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Debt Rattle February 28 2023

Feb 282023

February 28, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:05 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, Crimea, global elite, NATO, Nordstream, Sy Hersh, ultimatum 91 Responses »

Elliott Erwitt New York City, USA 1955

• West Considers ‘Ultimatum’ For Ukraine (RT)

• Crimea Integral Part Of Russia, Cannot Return To Ukraine – Peskov (TASS)

• Musk: Diplomats Want War, Warriors Want Peace (Celente)

• NATO Is De Facto At War With Russia – Kremlin (RT)

• Russia No Longer At Mercy Of Global Elite – Lavrov (RT)

• How Russia Managed To Survive Western Sanctions (RT)

• Pushback: The Folly Of Ukraine (Denninger)

• It’s Coming (James Howard Kunstler)

• Hungary Demands UN Investigation Into “Scandalous” Attack on Nord Stream (SN)

• Ex-White House Doctor Warns Of Biden Danger (RT)

• Why is Assange in Jail and Not Seymour Hersh? (Steve Brown)

• Starmer Is Paving The Way For The Triumph Of Dark Politics (Cook)

CNN Ukraine

This is a CNN report from 2014.
The people of Donestk were being brutalized & murdered by the Ukrainian government even back then under Poreshenko until the US govt swapped him out for zelenskyy to continue the slaughter. pic.twitter.com/oJNzMZD8Ki

— The opinionated Black woman ~ Aunty (@Theblackfemini3) February 26, 2023

Russia rebuilt Mariupol in just months. Yesterday, Ukraine started shelling it again.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1627038075967705088

Sticks and stones

Discover the untold story about the War in Ukraine in this eye-opening documentary. Are you ready to challenge what you know?

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

― Albert Einstein pic.twitter.com/gx9Vs4mmZP

— kanekoa.substack.com (@KanekoaTheGreat) February 28, 2023

Schrödinger’s garbage

The Jabbed

pic.twitter.com/bI9MF4gNlV

— David Wolfe (@DavidWolfe) February 28, 2023

Everyone should download, read, and share this excellent academic paper on the full-scale fraud of the so-called ‘Covid global pandemic’. It may be your first step to liberation from this widespread criminal enterprise…https://t.co/acD1EWgmb0

— Patrick Henningsen (@21WIRE) February 27, 2023

They have until fall. This is how the west will try to leave while saving face: we gave them everything they needed, but they screwed up!

“Should the counter-offensive fail, the pressure on Kiev to negotiate with the Kremlin will increase..”

• West Considers ‘Ultimatum’ For Ukraine (RT)

Ukraine’s Western backers are considering the imposition of an ultimatum on Kiev in relation to potential talks with Moscow, German tabloid Bild reported on Monday, citing anonymous government sources in Washington and Berlin. With new arms supplies, the US and its allies want to provide Kiev with an “incentive” to try and recapture territories seized by the Russian forces, Bild claimed, adding that the West wants to see results in this respect by the fall. “Should the counter-offensive fail, the pressure on Kiev to negotiate with the Kremlin will increase,” the paper reported. Earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported that the UK, France and Germany had allegedly offered Kiev weapons and security commitments under a plan aimed at pushing Kiev to negotiate with Moscow.

The US media outlet claimed last week that London, Berlin and Paris were supposedly ready to offer security guarantees just short of NATO membership. According to Bild, however, the conditions were not that generous. “The Europeans and the US cannot and do not want to provide Ukraine with hard security guarantees such as NATO membership at the moment,” German MP Norbert Roettgen, who previously headed the Bundestag’s Foreign Affairs Committee, told the tabloid. The German Chancellor’s Office also said on Sunday that potential NATO security guarantees played “no role at all” in the discussions between the three bloc members. Berlin neither outright denied nor confirmed the existence of the negotiations plan, Bild added.

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also encouraged Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to engage in talks with Moscow earlier in February, according to the media reports. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg previously admitted that Moscow was winning the logistical war of attrition. He also said it was unclear how much the bloc could spend on further military support for Kiev. Last week, the Russian Foreign Ministry set out its conditions for a diplomatic solution to the conflict. The list included the West halting military aid for Kiev, as well as Ukraine returning to its neutral status after being “demilitarized” and “denazified.” Zelensky rejected any negotiations with Moscow by saying there was “nothing to talk about” and “nobody” to talk with.

They’re not going to move a inch on that.

• Crimea Integral Part Of Russia, Cannot Return To Ukraine – Peskov (TASS)

Crimea is an integral part of Russia and its return to Ukraine is impossible, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday. When asked if Moscow could imagine a situation where Crimea would become part of Ukraine again, he answered in the negative. “It is an integral part of the Russian Federation,” the presidential spokesman stressed. US President Joe Biden assumed earlier that potential agreements on the Ukraine issue could include a provision on Kiev taking control of Crimea and some other territories in the future. After the February 2014 coup in Ukraine, the Crimean authorities held a referendum on reuniting with Russia. Most voters supported the idea (96.7% in Crimea and 95.6% in the city of Sevastopol), with turnout reaching 80%. In March 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty on Crimea’s reunification with Russia on March 18, 2014, which was ratified by the Federal Assembly on March 21, 2014.

That about sums it up.

• Musk: Diplomats Want War, Warriors Want Peace (Celente)

Elon Musk, the Tesla billionaire, accurately tweeted Monday about the Ukraine War and the U.S.’s continued effort to keep the conflict going, posting: “The diplomats want war and the warriors want peace.” His response was to another Twitter user who posted a New York Times article about how Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, once said, “Ukraine was unlikely to make substantially greater battlefield gains and should move to the bargaining table.” The Times said the White House “quickly squelched such talk.” Milley sent a shockwave through Washington in November when he said Ukraine may want to consider peace negotiations because the Ukraine War would keep dragging on. He later changed his tune and said Russia already lost.

“They’ve lost strategically, they’ve lost operationally and, I repeat, they’ve lost tactically,” he said. “What they’ve tried to do, they’ve failed at. The strategic reframing of their objectives, of their illegal invasion, have all failed, every single one of them.” Milley spoke with the Financial Times earlier this month and said that it would be “almost impossible for the Russians to achieve their political objectives by military means” and said it is exceedingly unlikely that its military will be able to “overrun” the country, he said. “It’s just not going to happen,” he said. He also said that it will be “very, very difficult for Ukraine this year to kick the Russians out of every inch” of the country it now controls.

Milley continues to sell the political line out of Washington. Col. Douglas MacGregor, who The Trends Journal has interviewed, has criticized these kinds of comments from Washington and said they hurt the administration’s credibility. “General Milley has made it very clear that he’s aligned with the left, he is part of this administration, he’s going to say whatever they want him to say,” MacGregor said, according to RT. Milley seems to be forgetting that Russia never said it had any intention of running over the entire country. The Kremlin has insisted since the start of the operation that it will achieve its goals, which include deNazification and demilitarizing the country. Russian forces now control about 20 percent of Ukraine since their invasion. Moscow also wants assurances that Ukraine will remain neutral and not join NATO.

Musk, in the meantime, has faced unfair attacks by the Presstitutes for calling for peace in Ukraine. The New York Times, in an unflattering report on Musk, called him a “geopolitical chaos agent” because he laid out a peace plan for Ukraine and suggested that tensions between Washington and Beijing can be resolved if China takes partial control. Musk took to Twitter in October to lay out what seemed like sensible steps to achieve peace. He said the referendums in the newly annexed regions could be done over, with UN supervision. Russia would leave if it is the will of the people. He noted that Crimea would be formally recognized as part of Russia, “as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake).”

“There would have been very complex, positional, sometimes irreconcilable talks, but they would have been under way. But they refused.”

• NATO Is De Facto At War With Russia – Kremlin (RT)

The US-led collective West must change their approach to global security and finally take Moscow’s concerns into consideration, before talks on the New START nuclear agreement can be renewed, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. Speaking to the Izvestia newspaper for an interview published on Tuesday, Peskov said relations with the United States and Europe have “changed radically” since President Vladimir Putin formulated draft security treaties that were sent to Washington, Brussels and Vienna in late 2021, only to hear that “they were not ready to talk about anything with us.” “If they wanted, they could have sat down at the negotiating table [back then, before the decision to launch a military operation in Ukraine],” he said. “There would have been very complex, positional, sometimes irreconcilable talks, but they would have been under way. But they refused.”

With the failed attempt at dialogue, tensions continued to soar between Moscow and the West in the lead up to the conflict in Ukraine. Peskov argued that NATO is now fully involved in the hostilities, noting “their intelligence is working against us 24 hours a day, their weapons… are supplied to Ukraine for free to shoot at our military, not to mention that they shoot at Ukrainian citizens.” “The moment when NATO de facto became a participant in the conflict in Ukraine, the situation changed,” the spokesman continued. “In fact, the NATO bloc is no longer acting as our conditional opponent, but as our enemy.” “President Putin was and remains open to any contacts that can help Russia achieve its goals in one way or another,” Peskov continued. “Preferably peacefully, at the negotiations table, but when this is not possible, also by military means, as we are seeing now.”

Peskov touched on the New START treaty, a US-Russian accord intended to limit both nations’ nuclear stockpiles and allow them to monitor each other’s military facilities to confirm compliance. Amid the conflict in Ukraine, however, Moscow and Washington have accused each other of failing to facilitate such inspections. Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Moscow intended to formally suspend its obligations under the pact, with Peskov explaining “the conditions must somehow change.” During the New START negotiations, the nuclear arsenals of France and Great Britain were left out of the equation, even though they are “significant enough for the entire system of European strategic security,” he said.

“These countries – France, Britain, the United States – are members of an organization which is de facto at war with us… you need to call a spade a spade,” Peskov added, noting how Western states nevertheless keep “repeating like a mantra that they do not want to be participants in the conflict.” Putin has also accused NATO specialists of helping Kiev to launch drone attacks against Russian airfields hosting long-range bombers, which are part of Moscow’s system of nuclear deterrence. He blamed Washington and NATO’s proxy war against Russia for destroying the foundation of trust on which the treaty was initially built.

“Just listing the names of these states already shows the failure of attempts [of the West] to isolate our country,,”

• Russia No Longer At Mercy Of Global Elite – Lavrov (RT)

Western political leaders will no longer have the power to dictate terms to Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday. Speaking with the heads of the ministry’s regional offices, the diplomat stressed that Russia will now determine its own needs for development. “Until recently, a couple of years ago, the external conditions that we needed for development were determined not by us, but by the Western minority,” said Lavrov. He added that all the foreign policy initiatives promoted by the so-called “golden billion” group serve the sole purpose of making sure that the world lives by rules that allow Western elites to continue their colonial policies and live at the expense of others.

“Therefore, we will no longer rely on someone when it comes to creating the external conditions for the development that we need,” Lavrov stressed, also pledging that Russia will not follow in the footsteps of the “selfish” West, and will take into account the interests of other independent states. According to the diplomat, Moscow aims to create external conditions that are as favorable as possible for the development of the country, but stressed that these conditions must also reflect “the consensus of all independent states” and fully comply with the principles of the UN Charter, which have been “repeatedly violated by our former Western colleagues.”

During the meeting, Lavrov also noted that the number of countries wishing to join BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) economic blocs had increased to almost two dozen by the end of 2022. The diplomat noted that the countries wishing to join the alliances, such as Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Indonesia, Argentina, Mexico and several African nations, “play a very prominent role in their regions.”“Just listing the names of these states already shows the failure of attempts [of the West] to isolate our country,” Lavrov observed, adding that the opposite has happened, with independent countries now uniting with other like-minded states.

It turned east,

• How Russia Managed To Survive Western Sanctions (RT)

The Russian economy has managed to hold up against the massive sanctions imposed by Western countries and their allies over Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby admitted on Friday. As the conflict enters its second year, Washington revealed more anti-Russia penalties, targeting dozens of companies and individuals linked to the country, and raising tariffs on Russian goods whose imports were still allowed. Meanwhile, the EU approved its tenth package of sanctions against Russia, which includes export limitations on dual-use items and technology, measures against so-called Russian disinformation, and new restrictions against individuals and entities for their alleged support of the Russian military. Western allies Britain, Switzerland, Australia, Japan and New Zealand joined the measures.

Russia’s economy is “showing some resilience,” according to Kirby, who added, however, that it’s not clear whether this “can be sustained for the long haul.” “He has had to take some drastic measures to prop up his economy, to prop up his currency, including playing pretty aggressively with interest rates, for instance,” Kirby said, commenting on steps approved by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russian statistics service Rosstat reported that GDP of the sanctions-hit nation contracted by just 2.1% in 2022, much less than the 10-15% some had predicted after sanctions hit last March. The Russian economy is actually forecast to increase by 0.3% during the current year, according to the IMF.

The strength of the Russian economy has been partially attributed to global prices for oil and gas, which saw a dramatic surge shortly after one of the world’s biggest exporters of the two commodities was targeted by Western sanctions. The growth of energy prices has reportedly compensated for the drop in the volume of the country’s exports. At the same time, Russia managed to re-orient some of its exports, including energy sales, eastwards after Western buyers opted to shun direct shipments under the sanctions pressure. The Russian national currency, the ruble, has also managed to stay afloat after bouncing back following a dramatic decline seen shortly after the sanctions were imposed last March. This has been attributed to strict capital controls, a dramatic interest-rate hike by the Russian central bank, and the country’s move to trade transactions with allied countries in domestic currencies.

The share of the ruble in Russia’s international settlements has doubled compared with December 2021. Last week, President Putin said that Moscow would continue to work with partners to form a stable and secure global payment system independent of the US dollar and of other Western currencies. President Putin has also attributed Russia’s economic resilience to the country’s strong agricultural sector. According to the latest data provided by Russia’s statistics service, the harvest amounted to 153.8 million tons, a 26.7% increase year-on-year against 2021. “By the end of the agricultural year, that is, by June 30, 2023, we will be able to bring the total volume of grain exports to 55-60 million tonnes,” he said last week during his annual address to the Federal Assembly.

Meanwhile, parallel imports of non-sanctioned products and flourishing trade with countries that refrained from punishing Moscow had also contributed to the economic resilience. In addition, Russia has been successful in moving a lot of products to Asian markets such as India and China, and to Türkiye. Additionally, Russia also had several years to prepare for sanctions following its reunification with Crimea in 2014. Moscow succeeded in developing an alternative to SWIFT, the messaging network that underpins global financial transactions. This came in response to Western threats to cut the country off from the international banking system.

“Crimea was purchased by Catherine the Great as it was a gateway for a strategic, warm-water 12 month port.”

• Pushback: The Folly Of Ukraine (Denninger)

Ukraine has always been an ungovernable cesspool; there are roughly four ethnic groups, all of whom hate each other, and one of them is essentially Russian. The land itself is a trade crossroads that has served as such for over a thousand years, so that this occurred is not really a surprise. The USSR delegated nearly all operating authority to the territory for this reason; Moscow simply didn’t have the desire to try to tame that which was always trying to bite from one direction or another, as they understood the only real way to make that happen would be to kill 3/4 of the population there or enslave all of them.

Crimea was purchased by Catherine the Great as it was a gateway for a strategic, warm-water 12 month port. Without it Russia was at risk of a pincer on said port at any time, and this was unacceptable. Therefore rather than take it, she bought it. This is historical fact and no amount of revisionism will ever change it, any more than you can un-do the fact that the United States purchased Alaska; even though it is non-contiguous with the rest of our land, it serves as a buffer between North America and the Russo/Asian landmass. It’s ours; we bought it through legitimate consensual negotiation, just as Russia bought Crimea through the same process.

The Turkish mess with NATO (since when are they in the North Atlantic?) and that part of the Cuban mess ought to be obvious, but that’s in the rearview mirror and we managed to avoid blowing each other up, even though we provoked it — and were in the wrong. Well, now we have a problem. You see, over the last three decades or so we’ve offshored huge parts of our supply chain to China. We did it out of idiocy, but that’s in the rear view mirror too. Its done and while we could reverse course we can’t do it tomorrow, and whether we like it or not it takes five to ten years to build a fab and get it online for chips and such, never mind other areas of manufacturing.

China doesn’t like our point of view when it comes to the Russia/Ukraine dust-up. In fact they’re thinking that if we can send weapons, ammunition and such to Ukraine, they can send them to Russia. Oh, by the way, they share a border so its quite-convenient and unlike our shipments, which can be blown up the minute they go into Ukraine, that’s a much-more dicey proposition for Chinese shipments into Russia. This is a problem and one we have no good answer to. Our government has threatened, including our Treasury Secretary (Yellen) that there will be “serious consequences” for China if they do this. Oh really? What consequences would those be? Are you going to shoot or sanction? Good luck with either; shooting leads to WWIII and sanctioning is an empty threat when you need the supply pipeline to operate or you can’t make, well…… just about anything.

“..what the Left actually thinks is exactly what Woody’s movie script implied: believe everything that the government, the news media, and the drug companies tell you, and act accordingly, and destroy anyone who says otherwise.”

• It’s Coming (James Howard Kunstler)

“It’s Coming.” That’s what Elon Musk said a while back apropos of the Twitter files that show all the US government suppression of Covid-19 information mis-labeled as “misinformation.” Think of whatever the truth is as mis-misinformation. Get it? You might have to read that sentence more than once to comprehend what went wrong with the American consensus the past three years. And then you’ll begin to understand why the operation is called mind-fuckery. “It” comes out in weird ways now. For instance, Woody Harrelson’s little prank on Saturday Night Live. The A-List actor opened the show acting stoned, talking about how much he likes weed and getting stoned, and, at the very end of his routine, spoke of a “movie script” that spun out in his stoned head:

“The biggest drug cartels in the world get together, and buy up all the media and all the politicians… and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes… and people can only come out if they take the cartel’s drug… and keep taking them over and over. I threw the script away. I mean, who’s gonna believe that crazy idea?“ One can also imagine the NBC lawyers’ iPhones lighting up and emitting a cacophony of ring-tones in the late-night hours following Woody’s little gaucherie. After all, this is the TV network that still employs the likes of Rachel Maddow, Misinformation-Informer-in-Chief of the whole USA who, for years, has performed as the icon representing how the political Left thinks of itself, and what it thinks. What the Left thinks of itself, of course, is that it’s collectively the smartest person in the world. And what the Left actually thinks is exactly what Woody’s movie script implied: believe everything that the government, the news media, and the drug companies tell you, and act accordingly, and destroy anyone who says otherwise.

Woody’s gag offended the news media hugely and instantly, said media being scaffolded on the Internet. The response was wildly censorious. Vanity Fair’s insta-bulletin said, “Uncle Woody… taking the stage to float conspiracy theories disguised as provocative humor is both intellectually dishonest and tedious.” Tedious? As if you’ve heard that come out of A-list actors’ mouths a thousand times? I doubt it. Who is being “intellectually dishonest” exactly? Rolling Stone, likewise headlined: “Woody Harrelson Spreads Anti-Vax Conspiracies During SNL Monologue.” (Just how anti-anti-establishment now is the old counter-culture rag I once worked for?) The Daily Beast, The Left’s house organ, echoed that: “Woody Harrelson Spews Anti-Vax Conspiracies in Rambling SNL Monologue.” Notice, “spews,” as in the most vile and disgusting bodily function imaginable, you revolting piece of filth….

They will have to frame a reply. It won’t go away.

• Hungary Demands UN Investigation Into “Scandalous” Attack on Nord Stream (SN)

Hungary has called for a UN investigation into the “scandalous” attack on the Nord Stream pipelines, which journalist Seymour Hersh asserted were destroyed by the United States. Three of the four natural gas pipelines connecting Russia to Germany were sabotaged in September last year, an attack that must have been carried out by a state actor. The attack left Germany and other European countries dependent on US energy, prompting them to support escalation of the war in Ukraine. Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Hersh published an article earlier this month in which he asserted that the pipelines were destroyed by the US as part of a covert operation.

According to Hersh’s sources, the explosives were planted in June 2022 by US Navy divers under the guise of the BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise and were detonated three months later with a remote signal sent by a sonar buoy. One source told Hersh that the plotters knew the covert operation was an “act of war,” with some in the CIA and State Department warning, “Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.” After China demanded that the United States “explain itself to the world” over the claims, Hungary has now added its voice to the call for a full and proper investigation. “This is basically the first time when such a major European critical infrastructure was attacked. By whoever – but it was attacked,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told RIA Novosti.

Szijjarto added that the sabotage was a “scandalous” act of terrorism and the truth as to finding out who was responsible should be of the utmost international importance. Budapest wants know “who committed it and why,” asking for a “comprehensive, deep, structured and detailed” probe conducted under the auspices of the UN. “I think the UN should give a framework for such kind of an investigation,” said Szijjarto, adding that the international body should act as a “platform for countries to talk to each other, who even consider each other as enemies.”

“He also pointed out that Biden, unlike his predecessor, Donald Trump, had not taken a cognitive test and argued that the sitting president’s “ability to think and reason is gone”..”

• Ex-White House Doctor Warns Of Biden Danger (RT)

Former White House physician and Republican Representative Ronny Jackson has hit out against US President Joe Biden, arguing that his declining mental state poses a danger to the entire country. “It’s TERRIFYING for our country that Biden is our commander-in-chief,” Jackson wrote on Twitter on Saturday. “He doesn’t know where he’s at half the time and every day he brings us closer to an all-out war with Russia and China. His cognitive decline is going to get people KILLED!!” Jackson, who served as the White House Physician to the President under Barack Obama and Donald Trump until 2018, has previously criticized the current US administration for failing to disclose the truth about Joe Biden’s mental health.

Earlier this month, the White House issued a summary on the status of Biden’s health based on a medical history review and a “detailed physical examination,” which found that the president was a “healthy, vigorous, 80-year-old male” who was fit to execute his duties. Replying to the president’s health report, Jackson stated that the medical exam was a “joke” and a “cover up.” He also pointed out that Biden, unlike his predecessor, Donald Trump, had not taken a cognitive test and argued that the sitting president’s “ability to think and reason is gone” and that he should not be in office.

According to a recent Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll conducted earlier this month, some 57% of Americans have doubts about Biden’s mental fitness, with 67% thinking he seems to be too old to lead the country. Speculations about the president’s cognitive abilities have only continued to grow due to his numerous recurring gaffes, the latest of which was him proclaiming that “more than half the women in my administration are women.”

“..they claim he made it all up – which means, according to them, that he did not publish classified information. Therefore he cannot be guilty of any crime.”

• Why is Assange in Jail and Not Seymour Hersh? (Steve Brown)

On February 7, Seymour Hersh – arguably the most credible investigative journalist of our era – published a bombshell exposé revealing that the United States was guilty of blowing up the Nord Stream II undersea pipeline that was supposed to deliver natural gas from Russia to the Federal Republic of Germany. Hersh’s revelations were based entirely on classified information leaked to him by a member of the government with first-hand knowledge of the planning and implementation of the attack on the pipeline – a member of the government who clearly broke the law by violating his fiduciary duty not to reveal classified information to an unauthorized source.

Like Chelsea Manning, who had revealed classified information to Julian Assange, for which she was convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison, Hersh’s source, if identified, would surely also be convicted and sentenced to similar long-term imprisonment. But Hersh’s source has not been identified. However – Hersh himself has. According to the same logic under which Assange was indicted for publishing classified information, and now faces up to 175 years in prison, Hersh, too, should be indicted and face comparable long-term imprisonment. So why is Sy Hersh still free? Hersh broke the same laws that the U.S. government accuses Julian Assange of breaking. But unlike Assange, a foreigner whom the U.S. has unsuccessfully been trying to extradite from England for years, Hersh is an American citizen living right here in the United States – easy to find, cuff, indict, convict and throw in prison for the rest of his life.

So why is Sy Hersh still free? Surely the classified information that Hersh has revealed is even more dangerous to the safety of the U.S. than what Assange revealed. Hersh showed that the U.S. had committed an unprovoked act of war against Russia. This gives Russia an absolute legal right to retaliate under Chapter VII, Article 51, of the United Nations Charter, which cites self-defense as an exception to the prohibition against the use of force. Since Russia happens to be a nuclear power, its potential retaliation could trigger World War III and wipe out not just the U.S. but the entire human race. Therefore, in any comparison of who has placed the U.S. in greater danger – Julian Assange is a piker compared to Sy Hersh.

So why is Sy Hersh still free? The answer is this. Although President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland would love to throw Sy Hersh into a maximum security prison for the rest of his life, as punishment for revealing their complicity in blowing up the Nord Stream II pipelines – they don’t dare to. If they did, it would be tantamount to admitting that … what Hersh published is true. Which would be embarrassing, to say the least, because Biden and Company have spent every day since February 7 denying that Hersh’s revelations are true. In other words, they claim he made it all up – which means, according to them, that he did not publish classified information. Therefore he cannot be guilty of any crime.

I stay away from the stench that is UK politics, but what ails Labour is not Corbyn or anti-semitism, it’s that Blair and Starmer have enough right wing voters inside the party to have taken over.

• Starmer Is Paving The Way For The Triumph Of Dark Politics (Cook)

There is a reason – and not the one given – why Labour Party leader Keir Starmer has announced that he is banning his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, from standing as a candidate for the party at the next general election. Corbyn has been sitting as an independent since Starmer exiled him from the Labour benches in late 2020 – after Corbyn observed that it was for “political reasons” he faced years of evidence-free accusations the Labour Party was beset by antisemitism on his watch. He called the accusation “dramatically overstated”. The official grounds for Corbyn being permanently barred from returning to the parliamentary party are that he has refused to apologise for his comment.

Announcing Corbyn’s exclusion as a candidate, Starmer said Labour would “never again be brought to its knees by racism or bigotry. If you don’t like that, if you don’t like the changes we have made, I say the door is open and you can leave”. The establishment media – from right to supposed left – are trying to bolster Starmer’s claims about Corbyn and his supporters by continuing to weave a web of misrepresentations about the former leader being depraved and unhinged. Antisemitism in Labour is apparently being kept at bay only because of Starmer’s vigilance, in contrast to Corbyn’s supposed indulgence. And, were Corbyn to be serving as prime minister today, we are warned, he would be taking “cranky” foreign policy decisions, like encouraging a diplomatic process to end the bloodshed in Ukraine.

No other political leader, not even Tony Blair, has haunted the thoughts of his successor – or the airwaves and pages of the billionaire-owned media – in quite the way Corbyn continues to do so. Even a disastrous, if brief, prime minister like Liz Truss quickly faded from memory. Boris Johnson stays in the British public’s imagination only because the scandals and dramas he presided over are still playing out, and because in the crisis-plagued Conservative Party, he might yet manage to claw his way back into Downing Street. So why the perennial concern about Corbyn, even as he languishes on the backbenches, outside the two-party chokehold on British politics, with no evident path back to power? Why does his shadow loom so large?

The reason has nothing to do with antisemitism or Corbyn’s criticisms of the West’s response to the Ukraine war – or rather, not in the sense Starmer and commentators would have you believe. Like the media, Starmer wants not just the solitary figure of Corbyn gone from British politics. He wants to eradicate something far more dangerous to the establishment: Corbynism, the ideas of a fairer, more equal society the former Labour leader gave life to, as well as the potential grassroots movement he represents.

Nick

This is Nick. If you won't maintain a healthy work-life balance, he'll do it for you. 12/10 pic.twitter.com/LvAoBwjjAA

— WeRateDogs® (@dog_rates) February 27, 2023

Warka

Warka Water structures consist of a bamboo frame supporting a mesh polyester material. Through rain and condensation they can collect 100 liters of clean drinking water a day for communities in the developing world

[read more: https://t.co/wxmiQTI9Y7]pic.twitter.com/d1MVJ6FDuG

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) February 27, 2023

Lumpsucker
https://twitter.com/i/status/1630466684241825793

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Debt Rattle February 2 2023

Feb 022023

February 2, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:40 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, Erdogan, ground forces, Hunter Biden, mad scientist, Metabiota, objectivity, Russian oil, Zakharova 79 Responses »

Andre Derain The port of Collioure 1905

• Former UK Defense Minister: NATO May Need To Send Ground Forces To Ukraine (ZH)

• NATO Involved In Hybrid War Against Russia For A Long Time – Lavrov (TASS)

• ‘At War with Russia’, Europe Peers Down the Abyss (Alastair Crooke)

• Trials and Tribulations of the Collective West (Escobar)

• Sending Tanks To Kiev Not To Help Resolve Ukraine Conflict – Erdogan (TASS)

• Zakharova: Jet Deliveries To Kiev Not Leading To Escalation ‘Absurd’ (TASS)

• Russia Ramps Up EU-Bound Gas Transit Via Ukraine (RT)

• Russia’s Pipeline Gas Exports To Europe Slump To Record Low (ZH)

• Ukraine Attacks Pipeline Pumping Russian Oil To EU – Transneft (RT)

• EU-Owned Tankers Boost Russian Oil Shipments (RT)

• “Objectivity Has Got To Go” (Turley)

• Hunter Biden’s Metabiota Labs Received $10s of Millions in DOD Contracts (GP)

• Hunter Biden Demands Investigations Into Reporting On His Laptop (JTN)

• The Press Versus The President, Part Three (CJR)

• Why Did UK Wait 3 Months to Disclose Data Showing COVID Vaccine Risks? (CHD)

• Is a Mad Scientist Set to Become Chief Scientist at the WHO? (CHD)

• Sweden Destroyed Substantial Part Of Its Documents On Julian Assange (Maurizi)

Crazy Twitter

What are the @Twitter engineers finding under the hood? @RubinReport tells @StreitMarissa that @elonmusk and the team are hard at work behind the scenes. pic.twitter.com/QGgh0kFECy

— PragerU (@prageru) February 1, 2023

Kamala

Our dear Kamala educates us on space & rockets pic.twitter.com/aeon925Aqs

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) February 1, 2023

Gonzalo 2023.02.01 The West Is Now Impotent In The Ukraine Conflict

“Are western citizens willing to fight and die for Ukraine? It’s highly unlikely.”

• Former UK Defense Minister: NATO May Need To Send Ground Forces To Ukraine (ZH)

The “domino theory” was once used to great effect in order to manipulate the American public into supporting the Vietnam War, but will the same narrative work to get the west to support World War III with Russia? Former UK Defense Minister Sir Gerald Howarth seems to think so as he uses this exact claim to justify NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine.

FORMER DEFENSE MINISTER OF UK SAYS NATO FORCES MAY NEED TO FACE RUSSIA ON THE GROUND pic.twitter.com/7LJ3Nksniq

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) January 31, 2023

It should be noted that a large percentage of the American populace and most of Europe have no interest whatsoever in engaging with Russia and possibly its allies in all out war, but the establishment appears intent on forcing the issue anyway. The delivery of NATO tanks and the possibility of longer range missiles will no doubt trigger a wider response from Russia, which will then be used by NATO as a reason to escalate further. At the very least, Howarth does admit what many in the alternative media have been saying for some time – That Ukraine’s efforts have ground to a halt without further support from NATO troops. The deliveries of money and weapons are nothing more than a stop-gap; wars are won by men.

The former minister suggests that Ukraine is essentially too big to fail and that NATO cannot allow Russia to prevail in the region, otherwise they will be emboldened to strike other nearby nations. There is zero evidence to support this argument, but it is clear that NATO talking heads are desperate to drum up some kind of public fervor. Are western citizens willing to fight and die for Ukraine? It’s highly unlikely.

“..take necessary measures in order to prevent further attempt to turn Ukraine into an even sharper threat for our security..”

• NATO Involved In Hybrid War Against Russia For A Long Time – Lavrov (TASS)

NATO has been involved in a hybrid war against Russia for quite a long time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during a press conference after the talks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry Tuesday. “Whatever our Western partners may say, however they try to justify their actions on pumping Ukraine with weapons – including the known slogans that the path to peace lies through arms shipments – everyone understands everything. We are talking about NATO being involved in a hybrid war against Russia for a rather long time, a war that is being refracted in its hot displays, in actions of the Kiev regime,” he said. Lavrov noted that Moscow is taking necessary measures in order to prevent attempts to turn Ukraine into an even sharper threat to Russia’s security.

“Of course, we watch how discussions develop in the West about further pumping of Ukraine with increasingly serious weapons, including offensive weapons. Of course, we see it all, and we not merely observer, but take necessary measures in order to prevent further attempt to turn Ukraine into an even sharper threat for our security, and to prevent the Kiev regime from prevailing in its policy of discrimination and destruction of rights of all those Ukrainian citizens and former Ukrainian citizens, who felt involved in Russian history, Russian culture and Russian traditions,” he said. Lavrov underscored that Russia is watching this process, while the armed forces take all necessary measures to prevent Western plans from coming to fruition. “And they will not [come to fruition],” Lavrov underscored.

“..the neo-cons ultimate intent: Poland, already mobilising a 200,000 man military force, would become the new proxy (and the largest army in Europe) in a wider European war against Russia.”

• ‘At War with Russia’, Europe Peers Down the Abyss (Alastair Crooke)

‘Serendipitously’ – at this moment of Davos decay – a raucous, distracting noise started up: Abrahams M1s and Leopards for Ukraine. German FM, Baerbock declares Germany and the EU family are “at war with Russia”. The noise, as usual, succeeds in obscuring any wider picture. Yes, point one, we do have mission creep: We won’t send offensive weapons, but then they did. We won’t send long-range weapons M777), but then they did. We won’t send multiple missile launch systems (HIMARS), but then they did. We won’t send tanks, but now they are. No NATO boots on the ground, but they have been there since 2014.

Point two: Colonel Douglas Macgregor, a former adviser to a U.S. Defence Secretary, says that the mood in Washington has notably changed: DC gets it – the U.S. is losing the proxy war. This fact however, Macgregor says, still remains ‘under the radar’ in respect to the main-stream media. The more important point Macgregor makes is that this late ‘awakening’ to reality is not shifting the stance of the neocons hawks, one jot. They want escalation (as do one small faction in Germany – the Greens; as well as a leading faction in Poland and, as usual, the Baltic states). And Biden has surrounded himself with State Department war-hawks.

Point three: the contrarian ‘reality’ is that the ‘uniformed’ militaries of Europe also ‘get it’: that Ukraine is losing, and now are very worried by the prospect of escalation – and of war engulfing eastern Europe. The tanks have nothing to do with their calculus about the war outcome. The professionals know the Abrams or Leopards will neither change the course of the war, nor will they arrive before it is too late to alter anything. The European military cadre do not want war with Russia: They know the EU has no ‘surge’ manufacturing capacity to sustain war against Russia beyond a very small window. Popular opinion, and key strands of élite opinion in Germany (and elsewhere in Europe), are becoming hardened in opposition to the war. The concern is that the emphasis on sending exactly German tanks, with their dark symbolism of past bloody battles, is intended to bury any prospect of any future German relationship with Russia – for good.

Further, German military officers worry that a failing Ukrainian military might fall back to the Polish border – and even across it – before the tanks are delivered. The tanks then would be absorbed by the Polish military. There is a thought in these military circles that this might, in fact, be the neo-cons ultimate intent: Poland, already mobilising a 200,000 man military force, would become the new proxy (and the largest army in Europe) in a wider European war against Russia.

“..nearly every possible scenario gamed in Washington and Brussels finishes with NATO like a giant, armoured version of Wile E. Coyote plunging to the depths of the Grand Canyon..”

• Trials and Tribulations of the Collective West (Escobar)

Every military analyst with an IQ over room temperature knows all those Leopards will be duly incinerated – or better yet, captured, and dissected by Russian military specialists. So what happens next is yet another vector of the – very successful so far – U.S.-unleashed German de-industrualization racket: the Americans will invade the German industrial military complex with their “much improved” Abrams – which may perhaps arrive in 2024, when only a rump Ukraine may still exist, or never arrive at all. So no need for the Abrams to prove themselves in actual combat – as in being captured and/or incinerated. Rumors in Washington advance that the U.S. “strategy” in Ukraine – extensively detailed by endless think tank reports – had to be adapted. It’s not about “defeating Russia” anymore, but providing Kiev with the means to “scare” Russia.

