Feb 022024
 
 February 2, 2024  Posted by at 9:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,


Winslow Homer Mending the nets 1881

 

House Speaker Mike Johnson First Floor Speech On Border Catastrophe (Kanekoa)
It’s Biden vs. Texas, and Texas Is Right. (McMaken)
Israel Accepts Ceasefire Deal – Al Jazeera (RT)
US Created Ukraine Conflict to Keep Europe ‘Under Its Thumb’ (Sp.)
EU Leaders Agree to Give $54Bln in Macro-Financial Assistance to Ukraine (Sp.)
Zelensky Wants Zaluzhny Out Over Effort At Ceasefire With Russia – Hersh (Sp.)
Zelensky To Fire Top General This Week – CNN (RT)
Zelensky’s Generals Refuse To Accept Firing Top Commander – Bild (RT)
Biden Makes Clear Case for NATO Complicity Over IL-76 Shoot-Down (SCF)
Ukraine’s ‘Failed State’ Status (DeMartino)
Mass European Farmer Protests Blowback for Ukraine Support (Sp.)
CIA Staffer Sentenced To 40 Years For Leaking US Hacking Secrets (RT)
Roger Waters Faces Axe by Record Label Over Defiant Israel Stance (Sp.)
UK High Court Throws Out Trump’s Christopher Steele Case (BBC)
Interesting – Elon Musk (Kanekoa)

 

 

 

 

Meme team
https://twitter.com/i/status/1753078612243423563

 

 

 

 

Jan 6

 

 

Tucker Bret

 

 

KJP Boeing

 

 

Scott Ritter: Turkey & Russia JOIN WAR

 

 

Macgregor: Iran must pay

 

 

 

 

 

 

” Just as we lock our doors at night to protect our homes, we secure our borders to protect our homeland. And my friends, that is our sacred obligation.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson First Floor Speech On Border Catastrophe (Kanekoa)

House Speaker Mike Johnson delivers first floor speech on border catastrophe, accusing President Biden of intentionally creating a “clear and present danger to our national security.” “Since I was elected Speaker less than 100 days ago, more than 700,000 illegals have been welcomed into our country illegally by the Biden administration. American schoolchildren have been forced into virtual schools so migrants can sleep in their school buildings. Korean War veterans have been booted from nursing homes that were sold to house migrants. Our streets are being flooded with fentanyl. Hundreds of thousands of children and adults are being poisoned and losing their lives. Vulnerable children and women are being exploited and trafficked by cartels. Since President Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas assumed office, there have been more than 7 million encounters with illegal aliens just at our southern border alone.

35 of our 50 states, including my home state of Louisiana, don’t have a population that large. More than 300 individuals who are on our terror watchlist have been apprehended on the southern border. The frightening question is, how many have entered undetected? We know there are at least 1.8 million gotaways that have escaped. Understand that the situation at our border presents a clear and present danger to our national security, and it demands that it be addressed. FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Homeland Security Committee in November that these gotaways are a great concern for the agency, and all 56 of our Joint Terrorism Task Forces are trying to identify who these people are. We don’t know how many terrorists are inside our borders. We do know that fentanyl is pouring into our communities like an open sewer. Right now, the leading cause of death in America for Americans aged 18 to 46 is fentanyl poisoning.

To make matters worse, we’ve learned that the Biden administration is now simply just releasing 85% of the illegals who come across that border right into the country. For reference, by the way, in 2013, the Obama administration detained 82% of illegal aliens. How do we go from detaining 82% to releasing 85%? It only happens if this is by design. It only happens if it’s an orchestrated intentional effort by the administration to do exactly that, and that is what the evidence shows. Earlier this month, I released a memo documenting 64 specific actions that the Biden administration has taken to undermine our border security and to promote the mass release of illegals and dangerous persons into our country. The very first day President Biden walked into the Oval Office, he revoked Executive Order 9844. Do you know what that did? It ended the construction of the border wall that Congress had already paid for. Everybody has seen the images of the materials out there rotting in the sun. Why?

Because Joe Biden decided unilaterally that he didn’t want a wall. In February 2021, the administration stopped applying Title 42 expulsions to children and incentivize by doing that incentivize families to send unaccompanied children through Mexico under the watch of cartels and traffickers. Since then, the administration admits to losing track of more than 80,000 unaccompanied children somewhere in the US. We don’t know where they are. Have they been put into trafficking rings? We know that some of these kids are being trafficked for free labor and being forced to do things that are too appalling for us to articulate on this floor. Everybody here knows that’s happening, and we’re not demanding the President stop it? He can. He has the power to do it.

[..] We have to decide if we believe in the rule of law or not. We have to decide if we’re a sovereign nation or we’re not. I believe that border security is part of our solemn obligation to safeguard the well-being of our citizens and uphold the principles that define who we are as a nation. A weak border weakens America, and a strong border is good for America, and a stronger America is good for everybody around the world. And everybody in this chamber should acknowledge that. Just as we lock our doors at night to protect our homes, we secure our borders to protect our homeland. And my friends, that is our sacred obligation.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1753202850023498016

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“..what is self-evident here is that it is up to the state government to determine for itself whether or not the state is being invaded..”

It’s Biden vs. Texas, and Texas Is Right. (McMaken)

So, what exactly does the Texas governor’s declaration say? Overall, it makes the case that the Biden administration has been ignoring federal immigration laws and illegally withdrawing border-control operations from the Texas-Mexico border. Abbott concludes: “Under President Biden’s lawless border policies, more than 6 million illegal immigrants have crossed our southern border in just 3 years. That is more than the population of 33 different States in this country. This illegal refusal to protect the States has inflicted unprecedented harm on the People all across the United States.” If that were all, we’d just chalk this up to a document that amounts to little more than a letter to the editor. But then Abbott says that the US Constitution provides a remedy for the situation:

“..the Framers included both Article IV, § 4, which promises that the federal government “shall protect each [State] against invasion,” and Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which acknowledges “the States’ sovereign interest in protecting their borders.” The final paragraph is where it gets interesting. Abbott writes: “The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense. For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary. The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border.”

Abbott is essentially saying that federal supremacy in this case has been rendered null and void by a federal refusal to enforce federal law. Can he get away with it? For clarity, let’s look at Article 1, section 10. It reads: “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.” The key phrase here is “unless actually invaded.” Whether or not the current flood of migrants across the border constitutes “invasion,” as stated here, is perhaps debatable.

However, what is self-evident here is that it is up to the state government to determine for itself whether or not the state is being invaded. After all, the whole point of the section is to grant certain powers to states outside the authority of the federal government. If the federal government also gets to determine for itself whether or not the state is being invaded, then the section is pointless. So, an honest reading of this text ought to preclude the Biden administration or US Supreme Court coming back and saying “you’re not being invaded, now do what we say.”

Abbott
https://twitter.com/i/status/1753160896312995917

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Wait and see.

Israel Accepts Ceasefire Deal – Al Jazeera (RT)

Israel has agreed to a ceasefire proposal that would halt its war with Hamas, Al Jazeera reported on Thursday, citing the Qatari Foreign Ministry. Hamas has reportedly given the plan a “positive” response. The ceasefire plan was hashed out in Paris over the weekend, with Qatari and Egyptian diplomats mediating between Israel and the Palestinian militant group. Delegations from West Jerusalem and Gaza left the French capital promising to study the proposal and negotiate further this week, and by Thursday evening, a deal was apparently within reach. “Israel agreed to the ceasefire proposal and we have initial positive confirmation from Hamas,” a spokesman for the Qatari Foreign Ministry said on Thursday evening, according to Al Jazeera. “We are awaiting their response,” the spokesman added.

The proposed ceasefire will be implemented in three stages, according to a Hamas statement shared with Reuters earlier this week. The first phase would see fighting stop for 40 days as Hamas hands over the female civilians, children, and elderly people it is still holding captive. During this time, large-scale deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza would resume. The following stages would see Hamas turn over captive Israeli soldiers and the bodies of Israeli troops, in exchange for further aid deliveries and the freeing of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. “Military operations on both sides will stop during the three stages,” the militants said, adding that the number of Palestinian prisoners freed would be open to negotiation.

The proposal falls short of the full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza that Hamas initially demanded. As a step toward ending the war, however, it also threatens Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to keep fighting until Israel achieves “total victory” over the militants, as he has promised on multiple occasions. While hardliners within Netanyahu’s cabinet have pressed him to reject any deal they view as too lenient towards Hamas, Israel has faced international condemnation over its conduct in Gaza, and two of the Jewish state’s most stalwart backers – the US and UK – suggested this week that they could soon recognize an independent Palestinian state. Such an outcome would be a political disaster for Netanyahu, who angered Washington and London last month when he outright rejected a two-state solution to the decades-long conflict with the Palestinians.

Hamas fighters attacked Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking roughly 240 as hostages. Israel responded by imposing a siege on Gaza and launching waves of airstrikes on the densely-populated enclave. A ground operation followed three weeks later, and after almost four months of fighting, more than 27,000 Palestinians have died, two thirds of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

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“..European countries are “going down faster than we can even imagine..”

“..we were concerned about their economy moving up because they were getting cheap Russian energy..”

US Created Ukraine Conflict to Keep Europe ‘Under Its Thumb’ (Sp.)

On Thursday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban relented to pressure from the EU and finally allowed €50 billion in military and financial aid to be transferred to Ukraine after blocking the funding for more than a month. The funds are ostensibly planned to fund Ukraine until 2027 and came as US aid remains stalled in Congress. Before the latest aid package was approved by the EU, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg remarked at a Monday news conference in Washington, DC, that “weapons are – in fact – the way to peace [in Ukraine],” but that’s not quite the case, an analyst told Sputnik. Dr. David Oualaalou told Sputnik’s Critical Hour on Wednesday that Stoltenberg’s assertion “defies logic” and asserted that Ukraine is already “gone.” Oualaalou argued that Europe was pushed into supporting Ukraine by the US, which is not “paying the price” of that support in the same way Europe is.

He added that the economic situation in Europe, largely brought on by the consequences of their support of Ukraine and sanctions on Russia, makes the continent reliant on the US. “[The US] created the conflict to ensure that Europe will stay under [its] thumb by dictating the terms and complicating matters for them,” Oualaalou explained. “One way you do that, [is] you complicate the economic outcome for an entity, doesn’t matter who, that’s how you do it.” He added that his family members in Europe acknowledge that European countries are “going down faster than we can even imagine,” and pointed to the farmer and worker protests breaking out across the continent. Complicating matters further, Oualaalou argued, is that even with monetary aid being sent to Ukraine, Europe is too short on ammunition to give Ukraine much that will help them on the battlefield.

