aid renewal Archives - The Automatic Earth

Edgar Degas Two laundresses 1876

• Here’s Russia’s Plan For Ukraine For This Summer (Poletaev)

• US Has ‘No Viable Plan’ for Ukraine – J.D. Vance (RT)

• No ‘Great Counteroffensive,’ Ukraine on Brink of Collapse – Scott Ritter (Sp.)

• Zelensky Could End Ukraine’s Viability as Country With Mobilization Law (Sp.)

• West Gets ‘Fantastic Value’ out of Ukraine – Boris Johnson (RT)

• Trump Offers Conditions For Ukraine Aid Renewal (RT)

• Taxpayers Heavily Subsidize Democrat Boots on the Ground This Election (RCW)

• 16 GOP Attorneys General Challenge Garland’s Comments on Voting Laws (ET)

• Democrats Used Campaign Funds To Pay Biden’s Lawyers (RT)

• The Beauty Parlor’s Full of Sailors and the Circus is in Town (Kunstler)

• UN Climate Chief Says Humans Have 2 Years Left ‘To Save The World’ (AP)

• The Great Dispossession Part 1 (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Requiem for The New York Times (Chris Hedges)

• Deep State versus Julian Assange (Hayes)

Trump Johnson

SPEAKER JOHNSON: "Every state is a border state…Election integrity is tied to the border. President Biden has created a catastrophe and he did it by design. We documented 64 Executive Actions that he took from the day he walked into the Oval Office…to open the border wide." pic.twitter.com/UDNVnx0TT1

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) April 12, 2024

JUST IN: Immediately after Speaker Johnson introduces legislation that would require people to prove they're a US citizen in order to vote, the propaganda media rushes to cover for the Dem party.

"Trump and Mike Johnson zero in on noncitizen voting. It’s already illegal and very… pic.twitter.com/y9sm1gRyr4

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 12, 2024

Bragg

TRUMP: “It’s very unfair I’m having a trial there. It’s very unfair you have a judge that hates Trump. It’s tremendous conflict. It’s a witch hunt. All I can do is tell the truth. They have no case.” pic.twitter.com/OHVULo1pB9

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) April 12, 2024

Mike McCormick

JUST IN – Former Obama White House stenographer Mike McCormick, who worked closely with the then-Vice President Joe Biden and recorded many of his interactions, is now calling for Joe Biden to be “impeached and imprisoned” for his crimes in Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/izJ9e8hru5

— Wendy Rogers (@WendyRogersAZ) April 12, 2024

Stefanik

Looks like Crossfire Hurricane # 2 is in the works pic.twitter.com/I2KyAxABY9

— George Papadopoulos (@GeorgePapa19) April 11, 2024

Lukashenko
https://twitter.com/i/status/1778783407838732765

Biden 1988

Joe Biden drops out of Presidential Race 1987- 1988…because of plagiarism and over exaggerated academic records pic.twitter.com/eRengh0dGn

— illuminatibot (@iluminatibot) April 12, 2024

FISA

My team and I were searching for this story all morning and finally found it. It's been memory-holed unless you know the exact number of times the FBI abused FISA in 2021: 278,000 times.

**THAT'S THE EQUIVALENT OF 8 TIMES PER FBI EMPLOYEE**

Here is the video. pic.twitter.com/06kS50EI3k

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) April 12, 2024

Roseanne
https://twitter.com/i/status/1778792376758120895

Gina Carano
https://twitter.com/i/status/1778935173729362355

No hurry.

• Here’s Russia’s Plan For Ukraine For This Summer (Poletaev)

From time to time, people ask why Russia is not acting more decisively in Ukraine, and why it appears to be dragging its feet. Some say it’s out of weakness, others suspect some secret agreements with the West, and it seems there are theories to suit all tastes. In reality, the answer is clear and transparent. This year and the next, Russia has budgeted about 5-6% of GDP on the Ukraine conflict, and the Kremlin’s task is to use these comparatively small resources as efficiently as possible. They intention is to achieve the goals of the military operation without a new mobilization, and to preserve not only a calm and functioning economy but also stability inside the country. Although the front line has remained largely static since autumn 2022, the political situation and the circumstances in which the conflict will likely end are changing radically – in Russia’s favor.

With little risk and at relatively small financial expense, President Vladimir Putin is slowly but surely getting his way. There is increasing talk of an imminent Russian offensive. As with the Ukrainian ‘counteroffensive’ a year ago, commentators claim to know exactly where it will take place (towards Kharkov or Sumy), when it will happen (in May or June), and are sure in advance that it will be decisive for the whole conflict, and so on. But it seems to us that the Kremlin does not want a big march on Ukraine’s second city this summer, and here is why. Firstly, there is a lack of experience. We are talking about an operation on the scale of the Eastern Front in the Second World War, and such endeavors have never been carried out during the current campaign. (February 22, 2022 doesn’t count, because the enemy wasn’t fully mobilized, and the front line didn’t really exist so there was no need to break through anything.)

