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Debt Rattle July 17 2024

Jul 172024
 
 July 17, 2024  Posted by at 8:46 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  81 Responses »


Salvador Dali The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory 1954

 

• This One Thing About Trump Shooting Is Very Suspicious (Pochuev)
• Further Thoughts on the Near Assassination (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Rep. Cory Mills Vows ‘J13 Committee’ To Investigate Trump Shooting (ZH)
• The Surrender (Matt Taibbi)
• RFK Jr. Apologizes For Trump Leak (RT)
• Biden Says No To Extra Debate With Trump (RT)
• Elon Musk Pledges $45 Million Monthly To Pro-Trump Super PAC (ZH)
• Elon Musk Abandons California Over Trans Law (RT)
• Pulte Family Takes “Activist Position” in BuzzFeed, Joins Vivek Ramaswamy (ZH)
• JD Vance Promises ‘Rapid Close’ To Ukraine Conflict (RT)
• ‘Root Causes’ Of Ukraine Conflict Should Be Eliminated – Lavrov (RT)
• ‘No Mercy’ For Ukrainian neo-Nazi POW Murderers – Medvedev (RT)
• MEPs Want Hungary Stripped Of Voting Rights – Politico (RT)
• Orban Asks EU To Talk With Russia – Bild (RT)
• “This is How Republics Collapse” (Turley)

 

 


“It blows my mind how narrowly Trump escaped death. He turned his head 0.3 seconds before impact.”


“It gets even crazier. There was a 7mph crosswind at Trump’s rally – enough to push a 5.56 round two inches to the left of its target, at 150 yards. If there hadn’t been a slight crosswind, that bullet would’ve gone straight through Trump’s skull.”

 

 

Alex jones

 

 

Landslide

 

 

 

 

Alexander Pochuev, Vice President of the Long Range Shooting Federation of Russia.

It’s not just this one thing, though. There’s tons.

• This One Thing About Trump Shooting Is Very Suspicious (Pochuev)

On Saturday, 20-year-old Pennsylvanian Thomas Crooks fired three shots from a rifle and was almost immediately hit by return fire from US Secret Service snipers. The country’s former President Donald Trump suffered a minor wound to his right ear, but literally looked death in the face. Apparently, Trump was saved by turning his head to the right, in the direction of the would-be assassin. He had already made this move when Crooks pulled the trigger and the bullet flew towards him at an initial velocity of more than 1,100 meters per second. According to a ballistic calculator, the bullet took 0.14 of a second to reach Trump’s ear. There was no way the shooter could have calculated the movement of his intended victim. Trump was only millimeters away from being fatally wounded.

Even if he had turned at a slightly different angle and the bullet had travelled 10-20 mm to the right, the former US president would have been seriously wounded and out of the running for power in the US for a long time, if not forever. The next two shots were automatic and missed, indicating poor shooting skills and an inability to control himself under stress. The presidential candidate himself heard the shots half a second later, apparently at the same time as he felt the pain of the wound. The speed of a bullet is three times the speed of sound. By this time, a projectile had already hit the next victim. We can assume that the shooter was able to hit several targets with one shot. But that’s not because of any ability on Crooks’ part, it’s the result of the large crowd at the rally.

What was striking, however, was the lightning response of the secret service snipers. They opened fire with at least two rifles in just over three seconds. This is an excellent result. And it would be even in a shooting competition where the target and distances are known, and the command ‘fire’ is given. So, it’s clear that Special Forces snipers had Crooks in their crosshairs by the time the shots were fired. So why didn’t they open fire sooner? And why did they let the shooter get so close and not respond to eyewitness reports of a strange man with a gun?

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“It is very unusual that an intended assassin would expect to be able to appear with a rifle in a protected area and not be accosted. In other words, it reeks of the smell of a stand down.”

“Trump has to root out the evil, to extinguish the evil. He has to find and appoint and get confirmed a government that will support him in this battle. Anything less and he is a failure.”

