WTC Archives - The Automatic Earth

Debt Rattle September 11 2023

Sep 112023

September 11, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:37 am Finance Tagged with: 9/11, Allende, Challenger 2, Chili, conscription, Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, WTC 37 Responses »

Edvard Munch Love and Pain (Vampire) 1893

• Ukraine, West’s Objectives No Longer Aligned, Russia No Longer A Threat (Exp.)

• 30 Fighting Days Left For Ukraine’s Offensive – US Army Chief (BBC)

• Ukraine’s Defeat Could Mean The End Of NATO In Its Current Form (Bowes)

• Lavrov at G20: Americans Want to ‘Strategically Defeat Russia’ (Sp.)

• West ‘Deadlocked’ Over Russia – Ukraine (RT)

• Ukraine To Change Conscription Rules (RT)

• Second UK Challenger 2 Tank Reportedly Destroyed In Ukraine (ZH)

• NATO To Launch Biggest Military Exercise Since Cold War (Az.)

• France Accused Of Planning ‘Aggression’ Against Niger (RT)

• Lead Author Of Cochrane Mask Review Says Fauci Makes No Sense (Demasi)

• Twilight Of The Democrats (Public)

• Biden Aide Intervenes To End Rambling Press Conference (RT)

• New Filings in the Hunter Biden Laptop Litigation (Turley)

RFK

I hope we see more of this RFK now that he's running for president, not less. Righteous indignation and powerfully not taking any of the media's bullshit lies, inversions, and appeals to authority. He decimated this BBC journalist. This was before Trump got into office.

"This… pic.twitter.com/ReLzjbRW1E

— Inversionism (@Inversionism) September 10, 2023

https://twitter.com/i/status/1700145666641535208

Woody

Woody Harrelson is asked about Russia-Ukraine 🇷🇺🇺🇦

Listen to his answer… 😅 pic.twitter.com/eH8Jfd5wNR

— Censored Men (@CensoredMen) September 9, 2023

https://twitter.com/i/status/1700525214512140299

Tapper goes for Musk

CNN's Jake Tapper asserts that Elon Musk “effectively sabotaged a military operation” and asks Secretary of State Antony Blinken if there should “be repercussions”…

pic.twitter.com/JuT1F8BbFH

— ALX (@alx) September 10, 2023

Alex Jones Musk

Alex Jones on Elon Musk; 'He's 100% pissed at the globalists.'
“I learned this in the last few weeks.” “I know people who know Elon very, very well.” “Elon is 100% pissed at the globalists.” “He doesn’t like things they have done to him and other people.” “People around him… pic.twitter.com/hx46uIhub4

— Jung (@betterworld_24) September 10, 2023

2 years ago it started
https://twitter.com/i/status/1700928136567742503

Is this where we’re going, the new narrative?: “..the war has weakened Russia to such an extent that it “no longer poses a credible threat to Europe..” (see Macgregor’s video). “..the Western objective of this conflict has been achieved”. And thus NATO can leave Ukraine to itself?!

The arms industry is in a bind: they want to keep selling, but they don’t want their products to be seen as inferior. They may contemplate cutting their losses.

• Ukraine, West’s Objectives No Longer Aligned, Russia No Longer A Threat (Exp.)

Back in January, a poll of Daily Express readers found that most wanted the UK to give more support to Ukraine to ‘end the war quicker’. However, that was eight months ago and – with Russia digging in – the war shows no sign of ending anytime soon. Some analysts now believe that – as the war grinds on – continuing to write cheques for Urkaine may longer be in the West’s best interests. And a recent CNN poll shows that most Americans oppose Congress authorising additional funding to support Ukraine. Sean Bell, a former RAF Air Vice-Marshal and Ministry of Defence (MoD) staffer, suggests that the war has weakened Russia to such an extent that it “no longer poses a credible threat to Europe”. Given this, Bell argues that “the Western objective of this conflict has been achieved”.

Writing for Sky, Bell said: “Having achieved their strategic objective, Western democratic governments must also address the cost of living crisis, domestic priorities, and re-building national weapons inventories. “Ukraine, however, has not yet met its objective, which is to liberate its territory. Bell writes: “The harsh reality is that Ukraine’s objectives are no longer aligned with their backers.”Many Ukrainians will remain determined to expel all Russians from their territory. That is Ukraine’s right, their fight, their future, and their sacrifice. “The ensuing sacrifices, devastation and suffering will leave a dreadful legacy, but what is the price for peace?”

Macgregor

Mitt Romney is a demented sociopath.

The notion that some how or another we have harmed Russia is a big lie.

The only thing we have succeeded in doing is murdering the Ukrainian nation.

We have destroyed the country.. pic.twitter.com/tDNAHWXT17

— Douglas Macgregor (@DougAMacgregor) September 10, 2023

Try on some logic on for size:

“Ukraine is winning and Russia is losing”. “That is because the aim of Russia was to subjugate Ukraine and to put it under Russia’s control..” “That has not happened and it never will happen, and that’s why Ukraine is winning.”

• 30 Fighting Days Left For Ukraine’s Offensive – US Army Chief (BBC)

Ukraine has little more than 30 days left of fighting before the weather hinders its counter-offensive, the top-ranking US military officer says. Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Gen Mark Milley said colder conditions would make it much harder for Ukraine to manoeuvre. He admitted the offensive had gone more slowly than expected. But he said: “There’s still heavy fighting going on. “The Ukrainians are still plugging away with steady progress.” Gen Milley said it was too early to say whether the counter-offensive had failed, but said Ukraine was “progressing at a very steady pace through the Russian front lines”. “There’s still a reasonable amount of time, probably about 30 to 45 days’ worth of fighting weather left, so the Ukrainians aren’t done.

“There’s battles not done… they haven’t finished the fighting part of what they’re trying to accomplish.” Kyiv’s counter-offensive, which was launched in the summer and aims to liberate Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine, has so far seen only small gains. But Ukrainian generals claim they have breached Russia’s formidable first line of defences in the south. “I said at the very beginning of this [war] that this was going to be long, slow, hard, and high-casualty-producing, and that’s exactly what it is,” Gen Milley said. In the same interview, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, the UK chief of defence staff, said “Ukraine is winning and Russia is losing”. “That is because the aim of Russia was to subjugate Ukraine and to put it under Russia’s control”, he said.

“That has not happened and it never will happen, and that’s why Ukraine is winning.” He added that Ukraine was making progress in its battle to regain its territory, having recovered 50% of the ground Russia seized. Ukraine’s progress was also down to the international community “applying economic pressure and diplomatic pressure, and Russia is suffering because of that”, he said. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin’s alliance with North Korea shows the Russian president is in a “state of desperation”, said Adm Radakin. He said the ties between the two countries showed how few partners Russia had left. North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un reportedly plans to visit Russia this month to meet Mr Putin for weapons talks.s

Blinken
https://twitter.com/i/status/1700821080364216791

..‘we tried to help them, but they simply couldn’t be saved from themselves..’

• Ukraine’s Defeat Could Mean The End Of NATO In Its Current Form (Bowes)

As the West’s proxy war in Ukraine slips inexorably towards utter failure, the neocons behind the debacle are faced with dwindling avenues of retreat. Early confidence that Russia, in its current form, would collapse under the pressure of the harshest sanctions regime in history failed to materialize. Early Russian miscalculations on the battlefield were not followed by a military meltdown, but by a pragmatic display of strategic adaptability, which is begrudgingly admired in the military war rooms of the West. The Russian army, far from falling apart, has steeled itself into making bold decisions to retreat when prudent and advance when required, both of which have proven devastating for their Ukrainian opponents. It follows that, as the Western political elites that cultivated this conflict peer into another winter of political, military, and potentially economic discontent, it is now that we potentially face the most dangerous period in Europe since the outbreak of WWII.

The catalyst for a wider war in Europe isn’t, in fact, a limited conflict in Ukraine in itself, one that started in 2014 and, notably, had been largely ignored by Western powers for almost a decade. The real issue is that NATO, which is currently engaged in a proxy War with Russia, is facing a ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’ scenario regarding its growing military involvement in Ukraine. If the US-led bloc escalates further as defeat looms, it could likely lead to direct confrontation with Russia. If it doesn’t, its proxy will collapse and leave Russia victorious, a fate once utterly unthinkable in Brussels, Washington, and London, but now becoming a nightmarish reality. Such a defeat would be devastating and potentially terminal for the prestige and reputation of the whole NATO brand.