The Russian General Staff must be trembling in their boots. Meanwhile, in real life, nearly every possible scenario gamed in Washington and Brussels finishes with NATO like a giant, armoured version of Wile E. Coyote plunging to the depths of the Grand Canyon. And that happens even if the much ballyhooded “Big Arrow” Russian offensive starts in a few days or weeks, or never starts at all. Arguably the Russian General Staff has concluded a long time ago there’s no point in reducing Ukraine to rubble in a matter of hours – something they could easily accomplish. Thus the fabled mincing machine approach – offering no excuses for NATO to “escalate” (which they continue to do anyway, as Jens “War is Peace” Stoltenberg is so fond of parroting).

The trick is that NATO’s escalation overdrive, as it happens, is somewhat controlled by the Russian General Staff, which is always calculating which optimal maneuvers will consume NATO’s military hardware faster. Call it a Russian version of the popular axiom “frog in a boiling pot doesn’t realize it’s being cooked until it croaks.” Absolute desperation is now graphically extrapolating into attacks on Iran. Both Russia and China have Iran as their key ally in West Asia for the whole, complex process of Eurasia integration; strategic partnerships interlink the trio. So attacking the Ministry of Defense in Isfahan with drones – total fail – and bombing an IRGC convoy of humanitarian aid crossing from Iraq to Syria is a serious U.S.-Israel-coordinated provocation.

Essentially these are also attacks against Russia and China. Israel cannot lift its hand or foot without U.S. permission. Iranian intel may be able to establish how the Straussian neo-con and neoliberal-con cabal in charge of U.S. foreign policy authorized if not ordered these attacks, which of course are directly connected to NATO’s desperation in Ukraine. When in doubt, just come back to Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski: “Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia and perhaps, Iran, an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by contemporary grievances. It would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc.” And mirroring Ukraine/Russia there’s of course Taiwan/China.

“..this risky step is especially profitable for arms barons.”

• Sending Tanks To Kiev Not To Help Resolve Ukraine Conflict – Erdogan (TASS)

The West’s supply of weapons, including tanks, to Kiev will not bring about the solution to the Ukraine conflict, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said in a televised interview with the TRT channel on Wednesday. “I cannot say that I believe that sending tanks is a step towards resolving [the Ukraine conflict],” he said. “We expect Western countries to back our calls for negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.” Referring to the buildup of arms supply to Kiev, Erdogan emphasized that “this risky step is especially profitable for arms barons.” Nevertheless, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that weapons supplies to Ukraine may create conditions for “a negotiated peaceful solution” in the future.

On January 25, the United States pledged to send 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Kiev. On the same day, Germany confirmed that it would transfer 14 Leopard 2A6 tanks to Ukraine and would allow other countries to re-export these combat vehicles to Ukraine. According to German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, the Leopard 2 tanks would be sent to Ukraine “before the end of March.” Norway, Slovakia, the UK, Poland, and France have also pledged to provide Kiev with Western-made tanks. Kiev expects to receive up to 140 tanks from 12 countries as the first batch. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that tensions around the situation in Ukraine are rising due to Washington’s decisions and US pressure on other countries.

‘Nothing is forbidden in principle, provided that it will be useful, in particular, for the Ukrainian armed forces, will not lead to an escalation of the conflict and strikes on Russian territory..”

• Zakharova: Jet Deliveries To Kiev Not Leading To Escalation ‘Absurd’ (TASS)

French President Emmanuel Macron’s statement that the possible delivery of military aircraft to Ukraine will not lead to an escalation is absurd, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing on Wednesday. “We’ve paid attention to the words of French President [Emmanuel] Macron, who, responding to a question about the possible supply of aircraft to Ukraine, said: ‘Nothing is forbidden in principle, provided that it will be useful, in particular, for the Ukrainian armed forces, will not lead to an escalation of the conflict and strikes on Russian territory, will not weaken the defense capability of France itself.’ Forgive me, but it’s some kind of absurdity,” Zakharova said, “Sorry, but Paris’ readiness to supply Kiev with fighter jets was confirmed by the French Defense Minister [Sebastien Lecornu] who visited Ukraine on January 28.”

“Is the French president really sure that supplying the Kiev regime with arms, heavy weapons and aircraft for combat operations will not escalate the situation? I refuse to believe that a grown man can have such logic,” the diplomat added, “Such statements only increase the already irrepressible appetite of [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky’s regime, which, by shelling hospitals and massacring civilians, has clearly demonstrated that Western military injections – how did Mr. Macron put it? – will not lead to an escalation of the conflict. Well, of course, they ‘give’ peace. Obviously these planes are going to be used to drop cookies and candy, right? I have a different feeling.”

The diplomat stressed that Russia strongly condemned “the increasingly aggressive and bellicose rhetoric of Western officials, who have not been shy about making loud statements on the Ukrainian conflict lately.” “I understand them. They feel the deadlock of their own position and the lack of arguments to explain to their own citizens what they have done, in particular to the European continent. Hence the tearing and shouting, trying to find some kind of explanation for what they are doing,” she added.

4 articles on Russian gas to EU that seem to contradict each other. Is the volume going up or down? You tell me.

• Russia Ramps Up EU-Bound Gas Transit Via Ukraine (RT)

Russian energy giant Gazprom has increased its daily volume of gas transit through Ukraine to the EU by 20% for the first time in weeks, the company announced on Wednesday. Supplies jumped to 29.4 million cubic meters (mcm) on February 1, compared to 24.5 mcm pumped the previous day through the Sudzha entry point, which remains the only operating interconnector in Ukraine. “Gazprom supplies Russian gas for transit through the territory of Ukraine in the amount confirmed by the Ukrainian side through Sudzha – 29.4 mcm as of February 1,” Gazprom spokesperson Sergey Kupriyanov told reporters. Kupriyanov added that an application had been rejected for the Sokhranovka transit point, which previously served as a key gas transit route through Ukraine and handled about a third of the Russian gas flowing through the country to the EU.

Ukraine shut down transit through Sokhranovka in early May, citing “interference by the occupying forces.” Russian gas deliveries to the EU via Ukraine were slashed from last May in the aftermath of the bloc’s sweeping anti-Russia sanctions, and stood between 40 to 43 mcm per day. This year, shipments declined sharply from 35.5 mcm in early January to 24 mcm by the end of the month. Analysts attributed the lower volumes to warm winter temperatures in Europe and to high stocks of gas in underground storage facilities. Imports have somewhat rebounded after gas prices began to rise on expectations of colder weather next week. Flows are still about 27% lower than levels at the start of the winter gas season last year, according to Reuters estimates.

Meanwhile, requests for Russian gas from Ukraine to Slovakia via the Velke Kapusany border point also surged to 23.7 mcm compared to 18.6 mcm the previous day, Ukrainian transmission system data showed. Gas transit through Ukraine remains the only route for Russian supplies to the countries of Western and Central Europe after sabotage attacks in September rendered the Nord Stream pipeline inoperable. Gazprom also exports gas via the Turkish Stream and Blue Stream pipelines to Southern and South-Eastern Europe.

The article above: “Russian energy giant Gazprom has increased its daily volume of gas transit through Ukraine to the EU by 20% for the first time in weeks..”

This article: “Russia’s pipeline gas exports to Europe slumped to a new monthly record-low in January, falling by nearly 30% from December..”

• Russia’s Pipeline Gas Exports To Europe Slump To Record Low (ZH)

Russia’s pipeline gas exports to Europe slumped to a new monthly record-low in January, falling by nearly 30% from December due to lower prices on the spot market, according to Reuters calculations. Russia’s gas giant Gazprom has seen exports to Europe decline since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year as Russia cut off gas supplies to a number of countries in Europe. Russia cut off supply to Poland, Bulgaria, and Finland in April and May, slashed gas deliveries via Nord Stream to Germany in June, then off Nord Stream supply in early September. Russia still sends some gas via pipelines to Europe via one transit route through Ukraine, and via TurkStream.

This month, Gazprom has reduced pipeline gas transit flows to Europe via Ukraine on some days. Analysts have said that the lower pipeline flows were the result of lower demand for gas under long-term contracts, considering the milder weather in parts of Europe earlier in January and the fact that spot supply is currently cheaper. Per Reuters calculations, which are based on daily data of flows from Russia via the transit route through Ukraine and via TurkStream, pipeline gas exports from Russia to Europe dropped to around some 1.8 billion cubic meters (bcm) in January, down from 2.5 bcm in December.

Gazprom hasn’t released January export data yet, but its exports to Europe via pipelines plunged to a post-Soviet low in 2022, according to data from the Russian firm calculated by Reuters. Last year’s Russian gas exports slumped by 45% year on year to reach 100.9 bcm in 2022. Germany, Russia’s biggest customer of gas before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, doesn’t import any Russian gas via pipeline now. Norway became Germany’s single-largest natural gas supplier in 2022, overtaking Russia, as total German gas imports dropped by 12.3% compared to 2021.

“..Transneft workers are currently repairing the damage caused by the attack and that the pipeline continues to operate normally..”

• Ukraine Attacks Pipeline Pumping Russian Oil To EU – Transneft (RT)

A Ukrainian rocket has reportedly struck near an oil pumping station connected to the Druzhba pipeline in Russia’s Bryansk Region, the operator Transneft claimed on Wednesday. Speaking to the TASS news agency, Igor Demin, a spokesman for the company, said the shell landed on the territory of the Novozybkovo station in the late hours of January 31. He noted that the attempted attack ultimately failed to cause any casualties or hinder the work of the pipeline. According to initial reporting by the Mash news agency, the strike was carried out using a Tochka-U rocket. Workers reportedly found a 20-meter crater on the territory of the station, which lost power as a result of the attack.

Demin explained that the Novozybkovo oil pumping station, which was the apparent target, is only temporarily used at peak times on the Druzhba pipeline and was last turned on in 2022 for only a few hours. He noted that Transneft workers are currently repairing the damage caused by the attack and that the pipeline continues to operate normally. The Druzhba (Friendship) oil pipeline is one of the longest in the world and connects eastern parts of Russia to several points in Europe, including Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and Germany.

The segment that was apparently being targeted by Kiev’s forces on Tuesday is located some 39km from the Russian-Ukrainian border and leads directly into Belarus, where it branches off into two sections: one going to Germany and Poland and the other delivering oil to Ukraine, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and the Czech Republic. Germany, however, has not received any oil since the start of the year after Berlin and Poland both pledged to stop all imports of Russian crude. According to Bryansk Governor Aleksander Bogomaz, Kiev’s forces also launched several artillery strikes against civilian targets across the region on Tuesday. Although no casualties have been reported, Bogomaz said the attack damaged over a dozen residential buildings, a WWII memorial, and a shop. The strikes also cut off power to several villages, he said, later adding that these issues had been promptly resolved by emergency services.

Price cap is $60. The average price for Urals oil blend was at $49.50 per barrel.

• EU-Owned Tankers Boost Russian Oil Shipments (RT)

Exports of Russian oil loaded in Western-insured tankers surged in January as prices for Moscow’s flagship Urals grade stood below the cap set by the Group of Seven (G7) countries and the European Union, Reuters reported, citing tracking data. The price cap on Russian seaborne oil exports of $60 per barrel was introduced by the EU, G7 countries, and Australia on December 5. It bans Western companies from providing insurance and other services to shipments of Russian oil unless the cargo is purchased at or below the set price. The average price for Urals oil blend was at $49.50 per barrel on a free-on-board basis (FOB) on Tuesday for shipments from the port of Primorsk, and at $47.83 FOB from Novorossiisk, traders told the outlet. Western tankers are set to carry more than 9.5 million tons of crude from the Russia, hitting a multi-month high in January as soaring Asian demand pushes up prices.

This month’s loadings of crude from Russia and Kazakhstan from only two ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk are expected to reach the highest volumes since 2019, amounting to 7.4 million tons, traders’ data showed. A quarter of all Urals shipments from Russia in January were handled by EU-owned vessels mainly from Greece, twice as much as in December. Meanwhile, other Russian export blends such as Sokol and ESPO are trading well above the price cap, with Sokol being contracted at about $78 per barrel and ESPO trading at over $72 per barrel as of Tuesday. Russia has been opposed to the price cap initiative from the start. Last month, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree banning the supply of Russian oil and oil products to foreign buyers that “directly or indirectly” mention the cap in their contracts. The ban came into force on February 1, and will be valid for at least five months.

The blessings of bias.

• “Objectivity Has Got To Go” (Turley)

Columbia Journalism Dean and New Yorker writer Steve Coll decried how the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was being “weaponized” to protect disinformation. In an interview with The Stanford Daily, Stanford journalism professor, Ted Glasser, insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He rejected the notion that journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality.” Thus, “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.” Lauren Wolfe, the fired freelance editor for the New York Times, has not only gone public to defend her pro-Biden tweet but published a piece titled “I’m a Biased Journalist and I’m Okay With That.”

Former New York Times writer (and now Howard University Journalism Professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones is a leading voice for advocacy journalism. Indeed, Hannah-Jones has declared “all journalism is activism.” Her 1619 Project has been challenged as deeply flawed and she has a long record as a journalist of intolerance, controversial positions on rioting, and fostering conspiracy theories. Hannah-Jones would later help lead the effort at the Times to get rid of an editor and apologize for publishing a column from Sen. Tom Cotten as inaccurate and inflammatory. Polls show trust in the media at an all-time low with less than 20 percent of citizens trusting television or print media. Yet, reporters and academics continue to destroy the core principles that sustain journalism and ultimately the role of a free press in our society.

Notably, writers who have been repeatedly charged with false or misleading columns are some of the greatest advocates for dropping objectivity in journalism. Now the leaders of media companies are joining this self-destructive movement. They are not speaking of columnists or cable hosts who routinely share opinions. They are speaking of actual journalists, the people who are relied upon to report the news. Saying that “Objectivity has got to go” is, of course, liberating. You can dispense with the necessities of neutrality and balance. You can cater to your “base” like columnists and opinion writers. Sharing the opposing view is now dismissed as “bothsidesism.” Done. No need to give credence to opposing views. It is a familiar reality for those of us in higher education, which has been increasingly intolerant of opposing or dissenting views.

“..they had also helped it “get new customers,” including “government agencies” in the case of Metabiota..”

• Hunter Biden’s Metabiota Labs Received $10s of Millions in DOD Contracts (GP)

According to USASpending.gov, a database of spending by the US federal government, the Department of Defense (DoD) awarded tens of millions of dollars in contracts to Hunter Biden’s Metabiota labs. Metabiota is a San Francisco-based health startup known for tracking epidemics. The company is mentioned on the Hunter Biden laptop. Hunter Biden’s investment firm, Rosemont Seneca, invested $500,000 in Metabiota, and the company went on to raise several million more from investment giants like Goldman Sachs. The firm has biolabs in several countries, including Ukraine, where Hunter played an important role in the company’s activities. In their pitches to potential backers, Hunter bragged that they had done more than just get financing for the company; they had also helped it “get new customers,” including “government agencies” in the case of Metabiota, according to Daily Mail.

Government data shows Hunter Biden secured millions in government funding and grants for Metabiota after he became part owner of the firm. Metabiota was one of the 46 Ukrainian Bioweapon labs that the US government partnered with, per DC Draino. Following Hunter Biden and his company, Rosemont Seneca’s acquisition of a 50% ownership stake in the Metabiota, the government contracts and grants started flowing. Before the Rosemont Senaca agreement, Metabiota was given a $349,513 contract from the government. Following Hunter’s involvement, Metabiota was awarded a contract with the Department of Defense worth $23.9 million. Before Hunter was involved, Metabiota received a $649,882 grant from the US government. After Hunter became involved, Metabiota received several million in government grants.

According to Daily Mail, Hunter Biden connected a corrupt Ukrainian gas company called Burisma with the Metabiota for an undisclosed “scientific project.” The outlet added that Metabiota is supposedly a medical data company, but in 2014, Metabiota Vice President Mary Guttieri contacted Hunter explaining how they could “assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia,” an unusual ambition for a biotech corporation. “Thanks so much for taking time out of your intense schedule to meet with Kathy and I on Tuesday. We very much enjoyed our discussion. As promised, I’ve prepared the attached memo, which provides an overview of Metabiota, our engagement in Ukraine, and how we can potentially leverage our team, networks, and concepts to assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia and continued integration into Western society,” the email reads.

“[n]o one thinks this strategy of putting Hunter Biden front and center is smart… No one, including the White House, thinks this is a smart strategy.”

• Hunter Biden Demands Investigations Into Reporting On His Laptop (JTN)

First son Hunter Biden and his legal team sent a slew of letters to government agencies on Wednesday demanding investigations into the dissemination of materials from his laptop, while also threatening to sue Fox News host Tucker Carlson. A source familiar with the letters, obtained by CBS News, indicated to the outlet that the scandal-plagued Biden intends to take the initiative in combatting negative press and Republican-led investigations. “He is not going to sit quietly by as questionable characters continue to violate his rights and media organizations peddling in lies try to defame him,” the source said. The letter to Carlson demands that the Fox host retract statements describing a “money laundering scheme” connected to Biden allegedly paying his father “rent” money.

The letter acknowledges that other outlets have retracted such claims. Other letters went to the Delaware attorney general, the IRS, and the Department of Justice seeking investigations related to the publication of the laptop, the authenticity of which has since been verified. The letters appear to mark a direct admission from Biden’s legal team that the laptop does indeed belong to Biden and that the contents are authentic. “This failed dirty political trick directly resulted in the exposure, exploitation, and manipulation of Mr. Biden’s private and personal information,” read the letter to Delaware AG Kathy Jennings. “Mr. Mac Isaac’s intentional, reckless and unlawful conduct allowed for hundreds of gigabytes of Mr. Biden’s personal data, without any discretion, to be circulated around the Internet.

Specifically, Biden wants investigations into laptop repairman John Paul Mac Isaac, at whose store the younger Biden left the laptop, as well as various Trump aides connected to the publication of its contents. Biden alleges that many of these aides may have broken the law in obtaining and distributing the laptop’s contents. Biden also has asked the IRS to review the tax-exempt status of Marco Polo, the organization operated by former Trump aide Garrett Ziegler that published a lengthy report on the laptop’s contents. Reports emerged in December that Hunter Biden was mounting a legal and media blitz to combat conservative criticism and allegations of legal improprieties. A source at the White House expressed concerns to the Washington Post about Hunter’s plans at the time, saying “[n]o one thinks this strategy of putting Hunter Biden front and center is smart… No one, including the White House, thinks this is a smart strategy.”

The “Russia thing”.

• The Press Versus The President, Part Three (CJR)

Trump’s firing of Comey on May 9 was nothing like his hit TV show, The Apprentice. The boss couldn’t move on to the next episode, nor would the ousted employee quietly walk away. The firestorm that erupted in the aftermath of Comey being axed required a do-over, in part because of shifting White House explanations for his dismissal. So Trump sat down two days later for an interview with Lester Holt, the Nightly News anchor for NBC. But instead of tamping down the controversy, it fanned the Russia flames for the media. A tweet from the show on May 11 set the narrative for the Holt interview: “Trump on firing Comey: ‘I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.’” Those few words, by suggesting Comey’s firing was aimed at getting the FBI inquiry off his back, provided fresh ammunition to anti-Trumpers.

The full interview, which was available online, presented a more nuanced story, and appeared to reflect what his advisers told him: firing Comey could prolong, not end, the investigation. Trump told Holt, soon after the controversial words, that the firing “might even lengthen out the investigation” and he expected the FBI “to continue the investigation,” to do it “properly,” and “to get to the bottom.” The media focused on the “Russia thing” quote; the New York Times did five stories over the next week citing the “Russia thing” remarks but leaving out the fuller context. The Post and CNN, by comparison, included additional language in their first-day story. The White House was upset and repeatedly asked reporters to look at the full transcript, according to a former Trump aide and two reporters.

On the heels of the NBC interview came a leak of Comey’s notes of private conversations with Trump, including one at a dinner in January where Trump was said to have asked the FBI director to pledge loyalty to him. The Times piece reported that the inquiry into Trump and Russia “has since gained momentum as investigators have developed new evidence and leads.” Comey, once out of office, had his internal memos leaked to the Times, hoping that might “help prompt” the appointment of a special counsel, he testified to Congress a few weeks later. At the same hearing, he criticized the paper’s story of February 14, one of whose authors was Michael Schmidt, the reporter who received his leaked memos. On June 8, at a Senate hearing, Comey was asked whether the Times story was “almost entirely wrong.” He said yes.

“.. there were a total of 1,250 serious adverse events for every 1 million people vaccinated..”

• Why Did UK Wait 3 Months to Disclose Data Showing COVID Vaccine Risks? (CHD)

A Jan. 25 report by the U.K government showed the risks of serious adverse effects from mRNA COVID-19 vaccines largely outweigh the benefits, according to John Campbell, Ph.D., who analyzed the U.K. data used for the report. U.K. health officials knew about the data in October 2022, but didn’t change their recommendations for the shots until the day they released the report and announced they will no longer recommend COVID-19 boosters for healthy people under 50. They also said they will discontinue free distribution of the primary two-shot series. In his latest video, Campbell, a retired nurse teacher in England, summarized the results of the report, which calculated how many people had to be vaccinated in different age groups and risk profiles in order to avoid a single hospitalization.

Campbell compared the results to peer-reviewed data on serious adverse events reported following mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. The report was based on an October 2022 UK Health Security Agency presentation to the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). Despite the “massive shift” in vaccine risk-benefit analysis that was already clear in the October presentation, Campbell said, “the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation carried on without modification to the autumn booster program.” “My question to the Joint Committee on Vaccination Immunisation is why?” said Campbell, who noted that the agency is 85% funded by industry.

Summary of the analysis: ‘number needed to vaccinate’ versus risk of serious adverse events The U.K. study analyzed the “number needed to vaccinate” by age group to prevent either hospitalization or “serious hospitalization,” which is when someone needs oxygen or a ventilator — though Campbell noted that it is common, in general, to oxygenate in hospitals. For example, healthcare providers would need to vaccinate 43,000 people in the 50 to 59 age group to prevent one hospitalization and more than 256,400 people in that age group to prevent a serious hospitalization. Campbell compared the numbers in the report to a peer-reviewed study published in Vaccine that re-analyzed the original phase 3 trials for Pfizer and Moderna to identify serious adverse events of special interest following the mRNA vaccines.

In the Moderna trials, the risk of serious adverse events was 15.1 per 10,000 doses. In other words, 1 in 662 vaccines administered produced a serious adverse event. In the Pfizer trials, the risk of serious adverse events was 10.1 per 10,000, which breaks down to 1 in 990 vaccines administered producing a serious adverse event. On average, there were 12.5 serious adverse events per 10,000 people vaccinated, which is 1 in 800. That means there were a total of 1,250 serious adverse events for every 1 million people vaccinated, according to the study.

“What we see with Farrar is a recipe for disaster when it comes to imposing experimental medical technology on the population during public health crises..”

• Is a Mad Scientist Set to Become Chief Scientist at the WHO? (CHD)

The World Health Organization (WHO) last month named Dr. Jeremy Farrar its new chief scientist. Farrar will step down Feb. 25 as director of the Wellcome Trust, the largest funder of medical research in the U.K. and one of the largest in the world. Farrar and the Wellcome Trust are less well-known relative to similar global public health giants, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — and that’s “to people’s detriment,” investigative journalist Whitney Webb told journalist Kim Iversen on a recent episode of “The Kim Iversen Show”: “If what is essentially a power grab by the World Health Organization gets put into force, then Jeremy Farrar will have essentially total authority to impose upon member states what medical responses they would have to implement in the event of another pandemic.”

Webb referred to proposals in the works to transform the WHO from an advisory organization to a global governing body whose policies would be legally binding for member states in the case of a global health emergency. While at Wellcome Trust, Farrar was the architect of several key WHO COVID-19 pandemic policy directives, including lockdowns, masking and mass vaccination. “What we see with Farrar is a recipe for disaster when it comes to imposing experimental medical technology on the population during public health crises. This is a guy who was very much invested in this stuff,” Webb said. It’s something out of ‘Brave New World’ Iversen asked about links between the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.

While there is no direct link, Webb said, “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a lot of these other organizations, including the Wellcome Trust, are very much pushing an agenda that I would argue is sort of the fusion of Big Pharma and Big Tech.” “Essentially Big Pharma is looking for new markets and new products and Big Tech can help them accomplish that,” she said. Over the last several decades, Big Pharma and “billionaire philanthropists” have come to dominate the WHO, Webb told Iversen. They are the ones, “in my opinion, executing this power grab more than the WHO itself,” she said. There are also key ties between Big Tech and national security agencies, Webb said. Farrar has connections to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, the Pentagon’s research arm, Webb said.

Stefania Maurizi has been tirelessly filing FOIA requests for years in Sweden, Britain, the United States and Australia.

• Sweden Destroyed Substantial Part Of Its Documents On Julian Assange (Maurizi)

A substantial portion of the documents on Julian Assange were destroyed by the Swedish Prosecution Authority, which investigated him for rape in a criminal investigation opened and closed three times between August 2010 and November 2019. The materials destroyed were correspondence between the Swedish Prosecution Authority (SPA) and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) which was providing the SPA with support on the case, since Assange was under investigation in Sweden but had been in London since 2010. The correspondence between the SPA and CPS is absolutely crucial to understand and reconstruct what really happened in the Swedish rape investigation. That investigation was ultimately dropped once and for all without Assange ever being charged, but for almost a decade has deprived him of the empathy of public opinion.

Especially the empathy of that segment of the public more sensitive to the WikiLeaks revelations on war crimes and torture, often the segment also more mindful of women’s rights. The highly anomalous handling of the Swedish case by prosecutor Marianne Ny resulted in justice for no one, contributed to the devastation of Assange’s health, cost British taxpayers at least 13.2 million pounds to keep the Ecuadorian embassy under siege by Scotland Yard from 2012 to 2015, and resulted in the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention decision that Sweden and the United Kingdom had arbitrarily detained Assange since 2010, in the case of Sweden the first time the UN Group had ever made such a decision in the country’s history. In September 2019, the then UN Special Rapporteur on Torture who had investigated the case, Nils Melzer, listed fifty perceived due process violations, including “Proactive manipulation of evidence”, in an official letter to the Swedish government.

[..] The fact that documents were destroyed by the Swedish Prosecution Authority has just surfaced thanks to our lengthy FOIA litigation, and comes almost six years after that very same FOIA litigation unearthed that key documents were destroyed by the Crown Prosecution Service. It is now clear that both of the authorities handling the Swedish case, the SPA and the CPS, destroyed a large part of their email exchanges. Why? What did those documents contain and on whose instructions were those materials destroyed? Now more than ever some sort of explanation is urgently needed, considering that the United States is currently acting through the Crown Prosecution Service itself in the extradition proceeding against Julian Assange.

Since 2015, we have been engaged in trench warfare in Sweden, Britain, the United States and Australia to access the full documentation on the case under FOIA, represented by seven lawyers. This investigative work has allowed us to find the answer to one of the key questions around the Swedish case: why did Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny, who reopened the rape case in September 2010 after Stockholm’s chief prosecutor, Eva Finné, had immediately dismissed it (because, in her judgement, the suspect’s conduct “disclosed no crime at all”) refuse to question Assange in London for six years?

Baldwin

JAMES BALDWIN addresses the the University Of Cambridge during his epochal debate with William F. Buckley in 1965.

This is oratory and content of the very very highest order.
To listen is to learn. pic.twitter.com/FCaXVJH6MF

— Michael Warburton (@MichaelWarbur17) February 1, 2023

Skills
https://twitter.com/i/status/1620844273347477504

Elephant Birth

Elephant gives birth in the Masai Mara reserve in Kenya pic.twitter.com/M1DyPXGHmL

— Gabriele Corno (@Gabriele_Corno) February 1, 2023

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Debt Rattle January 26 2023

Jan 262023

January 26, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, Baerbock, F-16, mining, mRNA, NATO, tanks, Türkiye, vaccine deaths 93 Responses »

Elliott Erwitt California, USA 1956

• Is This Western War On Russia Simply Stupidity? (Alastair Crooke)

• What Heavy Weapons For Ukraine Will Mean On The Battlefield (Khodaryonok)

• Ukraine Demands Jets And Missiles (RT)

• Ukraine Will Now Push For F-16 Fighter Jets (Hill)

• Russia, Now The South And East’s Counterpoint To Israel (Mazaheri)

• NATO Has Already Destabilized Europe, Asia Is Next (Lukyanov)

• German Foreign Minister Just Essentially Declared War On Russia (ZH)

• Ukrainian Nationalism as a ‘Cold War Weapon’ (Chung)

• Türkiye To Be Out Of NATO In Months – Erdogan Ally (RT)

• The Worst Article You’ll Ever Read (Space Worm)

• US Africa Leaders Summit Promises More Exploitation For Africa (GZ)

• Breaking The Silence: Do mRNA Vaccine Harms Outweigh Benefits? (Sladden)

• 217,000 Americans Killed By The Covid Vaccines In Just The First Year (Kirsch)

• We Have the Evidence; Time to Hold Government Criminals Accountable (Tom Renz)

• Australia Has Not Written to US on Assange For 6 Months (Lauria)

Make viruses

VIDEO NOW BLOWING UP THE INTERNET; Pfizer director on camera saying they are “mutating" COVID-19 Virus to increase infectiousness. UNREAL!

"That is Not What We Say to the Public" …

"People Won’t Like That’ … ‘Don’t Tell Anyone"pic.twitter.com/pGP8dCkNNf

— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) January 26, 2023

Pay it forward
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616057896604672003

South Africa Suspended vaccines
https://twitter.com/i/status/1618204753271611394

CJ Hopkins

"The masks were brilliant & pure theatre." (i.e. NOT science).
.@CJHopkins_Z23, Playwright.pic.twitter.com/p4rQBWWb94

— Robin Monotti (@robinmonotti) January 25, 2023

Vaxx Street Boys
https://twitter.com/i/status/1618292478150594561

“..NATO’s existence derives its validation from the management of perceived ‘threats’ that in a circular process of thinking precisely were provoked by NATO enlargement – an enlargement done ostensibly to manage such ‘threats’..”

• Is This Western War On Russia Simply Stupidity? (Alastair Crooke)

The US proxy war on Russia is stupid. Professor of Law at the LSE, Peter Ramsay, in a review of Benjamin Abelow’s book, How the West Brought War to Ukraine, outlines how the latter eschews the simplistic ‘Putin invaded Ukraine’ narrative — attributing primary responsibility for the war to less proximate causes: ‘American governmental stupidity and blindness’ and ‘the deference and cowardice’ of Europe’s leaders toward this American governmental ‘stupidity’. “Although Abelow describes the self-deluding arrogance and hypocrisy of Western policy very clearly, he does not attempt to explain how; or why US policy has become so stupid or European leaders so cowardly. He appears dumbfounded by it, describing the level of irrationality involved as ‘almost inconceivable’”.

Nevertheless, we must conceive of it, because it has happened, and it is bringing revolutionary change to a Middle East busily re-configuring itself as an integral part of the BRICS+ bloc; a transition, which in itself, portends a huge shift to the framework of geo-economics. At the bottom, the core “monumental stupidity” — for which Abelow quotes British Academic Richard Sakwa — is not something concealed, but rather, is one of those ‘truths’ that are ‘out there: hiding in the open’. It is that NATO’s existence derives its validation from the management of perceived ‘threats’ that in a circular process of thinking precisely were provoked by NATO enlargement — an enlargement done ostensibly to manage such ‘threats’. In short, it is a circular closed-loop argument.

Not only is there no threat from Russia that is independent of American policy, but it is also the expansion of NATO to ‘meet the threat from Russia’ that creates the very threat that expansion was supposed to meet. Similarly, it is this type of circular reasoning which makes ‘Putin into Hitler’ — a self-fulfilling epithet that is created because NATO expansion is firstly ‘reasonable (a ‘Value’, and a national Right), and therefore that anyone contesting it therefore must be ‘fascist’. Abelow asks simply, “What sane person could believe that putting a Western arsenal on Russia’s border would not produce a powerful response?” At its root, Abelow laments that the insanity that bothers him intensely is that US policy-makers recognize the circularity of their argument (he gives examples), yet will not countenance for a moment any argument against it. They know ‘one thing’, but say ‘another’, he says.

But the charge of insanity, Ramsay opines, “whilst appealing rhetorically, tends to obscure a vital aspect of the narcissism that drives Western policy: the aspect in which the self-regarding sense of virtue is informed by the dominant mindset of our time – ideas which influence not just ‘experts’ – but political leaders and entire populations.” This Narcissism and smug self-regard are indeed a key factor, but we need fully to understand their role by turning to Leo Strauss, whose thinking so shaped a generation of American conservatives (the Straussians).

“This gives us a figure of 1,800 tanks, which must be considered an absolute minimum..” “..the German manufacturer concedes that only 29 of them could be shipped before the summer of 2023..”

• What Heavy Weapons For Ukraine Will Mean On The Battlefield (Khodaryonok)

Another thing to consider is probable Ukrainian losses during offensive operations. The average daily losses of an armored unit in this case stand at 10 to 15%. About 15 to 20% of incapacitated tanks are typically irrecoverable losses, while the rest require repairs (general maintenance for 30 to 50%, medium-level repairs for 15 to 30%, and an overhaul for 10 to 20%). Simply put, at least another 300 tanks are required to offset losses during combat operations. This gives us a figure of 1,800 tanks, which must be considered an absolute minimum. These are very approximate and somewhat simplistic calculations, yet they give us ballpark figures. Great Britain and Poland have officially pledged an armored company each, respectively consisting of up to 14 tanks. Germany will supply a similar amount, while the US is preparing the supply of 31 Abrams heavy weapons.

At a recent meeting of the US-led Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, officials from 12 countries discussed sending a total of about 100 tanks to Kiev, if Berlin were to give the green light, which, according to an ABC report, it has done. Rheinmetall could additionally supply a total of 139 tanks to Ukraine, including 88 Leopard 1s and 51 Leopard 2A4s, yet the German manufacturer concedes that only 29 of them could be shipped before the summer of 2023. What impact will NATO’s tanks have? Will all these tanks see combat any time soon? Let’s consider the example of the M1 Abrams, which is seen as one of the symbols of US military power. A small number of these tanks manned by poorly trained crews and lacking full-scale maintenance and supply infrastructure support would most likely yield negative results.

They will fail to change Ukraine’s fortunes on the battlefield, while images of burning American tanks will likely hurt US public opinion. Thus, one of America’s premier weapons, the pride and joy of its defense industry, will be humiliated on the battlefield for a long time. This is something the Pentagon can’t allow to happen under any circumstances. Therefore, before any actual fighting happens, evacuation teams, tank repair units, and spare part supplies must be in place, while crews must receive superior training to handle American tanks. Last but not least, the first deployment of US main battle tanks in Ukraine must be accompanied by a significant Ukrainian army success, at least at the tactical level, which would necessitate no fewer than 200–300 (maybe even 400–500) tanks.

Otherwise, supplying the M1 Abrams to Ukraine makes neither military nor political sense. Transferring them one company (10 to 15 tanks) at a time would only mean that this equipment will burn on the battlefield without making any significant impact or even catching anyone’s attention. So far, Russia has not had any significant trouble dealing with enemy equipment. Since the launch of the military operation, according to Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov, the Russian Ministry of Defense spokesman, Russian forces have destroyed 376 planes, 203 helicopters, 2,944 UAVs, 402 anti-aircraft missile systems, 988 MLRVs, and 3,898 field artillery guns and mortars. As well as 7,614 tanks and other armored vehicles.

“Right now we are seeing a sharp change in sentiment among the political elites of European countries..”

