René Magritte The Art of Conversation 1963
🚨MUST WATCH:
Claire Daily: “500,000 men are dead.
Ukraine has resorted to conscription, signing people up with disability, with mental illness, men paying to get out of the country, hiding in their houses.”
Stoltenberg: “Russian army is the second strongest in Ukraine” pic.twitter.com/atlLRy8rqW
— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) September 7, 2023
Nap Sachs
The European Commission praised Ukraine’s Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin for his efforts to fight corruption in a December 2015 progress report published nine days after then-VP Joe Biden demanded his ouster. The report flies in the face of Biden’s claims that the European Union joined his demands that Shokin be removed for being corrupt and obstructing anti-corruption reforms.
Trump Rapid City
https://twitter.com/i/status/1700353703079747841
Obama insider and author and biographer Joel Gilbert has claimed Michelle Obama is preparing to enter the 2024 race and become the Democratic presidential nominee allegedly due to Biden’s declining health.
Lara Logan
https://twitter.com/i/status/1699848500551328179
“David Weiss is a factotum, he’s a lickspittle. He does what he’s told for the Biden family. Always has, always will.”
• Hunter the Hunted? Biden Indictment May be Ruse to Prolong Cover-Up (Tweedie)
Carter Clews, the president of Constitutional Rights PAC, Rory Riley Topping, a legal analyst at SpectrumNews 1 and opinion contributor at The Hill discusses the possible indictment of Hunter Biden with investigative journalist Dan Lazare. Looming charges against Joe Biden’s son Hunter may paradoxically be part of the long game of covering up his wrongdoing to save his father’s career, pundits have suggested. US media reported this week that special counsel David Weiss was planning to indict Hunter on illegal firearms possession charges before the end of the month. Carter Clews told Sputnik the indictment was an elaborate deception, but that “the American people aren’t that stupid.” “It’s all done for obfuscation,” Clews said. “David Weiss is a factotum, he’s a lickspittle. He does what he’s told for the Biden family. Always has, always will.”
He pointed out that a New York Post editorial column had already exposed how Weiss had “run interference” for Hunter Biden for five years. “If he wanted to indict Hunter Biden, he could have done it at any point during those five years,” Clews said. “All of the transgressions were there, all of the lawbreaking.” But by laying formal charges against the scion of the political family, the special counsel can declare all evidence sub judice and off-limits to journalists. “This will enable Weiss to refuse to turn over any more documents, to refuse to answer any questions: ‘well, you know, we have an indictment. There’s a very thorough, ongoing investigation’ — which will amount to nothing,” Clews argued.
He said the proceedings were a “three-part deception”“They may be doing it to go to Joe and say: ‘we’re going to stick your son behind bars for the rest of his life, if you don’t declare that you’ve decided not to run for re-election’,” Clews said. “‘Toxic Joe’ is very difficult to get along with. And I’m sure they’ve approached him nicely and say maybe, maybe you should step aside come January or February. And he said: ‘no, I’m not doing that’.” Another aim may simply be to “dupe the American people once again… to deepen the cover-up, as I just said, to be able to say: ‘oh, no, we can’t comment. We can’t give you any information over this’. They have blocked every request from [Congress representative James] Comer, the Oversight Committee chairman for documents. And this will enable them to continue doing it and they will do it even more so.”
Legal analyst Rory Riley-Topping told Sputnik that many US citizens had wanted a “more expeditious process” of indicting the president’s son. “Had he been just a regular citizen, if you or I or anyone on the street was caught doing some of the things that Hunter Biden was doing, I think that we probably wouldn’t have taken five years to be indicted for some of those charges,” she pointed out. “That’s one of the main sources of frustration.” But she argued the Biden administration had left a timebomb for itself by obstructing and delaying the investigation. “But in a wonderful twist of irony, this is potentially going to trial during the campaign season. I think that’s something that the Biden administration certainly wanted to avoid” Riley -Topping said. “So in some sense, their strategy to drag this out and hope it went away ultimately backfired.”
