Elon Musk: “In the “bet-you-didn’t-know” category,
Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas issued written guidance making it clear that:
1. Illegal presence alone is not grounds for deportation.
2. Criminal charges, convictions or gang membership alone are not enough for deportation.
You basically have to be a convicted axe murderer to be deported! That’s because every deportation is a lost vote.”

 

 

 

 

Not much to do with Trump’s promised new tariffs, I would think. This has been coming for a while.

Zerohedge thinks it’s serious though: “..every day that Beijing is just more talk and no action brings us closer to the world’s biggest and most violent social revolt seen in history…”

• Beijing Powerless As Chinese Stocks Crater (ZH)

The China Securities Regulatory Commission vowed on Sunday to prevent abnormal fluctuations, saying it would guide more medium- and long-term funds into the market and crack down on illegal activities including malicious short selling and insider trading. The brief statement followed a sudden plunge of as much as 3.4% in the benchmark CSI 300 Index on Friday — and an outpouring of frustration on social media from individual investors just days before families across the country gather to celebrate the Lunar New Year. “The statement sought to stabilize investor sentiment, but didn’t touch on fundamental problems including a lack of confidence and huge economic uncertainty,” said Shen Meng, director at investment bank Chanson & Co. “Those issues are the causes of abnormal market fluctuation.”

While authorities have taken piecemeal steps to support the economy and markets in recent months and have discussed a potential stock stabilization fund, they’ve yet to announce any major moves to stop the selloff. Weak economic data, simmering geopolitical tensions with the US, a worsening property crisis and an opaque crackdown on the financial sector have all weighed on investor sentiment. As reported last week, China’s CSI 300 tumbled 6.3% in January, a record sixth straight month of losses. Shares then rallied briefly toward the end of the month after Bloomberg reported that authorities were seeking to mobilize about 2 trillion yuan ($278 billion) for a stabilization fund, but the market has since renewed its decline, reaching the lowest level since January 2019 as once again the Beijing trial baloon was just that, and nothing more. .

Meanwhile, the hail mary media bullshit and lies continued, and over the weekend, 21st Century Business Herald daily newspaper reported that authorities should set up a stabilization fund as soon as possible to boost market confidence, with an aim to get its size to 10 trillion yuan or more. Next up it will be 100 trillion in promises, then 1 quadrillion, only by then the SHCOMP will hit 0. Meanwhile, in a sign of how exasperated some investors have become, thousands flocked to a social media account of the US embassy in Beijing to vent their frustrations over the economy and slumping share prices. In the comment section of the embassy’s Weibo post on giraffe protection on Friday evening, some 53,000 users added remarks by Saturday evening, winning over 300,000 likes. China’s internet users often struggle to find a venue to air grievances about the economy or government performance, with official accounts of Chinese state agencies or media usually either disabling the comment function or only showing selected feedback.

In the end, the outcome is a clear one: either Beijing will watch powerless as 1 billion furious Chinamen start rioting in the streets as both the real estate and capital markets crater – and only then, after countless are dead, will it inject trillions into the economy, or someone in Beijing will come to their senses and do so before there is bloodshed… Not that that’s a viable solution of course: at best, that’s kicking the can by a few years, but in the grand scheme of things, can kicking is all the world has left. And now all eyes are now on China and every day that Beijing is just more talk and no action brings us closer to the world’s biggest and most violent social revolt seen in history.

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It was Brzezinski who invented the plot of a war between Ukraine and Russia.

• Brzezinski’s Barbaric Dream. A Broader War, “Spreading Towards Iran” (Stea)

In a recent interview, Paul Craig Roberts, former economic adviser (US Department of the Treasury) to the late President Ronald Reagan, outlined, with astonishing foresight, the trajectory that the current Middle East crisis may follow, and his insight is both brilliant and terrifying. To paraphrase Roberts’s analysis, the Israeli-Gaza conflict is merely the beginning of a widening conflict in the Middle East, spreading toward the neocon’s main target, Iran. Though Iran is extremely powerful now, the conflict will greatly weaken the country, making possible the West’s stealthy infiltration of jihadists into the Central Asian countries which border Iran and extend to both the Russian borders and, indeed the Chinese border, with Xinjiang, bordering Kazakhstan. Though Roberts does not mention China, the logic of his thesis would extend to China.

The purpose of these jihadists, infiltrated into countries neighboring Russia, with large Islamic populations which have, historically lived in peace with citizens of very diverse ethnic and religious identities, including Russian, Catholic, Jewish citizens, often intermarrying, will be, as Brzezinski planned. This purpose will be,[..] to incite violent, extremist religious separatist movements, destabilizing these peaceful Central Asian countries, fomenting “color revolutions” (as was tried, but failed in Kazakhstan recently), and engineering bloody putsch, in these countries, similar to the one incited in Ukraine in 2014 with the ensuing devastating wars. These infiltrated jihadists would spread and continue inciting violent separatist movements, next, within the Russian Federation itself, with Bashkortostan and Tartarstan on the Volga, with large Islamic populations, again, also hitherto living peacefully with other extremely diverse religious and ethnic citizens.