In any conflict, the scale required for offensive battles increases steadily, and the appropriate tools, strategic and tactical techniques, officer and staff corps need to be formed. The leap required to go from a five-month operation to take Avdeevka to a rapid and successful occupation of Kharkov or Sumy seems unfathomable. Also, the forces and means required are not yet in place. Yes, we have reserves of about 150,000-170,000 people. Yes, more people are signing up for military service every month than Ukraine is catching in taverns and on the streets, which means that the numbers are still growing. But a mass of soldiers is not an army. They need to be armed, equipped, trained, provided with experienced officers, staff capacity, equipment, shells, aircraft, and other things.

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has said that the formation of two new general armies will be completed by the end of 2024. So the Russian Armed Forces will only reach their peak form in eight to nine months, and then the conditions for opening a second front should be apparent. But what about this summer? Unless the Ukrainian front suddenly collapses, we are likely to see a slow and measured advance, with a fight for every field and village, combined with simultaneous air strikes deep inside the front and on the Ukrainian rear. Despite increasingly sophisticated Ukrainian counterattacks, such a scenario will exhaust the enemy much faster than it exhausts us, which means that by the end of the year, or into next summer, the balance of forces will have shifted even more in our favor. In any case, this is the calculation of our general staff.

“Ukraine’s challenge is not the GOP; it’s math..”

• US Has ‘No Viable Plan’ for Ukraine – J.D. Vance (RT)

Kiev cannot win against Moscow because it has run out of men and needs more weapons and ammunition than Washington could possibly provide, US Senator said on Friday. Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer argued that “the biggest reason Ukraine is losing the war is because the hard-right in the Congress has paralyzed the US from acting.” The New York Democrat claimed that a small group of Republicans have been holding up a vital $60 billion aid package for Kiev. In an op-ed published by the New York Times, Vance addressed Schumer’s claim and accused President Joe Biden of having “failed to articulate even basic facts” about what Ukraine needs and the reality on the ground. “The Biden administration has no viable plan for the Ukrainians to win this war,” Vance argued.

“Ukraine’s challenge is not the GOP; it’s math,” the Ohio Republican wrote. “Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field, even with draconian conscription policies. And it needs more matériel than the United States can provide.” Not only is $60 billion a fraction of what Ukraine would need to turn the tide, Americans “lack the capacity to manufacture the amount of weapons Ukraine needs us to supply to win the war,” Vance argued. He pointed to the fact that the US can make 360,000 shells for 155mm artillery per year, “less than a tenth of what Ukraine says it needs,” and that’s after doubling prewar production capacity. Vance also took aim at the White House’s messaging that funding Kiev is good for US military industry.

“The notion that we should prolong a bloody and gruesome war because it’s been good for American business is grotesque. We can and should rebuild our industrial base without shipping its products to a foreign conflict,” he wrote. The US insistence on not negotiating with Russia is “absurd” and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s goal of restoring Ukraine’s 1991 borders is “fantastical,” Vance added. He urged Kiev to dig in and hold until some kind of peace can be brokered by Washington. Earlier this week, however, Zelensky said Ukraine was planning yet another counteroffensive – after the costly failure of last summer’s operation – but needed even more weapons and ammunition from the West.

“There will be no “great Ukrainian counteroffensive,” as Russia has entirely “changed the game” on the battlefield..”

• No ‘Great Counteroffensive,’ Ukraine on Brink of Collapse – Scott Ritter (Sp.)

There will be no “great Ukrainian counteroffensive,” as Russia has entirely “changed the game” on the battlefield, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter told Sputnik. The promises that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky dangles before his Western patrons in an effort to wangle more aid from them are just empty promises, the retired US Marine Corps intelligence officer said. He likened the two opposing sides in NATO’s ongoing proxy war against Russia in Ukraine to two “Jenga blocks.” “What is going on between Russia and Ukraine today is that Russia is making Ukraine lose ‘Jenga blocks’ at a rate far greater than NATO can replace them. Ukraine’s Jenga block structure is becoming weak, and may collapse at any moment,” he said.

Accordingly, Zelensky is appealing to Europe and the United States, begging for more “Jenga blocks”: air defense, tanks, artillery, artillery shells, “because his structure is on the verge of collapsing,” Ritter noted. Russia, on the other hand, is building walls of protection around its “Jenga blocks,” the analyst underscored. “Russia is very strong, sturdy, and is in no danger of collapsing. Ukraine is teetering on the brink of collapse. Not just militarily, but also economically, politically. Russia has taken apart the Kiev regime’s energy infrastructure, which spells an imminent collapse of the defense industries,” the expert said. The Russian Armed Forces have been conducting massive precision strikes using long-range air and sea-based weapons, as well as unmanned aerial vehicles, on fuel and energy infrastructure in Ukraine. The Russian Defense Ministry reported on Thursday that the strikes were in response to attempts by the Kiev regime to damage Russian oil and gas industry and energy facilities.

“Politically speaking, the world is tired of the Ukrainian conflict, tired of a nation that begs for more and more, but cannot produce any positive outcomes on the battlefield,” Scott Ritter emphasized. He added that the Ukrainian “Jenga block” structure is “about to collapse, and that is going to happen sooner rather than later.” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky told the German tabloid Bild on Tuesday that Kiev had already come up with a plan for a new counteroffensive against Russian forces, but needs more advanced Western weapons. The much-heralded 2023 offensive started with a delay on June 4 and ended in November 2023 without achieving any of its stated goals, such as reaching the Azov Sea in order to cut “the land bridge” between Crimea and “mainland” Russia. Zelensky’s previous failed counteroffensive plan resulted in the deaths and serious injuries of over 166,000 Ukrainian soldiers, as well as the loss of 789 tanks, 2,400 other armored vehicles, and 132 aircraft.

