Vasily Polenov Christ among the teachers (doctors) 1896
Border czar
The media did this in 2016 and 2020 and they’re doing it now in 2024 for Kamala Harris.
– Report on a true story that is bad for the Democrat candidate & say it’s false.
– Debate comes, Trump will use the true topic (Border Czar) against Harris.
– Harris will then cite all the… pic.twitter.com/DefbXLwJgP
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 25, 2024
Ben Carson
https://twitter.com/i/status/1816526225659019296
Gosh, I love this guy so much… ❤️
Ben Carson Reveals he Never Really Wanted to be President – God Chose Trump — “The difference was that he wanted to do it, and I didn’t.”
• we discovered early on we were very compatible
• I never particularly wanted to be president — but… pic.twitter.com/I5JIPL3eFD
— MJTruthUltra (@MJTruthUltra) July 25, 2024
Full
How was Kamala Harris transformed from an embarrassing incompetent to the coolest, most inspirational leader in the world in a single day? Dr. Ben Carson on America’s North Korean media landscape.
(1:57) Kamala Harris
(11:29) Donald Trump
(26:12) Why the Black Community Loves… pic.twitter.com/fDJ13dZON7— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) July 25, 2024
Willie Brown
“We are now – the Democratic Party – going to have a presidential nominee who nobody voted for to be president.” “There’s not one voter anywhere in the country this year or in 2020 who said ‘I want Kamala Harris..”
• Harris Coronation Demonstrates America’s Democratic Deficit (Manley)
Over the weekend, US President Joe Biden bowed out of this year’s presidential race and in the same swift move endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris while transferring his campaign funds to her. While the VP is not the official Democratic nominee, many Democratic lawmakers and elites have already endorsed her candidacy. A recent article by activist and former Green Party vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka considers the Democratic Party’s substitution of Kamala Harris as its presumptive presidential nominee and the development’s significance within the US political system. “The gangster move by the oligarchs that control the Democrats stripped away any pretense that any real structures of democracy exist in that party,” Baraka suggests. The article argues that special interests appear to hold sufficient power to remove a presidential nominee and quickly fill that role with whomever they choose.
On Thursday, writer and activist Margaret Kimberley joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program to discuss the current crisis of democracy in the US as well as Nicaragua’s struggle against US intervention as they recently celebrate 45 years since the Sandinista revolution, which ushered in a government the United States deems to be undemocratic. “If this happened anywhere else in the world, we’d call it a banana republic,” Kimberly said of Joe Biden’s replacement. “We’d say it was authoritarianism. We’d say it’s not democratic. All of those things apply here, except we’re talking about this country. We see how undemocratic the system is, how undemocratic the Democratic Party is.” “They pushed Biden through, they rigged it for him four years ago. They lied about his health for the past four years. Told us not to believe our lying eyes when we could see his declining state of health.”
“And when they saw the failure of their plan, they unceremoniously shoved him under the bus. They have anointed Kamala Harris. Everybody fell into line. Millions of dollars for her campaign and all because rich donors, the people that Ajamu points out really run the Democratic Party, had a change of mind about who the nominee ought to be,” she concluded. Baraka argues that for nearly two years, it seemed obvious that “Biden would not be a credible candidate in 2024 due to his noticeable cognitive decline and the ineptitude of his administration”. Baraka suggested Biden was coerced into taking part in a debate against Trump in order to hasten his removal as the Democratic Party candidate. “They knew they could not go forward with him and they went along with this early debate to try to speed up the process and get rid of him before the convention,” Kimberley suggested. “I also believe they thought Trump would be out because of all these criminal charges.
I think they thought Trump would be out. He either wouldn’t run again or that Republican voters would turn to someone else, and they would be running against a Republican with less of Trump’s popularity.” “But, all of this happened because of corruption. And I think that’s the way we should discuss it, that these are the people who run everything, and the last thing they want is for the voters to have a choice,” she argued. “We are now – the Democratic Party – going to have a presidential nominee who nobody voted for to be president.” “There’s not one voter anywhere in the country this year or in 2020 who said ‘I want Kamala Harris,’” Kimberley emphasized. “Despite misgivings that many Democratic voters have about her, they’re going to go along,” she claimed. “The panic, the fear of a Republican victory, a Trump victory no less, is something that most Democrats will just get behind. So I think she has a chance to win, especially with the money, the corporate media, and all Democratic politicians being behind her.”
He doesn’t accuse them (yet) of plotting the shooting.
• Trump Slams ‘Politicized’ FBI (RT)
Former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has slammed the Federal Bureau of Investigation as being politicized and incompetent at its job. Testifying before Congress on Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said he wasn’t sure whether Trump had been hit by a bullet or something else at a campaign rally two weeks ago. “I think with respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s [a] bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,” Wray told the lawmakers. Wray was unsure about the bullet but seemed sure that President Joe Biden was physically and cognitively fine, until Biden dropped out of the race, Trump said in a post on his platform Truth Social, late on Thursday. “That’s why he knows nothing about the terrorists and other criminals pouring into our country at record levels,” Trump continued. “His only focus is destroying J6 Patriots, raiding Mar-a-Lago, and saving Radical Left Lunatics, like the ones now in DC burning American flags and spray painting over our great National Monuments – with zero retribution.”
