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Debt Rattle October 22 2024

Oct 222024
 
 October 22, 2024  Posted by at 8:53 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  54 Responses »


Floris van Schooten Still-Life with Glass, Cheese, Butter and Cake 1st half 17th century

 

• Musk Fires Back At Der Spiegel Over ‘Enemy No. 2’ Claim (RT)
• Surprise, Surprise! (James Howard Kunstler)
• Alex Jones Issues Terrifying Post-Election Prediction (VF)
• A Citizen Journalist Wins Key Reversal for New Media (Turley)
• Court Denies Class Action Status for Lawsuit Against Twitter (ET)
• Russian “Restraint” Towards Assassination of Arab Leaders (Helmer)
• EU Troops Could Be Deployed To Ukraine – Politico (RT)
• Pentagon Pours Cold Water On Claim Of North Korean Troops In Ukraine (ZH)
• Medvedev Warns Of ‘Total War’ (RT)
• A New World Order In The Making: This BRICS Summit Will Be Special (Behanzin)
• Date With Destiny – BRICS Offers Hope in a Time of War (Pepe Escobar)
• Fani Willis Laid Groundwork For Prosecuting Trump Before Taking Office (JTN)
• Trump Assassination Probe Finds ‘Stunning’ Failures (RT)
• The EU Doesn’t Need Moscow To Interfere In Its Democracy (Marsden)
• US Interest Payments Top Defense Spending For First Time In History (I&I)
• German Doctors Alarmed At Growing Failures Of Antibiotics – Bild (RT)

 

 

 

 

Dark money

MSNBC

Speaker

PA


https://twitter.com/i/status/1848133402559721646

JD

Trump Biden
https://twitter.com/i/status/1848020588679348583

No tax

Racist

Bronx

DOJ

 

 

 

 

“Donald Trump is probably the current biggest threat to the free world. His buddy Musk [is] at least public enemy number two..”

• Musk Fires Back At Der Spiegel Over ‘Enemy No. 2’ Claim (RT)

Elon Musk has hit back at German magazine Der Spiegel, after it branded the billionaire “public enemy No.2” and claimed he is working with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to “decompose liberal democracy.” In response, Musk insisted that he is a staunch defender of democracy. The German outlet published an article on Sunday with a cover depicting a close-up of the tech mogul with Trump’s features emerging through part of his face. The piece noted that the X owner and Tesla CEO has amassed huge economic clout and a prominent media profile. “Within a few years, he [Musk] has not only become the political right-wing hardliner, but also a declared opponent of the liberal democracy in the US. The Troll-in chief has mutated into a political agitator.

“One could say: Donald Trump is probably the current biggest threat to the free world. His buddy Musk [is] at least public enemy number two,” the article said, drawing parallels with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, who rose to power thanks in no small part to the support of German industrial moguls. Musk addressed the accusation during a townhall meeting with American voters in Pennsylvania. “I’m like, enemy No. 2 of what? Democracy? I mean I’m pro-democracy. I’m literally trying to uphold the Constitution and ensure we have a free and fair election,” he fired back, drawing cheers from the crowd.

The billionaire added that he would “definitely upgrade… my security” after the article, noting that he is sometimes “shocked” by what he sees from the left. “You know, the level of vitriolic hatred on the left, which is supposed to be tolerant. They claim they are tolerant and yet they are incredibly intolerant and spewing hate.” Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” endorsed Trump after the failed assassination attempt on the former president in July, and has since donated tens of millions of dollars to his campaign. He has repeatedly expressed concern about what he describes as increasing censorship in the US, as well as an overbearing bureaucracy that prevents any meaningful action. Meanwhile, Trump has vowed to create a Musk-led government efficiency commission to audit the entire federal government if he returns to the White House.

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“The left’s ideas have failed and failed spectacularly, and all they have left is cheating.” Elizabeth Nickson.

• Surprise, Surprise! (James Howard Kunstler)

Of course, there’s no “pandemic” this time to cover for the trip that the Party of Chaos wants to lay on the country, no excuse for gross and glaring ballot fuckery, for the days of anxious uncertainty following an election. Everybody and his uncle expect a gigantic tantrum to follow November 6 if Mr. Trump somehow overcomes the tide of bogus harvested votes, illegal alien votes, phantom overseas votes, voting machine swapped votes, lost-and-found votes, last-minute rafts of votes, and other products of the Marc Elias election sabotage machine. I am not so sure that the tantrum will materialize. Despite the orgy of Orwellian language inversions you have been subjected to in recent years, and the bending of reality it induced, you will know a real insurrection if you see it. You already know the real reason the Democratic Party went insane: its crime spree against the citizens of this land was so obvious and outrageous that a thousand Beltway bureaucrats are now going crazy in fear of prosecution.

The tantrum everyone expects them to provoke would be a real insurrection and they are liable to find themselves in even deeper trouble for resorting to it. Crime is the whole reason for the Democrats’ desperation. There was no “policy” the past four years, only crime. The Covid operation was a mass murder. The open border was not something that just happened, like a spell of bad weather. It was a colossal racketeering operation. They worked it hard. “Joe Biden” paid dozens of NGO cut-outs to systematically jam more than ten million sketchy interlopers into the country, and then support them lavishly with cash payments when they got here. The political prosecutions of AG Merrick Garland are gauche and lawless. The pervasive censorship by DHS and other agencies is an affront to our constitution. The transgender campaign is a malicious prank against American children (and their parents).

Our CIA may be a party to the fentanyl crisis. The war in Ukraine is a failed resource-grab, unbelievably stupid in inception. “Joe Biden’s” empty treasury is writing trillions in IOUs to stealthily bail out the banks and jack-up the stock market. Everything about our government has become criminal and those responsible for it know they are bound for a reckoning now. Will the Democrats’ Antifa street-army be allowed to terrorize the cities? I expect the remaining cops not de-funded in DC, New York, Chicago, and LA won’t hold back this time, no matter what mayors Muriel Bowser, Eric Adams, Brandon Johnson, and Karen Bass tell them to do. You will instead see the return of something that has been missing for years: a sense of duty to public safety and the common good. Won’t that be a surprise? And there will be nothing that the FBI can do about. It’s one thing to incite a riot among a mob of ordinary middle-aged folks moiling around the US Capitol. It’s another thing to try to subvert the police in carrying out their duties. New heroes will emerge and there will be no ambiguity about what happens.

Black Lives Matter had already been outed as a lowlife money-grubbing hustle. But the Democratic Party may no longer depend on its old “plantation” field-hands to stage mostly peaceful anarchy and arson if the election goes the wrong way for the masters. Forty years of pretending to be an oppositional culture hasn’t worked. It was just minstrelsy updated, when all was said and done. Too many black men are rising up to speak out in support of Donald Trump, and of one America, and of acting like men. They appear to be tired of self-stigmatizing as designated victims in the Woke-Jacobin DEI psychodrama. A new generation of black male leaders is emerging to replace embarrassing con artists like Al Sharpton, Michael Eric Dyson, and Ibram X. Kendi. It’s been a long time coming.

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“..while the Democrats accuse Trump of planning to use the military on the American people, the government is already making moves to do just that..”

• Alex Jones Issues Terrifying Post-Election Prediction (VF)

He forecasts that once Trump becomes president, “Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and all these Islamic hordes that are allied with the left” will “engage in massive civil unrest.” The possibility is certainly real. And this scenario becomes even more terrifying when you realize that Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) is working on a bill to cripple Trump’s ability to respond to civil unrest. Specifically, Blumenthal is introducing legislation to limit unchecked presidential authority under the Insurrection Act ahead of Trump’s forecasted victory. What the bill means, if passed, is that Trump will be severely handicapped in the face of widespread violence and unrest. Blumenthal’s legislation is designed to handcuff the president by requiring approval from Congress before the military can be deployed to deal with domestic threats.

Adding to the possibility of civil unrest, Bill Gates, the man who seems to always financially profit when disaster happens, said in 2022 that America’s “political polarization may bring it all to an end.” He predicted that at some point, “We’re going to have a hung election and a civil war.” The trigger to civil unrest could be the election, of course. However, Alex Jones warned that an incident like the one we saw with George Floyd in 2020 could be exploited again to spark widespread riots. Jones pointed out that while the Democrats accuse Trump of planning to use the military on the American people, the government is already making moves to do just that. Adding to all the things that can go wrong is U.S. Department of Defense Directive 5240.01, which is an absolute nightmare.

What that directive does is that it gives the DoD the power to step in and use lethal force within U.S. borders, even against its own citizens, when it deems lives are at risk. Don’t want to wear a mask? You’re putting lives at risk. Lethal force could technically be used against you. Don’t want to take a vaccine? The same story exists. The potential for abuse is limitless here. The scope of this authority is chilling because the directive specifically states that the decision to use lethal force only needs the Secretary of Defense’s approval. Once lethal force is approved, anything can happen. For years, Alex Jones warned about martial law and domestic military control, and now we’re seeing that terrifying scenario unfold right before our eyes.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1848122086826606881

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“Only 31 percent express a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media. Adults with no trust at all in the media is greater at 36 percent. In the 1970s, trust in the media ranged from 68 percent to 72 percent.”

• A Citizen Journalist Wins Key Reversal for New Media (Turley)

This week, there was a little-noticed order out of the Supreme Court that decided a narrow legal question with much great implications for journalism. The justices tossed a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that barred a lawsuit by Priscilla Villarreal. Known online as La Gordiloca (loosely translated as “the fat, crazy lady”), Villareal is part of a growing number of new media journalists. At a time when the public is rejecting legacy or mainstream media, the case is the latest reminder of a rising force of citizen journalists. Technically, the court instructed the lower courts to review the case in light of the recent decision in Gonzalez v. Trevino. That decision relaxed the standards for citizens suing over retaliatory arrests. Villareal was not just a citizen but a citizen journalist who claimed to be performing the same newsgathering functions as conventional journalists.

Villarreal had alleged that she was arrested for seeking and obtaining nonpublic information from police as a journalist — the identity of a person who had killed himself — and publishing it on Facebook. The Fifth Circuit ruled that the police could claim immunity from the lawsuit she brought, and the justices just set that decision aside. As I discuss in my book, “The Indispensable Right, journalism is in free fall in the U.S. as citizens reject the establishment media as biased and unreliable. For years, journalism schools have taught students that they have to abandon objectivity and neutrality for advocacy. Advocacy journalism is now the norm. Former New York Times writer (and now Howard University journalism professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones has declared that “all journalism is activism.” Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle, similarly announced that “Objectivity has got to go.”

After a series of interviews with more than 75 media leaders, Leonard Downie Jr., former Washington Post executive editor, explained that objectivity is viewed as a trap and reporters “feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.” The response of the public has been to look elsewhere for news. Indeed, the mantra “Let’s Go Brandon!” was embraced by millions as a criticism of the media as much as it was a criticism of President Biden. Recently, the new Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis was brought into the paper to stop a collapsing readership and revenue. He told the staff, “Let’s not sugarcoat it…We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right? I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”

They are, however, reading “the stuff” of figures like La Gordiloca, who is described as “a tattooed one-woman mobile newsroom who, until the coronavirus lockdown, often broadcast live while driving her car.” Her following on Facebook is now larger than her local newspaper. The New York Times described how La Gordiloca “reflects how many people on the border now prefer to get their news.” The paper admitted that she is is a “swearing muckraker who is upending border journalism.” New media journalists are more H.L. Mencken or sometimes even Hunter S. Thompson but they are viewed as more authentic and independent. Millions of Americans now get their news from social media and blogs. Various traditional media outlets have either closed or are fighting for their existence. What they are not doing is seriously questioning their course in adopting advocacy journalism.

Journalism has become a ship of fools who increasingly write for each other rather than the dwindling numbers of actual readers. And they have written off half of the country with their plunge into advocacy journalism. As a consequence, many have come to view mainstream media as a de facto state media. Today, over half of U.S. adults (54 percent) say they get news from social media. Only 27 percent now rely on TV as their first choice with only 6 percent preferring radio and only 5 percent preferring print. The recent polling figures from Gallup show how much harm this generation of editors and reporters has done to the field. Trust in the media is at an all-time low, continuing a consistent decline. Only 31 percent express a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media. Adults with no trust at all in the media is greater at 36 percent. In the 1970s, trust in the media ranged from 68 percent to 72 percent.

Turley

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He wants a bonus, but: “..the plaintiff had argued against Twitter paying the bonus while he was under employment with the firm..”

• Court Denies Class Action Status for Lawsuit Against Twitter (ET)

A California court dismissed class action certification for a lawsuit filed by a former employee that accused Twitter of not paying laid off workers bonuses that were allegedly promised. Mark Schobinger, the plaintiff, was Twitter’s senior director of compensation during 2022–23, a time when the company was in the process of being acquired by Elon Musk, according to an Oct. 16 order issued by the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California. At the time, Schobinger was a member of a group of employees eligible to receive annual bonuses in early 2023. However, the company was under no obligation to pay, a fact that is “undisputed” under the terms of the bonus, the order noted. Paying the bonus was “a matter of discretion” for the firm. Schobinger alleged that the company promised employees in April, May, and August of 2022 that it would pay the bonus provided the workers stayed with the firm throughout the acquisition.

The plaintiff claimed he did stay during this phase because of the promise. He filed the lawsuit after not getting paid, and sought class certification. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria denied Schobinger’s motion, noting he is unfit to act as a class representative. The judge pointed out that the plaintiff had argued against Twitter paying the bonus while he was under employment with the firm. In November 2022, months after Twitter’s bonus promise, Schobinger sent a message to the company’s “Head of People Experience,” stating that whether to pay the bonus was purely dependent on the “discretion” of Musk. Schobinger also wrote that he recommended not to pay the bonus. In February 2023, the plaintiff sent a “white paper” to several executives on the issue, stating that “not paying a bonus would be prudent.” Evidence also points to Schobinger telling Musk in a meeting a month earlier that the firm need not pay the bonus, the order stated.

These statements make Schobinger “not an adequate class representative,” Chhabria wrote. “At his deposition, Schobinger offered a convoluted explanation for how he could possibly have believed he was entitled to the bonus while simultaneously advocating that the company not pay it. It seems likely that Schobinger’s explanation is untrue,” the judge said. “But even if he is telling the truth, that’s beside the point for purposes of this motion. Because even if he is telling the truth, his conduct makes him the worst possible candidate to serve as a litigation representative for the other Twitter employees who didn’t get a bonus.” The court also highlighted a major issue with the motion—a “large number” of proposed class members signed arbitration agreements with Twitter, some of which also waived off class action lawsuits against the company.

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“In Russian diplo-speak, “restraint” means “Russia will not intervene if you do your worst”.

• Russian “Restraint” Towards Assassination of Arab Leaders (Helmer)

The Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was murdered on October 20, 2011, and to mark the thirteenth anniversary of his death, the Russian Foreign Ministry received Qaddafi’s daughter, Aisha Qaddafi, in Moscow on Friday. This is the first open meeting in Russia between high-ranking Russian officials and the Qaddafi family. The political significance was buried in the communiqué. “On October 18, the Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for the Middle East and Africa, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Mikhail Bogdanov received Libyan public figure and artist Aisha Gaddafi, who is in Moscow in connection with the opening of an exhibition of her paintings at the State Museum of the East. During the conversation, issues of further strengthening historically friendly Russian-Libyan ties in the scientific, cultural and educational spheres were discussed.

At the same time, the Russian side confirmed its unchanged position in support of achieving Libyan national accord in the interests of ensuring the unity, territorial integrity and state sovereignty of Libya.” The official reason for Aisha Qaddafi’s visit to Moscow to open the exhibition of her paintings omitted that the paintings are in memory of her father, brother and other members of her family assassinated by the US and its proxies in Libya. “I show these works for the first time to honour my father and my brother on the anniversary of their deaths,” Qaddafi said in Moscow. “I can tell you that these pictures are painted not with my hand but with my heart.” Assassination of Qaddafi had been a secret US Government policy during the Carter Administration and then an open policy of the Reagan Administration.

Assassination of the Arabs of Palestine, including the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, is the open policy of the current US and Israeli governments. In this context, the unofficial reason for Aisha Qaddafi’s visit to Moscow is that the Russian Foreign Ministry is signaling its opposition to this decades-old US and Israeli policy. The signal also hints through several years of rumour and disinformation at fresh Russian support – that means armed protection – for Saif Qaddafi’s campaign to become the end-of-civil war president of Libya. “If the Libyans choose a strong president,” Saif told the New York Times in 2021, “the only thing is a strong president. That’s it. The Libyans will choose a strong one. Everything will be solved automatically.”

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“Allegations of Pyongyang supplying soldiers and equipment to Russia were originally raised by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky last week..”

• EU Troops Could Be Deployed To Ukraine – Politico (RT)

The EU should return to the idea of putting boots on the ground in Ukraine, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis has argued in a statement to Politico. The diplomat insisted that Brussels should revive talks about deploying EU forces in Ukraine in response to reports of North Korean ammunition and soldiers supposedly taking part in the hostilities on the side of Russia. “If information about Russia’s killing squads being equipped with North Korean ammunition and military personnel is confirmed, we have to get back to ‘boots on the ground’ and other ideas proposed by Emmanuel Macron,” Landsbergis told the outlet. Allegations of Pyongyang supplying soldiers and equipment to Russia were originally raised by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky last week and have been seconded by South Korea.

However, neither the US nor NATO has yet been able to confirm any of these reports, while Moscow has dismissed the speculations as a “bogus story.” Meanwhile, Macron’s continued refusal to rule out the potential deployment of French troops to Ukraine has repeatedly been criticized by other EU leaders who have argued that such a move would lead to a serious escalation of the conflict. At the same time, Brussels is reportedly considering the possibility of deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine after the conflict has ended, Politico has said. Washington’s former ambassador to Japan, Kenneth Weinstein, has told the outlet that such a move would show that the EU still has “skin in the game.”

“If there is going to be a DMZ [demilitarized zone] between Ukraine and Russia, my suggestion would be to have it manned by EU troops — not NATO troops, and not U.S. troops,” the former diplomat, who is now chairman to the Hudson Institute, a conservative DC-based think tank, told the outlet. One EU lawmaker, who chose to remain anonymous, has also confirmed to Politico that the question of European peacekeepers in Ukraine “will come up” after the conflict is over. Moscow has repeatedly warned against the deployment of Western forces to Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stressed that such a move could lead to a “serious conflict in Europe and a global conflict.”

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“..over the weekend the Pentagon refused to back the reports, with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin explaining that he can’t confirm this narrative..”

• Pentagon Pours Cold Water On Claim Of North Korean Troops In Ukraine (ZH)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has of late begun pushing hard new accusations that at least 10,000 North Korean troops are being sent to Ukraine where they will fight on behalf of the Russians. South Korea’s spy agency had also backed Zelensky’s claim, chiming in on Friday to say that at least 1,500 North Korean special forces have already been sent. The spy agency says it has satellite images tracking these movements. But over the weekend the Pentagon refused to back the reports, with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin explaining that he can’t confirm this narrative. “I’ve seen those reports in the media. I can’t confirm those reports at this point in time. This is something that we will certainly continue to investigate,” Austin said Sunday.

Zelensky has been pushing the idea that the ‘enemies’ of the West have formed an axis to fight in Ukraine and ultimately push back NATO. He’s identified them as Russia, Iran, and North Korea. He’s touted this curiously alongside desperate pleas for more urgent funding and weaponry from his Western backers. Kiev has especially sought long-range weapons for use inside Russian territory. As an example of this, Zelensky said in a weekend video address, “Now we have clear evidence that people are being supplied to Russia from North Korea, and these are not just workers for industries, but also military personnel. And we expect a normal, honest, strong reaction from our partners to this.” He followed by emphasizing, “In fact, this is another state joining the war against Ukraine.”

But not even NATO leadership is backing these assertions. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte recently said there’s no evidence of an influx of North Korean troops into the conflict. “At this moment, our official position is that we cannot confirm reports that North Koreans are actively now as soldiers engaged in the war effort,” he stated. Some video clips of unknown context, origin or location have circulated online in the past days, purporting to show North Korean troops being outfitted by Russia’s military before battle. Pundits have described one circulating video as showing a base in Russia’s eastern Primorye region, which shares a small border with North Korea, incredibly far away from front lines in Ukraine.

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“..there should be a “full-fledged counterweight” to the US, such as during the time of the USSR..”

• Medvedev Warns Of ‘Total War’ (RT)

The US must abandon its ambitions of “world domination” or risk a war which could lead to the “complete extermination” of humanity, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned on Monday. According to Medvedev, who currently serves as the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, Washington’s goal is “domination over the Old World, as well as over the rest of the world.” However, this policy is merely leading to the “weakening and humiliation of the West, including Europe” within the framework of the modern multipolar global order, Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel. The official issued the post in the context of the upcoming BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan, which is set to kick off on Tuesday. Medvedev argued that the world needs a balance of powers rather than a dominant one, meaning there should be a “full-fledged counterweight” to the US, such as during the time of the USSR.

The development of BRICS as a global power, as well as the growth of similar regional unions and the comprehensive development of relations with the countries of the Global South, are signs that such a balance is already in the making, Medvedev argued. “After all, the alternative to such a balance of power is a total war leading to the complete extermination of humanity,” the senior official warned. A world without balance in today’s conditions will not last even a decade. If the West does not realize this simple truth, it is the end for everyone. And this is not a situation where the death of some will mean the victory of others. Medvedev was Russian president from 2008 to 2012, before serving as prime minister until 2020. He is well known for his hardline stance on the Ukraine conflict and the West’s sanctions policy against Russia. He has also accused the US of pursuing a “global neocolonialism” agenda.

BRICS, which is widely seen as a rival to the G7 group of countries, is holding its 16th annual summit later this week. Initially founded in 2006 by Brazil, Russia, India, and China, it now consists of nine countries, including South Africa, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia and the UAE, representing about 46% of the world’s population and over 36% of global GDP, according to estimates by global financial institutions. Many analysts have suggested that the rapid development of the group signals that the Western monopoly over the international system is over, and that the world is firmly headed toward multipolarity.

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“This summit could mark the beginning of the end of Western supremacy and the emergence of a new era..”

• A New World Order In The Making: This BRICS Summit Will Be Special (Behanzin)

The upcoming BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia could mark a turning point in global geopolitical history. Faced with the slow erosion of the Western world order, a new balance is emerging, driven by a coalition that seems increasingly determined to chart its own course. This unique event brings together 24 heads of state from various nations, including iconic figures such as China’s Xi Jinping. The inclusion of Antonio Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, in this assembly raises major questions about the current dynamics of global governance. Traditionally, the UN has been seen as a bastion of multilateralism, but its alignment with the Western powers is being called into question. This summit in Kazan could be the catalyst for a strategic repositioning, where the UN might seek to navigate between old alliances and emerging trends.

The BRICS are no longer just an economic coalition; they are asserting themselves as a viable alternative to the historical dominance of Western countries. The unipolar world, as we have known it, seems to be giving way to a multipolar era, where several emerging powers are claiming their rightful place in the global decision-making process. The Kazan summit represents an unprecedented opportunity for the BRICS to draw a new map of international cooperation. The heads of state present will discuss a multitude of issues, ranging from the economy to security, including environmental challenges. By forming strategic alliances, this group, which represents over 45% of the world’s population, seeks not only to strengthen its influence but also to offer an alternative platform for developing countries that often feel marginalized within traditional Bretton Woods institutions like the IMF or the World Bank.

These discussions could lead to agreements that, depending on their scope, might redefine the rules of the international economic game. The West, rather than standing on the sidelines, is forced to respond to the growing and increasingly popular BRICS dynamic. Western governments, which often disagree and are divided over their approaches, may be compelled to reassess their relationship with emerging market countries. The current situation is marked by growing tensions, as illustrated by the declining confidence in Western-centered institutions. The stance of NATO and European actors towards the BRICS could become the focus of heated debates, highlighting an inevitable need for adaptation.

By attending this event, Guterres is likely illustrating the UN’s desire to revitalize its role in a changing world. His intervention could underscore the growing importance of South-South dialogue, and exchanges aimed at establishing cooperative partnerships that transcend the usual divides. [..] Multilateralism, as it was conceived after World War II, is facing a period of uncertainty. Established institutions struggle to effectively address contemporary challenges such as climate change, growing inequality, and governance crises. The BRICS summit could offer a new vision of multilateralism, more inclusive and adapted to current realities. This model could create synergies among the countries of the Global South, proposing an alternative to the rigidities of the current Western framework.

The future looks fascinating with the BRICS summit in Kazan. This is not just a series of diplomatic discussions but a laboratory for forging a new global architecture. As the West may witness a redistribution of power in international affairs, the developing countries, represented by the BRICS, are taking the reins of this transformation. This summit could mark the beginning of the end of Western supremacy and the emergence of a new era where the voice of the Global South is finally heard. The events in Kazan thus promise to have lasting repercussions on how we conceive the world order in the decades to come.

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‘Not an Anti-Western Group, Just a Non-Western Group’

• Date With Destiny – BRICS Offers Hope in a Time of War (Pepe Escobar)

This is it. A date with destiny. All set for the most crucial geopolitical/geoeconomic gathering of the year and arguably the decade: the BRICS Summit under the Russian presidency in Kazan, capital of Tatarstan, where Sunni Tatars coexist in perfect harmony with Orthodox Christians. All the excruciating work by sherpas and analysts throughout 2024 – supervised by the lead Russian diplomat in charge of BRICS, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov – converged to three final, separate key meetings in Moscow before the summit, grouping BRICS finance ministers and central bank governors, working groups, and the Business Council. All that in a context that is now familiar for the Global Majority. The combined GDP of the current BRICS nations is over $60 trillion, way ahead of the G7; their average growth rate by the end of this year is projected to be 4%, higher than the 3.2% global average; and the bulk of economic growth for the near future will come from BRICS member-nations.

Even before the meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov was stressing that BRICS is keen to bypass “politicized” Western platforms – a subtle reference to the sanctions tsunami and the weaponization of the US dollar – as BRICS work to create their own, Global Majority-friendly international payments system. The context for what will be decided in Kazan this week is no less than incandescent, as the uncontrolled chaos of the Hegemon’s Forever Wars – from Ukraine to West Asia – has even materially affected the heavy work of BRICS and the necessity to build a new international system of geoeconomic relations practically from scratch. A credible war escalation scenario may have been thwarted by the leak of secret high-level intel to the Five Eyes on the preparations by Israel-US to strike Iran. The strike will eventually happen – with dire consequences – but probably not this week, when it could have been timed to explicitly, and completely, disrupt the summit in Kazan and expel it from global headlines.

The joint statement by the BRICS finance ministers and central bank governors may not sound too adventurous, but the constraints reflect not only caution when facing a dangerous, cornered Hegemon, but internal contradictions among BRICS members. The statement recognizes “the need for a comprehensive reform of the global financial architecture to enhance the voice of developing countries and their representation.” Yet it remains clear the US has less than zero interest in a profound reform of the IMF, the World Bank and the Bretton Woods system. Russia and China, especially, are fully aware that what is needed is a post-Bretton Woods. The statement is more forceful on the BRICS Cross-Border Payments Initiative, dubbed BCBPI, welcoming “the use of local currencies in international trade” and “the strengthening of banking networks” to enable them. Yet everything for the moment is only “voluntary and non-binding.” Kazan is expected to give the process some edge.

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“And was there outreach to you to be part of the search committee prior to January 1, 2021?” “Absolutely..”

• Fani Willis Laid Groundwork For Prosecuting Trump Before Taking Office (JTN)

House Judiciary Committee Jim Jordan on Monday released the transcript of closed-door testimony from Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor hired by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to help manage her office’s Donald Trump election interference case before coming under scrutiny for his romantic-financial relationship with Willis. Wade testified that Willis was planning to prosecute Trump and began discussing a search committee to find a special prosecutor to investigate the former president prior to assuming office in January 2021. The former special prosecutor was also confronted with his own records showing that he met with White House officials, for eight hours on one occasion, though he told investigators he could not recall the details of the meetings.

Wade served on that search committee, which was instated on day one of Willis’ term in January 2021. After an unsuccessful search, Wade was ultimately invited to assume the role himself, which he claimed he reluctantly accepted. “And so the search committee, you said that began when DA Willis took office on January 1, 2021. Is that correct?” investigators asked. “Yes,” Wade replied. “And was there outreach to you to be part of the search committee prior to January 1, 2021?” “Absolutely,” he confirmed, saying the outreach began “Sometime after the election, but prior to her taking office.” The transcript of Wade’s deposition Tuesday was released by Jordan’s committee a week after the interview. The GOP-led committee subpoenaed Wade as part of an investigation into his relationship with Willis. Last year, Willis indicted Trump and 18 codefendants in Georgia over their alleged efforts to challenge the 2020 election results in the state.

Wade resigned from the case in March after a Georgia judge made his stepping aside a condition of allowing Willis to remain on the case after evidence of an improper financial and romantic relationship emerged between them. Wade also failed to recall key details about meetings with White House officials, despite recording them in his invoices to Willis’ office. According to the transcript, Wade billed Willis’ office for an eight hour meeting with White House lawyers. These meetings were reported by Just the News after court documents filed by a Trump codefendant showed Wade recorded an entry for a meeting with the White House Counsel’s office in Athens, Georgia in May 2022.

Though Wade testified that he did not remember the meeting, he told congressional investigators that “the invoice says travel to Athens. So that means to me that I traveled to Athens.” The invoices provided in the suit show at least one more meeting with Biden White House staff, on November 2022, that appears to have taken place in Washington, D.C., though there is no record of a visit by Wade in the White House visitor logs. Willis last week attempted unsuccessfully to block Wade from testifying to the committee on the grounds that it could “improperly divulge confidential information” about her investigation of the former president.

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Failures?!

• Trump Assassination Probe Finds ‘Stunning’ Failures (RT)

The US Congress task force investigating the July 13 attempt on the life of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has confirmed that the Secret Service and local law enforcement did not coordinate properly. Trump was speaking at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania when a bullet nicked his ear. One rally-goer was killed and two more seriously injured before the Secret Service neutralized the attacker on the roof of a nearby factory. “Put simply, the evidence obtained by the Task Force to date shows the tragic and shocking events of July 13 were preventable and should not have happened,” said the preliminary report published by the bipartisan body on Monday. The 53-page document contained eight main findings, starting with the lack of planning and coordination between the Secret Service and local law enforcement.

The factory roof from which Thomas Crooks opened fire was not included in the security perimeter, despite having “clear sight lines to the stage, and elevated position,” the report said. Local officers posted inside the building did not secure the complex or the roof, believing their job was just “overwatch” of the rally site. The Secret Service and local police had separate command posts and did not have a shared radio channel, the report said. This created gaps in communication which Crooks was able to slip through. A member of Congress with a law enforcement background who investigated the site in early August suggested that the FBI investigators may have destroyed evidence in the case by scrubbing the roof and allowing Crooks’ body to be cremated before the autopsy results were made available.

The Butler County Coroner’s office released the remains to Crooks’ family after the FBI said no additional evidence was necessary, the new report said. According to the autopsy, Crooks died of a single gunshot wound to the head, presumably inflicted by a Secret Service counter-sniper. He managed to fire eight shots prior to that, however, and may have stopped only after a local police officer shot at him. The coroner did not find evidence of alcohol or drugs in Crooks’ blood, but did find traces of antimony, selenium, and lead.

The new report also clarifies that Crooks did not use a ladder to get to the top of the building, but climbed using the outside air conditioning unit. The ladder seen in the photos after the incident was placed there by local police afterward to let investigators access the roof. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned ten days after the Butler shooting. The House of Representatives task force consists of both Republicans and Democrats and has been charged with investigating both the Butler incident and the thwarted ambush at Trump’s Florida golf course in September. Their final report is due December 13, well after the presidential election.

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“..before Marvel Studios’ costume department comes knocking on the door of the EU clown tent to ask for their capes back..”

• The EU Doesn’t Need Moscow To Interfere In Its Democracy (Marsden)

The EU superheroes did it, guys. They stopped Russian President Vladimir Putin from being elected to Brussels. And now they’re telling us all about how they did it, before Marvel Studios’ costume department comes knocking on the door of the EU clown tent to ask for their capes back. The Russians and their “disinformation” didn’t have any impact on the European Elections earlier this year. That’s now the official word from the EU itself. Vera Jourova, the Vice President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency, has emerged from an Orwellian novel to announce that “based on currently available information, no major information interference operation capable of disrupting the elections was recorded.” So much for the public freak out that European parliamentarians were having back in April 2024, demanding even more censorship of “Kremlin-backed media outlets” and “disinformation campaigns” in what they qualified as “Kremlin-backed attempts to interfere with and undermine European democratic processes.”

We’re supposed to believe that it’s all because Jourova had embarked on a crackdown, er, “Democracy Tour” to commiserate not just with election officials and authorities, but also with “civil society” NGOs, industry, and media. Surely it has nothing to do with the fact that there wasn’t really much disinformation to begin with and that they’ve been blowing the issue way out of proportion. Jourova herself acknowledged that even the EU’s Digital Media Observatory was only able to find between 4% to 8% of what they qualify as “disinformation” among all articles analyzed between May 2023 and March 2024, and that the figure climbed to just 15% in May 2024, right before the EU’s June election. This means that around EU election time, a whopping 85% of information and analysis floating around in the public domain was EU-approved.

Jourova said that “disinformation narratives followed the topics we expected: there were allegations that the elections are rigged, but mostly topics that trigger a strong emotional impact – the war on Ukraine, the Middle East, false narratives on climate change, and migrants.” We used to call those things topics of debate. But that was before they decided that the agendas Brussels was trying to ram down everyone’s throats across the entire bloc wouldn’t be served by messy democratic dissent. Best to just dismiss, marginalize, or censor opposing information and narratives and be forced to deal with being violently mugged by reality later on issues like Ukraine’s not actually “winning,” regardless of how expensive life has become for EU citizens as a result of the bloc’s suicidal pro-Ukraine policies, and migration being an actual five-alarm problem for the EU as it faces the palpable rise of populism backlash for not doing enough earlier.

And the EU elections are certainly not rigged! The people elect representatives to EU parliament, then a ‘president’ is handpicked behind closed doors and plopped in front of them for a simple yes/no confirmation vote. That person, currently ‘Queen’ Ursula von der Leyen, who has never actually been elected to the EU parliament, then runs a ‘royal’ European Commission of bureaucratic desk jockeys that crafts and dictates policy for the entire bloc. Anyone calling this anything other than a model democratic institution must be a Russian agent.

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“..interest payments on the national debt. These payments hit $882 billion in FY 2024, the Treasury report says. That’s a 35% jump from last year..”

• US Interest Payments Top Defense Spending For First Time In History (I&I)

“SUNNY HOSTIN: Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years? KAMALA HARRIS: There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of — and I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact.”