Russia, on the other hand, proved decisively that its military equipment, tactics, and military-industrial base are no worse than NATO’s, destroying hundreds of modern Western military vehicles, tanks, and artillery systems. A high-ranking source in the Russian Ministry of Defense stated that any new Ukrainian counteroffensive would end in complete disaster for Kiev, with the ultimate defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

“It is a little Banderite, fascist dictatorship.”

• Zelensky Could End Ukraine’s Viability as Country With Mobilization Law (Sp.)

On Thursday, Ukraine’s parliament adopted a new mobilization law, requiring all men aged 18 to 60 to register within 60 days and carry registration documents with them in public. The rules came just weeks after Ukraine lowered its conscription age from 27 to 25. Ukraine is at risk of losing its viability as a nation if it continues to mobilize its male population, as it was already dealing with a massive demographic deficit due to a massive drop in birth rates after the fall of the Soviet Union. “There are a lot more people in the 35-plus age bracket and a much smaller group of people in the younger bracket,” Mark Sleboda, a security and international relations expert told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Thursday. “They’re seriously at such a demographic crisis,” that it has put at risk “the future [and] the viability of Ukraine as a country.”

According to Sleboda, large parts of the bill remain classified, including the number of Ukrainians set to be mobilized. However, 450,000 – 500,000 has been floated by military generals and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a possible goal in recent months. “Figures within the Kiev regime are once again talking about mobilizing women in a separate bill, so that’s come up again,” Sleboda explained, adding that the medical exceptions, including for injuries in combat, have been lowered. “For instance, if you already fought and lost a leg, you’re not exempt anymore. You can still pilot a drone, right? That’s the mentality of the new bill.”

Zelensky also said another $13 billion would be needed to carry out his plan, but money is in short supply for the Kiev regime, and further US aid to Ukraine has been stalled in Congress since last summer. The US ran out of congressionally approved aid late last year. Still, Zelensky has kept his grip on power, preventing any kind of resistance from the Ukrainian people. “You can’t really have protests in the country except for wives and mothers, because any men who show their face in public are instantly sent to the trenches in Kupyansk,” Sleboda explained.

In March 2022, Zelensky banned eleven political parties in Ukraine, which was on top of the parties banned by former President Petro Poroshenko during Ukraine’s so-called “decommunization.” This has left virtually no opposition to Zelensky’s plans, with even some members of the ruling elite complaining that Zelensky has become a dictator. “Even the mayor of Kiev, [former Boxer Vitali Klitschko], and numerous other public figures have said, even though they’re part of the Maidan ruling elite, [they say] ‘we’ve become a dictatorship under Zelensky,’” Sleboda explained. “[We’re] not talking about real opposition, but even other members of the Maidan elite don’t have any power anymore outside of Zelensky.” “We’re not talking about a democratic country as the West presents,” Sleboda said. “It is a little Banderite, fascist dictatorship.”

zel

Zelensky told the Europeans the date when they need to start negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU

According to him, it is better to do this in June. It is in the first month of summer that Europeans will be able to send a signal to Putin that they are not showing… pic.twitter.com/jd8zMHteUP

— Zlatti71 (@Zlatti_71) April 12, 2024

“The theme of the lecture was the superiority of democracy, a political system “by which we kick the bastards out..”

• West Gets ‘Fantastic Value’ out of Ukraine – Boris Johnson (RT)

The Ukrainians are fighting the West’s fight with Russia and do not ask for much, so the money and resources put into the country generate “fantastic value,” according to former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The politician, who reportedly personally derailed a nascent peace agreement between Moscow and Kiev in 2022, discussed his policy choices on Thursday with students of Georgetown University, one of the leading breeding grounds of American political elites. The theme of the lecture was the superiority of democracy, a political system “by which we kick the bastards out,” as the Conservative politician phrased it. Johnson himself was forced out in 2022, after a string of scandals and accusations that his government had deceived the British public. Arming Ukraine against Russia is part of the global fight for democracy, he told the students. And the tens of billions of dollars it requires from the West are “a fraction of US annual defense spending.”

Boris Johnson convinces Americans that there is nothing more profitable than fighting Russia with the hands of Ukrainians:

"You're investing, America is investing now to support its annual defense spending. It's a fantastically effective way to support freedom. And by the way,… pic.twitter.com/ceLL4GjqQ0

— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) April 11, 2024

“There could be no more effective way of investing in Western security than investing in Ukraine, because those guys without a single pair of American boots on the ground are fighting for the West,” Johnson said. The Ukrainians “are effectively fighting our own fight, fighting for our own interests.” Early in the conflict, the US and its allies assumed a Russian victory would be swift, and such an outcome “would have been a nightmare,” Johnson suggested, painting Ukraine as a vibrant democracy. ”In Ukrainian elections you don’t know the outcome in advance,” he said. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky declined to hold elections this year, citing the state of martial law. The deadline for Ukrainians to vote in a new leader passed in March, and Zelensky’s term will expire in May.