”No wonder the once storied FBI has lost the confidence of America!” the former president added. Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered in Washington on Wednesday to protest the address to Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Some of them publicly burned the American flag, while others defaced several monuments with pro-Hamas slogans. The FBI rounded up thousands of Trump supporters who protested outside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, as Republicans tried to object to declaring Biden the winner of the 2020 election, citing numerous irregularities. In August 2022, the agency raided Trump’s Florida residence in search of classified documents. The Supreme Court later ruled that prosecuting him for official acts was unconstitutional. The Mar-a-Lago raid and the crackdown on January 6 protesters were repeatedly brought up as reasons why local and state law enforcement around the US no longer trusts the FBI, according to a report compiled by a group of current and former agents.
The Bureau is increasingly viewed “as a partisan federal agency motivated by a political agenda,” said the report, which was presented to Congress earlier this week. Insisting that Wray was “wrong,” Trump said it was indeed a bullet that had nicked his ear at the Butler, Pennsylvania rally. “There was no glass, there was no shrapnel,” Trump posted, adding that the FBI “never even checked” into it. The idea that Trump may have been injured by something else, or not at all, has been a popular conspiracy theory among Democrats online. Some people have claimed that he faked the ear injury, while others speculated that a shard from the teleprompter broke off and nicked the presidential candidate. Such rumors have persisted even though a New York Times photographer captured the bloodied bullet as it streaked past Trump and into the crowd behind him.
“..there is no evidence that it was anything other than a bullet,” and that “Director Wray is wrong and inappropriate to suggest anything else.”
• FBI Wrong About Assassination Attempt – Trump’s Doctor (RT)
The New York Times and Donald Trump’s personal physician have both concluded that the former president was struck by a bullet, and not “shrapnel” as FBI Director Christopher Wray suggested. In testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Wray told lawmakers that “there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that, you know, hit [Trump’s] ear” when a gunman opened fire on Trump at a campaign rally earlier this month. Wray’s statement appeared to validate theories circulating online since the shooting, which claimed that Trump was stricken by a piece of broken glass from his teleprompter rather than the would-be assassin’s bullet. After venting at Wray on his Truth Social platform on Friday, Trump shared a letter from his physician, Ronny Jackson, who stated that “there is no evidence that it was anything other than a bullet,” and that “Director Wray is wrong and inappropriate to suggest anything else.”
“Having served as an Emergency Medicine physician for over 20 years in the United States Navy…I have treated many gunshot wounds in my career,” Jackson noted. In an article published later on Friday, the New York Times concurred with Jackson. “A detailed analysis of bullet trajectories, footage, photos and audio by The New York Times strongly suggests Mr. Trump was grazed by the first of eight bullets fired by the gunman,” the newspaper stated. A 3D model of the rally grounds plus a “trajectory analysis show that the bullet traveled in a straight line from the gunman to the bleachers, clipping Mr. Trump on its path. This suggests the bullet was not deflected by first striking an object that would have then sprayed Mr. Trump with debris,” the newspaper explained.
The gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, killed one spectator and injured two others before he was shot dead by Secret Service snipers. Before he was led away from the stage by Secret Service agents, Trump rose to his feet and pumped his fist in the air, his ear visibly bleeding and his face streaked with blood. In the days after the shooting, Republicans fiercely criticized the Secret Service for failing to secure Crooks’ rooftop vantage point, despite it being around 150 meters from the stage where Trump stood, and for apparently disregarding reports of an armed Crooks crawling around on the roof minutes before opening fire. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday, a day after telling the Oversight Committee that she took responsibility for the “most significant operational failure at the Secret Service in decades.” “The biggest mistake they made is allowing me to go,” Trump told Fox News on Thursday “They shouldn’t have let me go on the stage. Different groups of people knew there was some nut job on the roof.”
Bullet?!
Christopher Wray was COMPLETELY INAPPROPRIATE and OUT OF LINE to question if President Trump was hit by a bullet. All this rhetoric does is feed the fire of ASSASSINATION DENIERS and IDIOTS like Joy Reid and Keith Olbermann!!
I examined the bullet wound hours after he was shot.… pic.twitter.com/9Le1Q0O2hx
— Ronny Jackson (@RonnyJacksonTX) July 25, 2024
“Joe Biden” will go down in history as the worst of all 46 US presidents.”
• Saving Our Democracy (Kunstler)
However it happened this week, “Joe Biden” passed the blowtorch to a new generation and got himself gone from the political battlefield. Delegates to the coming Democratic National Convention (August 19) were duly notified of the selected replacement, Veep Kamala Harris, and ordered to line up behind her. Not a peep of disagreement was heard among them. Amazing that no one had a different idea. Thus, is democracy saved. The curious details around this event remain shrouded in mystery. Reporters for The New York Times and the WashPo could not be bothered to inquire, and their readers are not inclined to ask how all this came to be. It just is. In a culture with no sense of consequence, things just happen or un-happen. It is your duty to recognize that the wind now blows from another direction and bend with it. One thing was obvious: the long-running prank of pretending that President “Joe Biden” is sound-of-mind fell apart after his mortifying appearance on the debate stage June 27th.