If successful in inciting separatist movements on the Volga, Russia could be isolated from the enormously rich resources in Siberia, and reduced in size to less than the area of France, and impoverished, accordingly. Though Russia may be aware of this lethal Western agenda, the militarization of the rabidly Russophobic Baltics, to the North, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and the recent accession of Finland and Sweden into Nato, with planned “Steadfast Defender 2024, including 31 NATO participants, will threaten Russia from the north and west, reducing its ability to protect itself from threats from destabilized Central Asian neighbors, and demanding that Russia fight for its survival on two fronts.

Although Brzezinski, in “The Grand Chessboard”, describes a partnership between Russia and China as a disaster to be avoided at all costs, NATO’s provocation of Russia has forced a war between Russia and Ukraine, which Brzezinski fiercely advocated in order to isolate Russia from Europe. Though the Russia-China friendship would appear to protect Russia from the aforementioned crisis, at least now, if the deadly agenda Paul Craig Roberts describes becomes a reality, the infiltration of jihadists would likely spread to China, which has, also, a large Islamic population, hitherto living peacefully with diverse citizenry.

However, as violent, externally engineered separatist movements have already occurred in Xinjiang, in the West of China, these could be exacerbated by further outside infiltration of jihadists, and could metastasize throughout China. Further, the eastern part of China could be existentially threatened by the new “Axis” of Japan, South Korea and the United States, menacing China’s survival, and again forcing China to divert its defenses from the West to the East, increasing its vulnerability, and diminishing its ability to assist Russia, amidst the rampant chaos created by the Brzezinski plan, and Washington’s current neocon agenda, world domination.

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“The United States, its assets across Iraq would be crushed. It would be overrun and by extension Syria as well and Lebanon. The world has changed. This is not just Iran, by the way. This is the whole of West Asia.”

• US Not Prepared for War Against Iran and ‘Axis of Resistance’ (Sp.)

US officials have reportedly signaled that plans have been approved for a series of strikes against targets in Iraq and Syria. That would be in response to a recent drone attack on US personnel in the Middle East — which claimed the lives of three soldiers and left 34 wounded. In the wake of the strike Bloomberg claimed the Biden administration was considering a covert strike on Iran or Iranian officials as possible options. But University of Tehran Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik that directly targeting Iran would be a major mistake and a major miscalculation by Washington. He suggested that scenario was very unlikely, given Iran’s missile defense and drone capabilities, as well as the vulnerability of US bases which are scattered across the Middle Eastern region.

“Let’s assume that the United States strikes Iran,” Marandi said. “The United States has bases all across the Persian Gulf. The Iranians will hit out at those bases, and then the Iranians will also punish those countries that host those bases.” The professor warned the fallout from the tit-for-tat attacks would send oil and gas prices “through the roof.” “The Red Sea would no longer be safe for oil and gas. The Western economies would collapse if there was a major escalation in our region,” Marandi underlined. “The United States, its assets across Iraq would be crushed. It would be overrun and by extension Syria as well and Lebanon. The world has changed. This is not just Iran, by the way. This is the whole of West Asia.” Given the latest US media reports, it appears far more plausible that the US would attack targets in Iraq and Syria, Marandi continued.

“[The US] will claim some sort of ‘victory over terrorists’ and that sort of nonsense which they usually say,” the professor said. “But it will be like in Yemen, they will have very little impact because the resistance to the US occupation, the illegal occupation in Iraq and Syria is very well hidden. Their assets are underground, they are spread out. And all the United States would do would be to make people angrier and make the resistance more popular, both at home and abroad. That’s exactly what we saw in Yemen.” Marandi noted that most recently instead of pushing the Israeli regime to end the slaughter in the Palestinian Gaza Strip, the US tried to facilitate the genocide by attacking Yemen. Since early January the US and its allies conducted a series of strikes against the Ansar Allah-led government in the Yemeni capital Sana’a, also known as the Houthis after their leader.

“They launched many missiles, wasted a lot of money, but they were incapable of changing the balance of power. And Yemen continues to easily strike ships. Why?” the professor asked. “Because all of their assets are underground. Their mobile radar is well-protected underground. Their missiles and drones are well protected underground. They come out, strike the target and go back underground. So the Americans failed in Yemen. They made ‘Ansar Allah,’ or what the West likes to call the Houthis, very popular across the region and across the world, and they’ll only do the same in Iraq and Syria.”

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Just like the US..

• EU Needs An Enemy – Kremlin (RT)

Recent statements by EU politicians about the possibility of a war with Russia serve their own domestic interests and distract the population from internal issues like tanking economies, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has suggested. At the same time, claims of an allegedly imminent conflict with Moscow also help to justify continued funding for Kiev, he said. On February 1 EU leaders signed off on a €50-billion ($54-billion) package of economic aid to Ukraine. This followed months of back-and-forth on the matter. “They [politicians in EU countries] need to continue to construct an image of the enemy, to do it in a textured, prominent way, in order to justify the increase in spending. And, you see, the allocation of 50 billion – on the one hand, for the EU this amount is not a very big deal, but on the other hand it is still noticeable against the backdrop of the crisis markers manifesting themselves in the economies of EU countries,” Peskov told journalist Pavel Zarubin on Sunday.

