Mar 072025
 


James McNeill Whistler Symphony in White, No. 3 1867

 

Are All of Biden’s Presidential Actions ‘Null and Void’? (Margolis)
Europe’s ‘ReArm’ Plan “Is Going To Come At A Vast Cost” (Rabobank)
European Leaders Want ‘Forever War’ In Ukraine – Musk (RT)
Lavrov Compares Macron to Hitler and Napoleon (RT)
Macron’s Remarks on Use of Nuclear Arms a Threat to Russia – Lavrov (Sp.)
Kremlin Reacts To Macron’s ‘War’ Speech (RT)
EU Must Win Arms Race – Poland (RT)
Macron Should Apologize – Moscow (RT)
Trump Begins CIA Cuts – NYT (RT)
US Ready To Change Legal Status Of 240,000 Ukrainian Migrants (RT)
Lavrov Weighs In On US Decision To Halt Intel Sharing With Ukraine (RT)
‘Science Should Be An Engine For Freedom’: NIH Nominee Bhattacharya (JTN)
Obama Judge Indefinitely Blocks Trump Admin Funding Freeze (ZH)
DOGE Looking To Cut More Than 80,000 Employees At Veterans Affairs (JTN)
IRS Reportedly Plans To Cut Half of Its 90,000 Workforce (JTN)
Elon Musk Says Amtrak, US Postal Service Should Be Privatized (ET)
Trump Planning Major NATO Shakeup – NBC (RT)
Trump Wants To Sideline EU – Politico (RT)
EU Seeking To Bypass Opponents of Ukraine Aid – Kallas (RT)
Israeli FM ‘Didn’t Know’ Kiev Glorifies Holocaust Perpetrators (RT)

 

 

 

 

1987

 

 

Destiny

PAC
https://twitter.com/i/status/1897633263750877606

Tulsi

Sachs Maidan

Rubio

Kash
https://twitter.com/i/status/1896935794532556981

 

 

 

 

Autopen. Could be explosive. Will the Trump admin want to pursue it? It has Pandora written all over it.

Are All of Biden’s Presidential Actions ‘Null and Void’? (Margolis)

The Biden presidency might have been the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the American people. A shocking investigation by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project has revealed that virtually every document bearing Joe Biden’s signature during his presidency was signed by an autopen — except for one. What makes this revelation particularly damning is that the only document confirmed to have Biden’s actual signature was his letter announcing his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race. Let that sink in for a moment. Remember when House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) revealed his discussion with Biden when Biden couldn’t recall signing the executive order halting LNG exports? Now we know why — he probably didn’t. The real question is: Who did? Who was running the country while Biden was not all there?

The use of the presidential autopen dates back to the 1950s, and there’s been much debate about its legality. In 2013, Barack Obama became the first president to sign a bill into law using an autopen. He was vacationing in Hawaii at the time. His office relied on a 30-page memo from President George W. Bush’s legal team asserting that the president’s presence was not required as long as said president had authorized the signature. What’s not clear, in the case of Biden, is who was running the autopen and whether Biden was aware it was happening. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is demanding that the Department of Justice investigate whether Biden’s obvious cognitive decline allowed unelected bureaucrats to essentially run the government without presidential oversight. If this is true — and let’s be honest, all signs point to yes — every executive order, every pardon, and every official action taken under Biden’s name could be constitutionally void.

Bailey’s letter to Michael E. Horowitz, the inspector general of the Department of Justice, spells it out perfectly. “I write to request that you conduct a full investigation into President Biden’s mental capacity in his final days in office. By now, Biden’s mental decline is famous. Under the 25th Amendment, his inability to make decisions should have meant a succession of power. Instead, it appears staffers and officers in the Biden administration may have exploited Biden’s incapacity so they could issue orders without an accountable President of sound mind approving them. That would explain why the Biden administration’s orders were aggressively much farther to the left than any previous President. If in fact Biden’s staffers were exploiting his mental decline, those orders are null and void.”

The evidence is overwhelming. We know that Biden’s handlers desperately tried to prevent anyone from meeting with him one-on-one. Even Democratic insiders admit the truth. DNC fundraiser Lindy Li recently spilled the beans and acknowledged that Biden wasn’t running the show; his staff, his wife, and Hunter were. Thanks to the Heritage Foundation’s investigation, we now have proof that Biden’s signature was automated throughout his presidency — which raises serious questions about whether he was aware of what was being signed in his name at all. The Oversight Project rightfully points out that since Biden revoked Trump’s executive privilege, we can easily determine who controlled the autopen and what safeguards, if any, were in place.

The implications are staggering. We essentially had a presidency by proxy, with unelected staffers wielding presidential power while the man himself was barely cognizant enough to read a teleprompter. This isn’t just a scandal; it’s potentially the biggest constitutional crisis in American history. The American people deserve to know who was really calling the shots during the Biden administration. If these allegations prove true, every single action taken under Biden’s name needs to be scrutinized and potentially nullified. The truth must come out, and those responsible must be held accountable.

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The end of Europe’s welfare state.

“They created a wasteland and called it democracy.”

Europe’s ‘ReArm’ Plan “Is Going To Come At A Vast Cost” (Rabobank)

The US has increased its pressure on Ukraine to pause the war by turning off military intelligence to it, removing Kyiv’s ability to fire missiles into Russia. This action has further outraged and –given their reliance on US systems in NATO– terrified Europe. Note President Eisenhower did the same vis-à-vis then-and-current ally South Korea in 1953, which didn’t want to stop fighting; the US didn’t want a direct war with China, or more inflation, and made it clear military aid would stop until an armistice was achieved. That frozen conflict seems where Ukraine-Russia is heading, especially as President Zelenskyy just said what rejected what the Russian terms for any formal peace deal (demilitarisation, formal renouncement of lost territories) would be.

Europe has added its own pressure on Zelenskyy as Germany’s ministry of defence admits it can’t supply more materiel to Ukraine either as it’s out of stock. That underlines the need for the German announcement on infrastructure investment and rearmament yesterday, which saw 10-year Bund yields rise 31bp on the day, their worst performance since 1997. EUR jumped. Ahead of today’s EU ReArm summit President Macron addressed his nation, stating: “Our prosperity and security have become more uncertain, and it must be said, we are entering a new era… if a country can invade its neighbour in Europe with impunity, then no one can be sure of anything anymore, and it is the law of the strongest that applies, and peace can no longer be guaranteed on our continent itself.” He added that the future of Europe will not be set by the Kremlin or Washington, DC, and spoke of extending the French nuclear umbrella to Europe.

This is going to come at a vast cost. If you think a 31bp rise in Bunds captures the scale of shocks involved in a soft-power Europe trying to set its own future in a hard-power world then you spend too much time in soft-power circles. For starters, the FT op-eds today that ‘Europe must trim its welfare state to build a warfare state’: like it or not, that is starting to sound a bit MEGA (Europe, not America) and DOGE. One wonders what the ECB will say about it today.

Europe is outraged by US actions vs Ukraine and what some call the White House’s “reverse Nixon” strategy (so, ‘Noxin’?) of trying to split Russia from China, as with China vs the USSR in the 1970s: there is talk of Trump–Putin kinship or kompromat even in the financial press. However, facing a united China and Russia, when until this week Europe refused to rearm, is something all geostrategists, some belatedly, see as a deeply flawed US strategy. Moreover, the eurocentric fail to spot that Trump is not only pivoting from Europe to focus on Asia –which the EU largely thinks of in terms of trade not security– but is trying to use the quid pro quo gained there for Putin’s help with nuclear negotiations with Iran.

After all, Tehran is close to a nuclear weapon and Israel, who just rehearsed a joint strike on it with the US, to having to remove what it sees as an existential threat the hard way. Were that to occur, it would have a vast negative impact on the US and European economies. That key issue isn’t even part of current EU conversations; but as Europe rearms and tries to find its own place in the world, it will find it has to join more such dots in more locations at an ever-higher price. It also goes without saying that the odds of ‘Noxin’ and an Iran deal success are very low; but the alternative scenarios are not ones markets want to think about. Again, they do not imply just a 31bp move higher in 10-year Bunds. Especially not when the Chinese embassy in the US tweets: “If war is what the US wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end.”

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Leaders that will all be voted out soon. So why do it?

European Leaders Want ‘Forever War’ In Ukraine – Musk (RT)

European leaders who are pushing against a peace agreement in Ukraine want a perpetual state of war, tech billionaire Elon Musk said in a statement on X on Thursday. His remarks come in response to a recent video of Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen arguing that peace in Ukraine could be more dangerous than the ongoing conflict with Russia. Musk, who is also currently a senior adviser to US President Donald Trump, has repeatedly called for a peaceful resolution of the conflict and has spoken out against continued military aid to Kiev, arguing that it could lead to an escalation and risk a nuclear confrontation. Responding to a post featuring Frederiksen’s latest remarks, he argued that some European leaders “want the forever war” and asked how many more people will have to lose their lives.

“How many more parents with no sons? How many more children with no fathers? By their logic, it never ends,” Musk wrote. Frederiksen, who stated last month that “peace in Ukraine is actually more dangerous than the war that is ongoing now,” told journalists earlier this week that “Ukraine has to win this war.” She claimed that if Russia is allowed to win, it will continue to take military action against other European countries. “If we end this war now with some kind of a ceasefire, it will give Russia the possibility to mobilize more funds, people, and maybe to attack another country in Europe,” she said.

Her statements echoed comments by other EU leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, who has recently claimed that Russia poses a threat to the entire bloc and called for defense spending to be ramped up. Russia has also rejected unsubstantiated claims that it intends to attack European or NATO countries with Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissing such statements as “nonsense” and fear mongering by EU leaders aimed at alarming citizens and raising defense budgets. Moscow has warned that one of the key reasons for the Ukraine conflict was NATO expansion towards Russia, including the bloc’s promise that Kiev would eventually become a member.

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“..the French president’s “predecessors, who also wanted to fight Russia.”

Lavrov Compares Macron to Hitler and Napoleon (RT)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has compared French President Emmanuel Macron to Adolf Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte, saying that he is also looking to impose a defeat upon Russia. During an address to the nation on Wednesday, Macron labeled Russia a “threat to France and Europe” and announced that he was considering expanding Paris’s nuclear deterrent to cover other EU member states. He insisted that the bloc needs to strengthen its independence when it comes to defense as there are doubts about the US continuing to protect the EU after the administration of President Donald Trump “changed its position” on the Ukraine conflict and became “less supportive” of Kiev. The French president insisted on further assistance to the government of Vladimir Zelensky, claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not stop if he is allowed to defeat Ukraine.

When asked to comment on Macron’s statements by journalists on Thursday, Lavrov mentioned Hitler and Napoleon, describing them as the French president’s “predecessors, who also wanted to fight Russia.” The two European dictators sent their armies into Russia in 1812 and 1941, respectively, but ended up suffering crushing defeats. The difference is that Hitler and Napoleon “said directly: ‘We must conquer Russia, we must defeat Russia.’ And he [Macron], apparently, wants the same thing, but for some reason says that we must fight Russia so that it does not defeat France; that Russia is creating a threat to France and Europe,” he stressed.

The minister refuted the French leader’s claims that Moscow has plans to attack Western Europe, calling such notions “unreasonable.” “President [Vladimir] Putin has said many times that this is absolute nonsense. I think that any sane person would understand that [by launching its military operation] Russia only wants to eliminate the root causes of the situation created by the West in Ukraine,” he explained. Lavrov also said that Moscow views Macron’s statement about widening France’s nuclear umbrella as a “threat towards Russia.” “If he considers us a threat, if he is calls a meeting of the chiefs of staff of the [Western] European countries and Britain; if he says that it is necessary to use nuclear weapons; if he prepares to use nuclear weapons against Russia – this is, of course, a threat,” he insisted.

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“..former EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was right when he said, in his usual manner, that the conflict in Ukraine could be stopped very quickly, within two weeks, if military aid to the Ukrainian government was halted..”

Macron’s Remarks on Use of Nuclear Arms a Threat to Russia – Lavrov (Sp.)