Apparently, every last captain and foot-soldier in the Democratic Party ranks was taken completely by surprise to see their champion flicker out in real time, like a forty-watt bulb that has done years of duty on the front porch and suddenly leaves you in the dark. Three weeks followed with “Joe Biden” boldly campaigning as if nothing had happened. (Perhaps his mind did not register that things had changed.) And then there was the weird tweet on “X” Sunday afternoon when the whole country was outside waterskiing, grilling weiners, carjacking, and yelling at ballparks, and the deed was done. Someone, possibly even “Joe Biden” himself, wrote a letter pasted into the tweet that declared he was bowing out of the race.
The White House staff didn’t even know until it was up-and-posted. Rumor had it that Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama read the riot act to “JB”, who was refusing to follow the script. There were plenty of carrots-and-sticks to finally lever his obdurate ass into motion: not least must have involved any pending legal outcome of the family’s influence-peddling operations, whispers of new whistleblower accusations about offshore bank accounts, perhaps with sweeteners in the deal as to how much schwag the clan could still hold onto in the end.
Then, the valedictory speech on Wednesday, sort of a proof-of-life exhibition, to verify that Sunday’s janky tweet to the nation was for real. You heard a Homeric recitation of “JB’s” signal achievements in office, every one of them demonstrably false. He did not keep our country out of war, or grow the economy, or keep inflation down, or beat Big Pharma, or build anything, or defend personal freedoms, or “make it clear there is no place, no place in America for political violence or any violence ever.” (In fact, the very next day, Thursday, pro-Hamas mobs attacked US Park police and vandalized federal property at Washington’s Union Station, and on Friday all charges were dropped against them — while scores of J6 Capitol trespassers rotted for years in the DC jail.)
What “Joe Biden” actually accomplished in office was the near-total wrecking of the USA. He torpedoed the authority and legitimacy of just about every federal agency, turned the Department of Justice into a Gestapo, seeded the federal court benches with Woke lunatics, allowed an invasion of perhaps 20-million border-jumpers (including many thousands of professional terrorists), coerced injections of an ineffective and injurious vaccine into millions of citizens afraid of losing their livelihoods, promoted gross medical experiments on sexually troubled children, invited drag queens and mentally-ill degenerates to cavort in the White House, spent borrowed money at a rate that propelled the national debt past the event horizon into a black hole, made the seeking of incompetence the number one priority of the Pentagon, provoked a war in Ukraine that now teeters on the hazard of a nuclear exchange, and allowed the CIA to complete its takeover of the US government. “Joe Biden” will go down in history as the worst of all 46 US presidents.
“..with hawks like Mike Pompeo and avowed anti-interventionists like Tucker Carlson each holding court..”
• Trump Vs the Deep State: Would Former President Shift US Foreign Policy? (Sp.)
The Republican Party’s apparent divisions were on full display during its recent convention in Milwaukee, with hawks like Mike Pompeo and avowed anti-interventionists like Tucker Carlson each holding court. A sea change has taken place in the way the US electorate discusses issues of foreign policy over the last decade. Former President Donald Trump spoke with distinctive brashness on subjects assumed to be beyond political debate in Washington, such as the United States’ fraught relationship with Russia and the country’s role as self-appointed “policemen of the world.” On the other side of the aisle Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders enjoyed a similar populist appeal, alleging “massive fraud” in US military spending and questioning former President Barack Obama’s effort to overthrow Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
The mandarins of the US foreign policy establishment have spent the last several years attempting to put the genie back in the bottle, returning to a time before the prerogatives of the “Deep State” were openly speculated and commented upon, but the influence of Trump’s candidacy and tumultuous time in the White House is still felt years later. As Vice President Kamala Harris solidifies her position as President Biden’s Democratic heir apparent, speculation has emerged over the possible foreign policy of her administration and how it would differ from that of a second Trump term. Former Ukrainian diplomat and whistleblower Andrii Telizhenko joined Sputnik’s The Backstory program this week to comment on the matter and discuss prospects for peace as fighting between Moscow and Kiev continues. “Everybody saw it coming,” Telizhenko said of Biden’s decision to end his candidacy for reelection Sunday amid concern over his age and mental acuity.
“The deep state in the Democratic Party used him and used his problems within his family [with] his son Hunter to keep him in place, to use him and his health to keep America in place, to bring this war with Russia.” “They don’t need him anymore,” he concluded. “That’s why they made the change from one lame duck for another lame duck that is going to be fully controllable.” Harris, who previously served as California’s state Attorney General before a four-year stint in the US Senate, has been noted for her relative lack of formal foreign policy experience. Some commentators have looked to her advocacy on immigration policy under President Biden to attempt to decode her broader outlook on global affairs. One analyst speculated she would initially rely on Biden’s foreign policy team, while others suggest she would continue her predecessor’s strong support for Volodymyr Zelensky, who has ruled Ukraine without an electoral mandate since the end of term in May.
Republicans frequently allege President Biden’s support for Kiev is influenced by his son’s financial ties to the country as a former member on the board of the troubled Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Others suggest he is simply too old to manage the task of overseeing complex matters of foreign policy. Biden is often considered a neoconservative, a term used to describe a muscular US foreign policy that has traditionally found favor in both major political parties in the United States. His promise to restore a more traditional approach to international affairs is perhaps best exemplified by his reliance on figures like Secretary of State Antony Blinken and former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland.