Johnson went on to claim that “in Ukraine journalists don’t get shot.” However, there have been several high profile incidents of media workers being killed in the country. Journalists Oles Buzina and Pavel Shermet were assassinated in 2015 and 2016 respectively. No one has been brought to trial in either case. The former prime minister also said he was skeptical of claims that Donald Trump intends to pressure Kiev into ceding territory to Moscow, if re-elected as US president. ”Think about what it might mean to a new president to have a triumph for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and the humiliation of the West,” he explained. Trump was the first US leader to send weapons to Ukraine, Johnson recalled, stressing that the Republican’s actions would not necessarily follow his rhetoric.

Why aid renewal if you’re going to solve it in 24 hours?

• Trump Offers Conditions For Ukraine Aid Renewal (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has said he would not be opposed to Congress approving more aid to Ukraine as long as the assistance is given in the form of loans, rather than gifts. He also insisted that European allies must match Washington’s level of assistance to Kiev. Speaking to reporters on Friday alongside US House Speaker Mike Johnson, Trump declared his support for the embattled Republican leader. Asked if he would give his blessing for Ukrainian aid legislation if Johnson brings the bill to a vote, he said, “We’re thinking about making it in the form of a loan, instead of just a gift. We keep handing out gifts of billions and billions of dollars, and we’ll take a look at it.” Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee in this year’s presidential election and is polling ahead of incumbent President Joe Biden.

He first floated the idea of converting Ukraine aid to loans in February, and he has repeatedly claimed that he will end Kiev’s conflict with Moscow within 24 hours by forcing both sides to the negotiating table. Republican lawmakers have been blocking new aid approvals for Ukraine since last fall, arguing that Biden is merely prolonging the bloodshed while offering no strategy for ending the bloodshed. However, Johnson is reportedly ready to let a $60 billion Ukraine funding bill advance to a House vote, despite opposition from a majority of Republicans. With Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Trump ally, threatening to push for a vote to oust Johnson, the speaker traveled to Florida on Friday to meet with the former president.

“It’s not an easy situation for any speaker,” Trump told reporters. “I think he’s doing a very good job. He’s doing about as good as you’re going to do.” He added that if new US assistance for Ukraine is approved, “Europe has to step up, and they have to equalize it. They don’t equalize. I’m very upset about it because they’re affected much more than we are.” Trump repeated his claim that the Russia-Ukraine conflict would have never happened if he were still president. Biden’s incompetence opened the door for both the Ukraine crisis and the Israel-Hamas war, Trump claimed. He added that under his successor’s leadership, “We’re a nation in decline, we’re a declining nation.” Trump also warned that the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel could escalate dramatically even before the US election in November. “A lot of bad things are happening in our country, but that’s the least of it. You’ve got Russia – you could end up in a world war between Russia, Ukraine, and all of the chaos.”

Iran is about to launch a bunch of really expensive missiles, which was made possible thanks to Obama’s employee, Joe Biden, giving Iran $10 billion. Trump is right. The Obama-controlled Biden White House could walk America into a world war.
pic.twitter.com/yVBZYUU5x8

— Charles R Downs (@TheCharlesDowns) April 12, 2024

“There is an overt assault on President Trump and those who wish to vote for him occurring at every level of government and with the support of all major institutions.”

• Taxpayers Heavily Subsidize Democrat Boots on the Ground This Election (RCW)

Progressives are using legal loopholes and the power of the federal government to maximize Democrat votes in the 2024 election at taxpayers’ expense, RealClearInvestigations has found. The methods include voter registration and mobilization campaigns by ostensibly nonpartisan charities that target Democrats using demographic data as proxies, and the Biden administration’s unprecedented demand that every federal agency “consider ways to expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.” A dizzying array of overwhelmingly “democracy-focused” entities with ties to the Democratic Party operating as charities and funded with hundreds of millions of dollars from major liberal “dark money” vehicles are engaged in a sprawling campaign to register the voters, deliver them the ballots, and figuratively and sometimes literally harvest the votes necessary to defeat Donald Trump.

These efforts, now buttressed by the federal government, amplify and extend what Time magazine described as a “well-funded cabal of powerful people ranging across industries and ideologies,” who had worked behind the scenes in 2020 “to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information” to defeat Trump and other Republicans. The “shadow campaigners,” Time declared, “were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.” Heading into 2024, “there is not a ‘shadow’ campaign,” said Mike Howell, executive director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. “There is an overt assault on President Trump and those who wish to vote for him occurring at every level of government and with the support of all major institutions.” By contrast, Republican Party stalwarts lament that no comparable effort exists on their side.

The GOP’s turnout and messaging efforts seek to thread a difficult needle by encouraging early and absentee voting and ballot-harvesting – pandemic-era measures that Trump and supporters blame for his 2020 electoral defeat – while the party simultaneously fights the mainly blue-state laws that made the practices possible. The party’s position is further complicated by its standard-bearer’s warnings of a rigged election bigger than in 2020, which some speculate could turn off moderate swing voters. The IRS permits tax-exempt nonprofit groups to engage in voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives so long as they do not “refer to any candidate or political party” nor conduct their activities “in a biased manner that favors (or opposes) one or more candidates prohibited.” These entities have become magnets for funds not only from wealthy donors, who can contribute without traditional campaign finance limits – and get a tax break to boot – but also abundantly endowed private foundations that are prohibited from engaging in partisan activities.