On Friday, the Treasury Department released a report showing the kind of impact Harris is talking about. If nothing else does, it should cost her the election. The latest monthly Treasury report shows spending and revenues for the full fiscal year 2024, which ended in September. Among the terrible results: The federal deficit topped $1.8 trillion in 2024 — the third highest in history and eclipsed only by the two COVID-19 panic spending years. That’s not for lack of revenues, which were up by nearly half a trillion dollars this year. Spending under Biden-Harris this fiscal year climbed more than $617 billion – a 10% increase.

But the real shocker is the explosive growth in interest payments on the national debt. These payments hit $882 billion in FY 2024, the Treasury report says. That’s a 35% jump from last year. And it’s $8 billion more than we spent on National Defense. This marks the first time in our nation’s history that interest on the debt has exceeded defense spending. And the gap is on track to rapidly widen – with the government spending $200 billion more in interest than in protecting America from her enemies by 2029. Why the massive run-up in interest costs? Blame Harris’ tie-breaking votes (something for which she routinely brags). Because of them, Biden-Harris added trillions in new spending at a time when the economy had already fully recovered from the COVID-19 panic. That sparked a huge increase in inflation, which in turn drove up interest rates. More debt and higher interest rates meant a sharp increase in the cost of financing that debt.

How do we know Biden and Harris are to blame? Before they took office, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected net interest payments for the next decade, based on the policies that Donald Trump had in place. The CBO said that, had Biden not spent us to the poorhouse, interest payments on the national debt this year would have been only $284 billion. In other words, Harris and her tie-breaking votes are responsible for a 210% increase in interest costs this year alone. What would Kamala Harris do about this terrible state of affairs if she were elected president? No one has bothered to ask her. But we do know that she wants to do exactly what she and Biden have already done: add trillions of dollars of inflationary spending, impose economically ruinous tax hikes, and pile on still more growth-killing regulations. Harris is right about one thing. It is time to turn the page — before it’s too late.

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“..up to 39 million deaths around the world by 2050 due to antibiotic-resistant pathogens..”

• German Doctors Alarmed At Growing Failures Of Antibiotics – Bild (RT)

The world risks going back to the era before the discovery of penicillin, German doctors have cautioned, pointing to the rise in antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Penicillin, discovered in the late 1920s, extended the human lifespan by up to 30 years by countering most bacterial infections, according to the outlet Bild. All of that progress is now reportedly in peril. “We are currently losing the achievements of modern medicine and falling back into the time before the discovery of penicillin,” Mathias Pletz, head of the Paul Ehrlich Society for Infection Therapy, told Bild. “Antibiotics were the greatest achievement of medicine ever,” said Professor Yvonne Mast, a microbiologist and researcher at the Leibniz Institute in Braunschweig. “The fact that more and more resistance is now emerging and new antibiotics are lacking is a major threat.”

The German outlet quoted a study that estimated up to 39 million deaths around the world by 2050 due to antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Such infections already account for 35,000 deaths in the EU every year. According to Professor Frank Brunkhorst of the Jena University Hospital, one of the reasons is that doctors overprescribe antibiotics for outpatient procedures. For example, antibiotics are useless against almost all respiratory infections, which are caused by viruses. “Second, many resistant germs are coming to us due to international travel, which is booming again after [Covid],” Brunkhorst said, pointing to resistant strains “especially in countries like Greece, Portugal, Turkiye, but also in India and other Asian countries.” He warned Germans returning from vacations that the germs they bring back could be “life-threatening” to their grandparents.

The medical industry has been slow to develop new antibiotics because the research is too long and too expensive, while the profits are too low, according to Professor Mast. Only 12 new medications have been approved since 2017, she said. Only one in 5,000 substances reaches market maturity, the development period is anywhere from 8-15 years, and R&D costs can range up to $2 billion, according to Mast. She urged more funding for research and faster approvals, noting that China has already overtaken Germany in this field. “It is a huge task for politicians to bring antibiotic production back to Germany and Europe. Today, not a single drug is manufactured here anymore; everything comes from India or China. And we are dependent on it,” said Professor Brunkhorst.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

KY/NC
https://twitter.com/i/status/1848109522230837705

 

 

NC

 

 

Starship

 

 

Summer’s day
https://twitter.com/i/status/1848233408469881293

 

 

Owls

 

 

Waterfall

 

 

Deep
https://twitter.com/i/status/1848386780409823724

 

 

Rube Goldberg
https://twitter.com/i/status/1848237891765354548

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle October 6 2024

Oct 062024
 
 October 6, 2024  Posted by at 8:35 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  130 Responses »


Francisco Goya Witches’ Sabbath 1798

 

• Biden Doubts US Presidential Election Will Be Peaceful (TASS)
• We Can’t Have The World Laughing At US – Trump (RT)
• Political Storm Rages Over FEMA Disaster Relief Weeks Before Election Day (JTN)
• Musk Accuses Biden Administration of Blocking Disaster Relief (RT)
• Biden/Harris Doctrine Has Brought the World Closer to World War III (AmG)
• Israel Should Strike Iran’s Nuclear Sites – Trump (RT)
• Soleimani Wins: Israel Falls Into The Trap of the Axis of Resistance (SCF)
• The Resistance Wants Victory (Pacini)
• Tanker Blown Up By Houthis As Disasters Mount For Biden-Harris (ZH)
• NATO Plans Major Force Buildup – Welt (RT)
• New NATO Chief Visits Ukraine (Antiwar)
• Kiev May Have To Accept Loss Of Territory – Stoltenberg (RT)
• Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico To Visit Russia For Victory Day (RT)
• Robert Fico Is A Rare Voice Of Sanity When It Comes To Russia (Amar)
• Le Pen Trial Chance for Establishment to Bring Her Party to Its Knees (Sp.)
• Alex Jones Creditors Target Future Assets – Which Could Include His Name (ZH)
• Argentina’s Milei Accused Of Copying Speech From The West Wing (RT)

 

 

 

 

FEMA sources
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842201497028689989

 

 

Rally

 

 

Biden press

 

 

Trump NC


Trump DEI
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842394029012480193

 

 

Fitton

Ashli Babbitt
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842300133490503874

Vivek Bolton
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842234866223436183

Liz Cheney Harris

 

 

 

 

• Biden Doubts US Presidential Election Will Be Peaceful (TASS)

US President Joe Biden is convinced that the upcoming presidential election in the United States will be free and fair, but doubts that it will be peaceful. “I’m confident it [the election] will be free and fair. I don’t know whether it will be peaceful,” he said, answering to a reporter’s question at the White House. “The things that [former President and Republican candidate Donald] Trump has said and the things that he said last time around when he didn’t like the outcome of the election were very dangerous.” Biden added that Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, had dodged the question of whether he will accept any outcome of the vote.

“They haven’t even accepted the outcome of the last election. So, I’m concerned about what they are going to do,” he said. The US will hold a presidential election on November 5. Incumbent US President Joe Biden was expected to run on the Democratic Party ticket, but after his disastrous performance at the June debate with Trump, he decided to quit the race and instead supported the nomination of his Vice President Kamala Harris. Her candidacy was later formally endorsed at a Democratic Party Convention.

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“They respected us. They respected us more than they’ve ever respected us, and now they laugh at us. We can’t have them laugh at us.”

• We Can’t Have The World Laughing At US – Trump (RT)

The US has squandered respect on the world stage, becoming a laughing stock, former President Donald Trump said at a campaign event in the swing state of Pennsylvania. Trump held a rally to drum up support for his re-election in the city of Butler on Saturday, returning to the site where he nearly survived an assassination attempt in July. The Republican nominee vowed to lift up the US economy, combat violent crime and crack down on illegal immigration through the southern border. “Everything has to be the best,” he said. “We have to have the best schools. We have to have strong borders. We don’t want bad people coming in and hurting us,”“You deserve a nation that builds things again, makes things better, that aims for the stars once more, and that once again, commands respect, and we want to get respect like we had it four years ago,” he told the rally crowd.

The entire world respected us. They respected us. They respected us more than they’ve ever respected us, and now they laugh at us. We can’t have them laugh at us. Throughout his campaign, Trump has accused the “weak” administration of President Joe Biden and the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, of damaging America’s reputation. He claimed that the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza would not have broken out if he was still in charge. Trump also argued that he had good relations with all of the world leaders, including presidents Vladimir Putin of Ukraine and Xi Jinping of China. He repeatedly claimed that he would quickly resolve the Russian-Ukrainian conflict if elected for a second term in November. Biden and Harris, meanwhile, have accused Trump of undermining NATO and failing to stand up to Russia. “Our NATO allies are so thankful that you are no longer president,” Harris told Trump during a televised debate last month.

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FEMA just flatly denies. That’s one way to do it.

• Political Storm Rages Over FEMA Disaster Relief Weeks Before Election Day (JTN)

After the devastation of Hurricane Helene, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) appears to be facing a storm of its own, as allegations of mismanagement and obstruction fly just weeks before the November election. A series of Republicans and alleged whistleblowers have accused the agency of mismanaging funds that were designated for disaster relief and using it for illegal immigrants at the southern border instead. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday admitted to reporters that FEMA does not “have the funds to make it through the [hurricane] season,” but said it does have enough to handle Hurricane Helene, which has resulted in over 200 deaths since making landfall in Florida last week. The secretary and FEMA have not indicated how much more money they would be needing to get through the rest of the season, which concludes at the end of November, but said the money approved through Congress’ continuing resolution would not be enough.

A group of Republican senators expressed concern on Friday over the allegations that FEMA’s “entanglement” with the border crisis could impact its ability to provide disaster relief. “FEMA’s continued entanglement in DHS’s efforts to respond to the border crisis could impact its readiness and emergency response mission,” the Republican lawmakers wrote to Mayorkas. “Rather than ensuring FEMA is ready to respond to hurricanes and other emergencies, FEMA has been pulled into a border crisis mission.” The senators also requested information on how many full-time FEMA employees have since been deployed at the border, and how much money FEMA reprogrammed to support its border-related mission duties. Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz backed up the senators’ concerns in his own letter to Mayorkas on Friday, in which he claimed FEMA whistleblowers said the agency used taxpayer funds marked for disaster relief on non-disaster-relief programs that housed and supported illegal immigrants on the country’s southern border.

Gaetz also said that he was told by whistleblowers that FEMA employees are on the ground in areas impacted by the hurricane, such as North Carolina, but do not have deployment orders so they are waiting on the clock in hotels. FEMA, the White House, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have denied all of the allegations of misappropriating its funds, claiming the money used for the border and for disaster relief are from two separate programs. The agency has even created a “rumor response” page on its website. “No money is being diverted from disaster response needs,” the agency said in a news release. “FEMA’s disaster response efforts and individual assistance is funded through the Disaster Relief Fund, which is a dedicated fund for disaster efforts. Disaster Relief Fund money has not been diverted to other non-disaster related efforts. “The funding for communities to support migrants is appropriated by Congress to Customs and Border Patrol – it has nothing to do with FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund,” it added.

FEMA has spent approximately $650 million on grants to non-profits and local authorities that resettle and aid migrants so far, per Fox News, and has sent employees down to the border to help address the increase in unaccompanied minors that began in 2021. But the money for grants is far less than the roughly $20 billion budget for the agency’s disaster relief fund. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Friday also criticized the federal response to Hurricane Helene, claiming that the government was blocking flights trying to bring Starlinks and aid to hurricane victims, after a source told Musk the airspace was shut down. The source texted Musk that FEMA is blocking shipments and seizing goods from volunteers. He also claimed the government is throttling private flights in the North Carolina airspace, which is making it harder to bring in supplies and Starlinks.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg denied the reports that they are making it harder for civilians to help with disaster relief, stating that “no one is shutting down the airspace and FAA doesn’t block legitimate rescue and recovery flights.” FEMA also denied the accusation, stating that reports they were confiscating aid meant for the survivors were “false” but that such rumors often spread after disasters. “FEMA does not take donations and/or food from survivors or voluntary organizations,” the agency said in its news release. “Donations of food, water, or other goods are handled by voluntary agencies who specialize in storing, sorting, cleaning and distributing donated items.”

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“As of Friday, FEMA had spent $45 million on relief efforts following Hurricane Helene, or 14 times less than it spent housing illegal immigrants last year..”

• Musk Accuses Biden Administration of Blocking Disaster Relief (RT)

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has accused US President Joe Biden’s administration of “actively blocking” the supply of Starlink internet terminals and critical aid to areas of North Carolina devastated by Hurricane Helene. The administration has dismissed those claims as false. Hurricane Helene tore through the American southeast last week, killing more than 225 people and leaving hundreds unaccounted for. The damage was particularly severe in Georgia and western North Carolina, where bridges were washed away and tens of thousands of people are still without running water, power, and cellphone service. During a visit to Georgia on Monday, former US President Donald Trump said that he had been in touch with Musk, who would be delivering Starlink internet terminals to affected areas. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) also said in a press release that it would be distributing Starlink terminals to local authorities.

On Friday, however, Musk claimed on his X platform that FEMA “is not merely failing to adequately help people in trouble, but is actively blocking citizens who try to help!” Citing a SpaceX engineer in North Carolina, Musk claimed that FEMA personnel are confiscating Starlink terminals and other supplies arriving in the state. In a follow-up post, the billionaire shared text messages from the engineer, who alleged that the agency had “shut down the airspace to ‘regulate’ the private choppers we are riding in to deliver Starlink and supplies.” Replying to Musk’s post, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that “no one is shutting down the airspace and [the Federal Aviation Administration] doesn’t block legitimate rescue and recovery flights.” “If you’re encountering a problem give me a call,” Buttigieg added. The issue was apparently resolved late on Friday night, with Musk replying to thank Buttigieg and announce that “support flights are underway.”

Republican politicians and conservative pundits have accused the Biden administration of slow-walking relief to western North Carolina due to the fact that the region’s predominantly white population overwhelmingly voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. Trump visited Georgia and North Carolina before Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris earlier this week, and claimed at a rally on Friday that “a lot of the money that was supposed to go to Georgia and supposed to go to North Carolina” had been spent on “people that came into the country illegally.”

After FEMA spent $640 million on housing for illegal immigrants over the last fiscal year, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced on Wednesday that the agency does not have enough money to make it through the rest of hurricane season, which typically runs until early December. However, the $640 million spent on illegal immigrants was not drawn from FEMA’s disaster relief fund, but from a separate fund authorized by Congress. As of Friday, FEMA had spent $45 million on relief efforts following Hurricane Helene, or 14 times less than it spent housing illegal immigrants last year, according to a White House statement.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1842331082139566081

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What? “Several experts, including Blinken and Sullivan, wrote that President Biden enhanced American foreign policy by strengthening the American economy..”

• Biden/Harris Doctrine Has Brought the World Closer to World War III (AmG)

By a strange turn of fate, on October 1, 2024, the day that Iran launched the largest ballistic missile attack ever against Israel, Foreign Affairs magazine published an article by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in which he claimed “the Biden administration’s strategy has put the United States in a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago” and that Iran is being held in check. A year earlier, Foreign Affairs published another tragically erroneous article by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, which said, “Although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges, the region is quieter than it has been for decades.” Six days after this article was posted, Hamas launched a sneak attack against Israel, massacring more than 1,200 people and maiming and injuring many more. In a stunning violation of journalistic ethics, Foreign Affairs allowed Sullivan to revise his article after the Hamas terrorist attack. Here is a link to the original version.

In these articles, Biden officials are trying to rewrite history by manufacturing false narratives of a successful Biden national security doctrine that they claim has enhanced U.S. and global security. This is, of course, preposterous. Not only has there been a huge increase in global instability since Donald Trump left office in January 2021, the Biden-Harris administration has brought the world closer to World War III because of an increased chance Russia could use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, the real prospect of an Israel-Iran War, a new Russia-China-Iran-North Korea Axis, a growing chance that China will attack Taiwan, and other current and potential crises.

Several Biden allies have tried to invent a so-called Biden Doctrine since 2021. Most made fatuous claims that Biden was reversing the damage done by President Trump to the country’s alliances, deterrence, and global leadership despite clear evidence that Trump strengthened alliances and had a successful foreign policy that brought global stability and kept U.S. troops out of new wars. Others asserted that Biden “restored trust abroad for the U.S.,” a claim that many U.S. allies would dispute. Several experts, including Blinken and Sullivan, wrote that President Biden enhanced American foreign policy by strengthening the American economy. The huge advantage that Donald Trump currently has in the polls over Kamala Harris on the economy proves this isn’t true either.

In January 2024, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote an article titled, “A Biden Doctrine for the Middle East Is Forming. And It’s Big” on a supposed new Biden Middle East peace initiative to quickly end the Hamas/Israel war. Under this plan, the Biden administration would bring peace to the Middle East with a tough stand on Iran, push for recognition of a Palestinian state, and greatly scale up the U.S. security alliance with Saudi Arabia. None of these things happened. Instead, Middle East security has deteriorated in 2024 to the worst level in decades.

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His big blind spot.

• Israel Should Strike Iran’s Nuclear Sites – Trump (RT)

Israel should carry out a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities to avenge Tehran’s recent missile attack on the Jewish state, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has argued. Earlier this week, Iran fired around 180 missiles at Israel, calling it retaliation for the assassinations of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, both of whom had close ties to Tehran. The attack killed one Palestinian in the West Bank, while the Israeli military acknowledged that some of the projectiles hit its air bases. The attack also followed what Israel called a “limited ground operation” in southern Lebanon targeting Hezbollah. Speaking at a campaign event in North Carolina on Friday, Trump, known for his hawkish stance on Iran, disagreed with US President Joe Biden, who had earlier refused to support an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“They asked him, what do you think about Iran, would you hit Iran? And he goes, ‘As long as they don’t hit the nuclear stuff.’ That’s the thing you want to hit, right? I mean, it’s the biggest risk we have, nuclear weapons,” he said. “When they asked him that question, the answer should have been, hit the nuclear first, and worry about the rest later,” Trump added. As president, Trump spearheaded the US withdrawal in 2018 from the nuclear deal with Iran. Under the agreement, Iran had agreed to limit its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. At the time, however, Trump argued that the deal did little to permanently prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Following the Iranian strike on Israel, Axios reported that West Jerusalem is eyeing a “significant retaliation” for the missile barrage and that all options are on the table, including strikes on Tehran’s nuclear facilities. Other potential targets could reportedly include gas and oil rigs or air defense systems, while targeted assassinations could also be considered. Meanwhile, according to an Al Jazeera report, Iran warned the US that any Israeli attack could be met with an “unconventional response.” As tensions continue to soar in the Middle East, Politico reported that Biden is growing increasingly frustrated by Israel’s conduct, including recent attacks on Hezbollah and the war in Gaza, with the White House said to be acknowledging the possibility that it may not be able to prevent a full-scale “regional war.”

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“..one of the greatest military thinkers in history – the man largely responsible for creating the trap that Israel has just fallen into, four years after his death..”

“Soleimani’s strategy was focused on creating a prolonged war, wearing down the Zionist regime to the point of no return of its own state structure.”

• Soleimani Wins: Israel Falls Into The Trap of the Axis of Resistance (SCF)

In 2020, the U.S. military assassinated Iranian General Qassem Solemani in a terrorist attack with drones in Iraq. The purpose of the operation was simply to eliminate one of the greatest military thinkers in history – the man largely responsible for creating the trap that Israel has just fallen into, four years after his death. Much more than a mere military officer, Soleimani was a strategist and negotiator – perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to even call him a “war diplomat”. An expert in clandestine operations, intelligence and special forces’ tactics, Soleimani was responsible for enabling the network of anti-Zionist organizations known as the “Axis of Resistance”. Overcoming religious, ethnic and ideological differences between the various Islamic and anti-Zionist movements, Soleimani united different factions in a joint strategy against Israel.

Obviously, this strategy was centered on Iran and gave the Islamic Republic the leading role in the fight against the Israeli occupation and its regional proxies. However, one of the keys to the success of the Axis is precisely its largely decentralized nature, guaranteeing autonomy of action for its members, without tight Iranian control over all the acts of the coalition. The Axis of Resistance was victorious in Syria, where several militias, with the support of Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), defeated ISIS and other Israeli proxies. At the time, Soleimani’s military diplomatic success was so great that even a dialogue with the Kurdish militias (historically supported by the West) was possible at a time of confrontation against more dangerous groups – such as ISIS itself. Soleimani’s survival was perceived as an existential threat by Israel, encouraging the Zionist lobby in the U.S. to push for a targeted assassination operation.

The main problem, however, is that targeted assassinations are rarely effective against highly ideological groups and countries with well-defined war strategies. Soleimani’s death did not dismantle the Axis, but rather further united the militias around Iran – including the Palestinian Sunni militias, which have historically suffered a struggle for influence between Shiites and Wahhabis. Today, no one can deny Iran’s great influence over the Palestinian Resistance. What few people know, however, is that this process is precisely the result of the diplomatic alliances achieved by Soleimani. By killing Ismail Hannyeh, the Hamas leader closest to Iran in the entire history of the Palestinian party and responsible for the peace between the Palestinian jihadists and the Syrian government, Israel also hoped to destabilize the Axis – reducing Iranian influence and expanding the pro-Wahhabi lobby in Palestine, which, as we know, did not happen.

In the same vein, by killing Hassan Nasrallah, then head of Hezbollah, Israel planned to once again destabilize the Axis, liquidating the leadership of the main Shiite paramilitary organization and thus possibly fomenting an institutional crisis within the group. Contrary to Zionist expectations, Hezbollah did not show any shock from the assassination of its leader, except to become even more organized and confident in its engagement against the occupation. Tel Aviv will not stop carrying out targeted assassinations. It is quite possible that the response to Iran’s recent attack will be through assassination attempts against other Iranian public figures. This Israeli method is due to a specific characteristic of the regime that was acutely perceived by General Soleimani: Israel’s inability to go to all-out war. Contrary to the myth of “Israeli invincibility” commonly propagated in the West, Tel Aviv has a natural weakness due to its own geographical limitations.

The policy of targeted killings was developed by Israel to try to destabilize its enemies psychologically and institutionally, avoiding prolonged military engagements. Without the capacity for continuous replenishment of troops and resources and having a very small territory with very exposed targets, Israel fears a large-scale war – and this was precisely Soleimani’s assessment. By creating the Axis of Resistance, the Iranian general has condemned Israel to perpetual war. There will be no peace at any time. If Israel defeats Hamas and the other Palestinian militias, there will still be Hezbollah and the Syrian militias in the north. On the naval front, Yemen will continue to capture ships and strike on strategic targets throughout occupied Palestine. In Iraq, the Resistance will not stop its operations at any time. And in the end, even if it defeats all these enemies, Tel Aviv will still have to face Iran itself – the largest military power in the Middle East, which, unlike Israel, has a large population and a gigantic territory, rich in resources and protected by a complex mountainous geography.

In other words, the existence of the Axis of Resistance is Israel’s death sentence. Soleimani’s strategy was focused on creating a prolonged war, wearing down the Zionist regime to the point of no return of its own state structure. The time will come when Israel becomes unviable as a country and will have to accept negotiating terms to create a demilitarized and non-ethnic state (joint between Jews and Palestinians), putting an end to apartheid. Otherwise, years of war will destroy all the country’s resources and create an irreversible migration crisis, leading millions of citizens to flee the Middle East forever.

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“..on the eve of one of the most delicate lunar transits of the century – with the Moon entering Libra with an eclipse attached with Mars opposed to Pluto retrograde in Capricorn, which will perfect the opposition at the end of the month, a conjunction harbinger of great clashes..”

• The Resistance Wants Victory (Pacini)

This is it. Something has happened. And this ‘something’ was for many unexpected, for others much hoped for. Now we have to reckon with what will happen. There are choices that cannot be made without considering certain esoteric data, the influence of which can be decisive for the success of a strategic operation. Israel knows this well, applying the notions of the Jewish Kabbalah to all political and military choices. This time the timing was not lacking even in the response: on the eve of one of the most delicate lunar transits of the century – with the Moon entering Libra with an eclipse attached with Mars opposed to Pluto retrograde in Capricorn, which will perfect the opposition at the end of the month, a conjunction harbinger of great clashes and which opens a two-year period of important battles – the Islamic Republic of Iran took the step of responding to the Zionist fury.

The attack was claimed as a legitimate response to the assassination of Haniyeh, Nasrallah and other members of the Resistance, following what the United Nations had also declared in recent months, when Israel had violated Iran’s territorial sovereignty by attacking Tehran directly. From a technical military point of view, it was an attack that could be described as modest. Certainly not focused on gaining significant strategic advantage, the operation involved some 400 hypersonic missiles that reached targets in Israel within approximately 15 minutes, all of them strategic in nature, i.e. military bases, weapons depots, and supply platforms. No civilian targets were tracked in the executed attack, confirming the military precision and legitimacy of the attack under International Law and Ius in bello, a necessary clarification given the Israeli use of targeting civilian targets.

What this attack has shown is that Iran has succeeded in overcoming Israel’s multi-layered air defence, somewhat like it did in April under similar circumstances. This time, however, the missile attack was significantly more successful than the previous one, with more warheads impacting the targets. The missiles employed were – according to the official release of the Iranian institutions – Fatteh-1s, defined as hypersonic, employed for the first time. Bear in mind that the term ‘hypersonic’ means that the missile maintains a speed of Mach 5 (or higher) for the entire duration of the flight, not just for part of it as is the case with non-hypersonic missiles. They are missiles with a weight of 450 kilos and a range of more than 1400 kilometers. From the recovered fragments, it appears that Cheibar Shekan missiles, which are particularly fast and have a longer cruise range, were also used.

The attack was followed by a series of ‘diplomatic clarifications’: if Israel counter-attacks, Iran is ready to strike more heavily. In the meantime, the U.S. condemned the attack and deployed its armed forces in support of Israel, which had also been present in the area for some time, both with the regular missions already there and the reinforcements sent since the beginning of the fight with Hamas in October last year. The quality of this attack is perhaps to be understood more on the level of international relations than on the strictly military level. Such a ‘partial’ attack was not helpful in clearing the way for ground troops, let alone in tampering with the enemy’s systems. The affected bases had already been evacuated hours in advance and Israel was waiting for the promised retaliation. What has changed is at the international level. The U.S. barefacedly confirmed its sine qua non protection to Israel, while, let us remember, Netanyahu was in New York at the UN plenary when he issued the order to attack to kill Nasrallah and shortly afterwards invade Lebanon, starting the Third Lebanon War.

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“..This chaos has sparked global supply chain snarls for the shipping industry as commercial vessels are rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope.”

• Tanker Blown Up By Houthis As Disasters Mount For Biden-Harris (ZH)

The Biden-Harris administration is facing several disasters this week. From FEMA’s botched response in the hurricane-ravaged US Southeast to elevated WW3 risks in the Middle East, one major and ongoing crisis that went underreported this week was multiple attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels on commercial ships in the critical maritime chokepoint of the southern Red Sea. On Wednseday we penned a note, citing intelligence firm SynMax, which specializes in maritime and energy intelligence, about two commercial vessels targeted by Houthis: “Two ships targeted by Houthis in the Red Sea yesterday—Panama-flagged CORDELIA MOON and Liberian-flagged MINOAN COURAGE—the first such attacks since September,” SynMax wrote on X.

Fast forward to late week, the maritime news website gCaptain released footage showing one of the vessels, Panama-flagged tanker M/T Cordelia Moon, being hit by a Houthi unmanned surface vessel. Here’s more from the gCaptain: The incident, which occurred on October 1, involved multiple missile strikes and a hit by an USV. The vessel was unladen and in ballast condition at the time of the attack. According to the Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC), the vessel was targeted while navigating the southern Red Sea, approximately 64 nautical miles from Al Hudaydah, Yemen. The attack unfolded in several stages, according to the ship’s Master:
At 0150 UTC, three projectiles landed near the ship’s port bow.
At 0253 UTC, a fourth projectile splashed 100 meters from the aft starboard quarter.
At 0500 UTC, the ship was struck by a USV on its port side.

The JMIC confirmed that the Cordelia Moon sustained damage but did not require assistance. All crew members are reported safe, and the vessel is proceeding to its next port of call. It also assesses that vessel was likely targeted due to affiliations within the vessel’s operation structure. The current threat assessment indicates that vessels with Israeli, United States, or United Kingdom associations are at the highest risk, but ships within company structures that have been identified as making port calls to Israel are also potential targets. As tensions continue to rise in the Red Sea, this latest incident underscores the dangers to vessels and their crews in the region, particularly those with connections to countries perceived as adversaries by the Houthi rebels. Dramatic footage.

For one year, Houthi rebels have launched over 80 attacks on commercial ships in the critical maritime chokepoint, sinking two ships and killing four sailors. [..] This chaos has sparked global supply chain snarls for the shipping industry as commercial vessels are rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope. Even more concerning is the Biden-Harris administration’s failure of ‘Operation Prosperity Guardian’ to ensure freedom of navigation and maritime security in the critical chokepoint. Meanwhile, the clogged chokepoint is causing major supply chain disruptions at top global ports. [..] In August, former Navy Seal and Blackwater founder Erik Prince issued this dire warning about what the clogged Red Sea actually means for the West: America’s “credibility and deterrence” are quickly eroding.

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49 additional combat brigades of 5,000 soldiers each.

• NATO Plans Major Force Buildup – Welt (RT)

NATO is planning to dramatically increase the number of its combat units amid tensions with Russia, the daily Die Welt reported on Saturday, citing a confidential planning document it obtained from the German Defense Ministry. Entitled the “Minimum Capability Requirements,” it was reportedly written by two top commanders of the US-led bloc: American General Christopher Cavoli, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and French Admiral Pierre Vandier, who is responsible for the bloc’s doctrinal and transformation issues. The document outlines the basic requirements NATO has to fulfil if it plans to defend “every centimeter” of its territory in a potential conflict with Moscow, Die Welt said. Cavoli and Vandier explain that the current number of the bloc’s combat brigades is insufficient for this task and should be increased from 82 to 131.

Under German army standards, the strength of such new formations should be around 5,000 soldiers each, the newspaper said, without explaining if the NATO strategy paper outlined any specific requirements. The number of corps and divisions is also to be increased from six to 15 and from 24 to 38 respectively, according to the document. The number of ground-based air defense units equipped with systems such as US-made Patriots or the German-made IRIS-T should be expanded fivefold from 293 to 1467, the outlet said. Each of the 32 NATO members would reportedly have to contribute to these new “minimum capabilities” depending on its population. It is unclear how quickly NATO countries would be able to meet the new requirements. According to Die Welt, the German Armed Forces – the Bundeswehr – currently has eight combat brigades and one more is being formed. Berlin plans to field one more brigade by 2031.

The buildup would require “significant further funding,” the authors said, as cited by Die Welt. The plan would “probably demand significantly more than two percent” of member states’ national GDP to be spent on defense, they added. Western nations have repeatedly called Russia a major threat to their security since the start of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. The Kremlin has denied any plans to attack NATO. President Vladimir Putin has dismissed talk of a ‘Russian threat’ as “nonsense” and propaganda by Western governments aimed at scaring European populations “to extract additional expenses” from them. However, Russian senior officials have warned that the West’s ever-increasing involvement in Ukraine via weapons shipments and other military assistance creates the risk of a direct confrontation between Moscow and the bloc.

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“Ukraine is closer to NATO than ever before. And we will continue on this path until you become a member of our alliance. I very much look forward to that day..”

• New NATO Chief Visits Ukraine (Antiwar)

Former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte visited Ukraine on Thursday, just two days after replacing Jens Stoltenberg as the head of NATO, demonstrating the alliance’s commitment to the proxy war. “This is now my fifth time in Ukraine since the full onslaught of Russia started in February 2022,” Rutte said alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “But this is my very first time as NATO Secretary General, and it was important to me that I come to Ukraine at the start of my mandate.” Rutte vowed he would work to support Ukraine’s continued move closer to NATO and eventual membership in the alliance. “Ukraine is closer to NATO than ever before. And we will continue on this path until you become a member of our alliance. I very much look forward to that day,” he said.

Rutte’s visit comes as Ukraine continues to lose territory to Russian forces in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. On Wednesday, Ukraine announced it was withdrawing from the strategic Donetsk town of Vuhledar, and Russian troops are closing in on Pokrovsk. Fighting is still raging in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, but the invasion has failed to distract Russia from eastern Ukraine. Russian forces have been slowly pushing the Ukrainians back in Kursk since launching a counteroffensive a few weeks ago. Zelensky is still pushing hard for the US to allow NATO missiles to be used in long-range strikes inside Russian territory, a step that would risk a direct NATO-Russia war and nuclear escalation.

“The frontline must be strengthened, and long-range capabilities must finally be provided in the way necessary to end this war. Everyone in the alliance understands the needs,” Zelensky said in his nightly address after meeting with Rutte. Last month, the US appeared poised to approve the decision on long-range strikes but may have backed down after Russian President Vladimir Putin warned it would mean NATO is at war with Russia and ordered changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine.

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“The West should “make the conditions” that would enable Ukraine to “sit down with the Russians and get something which is acceptable… something where they survive as an independent nation”.

• Kiev May Have To Accept Loss Of Territory – Stoltenberg (RT)

Ukraine may have to recognize the loss of some of its territory to Russia in order to achieve peace and security guarantees, Jens Stoltenberg said in his first long interview after stepping down as NATO secretary-general. Stoltenberg ended his ten-year tenure as the chief of the US-led alliance on October 1. In a conversation with the Financial Times published on Friday, he said that Kiev may be forced to rethink seeing the restoration of the 1991 borders as a prerequisite for any peace deal. Stoltenberg suggested that “a kind of new momentum” would come after the US presidential election in early November, possibly ushering in “ways to try to get movement on the battlefield combined with movement around the negotiating table.” The West should “make the conditions” that would enable Ukraine to “sit down with the Russians and get something which is acceptable… something where they survive as an independent nation”.

Asked what he would propose to Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, the former NATO chief offered a comparison to the resolution of the Soviet-Finnish war nearly 85 years ago. “Finland fought a brave war against the Soviet Union in ‘39. They imposed much bigger costs on the Red Army than expected,” he said. “The war ended with them giving up 10% of the territory. But they got a secure border.” Under the March 1940 treaty, Finland ceded a large portion of the Karelia region and Viipuri, its second-largest city at the time (known as Vyborg in Russia). Stoltenberg argued that Ukraine could obtain security guarantees from NATO even “if there is a line that is not necessarily the internationally recognized border.” He noted that the US defense pact with Japan does not cover Tokyo’s claim on the Kuril Islands, which are part of Russia, and that West Germany was admitted to NATO despite the fact that East Germany was controlled at the time by a separate, Soviet-aligned government.