“..let Ukraine borrow as much as it needs to buy American weapons to defeat Russia.” This, he claimed, would “send a clear signal to Mr. Putin that he will never win.”
• Pompeo Tries to Hijack Trump’s Peace Push (Sp.)
Donald Trump has bragged that he could end the Russia-NATO proxy war in Ukraine with a couple phone calls, saying his main priority is to stop “people dying.” The GOP nominee for VP, JD Vance, has talked about the conflict’s cost to taxpayers. But there are many figures in the Republican establishment looking to prolong the crisis at all cost. Former CIA director and secretary of state Mike Pompeo has outlined a neocon Republican playbook for the Ukraine crisis in the event that Donald Trump returns to office, calling for a rebranding of US military and economic assistance to Kiev as “lend-lease,” and inviting Kiev into NATO “as soon as possible so all European allies assume the burden of protecting it.” Pompeo’s proposal, entitled “A Trump Peace Plan for Ukraine,” assures that Trump’s return to the presidency would not mean stopping Ukraine funding or negotiating directly with Moscow to end the fighting. On the contrary, he suggested, a Trump administration would pursue a “strategy for victory” that’s lacking in the current administration.
The neocon plan proposes a global effort led by the US and partners in the Middle East to bring down energy prices and “squeeze” Russia out of energy markets, imposing “real sanctions” on Moscow to replace the current “good on paper but…hollow” ones Pompeo says are in place today, ramping up NATO defense spending to a minimum of 3 percent of GDP, and lifting “all restrictions on the type of weapons Ukraine can obtain and use” against Russia. Central to Pompeo’s plan is the proposal for a $500 billion “lend-lease” program for Kiev, which, in his words, “instead of saddling US taxpayers with more bills,” would “let Ukraine borrow as much as it needs to buy American weapons to defeat Russia.” This, he claimed, would “send a clear signal to Mr. Putin that he will never win.” Pompeo’s vision for a post-conflict Ukraine includes building up Kiev’s military potential against Russia, refusing to recognize Russia’s new territories, “demilitarizing” Crimea (whatever that means), giving seized Russian Central Bank assets to Kiev, and inviting Ukraine into the European Union.
Pompeo did not elaborate on how a second Trump administration might achieve any of these goals. Moscow has stressed that it would never accept Ukraine in NATO, and the recently leaked peace deal that was agreed in the spring of 2022 (and sabotaged by the West before it could be realized), signaled demands by Russia that Ukraine limit the size of its military, recognize the Donbass Republics, repeal discriminatory language laws, ban the glorification and propaganda of Nazism and neo-Nazism, and (together with its Western patrons) scrap sanctions. Pompeo’s treatise, penned together with lobbyist, CNN commentator and Trump 2016 campaign advisor David Urban, strikes a decidedly more aggressive tone than the former president or his pick for vice president, JD Vance, have taken on the campaign trail.
Trump has repeatedly promised to stop “the horrible war with Russia and Ukraine,” vowing to start the peace process on election night if he wins, but has remained light on the details of how he might achieve this goal. People familiar with the plan have reportedly said that it will include pressuring Kiev to give up territory, sparking panic among some at the Pentagon and neocons in both parties that such Ukrainian concessions would mean “Putin would win.”
Trump said last week that he had a “very good phone call” with Volodymyr Zelensky, and that Zelensky had “congratulated” him on becoming the Republican nominee and surviving his recent assassination attempt. “We agreed with President Trump to discuss at a personal meeting what steps can make peace fair and truly lasting,” Zelensky said in a follow-up social media post.Zelensky got in trouble with Republicans earlier this month over comments in a CNN interview from earlier this year in which he suggested that JD Vance doesn’t understand the situation in Ukraine, and that Kiev doesn’t “need any rhetoric from people who are not deeply in the know.” Vance, who has positioned himself as an America First Republican, argued in an op-ed in the New York Times in April that the biggest reason the US shouldn’t continue to support Ukraine is a basic “math” problem revolving around the fact that “Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field, even with draconian conscription policies,” and “needs more materiel than the United States can provide.”
“..US Secret Service repeatedly denied offers from a local law enforcement partner to utilize drone technology..”
• Secret Service Opted Out of Drone Surveillance Before Trump Shooting (Sp.)
The probe into the attempted assassination of Donald Trump has uncovered new details of the botched security operation at the Pennsylvania rally. Republican Senator Josh Hawley has submitted a letter to the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with shocking details that the Secret Service – responsible for ensuring the safety of the former president’s life – “repeatedly” turned down offers by local police to carry out drone surveillance of the area. “The night before the rally, US Secret Service repeatedly denied offers from a local law enforcement partner to utilize drone technology to secure the rally,” the senator wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, citing information from a whistleblower. The whistleblower also alleged that it was not until after the deadly shootout that the Secret Service went on to use drones to record the area, Hawley noted.
Hawley had previously quoted the whistleblower and spoken out against the officer who left the very spot from which the assassin targeted Trump. The officer allegedly left the roof of the warehouse because it was “too hot.”
