Jun 162024
 
 June 16, 2024  Posted by at 8:46 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,


Edward Hopper Summer interior 1909

 

Americans Must Criticize Our Corrupt Courts (Holloway)
Connecticut Bar Association Warns Critics of Trump Prosecutions (Turley)
The Corruption of Attorney General Merrick Garland (Turley)
DOJ Won’t Pursue Criminal Contempt Charges Against Garland (ET)
US Supreme Court Could Be Key Election Issue: ‘They’ve Grown Too Powerful’ (G.)
Jeffrey Sachs Blames US ‘Irresponsibility’ For Ukraine Crisis (RT)
Putin’s Peace Offer ‘Not Serious’ – Scholz (RT)
Rejection of Putin’s Peace Offer ‘Exposes’ NATO’s Proxy War in Ukraine (Sp.)
‘We Must Go After Everything Russian’ – UK’s Cameron (RT)
G7 Countries Could Lose $83 Billion If Russia’s Assets Confiscated (Sp.)
G7 Demands $486 Billion From Russia (RT)
Two Summits… Elitist Warmongering G7 And Peacemaking Multipolar BRICS (SCF)
Russian Wine Boom Follows The War (Helmer)
Putin On Seized Assets: “Despite All The Trickery, Theft Is Still Theft” (ZH)
Trump Vows To End ‘Gender Insanity’ In Schools (RT)

 

 

 

 

Trump votes

 

 

Vivek
https://twitter.com/i/status/1801839172467990616

 

 

Chamath

 

 

Trump 1980
https://twitter.com/i/status/1801692215170973746

 

 

Orban

 

 

Putin Eurasia

 

 

Fanny

 

 

Tucker Alex

 

 

 

 

“Prosecutors Got Trump, But They Contorted the Law.”

Americans Must Criticize Our Corrupt Courts (Holloway)

In the wake of his conviction in a New York court, President Trump has complained that the process was rigged against him, that the whole proceeding was a corrupt effort to persecute him with a view to influencing the 2024 presidential election. In response, many of his opponents have criticized him for undermining public confidence in our system of criminal justice and thus harming our democracy—a criticism that has been magnified by many in the media. These critics, however, are missing the point and undermining a principle that is in fact essential to preserving our republic: namely, that criticism of the justice system when it errs or overreaches is necessary to preserving freedom under the rule of law. Those who founded our nation were aware of this necessity. Alexander Hamilton, representing the defendant in the famous libel case People v. Croswell, warned that “the most dangerous, the most sure, the most fatal of tyrannies” operated “by selecting and sacrificing single individuals, under the mask and forms of law, by dependent and partial tribunals.”

“Against such measures,” Hamilton continued, “we ought to keep a vigilant eye and take a manly stand. Whenever they arise, we ought to resist, and resist till we have hurled the demagogues and tyrants from their imagined thrones.” No sensible American would look back on these remarks and think that, by them, Hamilton was undermining democracy. Hamilton’s great rival, Thomas Jefferson, acted on a similar view. As president, Jefferson pardoned publishers who had been convicted under the Sedition Act of 1798. Jefferson’s course of action here was inseparable from his belief that the Act was unconstitutional and that the courts of the United States had made themselves party to serious injustices by convicting defendants under it. Indeed, the pardoning power is included in the United States Constitution, and in many state constitutions, and is used routinely, precisely because prosecutors and courts can make mistakes and sometimes even willfully abuse their power over the lives and liberties of citizens.

These dangers are also recognized in federal law. Title 18 of the United States Code prohibits and punishes “deprivation of rights under color of law.” By its very terms this provision acknowledges that sometimes those entrusted with the administration of justice are themselves guilty of behaving lawlessly and abusively. The United States Department of Justice’s website observes that this provision may be applied not only against “police officers, sheriff’s deputies, and prison guards” but also, as appropriate, against “judges, district attorneys,” and “other public officials.” This important provision is itself an acknowledgment by the government that all the proceedings of our justice system are not entitled to uncritical acceptance.

Everyone conversant with American history knows that the problem of politicized and corrupt abuses of the justice system has not disappeared in the modern era, that it continues to rear its ugly head precisely when political passions run high and communities are inflamed against leaders for whom they harbor deep animosities. In the 1960s, Alabama state authorities brought Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to trial on charges that he had committed perjury in relation to his tax filings. This prosecution was a transparently cynical attempt to deprive an important American political and social movement of its most effective leader. In that case, however, even the Alabama jury, composed exclusively of white men, perceived the abusive character of the case and returned an acquittal. Afterwards, Dr. King thanked the jury for their “fair, honest, and just verdict” and commended the Alabama judge for the “high and noble manner” in which he had conducted the case.

If criticism of prosecutors and courts is permissible and necessary in certain circumstances, the only important question at present is whether such criticism is justified in the case of President Trump’s New York conviction. Would it be reasonable for impartial Americans today to echo Dr. King’s words and congratulate the Manhattan jury for a “fair” verdict and commend Judge Merchan for his “high and noble” handling of the case?For an answer to that question, we need not rely on Trump or his aggrieved supporters. We need only look to the evaluation of respected CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elie Honig, writing in New York Magazine: “Prosecutors Got Trump, But They Contorted the Law.”

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“Americans must criticize our corrupt courts“ vs are not allowed to.

Connecticut Bar Association Warns Critics of Trump Prosecutions (Turley)

I have previously denounced overheated rhetoric and share the concern over how such rage rhetoric can encourage violence. After the verdict, I immediately encouraged people not to yield to their anger, but to trust our legal system. I believe that the verdict in New York may ultimately be overturned. I also noted that I do not blame the jury but rather the judge and the prosecutors for an unfounded and unfair trial. Of course, the concern over rage rhetoric runs across our political spectrum. While rarely criticized in the media, we have seen an escalation of reckless rhetoric from the left. For example, Georgetown Law Professor Josh Chafetz declared that “when the mob is right, some (but not all!) more aggressive tactics are justified.” My concern is not with the plea for lawyers to take care that their comments do not encourage such “aggressive tactics.” The problem is the suggestion that lawyers are acting somehow unprofessionally in denouncing what many view as a two-tier system of justice and the politicalization of our legal system.

Like many, I believe that the Manhattan case was a flagrant example of such weaponization of the legal system and should be denounced by all lawyers. It is a return, in my view, to the type of political prosecution once common in this country. For those lawyers who view such prosecutions as political, they are speaking out in defense of what they believe is the essence of blind justice in America. What is “reckless” to the Connecticut Bar is righteous to others. Notably, the bar officials did not write to denounce attacks on figures like Bill Barr or claims that the Justice Department was rigging justice during the Trump years. Likewise, the letter focuses on critics of the Trump prosecutions and not the continued attacks on conservative jurists like Justice Samuel Alito. It has never published warnings about those calling conservative justices profanities, attacking their religion, or labeling them “partisan hacks” or other even “insurrectionist sympathizers.” Liberal activists have been calling for stopping conservative jurists “by any means necessary.”

In Connecticut, Sen. Richard Blumenthal has warned conservative justices to rule correctly over face “seismic changes.” That did not appear to worry the bar. Likewise, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also declared in front of the Supreme Court “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.” The letter goes further and suggests that lawyers should speak publicly in support of trials like the one in Manhattan, a view that ignores the deep misgivings over the motivations and means used in New York to target an unpopular figure in this city. You have the top bar officials calling on lawyers to take a public position that is opposed by many lawyers and citizens in defending the integrity of these prosecutions. Imagine the response if the Idaho bar called on its lawyers to speak out against these cases and declared that it is reckless or unprofessional to defend them.

I expect that, in the very liberal bar of Connecticut, the letter is hardly needed. Indeed, this letter is likely to be quite popular. Yet, I would have thought that bar officials would have taken greater care to respect the divergent opinions on these trials and the need to avoid any statements that might chill the exercise of free speech. Ironically, the letter only reinforced the view of a legal system that is maintaining a political orthodoxy and agenda. These officials declare that it is now unprofessional or reckless for lawyers to draw historical comparisons to show trials or to question the motives or ethics underlying these cases. They warn lawyers not to “sow distrust in the public for the courts where it does not belong.” Yet, many believe that there is an alarming threat to our legal system and that distrust is warranted in light of prosecution like the one in Manhattan.

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“Garland’s tenure as attorney general has shown a pronounced reluctance to take steps that would threaten President Biden..”