• Further Thoughts on the Near Assassination (Paul Craig Roberts)

“The fact that [the Secret Service] allowed a rifle armed shooter within 150 yds to a preplanned event is either malice or massive incompetence.” — Security expert Erik Prince, Navy Seal and founder of Blackwater. One of the most puzzling aspects of the near assassination of Donald Trump on the Secret Service’s watch is the shooter’s expectation to find the buildings within the protected area unoccupied by Secret Service and no agents guarding the sniper positions on the buildings. It is very unusual that an intended assassin would expect to be able to appear with a rifle in a protected area and not be accosted. In other words, it reeks of the smell of a stand down. Here is the Russian state news agency RIA-Novosti’s comment:

“The assassination attempt on Donald Trump is surprising only because it happened on July 13, and not earlier — a year, three or eight years ago. The upstart, who challenged not only most of the American establishment, but also the ‘Washington swamp’ as such, has risked his head very much all these years… It is clear that now the ‘swamp denizens’ are biting their elbows because they did not think to kill Trump before November 2016: they underestimated the threat, did not believe in the reality of his victory.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the atmosphere of hatred created around Trump by the Biden regime has led to the near assassination of Donald Trump. “After numerous attempts to remove Trump from the political arena with the help of legal tools, courts, the prosecution, attempts to politically discredit and compromise the candidate, it was clear to all outside observers that his life was in danger.”

“We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness.” — Donald Trump. Trump understands that the real fight is against the evil that has in its grasp the Democrat Party, the media, the liberal-left intellectuals who control the educational system, and the financial system that enslaves the population to debt service. It is extraordinary that former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama along with Biden and Trump himself have issued statements thanking the Secret Service for their “swift intervention.” Swift intervention? After an assassin in plain view of the Secret Service fires a series of shots that kill one person and dangerously injures two others standing behind Trump and misses killing Trump by a quarter of an inch? Only when the assassin finishes firing does the Secret Service intervene. How does a Secret Service that totally fails in its responsibility to protect a presidential candidate get congratulations for preventing an assassination?

Trump’s assassination failed because Trump turned his head when the assassin shot, thus throwing the bullet off mark. The Secret Service did nothing to prevent Trump’s assassination. Is it the case that once the Secret Service saw Trump was down, Trump was believed to be mortally injured and it was the time to eliminate, like happened to Oswald, the shooter before he could talk? I don’t say this is the case. It is a question that needs investigation. The question of the unsecured buildings from which the intended assassin fired has produced a dispute between the Secret Service and local police. The Secret Service claims the neglected shooting positions were the responsibility of the local police. The local police say they are merely the ordered around adjuncts of the Secret Service, who are in charge. Let’s assume the local police were responsible for the security of the nearby sites. Why did not the Secret Service check if the police performed their alleged duty?

The greatest puzzle is the near assassin’s unencumbered access to perfect spots for a successful assassination. To those few Americans still capable of thought, the outpouring of former presidents clearing the Secret Service with praise of its non-performance suggests it was an establishment attack on Donald Trump’s life. Trump’s response to the attack on his life is not promising. Indeed, he is already moving off-task. He says he is going to reunite the country. This assumes that America has no internal enemies intent on destroying her, her values, and her liberties, and in her place erecting a Sodom & Gomorrah Tower of Babel.

How can Trump reunite a country when the Democrat half is dedicated to the country’s destruction via open borders and the legitimization of all forms of sexual perversion? Is Trump going to compromise with his enemies and give them, in the false name of unity, part of their agenda? What is the point of a raised fist with blood running down your face shouting “fight, fight, fight” if you are going to compromise? Trump has to root out the evil, to extinguish the evil. He has to find and appoint and get confirmed a government that will support him in this battle. Anything less and he is a failure.

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‘How could this have gone so wrong?’

• Rep. Cory Mills Vows ‘J13 Committee’ To Investigate Trump Shooting (ZH)

Former sniper and defense contractor Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) triggered a CNN host on Tuesday after suggesting that “intentional” failures may have resulted in the assassination attempt on Donald Trump on Saturday. “The amount of negligence, the amount of mistakes that was made here, I have a very difficult time not leaning myself towards this was intentional, as opposed to fecklessness,” Mills told anchor Kate Bolduan. “If I have a building 160 yards perfectly adjacent to the stage, that’s an obvious threat,” he continued. “Especially with an elevated position that has overwatch? That’s a sniper’s paradise.” Mills, an Iraq war veteran and former DynCorp security specialist, co-founded private security company Pacem Defense, and says he’s overseen security for thousands of events.