Hollywood at its worst.
• Biden’s New Campaign Ad Presents Him As Last Action Hero (ZH)
“He entered Ukraine under the cover of night. And in the morning, Joe Biden walked shoulder to shoulder with our allies in the war-torn streets,” the narrator of a new one-minute Biden campaign ad begins. “Standing up for democracy in a place where a tyrant is waging war to take it away.” Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, where he’ll likely face Trump as the Republican nominee, the Biden team is focusing the reelection campaign around his surprise visit to Ukraine which took place last February. It’s being touted as the first time in American history that a sitting president traveled to an allied nation at war. “In the middle of a war zone, Joe Biden showed the world what America is made of,” the narrator says. “That’s the quiet strength of a true leader, who doesn’t back down to a dictator.”
So while his critics sarcastically refer to him as “sleepy Joe” – his supporters are envisioning him as some kind of last action hero being covertly whisked into a dangerous “war zone” in the dark of night. “Air raid sirens blared as the two men walked together,” the clip dramatically continues, showing Biden shoulder to shoulder with Zelensky. The video was timed to be released to coincide with Biden’s trip to the G20 summit in India, where he’ll likely have strong words for Putin, who will not be attendance. NBC writes of the spot entitled simply “War Zone”:
The new, 60-second advertisement will air in battleground states this weekend during the prime-time broadcast of “60 Minutes” while Biden is due to attend the G-20 Summit here, a gathering of leaders of the world’s largest economies that won’t include two geopolitical rivals, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping. This comes as he’s set to pour yet billions more of American taxpayer dollars into Kiev’s coffers. Yet war observers and analysts have of late expressed intensifying concern over uncontrollable escalation in what’s now obviously a US-NATO proxy war against Russia. But Biden is doubling or tripling down, showing the world “what America is made of”, apparently.
“Is it now, “Keep Hunter close and self-important — or else”?
• What Game Is Hunter Biden Playing? (Victor Davis Hanson)
Hunter Biden’s attorneys sought to leverage federal prosecutors into agreeing to drop their charges — by threatening to call in as a pro-Hunter witness President Joe Biden himself and thereby likely invoke a constitutional crisis! In such a scenario, the president under oath would be forced to lie again that he had no knowledge of or involvement in Hunter’s illegal behavior. Or if he admitted the truth that he did, he would thus contradict years of his adamant denials. Why would Hunter put his father and president in such a publicity circus?
Hunter has lost an incriminating laptop by abandoning it at a repair shop. He has forgotten his crack pipe in a rental car. His illegally registered handgun turned up in a trash dumpster near a school. So would not the carefree Hunter insist that all the Bidens in the spotlight remain extra careful never to abandon incriminating drugs — especially in the White House. Yet in a West Wing first, recently cocaine was found lost in an entrance vestibule. Various media outlets claimed it belonged to someone in the “Biden family orbit.” One of two things explain the continuous reckless behavior of wayward son Hunter Biden: One, he is either still on drugs or so suffers from past addiction that he has lost all common sense and judgment, and simply cannot control his behavior.
Or, two, Hunter is an embittered, angry son. As the Biden bagman for foreign shakedown cash, he did the dirty work and most risked the legal exposure that made all the Bidens rich. Yet, instead of familial praise — or so the broke Hunter seems to whine on his laptop –Hunter gets no respect from those he enriched. And now he, not they, might first go to jail. As a result, does his continuous recklessness send a not so-subtle reminder to all the Bidens – his father the “Big Guy” especially? That is, Hunter is not going to take the fall. He will not end up in prison for decades while the other exempt Bidens continue to enjoy their ill-gotten riches, due to Hunter’s imaginative cons. No wonder the first family for months moved Hunter into the White House and put him on Air Force One. Is it now, “Keep Hunter close and self-important — or else”?
Let’s see it.
• Biden Impeachment Vote Could Take Place in Mid-September – Comer (Sp.)