This effort to distract populations from domestic problems with talk about a purportedly looming conflict with Russia has been undertaken by multiple countries of the bloc, the spokesman pointed out. In particular, Germany has clearly taken such an approach to hide the internal issues it has been facing lately, he suggested. “Germany is an economic engine of the EU, and now whole sectors of the German economy are losing their attractiveness and competitiveness. And, of course, against this backdrop, it is best to divert attention by creating some kind of enemy and maintaining its image. And for this there is probably no one better than [Russia] in their opinion,” the spokesman explained.

In recent months, senior officials from various EU countries have been urging their citizenry to brace for an allegedly inevitable conflict with Russia, with governments redirecting funding towards their militaries. Berlin has actively taken such a route, adopting a new military and strategic doctrine late last year that aims for “war-ready” forces. At the time, Chancellor Olaf Scholz claimed the country needed “a long-term, permanent change of course,” with the goal of creating “a powerful Bundeswehr” actually able to fight in the war that has been flagged as imminent. Russia has repeatedly dismissed claims that it is somehow seeking to attack any EU or NATO countries, describing such allegations as “absurd.” Late last year, for instance, Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated that Moscow has “no interest… geopolitically, economically or militarily… in waging war against [the US-led NATO bloc].”

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“..They don’t actually believe there will be a war with Russia but it’s a great story to put out there which pays dividends…”

• EU Gives Zelensky Life Support for Himself and His Regime. But .. (Jay)

So by hook or by crook, the EU got its funding for Ukraine agreed. But before you get too excited, perhaps it’s worth pondering the amount. A pathetic 50bn euros spread over four years! Is this money really for Zelensky and his cabal to keep the war going though, or simply a massive bribe for him to pass most of it on, in order for him to stay in power? What is the West worried about with Zelensky leaving office too early, some astute analysts will no doubt ask. From a military perspective it would be too little too late and so it’s all destined for public services and what some EU apparatchiks are calling “keeping the lights on”. But EU leaders should be aware that a good part of this money – probably at least half of it – will go directly to Zelensky and his circle of close aides and ministers whose only job is to keep him in power.

As president, he has control over the budgets of the government ministries including the finance ministry and it would be absurd to assume that most of this money will not be diverted in a regime which redefines the scales of corruption and embezzlement. Even the CIA chief Bill Mad Dog Burns had to fly in recently to Kiev to tell Zelensky personally to “not steal too much” from the next bundle which the Biden administration is expected to sign off in the coming weeks, which is expected to be around 65 billion dollars in military aid. And so the Americans appear to be ready to continue to give the military kit, despite much of it, according to my own investigation is ending up on the black market in Libya, while the EU is happy to pay the bills of the government and salaries. The Atlantic Council sums it up thus:

“This agreement is also an important signal to Washington that Europe is stepping up and is with Ukraine for the long run. Coincidentally, debates over aid packages to Ukraine on both sides of the Atlantic unfolded at the same time last year in December and now”. “Europe missed an opportunity to better impact the U.S. debate then. The EU hit the mark this time, showing Washington that Europe is doing its part”. But doing what part exactly? The EU default position on Ukraine is to blindly follow the Biden administration and its fatalistic support of the Ukraine regime until the abyss approaches. Indeed, most of last year Biden could only repeat the mantra over and over again “whatever it takes” and the EU followed, with many member states devastated by the decision. Germany’s economy is looking like a basket case while folks in the UK pay sky-high utility bills which in most cases look like a zero has been incongruously added by mistake.

Most EU countries have no military stock left to defend themselves against any threat – which does tend to take away the credibility of the absurd narrative that Russia is about to invade at any moment. And the EU itself continues to borrow money that has to be paid back by the next generation of taxpayers long after corrupt elitists like Ursula von der Leyen have left office and only have their dirty vaccine deals to fund their retirement plan while Europe starves. There is much talk in Brussels and on member state level that more money needs to be found for the EU project and that it needs to develop its own defence policy, without using the words EU army. Even in Britain, the conservative party are preparing for war with Russia. Well, strictly speaking senior officials are preparing the media narrative. They don’t actually believe there will be a war with Russia but it’s a great story to put out there which pays dividends.

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When you bomb bakeries, yes…

This is what Ukraine will switch to: targeting civilians.