“It is hard to understand why [the Secret Service] would decline to use drones when they were offered, particularly given the fact USSS [US Secret Service] permitted the shooter to overfly the rally area with his own drone mere hours before [the] event,” the Republican senator elaborated further. Hawley also went on to mention that the whistleblower believes that using drones would have helped neutralize the sniper. The shooting took place on July 13 at a Trump rally in Butler, the US state of Pennsylvania. Trump sustained a gun wound to his right ear and was briefly hospitalized. Thomas Crooks, 20, killed a member of the audience and injured two others in the crowd before the Secret Service neutralized him. The FBI is investigating the incident as an assassination attempt and potential domestic terrorism.
“The NeoNazi regime has to be liquidated, Ukraine is never to join NATO, and all of the Ukrainian forces must fully withdraw from the five territories that are now legally part of the Russian Federation, including Crimea and Donbass. If the Kiev regime wants to negotiate this capitulation, then Russia’s terms are already on the table..”
• Zelensky Now Wants Peace, Or Rather Another Piece Of The Action (SCF)
All of a sudden, it seems, the Kiev regime wants to give peace a chance. This week, the so-called president Vladimir Zelensky was telling the Vatican envoy Cardinal Pietro Parolin that it was urgent to find a peaceful end to the conflict with Russia to spare further loss of life. “I think that we all understand that we must end the war as soon as possible, of course,” Zelensky told the Vatican secretary of state during a meeting in Kiev. Only a few months ago, Zelensky rebuffed calls from Pope Francis for a diplomatic settlement to the worst war in Europe since the Second World War. And earlier this month, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was similarly disdained when he visited Kiev to appeal for a negotiated end to the conflict. Suddenly, though, there is a decided change in tune coming out of Kiev. The day after Zelensky issued his purported concern for peace, the Kiev regime’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba flew to China to meet Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat.
“The Ukrainian side is willing and ready to conduct dialogue and negotiations with the Russian side,” Kuleba announced. “I am convinced that a just peace in Ukraine is in China’s strategic interests, and China’s role as a global force for peace is important,” he added, by way of ingratiating himself with Beijing. Earlier this year, China and Brazil jointly proposed a plan for peace negotiations. That proposal was dismissed out of hand by the Kiev regime. What’s going on here is a cynical move by the Kiev regime to extend its survival and corruption racket. Zelensky and his cronies have gotten obscenely rich from siphoning off the hundreds of billions in military and financial aid that the United States and its European NATO lackeys have showered on Ukraine to fight a futile proxy war against Russia. After two and a half years of war and more than 500,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers – many of them forcibly conscripted – the writing is on the wall. The NATO proxy war is a historic loss of monstrous dimensions.
Russia has gained the upper hand militarily – as many independent analysts had predicted – and it will not back down until all of its goals are achieved. The NeoNazi regime has to be liquidated, Ukraine is never to join NATO, and all of the Ukrainian forces must fully withdraw from the five territories that are now legally part of the Russian Federation, including Crimea and Donbass. If the Kiev regime wants to negotiate this capitulation, then Russia’s terms are already on the table, as outlined by President Vladimir Putin last month.
“..he called on his audience to see Ukraine as a laboratory where the West can develop its future military technology..”
• Zaluzhny’s Message Pleasing For Western Elites, Terrifying For Ukrainians (RT)
[..] Zelensky’s Ukraine, as represented by his former rival and current ambassador Zaluzhny, is the wet dream of the West’s mobilizers: a personalistic, at best semi-authoritarian regime, with no free media or opposition. And the fact that they have no shame in calling that sort of state a “democracy,” complete with the usual “vibrant” civil society, proves that they would not hesitate to do the same at home. If Zaluzhny’s ideas about what should be done to society are stunningly imitative, his take on the military meaning of the Ukraine War seems at least more original, if a little bombastic. He believes that the “changes which were invented on the battlefields of the Russian-Ukrainian war” are very likely to “determine the outlines of wars and the art of war in the 21st century” and to “become the foundation of the entire global security system of the future.”
Zaluzhny is probably wrong on the facts there. As I have long argued, the genocidal slaughter committed by Israel in Gaza is more likely to leave a deeper imprint on the future of “warfare” (for want of a better term). We are already seeing attempts to derive “lessons” (all the wrong ones, rest assured) from it by Western think tanks such as the RAND Corporation and, indeed, the very same RUSI where Zaluzhny gave his speech. But let’s set that aside and focus on what the former commander-in-chief believes to be the main military lesson of the Ukraine War. Driven by the need to survive on the battlefield, Zaluzhny argues, Ukrainian forces have invented and applied new technologies while adapting their structure and tactics to them. For him, this war therefore marks a transition, starting and foreshadowing decisive future developments. In particular – and this is a key phrase in his sales pitch – these technologies are supposed to offer a way to “fight and win against stronger armies in the 21st century.” (By “stronger,” the general here clearly must mean “larger,” because if he literally meant “stronger” – as in also technologically stronger – his statement would be self-contradictory and absurd.)
Now compare this with what the new chief of the UK General Staff, General Ronald Walker had to say at the same RUSI Land Warfare Conference. Walker also delivered a stern warning about a dangerous world out there, i.e. Russia and China, and promised to triple the effectiveness (“lethality”) of British forces within a few years, without asking for more men. His miracle fix to do so: new technology that, Walker says, will enable his army to defeat much larger forces. See a difference compared to Zaluzhny’s promises? No? Exactly. Once again, the obliging Ukrainian delivered exactly what his Western listeners wanted to hear. By now, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has publicly agreed with Walker. Congrats, General Zaluzhny: bullseye in crowd-pleasing. Yet, once again, there is a less farcical side to Zaluzhny’s somewhat crude opportunism.