“I hope your listeners know that the UK cannot fight the Houthis, for example,” Oualaalou said, referring to the growing conflict in the Red Sea. “The reason? They don’t have firepower, they don’t have enough. That is why they are just riding with the US.” Oualaalou also argued that even the US and UK combined will not be able to defeat the Houthis. “We couldn’t defeat the Taliban, we couldn’t defeat the militias in Iraq. What makes us think we’re going to defeat the Houthis? And the Houthis, to my knowledge, and I’ve been on the ground, I was there. They are fierce fighters.” Co-host Garland Nixon suggested that the real goal in funding Ukraine was to line politicians’ “filthy pockets” with money, an assertion Oualaalou agreed with. But he also reiterated that it is also part of the US geopolitical strategy.

“[The] Ukraine conflict was created by design for us to keep the Europeans down because we were concerned about their economy moving up because they were getting cheap Russian energy – that’s what’s at the heart of it,” he said. Asked about the narrative and media attention shifting from Ukraine to the Middle East, even as the conflict continues, Oualaalou admitted that it’s simply part of the larger plan, and that there could be more on the horizon. “That’s usually how the narrative goes because that is the aim – you move from one conflict to the next one because you’re already preparing [for] the next conflict. … what I see on the horizon, is what’s going on too, in Asia,” he explained. “It [has] become clear in the West that Ukraine is a failed state. The objective has been accomplished. Let’s move to the next conflict. And once that’s settled, we’re going to move to a third one and so forth.”

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To achieve what?

EU Leaders Agree to Give $54Bln in Macro-Financial Assistance to Ukraine (Sp.)

The EU leaders have reached an agreement on allocating 50 billion euros ($54 billion) as part of macro-financial assistance to Ukraine, European Council President Charles Michel said on Thursday. “All 27 leaders agreed on an additional €50 billion support package for Ukraine within the EU budget. This locks in steadfast, long-term, predictable funding for #Ukraine. EU is taking leadership & responsibility in support for Ukraine; we know what is at stake,” Michel wrote on X. The EU leaders have agreed to hold a debate about its assistance to Ukraine every year, and to review it after two years if necessary, The Guardian reported on Thursday, citing the EU summit’s conclusions. According to the conclusions, the European Council will hold a debate every year on the implementation of the Ukraine facility, and will invite the European Commission to make a proposal to review it in two years if needed.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported, citing a European diplomat, that the EU funds for Hungary will remain frozen after Budapest also agreed on the allocation of assistance for Ukraine. European officials have continuously said that they are ready to study alternatives in the event of a final blocking of aid to Kiev from the EU budget. The total amount of EU macro-financial assistance to Ukraine in 2023 amounted to 18 billion euros, transferred in monthly payments in the amount of 1.5 billion euros. This assistance was provided to Kiev regardless of the implementation of reforms and the fight against corruption.

In December, Hungary vetoed an enlargement of the EU’s 2024-2027 budget to incorporate 50 billion euros in macro-financial aid for Ukraine. Media reported that Hungary had proposed splitting the package into four tranches, subject to approval each year. However, several EU diplomats are reportedly opposed to giving Hungary the option of an “annual veto”. Western countries, led by the United States, have been providing military aid to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s special military operation in February 2022. The aid evolved from providing artillery munitions and training in 2022 to heavy weapons, including tanks, advanced air-defense systems, prohibited cluster munitions and long-range missiles, later that year and in 2023.

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Your top man must be a warmonger.

Zelensky Wants Zaluzhny Out Over Effort At Ceasefire With Russia – Hersh (Sp.)

Volodymyr Zelensky wants to remove Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny from his post because of his alleged involvement in secret talks with Western officials about pursuing a ceasefire with Russia, US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported. On Monday, Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksiy Goncharenko said, citing sources, that Zaluzhny was allegedly ordered to resign. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry and Zelensky’s spokesman denied the claims. “Zelensky’s desire to fire his commanding general is the result, some Americans believe, of his knowledge that Zaluzhny had continued to participate – whether directly or through aides is not known – in secret talks since last fall with American and other Western officials on how best to achieve a ceasefire and negotiate an end to the war with Russia,” Hersh said on Thursday. The New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing sources, that the Ukrainian government had postponed the dismissal of Zaluzhny due to a leak of information about his possible resignation.

The government planned to fire Zaluzhny, but on Monday evening, when information leaked, it decided to back off, the report said, adding that now, the government is slowing down the process. According to reports, Zelensky was forced to reverse his decision as international partners, including the United States and the United Kingdom, expressed concern about Zelensky’s actions.Zelensky reportedly met with Zaluzhny to inform the general of the decision to fire him. Instead, Zelensky offered Zaluzhny the post of secretary of the country’s security council, but Zaluzhny turned it down. The head of Ukraine’s military intelligence service, Kyrylo Budanov, and the commander of the Ukrainian ground forces, Oleksandr Syrsky, were named candidates for the post of commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, the report added.

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If only he could find a replacement.

Zelensky To Fire Top General This Week – CNN (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky intends to fire his top general, Valery Zaluzhny, before the end of the week, CNN claimed on Wednesday citing sources familiar with the situation. The report follows similar rumors appearing in outlets such as the Financial Times and the Washington Post, which have so far been dismissed by Kiev. The relationship between the two men reportedly began to deteriorate when the general wrote an article for The Economist in November, describing the battlefield situation as a “stalemate” following Kiev’s failed counteroffensive. The president has vehemently rejected that assessment. According to CNN, Zaluzhny was called into Zelensky’s office on Monday, where he was told he would be fired in the next few days. While no formal announcement has yet been made, a source allegedly told the outlet that a presidential decree is expected by the end of the week.

Rumors that the country’s popular military leader would be replaced originally started circulating in the media earlier this week based on anonymous sources in Kiev. The Washington Post claimed that the president explained his decision to Zaluzhny by saying that a new commander was needed to rejuvenate the situation, as the Ukrainian people had grown tired of war while Kiev’s foreign backers had reduced military assistance. The general was then reportedly offered an advisory position, which he declined, opting instead to leave the military entirely, a source told the outlet. After reports of Zaluzhny’s imminent sacking leaked on Monday, Zelensky spokesman Sergey Nikiforov issued an official statement insisting it was “untrue.” The Ukrainian Defense Ministry also posted a message on social media declaring the rumors false.

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the Ukrainian president had chosen to reconsider the decision after the initial plan ended up in the press. However, another source told the paper that the firing had only been temporarily delayed while Kiev looks for a fitting replacement for Zaluzhny. Moscow, meanwhile, has described the rumors of the Ukrainian commander’s dismissal as a sign that Kiev’s leadership is in disarray and has “a lot of problems,” according to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. He predicted that divisions in Ukraine’s military and civilian leadership stemming from the failed counteroffensive would continue to grow as Russia proceeds with its objectives.

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“Syrsky himself – alongside the Ukrainian military intelligence chief, Kirill Budanov – reportedly “politely declined” an offer to take up Zaluzhny’s position..”

Zelensky’s Generals Refuse To Accept Firing Top Commander – Bild (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has been unable to fire the nation’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny, because both replacements under consideration refused the job, the tabloid Bild reported on Thursday. A host of Western and Ukrainian media previously claimed, citing anonymous sources in Kiev, that Zelensky had sacked Zaluzhny, prompting the Ukrainian government to refute those rumors. According to Bild, the president did attempt to fire the general on Monday and had to reverse his decision “within an hour” because he could not find a replacement for the nation’s top commander. The move drew strong opposition from the Ukrainian generals, the tabloid claimed. Zelensky allegedly wanted to see Ground Forces Commander Aleksandr Syrsky in Zaluzhny’s place because “he is more loyal to the president,” Bild said, citing Gustav Gressel, a Ukraine expert with the Berlin-based European Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

The generals disapproved of the choice because they see Zaluzhny as a “more humane” leader who is “closer to the troops,” the analyst explained. Syrsky himself – alongside the Ukrainian military intelligence chief, Kirill Budanov – reportedly “politely declined” an offer to take up Zaluzhny’s position, the paper claimed. Yesterday, Britain’s The Times named Syrsky and Budanov as possible candidates to be Ukraine’s top general, also reporting that they had refused. Despite Zaluzhny retaining his post, the conflict between him and Zelensky continues to “smolder,” Bild alleged. The relationship between the two men reportedly began to deteriorate when the general wrote an article for The Economist in November, describing the battlefield situation as a “stalemate” following Kiev’s failed counteroffensive. The president has vehemently rejected that assessment.

According to the German outlet, the president and his commander also clashed over strategy in the cities of Bakhmut and Avdeevka. In late spring 2023, when the Russian forces were pressing their advantage against the Ukrainians in Bakhmut, Zelensky insisted the city should be held to the last man, while Zaluzhny wanted to withdraw to preserve his forces, the paper said, adding that the situation was being repeated in Avdeevka. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that Zelensky had abandoned his plans to fire the top general after his plan was leaked to the media. CNN reported on Thursday, however, that the Ukrainian leader still wanted to go ahead with the decision and would fire Zaluzhny by the end of the week.

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“..even the Pentagon has admitted there is no evidence showing Iran had a hand in the drone attack. Nevertheless, Biden has asserted Iran is to blame and that this gives the U.S. a right to respond militarily..”

Biden Makes Clear Case for NATO Complicity Over IL-76 Shoot-Down (SCF)

Joe Biden is contending that the United States has the right to attack Iran as a result of the deadly strike on a U.S. base in Jordan which killed three American troops. Biden is throwing rocks in a glass house if we then look at the case of the IL-76 shoot-down over Russia when 74 people were killed. It is by no means clear if Iran was involved in the Jordan base raid. Tehran strongly denies it and even the Pentagon has admitted there is no evidence showing Iran had a hand in the drone attack. Nevertheless, Biden has asserted Iran is to blame and that this gives the U.S. a right to respond militarily. If Biden can make that case, then the United States and its NATO allies should be held accountable for the shooting down of the IL-76 transport plane over Russia killing all onboard, according to the reasoning of none other than the US President.