After all, despite the Soviet Union having long ceased to exist, the bloc still markets itself as an indispensable bulwark against imagined Russian expansionism. In the event of an increasingly likely Ukrainian defeat, that ‘essential partner’ in ‘countering Russia’ will have been proven utterly impotent and largely irrelevant. More cynically, the vast US arms industry would also be denied a huge and lucrative market. So, how does a multi billion-dollar machine that has prophesied absolute victory against Russia even begin to contemplate defeat? And how do senior EU bureaucrats like Ursula Von der Leyen climb down from their quasi-religious devotion to the ‘cause’ of utterly defeating Russia, which she has shamelessly evangelized for over a year and a half? Lastly, how does the American administration, which has gone politically, morally, and economically ‘all in’ against Russia in Ukraine, contemplate what amounts to an increasingly inevitable European version of Afghanistan 2.0?

They will need to do two things: Firstly, find someone to blame for their defeat and secondly, find a new enemy to deflect public opinion onto. The ‘someone to blame’ will be quite easy to identify – the narrative will be flush with attacks on states like Hungary, China, and to some extent India, who will be accused of “undermining the unified effort needed to isolate and defeat Russia.” Blaming Ukraine itself will also be central to this narrative. Western media will insure it’s singled out as incapable of ‘taking the medicine’ proffered by NATO and therefore suffering the consequences, not listening to Western military advice, failing to utilize Western aid correctly and, of course – given that little has been done by Zelensky to tackle the endemic corruption in Ukraine – this fact will be easily weaponized against him and used to lubricate a slick narrative of ‘we tried to help them, but they simply couldn’t be saved from themselves’.

“The Americans want to strategically defeat us, as they put it. If they had anything new in mind they would like to tell us, they would have..”

• Lavrov at G20: Americans Want to ‘Strategically Defeat Russia’ (Sp.)

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who was representing Russia at the 18th G20 Summit in New Delhi, gave a press conference on Sunday where he weighed in, among other things, on the issue of the push towards dedollarization and trade in local currencies that is gaining momentum on a global scale. “Everyone understands what the Americans want from Russia… They want to get rid of a competitor,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Sputnik at the G20 Summit in New Delhi. “The Americans want to strategically defeat us, as they put it. If they had anything new in mind they would like to tell us, they would have,” Lavrov, representing Russia at the two-day international gathering, succinctly stated when asked if he had engaged in any bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit with US representatives.

As for one of the central trends in the current increasingly multipolar world – ditching the dollar in mutual trade and payments – Lavrov acknowledged that there is “some progress with respect to dedollarization, including in our bilateral relations with India.” “Like I said before, our exporters have a lot of, massive amounts of rupees in their accounts in Indian banks, and now we are looking into the possible ways of investing them in a mutually beneficial way. Now, as for actual transactions, we are working as part of the BRICS group and, back in Johannesburg, a decision was made to look into the ways of expanding the use of national currencies in operations,” Sergey Lavrov said. The historic three-day BRICS Summit 2023 wrapped up on August 24 in the South African city of Johannesburg.

The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, which together constitute the group of major emerging economies named BRICS, stressed the importance of encouraging the use of local currencies in international trade and financial transactions between members of the group as well as their trading partners. Recalling the decisions hashed out at the recent BRICS Summit, Lavrov continued: “We looked into the ways of the possibility of creating additional payment platforms, because right now we only have platforms controlled by the West. And now, in fact with China, for example, we have financial operations, 70% or 80% of them are in rubles and in renminbi. And the same goes for India. Now, when the global community sees what’s happening with SWIFT, with how the West, with how the United States is using, are using it as their own instrument, they understand that there has to be an alternative.”

Losing and at the same time bickering over putting Putin and Lavrov before a tribunal?! Gotcha.

• West ‘Deadlocked’ Over Russia – Ukraine (RT)

Ukraine has made no progress in making the US and its allies agree to its idea of a tribunal for top Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said in a speech on Friday. The nation’s top diplomat blasted the West’s “divisions” and “lack of will” on the issue at the Yalta European Strategy forum in Kiev. Western nations are just as reluctant to transfer frozen Russian assets to Ukraine, Kuleba said, adding that there has been little progress on this matter as well. “Unfortunately, we are in a kind of deadlock on both,” he said. The G7 group, which includes the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, and Japan, “stands firmly” in favor of what the diplomat described as a “hybrid tribunal,” in which Putin, as well as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, would maintain immunity from prosecution, Kuleba said, stressing that this is absolutely unacceptable for Kiev.

“The special tribunal is needed to create a precedent for punishing the Russian leaders,” he said. “The hybrid tribunal does not answer the question as to how to prosecute those three,” the top diplomat said, noting that he “simply cannot remember” the name of the Russian prime minister. Those who are against the “special tribunal” make a “clear statement that they consider Russia’s crimes in Ukraine less important than the crimes committed during the Yugoslavia war,” Kuleba said. Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andrey Kostin, also said it would be “impossible to explain to Ukrainians that we could have a tribunal without Putin on the defendant’s bench.” The Ukrainian foreign minister also said he sees no way to resolve these differences between Kiev and its Western backers.

“President [Vladimir Zelensky] has recently asked me what has been done [to push through the idea of a tribunal] and I have admitted for the first time in my ministerial capacity that I cannot suggest a solution,” he said. Kuleba claims that any legal constraints preventing Kiev from achieving its desired results can be altered. “If a law does not fit an idea of attaining justice, the legislation should be changed,” he said. Kiev continues to push for Zelensky’s ‘peace formula’, which includes Russia withdrawing from Donbass, Kherson, Zaporozhye, and Crimea, as well as paying reparations to Ukraine and submitting to war crimes tribunals. Moscow has dismissed these demands as “nonsense” and has said it is ready for peace talks that reflect “the reality on the ground.”

Once you start drafting the sick and handicapped, you’re probably close to losing the support of your people. There are reports about drafting all women. Must be popular too.

• Ukraine To Change Conscription Rules (RT)

Ukraine plans to change conscription laws to enable the drafting of citizens whose health problems previously rendered them fit only for limited military duty, according to Dmitry Lubinets, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman. However, the official offered assurances that people unable to fight on the front line will serve in the rear. The move comes as the country’s faltering counteroffensive has endured what Moscow says are “catastrophic” losses. Speaking on national TV on Saturday, Lubinets said that he had proposed to the country’s National Security Council to abolish the category ‘fit for limited military service’, adding that top officials had agreed with him.

“A Ukrainian citizen must either be fit for military service, or not,” he explained, adding that a potential conscript with health conditions that preclude participating in active combat can still contribute to defense efforts by serving at headquarters, or in missile and cyber forces. Lubinets also noted that the Ukrainian authorities had seen many cases when potential draftees bribed conscription officials to be registered as unfit for military service despite being completely healthy, while people with serious and long-standing medical conditions were told that they were fit for limited duty. “This issue should be addressed,” he stressed. During the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, Ukraine’s conscription system has been repeatedly criticized for rampant corruption. The Financial Times reported last month that some male Ukrainians were paying up to $10,000 in bribes to avoid being sent to the front.

Around the same time, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky sacked all of the regional military conscription officials after a string of corruption scandals. In the wake of the purge, Kiev also said that it would review all draft exemptions issued after the start of the conflict with Russia. However, Zelensky has said that his top military commanders had been asking him to draft more people. Earlier this month, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry issued a decree allowing the conscription of people with such severe conditions as hepatitis, HIV without symptoms, and clinically-treated tuberculosis. The push to expand the draft comes amid Ukraine’s counteroffensive, which has been underway for more than three months but has failed to make any significant progress. According to Moscow, Kiev has lost some 66,000 troops since the start of the offensive.

Of course many tanks have been destroyed, but this -very expensive- one was presented as nigh indestructable. Blown up not even by a jet or a tank, but by a “man-portable anti-tank guided missile”.

• Second UK Challenger 2 Tank Reportedly Destroyed In Ukraine (ZH)

“No Challenger 2 has been lost in combat since it was first deployed in 1994, although one was destroyed in a friendly-fire incident in Iraq in 2003,” The Guardian reported Wednesday after the UK Ministry of Defence confirmed the first Challenger 2 was destroyed on the Ukrainian battlefield. Russian media now says it has happened again: “Russian forces have reportedly destroyed a second Challenger 2 main battle tank out of the 14 that London has supplied to Kiev, RIA Novosti reported on Saturday, citing a local civic leader from Zaporozhye Region.” If confirmed, this would mark another devastating development for Kiev and its backers.