“When there is a will, there are ways to find the solution. But you need a line which defines where Article 5 is invoked, and Ukraine has to control all the territory until that border,” Stoltenberg said, referring to the section of the NATO treaty, which outlines the duty of member states to defend each other. Russia has said that it would not accept Zelensky’s ten-point ‘peace formula’ and not relinquish control over Crimea and four other regions, which Kiev and its backers continue to view as Ukrainian territory under illegal occupation. Kiev’s hopes of imposing its terms appear more distant after the failed 2023 counteroffensive and Russia’s new victories in Donbass, where Moscow’s troops have been making steady progress throughout 2024. During its renewed advances, the Russian Army pushed the Ukrainians out of several heavily fortified towns, including Avdeevka, which fell in February, and Ugledar, which was captured earlier this week.

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“..he recently reiterated to authorities in Kiev that he does not understand why they continue to fight the Russians..”

• Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico To Visit Russia For Victory Day (RT)

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on Saturday announced his intention to visit Moscow to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. Speaking to the host of the ‘Saturday Dialogues’ show on Slovakia’s RTVS radio, Fico said the event should have nothing to do with today’s conflicts. “Who will stop me next year, when it will be the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, from going to a peaceful demonstration in Moscow? I think I will go. And why wouldn’t I go. What does it have to do with the present time?” Fico stated, responding to a question from the host about his possible attendance. Fico said he would not let anyone forget that “freedom came from the East,” apparently referring to the liberation of Slovakia from Nazi occupation by the Soviet Army in spring 1945.

With regard to present-day Ukraine, he said he recently reiterated to authorities in Kiev that he does not understand why they continue to fight the Russians. Since returning to power in 2023, Fico has stopped Slovak weapons deliveries to Ukraine. He has also repeatedly called for a diplomatic solution to the conflict. At a press conference earlier this week, the premier vowed to do everything in his power to restore relations with Moscow once the fighting ends. Earlier this month, Fico lambasted the West for condemning the atrocities committed by the Third Reich during WWII while turning a blind eye to Ukrainian troops wearing Nazi symbols. In a speech the former site of Sered concentration camp in western Slovakia, he called on the global community to stop “silently tolerating” Kiev’s forces using Nazi insignia.

Moscow has long tried to draw the attention of the global community to the growing influence of Nazi ideology among the Ukrainian public, and has made the “denazification” of Ukraine one of the goals of the military operation it launched in February 2022. Russian Security Council deputy chairman Dmitry Medvedev accused the West earlier this year of nurturing and supporting modern Nazis by backing Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin also recently slammed the West for “forgetting the lessons of World War II” and “mocking history” by justifying the actions of current followers of the Nazis.

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“..he is heading to a meeting with the Ukrainian leadership to discuss how to continue the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine so that the Slovak economy does not go the way of Germany’s..”

• Robert Fico Is A Rare Voice Of Sanity When It Comes To Russia (Amar)

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has done something very normal that in today’s West is highly unusual – speaking at a press conference in Bratislava, Fico said that when a war ends, actual peace should follow. This sensational idea is the essence of his statement that if the Ukraine War “ends during the [2023-2027] mandate of this government,” he will do “everything possible for the renewal of economic and normal relations with Russia.” What an outrageously reasonable idea! Especially for the leader of a small state that belongs to both the EU and NATO. And all the more so as he is heading to a meeting with the Ukrainian leadership to discuss how to continue the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine so that the Slovak economy does not go the way of Germany’s – a slow, then increasingly rapid collapse by energy strangulation at the hands of Washington and Kiev.

Fico made the remarks about re-establishing normality with Russia – which would go far toward re-establishing normality in Europe in general – at a press conference on his government’s new tax policies, namely increases. They are needed, Fico argues, to lower a fiscal deficit that has grown bad enough to lead to a downgrade by Fitch International at the end of last year due to what the ratings agency called a “deterioration in public finances and an unclear consolidation path.” In other words, like all other EU countries, Slovakia is struggling with economic problems. Its government seeks to tackle them by deficit reduction; the opposition does its part and disagrees. So far, nothing unusual. But there is something that is very unusual in the Slovak case – namely, the clearsighted and open acknowledgement of two facts by the leader.

First, that Slovakia has no good reason to make its problems worse by giving up on comparatively inexpensive energy from Russia, whether in the shape of oil or gas. Never mind that the EU exerts, in Fico’s words, “huge pressure” to bend Slovakia to its will. Indeed, as Fico has correctly pointed out, grand gestures of cutting yourself off from Russian energy tend to end up with buying it anyhow, only at a higher price and via middlemen. And secondly, that the eventual end of the Ukraine conflict should lead to a rapid re-establishment of normal commercial and political relations with Russia. Unfortunately, there as well, the Slovak leadership is a lonely voice; the only comparably sane positions on these questions are to be found in Hungary. It is true that there are more and more voices among yesterday’s ultra-hardliners in the West who are beginning to strike a different, more timid tone now that Moscow is winning the war against both Ukraine and NATO.

Germany’s Olaf Scholz is begging for a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is slowly dawning on NATO’s former figurehead, Jens Stoltenberg, that Ukraine will lose territory; and France’s Emmanuel Macron is becoming gloomy about the potential ‘end’ of the EU. But unfortunately, there are enough obstinate hardliners left, and even those who are beginning to get cold feet are still nurturing delusions such as a territorially (and otherwise) reduced Ukraine inside NATO.Even if and when the EU finally learns its lesson, things will not be easy at all. Though Fico could hardly be expected to say anything to the contrary, there is one part of his statement that is not quite as realistic as the rest – that the “European Union needs Russia, and Russia needs the European Union.” In principle, yes – as neighbors, the EU and Russia should derive great mutual advantages from stable and persistent cooperation.

But in reality, as shaped by Western economic warfare via sanctions, Russia has ever less interest in the EU, for two reasons: The EU has revealed itself as knowing no limits, not even of elementary self-interest, in its obedience to the ongoing US attempts to degrade Russia; from Moscow’s perspective, it is an entirely unreliable actor since it does not even act rationally. Second, in response to the sanctions attack, Russia has succeeded in re-casting and re-orienting its economy in a manner that makes the EU much less important for it. None of this means that there is no potential for future cooperation. But it won’t be the same as in the past, it won’t be symmetrical, and Russia will emerge with a stronger position than the EU which it will not hesitate to use.

Fico is to be commended for his good sense and the persistent courage to speak it, especially in view of the fact that he barely survived an assassination attempt by a deranged Ukraine fan, who may or may not have been just that – a crazed loner. The Slovak leader is not giving up and he should not. Yet he is up against something extraordinarily resistant to reasonable arguments – a form of mass delusion among the West’s elites. The real problem is that so many Western leaders have not simply lost their connection to reality – they are proud of having proactively abandoned it. That’s why, in the final analysis, their obstinate refusal to give up on misguided wishful thinking is not really even about Russia.

They are in rebellion against having to heed facts as such, and what annoys them most about the Russian leadership is its insistence on living in the real world. Think of this Western syndrome as the real-life equivalent of something Orwell foresaw in his novel ‘1984’, which is all too often misunderstood as a silly Cold War pamphlet. In his drab, imaginary future, which is at least as much about the abyss of human hubris as about politics, the ruling elites practice what one of them describes as “collective solipsism.” If we all believe we are levitating, then we are levitating. Gravity be damned. That is as concise a description of the state of mind that prevails in Washington, Brussels, and London as we will get.

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“The alleged facts date back to a time when Ms. Le Pen’s party had few elected members, but had major funding needs because of its solid foothold in France, the need to finance a party machine etc… ”

• Le Pen Trial Chance for Establishment to Bring Her Party to Its Knees (Sp.)

Prosecutors in the case against Marine Le Pen and her colleagues allege that between 2004 and 2016, the populist right party, then known as the National Front, misused millions of euros in EU moneys, spending cash doled out for parliamentary aides on personnel including a bodyguard for Ms. Le Pen and her father, a chief of staff, a secretary, and a graphic designer. Le Pen denies any wrongdoing, accusing the prosecution of “fabricating” “preconceived ideas” about the case, assuring that the party has “not violated any political and regulatory rules of the European Parliament,” and promising to present “serious and extremely solid arguments” in the party’s defense in the coming months. “Parliamentary assistants do not work for the parliament. They are political assistants to elected officials, political by definition,” Le Pen maintains. “I have the impression that [preconceived ideas] have been fabricated by the prosecution, the European Parliament,” she said in her testimony Wednesday.

The European Parliament wants €2.7 million in compensation from the National Rally for “financial and reputational damages,” accounting for €1 million already paid back by the party following a probe. The 56-year-old politician served as National Rally president between 2011 and 2021, worked as a member of European Parliament between 2009 and 2017, and ran for president three times between 2012 and 2022, taking 41.5% of the vote in the 2022 race in the runoff against incumbent Emmanuel Macron. Separately, Le Pen and her colleagues could now face up to 10 years in jail and a €1 million fine, if found guilty of misusing the EU funds. Le Pen could also be banned from running for office for five to ten years, which would bar her from running in the 2027 presidential election. Notably, the National Rally and its allies won some 142 seats in snap French legislative elections in July, taking 53 additional seats in the 577-seat parliament as pro-Macron centrists saw their numbers drop by 86 seats, to 159 total.

The populist right party emerged as kingmaker capable of bringing down the Macron-appointed government of Prime Minister Michel Barnier this week after the populist left New Popular Front filed a no-confidence motion over the government’s undemocratic representation and austere budgetary plans. Le Pen had earlier promised to keep Barnier “under surveillance,” but to give his government a chance, on the condition that any new tax hikes are complemented by measures to assist the lower and middle classes, and measure are taken to tighten controls on immigration and measures against crime, including narcotics and human trafficking. Mainstream observers expect the trial to push the National Rally to focus its attention and resources on defending themselves instead of fully playing their opposition role, with some suggesting that Le Pen’s years-long campaign to successfully broaden the party’s base could be seriously marred if she or her colleagues are found guilty.

The trial is a chance for the establishment to cast shade on her party, and “a good opportunity to bring what is now France’s leading party to its knees,” Dr. Edouard Husson, a historian and publisher of Le Courrier des Strateges – a French geopolitical affairs journal, told Sputnik. “I can’t comment on the facts of the case. But I can talk about the context. The alleged facts date back to a time when Ms. Le Pen’s party had few elected members, but had major funding needs because of its solid foothold in France, the need to finance a party machine etc… The French system for financing political parties is disadvantageous for small parties or parties on the rise, such as the Front National/Rassemblement National at the time – since it grants funding on the basis of the number of votes obtained. I therefore assume that what Ms. Le Pen and the other defendants are accused of is using European Parliament funding beyond what is reasonable. Obviously, the Rassemblement National’s fear is that it may be judged more severely than other parties,” Husson explained.

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One goal: Shut him up.

• Alex Jones Creditors Target Future Assets – Which Could Include His Name (ZH)

Lawyers targeting Alex Jones over a $1.4 billion judgement to Sandy Hook families have asked a Texas court to appoint a receiver to manage assets he acquired after his recent Chapter 7 bankruptcy conversion. The move seeks to control any new ‘non-exempt’ assets or endeavors that Jones might generate in the future. If the receiver deems that Jones’ name, as a business entity or brand, holds value – they could seize control of any profits or business activity generated under it to satisfy the debt. Jones explained the situation on Friday: Non-exempt assets are properties and income streams that bankruptcy protection does not cover. In the Jones’ case, this could include future earnings from personal appearances, digital content revenues, or any new business ventures initiated after the conversion of his bankruptcy case from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7.

Jones has raised just under $80,000 as of this writing in a GiveSendGo campaign to foot his legal bills. In response, InfoWars said the following: “As President Trump has rightly stated hundreds of times, “They’re not after me, they’re after you—I’m just in the way,” when you stand with Alex Jones in the face of the globalist onslaught you are standing up not only for yourself but your family, your country, and God. Again, your desperately needed donations will fund Alex Jones’ legal defense and expenses associated with staying on the air that are essential to him being able to stay on the air regardless of what happens to InfoWars. We the people have turned the tide but evil is striking back. Without your support the enemies of humanity will win.

Thank you,
Alex Jones & Crew

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“..Milei’s adviser, Santiago Caputo, who is reportedly a big fan of The West Wing and was said to have made watching the show a condition for joining his political consulting firm.”

• Argentina’s Milei Accused Of Copying Speech From The West Wing (RT)

Argentine President Javier Milei has been accused of plagiarizing the hit US political drama ‘The West Wing’ during his recent speech at the UN. According to the Buenos Aires Herald, Carlos Pagni, a journalist with the newspaper La Nacion, was the first to notice the “remarkable resemblance” between parts of Milei’s fiery address and the monologue delivered by fictional US President Jed Bartlet. “We believe in freedom of expression for all. We believe in freedom of worship for all. We believe in freedom of commerce for all and we believe in limited governments, all of them,” Milei told the UN General Assembly on September 24.

“We believe that everyone should live free of tyranny and oppression, be that in the form of political oppression, economic slavery, or religious fanaticism. This fundamental idea cannot remain merely as words. It must be supported in facts, diplomatically, economically, and materially,” he continued. Nearly identical words were spoken by Bartlet, who was portrayed by actor Martin Sheen, to his cabinet in episode 15 of season four of the show. Pagni suggested that the speech was written by Milei’s adviser, Santiago Caputo, who is reportedly a big fan of The West Wing and was said to have made watching the show a condition for joining his political consulting firm.

Created by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, The West Wing ran from 1999 to 2006, winning multiple awards, including three Golden Globes and 26 primetime Emmys. Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist who is known for using brash and sometimes eccentric language, has not commented on the matter. Speaking from the podium in New York last month, he described the UN as a “Leviathan with multiple tentacles” that attempts to trample on the sovereignty of countries and impose a “socialist” agenda.

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Walz fraud

 

 

AI

 

 

Expecting

 

 

Chicken coop

 

 

Gosling
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842443112779518343

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle June 3 2024

Jun 032024
 
 June 3, 2024  Posted by at 8:11 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  76 Responses »


Domenico Fetti The Good Samaritan c.1620

 

• Trump and ‘Our Democracy’: When A Political System Becomes A Meme (Johnston)
• Trump Says He’s ‘OK’ With Serving Potential Jail Term (RT)
• Maher: If Trump Goes To Jail There Will Be A Racial Civil War (MN)
• Trump Campaign Raises Staggering $200 Million Since Thursday Conviction (ZH)
• US Secret Service Reacts To Trump’s Criminal Conviction (ZH)
• The Deepfake Privilege? (Turley)
• ‘Leader of the Free World’ Permits Genocide And Global Annihilation (SCF)
• Biden Doesn’t Want To Be Responsible For WW3 – White House (RT)
• Germany Bickers Over How to Get ‘Fit for War’ as Ukraine Drains Coffers (Sp.)
Saudi Arabia Won’t Attend ‘Ukraine Conference’ as Russia is Not Invited (Sp.)
• Alex Jones Repels Ambush Seizure Of Infowars, Sleeps In Studio (ZH)
• Boeing Enters ‘New Territory’ With Federal Probe, Possible Criminal Charges (ET)

 

 

 

 

Scharf

 

 

New Trump ad
https://twitter.com/i/status/1796985477406261310

 

 

O’Leary

 

 

Gov. Abbott
https://twitter.com/i/status/1796647997448544730

 

 

The largest organization in the history of the world: the US goverment

 

 

“German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock seriously stated at the Green party congress that her grandparents gave peace in Europe a second chance. It follows from this that now we cannot deviate from traditions and we must continue to support Ukraine for the sake of peace – “as long as it needs us.” Only the grandfather of the respected minister was not at all in the peacekeeping detachment, but, like a true Nazi, bravely defended the interests of the Third Reich. Yes, a minor nuance.”

 

 

Orwell 1943

 

 

Jim Rickards: U.S. is set to steal Russian-owned Treasury securities at the G7 summit in Italy on June 13. That theft will not destroy the Treasury market overnight. It will actually do something far worse. I explain in this new interview with @DanielaCambone

“Russia could retaliate by freezing the entire Western clearance system, warns Jim Richards, New York Times bestselling author. In an exclusive interview with Daniela Cambone, Richards explains that if Western countries seize Russian assets, Russia could sue Euroclear, the largest clearing, settlement, and custody organization in Europe, to recover damages. “You could throw a monkey wrench into the entire global clearance and settlement system by disrupting Euroclear, which is probably second only to DTCC in terms of settlement and clearance.” Additionally, Richards states that we may need to return to the gold standard to restore confidence in the U.S. dollar. “But if you have to go back to a gold standard, $27,000 would have to be the price in order to avoid massive deflation.”

 

 

 

 

The more people talk about democracy, the less of it there is.

• Trump and ‘Our Democracy’: When A Political System Becomes A Meme (Johnston)

The verdict in Donald Trump’s hush money trial has bestirred the usual characters in all the predictable ways. And never far from anybody’s lips is the word ‘democracy’. “Donald Trump is threatening our democracy,” President Joe Biden himself opined, calling the ex-president’s questioning of the verdict “dangerous.“ The editorial board of the New York Times lauded the “remarkable display of the democratic principles” on display in convicting a former president, arguing that this proves that even men as powerful as Trump are not above the law. The word democracy is everywhere in the Western world these days. Hardly a day goes by without pleas to defend it, protect it, fight against its sworn enemies, or celebrate its virtues with pompous clichés. Precise and neutral usage has given way to an ideological tinge that is as electrified as it is vague. One senses the word is invoked in defense of a certain decaying America-led order and the elite institutions that uphold it – and yet, like its cousin the ‘rules-based-order’, it is never quite defined. In the 2024 US presidential election, we are told, democracy itself is on the ballot. Whatever that means.

If Trump is the archetypal demonic figure in the eyes of polite society, democracy is the bulwark against him. Democracy has been imbued with a primitive metaphysical potency that almost seems a stand-in for religious faith. Biden’s 2023 State of the Union address contained an exhortation to cure cancer once and for all, followed immediately by a grand summation of what has underpinned all American successes for all time – and, implicitly, will underpin futures ones, such as curing cancer. “Folks, there’s one reason why we’ve been able to do all of these things: our democracy itself.” Biden concluded: “With democracy, everything is possible. Without it, nothing is.” Turn back the clock a century or so, replace the word ‘democracy’ with ‘the grace of God’ and give the same speech and nobody would bat an eye. Democracy is a shield against accusations of wrongdoing. The defense being mounted against the war crimes charges facing the Israeli leadership is that the country is a democracy. As if how a government elects its leaders somehow changes the laws of war.

But what is curious is that this nauseating ubiquity of the word democracy has coincided with a period of deep dysfunction in actual self-proclaimed democracies. The more it is talked about, the less it seems to work and the larger the chasm between what is proclaimed and what is practiced. Many of the countries most vocally proclaiming democracy are the ones at the forefront of implementing highly undemocratic policies. It would be easy to become carried away pointing out the blatant hypocrisy in the Western embrace of all things democratic while at the same time leaning hard into authoritarian tendencies. Take your pick of stories: Earlier this month, for example, a German court rejected an AfD complaint about the classification of its youth organization as an extremist movement, meaning Germany’s domestic intelligence service can continue to monitor the activities and communications of the party itself. This was hailed as a victory by the government. “Today’s ruling shows that we are a democracy that can be defended,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said.

Clearly, for the current Western elites, democracy has come to mean a system not intended to be run democratically in response to the will of the people, but run by self-proclaimed democrats. But more interesting than simply laying out further instances of double standards and hypocrisy is to seek to grasp what explains the proliferation of democracy as a meme in exact proportion to the decline of the real thing. After all, the word democracy wasn’t always on the tip of every politician’s lips. Even Woodrow Wilson, the consummate evangelist of the American political order, whose “make the world safe for democracy” quote is now indelibly associated with his name, did not play loose with facile references to the political system through which everything is apparently possible. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 upon the conclusion of World War I, Wilson’s opening speech contained only one passing and modest reference to democracy. And yet at that time, America could much more reasonably than now lay claim to being the world’s preeminent democracy. What to make of this paradox?

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‘You don’t beg for anything..”

• Trump Says He’s ‘OK’ With Serving Potential Jail Term (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump says he is “OK” with serving potential jail time or being under house arrest over his 34 convictions for falsifying business records. Any punishment, however, is not likely to be taken lightly by the public, he added. The ex-president made the remarks in an interview with Fox News aired Sunday. Asked about the potential punishments, Trump said he is “ok with it.” “I saw one of my lawyers the other day on television saying, ‘Oh no, you don’t want to do that to the president.’ I said, ‘You don’t beg for anything,’” he stated, suggesting, however, that the potential punishments would anger his supporters. “I don’t think the public would stand it. I’m not sure the public would stand for it.”

Trump jail

Trump reiterated his take on the case against him regarding alleged ‘hush money’ payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels in the wake of the 2016 election and the falsified paperwork to hide them, dismissing it as politically-motivated persecution. “People get it. It’s a scam. And the Republican Party… they’ve stuck together in this. They see it’s a weaponization of the Justice Department of the FBI and that’s all coming out of Washington,” he said. The former president was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records by a Manhattan jury on Thursday. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of four years behind bars. Trump’s legal team has already vowed to appeal, with the ex-president saying the “real verdict” will be delivered by the public in the election on November 5. Trump is now the first US president to be convicted of a felony. Sentencing has been scheduled for July 11, just ahead of the Republican National Convention.

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Not sure race will be the dividing line.

Brett Tolman: “I predict he will give him some jail time, I think he will fine him, he’ll give him a stern lecture and then he’ll promptly plan his retirement and a book deal..”

• Maher: If Trump Goes To Jail There Will Be A Racial Civil War (MN)

HBO ‘Real Time’ host Bill Maher has predicted that if Donald Trump is sentenced to any prison time, there will be a civil war that will quickly evolve into a race war because of MAGA supporters. “Here’s the key question: Is he going to go to jail? Would this judge dare do that?” Maher said, adding “And should he? I heard some people say if his name wasn’t Donald Trump he would definitely get jail time.” “MAGA nation will go nuts. I don’t know if that’s a reason to or not to do something, but they will,” Maher continued during the discussion with former Obama chief strategist David Axelrod. Maher went on to suggest that “because the judge’s name was Juan,” putting Trump in jail would lead to racial political violence.

“Everything becomes racial in this country. That’s partly because of our horrible, despicable racial past, partly because some of that racism lives on in the present and some of it because the far left makes everything racial. But that’s what it’s going to be.” Maher further posited. “A civil war in this country, I’m sorry to say, becomes a race war. That’s the sad truth about this country,” the host continued, adding “And if they put him in jail, I mean, the first thing his supporters are going to say is, ‘Oh, that’s what it is.’ A Black district attorney. You know, all these people who are the district attorneys, they’re black. The judge was not White. This is what it is.”

As we highlighted earlier this week, former US Attorney for the District of Utah Brett L. Tolman is adament that Judge Merchan will give Trump jail time. “This judge has considerable power now, on July 11th he has the power to take Trump forthwith, he can take him, put him in custody right then and he can do it for whatever period of time,” said Tolman, warning that despite there being a range of sentencing, “the rules are out the window, who knows what this judge will do.” “I predict he will give him some jail time, I think he will fine him, he’ll give him a stern lecture and then he’ll promptly plan his retirement and a book deal,” concluded Tolman.

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“Biden and his Democrat allies have turned our legal system into a political tool, and Americans from every corner of the country have had enough..”

• Trump Campaign Raises Staggering $200 Million Since Thursday Conviction (ZH)

If Democrats needed further confirmation that prosecuting Donald Trump on an obscure misdemeanor elevated to a felony just for him… (while the same DA reduced 60% of felonies to misdemeanors last year), the Trump campaign has raised over $200 million since Thursday’s verdict in the former president’s New York ‘hush money’ trial. Of that, $70 million was from small donors, and 30% of the total were first-time donors to a political campaign, Eric Trump told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. “I mean, these are Americans who are p*ssed off, said the younger Trump. “They’re coming out of the woodwork and they want to support a guy that they just believe is getting bamboozled by a system. “We saw it with Impeachment one, we saw it with Impeachment two, we see it where they weaponize every liberal DA and AG across the country with one intent: To take him down, to slander him, to ruin his reputation, to try and divide his family, to try and bankrupt him, to throw him in jail, to do whatever the hell they can do,” he added.

“America sees through it. They know exactly what’s going on.” As the Post Millennial notes further; The $200 million was raised in a matter of just three days, which far surpasses any amount raised by President Biden’s campaign in a similar time frame. Within 24 hours of President Trump’s guilty verdict, the Trump campaign received $53 million in donations. The Biden campaign raised a total of $51 million for all of April. According to a Friday statement by Trump campaign officials Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, “Biden and his Democrat allies have turned our legal system into a political tool, and Americans from every corner of the country have had enough,” adding “This momentum is just getting started and together, as President Trump stated perfectly, Americans will render the real verdict on November 5.”

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“..other 77-year-old, first-time offenders would never be sent to prison for this conduct.”

• US Secret Service Reacts To Trump’s Criminal Conviction (ZH)

The US Secret Service on Friday said that Donald Trump’s conviction in his ‘hush money’ trial will have “no bearing” on whether the agency will protect him. According to the agency, “today’s outcome has no bearing on the manner in which the United States Secret Service carries out its protective mission,” adding that “our security measures will proceed unchanged,” the Epoch Times’ Jack Phillips reports. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records in connection with a 2016 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. He will face sentencing on July 11, during which Judge Juan Merchan could toss the former president in jail. Prosecutors have not indicated whether they will push for this, while Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg (who downgraded 60% of felonies in his district to misdemeanors, while elevating a an obscure, rarely prosecuted crime to a felony in Trump’s case).

As the Epoch Times notes, several weeks ago, the Secret Service issued a similar statement to The Epoch Times regarding how it would handle the former president’s security if he were jailed, coming after Judge Merchan warned him that he would be prepared to send him to jail over comments that he said violated his earlier gag order. On May 8, the agency responded to questions about how the Secret Service would respond if President Trump were jailed, saying that “under federal law, the United States Secret Service must provide protection for current government leaders, former Presidents and First Ladies, visiting heads of state and other individuals designated by the President of the United States.” That comment also didn’t go into specifics about how it would handle security. At the time, the spokesperson did not respond to a question about whether a Secret Service agent could be stationed in a cell with the former president.

“For all settings around the world, we study locations and develop comprehensive and layered protective models that incorporate state-of-the-art technology, protective intelligence, and advanced security tactics to safeguard our protectees,” the spokesperson said. “Beyond that, we do not comment on specific protective operations.” The lead attorney for President Trump, Todd Blanche, told CNN that he thinks the former president should not face prison time, in part due to his age. President Trump, 77, also has no prior convictions, he noted. “There’s a system in place where you rely on precedent, and somebody like President Trump should never, never face a jail sentence based on this conduct,” Mr. Blanche said. “And it would just kind of confirm what we’ve been saying all along,” he continued. “And a lot of people say that we’re wrong and that we’re missing key pieces. But other 77-year-old, first-time offenders would never be sent to prison for this conduct.”

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“..the legal version of a deepfake — misrepresenting the law to mislead citizens into believing that they are better off with less information..”

• The Deepfake Privilege? (Turley)

We have been discussing the dubious constitutional basis for President Joe Biden withholding the audio tapes of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur. I have previously written that the claim of privilege makes little sense when the transcript of the interview has already been released. It seems curious that Biden is claiming to be the president “who cannot be heard” in withholding the audio version. It just got wackier as the Justice Department seeks to create a new type of “Deepfake privilege” that would effectively blow away all existing limits on the use of the privilege when it comes to audio or visual records of a president. Multiple committees are investigating Biden for possible impeachment and conducting oversight on the handling of the investigation into his retention and mishandling of classified material over decades. Classified documents were found in various locations where Biden lived or worked, including his garage. The mishandling of classified material is uncontestable. Broken boxes, unprotected areas and lack of tracking are all obvious from the photos.

Biden made the situation even worse with a disastrous press conference in which he attacked Hur and misrepresented his findings. Hur’s ultimate conclusion that Biden’s diminished cognitive abilities would undermine any prosecution left many dumbfounded. After all, the man who is too feeble to prosecute is not only running a superpower with a massive nuclear arsenal but running for reelection to add four more years in office. From impeachment to oversight to the 25th Amendment (allowing the removal of a president for incapacities), there are ample reasons for Congress to demand information and evidence from the government on these questions. Congress is also interested in looking at repeated omissions for “inaudible” statements. Under this sweeping theory that Biden can legitimately withhold these recordings under executive privilege, any president could withhold any evidence of incapacity or criminality. As previously explained, the claim that the audiotape but not the transcript remains privileged is hard to square with precedent or logic. However, now the Justice Department appears to be pivoting with a new claim with a late Friday filing.

The filing obtained by Politico states that the audiotape must be withheld due to the risk that it could be altered by artificial intelligence and passed off as authentic in a deepfake release: “The passage of time and advancements in audio, artificial intelligence, and ‘deep fake’ technologies only amplify concerns about malicious manipulation of audio files.” Consider the implications of that argument for a second. It would mean that any visual or audio recording of the President could be withheld due to the danger of digital or other manipulation. It would eviscerate any existing limits on privilege assertions. It is also absurd since you could create such fake recordings using the transcript and Biden’s voice from countless interviews through AI programs. The Justice Department acknowledges that obvious logical disconnect by noting that the release would make any fake version more credible. “To be sure, other raw material to create a deepfake of President Biden’s voice is already available, but release of the audio recording presents unique risks: if it were public knowledge that the audio recording has been released, it becomes easier for malicious actors to pass off an altered file as the true recording,.”

The filing is logically and legally absurd. It is also dangerous. For a president who is already carefully insulated from questions and controlled in public appearances, the argument would allow staff to completely control any public or, more importantly, congressional review of his actual speech and discourse. In seeking to prevent “malicious actors” from altering reality, the government is claiming the right to frame reality as an inherent constitutional prerogative. The argument ignores that, if an audiotape is released, it is harder to pass off a fake as genuine. As it stands, actors can claim tapes as leaked or derived from other sources. In the absence of an official tape, such arguments can be difficult to refute. The fact that this spurious argument is being made by Merrick Garland’s Justice Department is another disappointing sign that he has abandoned his pledge to remain apolitical in office. This litigation is clearly designed for one overriding purpose: to delay any release until after the election when it cannot harm the President. It is the legal version of a deepfake — misrepresenting the law to mislead citizens into believing that they are better off with less information on the credibility and competence of their president.

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“If there is any hope, it may be that the abominable reality galvanizes the world to rise up against this criminal system and the war criminals that lord it in high office..”

• ‘Leader of the Free World’ Permits Genocide And Global Annihilation (SCF)

The nadir of Washington’s hypocrisy and collusion was seen following the massacres in Rafah this week. The Biden White House said the mass murder did not cross any supposed red lines that might cause Washington to end its huge military and financial support for the Israeli regime. Only a few weeks ago, the Biden administration was ostensibly warning Israel not to proceed with its offensive plans in southern Gaza. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken exhibited depraved psychopathy when he spoke during a visit to Moldova and claimed that it wasn’t clear if American weapons were used in the Rafah bloodbath. He went on to use weasel words to justify mass murder, saying: “I think we also see that even limited, focused, targeted attacks designed to deal with terrorists who killed innocent civilians that are plotting to kill more, even those kinds of operations can have terrible, horrific, unintended consequences.”

European powers are equally contemptible. Following the Israeli onslaught in Rafah, European figures like French President Emmanuel Macron and the European Union’s foreign affairs minister Josep Borrell voiced criticism of Israeli violence. Nevertheless, the European Union and its main members continue to provide vital military support and political cover for the Israeli regime to perpetuate the slaughter. In the news this week were moves by European states Ireland, Norway and Spain to recognize Palestinian statehood. However, such moves are tokenism and ineffective in halting the genocide. European “values” are worthless, if ambiguous. Ambiguity on Gaza is not for the Americans though. US complicity is flagrant and barbaric. The White House and Congress have boorishly dismissed the orders by the International Court of Justice and ICC as “outrageous”, insisting with barefaced perversion that “there is no genocide” in Gaza.

Washington has even threatened to impose sanctions on these legal bodies for daring to hold the Israeli regime to account. No doubt, part of the logic here is a concern that the United States and its Western accomplices could also eventually be indicted for complicity in Israel’s war crimes. The double standards and hypocrisy of the United States and its European partners are off the charts. Only a few months ago, they were hailing the ICC issuing an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine. There is no credible basis for such an indictment against the Russian leader unlike the overwhelming evidence for genocide by Israel in Gaza with full support from the US and Europe.

There are very sound reasons why Biden has become known as “Genocide Joe” in the eyes of a large section of the American and European population. Further mocking his credentials as “leader of the free world”, Biden has overseen the arrests of thousands of American students who have bravely held protests on university campuses across the US against the genocide that their government and taxes are enabling. The moral bankruptcy of Biden and the rest of the ruling elite in the United States and Europe is proven beyond all doubt by the ongoing support for genocide in Gaza. Not one of these self-proclaimed champions of the “rules-based order” has stood up unequivocally on the side of justice. Confirming their moral decrepitude, Biden and virtually all of the Western establishment are moving to escalate the NATO proxy war in Ukraine by sponsoring a NeoNazi regime to hit Russia with long-range ballistic weapons.

The criminals have become insane in their warmongering and gambling with a potential nuclear conflagration. President Putin warned that such relentless escalation would have dire consequences. That’s not a bluff or idle warning. The savagery of Western imperialism has become a full-blown disease – again. World War One and Two were earlier pandemics of this disease. It is threatening the world once more in the obscene disguise of “democracy, freedom and rule of law”. But that threadbare disguise is as transparent as it is grotesque. The diabolical image of a distraught Palestinian father holding up the body of a decapitated baby is the horrific reality of Western imperialism. There is no restraint in what this psychopathic system is capable of permitting – the genocide of millions and ultimately global annihilation. If there is any hope, it may be that the abominable reality galvanizes the world to rise up against this criminal system and the war criminals that lord it in high office.

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All that’s left is semantics.

• Biden Doesn’t Want To Be Responsible For WW3 – White House (RT)

President Joe Biden does not want the standoff with Russia over Ukraine to trigger a global war, White House National Security spokesman John Kirby has said. He made his statement days after the White House confirmed that Biden had granted Kiev permission to use US-supplied weapons systems for strikes deep inside Russia. Ukraine had requested to ease the restrictions on the use of foreign arms after Russian troops launched a new offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkov Region last month and have captured several villages along the border. “We’ve been concerned about escalation since the very beginning of this war. And those concerns remain valid,” Kirby told ABC News on Sunday. “The president has said he does not want to be responsible for starting World War III. We’re not looking for a conflict with Russia, another nuclear power.” Kirby said that Biden “had understood all of the ramifications” of allowing Kiev to use American weapons “for counter-fire purposes.” He reiterated that Ukrainians were only permitted to target bases, artillery positions and other military sites “that Russians were using to create some sort of buffer zones.”