In recent years, dozens of progressive-oriented 501(c)(3)s, now pulling in upwards of $500 million annually, have engaged in purportedly neutral efforts to impact elections, according to Hayden Ludwig, director of Policy Research at the election integrity-focused advocacy group, Restoration of America. In practice, critics like Ludwig argue, left-leaning charities flout the law by registering and mobilizing demographics that tend to vote disproportionately Democratic behind a veil of non-partisan democracy promotion. During the 2020 election, for example, the Voter Participation Center solicited millions of ballot applications in swing states – many of them prefilled for respondents. This nonprofit, like its peers, is clear that it isn’t targeting just any voters, but what it and progressive activists have dubbed a “New American Majority” of “young people, people of color and unmarried women.”

“..none of these identification requirements are considered ‘discriminatory’ or ‘burdensome.’ Requiring an ID to vote in an election is no different.”

• 16 GOP Attorneys General Challenge Garland’s Comments on Voting Laws (ET)

A group of Republican state attorneys general are pushing back against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s comments made in March at a church in Selma, Alabama, where he discussed using the Department of Justice (DOJ) to interfere in state voting laws. Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, in a letter supported by 15 other GOP prosecutors, including Ken Paxton in Texas and Liz Murrill in Louisiana, stated that Mr. Garland’s comments are “concerning.” “In your speech, you claimed that democracy is under attack by ‘discriminatory, burdensome, and unnecessary restrictions on access to the ballot,’” Mr. Rokita wrote. “In response to these allegations, you announced that you ‘double[d] the number of lawyers in the civil rights division’ and ‘launched the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force,’ signaling your intent to intrude on our states’ authority.”

Mr. Rokita called this a “weaponization of the DOJ” fueled by Mr. Garland’s personal views, which he called a “serious threat to the principles of federalism and separation of powers, but also to democracy and the rule of law.”
In the letter, Mr. Rokita said the U.S. Constitution is clear in its direction to leave state elections up to the elected representatives of those states.“Any subversion of these clear mandates would be undermining our Constitution and law and order,” he wrote. “And we think your remarks undermine these principles in a few ways.” Mr. Garland told the audience at the Tabernacle Baptist Church that his DOJ is challenging state laws that he said are placing unneeded restrictions on black voters. He said black voters are disenfranchised by these restrictions on mail-in voting, the use of drop boxes, and voter ID. “That is why we are working to block the adoption of discriminatory redistricting plans that dilute the vote of Black voters and other voters of color,” Mr. Garland said.

“We are holding accountable jurisdictions that fail to provide accessible vote centers for voters with disabilities. We are defending the ability of private individuals—not just the government—to bring lawsuits under the key provisions of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Mr. Rokita addressed Mr. Garland’s statement on voter ID laws, stating that contrary to Mr. Garland’s claiming they are discriminatory, they prohibit voter fraud, which he called “very real,” and referenced several occurrences. “With these repeated instances of voter fraud, the DOJ should be championing these laws and encouraging enforcement of them,” Mr. Rokita said. “Individuals are required to use an ID to prove identity when driving a car, boarding an airline, buying cigarettes, or purchasing alcohol, and none of these identification requirements are considered ‘discriminatory’ or ‘burdensome.’ Requiring an ID to vote in an election is no different.”

Biden legal fees: $1.5 million.
Trump legal fees: $100 million and counting.

• Democrats Used Campaign Funds To Pay Biden’s Lawyers (RT)

The Democratic Party has reportedly diverted political donations to help cover legal costs incurred by Joe Biden while he was being investigated for mishandling state secrets – even as the US president’s reelection campaign condemned rival Donald Trump for the same tactic. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) paid more than $1.5 million to lawyers or firms representing Biden, Axios reported on Friday, citing campaign finance records and unidentified people familiar with the matter. The payments were made between July 2023 and February 2024, as US Department of Justice (DOJ) special counsel Robert Hur was investigating Biden’s handling of classified documents that he illegally retained after completing his two terms as vice president. Even as those payments were made, the Biden campaign ramped up its criticism of former US President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee in this year’s election, for using political donations to pay his lawyers.

Trump has reportedly incurred more than $100 million in legal fees while defending himself against 91 charges in four separate criminal cases, including two indictments brought by Biden’s DOJ. Biden’s backers have mocked Trump for soliciting donations to pay his lawyers. Just last month, DNC executive director Sam Cornale warned that the Republican National Committee (RNC) might start covering Trump’s legal fees after installing new leadership. “Pledging to spend the RNC’s non-existent war chest on Trump’s legal bills is not a good pitch to donors, who are already refusing to donate,” Cornale said. Last weekend, Biden campaign finance chief Rufus Gifford told MSNBC that “every single dime” given by donors was being used to get the president’s message out to voters. “We are not spending money on legal bills,” he said. “We are not hawking gold sneakers or any of that stuff.”