Moscow sees French President Emmanuel Macron’s words on possible use of nuclear weapons as a threat, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday. “Of course, this is a threat to Russia. If he [Macron] considers us a threat, gathers a meeting of the chiefs of General Staff of European countries and Britain, says it is necessary to use nuclear weapons, prepares to use nuclear weapons against Russia, this is, of course, a threat,” Lavrov told a news conference. On Wednesday, Macron said that Russia had become a “threat” to France and Europe, therefore, it was necessary to open a discussion on the use of France’s nuclear weapons to defend the entire European Union. Emmanuel Macron has the opportunity to call Russian President Vladimir Putin anytime, and accusations that Russia is allegedly preparing a war against Europe are unwise, Lavrov said.

“Macron periodically proudly declares that he will definitely call Putin and talk to him. He has such opportunities. No one forbids it. On the contrary, the president constantly emphasizes his openness to contacts with all his colleagues. And regarding these, frankly, unwise accusations of Russia in preparing a war against Europe and France, Putin has repeatedly said, calling such thoughts delusional, nonsense. Probably, it is absolutely clear to any sane person that Russia does not need this,” Lavrov told a joint press conference with Zimbabwean Foreign Minister Amon Murwira. Russia sees no possibility for achieving a compromise on possible deployment of European peacekeepers in Ukraine, Lavrov said. “We see no room for compromise. This discussion is being conducted with an openly hostile purpose. They are not hiding what they need it for,” Lavrov.

Suspension of US intelligence transfers to Ukraine confirm Russia’s statements that such assistance was provided to Kiev and it helped to carry out strikes deep into Russia, Sergey Lavrov said. “As for the current situation with the provision of military assistance and the pause that the US has announced, and the pause that was announced with respect to the provision of intelligence information, this has confirmed what we have always said, our president has repeatedly noted that without the direct participation of the West, the US, the UK, France, Germany, and other countries that provide intelligence data and help use the technologies for using this data to launch long-range missiles at our territory, the Ukrainians could not do this,” Lavrov said. The suspension of military aid to Ukraine from the United States may help to quickly end the Ukrainian conflict, Sergey Lavrov said.

“It has been said many times that former EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was right when he said, in his usual manner, that the conflict in Ukraine could be stopped very quickly, within two weeks, if military aid to the Ukrainian government was halted. This is the answer to your question. We agree with this assessment. Another thing that Josep Borrell added was that this should never be done, because first you need to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, and then dictate the terms of peace to it,” Lavrov told reporters. The Russian foreign minister noted that Russia is ready for a frank dialogue on the settlement of the Ukraine conflict.

“We are ready for an honest conversation, taking into account all the root causes of this conflict, including, of course, the main one – Russia’s security and guarantees against NATO’s continued expansion into Ukraine, which would then be used to create constant threats to Russia,” Lavrov said. In addition, the Russian official said that French President Emmanuel Macron’s statement about Russia and Ukraine was nervous and very verbose. “Macron, as I understand it, said in his lengthy, rather nervous statement yesterday [March 5] that the war should not be allowed to end with the surrender of Ukraine,” Lavrov said.

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“Following the 2022 escalation, both politicians admitted that the purpose of the accord from the West’s perspective had merely been to buy time for Kiev to strengthen its military..”

Macron said that Russia cannot be trusted because it violated the Minsk agreements. 4 days before the Russian invasion (February 20, 2022), Macron told Putin that the Minsk agreements have no legal force and are worthless!

Kremlin Reacts To Macron’s ‘War’ Speech (RT)

https://twitter.com/i/status/1897386604404306352

French President Emmanuel Macron’s speech focusing on Russia earlier this week was “highly confrontational,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday, arguing that it signals an intent to further escalate tensions. In his address to the nation on Wednesday, Macron labeled Russia “a threat” to the EU and called for a significant increase in defense spending to counter the perceived danger posed by Moscow. He also said that France would be prepared to deploy troops to Ukraine should a truce be reached in the conflict. Commenting on the remarks during a regular press briefing, Peskov stressed that it hardly conveyed a message of peace: “France apparently is contemplating war, a continuation of war.” This stance naturally elicits a negative reaction in Moscow, he suggested.

Macron’s address adhered to the conventional Western narrative portraying Russia as the unprovoked aggressor in the Ukraine conflict and claimed that Moscow has ambitions of conquest in Ukraine and beyond. However, according to Peskov, the French leader selectively ignored crucial events and circumstances that contributed to the current Ukraine crisis. Among these, he pointed to NATO military infrastructure “encroaching, or rather making seven-mile strides” towards Russia’s borders, creating significant security concerns for Moscow. Peskov stated that Russia had no choice but to respond to this growing threat. He also refuted Macron’s claims that Russia violated the Minsk Agreements, citing former French President Francois Hollande’s acknowledgment that the West never genuinely intended for them to succeed.

In 2015, Hollande and then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel co-mediated a roadmap purportedly aimed at peacefully reintegrating the then-breakaway regions in Donbass back into Ukraine. Following the 2022 escalation, both politicians admitted that the purpose of the accord from the West’s perspective had merely been to buy time for Kiev to strengthen its military with NATO support. Peskov also remarked that in 2014 France and other European nations “deceived” then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich by endorsing his power-sharing agreement with Western-backed militants, who violated the deal within hours and forcibly removed the democratically elected leader, all without any protest from Paris.

The EU is currently promoting a substantial military buildup that would cost some $840 billion and be funded through debt. Brussels asserts that European security risks have been intensified by the shift in Washington’s policy under President Donald Trump, who is seeking a resolution to the Ukraine conflict while urging Europe to assume responsibility for future security guarantees for Kiev. Peskov observed that while this does not make the US a friend of Russia, it at least opens avenues for normalizing bilateral relations.

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“The war, the geopolitical uncertainty and the new arms race started by Putin..”

EU Must Win Arms Race – Poland (RT)

The EU must escalate its military buildup and win the arms race against Russia, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said. This comes amid growing efforts by EU leaders to increase defense spending, citing what they describe as a threat from Moscow, which Russia has repeatedly denied. Tusk’s remarks also come as US President Donald Trump and his administration increasingly push European NATO members to take greater responsibility for their own defense. Washington has suggested that Europe should rely less on US military aid, particularly regarding Ukraine, and instead ramp up its own military spending. In a message posted on social media on Thursday, Tusk accused Moscow of starting a new arms race and insisted that Europe must respond.

“The war, the geopolitical uncertainty and the new arms race started by Putin have left Europe with no choice. Europe must be ready for this race, and Russia will lose it like the Soviet Union 40 years ago,” Tusk wrote, adding that from today, Europe will arm itself faster than Russia. His comments follow recent statements by French President Emmanuel Macron, who has claimed that Russia poses a threat to the EU. Macron has urged the bloc to increase defense spending and has also proposed expanding Europe’s nuclear deterrence, potentially extending France’s nuclear umbrella to other EU countries in response to the perceived risks from Moscow.

Moscow has dismissed the accusations that it poses a military threat to Europe and has condemned Macron’s latest statement as “highly confrontational.” Russian President Vladimir Putin called Western claims of an impending Russian attack “nonsense.” He has also accused European leaders of stoking tensions and using the perceived Russian threat as a pretext to justify increased military spending. In December, Putin also stressed that Russia does not want to be bogged down in an arms race, which would be detrimental to the social and economic development of the country. He warned, however, that Russia will take all necessary measures to ensure the security of itself and its allies.

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“Macron should invite his predecessor… Hollande, to the Élysée Palace to have a heart-to-heart talk with him… Then he’ll probably hear from Hollande… that he had no intention of implementing the Minsk agreements..”

Macron Should Apologize – Moscow (RT)

French President Emmanuel Macron should apologize for making “misleading” claims about the origins of the Ukraine conflict, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has told RT. In particular, Zakharova criticized Macron for alleging that Russia was to blame for the failure of the Minsk Accords. The agreements were brokered in 2014 and 2015 to halt fighting between Ukraine and the now-Russian Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, with France and Germany as guarantors. They were ultimately not implemented, and Moscow later accused Kiev and the West of using them to strengthen Ukraine’s military instead of securing peace. In a televised address on Wednesday,

Macron, however, blamed Russia of violating the accords and cited them as proof that the West “can no longer take Russia at its word” when it comes to resolving the conflict. “We cannot forget that Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and that we negotiated a ceasefire in Minsk at that time. And Russia did not respect this ceasefire,” the French president alleged, claiming that Moscow poses a direct threat to France and the entire EU. Zakharova condemned Macron’s comments as “aggressive and destructive” and pointed out that former French President François Hollande and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel have “openly confessed, and not under torture or pressure” back in 2022 they never intended to enforce the accords.

“Macron should invite his predecessor… Hollande, to the Élysée Palace to have a heart-to-heart talk with him… Then he’ll probably hear from Hollande… that he had no intention of implementing the Minsk agreements while representing France,” Zakharova stated, suggesting that after speaking to Hollande, Macron would “have to apologize to his own population for misleading them.” Macron has been a vocal advocate of strengthening Europe’s defenses against Russia and reiterated this position in his latest address. Moscow, however, has repeatedly denied having any plans to attack either the EU or NATO, with President Vladimir Putin dismissing such speculation as “nonsense” on multiple occasions.

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“..effectively granted Ratcliffe the authority to remove any CIA employee for any reason without the right to appeal.”

Trump Begins CIA Cuts – NYT (RT)

The administration of US President Donald Trump has begun cutting CIA staff as part of a broader effort to downsize government agencies, the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing sources. The first dismissals reportedly targeted officers hired within the past two years, many of whom were still on probationary contracts. According to sources familiar with the situation, several recently hired CIA employees were summoned to a location away from the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where they were asked to surrender their credentials without prior notice. The firings have reportedly led to anxiety among remaining CIA staff, with some employees allegedly avoiding calls from security out of fear they may be next.

A CIA spokeswoman confirmed to the New York Times that certain recently hired officers had been let go but did not specify how many. She signaled that the dismissals were performance-based, as did several unnamed officials who spoke to the outlet. The reported firings come amid Trump’s efforts to cut government ranks as part of a drive to eliminate wasteful state spending, bureaucracy, and corruption – a campaign spearheaded by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under billionaire Elon Musk. During the first cabinet meeting of his second term, Trump pledged to “cut down the size of government,” arguing that federal agencies had become “bloated” and “sloppy.” On February 11, he signed an executive order on workforce optimization, mandating large-scale reductions across government agencies and limiting hiring to essential positions.

The report also follows a federal judge’s ruling that cleared the way for CIA Director John Ratcliffe to fire employees at will. In late February, Judge Anthony J. Trenga ruled on a lawsuit brought by officers dismissed after Trump’s order to cut diversity programs in government agencies. That decision effectively granted Ratcliffe the authority to remove any CIA employee for any reason without the right to appeal. The Trump administration has previously cracked down on the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Washington’s primary mechanism for funding political projects abroad, firing some 2,000 employees and putting nearly all remaining staff on leave. According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, Trump is also preparing an executive order aimed at dismantling the Department of Education, which he has repeatedly criticized as a “big con job.”

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And “around 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans..”

US Ready To Change Legal Status Of 240,000 Ukrainian Migrants (RT)

US President Donald Trump’s administration is preparing to revoke the temporary legal status for all refugees, including around 240,000 Ukrainians – a move that could speed up their path to deportation, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing a senior administration official and three sources familiar with the matter. Expected to come into force in April, the decision is part of a broader crackdown on immigration which Trump launched since assuming office and marks a dramatic shift from the reception Ukrainians received under the previous administration of Joe Biden. The outlet noted that the effort to revoke protections for Ukrainians was already in progress before a verbal altercation between Trump and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky in the Oval Office last week.

According to sources, the move is part of a broader Trump administration initiative to eliminate the legal status of over 1.8 million migrants who entered the US through temporary humanitarian parole programs introduced under the Biden administration. In addition to the 240,000 Ukrainians, the administration plans to revoke parole for around 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans this month, the administration official and one of the anonymous sources told the outlet. Shortly after assuming office on January 20, Trump signed a number of executive orders introducing tougher immigration controls, including a decree instructing the Department of Homeland Security to “terminate all categorical parole programs.”

