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Debt Rattle March 31 2024

Mar 312024
 
 March 31, 2024  Posted by at 8:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  20 Responses »


Titian Christ Carrying the Cross 1565

 

• Why Americans Have Little To Smile About These Days (Bridge)
• Trump Pushes Legal Challenges In Two Cases (BBC)
• We Need A Ceasefire In Ukraine – Orban (RT)
• ‘Odessa Will Fall’, Musk Warns Ukraine (RT)
• Ukraine Was Testing Ground for Western Big Pharma (Sp.)
• Money Transfers Proof That Crocus Terrorists Followed Orders From Ukraine (Sp.)
• US Marines Struggle to Adapt to Fighting Adversary That Can Fight Back (Miles)
• Biden Claims Saudi Arabia, Qatar ‘Ready To Normalize’ With Israel (Cradle)
• Israel Believes Only 60-70 Out Of 134 Hostages Are Still Alive (ZH)
• The Never-Ending Federal Surveillance Crime Spree (Bovard)
• Republicans Score Win In Court Battle Over Pennsylvania Mail-In Ballots (ET)
• Behind Massive Mail-in Ballot Push Is a Little-Noticed Executive Order (ET)
• Judge Rebukes DOJ Arguments Against Release Of Jan. 6 Defendant (ZH)
• $935 Diabetes Jab Ozempic Costs Less Than $5 To Make (ET)
• Why is $BCH So Hot Right Now? (Kim Dotcom)

 

 

How Joe Biden chooses to celebrate the resurrection of Christ.

 

 

Maher Trump

 

 

Habba

 

 

 

 

Mike Davis Fani

 

 

DeSantis

 

 

Lie
https://twitter.com/i/status/1773809245504278628

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Not since the Civil War period have the American people witnessed such stark political divisions, and it seems to be just a matter of time before the Blue and Gray battle fatigues are back in style..”

• Why Americans Have Little To Smile About These Days (Bridge)

From a sputtering economy and high inflation to a lack of trust in political leadership, Americans are expressing displeasure with many facets of their daily lives. In the annual World Happiness Report, the United States plunged eight places to 23rd, a historic low for the land famous for its pearly white smiles. It’s the first time since the report launched back in 2012 that the US did not feature among the world’s 20 happiest countries. So what’s dragging Americans down? Perhaps the best place to start is with the economy, which has left many people in the dust as the rich just keep getting richer. Consumer prices for basic grocery items remain above what they were in January 2021, when President Joe Biden assumed office. Prices for chicken (+26%), bread (+30%), sugar (+44%), and butter (+27%) are enough to trigger many shoppers, while a simple trip to a restaurant has become a rare luxury for many financially strapped consumers. Meanwhile, rent costs have surged by 20% over the same period.

Amid this sticker shock at the checkout line, Americans have also expressed a heavy amount of skepticism with the political system. A comprehensive Pew Research Center survey reveals high levels of dissatisfaction with the three branches of government, the Democratic and Republican parties, as well as the candidates for office. Among the findings, just 4% of US adults say the political system is working extremely or very well; another 23% report it is working somewhat well. About six in ten (63%) express not too much or no confidence at all in the future of the US political system. A growing proportion of Americans are expressing contempt for both political parties. Nearly three in ten (28%) express unfavorable opinions of both parties, the highest share in three decades of polling. And a comparable share of respondents (25%) do not feel well-represented by either party.

While trust in government has remained near historic lows for much of the last two decades, today it stands among the lowest levels dating back nearly seven decades. And now, three years after the January 6 protests at the Capitol Building, more Americans believe their country is heading for a political smash-up. According to a CBS/YouGov poll released in January, 49% of respondents expect some sort of violence in future political contests, like the upcoming showdown between Donald Trump and Joe Biden on November 4. Meanwhile, a full 70% agreed with the statement that American democracy is ‘threatened’. Not since the Civil War period have the American people witnessed such stark political divisions, and it seems to be just a matter of time before the Blue and Gray battle fatigues are back in style, albeit over entirely different issues.

The Democrats and Republicans are trapped inside of their own iron-clad echo chambers, where they are prevented from hearing their political opponents just across the aisle. This lack of a national dialogue, worsened by an overtly pro-liberal media, is what spawned the so-called insurrection on January 6, and could easily trigger a new bout of violence sometime down the road. Feelings of loneliness is another thing dragging Americans down. In May 2023, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called loneliness a “public health epidemic.” The latest Healthy Minds Monthly Poll from the American Psychiatric Association (APA) reveals that, early in 2024, 30% of adults said they have “experienced feelings of loneliness at least once a week over the past year, while 10% say they are lonely every day.”

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When you don’t take it as “News”, the MSM is a delight. Take the new Trump gag order, “barring Mr Trump from attacking court staff and their family members”. What happened is Judge Merchan’s daughter uses a pic of Trump behind bars as her avatar. But he cannot say now that that is inappropriate.

“Contrary to the People’s suggestion, the Court cannot ‘direct’ President Trump to do something that the gag order does not require..”

Another gem: “Ms Willis had described Mr Wade as a “trusted friend..”

Michael Cohen boinked Stormy Daniels and paid her for it using Trump’s money. When that ran out, he claimed it was “hush money”. The paper trail was already there. Does that sound about right?

• Trump Pushes Legal Challenges In Two Cases (BBC)

Donald Trump’s attorneys pushed two legal challenges before Easter weekend. His camp is appealing against a verdict from a Georgia judge allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to stay on an election subversion case. They also aim to stop the expansion of a gag order, limiting Mr Trump’s speech, in a New York hush money case. The Republican presidential nominee faces four legal cases, and these two are the most likely to be heard in court before the US elections. Mr Trump has pleaded not guilty in all the cases, and claimed he is being politically persecuted. Mr Trump and his co-defendants in the Georgia case, which accuses them of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, have alleged that Ms Willis financially benefitted from an improper romantic relationship with Nathan Wade – a prosecutor she hired to lead the case. Judge Scott McAfee – who is overseeing the case – held two weeks of chaotic hearings that included fiery testimony from Ms Willis.

She admitted to the relationship but denied benefitting from it financially. In the end, the judge sided with Ms Willis, though he said the relationship had the “appearance of impropriety” and demanded Mr Wade or Ms Willis step down. Mr Wade did so within hours. In a 51-page motion filed on Friday before the Georgia Court of Appeals, Mr Trump and eight of his co-defendants argued Ms Willis should also be removed – which would greatly delay the case or could lead to it being dismissed. Mr Trump and other co-defendants’ lawyers said Mr Wade’s resignation did not sufficiently address the “appearance of impropriety” that “cast a pall over these entire proceedings”. “The trial court was bound by existing case law to not only require Wade’s disqualification (which occurred) but also to require the disqualification of DA Willis and her entire office,” the attorneys said in the filing. CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, has reported that Ms Willis intends to play a prominent role in the case, which the judge has ordered to proceed if Mr Trump appeals.

Meanwhile, in New York, Mr Trump is embroiled in other legal battles while he awaits the start of his first criminal trial over the alleged falsification of business records related to a payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels. This week, the justice in the case, Juan Merchan, granted a request from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to impose a gag order on Mr Trump barring him from making statements about jurors and witnesses or intimidating court staff. On Friday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg sought to clarify – and possibly expand – the gag order barring Mr Trump from attacking court staff and their family members. His motion came after Mr Trump insulted Justice Merchan’s daughter in a social media post before the gag order was issued.

Mr Bragg asked Justice Merchan to “make abundantly clear” that the gag order applied to “family members of the Court”, the district attorney and other individuals mentioned in the gag order. He also asked the judge to “warn” Mr Trump “and direct him to immediately desist”. If Mr Trump does not, the prosecutor argues, he should face sanctions. The former president’s attorney, Todd Blanche, denied that his client had violated the gag order and argued that the judge’s daughter was not a part of it. He wrote that there was nothing wrong with the social media posts. “Contrary to the People’s suggestion, the Court cannot ‘direct’ President Trump to do something that the gag order does not require,” he said.

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“There is no remaining “reasonable dispute between Russia and the West,” Orban added..”

• We Need A Ceasefire In Ukraine – Orban (RT)

Ukraine’s path to peace and security could lie in establishing a buffer zone next to the Russian border, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said. With the conflict between Moscow and Kiev in its third year, the Western flow of military and financial aid to Ukraine is dwindling, while its army is losing ground. Orban suggested that now is the time for a ceasefire, Hungarian magazine Mandiner wrote on Friday, quoting the prime minister’s interview with former Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schussel in Budapest. There is no remaining “reasonable dispute between Russia and the West,” Orban added. “People in Europe are not happy that their governments want to provide more financial assistance to Ukraine,” he said, explaining that Europe cannot provide the kind of support that would result in a military victory for Ukraine. EU states have allocated €77 billion ($83 billion) in aid to Kiev, while pledging €144 billion since the beginning of the conflict in February 2022, according to Germany’s Kiel Institute.

Ukraine has lost several strategically important cities in Donbass in the last month. Officials in Kiev have repeatedly cited the lack of Western-supplied munitions as the reason for their battlefield setbacks. Orban doubled down on his idea of a buffer zone next to the Russian border as Ukraine’s ideal peace solution, provided there are “additional security guarantees.” Without this, he said, “they could lose their country.” He stressed that Russia will never accept Ukraine joining NATO. Moscow has stated that one of the main causes of the conflict was the expansion of the US-led military bloc towards Russia’s borders. President Vladimir Putin has said one of the key goals of the Russian military operation is to force Kiev away from its goal of joining NATO – an ambition enshrined in the country’s constitution in 2019. While the Hungarian prime minister condemned the Russian military operation, he has repeatedly spoken out against the EU’s handling of it. Unlike the other EU states, Hungary has not sent any armaments to Kiev, limiting their contributions to humanitarian aid.

Mearsheimer

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“Whether Ukraine loses all access to the Black Sea or not is, in my view, the real remaining question..”

• ‘Odessa Will Fall’, Musk Warns Ukraine (RT)

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has reiterated his belief that Ukraine’s position is weakening with each passing day of the hostilities, warning that the “real question” is how much territory Kiev will lose and how many lives it will waste before sitting for talks with Moscow. The entrepreneur claimed in a post on his X platform on Saturday that “any fool could have predicted” that Kiev’s much-touted counteroffensive last year would fail, adding that even if Kiev had followed his recommendation to “entrench and apply all resources to defense,” it would be “tough to hold land that doesn’t have strong natural barriers.” “It was a tragic waste of life for Ukraine to attack a larger army that had defense in depth, minefields and stronger artillery when Ukraine lacked armor or air superiority!,” Musk wrote. Kiev has lost over 444,000 troops killed and wounded in two years of hostilities against Moscow, including more than 166,000 during last year’s counteroffensive, according to last month’s estimates from the Russian Defense Ministry.

However, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky claimed in February that Kiev’s forces lost only 31,000 soldiers killed since the start of the conflict. The billionaire went on to argue that “the longer the war goes on, the more territory Russia will gain until they hit the Dnepr, which is tough to overcome.” However, if the war lasts long enough, Odessa will fall too… Whether Ukraine loses all access to the Black Sea or not is, in my view, the real remaining question. I recommend a negotiated settlement before that happens. Elon Musk has shifted his position on Ukraine several times since the conflict began in early 2022. He initially supplied Kiev with free Starlink internet terminals and access to the satellite-based network, but declined to activate the service near Crimea for fear that Ukraine would use it to guide drone attacks on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. If this had happened, he explained last year, SpaceX would have been “complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

Musk has also used his X account to speak extensively about the trajectory of the conflict. More than a year ago, he proposed that Kiev abandon its claim to Crimea, declare neutrality, and allow the four new Russian regions – Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye – to hold fresh referendums on joining the Russian Federation. This proposal is similar to the terms offered by Russia to Kiev and the Western powers before the conflict began, except Moscow initially called only for autonomy in Donetsk and Lugansk. Moscow has stressed that it remains open to meaningful talks with Kiev and has blamed the lack of a diplomatic breakthrough on the Ukrainian authorities, who refuse to accept the “reality on the ground.” Ukraine must take into account the fact that its borders have changed drastically since 2022, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Saturday, commenting on Zelensky’s suggestion that a return to 1991 borders was no longer a precondition for negotiations.

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Biolabs.

• Ukraine Was Testing Ground for Western Big Pharma (Sp.)

Ukraine was one of the main testing grounds for trials of a drug that could potentially cause various forms of cancer and that was used on patients in the psychiatric ward of Mariupol Hospital No. 7 with the support of local officials in the interests of Western pharmaceutical companies, according to documents seen by Sputnik. In particular, the trial involved the experimental drug SB4 for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. The drug inhibits the action of molecules of the so-called tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF), which plays an important role in the immune system, and its use creates the possibility of developing various forms of cancer, including in the lymphatic and hematopoietic systems, as well as skin. The manufacturers of SB4 were Biogen Idec Denmark Manufacturing ApS (Denmark), Catalent Pharma Solutions (Belgium), and Fisher Clinical Services UK Limited (UK). The study was sponsored by South Korea’s Samsung Bioepis, the documents read.

An application from Quintiles Ukraine for approval by the state expert center of the Ukrainian Ministry of Health and the Ethics Commission at the medical and preventive institution for conducting clinical trials of SB4 was found among the documents. Quintiles Ukraine was established as a division of the US outsourcing pharmaceutical company Quintiles Transnational. According to the application, signed in February 2013, at that time it was planned to test the drug in Ukraine on 152 patients (later this number increased to 180), and in total on almost 500 patients around the world. According to the periodic report of the SB4-G31-RA project on SB4 trials, by November 2013, 777 patients had been selected for testing, including 285 in Poland, 143 in Ukraine, 108 in the Czech Republic, 77 in Bulgaria, 60 in Lithuania, 37 in the Republic of Korea, 34 in Mexico, 17 in Hungary, 14 in Colombia, and two in the United Kingdom.

The documents found in Mariupol Hospital No. 7 were collected between 2008 and 2016. The results of the initial inspection show that drugs with numbers and without names were tested on people, with the tests also conducted on toddlers. Companies such as Pfizer (US), AstraZeneca (UK, Sweden), Celltrion (South Korea), Novatris International AG (Switzerland, US), IQVIA (formerly Quintiles and IMS Health Inc., US, UK), Sanofi (France), Galapagos NV (Belgium), Janssen Pharmaceuticals (now Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, Belgium), Abbott Laboratories (US), Covance (now Labcorp Drug Development, US), and Merck KGaA (Germany) are mentioned in the documents.

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“..In order to save face, and to hide the fact that Ukraine itself is a huge terrorist organization..”

• Money Transfers Proof That Crocus Terrorists Followed Orders From Ukraine (Sp.)

It is of paramount importance that data in the technical devices seized from the suspects in the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack has confirmed their connection with the Ukrainian side, Kirill Kabanov, chairman of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, told Sputnik. Initial data received from those detained in the case related to the terrorist attack indicated Ukraine pulled the strings. However, the fresh report by the Russian Investigative Committee points to the Ukrainian special services, and “we must understand that they are directly connected with the CIA and MI6 and MI5,” Kabanov said. “That is why the West is trying to cover this up, blaming an outlawed international terrorist organization for everything. In order to save face, and to hide the fact that Ukraine itself is a huge terrorist organization,” Kabanov, who is also a member of the Human Rights Council, said.

The ongoing investigation into the attack at Crocus City Hall has discovered proof of the connection of the terrorists who carried out the heinous crime with Ukrainian nationalists, the Russian Investigative Committee said on March 28.”The initial results of the investigation fully confirm the planned nature of the terrorists’ actions, careful preparation and financial support from the organizers of the crime. As a result of working with the detained terrorists, analyzing the technical devices seized from them, analyzing information about financial transactions, evidence of their connection with Ukrainian nationalists has been obtained,” the Russian Investigative Committee said on Telegram.

The terrorists received significant amounts of money and cryptocurrency from Ukraine, Russian investigators added. Russia’s special services have completed their task by uncovering this proof, yet they “refuse to hear us in the West, the world’s mechanisms don’t work,” said Kirill Kabanov. “The Americans can get away with brandishing an empty vial and using it as a pretext for starting a war and destroying an entire state, as was the case with Iraq. Unfortunately, I am not at all sure that our evidence of cryptocurrency transfers will be heard. Although for citizens of many countries this might add to their perception of reality,” the expert noted. For people in Western countries whose leaders remain committed to supporting the regime holed up in Kiev, a reality check as to what is really happening in Ukraine is long overdue, the analyst believes.

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“..the United States has deployed its military forces almost 400 times during its short history..”

• US Marines Struggle to Adapt to Fighting Adversary That Can Fight Back (Miles)

After killing at least 3.6 million people in its so-called “War on Terror,” US armed forces are regrouping to combat adversaries capable of mounting a resistance. In a hagiographic article entitled “Preparing for a China war, the Marines are retooling how they’ll fight,” ruling class stenographer Ellen Nakashima blithely considers the prospect of fighting a war against a nuclear-armed country of 1.4 billion people. The piece, appearing in The Washington Post, details the US Marine Corps’ efforts to adapt to what she appears to believe is an inevitable, and desirable, conflict with China. “The Marines are striving to adapt to a maritime fight that could play out across thousands of miles of islands and coastline in Asia,” writes Nakashima, admitting the armed service has devoted the last 20 years to fighting less capable forces in the Middle East. “Instead of launching traditional amphibious assaults… nimbler groups are intended as an enabler for a larger joint force.”

“Their role is to gather intelligence and target data and share it quickly — as well as occasionally sink ships with medium-range missiles,” it is explained, “to help the Pacific Fleet and Air Force repel aggression against the United States and allies and partners like Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines.” The country she imagines launching this aggression has not been at war since 1979, while the United States has deployed its military forces almost 400 times during its short history. “New regiments are envisioned as one piece of a broader strategy to synchronize the operations of US soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen, and in turn with the militaries of allies and partners in the Pacific,” the piece continues. “Their focus is a crucial stretch of territory sweeping from Japan to Indonesia and known as the First Island Chain. China sees this region, which encompasses an area about half the size of the contiguous United States, as within its sphere of influence.” Naturally, China needs to understand its coastal waters are not its own concern, but the United States’, Nakashima’s logic suggests.

“China not only has the region’s largest army, navy and air force, but also home-field advantage,” Nakashima writes, apparently under the impression the United States will be allowed to attack China without suffering retribution on its own shores. “Taiwan, a close US partner, is most directly in the crosshairs.” China’s links with Taiwan go back hundreds of years. In the 1950s the United States attempted to cleave the island off from the country after the Chinese Civil War. As the defeated Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan the US threatened to use nuclear bombs if leader Mao Zedong crossed the Taiwan Strait, seeking to balkanize China as the US did in Korea and attempted to do in Vietnam. Nakashima writes of the disastrous consequences for shareholder profits of a war over Taiwan: “A successful invasion would… have catastrophic economic consequences due to disruption of the world’s most advanced semiconductor industry and of maritime traffic in some of the world’s busiest sea lanes — the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.”

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“..either a “multinational force” or a “Palestinian peacekeeping team” to oversee the affairs of a post-war Gaza..”

No use without involving Russia and China.

• Biden Claims Saudi Arabia, Qatar ‘Ready To Normalize’ With Israel (Cradle)

US President Joe Biden said at a campaign event on 28 March that Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are ready for a full normalization of ties with Israel. During the event – which was meant to show unity in the Democratic Party ahead of US elections in November this year – Biden was joined on stage by former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. “I’ve been working with the Saudis and with all the other Arab countries, including Egypt and Jordan and Qatar. They’re prepared to fully recognize Israel. There has to be a post-Gaza plan, and there has to be a trade to a two-state solution. It doesn’t have to occur today. It has to be a progression and I think we can do that,” Biden said. Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, which has seen Israel kill over 32,000 civilians, Saudi Arabia has repeatedly stated that normalization with Tel Aviv is still on the table.

However, Riyadh has doubled down on its demands for concessions to the Palestinians, including, most prominently, the demand for the eventual realization of statehood. Washington has been devising a plan for post-war Gaza, which includes the idea of a “reformed” Palestinian Authority (PA) assuming control over administration in the strip. In late February, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled a similar plan, which included demilitarizing Gaza, forming a local governing authority, and a broader normalization pact with Arab states, including the Saudis. Politico reported on the same day as Biden’s campaign event that the White House, State Department, and Pentagon are discussing the potential establishment of either a “multinational force” or a “Palestinian peacekeeping team” to oversee the affairs of a post-war Gaza.

Yet Israel has yet to achieve its goal of dismantling the Palestinian resistance and is continuing brutal and incessant airstrikes daily. “There are too many innocent victims, Israelis and Palestinians,” Biden added at the event. “We’re in a position where Israel’s very existence is at stake. You had all those people massacred,” the president said about 7 October, adding: “It’s understandable Israel has such a profound anger and Hamas is still there, but we must in-act, stop the effort that is resulting in significant deaths of innocent civilians and particularly children.” Several pro-Palestine activists erupted in chants throughout the campaign event, accusing Biden of complicity in the genocide being carried out against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

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How many Palestinian hostages?

• Israel Believes Only 60-70 Out Of 134 Hostages Are Still Alive (ZH)

Israel’s official count for the number of people still being held hostage in the Gaza Strip remains at 134 mostly Israeli citizens as well as some foreigners, which includes possibly deceased victims. Amid stalled truce negotiations in Qatar, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has revealed that Israeli officials believe only 60 to 70 Israeli hostages in Gaza are still alive. “According to the IDF, a total of 134 hostages and bodies are being held in Gaza,” Haaretz wrote Thursday. “Thirty-six of the people were confirmed by the army as killed – some on October 7, when their bodies were taken into the Strip. Of the 98 living hostages, 10 are foreigners (eight Thais, one Nepalese national, and one man with Mexican and French citizenship).” What’s more is that a month ago some of the families of the hostages were informed that 20 captives were in life-threatening condition.

An unnamed source close to the crisis told Haaretz, “I hope I’m mistaken, but the number may even be lower”—suggesting there may be even fewer that are alive. Given the intense battles unfolding across most of the Gaza Strip, it is widely speculated that the hostages are being held somewhere within the miles of underground tunnels below, where Hamas also has command and control centers. There’s a possibility that some of the hostages could have been killed by Israeli’s relentless bombing campaign which has decimated entire neighborhoods. A horrifically tragic incident last December saw three Israeli hostages shot dead by Israeli forces who mistook them for Palestinian militants. Israeli leadership under Netanyahu has been accused by the hostages’ families of prioritizing the military operation to defeat Hamas far and above hostage recovery.

Some recent testimony of hostages freed in last year’s truce and exchange with Hamas said the following: Echoing this sense of an indiscriminate and haphazard policy, testimonies from newly freed Israeli hostages, who were released as part of exchange deals for Palestinian prisoners during a temporary ceasefire in late November, as well as from some of the hostages’ families, indicate that one of the main fears of those held captive in Gaza was the threat of being hit by Israeli airstrikes and shelling. Many of the hostages, according to these testimonies, were held above ground rather than in tunnels, and were therefore particularly vulnerable to such attacks. Large-scale anti-Netanyahu protests led by victims’ families have persisted in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Pressure has also mounted on Washington to strike a ceasefire. Prime Minister Netanyahu is currently facing accusations from within his own government of ‘sabotaging’ the truce process with an aim to prolong the war, and also thus his political future in the top office.

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“..a much more lenient standard for wiretaps than the Constitution permitted for American citizens..”

• The Never-Ending Federal Surveillance Crime Spree (Bovard)

Last December, one of the most intrusive provisions in the federal statute book was set to expire. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authorizes the National Security Agency to vacuum up trillions of emails and other data. A bevy of bipartisan members of Congress called for radically curtailing those nullifications of Americans’ privacy. But the effort to put a leash on the federal surveillance failed dismally. Congress voted for a four-month extension of FISA, which will likely be followed in April by a much longer extension. There was a bipartisan congressional conspiracy to entitle the Deep State to continue trampling the Constitution. In 1978, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to outlaw political spying (such as the FBI had committed) on American citizens. FISA created a secret court to oversee federal surveillance of suspected foreign agents within the United States, permitting a much more lenient standard for wiretaps than the Constitution permitted for American citizens.

The FISA court “created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans,” the New York Times reported in 2013 after Edward Snowden leaked court decisions. The court rubber-stamped FBI requests that bizarrely claimed that the telephone records of all Americans were “relevant” to a terrorism investigation under the Patriot Act, thereby enabling National Security Administration (NSA) data seizures later denounced by a federal judge as “almost Orwellian.” In 2017, a FISA court decision included a 10-page litany of FBI violations, which “ranged from illegally sharing raw intelligence with unauthorized third parties to accessing intercepted attorney-client privileged communications without proper oversight.” The latest controversy involved FISA Section 702, first enacted by Congress in 2008.

That section authorizes the National Security Agency to surveil targets in foreign nations regardless of how many Americans’ privacy is “incidentally” destroyed. The NSA collects vast amounts of information as part of that surveillance and then permits the FBI to sift through its troves. The Electronic Frontier Foundation warned more than a decade ago that Section 702 “created a broad national-security exception to the Constitution that allows all Americans to be spied upon by their government while denying them any viable means of challenging that spying.” Professor David Rothkopf explained in 2013 how Section 702 worked: “What if government officials came to your home and said that they would collect all of your papers and hold onto them for safe-keeping, just in case they needed them in the future. But don’t worry … they wouldn’t open the boxes until they had a secret government court order … sometime, unbeknownst to you.” Actually, the law in practice is much worse.

From the beginning, federal agencies brazenly lied about the number of Americans whose privacy was ravaged. In 2014, former NSA employee Edward Snowden provided the Washington Post with a cache of 160,000 secret email threads that the NSA had intercepted. The Post found that nine out of ten account holders were not the “intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.” Almost half of the individuals whose personal data was inadvertently commandeered were American citizens. The files “tell stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes,” the Post noted. If an American citizen wrote an email in a foreign language, NSA analysts assumed they were foreigners who could be surveilled without a warrant.

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“..this 3rd Circuit ruling roundly rejects unlawful left-wing attempts to count undated or incorrectly dated mail ballot..”

• Republicans Score Win In Court Battle Over Pennsylvania Mail-In Ballots (ET)

Pennsylvania rules that require mail-in ballots to be dated are legal, a federal appeals court has ruled. A state law that says voters must fill out, date, and sign envelopes containing the ballots is not prevented by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a majority said in the March 27 ruling. The act bans denying “the right of any individual to vote in any election because of an error or omission on any record or paper relating to any application, registration or other act requisite to voting.” But that provision “only applies when the state is determining who may vote,” U.S. Circuit Court Judge Thomas Ambro, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, wrote for the majority of a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit panel. “In other words, its role stops at the door of the voting place. The provision does not apply to rules, like the date requirement, that govern how a qualified voter must cast his ballot for it to be counted.”

The same court ahead of the 2022 election ruled that state officials must count undated ballots but the U.S. Supreme Court vacated that order. After the state’s acting secretary of state said counties should still count undated ballots, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that counties could not count mail-in ballots with missing or incorrect dates. About 7,900 ballots were not counted in the 2020 election because they were missing a signature or date, or had an inaccurate date, according to state officials. U.S. District Judge Susan Paradise Baxter later ruled that the Pennsylvania law violated the Civil Rights Act provision, meaning Pennsylvania officials had to count mail-in ballots even if they lacked dates, or contained inaccurate dates. “Federal law prohibits a state from erecting immaterial roadblocks, such as this, to voting,” Judge Baxter, appointed by former President Donald Trump, wrote at the time, referring to the Pennsylvania law.

According to the law, a voter casting a ballot by mail must mark the ballot, then place it inside a provided envelope. That envelope must then be placed into a second envelope, which contains the areas for the date and signature. “The elector shall then fill out, date and sign the declaration printed on such envelope,” the law states. The Republican National Committee (RNC) and other groups appealed Judge Baxter’s ruling, arguing that her conclusion was wrong. “This is a crucial victory for election integrity and voter confidence in the Keystone State and nationwide. Pennsylvanians deserve to feel confident in the security of their mail ballots, and this 3rd Circuit ruling roundly rejects unlawful left-wing attempts to count undated or incorrectly dated mail ballot,” Michael Whatley, the RNC’s chairman, said in a statement after the new ruling was handed down.

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“This is Zuckerbucks on steroids because instead of $400 million, it’s unlimited funding and resources and the reach of the federal government and all its offices located across the country..”

“..the president’s unprecedented effort to deploy federal agencies in support of partisan voting operations and fortify politically aligned private organizations working to circumvent state election integrity laws.”

• Behind Massive Mail-in Ballot Push Is a Little-Noticed Executive Order (ET)

A federal effort to register voters using the government’s vast reach, including throughout the U.S. prison system, is raising concerns from critics who have said it won’t benefit Democrats and Republicans equally. Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson wrote to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on March 6 alleging that agencies under the attorney general’s charge are “attempting to register people to vote, including potentially ineligible felons, and to co-opt state and local officials into accomplishing this goal.” The allegation relates to President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14019, which states, “The head of each agency shall evaluate ways in which the agency can, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, promote voter registration and voter participation.”

Among other things, this order has forced U.S. Marshals to modify more than 900 contracts with prisons and jails to provide voter registration documents and facilitate mail-in voting for inmates, Mr. Watson wrote. “We have worked extremely hard to restore the confidence of Mississippi voters in our election process,” Mr. Watson told The Epoch Times. “To have the Biden administration and the DOJ purposefully undermine these efforts and jeopardize the integrity of Mississippi’s elections is unacceptable.” The secretary of state is the chief election officer in Mississippi. The work by the Department of Justice to register voters in prisons, critics say, is just the tip of the iceberg. Other agencies, including the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, are also carrying out campaigns to sign up new voters.

On Feb. 26, Vice President Kamala Harris lauded a federal plan to use work-study grants to pay students to register voters. In addition, President Biden’s executive order directed federal agencies to select “approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations and state officials to provide voter registration services on agency premises.” President Biden’s executive order was called “visionary“ by Ceridwen Cherry, a former staff attorney on the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Voting Rights Project, who said, ”In a democracy, governments at all levels should be doing everything they can to help eligible people register to vote.” However, critics say elections are under the purview of states, not the federal government.

“The reason it’s such a big problem is that, with the president, it’s only one political party that’s in power,” Stewart Whitson, legal director of the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), a conservative think-tank, told The Epoch Times. “If you allow the president to be the one to decide where all these massive resources are channeled, that’s problematic,” he said, adding that this is why the Founders gave election authority to states and not to the federal executive. The plan has been called “Bidenbucks” by some of its detractors, referencing the injection into state election programs of $400 million in 2020 from Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, dubbed “Zuckerbucks.” “This is Zuckerbucks on steroids because instead of $400 million, it’s unlimited funding and resources and the reach of the federal government and all its offices located across the country,” Mr. Whitson said.

[..] In July 2021, the FGA filed a FOIA request regarding President Biden’s Voting Access plan. The group sought information about what federal agencies were doing to implement the plan, as well as records from planning and strategy meetings among President Biden’s staff, federal agencies, and the architects of EO 14019. “These documents, in any other context, would be handed over much more quickly,” Mr. Whitson said. “So this indicates to us that there’s something there the Biden administration really does not care to share, because they’ve withheld it for nearly three years now.” The America First Legal foundation, another plaintiff in a FOIA suit, characterized EO 14019 as “the president’s unprecedented effort to deploy federal agencies in support of partisan voting operations and fortify politically aligned private organizations working to circumvent state election integrity laws.” More than two years later, court battles over the information requests are ongoing. The administration has brought in White House counsel and the Department of Justice to fight the requests.

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Can’t find anywhere what he’s supposed to have done, other than: “obstructing an official proceeding among other charges..”

“..the appeal raises a substantial question likely to result in a significantly lesser sentence or reversal..”

That will be true for most. But then they will have been locked up for years.

• Judge Rebukes DOJ Arguments Against Release Of Jan. 6 Defendant (ZH)

A Jan. 6 defendant seeking to be released from prison was granted in part by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia this week. The order, signed by U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden on March 26, will grant the release of Kevin Seefried, a defendant convicted for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach, pending the appeal of his conviction. This decision comes despite stark warnings from the Justice Department regarding the implications of such a move. Mr. Seefried received a three-year prison sentence for obstructing an official proceeding among other charges, facing a potential maximum sentence of 23 years. After his conviction, he appealed and requested release pending appeal, a request that gained new relevance when the Supreme Court decided to review a related case, Fischer v. United States, which could impact many Jan. 6 defendants.

The high Court’s decision on this case may influence the outcome of Mr. Seefried’s conviction, suggesting it could be vacated depending on the justices’ ruling. The decision to release Mr. Seefried is grounded in the ongoing legal debate over the application of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c), the obstruction of an official proceeding statute, beyond the context of “evidence impairment.” “Seefried’s current motion is déjà vu all over again,” Judge McFadden wrote. This legal question is currently under review by the Supreme Court in a related case, Fischer v. United States, which directly challenges the scope of § 1512(c) and its application to the Jan. 6 defendants. Judge McFadden, in his memorandum order, outlined that the release is premised on two conditions mandated by 18 U.S.C. § 3143(b): a defendant is not likely to flee or pose a danger to the community if released, and that the appeal raises a substantial question likely to result in a significantly lesser sentence or reversal.

Judge McFadden found that Mr. Seefried met both conditions, noting a lack of evidence to suggest Mr. Seefried would flee or pose a danger, and that the Supreme Court’s review of Fischer represents a substantial question of law that could materially affect Mr. Seefried’s conviction. Judge McFadden noted the argument of the Justice Department that, in their belief, he now knew the “day-to-day reality of confinement in prison” and was therefore “more likely” to flee than return to prison. Judge McFadden also noted U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves’s argument of 2024 being an election year involving “what will likely be another fiercely contested presidential election” and if released, the Court “would be releasing defendant into the same political maelstrom that led him to commit his crimes in the first place.”

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Why not focus on preventing diabetes? Easier, healthier and cheaper.

• $935 Diabetes Jab Ozempic Costs Less Than $5 To Make (ET)

It costs Novo Nordisk less than $5 per month to produce its top-selling diabetes injection, Ozempic, even as it charges nearly $1,000 for a month’s supply before insurance, according to a new study. The study, published Wednesday in the journal JAMA Network Open, raises questions about the prohibitive cost of the popular diabetes treatment and other weight loss drugs that belong to a pricy class of medications based on GLP-1 technology. Those medicines work by mimicking a hormone called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), which stimulates the pancreas to release insulin when blood sugar rises too high, slows down the emptying of the stomach, and targets brain receptors involved in reducing appetite. Over the past year, demand for GLP-1 agonists has exploded despite soaring costs and limited insurance coverage.

For their study, researchers at Yale University, King’s College Hospital in London, and the nonprofit Doctors Without Borders looked at the cost of manufacturing insulin and compared it with that of GLP-1 agonists. They estimated those prices by combining manufacturing costs for the weekly injection with costs of formulation and other operating expenses, plus a profit margin with an allowance for tax. The foundational price for a weekly dose of injectable semaglutide—the generic name for Ozempic—ranges from $0.89 to $4.73 per month, the study found. By contrast, a vial of human insulin can be manufactured at a cost between $2.37 and $5.94 per month. A month’s supply of Ozempic is $935.77 for those in the United States without health insurance, according to Novo’s website.

The Danish company’s GLP-1 weight loss drug, Wegovy, is listed as $1,349 per month. Wednesday’s study concluded that GLP-1s “can likely be manufactured for prices far below current prices, enabling wider access.” “High prices limit access to newer diabetes medicines in many countries,” the researchers wrote. “The findings of this study suggest that robust generic and bio-similar competition could reduce prices to more affordable levels and enable expansion of diabetes treatment globally.” Citing the findings, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called on Novo to slash prices for both Ozempic and Wegovy, highlighting the price gap for the identical drugs sold in America and other developed countries.

“A new Yale study found that Ozempic costs less than $5 a month to manufacture. And yet, Novo Nordisk charges Americans nearly $1,000 a month for this drug, while the same exact product can be purchased for just $155 a month in Canada and just $59 in Germany,” the senator said in a statement. “As Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, I am calling on Novo Nordisk to lower the list price of Ozempic—and the related drug Wegovy—in America to no more than what they charge for this drug in Canada,” he continued. “The American people are sick and tired of paying, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs while the pharmaceutical industry enjoys huge profits.”

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Kim has promoted Bitcoin Cash for a while now.

• Why is $BCH So Hot Right Now? (Kim Dotcom)

Bitcoin Cash is launching a new innovation on May 15th. The adaptive blocksize limit algorithm. This is an important step for BCH in preparation for substantial growth and one of the reasons why BCH is gaining popularity with Miners and Investors. The algorithm automatically adjusts Bitcoin Cash’s block size limit to reduce infrastructure costs during periods of lower usage while enabling up to a doubling of the maximum block size per year at peak growth. The block size limit caps the technical requirements of network infrastructure, enables reliable infrastructure cost projection, and prevents attacks that increase the cost of participating in the network. Excessively large blocks could require users and businesses to waste resources on unnecessary infrastructure, switch to cheaper and less secure validation strategies, or even to abandon running their own infrastructure and instead rely on third-party service providers – reducing the overall privacy, independence, and financial freedom of all users.