Confronted by Axios over the use of donations to pay Biden’s lawyers, DNC spokesman Alex Floyd said, “There is no comparison. The DNC does not spend a single penny of grassroots donors’ money on legal bills, unlike Donald Trump, who actively solicits legal fees from his supporters and has drawn down every bank account he can get his hands on, like a personal piggy bank.” Hur issued a report on his investigation in February, saying Biden had “willfully retained and disclosed” state secrets after leaving office as vice president in 2017. However, the special counsel didn’t recommend indicting Biden. He said it would be difficult to prove Biden’s intent to a jury because the 81-year-old president came across in interviews as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

“Joe Biden” keeps hinting about sending America’s tranny army there, and even gearing up the military draft for the nose-ring and blue hair generation..”

• The Beauty Parlor’s Full of Sailors and the Circus is in Town (Kunstler)

This is that part of the movie where the hero — you — tumbles off the cliff on Kong Island in a lightning storm with a canyon full of tarantulas down below where you’ll soon be landing. I know, not a pretty picture. The cliff is our country’s financial quandary; the lightning is us getting sucked directly into war; and the tarantula pit below is the emerging peril of Covid vaccine injury and death coming on hard, like your landing. Gold and silver are vaulting up suddenly like nobody’s business (literally). This may be fun to see if you are sitting on a pile, even a small pile of the stuff. But to everybody else it’s a signal that something is messed up in the complex engine of the economy. You know, of course, that our money is debt. So, debt is the fuel that drives that engine. Debt is a promise to pay back money with interest to take advantage of the time-value of money. The time-value of money means it’s better to have the money now (to keep the engine running) than to wait until your work produces money (if it even can).

The trouble is, debt loses its credibility if there is no plausible way of paying it back, or even just to keep paying the interest. That’s exactly what is happening now. Everybody can see that the US government can’t pay the interest on its debt, which is Treasury bonds, notes, and bills (from long duration to short). That debt is running at well over $1-trillion a year. That’s a thousand billion, which is a thousand million, altogether a million million. See, it’s impossible to grok how more than a trillion dollars gets produced in an economy based on selling fried chicken nuggets and streamed movies to people with no jobs.

When the Treasury holds an auction on a new issue of bonds (needed to pay off the interest on old bonds) and nobody shows up to buy because they doubt its ability to pay interest on the new paper, our country’s debt becomes worthless. As a last resort, the Federal Reserve swoops in and buys that worthless paper by creating “money” on its computer. That “money” goes out into the economy. The Fed pretends to get paid interest. It’s all fakery, a swindle. It’s like putting water in the gas tank of your engine. You know that the engine is going to throw a rod. When it does, it’ll be such a shock that the vehicle it’s running in is liable to hit a bridge abutment or something else hard. That’s what tumbling off the cliff is like.

The dopes running US foreign policy are so foolishly obsessed with taunting Russia (“poking the bear”), that they can’t give up their sponsorship of the war in Ukraine, which Ukraine is losing because they never had the mojo for the fight. That should have been obvious, but for some reason our “best-and-brightest” overlooked that. No amount of free weaponry and ammo can make up for the fact that Ukraine has run out of young men to pointlessly get shredded by Russian artillery. Russia is unwilling to get rolled by NATO and the US in a part of the world Russia has controlled for centuries. Yet, “Joe Biden” keeps hinting about sending America’s tranny army there, and even gearing up the military draft for the nose-ring and blue hair generation. Good luck with that.

Jim Rickards: “What a fraud. They’ve been saying that for 40 years and they’ve been wrong all along. He also asked for $2.4 Trillion from developed countries. No surprise there. Let’s just call a scam a scam.”

• UN Climate Chief Says Humans Have 2 Years Left ‘To Save The World’ (AP)

Humanity has only two years left “to save the world” by making dramatic changes in the way it spews heat-trapping emissions and it has even less time to act to get the finances behind such a massive shift, the head of the United Nations climate agency said. With governments of the world facing a 2025 deadline for new and stronger plans to curb carbon pollution, nearly half of the world’s populations voting in elections this year, and crucial global finance meetings later this month in Washington, United Nations executive climate secretary Simon Stiell said Wednesday he knows his warning may sound melodramatic. But he said action over the next two years is “essential.” “We still have a chance to make greenhouse gas emissions tumble, with a new generation of national climate plans.

But we need these stronger plans, now,” Stiell said in a speech at the Chatham House think tank in London. He suggested that climate action is not just for powerful people to address — in a not-so-veiled reference to the electoral calendar this year. “Who exactly has two years to save the world? The answer is every person on this planet,” Stiell said. “More and more people want climate action right across societies and political spectrums, in large part because they are feeling the impacts of the climate crisis in their everyday lives and their household budgets.” [..] Stiell’s speech comes just ahead of meetings of The World Bank and other big multinational development institutions, where poorer nations, led by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley and Kenyan President William Ruto, are pushing for major reforms in the systems that loan money to poor nations, especially those hit by climate-related disasters.

In conjunction with that push, Stiell called for “a quantum leap this year in climate finance.” He called for debt relief for the countries that need it the most, saying they are spending $400 billion on debt financing instead of preparing for and preventing future climate change. He called for more financial aid, not just loans, and more money from different groups like banks, the International Maritime Organization, and the G20, the world’s 20 most powerful economies. Those countries are responsible for 80% of the world’s heat-trapping emissions, he said. “G20 leadership must be at the core of the solution, as it was during the great financial crisis,” Stiell said.

“Our bank deposits and stocks and bonds, in the event the depository institution gets into trouble, belong to the depository institution’s creditors, not to us..”