An internal US Immigration and Customs Enforcement email reviewed by Reuters indicated that migrants losing their parole status could face fast-track deportation proceedings. Other executive orders also included enhancing vetting for visa applicants, limiting birthright citizenship, directing the armed forces to guard the southern border with Mexico, and erecting additional barriers. Trump also repealed 78 executive orders signed by Biden, including directives related to immigration.

The development comes amid a deepening rift in US-Ukraine relations. Tensions have escalated in recent weeks following Zelensky’s ill-tempered meeting with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent over a minerals deal, culminating in a tense public argument between Trump and Zelensky in the White House last week. Zelensky was accused of “disrespecting” the US, with Trump insisting that the Ukrainian leader does not want peace. A proposed minerals deal between the US and Ukraine was left unsigned as a result.

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“Without the direct involvement of the West [..] Ukraine would not be able to use these technologies and data to launch long-range missiles at our territory. This is a very important acknowledgment,”

Lavrov Weighs In On US Decision To Halt Intel Sharing With Ukraine (RT)

Ukraine is entirely incapable of launching long-range missile strikes on Russia without direct support from Western nations, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said, citing the recent US decision to pause intelligence sharing with Kiev as proof. On Wednesday, CIA Director John Ratcliffe confirmed that the US had halted intelligence sharing with Kiev, adding that the restrictions could be lifted if Ukraine demonstrated a commitment to peace negotiations with Russia. Washington has also frozen military assistance to Kiev, with both moves following a public spat between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky during an Oval Office meeting last week. The talks ended with Trump accusing Zelensky of “disrespect” and reluctance to seek peace with Moscow.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Lavrov highlighted the consequences of the US decision on intel sharing. “Without the direct involvement of the West – namely the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and other countries – Ukraine would not be able to use these technologies and data to launch long-range missiles at our territory. This is a very important acknowledgment,” the minister said. At the same time, Lavrov declined to speculate on how long the freeze would last, stressing that Russia is focused on eliminating the root causes of the conflict, including securing guarantees that NATO “will not continue to absorb Ukraine as a territory that could later be used to create permanent threats against the Russian Federation.”

Ukraine has long used advanced Western-made weapons, including US-supplied HIMARS and ATACMS, and British Storm Shadow missiles, to target Russian facilities, including civilian ones. In the fall of 2024, the administration of then-US President Joe Biden authorized Ukraine to use American long-range missiles for strikes deep into Russian territory despite Moscow’s warnings that this would escalate the conflict. In response to Ukrainian long-range strikes using Western weapons, Russia deployed its newest intermediate-range ballistic missile system, the Oreshnik, to target Ukraine’s Yuzhmash military-industrial facility in the city of Dnepr. Russian President Vladimir Putin described the Oreshnik as impossible to intercept, noting its warheads travel at ten times the speed of sound. Putin has said that Ukraine could launch missile strikes deep into Russia only if it receives reconnaissance data from satellites operated either by the EU or the US.

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“..Senate Democrats seem to have thrown in the towel on defending their own COVID record and heroes including Dr. Anthony Fauci..”

‘Science Should Be An Engine For Freedom’: NIH Nominee Bhattacharya (JTN)

Senate Democrats and some Republicans liked the status quo at the National Institutes of Health before the second Trump administration and Department of Government Efficiency started closely scrutinizing its grant decisions, headcount and wildly generous reimbursement for “indirect costs” to institutions at the expense of money for their researchers. That seemed apparent at Wednesday’s Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee confirmation hearing for NIH director-nominee Jay Bhattacharya, who faced repeated bipartisan demands to oppose President Trump who nominated him and immediately undo decisions made by agency leaders and the president’s Department of Government Efficiency, especially mass terminations and funding freezes.

Best known for his pioneering research on widespread COVID-19 immunity by April 2020 and vocal opposition to prolonged school closures and vaccine mandates, the Stanford medical professor and health economist barely drew criticism for his own record. He mentioned just a single vaccine whose safety record troubled him when asked by Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J.: “COVID vaccines for young men causing myocarditis,” which is inflammation of heart muscle. Like their House colleagues a month earlier, Senate Democrats seem to have thrown in the towel on defending their own COVID record and heroes including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the four-decade director of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Instead they assailed Trump and DOGE boss Elon Musk, with ranking member Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, telling Bhattacharya he’d be subservient to the unofficial leader of DOGE and asking Chair Bill Cassidy, R-La., to haul billionaire Musk before the committee. Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., asked Bhattacharya whether he’d follow the law when Trump gave him an illegal directive. When he rejected the plausibility of the hypothetical, she responded “that strains credulity” and denounced his “disappointing answer.”

Sanders repeatedly cut off Bhattacharya as he tried to answer leading questions about unilaterally capping high prices for drugs developed through NIH research and using his “bully pulpit” to pressure TV stations to ban ads for “unhealthy foods.” The nominee barely got to answer that the U.S. could have saved untold spending on drugs by treating serious COVID infections with the “cheap steroid” dexamethasone, as documented in a July 2020 New England Journal of Medicine study. “A lot can be done through executive orders,” Sanders answered, referring to Trump’s first-month deluge, when Bhattacharya told him that previous NIH directors said only Congress can impose price caps. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., called bullplop on Democrats for not cosponsoring his bill to remove junk food from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which he said would disproportionately improve health for poor people.

The ophthalmologist cheered Bhattacharya’s tout of steroids that cost “pennies” to treat serious COVID, which he said Fauci rejected in March 2020. Paul called it “the best cure and the cheapest,” and Bhattacharya frowned that the U.K. did that research instead of NIH. Just as Democrats pivoted to praising COVID vaccines as “life-saving” after the novel therapeutics were found unable to stop transmission, to make infection more likely via the antibody “class switch” and to cause heart inflammation in young people, several used the compound adjective to describe research subject to NIH’s funding pause. So did Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who also joined Democrats in branding NIH’s new 15% cap on indirect cost recovery – in line with private foundations’ reimbursement ratios – a violation of congressional directives. She called the cap “ill-conceived and completely arbitrary” and a “one-size-fits-all approach,” a jab often applied to federal COVID guidance.

Bhattacharya reminded senators his own research received NIH grants and he served on a standing NIH grant committee for a decade, but said the agency must recover from the cratering public trust in public health leaders due to their pandemic management. His NIH will “vigorously regulate” research that could cause another pandemic, he said, referring to the theory favored by the FBI, CIA and Department of Energy that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a Chinese lab conducting gain-of-function experiments, indirectly funded by Fauci’s agency. Bhattacharya promised Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., he’d work with Congress to keep taxpayer money out of foreign biolabs such as Ukraine’s, publish records with “limited obfuscation” and require funding recipients to report “politically inconvenient” results.

Tuberville had asked about an NIH-funded study on youth gender transitions and mental health whose negative findings were intentionally withheld for seven years, helping create a false medical consensus on so-called gender affirming care for young people. He urged Bhattacharya to be “very visual on television” with his transparency message. Bhattacharya said he’ll prioritize research on chronic diseases including obesity and diabetes and reversing the slide in life expectancy, which has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, and make it “replicable, reproducible and generalizable,” a weakness for the agency. He noted NIH’s “research integrity scandal” on Alzheimer’s disease, which he has studied, and its devotion to the “amyloid hypothesis,” an explanation for Alzheimer’s that may be based on falsified data and which he said crowded out study of other hypotheses.

Read more …

“..the Court finds that the public interest lies in maintaining the status quo and enjoining any categorical funding freeze.”

Obama Judge Indefinitely Blocks Trump Admin Funding Freeze (ZH)

A Rhode Island US District Judge has indefinitely blocked President Trump’s freeze on federal grants and loans, arguing in his ruling that the White House had “put itself above Congress” and undermined democracy. In a Thursday ruling, Judge John McConnell Jr., an Obama appointee – prohibited the Trump administration from freezing or otherwise impeding the disbursement of appropriated federal funds, WSJ reports. The decision is a victory for Trump critics who say he has trampled on Congress’s authority in his effort to cut federal spending and overhaul agencies. McConnell’s order follows a similar one issued by a different federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 25. The judge had previously issued a temporary restraining order, which on Thursday he converted into an injunction, a more permanent form of relief.

“The Executive’s categorical freeze of appropriated and obligated funds fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government,” wrote McConnell. “Here, the Executive put itself above Congress,” he continued. “It imposed a categorical mandate on the spending of congressionally appropriated and obligated funds without regard to Congress’s authority to control spending.” Of note – McConnell was very active in Democratic politics before becoming a judge – serving 14 years as treasurer of the Rhode Island Democratic State Committee, and donating heavily to Democratic political candidates. McConnell’s ruling came after 22 Democrat states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit which challenged a directive from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directing them to pause funding while it assessed whether various government programs complied with executive orders issued by Trump which target foreign aid, DEI, and green energy projects.

While OMB then rescinded that directive, the states say that come Congressionally-approved funds were still being improperly withheld – and that the initial OMB policy rollout sowed confusion among state governments, nonprofits, and lawmakers. McConnell issued an earlier temporary restraining order (TRO), in which he said that the administration couldn’t “pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate” its federal financial-assistance obligations to the states. According to the judge, state governments face “significant disruption in health, education, and other public services” due to the funding freeze, and as such, “the Court finds that the public interest lies in maintaining the status quo and enjoining any categorical funding freeze.”

Read more …

“In February, [..] VA said it was continuing to hire for more than 300,000 mission-critical positions that are exempt from the federal hiring freeze..”

DOGE Looking To Cut More Than 80,000 Employees At Veterans Affairs (JTN)

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is planning to cut 80,000 positions as part of an “aggressive” overhaul of the agency that runs programs for veterans and members of their families. The VA’s chief of staff, Christopher Syrek, told top VA officials on Tuesday that it would to return to 2019 staffing levels of just under 400,000 employees. That would require dismissing about 83,000 employees after the VA expanded during the Biden administration. It will work with the Department of Government Efficiency to create a workforce optimization plan, Syrek said in an internal memo obtained by multiple news outlets, including Government Executive, which first reported on the memo. He said VA will “move aggressively” to reduce bureaucracy, cut the department’s footprint and “increase workforce efficiency,” the outlet reported. House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Democrats said the move could hurt veterans.

“83,000 VA employees are set to be fired,” the committee wrote on X. “These cuts won’t just impact those seeking health care. They will create chaos across every aspect of VA – delaying benefits, straining claims processing, and making it nearly impossible for student veterans and schools to get the assistance they need. Veterans will suffer the consequences.” The VA added staff quickly during the Biden administration as it staffed up to address increased coverage under the PACT Act, a law that expanded VA health care and benefits for veterans exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange, and other toxic substances. News of the overhaul comes after relatively minor cuts at the agency. Earlier this week, Veterans Affairs started cancelling close to 600 “non-mission critical” and “duplicative” contracts valued at about $1.8 billion – and this is just the beginning, according to the department.

The cancellations result from the early stages of a “deliberative, multi-level review” by some of the people responsible for the contracts, VA senior leaders and contracting officials and will allow Veterans Affairs to redirect about $900 million back to veteran benefits and services, the agency said. The 585 contracts the department has begun canceling “represent less than 1% of the roughly 90,000 contracts VA currently has in place,” and the department plans to perform a thorough review of all of them. In February, VA dismissed more than 1,400 probationary employees in non-mission critical positions. At that time, VA said it was continuing to hire for more than 300,000 mission-critical positions that are exempt from the federal hiring freeze. Earlier that same month, VA announced it dismissed more than 1,000 of its 43,000 probationary employees in a move expected to save $98 million a year. The agency said those let go included non-union probationary employees who have served less than a year in a competitive service appointment or who have served less than two years in an excepted service appointment.

Read more …

“This will ensure that the IRS is not going after the wealthy and is only an agency that’s really focused on the low income,” he said. “It’s a travesty.”

IRS Reportedly Plans To Cut Half of Its 90,000 Workforce (JTN)

The Internal Revenue Service reportedly plans to cut its roughly 90,000-employee workforce by as much as half, as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce. The cuts will be made through a mix of attrition, layoffs and incentivized buyouts, two people familiar with the situation told the Associated Press. The reduction of the federal workforce is being led by the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, which is being led by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. Those being laid off are mostly probationary employees who have not yet gained civil service protection.