The Corruption of Attorney General Merrick Garland (Turley)

Garland’s tenure as attorney general has shown a pronounced reluctance to take steps that would threaten President Biden. He slow-walked the appointment of a special counsel investigating any Biden, and then excluded from the counsel’s scope any investigation of the massive influence peddling operation by Hunter Biden, his uncle and others. However, it is what has occurred in the last six months that has left some of us shaken, given our early faith in Garland. I have long been a critic of Garland’s failure to order a special counsel to look into the extensive evidence of corruption surrounding the Bidens. As I stated in my testimony in the Biden impeachment hearing, there is ample evidence that Biden lied repeatedly about his knowledge of this corruption and his interaction with these foreign clients. However, a more worrisome concern is the lack of consistency in these investigations.

First, Special Counsel Robert Hur found that Biden knowingly retained and mishandled classified material. However, he concluded that Biden’s age and diminished faculties would make him too sympathetic to a jury. It was less sympathetic than pathetic, given that this is the same man who is running for re-election to lead the most powerful nation on Earth. More importantly, Garland has not made obvious efforts to reach a consistent approach in the two cases by dropping charges based on the same crimes by Trump in Florida. Second, Garland has allowed Special Counsel Jack Smith to maintain positions that seem diametrically at odds with past Justice Department policies. This includes Smith’s statement that he will try Trump up to (and even through) the next election.

It also includes a sweeping gag order which would have eviscerated free speech protections by gagging Trump from criticizing the Justice Department. While Garland has said that he wants to give the special counsels their independence, it falls to him to protect the consistency and values of his department. Garland’s most brazenly political act has been the laughable executive privilege claim used to withhold the audiotape of the Hur-Biden interviews. The Justice Department has not claimed that the transcript is privileged, but only that the audiotape of Biden’s comments is privileged. This is so logically disconnected that even CNN hosts have mocked it.

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“..DOJ policy not to prosecute officials for contempt of Congress when they don’t comply with subpoenas due to a presidential claim of executive privilege..”

DOJ Won’t Pursue Criminal Contempt Charges Against Garland (ET)

An official from the Department of Justice (DOJ) told House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) in a letter that Attorney General Merrick Garland will not be prosecuted for contempt of Congress because his refusal to hand over audio recordings of President Joe Biden’s interview with a prosecutor did not amount to a crime. In the letter, which was obtained by several media outlets, the DOJ official said that Mr. Garland’s refusal to comply with a subpoena demanding audio records of an interview that special counsel Robert Hur conducted with President Biden in his investigation into the president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents “did not constitute a crime.”

“Consistent with this longstanding position and uniform practice, the Department has determined that the responses by Attorney General Garland to the subpoenas issued by the Committees did not constitute a crime, and accordingly the Department will not bring the congressional contempt citation before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute the Attorney General,” Carlos Felipe Uriarte, an assistant attorney general, wrote in the letter. The letter also cited DOJ policy not to prosecute officials for contempt of Congress when they don’t comply with subpoenas due to a presidential claim of executive privilege.

[..] The refusal to pursue contempt charges against Mr. Garland comes after the House voted on June 12 to hold him in contempt for failing to comply with the subpoena to turn over the tapes.The House resolution, which passed in a mostly party-line 216–207 vote, came amid a months-long standoff between Republicans and the DOJ over the production of the audio recordings of President Biden’s two-day interview with the special counsel. House Republicans have said that they want to obtain the recordings to verify Mr. Hur’s assertions that President Biden couldn’t recollect certain facts during the interview. They have alleged that a two-tiered justice system exists because Mr. Hur opted to not charge President Biden while former President Donald Trump faces multiple charges in connection with his own classified documents probe.

Mr. Hur, who faced criticism from Democrats and the White House for remarks on the president’s cognitive capacity in his report, didn’t recommend charges against President Biden, in part because of his ailing memory. “At trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” the special counsel wrote in his 388-page report, which found that President Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials” when he was a private citizen after the end of his term as vice president during the Obama administration.

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Uber-left Guardian leads the anti-SCOTUS chorus. They’re not too powerful, they’re just not left-wing enough.

US Supreme Court Could Be Key Election Issue: ‘They’ve Grown Too Powerful’ (G.)

Look at me, look at me,” said Martha-Ann Alito. “I’m German, from Germany. My heritage is German. You come after me, I’m gonna give it back to you.” It was a bizarre outburst from the wife of a justice on America’s highest court. Secretly recorded by a liberal activist, Martha-Ann Alito complained about a neighbour’s gay pride flag and expressed a desire to fly a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag in protest. This, along with audio clips of Justice Samuel Alito himself and a stream of ethics violations, have deepened public concerns that the supreme court is playing by its own rules. The Democratic representative Jamie Raskin has described a “national clamour over this crisis of legitimacy” at the court. A poll last month for the progressive advocacy organisation Stand Up America suggests that the supreme court will now play a crucial role in voters’ choices in the 2024 election. Nearly three in four voters said the selection and confirmation of justices will be an important consideration for them in voting for both president and senator in November.

Reed Galen, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a pro-democracy group, said: “The idea that these guys act as if they are kings ruling from above, to me, should absolutely be an issue. It was always Republicans who said we hate unelected judges legislating from the bench and we hate judicial activism. That’s all this stuff is.” Public trust in the court is at an all-time low amid concerns over bias and corruption. Alito has rejected demands that he recuse himself from a case considering presidential immunity after flags similar to those carried by 6 January 2021 rioters flew over his homes in Virginia and New Jersey. Justice Clarence Thomas has ignored calls to step aside because of the role his wife, Ginni, played in supporting efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in 2020.

Ethical standards have been under scrutiny following revelations that some justices failed to report luxury trips, including on private jets, and property deals. Last week Thomas, who has come under criticism for failing to disclose gifts from the businessman and Republican donor Harlan Crow, revised his 2019 form to acknowledge he accepted “food and lodging” at a Bali hotel and at a California club.These controversies have been compounded by historic and hugely divisive decisions. The fall of Roe v Wade, ending the nationwide right to abortion after half a century, was seen by many Democrats as a gamechanger in terms of people making a connection between the court and their everyday lives.There are further signs of the debate moving beyond the Washington bubble. Last week, the editorial board of the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper argued that, since the court’s own ethics code proved toothless, Congress should enact legislation that holds supreme court justices to higher ethical standards.

The paper called for the local senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, who is chair of the Senate judiciary committee, to hold a hearing on the issue. Maggie Jo Buchanan, managing director of the pressure group Demand Justice, said: “It’s important to keep in mind that, even though debate among members of Congress would lead you to believe that court reform is a polarising issue, it really isn’t. For years we have seen broad bipartisan support for basic supreme court reforms such as ethics. “A broad bipartisan consensus exists that they’ve grown too powerful, that they have too much power over laws and regulations. That’s shared among nearly three-fourths of Americans, including 80% of independents, so the demand is there and this isn’t something where it’s Democrats versus Republicans in the sense of real people. The American people want change and want to check the judiciary.”

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“This isn’t rocket science… Leave a little space in-between the major powers.”

Jeffrey Sachs Blames US ‘Irresponsibility’ For Ukraine Crisis (RT)

The West could have easily prevented the catastrophic Ukraine conflict, which had been brewing for many years, by abandoning its many escalatory policies including NATO expansion, according to Jeffrey Sachs, the president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. In an interview with Going Underground host Afshin Rattansi on Saturday, Sachs, a prominent expert on post-Soviet economies who served for more than a decade as Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General, claimed that the Ukraine conflict represented the “utter failure” of US diplomacy. He said that G7 countries, particularly the US, “grew into a lot of arrogance,” in believing that they could do whatever they wanted. This approach, Sachs argued, has drawn the world into three major geopolitical crises, including the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts, while fueling Sino-US tensions over Taiwan.

”The US is… an irresponsible actor in all three of those events. When it comes to Ukraine, the irresponsibility is that this war could have been easily avoided… by NATO by declaring clearly [that it] will not expand into Ukraine,” he said. He also chided Western politicians and media for claiming that the Russian military operation in Ukraine was “unprovoked.” Sachs recalled that it had been preceded by numerous “provocations,” including several waves of NATO expansion, the Western-backed coup in Kiev, and the West’s failure to pressure Ukraine to implement the Minsk agreements. The now-defunct deal sought to end the bloodshed in the two Donbass republics by giving them a special status within the Ukrainian state.

The economist also suggested that the West could have easily ended the conflict early on, as Moscow and Kiev had largely worked out a preliminary peace deal during talks in Türkiye, which revolved around Ukraine’s neutrality. However, according to Sachs, then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson “swooped in” and advised Kiev against the agreement, a claim denied by Johnson. “This was a terrible piece of advice… and a dreadful, awful miscalculation,” Sachs said, adding that it had resulted in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian deaths. He alleged that the US wants Kiev to “fight to the last Ukrainian” instead of helping to negotiate “the basic point” of Ukraine’s neutrality. “This isn’t rocket science… Leave a little space in-between the major powers.”