The sources cited in this latest report say the UK-supplied tank took a direct hit from a Russian Kornet missile, which is a man-portable anti-tank guided missile capable of being mounted on a vehicle. One pro-Kremlin activist was cited in Russian media as saying it’s “open season” on British tanks in Ukraine and that they will “burn just as well as any other Western equipment.” While the UK has yet to confirm or deny these latest claims that a second Challenger 2 tank has been destroyed, the defense ministry did confirm destruction of the first one, based in part on ample video evidence: The UK has confirmed the first loss of a Challenger 2 tank by Ukraine, saying it was “hit by Russian artillery.”

Speaking to Sky News on Wednesday morning, the UK’s defence secretary Grant Shapps also confirmed the vehicle’s crew had survived. Video surfaced on social media early on Tuesday morning of a Ukrainian Challenger 2 burning at the side of the road believed to be south of the recently-liberated town of Robotyne. In the aftermath, British military sources further indicated there are as yet no plans for the UK to replace those tanks lost on the battlefield. Kiev is still awaiting the M1 Abrams tanks promised by Washington, but these are sophisticated enough to require many months of additional training for Ukrainian operators. So far, the main battle tanks supplied by the West have not been the “gamechanger” that Ukraine hoped.

The arms industry loves it.

• NATO To Launch Biggest Military Exercise Since Cold War (Az.)

NATO is preparing its biggest live joint command exercise since the cold war next year, assembling more than 40,000 troops to practice how the alliance would attempt to repel Russian aggression against one of its members, The Financial Times said, Report informs. The Steadfast Defender exercise comes as part of NATO’s rapid push to transform from crisis response to a war-fighting alliance, prompted by the invasion of Ukraine. It will start in spring next year and is expected to involve between 500 and 700 air combat missions, more than 50 ships, and about 41,000 troops, NATO officials said. It is designed to model potential maneuvers against an enemy modeled on a coalition led by Russia, named Occasus for the purposes of the drill. The exercise is also a first in terms of technical capability, using real world geographical data to create more realistic scenarios for troops.

France tries to draw African nations into this, play them against each other.

• France Accused Of Planning ‘Aggression’ Against Niger (RT)

Paris is planning to intervene in Niger, as it continues to deploy troops to several countries in the region, the West African state’s military government has claimed. Relations between Niger and former colonial power France deteriorated following a coup in July. “France continues to deploy its forces in several ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) countries as part of preparations for an aggression against Niger, which it is planning in collaboration with this community organization,” Colonel Amadou Abdramane, spokesman for the government in Niamey, said in a statement broadcast on national television on Saturday, as quoted by AFP. ECOWAS has threatened to intervene in the country to restore its ousted president Mohamed Bazoum to office. Top French officials have also stated several times that Paris would support military action by the bloc.

However, according to Niger’s military-appointed prime minister, Ali Lamine Zeine, military action by ECOWAS is not supported by all member states. He also told the media on Monday that the new government in Niamey was hoping to reach an agreement with the bloc in the “coming days.” Nigerien military leaders have previously denounced the presence of French troops in the country as “illegal” and demanded their prompt withdrawal. While speaking during the G20 summit in New Delhi, French President Emmanuel Macron said that since his country doesn’t recognize the Nigerien military government, any redeployment of its forces might be done only “at the request of President Bazoum.” Paris already had to withdraw troops from Burkina Faso earlier this year. France also pulled its forces out of Mali following tensions with the military government after a coup in 2020.

“Once we excluded such low-quality studies from the review, we concluded there was no evidence that masks reduced transmission..”

• Lead Author Of Cochrane Mask Review Says Fauci Makes No Sense (Demasi)

Former chief medical advisor to the US President Anthony Fauci was questioned over the weekend by CNN reporter Michael Smerconish, about face masks being able to curb the spread of covid-19. “There’s no doubt that masks work,” said Fauci. “Different studies give different percentages of advantage of wearing it, but there’s no doubt that the weight of the studies … indicate the benefit of wearing masks,” he added. Smerconish brought up the 2023 Cochrane review which found no evidence that physical interventions like face masks could stop viral transmission in the community and cited my interview with lead author of the study Tom Jefferson who confirmed, “There is just no evidence that they [masks] make any difference. Full stop.” Fauci replied, “Yeah but there are other studies,” stressing that masks work on an individual basis.

“When you’re talking about the effect on the epidemic or the pandemic as a whole, the data are less strong…but when you talk about an individual basis of someone protecting themselves or protecting themselves from spreading it to others, there’s no doubt that there are many studies that show there is an advantage,” said Fauci. Professor Tom Jefferson, who says he is committed to updating the Cochrane review as new evidence emerges, has responded to Fauci’s comments. “So, Fauci is saying that masks work for individuals but not at a population level? That simply doesn’t make sense,” said Jefferson. “And he says there are ‘other studies’…but what studies? He doesn’t name them so I cannot interpret his remarks without knowing what he is referring to,” he added.

Jefferson explains that the entire point of the Cochrane review was to systematically sift through all the available randomised data on physical interventions such as masks and determine what was useful and what was not. Since 2011, the Cochrane review only included randomised trials to minimise bias from confounders. “It might be that Fauci is relying on trash studies,” said Jefferson. “Many of them are observational, some are cross-sectional, and some actually use modelling. That is not strong evidence.” “Once we excluded such low-quality studies from the review, we concluded there was no evidence that masks reduced transmission,” he added. The problem with Fauci is that his story has changed. Initially, Fauci said that masks were ineffective and unnecessary. In March 2020, Fauci told 60 Minutes, “Right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks.”

But only a few weeks later, he did a U-turn and began recommending widespread use of face masks. Fauci defended his U-turn saying, “When the facts change, I change my mind.” Jefferson retorted, “What facts changed? There were no randomised studies, no new evidence to justify his flip-flop. That’s simply not true.” Since then, Fauci has remained adamant that face masks not only stop people from infecting others, but they also protect the wearer. Fauci advocated for the use of cloth masks, and even encouraged double-masking in the absence of evidence. “You put another layer on, it just makes common sense that it would be more effective,” Fauci told NBC News. “What Fauci doesn’t understand is that cloth and surgical masks cannot stop viruses because viruses are too small and they still get through,” said Jefferson.

“The old vibrancy and inspiring messages of “hope” and “change” are gone, and all that remains is a cynical and desperate thirst for power..”

• Twilight Of The Democrats (Public)

For many years, Democrats insisted that they were the party of diplomatic solutions; today, they are eagerly sending depleted uranium rounds and internationally banned cluster munitions to Ukraine. Biden’s poor approval ratings are likely also influenced by the brewing scandal around his son. Over half of voters believe that the president’s actions related to the Hunter Biden probe are inappropriate, and 61% say they think the president was involved in his son’s business dealings. Indeed, there is mounting evidence that Biden’s Department of Justice is criminalizing the political activity of his enemies while shielding his son from real prosecution. When Biden took office, he vowed that his administration would put an end to the division of the Trump years and would restore unity. Yet, on several occasions, Biden has made highly charged and antagonistic remarks about ordinary American citizens. Despite the media’s efforts to portray him as a wise and grandfatherly figure, Biden often appears to be angry and confused, lashing out at us unpredictably.

Due to the president’s age and obvious cognitive decline, it is unclear who is actually running the country and calling the shots. Biden, a corrupt and disoriented old man controlled by shadowy figures behind the scenes, is emblematic of what the Democratic Party has become. The old vibrancy and inspiring messages of “hope” and “change” are gone, and all that remains is a cynical and desperate thirst for power. Like its figurehead, the Democratic Party operates through secrecy and can barely conceal its contempt for large swathes of the country. It has become a party of censorship, war, elitism, and dishonesty. There is only so long that Democrats can keep pretending Biden is a competent leader, and the latest CNN poll has provided a chance for many to finally state the obvious.

Said Van Jones on CNN, “A lot of Democrats look at these numbers and say, ‘The whispers are finally showing up in this data’… People are scared to come out and say anything about it, but I think it’s important for us to have this conversation now.” And yet Biden has shown no sign of throwing in the towel. Rumors periodically fly that he is about to announce he won’t run for a second term. Many thought it would happen in August. The problem for Democrats is that they might have no one who can replace him. Kamala Harris is even less popular than Biden, and San Francisco is Gavin Newsom’s albatross. This is perhaps what is most damning about the current state of the Democrats: Biden may really be the best they have to offer.

We’ve seen quite a few of such videos, but cutting off your president mid-sentence at an international forum is quite the feat.

And he should never again complain about being babied.