By “accountable” that means Russia has the right to take retaliatory military action against the culprit of the crime in which 74 people were killed. Again, this is according to Biden’s own reasoning.Biden was not speaking about the fatal IL-76 incident that occurred on January 24 when nine Russian servicemen and 65 Ukrainian prisoners were killed after their cargo plane was hit in mid-air with a warhead. The president was responding to U.S. journalists questioning him about the deaths of three American military personnel at a base in Jordan that Iraqi militants attacked on January 28. Biden said he held Iran responsible for the American fatalities and vowed to retaliate. Somewhat contradictorily, the president and his spokesmen have said the United States does not seek to have a wider war with Iran even though Biden said he intends to attack Iranian assets in a “tiered way at a time of his choosing”. If that’s not a wider war, what is?

Iran has vehemently denied any involvement in the drone attack on the U.S. base in Jordan near the border with Syria and Iraq. The strike was claimed by Iraqi militia known as Islamic Resistance which is allied with Iran.Asked if he blamed Iran, Biden said he did “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it.” Iran and the Iraqi militants are affiliated in a similar way to Tehran’s support for Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, and the Ansar Allah movement in Yemen. All are motivated by staunch opposition to U.S. military occupation in the Middle East and Washington’s support for Israel’s genocidal aggression in Gaza. Collectively, Iran and its allies are known as the Axis of Resistance.There is no evidence that Iran supplied the weapons to the militants who killed the three American troops. Iran contends that each resistance member possesses its own agency and decision-making.

By contrast, however, the supply of American and other NATO weaponry to the Kiev regime is publicly recorded. It is estimated that the West has funded Ukraine with a total of $200 billion since the proxy war against Russia erupted in February 2022. About half of that has been spent on weapons that include long-range missiles such as Patriot, Shadow Storm, Scalp and Iris-T systems. British and French cruise missiles have been repeatedly used to hit pre-war Russian territory such as Belgorod resulting in dozens of civilian deaths. The strike on the IL-76 transport plane is believed to have been carried out with Western-supplied weapons. Russian crash investigators have this week confirmed earlier claims that the cargo plane was shot down with a NATO weapon, either a U.S.-made Patriot missile system or a German Iris-T surface-to-air missile.

When the IL-76 was blown out of the sky on January 24 over Russia’s Belgorod region, Russian radars detected the launch of two anti-aircraft warheads nearly 100 kilometers away from the target. The missiles were allegedly fired from the location of Liptsy in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkov province. It is believed that only NATO-supplied weapons to the Ukrainian forces could have achieved that extensive range.At the time of the IL-76 shoot-down, the Kremlin said that if it confirmed that Western weapons were responsible then Russia would deem the West to be complicit in the crime. On January 26, Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said: “According to preliminary investigation, Ukrainian armed forces carried out this terrorist attack using an anti-aircraft missile system. The missiles were launched from the village of Liptsy in Kharkov region.”

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“..despite all the aid that has been sent to Ukraine, which he estimated to be over $200 billion, the army itself is woefully ill-equipped for battle..”

Ukraine’s ‘Failed State’ Status (DeMartino)

Earlier this week, Ukraine’s security service announced that five Ukrainians, including the current head of a department in Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, had been served with notices of suspicion related to the embezzlement of nearly $40 million that was supposed to be spent on artillery shells.The news was the latest in a consistent pattern of fraud and corruption being reported in Ukraine since Russia’s special military operation began nearly two years ago. Former Ukrainian ambassador and whistleblower Andrii Telizhenko told Sputnik’s Fault Lines that corruption is rife in Kiev and is only getting worse. “So this whole scheme of $40 million is just a small little example,” Telizhenko explained. “Ukraine became a failed state,” Telizhenko said, “because of the corruption and because Ukraine was sold off to the people inside Ukraine, was sold off to its Western allies, and people in Ukraine are suffering from this.”

Telizhenko noted that despite all the aid that has been sent to Ukraine, which he estimated to be over $200 billion, the army itself is woefully ill-equipped for battle. “People are still collecting money to buy medical kits and drones for the soldiers,” Telizhenko said. “[This is] what is happening in Ukraine, total corruption.” Telizhenko noted that there was another case in which more than $1 billion worth of military equipment that the US Department of Defense authorized to be sent to Ukraine never arrived and the DoD was unable to locate them. “So this is a great example where equipment is being lost for billions of dollars, equipment is not being made for hundreds of millions of dollars, and it’s all being stolen by the Kiev regime, and I think, with the help of the deep state government in Washington.”The actions by Ukrainian authorities to arrest those involved in the motor scandal are token gestures, says Telizhenko,“It’s all a big show.”The corruption in Ukraine has always been there but grew exponentially after the West began meddling in Ukrainian affairs, he explained.

“Corruption, which was inside Ukraine, which [already] was pretty big, but then it came from the outside, from people like [US President Joe] Biden in Washington, the deep state, which said, ‘Oh, why [don’t] we also make money on this together with the Ukrainian politicians?’” Telizhenko blasted the Ukrainian officials calling them “hypocrites” and “so-called patriots.” The corruption is so entrenched, Telizhenko said, that it will take more than the removal of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to root it out.“It [is] coming to a situation where a change of government in Washington, DC, a change of national policy issues in Washington, people like [Former US President Donald] Trump [could] come in,” Telizhenko explained. “He spoke about making peace in 24 hours, that’s a possibility.” “The end game… for Ukraine is to have a new government inside Ukraine and to see what government comes from Washington, maybe that will give some stability in the world,” he concluded.

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“..we see how the [countries in the union are] going really down the slope and nobody’s stopping it..”

Mass European Farmer Protests Blowback for Ukraine Support (Sp.)

After farmers blocked highways leading into Paris last week, farmers from several other European countries have followed suit, protesting against their countries’ dropping of fuel subsidies, green regulations and dropping sale prices. Veteran war correspondent Elijah Magnier told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Wednesday that the root causes of the protests stem from Europe’s decision “to follow the United States policy and join the war against Russia.”
“We shot ourselves in the foot, basically that’s very soft – we shot ourselves in the head and now we are paying the price,” Magnier said. He noted how everything from energy to consumer food prices has skyrocketed in Europe, but that has not caused European leaders to change course. “Now, they are attacking the heart of Europe that are the farmers … they can no longer stand on their feet with the difference of prices, with the increase of price [for consumers and] the lower price that the markets are buying off of them.”

Co-host Jamarl Thomas asked Magnier what demands the farmers have. Magnier replied that they want protection from cheap products coming out of Ukraine, subsidies on diesel fuel to be reinstated, the rollback of European Green New Deal regulations that limit when and what crops are allowed to be planted and a fair price from the supermarket that matches the cost of living increases in Europe. Part of the issue, says Magnier is that the EU hamstrings what the individual countries’ leaders can do to respond to their population. “It’s a serious issue today in Europe, where the European leaders are no longer able to rule Europe as it used to be, and we see how the [countries in the union are] going really down the slope and nobody’s stopping it,” Magnier explained.

In particular, Magnier explained, farmers are angry that they have to follow the new regulations but Ukraine is allowed to skirt them under the guise that they are at war. “When you say ‘you cannot plant this kind of vegetable at this particular time of the year because of the CO2 and because of the climate change and because we need to transform Europe into a green environment,’” Magnier explained. “You cannot [also] say, ‘Okay, this is applicable only on the Europeans [with] the exception of Ukraine,’ that doesn’t go, it doesn’t work. “The farmers today are waking up [to] the consequences of the Ukrainian conflict and they are saying ‘we have to be completely detached from what is happening in Ukraine because this is not our war,’” he added. Instead of fighting with the farmers, Magnier said he believes the EU should at least pause the Green New Deal regulations until after the conflict in Ukraine is over and talk to the farmers about what they need and can accommodate, but he noted that trust between the two parties has already been severed.

“So what [European Commission President] Ursula von der Leyen is saying is, ‘Well, I’m ready to talk to you to see what we need and how we can work together.’ But it is too late. [The EU should] stop all [their] procedures and say, ‘let us talk.’ But you don’t negotiate with the knife at the throat of the farmers saying, ‘Well, now I have to think what I can lift, what I cannot lift.'” “If the leaders in Brussels don’t start talking and listening to the farmers, they cannot achieve their [Green New Deal] plan, so the plan is unachievable,” he added.

Dutch farmer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1753176829169398094

Read more …

Vault 7. “..Schulte had helped create the hacking tools that he later exposed to WikiLeaks..”

CIA Staffer Sentenced To 40 Years For Leaking US Hacking Secrets (RT)

A former CIA software engineer who embarrassed his employer by allegedy giving a massive trove of classified information to WikiLeaks has been sentenced to 40 years in prison by a New York judge. US District Court Judge Jesse Furman handed down the sentence against Joshua Schulte on Thursday, falling short of the life prison term that federal prosecutors had requested. Schulte, who was accused of carrying out the largest theft of US secrets in the CIA’s history, was convicted on charges of espionage, computer hacking, contempt of court, making false statements to the FBI, and possessing child pornography. Schulte, 35, was allegedly the source behind the so-called Vault 7 release by WikiLeaks in 2017, which exposed the methods used by the CIA to hack smartphones and other devices.

The bombshell report exposed how the US spied on foreign governments, terrorism suspects and other targets, creating a major embarrassment for Washington’s intelligence agencies. It also reportedly triggered a secret CIA plot to kidnap or assassinate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Prior to his arrest in 2018, Schulte had helped create the hacking tools that he later exposed to WikiLeaks. The CIA tactics included efforts to turn so-called smart TVs – televisions with online connectivity – into listening devices. Prosecutors claimed he was behind “the most damaging disclosures of classified information in American history.”Schulte argued during his July 2022 trial that the CIA and FBI were making him a scapegoat for a humiliating leak of data that could have been stolen by hundreds of other people. He claimed, too, that he had no motive to carry out such a leak.

During Thursday’s sentencing hearing, he complained of horrible conditions in his New York jail cell, which he called a “torture cage,” and he said prosecutors were seeking “vengeance” after previously offering him a plea bargain calling for a 10-year prison sentence. Furman found that Schulte was motivated by “anger, spite and perceived grievance” against his CIA bosses after they ignored his complaints about working conditions. After being jailed in 2018, the ex-programmer continued trying to leak classified materials in what prosecutors called an “information war” with the US government, the judge said.

While executing a search warrant in the espionage case, FBI investigators allegedly found an encrypted cache of more than 3,000 images and videos depicting child sexual abuse on Schulte’s home computer, according to prosecutors. More than six years of his 40-year prison sentence stemmed from the pornography charges. Although Furman didn’t grant the request by the US Department of Justice to imprison Schulte for life, he did agree to apply a “terrorism enhancement,” a legal provision that allows harsher sentences for terrorism-related offenses. Assange, who has been jailed in London since 2019 while fighting extradition to the US, faces up to 175 years in prison on 17 espionage charges.