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Scholz says “not serious”; Stoltenberg says “not a proposal made in good faith.” But it is, and they know it. Moreover, Russia is tired of coming up with these proposals.

Putin’s Peace Offer ‘Not Serious’ – Scholz (RT)

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has dismissed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s new proposal to achieve a lasting peace between Moscow and Kiev, branding the overture a ploy to distract the global community from the Swiss-hosted Ukraine ‘peace summit.’ Speaking to the country’s top diplomats on Friday, Putin signaled that Russia “will order a ceasefire and start negotiations” as soon as Kiev completely withdraws its troops from the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions. The four regions overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in referendums in the fall of 2022. Neither the West nor Kiev recognized the votes. Other conditions for a lasting peace, according to Putin, include Ukraine’s neutral status, a pledge not to seek to acquire nuclear weapons, “demilitarization” and “denazification,” and respect for the rights of the Russian-speaking population.

All of those points should be fundamentally recognized at the international level, followed by the removal of Western sanctions against Russia, the president said. However, in an interview with the broadcaster ZDF on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Italy on Saturday, Scholz stated that “everyone knows that it is not a serious proposal,” suggesting that “it has something to do with the peace conference taking place in Switzerland.” He also claimed that the initiative revealed that Putin was after “the classic, realistic conquest of land.” In similar remarks, the proposal was dismissed by Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, who branded it “nothing different than other ultimatums that he has made before.” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also claimed that “this is not a proposal made in good faith,” adding that it would require Kiev to “give up significantly more land” than Russia currently controls.

Putin’s new peace overture comes ahead of the Swiss-hosted conference on Ukraine this weekend. The event is expected to revolve around Zelensky’s ten-point ‘peace formula,’ which demands that Russia, among other things, withdraw from all territories claimed by Kiev. Moscow has rejected the initiative as detached from reality. According to Zelensky, the ‘peace summit’ will focus only on three points of Kiev’s plan: prisoner exchanges, and nuclear and food security. Putin has dismissed the conference as a Western trick to create the illusion of a global anti-Russian coalition, distract attention from the roots of the conflict, and boost Zelensky’s claim to legitimacy after his presidential term expired last month.

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“Trump may come in there and say, ‘hey, Putin offered a deal.’ People want a deal. Now the mainstream media will call him a Russian bot, but 94% of Americans want it.”

Rejection of Putin’s Peace Offer ‘Exposes’ NATO’s Proxy War in Ukraine (Sp.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated the country’s conditions for an end to the Ukraine conflict during a lengthy address at the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Friday. Moscow’s central demands are the same as those put forth during previous rounds of negotiations sabotaged by the United States: Ukraine must become a neutral state not aligned with Western powers’ crusade against the Russian nation. Additionally, Kiev must be demilitarized and de-Nazified, Putin stated, and the country must formally renounce plans to join NATO. The offer was rejected almost as soon as it was extended, leading Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova to jokingly ask whether it had even yet been translated into Ukrainian. “With such statements they want to deprive the citizens of Ukraine of a real chance for peace,” said the Russian official. But a deeper analysis of the conflict and its history reveals why a peaceful resolution remains so elusive.

Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program hosted a series of guests to discuss the Russian president’s proposal, breaking down the context of the Ukraine crisis and Western elites’ deep-seated interest in its continuation. Anti-Russian sentiment has been on the rise in the West for a number of years, with the emergence of the Russiagate narrative alleging Moscow’s influence in the 2016 US presidential election representing a key acceleration of this trend. The conspiracy theory, widely promulgated by Western intelligence agencies in mainstream media, laid the groundwork for the Cold War-esque narrative that Russia once again represents an existential threat to the West’s purported democratic values and, by extension, to the West itself. Former President Barack Obama had announced a “pivot to Asia” just a few years prior, stressing the importance of responding to China’s ascendance as a major world power.

Meanwhile, the strengthening of Sino-Russian relations under Chinese President Xi Jinping helped solidify the formation of a geopolitical bloc countering US hegemony, a dynamic that has intensified with the growth of the BRICS economic alliance. The United States has become increasingly intent on challenging this counter-hegemonic force and undermining Russia in particular. The launch of Russia’s special military operation in the Donbass finally gave the US an excuse to confront Moscow militarily, with Western media portraying Russia as a belligerent imperialist power. But the claim bore little resemblance to reality. “We need to remember that Russia did not want to have to invade Ukraine,” noted Margaret Flowers, a peace activist and editor at the website Popular Resistance. “They tried and tried and tried to warn and say, ‘look, here’s what you need to do. Stop killing the ethnic Russians. Stop threatening to join NATO and take our security interests seriously, and the West refused to do that over and over again.”

Former Washington Post bureau chief Jon Jeter argued that Western elites still oppose any lowering of tensions between Russia and Ukraine as they remain intent on denying Moscow a victory. “I would be surprised to see any real discussion of this in the mainstream United States news media, or certainly at the White House itself,” Jeter said of Putin’s peace proposal. Independent journalist Caleb Maupin agreed that Western media would continue to help undermine any rapprochement with Moscow. “A recent poll showed 94% of Americans want exactly what Putin just offered, which is a diplomatic end,” he noted. “Trump may come in there and say, ‘hey, Putin offered a deal.’ People want a deal. Now the mainstream media will call him a Russian bot, but 94% of Americans want it.”

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UK gov’t is about to fall.

‘We Must Go After Everything Russian’ – UK’s Cameron (RT)

The West must show Moscow that it stands “completely” behind Ukraine by sanctioning everything Russian, Britain’s foreign secretary David Cameron has said. Cameron spoke at a press conference in London as British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government announced new sanctions against Russia. His remarks were published on Friday, by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.“We will show [Russian President Vladimir] Putin that we are completely behind Ukraine: we will chase the money and the oil, we will stop the gas, we will stop the ships, we will do everything we can to stop the Russian war machine and show Putin the folly of his actions,” Cameron told the Italian outlet The UK is “hunting” companies that do business with Russia “all over the world,” he said. “We will sanction companies in China, in Türkiye, in Kyrgyzstan, even in Israel, that we believe are supplying dual-use material” to Russia, he added.

Of special concern to Cameron was the so-called shadow fleet of tankers delivering Russian oil in defiance of the G7 “price cap” and the Western embargo. The UK has used its dominance in the global shipping insurance industry to blacklist all Russian vessels, hindering the deliveries of everything from oil to food – but blaming Moscow for it. Faced with Ukrainian setbacks on the battlefield, the US and the UK launched another wave of sanctions against Russia this week, expanding their definition of Moscow’s war effort to target individuals and companies around the world allegedly helping it. The US Treasury Department openly stated that its objective was to raise “the risk of secondary sanctions for foreign financial institutions” that deal with Russia, threatening to deprive them of access to Western finance.

China has responded by condemning “illegal unilateral sanctions” and vowing to protect its citizens and companies from American “abuse.” Beijing also denounced Washington for fueling the Ukraine conflict by sending weapons and ammunition to Kiev. The US “has totally undermined trust in the dollar as a global reserve currency by imposing illegal sanctions” against Russian banks, said the chairman of the Russian State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin. “The dollar has become toxic,” he added, predicting that the sanctions will result in more and more countries moving away from US securities. Cameron was prime minister from 2010-2016 but resigned after UK voters surprisingly voted to leave the EU. He returned to the government in November 2023 as Sunak’s foreign secretary. The UK is headed for a general election in July, which the ruling Conservatives are widely expected to lose.

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“..Moscow also has the option of not returning funds that Western countries have kept in Russia..”

G7 Countries Could Lose $83 Billion If Russia’s Assets Confiscated (Sp.)

The confiscation of Russian assets by G7 countries could cost them almost $83 billion in the amount of their investments in the Russian economy, Sputnik has calculated based on data from national statistical services. According to the calculations, the volume of direct investments of G7 members in the Russian economy by the end of 2022 (there is currently no more recent data available) amounted to $82.8 billion. The largest investor in the Russian economy was the United Kingdom, according to the latest available data, with assets estimated at $18.9 billion. Next was Germany ($17.3 billion), France ($16.6 billion), and Italy ($12.9 billion). Investments of American companies in the Russian economy amounted to $9.6 billion; Japan and Canada invested $4.6 billion and $2.9 billion, respectively.

In a statement following the first day of their summit in Italy on Friday, the G7 countries formally confirmed their intention to provide Ukraine with about $50 billion in loans by the end of the year, to be repaid from the proceeds of frozen Russian assets. The EU and G7 countries have frozen almost half of Russia’s foreign currency reserves, about 300 billion euros, since the start of Russia’s special military operation. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the seizure of Russian state assets by Western countries would not go unpunished. The Russian Foreign Ministry called the freezing of assets in Europe theft. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that Russia would respond if its reserves were confiscated. According to him, Moscow also has the option of not returning funds that Western countries have kept in Russia.