In essence, he called on his audience to see Ukraine as a laboratory where the West can develop its future military technology. Ukraine, he admitted, cannot “scale up” its inventions and innovations made in the midst of battle. Yet its Western “partners” – “users” would be a better, more honest term – have the resources needed for such upscaling, “but there is no applied and practical field to test them.” In other words, Ukrainians can keep dying, while the West can field-test new military technologies. And make no mistake: Zaluzhny does not believe that fewer Ukrainians will be needed because the new technologies will replace them. The whole meaning of his labelling the current war merely “transitional” and not yet one of “the future” is to strand Ukraine in the worst of both worlds where, as he admits, “the only way out may be to increase the number of human resources involved in hostilities.”
And there you have it. Ukraine’s real future, according to Zaluzhny, is one where more Ukrainians will be fed into the meatgrinder of a losing war, but on the upside, the meatgrinder will be constantly modernized and updated with the newest ways of killing and dying, compliments of the West. It is one thing that this fantasy of a forever war as a forever laboratory will not come to pass. It is another that it is the real message – if you pay attention – of Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief and current ambassador in London, and future who-knows-what, when speaking to an elite Western audience. One of Ukraine’s tragedies is being abused by the West; the other being betrayed by its own leaders.
“Ursula von der Leyen is making Europe poorer, less independent and more dangerous. Much more dangerous.”
• Von der Leyen’s Legacy (Dionísio)
The mainstream political class of the European Union, and its member states, has predictably ended up prolonging the agony, decadence and subservience of European affairs to U.S. interests. And now, for another five years, we will have to live, again, with Ursula von der Leyen. Moreover, in the future, we will all remember her speeches on “value chain security”, in which Ursula’s great merit was to further reinforce the world’s dependence on Chinese value chains, demonstrating that, contrary to what she announces with as much anger as hatred, her tariffs, sanctions and conditioning cause us as much pain as they relieve the others. In the EU, in 10 years we will have given up the largest reserve of mineral, food, energy and raw materials in the world and, unless an uprising begins, we will also have given up the largest consumer market on the planet and the one that will grow the most in the coming years. These are von der Leyen’s great merits!
Given this record, you might think that the next five years would see a reversal of course. But no. Ursula von der Leyen will continue to infight against the EU’s own peoples, telling them one thing and doing the opposite, and one of the areas in which we can see, without any reservations whatsoever, that the European Union – this European Union – has given up on its indigenous peoples, is in relation to what is currently one of the main sources of social tension: immigration. Classifying the current situation of the European labor market as being affected by serious “labor shortages”, the European Commission’s communication, entitled “Strengthening the social dialogue in the European Union: harnessing its full potential to manage just transitions”, is clear about von der Leyen’s intentions in this regard.
Don’t let that the apparently rational discourse fool you: “strengthening the social dialogue” should be read as “guaranteeing social peace in the face of measures that will further squeeze wages and living conditions”; “harnessing its full potential” should be read as “increasing the reserve army of labor to contain wage growth”; and “managing fair transitions” should be read as “ensuring that everyone will be forced to adopt the EU’s economic and social model, without reservation”. As always, by wrapping her draconian intentions in occasional discursive flourishes, Ursula von der Leyen is making Europe poorer, less independent and more dangerous. Much more dangerous. Every time she opens her mouth, it’s best to interpret her words as having a hidden meaning, which is often the opposite of what she actually said.
On the road to increasing the exploitation of Europe’s peoples, the European Commission rightly begins by noting the demographic changes that have taken place in recent decades. Europeans are simply having fewer children. The result is that the native European working population has been shrinking and the forecast is that, today, being around 265 million workers, in 2040 this figure will be around 250 million and in 2050, 240 million. In other words, a reduction of one million per year. Faced with a problem of this magnitude, the long-term consequences of which will not only be the reduction of native peoples, but also the emergence of vast deserted and unused areas, the perishing of certain cultures and traditions, would require an in-depth study and measures capable of reversing the trend of population decline and falling fertility and birth rates.
“The Ursulas announced that, in their opinion, the sovereigntist faction — largely created by Viktor Orbán— is far-right and, as such, anti-Europe, anti-progress and anti-humanity, and therefore should be quarantined, isolated and suffocated..”
• To Hell With The Will Of The People (RMX)
The globalist left is increasingly unscrupulous in its disregard for the voters’ choice. The third-strongest faction, the Patriots for Europe, will not have a single official in the European Parliament. It won’t happen, because the globalist-Jacobin majority —which, for the sake of simplicity, is mostly called “the left” — is violating all written rules and customary law and ignoring the will of the people and has now prevented it. The Ursulas announced that, in their opinion, the sovereigntist faction — largely created by Viktor Orbán— is far-right and, as such, anti-Europe, anti-progress and anti-humanity, and therefore should be quarantined, isolated and suffocated. There is no talk of their deportation yet, but based on the dynamics of events, this may even happen in a few years. So the Patriots get nothing, let alone positions — perhaps even eventually a few bullets, like Fico and Trump. This is how people’s representation “works” for the champions of democracy in Brussels.