The White House previously clarified that the ban on the use of the “ATACMS [missiles] or long-range strikes inside of Russia has not changed.” Russia, however, said that Kiev had already been using ATACMS and other long-range weapons to hit targets in Crimea, the Donbass, as well as the regions of Zaporozhye and Kherson. Kiev and its Western backers continue to view these recently incorporated Russian territories as Ukrainian land. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the goal of the operation in the Kharkov Region is aimed at stopping frequent Ukrainian cross-border mortar and missile attacks on Belgorod and other Russian cities. Moscow has no plans of seizing the city of Kharkov itself, he told reporters during his trip to China last month. Moscow has repeatedly warned that the deliveries of heavy weapons to Ukraine from the West would not deter the Russian forces. Russia stressed, however, that military aid to Kiev leads to dangerous escalation. In an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson in February, Putin said it is unthinkable for anyone to drag the world into a new global war. “A global war would put the whole of humanity on the brink of survival,” he said.

Pepe

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The German army could last for, what was it, 3 hours?!

• Germany Bickers Over How to Get ‘Fit for War’ as Ukraine Drains Coffers (Sp.)

Tension is brewing between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his increasingly pugnacious defense chief Boris Pistorius, Bloomberg reported. The dispute between the two is rooted in their different visions for how Germany should rebuild its armed forces and revitalize its defense. Pistorius’ “tub-thumping” war rhetoric is fraught with potential trouble for his fellow Social Democrat Scholz ahead of next year’s elections, the outlet noted. Public messaging from the two sees Scholz using plying the word “peace” more often. Campaign posters for June’s European elections featuring Scholz emblazoned with the word “Frieden” (“Peace”). Pistorius, on the other hand, is avidly beating the “war” drum. The Bundeswehr needs to get “ready for war,” Pistorius said in an interview last year for Welt am Sonntag.

“It will take time for the defense industry to ramp up its capacities. We now have around five to eight years to catch up – both regarding the armed forces, industry and society,” he stated. Not that the two men are not on the same page when it comes to supporting the Kiev regime. Germany is one of the biggest cheerleaders of NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine, sending over 10 billion euros in military and economic support to Kiev. But its own Bundeswehr is both aging and shrinking. Modernizing the armed forces and covering maintenance costs for military equipment have become a challenge. This is where the war rhetoric comes in. Pistorius has been arguing the alleged “Russia threat” to urge the chancellor to dramatically hike up military spending. His language has been peppered with militaristic language that has not been heard from a German politician in the decades after World War II.

Scholz announced a “Zeitenwende” or “historic turning point” in 2022 when the Ukraine crisis escalated. He pledged to revive Germany’s military, but ambitious plans have since been mired in spending squabbles and the need to pump weapons and cash to the Kiev regime. Accordingly, the chancellor’s 100-billion-euro ($109 billion) defense fund “has already been fully allocated and will have been spent by 2027,” the publication noted. The 100-billion-euro fund was announced by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to improve the country’s defense capabilities shortly after the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. The fund was approved by the German parliament in June of that year. In January 2023, Pistorius told the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that the fund would not be enough for Germany to modernize its troops and called for an increase of 10 billion euros per year in the German defense budget. The defense minister has so far been unable to secure the extra funding.

Recently, several public disagreements have shone light on the growing distance between the two men. Scholz again rejected Pistorius’ request for greater defense spending, with Robert Habeck, vice chancellor from the Greens, and Finance Minister Christian Lindner all opting for belt-tightening. It should be noted that Germany has a so-called “debt brake” that restricts the federal deficit to 0.35 percent of GDP. Pistorius argued that “expenditure for defense and civil protection should not be included” in those rules. His statement was made during a trip to the US. “Unfortunately, Mr. Pistorius is only singling out the option of creating security through debt. The citizens would thus be saddled with more and more permanent interest burdens. The better way is to reallocate money in our large state budget and get the economy moving,” Christian Linder shot back.

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China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and counting.

• Saudi Arabia Won’t Attend ‘Ukraine Conference’ as Russia is Not Invited (Sp.)

Saudi Arabia will not attend the Swiss-hosted peace conference on Ukraine in June because Russia will not be represented, German news agency DPA reported on Sunday, citing Saudi diplomatic sources. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Saudi Arabia, scheduled for past Saturday, may now take place after the “peace conference” in Switzerland, the report read. Riyadh has not yet officially announced its decision not to attend the conference. Switzerland will host the summit on Ukraine not far off from the city of Lucerne from June 15-16. In April, the spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Bern, Vladimir Khokhlov, told Sputnik that Russia was not invitied to the summit, adding that Moscow had no plans to participate in the event even if invited.

China and Brazil have also refused to take part in the conference. Even Washington, despite being its main proponent, cannot say who will represent the US. President Joe Biden is due to attend a Hollywood fundraising gala for his re-election campaign instead. Since the start of the special military operation in 2022, Moscow has said many times that it was ready to negotiate with Ukraine. Russian and Ukrainian delegations held several rounds of peace talks in the early days of the conflict, but the negotiation failed, with Kiev legislating a ban on further peace talks. Western countries have been calling on Russia to engage in negotiations with Ukraine, but at the same time the West keeps ignoring Kiev’s continuous refusal of dialogue.

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“..different groups involved in the bankruptcy that will be exposed soon have literally made a move to shut this place down and end my show..”

• Alex Jones Repels Ambush Seizure Of Infowars, Sleeps In Studio (ZH)

One day after Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies in his ‘hush money’ trial, a court-appointed officer overseeing the Infowars bankruptcy apparently went rogue on Friday and tried to seize and shut down Alex Jones’ studio without a court order, despite having a reported “path with the [bankruptcy] judge to continue on for years.” On Saturday, Jones held a four hour X space, in which supporters including Gen. Mike Flynn, Steve Bannon and Roger Stone commented on the situation. All three suggested that Jones stand his ground and peacefully resist. According to commentator and attorney, ‘Viva Frei’ (David Freiheit), the court-appointed Chief Restructuring Officer (CRO) in the Infowars bankruptcy, Patrick Magill, “showed up to lock the place down,” adding “and apparently in the absence of a court order.”

“This is going to be Infowars’ last show, because I learned yesterday that they were going to padlock the door and kick us out last night,” Jones said during the Saturday space. “They are trying to shut us down,” Jones told us when reached for comment. A CRO is typically appointed during times of significant financial stress, and is tasked with overseeing the restructuring companies in bankruptcy. On Saturday, Jones suggested that his legal team had come to terms with the judge in the bankruptcy proceedings regarding a long-term timeline for transition, and was instead surprised with an ambush by Magill to seize his studio. “They want us shut down because in bankruptcy and what was happening we have a path with the judge to continue on for years, and the judge has signaled that. So, different groups involved in the bankruptcy that will be exposed soon have literally made a move to shut this place down and end my show,” Jones said.

In March, tensions came to a boil between Jones’ legal team and Magill, after a company managed and partially owned by Jones’ father, PQPR Holdings Limited, LLC asked the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas to replace Magill with a new CRO – days after accusing Magill of acting unprofessionally and in a dysfunctional manner. PQPR has been accused of receiving millions in payments from Jones’ Free Speech Systems while families of Sandy Hook Elementary School students attempt to collect $1.5 billion worth of legal judgements against Jones and Infowars. In a court filing, PQPR slammed Magill’s decision to replace the company’s lead bankruptcy attorney with someone new, after the CRO accused attorney Ray Battaglia of hindering progress on the bankrupcy. Jones says Magill is trying to “obviously and maliciously” entrap him, per Frei, in order to “facilitate the shutting down of Infowars.”

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“They killed 346 people over money and nothing else.”

• Boeing Enters ‘New Territory’ With Federal Probe, Possible Criminal Charges (ET)

When a door panel ripped off an Alaskan Airlines flight after takeoff on Jan. 5, Boeing’s fortunes changed overnight. Had the company gone just two more days without an incident, it would have satisfied a settlement to avoid criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice (DOJ). Instead, the accident triggered investigations by federal agencies and congressional hearings. The incident also renewed public scrutiny of Boeing and the 737 MAX 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed everyone on board and led to criminal charges for the company. Boeing has since seen a significant financial fallout, reporting a $355 million loss and a near-50 percent drop in deliveries in the first quarter alone. The company also faces plummeting stock values and canceled orders from multiple airlines since the Jan. 5 incident.

The DOJ ended months of speculation on May 14 with a court filing alleging that Boeing violated its 2021 deferred prosecution agreement. The company failed to “design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of the U.S. fraud laws.” The DOJ will meet with the crash victims’ families on May 31 before announcing its intentions with Boeing’s case by July 7. According to career pilots, aviation safety experts, and attorneys who spoke with The Epoch Times, how Boeing violated the agreement and the possible consequences are complicated. To stay competitive, Boeing needed to design a new plane that could fly to destinations such as Hawaii with less fuel. The company’s competitor, Airbus, was edging out the market with new, more fuel-efficient jets. Instead of designing a brand new plane, which would have required extensive pilot training from the airlines that buy them, raising the jet’s price, Boeing opted to release an upgraded version of its 737 jet, the 737 MAX.

It has larger, more powerful engines that are installed farther forward on the plane’s wings, which causes the nose to push up higher during takeoff. Boeing compensated with a new flight control software called Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which automatically lowers the nose to avoid midair stalling. Federal regulators said Boeing didn’t tell the airlines or the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) the extent of the software, how it controls the plane in the background, and how to disable it. Planes also use angle of attack vanes, or indicators, to tell the computer whether the jet is ascending or descending at the right pitch angle. Before the 737 MAX, these indicators were wired to two sensors in case one malfunctioned during flight—because of damage from a bird strike, for instance. On the original 737 MAXs, the angle of attack indicators were wired to a single sensor, causing the flight control software to assume that the plane was in critical danger if either indicator malfunctioned.

During the 2018 and 2019 fatal flights, the MCAS system kept pitching the nose downward with faulty angle-of-attack data, likely from a damaged angle of attack vane. Because Boeing didn’t properly disclose the software nuances and how to disable it to the airlines, the pilots took more than 10 seconds to respond. Federal guidelines expect pilots to respond to such as situation in four seconds to avoid a catastrophe. Boeing also didn’t overhaul the flight control software until after the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash, which was five months after the 2018 Lion Air crash. The FAA responded by grounding all 737 MAX jets for nearly two years to ensure compliance with regulations. “The MCAS accidents were pure, 100 percent money accidents,” said Shawn Pruchnicki, aviation safety expert and assistant professor at Ohio State University’s Center for Aviation Studies. “They killed 346 people over money and nothing else.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Autonomous
https://twitter.com/i/status/1797161693765677363

 

 

Joy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1797243368067440903

 

 

Anaconda

 

 

Panther

 

 

Boat lift

 

 

Restyling
https://twitter.com/i/status/1797152416460120434

 

 

Sheep

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle December 10 2023

Dec 102023
 
 December 10, 2023  Posted by at 9:05 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  42 Responses »


Salvador Dalí Mi esposa desnuda 1945

 

• ‘Most Censored Man’ In America Set To Return To X (RT)
• Gonzalo Lira’s Father Blames Biden (RT)
• US Condemns Thousands To Death By Vetoing UN Gaza Resolution – Russia (TASS)
• In the Season of Goodwill, A Tip for Biden… Stop Fuelling War (SCF)
• Israeli Losses Multiply As Gaza Factions Ferociously Resist Aggression (Cradle)
• Moscow on the Rocks (Pepe Escobar)
• ‘Putin Era’ Rolls On in Spite of West Endlessly Underestimating Him (Sp.)
• Russia Won’t Agree to ‘Minsk-3.0’ Deal on Ukraine (Sp.)
• Russia Won’t Allow Existence Of ‘Nazi State’ On Its Border – Zakharova (RT)
• Polish Media Debunks Narrative That Ukraine is Fighting for West’s Freedom (Sp.)
• Bizarre Plot Twist: Scholz Blames Putin for High Energy Prices in Europe (Sp.)
• EU Leaders Panicking Over Potential Trump Return – NYT (RT)
• With Hunter’s Indictment, Democrats Face A Moment Of Maddening Truth (Turley)
• Americans Running Out Of Savings – JPMorgan (RT)
• Net Zero Requires 80 Million Kilometres of New Power Lines By 2040 (DS)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peace

 

 

 

 

Martyanov

 

 

Jeffrey Sachs

 

 

Mahathir

 

 

 

 

“If the people vote him back on, this will be bad for X financially, but principles matter more than money..”

• ‘Most Censored Man’ In America Set To Return To X (RT)

X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk has asked the public to vote on whether to reinstate the account of Infowars host Alex Jones. Musk said that maintaining the ban on Jones would go against his belief in free speech. Musk posted his poll on Saturday afternoon, asking X users whether they wanted him to “reinstate Alex Jones on this platform?” With eight hours to go at time of writing, 70% were in favor of Jones’ reinstatement, and 30% opposed. “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk wrote in his post. Musk used this Latin phrase, which means “the voice of the people is the voice of God,” when he reinstated former US President Donald Trump’s account after a similar vote last year. Jones and his InfoWars channel were banned from every major social media platform in 2018, with the Silicon Valley firms citing “hate speech” and alleged breaches of their terms of service.

Jones was also banned from using PayPal for business transactions over his alleged “intolerance against certain communities and religions.” After purchasing Twitter last year and rebranding the platform as X, Musk rolled back many of the company’s speech rules and censorship policies, and offered a “general amnesty” to previously banned users. However, he wrote last year that after the death of his infant son, he would never allow Jones back, describing the Infowars shock-jock as someone “who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.” Jones had previously claimed that the Sandy Hook school shooting of 2012 was perpetuated by the US government to drum up support for gun control. A group of victims’ families sued Jones over his comments, and a judge ordered him to pay over $1.5 billion in damages last year. Jones, who filed for bankruptcy shortly after the verdict, has vowed to appeal the decision.

Musk’s opinion of Jones appears to have softened after former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who now hosts a self-produced show on X, interviewed the notorious pundit earlier this week. Introducing his guest as “the most censored man in the English language,” Carlson sat down to an hour-long discussion with Jones, during which Jones said that he understood that if Musk allowed him back on X, “the ADL and others would really be able to shut down Twitter.” The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish NGO, has previously clashed with Musk over X’s alleged tolerance of “rampant hate speech.” The ADL settled its beef after Musk threatened to sue the organization for driving away advertisers with “false accusations.” Responding to an X user later on Saturday, Musk wrote that “I vehemently disagree with what he said about Sandy Hook, but are we a platform that believes in freedom of speech or are we not?” “That is what it comes down to in the end. If the people vote him back on, this will be bad for X financially, but principles matter more than money,” he added.

56 seconds

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“Isn’t it odd that four days later, after condemning Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, Gonzalo was arrested?”

“If we are going to protect democracy in the world, let’s start by taking out that puppet called Zelensky..”

• Gonzalo Lira’s Father Blames Biden (RT)

President Joe Biden’s administration was complicit in the arrest of a US citizen who was jailed and tortured in Ukraine for criticizing the Kiev government, the father of incarcerated blogger Gonzalo Lira has claimed, saying his son may have sealed his fate when he also spoke out against Washington. Gonzalo Lira was apprehended by Ukrainian authorities for the third time in August, while trying to escape the country into Hungary after being released on bail. The Chilean-American journalist had repeatedly criticized the government of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, arguing that Kiev had provoked its conflict with Russia and had no chance of winning. “This that is happening to my son, he’s a victim of this Biden government and his relation with that puppet Zelensky,” Gonzalo Lira Sr. said on Saturday in an interview with US political commentator Tucker Carlson.

“Zelensky is a man that has made opponents, political opponents, disappear.” The 80-year-old father said his son had bravely reported on about a dozen Zelensky opponents who had been “disappeared.” The younger Gonzalo Lira also predicted correctly that the Russian economy would be relatively unscathed by Western sanctions and that NATO members would suffer a boomerang effect from their efforts to arm Ukraine and punish Moscow. However, it was only after the blogger sharply criticized Biden and US Vice President Kamala Harris that he was arrested for a second time, in May, Gonzalo Lira Sr. told Carlson. “Isn’t it odd that four days later, after condemning Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, Gonzalo was arrested?” the father asked. “Why was he not detained earlier? When he was let go the previous year, he continued the same criticism against the war.”

He added, “The USA government, with its silence in the face of this scandalous incident, suggests a degree of complicity, or at least tacit approval of Gonzalo’s arrest.” Lira contrasted the Biden administration’s “conspicuous lack of response” to his son’s arrest to Washington’s aggressive efforts to secure the release of Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was arrested in Russia on espionage charges in March. The younger Lira is relying on a court-appointed Ukrainian attorney who speaks no English for his legal defense. Just before being captured in August, he warned that if he failed to get safely into Hungary and be granted political asylum, he would likely die in a Ukrainian labor camp.

Gonzalo Lira Sr. has called his son a political prisoner and has argued that his case illustrates the absurdity of US claims that the world must defend “freedom and democracy” in Ukraine. “If we are going to protect democracy in the world, let’s start by taking out that puppet called Zelensky,” he said.

Tucker Gonzalo

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“The resolution called for a ceasefire and the release of all hostages and urged the parties to the conflict to comply with international humanitarian law.”

• US Condemns Thousands To Death By Vetoing UN Gaza Resolution – Russia (TASS)

The United States condemned thousands of Palestinian and Israeli civilians to death by vetoing a resolution calling for a ceasefire, Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said.”Our American colleagues have condemned thousands – if not tens of thousands – more civilians in Palestine and Israel, including women and children, to death, along with the UN workers who are trying to help them. History will assess what Washington has done,” he noted. “One can say many beautiful but empty words about democracy, human rights, peace, security, some rules and order, but today, we learned the true value of these words as two members of the UN Security Council preferred to remain complicit in Israel’s brutal massacre,” the diplomat said.

“Here at the council, we have nothing left to do but triple efforts to develop a decision that would ease the suffering of civilians within the limited and toothless framework that Washington and London have left us with,” he concluded. Earlier, the US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution submitted by the United Arab Emirates, which called for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Thirteen out of the UN Security Council’s 15 members, including Russia and China, voted for the resolution, while the UK abstained. The resolution called for a ceasefire and the release of all hostages and urged the parties to the conflict to comply with international humanitarian law.

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“The massacre of children in Gaza is particularly poignant given its location in the Holy Land and the proximity to the birthplace of Jesus Christ, whom Christians revere as the Son of God. The profanity is shocking.”

• In the Season of Goodwill, A Tip for Biden… Stop Fuelling War (SCF)

U.S. President Joe Biden failed to obtain his Christmas wishlist of $111 billion in additional military funds for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The so-called “supplementary military aid package” was blocked by the Senate this week mainly due to opposition from Republican lawmakers. Their opposition was primarily based on demands for more funding to be given to U.S. border security measures rather than on principles of anti-war and pro-peace. Nevertheless, it is somewhat satisfying that Biden’s madcap militarism was dealt a blow. It’s also quite a grim eye-opener that the American president – the supposed leader of the “free world” and a professed devout Christian – sees nothing more important than spending such colossal amounts of money on weapons of war. It is all the more odious given the approach of Christmas and the Season of Goodwill.

The appalling violence in Gaza and the futile war in Ukraine must be stopped immediately. Peace and the alleviation of suffering should be the utmost priority for all world leaders worthy of the name. However, the Biden administration is having none of that. President Biden wants to send another $68 billion in weapons to Ukraine – on top of the more than $120 billion his administration has already supplied in aid to the Kiev regime. It is estimated that 400,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed in nearly two years of a U.S.-led NATO proxy war against Russia. Yet, ludicrously, Biden declares this war to be an achievement in “defending democracy”. Instead of recognizing (even tacitly) that the conflict is a disastrous defeat for Washington and its allies, Biden wants to keep on throttling it.

Meanwhile, the White House has repudiated international calls for a ceasefire in Israel’s wanton offensive against Gaza. After more than two months of intensive aerial bombardment, more than 17,000 Palestinians have been killed and 50,000 injured. Most of the victims have been innocent children and women. The barbarity is unspeakable. So much so that there is a strong suspicion that the Israeli regime is exploiting the Hamas attacks on October 7 as a pretext for ethnic extermination. Despite the horrendous destruction, the Biden administration wants to give Israel an additional $14 billion in military aid on top of the $3.8 billion it receives annually from the United States.

The reported supply of 15,000 heavy bombs and one-tonne bunker buster ordnance from the U.S. to Israel has been made without any conditions on their use to limit civilian casualties. That makes the United States fully complicit in what can only be called genocide in Gaza. To request even more killing power in the form of $14 billion supplementary military aid is tantamount to giving Israel an even brighter green light to continue the mass slaughter with impunity. It is shuddering that this spiritually significant time of year does not give politicians pause for thought. The massacre of children in Gaza is particularly poignant given its location in the Holy Land and the proximity to the birthplace of Jesus Christ, whom Christians revere as the Son of God. The profanity is shocking.

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“Only in the Mount Herzl cemetery did we bury 50 soldiers in 48 hours.”

• Israeli Losses Multiply As Gaza Factions Ferociously Resist Aggression (Cradle)

The Israeli army has registered at least 5,000 wounded among its ranks, including 2,000 troops who have been left “disabled” during the two-month-long ethnic cleansing campaign of Gaza. “Israel has never witnessed an event like this before in terms of the number of injured people,” the head of the Rehabilitation Department at the Israeli Ministry of Defense, Limor Luria, told Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth on 9 December. She added that “58 percent of the soldiers have limb injuries, as they were subjected to the amputation of a leg or arm.” The Israeli army claims only 91 soldiers have been killed by the Palestinian resistance in Gaza since the start of the war on 7 October, casting doubt on whether the actual death toll is being kept secret as the Al-Qassam Brigades has documented the daily destruction of Israeli vehicles and squadrons for the past two months.

In an interview last month, the director of Mount Herzl Military Cemetery, David Oren Baruch, revealed that – at the time – one Israeli soldier was being buried every one hour to one hour and a half. “We are now going through a period. Every hour, there is a funeral, and every hour and a half, there is a funeral,” Baruch said on 19 November. “Only in the Mount Herzl cemetery did we bury 50 soldiers in 48 hours.” The Israeli army is currently facing a fierce battle in the southern city of Khan Younis. According to Yaniv Kubovits, the military affairs correspondent for Haaretz, Israeli army commanders have reported there are four Hamas battalions at the site “whose ability to launch attacks against the army has not been affected.” Battles are also raging in the north of Gaza, which the Israeli army claimed to have gained control of last month. Rocket attacks also continue to be launched against settlements near the Gaza envelope, raising questions on whether Tel Aviv’s stated goal of “eradicating Hamas” can be achieved.

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“Russia will not initiate a diplomatic dialogue. A sense of threat is very real in Russia. Diplomatic channels conveyed this message to the Americans, behind closed doors.”

• Moscow on the Rocks (Pepe Escobar)

And then, casually, almost as an afterthought while meeting Donbass heroes, Putin announces he will run for President again in next March’s elections. Considering his massive popularity – at least 80% nationally – he’s bound to remain in power until 2030. Welcome to VVP-2024. Plenty of time for serial meetings with his dear friend Xi Jinping. The Russia-China strategic partnership – in charge of paving the road to multipolarity – is scheduled to be rocking more progressively than Emerson, Lake and Palmer in Tarkus (“Have you walked in the stones of years?”) These have been heady days in dazzling, snowy Moscow. To start with, let’s go on a roll call of all those indicators which are being reluctantly admitted even by rabid NATOstan media.

A manufacturing boom is in effect in a semi war economy. Investments are up, up and away – including by dodgy Russian oligarchs who can’t park their funds in the West anymore. Tourism is up and up – including legions of Chinese tour groups and everyone and his neighbor from West, Central and South Asia. There’s an oil and gas export boom – as EU clients continue to buy gas via Turkey or to the delight of New Delhi, Repackaged in India oil. The yuan replaces the U.S. dollar and the euro. Import substitution rules – while in parallel Made in Turkey or Made in China products replace Europeans. Last January, the IMF was betting that the Russian economy would shrink by 2.3%. Now this outpost of the Treasury Department admits Russian GDP will grow by 2.2%. Actually it’s 3%, according to Putin himself, based on figures provided by the “Disrupter” (as described by a Western rag), Madame Elvira Nabiullina.

I have been privileged to be part of key meetings on everything from the latest in the Ukraine-Belarus front to still secret, top-flight studies on the ideal mechanism to bypass the U.S. dollar in payment settlements. A small group of us, invited by the International Russophile Movement (MIR), were treated to a detailed visit to the astonishing Sretensky monastery complex, defined by mega cool guy Larry Johnson as an unparalleled architectural jewel where one may experience “the palpable presence of God.” Then there was the requisite ritual, long, languid dinner with a stunning Princess in unmatchable Patriarch’s Ponds – Moscow’s Soho; talking to the young, future generation planning a new ground-breaking think tank in St. Petersburg; the mesmerizing Russia exhibition at the VDNKh – complete with a four-story underground bunker built by Rosatom to highlight the history of the Russian nuclear program.

Yes: there are replicas of the supersonic TU-144, the K3 Leninsky Komsomol nuclear submarine and even the Tsar Bomba. Not to mention Gagarin’s rocket lighted as if it’s starring on a psychedelic trip. The spirit of Christmas in on at Red Square – complete with skating rink and countless Christmas trees from every Russian region displayed at GUM. Welcome to the true multipolar Moveable Feast; and in the era of genocide in every smartphone, unlike Hemingway’s time a century ago, that’s not exactly taking place in gloomy and fearful Paris.

High-level Russian diplomacy was stunned to discover that Europe was much more dogmatic than many believed. “A new generation” is needed for dialogue to resume – but that does not seem to be in the cards anytime soon. Embassies should work as mediators. Yet that’s not the case – especially when it comes to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Russia will not initiate a diplomatic dialogue. A sense of threat is very real in Russia. Diplomatic channels conveyed this message to the Americans, behind closed doors. On the wishful thinking by has-beens such as former NATO secretary-general Anders “Fogh of War” Rasmussen, bragging on blocking St. Petersburg out of the Baltic Sea: “This is something that may end up very badly.”

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“..any global governance settlement cannot be enforced without the equal involvement of Russia, China and the US,” Raffone said. “The EU is, regrettably, irrelevant in such an exercise..”

• ‘Putin Era’ Rolls On in Spite of West Endlessly Underestimating Him (Sp.)

Many in the West thought military conflict between Russia and Ukraine would spell doom for Russian leader Vladimir Putin. But instead the operation has only strengthened the longtime president’s political resilience. That’s according to Paolo Raffone, the director of CIPI Foundation in Brussels, who spoke to Sputnik in light of Putin’s recent announcement that he’d seek reelection in 2024. “One critical mistake in any military confrontation is to underestimate the enemy,” noted Raffone. “Since the outset of the Russian operation, the Western propaganda machine has diffused reports ridiculing Russian strategies, forces, and capabilities.” “Even at a later stage, the withdrawal of Russian forces from Bakhmut has been completely misinterpreted as a sign of weakness while, instead, it was a wise decision, although painful, dictated by the restructuring of logistics along an over extended frontline.”

The strategic analyst suggested Putin and his military advisers have played the long game. Meanwhile, Western leaders’ public promotion of Kiev’s chances for victory has given rise to an overconfidence in the regime’s capabilities, imperiling the entire project. “The over communication of the capabilities of the Ukrainian army to launch last summer’s counteroffensive has resulted in overestimating the real possibilities while underestimating the carefully prepared Russian defensive lines,” said Raffone. “In addition, the stream of declarations by the NATO secretary general shows the manipulative intent instead of representing the effectiveness of the situation.” “Over the last three days, the NATO ‘paper tiger’ has contradicted itself several times on the real possibilities for Ukraine to win. No doubt that in all military operations propaganda is as important as the field activities. However, the reality in the field remains while propaganda vanishes, producing a sense of despair and disaffection in the masses involved.”

Raffone claimed that, behind the scenes, a “secret realist diplomacy” has prevailed regarding the situation even as a chauvinistic Western press is unable to convey the reality of events on the ground. The disconnect with reality extends to Western political leaders who’ve been unable to reflect Russia’s advantageous position in their “storytelling and policies. He believes the United States is seeking a “credible face-saving exit strategy” from the Ukrainian confrontation amidst the political realities of upcoming elections in Russia, the United States, and the European Union. Until those elections are held, Raffone said “no political leader can deviate from the chosen anti-Putin stance,” meaning Western audiences may expect public vilification and hysterical mainstream media speculation to continue. “Serious strategic analysis indicates that any global governance settlement cannot be enforced without the equal involvement of Russia, China and the US,” Raffone said. “The EU is, regrettably, irrelevant in such an exercise..” [..]

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“They all talk about the de facto recognition of Russian control over territory and making the rest of Ukraine an anti-Russia on steroids..”

• Russia Won’t Agree to ‘Minsk-3.0’ Deal on Ukraine (Sp.)

Russia will either have to “come to the negotiating table on terms that would be acceptable to Ukraine…or they will face a stronger Ukraine, backed by a stronger defense industrial base in the United States, in Europe, and in Ukraine that has more ability to go on the offense,” US deputy national security advisor John Finer warned during a talk at a DC neocon think tank this week. The Kremlin rejected Finer’s comments as “absolutely unrealistic.” “I don’t think that there are necessary preconditions for peace talks,” Russian foreign policy strategist Dmitry Suslov told Sputnik’s New Rules podcast. “The objective reasons for Western interest in peace talks are there because the correlation of forces on the Ukrainian conflict is shifting in Russia’s favor, has already shifted in Russia’s favor.

“And I think Russian preponderance in all aspects on the front will continue to grow – in terms of the number of people…in terms of weapons and ammunition, in terms of the ability to deliver and supply those weapons and ammunition to the front, including the newest features of contemporary warfare like drones and anti-radio systems and so on and so forth. So, Russia will continue to increase its advantage and over time, this Russian material advantage will inevitably translate into breakthroughs on the front,” Suslov explained. Leading American neoliberal and neoconservative geopolitics experts realize this, the observer believes, hence the sudden calls for a truce, some type of diplomatic settlement or at least a freeze on the conflict.

“But from the Russian perspective, we do not see a readiness for serious discussions from the Biden administration. Most likely it wants, as Americans say, to ‘kick the can down the road’ until the elections and then to think what comes next after the elections,” Suslov said. One recent report by a well-respected US journalist suggested that forces behind the scenes in Washington have put out feelers for a peace deal with Russia involving freezing the conflict along its current frontiers, in exchange for a rump Ukrainian state’s inclusion into the NATO bloc. Such talk focused territory marks a fundamental misunderstanding of Russia’s actual security concerns, Suslov stressed.

“They all talk about the de facto recognition of Russian control over territory and making the rest of Ukraine an anti-Russia on steroids, integration of the rump Ukraine into the Western orbit in this or that form, robust militarization of this rump Ukraine. They talk about either the Israeli model or the Korean model, both of which would imply Ukraine becoming a militarized anti-Russian fortress with very strong connections with the West. This is completely unacceptable for Russia. This is a false vision because Russia will never be satisfied with territories. The most fundamental reason why Russia is fighting this struggle is security – more fundamental questions of European security,” the geopolitical observer said.

Moscow, Suslov said, is focused not on territory, but on “Ukrainian-NATO relations, the future of NATO’s presence in Ukrainian territory, the future of Ukrainian militarization versus demilitarization” (as outlined in the Russian Foreign Ministry’s December 2021 draft treaties on ironclad security guarantees). Accordingly, “without Western readiness to address those issues,” the Russian government will be extremely unlikely to entertain talks of peace or even a truce, the analyst believes.

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“It is necessary to confirm the neutral, non-aligned and nuclear-free status of Ukraine..”

• Russia Won’t Allow Existence Of ‘Nazi State’ On Its Border – Zakharova (RT)

Moscow will not allow Ukraine to continue its existence as a “Nazi state,” threatening both Russia and other nations, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. Zakharova made the remarks in an exclusive interview with AFP, published in full on Saturday. Asked whether the goals of “denazification” and “demilitarization” of Ukraine, proclaimed by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the beginning of the conflict in February 2022, Zakharova confirmed that was the case. Moreover, the events of the Ukrainian crisis have shown Russia’s decision to launch its special military operation was a necessity, she stressed.

“From the very beginning of the hostilities, the [Ukrainian] neo-Nazis have been cynically using the civilian population as ‘human shields’ and brutally treating Russian prisoners of war. Their main goal in this conflict is to kill as many Russians as possible,” Zakharova explained. “We will not allow the existence on our borders of an aggressive Nazi state from whose territory there is a danger for Russia and its neighbors.” Asked about prospects of somehow settling the conflict, Zakharova said that the only way to reach a “lasting peace” was, effectively, meeting all Russia’s demands. “It is necessary to confirm the neutral, non-aligned and nuclear-free status of Ukraine, carry out its demilitarization and denazification, acknowledge new territorial realities, and ensure the rights of Russian-speaking citizens and national minorities living in this country,” she explained.

Russia remains ready to resolve the conflict through diplomacy, the spokeswoman confirmed, stating that Moscow has never refused to do so. However, to make such negotiations possible, “the Kiev regime and its Western curators” must take “practical steps and show goodwill.” Thus far, neither of them had shown such “political will,” she added. “A comprehensive, sustainable and just resolution of the conflict over Ukraine depends, to a large extent, on addressing its very causes. The West must stop pumping up the Ukrainian military with weaponry, while Kiev must cease hostilities and withdraw its troops from Russian territory,” Zakharova explained, referring to the four formerly-Ukrainian regions of Zaporozhye, Kherson, as well as Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which got incorporated into Russia after referendums last fall.

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“An Estonian military officer has formulated the following thesis: that ‘there are only two options: either Ukraine will win, or there will be World War III..’”

• Polish Media Debunks Narrative That Ukraine is Fighting for West’s Freedom (Sp.)

Kiev’s “cunning propaganda” suggesting that a Russian victory in Ukraine will inevitably be followed up with attacks on NATO countries are little more than a form of “demagoguery” and “blackmail” completely detached from reality. That’s according to an editorial published in Polish politics journal Mysl Polska. “An Estonian military officer has formulated the following thesis: that ‘there are only two options: either Ukraine will win, or there will be World War III’. This ridiculous proposition is probably shared by a large part of Ukraine’s supporters in our country,” the alternative conservative media outlet wrote, pointing to efforts by some actors to convince the public “that a Ukrainian defeat will mean we will definitely be attacked by Russia.”

But the latter claim is little more than a “cunning propaganda move by Kiev aimed at maintaining Western policy of unconditional military and financial support,” with these kind of “demagogic statements…often used by Ukrainian politicians as blackmail (for example, during the Polish truckers’ protests). This trick is also used by the failing administration of Joe Biden, which frightens the countries of NATO’s eastern flank with the prospect of an attack by Russia,” the journal emphasized. The reality is the exact opposition, and “there is no country in Europe that should be more interested in ending the war than Poland, which will be the first to face the consequences if the military situation escalates. Poland should be among the first countries to demand an end to this war, just like the Hungarians are doing. However, no political force in our country will dare to formulate such a demand… Why? Because the dogma of ‘fighting to the end’ continues to apply. The fact that it means ‘to the last Ukrainian’ is something no one in Poland cares about.”