Read more …

Waters is 80 years old and doing massive sold out shows all the time. He’ll be fine.

Roger Waters Faces Axe by Record Label Over Defiant Israel Stance (Sp.)

Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) is reportedly planning to axe its 2016 publishing deal with 80-year-old rock legend Roger Waters over his “inflammatory comments” on the crises in Israel and Ukraine, and his outspoken criticism of the United States. Sources told entertainment magazine Variety that the Germany-based record giant is getting ready to take the radical step to “separate entirely” from Waters. Ordinarily, publishing deals are generally allowed to expire without renewal instead of being prematurely ended. Waters mentioned being “fired” by BMG in an interview with independent journalist Glenn Greenwald late last year, citing pressure from Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League pro-Israeli lobbying group, over his outspoken position on the conflict in Gaza.

“Bertelsmann’s, did they say ‘F*ck you Jonathan Greenblatt, we’re a proper company and this is a great artist and we have his publishing and we supported him and he makes great records’? No, they didn’t. They went ‘ok’ and they fired me, boom!” Waters recalled, accusing Greenblatt of falsely labeling him an “anti-Semite” and threatening to “remind the public” that BGM “collaborated with the Nazis in World War II” to push the label to axe him. After the October 7 escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli crisis, Waters, a longtime self-professed pro-Palestinian peace activist, accused Israel of “committing genocide” and suggested that “its leaders and any Western leaders who support it should be prosecuted under the Genocide Convention.”

On Ukraine, Waters was invited by Russia to speak at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council last February, where he condemned all sides in the conflict but emphasized that Russia’s special military operation was “not unprovoked” and the “provocateurs” must be condemned “in the strongest possible terms.” Waters’ nuanced stance on the Ukrainian crisis led his name to be placed on a notorious ‘kill list’ website linked to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs. Consistently speaking out against the suspected crimes of the UK government as a “willing accomplice and satellite of the American Empire,” Rogers has decried the “US Empire” as “the most evil of all by a factor of at least ten times.”

Waters’ future with BGM was called into question last year. After being appointed CEO of BMG last July, record industry big whig Thomas Coesfeld unilaterally canceled the release of a new 50th anniversary recording of Dark Side of the Moon, the legendary album which propelled Pink Floyd and Waters to international stardom in 1973. The album wound up being released by independent UK-based publisher Cooking Vinyl Publishing instead. Waters was Pink Floyd’s lead lyricist, co-lead vocalist and band leader between 1968 and 1985. He was inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005, and has often been characterized as one of the top rock singer-songwriters of all time.

Read more …

Steele belongs in jail. But he has protection.

UK High Court Throws Out Trump’s Christopher Steele Case (BBC)

Donald Trump’s attempt to bring a case in the UK courts against a former MI6 officer who wrote a salacious dossier linking him to Russia has failed. The former president had been seeking to use data protection laws to sue Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, the company run by Christopher Steele. Mr Steele compiled the dossier which had unproven allegations about bribing officials and sex parties. It was leaked to the media just before Mr Trump was sworn in as president. In bringing the lawsuit, he said the dossier contained allegations that were inaccurate and breached his data protection rights. A ruling on Thursday by the High Court in London threw out the case. Mrs Justice Steyn DBE said she did not make any judgement on the allegations themselves but found Mr Trump’s claim had not been brought within the six-year limitation period.

“There are no compelling reasons to allow the claim to proceed to trial,” she wrote. A statement is expected from Mr Steele later today. The case stems from 2016, when a US political consultancy asked Mr Steele’s company to produce a report into potential Russian interference in that year’s US general election. The project was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s Democrats and other political opponents of Mr Trump. Mr Steele, the former head of MI6’s Russia desk, sent his findings to the FBI, a British national security officer and an aide to a senior US senator. The dossier, later obtained and published by BuzzFeed News, detailed uncorroborated intelligence claims that Mr Trump had a “compromising relationship with the Kremlin”.

The former president said in his witness statement when he brought the case last year that “none of these things [in the Steele dossier] ever happened.” “I can confirm that I did not, at any time engage in perverted sexual behaviour including the hiring of prostitutes to engage in ‘golden showers’ in the presidential suite of a hotel in Moscow.” Mr Trump said official investigations had debunked the dossier but it continued “to cause me significant damage and distress” because people still believed it. He added that he had not had time to sue in the UK before 2023 because he had been busy being president. Antony White KC, for Orbis, told the court in October that Mr Trump had accepted that the company was not responsible for BuzzFeed’s publication of the document.

Read more …

X thread that Musk labeled “interesting”.

“Elon Musk paid more income tax than anyone ever in the history of Earth back in 2021. He paid over $11 billion in taxes.”

Interesting – Elon Musk (Kanekoa)

Judge Kathaleen McCormick rescinded Elon Musk’s $55 billion Tesla compensation package, overturning the company’s board and 80% of its shareholders. McCormick also ruled against @elonmusk during his Twitter acquisition. Before becoming the head of the Delaware Chancery Court, McCormick worked at a Delaware law firm called Young Conaway. This firm and its employees have been major donors to President Joe Biden for decades. In 2016, Hunter Biden hosted a gubernatorial campaign event for Congressman John Carney, with then-Vice President Joe Biden as the guest speaker. This event took place at the Law Offices of Young Conaway in Wilmington, Delaware. Carney, a close friend of Joe Biden for the last four decades, later became governor and nominated Kathaleen McCormick, a partner at Young Conaway, to her position on the Delaware Chancery Court.

In a March 2018 email, Hunter Biden claimed to personally know every judge on the Delaware Chancery Court while threatening legal action against his Chinese business partners. “I will bring the suit in the Chancery court in Delaware – which as you know is my home state and I am privileged to have worked with and know every judge on the chancery court.” After Elon Musk purchased Twitter with the stated goal of restoring free-speech, President Biden called for a federal investigation into Musk on the podium at the White House. Following this, the Biden Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Federal Trade Commission initiated legal actions and investigations against Tesla, SpaceX, and X. This recent decision by Judge McCormick, who worked with Biden’s top donors and was nominated by Biden’s close friend, to override Tesla’s board and the majority of its shareholders is another clear example of the Biden administration and its allies weaponizing the American legal system against their political opponents.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Assange

 

 

 

 

Brahman
https://twitter.com/i/status/1752804731859218932

 

 

Treat

 

 

Disabled
https://twitter.com/i/status/1753069487925190827

 

 

Tiny
https://twitter.com/i/status/1752811211866116527

 

 

Mandarin

 

 

Ears
https://twitter.com/i/status/1752788518420840805

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle February 2 2024

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 69 total)
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  • #151736

    Winslow Homer Mending the nets 1881   • House Speaker Mike Johnson First Floor Speech On Border Catastrophe (Kanekoa) • It’s Biden vs. Texas, and
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle February 2 2024]

    #151737
    Formerly T-Bear
    Participant

    The Zionist / Israeli assault on the UNWAR is a blatant attempt to destroy the UN agency created to assist the Palestinian refugees from the establishment of Israel curtesy of Zionist Thugs, Terrorists and Thieves. In its destruction, also includes a registry of displaced Palestinians who by registering reserve their LEGAL RIGHT of return; some 6,000,000 (six millions) persons strong, closing that door for their rights forever in Israel’s empty assertion is accepted. By accepting, those nations withholding funds to the agency become accomplices to the Gazan genocide. What a pathetic list of morally bankrupt nations now exists.
    Do you live in one?

    #151738
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    Linh Dinh’s short story on Kafka’s “Jackals and Arabs” in this new booklet of his – read free at:

    … fwiw,

    F.S.

    #151739
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “”Entirely Counterfeit”: Harvard’s Chief Diversity Officer Plagiarized At Least 40 Times According To Complaint
    Pic
    https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/harvard-dei_jpg.jpg

    Gee if this keeps up they’re going to think it’s Black people instead of the correct lesson that it’s people from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Rutgers. I remember about 10 years ago a survey of their students where 80% said they cheated. Nope. Nobody did nothing. Sounded all good to them. Weren’t embarrassed at all.

    This study: Columbia, U Wisconsin- Madison, U Michigan. Gay: Princeton, Stanford, Harvard. Did I leave anybody out, or is UPenn only known for raping little boys?

    Also: so literally no one checked or noticed? Something like the 30 papers retracted from Harvard this month, or the 300 word-salad papers easily published to prove their point, now almost 10 years ago as well? A: Nope. Nobody checked or noticed. When they were found out and exposed they did nothing at all.

    Is there ANY possible point where Science or Education can become embarrassed? A: No. The Universe is not long enough that we could reach that point.

    Exaggerating? “Acid Attack In London Prompts Manhunt, But No Description Of Suspect

    So, your manhunt is “We’re looking for someone.”? Black or white? Can’t say. Muslim or Christian? Can’t say. Old or young? Can’t say. Rich and entitled or poor and downtrodden? Can’t say. Man or woman? A: What’s that?

    I’m sure they’ll catch up with Thee/Them in no time.

    China won’t have any trouble with this, and will just adopt the same policies to make sure they don’t surpass us in anything. That would only be fair, right? #SocialJustice Their deepest core belief is that only black people commit crimes, or they would just call it “crime” and release the photos. But we know without looking that we shouldn’t arrest anyone, because we know without looking that it’s a black person (insert trendy race group here)

    “Ukraine Celebrates EU Approval Of $54BN Aid Package After Hungary’s Orban Caved

    Man, they sure like dead Ukrainians.

    “According to an in-depth investigative report by The Washington Post, “police carry out tens of thousands of no-knock raids every year nationwide.”

    “SWAT teams are granted “no-knock” warrants at high rates such that the warrants themselves are rendered practically meaningless.”

    They’ll give one for anything, and if they’re wrong, like the FISA court, the judges don’t care and aren’t embarrassed or angry at being lied to at all.

    “SWAT teams are now increasingly being deployed for relatively routine police matters such as serving a search warrant, with some being sent out as much as five times a day.
    SWAT teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of so-called criminal activity or mere community nuisances: angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork …”
    “Aiyana Jones is dead because of a SWAT raid gone awry. The 7-year-old was killed after a Detroit SWAT team—searching for a suspect—launched a flash-bang grenade into her family’s apartment, broke through the door and opened fire, hitting the little girl who was asleep on the living room couch. The cops weren’t even in the right apartment.”