The US House of Representatives could vote to impeach President Joe Biden as early as mid-September, James Comer, the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, said. Earlier in the week, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said a majority of House members support investigating Biden in order to move forward with impeachment proceedings. “I think the House will vote in September. And this is all up to [House Speaker] Kevin McCarthy … but he and I have had several conversations … I would predict that in the middle of September, we have a vote. I would predict that it passes,” Comer said in an interview with the news broadcaster. The lawmaker also said that the official inquiry could be useful in obtaining information from the National Archives and Records Administration and the Internal Revenue Service, which have allegedly slow-walked the investigation by postponing providing requested bank records of the Biden family.
Biden’s possible use of a pseudonym to communicate with his son, Hunter about foreign business dealings may have been precisely what prompted representatives to move forward with the investigation, Comer added. US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had earlier expressed support for a vote to launch an impeachment inquiry into Biden, amid reports that it could be launched without a proper vote. He said that the information gathered by the Republican Party allows the question of Biden’s impeachment to be raised. He said that the family of the US president was involved in a “culture of corruption”. McCarthy also stated that the investigation into the alleged involvement of the US president and his son in corrupt activities dictates the need to initiate the impeachment process. As the high-ranking congressman noted, such a procedure would expand the ability of the US legislature to gather information necessary for the investigation into the presidency.
Madam President.
• White House Scolded Hillary for Asking Ukraine for Help With Afghan Exit (Sp.)
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan reportedly scolded former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to help evacuate Afghan women during the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Citing the recently-published book “The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future,” US media reported on Friday that Clinton had asked Zelensky’s aide if she could board several Afghan women on military transport planes headed to Kiev. After Sullivan became aware of Clinton’s call, it’s alleged he questioned her methods and reportedly asked her: “What are you doing calling the Ukrainian government?”
Clinton later responded by explaining that she would not have to call Ukraine if the Biden administration would have done it in the first place. She subsequently assured Sullivan she would coordinate with US officials. However, as the book alleges, Clinton had already contacted world leaders in Canada, Qatar and Albania amid her efforts to evacuate 1,000 people out of Afghanistan who were said to be at-risk of being killed by the Taliban* once American forces fully departed the war-torn nation. The book’s author, Franklin Foer, explains that the list of women were referred to as “white scarves” since the Clinton camp instructed them to wear the specified head coverings so they were easily identifiable.
He would have had to specifically order a lethal operation on the brink of WWIII. Not his style.
• Zelensky On Starlink-Gate: Musk “Committing Evil” & Driven By “Big Ego” (ZH)
Since Elon Musk has apparently become Donald Trump – in that any lie/twist/gaslighting will do to further the narrative, no matter how false it is known to be – last night saw the mainstream media overwhelmed with circle-jerk-justified accusations that Musk meddled in the Ukraine-Russia war to stop a Zelenskyy-driven offensive (that likely would have turned the war and hailed victory ticker-tape parades up and down Kiev’s streets). Ok, admittedly that last bit was out hyperbole; but given a quick read of headlines from CNN and NBC, we could be forgiven for this view. Elon Musk secretly ordered his engineers to turn off his company’s Starlink satellite communications network near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt a Ukrainian sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet, according to an excerpt adapted from Walter Isaacson’s new biography of the eccentric billionaire titled “Elon Musk.”
As Ukrainian submarine drones strapped with explosives approached the Russian fleet, they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” Isaacson writes. NBC led with the following headline: “Ukraine is furious with Elon Musk for thwarting an attack on Russia’s navy”. Tech billionaire Elon Musk has come under fire from Ukraine after it emerged he thwarted a major attack on the Russian navy. According to excerpts published by CNN, a soon-to-be-released biography of the SpaceX CEO claims that Musk secretly ordered his engineers to turn off his Starlink satellite network over Russian-occupied Crimea last year in order to prevent a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s naval fleet. The mainstream media did not have to look too far to find someone willing to denigrate Musk: Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, blasted the tech billionaire on X, formerly Twitter, which Musk owns.