The political journal lamented that “no one in Poland is talking about the fundamental change in the West’s policy toward Russia towards dialogue and the creation of a security system in which all parties (Russia and the West) will feel safe. To achieve this, we will need to end NATO’s march to the east, clearly declare that Ukraine will be a neutral country, end the policy of endless sanctions and revive all institutions that could be a platform for dialogue between Russia and the Europe (e.g. The OSCE). Someone might say, but isn’t that impossible? If so, they will be admitting that the Estonian military officer quoted above is right – that the alternative is World War III,” Mysl Polska summarized.

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“Yes, Russia stopped supplying energy to Europe… It was the Russian president who halted gas supplies through a working gas pipeline,” Scholz stated.”

• Bizarre Plot Twist: Scholz Blames Putin for High Energy Prices in Europe (Sp.)

The leader of Germany’s coalition government attempted to scapegoat Russia for his country’s self-inflicted economic woes as Berlin faces the threat of deindustrialization. In a recent address at the Social Democratic Party (SPD) congress, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz blamed Russia for halting gas supplies to Europe amid rising energy costs. He accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of stopping gas flows through a functional pipeline, significantly reducing Germany’s gas intake and contributing to a shortfall in Europe’s energy reserves. “Russia: Yes, Russia stopped supplying energy to Europe… It was the Russian president who halted gas supplies through a working gas pipeline,” Scholz stated. “This has implications for energy prices.”

But that narrative collapses in light of his country’s role in imposing sanctions on Moscow and restricting the flow of Russian energy to Western Europe. Scholz’s decision to align with the US and Britain in sanctioning Russian energy sources worsened Germany’s problems. The nation has denied itself around 120 billion cubic meters of Russian gas as a result. Germany has instead increased gas imports from Norway and built new liquified natural gas (LNG) on its northern coast to import more-expensive supplies from the US — all choices made by the West, not Moscow.

The gas supply situation worsened further following last year’s terrorist attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines that run from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea. Several countries, including Germany, Sweden, and Denmark, have conducted investigations into the incident, but have failed to name a culprit and refused to share their findings with Russia. Russian authorities have accused the US and Britain as the main forces behind the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines. Nikolai Shulginov, head of the Russian Ministry of Energy, stated in November that Russia had not “closed” the western direction of energy supplies and continues to be a reliable gas supplier even under current challenging conditions.

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“..this anti-interventionism would lead to the eventual collapse of NATO..”

• EU Leaders Panicking Over Potential Trump Return – NYT (RT)

EU diplomats and think tank officials have been contacting former US President Donald Trump’s associates to figure out whether he would pull the US out of NATO if he returns to the White House, the New York Times reported on Friday. With less than a year to go until the 2024 presidential elections, Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee and is leading President Joe Biden in most polls. A host of former Trump administration officials and anti-Trump pundits have claimed in recent weeks that a second Trump presidency would herald the collapse of NATO, and that panic has reportedly spread to the EU. “European ambassadors and think tank officials have been making pilgrimages to associates of Mr. Trump to inquire about his intentions,” the New York Times reported, citing anonymous sources.

These officials included Finland’s ambassador to the US, Mikko Hautala, who the newspaper said “reached out directly to Mr. Trump and sought to persuade him of his country’s value to NATO as a new member.” Other countries are expected to try and win Trump’s support with “flattery and transactional tributes,” the Times stated, citing interviews with current and former diplomats. Trump has not threatened to pull the US out of NATO. However, he spent his presidency railing against the bloc’s European members, accusing them of freeloading off the US’ massive military presence on the continent while failing to meet NATO’s target of spending 2% of GDP on defense. Trump used NATO’s annual summits to berate European leaders into boosting their military spending, and according to former National Security Advisor John Bolton, was ready to announce the US’ withdrawal from the alliance in 2018.

Trump’s final national security advisor, Robert O’Brien, and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, told the Times that the former president’s NATO-related gripes should be viewed as a negotiating tactic, aimed at pressing European members into committing more money to the bloc. In a statement to the Times, Trump wrote that “it is the obligation of every US president to ensure that America’s alliances serve to protect the American people, and do not recklessly endanger American blood and treasure,” adding that his “highest priority” would be “the defense of our own country, our own borders, our own values, and our own people.”

Such a statement is consistent with Trump’s long-standing view that American troops should not be “the policemen of the world.” While Trump carried out military strikes on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, he attempted to withdraw American troops from all three countries, and was the only US president in modern history not to engage in a new foreign war. However, Trump’s former defense secretary, Marc Esper, told MSNBC on Thursday that this anti-interventionism would lead to the eventual collapse of NATO. If Trump were to pull military support for Ukraine, Esper claimed, “the whole effort to support Ukraine in its war with Russia would eventually crumble,” as would the alliance itself if Trump then began pulling troops from Europe.

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“..it makes no sense to insist that there is no direct evidence while opposing efforts to establish such evidence..”

• With Hunter’s Indictment, Democrats Face A Moment Of Maddening Truth (Turley)

Author Aldous Huxley once said, “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.” Such a moment of madness has arrived in Congress as members prepare to vote on the formal approval of an impeachment inquiry. The second indictment of Hunter Biden shattered long-standing denials and narratives repeated by the White House and members of Congress. What is left in its wake is now plain to the public: corruption. The vote is not whether to impeach President Biden, but whether members support the investigation into these growing allegations of corruption by the Biden family. According to recent polling, nearly 70 percent of voters (and 40 percent of Democrats) believe that Biden has acted unlawfully or unethically or both. Yet with almost half of the Democratic Party viewing Biden’s conduct as worthy of investigation, it is not clear whether a single Democratic member will vote to look into these allegations.

In September, I testified at the first impeachment inquiry hearing and stated that the evidence had clearly passed the threshold for such an inquiry. While there was no requirement to hold a formal vote to start this process (as the Democrats did with Trump), I encouraged the members to hold such a vote. Since that hearing, the evidence has only mounted against President Biden. It is now clear that Biden lied when he maintained as a candidate, and later as president, that he had no knowledge of his son’s business dealings with foreign interests. Even Hunter himself contradicted the president on this claim. It is also now clear that he lied in denying that his son never made money in China. The indictment confirms massive transfers from Chinese sources.

It is also clear that Hunter was engaged in raw influence peddling. This included threatening at least one Chinese businessman that his father was sitting next to him and would retaliate against him if he did not send millions to the Bidens. President Biden also lied when he claimed this week that he had not had any “interactions” with his son’s business associates. There are emails, audiotapes and testimony now disproving that claim. Millions of dollars flowed to Biden family members through a labyrinth of shell companies and accounts. Hunter Biden sent emails saying that up to half of his income went to his father while they used shared accounts and credit cards for expenses. Even Biden associates now admit that they were selling “the Biden brand” and influence with Joe Biden. Advocates simply argue that they were merely selling the “illusion” of influence.

It is now time to see if a single Democratic member will stand against corruption and support an inquiry into the president’s role and later cover-up of this corruption. That includes the use of White House staff to spread false claims and attack critics. I have previously discussed four possible articles of impeachment that warrant investigation. One of the false narratives being bandied about is that there is no proof that the influence peddling Biden’s son and brothers benefited the president himself. Thus, the argument goes, even though he was the subject of the influence peddling, Joe Biden did not legally or constitutionally benefit from the payments to constitute bribery or other crimes.

That is utter nonsense. The courts have repeatedly found that benefits to family members (far more modest than the millions in this case) can constitute bribery for a politician. That has also been the position of the Justice Department in past cases. Regardless of whether Hunter or his associates were speaking truthfully about handing over percentages of these funds to Joe Biden, he practically and legally benefited from the millions going to his family. Even if members insist that they are not yet convinced, it makes no sense to insist that there is no direct evidence while opposing efforts to establish such evidence. These members have opposed any investigation into the allegations from the start.

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“..existing home sales have dropped near record lows, and roughly $6.5 trillion of commercial real estate debt remains an overhang..”

• Americans Running Out Of Savings – JPMorgan (RT)

Most Americans have already drained the excess savings they made during the Covid-19 pandemic, Marko Kolanovic, a senior stock strategist at JPMorgan bank, said in a note this week. According to Kolanovic, inflation-adjusted liquid assets such as deposits and money market funds of nearly all US consumers will be below 2019 levels by mid-2024. “It is likely that only the top 1% of consumers by income will be better off than before the pandemic,” he warned, noting the recent surge of credit card and auto loan delinquencies and a growing number of bankruptcy protection filings.

According to JPMorgan’s earlier calculations, Americans’ excess savings reached a record high in August 2021 at $2.1 trillion. However, in October this year, they were down to around $148 billion. The bank’s strategists explained at the time that the trend stems from “tighter credit conditions and rising rates, wind-down of Covid-era stimulus and relief programs,” as well as multiple years of above average inflation. Kolanovic noted that the housing market is so far stable despite high borrowing costs, “as consumers locked in low interest rates.” “However, existing home sales have dropped near record lows, and roughly $6.5 trillion of commercial real estate debt remains an overhang,” he warned.

Meanwhile, US credit card debt has continued to surge this year, marking the eighth consecutive quarter of year-over-year increases in the three months to September, according to the New York Federal Reserve bank. Researchers have noted that more and more households are having difficulty managing their debt amid persistently high inflation and rising interest rates, a tendency that could signal “real financial stress.”

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“..renewable energy is unreliable and uneconomic, and has an insatiable requirement for financial subsidy..”

• Net Zero Requires 80 Million Kilometres of New Power Lines By 2040 (DS)

Achieving Net Zero means building 80 million kilometres of new and refurbished power lines within 17 years, equivalent to wrapping the Earth 2,000 times with new electricity grid capacity. All the high voltage lines built in the last century will need to be built again by 2040 to benefit from all the intermittent power produced by the vast number of wind turbines. The ecological costs of all this can only be guessed at. Electricity cables are made of aluminium and copper and strung on giant pylons made of steel and supported by large concrete bases. For their part, wind turbines are a menace to both avian and oceanic wildlife, consume vast quantities of raw materials, have a limited lifespan and are an increasing blight on both inland and offshore landscapes.

If the International Energy Agency (IEA) gets its way, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The roll-out of high voltage lines will be on an unprecedented scale. In a report on global electricity grids issued to coincide with COP28, the IEA states that “an unprecedented level of attention from policymakers and business leaders is needed to ensure grids support clean energy transitions and maintain electricity security”. Major changes in how grids operate and are regulated are said to be essential. Annual investment in grids, which has remained broadly stagnant, needs to double to more than $600 billion a year by 2030. The Australian science journalist Jo Nova is in no mood to be understanding: “Remember, it’s not their fault that renewables need far more land, more space, more backup and more infrastructure – it’s our fault we didn’t build a world ready for their holy energy.”

The IEA paints a world where electricity grids are becoming a “bottleneck” for transitions to Net Zero emissions. While investment in renewables has been increasing rapidly, global investment in grids “has barely changed”. In Europe, policymakers can speed up progress on grids by “enhancing planning, ensuring regulatory risk assessments allow for anticipatory investment, and streamlining administrative processes”. In plain English this means ripping up local planning laws in over-populated Britain and blanketing the country with millions of giant electricity pylons. These will be required to bring energy to urban areas from power intermittently generated far away in the North Sea and off the Scottish coast.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the British Government recently set out “major plans” to speed up connections and rapidly increase capacity on the electricity grid. The press release cunningly linked it with a £960 million government investment in “green industries”. The new package is “expected” to bring forward £90 billion of investment over the next 10 years. The Government promised that it will “reward” those living closest to new infrastructure with up to £1,000 a year off their electricity bills. In another part of the release, this is downgraded to communities “could” benefit, and the bung is limited to 10 years. Whatever the money is spent on, it is likely to be chickenfeed compared with the growing £12 billion annual subsidy paid by electricity consumers to the producers of renewable energy. But the next British government will face an empty exchequer and soaring state debt. Lack of finance along with the end of low interest rates and free money printing is likely to kill many of the green fantasises currently being peddled by collectivist Net Zero fanatics. It is becoming clearer by the day, to an increasing number of people, that renewable energy is unreliable and uneconomic, and has an insatiable requirement for financial subsidy.

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Reindeer antlers

 

 

Reindeer cyclone

 

 

Kinetic

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle December 8 2023

Dec 082023
 
 December 8, 2023  Posted by at 9:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  38 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Self-Portrait with Straw Hat 1887

 

• Netanyahu’s Game Of Russian Roulette (Cradle)
• Behind Enemy Bars: Palestinian and Israeli Prisoners (Inlakesh)
• Gaza Divides the World, Again (Patrick Lawrence)
• ‘The Death Rattle of The Western Empire’: US Hegemony Crumbling (Sp.)
• The Military/Security Complex Proved to be Too Strong for Peace (PCR)
• The Military-Industrial Complex (RFK Jr)
• Russian Intel Chief Warns US Of ‘Second Vietnam’ (RT)
• Pentagon Threatens Americans Over Ukraine – Tucker Carlson (RT)
• Moscow Rejects US Narrative On Aid For Kiev (RT)
• The Diamond Crack-Up (John Helmer)
• Hunter Biden Indicted by Feds on 9 Counts Related to Tax Evasion (Sp.)
• “If People Think Things Are Bad Now…” Tucker And Alex Jones (ZH)
• Trump Witness Says He Valued Mar-a-Lago at More Than $1 Billion (ET)

 

 

 

Today, the world mourns the loss of Professor Refaat Al-Areer, one of Palestine’s most prolific poets and activists. There is reason to believe that the Zionist regime deliberately targeted his sister’s home, killing his brother, sister, and her 4 kids

 

 


Elon Musk: “Drops more bombs than a B-52“

 

 

 

 

Biden
https://twitter.com/i/status/1732462667107865071

 

 

Noted among Putin’s entourage in Saudi Arabia: Chechen leader Kadyrov and central bank head Elvira Nabiullina
https://twitter.com/i/status/1732474995366875435

 

 

Weaponizing AI
https://twitter.com/i/status/1732569528817607133

 

 

 

 

Vivek

 

 

Elon Musk in response via email to an Axios reporter asking about X: “I have never lost money for those who invest in me and I am not starting now.”

Since Elon Musk Bought X:

-SEC sues Musk over the purchase
-FTC demands internal X documents
-Biden DOJ sues SpaceX for not hiring refugees for secret rocket technology
-Biden DOJ and SEC open investigations against Tesla over a literal glass house
-Biden DOJ opens criminal investigation against Tesla over self-driving cars
-Federal investigation into Neuralink
-EOCC sues Tesla over harassment
-Massive media campaign against X
-Massive corporate boycott campaign

.

 

 

 

 

“Netanyahu, however, harbors a different agenda, seeking to prolong the conflict for personal gains rather than political success..”

• Netanyahu’s Game Of Russian Roulette (Cradle)

Forced into a Gaza truce by an angry public demanding prisoner exchanges, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now faces his toughest challenge since launching air and land assaults on the Gaza Strip in October. The frequency of his threats to both Hamas in Gaza and Lebanon’s Hezbollah on Israel’s northern front has spiked since Netanyahu’s reluctant acceptance of the Qatar-brokered truce. While the prime minister and Washington’s goals align on waging a war on the Palestinian resistance, and, by extension, on Gaza, their policies diverge on the strategy and duration of the conflict. Faced with threats of its own and attacks by resistance factions in West Asia, the US prefers employing a leveraged military approach without any extensive involvement on the ground.

Lately, the Biden administration has been taking a sterner approach towards Tel Aviv’s actions in the northern Gaza Strip, and has called for Israeli coordination with the US on the ground war. Hours ahead of the truce being implemented, Secretary of State Antony Blinken underscored that “the massive loss of civilian life and displacement of the scale that we saw in Northern Gaza [should] not be repeated in the South.” The spokesman for the White House National Security Council, John Kirby, has also recently told reporters that the Biden administration “does not support southern operations unless or until the Israelis can show that they have accounted for all the internally displaced people of Gaza.” Netanyahu, however, harbors a different agenda, seeking to prolong the conflict for personal gains rather than political success.

The continuation of the war means he will stay in office longer, and have the time to strike internal and external deals that ensure his post-conflict survival. For now, “King Bibi” faces mounting pressure from both allies and adversaries. International calls for tangible outcomes from the conflict are intensifying, with the mainstream media increasingly compelled – by social media – to highlight Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Domestically, Netanyahu is grappling with almost daily demands for his resignation or for the removal of extremist cabinet ministers from the Otzma Yehudit and religious Zionist parties. In the aftermath of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the Israeli opposition tempted Netanyahu’s Likud party with offers to dismiss Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir – as well as the removal of the prime minister himself – as a condition for participating in an emergency government.

These proposals aimed to resolve Israel’s ongoing political and social unrest since 2019, which has led to five consecutive electoral cycles in four years and frequent mass anti-government protests. A national unity government would also be able to resume and possibly develop the Abraham Accords, strained by the presence of extremist parties in the government. Netanyahu’s radical ministers have often negatively affected both these nascent Israeli-Arab relations and Tel Aviv’s relationship with US Democrats.

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“We were sitting in the tunnels and we were terribly afraid not that Hamas but Israel would kill us, and then they would say – Hamas killed you.”

• Behind Enemy Bars: Palestinian and Israeli Prisoners (Inlakesh)

The issue of Prisoners of War (POWs) taken captive by Hamas-led Palestinian resistance forces has become one of the key justifications for Israel’s military assault on the Gaza Strip. While western audiences are often presented with the image of these groups as bloodthirsty terrorists, a closer look reveals that Hamas and other factions may have treated Israeli captives more humanely than how Israel treats Palestinian political prisoners. While the Israeli POW issue spans eight weeks, the plight of Palestinian captives has persisted since at least 1967. There are said to be some 137 Israelis that are currently being held captive in Gaza, whom Hamas claims all are males and/or soldiers.

In the seven-day truce struck in November between Hamas and Israel, the Palestinian resistance released 108 women and children held captive in Gaza. In return, Israel was to release 300 Palestinian women and children held in detention and permit much-needed aid into Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt. Stanley Cohen, a US attorney who has represented both Hamas and Hezbollah members, tells The Cradle that “the laws of war do not limit Prisoners of War to State actors.” He says that “all the laws of war apply, whether it’s state actors or non-state actors.” This would mean that the same legal obligations on the treatment of POWs should apply to both Hamas and Israel, despite there being a greater moral expectation often placed on UN member states.

Access to interviews with detainees is limited due to Israeli government restrictions on media interaction with the recently freed captives, especially since the embarrassing PR blunder in late October when one of the four Israelis unconditionally released before the truce – 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz – said at a presser that “they treated us very well” in Gaza, but had endured “hell” while being taken captive. But despite the challenges in obtaining their full stories, certain facts stand out. Recent audio recordings quoted by Israeli media have revealed statements from freed prisoners who claim they were more fearful of Israeli actions than those by Hamas. One former detainee, criticizing the Israeli government, highlighted the lack of support and the challenges faced during their captivity:

“We were sitting in the tunnels and we were terribly afraid not that Hamas but Israel would kill us, and then they would say – Hamas killed you.” Another former Israeli captive went further in expressing disdain for the Israeli government’s responses on and after the events of 7 October: “The feeling we had there was that no one was doing anything for us. The fact is that I was in a hiding place that was shelled and we had to be smuggled out and were wounded. Not including the helicopter that shot at us on the way to Gaza. You claim that there is intelligence, but the fact is that we are being shelled. My husband was separated from us three days before we returned to Israel and taken to the tunnels. And you are talking about washing the tunnels with sea water? You are shelling the route of tunnels in the exact area where they are.”

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“It is repugnant to see how, despite the cruelty of the facts on view to the world, the government of the United States of America and its satellites aim to justify the unjustifiable..”

• Gaza Divides the World, Again (Patrick Lawrence)

My award for courageous elocution of the week goes hands-down to Samuel Moncada, Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations, who addressed the General Assembly last Tuesday on the topic of Israel and its barbaric attacks on the Palestinians of Gaza. His remarks, which Consortium News reproduced, were appropriately lengthy. Here I draw from his introductory paragraphs: “The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela robustly condemns the Israeli aggression against the civilian population in the occupied Palestinian territories. This is an operation of mass expulsion of an entire people in order to annex their territory by the occupying power. It’s a new cycle of expansionist terror, of so much that has been suffered by the Palestinian people over 75 years of occupation…. It is repugnant to see how, despite the cruelty of the facts on view to the world, the government of the United States of America and its satellites aim to justify the unjustifiable:

That the occupying power is carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people as defined in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court. We ask ourselves where are those who in other cases rush to apply the responsibility to protect but now are ignoring the human rights of Palestinians submitted to the Israeli occupation?” It is one thing, I have to say, for publications such as ScheerPost and Consortium News to publish commentary of this kind, or for many thousands of honorable people to march in the name of decency and justice. It is quite, quite another for a sovereign state to denounce Israel and the U.S. in a chamber such as the General Assembly. It all counts, everything we do. But Moncada and the government he represents just elevated the condemnation of apartheid Israel to the level of global diplomacy and state-to-state relations.

Jump-cut to the Land of Eire. Members of the Dáil, the lower house of Ireland’s national assembly, were the first in Europe—and remain alone in this—to speak for Palestinian rights and against the Israel Defense Forces’ savagery after Hamas’s October 7 incursion into southern Israel (which the Dáil also denounced). As noted previously in this space, the Dáil voted last month on expelling the Israeli ambassador and referring Israel to the ICC. These motions were defeated, narrowly. But the government’s countermotions nonetheless “deplore the escalation of violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory since [October 7].” As to the ICC referral, the government pointed out that an investigation into Israeli war crimes has been in train since 2021—so, no point.

These are specific cases suggesting a larger whole. After the U.S., in February 2022, finally succeeded in provoking Russia to intervene in Ukraine, we recall, 90 percent of humanity declined to line up behind Washington and its European client states. “The international community” whose support the Biden regime incessantly cited, turned out to be the 20–odd nations we refer to as the West. Hamas’s attacks on noncombatants on October 7 have been more or less universally condemned, as they should be. But Israel’s unrestrained response and the Biden regime’s unrestrained support of it have again divided the world. The trans–Atlantic alliance, with the U.S. per usual in the lead, is full-tilt behind Israel’s outright genocide. Support for it is scarce in the non–West, while expressions of support for the Palestinians of Gaza are many if in some cases muted.

Ireland is, of course, an exceptional and interesting case, I should pause to note. The government of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar won the day in the Dáil last month, yes, but Ireland’s identity is nonetheless as non–Western as it is Western. The Irish know Western colonialism firsthand and have not forgotten their time under it. During the Troubles, the Irish Republican Army insisted Ireland must be understood as a Third World country. If you want to go further back, Ireland lay beyond the Roman walls; Rome never attempted to conquer it. These historical realities are often detectable in Dublin’s foreign policies and certainly, I would argue, in its position on the Israel–Gaza crisis. How fine it is to know the Dublin City Council began Wednesday to fly the Palestinian flag atop it for a week.

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But as a country, we don’t really have the intellectual resources to dig our way out of the hole that we’re in…”

• ‘The Death Rattle of The Western Empire’: US Hegemony Crumbling (Sp.)

Speaking to Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Wednesday, Jon Jeter, an award-winning foreign correspondent, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and a former Washington Post bureau chief, said the wider perception of the United States as a the world’s most prominent political and military locomotive has shifted dramatically. He put that sea-change down to the developments within the Ukrainian and Gaza crises. “The events since October 7th, I think that’s the death rattle of the Western empire of the United States as the single greatest political and economic and military power in the world,” said Jeter. That to me is the final nail in the coffin, because we can’t go back to the world the way it was before October 6th.” The fading of US international hegemony has its roots at home too.

Dimming global engagement among the general public and the ineptitude of current US political establishment have added to the overall weakening US foothold on the international arena. “But as a country, we don’t really have the intellectual resources to dig our way out of the hole that we’re in. <…> I’ve seen this transition from a country that was very much engaged with the world. As a teenager, you could see it in the 1970s, and the 1980s up until Reagan, and then it started to change. We started to dumb down the conversation”, Jeter believes. The speakers also discussed the effect developments on the African continent earlier this year on the status-quo the US desperately seeks to uphold.

“One of the things that happened was the African summit [in Russia]. A bunch of African leaders came and the next week they went back and started overthrowing countries and kicking the French out. <…> the world that was scared of the big bully. And after they saw somebody punch back, people aren’t as afraid anymore,” noted Garland Nixon, The Critical Hour’s co-host. Jeter stressed the irreversible changes over the past couple of years to the balance of power and their lasting effect on the global political makeup. “I don’t think the United States or the West can put that genie back in the bottle. You know, Germany is de-industrializing. There’s turn to the right by many countries in Europe, Italy and now the Netherlands. And I don’t think they’re going to find answers that can really help to restore the West to its past glory,” Jeter concluded.

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“Truth is not very powerful as it does not serve very many powerful interests..”

• The Military/Security Complex Proved to be Too Strong for Peace (PCR)

Henry Kissinger’s death resulted in an outpouring of hatred toward the former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State, especially from CounterPunch. Even a few of my readers mistook my explanation of Kissinger as a justification of the war crimes so many accuse him of. I have noticed over recent decades the increasing tendency of Americans to respond emotionally, instead of rationally, to information. Since I explained Kissinger, instead of denouncing him, I was seen as apologizing for him or justifying him. I have no doubt that large numbers of civilians were killed and maimed in the bombings associated with the Vietnam war, some of which–Cambodia for example–Kissinger approved. But, of course, the Secretary of State is not the official who orders bombings.

Moreover, there is no indication that Kissinger engaged in bombing civilians simply because he enjoyed killing people and committing war crimes or because he believed in ethnic cleansing like the Zionist government in Israel. The Democrats and the left-wing have been very adroit at shifting the blame for the Vietnam War to Republican Nixon from Democrat Lyndon Johnson. Nixon and Kissinger wanted to end the war, but they had to do so in a way that did not discredit Nixon with his conservative base, a base that believed in the Domino Theory and that the Soviet Union’s mission was world conquest. The same base made it difficult for Nixon to defuse Cold War tensions with arms control agreements, such as SALT I. The North Vietnamese were not in much of a hurry to enable Nixon to exit the war on comfortable terms.

The only option remaining was to increase the violence in order to force an acceptable exit. That is what produced Cambodia, not blood-lust on the part of Kissinger and Nixon. Because Kissinger was a Jew, in denouncing him today some compare him to Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza. This is to misread both Kissinger and the events of his time. Nixon was distrusted by the ruling establishment because he worked to defuse both the tensions of the Cold War and the hostile relationship with China. This went against many vested interests and belief about communist motives. As I have explained, the CIA used Watergate and the Washington Post to assassinate Nixon. The liberal-left hated Nixon for his work as a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee that led to the conviction of Alger Hiss and for his rhetoric, which was nothing but a sop to his base. The liberal-left was too busy enjoying Nixon’s discrediting to notice that he was another victim of the CIA like they believed Salvador Allende to be.

In my life I have seen close up so much that is then falsely explained and goes down in history books as wrongful accounts. Truth is not very powerful as it does not serve very many powerful interests. The fact remains that the Cambodia bombing was the desperate act of a government that wanted to end the Vietnam War. A legitimate question is: why didn’t Nixon simply walk away from the war? The answer is that he would have lost his conservative base, and, of course, the liberal-left would have piled on as well. Nixon and Kissinger hoped to create a more stable world by defusing the tensions between the West and the communist powers. This is also the reason left-leaning governments were overthrown elsewhere. The reasoning was that stability was impossible if Soviet leaning governments kept popping up in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

The Nixon/Kissinger decision is not everyone’s. But, the Cuban Missile Crisis had made clear that one alternative to stability was conflict that could result in nuclear war. Reagan faced the same conundrum, but was able to reconcile with Gorbachev. It is a crime that subsequent administrations threw Reagan’s accomplishment away. The military/security complex proved to be too strong for peace.

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X thread.

• The Military-Industrial Complex (RFK Jr)

On my seventh birthday, January 17, 1961—three days before my uncle, John F. Kennedy, took his oath of office as United States President—his predecessor, President Dwight Eisenhower, appeared on national television to deliver his farewell address, which history increasingly regards as one of the most important and prophetic speeches in American history. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.””

President Eisenhower took special care to include an expanded definition of his term “military-industrial complex” that would include the top bureaucrats at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Eisenhower warned that the federal government’s rising medical and scientific technocracy posed its own unique threats toward our democracy and freedom. “In this revolution, [scientific/medical] research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government . . . Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity . . . The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded . . .

[W]e must also be alert to the . . . danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” Eisenhower ended his speech with an admonition that echoes now in rebuke as we emerge from the COVID era that trampled the core principles that had, for 240 years, maintained America as the global exemplar for democracy, constitutional government, and personal freedom. “It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system—ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.”

The Wuhan Cover Up
Robert F Kennedy, Jr

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Wasn’t that Afghanistan?

• Russian Intel Chief Warns US Of ‘Second Vietnam’ (RT)

By backing Kiev in its fight with Moscow, the US risks sleepwalking into another Vietnam War-style debacle, Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), has said. In an opinion piece for Razvedchik magazine issued by the SVR and published on Thursday, Naryshkin predicted tectonic geopolitical shifts in the coming year, which he said would be marked by an intensified confrontation between the West and those countries that oppose its hegemony. The intelligence chief suggested that the Western bloc would try to defend the dominance that is slipping from its grasp, with the ripples of the struggle likely to spread across the world.

The West will be particularly focused on the Ukraine conflict, Naryshkin said, predicting that it “would try to prolong the fighting as much as possible” in a bid to turn hostilities into “a second Afghanistan” and defeat Russia in a battle of attrition, using unprecedented sanctions and pumping Kiev with weapons. However, he warned that there is a high chance that continued support for the “Kiev junta” – given that the Ukraine conflict is becoming an increasingly “toxic” issue in the eyes of the global community – would lead to a rapid erosion of Western authority. The further we go, the more Ukraine will turn into a ‘black hole’, absorbing material and human resources. In the end, the US risks bringing upon itself a ‘second Vietnam’.”

According to Naryshkin, should this come to pass, every US administration will have to deal with this conundrum until “a more or less reasonable person comes to power in Washington” with enough courage and determination to extinguish the crisis. The 1955-1975 Vietnam War, in which the US actively supported anti-Communist forces, is widely regarded as one of the worst conflicts in America’s recent history. Apart from claiming the lives of about 58,000 US soldiers, it shattered public confidence in the government, in no small measure due to several controversies surrounding alleged war crimes committed by Washington. Under relentless public pressure, US forces completely withdrew from Vietnam in 1973, with the Washington-backed government being defeated a few years later. Russian officials have repeatedly warned the West against arming Ukraine, arguing that it will only prolong the conflict but not change its ultimate outcome. Moscow has also said that by supporting Kiev, NATO is essentially waging a war against Russia.

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“Pay the oligarchs or we’ll kill your kids.”

• Pentagon Threatens Americans Over Ukraine – Tucker Carlson (RT)

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin reportedly told members of Congress that unless they approve more funding to Ukraine, Americans will be sent to fight Russia directly, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said on Thursday. According to Carlson, Austin spoke at a classified briefing for members of the House of Representatives on Wednesday, and at one point told members that “we’ll send your uncles, cousins and sons to fight Russia” unless Kiev gets the $60 billion in aid requested by the White House. “The Biden administration is openly threatening Americans over Ukraine,” said Carlson said on X (formerly Twitter), summarizing Austin’s message as “Pay the oligarchs or we’ll kill your kids.” “He really said this?” asked X owner Elon Musk. “He really did. Confirmed,” Carlson replied.

Carlson was by far the most popular host of an evening talk show on cable TV when Fox News mysteriously chose to part ways with him in April. He has since speculated that its corporate owners “really didn’t like” some of his coverage that challenged official narratives. In May, he launched his own show on Musk’s platform in a format similar to his long-form interviews for Fox. On Tuesday, his guest was Congressman Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican opposed to sending any more money to Ukraine – on account of the US being too heavily in debt. “How could Washington possibly send tens of billions more to sleazy oligarchs in Ukraine now that the whole enterprise has been revealed as a fruitless, corrupt and incredibly destructive disaster?” Carlson wondered in the introduction to that interview.

The US Congress has approved over $120 billion worth of aid to Kiev since the conflict with Russia escalated in February 2022, in the form of weapons and ammunition coming from the Pentagon’s stockpiles as well as cash payments to the Ukrainian government. That money has mostly run out at this point, and the White House has asked for $60 billion more – choosing to bundle it with aid for Israel, weapons for Taiwan and “border security.” Some Republicans in both the House and the Senate have refused to go along, however. GOP senators stormed out of their briefing on Wednesday and later voted against advancing the aid package. Meanwhile, Republican chairs of the Foreign Affairs, Armed Services and Intelligence committees in the House of Representatives have embraced the White House talking points in a memo aiming to persuade their party members to back the Ukraine funding bill, according to Axios.

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“In an attempt to ‘add fuel’ to the fire of the Ukrainian proxy war, [US] authorities have finally lost touch with reality..”

• Moscow Rejects US Narrative On Aid For Kiev (RT)

Claims in Washington that Russian President Vladimir Putin may attack NATO, unless Congress allocates tens of billions of dollars in additional Ukraine funding are “bogeyman stories,” Moscow’s top diplomat in the US capital said on Wednesday. White House officials, including President Joe Biden, have claimed that by withholding aid from Kiev, American lawmakers were increasing the risk of a direct US-Russia war. “If Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there,” Biden said in an address on Wednesday, in which he made a last-ditch appeal to lawmakers to appropriate over $110 billion in assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Touting the scenario of a Russian attack on NATO, Biden stressed that then American troops will have to get involved directly. The Russian leadership has not expressed an intention to “take Ukraine,” let alone invade any NATO member.

Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov called the narrative “myth-making and [the] propagation of dangerous lies” about his nation. “In an attempt to ‘add fuel’ to the fire of the Ukrainian proxy war, [US] authorities have finally lost touch with reality,” he claimed in remarks posted by the embassy. “Washington and [the] insatiable US military-industrial complex are direct beneficiaries of the bloodshed in Ukraine,” Antonov added. In his pitch to Congress, Biden claimed that the Russian leader’s ambition was to “dominate Ukraine” and warned that “the entire world is watching” Washington’s actions. America is “the reason Putin has not totally overrun Ukraine and moved beyond that,” he claimed. Moscow has cited NATO’s expansion in Europe and the pledge that Ukraine will eventually join the US-led military bloc among the causes of the crisis. It was willing to seal a truce with Kiev in the early phase of the conflict in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality.