    “a Georgia SWAT team launched a flash-bang grenade into the house in which Baby Bou Bou, his three sisters and his parents were staying. The grenade landed in the 2-year-old’s crib, burning a hole in his chest “

    Again, as I say, that’s not the problem. The problem is, now these things happened, you know they happened, you’re afraid of them happening to you and your district, AND THEN YOU DID NOTHING. You didn’t get rid of SWAT. You didn’t drop a hammer on the warrant system. You didn’t outlaw no-knock, which is an option and a common sense one.

    So my only conclusion is, you like this sort of thing. You saw where you were going and kept going there. Why?

    BTW, this is exactly what we said would happen. Every word. So not just 1950. Not just 1977 when this weirdo California show came on about shooting everyone instead of Andy Griffith. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN6dTNK1hHM Yes Americans are like this AND that the arrests are inside jobs of competition) Not just 1990 when every district started to have one. The WHOOOOOOOLE time we said this would happen, it DID happen, every day of every year, it got worse with each week, more people died, police and law lost legitimacy every day, people hated police and you, off duty more, AND YOU KEPT GOING. 20 more years. WHY? We told you it would make policing worse, your life harder, and it did. We’re now 20+ years in proving our point. But you won’t stop doing what DOESN’T work.

    The ghost of Marley says, “Gooooo baaaack, goooooo baaaaaack” before it’s too late.

    Of by the way, when there are lawsuits, who pays? The people being swatted in the first place: the local public. They are to pay for the privilege of being killed at any moment.

    That’s in the Ritter interview. “What if Russia just said, ‘We’re going to spend $100M to influence the ‘24 U.S. election’? They would all be ‘Russian’ candidates. Therefore most elected officials are ‘Israeli’ candidates.” Logical enough. If a foreign power then ALSO leads to the undermining of the U.S., perhaps through incredible poverty and overreach, would that be by definition treason?

    Anyway, my point is, like above, IT’S NOT THEIR MONEY. We give “Foreign Aid” to them, they take 10% of it and bribe us off, a felony. We are paying for our own destruction and occupation. So like we do to Ukraine, they do to us. And we go “Duuuuuh, I dunno!”

    “”Since I was elected Speaker less than 100 days ago, more than 700,000 illegals have [entered]”

    You haven’t built 7 new American cities in the last 100 days for them??? How dare you! What are you doing up there?

    “Israel has agreed to a ceasefire proposal that would halt its war with Hamas, Al Jazeera reported”

    They only do this to rearm and re-position. Even when The Plan is 100 years old and all the countries involved not longer exist (USSR) or the events never happened (Tonkin, J6) we just do it anyway.

    “• US Created Ukraine Conflict to Keep Europe ‘Under Its Thumb’ (Sp.)

    Kind of? OUR army will offensively attack and invade, occupy, and sell off Russia. And we will sell that back exclusively to Europe. So they are under our thumb. Or are we under THEIR thumb? Since we’re the ones paying, dying, and they have leverage as our only customer, while they sit home and eat Smørrebrød and brioche?

    Orrrrr, sounds a lot like you two are in this together. How is your “Customer” “Under your thumb”? You work all day to serve HIM.

    “• EU Leaders Agree to Give $54Bln in Macro-Financial Assistance to Ukraine (Sp.)

    Whoa whoa, wait. I thought this was $54B in ARMS. It’s only a little arms and mostly money? So the money’s never going to arrive in Kiev and 90% will be recycled back to EU elite? Elected and otherwise?

    “This locks in steadfast, long-term, predictable funding for #Ukraine. Europe. Or CERTAIN people in Europe, who apparently are deeply unpopular, about to be booted, and desperately need this $54 billion in money to pay policemen to shoot French women in the eye and stay in power?

    “This locks in steadfast, long-term, predictable funding for #Ukraine.”

    Duran followed this, where it seems that this was all a maneuver to erase Ze. Like this: They punk’d Ze into having no choice but confront Zu, otherwise it would be obvious, the reality that Zu is in control, and Ze is an actor-puppet who never controlled anything. Now because they’re all double-crossing attack-weasels, WHEN Zu was told to resign, he said no, make me. That is itself inappropriate, although it’s somewhat required for Ze to follow this path of asking first. And they know that. Ze then goes back, starts the paperwork to dump Zu, and immediately finds out that his successor (Badenov) has just that minute withdrawn his offer to take over. Now Ze cannot go forward, can’t go back, loses face, and essentially all these subs — i.e. the whole rest of government — have stated they think nothing of his power. Pissed in your eye: you’re nobody. AND after pissing on you, we all stood here looking at you. And the Ukr parliament now knows who’s in control, has power, and what is happening.

    Ze, not being a politician nor a killer but a puppet who plays piano with his d—k, does not know what to do, since he wasn’t given that script. That brings us up to today.

    It’s also impossible the CIA/MI6 weren’t also in on it. So this is a new, “soft” removal? Instead of the 1960s coup of shooting in the head? So they say he has to move to Miami and “retire”….knowing full well that Azov and Budanov will shoot him in the head. …But that’s not the CIA’s business, is it? Although they arranged every single part and understood that would be the end result. But other than knowing and arranging the whole thing, they had nothing to do with it. Everything = Nothing.

    “the Pentagon has admitted there is no evidence showing Iran had a hand in the drone attack.”

    So we reported the Opposite and act on it.

    “Nevertheless, Biden has asserted Iran is to blame and that this gives the U.S. a right to respond militarily..”

    No it doesn’t. And not just because Iran didn’t do it to begin with.(technically) Just as Saddam was the #OPPOSITE of Al-qaeda. They had #OPPOSITE religions and they would remove Saddam in an instant if they could. What “right” does a President have to just attack anyone he accuses? Either in the U.S. or in the UN and ICJ?

    A: Squirrel! What’s Taylor Swift doing this week?

    No, the “Legal” move is an act of war, or even a Congressional debate and approval of exact parameters. Like we knew we legally had to do – and still wasn’t enough to be legal – only a few years ago in 2002.

    Why can Biden bomb anyone on the planet? A: “I thought it in my head.” That’s democracy.

    And yes, I hadn’t immediately put that together, but Ukraine didn’t shoot down POWs to cynically aggravate Russia for no reason except to get nuked. WE DID. Whoever in “the West”, that is, the CIA, had OUR guys in the Patriot missile battery, shoot down Russian planes over Russia, where Ukraine wasn’t involved at all.

    Again, like all provocations, Russia says, “Oh well.” and in their depressive, laconic way, say, “C’est la geurre” and carry on what they’re doing without alteration. Until their enemies are all ground to a powder so fine, and destroyed so utterly that history books gasp in horror for 200 years. …And then Europe, being retarded AF, immediately does it again.

    ““People are still collecting money to buy medical kits and drones for the soldiers,” Telizhenko said. “[This is] what is happening in Ukraine, total corruption.”

    Yes, because the corruption is AMERICAN. It’s EUROPEAN. None of the money is reaching Kiev except for the 1.5 milliseconds it traverses their bank.

    No? Then we really need a congressional audit into where the money’s going, right? Isn’t that really a minimum? We can’t have that BECAUSE all the money is being used for its intended purpose, and we can be sure of that because we won’t look. We know before we know that we know, without looking. No data required. No discussion. Are these guys Scientists or something?

    “• CIA Staffer Sentenced To 40 Years For Leaking US Hacking Secrets (RT)

    That is how it goes. It’s illegal.

    “Assange faces up to 175 years in prison on 17 espionage charges.”

    That is not how it goes. That is not illegal.

    “and his outspoken criticism of the United States.”

    How dare musicians be rebels and criticize the establishment? Modern musicians don’t. Like Green Day, raging in defense of the machine. Forgot to add them for specific ridicule yesterday. Disgusting corporate shills. American Idiots almost. Well post-punk never understood punk anyway. Just like today’s tattooed don’t understand the meaning of “rebel”.

    “• UK High Court Throws Out Trump’s Christopher Steele Case (BBC)

    Actually, you’d be saying it’s illegal to lie? That’s how London works to control the retard-dummy United States: they post a 2nd fake set of books to us about what’s going on in the world, we never doubt or double-check the intel of “our allies” – same as Israel – and slavishly and stupidly do whatever that intelligence tells us. Like get involved in 5 new wars, all of which coincidentally advance London and destroy Iowa.

    The problem isn’t Steele or MI6 is, it’s that you’re a treasonous retard. I don’t know if you can make a law against stupid.

    “Judge Kathaleen McCormick rescinded Elon Musk’s $55 billion Tesla compensation package,”

    One guy. “I thought it in my head!”

    “Dog always celebrates”

    Makes it taste better. You should do the same.

    #151740
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Schulte, who was accused of carrying out the largest theft of US secrets in the CIA’s history, was convicted on charges of espionage, computer hacking, contempt of court, making false statements to the FBI, and possessing child pornography.

    So this guy was some super hacker bloke but he left unencrypted kiddie porn on his laptop for all to see? Sure, I will believe that, after all, if cows can fly then why not? The corruption at the core of the US mafia government is quite astonishing, not astonishing because it is there, but astonishing because it is to blatant and simplistic that even a child can see that this person has been set up and his character smeared.

    It really is very pathetic, the world’s most powerful government is smearing people with lies about kiddie porn; my guess is that kiddie porn is the standard shit they throw at people who refuse to bend to their threats and other blackmail; most of congress is probaby controlled by threats regarding kiddie porn, most of which will be entirely fake.

    Trump should pardon him when in power; Trump should have a list of hundreds to be pardoned on day one.

    #151741
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Waters is 80 years old and doing massive sold out shows all the time. He’ll be fine.

    Musk insulted the Jews and looks at what happened afterwards. He has been playing the wannabe Jew to try to make up for it, but it looks like they may just take his 55bln to teach him a lesson. Bribing judges is child’s play today, the Democrat Jew lawyers do it all the time, they will have no problem sorting out Musk.

    Waters may be okay unless they use AI to discover a video of Waters fucking some little kid, the sort of thing the US government likes to use to demolish the reputations of morrally wholesome people.

    #151742
    zerosum
    Participant

    Failure of “People Power”


    In a remarkable PBS documentary, the January 6th committee admits the entire thing was a publicity stunt / fabricated TV production meant to manipulate the audience.

