Menu Icon

Debt Rattle February 24 2024

Feb 242024
 
 February 24, 2024  Posted by at 9:41 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  36 Responses »


Grete Stern Sueño No. 1: Artículos eléctricos para el hogar 1949

 

• The Dark and the Light (Kunstler)
• New Cell Phone Records Prove DA Willis Affair (Techno Fog)
• CBS Causes Uproar After Seizing the Notes of Investigative Reporter (Turley)
• NATO Will Allow Ukraine To Attack Inside Russia With F-16s – Stoltenberg (RT)
• Zelensky Promises ‘New Counteroffensive’ (RT)
• Europe Has ‘Dim, Lackluster Technocrats’, Not Strong Leaders – Medvedev (TASS)
• Why Won’t The West Admit That The Maidan Coup Was Based On A Lie? (RT)
• Kiev’s Sponsors Should Hold ‘Discreet’ Talks With Moscow – Ukraine Envoy (RT)
• How Russia Could Respond to West’s Potential Frozen Asset Seizure (Sp.)
• Dutch PM Has No Right to Sign 10-Year Ukraine Security Agreement – Musk (Sp.)
• The Elites Versus The Rest Of Us (Utter)
• The Axis of Asymmetry Takes On The ‘Rules-Based Order’ (Pepe Escobar)
• Ukraine, Gaza Conflicts Isolate US, Europe (Sp.)
• Censors Who Rigged The 2020 Election Are Now Stealing 2024 (Fed.)
• Julian Assange Faces ‘A Living Death Sentence’ In A Concrete Coffin Cell (DM)

 

 


Scott McNealy’s famous ‘What were you thinking?’ rant to investors for bidding Sun Microsystems’ stock price up to 10x sales during the DotCom bubble Keep in mind that $nvda is now trading at over 40x sales…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Informant

 

 

Watters AI

 

 

Walsh

 

 

 

 

“Mr. Trump volunteered to play role of exorcist in this grand psychodrama. Whatever else you make of him, he has shown a lot of fortitude..”

• The Dark and the Light (Kunstler)

The poison killing our country is pervasive untruth. Every institution we have relied on to run the public interest has become a factory churning out lies, evasions, and misdirection — not unlike the way mRNA “vaccines” turned the cells in your bodies into tiny generators of spike proteins destroying your organs. Likewise, half the population, apparently, thinks this is a good thing, that we need more lawfare — the perversion of law by attorney perverts — and that we need ever more lies, evasions, and misdirection (just as the degenerates who run Harvard declare their student body needs more mRNA boosters to remain in school). Since the doctors have all failed — miserably and dishonorably — America needs an exorcism. The poisons in our system are actual persons carrying out their programmed assignments, just as the spike proteins in the bodies of millions act as individual agents of destruction in your body.

What possible invocation can drive out the likes of Mayorkas, Christopher Wray, Avril Haynes, William Burns, Merrick Garland, Lisa Monaco, Marc Elias, Norm Eisen, Jack Smith, Jake Sullivan, Marc Zuckerberg, Mandy Cohen, Rachel Maddow, Daniel Sachs Goldman, Jamie Raskin, Mitch McConnell, Charles “Chuck” Schumer, “Joe Biden” (the remnant of a person, after all), and a thousand others in high places behaving in a way indistinguishable from demons? What explains their devotion to untruth? What motivates them? Can it possibly be the mere perqs and comforts of their positions? Are they answering a call? And who is issuing that call? Or are they just trapped by their many years of lying continually, fearful of getting cast into prison? Are you asking yourselves: what will satisfy these maniacs? Anything short of the ruin of our country? What will their coveted power be worth in a ruined country? Mr. Trump volunteered to play role of exorcist in this grand psychodrama. Whatever else you make of him, he has shown a lot of fortitude.

Eight years ago, when he came on the scene, he appeared to not know that his opponents were actually demons seeking to wreck the country; rather just low persons sunk in the most common venial corruption, and others mere zealots steeped in futile utopian fantasies of perfecting the flawed human condition. He learned eventually the that the situation was more dire than he ever imagined. His opponents came after him hard from the get-go and keep coming at him. Russia is the knout they use in the attempt to flay him alive. “Russia Russia Russia” has been one long, elaborate lie. They’re going at it again, pretending that Mr. Trump seeks Russian help interfering in the fall election, despite the plain fact that all previous invocations of “Russia Russia Russia” were revealed to be untrue, and maliciously so — and that all the actual election interference originated with the gang shouting “Russia Russia Russia.” It looks like more than half the country is refusing to fall for it this time. Thus, the resort to lawfare, the five cases (so far) designed to bankrupt Mr. Trump and gain a felony conviction for objecting to the election shenanigans of 2020.

Read more …

Something tells me we’re not talking about the smartest folk here..

• New Cell Phone Records Prove DA Willis Affair (Techno Fog)

The lawyers for President Trump have Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade’s cell phone records. And it’s bad for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. The official story from the Fulton County DA and her former lover Nathan Wade, made through sworn filings and sworn testimony, was that their “personal relationship” started in 2022. In a February 2, 2022 filing, DA Willis submitted Wade’s affidavit to the Court which stated: “In 2022, District Attorney Willis and I developed a personal relationship.” DA Willis and Wade both testified that the relationship started sometime in early 2022. But Wade’s cell phone records disprove their official story. In a filing this morning from President Trump’s attorneys, records indicate that the “relationship” between DA Willis and Wade was romantic well-before Wade’s November 1, 2021 appointment by Willis as Special Prosecutor.

Trump’s attorneys were able to obtain, by subpoena to AT&T, Wade’s cell phone records from 1/1/2021 through 11/30/2021. Wade’s location data was analyzed by an investigator hired by the attorneys – an analytical tool which generated geolocation data that pinpointed Wade’s presence at DA Willis’s South Fulton Condo during that time period. Here are the highlights:

• Wade and Willis exchanged “over 2000 voice calls and just under 12,000 texts messages” from January 1, 2021 through November 30, 2021.

• Geolocation data indicates Wade was at DA Willis’s condo “at least 35 occasions”. The data revealed he was “stationary” at the condo “and not in transit.”

• Wade’s visits to DA Willis’s condo were corroborated by texts and phone calls. According to the report: On November 29, 2021, “following a call from Ms. Willis at 11:32 PM, while the call continued, [Wade’s] phone left the East Cobb area just after midnight and arrived within the geofence located on the Dogwood address [the condo] at 12:43 AM on November 30, 2021. The phone remained there until 4:55 AM.”

• On September 11, 2021, Wade arrived at the condo address at approximately 10:45 PM. He left the address at 3:28 AM and arrived at his Marietta residence at 4:05 AM. He then texted DA Willis at 4:20 AM.

It’s important to note that Trump’s investigator is under a serious time constraint, due to the nature of the proceedings before Judge Scott McAfee, and wasn’t able to analyze all of the Wade/Willis data, which he described as voluminous. The two visits listed above – those are just a small fraction of the 35+ trips that Wade made to DA Willis’s condo. If his review continues, then more revelations will follow. The extensive communications between DA Willis and Wade – the thousands of calls and tens of thousands of texts – indicate something more than what they described as a friendship. And combined with the late-night visits, with Wade appearing at her apartment for a few hours before heading home, this is definitive proof that their romantic relationship started long before what they told the Judge.

Beck Fani

Watters Fani

Read more …

I bet this is about finding out what she has on Biden and Hunter. Then they’ll return (most of) her notes.

• CBS Causes Uproar After Seizing the Notes of Investigative Reporter (Turley)

There is trouble brewing at Black Rock, the headquarters of CBS, after the firing of Catherine Herridge, an acclaimed investigative reporter. Many of us were shocked after Herridge was included in layoffs this month, but those concerns have increased after CBS officials took the unusual step of seizing her files, computers and records, including information on privileged sources. The position of CBS has alarmed many, including the union, as an attack on free press principles by one of the nation’s most esteemed press organizations. I have spoken confidentially with current and former CBS employees who have stated that they could not recall the company ever taking such a step before. One former CBS journalist said that many employees “are confused why [Herridge] was laid off, as one of the correspondents who broke news regularly and did a lot of original reporting.”

That has led to concerns about the source of the pressure. He added that he had never seen a seizure of records from a departing journalist, and that the move had sent a “chilling signal” in the ranks of CBS. A former CBS manager, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said that he had “never heard of anything like this.” He attested to the fact that, in past departures, journalists took all of their files and office contents. Indeed, the company would box up everything from cups to post-its for departing reporters. He said the holding of the material was “outrageous” and clearly endangered confidential sources. [..] A source within the the union, SAG-AFTRA, confirmed that it has raised this controversy with CBS and remains extremely concerned about the effect of this action on journalistic practices and source confidentiality. The union believes this is “very unusual” and goes far beyond this individual case. “It is a matter of principle,” a union spokesperson added. “It is a matter of serious concern. We are considering all of our options.”

For full disclosure, I was under contract twice with CBS as a legal analyst. I cherished my time at the network. I have also known Herridge for years in both legal and journalistic capacities. CBS is one of the world’s premier news organizations, with a legendary history that includes figures from Murrow to Walter Cronkite to Roger Mudd. That is why the hiring of Herridge was so welcomed by many of us. The network was at risk of becoming part of the journalistic herd, an echo-chamber for Democratic and liberal narratives. It had been mired in third place for ages, and it was moving in the wrong direction by alienating half of the country. Herridge had been a celebrated investigative reporter at Fox News. An old-school investigative journalist, she is viewed as a hard-driving, middle-of-the-road reporter cut from the same cloth as the network’s legendary figures.

The timing of Herridge’s termination immediately raised suspicions in Washington. She was pursuing stories that were unwelcomed by the Biden White House and many Democratic powerhouses, including the Hur report on Joe Biden’s diminished mental capacity, the Biden corruption scandal and the Hunter Biden laptop. She continued to pursue these stories despite reports of pushback from CBS executives, including CBS News President Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews. Given the other layoffs and declining revenues, the inclusion of Herridge was defended by the network as a painful but necessary measure. But then something strange happened. The network grabbed Herridge’s notes and files and informed her that it would decide what, if anything, would be turned over to her. The files likely contain confidential material from both her stints at Fox and CBS. Those records, it suggests, are presumptively the property of CBS News.

Read more …

Deliberate escalation.

“..the F-16 is capable of delivering B61 gravity bombs. “So, if one of those planes takes off from a NATO nation – what would that be? An attack on Russia. I shall not describe what could happen next..”

• NATO Will Allow Ukraine To Attack Inside Russia With F-16s – Stoltenberg (RT)

Once Ukraine receives F-16 fighter jets it will be free to use them against military targets inside Russia, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has told American state-run media. Stoltenberg was speaking to RFE/RL for an interview which is scheduled to air on Friday. According to snippets released in advance, the NATO head has argued that Ukraine has the right to self-defense against Russian “aggression,” which would include “striking legitimate Russian military targets outside Ukraine.” As to when the government in Kiev might actually receive the promised jets, Stoltenberg would not say. Each NATO member that has pledged to deliver them has different policies and will decide themselves, he explained.

While some of Ukraine’s backers want the jets in action as soon as possible, they will have a stronger impact if the pilots are well-trained and there are enough maintenance and support crews on hand, according to Stoltenberg. “So, I think we have to listen to the military experts exactly when we will be ready to or when allies will be ready to start sending and delivering the F-16s,” he said. “The sooner the better.” Ukraine has long demanded the F-16 as a way to combat Russian air superiority. Denmark and the Netherlands have both pledged to contribute some of their jets, with President Vladimir Zelensky putting the total number at 42. The first Ukrainian pilots training in the West finished their classes in the UK in December.

The way the US-made jet is designed means it might have difficulties operating from Ukrainian runways, sparking speculation that they could be flown from Poland, Romania or the Baltic states instead. Russia has repeatedly warned such a deployment would be an escalation of the conflict and may even risk nuclear war, as the F-16 is capable of delivering B61 gravity bombs. “So, if one of those planes takes off from a NATO nation – what would that be? An attack on Russia. I shall not describe what could happen next,” Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and deputy head of Russia’s National Security Council, said in an interview on Thursday.

Read more …

“..if Kiev loses its soldiers, it “will lose everything..”

Bit late perhaps?

• Zelensky Promises ‘New Counteroffensive’ (RT)

Ukraine is planning a new counteroffensive against Russia despite a string of recent setbacks including the failure to break through Moscow’s defenses last year and the loss of the strategic city of Avdeevka in Donbass, President Vladimir Zelensky has said. In an interview with Fox News on Thursday, Zelensky acknowledged that some Western backers have expressed impatience with Kiev and the perceived lack of progress, asking him “when we will finish the war, when will we win.” The Ukrainian leader stressed that his utmost priority is to avoid heavy casualties, and that if Kiev loses its soldiers, it “will lose everything,” even if the West provides it with the most advanced weapons. “To defend [is] the task number one and then to continue our successful story on the Black Sea” he said, adding that Russia is preparing certain “surprises” in the region, without elaborating further.

The “south is very important,” he continued, noting that Kiev’s other priority is to hold the line in Donbass, and that “of course, we will prepare a new counteroffensive, a new operation.” Zelensky cautioned that the ultimate plan depends on many factors, and declined to give a possible timeframe for a new push. Ukraine attempted a large-scale offensive early last summer but failed to make any substantial progress despite being reinforced with a massive amount of Western military hardware. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has said Kiev suffered colossal losses in the campaign, with more than 215,000 troops lost in 2023 alone.

Last week, Russian troops took full control of the heavily fortified city of Avdeevka, which was frequently used as a launch ground for attacks on Donetsk, many of which have targeted civilians. The Russian Defense Ministry said the Ukrainian troops left their positions in a “disorderly retreat,” losing some 1,500 soldiers in the process. The New York Times, citing sources, has suggested that Moscow may have captured up to 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers during the rout. Commenting on the retreat, Zelensky called the decision to leave Avdeevka “absolutely logical,” saying its goal was to spare the lives of Ukrainian troops.

Read more …

“..They would tear him to pieces and say: ‘We will be attacked instantly, Cossacks will be galloping around Paris again, and the world will simply collapse!'”

• Europe Has ‘Dim, Lackluster Technocrats’, Not Strong Leaders – Medvedev (TASS)

The current leaders of European countries are mostly “dim, lackluster technocrats” who are engaged in pursuing “Euro-Atlantic ideals” instead of resolving national problems, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with Russian media, including TASS. “In Europe, as I have said many times, all the true leaders are gone. A generation of dim, lackluster technocrats has arrived, who endorse only Euro-Atlantic ideals. Instead of dealing with their national problems, they follow instructions from Washington,” he said. Medvedev explained that there are exceptions among European leaders, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, or Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, “but this only confirms the rule.”

“And all the rest are people who do not have their own position,” the politician stated. In his opinion, the previous generation of European figures had the inner strength to raise objections when issues were important to their countries. But this does not mean that they took Russia’s side or abandoned any European ideals, the politician noted. “No, but they could object. To the extent that during the period when de Gaulle was the French president, France suspended its participation in the military component of NATO, and considered it the right thing to do. Can you imagine anyone even mentioning that now? They would tear him to pieces and say: ‘We will be attacked instantly, Cossacks will be galloping around Paris again, and the world will simply collapse!'” Medvedev surmised.

Read more …

Because the story is too sordid.

• Why Won’t The West Admit That The Maidan Coup Was Based On A Lie? (RT)

Political scientist Ivan Katchanovski – of the University of Ottawa – revealed last year, in a paper, that the February 2014 massacre of Ukrainian protesters by sniper fire, a defining moment of the Western-backed Maidan coup, was not published by an academic journal for “political reasons.” In a lengthy Twitter thread, Katchanovski first laid out the circumstances behind the rejection of his article, and the bombshell evidence included in it. The paper was initially accepted with minor revisions after peer review, and the journal’s editor offered a glowing appraisal of his work, writing: “There is no doubt that this paper is exceptional in many ways. It offers evidence against the mainstream narrative of the regime change in Ukraine in 2014… It seems to me that the evidence the study produces in favour of its interpretation on who was behind the massacre of the protesters and the police during the ‘Euromaidan’ mass protests on February 18-20, 2014, in Ukraine, is solid. On this there is also consensus among the two reviewers.”

As the editor noted, the massacre was a “politically crucial development,” which led to the “transition of powers in the country” from the freely elected Viktor Yanukovich to the illegitimate and rabidly nationalistic administration of Aleksandr Turchinov, a former security services chief. It was endlessly cited in Western media as a symbol of the brutality of Ukraine’s government and an unprovoked attack on innocent pro-WesternMaidan protesters, who allegedly sought nothing more than democracy and freedom. Rumors that the killings were a false flag intended to inflame tensions among the vast crowds filling Maidan, and provoke violence against the authorities, began circulating immediately. No serious investigation into what happened was ever conducted by the Western media, with all claims that the sniper attacks were an inside job dismissed as Kremlin “disinformation.” However, even NATO’s Atlantic Council adjunct admitted in 2020 that the massacre was unsolved and that this “cast a shadow over Ukraine.”

It may not remain unsolved for much longer though, due to an ongoing trial of policemen at the scene on the fateful day. The legal action has been unfolding for well over a year and has received no mainstream news attention at all outside Ukraine. Katchanovski drew heavily on witness testimony and video evidence that has emerged over the course of the trial in his suppressed paper. For example, 51 protesters wounded during the incident testified at the trial that they were shot by snipers from Maidan-controlled buildings, and/or witnessed snipers there. Many spoke of snipers in buildings controlled by Maidan protesters shooting at police. This is consistent with other evidence collected by Katchanovski, such as 14 separate videos of snipers in protester-controlled buildings, 10 of which clearly feature far-right gunmen in the Hotel Ukraina aiming at crowds below.

In all, 300 witnesses have told much the same story. Synchronized videos show that the specific time and direction of shots fired by the police not only didn’t coincide with the killings of specific Maidan protesters, but that authorities aimed at walls, trees, lampposts, and even the ground, simply to disperse crowds. Among those targeted by apparently Maidan-aligned snipers were journalists at Germany’s ARD. They weren’t the only Western news station in town at the time – so too were Belgian reporters, who not only filmed Maidan protesters screaming towards Hotel Ukraina for snipers not to shoot them, but also participants being actively lured to the killing zone. This incendiary footage was never broadcast.

Read more …

Very few people in Ukraine could call for this. But Melnik is the person who “..called German Chancellor Olaf Scholz an “offended liver sausage” and told Elon Musk to “f**k off”..”

• Kiev’s Sponsors Should Hold ‘Discreet’ Talks With Moscow – Ukraine Envoy (RT)

Kiev’s foreign backers should contact Russia behind the scenes to find out its conditions for peace with Ukraine, former Ukrainian ambassador to Germany Andrey Melnik, who now represents the country in Brazil, has said. In an interview with the German newspaper Tagesspiegel, Melnik was asked to comment on a poll which revealed that, given the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive last year and gains by Russian forces in recent months, 64% of Germans now believe that Kiev has lost the conflict with Moscow. The diplomat called the results of the survey “bitter” and acknowledged that “our partners have the right to say: ‘okay, we tried, we helped, but now it doesn’t work anymore.’” However, he insisted that Ukraine’s defeat would “be a threat to Germany’s security.”

According to Melnik, Berlin must now focus on what else it can do to help Kiev, including supplying “Taurus [missiles], fighter jets, more anti-aircraft defenses and ammunition.” The ambassador suggested that considering how things stand at the moment, “it would at least be wise if our allies could discreetly contact Moscow to find out whether there’s real willingness to compromise. Under what conditions and guarantees, for example, would the Russians be ready to withdraw from the occupied territories.” “It’s not about lazy compromises or restoring a false calm on the global stage, but about leaving no stone unturned,” he said, adding that “conducting exploratory talks doesn’t mean giving up one’s interests.” At the same time, Melnik claimed “the Russians have done everything they can to destroy trust.

From Ukraine’s point of view, it is impossible to forge a deal.” “Nevertheless, our partners, including in the Global South, should use their diplomacy to end the war this year,” he stressed. Melnik was removed from the post of Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany in summer 2022 after a series of scandals. Notably, he called German Chancellor Olaf Scholz an “offended liver sausage” and told Elon Musk to “f**k off” on social media. “I might’ve been able to do my job less passionately from time to time so as not to offend some people,” he acknowledged. The diplomat explained that his harsh tone was justified by the need to put pressure on the government in Berlin to provide more aid to Ukraine in the first month of the conflict with Russia.

Read more …

“..with a negative effect on the US balance of trade, hence on US inflation and economic growth, all of which could increase unemployment, poverty and fiscal deficits in the United States.”

• How Russia Could Respond to West’s Potential Frozen Asset Seizure (Sp.)

A group of international law experts and practitioners from Belgium, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US are seeking to bolster the legal case for seizing frozen Russian Central Bank assets, Bloomberg news agency has reported. In a letter obtained by Bloomberg, the experts argue that such actions are allegedly allowed under international law, citing the ongoing Ukraine conflict as a pretext. The letter, however, did not elaborate on what legal mechanism (if any) these experts could use for possible a seizure. Shortly after the start of Russia’s special military operation, Western countries slapped comprehensive sanctions on Russia, including the freezing of about €260 billion ($280 billion) in securities and cash, with more than two-thirds of the sum immobilized in the EU.

“I do not think that it is possible on legal grounds to confiscate frozen assets of the Russian Central Bank, even though these assets are held in some Western countries such as the US, the UK, Germany or France,” Sergio Rossi, professor of macroeconomics and monetary economics at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, told Sputnik. Touching upon potential ramifications, he suggested that speculation about the possibility of confiscating the assets on a legal basis “could induce a number of European or US stakeholders to seize these assets held in their own countries in order to give them to Ukraine, so as to reduce the expenditures of their own governments in support of Ukraine.” This may, in turn, “give rise to some reputational risks at international level, since these countries might be considered less trustworthy in managing foreign financial capital, which is thereby subject to confiscation in a not-too-distant future, particularly in view of the existing huge geopolitical tensions, notably between China and the United States, in the Middle East or in the Red Sea,” according to Rossi.

When asked what countermeasures one should expect from Moscow if the US and the EU take action in this regard, the pundit suggested that the Russian government could sell “a relevant share of its Western assets, particularly US and European bonds and equities.” Russia then “could invest this capital in a number of economic activities across the so-called ‘Global South’ countries, particularly in the BRICS+, namely, Brazil, India, China, South Africa, and some other countries whose economy is emerging in the currently multi-polar globalization,” per the expert. Similarly, he did not rule out that Russia could sell “huge amounts of US dollars across the foreign exchange market, thereby inducing a relevant depreciation of the greenback, with a negative effect on the US balance of trade, hence on US inflation and economic growth, all of which could increase unemployment, poverty and fiscal deficits in the United States.” He also indicated that others may follow the Russian move, “thereby impacting on Western economies negatively, in a period when both the US and the EU already have their own economic and social problems to address properly and for the common good,” Rossi concluded.

Read more …

All that to get the NATO job.

• Dutch PM Has No Right to Sign 10-Year Ukraine Security Agreement – Musk (Sp.)

US entrepreneur Elon Musk said outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte does not have the legal authority to sign a security treaty with Ukraine for ten years. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO made the statement in response to a post by political commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek on social network X regarding the Netherlands’ ten-year military assistance agreement with Ukraine. Vlaardingerbroek said “the opinion of the Dutch People” had not been asked. “Doesn’t seem like he [Rutte] has the legal authority to do this,” Musk wrote in response. The Dutch Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday that the Netherlands would sign a security agreement with Ukraine for the next 10 years. It said the deal means the Netherlands will help Ukraine defend itself and achieve further integration into the EU and NATO.

Ukraine earlier signed similar agreements with the UK, France, Germany and Denmark. Reports also said a similar document could be signed with Italy in the near future. Russia has been conducting a special military operation in Ukraine since February 24, 2022. President Vladimir Putin has said the operation aims to “protect people subjected to genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.” According to the president, the ultimate goal of the operation is to liberate Donbass and create conditions that guarantee Russia’s security. Russia earlier sent a note to NATO because of arms supplies to Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said any cargo that contains weapons for Ukraine will become a legitimate target for Russia.

Read more …

“..In a sort of reverse Genesis, these would-be deities seek to save the earth from humanity..”

• The Elites Versus The Rest Of Us (Utter)

Far too many unelected, bureaucratic pencil-pushers in Washington and Brussels have been granted nearly complete control over those they are supposedly to serve, due to the cravenness of their elected “bosses.” These duplicitous diplomats and sanctimonious “servants” sneer self-righteously at those who they derisively say cling to their God and their guns, as they arouse themselves by marinating in their own supposed superiority. The West and its signature values of limited representative government, respect for the individual, free will, free markets, discipline, work ethic, and reasoned faith led the world out of the Dark Ages. Bizarrely and remarkably, the truth of the matter is that elites in the Western media, government, entertainment, and academia are now revolting against the same values that changed the world so much for the better. Progressive?

In America, the Biden administration is putting the kibosh on gas stoves and, now, all new liquid natural gas export approvals, ostensibly to fight climate change — but, some believe, more likely just to piss off political opponents. Mindbogglingly, various Western governments are essentially declaring war on farmers, or at least farming, again purportedly to combat global warming. So what will 8 billion people eat? The elites say, “Let them eat bugs!” Indeed, you will eat ze bugs…and be happy! The globalists at the WEF have taken it upon themselves to plan our subjugation. In a sort of reverse Genesis, these would-be deities seek to save the earth from humanity. At the 2024 Forum, the global aristocracy vowed to ramp up censorship of dissenting opinion.

If they can successfully implement broad-based censorship of those with whom they disagree, there is no hope for the rest of us to throw off our shackles. Period. That is why the American Founders wrote — and enshrined — the First Amendment to the Constitution. The elites believe they know what’s best for everyone else, and the planet at large. But in reality, they are far more concerned with what’s best for them — and their image as virtue-signaling champions of a supposedly utopian future. It is up to us to ensure that their assault on logic, morality, and sanity does not succeed — no matter the consequences.

Read more …

“Yemen’s fight for “our people” in Gaza is a matter of humanistic, moral, and religious solidarity – these are foundational tenets of the rising eastern “civilizational” powers..”

• The Axis of Asymmetry Takes On The ‘Rules-Based Order’ (Pepe Escobar)

The Axis of Asymmetry is in full swing. These are the state and non-state actors employing asymmetrical moves on the global chessboard to sideline the US-led western rules-based order. And its vanguard is the Yemeni resistance movement Ansarallah. Ansarallah is absolutely relentless. They have downed a $30 million MQ-9 Reaper drone with just a $10k indigenous missile. They are the first in the Global South ever to use anti-ship ballistic missiles against Israel-bound and/or -protecting commercial and US Navy ships. For all practical purposes, Ansarallah is at war with no less than the US Navy. Ansarallah has captured one of the US Navy’s ultra-sophisticated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), the $1.3 million Remus 600, a torpedo-shaped underwater drone able to carry a massive payload of sensors. Next stop: reverse engineering in Iran? The Global South eagerly awaits, ready to pay in currencies bypassing the US dollar.