• Ukraine Demands Jets And Missiles (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has called on Western countries to supply fighter jets and long-range munitions, urging for more weapons just hours after the United States and Germany agreed to send heavy battle tanks. Speaking for a video address on Wednesday, Zelensky thanked his German and American counterparts for their decision to send tanks, but quickly shifted to Ukraine’s needs for additional arms. “We must also open deliveries of long-range missiles to Ukraine, it is important – we must expand our cooperation in artillery,” he said, adding that his country also requires fighter jets, and that “speed and volume are key now.”

Washington’s decision to send 31 Abrams tanks broke a stalemate with Berlin, which had refused to send its own Leopard 2 tanks or allow allies to re-export them to Kiev unless the United States followed suit. Ukrainian officials had long pleaded for heavier armor, specifically the M1 Abrams, among other advanced weapon systems from the West. A top advisor to Zelensky, Mikhail Podolyak, told the Telegraph on Wednesday that he expects Ukraine’s patrons to provide long-range missiles eventually, claiming they would be “part of the negotiation process” for the next weapons delivery to Kiev. “Right now we are seeing a sharp change in sentiment among the political elites of European countries, who understand that we need to transfer all equipment, including armored vehicles,” he said. “And we will reach, I am sure, no doubt, an agreement on long-range missiles.”

The advisor added that “Only these missiles will make it possible to destroy almost the entire infrastructure of the Russian rear army.” Citing unnamed sources, the Telegraph reported that the UK government has “not ruled out” longer-range missiles, but currently has no plans to supply them. Washington has previously refused Ukraine’s requests for ATACMS surface-to-surface missiles, which have a range of around 190 miles (305km), though it is unclear whether that, like the M1 Abrams decision, might be subject to change.

Moscow has repeatedly called on Western countries to halt the flow of weapons into Ukraine, saying the arms will only prolong the conflict and make a negotiated settlement impossible. Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, condemned the upcoming tank shipments as “another blatant provocation,” insisting the hardware will be “destroyed” by Russian forces.

“Can’t blame the Ukrainians for wanting more and more systems,” Kirby said. “It’s not the first time they’ve talked about fighter jets, but I don’t have any announcements to make on that front.”

• Ukraine Will Now Push For F-16 Fighter Jets (Hill)

With main battle tanks from the U.S. and Germany now headed to Ukraine, Kyiv is now focusing on securing modern fighter jets from Western allies. Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s Defense secretary, told The Hill that he was optimistic about receiving Western fighter jets such as the American F-16s, which Ukrainians have sought since early last year when Russia first invaded. “Every type of weapon we request, we needed yesterday,” Sak said. “We will do everything possible to ensure Ukraine gets fourth-generation fighter jets as soon as possible.” Reuters first reported the news that Ukraine was setting its sights on fighter jets.

Ukraine scored a major win on Wednesday with the announcement from President Biden that the U.S. will donate 31 American-made M1 Abrams main battle tanks to Kyiv. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday also said he would supply Ukraine with the country’s Leopard 2 tanks and approve the transfer of other Leopards from European allies. The tanks were the latest hurdle for Western allies, who have cautiously approved more and more advanced weaponry for Kyiv, from HIMARS launchers to the Western battle tanks. Western fighter jets and longer-range artillery units, which would allow Ukraine to strike Russian forces deeper in occupied territory, will likely be the next debate for NATO.

Ukraine currently uses Soviet-era fighter jets, including MiG-29s, which became a point of controversy last March when the U.S. declined to facilitate the transfer of MiGs from Poland to Kyiv. So far, the U.S. has resisted sending the F-16 fighter jets and does not appear ready to announce their transfer anytime soon. But national security adviser John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday the U.S. was “in constant discussions” with Ukraine and “we evolve those as the conditions change.” “Can’t blame the Ukrainians for wanting more and more systems,” Kirby said. “It’s not the first time they’ve talked about fighter jets, but I don’t have any announcements to make on that front.”

WWIII

According to @JoeBiden WW3 starts with the shipment of “offensive equipment” like “tanks”to Ukraine.

Welcome to WW3!pic.twitter.com/mc7flIH5Ob

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) January 25, 2023

Focus on China.

• Russia, Now The South And East’s Counterpoint To Israel (Mazaheri)

There is no doubt that were Israel threatened with the forced implementation of even something as fundamentally just and decent as a two-state solution they would resort to using nuclear bombs. They are dead-set on waging war until they get all the Palestinians’ lands, and they have made it clear that there is no place for non-Jews (non-White Jews, actually) inside this land they have stolen as if human mores had not changed since the 19th century. In the blink of a post-corona eye, Russia has become something quite similar. As former Russian ex-president Dmitry Medvedev just reiterated, if the Russian nation is seriously threatened with defeat nuclear weapons will be used in self-defence. Other than North Korea, only Israel feels the need to use such language.

Russia and North Korea are genuine nations, ones whose existence was not entirely contrived by and for Western imperialism, but in many ways Russia has become a new Israel. To be more accurate – Russia is now the counterpoint and antithesis of Israel. Just as Israel, the poisoned blade of Western capitalism and imperialism, faces and constantly thrusts east and south, now Russia is the South and East’s defensive rampart facing West. Russia has gone from post-1991 kowtowing to Western liberal democracy – earnestly trying to join them – to realising that the West has declared total war against them. How can there be a reconciliation? War in the Donbass has been going on for nearly a decade – that’s not the blink of an eye. Anyway, the West simply does not remove sanctions once in place – look at decades of Western policy towards Iran, Cuba, North Korea, etc. – barring total capitulation.

The West only removed sanctions on China because they absurdly thought that China had gone capitalist and that it had all just been Mao’s doing. Sanctions are now back in force, as Xi has reflected the broad persistence of socialism in China. The alleged end of history was based on the idea that only one type of civilisation existed any more, but it’s clear that there is a false idolatry of a West which exists in only in theoretical words and not in practical deeds, and there is a tolerant and truly diverse non-West which insists on national sovereignty and the right to cultural differences. The West’s outpost in Asia is well-known – Israel – and it is not just a rich colonialist’s whim and folly. Israel serves as an imperialist foothold to destabilise the entire Muslim world and Africa – training, funding and supporting all types of awful monarchies and puppet governments – and for these crimes they suffer internally from the awful, unstable Apartheid they have created.

The surprising development is that non-Western bloc’s frontier has shifted West: from 1979 onwards it was clearly Iran. Forty years of war on and around Iran failed to topple the revolution, and drained the West of vital tangible and moral resources. The non-Western frontier has now been pushed back to Russia. Russia is the country that – for reasons which are diametrically and morally the opposite for the reasons of Israel’s existence – will now serve as the non-Western bloc’s frontier, a frontier which will be in long-term combat and instability.

Schlanger

Why NATO is commited to a permanent war against Russia:

pic.twitter.com/j9fiZQNXJF

— Vera Van Horne (@VeraVanHorne) January 24, 2023

“The open discourse on Ukraine as a testing ground for US weapons and Russia as an example to China suggests that the Americans see the current campaign as a test run for different means of influencing the future..”

• NATO Has Already Destabilized Europe, Asia Is Next (Lukyanov)

Currently, the world’s attention is focused on the European theater of war, but some very interesting events are also unfolding in Asia. Japan is the most illustrative. Until recently, the country was reluctant to peddle a militant attitude either in terms of weaponry or even in using economic pressure. Things are changing, and this is a strong indicator of the transformation of the international arena. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has just completed a tour of the US and the leading countries in Western Europe. Contrary to usual custom, there was virtually nothing but military rhetoric everywhere. In a policy statement delivered in Paris, Kishida stressed that the security of Europe and the Indo-Pacific region are inextricably linked and must be ensured collectively.

Other statements in Rome, London and Washington confirmed the new trend: In the security field, Japan no longer intends to limit itself exclusively to its relationship with the US, though it forms the basis of its entire defense strategy. Now, Tokyo seeks a much broader engagement with the main Western bloc (NATO), subject to its gradual reorientation towards the Pacific space. This is a new scheme. Since the Cold War, the security system in Asia has been America-centric but not unified, instead based on different groups of countries or bilateral relationships. The US has been the fixed element, the others have varied. Recent innovations such as the “QUAD” involving Japan, India, Australia, and an “Anglo-Saxon club” of the Americans, British and Australians have not disturbed the usual logic. However, something else is emerging – the transfer to greater Asia of the principle of a consolidated alliance, moreover, with European allies to whom the region poses no security threats.

At the heart of the strategy is the logic of Washington, which proceeds from the inevitability of strategic rivalry with China and Beijing’s Asian neighbours, or more precisely, its most bellicose ones. There is no doubt in the US that Beijing will be a major challenge to the American position in the world for years or decades to come. It is discussed in doctrinal documents and it guides the military’s entire posture. Russia is seen as an acute, but short-lived and transient, threat because of what Washington sees as its limited aggregate capabilities. The open discourse on Ukraine as a testing ground for US weapons and Russia as an example to China suggests that the Americans see the current campaign as a test run for different means of influencing the future. In this context, the question of NATO’s status naturally arises.

80 years ago, 25 million Russians were killed by Germans. Baerbock is too young and uneducated to remember that. But every Russian knows. And German tanks are back fighting Russia.

• German Foreign Minister Just Essentially Declared War On Russia (ZH)

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock bluntly stated in fresh remarks that Western allies are fighting a war against Russia. The remarks came during a debate at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Tuesday amid discussions over sending Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. While Baerbock’s words were largely ignored in mainstream media, a number of pundits on social media noted with alarm that the German foreign minister just essentially declared war on Russia. Ironically other German officials have long sought to emphasize their country is not a party to the conflict, fearing uncontrollable escalation. Contradicting this official stance, Baerbock said the quiet part out loud, and introduced the comments with: “And therefore I’ve said already in the last days – yes, we have to do more to defend Ukraine. Yes, we have to do more also on tanks.”

And that’s when she asserted: “But the most important and the crucial part is that we do it together and that we do not do the blame game in Europe, because we are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other.” Interestingly, both Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his former defense minister who recently resigned, Christine Lambrecht, have been seen as weak on arming Ukraine – repeatedly declaring an unwillingness to get pulled deeper into the proxy war aspect to the conflict. But now it seems the more hawkish Baerbock is willing to at this point be much more open with the reality of what’s happening. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova seized on the comments, saying this is yet more proof that the Western allies were planning a war on Russia all along…

“If we add this to Merkel’s revelations that they were strengthening Ukraine and did not count on the Minsk agreements, then we are talking about a war against Russia that was planned in advance. Don’t say later that we didn’t warn you,” Zakharova said. One thing is for sure, things are moving fast…

From Russia
https://twitter.com/i/status/1618014795755839491

“..spend much of the war collaborating closely with the Germans. They had no issues with the Nazi ideology for they too believed that a solution was found in returning to a ‘pure race.’”

• Ukrainian Nationalism as a ‘Cold War Weapon’ (Chung)

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was founded in 1929 in East Galicia (located in Poland at the time) and called for an independent and ethnically homogenous Ukraine. From the beginning, the OUN had tensions between the young radical Galician students and the older military veteran leadership, who grew up in the more lenient Austro-Hungarian Empire. The younger generation had only known oppression under the new Polish rule and underground warfare. As a result, the younger faction tended to be more impulsive, violent and ruthless. During this period, Polish persecution of Ukrainians increased and many Ukrainians, especially the youth who felt they had no future, lost faith in traditional legal approaches, in their elders and in Western democracies who were seen as turning their backs on Ukraine.

The OUN assassinated Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki in 1934. Among those tried and convicted in 1936 for Pieracki’s murder, were OUN’s Stepan Bandera and Mykola Lebed. Both escaped when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. Support for the OUN increased as Polish persecution of Ukrainians continued. By the beginning of the Second World War, the OUN was estimated to have 20,000 active members and many times that number in sympathizers in Galicia. In 1940 the OUN would split into the OUN-M led by Andriy Melnyk, and OUN-B headed by Stepan Bandera which made up most of the membership in Galicia and consisted mainly of youth.

In August 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the non-aggression pact known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, dividing Poland. Eastern Galicia and Volhynia were reunified with Ukraine, under the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In June 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded Western Ukraine, there were many Western Ukrainians who welcomed the invading Nazis as their ‘liberators.’ It should be noted here that this was not a sentiment predominantly shared by the rest of Ukraine, who fought in or alongside the Russian Red Army against the invading Nazis. Both the OUN-M and OUN-B would spend much of the war collaborating closely with the Germans. They had no issues with the Nazi ideology for they too believed that a solution was found in returning to a ‘pure race.’

In the case of Ukraine, this pure race consisted of a somewhat romanticised concept of ‘ethnic Ukrainian,’ based on the golden age of Kievan Rus’. The OUN believed that the ‘pure ethnic Ukrainian race’ were the only true descendants of the royal bloodline of the Rurik dynasty that ruled Kievan Rus’. And rather than looking at Belarusians and the Russians as their brothers and sisters who shared the same ancestry, the OUN viewed them more so as ‘ethnic impostors’ so to speak of this pure bloodline. This can be seen today with Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups attacking Ukrainian ethnic Russians for the past nine years in Ukraine.[1] An issue that is almost entirely ignored in the West.

“Türkiye is among NATO’s oldest members, and people calling for its exit are “talking about destroying” the bloc..”

• Türkiye To Be Out Of NATO In Months – Erdogan Ally (RT)

Türkiye could leave NATO within months, a politician there has claimed, citing “provocations” by the US-led military bloc against his nation. Ethem Sancak is a Turkish businessman of Arab descent who is active in politics and who local media describe as close to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He was commenting on an anti-NATO campaign in Türkiye that the Vatan (Patriotic) Party, where he holds the position of vice chairman for foreign relations, has organized. “NATO forces us to take these actions with their provocations,” he stated, predicting that his party’s goal of getting Türkiye to leave the alliance may come to fruition “in five-to-six months.”

Speaking to the news website enbursa.com on Tuesday, Sancak noted that being part of the bloc puts Türkiye on a collision course with fellow member and longtime rival Greece, and also at risk of being pulled “into a whirlpool in the Middle East.” The recent Koran-burning stunts in some European nations make leaving NATO “a necessity,” he argued. The Danish-Swedish right-wing politician and activist Rasmus Paludan staged a protest last weekend in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, which involved the burning of the holy book of Islam. The incident sparked outrage in the Muslim world, while the Turkish president said Stockholm’s choice to permit the action meant that Ankara would not support Sweden’s request to join NATO.

Sancak said that Turks were increasingly perceiving the US as a nation that pursues “the most hostile and destructive policies.” At the same time they “feel great sympathy towards Russia.” A survey conducted by the Turkish pollster Gezici at the end of last year showed that 72.8% of Turks wanted their nation to have good relations with Russia. Less than a quarter said they believed Moscow to be hostile towards Türkiye. Omer Celik, the spokesman for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), rejected the idea, which he called “mind-blowing.” Türkiye is among NATO’s oldest members, and people calling for its exit are “talking about destroying” the bloc, he told journalists on Wednesday.

The Vatan Party believes that Türkiye would be better off if it dropped its attempts to become a member of the EU and forged good relations with China and Russia instead. It also advocates overcoming differences with Iran and Syria, nations that the US is targeting with crippling sanctions and other forms of pressure. Sancak joined the Vatan Party last year, though his involvement in politics goes back decades to his days as a university student and activist. His business interests include pharmaceuticals and cosmetics as well as media, with the TV channel 360 and the daily newspaper Star among his best-known acquisitions.

“..4000-word New York Times opinion piece titled Nancy Pelosi, Liberated and Loving It by Maureen Dowd.”

• The Worst Article You’ll Ever Read (Space Worm)

It’s not a pretty sight when pols lose power. They wilt, they crumple, they cling to the vestiges, they mourn their vanished entourage and perks. How can their day in the sun be over? One minute they’re running the world and the next, they’re in the room where it doesn’t happen. Donald Trump was so freaked out at losing power that he was willing to destroy the country to keep it. I went to lunch with Nancy Pelosi at the Four Seasons to find out how she was faring, now that she has gone from being one of the most powerful women in the world — second in line to the presidency — and one of the most formidable speakers in American history to a mere House backbencher. I was expecting King Lear, howling at the storm, but I found Gene Kelly, singing in the rain. Pelosi was not crying in her soup.

She was basking as she scarfed down French fries, a truffle-butter roll and chocolate-covered macadamia nuts — all before the main course. She was literally in the pink, ablaze in a hot-pink pantsuit and matching Jimmy Choo stilettos, shooting the breeze about Broadway, music and sports. Showing off her four-inch heels, the 82-year-old said, “I highly recommend suede because it’s like a bedroom slipper.” Fans dropped by our booth to thank Pelosi, and women in the restaurant gave me thumbs-ups, simply because I was sitting with her. “I wonder, Maureen, girl to girl, I keep thinking I should feel a little more, I don’t know,” she hesitated, looking for the right word. Over the course of our conversation, she said the word was “regretful,” and she thought about it in church, and during morning and night prayers, but she just wasn’t feeling it. “It’s just the time, and that’s it. Upward and onward. I’m thrilled with the transition. I think it was beautiful.”

Her daughter Alexandra, a documentary filmmaker, assured me that it’s not an act. “I can tell you, in my 52 years of being alive on this earth, I have never had the kind of weekend I’m having right now,” she said last Sunday. “My mother is at peak happiness. I’ve never seen her like this. It’s like she’s floating through the air. It’s fascinating for my kids because they don’t know this person. “I think you want to enjoy being old. I don’t think you want to spend your final days fighting with Kevin McCarthy about how many seats you get on Appropriations.” Before I could broach the humiliating spectacle of McCarthy abasing himself to the loonies on the far right and being tortured by preposterous Matt Gaetz, Nancy Pelosi brought up her successor. She looked at me, her brown eyes widening, and said: “I’m sad for Kevin that he couldn’t do that in a way that brought a little more dignity to the House of Representatives. It’s strange.” She added, “What happened was inexplicable.”

“..opened the door for US and like-minded investment” in the respective countries’ vast “green” mineral wealth..”

• US Africa Leaders Summit Promises More Exploitation For Africa (GZ)

The US Africa Leaders Summit held this December in Washington DC provided a platform for the Biden administration to advance its agenda across the African continent. With topics ranging from COVID-19 to climate change to “closing the digital divide,” to “strengthening democracy,” Washington’s agenda united around the belief that African collaboration with US multinational corporations would prove mutually beneficial, and advance long-term “progress.” The weekend of discussions was conducted Davos-style, with heads of US industry seated directly beside African heads of state and members of the Biden administration. At the top of the corporate titans’ agenda was the relaxation of regulatory requirements, which they argued would make the continent more “inviting” for outside investment.

One set of regulations that the US would especially like to loosen are those relating to the mining sector. This includes miners’ rights, child labor laws, slavery laws, environmental regulations and mineral tariffs. Deloitte, a US corporate giant and strategic partner of the World Economic Forum, published a paper in 2018, “The Future of Mining in Africa,” which spells out the agenda Washington is advancing across the continent. The paper argued that facilitating the digital transformation known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution would require African nations to loosen mining regulations intended to protect human rights and the environment. The paper lamented that the mining sector “continues to experience scrutiny by regulators in Africa,” which supposedly “creates uncertainty, delayed investment in mining expansion, and stops the development of new mines.”

Deloitte went on to argue that Africa needs “to move away from enforcing [regulatory] compliance for compliance sake and move toward delivering value.” It was clearly implied that that “value” would be determined by corporate America, and not necessarily the African people. The script put forward by Deloitte helped set the stage for the US Africa Leaders Summit this December. There, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken presented a memorandum of understanding to DRC Foreign Minister Christophe Lutundula and Zambian Foreign Minister Stanley Kakubo. The agreement, according to Blinken, “opened the door for US and like-minded investment” in the respective countries’ vast “green” mineral wealth, referring to massive deposits of nickel, cobalt, and copper.

“The DRC produces more than 70 percent of the world’s cobalt. Zambia is the world’s sixth-largest copper producer, second-largest cobalt producer in Africa,” Blinken said. “Global demand for critical minerals is going to skyrocket over the next decades…Electric vehicles help reduce carbon emissions and they support the global response to the climate crisis,” the Secretary of State continued, draping the plundering of Africa’s wealth in friendly green-speak.

Mining

This is what the West’s green, sustainable “Digital Revolution” looks like in Africa. I spoke to Siddharth Kara about the very bottom of the EV supply chain & @BillGates new copper mining project in Zambia — for @TheGrayzoneNews: https://t.co/l6BA2FaQJB
pic.twitter.com/1LA51ZH1TB

— Jeremy Loffredo (@loffredojeremy) January 25, 2023

“..the lead researcher said they were not going to publish these findings because it may affect funding from pharma..”

• Breaking The Silence: Do mRNA Vaccine Harms Outweigh Benefits? (Sladden)

‘Double-jabbed’ Malhotra originally supported the program, until a series of events sent him digging into the evidence. What he discovered alarmed him and resulted in the publication of two evidence-based, peer-reviewed papers along with a call for the immediate suspension of the Covid mRNA roll-out. He tells his story: ‘Despite being one of pharma’s biggest critics I could not have expected or conceived of the possibility that these vaccines, these new vaccines, could cause harm. So very early on I was one of the first to have two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, and I helped out at a vaccine centre in January 2021. About a month later I had a conversation with a friend of mine, film director Gurinder Chadha (who was) vaccine hesitant. I said to her, “Listen, traditional vaccines are still one of the safest pharmacological interventions in the history of medicine. That doesn’t mean that all vaccines are completely safe.

No drug is completely safe. But when you compare them to other pharmacological interventions I’ve talked about and campaigned on, for example diabetes drugs, blood pressure pills or statins, they are far, far safer.”’ Malhotra further explains his view during a Good Morning Britain interview. ‘I said, “There are rational concerns for vaccine hesitancy and irrational concerns. The rational concerns are when looking at what the pharmaceutical industry has done for years – they’ve been found guilty of fraud on many occasions – and prescribed medications are the third most common cause of death after heart disease and cancer.” So, I was being open, and I felt compassion for people who were vaccine hesitant. And I said, “In my opinion, as it stands at the moment, traditional vaccines are the safest.”

‘Six months later my father suffered an unexplained … cardiac arrest. The post-mortem didn’t make sense, he was a very fit guy, yet he had very severe narrowings of two of his coronary arteries. I had known his cardiac history inside out, we had done imaging on him a few years earlier. I found myself thinking “hold on a minute, he’s got a rapid progression of coronary artery disease when he’s doing really well during lockdown, walking 10,000 steps a day and eating well. This doesn’t make sense.“ And I could only attribute it at the time to stress, I couldn’t think of any other reason.’ Over following months, emerging data led Malhotra to question whether the vaccine was linked to his father’s death. The first was an abstract published in Circulation (November 8, 2021) by US cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr Steven Gundry, who followed several hundred of his patients after the mRNA (Moderna/Pfizer) jabs.

Gundry found that inflammatory markers correlated with heart disease risk went through the roof. On average, that change increased the risk of those people having a heart attack or stroke within the next five years, from 11 per cent up to 25 per cent. This increase in risk is massive. The next event raised more alarm bells for Malhotra. ‘Within two weeks of that abstract, a whistle-blower contacted me from a prestigious institution in the country, and said that a group of researchers had accidentally found through imaging studies that mRNA vaccines were increasing heart attack risk through inflammation, but the lead researcher said they were not going to publish these findings because it may affect funding from pharma. ‘I then felt a duty and contacted GB News saying, “There is a Circulation abstract but also something else I’ve heard,” and I spoke about it on GB news. That interview went viral … with me raising questions and saying, “We need to investigate this.”’ The push back was strong.

“..most experts would estimate the all-cause mortality death toll from the COVID vaccines to be in the range of 500K to 600K. So the global cost of life from these vaccines is on the order of 10 to 12 million people..”

• 217,000 Americans Killed By The Covid Vaccines In Just The First Year (Kirsch)

A new peer-reviewed paper was just published that finally gets the truth out: Over 217,000 Americans were killed by the vaccine in the first year after rollout The rate of severe adverse events reported in the survey by the survey participants (13.4%) after adjusting by a factor of 2 for categorization error, is still 5X more than was reported by Pfizer in their Phase 3 trial. Since deaths from the vaccine were higher in 2022, most experts would estimate the all-cause mortality death toll from the COVID vaccines to be in the range of 500K to 600K. So the global cost of life from these vaccines is on the order of 10 to 12 million people. But nobody wants to talk about it because that’s the way science works. When you can’t argue with the data, you censor the speaker like the FDA and CDC did to me.

They are actively trying to get the paper retracted because it destroys the narrative. I’m certain they will succeed because journals are under intense pressure to censor any anti-narrative paper. The problem is that Mark’s survey was entirely consistent with my surveys. If they want to have the paper retracted they need to show us THEIR surveys. But of course, they don’t have any surveys because they are too afraid of the results. So they will use hand-waving arguments like “I don’t like the methodology” or some nonsense like that instead of gathering their own data. They will NEVER show us survey data that supports their narrative because it isn’t there. That’s why there are no success anecdotes. NOBODY can give me the name of a US geriatric practice where all-cause deaths plummeted after the vaccines rolled out. In every case, they went the wrong way. The narrative is unraveling at an accelerated pace but the medical community is still fighting the truth.

“FBI has proven itself to be the Deep State’s brownshirts to DOJ’s Gestapo.”

• We Have the Evidence; Time to Hold Government Criminals Accountable (Tom Renz)

How many more young people need to die before doctors and politicians stop pretending that they don’t know what’s going on? Here’s a selection of deaths in just the last two weeks: 16yo High School Flag Football Player 18yo Rugby Player 18yo Baseball Player 18yo Basketball Player 18yo Football Player 18yo MMA phenom 20yo College Tennis Player. But it’s not just young athletes that are literally dropping like flies. Recent “sudden deaths” include a 30yo former WWE and reality TV star, a 31yo American Idol singer, a 33yo TikTok celebrity, a 42yo former football player, a 48yo award-winning Scottish chef, a 54yo Filipino celebrity chef, a 56yo former supermodel, and a beloved 67yo character actor.

These aren’t the aged and infirm (although they’re dying in record numbers too). A 14yo boy has a heart attack. A 16yo girl “dies suddenly” in her sleep…TWO DAYS after her 36yo aunt! Mothers, Fathers-to-be, and toddlers are at risk too. “Vibrant” 33yo women are “dying suddenly.” Even “walking too briskly” to class is now deadly, if you’re a military academy football player that was forced to participate in the experiment. Sometimes people don’t even make it out the door after getting jabbed. And think you’re safe if you ran “vaccine” clinics and dosed thousands with the gene jab? Think again. The data are clear: these injections are killing people at an unprecedented rate. And what has the response been? More gaslighting. Raising money to pay the hospital responsible for losing your child. And urging people to learn CPR.

Maybe we’ll finally get some action now that politicians are dying too. Then again, its curious how it’s never the ones who have been behind this operation nor anyone in their families. It’s time for Republicans to heed calls to start standing up for We the People and demanding an end to this genocide and holding those responsible criminally accountable. If you still need further proof that our government is being run as a criminal enterprise, look no further than the FBI. Between doing its best to take down a sitting president to colluding with Big Tech to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election and agreeing to cover up Joe’s Top Secret document scandal until after last November’s midterms (while at the same time ginning one up to smear and further harass President Trump), FBI has proven itself to be the Deep State’s brownshirts to DOJ’s Gestapo.

It should be no surprise to anyone, then, that FBI director Christopher Wray was a Davos darling at the annual World Economic Forum gathering, braying about how FBI has embedded itself into Big Tech to expand its surveillance and censorship operations. It’s time to reinstate the Smith-Mundt Act and limit the federal government’s ability to surveil Americans without a court-ordered warrant specific enough to meet the Fourth Amendment standards.

“When the Federal Parliament reconvenes in February, the Government will need to explain – in much more detail – when we can expect to see Mr. Assange return to Australia..”

• Australia Has Not Written to US on Assange For 6 Months (Lauria)

A Freedom of Information request by a member of the Australian parliament has revealed that the Australian government has not engaged in correspondence with the United States regarding the case of imprisoned publisher Julian Assange for at least the last six months. MP Monique Ryan filed the requests with the offices of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Attorney General Mark Dreyfus and Foreign Minister Penny Wong and no documents were returned, indicating that there has been no written communication with the U.S. over the fate of Assange since at least last May, reported former Australian Senator Rex Patrick in the Australian publication Michael West Media. The absence of written correspondence does not exclude that Australian officials may have engaged in verbal communications with U.S. counterparts about Assange over the past half year, though written notes are normally made on such meetings.

The freedom of information request asked for all correspondence or other records of communication sent after May 23, 2022 between Albanese and President Joe Biden; Dreyfus and U.S. Attorney General Marrick Garland and Wong and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Albanese raised Assange supporters’ hopes in November when he responded to a question in Parliament from MP Ryan by saying: “The government will continue to act in a diplomatic way, but can I assure the member for Kooyong that I have raised this personally with representatives of the United States government. My position is clear and has been made clear to the US administration that it is time that this matter be brought to a close.”

Hopes for Australian action on Assange were further raised when Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist John Lyons told an ABC program at the end of December that he understood Assange would be back home in Australia within two months. Ryan told Michael West Media: “If the Albanese Government was serious about working to secure an end to the US prosecution and Mr. Assange’s release, then he and his Ministers would have raised the matter formally, in writing, with their counterparts at the top levels of the US Government. It is now confirmed that they have not done so via any formal means.” Ryan said that she intends to question Albanese about the absence of written communication. “When the Federal Parliament reconvenes in February, the Government will need to explain – in much more detail – when we can expect to see Mr. Assange return to Australia,” she said.

Color change
https://twitter.com/i/status/1618298413338234881

Pendulums

Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and (seemingly) random motion

[full video + explanation: https://t.co/sDeFDH1KBc]pic.twitter.com/aO2a5WJ3vL

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 25, 2023

Flip-flop

He learned how to do a backflip step by step. The result is amazing…

pic.twitter.com/sU3A8gJJ9y

— Tansu YEĞEN (@TansuYegen) January 24, 2023

Cats are awesome
https://twitter.com/i/status/1617980726502359040

In 2016, a study based on 28 Greenland sharks determined by radiocarbon dating of crystals within the lens of their eyes, that the oldest of the animals that they sampled had lived for 392±120 years and was consequently born between 1504 and 1744

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Predictions 1: War

Jan 102023

January 10, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 3:14 pm Finance Tagged with: Assange, Baltic, Condoleezza Rice, desperation, Gonzalo, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, war 18 Responses »

John Koch Conversation 1962

I don’t really like to do predictions, not without tea leaves and crystal balls, but I do have one. My prediction is that NATO will -try to- expand/widen/deepen the Ukraine conflict in 2023, and not just a little. They have to, because Ukraine as a theater is failing, no matter how much additional weaponry they import into it. And because Ukraine is running out of -under 65- boots on the ground.

Next step will be to actively involve the NATO members who despise Russia most. Ergo: the Baltic States. Problem with that is there’s not a lot of people there. But it’s just a hop across the border from Lithuania to Poland. And Poland is a whole different story. And, like the Baltics, but unlike Ukraine, a NATO member.

Here’s NATO’s own numbers: Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014-2022)

Poland has the weaponry, and the trained personnel. No threat to Russia, but you could sell is as such. Poland is just what Washington likes. And Raytheon, Northrop etc. The US cannot send US troops into the theater. And neither can Western Europe. Unpalatable. Countries like Germany, France and Holland won’t even think about sending troops. NATO depends on eastern European cannon fodder. Western Europe, like the US, will only send their second hand armoury. But not so, Poland. Here’s from Politico, November 21 2022:

Meet Europe’s Coming Military Superpower: Poland

Poland’s paranoia about Russia prompted it to eschew the prevailing Zeitgeist across much of Europe that conventional warfare was a thing of the past. Instead, it is building what are now on track to become the EU’s heftiest land forces. “The Polish army must be so powerful that it does not have to fight due to its strength alone,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on the eve of Poland’s independence day. It’s a shift that has resonated with Poland’s indispensable ally.

“Poland has become our most important partner in continental Europe,” a senior U.S. Army official in Europe said, citing the crucial role Poland has played in supporting Ukraine and in shoring up NATO defenses in the Baltics. While Germany, traditionally America’s key ally in the region, remains a linchpin as a logistical hub, Berlin’s endless debates over how to resurrect its military and lack of a strategic culture have hampered its effectiveness as a partner, the official said. As Germany continues to debate the details of what it calls the “Zeitenwende,” or strategic turning point triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Poland is already making substantial investments.

Warsaw has said it will raise its target defense spending from 2.4% of GDP to 5%. Meanwhile, Germany, which spent about 1.5% of GDP on defense last year, is debating whether it can maintain NATO’s 2% goal after it exhausts a €100 billion defense investment fund it approved earlier this year. Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak pledged in July that his country would have “the most powerful land forces in Europe.” It’s well on its way. Poland already has more tanks and howitzers than Germany and is on course to have a much larger army, with a target of 300,000 troops by 2035, compared with Germany’s current 170,000.

Today, Poland’s military is about 150,000 strong, with 30,000 belonging to a new territorial defense force set up in 2017. These are weekend soldiers who undergo 16 days of training followed up by refresher courses. They were initially seen as a bit of a joke, but Ukraine’s success in using mobile militia equipped with anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles now makes the idea seem much more sensible. “Today, those doubts have disappeared,” Blaszczak said during a recent swearing-in ceremony for new territorial troops.

Unlike Germany, which struggles to attract new troops, Poland’s recruiting drive is gaining attention. “The Poles have a much more positive attitude towards their military than Germany because they had to fight for their freedom,” said Gustav Gressel, a former Austrian military officer and security scholar now with the European Council on Foreign Relations. “In military circles no one questions the quality of the Polish army.”

We would do well to see all this in the light of what Julian Assange said about Afghanistan in 2011. NATO wants a forever war, not a successful one.

NATO, the US and the rich part of Europe, have nothing to lose. They send plenty of mostly useless weapons into the Ukraine theater, but as long as there are no coffins arriving at their (air)ports, their people won’t complain. On the contrary, their media make sure that they keep cheering it all on. While making sure it remains murky how much it exactly costs them.

I found this very peculiar, through Andrew Korybko:

Top Ukrainian & Former US Officials Are Panicking That $100 Billion In Aid Isn’t Enough

Ukrainian Ambassador to the UK Vadim Prystaiko [..] telling Newsweek: “The West now has a unique chance. There are not many nations in the world who would allow themselves to sacrifice so many lives, territories and decades of development for the purpose of defeating the archenemy…This is what I mean: All hands on deck, every single thing we can spare to help Ukraine win.”

You have a unique chance to have our people shot to bits. We will be happy to sacrifice them for your goals. Just keep giving us weapons, that’s all you have to do. Note the use of the term “archenemy”. For a country whose language and culture is still very much alive for perhaps more than half of Ukrainians. The 2014 US coup unseated a president elected by a majority of the population.

For some reason the US dragged two of their biggest old warmongers out of their respective proverbial basements: former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Who co-wrote this in the WaPo:

Time Is Not On Ukraine’s Side

Under current circumstances, any negotiated cease-fire would leave Russian forces in a strong position to resume their invasion whenever they are ready. That is unacceptable. The only way to avoid such a scenario is for the United States and its allies to urgently provide Ukraine with a dramatic increase in military supplies and capability — sufficient to deter a renewed Russian offensive and to enable Ukraine to push back Russian forces in the east and south.

Congress has provided enough money to pay for such reinforcement; what is needed now are decisions by the United States and its allies to provide the Ukrainians the additional military equipment they need — above all, mobile armor. The U.S. agreement Thursday to provide Bradley Fighting Vehicles is commendable, if overdue. Because there are serious logistical challenges associated with sending American Abrams heavy tanks, Germany and other allies should fill this need. NATO members also should provide the Ukrainians with longer-range missiles, advanced drones, significant ammunition stocks (including artillery shells), more reconnaissance and surveillance capability, and other equipment. These capabilities are needed in weeks, not months.