• EU Citizens’ Taxes Going To Terrorists – Moscow (RT)

The West is complicit in the Ukrainian military’s killing of civilians in Donbass, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has claimed. The diplomat was referring to a Ukrainian attack on a bakery in the city of Lisichansk, apparently involving weaponry provided by Kiev’s allies, which claimed the lives of at least 28 civilians. Following the attack, the acting head of the Lugansk People’s Republic, Leonid Pasechnik, accused the Ukrainian military of deliberately targeting the building on a weekend to maximize civilian casualties. In a post on his Telegram channel, he added that “emergency services have managed to rescue ten people from under the rubble,” with doctors doing their best to save their lives. In a statement on Saturday, Zakharova said that “according to preliminary information, the strike was conducted using Western weaponry.”

She described the shelling as a “terrorist attack” meant to convey Kiev’s “gratefulness for the ‘generous’ financial support by EU countries.” The foreign ministry spokeswoman added that the EU nations’ citizens should be cognizant of what their taxes are being spent on, namely “deadly weapons systems” used by the Ukrainian military to “kill civilians.” “We suggest that Parisians imagine how they go in the morning for a baguette, and Rome’s residents – to have a cup of coffee with cornetto – but instead of freshly-baked pastry return home with relatives wounded or killed by Ukrainian terrorists,” Zakharova charged. Echoing Pasechnik, the diplomat alleged that Kiev’s forces had been well aware that civilians, including families with children and the elderly, would typically flock to the bakery on Saturdays. She added that the building had been razed to the ground as a result of the shelling.

According to Zakharova, the deadly incident is “further proof of the criminal nature of the Kiev regime.” She went on to quote Russian President Vladimir Putin, who on Friday characterized the Ukrainian military as a “terrorist organization that attacks ambulances.” He was referring to several attacks on paramedics working in Donbass last month. The foreign ministry spokeswoman concluded by saying that Moscow will inform “international organizations of yet another terrorist attack on the part of Zelensky’s gang.” The official noted that Russia expects a swift and unequivocal condemnation of Kiev’s actions. Authorities in the LPR declared Sunday a day of mourning for the 28 victims of the attack on the bakery, which include one child. Pasechnik vowed that those responsible would eventually be brought to justice “for this horrible tragedy, for every death.”

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“..Russia has complete air dominance, escalatory dominance, logistical dominance, ammunition dominance..”

• Possible NATO Corps Deployment to Ukraine May Become ‘Suicide Mission’ (Sp.)

The UK has urged its NATO allies to consider sending the alliance’s expeditionary force to Ukraine, an informed source told Sputnik. According to the source, the alleged move came “in connection with the unfavorable developments in the Ukrainian theater of military operations for Kiev”. The insider added that Britain also called on NATO to consider imposing a no-fly zone over the territory controlled by the Zelensky regime and to increase military aid to Ukraine. ”The UK’s reported plans about deploying NATO’s expeditionary corps to Ukraine is “a fantastical delusion on the part of the Brits and has no foundation in reality,” retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official Larry Johnson told Sputnik. “But just because the Brits are insane does not mean Russia can ignore them. It is a serious proposal,” he added.

Johnson was partly echoed by Matthew Gordon-Banks, an international relations consultant, former member of Parliament and retired senior research fellow at the UK Defence Academy, who said he didn’t think the rumors of a NATO force in Ukraine should be taken seriously. “The suggestions I have heard are quite unrealistic at present,” Gordon-Banks stated. Asked to comment on the “unfavorable development of events” for Kiev on the battlefield, he emphasized that “things are collapsing in Kiev quite quickly”. “[Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky has not been able to fire his top general, and I think he is now very much a ‘lame duck’ president,” Gordon-Banks argued, referring to the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, Valery Zaluzhny.

The same tone was struck by Earl Rasmussen, a retired US Army lieutenant colonel turned geopolitical and military affairs consultant, who warned that if the information about London’s plans is true, and “if this is somebody’s dream, it could quickly become a nightmare for British and NATO forces.”But it is not a realistic solution or proposal. Russia has complete air dominance, escalatory dominance, logistical dominance, ammunition dominance. This would be catastrophic for any UK forces and definitely would show a symbol of direct NATO involvement, which could really be dangerous, as far as escalation goes,” Rasmussen emphasized, noting that “the British forces would probably be wiped out, fairly rapidly.” The US Army veteran suggested that someone in the UK military might be having “some type of delusional experience” for even suggesting such a scenario. “It’s a suicide mission for those troops. And it definitely would pull NATO into a much more dangerous situation and direct confrontation [with Russia],” Rasmussen concluded.

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“When the Western Roman Empire was overrun, Rome ceased to exist. How can it be any different for America?”

• What Powerful Force Prevents the US from Defending its Borders? (PCR)

Israel can evict Palestinians from the the Palestinians’ villages in Palestine. Tiny Latvia can deport Russian ethnics born in Latvia for not learning to speak Latvian, but mighty America cannot prevent millions of immigrant-invaders from illegally entering the US each year and remaining. How can this be? Clearly the US government is in a conspiracy with the NGOs that are recruiting and funding the invasion in order to replace the white American population. Why is the US government cooperating with anti-American NGOs to steal America from Americans? Why do Americans sit on their butts and permit their country to be stolen? Why do a majority of American women vote for the Democrats who are aiding and abetting the theft of America? When Washington speaks of “American national interests,” whose interests is meant?