All of the above – a maritime 21st-century remix of the Ho Chi Minh trail during the Vietnam War – spells out that the Hegemon may not even qualify as a paper tiger, but rather as a paper leech. Into the Big Picture – linked to the relentless ongoing genocide perpetrated by Israel in Gaza – steps a true leader of the Global South, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula spoke in the name of Brazil, Latin America, Africa, BRICS 10, and the overwhelming majority of the Global South when he cut to the chase and defined the Gaza tragedy for what it is: a genocide. No wonder the Zionist tentacles across the Global North – plus its Global South vassals – went bonkers. The genocidals in Tel Aviv declared Lula as persona non grata in Israel. Yet Lula did not assassinate 29,000+ Palestinians – the overwhelming majority of whom were women and children. History will be unforgiving: it’s the genocidals that will eventually be judged as personae non grata to all of humanity.

What Lula said represented BRICS 10 in action: this was obviously cleared before with Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and, of course, the African Union. Lula spoke in Addis Ababa, and Ethiopia is now a BRICS 10 member. The Brazilian president was extremely smart in timing his Gaza fact-check to be on the table during the G20 meeting of Foreign Ministers in Rio. Way beyond BRICS 10, what’s happening in Gaza is a consensus among the non-Western G20 partners – who are actually a majority. No one, though, should expect any serious follow-up inside a divided G20. The heart of the matter remains in the facts on the ground. Yemen’s fight for “our people” in Gaza is a matter of humanistic, moral, and religious solidarity – these are foundational tenets of the rising eastern “civilizational” powers, both domestically and in international affairs. This convergence of principles has now created a direct link – extrapolating to the moral and spiritual spheres – between the Axis of Resistance in West Asia and the Slavic Axis of Resistance in Donbass.

Extreme attention should be paid to the timescale. The Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) forces and Russia have spent two hard-fought years in Novorossiya just to arrive at the stage where it becomes clear – based on the battlefield and cumulative facts on the ground – that “negotiations” mean only the terms of Kiev’s surrender. In contrast, the job of the Axis of Resistance in West Asia has not even started. It’s fair to argue that its strength and full sovereign involvement have not been deployed yet (think Hezbollah and Iran). Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, with his proverbial subtlety, has hinted there’s, in fact, nothing to negotiate on Palestine. And if there would be a return to any borders, these would be the 1948 borders. The Axis of Resistance understands that the whole Zionist Project is unlawful and immoral. But the question remains how to throw it, in practice, into the dustbin of History?

Read more …

“The US failed in its goal to isolate and divide Russia but did succeed in its unstated goal of deindustrializing Europe..”

• Ukraine, Gaza Conflicts Isolate US, Europe (Sp.)

The US failed in its goal to isolate and divide Russia but did succeed in its unstated goal of deindustrializing Europe, war correspondent and analyst Elijah Magnier told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Thursday. “The world is changing indeed, not only because of the war on Russia in Ukraine but also the war in Gaza […] the Development of the BRICS countries [and] the increase of the Shanghai Cooperation. All these indications lead to one reality, the beginning of the end of US hegemony.” “Fifty nations gathered to defeat Russia and they failed… Ukraine has been defeated and Europe is defeated,” Magnier added, noting later that Russia’s economy is doing much better than Europe’s. In addition, the conflict in Gaza has wiped out any remaining pretense of Western moral superiority.

“We are confronted [with] the war on Gaza, where none of [that] moral ground is translated into punishment of those who are committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. This is where, today, the Americans are completely isolated, along with their European partners.” America can only survive through wars, Magnier argued, resulting in NATO threatening war with China when it cannot handle much weaker adversaries. “The US and UK are failing in front of non-state actors in the Red Sea [like] the Ansar Allah Houthis… So how can we understand that the Americans are ready to start a war against Russia and then against China?” Co-host Wilmer Leon brought up what he believes to be the “unstated” goal of the war in Ukraine, “the de-industrialization of Europe” which, unlike the stated goal of defeating Russia, “seems to be doing quite well.”

Magnier agreed and expressed shock that Germany has seemingly declined to react. “The Nord Stream II pipeline was blown up and the Germans refused to investigate the terrorist act,” noting that energy prices are rising throughout Europe, even though there are still some European countries buying Russian gas. “When energy is unaffordable… there is a migration of European industry to the United States where energy is cheaper.” “This is [how] the Americans succeeded in putting the Europeans, literally, on the floor, and this is something that Europeans understand, realize, [and] are fully aware of, but, surprisingly, they’re not really reacting and stopping all this useless war that is [leading] them nowhere but to the destruction of the European industry and economy.”

Read more …

I’ve posted the Mike Benz interview(s) before.

• Censors Who Rigged The 2020 Election Are Now Stealing 2024 (Fed.)

If you didn’t see Tucker Carlson’s interview last week with Mike Benz, you need to take an hour and watch the whole thing. In a mind-bending narrative about the emergence of what Benz calls “military rule” through an online censorship industry in the U.S., he lays out in startling detail just how corrupt and tyrannical the U.S. defense and foreign policy establishment has become. Most importantly, Benz, the executive director of the Foundation For Freedom Online, explains how a constellation of federal agencies and publicly funded institutions, under the pretext of countering “misinformation,” rigged the 2020 election and are right now smothering the First Amendment and rigging the 2024 election through massive state-sponsored censorship online. The 2020 election and the Covid-19 pandemic, says Benz, were the “two most censored events in human history.” And 2024 is shaping up to be the same, thanks to the emergence of a federal censorship-industrial complex.

The problem here is profound, with deep historical roots that go back to the aftermath of World War II and the creation of the CIA along with a host of U.S.-funded international institutions. But for our purposes, it suffices to understand the problem in its two most recent stages: the period from 1991 to 2014, and from 2014 to the present. At the outset of internet privatization in 1991, free speech online was seen as an instrument of statecraft. At that time, says Benz, internet free speech was championed by the U.S. foreign policy and defense establishments as a way to support dissident groups around the world in their efforts to overthrow authoritarian or disfavored regimes. It allowed the U.S. to conduct what Benz calls “insta-regime change operations,” in service of the State Department’s foreign policy agenda. The plan worked really well. Among other things, free speech on the internet allowed U.S.-backed groups to assert control over state-run media in foreign countries, making it much easier to overthrow governments.

The high-water mark of this way of deploying free speech online, Benz explains, was the Arab Spring in 2011 and 2012, when governments the Obama administration considered problematic — Egypt, Tunisia, Libya — all began falling in so-called Facebook and Twitter revolutions. During that time, the State Department worked closely with these social media companies to keep them up and running in those countries, to be used as tools for protesters and dissident groups that were trying to circumvent state censorship. But all of that changed in 2014 after the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine toppled the government of Viktor Yanukovych and there was an unexpected pro-Russia counter-coup in Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine. Later that same year, says Benz, when the people of Crimea voted to be annexed into the Russian Federation, “that was the last straw for the concept of free speech on the internet in the eyes of NATO.”

Thereafter, NATO, the CIA, and the State Department, together with the intelligence agencies of our European allies, did an about-face on internet free speech. They began instead to engage in what amounted to hybrid or information warfare to censor what they saw as Russian propaganda online. These efforts quickly spread beyond Ukraine and Eastern Europe to include the censorship of populist groups on the right that were emerging across the EU as a response to the Syrian migrant crisis. By the time Brexit emerged in the summer of 2016, explains Benz, NATO and the foreign policy establishment felt there was a real crisis afoot; the problem was spreading west from Central and Eastern Europe, and it had to be stopped. If it wasn’t, then Brexit might trigger the collapse of the entire EU, along with NATO and the entire constellation of supranational institutions that relied on NATO. The entire postwar architecture of institutions might come crashing down, all because the hearts and minds of the people were being swayed. So went the thinking, anyway.

As far as the national security establishment was concerned, citizens were being swayed by Russian and far-right propaganda, and we can’t have that. Under these circumstances, free speech was the last thing that could be allowed to flourish online. Censorship became the order of the day. As Carlson put it, these NATO and EU leaders identified their new enemy as democracy within their own countries — their own voters, in other words: “They feared that their people, the citizens of their own countries, would get their way. And they went to war against that.” And then Trump was elected. From that moment — and indeed, as we know from the Russia-collusion hoax, even before Trump was elected in November 2016 — the U.S. foreign policy and defense establishments, which had done so much to censor and weaponize the internet overseas, turned their attention to American citizens.

Read more …

Chilling. Bone.

• Julian Assange Faces ‘A Living Death Sentence’ In A Concrete Coffin Cell (DM)

Just days from now, Wikileaks boss Julian Assange could be standing shackled on a British airfield preparing to board a plane to the US. Once he disembarks and the sound-proofed door of a supermax prison cell closes behind him, the man who’s made himself America’s most wanted will – finally – be silenced. Lawyers fear the 52-year-old could be confined alone in a ‘concrete coffin’, a 12ft by 7ft chamber – with a window 3ft high but just four inches wide, designed to ensure that the inmate has no view other than sky or wall. Inside it, his bed, desk and stool will be made of poured concrete too. Under this regime, meals are passed through a slot in the door and inmates use a stainless steel sink, toilet and shower inside their cell, meaning they don’t even leave to eat or wash. Once every 24 hours, they are allowed out for an hour to exercise in a small, individually caged space, often sunken, like an empty swimming pool, to prevent them getting any sense of their bearings within the prison complex.

The CIA plan to kill Julian Assange in London

A 2012 class-action lawsuit brought against America’s Federal Bureau of Prisons revealed how a sentence in this sort of facility tests the sanity of the toughest inmates. They ‘interminably wail, scream and bang on the walls of their cells. Some mutilate their bodies with razors, shards of glass, sharpened chicken bones, writing utensils, and whatever other objects they can obtain. A number swallow razor blades, nail clippers, parts of radios and televisions, broken glass, and other dangerous objects’. Security is, of course paramount. Both prisoners and their cells, which are constantly monitored by CCTV, are searched frequently. Outside, 12ft high walls topped with razor wire, turreted guard towers, floodlights, motion censors and dog patrols mean the likelihood of escape is minute.

Most notorious of all is ADX Florence, an institution in Colorado nicknamed the Alcatraz of the Rockies, which was memorably described by one former warden as ‘a clean version of hell’. It was the possibility of Assange being entombed there, under what are known as special administrative measures (solitary confinement and the severest restrictions), that temporarily halted his extradition back in 2020. Now it’s back on and in its endgame following two climactic days of hearings in London’s High Court this week. Two judges, Dame Victoria Sharpe and Mr Justice Johnson, yesterday reserved their judgment pending further submissions from both sides. They are expected to rule on whether the extradition, originally agreed by former home secretary Priti Patel in 2022, can go ahead, or whether Assange has the right to another appeal, some time next month.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Elephant Hat

 

 

Henry

 

 

Victims

 

 

 

 

Garra rufa

 

 

Gray whale

 

 

Bathtubs

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle January 10 2024

Jan 102024
 
 January 10, 2024  Posted by at 8:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  32 Responses »


Jackson Pollock Male and female 1942

 

• Why Democrats Need to Re-Think Hunter’s Contempt (Turley)
• Trump Warns of ‘Big Trouble’ if Supreme Court Rules Against Ballot Access (ET)
• Biden White House Coordinates Fani Willis Indictment of Donald Trump (Kanekoa)
• Judge James Boasberg Gives Ray Epps Probation (CTH)
• Biden on Borders (Kanekoa)
• Trump is the Winter Coat – Charles Nenner (USAW)
• Something Lost, Never to Be Found Again (Alastair Crooke)
• Netanyahu ‘In Real Trouble,’ IDF Can’t Control Gaza – Analyst (Sp.)
• West Ready To Back Ukraine ‘For Years’ – UK Foreign Secretary (RT)
• Russian Tycoon Deripaska Predicts 20% Oil Price Crash (RT)
• German Government Ready to Sacrifice Own Citizens in Order to Arm Ukraine (Sp.)
• Germany Could Face Its Own ‘Maidan’ – Medvedev (RT)
• Let the Games Begin (James Howard Kunstler)
• Fauci Unable to Answer Key Questions in Pandemic Probe (CHD)

 

 

 

 

Greenwald

 

 


Elon Musk: “Arizona clearly states that no proof of citizenship is required for federal elections.”

 

 

Rogan 1965

 

 

Rickards

 

 

 

 

Scott Ritter

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..unanimously oppose holding Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress despite his flagrant violation of a subpoena to appear for a standard closed deposition…”

• Why Democrats Need to Re-Think Hunter’s Contempt (Turley)

This week, the Republican-controlled House will begin contempt proceedings against Hunter Biden with a vote expected as early as this week. That alone will be an historic moment for Congress to declare that the son of a sitting president may have committed a federal felony. However, the costs may not be borne by Hunter alone. If the Democratic members, as expected, unanimously oppose the contempt sanction, the party could fundamentally undermine its position in future investigations. The Democratic leadership has made a series of similar decisions in the last decade that have cost the party dearly by opting for immediate political benefits over long-term interests. They are acting as the political version of short sellers who have given away institutional positions, only to find later that the costs were prohibitive.

That was the case when Democrats repeatedly undermined the Senate filibuster. Many of us warned Democratic senators that they would rue the day that they killed the rule. Nevertheless, in 2013, Democrats pushed through a rule change allowing most presidential nominees (but not Supreme Court nominees) to be confirmed by a simple majority vote. Then in 2017, when Republicans controlled the Senate, they extended the simple-majority rule change to justices, too — and when Democrats wanted the filibuster to block the High Court nominations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh or Amy Coney Barrett during the Trump administration, it was gone. Likewise, when Democrats first sought to impeach President Donald Trump, they held only one hearing in the House Judiciary Committee and discarded the development of the type of evidentiary record used in past impeachments.

I warned that the record guaranteed an easy acquittal in the Senate and undermined the process of impeachment. They ignored such warnings and quickly impeached, then lost the case in the Senate. In a second impeachment, they went even further, using what I called a “snap impeachment” with no hearing of any kind. Now, after using the first snap impeachment in history, Democrats are implausibly arguing that House Republicans have failed to support impeachment efforts against President Joe Biden and objected to the lack of hearings with particular witnesses. They also have encouraged President Biden to act unilaterally in a host of areas, including his attempt to give away a half-trillion dollars in student loan debts.

When House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was targeted for removal by a handful of GOP members, many people urged Democrats not to support such a dysfunctional movewhen the nation had serious problems to address. Yet Democrats voted with the rebellious Republicans to oust McCarthy, and the whole effort caused weeks of disruption. It shattered a certain detente in such motions to vacate— and Republicans are very likely to return the favor during any future revolt against a Democratic speaker. The political culture of short selling is nowhere more evident than in the “ballot-cleansing” efforts of Democratic officials and activists to remove Trump’s name from 2024 ballots as well as to remove primary opponents against Biden.

The immediate satisfaction of blocking potential voters ignores the long-term costs of this distinctly anti-democratic measure. When presented with those implications, anti-Trump pundits often express anger. MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, for example, called such concerns “laughable” and told critics to “spare me the anti-democratic lectures.” Now, Democrats are about to do another short sell. They are expected to unanimously oppose holding Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress despite his flagrant violation of a subpoena to appear for a standard closed deposition. It is the very same demand made by Democrats in prior congresses, before witnesses subsequently appeared for public hearings on controversies like the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Read more …

“.. the 14th Amendment provision has been used so sparingly in American history that the U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on it.”

• Trump Warns of ‘Big Trouble’ if Supreme Court Rules Against Ballot Access (ET)

Former President Donald Trump warned there would be “big trouble” if the U.S. Supreme Court issued an unfavorable ruling in cases where he is denied access to states’ ballots. The nation’s high court on Jan. 5 agreed to hear a case that stemmed from the Colorado Supreme Court’s earlier ruling that barred President Trump from appearing on the ballot in the state. The judges wrote that he should be blocked due to their interpretation of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment’s Section 3, which prohibits candidates who engaged in an “insurrection or rebellion” from running for office. During a rally on Jan. 5, the former president told a rally in Iowa that he hopes “we get fair treatment because if we don’t, our country’s in big, big trouble. Does everybody understand what I’m saying?”

In their appeal to the high court, his lawyers argued that Colorado’s voters have been disenfranchised under the state Supreme Court’s ruling in December. “The Colorado Supreme Court decision would unconstitutionally disenfranchise millions of voters in Colorado and likely be used as a template to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters nationwide,” the lawyers wrote in their appeal.Aside from Colorado, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows unilaterally ruled to block the former president from the ballot, prompting an appeal to the Supreme Court. And like in Colorado, Ms. Bellows argued that he should be barred from appearing on primary and general election ballots because of the 14th Amendment’s clause. The appeal to the Supreme Court came one day after the president’s legal team filed an appeal against the ruling from Ms. Bellows that Trump was ineligible to appear on that state’s ballot over his role in the Capitol breach.

Both the Colorado Supreme Court and the Maine secretary of state’s rulings are on hold until the appeals play out. Late last week, the former president’s attorney and spokeswoman, Alina Habba, said she believes the Supreme Court will “step up” to reject the ballot decisions because they are “pro-law” and “pro-fairness.” “I think it should be a slam dunk in the Supreme Court. I have faith in them,” Ms. Habba told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “You know, people like Kavanaugh, who the president fought for, who the president went through how to get into place, he’ll step up.” The Trump appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court also follows one from Colorado’s Republican Party. Other legal observers expect the high court will take the case because it concerns unsettled constitutional issues that go to the heart of how the country is governed. At the same time, the 14th Amendment provision has been used so sparingly in American history that the U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on it.

Read more …

X thread.

Nathan Wade billed the taxpayer for his “coordinating” talks with the White House.

• Biden White House Coordinates Fani Willis Indictment of Donald Trump (Kanekoa)

Yesterday, in a shocking revelation, @MarcoPolo501c3 uncovered a significant connection between Nathan Wade, Fani Willis’ lead prosecutor, and the Biden White House. Fani Willis’ lead prosecutor held meetings with Biden’s White House Counsel on May 23 and Nov. 18, 2022, before indicting Donald Trump, Biden’s leading presidential opponent. Remember when Fani Willis prematurely leaked Trump’s indictment before announcing it at a late-night press conference at 11:37 pm? Newt Gingrich told @charliekirk11 that someone from DC called Fani Willis and demanded she indict Trump that Monday night, Aug. 14, 2023, to divert attention away from the Weiss “screw up.” That Weiss “screw up” originated on July 19, 2023, when IRS whistleblowers testified before Congress about DOJ and Weiss blocking investigators from filing felony charges against Hunter Biden, tipping off Hunter about search warrants, preventing witness interviews, and restricting any investigation into President Joe Biden.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1744847101362896973

Senator Chuck Grassley later released an FBI FD-1023 form detailing a $10 million bribery scheme involving VP Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. One week later, Judge Noreika dismantled Weiss’s unprecedented sweetheart immunity deal for Hunter, questioning why the DOJ granted full-scale immunity to Hunter Biden for unrelated crimes. In the following weeks, the House Oversight Committee released bank records showing payments to the Bidens from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. Rep. James Comer disclosed over 170 suspicious activity reports submitted by six banks to the Treasury Department, implicating the Biden family in money laundering, human trafficking, and tax fraud. Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s business partner, claimed President Joe Biden was involved in over twenty calls regarding his son’s foreign business dealings. Leading up to Friday, Aug. 11, 2023, when Garland appointed Weiss as Special Counsel despite prior false statements to Congress that Weiss already had the authority to file charges against Hunter, further exposing the DOJ’s corruption.

Garland appointed Weiss after he was the attorney who approved Hunter Biden’s unprecedented sweetheart deal, and IRS whistleblowers testified before Congress that Weiss had obstructed the investigation into the Bidens for the last five years. This would explain why Fani Willis leaked the indictment prematurely on Monday, Aug. 14, 2023, before holding a press conference at a quarter to midnight, shifting the media’s focus away from the DOJ protecting Biden to Fani Willis indicting Trump. As revealed in yesterday’s court filings, Nathan Wade, Fani Willis’ lead prosecutor, held meetings with Biden White House Counsel at the beginning and near the end of her grand jury, strategically coordinating Biden’s prosecution of Donald Trump.

 

 

Watters Fani

Read more …

“..We need a reckoning, a serious and massive foundational reset, the likes of which we have never seen in our nation’s history..”

• Judge James Boasberg Gives Ray Epps Probation (CTH)

James Wolfe was the Senate Intelligence Committee Security Director who leaked the top-secret Title-1 search warrant FISA application to journalist Ali Watkins on March 17, 2017. When Wolfe was busted by the FBI his lawyers threatened to introduce evidence in court that he was instructed to do so by SSCI Vice-Chairman Senator Mark Warner. The DOJ dropped the classified document leak charge, and instead charged him only with lying to investigators. Wolfe received probation. In March, 2023, when I wrote the outline about Judge Boasberg being the corrupt DC judge who broke the constitutional restrictions on executive privilege, which technically forced Mike Pence to turn over his notes and testify to James Smith and the DC grand jury, I said at the time, “The entire judicial system is corrupt, soup to nuts, all of it.” I was not using hyperbole.

This is the same Judge Boasberg who sat as presiding judge on the FISA court. The same Judge Boasberg who gave FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith a slap on the wrist for manufacturing evidence used in the Carter Page FISA application that defrauded the court. The same Judge Boasberg who appointed former DOJ-NSD head Mary McCord as amicus curiae advisor to the court, after she knowingly and fraudulently submitted the FISA application to the court. Today, Judge Boasberg gave J6 FBI agent provocateur Ray Epps a sentence of probation.

Judge James Boasberg is not just openly and visibly aligned with the most corrupt activity within Washington DC, this is a federal judge who is laughing at the inability of anyone within the system to do a damned thing about it. We need a reckoning, a serious and massive foundational reset, the likes of which we have never seen in our nation’s history. Pray thankfulness. Pray for wisdom. Pray for resolve. Pray for strength. …. Then prepare!

Read more …

X thread.

Elon Musk: “Incentives matter. They are importing voters.”

• Biden on Borders (Kanekoa)

In 2007, Senator Joe Biden declared that no great nation has uncontrolled borders, warning that America must build a border fence and increase border agents to secure the nation against drugs, terror, and illegal immigration. Biden accused wealthy Republicans of wanting to increase illegal immigration to replace American workers with cheaper labor. “The reason the employers want this extra influx is it drives cost down… Employers have to be held responsible for the unscrupulous practice of bringing people here in order to keep wages down.” “That’s not fair to Americans. You have to hold employers responsible for hiring Americans First.”

Criticizing President Bush, Biden lamented the lack of border agents, the absence of a border fence, and the free flow of drugs into the country. “I’ve been arguing for the need to put more protection at our borders, meaning you have more border guards.” “You have to have a significant increase of security at the border, including limited elements where you actually have a fence.” “People can go over and under a fence, but you can’t take 100 kilos of cocaine over and under a fence.” Fast forward to President Biden’s term, and a record-breaking 8 million people have illegally entered the country in 3 years, with a fentanyl crisis leading to over 106,000 Americans overdosing on drugs last year.

On Biden’s inaugural day, he introduced policies that incentivize illegal immigration: • Paused Deportations • Suspended “Remain in Mexico” • Stopped Border Wall Construction. The consequences are dire – a national security crisis draining American taxpayers of hundreds of billions annually, leading major cities to slash budgets for essential services such as fire, police, sanitation, and education. As Senator Biden once warned, “No great nation can be in a position where they can’t control their borders.” “It matters how you control your borders. Not just for immigration, but it matters for drugs, terror, and a whole range of other things.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1744482029641793883

Read more …

“Trump is going to be the winter coat. I think he can make it less bad. If this continues the way it is, then we are going downhill very fast. I think Trump is coming back.”

• Trump is the Winter Coat – Charles Nenner (USAW)

Renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner has been warning of a huge war cycle that happens every 120 years or so. With Tiawan/China and Russia/Ukraine and Israel and the Middle East conflicts, we are clearly in this huge war cycle. Nenner also says we are simultaneously entering a huge financial down cycle that could easily turn into the Greatest Depression–ever. Neither of these cycles can be stopped. Nenner explains, “The problem is everywhere. You may remember we said 10 years ago that the biggest problem for the United States is going to be internal. There is a huge problem. Nobody knows what to do anymore, and people are afraid to speak up. . . . History says if you are not allowed to say certain things, then you stop thinking certain things. This is what is written in the book ‘1984.’ . . . .

So, this is the end of what is going on in the United States. I think America is lost, but it is not a surprise. The Dutch ruled for 250 years, and then the Spanish, Portuguese came, and then the English came. Every big society ends, more or less, after 250 years, and now it’s the United States. . . . People are talking about new systems. They think Marxism is good, but it did not work because the people who did it before made mistakes. If you don’t wake up, this is what you are going to get, and that is a communist Marxist situation.” So, is there nothing that can be done to save America? Nenner says, “The cycle is turning down, and people ask is there anything you can do? You cannot do anything about it. The question is what can you do? You have summer and then you have winter . . . if you know winter comes after summer, you can buy a coat. I have predicted all these war situations, and out of the blue they are here. There is nothing you can do about it.”

Where does Donald Trump fit in? Nenner says, “Trump is going to be the winter coat. I think he can make it less bad. If this continues the way it is, then we are going downhill very fast. I think Trump is coming back.” Nenner says interest rates are not going down until summer. He likes gold longer term, but it has not bottomed yet. The stock market is in for at least a 30% fall in the next few months, and the country will fall into a deep recession after the halfway point in 2024. Yes, it could turn into the greatest depression ever because there is astronomical debt. Nenner thinks the wild card is a multifront war that has already started. Be warned as Nenner thinks it can spin out of control at any time. War gets much worse before it gets better. Nenner also is warning about a huge wave of terrorism coming to America with the wide-open southern border.

Read more …

“..the purveyors of ‘winning’ hug themselves in sheer glee as their ‘flipped’ delusions are relayed through a compliant MSM..”

• Something Lost, Never to Be Found Again (Alastair Crooke)

So the narrative ‘factory’ is put hard to work. The kinetic war in Ukraine is settled in an evident and overwhelming Russian victory – albeit without it yet being ‘over’. Of course not: Ukraine was but one single battlescape in the wider struggle to force the ‘Rimland’ (the Atlanticist world) to accept an agreed upon frontier between it and the ‘Heartland’ (Russia, China and their Asian depth), and gracefully to renounce its claim to exceptionality in determining our global future. The MSM media therefore is abuzz with analysis of how to define a ‘western win’: Is it possible to ‘flip’ the narrative of Ukraine, they ponder, to being ‘another’ western win? They want to continue to feed Ukraine into the grinder – to persist in the fantasy of ‘total win’: “There is no other way than a total win – and to get rid of Putin … We have to take all risks for that. No compromise is possible, no compromise”.

Call the Ukraine conflict a ‘stalemate’, and insist that it represents a ‘defeat’ for Putin and a ‘win’ for Biden, since Russia was unable to seize the whole of Ukraine (falsely imputing this to have been Moscow’s objective, from the start). This approach is thought rather ‘cool’ by western analysts: Frame the narrative of a ‘win’ and ensure that from top-to-bottom of society, all adhere to the correct narrative without demur. But this is little more than a simple projection from the YouTube ‘influencer’ culture, by which random individuals earn ‘street cred’, (and lots of cash), by curating slick narratives – whether about fashion, or political events. It may work insofar as the addled western public is concerned, but it has limited traction beyond western cultural tinselry.