It’s starting to look like a desperate push. But it will come. Much stronger than today. Desperation has that kind of effect. The suffering will be in Ukraine and soon likely in Poland and Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia. Western Europe will pay through higher food- and energy prices. The US elites will be sitting pretty.

There is zero doubt that we will have to come back to this, a lot, in the near future. But that’s sort of what you do with predictions. They foretell actual events and conversations.

Gonzalo Lira talked about these things back in November 2022:

To be continued. As long as the people in the west remain oblivious to their own destiny, fate, reality. We are all used to having unipolar control of the world. But those times are over.

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Debt Rattle January 2 2003

Jan 022023

January 2, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:03 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, BRI, China, COVID, Elon Musk, Fauci, Pelosi, Scott Atlas, zero non Covid 45 Responses »

Edward Hopper Burly Cobb’s House, South Truro 1930-33

• Drone Attacks Continue On Kyiv And Eastern Ukraine (BBC)

• Nancy Pelosi Is Stepping Down As US House Speaker, And Few Will Miss Her (RT)

• Twitter’s COVID-19 Censorship Led to Loss of Life – Dr. Scott Atlas (ET)

• Fauci Fibbed on the Day Everything Changed (Tucker)

• How China Changed Its Zero-COVID Policy to a ‘Zero Non-COVID’ Policy (ET)

• States Grand Jury to Hold Big Pharma Accountable for Covid Vaccines (BN)

• Elon Musk Says He Is ‘Open’ to Idea of Buying Out Major Media Companies (BN)

• In 2023 It Will Be All About The Dollar (Macleod)

• USD Exchange Rates Hit Foreign Exchange Reserves (WS)

• My Prediction On What 2023 Will Bring (Varoufakis)

• 1 Year On, EU Alternative To China’s Belt And Road Fails To Deliver (SCMP)

• New Year, New Things (Denninger)

Free Assange

“My expectation is in the next two months or so, Julian #Assange will be released.”

Hear, hear! ABC Global Affairs Editor John Lyons on @abcnews John talks about Julian’s declining health and his optimism for Albanese action.

It’s time. #EnoughIsEnough #dropthecharges pic.twitter.com/ONDsDFRcrV

— Australian Assange Campaign (@AssangeCampaign) January 1, 2023

Difference between BBC and RT is remarkable.

• Drone Attacks Continue On Kyiv And Eastern Ukraine (BBC)

Air raid sirens sounded in Kyiv on Sunday night as the latest wave of drone and missile strikes from Russia continued. An attack which began shortly before midnight targeted critical infrastructure, Kyiv regional governor Oleksiy Kuleba said. One man in Kyiv was injured by debris from a destroyed Russian drone, the capital’s mayor said. The attacks have continued for several days over the New Year period. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Armed Forces said 400 Russian soldiers had been killed in on New Year’s Eve in Makiivka, in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region. In a rare move, pro-Russian authorities admitted to casualties. But Russia refused to confirm the number of deaths, and the BBC is unable to verify this.

It comes after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky wished for victory and a “return to normal” for Ukraine in 2023. In a new year address on Russian TV, President Vladimir Putin said Russia would fight to protest its sovereignty and independence. Kyiv’s military issued a warning of the latest attacks just after 01:00 (23:00 GMT) on Monday. “Air attack on Kyiv… Air alert is on in the capital,” it announced on the Telegram social media site. Serhiy Popko, the city’s military administration head, told people to stay in shelters. Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported an explosion in Kyiv’s northeastern Desnyanskyi district and said emergency services were attending. “An injured 19-year-old man was hospitalised in the Desnyanskyi district of the capital,” he said.

Mr Kuleba said the weapons were Iranian-made Shahed drones, adding that they were “targeting critical infrastructure facilities”. “The main thing now is to stay calm and stay in shelters until the alarm is off,” he said. It comes after a barrage of attacks on New Year’s Eve, which killed at least one person in Kyiv. Russia has been targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for several months, destroying power stations and plunging millions into darkness during the country’s freezing winter.

“Yeah, we completely agree with Satan on everything.”

• Nancy Pelosi Is Stepping Down As US House Speaker, And Few Will Miss Her (RT)

The 118th United States Congress will be inaugurated on January 3, 2023, ushering in a number of changes, including Republican control of the House of Representatives and an attendant flip of the office of the speaker. That means that long-time Democratic Party leader Nancy Pelosi will have to give up her gavel and hand it over, most likely to Republican leader Kevin McCarthy. This has been Pelosi’s second tenure as speaker, as she served the first time from 2007-2011 and made history during that time by being the first – and so far only – woman to hold that title. Indeed, Pelosi’s record as the third-highest constitutional officer in the US has been historic – but maybe for some reasons that aren’t so savory. For one, the California Democrat is a notorious self-dealer. For instance, Pelosi was one of the most high-profile members of Congress implicated in a five-month corruption investigation by Business Insider.

She is reported to have deep holdings in companies such as Tesla, Disney, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), and Meta (Facebook’s parent company), which she is directly responsible for regulating as a member of Congress. And it should also not be a surprise that she has repeatedly come out against barring members of Congress from trading stocks and other financial assets, even if she did an about face when public pressure mounted. “We are a free-market economy. They (members of Congress) should be able to participate in that (trading),” she told reporters in December 2021. There is actually an argument to be made that indeed members of Congress should be able to engage in such investments. After all, they have to pay two sets of housing costs in their district and in the notoriously expensive Washington, DC area.

They also have to pay all of their own traveling expenses to and from their district. And they have to do all of that, plus probably also have a family, with a salary of $174,000. It’s not all that glamorous when you think about it. But if we look at Pelosi’s net worth of $114,662,521, according to 2018 data by OpenSecrets, then we can see that this argument hardly applies. In fact, if you look at the chart of her individual wealth over the years, you’ll notice that her wealth exponentially increased with her position as speaker. It’s like her power in Congress directly translates to her own personal wealth accumulation – which, I think we can all agree, would be the definition of corruption. Along with being greedy, the outgoing speaker is a devout war hawk. She once told reporters in Damascus in 2007, during George W. Bush’s presidency, that “there is no division on policy between us and President Bush, be it on Israel, Palestine or Syria.” For anyone familiar with Bush’s genocidal Middle East scheme, this is basically like saying, “Yeah, we completely agree with Satan on everything.”

[..] To put in perspective how unpopular Pelosi is, according to Public Policy Polling, a higher share of Americans believe that JFK was killed by a conspiracy (51%) and that Bush intentionally misled the public on Iraq’s WMDs (44%) than like Pelosi, with just a bit less (37%) thinking global warming is a hoax. For the sake of our country, it is to be hoped that the 82-year-old will retire from political life after her term as speaker comes to a close. But unfortunately, as is ever the case with Pelosi, her career might just outstay its welcome and drag on endlessly.

Atlas was completely silenced by Fauci and Birx. Strange story.

• Twitter’s COVID-19 Censorship Led to Loss of Life – Dr. Scott Atlas (ET)

When discussing censorship, there are often “vague implications” on the effects of that restriction. But by censoring medical science and health policy, “you are killing people,” Dr. Scott Atlas firmly stated in an interview that aired on Newsmakers by NTD and The Epoch Times on Dec. 28. “Censorship of the correct science and medical information, during this pandemic, absolutely killed people. It prevented people from making intelligent decisions. It prevented people from making the appropriate use of caution,” Atlas alleged of Twitter censoring doctors such as himself. Furthermore, Atlas charged, Twitter’s censorship was particularly “harmful” and “shocking” because the United States was founded on freedom.

“This kind of censorship was, in my view, unheard of in the United States,” Atlas stated. “It’s reminiscent of everything that we, as a free society and democracy, abhor about countries that are authoritarian, like China, the former USSR and now Russia, North Korea. “This is the kind of censorship that occurs in those countries. And now it’s occurring in our country.” According to Atlas, censorship at the government’s behest isn’t limited to social media and is far more insidious than first imagined. “It’s not simply blocking information. It’s also—being less overt about it—it’s limiting the public’s access to information. It’s impugning people who are speaking correct information,” Atlas said.

In Atlas’s view, there was only one acceptable COVID-19 narrative at the height of the pandemic, and that was the one put forward by those in authority, specifically Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx. Consequently, when other health authority figures, such as Atlas, advanced conflicting information, the above authorities enlisted help from the media to squash that dissent. “Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, etc., went to their friends in the media and undermined people like me. Who, in fact, were saying what was correct, what has been validated as being correct this entire time. “But the reality is, yes, the censorship of science kills people. And it killed people during this pandemic. There’s no doubt about that,” Atlas stated.

“..he threw around so much data confetti that a person could have easily believed that he was downplaying the severity to promote calm. His intention was the opposite.”

• Fauci Fibbed on the Day Everything Changed (Tucker)

Anthony Fauci is finally gone from his government perch. Let us recall that it was he who set this calamity in motion, squandering his credibility, while taking down public health and much else with it. More than anyone, he bears responsibility, even if he was acting on others’ behalf. That is especially true if he was carrying out a hidden agenda (take your pick of theories). There was already growing political and societal panic on March 11, 2020, when the House Oversight and Reform Committee convened a hearing on the new virus circulating. Fauci was the key witness. The only question on everyone’s mind came down to the most primal fear: am I going to die from this thing, like in the movies?

This was one day before Trump’s announcement of the travel ban from Europe, the UK, and Australia, essentially sealing the borders of the US to an extent never before attempted, thus separating families and loved ones and trapping billions of people in their nation states. It was five days before the evil declaration by all health authorities to immediately shut down all places where people could congregate. These few days will remain a case study in irrationality and crowd madness. Fauci, on the day of his testimony, however, seemed like a paragon of stability. He was calm and clear, nearly bloodness in his tone. The substance of what he said, at the same time, was clearly designed to generate panic and create the conditions for a full lockdown.

He had the countenance of a doctor who was telling the family that a beloved father was terminally ill with 30 days to live. In particular, and in contrast to the testimony prepared by CDC/NIH, Fauci spoke to the severity of the virus. To the average member of Congress, the answer here was crucial because it addressed the only two serious issues: “Am I going to die?” and “Will I be blamed and politically punished if my constituents die?” To this, he responded with what seemed like science but was actually completely wrong, dreadfully wrong, catastrophically wrong. He claimed that we knew for sure that at best Covid was 10 times deadlier than the flu. In fact, he threw around so much data confetti that a person could have easily believed that he was downplaying the severity to promote calm. His intention was the opposite.

Pushing infection?!

“A local official in Shanghai told The Epoch Times on Dec. 27 that his office had received instructions to do whatever it could to push the city into the COVID peak status.”

• How China Changed Its Zero-COVID Policy to a ‘Zero Non-COVID’ Policy (ET)

“Zero non-COVID” is the name that people in China are calling the regime’s new pandemic management policy. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has aggressively pushed the whole country towards an all-COVID-positive state. China’s annual rubber-stamp legislature is usually in session during the month of March. It is widely expected that the coming session will focus on saving China’s economy because it is on the edge of collapse after the three-year long zero-COVID policy. Party leader Xi Jinping is clearly willing to pay any price to reopen the country. Government employees of Chongqing City and Zhejiang Province received notices telling them return to their offices to work even if they have tested positive for COVID-19, as long as their symptoms are mild.

The total population of Chongqing City is more than 31 million, and Zhejiang province more than 57 million. Rumors on the Chinese internet talked about local governments of Chongqing City and Zhejiang Province being criticized by Beijing because these regions were too slow to reach a high percentage of COVID positive patients. A local official in Shanghai told The Epoch Times on Dec. 27 that his office had received instructions to do whatever it could to push the city into the COVID peak status. “Let those who are supposed to become positive become positive, and let those who are supposed to die, die,” said Song Wen (pseudonym). All state-owned media are mute about the current situation in the country, and reports from different government agencies are conflicting.

The Zhejiang Provincial government recorded one million new COVID cases on Dec. 25, while the Chinese national CDC only reported 2,983 new cases in the whole nation for the same day. The regime announced that on Jan. 8, 2023, China will totally reopen travel in and out of the country, which has triggered concern in countries around the globe. Italian officials reported on Dec. 28 that 50 percent of passengers on two flights from China tested positive for COVID. China, a country with a population of more than 1.4 billion, moved from the zero-COVID policy to a zero non-COVID policy within a month. The sudden change has left health experts worldwide feeling uncertain, because the explosion in COVID cases in China may lead to the whole world being exposed to new variants.

The Western media have widely attributed the sudden policy change to the late November White Paper protests against the zero-COVID policy in China. However, according to World Health Organization (WHO) emergencies chief Michael Ryan, the COVID spike in China was not due to the lifting of the government mandated restrictions. Before the policy change, “the disease was spreading intensively because I believe the control measures in themselves were not stopping the disease. And I believe China decided strategically that was not the best option anymore,” Ryan said.

Wonder if this can/will carry over into other states. Perhaps not even necessary, depending on what they find.

• States Grand Jury to Hold Big Pharma Accountable for Covid Vaccines (BN)

A states grand jury to investigate Big Pharma for civil and criminal wrongdoing related to its COVID-19 mRNA vaccines has been approved by the Supreme Court of Florida. “A statewide grand jury shall be promptly impaneled for a term of twelve calendar months, to run from the date of impanelment, with jurisdiction throughout the State of Florida, to investigate crime, return indictments, make presentments, and otherwise perform all functions of a grand jury with regard to the offenses stated herein,” the court order stated. “The Petitioner, the Honorable Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, has alleged that good and sufficient reason exists and that it is in the public interest to impanel a statewide grand jury, with jurisdiction throughout the State of Florida, to investigate crime, return indictments, make presentments, and otherwise perform all functions of a grand jury with regard to the offenses listed,” the court order continued.

The grand jury probe will have sweeping scope and will include many targets for investigation.Those include: “Individuals, persons, and entities, including, but not limited to, pharmaceutical manufacturers (and their executive officers) and other medical associations or organizations involved in the design, development, clinical testing or investigation, manufacture, marketing, representation, advertising, promotion, labeling, distribution, formulation, packing, sale, purchase, donation, dispensing, prescribing, administration, or use of vaccines purported to prevent COVID-19 infection, symptoms, and transmission.” The grand jury will also investigate “other criminal activity or wrongdoing that the statewide grand jury uncovers during the course of the investigation if it determines that pursuing the criminal activity or wrongdoing is in the best interests of the investigation.”

“The legacy media should worry about its reputation,” Musk retorted. “We have only just begun.”

• Elon Musk Says He Is ‘Open’ to Idea of Buying Out Major Media Companies (BN)

Billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk is entertaining the idea of buying out top digital media companies. Journalist and media commentator Dave Rubin started a Twitter thread discussing the tremendous influence that Google and YouTube have on the nation’s politics. “Let me get ahead of this one right now…” Rubin tweeted. “I think YouTube’s (and Google’s) manipulation for political purposes is FAR worse than Twitter’s.” “And we might find out as @rumblevideo will get discovery in its lawsuit against Google…” Rubin added. One user suggested Musk should try to buy Substack, which is a subscription-based platform used by many influential journalists.“You would have the information layer with Twitter and the narrative layer. Corporate media would then have specialize on reporting government leaks, from ‘people familiar with the matter,’” the user said.

Musk responded by saying: “I’m open to the idea.” Earlier in December, Musk also suggested he could try to buy Wikipedia, but was informed it was not for sale by its founder Jimmy Wales. The “Twitter Files,” a series of releases on Twitter showing the prior regime’s coordination between Big Tech and U.S. government agencies, has been spearheaded by a number of notable journalists, such as Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger. The subsequent Fauci Files and forthcoming Covid Files have additionally spurred independent journalistic accountability that has been denied by corporate media and the U.S. Congress. On Wednesday, Musk dropped a ‘Fauci bomb’ that exposed Twitter’s extreme bias on Covid issues.

“Almost no one seems to realize that the head of bioethics at NIH – the person who is supposed to make sure that Fauci behaves ethically – is his wife,” Musk remarked. “‘Gain-of-function’ in this context is just another way of saying ‘bioweapon’,” Musk added. “Some good nuggets in article. Important to note that Fauci authored 2012 paper arguing for gain-of-function research! Obama wisely put this on pause, but Fauci restarted it.” “Despite these glaring issues, Twitter nonetheless had an internal Slack channel unironically called ‘Fauci Fan Club’,” he added. Dr. Pierry Kory in a Twitter Spaces on Wednesday praised Twitter for providing a forum for physicians and policy critics to discuss the pervasive bias in medicine, which would help correct the “information assymetry” that has been perpetuated by the mainstream media and in medical journals.

Elon Musk also fired a warning shot to the corporate media about his mission to protect free speech and develop a forum for actual journalism. His response came after an attack by Axios reporter Hope King on CNBC, who said that his “reputation is in danger.” “The legacy media should worry about its reputation,” Musk retorted. “We have only just begun.”

“Putin [..] probably has a greater influence on the dollar’s future than the US Treasury and the Fed combined.”

• In 2023 It Will Be All About The Dollar (Macleod)

One of the factors which supported gold in the final quarter, offsetting moderate ETF liquidation of about 300 tonnes over the year has been central bank demand, which the World Gold Council estimates to have been 364 tonnes by October. Including more recent purchases by China and others adds nearly 300 tonnes. The Chinese purchase was confirmed in recent days by Mark Bristow, CEO of Barrick Gold, the world’s second largest gold mining corporation, who claimed China had bought “tonnes of gold around the high 200-tonnes mark”. Why China has bought this gold, when it has ample bullion additional to its declared reserves, is an interesting question. The answer probably lies with President Xi’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia, where it was agreed that sales of oil would be paid in yuan, replacing the petrodollar with petroyuan.

According to Aljazeera, Saudi exports to China are worth $33.4bn equivalent, while its imports are $31.8bn, so the net surplus is $1.6bn. The official communiqué referred to “levelling up trade, investment and financial cooperation”. We know that China is keen to internationalise its markets, which is what investment and financial cooperation is about. The international section of the Shanghai Gold Exchange will be used by Saudi Arabia for its yuan to gold transactions. It is therefore likely that some of China’s purchase of nearly 300 tonnes in recent weeks will be to provide liquidity to backstop this market. With regard to prospects for next year’s gold price, it should be noted that the major factor will be the fate of the dollar. It appears likely that dollar oil prices will increase in the coming months, while foreign holders of dollars will continue to reduce their dollar exposure, which in the year to October declined by $3.8 trillion.

But a rising interest rate trend leading to falling financial asset values and the petroyuan replacing the petrodollar, events could coalesce into a perfect storm for the dollar. This is not how conventional analysts look at the gold price. They would argue that higher interest rates, if they occur, will drive gold lower. But that is an argument that denies the role of gold as money. Tell that to President Putin, who by cornering global hydrocarbon supplies probably has a greater influence on the dollar’s future than the US Treasury and the Fed combined.

Still amazed at the strength of the USD in the face of so much opposition.

• USD Exchange Rates Hit Foreign Exchange Reserves (WS)

The last three years were complicated for the dominant reserve currency. At first there was the Fed’s $5-trillion money-printing orgy and interest-rate repression. Then there was raging inflation, which the Fed brushed off as “transitory.” Through this period, the dollar fell against other currencies. But then the Fed got religion and began to tighten: since March 2022, it has hiked rates by 425 basis points, accompanied over the past six months by $414 billion in QT so far. As a result, the dollar bounced off and shot higher against other currencies, particularly the euro and the yen – the #2 and #3 reserve currencies.

At the end of Q3, the share of US-dollar-denominated foreign exchange reserves rose to 59.8%, the third quarter in a row of increases, and the highest since Q3 2020, according to the IMF’s new COFER data on reserve currencies. Since the end of 2021, the share of the dollar rose by nearly 1 percentage point. But this increase came off a 26-year low at the end of 2021. Note that this does not include the dollar-denominated assets on the Fed’s balance sheet, but only dollar-denominated assets held by foreign central banks and foreign official institutions.

[..] The euro is the second largest reserve currency. The Eurozone encompasses 19 countries with a population of 340 million people. Over two decades ago, when the euro was being promoted to Europeans, they often talked about “parity” of the euro with the dollar on all levels: as global reserve currency, as trading currency, and as financing currency. This reserve currency parity made progress until the Euro Debt Crisis brought to light the euro’s structural weakness. And that put an end to this parity talk. Since then, the euro has had a share of about 20% of global reserve currencies (in Q3, 19.7%), about as large as all also-rans combined. But it was far below the dollar (black line, red dots in the chart below).

The yen (purple line at the top of the colorful spaghetti at the bottom in the chart) had a share of 5.3%. It became the #3 reserve currency in 2018, when its share surpassed that of the British pound. The British pound, the #4 reserve currency, had a share of 4.6% (blue line just under the yen in the spaghetti). The Chinese renminbi, the #5 reserve currency, dipped to a share of 2.8% in Q3 — only 2.8%, despite the huge size and global interconnection of China’s economy!

“..the designed irrelevance of the European Union.”

• My Prediction On What 2023 Will Bring (Varoufakis)

This will be the year that Europeans realize the designed irrelevance of the European Union. The quagmire in Ukraine’s killing fields will bring on the realization of the need for a diplomatic process to end the war, but also the realization that the EU is radically incapable of playing any significant role in it. Who will represent Europe in these talks? The EU’s eastern and Nordic governments trust neither Paris nor Berlin – without whom, however, there can be no EU role.

On the economic front, the German mercantilist economic model will remain broken even as inflation abates – with dire repercussions for a eurozone still reliant on German surpluses. Europe’s deepening economic and geopolitical woes will, naturally, reinforce America’s hegemony and, with it, exacerbate its chosen policy of escalating a new cold war with China. Caught up in all this, humanity will be spending another year not investing in the green transition on which our species’ future hinges.

Competing with the BRI is just a weird pipe dream. They wanted to do it in a year. China’s been building it for many years.

• 1 Year On, EU Alternative To China’s Belt And Road Fails To Deliver (SCMP)

In December 2021, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stood on a Brussels podium and confidently announced that the European Union’s new infrastructure drive would be a “true alternative” to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. “We are able to do that. Countries made their experience with the Chinese investments. They need better and different offers,” she said of Global Gateway, a spending drive that promised to mobilise up to €300 billion (US$318 billion) by 2027 for modern infrastructure projects outside the EU. With some blowback forming towards China’s trillion-dollar plan to connect China with the rest of the world after high-profile allegations of “debt-trap diplomacy”, both Europe and the United States were positioning to offer a different model, grounded in democratic norms, transparency of funding, and with sustainable objectives.

But one year on, observers are growing increasingly sceptical about von der Leyen’s claims. So far, Global Gateway has delivered plenty of hype, but little in terms of concrete projects, while confusion reigns in Brussels and beyond about what the initiative actually is. At a hearing in the European Parliament last month, lawmakers pressed officials for details, only to learn that none of the €300 billion would be “new”. “Global Gateway does not bring new financial means – there is no additional money when it comes to the EU level,” said Vincent Grimaud, an acting director in the commission’s department for international partnerships. The statement sparked incredulity from members of the parliament. “There’s no new money. And I’ve always held the view that if there’s no new money, there’s no new policy,” said Barry Andrews, an Irish lawmaker with the centrist Renew group.

“This is a communications exercise. It’s a strategy to put together what was already going to happen and present it as something new. And if our partners are tricked by this, then more fool them.” Hildegard Bentele, a German member from the centre-right European People’s Party, said she had been trying to find German companies who are “part of this adventure”, but had failed to locate any. “If I talk to journalists, journalists are asking me what are these Global Gateway projects? If I go on the website of the European Commission, I do not find it – this is really difficult,” she said. The commission’s efforts to promote the initiative have added to the bemusement. A recent gala event held in the metaverse to explain the Global Gateway concept to 18-35 year olds was lampooned online after just a handful of users logged on – despite the EU forking out €387,000 (US$410,000) to host it.

“..the utter failure of the “green energy shift” in the face of real-world tests..”

TVA=Tennessee Valley Authority.

• New Year, New Things (Denninger)

So it is January 1st, 2023. Those reading this made it there. That’s good, I think. With that said here’s some “news” on The Ticker itself and my intentions going forward as to focus. You can take it for whatever you think its worth, but this, from my perspective, is the right way to look at things in the world. Of course there is room for plenty of other opinions all over the ‘net and so-called “traditional media” too, so it is what it is. If you remember a big shift occurred during the second Trump impeachment coverage, which I was doing on a daily basis, including most days a podcast. That of course was Covid, which showed up right on the tail end of that. That chapter has run in America and even the “mainstream media” is reporting that (like it or not, politicians) running stories about, for example, Atlantic City and its prospects forward – – and that they’re now returning to their regularly-scheduled debate (like, for instance, can you smoke in a casino?)

We’ve got plenty to talk about, such as, for instance, the utter failure of the “green energy shift” in the face of real-world tests. In a just world people would already be in irons and headed for prison; TVA, for example, was only able to produce 68% of its claimed capacity when all of it was required. WPLN tries to blame this on “natural gas being the bet” but in fact the reality of it is that TVA has shut down what was plenty of coal capacity and they did it on purpose over the space of years without replacing that with known reliable generation. In the summer the peak of demand tends to mostly-track with when the sun is up because its hottest and, while the peak shifts a bit off noon its not at 3:00 AM. In winter it is every time; its coldest when there’s no sun at all and thus the solar generation capacity is always zero at the times of peak demand in winter.

Thus any solar you put in must be counted as zero in the winter months when things get nasty, because it will either be snowing, icing (both of which wildly cut solar cell output) or at 3:00 AM when there’s no solar radiation available at all. Wind has similar issues; you can fit windmills with heating systems but obviously they require energy and they have both a lower and upper wind limit where they either produce nothing of value or must be intentionally shut down to avoid destruction. Thus you can’t count them as anything other than zero in the winter because you can’t count something that is less than 100% available, with proper maintenance and such, as “there.” We also know that in the face of such nasty weather EVs are worthless too. They’re nice secondary vehicles, basically, but when you must be able to rely on them they’re just not up to the job. People are figuring this out and that will continue; in short how you were sold these cars and light trucks was a lie and worse, the people selling them knew all that as they did the engineering on them.

Richard Fleming

Dr. Richard M Fleming shows the direct effect of the Pfizer, Moderna and Janssen #COVID19 shots on human blood. pic.twitter.com/PgX8RFYctJ

— Coronavirus Plushie (@c_plushie) January 1, 2023

Bernardi WEF

Sky News host Cory Bernardi says the WEF has been “upfront” about its “agenda” for the public.
Source: Sky News Australia (Youtube) pic.twitter.com/ZYtjtrtnca

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) January 1, 2023

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Debt Rattle December 13 2022

Dec 132022

December 13, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:55 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, Bari Weiss, Gensler, Greece, MEP, Qatar, SBF, Trump, Twitter, Ursula 73 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Female bust 1943

• The Alarm Bells Go Off (Kunstler)

• Sam Bankman-Fried Arrested In Bahamas After US Files Criminal Charges (CNBC)

• SEC Chair Gensler Scrubbed Evidence Of Clinton, Soros And Pelosi Meetings (ZH)

• Twitter Trust And Safety Team Found Trump Tweets Did Not Violate Policy (ZH)

• The Banning of President Trump by Bari Weiss: Just a Few Rogue Actors (CTH)

• Germany Should Do Business With Russia Again – Scholz (RT)

• 50% Of Ukraine’s Energy Facilities Destroyed – Zelensky (Az.)

• Russia Has No Right To Security Guarantees – Poland (RT)

• Increased Heart Failure Deaths Linked To Extreme Hot And Cold (CTV)

• European Parliament Lawmaker Denies Taking Bribes From Qatar (R.)

• Assets of Greek MEP Accused Of Graft Frozen (K.)

• Von der Leyen Ducks Questions On Qatar Corruption Scandal (Pol.eu)

• Wars – How They Start and End? (Salamah)

• The End of Europe: The Sad Conclusion of a Long Historical Cycle (Ugo Bardi)

• Biden Faces Growing Pressure To Drop Charges Against Julian Assange (G.)

Unicef

Unicef… pic.twitter.com/dEEjPGmvRq

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) December 13, 2022

And then you get the coldest night of the year…

First ever recorded snowball fight (1897)

First ever recorded snowball fight (1897) pic.twitter.com/c6t6A0Mgo0

— History In Pictures (@HistoryInPics) December 11, 2022

“Everything appears to be veering out-of-control, including thought itself.”

• The Alarm Bells Go Off (Kunstler)

Here’s another awful reality (better fasten your seatbelts): What also emerged in the tweet record of Yoel Roth, the company’s chief censor (former “Head of Trust and Safety”), begins to look like a gay mafia assault on the collective American psyche. Having gained official federal government sanction and protection, a statistically tiny homosexual demographic left in charge of the country’s main public forum has been out for revenge against their perceived enemy, political conservatives — Americans disinclined to join the cheerleading for drag queen story hours, “minor-attracted persons,” transsexuals in the military, and other LBGTQ cultural pranks. In the process, that gay mafia running the public dialogue supported every lie that the government, its protector, put out, to keep the Deep State happy and well-fed. Shocking, I’m sure… but there it is.

That means the gay mafia also helped promote the most-deadly psy-op in world history: the Covid-19 scare and the mass “vaccination” crusade that will end up killing many millions world-wide, after destroying the economies of the Western Civ nations. The whole package looks like an attempt to turn the world upside down and inside out. Is it any wonder that so many feel the USA has gone crazy? Of course, these revelations aroused the widespread suspicion that these now-exposed nefarious operators in social media were merely tools for some murky plutocrat elite led by the likes of the WEF, Bill Gates, and George Soros. Could that be the greatest “conspiracy theory” of all? More likely, I hesitate to suggest, all these characters in one way or another are merely tools of history itself, as the world enters the darkest days of a Fourth Turning secular winter.

As T.S. Eliot observed: “Humankind cannot bear too much reality.” Thus, so many sense we live in dangerous times. Everything appears to be veering out-of-control, including thought itself. Disorder incites more disorder. While all this madness is going on in-country, the US government, led by the phantom president “Joe Biden,” continues to prosecute its insane proxy war in Ukraine in order to antagonize Russia. Lately the US has sent drones hundreds of miles inside Russia to blow up military airfields. How is that not an escalation of hostilities, and exactly how far do the American people want their government to take this crazy project?

SBF could have been arrested, and charges filed, anytime over the past, what has it been, 6 weeks?! But they pick the day before his virtual hearing in Congress. Which now won’t happen.

• Sam Bankman-Fried Arrested In Bahamas After US Files Criminal Charges (CNBC)

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested by Bahamian authorities Monday evening after the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York shared a sealed indictment with the Bahamian government, setting the stage for extradition and U.S. trial for the onetime crypto billionaire at the heart of the crypto exchange’s collapse. His arrest is the first concrete move by regulators to hold individuals accountable for the multibillion-dollar implosion of FTX last month. Before his arrest was announced, Bankman-Fried had been expected to testify virtually before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday, but his attorneys told CNBC that he will not appear.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., who oversees that committee, said that she was “surprised” at his arrest, and disappointed that Congress would not be able to hear from him on Tuesday. Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said on Twitter that the federal government anticipated moving to “unseal the indictment in the morning.” The charges include wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy, and money laundering, according to the New York Times, citing a person familiar with the matter. Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission has initiated a separate set of charges against Bankman-Fried, relating to “violations of our securities laws, which will be filed publicly tomorrow in the Southern District of New York,” enforcement director Gurbir Grewal said in a statement.

What was SBF going to talk about? His links to Gensler, Ukraine, Democrats?

“The charges include wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy, and money laundering – NYT”

Securities fraud. Wait, that’s Gensler…

• SEC Chair Gensler Scrubbed Evidence Of Clinton, Soros And Pelosi Meetings (ZH)

Sunlight is the best disinfectant – unless you’re Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler – who scrubbed evidence of a meeting with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from his calendar, along with key details of a meeting with Billionaire leftist-operative George Soros. He also concealed September 21 meetings with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and former Bill Clinton White House official-turned-DC consultant, Minyon Moore. Gensler, a former Goldman Sachs executive, Obama administration official, Clinton’s 2016 campaign CFO, and FTX associate, essentially had two calendars. His public calendar showed that on Aug. 7, 2021, he only had a staff meeting, while his private calendar lists a meeting with Hillary Clinton, Fox News reports.

Thirteen days later on Aug. 20, 2021, Gensler’s public calendar does list a meeting with Soros, but the agenda was hidden. His private calendar reveals that the meeting was held to discuss an upcoming WSJ op-ed Soros was planning to write in which he slammed BlackRock for launching investment products for Chinese customers, while also applauding the company’s ESG policies. “Gensler’s private calendar revealing the discrepancies was obtained by the watchdog group Energy Policy Advocates and shared with Fox News Digital. The group was only able to obtain the internal records after filing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the SEC. In recent days, around the time Fox News Digital contacted the SEC, the agency updated Gensler’s public calendar to include his meeting with Clinton in August 2021. As recently as Wednesday the public calendar didn’t include the meeting, and archived copies of the webpage from April also list just a meeting with staff. -Fox News ”

When contacted for comment, the SEC initially lied – saying that the Clinton meeting was visible on Gensler’s public calendar. When confronted with screenshots to the contrary, the spokesperson said that the agency updates calendars “from time to time” when inaccuracies are discovered (by watchdog groups?). Gensler also concealed several September 2021 meetings with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and Minyon Moore – both of which have been now updated on Gensler’s public calendar. “That even George Soros is calling out progressive darling BlackRock for craven blundering is striking — even if it did carry the requisite, tribal praise for BlackRock’s truly damaging ‘ESG’ (environmental, social and governance) campaigning to impose their shared ‘climate’ agenda on the U.S., an agenda also much to China’s delight,” said Chris Horner, a lawyer representing Energy Policy Advocates. “That it appears Soros received counsel from Gary Gensler on the mega-donor’s call for more SEC powers as a result is truly astonishing.”

“We must examine Twitter’s complicity in what President-Elect Biden has rightly termed insurrection.”

• Twitter Trust And Safety Team Found Trump Tweets Did Not Violate Policy (ZH)

The new drop reveals that Twitter employees did not believe former President Trump had violated Twitter’s policies. “I think we’d have a hard time saying this is incitement,” wrote one staffer in an internal message, adding: “It’s pretty clear he’s saying the ‘American Patriots’ are the ones who voted for him and not the terrorists (we can call them that, right?)…” Another staffer agreed, writing: “Don’t see the incitement angle here.” “I also am not seeing clear or coded incitement in the DJT tweet,” wrote Anika Navaroli, a Twitter policy official. “I’ll respond in the elections channel and say that our team has assessed and found no vios”—or violations—“for the DJT one.”

4. For years, Twitter had resisted calls both internal and external to ban Trump on the grounds that blocking a world leader from the platform or removing their controversial tweets would hide important information that people should be able to see and debate. 5. “Our mission is to provide a forum that enables people to be informed and to engage their leaders directly,” the company wrote in 2019. Twitter’s aim was to “protect the public’s right to hear from their leaders and to hold them to account.” 6. But after January 6, as @mtaibbi and @shellenbergermd have documented, pressure grew, both inside and outside of Twitter, to ban Trump.

7. There were dissenters inside Twitter. “Maybe because I am from China,” said one employee on January 7, “I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation.” 8. But voices like that one appear to have been a distinct minority within the company. Across Slack channels, many Twitter employees were upset that Trump hadn’t been banned earlier. 9. After January 6, Twitter employees organized to demand their employer ban Trump. “There is a lot of employee advocacy happening,” said one Twitter employee. 10. “We have to do the right thing and ban this account,” said one staffer. It’s “pretty obvious he’s going to try to thread the needle of incitement without violating the rules,” said another.