The agency has already cut roughly 6,000 employees, or bout 6% of its workforce, Reuters reported in late February. Philip Hackney, a University of Pittsburgh tax law professor and Former IRS lawyer, warned such cuts could unfairly target the country’s underclass. “This will ensure that the IRS is not going after the wealthy and is only an agency that’s really focused on the low income,” he said. “It’s a travesty.”

Read more …

“I think logically, we should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized..”

Elon Musk Says Amtrak, US Postal Service Should Be Privatized (ET)

Elon Musk, who is advising President Donald Trump on reducing government waste and downsizing the federal workforce, has called for privatizing the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and passenger rail operator Amtrak. “I think logically, we should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized,” Musk said at a March 5 Morgan Stanley conference. “I think we should privatize the Post Office and Amtrak for example.” Amtrak, a government-owned company created in 1970, reported an adjusted operating loss of $705 million in the prior fiscal year. USPS, also government-owned, has accumulated over $100 billion in losses since 2007, including $9.5 billion in the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2024. Neither Amtrak nor USPS responded to requests for comment on Musk’s remarks by publication time. The National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) voiced opposition to Musk’s idea of privatizing USPS, emphasizing the service’s public mission.

“A friendly reminder on behalf of every American who depends on USPS (including 51.5 million rural addresses): It’s called universal service, not ‘as much as possible’ service,” NALC wrote in a post on X. “And we’ll #FightLikeHell to protect it.” Trump has previously suggested that the USPS could be privatized, a move that would allow for more flexibility in pricing and labor negotiations. During Trump’s first term, his administration proposed a restructuring plan for USPS, citing “extremely high” fixed costs and an inability to support its financial obligations. The plan highlighted over $100 billion in unfunded liabilities, a decade of consecutive losses, and a growing capital investment backlog. “A privatized Postal Service would have a substantially lower cost structure, be able to adapt to changing customer needs and make business decisions free from political interference, and have access to private capital markets to fund operational improvements without burdening taxpayers,” the proposal stated.

Last month, Trump said he was considering merging USPS with the Commerce Department, a move that Democrats said would violate federal law. Calling USPS “a tremendous loser for the country,” Trump said the objective of such a move would be to have a “post office that works well and doesn’t lose massive amounts of money.” Democrats have consistently opposed privatization efforts, warning that changes to USPS operations could disproportionately impact rural communities and those dependent on postal services for essential goods and medication. Trump has also repeatedly pushed to cut Amtrak’s federal funding, which totaled approximately $2.4 billion last year. His past budget proposals sought to reduce Amtrak’s funding by 40–50 percent and eliminate long-distance routes, arguing that resources should be redirected to higher-traffic corridors. Musk, comparing U.S. rail service to China’s high-speed system, criticized Amtrak as a “sad situation,” saying, “It will leave you with a very bad impression of America.”

Read more …

Trump questions Article 5.

Trump Planning Major NATO Shakeup – NBC (RT)

The US could decide to only defend those NATO countries that actually meet the bloc’s spending requirements, four former and current officials have told NBC. Such a policy would mark a major departure from a core article of the military bloc, which states that an attack on any NATO member is to be treated as an attack on all of them. A similar principle would apply to joint military exercises and American overseas deployments, the report said. Washington could choose to prioritize drills with those NATO partners that meet the defense spending targets and also reposition its forces in Europe according to the same criteria.

The administration of President Donald Trump has previously signaled that it was planning to reduce its military presence in Europe. The president also recently urged the EU to take the lead in its own defense and to bear the brunt of any future security guarantees for Kiev. Last month, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said that Washington intended to refocus its military priorities on countering China. He also warned the EU nations that they should not assume the presence of US troops on the continent will be indefinite. Some senior US officials contacted by NBC denied that the mutual defense clause – Article 5 – could be affected by any policy changes. Senator Chris Coons, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Defense, said that Trump’s nominee for the NATO ambassador’s position, Matthew Whitaker, “gave very reassuring answers” on the administration’s commitments to Article 5.

Trump has repeatedly criticized NATO members that fail to meet the bloc’s current defense spending threshold of 2% of GDP. The president floated the idea of raising mandatory defense spending by members to 5% of GDP, though none – including the US – currently meet that threshold. According to NATO estimates, 23 bloc members met the 2% threshold as of 2024, with just five, including the US, coming in above 3%. Poland was the only member to spend more than 4% of GDP on defense.

Read more …

“..too divided and insufficiently nimble to respond to the scale of the storm that Trump is whipping up over Ukraine,”

Trump Wants To Sideline EU – Politico (RT)

US President Donald Trump wants to sideline and destroy the European Union, an entity that he has long disliked, Politico has claimed in an article published on Thursday. The outlet argued that Trump is taking advantage of the cracks within the bloc caused by the Ukraine conflict. The administration in Washington has recently launched negotiations with Russia to broker peace in the Ukraine conflict and has excluded the EU from the process, which has elicited condemnation from Brussels. Trump has also halted American military aid to Ukraine, leaving the bloc jostling for funds to support Kiev. Washington’s anti-EU push “is triggering a crisis in Brussels institutions. The EU as a bloc is scrambling to prove its relevance,” Politico wrote. The Ukraine conflict has exposed differences among EU members in defense priorities, economic interests, and diplomatic approaches.

While countries such as Poland and the Baltic states have advocated for stronger military backing of Kiev, others, particularly Hungary and Slovakia, have pushed back, calling for a negotiated settlement with Russia. The financial burden of military aid and energy security concerns have also fueled tensions. Right-wing movements in several EU nations have questioned the bloc’s commitment to Kiev. “Trump will sideline the EU and play divide-and-rule with national leaders,” the publication wrote. While European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met with US Vice President J.D. Vance in Munich last month, neither she nor European Council President Antonio Costa has had a face-to-face meeting with Trump, it noted.

The European Council, the body made up of the heads of state or government of all EU member states, “is being agonizingly exposed as too divided and insufficiently nimble to respond to the scale of the storm that Trump is whipping up over Ukraine,” Politico added. With Washington halting over $1 billion in arms shipments, Kiev faces potential shortages of ammunition and equipment. The EU is exploring alternatives to continue backing Ukraine militarily, despite the peace process initiated by the US and Russia. Von der Leyen on Tuesday unveiled a €800 billion plan aimed at bolstering the EU’s defense. In recent weeks, Trump has also targeted the bloc’s trade practices, describing them as “an atrocity” and announcing plans to impose a 25% tariff on EU goods. He also claimed that the bloc was “formed to screw the United States.”

Read more …

Trump wants to sideline EU, and the EU wants to sideline its own members.

“They created a wasteland and called it democracy.”

EU Seeking To Bypass Opponents of Ukraine Aid – Kallas (RT)

The EU is working on a new mechanism whereby a “coalition of the willing” would continue providing military aid to Kiev despite opposition by Hungary, according to Kaja Kallas, the bloc’s foreign policy chief. Kallas made the announcement on Thursday after arriving in Brussels for an emergency summit of the bloc’s 27 countries to discuss boosting defense and Ukraine aid amid waning US support.Asked by reporters about Hungary’s attempt to block aid to Ukraine, Kallas acknowledged the issue is “increasingly difficult” and explained that Brussels is considering a new initiative called a “coalition of the willing,” so that “one country cannot block everybody else.” She did not provide any details about how the mechanism would work in practice. Hungary has already rejected an EU draft text on Ukraine that included security guarantees for Kiev and a new military aid package. Budapest has also called on the EU to begin negotiations with Russia.

The idea of creating a “coalition of the willing” – a group of countries ready to support Kiev militarily – was first proposed by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at an emergency summit in London this past Sunday. The meeting in London was summoned shortly after Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s ill-fated trip to Washington. The term “coalition of the willing” is most closely associated with the designation given to the countries supporting the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the ultimately disproven allegations of possession of weapons of mass destruction.“We are still striving for having the unity of 27 members,” Kallas said, but added that if unanimity cannot be reached, Hungary will have to “speak for themselves.” The military aid package for Ukraine reportedly being prepared by the EU is worth at least $6.2 billion, making it one of the bloc’s largest arms commitments since 2022. However, Hungary has indicated that it will veto the initiative.

Earlier this week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled the so-called ReArm Europe initiative, an €800 billion plan aimed at bolstering the EU’s defense capabilities. The proposal was prompted by US President Donald Trump’s freezing of military aid to Ukraine while urging the EU to take greater responsibility for its own defense. Moscow has long warned against Western arms shipments to Ukraine, arguing that they only prolong the conflict without altering the outcome, while increasing the risk of a direct Russia-NATO clash. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko has suggested that the EU could contribute to resolving the crisis by halting military and logistical support to Kiev.

Read more …

Without a past of nazis and holocaust, the country would not exist. It has one of the prime secret services in the world. But no idea what happens in Kiev.

Israeli FM ‘Didn’t Know’ Kiev Glorifies Holocaust Perpetrators (RT)

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has claimed ignorance of the well-documented fact that Ukrainian nationalists responsible for atrocities against Jewish people are venerated as heroes by Kiev. Moscow, in response, has offered to enlighten the Israeli official on the matter. On Monday, Sa’ar held a press briefing to mark Israel’s presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). West Jerusalem emphasized that anti-Semitism, which fueled Nazi crimes during World War II, “has not been eradicated from the world.” The minister seemed taken aback when a reporter asked for his thoughts on the modern-day glorification in Ukraine of Nazi-allied historical nationalist figures such as Stepan Bandera. In 2016, the Kiev city council renamed a large street in honor of Bandera, located just 3 km from Babi Yar, where an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 Jews and thousands of others were exterminated under Nazi occupation.

“First of all, I didn’t know about it. I will check it,” the official responded, pledging to issue a statement of condemnation “if there is a necessity.” Bandera and other nationalists, including those directly implicated in wartime atrocities, have been celebrated in modern Ukraine for years – something the reporter described as “common knowledge.” The Russian government expressed bewilderment at the exchange, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova sarcastically questioning the competence of Israel’s diplomatic staff. “How so? What is the Israeli embassy in Kiev doing then? And in Moscow too?” she wrote on social media, offering a collection of relevant documents in English for the minister’s convenience.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry and its embassy in Kiev have in fact issued multiple statements denouncing the veneration of such figures. In January 2022, the diplomatic mission described that year’s annual torch march commemorating Bandera’s birthday as “desecrating the memory of the victims of the Holocaust in Ukraine.” No such condemnation was issued the following year, however. The embassy explained to Haarez that “we’ve made our position clear many times, but apparently there is nothing we can do, at least at the moment.” Moscow views the current government in Kiev as dominated by neo-Nazis and radical nationalists and insists that any potential peace deal with Ukraine must include a reversal of policies discriminating against ethnic Russians.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Elon

 

 

Nap
https://twitter.com/i/status/1897477371051360561

 

 

Feeders

 

 

Cheetah
https://twitter.com/i/status/1897665976646373393

 

 

Secret

 

 

Jekyll island

 

 

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Apr 262023
 
 April 26, 2023  Posted by at 5:00 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  10 Responses »


Mark Chagall I and the village 1911

 

 

My good friend Wayne brings up some interesting questions about weapons, in the view of the current Ukraine conflict. Are nuclear weapons the most terrifying ones we know? Or have hypersonic precision weapons taken that “crown”? The answer is not all that obvious.

There is a persistent rumor that sometime in March, Russia hit a secret NATO base deep underground near Kiev with a hypersonic Kinzhal missile and took out some 300 people, including a bunch of high-placed NATO commanders. I have neither seen this confirmed nor, perhaps more importantly, denied. But Russia has no reason to boast about it, and the US has even less reason to acknowledge it happened.

What we do know is that US/NATO (or even China) doesn’t have these weapons, and Russia does. And that, from what I’ve read, partly has to do with the fact that since the missiles move at speeds of up to Mach 15 (15x speed of sound), they need a special heat resistant coating that only Russia has been able to develop. Moreover, these hypersonic missiles are not just much faster than any other missile, they are also far better at hitting precision targets. Try hitting a bunker 60 meters or more underground.