The flaw when ‘flip-narratives’ are weaponised geo-politically, however, is that propaganda which is so divorced from a reality that is evident simply is not a winning narrative (except in the most fleeting of ways). Plainly said, it leads to the self-isolation of its authors. The glee with which evident western ‘reverses’ seemingly can be narratively ‘flipped’ by Intelligence ‘leaks’ propagating rank lies to support a narrative has become a contagion amongst western intelligence services. Yet rather, this ‘deceptive covenant’ is a poisoned chalice. If the West had any remaining sense, it would concentrate more on setting a ‘narrative of western defeat’ in Ukraine, rather than promulgating yet another rotting ‘narrative of victory’ Why so? Because a wise leadership would be preparing its people for defeat.

Unlikely and false stories of glory on the battlefield come back to bite the perpetrators, as (metaphorically) the wounded and dead return to contradict visibly the tale of victory. The West, by contrast, is still fed on stories of western leadership, election, innate qualities and exceptionalism. Put simply, this ‘influencer’ fad signally is failing to help westerners cope with the tectonic shifts occurring across the globe. Its peoples are wholly unprepared for the ‘Winter that is Coming’. Yet, the purveyors of ‘winning’ hug themselves in sheer glee as their ‘flipped’ delusions are relayed through a compliant MSM. Childish propaganda and lying however will only serve to make the new era all the more painful. A ‘narrative of defeat’, told with integrity, by contrast, is one that helps a people to understand how a particular crisis arose and came to afflict them. It should also signal a way forward.

Read more …

“..Netanyahu’s future may depend on Biden losing reelection later this year, with a second Donald Trump administration likely being more amenable to ethnic cleansing..”

• Netanyahu ‘In Real Trouble,’ IDF Can’t Control Gaza – Analyst (Sp.)

Political analyst Elijah Magnier joined Sputnik’s Political Misfits program Monday to discuss Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declining political fortunes as the country pulls troops from northern Gaza. “Netanyahu is in real trouble today,” said the journalist in a discussion with host John Kiriakou. “First, he is attacked by his coalition in the government… the finance minister [Bezalel] Smotrich and the security minister [Itamar] Ben-Gvir warned him if he stopped the attack on Gaza, saying that they want the [Israeli] settlers to return to Gaza after they were asked to leave in 2005 by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.” “This objective contradicts with the American announcement that the Palestinians will go nowhere and will remain in Gaza, and any ethnic cleansing is not permitted,” added Magnier, “which means that the coalition and Netanyahu’s government is not going to hold.”

The Biden administration has largely defended Netanyahu’s military operation in Gaza, which has killed 1% of the enclave’s population over the previous months. Both Biden and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken have a long history of strong support for Israel. But, hounded by elements of his party’s base and activists who have dubbed him “Genocide Joe,” Biden has been compelled to offer rhetorical opposition. His administration has criticized far-right members of Netanyahu’s government calling for a population transfer of Palestinians from Gaza. Magnier said Netanyahu’s future may depend on Biden losing reelection later this year, with a second Donald Trump administration likely being more amenable to ethnic cleansing.

“He [Netanyahu] needs to keep going in this war, first to avoid the fall of the coalition and have the war last for as long as possible, waiting in the hope that Donald Trump will come to power,” said the analyst. “Trump will be extremely happy to put pressure on Egypt to open the gate and force an exodus of all the Palestinians and give him the whole of Gaza.” “The only hope for Netanyahu is to disregard what the Biden administration wants,” he concluded. Discussion then shifted towards South Africa’s recent filing of genocide charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice. The South African government delivered an 80-page complaint against Israel last week, documenting various statements from members of the Israeli government expressing support for ethnic cleansing and mass civilian casualties. The charges are set to be heard this week. “Ministers in the Netanyahu government said, ‘We want to kill all the Palestinians, we don’t want anyone in Gaza to remain alive, and we want to force an exodus on them if they don’t leave Gaza,’” recalled Magnier.

“The heritage minister of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government said we need to use nuclear bombs on Gaza. And the other minister said we are going to cut both electricity and food and supply to Gaza and ‘don’t lecture us about human rights.’” “All these represent clear evidence [of genocidal intent],” he said. “Plus all the films and videos that are posted on TikTok and social media by the Israeli army itself inside Gaza showing how they’re blowing up those homes by spreading explosive everywhere. And then another officer saying, ‘Well, I killed two boys of 20 because I didn’t find any children to kill.’ And the snipers killing civilians who were raising white flags and raising their arms in the sky. So all these represent solid proof of crimes against humanity and war crimes that Israel is committing.” “I think many countries would like to see some of the international laws coming back to normality,” Magnier concluded.

Read more …

Foreign Secretary wouldn’t have been enough for ex-PM Cameron. Instead, he was brought in as War Secretary. And that he liked.

• West Ready To Back Ukraine ‘For Years’ – UK Foreign Secretary (RT)

The US and its allies will not falter in their support for the Ukrainian cause, and Russia should not count on waiting them out, British Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron told Parliament on Tuesday. Cameron was prime minister between 2010 and 2016. Last November, he was made a baron and appointed Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs. Tuesday’s appearance before the Foreign Affairs Committee was his first since returning to government. The Ukraine conflict was among the topics that were raised during the questioning. “Our commitment is such that with our allies, we want to demonstrate to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin very clearly that he cannot wait us out, and we are prepared to support Ukraine through 2024, ’25, ’26,” Cameron told the MPs. “We are prepared to give that support because it is the challenge of our generation.”

The Israeli war on Hamas in Gaza is “certainly” taking international attention away from Ukraine, “which I think is a pity,” Cameron said. “I think it’s the job of the strongest supporters of Ukraine – of which I would say Britain is rightly one – to do everything we can to keep it as high up the agenda as possible, to keep the partnership and coalition of countries that back Ukraine as strong and united and as purposeful as possible.” Support for Ukraine is “not an issue of contention in British politics,” as it may be in the US and some other countries, he insisted. While London will continue to back Kiev even if Washington and others are slow to commit, “we really need the Americans to come forward with this package,” Cameron added. He was confident that the US Congress would do so eventually. The White House has asked for over $60 billion to fund Kiev in 2024.

Right now, the UK is working on mobilizing the military-industrial complex to manufacture ammunition and other weapons to meet Ukraine’s needs, Cameron said, noting there is “more to be done on that.” He argued it “should not be impossible” for the West to ramp up production, since its combined gross domestic product (GDP) is 25 times greater than Russia’s. The US and its allies have given Ukraine over $200 billion worth of military aid since 2022, according to recent Russian Defense Ministry estimates. Ukraine’s own military industry has been severely damaged by the conflict, making Kiev almost entirely dependent on Western handouts. London has played a key role in the conflict by encouraging Kiev not to make peace with Moscow. Then-PM Boris Johnson visited Ukraine in April 2022 and told President Vladimir Zelensky that the West was not interested in a deal with Russia. Ukraine then reneged on a preliminary ceasefire agreement it had signed in March in Istanbul.

Read more …

Too much oil?!

• Russian Tycoon Deripaska Predicts 20% Oil Price Crash (RT)

Global oil markets are heading for a crash that will slash 20% off of the crude price this year, Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska predicted on Tuesday. The tycoon’s warning comes after oil prices fell by about 4% on Monday on sharp price cuts announced by top exporter Saudi Arabia for exports in February. Oil has since rebounded, with the WTI benchmark trading at $72 per barrel, and Brent at $77.4 as of 14:00 GMT on Tuesday. “Cheaper oil, which will fall by another 20% on the global market this year, will be a good help in fighting inflation,” Deripaska wrote on his Telegram channel on Tuesday.

The aluminum magnate also referred to a report in the Financial Times that said that steady growth in oil supply from countries outside the OPEC+ group, specifically the US, and an uncertain economic outlook are expected to keep a lid on the price of crude this year. EU countries along with the US and Russia have been grappling with high inflation over the past two years. The rising prices have compelled central banks to embark on a rate-hike campaign that helped contain price growth in 2023, although the Eurozone saw annual inflation rebound in December, according to preliminary estimates.

Read more …

“..Germany’s budgetary position has deteriorated very rapidly due to the economic crisis. The government now needs to save money..”

• German Government Ready to Sacrifice Own Citizens in Order to Arm Ukraine (Sp.)

Farmers across Germany on January 8 started blocking roads and highways with tractors in response to Berlin’s agricultural policies which envisage the reduction of tax breaks for the agricultural sector and subsidy cuts for fuel usage. The protestors carried placards saying “no farmer, no food, no future” and “when farmers are ruined, food has to be imported”, as per the Western press. “The German government is short of money,” Gunnar Beck, a member of the European Parliament for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, told Sputnik. “And in order to offset rapidly and drastically rising energy prices, the government one and a half years ago decided to finance rebates to consumers in order to mitigate the effect of rising energy prices and rising inflation. And they also stepped up subsidies for farmers.”

“Since then, Germany’s budgetary position has deteriorated very rapidly due to the economic crisis. The government now needs to save money, and they’ve decided to scrap those rebates and scale back subsidies. That’s what’s happening now. It’s a reflection of the deteriorating economic circumstances in Germany. There’s also been a German Constitutional Court ruling which forbade the government from using €60 billion of unspent corona aid for climate policy purposes. That puts a further constraint on the government’s budgetary room for maneuver.” It’s not only German farmers who are facing the standard of living crisis, as the federal government also scrapped the rebate for consumers, Beck continued. That means that Germans will suffer the full impact of rising energy costs.

“I think it will be an enormous problem for a large part of the German public, who even now are struggling to pay their energy bills,” he stressed. “The German government is cutting back aid for those in need left, right and center because it’s pursuing ruinous policies, namely climate change, mass migration, subsidizing southern Europe, which it simply can no longer afford.” Germany has emerged as the only G7 economy that suffered contraction in 2023, as per the International Monetary Fund (IMF). For decades, the nation has relied on relatively cheap energy coming from Russia. However, after the US twisted Berlin’s arm into slapping an energy embargo on Moscow over the Russian special operation in Ukraine, Germany has found itself between a rock and a hard place, facing economic decline and de-industrialization. The sabotage attack on the Nord Stream pipeline infrastructure – which was designed to make Germany a major European energy hub – became the last straw.

Even though Germany appears to be incapable to provide its own citizens with much-needed subsidies, the nation’s government “generously” sent a Skynex air defense system, 10 Schützenpanzer Marder infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), ammunition for Leopard tanks, missiles for IRIS-T SLM air defence systems, 2 TRML-4D air surveillance radars, more than 9,000 155-mm calibre projectiles, and other aid to the Kiev regime. “These are very costly weapons,” Beck highlighted. “What does the decision to go ahead with the delivery mean? Well, it obviously means that to the German government, supporting Ukraine is more important than the needs of its own population. It’s as simple as that. The German foreign minister even said so.

Read more …

Scholz won’t last.

• Germany Could Face Its Own ‘Maidan’ – Medvedev (RT)

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz risks being forced out of office by mass protests, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has claimed. A week-long nationwide strike was launched in the EU’s leading economy on Monday. Farmers in Germany say the government’s decision to cut diesel subsidies and tax breaks for the agriculture sector will force many of them out of business. Berlin’s budgetary shortages are a direct result of spending “astronomical amounts” on Ukraine, Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council, argued in a post on X (formerly Twitter). “Subsidies have been ended, and astronomical amounts spent on Ukraine are still growing. And Germany is the main funder,” Medvedev wrote. “If this goes on, banderovtsy will export their proven weapon, the maidan, to Berlin.”

Officials in Moscow, meanwhile, are “following [the events] with malicious interest,” Medvedev added. Germany has emerged as one of Kiev’s key donors in its conflict with Russia, after the US and its allies pushed Ukraine into seeking victory on the battlefield instead of compromising on its ambition to become a NATO member. German funding currently accounts for half of all EU aid for Ukraine, Finance Minister Christian Lindner said at a conference last week. The Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW) estimates German bilateral assistance to Ukraine at $23 billion, including the cost of hosting refugees. Kiev’s failure to achieve significant progress on the frontline last year has undermined its long-term aid security.

In the US, Republican lawmakers have refused to appropriate additional funds unless the administration of President Joe Biden agrees to concessions on domestic immigration policy and provides a realistic plan for a Ukrainian victory. In the EU, Hungary has vetoed a European Commission plan to prop up the Ukrainian government. Meanwhile, German Chancellor Scholz has seen his approval rating fall. Citing a survey by INSA, Bild reported on Monday that 64% of voters in the country believe Scholz should step down and be replaced by Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. The farmers’ protests were triggered by Scholz’s attempts to fill a €17 billion ($18.6 billion) hole in the 2024 budget, which the government has since partially backpeddled on. Nevertheless, the German Farmers’ Association pushed ahead with its plans for an ‘action week’. Demonstrators blocked highways with their tractors on Monday, also dumping hay, animal feed, and manure on roads in a gesture of disdain for government policies. Hundreds of farm vehicles gathered at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

Read more …

“..Jack Smith’s J-6 case is a dog’s breakfast of erroneous supposition, misprision, and persecutorial misconduct, soon to be wrecked by the Supreme Court..”

• Let the Games Begin (James Howard Kunstler)

Did you notice that “Joe Biden” ceremonially kicked off his “reelection campaign” with that speech at Valley Forge, blaring the “insurrection” klaxon? Is it not astounding that half the people in our country have no idea that the joke is on them? “Joe Biden” is marking time in the oval office until the moment he must use his unique legal prerogative to pardon himself and all the members of his family for their roles in the influence-peddling racket he fronted as veep. . . and then he’ll gallantly step aside. The optimum play would be to hold off on that until just before the Democratic Party’s convention, where a claque of super-delegates can pick somebody else in a back room filled with estrogen vapors. It kind of depends on whether a faction of corruption-resistant Republicans will ante up for that impeachment inquiry we keep hearing about.

Despite the obvious bullshit on CNN about “no evidence,” there is actually a garbage barge of evidence steaming up the Potomac to prove that “Joe Biden” sold out his country. It simply needs to be laid out with brutal decorum in the proper setting. The catch is that a House committee can report out a bill of impeachment — as we’ve seen before — but a trial in a Democrat-majority Senate would probably fail to bring a conviction. The additional catch is that even so, the whole country will have watched the sordid spectacle and seen enough proof of malfeasance to foul the waters for the Party of Chaos in the November election, no matter who heads the ticket. It must also be obvious that the party is running out of lawfare tricks for shackling Mr. Trump.

Jack Smith’s J-6 case is a dog’s breakfast of erroneous supposition, misprision, and persecutorial misconduct, soon to be wrecked by the Supreme Court; the Mar-a-Lago raid case is a patent fraud; the Fulton County, GA, RICO case is a Fani Willis masturbation fantasy, and the two New York raps under DA Alvin Bragg and AG Letitia James will be laughed out of appeals courts. Anyway, Mr. Trump seems to thrive on the noxious vapors thrown off by these rancid actions. If all these genius moves fail, how else can they stop the Golden Golem of Greatness. . . and his promise of keen retribution for the serial hoaxes run on him and all the fiendish trips laid on the nation since 2016?They can try to kill him. Can you put it past our “intel community”? It is exactly that nucleus of the DC blob that has the most to fear from a second Trump term. Dozens of them will be charged with sedition and even treason, a hanging crime. And if they succeed in whacking Mr. Trump, that would only leave a huge opening for Bobby Kennedy, who has an even bigger axe to grind against the agency that rubbed-out his father and his uncle.

We held a meet-up here this weekend in my little upstate New York town to make plans for the petition drive in April-May to get RFKJr on the New York ballot. I told the group that much as I would relish seeing Donald Trump mop up the floor with the people who perverted the rule of law and just about spatchcocked our country, I believe Bobby Kennedy would be a better choice to lead us through the dark defile of history that circumstance has jammed us in. He is just as determined to expunge the horrific blob corruption, but without Mr. Trump’s exasperating artifice and grandiosity.

Read more …

“..He lied — brazenly — to Congress about his policy violations in three Senate hearings in 2021-2022. He lied — brazenly — to Congress about his policy violations again yesterday.”

• Fauci Unable to Answer Key Questions in Pandemic Probe (CHD)

On the first day of a two-day closed-door interview before the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), frequently evaded questions about gain-of-function research and the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), in a statement following Monday’s interview, said, “Dr. Fauci’s testimony today uncovered drastic and systemic failures in America’s public health systems” and that Fauci “had no idea what was happening under his own jurisdiction at NIAID.” According to The Hill, Fauci offered “his expertise on preparing for potential outbreaks in the future.”

But according to The Washington Times, he “couldn’t remember many details about his advocacy of lockdowns, his flip-flopping on mask mandates and his decision to allow government funding of gain-of-function research in China that might have led to the pandemic.” Fauci “claimed he ‘did not recall’ pertinent COVID-19 information or conversations more than 100 times,” and “profusely defended his previous congressional testimony where he stated the National Institutes of Health (NIH) did not fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan,” according to the subcommittee statement. Fauci also “repeatedly played semantics with the definition of gain-of-function in an attempt to avoid conceding that NIH funded potentially dangerous research in China,” the subcommittee stated. Responding to Monday’s testimony, Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright, Ph.D., a frequent critic of gain-of-function research, told The Defender:

“Fauci repeatedly and flagrantly violated U.S. government policies implemented to protect the public from lab-generated pandemics. He lied — brazenly — to Congress about his policy violations in three Senate hearings in 2021-2022. He lied — brazenly — to Congress about his policy violations again yesterday.” Investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker, who has documented attempts by Fauci and other government officials, federal agencies and leading scientists to cover up the U.S. government’s role in funding gain-of-function research in China, told The Defender he was not surprised by Fauci’s stance. “As I documented over two years ago, Anthony Fauci has lied about funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan. That’s fine. People in Washington lie all the time,” Thacker said. “But when he lied during a congressional hearing, wagging his finger at Senator [Rand] Paul … I knew immediately he had broken the law. His lies about this pandemic have been documented in multiple media outlets and I hope he is eventually prosecuted,” he added.

Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., professor of international law at the University of Illinois and a bioweapons expert who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, told The Defender Fauci should be prosecuted. “Fauci knew exactly what was going on at the Wuhan BSL4 [biosafety level 4] and the University of North Carolina BSL3 — he was paying for it,” Boyle said. “He has repeatedly perjured himself in testimony before Congress. This is just more of the same.” Boyle said Wenstrup should follow Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) example and refer Fauci to the U.S. Department of Justice for prosecution for perjury. “Maybe we will get some action there now that the Wuhan cover-up is unfolding, as detailed in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s book, ‘The Wuhan Cover-Up,’” he added. The seven-hour meeting was Fauci’s first appearance in the House since retiring from public office in December 2022. He was accompanied by two of his attorneys and two government attorneys, according to The Hill.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

CO2 ain’t gonna cause nothing,” astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon told Tucker Carlson.

 

 


..the astonishing “Treetop Tumblers,” a rare troupe of acrobatic lions whose gravity-defying tree-climbing stunts turn the Tropland wilderness into an everyday spectacle. Josh Gottsegen / troplanduniverse]

Best friends
https://twitter.com/i/status/1744433463787147741

 

 

 

 

Drunk test
https://twitter.com/i/status/1744442214363672606

 

 


Real annual wages in Greece are, on average, still more than 25% lower than in 2007. Meanwhile, some are continuing to frame the Greek experience over the past 10+years as a miracle success of adjustment. If this is what success looks like…

 

 

Dementia restaurant

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle November 25 2023

Nov 252023
 
 November 25, 2023  Posted by at 9:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  31 Responses »


Giorgio de Chirico The Enigma of the Hour 1910

 

• No Ceasefire in the Propaganda War (Craig Murray)
• As Israel Pounds Gaza, BBC Journalists Accuse Broadcaster Of Bias (AlJ)
• Was October 7th a Hamas or Israeli Massacre? (Cradle)
• The Eviction Notice Is Being Written, and Will Come in Four Languages (Escobar)
• Ukraine Conflict Could Have Ended In Spring 2022 – Kiev’s Top MP (RT)
• US, Germany Trying To Nudge Ukraine To Negotiating Table (TASS)
• Zelensky Flags New Military Conscription Drive (RT)
• Maidan 10 Years On… (SCF Op-ed)
• Control of AI Can Be Similar To Nuclear Non-Proliferation Rules – Putin (TASS)
• Eliminating Central Bank ‘Non-Negotiable’ – Argentina’s Milei (RT)
• Netizens Slam Biden’s ‘Thanksgiving Guide for Responding to MAGA Nonsense’ (Sp.)
• The Biden Administration’s EV Goals Are an Expensive Fantasy (RCW)
• How Electric Vehicles Harm The Environment They’re Supposed To Save (RT)

 

 

 

 

Haaretz

 

 

 

 

Finkelstein

 

 

 

 

Scott Ritter reveals why he gave up his career to fight against Netanyahu & the Israeli Right-Wing

 

 

Nap Macgregor

 

 

 

 

VDH

 

 

Garland

 

 

 

 

 

 

“This “justice” system is an essential part of the imposition of apartheid and the slow genocide, which did not just start this autumn. The BBC won’t tell you that either..”

• No Ceasefire in the Propaganda War (Craig Murray)

I have had BBC News on in the background for the last two hours. In that time there have been three lengthy interviews with different relatives of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. There has not been a single interview with a Palestinian relative of a Palestinian prisoner held by Israel. Today 13 Israeli prisoners and 39 Palestinian prisoners are due to be released. 90% of the BBC mentions of prisoner releases do not include the Palestinians at all. Just finished is a ten minute interview of a Professor in Kent on the psychological effects on Israeli hostages. Earlier there was an expert from Tel Aviv on the psychological impact on Israeli hostages’ families. There has been no mreport whatosever of the impact on Palestinian prisoners and their families. The BBC simply does not treat the Palestinians as human, whereas the emphasis on Israeli personal victimhood is incessant and unrelenting.

Of the 300 Palestinian women and children prisoners on the list possibly to be released during the ceasefire, 252 have never been charged with any crime. 23 were charged with stone throwing. Since October 8 over 200 Palestinian children have been taken prisoner, none of whom had anything to do with the October 7 attacks. That rather puts the possible release of 33 children and six women today into perspective. But it is not a perspective the BBC would ever give you. Over 2,000 Palestinians are held by Israel in “administrative detention”, without charge or trial. Some for over twenty years. Since 1967 Israel has made over 1 million arrests of Palestinians. This “justice” system is an essential part of the imposition of apartheid and the slow genocide, which did not just start this autumn. The BBC won’t tell you that either, and appears to have no problem with permanently showcasing its Israel based correspondents churning out the Israeli propaganda narrative, with no attempt at either perspective or balance.

Read more …

“The group does not plan to send the letter to BBC executives, believing such a move was unlikely to lead to meaningful discussions..”

• As Israel Pounds Gaza, BBC Journalists Accuse Broadcaster Of Bias (AlJ)

The BBC has been accused by its journalists of failing to tell the story of the Israel-Palestine conflict accurately, investing greater effort in humanising Israeli victims compared with Palestinians, and omitting key historical context in coverage. In a 2,300-word letter written to Al Jazeera by eight UK-based journalists employed by the corporation, the BBC is also said to be guilty of a “double standard in how civilians are seen”, given that it is “unflinching” in its reporting of alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Fearing reprisal, the journalists requested anonymity. The group does not plan to send the letter to BBC executives, believing such a move was unlikely to lead to meaningful discussions. They sent Al Jazeera the letter as a humanitarian disaster in Gaza escalates, and as grim milestones are reached at pace.

At the time of writing, more than 14,500 Palestinians have been reported as killed by Israeli bombardment, including at least 6,000 children. “The BBC has failed to accurately tell this story – through omission and lack of critical engagement with Israel’s claims – and it has therefore failed to help the public engage with and understand the human rights abuses unfolding in Gaza,” the letter reads. “Thousands of Palestinians have been killed since October 7. When will the number be high enough for our editorial stance to change?” Israel declared war against Hamas after the Palestinian group, which governs the densely populated enclave, attacked southern Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 Israelis and taking more than 200 hostage. Rights groups and hundreds of thousands of protesters worldwide, outraged by the soaring Palestinian death toll in Gaza, have called for a ceasefire.

The war has also divided newsrooms globally, with disagreements over how each side is being portrayed, the allegedly unequal level of empathy shown to Israeli and Palestinian victims, and the use of language. The BBC journalists said that across British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) platforms, terms like “massacre” and “atrocity”, have been reserved “only for Hamas, framing the group as the only instigator and perpetrator of violence in the region. This is inaccurate but aligns with the BBC’s overall coverage”. The Hamas assault, while “appalling and devastating … does not justify the indiscriminate killing of thousands of Palestinian civilians, and the BBC cannot be seen to support – or fail to interrogate – the logic that it does,” their letter reads.

Read more …

“..Nor has the Israeli government investigated her death or told her relatives how she died. This is because Leil was likely not killed by Hamas, but by the Israeli army.”

• Was October 7th a Hamas or Israeli Massacre? (Cradle)

A farewell ceremony was recently held for 12-year-old Liel Hezroni, an Israeli girl from Kibbutz Be’eri who died during the Hamas-led Al-Aqsa Flood military operation on 7 October. There was no traditional burial, just a ceremony, because her body has never been found. Israeli officials initially claimed that the Palestinian resistance killed 1,400 Israelis that day, including 112 in Be’eri. Though Liel died on “Israel’s darkest day,” no government official attended the farewell ceremony to offer condolences to her family. Nor has the Israeli government investigated her death or told her relatives how she died. This is because Leil was likely not killed by Hamas, but by the Israeli army.

Liel died when Israeli military forces fired two tank shells into a home in Be’eri that held 15 Israeli hostages and the 40 Hamas fighters who had taken them captive. Yasmin Porat, 44, is one of two Israelis to have survived the incident. She remained with Liel and other hostages for several hours in the house, guarded, she says, by fighters who treated them “humanely,” and whose “objective was to kidnap us to Gaza. Not to murder us.” Porat’s bombshell revelation was that when Israeli forces arrived, “they eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” the mother of three told Kan. “There was very, very heavy crossfire.”

An official Israeli police investigation into the Nova music festival attack near the Gaza border adds to the growing claims that the army killed civilians. The initial narrative of a Hamas-led massacre of 260 Israelis is swiftly being debunked as Israeli citizens demand investigations and more information surfaces. According to Haaretz, a police source disclosed that an Israeli combat helicopter, upon arrival, not only targeted Hamas fighters but also fired at Israelis attending the festival. The police report has now adjusted the festival death toll to 364 casualties.

A report from Yedioth Ahronoth on 15 October suggested that Hamas intentionally made it difficult for pilots to distinguish between them and Israelis by dressing in civilian clothing. This, it is argued, made the pilots hesitate to attack targets on the ground at first, but they soon began to fire indiscriminately: “The rate of fire against the thousands of terrorists was tremendous at first, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select the target.” The willingness of occupation forces to unleash overwhelming firepower in this way helps explain the large death toll on 7 October. It also sheds a light on the stark discrepancy between two narratives – one, of a trigger-happy, murderous Hamas that killed hundreds “indiscriminately,” versus the other picture, Palestinian fighters who treated captives ”humanely.”

Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev admitted in an interview last week on MSNBC that the initial death count of 1,400 Israelis from the resistance operation was a mistake. The revised count lowered the number to 1,200. We “overestimated, we made a mistake,” Regev said. “There were actually bodies that were so badly burnt we thought they were ours, in the end, apparently, they were Hamas terrorists.” If some 200 Hamas fighters and Palestinians were burned so severely by tank and helicopter fire that they could not be identified, logic dictates that many Israelis met a similar fate. It may also explain why there was nothing left of Liel Herzoni’s body to bury at her farewell ceremony.

Read more …

“..President Putin defined sending humanitarian aid to Gaza as a “sacred duty”, which in Russian code includes, crucially, the military spectrum..”

• The Eviction Notice Is Being Written, and Will Come in Four Languages (Escobar)

The Eviction Notice is being written. And it will come in four languages. Russian. Farsi. Mandarin. And last but not least, English. A much-cherished pleasure of professional writing is to always be enriched by informed readers. This “eviction” insight – worth a thousand geopolitical treatises – was offered by one of my sharpest readers commenting on a column. Concisely, what we have here expresses a deeply felt consensus across the spectrum not only in West Asia but also in most latitudes across the Global South/Global Majority. The Unthinkable, in the form of a genocide conducted live, in real time on every smartphone in the third decade of the millennium – which I called the Raging Twenties in a previous book – has acted like a particle accelerator, concentrating hearts and minds. Those that chose to set West Asia on fire are already confronting nasty blowback. And that goes way beyond diplomacy exercised by Global South leaders.

For the first time in ages, via President Xi Jinping, China has been more than explicit geopolitically (a true Sovereign cannot hedge when it comes to genocide). China’s unmistaken position on Palestine goes way beyond the geoeconomics routine of promoting BRI’s trade and transportation corridors. All that while President Putin defined sending humanitarian aid to Gaza as a “sacred duty”, which in Russian code includes, crucially, the military spectrum. For all the maneuvering and occasional posturing, for all practical purposes everyone knows the current UN arrangement is rotten beyond repair, totally impotent when it comes to imposing meaningful peace negotiations, sanctions or investigations of serial war crimes. The new UN in the making is BRICS 11 – actually BRICS 10, considering new Trojan Horse Argentina in practice may be relegated to a marginal role, assuming it joins on January 1st, 2024.

BRICS 10, led by Russia-China, both regulated by a strong moral compass, keep their ear on the ground and listen to the Arab street and the lands of Islam. Especially their people, much more than their elites. This will be an essential element in 2024 during the Russian presidency of BRICS. The current order of business in the New Great Game is to organize the expulsion of the Hegemon from West Asia – as much a technical challenge as a civilizational challenge. As it stands, the Washington-Tel Aviv continuum are already prisoners of their own device. This ain’t no Hotel California; you may not check out any time you like, but you will be forced to leave.

That may happen in a relatively gentle manner – think Kabul as a Saigon remix – or if push comes to shove may involve a naval Apocalypse Now, complete with expensive iron bathtubs turned into sub-ocean coral reefs and the demise of CENTCOM and its AFRICOM projection. The crucial vector all along is how Iran – and Russia – have played, year after year, with infinite patience, the master strategy devised by Gen. Soleimani, whose assassination actually started the Raging Twenties. A de-weaponized Hegemon cannot defeat the “new axis of evil”, Russia-Iran-China, not only in West Asia but also anywhere in Eurasia, Asia-Pacific, and pan-Africa. Direct participation/normalization of the genocide only worked to accelerate the progressive, inevitable exclusion of the Hegemon from most of the Global South.

All that while Russia meticulously crafts the integration of the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Baltic Sea (Finnish hysteria notwithstanding), the Arctic and the Northwestern Pacific Sea and China turbo-charges the integration of the South China Sea. Xi and Putin are gifted players of chess and go – and profit from stellar advisers of the caliber of Patrushev and Wang Yi. China playing geopolitical go is an exercise in non-confrontation: all you need to do is to block your opponent’s ability to move. Chess and go, in a diplomatic tandem, represent a game where you don’t interrupt your opponent when it is repeatedly shooting itself on the knees. As an extra bonus, you get your opponent antagonizing over 90% of the world’s population. All that will lead to the Hegemon’s economy eventually collapsing. And then it can be beaten by default.

Read more …

Not new, but first time from Ukraine sources.

“As soon as Russia pulled back its troops from the vicinity of Kiev, as a gesture of good will, Ukraine reneged on the deal, Putin said..”

• Ukraine Conflict Could Have Ended In Spring 2022 – Kiev’s Top MP (RT)

Russia was ready to stop the fighting had Ukraine agreed to remain neutral, but the West advised Kiev to keep going, the head of President Vladimir Zelensky’s parliamentary faction – and the chief negotiator at the peace talks in Istanbul – David Arakhamia admitted on Friday. Arakhamia, who heads the ‘Servant of the People’ parliamentary group, told the TV channel 1+1 that Moscow had offered Kiev a peace deal in March 2022, but the Ukrainian side did not trust Russia. “Russia’s goal was to put pressure on us so that we would take neutrality. This was the main thing for them: They were ready to end the war if we accepted neutrality, like Finland once did. And we would make a commitment that we will not join NATO. This was the main thing,” said Arakhamia.

However, agreeing to neutrality and giving up NATO membership would have required changing the constitution of Ukraine, Arakhamia explained. “Secondly, there was no trust in the Russians that they would do this. This could only be done with security guarantees,” he told 1+1. During the talks, Arakhamia added, British then-PM Boris Johnson arrived in Kiev and told Ukrainian officials to keep fighting and not sign any agreements with Moscow. Johnson’s role in scuttling the peace talks in Istanbul was revealed in May 2022 by the outlet Ukrayinska Pravda. However, neither the British politician – who was ousted as PM in June that year and eventually landed a job at an American think tank – nor the US government ever officially acknowledged pressuring Kiev into reneging on the draft agreement, which Arakhamia himself had signed with the Russians. Kiev had likewise never officially commented on the matter – until now.

Earlier this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed to African leaders that Moscow and Kiev had signed a draft agreement “on permanent neutrality and security guarantees for Ukraine” at the talks hosted by Türkiye. As soon as Russia pulled back its troops from the vicinity of Kiev, as a gesture of good will, Ukraine reneged on the deal, Putin said. The Russian withdrawal was presented by Western governments and media as a Ukrainian military victory and they began sending heavy weapons and equipment to Zelensky’s government, fueling the conflict for the next 18 months.

Read more …

“The German-US plan is to supply Kiev with just the kind of weapons and just the right quantity of them to allow the Ukrainian military to hold the current frontline..”

• US, Germany Trying To Nudge Ukraine To Negotiating Table (TASS)

The US and Germany want to push Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky toward talks with Russia by providing Ukraine with only just enough weapons to hold the current frontline, the Bild newspaper reported, citing sources in the German government. “The German-US plan is to supply Kiev with just the kind of weapons and just the right quantity of them to allow the Ukrainian military to hold the current frontline, but not retake the conquered territories,” the newspaper reported. “Zelensky must come to the realization that things cannot go on like this on his own, without demands from the outside,” one of the sources told the newspaper. “He must address the nation of his own volition and explain that it is necessary to hold talks.”

The US and Germany want Zelensky to realize that extending the conflict makes no sense for his country. However, neither Chancellor Olaf Scholz nor US President Joe Biden plan to make direct demands that he start negotiations. The US and Germany are the largest suppliers of weapons to Kiev. Bild said the situation at the battlefield is “grim” for Ukraine and that “Russian troops are advancing, albeit slowly.” According to the newspaper, the German government’s main goal now is to help officials in Kiev achieve a “strategically favorable negotiating position.” “The White House and the chancellor’s office are coordinating their actions in this matter,” the sources said.

Bild also reported that Washington and Berlin have a plan B. “What Berlin and Washington want as an alternative to negotiations is a frozen conflict without an agreement between its sides,” one of the sources said. Under that scenario, the current line of engagement will be “a kind of a new border” between Ukraine and Russia. “It would be like Minsk (the Minsk agreements – TASS), but without Minsk,” the source said. The newspaper reported that many German decisions on arms deliveries are now made by Scholz’s office, not by the Defense Ministry headed by Boris Pistorius. According to the report, Pistorius is ready to transfer Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, but his “hands are tied.”.

Read more …

“The West has been pushing Zelensky to expand the conscription age to men aged 17-70 and mobilize more women..”

• Zelensky Flags New Military Conscription Drive (RT)

Ukraine will announce a new “complex plan” of mobilization next week, President Vladimir Zelensky said on Friday after meeting with the General Staff. While he offered no details, other Kiev officials hinted at the possibility of demobilizing some soldiers that had been fighting since February 2022. Ukraine has been under pressure to make up the losses incurred in the four-month “counteroffensive” on the southern front, which Russia has estimated at over 90,000 men. “As for the issue of mobilization, you know how complex and very relevant it is,” the Ukrainian president said at a press conference on Friday. “Today there was a comprehensive report on what the challenges are, how to resolve the issue, what to do, what legislative changes, who must do this… A comprehensive plan on this issue will be available next week.”

Kiev first announced a mobilization and declared martial law in February 2022, when the conflict with Russia escalated. It has repeatedly widened the conscription net since, to the point where some German researchers warned this week it could jeopardize Ukraine’s economic recovery. Aleksey Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told Ukrainian radio on Friday that at least some of the men mobilized early on in the conflict with Russia might be released from service “in the near future.” “We all know that we now have a problem with mobilization, one might say, a failure of mobilization,” Roman Kostenko, secretary of the parliamentary committee on Defense, National Security and Intelligence, told Ukraine’s Radio NV on Friday. “After the military commissars were replaced, we experienced a failure in mobilization.”

Zelensky had purged all the regional conscription offices earlier this year, citing widespread corruption. By the end of August 2023, over 20,000 men eligible for the draft had fled Ukraine – and another 21,000 tried to flee but were caught, the BBC reported last week. According to Kostenko, Kiev needs to find a solution quickly or it will face “big problems,” describing mobilization as a bigger challenge than the shortage of artillery ammunition. The West has been pushing Zelensky to expand the conscription age to men aged 17-70 and mobilize more women, Russian intelligence said earlier this week. Kiev has neither confirmed nor denied these claims.

Former Deputy Defense Minister Anna Maliar – whom Zelensky sacked in September – told the outlet Liga on Thursday that Ukrainians “shouldn’t be afraid” of mobilization. Ukraine needs to realize some “unpleasant things,” she said, such as that the Russians “simply physically have more people” while Ukraine has a smaller army that “will not get larger” and fewer weapons. “The time for popular solutions has already passed,” Maliar said. “As an adult society, we just need to understand these things and not expect that there should be good news every day.”

Read more …

“Von Der Leyen, who now so absurdly eulogizes Ukraine, was the German minister of Defense during the Maidan coup. Her family’s Nazi past was quite fitting for the role she played in pumping NATO weapons and training to build up Ukrainian paramilitaries..”

• Maidan 10 Years On… (SCF Op-ed)

Ten years on from the Maidan uprising in Kiev, the country of the Ukraine has descended into utter chaos, corruption, fascism, destruction and suffering. And yet the Kiev regime and its Western state supporters have the audacity to call the tragic, bloody morass “a decade of dignity”. European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen declared this week: “Ten years of dignity. Ten years of pride. Ten years of striving for freedom. The cold November nights of Euromaidan changed Europe forever. The whole country took to the streets and spoke with one voice… The future for which Maidan fought has finally begun. Glory to Ukraine! Long live Europe!” It is nauseating to hear such bare-faced lies and distortions. “The whole country took the streets”? It was a minority of Nazi ideologues bankrolled by Western powers.

“Speaking with one voice”? The Maidan coup leaders murdered and burned opponents to death as in the Odessa pogrom on May 2, 2014, or in the deadly air strike on unsuspecting Lugansk civilians on June 2, 2014. Bitterly amusing, though, Von Der Leyen inadvertently speaks the truth when she said the Maidan event “changed Europe forever”. It certainly did that, but in an opposite and awful way to her ridiculous, rosy view. As this excellent documentary film makes clear, when the Western transAtlantic powers couldn’t get their way in dragooning Ukraine into joining the EU-NATO axis, the next step was to orchestrate a violent coup d’état in Kiev. This week ten years ago, the elected president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych rejected a vigorously promoted “association agreement” with the EU, preferring instead to orient the country towards closer economic integration with Russia and the Eurasian markets.

That decision by the president triggered relatively minor protests in Kiev dubbed the EuroMaidan which began on November 21, 2013. The rapid escalation of violent protests was obviously fomented and mobilized by external forces: the United States, European Union, the CIA and NATO. It was a repeat of the U.S.-sponsored Orange Revolution in Kiev in 2004 which had failed back then to fully decouple Ukraine from historically close relations with Russia. A second time around, however, the color revolution process would be more deadly and determined. Three months after the initial street demonstrations and amid mounting organized deadly subversion, the coup was executed on February 20, 2014. President Yanukovych fled the country.

A NeoNazi regime seized power and immediately transformed Ukraine into a bastion of anti-Russia hate. World War Two Nazi collaborators were venerated and made public heroes. Russian-speaking people were attacked and lynched. This is all documented, albeit censored out of history by the Western media. American and European politicians midwifed the birth of a monster. The objective was always to create a fascist Frankenstein terrorist state that would do the Western imperialists’ dirty work of destabilizing Russia. American imperialist ideologues like Zbigniew Brzezinski had touted and written books about Ukraine as the bridgehead for destabilizing Russia. The roots of such intrigue can be traced back to the early CIA recruitment of Ukrainian Nazis in the aftermath of World War Two to harass the Soviet Union.

Joe Biden, who was then the vice president in the Obama administration (2008-16), was intimately responsible for the transmogrification of Ukraine. Along the way, Biden even got his drug-addict playboy son Hunter a lucrative job as an executive in the country’s largest gas company. Von Der Leyen, who now so absurdly eulogizes Ukraine, was the German minister of Defense during the Maidan coup. Her family’s Nazi past was quite fitting for the role she played in pumping NATO weapons and training to build up Ukrainian paramilitaries for launching terror attacks on the Russian-speaking regions in the weeks, months and years after 2014.

Read more …

“Putin speculated that the best option would be to reach agreements before any threat in the field of artificial intelligence might emerge. “Do you know when this will be possible? When everybody feels threatened.”

• Control of AI Can Be Similar To Nuclear Non-Proliferation Rules – Putin (TASS)

Humanity can agree on common principles of controlling artificial intelligence similar to the nuclear non-proliferation rules, Russian President Vladimir Putin told a conference on artificial intelligence. “Humanity has worked out certain rules related to the use of nuclear technologies, including those in the military field: non-proliferation. It formulated the rules for non-proliferation of delivery vehicles and nuclear technologies as such. There are such rules. Humanity has managed to create this. In the field of artificial intelligence, we can achieve common solutions acceptable to all and necessary for all,” Putin said. His point of view was supported by the head of Sberbank German Gref.

“You are absolutely right. It seems to me that it is in the interests of all people, all of humanity, to approach this process with a sense of great responsibility,” Gref said. He is certain that this process should be fully controlled by people. During the discussion Putin speculated that the best option would be to reach agreements before any threat in the field of artificial intelligence might emerge. “Do you know when this will be possible? When everybody feels threatened. When everyone feels threatened by uncontrolled proliferation, by uncontrolled work in this area, then we will immediately see a wish to reach agreements. It would be the best if common awareness of looming threats led to the wish to negotiate,” Putin said.

Read more …

He’s an interesting man. I like the video.

• Eliminating Central Bank ‘Non-Negotiable’ – Argentina’s Milei (RT)

Argentina’s incoming president Javier Milei confirmed on Friday that he will keep his promise to shut the nation’s central bank. The statement was posted by his office on X (formerly Twitter). The shutdown was Milei’s signature campaign pledge along with “shock therapy” to fix Argentina’s beleaguered finances that includes dollarizing the economy, privatizing state-owned media outlets and other public companies including energy firm YPF. The statement reportedly came in response to what Milei has called “false rumors” that he had eased off on his plans, with some people claiming he was picking a more moderate Cabinet than expected.

Milei, who will take office on December 10, predicted it would take him “between 18 and 24 months” to decrease inflation, which is nearing 150%. Some economists have raised concerns that Milei’s “shock therapy sets Argentina on a path of deep uncertainty.” Experts suggested that dollarizing the $622 billion economy at a time of depleted international reserves could plunge the South American nation into another spell of hyperinflation.

Milei

Read more …

“The guide urges Biden supporters to say that “inflation is the lowest” under POTUS, in response to the claim that “the economy was better under Trump!”

• Netizens Slam Biden’s ‘Thanksgiving Guide for Responding to MAGA Nonsense’ (Sp.)

The Biden campaign has faced strong criticism from internet users for sharing a set of talking points designed to assist supporters of the President in engaging in political discussions during Thanksgiving, covering a wide range of topics including immigration and the economy. The list, titled “Your handy guide for responding to crazy MAGA nonsense this Thanksgiving,” was shared on X and rejected by many users as nothing but propaganda and gaslighting. “You’re literally gaslighting Americans about the economy. So many Americans are struggling to make ends meet due to inflation,” a netizen wrote.

Another user pointed out the irrelevance of releasing similar talking points before Thanksgiving Day on November 23, noting: “Why not just encourage families to focus on each other, the things that unites them, and their thankfulness for health, each other, etc? One of the guide’s talking points was related to inflation in the US. The guide urges Biden supporters to say that “inflation is the lowest” under POTUS, in response to the claim that “the economy was better under Trump!”. In reality, however, inflation has risen to a four-decade high of 9.1% in June 2022 under the 46th U.S. president. Data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics also shows that about 60% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck as inflation eats away at their wages.

Read more …

A society commiting suicide.

• The Biden Administration’s EV Goals Are an Expensive Fantasy (RCW)

The Biden administration is pushing for widespread electrification in less than 20 years through government subsidies and coercive regulations as part of its aggressive climate agenda. The truth is that President Joe Biden’s goals are an illusion at the expense of the American people. While EV proponents try to claim that EVs will soon be cheaper than gasoline vehicles, our new research demonstrates that EVs benefitted from hidden subsidies that total nearly $50,000 per EV. Who is footing that bill? Gasoline vehicle owners, taxpayers, and utility ratepayers are. Electric vehicles primarily benefit from regulatory credits and generous fuel economy standards, which average $27,881 per vehicle. EVs have been given an unlawful 6.67 multiplier to their rated fuel economy, so that an EV with a rated fuel economy of 100 miles per gallon is credited as if it is getting 667 miles per gallon.

What’s more, the EPA’s proposed fuel economy standards are designed to require that 67% of new passenger cars sold be all-electric by 2032, demonstrating a clear government preference toward EVs without proper consideration of costs and benefits. For gasoline vehicles, the price you see at the gas pump covers the cost of extracting, refining, and transporting the gasoline, but the same cannot be said for the cost of charging an EV. EVs require new charging infrastructure, and their large power draw increases the strain on electricity infrastructure. As our research highlights, a typical EV charging overnight at home consumes as much power as several homes, and an EV charging at a fast-charging station in 30 minutes consumes as much power as a small to medium-sized grocery store. A few extra EVs in the neighborhoods are manageable, but widespread EV adoption will require significant and expensive grid upgrades.

Adding insult to injury, EV owners alone aren’t shouldering these increased electricity costs, which average $11,833 per vehicle over 10 years. Until a utility starts charging EV owners for the extra infrastructure costs to serve them, those costs are shared among all the utility’s customers. Residential electricity costs across the U.S. have risen 20% over the last three years, and a rapid forced adoption of EVs will only make this problem worse. Direct federal and state subsidies provide EVs with another $8,984 per vehicle over 10 years, including the widely publicized $7,500 federal tax credit in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and smaller state subsidies for EVs. All these subsidies, of course, are borne by the American taxpayer.

President Biden’s expensive green pipe dream is not without irony. While Biden administration claims that these draconian EV mandates are necessary to combat climate change, the widespread adoption of EVs in the developed world would have negligible effects on global emissions and climate. For starters, if EVs are able to displace all the carbon emissions from U.S. passenger cars, that would only cut out 20% of U.S. carbon emissions. Our calculations show that even if the U.S. eliminated all of its carbon emissions by 2050, the effect on global temperatures in 2100 would only be 0.08 degrees Celsius.

[..] The lifetime emissions of the electric version of the Volvo SUV at the center of the study are only a third less than the emissions of the gasoline version, and that is when it is charged on the carbon-light European grid. Different assumptions could lead to an EV emitting more carbon than its gasoline counterpart. The obvious conclusion is that without rapid reductions in carbon emissions from the electric grid, an equally Herculean task to EV mass adoption, EVs will continue to produce significant carbon emissions. Emissions from gasoline vehicles are projected to decline 20% over the next decade, and hybrids, which nearly double the fuel efficiency of a gasoline vehicle with a battery that is 50-100 times smaller than an EV battery, would actually produce the least amount of lifetime emissions. But the net-zero advocates are needlessly demanding all EVs—or nothing.

Read more …

“India’s EVs depend on just the 8,738 Public Charging Stations (PCS) that are operational as of June 2023 [..] The number of PCS needs to increase to a minimum of 1.32 million..”:

• How Electric Vehicles Harm The Environment They’re Supposed To Save (RT)

Five Indian cities, including the capital, New Delhi, consistently rank in the world’s top ten worst air-polluted cities. Vehicular emissions are significant contributors; Delhi alone has around four million cars – no wonder the government of India is promoting electric vehicles (EVs) on a large scale. While India’s target is a 30% market share of EVs by 2030, the share is currently only 1.1%. Moreover, concerns exist about whether EVs are a green option if pollution is transferred from the cities to the countryside. Around 27.4 million EVs were running on Indian roads as of July 2023, according to the ‘Vahan4’ portal of the Ministry of Road, Transport, and Highways. To achieve its goal of net zero by 2070 to cut down greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, India is expanding its EV market.

The hope in New Delhi, for example, is that a rise in the number of green-number plate vehicles will herald a day when its air will become breathable again. However, India’s EVs depend on just the 8,738 Public Charging Stations (PCS) that are operational as of June 2023, as per the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), Ministry of Power data. The number of PCS needs to increase to a minimum of 1.32 million, states the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on ‘Charging Infrastructure for Electric Vehicles,’ to support the 30% market share target. But will EVs really be emission-free? For an EV to achieve maximum environmental benefit, the electricity used for charging must be generated from green or renewable sources. However, much of India’s electricity is still dependent on coal-based thermal power plants, and the government is on a spree to auction more mines and make non-operational mines functional again.

India’s total thermal installed capacity is 238.1 Gigawatts, and over 48.67% of thermal power (around 116 GW) is obtained from coal, and electricity demand is increasing by 4.7% annually. As per the National Electricity Plan (2022-32), the projected peak electricity demand for 2026-27 will be 277.2 GW, and for 2031-32, it will be 366.4 GW. Despite efforts to generate electricity from renewable sources, according to NEP 2022-23, much of India’s electricity will still be derived from thermal plants running on coal by the early 2030s. The share of coal-based capacity in the total installed capacity for the year 2026-27 is likely to be 38.57% and 28.83% for the year 2031-32, which will be around 107 GW and 106 GW respectively, by 2026-27 and 2031-32 – little difference from the present scenario.

Read more …

 

 


Dr. Gabor Maté and Dr. Tarek Loubani, a doctor who treats patients in Gaza and runs the Glia Project which seeks to provide medical supplies to impoverished locations, break down Israel’s systematic destruction of medical practice in Gaza. Loubani recounts his own experiences to portray a horrendous site in which children are forced to undergo surgery using “prehistoric” medicines without anesthesia, and innocent civilians are left for dead due to Israel’s blockading of crucial medial supplies. Maté describes these horrors through the lens of trauma, and gives insight as to how war psychologically destroys all its victims.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Penguin

 

 

Raccoon

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle November 18 2023

Nov 182023
 
 November 18, 2023  Posted by at 9:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


Mark Rothko Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea 1944

 

• Israel Captures Al Shifa Hospital for Their Gaza Military Post (Sahiounie)
• ‘Al-Shifa Hospital Has Become A Giant Prison:’ Gaza Health Authority (Cradle)
• How The Colonial West Continues To Betray The Rest Of The World (Ullekh)
• ‘Attacks On US Forces Essential To Stop Bloodbath In Gaza’: Hezbollah (Cradle)
• Biden Offers Hand of Friendship to Xi While Holding Enmity in the Other (SCF)
• Zelensky Fears A New ‘Maidan’ – Bloomberg (RT)
• Will US Ever Resume Funding Ukraine? (Sp.)
• Mike Johnson To Post More Than 40,000 Hours Of Jan. 6 Footage Online (JTN)
• US Needs ‘New Breed’ Of Leaders – Schwarzenegger (RT)
• Michael Cohen Appears to Confess to Prior False Statements Under Oath (Turley)
• Don’t Count On A Trump Conviction — None Of These Cases Are Slam Dunks (Turley)
• Stefanik Files Second Ethics Complaint Against Judge Engoron (JTN)
• Judge Rejects Trump Bid To Remove ‘Prejudicial’ Language From Indictments (JTN)
• As White House Stonewalls Probe, James Biden Signals Cooperation: Comer (JTN)
• Pilot Warns Of Airline Industry Disaster Due To Covid Vaccines (Beck)

 

 

 

 

Tapper – Don’t miss
https://twitter.com/i/status/1725341684580438091

 

 

BBC

 

 

Israel May Lose Its Statehood | Col. Larry Wilkerson Col. (ret.) Lawrence Wilkerson was Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff (2002-05)

 

 

 

 

What really happened in Israel on Oct. 7? Chris Hedges w/Max Blumenthal

 

 

 

 

Tucker Spain

 

 

 

 

“In the face of millions of protesters across the world, we still have never once heard Biden call for a ceasefire.”

• Israel Captures Al Shifa Hospital for Their Gaza Military Post (Sahiounie)

A military expert in the Middle East, on the condition of anonymity, said that Hamas likely keeps the location of their headquarters secret, and the information is available on a ‘need to know’ basis. Only the most senior members would likely know the location, and the local informants would not have that information, nor would the fighters who participated on the October 7 attack. The same military expert offered his theory: that the IDF want the Al Shifa Hospital as their headquarters because it is centrally located in the north, a substantial building, and has plenty of resources inside for electricity production and health care for the IDF. If his theory is correct, we may be presented with fabricated evidence of a secret Hamas headquarters by the IDF.

Regardless of how flimsy the evidence, the White House will rubber-stamp it with their seal of approval. We can’t forget General Colin Powell in Congress in 2003 with the small vial of baby powder claiming it to be Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Fabrications and lies are a specialty served up hot on a bed of media distortions by the Biden administration. The IDF hurriedly deleted a social media post they made claiming that all hospitals and ambulances in Gaza were a legitimate military target as Hamas used them. They were working up to the Al Shifa Hospital attack and wanted to test the waters. Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa Hospital, located in northern Rimal in Gaza City, was built in 1946 during British rule. “In Gaza, as Israeli forces enter Al-Shifa hospital, we call once again for the protection of medical staff, patients and displaced civilians sheltered inside the hospital,” Doctors Without Borders said on X.