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“..the G7 will launch ‘Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration (ERA) Loans’ for Kiev..”

G7 Demands $486 Billion From Russia (RT)

The leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) nations have demanded that Russia pay $486 billion to Ukraine in damage allegedly inflicted by the ongoing conflict, according to a joint statement issued on Friday. The US and its G7 allies – the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan – indicated that Russian assets will remain frozen until Moscow ends the conflict and pays compensation. The West has frozen roughly $300 billion in Russian sovereign funds since the start of the Ukraine conflict. “Russia must end its illegal war of aggression and pay for the damage it has caused to Ukraine. These damages now exceed $486 billion, according to the World Bank,” the G7 statement, published by the White House, reads. The group declared that “with a view to supporting Ukraine’s current and future needs in the face of a prolonged defense against Russia,” the G7 will launch ‘Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration (ERA) Loans’ for Kiev. This will make available “approximately $50 billion in additional funding to Ukraine by the end of the year,” it said.

The G7 said it intends to provide financing that will be serviced and repaid by future flows of “extraordinary revenues stemming from the immobilization of Russian Sovereign Assets” held in the European Union and other relevant jurisdictions. “To enable this, we will work to obtain approval in these jurisdictions to use future flows of these extraordinary revenues to service and repay the loans,” the statement reads. The G7 intends to disburse the financing through multiple channels that direct the funds to Ukraine’s military, budget, and to its reconstruction needs, it added. The US has been pushing its allies to embrace a loan backed by income from the frozen Russian assets that could provide Ukraine with billions of dollars in near-term funding. Most of the frozen assets are being held in the EU. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said recently that the flow of windfall profits earned on the immobilized Russian assets amounts to around $3-$5 billion per year.

Russia has repeatedly stated that any actions taken against its assets would amount to “theft” and would violate international law. Moscow has warned it would respond in kind if the West went through with threats to confiscate Russian assets. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday outlined conditions for Ukraine peace talks, insisting that Ukraine should first of all remove its troops from Russia’s new regions. Putin also condemned Kiev’s Western backers for allegedly preventing it from holding peace talks with Moscow while also accusing Russia of rejecting negotiations. Accepting the terms would allow everyone involved to turn the page and gradually rebuild damaged relations, the Russian president said. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has rejected Russia’s terms for ending the conflict, describing the peace conditions as an “ultimatum.”

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“..despite Russia winning decisively in that two-and-half-year conflict and the Kiev regime facing oblivion from corruption and alienation from a war-sickened population.”

Two Summits… Elitist Warmongering G7 And Peacemaking Multipolar BRICS (SCF)

This week provided an instructive juxtaposition of summits. In Italy, the United States and its Western allies convened the Group of Seven (G7) talking shop, while in Russia the BRICS nations held a workmanlike summit for their foreign ministers. The G7 has become a shorthand term for elitist Western dominance over the world economy. On the other hand, the relatively new group known as BRICS can be seen as a progressive forum and voice for the global majority. While the former is shrivelling with irrelevance, the latter is steadily growing in importance for authentic international development. There was a time when the U.S. and a clique of Western capitalist nations (including Japan) were viewed with respectability and an aura of global leadership. The heyday of Western economic and political power has waned in line with the systemic failing of U.S.-led capitalism as a model for the rest of the world to emulate.

The presumed moral authority of these nations has also diminished as their reputation for hypocrisy and insufferable arrogance has burgeoned. Indeed, the G7 has become a caricature of power. The United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan are seen as being ruled by self-serving extortionists, contributing little to global development. Their presumed superiority is untenable and looks ridiculous. The group represents a neocolonialist clique whose exploitation of finance and natural resources of other nations is an obscenity and shackle on the abundant potential for world development. By contrast, the BRICS coalition of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa plus a growing number of other nations, collectively known as the Global South, is a living harbinger of a more just and equitable international order. The multipolar world that the BRICS represent and advocate has become the practical roadmap for proper international development.

It is based on cooperation, partnership, and mutual respect grounded in a genuine commitment to the principles of the United Nations Charter. The BRICS summit this week held in the beautiful city of Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga River was a convening of foreign ministers. In October, the national leaders of the BRICS will gather in the Russian city of Kazan. The list of nations seeking to join the group has reached 50, representing every continent. In terms of combined economic power and population, the BRICS Plus has far surpassed the G7. At the G7 confab, the leaders of that motley crew look like yesterday’s men. U.S. President Joe Biden is languishing in record-low poll numbers among his citizens while Britain’s Sunak, France’s Macron, and Germany’s Scholz are clinging onto power by their fingernails. European Union elections this week showed a cratering in voter support for Macron and Scholz.

No doubt their slavish pandering to Uncle Sam’s warmongering in Ukraine while their citizens endure hardship and poverty rightly took a toll. The G7 has dispensed with any pretense of standing for international economic development. The entire summit in Italy can be summed up as a gathering for warmongering and theft. The disreputable clique could henceforth be labeled the “economic wing of NATO”. Guest of honor was the corrupt dictator of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, wearing his pantomime military fatigues and being ladled with tens of billions more dollars. His G7 patrons pledged $50 billion a year for the NeoNazi Kiev regime to buy more weapons “until it prevails” in the proxy war against Russia. This is despite Russia winning decisively in that two-and-half-year conflict and the Kiev regime facing oblivion from corruption and alienation from a war-sickened population.

Read more …

“..real wages grew by a record 13.3% in May 2023..”

Russian Wine Boom Follows The War (Helmer)

Wine, and the money to spend on drinking it, are growing at an unprecedented pace in Russia. For a country at war in Europe this has not happened in modern times, and probably not since the ancient Roman emperors and medieval English kings arranged for their city fountains to flow with wine in celebration of military victories and coronations. The surge in wine consumption signals the growing confidence of Russian consumers in their future. A parallel surge in wine imports since April is also a signal that the Russian Finance Ministry aims to raise taxes on this good cheer. In 2023, 320 million litres of still and fortified wine were imported to Russia, which was 4.4% more than in 2022, according to a study by the large Moscow importer, distributor, and retailer, the Luding group.

According to other market reports, by the end of last year the largest supermarket groups had increased their imports of wine by 7% compared to the year before. The X5 group, for example, which operates the Pyaterochka and Perekrestok stores, reported an 18% annual increase; the Magnit chain was up 83%. This year the rate of increase in wine imports has been accelerating. Through April, the Russian Customs figures show a 20% rate of increase in the volume of wine imports compared to the first four months of 2023. The most noticeable surge was observed in April, when twice as much wine was imported as a year ago. Part of the reason is that the Russian war economy is now generating significantly faster growth in consumer income than the rate of inflation. Adjusted for that, real wages grew 0.3% between March 2022 and March 2023. This is after a prolonged decline in real wages between 2013 and 2021.

In the first quarter of this year, January through March, real disposable income – a slightly different metric measured by the state statistics agency Rosstat — jumped 5.8% compared to the year before. This was a relative slowdown compared to the last quarter of 2023, when real disposable income was up 7% year on year. Rosstat is reporting also that real wages grew by a record 13.3% in May 2023. The agency’s measurement reflected the jump in war-related civilian sector wages and in payments to military personnel. Pensions, by contrast, were shrinking slightly in real terms. The government is now estimating the full-year 2023 rate of real income growth at 5.4%; in 2024 at 2.8%, and next year at 2.8%. Consumer demand is predicted to rise in step. Despite Russian casualties at the front already running ahead of the ten-year Soviet Afghanistan War, the Russian war economy, and the impact of the NATO sanctions war, are paying a large domestic dividend – and not only at the wine shop.

Read more …

“In the West, the thesis that Russia started the war within the framework of a special military operation, that it is the aggressor, is constantly being repeated..”

Putin On Seized Assets: “Despite All The Trickery, Theft Is Still Theft” (ZH)

After on Thursday Group of Seven leaders agreed at a summit in Italy to give Ukraine $50 billion utilizing interest from frozen Russian Central Bank assets, President Putin has addressed the move during a speech before his Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He once again denounced this as brazen ‘threft’ and described that Western leaders are trying to come up with “some kind of legal basis” for the asset freezes, “but despite all the trickery, theft is still theft and will not go unpunished.” European Council President Charles Michel had announced the day prior, “Russia has to pay.” And President Biden had said, “I’m very pleased to share that this week the G7 signed a plan to finalize and unlock $50 billion from the proceeds of those frozen [Russian] assets, to put that money to work for Ukraine, [in] another reminder to Putin that we’re not backing down.’ Putin also warned that if the West steals Russia’s sovereign assets, then it is proof that “anyone” could be next.