• Biden Aide Intervenes To End Rambling Press Conference (RT)

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre abruptly ended a news conference by US President Joe Biden on Sunday, cutting the president off mid-sentence as he rambled about “the third world” and his conversation with Chinese Premier Li Qiang. Biden took a number of scheduled questions from the press while on a visit to the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, before telling reporters that he was “going to bed.” However, Biden kept answering additional questions, including on his talk with Li at the G20 summit in India on Saturday. “It wasn’t confrontational at all,”Biden said. “We talked about making sure that the third world…the, uh, the, uh, the southern hemisphere has access to changing…” As Biden continued to mumble, Jean-Pierre announced that “this ends the current press conference.”

After attempting to answer another question, Biden turned around and walked off stage. Biden’s press conferences are typically tightly managed by his aides, with the president handed cue cards and told which journalists to turn to for questions. Nevertheless, Biden still occasionally leaves the stage mid-sentence, often visibly confusedand guided by his staff. According to a recent Wall Street Journal poll, 73% of all voters think that the 80-year-old Biden is too old to serve as president, while 60% believe he lacks the mental capacity for the position. While Republicans have repeatedly hammered Biden over his apparent cognitive decline, Democrats are increasingly concerned about the president’s health too.

WATCH: Joe Biden's staff cuts off a rambling Joe Biden mid-sentence and abruptly ends his news conference.

I have never seen this occur with any other president. pic.twitter.com/LqvW2VsESH

— Andrew @ Don’t Walk, RUN! (@DontWalkRUN) September 10, 2023

This is what a puppet looks like.

Biden can’t give a full speech without being kicked off stage by his own staff… pic.twitter.com/cr5in4NiOp

— Chad Prather (@WatchChad) September 10, 2023

According to an NBC News survey in June, 43% of Democrats said that they had moderate to major concerns about Biden’s health, up from 21% in 2020. Biden’s trip to Vietnam came as the US attempts to strengthen its ties with more Asian nations in a bid to counter Chinese influence in the region. On Sunday, Biden and Vietnamese General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong announced a bilateral trade and investment deal, which included measures to boost semiconductor manufacturing and research in Vietnam.

“..the absurd court arguments are largely being ignored by the media while an acknowledgment would force major media to fully cover the story.”

“..it seemed off that Hunter was deeply offended by the disclosure of pictures that were “voluntarily shared by [Hunter] Biden with others through the website, ‘Pornhub’ …

“It is the ultimate “to be or not to be” pitch when everyone knows exactly what the true question is. . . and it is not the authenticity of this laptop.”

• New Filings in the Hunter Biden Laptop Litigation (Turley)

An FBI computer expert reportedly assessed the laptop and found that it “was not manipulated in any way.” The authenticity of the information was further confirmed “by matching the device number against Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud ID.” Emails and messages have been confirmed by third parties who were the recipients. Yet, as Polonius said in Hamlet, “though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” The Biden team wants, in my opinion, to grind Isaac and delay the litigation as much as possible. It is using the Delaware courts to exact that sweet revenge against a now defunct computer shop owner. Moreover, the absurd court arguments are largely being ignored by the media while an acknowledgment would force major media to fully cover the story.

So, Hunter simply continued to disclaim knowledge of voicemail messages and emails from Isaac about an external hard drive, paying his repair bill and picking up the computer. However, he is crystal clear that he did not give consent to Isaac about gaining access to the laptop that may not be his. This is why Shakespeare wrote: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be, For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.” Hunter has to challenge the terms of an agreement that he refuses to admit that he signed. Instead, he criticized the “boilerplate terms of the Repair Authorization” on the work order as being “well below the signature line” and referred to the Repair Authorization as a “typical small-print adhesion clause for which there was no proper notice or opportunity to bargain or negotiate.”

Biden is equally clear that he is terribly “embarrassed” by publication of private material that would be “highly offensive to a reasonable person,” in exposing pictures and communications that may not be him or his. That view was slammed by the Isaac team that noted that it seemed off that Hunter was deeply offended by the disclosure of pictures that were “voluntarily shared by [Hunter] Biden with others through the website, ‘Pornhub’ … the use of the ‘reasonable person’ standard should clearly not apply to Biden … It seems what would embarrass a reasonable person does not embarrass Biden.” What is most striking is how this story continues to be effectively buried by the media. It is not hard to imagine the coverage if one of the Trump kids tried to maintain this combined claim of ignorance and outrage in a court — or tried to continue to question the authenticity of files established by the FBI and other witnesses.

Devine and her colleagues at the New York Post (as well as Fox News and the Wall Street Journal) have pursued this story since the beginning when it was suppressed by social media companies before the election. They have pursued the story for years as the media went through a series of false denials and narratives. Instead, the media endlessly pursued every allegation in the now-infamous Steele dossier and the New York Times and Washington Post received Pulitzer Prizes for a story that not only has been debunked but shown to be the product of Hillary’s Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Yet, in pursuing a true story with sweeping implications of corruption and deceit, the New York Post remains the media’s persona non grata. It embarrassed not only the establishment but other media. That is not how you get a Pulitzer. Indeed, as I discussed in an earlier column, the denial of true stories can be “the stuff that Pulitzer Prizes are made of.” Instead, Hunter will continue his performance of Hamlet on the Delaware in continuing to question reality. It is the ultimate “to be or not to be” pitch when everyone knows exactly what the true question is. . . and it is not the authenticity of this laptop.

US car market

Crazy stat:

50% of Americans are priced out of the car market.

Jonathan Smoke, Chief Economist of Cox Automotive, breaks it down in < 45 seconds: pic.twitter.com/kAI6oAiTAn

— CarDealershipGuy (@GuyDealership) September 10, 2023

Sync lions

In sync.. 😊 pic.twitter.com/I7KY6AMvU3

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) September 10, 2023

Mother

Always follow your mother, she's always experienced!pic.twitter.com/l90R6YW2le

— Figen (@TheFigen_) September 9, 2023

Allende

The other 911. On 11 September, 1973, the democratically-elected socialist president of #Chile Dr Salvador #Allende was overthrown by a US-backed fascist military coup, destroying the base of #Chilean democracy. Here are Allende's last words to his nation and to the world. pic.twitter.com/HpoBQbpquN

— tim anderson (@timand2037) September 10, 2023

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Debt Rattle September 12 2022

Sep 122022

September 12, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:14 am Finance Tagged with: blackout, climate policy, dollar shortage, grid, intel sharing, mass formation, Trump, WTC 74 Responses »

Claude Monet Éretrat sunset 1882-3

• Ukraine Suffers Massive Blackout After ‘Russian Strikes’ (RT)

• Ukraine Says It’s Repaired Damaged Power Infrastructure (RT)

• Ukraine Lost Thousands Of Soldiers In Counteroffensive – Moscow (RT)

• Ukraine and US Increased Intel-sharing Prior To Counteroffensive – NYT (RT)

• Is the US Sacrificing Europe to Maintain Global Dominance? (Armstrong)

• Belgium PM Fears “Severe Risk Of Social Unrest”

• Europe To Blame For Electricity Crisis – Former Austrian FM (RT)

• Talks With Ukraine Still On The Table – Russia (RT)

• Climate Policy Is a Much Greater Threat Than Climate Change (Mish)

• US Creates Dollar Shortage As Russia Creates Oil, Gas & Grain Shortage (Peters)

• A Different Take on the Dismissal of the Trump v Clinton Lawsuit (CTH)

• Instagram Fact-checks Trump WTC Photo As ‘Missing Context’ (PM) s

• Mass Formation Hypnosis Disorder (CJ Hopkins)

• ‘Unethical’ and up to 98 Times Worse Than the Disease (ET)

Ukraine cannot win this war. But it can win peace.

Fuellmilch

Dr. R.einer F.uellmich and his dang c.onspiracy t.heories.pic.twitter.com/Q0qD2kvgEi

— NEWSNANCY (@NewsNancy9) September 11, 2022

Tried to find some western sources for this, but they all say this was done in retaliation for Ukraine “successes”, which they can’t prove, and then just lazily cite Zelensky verbatim. And I can’t even remember the last time he said something true. So we’re stuck with RT.