To limit block size, most bitcoin-like networks employ a static block size limit. For Bitcoin Cash this limit is currently 32MB. If a payment network is growing, usage will eventually approach any previously established static limit. If this limit is reached before a successfully coordinated upgrade, network service degrades, transaction fees and confirmation times become less predictable as size-limited blocks become more common. Uncorrected, market actors begin to adapt to this artificial scarcity by using alternatives to on-chain transactions, custodians, intermediaries, and competing networks. This in turn compromises the long-term economics of mining, cumulative transaction fee revenue is suppressed, and long-term network security grows to rely on continuous inflation via block subsidies.

Because static block size limits can only be changed as part of a widely coordinated network upgrade, they present a focal point for network interruption or capture by motivated attackers, rent seeking institutions, competing networks, opponents of peer-to-peer cash, etc. To make matters worse, the attackers have a significant coordination advantage – while honest network participants must achieve near-unanimous consensus to activate an upgrade, attackers must only create sufficient uncertainty among the honest participants to delay limit increases, as inaction results in degradation of the network’s functionality and long-term security.

Adaptive block size limits resolve the economic vulnerability of static limits by automatically adjusting the maximum block size over time. While an adaptive block size limit could still diverge from a hypothetical “ideal” size due to significant changes in the rate of technological advancement or the availability of capital, such divergences would likely remain much smaller than with static limits, and attackers are no longer afforded an advantage. Bitcoin Cash’s Adaptive Algorithm is conservative and based on observed usage. In cooling-off periods of falling network usage, the limit slowly decreases to preserve the resources of infrastructure operators. On the other hand, during periods of rapid growth, the limit can increase at a rate of up to 2x per year.

Exciting times for Bitcoin Cash.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Kory

 

 

Denier
https://twitter.com/i/status/1774045305509446045

 

 

Coyote

 

 

God jump

 

 

Girl power

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 23 2024

Feb 232024
 
 February 23, 2024  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  62 Responses »


Jean-Michel Basquiat Aboriginal 1984

 

• Julian Assange’s Grand Inquisitor (Chris Hedges)
• Totally Corrupt Weaponized Law Used As a Weapon (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Kiev and Odessa Are Ours – Medvedev (RT)
• Arming Ukraine With F-16s Could Trigger Nuclear War – Medvedev (RT)
• Biden Disgraced US With Putin Insult – Kremlin (RT)
• Seize Frozen Russian Assets In Navalny’s Name – German MP (RT)
• Give Us All Your Heavy Weapons, Kiev’s Security Chief Tells EU (RT)
• ‘Almost Nobody’ Believes Ukraine Will Win – Orban (RT)
• Von der Leyen’s Foreign Policy Subordinates Europe to US (Sp.)
• Biden Backs Dutch PM Rutte for Top NATO Job (Sp.)
• Red Lines: Will Iran Enter The Regional War? (Cradle)
• Will Netanyahu Bring Down Biden? (Jeffrey Sachs)
• Lara Trump Vows Largest-Ever Legal ‘Ballot Harvesting’ Operation (ET)
• What the Left Has Bequeathed Us (Victor Davis Hanson)
• Biden Dogs Accused of Dozens of Additional Attacks at White House (Turley)

 

 

 

 

Tucker Trump

 

 

Fitton

 

 

 

 

Tulsi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1760862233418985952

Vivek

 

 

Tucker immigration
https://twitter.com/i/status/1760666547813589148

 

 

UN Nada

 

 

 

 

“Julian contacted the US government, as Summers told the court, and spoke to them at length, in an attempt to prevent the unredacted cables from being published. In the end, the U.S. State Department chose not to act. ”

• Julian Assange’s Grand Inquisitor (Chris Hedges)


Kangaroo Courtship by Mr. Fish

The prosecution for the U.S., which is seeking to deny Julian Assange’s appeal of an extradition order, begun by the Trump administration and embraced by the Biden administration, grounded its arguments on Wednesday in the dubious affidavits filed by a U.S. federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia, Gordon Kromberg. The charges articulated by Kromberg — often false — to make the case for extradition did not fly with the two High Court judges, Jeremy Johnson and Dame Victoria Sharp, who are overseeing Julian’s final appeal in the British courts. The prosecuting attorneys, under questioning from the judges, were knocked off balance when challenged about the veracity of several of the claims which Kromberg made in support of the indictment against Julian. This was especially the case when the attorneys argued that the classified documents Julian released in 2010 — known as the Iraq and Afghan war logs — were not redacted.

These unredacted documents, they told the court, jeopardized the lives of those named in the documents and caused some to “disappear.” As defense lawyers Edward Fitzgerald KC and Mark Summers KC made clear, and the judges seemed to acknowledge, the documents were indeed redacted by Julian as he worked with media partners, such as The Guardian and The New York Times, when WikiLeaks published classified military documents concerning the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, along with U.S. State Department cables. The unredacted versions were first published by the website Cryptome after two reporters from The Guardian published a book with the passcode to the documents, leading to their publication by other online organizations. Julian contacted the US government, as Summers told the court, and spoke to them at length, in an attempt to prevent the unredacted cables from being published. In the end, the U.S. State Department chose not to act.

U.S. officials have sheepishly admitted they have no evidence of anyone named in the documents being harmed. Other allegations — such as that Julian tried to help Chelsea Manning, who leaked the documents, decode a password hash to access documents or protect her identity, or that he sought to conspire with computer hackers — have also been debunked. A report provided to Judge Baraitser by a U.S. military forensic expert found that even if Manning was able to decode the password hash (which neither she nor anyone at WikiLeaks ever did) it would not have provided access to documents, it would not have provided her with anonymity and it would not have given her access to documents which she did not already have. The expert also described that someone with Manning’s technical knowledge, skill and experience, as well as her lawful access to Top Secret materials, would have known this. But these Kromberg-inspired canards are all the U.S. has, so it uses them.

By the end of the day, it seemed likely that, probably by April, since requested written briefs have to be turned into the judges in March, the two judges will permit an appeal on at least a few of the points. This will, conveniently for the Biden administration — which I expect does not want to take on the contentious issue of extraditing Julian while fueling the genocide in Gaza — mean that any extradition would occur after the election. The two-day hearing was Julian’s last chance to request an appeal of the extradition decision made in 2022 by the then British home secretary, Priti Patel and of many of the rulings of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser in 2021. If Julian is denied an appeal he can request the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for a stay of execution under Rule 39, which is given in “exceptional circumstances” and “only where there is an imminent risk of irreparable harm.” But it is possible the British court could order Julian’s immediate extradition prior to a Rule 39 instruction or decide to ignore a request from the ECtHR to allow Julian to have his case heard by the court.

Jen Robinson

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“This is America today. Law has no meaning. It is nothing but a weapon. We can have zero confidence it its application and zero confidence in its outcomes..”

• Totally Corrupt Weaponized Law Used As a Weapon (Paul Craig Roberts)

The Democrats appear to be the New Stalinist Party. My conclusion is based on how they abuse law. President Trump has suffered eight years of legal abuse from Democrats and their corrupt prosecutors and judges. It began with Russiagate led by the CIA, Justice (sic) Department, and FBI. It was a total orchestration long since disproved. Then there were a series of concocted nonsense allegations–strippergate, documents gate, insurrection gate and two concocted and failed impeachment attempts. The Democrats then rescued their failed attempts by rolling them into indictments, which the Democrat controlled corrupt United States Justice (sic) Department and Soros-implanted Trump-hating Democrat state attorneys generals and district attorneys leveled against Trump. Some of these fake charges are falling apart, because the black female prosecutors are so stupid and incompetent that they have disqualified themselves and should actually face indictment for perjury.

As US Senator J.D. Vance recently said, “It’s like every other two-minute clip I watch of this Fani Willis interview she admits to committing another felony.” Of all the indictments, the most absurd is the one presided over by what must be the most corrupt judge in human history–New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron. The Trump-hating NY Attorney General, apparently another Soros implant, charged on her own with no civil complainants against Trump that he damaged unidentified people by overstating the value of his properties in his loan applications. She has zero evidence for the charge. Indeed, all of the lenders and every real estate valuation expert said that there was nothing wrong with Trump’s valuations. Lenders said they didn’t care about the valuations, they just wanted Trump’s business. Regardless, the ideological black woman implanted into NY “justice” by Soros’ money indicted Trump for civil fraud.

The trial was arranged to go to Engoron, who would not be satisfied if Trump were drawn and quartered in public view on the courthouse steps. Engoron has made the most stupid rulings based on nothing but his own hatred 0f Trump. The corrupt fool stupidly ruled without evidence that Trump’s real estate was worth a small fraction of what independent real estate evaluators place as the value of the properties. He simply ignored the facts in order to rule as he wanted. Engoron issued an order cancelling the Trump Organization’s business certificates. Apparently, he couldn’t make it stick. So now he has imposed a $350 million fine on Trump and his executives despite the fact that the NY Attorney General Letitia James, who is also busy at work trying to destroy a well-read website that documents the overrunning of the United States by recruited immigrant-invaders, has not a shred of evidence to support her hate-driven charge.

The American presstitute media hate Trump as much as Letitia and Engoron and have already ruled that Trump is guilty. So again we have an American convicted, just like Derick Chauvin, despite the fact that all of the evidence shows that he is innocent. This is America today. Law has no meaning. It is nothing but a weapon. We can have zero confidence it its application and zero confidence in its outcomes. American prisons are full of innocent people like the “insurrectionists” who could not afford to strand trial and who knew that if they did stand trial they would be punished for doing so. The way American “criminal justice” (sic) works is that a defendant, innocent or guilty, admits to a lessor offense, that is he admits to a crime that never happened, in order to avoid trial for a crime that he did not do, but conviction for which his sentence would be much longer.

“Law and Order Conservatives” have never caught on. Indeed, it was their outrage over “liberal judges” who let criminals off too easily that helped to produce a system in which everyone is guilty by accusation alone and self-incrimination. Where are all these liberal judges in Trump’s case, in the case of the 1,000 American patriots in prison because they attended a political rally in support of the President of the United States?

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Haven’t heard that for a while. And now it comes from Putin’s alter ego.

“Kiev is a Russian city, and a threat to the existence of the Russian Federation emanates from it..”

• Kiev and Odessa Are Ours – Medvedev (RT)

Russia will have to continue fighting Ukraine until it takes Kiev and the coastal city of Odessa, former President Dmitry Medvedev has claimed. Both cities have “Russian roots” but are being run by US-led enemies of Moscow, meaning they present an existential threat, according to the senior official, who currently serves as deputy head of Russia’s National Security Council. The remarks were extracts from an interview that Medvedev gave to Russian media, which he shared on social media on Thursday. “Where should we stop? I don’t know,” he said, adding that a lot of “serious work” lies ahead. “Will that be Kiev? Probably. This should be Kiev too. If not now, then sometime later. There are two reasons. Kiev is a Russian city, and a threat to the existence of the Russian Federation emanates from it,” he said.

In a separate video, Medvedev addressed the southern Ukrainian port of Odessa, urging it to “return home.” “We in the Russian Federation have long been waiting for Odessa, if only because of its history and what kind of people live there and what language they speak. It is our Russian city,” he claimed. In May 2014, 42 pro-Russia supporters were burned to death in Odessa, a predominantly Russian-speaking city, having been trapped by a mob that supported the Western-backed protests in Kiev that would later overthrow the democratically elected government of Ukraine. Medvedev identified the source of the threat to the existence of Russia as an “international brigade of the opponents of Russia, led by the US,” who he claimed are in control of Kiev.

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“..The doomsday clock “is ticking” and has “sped up considerably..”

• Arming Ukraine With F-16s Could Trigger Nuclear War – Medvedev (RT)

Supplying Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets poses a risk of triggering a nuclear conflict, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has warned. NATO member states are currently training Ukrainian pilots to operate F-16s ahead of the expected transfer of the aircraft. Kiev has been asking for the Western fighter jets for months, saying they were needed to combat Russian air superiority. ”An accidental, unintentional outbreak of a nuclear conflict is not something to be discarded, which is why all those machinations around Ukraine are dangerous,” Medvedev said in an extensive interview with Russian journalists, as quoted by TASS on Thursday.

The deputy head of Russia’s National Security Council cited the US-designed aircraft as a possible trigger, noting that Kiev wants them despite having no ground infrastructure to operate them. ”So if one of those planes takes off from a NATO nation [on a Ukrainian mission] – what would that be? An attack on Russia. I shall not describe what could happen next,” he said. “Such a development may not be even sanctioned by the NATO leadership and the US.” nRussian officials previously warned that delivering F-16s to Ukraine would be highly problematic, considering that the jets can deploy nuclear gravity bombs.

Medvedev said Russia’s standoff with the US and its allies was not at a stage that would force people to hide in a nuclear shelter, but described it as worse than the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The doomsday clock “is ticking” and has “sped up considerably,” he added. The doomsday clock – a representation of the likelihood of a global catastrophe maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists – is currently 90 seconds to midnight, having advanced 10 seconds last year. The clock was first launched in 1947, when it was set at 23:53. Its most optimistic time was in the 1990s, when it was 17 minutes to midnight. Its current time is the closest it has ever been to midnight or ‘doomsday.’

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“.. The spokesman suggested that Biden was emulating a “Hollywood cowboy” to appeal to domestic audiences..”

• Biden Disgraced US With Putin Insult – Kremlin (RT)

Americans should be ashamed of their leader after their president reportedly called Russia’s Vladimir Putin a “crazy S.O.B.” during a public event, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. Joe Biden’s alleged name-calling occurred during a fundraiser on Wednesday. According to US media, Biden singled out the Russian president while arguing that climate change was a worse threat for humanity than a nuclear conflict. Officials in Washington have claimed that Putin resorted to “nuclear blackmail” when discussing the Ukraine conflict. Moscow has denied this characterization. “This is a great disgrace for [the US],” Peskov said on Thursday, when asked about the reported incident. “If the president of that nation uses that kind of language, that is shameful.” The spokesman suggested that Biden was emulating a “Hollywood cowboy” to appeal to domestic audiences. Such remarks “can hardly hurt any foreign head of state, let alone President Putin,” Peskov added.

Biden has in the past used the same insult that he reportedly directed at Putin on Wednesday. During a press briefing in 2022, he exclaimed “what a stupid son-of-a-bitch,” after a member of the press corps asked him about inflation. In 2018, he resorted to the same language while bragging at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, about pressuring Kiev to fire its prosecutor general. He threatened to withhold a credit line. “I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch, he got fired,” Biden recalled of events in 2016, when he served as vice president. Last week, media reported that Biden had called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an “a**hole” on three different occasions in private conversations with other people, including with Democratic Party donors. He was said to have been venting frustration over Israel’s refusal to follow US suggestions on how it should prosecute its military campaign in Gaza.

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It’s still theft.

• Seize Frozen Russian Assets In Navalny’s Name – German MP (RT)

Russia’s assets that remain frozen in the West should be confiscated in response to the death of opposition activist and anti-corruption campaigner Alexey Navalny, German parliament member Norbert Rottgen has said. This money should be used to provide more arms to the Ukrainian military for use in the conflict with Russia, Rottgen suggested in his speech to the Bundestag on Wednesday. Legislation that would allow the confiscation of an estimated $300 billion in assets owned by the Russian central bank, which were blocked by the US and the EU after the outbreak of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022, should be named “Navalny Laws,” he added. Navalny died last Friday in a Russian prison, where he had been serving a lengthy sentence stemming from the violation of the terms of his earlier fraud sentence and his “extremist activities.” The opposition figure had denied any wrongdoing, describing the charges as politically motivated.

According to the prison authorities, Navalny suddenly “felt ill” after a walk and collapsed, with efforts to resuscitate him failing. The cause of the 47-year-old’s death remains unclear, but a source has told RT that it may have been the result of a blood clot. An investigation is ongoing. Rottgen was quick to blame the Russian president for Navalny’s passing, saying: “this murder was of course a matter for the boss. [Vladimir] Putin is the perpetrator.” The lawmaker from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) also insisted that Germany’s deliveries of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine must “now be ramped up.” Frank Schwabe from the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which is part of the ruling coalition, also blamed Putin for the activist’s death. “We demand further sanctions for the Russian regime and must do everything we can to help Ukraine win,” he said.

Omid Nouripour, the leader of the Greens, another member of the ruling coalition, suggested that the Russian president bears “at least political” responsibility for what had happened to Navalny. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier said it was “completely unacceptable” for Western politicians to make “outrageous statements” regarding Navalny’s death while the investigation into the case is still ongoing. Moscow has repeatedly said that the seizure of its funds by the US and the EU would be tantamount to “theft” and would trigger a response. Russian officials have also warned that such an “illegal” move could further undermine global trust in the Western financial system.

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“.. the “Kiev regime” is an accomplice in this Western scheme and a threat to the Ukrainian people themselves..”

• Give Us All Your Heavy Weapons, Kiev’s Security Chief Tells EU (RT)

The EU should donate all its heavy weapons to Kiev, Ukrainian national security council chief Aleksey Danilov has said, claiming that the arms will in any case be useless in future conflicts. Discussing the perceived threats to the EU, Danilov told national media on Wednesday that the bloc is facing the potential rise of ultra-right forces, but suggested that nobody can predict what the security situation will be in two or three decades’ time. “This issue needs to be tackled now. We have great experience, and we understand that Europe will not need those guns, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and other hardware for its next war,” he declared. “They urgently need to donate them all to us, as Denmark did.” The Danish government has decided to give all its artillery systems to Ukraine, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced last week.

”We have weapons, we have ammunition, we have air defense, that we don’t have to use ourselves at the moment, that we should deliver to Ukraine,” she added, referring to all EU states. Danilov argued that in the future, current weapons will effectively be “scrap,” claiming that Kiev would have defeated Russia already if it had been given enough arms. Ukraine remains determined to prevail in the conflict, the official insisted, suggesting that with more Western arms donations, Kiev would ensure Moscow is not a “threat” to European NATO members. ”We are prepared to achieve the task of destroying the Russian Federation,” he stated. Moscow perceives the Ukraine conflict as a US-led proxy war against Russia, in which Ukrainian troops are being used as cannon fodder. Russian officials have claimed that the “Kiev regime” is an accomplice in this Western scheme and a threat to the Ukrainian people themselves.

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“..the immediate future is bleak for the European Union due to the way the Ukraine conflict is unfolding..”

• ‘Almost Nobody’ Believes Ukraine Will Win – Orban (RT)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said the immediate future is bleak for the European Union due to the way the Ukraine conflict is unfolding. He made the comments during a Fidesz-KDNP parliamentary faction conference behind closed doors on Wednesday, according to media reports. Orban, who is a prominent critic of the bloc’s policies and has opposed its funding of Kiev’s conflict against Russia, predicted a major victory for conservative parties in the European Parliament elections in June. ”The war will not end. Europe’s burden will become heavier, because financial support for Ukraine will decrease due to disputes in the US amid the presidential election,” he told the conference, according to the newspaper Magyar Nemzet. ”Supporting the Ukrainians has a huge political price. Farmers are revolting all over Europe, and almost nobody believes in the victory of the Ukrainians,” Orban added.

There may be a change in policy from Brussels after the elections, and Washington could also alter its course following the presidential election later this year, he suggested. Orban’s prediction regarding the outcome of the Ukraine conflict appears to be consistent with the views of citizens in 12 EU member states who were surveyed recently by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). The results of the opinion poll were released on Wednesday and showed that only 10% of respondents believed Ukraine would beat Russia on the battlefield. Twice as many believed Russia would prevail, while 37% said a compromise settlement was the most likely outcome. Hungarians were the most pessimistic about a Ukrainian victory, with just 5% considering that this was the likely result of the conflict. A total of 31% predicted that Russia would win.

17 year old Ukr

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“..if Russia continues to be treated as the ultimate Other, to be excluded from the European security architecture and treated as a pariah, Europe’s demise will be accelerated and its recovery difficult to envisage.”

• Von der Leyen’s Foreign Policy Subordinates Europe to US (Sp.)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s foreign policy has failed to strategically weaken Russia, created a perception of eroding the sovereignty of member states and made Europe more subordinate to the United States than at any point during the Cold War, experts told Sputnik. Earlier in the week, von der Leyen confirmed that she would run for reelection as EU Commission chief. She also announced a new European defense strategy to be unveiled in three weeks. The strategy will consist of four main points: spending more, spending better, spending “more European” by investing billions of European taxpayers’ money, and using the experience of the conflict in Ukraine to “outsmart Russia” on the battlefield.

“Facts on the ground suggest that the EU’s foreign policy, or lack thereof, has failed to strategically weaken Russia or bring an end to the conflict in Ukraine. Rather, the narrative surrounding Russia serves as a pretext to consolidate power within the EU,” Adriel Kasonta, a London-based political analyst, said, adding that “the war in Ukraine, once seen as a rallying point for European unity, is now perceived as a smokescreen for a broader agenda of centralization.” The expert noted that von der Leyen’s vision for the EU has been criticized for making the bloc more federalist and dominated by unelected bureaucrats. “The foreign policy trajectory represented by von der Leyen is marked by a push towards increased militarization and defense spending. A looming specter of a unified EU army has fueled fears that member states will witness a gradual erosion of sovereignty,” Kasonta explained.

In the latter part of her term, von der Leyen has reportedly forged a strong relationship with US President Joe Biden, who is also up for reelection later this year, due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and Biden’s vocal internationalist stance, in contrast to his predecessor Donald Trump. Nevertheless, as Washington turns more attention to Asia, a trend that began during the Barack Obama administration, Europe is grappling with what it means for the continent. “As Washington pivots towards Asia to counter China, Europe finds itself urged to continue the proxy war on behalf of its transatlantic ally. This has translated into a recalibration of priorities, with more focus on military might and less emphasis on climate discussions. The EU’s trajectory, it seems, is bending towards aligning itself with American interests, even at the expense of its original environmental commitments,” Kasonta said, while also noting that growing discontent with the EU’s green policies also pushed von der Leyen “towards a shift in priorities.”

Srdja Trifkovic, the foreign affairs editor of the paleoconservative magazine Chronicles, pointed to von der Leyen’s close ties to the US foreign policy establishment. “Thanks to the war in Ukraine, von der Leyen has managed to bring Europe under American control more firmly than it had been at any time during the Cold War,” Trifkovic said. He also observed that the anti-Russian sentiment displayed by van der Leyen and people like her goes beyond a simple antipathy to the government of President Vladimir Putin and instead constitutes “loathing all things Russian,” as Trifkovic put it. “There is a remarkable mixture of hostility and repulsion that is primarily culturally motivated, rather than geopolitically driven,” Trifkovic continued, adding that “if Russia continues to be treated as the ultimate Other, to be excluded from the European security architecture and treated as a pariah, Europe’s demise will be accelerated and its recovery difficult to envisage.”

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Rutte is as much an American lackey as von der Leyen is. But still, who wants to head a club so much in decline?

• Biden Backs Dutch PM Rutte for Top NATO Job (Sp.)

US President Joe Biden is supporting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to replace Jens Stoltenberg as the next NATO secretary general, Politico reported on Wednesday, citing a US official. The support of the president of the United States is likely to sway more allies to get on board with Rutte’s nomination, the report said. Politico reported earlier on Wednesday that two-thirds of NATO countries are now backing the Dutch prime minister’s nomination to become the next leader of NATO this year, but the decision requires unanimity among all NATO member states.

The report also cited NATO officials as saying that Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and Latvian Foreign Minister Krisjanis Karins are not in the mix of potential candidates since they have not put forward their candidacies. Stoltenberg’s term as NATO secretary general was due to expire in October 2022, but it was extended for another year, until September 30, 2023, against the backdrop of the Ukraine crisis. In July, the alliance extended his term for another year, meaning that Stoltenberg will remain in the post until October 1, 2024. He is the second-longest serving NATO secretary general after former Dutch Foreign Minister Joseph Luns, who held the post from 1971 to 1984.

Tucker NATO
https://twitter.com/i/status/1760677195377451359

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“Tehran’s approach is to apply pressure on Washington via non-aggressive methods – without entering the war..”

• Red Lines: Will Iran Enter The Regional War? (Cradle)

On 14 October 2023, Iran issued a stern public ultimatum to Israel, cautioning that unless it ceases its genocidal assault on Gaza, significant repercussions will ensue, likening them to “a huge earthquake.” Tehran’s envoy to the UN later clarified that the Islamic Republic would only intervene in the Gaza war if the occupation state were to jeopardize Iranian interests or citizens. Given the events of the past four months, this raises the question: What are Iran’s red lines, and at what point would Tehran opt for direct confrontation? To grasp Iran’s motivations and reactions, it’s critical to understand its red lines—those non-negotiable boundaries it staunchly defends. At the heart of this lies the survival of the Islamic Republic itself, which recently celebrated its 44th anniversary. Any encroachment on Iran’s territorial integrity or vital interests triggers a defensive response to deter potential threats.

Foremost among these red lines are any broad attacks on Iran’s maritime assets, energy infrastructure, and strategic interests. Assaults on vital economic nodes like oil refineries or shipping lanes will likely prompt swift and resolute reactions from Iran’s leadership, signaling a readiness to safeguard national assets at any cost. Previously, the Iranian government denied involvement in the Hamas-led resistance Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. While ideologically aligned with Palestinian resistance factions, Tehran insists on their autonomy, wary of direct involvement that could destabilize its domestic front. Nevertheless, support for other allies in the Axis of Resistance like Hezbollah remains unwavering, serving as a deterrent against external aggression targeting Iran’s strategic depth. So far, Tehran has moved to influence Israel’s war in Gaza on the level of diplomacy, demanding the immediate cessation of killings, the lifting of the blockade on humanitarian aid, and the withdrawal of the Israeli military from the Gaza Strip. The key aims of the Iranians are to prevent a serious blow to the Palestinian resistance and its military capabilities and to prevent another mass displacement of Palestinians from their lands.

From Iran’s perspective, resistance against Israel and the US represents a cornerstone of the Islamic Republic’s strategic vision – part of its wider anti-imperialist struggle in West Asia, and ambition to force the US out of the region. Many in Tehran believe the Gaza war is orchestrated in Washington, with the US serving as Israel’s primary advocate in global arenas like the UN Security Council. As such, Iran aims to undermine US influence by exacerbating divisions between Washington and Tel Aviv. Despite Israel’s resolve to continue its campaign of ethnic cleansing, Iran’s strategy hinges on exploiting this discord, using diplomatic channels to influence US policy without resorting to direct confrontation. In essence, Tehran’s approach is to apply pressure on Washington via non-aggressive methods – without entering the war.

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“Netanyahu pursues the religious ideology of 7th century BC in the 21st century..”

• Will Netanyahu Bring Down Biden? (Jeffrey Sachs)

The cabinet of Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is filled with religious extremists who believe that Israel’s brutality in Gaza is at God’s command. According to the Book of Joshua in the Hebrew Bible, dated by scholars to the 7th century BC, God promised the land to the Jewish people and instructed them to destroy the other nations living in the promised land. This text is used by extreme nationalists in Israel today, including by many of the 700,000 or so Israeli settlers living in occupied Palestinian lands in violation of international law. Netanyahu pursues the religious ideology of 7th century BC in the 21st century. Of course, the vast majority of the world today, including the vast majority of Americans, are certainly not in line with Israel’s religious zealots. The world is far more interested in the 1948 Genocide Convention than in the genocides supposedly ordained by God in the Book of Joshua. They don’t accept the Biblical idea that Israel should kill or expel the people of Palestine from their own land.

The two-state solution is the declared policy of the world community, as enshrined by the UN Security Council, and of the U.S. government. President Joe Biden is therefore caught between the powerful Israel Lobby and the opinion of American voters and of the world community. Given the power of the Israel lobby, and the sums it expends in campaign contributions, Biden is trying to have it both ways: supporting Israel but not endorsing Israel’s extremism. Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken hope to entice the Arab countries into yet another open-ended peace process with the two-state solution as the distant goal that is never reached. Israeli hardliners would of course block every step of the way. Biden knows all of this but wants the fig leaf of a peace process. Biden also hoped until recently that Saudi Arabia could be lured into normalizing relations with Israel in return for F-35 fighter jets, access to nuclear technology, and a vague commitment to an eventual two-state solution… someday, somehow.

Carter
https://twitter.com/i/status/1760420339421413464

The Saudis will have none of it. They made this clear in a declaration on February 6, stating: The Kingdom calls for the lifting of the siege on the people in Gaza; the evacuation of civilian casualties; the commitment to international laws and norms and international humanitarian law, and for moving the peace process forward in accordance with the resolutions of the Security Council and the United Nations, and the Arab Peace Initiative, which aims to find a just and comprehensive solution and establish an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as capital. Domestically, Biden confronts AIPAC (the innocuously named American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the lead organization of the Israel lobby. AIPAC’s long-running success is to turn millions of dollars of campaign contributions into billions of dollars of U.S. aid to Israel, an amazingly high return. Currently, AIPAC aims to turn around $100 million of campaign funding for the November election into a $16 billion supplemental aid package for Israel.

So far, Biden is going along with AIPAC, even as he loses younger voters. In an Economist/YouGov poll of January 21-23, 49% of those aged 19-29 held that Israel is committing a genocide against the Palestinian civilians. Only 22% said that in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, their sympathies are with Israel, versus 30% with Palestine, and the remaining 48% “about equal” or unsure. Only 21% agreed with increasing military aid to Israel. Israel has utterly alienated younger Americans. While Biden has called for peace based on the two-state solution and a reduction of violence in Gaza, Netanyahu has brazenly brushed Biden aside, provoking Biden to call Netanyahu an asshole on several occasions. Yet it is Netanyahu, not Biden, who still calls the shots in Washington. While Biden and Blinken wring their hands at Israel’s extreme violence, Netanyahu gets the U.S. bombs and even Biden’s full backing for the $16 billion with no U.S. red lines.

China ICJ

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“‘Hey, I just clicked on this to donate to the president … [and] I think it goes to the RNC, I don’t know if I trust that,’” she said. “That’s a problem.”

• Lara Trump Vows Largest-Ever Legal ‘Ballot Harvesting’ Operation (ET)

Lara Trump says efforts of “historic” proportions are needed to ensure that Republicans, including her father-in-law, former President Donald Trump, win the Nov. 5 election. Ms. Trump says she is ready to take on that challenge if she becomes co-chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), as President Trump has recommended. In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times before a Feb. 21 campaign stop, Ms. Trump declared: “We need to have the biggest legal ballot harvesting operation this country has ever seen.” Ballot harvesting, which is legal in many states, allows people to deliver other voters’ absentee or mail-in ballots to election officials. Some fear this practice facilitates election fraud. Republicans have long frowned upon it; Democrats have taken advantage of it. “Whether or not they [Democrats] do it legally, that’s up for discussion,” Ms. Trump said.

In any case, Ms. Trump says it’s time for Republicans to start “attacking the game differently.” Ms. Trump’s remarks to The Epoch Times, and later, to supporters, provided new insights about her vision for a revamped and reinvigorated RNC. “It feels, for a long time, like the Democrats have been playing chess and we’ve been playing checkers,” she said. Her goal is for the Republican Party “to be the opposite, to be steps ahead of them, and on our toes, and ahead of the game, and facing forward the whole time.” Ms. Trump, the wife of President Trump’s son, Eric, also advocates two other efforts that she says would be unprecedented. Republicans need to be urged to vote early, not just on election day, as they typically have preferred, she said. She also wants to see the RNC’s program for training poll watchers expanded nationwide.

“They don’t just stand in the background and kind of keep an eye out and look around for things,” Ms. Trump said. “They physically can count how many ballots are coming in, and how many ballots are going out.” Such measures are needed “to reassure people in a time like we’re in right now, where they really feel like there wasn’t something quite right about the 2020 election, and people still have a lot of unanswered questions,” she said. Ms. Trump said that the RNC, which is suffering from depleted coffers and anemic fundraising, must restore trust among Republican donors. “I’ve had family members of mine call me and say, ‘Hey, I just clicked on this to donate to the president … [and] I think it goes to the RNC, I don’t know if I trust that,’” she said. “That’s a problem.”

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“..welcome 8-million illegal aliens to “surge” into America on the premise a new constituency might support agendas that American citizens do not..”

• What the Left Has Bequeathed Us (Victor Davis Hanson)

The Left has created new rules for national politics. Here are 20 some precedents they now have established for America in the future:

1) When in control of the Senate, demand the end of the filibuster; when not, don’t.

2) Call for the end of the Electoral College–but only if it appears to recently favor the candidate of the opposition.

3) In an election year, change any state balloting laws deemed unhelpful through administrative fiat or court order to favor your political candidate.

4) Seek to flip electors from voting in accordance with the popular vote count in their states; indict as an insurrectionist any of the opposition who dare do the same.

5) Raid the home of any opposition ex-president who removed classified files; exempt any sitting president of your party who did the same.

6) Swarm the private homes of, and then bully and intimidate any, Supreme Court officials, politicians, or citizens you oppose.

7) Appoint two special counsels: one to go after the current chief presidential opponent in an election year; the other to exempt and excuse the sitting president for the very crimes charged against his rival.

8) Lobby to remove any oppositional president through the 25th Amendment; smear any one as ageist who suggests a cognitively challenged sitting resident of your party should be subject to similar invocations of the 25th Amendment.

9) Exempt thousands of arrested rioters from charges of 120 days of arson, looting, injuring 1,500 law enforcement officers, and assault—but only if they are radical supporters of your party.

10) Excuse any demonstrator or rioter for desecrating public monuments and cemeteries or shutting down bridges and freeways, or swarming and disrupting the Capitol Rotunda—but only if they agree with you and/or are pro-Hamas. Otherwise, ensure the charged face lengthy prison sentences.

11) Try to pack the Supreme Court—but only if justices you don’t like are in a majority.

12) Seek in an election year to remove a presidential opponent off state ballots for crimes for which he has never been charged, much less convicted of.

13) First target a presidential opponent, and then change, warp, or redefine laws to convict him. Weaponized prosecutors should always indict their political opponents in jurisdictions where they are guaranteed like-minded justices and jury pools.

14) Violate the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution (the prohibition of “excessive fines”) by having sympathetic judges level multimillion-dollar fines to bankrupt the opposition candidate during a presidential campaign. The more there is no victim of a crime, the higher fines should be leveled for “damages”.

15) Open the border by destroying all the protocols and executive orders of a predecessor president. Then welcome 8-million illegal aliens to “surge” into America on the premise a new constituency might support agendas that American citizens do not. Then call the nonexistent border “secure,” while blaming a predecessor president for having left it secure.

16) Have local prosecutors invent criminal acts of an opposition national presidential candidate in efforts to make it impossible for him to campaign for the presidency.

17) Use the FBI to hire out social media auditors to censor any news deemed problematic for the correct presidential candidate.

18) Hire a foreign national to concoct a smear dossier about one’s opposition political nominee. Ensure the FBI also uses and pays the foreign national to spread untruths among the media and administrative state.

19) On the eve of any major national or midterm election, ensure a president drains the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower gasoline prices.

20) On the eve of any major national or midterm election, ensure a president promises to cancel billions of dollars in contracted federal student loans.

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“..I have never come across a case with such a long history of dog attacks from multiple animals in one family..”

• Biden Dogs Accused of Dozens of Additional Attacks at White House (Turley)

We have been writing about alarming record of the dogs of the Bidens attacking staff and Secret Service agents through the years. At first, the story was a humorous distraction as some of us wondered if the First Family had a vicious dog. It then became more alarming as each of the dogs were found to be attacking staff and had to be eventually removed. Even. more worrisome was the response of the White House and President Joe Biden, who dismissed a Secret Service agent’s account and brushed off the incidents. Now, a report indicates that Commander is responsible for at least 24 attacks. The record shows not only a lack of concern by the Bidens for staff, but a bizarre litany of vicious German Shepherds in their care. We began our discussion of these incidents with Major, who continued to attack staff until the press finally reported on the complaints from staff. Only when it became a public embarrassment did the Bidens send Major to Delaware.

Major was adopted in November 2018 from an animal shelter. Then, after the coverage died down, the Bidens simply brought Major back to the chagrin of the Secret Service. He then proceeded to continue to bite agents and staff. It was then discovered that their other dog, Champ, was also chomping on staff and agents. Again, the White House dismissed the concerns. First lady Jill Biden’s press secretary Michael LaRosa told CNN: “Yes, Major nipped someone on a walk. Out of an abundance of caution, the individual was seen by WHMU and then returned to work.” The difference between “nipped” and “bitten” is that you are bitten by other people’s dogs. Your dog however only nips, which is somewhere on the spectrum between a lick and a complete devouring. Then a book came out that detailed these attacks and the President himself seemed to attack an agent.