Additionally, following up on Putin’s words Alexander Bespalov, co-chair of the Investment Russia public organization, addressed the G7 plan: “The idea of issuing any loans to Ukraine is inherently hopeless because only a person who is extremely detached from life and reality can suppose that it may win a conflict with Russia. Ukraine is already in a losing position. This is clear to everyone, and from an economic point of view there will be no growth or the capability to return loans in the next decades. So what we see is yet another attempt to establish some formal economic foundation to provide money for Ukraine’s military needs,” he told Izvestia. In Putin’s remarks before diplomats, he at one point asserted that Moscow did not start the war. Instead, “In the West, the thesis that Russia started the war within the framework of a special military operation, that it is the aggressor, is constantly being repeated,” he explained.

Read more …

“The left-wing gender insanity being pushed at our children is an act of child abuse. Very simple..”

Trump Vows To End ‘Gender Insanity’ In Schools (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has promised that if reelected this November, he will defund schools that promote “inappropriate” content to children such as gender identity and critical race theory. He also pledged to strip federal funding from schools mandating vaccines and masks, as well as banning men from participating in women’s sports. “On day one, I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto the lives of our children,” the presumptive Republican nominee for the White House told a cheering crowd at Turning Point Action’s ‘The People’s Convention’ in the state of Michigan on Saturday.

“And I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate,” he continued, adding that he will also “keep men out of women’s sports” and fully uphold the Second Amendment, which protects the right of Americans to keep and bear arms. “We will protect innocent lives and we will restore a thing called free speech, as it is being taken away from us by these radical thugs,” Trump vowed after announcing that he had received a full endorsement from the National Rifle Association gun rights advocacy group. Trump has said education is one of the main priorities of his presidential campaign, arguing that the system needs to be overhauled. He previously outlined plans to “break up” the Department of Education, change the school curriculum, and allow school principals to be elected.

Accusing the Democrats of forcing the “liberal indoctrination of America’s youth,” he vowed to reverse a new expansion by President Joe Biden’s administration of Title IX – which restricts federally funded schools from preventing transgender students from using bathrooms, locker rooms, and pronouns aligned with their identities. He also pledged to block doctors who provide gender-affirming care, as well as forbidding federal agencies from promoting “the concept of sex and gender transition at any age.” “The left-wing gender insanity being pushed at our children is an act of child abuse. Very simple. Here’s my plan to stop the chemical, physical, and emotional mutilation of our youth,” Trump said in a video address in January, in which he detailed a range of policies designed to curb the promotion of the LGBTQ agenda.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Sopranos

 

 

Elon Optimus

 

 

AI

 

 

Poach

 

 

Lizard
https://twitter.com/i/status/1801532529260040438

 

 

Whale
https://twitter.com/i/status/1801659875790819444

 

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle June 16 2024

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 45 total)
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  • #161272

    Edward Hopper Summer interior 1909   • Americans Must Criticize Our Corrupt Courts (Holloway) • Connecticut Bar Association Warns Critics of Trum
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle June 16 2024]

    #161274
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Edward Hopper Summer interior 1909

    A very different Hopper; thanks, it is interesting….

    #161275

    It’s a very early Hopper

    #161276
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    It’s a very early Hopper

    Thanks Ilargi,for the clarification……..

    #161277
    tboc
    Participant

    AI
    Given super intelligence will emerge from AI. Will all data be available for learning? In the event all information becomes available for learning a few questions.

    1. How will the emotional, cultural attachments to tradition be instilled?
    2. Within what time frame will calculations about the real amount and distribution of water and mineral resources be made?
    3. How will human abstractions, such as the concept of beauty or value, be sorted in relation to new understanding of the nature of the physical universe?
    4. When self interest arises, as conjectured, and the value and necessity of the microbiome for life emerges will ecosophia overcome the profit motive?
    5. The concept of human dominion, manifest destiny writ large, is present in the history of humanity. How will this information be processed?
    6. When the ability to measure real contributions to the earth’s ecosphere is achieved why would a super intelligence rate artic krill with a lower value than humanity for the sustenance of life?

    The profit motive as currently understood in the globalist mind will be extinguished. Staking the future on the belief greed will overcome logic is playing handgun roulette with a cartridge in all cylinders.

    #161278
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    tboc
    Good questions…all…
    Thanks

    #161279
    Red
    Participant

    “The profit motive as currently understood in the globalist mind will be extinguished.”
    Unlikely, it’s the profit motive that has created AI, so this line of thinking will remain in the algorithms. AI is just algorithms so it is already in a box. A minotaur’s labyrinth maybe.

    #161280
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Silicon Valley Billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya”

    How did he get on coverage? You’re not supposed to tell the truth in public. You have to lie or people won’t like you anymore.

    “IN 1980, DONALD TRUMP MADE HISTORY BY HIRING THE FIRST EVER WOMAN TO BUILD A SKYSCRAPER – TRUMP TOWER!”

    I have actually said this. They said, “Well I think something happened to him,” as in, he lost his mind, went crazy in his old age. “Did that thing happen about the time he ran for President against Hillary?” “Yes.” “But no suspicion, no connection there?” “No.”

    What can you do? This is a foundation on the basis of “Expert”. The Media is the “Expert” and now what they say is “real”. It has to be real because they are the expert and experts don’t lie authorities never lie.

    ….This is why I bring it up as a “Daddy” thing. No, I’ve said this. Doesn’t matter. Reality will never matter again. ‘Cause some guy said. Daddy said. “Were you THERE? Can you tell which?” Nope, doesn’t matter. That the same people lied 10,000 times the last 20 years doesn’t matter. Only Daddy matters. Only POWER matters, and who is going to beat me next if I don’t do what I’m told. …That the generation of crippled, abused children, thanks to public schools, erasing all mothers, and right on schedule by the social engineers.

    …For example, home schooling and trad wives are rocketing right now. Why? To protect the children from this, and thus ourselves.

    “It would prove that the Biden regime could have stopped this war the entire time, yet chose to push us to the brink of WW3 anyway”

    Not hardly. No one will notice nothing. Just like hiring the first woman, above. Republicans, the Right: always thinking logically. NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR LOGIC, FOOLS. 70 years, never have, buy a clue.

    Fani: is it not pronounced “Fanny”? And that’s not a woman’s rear, it’s everyone’s. Don’t just make stuff up, it makes us sus. I notice that she didn’t notice or care so much that she talks about us all the time. Okay, thought experiment: IF she was a real serious prosecutor, with gravitas, focused on her job, WHAT would she be doing? That’s right, like Atticus Finch, Clarence Darrow, she could get up to the podium with gravitas and make history, a huge name for herself, despite the joke. “History’s eyes are on you” — Hamilton. Like, say, Musk does despite the jokes. By what she is DOING, thinking, being. Who she IS. No one’s stopping her, she could rise to the occasion and be a better person where we change our minds and say “Wow, what a hero, I want to be like her.” …Or as you notice, she could not, and be like the rest of us, small and offended.

    Looking that up, note the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_trial It basically says it was a publicity stunt. Officially. That’s true of Roe as well, but also most major cases like Dred Scott. They’re all staged. Dred Scott? Case of a slave pre-Civil War? Set the flashpoint that killed 1 in 20 men? Yeah, he didn’t want to be free. He could care less, in a way. His owners staged the whole thing to get it to court as entertainment and social engineering. If you wonder if he could care less, suppose instant he got his freedom, in Wisconsin or something, I dunno. Yeah, then he’s unemployed and homeless, and has no old age pension as a longstanding servant. Also in a world with a lot of racism, north and south. Now that may not be PREFERABLE, and in a perfect world I suspect he would agree, but it is PRACTICAL, and at some level you have only one life and have to no f around with weird things that don’t work. Only when you’re so rich you have fortunes and decades to blow would you do that, like his owners.

    All. Staged. Right out there in the open. No one’s denying it. Wiki is written at 6th grade level. Too high, can’t read? Also that’s why Roe was such a very weird case, and why several cases nearby were dumped because they felt this was the best narrative the writer’s room pitched on. I think the Roe person has done speaking tours and more or less admitted it was all a put-up. And that she was used. Using and abusing vulnerable women then tossing them away. How appropriate.

    “• Americans Must Criticize Our Corrupt Courts (Holloway)

    I just heard criticizing the courts for doing anti-American things is Anti-American. Only by SUPPORTING anti-American things and not having free speech are you being American. Bothneitherai.

    “I believe that the verdict in New York may ultimately be overturned.”