    Jan. 6, Three Years Later: 10 Documentaries to Watch

    Jan. 6, Three Years Later: 10 Documentaries to Watch

    JANUARY 5, 2024 by Patrice Taddonio
    Originally published on Jan. 6, 2023, this story has been updated.
    ————
    Again! Failure of “People Power”
    Farmers demonstrations in the streets.
    • EU Leaders Agree to Give $54Bln in Macro-Financial Assistance to Ukraine (Sp.)

    https://sputnikglobe.com/20240201/eu-leaders-agree-to-allocate-54bln-in-macro-financial-assistance-to-ukraine-1116533192.html
    ————–


    Mission accomplished. Hungary’s funds will not end up in Ukraine and we have a control mechanism at the end of the first and the second year. Our position on the war in Ukraine remains unchanged: we need a ceasefire and peace talks.
    ————
    WHY Failure of “People Power”
    Threats and other blackmail; …. most of which will be entirely fake.
    Demolish the reputations of morally wholesome people.

    ———–

    #151743
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Will the EU monitor and audit the 54 bln or is this just a rort; the cash is to be distributed among the Ukraine elites and their friends in the EU parliament.

    Who checks that this isn’t just plain theft, similar to the Pfizer deal that the EU did that mysteriously dissappeared a load of cash.

    Are there any honest governments? Have they always been this way or are they simply getting more incompetent along with more greedy?

    #151744
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Aiyana Jones is dead because of a SWAT raid gone awry. The 7-year-old was killed after a Detroit SWAT team—searching for a suspect—launched a flash-bang grenade into her family’s apartment, broke through the door and opened fire, hitting the little girl who was asleep on the living room couch. The cops weren’t even in the right apartment.

    Cops are not the brightest lamps on the block and what with the current recruitment issues, they will probably start recruiting cops who are illegal immigrants who cannot read or write. There will be more “wrong address” raids as illiterate cops become the norm.

    #151746
    tboc
    Participant

    “There is an enormous thrust in our time to have a simple answer. And that simple answer is that all depends on Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve. And Alan, who is an old acquaintance of mine, is a marvelous performer in the impression he gives of enormously great perception.” ~
    John Kenneth Galbraith

    “Under capitalism, man exploits man.
    Under communism, it’s just the opposite.” ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

    “Among all the world’s races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not the consequence of any special preference for mendacity, although at the higher levels of their public administration that tendency is impressive. It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong.” ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

    there is some thought in the United States, perhaps more prevalent than not, that the US military should strike Moscow and Tehran with a barrage of missles and see what happens. There is plain evidence that the United States reserves to the right to annihilate any life deemed objectionable. A test of the practicallity of this position seem appropriate.
    in the recent past i opposed this train of thought as unproductive, now in a perverse manner of thought i am warming to the idea such action would be highly productive.

    do you ever wonder what “Cookies” collar size is? asking from a foreign and domestic perspective

    do you find it entertaining that much of the video background for the Assange piece above features scenes from the Bourne movies? In real estate it is Location, Location, Location in video it is frame rate, subliminal input, frame rate, preconditioning and frame rate. The Hallmark movies are quite popular even though the background to most scenes are obviously more contrived than a theater set. Producing a personal sense of empathy for one’s own predicament must be quite profitable.

    “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.” ~ Kris Kristofferson
    do you still have something to lose?

    perhaps you are a slave to your creature comforts

    #151747
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/politics/foreign-interference-networks-deeply-embedded-in-canadian-politics-csis-report-says/ar-BB1hDjHO?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=b6ddef3542814979afeb5bfd5d8966b2&ei=60

    Foreign interference networks are “deeply embedded” in Canadian politics, and operate at every level of government, according to a declassified intelligence report obtained by Global News.
    Targets of foreign meddling include diaspora groups, media outlets and federal, provincial, municipal and indigenous governments, as well as “various facets of Canadian civil society,” the CSIS report said.

    The Canadian Security Intelligence Service report, released under the Access to Information Act, also warned that foreign interference was “incrementally” weakening Canada’s democracy.

    … but other materials released to Global News at the same time name China and India as top threats.

    (There is no mention of the most active agents doing …
    conflict of interest,
    Threats and other blackmail; …. most of which will be entirely fake.
    Demolish the reputations of morally wholesome people.
    Ukraine, Nazi, Israel, USA or their agents have been ignored)
    ———-

    Woman ordered deported over Chinese foreign interference

    allegations against China, Russia, Iran and India are all under scrutiny. David Akin reports.
    ———–
    https://courdappelduquebec.ca/en/news/details/justice-hogue-is-appointed-commissioner-in-charge-of-the-public-inquiry-into-foreign-interference-in/
    Justice Hogue is Appointed Commissioner in Charge of the Public Inquiry Into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions
    September 07, 2023
    ———-

    #151748
    Oroboros
    Participant

    .

    #151749
    Oroboros
    Participant

    “Sometimes, the world needs a whore” Nikki Haley

    Hahahahaha!

    So True!

    #151750
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Nikki be gettin’ downnn…..

    Hoeing for Boeing

    .

    #151751
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Nikki Haley wants you to work until you’re dead…

    you must be trippin’…….hahahahahahaha!

    #151752
    Oroboros
    Participant

    James O’Keefes Truly Hysterical Exposure of Charlie Kraiger

    What an awesome disguise James!

    Hahahahahahahaahaha!

    .

    #151753
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    The PBS documentary on the January 6 Committee is just astonishing, and most especially the statement from Adam Kinzinger that it opened with. Listen carefully. In stating that the information they had was compelling, BEFORE the hearings started, is a public confession that the committee had reached its verdict BEFORE it received evidence. You’re not allowed to do that in a legal proceeding because reaching a verdict prior to receiving evidence completely invalidates the process. It doesn’t just prove the fact that the hearings were a sham, it literally throws out of court all of the evidence and testimony given after the fact.

    It’s also a flat out admission that the Committee committed fraud. The alleged and reported purpose of the committee was to investigate, a gather facts from testimony, reach a conclusion based on that evidence, and then report their findings and recommendation accordingly. Kinzinger unambiguously goes on record stating that that is NOT what they did.

    As an aside, since when is story telling the job that Legislators are tasked with, paid for, and contractually obligated to perform? That ain’t their job. That’s not what they’re paid to do. In fact, it is a straight up breech of contract with the citizens who paid their salaries.

    So if they’re not fulfilling their contractual obligations to the citizens, then who are they working for? In other words, who are they telling the story FOR? That’s a fair question. Who was the Committee working for? Who tasked them with telling the story they were given to tell before the hearings even began?

    For that matter, who told them that their job was story telling rather than legislating? Obviously the “who” who gave them the job is someone they considered to be their real boss.

    I think an in depth investigation of the Jan 6 Committee itself, along with all of its proceedings and influences would be one helluva lot more fascinating to the viewing public than the boring crap that they actually produced.

    Question number one might be, who do the committee members take directions and orders from? Who do they actually work for. What do those command channels actually look like? Who’s doing what, with which, to whom, and why are they doing it?

    #151754
    teri
    Participant

    Dear Ilargi,

    You know, some photos, artwork, or altered videos are very funny and can be used to make a clever satirical point or to simply provoke a chuckle. Some photos and altered videos are just kind of dumb. The picture near the top of today’s post, the one of Biden and Harris as the couple from the Titanic, is an example of the “just dumb” category. It’s like those really inane pictures you sometimes post that show Trump as Jesus, or Trump with Jesus, or Trump with a lion boldly striding forward as the conquering hero.

    One can scroll over those with an eye-roll.

    But I gotta tell you, the video up there where someone has taken footage of MLK jr and altered his words to make it appear as if he is endorsing Trump is neither funny nor witty. It is abusive to the memory of MLK, Jr. and perhaps even actionable, should his family want to sue for the defamation of his legacy.

    MLK, Jr. was affiliated with neither party. No-one knows who he voted for in any given election. He did mention in many speeches that he thought capitalism was a major problem for the country and that we needed to move on to a form of democratic socialism. However, he never committed his support to any party, as he did not want his views to be used for their political purposes. He never endorsed any presidential candidate; for one thing, he strongly felt that as a minister it was wrong for him to issue endorsements for any politician. For another, he wanted to remain completely non-partisan and free of political attachments so that he could criticize both major parties when he felt it necessary.

    The text in that altered video is so exaggerated that it becomes repulsive. Donald Trump as the champion of the black man? Are you shitting me?

    We have had very few Americans during my lifetime that could be consider “great men”. MLK, Jr. was one of them. And they assassinated him; gunned him down like a dog to stop him from speaking. It was a truly grievous loss for the country.

    And now, some twit somewhere has decided to make a complete mockery of this courageous (and very dead) great black leader and you, for inscrutable reasons (You think it is amusing? You think MLK, Jr. really said those things? You just like anything that supports Trump?) have decided this video deserves your promotion.

    It’s easy enough to ignore the silliness that sometimes appears on otherwise informative websites like yours, Ilargi, but this video is too repugnant and offensive to pass over without remark. I really wish you had not chosen to feature this piece of crap.

    – Teri

    #151755
    John Day
    Participant

    Jim Jordan Whips Out Subpoena, Devastates Fani
    House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has slapped a subpoena on Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis for failing to comply with document requests related to allegations that Willis fired a whistleblower who tried to stop a top campaign aide from misusing federal funds.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/jim-jordan-whips-out-subpoena-devastates-fani

    #151756
    Celticbiker
    Participant

    What kind Overlord power uses puppet governments to destroy farming? 1 that plans on starving you to death. Wikileakers get shot, 40 years or life in prison. Inject poison into billions, killing millions, you get stock options, a raise, awards from isreal, capital of Murder Inc. After thousands of years the jews are finally getting what they want…Hell on earth. Freemasonic traitors dancing to the tune of Money. As chemtrails rain down on you, 5G bounces around in your head, injections eat your insides, rapists and murderers coming from the border to your town…what will you do? The painting at the top evokes a time of purposeful people. A rarity this day and age. I pray to God this changes Time is short.

    #151757
    John Day
    Participant

    Thoughtful input, tboc. 🙂

    #151758
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @teri

    I sure hope that I never earn your reprobation, because you really do know how to dole it out in a calm, measured and rational manner that leaves no room for excuses or avenue of escape. Very well done.

    #151759
    Dr. D
    Participant

    I thought the MLK video was amazing, thought provoking, well done and… Probably should not have been made.

    We’ve got enough of that going around. People can’t tell fact from fiction, and after the first few lines began a steady divergence from MLK to …something. Maga, I guess.

    MLK did a wide number of bad things as a man, including adultery, and had we enacted his world as a dictator, quite probably it would have made hell on earth. Everyone hated his guts when he was alive, particularly Democrats. They love him dead. But we’ll never know since he was one man, trying his best, working it out, and raising his voice for his perspective as we all should. The lesson might not be lionizing him, but learning how we can do great things and make a difference despite our weakness and flaws.