In fact, one of the pillars of Ursula von der Leyen’s forthcoming five-year EU commission presidency will be to break down resistance to the imperialism of the EU, to remove the veto of small states, especially the meddling Hungary. If there is no veto, everyone will do what the big ones want. In other words: “Shut up!” Now, imagine for a moment that in the Hungarian parliament, opposition parties could not nominate vice-presidents to head the House, could not have committee chairs and vice-chairs. Obviously, the problem is with the Hungarian conception of democracy, but in this country such a thing has not even been thought of — neither during the period of left-wing nor right-wing governments did anyone think of such a despicable act, such disregard for the will of the electorate. But Brussels has done so without scruples. They take part in this disgusting act and in the meantime, act as if nothing had happened, as they continue lecturing us about democracy, the rule of law, checks and balances.
Where is the respect for the will of the voters? The rule of the people? The principle of popular sovereignty? Of course, we Hungarians have a dictatorship on the rampage, where even with a two-thirds majority from Fidesz, there is always an opposition leader (this time Zoltán Sas, a Jobbik member of the National Security Committee), not to mention the opposition deputy speakers of the National Assembly and many other officials. So goes the trampling of voters by the European People’s Party (EPP). In order to give the globalists a majority, Manfred Weber, with the spine of a snail, has teamed up with the Bolsheviks — as if he had just been ordered to do so by text message. He lured the more naive right-wingers to his side with blatant lies and nationalist promises, only to be swept away by the left’s agenda.
Even though his voters are fed up with illegal migrants, Weber and his crew do not care — with their approval they will continue to fly and ship millions of Africans and Asians into the continent because the population replacement must continue. Weber is like a hijacker: He has hijacked the right-wing vote. If I say that this figure is a fraud, a scoundrel traitor, a moral lunatic, I am certainly putting it too mildly.
Think she’s already taking over?
• Netanyahu Angry After Meeting With Vice President Harris (ZH)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was angered by Vice President Kamala Harris’ on-camera statement following their Thursday meeting, and he now says the words threaten to sabotage any potential peace deal with Hamas. Diplomats speaking with Axios said Netanyahu’s criticism stems from Harris speaking as if a ceasefire and hostage exchange would mark the final end of the war in Gaza, whereas Israel’s position has all along been that counter-Hamas operations could resume even if a hostage deal is reached. Following the Harris-Netanyahu meeting which lasted about 40 minutes, the Vice President said “It is time for this war to end in a way where Israel is secure, all the hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity and self determination.”
She added: “And as I just told Prime Minister Netanyahu it is time to get this deal done. Let’s get the deal done. So we can get a ceasefire to end the war. Let’s bring the hostages home. And let’s provide much needed relief to the Palestinian people.” Israeli officials told Axios that the Biden meeting was much more constructive than the one with Harris, but that they were “caught off guard” by Harris’ follow-up statement: “The Israeli officials said Netanyahu and his team were caught off guard by Harris’ on-camera statement and taken aback by its tone, which they said sounded much more critical than Biden’s. “Harris’ statement after the meeting was much more critical than what she told Netanyahu in the meeting,” one Israeli official claimed. According to more, “The Israeli official also said Netanyahu was unhappy with the fact that Harris criticized Israel publicly for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and for killing civilians, especially at the current timing amid the hostage deal negotiations.”
BREAKING: VP Harris speaks after meeting with Israeli PM Netanyahu
Harris calling for an immediate cease-fire deal to free the hostages.
The VP saying she “will not be silent" about the suffering in Gaza, the "devastating" loss of life and the "dire" humanitarian crisis. pic.twitter.com/Fe5QPoOuFh
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) July 25, 2024
But an aide to the vice president said he has no idea what the Israeli side is talking about and emphasized the private meeting between Harris and Netanyahu was “serious and collegial.” So for now, it appears Netanyahu is ready to blame lack of progress in a ceasefire on VP Harris, and the current chaos of American politics after Biden bowed out of the presidential race. Israeli officials have tried to push a narrative that says a truce deal is impossible if there is any daylight in messaging between Washington and Tel Aviv. But what Israel wants is a perpetual ‘blank check’ from the US taxpayer (akin to Ukraine’s Zelensky), and makes a lot of noise and complains bitterly in any instance where US leadership is not 100% on board, or issues some degree of criticism of Israeli military action.
“Now compare China’s diplomatic coup with the US Congress giving 58 standing ovations to Israel’s psychopath-in-chief peddling the notion of genocide as a wellness treatment…
• China Throws Clout Behind Palestine (Pepe Escobar)
The Beijing Declaration, signed earlier this week, constitutes yet another stunning Chinese diplomatic coup, but the document goes far beyond affirming China’s pull. The gathering of representatives of 14 Palestinian factions to commit to full reconciliation showed the entire world that the road to solving intractable geopolitical problems is no longer unilateral: it is multipolar, multi-nodal, and features BRICS/Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member China as an inescapable leader. The concept of China as a peacemaking superpower is now so established that after the Iran–Saudi Arabia rapprochement and the signing of the Beijing Declaration, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba chose to tell his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing that Kiev is now finally ready to negotiate the end of the NATO–Russia proxy war in Ukraine. Palestinians who came to Beijing were beaming. For Fatah Vice Chairman Mahmoud al-Aloul, “China is a light. China’s efforts are rare on the international stage.”