The military/security complex’s interest? How does a tower of babel have a national interest? Why is it in America’s national interest to be overrun by invaders? Why is Washington worried about attack from Russia and China but not from the vastly larger army of the anti-American NGOs? Does the US military have any role other than protecting the profits of the military/security complex? How can the United States be a country when it has no borders? How can something as abnormal as a country without borders continue to exist? When the Western Roman Empire was overrun, Rome ceased to exist. How can it be any different for America? Why are voices that speak for American identity, such as VDARE, suppressed by American prosecutorial authorities?

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3rd day in a row that we’re talking about birth rates.

• Shrinking Populations Fuel Divisive Politics (NYT)

In the 2000 film “Almost Famous,” Cameron Crowe’s comedy-drama about rock musicians in the 1970s, the character played by Zooey Deschanel gives her younger brother some advice. “Listen to ‘Tommy’ with a candle burning, and you’ll see your whole future,” she says. I’m going to borrow that thought: Stare at the map accompanying this article with — or without — a candle burning, and you’ll see your whole future. The map shows how the number of working-age people around the world is forecast to change by 2050. Europe’s working-age population will shrink. So will that of Brazil, China, Chile, Japan and Russia, among others. And that change could have extremely negative consequences for those societies, without mitigation. “Working-age population” can sound technical and abstract. But these are the people who staff our offices and factories, work farms, treat the sick, care for the very old and the very young.

They are the ones who have children and raise them; who build new things and fix old ones. When that population shrinks, those activities become more difficult, more expensive and less frequent. The economy slows down. Fewer workers getting paid generates less tax revenue. As the population ages, more people rely on government social security programs to fund their retirements and health care, putting those vital programs further under strain. This is mostly a story about birthrates. As countries get richer, people have fewer children; and it turns out that once birthrates fall, it’s really hard to get them back up again. Although a number of countries have tried to boost fertility through tax breaks, cash bonuses and even awards for heroism given to women who bear many children, none of those programs have made more than a marginal difference.

But look at the map a little longer, and you see the phenomenon that has allowed a few wealthy countries to cushion the blow of demographic change: immigration. Australia, Canada and the United States have small green dots, denoting modest growth in their working-age populations. That’s largely because those countries take in relatively high numbers of immigrants, who not only bolster population numbers directly when they arrive, but also tend to have more children than the native-born population. In the United States, for instance, the modest increase in births since the 1970s was entirely driven by births to immigrant mothers. In Canada, immigration is the sole driver of population growth, according to government statistics.

Immigration, to be clear, can only ever be a partial solution to this demographic shift. To put the numbers in perspective, just to stay level by 2050, Europe would have to absorb about half of the entire working-age population growth in India, the world’s most populous country. China, facing an even bigger shortfall, could take all the growth of Pakistan and all that of Nigeria — Africa’s most populous country — and still be 2 million short of where it stands now. At the same time, this map strongly suggests that being able to attract and integrate large numbers of immigrants will be an important competitive advantage for countries in the coming decades. Doing so, however, will require overcoming political barriers that arise, partly, out of the same demographic shifts.

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Gretarded.

• Facebook: Tool for State Censorship, Goldmine for US Intel (Sp.)

As Americans, Europeans and others around the world signed up, logged on and voluntarily offered up private information that companies and intel agencies would have paid a fortune to get their hands on just a few short decades ago, powerful forces quickly realized the importance of collecting and engineering this new form of online human interaction. “It is clear that intelligence agencies throughout the world, not only the US, can use Facebook to their advantage,” Ryan Hartwig, Facebook contractor-turned whistleblower and co-author of ‘Behind the Mask of Facebook: A Whistleblower’s Shocking Story of Big Tech Bias and Censorship,’ told Sputnik in an interview. “The government launders their censorship through various NGOs and institutions on behalf of the US government,” Hartwig said, pointing, for example, to a 2021 report by the Stanford Internet Observatory entitled “Combating Information Manipulation: A Playbook for Elections and Beyond,” which plainly outlines tools the company uses to “remove the spread of malign information” from social media.

In his book, coauthored with attorney Kent Heckenlively, Hartwig documents how, while working as a content moderator for Facebook in the 2010s, he had witnessed the platform’s disturbing transformation after the 2016 US elections into a tool for systematically suppressing conservative viewpoints while elevating liberal ones, and cracking down on some forms of suspected hate speech while amplifying others. Of course, conservatives aren’t the only ones targeted by the social media giant’s censorship leviathan, with non-liberal left groups, critics of the US military-industrial complex, Big Pharma, Big Tech and other elite forces which run America and much of the world also falling victim. Documented instances of censorship by Facebook include the scrubbing of criticism of US and European immigration policy, climate policies, vaccines and vaccine mandates, criticisms of Facebook itself, and the vagaries of US foreign policy, with posts on these issues occasionally deleted outright, but more often hidden or deranked without users being informed using the platform’s complex, non-open source algorithm.