11. In the early afternoon of January 8, The Washington Post published an open letter signed by over 300 Twitter employees to CEO Jack Dorsey demanding Trump’s ban. “We must examine Twitter’s complicity in what President-Elect Biden has rightly termed insurrection.” 12. But the Twitter staff assigned to evaluate tweets quickly concluded that Trump had *not* violated Twitter’s policies.“I think we’d have a hard time saying this is incitement,” wrote one staffer. 13. “It’s pretty clear he’s saying the ‘American Patriots’ are the ones who voted for him and not the terrorists (we can call them that, right?) from Wednesday.” 14. Another staffer agreed: “Don’t see the incitement angle here.”

sundance still doesn’t buy it. He wants to see what government officials are involved, not just the Twitter employees..

• The Banning of President Trump by Bari Weiss: Just a Few Rogue Actors (CTH)

The fifth installment of the Twitter Files release drops today courtesy of Ms. Bari Weiss. The focus of Ms Weiss was on the decision to ban President Donald Trump from the platform, and her outline walks through the events leading up to the decision to remove him. After a review of internal discussions, slacks and conversations within the social media platform, ultimately the officers within the company decided to protect their view of democracy by removing their biggest ideological opponent. The Twitter executives justified their actions by echo-chambering a belief that President Trump was tweeting “coded messages,” the secret transmission of thoughts that can only be received by those wearing red hats, tuned to a specific psychological frequency.

As Weiss notes: “Less than 90 minutes after Twitter employees had determined that Trump’s tweets were not in violation of Twitter policy, Vijaya Gadde—Twitter’s Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust—asked whether it could, in fact, be “coded incitement to further violence.” President Trump tweeted the term “American Patriots,” which would be viewed by the Twitter ideologues as something akin to “the leader of a terrorist group responsible for violence/deaths comparable to Christchurch shooter or Hitler and on that basis and on the totality of his Tweets, he should be de-platformed.” It did not take long for the narrative to embed as the most senior Twitter regulatory officers assembled. “One hour later, Twitter announces Trump’s permanent suspension “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

The entirety of Twitter File #5 release surrounds this internal Twitter dynamic, carefully avoiding any discussion or sunlight from outside government actors who may have been in direct contact with the senior Twitter team. Indeed, the documents chosen to provide evidence of the debate and decision to remove President Trump are transparently devoid of any inbound government contact to the Twitter organization. Thus, at the end of Ms. Weiss carefully written expose’, she concludes with this:

See, it’s only “a handful of people at a private company“…. Nothing to see here folks, move along, move along. Apparently, DHS, FBI and CISA officials were involved in direct contact with Twitter through their DHS “trusted partnership” portal to get rid of innocuous rebel voices and influence agents like Dan Bongino, Q conspiracy theorists, and various COVID doctors who were providing information against the interests of the government. However, when it came to removing the most powerful voice of President Donald John Trump, there was nothing but static radio silence from the government side of the DHS portal. You getting this? Do you see how this is presented? “A handful of people at a private company,” that’s the story and they are sticking to it. Swear.

Presumably only after NATO has defeated them.

• Germany Should Do Business With Russia Again – Scholz (RT)

Once Russia ends the conflict in Ukraine, it should be given a chance to do business with Germany again, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Monday. He repeated that Moscow must and will not win, however. A Russian government that ends the hostilities “needs a chance to restart economic cooperation, in another time when this is possible,” Scholz said in Berlin, at the meeting of the Eastern Committee for German Business (OA), a trade association focused on relations with eastern Europe. “Now is not that time.” “At the moment, the relationships we have are being scaled back,” Scholz said, according to the weekly Zeit. The EU is “tightening the sanctions” now, but Russia will remain the largest country on the European continent after the conflict is resolved. “It is therefore very important that we make preparations for this time.”

Scholz described the current conflict as an attempt by President Vladimir Putin to re-create a Russian Empire that is destroying the country’s future instead, and accused Moscow of atrocities against the Ukrainian civilians. Russia must not win “and Russian will not win, either,” he told the business group. Berlin’s determination to ditch Russian energy imports – pushed mainly by Scholz’s Green coalition partners – created troubles for Germany even before the gas deliveries were disrupted by the sabotage on Nord Stream pipelines in September. Germans are now trying to make up the shortages from elsewhere, though unsuccessfully. Earlier this month, Germany’s ambassador in Washington admitted to the economic troubles, but said this was a small price to pay for a “profound transformation” of her country into a remilitarized continental power, more hostile to Russia and closer to the US.

For all of Scholz’s promises to help Ukraine, Kiev has continued to browbeat Berlin about deliveries of tanks and even more artillery. Last week, the chancellor’s predecessor Angela Merkel admitted that the 2014 Minsk agreement was not aimed at resolving the conflict in Donbass, but to “give Ukraine time” to arm against Russia. Putin said he was disappointed by Merkel’s admission and that the trust between Moscow and Berlin was now “almost at zero.”

Trying to escalate.

• 50% Of Ukraine’s Energy Facilities Destroyed – Zelensky (Az.)

Missile strikes have destroyed 50% of Ukraine’s energy facilities, the country’s President Vladimir Zelensky said in a call with US President Joe Biden, according to a statement published on the Ukrainian leader’s website on Monday. The Ukrainian leader also highlighted US assistance in restoring Ukraine’s energy grid and hoped that the parties would deepen cooperation on this track. In addition, Zelensky urged Biden to help Kiev establish air defenses.

Poland wants its part of Ukraine.

• Russia Has No Right To Security Guarantees – Poland (RT)

Russia cannot expect security guarantees from other nations, a senior Polish diplomat has said. Calls to address Moscow’s concerns about NATO expansion in Europe have come from former and serving leaders of EU nations, including ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron. People should not “let themselves be persuaded … that Russia has the right to expect security guarantees from anyone,” Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Jablonski told journalists ahead of a meeting of top diplomats of EU member states, which kicked off in Brussels on Monday. “It’s just a strategic mistake – that kind of consideration. It is not Russia that needs security guarantees today, but Europe needs security guarantees from Russia,” he said, adding that the Polish delegation will call for the harshest sanctions possible on Russia during the ministerial meeting.

Moscow has for years told the US and its allies that the expansion of NATO poses a threat to Russian national security, and warned that by ignoring its objections on issues such as Ukraine’s potential membership in the US-led bloc, Western nations were crossing a red line. A last-ditch attempt to defuse tensions came last year, when Moscow offered an agreement which it said would address this concern. The proposal was rejected, with Western leaders doubling down on NATO’s open-door policy. Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine in February, citing, among other reasons, the bloc’s creeping expansion to the east. While EU nations condemned the move as an act of supposedly unprovoked aggression, some politicians acknowledged that the lack of a European security architecture that would alleviate Russia’s concerns was a major destabilizing factor.

In her first interview after stepping down as chancellor, Merkel said that the failure to build such an arrangement was something “we should think about” when discussing Ukraine. Her successor, Olaf Scholz, said that “we have to go back to the agreements which we had in the past decades and which were the basis for peace and security order in Europe.” He also claimed that Russia broke these arrangements and that there was “no aggression coming from NATO.” Macron argued this month that the US-led bloc needs to prepare an offer of security guarantees for Moscow to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. He said the concerns that “NATO will deploy weapons that will threaten Russia” were understandable.

Ha! It’s not the vaccines, it’s climate change.

• Increased Heart Failure Deaths Linked To Extreme Hot And Cold (CTV)

New research has found extremely hot and cold temperatures increase the risk of death among people with cardiovascular diseases, particularly heart failure. An international study, published Monday in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, looked at more than 32 million cardiovascular deaths over four decades from more than two dozen countries. It found people with heart failure experienced the most additional deaths from extreme temperatures compared to those with other heart conditions. “The decline in cardiovascular death rates since the 1960s is a huge public health success story as cardiologists identified and addressed individual risk factors such as tobacco, physical inactivity, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and others,” Dr. Barrak Alahmad, a research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a faculty member at the College of Public Health at Kuwait University, said in a news release.

“The current challenge now is the environment and what climate change might hold for us.” The study used health data, pulled from 567 cities in 27 countries across five continents between 1979 and 2019, through the Multi-Country Multi-City Collaborative Research Network. Researchers compared cardiovascular deaths on the hottest and coldest 2.5 per cent of days for each city with cardiovascular deaths in those same cities on days that had optimal temperatures or when death rates were lowest. The study found that for every 1,000 cardiovascular deaths, extreme hot days accounted for 2.2 additional deaths, while extreme cold days accounted for 9.1 additional deaths.

Europe has a nice scandal. Allegedly, €600,000 was found in this woman’s father’s home. Cash, in bags.

• European Parliament Lawmaker Denies Taking Bribes From Qatar (R.)

European Parliament Vice President Eva Kaili, a suspect in an investigation into money laundering and corruption at the parliament, has denied receiving money from Qatar, one of her lawyers said in Greece on Tuesday. Kaili, one of 14 vice presidents of the parliament, was among four people arrested and charged in Belgium at the weekend over allegations that Qatar lavished them with cash and gifts to influence decision-making. “Her position is that she is innocent, I can tell you that,” Michalis Dimitrakopoulos, a lawyer representing Kaili in Greece, told Open TV. “She has nothing to do with financing from Qatar, nothing – explicitly and unequivocally. That is her position,” Dimitrakopoulos said. He added that Kaili had “undertaken no commercial activity in her life.” Greece on Monday froze Kaili’s assets in the country. The European Parliament has suspended her from her duties.

Yes, “one of 14 vice presidents of the parliament..” Wonder what they all get paid.

• Assets of Greek MEP Accused Of Graft Frozen (K.)

Greece’s Anti-Money Laundering Authority has issued a general order to freeze, until further notice, all assets that MEP Eva Kaili, 44, and her husband or her immediate family members (parents, siblings) may have in Greece. Kaili, a vice president of the European Parliament, and her husband were among four people arrested on Sunday on charges of corruption, money laundering and participation in a criminal organization. Police carried out raids at 16 houses in and around Brussels and seized €600,000 on Friday as a part of the investigation into a corruption scandal involving Qatar and prominent European politicians, dubbed Qatargate.

The order by the head of the Anti-Money Laundering Authority, former Supreme Court deputy prosecutor Haralambos Vourliotis, has already been forwarded to all Greek credit institutions to identify accounts, control movements, existence of safe deposit boxes, possession of other financial products, while at the same time an order was given to all land registry offices to freeze all real estate of the above persons. The move of the Anti-Money Laundering Authority, in addition to the broader control, which will be carried out anyway, aims, as sources told Kathimerini, to identify any cash that may be in the possession of the persons under investigation, and to ascertain whether they are products of legitimate origin or bribes.

As this investigation began on Monday morning, a real estate company set up about a month ago by the MEP and her husband in Kolonaki was identified and audited, and its entire activity has been frozen. The authority has also ordered and conducted a check on the assets of Kaili’s father. In the event that incriminating evidence is also found in Greece, Kaili could, in theory at least, request to be tried in Greece, but sources said this is unlikely. Under Belgian law, the charges against the MEP and her husband are punishable by three to five years in prison, while under Greek law the sentences range from15 years and can exceed 20 years, even reaching life sentences in very exceptional cases. However, legal sources have stressed that it is still too early to make assessment as the investigations are still in full swing and no one can predict what will emerge and what will be revealed.

More Greeks connected to Qatar.

• Von der Leyen Ducks Questions On Qatar Corruption Scandal (Pol.eu)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declined to answer questions about her Vice President Margaritis Schinas’ relations with Qatar at a press briefing Monday, triggering fury from the Brussels press corps seeking answers on the biggest corruption scandal to hit the EU in years. The Greek commissioner represented the EU at the opening ceremony of the World Cup last month, and has been criticized by MEPs over his tweets in recent months, lavishing praise on Qatar’s labor reforms. Asked about the Commission’s response to the Qatar corruption scandal engulfing the European Parliament, and in particular the stance of Schinas, von der Leyen was silent on the Greek commissioner.

The decision by deputy European Commission spokesperson Dana Spinant to shut down questions from journalists, sparked a furious reaction from reporters in the room, who called for more answers. “You didn’t answer a single one of the questions,” one reporter shouted as Spinant tried to close a session with reporters. “This is not the way to organize a press conference here,” Spinant responded through a chorus of protest. While von der Leyen did respond to further questions on the scandal, she did not address reporters’ questions about the circumstances surrounding Schinas’ visit to Qatar. Instead, she pointed to a proposal for a new ethics body to police all EU institutions — something she committed to more than three years ago, but which has gained little traction within any of the main institutions.

Referring to the European Commission’s transparency register, a database which lists representatives who carry out activities to influence EU policy and decision-making, she said: “We have one with very clear rules internally in the European Commission. There I think it is time to discuss whether we could not establish this over all for all EU institutions.”

Borders change all the time.

• Wars – How They Start and End? (Salamah)

Most countries have different religions, cultures, customs, values, local laws, practices, and political systems. Not only does changing other countries’ cultures not qualify as fair and just national interests, but also borders on the ridiculous when some countries unilaterally appoint themselves as heaven’s guardian on earth and incorporate such metaphysical concepts into their national interests. Does changing other people into one’s image make them more humane or Godlier? Or does it make them more pliable for exploitation? History confirms that such attempts have never been successful in perpetuating themselves, as evidenced by Alexander’s Hellenistic empire, Great Rome, Genghis Khan, the Golden Horde, the Crusades, the Islamic conquests, etc. – they were all eventually expunged or melded into the cultures that they tried to change, at a huge human and physical cost.

Undoubtedly, an exploiter’s rewards can be attractive in the short term, subject that the infringement or exploitation being successful. But in the longer term, pressure will continue to be exerted to return to the original status, or a semblance of it, and again, at a huge human and physical cost. Defending a country’s national territory is considered a paramount national interest (is also a security objective). Consequently, territorial or border disputes are the most popular reasons for starting wars, especially for smaller nations. But if we dig only skin-deep into the history, we will quickly find that almost no country has, throughout the ages, maintained its theoretical or historical borders – it has always been a continuous ebb and flow of territory usurped or lost, more so in Europe and the ex-colonialized world.

Nevertheless, many falsely justify this as a casus belli, or a rallying call, to regain what they regard as usurped national land. They do this with total disregard to the views and wishes of the current inhabitants of the territories in dispute, thus lending credence to the likelihood that it, in reality, is a camouflage to exploit another nation’s land. The sad part is that these wars regularly flare up despite the presence of the UN and the International Court, which were created, among other things, to adjudicate the validity of such territorial disputes and, unless a gross miscarriage of justice occurs, all grounds for territorial wars are unjustified.

I know Ugo is Italian. But ignoring the entire Greek civilization is a step too far.

“..On the Southern coast of Europe, a lively network of commercial exchanges emerged, made possible by transportation over the Mediterranean Sea. Out of this network, the Roman Empire was born..”

• The End of Europe: The Sad Conclusion of a Long Historical Cycle (Ugo Bardi)

The latest (and perhaps the last) attempt to unify Europe was the European Union. The creators of the Union understood that it was impossible to unify Europe by military means, so they tried to do it in the form of an economic free zone and an elected parliament. It was a bold attempt, but it didn’t work. It could not have worked. The Union faced enormous hostile forces, both internal and external. Britain and France were supposed to be balancing the German power, but when Britain left, in 2020, the Union suffered an economic defeat equivalent to the military one suffered by Germany in the Battle of Britain, in 1940. In both cases, they had tried to absorb Britain into continental Europe, and they had failed.

The defection of Britain left the European Union with Germany dominating it. Just like during WW2, the German government never understood that throwing its weight around was not the way to endear itself with the neighboring states. The result was the growth of anti-European forces all over the continent — the movement called “sovereignty” that aimed to restore the power of nation-states and get rid of the EU bureaucrats. So far, this movement has played only a marginal role in politics, but it has succeeded in making the EU deeply hated by everyone who is not getting their salaries from Brussels. Just as it had happened in 1941, Europe is now engaged in a desperate battle on two different fronts, but the struggle is now mainly economic and cultural, not military: it is a “full spectrum dominance” war.

The struggle is still ongoing, but it seems already clear that Europe is being defeated. Just like Germany had destroyed itself with a military attack on Russia in 1941, the European Union is destroying itself with its economic sanctions against Russia. Effectively, Europe is committing a slow and painful suicide. But that’s how full spectrum dominance works: it destroys enemies from the inside. And now? It was unavoidable that Europe would cease to be an Empire. The human and material resources that had made European dominance possible are not there any longer. But it was not unavoidable that Europe would destroy itself. Europe could have survived and maintained its independence by remaining on good terms with the other Eurasiatic powers, China, Russia, and India,

But, choosing to break the commercial, cultural, and human relations with the rest of Eurasia was not just an economic suicide. It was a cultural and moral suicide. So, what’s going to happen to poor Europe? History, as usual, rhymes: do not forget that in 1945 the official US plan was to destroy the German economy and exterminate most of the German population. Fortunately, the plan was shelved, but could that idea become fashionable again? We cannot exclude this possibility. In any case, an impoverished Europe could go back to something not unlike what it was during the early Middle Ages: depopulated, poor, primitive, a mere appendage of the great Eurasian Continent. And, yet, Europe has rebounded more than once from terrible disasters. It may happen again. Not soon, though.

The Guardian on Assange again. Feels uncomfortable. Their smear pieces are still up.

• Biden Faces Growing Pressure To Drop Charges Against Julian Assange (G.)

The Biden administration has been saying all the right things lately about respecting a free and vigorous press, after four years of relentless media-bashing and legal assaults under Donald Trump. The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has even put in place expanded protections for journalists this fall, saying that “a free and independent press is vital to the functioning of our democracy”. But the biggest test of Biden’s commitment remains imprisoned in a jail cell in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been held since 2019 while facing prosecution in the United States under the Espionage Act, a century-old statute that has never been used before for publishing classified information.

Whether the US justice department continues to pursue the Trump-era charges against the notorious leaker, whose group put out secret information on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, American diplomacy and internal Democratic politics before the 2016 election, will go a long way toward determining whether the current administration intends to make good on its pledges to protect the press. Now Biden is facing a re-energized push, both inside the United States and overseas, to drop Assange’s protracted prosecution. Five major media organizations that relied on his trove of government secrets, including the Guardian and the New York Times, put out an open letter earlier this month saying that his indictment “sets a dangerous precedent” and threatens to undermine the first amendment.

At the same time, officials in Australia, where Assange was born and remains a citizen, met with American counterparts to appeal for his release. “My position is clear and has been made clear to the US administration: that it is time that this matter be brought to a close,” Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, told the Australian parliament late last month. In Brazil, meanwhile, President-elect Luis Inácio Lula da Silva demanded an end to what he called the “unjust imprisonment” of Assange after a meeting with WikiLeaks editors lobbying for his freedom. Some of Assange’s defenders, who have attacked his prosecution as a trampling of the first amendment, say they are optimistic that the case may have reached a turning point that could ultimately lead to his freedom.

“This case is hugely significant,” the Columbia University law professor Jameel Jaffer, who runs the Knight First Amendment Institute at the university, said in an interview. “At the end of the day, I find it hard to believe that the Biden administration wants this case to be its press freedom legacy, and it will be its legacy if they continue to pursue it. That will overshadow everything else when it comes to press freedom.” Justice department officials aren’t tipping their hand about where Assange’s prosecution might eventually lead, as he continues to challenge his extradition to the US before a British appeals court. The justice department declined to comment on all the outside calls to drop the case, but one official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Garland “has made clear that he will follow the law wherever it leads”, as he has in other politically charged cases.

Hot water
https://twitter.com/i/status/1602254557329108993

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Debt Rattle December 9 2022

Dec 092022

December 9, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:35 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, Azov, Bari Weiss, Borrell, ECB, Ellsberg, Elon Musk, Merkel, Perkins Coie, price cap, tribunal, Twitter Files 74 Responses »

Salvador Dali Back the girl 1926

• Second Wave Of Twitter Docs Reveal ‘Blacklists’ And ‘Shadow Bans’ (JTN)

• Saxo Bank Predictions Warn Of A Wild 2023 (Spears)

• Merkel’s ‘Confession’ May Be Ground For Tribunal – Moscow (RT)

• US Trying To Make Ukraine Conflict Last For Years – Russia (RT)

• Kremlin Explains When Ukraine Conflict May End (RT)

• Bandera’s ‘Insurgency-in-Waiting’ (Robeson)

• ADL: Ukraine’s Azov Battalion No Longer ‘Far-right’ (GZ)

• EU Lacks ‘Critical Defense Capabilities’ – Borrell (RT)

• The Russian Oil Price Cap Isn’t As Simple As It Seems (OP)

• “People Are Losing Faith In This Institution”: ECB Staff (ZH)

• FBI Sees ‘Threat’ In Apple Encryption Move (RT)

• The Coming Purge of the China-Hands (Pattberg)

• The Fixed-pPice Shopping Basket: Greece’s Answer To Cost Of Living Crisis (G.)

• Daniel Ellsberg: Indict Me Too (Lauria)

• Disinformation Down 92% As NYT Writers Go On Strike (BBee)

In 2018, Twitter was doing fine with the same amount of people they now employ. What was the rest doing? Just censoring?

Shadow ban

Can confirm – Twitter shadowbanned pic.twitter.com/kpLeeB3E7p

— Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) December 9, 2022

Zelensky

Never deleting this app pic.twitter.com/Y0EOVsRBUW

— Dr. Parik Patel, BA, CFA, ACCA Esq. (@ParikPatelCFA) December 7, 2022

@CelineDion reveals she has ultimately been diagnosed with Stiff Person Syndrome. This is a known vaxx side effect that Pfizer kept quiet until the court forced them release the side effects in the first Pfizer dump.

Tucker board

Censorship plans of Disinformation Board exposed pic.twitter.com/g1V081sgHf

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) December 8, 2022

Christine Anderson
https://twitter.com/i/status/1599487419530629120

Interesting discussions on Twitter about Twitter. Much more to come. It’ll be hard on Elon too. For instance, he tweeted that Twitter doesn’t employ the Perkins Coie law firm. And then someone sends a Dec. 8 paper that says it does. How now?

• Second Wave Of Twitter Docs Reveal ‘Blacklists’ And ‘Shadow Bans’ (JTN)

Former New York Times editor Bari Weiss on Thursday released internal documents on Twitter’s censorship efforts and detailed the creation of blacklists and use of shadow ban technique to throttle “disfavored” tweets. Last week, Musk released information on the company’s censoring of the Hunter Biden laptop story via alternative journalist Matt Taibbi. Thursday’s dump came through a team of reporters Weiss led and to whom Musk granted broad access to the company’s files to investigate on condition they first publish their findings on Twitter. “[T]eams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users,” Weiss posted in the first of a series of tweets.

Weiss subsequently outlined how conservative personalities or individuals with “disfavored” positions would end up on internal blacklists to stunt the spread of their messaging. Talk-show host Dan Bongino was featured on a “search blacklist” while Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s account was set to “Do Not Amplify,” Weiss detailed. COVID-19 lockdown critic Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University wound up on a “trends blacklist” that prevented his tweets from featuring on the website’s trending section. Weiss then recalled prior comments from Twitter executives denying that the company used shadow bans to stifle traffic on accounts without their knowledge.

“We do not shadow ban. And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology,” said then Head of Legal Policy and Trust Vijaya Gadde and Head of Product Kayvon Beykpour in 2018. Weiss then outlined testimony from Twitter engineers detailing an identical process the company termed “Visibility Filtering” in which the platform would quietly limit the reach of specific posts. VF decisions would go through the Strategic Response Team — Global Escalation Team Weiss explained, which she said often handled up to 200 cases per day. She further asserted that a secret dubbed “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support” included top-level officials who made the biggest decisions. Weiss asserted that former CEO Jack Dorsey participated in the group’s deliberations.

‘If I was a strategic thinker in the non-western world I would be thinking about what to do with my US dollar reserves..’

• Saxo Bank Predictions Warn Of A Wild 2023 (Spears)

From Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to a British prime minister being ousted after six weeks, it has been a year of shocking events. More volatility lies ahead if Saxo Bank — whose previous annual list of ‘outrageous predictions’ did not see those two coming — is accurate with its prophecies for 2023, which include the reversal of Brexit and the end of dollar dominance. Some of Saxo Bank’s predictions are more outrageous than others, admits Steen Jakobsen, chief investment officer, who has been overseeing the annual project for more than 20 years. He says the most likely prediction of Saxo’s 10 for 2023 could see the US dollar’s dominance assailed by concerted action among non-Western countries.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to the ‘US weaponising the US dollar,’ as part of the sanctions response, says Jakobsen. ‘If I was a strategic thinker in the non-western world I would be thinking about what to do with my US dollar reserves going forward.’ Oil-producing nations could agree with large consumers such as China and India to do deals in a new reserve asset, leaving the dollar behind. Saxo’s possible scenario sees non-US allied countries create an international clearing union (ICU) and a new reserve asset. Based on an idea by economist John Maynard Keynes after the Second World War, the idea would make the purchasing price for oil more stable in currency terms. ‘Why would Saudi Arabia and China do deals in dollars?’ adds Jakobsen. He believes it would be a natural move ‘at a time when the US has stepped back from being a world policeman.’

Saxo’s predictions suggest a splintering world in which national economies ‘shift into War Economy mode, where sovereign economic gains and self-reliance trump globalisation.’ But closer regional links are also foreseen, most notably in the UK, which votes to ‘un-Brexit’ and rejoin the EU in the wake of economic turmoil and political demonstrations. Jakobsen does not think Rishi Sunak’s more measured approach as prime minister will be any more effective than predecessor Liz Truss’s attempts to create a laissez-faire economy. ‘Neither is going to do anything for the debt or inflation (problems) in the UK,’ he says. ‘Maybe this leads to dissatisfaction, demonstrations and ultimately an election which will see Labour come in. Maybe the Liberal Democrats show up as a Europe-friendly party, (popular) with young people in particular.’

Merkel made clear that the “collective west” spent years trying to create a war with Russia. It’s that simple.

A tribunal would have no effect. Because all tribunals these days listen to only one side. A “Russian war crimes tribunal” will exclude Ukraine war crimes. Useless. Or worse.

• Merkel’s ‘Confession’ May Be Ground For Tribunal – Moscow (RT)

A confession by former German chancellor Angela Merkel regarding the true nature of the Minsk agreements – a roadmap for peace in Ukraine that was brokered by Berlin – could be used as evidence in a tribunal involving Western politicians responsible for provoking the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. The former German leader admitted in an interview with Die Zeit on Wednesday that the actual purpose of the Minsk agreements was to give Ukraine time to prepare for a military confrontation with Russia. “They talk a lot about legal assessments of what is happening around Ukraine, certain tribunals and so on in all sorts of ways,” Zakharova said during a media briefing on Thursday. “But this is a specific reason for a tribunal.”

She claimed that Merkel’s comments were nothing short of the testimony of a person who had openly admitted that everything done between 2014 and 2015 was meant to “distract the international community from real issues, play for time, pump up the Kiev regime with weapons, and escalate the issue into a large-scale conflict,” Zakharova added. She said Merkel’s statements “horrifyingly” reveal that the West uses “forgery as a method of action,” and resorts to “machinations, manipulation and all kinds of distortions of truth, law and rights imaginable.” The spokeswoman claimed that the West had known well in 2015, when it spent hours negotiating the second part of the Minsk accords, that it would never even attempt to fulfill any part of the agreements and would instead pump weapons into Kiev.

“They did not feel sorry for anyone: women, children, the civilian population of Donbass or the whole of Ukraine. They needed a conflict and they were ready for it back then, in 2015,” Zakharova said. Earlier this month, a number of Western officials called for the creation of a special UN-backed court to investigate alleged war crimes committed by Russia during its ongoing military campaign in Ukraine. The Kremlin has said the West has no legal or moral right to set up any courts to investigate or prosecute Russia over the conflict, which Moscow claims was ultimately provoked by the US and its allies.

“She also said that Zelensky should watch his back, considering last week’s visit to Ukraine by Victoria Nuland..”

• US Trying To Make Ukraine Conflict Last For Years – Russia (RT)

US arms procurement documents show that Washington intends to fuel the conflict in Ukraine for at least three more years, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky should take notice of it when assessing the future of his country, she added. “Washington plans to fuel hostilities in Ukraine at least till the end of 2025. That’s what their plans are, judging by documents, which they don’t hide from anybody,” the Russian diplomat told journalists during a briefing on Thursday. Zakharova was referring to a contract for Raytheon’s National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS), which the Pentagon announced last week.

The US Army will buy $1.2 billion worth of hardware for Ukraine, according to the announcement, with an estimated completion date in late November 2025. The US, which pledged to provide military assistance to Kiev for “as long as it takes” to defeat Russia, previously supplied this type of anti-aircraft system to Ukrainian troops. Advisors to President Vladimir Zelensky should tell him about the procurement timeline, Zakharova suggested, so that he didn’t promise his people that the conflict would end next year, as he did this week. “Washington has different plans. There is a lot of money to be embezzled” through Ukraine aid programs, she alleged. Zakharova claimed that Western assistance was “a corruption marathon” going from the White House to Kiev and back again and profiting grifters on a global scale.

She also said that Zelensky should watch his back, considering last week’s visit to Ukraine by Victoria Nuland, a veteran US diplomat, whom Zakharova called “a harbinger of tragic shocks, caused by the Washington-orchestrated bloody putsch” of 2014. “A new palace coup may be in the making or some other reshuffle. I believe the Zelensky regime, which has repeatedly tested Washington’s patience, has some things to consider,” she remarked, adding that the US didn’t care who was in power in Kiev. Nuland, who served as US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs in 2014, was recorded discussing with then-US Ambassador to Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, the composition of the post-coup Ukrainian government. The private conversation was leaked online by unidentified parties. Her preferred candidate for prime minister subsequently got the job.

“Zelensky knows when all this can end, it can end tomorrow if desired..”

• Kremlin Explains When Ukraine Conflict May End (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky knows that if desired the fighting between Moscow and Kiev could end at any moment, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said during a press call on Thursday. “You can talk about when all of this will end until you are blue in the face,” Peskov said in response to the Ukrainian president’s recent prediction that the conflict could be over next year. “Zelensky knows when all this can end, it can end tomorrow if desired,” the spokesperson added. In a recent interview with Politico – which named him ‘the most powerful person in Europe’ – Zelensky stated that Ukrainians “will be the most influential next year, but already in peacetime.”

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine could turn out to be a “lengthy process” because achieving all of Russia’s objectives could take quite some time. Earlier, the Russian leader also said that it was wrong to talk about the timing of the special operation or try to adjust it. He noted that it was impossible to set an exact date for when the conflict could end because the fighting is still intense. “We are working calmly, the troops are moving, reaching the lines that are set as tasks. Everything is going according to plan,” Putin said back in June.

“[Zelensky] can’t go forward with full peace negotiations with Russia, with Putin, unless America has his back..”

• Bandera’s ‘Insurgency-in-Waiting’ (Robeson)

In early February 2022, a couple weeks before Putin’s invasion, Ragozin observed, “While downplaying the risk of a Russian offensive and even reprimanding the West for sowing panic, the Ukrainian leadership appears preoccupied with a different threat – that of a coup.” In the same article (“What is Zelenskiy afraid of?”), he described the “Capitulation Resistance Movement” as “a radical street force dedicated to toppling Zelensky” and “a paramilitary force associated with the nationalist opposition that coalesced around former president Petro Poroshenko.” Nationalists officially launched the “Capitulation Resistance Movement” (Rukh Oporu Kapitulyatsiyi, ROK) in October 2019 to sabotage Zelensky’s peace mandate after the political newcomer crushed Poroshenko and his political party in elections held earlier that year.

“No Capitulation” became the slogan of a broader, far-right-led campaign against Zelensky and his government, with protests typically spearheaded by the neo-Nazi Azov movement and the ROK. “Zelensky ran as a peace candidate,” and the hardliners vigorously opposed him, the late Russia expert Stephen F. Cohen explained to journalist Aaron Maté that month. “He won an enormous mandate to make peace. So, that means he has to negotiate with Vladimir Putin.” But there was a major obstacle. Ukrainian fascists “have said that they will remove and kill Zelensky if he continues along this line of negotiating with Putin… His life is being threatened literally by a quasi-fascist movement in Ukraine.” Peace could only come, Cohen stressed, on one condition. “[Zelensky] can’t go forward with full peace negotiations with Russia, with Putin, unless America has his back,” he said.

“Maybe that won’t be enough, but unless the White House encourages this diplomacy, Zelensky has no chance of negotiating an end to the war. So the stakes are enormously high.” That was three years ago. After Russia invaded, the ROK became the FURM, or the Free Ukraine Resistance Movement, which has mostly flown under the radar. After interviewing a representative of the FURM in early March, a neoconservative US journalist referred to the “Resistance Movement” as an “insurgency-in-waiting, one of many, no doubt, that plans to resort to guerrilla warfare in the event that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempted conquest of Ukraine turns into a prolonged occupation of major population centers.”

After keeping tabs on this “quasi-fascist” movement for a few years (although it mostly went dark after Russia invaded), I feel comfortable speculating that the ROK was partially responsible for making Zelensky feel that negotiating peace with Russia would be too dangerous for him. I also suspect that once Putin declared war, Zelensky as an actor felt his only choice was to become an action hero, not just to rally international support for his country, but to become so popular in Ukraine and the West to rule out a coup d’etat.

“The New York Times has even referred to the unit as the “celebrated Azov Battalion.”

• ADL: Ukraine’s Azov Battalion No Longer ‘Far-right’ (GZ)

A November 9 email from the Anti-Defamation League to The Grayzone provided a twisted defense of Ukraine’s Azov Battalion. Despite its self-proclaimed “anti-hate” mission, the ADL insisted in the email it “does not” consider Azov as the “far right group it once was.” The Azov Battalion is a neo-Nazi unit formally integrated into the US government-backed Ukrainian military. Founded by Andriy Biletsky, who has infamously vowed to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led untermenschen,” Azov was once widely condemned by Western corporate media and the human rights industry for its association with Nazism. Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In the months that immediately followed, Azov led the Ukrainian military’s defense of Mariupol, the group’s longtime stronghold. As the militia assumed a frontline role in the war against Russia, Western media led a campaign to rebrand Azov as misunderstood freedom fighters while accusing its critics of echoing Kremlin talking points. The New York Times has even referred to the unit as the “celebrated Azov Battalion.” Like the Washington Post and other mainstream outlets, the ADL ignored Azov’s atrocities this April in Mariupol, where locals accused the group of using civilians as human shields and executing those who attempted to flee. One video out of Mariupol showed Azov fighters proudly declaring the Nazi collaborator and mass murderer of Jews, Stepan Bandera, to be their “father.”

The Azov Battalion has long served as a magnet for the international white nationalist movement, attracting recruits from the terrorist Atomwaffen Division to a US Army Specialist arrested on charges of distributing bomb-making instructions. Back in March 2022, just a month before the battle of Mariupol, the ADL itself issued a report acknowledging that white nationalists see Azov “as a pathway to the creation of a National Socialist state in Ukraine.” Eight months later, however, the ADL has changed its tune, asserting to this outlet that Azov has rooted the fascists from its ranks. So did Azov change its Nazi ways, or did the ADL simply shift its messaging to conform to the imperatives of a Biden administration still intent on sending billions in military aid to Ukraine?

Does Borrell work for Raytheon? His spending demands will make Europe a lot poorer…

• EU Lacks ‘Critical Defense Capabilities’ – Borrell (RT)

Europe must begin to take more responsibility for its own security, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has said, announcing that total expenditure by member states will grow by €70 billion over the next three years. Speaking at the ‘Investing in European Defence’ forum on Thursday, Borrell, who also heads the European Defence Agency (EDA), called on European nations to cooperate more on upping defense capacities in the common interest of bloc security. They should also look past the current conflict in Ukraine and anticipate “future threats.” Borrell said states’ spending on defense had surpassed the €200 billion-level in 2021 for the first time, though they’re still playing catch-up. “After the Cold War, we shrunk our forces to small-size armies without coordination … We lack critical defense capabilities,” he said.