However, Russia’s opponent ditched a proposed peace agreement and opted for continued hostilities, after then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the country to “just make war,” according to David Arakhamia, who headed the Ukrainian delegation at the Türkiye-mediated negotiations. Biden accused Republican opponents of his request of being willing to “literally kneecap Ukraine on the battlefield” and “give Putin the greatest gift he could hope for and abandon our global leadership not just to Ukraine.” Nevertheless, Republican senators voted unanimously against the aid, which was bundled in a spending package, later in the day. The GOP legislators insisted that the White House and Democratic lawmakers make concessions on immigration reform and border security before they were willing to approve additional tens of billions of aid to Kiev.

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“I hope and believe business rises above the political nonsense.”

• The Diamond Crack-Up (John Helmer)

It has never happened before among the world’s diamond-producing and diamond-processing countries. Meeting together last month in Zimbabwe in what is called the Kimberley Process (KP), the 57-member states refused to agree to the US and European Union (EU) attempt to exclude Russia, producer of half the diamonds in global trade. To camouflage the outcome of the fight, the KP delegates decided not to issue a communiqué. Without that, the rules of the meeting nullified all points of agreement which the Kimberley Process states had accepted during their two-day sessions. This dramatic collapse of the Kimberley Process happened in Harare on November 10. The disagreement and deadlock came over a letter from the Kiev regime, backed by the US, the EU, Japan, and Canada (the G7 member states) to impose a full ban on the trade in Russian diamonds.

The Ukrainian attempt was backed by intense pressure from the US State Department and by Jewish diamantaires in New York for the international diamond trade to accept the US Diamond Protocol, a scheme of registration, inspection, auditing, and certification enforced by US intelligence and Treasury agents, to prevent any Russian-mined diamond from entering the international diamond jewellery market. Instead, what has happened is that the global diamond industry has been cracked in half by the sanctions war. The defeat of the so-called “western bloc” in Zimbabwe is big news in Africa and India. It has not been reported in the New York and London financial press. Diamonds are now likely to follow oil, gas, coal, gold, and other commodities into parallel and competing global market operations.

In the diamond war, however, the outcome is also going to backfire on the Israeli diamond industry and the traditional Jewish centres in Antwerp, Belgium, and New York City, which have combined to take sides against Russia. In time, they will be replaced by the Arabs, Indians, and perhaps the Chinese. The Israelis don’t think so. They are calculating that in the short run they will gain from the recovery of diamond prices when the shortage of Russian supplies hits much harder than it has to date. A source in Antwerp reports “absolutely no backlash [against the Gaza war] here from any of the five main diamond communities including the Lebanese. The Israeli industry has been declining for many years anyway, especially manufacturing – it’s uncompetitive with the Indians — but also trading. There is no diamantaire sympathy with any Arab country (or Iran). I hope and believe business rises above the political nonsense.”

The Kimberley Process, first created in 2003 to stop “blood diamonds” from entering the market from the genocidal wars of western Africa, is about to be confronted by blood diamonds from Israel. The story of the US attempt to start sanctions against Russian diamonds from the US and its allies began here when the Belgian government was resisting to save the multi-billion dollar Antwerp diamond business.

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This does not yet include anything FARA related.

• Hunter Biden Indicted by Feds on 9 Counts Related to Tax Evasion (Sp.)

US federal prosecutors filed nine new counts against Hunter Biden and alleged he engaged in a scheme to evade over a million in taxes, a court filing revealed. “The Defendant engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019, from in or about January 2017 through in or about October 15, 2020, and to evade the assessment of taxes for tax year 2018 when he filed false returns in or about February 2020,” the document, filed in a federal court in California on Thursday, said. The indictment alleges that Hunter Biden “spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills.” He evaded taxes while getting paid millions, the document revealed.

Between 2016 and October 15, 2020, according to the document, Hunter Biden received more than $7 million in total gross income. The document also said Burisma agreed to pay the defendant $1 million annually, which they reduced to $500,000 a year in March 2017. The indictment also details Hunter Biden’s business dealings with other foreign contacts. Between 2015 and 2017, Hunter Biden and two business associates split a payment of $3.1 million tied to attempts to help a Romanian businessperson contest bribery charges he was facing in his home country. Hunter Biden and business associates in 2015 met with individuals tied to CEFC China Energy company for talks on infrastructure projects.

“On or about March 1, 2017, State Energy HK, a Hong Kong entity associated with CEFC, paid approximately $3 million to Business Associate 1’s entity for sourcing deals and for identifying other potential ventures. The Defendant [Hunter Biden] had an oral agreement with Business Associate 1 to receive one-third of those funds, or a million dollars. The Defendant, in turn, directed a portion of those million dollars to Business Associate 3,” the document said. Republican-led House panels are probing Hunter Biden for alleged criminal activity, including foreign bribery and influence peddling. Last month, the Oversight Committee subpoenaed Hunter Biden to appear for a deposition.

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Perhaps Elon Musk WILL reinstate him..

• “If People Think Things Are Bad Now…” Tucker And Alex Jones (ZH)

Dubbed “the most censored man in the world”, Jones began by discussing his (correct) prediction about 9/11. As Tucker points out, “the 9/11 thing, you called it in public.” But Jones says his most accurate prediction was around a decade ago when he read the “Rockefeller Foundation Operation Lockstep report,” which he says: “described using a virus to bring in world government, a world medical ID, which they would then build a social credit score off of……that they would make people wear masks for fear, shut down sporting events and things like that… and basically phase in this new tyranny.” These warnings, among other things, were the reason, Carlson argues, why Jones was so widely deplatformed. “Fundamentally, Alex Jones is right about a lot of things. And in fact, that’s why they don’t like him.”

“To this day, nobody has been more aggressively censored, I don’t think, than you… I read about it, and I felt that it was a major moment in the history of American media. I don’t think anybody defended you when that happened. Anybody, with any kind of audience,” To which Jones replied: “When Tim Cook admitted that he met on the weekend in August of 2017 with the other big tech heads, and they made the decision to “curate” like it’s a museum – and take me off, it was hundreds of platforms. It wasn’t just the big ones. Everything from LinkedIn, to our bank accounts being taken away, to everything ensuing over the next week and that month. And I knew I was a test case.” “It was the questioning the school shooting thing that came later. They kind of dredged that up from my past, blew that up after I’d been deplatformed, and said I’d been deplatformed for that.

“Once they deplatformed me, it made the show in ways only get bigger… So then they panicked and said ‘okay, let’s look at his record and create more of a reason,’ so they took things out of context from 5-6 years before, blew em up as a current thing out of context, and deceptively reported on what I said to create a strawman argument to then facilitate the reason.”

The discussion turns to the current state of America with Jones laying the blame for the growing division of the nation by race squarely at the feet of China. “The CCP, along with the SPLC and ADL, see America’s weakness and they are literally coming in and saying ‘white people are inherently bad because of the color of their skin……and then they organize all them into race-based groups under the Democratic party flag to attack who is left… which tends to be more conservative.” Jones warns however that “they are panicking” because “more and more blacks and hispanics are voting Republican,” which, he explains is why the open border policy is being allowed. “They are bringing in all these totally disenfranchised people from around the world… putting them in camps where they indoctrinated into a subdued political under-class… that’s then going to be turned loose on America.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1732907397511856217

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“If they want the best house in the country, that would be one of the top two or three that would be available if they were for sale..”

• Trump Witness Says He Valued Mar-a-Lago at More Than $1 Billion (ET)

A Florida real estate agent this week testified in former President Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York that his Mar-a-Lago property is worth at least $1 billion. Lawrence Moens, who was called as a witness by the defense, testified that the Florida property could be sold as a home, saying he would value it at over $1 billion as of 2021. “It’s something breathtaking. It’s something amazing to see,” he said of Mar-a-Lago, adding that he had valued it at over $1.2 billion in 2021. He also told the court that President Trump’s company had actually undervalued Mar-a-Lago by about half. Mr. Moens’s valuation assumes that Mar-a-Lago is a personal residence, a premise that a judge already has rejected in the ongoing civil fraud trial.

“I work very hard to sell rich people property in Palm Beach,” testified Mr. Moens. “I’m on the front lines every day of selling properties, and I have a pretty good handle on what’s happening in the market.” Spanning 17 acres with waterfront on two sides, the Trump estate and social club is his home, a place where the former president and current Republican 2024 front-runner has conducted high-profile meetings while in and out of office, and the spot where federal special counsel Jack Smith alleges he improperly stashed classified documents, which President Trump denies. Mar-a-Lago also is a key element of the current New York civil case. State Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit claims that the ex-president and his company deceived lenders and others by giving them financial statements that greatly overstated the values of some of his prime assets, including Mar-a-Lago.

Testifying for Trump’s defense, a Florida real estate attorney said the property could be sold as a home, notwithstanding decades-old legal documents in which Trump said he intended to forswear its use as anything but a club. Then a Palm Beach luxury real estate broker testified that he’d value the historic estate at over $1 billion as of 2021. Judge Arthur Engoron, in a pretrial ruling declaring that Trump and his company engaged in fraud, found that he exaggerated Mar-a-Lago’s worth by as much as 2,300 percent, compared to the Palm Beach County tax appraiser’s valuations. They ranged from $18 million to $28 million. However, some real estate professionals who aren’t involved in the case expressed concern about the judge’s ruling several months ago, suggesting that he made an error by relying solely on the tax appraiser’s valuations.

Some Palm Beach luxury real estate agents have told The Associated Press that the property would sell for $300 million to $600 million, and possibly $1 billion or more if it sparked a bidding war among uber-wealthy contenders.
During a short cross-examination Tuesday, state attorney Kevin Wallace asked whether he was a member of the Mar-a-Lago club. “I am,” Mr. Moens said, saying that he joined in 1995 or 1996. “I don’t go too often. I don’t like clubs,” he added. “You’re not running a process that is re-creatable … is that fair?” Mr. Wallace asked about his valuations of Mar-a-Lago. “That’s fair,” Mr. Moens said. In a pre-trial deposition over the summer, Mr. Moens had said that he “could dream up anyone from Elon Musk to Bill Gates and everyone in between” to purchase Mar-a-Lago. “Kings, emperors, heads of state.”

“If they want the best house in the country, that would be one of the top two or three that would be available if they were for sale,” he added. “I wish he’d let me sell it, but it’s not for sale,” he said. Another defense witness, Miami-based real estate attorney John Shubin, also testified that “there is absolutely no prohibition on the use of Mar-a-Lago as a single-family residence.” He noted that the property is simultaneously a club and President Trump’s residence. Mr. Shubin also pointed to a 1993 agreement between the former president and the city that said Mar-a-Lago would revert to private residential use if the club were “abandoned.”

Read more …

 

 


 

 

Kirsch Brand
https://twitter.com/i/status/1732804423783432628
https://twitter.com/i/status/1732822737540858345

 

 


Malabar giant squirrel found in India

 

 

Easy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1732739986771042530

 

 

Elephant shoe

 

 

Mommy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1732662224374915560

 

 


The water quality in Warsaw, the capital city of Poland, is monitored by clams. If the water gets too toxic, they close, and the triggers shut off the city’s water supply automatically

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 5 2022

Aug 052022
 
 August 5, 2022  Posted by at 7:01 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  34 Responses »


Piet Mondriaan Avond (Evening): The Red Tree 1908-10

 

• Ukraine Violates War Laws, Endangers Civilians: Amnesty (NW)
• Kiev Blasts Amnesty Report On Ukraine Risking Civilian Lives (RT)
• NATO Working With Arms Industry to Get Ukraine More Weapons (Antiwar)
• Gazprom Explains Complications In Turbine Row (RT)
• How A Missile In Kabul Connects To A Speaker In Taipei (Escobar)
• Kremlin Reveals ‘Real Threat’ To World Order (RT)
• Irish Farmers Outraged Over 25% Emissions Reduction Plan (TCS)
• Covid Vaccines Are Killing One in Every 800 Over-60s (DS)
• Japanese Surgeon Calls for Suspension of COVID Boosters (ET)
• The Truth About the Alex Jones Phone Records (SN)
• Republicans’ Last-minute Cheney Lifeline (Axios)
• Democrats Block Measures To Stop Gain-of-Function Research (JTN)
• The Point of No Return (Thomas Sowell)
• Parts of Great Barrier Reef Show Highest Coral Cover In 36 Years (CBS)
• The Big Green Lie Almost Everyone Claims to Believe (ET)

 

 

 

 

Tucker Macgregor
https://twitter.com/i/status/1555019724509089792

 

 

 

 

Tedros is unvaxxed
https://twitter.com/i/status/1554949172322869254

 

 

 

 

 

 

Human shields=war crimes.

• Ukraine Violates War Laws, Endangers Civilians: Amnesty (NW)

Amnesty International has accused Ukraine of war crimes during its ongoing military conflict with invading Russian forces. The humanitarian organization said in a release on Wednesday that the Ukrainian military’s tactics “violate international humanitarian law and endanger civilians” by operating weapons out of bases established in residential areas while civilians are present. Russia has previously been accused by Amnesty International of violating multiple international laws during the war. The organization on Wednesday said that Ukraine’s alleged violations “in no way justify Russia’s indiscriminate attacks.” “We have documented a pattern of Ukrainian forces putting civilians at risk and violating the laws of war when they operate in populated areas,” Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard said in a statement.

“Being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law.” While conducting an investigation of Russian attacks in the Kharkiv, Donbas and Mykolaiv regions of Ukraine between April and July, Amnesty International researchers said they discovered that the Ukrainian military was operating out of civilian buildings in at least 19 towns and villages. The discovery was corroborated by satellite images, according to the release. The organization said that Ukraine committed “a clear violation of international humanitarian law” by basing at least five military facilities in civilian hospitals. Russian airstrikes on health care facilities have resulted in a significant number of civilian injuries and deaths during the war, according to the World Health Organization.

Amnesty International also discovered that Ukraine had installed military bases in 22 out of 29 schools visited in the Donbas and Mykolaiv regions during the investigation, according to the release. The organization said that Russia later launched strikes on many of the same schools between April and late June, resulting in multiple deaths and injuries.

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“We’ve been talking about this constantly, calling the actions of the Ukrainian armed forces the tactics of using civilians as a ‘human shield’,” Zakharova said.

• Kiev Blasts Amnesty Report On Ukraine Risking Civilian Lives (RT)

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba pushed back against an Amnesty International report that blames Kiev for placing its military assets in schools and residential areas, violating humanitarian law and putting civilians at risk. In his comments posted on social media on Thursday, the minister said that he was outraged by the NGO’s claim. “I understand that Amnesty will respond to criticism by saying that they criticize both sides of the conflict. But such behavior on Amnesty’s part is not about looking for the truth and presenting it to the world, but about creating a false balance between the criminal and his victim”, he said. Kuleba also urged the organization to stop “creating a fake reality” where everyone is “at fault for something.”

Amnesty should primarily focus on what Russia is doing in Ukraine and what devastation Moscow has brought upon this country, he argued. On Thursday, Amnesty released a report accusing Kiev of “a clear violation of international humanitarian law,” saying it was putting civilian lives at risk by placing its military close to civilian infrastructure. In 22 out of the 29 schools visited by Amnesty between April and July, the human rights group said it found evidence of current or prior military activity. In five locations, they witnessed Ukrainian troops using hospitals as bases. At the same time, the group said it was “not aware” that Ukraine tried to evacuate civilians from the areas in question.

However, Amnesty also noted that no Ukrainian troops were present in some areas where it assessed Russian forces had delivered strikes on residential areas. For that reason, the NGO said that Ukraine’s unlawful military use of civilian objects did not “in any way justify indiscriminate Russian attacks.” According to Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, the NGO’s report only confirmed what Moscow has known for a long time. “We’ve been talking about this constantly, calling the actions of the Ukrainian armed forces the tactics of using civilians as a ‘human shield’,” Zakharova said.

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“In July, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov made an offer to Western arms makers to use Ukraine as a testing ground for new weapons in a pitch for more arms..”

Offering his people as practice targets..

• NATO Working With Arms Industry to Get Ukraine More Weapons (Antiwar)

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday said that the military alliance was working closely with the arms industry to get more weapons to Ukraine and said more must be done to support Kyiv for the “long haul.”“We are providing a lot of support but we need to do even more and be prepared for the long haul,” the NATO chief told Reuters. “Therefore we’re also now in close contact and working closely with the defense industry to produce more and to deliver more of different types of ammunition, weapons, and capabilities.” The Western response to the war in Ukraine has been a boon for US arms makers, who are cashing in on replacing stockpiles of weapons sent to Ukraine, direct sales to Kyiv, and European NATO allies increasing their military spending.


In July, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov made an offer to Western arms makers to use Ukraine as a testing ground for new weapons in a pitch for more arms. “We are interested in testing modern systems in the fight against the enemy and we are inviting arms manufacturers to test the new products here,” he said. The next big escalation in military aid for Kyiv could be the US or some of its NATO allies sending warplanes to Ukraine. US Air Force officials have said they are in talks on providing Kyiv with aircraft and sound very receptive to Ukraine’s request for F-15 and F-16 fighter jets.

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“According to Gazprom, only one of the six main gas compressor units is currently operational..”

• Gazprom Explains Complications In Turbine Row (RT)

Western sanctions are hindering the return of a gas turbine from Germany and threaten future equipment maintenance at the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, Gazprom announced on Thursday. In the latest development in the gas turbine repair row between Moscow and Berlin, the Russian energy major has laid out the reasons why the Nord Stream 1 pipeline is not fully back on-line an why getting repaired equipment back is impossible.“The current anti-Russian sanctions are hindering the successful resolution of the issue of the transportation and repair of Siemens gas turbine engines for the Portovaya compressor station, which supplies gas to European consumers through the Nord Stream pipeline.” Gazprom wrote on its Telegram channel.


The crucial part that is stuck in Germany, after repairs in Canada, should have been sent back to Russia in May. But the paperwork for its return is not in order as it was issued by Siemens Energy and not the firm that is contracted to Gazprom, the gas giant claims. If the turbine is shipped to Russia, there is a risk that Canadian authorities will see this is a breach of contract, and withdraw permission for further maintenance of turbines to be carried out on its soil. According to Gazprom, only one of the six main gas compressor units is currently operational at the station with its daily delivery capacity reduced to roughly 20%. The remaining turbines require factory maintenance or overhaul, Gazprom adds. The company explained that other Western sanctions regarding the transportation of gas equipment may also apply to the turbine. All of which, given the current situation, makes the return of the equipment impossible, reiterated Gazprom.

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“..China will steadily speed up its process of reunification and declare the end of US domination of the world order.”

• How A Missile In Kabul Connects To A Speaker In Taipei (Escobar)

Two Hellfire R9-X missiles launched from a MQ9 Reaper drone on the balcony of a house in Kabul. The target was Ayman Al-Zawahiri with a $25 million bounty on his head. The once invisible leader of ‘historic’ Al-Qaeda since 2011, is finally terminated. All of us who spent years of our lives, especially throughout the 2000s, writing about and tracking Al-Zawahiri know how US ‘intel’ played every trick in the book – and outside the book – to find him. Well, he never exposed himself on the balcony of a house, much less in Kabul. Why now? Simple. Not useful anymore – and way past his expiration date. His fate was sealed as a tawdry foreign policy ‘victory’ – the remixed Obama ‘Osama bin Laden moment’ that won’t even register across most of the Global South.

After all, a perception reigns that George W. Bush’s GWOT has long metastasized into the “rules-based,” actually “economic sanctions-based” international order. Cue to 48 hours later, when hundreds of thousands across the west were glued to the screen of flighradar24.com (until the website was hacked), tracking “SPAR19” – the US Air Force jet carrying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – as it slowly crossed Kalimantan from east to west, the Celebes Sea, went northward parallel to the eastern Philippines, and then made a sharp swing westwards towards Taiwan, in a spectacular waste of jet fuel to evade the South China Sea. Now compare it with hundreds of millions of Chinese who are not on Twitter but on Weibo, and a leadership in Beijing that is impervious to western-manufactured pre-war, post-modern hysteria.

Anyone who understands Chinese culture knew there would never be a “missile on a Kabul balcony” moment over Taiwanese airspace. There would never be a replay of the perennial neocon wet dream: a “Pearl Harbor moment.” That’s simply not the Chinese way. sThe day after, as the narcissist Speaker, so proud of accomplishing her stunt, was awarded the Order of Auspicious Clouds for her promotion of bilateral US-Taiwan relations, the Chinese Foreign Minister issued a sobering comment: the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland is a historical inevitability. That’s how you focus, strategically, in the long game. What happens next had already been telegraphed, somewhat hidden in a Global Times report. Here are the two key points:

Point 1: “China will see it as a provocative action permitted by the Biden administration rather than a personal decision made by Pelosi.” That’s exactly what President Xi Jinping had personally told the teleprompt-reading White House tenant during a tense phone call last week. And that concerns the ultimate red line. Xi is now reaching the exact same conclusion reached by Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this year: the United States is “non-agreement capable,” and there’s no point in expecting it to respect diplomacy and/or rule of law in international relations. Point 2 concerns the consequences, reflecting a consensus among top Chinese analysts that mirrors the consensus at the Politburo: “The Russia-Ukraine crisis has just let the world see the consequence of pushing a major power into a corner… China will steadily speed up its process of reunification and declare the end of US domination of the world order.”

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“..tensions in Europe have been stoked by aggressive NATO policies and encroachment toward Russia’s borders..”

• Kremlin Reveals ‘Real Threat’ To World Order (RT)

The original threat to global order was the 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. Peskov pushed back on claims made by NATO’s secretary-general that Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine was to blame for the major shake-up. “The real threat to the world order and the situation in the world and … in Europe comes from the coup that took place in Ukraine in 2014, which was carefully orchestrated by, among others, NATO countries, despite the guarantees that the foreign ministers of a number of countries had provided. Hence the threat and danger to the world order,” he stressed.


According to Peskov, tensions in Europe have been stoked by aggressive NATO policies and encroachment toward Russia’s borders. “This situation has been maturing for several decades and in many ways it was fueled by the aggressive policies NATO pursued towards our country as they brought their infrastructure closer to Russia. This created additional threats for us,” Peskov noted, explaining that, faced with such reality, Moscow had no choice but to take action. On Thursday, NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the Ukraine conflict is the “most dangerous situation in Europe since World War Two,” and the West must do its best to stop Russia from winning. With that, he vowed to continue to support Kiev with arms and other types of aid.

Putin

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“That reduction of 22 cows effectively wipes out the economic sustainability of this farm and replicated through the neighbouring and similar farms. It undermines the viability of the wider rural community..”

• Irish Farmers Outraged Over 25% Emissions Reduction Plan (TCS)

The Irish government had previously been debating what the cut on emissions from the agriculture industry would be, finally settling on a 25% reduction below 2018 levels by 2030. “Today, the government has agreed on a pathway to a 51% cut in economy-wide emissions by 2030. The emissions ceiling for agriculture has been set at a level requiring a 25% reduction by 2030. This falls within the target range assigned to the sector under the Climate Action Plan 2021. I am pleased to have reached this conclusion as a way of offering certainty to our farm families and their businesses over the next decade,” said Irish Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue in a press release. Many farmers had been expecting a cap on emissions but said they were preparing for something more moderate.

They’re now arguing that culling their herds, which would sabotage their own businesses in the process, will be the only way they can meet the lofty standards of the Irish government. “The target that we’ve been working towards has been 18%, maybe 22% but not 25%,” said Cork farmer Alan Jagoe. “We’re producing food on our farms. We’re not taking fossil fuels off the ground; we are not mining; we are producing food that we all eat. That has been lost in this debate.” Jagoe further stated that the policy was totally “unrealistic.” “We had a pathway and a direction, and I cannot overemphasize enough that the work it would take to get to an 18% target would be absolutely massive,” Jagoe continued. “It’s a fundamental change in the way we farm, the way we apply our fertilizers, the way we apply our slurry. This is a fundamental policy shift to get to 18%, and we were prepared to work towards it, but now we have been given 25%.”

According to the Irish Farmers Journal, Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association president Pat McCormack is also baffled by the policy. He has stated that de-herding is already happening due to previous environmental regulations and that this will be exacerbated by the new policy, leading to a forced culling of herds and making family businesses less sustainable financially. Regarding one family farm with 30ha with 84 cows, McCormack stated that the farm would have to cut its livestock population by nearly 25%. “That reduction of 22 cows effectively wipes out the economic sustainability of this farm and replicated through the neighbouring and similar farms. It undermines the viability of the wider rural community,” McCormack said.

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“..the coagulation problems, myocarditis, we know that, but there are many more things happening at the moment.”

• Covid Vaccines Are Killing One in Every 800 Over-60s (DS)

Covid vaccine boosters in older people are killing one person for every 800 doses administered and should be withdrawn from use immediately, a leading vaccine scientist has said. Dr. Theo Schetters, a vaccinologist based in the Netherlands who has played a leading role in the development of a number of vaccines, says he analysed the official data from the Dutch Government and found a very close correlation between when fourth vaccine doses were administered in the country and the number of excess deaths, as shown in the chart below. Importantly, in the Netherlands the booster rollout in different regions was staggered over a number of weeks allowing an analysis by region, which confirms the effect.

Dr. Schetters, who is a recipient of the Medal of Honour of the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Montpellier in France, told Dr. Robert Malone, an inventor of mRNA vaccine technology, that medical doctors are currently seeing “all sorts of symptoms that they do not know what it is” and that “in the Netherlands now it’s very clear that there is a good correlation between the number of vaccinations that are given to people and the number of people that die within a week after that”. It is essential to look at all-cause mortality, he said, as the vaccine “potentially affects all organs”.

So it potentially affects all organs. And that’s what the medical doctors now see, they see all sorts of symptoms that they do not know what it is. And because the adverse effects are so not just single one adverse effect, but can be anything, they surface very difficult to a statistical level. And that’s why we do analysis on all cause mortality, because say, okay, and if we do not know what is exactly related to vaccination, of course, the coagulation problems, myocarditis, we know that, but there are many more things happening at the moment. And so that’s why we look at all cause mortality, and in the Netherlands now it’s very clear that there is a good correlation between the number of vaccinations that are given to people and the number of people that die within a week after that. So let’s say in this week we gave 10,000 vaccinations. Then in this week, we have something like 125 excess in death in that week.

The correlation is striking, Dr. Schetters said, to the extent that if you have more vaccines in a week then you also have more excess deaths, and if you have fewer vaccines in a week, you have fewer deaths. He says he has written to the Director of the Institute of Health in the Netherlands to alert him to the findings.

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“..suppressed immune function is likely to have been caused by COVID-19 vaccination..”

• Japanese Surgeon Calls for Suspension of COVID Boosters (ET)

In a letter to the peer-reviewed journal Virology, a Japanese cardiovascular surgeon, Dr. Kenji Yamamoto, has called for the discontinuation of COVID-19 booster shots. “As a safety measure, further booster vaccinations should be discontinued,” Yamamoto wrote. Among his urgent concerns are the fact that the COVID-19 vaccines have been linked to vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia, which, in some cases, has been lethal to patients. Yamamoto works at Okamura Memorial Hospital in Shizuoka, Japan. In the letter he explains that he and his colleagues have “encountered cases of infections that are difficult to control,” including some that occurred after open-heart surgery and were still not under control after several weeks of treatment with multiple antibiotics.

These patients, says Yamamoto, showed signs of being immunocompromised, and some of them died. Yamamoto believes their suppressed immune function is likely to have been caused by COVID-19 vaccination. It is rare for a cardiac surgeon to get involved in government vaccination policy. It is even rarer for a practicing medical doctor to express an opinion like this that flies in the face of the medical status quo in a prestigious medical journal, and for the medical journal itself to publish the opinion. Other clinicians, too, who have never spoken publicly before are also voicing similar concerns.

“The signals in the best sources we have currently available, which is our VAERS data, have been screaming,” said Dr. Angelina Farella, a pediatrician based in Webster, Texas who has expanded her practice into family medicine and has been treating COVID patients when other doctors in her area refused to see them. “It’s an all-out red-alert, about heart disease, deaths, and vaccine injury,” said Farella. In over 25 years of practicing medicine, which, Farella said, has included giving vaccinations to children every day, she has never seen such a dangerous vaccine.


Yikes!

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Robert Barnes @barnes_law: “Turns out plaintiffs lawyer lied in court when he illicitly spied on attorney client emails & texts, which would make 1/6 committee subpoena a violation of 4th, 5th & 6th Amendment rights. The #AlexJones case keeps setting records for violating rights.”

• The Truth About the Alex Jones Phone Records (SN)

An emergency protective order motion has been filed in the Alex Jones case relating to claims in court that lawyers had inadvertently obtained years worth of Jones’ phone records, with emails showing Plaintiffs had not been given approval to use the material in court as it would violate attorney client privilege. A video clip from the trial went viral yesterday showing Jones responding to the revelation by Mark Bankston that Jones’ lawyers had mistakenly sent Bankston what he described as “an entire digital copy of your entire cell phone, with every text message you’ve sent for the past two years.” “That is how I know you lied to me when you said you did not have text messages about Sandy Hook,” Bankston claimed.

This was then seized upon by media outlets to suggest that some kind of Hunter Biden laptop moment had occurred, apparently miring Jones in an even deeper scandal. However, according to an Emergency Motion for Enforcement of Protective Order filed by Jones’ lawyers, they did not given permission for the files, which only span a 6 month period from the end of 2019 through early 2020 and do not represent “an entire digital copy” of the cellphone, to be entered into evidence in court. “The file transfer link, however, inadvertently gave Plaintiffs access to dozens of other folders as well, including confidential documents, such as the medical records of Sandy Hook Parents who are Plaintiffs in the Connecticut litigation and other documents subject to various privileges, including attorney-client and work product,” states the motion.

An email shows that the issue was raised by Bankston, who told Jones’ attorneys in an email that the files contained “confidential information.” “My assumption is now that you did not intend to send us this? Let me know if I’m correct,” he enquired. Bankston was told by Jones’ attorney F. Andino Reynal to “disregard the link.” “It is now apparent that Plaintiffs’ counsel did not “disregard the link”, but has reviewed and used documents he acknowledged defendants “did not intend to send” and appeared to be “work product or confidential.” Defendants, therefore, seek Emergency relief pursuant to Rule 193.3 and the Court’s Protective Order,” states the motion.

The chunk of files were apparently sent to Bankston by a paralegal by mistake and were intended for lawyers in Connecticut representing other Sandy Hook families in separate cases, but were seized upon by Bankston and the media to suggest Jones had engaged in perjury or that he was hiding information. Jones responded to the controversy by asserting that he turned all his phones over to his lawyers and was merely trying to comply with discovery. Despite not being given permission to use the material in court, Bankston appears to have used it anyway as a PR stunt to sneak attack Jones, take him by surprise, and generate salacious media headlines.

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The Democrats don’t want her either; she’s toxic for votes.

• Republicans’ Last-minute Cheney Lifeline (Axios)

A handful of Republican operatives are quietly mounting a last-ditch effort to rescue Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) from a Trump-backed primary challenge, Axios has learned. The previously unreported effort shows how some Republicans are trying to surreptitiously undercut the former president’s revenge campaign, which has so far claimed the political lives of a significant chunk of GOP critics. Cheney — the vice chair of the House Jan. 6 committee — could be the next casualty. She’s facing tough odds in her primary fight this month against Trump-backed challenger Harriet Hageman. Involved in the effort are Jeff Larson, the chairman of Republican research firm America Rising and a longtime Cheney backer, and Julia Griswold Dailer, a former Trump White House and inauguration committee aide.

Their strategy is two-pronged: Persuade Democrats to cross the aisle and back the Wyoming Republican in this month’s open primary, and dent her Trump-endorsed challenger by portraying her as insufficiently loyal to the former president. Two seemingly unrelated political groups recently popped up to try to beat back Hageman’s challenge. Wyomingites Defending Freedom and Democracy is running digital and television ads and encouraging Democrats in the state to cross party lines and vote for Cheney in the Aug. 16 primary. Conservatives for a Strong America is portraying Hageman as a fake conservative secretly in league with Cheney and critical of Trump. The latter group is also trying to boost two of Cheney’s other primary challengers in an apparent effort to split the anti-Cheney vote.

Tex McBride, a Wyoming rancher who leads WDFD, told Axios that Larson recruited him for that role. “They needed somebody that … has a voice in the state rather than just trying to bring in someone from the outside who nobody knows or trusts,” McBride said in an interview. “My involvement is really just to put people in touch with each other and they go do their own deal, and help raise some money, but that’s the extent of it,” Larson told Axios.

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Why?

• Democrats Block Measures To Stop Gain-of-Function Research (JTN)

Senate Democrats on Thursday declined to offer unanimous consent to two measures to stop gain-of-function research, a process now infamous over its alleged connection to the spread of COVID-19. Republican Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall put forward both the Viral Gain of Function Research Moratorium Act and the SAFE Risk Research Act, which aimed to cut funding to universities conducting such research and foreign countries doing so, respectively. Gain of function is a process by which researchers genetically modify a virus. It has the potential for risk as an enhanced virus could potentially become a significant threat to humanity. Earlier this year, Congress banned funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese lab that U.S. intelligence and many Republicans suspect may have been the source of the coronavirus.


Marshall first introduced the Viral Gain of Function Research Moratorium Act in October of last year. Democrats denied Marshall’s Thursday bid for unanimous consent, meaning the bill’s passage will not be expedited. “It is disturbing that one of our top public health agencies directed this risky research to be offshored while encouraging the pause in that exact same research in the U.S.,” Marshall said on the Senate floor on Thursday, per a press release from his office. “Despite warnings and past lab accidents, our public health agencies like NIH continue to fund the WMD research, often in China nonetheless.” “Shockingly, Congress has minimal insight into the amount of this research at NIH,” he continued. “There is no transparency into their risk evaluation process.” “This is a national security issue,” Marshall insisted. “We must pause this research until national security experts can help create appropriate risk metrics, guardrails and processes for this research.”

Nipah virus gain of function

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“Why do we elect legislators to do what the voters want done, if unelected judges are going to make up laws on their own..”

• The Point of No Return (Thomas Sowell)

This is an election year. But the issues this year are not about Democrats and Republicans. The big issue is whether this nation has degenerated to a point of no return — a point where we risk destroying ourselves, before our enemies can destroy us. If there is one moment that symbolized our degeneration, it was when an enraged mob gathered in front of the Supreme Court and a leader of the United States Senate shouted threats against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, saying “You won’t know what hit you!” There have always been irresponsible demagogues. But there was once a time when anyone who shouted threats to a Supreme Court Justice would see the end of his own political career, and could not show his face in decent society again.