In 2022, Facebook rolled out a special carve-out of exceptions to its anti-hate speech rules to allow users to make explicitly Russophobic posts, issue death threats against Russian officials, use dehumanizing language to refer to Russian troops, and even offer praise for the neo-Nazi Azov** Regiment, despite the social media giant’s ban on content featuring Nazi and neo-Nazi ideology. “Facebook manipulates public opinion by suppressing unpopular opinions, or allowing newsworthy exceptions for the people they like,” Hartwig explained, noting this extends not just to big name issues, but even extremely minute details bordering on psychopathy. “For example, they made a specific rule to protect Greta Thunberg from being attacked or called ‘Gretarded’,” the former content moderator recalled, referring to the WEF-promoted climate activist. “Normally, public figures, even young individuals like Greta are allowed to be called retarded. Facebook made an exception to protect her,” Hartwig said.

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I heard a similar story last year about another company 🙂 : “The company’s headcount decreased by 22% year-over-year, following layoffs, indicating a strategic shift in its workforce.”

• Get The Zuck Out Of Here: 20 Years Later (RT)

As Facebook approached its adolescence and entered the realm of maturity, its impact on society became increasingly significant. The platform, once a college-focused social hub, had evolved into a global information-sharing powerhouse, shaping not only individual interactions but also influencing broader societal dynamics. Despite the controversies, Facebook’s financial triumphs were undeniable. Meta’s Q4 2023 earnings report showcased a strong rebound in its online ad business, with a 25% year-over-year increase in sales. The company’s expenses decreased, and its operating margin more than doubled, reflecting successful cost-cutting measures. Net income also saw a significant increase, reaching $14 billion.

In addition to the positive financial results, Meta announced its first-ever dividend payment and a $50 billion share buyback, signaling confidence in its financial standing. However, the financial success was not without challenges. Meta’s Reality Labs unit, responsible for virtual reality and augmented reality technologies, generated over $1 billion in sales but recorded a $4.65 billion loss, highlighting the risks associated with cutting-edge technologies. Looking ahead this year, Meta anticipates first-quarter sales in the range of $34.5-37 billion, with expenses in 2024 projected at $94-99 billion. The company’s headcount decreased by 22% year-over-year, following layoffs, indicating a strategic shift in its workforce.

Zuckerberg has trumpeted the role of artificial intelligence in the company’s growth trajectory, emphasizing continued investments in AI and computing infrastructure. However, he has also acknowledged the company’s commitment to maintaining a relatively lean workforce, balancing technological innovation with operational efficiency. The confluence of financial triumphs, persistent challenges, and controversies marked the pivotal phase in Facebook’s transformation into Meta. The rebranding aimed to thrust the company to the forefront of the metaverse. However, this strategic maneuver encountered skepticism and formidable challenges, notably in light of substantial losses associated with metaverse-related technologies.

During its adolescent years, Facebook endeavored to stay relevant among younger generations. By introducing features like ‘Reels’, it sought to emulate the success of competitors such as TikTok. Yet, these initiatives met with only limited success, as the platform’s user base continued to age, resulting in diminished engagement, particularly from Generation Z. The challenges extended beyond shifting demographics. Facebook’s reputation suffered amid data privacy controversies. Younger users, in particular, perceived the platform as less trustworthy, further impinging on engagement. In response, the company embarked on a broader identity shift.

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He can’t seem to decide if Skripal is alive or not. But certainly strange that we’ve never seen father nor daughter again.

• Novichok Public Inquiry Turns Into A Secret Farce Before It Begins (Helmer)

In a London courtroom on Friday, Lord Anthony Hughes, the retired judge whom the British government has appointed to run a public inquiry into the alleged Novichok poisonings of March and June 2018, collapsed into a farce of state secrecy. Not even the open hearings which are now scheduled to start later this year, on October 14, will in fact be open, Hughes told lawyers for the Home Office and for the family of Dawn Sturgess. This is because the police and the security services have told the judge they want a livestream default or broadcasting delay of at least fifteen minutes, possibly longer when “the police will decide if any disclosure at all will be made”, a government lawyer told the judge.Hughes announced: “I absolutely accept how difficult it is when you are batting in the dark…but it is a situation which has simply got to be coped with.”

Follow the archive on the official investigation of the cause of Dawn Sturgess’s death in June 2018, allegedly from a Novichok poison which Russian assassins left behind after they had attacked Sergei and Yulia Skripal the previous March. The Skripals have been assigned a lawyer, Adam Chapman, to represent them in the Hughes proceeding, but he wasn’t present in court on Friday. To date, Chapman hasn’t asked a question, made a written submission, or reported what the Skripals want to say about the Novichok affair. Chapman’s silence confirms that if the Skripals are still alive, they are being held by the British government incommunicado. Hughes has yet to rule on whether they will be called to testify as witnesses, and if so, whether their testimony will be given in open or secret session.