The book, “The Fight of His Life,” by author Chris Whipple details Biden’s continued mistrust of the Secret Service and his alleged avoidance of saying anything in front of agents. Biden has long had tense relations with the Secret Service, particularly after female agents complained about his exposing himself to them by insisting on swimming in the nude. The book claims that Biden has his own “deep state” conspiracy theories. Biden reportedly views the Secret Service as essentially the enemy within, suggesting that it is populated by “MAGA sympathizers” due to the fact that the service “is full of white ex-cops from the South who tend to be deeply conservative.” However, this is a major escalation in that reportedly strained relationship. In one eight-day period, agents were bitten every day. Indeed, outside of the White House, the Biden dogs would qualify for strict liability under the common law as displaying a vicious disposition.

After prior incidents, White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the injury as “minor” and insisted that Major was just “getting acclimated and accustomed to their surroundings and new people.” He was then sent away to Delaware with Champ. It was the equivalent of a politician going into “treatment” at the height of a scandal. Major was later returned to the White House but proceed to “acclimate” himself on the limbs of Secret Service agents. The White House failed to disclose the incidents and only partially confirmed past attacks when pressed by the media. Joe Biden was then quoted as saying that he does not trust the Secret Service and believes that one agent is outright lying about one attack by Major. The President is quoted as saying “Look, the Secret Service are never up here. It didn’t happen.”

The incident was reported by the agent and photos were taken to document that attack. The President’s denial of the location ignored the confirmed attack itself. Other agents complained about the disregard of the agents by the Bidens in the repeated attacks, including one agent who reportedly insisted that the president personally pay to repair a ripped coat after one attack on March 6, 2021. Then Commander was brought in to replace Major. Commander then started to bite people. Again, neither the Bidens nor the White House seemed particularly concerned for the staff and brushed off questions. It now turns out that the attacks increased but the press were not informed . . . again. According to new internal USSS documents obtained by CNN, that does not even include additional incidents that were previously reported involving executive residence staff and other White House workers.

[..] I have taught torts for three decades, including animal liability. In that time, I have never come across a case with such a long history of dog attacks from multiple animals in one family. There is no question that the Bidens would be strictly liable in these attacks, but have been allowed to escape such liability due to the fact that this is the official residence. Under the common law, the Bidens could claim that Major and Commander were entitled to “one free bite.” They are well beyond that threshold. The “one free bite rule” is a commonly misunderstood torts doctrine — suggesting that you are not subject to strict liability until after the first time your dog bites someone. In fact, you are subject to strict liability whenever you know or have reason to know of the vicious propensity of your animal. That can be satisfied by conduct such as frequent snapping or aggressive behavior.

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Bad dog

 

 

Lifeguard
https://twitter.com/i/status/1760545343861608457

 

 

Staircase

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle May 3 2023

May 032023
 
 May 3, 2023  Posted by at 8:37 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  37 Responses »


Frida Kahlo Self portrait in a Velvet Dress 1926

 

• The US Grip On The Middle East Slips, And Peace Breaks Out (Inlakesh)
• What China Is Really Playing at in Ukraine (Pepe Escobar)
• ‘Bad Weather’ Delaying Counteroffensive – Ukraine (RT)
• Why Ukraine’s Much-Anticipated ‘Counteroffensive’ Could End In Failure (RT)
• ‘Ukraine Will Not Stop Until It Liberates All Occupied Territories’ (Az.)
• Russian Army Has Enough Ammo And Kiev’s Losses Mounting – Shoigu (TASS)
• Kremlin Mocks & Dismisses White House’s High Russian Casualty Count (ZH)
• Top US General Milley Predicts Ukraine Conflict Duration (RT)
• German Media Shares Details Of NATO-Ukraine Talks (RT)
• Half Of Europe’ Wants Better Ties With Russia – Polish Deputy PM (RT)
• US Decided ‘Not To Notice’ That Kiev Hid Truth About Odessa Massacre (TASS)
• Defeat of the Enemy Lies in His Own Hands (Crooke)
• Poland Explains Plan For WWII Reparations From Russia (RT)
• US Biden-Trump Generation Clings To An Outdated Political Reality (Lukyanov)
• Judge Orders Hunter Biden to Provide Details on Income (ET)

 

 

 

 

Class action
https://twitter.com/i/status/1653301938346160129

 

 

 

 

America’s grandpa

 

 

 

 

 

 

“In March, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman said that he didn’t care if the US President had misunderstood things about him, and later in April it was reported he also told advisors that pleasing the Americans is no longer a priority.”

• The US Grip On The Middle East Slips, And Peace Breaks Out (Inlakesh)

As Washington’s influence in the Middle East declines, countries throughout the region are taking to compromise, rapprochement, and peace talks, inflicting a blow to the US narrative that seeks to depict its role as a stabilizer and democracy advocate. Under the leadership of US President Joe Biden, there has been a notable downgrade in the status of the West amongst various long-time Middle East allies. As the US-led West exerts the majority of its efforts on the war in Ukraine, its poor decision making in the Middle East has finally begun to catch up to it. The first major blow to Washington’s influence came in the form of a Chinese-mediated agreement to end a decades-long feud between major regional actors Iran and Saudi Arabia, one which led to the severing of ties in 2016. This has a number of implications for US power in the region.

The first being that this collapsed a strategy that the US was developing, to unite Saudi Arabia with the likes of Egypt, the UAE, Jordan, Bahrain, and Israel, against Iran and its allies in the region; the alliance was speculated to serve as a “Middle East NATO.” The second is that the Iran-Saudi rapprochement appears to have caused Riyadh to scrap its plans for normalizing ties with Israel at this time, something that the Biden administration clearly values as a foreign policy achievement. There is also the additional aspect of this being negotiated by Beijing without any regard for how it would reflect on the White House. Despite attempts in Washington to make the deal seem like something it approves of, and repeated remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about how close normalization with Saudi Arabia is, it was clearly a blow and has major consequences to the US approach to the region. In March, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman said that he didn’t care if the US President had misunderstood things about him, and later in April it was reported he also told advisors that pleasing the Americans is no longer a priority.

Immediately after the Saudi-Iran normalization, Riyadh entered into serious negotiations with Yemen’s Ansarallah (the Houthis), in order to end the war that has been raging between the two sides since 2015 and has claimed around 400,000 lives in the country. To make things worse for the US, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister recently made a trip to Damascus to meet with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In addition to Riyadh’s moves and Tunisia re-establishing ties with Syria, it also appears as if Ankara may be on the cusp of rapprochement with Damascus and there is a push for Syria to be re-integrated into the Arab League, which clearly runs contrary to the US agenda. Then we have the fact that Qatar has announced it is restoring ties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which is not as significant as the above mentioned moves, yet adds to a list of peacemaking decisions taken without America.

On the level of optics, this makes it seem as if the common denominator is the absence of the US. On the other hand, Washington’s development of ties with the Kingdom of Morocco is egging on tensions with neighboring Algeria. Not only is the Biden administration adding fuel to the fire in the diplomatic feud between both sides, but is helping exacerbate military tensions in a Rabat-Algiers arms race. Earlier this April, the US approved a potential $524.2 million sale of HIMARS artillery rocket systems to Morocco. Furthermore, the top Middle East partner of the United States, Israel, has been severely weakened by an ongoing domestic political crisis over a proposed judicial overhaul by the Israeli government. Problems have also arisen with Israel’s approach to issues like maintaining the status quo at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a holy site where neighboring Jordan maintains custodianship, and it has caused major rows between Amman and Tel Aviv in recent months. This presents another obstacle to the US, which is being forced to mediate between both sides to maintain calm.

Assad
https://twitter.com/i/status/1653310462002450433

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“..the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is the un-dissociable double of an American direct war against the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)..”

• What China Is Really Playing at in Ukraine (Pepe Escobar)

Imagine President Xi Jinping mustering undiluted Taoist patience to suffer through a phone call with that warmongering actor in a sweaty T-shirt in Kiev while attempting to teach him a few facts of life – complete with the promise of sending a high-level Chinese delegation to Ukraine to discuss “peace”. There’s way more than meets the discerning eye obscured by this spun-to-death diplomatic “victory” – at least from the point of view of NATOstan. The question is inevitable: what’s the point of this phone call? Very simple: just business. The Beijing leadership is fully aware the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is the un-dissociable double of an American direct war against the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Until recently, and since 2019, Beijing was the top trade partner for Kiev (14.4% of imports, 15.3% of exports).

China essentially exported machinery, equipment, cars and chemical products, importing food products, metals and also some machinery. Very few in the West know that Ukraine joined BRI way back in 2014, and a BRI trade and investment center was operating in Kiev since 2018. BRI projects include a 2017 drive to build the fourth line of the Kiev metro system as well as 4G installed by Huawei. Everything is stalled since 2022. Noble Agri, a subsidiary of COFCO (China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corporation), invested in a sunflower seed processing complex in Mariupol and the recently built Mykolaiv grain port terminal. The next step will necessarily feature cooperation between Donbass authorities and the Chinese when it comes to rebuilding their assets that may have been damaged during the war.

Beijing also tried to become heavily involved in the Ukraine defense sector and even buy Motor Sich; that was blocked by Kiev. So what we have in Ukraine, from the Chinese point of view, is a trade/investment cocktail of BRI, railways, military supplies, 4G and construction jobs. And then, the key vector: neon. Roughly half of neon used in the production of semiconductors was supplied, until recently, by two Ukrainian companies; Ingas in Mariupol, and Cryoin, in Odessa. There’s no business going on since the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO). That directly affects the Chinese production of semiconductors. Bets can be made that the Hegemon is not exactly losing sleep over this predicament.

Ukraine does represent value for China as a BRI crossroads. The war is interrupting not only business but, in the bigger picture, one of the trade and connectivity corridors linking Western China to Eastern Europe. BRI conditions all key decisions in Beijing – as it is the overarching concept of Chinese foreign policy way into mid-century. And that explains Xi’s phone call, debunking any NATOstan nonsense on China finally paying attention to the warmongering actor.

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“God’s will, the weather, and a decision of commanders.”

• ‘Bad Weather’ Delaying Counteroffensive – Ukraine (RT)

Ukraine is holding off on its long-touted counteroffensive against Russia because it currently cannot use Western-provided armor due to bad weather, Kiev’s ambassador to the UK has claimed. “Obviously, the weather is not allowing so far the heavy tanks to move in the Ukrainian usual spring mud,” Vadim Pristayko told Sky News on Tuesday. The comments mirrored those made last week by Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov, who stated that Ukrainian forces were broadly ready for a push against Russia but needed “God’s will, the weather, and a decision of commanders.” The US and its allies have sent dozens of main battle tanks and hundreds of armored vehicles to Ukraine to bolster the expected counteroffensive.

While Western officials have argued that Kiev has all it needs for a successful operation, behind closed doors the American military has reportedly expressed doubts about Ukraine’s ability to break through Russian defensive lines. Multiple Western media reports have suggested that the counteroffensive could be a make-or-break moment for the conflict, and that Kiev may find it difficult to secure further packages of military assistance unless it gains significant ground. Senior Ukrainian officials have criticized that notion, urging continued support regardless of the outcome. Pristayko told Sky that Ukraine is targeting “a breakthrough offensive,” but at the same time cautioned that “too much hope is put on this one.”

The envoy accused Moscow of exaggerating its own military capabilities, citing the latest missile strikes against Ukrainian targets as an example. Russians “are blowing it out of proportion reporting hundreds of rockets. In reality there were just dozens of them sent our way,” he insisted. The claim that up to 100 missiles were launched in a recent attack by Russia appears to have originated from Ukrainian official Sergey Shakhet, police chief in Nikolaev Region. He shared the figure on social media on Monday, with Ukrainian media later disseminating it. The Russian Defense Ministry did not mention the number of weapons used in its own report on the strikes.

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“..As soon as Ukraine’s previously hidden equipment was moved closer to the front line, it became easier to destroy..”

• Why Ukraine’s Much-Anticipated ‘Counteroffensive’ Could End In Failure (RT)

Talk about a counteroffensive by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) has been doing the rounds for months, but it is still not clear when it might begin or whether it will happen at all. Previously, RT analyzed the readiness of the AFU for such an operation, but this time we will discuss the main challenges that may prevent Kiev’s troops from implementing or developing its political leaderships aims. And, perhaps most importantly, those of its Western sponsors. What is the AFU’s main challenge in mounting this sort of endeavor? We currently do not have any idea of where the AFU’s counteroffensive could take place, although Russian military bosses will be well aware of troop movements. If it involves an attempt to breakthrough the front line, then in addition to preparing reserves for battle, the AFU will need high-precision weapons.

Ukrainian troops will have to use long-range artillery rocket systems, including the US-supplied M142 HIMARS MLRS. Since the start of Moscow’s offensive, Kiev has used these systems only from deep within its own territory. However, to achieve momentum and penetrate the defense line, the systems will have to be moved closer to the front. The current number of HIMARS rocket launchers (about 35 units) may not be enough for a counteroffensive along the entire front line, which stretches for 1,000km. The systems will probably be concentrated in just one or two directions, but this makes them easier to detect and destroy. Moreover, Ukraine only has a finite supply of missiles for most of its Western weapons systems, like the HIMARS, which means the manner in which they can be used is limited. These systems have never been tested in high-intensity conflicts.

There is currently no doctrine or tested recommendations on using HIMARS/M270 MLRS in combined arms warfare or in such a large-scale war against a technologically advanced enemy. Considering the risk of detection in areas with concentrated equipment, and Ukraine’s fear of losing reserves, as we see happening in Artemovsk (Bakhmut), the AFU will likely prepare its most important military formations from 12 to 36 hours before the main strike. In the present conditions, it is nearly impossible to amass enough fuel and ammunition. Not to mention the difficulties in trying to position people secretly. Russia has already used Lancet drones to hit German Gepard anti-aircraft guns and Soviet S-300 missile systems close to the front line. As soon as Ukraine’s previously hidden equipment was moved closer to the front line, it became easier to destroy.

This demonstrates that the routes used for transporting Ukrainian military equipment and the places where it is positioned are under Russian surveillance. If the AFU loses significant amounts of fuel – or transport equipment or engineering units – in the first two or three days, it will have to adjust the counteroffensive’s strategy on the go or implement a backup plan (if it has one). Moreover, Ukraine has no means of transferring reserves by air or conducting amphibious warfare. Its supply and logistics fully depend on roads and railways. In such conditions, the destruction of a bridge or a train line on an important supply route may lead to a disaster at the front.

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“I am confident that our partners will make the necessary decisions and we will receive the F16.”

• ‘Ukraine Will Not Stop Until It Liberates All Occupied Territories’ (Az.)

Ukraine will not stop until it liberates all the temporarily occupied territories, and is currently preparing for counteroffensive operations, Head of the Presidential Office of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, said during a conversation with journalists of the Dutch national TV channel NOS and the NRC newspaper, Report informs. He said that partner countries should continue and strengthen their support to Ukraine. Andriy Yermak said that the troops of the Russian Federation continue to launch missile attacks on civilian infrastructure and civilians in Ukrainian cities, and this has been going on for more than 14 months. “They want to destroy Ukrainians, the Ukrainian nation. But our people, our military are heroic and brave, and we continue not only to defend our land, but also to liberate the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories,” he said.


The Head of the President’s Office noted that Ukraine is currently preparing for counteroffensive operations and therefore needs more and more weapons. He noted that Ukraine needs long-range missiles and modern aircraft to liberate the temporarily occupied territories: “Everything changes, and Ukraine has changed many things. I am confident that our partners will make the necessary decisions and we will receive the F16.” “The people of Ukraine have made a decision – we want to be in NATO. Now about 80% of our population supports this move,” he added. According to Andriy Yermak, the decision on Ukraine’s accession to NATO is the best way to speed up the end of the war and guarantee peace in Europe.

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“Russia’s Tactical Missiles Corporation that rolls out missile systems, anti-ship, anti-radar and other missiles, has launched the mass production of new weapons..”

• Russian Army Has Enough Ammo And Kiev’s Losses Mounting – Shoigu (TASS)

Russian forces have already received sufficient ammunition for effectively inflicting damage on the enemy by firepower and the domestic defense industry generally meets the requirements of the Army and the Navy, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told a conference call with military commanders on Tuesday. In April, Kiev lost over 15,000 troops and 430 armored vehicles in battles. Therefore, the Kiev regime’s manpower losses increased by a third compared to February (the Russian Defense Ministry did not report about the Kiev regime’s military personnel losses in March). TASS has put together the highlights of the Russian defense minister’s speech.

“The Russian Armed Forces are conducting active operations along the entire engagement line. Despite the unprecedented military assistance from Western countries, the enemy is sustaining heavy losses.” According to the data of the Russian Defense Ministry, in the past month alone, the Kiev regime lost over 15,000 troops, eight combat aircraft and 277 unmanned aerial vehicles, 430 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 18 multiple rocket launchers and 225 artillery guns and mortars. As the data indicate, Ukraine’s manpower losses proved to be higher in April than in February while equipment losses exceeded the January figures (the latest information publicly reported by the Russian Defense Ministry), although Ukraine lost more aircraft at that time.

“As a whole, the defense industry meets the requirements of the Army and the Navy.” Compared to early 2022, the amount of purchased basic armaments grew by 170% and “especially needed weapons” by seven times, the defense chief said. “This year, a sufficient amount of ammunition has been delivered to the Armed Forces for inflicting effective damage on the enemy by firepower.” In addition, Russian military specialists have achieved successes in recovering damaged or broken military hardware and preventing equipment breakdowns, the defense minister said. “Presently, the daily amount of repaired armaments exceeds the amount of broken equipment in the proportion of three to two. Thanks to organizational measures taken, the amount of unfit equipment subject to repairs has dwindled by 1.5 times,” he said.

Russia’s Tactical Missiles Corporation that rolls out missile systems, anti-ship, anti-radar and other missiles, has launched the mass production of new weapons. “With regard to some latest weapon systems, the corporation has switched over to serial production, having finished all the R&D stages within the shortest time possible,” Shoigu said. As a whole, “the enterprise fulfils the defense procurement plan within the established timeframe” but today it is necessary to “double the production of precision weapons within the shortest time possible.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1653349439082209280

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Remember: Ukraine losses are 7-8x higher than Russia’s.

• Kremlin Mocks & Dismisses White House’s High Russian Casualty Count (ZH)

The Kremlin has reacted to a Monday briefing by National Security Council spokesman John Kirby wherein he issued a surprisingly high estimate of Russian casualties which he said took place since December in the contested Donetsk city of Bakhmut. He said Russian forces have suffered over 100,000 total casualties – including about 20,000 soldiers killed in combat and another 80,000 wounded. In response, Dmitry Peskov mocked and dismissed these figures on Tuesday, saying the White House is pulling the numbers out of a hat, and further stressed the US cannot possibly know any of this. “Pulling out figures out of a hat, Washington does not have the opportunity to give any correct figures, they do not have such data, this is how it should be treated” Peskov said, as cited in national media. “It is necessary to focus only on those figures that are published in a timely manner by the Russian Defense Ministry,” he added.

Interestingly, when in the Monday press briefing Kirby was asked the NSC spokesman refused to give casualty numbers for the Ukrainian side. “I’m not ever going to put anything out in the public domain that’s going to make their job harder,” Kirby said. “They are the victims here. Russia is the aggressor.” As we explained previously, while very clearly Bakhmut has for months been in truth a “meat-grinder” for both sides, the US is likely offering this staggering and large Russian casualty count of 100,000 in order to establish a ‘pyrrhic victory’ narrative. Kirby admitted the Russians are winning in Bakhmut, but wants to paint a picture of it losing the overall conflict given the massive cost and sacrifice for Bakhmut. The independent geopolitical analysis site Moon of Alabama wrote days ago:

“Bakhmut/Aryomovsk is to 90% under Russian control and the rest will be captured during the next few days. Ukrainian losses in the city must have been huge. The Ukrainian troops who try to escape from the city immediately come under artillery fire. The latest daily Russian clobber report counts 575 ‘enemy losses’ in Bakhmut over the last 24 hours for a total of 815 along the whole frontline. This is the largest number reported over the last two months.” Meanwhile, a Tuesday briefing by Russia’s defense chief has painted a grim picture for the Ukrainian side. According to his words: “Russian forces have already received sufficient ammunition for effectively inflicting damage on the enemy by firepower and the domestic defense industry generally meets the requirements of the Army and the Navy, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told a conference call with military commanders on Tuesday.”

“In April, Kiev lost over 15,000 troops and 430 armored vehicles in battles,” he said as cited in TASS. “Therefore, the Kiev regime’s manpower losses increased by a third compared to February (the Russian Defense Ministry did not report about the Kiev regime’s military personnel losses in March),” the state publication said.

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“..he argued that “rational folks” in Moscow would be convinced “over either months or a year or two” to negotiate, “because they’re not going to win.”

• Top US General Milley Predicts Ukraine Conflict Duration (RT)

The US has helped train and equip the Ukrainian military for the upcoming operations, whether offensive or defensive, but the fighting is unlikely to produce a clear winner in 2023, General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has told the outlet Foreign Affairs on a podcast that aired on Tuesday. Asked what he expected of the much-heralded Ukrainian counteroffensive, Milley told Foreign Affairs that the US and its European NATO partners have helped Ukraine train and equip “about nine brigades worth of combined arms, armor, and mech[anized] infantry type forces” over the past several months, as well as some light infantry. Kiev’s forces “right now have the capability to attack, they can conduct offensive operations, and they also have the capability to defend, significantly enhanced from what they were just a year ago for conventional operations,” he said.

“They’ve got a significant amount of planning and coordination and all of that to do, if they were to do an offensive operation.” According to Milley, if the Ukrainians do launch an offensive, anything is possible, from collapsing the Russian front entirely to no success at all. “I do think, though, that the probability of either side achieving their political objectives – war is about politics through the sole use of military means – I think that’s going to be very difficult, very challenging. And frankly, I don’t think the probability of that is likely in this year.” Milley claimed the Russian military had suffered 250,000 casualties and that the army, society and economy have all been severely impacted by the conflict. He would not speculate about Ukrainian casualties. The Kremlin has laughed off US estimates of Russian deaths as fabricated “out of nowhere.”

The US general stuck by those claims, however, and also asserted that Russia had “failed” to achieve any of its objectives in Ukraine. Based on that, he argued that “rational folks” in Moscow would be convinced “over either months or a year or two” to negotiate, “because they’re not going to win.” Congressman Michael McCaul, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on Monday that the offensive needed to present a success so the West could keep funding Kiev, “after which we can then maybe have negotiations, to finally resolve this.” The bulk of the podcast was devoted to China, with Milley arguing that the US “should do what it can to make sure” that Russia and China don’t set up a strategic military alliance. He dismissed the present level of military ties between Moscow and Beijing as “very, very modest.” Milley also maintained that both Russia and China were aware of the US military might and did not wish a direct confrontation with Washington.

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“..it’s known that France, Germany, and countries in Western Europe, in general, have always been against Ukraine joining either the EU or NATO.”

• German Media Shares Details Of NATO-Ukraine Talks (RT)

Washington and Berlin aren’t ready to make any promises to Kiev regarding Ukraine’s future NATO membership, German news agency dpa has reported. Ukraine’s hopes of joining the US-led military bloc anytime soon are likely to be shattered, the agency claimed on Tuesday. According to dpa’s information, the bloc’s key players such as the US and Germany recently made it clear to Kiev behind closed doors that they currently don’t want to make any further commitments on the issue, beyond the vague NATO declaration of 2008. Back then, the leaders of the NATO member-states said that Ukraine and another former Soviet republic, Georgia, should join the bloc, but didn’t provide any timetable for the accession of either.

During his visit to Kiev last month, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reiterated that “Ukraine’s rightful place is in NATO.” He also projected that “over time, our support will help to make this possible,” but refrained from saying when exactly Ukraine’s NATO membership is going to happen. However, a few days later, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius suggested that “this is not the time to decide” about Ukraine’s place in NATO. The bloc’s members should consider this issue “with a cool head and a hot heart. Not the other way around,” Pistorius said. The German minister’s comments have angered Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Piotr Wawrzyk, who claimed that “it’s known that France, Germany, and countries in Western Europe, in general, have always been against Ukraine joining either the EU or NATO.”

Earlier this week Gitanas Nauseda, the president of another NATO member-state, Lithuania, said that it “would be too difficult” to make Ukraine a member of the bloc as long as the conflict with Russia continues. The Kiev government is also well aware of this, he added. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s top adviser, Mikhail Podoliak, has recently reiterated Kiev’s desire to join the alliance, claiming that it would be impossible to restore security in Europe without “the country’s full membership in NATO.” Moscow, which sees NATO’s eastward expansion as a major security threat, had singled out Ukraine’s push to join the bloc among the main reasons for launching its military operation against Kiev more than a year ago.

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“..lamented the fact that there is still a “threat” that relations between Russia and EU countries could return to the way they were before the current rift..”

• Half Of Europe’ Wants Better Ties With Russia – Polish Deputy PM (RT)

Polish Deputy Prime Minister Piotr Glinski has lamented the fact that there is still a “threat” that relations between Russia and EU countries could return to the way they were before the current rift. He blasted opposition parties in Poland, as well as “half of Europe,” for harboring hopes of improving ties with Moscow.= Speaking to the Kurier Lubelski news outlet, Glinski was asked if he believed that Warsaw was “in danger” of returning to “naive” politics when, for example, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was invited to meet with Polish ambassadors in Warsaw in 2010 in an effort to improve bilateral relations. “Unfortunately, the threat of a return to these relationships still exists,” he replied.

Glinski claimed that the government’s “political rivals” as well as their voters are “hostage to interest groups that only think about ending the war in Ukraine as soon as possible and continue to be a client of Russia and do business with it,” adding that “half of Europe is like that, waiting for it.” The deputy prime minister’s comments come as Polish Secretary of State Marcin Przydacz also told the Financial Times on Tuesday that Warsaw plans to demand World War II reparations from Russia, just as it has done from Germany, from which it is requesting some €1.3 trillion ($1.43 trillion). “We treat Berlin and Moscow in a different-civilization way,” Przydacz told the outlet, noting that once there is “success” in squeezing cash out of Germany, the next step would be to “launch such a discussion with the other oppressor.”

Brussels, meanwhile, has accused Poland of sliding towards authoritarianism under its current leadership, while Jana Puglierin, the head of the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, suggested that the right-wing PiS party is prioritizing electoral success rather than focusing on establishing constructive relationships. Moscow has responded to the recent comments from Warsaw by stating that “nothing good” can be expected in Russian-Polish relations in the near future. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov noted on Tuesday that “Russophobia,” which has “gripped” the minds of Polish authorities “absolutely deprives them of sobriety in their approach to everything related to Russia” and prevents them from taking “intelligible or thoughtful steps.”

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“Illusions disappeared, the country by leaps and bounds began to turn into a copy of the Nazi Reich..”

• US Decided ‘Not To Notice’ That Kiev Hid Truth About Odessa Massacre (TASS)

The US preferred to “not notice” that Kiev destroyed evidence and hid the truth about the tragedy in the Odessa House of Trade Unions that took place on May 2, 2014, the Russian embassy in Washington said in a statement on Tuesday. The embassy stated that “May 2 marks the nine-year anniversary since the date of the tragic events in Odessa.” “On this day in 2014, a brutal crowd of Ukrainian fanatics committed a merciless murder of several dozen civilians. Like Nazi castigators, these extremists drove defenseless people, among them – women and elderly, into the House of Trade Unions with sticks and steel bars, and then set it on fire with Molotov cocktails. At least 48 people were burned to death, poisoned by carbon monoxide or died after jumping out of windows. Hundreds were seriously injured. Their only ‘fault’ was their disagreement with the aggressive policies of the neo-Nazis who came to power and their desire to remain Russian,” the statement said.


“Contrary to the promises by the Kiev regime to investigate this barbaric crime and punish those responsible, the authorities did everything to hide the truth and destroy the evidence, to allow organizers and effecters to avoid justice. In the United States, they decided not to notice this. And the local so-called human rights activists, in fact, covered up the Odessa executioners and tormentors all these years,” the statement said. “The Odessa tragedy will forever remain one of the most shameful pages in the history of Ukraine. Supporters of the Kiev junta applauded the brutal massacre, glorifying the unbridled radicals as ‘patriots.’ Under the influence of a nationalist frenzy, human life in the country has completely lost its value.”

“It is clear now that the bloody massacre in Odessa is a point of no return. Illusions disappeared, the country by leaps and bounds began to turn into a copy of the Nazi Reich. Bandera’s heirs launched a punitive military operation against the inhabitants of Donbass, with crimes against the civilian population committed en masse. Terror against dissidents, censorship and discrimination has become the basis of state policy on the territory controlled by Kiev,” the Russian diplomats said. “The progressive disease of the Ukrainian state demanded a tough rebuff. A special military operation is aimed at its denazification and demilitarization. It is a guarantee that tragedies like the one in Odessa will never happen again,” the statement said.


Radicals from the Right Sector (banned in Russia) and the Maidan uprising’s so-called self-defense force attacked a tent camp on the Kulikovo Field in Odessa on May 2, 2014, where residents were collecting signatures for a referendum on the federalization of Ukraine and giving the Russian language status as an official language. Supporters of federalization took refuge in the House of Trade Unions, but the radicals surrounded the building and set it on fire. According to official data from the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, 48 people were killed, and more than 240 were injured in those events. The government pinned the blame for the riots solely on the opponents of the uprising. However, the investigation, which lasted several years, could not prove their guilt in court. As a result, all those who were initially detained in the case were later acquitted.

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‘Securing Ourselves Is in Our Hands; and Defeat of the Enemy Lies in His Own Hands’

(Sun Tzu, d. 496 BCE)

• Defeat of the Enemy Lies in His Own Hands (Crooke)

Whilst the structural shift to a multipolar world is now well understood in geo-political terms, its other dimensions are little noticed. The media focus is so much centred on the military situation in Ukraine that it is easily overlooked that President Putin has also been fighting a financial war – a war on liberal economic theory; and a diplomatic war for the support of the non-West and from key strategic allies, China and India. On top of that, Putin has to manage the psyche inside Russia. His objective is to restore patriotism and a Russian national culture reconnected to its roots in Orthodox Christianity. To achieve this, he needs to let it evolve in a civil context – To allow the military aspect to become all-encompassing would be to skew the Russian consciousness in a very particular way.

President Putin has spoken on several occasions of the need for ‘civil Russia’ to have the oxygen to evolve in its own way – by re-appropriating its past cultural legacy in new form – and for that process not to be wholly subsumed into military needs and ethos. So, the project is, in fact, wholly multi-faceted – although undoubtedly, the struggle to restore respect for sovereignty and for autonomy in internal affairs represents the project ‘key stone’. Yet, a significant part to re-appropriating sovereignty requires the shift of Russia’s economic structure out from the grip of the ‘Anglo’ neo-liberal model, to one that provides for greater national self-sufficiency. Hence, the simple questioning of the philosophical underpinnings to the ‘Anglo’ system of politics and economics – which underlie the Rules Order – is as important, in its own way, as the Ukrainian battlefield.

Like any system, the World Order rests on philosophical principles believed to be universal, but which, in truth, are specific to a particular moment in European history. Today, the West is not ‘what it was’. It is a fractured ideological battlespace. The Rest of World is not ‘what it was’. And today’s ideological western writhings are no longer viewed as being of primary concern to the World. The point here, however, is about a project designed to bring change to that which has not changed. It is as much a war for global psyche as of attrition on the battlefront (though that, too, is a vital component in shifting the global zeitgeist). If a multi-polar order is to be built based on self-sufficient sovereignty, others should exit the neo-liberal economic system too (if they can). Hence the need for a major diplomatic initiative by Russia and China to build a strategic depth for a new economics.

Where Putin and Xi Jinping come together … is their shared appreciation of China’s astonishing sprint to the ranks of an economic superpower. In Putin’s words, China “managed in the best possible way, in my opinion, to use the levers of central administration (for) the development of a market economy … The Soviet Union did nothing like this, and the results of an ineffective economic policy impacted the political sphere”. Washington and Brussels clearly doesn’t ‘get it’. And Yellen’s speech is the prime ‘exhibit’ of this analytic failure: The West had understood the Soviet implosion and to the financial mayhem of the Yeltsin years in precisely the opposite way to Xi’s analysis, and to Putin’s concurrence with Xi’s harsh verdict. Plainly put, Xi and Putin’s assessment is that the Russian disaster was the result of the turn to western liberalism, whereas Yellen clearly sees China’s ‘error’ – for which she chides it – is in the move away from the ‘liberal’ world system.

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Hard to believe. 26 million dead AND pay war reparations?

• Poland Explains Plan For WWII Reparations From Russia (RT)

Poland could demand World War II reparations from Russia but only if it persuades Germany to pay a similar bill first, a senior official in Warsaw has said. Berlin has thus far rejected a €1.3 trillion ($1.43 trillion) claim from Poland over the Nazi occupation, arguing that the issue has long been settled. “We treat Berlin and Moscow in a different-civilization way,” Polish Secretary of State Marcin Przydacz told the Financial Times in an article published on Tuesday. “Once there will be a success with Germany, the next step could be to launch such a discussion with the other oppressor.” Demanding reparations has become a key aspect of Polish foreign policy under the ruling right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS). Berlin has said it accepts moral responsibility for Nazi crimes and continues to make direct payments to Holocaust survivors in Poland, but argues that other financial claims were settled in the 1950s.

Warsaw has insisted that it was short-changed due to the USSR’s desire to move on from the conflict. Warsaw sent a formal note to Berlin with reparation demands last October. Polish President Andrzej Duda said at the time that he did not see any reason why his country should not do the same with Russia. Warsaw is locked in a broader dispute with Berlin over what it perceives to be outsized German influence on EU affairs. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of PiS, claimed in 2021 that Berlin was morphing the EU into a “Fourth Reich.” Brussels, meanwhile, has accused Poland of a slide towards authoritarianism under its current leadership, and further angered Warsaw by initially declining to approve Covid-19 funding from the bloc.

Jana Puglierin, head of the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, told the FT that PiS appeared to prioritize electoral success rather than “having a constructive relationship [with Germany].” “Overall in terms of trust I feel the German-Polish relationship is at its lowest level since 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall,” Michal Baranowski, director of the German Marshall Fund’s office in Warsaw, said of the situation. The FT noted that despite any political tensions, Germany has opted to deploy long-range anti-aircraft systems in Poland amid the conflict in Ukraine. Warsaw has accused Berlin of not doing enough to support Kiev and previously criticized Germany for buying cheap Russian gas. Experts told the newspaper that economic interconnection could alleviate the political standoff between Warsaw and Berlin.

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“Trump may seem to be outside the club, with his “America First” discourse challenging the globalist aspirations of the American ruling class. But his place in history is not in doubt, for he too has not challenged US hegemony..”

• US Biden-Trump Generation Clings To An Outdated Political Reality (Lukyanov)

Joe Biden has decided to continue fighting the battle for America’s soul and has announced his intention to run for a second term as President. If he is successful, he will be 82 years old on Inauguration Day, overtaking himself in the rankings of the oldest US leaders to take office. By the end of his presidency, if all goes well, Biden would be 86. Age is no longer a burden in the modern world, and practices and techniques encouraging active longevity are widespread and effective. Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad will be 98 in two months, and like a lion he continues to fight for the rights of the opposition against his former associates. Henry Kissinger will celebrate his centenary in a month’s time, but his judgments are often retold and treated as important observations.

By comparison to these figures, Biden is still in his prime. Angry tongues, however, say that the problem is not his age, but the cognitive state of the president, who often greets the void, hears voices and forgets where he is. But let’s face it, Biden’s political line is pretty consistent and logical. And it is not a consequence of dementia, but of a certain ideological and strategic approach. How right it is and what it will lead to is another question, but it is being pursued consciously and not under the influence of apparitions. In any case, there is a good chance of a rematch in 2024. Donald Trump, who is currently in the lead for the Republican nomination, would face an opponent he lost to in 2020. Even if he has never fully acknowledged the defeat. Trump will be 77 on Election Day. The former president is noticeably more active and mentally sharper than his potential rival and appears to still be in possession of all his powers. However, Biden also looked very different, just a few years ago, but eventually broke down.