• Ukraine Suffers Massive Blackout After ‘Russian Strikes’ (RT)

Multiple regions of southeastern Ukraine suffered electricity shortages and blackouts late on Sunday. President Vladimir Zelensky has said the cause was missile attacks by Moscow on “critical infrastructure.” Full blackouts have hit Kharkov and Donetsk regions, Zelensky said in a social media post, apparently referring to the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donetsk People’s Republic. Sumy, Dnepropetrovsk, Poltava, Zaporozhye and Odessa regions have been hit by partial blackouts, according to the president, who blamed the incident on “Russian terrorists.” So, far Moscow has remained silent on the matter, neither confirming nor denying its involvement. Still, the incident has been preceded by a reported launch of multiple cruise missiles from Russian ships positioned in the Black and Caspian Seas.

Footage circulating online shows the aftermath of the purported attacks, with firefighters trying to extinguish flames at what appear to be power plants. Another video, purportedly shot in Poltava, shows a trolleybus that caught fire, apparently due to a power surge in the grid. The blackout has affected the operations of Ukrainian railways, which reported delays across the country. It also brought the subway system in the eastern city of Kharkov to a halt the, footage circulating online purports to show. So, far, emergency services have managed to restore power supply only in Poltava, Sumy and Dnepropetrovsk regions, according to Ukrainian media reports.

I think this was just a warning shot, not an attempt to kill the grid. There are ways to do that.

• Ukraine Says It’s Repaired Damaged Power Infrastructure (RT)

Blackouts allegedly caused by Russian strikes on the Ukrainian power grid were partially dealt with overnight, according to President Vladimir Zelensky’s deputy chief-of-staff. In a Telegram post, Kirill Timoshenko reported the full restoration of electricity supplies in the Ukrainian cities of Sumy, Dnepropetrovsk and Poltava. Grid capacity in Kharkov region, which was the scene of a successful Ukrainian counter-offensive last week, was at 80% on Monday morning, according to the official. The Mayor of Kharkov, Igor Terekhov, said on Monday morning that the city’s subway and trolleybus systems were back online and that the water supply would be fully restored during the day. Electric-powered transport was paralysed during the Sunday outage.

Kiev blamed the blackouts in several of its regions on Russian missile attacks targeting power stations and key nodes of the transmission grid. The Russian military has neither confirmed nor denied carrying out such attacks. The purported Russian military action on Sunday followed Ukraine’s counter-offensive in the north of the country. Last week, Kiev forced Russian troops to leave a swath of previously captured territory in Kharkov region. Kiev called it a major success for its military and a harbinger of further victories on the battlefield. Moscow has described the loss of territory as a temporary setback, necessary to win time for regrouping Russian troops.

12,000 in 5 days. Over 4,000 killed and another 8,000 injured.

Gonzalo Lira: “Assuming that Dima at Military Summary channel is correct (and I think he is), in these past two weeks of offensives, Ukraine lost +10,000 and another +20,000 wounded.”

As the Russians reportedly mostly just walked away these past few days.

• Ukraine Lost Thousands Of Soldiers In Counteroffensive – Moscow

Ukrainian military casualties in just five days of its counteroffensive exceeded 12,000, Russia’s Defense Ministry has claimed. More than 4,000 Ukrainian troops were killed and another 8,000 injured between September 6 and 10 in the south and east of the country, ministry spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov said during a daily briefing on Sunday. According to the official, Russian forces conducted “precision strikes” with missiles and artillery targeting pro-Kiev units in Kharkov region, from where Russian troops retreated earlier as part of what Moscow described as “redeployment.” Russia said its military has destroyed, among other things, numerous command posts and shot down a helicopter over the past few days.

The Defense Ministry also accused the Ukrainian troops of having shelled the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant 26 times since September 1. The Russia-controlled facility located in Ukraine’s southern Zaporozhye region was seized by Russian forces in early March, soon after Moscow launched its military operation. On Sunday, the last working reactor at the plant was switched off. According to a member of the region’s pro-Russian administration, the decision was made due to continued shelling of the plant by Ukraine and damage to the power lines. The constantly changing modes in which the reactors and turbines were forced to operate, because of the attacks, created the risk of an accident, Vladimir Rogov told RIA-Novosti.

Kiev and Moscow have been accusing each other of targeting the power plant and risking a nuclear disaster for several months now. In its Sunday briefing, the Russian Defense Ministry also alleged that the Ukrainian military was deliberately striking “energy infrastructure on liberated territories,” including in the Donetsk People’s Republic.

They want to advertize direct US involvement?!

• Ukraine and US Increased Intel-sharing Prior To Counteroffensive – NYT (RT)

Ukraine had stepped up intelligence-sharing with the US in preparation for its counteroffensive against the Russian forces in the Kharkov Region, The New York Times reported on Saturday. Despite Washington providing information on Russian command posts, ammunition depots and other targets to Kiev, Ukrainian officials had been reluctant earlier in the conflict to reveal operational plans to their US counterparts, over concerns that this “could highlight weaknesses and discourage continued American support,”the newspaper claimed. But it all changed during the summer as Kiev decided that sharing plans for its counteroffensive would, contrary to previous concerns, prompt Washington to provide Ukraine with even more assistance, unnamed senior US officials told the NYT.

This shift allowed the US to offer “better and more relevant information about Russian weaknesses,” the sources reported. They declined to expand on how much information has been shared between the sides or on how deep the Americans have been involved in the planning of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, the newspaper said. However, one official claimed that the US had“constantly” discussed with Ukraine ways that it could blunt the Russian advance in the east of the country.
The large-scale Ukrainian offensive with the use of weapons supplied by the US and other Western nations started in the north-eastern Kharkov Region on Thursday after Kiev’s attempts to advance in other areas failed.

On Saturday, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced the withdrawal of its troops from the city of Izyum and some other settlements in the region, saying that these are being regrouped in order “to build up efforts in the Donetsk direction.” During the operation, it added, the military had performed what it called a “number of distracting and demonstration activities imitating the real action of troops.” Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky celebrated the Russian retreat as a victory, but the NYT pointed out that “it is not yet clear how much broad strategic importance those gains [by Kiev] will have.” Moscow has many times warned Washington against providing weapons and sharing intelligence data with Ukraine, saying that the US risked becoming a party to the conflict through such actions.

“..they sacrificed their main supplier of energy to save a nation with a GDP of roughly only $200 billion..”

“The war in Ukraine has only promoted capital to rush into the dollar.”

• Is the US Sacrificing Europe to Maintain Global Dominance? (Armstrong)

Vladimir Putin believes that Washington is sacrificing Europe to maintain global dominance. The United States has always been the world police, and the top country that others turn to in times of crisis. America’s post-World War II status left it as the financial capital of the world, and the dollar has remained the world’s reserve currency. Nothing has topped the dollar. Europe attempted to create the European Union in an effort to prevent European conflicts, but it also created the euro to compete against the dollar. I explained various times how their attempts have failed. However, the euro is now beneath the dollar and on the decline. Nations maintain diplomatic relations, but only Schwab wants a one-world government as everyone is competing for global dominance.

Putin claims that the West rushed to place sanctions on Russia. There was indeed a rush to place sanctions on Russia despite Joe Biden himself coming out and admitting sanctions never work. Peace talks were never an option. Returning land or promising to curtail NATO was never an option. Sanctions and threats were immediately imposed. Why? “The pandemic has been replaced by new challenges of a global nature, carrying a threat to the whole world, I’m talking about the sanctions rush in the West and the West’s blatantly aggressive attempts to impose their modus vivendi on other countries, to take away their sovereignty, to submit them to their will,” Putin told delegates at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in the port city of Vladivostok on Russia’s Pacific coast, as reported by CNBC.

It is true that Europe is facing the brunt of these sanctions as they sacrificed their main supplier of energy to save a nation with a GDP of roughly only $200 billion. Europe did not want to allow Ukraine to join the euro, and they had no interest in the country prior to this conflict. The hatred for Russia runs deep in Europe, especially in Germany after Russia took hold of the east after the last World War. The politicians are certainly old enough to remember when Germany was split in two until 1989. There is a reason Russia’s integral support for the axis powers during World War II is diminished in Western history books. Putin went on to say that the standard of living in Europe and overall social and economic stability was “being thrown onto the fire of sanctions.” The United States has been eager to sanction Russia since the war in Syria began. Obama tried but failed to kick Russia out of the SWIFT system in 2014, with Christine Lagarde offering her support. Zelensky, who rand the NYSE bell this week remotely, admitted that he needed America to place harsh sanctions on Russia to accelerate the war.