“We are extremely worried for their lives,” it stressed. “There are reports that some people who fled the hospital have been shot at, wounded and even killed,” wrote WHO on X on Saturday. Decomposed bodies were buried in a mass grave at the hospital to ward off contagions. Dr. Ahmad Mokhallalati, a surgeon who is currently in the hospital, told Al Jazeera that gunshots can be heard surrounding the hospital. Mokhallalati said 650 patients remain at the hospital, including about 100 in critical condition, with 2,000 to 3,000 displaced Palestinians seeking shelter in the building, and 700 medical staff. 36 premature babies were recently taken off their incubators because the station supplying them oxygen was destroyed in Israeli shellings three days ago, and three babies died. The IDF have stripped naked people in the courtyard of the hospital amid rain and winter temperatures while interrogating them as Israel tanks approached while firing.

At least 11,320 Palestinians have been killed, including over 7,800 women and children, and more than 29,200 others have been injured, according to the latest figures from Palestinian authorities. According to experts, the Al Shifa attack and occupation is part of the Israeli vision for a forceful displacement of everyone in northern Gaza. Food and water supplies have run out, and the destruction of the last remaining source of medical care is a strategic Israeli military goal. “The war against [Hamas] is advancing with full force, and it has one goal: to win. There is no alternative to victory,” Netanyahu said on Saturday, and has rejected international calls for a ceasefire. Netanyahu has clearly stated it is his goal to remain in Gaza as an occupying force indefinitely, despite the U.S., Egypt, and Jordan opposing such a plan. Netanyahu also made clear he wanted Israel to retain overall security control after any conflict “with the ability to go in whenever we want in order to kill terrorists”.

In the face of millions of protesters across the world, we still have never once heard Biden call for a ceasefire.

Read more …

“We are left with nothing, no power, no food, no water. With every passing minute, we are losing a life..”

• ‘Al-Shifa Hospital Has Become A Giant Prison:’ Gaza Health Authority (Cradle)

The head of the burns department in Al-Shifa Hospital, Ahmed Muqhalati, revealed to Al-Jazeera on 17 November that the Israeli army has continued to conduct several war crimes as their occupation of Gaza’s largest medical complex extends into a third day. Muqhalati mentioned that the hospital’s main building lacks water and electricity and that surviving children are suffering from severe intestinal infections due to the lack of clean water. Muhammed Abu Salmiya, Shifa Hospital’s director general, told Al-Jazeera that the building has become a “giant prison.” Still, staff continue to do their best to help patients but add that they “lost all those who were in the intensive care unit.” “We are left with nothing, no power, no food, no water. With every passing minute, we are losing a life. Overnight, we lost 22 persons, [and] for the past three days, the hospital has been kept under siege,” Salmiya said.

However, despite efforts from the hospital’s staff, the situation remains out of their hands. “On some occasions, we are forced to leave patients to die because we are helpless; we cannot perform any surgical operations on them; the least we can do is give them some painkillers to let those victims die in peace,” Salmiya added. He called out Israel’s propaganda, in which the Israeli army claimed to have provided humanitarian aid to the hospital, including incubators for the premature children. “The Israeli occupation forces claim to have provided incubators to the hospital, but this is not true; this is false,” Salmiya underlined. “In addition, we are not in need of incubators; we already have incubators in the hospital, yet we are out of fuel to generate electricity [for the incubators].” Al-Shifa Hospital is in crisis as the Israeli army claims to have information about a Hamas cell operating from within the medical facility. As current reports have it, nothing has been found.

Read more …

“..doling out death sentences to more than 11,000 people, including over 4,000 children, infants and newborn babies, under the guise of “self-defense.”

• How The Colonial West Continues To Betray The Rest Of The World (Ullekh)

Nothing is more telling of the Western world’s attitude towards developing nations than the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Middle East. We in the Global South aren’t the only ones aghast at non-precision attacks by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on the Gazans. American academic John Mearsheimer, one of the world’s foremost international relations experts, is of the view that Tel Aviv is committing war crimes and “tearing the place” apart. He said in a recent interview that Israel is “waging a punishment campaign in Gaza [where] they are punishing the civilian population. If the Israelis were going to great lengths to target just Hamas and avoid civilian casualties then you could make a coherent argument that this is not a case of them committing war crimes. But they are not doing that.”

This is not the first instance of the South feeling betrayed by the West, which has come under sharp attack for treating the people of the rest of the world as subhuman, mere expendables. One key takeaway from Israel is the statement by its defense minister that the IDF is up against “human animals” in Gaza. This is the language of the colonizer since the dawn of empires: Sir Winston Churchill thought of Indians as an inferior race. When he was told that millions were dying in India because of the British diverting food supplies to the frontlines during World War II, he reportedly asked, “Why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?” There may exist no proof that he uttered those exact words, but his attitude was clear. From dehumanizing the Gazans who died in IDF strikes by terming them “Hamas’ human shields” – an accusation made sweepingly without evidence, as is the habit of the powerful over the ages – an Israeli representative has now called the UN relief workers in Gaza “Hamas members.”

Among the Western leaders, only Emmanuel Macron of France has so far spoken out against the killings of civilians in Gaza. The less said, the better about US officials such as former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, whose claims about Hamas’ “terror infrastructure” have not been backed up by proof of any kind – a privilege that would not have been so easily granted to a country from the Global South. I recently interviewed Dr. Mads Gilbert, a veteran Norwegian physician in the NORWAC (Norwegian Aid Committee) emergency team for Gaza, who has worked with the Palestinians for nearly 45 years as a specialist in emergency medicine and anaesthesiology. He was in Lebanon in 1982 when the IDF invaded the south of the country. He was in Gaza, too, offering emergency medical services during the Israeli bombardments of 2006, 2009, 2012, and 2014.

He had worked in hospitals that the IDF had bombed, including Al-Shifa Hospital. “I challenge [Benjamin] Netanyahu to show proof that Al Shifa Hospital is a Hamas hideout,” he told me just before crossing the Rafah border into Gaza during the current bombardment to assist Palestinian doctors working under the direst conditions. The West seems driven by a divine right to whimsically trample upon the human rights of those it deems unimportant and beneath it, doling out death sentences to more than 11,000 people, including over 4,000 children, infants and newborn babies, under the guise of “self-defense.” Over the past two decades, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven this typical Western mentality beyond doubt, and these countries need to be called out for their collective hypocrisy.

Now in Gaza, the women and children who die of starvation, bomb explosions, and lack of medicine perish because of American complicity – it is American weapons, funded by American taxpayers, that the Israelis use with complete impunity and utter lack of respect for international laws. According to the Western idea of justice, even occupiers have the right to “defend” themselves militarily against the occupied. Presidents who order invasions under unethical pretexts never make it to the list of global terrorists, nor are they tried at The Hague. Leaders who criminalize whistle-blowing are forgiven because they belong to the league of untouchables. Such tyranny is condoned as business as usual in the West.

Read more …

”If Israel still stands, it is because of the support of the United States. Otherwise, it would have collapsed within a few days. Israel is under intensive care by the west and we do not know how much longer it will last.”

• ‘Attacks On US Forces Essential To Stop Bloodbath In Gaza’: Hezbollah (Cradle)

In an extensive interview with Spanish daily El Mundo, the Deputy Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, said that attacking US positions in West Asia is “essential” to stop the mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza due to the unfettered support given by Washington to Tel Aviv. “It is the [western] axis that supports the occupation, legitimizes the murder of children and women, the destruction of hospitals, and grants immunity to Israel to continue its massacres. The US is supporting these massacres, and that is why attacking the US is essential to stop the aggression against Gaza,” Qassem said in the interview published on 14 November. “US military intervention is part of the violent Israeli reaction and serves to protect this monstrosity,” the Hezbollah deputy chief stressed.

US bases in Iraq and Syria have come under daily bombardment since 17 October by local resistance factions, prompting the Pentagon to deploy nearly a dozen warships, thousands of troops, and heavy weapons to the region. The Hezbollah official also stressed that Israel “still stands [today] because of the support of the US.” “You heard Nasrallah say in 2006 that Israel was more fragile than a spider’s web. Israel is weak. Their society is not motivated to defend their country. This is what happened on [7 October]. The amount of time it took for politicians and the army to react was unreal. If Israel still stands, it is because of the support of the United States. Otherwise, it would have collapsed within a few days. Israel is under intensive care by the west and we do not know how much longer it will last.”

When asked about the fighting between Hezbollah and the Israeli army at the Lebanese border – which has been ongoing since 8 October – Qassem said Hezbollah has a plan to “force Israel to restrain itself.”Nonetheless, he added that any decision “will be made on the battlefield,” as the possibility of the fighting spreading beyond the Lebanese border region depends on “the evolution of the Gaza war and on Israel’s (hypothetical) decision to start a broader war.” “If they attack us, we will have to defend ourselves, and we will use all of our power,” he told El Mundo.

Read more …

“It was highly notable that Biden and Xi did not hold a joint press conference following their lengthy discussions. Nor did the two leaders issue a joint statement.”

• Biden Offers Hand of Friendship to Xi While Holding Enmity in the Other (SCF)

Despite the hype in the U.S. media about their much-anticipated summit in California this week marking a putative return to normal bilateral relations, the Biden administration continues pushing unprecedented aggression towards China. Just like San Francisco’s notorious Third World-like homelessness and squalor being hurriedly cleaned up (swept under the rug, more like it) for the media spectacle, all the signs point to no return to decent U.S.-China relations in the longer term. It’s all a duplicitous facade for a passing moment on a path of enmity. Biden held a four-hour summit with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Wednesday in San Francisco ahead of the annual conference for the 21-nation Association of Pacific and Economic Cooperation (APEC).

It was highly notable that Biden and Xi did not hold a joint press conference following their lengthy discussions. Nor did the two leaders issue a joint statement. So much for a new beginning! Almost comically, the supposed positive meeting was later thrown into disarray when Biden at the end of his solo press conference made a hallmark embarrassing gaffe by repeating an earlier epithet for Xi. Asked by a reporter if he still considered the Chinese president “a dictator”, Biden responded, “Yes”. Antony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State, was visibly perplexed by his tone-deaf boss’s remarks, sensing that all the effort to create an apparent amiable reset in relations was in danger of collapsing in farce.

Chinese media tended to overlook Biden’s undiplomatic gaucheness. Surprisingly, China’s foreign ministry and media appeared to talk up the presidential summit as bearing prospects of more friendly bilateral relations. Global Times reported in an upbeat mood on a “strategic summit” for “greater stability in the world”. The American and Chinese media spinning or wishful thinking about a seeming turnaround in positive relations is misplaced. As Biden’s foolish and gratuitous remark about Xi being a “dictator” shows, the U.S. rulers have nothing but contempt for China. Biden may have held out a friendly hand to Xi, but the American president and the U.S. establishment are harbouring endemic and growing hostility towards Beijing.

Read more …

“..a “disinformation plan known internally as ‘Maidan 3’”

• Zelensky Fears A New ‘Maidan’ – Bloomberg (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky told journalists on Thursday that he has received tips about a Russian influence campaign aimed at destabilizing his government, according to a Bloomberg report. He claimed that various intelligence agencies had informed him about the purported operation. Ukraine’s top leadership has experienced divisions in recent months, with a series of publications in the Western press, based on leaks from Kiev staffers, describing Zelensky as calcified in pursuing an unrealistic goal of pushing Russia out of all territories claimed by Kiev. His office has also publicly clashed with one of the country’s top generals, Valery Zaluzhny, who said earlier this month that the hostilities had reached a stalemate and that he expected no breakthrough for Kiev.

Bloomberg reported on Friday that Zelensky claims to have received information from Ukrainian and allied intelligence services warning him about a “disinformation plan known internally as ‘Maidan 3’”meant to play on fractures in civil society and foment insurrection. Maidan means “square” in Ukrainian. Maidan 1 and 2 are the terms for the mass protests that took place in 2004 and 2014, respectively, primarily in Kiev’s Independence Square. Both were directed against Viktor Yanukovich, the former president whose political support base was in what was then the majority Russian-speaking eastern portion of the country, but which joined Russia in a series of referendums in 2022. The 2004 protest was mostly peaceful and successfully overturned Yanukovich’s victory in that year’s presidential race.

On the other hand, the 2014 demonstration occurred while Yanukovich was in office, forcing him to flee the country and resign from his post as armed rioters targeted his home. The violent uprising in 2014, Maidan 2, was backed by the West and empowered nationalist forces in the country. Moscow has described the policies of the successive government in post-coup Kiev as discriminatory against ethnic Russians and detrimental to Russia’s national security. Zelensky was elected on a promise of reconciliation with Donbass rebels but caved into the pressure of pro-Maidan nationalists, who threatened him with mass protests. Now, he believes Russia is seeking to provoke chaos and division in his country and topple his government.

Bloomberg quoted him as saying: “Maidan is coup for them (Moscow), so the operation is understandable.” Earlier this month, a profile of the Ukrainian president in TIME magazine cited his close aides as complaining about his unwavering pursuit of a military victory over Moscow, which the report called “verging on the messianic.” One source in the article reportedly called Zelensky delusional. General Zaluzhny outlined his vision of the frontline situation in The Economist, stating that despite all the Western assistance, Ukrainian troops were unlikely to carry out a “deep and beautiful breakthrough.” The remark put into doubt Zelensky’s assurances that the counteroffensive against Russia was progressing and reportedly fueled tension between his government and Kiev’s military leadership.

Read more …

“They’re going to have to learn how to shoot more accurately if they want to keep shooting at the Russians. They obviously are incapable of that..”

• Will US Ever Resume Funding Ukraine? (Sp.)

On Thursday, US President Joe Biden inked a stopgap funding bill that, remarkably, does not include a supplemental package of aid to the Zelensky regime. The US decision to provide Ukraine with a new military aid package may be made next month at the earliest, the US news agency Bloomberg reported. “New US aid for Ukraine risks slipping to mid-December and maybe longer, casting doubt on Washington’s ability to keep up the flow of weapons that both the Biden administration and the Ukrainian government say is vital,” the media outlet pointed out. Bloomberg quoted a Pentagon spokeswoman as saying that America had already begun restricting the flow of military aid to Kiev “because of the wait.”

According to Bloomberg, Republican infighting may push congressional consideration of new Ukraine aid into the new year, though White House national security spokesman John Kirby earlier warned that the US is “near the end of the road” in terms of resources available for Ukraine. “It’s an active battlefront and our ability to continue to support Ukraine is increasingly at jeopardy,” Kirby stated. The US news outlet’s report comes after the threat of a US government shutdown was narrowly averted on Thursday when President Joe Biden signed another stopgap spending bill into law just before the funding deadline on November 17. The document does not include Biden’s funding requests for Ukraine and Israel, which essentially means that these countries won’t be getting more US money anytime soon, Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, told Sputnik.

Asked how Ukraine would get money to replace US support, Maloof said it would have to “suck it up. “They’re going to have to learn how to shoot more accurately if they want to keep shooting at the Russians. They obviously are incapable of that,” he stated, in an apparent reference to the Ukrainian armed forces. “They burn through ordnance faster than I’ve seen anything like it. And under peacetime conditions, neither the United States nor the Europeans collectively can produce it fast enough to supply them without reverting their own industries to full wartime production. And the American people won’t settle for that,” the analyst added. Earlier this month, Kirby, for his part, said that the US had already gone through nearly 96% of the funds allocated to the Kiev regime since the start of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine. “We’ve gone through about 96% of what’s left and greater than 90% of security assistance replenishment funds,” Kirby told reporters.

Read more …

That’s almost 3 years later.

• Mike Johnson To Post More Than 40,000 Hours Of Jan. 6 Footage Online (JTN)

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday announced that he planned to post nearly all of the Capitol Hill security footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot online for the public to view. “When I ran for Speaker, I promised to make accessible to the American people the 44,000 hours of video from Capitol Hill security taken on January 6, 2021,” he said in a statement obtained by Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman. “Truth and transparency are critical.” “Today, we will begin immediately posting video on a public website and move as quickly as possible to add to the website nearly all of the footage, more than 40,000 hours. In the meantime, a public viewing room will ensure that every citizen can view every minute of the videos uncensored,” he continued. “This decision will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations, and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials.”

“I commend Chairman Loudermilk and his team for their diligent work to ensure the thousands of hours of videos are promptly processed to be uploaded to the committee’s public website,” he continued. “Processing will involve blurring the faces of private citizens on the yet unreleased tapes to avoid any persons from being targeted for retaliation of any kind and segregating an estimated 5% of the videos that may involve sensitive security information related to the building architecture.” Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had previously made some of the footage available to media outlets and personalities such as former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. McCarthy did not make the footage directly available to the general public.

Jan 6

Read more …

“..I just think we’re at a time now where we need someone strong, where we need visionaries, and not people that tinker around with little Mickey Mouse stuff..”

• US Needs ‘New Breed’ Of Leaders – Schwarzenegger (RT)

Americans are looking for “something new” in the White House and are understandably worried about a 2024 presidential rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden due to the candidates’ advanced ages, former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has said. In an interview with Politico, the Terminator movie-star said that, given the complexity of the problems the US is facing, the country needs “someone that has energy.” “We need new blood. I say, always, we need a new breed of leaders,”Schwarzenegger told the outlet. “It’s really because none of them are perfect and also because of the age factor.” Schwarzenegger also complained about the media’s focus on Trump and Biden, saying it hinders other potential candidates from being able to “build a name” for themselves.

“When Biden holds a press conference, everyone covers it. And when Trump does something …even when he sneezes, they cover it,” he said. Schwarzenegger also raised the Biden and Trump age issue when he spoke with Axios to promote a new audiobook on the 2003 California recall election, which he won. “The bottom line is, I think we need to find new leaders. To me they’re both flawed and I just think we’re at a time now where we need someone strong, where we need visionaries, and not people that tinker around with little Mickey Mouse stuff,” he told Axios. In June, the actor-turned-politician told CNN’s Chris Wallace that he would run for president himself if he was legally allowed to enter the race.

Schwarzenegger was born in Austria so is ineligible to run for the top job. He told Wallace that he could “see so clearly how I could win that election” and that it was a “no-brainer.” In a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, nearly three quarters of respondents (71%) said Biden was too old to serve effectively. Biden turns 81 later this month and was the oldest president sworn into office at 78 years old. Trump is currently 77. Earlier this month, David Axelrod, the chief strategist for former US President Barack Obama’s political campaigns, implied that Biden should reconsider running in 2024 due to “concern about the age issue,” suggesting it was something the incumbent president “needs to ponder.”

Read more …

“A serial liar just admitted under oath that he lied previously under oath.”

• Michael Cohen Appears to Confess to Prior False Statements Under Oath (Turley)

If lying were an art form, former Trump fixer Michael Cohen would be its Rembrandt. Throughout his career, the disbarred lawyer has found powerful clients who valued his reputation for supporting any side that offered the biggest payback. Now he is accused of yet another lie under oath and the question is whether his current benefactors will again protect him from a criminal charge. For years, Cohen was the heavy for Donald Trump who threatened everyone from journalists to students with ruin for threatening the former president. Faced with disbarment and criminal charges, he then became an equally vicious critic of Trump; a human cudgel for Democrats. The most remarkable thing about his checkered career is the one constant: a long, uninterrupted line of lies upon lies. Indeed, he is now accused of lying about prior lies.

I have been a critic of Cohen for years, going back to work as a legal thug for Trump. That criticism continued after Cohen sought to raise money from Democrats as a Trump killer as opposed to a Trump enabler. Those of us familiar with his history warned about the notion that he was now a “liberated former liar.” As expected, the sides changed but the lies continued. He would appear as the new star Democratic witness before House Oversight Committee chairman, Elijah Cummings, and was promptly accused of lying under oath again. Cummings refused to take any action against Cohen. He had again found a powerful ally who valued his moral flexibility. Even after being stripped of his bar license and sentenced to three years in prison, Cohen continued the pattern.

In 2019, Cohen failed to appear to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing the inability to travel due to a medical surgery. However, he was seen partying before the hearing date with five friends with no apparent problems. Even in jail, Cohen was accused of lying to a court in violation of an order for early release due to medical problems. He was ordered back into custody after being spotted at a high-end restaurant. Nevertheless, Cohen has few illusions about his sudden alliance with media outlets and Democratic figures. He does not have to be truthful; he has to be useful. That celebrated role continued this year when Cohen was called to testify in the New York fraud case brought by Attorney General Letitia James. It mattered little to James that Cohen is a serial liar. Yet, even her office may have been surprised with the ease with which Cohen now admits to false statements.

During his recent testimony, Cohen was confronted by statements about Trump inflating the value of his properties that directly contradicted his sworn testimony before Congress. Most witnesses would be petrified by the prospect of admitting lying under oath. Most would refuse to testify under the Fifth Amendment. Not Cohen. He simply seemed to shrug it off and admitted that he previously lied under oath in 2019 before Congress. In testifying before the House Intelligence Committee on February 28, 2019, Cohen was asked about the same alleged violation and responded: “I’m sorry. Did he ask me to inflate the numbers? Not that I recall, no.” When read that answer in New York by defense counsel, Cohen admitted that he was not being “honest” with Congress. Trump attorney Alina Habba then asked him: “So you lied under oath in February of 2019? Is that your testimony?” Cohen replied “yes.”

For Cohen, the admission of a lie is hardly a significant moment. He pleaded guilty to felonies including false statements to banks in 2018. After professing his profound guilt and remorse, he was sentenced to three years. He then later said that he really did not mean it in denying aspects of the plea. After that plea and then denying the sworn plea, Cohen was called to give testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. He now says that he proceeded to lie again. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik have sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland for an investigation into the admitted false testimony.

This would seem an embarrassingly easy case for a prosecutor. A serial liar just admitted under oath that he lied previously under oath. There is a five-year statute of limitations on lying to Congress. Moreover, this is the attorney general who aggressively pursued Trump officials and associates for contempt and other violations linked to congressional investigations. It is also the same department that prosecuted figures like Gen. Michael Flynn for false statements made to FBI agents. For Cohen, the key to his career has been to lie to the right people at the right time. It is now up to Garland whether he will join a long line of powerful allies covering for Cohen.

Read more …

“the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of [New] York.”

“..It is perfectly consistent that a man long described as having an inflated self-image would not accept that he is a loser. That long-held journalistic view is now a viable criminal defense.”

• Don’t Count On A Trump Conviction — None Of These Cases Are Slam Dunks (Turley)

This week, Chris Christie declared that “it’s over” for Donald Trump and predicted that the former president would be a convicted felon “by the spring.” He was specifically referring to the prosecutions linked to the 2020 election denial in Atlanta and DC. However, Yogi Berra would likely caution that, in baseball and litigation, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” Trump’s greatest threat of conviction remains in Florida, where he is facing federal charges related to his retention of classified documents. But the judge in that case seems inclined to delay it, perhaps even until after the election. And with reports that President Biden will not face charges in his own handling of classified documents, Trump has a political rallying cry that — correctly or not — he’s being treated differently. So that leaves the two cases surrounding the 2020 election.

In Georgia, a slew of former lawyers are taking pleas with promises to testify if called. Some of their depositions have been leaked, much to the dismay of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. She has reason to be alarmed because some of the leaked interviews hit hard at the weakest link in her conspiracy case. For instance, Sidney Powell stated that Trump clearly believed that he had won the election when he was challenging the results in the courts and Congress. Powell pleaded to misdemeanors for a deal that avoids jail time and preserves her ability to resume the practice of law. She notably did not plead guilty to the sweeping racketeering charges brought by Willis to link Trump in an effort to subvert the election. I previously wrote that the Achilles heel of the racketeering case was Trump’s state of mind: “As a threshold matter, one problem is immediately evident. If Trump actually did (or does) believe that he did not lose the election, the indictment collapses.”

That’s exactly what Powell argues. Trump had “general instincts that something wasn’t right here.” She added, “I didn’t think he had lost. I saw an avenue pursuant to which, if I was right, he would remain president.” That supplies a key defense for Trump: that he believed assurances from counsel that he had a case to make in challenging the election. Powell’s statement will also present challenges to special counsel Jack Smith, who has a parallel case in Washington, DC. While both prosecutors benefit from heavily favorable jury pools in staunchly Democratic strongholds, it requires only one holdout juror to result in a hung jury. Smith has admitted that Trump’s election claims were protected under the First Amendment but claims that, at some point, they became criminal lies. But Smith fails to explain when that line was clearly crossed — a dangerous ambiguity for free speech, particularly in the context of an election.

Smith ignores past election challenges by Democrats that were made without factual or legal support, including the challenge in Congress to certify Trump’s victory in 2016 by figures like Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.). The statement of Powell only magnifies those concerns over the lack of a clear line between political advocacy and criminal conduct in future cases. As part of his own agreement, former counsel Kenneth Chesebro pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit filing false documents. Again, the deal avoided jail time and allowed him to keep his law license. His attorney, Scott Grubman, said Chesebro “never believed in ‘the Big Lie’ ” and that he knows Joe Biden won the election. However, the question is what he told Trump about avenues for challenging the election. Grubman has emphasized that he “do[esn’t] think” Trump should be concerned about Chesebro’s plea and Chesebro “didn’t snitch against anyone.”

Previously, Chesebro’s lawyers stated that nothing about his “conduct falls outside the bounds of what lawyers do on a daily basis; researching the law in order to find solutions that address their clients’ particularized needs.” Both the prosecutors and media have maintained a conflicted narrative of a man who could not accept defeat and a man who knew he was defeated. Trump has long been portrayed as a megalomaniac in the media who never apologizes or accepts failure. It is perfectly consistent that a man long described as having an inflated self-image would not accept that he is a loser. That long-held journalistic view is now a viable criminal defense.

The Georgia case has strong individual claims for crimes like unauthorized access to voting machines or areas. But that clarity is lost in the effort to establish a massive racketeering conspiracy to ensnare Trump. While polls increasingly show Trump winning a general election against Biden, pundits point to these criminal trials as proof it’s all over. But none of these cases are truly slam dunks, particularly with the danger of hung juries. For candidates like Christie, it is understandable to hope that the courts will finally dislodge the hold of Trump on this primary. He, like others, looks at this election, to paraphrase Richard III, as “the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of [New] York.” Spring could just as easily bring more discontent rather than convictions.

Read more …

“Today, I’m supplementing my ethics complaint against Judge Engoron with examples of even more of his egregious misconduct after he just wrongly dismissed President Trump’s motion for a mistrial.”

• Stefanik Files Second Ethics Complaint Against Judge Engoron (JTN)

House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik on Friday filed a second ethics complaint against New York Judge Arthur Engoron after he rejected former President Donald Trump’s bid for a mistrial in New York Attorney General Letitia James’s fraud case against him. Engoron on Friday rejected Trump’s bid for a mistrial in a decision that followed an appeals judge’s staying a gag order he issued against Trump and his attorneys to stop them from publicly criticizing him and his court staff. Trump has repeatedly accused Engoron and his senior clerk, Allison Greenfield, of having a political bias against him.