The elections are still a year and a half away, which in the current circumstances is a very long time, not just for the patriarchs themselves, but for everyone else too. A lot can change suddenly. But if these two candidates make it to the final stage, what form will the eventual long generational transition take? We would venture to guess that behind the political longevity of this age cohort which, excluding Obama, under whom Biden played the role of ‘uncle’, has been running the United States since the early 1990s is a fixed agenda. And this, strangely enough, is international, despite the fact that foreign policy issues play little role in real American politics. The first member of the Trump-Biden generation to hold high office was Bill Clinton, and he was given the opportunity to implement a unipolar, US-centric world order. This framework has remained in place ever since.

Although the structure and state of the international system have changed qualitatively, the consciousness of the American establishment – which aims to preserve and strengthen the old system – has not budged. Trump may seem to be outside the club, with his “America First” discourse challenging the globalist aspirations of the American ruling class. But his place in history is not in doubt, for he too has not challenged US hegemony. The Republican differs from his predecessors or from Biden in that he openly wants to make his country’s central role a profitable affair, discarding conventionality. Nevertheless, by no means would he give it up. American world dominance is now under intense pressure. It is not only the emergence of rivals challenging the hegemon. These shifts are very different, but they have in common a rejection of claims to leadership, especially American dominance. In other words, a global “material resistance” effect has emerged.

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“..If the press comes up with those things, I can’t control that. I can’t gag the world..”

• Judge Orders Hunter Biden to Provide Details on Income (ET)

President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden may have paid the mother of his 4-year-old daughter up to $750,000 in child support since March 2020, said one of his attorneys at a hearing. Hunter Biden appeared in Independence County Circuit Court in Batesville, Arkansas, on May 1 as ordered by the judge overseeing the child support dispute between the president’s 53-year-old son and Lunden Roberts. Roberts is the Arkansas woman who, according to court filings, had a relationship with Hunter and gave birth to a baby girl in August 2018. She sued for support in 2019. At first Hunter Biden denied that the child was his, but a DNA test confirmed he is the father. On March 12, 2020, he and Roberts agreed to an undisclosed amount in monthly child support to begin on April 1, 2020.

Terms of the agreement are sealed because they contain sensitive personal information, including the amount of monthly support and each party’s source of income. Hunter Biden asked the court to review the child support arrangement the following September because his financial status had changed. During a discussion of the discovery process, Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe David Lowell, said his client has been paying $20,000 monthly, more than $700,000 since the support order was signed. Judge Holly Meyer clarified during the May 1 hearing that any information discussed in open court was a matter of public record. Lowell’s remarks came after he and attorney Brent Langdon of Dallas, Texas, complained that news outlets had published information from sealed court files.

He said news reports referenced tax files, information on Hunter Biden’s cars, and other things that had been redacted. “How is it that things that are redacted in the file are released to the Daily Mail? There are matters that are being redacted that are getting out to the daily news,” Langdon said. Meyer said that, without proof someone was illegally releasing information, there was little she could do. Journalists and the public often speculate on matters and may come close to guessing what is in a sealed file, she added. “If the press comes up with those things, I can’t control that. I can’t gag the world,” Meyer said. The judge ordered Hunter Biden to provide information on his income from his artwork, investments, employment, gifts from friends, and other sources. She also ordered Roberts to provide information on the value of her property and income while working with her father’s business.

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Origami
https://twitter.com/i/status/1653388335807594497

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle February 14 2023

Feb 142023
 
 February 14, 2023  Posted by at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  79 Responses »


Elaine de Kooning Fairfield Porter #1 1954

 

• When Do The Giant Ants Show Up On Fremont Street In Las Vegas? (Kunstler)
• 30 Million People May be in Danger by East Palestine Disaster (TP)
• US Raises Pressure On Kyiv To Make Significant Gains On Battlefield – WaPo (Az)
• Taking Odessa, Kharkov To Help Ensure Russia’s Security – Chechen Leader (TASS)
• NATO Sounds Alarm Over Ukraine’s Ammo Consumption (RT)
• US Has No Long-Range Missiles For Ukraine – Politico (RT)
• Former Pentagon Chief: US Uses Ukraine To Achieve Goals Against Russia (Tass)
• EU Has No Plans To Urge Its Citizens To Leave Russia (TASS)
• Hungary Must Resist America’s Woke Imperialism (Furedi)
• Amid Turkiye’s Rubble Lies Erdogan’s Political Fate (Karan)
• Clapper: Letter About Russian Links To Hunter Biden Laptop Was ‘Distorted’ (WE)
• Seymour Hersh Speaks About His Nord Stream Report and Media Silence (Celente)
• Global Debt & Death Spiral – John Rubino (USAW)
• 30% Of High School Girls ‘Seriously Considered’ Suicide Last Year (ZH)

 

 

 

 

Zel Eu

 

 

 

 

Yes, there is a recent film set in East Palestine that is about an enviromental disaster exactly like the one that happened on Friday

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry Jim, I changed the title…

• When Do The Giant Ants Show Up On Fremont Street In Las Vegas? (Kunstler)

Didn’t you get the feeling this weekend that we’re living in HG Wells’ classic tale of the earth invaded by sinister alien spacecrafts? Our government is playing the story like a bassoon concerto. “American officials do not know what the objects were, much less their purpose or who sent them,” The New York Times reported, poaching a line from every horror movie of the 1950s. When do the giant ants show up on Fremont Street in Las Vegas? Looks like they’ll keep up the suspense as long as possible, too. Oh, we can’t retrieve that thing up in Alaska due to white-out weather conditions… Oh, that other thing — the eight-sided silver tic-tac — it fell into Lake Huron, glug glug… and that first one, the big balloon payload, lies deep in Davy Jones’ Locker now. You’ll have to stand by, folks….

Let’s face it, all the other mindfucks set in motion by the folks-in-charge are not just losing their mojo — they’re generating a lot of nasty blow-back in the way of widespread distrust of authority and institutional collapse. Even Woked-up Democrat voters begin to suspect that the vaxxes they greeted like a holy deliverance might not be so good for you after all. I’m waiting for Rob Reiner’s head to explode when he starts to notice how many young SAG-AFTRA members are waking up dead in West Hollywood. More to the point, you are now correct to suspect that the entire Covid-19 episode, from the design of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus to the gene-modification shots put out by Pfizer and Moderna (erroneously labeled “vaccines”), was a joint Intel-DOD operation, not really a public health crisis. The abiding mystery is… why? Why turn Western Civilization upside down and inside out and then try to pound the whole thing down a rat-hole?

Frankly, the only angle that makes sense is that our government is captive to a hostile force. The WEF, the WHO, and the UN are the most obvious culprits, certainly the most talked-up, the most active on-the-scene. But until a few years ago these organizations had no real influence on the world. They were bad jokes… only pretending to protect the global community’s interests… actually completely incapable, utterly incompetent. Klaus Schwab, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus? Please! What Muppet factory were they made in? The UN was a mere collective of Third World hustles and rackets. And everybody knew it, but the developed world played along as a sop to these sad-sack nations and their greedy officials because the grift was chump-change.

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BlackRock, Vanguard, and JPMorgan are the biggest stockholders of Norfolk Southern, the train operator that crashed in Ohio, that’s why there has been a major media blackout on the toxic chemical disaster.

They’re actually telling people the water is safe…

• 30 Million People May be in Danger by East Palestine Disaster (TP)

30 million people, or 10% of the United States population, may be in danger after a train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio that led to the release of toxic chemicals. “We basically nuked a town with chemicals so we could get a railroad open,” said Sil Caggiano, a hazardous materials specialist. As public officials try to calm the public, animals are falling sick and dying. “Out of nowhere, he just started coughing really hard, just shut down, and he had liquid diarrhea and just went very fast,” said resident Taylor Holzer while he explained the mortally ill confition of his foxes. “Smoke and chemicals from the train, that’s the only thing that can cause it, because it doesn’t just happen out of nowhere,” Holzer said. “The chemicals that we’re being told are safe in the air, that’s definitely not safe for the animals … or people.”

According to a new report, the situation may become much more widespread through the Ohio River Basin. As noted by Stew Peters, 10% of the United States population may be in trouble. “10% of the U.S. population, over 30 MILLION PEOPLE, live in the Ohio River Basin!” he tweeted. “The Ohio River itself provides drinking water to over 5 MILLION PEOPLE!” According to Upward News, the dangerous chemicals are making their way as far as West Virginia through the Ohio River. “Toxic chemicals from the train derailment & explosion in East Palestine have reportedly “contaminated” the Ohio River as far as West Virginia, a water source for over 5 million,” they reported. “The Ohio River is one of the nation’s great natural resources. Over 30 million people, or about ten percent of the U.S. population, live in the Ohio River Basin. With numerous public drinking water intakes and industries, the river provides drinking water to +5,000,000 people.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1624910190847094784

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“‘As long as it takes’ pertains to the amount of conflict,” the official added. “It doesn’t pertain to the amount of assistance.”

Note that Stoltenberg in the video talks about the THIRD invasion.

• US Raises Pressure On Kyiv To Make Significant Gains On Battlefield – WaPo (Az)

As the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nears, US officials are telling Ukrainian leaders they face a critical moment to change the trajectory of the war, raising the pressure on Kyiv to make significant gains on the battlefield while weapons and aid from the United States and its allies are surging, Report informs, citing the Washington Post. Despite promises to back Ukraine “as long as it takes,” Biden officials say recent aid packages from Congress and America’s allies represent Kyiv’s best chance to decisively change the course of the war. Many conservatives in the Republican-led House have vowed to pull back support, and Europe’s long-term appetite for funding the war effort remains unclear. Several officials noted the strong bipartisan support that has accompanied every Ukraine package, adding that Congress gave the White House more than it asked for, but they acknowledged that was under a Democrat-led House and Senate.


“We will continue to try to impress upon them that we can’t do anything and everything forever,” said one senior administration official, referring to Ukraine’s leaders. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters, added that it was the administration’s “very strong view” that it will be hard to keep getting the same level of security and economic assistance from Congress. “‘As long as it takes’ pertains to the amount of conflict,” the official added. “It doesn’t pertain to the amount of assistance.” “Ukraine has expended significant resources and troops defending Bakhmut in the eastern Donbas region. Zelenskyy, however, attaches symbolic importance to Bakhmut and believes it would be a blow to Ukrainian morale to lose the city,” two senior administration officials said.

Stoltenberg
https://twitter.com/i/status/1625115812896841731

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“We are fighting for peace, so that we are not killed, not shot at…”

• Taking Odessa, Kharkov To Help Ensure Russia’s Security – Chechen Leader (TASS)

Taking control of Odessa and Kharkov will ensure Russia’s security, Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Russia’s Republic of Chechnya, said on Monday. “Although some say that it will take a year, or two, or even three [to complete the special operation], I think that by the end of the year, we will have completed 100% of our task. I believe that the least we must do is take Odessa and Kharkov, which will go a long way in ensuring the security of our state,” he said in an interview with the 60 Minutes program on the Rossiya-1 television channel. According to Kadyrov, up to 200 trained soldiers are sent to the frontline from Chechnya every week. “We are fighting for peace, so that we are not killed, not shot at. All of us must work this way now. Every week, we send 200 soldiers. It is not easy. People are coming from all over Russia and we train them, <…> provide them with outfit and footwear, armor vests and helmets – we give them everything that is necessary,” he added.

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It’s obvious they’re running out. But they can’t admit it.

• NATO Sounds Alarm Over Ukraine’s Ammo Consumption (RT)

Ukraine is consuming an “enormous amount” of ammunition, and the West needs to boost production to keep up, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Monday. Stoltenberg also called on the bloc’s members to increase their intelligence efforts, accusing China and Russia of spying on them with balloons. “The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of ammunition,” he said ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels. “This puts our defense industries under strain,” he continued, adding that “we need to ramp up production and invest in our production capacities.” Stoltenberg then pledged, as he has repeatedly since Russia’s military operation in Ukraine began, that “NATO stands with Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

“Standing with Ukraine” has proven costly for NATO, particularly its European members. After decades of underinvestment, the German military rapidly emptied its stockpiles for Ukraine and reportedly has only enough ammunition for two days of warfare. Furthermore, Berlin will not be able to send its full complement of 187 Leopard 1 tanks to Kiev until refurbishment is complete in 2024, and even then, reports suggest that ammunition for these tanks is in short supply. The situation in the UK is similar, with the British Army reportedly having just enough ammunition for days or even hours of full-scale fighting. Meanwhile, multiple European nations have walked back promises of tanks for Ukraine, citing shortages and the vehicles’ state of disrepair.

Stoltenberg has repeatedly called on NATO members to boost arms and ammo production since the conflict in Ukraine began. On Monday, however, he also urged them to increase their intelligence gathering and sharing capacities, claiming that China and Russia are “increasing their intelligence and surveillance activities against NATO allies.” The NATO chief claimed that both nations are using “balloons” to spy on the West, referring to four aircraft shot down over the US and Canada in recent days. One of these airships came from China, while the origin of the other three is unclear. US authorities have not linked any of the four to Russia, and Beijing insists that the first was a “civilian airship” that veered off course.

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“..If Europe were to fight Russia, some countries would run out of ammunition in days.”

• US Has No Long-Range Missiles For Ukraine – Politico (RT)

The US will not supply Ukraine with its Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) due to concerns it will not have enough for itself, officials told Politico. Kiev continues to demand longer range missiles and other heavy weapons, despite $30 billion in military aid already authorized by the White House. Ukrainian officials were informed that Washington has no ATACMS missiles to offer during a recent meeting in the US capital, with the Pentagon concluding that transfers would “dwindle America’s stockpiles and harm the US military’s readiness,” the outlet reported on Monday. “With any package, we always consider our readiness and our own stocks while providing Ukraine what it needs on the battlefield. There are other ways of providing Ukraine with the capabilities it needs to strike the targets,” a senior military official said on condition of anonymity.

While it is unclear how many ATACMS remain in US stocks, weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin has produced only about 4,000 units of various makes over the last 20 years, with around 600 used up by US forces during the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War. A number of those missiles have also been sold to allies, including Bahrain, Greece, Poland, Qatar, Romania, South Korea, and Turkey. Short of obtaining the weapon directly from the US, Kiev is considering whether to ask one of those allied countries to provide the ATACMS instead, a move that would have to be approved by Washington. Arms transfers to Ukraine have stressed US stocks over the last year, with shortages in Javelin and Stinger missiles reported as early as last March, just weeks after the conflict with Russia kicked off. As of February 3, Washington has sent at least 1,600 Stinger systems and more than 8,000 Javelins, in addition to a massive quantity of other arms, including drones, mortars, howitzers, armored combat vehicles, and dozens of HIMARS multi-launch rocket systems.

In addition to concerns about shrinking arms inventories, US officials also fear that Ukrainian forces would use the ATACMS to “attack deep inside Russian territory” given their range of 190 miles, according to Politico. Though the White House has approved increasingly heavy weapons for Kiev – including the M1 Abrams main battle tank – it believes strikes on Russian soil could cross a “red line” with the Kremlin.The NATO bloc has urged member states to “ramp up production” of weapons and ammunition to keep up with Kiev’s needs, with the alliance’s head, Jens Stoltenberg, warning on Monday that the Ukrainian military is consuming an “enormous amount” of materiel. A recent NATO assessment obtained by Reuters found that arsenals across the alliance have been significantly depleted thanks to the conflict, with one official telling the outlet that “If Europe were to fight Russia, some countries would run out of ammunition in days.”

Moscow has repeatedly urged against foreign arms deliveries to Ukraine, saying they would only prolong the fighting without changing the outcome of the conflict. The Kremlin has also warned that the aid creates a greater risk of escalation, especially if Western weapons are used to strike Russian cities or to try to seize Russian territory.

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“The Ukrainian people are doing the dirty work of what we never wanted to do here in the United States..”

• Former Pentagon Chief: US Uses Ukraine To Achieve Goals Against Russia (Tass)

The Ukrainian people in the conflict with Russia are ‘doing dirty work’ that the US would not want to do, former US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told the Russian pranksters Vladimir Kuznetsov (Vovan) and Alexey Stolyarov (Lexus). The pranksters called Esper on behalf of former Ukrainian President Petr Poroshenko and asked the former Pentagon chief for his opinion on US involvement in the conflict in Ukraine. “The Ukrainian people are doing the dirty work of what we never wanted to do here in the United States, which is why we should continue to support you [Ukraine] with everything we can, whether it’s munitions or arms or intelligence,” Esper said.


According to him, the expansion of Russian influence in other countries, including Africa, “is a problem” for the United States. At the same time, the former Pentagon chief expressed concern that US technology could end up in the hands of other countries because of arms deliveries to Ukraine. He stressed that it was important for the US to make sure that its technology would not fall into the wrong hands.

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France just did.

• EU Has No Plans To Urge Its Citizens To Leave Russia (TASS)

The EU has no plans to follow the US’ example and recommend its citizens or people with double citizenship to leave Russia, European External Actions Service Spokesman Peter Stano said Monday. “The EU has made no such decision, and we have no discussions in this regard. That is a question for EU member states. Consular decisions are a responsibility of member states, not the EU,” he said. Previously, the US Embassy in Russia called on US nationals to immediately leave the country, claiming that the Russian said can allegedly deny US citizens the recognition of their double citizenship; strip them of access to consular aid; mobilize them to the armed forces or to prevent them from leaving the country.

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Wokeness is a smokescreen. All they care about is Orban not joining the war.

• Hungary Must Resist America’s Woke Imperialism (Furedi)

Samantha Power, head administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), arrived in Budapest last week with one mission – to save Central European nations from themselves. Her main target was Hungary. According to a press release issued by USAID to accompany her trip to the Hungarian capital, Power wants ‘to help support democracy in Central Europe’. And she wants ‘independent media to thrive and build new audiences’. ‘[A] free and diverse press is a cornerstone of democracy’, she tweeted, ‘and in Hungary, independent journalists are facing real challenges’. By a ‘free’ and ‘independent’ media, what Power really meant are outlets that freely propagate the worldview of the Biden administration. Central to this worldview, it seems, are LGBT rights.

That’s why USAID’s press release explicitly told the Hungarians that the US will ‘continue to stand as an ally with LGBTQI+ people and all marginalised groups in their struggle for equality’. Power’s attempt to impose the White House’s obsession with LGBT issues on Hungary is not especially surprising. It is worth remembering that one of Biden’s earliest foreign-policy initiatives was to send the State Department a memo ‘to ensure that US diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBTQ+ persons’. But of course, it’s not just LGBT rights driving the US’s intervention in Central Europe. Last December, when USAID announced its Central Europe programme, it also claimed it was going to support ‘new locally driven initiatives in Central Europe with the goal of strengthening democratic institutions, civil society and independent media, which are all pillars of resilient democratic societies’.

For USAID, these ‘locally driven initiatives’ refers not to any grassroots organisations, but to NGOs. And through these NGOs, USAID claims it is building ‘the watchdog skills of civil society and media to enhance rule-of-law observance, combat corruption and increase access to justice’. The use of the word ‘watchdog’ is telling. As is well known, a watchdog usually has a master – and one does not need a PhD in political science to guess that this watchdog’s master is not a million miles away from 2201 C Street Northwest, Washington, DC – the home of the State Department. USAID’s promise to ‘support democracy’ and ‘strengthen democratic institutions’ is entirely cynical. In practice, USAID wants to use local NGOs and other institutions to translate Washington’s cultural narrative and political priorities into a local language.

This is to create the impression that what’s ‘made in America’ appears as locally grown. In reality, of course, it’s nothing of the sort. This represents a clear attempt on the part of Washington to erode the sovereignty and exert influence over the democratic decision-making processes of Hungary and other nations in Central Europe. The US is effectively assuming the role of a moral guardian of democratic life in Central Europe. The arrogance is breathtaking. It seems that the Biden administration believes it possesses an inalienable right to influence the political and cultural life of Hungary and other Central European nations.

Frank Furedi is the executive director of the think-tank, MCC-Brussels.

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“..the TAF’s ability and capacity to respond to such disasters had been significantly reduced after and even before the 2016 attempted coup…”

• Amid Turkiye’s Rubble Lies Erdogan’s Political Fate (Karan)

Turkiye’s Disaster and Emergency Management Agency (AFAD), under the Ministry of Interior, is responsible for handling national disasters and emergencies. Unlike many other countries where disaster response executives are military experts, AFAD executives in Turkiye are mostly Imam-Hatip (religious school) graduates with questionable qualifications. The agency was also criticized for being understaffed and having major coordination issues. In the first critical hours after the earthquake, AFAD officers either never arrived at the wreckage or came to only take notes. The lack of available equipment, such as cranes and construction equipment, made it difficult to reach the affected areas. Experienced miners in the Black Sea region were not dispatched until 48 hours after the earthquake. In contrast, the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) were deployed within a short period of time during the 1999 Golcuk earthquake, but only 3,500 soldiers were deployed in the first 24 hours this time round.

On 7 February, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency (OHAL) in the disaster zone and a week of mourning. Despite the outpouring of support from the opposition municipalities and civil society, the government faced criticism for its slow response and lack of preparation. In addition, the Turkish Red Crescent was virtually absent on the ground. Erdogan responded to criticism by lashing out and claiming that he would address the “lies” and “distortions” leveled at his administration in due course. However, the very next day, social media, which was being used by civil society to save lives via search and rescue posts, was shut down, causing immense outrage. Access was restored only after celebrated Turkish singer Haluk Levent, known for his charity work, called out the authorities and referred to the social media ban as “equivalent to murder.”

Perhaps the most controversial issue was the response of the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) to the catastrophe. Despite the presence of 50 thousand Turkish soldiers in Syria, only 3500 troops were deployed in the first 24 hours after the earthquake. Minister of National Defense Hulusi Akar was correct when he explained that Turkish troops were delayed due to weather conditions and destroyed land routes. But the failure of President Erdogan to effectively mobilize the TAF did not go unnoticed. Retired officers who took part in the relief efforts for the 1999 Golcuk earthquake had raised warnings in the early hours of this month’s disaster. Retired Rear Admiral Cem Gurdeniz called for amphibious ships to be sent to the Iskenderun Bay to help Hatay. Meanwhile, teams from countries such as Russia, Spain, and Israel had already established field hospitals.

Experts pointed to the fact that the TAF’s ability and capacity to respond to such disasters had been significantly reduced after and even before the 2016 attempted coup. The closure of the prestigious Gülhane Military Medical Academy (GATA) was cited as an example. Retired Admiral Turker Erturk, former Black Sea commander, emphasized the importance of the army’s role in both responding to natural disasters and external threats, stating: “The government destroyed the health facilities and capabilities of the Turkish army and the field hospitals. They also enacted a law so that the TAF would not interfere in such matters. The TAF had security, public order and aid plans called EMASYA, and the Natural Disaster Relief Plan called DAFYAR. Erdogan made laws and destroyed them. He prevented the military from rushing to the aid of the people.”

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““All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation..”

Yeah sure. Watch the 2020 video.

• Clapper: Letter About Russian Links To Hunter Biden Laptop Was ‘Distorted’ (WE)

The former director of national intelligence for President Barack Obama is blaming Politico for the “distortion” of a letter signed by more than 50 ex-intelligence officials that had baselessly claimed Russia’s involvement in the Hunter Biden laptop saga. Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign quickly dismissed the laptop story as a Russian disinformation operation. After the New York Post published emails belonging to his son, Biden called the story “garbage” and part of a “Russian plan” during an October 2020 debate with then-President Donald Trump. Biden said at the time: “There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan. They have said this is, has all the — four, five former heads of the CIA. Both parties say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage.”

He was referring to a Politico report about the letter in an article titled “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” The title was a bit misleading because the letter never directly called the story Russian “disinformation.” Ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper complained about the Politico headline to the Washington Post this week. “There was message distortion,” Clapper told the outlet. “All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation. Politico deliberately distorted what we said.” Clapper did not speak up about this during the 2020 election, however, despite the Biden campaign exploiting the letter to dismiss the Hunter Biden laptop stories as a Kremlin disinformation operation, and he implausibly claimed in his new interview that he was unaware of how Joe Biden described the letter during the 2020 debate.

“It could have been bad information, false information. But we had no evidence, no inside baseball that it was. The intent of the letter was that this could be Russian disinformation — emphasis on could,” Clapper told the outlet. “It’s a very important nuance … a distinction that people are always ignoring.” Although the October 2020 letter hedged a bit at various times, it did repeatedly contend there was Russian involvement with the laptop stories, arguing that “if we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election” and expressing “our view that the Russians are involved in the Hunter Biden email issue.” The letter claimed that the laptop saga “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” and that “our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”

Clapper 2020

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“..they have The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSN, and CNN fronting for them..”

• Seymour Hersh Speaks About His Nord Stream Report and Media Silence (Celente)

Seymour Hersh spoke to Radio War Nerd about his recent column on the Nord Stream blast that blames the Biden administration of carrying out the attack. It was his first interview after his story was published that has been largely ignored by the Western propaganda media. Hersh said he was asked about how he found the story, and said his friend told him he is an “expert at deconstructing the obvious.” He said German newspapers have been “nasty” to him and outlets like The Washington Post and New York Times simply ignore him. He said these outlets want him to name his source, which he will not, because the individual will end up in jail. “The problem is, it’s all been cheapened. Because now the New York Times and the Washington Post think an unnamed source can be a press guy, a press secretary, that whispers something to them on the side. I don’t know, they don’t seem to have anyone inside,” he said.


He theorized that mainstream outlets in the U.S. avoided his stories because it gives a “pro-Russian” impression. “The way I look at it, you know, the White House, despite all the criticism of [President Joe] Biden…they have The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSN, and CNN fronting for them,” Hersh said. Hersh said the only reporter to call him was Fox News’s Tucker Carlson. “It’s amazing to be how they fall in line, my colleagues,” he said.

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“Welcome to the end game for the world’s big currencies.”

• Global Debt & Death Spiral – John Rubino (USAW)

Analyst and financial writer John Rubino says we’re are in a “debt and death spiral” that will force dramatic changes on the world. Rubino explains, “The debt spiral part of this means things from here continue to get worse and worse for the big currencies of the world until they die. In other words, until people lose faith in them, refuse to use them and hold them anymore until their value falls to their intrinsic value, which is zero. That manifests to hyperinflation. The value of the currency falls as opposed to the things you buy with it. . . . Things feel basically okay for a long time as long as governments could force interest rates down to really low levels. The side effects of that are massive money creation and, eventually, inflation. That’s what we are dealing with now. So, here we go. Welcome to the end game for the world’s big currencies.”

Rubino contends things have gotten so out of control that there is no stopping what is coming. Rubino says, “We are in the part of the cycle now where things just get worse, and there is nothing we can do about it. You are going to see companies that have borrowed huge amounts of money to buy back their stock, and now they see their interest costs explode. Governments around the world have the same problem, and there is nothing central banks can do about this. The next stage of this is when everybody realizes that there is no fix. Daddy is not going to come home and take care of all of this, and there is no adult supervision. The financial markets are basically on their own with so much debt that there is nothing left to do.

You either have mass bankruptcies or inflate away the currencies of the world, and we’re there—finally. 2023 is going to be an amazing year . . . and we make the decision about what kind of a crisis we fall into. We have a 1930’s style deflationary depression, which is what happens if we keep raising interest rates. Or, a Weimar Germany kind of hyperinflation, which is what happens if we try to inflate our way out of our current debt problems. And that’s it. This is not something on the distant horizon anymore. It’s something right here staring us in the face.”

Rubino talks about the threat of global nuclear war and contends our extreme financial problems will seem timid if the nukes fly. In the nuclear war scenario, the global population could get cut in half with “radiation and starvation.” Rubino also talks about ways to be more resilient, and that starts with shedding as much debt as you can. It also includes food, water, cash, defensive investments and precious metals. Rubino thinks the economy is so weak, with so many different financial bubbles, that one bubble pop could bring the entire system down rapidly. Rubino says look out for big European banks to go insolvent as a warning sign of trouble if the trillion-dollar derivative complex blows up. There is much more in the 52-minure interview.

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The CDC is your friend…

• 30% Of High School Girls ‘Seriously Considered’ Suicide Last Year (ZH)

A staggering 30% of high school girls in the United States who were surveyed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they had “seriously considered attempting suicide” in 2021, up from (a still shocking) 19% in 2011. Panning back, almost 60% of high school girls surveyed said they felt ‘persistent sadness or hopelessness’ in 2021, an increase of roughly 60% over the same time period. “Though both high-school girls and boys reported experiencing mental-health challenges, girls reported record high levels of violence, sadness and suicide risk, the CDC said. In 2021, 57% of high-school girls reported experiencing persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the past year, compared with 36% in 2011. Thirty percent reported they seriously considered attempting suicide in 2021, up from 19% in 2011.” -WSJ

When it comes to boys in high school, 29% reported persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness in 2021 vs. 21% in 2011, while 14% reported seriously considering a suicide attempt, up from 13% in 2011. Following the survey, federal officials noted a spike in mental health among young people – particularly girls, in new data released on Monday which was gathered from a biennial survey spanning 2011 to 2021, of 9th through 12th-graders across the country. According to mental health experts, girls are particularly vulnerable to anxiety and depression, given higher rates of harassment and discrimination they face compared with boys. And of course, now they’re all competing with TikTok Barbies who set even more unrealistic and unhealthy standards.

And as the Wall Street Journal notes, the evidence suggests that the stress, isolation and loss during the pandemic amplified mental health issues among young people who were already struggling. “These data show our kids need far more support to cope, hope and thrive,” said CDC chief medical officer, Debra Houry. According to the CDC, there LGBTQ teens are showing ‘ongoing and extreme distress,’ with more than half of these students reporting a recent episode of poor mental health, and 22% reporting an actual suicide attempt in the past year.

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Elon bad now

 

 

 

 

 

 

The EU has approved a 4th species of insects for human consumption. From now on, it will be possible to sell food products made out of the larvae of the Lesser Mealworm.

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle December 30 2022

Dec 302022
 
 December 30, 2022  Posted by at 10:05 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  44 Responses »


Henri Matisse Harmony in red 1908

 

• We’ve Reached Peak Zelensky. Now What? (Freeman)
• World Could Reach ‘Critical Mass’ At Any Moment – Ex-Polish President (RT)
• On the Influence of Neo-Nazism in Ukraine (Lauria)
• Lavrov Suggests ‘Hundreds’ Of US Troops Are In Ukraine (RT)
• Ukraine Falsifying History And ‘Replacing’ Memory – Moscow (RT)
• Türkiye Warns Greece Against Expansion In Aegean Sea (RT)
• SBF Met With Senior White House Officials Shortly Before FTX Collapse (ZH)
• Integrity Lost and Regained (Malone)
• Study Finds Worse Antibodies After mRNA Boosters (JTN)
• The New Yorker Promotes “People’s CDC” And Mask Mandates Forever (ZH)
• Half of Chinese Arrivals to Italy Carrying COVID-19 Virus – All Omicron (CTH)
• Elon Musk’s Net Worth Collapse Is Biggest Loss Of Wealth In Modern History (Ind.)
• Britain’s Renewable Power Hits New Peak, Fossil Fuel Also Rises (R.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

GVB
https://twitter.com/i/status/1608247624544526336

 

 

Anecdotals
https://twitter.com/i/status/1608529574286999553

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Ukraine is losing soldiers at a rate 141 TIMES that of U.S. losses in Vietnam.”

• We’ve Reached Peak Zelensky. Now What? (Freeman)

When the president of the poorest, most corrupt nation in Europe is feted with multiple standing ovations by the combined Houses of Congress, and his name invoked in the same breath as Winston Churchill, you know we’ve reached Peak Zelensky. It’s a farcical, almost psychotic over-promotion, probably surpassed only by the media’s shameful, hyperbolic railroading of the country into war with Iraq, in 2003. Paraphrasing Gertrude from Hamlet, “Methinks the media doth hype too much.” Let’s remember that before ascending to his country’s presidency, Volodymyr Zelensky’s greatest claim to fame was that he could play the piano with his penis. I’m not joking. And he ran on a platform to unite his country for peace, and for making amends with Russia. Again, I’m not joking.

Now, he’s Europe’s George Washington, FDR and Douglas MacArthur all rolled into one and before whom the mighty and powerful genuflect. Please. The only place to go from here is down. And, that is surely coming. Soon. Consider some inconvenient facts that the fawning media, which is essentially the public relations arm of the weapons industry, doesn’t want you to know. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, recently let slip that the Ukrainian army has lost more than 100,000 troops in the eight months since the beginning of the war. Over the nine-year span of the Vietnam War, the U.S. with a population six times that of Ukraine, lost a total of 58,220 men. In other words, on a per day, per capita basis, Ukraine is losing soldiers at a rate 141 TIMES that of U.S. losses in Vietnam.

The U.S. lost the public on Vietnam when middle class white boys began coming home in body bags. Does anybody with half a brain believe such losses in Ukraine are sustainable? Does anybody have another plan to avert such slaughter? Von der Leyen is shrewdly laying the predicate for Western withdrawal from Ukraine and ending the war. If you look at the facts on the ground, not the boosterish propaganda ladled out by the media, you can understand why. In a matter of weeks, Russia, with its hypersonic missiles, destroyed half of Ukraine’s electrical power infrastructure. This, as winter is coming on. It can just as easily take out the other half, effectively bombing Ukraine back into the Stone Age. Is that what anybody wants?

The startling, indeed, terrifying part of this is that neither Ukraine nor the West have any defense against these hypersonic missiles. They travel so fast, and on variable trajectories, they cannot be shot down, even by the most advanced Western systems. They represent one of the greatest asymmetries in deliverable destructive power in the history of warfare, probably dwarfed only by the U.S.’s possession of atomic bombs at the end of World War II. Again, there is no effective defense against them. The Russians have them. The Ukrainians don’t. Game over. Can you understand why leaders in the West are beginning to wake up?

Churchill

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“..Russia is similar to Nazi Germany and has to be defeated militarily..”

• World Could Reach ‘Critical Mass’ At Any Moment – Ex-Polish President (RT)

The world is in chaos and could reach “critical mass” anytime, former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski has warned, citing the turbulence created by the Ukrainian crisis. The conflict has put an end to the old world order, the former head of state said during a TV interview on Thursday. “In short, we are in a time of dangerous chaos,” he concluded. “If we add further unrest, such as on the Serbian border, the critical mass may be easily exceeded.” The very fact that the possibility of a new world war is now being discussed is terrifying, he believes. Kwasniewski started his political career in Soviet times as a Polish youth organizer, and after the fall of communist rule, was elected to lead the country for two terms between 1995 and 2005.

He blamed Russia for the crisis in Ukraine and praised US President Joe Biden for leading Western nations in opposition to Moscow. The former politician claimed that Russia “turned out to be not so strong.” Poland, in turn, “is doing what it can do” to help Ukraine and the effort is being appreciated, he said. Kwasniewski cited a letter he received from former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma as evidence, in which he called Poles “true friends of Ukraine.” The Polish government has been one of the most vocal supporters of Kiev and has spared no words in accusing Russia of various misdeeds. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has claimed that Russia is similar to Nazi Germany and has to be defeated militarily. Warsaw has also offered to host US nuclear weapons on its soil, but Washington has said it has no plans for such a deployment.

Moscow sent its troops into Ukraine in late February, citing what it calls NATO’s creeping expansion into the country as one of the main reasons. Russia has accused Western nations of torpedoing peace talks with Kiev. The US and its allies want to hurt Russia as much as possible and are using Ukrainians as “cannon fodder” Russian President Putin has declared.

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Long history.

• On the Influence of Neo-Nazism in Ukraine (Lauria)

The U.S. relationship with Ukrainian fascists began after the Second World War. During the war, units of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) took part in the Holocaust, killing at least 100,000 Jews and Poles. Mykola Lebed, a top aide to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the fascist OUN-B, was recruited by the C.I.A. after the war, according to a 2010 study by the U.S. National Archives. The government study said, “Bandera’s wing (OUN/B) was a militant fascist organization.” Bandera’s closest deputy, Yaroslav Stetsko, said: ““I…fully appreciate the undeniably harmful and hostile role of the Jews, who are helping Moscow to enslave Ukraine…. I therefore support the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine….”

The study says: “At a July 6, 1941, meeting in Lwów, Bandera loyalists determined that Jews ‘have to be treated harshly…. We must finish them off…. Regarding the Jews, we will adopt any methods that lead to their destruction.’” Lebed himself proposed to “’cleanse the entire revolutionary territory of the Polish population,’ so that a resurgent Polish state would not claim the region as in 1918.” Lebed was the “foreign minister” of a Banderite government in exile, but he later broke with Bandera for acting as a dictator. The U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps termed Bandera “extremely dangerous” yet said he was “looked upon as the spiritual and national hero of all Ukrainians….” The C.I.A. was not interested in working with Bandera, pages 81-82 of the report say, but the British MI6 was.