Hamas spokesman Hussam Badran said the Palestinian resistance movement accepted the Chinese invitation “with a positive spirit and patriotic responsibility.” All Palestinian factions have reached a consensus on “Palestinian demands to end the war,” adding that the “most important” part of the declaration is to form a government that builds Palestinian national consensus to “manage the affairs of the people of Gaza and the West Bank, oversee reconstruction, and create conditions for elections.” Wang Yi cut to the chase: the Palestinian issue, says the Chinese foreign minister, is at the core of everything in West Asia. He emphasized that Beijing … has never had any selfish interests in the Palestinian issue. China is one of the first countries to recognize the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] and the State of Palestine and has always firmly supported the Palestinian people in restoring their legitimate national rights. What we value is morality and what we advocate is justice.
What Wang did not say – and didn’t need to – is that this position is the overwhelming BRICS+ position, shared by the Global Majority, including, crucially, all Muslim countries. It’s all in a name – everyone in the foreseeable future will note this is the “Beijing” declaration unequivocally supporting One Palestine. No wonder all political factions had to rise to the occasion, committing to support an independent Palestinian government with executive powers over Gaza and the occupied West Bank. But there’s a catch: this will take place immediately after the war, which the regime in Tel Aviv wants to prolong indefinitely. What Wang Yi left somewhat implicit is that China’s consistent historical position supporting Palestine may be a decisive factor in helping future Palestinian governance institutions. Beijing is proposing three steps to get there:
First, a “comprehensive, lasting and sustainable” ceasefire in Gaza as soon as possible, and “access to humanitarian aid and rescue on the ground.” Second, “joint efforts” – assuming western involvement – toward “post-conflict governance of Gaza under the principle of ‘Palestinians governing Palestine.’” An urgent priority is restarting reconstruction “as soon as possible.” Beijing stresses that “the international community needs to support Palestinian factions in establishing an interim national consensus government and realize effective management of Gaza and the West Bank.” Third, help Palestine “to become a full member state of the UN” and implement the two-state solution. Beijing maintains that “it is important to support the convening of a broad-based, more authoritative, and more effective international peace conference to work out a timetable and road map for the two-state solution.”
For all the lofty aims, especially when it is patently clear that Israel has de facto buried the two-state solution – as witnessed in the Knesset’s recent vote to reject any Palestinian state – at least China is directly proposing what the Global Majority unanimously considers as a fair outcome. Also important to note is the presence of diplomats from China’s fellow BRICS members Russia, South Africa, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, alongside diplomats from Algeria, Qatar, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Turkiye at the signing of the declaration. Now compare China’s diplomatic coup with the US Congress giving 58 standing ovations to Israel’s psychopath-in-chief peddling the notion of genocide as a wellness treatment. Bibi Netanyahu’s hero’s welcome in Washington takes the notion of collective psychopathology to new heights. And yet complicity in the Gaza genocide is not exactly an exception to the rule when it comes to American political leadership.
That’s gotta hurt a little bit.
• Russian Central Bank Hikes Interest Rate To 18% (RT)
The Bank of Russia has raised its key interest rate from 16% to 18%, citing inflationary pressures. Domestic demand continues to exceed the economy’s capacity to produce goods and services to meet it, the regulator said in a statement on Friday. Inflation has accelerated and is running substantially above the bank’s April forecast, the statement added. The Bank of Russia has “substantially revised” its projection, predicting an overall rate of 6.5-7.0% in the current year. Inflation in June stood at 8.6%, more than a double the government target of 4%. If the interest rate had not been raised, Russia would have risked lurching into stagflation, central bank chief Elvira Nabiullina said at a press conference following the announcement. The term refers to the combination of slow economic growth, high inflation, and high unemployment.
The key rate will remain high “for as long as necessary” to bring inflation down to the government target of 4%, Nabiullina stated. A further tightening of monetary policy may be necessary, she added. The central bank said the latest rate hike will help bring inflation down to 4.0-4.5% in 2025.The Bank of Russia previously raised the key interest rate in December. A 100 basis points increase to 16% per annum was the fifth hike in a row since the summer of 2023, when the basis was at 7.5%. The central bank also cited economic indicators from the second quarter of this year as showing that the Russian economy continues rapid growth. Consumer activity remains high against the backdrop of significant growth in household incomes and consumer confidence, the regulator said. Russia’s GDP grew 3.6% in 2023 compared to the previous year. In April, the International Monetary Fund projected 3.2% growth for the country’s economy for 2024. The Bank of Russia will hold its next key rate review meeting in September.
Cow rope
https://twitter.com/i/status/1816692420752605399
Beware
https://twitter.com/i/status/1816754521940410795
Beethoven
I wonder how Beethoven did this …
Simply magnificent!pic.twitter.com/DbHOxq2Rzn
— Figen (@TheFigen_) July 25, 2024
Eagle crow
This video will change your life: pic.twitter.com/kB61XmC8Hs
— Deep Money Wisdom (@DeepMoneyWisdom) July 25, 2024
Blue whale
https://twitter.com/i/status/1816697594707411345
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