You either believe in laws or you believe in mob rule. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with the law or agree with the mob on some particular issue. If threats of violence against judges — and publishing where a judge’s children go to school — is the way to settle issues, then there is not much point in having elections or laws. There is also not much point in expecting to have freedom. Threats and violence were the way the Nazis came to power in Germany. Freedom is not free. If you can’t be bothered to vote against storm-trooper tactics — regardless of who engages in them, or over what issue — then you can forfeit your freedom. Worse yet, you can forfeit the freedom of generations not yet born.

Some people seem to think that the Supreme Court has banned abortions. It has done nothing of the sort. The Supreme Court has in fact done something very different, something long overdue and potentially historic. It has said that their own court had no business making policy decisions which nothing in the Constitution gave them the authority to make. Get out a copy of the Constitution — and see if you can find anything in there that says the federal government is authorized to make laws about abortion. Check out the 10th Amendment, which says that the federal government is limited to the specific powers it was granted, with all other powers going to the states or to the people. Why do we elect legislators to do what the voters want done, if unelected judges are going to make up laws on their own, instead of applying the laws that elected officials passed?

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“..an increase in average hard coral cover in the northern region of the reef to 36% in 2022 from 27% in 2021, and an increase in in the central region to 33% in 2022 from 27% in 2021..”

• Parts of Great Barrier Reef Show Highest Coral Cover In 36 Years (CBS)

The central and northern stretches of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef are showing the highest coral cover seen in 36 years, showing that the fragile UNESCO World Heritage site could still recover from decades of damage, a monitoring group reported Thursday. Coral cover in the southern region of the reef decreased, however, and the reef is vulnerable to increasingly common disturbances like mass bleaching events, the group said. There was an increase in average hard coral cover in the northern region of the reef to 36% in 2022 from 27% in 2021, and an increase in in the central region to 33% in 2022 from 27% in 2021, the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (AIMS) said in its annual summary report.

Despite this, “a third of the gain in coral cover we recorded in the south in 2020/21 was lost last year due to ongoing crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks,” Dr. Paul Hardisty, CEO of AIMS, said in a statement. “This shows how vulnerable the Reef is to the continued acute and severe disturbances that are occurring more often, and are longer-lasting.” AIMS has been monitoring the Great Barrier Reef since 1986. It said the increase in frequency of mass bleaching events — when coral, in response to stressful conditions like heat, loses its pigments and symbiotic algae, turns white, and potentially dies — were “uncharted territory.” “In our 36 years of monitoring the condition of the Great Barrier Reef we have not seen bleaching events so close together,” Hardisty said.

“Every summer the Reef is at risk of temperature stress, bleaching and potentially mortality and our understanding of how the ecosystem responds to that is still developing.” Dr. Mike Emslie, also from the AIMS monitoring program, said that most of the coral increase in the north and central parts of the reef was driven by fast-growing but fragile Acropora corals, and could therefore be reversed quickly. “These corals are particularly vulnerable to wave damage, like that generated by strong winds and tropical cyclones,” Emslie said. “The increasing frequency of warming ocean temperatures and the extent of mass bleaching events highlights the critical threat climate change poses to all reefs, particularly while crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks and tropical cyclones are also occurring. Future disturbance can reverse the observed recovery in a short amount of time.”

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Patrick Moore, past president of Greenpeace Canada: “Two of Canada’s smartest writers set the record straight. We are being lied to that CO2 is a “pollutant” when it is the basis for all life. The fate of civilization depends on our defeating this lie.”

• The Big Green Lie Almost Everyone Claims to Believe (ET)

Almost every member of Congress, Democrat or Republican, pays homage to the Big Green Lie. So do all the past and remaining Conservative candidates vying to be prime minister of the UK and every candidate currently vying for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada. So does virtually all of the mainstream press. The Big Green Lie—that carbon dioxide is a pollutant—is so pervasive that even those considered skeptics—including right-wing NGOs and pundits—generally adhere to the orthodoxy, differing not in their stated belief that CO2 is a pollutant but only in how calamitous a pollutant it is.

Because everyone now participates in the CO2-emissions-are-bad lie, the debate over climate policy hasn’t been over whether a CO2 problem exists but over how urgently CO2 needs to be addressed, and how it should be addressed. Do we have eight years left before Armageddon becomes inevitable or decades? Do we get off fossil fuels by building nuclear plants or wind turbines? Should we change our lifestyles to need less of everything? Or should we mitigate this evil—the view of those deemed climate minimalists—by shielding our continents from a rising of the oceans by enclosing them behind sea walls?

With almost everyone across the political spectrum publicly agreeing that curbing CO2 is a good thing, the debate has been between those who want to do good quickly by reaching Net Zero in 2040 and sticks in the mud who want to slow down the doing of a good thing. With discourse careening down rabbit holes, almost everyone gets lost pursuing solutions to Alice-in-Wonderland delusions—and wasting trillions of dollars in the process.

Patrick Moore
https://twitter.com/i/status/1555093266051342336

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1981
https://twitter.com/i/status/1553907150556110849

 

 

 

 


All countries of the world by real size arranged like the real map (via http://thetruesize.com)

 

 

 

 

Perpetual motion
https://twitter.com/i/status/1555201958734168065

 

 

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The Ritual Burial of the US Constitution

Sep 122018
 
 September 12, 2018  Posted by at 1:17 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  9 Responses »


Winslow Homer Salt Kettle, Bermuda 1899

 

In the wake of a number of the Lehman and 9/11 commemorations in America, and as a monster storm is once again threatening to cause outsize damage, we find ourselves at a pivotal point in time, which will decide how the country interacts with its own laws, its legal system, its Constitution, its freedom of speech, and indeed if it has sufficient willpower left to adhere to the Constitution as its no. 1 guiding principle.

The main problem is that it all seems to slip slide straight by the people, who are -kept- busy with completely different issues. That is convenient for those who would like less focus on the Constitution, but it’s also very dangerous for everyone else. Americans should today stand up for freedom of speech, or it will be gone, likely forever.

The way it works is that president Trump is portrayed as the major threat to ‘the rule of law’, which allows other people, as well as companies and organizations, to drop below the radar and devise and work on plans and schemes that threaten the country itself, and its future as a nation ruled by its laws.

Bob Woodward’s book “Fear: Trump in the White House” and the anonymous op-ed published in the NYT a day later serve as a good reminder of these dynamics. If you succeed in confirming people’s idea that Trump is such an unhinged idiot that an unelected cabal inside the White House is needed to save the nation from the president it elected, you’re well on your way.

Well on your way to separate the country from its own laws, that is. Not on your way to saving it. You can’t save America by suspending its Constitution just because that suits your particular political goals or points of view.

 

Late last night, Michael Tracey wrote on Twitter: “Trump’s preference to pull out of Afghanistan is depicted in the Woodward book as yet another crazy impulse that the “adults in the room” successfully rein in.” “We’re going to save you from yourselves, thank us later!” Nobody voted for those adults in the room anymore than anyone voted for the Afghanistan ‘war’ to enter year 17.

Meanwhile Infowars said: “Several people within Trump’s inner circle know the threat to the mid-terms and his re-election chances that social media censorship poses, including Donald Trump Jr. and Brad Parscale, his 2020 campaign manager. However, older members of the administration are completely unaware of the fact that banning prominent online voices and manipulating algorithms can shift millions of votes and are oblivious to the danger. This ignorance has placed a temporary block on Trump taking action, despite the president repeatedly referring to Big Tech censorship in tweets and speeches over the last few weeks.”

Yes, Infowars, I know, everybody loves to hate Alex Jones. And perhaps for good reasons, at least at times. But does that mean he can be banned from a whole slew of internet platforms without this having been run by and through the US court system? Without even one judge having examined the ‘evidence’, if it even existed, that leads to such banning, blocking and shadowbanning?

Alex Jones is an ‘easy example’ because he’s so popular. Which is also, undoubtedly, why all the social media platforms ban him so easily, and all at the same time. ‘He’s a terrible person’, say so many of their readers. But that’s not good enough, far from it. Twitter and Facebook should never be allowed to ban anyone, using opaque ‘Community Standards’ or ‘Terms and Conditions’ interpreted by kids fresh out of high school.

These platforms have important societal functions. They are for instance the new conduits governments, police, armies use to warn people in case of emergencies and disasters. You can’t ban people from those conduits just because a bunch of geeks don’t like what they say. If you can at all, it will have to be done through the legal system.

That this is not done at present poses an immense threat to that legal system, and to the Constitution itself. But Americans, and indeed Congressmen and Senators, have been trained in a Pavlovian way to believe that it’s not Google and Facebook who threaten the Constitution, but that it’s Trump and his crew.

 

Meanwhile, Trump is being put through Bob Mueller’s Special Counsel legal wringer 24/7, while Alphabet, Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg escape any such scrutiny at all. That discrepancy, too, is eating away at the foundations of American law.

And like it or not, Trump had it right when he said “You look at Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants and I made it clear that we as a country cannot tolerate political censorship, blacklisting and rigged search results..”

America as a country cannot tolerate a few rich companies deciding whose voice can be heard, and whose will be silenced. It is entirely unacceptable. That goes for voices Trump doesn’t want to hear as much as it does for whoever Silicon Valley doesn’t. That’s why neither should be in charge of making such decisions. It kills the Constitution.

None of the above means that everyone should be free to post terrorist sympathies or hate speech on social media platforms. But it does mean that legislative and judicial systems must define what these things mean, that this not be left up to arbitrary ‘Community Standards’ interpreted by legally inept Silicon Valley interns, nor should it be left to secret algorithms to decide what news you see and what not.

America itself hangs in the balance, and so do many other western countries. What exactly is the difference between China’s overt internet censorship and America’s hidden one? That is what needs to be defined, and that can only be done by the legal system, by Congress, by the courts, by judges and juries.

And it’s not something that has to be invented from scratch, it can and must be tested against the Constitution. That is the only way forward. That social media have taken over the country by storm, and nary a soul has any idea what that means, can never be an excuse to leave banning and silencing voices over to private parties, whoever they are.

 

It’s not a unique American problem. In Europe there are all sorts of attempts to ban ‘hate speech’, but there are very few proposals concerning who will define what that is. And since Europe has no Constitution, but instead has 27 different versions of one, it will be harder there. Then again, it will also be easier to get away with all sorts of arbitrary bannings etc.

Hungary will be inclined to ban totally different voices than for instance Denmark and so on. And nobody over there has given any sign of understanding how dangerous that is. Banning ‘hate speech’ doesn’t mean anything if the term hasn’t been properly defined. But that also allows for banning voices someone simply doesn’t like. To prevent that from happening, we have legal systems.

It’s essential, it’s elementary, Watson. But it’s slipping through our fingers because our politicians are either incapable of, or unwilling to, comprehending the consequences. Why stick out your neck when nobody else does? It’s like the anti-thesis of what politics means: stay safe.

So the social media’s industry’s own lobbying has a good shot at getting its way: they tell Washington to let them regulate themselves, and everything will be spic and dandy. That would be the final nail in the Constitution’s coffin, and it’s much closer than you think. Do be wary of that.

 

In the end it comes down to two things i’ve said before. First, there is no-one who’s been as ferociously banned and worse the way Julian Assange has. His ban goes way beyond Silicon Valley, but it does paint a shrill portrait of how far the US, CIA, FBI, is willing to go, and to step beyond the Constitution, to get to someone they really don’t like.

But has Assange ever violated and US law, let alone its Constitution? Not that we know of. Mike Pompeo has called WikiLeaks a ‘hostile intelligence service’, and the DOJ has said the 1st Amendment, and thereby of necessity the entire US Constitution, doesn’t apply to Assange because he’s not an American, but both those things are devoid of any meaning, at least in a court of law.

Bob Woodward has an idea of what Assange faces, and he’d do much better to focus on helping him than trying to put Trump down through anonymous sources. And that also leads me to why I, personally, have at least some sympathy for Alex Jones, other than because he’s being attacked unconstitutionally: Jones ran/runs a petition for Trump to free Julian Assange.

Come to think of it: it’s when that petition started taking off that Jones’s ‘real trouble’ started. Given how closely interwoven Silicon Valley and the FBI and CIA have already become, I’m not going to feign any surprise at that.

And before you feel any wishes and desires coming up to impeach Trump, do realize that he may be the only person standing between you and a complete takeover of America by the FBI/NSA/CIA/DNC and Google/Facebook/Twitter, which will be accompanied by the ritual burial of the Constitution.

Think Trump is scary? Take a step back and survey the territory.

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle September 8 2018

Sep 082018
 
 September 8, 2018  Posted by at 9:42 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  5 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Rispal Restaurant at Asnieres 1887

 

• Obama Claims Ownership Of US Economic Recovery (MW)
• Trump Has Set Economic Growth On Fire. Here Is How He Did It (CNBC)
• May Urged To Ignore ‘Three Stooges’ In Brexit Negotiations (G.)
• Cohen Seeks To Vacate Hush-Money Deal With Stormy Daniels (Hill)
• Papadopoulos Sentenced To 14 Days In Prison For Lying To FBI (ES)
• Secret Grand Jury Proceedings Underway Against Andrew McCabe (ZH)
• Apple Bans Alex Jones App For ‘Objectionable Content’ (R.)
• Erdogan Legacy Construction Projects Stall In Turkish Financial Crisis (Ind.)
• Slouching Toward Okeefenoke (Kunstler)
• Russia Asks Britain For Help In Identifying Novichok Suspects (G.)
• Nike Online Sales Jump 31% After Company Unveiled Kaepernick Campaign (MW)

 

 

I’d say be careful what you claim ownership of. Because you break it, you own it

• Obama Claims Ownership Of US Economic Recovery (MW)

Former President Barack Obama on Friday used a speech at the University of Illinois to sharply criticize his successor as well as claim ownership of the U.S. economic recovery. Speaking in Urbana, Ill., where he received an award for ethics in government, Obama recalled that the U.S. economy was losing 800,000 jobs a month when he entered office. “We worked hard to end that crisis but also break some of these longer-term trends,” said Obama, who is planning a series of campaign trips ahead of the midterm elections in November. “By the time I left office, household income was near its all-time high, and the uninsured rate had hit an all-time low and wages were rising,” he said. “I mention all this so when you hear how great the economy is doing right now, let’s just remember when this recovery started.

“I’m glad it’s continued, but when you hear about this economic miracle that’s been going on … I have to kind of remind them, actually those job numbers are kind of the same as they were in 2015 and 2016.” On that, Obama is correct. U.S. job growth averaged 226,000 per month in 2015, 195,000 in 2016, 182,000 in 2017 and, so far this year, 207,000. Data also show a pickup in business and consumer confidence after Trump’s election. The U.S. is on track to grow more than 3% in 2018, a rate of economic expansion not recorded over the course of a full calendar year since the second term of the George W. Bush administration. At a North Dakota event, Trump responded. “Obama was trying to take credit for this incredible thing that’s happening,” Trump said.

“I have to say this to President Obama – if the Dems got in with their agenda in November of almost 2 years ago, instead of having 4.2 up, I believe honestly we’d have 4.2 down,” he said, referring to GDP growth of 4.2% in the second quarter. Obama meanwhile had a broader attack on Trump than just the economy. Mentioning Trump by name, Obama said political division is more manufactured than real. “Sometimes the backlash comes from people who are genuinely, if wrongly, fearful of change. More often it’s manufactured by the powerful and privileged who want to keep us divided and keep us angry and keep up cynical because it helps them maintain the status quo and keep their power and keep their privilege,” he said. “And you happen to be coming of age during one of those moments. It did not start with Donald Trump. He is a symptom, not the cause,” Obama said to applause.

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And these ownership claims are easy to argue.

• Trump Has Set Economic Growth On Fire. Here Is How He Did It (CNBC)

President Donald Trump is more than 19 months into an administration engulfed in so much controversy that it may overshadow a tremendous achievement, namely an economic boom uniquely his. During his time in office, the economy has achieved feats most experts thought impossible. GDP is growing at a 3 percent-plus rate. The unemployment rate is near a 50-year low. Meanwhile, the stock market has jumped 27 percent amid a surge in corporate profits. Friday brought another round of good news: Nonfarm payrolls rose by a better-than-expected 201,000 and wages, the last missing piece of the economic recovery, increased by 2.9 percent year over year to the highest level since April 2009.

That made it the best gain since the recession ended in June 2009. His critics, a group that includes a legion of Wall Street economists, most Democrats and even some in his own Republican Party, don’t believe it will last. They figure the current boom will begin petering out as soon as mid-2019 and possibly end in recession in 2020. But even they acknowledge that the current numbers are a uniquely Trumpian achievement and not owed to policies already set in motion when he took office. “I still believe the big story this year is an economic boom that most folks thought impossible,” Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council and a chief advisor to Trump, said in a recent interview with CNBC.com. “I understand that he’s been in for a year and a half, but when you look at those numbers, this is not going away.”

Indeed, the economy does seem to be on fire, and it’s fairly easy to draw a straight line from Trump’s policies to the current trends. Business confidence is soaring, in part thanks to a softer regulatory environment. Consumer sentiment by one measure is at its highest level in 18 years. Corporate profits, owed in good part to last year’s tax cuts, are coming close to setting records.

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May will have to bend a lot.

• May Urged To Ignore ‘Three Stooges’ In Brexit Negotiations (G.)

An EU commissioner has likened Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage to the “Three Stooges” and issued a stern warning to Theresa May that there would be no Brexit deal next March if she insisted on sticking to her Chequers proposal. In a speech in Ireland on Friday, Phil Hogan said the EU would fight to the end to preserve the union of nations that has stood for the past 60 years. He said Brussels would not allow the bloc to be damaged just to save the UK “from its own silliness” and reiterated the EU position that the four freedoms forming the bedrock of the union were not negotiable. He said the only room for a special deal on deviating from the four freedoms would be in relation to Northern Ireland.

“The EU’s first offer, reflexively rejected, was a significant departure from our internal market policy. And it was meant for Northern Ireland only. It was that Northern Ireland could remain in the single market with the EU27,” he said. Instead of accepting that offer, the UK’s reply, he said, was “‘Let’s restrict the single market to goods and generalise it for the whole UK.’ The EU’s answer has already been given: no. “If the UK attitude is Chequers and only Chequers, there will be no agreement before March next year on the future trade relationship,” he said. He said that if May could not progress the UK’s position then the EU’s offer on a future trade deal would be the one it put forward months ago, “essentially a Canada-type trade arrangement”. He added: “There is nothing new in this. Each time she is asked about her red lines, the prime minister repeats them, making a Canada-type trade deal more likely.

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Curious development. Trying to make it look like it never happened?

• Cohen Seeks To Vacate Hush-Money Deal With Stormy Daniels (Hill)

Michael Cohen’s shell company has reportedly moved to vacate a 2016 nondisclosure agreement with adult-film star Stormy Daniels, requesting that she return the $130,000 she received as part of the deal. Cohen’s lawyer Brent Blakely said Friday that California law requires Daniels to return the money that Cohen paid her in 2016 to stay quiet about her alleged affair with President Trump in 2006, CNN reports. “Today, Essential Consultants LLC and Michael Cohen have effectively put an end to the lawsuits filed against them by Stephanie Clifford aka Stormy Daniels,” Blakely told CNN.

“The rescission of the Confidential Settlement Agreement will result in Ms. Clifford returning to Essential Consultants the $130,000 she received in consideration, as required by California law,” he added. A source familiar with Cohen’s thinking told the network that Cohen no longer benefits from Daniels’s promise to keep quiet about the affair. The existence of the deal, and Daniels’s alleged affair, were reported by The Wall Street Journal originally in January, while Daniels has been outspoken about her allegations since then. Michael Avenatti, the attorney representing Daniels in her defamation case against Cohen and Trump over their denials of the alleged affair, told CNN that the move was likely made in an attempt to protect Trump from being deposed.

“I haven’t had a chance to digest it, I just saw it on my email literally right before I came on,” Avenatti told CNN. “What they’re trying to do is they don’t want me to get a chance to depose Michael Cohen and Donald Trump,” he added. “This is a hail mary to try and avoid that, that’s my first guess.” Avenatti added in a tweet Friday night that Cohen “is back to playing games and trying to protect Donald Trump.” “He is now pulling a legal stunt to try and ‘fix it’ so that we can’t depose Trump and present evidence to the American people about what happened. He is not a hero nor a patriot. He deserves what he gets,” the attorney added.

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If Mueller et al had a sense of decency, they’d have let him go on “Time Served”. All they’ve proven is that Papadopoulos is indeed a nobody. BTW, rumor has it that Joseph Mifsud is dead.

• Papadopoulos Sentenced To 14 Days In Prison For Lying To FBI (ES)

President Trump’s former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos has been sentenced to 14 days in prison for lying to the FBI. He is the first former campaign aide to be sentenced in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian investigation. In October 2017, he pled guilty to one count of lying to FBI agents about the nature of his interactions with “foreign nationals” who he thought had close connections to senior government officials. Mr Papadopoulos was a member of the campaign’s foreign policy team, but Trump aides have said he played a limited role in the campaign and had no access to the candidate.

Court papers revealed that Mr Papadopoulos was told about the Russians possessing “dirt” on Democrat Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails” on April 26 2016, well before it became public that the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails had been hacked. The interactions at the centre of the case included speaking with Russian intermediaries who were attempting to line up a meeting between Mr Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin and offering “dirt” on Mrs Clinton. During the trial, Mr Papadopoulos apologised for his actions, telling a judge that he had made a “dreadful mistake” and was eager for redemption.

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See, Papadopoulos gets jailed for lying to the FBI (about nothing). Now, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe lied 4x, twide under oath, about leaking FBI info to the press. Which is worse? And if this concerns the FBI so much, how come Mueller, ex-FBI head, conducts the investigation?

• Secret Grand Jury Proceedings Underway Against Andrew McCabe (ZH)

Federal prosecutors have been using a grand jury over the last several months to investigate former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, reports the Washington Post, citing two people familiar with the matter. What’s more, the grand jury has summoned at least two witnesses, and the case is ongoing according to WaPo’s sources. “The presence of the grand jury shows prosecutors are treating the matter seriously, locking in the accounts of witnesses who might later have to testify at a trial. But such panels are sometimes used only as investigative tools, and it remains unclear if McCabe will ultimately be charged.” -Washington Post

McCabe was fired on March 16 after Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued a criminal referral following a months-long probe, which found that McCabe lied four times, including twice under oath, about authorizing a self-serving leak to the press. Horowitz found that McCabe “had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor – including under oath – on multiple occasions.” Specifically, McCabe was fired for lying about authorizing an F.B.I. spokesman and attorney to tell Devlin Barrett of the Wall St. Journal – just days before the 2016 election, that the FBI had not put the brakes on a separate investigation into the Clinton Foundation, at a time in which McCabe was coming under fire for his wife taking a $467,500 campaign contribution from Clinton proxy pal, Terry McAuliffe.

In order to deal with his legal woes, McCabe set up a GoFundMe “legal defense fund” which stopped accepting donations, after support for the fired bureaucrat took in over half a million dollars – roughly $100,000 more than his wife’s campaign took from McAuliffe as McCabe’s office was investigating Clinton and her infamous charities.

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Let’s go through all the apps. And through all Twitter accounts. I understand Hamas and Ahmadinejad still operate.

• Apple Bans Alex Jones App For ‘Objectionable Content’ (R.)

Apple said on Friday that it had banned from its App Store the Infowars app belonging to popular U.S. conspiracy theorist Alex Jones after finding that it had violated the company’s rules against “objectionable content”. The move makes Apple the latest tech company or social media platform to take action against Jones, a deeply controversial right-wing radio talk-show host who has suggested that the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax, among other sensational claims. Apple said the guidelines Jones violated bar “defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content, including references or commentary about religion, race, sexual orientation, gender, national/ethnic origin, or other targeted groups, particularly if the app is likely to humiliate, intimidate, or place a targeted individual or group in harm’s way.”

Representatives for Jones could not immediately be reached for comment by Reuters on Friday evening. On Thursday, Twitter Inc permanently banned Jones and his website from its platform and Periscope, saying in a tweet that the accounts had violated its behavior policies. In a video posted on the Infowars website on Thursday, Jones said in response: “I was taken down not because we lied but because we tell the truth and because we were popular.” Last month, Twitter banned Jones and Infowars for seven days, citing tweets that it said violated the company’s rules against abusive behavior, which state that a user may not engage in targeted harassment of someone or incite other people to do so.

Apple said at the time that the Infowars app remained in its store because it had not been found to be in violation of any content policies, although it had removed access to some podcasts by Jones. The podcasts differ from the Infowars app by allowing access to an extensive list of previous episodes, subjecting all of those past episodes to Apple’s content rules.

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Oh well, just blame America.

• Erdogan Legacy Construction Projects Stall In Turkish Financial Crisis (Ind.)

Turkey’s financial meltdown has brought the country’s years-long construction boom screeching to a halt, with even some of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s favourite projects being suspended or scaled back amid a cash crunch and debt woes. In recent weeks, worried murmurs about stalled projects among developers and ordinary Turks about dormant construction sites and half-finished buildings left untouched for months have reached a crescendo. This week local news outlets reported that a key transport project in Istanbul, the Kabatas ferry terminal connecting the city’s European and Asian sides of Turkey’s commercial capital, would be scaled back.

Across the country, experts say construction sites have gone dormant, projects suspended or delayed. The construction cranes remain in place, but the work has stopped. “The huge companies that do fancy infrastructure projects – they don’t have any money,” said one developer who is well-connected to official circles. “The government has a spending freeze. They’re going to reconsider all the projects and reprioritise.” Mr Erdogan, a former mayor of Istanbul, built his reputation and electoral popularity on undertaking gigantic public works projects like mosques, airports, and bridges, as well as facilitating big private sector projects that included showy housing complexes, glittery office towers, and shopping malls packed with Turkish and international retail brands.

But the miracle was built on cheap credit from abroad, which has now dried up in a climate of rising US interest rates and doubts about Turkey’s economic health. And financial experts, developers, and bankers say many of Turkey’s projects – including the 45km Istanbul canal connecting the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara that even Mr Erdogan himself called “crazy” – are now in doubt. “The Istanbul Canal is almost impossible,” said Atilla Yesilada, an economist and consultant. “Because no one wants to lend to Turkey now.”

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A caravan of grand jury’s.

• Slouching Toward Okeefenoke (Kunstler)

There is now a clear evidence trail about eight-lanes wide detailing Russian collusion of the Democratic Party, the Hillary Campaign, the FBI / DOJ, plus a caravan of Robert Mueller aides, adjuncts, colleagues and former trainees. They are all mixed up with a cavalcade of events weaving through more than one Clinton investigation (and its damage control operations), and they need to appear before grand juries too. Many, I suspect are criminally culpable and will end up in the slammer. Perhaps even ole Horse-face himself, grave and aseptic as he may seem.

I’ve caught two of Trump’s rallies the past week or so. His freestyling babble at the podium makes me wish I could wave a magic wand and just make him vanish in a cloud of orange vapor, or perhaps turn him into Richard Nixon. (Doesn’t all this make you nostalgic for ole Nixie?) He can’t shut up about the economic miracles that he has wrought with his mighty “stable genius” brain. Perhaps he has not noticed that the money system is crumbling all around the world at the margins. If he does not understand that this rot eventually must reach the center, then he has washed down too many cheeseburgers with his own Kool Aid.

Having taken ownership of all this lock, stock, and barrel, then he is perfectly situated to be blamed when the honey-wagon of algo trading robots turns south and whatever remains of the world’s hot money, including the US dollar, goes up in smoke. If it coincides even bluntly with the mid-term election, then we will find ourselves living through Civil War Two.

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2 Russian secret agents who make sure they get photographed by 5-6 different camera’s. Yeah.

• Russia Asks Britain For Help In Identifying Novichok Suspects (G.)

Moscow has claimed it wants to ascertain as soon as possible the identities of the two men named by Britain as suspects in the nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in Salisbury, and has asked London to help. “We need to establish who these people are, if these are [Russian] citizens or not,” said Maria Zakharova, the foreign ministry spokeswoman on Friday. “We want to do this with maximum haste and effectiveness, and so we are again appealing to Britain for help in ascertaining the identities of these people.” Britain announced charges in absentia on Wednesday against two men believed to be officers with Russia’s military intelligence service, known as the GRU.

Theresa May said the men flew into Britain in March to try to murder Sergei Skripal, a former GRU officer who sold secrets to MI6, and accused the Russian government of orchestrating the operation. Scotland Yard said the alleged secret agents travelled to Britain under the names of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, which were probably aliases. The Kremlin has described the allegations as unacceptable and denies that any Russian officials were involved. Zakharova also accused May of a “frank lie” over her claims that Russia had not offered Britain information after the nerve agent attack, and suggested that May had “selective access” to Russian media reports. Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Vladimir Putin, said on Thursday that Russia would not investigate the two suspects because it had not received a formal request for legal assistance from Britain.

Zakharova’s comments came as a purported ex-GRU officer claimed the attempted murder was too amateurish to have been the work of professional secret service agents. If GRU agents had wanted to target Skripal, they would have done it “quietly, without fuss, and brought him [to Russia] in a mail bag, and no one would have known where he had gone,” Ivan Tarasov told Russia’s Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. Tarasov also claimed the Skripals could have been targeted by a Russian crime gang, possibly over unpaid debts, and mocked reports that the suspects stayed in the same room in a cheap hotel near Salisbury. “That’s how bandits act, not professional secret service officers. GRU officers don’t stay in London hotels,” he said.

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I don’t care about Nike. But I do care about Kaepernick. See, if there’s one thing wrong here that proves him right, it’s that only black people come out in support of him. Where are his white colleagues, white athletes in general? Why only Tiger, Serena and LeBron?

The world he’s protesting is the one that is killing black kids. His protest started under the first black US president. So did Black Lives matter. So where is Obama on the issue? Why doesn’t he stand with Kaepernick?

• Nike Online Sales Jump 31% After Company Unveiled Kaepernick Campaign (MW)

Talk of Nike Inc. sales taking a hit from the company’s decision to put ex–NFL player Colin Kaepernick at the center of its latest “Just Do It” campaign is looking overblown, based on data from a Silicon Valley digital commerce research company. After an initial dip immediately after the news broke, Nike’s online sales actually grew 31% from the Sunday of Labor Day weekend through Tuesday, as compared with a 17% gain recorded for the same period of 2017, according to San Francisco–based Edison Trends. “There was speculation that the Nike/Kaepernick campaign would lead to a drop in sales, but our data over the last week does not support that theory,” said Hetal Pandya, co-founder of Edison Trends.

Nike’s stock has also held up after its initial slump. The stock was up 1% on Friday and remains in the black for the month. It has gained 29% in 2018, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, which since 2013 has counted Nike as a member, has gained 5%, as the S&P 500 index has risen about 8%. The news generated plenty of online buzz, with social engagement around Nike and Kaepernick rising sharply this week, according to 4C Insights, a marketing technology company. Mentions of and comments about Nike on social-media platforms rose 1,678% on Sunday and Monday, according to 4C data. Mentions of Kaepernick spiked 362,280%, the data showed.

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Debt Rattle September 7 2018

Sep 072018
 
 September 7, 2018  Posted by at 9:18 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  8 Responses »


René Magritte The false mirror 1928

 

• I Know Who the “Senior Official” Is Who Wrote the NY Times Op-Ed (PCR)
• Pompeo Denies Being Author Of ‘Sad’ NYT Op-Ed On Trump (AFP)
• Mueller Hardens Stance On Trump Interview In Russia Probe, Giuliani Says (R.)
• ‘Lots Of Evidence’ Syria Preparing Chemical Weapons In Idlib- New US Envoy (R.)
• Operation Yellowhammer: Secret Government Paper On No-Deal Brexit (Ind.)
• Brexit Negotiators Risk Sleepwalking Into Crisis – Former UK Envoy To EU (G.)
• The Fed’s QE Unwind Hits $250 Billion (WS)
• Twitter Permanently Bans Alex Jones, Website Infowars (R.)
• Google and Apple’s Systems to Track you in Person (CP)
• Moon Says Is Seeking To Establish ‘Irreversible’ Peace On Korean Peninsula (YH)
• Paris Official Seeks To Outlaw Airbnb Rentals In City Centre (AFP)
• Most Of British Countryside Now Devoid Of Hedgehogs (G.)

 

 

Paul Craig Roberts: “The New York Times wrote it.”

• I Know Who the “Senior Official” Is Who Wrote the NY Times Op-Ed (PCR)

I know who wrote the anonymous “senior Trump official” op-ed in the New York Times. The New York Times wrote it. The op-ed is an obvious forgery. As a former senior official in a presidential administration, I can state with certainty that no senior official would express disagreement anonymously. Anonymous dissent has no credibility. Moreover, the dishonor of it undermines the character of the writer. A real dissenter would use his reputation and the status of his high position to lend weight to his dissent. The New York Times’ claim to have vetted the writer also lacks credibility, as the New York Times has consistently printed extreme accusations against Trump and against Vladimir Putin without supplying a bit of evidence.

The New York Times has consistently misrepresented unsubstantiated allegations as proven fact. There is no reason whatsoever to believe the New York Times about anything. Consider also whether a member of a conspiracy working “diligently” inside the administration with “many of the senior officials” to “preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting” Trump’s “worst inclinations” would thwart his and his fellow co-conspirators’ plot by revealing it! This forgery is an attempt to break up the Trump administration by creating suspicion throughout the senior level. If Trump falls for the New York Times’ deception, a house cleaning is likely to take place wherever suspicion falls. A government full of mutual suspicion cannot function.

The fake op-ed serves to validate from within the Trump administration the false reporting by the New York Times that serves the interests of the military/security complex to hold on to enemies with whom Trump prefers to make peace. For example, the alleged “senior official” misrepresents, as does the New York Times, President Trump’s efforts to reduce dangerous tensions with North Korea and Russia as President Trump’s “preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un” over America’s “allied, like-minded nations.” This is the same non-sequitur that the New York Times has expressed endlessly. Why is resolving dangerous tensions a “preference for dictators” and not a preference for peace? The New York Times has never explained, and neither does the “senior official.”

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As have lots of others. If PCR is right, makes sense.

• Pompeo Denies Being Author Of ‘Sad’ NYT Op-Ed On Trump (AFP)

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denied Thursday being the author of a damning, anonymous op-ed in the New York Times about President Donald Trump, calling it “sad”. “It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the New York Times, a liberal newspaper that has attacked this administration relentlessly, chose to print such a piece,” Pompeo said in New Delhi. “If it’s accurate… they should not… have chosen to take a disgruntled, deceptive bad actor’s word for anything and put it in their newspaper. It’s sad more than anything else,” he told reporters.