Here’s Wayne for some philosophy:

 

 

Wayne Hall:

The 1980s were the decade of the Non-aligned Anti-Nuclear Weapons Movement. The Non-aligned movement’s political line differed from that of the Communist-Party controlled anti-nuclear movements, which took their lead from Soviet diplomacy. The Non-aligned current had some party-political cover from Eurocommunist parties. It said “there are no good and bad nuclear weapons”. Implication: Soviet nuclear weapons are bad. To be consistent the movement should have called for Soviet nuclear disarmament when the USSR disintegrated, particularly because it was not clear at first whether Yeltsin would be better or worse than Gorbachev. Some of us did indeed call for unilateral Soviet nuclear disarmament.

NATO policy was for removal of Soviet nuclear weapons from Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine. But not from Russia. Why not from Russia? Well, for a start, that would mean abolition of the Russian nuclear bogy. What justification could there then be for NATO’s nuclear weapons? The Non-Aligned Anti-Nuclear Weapons Movement was clearly confused. Why were they not raising the demand for nuclear disarmament of Russia? They had spent the nineteen eighties ridiculing ideas of “nuclear deterrence”.

Yeltsin turned out to be (or at least to appear) even more open to ideas of nuclear disarmament of Russia than Gorbachev had been. The Non-Aligned Anti-Nuclear Weapons Movement called out NATO for fraud. Even official spokespersons acknowledged that nuclear weapons were “more of political than of military utility”. In other words they were useless, except for politicians (and journalists). The Swedes had recognized the uselessness when the nuclear hawk Olof Palme changed his stripes and became an anti-nuclear activist, presiding over unilateral nuclear disarmament of Sweden.

A demand for unilateral nuclear disarmament of Russia would have been a brilliant poke in the eye for the Tory smartypants who were always jeering: “If you want unilateral nuclear disarmament, recommend it to the Soviets!” Instead of raising the demand, some anti-nuclear activists simply started pointing out to each other that the Cold War is over and this should be recognized. Others didn’t do even that.

Since March 2023, the unnecessary character of Russian nuclear weapons has been confirmed. In March a provocation was staged inside Russia (by Ukraine? By NATO?) with civilians including children being killed and injured. Putin declared that there would be retaliation, and indeed, there was, within days. A command bunker in Ukraine four hundred feet underground (too deep then for run-of-the-mill bunker-busting technology) was hit by a Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missile and hundreds of dignitaries and high-ranking NATO personnel were allegedly killed. The media were pretty silent about it. And pretty soon the gaslighting started.

If this Kinzhal strike typifies the code of ethics that Russia intends to follow in its war making, the superfluous character of Russian nuclear weapons is confirmed. Attacks on civilians are punished by attacks on the top leadership of the side that resorts to them. The media propaganda machine is now bending over backwards to scream that the Kinzhals are “nuclear capable”. So what? Is a nuclear weapon needed to wipe out political leadership in a bunker? It is said that the United States has begun testing its own hypersonic missiles but the tests so far have failed. Will this failure be the prelude to a new arms race, or to abandonment of the 20th century mode of conducting wars particularly from 1914 onwards? The twentieth century mode of mass politics and mass slaughter of civilians?

When one studies the ideas of Hitler apologists it is easy to come to the conclusion that Hitler’s key intellectual mistake was to assume that the category “white people” includes Germans. The Boers had to learn the same lesson in South Africa, I suppose. Given this and given the assumptions of “nuclear deterrence”, which is an acceptable doctrine for the white people of NATO but not for the white people of Russia unless they face the “fact” that they too require to be “deterred” from destroying all life on planet earth, WOKE notions that “only white people can be racist” become comprehensible and the Hitlerian misreadings of the Coudenhove-Kalergi prediction/recommendation(?) of a world of mulattos following the extinction of “white people”, elevatable into a praiseworthy program for the future of this world.

If racism cannot be overcome intellectually there is obviously no alternative to overcoming it, or “trying to”, biologically. Is there? It seems to me that the logic of Russia’s development of hypersonic missiles, particularly given the way they appear to be using them, is the opposite of the motives according to which nuclear weapons were initially developed: i.e. elaboration of a mass “shock and awe” effect. Hypersonic missiles apparently aim at introducing military precision: graduated retaliation, which so far has been used to retaliate for attacks on the civilians of one’s own side. But the retaliation has been strikingly disproportionate, suggesting that one is planning to really stigmatize cowardly attacks on unarmed civilians. In effect stigmatize modern mass destruction warfare.

If it is true that “the West” is behind in this hypersonic missiles technology, how is it going to respond? Through embarking on a hypersonic missiles arms race? If it does to Russia what Russia has just done to it in Ukraine, there is a widespread view that this will trigger generalized nuclear war, which “the West” claims not to want. So what would be the purpose of getting ahead in hypersonic missiles technology? Public relations? Being first for the sake of being able to say that one is first?

It is said that nuclear weapons serve political more than military purposes, but those political purposes have to do with the “shock and awe” effect, not the ability to launch a precision strike at the nerve centre of the enemy (and so trigger the nuclear war one supposedly seeks to avoid). Will “the West” think this through or will it just go ahead anyway and “try to catch up and overtake”? Is “the West” thinking coherently about nuclear weapons?

 

 

 

 

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May 222020
 


Cave of swimmers, Gilf Kebir plateau, Sahara c6000 BCE

 

Just 7.3% Of Stockholm Had COVID19 Antibodies By End Of April (G.)
Brazil Suffers Record Daily Coronavirus Death Toll, Soon To Be World No. 2 (R.)
Which US States Meet WHO Recommended Testing Criteria? (Johns Hopkins)
US Layoffs Spread Despite Businesses Reopening (R.)
New Zealand Discussing ‘Helicopter Money’ Handouts To Stimulate Economy (R.)
Washington State Loses 100s Of Millions Of Dollars In Unemployment Fraud (ST)
America’s 600+ Billionaires So Far Made $434 Billion During The Pandemic (F.)
US Prepared To Spend Russia, China Into Oblivion To Win Nuclear Arms Race (R.)
Biden Asks Amy Klobuchar To Undergo Vetting As Possible Running Mate (CBS)
Warren Pivots On ‘Medicare For All’ In Bid To Become Biden’s VP (Pol.)
Appeals Court Orders Judge In Flynn Case To Explain Actions (JTN)
The Railroading of Michael Flynn (Lake)
Russiagate Began With Obama’s Iran Deal Domestic Spying Campaign (Tablet)

 

 

Another record in global new cases over past 24 hrs at 109,627:

• US + 28,215
• Brazil + 17,564
• Russia + 8,894
• India + 7,784
• Peru + 4,749
• Chile + 3,964
• Mexico + 2,973
• Pakistan + 2,603
• Saudi Arabia + 2,532

New deaths
• US + 1,503
• Brazil + 1,188
• Mexico +357
• UK +338

 

 

 

Cases 5,218,496 (+ 109,627 from yesterday’s 5,108,869)

Deaths 335,069 (+ 4,987 from yesterday’s 330,082)

 

 

 

From Worldometer yesterday evening -before their day’s close-

 

 

From Worldometer

 

 

From SCMP:

 

 

From COVID19Info.live:

 

 

 

 

Herd immunity is a failed figment of the imagination, and not one to experiment on the entire population of a country with.

Just 7.3% Of Stockholm Had COVID19 Antibodies By End Of April (G.)

Just 7.3% of Stockholm’s inhabitants had developed Covid-19 antibodies by the end of April, according to a study, raising concerns that the country’s light-touch approach to the coronavirus may not be building up broad immunity. The research by Sweden’s public health agency comes as neighbouring Finland warned that it would be risky to welcome tourists from Sweden after figures suggested the country’s death rate per capita was the highest in Europe over the seven days to 19 May. Sweden’s state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, said the Stockholm antibodies figure was “a bit lower than we’d thought”, but added that it reflected the situation some weeks ago and he believed that by now “a little more than 20%” of the capital’s population had probably contracted the virus.


However, the public health agency had previously said it expected about 25% to have been infected by 1 May and Tom Britton, a maths professor who helped develop its forecasting model, said the figure from the study was surprising. “It means either the calculations made by the agency and myself are quite wrong, which is possible, but if that’s the case it’s surprising they are so wrong,” he told the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. “Or more people have been infected than developed antibodies.” Björn Olsen, a professor of infectious medicine at Uppsala University, said herd immunity was a “dangerous and unrealistic” approach. “I think herd immunity is a long way off, if we ever reach it,” he said after the release of the antibody findings.

Read more …

They’re only just starting.

Brazil Suffers Record Daily Coronavirus Death Toll, Soon To Be World No. 2 (R.)

Brazil suffered a record of 1,188 daily coronavirus deaths on Thursday and is fast approaching Russia to become the world’s No. 2 COVID-19 hot spot behind the United States. Brazil also passed 20,000 deaths on Thursday and has 310,087 confirmed cases, up over 18,500 in a single day, according to Health Ministry data. The true numbers are likely higher but Brazil has not carried out widespread testing, the ministry said. President Jair Bolsonaro is under growing pressure for his handling of the outbreak, which looks set to destroy the Brazilian economy and threatens his re-election hopes.


He strongly opposes social distancing measures and has repeatedly pushed for greater usage of chloroquine as a remedy for the virus, despite health experts’ warnings about risks. Bolsonaro’s relationship with governors and mayors has also grown increasingly bitter. The president is angry over local shutdowns to slow the spread of the virus and argues that keeping the economy running is more important. Bolsonaro said he will approve on Thursday or Friday a 60 billion-real ($10.72 billion) federal aid program for states and cities hit by coronavirus but asked governors for support freezing public sector pay increases.

Read more …

An unfortunate format for the graph. Click the link to the original for a somewhat better version.

Which US States Meet WHO Recommended Testing Criteria? (Johns Hopkins)

On May 12, 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) advised governments that before reopening, rates of positivity in testing (ie, out of all tests conducted, how many came back positive for COVID-19) of should remain at 5% or lower for at least 14 days. If a positivity rate is too high, that may indicate that the state is only testing the sickest patients who seek medical attention, and is not casting a wide enough net to know how much of the virus is spreading within its communities. A low rate of positivity in testing data can be seen as a sign that a state has sufficient testing capacity for the size of their outbreak and is testing enough of its population to make informed decisions about reopening.

Which U.S. states are testing enough to meet the WHO’s goal? The graph below compares states’ rate of positivity to the recommended positivity rate of 5% or below. States that meet the WHO’s recommended criteria appear in green, while the states that are not testing enough to meet the positivity benchmark are in orange.

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Time to assess what jobs will never return. There will be millions.

US Layoffs Spread Despite Businesses Reopening (R.)

Millions more Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, more than two months after a shutdown of the country to deal with the coronavirus crisis, pointing to a second wave of layoffs in industries not initially impacted by closures caused by the pandemic. The Labor Department’s weekly jobless claims report on Thursday, the most timely data on the economy’s health, also showed the number of people on unemployment rolls surging to a record high in early May, suggesting that businesses were probably not rushing to rehire workers as they reopen.

This also raises questions about the efficacy of the government’s Paycheck Protection Program. A broad lockdown of the country in mid-March to contain the spread of COVID-19 initially led to layoffs in mostly low-wage consumer-facing businesses such as restaurants and retailers. But economists say weak demand was causing layoffs in other industries like utilities, information, finance and insurance, and education. “This raises the possibility that new private and public sector cutbacks may be creating a major barrier to stopping the labor market bleeding,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economics in Holland, Pennsylvania.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits totaled a seasonally adjusted 2.438 million in the week ended May 16, down from 2.687 million in the prior week, the government said. Last week’s claims reading [..] marked the seventh straight weekly decline. First-time claims have been gradually decreasing since hitting a record 6.867 million in the week ended March 28. Still they remained more than triple their peak during the 2007/09 Great Recession. The elevated claims have also been blamed on backlogs after the unprecedented amount of applications overwhelmed state unemployment offices.