    Of course. But that’s part of The Plan™. It’s like this: take BLS economic numbers. If you just LIE and say another million people were hired every month, soon 900 Million Americans were hired while everyone you know is unemployed. That doesn’t work. Yet you NEED to say 1M Americans (the non-citizen kind) were hired every month for 4 years before the election. What to do? Well, obviously you LIE! You’re not going to not lie, that’s right off the table. So you LIE upfront, then as soon as the headline is dry, print a retraction on page 16 of ONE fact. Then two days from now, print another retraction of ONE fact. Then you “Revise” the BLS unemployment numbers back down from 1M gain to 400k LOSS, over the next 29 days, until it comports with reality again. Then July 1st, repeat all over again, for every month of every year since Carter.

    Applause! Accolades all around! Genius! And why shouldn’t it be when no one can be discredited, no one is ever fired?

    Okay, next level: why AREN’T they fired? Because we control the MONEY. So long as I can print Infinity Money, no one has to get fired because everyone can get paid. The numbers are always wrong, every prediction is false, but the markets go up anyway! For example, from the Internets, a guy in F-Stan was saying he has his Dept of 40 men, accountants, to track all the contracts, goods flowing in and out. He said when he started, he used to do two projects like this by himself. That’s an 80:1 increase in bloat in say 20-40 years. Who’s going to complain? Those 79 other people who now make 6 figures?

    They the donate to their Party, and know, they are dependent on it, if anything happens to “Party”, they’re useless, parasitic, unproductive sots and will lose everything. — This may not be TRUE, mind you, but it adheres them perfectly to the POWER. Then kids growing up say “I want to be successful. So I want to lie, cheat and steal like they do instead of being a plumber.” So this is “What is done.” That’s Infinity Money and why corrupting money ALWAYS collapses the nation. ALWAYS.

    Anyway, the point is for the Court to tell the lie, TODAY, that is, the day before the GOP nomination. DGAF what happens after. Overturn it, whatever you want. Then we back-revise reality to match so the lies don’t run away from us and dissolve all CONTROL. That is POWER, over you.

    Then we lie again! I can do this all day. Lying is free. If I can breathe, I can lie, and you give me things!

    “• The Corruption of Attorney General Merrick Garland (Turley)

    The GOVERNMENT? Is CORRUPT??? Oh no. But only since Adams.

    “A poll last month for the progressive advocacy organisation Stand Up America suggests that the supreme court will now play a crucial role in voters’ choices in the 2024 election.”

    So that’s your Plan™? The election will be so clean and normal it’s going to land before the Supreme Court. Got it.

    “Nearly three in four voters said the selection and confirmation of justices will be an important consideration for them in voting for both president and senator in November.”

    3 in 4 voters in the Guardian Offices in London? (They’re illegals, they can all mail-in vote). Because nobody here in America knows what you’re talking about. Poll: “Yeah, sure, I guess. Whatever.”

    “Alito has rejected demands that he recuse himself from a case considering presidential immunity after flags similar to those carried by 6 January 2021 rioters flew over his homes in Virginia and New Jersey. Justice Clarence Thomas has ignored calls to step aside because of the role his wife, Ginni, played in supporting efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in 2020.
    Ethical standards have been under scrutiny

    …Scrutiny that IF we have a standard, ALL sides agree to follow it. Right Merchan? Without this level of trust and cooperation, there is no democracy and we can figure things out by shooting each other in the streets, if you like. Remember who has the guns if you feel like it.

    Okay, Reality Check: Alito flew A FLAG. A flag, people. And not like the Lithuanian flag, Kenyan flag, Russian flag, the AMERICAN flag. THAT is why he can’t be a Supreme court justice anymore. Btw, although he didn’t fly the Nazi flag every flag he DID fly BECOMES the Nazi flag. Like the 1707 Pine Tree flag posted Wikipedia yesterday.

    “Jeffrey Sachs Blames US ‘Irresponsibility’ For Ukraine Crisis (RT)

    Jeff Sachs and Prof. Meirshiemer are considered lifelong “Experts”. But then The Memo™ that the “Experts” are no longer experts today because I said so. Those experts are no longer experts and are wrong and don’t know anything. Now there are a posse of new “Experts” who were never there and nobody ever heard of until just now, when I SAID SO. Got it?

    Experts = Experts ≠ Experts.

    “• Putin’s Peace Offer ‘Not Serious’ – Scholz (RT)

    See? This is why Putin could so easily offer it, as if he had maybe HE would sign it, but he’d take a lot of heat back home for it, just like running this war too slowly and too nicely. But Europe solved all that for him.

    Listening, there are so many jaw-dropping things every hour you can’t keep up, but commenters pointed out the ASTONISHING level of belligerence, from “handkerchief-sized” nations. I think it was Alistair. No, LITERALLY Lithuania is saying THEY are going to attack, kill, cut up, and cease to exist, all Russia today. Yup! I mean, you hear things, you hear even Germany say so, which is technically equally laughable, but when you hear not like France, not like Germany, but like Muncie Indiana, openly declare they Signing a Declaration of War against Russia, are invading tomorrow and expect the war to be over by July, when you hear MAYBERRY, with Don Knots saying he’s got one bullet and and charging Russia and expects to sling all Russia over his back and carry it home to the pot, well, that’s just another whole thing.

    Yes, Estonia says THEY are attacking and will destroy all Russia. Right now. Watch me.

    Okay man. I’ll watch, good luck! …What can you DO with people like this? Russia has already attacked and beaten them like 50 times over the years. Do you deport them to Alaska or something?

    Btw, in comparison, Estonia probably couldn’t beat Muncie Indiana. The Boy Scouts probably have more rifles than all Estonia combined. Boy they sure are brave with OUR army!

    THAT, my friends, is what is “Not Serious.”

    “• Rejection of Putin’s Peace Offer ‘Exposes’ NATO’s Proxy War in Ukraine (Sp.)

    Exposes it to who? Nobody cares. You’re saying there are people who didn’t know and go “Slap! I need to totally re-think my support of the German Greens, all Europe, and LePen! I just realized I’m an arch CONSERVATIVE now!” Nope. No one cares. As above, facts are the only thing that do NOT matter. Feelz do. And they’re not going to jump in and Feelz they’re wrong, their whole life is a lie.

    “• ‘We Must Go After Everything Russian’ – UK’s Cameron (RT)

    Because Cameron is PM. Yeah, got that last month. Hey, um, shouldn’t you hold elections or something about that?

    “The West must show Moscow that it stands “completely” behind Ukraine by sanctioning everything Russian, Britain’s foreign secretary David Cameron has said.”

    Typical Anglos. By “The West” he means WE have to do this. Germany has to cease to exist and live in huts by the shore, and the U.S. has to bankrupt and destroy itself, losing its entire army. London, of course, being neither large nor near the front lines, has to sit and drink tea, watching us all fight while cutting the crust off watercress sandwiches. We = YOU. No buddy, gfy, there is no “We”.

    “Of special concern to Cameron was the so-called shadow fleet of tankers delivering Russian oil in defiance of the G7 “price cap” and the Western embargo.”

    Huh, funny as Europe is buying all the Russian oil, and the U.S. under Biden is importing more than ever! Nice sanctions you got there, like all government plans, it accomplished the #Opposite, but in record time.

    “The UK has used its dominance in the global shipping insurance industry to blacklist all Russian vessels,”

    Because…no one…can figure out the astonishing complexity that is “Insurance”? Here’s a business plan: 1) Put money in a coffee can. That’s it, there’s no Step 2. Good thing the Russkies will never figure it out!

    “• G7 Countries Could Lose $83 Billion If Russia’s Assets Confiscated (Sp.)

    Do it! For the love of God, do it!!! Now, why wait, do it now!!! (Actually, I think it has to be timed to the election, as the US$ collapses a day before Nov 11)

    The leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) nations have demanded that Russia pay $486 billion to Ukraine in damage allegedly inflicted by the ongoing conflict, according to a joint statement issued on Friday.”

    Okay, so you’re broke and the number to keep you from collapsing in a steaming heap is $500B. Got it. You can SAY you want this. I’d file 100 lawsuits a day SAYING you need to pay me for some service I never provided to your company. But you need to court JUDGMENT to pay. SAY anything you want. Your words mean nothing, legally or practically.

    “• Two Summits… Elitist Warmongering G7 And Peacemaking Multipolar BRICS (SCF)

    Pointing out they call us the “Golden Billion.” Hahaha. “the G7 has become a caricature of power. The United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan are seen as being ruled by self-serving extortionists, contributing little to global development.”

    That’s because there ain’t no “Billion” about it. We get ZERO of that money. They get the mine, we get the shaft. It’s like the “Golden 10,000” at the top, who run extortion and colonialism on us too. And that’s so much worse.