“We have to compensate for years of underspending.” “Total defense expenditure that Member States have announced will grow by another €70 billion in the next three years,” Borrell said, adding that “people don’t fight with banknotes.” Borrell said Brussels faced a challenge to spend the money “in a coordinated manner” and that national decisions should not be focused solely on present needs, an apparent reference to the turmoil in Ukraine. If the focus remains only on current requirements, Europe will once again be faced with “a fragmented European capability landscape,” he warned. The top diplomat said a balance must be found between responding to current needs and preparing for future threats. Those threats are “close by and likely to get worse,” he said.

The EU has committed around $2.5 billion in weapons to Ukraine since Russia’s offensive began in February. Borrell’s pledge comes as European nations are running out of weapons to give Ukraine as they see their own stocks dwindling. The constant transfers of weapons to Ukraine has left most NATO nations’ stockpiles strained, according to a New York Times report last month, which said the bloc’s smaller nations had “exhausted their potential” and at least 20 of NATO’s 30 members were “pretty tapped out.” Politico reported last week that France unofficially admitted it has run out of weapons to send Kiev due to the state of its own supplies, while Germany also faces a €20-billion shortfall in ammunition.

“..wondering how a fixed price would work in a market that trades oil on a forward floating basis against international benchmarks..”

• The Russian Oil Price Cap Isn’t As Simple As It Seems (OP)

The $ 60-per-barrel price cap on Russian crude oil, which came into effect on Monday, looks pretty straightforward. Buyers paying $60 or less per barrel of Russia’s crude will have full access to all EU and G7 insurance and financing services associated with transporting Russian crude to non-EU countries. However, the physical oil market doesn’t usually see trades with fixed prices of crude – oil is being sold at a price premium or discount against the forward prices of the major international benchmarks such as Brent or the Oman/Dubai average. So, the price cap is much more complicated than a straightforward $60 per barrel ceiling. As a result, traders of physical oil cargoes are confused by the price cap on Russian crude, wondering how a fixed price would work in a market that trades oil on a forward floating basis against international benchmarks.

Physical oil traders, those who are willing to trade crude in compliance with the price cap, are also concerned that they could end up inadvertently violating the cap if, for example, the price of Russia’s flagship grade, Urals, with a discount to Brent, is higher than $60 per barrel weeks after the oil trade has been made. In such cases, traders would be stuck with above-$60 Russian crude that violates the price cap and would significantly limit access to EU/G7 tankers and maritime transportation services such as insurance and financing, oil traders tell Bloomberg. This could complicate the physical handling of Russian crude oil cargoes and hedging, they say. “Physical traders rarely trade on a fixed price,” John Driscoll, chief strategist at JTD Energy Services Pte Ltd, told Bloomberg.

“It’s a much more complex space where they trade on formulas and spot differentials to a benchmark crude for the trading of actual cargoes as well as for hedging that follows,” said Driscoll, who has more than 30 years of trading oil in Singapore. The price cap is not set in stone – it “is fixed for now but adjustable over time,” the EU said last week. A price revision would “take into account a variety of factors, which can include the effectiveness of the measure, its implementation, international adherence and alignment, the potential impact on coalition members and partners, and market developments,” the EU says. Even within the price cap, banks are generally wary of providing financing, industry officials told Global Trade Review this week.

Banks are concerned by the high compliance risk and fear they will have to increase scrutiny and due diligence to avoid being caught in a trade or deceptive shipping practices. Adding further confusion for physical oil traders is Russia’s position on the matter. Moscow says it will not trade its oil with countries that have joined the price cap. The EU says that “With the price cap, there are clear incentives for Russia, oil importing countries and market participants to maintain the flow of Russian oil. This will achieve both objectives at the same time.” But Russia says the price cap artificially limits prices—a mechanism Moscow will not accept.

In times of plenty, incompetence tends to remain hidden. But today, almost everyone working in European institutions turns out to be incompetent. They’ve been selected not for their skills, but for loyalty to some ideology or another.

• “People Are Losing Faith In This Institution”: ECB Staff (ZH)

This one is just too funny to pass by: having watched as their incompetent and clueless “leaders” sparked the biggest surge in European inflation since Weimar, crushing the purchasing power of ordinary people across the continent, it is only when their own purchases were suddenly threatened that the ECB’s rank and file decided to make some noises. According to the FT, workers at the world’s biggest hedge fund (or at least it was until the Euro hit parity), known as the European Central Bank, will discuss protest action and even potential strikes after rejecting a pay offer well below the rate of eurozone inflation, a union official has warned. The ECB’s proposal to increase pay by “only” 4.07% in January is – hilariously enough – consistent with the bank’s own opposition to deals that link wages to inflation that it believes risk fuelling a damaging wage-price spiral.

There is just one problem: its own employees think Christine Lagarde – herself a multimillionaire who barely avoided jail time despite being a convicted felon – is full of it and demand much higher pay… which if extended to all European workers will result without doubt in a wage-price spiral, as higher wages will mean higher prices, which mean even higher wages, and so on. The ECB’s latest pay offer, up from a 1.48% rise at the start of this year, is less than half what annual eurozone inflation is expected to be this year and will leave its staff with a significant pay cut in real terms (don’t tell them, but most Europeans won’t even get a 4.07% nominal wage increase: are they supposed to strike too). “People are losing faith in this institution,” said Carlos Bowles, vice-president of the Ipso union that represents ECB staff. “What the ECB leadership is telling us is ‘sorry we missed our own inflation target and now you, the staff, are going to pay the price’. “We really see an issue in the way the ECB stance is damaging the bargaining power of workers,” said Bowles.

“This is playing a role in increasing inequality.” Of course, that’s what we have been saying since 2009. But it was only when their own livelihood was on the line, did workers for Europe’s money printer figure it out too. A recent survey by the union found “the vast majority of colleagues are angry” about the ECB’s pay offer, he said. “The pay consultation is due to finish at the end of the year and we will decide in January if we protest.” The union reportedly met with the ECB’s ultra wealthy president Christine Lagarde – who doesn’t care what food costs, after all with the help of Bernard Tapie she embezzled enough to last her a lifetime – a few weeks ago and she made it clear there was no room for negotiation, he said. A strike, as happened at the ECB over pension reforms in 2009, was “not excluded” but it would only “come after an escalation curve”.

“In this age of cybersecurity and demands for ‘security by design,’ the FBI and law enforcement partners need ‘lawful access by design.’”

• FBI Sees ‘Threat’ In Apple Encryption Move (RT)

The FBI has issued a warning about upcoming security updates for Apple products, insisting the company’s plans to strengthen end-to-end encryption will interfere with efforts to track down criminals and terrorists. The agency sounded alarms soon after Apple announced several “advanced security features” set to be introduced in the coming months – including new protections for files stored in the cloud – telling the Washington Post it is “deeply concerned with the threat end-to-end and user-only-access encryption pose.” “This hinders our ability to protect the American people from criminal acts ranging from cyber-attacks and violence against children to drug trafficking, organized crime and terrorism,” an unnamed FBI spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday.

“In this age of cybersecurity and demands for ‘security by design,’ the FBI and law enforcement partners need ‘lawful access by design.’” US and allied law enforcement officials have long demanded tech firms to provide open access to all devices, with the FBI frequently citing the aftermath of a 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernadino, California, when agents were unable to get into an Apple phone used by the shooter. Though the bureau pressed the company to help it break in, Apple refused, leading to a lengthy legal battle centered on encryption. Between 2015 and 2016 alone, Apple received at least 11 separate court orders to help police access various devices thought to be involved in criminal activity, but objected to all of them. A New York City court would later conclude that Apple could not be compelled to unlock its phones on the basis of the 1789 All Writs Act, which the FBI had repeatedly cited in prior cases.

Alongside agencies in the UK and Australia, the US Department of Justice has placed similar pressure on other tech giants in the past. In 2019, the three countries issued an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg which argued that “companies should not deliberately design their systems to preclude any form of access to content.” Officials suggested encryption could interfere with investigations into “the most serious crimes,” effectively asking for the ability to crack any device at any time. Privacy advocates, including famed national security whistleblower Edward Snowden, have pushed back on the drive to undermine strong encryption, saying it is impossible to create a backdoor exclusively for law enforcement, and that any such security loophole will also be open to everyone, including bad actors.

How our impression of China is shaped. Read!

• The Coming Purge of the China-Hands (Pattberg)

There comes a time during or shortly after the academic training of every “Student of China” when he frequently runs into one of the many agents of Western anti-China state security. They are adverse hostile forces, they run a complete background-check on you, and then they‘ll make you a simple offer: You either produce anti-Chinese content for the West, or they‘ll mark you as anti-democratic and enemy of freedom, a traitor. In that case, you’ll never find work in the West again. And if you make a big fuss about it and cry coercion or blackmail, they are gonna start decomposing you. Like most young students back then, I, too, was completely ignorant about the inner workings of Western world hegemony. And, like the idiot I always was, I threw myself heedlessly into “China Studies” at a respective University in the United Kingdom, Edinburgh to be exact.

Immediately, the conceited profs and lecturers, they taught us the horrors of Han chauvinism, the horrors of Qing China and the horrors of the Maoists and the horrors against the poor people of Tibet, Hong Kong and Taiwan. When I looked it up, those were all former British colonies and/or places of interest to the British Crown. We were told LIES by the very British people whose soldiers raped, looted and colonized China, and were now angry that China somehow stood its ground and survived. I do not expect you to believe at first what I am about to tell you. I would not have believed it myself, back then I mean, before I joined some of the many “Studies” invented by the Western Empire of LIES. “China Studies” is not about China. It could be, but it is not. It is warfare against China. To keep China down. To sabotage her. To control her people and her history. In this war, it is the West or you perish.

Joining the enemy, China, is a capital crime. Have you ever wondered why there are no pro-China talking heads in the books, in the papers or on telly? It is because pro-China people in “China Studies” were the enemy. They didn’t make it through graduation, they weren’t hired, etc.. Our common sense is often betrayed by what sociologists call ‘the survivor bias’: We believe that since all we hear or read about China is negative, this must be sure proof that China is a very nasty place. What we fail to see, however, is that all the negative stuff we heard and read about China was the product of just 1 “China Studies” graduate for every 1,000,000 people or so of the general Western population. Nobody who was pro-China survived the selection process or came anywhere near central power.

“For many it was not in the increased number of homeless on the streets, or beggars huddled around tourist sites, or eye-wateringly high energy bills – although all of those existed before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. ”

• The Fixed-pPice Shopping Basket: Greece’s Answer To Cost Of Living Crisis (G.)

Even before the cost of living crisis was formally pronounced, it had arrived in Greece. For many it was not in the increased number of homeless on the streets, or beggars huddled around tourist sites, or eye-wateringly high energy bills – although all of those existed before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “It was there for everyone to see on the supermarket shelves,” says Panagiota Kalapotharakou, who heads the consumer rights association Ekpizo. “Eighteen months ago there were so many products with price labels that a great number of Greeks could not afford. Costs were going up long before the war in Ukraine.” It came as little surprise for consumer groups, then, that when talk turned to the need for relief measures to counter rising inflation the government chose to focus on staple goods.

What emerged was the novel concept of the “household basket”: supermarkets agreed with the government to sell about 51 staples – from flour to fish – at fixed prices. The measure, thrashed out around a long mahogany table in the ministry of commerce, went into effect in early November. Officials in the centre-right government intend the scheme, scheduled to run to the end of the winter, as a bulwark for the most vulnerable against the inflationary storm. No government subsidies are involved. “We spent weeks sitting around this table working on it with supermarket market representatives and our competition committee,” says Sotiris Anagnostopoulos, the ministry’s fresh-faced general secretary. “In politics you have to anticipate what is coming next. The cost of living crisis is a huge challenge, maybe the biggest we have faced since the adoption of the euro.”

Nationwide chains have signed up to the programme, selling products under blue household basket labels. With the country’s annual consumer inflation rate currently at 10% – down from a high of 12% in September – the government insists the initiative has succeeded in stabilising prices at a time of uncertainty and, in some cases, driving them lower. “What was never expected was the price war that we have seen among the big supermarket chains,” says Anagnostopoulos. “It’s been a surprise and a pleasant one because in general Greeks have much lower purchasing power.” Forced to survive on some of the lowest wages in the EU – at less than €1,200 a month, the average monthly salary is about a quarter of that in Germany – Greeks have felt the impact of soaring prices perhaps more than other EU nations.

“Anyone who has downloaded a classified document from WikiLeaks, Cryptome or any other source, or posted it online is liable to prosecution under the Act..”

• Daniel Ellsberg: Indict Me Too (Lauria)

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has told the U.S. Justice Department and President Joe Biden that he is as indictable as WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange for having unauthorized possession of classified materials before they were published by WikiLeaks and that he would plead “not guilty” because the Espionage Act is unconstitutional. Ellsberg revealed this week to the BBC interview program Hard Talk that Assange had given him the files leaked by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to keep as a backup before they were published by WikiLeaks in 2010. Assange has been charged with violating the Espionage Act for possession and dissemination of classified information and faces 175 years in a U.S. prison if he is extradited from Belmarsh Prison in London.

Ellsberg is the second figure this month to come forward calling on the U.S. government to indict them for the same reasons Assange has been charged. “Cryptome published the decrypted unredacted State Department Cables on September 1, 2011 prior to publication of the cables by WikiLeaks,” John Young wrote in a Justice Department submission form, which Young posted on Twitter last week. “No US official has contacted me about publishing the unredacted cables since cryptome published them,” he wrote. “I respectfully request that the Department of Justice add me as a co-defendant in the prosecution of Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act.” The 1917 Espionage Act does not exempt journalists from receiving and publishing classified information, which Ellsberg says is a clear violation of the First Amendment and should be challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Anyone who has downloaded a classified document from WikiLeaks, Cryptome or any other source, or posted it online is liable to prosecution under the Act, which would include millions of people around the world. Receiving and publishing classified information is routine work for journalists at major publications. Five newspapers partnered with WikiLeaks to publish Manning’s material in 2010 but only Assange has been charged. Those five newspapers last week called on the Biden administration to drop the charges on Assange because of the threat to the First Amendment. The Obama administration declined to indict Assange in 2011 because it understood that it would also have to indict New York Times editors and reporters for having published the same materiel Assange did. That is the only material Assange was indicted for.

He was not charged for releases exposing Central Intelligence Agency hacking activities in 2016, though that so infuriated then C.I.A. Director Mike Pompeo that Pompeo later asked for plans to be drawn up to either kidnap or kill Assange while he was living under asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy. The Trump administration then had Assange arrested and charged under the Espionage Act in 2019. Despite being part of the Obama administration, Biden has refused to drop the case. When those plans were first revealed at Assange’s extradition hearing in 2020, Ellsberg said that the government was treating Assange worse than he had been treated and that it should have set Assange free.

“..all other news outlets around the country reported feeling “lost” as they were so used to just copying and pasting from the New York Times each morning.”

• Disinformation Down 92% As NYT Writers Go On Strike (BBee)

Researchers are reporting that disinformation on Twitter, Facebook, and mainstream news sources is already down by 92% in the wake of a 24-hour writer’s strike at the New York Times. “We always wondered where all this harmful disinformation was coming from,” said Darryl Ball, a researcher with the Center for Combatting Bad Things Online. “Turns out, it was all coming from those knuckleheads at the Times. Who knew?” Several studies indicate the country has seen a sharp decrease in hate speech, foreign propaganda, and shockingly dumb hot takes since the entire writing staff walked out of the building in New York City, which experts believe could lead to an outbreak of peace and harmony across the nation.

“All this time, the threat to democracy was us all along!” said NYT Union Boss Fuggs Crullers to reporters from other news organizations not on strike. “We have begun negotiations with leadership to pay us more money to never come back to work in hopes of saving America.” At publishing time, all other news outlets around the country reported feeling “lost” as they were so used to just copying and pasting from the New York Times each morning.

Paul Marik

'It's An Outrage'

"If early treatment was adopted in Mar/Apr '20, we would have saved 100s of 1000sof lives,"
-Dr. Paul Marik

"It's a moral, ethical medical outrage, that we weren't allowed to treat patients w/ safe, effective, cheap, drugs – in favor of big pharma control" pic.twitter.com/3BpTqC7wCb

— New World Odor™ (@hugh_mankind) December 8, 2022

Tucker dreamers

There is new reporting that Democrats and several Republicans are working on a deal to pass amnesty for millions of illegal migrants before the new Congress can take over. This is an actual effort to disenfranchise American voters.https://t.co/L9L2DYMU9N pic.twitter.com/rWD2qfdyky

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) December 7, 2022

Referee
https://twitter.com/i/status/1600902123486470145

Polar bear cub

Polar bear and her cub. Video by Ruth Elwell Steckpic.twitter.com/oPrjmUIwUZ

— Fascinating (@fasc1nate) December 7, 2022

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Debt Rattle December 8 2022

Dec 082022

December 8, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:52 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, bad faith, died suddenly, Elon Musk, faux urgency, Merkel, mortality, Twitter Files 87 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Couple on a bench 1943

• Merkel Confirms Ukraine Ceasefire Was A Ploy (RT)

• Germany Says Ukraine Can Strike Inside Russia (RT)

• Putin: Risk Of Nuclear War Rising, Ukraine Operation To Be “Long Process” (ZH)

• Ukraine Operation Could Take A Long Time – Putin (RT)

• EU Has To Show It ‘Has Its Own Interests’ – Lavrov (RT)

• Russia’s Mega Gas Pipeline To China Nearly Complete (RT)

• Elon Musk: Data May Have Been Hidden And Deleted From The Twitter Files (PM)

• Fight Over Officer Testimony Roils Proud Boys Sedition Case (AP)

• Report: Those Who Died Suddenly Likely Killed by the Covid Vaccine (Jones)

• Analysis Shows 26% Worse Mortality Among the Vaccinated (RVM)

• Australia Concerned As People Dying At ‘Incredibly High’ Pace (Benzinga)

• COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters For Young Adults (BMJ)

• The Faux Urgency Of The Climate ‘Crisis’ (Curry)

• Wikileaks Editor-in-Chief Warns Assange May Be Extradited “Within Weeks” (WSWS)

• Julian Assange’s Family Pleads For Unity (AAP)

mRNA military

We now know that the US Govt created Covid-19 by funding gain of function research at the Wuhan lab in China. But the US Govt also created gene-encoded vaccines since 2012.

“The US military came up with the idea of messenger RNA vaccines, not Pfizer…” pic.twitter.com/FSXsIz1R8B

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) December 8, 2022

Tucker military
https://twitter.com/i/status/1600677795369132032

She always acted in bad faith. Because she was going to blame Russia anyway: “..the Cold War never really ended because Russia was basically not at peace..”

And now, at some point, there must be new talks. How do you think Putin and Lavrov will act?

• Merkel Confirms Ukraine Ceasefire Was A Ploy (RT)

The 2014 ceasefire brokered by Berlin and Paris in Minsk was an attempt to give Kiev time to strengthen its military and was successful in that regard, former German chancellor Angela Merkel argued in an interview published on Wednesday. In an extensive interview about her 16 years in power, Merkel told the Zeit magazine her policy towards Russia and Ukraine was correct, even if not successful. “I thought the initiation of NATO accession for Ukraine and Georgia discussed in 2008 to be wrong,” Merkel said. “The countries neither had the necessary prerequisites for this, nor had the consequences of such a decision been fully considered, both with regard to Russia’s actions against Georgia and Ukraine and to NATO and its rules of assistance.”

She described the September 2014 Minsk agreement as “an attempt to give Ukraine time.” France and Germany had brokered a ceasefire after the failure of Ukraine’s attempt to subdue the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk by force. “[Ukraine] used this time to get stronger, as you can see today,” Merkel continued. “The Ukraine of 2014/15 is not the Ukraine of today. As you saw in the battle for Debaltsevo in early 2015, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin could easily have overrun them at the time. And I very much doubt that the NATO countries could have done as much then as they do now to help Ukraine.” The defeat at Debaltsevo resulted in the second Minsk protocol being signed in February 2015. Merkel said that it was “clear to all of us that the conflict was frozen, that the problem had not been solved, but that gave Ukraine valuable time.”

Meanwhile, she defended the decision to build the Nord Stream 2 pipeline for Russian gas, since refusing to do so would have “have dangerously worsened the climate” with Moscow given the situation in Ukraine. It just so happened that Germany couldn’t get gas elsewhere, she added. Asked for any self-criticism, Merkel told Zeit that “the Cold War never really ended because Russia was basically not at peace,” and that NATO “should have reacted more quickly to Russia’s aggressiveness” in 2014. Pyotr Poroshenko, who became president of Ukraine after the 2014 US-backed coup in Kiev, told the domestic audience in August 2015 that Minsk was a ruse to buy time for a military build-up. He admitted as much to the West in July 2022, in an interview with German media.

Guaranteeing the end of Ukraine. Why does Germany want that?

• Germany Says Ukraine Can Strike Inside Russia (RT)

While the US distanced itself from Ukraine’s drone strike at two air bases hundreds of kilometers inside Russia, the German government’s spokesman said on Wednesday that Kiev doesn’t have to limit its war effort to Ukrainian territory. “Ukraine has a right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter,” Steffen Hebestreit told journalists, when asked to comment on reports of explosions at the Russian airfields. “Ukraine is not obligated to limit defense efforts to its own territory.” Two strategic bomber bases in Ryazan and Saratov regions came under attack by drones on Monday morning, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Three service members were killed and several more injured, while two airplanes suffered minor damage.

The attack did not disrupt the planned strike against Ukrainian military logistics later in the day. The attack came on the same day as revelations that the US had modified HIMARS rocket launchers so Ukraine could not use them for longer-range missiles, allegedly because the White House wanted to avoid escalation with the Kremlin. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Tuesday that Washington has “neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia,” but instead provided them with “the equipment that they need to defend themselves.”

Moscow has repeatedly warned the US and NATO that providing heavy weapons to Ukraine risks crossing Russia’s “red lines,” and involving them in the conflict directly. Washington and its allies insist they are not a party to the hostilities, but continue arming Kiev. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has pledged to invest much more into his military, so that Berlin can become “the guarantor of European security that our allies expect us to be, a bridge builder within the European Union.” However, German media have noted that it will take until 2026 to hit the NATO-mandated goal of spending 2% of the GDP on the armed forces.

“Russia does not have tactical nuclear weapons in other countries, unlike the US.”

• Putin: Risk Of Nuclear War Rising, Ukraine Operation To Be “Long Process” (ZH)

On Wednesday Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a wide-ranging public war update during a televised session of his Human Rights Council, which at least one independent regional outlet said was tightly controlled in terms of the kind of questions Kremlin officials could ask. Among the more important topics he addressed related to the now 10-month long “special military operation” in Ukraine was future plans for broader mobilization and the prospect of deployment of nuclear assets. On the latter point, Putin lashed out at the United States and NATO, saying “Russia does not have tactical nuclear weapons in other countries, unlike the US.” This was in reference to the fact that some NATO members in Europe, including extending as far east as Turkey, do act as host countries to many of the US’ tactical nukes under the NATO defense umbrella.

“Our nuclear forces are in a more advanced state than any other country in the world,” he boasted at one point. Importantly, given the ratcheting US-NATO arms pipeline to Ukraine’s forces, which has lately involved transfer of increasingly sophisticated and longer range missiles, Putin warned that the “risk of nuclear war in the world is rising.” He further took the opportunity to restate Russia’s ‘defensive’ nuclear doctrine, stressing that nuclear weapons would be considered as a response to an attack on Russian territory, while also stating that he stands ready to defend Russian territory “using all available means”. According to a translation of Putin’s remarks in Sky News: “We didn’t speak about usage of nuclear weapons.” Then, he said: “Russia has not gone mad.”

“We have the most advanced weapons, but we do not want to wave it around.” But in taking a swipe at Washington’s nuclear deployments in Europe, he seemed to suggest that it’s precisely the US side doing the nuclear saber-rattling. “Yes, we will do this by various ways and means. First of all, of course, we will focus on peaceful means, but if nothing else remains, we will defend ourselves with all the means at our disposal,” Putin said. Western mainstream media will more than likely run with the comments as a fresh “threat” that Russia stands ready to conduct a nuclear attack if cornered in Ukraine, and yet just like the previous time he made similar statements, the Russian leader was in fact articulating the defensive nature of the country’s official nuclear policy against ‘existential’ threats to Russian territory.

This British volunteer flighting for the Ukrainian army reports of truckloads of military aid going missing because of rampant corruption in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/WFDgLoOUW7

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) December 8, 2022

“..Paris and Berlin later negotiated a ceasefire between Kiev and the Donbass republics in Minsk, but did nothing to uphold or promote it.”

• Ukraine Operation Could Take A Long Time – Putin (RT)

The military operation in Ukraine may go on for a while, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday, in a meeting with the Council for Civil Society and Human Rights. Addressing a question about the duration of hostilities that escalated in February, Putin said that achieving all the objectives will take time, but pointed to several major gains already won. “Of course, this might be a lengthy process,” Putin said, pointing out that the conflict really began in 2014, when the US backed a nationalist coup in Kiev. He explained that Moscow had little choice but to intervene in February, to defend the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk – which have since voted to join Russia, along with most of Kherson and Zaporozhye regions.

“These new territories are a major gain for Russia,” the president said. “Even Peter the Great sought access to the Azov Sea, and it is now an internal sea of the Russian Federation.” “Most importantly, the people who live there showed in a referendum that they want to be in Russia and feel themselves part of our world,” Putin said. “They are now with us, millions of them, and that is the greatest outcome.” Putin also said there was “no point” in discussing additional mobilization measures, as the more than 300,000 reservists called up to fill the ranks of the military were quite sufficient. In fact, some of the Donbass students who have been fighting for years are in the process of mustering out so they can finish their studies.

The Russian president also revealed that Western European leaders now objecting to the military operation “fall silent” when he reminds them their countries were supposed to guarantee the peace process in Ukraine since 2014. France and Germany negotiated a peaceful end to the Maidan turmoil just before the US-backed nationalists violently seized power in February that year. Paris and Berlin later negotiated a ceasefire between Kiev and the Donbass republics in Minsk, but did nothing to uphold or promote it. Earlier this year, former Ukrainian president Pyotr Poroshenko openly admitted the ceasefire was a tactic to buy time so Kiev could build up an army for a military solution.

“..the European Union will be able to participate in these processes on an equal footing when it realizes that it doesn’t have to say 100% ‘yes, sir’ to the United States.”

• EU Has To Show It ‘Has Its Own Interests’ – Lavrov (RT)

The European Union could have a place in a new multipolar world but it has to first free itself from excessive dependence on its allies across the Atlantic Ocean, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has argued. He added that the bloc needs to learn how to stick up for itself in areas that are important to it. Speaking on Wednesday at the Primakov Readings, an international forum of experts, diplomats and decision-makers held in Russia, Lavrov said: “the European Union will be able to participate in these processes on an equal footing when it realizes that it doesn’t have to say 100% ‘yes, sir’ to the United States.” He added that the bloc needs to demonstrate that it “has its own interests.” The minister also noted that, of late, voices calling for this have been emerging in European countries.

Lavrov stressed that Moscow is by no means trying to drive a wedge between Washington and Brussels, arguing that it is obvious that not all of Europe’s interests are necessarily in line with those of the US. “That Europe cannot defend these interests is, in my opinion, for now also a medical fact,” the official quipped. Lavrov pointed to the apparent lack of any meaningful results from French President Emmanuel Macron’s meeting in Washington last week with his US counterpart Joe Biden, as proof of his assertion. Addressing the guests at the Valdai Discussion Club meeting outside Moscow in late October, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed confidence that sooner or later “new centers of power in the multipolar world and the West will have to start talking as equals about our common future.”

“The East Route is part of a $400 billion, 30-year agreement between Russia’s Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation, signed in May 2014..”

• Russia’s Mega Gas Pipeline To China Nearly Complete (RT)

A crucial section of the East Route natural gas pipeline between Russia and China has been completed, Xinhua News agency reported on Wednesday, citing construction company PipeChina. It will allow gas to be transported from Russia to China’s eastern economic powerhouse Shanghai, according to the report. The 5,111 km cross-border pipeline reportedly enters China via the border city of Heihe in northeastern Heilongjiang Province, and runs through nine provincial-level regions, supplying natural gas to areas along the route, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin. It is part of the East Route project, connecting to the 3,000 km Power of Siberia pipeline in Russia. The East Route was partially launched in December 2019, becoming the first pipeline to supply Russian gas to China.

The mega project, which is expected to be completed and become fully operational by 2025, will provide China with 38 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas annually, starting in 2024. That could help reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 164 million tons per year, according to PipeChina. The energy corridor will boost the energy security and economic development of the eastern regions of China, the company said. The East Route is part of a $400 billion, 30-year agreement between Russia’s Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation, signed in May 2014. The two companies are also working on a western gas route, which involves the construction of a pipeline to China through the territory of Mongolia. The route will be capable of delivering as much as 50 billion cubic meters of gas, once operational.

Why didn’t @jack release the files himself?

• Elon Musk: Data May Have Been Hidden And Deleted From The Twitter Files (PM)

On Wednesday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk revealed that important data in the Twitter Files releases was “hidden” and “deleted,” but vowed that “everything we find will be released.” “Most important data was hidden (from you too) and some may have been deleted, but everything we find will be released,” the Wednesday afternoon tweet read. The tweet came in response to a post from former Twitter CEO and company cofounder Jack Dorsey demanding that all information related to the Twitter Files be released “without filter.” “If the goal is transparency to build trust, why not just release everything without filter and let people judge for themselves? Including all discussions around current and future actions? Make everything public now. #TwitterFiles,” the tweet read.

Musk fires FBI-linked Twitter staffer James Baker pic.twitter.com/K9rIcnEeGr

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) December 7, 2022

On Tuesday evening, Musk also tweeted out the phrase, “Oh, what a tangled web they weave, when first they practice to …,” referencing the 1801 poem by Sir Walter Scott Marion: A Tale of Flooded Field, with the complete line ending in “deceive,” according to the Daily Mail. In Tuesday’s release of the Twitter Files, it was revealed that now-former twitter Deputy General Counsel James Baker had “vetted” the Twitter Files, causing delay and occurring without “knowledge of new management,” said journalist Matt Taibbi.

“We can now tell you part of the reason why” there was a delay, Taibbi posted. “On Tuesday, Twitter Deputy General Counsel (and former FBI General Counsel) Jim Baker was fired. Among the reasons? Vetting the first batch of “Twitter Files” – without knowledge of new management.” “The process for producing the “Twitter Files” involved delivery to two journalists (Bari Weiss and me) via a lawyer close to new management. However, after the initial batch, things became complicated.” “Over the weekend, while we both dealt with obstacles to new searches, it was @BariWeiss who discovered that the person in charge of releasing the files was someone named Jim. When she called to ask “Jim’s” last name, the answer came back: “Jim Baker,” Taibbi continued.

Elon knew about James Baker since at least April. Curious?!

How can Tarrio have a fair trial? He wasn’t in DC on Jan 6. Unlike a lot of FBI agents.

• Fight Over Officer Testimony Roils Proud Boys Sedition Case (AP)

A legal fight has erupted over a Washington D.C. police officer who was communicating with Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack that could shape the outcome of the upcoming trial of Tarrio and other far-right extremists. Metropolitan Police Lt. Shane Lamond’s testimony is crucial for the former Proud Boys national chairman’s defense against seditious conspiracy and other serious charges stemming from the attack, Tarrio’s attorneys say. But Lamond plans to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self incrimination if called to the witness stand after prosecutors warned the officer he could be charged with obstructing the investigation into Tarrio, the Proud Boy’s attorneys say.

They have accused the Justice Department of trying to bully Lamond into keeping quiet because his testimony would hurt their case. Prosecutors have vehemently denied that charge. The legal skirmish is unfolding two weeks before jury selection is supposed to begin in one of the highest-profile cases the Justice Department has brought since the Jan. 6 insurrection. Prosecutors charge Tarrio and four co-defendants conspired to forcibly stop the transfer of presidential power from former President Donald Trump to Democrat Joe Biden. The Proud Boys trial will be another major test for the Justice Department, which secured a major victory last month in the seditious conspiracy convictions of two other far-right extremist group leaders: Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, of Granbury, Texas, and Kelly Meggs, who was the leader of the group’s Florida chapter.

Tarrio’s far-right, male chauvinist extremist group that seized on the Trump administration’s policies was a major agitator during earlier pro-Trump protests and at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Tarrio wasn’t in Washington when the riot erupted, but authorities say he helped put into motion the violence of that day. Shortly before the riot, authorities say Tarrio posted on social media that the group planned to turn out in “record numbers” on Jan. 6, but would be “incognito” instead of donning their traditional clothing colors of black and yellow. Tarrio was arrested in Washington two days before the riot and charged with vandalizing a Black Lives Matter banner at a historic Black church during a protest in December 2020. Tarrio was released from jail on Jan. 14, 2022 after serving his five-month sentence for that case.

[..] Tarrio told Lamond that Proud Boys would not be wearing their traditional colors of black and yellow in order to protect themselves from possible attacks from antifa activists. Tarrio told the officer they planned to watch Trump’s speech, protest the results of the election “and later that night they planned to party with plenty of beers and babes,” Tarrio’s lawyers wrote. “He told me they are trying to go incognito this time,” Lamond told fellow officers in one message, according to Tarrio’s attorneys. “Even if they aren’t wearing their colors they will stick together as a group so we should be able to identify them. Not to mention they won’t be head to toe in black with makeshift shields!”

“..inflammation of the heart tissue due to an autoimmune response triggered by the vaccine..”

• Report: Those Who Died Suddenly Likely Killed by the Covid Vaccine (Jones)

A major new autopsy report has found that three people who died unexpectedly at home with no pre-existing disease shortly after Covid vaccination were likely killed by the vaccine. A further two deaths were found to be possibly due to the vaccine. The report, published in Clinical Research in Cardiology, the official journal of the German Cardiac Society, detailed autopsies carried out at Heidelberg University Hospital in 2021. Led by Thomas Longerich and Peter Schirmacher, it found that in five deaths that occurred within a week of the first or second dose of vaccination with Pfizer or Moderna, inflammation of the heart tissue due to an autoimmune response triggered by the vaccine had likely or possibly caused the death.

In total the report looked at 35 autopsies carried out at the University of Heidelberg in people who died within 20 days of Covid vaccination, of which 10 were deemed on examination to be due to a pre-existing illness and not the vaccine. For the remaining 20, the report did not rule out the vaccine as a cause of death, which Dr. Schirmacher has confirmed to me is intentional as the autopsy results were inconclusive. Almost all of the remaining cases were of a cardiovascular cause, as indicated in the table below from the supplementary materials, where 21 of the 30 deaths are attributed to a cardiovascular cause. One of these is attributed to blood clots (VITT) from AstraZeneca vaccination (the report was looking specifically at post-vaccine myocarditis deaths), leaving 20 from other cardiovascular causes.

“..we’d have to assume that this is now the baseline, there’s going to be 145% higher mortality..”

• Analysis Shows 26% Worse Mortality Among the Vaccinated (RVM)

‘COVID-19 Vaccines: What They Are, How They Work and Possible Causes of Injuries’. That’s the title on the agenda today (December 7, 2022), as Senator Ron Johnson holds a roundtable discussion of doctors, medical experts, and researchers in an effort to shed light on the current state of knowledge regarding the Covid-19 shot. An enlightening speaker today was Josh Stirling, a highly-recognized insurance research analyst. And what he brought forth was “the one chart that tells the entire story.” Here it is: “The UK Government, until this summer, was reporting a data series that showed the relative mortality rates for the vaccinated and unvaccinated by the number of doses of the vaccine,” stated Stirling.