[..] Attention is shifting from new claimants for jobless benefits to the number of people still on aid. These so-called continuing claims numbers are reported with a one-week lag, but are considered a better gauge of the labor market. They offer a glimpse into how soon the economy ramps up and companies’ ability to get people off unemployment or keep workers on payrolls as they access their share of a historic fiscal package worth nearly $3 trillion, which offered loans that could be partially forgiven if they were used for employee salaries. Continuing claims surged 2.525 million to a record 25.073 million in the week ending May 9.

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Nice size economy to try something like it. But they dare not call it UBI.

New Zealand Discussing ‘Helicopter Money’ Handouts To Stimulate Economy (R.)

New Zealand is considering distributing free cash directly to individuals as a way of policy stimulus to help boost the economy reeling from a COVID-19 pandemic driven contraction, Finance Minister Grant Robertson said on Friday. At a regular news conference Robertson was asked to share details about the government’s plans for launching ‘helicopter money’ – whether it would be the central bank printing money and distributing it or the government increasing its borrowing and then handing it out. Robertson said the concept was being discussed but “it’s not something that has got to that level of discussion at all.” “I am pretty keen on making sure that fiscal policy remains the role of the government,” he added.


The idea of helicopter money, or dumping cash unexpectedly onto a struggling economy, is slowly gaining currency among economists and policymakers as the pandemic looks to inflict the worst blow to global growth since the Great Depression in the 1930s. None of the wealthy countries have embarked on it, though, citing risks such as central bank independence and the risk of flaring long-term inflation. In a helicopter money drop, a central bank would directly increase the money supply and, via the government, distribute the new cash to the population with the aim of boosting demand and inflation.

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An entire state run by gullible grandmas.

Washington State Loses 100s Of Millions Of Dollars In Unemployment Fraud (ST)

Washington state officials have acknowledged the loss of “hundreds of millions of dollars” to an international fraud scheme that hammered the state’s unemployment insurance system and could mean even longer delays for thousands of jobless workers still waiting for legitimate benefits. Suzi LeVine, commissioner of the state Employment Security Department (ESD), disclosed the staggering losses during a news conference Thursday afternoon. LeVine declined to specify how much money was stolen during the scam, which is believed to be orchestrated from Nigeria. But she conceded that the amount was “orders of magnitude above” the $1.6 million that the ESD reported losing to fraudsters in April.

LeVine said state and law enforcement officials were working to recover as much of the money as possible, though she declined to say how much had been returned so far. She also said the ESD had taken “a number of steps” to prevent new fraudulent claims from being filed or paid but would not specify the steps, to avoid alerting criminals. “We do have definitive proof that the countermeasures we have put in place are working,” LeVine said. “We have successfully prevented hundreds of millions of additional dollars from going out to these criminals and prevented thousands of fraudulent claims from being filed.”

Thursday’s disclosure, which came after state officials had largely refused to discuss the scale of the fraud, helped explain the unusual surge in the number of new jobless claims filed last week in Washington. For the week ending May 16, the ESD received 138,733 initial claims for unemployment insurance, a 26.8% increase over the prior week and one of the biggest weekly surges since the coronavirus crisis began. That sharp increase came as the number of initial jobless claims nationwide fell 9.2%, to 2.4 million, according to data released earlier in the day by the Labor Department.

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Since they won’t stop it, and it can’t last either, it’s up to you.

America’s 600+ Billionaires So Far Made $434 Billion During The Pandemic (F.)

America’s billionaires saw their wealth increase by $434 billion during the course of the global pandemic, according to a new report, a staggering figure that coincided with upheaval to the global economy and more than 38 million Americans filing for unemployment. Per the report by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies’ Program for Inequality, between March 18 and May 19, the total net worth of the 600-plus U.S. billionaires jumped by $434 billion or 15%, based on the group’s analysis of Forbes data. The top five U.S. billionaires (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett and Larry Ellison) saw their wealth grow by a total of $75.5 billion.


Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has seen his net worth grow 30.6% in the past two months, boosting it to $147.6 billion; the fortunes of Bezos and Zuckerberg combined grew by nearly $60 billion, or 14% of the $434 billion total. Tech stocks have continued to rise, with both Facebook and Amazon hitting new all-time highs on Wednesday. While the technology sector has remained strong, many Americans in other markets haven’t been nearly as fortunate, as evidenced by an additional 2.4 million workers filing for temporary unemployment benefits last week, and with 47% of adults reporting that they or another person in their household has lost income since mid-March. Low-income earners have been hit hardest over the last two months, as almost 40% of people working in February and earning less than $40,000 annually have lost their jobs over the last month.

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They know the US has already lost the arms race, but A) you can’t explain that to the people, and B) the industry must be kept well-fed.

US Prepared To Spend Russia, China Into Oblivion To Win Nuclear Arms Race (R.)

U.S. President Donald Trump’s arms control negotiator on Thursday said the United States is prepared to spend Russia and China “into oblivion” in order to win a new nuclear arms race. “The president has made clear that we have a tried and true practice here. We know how to win these races and we know how to spend the adversary into oblivion. If we have to, we will, but we sure would like to avoid it,” Special Presidential Envoy Marshall Billingslea said in an online presentation to a Washington think tank.

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Just in case he still doubted he does NOT intend to win.

Biden Asks Amy Klobuchar To Undergo Vetting As Possible Running Mate (CBS)

Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, has been asked by Joe Biden to undergo a formal vetting to be considered as his vice presidential running mate, one of several potential contenders now being scrutinized by his aides ahead of a final decision, according to people familiar with the moves. In an interview with Stephen Colbert on Thursday night, Biden said “no one’s been vetted yet by the team” but confirmed the initial preliminary outreach to gauge interest is “coming to an end now.” Biden said the “invasive” vetting process will soon begin. When pressed on Klobuchar’s chances of making his running mate “short list,” Biden responded positively: “Amy’s first rate, don’t get me wrong.”


The request for information from potential running mates like Klobuchar “is underway,” a senior Biden campaign aide tells CBS News. If a potential contender consents, she should be poised to undergo a rigorous multi-week review of her public and private life and work by a hand-picked group of Biden confidantes, who will review tax returns, public speeches, voting records, past personal relationships and potentially scandalous details from her past. While several are expected to consent to a vetting, at least one potential contender has bowed out. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, who is running for reelection this year, declined Biden’s invitation to be considered, according to a person familiar with her decision. But Senator Maggie Hassan, the other New Hampshire senator, has agreed to be vetted, according to local news reports.

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https://twitter.com/megslay27/status/1263591562476285954

Warren Pivots On ‘Medicare For All’ In Bid To Become Biden’s VP (Pol.)

In the thick of primary season, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden brawled over “Medicare for All”: He called her approach “angry,” “elitist,” “condescending”; she shot back, anyone who defends the health care status quo with industry talking points is “running in the wrong presidential primary.” Six months later, with Biden the presumptive Democratic nominee and Warren in the running for VP, she is striking a more harmonious chord. “I think right now people want to see improvements in our health care system, and that means strengthening the Affordable Care Act,” she told students at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics this week, while adding that she still wants to get to single payer eventually.


The shift is the latest public signal Warren has sent Biden’s way in recent weeks that she wants the job of vice president — and wants Biden to see her as a loyal governing partner despite their past clashes, which go back decades. Warren’s policy-centered, team-player pitch is counting on Biden caring more about Jan. 20 than Nov. 3, when he makes his vice presidential pick. In other words, that the current crisis has elevated governing concerns above political ones — and that the times call for someone with her policy chops and, yes, plans.

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The power of Sidney Powell.

Appeals Court Orders Judge In Flynn Case To Explain Actions (JTN)

A federal appeals court Thursday has agreed to hear a request from Michael Flynn’s legal team to remove the district judge overseeing his case, and has also ordered the judge to explain his controversial and unorthodox conduct in handling it. Judge Emmett Sullivan has been given a June 1 deadline to respond. The government has also been invited to “respond in its discretion” during that window. Flynn’s legal team had filed a request on Tuesday asking the appeals court to remove Judge Emmett Sullivan from the case, claiming the judge was biased against the defendant. Following the Justice Department’s request earlier this month to dismiss the case against Flynn, Sullivan had appointed retired federal Judge John Gleeson to file an amicus curiae brief arguing in favor of not dropping the case against the general.


Flynn’s lawyers sharply criticized Sullivan’s handling of the case. “The district judge’s latest actions – failing to grant the Government’s Motion to Dismiss, appointing a biased and highly-political amicus who has expressed hostility and disdain towards the Justice Department’s decision to dismiss the prosecution, and the promise to set a briefing schedule for widespread amicus participation in further proceedings – bespeaks a judge who is not only biased against Petitioner, but also revels in the notoriety he has created by failing to take the simple step of granting a motion he has no authority to deny,” the Tuesday petition read.

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Good long overview.

The Railroading of Michael Flynn (Lake)

As it happens, the FBI case manager for the Flynn investigation, Joe Pientka, had indeed drafted a memo closing the Flynn investigation—but he hadn’t filed it formally. Because of Pientka’s “incompetence” (the word was Peter Strzok’s, in a delighted text exchange on January 4, 2017, with his paramour Page), the probe was not shut down and a new predicate wasn’t required. In his motion to dismiss the prosecution of Flynn, U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea said this “sidestepped a modest but critical protection that constrains the investigative reach of law enforcement: the predication threshold for investigating American citizens.”

Until the end of April 2020, Pientka’s memo was kept from Flynn’s counsel and the public. It has been released only now because career U.S. attorney Jeffrey Jensen completed his review of Flynn’s case and declassified documents relevant to it. The Pientka memo provides far more detail on the status of the Flynn investigation than was previously known—and what it shows isn’t pretty. We learn from the memo that after the FBI ran down a lead provided by a confidential human source about Flynn’s contact with a person with links to the Russian state, the bureau could not confirm that any such relationship ever existed. That source was likely Stefan Halper, a fellow at Cambridge University and an intelligence community insider. Halper was being paid by the U.S. government to inform on Flynn as well as another Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos.

Flynn’s suspected contact, whose name is redacted in the memo, is likely Svetlana Lokhova. She is a Russian-born academic who, the Guardian and other news outlets reported in 2017, had traveled in the same car with Flynn as they left a Cambridge University seminar in 2016. These stories made it seem as if Lokhova was luring Flynn into a honey trap, during which sex is offered for blackmail leverage later on. “The CIA and FBI were discussing this episode, along with many others, as they assessed Flynn’s suitability to serve as national security adviser,” the Guardian reported.

The Lokhova story was a smear. Two months after it was published, the Guardian was forced to append an embarrassing correction. The correction read in part, “Her lawyers have also subsequently informed us that she does not have privileged access to any Russian intelligence archive. We also wish to make clear, for the avoidance of doubt, that there is no suggestion that Lokhova has ever worked with or for any of the Russian intelligence agencies.” Last year, Lokhova sued Halper and several news organizations for the smear against her.

https://twitter.com/SidneyPowell1/status/1263557289950228481

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Flynn was opposed to it. He had to go.

Russiagate Began With Obama’s Iran Deal Domestic Spying Campaign (Tablet)

Obama and his foreign policy team were hardly the only people in Washington who had their knives out for Michael Flynn. Nearly everyone did, especially the FBI. As former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s spy service, and a career intelligence officer, Flynn knew how and where to find the documentary evidence of the FBI’s illegal spying operation buried in the agency’s classified files—and the FBI had reason to be terrified of the new president’s anger. The United States Intelligence Community (USIC) as a whole was against the former spy chief, who was promising to conduct a Beltway-wide audit that would force each of the agencies to justify their missions.

Flynn told friends and colleagues he was going to make the entire senior intelligence service hand in their resignations and then detail why their work was vital to national security. Flynn knew the USIC well enough to know that thousands of higher-level bureaucrats wouldn’t make the cut. Flynn had enemies at the very top of the intelligence bureaucracy. In 2014, he’d been fired as DIA head. Under oath in February of that year, he told the truth to a Senate committee—ISIS was not, as the president had said, a “JV team.” They were a serious threat to American citizens and interests and were getting stronger. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers then summoned Flynn to the Pentagon and told him he was done.