Hughes ran Friday’s hearing to just under 90 minutes. A switch of stream engineering companies and a failure by Paul Dunlay, the judge’s technician in charge of live-streaming, excluded reporters who had registered to hear the proceeding from their offices. Hughes’s spokesman apologized for the “confusion”. Dunlay said “we are not responsible for your IT systems security which may have blocked this auto response.” “My starting point,” Hughes claimed, “has always been that this is a public hearing and everything is in public unless there is a necessity for it not to be. But given the circumstances of this Inquiry – involving as it does the use of a chemical weapon on British soil – it will be of no surprise that there will inevitably be some material that will be CLOSED. Indeed that was the reason for the conversion of the original Inquest to a public Inquiry.”

Just how little will be open — and just how large “the necessity for it not to be” — were revealed in Friday’s hearing. Closed circuit television (CCTV) tapes from Salisbury and Amesbury which the police seized after the Skripal attack and the Sturgess death, and which have not been released to date, are to be allowed in evidence in the open hearing, but only, Judge Hughes has conceded, in the form of a “compilation”. What has been withheld will remain a state secret. A police report combining the Skripal incident in Salisbury of March 4, 2018, and the Sturgess incident in Amesbury four months later, on June 30, 2018, has been partially released to the Sturgess family’s lawyers, led by Michael Mansfield KC. But on Friday he told Hughes the evidential value of the report has already been compromised.

“There are 17 pages of redactions,” Mansfield said, “not all of them total pages, although the further you go into the report, starting at page, for example — it should be the same on yours, so that is page 53 onwards. There is nothing visible there, or the 20 succeeding pages. Altogether 17 pages in which, again, if we can just say, there must be questions arising there and in relation to the open and closed divide, it would be of great help if we did have a gist.” Mansfield went on to refer to a section he has read in the police report entitled “Target”. “I hope I am not exaggerating it, there are some pretty astonishing observations in this section alone and if what is said in this section alone about the target, there is and must be very much more material, or absence of material.”

Mansfield was intimating in public that the police report he has seen is missing the key elements of how the alleged Russian-made Novichok got into Dawn Sturgess’s hands and killed her, as well as the police account of how their searches of Sturgess’s house failed to detect the Novichok in a perfume bottle standing on the kitchen table until July 11, 2018 – eleven days after Sturgess had collapsed and been taken to Salisbury District Hospital, and after police reported their search of the house for suspected narcotics.


Dawn Sturgess, died between June 30 and July 8, 2018; Sergei Skripal, died in British custody at an unknown date after his last telephone call to Russia on June 19, 2019; Adam Chapman, the London lawyer appointed by the British government on March 25, 2022 — without evidence of Skripal consent.

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What am I supposed to make of this?

• E Jean Carroll Lawyer Says Trump Used Coded Version Of C-Word Against Her (G.)

E Jean Carroll’s attorney says Donald Trump used a coded expression to call her the C-word during a deposition before she helped the magazine columnist win an $83.3m verdict in her defamation case against the former president. Roberta Kaplan shared the anecdote during an appearance Friday on the George Conway Explains It All podcast, saying it happened while Trump was deposed at his Mar-a-Lago resort as part of an unrelated, since-dismissed case in which he faced accusations of collaborating with a fraudulent marketing company. As Kaplan told it, at the end of the questioning, Trump’s attorneys ensured the two sides were no longer on the record before he looked at her and remarked: “See you next Tuesday.” The phrase is well-known, thinly veiled code for perhaps the most offensive misogynistic insult that can be directed at a woman, combining words that sound like the first two letters of the slur – “C” and “U” – along with words that start with the letters “N” and “T”.

Kaplan told Conway that she initially didn’t understand the meaning of what Trump said because the opposing sides weren’t scheduled to meet that upcoming Tuesday. “I, thank God, had no idea what that meant, so I said to him, ‘What are you talking about? I’m coming back on Wednesday,’” Kaplan remarked. “Literally, it was an honest answer. I had no idea what he’s talking about.” Colleagues of Kaplan informed her what the former president had meant by saying “see you next Tuesday” once they were all in their car driving away from Trump’s property, she said. “That is a teenage boy-level joke,” the podcast co-host Sarah Longwell said. Kaplan replied: “Had I known, I for sure would have gotten angry … I looked like I was being above it all, which I wasn’t. I just did not know.”

Conway – a conservative attorney formerly married to Trump’s White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway – punctuated Kaplan’s recollections by saying: “So that’s just an amazing story.” According to Kaplan, Trump had also thrown a temper tantrum that day when his legal team offered to provide lunch to Kaplan and her associates. “There was a huge pile of documents, exhibits, sitting in front of him, and he took the pile and he just threw it across the table – and stormed out of the room,” Kaplan said. That claim about Trump throwing papers across a table in particular called to mind another anecdote produced by testimony to the congressional committee that investigated the Capitol attack staged by the ex-president’s supporters after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. A former White House aide testified that Trump angrily threw a plate of food at a wall in the White House – smearing it with ketchup – after his attorney general at the time publicly denied Trump’s lies that there had been voter fraud in the race won by Biden.