After a stunned Boulduan pressed Mills, he replied: “I sit here and scratch my head. You don’t want to be the conspiracist. That’s the issue. You walk this fine balance, but you look at it and think ‘How could this have gone so wrong?’.” Meanwhile, journalist Laura Loomer spoke with Mills outside the Republican National Convention, where he told her that he plans to create a ‘J13 committee’ that’s ‘bigger than the J6 committee,’ and that he will push to be in charge of it.

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“.. they quoted a “senior House Democrat” at the bottom, saying, “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.”

• The Surrender (Matt Taibbi)

The decision was announced at a White House briefing Monday morning. “In light of this weekend’s events, the president has directed me to work with the Secret Service to provide protection to Robert Kennedy Jr.,” was the quote from Homeland Security Director Alejandro Mayorkas. It’s difficult to read the line “in light of this weekend’s events” and not see an admission on the part of the White House that Secret Service protection was previously being denied to Kennedy, Jr. for political reasons, or out of spite, if those are even two different things in this era. Whatever the original prerogative was for pushing the envelope with that denial, it seems to have been removed by series of paradigm-shattering news events, leading to a flurry of real and symbolic surrenders.

MSNBC likewise made an extraordinary decision Sunday night to pull Morning Joe, with CNN saying the network wanted to “to avoid a scenario in which one of the show’s stable of two dozen-plus guests might make an inappropriate comment on live television.” As with the Secret Service decision, MSNBC was making a major admission, essentially telling audiences its lead morning news show is either not really a news show, or that its format only holds up under something less than maximum scrutiny. I can’t recall a similar act of self-sabotage in media. Meanwhile, in a move that went mostly unnoticed, Meta announced Friday that it was lifting restrictions on Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, with CNN citing company sources saying this was done “to ensure that Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, would have equal standing with Democrat President Joe Biden.”

The next day, after the attempt on Trump’s life that left firefighter Corey Comperatore dead, Axios ran a story about Democratic reaction. Burying the lede, they quoted a “senior House Democrat” at the bottom, saying, “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.” There’s a longer story to be written about the sudden collapse of many of the core premises of the last eight years of American politics, in particular the notion that Trump is such a unique “existential” threat that the system would not bear treating him like any other politician. In conjunction with Trump’s documents case collapsing and a list of other retreats on the lawfare/prosecution front, we appear headed for a new world, though what that will look like remains very unclear. The two obvious options are retreat from the “at all costs” mindset and a double-down, the double-down being the pattern in the Trump era. Who knows yet, but it’s remarkable to watch.

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A president calls you who’s been shot just hours before. And you don’t stop the video that’s running, or find a private place to take the call?

• RFK Jr. Apologizes For Trump Leak (RT)

US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has apologized after his son posted a video recording of a recent phone call with his Republican challenger, Donald Trump. During the call, Trump sought RFK Jr.’s endorsement and said that he shared the independent’s concerns about vaccinating children. An excerpt of the call, which took place on Sunday, was posted to X on Tuesday by Bobby Kennedy III, before it was deleted shortly afterwards. According to screenshots of the post, the younger Kennedy posted the video as he felt “these sorts of conversations should be had in public.” In the video, Trump told the elder Kennedy that “clearly something’s wrong” with the US’ childhood vaccination program.

“I said I want to do small doses,” Trump told Kennedy Jr., who was listening on his phone’s speaker. Trump complained that children are given a “vaccination that’s like 38 different vaccines, and it looks like it’s meant for a horse, not a ten-pound or twenty-pound baby. And then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change…and then you hear that doesn’t have an impact.” “You and I talked about that a long time ago,” Trump added.

Kennedy Jr. has railed against vaccinating children since before the Covid-19 pandemic, and Trump – whose administration funded the development of Covid vaccines – at one point publicly shared his views. “My theory,” he told reporters in 2007, “is the shots” are responsible for causing autism. “We’re giving these massive injections at one time, and I really think it does something to the children.” Within hours of the video being posted, Kennedy Jr apologized for the leak. “When President Trump called me I was taping with an in-house videographer,” he explained in a post on X. “I should have ordered the videographer to stop recording immediately. I am mortified that this was posted. I apologize to the president.”

Kennedy Jr. did not speak during the section of the call posted online. After laying out his views on vaccines, Trump appeared to ask for the independent candidate’s endorsement, telling him “it would be so good for you.” Trump met with Kennedy Jr. the day after the phone call to discuss his possibly suspending his bid for the White House and joining the Republican’s campaign, Politico reported on Monday. The Kennedy campaign acknowledged that the meeting took place but said that the two discussed “national unity,” and that Kennedy Jr. would remain in the race. Recent polls show Kennedy Jr. winning around 10% of the national vote in a hypothetical race that includes the Green Party’s Jill Stein and the Justice for All Party’s Cornel West. These same polls show Trump leading President Joe Biden by between one and six points.