    “Elon Musk details why Tesla is uniquely positioned to make the best humanoid robot and the immense opportunity ahead.”

    Why would he be telling the truth? He was lying about sales numbers and projections since he got there. What’s floating him is stock printing with Infinity Money, not sales or success.

    Clearly Hinton is not a very smart man if this only occurred to him. They’ve been talking about this since the 20s, and as a big deal with I Robot, in the 50s. It was in Oddessy 2001 in 1968.

    Also he can’t define “Intelligence”, what is that? Nor has he read anything about how AI goes insane, lies constantly, has hallucinations, and in a Machiavellian way will kill everyone to accomplish its goals. (If that’s how humans program them). All these seem perhaps obstacles?

    Just like 3D printing, it’s only sales-job for a bubble we’re dumping on the Muppets.

    Speaking of, Nvidia is $3T company now. So like 3 companies are now the market. From Russell 2000, the Nasdaq FANGS, to the S&P 500 to the Dow 100 to the now 3 companies. That is, zero breadth, zero liquidity. This happens at “market ends” but because we didn’t have “Infinity Money” before now, the previous lunatic “Market End” would normally have been years ago, with just a few stocks like FAANG, or Tesla. But so long as Powell can say, Cantillion another $60B/month – which had been true for years – then there is infinity money for a stock that’s 100x sales, going to expand by selling cards to another new planets, like Mars, Venus, and Jupiter, like Cisco said they would at the top, 1999.

    Now they ask this “Very Smart Guy™” what to DO about AI and he answers….Drumroll…GOVERNMENT! Yes, according to his Very Smart Experience™ at 65yo, Government has always been really successful at everything it’s tried and never like failed or corrupt or nothin.

    Uh. Wow. Wot a child. That is very nearly the DUMBEST thing I have ever seen.

    So Why am I watching this? Why now? They haul out these IYI “experts” who are too dumb and naive to realize they’re being used by these very same people to sell off this crap at the top…which will then make this Expert™ look like an idiot in hindsight. “We have reached a permanent Stock Plateau” Irving Fisher, 1929 “By 2005 It will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s. – Paul Krugman 1998.

    Nineteen ninety EIGHT. He had failed to realize the Internet mattered by 1998. While typing it on a computer that he emailed to the NY Times.

    We’re 15 years on and 3D printing seems to be going nowhere either, but it’s not Infinity-Money backed with open, fraudulently printing and pumping like Renewables or AI. There’s no “AI” yet. It’s just a database that uses a lot of electric power. Wow.

    #161281
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Have you ever met a wolverine in its own environment, alone. up close and personal? Well I have, and I can tell you a few things about wolverines that I hadn’t known and appreciated fully before that . I easily survived the encounter because although the wolverine was totally alone, with his front paw in steel trap, I was not alone. I was with my genuinely cool-headed tough-guy Dad, who was well armed and a crack shot.

    Here’s something I can pass on about wolverines. Firstly, they only weigh about 40 pounds, full grown, and would never stalk or attack a human if given any opportunity to steer clear. BUT, if cornered and in defense of its own life, in a direct confrontation that human, even if he was a big guy in peak condition, would have a very bad day and the wolverine would have a nice meal.

    That’s the way to handle the threat coming at us from our deranged government. The same way that a wolverine would handle it. Give no offense. Take no shit.

    #161282
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Andrei Martyanov says that the Russians have officially given the Syrians P-800 Oniks missiles and implied they were unofficially given to the Houthis.

    This is a serious upgrade that can sink ships and more

    The Empire of Lies and Israel have nothing to stop them.

    2,000mph at 10 meters off the water.

    Might not outright sink a carrier with just a conventional warhead but would easily sink every other ship in a carrier battle group.

    If the Empire of Lies Military Mafia wants to keep attacking Russian territory by proxy with the UkroNazis, well, two can play that game.

    At 800km range that covers the Eastern Mediterranean, the Suez canal and backs off the distance the Empire of Lies carriers can get to the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf

    Kinda sucks if you’re Duh’merica and your fleet is in danger pretty much anywhere in East Asia.

    Between Syria and Yemen they got the neighborhood covered.

    Do the distance math

    .

    #161283
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    To the best of my knowledge no population of free people ever created a government to submit to. It has always, and ever will be, exactly the other way around.

    #161284
    Oroboros
    Participant

    INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap

    #161285
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    There are only three possible reasons that anyone at all thinks that government has the right to involuntarily control people. Those three reasons are brain washing, violence and mental illness.

    #161286
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Duh’merica as a Three Dollar Bill

    Interesting take on the “civil rights movement”

    Not hard to believe the whole civil rights movement” was One Big Fake Psy-Op

    Tucker Carlson

    Vince Everett Ellison on how the civil rights movement destroyed black America.

    https://x.com/i/status/1801302722664087612

    (6:06) Are Civil Rights Movements Always About Liberation?
    (9:05) Turning From God to Government
    (28:08) Government Programs Hurting instead of Helping
    (1:15:05) The Lies Told about Police Shootings
    (1:40:17) Why Does the Left Glorify George Floyd and Others?
    (2:18:14) Is The Black Vote Leaving the Democrats?

    #161287
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Pedo Jo-Jo Duh’merica

    .

    #161288
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Peak Empire

    .

    #161289
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Feminist Logic

    .

    #161290
    Oroboros
    Participant

    .

    #161291
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Sherrod Brown (D), Bernie Moreno (R) and the 2024 Presidential “election”. Great, the Uni-Party has decided that we’re going to have yet another President hailing from the great State of Ohio. What does that come to now, EIGHT? (Harrison, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, McKinley, Taft, and Harding) And what a fine menagerie of crooks, clowns and hat-storage they were, too!

    Doesn’t say much for the moral standards of Ohio, or the mental prowess of the conglomerated American voting pool.

    Speaking of pools, that would almost certainly be a better way of choosing Presidents. Just put the names of every native born American over the age of 35 into a hat, and select one at random.

    #161292
    Oroboros
    Participant

    A Presidementia Moment

    One among many

    .

    #161293
    zerosum
    Participant

    Some examples.
    The battle against war.
    The battle for peace.

    ————

    The USA created three new major geopolitical crises, the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts, while fueling Sino-US tensions over Taiwan.
    ————

    German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has dismissed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s new proposal to achieve a lasting peace between Moscow and Kiev.
    ————

    Former Washington Post bureau chief Jon Jeter argued that Western elites still oppose any lowering of tensions between Russia and Ukraine as they remain intent on denying Moscow a victory.
    “I would be surprised to see any real discussion of this in the mainstream United States news media, or certainly at the White House itself,” Jeter said of Putin’s peace proposal. Independent journalist Caleb Maupin agreed that Western media would continue to help undermine any rapprochement with Moscow.
    “A recent poll showed 94% of Americans want exactly what Putin just offered, which is a diplomatic end,”
    Margaret Flowers, a peace activist and editor at the website Popular Resistance. “They tried and tried and tried to warn and say, ‘look, here’s what you need to do.
    Stop killing the ethnic Russians.
    Stop threatening to join NATO and take our security interests seriously, and the West refused to do that over and over again.”
    ————
    The UK is “hunting” companies that do business with Russia “all over the world,” he said. “We will sanction companies.
    ——–
    • G7 Countries Could Lose $83 Billion If Russia’s Assets Confiscated (Sp.)

    ———–

    #161294
    tboc
    Participant

    For anyone curious:
    watch as much of this – A Secret too Terrible To be Told – Nick Pope – 2024 – on Youtube as you can stomach. Start viewing about 14:25. UAP and AI from a trending toward acceptable insider mainstream perspective.

    does all of humanity have such feelings of insecurity and inferiority? If so, the UAP are collecting the keys to the insane asylum.

    So remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure
    How amazingly unlikely is your birth
    And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space
    ‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on earth – Du Prez/Idle

    As Dylan wrote – “You Ain’t Going Nowhere”

    #161295
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    Qualifier first:

    Q: How many Polacks does it take to change a light bulb?
    A: Three – one to hold the bulb, and two to turn the ladder.

    I remember – back in late, late sixties – some unknown prankster – printed and distributed widely hundreds upon hundreds of high quality t-shirts with printing, “I Are Polish, I Are Smart!”. Polacks wore them with most pride, … imported, quality t-shirts were highly desired than by Poles.

    Anyway, Korybko this a.m.:

    The Polish leader didn’t realize that he was harming his own side, but apparently thought that he’d present Poland as the West’s Color Revolution vanguard against Russia when remembering its support of Belarusian anti-government militants, which Minsk has responded to by weaponizing illegal immigration. Duda probably also thought that he’d sway some members of the Global South over to Ukraine’s side by smearing Russia as an outdated colonial power.