Friday’s remarks from Kaplan were also sure to open Trump to renewed criticism over his mistreatment of women. Conway went on CNN later Friday and said Trump was “a pig” for how he addressed Kaplan, according to the attorney. Kaplan represented Carroll in a separate legal matter that saw the former Elle magazine writer sue Trump on accusations that he sexually abused her in a department store changing room in the mid-1990s. Carroll’s lawsuit asserted that Trump then defamed her as he attacked her credibility.

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If and when you say about an outlet that takes itself very seriously that it “..is not fit to line a parrot cage for bird [poop emoji]..”, then you get this. Which sorta proves your point. And the rest will chime in, too.

• Musk Took Drugs With Tesla, SpaceX Execs – WSJ (RT)

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been taking illegal drugs for years, on many occasions alongside the board members and directors of his companies, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing sources who claimed to have either witnessed the drug use or had knowledge of it. According to the report, Musk has attended a number of social gatherings in recent years with Tesla board member Joe Gebbia, where he recreationally took ketamine, an anesthetic commonly used to euthanize house pets. Other directors, Antonio Gracias, Kimbal Musk and Steve Jurvetson, have reportedly consumed drugs like ecstasy and LSD with him at several parties, including those held at Hotel El Ganzo, a boutique hotel in Mexico allegedly known for its drug-fueled events.

According to several sources, some of the directors felt pressured to consume drugs with Musk either because refraining could upset the billionaire, or result in them “losing the social capital” of being in the CEO’s circle. Sources told the news outlet that Musk’s drug use was common knowledge among several current and former Tesla and SpaceX officials, and the volume of his consumption has become concerning in recent years. However, the companies’ boards haven’t investigated Musk’s alleged drug use nor documented any claims. On the one hand, the use of illegal substances violates antidrug policies at both firms, while on the other, official board minutes could become public, and if they mentioned Musk’s drug problems, it could put SpaceX’s federal contracts and Musk’s security clearance at risk, the report notes.

The WSJ already reported on Musk’s alleged illegal drug use last month, claiming that the CEO has a history of using drugs including cocaine, ecstasy, LSD and psychedelic mushrooms. In response to that news piece, Musk lashed out at WSJ on X, saying that the news outlet “is not fit to line a parrot cage for bird [poop emoji].” Musk noted that he regularly took random drug tests at SpaceX, which he never failed. This claim was backed by his lawyer, Alex Spiro.Later, Musk also tweeted: “If drugs actually helped improve my net productivity over time, I would definitely take them!”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1754340103873564988

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• FREEMAN DYSON Emeritus Professor, Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies (2009)


THERE IS NO GLOBAL WARMING, THERE IS ONLY REGIONAL WARMING (AND IT’S A GOOD THING!):

“The change that’s now going on is very strongly concentrated in the Arctic. In fact in three respects, it’s not global, which I think is very important. First of all, it is mainly in the Arctic. Secondly, it’s mainly in the winter rather than summer. And thirdly, it’s mainly in the night rather than at the daytime. In all three respects, the warming is happening where it is cold, not where it is hot. The people in Greenland love it. They tell you it’s made their lives a lot easier. They hope it continues. I am not saying none of these consequences are happening. I am just questioning whether they are harmful. There’s a lot made out of the people who died in heat waves. And there is no doubt that we have heat waves and people die. What they don’t say is actually five times as many people die of cold in winters as die of heat in summer. And it is also true that more of the warming happens in winter than in summer.

So, if anything, it’s heavily favorable as far as that goes. It certainly saves more lives in winter than it costs in summer.So that kind of argument is never made. And I see a systematic bias in the way things are reported. Anything that looks bad is reported, and anything that looks good is not reported.A lot of these things are not anything to do with human activities. Take the shrinking of glaciers, which certainly has been going on for 300 years and has been well documented. So it certainly wasn’t due to human activities, most of the time. There’s been a very strong warming, in fact, ever since the Little Ice Age, which was most intense in the 17th century. That certainly was not due to human activity.

And the most serious of almost all the problems is the rising sea level. But there again, we have no evidence that this is due to climate change. A good deal of evidence says it’s not. I mean, we know that that’s been going on for 12,000 years, and there’s very doubtful arguments as to what’s been happening in the last 50 years and (whether) human activities have been important. It’s not clear whether it’s been accelerating or not. But certainly, most of it is not due to human activities. So it would be a shame if we’ve made huge efforts to stop global warming and the sea continued to rise. That would be a tragedy. Sea level is a real problem, but we should be attacking it directly and not attacking the wrong problem.”

 

 

Leash
https://twitter.com/i/status/1754050063498682513

 

 

Honeybees

 

 

Belly rubs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1754116371951001767

 

 

 

 

Bucket sheep

 

 

Baby hippo
https://twitter.com/i/status/1754075250361290874

 

 

Doomsday fish

 

 

Fast car

 

 

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