• The Great Dispossession Part 1 (Paul Craig Roberts)

Some definitions: an “account holder” is you, your IRA, your pension plan, your stock and bond investments held at an “account provider” or “intermediary” or “depository institution” such as Merrill Lynch, Schwab, Wells Fargo. An “entitlement holder” is the definition of you whose ownership claim to your financial assets has been subordinated to the claims of “secured creditors” of the institution where you have your accounts. Please do understand that the dispossession of which I write is your dispossession. Klaus Schwab tells us that in the Great Reset that the World Economic Forum is preparing for us “you will own nothing and you will be happy.” Well, we already own nothing. Our bank deposits and stocks and bonds, in the event the depository institution gets into trouble, belong to the depository institution’s creditors, not to us. All assets are pooled and serve as collateral whether or not labeled “segregated.” You might remember that during the last financial crisis we were told that there would be no more bail-outs, that in the future there would be bail-ins.

A bail-out is when central bank money creation rescues the favored troubled financial institutions. A bail-in is when the depositors’ assets are used for the rescues. David Rogers Webb, an experienced financial market participant, explains it in The Great Taking in 72 readable pages plus a 25 page prologue explaining who he is and a 20 page reply of the New York Fed to the European Commission Legal Certainty Group’s questions. The Great Taking is available from Lulu for $10 and is free online: https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/1ee786fb-3c78-4903-9701-d614892d09d6/taking-feb24-screen2.pdf. The loss of property rights in financial assets is the case throughout the Western world. The rewrite of financial property rights appears to be the work of regulatory bodies, not legislatures which seem to be unaware of it. No, it is not a conspiracy theory. Regulatory authorities have made legal changes of which financial market participants are unaware. Webb’s purpose is to bring awareness, which is why he has made his book freely available.

As a result of these changes, which appear to have been made by financial regulatory authorities rather than by elected legislatures, individuals no longer have property rights in “their” securities. “Owners” now have “entitlement rights,” which means that they have pro-rata rights to whatever securities remain in the depository institution after secured creditors’ claims are met. In actual fact, “your” securities and your bank deposits are no longer recognized in law as your personal property if the depository institution–the bank or, for example, Merrill Lynch–becomes financially troubled. Your “ownership” is encumbered as collateral for secured creditors who are the owners in fact. Apparently, this was done by regulatory authorities as underpinning for the derivatives complex, which is many magnitudes greater than world GNP, or perhaps derivative exposure served as an excuse for setting up the Great Reset in which “you will own nothing.” Indeed, individual banks among the world’s largest have derivative exposure the size of world GDP.

You might wonder why regulatory authorities permitted something so dangerous and irresponsible to occur. To state the bottom line in another way, “your” securities serve as collateral for the creditors of depository institutions. Your right to “your” property terminates the minute the depository institution gets in financial trouble. Communications between the New York Federal Reserve Bank and the European Commission Legal Certainty Group and the court case resulting from the failure of Lehman Brothers have established legal certainty that secured creditors are empowered to immediately take client assets in the event of a failure in the custodian. National central depositories of securities (all are now pooled, none held under the “owner’s” name or segregated) are now established and are linked to the international depository so that securities can instantly be delivered world wide to meet secured creditors’ claims. Essentially, the mega-banks are “privileged creditors.”

You might think that your money and your stocks and bonds would be safe if you use as your depository one of the “banks too big to fail.” You would be mistaken. The Federal Reserve permits the large banks to create subsidiaries that hold deposits, and the Federal Reserve permits the large banks to transfer their derivatives to these same subsidiaries. In this way, the bank itself remains afloat. Only its subsidiaries holding your money and securities are wiped out in the event of a crash. At the risk of over-promising, as even for a person of my education and experience getting one’s mind around the enormity of what has been put in place is a challenge, I hope for this article, which you have just read, to be part 1 in a 3-part series, with the second part being an outline of the regulatory changes that stole our financial property rights, and the third part being the implications of the Federal Reserve’s raising of interest rates after 15 years of near zero rates, thus shredding the value of financial assets held in portfolios. We face the prospect of the worst financial crisis in history “solved” with the introduction of digital money that places total control into the hands of political power and its masters.

“On the front page of the program of the memorial, the year of his death is incorrect — emblematic of the sloppiness of a newspaper that is riddled with typos and errors..”

• Requiem for The New York Times (Chris Hedges)

I am sitting in the auditorium at The New York Times. It is the first time I have been back in nearly two decades. It will be the last. The newspaper is a pale reflection of what it was when I worked there, beset by numerous journalistic fiascos, rudderless leadership and myopic cheerleading of the military debacles in the Middle East, Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza, where one of the Times contributions to the mass slaughter of Palestinians was an editorial refusing to back an unconditional ceasefire. Many seated in the auditorium are culpable. I am here, however, not for them but for the former executive editor they are honoring, Joe Lelyveld, who died earlier this year. He hired me. His departure from the Times marked the paper’s steep descent. On the front page of the program of the memorial, the year of his death is incorrect — emblematic of the sloppiness of a newspaper that is riddled with typos and errors. Reporters I admire, including Gretchen Morgenson and David Cay Johnston, who are in the auditorium, were pushed out once Lelyveld left, replaced by mediocrities.