“So far, I think that the United States of America is the accelerator of the sanction policies and I think they do more than any other country. And this is the way it should be because they are the most powerful country right now. I see the same support with respect to sanctions from the United Kingdom,” Zelensky told reporters at Fox in May. The dollar remains strong and is the last safe haven. The war in Ukraine has only promoted capital to rush into the dollar. So is Europe “being sacrificed in the name of preserving the US dictatorship in global affairs,” as Putin claims? Europe will suffer more than the United States due to these sanctions. In fact, had Biden not eliminated domestic oil production, the US would not be facing an energy crisis at all. One thing is clear – the support to Ukraine is not an act of kindness. The invisible hand is at play.

He’s said a few smart things. That won’t make him popular on the other side of Brussels.

• Belgium PM Fears “Severe Risk Of Social Unrest”

“A few weeks like this and the European economy will just go into a full stop…” That is the ominous warning of yet another EU leader who recognizes the needs of his people over the needs to signal virtue towards Ukraine (and against Putin “for the sake of democracy.”) Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo warned that Europe needs to act immediately to address the energy crisis or risk the kind of fundamental economic shutdown that the bloc would struggle to recover from. During an interview with Bloomberg News, De Croo warned: “The risk of that is de-industrialization and severe risk of fundamental social unrest.”

Like a number of other EU leaders, who are rapidly diverging from Brussels bureaucrats on the path forward, the Belgium leader warns against unilateral action against Russia, urging “I honestly do not see any other choice than doing market interventions,” De Croo said. “We don’t get a second chance to prove as 450 million Europeans that we take things in our hands. What you are seeing today is a massive drainage of prosperity out of the European Union.” Specifically, Belgium’s federal government is calling for introducing broad price caps on gas markets rather than just on Russian imports “because Vladimir Putin already said that he would stop selling gas.”

“What you are seeing today is a massive drainage of prosperity out of the European Union,” De Cross concluded. “A cap on Russian gas only is a purely political objective,” Belgium’s energy minister doubled-down on De Croo’s warnings, adding that Belgium “will not agree to this” as it did not “see the added value in that.” On security of supply for gas and electricity this winter, De Croo reassured his people that Belgium will be fine (thought we are unclear how he knows that), but warned that if any European country gets into a situation of blackouts it will be a “gigantic problem for all of us.”

“..prices for electricity in the region saw a surge of up to 40% after April 2021, and have now soared nearly 400%..”

• Europe To Blame For Electricity Crisis – Former Austrian FM (RT)

The crisis affecting the electric power industry across Europe started in 2021 and was caused by European policymakers themselves, according to former Austrian foreign minister Karin Kneissl. “We had a crisis in the electric power industry even before the gas crisis began,” she said on Saturday in an interview with Russian news agency TASS. “That’s the result of the liberalization of the past 15-18 years, and we have been going through this since April 2021, for more than a year so far,” Kneissl added. According to the former foreign minister, the electricity market in Europe is not a classic supply-and-demand market anymore, and is now operating “in accordance with some incomprehensible principles.”

She added that the market had been redirected with a preference for renewable energy, and had turned into a unbalanced one as a result. “The electricity market, despite the role of renewable energy sources, is still highly dependent on gas prices, even when more electricity is generated from renewable sources,” Kneissl said. The former minister stressed that prices for electricity in the region saw a surge of up to 40% after April 2021, and have now soared nearly 400%, inevitably dragging households’ finances down.

“For manufacturers, for the industrial sector, the situation is even worse. There’s already a movement in the UK – it’s not [part of] the EU, but it might spread further – where people are simply boycotting their electricity bills,” she said, noting that the electricity crisis had begun prior to the gas crunch. Kneissl attributed the crisis to the significant reduction in investment in oil and gas projects, explaining that supply was declining while demand remained. “The demand has been growing after the pandemic. It was quite calm during the pandemic for a year and a half,” she said. “And we can still be glad that in China demand remains at a fairly low level, since they are introducing quite a lot of lockdowns,” Kneissl added.

“Nobody needs a meeting for the sake of a meeting”: Kremlin press-secretary Dmitry Peskov.

• Talks With Ukraine Still On The Table – Russia (RT)

Moscow is not giving up on the idea of peace talks with Kiev, but the sides need to start negotiations sooner rather than later, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. “We don’t reject the negotiations; we’re not giving up on the negotiations” with Ukraine, Lavrov told the Rossiya 1 channel. “Those who reject them must understand that the longer this process is delayed, the harder it will be to reach an agreement,” he added in an apparent reference to the authorities in Kiev. Lavrov noted that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin earlier voiced the same stance on peace talks. The conflicting sides have not sat down at the negotiating table since talks in Istanbul in late March.

Russia, which initially expressed optimism on the peace process, later accused Kiev of backtracking on the progress achieved in Turkey, saying it had lost trust in the Ukrainian negotiators. Russian officials warned that Moscow’s demands would be more extensive if the talks were to restart. In recent months, Ukraine has been either putting forward terms that Moscow deemed ‘unrealistic’ for the resumption of the negotiations, or said that they can only begin after Russia is defeated on the battlefield. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has also claimed on several occasions that he wanted to discuss the outcome of the conflict directly with President Putin.

But Moscow’s position has been that the two leaders should only meet to sign concrete agreements, prepared for them by the negotiators. “Nobody needs a meeting for the sake of a meeting,” Kremlin press-secretary Dmitry Peskov said earlier this week. Ukraine launched a major counter-offensive in the north-eastern Kharkov region earlier this week after attempts to advance in other areas failed. On Saturday, Russia withdrew its forces from Izuym and some other settlements in the area, saying that they will be regrouped “to build up efforts in the Donetsk direction.”

The people who make the policies don’t know a thing about energy.

• Climate Policy Is a Much Greater Threat Than Climate Change (Mish)

Germany’s decision to scrap its nuclear reactors before having replacement energy is in play. In April, then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson bragged his Energy Security Strategy would “bring clean, affordable, secure power to the people for generations to come.” In the US, California marches on with the blessing of president Biden, preposterous targets for electric cars without having the faintest idea where the minerals and mining for those batteries will come from. The Wall Street Journal comments on the Coming Global Crisis of Climate Policy. A crisis isn’t coming, it’s already here, and obviously so.

“The Federal Reserve, Bank of England and European Central Bank, among others, want to know how global temperature variations a century hence might weigh on Citi’s or Barclays’ or Deutsche Bank’s capital and risk weightings today. The fad is for quantifying, with preposterous faux-precision, the costs of reinsuring flood risks, or fire, or the depressed corporate profits of a dystopian hotter future. Well, if you seek “climate risk” to financial stability, look around you. It has arrived, although in exactly the opposite manner to what our current crop of eco-financiers predicted. Europe’s plight tells a tale that could become all too familiar in the U.S. soon.

The U.K. may be facing a wave of business bankruptcies exceeding anything witnessed during the post-2008 panic and recession. Some 100,000 firms could be forced into insolvency in coming months, bankruptcy consultancy Red Flag Alert warned this week. These are otherwise healthy firms with at least £1 million in annual revenue. Business failures on this scale would dwarf the roughly 65,000 firms of any size that went under from 2008-10. Matters are probably worse in Germany, the eurozone’s largest economy. Some 73% of small and medium-sized enterprises in one survey reported feeling heavy pressure from energy prices, and 10% of those say they believe they face “existential” threats to their businesses over the next six months. And that poll, from the small-business association BMD, is the optimistic one. [..]

Policy decisions by clueless heads of state bow down to Saint Gretta, AOC, and president Biden. They have put in place an inflationary inferno that central bankers do not know how to stop. Even more ridiculous, President Biden, Elizabeth Warren and others want the Fed to take on a third mandate and stress test the economic impact of continued rise in temperature. What needs to be stress tested is the reverse, the inflationary impact of a push for clean energy before battery storage technology exists, grid improvements exist, and whether or not physical metals for all the batteries that will be needed are even available.

With the shift into SCO, BRICS et al, who will be hurt most?

• US Creates Dollar Shortage As Russia Creates Oil, Gas & Grain Shortage (Peters)

“We must cut Russia’s revenues which Putin uses to finance this atrocious war,” said European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, discussing a proposal to cap the price of Russian gas. There are no easy solutions to Europe’s energy crisis, just a range of suboptimal outcomes, each of which carries unknown costs in a world growing increasingly uncertain. Making difficult decisions is always hard and subjects all involved to unintended consequences. But in a world trending toward ever greater economic integration the risk of unexpectedly bad outcomes is more muted than in periods of conflict, division, deglobalization. The reason for this (as Zoltan Pozsar pointed out two weeks ago) is a matter of trust.