“MI6 argued, Bandera’s group was ‘the strongest Ukrainian organization abroad, is deemed competent to train party cadres, [and] build a morally and politically healthy organization….’” An early 1954 MI6 summary noted that, “the operational aspect of this [British] collaboration [with Bandera] was developing satisfactorily. Gradually a more complete control was obtained over infiltration operations…” Britain ended its collaboration with Bandera in 1954. West German intelligence, under former Nazi intelligence chief Reinhard Gehlen, then worked with Bandera, who was eventually assassinated with cyanide dust by the KGB in Munich in 1959. Instead of Bandera, the C.I.A. was interested in Lebed, despite his fascist background. They set him up in an office in New York City from which he directed sabotage and propaganda operations on the agency’s behalf inside Ukraine against the Soviet Union.

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No doubt.

• Lavrov Suggests ‘Hundreds’ Of US Troops Are In Ukraine (RT)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has alleged that “hundreds” of American servicemen are deployed to Ukraine, claiming that US soldiers, military advisers and intelligence officers have long been direct participants in the conflict. Sitting down with Russia’s Channel One for an interview on Wednesday, Lavrov spoke at length about Washington’s deep involvement in the hostilities in Ukraine, which has steadily grown despite repeated assurances from American leaders that US personnel would have no role in the fighting. “Dozens, maybe even hundreds of American troops are in Ukraine, they were there even before the coup,” the FM said, referring to the 2014 ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich by nationalist formations and pro-Western activists. “CIA officers occupied at least one floor in the Security Service of Ukraine.”

Lavrov also claimed that the US military attache based in Kiev has provided significant advice to Ukrainian authorities, saying “Military specialists are obviously engaged not only in making visits to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, but, of course, in one way or another they provide direct advisory, and maybe even more than advisory, services.” He noted that a separate team of US specialists has traveled to Ukraine to monitor the flow of Western arms to the country, created after American lawmakers demanded a more robust mechanism for tracking billions in lethal aid. Given that “Ukraine is receiving more and more and better Western weapons,” the FM said Russian forces are now formulating plans to disrupt the arms shipments, adding that “Railway lines, bridges and tunnels” are being considered as targets to “make these deliveries more difficult or, ideally, stop them altogether.”

Lavrov went on to argue that Western states declared “war” on Russia nearly a decade ago, soon after the 2014 Euromaidan revolution, which was soon followed by US and NATO military support to the post-coup government. “The collective West, which is headed by a nuclear power – the United States – is at war with us,” he said. “This war was declared on us quite a long time ago, after the coup d’etat in Ukraine that was orchestrated by the United States and, in fact, backed by the European Union.” So far this year, Washington has authorized more than $20 billion in direct military aid to Ukraine, not counting the separate ‘Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative’ and billions more in economic and humanitarian assistance. US officials have indicated those policies are set to continue, having pledged to supply Kiev with as much aid as needed for “as long as it takes.”

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“The statue of Catherine II was restored by the citizens of Odessa themselves, back in 2007..”

• Ukraine Falsifying History And ‘Replacing’ Memory – Moscow (RT)

With its campaign of removing monuments and erasing Russian culture, the government in Kiev is attempting to rewrite Ukraine’s history and forcibly alter the memory of its own population, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday. She was commenting on the removal of the statues of Empress Catherine the Great and General Alexander Suvorov from the port city of Odessa. Local authorities ordered the monument to Catherine to be taken down “under the cover of night, like criminals,” Zakharova said, accusing Ukraine of “falsifying its own history, and destroying and replacing the historical memory of its people.”

“In their futile attempt to abolish Russian culture, to ban speaking and even thinking in Russian, Ukrainian authorities are trying to wipe off the face of the earth any objects that could awaken in the large Russian-speaking population of the country the awareness of what they are trying to take from them,” Zakharova noted. Part of that process is removing the monuments their own ancestors put up, she explained. The statue of Catherine II was restored by the citizens of Odessa themselves, back in 2007, to replace the 1900 monument taken down by the Bolshevik revolutionaries in 1920. Suvorov commanded Russian troops that took the Ottoman fort of Khadjibey in 1791. Three years later, by imperial decree, Catherine II established the city that would be named Odessa in 1795. The port ended up becoming the Russian Empire’s “pearl by the sea.” Some nationalists in Ukraine have called these facts “myths” imposed by “Russian occupiers” and urged the removal of monuments to Catherine, Suvorov and other Russians.

President Vladimir Zelensky’s government created a special task force for “de-Russification, de-Communization and decolonization” in June, expanding the policy of removing Soviet-era names and monuments adopted after the US-backed coup in 2014. Zelensky himself endorsed the removal of the Odessa monument in July, though he stopped short of approving a petition to replace the empress with a statue to American porn actor Billy Herrington. Two statues to Suvorov, in the city of Odessa and nearby Izmail, were also taken down in recent days. “The history of these places, like the entire history of Ukraine, is inseparable from Russian history, and any attempts of the Kiev regime to rewrite it are doomed to failure,” said Zakharova, vowing that the removed monuments will be restored to their place of honor once Ukraine is no longer under “the yoke of aggressive radical nationalists” and everything “returns to normal.”

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Erdogan thrives on his neutral stance, but still has some 90% inflation.

• Türkiye Warns Greece Against Expansion In Aegean Sea (RT)

Türkiye will not give Greece a single mile of territorial waters in the Aegean Sea, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday, warning that Ankara will use all means at its disposal to protect its interests. “We will not allow the expansion of [Greek] territorial waters by even one mile in the Aegean, let alone 12,” Cavusoglu was quoted as saying by the state-run Anadolu Agency. His comments came in response to reports that Athens plans to extend its territorial waters around the island of Crete to 12 nautical miles. Cavusoglu recalled a 1995 Turkish parliamentary decision that states that if Greece increases its territorial waters in the Aegean beyond six miles, the parliament would provide the government with “all powers,” including military ones, in order to defend Türkiye’s national interests. The minister went on to warn Greece not to “get into sham heroism by trusting those who might have your back.”


“Don’t seek adventurism. It won’t end well for you!” Cavusoglu warned. Last week, the Greek government announced that it plans to extend its territorial waters to the south and west of Crete in March, citing favorable international and regional developments, according to the online news outlet In.Gr, which cited sources from the presidential administration. The move puts further strain on the already fraught relations between Ankara and Athens. Back in May, Erdogan officially cut ties with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and closed all other communication channels between the countries. Although the two nations are NATO partners, they have a long history of rivalry and are entwined in a number of ongoing disputes, including over control of several Aegean islands, as well as about drilling rights in the Mediterranean, and the status of Cyprus.

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Coordinated.

• SBF Met With Senior White House Officials Shortly Before FTX Collapse (ZH)

FTX founder and accused crypto-crook Sam Bankman-Fried met with senior White House officials on at least four occasions in the months leading up to his firm’s massive implosion, Bloomberg reports. On Sept. 8, SBF met with senior Biden adviser Steve Ricchetti in a previously unreported encounter, White House officials familiar with the matter said. The meeting was “the latest in a handful of sessions,” according to the report. “Bankman-Fried had at least three others previously disclosed in White House visitor logs. They include one April 22 and another May 12, each with Ricchetti, and one a day later, on May 13, with Bruce Reed, another senior Biden aide, officials confirmed. The final meeting is recorded in logs as two meetings held back-to-back, but was one meeting, officials said. Some of the prior White House meetings included others from FTX. -Bloomberg”

What’s more, Bankman-Fried’s brother, Gabriel, held a March meeting of his own and was also at the May 13 meeting – bringing the total number up to five meetings that involved one or both brothers. According to one source, “politics” were not discussed despite SBF being a Democrat megadonor credited as a major factor in President Biden’s 2020 win. Instead, the brothers allegedly talked about general matters related to the ‘crypto industry and exchanges,’ as well as “pandemic prevention related to the foundation, Guarding Against Pandemics, run by Gabe Bankman-Fried,” according to an official. SBF now faces several criminal charges related to the collapse of FTX. His ties to Washington have come under the microscope since the collapse of his exchange – as Bankman-Fried gave millions of dollars to Democratic politicians – becoming the party’s second-largest individual donor in the 2022 session.

One person familiar with the meetings, speaking on condition they not be identified, said that politics was not discussed at the White House meetings. “While Bankman-Fried, or SBF as he’s known, lived in the Bahamas, he made frequent trips to Washington — testifying before Congress and meeting with key regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as well as with White House officials. -Bloomberg”. According to US prosecutors, SBF allegedly conspired with others to use corporate funds and shadow donors for political contributions, and illegally commingled billions of dollars of customers’ funds lent to his trading arm, Alameda Research.

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“I have a very busy day job running a $6 billion institute. I don’t have time to worry about things like the Great Barrington Declaration.”

• Integrity Lost and Regained (Malone)

Human beings can be characterized by exhibiting integrity or its opposites, hypocrisy and deceit. Buildings can have structural integrity, or they can be unsound, a danger to inhabitants. Organizations can have integrity, or can be corrupt. And a Nation can have integrity, or be divided against itself. Ed Dowd, Tom Lewis and their Maui colleagues diagnosed loss of integrity as a core problem contributing to the Covid crisis across virtually all governmental and corporate “verticals” and developed a solution which they (generously) named the “Malone Doctrine.” Subsequent events have validated their assessment. One needs look no further than the latest headlines. Election integrity has become one of the most trending of hashtags (in USA, Brazil, and so many other places).

Nord Stream (NS) and Nord Stream 2 (NS2) have been sabotaged, most certainly not by either Russia or Germany, but fearing retaliation no one dares even whisper the name of the culprit all know to be responsible. The deep corruption associated with the Biden family is being revealed, as is the role of corporate media in trying to keep it from impacting elections. The omniscient Anthony Fauci has followed in the footsteps of Hillary Clinton and so many others in deploying the “I cannot remember” defense, but with a new wrinkle of belligerent defiance; recently testifying that “I have a very busy day job running a $6 billion institute. I don’t have time to worry about things like the Great Barrington Declaration.”

Clear and compelling evidence released to Blaze Media under FOIA request document otherwise. During the Covid crisis, both CDC director Rochelle Walensky and Deborah Birx resorted to substituting “hope” for data in making major public health decisions, and then enforcing these decisions via deployment of highly refined psychological operations techniques against objecting United States Citizens. And then we have the cascading collapse of corruption known as the FTX scandal. Just to highlight some of the most recent examples. I argue that the Imperial Administrative State which the United States Federal Government has been transformed into has clearly lost any semblance of integrity.

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The stories on IgG4 keep coming..

• Study Finds Worse Antibodies After mRNA Boosters (JTN)

IgG4 antibodies, known for their noninflammatory properties, constituted just 0.04% of all IgG subclasses shortly after the second mRNA dose, the German study says. The fourth subclass started ramping up several months after the full series and reached a high of 19.27% “late after the third vaccination.” “Importantly, this class switch was associated with a reduced capacity of the spike-specific antibodies to mediate antibody-dependent cellular phagocytosis [ingesting and eliminating pathogens] and complement deposition,” the study’s introduction says. Serum samples taken after the booster and “normalized to the amount of anti-spike antibodies yielded significant[ly] lower phagocytic scores than sera from the same donors after two immunizations,” the study found.

The increased IgG4 “might result in longer viral persistence in case of infection,” according to the researchers, most of whom are associated with the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. The findings “may have consequences for the choice and timing” of mRNA vaccine regimens, including subsequent boosters. Co-author Kilian Schober wrote in a tweet thread that the 1-in-5 proportion of IgG4 after boosting jumped to 40-80% of antibodies after subsequent breakthrough infections, which is “very unusual.” While the researchers “saw improved antibody avidity [accumulated binding] and cross-neutralization after 3rd vs. 2nd vaccination,” he said, the “fragment crystallizable” antibody functions on cell receptors “are indeed deteriorated (!).” But Schober also cautioned against the view “among some anti-vax circles,” prompted by the paper’s preprint release this summer, that mRNA vaccines are inducing “tolerance” to infection rather than fighting it.

The study didn’t answer whether “the class switch [is] irrelevant in terms of consequences on subsequent infections,” he said. It is “conceivable” that the noninflammatory IgG4 response prevents “immunological over-activation while virus is still being neutralized [blocked from entering] via high-avidity antibody variable regions.” The IgG4 subclass is associated with increased COVID-related mortality, according to a letter by Italian researchers published in Elvesier’s European Journal of Internal Medicine a year ago. “Because anti-spike IgG4 have shown poor in vitro neutralizing capacity compared to IgG1, IgG2, and IgG3 antibodies, a first possibility is that hosts with prominent IgG4 immune responses might be more permissive to SARS-CoV-2 infection,” according to those San Raffaele Scientific Institute researchers.

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“They feel betrayed by the very government agencies that once fed their craving for fear.”

• The New Yorker Promotes “People’s CDC” And Mask Mandates Forever (ZH)

When the science no longer supports the establishment narrative, the science no longer matters. This is the lesson we have learned time and time again over the course of the past few years when it comes to covid mandates and vaccine cultism. Americans in particular have been whipped with incessant claims since 2020 that the “science is settled” when it comes to mask restrictions, lockdowns, mRNA technology, etc. Yet, as time passes, every “conspiracy theory” asserted by the anti-mandate crowd turns out to be true. This, however, is not stopping the covid cult (made up mostly of political leftists) from blindly marching forward as they cling to the sweet taste of ultimate power they experienced from 2020 – 2021. They just can’t let it go.

The pandemic world is their ideal world, and they continue to reveal their addiction in a steady outcry for ongoing restrictions. The New Yorker has recently joined the trend for perpetual medical tyranny with an article titled ‘The Case For Wearing Masks Forever’ in which they promote the concept of a new politicized version of the CDC, called the People’s CDC, which ignores the actual science and enables the irrational fears of covid obsessives. The People’s CDC is made up of academics, doctors, activists, and artists who believe that the government has left them to fend for themselves against Covid-19. They believe the CDC’s data and guidelines have been distorted by powerful forces with vested interests in keeping people at work and keeping anxieties about the pandemic down.

This is a fascinating juxtaposition of previous narratives. Two years ago, anti-mandate movements argued the exact opposite – That data and guidelines had been distorted by powerful forces vested in keeping the public afraid and under control. As it turns out, the anti-mandate crowd was right about everything. The public was being lied to about the effectiveness of the masks, the effectiveness of the lockdowns and the effectiveness of the vaccines. Establishment institutions have been forced by the wider dissemination of scientific data to admit this reality.

And now, leftists are livid. They feel betrayed by the very government agencies that once fed their craving for fear. The People’s CDC admits they don’t really know what their larger goal is, only that they are seeking to provide an “alternative source of information”, one that essentially reinforces their ideological assumptions. It should be noted that when conservatives and liberty activists tried to share scientific information that was contrary to the establishment narrative, it was these same leftists that cried for censorship and called anti-mandate groups “dangerous”.

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No new mutations at all.

• Half of Chinese Arrivals to Italy Carrying COVID-19 Virus – All Omicron (CTH)

Yesterday Italian officials announced that half the airline passengers arriving from China tested positive for COVID-19. However, in a follow-up today Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said so far all of the testing shows the omicron variant, no new sub-variants of the virus. The Biden administration CDC announced yesterday that effective January 5, 2023, all passengers traveling to the U.S. from China will be required to show a negative COVID-19 test prior to arrival.

(Bloomberg) — “Italy didn’t find any new concerning Covid-19 mutations among recent arrivals from China who tested positive for the virus, a relief for officials worried about fresh health threats. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Italy already sequenced half of the samples tested in Milan and they all show the omicron strain of the coronavirus. “This is quite reassuring,” she said at a press conference Thursday. “The situation in Italy is under control, and there are no immediate concerns.” China has scrapped its strict lockdown measures in recent weeks, leading to a surge in infections in the country. While the exact numbers are unclear, the rapid spread has led to concerns around the world about new strains emerging. The US and Italy on Wednesday joined an increasing number of nations demanding Covid tests for travelers from China, after Japan and Taiwan unveiled similar measures.”

It seems odd that with all this time passed, China is still struggling with COVID-19 mitigation and treatment while the rest of the world seems to have moved beyond it. Perhaps this is an outcome of China’s zero covid approach.

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Only $138 billion left..

• Elon Musk’s Net Worth Collapse Is Biggest Loss Of Wealth In Modern History (Ind.)

Elon Musk‘s net worth has plummeted by more than $200bn over the past 13 months, the biggest loss of wealth in recent history. The tech tycoon lost more than half of his fortune between November 2021 and December this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, largely due to the collapse of Tesla stock during that time. The $208bn wiped from Mr Musk’s net worth is roughly equivalent to the GDP of Greece. The amount lost is also more than the net worth of the world’s richest person, Bernard Arnault. After topping the rich list for most of the year, Mr Musk lost his place to the French business magnate earlier this month, although he remains ahead of other US tech billionaires that have dominated the list in recent years.


Mr Musk’s net worth peaked at $338bn in November 2021, according to Bloomberg, coinciding with the fortunes of Tesla. The electric car maker has lost roughly 70 per cent of its value in 2022 following production delays in China, vehicle recalls, and concerns among investors that its CEO has been distracted by his new role as head of Twitter. Tesla’s market cap is down by nearly $900bn since November 2021, causing it to drop out of the top 10 most valuable companies. Despite the losses, Tesla remains the world’s most valuable car maker by a distance, with its losses over the last year equivalent to the combined market cap of all other automakers.

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“- UK renewable power hit a peak;
– the UK experienced its ‘warmest’ year; and
– the UK experienced its worst energy crisis in 40+ years.
So renewables didn’t solve the ‘problem’ they were supposed to, but instead caused a crisis.”

• Britain’s Renewable Power Hits New Peak, Fossil Fuel Also Rises (R.)

Renewable power sources generated 40% of Britain’s electricity in 2022, up from 35% in 2021, while the share of fossil fuel in the energy mix also rose, a report by academics from Imperial College London for Drax Electric Insights showed on Thursday. Overall generation from renewables has more than quadrupled over the last decade. Wind, solar, biomass and hydro are the main sources of renewable power. Fossil fuel still has a larger share, providing 42% of Britain’s power in 2022, which was its biggest contribution to the country’s fuel mix since 2016. Iain Staffell of Imperial College London, and lead author of the report, said 2022 had been “a year like no other for the energy industry”.

Although renewables provide “more cheap, green energy than ever before,” he said, the public is feeling the pain of gas prices, which surged in response to supply disruption linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. Britain, in common with other European countries, extended the life of coal-fired power units to try to ensure adequate supplies during winter peak demand as Britain’s power imports dropped to zero in 2022, compared with 8% of supplies in 2021, Drax said. The country has significantly reduced its reliance on coal, the most carbon-intensive form of power generation. The National Grid said 0.7% of generation came from coal in November compared with 11.3% at the same time in 2017. On one day in May, renewables provided almost 73% of power to the grid, the report said.

The rise of renewable power cut Britain’s carbon emissions by 2.7 million tonnes compared to the previous year, according to Thursday’s report. Another report by Drax, once heavily reliant on coal and now Britain’s biggest renewable power generator by output, said that between 2010-19, Britain cut its carbon emissions from its power grid further and faster than any other major economy.

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Spud the beaver
https://twitter.com/i/status/1608278905886216192

 

 

Smallest cat

 

 

Lions

 

 

Deer jumping

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle August 28 2022

Aug 282022
 
 August 28, 2022  Posted by at 8:24 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  71 Responses »


Henri Matisse The terrace, St. Tropez 1904

 

• All The Way To Odessa (Escobar)
• Blame West For Global Inflation — Former Czech President (RT)
• China Calls On Putin To End Russian Roulette At Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant (iN)
• US Comments On American Fighter Death In Ukraine (RT)
• Amnesty Issues Warning About Donbass Tribunal (RT)
• Sanctions War Isn’t Going As Well As Planned – The Economist (RT)
• Serbia Comments On Russia Gas Supplies (RT)
• Pentagon Signs Deal To Make Air Defense Systems For Ukraine (RT)
• Ukraine Site Threatens 1000s, Incl. Americans, With Extrajudicial Killings (A.)
• What Did Not Happen With The Release Of The Mar-a-Lago Affidavit? (Turley)
• Judge Announces ‘Preliminary Intent To Appoint A Special Master’ (Fox)
• Don’t Charge Trump With Espionage (John Kiriakou)
• Let Djokovic Play (Vinay Prasad)
• 62% of Democratic Students Oppose Sharing Dorm Rooms With Republicans (Turley)
• Assange Files Appeal To Stop US Extradition (RT)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zelensky

 

 

Biden showering with his daughter is creepy as hell, but for me it’s more: what if Ivanka had written this about her dad? He would have been crucified.

 

 

Tucker Rumble

 

 

 

 

“..the NATO-Bandera alliance..”

• All The Way To Odessa (Escobar)

Europe is now a runaway TGV – minus the requisite Hollywood production values. Assuming it does not veer off track – a dicey proposition – it may eventually arrive at a railway station called Agenda 2030, The Great Narrative, or some other NATO/Davos denomination du jour. As it stands, what’s remarkable is how the “marginal” Russian economy hardly broke a sweat to “end the abundance” of the wealthiest region on the planet. Moscow does not even entertain the notion of negotiating with Brussels because there’s nothing to negotiate – considering puny Eurocrats will only be hurled away from their zombified state when the dire socio-economic consequences of “the end of abundance” will finally translate into peasants with pitchforks roaming the continent.

It may be eons away, but inevitably the average Italian, German or Frenchman will connect the dots and realize it is their own “leaders” – national nullities and mostly unelected Eurocrats – who are paving their road to poverty. You will be poor. And you will like it. Because we are all supporting freedom for Ukrainian neo-nazis. That brings the concept of “multicultural Europe” to a whole new level. The runaway train, of course, may veer off track and plunge into an Alpine abyss. In this case something might be saved from the wreckage – and “reconstruction” might be on the cards. But reconstruct what? Europe could always reconstruct a new Reich (collapsed with a bang in 1945); a soft Reich (erected at the end of WWII); or break with its past failures, sing “I’m Free” – and connect with Eurasia. Don’t bet on it.

The SMO may be about to radically change – something that will drive the already clueless denizens of US Think Tankland and their Euro vassals even more berserk. President Putin and Defense Minister Shoigu have been giving serious hints the only way for the pain dial is up – considering the mounting evidence of terrorism inside Russian territory; the vile assassination of Darya Dugina; non-stop shelling of civilians in border regions; attacks on Crimea; the use of chemical weapons; and the shelling of Zaporizhzhya power plant raising the risk of a nuclear catastrophe. This past Tuesday, one day before the SMO completing six months, Crimea’s permanent representative to the Kremlin, Georgy Muradov, all but spelled it out.

He stressed the necessity to “reintegrate all the Taurian lands” – Crimea, the Northern Black Sea and the Azov Sea – into a single entity as soon as “in the next few months”. He defined this process as “objective and demanded by the population of these regions.” Muradov added, “given not only the strikes on Crimea, but also the continuous shelling of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, the dam of the Kakhovka reservoir, peaceful facilities on the territory of Russia, the DNR and LNR, there are all preconditions to qualify the actions of the Banderite regime as terrorist.” The conclusion is inevitable: “the political issue of changing the format of the special military operation” enters the agenda. After all, Washington and Brussels “have already prepared new anti-Crimean provocations of the NATO-Bandera alliance”.

So when we examine what the “restoration of the Taurian lands” implies, we see not only the contours of Novorossiya but most of all that there won’t be any security for Crimea – and thus Russia – in the Black Sea without Odessa becoming Russian again. And that, on top of it, will solve the Transnistria dilemma. Add to it Kharkov – the capital and top industrial center of Greater Donbass. And of course Dnipropetrovsk. They are all SMO objectives, the whole combo to be later protected by buffer zones in Chernihiv and Sumy oblasts. Only then the “tasks” – as Shoigu calls them – of the SMO would be declared fulfilled. The timeline could be eight to ten months – after a lull under General Winter.

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“The ‘green delirium..’”

• Blame West For Global Inflation — Former Czech President (RT)

Former Czech President Vaclav Klaus has rejected the notion that the Ukrainian conflict has been the sole reason for the economic problems now experienced around the globe. “The issues that led to spiking inflation and to a huge increase in energy prices that we have now originated long before February 24” when Russia sent its troops into Ukraine, Klaus told outlet Seznam Sravy on Friday. “This is self-inflicted, this is self-inflicted by the West. The Russian invasion just added to that,”he insisted. Russia is a major supplier of gas, oil and coal, but it’s “just one of the players” on the international market, the 81-year-old economist, who was the Czech Republic’s president between 2003 and 2013, pointed out.


So, the reduction of supply of Russian hydrocarbons to the EU and soaring energy prices – which came as a result of sweeping sanctions imposed on Moscow by the bloc – just can’t be the number one cause for high inflation rates and soaring energy prices, Klaus insisted. “I don’t understand why the number one cause isn’t being mentioned. The ‘green delirium,’ the supposed fight against climate change and the EU’s Green Deal – that’s the fundamental cause for the rise in prices,” he said, referring to the Western attempts in recent years to switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. The ex-president has urged the sides involved to find a solution to the conflict in Ukraine, which has already been going on for half a year, warning that the situation will only “get worse and worse” if it’s not done soon. “It won’t be enough for the representatives of Ukraine and Russia to get together. It’s necessary for the West, especially the US, to start negotiating with Russia. Every person with at least some intelligence understands this,” he also remarked.

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How news is fabricated. Michael Day at iNews.uk comes with this headline, but nowhere in his quotes is it repeated. Instead, China simply called on both sides to be careful. And of course the article talks about Russian shelling, which we know is nonsensical. Russia’s held the plant since March, and there was never an issue until Ukraine started firing at it. But yeah “Russian Roulette” sounds cute, and so does “China Calls On Putin To End..” [it].

• China Calls On Putin To End Russian Roulette At Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant (iN)

China has issued a thinly veiled attack on Russia’s brinkmanship over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine, as fears of disaster escalate following a near-miss at the site. A senior Chinese official told the UN on Friday that just one incident might cause a serious nuclear accident “with irreversible consequences for the ecosystem and public health of Ukraine and its neighbouring countries”. Geng Shuang, China’s deputy permanent representative at the UN, pointedly called on all parties involved “to exercise maximum restraint strictly abide by international law and minimise the risk of accidents”, adding: ”We must not allow the tragedies of the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents to be repeated.”

In addition to an international public health emergency, a serious accident and radiation release at the plant would be another blow to the world economy, already severely impoacted by Covid-19 and the energy crisis. China’s warning is signficiant as it is perhaps the only world power with real influence over the Putin regime. Beijing issued its statement just hours after an incident at Zaporizhzhia – Europe’s largest nuclear power plant – when electricity was cut off for hours, according to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. Mr Zelensky said Russian shelling on Thursday sparked fires in the ash pits of a nearby coal power station, wihch disconnected the Zaporozhzhia plant from the power grid. A Russian official claimed Ukraine was to blame.

Back-up diesel generators ensured that the power supply to the plant, vital for cooling and safety systems there, continued, Mr Zelensky said. He urged international bodies to act faster to force Russian troops to vacate the site, located in the south of country. Oleh Savitskyi, an energy policy expert with the Ukrainian Climate Network who has worked in the country’s ministry of energy and environment protection, told the Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists (BOAS) that relying on back-up diesel generators was not enough “Russians are using Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as their military base, they could have been stealing that diesel fuel or using it for their vehicles. Nobody knows how much fuel is available,” he said.

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Why do you have to hear this through RT, and not a US source, who should be all over it? Easy:

“..the fighter was killed not by Russian or allied forces, but by his fellow soldiers while “fleeing from the position.”

• US Comments On American Fighter Death In Ukraine (RT)

Another American has died in fighting in Ukraine, the US State Department revealed on Friday, confirming previous claims made by Russian officials. “We can confirm the death of a US citizen in Ukraine,” a US State Department spokesperson told Newsweek on Friday. “Out of respect for the privacy of the family, we have no further comment at this time.” On Friday, Oleg Kozhemyako, who serves as the governor of Russia’s Far Eastern Primorsky Region, said that the ‘Tiger’ military unit from his area had eliminated an American while repelling an attack from a group consisting of mercenaries from several countries.

“An American mercenary was destroyed in Ukraine,” he said on his Telegram, attaching photos of both a US passport and Ukrainian military service card, apparently issued in the name of Joshua Alan Jones. The ID documents say he was born in Tennessee and joined the Ukrainian Army on July 14 with the A3449 military unit. According to Andrey Rudenko, a Russian military reporter, the fighter was killed not by Russian or allied forces, but by his fellow soldiers while “fleeing from the position.” The State Department spokesperson offered a reminder that “US citizens should not travel to Ukraine, due to the active armed conflict and the singling out of US citizens in Ukraine by Russian government security officials.”

“US citizens in Ukraine should depart immediately if it is safe to do so using any commercial or other privately available ground transportation options,” the representative reiterated. Russia’s Ministry of Defense has repeatedly claimed it had destroyed foreign mercenaries in Ukraine, including by conducting high-precision missile strikes. Moreover, earlier this month, authorities of the Donetsk People’s Republic said that three Western nationals accused of fighting as mercenaries for Ukraine could be sentenced to death while another two are facing up to eight years behind bars for the same reason. Earlier, the Russian Ministry of Defense warned that mercenaries aren’t viewed as combatants under international law and “the best thing that awaits them if they are captured alive is a trial and maximum prison terms.” s

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Amnesty still feels queasy. More interesting is Duma Speaker Volodin:

“He and his inner circle ordered to bomb, shoot and kill peaceful citizens: the elderly, women, children. That is why Zelensky is doing everything to prevent the tribunal.

• Amnesty Issues Warning About Donbass Tribunal (RT)

Amnesty International is against putting Ukrainian POWs on trial for alleged war crimes, insisting that Russia and Donbass are in no position to do so. Describing the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics as “Russian-backed armed groups,”the organization called the upcoming tribunals “illegal and abusive.” The organization also blasted the decision to set up the trials in the city of Mariupol, captured by Russian and Donbass forces during the ongoing conflict, saying it was “a further act of cruelty against a city.” “Any attempts by Russian authorities to try Ukrainian prisoners of war in so-called ‘international tribunals’ set up by armed groups under Russia’s effective control in Mariupol are illegal and unacceptable,” Amnesty International’s Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Marie Struthers, said in a statement on Friday.

The remarks echoed those recently made by top Ukrainian officials, including Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, who threatened to cut any potential negotiations with Russia should Ukrainian POWs, primarily fighters of the notorious neo-Nazi Azov regiment, be placed on a “show trial.” “If this despicable show trial takes place … This will be the line beyond which any negotiations are impossible. Russia will cut itself off from any negotiations,” Zelensky said in a video address on Monday. Zelensky’s call, however, has been promptly snubbed by top Russian and Donbass officials, with the head of the DPR, Denis Pushilin, stating such threats will have “no effect” on the tribunal plans.

“The data on 80 counts of crimes committed by the Azov has been collected, 23 people have been arrested and are in custody,” Pushilin stated. Russian Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin issued a darker warning in response to Zelensky’s threats, suggesting the public hearings will expose Kiev’s crimes, which is why the Ukrainian president rightfully fears them. “He and the Kiev regime have reasons to be afraid,” Volodin said. “He and his inner circle ordered to bomb, shoot and kill peaceful citizens: the elderly, women, children. That is why Zelensky is doing everything to prevent the tribunal.”

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“The biggest flaw [of sanctions] is that full or partial embargoes are not being enforced by over 100 countries with 40% of world GDP..”

• Sanctions War Isn’t Going As Well As Planned – The Economist (RT)

The harsh sanctions imposed on Russia by the West over the conflict in Ukraine have so far been unable to deliver the desired result, The Economist magazine has acknowledged, adding that the strategy has “flaws.” “Worryingly, so far the sanctions war is not going as well as expected,” the British publication said in its article on Thursday, insisting that the effectiveness of economic restrictions on Moscow “is key to the outcome of the Ukraine war.” “Russia’s GDP will shrink by 6% in 2022, reckons the IMF, much less than the 15% drop many expected in March… Energy sales will generate a current-account surplus of $265 billion this year, the world’s second-largest after China. After a crunch, Russia’s financial system has stabilized and the country is finding new suppliers for some imports, including China,” it pointed out.

At the same time, the energy crisis, which has been provoked by the sanctions war, “may trigger a recession” in Europe, where gas prices spiked by another 20% this week, according to the British magazine. This all means that the expected “knockout blow [from restricting Russia] has not materialized,” The Economist said. “The unipolar moment of the 1990s, when America’s supremacy was uncontested, is long gone, and the West’s appetite to use military force has waned since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” it acknowledged. Economic restrictions “seemed” to be the new tool that would allow the US, EU and its allies to project their power globally, but the conflict in Ukraine has revealed that “the sanctions weapon has flaws,” it said.

One of those flaws is “the time lag,” the magazine continued. For example, “blocking [Russia’s] access to tech the West monopolizes takes years to bite,” it added. The Economist suggested that isolation from Western markets could only “cause havoc in Russia… on a three- to five-year horizon.” “The biggest flaw [of sanctions] is that full or partial embargoes are not being enforced by over 100 countries with 40% of world GDP,” the outlet insisted. “A globalized economy is good at adapting to shocks and opportunities, particularly as most countries have no desire to enforce Western policy.” With economic curbs failing to cripple the Russian economy, one should “discard any illusions that sanctions offer the West a cheap and asymmetric way to confront China” if it decides to use force against Taiwan, The Economist warned.

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Hungary, Serbia, Turkey, who’s next?

• Serbia Comments On Russia Gas Supplies (RT)

Serbs would not have to save energy and reduce their consumption this winter thanks to Belgrade’s policies and gas imports from Russia, President Aleksandar Vucic told his fellow citizens in an address on Saturday. “There are no plans for electricity restrictions next winter,” he said, adding, however, that the situation in the energy field remains “extremely difficult.” At the same time, the Serbian cabinet is expected to provide “large discounts” to those who did save electricity this year in comparison to the previous one, he said. Such measures have become possible particularly due to gas imports from Russia, the Serbian leader believes. Serbia purchases 2 million cubic meters of gas – or between 63% and 64% of all gas it needs – from Russia and its total cost amounts to €800 million ($797 million), Vucic said, calling such a price “fantastic.”


If Belgrade had to buy gas at the current European market prices, it would go bankrupt, he said, arguing that the remaining 1.2 million cubic meters of gas – or around 36% of its total consumption – would cost Serbia €4.8 billion ($4.7 billion) now. “And our entire budget is around €13 billion,” the president said. Vucic also praised a deal Belgrade struck with Budapest that would see Hungary storing between 300 and 500 cubic meters of gas purchased by Serbia in its gas storages. The Serbian president’ comments come as the European gas prices continue to soar. September futures on the TTF hub in the Netherlands rose to nearly $3,500 per thousand cubic meters on Friday, according to data on the London ICE exchange.

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Raytheon pay day. But this stuff won’t be ready for another two years. They are actively trying to create a 10-year war. Why would Russia wait that long, though?

• Pentagon Signs Deal To Make Air Defense Systems For Ukraine (RT)

The Pentagon has signed a $182-million deal with US arms manufacturer Raytheon to produce NASAMS (National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems) for the Ukrainian military. The work on short-and medium-range air defense weaponry will be conducted at Raytheon’s facilities in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, with an estimated completion date of August 23, 2024, the US Department of Defense said in a statement on Friday. Earlier this week, US President Joe Biden announced yet another military aid package for Ukraine amid its conflict with Russia. At $2.98 billion it is the largest to date, and will include six NASAMS systems.


The military assistance will be funded as part of the so-called Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), meaning the hardware will be specifically produced for Kiev, and not taken from US stocks. In an article earlier this month, Air Force Magazine described the NASAMS as a vital piece of technology that could help the Ukrainian forces to shoot down Russian cruise missiles, which have so far been hitting targets in the country “nearly unimpeded.” Moscow has long been critical of weapons supplies to Kiev by Washington and its allies, saying that they only prolong the conflict and increase the risk of a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia.

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“In total, nearly 200,000 people have been declared ‘criminals’ over the five years.”

German politicians, a French actor, Victor Orban, Henry Kissinger, and of course as per last week, Roger Waters.

• Ukraine Site Threatens 1000s, Incl. Americans, With Extrajudicial Killings (A.)

Mirotvorets, which compiles lists of ‘enemies of Ukraine’, has been operating with impunity for eight years. For the last eight years, a group of publicly unknown activists in Ukraine have been compiling lists of ‘enemies of the people’ with impunity. Hundreds of thousands have been declared criminals without trial. Among them are not only Russian citizens, but also Ukrainian opposition figures and bloggers, European politicians, and US citizens. At the very least, being added to this list is a stigma that makes life difficult in Ukraine, but it can also serve as justification for imprisonment or, in some cases, even being killed. This is exactly what happened last weekend to Daria Dugina, daughter of world-famous Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, who’s name also can be found on that list.