He added: “I come from a place where if you’re not in a position to execute the commander’s intent, you have a singular option, that is to leave. And this person instead, according to the New York Times, chose not only to stay but to undermine what President Trump and this administration are trying to do. “And I have to tell you, I just, I find the media’s efforts in this regard to undermine this administration incredibly disturbing. The editorial, by an anonymous senior US official according to the New York Times, said that Trump’s own staff see him as a danger to the nation. Trump has questioned whether the “gutless” piece, entitled “I am part of the resistance inside the Trump administration”, might be treasonous. “It’s not mine,” Pompeo added.

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“We’ve said no, and let’s see how they deal with it.”

• Mueller Hardens Stance On Trump Interview In Russia Probe, Giuliani Says (R.)

Special Counsel Robert Mueller wants President Donald Trump to commit to a follow-up interview to written answers to questions in his probe of any coordination between Trump campaign members and Russia in the 2016 U.S. election, Rudy Giuliani, who is representing the president, said on Thursday. Giuliani, who said talks between the two sides were continuing, saw Mueller’s stance as a hardening in the position prosecutors are taking after offering to allow Trump to answer questions in writing. “I thought we were close to having an agreement until they came back with, ‘You have to agree now that you’ll allow a follow-up,’ and I don’t see how we can do it,” Giuliani told Reuters.

Lawyers for Trump have been negotiating over a potential interview with Mueller’s team since last year in the U.S. investigation of Russian meddling in the presidential election, which Moscow denies. Trump has denied any campaign collusion, calling the Mueller probe a “witch hunt.” In a letter to Trump’s lawyers last week, Mueller expressed a willingness to accept written responses on questions about collusion, but did not rule out a possible interview as a follow-up, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday. After receiving the written responses, Mueller’s investigators would decide on a next step, which could include an interview with Trump, the person said. But Giuliani said on Thursday that Mueller’s team had stiffened its position in the latest talks. “They want a commitment” to a follow-up interview, Giuliani said. “We’ve said no, and let’s see how they deal with it.”

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In crease the pressure on Trump with anon op-eds and Mueller, and see if he bombs Assad. Transparent.

• ‘Lots Of Evidence’ Syria Preparing Chemical Weapons In Idlib- New US Envoy (R.)

There is “lots of evidence” chemical weapons are being prepared by Syrian government forces in Idlib, north-west Syria, the new US representative for Syria has said, warning any attack on the last big rebel enclave would be a “reckless escalation”. “I am very sure that we have very, very good grounds to be making these warnings,” said Jim Jeffrey, who was named on 17 August as secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s special adviser on Syria overseeing talks on a political transition. “Any offensive is to us objectionable as a reckless escalation,” Jeffrey said. “There is lots of evidence that chemical weapons are being prepared.”

Washington has issued a strong warning to Syria’s government against using chemical weapons in the widely expected operation. Jeffrey said any offensive by Russian and Syrian forces, and the use of chemical weapons, would force huge refugee flows into south-eastern Turkey or areas in Syria under Turkish control. The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has massed his army and allied forces on the frontlines in the north-west and Russian planes have joined his bombardment of rebels there – the prelude to a possible assault. The fate of the insurgent stronghold in and around Idlib province now seems to rest on a meeting to be held in Tehran on Friday between the leaders of Assad’s supporters Russia and Iran, and the rebels’ ally Turkey.

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“..its song is said to have a rhythm like “a little bit of bread and no cheese”

• Operation Yellowhammer: Secret Government Paper On No-Deal Brexit (Ind.)

A secret Treasury document has raised questions about “rail access to the EU” after a no-deal Brexit. The document – snapped as it was carried into a Whitehall meeting – also reveals that Philip Hammond’s department has codenamed its contingency planning “Operation Yellowhammer”. It warns that government departments will have to make cuts to prepare for crashing out of the EU, saying: “Their first call should be internal reprioritisation.” And it acknowledges the need to “maintain confidence in the event of contingency plans being triggered – particularly important for financial services”.

Operation Yellowhammer is being overseen by the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, which is usually responsible for coping with emergencies such as floods and disease outbreaks. The document was photographed just hours after the health secretary admitted that taxpayers would have to foot the bill for stockpiling NHS medicines in a no-deal Brexit. A Treasury spokesman refused to be drawn on the paper, saying: “We don’t comment on leaked documents.” The yellowhammer is a bird with a bright yellow head, a brown back streaked with black and chestnut rump, often seen perched on top of a hedge or bush, singing. Intriguingly for critics of a no-deal Brexit, its song is said to have a rhythm like “a little bit of bread and no cheese”.

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“Rogers says the prime minister’s compromise plan “contains many wholly unsaleable elements and will not [and] cannot be agreed by the 27..”

• Brexit Negotiators Risk Sleepwalking Into Crisis – Former UK Envoy To EU (G.)

Brexit negotiators on both sides of the Channel risk “sleepwalking into a major crisis” that could poison relations for a generation, the UK’s former ambassador to the European Union Sir Ivan Rogers, has warned. In a speech to the British Irish Chambers of Commerce in Dublin, he urged EU leaders to move beyond a technocratic approach to Brexit and give serious thought to “the British question” or risk “endless toxic running battles”. “There is now, in my view, a higher risk than the markets are currently pricing of a disorderly breakdown in Brexit negotiations, and of our sleepwalking into a major crisis,” he said. “Not because either negotiating team actively seeks it, but precisely because each side misreads each other’s real incentives and political constraints and cannot find any sort of landing zone for a deal, however provisional.”

He said it was “tempting” and “an understandable accusation” for European capitals to think that “the British have brought all this on themselves without much apparent thought or honesty”. But he urged leaders to take a longer view, or risk a brittle settlement that would not last. Rogers resigned as the UK’s ambassador to the EU last January after being attacked as “the gloomy mandarin” by Tory Eurosceptics, who dismissed his warnings that leaving the EU would be be complicated process that would dominate UK political life for a decade.

In a parting email to staff he urged British officials to challenge ill-founded arguments and “muddled thinking”, while another former top civil servant lamented his departure as a “wilful and total destruction of EU expertise”. In his speech on Thursday night Rogers criticised the “delusional” thinking of British Eurosceptics and said they knew that a genuine no-deal Brexit “would bring several key sectors of the economy to a halt”. He said that advocates of a no-deal Brexit expected to trigger a host of mini deals at the 11th hour.

[..] Much of his speech was a plea to EU27 member states to take a strategic approach to Brexit, recognising that they cannot have “just a bog-standard third-country relationship like any other” with the UK. But Rogers was not attempting to sell Theresa May’s Chequers plan, an array of proposals that includes an unprecedented customs deal and “common rule book” for goods that the EU has rejected. Rogers says the prime minister’s compromise plan “contains many wholly unsaleable elements and will not [and] cannot be agreed by the 27”.

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Just a start, but getting serious.

• The Fed’s QE Unwind Hits $250 Billion (WS)

In August, the Federal Reserve was supposed to shed up to $24 billion in Treasury securities and up to $16 billion in Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), for a total of $40 billion, according to its QE-unwind plan – or “balance sheet normalization.” The QE unwind, which started in October 2017, is still in ramp-up mode, where the amounts increase each quarter (somewhat symmetrical to the QE declines during the “Taper”). The acceleration to the current pace occurred in July. So how did it go in August? The Fed released its weekly balance sheet Thursday afternoon. Over the period from August 2 through September 5, the balance of Treasury securities declined by $23.7 billion to $2,313 billion, the lowest since March 26, 2014. Since the beginning of the QE-Unwind, the Fed has shed $152 billion in Treasuries:

The step-pattern of the QE unwind in the chart above is a consequence of how the Fed sheds Treasury securities: It doesn’t sell them outright but allows them to “roll off” when they mature; and they only mature mid-month or at the end of the month. On August 15, $23 billion in Treasuries matured. On August 31, $21 billion matured. In total, $44 billion matured during the month. The Fed replaced about $20 billion of them with new Treasury securities directly via its arrangement with the Treasury Department that cuts out Wall Street – the “primary dealers” with which the Fed normally does business. Those $20 billion in securities were “rolled over.” But it did not replace about $24 billion of maturing Treasuries. They “rolled off” and became part of the QE unwind.

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They have to reveal their grounds.

• Twitter Permanently Bans Alex Jones, Website Infowars (R.)

Twitter on Thursday permanently banned U.S. conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his website Infowars from its platform and Periscope, saying in a tweet that the accounts had violated its behavior policies. “As we continue to increase transparency around our rules and enforcement actions, we wanted to be open about this action, given the broad interest in this case,” the company tweeted. “We do not typically comment on enforcement actions we take against individual accounts for their privacy.” In a video posted on the Infowars website on Thursday Jones said, “I was taken down not because we lied but because we tell the truth and because we were popular.”

The ban came weeks after Apple, Alphabet’s YouTube, and Facebook took down podcasts and channels from Jones, citing community standards. Jones, whose conspiracy theories include that the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax, hosts the syndicated radio program “The Alex Jones Show.” Last month, Jones lost a bid to dismiss a defamation lawsuit brought against him by the parents of a boy who was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting. On Wednesday, Jones attended a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on ways to counteract foreign efforts to influence U.S. elections and political discourse. Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey testified at the hearing.

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Bluetooth ‘beacons’ everywhere that track you. Lovely.

• Google and Apple’s Systems to Track you in Person (CP)

Google is in the news (again) for creepy surveillance practices. Google, AP reported, is tracking your physical whereabouts even after you tell them to shut Location History off. Now Bloomberg reports they bought data about Mastercard transactions to link online ads with in-store purchases. These make for interesting stories, but the real story, not being discussed, is the online-physical advertising systems engineered by Google and Apple.

Over the last few years, there’s been a quiet revolution in retail marketing empowering advertisers to track consumers in physical space. Retailers have realized that, contrary to popular misconceptions, most retail purchases are still made in brick-and-mortar stores– not the online world of Amazon and Walmart. The capacity to track each of us in the physical world offers an untapped market for high-tech advertising. Google previously called this the Physical Web, a new Internet of Things frontier that melds the online and offline worlds into one.

To facilitate online-offline tracking, Google and Apple developed protocols for communications with mobile devices like smartphones. The idea is to make the physical world, like a poster on a building, something you can “click on” (i.e. interact with) without installing a special app. The dominant weapon of choice is the bluetooth beacon – silly putty-sized units that broadcast bluetooth signals to track your precise location and send messages to your phone. Bluetooth beacons are now scattered about stores, airports, sporting arenas, malls, and other locales. The technology is several years in the making.

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Let him.

• Moon Says Is Seeking To Establish ‘Irreversible’ Peace On Korean Peninsula (YH)

South Korea is seeking to formally end its hostile relations with North Korea before the year’s end to establish permanent peace that would be irreversible, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said in an interview published Friday. “The most basic goal of our policy is that there must never be another war on the Korean Peninsula,” the president said in a written interview with Indonesian newspaper Kompas. The rare interview came ahead of Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s three-day trip to Seoul. Moon and Widodo will meet Monday, one day after the Indonesian leader arrives on a state visit. Moon noted he and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have already agreed to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and establish permanent peace.

“The issue is sincerely implementing the agreement reached by the leaders, and the plan is to make enough progress by the year’s end so the process cannot be reversed,” the South Korean president said, according to a script of his written interview released by his office Cheong Wa Dae. Moon’s remarks came as he is set to hold his third bilateral summit with the North Korean leader in Pyongyang from Sept. 18-20. Moon and Kim earlier met in the border village of Panmunjom on April 27 and May 26. He expressed hope for a formal end to the Korean War before the year’s end. “As a practical way of building trust, it would be great if a declaration of the war that would mark the end of hostile relations on the Korean Peninsula can be made this year,” Moon said.

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“We’ll be living in an open-air museum.”

• Paris Official Seeks To Outlaw Airbnb Rentals In City Centre (AFP)

The Paris city council member in charge of housing said Thursday that he would propose outlawing home rentals via Airbnb and other websites in the city centre, accusing the service of forcing residents out of the French capital. Ian Brossat told AFP that he would also seek to prohibit the purchase of secondary residences in Paris, saying such measures were necessary to keep the city from becoming an “open-air museum”. “One residence out of every four no longer houses Parisians,” said Brossat, who is expected to head the Communist party list for European Parliament elections next year. With some 60,000 apartments on offer in the city, Paris is the biggest market for Airbnb, which like other home-sharing platforms has come under increasing pressure from cities which claim it drives up rents for locals.

“Do we want Paris to be a city which the middle classes can afford, or do we want it to be a playground for Saudi or American billionaires?” he said. Brossat has had Airbnb and its rivals in his sights for years, and recently published a book assailing the US giant titled “Airbnb, or the Uberised City”. He wants to forbid any short-term tourist rentals of entire apartments in the First, Second, Third and Fourth Arrondissements of Paris, home to some of the world’s most popular sites including the Cathedral of Notre-Dame and the Louvre museum. “If we don’t do anything, there won’t be any more locals: Like on the Ile Saint-Louis, we’ll end up with a drop in the number of residents and food shops turned into clothing or souvenir stores,” he said, referring to the Seine island in the shadow of the Notre-Dame cathedral. “We’ll be living in an open-air museum.”

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In the end this means a countryside devoid of countryside.

• Most Of British Countryside Now Devoid Of Hedgehogs (G.)

A “perfect storm” of intensive farming and rising badger populations has left most of the countryside in England and Wales devoid of hedgehogs, according to the first systematic national survey. The research used footprints left by hedgehogs in special tunnels to reveal that they were living at just 20% of the 261 sites surveyed. Hedgehogs, which topped a vote in 2013 to nominate a national species for Britain, were significantly less common where badgers were more numerous. Badgers eat hedgehogs and also compete for the beetles and worms the prickly animals consume. However, hedgehogs and badgers lived alongside each other in half the hedgehog sites, while a quarter of all the sites had neither animal, showing the destruction of habitat such as hedgerows and coppices was also a major factor.

“There are lots of areas in the countryside that are not suitable for hedgehogs or badgers,” said Ben Williams, at the University of Reading, who led the new work. “There is something fundamentally wrong in the rural landscape for those species and probably lots of other species as well,” such as birds and shrews. Previous work based on visual sightings and roadkills indicated that the number of hedgehogs living in the British countryside has plummeted by more than half since 2000. Historical hedgehog numbers are hard to estimate, but scientists think populations have fallen by at least 80% since the 1950s. The new survey, published in the journal Scientific Reports, is much more detailed and reliable. It concludes: “The combined effects of increasing badger abundance and intensive agriculture may have provided a perfect storm for hedgehogs in rural Britain, leading to worryingly low levels of occupancy over large [areas].”

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Debt Rattle August 8 2018

Aug 082018
 
 August 8, 2018  Posted by at 8:20 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  12 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh The red tree house 1890

 

• Tesla Shares Soar After Elon Musk Floats Plan To Take Company Private (G.)
• Securities Lawyers Shocked By Elon Musk’s Tweet (CNBC)
• Alex Jones Pleads With Donald Trump To Fight ‘Censorship’ (Ind.)
• US Think Tank’s Tiny Lab Helps Facebook Battle Fake Social Media (R.)
• Trump’s Sanctions Causing Turmoil In Turkey (CNBC)
• Turkish Banks Scramble to Stave Off Debt Crisis (DQ)
• Europe ‘Needs To Get A Backbone’ On Trump’s Iran Sanctions – Ron Paul (RT)
• EU Foreign Policy Chief Calls On Firms To Defy Trump Over Iran (G.)
• The Blowup With Canada Is the Latest Saudi Overreach (IC)
• London Is The World’s Airbnb Capital (ZH)
• My Amsterdam Is Being Un-Created By Mass Tourism (G.)
• First Trial Alleging Monsanto’s Roundup Causes Cancer Goes To Jury (R.)
• The American Sea of Deception (TD)

 

 

$82 billion in funding arranged? Perhaps the SEC should have a word with Musk about that.

• Tesla Shares Soar After Elon Musk Floats Plan To Take Company Private (G.)

Elon Musk has launched a campaign to take Tesla private on a day that included several provocative tweets, a suspension (and resumption) of trading in the company’s shares, reports of a significant Saudi investment, a surge in stock price, and an evocative, Musk-tinged appeal to the Tesla faithful: “The future is very bright and we’ll keep fighting to achieve our mission.” The ride started with Tesla’s stock rising more than 7% after Musk tweeted he was “considering taking Tesla private” and had funding in place to do so at a price of $420 (£325) per share. Shortly afterwards, Tesla published a blogpost written by Musk entitled ‘Taking Tesla private’ that had been sent to all employees.

The tweet appeared to be triggered by a report in the Financial Times that Saudi Arabia has built up a stake in Tesla worth up to $2.9bn. At $420 a share, Tesla would have an enterprise value of about $82bn including debt, well above its stock market value, which reached $63.8bn on Tuesday. Shares closed up 11% at $378. To take Tesla private, Musk would have to pull off the largest leveraged buyout in history, surpassing Texas electric utility TXU’s in 2007. Analysts say Tesla doesn’t fit the typical profile of a company that can raise tens of billions of dollars of debt to fund such a deal. In a follow up tweet, Musk wrote: “I don’t have a controlling vote now and wouldn’t expect any shareholder to have one if we go private. I won’t be selling in either scenario.”

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Social media and its consequences.

• Securities Lawyers Shocked By Elon Musk’s Tweet (CNBC)

“If his comments were issued for the purpose of moving the price of the stock, that could be manipulation, it could also be securities fraud,” former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt told CNBC on Tuesday. “The use of a specific price for a potential going private transaction is highly unprecedented and therefore raises significant questions about what his intent was. So, that would have to be investigated.” [..] Five years ago the Securities and Exchange Commission had to clarify its social media policy after Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings set off a firestorm of his own.

Companies can use social media like Facebook and Twitter to announce key information and be OK under Fair Disclosure regulations as long as investors know that they can find that information on the social media accounts. Reg FD was designed to make sure investors could get information at the same time, rather than having select disclosures to some before others. The SEC’s enforcement division had investigated Hasting’s use of a personal Facebook page back in 2012 to say the streaming service’s monthly online viewing had exceeded 1 billion hours for the first time.

The SEC didn’t take any action against Netflix or Hastings but clarified its social media policy. “Personal social media sites of individuals employed by a public company would not ordinarily be assumed to be channels through which the company would disclose material corporate information,” the SEC said in a statement at the time. There might not be any SEC action this time, either, but it’s only a matter of time before an executive gets accused of making a false or misleading statement on social media, said Kevin LaCroix, an attorney focused on management liability issues. “There will be a case someday.”

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A hard one for Trump. Alex Jones is his biggest media asset. But how can Washington stop Silicon Valley?

• Alex Jones Pleads With Donald Trump To Fight ‘Censorship’ (Ind.)

Far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has appealed to Donald Trump to pursue an end to “censorship” after the InfoWars host was banned from all but one of the West’s major content platforms. On Monday, Apple deleted most of Mr Jones’s podcasts saying they contained hate speech; Facebook removed four of his pages down for “repeated violations of community standards”; YouTube terminated Mr Jones’s account after he violated a 90-day ban; and Spotify removed one of Jones’s podcasts for “hate content”. In a free-wheeling monologue posted online, the prominent far-right personality praised the president, condemned the mainstream press, and accused China of meddling in US elections.

“Mr President, America knows you’re real. They know the Democrats are the anti-American globalists allied with the ChiComms, radical Islam, the unelected EU, and others,” he said. “If you come out before the midterms and make the censorship the big issue of them trying to steal the election. “And if you make the fact we need an Internet Bill of Rights, and anti-trust busting on these companies, if they don’t back off right now. “And if you don’t come out and point out that the communist Chinese have penetrated and infiltrated and are way, way worse than the Russians …. then they will be able to steal the midterms and start the impeachment.” He said cracking down on China and speaking out against censorship was “the right thing to do”.

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The Atlantic Council doesn’t find the truth, it makes its own. Main Russiagate proponents.

• US Think Tank’s Tiny Lab Helps Facebook Battle Fake Social Media (R.)

A day before Facebook announced that it had discovered and disabled a propaganda campaign designed to sow dissension among U.S. voters, it exclusively shared some of the suspicious pages with an online forensics team so busy it hasn’t put a nameplate on the door. The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab is based in a 12-foot-by-12-foot office in the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the nearly 60-year-old Council www.atlanticcouncil.org, a think tank devoted to studying serious and at times obscure international issues. Facebook is using the group to enhance its investigations of foreign interference. Last week, the company said it took down 32 suspicious pages and accounts that purported to be run by leftists and minority activists.

While some U.S. officials said they were likely the work of Russian agents, Facebook said it did not know for sure. It fell to the lab to point out similarities to fake Russian pages from 2016 during Facebook’s news conference last week. Facebook began looking for outside help amid criticism for failing to rein in Russian propaganda ahead of the 2016 presidential elections. The U.S. Justice Department won indictments against 13 Russians and three companies for using social media in that election to influence voters. U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security team warned last week of persistent attempts by Russia to use social media against the 2018 congressional elections as well.

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All they need to do is release a pastor.

• Trump’s Sanctions Causing Turmoil In Turkey (CNBC)

The Turkish lira and benchmark sovereign bond hit a record low as the threat of U.S. sanctions added pressure to already ailing markets. The U.S. dollar rose to 5.4 against the lira on Monday before trading around 5.29 on Tuesday. Turkey’s 10-year bond fell to a record low on Tuesday, pushing its yield up to around 20 percent before hovering around 18.8 percent. Bond prices move inversely to yields. Turkish capital markets have struggled this year as the country deals with a weakening economy. The sharp moves down come after President Donald Trump threatened last month to slap “large sanctions” on the Middle Eastern nation if it refuses to free Andrew Brunson, an evangelical pastor.

The U.S. then announced on Aug. 1 sanctions on Turkey’s justice and interior ministers, prohibiting U.S. citizens from doing business with them. “This is a shot across the bow,” said Marcus Chenevix, an analyst at TS Lombard. “Now, I think the U.S. will give them time to respond. It’s not like the U.S. sees this as a pressing political matter, it just can’t seem to be backing down to these hostage tactics.” Turkey detained Brunson in October 2016, accusing him of spying and trying to overthrow the government after a failed coup earlier that year. Trump demanded in a July 26 tweet the Turkish government release Brunson.

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20% yields on bonds… As the lira has lost 25% or so of its value..

• Turkish Banks Scramble to Stave Off Debt Crisis (DQ)

Highly leveraged companies currently face a potent cocktail of soaring borrowing costs and a plunging Lira. As the local currency weakens against the dollar and the euro, it gets harder and harder for local companies to service foreign currency bonds. That’s how a currency crisis becomes a debt crisis. Turkish companies are sitting on $337 billion in debt. With as much as $100 billion in debt scheduled to come due over the course of the next year, Turkish banks are under growing pressure to restructure foreign-currency denominated corporate loans as those companies struggle to service them.

The banks have proposed rules to accelerate the restructuring of company debt and allow lenders to avoid booking these loans as “non-performing loans,” a move that may help prevent defaults from piling up. As has happened in Italy since Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, the banks will try to extend loans indefinitely in order to avoid gaping holes developing on their balance sheets. But it may already be too late. The downgrades, both sovereign and corporate, are coming thick and fast. On July 20, Fitch Ratings downgraded the Long-Term Foreign Currency Issuer Default Ratings (LTFC IDRs) of 24 Turkish banks and their subsidiaries, in many cases by two notches.

The agency also slashed Turkey’s sovereign rating deeper into junk territory, downgrading its Long-Term Foreign-Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to ‘BB’ from ‘BB+’ with a negative outlook. Moody’s also downgraded the ratings of 17 banks in July. These downgrades will make it even more costly for Turkish banks and the Turkish government to raise funds, with the yield on Turkey’s benchmark 10-year bond soaring to an eye-watering 19% on Tuesday.

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“In time people are going to realize we might have to adjust because countries are not going to tolerate what we have done..”

• Europe ‘Needs To Get A Backbone’ On Trump’s Iran Sanctions – Ron Paul (RT)

Washington is powerful, but Europe needs to “stick to its guns” against President Donald Trump’s threats that any countries doing business with Iran will not to do business with the US, according to former Congressman Ron Paul. In an interview with RT, Paul said that while the US can “throw its weight around” the EU needs to “get some backbone” to resist Trump’s threats. “If they stick to their guns I think the United States would have to adjust our policies a bit, because how are they going to enforce that? You know, if China and Russia and other countries and India, they do business with Iran — how are we going to punish them?” he said. Paul acknowledged that standing up to Washington might be difficult if major companies are faced with the threat of losing business in the US. “In time people are going to realize we might have to adjust because countries are not going to tolerate what we have done,” he said.

Asked about the anti-Russia sentiment currently gripping the US, Paul said that the people who are in favor of taking a very negative view of Russia — and who are pushing the narrative that Trump colluded with Russia to win the presidency — are in control in both the media and in Congress. “I think it’s tragic what’s happening, because they have no proof of anything and for some reason these senators have come up with this new [Russia sanctions] bill — Graham and McCain and Menendez — just out of the clear blue, they have no evidence whatsoever of their charges that they have made,” he said. Paul, who has long advocated a non-interventionist foreign policy and taken a negative view of sanctions, said that the US tendency to blame other countries for everything, slapping them with sanctions and then complaining when they retaliate is “very, very bad foreign policy.”

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Catch 22.

• EU Foreign Policy Chief Calls On Firms To Defy Trump Over Iran (G.)

The EU is set on a collision course with Donald Trump after its foreign policy chief called for Europeans to increase their business dealings with Iran in defiance of bellicose statements from the US president. As Trump vowed to block those trading with Iran from the US market, the EU stepped up efforts to save the Iran nuclear deal by encouraging its companies to ignore the White House. Federica Mogherini, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, said Brussels would not let the 2015 agreement with Tehran die, and she urged Europeans to make their own investment decisions. The EU, China and Russia remain signatories to the joint comprehensive plan of action under which economic sanctions on Iran have been lifted in return for the regime curtailing its nuclear aspirations.

Trump reneged on the deal in May, describing it as “a horrible one-sided deal that should never, ever have been made”. The clash risks destabilising the wider transatlantic relationship weeks after the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, and Trump vowed in the White House rose garden to increase tariff-free trade between the EU and the US and to move on from recent disagreements. During a trip to Wellington, New Zealand, on Tuesday, Mogherini said: “We are doing our best to keep Iran in the deal, to keep Iran benefiting from the economic benefits that the agreement brings to the people of Iran, because we believe this is in the security interests of not only our region but also of the world.

“If there is one piece of international agreements on nuclear non-proliferation that is delivering, it has to be maintained. We are encouraging small and medium enterprises in particular to increase business with and in Iran as part of something [that] for us is a security priority.” Hours earlier, Trump had tweeted: “The Iran sanctions have officially been cast. These are the most biting sanctions ever imposed, and in November they ratchet up to yet another level. Anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States. I am asking for WORLD PEACE, nothing less!”

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“Have the Saudis gone stark-raving bonkers?”

• The Blowup With Canada Is the Latest Saudi Overreach (IC)

Have the Saudis gone stark-raving bonkers? First, they pick a fight with Canada — yeah, that Canada! Maple syrup-loving, hockey-playing, poutine-eating, liberal, multicultural Canada; the land with free health care and a prime minister who wears “Eid Mubarak” socks. On Sunday, Saudi Arabia (over)reacted to a single tweet from the Canadian foreign ministry. The tweet called on the Saudis to “immediately release” imprisoned activist Samar Badawi, sister of Raif, as well as “all other peaceful #humanrights activists.” The Saudi foreign ministry lambasted the Canadians for an “unfortunate, reprehensible, and unacceptable” statement, announced the “freezing of all new trade and investment transactions” with Canada, demanding the Canadian ambassador leave the country “within the next 24 hours.”

At the same time, Saudi trolls took to Twitter to declare their loud support for … Quebec’s independence. Who knew that an absolute Persian Gulf monarchy was so passionate about a French-speaking secessionist movement 6,000 miles away? (Hey, Canadian trolls — if you even exist — my advice would be to retaliate by offering Ottawa’s backing for independence in the restless, Shia-dominated Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. It’ll drive them totally nuts.) And Saudi Arabia was just getting started. On Monday, the kingdom escalated the row by suspending scholarships “for about 16,000 Saudi students” studying in Canada, the Toronto Star reported, “and ordered them to attend schools elsewhere.” (Can you think of a better example of biting your bigoted nose to spite your intolerant face?)

Then — and this is my favorite part of this whole bizarre episode — a Saudi group put out an image on Twitter of a Canadian airliner flying directly toward Toronto’s tallest building over a warning against interfering in others’ affairs. (The Saudi group later deleted it and apologized) Are. You. Kidding. Me?

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Destruction in its wake.

• London Is The World’s Airbnb Capital (ZH)

10 years ago, in early August 2008, the website Airbedandbreakfast.com went online, marking the birth of Airbnb. Back then the three founders, Brian Cheky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk wanted to help short-term travelers find affordable accommodation and provide renters with an opportunity to make an extra buck by renting out spare rooms or even just the namesake airbed on the floor. However, as Statista’s Felix Richter notes, little did they know that 10 years later their little venture would be one of the hottest private companies in the world, valued at nearly $30 billion.

Over the years, Airbnb has developed into much more than what it was originally meant to be. These days you can rent millions of houses, apartments and rooms on the platform. For many young travelers is has become the favorite if not the only way to find accommodation when travelling. Luckily for Airbnb, its rise coincided with a steep increase in city tourism. In cities such as London, Paris or New York, where hotel rooms are often hard to find and/or expensive, Airbnb has become an affordable and popular way to experience cities in a less touristy way.

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Politicians can’t keep up with tech developments. They’re always late. They sit on their hands until someone else does something.

“..the red light district is no longer under government control at weekends. Criminals operate with impunity; the police can no longer protect citizens; ambulances struggle to reach victims on time.”

• My Amsterdam Is Being Un-Created By Mass Tourism (G.)

The word on everyone’s lips is “Venice”. It starts as a whisper, some time in early spring, when the lines in front of the Rijksmuseum get a little longer, and the weekend shopping crowds in the Negen Straatjes begin to test your bike-navigation skills. By the time it’s July those streets are flooded. You don’t even try steering through the crowds. You’d be like Moses, except that God is not on your side, the Red Sea will not part in your favour, and the crowds will wash you away: the middle-aged couples from the US and Germany, here for the museums; and the stag parties from Spain, Italy and the UK, here in their epic attempt to drink all the beer and smoke all the pot.

So you learn to take the long way round to your destination and skip entire areas of Amsterdam – which nevertheless means that, perhaps once every summer, you’ll be down on the pavement after crashing into a distracted tourist who walked in front of your bike, and the whisper becomes a curse: “Fucking Venice!” (The Dutch like to swear in English.) “Venice”is shorthand for a city so flooded by tourists that it no longer feels like a city at all. In the famed 2013 Dutch documentary I Love Venice a tourist asks: “At what time does Venice close?” It’s very funny, except, of course, that it is not funny at all.

This year Amsterdam’s 850,000 inhabitants will see an estimated 18.5 million tourists flock to the city – up 11% on last year. By 2025, 23 million are expected. Last week the city’s ombudsman condemned the red light district as no longer under government control at weekends. Criminals operate with impunity; the police can no longer protect citizens; ambulances struggle to reach victims on time. [..] There are several ways to react. One is to leave town. A study shows that in the past five years 40% of couples relocated to smaller towns after their first child. Many feel this is no longer a city to raise kids.

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Hard to prove, I said it before. But a jury might decide anyway. Huge case, 5,000 more plaintiffs to come.

• First Trial Alleging Monsanto’s Roundup Causes Cancer Goes To Jury (R.)

Groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson is one of more than 5,000 plaintiffs across the United States who claim Monsanto’s glyphosate-containing herbicides, including the widely-used Roundup, cause cancer. His case, the first to go to trial, began in San Francisco’s Superior Court of California four weeks ago. Johnson’s lawyer Brent Wisner on Tuesday urged jurors to hold Monsanto liable and punish them with a verdict he said would “actually change the world.” Wisner claimed Monsanto knew about glyphosate’s cancer risk, but decided to bury the information. Monsanto, a unit of Bayer following a $62.5 billion acquisition by the German conglomerate, denies the allegations and says expert testimony on which Johnson and others rely does not satisfy any scientific or legal requirements.

“The message of 40 years of scientific studies is clear: this cancer is not caused by glyphosate,” Monsanto’s lawyer George Lombardi said, according to an online broadcast of the trial by Courtroom View Network. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in September 2017 concluded a decades-long assessment of glyphosate risks and found the chemical not likely carcinogenic to humans. The World Health Organization’s cancer arm in 2015 classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” If it finds Monsanto liable, the jury can decide to award punitive damages on top of the more than $39 million in compensatory damages Johnson demanded. The jury is expected to start deliberating on Wednesday.

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All the Presidents’ lies.

• The American Sea of Deception (TD)

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt lied to Congress and the American people when he claimed that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was “unprovoked” by the U.S. and a complete “surprise” to the U.S. military. President Dwight Eisenhower flatly lied to the American people and the world when he denied the existence of American U-2 spy plane flights over Russia. President John F. Kennedy lied about the supposed missile gap between the United States and the Soviet Union. And Kennedy lied when he claimed that the United States sought democracy in Latin America, Southeast Asia and around the world. President Lyndon Johnson lied on Aug. 4, 1965, when he claimed that North Vietnam attacked U.S. Navy destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. This provided a false pretext for a massive escalation of the U.S. war on Vietnam, resulting in the deaths of more than 50,000 U.S. military personnel and millions of Southeast Asians.

Regarding Vietnam, Daniel Ellsberg recalled 17 years ago that his 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers exposed U.S. military and intelligence documents “proving that the government had long lied to the country. Indeed, the papers revealed a policy of concealment and quite deliberate deception from the Truman administration onward. … A generation of presidents,” Ellsberg noted, “chose to conceal from Congress and the public what the real policy was. …” President Richard Nixon lied about wanting peace in Vietnam (his agent, Henry Kissinger, actively undermined a peace accord with Hanoi before the 1968 election) and about respecting the neutrality of Cambodia. He lied through secrecy and omission about the criminal and fateful U.S. bombing of Cambodia—a far bigger crime than the burglarizing of the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate complex, about which he of course famously lied.

The serial fabricator Ronald Reagan made a special address to the nation in which he lied by saying, “We did not—repeat—we did not trade weapons or anything else [to Iran] for hostages, nor will we.” President George H.W. Bush falsely claimed on at least five occasions in the run-up to the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War that Iraqi forces, after invading Kuwait, had pulled babies from incubators and left them to die.

President Bill Clinton shamelessly lied about his White House sexual shenanigans with Monica Lewinsky. He falsely claimed to be upholding international law and to be opposing genocide when he bombed Serbia for more than two months in early 1999. The serial liar George W. Bush and his administration infamously, openly and elaborately lied about Saddam Hussein’s alleged Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” and about Iraq’s purported links to al Qaida and the 9/11 jetliner attacks. After the WMD fabrication was exposed, Bush falsely claimed to have invaded Iraq to spread liberty and democracy.

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