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“I have done 22 major events, met thousands of people, overwhelming crowds.”

Let’s see the footage.

• Biden Says No To Extra Debate With Trump (RT)

US President Joe Biden has turned down Donald Trump’s proposal for him to “redeem himself” after his disastrous performance in their first televised debate last month by holding another unscheduled face-off. Biden has faced increasing calls to withdraw from the presidential race after he appeared frail and confused during the June 27 debate against Trump. According to the New York Times, Democratic donors have been withholding some $90 million in donations in order to persuade the party to replace the 81-year-old president on the ticket. Biden, however, has insisted he is staying in the race. Last week, speaking at a rally in Miami, Trump offered Biden a “chance to redeem himself.”

“Let us do another debate this week so that sleepy Joe Biden can prove to everyone all over the world that he has what it takes to be president,” he said, adding that the unscheduled face-off should have no moderators and be “man-to-man.” Asked about the proposal during an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt on Tuesday, Biden said he will debate Trump only at the previously agreed time. “I’m gonna debate him when we agreed to debate. And I agreed to debate him in September,” Biden said. The second face-off between the two is scheduled to take place on September 10, with ABC News hosting. Biden snapped back when Holt suggested a snap debate in the coming weeks would be a chance for him to “get back on the horse.”

“I am on the horse. Where have you been? I have done 22 major events, met thousands of people, overwhelming crowds. A lot has been happening. I am on the horse,” he said, insisting that he does not need notes or a teleprompter. “I can go out and answer any questions at all,” he said. Multiple US news outlets have reported in recent weeks that Democratic donors and officials have been plotting to force Biden out of the race and replace him with another candidate. Axios reported last week that an “anti-Biden network” that includes veterans of the Obama and Clinton administrations are seeking to oust Biden and field a candidate they believe has a better chance of winning the November election. Biden told Holt on Tuesday that he would not repeat his poor performance at the next debate. “I don’t plan on having another performance on that level,” he said.

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To counter Zuckerberg millions?!

• Elon Musk Pledges $45 Million Monthly To Pro-Trump Super PAC (ZH)

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, a source familiar with the situation has revealed Elon Musk’s latest power move: a $45 million a month commitment to a new super political-action committee to support former President Donald Trump. This new super PAC will deploy large sums of money and other resources in critical swing states to counter ‘get out the vote’ campaigns by Democrats. Called ‘America PAC,’ the group is reportedly focused on registering voters and convincing constituents to vote early and request mail-in ballots across swing states, according to the people. The group will counter get out the vote campaigns by Democrats in swing states. Besides Musk, America PAC is supported by Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and former US ambassador to Canada Kelly Craft and her husband, Joe, the chief executive of coal producer Alliance Resource Partners.

According to a Monday filing, America PAC received $8.75 million in contributions for the quarter ending June 30, as reported by the WSJ. Musk is rumored to begin his donations this month. A recent Bloomberg News report indicated Musk had donated to the new super PAC last week, although the donation size was not mentioned. Following the failed assassination attempt on Trump, Musk wrote on X on Saturday evening, “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” adding, “Last time America had a candidate this tough was Theodore Roosevelt.” X user End Wokenes wrote, “Elon Musk went from being an Obama voter to pledging $180 million to elect DJT. The woke left really f*cked up. Badly.” Musk responded with a “Yeah”…

Perhaps the Democrats miscalculated their assault on Musk. Musk also praised Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance as his vice-presidential nominee, calling it an “excellent” choice. Vance has ties with Peter Thiel, the founder of Palantir Technologies. In recent weeks, David Sacks has backed Trump, even hosting a fundraiser at his San Francisco mansion. Whether it’s Thiel, Sacks, or Musk, they were all once part of a group dubbed the ‘PayPal Mafia.’

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“Have had enough of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building..”