“Flynn’s warnings that extremists were regrouping and on the rise were inconvenient to an administration that didn’t want to hear any bad news,” says former DIA analyst Oubai Shahbandar. “Flynn’s prophetic warnings would play out exactly as he’d warned shortly after he was fired.” Flynn’s firing appeared to be an end to one of the most remarkable careers in recent American intelligence history. He made his name during the Bush administration’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where soldiers in the field desperately needed intelligence, often collected by other combat units. But there was a clog in the pipeline—the Beltway’s intelligence bureaucracy, which had a stranglehold over the distribution of intelligence.

Flynn described the problem in a 2010 article titled “Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan,” co-written with current Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger. “Moving up through levels of hierarchy,” they wrote, “is normally a journey into greater degrees of cluelessness.” Their solution was to cut Washington out of the process: Americans in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan needed that information to accomplish their mission.

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 July 13, 2016  Posted by at 8:33 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  11 Responses »


Tim McKulka Elderly Woman Receives Emergency Food Aid, Sudan 2008

Markets Are In The Twilight Zone, Get Ready For New New Deal (AFR)
BOE Governor Carney Accused Of ‘Peddling Phoney Forecasts’ Over Brexit (G.)
Carney Should Stop Being So Gloomy About Brexit (Ashoka Mody)
German Leaders Demand Brexit Clarity From New British PM (R.)
British Pensions £383 Billion Underwater As Liabilities Hit Record (Tel.)
Ireland’s Economists Left Speechless by 26% Growth Figure (BBG)
Losing Australia’s AAA Rating To Make Losers of Mortgage Holders (BBG)
The Richest Generation in US History Just Keeps Getting Richer (BBG)
A Year After Bailout, Greece Struggles For Brighter Future (AFP)
EU Development Aid To Finance Armies In Africa (EuO)
Global Arms Race Escalates As Sabres Rattle In South China Sea (AEP)
Economic Theory as Ideology (Zaman)
Half Of All US Food Produce Is Thrown Away (G.)

 

 

Thought we were already there.

Markets Are In The Twilight Zone, Get Ready For New New Deal (AFR)

Macquarie analysts have likened the bizarre and inherently contradictory moves in markets to a “twilight zone” which is leading investors to a world where free-market economic thinking will be overtaken by the “nationalisation of credit” and state-sponsored growth. Think about that. Monetary policy is beating a path to a world where conventional market signals such as credit spreads and the price of risk will “finally perish” and be unseated by one where states are the drivers of credit, and spending and capital formation is the domain of central banks. “It would take the form of state-sponsored stimulation of consumption, investment, [research and development] and rescuing what essentially is a bankrupt financial superstructure (ie banks, insurance, life and pensions),” the Macquarie report, authored by Hong Kong-based analyst Viktor Shvets, said.

“Whilst similar to FDR’s New Deal, it would be a far more distorted world than either the 1930s or the 1960s-70s, with brand new investment signals.” [..] The unusual commentary from Macquarie says this “state driven paradise” will be brought on by ongoing high levels of volatility and “discontinuities” similar to what markets are grappling with today. “We don’t believe these conditions are yet satisfied, but the chances are high that they would be over the next 12-18 months. In the meantime, we still expect half-hearted ‘stop and go projects’. Japan is likely to be the first to ‘jump’ and wholeheartedly embrace this merger of fiscal, income support and monetary policies but others would eventually follow. It is just a matter of time.”

The Bank of Japan and re-elected Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have signalled a fiscal-led stimulus package in excess of ¥10 trillion ($98 billion) is under consideration. The contradiction that Macquarie is referring to is the way markets have behaved since Brexit, where assets historically linked to “risk-on” and “risk-off” moods have inexplicably rallied in unison. Equities, a classic risk asset, have recovered all of their losses since the Brexit vote on the belief that central banks will step in and lift asset prices by doing stimulus and ignore sound fears about asset bubbles.

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His role is questionable. Shirked far too close to influencing politics.

BOE Governor Carney Accused Of ‘Peddling Phoney Forecasts’ Over Brexit (G.)

Mark Carney has agreed to hand notes of private meetings he had with the chancellor in the run-up to the EU referendum to MPs, after a Treasury select committee hearing where the governor of the Bank of England faced questions about whether he had “peddled phoney forecasts” about the risks of a vote for Brexit. In his first appearance at the Treasury select committee since the referendum, the Bank’s governor faced questions about whether he had tried to scare the electorate by warning of the economic shock – and possible recession – that a vote to leave the EU would cause. Andrew Tyrie, the committee’s chairman, citing two former chancellors and two former leaders of the Conservative party, said the Bank had also been accused of “startling dishonesty”.

Tyrie, a Conservative MP, told Carney that the accusations, if true, would be a “very robust assault on the Bank’s credibility” and also of the independence from government it was granted in 1997 that could not be recovered under the Canadian’s tenure. Carney said he had held private meetings with George Osborne before the 23 June vote. He agreed that the MPs could appoint someone to review the notes of those meetings but said he would be reluctant for them to be made public. Carney was also asked by Jacob Rees-Mogg, a prominent Brexit campaigner, whether the Bank should be, like Caesar’s wife, beyond suspicion in terms of being influenced by politicians. The governor, who said politicians had sought to inform him rather than influence him, replied: “Those who cast it [the independence] into question should consider their motivations and their judgments.”

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That would mean Stage Five: Acceptance. It’ll take a while. In the meantime, the ‘gloom’ is driven by politics, not economics. And yes, Carney is the champ, hoping for a self-fulfilling process. The Leave camp, which won (remember?), should perhaps ask for him to step down.

Carney Should Stop Being So Gloomy About Brexit (Ashoka Mody)

Few have been more downbeat about the outlook for the U.K. economy than the country’s own central bank governor, Mark Carney. If he wants to help mitigate the consequences of the vote to leave the European Union, he should send a more encouraging message by holding back on monetary stimulus. People charged with managing economies usually try to be optimistic, on the logic that their positive attitude will give people and businesses the confidence to spend and invest, ultimately making the optimism self-fulfilling. The rhetoric surrounding Britain’s vote on EU membership has been a glaring exception. In a bid to influence the vote, a chorus of global policymakers predicted dire consequences. That chorus has sadly persisted.

After voters chose to leave, the secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Angel Gurria, reiterated forecasts of higher unemployment and permanent damage to household incomes. Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, said that the decision was “casting a shadow over international growth.” Yet Brexit’s shadow is hard to discern amid the broader global decline in output growth and interest rates that began in early 2014. Perhaps no one, though, has been as active as Carney in stoking feelings of gloom and doom – a particularly notable feat, given that central bank governors rarely make predictions of economic and financial turmoil, especially when it concerns their own currency.

As far back as May, the Bank of England said that the possibility of Brexit was already weighing on the British pound, even though much of the decline in sterling’s value had happened earlier, when the polls – and especially the betting markets – showed a clear lead for the “Remain” campaign. The currency actually stabilized during the brief period when polls showed the “Leave” campaign gaining ground. Markets have come to anticipate Carney’s public appearances as harbingers of bad news. The pound began to decline in the hours before his first major post-Brexit speech on June 30, and he did not disappoint: Brexit-induced uncertainty, he insisted, had caused “economic post-traumatic stress disorder amongst households and businesses, as well as in financial markets.”

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Or else what?

German Leaders Demand Brexit Clarity From New British PM (R.)

German leaders stepped up the pressure on Britain’s incoming prime minister Theresa May on Tuesday by demanding she swiftly spell out when she will launch divorce proceedings with the European Union. “The task of the new prime minister … will be to get clarity on the question of what kind of relationship Britain wants to build with the EU,” Chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference. Her finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said clarity was needed quickly to limit uncertainty after Britain’s shock choice for ‘Brexit’, which has rocked the 28-nation bloc and thrown decades of European integration into reverse. May, 59, will on Wednesday replace David Cameron, who is resigning after Britons rejected his advice and voted on June 23 to quit the EU.

On arriving and departing from Cameron’s last cabinet meeting, she waved a little awkwardly from the doorstep of 10 Downing Street, shortly to become her home. She will face the enormous task of disentangling Britain from a forest of EU laws, accumulated over more than four decades, and negotiating new trade terms while limiting potential damage to the economy. The pound was up 1.2% against the dollar at around $1.3150, boosted by the appointment of a new prime minister weeks earlier than expected after May’s main rival dropped out. But it remains more than 12% below the $1.50 it touched on the night of the June 23 referendum, reflecting concerns that Brexit will hit trade, investment and growth.

The German leaders spoke after May’s ally Chris Grayling appeared to dampen any hopes among Britain’s EU partners that her rapid ascent might accelerate the process of moving ahead with the split and resolving the uncertainty hanging over the 28-nation bloc.

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Which of course can be blamed on Brexit again. But it’s really just a Ponzi scheme dying a natural death.

British Pensions £383 Billion Underwater As Liabilities Hit Record (Tel.)

Britain’s gold-plated pensions now have record-breaking liabilities of £1.75 trillion after the EU referendum triggered a rout in their core gilt and equity holdings, highlighting the difficulty of funding the UK’s retirement needs. The country has almost 6,000 defined benefit schemes, which are obliged to pay their members an amount in retirement often tied to their final salary. Just 950 of these schemes were in surplus on June 30, with the rest hoping to make up the shortfall from long-term investment returns. In total, defined benefit funds are £383.6bn underwater, compared to £294.6bn just a month ago, as the tumbling UK government bond yields added to liabilities while global stock markets wiped value from the schemes’ equity investments.

Around 78pc of the long-term liabilities of the schemes are funded, down from 81.5pc within a month. While these figures are merely a snapshot, the data from the Pension Protection Fund highlights the precarious position of numerous schemes. “Companies are having to divert profits into schemes to make good on their promises, which means less investment capital to help businesses grow and less money available to invest in the pensions of younger workers,” said Tom McPhail, head of retirement policy at Hargreaves Lansdown. “Accrued pension rights have to be respected and investors have to be able to trust the system, however there is also a growing argument for the Government to look at finding a more balanced approach to the retirement funding needs of UK workforce.”

UBS analysts have estimated that a 1pc fall in real yields on government bonds results in a 10pc rise in pension liabilities, although this varies by scheme depending on how many bonds they hold. Gilts have jumped in price, lowering their yields, as global investors seek out safe havens. Industrial companies have the largest pension burdens, amounting to 77pc of their overall market value of the businesses, according to UBS’s research, while telecoms firms have liabilities worth 56pc of their value and utilities’ liabilities have reached 54pc.

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Hilarious.

Ireland’s Economists Left Speechless by 26% Growth Figure (BBG)

In three days, Jim Power is due in London to brief the British-Irish Trade Association on the state of the Irish economy. Now, he has no idea what he is going to say. The economy grew 26% in 2015, officials from the Central Statistics Office told a stunned room full of economists and reporters in Dublin on Tuesday. Previously, they had estimated growth of 7.8%. “I’m not going to stand up and say the economy grew by 26%,” Power, an independent economist, said after the release. “It’s meaningless – we would be laughing” if these numbers came out of China, he said. The figure is mostly explained by the open nature of Ireland’s economy and its attraction to U.S. companies seeking access to a 12.5% tax rate.

Among firms that have inverted to Ireland, mostly through acquisitions, are Perrigo and Jazz Pharmaceuticals. Corporations with assets overseas of €523 billion were headquartered in Ireland in 2014, up from €391 billion in 2013, according to the statistics office. “We are a very small economy, and if we get a big increase in assets, this is what happens,” Michael Connolly, an official at the CSO, said on Tuesday. Once explained the numbers are “believable,” he said. In a statement, Finance Minister Michael Noonan pointed out that growth numbers cut Ireland’s debt and deficit ratios. Trouble is, they carry downsides too. For one, tax inversions artificially inflate the size of Ireland’s economy.

When the headquarters of a group of companies becomes resident in Ireland, all of its global profits may be counted as part of the nation’s gross national income, according to the ministry. Since 2008, that gauge has been boosted by about 7 billion euros thanks to corporate relocations, without accompanying substance or employment, the ministry has said. This in turn drives up the country’s contribution to the European Union budget, which is based on the size of the economy. For a second thing, it leaves self-described “baffled” analysts like Power at a loss to explain the state of the Irish economy. Power says he’ll look at indicators like employment growth and tax revenue for a better gauge, and guesses Ireland’s underlying economic growth was 5.5% last year.