RT explains what is behind the Mirotvorets, or ‘Peacemaker’, website, whose creators seek to bring ‘peace’ to their country with the help of extrajudicial killings, and why the Ukrainian authorities have done nothing about this despite condemnation from the international community. What is Mirotvorets? The main page of the Ukrainian Mirotvorets website proclaims that the outlet represents a ‘Center for Research of Signs of Crimes against the National Security of Ukraine, Peace, Humanity, and the International Law’. It claims to have been created by a group of academics, journalists, and other specialists. However, their names are known to no one, and the outfit itself has never even been officially registered in Ukraine. Nevertheless, this organization has been in operation for nine years, since August 2014.

[..] As long as Mirotvorets was limiting itself to publishing information on Ukrainian citizens living in Crimea and Donbass, Ukrainian opposition politicians and journalists, and Russian residents and officials, the odious organization went unnoticed in the ‘civilized world’. But a scandal erupted in 2016, when Mirotvorets published information on employees of a host of media outlets, including the BBC, Reuters, Al Jazeera, AFP, Le Monde, the Guardian, Le Figaro, France 24, El Mundo, CBS News, CNN, Sky News, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, Cheska Televize, Radio France, Channel 9 Australia, the Associated Press, Japan TV, the Daily Mail, Die Welt, the Washington Post and New York Times, as well as representatives of Human Rights Watch and many other organizations, for “cooperating with a terrorist organization” (i.e., the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics).

[..] so far, calls for the closure of Mirotvorets have, in fact, been limited to a chorus of journalists, human rights defenders, and parliamentarians, who lack the power to make legally binding decisions with respect to Ukraine. This issue is not included among the list of requirements put forth by the Council of Europe or the European Commission that Kiev must fulfil in order to implement the EU Association Agreement.

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“..the largest Rorschach test in history..”

• What Did Not Happen With The Release Of The Mar-a-Lago Affidavit? (Turley)

With Friday’s release of the redacted affidavit from the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, the largest Rorschach test in history seemed to play out on cable television. Instead of ink blots, pundits and politicians stared at pages of solid black lines and offered strikingly different “ah-ha” observations. For former Mueller top aide Andrew Weissmann, the affidavit meant one thing — that “the former president is going to be prosecuted.” (Of course, Weissmann once expressed certainty that Donald Trump would pardon himself by his last day in office.) There already are a plethora of news and opinion columns focusing on five things we learned from the redacted affidavit. Equally telling, I think, is what did not happen with the affidavit’s release.

[..] There is every reason to believe that what followed contained some facts that could be released on the FBI’s communications with the Trump team or the breakdown of such communications. After all, the Trump team already knows about that. Yet the government is saying that everything which occurred in that critical month cannot be disclosed in even the smallest detail. The court could have pushed for additional disclosures but chose to call it a day, based on government representations that more would cause harm. Yet this is the same department that maintained all of the pages released this week could not be released without causing harm.

There is still more that can be done by the court. One option is the special master requested, belatedly, by Trump’s team. I previously argued that Attorney General Merrick Garland should have proposed such an appointment to assure the public that this was not a pretextual search using sensitive documents as an excuse for a massive seizure. The scope of the warrant was ridiculously broad, allowing the seizure of virtually every document in the storage room and every document generated during Trump’s presidency. A special master could have sorted through this mass of material and separated privileged or immaterial documents. That would add to the legitimacy of an otherwise unlimited search.

That also did not happen. However, a special master could still serve the same interests of transparency and legitimacy. By dividing these documents into classified material, unclassified but defense-related information, and unclassified material we would have a better understanding of the scope and seriousness of any alleged crimes. That is why the most curious thing about the redacted affidavit is what did not happen. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Silver Blaze,” a police inspector asks Sherlock Holmes if anything about a crime scene bothered him. The brilliant detective responds, “To the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.” When the confused inspector objects that “the dog did nothing in the night-time,” Holmes replies: “That was the curious incident.”

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“A hearing is set for Sept. 1 at 1:00 p.m.”

• Judge Announces ‘Preliminary Intent To Appoint A Special Master’ (Fox)

A federal judge on Saturday announced her “preliminary intent to appoint a special master” to review records seized by the FBI during its unprecedented raid of his Mar-a-Lago home earlier this month, at the request of former President Trump and his legal team, citing the “exceptional circumstances.” Trump and his legal team filed a motion Monday evening seeking an independent review of the records seized by the FBI during its raid of Mar-a-Lago earlier this month, saying the decision to search his private residence just months before the 2022 midterm elections “involved political calculations aimed at diminishing the leading voice in the Republican Party, President Trump.”

U.S. District Judge from the Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen M. Cannon on Saturday afternoon said that the decision was made upon the review of Trump’s submissions and “the exceptional circumstances presented.” “Pursuant to Rule 53(b) (1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Court’s inherent authority, and without prejudice to the parties’ objections, the Court hereby provides notice of its preliminary intent to appoint a special master in this case,” Cannon wrote in a filing Saturday. A hearing is set for Sept. 1 at 1:00 p.m. in West Palm Beach, Fla. Cannon also ordered the Justice Department to file a response by Aug. 30 and provide, “under seal,” a “more detailed Receipt for Property specifying all property seized pursuant to the search warrant executed on August 8, 2022.”

The current property receipt shows that FBI agents took approximately 20 boxes of items from the premises, including one set of documents marked as “Various classified/TS/SCI documents,” which refers to top secret/sensitive compartmented information. Records covered by that government classification level could potentially include human intelligence and information that, if disclosed, could jeopardize relations between the U.S. and other nations, as well as the lives of intelligence operatives abroad. However, the classification also encompasses national security information related to the daily operations of the president of the United States. The property receipt also showed that FBI agents collected four sets of top secret documents, three sets of secret documents and three sets of confidential documents, but the document does not reveal any details about any of those records.

Maher Reiner

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Word du jour: Overreach.

• Don’t Charge Trump With Espionage (John Kiriakou)

To understand the damage that this deeply flawed law has done, and will continue to do, we have to look at its origins. The Espionage Act was written in 1917, at the height of World War I. The U.S. was panicked at the thought of German spies working undercover to steal its secrets and to disrupt its ability to produce war materiel and support its allies. Congress drew up a law in which one provision, Section 794, made it a crime punishable by life imprisonment or death to provide “national defense information” to a foreign power. But another provision, Section 793, made it a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison to “provide national defense information to any person not entitled to receive it.”

The problems with the law were myriad. First, nobody ever bothered to define what “national defense information” was. The law doesn’t even mention the term “classified information” because the classification system wouldn’t be invented for another 40 years. Second, there was no “affirmative defense” written into the law. A defendant was forbidden from saying in court, “Yes, I gave national defense information to a reporter because I was revealing a crime” or “I did it in the national interest.” And to make matters worse, the Sedition Act, which was passed a year later, amended the Espionage Act to criminalize many forms of speech, including “any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the flag of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy.”

Even a Hollywood studio was prosecuted under the Espionage Act. In United States v. Motion Picture Film, a federal court upheld the Justice Department’s seizure of the film, called Spirit of ’76, because a scene showed British soldiers being cruel to colonists. The Justice Department had argued that such a depiction, even if true, could undermine public support for the British in the world war. The film’s producer, Robert Goldstein, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined $5,000. He served three years. These are only a few of the dozens of “espionage” prosecutions from the period. The law’s Section 793 was largely ignored from the mid-1920s to the early 1970s, when the Nixon administration charged Daniel Ellsberg with multiple counts of espionage for releasing the Pentagon Papers to the media. The case fell apart when Nixon ordered his “plumbers” to break into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, steal his files and send them to newspapers. Section 793 then went dormant again until Barack Obama was elected president in 2008.

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It’s theater. And it’s too late.

• Let Djokovic Play (Vinay Prasad)

The credibility and legitimacy of public health demands two things. The rules have to make sense; they can’t be nakedly contradictory. And the rules have to benefit people. You can’t demand jumping through hoops merely for optics. The treatment of the tennis star Novak Djokovic, who is officially blocked from competing in this year’s U.S. Open, set to begin on Monday, violates both. Keeping him from playing because he has not received a Covid-19 vaccine undermines the credibility of the White House, which set the policy, and public health more broadly. I’m saying this both as a Democrat and a doctor gravely concerned about eroded trust in our institutions.

Djokovic is one of the best tennis players of all time. He is currently vying for most majors of any champion (21 to date), competing with Rafael Nadal (22) and Roger Federer (20). But there will forever be an asterisk next to those comparisons because Djokovic is banned from entering the U.S. to compete in this year’s U.S. Open because of a byzantine rule that non-U.S. citizens cannot enter the country without proof of vaccination. This rule makes no sense from a medical or public health standpoint. Consider the facts. Djokovic is 35 years old, and he is in terrific health. He has had and recovered from Covid-19 twice. This—and the fact that current variants are less lethal than prior strains—means that Djokovic’s odds of doing well were he to get sick with Covid-19 again are remarkably good, and lower than his risk of seasonal influenza.

If Djokovic gets a vaccine at this moment it would be against the ancestral, Wuhan strain of the coronavirus and there is no good evidence this would further improve his odds. Now consider Djokovic’s risk to others. At least 140 million Americans have had and recovered from Covid-19 as of January (this number is higher today), and both vaccinated and unvaccinated can spread the disease. Data shows, when infected, that vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals shed virus at similar rates and for similar durations. Forcing Djokovic to get vaccinated won’t protect others. Sars-cov-2 will circulate in the United States for a thousand years whether we let Djokovic in, or keep him out forever.

Then, there are the absurd contradictions in our current rules. Unvaccinated American citizens can move freely in and out of the country without testing. Unvaccinated people can pack the stadium to watch this year’s U.S. Open, where face masks are optional. There is no vaccine or testing requirement to attend. Worst of all, Novak Djokovic competed in last year’s U.S. Open, where he made the finals before the travel rule barring his entry was in place. Joe Biden, who made the rule that blocks Djokovic, has received four Covid-19 vaccine doses. He has had Covid-19 twice, and taken at least 2 courses of Paxlovid. His wife, first lady Jill Biden, has also had four vaccine doses, also had Covid-19 twice. Yet, for some reason, their concern is the Novak Djokovics of the world.

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“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Is there any comparable time in history?

• 62% of Democratic Students Oppose Sharing Dorm Rooms With Republicans (Turley)

It is a sign of our times. It used to be that the key criterion for college roommates was whether you are a “partier v. non-partier.” Now, it is just your party. A new NBC and Generation Lab study of the class of 2025 showed that roughly half of college students refuse to live with someone who voted for a member of a different political party. That percentage is notably much higher with Democrats rather than Republicans. According to the poll, 46% responded that they would “probably not” or “definitely not” be willing to share a room with someone from another political party.


Of those, 62% of young Democrats refused to share a room with a member of the Republican party while only 28% of young Republicans took that position. That attitude extended to marriage where 52% ruled out a spouse from an opposing party. So much for opposites attracting. Notably, 62% would not work for a company that does not share their political values. It seems Twitter is going to be busy this hiring season. sThe poll reflects not just our age of rage but the increasing siloed news consumption of citizens. People now largely remain in echo chambers for news from the left or the right. It appears that such self imposed isolation now extends socially and professionally for the rising generation, particularly for Democratic students.

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“Overwhelming evidence has emerged proving that the US prosecution against my husband is a criminal abuse..”

• Assange Files Appeal To Stop US Extradition (RT)

Julian Assange’s legal team filed an appeal on Friday to stop the WikiLeaks co-founder’s extradition to the US, where he faces espionage charges that carry a prison sentence of up to 175 years. According to WikiLeaks, Assange’s lawyers filed “perfected grounds of appeal” before the UK High Court of Justice against the US government and UK Home Secretary Priti Patel, who approved the extradition of the Australian-born editor in mid-June. The appeal argues that “Julian Assange is being prosecuted and punished for his political opinions,” while the US government “misrepresented the core facts” of the case to the UK judiciary. It adds that the request to extradite the WikiLeaks co-founder violates the relevant treaty between the US and the UK, as well as international law.


The document also reportedly contains some new evidence that has been compiled since the UK court ruled on Assange’s extradition in early 2021. The editor’s wife, Stella Assange, said: “Overwhelming evidence has emerged proving that the US prosecution against my husband is a criminal abuse,” adding that the high court will now decide whether her husband is given the opportunity to make his case against the US before open court at the appeal. In early June, the Wall Street Journal reported that Assange’s lawyers had filed two appeals to fight his extradition to the US, just a day before the deadline for the legal action was set to expire. The exact details of the appeal, however, were unclear.

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Quick prayer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1563382574139207682

 

 

German power baseload price

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 24 2022

Jul 242022
 
 July 24, 2022  Posted by at 8:23 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  56 Responses »


Piet Mondriaan Place de la Concorde 1938-43

 

• Rule by the Few or Rule for the Many? (Batiushka)
• Zelensky Refuses Peace Talks (RT)
• US Concerned About Zelensky’s Safety (RT)
• Mysterious Missiles Strike Grain Facility at Odessa Port (CTH)
• Flying Coffins (Will Schryver)
• Russia Claims It Destroyed HIMARS (RT)
• For Those About To Rock, NAM 2.0 Salutes You (Escobar)
• Ukraine To Make Seeking Russian Passport A Crime (RT)
• Hungary Urges EU To Not ‘Hide The Truth’ About Russian Gas (RT)
• Go East, My Son! (Salamah)
• Canada Joins the Netherlands in Operation Eat Bugs (CTH)
• Is The Clock Finally Running Out On Hunter Biden? (Turley)
• The Senior Biden Officials Entangled In Durham’s Russiagate Probe (Sperry)
• Why Do The Minority Who Haven’t Had Covid Account For Most New Infections? (G.)
• CV19 Vax Lies Destroyed Trust Everywhere on the Planet – Steve Kirsch (USAW)

 

 

 

 

Jim Rickards @JamesGRickards: Russia just raised its growth forecast from -8% to -4%, cut interest rates from 9.5% to 8%, and raised its current account surplus forecast from $145 billion to $243 billion. Exports expected to reach a record $593 billion. How are those sanctions working out, Joe?

 

 

Tedros overruled his own experts. 98% of monkeypox infections are gay men. 5 people have died with/from it. How is that a global health emergency? Well, it could become one…

 

 

Bannon Alex Jones
https://twitter.com/i/status/1550863875473539074

 

 

 

 

Oligarchy or Patriarchy. Take your pick.

• Rule by the Few or Rule for the Many? (Batiushka)

Today the Ukraine is the battlefield where these two systems, Oligarchy and Patriarchy, are competing. The future of the whole world is being decided there. The Oligarchy has become embroiled ever more in its proxy war there because it intends to destroy Russia so that it can then destroy China. However, in order to do this, the USA must first finish off Russian-supplied Europe. The European elite has followed the Oligarchy’s dictates because its leaders are all only other ‘zelenskies’, whose strings are also pulled by the Oligarchy’s same puppeteers.


This is why the dollar has recently been rising against the pound sterling and the euro (and also the yen). However, seeing this, other countries are seeking alternatives and the USA is threatened with dedollarisation. There is no end game in the Ukraine for the Oligarchy. Meddling in Russia and Europe has meant heading towards economic meltdown. The Oligarchy is now pulling down an iron curtain on the Western world, not to protect it from some imagined foreign military attack, but to imprison the peoples of the USA, UK, EU, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand. As those peoples cotton on, this will end badly for the Oligarchy.

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“Putin said that back in March, Moscow and Kiev had “actually reached an agreement, the only thing left to do was to sign it.”

• Zelensky Refuses Peace Talks (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, explaining the reasons behind his country’s refusal to negotiate with Moscow, compared Russia to an insatiable “cachalot” who would not understand the language of diplomacy. In a Friday interview with the Wall Street Journal, Zelensky responded to the recent remarks of his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, who said earlier this week that Russia and Ukraine could have ended their conflict in March if Kiev had not withdrawn from negotiations. Calling this statement “total delirium,” the Ukrainian leader said that, prior to Moscow’s offensive, he had been trying to talk to Putin for a long time but he couldn’t be bothered to take a phone call.

“He came here without talking, killed people, displaced 12 million, and now says Ukraine doesn’t want to negotiate. They just murder people, destroy cities, enter them, and then say: ‘Let’s negotiate’. With whom can they talk? With rocks? They are covered in blood, and this blood is impossible to wash off. We will not let them wash it off,” Zelensky said. Now, five months into the military conflict, Ukrainians believe that all of the country’s territories must be “liberated” before any negotiations can resume, according to him. Zelensky stressed that he would prefer to conduct ‘de-occupation’ in a non-military manner but, in his opinion, Russia would not understand anything until it got “smashed in the face.”

Moreover, he believes there is another reason conducting talks no longer makes sense. Russia will never stop seizing Ukrainian territories, he claimed. “It is a cachalot that has swallowed two regions and now says: Freeze the conflict. Then it will rest and, in two or three years, it will seize two more regions and say again: Freeze the conflict. And it will keep going further and further. One hundred percent,” the Ukrainian leader said. Meanwhile, Putin said that back in March, Moscow and Kiev had “actually reached an agreement, the only thing left to do was to sign it.” “In order to create these conditions, our troops withdrew from central Ukraine, from Kiev, but the Kiev authorities refused to implement these agreements” and have no desire to do so even now, the Russian president added.

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If Russia wanted Zelensky dead, he would be.

• US Concerned About Zelensky’s Safety (RT)

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Friday that Washington is worried about the personal safety of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. The US is assisting Zelensky with his security, Sullivan added. “President Zelensky’s personal safety is something that concerns us,” Sullivan told the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. “This is a leader in wartime, dealing with an enemy in Russia that is ruthless, brutal and capable of just about anything.” “President Zelensky takes the precautions you would expect to protect himself,” Sullivan continued, adding that the US is helping to “facilitate” the Ukrainian leader’s security, without elaborating. The US offered to evacuate Zelensky from Kiev when Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine in February. Zelensky did not take up the offer.

This week, Ukraine’s parliament approved the firing of Ivan Bakanov, the top official at the state security service (the SBU). Zelensky also removed the heads of SBU departments in five of the country’s regions. Bakanov was a close associate of Zelensky, and the pair had worked together since the latter’s days in comedy. Ukraine’s president has claimed on several occasions that assassins have threatened his life, and his officials said numerous times that Russia intends to have the president killed. Moscow denies these allegations, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stating in April that Zelensky “is the president of Ukraine,” and Russia wants him to sit down and agree to its terms for peace. Asked whether he worries about declining public support for Ukraine at home, Sullivan said that he worries “about literally everything,”except the arms pipeline to Kiev.

The $40 billion military and economic aid bill signed by US President Joe Biden in May allocates “enough resources to keep weapons flowing for some time,” Sullivan stated, adding that even though public support for Ukraine may be dipping, there is a “reservoir” of “deep and sustainable support” in the White House and Congress. Should the tens of billions of dollars run out, Sullivan said that “there will be bipartisan support in the Congress to re-up those resources should it become necessary.” As Sullivan spoke in Aspen, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby announced that the Biden administration would send a fresh tranche of weapons worth $270 million to Ukraine, including four HIMARS rocket artillery systems. The US has given Ukraine a dozen of these truck-mounted weapons platforms already, although Russia claims to have destroyed four during the last three weeks.

Zelensky Is About To Be Assassinated By The Americans

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“Russia had nothing to do with the targeting of a grain facility in the port city of Odesa..”

• Mysterious Missiles Strike Grain Facility at Odessa Port (CTH)

Let me say from the outset, with a degree of specific assurance we generally reserve for other matters, Russia had nothing to do with the targeting of a grain facility in the port city of Odesa. Geopolitically and strategically, such an action would be against their interests. These events have the smell of the U.S. State Dept and CIA all over them. Start by first reviewing the agreement between Russia and Ukraine that was announced yesterday. July 22 (Reuters) – Russia and Ukraine signed a landmark deal on Friday to reopen Ukrainian Black Sea ports for grain exports, raising hopes that an international food crisis … can be eased.” NATO country Turkey, specifically Recep Erdogan, brokered the deal between Russia and Ukraine. Ignore the narrative engineering and WATCH:

Russia was particularly a geopolitical beneficiary from the agreement itself. No longer could NATO and the western alliance blame Russia for the void in gobal food markets associated with the conflict in Ukraine. From the perspective of Russian President Putin, the grain movement through the port city of Odesa was a net benefit. “Russia has taken on the obligations that are clearly spelled out in this document. We will not take advantage of the fact that the ports will be cleared and opened. We have made this commitment,” said Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. However, from the perspective of the Western alliance, the agreement mooted one of their biggest justifications for the upcoming global food shortage. If Ukraine and Russia are exporting food, and yet food costs are still rising…. well, the food shortage impact from western energy disruption, the Build Back Better agenda, starts to become increasingly visible.

Suddenly, within hours of the trade agreement, the grain transportation system and the port city of Odesa come under fire from mysterious cruise missiles. “Europe – Missiles struck a key Ukrainian port Saturday, just one day after Kyiv and Moscow signed a breakthrough deal to unblock shipments of grain. Pointing the finger at Russia, Ukraine’s air force chief said the port — a key site for exporting Ukrainian grain — had been deliberately targeted. “The port of Odesa, where grain is processed for shipment, was shelled. We shot down two missiles, and two more missiles hit the port territory, where, obviously, there is grain,” Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuri Ignat told reporters. Russia has denied any involvement in the strikes, says Turkey’s defence minister.”

The origin of the mysterious missile attack becomes clear when you overlay the question of ‘who has motive’? It wasn’t Russia. We can be almost certain it was the U.S. State Department, and covert CIA operators, who used their operational control within Ukraine to target the exports. Stopping the export of Ukrainian grain is in the interests of the western alliance. After all, it was the United States who previously claimed, “Vladimir Putin is weaponizing food.”… pparently, Russian President Vladimir Putin has the ability to drive up U.S. inflation, explode U.S. energy costs, increase gasoline prices, influence global agriculture, weaken U.S. oil refining capability, disrupt availability of diesel fuel, impede the transportation of U.S. goods, force municipal energy companies to raise prices, cancel airline flights, stop the manufacturing of infant formula and now block the production -and increase the cost- of food in North America.

That’s their collective story, and they’re sticking to it.

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“..if Russia were to aggressively deploy its best-in-class air defense systems into the battle zone, two squadrons of actively flying F-16s would be destroyed in less than a month – if not sooner..”

• Flying Coffins (Will Schryver)

[..] we are now hearing apparently serious talk of sending some of our otherwise destined-for-retirement F-16s and A-10s to Ukraine – ostensibly to become the latest “game-changer” able to “turn the tide” against a seemingly inexorable Russian victory. Indeed, since the news first broke earlier this week, in the form of comments by Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall at the Aspen Security Forum, thousands of “Slava Ukraini!”-chanting supporters of Ukraine have erupted with shouts of “Hallelujah!” on Twitter and elsewhere – convinced that THIS is – finally! – the wunderwaffe they’ve been waiting for. So … let me be perfectly clear: The notion that the US (and/or its NATO allies) can ship F-16s and A-10s to Ukraine in order to save the Ukrainians from an otherwise absolutely certain defeat is an unqualified delusion; a ridiculous fantasy of the highest order.

To be even more precise, it’s batshit crazy silly talk. Indeed, the only possible interpretation of Kendall’s broaching of the subject at this juncture is that there is now a profound recognition, at the highest levels of the Pentagon, that the inevitable outcome of this war is set in stone. But, because political considerations preclude them being able to acknowledge this reality, they must somehow stall for time, during which they can better prepare the American people to receive the bad news that the Mother of All Proxy Armies – which the US spent eight long years and countless billions building – has been comprehensively wrecked in a matter of months by the supposedly inept armed forces of the Russian Federation.

As expected and predicted by a great many intelligent and insightful military analysts, the 120+ M-777 tow-behind howitzers (of which 80+ have now been destroyed) and a dozen M-142 HIMARS multiple-launch rocket systems (of which at least 4 have already been “eliminated” from the battlefield) have produced negligible results. Each, in its turn, generated a hopeful sense of euphoria among those rooting for the team in blue and yellow. Each produced a few early successes which were celebrated far beyond their actual military significance by western commentators. And, once Russian countermeasures were formulated and executed, each has proven to be nothing more than what sober military analysts always knew them to be: run-of-the-mill artillery systems which are at best equivalent to their Russian counterparts, and arguably inferior in several key respects.

As far as providing F-16s and A-10s to Ukraine is concerned, I am strongly persuaded that it is nothing but empty propaganda. I don’t believe there is any serious actionable intent behind the words. But even if there is, there are several realities that render the entire proposition futile: – Ukrainian pilots are not trained on these platforms, and they cannot possibly be adequately trained in any less than at least a year. It is utterly ludicrous to believe otherwise. – Even if US/NATO pilots and ground crew were provided to field, say, two squadrons of F-16s and another two squadrons of A-10s, they would prove to be, against Russian air defenses and fighter aircraft, the obsolescent air frames they are already known to be. The A-10s, in particular, would not survive more than a handful of sorties – at most – in Ukrainian airspace. And, if Russia were to aggressively deploy its best-in-class air defense systems into the battle zone, two squadrons of actively flying F-16s would be destroyed in less than a month – if not sooner. In short, it would be an absolute slaughter.

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Sitting ducks.

• Russia Claims It Destroyed HIMARS (RT)

Four of the US-supplied HIMARS rocket artillery launchers and one of their support vehicles have been destroyed over the past three weeks of fighting in Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defense said on Friday. The US sent 12 launchers earlier this month, and said on Friday it would provide Kiev with four more. “High-precision strikes with land- and air-based missiles destroyed four HIMARS multiple rocket launch systems and one ammunition and reloading vehicle between July 5 and July 20,”General Igor Konashenkov said in a daily briefing. Two of the launchers were destroyed near the settlement of Malotaranovka, south of Kramatorsk. Another, alongside the support vehicle, was destroyed near Krasnoarmeysk – known in Ukraine as Pokrovsk.

The final one was destroyed on the eastern outskirts of Konstantinovka, the Defense Ministry specified. All three locations are on territory claimed by the Donetsk People’s Republic but under the control of Ukrainian troops. The US provided Kiev with eight High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) last month, to replace rocket artillery lost in the conflict with Russia. The Malotaranovka strike was widely publicized on July 5, but the subsequent two strikes had not been previously mentioned. Earlier on Friday, the White House confirmed that four additional HIMARS launchers, 580 suicide drones and thousands of rounds of artillery ammunition would be sent to Ukraine as part of the $270 million “security assistance”package.

One US official, who spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity, insisted that no HIMARS launchers sent to Ukraine had been destroyed. Meanwhile, the government in Kiev has accused Moscow of spreading “misinformation” calculated to dissuade the West from sending Ukraine more weapons. “Russia is trying to stop the supply of weapons from the West and intimidate Ukraine’s allies with the fictional power of Russia’s armed forces,” Sergey Leshchenko, an aide to President Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andrei Yermak, told reporters.

Washington has sent Kiev a total of 16 wheeled HIMARS launchers, with London providing another three or so tracked rocket artillery vehicles capable of launching the same munitions. The HIMARS came with medium-range, satellite-guided GLMRS projectiles, which Ukraine claims to have used to great effect against ammunition storage facilities and infrastructure objects. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Ukraine has lost over 760 multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) and more than 3,100 artillery pieces since the beginning of hostilities in February.

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“This NAM 2.0 drive – of which China is a key player – stands in stark opposition to how the Empire of Chaos – and Lies – wove its toxic net..”

• For Those About To Rock, NAM 2.0 Salutes You (Escobar)

Those were the days, in 1955, at the legendary Bandung conference in Indonesia, when the newly emancipated Global South started dreaming of building a new world, via what became configured later in 1961 in Belgrade as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). The Empire of Chaos – and Lies – would never allow a starring role for NAM. So it played dirty: everything from hardcore subversion and bribing to military coups and proto-color revolutions. Yet now, the Spirit of Bandung lives again, via a sort of NAM 2.0 on steroids: a Newly Aligned Movement, with the leaders of Eurasian integration at the vanguard. We just had a taste of which way the geopolitical wind is blowing at the gathering of a new power troika in Tehran. Unlike Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill in 1943, Putin, Raisi and Erdogan did not meet to carve up the world.

They met essentially to discuss how another world is possible – through bilaterals, trilaterals, multilaterals and an enhanced role for an array of relatively new geopolitical and geoeconomic institutions. Russia – and China – have been on the forefront of all recent key decisions. Their diplomacy has brought Iran to join the SCO as a full member. Their pull is attracting key Global South players to join BRICS+. Russia has all but convinced Turkey to join BRICS+, the SCO and the EAEU, and facilitated the re-approximation of Tehran and Ankara as well as Tehran and Riyadh. Russia has largely influenced the remake/remodel process across West Asia. This NAM 2.0 drive – of which China is a key player – stands in stark opposition to how the Empire of Chaos – and Lies – wove its toxic net, via the war on terror, since the start of the millennium.

The Empire tried to subdue what it described as MENA (Middle East-Northern Africa) on the basis of two invasions/occupations (Afghanistan-Iraq); a total devastation (Libya); and a protracted proxy war (Syria). All eventually failed. And that brings us to the stunning contrast between these two foreign policy approaches, graphically illustrated by the spectacular failure of the teleprompter-reading “leader of the free world” in his visit to Jeddah – he was not even allowed to go to Riyadh – compared to Putin’s performance in Tehran. Not only we are witnessing the lineaments of a Russia/Iran/Turkey informal alliance; we are witnessing the alliance reading a soft riot act to the Empire: leave Syria, before you suffer yet another humiliation. And with a Kurd-directed corollary: keep away from the Americans and recognize the authority of Damascus before it’s too late.

Ankara could never admit it in public, but the fact is Sultan Erdogan – as much against US troops in Syria as Putin and Raisi – even seems to have swiftly calibrated his previous designs on Syrian sovereign territory. The much-debated Turkish military operation in northern Syria in the end may be restricted to taming the YPG Kurds. The heart of the action will in fact revolve around how the Russia/Iran/Turkey/Syria alliance will make like impossible for Americans stealing Syrian oil.

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Not many freedoms left there.

• Ukraine To Make Seeking Russian Passport A Crime (RT)

Trying to obtain Russian citizenship as a Ukrainian could soon become a criminal offense, the country’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories Irina Vereschuk warned on Friday. In a Telegram post, Vereschuk said that the matter had previously been discussed during a closed interdepartmental meeting. “Work on the draft law continues, there will be discussions, but the direction has been determined,” the deputy prime minister said. She admitted that there could be “a long and difficult discussion” about the legal aspects of obtaining a Russian passport, about human rights, and “the need to survive under occupation.”

“But let’s not forget: There is a lot of Ukrainian blood on the red Russian passport – military and civilian, women’s and children’s,” Vereschuk said. Two days ago, she wrote on Facebook that passports and referendums were being used by Moscow as “weapons, more dangerous than missiles.” In her opinion, these “weapons” enable Russia to create a “live shield” of Ukrainian citizens in the territories it controls. Therefore, the deputy prime minister argued, Kiev should take “a clearer and stricter stance” on Ukrainians who obtain citizenship from the “aggressor state”and vote in referendums.

“I understand that it’s tough, but it’s about the existence of the Ukrainian state,” Vereschuk said. On June 11, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree granting all Ukrainians the right to apply for Russian citizenship under a simplified procedure. By doing so, he extended the procedures that had previously been reserved for citizens of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as residents of Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, which are under the control of Russian forces. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said that Moscow’s move was nothing short of an “encroachment on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

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Open Nord Stream 2.

• Hungary Urges EU To Not ‘Hide The Truth’ About Russian Gas (RT)

The EU should be truthful about the realities of the gas supply from Russia, rather than treating it as an ideological matter, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said. “It has been proven that the purchase of natural gas is not an ideological issue, but a physical issue that can’t be solved by talking,” Szijjarto told reporters on Friday following a trip to Moscow. The EU has been urging member states to decrease their dependence on Russian gas in response to Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, which was launched in late February. Germany triggered the “alarm stage” of its emergency gas plan on Thursday, while the European Commission called on members to slash the use of gas by 15% from August to the end of March next year.

Budapest, however, has said it plans to buy an additional 700 million cubic meters of gas from Moscow to ensure that it has enough reserves to last the winter. Szijjarto said the necessary volumes can only be obtained from Russia. “I’ll be frank: I’ve been hearing from leading politicians in Western Europe in recent months that they’ve gotten it all sorted out. They have found alternative sources, they have bought gas from elsewhere, they have gotten rid of their dependence on Russia. So why the alarm?”Szijjarto said. “After a while, the heating season will arrive and politicians would have to say if there is gas or not,” he said, adding that politicians should not “hide the truth” regarding energy supplies.

Russian state company Gazprom resumed gas deliveries to Germany through the Nord Stream 1 Baltic Sea pipeline on Thursday after a ten-day pause due to maintenance, which sparked fears in Europe that Moscow could shut down the gas supply completely. Officials in Germany have warned that an immediate halt to deliveries from Moscow would severely hurt the economy. Hungary has said the EU should focus on the interests of its own citizens rather than increasingly involving itself in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Prime Minister Viktor Orban said this month that Brussels “shot itself in the lungs” by imposing sanctions on Moscow.

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“Today’s Western economy is dominated by the FIRE sectors (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) plus the military industry, all of which have usurped the bulk of the economy’s wealth and income..”

• Go East, My Son! (Salamah)

Today’s Western economy is dominated by the FIRE sectors (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) plus the military industry, all of which have usurped the bulk of the economy’s wealth and income, leaving far too little for the other sectors to survive let alone grow. The result is an alarming rise in extreme inequality with, it is claimed, the top 1% (or 10%) of the population owning the bulk of the wealth and income. Other sectors have also grown, most prominent are those related to IT and services. But these are highly volatile and high-risk businesses and not all who enter them succeed or remain and prosper. Quite a few have turned into Zombie companies that absorb endless bouts of capital increases in the millions and even billions of Dollars but fail to show a profit.

The great western industry has all but disappeared. It has migrated to China, Asia, and elsewhere, as a result of an erroneous application of the famous economic edict of “maximizing profits”. It was applied exclusively to the short-term with total disregard to its negative long-term implications on both the companies themselves as well as the economy as a whole. The result, among other things, was the stripping of the West’s industrial capability, increasing its balance of trade deficit, creating endless supply chain bottlenecks, and increasing its vulnerability and reliance on the outside world. Despite the negative description above, the US, so far, remains the biggest and strongest economy and the US Dollar remains the main trade currency, the main reserve currency held by the world’s central banks, and the number one safe haven currency.

Also, we should by no means ignore the huge American agriculture capacity that has fed and continues to feed a substantial number of the world’s population. But at the same, we cannot disregard the huge and important changes that are rapidly occurring elsewhere in the world, especially as most of these changes seem intent on competing directly, commercially and economically with the US and the West. Nor can we disregard the well-published data signaling a shrinkage in the West’s global market share and the gradual erosion of the US Dollar hegemony. And once we add the increasingly belligerent geopolitical tug-of-war between the US and its allies against Russia, China, and part of the Global South, it quickly becomes apparent that the world is on the verge of a major historic and permanent split into two or more camps.

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“After using government incentives and subsidies to build a new facility in London, Ontario, to manufacture 9,000 metric tons of crickets for human consumption to replace cows, pigs and chickens..”

My eternal question: If crickets and other bugs were such a great form of nutrition, wouldn’t people all over the world be eating them?

• Canada Joins the Netherlands in Operation Eat Bugs (CTH)

You will switch to bugs, and you will like it. After using government incentives and subsidies to build a new facility in London, Ontario, to manufacture 9,000 metric tons of crickets for human consumption to replace cows, pigs and chickens, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau now triggers a series of nitrogen emission reduction regulations to target traditional farming. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is following the same roadmap as his political friend in the Netherlands, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, and the Canadian farmers are not happy about it.

“CANADA – Saskatchewan and Alberta Ministers of Agriculture are expressing profound disappointment in the federal government’s fertilizer emissions reduction target. “We’re really concerned with this arbitrary goal,” Saskatchewan Minister of Agriculture David Marit said. “The Trudeau government has apparently moved on from their attack on the oil and gas industry and set their sights on Saskatchewan farmers.” “This has been the most expensive crop anyone has put in, following a very difficult year on the prairies,” Alberta Minister of Agriculture Nate Horner said. “The world is looking for Canada to increase production and be a solution to global food shortages. The Federal government needs to display that they understand this. They owe it to our producers.” [..]

Another press release from the affected Fertilizer industry reads: […] “In initial conversations with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), the government has stated their intention to pursue an absolute emissions reduction of 30%, rather than an emissions intensity reduction of 30%. This short-sighted approach to reducing emissions will result in the need to reduce nitrogen fertilizer use and will have considerable impact on Canadian farmers’ incomes and reduce overall Canadian exports and GDP.” On the positive side, there is no indication yet, that Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador (AMLO) is in alignment with the Canadian proposals for farming. Trudeau and his uber-leftists might be able to destroy the Canadian farmland; and there is a possibility Joe Biden might join Canada in trying to destroy U.S. farmland; however, it looks like Mexico is going to remain with the commonsense and pragmatic approach outside the western alliance idiocy.