“Sometimes a mistake is much more than just a mistake,” Podolyak wrote. “By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian military (!) fleet via #Starlink interference, @elonmusk allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities,” he added. “As a result, civilians, children are being killed,” Podolyak said. “This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego. However, the question still remains: why do some people so desperately want to defend war criminals and their desire to commit murder? And do they now realize that they are committing evil and encouraging evil?” Isaacson quotes Musk at the time as questioning “How am I in this war?” “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.”
Couple quick questions – how would Musk know – pre-emptively – of the attack, and choose to disable Starlink? Is his intel better than Putin’s; better than the CIA’s? The spin here is utterly mind-blowing. In fact, according to Musk – who responded to the accusations on X, the details are the exact opposite to how CNN described them… In fact, Musk NEVER turned Starlink on in those controversial border zones – for exactly this reason, as he feared using this technology near borders could prompt an escalation in the war. In fact, Musk did not ‘turn Starlink off’ but refused to ‘turn Starlink on’ for Ukraine’s offensive. Which makes more sense to you – the richest man in the world unilaterally switching off internet access to pre-emptively thwart a secret attack by Ukraine on Russia in a Blofeld-esque move? Or the CEO of a major communications company refusing to enable his technology to be used to escalate a war that could well lead to armageddon?
“..where you want to force the enemy to come in so you can hit them with artillery, to break up the attack, but not to hold and die..”
• Scott Ritter: Ukrainian Counteroffensive’s Last, Desperate Push (Sp.)
Ukraine is gaining ground in its counteroffensive started in June, claimed NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday, addressing lawmakers at the European Parliament. Does that mean Ukraine has finally achieved a breakthrough after nearly four months and heavy casualties? “To answer that question, we have to know what the goals and objectives of the current phase of the Ukrainian counteroffensive are,” Scott Ritter, a military analyst and former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, told Sputnik. “We know that when they initiated this counteroffensive back in early June of this year, the goals were quite clear: to break through the first line of Russian defenses, the second line of Russian defenses, seize the town of Tokmak, and then use that as a launching point to penetrate deeper through the Russian defenses to seize the city of Melitopol, which would enable them to sever the land bridge between Crimea and Russia and bring Crimea under direct attack.
That was the stated objective put forward by General Zaluzhny, echoed by President Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials,” the military expert continued. However, these objectives have not been reached so far, per Ritter. Presently, the Ukrainians are claiming that they have put infantry units beyond the so-called “dragon’s teeth”, the concrete obstacles that constitute the first line of Russia’s defenses. In particular, the Kiev regime says its forces managed to take the villages of Verbovoye and Rabotino in the Zaporozhye region. Still, the Russian Ministry of Defense made it clear on September 7 and 8 that the Russian forces are continuing to successfully repel attacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the areas of the settlements. As Russian military blogger Rybar remarked on his Telegram account: it’s the best way “to turn Rabotino into a continuous conveyor of death for Ukrainian units.”
“The village of Rabotino was always meant to fall. If the Ukrainians put sufficient military power in a specific zone of operations, they should be able to advance and seize terrain that the Russians have decided will be defended, but not to the death. Rabotino was always meant to be part of the crumple zone in the fire element, defensive zone of the first line of defense. The purpose of Rabotino was to help break up the Ukrainian attacks, and it has done this magnificently,” said Ritter. What’s actually going on in Rabotino and Verbovoe is part of a new Russian defensive doctrine, explains the former Marine intelligence officer. “Russia always had a primarily defensive doctrine inherited from the Soviet times.
But this new defensive doctrine that’s being implemented, especially in the Zaporozhye front, is the brainchild of Lieutenant General Alexander Romanchuck, former deputy commander, I believe, of the 58th Combined Arms Army. He was sent to the Combined Arms Academy after participating in the early phases of the Special Military Operation. While he was at the Combined Arms Academy, he rewrote Russian defensive doctrine and then he was brought out of the Combined Arms Academy and given a leadership position in the Zapporozhye front in the Rabotino area.” In accordance with the doctrine, “the purpose of the forward defensive zone is to receive an enemy attack to help break it up, to use defensive belts, minefields, obstacles, what they call, ‘fire cauldrons’ or ‘sacks’ where you want to force the enemy to come in so you can hit them with artillery, to break up the attack, but not to hold and die,” explained Ritter.