“We’ve done what we think is really professional work with this. And we think it simplifies down to a conclusion that says that through the last available data set, the people in the UK who took the vaccine have a 26% higher mortality rate. The people who are under the age of 50 who took the vaccine now have a 49% higher mortality rate. And worst of all, the people who only took one dose of the vaccine at approximately 145% worse mortality rate.” “That last data point is on its face confusing.” “It just doesn’t make a ton of sense unless you realize that what’s going on with this really is that the people who took the dose, the first dose in the United States — that’s about 12% of people — but then stop taking any other doses, those people, through their choice to stop, disproportionately [were] the ones who are harmed,” explained Stirling.

“And so, what we’re concluding is that if you happen to be an unlucky person who was in some fashion, even moderately injured [or] with a minor injury [and] have decided not to continue, the statistics, the best statistics we have show that you’re gonna have, at least through today, maybe it’ll get better … but if that doesn’t happen we’d have to assume that this is now the baseline, there’s going to be 145% higher mortality. And if you were to take these numbers and just apply them to the United States, that ends up being something like 600,000 excess deaths per year in the United States from this higher vaccine-induced mortality.”

Worldwide.

• Australia Concerned As People Dying At ‘Incredibly High’ Pace (Benzinga)

Australia’s peak actuarial body has asked the government to urgently investigate the country’s “incredibly high” 13% excess death rate in 2022. What Happened: An analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data by the Actuaries Institute showed that an additional 15,400 people died in the first eight months of the year in the country. Actuaries said that number includes around one-third of those having no link to COVID-19. 13% was an “incredibly high number for mortality,” and it was “not clear” what was driving the increase, said Karen Cutter, spokeswoman for the institute’s Covid-19 Mortality Working Group.

“Mortality doesn’t normally vary by more than 1 to 2%, so 13% is way higher than normal levels,” she said. “I’m not aware [of anything comparable] in the recent past but I haven’t gone back and looked [historically]. They talk about the flu season of 2017 being really bad, and the mortality there was 1% higher than normal. So it’s well outside the range of normal,” she said. This came after Australia’s latest mortality data released in November showed that there had been 128,797 deaths from Jan. 1 to Aug. 31, which was 17% higher than the historical average.

Edward Dowd

'Something Flipped in 2021 by 8 points': Ed Dowd

"Excess mortality has shifted so much – it's pretty phenomenal"

Healthy policyholders (exposed to vax mandates) suffered 40% excess mortality in '21, the general population (less exposed) saw a 31.7% excess mortality. pic.twitter.com/QDEI6ww0qv

— New World Odor™ (@hugh_mankind) December 7, 2022

At this point, how dare you even talk about it?

• COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters For Young Adults (BMJ)

In this paper, we integrate a risk-benefit assessment of SARS-CoV-2 boosters for adults under 30 years old with an ethical analysis of mandates at universities. Our estimate suggests an expected net harm from boosters in this young adult age group, whereby the negative outcomes of all SAEs and hospitalisations may on average outweigh the expected benefits in terms of COVID-19 hospitalisations averted. We also examine the specific harms to males from myo/pericarditis. We then outline a five-part ethical argument empirically assessing booster mandates for young people informed by the quantitative assessment.

First, we argue that there has been a lack of transparent risk-benefit assessment; second, that vaccine mandates may result in a net expected harm to individual young adults; third, that vaccine mandates are not proportionate; fourth, that US mandates violate the reciprocity principle because of current gaps in vaccine injury compensation schemes; fifth, that mandates are even less proportionate than the foregoing analyses suggest because current high levels of coercion or pressure may create wider societal harms. We consider possible counterarguments including potential rationales for mandates based on a desire for social cohesion or safety and summarise why such arguments cannot justify current COVID-19 vaccine mandates. We suggest that general mandates for young people ignore key data, entail wider social harms and/or abuses of power and are arguably undermining rather than contributing to social trust and solidarity.

Rod Stewart lost his 2 brothers within 2 months earlier this year. He’s a vaccine promoter.

“..we should not delude ourselves into thinking that eliminating emissions would have a noticeable impact on weather and climate extremes in the 21st century..”

• The Faux Urgency Of The Climate ‘Crisis’ (Curry)

For the past two centuries, fossil fuels have fuelled humanity’s progress, improving standards of living and increasing the life span for billions of people. In the 21st century, a rapid transition away from fossil fuels has become an international imperative for climate change mitigation, under the auspices of the UN Paris Agreement. As a result, that transition is now dominated by stringent targets to rapidly eliminate carbon dioxide emissions. However, the recent COP27 meeting in Egypt highlighted that very few of the world’s countries are on track to meet their emissions reductions commitment. The desire for cleaner, more abundant, more reliable and less expensive sources of energy is universal.

However, the goal of rapidly eliminating fossil fuels is at odds with the urgency of providing grid electricity to developing countries. Rapid deployment of wind and solar power has invariably increased electricity costs and reduced reliability, particularly with increasing penetration into the grid. Allegations of human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang region, where global solar voltaic supplies are concentrated, are generating political conflicts that threaten the solar power industry. Global supply chains of materials needed to produce solar and wind energy plus battery storage are spawning new regional conflicts, logistical problems, supply shortages and rising costs. The large amount of land use required for wind and solar farms, as well as transmission lines, is causing local land use conflicts in many regions.

Given the apocalyptic rhetoric surrounding climate change, does the alleged urgency of reducing carbon dioxide emissions somehow trump these other considerations? Well, the climate ‘crisis’ isn’t what it used to be. The COP27 has dropped the most extreme emissions scenario from consideration, which was the source of the most alarming predictions. Only a few years ago, an emissions trajectory that produced 2 to 3C warming was regarded as climate policy success. As limiting warming to 2C seems to be in reach, the goal posts were moved to limit the warming target to 1.5C. These warming targets are referenced to a baseline at the end of the 19th century; the Earth’s climate has already warmed by 1.1C since 1880.

In context of this relatively modest warming, climate ‘crisis’ rhetoric is now linked to extreme weather events. Attributing extreme weather and climate events to global warming can motivate a country to attempt to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels. However, we should not delude ourselves into thinking that eliminating emissions would have a noticeable impact on weather and climate extremes in the 21st century. It is very difficult to untangle the roles of natural weather and climate variability and land use from the slow creep of global warming. Looking back into the past, including paleoclimatic data, there has been more extreme weather everywhere on the planet. Thinking we can minimise severe weather by using atmospheric carbon dioxide as a control knob is a fairy tale.

“Julian’s case is coming to the end of all possibilities of getting a fair solution through the court proceedings.”

• Wikileaks Editor-in-Chief Warns Assange May Be Extradited “Within Weeks” (WSWS)

Julian Assange could be extradited to the United States within weeks, WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson has warned. He told journalist Glenn Greenwald that Assange was “running out of time” and that legal avenues in London to challenge his unlawful extradition were being exhausted, “he will never get a fair trial there”. Hrafnsson’s urgent warnings came during an interview in Brazil, published Monday on Rumble. He told Greenwald, “Julian’s case is coming to the end of all possibilities of getting a fair solution through the court proceedings. He is fighting extradition in London. Within weeks he could be extradited.”

Assange has been charged under the Espionage Act (1917) for WikiLeaks’ publications exposing war crimes by US imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan, and anti-democratic conspiracies of the US government and its intelligence agencies throughout the world. If found guilty, the 51-year-old journalist and father of three faces 175 years in a US federal prison. He has already spent more than a decade in detention in the UK, including three years without charge in Belmarsh maximum security prison. Hrafnsson was appointed WikiLeaks editor in 2018 after Assange’s communication with the outside world was cut under pressure from the US government, a prelude to his seizure from the Ecuadorian Embassy in April 2019.

An award-winning journalist in his own right, Hrafnsson worked with Assange to verify WikiLeaks’ most famous release, the Collateral Murder video, travelling to Iraq in early 2010 to interview relatives of civilians killed by targeted airstrikes launched from US AH-64 Apache helicopters. Speaking last week in Brazil, Hrafnsson said legal channels for Assange to appeal his extradition are fast closing. In June, then UK Home Secretary Priti Patel approved Assange’s extradition after the High Court overturned an earlier court decision barring it on medical grounds. The High Court accepted worthless assurances by the US government that Assange would not face oppressive treatment, ignoring overwhelming evidence that the CIA plotted to kidnap and kill Assange.

Britain’s courts have mounted a legal vendetta against Assange, approving the extradition request in violation of his fundamental legal and democratic rights as a publisher and journalist.The High Court and Supreme Court have handed down rulings aimed at speeding his dispatch to his would-be assassins. In March, the High Court refused Assange’s application to appeal its earlier ruling to the Supreme Court. His lawyers have since appealed the Home Secretary’s extradition order.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1599528877201641472

“quiet diplomacy”

• Julian Assange’s Family Pleads For Unity (AAP)

Julian Assange’s family wants supporters of the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder to politely advocate for his release, rather than “disparaging” the Australian government. Endorsing the approach of “quiet diplomacy” and thanking Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for a supportive statement in parliament last week, Mr Assange’s mother Christine called on backers to unite in their support of the government’s efforts to bring her son home. Mr Assange is facing espionage charges in the United States and remains in London’s Belmarsh prison, where he’s been since 2019 while fighting extradition. Ms Assange asked advocates to “support and not thwart or disparage the efforts of the Australian government in their diplomatic efforts to bring Julian safely home”.

“Diplomatic negotiations at this level are not easy. They require a high level of skill, experience, understanding, mutual respect, time and patience,” she said in a statement on Wednesday. “Please continue to politely inform your politicians, media and the general public of the facts of Julian’s plight to raise public and political support for the Australian government’s diplomatic efforts.” Mr Albanese has previously opted for quiet diplomacy in his efforts to secure the 51-year-old Australian’s release, but told parliament last week he had raised the matter personally with US government officials. “My position is clear, and has been made clear to the US administration, it is time this matter be brought to a close,” he said.

“This is an Australian citizen … what is the point of continuing this legal action, which could be caught up now for many years into the future.” Ms Assange thanked the PM for the government’s commitment to bring the “12-year legal stalemate and suffering to an end”. “His simple but compassionate statement ‘enough is enough’ resonates with the hearts of people around the world,” she said. “I endorse quiet diplomacy as the Australian government’s preferred path for reaching a resolution … to date all other methods have failed. “The involvement of diplomatic teams negotiating at a high level is the most appropriate and historically the most successful way to resolve the detention of Australian citizens overseas in political cases.”

Fossil fuels

“this idea that we owe reparations is a total injustice. There are people living 10, 20 years longer because of us, [who are] safer from climate because of us. So there should be gratitude toward the free world, not this condemnation.”

With @Tom_Basile pic.twitter.com/rBZ1woGJEN

— Alex Epstein (@AlexEpstein) December 7, 2022

A good friend
https://twitter.com/i/status/1600474899092758530

Golden crowned Kinglet

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Debt Rattle December 1 2022

Dec 012022

December 1, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:25 am Finance Tagged with: Apple, Assange, BRICS, China, Cryptome, Elon Musk, Eric Idle, free speech, Twitter, Ursula, Yellen, Zelensky 75 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Coffee maker 1943

• More Than 100,000 Ukrainian Soldiers Have Died In Conflict – EU (RT)

• Von der Leyen’s Comment On Ukrainian Military Losses Retracted (RT)

• Kiev Reacts To Redacted EU Assessment Of Its Casualties (RT)

• The Global South Births A New Game-Changing Payment System (Escobar)

• China Wants More Russian Gas (RT)

• Russian Coal Exports Shift To China (RT)

• Poland To Charge Ukrainian Refugees For Government-Provided Housing (Az.)

• Congress Wants $45B Tacked on to Biden’s Military Budget Request (Celente)

• Washington Goes to War Against Twitter and Free Speech (Turley)

• Yellen Hints At ‘National Security’ Probe Into Twitter Purchase (RT)

• EU Threatens Musk With Twitter Ban (RT)

• Musk Says Twitter Clash With Apple A ‘Misunderstanding’ (AFP)

• Ex-Twitter Safety Chief: Hunter Biden Laptop Censorship Was A ‘Mistake’ (Fox)

• Eric Idle Insists He Wants To Be ‘Cancelled’ (DM)

• Cryptome Founder Asks to Be Indicted With Assange (Lauria)

Brilliant T-shirt sold in Japan.

Reed Hastings

“@elonmusk is the bravest, most creative person on the planet”, says Netflix’s Reed Hastings
pic.twitter.com/5zBlvu9gGV

— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) November 30, 2022

Tucker DealBook

NYT lesson: Good liberals can always be forgiven pic.twitter.com/EkPObMiCiq

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) December 1, 2022

Clare Daly

After 11th anniversary of #Gaddafi's death during #NATO's assault on #Libya – all in the name of freedom, democracy & human rights – we'd do well to remember what happened next: terror, death, lawlessness, rape, poverty, starvation. Libya riven by conflict. That's NATO's legacy. pic.twitter.com/7CUgdSvcmJ

— Clare Daly (@ClareDalyMEP) November 30, 2022

Ursula didn’t get the memo. In 3 parts. First, she posts the number -with video. Then Zelensky protests. Then the video is removed and re-done. Finally, Ukraine reacts: if you post these numbers, we can’t manipulate them anymore.

• More Than 100,000 Ukrainian Soldiers Have Died In Conflict – EU (RT)

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has presented the total number of losses estimated to have been suffered by Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. “More than 100,000 Ukrainian military officers have been killed so far,” von der Leyen claimed on Wednesday, while adding that around 20,000 civilian lives have also been lost amid the fighting, which has continued since late February. The head of the European Commission didn’t reveal the sources of the information she provided. In late September, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu stated that Ukrainian losses had to date amounted to more than 61,000 troops, which was ten times higher than those of Russia.

In her address, von der Leyen also proposed to set up a specialized, UN-backed court to investigate and prosecute what she described as “Russia’s crime of aggression.”She also said that a special structure would be created by the EU to manage and invest 300 billion euro (nearly $311 billion) in Russian Central Bank reserves and 19 billion euro of Russian business figures’ assets, which the EU froze after the outbreak of the conflict. The plan is to use the proceeds from those activities to rebuild and assist Ukraine, according to the commission president.

Here is the original clip. pic.twitter.com/nD0xChqc8O

— The Sirius Report (@thesiriusreport) November 30, 2022

Some people are convinced it was retracted after US protest. But Ukraine protest would have been enough.

• Von der Leyen’s Comment On Ukrainian Military Losses Retracted (RT)

A claim about the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed during its conflict with Russia has been removed from a speech by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on the executive’s official website. “More than 100,000 Ukrainian military officers have been killed so far,” she said during an address earlier on Wednesday, adding that around 20,000 civilians had also died in nine months of fighting. The source of this information was not provided. However, the reference to Kiev’s death toll soon disappeared from the text of the speech on the European Commission’s website. It was also cut from a video of the address on the website and on von der Leyen’s account on Twitter.

The editing was noticed by some media outlets and social media users, who compared the two versions of the statement online. The move was then officially confirmed by the European Commission. The EU executive body’s spokeswoman Dana Spinant took to Twitter to thank those who had “pointed out the inaccuracy” in von der Leyen’s speech. “The estimation used, from external sources, should have referred to casualties, i.e. both killed and injured, and was meant to show Russia’s brutality,” she wrote. In late September, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu stated that Ukrainian losses had by then amounted to more than 61,000 troops, which was ten times greater than Russia’s.

Judge Nap Macgregor

Oh yeah, she also talked about the stolen Russian assets.

• Kiev Reacts To Redacted EU Assessment Of Its Casualties (RT)

A claim that Ukraine has lost more than 100,000 personnel in the conflict with Russia has been deleted from the Twitter account of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Kiev had objected to the figure, saying it was up to President Vladimir Zelensky and top Ukrainian officials to voice such numbers. Zelensky’s spokesman, Sergey Nikoforov, told Ukrainian media on Wednesday that such “sensitive” information should only be made public by the country’s top military commander General Valery Zaluzhny, Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov, or the president himself. Earlier in the day, the head of the EU executive branch cited an assessment that more than 100,000 Ukrainian troops and over 20,000 civilians have been killed in the conflict with Russia.

The video statement has since been pulled from her Twitter account and replaced with a new version, which omitted the figures. Von der Leyen did not identify the source of the assessment. Earlier in the month, US General Mark Milley, who serves as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that over 100,000 soldiers may have been killed and wounded on each side of the conflict, with 40,000 civilians killed as collateral damage. Milley, speaking at the Economic Club of New York, said that the winter season would cause hostilities to go “static” and open “a window of opportunity” for negotiations. The call for diplomacy reportedly outraged officials in Kiev, who pledged to continue fighting against Russia until it fully regains pre-2014 positions. In her Wednesday address, von der Leyen urged the UN to convene a special tribunal to try Russia for its alleged crimes against Ukraine.

The Commission chief also shared the EU’s plans to invest seized Russian national reserves and “oligarch” money for profit that would later be used to rebuild Ukraine. She estimated Ukraine’s damage at €600 billion ($621bn) so far, which dwarfs the €319 billion ($330bn) of Russian funds blocked by the EU. The assets would only be unfrozen after anti-Russia sanctions are lifted, to be paid in compensation to Ukraine, the official stated. Top Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have criticized the freezing of assets by the US and its allies, including the EU. At first, they devalued national reserves denominated in dollars and euros through inflation, and later “pawed and pocketed” them, Putin remarked in October.

In the background, these preparations continue.

• The Global South Births A New Game-Changing Payment System (Escobar)

The Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) is speeding up its design of a common payment system, which has been closely discussed for nearly a year with the Chinese under the stewardship of Sergei Glazyev, the EAEU’s minister in charge of Integration and Macro-economy. Through its regulatory body, the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC), the EAEU has just extended a very serious proposal to the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) which, crucially, are already on the way to turning into BRICS+: a sort of G20 of the Global South. The system will include a single payment card – in direct competition with Visa and Mastercard – merging the already existing Russian MIR, China’s UnionPay, India’s RuPay, Brazil’s Elo, and others.

That will represent a direct challenge to the western-designed (and enforced) monetary system, head on. And it comes on the heels of BRICS members already transacting their bilateral trade in local currencies, and bypassing the US dollar. This EAEU-BRICS union was long in the making – and will now also move toward prefiguring a further geoeconomic merger with the member nations of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The EAEU was established in 2015 as a customs union of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, joined a year later by Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. Vietnam is already an EAEU free trade partner, and recently enshrined SCO member Iran is also clinching a deal. The EAEU is designed to implement free movement of goods, services, capital, and workers between member countries.

Ukraine would have been an EAEU member if not for the Maidan coup in 2014 masterminded by the Barack Obama administration. Vladimir Kovalyov, adviser to the chairman of the EEC, summed it all up to Russian newspaper Izvestia. The focus is to establish a joint financial market, and the priority is to develop a common “exchange space:” “We’ve made substantial progress and now the work is focused on such sectors as banking, insurance, and the stock market.” A new regulatory body for the proposed joint EEU-BRICS financial system will soon be established. Meanwhile, trade and economic cooperation between the EAEU and BRICS have increased 1.5 times in the first half of 2022 alone.

Not using Russian oil and gas does nothing for climate. You don’t want it, others will use them. And you will be cold.

• China Wants More Russian Gas (RT)

Russian gas export to China via the so-called eastern route, the Power of Siberia pipeline, should be steadily increased, according to Huang Yongzhang, Vice President of China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). The 3,000 kilometer (1,864 mile) cross-border pipeline started deliveries of Russian natural gas to China in 2019. Its capacity is 61 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per year, including 38 bcm for export. Last year, Russian gas supplies to China increased by 10.4 bcm via the mega pipeline. “It is necessary to steadily increase gas supplies from Russia to China via the eastern route. The parties continue cooperation in this area, using all its advantages, strengthening and deepening business cooperation,” Yongzhang said on Tuesday at the Russia-China Energy Business Forum.

He also called for the strengthening of the scientific and technical cooperation between the two nations in order to improve the quality of joint work in the oil and gas sector, as well as in the field of green and low-carbon energy. The agreement on gas supplies via the Power of Siberia pipeline was reached in 2014, with Gazprom and CNPC signing a 30-year contract. The $400 billion agreement is Gazprom’s biggest deal ever and the Power of Siberia is the first natural gas pipeline between Russia and China. The Russian energy company is currently working on the Power of Siberia 2 project, which involves construction of a gas pipeline to China through the territory of Mongolia. The pipeline will be capable of delivering as much as 50 billion cubic meters of gas, once operational.

You can hear the Chinese laughing in the background.

• Russian Coal Exports Shift To China (RT)

Russia has this year become the second most important supplier of coal to China, the head of oil giant Rosneft Igor Sechin announced at the Russia-China Energy Business Forum on Tuesday.“Deliveries of high-quality Russian coal to China in [those] ten months of 2022 amounted to 53 million tons. This is about 23% of total imports to China, second place after Indonesia, which supplies 134 million tons,” Sechin said. According to the CEO, in order to further increase coal supplies to Asia, Russia is investing in the development of the Eastern Range of the country’s train-services supplier Russian Railways (OAO). The project is expected to increase transportation capacity to 195 million tons per year.

Russia has dramatically increased exports of energy commodities, including coal, to Asian buyers after the EU suspended coal purchases from the country earlier this year as a Ukraine-related sanction. Chinese purchases of the Russian fossil fuel, in particular, reached a five-year high in September, soaring to 8.54 million tons. It was a 57% year-on-year rise, according to data from China’s General Administration of Customs. Beijing has also been stocking up on Russian oil. Total Russian crude exports to China in the period January to October jumped by 9.5% to nearly 72 million tons, slightly less than what Saudi Arabia, China’s largest supplier, exports to the Asian nation, Sechin said.

The head of Russia’s biggest oil company stressed that both Moscow and Beijing are looking forward to further developing trade relations, particularly in the field of energy. Sechin also noted that the overall trade turnover between Russia and China jumped 33% this year, reaching $153.9 billion in the first ten months. “If these rates are maintained, by the end of this year the trade turnover may reach a record high of $180 billion. We can expect that the goal of reaching $200 billion in trade turnover will be achieved even before the set target date, 2024,” he said.

“More than a million Ukrainian refugees made a temporary home in Poland..”

• Poland To Charge Ukrainian Refugees For Government-Provided Housing (Az.)

Poland plans to charge Ukrainian refugees for food and housing after four months of staying in state accommodation, the government said, Report informs referring to Reuters. More than a million Ukrainian refugees made a temporary home in Poland, Ukraine’s western neighbor, after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, relying on the kindness of strangers who opened up their homes and government aid. But after an initial outpouring of public support for refugees, resources are drying up and refugees are having a harder time finding flats and getting support with Poland facing a cost of living crisis and budget strains.

“Citizens of Ukraine who stay in Poland in collective accommodation centers will participate in the costs of housing and meals,” the government said in a statement. Those staying in such accommodation, for example government-funded hotel rooms or school dormitories, longer than 120 days will have to cover 50% of the cost up to 40 zlotys ($8.87) per day, per person. After 180 days it would be 75% of the cost up to 60 zlotys. Those unable to work because of their age or disability would be excluded, as would pregnant women, according to the plan. The government wants the new rules to apply from March 1, 2023. The bill will go to parliament where it is expected to pass comfortably.

“..the deal would set the budget at $847 billion for national defense..”

• Congress Wants $45B Tacked on to Biden’s Military Budget Request (Celente)

We have long noted that the one issue that can bring together the most hardened liberal Democrats, and the most conservative Republicans is the vote for war. After all, what other issue would you find Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Mitch McConnell agreeing on? It was reported Wednesday that members of the House and Senate Armed Service committees agreed to add $45 billion more to President Joe Biden’s already gargantuan 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, according to a newly released report on Wednesday. Politico, citing four people familiar with the negotiations, reported that the deal would set the budget at $847 billion for national defense, with the possibility of reaching as high as $858 billion.

We reported in July that the House voted in favor of an $850.3 billion national security budget that members say will help the U.S. respond to continued threats and surging inflation. The House passed the bill in a 329-101 vote. The “no” votes included 62 Republicans and 39 Democrats.“With inflation factored in, it is a good increase but it’s essential because of inflation and also the need to continue significant programs,” Sen. Jack Reed, the chair of the Senate Armed Services, said in an interview, according to Politico.As the global economies sink into recession, as world hunger escalates, as inflation spikes and people pay much more to buy a lot less, as world poverty levels increase and the middle class shrinks…countries around the world have increased their military budgets and built up their defenses since the Ukraine War began in February.

But the War Machine Always Wins. And Bill La Plante, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said months ago that he expected Congress—no matter what party was in control—would approve new weapons purchasing power at levels not seen since the Cold War. “They are going to give us multiyear authority, and they’re going to give us funding to really put into the industrial base,” he told George Mason University at the time. “And I’m talking billions of dollars into the industrial base—to fund these production lines. That, I predict, is going to happen, and it’s happening now. And then people will have to say: ‘I guess they were serious about it.’ But we have not done that since the Cold War.”

“Despite a creepy Facebook advertising campaign to convince the public to embrace censorship, it has not worked. The public is not buying. They are buying Free Twitter…”

• Washington Goes to War Against Twitter and Free Speech (Turley)

Washington this week is in full wartime footing. No, it’s not over the Russian invasion of Ukraine or North Korean missiles or even Chinese expansionism. It is about Twitter and the threat of Elon Musk to restore free speech protections to social media. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has emerged as the bellicose general rallying others to the “censor or die” pressure campaign against Twitter. The problem is that citizens are flocking to Twitter and signing up in record numbers. They want more, not less, free speech. The over two million new sign-ups per day represent a 66% increase over the same period last year, according to figures released by Musk.

A reporter this week was so alarmed that she asked the White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about the concern that millions are still signing up at Twitter and demanded to know who is “keeping an eye on this” for possible federal action. Unable to convince users to embrace censorship, Clinton and others are pressuring corporations and foreign governments to deter Musk from restoring free speech. Since users are embracing the new Twitter, the campaign has focused on preventing them from signing up by removing the app from the Apple and Google stores. In the meantime, Apple is joining the boycott by withholding advertising revenue to coerce Musk to reverse his free-speech pledge.

Musk, however, is sitting on the ultimate weapon to bring this war to an end: free speech itself. However, it will require more than rhetorical recriminations like Musk asking why Apple executives “hate free speech in America?” The fact is that these media and political figures are becoming more and more alarmed as Musk threatens to release files on the past censorship of stories like the Hunter Biden laptop. Musk has reason to wonder why Apple CEO Tim Cook would join this anti-free speech campaign. The reason is as obvious as it is craven. These boycotts are not about corporations or shareholders. If anything, they are more likely to diminish profits. It is about the executives themselves. Many are allies of figures like Clinton. Others are yielding to these demands to avoid being attacked or tagged by the left.

[..] If Musk carries through on his pledge, the public will have a free speech alternative and they are already speaking loudly by signing up with the company in record numbers. Despite a creepy Facebook advertising campaign to convince the public to embrace censorship, it has not worked. The public is not buying. They are buying Free Twitter. So, the only way to regain control is to prevent people from getting the app or threaten to force Twitter into insolvency. The problem is Musk, an eccentric billionaire who is not easy to intimidate. Musk now stands against a massive alliance of governments, corporations, celebrities, and politicians. He has only the public and free speech on his side. He needs to use both.

DeSantis

Heavy D with a message for Tim Cook. pic.twitter.com/9D61CHfQ7R

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) November 29, 2022

Yellen is so out of her depth here, I suspect that’s why they let her do the talking.

• Yellen Hints At ‘National Security’ Probe Into Twitter Purchase (RT)

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said federal officials could seek to launch a review into billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s recent purchase of Twitter if it were deemed to carry national security risks, backtracking after she downplayed any chance for a probe. Speaking at an event hosted by the New York Times on Wednesday, Yellen claimed she had “misspoke” when she said there was “no basis” to investigate Musk or his finances during an interview earlier this month, now saying the government could take that step after all. “I’m not going to say specifically what we are looking at. We don’t comment on what’s in progress,” she said, but added the Treasury “does look at transactions that involve foreign investments in the United States to see if they create national security risk.”

While she stopped short of confirming that a probe was underway, Yellen said “if there are such risks it would be appropriate for the Treasury to have a look.” The secretary’s comments follow earlier reports that the Treasury had already requested approval to begin reviewing Musk’s Twitter deal, though sources told the Washington Post at the time that such actions are “fairly routine” and do not always result in a full-fledged investigation. Earlier this month, President Joe Biden also stated that Musk’s “relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at,” following reports that foreign investors such as Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal now hold significant stakes in Twitter. However, Biden stressed that he was not claiming the billionaire had done anything “inappropriate,” and did not indicate that he was under investigation.

Musk has faced pressure from abroad as well, with the European Commission recently threatening to ban Twitter outright should the platform run afoul of the EU’s digital regulations. According to a Wednesday report in the Financial Times, the bloc has presented Musk with a “checklist of rules” and demanded he submit to an “extensive independent audit” sometime next year, insisting Twitter must continue to “aggressively” police disinformation and hate speech. The billionaire has repeatedly vowed to make Twitter a bastion of free expression, even suggesting an “amnesty” for previously banned accounts so long as they did not violate the law or post spam. However, critics have argued the more hands-off approach will foster hatred, extremism and misinformation online, with some even urging major platforms like Apple and Google to remove Twitter from their app stores.

“Musk replied that the DSA [EU’s Digital Services Act] was “very sensible” and should be applied worldwide.”

• EU Threatens Musk With Twitter Ban (RT)

As Elon Musk pledged to run a more fair and transparent Twitter that won’t interfere in elections, the EU’s internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, on Wednesday demanded tougher censorship, reportedly warning that the platform might be banned if it doesn’t comply with the bloc’s laws. “Twitter has failed in trust & safety for a very long time and has interfered in elections,” Musk tweeted on Wednesday, responding to claims by former executive Yoel Roth published by Reuters that his takeover had made the company less safe. “Twitter 2.0 will be far more effective, transparent and even-handed.” Within the hour, Breton tweeted that he welcomed Musk’s “intent to get Twitter 2.0 ready” for the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), a law scheduled to come into force in 2024.

He added that the platform would have to “significantly reinforce content moderation and tackle disinformation,” among other things. Breton attached a short video from a call he held with Musk, though without any sound. According to the Financial Times, however, the EU commissioner actually threatened Musk with a ban unless Twitter complies with a list of demands. This includes not having an “arbitrary” approach to reinstating banned users, “aggressively” pursuing “disinformation” and agreeing to an “extensive independent audit” by next year. Failing to do so would infringe on the DSA, which could expose Twitter to massive fines or even a ban in the EU, Breton reportedly said. According to FT’s sources, Musk replied that the DSA was “very sensible” and should be applied worldwide.

Musk bought Twitter for a reported $44 billion and took ownership of the company on October 27, declaring “the bird is freed.” Within hours, Breton responded that “In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules.” The DSA was approved by the bloc earlier this year. It requires “content moderation” from major social media platforms, so they can swiftly censor “hate speech” or any information that Brussels deems false. The EU has already invoked these powers to ban RT and several other Russian media outlets, with most US-based platforms eagerly complying. The video hosting service Rumble, however, chose to turn off their service in France rather than comply with demands from Paris to censor certain Russian outlets.

Declaring “free speech” – as guaranteed in the US Constitution – to be his guiding principle, Musk has rolled back some of Twitter’s censorship policies and lifted the bans on many “permanently suspended” accounts, including former US president Donald Trump. The decision to reinstate Trump and declare a general amnesty for accounts that hadn’t broken the law was put to a vote on Twitter, with most users voting in favor in both cases.

“Tim was clear that Apple never considered doing so.”

• Musk Says Twitter Clash With Apple A ‘Misunderstanding’ (AFP)

Twitter owner Elon Musk said he met with Apple chief Tim Cook on Wednesday and “resolved the misunderstanding” that prompted him to declare war on the iPhone maker’s App Store. “Among other things, we resolved the misunderstanding about Twitter potentially being removed from the App Store,” Musk tweeted. “Tim was clear that Apple never considered doing so.” Musk also tweeted a video clip of “Apple’s beautiful HQ” in Cupertino, California, noting that he had had a “good conversation” with Cook. The world’s richest person opened fire on the planet’s most valuable company early this week over fees and rules at the App Store, saying Apple had threatened to oust his recently acquired social media platform.

The billionaire CEO had tweeted that Apple “threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why.” Apple, which has not issued a public statement on the matter, typically tells developers if fixes need to be implemented in apps to conform to App Store policies. Analysts told AFP the clash may have came down to money, with Musk irked that the App Store takes a commission on transactions such as subscriptions. Musk has delayed the relaunch of the Twitter Blue subscription tier intended to have users pay for perks such as account verification check marks. Twitter rolled out Blue early in November, but pulled the plug after impersonators paid for check marks to appear legitimate in what former head of safety and security Yoel Roth referred to as “a disaster.”

Both Apple and Google also require social networking services on their app stores to have effective systems for moderating harmful or abusive content. But since taking over Twitter last month, Musk has cut around half of Twitter’s workforce, including many employees tasked with fighting disinformation, while an unknown number of others have quit.

Tucker Apple

Tucker Carlson: Apple has done plenty to eliminate free speech pic.twitter.com/d0uK90bLgW

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) November 30, 2022

Musk has promised full disclosure.

• Ex-Twitter Safety Chief: Hunter Biden Laptop Censorship Was A ‘Mistake’ (Fox)

The former head of trust and safety at Twitter recently admitted that the social media company’s decision to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 was a “mistake.” During a sit down with journalist Kara Swisher, ex-Twitter safety chief Yoel Roth said that despite concerns about the authenticity of the laptop story, it still did not reach a point where he wanted to remove the content — which was later censored anyway. Initial reporting suggested that Roth blocked user access from the October 2020 story, but the former Twitter division lead said the decision was not up to him. “We didn’t know what to believe, we didn’t know what was true, there was smoke — and ultimately for me, it didn’t reach a place where I was comfortable removing this content from Twitter,” Roth said.

“But it set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 hack and leak campaign alarm bells.” Roth repeatedly reiterated that despite Big Tech companies’ high-alert status and his personal feeling of responsibility to protect the “integrity of conversations” from foreign governments attempting to interfere in elections, it never rose to the level where he believed the story should be censored. “But — so it was a mistake?” Swisher asked. “In my opinion, yes,” he responded. Roth planned to meet with the Department of Homeland Security’s now-defunct Disinformation Governance Board, where the government was expected to ask Twitter to become more involved in efforts to monitor misinformation.

Both Roth and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed they were approached by the FBI prior to the 2020 election, warning the platforms about foreign propaganda and misinformation. When the New York Post’s bombshell report was first published with weeks to go before the 2020 election, Twitter and Facebook were quick to limit or block sharing of the story in an unprecedented display of coordination. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has also admitted the social media platform was wrong to intervene in the Hunter Biden story. Last week, Twitter’s new CEO Elon Musk said that he might release more information on how the social media company censored the Biden laptop story.

‘I would like to be cancelled so I can go home and read a book and not have to make an a**e of myself all over the world..’

• Eric Idle Insists He Wants To Be ‘Cancelled’ (DM)

Famed English comedian Eric Idle says he wants to be ‘cancelled’ for his comedy. The 76-year-old funnyman, who first rose to fame in the 1960s as a founding member of the Monty Python comedy team, is outspoken about political correctness. He says that there is a lot of bullying going on in the name of decency. ‘I would like to be cancelled so I can go home and read a book and not have to make an a**e of myself all over the world,’ Idle joked in The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday. Idle, who is in Australia to perform a show in Sydney this week, explained in the chat that he thinks comedy is about saying the wrong thing at the right time. ‘You have to remember that Python was offensive when it started. We were not the cuddly old f***ers we are now,’ he told the publication.