While Stefanik previously submitted an ethics complaint against Engoron over his conduct in the case, on Friday she supplemented her initial criticisms in light of the court developments.”A week ago, I filed an ethics complaint against Manhattan Judge Arthur Engoron for his partisan antics, bias, and railroading of President Trump. After my complaint, a New York appellate court smacked down Judge Engoron for his blatantly unconstitutional gag order,” she said. “Today, I’m supplementing my ethics complaint against Judge Engoron with examples of even more of his egregious misconduct after he just wrongly dismissed President Trump’s motion for a mistrial.”

Stefanik, a stalwart Trump ally, declared “victory” in the wake of the appeals decision striking down Engoron’s gag order earlier in the week. “I am pleased to see that after my ethics complaint to the New York Commission on Judicial Conduct against Manhattan Judge Arthur Engoron, an appellate court has lifted the unconstitutional gag order against President Trump,” she said. “If Democrats can do this to a billionaire, former President, and leading presidential candidate, just imagine what they can do to the rest of us. That’s why I filed my ethics complaint against Judge Engoron, and I will continue to fight for all New Yorkers.”

Read more …

“Because the Government has not charged President Trump with responsibility for the actions at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, allegations related to these actions are not relevant and are prejudicial and inflammatory..”

• Judge Rejects Trump Bid To Remove ‘Prejudicial’ Language From Indictments (JTN)

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Friday rejected a bid former President Donald Trump to remove language in the indictments against him that his attorneys deemed “prejudicial and inflammatory.” Trump currently faces conspiracy charges in special counsel Jack Smith’s case involving his efforts to challenge the 2020 election results and has pleaded not guilty. The former president’s legal team had objected to passages in the indictment referring to the “actions of independent actors at the Capitol on January 6, 2021” for which the prosecutors did charge Trump himself, The Hill reported. “Because the Government has not charged President Trump with responsibility for the actions at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, allegations related to these actions are not relevant and are prejudicial and inflammatory. Therefore, the Court should strike these allegations from the Indictment,” his attorneys wrote last month.

“Regardless of whether the allegations at issue are relevant, Defendant has not satisfied his burden to clearly show that they are prejudicial,” Chutkan said. Smith’s team, meanwhile, had argued that “evidence of the attack at the Capitol on January 6 is powerful and probative evidence of the defendant’s conduct, motive, and intent.” Trump specifically faces charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. He has contended that the case, as well as the myriad other legal proceedings against him, are part of broader political witch hunt designed to derail his 2024 bid to return to the White House.

Read more …

“..we have questions about which countries were involved in those classified documents, because we’re still trying to figure out what the Biden family did to receive all that money.”

• As White House Stonewalls Probe, James Biden Signals Cooperation: Comer (JTN)

Attorneys representing President Joe Biden’s brother, James, have signaled the House Oversight Committee that he will sit for an interview as part of that panel’s ongoing investigation of the first family, Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., confirmed on Friday. “[W]e have heard from James Biden’s attorney, and they have signaled that he will come and answer questions in front of the House Oversight Committee, and we’re very appreciative of that look forward to that,” the Kentucky Republican said on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show. “We have as you know, the IRS notes that the IRS whistleblowers turned over from his interview with the FBI. We also have the bank records that I’ve subpoenaed,” he continued. “So we have several specific questions for James Biden.

“And yes, he will be an absolutely crucial witness to our investigation and help us continue to connect the dots as to what exactly the Biden family was doing to receive millions of millions of dollars from our enemies around the world.” Prior to Comer’s appearance on the show, the committee announced that it had received a letter from the White House signaling it did not intend to cooperate with the litany of records requests from the committee and would seek to prevent the Bidens and their associates from testifying. “This obstruction does not deter us, and we will continue to follow the facts and hold President Biden accountable to the American people,” the committee asserted in a statement. Comer, for his part, was optimistic that the committee would ultimately be able to interview every relevant figure in its investigation.

“I think everybody that we’ve requested will come in,” he said. “The White House is has apparently sent a letter in the last few minutes – they always do something on a Friday – saying that they don’t … agree with having to bring the staff over over the classified documents over their mishandling classified documents.” “The reason we want the president’s staff to answer questions about his mishandling of classified documents is his timeline doesn’t match up with what our transcribed interviews, with some of his staff in the past have said, with respect to when they discovered the classified documents,” Comer went on. “And as you know, we have questions about which countries were involved in those classified documents, because we’re still trying to figure out what the Biden family did to receive all that money.” “So I believe that all these people will come in. We’re we’ve got speaker [Mike] Johnson has made it clear to both Jim Jordan and myself that anyone who doesn’t honor a subpoena will get a loud and clear message from Congress,” he concluded.

Read more …

“He thinks some pilots are ticking timebombs and claims many are not declaring ill-health. He said: ‘They are not reporting brain fog, heart flutters and dizzy spells because they don’t want to lose their jobs.’”

• Pilot Warns Of Airline Industry Disaster Due To Covid Vaccines (Beck)

It was November 15, 2020, when Australian airlines mandated Covid-19 vaccines for 900 pilots, and all air and ground crew. Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna were available in Australia. Today is the third anniversary of that mandate and Cpt Murdock is one of 12 pilots who refused. He was sacked of course, accused of serious professional misconduct, a charge generally reserved for inappropriate sexual behaviour or reckless and dangerous behaviour. Mr Murdock, 60, who lives near Sydney, Australia, flew as Captain for Virgin Australia for 20 years, and has held a licence since 1984. He also has an MSc in Aviation Human Factors, the science behind how humans interface with machines. He said: ‘Somewhere on the international network daily, you will find a plane has been turned back because of a health emergency. Either a passenger health emergency or crew health emergency.’

When pilots put out a mayday radio call to air traffic control, it is nicknamed a ‘squawk’. They use the code 7700 for all mayday calls which are reserved for serious incidents like pilot incapacitation or an uncontained fire on board. Few scenarios warrant a mayday; passengers and crew must face genuine peril. There has been an unprecedented rise in the numbers of mayday calls as tracked by a bot set up by the X account @GCFlightAlerts. It posts when a pilot squawks 7700 anywhere in the world. Between 2018, and 2019, the mayday average was 29.1 per cent of all distress calls. During 2022, mayday calls increased by 272 per cent. In the first three months of 2023, the increase was 386 per cent. The graph shows there was an instant, steep increase when the vaccines were mandated to pilots.

The average age of death in Australia during the pandemic was 85.3 years. The figures did not justify mandating vaccination to healthy, fit, pilots and implementing a no jab, no job policy. It even violated their own guidance: according to FAA rules, no pilot is allowed to take any type of medicine unless it has been approved and in use in the general population for 12 months. Pilots are forbidden to take part in drug trials and all Covid-19 vaccines were allowed under emergency use authorisation. The final phase of the trial finishes this year.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

McBride

 

 

 

 

Green murder

 

 

How To Steal An Election

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle March 13 2023

Mar 132023
 
 March 13, 2023  Posted by at 9:56 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  73 Responses »


Rembrandt van Rijn Student at a table by candlelight c.1642

 

• Fed, TSY, FDIC Announce New Banking System Bailout, Signature Bank Closed (ZH)
• Bill Ackman To US Gov’t: Fix Mistake In ‘48 Hours’ Or Face ‘Destruction’ (CT)
• Yellen Says Government Will Help SVB Depositors But “No Bailout” (ZH)
• HSBC To Buy Silicon Valley Bank’s UK Operations (G.)
• Hatred of Putin Makes Washington ‘Do Dumb Things’ – Seymour Hersh (RT)
• Liu Xin’s Interview With Seymour Hersh (CGTN)
• Zakharova: Ukraine Allegations Russia’s Reluctant To Talk A Colossal Lie (TASS)
• Ukraine Won’t Get Western Jets ‘Anytime Soon’ – FM (RT)
• Growing Backlash Against Methods To Conscript Ukrainian Men For War (Lavrenin)
• Prigozhin Describes Situation In Bakhmut As Very Difficult (TASS)
• US ‘Sitting Still’ Amid Growing China-Russia Influence – Bolton (RT)
• ‘Rigorous’ Maidan Massacre Exposé Suppressed By Top Academic Journal (GZ)
• Comer: We Have Documents That Show Biden Family Was Getting Money from CCP (GP)
• The Democrats Have Lost the Plot (Taibbi)
• Georgian Protesters Unwittingly Imperil Their Nation’s Survival (Scott Ritter)
• Could Vitamin D Help Save Our Veterans? (ET)
• The Doctor Indicted For Not Killing His Patients (Horowitz)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chansley
https://twitter.com/FreeStateWill/status/1635011407434641408

 

 

 

 

O’Keefe

 

 

Iran Saudi

 

 

 

 

Stone Putin
https://twitter.com/i/status/1634557724619943939

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zakharova: “Every child can explain how the US authorities will ‘support the stability of the banking system’ – with paper and paint. They will print even more unsecured dollars then they will cause even more problems in the world.”

“..pledge collateral at par, not at market value, thus giving banks credit for all those hundreds of billions in unrealized net losses, and allowing banks to “unlock liquidity” based on losses which the Fed and TSY now backstop!”

• Fed, TSY, FDIC Announce New Banking System Bailout, Signature Bank Closed (ZH)

On Friday, we said that the Fed will have to make an announcement before the Monday open, and we didn’t have to wait that long: in fact, the Fed waited just 15 minutes after futures opened for trading to announce the new bailout, alongside even more shocking news: the Treasury announced that New York State regulators are shuttering Signature Bank – a major New York bank – adding that all depositors both at Signature Bank, and also the now insolvent Silicon Valley Bank, will have access to their money on Monday. And as we process the shock of yet another small bank failure (which makes JPMorgan even bigger), the Fed just issued a statement saying that “to support American businesses and households, the Federal Reserve Board on Sunday announced it will make available additional funding to eligible depository institutions to help assure banks have the ability to meet the needs of all their depositors.

This action will bolster the capacity of the banking system to safeguard deposits and ensure the ongoing provision of money and credit to the economy.” The Fed also said that it is prepared to address any liquidity pressures that may arise, which in turn has just unveiled the first bailout acronym of the new crisis: the Bank Term Funding Program, or BTFP. Some more details: The financing will be made available through the creation of a new Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP), offering loans of up to one year in length to banks, savings associations, credit unions, and other eligible depository institutions pledging U.S. Treasuries, agency debt and mortgage-backed securities, and other qualifying assets as collateral. These assets will be valued at par. The BTFP will be an additional source of liquidity against high-quality securities, eliminating an institution’s need to quickly sell those securities in times of stress.

The Fed explains that the Department of the Treasury will make available “up to $25 billion from the Exchange Stabilization Fund as a backstop for the BTFP.” And while the Federal Reserve – which was completely clueless about this banking crisis until Thursday – does not anticipate that it will be necessary to draw on these backstop funds, we anticipate that the final number of needed backstop liquidity be somewhere north of $2 trillion. What is more notable is that the BTFP – or Buy The Fucking Pivot – facility, will pledge collateral at par, not at market value, thus giving banks credit for all those hundreds of billions in unrealized net losses, and allowing banks to “unlock liquidity” based on losses which the Fed and TSY now backstop!

Read more …

And they did…

• Bill Ackman To US Gov’t: Fix Mistake In ‘48 Hours’ Or Face ‘Destruction’ (CT)

Billionaire Bill Ackman has urged the United States government to “guarantee” all deposits held by Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) within the next “48 hours,” or it risks the “destruction” of many financial institutions. In a March 11 tweet, Bill Ackman, CEO of hedge fund management firm Pershing Square Capital Management, said a “giant sucking sound” will be heard from the ”withdrawal of substantially all uninsured deposits” from all banks, not just the “systemically important banks (SIBs),” should the government fail to “guarantee all” of SVB’s deposits before the “open on Monday.”Ackman suggested that this would be the result of “the world” realizing what an uninsured deposit is — “an unsecured illiquid claim on a failed bank.”

https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1635047789376974848

He warned that these withdrawals would “drain liquidity” from the community, regional and other banks and “begin the destruction” of these crucial institutions if the United States government fails to protect “all depositors.” Ackman said the only other way to prevent this was in the “unlikely” event that major financial institutions, such as JPMorgan Chase, Citibank or Bank of America, acquire SVB before Monday. He argued that this could have been “avoided” if the U.S. government had “stepped in on Friday” to guarantee SVB’s deposits, adding that the long-standing bank’s “franchise value” could have been safeguarded and “transferred” to a new owner in return for an “equity injection.”


Ackman suggested that SVB’s senior management “made a basic mistake” and should be fired. He noted: “They invested short-term deposits in longer-term, fixed-rate assets. Thereafter short-term rates went up and a bank run ensued. Senior management screwed up and they should lose their jobs. After conducting a “back-of-the-envelope review” of SVB’s balance sheet, Ackman believes that even “in a liquidation,” depositors “should eventually” get back approximately “98% of their deposits”. However, he argued that “eventually” is “too long” when you have “payroll to meet next week.”

Read more …

A new meaning for “bailout”.

“No bailout for shareholders and bondholders of SVB. Depositors will be protected.”

“the Fed itself is insolvent. It has exactly the same problem as SVB — it paid top dollar for bonds whose prices have fallen, driving the Fed deep into neg equity (along with BoJ, ECB…)”

• Yellen Says Government Will Help SVB Depositors But “No Bailout” (ZH)

With just hours left until futures open for trading late on Sunday afternoon, the situation remains extremely fluid and for now it appears that regulators, central bankers and treasury officials (we won’t mention the White House where the most competent financial advisor is Hunter Biden) still don’t have a clear idea of how they will coordinate or respond. Take Janet Yellen, who said on Sunday morning that the US government was working closely with banking regulators to help depositors at Silicon Valley Bank but dismissed the idea of a bailout. Speaking with CBS on Sunday, the treasury secretary sought to assure US customers of the failed tech lender that policies were being discussed to stem the fallout from the sudden collapse this week. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporate (FDIC) took control of the bank on Friday morning.

“Let me be clear that during the financial crisis, there were investors and owners of systemic large banks that were bailed out . . . and the reforms that have been put in place means we are not going to do that again,” Yellen said (oh but you will, you just don’t know it yet). “But we are concerned about depositors, and we’re focused on trying to meet their needs.” It wasn’t clear which depositors she meant: as we first pointed out on Friday, out of SIVB’s $173 billion of customer deposits at the end of 2022, $152 billion were uninsured (i.e., over the $250,000 FDIC insurance threshold) and only $4.8 billion were fully insured. As we also noted last week, a further look at SIVB funding (pie charts) shows unusually high reliance on corporate/VC funding; only the small red private bank slice looks like traditional retail deposits to us.

As a result, as JPM’s Michael Cembalest says “It’s fair to ask about the underwriting discipline of VC firms that put most of their liquidity in a single bank with this kind of risk profile. At the end of 2022, SIVB only offered 0.60% more on deposits than its peers as compensation for the risks illustrated below; in 2021 this premium was 0.04%”.

Read more …

Tech start-ups are sexy.

• HSBC To Buy Silicon Valley Bank’s UK Operations (G.)

The government has struck a last-minute deal for HSBC to buy Silicon Valley Bank’s UK operations, saving thousands of British tech startups and investors from big losses after the biggest bank failure since 2008. The takeover will override the Bank of England’s initial decision to place SVB UK into insolvency, after a run on the lender that was originally sparked by fears over the a multibillion-pound shortfall on the US parent company’s balance sheet. The US bank was closed and its assets seized by authorities on Friday. “This morning, the government and the Bank of England facilitated a private sale of Silicon Valley Bank UK to HSBC. Deposits will be protected, with no taxpayer support. I said yesterday that we would look after our tech sector, and we have worked urgently to deliver that promise,” the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said on Twitter.

HSBC’s takeover is expected to protect the finances of SVB UK’s 3,500 customers, including hundreds of tech startups that feared they would go bust if their deposits were wiped out. Authorities had been considering a range of options to help SVB UK customers pay wages and suppliers, including an emergency fund that could provide a cash lifeline to support startups, as well as government-guaranteed loans for the sector, similar to those offered to businesses during the Covid crisis. It follows a tense 72 hours, with Rishi Sunak having been locked in weekend talks with the Bank of England governor, Andrew Bailey, and Hunt, who warned that tech and life sciences sector were at “serious risk” as a result of the bank’s collapse.

While analysts said there was little chance of contagion across the banking sector – given that the biggest banks serve a wider range of customers and have plenty of capital – tech startups and investors were worried about the ripple effects for the sector. A group of more than 200 tech executives warned in an open letter to Hunt over the weekend that the loss of deposits had the potential to cripple the industry, with many businesses at risk of falling into insolvency overnight.

Read more …

“They make it personal. They don’t make it professional.”

• Hatred of Putin Makes Washington ‘Do Dumb Things’ – Seymour Hersh (RT)

Legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh on Sunday offered a theory for what he sees as the foreign policy “complete idiocy” displayed by US officials, saying they’re so consumed by hatred of Russian President Vladimir Putin that they stumble into bad decisions. Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who reported last month that US President Joe Biden ordered last fall’s sabotage of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines, has called the alleged plot one of Washington’s “dumbest” decisions in years. However, the blunder didn’t reflect a lack of intelligence among top officials in Biden’s administration, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Hersh said in an interview with China’s CGTN.

Top administration officials “all have high degrees of, plenty of, intelligence,” Hersh said. “It’s just what they’re so driven by, I think, hatred of all things particularly Putin, and also communism per se. They’re so cold warriors, they’re really out of sorts. It makes them do dumb things.” The White House dismissed Hersh’s bombshell report on the Nord Stream blast as “complete fiction.” The New York Times, where Hersh did award-winning work on the Watergate scandal and other stories as a star reporter in the 1970s, claimed earlier this month that a “pro-Ukraine group” was behind the Nord Stream attack. The story cited unidentified US officials. Hersh told CGTN that neither the Ukrainian navy nor a non-state actor had the resources to carry out the sabotage, which involved planting C4 explosives on four concrete-encased steel pipelines at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. He said the false claim was made to distract from the fact that US Navy divers planted the remotely detonated explosives under cover of a NATO exercise in the Baltic.

“They’re trying to divert attention from the story that I wrote, which included enormous specifics,” Hersh said. “I was describing a process that began before Christmas of 2021. . . . They had a series of meetings at a secret room in the White House, that I gave clues I know the title of the room.” The veteran journalist argued that being “antagonistic” with China and Russia is counterproductive for Washington. “They make it personal. They don’t make it professional.” He added that Biden’s foreign policy has alienated governments around the world since Russia’s military operation in Ukraine began last year. “Russia has made more friends in the Third World since this began than anybody in this administration seems to appreciate,” Hersh said. “This notion of American hegemony, if you will, just doesn’t work anymore.”

Nordstream attack vessel

Read more …

The interview.

• Liu Xin’s Interview With Seymour Hersh (CGTN)

As the NYT reports new allegations on the Nord Stream sabotage, Seymour Hersh takes the “pro-Ukrainian group” intel with a pinch of salt. Here’s the reason. Liu Xin: But you think it’s not possible for a “pro Ukrainian group” to carry out this explosion? Seymour Hersh: I know that the few things I know about the Ukrainian navy is they are capable of dropping mines. I’m not an expert on it. I just happen to ask questions after that story came out. They don’t have a working decompression chamber. We’re talking about four pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and 2, each has two. They’re steel tubes covered by a concrete cover to protect themselves from the salinity, the salt in the water. So, you have to have people that know, that are the experts in underwater diving and experts in using the most, the plastic C4, the most volatile stuff there is.And also, they have to be able to go quick. They have to be sure they get the bomb, their weapon and the bomb in the right place that triggers, destroys everything. They have to practice like, they practice for weeks and months on this, I would say, in the waters of the Baltic Sea. “The U.S. is trying to divert attention away from my story,” says Seymour Hersh, after the NTY reported intel pointed at a “pro-Ukrainian group” on the Nord Stream sabotage.

Liu Xin: The fact that the U.S. government officials leaked this intelligence to the New York Times at this particular moment. What do you think they are trying to send as a message? Seymour Hersh: They are trying to divert attention from the story that I wrote, which included enormous specifics. I was describing a process that began before Christmas of 2021. It involved the National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan of the White House for the President. They had a series of meetings at a secret room in the White House. They gave clues, I know the title of the room. They were asked to come up with both reversible and irreversible concepts, ideas. A reversible concept would have been more sanctions. Something irreversible would have been kinetic, a bomb. And then eventually it turned out what they really wanted was a hit on the pipelines. And in this government, the concern has always been that Germany has been getting so much gas at such a cheap price from Russia that it would be very hard to wean them away from Russia. Slamming U.S. foreign policy as “complete idiocy,” Seymour Hersh told Liu Xin he believes American hegemony and the hatred of “all things Putin & communism” are driving the Biden Administration to do dumb things.

Liu Xin: You have also called a part of the called this planning “stupidity.” And you on several occasions you laughed at the intelligence level of the Biden. Seymour Hersh: I was not questioning their intelligence. These are all people, Tony Blinken, the Secretary of State, the one who didn’t go to China to meet his counterpart because of a balloon and Jake Sullivan, who’s the National Security Advisor, and the Undersecretary of State, all have high degrees of, plenty of intelligence. It’s just what they’re so driven by, I think, hatred of all things particularly Putin, and also communism per se. They’re so cold warriors. They’re really out of sorts. It makes them do dumb things. I just think his foreign policy is too complete idiocy, alienating a lot of people around the world. This notion of American hegemony, if you will, it just doesn’t work anymore. That’s what I object to.

Read more …

“..this point of view is nothing but a wish of defeat to his country and its non-existence..”

• Zakharova: Ukraine Allegations Russia’s Reluctant To Talk A Colossal Lie (TASS)

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has slammed her Ukrainian counterpart Dmitry Kuleba’s statement that Moscow is reluctant to negotiate the crisis settlement with Kiev as a “colossal lie”. “These days, Kuleba was once again ranting and raving in interview with the Italian newspapers Repubblica and Stampa. He called those Italians who are standing for settling the conflict with Russia through talks rather than in the battlefield hypocrites. In his interpretation, this point of view is nothing but a wish of defeat to his country and its non-existence – “Not peace but ‘rest in peace’ on Ukraine’s grave,” she wrote on her Telegram channel.


“However, he seems to share the opinion that ‘there is always room’ for talks but says he sees no willingness for them in Russia. A colossal lie, bearing in mind the fact that it is the regime he represents that has banned such talks with Russia in its laws”. Moreover, in he words, Kuleba forecasted “the end of Europe if Ukraine is defeated”. “An optimist. In its current shape, Europe ended right when the European Union let Washington govern its political institutions and ultimately surrendered to NATO,” she added.

Ukraine Inc.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1634810341682036738

Read more …

“We sat down with Ukrainian representatives and the German armaments industry … and German industry, in my presence, asked the German government for one thing: signed contracts..”

• Ukraine Won’t Get Western Jets ‘Anytime Soon’ – FM (RT)

Kiev will not get Western-made fighter jets “anytime soon,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba admitted during an interview with the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag published late on Saturday. The potential delivery of fighter jets to Kiev to prop it up in its ongoing conflict with Moscow is hindered by assorted technical and logistical issues, Kuleba said. However, he urged that Ukrainian pilots, who are only familiar with Soviet-made aircraft, begin training on the Western planes as soon as possible. “I don’t expect the delivery of fighter jets to happen anytime soon because it’s a very difficult task logistically and technically. Therefore, we advise that the training of Ukrainian pilots on Western jets should start now, so that when the decision to provide aircraft is made, we do not waste time or many months on training,” he said.

The diplomat also urged Berlin to ramp up deliveries of ammunition to Ukraine, namely artillery shells, claiming that while German industry had already expressed a readiness to provide them, the issue lies with the country’s government. “We sat down with Ukrainian representatives and the German armaments industry … and German industry, in my presence, asked the German government for one thing: signed contracts,” he stated. Over the course of the conflict, Ukraine has increasingly demanded more and more sophisticated weapon systems from its Western backers. Kiev has intensified calls for NATO to supply it with fighter jets – namely the US-made F-16 – in recent months after securing a pledge for dozens of Leopard 2 and Leopard 1, M1 Abrams, and Challenger 2 main battle tanks from multiple EU countries, the US, and UK, respectively.

So far, however, the West has been reluctant to provide Ukraine with modern aircraft. Late in February, US President Joe Biden said he was “ruling it out for now.” His Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky “doesn’t need F-16s now. There is no basis upon which there is a rationale, according to our military, now, to provide F-16s,” Biden told ABC at the time. Still, American media reported that the Pentagon has already invited Ukrainian pilots to a military base in Arizona to determine how long it would take to train them to fly the F-16. Last week, unnamed officials told NBC that two Ukrainian airmen had already arrived on American soil and more were likely to follow. Russia has repeatedly warned the West against “pumping” Ukraine with assorted weaponry, maintaining it would only prolong the hostilities rather than change the ultimate outcome.

Read more …

By Petr Lavrenin, Odessa-born political journalist and expert on Ukraine and the former Soviet Union

• Growing Backlash Against Methods To Conscript Ukrainian Men For War (Lavrenin)

Last year, military conscription became an issue in both Russia and Ukraine. However, the extent has been completely different in the two countries. While in Russia the mobilization was partial, lasting barely more than a month and affecting around 300,000 people, according to official figures – a significant part of whom already had military experience – a completely different picture has developed in Ukraine. Kiev instituted a general conscription drive which has been in force for more than a year. The exact number of those taken to the armed forces during this time is not known for certain and the process has been accompanied by numerous scandals. Cases where law enforcement officers have applied force when handing out conscription notices and illegally delivered men to enlistment offices have given rise to public discontent.

However, the Ukrainian authorities clearly have no intention of pausing enlistment because the situation remains critical at some sections of the front. The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are losing their grip on fortified areas around Artyomovsk (Bakhmut), and taking huge numbers of casualties, according to the Guardian and other media outlets. Meanwhile, Kiev continues to issue mobilization summonses and is sending people without proper training. According to the country’s legislation, a summons for military duty can only be issued on the street if it specifies the personal data of the person to whom it is given. It is also illegal for military commissars to detain citizens, as they are not the police, and conscripts are not criminals. Yet, that’s exactly how conscription is currently being conducted in Ukraine. Men of military age are being hunted down, and videos showing military commissars going to extreme lengths to hand out summonses, including by force, constantly circulate on social media.

Odessa, in particular, stands out in this respect. For example, military commissars were caught driving around the city in ambulances. When they came across men of the appropriate age, they stopped, handed over summonses and drove on. After videos emerged on social networks, local military commissars had to explain themselves and claimed that they were given the ambulance to use for their work. There were also cases when men in Odessa were detained on the street and forcibly taken to military enlistment offices, even without being handed a mobilization summons. For quite a long time, the AFU’s Operational Command South tried to ignore the illegal, forceful methods used by its military commissars. However, on February 14, a video was released showing military enlistment office staff detaining a man by force. In order to avoid a scandal, the military quickly assured the public that the staff responsible would be disciplined for “incorrect” behavior and the incident investigated.