“We cannot continue to wage war by simply saying: ‘More weapons, more deaths, more resistance.’ How do you get out of this?”
• US Using Ukraine To Weaken EU – Sarkozy (RT)
Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has spoken out against Ukraine’s accession to the EU and NATO, arguing that the move would not bring peace to Europe and would chip away at the continent’s independence. Speaking to France 5 TV broadcaster on Wednesday, Sarkozy reiterated his calls for a compromise between Moscow and Kiev, noting that the conflict had already claimed the lives of around half a million of people, most of whom were Ukrainian. “But we continue because in the Boulevard Saint-Germain they are very brave in terms of sending young Ukrainians to die,” he added, referring to the street where many French government offices are located.
While denouncing Russia as an “aggressor” in the conflict, Sarkozy said he believed that Ukraine’s accession to NATO and the EU – which Kiev has been seeking for many years – would not lead to peace. “Because if you bring Ukraine into Europe, you strengthen American Europe as the Eastern European countries are dominated by the US,” he noted. According to Sarkozy, while Ukraine essentially expresses America’s wishes because it is heavily reliant on Washington’s military assistance, the same is not true for relations between Washington and Paris. “France has a unique voice… and does not align itself with American interests,” he said. While reiterating that he wants France to support Ukraine, Sarkozy said he believes that Ukraine should eventually receive security guarantees from the West but must remain neutral and continue to serve as a “bridge between the Slavic world of Russia and us.”
“We cannot continue to wage war by simply saying: ‘More weapons, more deaths, more resistance.’ How do you get out of this?” he asked. He claimed that the Ukraine conflict benefits only China, which he said is gaining clout by courting its partners in the BRICS economic group, and the US, which is profiting from arms sales and higher prices for liquefied natural gas. Last week, Sarkozy suggested that any compromise with Moscow would involve recognizing Crimea as part of Russia, a statement that triggered outrage in Kiev, with Mikhail Podoliak, an aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, calling the proposal “criminal,” and accusing Sarkozy of complicity in organizing “genocide and war.”
Could blow up the EU?!
• Ukraine ‘Threatening’ Poland – Minister (RT)
Ukrainian pressure tactics over Poland’s ban on grain shipments through its territory will not work, Minister for EU Affairs Szymon Szynkowski vel Sek said on Friday, responding to Kiev’s threat to take the issue to the World Trade Organization (WTO). According to the diplomat, Warsaw is not impressed by such a move, as the protection of Polish farmers and citizens is a top priority for the government. “This is a threat, and this is another element of pressure from the Ukrainian side,” he said. “These elements sometimes go beyond the certain boundaries of classical diplomacy on the part of Ukraine.” Szynkowski vel Sek added that the Polish authorities are not planning to lift the embargo imposed on the imports of Ukrainian agricultural exports that is due to expire on September 15.
Ukraine’s exports of grain, its major trade commodity, are currently banned from the markets of Poland, Hungary, and three other EU nations under a deal struck with the European Commission earlier this year to protect the bloc’s farmers from a glut of cheaper agricultural produce. The issue has driven a wedge between Kiev and the EU’s eastern members, which have been among Ukraine’s biggest supporters in its confrontation with Russia. The nations impacted by the glut have repeatedly pledged to impose unilateral import bans, in violation of the bloc’s common trade rules, if the EU decides to lift the restrictions.
Who builds this for the Pentagon?
• Pentagon’s Hypersonic Woes Due to ‘Very Delicate’ Physics Problems (Sp.)