Lelyveld’s successor Howell Raines – who had no business running a newspaper – singled out the serial fabulist and plagiarizer, Jayson Blair, for swift advancement and alienated the newsroom through a series of tone deaf editorial decisions. Reporters and editors rose up in revolt. He was forced out along with his equally incompetent managing editor. Lelyveld came back for a brief interim. But the senior editors who followed were of little improvement. They were full-throated propagandists – Tony Judt called them “Bush’s useful idiots” – for the war in Iraq. They were true believers in the weapons of mass destruction. They suppressed, at the government’s request, an expose by James Risen about warrantless wiretapping of Americans by the National Security Agency until the paper found out it would appear in Risen’s book.

They peddled for two years the fiction that Donald Trump was a Russian asset. They ignored the contents from Hunter Biden’s laptop that had evidence of multimillion dollar influence peddling and labeled it “Russian disinformation.” Bill Keller, who served as executive editor after Lelyveld, described Julian Assange, the most courageous journalist and publisher of our generation, as “a narcissistic dick, and nobody’s idea of a journalist.” The editors decided identity, rather than corporate pillage with its mass layoffs of 30 million workers, was the reason for Trump’s rise, leading them to deflect attention from the root cause of our economic, political and cultural morass. Of course, that deflection saved them from confronting corporations, such as Chevron, which are advertisers.

They produced a podcast series called Caliphate, based on invented stories of a con artist. They most recently ran a story by three journalists — including one who had never before worked as a reporter and had ties with Israeli intelligence, Anat Schwartz, who was subsequently fired after it was disclosed that she “liked” genocidal posts against Palestinians on Twitter — on what they called “systematic” sexual abuse and rape by Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions on Oct. 7. It also turned out to be unsubstantiated. None of this would have happened under Lelyveld.

“Cross their cross dressing Zelensky figurehead and the SBU will Gonzalo Lira or Julian Assange you.”

• Deep State versus Julian Assange (Hayes)

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12

Sources close to the Julian Assange campaign tell me they have so far spent upwards of $50 million fighting for his release, with probably a similar amount spent indirectly by supporters. Although that is a veritable king’s ransom, it is nothing compared to what the Swedish, British and American deep states have available to fight him or anyone else like Gonzalo Lira who really cheeses them off. I mention the late Gonzalo Lira as he not only clearly cheesed off Clown Prince Zelensky but paid the ultimate price for doing so. Though Zelensky is a contemptuous cross dwelling clown, Colonel Douglas Macgregor makes the valid point that all senior Ukrainian generals are terrified of the man or, to be more precise, of the SBU assassins and their NATO handlers he serves. Cross their cross dressing Zelensky figurehead and the SBU will Gonzalo Lira or Julian Assange you.

This is not, heaven forbid, to criticise the scum of the SBU but to make the important point that in every country there is a deep state, a cadre of folk who believe it is their duty to hold the country together, come hell or high water. Previous articles relating to Stakeknife have shown how murky the deep state is in both Ireland and Britain and this article on industrial levels of child rape by leading British politicians and their Royal family buddies or this one on sex, sleaze and gangsters in 1960s London show that Britain has its own murky Jeffrey Epsteins that the deep state must factor into national security calculations. Similarly, Russia has its siloviki, chaps like Nikolai Patrushev, Sergey Naryshkin, Alexander Bortnikov and Sergei Shoigu, who have an appreciation of the challenges Russia faces and how to forestall them. And Turkey and Egypt have their armed forces, whose generals traditionally saw themselves as the guardians of their countries’ secularism, which terrorist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood remain hell bent on upending.

And Thailand, perhaps more importantly, also has its armed forces, which fortify the monarchy as a means of keeping other subversive forces at bay. Thailand is of particular note because of its stringent lèse-majesté legal provisions which were fortified by the reverence and affection with which almost all Thais held His Majesty, the late King Rama 1X who was, like Albion’s late Queen Elizabeth, marinated and cocooned his entire life in such pomp and circumstance. Not so Zelensky or thin skinned deep state actors like Hillary Clinton Assange has so grievously offended. And, although Assange has managed to garner some D lister support, Clinton, who imagines herself to be a modern day Pharaoh, has hardened her (non-existent) heart to the plight of Assange, just as she previously assigned tens of thousands of Libyans to the abattoir.

If it was up to her, Assange would be long ago dead in the water. Seriously tilt the scales in Assange’s favour and Clinton, the Lord High Executioner, will Jeffrey Epstein you because, though Clinton is as despicable a fraud as is Zelensky, she too has some very serious deep state friends, who are not only past masters of the darkest arts but who are prepared, as this excellent background article insinuates, to practice those arts on Assange by unaliving him. As things currently stand, Assange is back in search of justice (ha ha) before the British judiciary on 20 May when the King’s learned judges will announce how they intend to enact the next act in this farce. Although American deep state actor Mike Pompeo has confessed that he’d gladly put a bullet through Assange’s head, such an approach is devoid of the multiple layers of plausible deniability, which the deep state needs for its masquerade to continue. Thus, the British courts, which are playing the role of Pontius Pilate in all of this, must absolve themselves of any and all culpability, by pretending that, like Pontius Pilate himself, they are above the petty vanities of Clinton and her ilk.