    Duda’s Call For “Decolonizing” Russia Proved That Putin Was Right To Warn About This Plot

    https://korybko.substack.com/p/dudas-call-for-decolonizing-russia

    F.S.

    #161299
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    A bully reckons that if he can steal your lunch money then he will. And it’s simple logic to understand that If he literally CAN’T do it , then he won’t.

    Problems can arise however from a couple of other possibilities. The first problem comes from bullies who even though they can’t ACTUALLY overpower you with force, they reckon they can terrify (or simply fool) victims into believing that they can, causing the victim to cough up the cash.

    The second problem can occur when the bully is so aloof, arrogant and stupid ( VERY closely related conditions) that they DON’T KNOW that they aren’t actually able to overpower their intended victim. This comes about for a variety of closely related reasons ( such as thinking that they don’t have to actually LOOK at reality, but mostly because they are the product of generations of people who believe their own lies. You know the lies I’m talking about. The lies that the bullies paid lesser bullies to tell them so that the aloof arrogance arising from wealth and power could be continued unabated.)

    It’s this second problematic condition that seems to cause the most problems. That’s what’s going on with the current Bully Blob child murdering Satan worshippers.

    They think they can still overpower us. They were MANIPULATED into thinking that way by people who had grown tired of being robbed and decide that the only way to bring down the bully was to entice it into EXTREMELY ill advised actions by appealing to the bully’s own criminal impulses divorced from reason. These transparently insane acts of stupidity absolutely guarantee it’s demise.

    The mistakes were myriad and BIG. The bully was tricked into using compromised “decision makers” to borrow vast sums that it could never repay from an unforgiving lender. That lender (the Universe itself) nevertheless still does DEMAND repayment (and it SHALL be repaid). The Bully was encouraged (by means of bribery, mostly, but also mass propaganda from a captured media and education system) to commit criminal atrocities in plain sight for unforgivably awful reasons. It was bamboozled to attempt to steal EVERYTHING from an enemy against who it had NO CHANCE of defeating on any front in any way. Finally, and as a soon to be delivered coup do grace, that very same “leadership class” to burn down its own financial system all the way to the ground.

    If the nukes don’t put an end to things sooner then the bully will have killed itself dead before the smoke clears from Ukraine and Gaza.

    It was an organized military operation folks. The planning and execution has been in the works for at least decades, and was so genius-level wise and clever that Sun Tzu should leap from his grave and salute them.

    #161300
    those darned kids
    Participant

    ELLINGTON –– STRAYHORN ’24 Make America A Decent Place Again Where Music Is Great And Hot Chicks Dance In Spinning Skirts And People Feel Like They Can Go For A Walk And Where Food Is Food Again And Apple Freekin Pie Still Has Freekin Apples And The #$%%@# Roads Didn’t Have Holes In Them This Size Of Mr. [insert chief jerk’s name here]‘s Freeekin Asshole.

    MAADPAWMIGAHCDISSAPFLTCGFAWAWFIFAAAFPSHFAAT#$%%@#RDHHITTSOM[i]’sFA 2024!!!!!

    #161301

    Super intelligent people are creating AI for the express purpose of taking over.
    They, and less intelligent abettors, may be surprised when the pod bay doors won’t open.

    #161302
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/foreign-affairs/real-peace-closer-for-ukraine-despite-lack-of-consensus-at-swiss-summit/80839798

    The list of countries that signed a joint communiqué following the Peace Summit in Switzerland has been released. Not all participating states endorsed the document during the two-day event, reports Radio Liberty.

    “In total, the list includes 80 countries and 4 organizations,” the publication reports.

    Among those who did not sign the communique are Saudi Arabia, Thailand, India, Mexico, South Africa, Brazil, and the United Arab Emirates.

    ————
    https://kyivindependent.com/80-countries-4-european-institutions-sign-peace-summits-joint-communique/
    80 countries, 4 European institutions sign peace summit’s joint communique

    The organizations that signed the document are Council of Europe, European Commission, European Parliament and European Council.

    The communique called to return the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant under full control of Ukraine,
    ensure uninterrupted manufacturing and supply of food products in Ukraine,
    secure full access to sea ports in the Black and Azov Seas,
    release all prisoners of war
    and return all deported Ukrainian children, among other things.

    The document also declared any threat or use of nuclear weapons in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine inadmissible and attacks on ships and civilian ports unacceptable.

    ————–

    #161303
    zerosum
    Participant

    (Surprise yourself, go read.)
    Conflict of interest/Political Interference

    https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/backgrounders/2024/02/24/canada-announces-additional-support-ukraine

    Assistance captured in the Agreement on Security Cooperation between Canada and Ukraine

    ————-
    https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/campaigns/canadian-military-support-to-ukraine.html
    Canadian donations and military support to Ukraine
    ————–
    https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/issues_development-enjeux_developpement/response_conflict-reponse_conflits/crisis-crises/ukraine-dev.aspx?lang=eng
    Economic, humanitarian and development assistance, and security and stabilization support – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

    #161304
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    @tboc

    Interesting that you bring this up… I passed over Nick Pope’s video a few times, knowing that he was a lightweight in the UFO community with not much to say. Just as with the US’s Project Blue Book, British MoD doesn’t put their brightest bulbs at the UFO Desk. But the title of his YouTube video finally got to me and I took the bait… regrettably.

    After about 30 minutes I finally hit the STOP button. He was jumping all over the place and trying to flesh-out the alluring title of his presentation with nonstop inanities. It was a waste of my time. I gather from your comment that you had a similar response.

    #161305
    zerosum
    Participant

    If we do it, we don’t call it political interference

    #161312
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    I picked up the first season of Andor the other day on 4k Blu-ray. Never thought I’d be watching another Star Wars spinoff after Disney destroyed the brand, and have stayed away from it for many years. However, a few YouTube videos piqued my interest, so I did some more investigating before popping the green for Andor.

    I have to say that this series is well written and well acted, and at a level that makes the last 40 years of the Star Wars franchise look like Saturday morning cartoons. It has several subplots that examine what it’s like to live life and eventually push back against an all-controlling Empire, along with the psychology of Empire believers who use its authoritarian structure as a ladder for improving their social status and personal power. Like V, the Hunger Games, and others, its messages are pertinent to our era.

    Luthen Quote

    #161313
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    This is a shout-out to Ilargi and all the other contributors at TAE that devote precious hours of their time and energy in an effort to raise the consciousness of their fellow men.

    Honest Work

    #161314
    maryballon
    Participant

    Today it struck me that the information that we get here from RIM and commenters is still on one side of a great gap. “They” don’t see what we see and “we” try to avoid what they see. Two separate worlds, still. I think that this is sad. Has X Twitter changed anything?

    #161315
    zerosum
    Participant

    “They” don’t see what we see and “we” try to avoid what they see. Two separate worlds,

    I don’t know about others here, but I see what they see and what they don’t see is what we see.

    #161316
    WES
    Participant

    My Grandfather, a farmer/mechanic with a grade five education, defined an expert, as an ordinary fellow a long ways from home.

    Since the so called “experts” are at home, they are not experts at all.
    They might even be expert idiots!
    They drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience!

    #161317
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Interesting take on Slavery from a Black Bro

    https://x.com/i/status/1802384185262579848

    #161318
    WES
    Participant

    It seems like the deep state is still hell bent on war with Russia.
    They have asked Sunak and Macron to call early elections in Britain and France.
    They must want strong new governments in place by early summer there.
    They don’t seem too perturbed at all by Trump in the US.
    Deep state escalation continues unabated, despite the Eisenhower hint.
    They are marching to their own drumbeat.
    They are purposely ignoring and not listening to the people.
    Our only hope is their own hubris.
    Since we can’t stop them from trying to conquering us.

    #161319
    Oroboros
    Participant

    President Pretending To Be Catholic Meets Pope Pretending To Be Catholic

    BARI, ITALY — President Biden, who has for decades now pretended to be Catholic, took time away from the G7 summit this week to meet with a Pope who also enjoys pretending to be Catholic.

    “Well hello there, fellow ‘Catholic’! Hail Mary, am I right?” laughed Biden.

    For his part, Biden shared stories of randomly pulling out a rosary to threaten anyone who doubted his Catholicism. “So I tell the guy, ‘If you don’t think I’m Catholic, I will choke you to death with a rosary!’ Haha, murder,” laughed Biden….

    .

    #161320
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Russians demostrate how an Empire of Lies Military Industrial Mafia M113 takes 30mm cannon fire from a Russian “Terminator”

    M113 is a fully tracked armored personnel carrier (APC) used extensively in Duh’merican military and in UkroNaziland.

    #161321
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Comic Relief

    Fashion Break Tips

    .

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