Konstantin Sivkov, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Rocket and Artillery Sciences, Doctor of Military Sciences, pointed out that the technology behind hypersonics is both old and new. “What is a hypersonic weapon? It allows you to hit targets using homing in the final stage and at the same time fly at hypersonic speed,” he summarized to Sputnik. “Many ballistic missiles that appeared in the world as intercontinental ones back in the 1950s also have hypersonic speed, but they do not maneuver on their flight path – but this is not the case for hypersonic weapons.” “The Americans cannot solve two problems: providing control over the flight of missiles at hypersonic speeds – that is, maneuvering – and the issue of ensuring the operation of targeting systems at hypersonic speeds.”
Dmitry Drozdenko, a military analyst and chief editor of the “Fatherland Arsenal” internet portal, told Sputnik that the LRHW was similar to Russia’s Avangard hypersonic weapon, which was the first to be announced in 2019. “That is, there is a standard container in which the rocket engine accelerates the warhead-laden glider up to a certain height and to hypersonic speed. At that point, it begins to maneuver in the atmosphere without an engine. The only difference is that our Avangard has a global strike capability: it can strike at the South or North Pole, even in Washington, even in Canberra – anywhere on the planet, with both nuclear and non-nuclear payloads.” Drozdenko explained the US has struggled to develop a usable hypersonic weapon because hypersonic technology is “subtle in the field of fundamental science.” “It is a very delicate topic,” he told Sputnik.
“Once upon a time there were problems with supersonic, if you remember the old stories, when the first jet aircraft had straight wings and propellers, and then they began to be made with wings angled back. It’s all related to the fact that when approaching the speed of sound, a shockwave occurs, which does not allow an effective increase in speed. Therefore, the wings were deflected back and this shockwave flowed back at supersonic speed.” “So at hypersonic speeds, physical phenomena also arise. That is, there are several barriers such as high temperatures – very high. The vehicle heats up a great deal. If we are talking about [Russia’s] Avangard, it heats up to the state of plasma” similar to a spacecraft’s reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, which also travels at hypersonic speed, he explained.
“The protective layer burns away as a result. The astronaut is not damaged, but at that moment the communication connection is lost. That is, it is a known fact that when they enter the atmosphere, radio communication is lost, because radio waves do not pass through the plasma.” “And here questions of control arise: a hypersonic weapon that flies for a long time at such speeds must, firstly, be refractory. That is, it should not burn out, otherwise it will not fly,” he said, adding that “This is a matter of materials science – maintaining high temperatures.” This, Drozdenko noted, was a key difference between reentry vehicles and hypersonic weapons: they have to be controlled and maneuvered, not just allowed to “ram the atmosphere with their belly” until they slow down.
“The task of hypersonic weapons like Avangard is to maneuver. This is the most important thing, so that air defense systems can neither detect it nor shoot it down. It needs a control system that can somehow analyze the external environment despite being in this plasma cloud. There is a whole complex of fundamental theoretical sciences – materials science, aerodynamics of high speeds – which current control systems and radio electronics do not have. This is a huge barrier.”
US too. The troops are sittting ducks.
• France Seeks Pullout From Niger (Sp.)
France is considering several options for troops pullout from Niger, contacts with the Nigerien army continue and relate to operational and technical aspects, a French General Staff spokesman told Arabian broadcaster. Niger’s newly-appointed Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine said on Monday that French forces were staying in the country illegally and called for their swift departure. French forces have been largely confined to their air base in Niger’s capital, Niamey, since military leaders ousted Paris-backed President Mohamed Bazoum in late July. The West African bloc ECOWAS threatened military intervention if Niger’s military did not restore Bazoum to power.
Without Xi and Putin it is. Just another politicized gathering.
• Is The G20 Obsolete In An Increasingly Multipolar World? (Malyk)
You can count the number of cases in which Western governments have been genuinely interested in Africa’s wellbeing on the fingers of one hand. However, the sharp drop of Western influence on the continent is forcing former colonial powers to try rebranding themselves. The first step in this rebranding can be seen at the upcoming G20 Summit in New Delhi, which will see the African Union admitted as a permanent member of the organization – on a par with the European Union. Will that be enough to heal old wounds? Probably not, especially considering that the G20 meeting takes place after last month’s historic BRICS Summit in South Africa. The event brought together countries from across the Global South and announced the admission of six new members into BRICS, including two African countries – Egypt and Ethiopia. Hard to see how the G20 tops that.