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A world of pain.

Losing Australia’s AAA Rating To Make Losers of Mortgage Holders (BBG)

The biggest losers after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull scraped through to win Australia’s fractious elections could be homebuyers facing higher costs on their A$1.6 trillion ($1.2 trillion) in mortgages. The price to protect bonds issued by the nation’s banks climbed seven basis points last week after S&P Global Ratings cut its outlook on Australia’s AAA grade to negative on concern government deficits will persist without “more forceful” decisions to rein in shortfalls. It also put the nation’s biggest lenders on notice. Stephen Miller, BlackRock’s head of fixed income for Australia, said Wednesday there’s a “real risk” Australia loses its top debt score.

“An increase in funding costs relating to a ratings downgrade will impact bank margins, but banks may choose to offset this via loan pricing,” said Anthony Ip at Citigroup in Sydney, adding that any increase in funding costs will be significant but manageable. “At the end of the day it’s still a competitive lending market.” Australia’s largest lenders – Australia & New Zealand Banking, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank and Westpac Banking – rely on offshore bond markets for a fifth of their funding requirements, central bank data show. If their rankings were lowered after a sovereign downgrade, that would increase borrowing costs as much as 20 basis points, prompting them to slap mortgagees with higher interest rates, according to Citigroup.

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I smell a timebomb.

The Richest Generation in US History Just Keeps Getting Richer (BBG)

Baby boomers started turning 65 in 2011, marking the unofficial beginning of their retirement years. The timing could not have been better for older boomers, who are already part of the wealthiest generation in U.S. history. Since then, the broad S&P 500-stock index is up 91%, including dividends. U.S. stocks hit a record high yesterday. Market performance in the early years of retirement is a crucial worry for anyone living off a nest egg. In the worst-case scenario, stocks crash just as retirees start spending their savings, leaving them in a hole they can no longer earn their way out of. Older boomers have experienced what is arguably the best-case scenario: The S&P 500 has returned 269% since its March 2009 low.

As a recent study in the Journal of Financial Planning shows, wealthy retirees can be very cautious about spending down their savings. This instinct, along with the stock market’s new record, suggests that many boomers are likely to end up with far more money than they know what to do with. Researchers followed the spending and investing behavior of 65- to 70-year-olds from 2000 to 2008. The poorest 40% of the survey respondents generally spent more than they earned, according to the study, which was funded by Texas Tech University. Those in the middle were able to keep their spending at about 8% below what they could have safely spent from pensions, investments, and Social Security.

The wealthiest fifth, meanwhile, had a gap of as much as 53% between their spending and what they could have spent. The authors wrote: “Retirees in the top quintile of financial wealth were spending nowhere near an amount that would place them in danger of running out of money. In fact, the average financial assets of wealthy retirees increased during this period and most retirees spent less than their income.” In other words, these affluent Americans retired and then continued to get richer. That’s quite a feat when you’re no longer working, particularly against the backdrop of the mediocre stock market of the early 2000s.

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Conditions in Greece are getting worse, fast. I’ll soon have more on that, firsthand. Meanwhile, another 4 refugees died this morning off Lesbos.

A Year After Bailout, Greece Struggles For Brighter Future (AFP)

A year after it fought and lost a tug-of-war with its creditors, Greece remains a country that seems adrift, and many of its citizens view the present as joyless and the future as grim. Summer 2015 saw Greece’s youthful left-wing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras wage an extraordinary battle between the mighty European Union, the European Central Bank and the IMF. Over five months, Tsipras and his firebrand finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, took Greece and Europe to the brink as they demanded the creditors ease reforms imposed under two previous bailouts agreed since 2010. As the EU, ECB and IMF took a hard line, Greece’s financial flows shrank and a bank crisis loomed – but Tsipras, instead of buckling, stunned the world by announcing a referendum on the new deal proposed by creditors.

On July 5, 62% of voters rejected the package. But even with the mandate of the Greek people behind him, Tsipras backed down: the risk of seeing Greece thrown out of the eurozone was too much. Instead, in a dramatic U-turn, he let go of Varoufakis, replaced him with the more moderate Euclid Tsakalotos – and just over a week later, signed the third bailout. The deal was worth €86 billion over three years and laden with conditions, such as tax hikes and pension reforms, considered by critics to be so tough that social media buzzed with talk of a coup d’etat. Since then, Greece has soldiered on, weathering popular unrest and the consequences of the 2015 migration crisis, while Tsipras strives to defend his leftwing credentials.

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Brussels is completely lost. Time to end its misery.

EU Development Aid To Finance Armies In Africa (EuO)

The EU commission wants to finance foreign armies as part of a larger effort to stop people from fleeing to Europe, including in countries with patchy human rights. A commission draft proposal released on Tuesday (5 July) spells out reasons why it is “necessary to provide assistance to the militaries of partner countries”. Some €100 million that were initially slated for development aid will be diverted to finance military-led border control exploits and other initiatives like mine-clearing The EU money can also be used to finance anything from troop transport vehicles to uniforms and surveillance equipment. Even furniture, stationary and “sport facilities” are covered. The EU has already contracted out some €1 billion from 2001 to 2009 when it came to things like law enforcement and border management.

But this is the first time it will pump money directly into a foreign military structure. “The direct financing of the military is not possible [at the moment]. Due to exceptional circumstances in some partner countries, it was important to close this gap,” notes the document, a joint communication to the European Parliament and EU Council. The document attempts to quell some concerns over how the money will be used. It notes, for instance, that it won’t fund “recurrent military expenditure”, weapons and ammunition, and combat training. But such limitations are unlikely to be taken seriously by critics. “This proposal is nothing short of scandalous,” said German Green deputy Reinhard Butikofer.

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No Ambrose, not the International Court of Justice. The ruling was by the Permanent Court of Arbitration. And your conclusion is fit for the National Enquirer: “The world has not been in such peril since the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

Global Arms Race Escalates As Sabres Rattle In South China Sea (AEP)

The South China Sea has become the most dangerous fault-line in the world. Beijing and Washington are on a collision course over these contested waters, the shipping lane for 60pc of global trade. As expected, the International Court of Justice in The Hague has ruled that China has no “historic title” to areas of this sea stretching all the way to the ‘nine dash line’ – deep into the territorial waters of a ring of South East Asian states. Equally expected, Beijing has dismissed the verdict with scorn, accusing the tribunal of “shamelessly abusing its authority”. The state media said the country “must be prepared for any military confrontation” with the US, and must not flinch from war if provoked.

It is the latest in a series ominous developments in Asia and Europe that are rapidly subverting the Western international system and setting off a global rearmament race with strong echoes of the late-1930s. Tensions are flaring up across so many spots in East Asia that global investment funds are actively betting on defence stocks and technology companies linked to military expansion. Nomura has launched an “Asian Arms Race Basket” as a hedge against potential conflicts in the East China Sea, the Straits of Taiwan, and the South China Sea. Among the companies listed are Mitsubishi Heavy Industry and Sumitomo Precision in Japan, China Shipbuilding and AVIC Aircraft in China, Korea Aerospace and the explosives group Hanwha, as well as Reliance Defence and Bharat Electronics in India.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute says China spent $215bn on defence last year, a fivefold increase since 2000, and more than the whole of the European Union combined. It is developing indigenous aircraft carriers. US experts say its “Two-Ocean Strategy” implies a fleet of five or six aircraft carrier battle groups to project global power. Japan has upgraded its once invisible Self-Defence Force to a full-fledged fighting machine with a humming new headquarters and an air of determined alertness. The country has been increasing military spending for the last four years, especially under its nationalist leader Shinzo Abe, commissioning its largest warship since the Second World War, an 800-ft DDH-class helicopter carrier.

Rearmament has paradoxical effects. It acts as a form of Keynesian stimulus, as it did in the late 1930s. The spending might absorb some of the Asian savings glut and eat into excess industrial capacity, lifting the world out of secular stagnation, but it is a lethal way to do it. A parallel process is underway in Europe where defence spending has been shooting up since the Russian invasion of Crimea, ending years of neglect and austerity budgets. Outlays are expected to rise by 20pc in Central and Eastern Europe this year, and 9.2pc in South-Eastern Europe, according to the French think-tank IRIS.

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Not terribly smart people.

Economic Theory as Ideology (Zaman)

[..] For a very long time, economists refused to take results from experiments seriously, because these were in direct conflict with axioms at the heart of economic theories. The empirical failure of economic axioms led to the creation of “Behavioral Economics,” which studies actual behavior of human beings. In any scientific field, “behavioral economics” would be the center of attention, since it matches the observational evidence about human behavior. Furthermore, the axiomatic theory, which is contradicted by the empirical evidence, would be a long forgotten idea belonging to the primitive history of economic science. Surprisingly, mainstream economic textbooks, used all over the planet, continue to teach axiomatic theories of human behavior as if they are true, while behavioral economics remains neglected and ignored.

Why do economists maintain an ideological commitment to patently false theories of human behavior? Certainly it is not because these theories are noble and elevating. In fact, many observers have argued that these theories create immoral behavior, by teaching that selfishness, without concern for morality or society, is rational for everyone, and good for society. For example, Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman taught that businesses should maximize profits, without any concern for social responsibility. Given this license, multinational corporations have gone on a rampage, exploiting natural resources by using methods which threaten to destroy the planet. The easiest way to make a profit is to appropriate a priceless natural treasure, like a rainforest, and chop it down for timber.

The losses from industrial wastes are changing the composition of the atmosphere, oceans, lakes and rivers, and inflicting costs on all human beings, but creating profits for corporate coffers. This strategy is called ‘socializing the losses and privatizing the gains.’ With massive profits, it is easy to buy politicians to prevent environmental concerns from getting in the way. The book Merchants of Doubt documents a well funded campaign to create doubt about climate change, so that corporations can continue to make profits while destroying the planet. The persistence of economic theories which celebrate and glorify these poisonous ideologies of personal greed and social irresponsibility can be traced to corporate funding of think-tanks and research which promote “free markets”. The charms of “freedom” propagated by economic ideologies conceal the ugly reality of corporate freedom and wage slavery of the masses.

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The glory of mankind.

Half Of All US Food Produce Is Thrown Away (G.)

Americans throw away almost as much food as they eat because of a “cult of perfection”, deepening hunger and poverty, and inflicting a heavy toll on the environment. Vast quantities of fresh produce grown in the US are left in the field to rot, fed to livestock or hauled directly from the field to landfill, because of unrealistic and unyielding cosmetic standards, according to official data and interviews with dozens of farmers, packers, truckers, researchers, campaigners and government officials. From the fields and orchards of California to the population centres of the east coast, farmers and others on the food distribution chain say high-value and nutritious food is being sacrificed to retailers’ demand for unattainable perfection.

“It’s all about blemish-free produce,” says Jay Johnson, who ships fresh fruit and vegetables from North Carolina and central Florida. “What happens in our business today is that it is either perfect, or it gets rejected. It is perfect to them, or they turn it down. And then you are stuck.” Food waste is often described as a “farm-to-fork” problem. Produce is lost in fields, warehouses, packaging, distribution, supermarkets, restaurants and fridges. By one government tally, about 60m tonnes of produce worth about $160bn, is wasted by retailers and consumers every year – one third of all foodstuffs. But that is just a “downstream” measure.

In more than two dozen interviews, farmers, packers, wholesalers, truckers, food academics and campaigners described the waste that occurs “upstream”: scarred vegetables regularly abandoned in the field to save the expense and labour involved in harvest. Or left to rot in a warehouse because of minor blemishes that do not necessarily affect freshness or quality. When added to the retail waste, it takes the amount of food lost close to half of all produce grown, experts say. “I would say at times there is 25% of the crop that is just thrown away or fed to cattle,” said Wayde Kirschenman, whose family has been growing potatoes and other vegetables near Bakersfield, California, since the 1930s. “Sometimes it can be worse.”

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