• Elon Musk Abandons California Over Trans Law (RT)

SpaceX CEO and X owner Elon Musk has said that he will relocate the headquarters of both companies from California to Texas in response to a new law forbidding teachers in the Golden State from telling parents if their children identify as transgender. California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the SAFETY Act into law on Tuesday. Hailed by activists as a safeguard against the “forced outing” of gay or transgender kids, the law forbids school staff from informing parents if their children identify as gay in the classroom, or use names or pronouns that differ from those on their birth certificates. Critics slammed the bill as an infringement on parental rights. “This is the final straw,” Musk wrote on X. “Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas.”

Musk explained that he made it “clear to Governor Newsom about a year ago that laws of this nature would force families and companies to leave California to protect their children.” In a follow-up post, Musk said that he would relocate X’ HQ from San Francisco to Austin, Texas. “Have had enough of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building,” he said, referring to San Francisco’s well-documented homelessness, drug abuse, and street-crime problems. Musk previously described the “once beautiful and thriving” downtown area of San Francisco as “a derelict zombie apocalypse,” blaming the decline on decades of Democrat rule. Last August, the billionaire vowed to go to “war” with a law firm that was suing city authorities for clearing vagrants from the area.

Musk already moved Tesla’s HQ from the tech hub of Palo Alto in California to Austin in 2021, and moved his personal residence from California to Texas in 2020. Aside from distancing himself from coastal liberalism – which he has described as “the woke mind-virus,” the move allowed Musk to avoid tax on his personal income. In 2023, Musk told his biographer, Walter Isaacson, that he blamed his transgender daughter’s liberal Los Angeles school for encouraging her to become “a full communist” and to sever all ties with her father the year before. “She went beyond socialism to being a full communist and thinking that anyone rich is evil,” Musk said of his now 20-year-old child. “I’ve made many overtures, but she doesn’t want to spend time with me.” Musk has also spoken out repeatedly against child sex changes, stating last year that he “will be actively lobbying to criminalize making severe, irreversible changes to children below the age of consent.”

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Buzzfeed looks dead to me.

• Pulte Family Takes “Activist Position” in BuzzFeed, Joins Vivek Ramaswamy (ZH)

Shares of Buzzfeed jumped 26% moments ago after the Pulte Family revealed an “activist position” in BuzzFeed, supporting the changes Vivek Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate, has proposed for the media company. “In our opinion, the Current BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti is driving the company into the ground, and when Vivek Ramaswamy gave him a lifeboat to save his sinking ship, Peretti told him thanks anyway,” William J. Pulte, CEO of Pulte Capital and a former Director of PulteGroup, wrote in a statement released on X. Pulte said, “This is exactly the type of hubris that needs to end in corporate America; at every turn, CEO Peretti has delivered unacceptable financial and operational performance, quarter after quarter. If CEO Peretti isn’t up to modernize BuzzFeed, then he should bring in someone who is or he should buy the company back from its shareholders.”

He added, “We support the changes Vivek Ramaswamy has proposed and that which he thinks are necessary.” Axios reported on June 24 that Ramaswamy and two of his proposed directors spoke with CEO Peretti via conference call to discuss his activist campaign against the media company. In May, Ramaswamy announced his BuzzFeed stake with a letter to the company’s board, saying the media company has “lost its way.” Ramaswamy holds approximately a 7.7% stake in BuzzFeed, while the size of the Pulte Family’s stake has not been disclosed. Pulte concluded, “For the avoidance of doubt, we are not working in concert with and are not working in a group with Mr. Ramaswamy. To that end, we did not inform Mr. Ramaswamy before we purchased shares in BuzzFeed.”

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“Is there a risk of escalation into a nuclear war? Because there is, when you have a buffoon running foreign policy, and we have got a lot of them right now in Washington, DC..”

• JD Vance Promises ‘Rapid Close’ To Ukraine Conflict (RT)

Donald Trump will bring about a “rapid close” to the Ukraine conflict if reelected as US president in November, the Republican’s newly announced running mate, JD Vance, has said. Vance argued that Washington should shift its focus to China, describing Beijing as the “biggest threat” to the US. Trump announced Vance as his running mate on Monday at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Ohio senator’s candidacy was approved later the same day. If Trump returns as president after the November 5 election, his policy on Ukraine will be “very simple,” Vance told Fox News shortly after being officially nominated. “Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if Donald Trump had been president. Everybody agrees with it. Even a lot of my Democratic colleagues privately agree with that,” he said.