Read more …

Too many tunnels?!

• Prigozhin Describes Situation In Bakhmut As Very Difficult (TASS)

The situation is Artyomovsk (known as Bakhmut in Ukraine) is very difficult, with the Ukrainian army receiving “endless reserves,” Wagner PMC founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Sunday. “The situation in Bakhmut is difficult, very difficult, with the enemy fighting for each meter. And the closer we are approaching the city center the fiercer fighting is growing, the more artillery and tank being used against us. Ukrainians keep on supplying endless reserves. But we are moving forward and will continue to move forward and we will not cover the glory of Russian arms with shame,” his press service quoted him as saying on its Telegram channel.


Artyomovsk is located in the Kiev-controlled part of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). Fierce fighting for control of the city is underway. According to the latest data, Russian forces have blocked or taken control of all paved roads to the city while the nascent spring mud season is complicating the logistics of supplying the Ukrainian army with fresh ammunition and personnel. Prigozhin said on Saturday that Russia forces were some 1.2 kilometers from the city’s administrative center.

Prigozhin
https://twitter.com/i/status/1634598452666544128


“Wagner” began storming the underground part of the “Bakhmut Azovstal”. Right now,”Wagner” are making their way into the mine. The battles take place at a depth of up to 320 meters.

Read more …

You lost. You were staring blind.

• US ‘Sitting Still’ Amid Growing China-Russia Influence – Bolton (RT)

President Joe Biden’s administration is doing nothing to counteract steps by China, Russia, and their allies to work more closely together, jeopardizing US interests and undermining its global influence, former White House National Security Adviser John Bolton has claimed. “We’re sitting still, and the Chinese, the Russians, Iran, North Korea and several others are moving to shore up their relations and threaten us in a lot of different places,” Bolton said on Sunday in a WABC 770 radio interview. He added that while Beijing follows a clear strategy, “we kind of wander around from day to day.”

Bolton, a longtime war hawk who has called for regime changes in Moscow and Tehran, made his comments in the wake of Friday’s announcement that Saudi Arabia and Iran had agreed to re-establish diplomatic ties under a deal brokered by China. He lamented that the agreement reflected diminishing US influence around the world. “It’s an indication that the Saudis and others are trying to hedge their bets with China and Russia, because they don’t think the United States has the resolve and the fortitude necessary to do what they need to do to protect the world against Iran and its intentions,” Bolton said.

The 74-year-old Bolton has worked in the administrations of former Presidents Donald Trump, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. Chinese officials have bristled at Washington’s threat claims, arguing that the US and its NATO allies behave as if they’re still fighting the Cold War. Beijing has maintained neutrality on the Ukraine crisis, resisting US pressure to condemn Russia over the conflict, and proposed a 12-point blueprint to end the fighting late last month. Biden dismissed the peace plan, saying it would benefit only Russia.

Read more …

Maybe he should name the journal…

• ‘Rigorous’ Maidan Massacre Exposé Suppressed By Top Academic Journal (GZ)

A peer-reviewed paper initially approved and praised by a prestigious academic journal was suddenly rescinded without explanation. Its author, one of the world’s top scholars on Ukraine-related issues, had marshaled overwhelming evidence to conclude Maidan protesters were killed by pro-coup snipers. The massacre by snipers of anti-government activists and police officers in Kiev’s Maidan Square in late February 2014 was a defining moment in the US-orchestrated overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government. The death of 70 protesters triggered an avalanche of international outrage that made President Viktor Yanukovych’s downfall a fait accompli. Yet today these killings remain unsolved.

Enter Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian-Canadian political scientist at the University of Ottawa. For years, he marshaled overwhelming evidence demonstrating that the snipers were not affiliated with Yanukovych’s government, but pro-Maidan operatives firing from protester-occupied buildings. Though Katchanovski’s groundbreaking has been studiously ignored by the mainstream media, a scrupulous study he presented on the slaughter in September 2015 and August 2021 and published in 2016 and in 2020 has been cited on over 100 occasions by scholars and experts. As a result of this paper and other pieces of research, he has among the world’s most-referenced political scientists specializing in Ukrainian matters.

In the final months of 2022, Katchanovski submitted a new investigation on the Maidan massacre to a prominent social sciences journal. Initially accepted with minor revisions after extensive peer review, the publication’s editor effusively praised the work in a lengthy private note. They said the paper was “exceptional in many ways,” and offered “solid” evidence in support of its conclusions. The reviewers concurred with this judgment. However, the paper was not published, a decision Katchanovski firmly believes to have been “political.” He filed an appeal, but to no avail. Among those fervently supporting Katchanovski’s appeal was renowned US academic Jeffrey Sachs. “You have written a very important, rigorous, and substantial article. It is thoroughly documented. It is on a topic of great significance,” Sachs wrote to the scholar.

“Your paper should be published for reasons of its excellence…The journal will only benefit from publishing such a work of importance and excellence, which will further the scholarly understanding and debate regarding a very important moment of modern history.” Katchanovski declined to name the journal in question, but described it as “top-tier” in the field of social sciences. He believes its refusal to publish his study is “extraordinary,” but nonetheless emblematic of a “far bigger problem in academic publishing and academia.” “The editor who accepted my article only learned it would not be published from my tweets on the subject. This reversal was highly irregular and political. There is growing political censorship concerning Ukraine in academia, and also self-censorship..”

Read more …

Let’s see them.

• Comer: We Have Documents That Show Biden Family Was Getting Money from CCP (GP)

House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) joined Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures this morning. This was an explosive interview. Comer dropped several bombs on the Biden Crime Family. According to Comer the House Oversight Committee is working with four individuals with close ties to the Bidens. Comer says the committee now has documents that tie the Bidens to the Chinese Communist Party. Biden is finished. James Comer: “It’s as bad as we thought… Since we’ve last spoken we have bank records in hand. We have individuals who are working with our committee. In the last two weeks we’ve met with either these individuals personally or with their attorneys. And that would be four individuals who had ties in with the Biden family in their various schemes around the world. So now we have in hand documents We have in hand documents in hand that show just how the Biden family was getting money from the Chinese Communist Party.”

Comer’s got the goods! This is a pivotal moment in American history. They finally have the goods on the Biden Crime Family.How will Democrats deal with this? With more phony charges against President Trump? Or maybe Old Joe will suffer a slip and fall?

Read more …

“They did not want to have a discussion about anything. It was completely opposite to what the party was even ten years ago..”

• The Democrats Have Lost the Plot (Taibbi)

One of the crazier parts came at the end of the examination by Garcia, when I ended up becoming just a bystander to a heated and apparently sincerely unfriendly blowup between chairman Jim Jordan and Plaskett: GARCIA: So you’re not gonna tell us when Musk first approached you. TAIBBI: Again, Congresswoman, you’re asking me to, you’re asking your journalist to reveal a source. GARCIA: So then you consider Mr. Musk to be the direct source of all this? TAIBBI: Now you’re, you’re trying to get me to say that he is the source. GARCIA: Well, he isn’t, if you’re telling me you can’t answer because it’s your source, the only logical conclusion is that he is in fact your source. TAIBBI: Well, you’re free to conclude that. GARCIA: Well, sir, I just don’t understand. You can’t have it both ways, but let’s move on, because — JORDAN: Well, no, he can. He’s a journalist. PLASKETT: He can, because either Musk is the source and he can’t talk about it, or Musk is not the source. And if Musk is not the source, then he can discuss.

Did these people really not understand that identifying who is not a source crosses the same line as identifying who is one? You just can’t go into these questions. I started to interject to point this out, then realized that Garcia and Plaskett legitimately didn’t even know the basics of the civil liberties landscape. This was much the same as when Vijaya Gadde acted completely at a loss when Ro Khanna wrote to her in the middle of the Hunter Biden laptop affair, to express concerns about speech rights. Khanna mentioned the New York Times v. Sullivan case and other principles to Gadde, and she seemed to have no idea what he was talking about. This was like that. Garcia also made it clear she didn’t know what Twitter was. At one point she said, regarding yesterday’s Twitter Files thread, that I had said “I had to attribute all the sources to Twitter first.”

I was so confused by this that I paused, worried that I was misunderstanding (my hearing is not so great). She then asked if I “sent it to Twitter first.” As I was replying no, that I’d posted the thread on Twitter, I heard an aide whispering something about “putting it on Twitter.” Garcia seemed to think that Twitter was an editorial body to which I was sending text, maybe for review. It’s understandable, not knowing that the platform doesn’t work that way — not everyone has to be on Twitter obviously — but then why the hostility? Instead of simply asking me in a friendly way about this process, which I would have been glad to explain, she kept blasting away. “First, sir. Yes or no?” The Democrats were angry that Michael and I were there at all. They did not want to have a discussion about anything. It was completely opposite to what the party was even ten years ago, when expression rights were an issue they wanted to own.

Read more …

Scott Ritter’s wife is Georgian. He knows the country. This is a harrowing story.

• Georgian Protesters Unwittingly Imperil Their Nation’s Survival (Scott Ritter)

In many ways, the critics were correct—the practical outcome of the foreign agents bill would have been to expose the extent to which Georgian politics and governance had become overrun with foreign money and influence. The threat, however, didn’t come from Russia, but rather the United States, which uses the $40 million in aid funneled through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) every year to conduct what amounts to a “soft coup” in Georgia designed to displace the current government with one that will be compliant to American—not Georgian—goals and objectives—including the establishment of a “second front” against Russia. All of this is done, according to Samantha Power, the Director of USID, to build “a country with free expression, a free press, & a path to Euro-Atlantic integration.”

But what she really means is a country that suppresses any dissent as “disinformation,” uses the media as state-sponsored propaganda, and removes from power any politician or political party that dares impede Georgia’s absorption into the US-led NATO sphere of influence. Georgia’s Prime Minister, Irakli Garibashvili, does not want an expanded war with Russia—especially one that drags Georgia into the conflict. As such, Samantha Power and her minions at USAID believe the prime minister of Georgia must now be removed and replaced with an anti-Russian (i.e., pro-war) leader cut from the same pro-American cloth as Georgia’s US-backed President, Salome Zurabishvili.

To accomplish this, USAID funds programs designed to foment a “bottom-up” transformation of Georgian society and politics by empowering “diversity” at the grass-roots level, suppressing opposing points of view in the name of building “societal resilience to disinformation,” and seizing control of the electoral process so that the US-controlled “diversity” movements can prevail in local elections and, by extension, national elections. The Georgian foreign agents bill would have exposed the level to which these USAID-funded programs, and other related US and EU-funded activities, had infiltrated Georgian society. For that reason, the US mobilized its paid activists to take to the streets, forcing the Georgian Prime Minster to pull the plug on the legislation in the interests of public safety.

Read more …

This is about suicides, not covid. Why only suicides among veterans? Isn’t it time to widen and broaden this discussion?

• Could Vitamin D Help Save Our Veterans? (ET)

Findings from a new study have shown that vitamin D may lower the risk of suicide and suicide attempts in U.S. veterans with low vitamin D levels. The study found that veterans who received vitamin D had a 64 percent lower risk of suicide than those who did not receive supplementation. The study was published in February 2023 in the journal Plos One. Suicide is a serious public health issue and the 12th leading cause of death in the United States. In 2020, 45,979 Americans died by suicide and there were an estimated 1.2 million suicide attempts. According to the CDC, suicide rates increased 36 percent between 2000-2018, and Suicide Awareness Voices of Education states that from 2020 to 2021 there was a 3.6 percent increase in suicides, bumping it up to the 11th leading cause of death in the United States. This is one death every eleven minutes.

When it comes to veterans, however, the statistics change. Veterans are at a 57 percent higher risk of suicide than those who haven’t served, which is more than 1.5 times the national average. Suicide is the second leading cause of death of veterans under the age of 45. Some other notable statistics: • 125,000 veterans have died by suicide since 2001. • There were 6,146 veteran suicides in 2020. • There have been 20 consecutive years with 6,000-plus veteran suicides. The study aimed to determine the association between vitamin D supplementation, vitamin D blood serum levels, suicide attempts, and intentional self-harm in a group of veterans in the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The retrospective cohort study looked at veterans who had filled either a vitamin D3 or vitamin D2 prescription between 2010 and 2018. A cohort of 169,241 vitamin D2-treated veterans and 490,885 vitamin D3-treated veterans were each matched to an equal number of controls that had similar demographics and medical histories. The results of the study showed that vitamin D3 and D2 supplementation was associated with a 45 percent and 48 percent reduced risk of suicide attempt and self-harm. This was an almost 44 percent difference between the groups receiving supplementation and the control group. Additionally, the study found that vitamin D supplementation among black veterans was associated with a 60 percent decline in suicide attempts, and in veterans with vitamin D deficiency, which the study defined as being below 20 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL), there was a more than 64 percent reduction in potential suicide attempts.

Read more …

“..in exceptional circumstances of unjust laws, ethical responsibilities should supersede legal duties.”

• The Doctor Indicted For Not Killing His Patients (Horowitz)

All the government officials, pharmaceutical executives, and doctors involved in defrauding the public with taxpayer funding and violating the consent of humanity to mandate dangerous shots are absolved of liability. Meanwhile, a doctor who took his Hippocratic Oath seriously and allegedly saved nearly 2,000 patients (with FULL CONSENT) from the shots, is facing serious federal charges for conspiracy to defraud the government defrauders. We’re all big talkers. We’d like to believe that if we were there in Germany during the late 1930s, we would have protested the budding genocide, which was first rooted in medical experimentation and coerced sterilization. But just like most doctors and scientists went along with the Third Reich, nearly every doctor went along with the Fourth Reich in coercing patients into taking a known dangerous shot because they were “just following orders” and “following the science.”

Dr. Kirk Moore, an experienced plastic surgeon from Utah, on the other hand, has risked his life and career to actually follow the dictates of the Nuremberg Code. Yet despite everything we now know about the shots, which should win him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his alleged actions, he is the one facing prosecution for a disposing of a shot that is only on the market because of government fraud. In January, Dr. Moore, along with two members of his clinic’s staff and a neighbor, were indicted on conspiracy to defraud the federal government by allegedly offering nearly 2,000 patients saline injections along with vaccine documentation while disposing of the real shots into the sink. To be clear, he is not being accused of tricking patients. He never offered unsuspecting patients fake shots. These were all people (or parents of minors) who desperately sought him out to bypass the genocidal, unconstitutional, inhumane, and immoral jab mandates, so they could go on with their lives unharmed by this terrible technology.

Prosecutors accuse Dr. Moore and staff at the Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah of pretending to administer 391 children shots, 524 adult Pfizer shots, 64 Moderna shots, and 958 J&J shots between October 2021 and Sept. 2022 just based on the inventory of shots that went to that office. That was long after it was known these shots were dangerous, yet Moore, not the Pfizer executives, faces up to five years in federal prison. According to the AMA Medical Code, “When physicians believe a law violates ethical values or is unjust, they should work to change in law.” However, it adds that “in exceptional circumstances of unjust laws, ethical responsibilities should supersede legal duties.”That is clearly going to be part of Moore’s defense if he is indeed shown to have given people saline at their request. Ironically, Moore is being accused of grifting and running a fake vaccine card ring and earning $98,000 off it. Dr. Moore, though, rigorously disputed this fact in an interview on my podcast and notes that when people asked him for his fee for COVID treatment, he told them to donate it to a 501(c)(3) medical freedom group.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earth music
https://twitter.com/i/status/1634947463487574018

 

 

 

 

Owl
https://twitter.com/i/status/1634644161239437318

 

 

God made a farmer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1634879637527445504

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle April 23 2015

Apr 232015
 
 April 23, 2015  Posted by at 9:43 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  12 Responses »


Harris&Ewing Camp Meade, Maryland 1917

• Half of US Fracking Companies Will Be Dead or Sold This Year (Bloomberg)
• The ‘Grexit’ Issue And The Problem Of Free Trade (Stratfor)
• If Greece Can Survive 2015, It’s Home Free (MarketWatch)
• Greek Banks Win More Emergency Cash as Talks Loom (Bloomberg)
• Greece: Of Parents And Children, Economists And Politicians (Wren-Lewis)
• Greek Contagion Risks May Be Higher Than You Think (CNBC)
• We’re Just Learning the True Cost of China’s Debt (Bloomberg)
• ‘Goldman Advising On The Economy Like Dracula On Running A Blood Bank’ (RT)
• Russell Brand Eyes Cryptocurrency As Integral Part Of Global Revolution (RT)
• More Than A Million Brits Have Used Food Banks In The Past Year (Guardian)
• Petrobras, World’s Most Indebted Company, Gets Audited (CNBC)
• Petrobras To Book Nearly $17 Billion In Charges (MarketWatch)
• Most Migrants Crossing Mediterranean Will Be Sent Back (Guardian)
• EU Borders Chief Says Saving Migrants’ Lives ‘No Priority’ (Guardian)
• ‘Maidan Snipers Trained In Poland’: Polish MP (RT)
• US Accuses Russia Of ‘Ramping Up’ Ukraine Presence (BBC)
• If A Clinton Were To Marry A Bush, The US Could Cancel Elections (RT)
• Fed Refuses to Comply With Lawmakers’ Request For Names in Probe (WSJ)
• Wolves Shot From Choppers Shows Oil Harm Beyond Pollution (Bloomberg)
• What California Can Learn About Drought From ‘Chinatown’ (MarketWatch)

“It’s not good for equipment to park anything, whether it’s an airplane, a frack pump or a car.”

• Half of US Fracking Companies Will Be Dead or Sold This Year (Bloomberg)

Half of the 41 fracking companies operating in the U.S. will be dead or sold by year-end because of slashed spending by oil companies, an executive with Weatherford said. There could be about 20 companies left that provide hydraulic fracturing services, Rob Fulks, pressure pumping marketing director at Weatherford, said in an interview Wednesday at the IHS CERAWeek conference in Houston. Demand for fracking, a production method that along with horizontal drilling spurred a boom in U.S. oil and natural gas output, has declined as customers leave wells uncompleted because of low prices.

There were 61 fracking service providers in the U.S., the world’s largest market, at the start of last year. Consolidation among bigger players began with Halliburton announcing plans to buy Baker Hughes in November for $34.6 billion and C&J Energy buying the pressure-pumping business of Nabors Industries Ltd. Weatherford, which operates the fifth-largest fracking operation in the U.S., has been forced to cut costs “dramatically” in response to customer demand, Fulks said. The company has been able to negotiate price cuts from the mines that supply sand, which is used to prop open cracks in the rocks that allow hydrocarbons to flow.

Oil companies are cutting more than $100 billion in spending globally after prices fell. Frack pricing is expected to fall as much as 35% this year, according to PacWest, a unit of IHS. While many large private-equity firms are looking at fracking companies to buy, the spread between buyer and seller pricing is still too wide for now, Alex Robart, a principal at PacWest, said in an interview at CERAWeek. Fulks declined to say whether Weatherford is seeking to acquire other fracking companies or their unused equipment. “We go by and we see yards are locked up and the doors are closed,” he said. “It’s not good for equipment to park anything, whether it’s an airplane, a frack pump or a car.”

Read more …

Not a big Stratfor fan, but smart analysis by Friedman: “The main assumption behind European integration was that a free trade zone would benefit all economies. If that assumption is not true, then the entire foundation of the EU is cast into doubt..”

• The ‘Grexit’ Issue And The Problem Of Free Trade (Stratfor)

The Greek crisis is moving toward a climax. The issue is actually quite simple. The Greek government owes a great deal of money to European institutions and the International Monetary Fund. It has accumulated this debt over time, but it has become increasingly difficult for Greece to meet its payments. If Greece doesn’t meet these payments, the IMF and European institutions have said they will not extend any more loans to Greece. Greece must make a calculation. If it pays the loans on time and receives additional funding, will it be better off than not paying the loans and being cut off from more? Obviously, the question is more complex. It is not clear that if the Greeks refuse to pay, they will be cut off from further loans.

First, the other side might be bluffing, as it has in the past. Second, if they do pay the next round, and they do get the next tranche of funding, is this simply kicking the can down the road? Does it solve Greece’s underlying problem, which is that its debt structure is unsustainable? In a world that contains Argentina and American Airlines, we have learned that bankruptcy and lack of access to credit markets do not necessarily go hand in hand. To understand what might happen, we need to look at Hungary. Hungary did not join the euro, and its currency, the forint, had declined in value. Mortgages taken out by Hungarians denominated in euros, Swiss francs and yen spiraled in terms of forints, and large numbers of Hungarians faced foreclosure from European banks.

In a complex move, the Hungarian government declared that these debts would be repaid in forints. The banks by and large accepted Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s terms, and the European Union grumbled but went along. Hungary was not the only country to experience this problem, but its response was the most assertive. A strategy inspired by Budapest would have the Greeks print drachmas and announce (not offer) that the debt would be repaid in that currency. The euro could still circulate in Greece and be legal tender, but the government would pay its debts in drachmas. In considering this and other scenarios, the pervading question is whether Greece leaves or stays in the eurozone. But before that, there are still two fundamental questions.

First, in or out of the euro, how does Greece pay its debts currently without engendering social chaos? The second and far more important question is how does Greece revive its economy? Lurching from debt payment to debt payment, from German and IMF threats to German and IMF threats is amusing from a distance. It does not, however, address the real issue: Greece, and other countries, cannot exist as normal, coherent states under these circumstances, and in European history, long-term economic dysfunction tends to lead to political extremism and instability. The euro question may be interesting, but the deeper economic question is of profound importance to both the debtor and creditors.

Read more …

Won’t the Troika even give it that one year?

• If Greece Can Survive 2015, It’s Home Free (MarketWatch)

For the third time in five years, Greece’s parlous financial state is shaking up global markets. In 2010 and 2012, the country was saved from default by two massive rescue packages organized by the EU, the ECB and the IMF. This time, the question is whether Greece, which owes about €320 billion to its creditors, really wants to save itself. Its government, run by radical left-wing group Syriza, says it doesn’t want to default, but it also won’t make the economic reforms creditors demand. In fact, Syriza has vowed to protect pensioners and public employees’ salaries even as debt payments come due. With nearly 20 billion euros owed to creditors over the next six months, the two sides are far apart, and the risks of a default or “Grexit” — Greece’s exit from the euro — are rising.

Still, all may not be lost. If Greece can get through 2015, it won’t have to pay creditors very much until the next decade. “People are saying this is the crunch year,” said Franklin Allen, an expert on financial crises who is executive director of the Brevan Howard Centre and professor at Imperial College London. In fact, we’re in the crunch months. Athens owes around €2.5 billion to the IMF by mid-June. It made a payment to the IMF in early April. Greece and its creditors meet again on Friday in Riga, Latvia, although few expect a deal. Both Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis have said Greece will meet its obligations, but on Monday Tsipras ordered local governments to transfer funds to the Greek central bank.

That amounts to confiscating €2 billion in reserves local governments hold in commercial banks. The money could be used to pay salaries and part of the debt to the IMF. The yield on Greece’s two-year bonds soared to near 30% on Tuesday. Yikes! The Greek government wants €7.2 billion in emergency bailout funds to get it over the hump. So far, creditors aren’t budging. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde last week warned against any payment delays and told Varoufakis to accelerate reforms, such as privatizations and labor-market changes. It’s a recipe for a stalemate. That’s why Allen, who also has taught finance at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, thinks “there’s about a 40% chance they’ll default on something.”

Read more …

What’s a few billion among friends?

• Greek Banks Win More Emergency Cash as Talks Loom (Bloomberg)

The ECB almost doubled an increase in emergency funding to Greek banks from last week before political talks shift to Brussels and Latvia over the country’s bailout review. The European Central Bank’s Governing Council raised the cap on Emergency Liquidity Assistance by about €1.5 billion to €75.5 billion on Wednesday, people familiar with the decision said. ELA is funding provided by national central banks at their own risk and is extended against lower-quality collateral than the ECB accepts. “The ceiling increase shows that deposit outflows from Greek lenders continue,” said Andreas Koutras at In Touch Capital Markets Ltd. in London. “The question now is when will the collateral against ELA be exhausted — in other words how much time is left?”

Euro-area finance ministers will meet in Riga, Latvia, on Friday in their latest attempt to persuade Greece to commit to economic reforms so that aid payments can be released before the country runs out of money. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are due to meet on the sidelines of a European Union immigration summit in Brussels on Thursday, according to a Greek government official. Greek stocks and bonds rose Wednesday after Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis saw a “convergence” of views and ECB Executive Board member Benoit Coeure said progress was being made.

“In recent days, there has been tangible progress in the quality of the discussions,” Coeure said in an interview with the Athens-based newspaper Kathimerini. “Significant differences on substance remain.” There are signs Greece’s creditors are curbing demands for far-reaching reforms as part of current talks, focusing on a number of key actions instead, Medley Global Advisors said in a client report on Wednesday. The softening stance comes on condition Greece stays co-operative on fiscal targets, according to Medley.

Read more …

“..from the perspective of the Eurozone and IMF, this is all extremely small beer. You would think the key players on that side had more important things to do with their time.”

• Greece: Of Parents And Children, Economists And Politicians (Wren-Lewis)

Chris Giles has a recent FT article where he describes how non-Greek policymakers (lets still call them the Troika) see themselves like parents trying to deal with the “antics” of the problem child, Syriza in Greece. He splits these parents into different types: those that want to act as if the child is grown up (though they believe they are not), those who want to be disciplinarians etc. As a description of how the Troika view themselves, and present themselves to the public, the analogy rings true. It certainly accords with the constant stream of articles in the press predicting an impending crisis because the Greeks ‘refuse to be reasonable’.

[..] We know that if Greece was not part of the Euro, but just another of a long line of countries that have borrowed too much and had to partially default, its remaining creditors would be in a weak position now that Greece has achieved primary surpluses (taxes>government spending). The reason why the Troika is not so weak is that they have additional threats that come from being the issuer of the Greek currency.

It is important to understand what the current negotiations are about. Running a primary surplus means that Greece no longer needs additional borrowing – it just needs to be able to roll over its existing debts. Part of the argument is about how large a primary surplus Greece should run. Common sense would say that further austerity should be avoided so that the economy can fully recover, when it will have much greater resources to be able to pay back loans. Instead the creditors want more austerity to achieve large primary surpluses. Of course the former course of action is better for Greece: which would be better for the creditors is unclear! The negotiations are also about imposing additional structural reforms. Greece has already undertaken many, and is prepared to go further, but the Troika wants yet more.

As Andrew Watt points out, from the perspective of the Eurozone and IMF, this is all extremely small beer. You would think the key players on that side had more important things to do with their time. The material advantages to be gained by the Troika playing tough are minimal from their perspective, but the threats hanging over the Greek economy are damaging – not just to investment, but also to the very primary surpluses that the Troika needs. So why do the Troika insist on continuing with brinkmanship? Can it be that this is really about ensuring that an elected government that challenges the dominant Eurozone political and economic ideology must be forced to fail?

Read more …

This has always been obvious no matter what Draghi or Schäuble say. They have no way of knowing, they can just wish.