It turns out that Western-centric groups are beginning to cede global leadership to the multipolar world organizations, mostly led by Russia, China and India. Is this trend taking over the politics of the G20? And what are the prospects for the G20 in a future world stage? The G20 Summit in New Delhi will take place without the leaders of Russia and China. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will head the Russian delegation, while Premier Li Qiang will head the Chinese one. As both leaders were among the main actors of the recent BRICS Summit, this turn of events may be regarded as a bad omen for the upcoming summit. Although Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov noted that Putin and Xi did not coordinate the refusal to attend the New Delhi Summit, the absence of these two leaders will be extremely significant.
Tony Kevin, former Australian ambassador to Poland and Cambodia and former carrier officer of the Australian Foreign Ministry, as well as the author of two books on Russia, ‘Return to Moscow’ (2017) and ‘Russia and the West’ (2019), highlighted to Sputnik that “the Russian President Putin and the Chinese President Xi have both sent a very clear signal by not attending the meeting.” In turn, Dr. Zhang Baohui, director of the Centre for Asian Pacific Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, claimed that the decision of the leaders of Russia and China not to attend the G20 “will indeed dampen the significance of this summit.”
“G20 was created as a concert system that incorporates the world’s leading powers so they can work together to resolve the biggest problems facing the globe. The absence of the top leaders of China and Russia pokes a hole in the G20 mechanism. The Ukraine war and many global issues ranging from climate to development need the cooperation of the world’s leading powers. As such, Xi and Putin’s absence will reduce the significance of this summit even though their representatives will be there,” he told Sputnik.
“Russia is offering, on the one hand, the Wagner Group as gatekeepers, and on the other hand, food security for the continent. In one fell swoop, western propaganda was trashed..”
• The Unshakeable Putin-Erdogan Nexus (Bhadrakumar)
Since the two heads of state last met in Astana last October, Moscow has gained the upper hand in the battlefields of Ukraine; the so-called grain deal involving Russia and Ukraine, brokered by Ankara under UN auspices, ran its course; security of the Black Sea region touched a new level of criticality as the Anglo-American obsession with Crimea surged; and, above all, Erdogan secured another term as president, which puts him in the hot seat to reverse Turkiye’s financial and economic crisis. In the full flush of his election victory, Erdogan made certain efforts to mend fences with the west, signaling a willingness to agree to Sweden’s induction into NATO and showing solidarity with Ukraine. In moves that could seriously upset Moscow, Ankara wantonly released Azov commanders who were captured by Russia in Mariupol last year and announced an intent to jointly produce weaponry with Ukraine.
Nonetheless, Moscow reacted cautiously. The Kremlin could afford to mark time since this is also an asymmetrical relationship where Russia holds the upper hand. Moscow could sense that Erdogan was not really “pivoting” to the west, but was rather showing an interest in improving western ties which had soured in recent years -and its outcome remains far from certain. Basically, Russia’s relations with Turkiye are fortified by the warm personal equations between Putin and Erdogan, and both leaders are consummate realists with shared interests and a keenness to challenge Western dominance in regional politics. Moscow is only too well aware that Turkiye’s hopes for membership in the European Union remain a far-fetched dream.