Vance again accused the administration of US President Joe Biden of lacking a coherent policy on the conflict. “We have now spent $200 billion [on aiding Ukraine]. What is the goal? What are we trying to accomplish? Is there a risk of escalation into a nuclear war? Because there is, when you have a buffoon running foreign policy, and we have got a lot of them right now in Washington, DC,” he said. “I think what President Trump has promised to do is go in there, negotiate with the Russians and Ukrainians and bring this thing to a rapid close, so that America could focus on the real issue, which is China. That’s the biggest threat,” Vance stressed. Since the outbreak of the fighting between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022, Trump has repeatedly claimed that the conflict wouldn’t have happened if he had retained the presidency in 2020. He has also vowed to resolve the crisis within 24 hours if he returns to the White House.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier this month that Moscow takes the former US president’s comments “quite seriously.” “I certainly do not know what, exactly, his proposal would be [to end the conflict] and how he plans to achieve that. And that is the key question. But I do not doubt his sincerity and we welcome” the sentiment, Putin stated. In early June, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky demanded that Trump reveal the details of his peace plan. “I would like to know what it would mean to finish a war fast,” Zelensky told Bloomberg. “If Trump knows how to end this war, he should tell us today, because if there are risks to Ukraine’s independence, and there are risks that we will lose our statehood, we want to be prepared for this,” he argued.

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“Russia and the West need mutual “guarantees and agreements..”

• ‘Root Causes’ Of Ukraine Conflict Should Be Eliminated – Lavrov (RT)

The world should address the “root causes” that led to the “crisis” in Europe and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a ministerial summit at the UN Security Council on Tuesday. Ending the standoff between Moscow and Kiev should be accompanied by the removal of the threat posed by the West to Russia’s security, he said. Conditions for a “sustainable peace” between Russia and Ukraine had already been presented by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the top diplomat noted. In June, Putin outlined Moscow’s terms for initiating a ceasefire. They involved a full withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from all Russian territories, including the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, and the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye, as well as a legal commitment from Kiev never to join NATO. Any final deal should be recognized in Western capitals and pave the way to lift sanctions against Russia, Putin added. Both Kiev and its Western backers dismissed the offer.

Any “political and diplomatic settlement [of the Ukraine conflict] should be accompanied by specific steps aimed at removing the threats to the Russian Federation posed by the [West],” Lavrov told the UNSC as he listed the measures needed to “restore trust and stabilize the situation” on the international arena. “The root causes of the crisis that has broken out in Europe should be dealt with once and for all.” Russia and the West need mutual “guarantees and agreements,” the minister stated, adding that “new geostrategic realities on the Eurasian continent” should be taken into account as well. According to Lavrov, a new “pan continental architecture of truly equal and indivisible security” was being formed on the continent. “The global and regional balance of power should be restored as well, along with repairing injustices in the world economy,” he said. A multipolar world should not have any monopolies in the financial or currency regulation, trade or technologies, he said, calling on the World Trade Organization to be reformed to reflect the “real weight” of non-Western centers of growth and development.

Moscow has long blamed the hegemonic aspirations of Washington and its allies for various crises in recent decades. In June, Putin said the world had missed an opportunity to create a better, more just and secure international order in the 1990s. The US and other Western nations believed they had “won the Cold War and refused to respect the interests of others,” he said at that time. That approach manifested itself in NATO’s policy of resolving conflicts that came down to “accusing the party they dislike of all sins and crushing it,” Putin stated. Such an approach proved to be a disaster, according to the Russian president. He also denied that Russia was the main threat to Europe, arguing that the greatest danger to European nations comes from their massive dependence on the US.

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Fully ignored in the west.

“Fascists are fascists,” he told reporters. “We must treat them this way and they must be destroyed..”

• ‘No Mercy’ For Ukrainian neo-Nazi POW Murderers – Medvedev (RT)

No mercy must be shown towards Ukrainian neo-Nazis who murdered an unarmed Russian soldier, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has said. The only response that should follow is across-the-board executions, he added. Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, was commenting on a video depicting the brutal execution of a Russian serviceman that was published by the Azov Brigade on its Telegram channel on Monday. The helmet-camera video shows an unarmed soldier asking a purported Azov militant not to shoot him, before he gets shot several times in the face at point-blank range. The commander of Russia’s Akhmat Special Forces unit Apty Alaudinov said the incident violated the Geneva Conventions. Under the provisions of the 1949 treaties, “members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, or detention” should be treated humanely.