    His family is a good indicator, since they are also flawed, and yet chose to meet with Trump to talk, find out, ask. Tell. Coordinate. We don’t know what came from that but it wouldn’t surprise me if he told them about the well-known hit on their father, its purpose, the FBI’s deep involvement, and that he knows it and this is his position. …Not that he would be telling them anything they didn’t know, but it good to know HE knows, and if he’s rocking a boat that might splash back on them.

    At present, RFK is saying and doing the same thing for different heroes and different murders, but essentially the same.

    No I wouldn’t post it but it’s interesting it exists. This is about to be our world and in 10 years no video WON’T be AI-generated Trump saying he loves the Democratic Party like his wife and the CIA most of all…Elon hates space and cars…and Elmo is an ax murderer. If you don’t stand for truth, that’s your future and you might get used to it.

    #151760
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    It’s mildly amusing in a saddening sort of way that the people who want other people to fight in wars have absolutely no intention to fight in any wars themselves. Quite the contrary. They are dead sure and damn determined that they themselves will not ever have to physically fight under any circumstances. The best way to assure that one doesn’t have to fight in a war is to get someone else to fight a war to keep that from happening.

    What makes this double funny is that the people who actually do fight in wars (you know, FIGHT, as in hit and bleed, kill and die kind of fighting) only do so because they reckon that they have to, that they must fight because they have no other choice. They consider that they have no better alternatives, and so they do what they think they must. They choose to fight. The ridiculous irony is that they are fighting to protect the lives, treasure and sacred honor of the assholes who are forcing them into it. You remember who they are, right? They’re the assholes who don’t want to fight. They’re also the assholes who have done all the bad stuff that people are fighting about. Talk about psychological projection!!!. That’s really knocking it up a few notches. Like all the way to the top of the scale.

    #151761
    John Day
    Participant

    Fugitive Wanted For London Acid Attack That Injured 12 Is Afghan Asylum-Seeker & Convicted Sex Offender
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/fugitive-wanted-london-acid-attack-injured-12-afghan-asylum-seeker-convicted-sex

    #151762
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    I am of decidedly Irish heritage. Irony is our specialty. If you aren’t convinced that Irish history isn’t proof of the fact then just look at our literature and humor. Irony is definitely our thing. Luck of the Irish, and all that. Ah, well, it could have been worse, so I count myself lucky for that.

    #151763
    John Day
    Participant

    Qouth DBS:
    “The people who actually do fight in wars (you know, FIGHT, as in hit and bleed, kill and die kind of fighting) only do so because they reckon that they have to, that they must fight because they have no other choice.
    They consider that they have no better alternatives, and so they do what they think they must. They choose to fight.
    The ridiculous irony is that they are fighting to protect the lives, treasure and sacred honor of the assholes who are forcing them into it.
    You remember who they are, right? They’re the assholes who don’t want to fight.
    They’re also the assholes who have done all the bad stuff that people are fighting about.”

    #151764
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    “We have to vaccinate some bankers!” – Dr. Dave Collum ( at ~ 1:24:08)

    Anyway, … answers to just about anything and everything from Collum!

    F.S.

    #151765
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    … er link to Collum interview:

    #151766
    zerosum
    Participant

    Boycott List of Shame


    Boycott List of Shame
    At the Canadian BDS Coalition, one of the questions we receive most frequently is: “Which products and businesses should we boycott? Which businesses should we support, if we want to support Palestinian rights and liberation?”
    (You will have to live under a rock and eat things that you grow.)

    #151767
    John Day
    Participant

    Trump Prosecutor Avoids Tainting Fani, Gives Booty To Estranged Wife In Last-Minute Divorce Settlement
    Trump special prosecutor Nathan Wade will avoid testifying about his alleged relationship with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
    Wade notably filed for divorce from his stay-at-home wife of 20 years, Jocelyn Wade, on Nov. 2nd, 2021, the day after Fani hired him as a special prosecutor in the Trump case, from which he earned more than $650,000 in taxpayer dollars – which he used to take Fani on lavish vacations, according to claims from Trump co-defendant Michael Roman and corroborated by receipts revealed in the divorce case. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-prosecutor-avoids-tainting-fani-gives-booty-estranged-wife-last-minute-divorce

    #151768
    poppie
    Participant

    Thank you Teri

    #151769
    Oroboros
    Participant

    This is how gobshite lawyers think, with “Legalize Sleaze” and “Weasel Words”

    Find a ‘loophole’ to violate the spirit and obvious intention of a law, any law, lawyers as a profession are sociopaths at a bare minimum. Yes, I mean the entire ‘profession’ > gang.

    Texas Finds Loophole With New ‘Super Ouchy Pokey Wire’

    .

    “EL PASO, TX — With the legal conflict between the federal government and the state of Texas still in full swing following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the use of razor wire along the southern border, Texas found a loophole by instead using “Super Ouchy Pokey Wire.”

    The new type of wire, manufactured in Japan, provides an alternative to the controversial razor wire that was previously being used to deter illegal migrants. Legal experts consulted by Texas officials discovered the loophole and presented it as a viable option to subvert the legal challenges brought by the Biden administration.

    “This isn’t razor wire,” said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. “The Supreme Court ruling had to do specifically with razor wire. This is ‘Super Ouchy Pokey Wire’ from the Crazy Aggressive Security Corporation in Yokohama, Japan. It’s just as effective, but it is absolutely not razor wire. Your move, Biden.”

    #151770
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Larry Makes Fun of the Empire of Lies Military Mafia Announcing It’s Intentions Before Hand

    Or “It’s Too Bad Stupid Isn’t Painful”

    Hahahahahahahaha!

    #151771
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    I must ‘fourth’ teri’s sentiment. Memes are a downgrade. It’s still viable humor, and maybe you can have a ‘humor’ thread, like Martyanov’s Friday music threads.

    #151772
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Happy Ground Hog Day!

    #151773
    Oroboros
    Participant

    From Andrei Martyanov

    UKRONAZIS do not operate Patriot PAC3.

    Period

    Ukronazis aren’t smart enough for one thing

    The ‘Patriot’ AD system is a piece of shit, like most Military Industrial Mafia weapons are.

    The F-35 Lardbucket boondoggle for instance.

    Their Brand…….

    Made for ‘Profit NOT Performance©

    “Those systems are operated by US personnel, including making a decision on its use.

    From Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova,.

    The US and its citizens are complicit in the deaths of the Ukrainian POWs who were killed last week when the Russian Il-76 military aircraft transporting them was shot down by Kiev’s troops,

    On Thursday Russia’s Investigative Committee released a report stating that the cargo plane was destroyed using two US-made MIM-104A missiles fired by a Patriot air-defense system. The Il-76 came down in Russia’s Belgorod Region last Wednesday.

    All of those on board – 65 Ukrainian POWs, three Russian troops, and six crew members – were killed. Russian investigators stated that Ukrainian troops fired the missiles from a staging area in Kharkov Region, not far from the village of Liptsy, some 10km from the Russian border.

    They based their conclusion on 116 missile fragments found at the crash site bearing inscriptions in English. Responding to the report, Zakharova said in a Telegram post that US citizens “need to know where their money is going,” arguing that President Joe Biden and his administration have made Americans “complicit in a bloody tragedy.”

    I am sure those Empire of Lies Military Mafia will get Bronze Star for shooting a defenseless aircraft carrying POWs.

    Not the first time the US shot down civilian aircraft.

    Patriot missile serial numbers

    .

    #151774
    Oroboros
    Participant

    When Maria Zakharova says this, there will be consequences for the Empire of Lies and their Toadie Coward Mercs and Buttboys in Ukronaziland.

    “The US and its citizens are complicit in the deaths of the Ukrainian POWs who were killed last week when the Russian Il-76 military aircraft transporting them was shot down by Kiev’s troops, “

    Time to get really serious and whole kill a shit-ton of Western ‘advisors’.

    I mean really go after them gloves off fashion. There are Legions of in ground Russian intel assets in Ukronaziland who know what rocks the dirtbag vermin are hiding under.

    I know that will ‘trigger’ the snowflake soyboys of the Collective West but….

    .

    #151775
    Oroboros
    Participant

    The Moral Character of Duh’merica on Display for All the World to Laugh At

    .

    #151776
    John Day
    Participant

    New Westphalian World Order https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/new-westphalian-world-order