The “body language” of the meeting in Sochi confirmed that there is no change in the verve of the personal relationship between the two leaders. Television footage showed the two men smiling and shaking hands upon Erdogan’s arrival at Putin’s residence, where the Russian president suggested that his guest take a vacation in the Black Sea resort. In his opening remarks, Putin put Erdogan at ease by reassuring him upfront that the Russian offer to create a global “energy hub” in Turkiye is very much in the cards and will materialize soon. However, the icing on the cake is the proposed agreement that would facilitate free exports of grain from Russia to six African nations with the help of Turkiye and Qatar. In Erdogan’s presence, Putin announced:
“We are close to completing agreements with six African states, where we intend to supply foodstuffs for free and even carry out delivery and logistics for free. Deliveries will begin in the next couple of weeks.” The political and geopolitical resonance of this decision in Africa is simply immeasurable — Russia is offering, on the one hand, the Wagner Group as gatekeepers, and on the other hand, food security for the continent. In one fell swoop, western propaganda was trashed, with some help from Ankara.
“Liberalism needed, above all, a sense of moral superiority, to heal an imperfect world, to be ahead-of-the-curve in mankind’s implacable march of progress toward perfection..”
• A Theory of the Game (Jim Kunstler)
In cases of madness, there is often a dark, sordid secret behind the weird behavior that presents outwardly. In the group madness provoked by Hillary Clinton’s loss, the dirty secret was that she had actually bought the Democratic National Committee in 2016, meaning the machinery that runs the party. She used lavish contributions to the Clinton Foundation to accomplish that. And Hillary along with her foundation — and husband Bill, who had been reduced by late career misadventure to a kind of political fashion accessory — had committed any number of grave crimes against our country over the years, especially during her service as Barack Obama’s Secretary of State. Think: Skolkovo… Uranium One…. In 2016 Hillary used her ownership of the DNC to underhandedly de-rail the likely Democratic primary winner, Bernie Sanders, from being nominated.
The initial act of madness by the “Resistance” on Mr. Trump’s inauguration day was the women’s march of pink pussy-hats, so called, a symbolic exhibition of fleering female genitalia in Mr. Trump’s face, so to speak, as an act of defiance against the new national daddy figure (and his millions of deplorable supporters watching the ceremonies on TV). This proved to be a mere overture to the more extreme sexual acting-out that evolved in the years to follow, overall a campaign to horrify people of normal appetites, beliefs, and moral codes, culminating in the drag queen story hours aimed at maximally inducing outrage among people organized as families.
All of that psychodrama was hijacked, of course, by the serious neo-Marxists lurking among the Left, who used it in the usual neo-Marxian way: to overthrow everything in the established social order. And who were these? The circle around Barack Obama. And who was Barack Obama exactly? Good question. This mysterious figure who rose so swiftly from being, briefly, a mere state senator in Illinois, then to the US Senate — for only a few years, accomplishing next to nothing there — then to being nominated for president, and actually winning the 2008 election!
Since we’re speaking in terms of psychodrama, Mr. Obama was liberalism’s wish-fulfillment: a half-century after the Civil Rights movement, America elects the first black president (half-black, anyway)! Liberalism needed, above all, a sense of moral superiority, to heal an imperfect world, to be ahead-of-the-curve in mankind’s implacable march of progress toward perfection, and especially to set an example for how to live for all those gun-loving, bible-thumping, meth-smoking, opiate-scarfing, racist, rapist flyover rubes who would dare to vote for such misogynistic vermin as the TV-clown Donald J. Trump.
WOW. 5th Circuit court JUST UPHELD Missouri v Biden and ruled that the following people CAN:
1) NO LONGER CENSOR YOU
2) NO LONGER FLAG YOUR POSTS
3) NO LONGER DICTATE SOCIAL MEDIA POLICIES
4) NO LONGER COMMUNICATE WITH THESE COMPANIES TO CENSOR YOU
5) NO LONGER WORK WITH…— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) September 8, 2023
Diver dog
https://twitter.com/i/status/1700098525835530502
Halitrephes maasi jelly.
A rare encounter the amazing Halitrephes maasi jelly. pic.twitter.com/S5fczOEpKm
— Amazing Science (@MAstronomers) September 7, 2023
Eagle
A puffed up bateleur eagle
📹 dailybirdshow
pic.twitter.com/AQMhnqzFTa— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) September 8, 2023
Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.
Home › Forums › Debt Rattle September 9 2023