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If the DNC wants to get rid of Joe, there will be a special counsel. Unless there are too many ties to other Dems; then Hunter will be disappeared.

• Is The Clock Finally Running Out On Hunter Biden? (Turley)

A long-standing Justice Department policy instructs prosecutors to exercise caution in “the timing of charges or overt investigative steps near the time of a primary or general election.” Accordingly, some observers have objected that prosecutor Weiss should not issue an indictment against Hunter before the midterm elections, since that could hurt Democratic candidates. That could explain the failure to release any indictments after the disbanding of the grand jury. But the use of this policy to seal or delay any indictments could raise equal concerns over the politicalization of prosecution. The protected period under Justice’s policy has been stated variously as 60 or 90 days. This grand jury’s term expired outside of either period.

Moreover, the policy does not bar filings during that period; it bars prosecutors from using “the timing of investigative steps or criminal charges for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.” It is the grand jury’s expiration, not any nefarious purpose, that is driving this schedule. The most obvious problem with this argument is that neither President Biden nor his son are on any ballot in November. The policy is not supposed to be a political variation of the parlor game “Six Degrees of Separation From Kevin Bacon.” An indictment in Delaware would be three degrees from any Democratic candidate: (1) Hunter is the son of Joe Biden, (2) Joe Biden is president and a Democrat, and (3) there are candidates running as Democrats.

To use such a strained connection can itself be a political act. If the Justice Department can withhold prosecutions with even tangential political elements, it can shield political allies from having to address criminal allegations before the voters. Of course, if there are sealed indictments, any delay would not stop an eventual prosecution. However, that timing still could benefit Hunter. He did not have to face a special counsel, who ordinarily would prepare a comprehensive report. There has long been an overwhelming basis for the appointment of a special counsel in this case, given direct references to President Biden as a prospective beneficiary of Hunter’s deals. By leaving this case with a U.S. Attorney, such a report is unlikely, and only limited information would be disclosed with any indictment.

More importantly, if an indictment is confined to narrow charges, not a broader conspiracy, Hunter could plead guilty to secure a more favorable sentence and avoid both a trial and the release of additional information. A plea could offer practical protection from future congressional hearings, too: It would close the case before Republicans could regain control of one or both houses of Congress, and the Justice Department could decline to bring further charges. Indeed, the expiration of the grand jury without a public indictment fueled concerns that the Biden Justice Department might cut a generous plea deal with the president’s son.

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Paul Sperry still has some hope for Durham.

• The Senior Biden Officials Entangled In Durham’s Russiagate Probe (Sperry)

Several individuals connected to a 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign plot to cast Donald Trump as a covert Kremlin collaborator are working in high-level jobs within the Biden administration – including at least two senior Biden appointees cited by Special Counsel John Durham in his “active (and) ongoing” criminal investigation of the scheme, according to recently filed court documents. Jake Sullivan, who now serves as Biden’s national security adviser, and Caroline Krass, a top lawyer at the Pentagon, were involved in efforts in 2016 and 2017 to advance the Clinton campaign’s false claims about Trump through the media and the federal government, documents show. Other evidence shows that two other Biden officials – senior State Department official Dafna Rand and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler – also are entangled in the so-called Russiagate scandal.

It’s not known whether these Biden appointees have been interviewed by Durham’s investigators. But as the probe widens, some government ethics watchdogs anticipate that Biden’s presidency could be pulled into the scandal, which saw the FBI abuse its surveillance powers to spy on a Trump campaign adviser based on Clinton opposition research. Just as the Democrats have used their control of Congress to cast President Trump and the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol as threats to American democracy, Republicans are vowing if they regain power after November’s congressional elections to investigate the years-long effort to question Trump’s 2016 victory and undermine his presidency.

The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Turner, recently pledged to hold hearings and issue subpoenas “to get to the bottom of [Russiagate] so this never happens again, so we never have Americans having to distrust their own government because of the politicization of the FBI [and] of our intelligence community.” RealClearInvestigations has learned that Congress has referred to the Special Counsel’s Office at least a dozen cases of potential perjury involving former Clinton campaign officials and Obama administration officials who have testified behind closed doors about their involvement in Russiagate. Hill lawyers and investigators have met with Durham’s staff about the criminal referrals stemming from the sworn depositions. Republican sources say that the roles played in Russiagate by Krass, Sullivan, Rand, and Gensler may be among the first to draw attention in hearings. Although the full range of their efforts has not been made public, here’s what is known so far.

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Obvious nonsense froom the Guardian. Somone do a deep dive into the details. Who’s hiding what?

• Why Do The Minority Who Haven’t Had Covid Account For Most New Infections? (G.)

Having somehow dodged Covid since the pandemic kicked off, the proportion of people who have never seen the red line appear on a rapid test are a steadily shrinking minority. On Thursday, the White House announced that the US president, Joe Biden, had tested positive for Covid, becoming the most high-profile figure yet to join the increasingly exclusive club of people who are only now, in the third year of rife disease, notching up their first infection. Figures from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) are striking on this. About 15% of people in England have never had Covid. But in the current wave, driven by the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of Omicron, this minority group still accounts for 55% of infections. How can so few be contributing so much? There are, as ever with Covid, multiple forces at work.

In a textbook pandemic, the proportion of first-timers who get infected is expected to drop from 100% in the early days to a much smaller number as the bug eventually infiltrates every niche of society. Ultimately, the only people unexposed tend to be babies and young children. Not that we will reach this point soon. Going into the latest Covid wave in England, the UKHSA estimated more than 10 million people had still never been infected. “It will take a while to get there,” says Bill Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard. The decline in first-timers getting infected may not be a smooth one as the pandemic plays out. People’s behaviour (such as whether they shield or reduce social contacts), their immunity, and new variants all exert an influence on that downward trend.

Even though 55% of Covid infections in England are first-timers, this is the lowest it has been since the start of the pandemic, except at the peak of the first Omicron wave, driven by the BA.1 variant in December. Looked at another way, 45% of cases are now reinfections, the highest the figure has ever been, or at least very close to it. There is good reason for first-time infections to seem even more common than the data suggests. The first encounter with Covid is often the worst, with subsequent infections usually being milder. Across the population, this can skew awareness: many people on their second, third or fourth infection may never even realise they have caught it again.

“If infections after the first are less likely to be symptomatic, or less likely to be seen by the public as ‘test worthy’, then there will be many people who are being reinfected but not noticing, so that first infections are far more likely to be diagnosed and reported,” says Graham Medley, professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

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“When people figure out that they were told by their government to take a shot that was way more likely to kill them than to save them, people are going to be livid..”

• CV19 Vax Lies Destroyed Trust Everywhere on the Planet – Steve Kirsch (USAW)

Kirsch says, “Whenever I have an audience, I ask people, ‘How many people in your household died from Covid?’ There will be one hand or two hands. Then I ask, ‘How many people do you know died from the Covid vaccine?’ The last time I asked that question, it was a 7 to 1 ratio. 7 times more people reported a death from the vaccines. If they are wrong even by a factor of 10 . . . it is still a disaster beyond proportion. . . . I saw a tweet from a doctor saying how much longer are we going to pretend that these (vax death) incidents are just bad luck? He is basically saying we know the vaccine is causing this, but we can’t speak out because we will be fired and have our hospital privileges revoked. We will have our licenses to practice medicine revoked. This is why you are not seeing doctors who realize this speaking out. They all have to remain silent.” Kirsch goes on to say, “This is the biggest catastrophe in American history. Even a member of the EU parliament recently said this. She said these vaccines are the biggest disaster ever.”


The massive amount of victims of this vaccine fraud are waking up to the fact they have been poisoned and murdered. Kirsch says, “They are not going to be happy. I don’t want to predict what they are going to do, but a lot of people are going to be extremely upset. I think at minimum, they will not trust anything from the CDC, FDA and NIH ever again. That’s at a minimum, and they won’t trust the mainstream media either. They won’t trust representations from Congress because most of the people in Congress are saying get your vaccine. This will destroy trust in the mainstream media, Congress, in the mainstream medical community, in government agencies and medical science in general. It will be the greatest trust destroyer in human history, these Covid vaccines. This is not just in the U.S., this is worldwide. When people figure out that they were told by their government to take a shot that was way more likely to kill them than to save them, people are going to be livid. It won’t just be a few people that will be livid, it will be a lot of people.”

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Debt Rattle May 3 2015

May 032015
 
 May 3, 2015  Posted by at 10:13 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  1 Response »


Harris&Ewing Hancock’s, the Old Curiosity Shop, 1234 Pennsylvania Avenue 1914

• Gundlach’s Bet-Against-German-Debt Plan Has One Very Big Problem (Bloomberg)
• Canada has the Most Overvalued Housing Market in the World (VC)
• No New Bailout Needed If Greek Debt Restructured, Says Varoufakis (AFP)
• Markets Waver As Greece Teeters On Edge Of Financial Tragedy (AFR)
• Use Your Credit Card To Fight Tax Evasion, Greece Urges Visitors (Observer)
• Greek Exit ‘Would Leave Western Alliance In Chaos’ (Telegraph)
• Greece Braced For Weekend Of Unrest As Cash Crunch Nears (Telegraph)
• German President Says Berlin Should Be Open To Greek War Reparations (Reuters)
• What Does Putin Want? (Rostislav Ishchenko)
• Insanity Grips The Western World (Paul Craig Roberts)
• China Teaches Top Cadres Western Ideas Despite Backlash (AP)
• Italy Rescues More Than 3,400 Europe-Bound Migrants At Sea (AFP)
• Greece To Ask EU For Extra Funding For Migrant Influx (Kathimerini)
• Many Displaced African Migrants Had No Plan to Land in Italy (NY Times)
• Italian Army Growing Cannabis To Slash End User Prices (RT)
• From Ukraine To Australia, Tributes Pour Out For Odessa Massacre Victims (RT)
• Wildlife Decline To Lead To ‘Empty Landscape’ (BBC)

Europe’s bond markets are so distorted everything carries out-of-whack risks.

• Gundlach’s Bet-Against-German-Debt Plan Has One Very Big Problem (Bloomberg)

So it turns out that Jeffrey Gundlach was really thinking out loud when he said he was looking to short negative-yielding German debt. Yes, it’s true he’d really like to. But, as he would subsequently acknowledge, it’s a very difficult trade to execute in today’s European markets. “The mechanics are challenging,” Gundlach wrote in an e-mail on April 29. Earlier this week, the chief executive officer of DoubleLine Capital said in an interview on Bloomberg TV that he’s thinking of amplifying a wager against 2-year German notes using leverage. “It seems to me there’s almost no way to lose,” he said in that interview. “I wonder why people don’t leverage up negative bonds.” There are legitimate reasons why everyone isn’t. For one, there appear to be no negative-yielding derivatives contracts tied to this debt.

And Europe closely regulates short-selling of government bonds. Then, even if you could do it, you may have to park cash at some point in European bank accounts, which make you pay to hold your money because the region’s deposit rates are negative. “You can actually lose money being short negative yielding debt,” said Ashish Shah at AllianceBernstein. “People charge you even more in the short term to hold cash.” Of course, this is an opportunity that seems too good to pass up, and traders are almost certainly trying to figure out the best way to make it happen.

The trade should be – again, in theory – very lucrative. While bonds are normally cushioned from losses due to their regular interest payments, it’s the opposite in this bizarro world of negative-yielding debt. Traders betting against bonds wouldn’t lose money if prices stayed about where they were, because there’s essentially no coupon payment. Yes, prices on this upside-down-inside-out debt could keep rising and yields could get even more negative, leading to some losses. But the chances of that happening appear to be getting smaller as economic data shows inflation and growth starting to pick up in the euro zone.

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Auckland wants that title.

• Canada has the Most Overvalued Housing Market in the World (VC)

In every inflating bubble, there’s usually two camps. The first group points out various metrics suggesting something is inherently unsustainable, while the second reiterates that this time, it is different. After all, if everyone always agreed on these things, then no one would do the buying to perpetuate the bubble’s expansion. The Canadian housing bubble has been no exception to this, and the war of words is starting to heat up. On one side of the ring, we have The Economist, that came out last week saying Canada has the most overvalued housing market in the world. After crunching the data in housing markets in 26 nations, The Economist has determined that Canada’s property market is the most overvalued in terms of rent prices (+89%), and the third most overvalued in terms of incomes (+35%).

They have mentioned in the past that the market has looked bubbly for some time, but finally Canada is officially at the top of their list. Of course, The Economist is not the only fighter on this side of the ring. Just over a month ago, the IMF sounded a fresh alarm on Canada’s housing market by saying that household debt is well above that of other countries. Meanwhile, seven in ten mortgage lenders in Canada have expressed “concerns” that the real estate sector is in a bubble that could burst at any time. Deutsch Bank estimates the market is 67% overvalued and readily offers seven reasons why Canada is in trouble. Even hedge funds are starting to find ways to short the market in anticipation of an upcoming collapse. Canada’s housing situation could give rise to the world’s next Steve Eisman, Eugene Xu, or Greg Lippmann.

On the opposing side of the ring, who will contend that the Canadian housing market is just different this time? Hint: look to the banks and government. Stephen Harper, Canada’s Prime Minister, has tried to dispel fears. He recently told a business audience in New York that he didn’t anticipate any housing crisis in Canada. Just this week, the Bank of Canada also tried its best to deflate housing bubble fears. “We don’t believe we’re in a bubble,” says Stephen Poloz, the Bank’s Governor. “Our housing construction has stayed very much in line with our estimates of demographic demand.” Poloz suggested that housing costs do not necessarily have to contract to match the incomes of Canadians. Instead, he expects growth in the economy to raise wages and make housing more affordable.

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

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“..one thing to say we shouldn’t have joined the euro and it is another to say that we have to leave..”

• No New Bailout Needed If Greek Debt Restructured, Says Varoufakis (AFP)

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis insisted Saturday that Greece would not require a new bailout from its international creditors if they would simply restructure its debt. Athens last week resumed talks with its creditors in a bid to unblock €7.2 billion from its EU-IMF bailout before state coffers run dry. But analysts believe that even if it manages to secure the last tranche of aid, Athens may have to obtain a new rescue package to stay afloat. Varoufakis said however that Greece could do without a new bailout. “One of the conditions for this to happen though, is an important restructuring of the debt,” he told the Efimerida ton Sindakton daily in an interview published Saturday.

The radical-left SYRIZA government came into power in January on a campaign promise that it would seek to get part of its debt written off. However, its creditors have reiterated that that is impossible. Varoufakis, whose negotiating style has grated his EU counterparts, also took a swipe at the eurozone in the interview, warning that if it “doesn’t change it will die.” He added that “no country, not only Greece, should have joined such a shaky common monetary system.” Nevertheless, Varoufakis said it was “one thing to say we shouldn’t have joined the euro and it is another to say that we have to leave” because backtracking now would lead to “an unforeseen negative situation.” Asked about reported insults from fellow Eurogroup finance ministers during a tense meeting in Riga on April 24, Varoufakis was also dismissive.

Media reports said he had been branded a “gambler,” an “amateur” and an “adventurist” by his peers. “Those would have surely been heavy offenses if they had been expressed. But they were not,” said Varoufakis. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had reshuffled the team handling negotiations with its creditors after relations between Varoufakis and the EU hit a new low during a stormy Eurogroup meeting in Riga last week. Athens is struggling to pay salaries and pensions without the promised loans. Almost a billion euros in debt and interest is also due for repayment to the IMF by May 12. Unless an agreement is reached to unlock the remaining EU-IMF bailout money, the debt-ridden country faces default and a possible exit from the euro. Technical experts from the Eurogroup and the Greek delegation are due to be in contact all weekend, trying to resolve differences concerning sweeping reforms required by Brussels and the IMF to secure the package.

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Who cares if markets waver?

• Markets Waver As Greece Teeters On Edge Of Financial Tragedy (AFR)

In an attempt to address its liquidity crunch, Athens has directed 1500 state entities – including local authorities, hospitals and universities – to hand over surplus cash reserves to the central bank. But some entities are resisting this directed, fearing that their funds may not be returned. Meanwhile, the lack of progress in negotiations with Greece’s creditors is unnerving Greece’s households and businesses, who withdrew a further €2 billion from the country’s banks in March, according to the Bank of Greece. This follows withdrawals of more than €7.5 billion in February, just under €13 billion in January, and around €4 billion last December. As a result, household and business deposits fell to €138.55 billion in March, their lowest level in 10 years. Even more worrying, early figures for April suggest that deposit outflows are again accelerating.

To compensate for their dwindling deposit base, Greek banks have stepped up their use of emergency funding provided by the country’s central bank. Last week the ECB, which now reviews the amount which Greek banks can borrow on a weekly basis, raised the ceiling on emergency liquidity assistance by a further €1.4 billion, bringing it to €76.9 billion. This emergency liquidity is playing a crucial role in keeping the country’s banking system afloat. But financial markets – along with top officials in Paris, Berlin and Brussels – are all to well aware that Athens is moving ever closer to a position where it is no longer able to pay its debts, and is forced to “default”, potentially triggering an uncontrollable bank run and a collapse of the Greek banking system.

At that point, either European politicians resolutely adopt special emergency measures to rescue the country, or the situation spirals out of control, leaving Greece with no option but to introduce capital controls and quit the euro zone. Although some European politicians are in favour of allowing Greece to default, Paris and Berlin are fearful that “Grexit” risks destabilising the euro zone and encouraging speculators to target vulnerable countries such as Italy, Portugal or Belgium. For his part, Tsipras is betting that worries about the potential disruption from a “Grexit” will eventually cause the Europeans to back away from their demands for further reforms. Still, it’s a dangerous strategy, because in Greece’s precarious position, a financial accident could occur at any time.

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The benefits of plastic.

• Use Your Credit Card To Fight Tax Evasion, Greece Urges Visitors (Observer)

Greece’s tourism chief has appealed to the millions of Britons planning to visit the crisis-hit country this year to use credit cards as much as possible. The move comes as the government in Athens has signalled that it plans to raise VAT rates on some holiday islands. Andreas Andreadis made the plea to what are expected to be record numbers of holidaymakers, saying plastic could play a key role in hindering tax evasion, a perennial drain on the Greek economy. “What we are saying is that on cash transactions above a certain level please use your credit cards,” he told the Observer. “That way it forces services and shops to declare it on the cash register and issue receipts.”

Greece is bracing itself for around 25 million foreign arrivals – more than twice its population – with the vast majority heading for resorts where tax collection is notoriously lax. An estimated 2.4 million Britons will be among them. “In a country where the tax collection system is so inefficient, credit cards are the easiest way of clamping down on evasion,” said Andreadis, who heads the Confederation of Greek Tourism (Sete). “We calculate that around 40% of receipts are not issued in tourist areas to avoid VAT.” The confederation, which represents more than 50,000 enterprises in the sector, was pressing for consumers to be given incentives to use cards. Greece is in a race against the clock to clinch a cash-for-reform deal with international creditors to keep bankruptcy at bay.

Fraught negotiations with the EU and International Monetary Fund have brought the nation close to insolvency with Athens’ radical left Syriza government, voted in on a pledge to end austerity, struggling last week to pay pensions. With Greece shut out of international markets and unable to issue short-term debt, a desperate lack of liquidity has exacerbated the problem. Over the next 10 days, the country must pay two loan instalments to the IMF – including €780m on 12 May – or face the spectre of potentially devastating default. The appeal came days after prime minister Alexis Tsipras suggested credit card use being made mandatory for transactions of more than €70. In his first wide-ranging interview since assuming power in January, he said payment cards made eminently more sense than the proposal of Yanis Varoufakis, his finance minister, to use tourists as undercover tax agents.

“It’s simpler than that other idea involving people with [hidden] cameras, etc,” he told Star TV on Monday. Greece loses up to €20bn in tax evasion every year, according to finance ministry officials. The new government has made cracking down on it a top priority. Taxpayers owe in excess of €70bn to the state – nearly a quarter of its debt. Under pressure to provide reforms to unlock an intermediate €7.2bn in bailout funds held up since August, the government has also signalled it will increase VAT on popular Aegean islands. Isles such as Mykonos and Santorini would see a surcharge on hotel rooms, services and goods. The measure would bring in an estimated €350m. But it has been strongly opposed by the tourist industry, which provides one in five jobs and is by far Greece’s biggest foreign earner.

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“..there’s a whole range of political ramifications in terms of market expectations if the euro proves to be reversible. The natural question is: who will be next?”

• Greek Exit ‘Would Leave Western Alliance In Chaos’ (Telegraph)

A Greek exit from the eurozone would throw the bloc into chaos and put the “whole cohesion of the western alliance in doubt”, a key figure in the country’s private sector debt restructuring has warned. While banks had reduced their exposure to Greece, which represents less than 2pc of eurozone GDP, investors are being too complacent about the implications of a Greek exit, which could have far-reaching political ramifications and amplify the polarisation between the eurozone’s core and periphery, Hung Tran, executive managing director of the Institute of International Finance (IIF), said. Mr Tran, who helped represent private sector bondholders during Greece’s debt haircut in 2012, said he remained optimistic that there was “room for compromise” and that Greece would reach a “last minute deal” to remain in the 19 nation bloc.

However, he stressed that if the country was forced out of the euro, the consequences would be complex and were “not fully understood”. “In the short term, it probably is the case that financial contagion in terms of spreading to borrowing costs of peripheral countries like Spain and Portugal would be more limited this time compared with 2010 or 2012,” he said. “However, there’s a whole range of political ramifications in terms of market expectations if the euro proves to be reversible. The natural question is: who will be next? “If Greece exiting the euro area severely strains its relationship with the EU and the West, questions will arise about the alignment of Greece in terms of foreign policy, security policy and so on, and the whole cohesion of the western alliance would be put in doubt.”

Mr Tran said the European Central Bank’s €60bn a month quantitative easing programme had helped to create a false sense of security by “overwhelming” any sense of potential spillover from the Greek crisis and pushing down borrowing costs across Europe. However, he said a Greek exit would only serve to amplify the polarisation that we have already seen in Europe. “There has been a sharp polarisation both on the right and left of the mainstream arguing that the current austerity driven approach of economic policy hasn’t worked … so the failure of reaching an agreement in Greece leading to a exit from the eurozone would make this debate and this polarisation sharper and more problematic.”

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Telegraph wishful thinking?

• Greece Braced For Weekend Of Unrest As Cash Crunch Nears (Telegraph)

Greece was braced for the biggest weekend of civil unrest since its radical Left government assumed power, as tensions over the country’s future in the eurozone are set to reach breaking point in May. Athens was gripped by a throng of anti-austerity protests on Friday, to mark the Labour Day holiday across the continent. Several members of the ruling Syriza party, including embattled finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, took part in rallies, repeating they would not forsake their people and cower to the demands of creditors. In a veiled barb aimed at his paymasters, a defiant Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras tweeted: “We will prevail in our struggles to bolster and protect our rights, our democracy and our dignity”.

Labour market reforms have emerged as one of the main stumbling blocks in Greece’s three-month bail-out impasse, as European powers have pushed the Leftist regime to reverse its promises to raise the minimum wage. But Greece’s Labour minister Panos Skourletis said the policy would go ahead, calling it a “deep and immovable red line” for the government. In a taste of the domestic turmoil that could ensue should the state withold funds from its citizens, hundreds of pensioners in Athens were forced to queue outside banks on Thursday, as pensions payments were temporarily delayed. The government is scrambling to find the funds it needs to avoid defaulting on the IMF on May 6, when it is due to repay a €200m loan. Panic over the pensions payment “suggests that this comparably small IMF payment will be a headache to scrape together and underlines that Greece might well struggle to stay financially afloat much beyond May,” said Robert Kuenzel of Daiwa Capital Markets.

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What do you say to that, Schäuble?

• German President Says Berlin Should Be Open To Greek War Reparations (Reuters)

German President Joachim Gauck expressed support on Friday for Athens’ demands for reparations for the Nazi occupation of Greece in World War Two, even though the government in Berlin has repeatedly rejected the claims. Gauck, who has little real power in Germany but a penchant for defying convention, said in an interview to be published in Saturday’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that Germany should consider its historical responsibility to Greece. “We are not only people who are living in this day and age but we’re also the descendants of those who left behind a trail of destruction in Europe during World War Two – in Greece, among other places, where we shamefully knew little about it for so long,” Gauck said.

“It’s the right thing to do for a history-conscious country like ours to consider what possibilities there might be for reparations.” Greece’s demand for €278.7 billion in reparations for the brutal Nazi occupation have mostly fallen on deaf ears, but some legal experts say it may have a case. Many in Greece blame Germany, their biggest creditor, for the tough austerity measures and record unemployment that have followed from two international bailouts totaling €240 billion. Last month, economy minister and vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel called the demand “stupid”.

Gabriel said Greece wanted to squeeze some leeway out of its euro zone partners as they set conditions for further financial aid to help Greece avoid bankruptcy. “And this leeway has absolutely nothing to do with World War Two or reparation payments,” he said. German officials have previously argued that Germany has already honored its obligations, not least with a 115 million deutsche mark payment to Greece in 1960. Gauck, a former East German pastor, recently caused a stir by condemning the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces a century ago as “genocide”, a term that the Berlin government had long rejected. Turkey denies the charge.

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Good analysis of US-EU-Russia relations.

• What Does Putin Want? (Rostislav Ishchenko)

To understand how, when and on what conditions military activity can end, we need to know what the politicians want and how they see the conditions of the postwar compromise. Then it will become clear why military action turned into a low-intensity civil war with occasional truces, not only in the Ukraine but also in Syria. Obviously, the views of Kiev politicians are of no interest to us because they don’t decide anything. The fact that outsiders govern the Ukraine is no longer concealed. It doesn’t matter whether the cabinet ministers are Estonian or Georgian; they are Americans just the same. It would also be a big mistake to take an interest in how the leaders of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Lugansk People’s Republic (LNR) see the future.

The republics exist only with Russian support, and as long as Russia supports them, Russia’s interests have to be protected, even from independent decisions and initiatives. There is too much at stake to allow [Alexander] Zakharchenko or [Igor] Plotnitzky, or anyone else for that matter, to make independent decisions. Nor are we interested in the European Union’s position. Much depended on the EU until the summer of last year, when the war could have been prevented or stopped at the outset. A tough, principled antiwar stance by the EU was needed. It could have blocked U.S. initiatives to start the war and would have turned the EU into a significant independent geopolitical player. The EU passed on that opportunity and instead behaved like a faithful vassal of the United States. As a result, Europe stands on the brink of frightful internal upheaval.

In the coming years, it has every chance of suffering the same fate as the Ukraine, only with a great roar, great bloodshed and less chance that in the near future things will settle down – in other words, that someone will show up and put things in order. In fact, today the EU can choose whether to remain a tool of the United States or to move closer to Russia. Depending on its choice, Europe can get off with a slight scare, such as a breakup of parts of its periphery and possible fragmentation of some countries, or it could collapse completely. Judging by the European elites’ reluctance to break openly with the United States, collapse is almost inevitable. What should interest us is the opinions of the two main players that determine the configuration of the geopolitical front and in fact are fighting for victory in the new generation of war – the network-centric Third World War. These players are the United States and Russia.

The U.S. position is clear and transparent. In the second half of the 1990s, Washington missed its only opportunity to reform the Cold War economy without any obstacles and thereby avoid the looming crisis in a system whose development is limited by the finite nature of planet Earth and its resources, including human ones, which conflicts with the need to endlessly print dollars. After that, the United States could prolong the death throes of the system only by plundering the rest of the world. At first, it went after Third World countries. Then it went for potential competitors. Then for allies and even close friends. Such plundering could continue only as long as the United States remained the world’s undisputed hegemon. Thus when Russia asserted its right to make independent political decisions – decisions of not global but regional import –, a clash with the United States became inevitable. This clash cannot end in a compromise peace.

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“Clearly, the European Parliament is a great danger to life on the planet.”

• Insanity Grips The Western World (Paul Craig Roberts)

The White Media claims, and has claimed since February 2014, that there are Russian tanks and troops in Ukraine. Putin has pointed out that if this indeed was the case, Kiev and Western Ukraine would have fallen to the Russian invasion early last year. Kiev has been unable to defeat the small breakaway republics in eastern and southern Ukraine and would stand no chance against the Russian military. Recently a brave news organization made fun of the White Media’s claim that Russian tanks have been pouring into Ukraine for 14 months. The parody pictured Ukraine at a standstill. All traffic on all roads and residential streets is blocked by Russian tanks. All parking places, including sidewalks and people’s front and rear gardens have tanks piled upon tanks. The entire country is immobilized in gridlock.

Although a few have fun making fun of the gullible people who believe the White Media, the situation is nevertheless serious as it concerns life on planet Earth. There is little sign that Washington and its vassals care about life on Earth. Recently, the largest political group in the European Parliament–the European People’s Party–expressed a cavalier opinion about life on Earth. We know this, because, if we can trust Euractiv, an online EU news source, the majority EU party believes that declaring the EU’s readiness for nuclear war is one of the best steps to deter Russia from further aggression. The aggression to be stopped by Europe’s declaration of its readiness for armageddon is the alleged Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the “further aggression” is Putin’s alleged intention of reestablishing the Soviet Empire.

It must be disappointing to the Russian government to see that leaders of the European Union prefer to endorse nuclear war than to challenge Washington’s propaganda. When I read that the governing party in the European Parliament thought non-existent aggression had to be stopped by a declaration of readiness for nuclear war, I realized that money could buy any and every thing, even the life of the planet. The European People’s Party was speaking in behalf of Washington’s propaganda, not in behalf of Europe. Europe’s nuclear war with Russia would end instantly with the destruction of every European capital. The crazed vice-president of the European People’s Party, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski revealed who the real aggressor is when he declared: “Time of talk and persuasion with Russia is over. Now it’s time for a tough policy.” Clearly, the European Parliament is a great danger to life on the planet.

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Breeding Chinese Goldmanites.

• China Teaches Top Cadres Western Ideas Despite Backlash (AP)

In the still, early hours, cadres make their way down tree-lined paths. They walk through a polished lobby, down dim hallways and settle themselves in rows in plain, wood-paneled classrooms. Here, they sit at the vanguard of the Communist Party of China. These rising Communist Party members from across the country have come to the China Executive Leadership Academy Pudong (CELAP) in Shanghai as part of the party’s decade-long effort to introduce its own elite to foreign ideas. Outside these walls, President Xi Jinping’s government is campaigning to scrub Western influence from classrooms, but here some 10,000 party loyalists each year hear from top Western scholars and executives about management techniques, media relations, urban development and innovation.

“It does no harm for top leaders to get to know different ideas in the world,” said Zhang Xuezhong, who was barred from teaching at East China University of Political Science and Law in 2013, after publishing an article critical of the government. “The Communist Party expects the people it rules to be ignorant, but they would not expect themselves to be like this.” As China seeks to play a more decisive role on the global stage, such exposure is becoming more important — at least for those at the forefront of transforming China’s economy and international role. For everyone else, education has become an ideological battleground, where destabilizing Western values must be vanquished lest they weaken the party’s grip on power.

“Young teachers and students are key targets of infiltration by enemy forces,” Education Minister Yuan Guiren wrote in a January essay. Around the same time, he told university officials to bar “teaching materials that disseminate Western values,” state-run news agency Xinhua reported. His remarks came shortly after Beijing issued new guidelines ordering universities to promote loyalty to the party, core socialist values, and the teachings of Xi himself. Meanwhile, Westerners continue to march through CELAP, bringing with them an uncontrollable parade of ideas. [..] “It’s a very unusual institution in China,” said Oxford University’s Nicholas Morris, who has taught at CELAP for a decade. “This institution’s job is to help Chinese leaders understand Western practice.”

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In one day. Where was Europe?

• Italy Rescues More Than 3,400 Europe-Bound Migrants At Sea (AFP)

More than 3,400 migrants were rescued at sea Saturday, mainly off Libya, as Europe seeks ways to deal with the flood of people trying to reach its shores following a series of deadly shipwrecks. A total of 3,427 people were picked up during the operation coordinated by the Italian coast guard. While they said it was a “very busy day”, it was not a record for the coast guard, which coordinated the rescue of 3,791 migrants on April 12 and another 2,850 the following day. French patrol boat Commandant Birot, which was sent to boost EU patrols to deal with the influx of migrant boats in the Mediterranean, picked up 217 people off the coast of Libya.

The migrants – all men – had been on board three boats, the authorities said, adding that two suspected people smugglers were also caught and would be handed over to Italian police. In Italy, the coast guard announced late at night that 16 vessels had rescued a total of 3,427 people on Saturday alone in an operation coordinated from their headquarters in Rome.

In addition to the French patrol boat, the rescue operation mobilised four Italian coast guard ships, two Italian navy vessels, two cargo ships, two Italian customs ships and two tugs. Most notably, the navy said on Twitter that the frigate Bersagliere had rescued 778 migrants while the patrol boat Vega had picked up another 675. Some of the rescued migrants were expected to arrive overnight on the Italian island of Lampedusa, the closest to the African coast, while most of the others are expected to arrive in Sicily or southern Italy on Sunday night. According to the Italian coast guard, the French patrol vessel should land its migrants at a port in Calabria.

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Should have been taken care of a long time ago.

• Greece To Ask EU For Extra Funding For Migrant Influx (Kathimerini)

Greece is to ask the European Union for €30 million of emergency funds to deal with the growing number of undocumented migrants arriving in the country, sources have told Kathimerini. The EU is already due to give Greece €470 million by 2020 for immigration-related matters, such as covering the cost of an asylum service and reception centers. However, this money covers existing operations and cannot be used to tackle problems caused by the spike in migrants reaching Greece over the last few months.

One of the things the government wants to use the emergency funds for is to hire a ferry to transport migrants from islands to reception centers or other facilities on the mainland. The coalition submitted an amendment to Parliament last week allowing authorities to bypass until the end of the year the tender process for immigration-related projects. The government says this will speed up the implementation of schemes aimed at helping migrants.

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Oooh, in-depth reporting from the NYT…

• Many Displaced African Migrants Had No Plan to Land in Italy (NY Times)

By now, the unceasing tides of migrants arriving at the ports of Sicily fall into loose national categories. The Syrians usually arrive with money, bearing broken lives in canvas bags, and are able to slip out of Italy, bound for affluent northern Europe. The Eritreans may be far less wealthy but they too are well organized, with networks that move them north as well. Then there are men like Agyemin Boateng and Prince Adawiah, who were scooped out of the Mediterranean this month by an Italian rescue ship. Both are from Ghana, and neither has a plan for a new life in Europe — nor, they say, did either of them ever plan to come to Italy. They were working as laborers in Libya, until life there became untenable and returning to Ghana became unfeasible.

“There are guns and bombs,” said Mr. Adawiah, 25, who worked in Tripoli for nearly three years. “Every day, there is shooting. I’m afraid. That is why I traveled to Italy.” Europe’s migration crisis escalated sharply in April, with the coming of warmer weather to the Mediterranean. Many more smugglers’ boats took to the sea, and a record number of migrants died attempting the crossing — more than 1,700 people so far in 2015, by some estimates. Conflicts in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia have shaped and reshaped Europe’s migrant flows in recent years, with none more transformative to the Mediterranean smuggling trade than the civil war in Syria. And the tumult in Libya is changing the migration equation once again.

Libyan lawlessness has allowed a haven for smugglers to operate along the country’s coastline, but it has also unmoored many African laborers who were working there as migrants. Many of these men now languish in Italian detention centers without contacts or plans for the future, and their growing numbers are frustrating some Italian mayors and other officials. “We don’t know anything,” said one migrant, Shamsudeen Sawud, 18, who arrived in Italy more than a week ago. “No one is telling us anything.”

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Yes, this is funny.

• Italian Army Growing Cannabis To Slash End User Prices (RT)

Italy’s first medical marijuana crop – grown by the country’s military – is “coming along nicely,” according to officials at a government-funded greenhouse outside Florence. “The aim of the operation is to provide users with a product that is not always easily available on the market, at a more competitive price,” Colonel Antonio Medica, the director of the facility, told Italian daily Corriere della Sera. Medical marijuana has been legal in the country since 2013 as pain relief for conditions such as multiple sclerosis and cancer, and as treatment for others, such as glaucoma. However, as there have been no licensed producers, and the state would not pay for the treatment, those with prescriptions have had to purchase it abroad, from the Netherlands and Germany, at prices that reach up to €40 per gram.