‘It was very offensive. The point was absolutely to upset and insult the bourgeois.’ Idle, who is in Australia to perform a show in State Theatre on Thursday, explained that comedy is about saying the wrong thing at the right time, Pictured: Idle in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, a box-office smash despite offending audiences After debuting on the BBC in 1969, Monty Python earned a reputation for outrageous, surreal, often violent and sexual humour. Idle says the point of comedy is to test boundaries and say the ‘unsayable’. ‘And so who are the people saying you can’t do that?’ he says. ‘I don’t understand that. Who is the committee that does this? ‘It sounds a bit like the French Revolution committees, who said, ‘off with his head’. I think a lot of bullying goes on in the name of decency.’

Monty Python, who formally disbanded three decades ago, often attracted notoriety and scandal. Their films Monty Python and The Holy Grail (1975), and Monty’s Python Meaning of Life (1983) became box office hits, while shocking audiences. But it was their 1979 smash Life of Brian, a parody of pious religious movie epics that created a storm of protest around the world. Set in the time of Christ, the film features a climax where the hero, Brian (Graham Chapman), a Jew, is crucified because he has been mistaken as a messiah by the Romans. As he and others hang on crosses, they sing ‘Always Look on The Bright Side of Life,’ a jolly sing along composed by Idle. Condemned by a diverse range of religious groups as blasphemous, Idle says the film would never be made today because ‘you don’t laugh at religion.’

“Cryptome published the decrypted unredacted State Department Cables on September 1, 2011 prior to publication of the cables by WikiLeaks..”

• Cryptome Founder Asks to Be Indicted With Assange (Lauria)

The founder of a U.S.-based website that earlier published the same un-redacted documents that WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange was later indicted for has invited the U.S. Department of Justice to make him a co-defendant with Assange. “Cryptome published the decrypted unredacted State Department Cables on September 1, 2011 prior to publication of the cables by WikiLeaks,” John Young wrote in a Justice Department submission form, which Young posted on Twitter on Tuesday. “No US official has contacted me about publishing the unredacted cables since cryptome published them,” he wrote. “I respectfully request that the Department of Justice add me as a co-defendant in the prosecution of Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act.”

Assange has been charged with possession and dissemination of classified information, some of the same material that Young possesses and disseminated. Young founded Cryptome, which he calls a “free public library” in 1996. It was a precursor of WikiLeaks in publishing raw, classified and unclassified government documents on the internet. Young testified at Assange’s extradition hearing in London in September 2020. His sworn statement says: “I published on Cryptome.org unredacted diplomatic cables on September 1, 2011 under the URL https://cryptome.org/z/z.7z and that publication remains available at the present. … Since my publication on Cryptome.org of the unredacted diplomatic cables, no US law enforcement authority has notified me that this publication of the cables is illegal, consists or contributes to a crime in any way, nor have they asked for them to be removed.”

A cornerstone of the Justice Department’s case against Assange is that he recklessly published State Department cables leaked to him by Army Intelligence Analyst Chelsea Manning, which, the U.S. says, endangered the lives of named U.S. informants. Young is asking the Justice Department why he too hasn’t been prosecuted for publishing these names before Assange did. At Manning’s court martial, Brig. Gen. Robert Carr, testified under oath that no one was actually harmed by the WikiLeaks releases. Then Defense Secretary Robert Gates called the leaks “awkward” and “embarrassing” but said they did only “fairly modest” damage to U.S. foreign interests.

Musk 2008

When @elonmusk predicted the future during this 2008 interview. pic.twitter.com/et1d8xqlLZ

— History In Pictures (@HistoryInPics) November 30, 2022

Parking

Watch until the end. Really funny. Not mean, just genuinely funny. pic.twitter.com/wYW4wcIsi6

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) November 29, 2022

DogBrush

Very clever
pic.twitter.com/ObFYvI1TAO

— Tansu YEĞEN (@TansuYegen) November 30, 2022

Holidog
https://twitter.com/i/status/1597858949772234752

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Debt Rattle November 29 2022

Nov 292022

November 29, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:55 am Finance Tagged with: Apple, Assange, audits, Boeing, Crimea, Dutch farmers, Elon Musk, Luciferian, Twitter, Zelensky 88 Responses »

Salvador Dali Cubist self portrait 1926

• The US Is a Luciferian Project (Garlington)

• About Saving Face: Some Advice to Volodymyr Zelensky (Batiushka)

• Kiev Planning To ‘Retake’ Crimea In 2023 – The Economist (RT)

• Beijing Protesters Spooked By Phone Calls From Police (AFP)

• NYT: Lockdowns Are Draconian When China Does Them (Eugyp)

o US Diplomat Reveals Contents Of Spy Chief Talks (RT)

• Boeing Offers To Make Bombs For Ukraine – Reuters (RT)

• Putin Confession Suggests Ukraine Conflict Could Last For Years (Trenin)

• Biden Admin Scrambles To Track $20B In Ukraine Aid As GOP Warn Of Audits (Fox)

• EU Gets Tough on China as US Steals European Industry (Gallagher)

• Netherlands To Forcefully Shut Down 3,000 Farms (CS)

• New Twitter Sign Ups Hit All-Time Record Despite Cancel Campaign (Turley)

• Twitter Owner Musk Signals New ‘War’ Against Apple (AFP)

• UK Deployed 15 Staff On Secret Operation To Seize Julian Assange (Dec.uk)

• Media Groups Urge US To Drop Julian Assange Charges (G.)

J6 FBI
https://twitter.com/i/status/1597293108857032704

It takes 15 SECONDS to understand the Ukrainian genocide

“People are not gods. They must not act like gods or assume godly authority. If they do, terrible retributions are in store.”

• The US Is a Luciferian Project (Garlington)

All of this is the regression of human development, not its advancement. It is consonant with the spirit of Antichrist, as described in the Book of the Holy Prophet Daniel (7:23-25):‘”Thus he said: `As for the fourth beast, there shall be a fourth kingdom on earth, which shall be different from all the kingdoms, and it shall devour the whole earth, and trample it down, and break it to pieces. As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom ten kings shall arise, and another shall arise after them; he shall be different from the former ones, and shall put down three kings. He shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and shall think to change the times and the law; and they shall be given into his hand for a time, two times, and half a time.’

St. Jerome provides a commentary: ‘The Antichrist will wage war against the saints and will overcome them; and he shall exalt himself to such a height of arrogance as to attempt changing the very laws of God and the sacred rites as well. He will also lift himself up against all that is called God, subjecting all religion to his own authority.’ The modern American project of god-like, autonomous individuals is Promethean/Luciferian at its core, attempting to ‘change the times and the law’ given by the All-Holy Trinity in ever more disturbing ways – by pursuing genetically modified crops and animals; synthetic biology; transgenderism; transhumanism; etc. Is it any wonder that many tradition-respecting countries are becoming reluctant to ally with Washington City and its friends in the wider apostate West?

Within the US itself there is, nevertheless, resistance; there are dissenting voices and views. The people of New England and their descendants in Utah and in the cities along the Pacific Coast have always been at the forefront of pushing new, subversive ideologies – feminism, communism, polygamy/Mormonism, homosexual rights, man-boy love, polyamory. But outside of Yankeedom we meet with more reasonable, more traditional voices. The South, for instance, the South shorn of Yankee-imposed ideologies, that is true to her history and character and inherited customs – Southerners of this kind insist on the ‘given-ness’ of creation, on its immutability, that man must respect certain boundaries regarding it or risk experiencing great cataclysms and tragedies.

Wendell Berry, a typical Southern agrarian of this sort, writes in his essay ‘The Gift of Good Land,’ ‘It [the land}s a gift because the people who are to possess it did not create it. It is accompanied by careful warnings and demonstrations of the folly of saying that “My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:17). Thus, deeply implicated in the very definition of this gift is a specific warning against hubris, which is the great ecological sin, just as it is the great sin of politics. People are not gods. They must not act like gods or assume godly authority. If they do, terrible retributions are in store. In this warning we have the root of the idea of propriety, of proper human purposes and ends. We must not use the world as though we created it ourselves.

“As the US realises that the free nations of the world are turning against it, it will not hesitate to blame the Kiev regime. The US must save face. Kiev has been warned: it will have to start negotiating with Russia again.”

• About Saving Face: Some Advice to Volodymyr Zelensky (Batiushka)

It is now dawning on the US elite that they totally underestimated Russia in all respects. For instance, on 25 March 2014 the arrogant Obama contemptuously called Russia ‘a regional power, threatening others out of weakness’ (sic!). (Clearly, he was talking about the USA). As a result, blinded by hubris, some in the US are now admitting that the Ukraine, the most corrupt country in Europe, is a dead duck, the game is simply no longer worth the candle. Apart from being a black hole for Western money and military equipment, the Ukraine is no longer the problem. It is a sideshow, a distraction, a mere symptom of something far more important. The real problem is what is now happening worldwide under Russian leadership – the ending of the unipolar world, of US global hegemony, camouflaged beneath the more innocent-sounding term ‘globalism’.

Following Russia’s decision and ability to stand up to the world’s bully, the whole Non-Western world is now also standing up to him. For example, at the recent G20 meeting in Indonesia, the debate was not about the Ukraine, but about whether or not to continue to accept American Fascist rule (‘the rules-based international order’). All the Latin American and African and four Asian countries said no, it’s finished, the world is now multipolar. Taiwan will inevitably be Chinese and soon – and wait till Chinese troops appear in Mesopotamia to take control of Iraqi oil and gas and rebuild that tragic country. Freedom beckons. Long-deluded Western elitists must be shocked: other ‘regional powers’ are now also standing up to the bully. Perhaps also out of weakness?

Zelensky must have suspected that his boss, until now the self-imagined master of the universe, is going to get rid of him. He is a loser and the Yanks cannot stand losers. As the US realises that the free nations of the world are turning against it, it will not hesitate to blame the Kiev regime. The US must save face. Kiev has been warned: it will have to start negotiating with Russia again. Zelensky had better plan his escape now, because Ukrainians will not forgive him for stringing them along with a pack of lies. Regardless of Zelensky’s delusional assertions that there will be no negotiations with Russia and that it will re-occupy Russian territories, including the Crimea, there are three reasons for him to throw in the towel now, before it all gets much, much worse.

Not going to happen. Zelensky’s Waterloo.

• Kiev Planning To ‘Retake’ Crimea In 2023 – The Economist (RT)

Ukraine’s armed forces are reportedly preparing for an assault on Crimea, to “retake” the peninsula which voted to reunite with Russia in 2014. A former Ukrainian commander told the Economist that the operation was being planned for 2023, but declined to give more details. Former air assault commander, Mikhail Zabrodsky told the outlet that if the army announced its intentions on social media or television, it would “never achieve anything.” He did admit, however, that an operation designed to retake the peninsula would not be a “senseless frontal assault” and would be done using a combination of land troops, sea landings, and air attacks, including the use of drones. “We will surprise people—and many times—again,” he said.

However, Zabrodsky, who claims to remain close to the military planning process in Kiev, stressed that there are still many battles to win before the army could consider a timeframe for such an attack. Military experts have warned that an effort to forcefully retake Crimea or the territories of the Donbass republics, which recently joined Russia after holding public referendums, could prove costly for Kiev and drive Moscow to escalate, perhaps even to the use of tactical nuclear weapons. “There is a real prospect that things will end in a bloodbath. That is an operation Ukraine does not need,” retired navy captain Andrey Ryzhenko told the Economist. Top US General Mark Milley said earlier this month that the probability of a Ukrainian military victory which included taking Crimea was “not high” and not likely to be happening “anytime soon.”

Nevertheless, Kiev has insisted it is determined to seize the peninsula, with President Vladimir Zelensky saying he has no desire to seek a peaceful settlement to the ongoing conflict with Moscow without “de-occupying” the territory. Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Vladimir Gavrilov also suggested earlier this month that Ukrainian forces could step into Crimea “by the end of December.” Crimea overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in 2014 following violent riots in Kiev that ousted democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovich. This autumn, the two Donbass republics, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, also voted to become part of Russia in referendums not recognized by Kiev or its Western backers. In late September, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow would defend its new territories “with full force and all the means at our disposal.”

I can see how this would freak you out.

• Beijing Protesters Spooked By Phone Calls From Police (AFP)

Beijing protesters have been interrogated by police via phone call after attending rare large-scale protests calling for an end to China’s harsh zero-Covid controls, one told AFP on Monday. Hundreds of mostly young people braved icy temperatures to gather near a riverbank in the capital Sunday evening, as a vigil for victims of a deadly apartment blaze in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region turned into calls to end zero-Covid. People have taken to the streets in major cities and gathered at university campuses across China in a wave of protests not seen since pro-democracy rallies in 1989 were crushed. A woman protester told AFP that by Monday evening she and five of her friends who attended the protest had received phone calls from Beijing police, demanding information about their movements.

In one case, a police officer visited her friend’s home after they refused to answer their phone. “He said my name and asked me whether I went to the Liangma river last night… he asked very specifically how many people were there, what time I went, how I heard about it,” she told AFP, asking to stay anonymous for safety reasons. “The police stressed that last night’s protest was an illegal assembly, and if we had demands then we could submit them through the regular channels. ”She said that the police officer was mostly “even-toned” during the brief call and urged her not to attend future events. “I had previously prepared for this, but of course I was still agitated,” she said, adding she would “try her best to continue” attending similar protests in the future, and “prepare better” next time. “I never thought that this kind of civil society activity could ever happen in China,” she said.

“Western lockdowns were necessary to save lives. Chinese lockdowns are the repressive tactic of an undemocratic regime.”

• NYT: Lockdowns Are Draconian When China Does Them (Eugyp)

Three years ago, Zero Covid was the aspiration of public health bureaucrats and politicians across the West. Charlatan techbros like Tomas Pueyo appeared on national television to demand nationwide house arrest; leaders like Angela Merkel surrounded themselves virus-eradicationist modellers and imposed unprecedented months-long closures upon their countries. When protests inevitably broke out, they were violently suppressed; the protesters were slandered as conspiracy theorists and fascists. The New York Times played a leading role in this long and excruciating charade. In April 2020, they reported that “an informal coalition of influential conservative leaders and groups, some with close connections to the [Trump] White House” was responsible for “quietly working to nurture protests and apply … pressure to overturn state and local orders intended to stop the spread of the coronavirus.”

In March 2021, they ran an obnoxious opinion piece about What Happened When Germany’s Far-Right Party Railed Against Lockdowns, which called the German protesters “an amorphous mix of conspiracy theorists, shady organizations and outraged citizens” and appeared to accuse the right-populist party Alternativ für Deutschland of opportunism for joining their ranks. What a difference a few years have made. China Protests Break Out as Covid Cases Surge and Lockdowns Persist is a lead headline in today’s New York Times: “Strict Covid restrictions are hurting the country’s economy and angering members of the public, who are taking to the streets,” we read in the article that follows. Western anti-lockdown protesters are fascists and conspiracy theorists; Chinese anti-lockdown protesters, on the other hand, are ordinary people protesting their oppression:

“Lift the lockdown,” the protesters screamed in a city in China’s far west. On the other side of the country, in Shanghai, demonstrators held up sheets of blank white paper, turning them into an implicit but powerful sign of defiance. One protester, who was later detained by the police, was carrying only flowers. Over the weekend, protests against China’s strict Covid restrictions ricocheted across the country in a rare case of nationwide civil unrest. There had been signs of dissent, but the new wave of anger may pose a bigger challenge for the government. Some demonstrators went so far as to call for the Communist Party and its leader, Xi Jinping, to step down. Many were fed up with Mr. Xi, who in October secured a precedent-defying third term as the party’s general secretary, and his “zero-Covid” policy, which continues to disrupt everyday life, hurt livelihoods and isolate the country.

Western lockdowns were necessary to save lives. Chinese lockdowns are the repressive tactic of an undemocratic regime.

“The diplomat noted that the ongoing Ukraine conflict was not on the officials’ agenda.”

o US Diplomat Reveals Contents Of Spy Chief Talks (RT)

The heads of American and Russian intelligence agencies have discussed the risk of a potential nuclear confrontation between the two countries, Washington’s Charge d’Affaires in Moscow, Elizabeth Rood, has told RIA Novosti. The diplomat noted that the ongoing Ukraine conflict was not on the officials’ agenda. In an interview with the Russian media outlet published on Monday, Rood said: “The US and the Russian Federation have [communication] channels for risk management, especially in terms of nuclear risks, and precisely this issue was the goal of CIA Director [William] Burns’ meeting with his Russian counterpart.” She pointed out that the two spy chiefs had not, however, discussed the situation in Ukraine or ways to end hostilities there.

The American diplomat added that Washington and Moscow could hold consultations in a similar fashion down the road, if necessary. “For now, as far as I know, nothing is being planned,” Rood noted. The high-level meeting in Türkiye’s capital, Ankara, was first reported by Russia’s Kommersant newspaper in mid-November. It is believed to have been the first in-person contact between top US and Russian officials since Moscow launched its military campaign in Ukraine in late February. Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, confirmed that a high-level meeting had taken place in Ankara on November 14, stopping short, however, of revealing any details regarding the participants or the topics discussed there. “It was the American side’s initiative,” he explained.

Recent comments by Rood about Ukraine not being on the agenda of the meeting between Sergei Naryshkin, chief of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service, and Burns echoed those made earlier by an unnamed White House official cited by Reuters. That source was also quoted as saying that the two spy chiefs had touched on the issue of American citizens in Russian custody and Russian nationals held in US prisons, and the possibility of a swap deal. Earlier this month, US President Joe Biden expressed hope that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, would be willing to discuss such an exchange, which would involve US basketball star Brittney Griner, who is serving nine years in a Russian prison for drug offenses. According to media reports, in exchange, the US could release Viktor Bout, a Russian national and alleged arms dealer, who is serving a 25-year jail term in America.

When they make them they want them to be used.

• Boeing Offers To Make Bombs For Ukraine – Reuters (RT)

The Pentagon is reportedly considering an offer from Boeing to mass-produce cheap precision bombs for Ukraine using existing US stores, as Washington and its allies struggle to keep up with Kiev’s military aid requirements. According to Reuters, Boeing has proposed supplying Ukraine’s forces with the so-called Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) system, which would pair the $40,000 GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) with the relatively abundant M26 rocket motor. The weapon has been in development since 2019. In a document seen by the outlet, the manufacturer claims the availability of the necessary components would enable it to produce the ordnance and start delivering it to Ukraine as early as spring 2023.

However, there are still logistical obstacles to overcome, as at least six suppliers would have to expedite shipment of parts in order to produce the weapons quickly. Boeing’s plan also asks for a price discovery waiver, which would exempt the contractor from an in-depth review to ensure the Pentagon is getting a fair deal. According to SAAB AB’s website, who manufactures the weapon together with Boeing, the GPS-guided GLSDB is capable of striking targets at a range of up to 150 kilometers, which would potentially allow Kiev to strike Russian forces far beyond the front line. While both the US military and Boeing have declined to comment on the report, Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Cmdr. Tim Gorman told Reuters that Washington and its allies “identify and consider the most appropriate systems” that would help Kiev.

He refused to elaborate on providing any “specific capability” to Ukraine. Moscow has repeatedly warned the US and its NATO allies against supplying weapons to Ukraine, arguing that it only serves to prolong the conflict and could eventually lead to a direct confrontation between Russia and the West. As countries like the US and UK have made more advanced weapon systems available to Kiev’s forces, capable of reaching deep behind the front lines, the Kremlin has described the ongoing conflict as nothing short of a proxy war against NATO. President Vladimir Putin has also stated Russia is fighting “the entire Western military machine.”

“..he now regards the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015 as a mistake..”

Because they stopped Russia’s advance in the Donbass. They were a trick.

• Putin Confession Suggests Ukraine Conflict Could Last For Years (Trenin)

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin commented, during a meeting with soldiers’ mothers, that he now regards the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015 as a mistake. This concession makes a powerful contribution to the possibilities of peace negotiations to end the fighting in Ukraine. It is worth remembering that in 2014, Putin acted on a mandate from the Russian parliament to use military force “in Ukraine,” not just in Crimea. In fact, Moscow did save the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk from being overrun by Kiev’s army, and defeated Ukraine’s forces, but rather than clearing the whole region of Donbass, Russia stopped, and agreed to a cease-fire brokered in Minsk by Germany and France.

Putin explained to the mothers that at the time, Moscow did not know for sure the sentiments of the Donbass population affected by the conflict, and hoped that Donetsk and Lugansk could somehow be reunited with Ukraine on the conditions laid down in Minsk. Putin might have added – and his own actions, as well as conversations with then-Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, confirm it – that he was prepared to give the new Kiev authorities a chance to settle the issue and rebuild a relationship with Moscow. Until rather late in the game, Putin also hoped that he could still work things out with the Germans and the French, and the US leadership. Admissions of mistakes are rare among incumbent leaders, but they are important as indicators of lessons they have learned.

This experience has apparently made Putin decide not that the decision to launch the special military operation last February was wrong, but that eight years before, Moscow should not have put any faith in Kiev, Berlin, and Paris, and instead should have relied on its own military might to liberate the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine. In other words, agreeing to a Minsk-style ceasefire now would be another mistake which would allow Kiev and its backers to better prepare to resume fighting at the time of their choosing. The Russian leader realizes, of course, that many nations in the non-West, those who refused to join the anti-Russian sanctions coalition and profess neutrality on Ukraine, have called for an end to hostilities. From China and India to Indonesia and Mexico, these countries, while generally friendly toward Russia, see their economic prospects being impaired by a conflict that pits Russia against the united West.

The Western media also promote the message that global energy and food security is suffering because of Moscow’s actions. Russia’s arguments and protestations to the contrary have only limited impact, since Russian voices are rarely heard on Middle Eastern, Asian, African, or Latin American airwaves. Be that as it may, Moscow cannot ignore the sentiments of the larger part of humanity, which is now increasingly referred to in Russian expert circles as the Global Majority. Hence, official Russian statements that Moscow is open for dialogue without preconditions. However, any Russian delegation to talks would have to take into account the recent amendments to the country’s Constitution, which name the four former Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye as part of the Russian Federation. As Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has put it, Russia will only negotiate on the basis of existing geopolitical realities. It should be noted that the Kremlin has not retracted the objectives of the military operation, which include the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, which means ridding the state and society of ultra-nationalist, anti-Russian elements.

“If America pulls back, Putin could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.”

• Biden Admin Scrambles To Track $20B In Ukraine Aid As GOP Warn Of Audits (Fox)

President Biden’s administration is scrambling to track the nearly $20 billion in military aid it has sent to Ukraine as Republicans warn of impending audits when they take control of the House in January. Likely future House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has said his party will not be giving Ukraine a “blank check” to fend off Russia’s invasion. A potential audit would determine how much, if any, of the U.S. aid is ending up in the wrong hands. The Biden administration’s previous tracking efforts have inspected only a fraction of the aid provided to the country. The Republican push to ramp up oversight enjoys some bipartisan support in Congress. Some staunch Ukraine allies fear the party will cut off aid to the country entirely, however.

Firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has vowed to “hold our government accountable” for Ukraine spending, and some of her colleagues across the aisle are echoing the message. “The taxpayers deserve to know that investment is going where it’s intended to go,” Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., told the Washington Post. “In any war, there can be missteps and misallocation of supplies.” The lawmakers agree that current monitoring efforts appear woefully inadequate, with the Biden administration inspecting just 10% of the 22,000 weapons the U.S. has provided to Ukraine between February and November 1, according to the Post. U.S. allies in Europe have expressed hope that Republican skepticism of Ukraine aid will not lead to a widespread cutting of funding, however.

“You’d be playing into Putin’s hands,” U.K. Parliament member Tobias Ellwood said in October. “If America pulls back, Putin could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.” McCarthy has based his criticism of the aid packages on America’s economic situation as the economy threatens to fall into a recession. “I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine,” McCarthy said last month. “They just won’t do it. … It’s not a free blank check.”

The entire continent is made up of sock puppets.

• EU Gets Tough on China as US Steals European Industry (Gallagher)

European leaders have finally woken up to the fact that Washington is benefitting at their expense with the US/NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Despite their economies being harmed by Washington, the EU continues to take a much tougher stance against Beijing. NATO leaders are set to meet Nov. 29-30 in Bucharest and will discuss ways to “reduce dependency” on China. At the same time, EU leaders are debating how to deal with their US “ally” coaxing European industry to American shores. Ahead of French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Washington, Paris is signaling that Europe would be more willing to go along with a more hardline China stance if the US backs down on efforts to poach European industry with its subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Yet, there are reasons to believe that’s a dead end, and some Europeans are already waving the white flag. While the EU is suddenly in emergency mode over its industry being wiped out by American rivals – something that’s been obvious to many for months – its focus all year has been on Moscow and Beijing. Here’s a brief roundup of the China focus: The bloc is busy hammering out an Anti-Coercion Instrument, which aims to take countermeasures against outside countries that attempt to pressure bloc states using the member states’ economic dependencies. China, which implemented a de facto trade embargo against Lithuania after it allowed Taiwan to open a liaison office in Vilnius, is widely seen as the primary target of the rule.

European lawmakers are also finalizing new rules to curb acquisitions or bids for public contracts by subsidized foreign companies. Again it is widely believed the rules are aimed primarily at China. It came on the heels of the uproar over Chinese efforts to obtain a controlling stake in a Hamburg port terminal. In the end, Berlin approved a sale of 24.9% of the terminal to Cosco. American companies could also face scrutiny from the new legislation due to the Inflation Reduction Act, which has subsidies for US-based manufacturers of electric cars, batteries and renewable energy products and consumers who buy such American-made products. But it would only apply to American companies if they try to buy EU companies or in public procurement bids and not in the case of EU companies relocating production or building of future factories.

China’s Global Times argues that Europe should blame the US for its decline in competitiveness but doesn’t believe that will be the case: Europe has a kind of concern or fear about the rise of China, which is also consistent with the strategy of containing China pursued by the US, Zhao Junjie, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of European Studies. [..] He added that this decision by the EU is very unwise, especially when European economic prospects are unclear, as the implementation of trade protectionism and blocking of normal market business behavior will ultimately damage European companies.

Pre-Covid this was seen as following the science. But now things are different. Now it’s just WEF. And people won’t follow that.

• Netherlands To Forcefully Shut Down 3,000 Farms (CS)

To comply with the European Union’s radical climate laws, the Dutch government of World Economic Forum acolyte Mark Rutte will force up to 3,000 farms to shut down for good. Farmers will be made an offer on their farms, which the government claims is “well over” market value. According to nitrogen minister Christianne van der Wal, the government purchase will be compulsory. “There is no better offer coming,” claimed van der Wal. Recent EU nature preservation rules require member states to reduce emissions across sectors of the economy. As one of Europe’s most prominent farming nations, half of the Netherlands’ emissions come from agricultural activity. Rutte has warned that those who refuse to comply could face government force.

When the Dutch government announced a nitrogen fertilizer reduction mandate, the country saw nationwide protests from farmers. Former agricultural minister resigned from his position as a result of the movement. The Dutch farmer protests received international attention, with protests popping up in Canada in support of the uprising. Rutte’s government policies have many observers concerned about the direction he is taking the country. Earlier this month, the country’s finance minister Sigrid Kaag proposed a law to allow banks to spy on transactions of citizens which totaled more than €100. Privacy watchdog Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens called the bill an unprecedented “surveillance of the Dutch” people.

“Biden is accusing Twitter of “spewing lies all across the world” by seeking to reduce one of the largest censorship systems in history.”

• New Twitter Sign Ups Hit All-Time Record Despite Cancel Campaign (Turley)

Since Elon Musk bought Twitter with a pledge to restore free speech protections, the media and political establishment have maintained an unrelenting campaign to use pressure from corporations and foreign governments to force him to restore censorship policies. Reporters have covered seemingly every celebrity declaring that they are leaving the site or even selling their Teslas in protest. As companies joined the boycott, commentators gleefully announced the “death,” “collapse,” and “demise” of the social media company with some mocking Musk’s endangerment of billions for free speech. New figures, however, appear to show that the public is solidly with Musk on the free speech issue. New signups at Twitter are at an all-time high with two million new signups per day.

As these companies and activists demand censorship, customers are signing up in mass to embrace the greater diversity of viewpoints and expression at the company. While companies are yielding to demands from the left that they cut off ad revenue until Musk restores censorship, users are flocking to the site. The over two million new sign-ups per day represent a 66% increase over the same time frame last year, according to figures released by Musk. Of course, it has long been known that the public wants more, not less, free speech. It is the political establishment that is struggling to retain control over speech on social media at any cost. Facebook even tried a massive commercial campaign to convince the public to embrace censorship.

President Joe Biden has led calls for censorship on social media, which have been largely heeded by companies like Facebook and Twitter. Biden is accusing Twitter of “spewing lies all across the world” by seeking to reduce one of the largest censorship systems in history. President Biden has previously accused social media companies of “killing people” by refusing to impose robust censorship over a wide range of subjects. Many of those banned or censored were doctors with opposing views on the data and the science related to the pandemic. Some of those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates.

“It’s not even that they worry about the content. Twitter is a tainted brand, a brand non grata companies don’t want to be associated with..”

• Twitter Owner Musk Signals New ‘War’ Against Apple (AFP)

Twitter owner Elon Musk on Monday opened fire against Apple over its tight control of what is allowed on the App Store, saying the iPhone maker has threatened to oust his recently acquired social media platform. Musk also joined the chorus crying foul over a 30 percent fee Apple collects on transactions via its App Store – the sole gateway for applications to get onto its billion plus mobile devices. A series of tweets fired off by Musk included a meme of a car with his first name on it veering onto a highway off-ramp labeled “Go to War,” instead of continuing onwards towards “Pay 30%.” The billionaire CEO also tweeted that Apple has “threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why.” Both Apple and Google require social networking services on their app stores to have effective systems for moderating harmful or abusive content.

But since taking over Twitter last month, Musk has cut around half of Twitter’s workforce, including many employees tasked with fighting disinformation, while an unknown number of others have voluntarily quit. He has also reinstated previously banned accounts, including that of former president Donald Trump. Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety at Twitter who left after Musk took over, wrote in a New York Times op-ed that “failure to adhere to Apple’s and Google’s guidelines would be catastrophic,” and risk “expulsion from their app stores.” Describing himself as a “free speech absolutist,” Musk believes that all content permitted by law should be allowed on Twitter, and on Monday described his actions as a “revolution against online censorship in America.”

He also tweeted that he planned to publish “Twitter Files on free speech suppression,” but without clarifying what data he had in mind to share with the public. Though Musk says Twitter is seeing record high engagement with him at the helm, his approach has startled the company’s major moneymaker — advertisers. In recent weeks, half of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers have announced they are suspending or have otherwise “seemingly stopped advertising on Twitter,” an analysis conducted by nonprofit watchdog group Media Matters found. Musk on Monday accused Apple of also having “mostly stopped advertising on Twitter.” “Do they hate free speech in America?” he asked, before replying with a tweet tagging Apple CEO Tim Cook.

In the first three months of 2022, Apple was the top advertiser on Twitter, spending some $48 million on ads which accounted for more than 4 percent of the social media platform’s revenue, according to a Washington Post report citing an internal Twitter document. Sarah Roberts, an information studies expert at University of California, Los Angeles, told AFP that “Musk didn’t understand that Twitter itself was a brand, had cachet.” “Now companies don’t even want to be associated with it. It’s not even that they worry about the content. Twitter is a tainted brand, a brand non grata companies don’t want to be associated with,” she added.

The swamp is putrid.

“..he watched a live-feed of Assange’s arrest from the Operations Room at the top of the Foreign Office alongside Pelican personnel. After Assange had been imprisoned in Belmarsh, Duncan had a drinks party at his office for the Pelican team.”

• UK Deployed 15 Staff On Secret Operation To Seize Julian Assange (Dec.uk)

The British government assigned at least 15 people to the secret operation to seize Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, new information shows. The WikiLeaks founder was given political asylum by Ecuador in 2012, but was never allowed safe passage out of Britain to avoid persecution by the US government. The Australian journalist has been in Belmarsh maximum security prison for the past three and a half years and faces a potential 175-year sentence after the UK High Court greenlighted his extradition to the US in December 2021. ‘Pelican’ was the secret Metropolitan Police operation to seize Assange from his asylum, which eventually occurred in April 2019. Asylum is a right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The operation’s existence was only revealed in the memoirs of former foreign minister Sir Alan Duncan which were published last year.

The UK government routinely blocks, or obfuscates its answers to, information requests about the Assange case. But the Cabinet Office recently told parliament it had seven officials working on Operation Pelican. The department’s role is to “support the Prime Minister and ensure the effective running of government”, but it also has national security and intelligence functions. [..] Other government ministries refused to say if they had staff working on Pelican, including the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). The MoJ is in charge of courts in England and Wales, where Assange’s extradition case is currently deciding whether to hear an appeal. It is also in control of its prisons, including Belmarsh maximum security jail where Assange is incarcerated. When asked if any of its staff were assigned to Pelican, the MoJ claimed: “The information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.”

Sir Alan Duncan, foreign minister for the Americas from 2016-19, was the key UK official in the diplomatic negotiations between the UK and Ecuador to get Assange out of the embassy. In his memoirs he wrote that he watched a live-feed of Assange’s arrest from the Operations Room at the top of the Foreign Office alongside Pelican personnel. After Assange had been imprisoned in Belmarsh, Duncan had a drinks party at his office for the Pelican team. “I gave them each a signed photo which we took in the Ops Room on the day, with a caption saying ‘Julian Assange’s Special Brexit Team 11th April 2019’”, he wrote. Ecuador’s president from 2007-17, Rafael Correa, recently told Declassified he granted Assange asylum because the Australian journalist “didn’t have any possibility of a fair legal process in the United States.”

Given all of the Guardian’s efforts to paint Assange as a traitor, writing such letters takes gall.

• Media Groups Urge US To Drop Julian Assange Charges (G.)

Twelve years ago, on November 28th 2010, our five international media outlets – the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, El País and Der Spiegel – published a series of revelations in cooperation with WikiLeaks that made the headlines around the globe. “Cablegate”, a set of 251,000 confidential cables from the US state department, disclosed corruption, diplomatic scandals and spy affairs on an international scale. In the words of the New York Times, the documents told “the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions, the decisions that cost the country most heavily in lives and money”. Even now in 2022, journalists and historians continue to publish new revelations, using the unique trove of documents.

For Julian Assange, publisher of WikLeaks, the publication of “Cablegate” and several other related leaks had the most severe consequences. On April 12th 2019, Assange was arrested in London on a US arrest warrant, and has now been held for three and a half years in a high-security British prison usually used for terrorists and members of organised crime groups. He faces extradition to the US and a sentence of up to 175 years in an American maximum-security prison. This group of editors and publishers, all of whom had worked with Assange, felt the need to publicly criticise his conduct in 2011 when unredacted copies of the cables were released, and some of us are concerned about the allegations in the indictment that he attempted to aid in computer intrusion of a classified database.

But we come together now to express our grave concerns about the continued prosecution of Julian Assange for obtaining and publishing classified materials. The Obama-Biden administration, in office during the WikiLeaks publication in 2010, refrained from indicting Assange, explaining that they would have had to indict journalists from major news outlets too. Their position placed a premium on press freedom, despite its uncomfortable consequences. Under Donald Trump however, the position changed. The DoJ relied on an old law, the Espionage Act of 1917 (designed to prosecute potential spies during world war one), which has never been used to prosecute a publisher or broadcaster. This indictment sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America’s first amendment and the freedom of the press.

Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information when necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists. If that work is criminalised, our public discourse and our democracies are made significantly weaker. Twelve years after the publication of “Cablegate”, it is time for the US government to end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets. Publishing is not a crime.

The editors and publishers of:
The New York Times
The Guardian
Le Monde
Der Spiegel
El País

Julian Assange speaking in 2011: "We need a Cablegate for the CIA, we need a Cablegate for the SVR [Russian intelligence], we need a #Cablegate of the New York Times, actually, to see all the stories they're censoring…" #Cablegate12 #FreeAssangeNOW pic.twitter.com/MjhU44tVOU

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 28, 2022