When we trust that we are all competitors striving for a greater share of a more prosperous common future, the price of misjudgments and misunderstandings is relatively lower than in a world filled with real and perceived adversaries who expect the worst from one another. “We will not supply gas, oil, coal, heating oil – we will not supply anything,” said Putin in response to Ursula’s statement. In recent years, the possibility that such stark outcomes might manifest were seen by consensus as pure fancy. But those innocent times have passed, perhaps not to return for decades. The Japanese continued to cap government bond yields, intervening in markets to monetize their enormous debts. The yen extended its dramatic losses as markets prepare for another 75bp rate hike from the Fed.

The US is naturally doing what it sees as in its national interest, creating a shortage of dollars, just like Russia is doing in oil and gas, grain, and fertilizer (perhaps someday we will suffer a shortage of Taiwan’s chips). Without an ample and growing supply of dollars, the global economy sputters, markets too. Then things break. In more peaceful times, the Americans rarely adjusted domestic policy to help foreigners until the overseas problem washed ashore here at home. And we are now left to wonder how such decisions will be made in a world without trust.

“sundance” argues that Trump’s lawyers expected the case to be dismissed, but filed it anyway, because now everything in it is “on the record”.

• A Different Take on the Dismissal of the Trump v Clinton Lawsuit (CTH)

[..] when I originally read the 108-page lawsuit filed in March, it took me a few moments, and then I realized this was not a lawsuit; this was a legal transfer mechanism created by lawyers to establish a proprietary information silo. Second, because I do not want another ridiculous subpoena from DC simply because they can’t fathom how any outside entity could solve a puzzle without insider assistance. As to the former, I have prayed on it and come to the opinion it’s worth sharing. As to the latter, it’s just another waste of taxpayer funds, but whatever – the truth has no agenda. So, here’s a totally different take on the issues surrounding the Trump -v- Clinton lawsuit, which -from the outset- I always believed was going to be dismissed because suing all of those characters under the auspices of a civil RICO case was never the objective.

However, in the aftermath, the silo created by the lawsuit is also grounded upon attorney-client privilege, a legal countermeasure to a predictable DOJ-NSD lawfare maneuver, which unfolded in the Mar-a-Lago raid and ongoing issues. In March 2022 President Trump filed a civil lawsuit against: Hillary Clinton, Hillary for America Campaign Committee, DNC, DNC Services Corp, Perkins Coie, Michael Sussmann, Marc Elias, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Charles Dolan, Jake Sullivan, John Podesta, Robby Mook, Phillipe Reines as well as Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, Peter Fritsch, Nellie Ohr, Bruce Ohr, Orbis Business Intelligence, Christopher Steele, Igor Danchenko, Neustar Inc., Rodney Joffe, James Comey Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith and Andrew McCabe.

When I was about one-third of the way through reading the lawsuit, I initially stopped and said to myself this is going to take a lot of documentary evidence to back up the claims in the assertions. Dozens of attachments would be needed and hundreds of citations to the dozens of attachments would be mandatory. Except, they were not there. After reading further, while completely understanding the background material that was being described in the filing, I realized this wasn’t a lawsuit per se’. The 108-pages I was holding in my hands was more akin to legal transfer mechanism from President Trump to lawyers who needed it. The filing was contingent upon a series of documents that would be needed to support the claims within it.

Whoever wrote the lawsuit had obviously reviewed the evidence to support the filing. However, the attachments and citations were missing. That was weird. That’s when I realized the purpose of the lawsuit. In hindsight, things became clear when the DOJ-NSD raided the home of Donald Trump, and suddenly the motive to confiscate the documents that would be the missing lawsuit attachments and citations surfaced. With the manipulative, and I say intentional, “ongoing investigation” angle of the John Durham probe essentially blocking public release of declassified documents showing the efforts of all the lawsuit participants (Trump-Russia Collusion Hoax), President Trump needed a legal way to secure and more importantly share the evidence.

Think of it like the people around Trump wanting to show lawyers the evidence in the documents. However, because of the construct of the lawfare being deployed against Trump, any lawyer would need a *reason* to review the evidence. The Trump -v- Clinton et al lawsuit becomes that ‘reason.’ [..] If the documents seized by the FBI were part of the lawsuit established by President Trump and his legal team via Trump -v- Clinton, then the material seized is all attorney client work product. Lawfully obtained, constitutionally declassified and legally protected material. sThis is where the ‘special master’ will play a key role.

Don’t think there’s any doubt that Trump loves NYC.

• Instagram Fact-checks Trump WTC Photo As ‘Missing Context’ (PM)

In honor of the 21st anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, Human Events Daily’s Jack Posobiec posted a photo of Donald Trump visiting Ground Zero in 2001. In response to the Instagram post, showing Trump at that horrific scene so many years ago, Instagram posted a “fact-check,” reading: “Missing Context. The same information was reviewed by independent fact-checkers in another post.” Posobiec’s comment was “No one told him to go. He went anyway.” The photo is credited to Getty Images. The fact-check was posted on the photo, despite no claims being made other than that Trump was there. Instagram’s parent Meta’s algorithms appear to be looking to discredit Trump, even when there is nothing to discredit.

Opening up the message brings readers to a fact-check showing two fact checks. Lead Stories says that the conclusion of their fact check is that the post has “missing context,” by which they explain that there is “No evidence that Donald Trump paid hundreds of workers to help with search and rescue after 9/11.” This is a fact check on a photo showing Trump at the site of the terrorist attack in 2001. It made no claims other than that he was there, which he was. A fact-check from Snopes states that their conclusion is that the post is “partly false,” giving as “more information” the question “Was Donald Trump at Ground Zero searching for survivors two days at 9/11 with workers he paid for?” This on a fact-check of a photo which made no additional claims. Snopes’ rating as to whether or not Trump brought employees down to Ground Zero is recorded as “unproven.”

It was years later that a meme, using the same Getty photo, began circulating that was captioned: “2 days after the September 11th attacks Donald Trump was at ground zero with hundreds of workers that he payed for, to help find and identify victims.” Trump visited Ground Zero on September 13, 2001, two days after the attacks. According to The New York Times, Trump had said “Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers and other first responders. And I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there. I spent a lot of time down there with you” at a speaking event years later. Others said he wasn’t there for extended periods of time. Trump said in 2001 that “I have a lot of men down here right now. We have over 100 and we have 125 coming. So we’ll have a couple of hundred people down here.”

He added: “We will be involved in some form helping to reconstruct.” The reconstruction efforts were led by the City of New York, and Larry Silverstein, who was the existing developer of the property. At a 2016 speaking event in Buffalo, NY, Trump said “Everyone who helped clear the rubble — and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit — but I want to tell you: Those people were amazing. Clearing the rubble. Trying to find additional lives. You didn’t know what was going to come down on all of us — and they handled it.” Trump was a private citizen in 2001, a native New Yorker, and a local businessman.

CJ Hopkins is not impressed with Mattias Desmet.

• Mass Formation Hypnosis Disorder (CJ Hopkins)

Well, gosh, this is kind of embarrassing. For approximately the last two and a half years, I have been documenting, analyzing, and occasionally satirizing the so-called “New Normal,” i.e., the new, pathologized, official ideology that has been rolled out all across the planet by the global-capitalist ruling classes under the pretext of combating an apocalyptic pandemic … or at least that’s what I thought was going on. As it turns out, I was totally wrong. Apparently, the global-capitalist ruling establishment (or “GloboCap,” as I often refer to the unaccountable, supranational network of global corporations, banks, governments, and non-governmental governing entities that unaccountably govern our world) has not been rolling out a new official ideology, or pathologized form of totalitarianism, or not intentionally in any event.

No one has been methodically gaslighting anyone, or terrorizing anyone with propaganda, or censoring or segregating anyone, or coercing anyone to get needlessly “vaccinated” with any sort of dangerous experimental drugs, or consciously conspiring with anyone to do anything. Everyone has simply been suffering from Mass Formation Hypnosis Disorder! I know, you probably find this hard to believe, especially because I have been making precisely the opposite case for over two years now, but I saw it on the Alex Jones show! Mattias Desmet, a professor from Belgium, and “the world’s leading expert” on this new disorder, explained it all in meticulous detail.

According to Desmet, the way this disorder works is, people feel “lonely and isolated,” which makes them feel angry, but they don’t have anything or anyone to unleash their anger on, so they form a mass and hypnotize each other, and invent a new fanatical ideology that they all fanatically hypnotically believe in, which, at that point, their rulers, who are also hypnotized, have no choice but to go full-totalitarian, and hypnotize everyone even more, because that is what the hypnotized mass demands, so that they can finally unleash their anger on someone, i.e., those who have managed to avoid being hypnotized (one assumes with some special anti-hypnosis technology, but I don’t think Professor Desmet explained that part). And, OK, before you hypnosis deniers start sending me emails denying the power of hypnosis to totally totalitarianize society, listen to Professor Desmet explain how surgeons in Belgium are routinely performing open-heart surgery on hypnotized patients without any anesthetic whatsoever!