This means many patients have simply been buying their drugs off the street, financing drug dealers, who do not pay taxes, and may be engaged in other illegal activities. By producing 100 kg of its own weed, the government hopes to undercut the street dealers. “We’re aiming to lower the price to under €15 euros ($17), maybe even around €5 euros per gram,’ said Medica, who noted that this would be similar to the black market price of the drug. The government chose a military lab, due to existing security and surveillance arrangements. While the innovations will help medicinal users, they are unlikely to undermine the illegal marijuana market in a country where one in five admitted to being smokers of the drug in a survey conducted in 2012.

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And not a word on an investigation.

• From Ukraine To Australia, Tributes Pour Out For Odessa Massacre Victims (RT)

Thousands of people in Ukraine, Russia and around the world took to the streets to mark the first anniversary of the Odessa massacre. Last year, 48 activists were killed and over 200 injured as radicals set the local trade unions house on fire. The commemoration ceremonies for those who died in the fire on May 2, 2014 proceeded without serious incident in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa. A huge crowd, including the relatives of the victims, gathered in front of the Trade Unions building and released black balloons and doves in air. According to local media, the rally in Odessa was attended by around 5,000 people. The people held banners reading “fascism won’t pass” and “no to political repressions,” with some carrying photos of journalist Oles Buzina and politician Oleg Kalashnikov, who were assassinated in Kiev last month.

In the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, some 2,000 people marched to honor the victims of the tragedy in an action entitled ‘Kiev Remembers Odessa.’ The people were carrying photos of those who died in the fire, as well as pictures of Buzina and Kalashnikov. Several arrests were made during the demonstration, with the Kiev police saying that they “invited the men to a local police station”. They were later released. March to honor the victims of the Odessa massacre in Ukrainian capital Kiev on May 2, 2015.March to honor the victims of the Odessa massacre in Ukrainian capital Kiev on May 2, 2015. Earlier, reports emerged on social media that it was the organizers of the rally, who had been detained by the security officials. “The organizers of a peaceful rally have been arrested in Kiev! What for? Show me a single slogan, for which you can be arrested in a democratic ‘European’ country?” Yuri Kot, Ukrainian public figure and journalist, wrote on Facebook.

In Moscow, around 1,000 people gathered in front of the Ukrainian Embassy to Russia to commemorate the Odessa massacre victims. An outdoor photo exhibition, showcasing pictures of the burning Odessa Trade Union House, was organized together with the rally. “It was very hard to not to cry. I didn’t expect so many people to care and feel for the sorrow,” an eastern Ukrainian resident, who attended the event, told RIA-Novosti. At the end, the bell tolled 48 times to commemorate each victim of the last year’s tragedy. Remembrance events were also held in Australia, Poland, the Republic of Ireland, Switzerland, Morocco and other countries. In Italy, a monument to the Odessa tragedy was opened in the northern town of Ceriano Laghetto.

Ukraine authorities deployed over 3,000 law enforcers in Odessa ahead of the anniversary of mass killings on May 2. Odessa’s Kulikovo Field, the square where the bloodiest scenes in the last year’s confrontation unfolded, was cordoned off on Friday. People wishing to lay flowers in front of the Trade Unions building, where dozens of activists met their deaths, have had to pass through metal detectors. The streets are being patrolled by some 2,600 police officers, while 600 special service fighters are on alert, the Interior Ministry reported. Unarmed volunteer activists were also called to Odessa. “There cannot be too much police presence. It’s a demonstration of our presence and strength to those who want to shake the situation in Odessa. There will be a policeman in every square meter,” Ivan Katerhinchuk, the chief of Odessa region’s police force, told the media.

Earlier on Friday, police troops brought in from other regions and their local colleagues gathered in front of the building. CCTV footage showed dozens of trucks and patrol cars parked in rows and columns of security forces marching in the streets.

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“It’s no use having habitat if there’s nothing left to eat in it.”

• Wildlife Decline May Lead To ‘Empty Landscape’ (BBC)

Populations of some of the world’s largest wild animals are dwindling, raising the threat of an “empty landscape”, say scientists. About 60% of giant herbivores – plant-eaters – including rhinos, elephants and gorillas, are at risk of extinction, according to research. Analysis of 74 herbivore species, published in Science Advances, blamed poaching and habitat loss. A previous study of large carnivores showed similar declines. Prof William Ripple, of Oregon State University, led the research looking at herbivores weighing over 100kg, from the reindeer up to the African elephant. “This is the first time anyone has analysed all of these species as a whole,” he said. “The process of declining animals is causing an empty landscape in the forest, savannah, grasslands and desert.”

Prof David Macdonald, of Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, was among the team of 15 international scientists. “The big carnivores, like the charismatic big cats or wolves, face horrendous problems from direct persecution, over-hunting and habitat loss, but our new study adds another nail to their coffin – the empty larder,” he said. “It’s no use having habitat if there’s nothing left to eat in it.” According to the research, the decline is being driven by a number of factors including habitat loss, hunting for meat or body parts, and competition for food and resources with livestock. With rhinoceros horn worth more than gold, diamonds or cocaine on illegal markets, rhinos could be extinct in the wild within 20 years in Africa, said the researchers.

The consequences of large wild herbivore decline include: • Loss of habitat: for example, elephants maintain forest clearings by trampling vegetation. • Effects on the food chain: large predators such as lions, leopards, and hyena rely on large herbivores for food. • Seed dispersal: large herbivores eat seeds which are carried over long distances. • Impact on humans: an estimated one billion people rely on wild meat for subsistence while the loss of iconic herbivores will have a negative impact on tourism. The biggest losses are in South East Asia, India and Africa. Europe and North America have already lost most of their large herbivores in a previous wave of extinctions.

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Debt Rattle May 2 2015

May 022015
 
 May 2, 2015  Posted by at 10:36 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  11 Responses »


NPC National Service Co. front, 1610 14th Street N.W., Washington DC 1920

• Grantham Says Fed “Bound And Determined” To Engineer “Full-Fledged Bubble” (ZH)
• Our Banking System is a Giant House of Cards (Lynn Parramore)
• For China To Start All Over, The Dinosaurs Will Have To Change (Satyajit Das)
• Your No. 1 End-Of-The-World Investing Strategy (Paul B. Farrell)
• How Ben Bernanke Let Down America (MarketWatch)
• Quick Breakthrough At Brussels Group Looks Unlikely (Kathimerini)
• The Coming Defaults Of Greece (Vox.eu)
• FastTrack TPP: The Death of Sovereignty, Separation of Powers and Democracy (JF)
• Iceland Pirate Party Popularity Rivals Government Coalition (RT)
• Angela Merkel’s NSA Nightmare Just Got A Lot Worse (Don Quijones)
• Rioters In Milan Smash Shopfronts, Throw Smoke Bombs As Expo Opens (CNBC)
• Russia Preparing Offensive In Ukraine, NATO General Imagines (Zero Hedge)
• Kiev Is Making No ‘Tangible Steps’ To Investigate Year-Old Odessa Massacre (RT)
• Kim Dotcom Awarded Millions For Legal Bills And Living Expenses (TF)

I think people should stop calling this a ‘market’.

• Grantham Says Fed “Bound And Determined” To Engineer “Full-Fledged Bubble” (ZH)

Back in November, we highlighted the accuracy of Jeremy Grantham’s predictions about the trajectory of the central bank liquidity-fueled equity rally. In terms of how far the market can run before reality and gravity finally reassert themselves, bursting the centrally planned bubble and prompting a 2008-style “correction”, Grantham defined a “full-fledged” bubble as S&P 2250 and warned that a retracement of some 50% was possible depending on how assertive the Fed’s response to its real favorite economic indicator (stocks) turns out to be.

In GMO’s latest quarterly letter, Grantham is out reiterating his view that although US stocks may not have reached their peak in what he accurately calls a “strange, manipulated world” (we prefer “new paranormal”), he’s sticking with the idea that “bubble territory” is likely just around the corner as the Yellen Fed is “bound and determined” to facilitate an inexorable rise in asset prices. He also notes that the Yellen seems no more inclined than her predecessor to take Jeremy Stein’s advice on being careful not to adopt an “implicit policy of inaction” when it comes to bubbles. Here’s more:

The key point here is that in our strange, manipulated world, as long as the Fed is on the side of a strong market there is considerable hope for the bulls. In the Greenspan/Bernanke/Yellen Era, the Fed historically did not stop its asset price pushing until fully- fledged bubbles had occurred, as they did in U.S. growth stocks in 2000 and in U.S. housing in 2006. Both of these were in fact stunning three-sigma events, by far the biggest equity bubble and housing bubble in U.S. history.

Yellen, like both of her predecessors, has bragged about the Fed’s role in pushing up asset prices in order to get a wealth effect. Thus far, she seems to also share their view on feeling no responsibility to interfere with any asset bubble that may form. For me, recognizing the power of the Fed to move assets (although desperately limited power to boost the economy), it seems logical to assume that absent a major international economic accident, the current Fed is bound and determined to continue stimulating asset prices until we once again have a fully-fledged bubble. And we are not there yet.

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“We are failing to take simple steps and at the same time undertaking extremely costly steps with doubtful benefits.”

• Our Banking System is a Giant House of Cards (Lynn Parramore)

Anat Admati teaches finance and economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and is co-author of The Bankers’ New Clothes, a classic account of the problem of Too Big to Fail banks. Admati warns that we are not doing nearly enough to confront a bloated, inefficient, and dangerous financial system. The system can’t fix itself. Here’s what you need to know.

Lynn Parramore: How would you describe the problem of Too Big to Fail banks. Whey does it matter to an ordinary person?

Anat Admati: Too Big to Fail is a license for recklessness. These institutions defy notions of fairness, accountability, and responsibility. They are the largest, most complex, and most indebted corporations in the entire economy. We all have to be really alarmed by the fact that not only do we still have such institutions, but many of them are ever-larger and more complex and at least as dangerous, if not more so, than they were before the financial crisis. They are too big to manage and control. They take enormous risks that endanger everybody. They benefit from the upside and expose the rest of us to the downside of their decisions. These banks are too powerful politically as well. As they seek profits, they can make wasteful and inefficient loans that harm ordinary people, and at the same time they might refuse to make certain business loans that can help the economy.

They can even break the laws and regulations without the people responsible being held accountable. Effectively we’re hostages because their failure would be so harmful. They’re likely to be bailed out if their risks don’t turn out well. Ordinary people continue to suffer from a recession that was greatly exacerbated or even caused by recklessness in the financial system and failed regulation. But the largest institutions, especially their leaders — even in the failed ones — have suffered the least. They’re thriving again and arguably benefitting the most from efforts to stimulate the economy. So there’s something wrong with this picture. And there’s also increasing recognition that bloated banks and a bloated financial system – these huge institutions—are a drag on the economy.

LP: Have we made any progress in dealing with the problem?

AA: The progress has been totally unfocused and insufficient. Dodd-Frank claims to have solved the problem and it gives plenty of tools to regulators to do what needs to be done (many of these tools they actually already had before). But this law is really complex and the implementation of it is very messy. The lobbying by the financial industry is a large part of the reason that the law has been implemented so poorly and inefficiently with so much difficulty. We are failing to take simple steps and at the same time undertaking extremely costly steps with doubtful benefits. So we’ve had far from enough progress. We are told things are better but they are nowhere near what we should expect and demand. Much more can be done right now.

LP: Banks, compared to other businesses, finance an enormous portion of their assets with borrowed money, or debt – as much as 95%. Yet bankers often claim that this is perfectly fine, and if we make them depend less on debt they will be forced to lend less. What is your view? Would asking banks to rely more on unborrowed money, or equity, somehow hurt the economy?

AA: Sometimes when I don’t have time to unpack everything I use a quote from a book called Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins by Jeff Connaughton. He relates something Paul Volcker once said to Senator Ted Kaufman: “You know, just about whatever anyone proposes, no matter what it is, the banks will come out and claim that it will restrict credit and harm the economy…It’s all bullshit.” Here’s one obvious reason such claims are, in Volcker’s vocabulary, bullshit: Lending suffered most when banks didn’t have enough equity to absorb their losses in the crisis — and then we had to bail them out. The loss they suffered on the subprime fiasco was relatively small by comparison to losses to investors when the Internet bubble burst, but there was so much debt throughout the system, and indeed in the housing markets, and so much interconnection that the entire financial system almost collapsed. That’s when lending suffered. So lending and growth suffers when the banks have too little equity, not too much.

Now, banks naturally have some debt, like deposits. But they don’t feel indebted even when they rely on 95% debt to finance their assets. No other healthy company lives like that, and nobody, even banks, needs to live like that — that’s the key. Normally, the market would not allow this to go on; those who are as heavily indebted feel the burden in many ways. The terms of the debt become too burdensome for corporations, and reflect the inefficient investment decisions made by heavily indebted companies. But banks have much nicer creditors, like depositors, and with many explicit and implicit guarantees, banks don’t face trouble or harsh terms. They only have to convince the regulators to let them get away with it. And they do. So the abnormality of this incredible indebtedness is that they get away with it. There’s nothing good about it for society. If they had more equity then they could do everything that they do better —more consistently, more reliably, in a less distorted fashion.

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This will not happen, because the leaders themselves are the biggest dinosaurs. And they’re not about to give up their grip on power.

• For China To Start All Over, The Dinosaurs Will Have To Change (Satyajit Das)

Central to China’s agenda of driving growth through economic reform is a shift from debt-driven investment to consumption. Since the 1980s, investment has risen from 35% of GDP to 45 to 50%. China’s annual infrastructure spend is far greater than that of the US and Europe but also of other emerging markets. It is double that of India and around four times that of Latin America. The country’s investment levels are also running at 10 to 15% of GDP – higher than in comparable countries such as Japan and South Korea at the equivalent stages of their development. In recent years, Beijing has sought to rebalance the share of GDP contributed by consumption and investment, but the task is difficult.

First, as the analyst Michael Pettis has repeatedly stated, the level of consumption growth needed to rebalance China is formidable. That rate has not been static, running at around 8% a year over the past decade. But growth in consumer spending has been slower than that in the overall economy and the increase in gross fixed investment – an average annual growth of more than 13%, which resulted in the share of private consumption in GDP falling to 35% from 45 to 50%. If China grows at 8% a year, consumption needs to expand by around 11% (3% above growth) to increase the share of consumption from 35% to 36% of GDP in a year. Assuming a growth rate of 8% and consumption increases of 11%, it would take about five years to increase consumption to 40% of GDP. If growth slows, the difficulty of the task increases.

Second, legacy issues of rapid expansion and excessive investment will need to be managed. Many projects have dubious economics and will not generate sufficient revenues to repay the borrowings used to finance them, resulting in potential losses to lenders.

Third, boosting consumption will reduce savings, affecting the deposit base and cost of funding at Chinese banks, which will reduce their flexibility in managing rising losses on bad loans. It will also require a significant boost in household income, and this will affect the profitability of Chinese companies, which already operate on thin margins.

Fourth, the rebalancing will result in slower growth, at least during the period of transition. A move away from investment-driven growth also requires reform of China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs). China has around 150,000 SOEs, which control around 50% of industrial assets and employ around 20% of the workforce.

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Farrell misses out on the no. 1: people and communities.

• Your No. 1 End-Of-The-World Investing Strategy (Paul B. Farrell)

Quarterly reports are hot news today. Listen: “While the end-of-the-world scenario will be rife with unimaginable horrors,” predicts the CEO of a major Wall Street bank at a shareholders meeting, “we believe that the pre-end period will be filled with unprecedented opportunities for profit.” That message comes from one of Robert Mankoff’s popular New Yorker cartoons, and it accurately captures the winning strategy used by most successful Wall Street bankers. But the real successful strategists have both, balancing the two: short-term opportunities for profit plus a vision of the future, the long-term megatrends that impact returns today as well as tomorrow. Here’s an example of this strategy, hedging long risks while playing a winning short game.

Here’s one strategy based on the 12 megatrends in Jared Diamond’s book “Collapse: How Societies Chose to Fail Or Succeed.” So you’d be building a portfolio that balances short-term opportunities within Diamond’s megatrends structure, picking stocks that fit near-term the best investment parameters for success in a society that’s risking a collapse:

1. Water
Diamond warns: “Most of the world’s freshwater in rivers and lakes is already being used for irrigation, domestic and industrial water,” transportation, dams, fisheries and recreation. Water problems destroyed many earlier civilizations: “Today over a billion people lack access to reliable safe drinking water.” By 2015 two-thirds of the world will live in water-stressed countries. Water will trade like oil futures today. More and more wars will be fought over water and other basic resources concluded a 2003 Pentagon report predicting that “warfare will define human life by 2020.

2. Food
The United Nations says the global food crisis is a “silent tsunami.” Two billion people, mostly poor, depend on fish and other wild foods for protein. Their supplies have “collapsed or are in steep decline,” forcing use of costly animal proteins. The rise in food prices is making it worse for billions living below poverty levels. In “The End of Plenty,” National Geographic warns “synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation, supercharged by genetically engineered seeds” is failing. A joint World Bank/UN study “concluded that the immense production increases brought about by science and technology the past 30 years have failed to improve food access for many of the world’s poor.” Time warns that our “addiction to meat” has led to farming that’s “destructive of the soil, the environment and us.”

3. Farmland
Crop soils are “being carried away by water and wind erosion at rates between 10 to 40 times the rates of soil formation.” With forests, the soil-erosion rate is “between 500 and 10,000 times” the replacement rate, a trend accelerated by today’s new age of the 100,000-acre megafires. Ceres and Chess are hedge funds that own many small farms.

4. Forests
We are destroying natural habitats and rain forests at an accelerating rate. Half the world’s original forests have been converted to urban developments. A quarter of what remains will be converted in the next 50 years.

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How America lets down Americans.

• How Ben Bernanke Let Down America (MarketWatch)

Don’t say Ben Bernanke didn’t do anything for unemployment. After all, the former Federal Reserve chairman now has three jobs. On Wednesday, Pacific Investment Management Co., or Pimco, announced — via Twitter, of course — that Bernanke had signed on as a senior adviser to the fund company known for its bond investing. Pimco joins the hedge fund Citadel and the Brookings Institution as Bernanke’s post-Fed effort to put food on the table. While Bernanke has sought to underplay or, more accurately, not disclose how much he’s being paid by these firms, it’s highly unlikely he will have to ask for public assistance. Speaking of which, just how good is that unemployment office near the Fed and Treasury Department?

We’re just teasing, of course. Bernanke, like any other public servant, has a right to work after he leaves government. And since the Fed is a quasi-governmental institution and has been accused of serving Wall Street’s interests, is this as much of a radical transition as it may appear at first glance? On the other hand, isn’t this endless pattern, known as the “revolving door” where senior regulators leave to join the firms they regulated only a few months or weeks ago, getting a little tired? Timothy Geithner, a regulator cozy with Wall Street, goes to head the Treasury Department where he’s criticized for bailing out Wall Street and almost no one else, and then leaves public service for a private equity firm, Warburg Pincus, with deep ties to banks.

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Get out, you Greeks!

• Quick Breakthrough At Brussels Group Looks Unlikely (Kathimerini)

Greece’s hopes of an emergency Eurogroup being called as early as Monday to confirm the progress in Brussels Group talks, and thereby possibly prompting the European Central Bank to allow Athens to issue more treasury bills to relieve its liquidity problem, appear to be misplaced. Several European Union officials have told Kathimerini that it is unlikely eurozone finance ministers will be in a position to discuss the state of negotiations at the beginning of the week. Greece’s lenders insist that there must be a staff-level agreement on the range of measures being demanded in return for €7.2 billion in bailout funding before the matter can be referred to the Eurogroup.

Athens, though, hopes that there can be an initial agreement on a bare minimum of reforms that would prompt the ECB to increase its €15 billion ceiling on the level of Greek T-bills that can be issued and allow local banks to increase their exposure to this form of debt. The first two days of the Brussels Group deliberations, which began on Thursday, confirmed that there is a substantial distance separating Greece and its lenders. For instance, they differ on macroeconomic projections. Athens still believes growth this year can reach 1.2 to 1.4% and that this would lead to a primary surplus of 1.2%. Creditors see these projections as extremely optimistic.

Also, Athens is willing to go ahead with some but not all of the privatizations planned for this year, bringing in projected revenues of €1.5 billion, which the institutions also see as being overestimated. The target for revenues from sell-offs this year had been €2.2 billion The government looks set to keep the single property tax (ENFIA) this year despite its election pledge to scrap the highly unpopular levy, but there is still a disagreement over the value-added tax increase being demanded by creditors. The institutions believe that between €2 and €3 billion of new fiscal measures will be needed this year for Greece to hit its targets.

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“In the longer run, however, a much-depreciated drachma could lift the Greek economy and, of course, the country might appreciate monetary independence..”

• The Coming Defaults Of Greece (Vox.eu)

When thinking about Greece’s dilemma, two facts from Reinhart and Rogoff (2009) research are highly relevant:
• Defaults on public debts are pretty mundane events; and
• Greece is historically the world’s leading serious defaulter.

What makes the coming event interesting is that it will be the first time that a default occurs within a monetary union. The crucial observation is that there is no automatic link between a default and monetary-union membership. As we know from previous experiments of government default within the dollar monetary union – the defaults of Orange County in California and Detroit in Michigan – a sub-central government can default and keep the currency. The unique characteristics of such events are that: 1) an exchange-rate depreciation cannot help shift expenditure to the defaulting region’s production; and 2) there is no local central bank to provide liquidity to both the government and commercial banks during the hard phase of the default. The Greek government might be tempted to recover its own currency but the short-run costs are likely to far exceed the short-run benefits.

An idea of what would await Greece is provided by Levy Yeyati (2011) in his description of how Argentina gave up its currency board link to the US dollar, an easier case given that the national currency was already in place. The Argentinian example should warn the Greek authorities of the political turmoil that could follow a default. In the longer run, however, a much-depreciated drachma could lift the Greek economy and, of course, the country might appreciate monetary independence following its wrenching experience inside the Eurozone. Basically, the trade-off is a major shock and one more year of misery versus the removal of Eurozone membership shackles forever. The balance of benefits is difficult to evaluate since it depends very much on institutional issues that are not clear now.

The key questions are:
• Will Greece be able to finally establish on its own fiscal discipline and will its central bank deliver high-quality monetary policy?
• Will the Eurozone draw all the lessons from a Grexit and amend its policies and governance?

In the short run, after a first default, even a partial one, the Greek government will have to balance its books because no one will lend anything any more. ‘Balancing the books’ can mean different things, however.

• One option is to run an overall balanced budget, thus continuing to service the debt after the initial wave of defaults.

The latest European Commission forecasts for 2015 are for a surplus of 1.1% of GDP, after a deficit of 2.5% last year. This might be optimistic as tax receipts seem to have slowed down. Another option is to balance the primary budget, which means no servicing of the debt.

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“..the death of National Sovereignty, State Sovereignty, Separation of Powers, and Democracy..”

• FastTrack TPP: The Death of Sovereignty, Separation of Powers and Democracy (JF)

Ellen Brown has called the TPP “the death of the Republic.” It certainly is that. But, I think I’ve shown that it is the death of National Sovereignty, State Sovereignty, Separation of Powers, and Democracy, as well. These impacts on governance and politics are even more important, I believe, than its economic ones, since it from these that our benefits, both economic and non-economic flow. The elevation of the principle of “expectation of profits” above all other principles including the principles of “public purpose,” “consent of the governed,” “the general welfare,” and “separation of powers,” is tantamount to the overthrow of democracy, preserving its form in national level elections, but emptying its elections of meaningful content in mandating change and in conferring legitimacy on national authorities.

I’ve said previously that the rule of the TPP, even if passed over the mushrooming opposition from all segments of American society except the uncritical globalists, will never be viewed as legitimate in the United States and will also always be viewed as tyranny for as long as we live under it. This problem will become increasingly severe the larger, more frequent, and more outrageous ISDS awards defending the “expectations of profits” of multinational become. That makes those who want to pass the TPP guilty of conspiracy to create tyrannical rule of the international few over the people of the United States and other TPP member nations. Eventually, I believe that a vote for the TPP will be viewed as vote to betray the Constitution and a violation of the oath of office of any who vote that way.

How can there be any other outcome when an action taken in office destroys National Sovereignty, State Sovereignty, Separation of Powers, and Democracy with a single vote.

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A sudden surge.

• Iceland Pirate Party Popularity Rivals Government Coalition (RT)

The Pirate Party of Iceland, which has the smallest faction in the national parliament after the 2013 election, is now almost as popular as the two ruling coalition parties combined, the latest opinion poll showed. The party would score 30.1% of votes in Iceland if a general election was held now, the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service (RUV) reports citing a Gallup poll. Iceland’s two ruling parties – the Independent Party and the Progressive Party – have 22.9% and 10.1% support respectively, scoring less than 3% points ahead of the Pirates. The Pirate Party experienced an astounding surge of popularity in Iceland. In 2013, polls indicated it would barely score 5% of votes needed to win parliamentary seats. The party’s approval rating in January was roughly the same.

An early March Gallup poll showed its popularity had grown to over 15%, beating the Bright Future party. In less than two months the Pirate Party doubled its rating. “People are starting to realize that the whole system is corrupt, not just a few politicians,” Helgi Hrafn Gunnarsson, Pirate Party’s chair and one of its three MPs told Vísir news website in March. “They don‘t trust it at all. I think they appreciate it when someone points this out.” Responding to the latest poll, Gunnarsson said he was glad to see such a result but expected it to rebound somewhat in the weeks to come. He added there is still some time to go to the next election in Iceland, which is scheduled for 2017. The same opinion poll showed a 32% approval of the government by Icelanders, compared to 37% in March. Among the latest big decisions of the government is the March withdrawal of its bid to join the European Union.

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“The phrase “shameless hypocrisy” comes to mind.”

• Angela Merkel’s NSA Nightmare Just Got A Lot Worse (Don Quijones)


Angela Merkel, Germany’s most successful and popular politician, could be in serious trouble, after revelations that Germany’s national intelligence agency, the BND, has been spying on key European assets on behalf of US intelligence. Those “assets” include top French officials, the EU’s headquarters, the European defense corporation EADS, the helicopter manufacturer Eurocopter and even German companies. To wit, from Der Spiegel:

In 2008, at the latest, it became apparent that NSA selectors were not only limited to terrorist and weapons smugglers… But it was only after the revelations made by whistleblower Edward Snowden that the BND decided to investigate the issue. In October 2013, an investigation came to the conclusion that at least 2,000 of these selectors were aimed at Western European or even German interests.

Today, the German foreign intelligence agency is accused of processing over 40,000 spy requests from the NSA, many of which represent a clear violation of the Memorandum of Agreement that the US and Germany signed in 2002. Washington and Berlin agreed at the time that neither Germans nor Americans — neither people nor companies or organizations — would be among the surveillance targets. The scandal could be particularly damaging for the Minister of Interior Thomas de Maiziere, whose ministry is accused of misleading parliament after claiming, as recently as April 14, to have no knowledge of alleged US economic spying in Europe, and of Germany’s alleged involvement.

For Merkel, it is a dizzying reversal of roles and fortunes. In 2013 she was arguably the most high-profile victim of NSA surveillance when it was revealed that the NSA had targeted her cellphone. When confronted with Edward Snowden’s allegations of US National Security Agency mass surveillance of European citizens, Merkel famously said that “spying on friends is just not on.” According to official accounts, she even placed a “strongly worded phone call” to US President Barack Obama. At the time the scandal was a political boon for Merkel, with 62% of Germans approving of her “harsh reaction”, according to a survey by polling institute YouGov. Now the tables have turned. If Merkel’s government is found to have had prior knowledge of the BND’s spying on the French government, citizens, and companies, its behavior in the wake of the phone-tapping revelations will be cast in a starkly different light. The phrase “shameless hypocrisy” comes to mind.

While the BNS is taking most of the flak, with some pundits even questioning whose interests it serves, questions are being raised about just how much Merkel’s government knew about the surveillance program. “At least since the Snowden revelations in 2013, all those involved at all levels, including the Chancellery, should have been suspicious of the cooperation with the NSA,” Konstantin von Notz, the senior Green Party member on the NSA investigative committee, told Der Spiegel.

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Italy hates the Milan Expo. For good reason.

• Rioters In Milan Smash Shopfronts, Throw Smoke Bombs As Expo Opens (CNBC)

Milan has been waiting since 2008 for this day and now it has finally come—but takeoff for the World Expo 2015 looks to be overshadowed by violent protests. The turnstiles and doors officially opened on Friday in Italy’s commercial and fashion capital. But opening day excitement for the six-month-long commercial event wasn’t necessarily present among the crowds on Friday. The wet weather may have dampened the number of visitors to the event on its first day—with noticeably empty entrances and security checkpoints. Meanwhile, thousands of protesters marched through the streets of Milan behind a banner reading “No Expo, Eat the Rich,” according to Reuters. The No-Expo movement has been critical of the amount of money the government has poured into the event, when there are fears of austerity and cuts to public services.

A large anti-expo march through the center of Milan was overtaken by anarchists groups that smashed shopfronts and clashed with police. There were several banks with smashed-in doors and windows and the streets were strewed with detritus. Teargas was used by riot police to try and disperse parts of the crowd. Although most of the march was peaceful, around 200 demonstrators threw rocks, in addition to setting off flare and smoke bombs. A large six-story building was torched, as well as the ground floor of a two-story building. At least six cars were burnt and fire crews were deployed at multiple spots across the city. AP television footage appeared to show police using water cannons on protesters.

Friday is Labor Day, also known as May Day, and is a traditional occasion for anti-capitalist protests. The Expo is bringing together 145 countries from around the world with the theme “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life.” The organizers are expecting up to 20 million visitors during the length of the Expo and as many as 250,000 on a particularly busy day. However, estimates for attendee numbers on Friday were only in the tens of thousands. Italy is hoping for a big economic boost because of the Expo, which is held every five years in different world location and is designed to showcase innovation. Some say the Milan Expo could generate up to $10 billion. But the event has come under criticism, particularly for skyrocketing costs and a number of corruption scandals.

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“Note that Breedlove has managed to pull off what we thought was a linguistic impossibility: his statement is contradictory, vague, and definitive all at once.”

• Russia Preparing Offensive In Ukraine, NATO General Imagines (Zero Hedge)

Just a day after the US Navy said it was prepared to escort US-flagged cargo ships through the Strait of Hormuz as a precautionary measure after Iran supposedly fired on and subsequently seized a ship flying the Marshall Islands flag, we get still more sabre rattling in what has become a global staring match between the US on one side and Russia, Iran, and China on the other, with points of contention ranging from territorial sovereignty in Eastern Europe, to man-made islands in the South China Sea, to nuclear energy, to cyber warfare. This time it’s U.S. Air Force General and NATO supreme allied commander Philip Breedlove ratcheting up the rhetoric (and perhaps suggesting that the Kremlin is correct in its assessment of US foreign policy) by suggesting to the Senate that Russia is planning to shatter what remains of the fragile ceasefire in Ukraine by launching an imminent offensive. Via Reuters:

Russia’s military may be taking advantage of a recent lull in fighting in eastern Ukraine to lay the groundwork for a new military offensive, NATO’s top commander told the U.S. Congress on Thursday. U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, the NATO supreme allied commander, said Russian forces had been seeking to “reset and reposition” while protecting battlefield gains, despite a fragile ceasefire agreed in February.

And while the general had trouble explaining exactly how he came to this conclusion based on the evidence he had observed, he did come prepared with plenty of vague soundbites which, although largely devoid of any real meaning, sounded scary enough to get the attention of the media and will probably play well with the 348 members of the House who not long ago voted to provide lethal aid to Kiev. Here are some excerpts from the DoD press release:

“Many [Russian] actions are consistent with preparations for another offensive,” he added. Russia is aggressive in all elements of national power – diplomatic, informational, economic, and its military, the general said. “It would not make sense to unnecessarily take any of our own tools off the table,” he said about the U.S. possibility of supplying defensive weapons to Ukraine. Russia’s aggression also is destabilizing neighboring states and the region, and its illegal actions are pushing instability closer to NATO’s boundaries, Breedlove told the senators. “We cannot be fully certain what Russia will do next, and we cannot fully grasp [Putin‘s] intent,” Breedlove he said. “What we can do is learn from his actions, and what we see suggests growing Russian capabilities, significant military modernization and an ambitious strategic intent.”

Got it. So summarizing, we cannot be certain about Putin’s intent, but based on his actions, we can be certain that his intent is both ambitious and strategic. Note that Breedlove has managed to pull off what we thought was a linguistic impossibility: his statement is contradictory, vague, and definitive all at once.

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Kiev and the west are determined that no-one ever finds out what happened in Odessa, on Maidan Square, with MH-17 etc etc.

• Kiev Is Making No ‘Tangible Steps’ To Investigate Year-Old Odessa Massacre (RT)

Moscow has called on the international community to put pressure on Ukrainian authorities, which are not making any ‘tangible steps’ towards an independent and impartial investigation of last year’s Odessa massacre, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said. “With a deep concern we have to state that one year [since the tragedy], the Ukrainian justice system did not take any tangible steps toward an objective, independent and impartial investigation of this horrific crime in order to bring the perpetrators to justice,” the statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry said, as cited by Sputnik news agency. On May 2 last year, the Ukrainian radicals set fire to the Trade Union House in Odessa, killing 48 and injuring over 200 anti-Kiev activists inside.

“As a result of these barbaric acts of intimidation, several dozen people, whose only fault was that they openly expressed their civic stance against the anti-constitutional coup in February 2014 and outburst of radical ultranationalists, were killed,” the Foreign Ministry’s statement reads. Moscow urged the international community, including human rights NGOs, to “decisively and honestly” demand Kiev stage a fair investigation into the Odessa massacre and correct the “glaring flaws” in Ukrainian judicial system. The ministry stressed that Kiev’s “carelessness” and passiveness in investigating the May 2 events is backed by the stance of its Western backers and some major global media outlets.

The little attention given to the Odessa massacre in European and American news is “yet another manifestation of information warfare and manipulation of the media,” the statement said. Meanwhile, the US also addressed Kiev with an appeal not to delay the investigation of deadly fire. “We reiterate the need for a thorough and transparent investigation so those responsible can ultimately be held accountable. We continue to urge the Ukrainian government to investigate and bring charges against those culpable for the events in Odessa and to do so as quickly as possible,” Marie Harf, US State Department spokeswoman, said on Thursday.

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Little bit crazy perhaps? My guess is if this comes out, he’s going to lose a lot of sympathy. Kiwi’s are sort of done with him anyway.

• Kim Dotcom Awarded Millions For Legal Bills And Living Expenses (TF)

Kim Dotcom has succeeded in getting more of his seized funds released by the courts in New Zealand. In addition to millions for legal expenses, the entrepreneur will receive $128K per month including $60K to pay mansion rent, $25,600 to cover staff and security, plus $11,300 for grocery and other expenses.

How much does it cost to enjoy a reasonable standard of living in the modern world? A couple of thousand dollars a month? Three thousand? Four? For Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, none of these amounts scratch the surface, a problematic situation considering all of his assets were previously seized by the U.S. and New Zealand governments. In February a “broke” and “destitute” Dotcom appeared before Justice Patricia Courtney, asking for living expenses and a massive cash injection to pay historical and current legal fees. Dotcom was previously granted around US$15,000 per month to live on but high costs had left him “penniless”. Following the hearing Justice Courtney’s ruling is largely good news for Dotcom, with the Judge taking into consideration claims by authorities that the entrepreneur has funds in a trust that could help pay his expenses.

“The trust’s major asset is its shareholding in Mega Ltd, said to be worth more than $30m (US$22.6m). In evidence Mr Dotcom said that there were difficulties in selling Mega shares because they were blocked from being sold until the planned listing of Mega, which is now scheduled for late May 2015 (though it is possible that this date will be pushed back). There was no evidence to the contrary,” the Judge’s ruling reads. “I have concluded that Mr Dotcom does not have the ability to meet his legal and reasonable living expenses from trust assets because, on the evidence, those assets are not sufficiently liquid.” Noting that he still owes former lawyers around US$1.5m, the Judge said that Dotcom’s estimate for financing his legal battle against extradition is between US$1.5m and US$3m.

This amount will be released from currently restrained government bonds. Next up was the Dotcom family’s accommodation costs. Rent on the now-famous mansion amounts to US$754,000 per annum under a lease Dotcom signed in February 2013 and which expires in the same month 2016. The Judge decided that terminating that lease would result in additional costs. “If [Dotcom] were to terminate the lease in order to find a more modest home, he would immediately be exposed to a significant contractual liability for the existing rental in addition to the costs of any new accommodation,” the Judge writes.

“Little would be saved by requiring Mr Dotcom to move into more modest accommodation pending the expiry of the lease; it is more likely that the total amount required to house Mr Dotcom and his children and meet his lease commitment would actually prove greater than simply remaining where he is. “I therefore accept that, in the particular circumstances of this case, a figure of $80,000 (US$60,300) per month is reasonable for accommodation.”

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