    Michael Hudson , Perfecting Imperialism
    ​ Look at the background of the people who’ve led the World Bank. From the very beginning, John McCloy was in the army. The most notorious World Bank leader and most corrupt was Robert McNamara, of course. And then you have the last few World Bank presidents who come directly from the US national security state. So, if you look at their background, you may ask, why is it that they come from the military or the national security state?
    ​ Well, the reason is that they look at the World Bank as a key to the US strategic control of other countries’ economies. And there are two basic spheres economically that the United States uses as the buttress of its balance of payments and its ability to impose sanctions on other countries. The first is oil, which explains why the United States has blown up the Nord Stream pipelines and why it’s isolated Venezuela. It used oil to be able to control the energy of foreign countries. And the second point is agriculture. And that is probably the most serious and most negative, destructive element of all of the World Bank’s policies. And I have a chapter on that in my Super Imperialism.
    ​ The function of the World Bank is to prevent other countries from growing their own food, to make sure that the World Bank does not give economic support to domestic agriculture. One of the most fateful requirements of the World Bank is that it only makes foreign exchange loans. Now, foreign exchange loans mean they’re going to develop the export sector, they’re going to develop roads and transportation for export commodities. The government will bear the cost of developing mining, of developing oil and minerals, of deforestation, but it won’t develop domestic industry. And if you look at agricultural development in the United States, most of this agricultural development spending is domestic… Not a single (World Bank)​ loan has been made for that unless it’s for plantation agriculture and export crops. So, the idea is that other countries, Latin America, Africa, South Asia, should depend on American farmers for grain and food exports and they should export plantation products that do not compete with American agriculture…
    ..The World Bank has opposed land reform. It’s opposed any of the domestic rules that any country such as the United States, or the European Common Agricultural Policy, have used to support domestic food production. So, what the World Bank has done is subsidize import dependency on American grain. And the export competition with other World Bank customers to compete among themselves at products that do not compete with American or Western Europe production. So, the World Bank is basically an arm of economic warfare by the United States and NATO against the global majority…
    ..The important thing to know is that there was an alternative to the World Bank. It was called the World Bank for Economic Acceleration, and it was promoted by the American senator from Florida, Senator Smathers, and was called the Forgash Plan after Morris Forgash, who was the head of the containerized shipping. The World Bank for Economic Acceleration was to finance land reform, it was to finance domestic subsidy for agriculture and domestic import displacement, and of course that was opposed by the United States.
    ​ I found out that it was opposed because a copy of the plan was sent to my former boss at Chase Manhattan Bank, John Deaver. Deaver said, advised David Rockefeller, that every country that is engaged in land reform has ended up a political enemy of the United States. Well, that’s because the United States subsidizes assassination squads to kill any advocacy of land reform, so that the United States can control the land of the country’s most​-notorious United Fruit Company…
    ​..The idea of the World Bank is to turn Latin American, African, and other economies into extensions of the US economy, not serving their own domestic economy…
    ..You need an alternative set of international institutions whose goal will be to promote domestic development and domestic independence in food, basic consumer goods independence, energy independence, instead of dependency on the United States…
    ​..De-dollarization doesn’t mean having an alternative currency like the euro or the dollar or the yen. It doesn’t mean a domestic currency at all. De-dollarization means how do you avoid having to keep your reserves in dollars where the United States can simply confiscate them…
    ..You’ll have, of course, some holdings of other countries’ currencies, just as every country holds other countries’ currencies to stabilize the foreign exchange market.
    But the big problem is what do you do to keep your international reserves, the savings of the country, in a kind of global money? In other words, what do you do to replace the role that gold had prior to 1971? The problem is that the growth in international reserves itself is a function of American military spending. Almost all these dollars that have been ended up in the bank accounts of foreign governments have been injected into the world economy, not by foreign trade, not even by foreign investment, but by foreign military spending. Again, I showed the statistics in Super Imperialism…
    ..Well, the United States will not let these countries do what the United States does to them… It will only let these dollars be invested in US Treasury securities, or maybe in the stock market, or maybe you can buy scattered real estate… The problem is the fact that these reserves are unnecessary in the first place. The reserves measure imbalance in international trade, investment, and payments. And if the world worked the way it’s supposed to in the economic textbooks, countries would be in balance…
    ​..If you didn’t have American military spending, if you didn’t have the American looting of global south countries, you wouldn’t have this growth in reserves. And the fact is you wouldn’t need them. You would need basically some international credit..​.
    ..The fact is that access to international credit, to international reserves, is used as a kind of political leverage to force them to follow laws that will not tax American and European firms, that will let them use accounting stratagems to pretend not to earn any profits at all at home, but to take them in offshore tax havens and offshore banking centers..
    ..The whole international financial system is a massive pretense to avoid paying taxes to the countries that are the host countries for investment and to avoid making companies responsible for the economic damages that they cause to the environment and to the rest of the economy…
    ..Why did the United States go off gold in 1971? It’s because General de Gaulle in France and Germany were doing the same thing, were cashing in all of the dollars that were thrown off by American military spending, mainly in Southeast Asia but around the world in the 800 military bases. If you had the gold reserve or a reserve controlled by the global majority, then the United States could not simply finance its military spending by printing dollars…
    ..So basically, neoliberalism is financialization, privatization, untaxation, and a lot of political assassination, a lot of killing of people who oppose this…​ As the head of the CIA said, “we’re murder inc.” and who do they murder? They murder people who are trying to explain and expose this whole imperialistic process​…
    ..In fact, all of this increase in wealth by the financial class, by the real estate class, by the insurance class and what I call the FIRE sector- finance, insurance and real estate- has been created in the form of economic rent. Not wages, not profits, but land rent, monopoly rent and financial returns…​
    ​..Well, how can the rental yield go up if you’re deindustrializing the economy?​ … The banks will say, let’s give this mortgage to the Federal Reserve as a deposit and the Federal Reserve will give us real money for it. Let the Federal Reserve and the government take the big loss. That’s the only hope of getting out of this because 80% of bank loans are mortgage loans.​..

    Perfecting Imperialism

    ​ Pepe Escobar, Will the Hegemon Ever Accept a New Westphalian World Order?
    ​ A new book by scholar Glenn Diesen, The Ukraine War & The Eurasian World Order, out in mid-February, asks the make-or-break question of the young 21st century: will the Hegemon accept a new geopolitical reality, or will it go Captain Ahab on Moby Dick? …
    ..Diesen offers a concise, easily accessible mini-history of how we got here.
    ​ He starts to make the case harking back to the Silk Roads: “The Silk Road was an early model of globalization, although it did not result in a common world order as the civilizations of the world were primarily connected to nomadic intermediaries.”
    ​ The demise of the Heartland-based Silk Road, actually roads, was caused by the rise of the thalassocratic European powers reconnecting the world in a different way. Yet the hegemony of the collective West could only be fully achieved by applying Divide and Rule across Eurasia.
    ​ We did not in fact had “five centuries of western dominance”, according to Diesen: it was more like three, or even two…
    ​..What is indeed The Big Picture now is that “the unique world order” produced by controlling “the vast Eurasian continent from the maritime periphery is coming to an end”​
    Mackinder is hit by a train​
    Diesen hits the nail on the head when it comes to the Russia-China strategic partnership – on which the overwhelmingly majority of European intellectuals is clueless​…
    ..Diesen shows how “Russia can be considered the successor of the Mongolian nomads as the last custodian of the Eurasian land corridor”, while China revives the Ancient Silk Roads “with economic connectivity”. In consequence, “a powerful Eurasian gravitational pull is thus reorganizing the supercontinent and the wider world.”…
    ..Witte “wanted to end Russia’s role as an exporter of natural resources to Europe as it resembled ‘the relations of colonial countries with their metropolises’”.
    ​ And that implies going back to Dostoyevsky, who argued that “Russians are as much Asiatics as European. The mistake of our policy for the past two centuries has been to make the people of Europe believe that we are true Europeans (…) It will be better for us to seek alliances with the Asiatics.” Dostoyevsky meets Putin-Xi.
    ​ Diesen also needs to go through the obligatory references to Mackinder’s “heartland” obsession – which is the basis of all Anglo-American geopolitics for the past hundred and twenty years.
    ​ Mackinder was spooked by railway development – especially the Trans-Siberian by the Russians – as it enabled Moscow to “emulate the nomadic skills of the Scythians, Huns and Mongols” that were essential to control most of Eurasia.
    ​ Mackinder was particularly focused on railways acting “chiefly as feeders to ocean-going commerce”. Ergo, being a thalassocratic power was not enough: “The heartland is the region to which under modern conditions, sea power can be refused access.”
    ​ And that’s what leads to the Rosetta Stone of Anglo-American geopolitics: to “prevent the emergence of a hegemon or a group of states capable of dominating Europe and Eurasia that could threaten the dominant maritime power.”
    ​ That explains everything from WWI and WWII to the permanent NATO obsession in preventing a solid rapprochement between Germany and Russia, by any means necessary.
    ​ Diesen offers a succinct perspective of Russian Eurasianists of the 1920s such as Trubetskoi and Savitsky, who were promoting an alternative path to the USSR.
    ​ They conceptualized that with Anglo-American thalassocracy applying Divide and Rule in Russia, what was needed was a Eurasian political economy based on mutual cooperation: a stark prefiguration of the Russia-China drive to multipolarity.
    ​ Savitsky in fact could have been writing today: “Eurasia has previously played a unifying role in the Old World. Contemporary Russia, absorbing this tradition”, must abandon war as a method of unification.
    ​ Cue to post-Maidan in 2014. Moscow finally got the message that trying to build a Greater Europe “from Lisbon to Vladivostok” was a non-starter. Thus the new concept of Greater Eurasian Partnership was born. Sergey Karaganov, with whom Diesen worked at the Higher School of Economics, was the father of the concept.
    ​ Greater Eurasia Partnership repositions Russia “from the periphery of Europe and Asia to the center of a large super-region.” In short, a pivot to the East – and the consolidation of the Russia-China partnership.
    ​ Diesen dug up an extraordinary passage in the Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, proving how the Little Helmsman in 1990 was a visionary prefiguring multipolar China:​
    ​ “In the future when the world becomes three-polar, four-polar or five-polar, the Soviet Union, no matter how weakened it may be and even if some of its republics withdraw from it, will still be one pole. In the so-called multipolar world, China too will be a pole (…) Our foreign policies remain the same: first, opposing hegemonism and power politics and safeguarding world peace; and second, working to establish a new international political order and a new international economic order.”
    ​ Diesen breaks it down, noting how China has to a certain extent “replicated the three-pillared American System of the early 19th century, in which the U.S. developed a manufacturing base, physical transportation infrastructure, and a national bank to counter British economic hegemony.”
    ​ Enter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI); the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); the AIIB; the de-dollarization drive; the China International Payment System (CIPS); increased use of yuan in international trade; the use of national currencies; Made in China 2025; The Digital Silk Road; and last but not least, BRICS 10 and the NDB, the BRICS development bank.
    ​ Russia matched some of it – as in the Eurasia Development Bank (EDB) of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and in advancing the harmonization of financial arrangements of BRI and EAEU projects via the SCO.
    ​ Diesen is one of the very few Western analysts who actually understands the drive to multipolarity: “BRICS+ is anti-hegemony and not anti-Western, as the objective is to create a multipolar system and not assert collective dominance over the West.”
    ​ Diesen also contends that the emerging Eurasian World Order is “seemingly based on conservative principles.” That’s correct, as the Chinese system is drenched in Confucianism (social integration, stability, harmonious relationships, respect for tradition and hierarchy)…
    ​ Diesen’s detailed analysis of the Ukraine proxy war, “a predictable consequence of an unsustainable world order”, is extrapolated to the battleground where the future, new world order is being decided; it is “either global hegemony or Westphalian multipolarity.”
    ​ Everyone with a brain by now knows how Russia absorbed and re-transformed everything thrown by the collective West after the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO). The problem is the rarified plutocracy that really runs the show will always refuse to acknowledge reality, as Diesen frames it: “Irrespective of the outcome of the war, the war has already become the graveyard of liberal hegemony.”
    ​ The overwhelming majority of the Global South clearly sees that even as what Ray McGovern indelibly defined as MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex) cast the Russia-China partnership as the main “threats” – in reality those that created the “gravitational pull to reorganize the world order towards multipolarity” – they can’t bring Russia-China down geoeconomically.
    ​ So there’s no question “the conflicts of the future world order will continue to be militarized.” That’s where we are at the crossroads. There will be no peaceful road towards to Westphalian world order.

    Will the Hegemon Ever Accept a New Westphalian World Order?

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