• Greek Contagion Risks May Be Higher Than You Think (CNBC)

A perception in financial markets that Greece exiting the euro zone would have limited knock-on effects is misguided, some analysts say. Euro zone officials meet in Latvia this week to discuss a rescue deal between Greece and its creditors amid growing talk that time is running out for Athens to avoid defaulting on its debt and being ejected from the 19-member euro zone. “UBS does not believe, as its base case that Greece, will leave the euro,” Paul Donovan, UBS global economist, said in a video published by the bank’s research team. “However, there seems to be a belief in financial markets that if Greece were to be forced from the euro area it should be regarded as an isolated incident,” he said. “This belief, seems to us, to be dangerous.”

Donovan said that the view that Greek problems were distinct from the rest of the euro zone was reflected in recent online search patterns: Searches on Google for the term “Grexit” had soared, while those for “euro crisis” or “euro collapse” had not, even though they did during the 2012 euro zone debt crisis. In the latest crisis, government bond yields in peripheral euro zone countries—in the past viewed as most vulnerable to any Greek contagion—have not followed Greek bond yields higher. Greek bond yields have risen sharply this week, reflecting the greater risk attached to holding them. Greece’s benchmark 10-year bond yielded over 13% on Tuesday, well above Spain’s 10-year yield at 1.48% and Portuguese yields at 2.12%.

Although this can partly be explained by the ECB’s massive monetary stimulus program, which is putting downward pressure on yields, it also reflects diminished contagion fears. “I don’t get the sense that there is a widespread view that if a deal is not made and Greece exits the euro zone, you would have this massive contagion effect,” Ben White, Politico’s chief economic correspondent, told CNBC on Monday. UBS’ Donovan said any contagion from a Grexit would come from the banking system. He said that if Greece did leave the euro area, any money in Greek banks would be redenominated into a new currency, which would probably plunge in value, distressing depositors.

Depositors in other countries may think their holdings are safe, since their country is not going to leave the euro zone–or they may decide to avoid any risk and withdraw their savings, Donovan said. “Why take the risk that your country probably won’t leave the euro, if it’s a relatively simple operation to withdraw your savings and hold them in cash?” Donovan asked. “A euro held as cash today is a euro tomorrow,” he said. “A euro held in a bank account today may be an entirely different currency tomorrow, if the irrevocable monetary union has been revoked. Investors are thus likely to choose cash over deposits.”

Read more …

We haven’t a clue yet.

• We’re Just Learning the True Cost of China’s Debt (Bloomberg)

The true cost of the debt that China’s real estate developers peddled to eager international investors during a five-year property boom is now becoming clear. Having found themselves shut out of local bond and loan markets seven years ago, a band of developers began looking elsewhere for funds. First an initial public offering, and then a dollar bond sale. It became a well-trodden path. By 2010, a core group of four – Kaisa, Fantasia, Renhe, Glorious Property – raised a total of $5.6 billion. On Monday, Kaisa buckled under $10.5 billion of debt and defaulted. China’s home builders became the single biggest source of dollar junk debt in Asia amid government measures to prevent a property bubble.

Developers already funneled $78.8 billion from international equity and bond markets into an industry that’s grown to account for one third of the world’s second-biggest economy. Most of the first rush of dollar offerings, in 2010, falls due in the next two years. “It was an unintended consequence of the Chinese government that property developers are selling equity and debt to offshore investors,” said Ben Sy, a Hong Kong-based managing director in JPMorgan’s private banking division. “There happened to be huge demand from international investors in the past few years driven by the intense search for yield.” Kaisa was the first to debut in the dollar note market in 2010, selling $650 million of five-year bonds that April.

The securities paid a 13.5% coupon, more than twice the 6.3% average yield for Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s U.S. Real Estate index at the time. The Shenzhen-based developer was among nine real estate companies that raised $4 billion selling offshore bonds that year, a record at the time and fourfold the previous high. Six of the nine had listed their shares on the Hong Kong stock exchange in the previous 24 months. Chinese developers’ move into the international capital markets started in earnest in 2007. From January to December, as the rest of the world slid deeper into recession, homebuilders raised $7.2 billion. Since 2008, another $11.5 billion has been raised via IPOs in Hong Kong.

Read more …

The Dracula Squid.

• ‘Goldman Advising On The Economy Like Dracula On Running A Blood Bank’ (RT)

Goldman Sachs’ claim that a Labour victory in the general election would impact negatively on Britain’s economy has been dismissed by leading British economists, who say the Wall Street giant’s outlook is laughable and colored by self-interest. In a research document sent to clients earlier this week, Goldman claimed a Labour-led government could spark an exodus of investors from the City of London to more business-friendly pastures. The bank’s warning adds to a growing chorus of concern emanating from the City that Ed Miliband’s party would formulate fiscal and economic policy in the interest of people rather than profit. Speaking to RT on Wednesday, British economist James Meadway insisted Goldman Sachs is not a credible voice on economic policy.

“Listening to Goldman Sachs for advice on how to run the economy is like listening to Dracula on how to run a blood bank,” he said. UK economist and anti-austerity campaigner Michael Burke added Goldman Sachs’ general election analysis amounts to “laughably bad economics.” Burke told RT Goldman’s assessment of Labour’s prospective role in government appears to “confuse the economy with the well-being of its own bankers.” He added the Wall Street banking giant’s prognosis is “blatantly political” and born of self-interest. Goldman Sachs is a powerful player in the City of London and across the European Union.

However, the investment bank has been the focus of a firestorm of criticism in recent years over allegations of insider trading, corruption, aggressive investment vehicles with profound social impacts, and its role in compounding Europe’s sovereign debt crisis. Despite the bank’s less-than-gleaming reputation, its condemnation of Labour will likely be welcomed by City financiers and Conservatives. Speaking to its clients earlier this week, the investment bank said a victory for Labour would be understood as “more problematic by the business community” than victory for the Tories. Goldman billed a coalition between Labour and the Scottish National Party (SNP) as the most toxic combination of parties that could enter government next month.

Read more …

I’m not sure I find the celebrity contest that seems to go along with this thing all that appealing. Nothing against Russell, or Max.

• Russell Brand Eyes Cryptocurrency As Integral Part Of Global Revolution (RT)

In his quest for a global revolution, political activist Russell Brand is eyeing crypto currency and crowd funding as a way of negating and avoiding the capitalist system. Such combination can set the stage for a new era, believes RT’s Max Keiser. Russel Brand has long been promoting organized civil disobedience to bring about a political revolution and fair distribution of wealth unfeasible under capitalism. With his calls sometimes bordering on anarchy, Brand has emerged as a leftist political figure seeking social justice and decentralization of state control over the individual.

“I think what is important is to organize and to disobey. To be really, really disobedient. Revolution is required. It is not a revolution of radical ideas, but simply the implementation of the ideas that they say we already have,” Brand was telling his supporters as he campaigned for resistance. Now Brand has taken one of these revolutionary ideas, the cryptocurrency, and teamed up with StartJoin crowdfunding platform to help people break away from conventional monetary and financial systems. “Essentially what we need is alternative systems and models, and alternative currency is an integral part of that,” Brand told Max Kaiser, the co-guru behind the financial side of the StartCOIN project and the host of RT’s Kaiser Report.

“I’m very interested in setting up social enterprises, such as our cafe that we’ve started, replicating that model more and more,” Brand explained. “Small businesses, practical, functional things where people can come together in an entrepreneurial spirit, creatively, and work together – hopefully ultimately using an alternative currency and completely negating and avoiding the system.” “The more I deal with bureaucracy, the more I deal with consumerism, the more I think that there is really very little it can offer us,” he added. Brand’s latest project is aimed at promoting digital literacy, to further boost online activism. By raising £150,000 for at least 1,000 laptops he is planning to give away for free, Brand wants to make the voices of even the most marginalized individuals in the community heard.

Read more …

Land of shame.

• More Than A Million Brits Have Used Food Banks In The Past Year (Guardian)

More than 1 million people, including rising numbers of low-paid workers, were forced to use food banks in the last 12 months, challenging claims that the dividends of Britain’s economic recovery are being equally shared. The latest figures from the Trussell Trust, which coordinates a network of food banks in the UK, show a 19% year-on-year increase in food bank users, demonstrating that hunger, debt and poverty are continuing to affect large numbers of low-income families and individuals. Nearly 1.1 million people received at least three days of emergency food from the trust’s 445 food banks in 2014-15 – up from 913,000 the previous year. Back in 2009-10, before the Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition took power, the then little-known charity fed 41,000 people from its 56 food banks.

Chris Mould, the Trussell Trust chairman, said the figures showed many people were experiencing “catastrophic” problems as a result of low incomes, despite signs of a wider economic recovery. He said: “These needs have not diminished in the last 12 months.” Experts warned that the figures were the “tip of the iceberg” of food poverty in the UK, while doctors said the inability of families to buy enough food had become a public health issue. The Trussell Trust figures show the biggest proportion, 44%, of food bank referrals last year – marginally lower than the previous year – were triggered by people pitched into crisis because their benefit payments had been delayed, or stopped altogether as a result of the strict jobcentre sanctions regime. More than a fifth, 22%, of food bank users were referred because of low income – meaning they were unable to afford food due to a relatively small financial crisis such as a boiler breaking down or having to buy a school uniform.

Read more …

This should have been one of the richest entities in the world. And look at it! What came out, see below, is they say they lose $2 billion to ‘graft’. $2 billion? Try $200 billion. These guys spend $2 billion on champagne alone.

• Petrobras, World’s Most Indebted Company, Gets Audited (CNBC)

Petrobras, the Brazilian oil giant, is hoping to finally release audited financial results for the fourth quarter after U.S. markets close on Wednesday, including an estimate of how much has been stripped out of the company by years of alleged fraud. The state-controlled oil company is engulfed in what’s probably the largest financial scandal in Brazil’s history—a high bar, given the country’s record of corruption. And Wednesday’s earnings report has big implications for investors and maybe even the future course of the world’s seventh-biggest economy. Markets are closely examining the results for the level of write-offs and impairments on Petrobras assets, whose values may have been inflated by the fraud. Estimates on how big those numbers may be are staggering: anywhere from $6 billion to $30 billion.

Andre Gordon of AMEC, a Brazilian shareholders’ rights group, said he’s “waiting to see the balance sheet” and expects impairments and writeoffs of between $10 billion to $15 billion. AMEC is active in lobbying for better corporate governance at Petrobras and within Brazil in general. Gordon said he hopes for a turning point for the company that will lead to less government entanglement with Petrobras, “but I am skeptical.” “Not even the opposition party talks about privatization of Petrobras—only small insignificant parties with small market share,” he said. The scandal started with the arrest early last year of a company director, who subsequently struck a deal with prosecutors in September. Since then, details have emerged almost daily of a decade-long, alleged bribery scheme involving company officials.

The executive alleged to investigators that for nearly 10 years, Petrobras contracts were routinely padded by 3%, with the extra money used for bribes and kickbacks. Much of that money was supposedly funneled to the country’s ruling political parties. Other executives have since come forward, and nearly 50 people have been arrested or charged, ranging from more than a dozen CEOs to politicians to party officials, including the treasurer of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s Workers Party.

Read more …

Rousseff must step down and open the prosecutorial floodgates here, or there’ll be severe damage for decades.

• Petrobras To Book Nearly $17 Billion In Charges (MarketWatch)

Brazilian state-run oil company Petróleo Brasileiro SA on Wednesday finally put a price tag on the impact of a corruption scandal that has battered the company’s shares, writing off 6.2 billion reais ($2.1 billion) of alleged bribe payments
In addition, the company booked an impairment charge of 44.6 billion reais ($14.8 billion) for 2014 after determining that assets were overvalued on its balance sheet. As a result, the company reported a net loss of 26.6 billion reais for the fourth quarter on revenue of 85.04 billion reais. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization stood at 20.06 billion reais, up from 15.55 billion reais a year earlier.

The disclosures were part of the first audited financial statements released by Petrobras in more than eight months. Brazilian federal prosecutors since last year have been investigating allegations that the company’s suppliers conspired to overcharge Petrobras for major projects, funneling some of the illicit profit to former Petrobras executives and politicians in the form of bribes and illegal political donations. Petrobras has portrayed itself as a victim of the graft and says it has cooperated with authorities. Still, the company struggled to calculate the scheme’s impact on its balance sheet, leading auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers to refuse to sign off on its statements since the third quarter of 2014.

“With the publication of audited 2014 results, Petrobras has cleared a significant obstacle, after a collective effort, that shows our ability to overcome challenges in an adverse environment,” Chief Executive Aldemir Bendine said in a statement. The financials come just days before an April 30 deadline in Petrobras’s bond covenants that could have allowed the holders of billions of dollars of Petrobras debt to demand early repayment.

Read more …

“Only 5,000 resettlement places across Europe are to be offered to refugees..”

• Most Migrants Crossing Mediterranean Will Be Sent Back (Guardian)

Only 5,000 resettlement places across Europe are to be offered to refugees who survive the dangerous Mediterranean sea crossing under the emergency summit crisis package to be agreed by EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday. A confidential draft summit statement seen by the Guardian indicates that the vast majority of those who survive the journey and make it to Italy – 150,000 did so last year – will be sent back as irregular migrants under a new rapid-return programme co-ordinated by the EU’s border agency, Frontex. More than 36,000 boat survivors have reached Italy, Malta and Greece so far this year. The draft summit conclusions also reveal that hopes of a major expansion of search-and-rescue operations across the Mediterranean in response to the humanitarian crisis are likely to be dashed, despite widespread and growing pressure.

The summit statement merely confirms the decision by EU foreign and interior ministers on Monday to double funding in 2015 and 2016 and “reinforce the assets” of the existing Operation Triton and Operation Poseidon border-surveillance operations, which only patrol within 30 miles of the Italian coast. The European council’s conclusions said this move “should increase the search-and-rescue possibilities within the mandate of Frontex”. The head of Frontex said on Wednesday that Triton could not be a search-and-rescue operation. Instead, the EU leaders are likely to agree that immediate preparations should begin to “undertake systematic efforts to identify, capture and destroy vessels before they are used by traffickers”. The joint EU military operation is to be undertaken within international law.

The statement describes the crisis as a tragedy and says the EU will mobilise all efforts at its disposal to prevent further loss of life at sea and to tackle the root causes of the human emergency, including co-operating with the countries of origin and transit. “Our immediate priority is to prevent more people dying at sea. We have therefore decided to strengthen our presence at sea, to fight the traffickers, to prevent illegal migration flows and to reinforce internal solidarity,” it says, before adding that the EU leaders intend to support all efforts to re-establish government authority in Libya and address key “push” factors such as the situation in Syria. But the detail of the communique makes it clear that the measures to be agreed fall far short of this ambition.

In particular in terms of sharing responsibility across the EU for those who survive the journey, the draft statement suggests only “setting up a first voluntary pilot project on resettlement, offering at least 5,000 places to persons qualifying for protection”, it says. The EU leaders also make a commitment to “increasing emergency aid to frontline member states” – taken to mean Italy, Malta and Greece – “and consider options for organising emergency relocation between member states”.

Read more …

“Leggeri ruled out putting his ships anywhere near the Libyan coast, saying stepping up search-and-rescue operations would only encourage desperate migrants to risk the passage.”

• EU Borders Chief Says Saving Migrants’ Lives ‘No Priority’ (Guardian)

The head of the EU border agency has said that saving migrants’ lives in the Mediterranean should not be the priority for the maritime patrols he is in charge of, despite the clamour for a more humane response from Europe following the deaths of an estimated 800 people at sea at the weekend. On the eve of an emergency EU summit on the immigration crisis, Fabrice Leggeri, the head of Frontex, flatly dismissed turning the Triton border patrol mission off the coast of Italy into a search and rescue operation. He also voiced strong doubts about new EU pledges to tackle human traffickers and their vessels in Libya.

“Triton cannot be a search-and-rescue operation. I mean, in our operational plan, we cannot have provisions for proactive search-and-rescue action. This is not in Frontex’s mandate, and this is in my understanding not in the mandate of the European Union,” Leggeri told the Guardian. The capsizing of a trawler off Libya late on Saturday sparked a public outcry. EU foreign and interior ministers held an emergency meeting on Monday and a special summit on the issue has been called for Thursday in Brussels. The ministers and the European commission agreed to bolster the current Triton mission, to increase its funding and assets, and to expand its area of operation while also calling for new military measures to “systematically capture and destroy” traffickers’ vessels.

Thursday’s summit is to finalise the EU response. Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, who called and will chair the emergency summit, said the leaders had to agree on quick and effective action. “Our overriding priority is to prevent more people from dying at sea … to agree on very practical measures, in particular by strengthening search and rescue possibilities,” he said. But Leggeri ruled out putting his ships anywhere near the Libyan coast, saying stepping up search-and-rescue operations would only encourage desperate migrants to risk the passage. He signalled that Frontex was not asking for more boats, and voiced scepticism about the new talk of military action.

Read more …

More great stuff from ‘our’ side.

• ‘Maidan Snipers Trained In Poland’: Polish MP (RT)

Snipers who are thought to have operated in Kiev’s Independence Square amidst events that led to a coup in February 2014 were trained in Poland and sent to Ukraine to “do a favor” for the US, a Polish Euro-MP claimed in an interview. On February 20, 2014, riot police trying to restrain anti-government demonstrators on Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kiev suddenly retreated up the street from whence they had come. As the protesters rushed forward, gunfire suddenly broke out, with many witnesses saying it was a sniper attack. In some two hours, 46 people were killed.

A year after the tragedy that provoked a huge backlash from the Ukrainians, ultimately leading to the rapid toppling of then-President Viktor Yanukovich, the events on the square are still pending investigation. Several Berkut riot police officers have been detained, but not much progress has been made, while murky details and speculation have been emerging in the press. In a new development, Polish former presidential candidate Janusz Korwin-Mikke told Wiadomosci media outlet that the snipers had actually been trained in Poland. Korwin-Mikke, 72, a European lawmaker and leader of Poland’s conservative KORWiN party, claimed this was a CIA operation. This came as a “Yes” reply to the question whether he believed the CIA was involved.

“Yes – but it was also our operation. The snipers were trained in Poland,” Korwin-Mikke said adding this was done “to provoke riots.” Poland trained those “terrorists” to please the US, which invested heavily into Ukrainian coup, the politician alleged. “Let me say this again: we are doing a favor to Washington,” Korwin-Mikke said. Challenged about his sources, the politician said he overheard this in the European Parliament as Estonia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Urmas Paet “admitted” to the then-EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton that it was “our people who opened fire on Maidan, not those of Yanukovich or Putin.” It is not clear when the conversation took place, but in March previous year a tape with a telephone conversation between the two politicians was leaked which went among the same lines.

Read more …

And we don’t need to provide no steenking proof.

• US Accuses Russia Of ‘Ramping Up’ Ukraine Presence (BBC)

The US has accused Russia of deploying more air defence systems in eastern Ukraine in breach of a ceasefire deal. The state department also said Russia was involved in training separatist forces in the area and building up its forces along the border. The Kremlin has not yet responded to the claims. A truce between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian rebels in east Ukraine was brokered by the West in Minsk in February. State department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a statement that “combined Russian-separatist forces” were violating the terms of the Minsk deal, keeping artillery and multiple rocket launchers in prohibited areas.

“The Russian military has deployed additional air defence systems into eastern Ukraine and moved several of these nearer the front lines,” she said. ‘Complex training’ “This is the highest amount of Russian air defence equipment in eastern Ukraine since August.” Ms Harf said the “increasingly complex nature” of training of pro-Russian forces in east Ukraine “leaves no doubt that Russia is involved”. “Russia is also building up its forces along its border with Ukraine,” she said. “After maintaining a relatively steady presence along the border, Russia is sending additional units there. These forces will give Russia its largest presence on the border since October 2014.” Earlier this month, about 300 US paratroopers arrived in western Ukraine to train with Ukrainian national guard units. At the time, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned the move “could seriously destabilise” the situation in Ukraine.

Read more …

It’s should be mandatory. Get us royal family of lying chimps.

• If A Clinton Were To Marry A Bush, The US Could Cancel Elections (RT)

With apologies to their respective spouses, if Jeb Bush’s son, George P. Bush, had married Chelsea Clinton, Americans could have spared themselves the spectacle of Election 2016 and saved billions of dollars. All that the USA needs now is for a young Clinton to pair up with a junior Bush. Should the union produce an heir, a single line of monarchy would be established. This is the reality of the USA’s broken politics in 2015. A country pretty much established in opposition to hereditary elites now has the most closed political system in the Western world. In the past, America’s strange obsession with the British Royal Family was usually explained by fact that the US has no monarchy of its own. The bad news for Queen Elizabeth’s bunch is that this is increasingly the case in name only.

Right now, Hillary Clinton is close to an even money favorite to become the next American President. The only other short-odds candidate appears to be Jeb Bush. After the former Florida governor there’s a clutch of outsiders like Rand Paul, Scott Walker and Marco Rubio filling out the field. It’s depressing on so many levels. Should Hillary, as expected, secure the White House and serve two terms it’ll mean that America will have been ruled by either a Bush or Clinton for 28 out of 36 years. The only break coming during the 8-year Obama Presidency. Of course, the former first lady served as Secretary of State for half of Obama’s reign. Despite a common misconception that the Roosevelts, Teddy and Franklin D, were close relatives, (they weren’t) keeping things in the family has not been the American way.

In fact, George Bush Senior was the first President since FDR to have been born into the politically-connected WASP elite. Instead, post-war American Presidents have tended to be outsiders, coming from left field. Think Reagan, Nixon and Carter, for instance. Even the ultimate ‘silver-spoon’ Commander-in-Chief, John F. Kennedy, was far from an insider by dint of his Catholic religion. Indeed, despite their great wealth and celebrity, the Kennedy clan never came close to establishing the kind of dynasty that the Bush family has managed. However, the Boston brood remains powerful in the world of baby kissers and it’s commonly accepted that the late Edward was pivotal in securing Obama’s nomination for the 2008 contest.

Read more …

Audit it.

• Fed Refuses to Comply With Lawmakers’ Request For Names in Probe (WSJ)

The Federal Reserve has not replied to a lawmakers’ request that it identify the individuals who had contact with a private consulting firm that published a report on the central bank’s market-sensitive internal policy deliberations. In October 2012, the day before the Fed released its minutes of its September 2012 policy meeting, Medley Global Advisors, sent a report to its clients with several sensitive details that subsequently appeared in the minutes. A central bank probe found a “few” Fed staffers had contact with Medley before the report, but did not identify them. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas), Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, sent a letter to Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen on April 15 asking the Fed to name them by 5 p.m. EDT April 22.

The deadline passed without any response by the Fed, a committee spokesman said Wednesday. The Fed declined to comment. Medley did not respond to a request for comment. The central bank’s policy-making Federal Open Market Committee makes decisions on interest rates that can cause huge swings in global financial markets. Confidential information about its internal deliberations or advance information about the minutes of its meetings or possible future actions can be worth huge sums of money to traders around the world.

Read more …

We won’t rest till all wildlife is gone.

• Wolves Shot From Choppers Shows Oil Harm Beyond Pollution (Bloomberg)

Here’s one aspect of Canada’s energy boom that isn’t being thwarted by the oil market crash: the wolf cull. The expansion of oil-sands mines and drilling pads has brought the caribou pictured on Canada’s 25-cent coin to the brink of extinction in Alberta and British Columbia. To arrest the population decline, the two provinces are intensifying a hunt of the caribou’s main predator, the gray wolf. Conservation groups accuse the provinces of making wolves into scapegoats for man-made damage to caribou habitats. The cull carried out in winter when the dark fur of the wolves is easier to spot against the snow has claimed more than 1,000 animals since 2005. Hunters shoot them with high-powered rifles from nimble two-seat helicopters that can hover close to a pack or lone wolf.

In Alberta, some are poisoned with big chunks of bait laced with strychnine, leading to slow and painful deaths that may be preceded by seizures and hypothermia. “It’s an unhappy necessity,” Stan Boutin, a University of Alberta biologist, said of the government-sponsored hunt. “We’ve let the development proceed so far already that now, trying to get industry out of an area, is just not going to happen.” The energy industry has delivered a death blow to caribou by turning prime habitat into production sites and by introducing linear features on the landscape that give wolves easy paths to hunt caribou, such as roads, pipelines and lines of downed trees created by oil and gas exploration.

A drop in drilling after oil prices plunged can’t reverse the damage. More than C$350 billion ($285 billion) spent by Alberta’s oil-sands producers to build an industrial complex that’s visible from space have made the province’s boreal herds of woodland caribou the most endangered in the country. Their population is falling by about half every eight years, according to a 2013 study in the Canadian Journal of Zoology. Since 2005, Alberta has auctioned the rights to develop more than 25,000 square kilometers (9,652 square miles) of land in caribou ranges to energy companies, according to the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, an Ottawa-based charity. That’s equivalent to about three times New York’s metropolitan area.

“When the oil industry goes in there and cuts those lines and drills and puts in pipelines, it helps the wolves,” said Chad Lenz, a hunting guide with two decades of experience based in Red Deer, Alberta. Lenz has watched caribou herds shrink as the number of wolves soar. “There’s not a place in Alberta that hasn’t been affected by industry, especially the oil industry.” Home to the world’s third-largest proven crude reserves, Alberta depends on levies from the energy industry to build new roads, schools and hospitals.

Read more …

It’s no use staying. Your kids deserve better. California is yesterday.

• What California Can Learn About Drought From ‘Chinatown’ (MarketWatch)

In the 1974 film “Chinatown,” a fictional Los Angeles politician issues a warning as he lays out his case for creating an aqueduct to bring water to the city from the inland valley more than 200 miles north: “Beneath every street there is a desert, and without water the dust will rise up and cover us as if this place never existed.” For California, these words still resonate as a severe drought drags into its fourth year, prompting the first-ever mandatory restrictions on water usage and stirring questions about how the drought will be handled as the climate becomes warmer and drier. With the mood of the present-day state becoming more unsettled, “Chinatown” is perhaps more timely than ever, offering a cautionary tale and a possible roadmap for our thinking about water.

“I can’t tell you how many times people have said, ‘Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown,’” said Jon Christensen at UCLA, speaking of the iconic movie’s staying power. Although the film itself is a fictional work, “like all great art,” Christensen said, “it captures a great truth about water in California and in the American West.” The film, starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and John Huston, dramatizes the California water wars of the early 1900s, accenting corruption, deception and secret dealings within Los Angeles, a city whose character would be shaped by its growing thirst for water. The film is set in the 1930s but is loosely based on the events of 1913, when Los Angeles began siphoning off water from the Owens Valley, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada, through an aqueduct.

As the L.A. region flourished, businessmen involved in the deal to bring water to the city profited wildly, while farmers in the Owens Valley were left to watch their land go dry and their regional economy suffer. The tension between agricultural and residential interests has been a defining conflict in California’s history, according to many experts. In March, the Golden State’s cities and towns were ordered to reduce their water usage by 25%. Farmers were exempted from these restrictions, even though agriculture amounts to 80% of water use in the state. Gov. Jerry Brown defended agriculture’s water consumption but has said water rights may need to be re-examined.

Read more …