They just saw right through their breastbones with a sternum saw, ratchet open their rib cages with a sternal retractor, and start slicing into the patients’ hearts … and these patients don’t even flinch or anything! He has witnessed this with his own two eyes! Or, all right, it seems he hasn’t actually witnessed this with his own two eyes. It seems he was actually just lying when he said that, which he confessed to in a lengthy Facebook post (after people pointed out that he had lied) in which he publicly wondered why he had lied, and then rationalized his lie with various excuses, and posted several misleading links in an attempt to suggest that he hadn’t actually lied, despite the fact that he had just admitted he did, and just generally tried to muddy the waters with a lot of awkward psychobabble.

“22,000 to 30,000 Previously Unaffected Young Adults Must be Vaccinated to Prevent Just 1 Hospitalization..”

• ‘Unethical’ and up to 98 Times Worse Than the Disease (ET)

A team of nine experts from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and other top universities has published paradigm-shifting research about the efficacy and safety of the COVID-19 vaccines and why mandating vaccines for college students is unethical. This 50-page study, which was published on The Social Science Research Network at the end of August, analyzed CDC and industry-sponsored data on vaccine adverse events, and concluded that mandates for COVID-19 boosters for young people may cause 18 to 98 actual serious adverse events for each COVID-19 infection-related hospitalization theoretically prevented. [..] As the study pointed out, students at universities in America, Canada, and Mexico are being told they must have a third dose of the vaccines against COVID-19 or be disenrolled.

Unvaccinated high school students who are just starting college are also being told the COVID-19 vaccines are “mandatory” for attendance. These mandates are widespread. There are currently 15 states which continue to honor philosophical (personal belief) exemptions, and 44 states and Washington, D.C. allow religious exemptions to vaccines. But even in these states, private universities are telling parents they will not accept state-recognized vaccine exemptions. Against a backdrop of confusing and often changing public health recommendations and booster fatigue, the authors of this new paper argue that university booster mandates are unethical. They give five specific reasons for this bold claim:

1) Lack of policymaking transparency. The scientists pointed out that no formal and scientifically rigorous risk-benefit analysis of whether boosters are helpful in preventing severe infections and hospitalizations exists for young adults. 2) Expected harm. A look at the currently available data shows that mandates will result in what the authors call a “net expected harm” to young people. This expected harm will exceed the potential benefit from the boosters. 3) Lack of efficacy. The vaccines have not effectively prevented transmission of COVID-19. Given how poorly they work—the authors call this “modest and transient effectiveness”—the expected harms caused by the boosters likely outweigh any benefits to public health. 4) No recourse for vaccine-injured young adults. Forcing vaccination as a prerequisite to attend college is especially problematic because young people injured by these vaccines will likely not be able to receive compensation for these injuries. 5) Harm to society. Mandates, the authors insisted, ostracize unvaccinated young adults, excluding them from education and university employment opportunities. Coerced vaccination entails “major infringements to free choice of occupation and freedom of association,” the scientists wrote, especially when “mandates are not supported by compelling public health justification.”

The lack of effectiveness of the vaccines is a major concern to these researchers. Based on their analysis of the public data provided to the CDC, they estimated that between 22,000 and 30,000 previously uninfected young adults would need to be boosted with an mRNA vaccine to prevent just a single hospitalization. However, this estimate does not take into account the protection conferred by a previous infection. So, the authors insisted, “this should be considered a conservative and optimistic assessment of benefit.” In other words, the mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 are essentially useless. But the documented lack of efficacy is only part of the problem. The researchers further found that per every one COVID-19 hospitalization prevented in young adults who had not previously been infected with COVID-19, the data show that 18 to 98 “serious adverse events” will be caused by the vaccinations themselves. These events include up to three times as many booster-associated myocarditis in young men than hospitalizations prevented, and as many as 3,234 cases of other side effects so serious that they interfere with normal daily activities.

Stoltenberg

How they built the proxy army against #Russia: #NATO boss @jensstoltenberg – although #Ukraine is not a #NATO member we have armed and trained them since the #Kiev coup of 2014. pic.twitter.com/R4O12ulGSz

— tim anderson (@timand2037) September 11, 2022

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The Narrative of Loss

Sep 122021

September 12, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 5:15 pm Finance Tagged with: 9/11, Delta, fictitious, JFK, lies, loss, narrative, Silverstein, vaccine, WTC 13 Responses »

Thomas Cole The Course of Empire – The Savage State 1834

There is nothing wrong with people remembering their departed loved ones; mourning has a beneficial function for the human mind -and body. It’s a bit different when it becomes a group process, or even one of an entire nation, especially when a vast media complex gets involved to tell readers and viewers what to think.

And when one of the eulogists is the guy who used the deaths to inflict death upon millions of others, it has become real different. Mourning, in its optimal form, binds people together. And if you can’t, or don’t mourn all deaths, it has lost that form. It has become as divisive as the initial cause of all the dying.

Does any American think that whoever killed 3,000 people in New York, should want or expect 2-3-4 million people to die in retribution over the following 20 years? Do you even have a right to mourn your own lost innocent lives if you neglect all other lost innocent lives?

I remember watching a video with Larry Silverstein, who had bought all -or most- of the WTC complex just 3 months before 9/11 (always found that a weird detail), saying at some point during 9/11 the fire department decided to “pull the building”. The video is still up. And I thought: you can only “pull” a building if you loaded it up with explosives first, which for a building the size of WTC7 takes days. Why on earth would you have done that in early September or before??

That’s when I stopped reading 9/11 stories, and trying to figure out what really happened, because it was too clear that we would never find out. It is JFK’s murder all over again. Lots of speculation, but never an answer. Just an endless barrage of deceit.

And lo and behold, we appear to be walking into exactly the same kind of barrage again, eyes wide open. This one has made, at last count, some 655,000 victims in the US alone over the past 20 months. As the country mourns 3,000 victims from 20 years ago. And while the last great deceit led to revenge on people half a world away, this time the target is “our own people”.

Dr. Robert Malone yesterday said: “I have seen reliable estimates that there have been 450,000 excess US deaths attributable to USG blocking early use of ivermectin and HCQ.” Other sources claim some 200,000 have died from the vaccines (and many more will follow). You keeping track of the numbers? We’re at 650,000 out of 655,000 already. And there’s more (or less, if you want). “Covid cases in UK are 26 times higher than a year go. ”

Does the virus even really exist? 7 Laboratories in US Can’t Find COVID-19 in One of 1,500 Positive Tests. It doesn’t even appear to have been isolated either. Just people with influenza A or B jotted down as covid.

And even if the coronavirus exists, how dangerous is it? More and more claim that the Delta variant, which is said to be almost all virus left, is fictitious, and merely a term used as a way to cover up vaccine deaths.

Meanwhile, Moderna is rushing to get a vaccine approved for 5-11 year olds, and working on one for 6 months old and up. Because they might infect their grandparents, or something. Case fatality rates of these kids are infinitesimal, much lower than the risks of the vaccines for them, but The Science has been abandoned by those who claim to represent it. And the grandparents might think: better me dead than my grandchild, but octogenarian Fauci sure ain’t going to ask them what they think.

That the vaccinated are doing much better than the unvaccinated, either in infections or in transmission, is a long dead mantra. But the idea that the vaccines prevent severe disease or death, is also rapidly vanishing. You’ve been spritzed with something that will be a threat for the rest of your life, and your best defense is to get fit and spruce up your immune system as best you can. Take vit. D, zinc and ivermectin, if you can still get it.

What remains is the deceit, from 9/11 to Covid, the government lies that by now should be expected, and the media lies that.. well, should also. Maybe that’s why we have the interwebs, so we can go out and find a kernel of truth in between the deceit. Even if 95% of people use it to do the exact opposite.

Time to start mourning the people who die of or with Covid, and who die of the vaccines, once you’re done with 9/11. And see that they didn’t have to die, that it was a political choice. You may be able to use that grief, and your nascent understanding of why they died, to make sure not more others die of fully preventable causes. Any Americans -and Europeans- who die from now on in will be like the Afghans and Iraqis and Syrians etc. who died post-9/11. Victims of failed -or worse- policy.

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