Medvedev said, however, that reference to the Geneva Conventions is pointless, as there should be “no mercy” to perpetrators of war crimes. The politician quoted the Soviet WWII-era war poet Konstantin Simonov’s verse “Kill him” and called for the expedited execution of those who murdered the captured serviceman. “There is no place for good here. Just kill! Like Simonov, to whom I have referred many times!” he wrote on his Telegram channel on Tuesday. “Only total executions. No choice. There are no words about mercy. No humanity. No pardon. They have no right to life,” Medvedev insisted. Echoing his remarks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated on Tuesday that Ukrainian Neo-Nazis should be “destroyed.” “Fascists are fascists,” he told reporters. “We must treat them this way and they must be destroyed,” Peskov added.

Earlier this month, the New York Times revealed, citing a German battlefield medic, multiple atrocities allegedly committed by members of the so-called ‘Chosen Company,’ an international mercenary group fighting on behalf of Ukraine. In one reported incident described by the NYT, members of the Chosen Company murdered a seriously injured Russian serviceman who, it’s claimed, was surrendering and pleading for help. Russia’s Investigative Committee has said it will probe alleged war crimes committed by mercenary units fighting for Ukraine. Moscow will also demand that international organizations verify data on alleged Russian POW executions, which, if confirmed, would qualify “as a violation of key norms and principles of humanitarian law, amounting to war crimes,” according to ambassador-at-large for Ukraine’s crimes, Rodion Miroshnik.

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93 MPs who don’t want peace.

• MEPs Want Hungary Stripped Of Voting Rights – Politico (RT)

Scores of European Parliament members have called on Brussels to punish Hungary after its prime minister, Viktor Orban, allegedly abused the bloc’s rotating presidency by launching his Ukraine “peace mission,” Politico reported on Tuesday. The outlet published a letter signed by 93 MEPs and addressed to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel, and European Parliament chief Roberta Metsola. The signatories accused Orban of causing “significant damage by exploiting and abusing the role of the [EU] Council Presidency,” which Hungary assumed earlier this month. The focus of their ire was Orban’s “peace mission” which involved recent visits to Ukraine, Russia, China, and the US.

“Orban deliberately left the impression that he was acting on behalf of the entire European Union,” the letter claimed, despite the leader stressing that he was acting in his capacity as head of the Hungarian government before flying to Moscow earlier this month. MEPs said their assertion was “clearly evidenced” by the fact that senior EU officials had stressed that Orban did not represent the bloc “in any form” during his trips. The Hungarian leader “is actively pursuing a policy agenda which is contrary to common EU positions,” and “this cannot be allowed to continue,” the MEPs said. They have urged the EU leadership to launch so-called Article 7 proceedings against Hungary. Widely considered a “nuclear option,” the article allows suspension of voting rights of a member state. The punishment is necessary “since practice has shown that mere verbal condemnations of this situation have no effect,” the letter said.

Hungary has criticized EU policy since hostilities between Ukraine and Russia broke out in February 2022. According to Budapest, Western economic sanctions imposed against Moscow have seriously damaged European economies, while the supply of weapons to Kiev has led to the continuation of hostilities instead of their end. Orban has urged a ceasefire and a negotiated resolution of the crisis, which his critics call a pro-Russian stance. Orban has detailed his vision of resolving the conflict in a letter to Michel, the European Council president, his office confirmed on Monday. His plan reportedly includes making concessions to Russia in terms of NATO’s expansion in Europe, which Moscow has called one of the key triggers of the confrontation.

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What a crazy idea!

• Orban Asks EU To Talk With Russia – Bild (RT)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has written to Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, urging him to resume dialogue with Russia and involve China in the effort to resolve the Ukraine conflict, Bild reported on Monday. The plea comes after Orban went on a “peace mission” to Ukraine, Russia, China, and the US. According to the letter cited by the German tabloid, Orban provided Michel with a summary of his talks with the Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, and Turkish leaders, as well as Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. It also reportedly contained “some suggestions for [Michel’s] consideration.” Warning Michel that “the intensity of the military conflict [in Ukraine] will radically intensify in the near future,” Orban urged the EU official to hold talks with China on a ‘peace conference’ as well as reestablish diplomatic relations with Russia, according to the letter.

He further called for a “political offensive” in the Global South, arguing that the region is disillusioned with the EU’s stance on the Ukraine conflict. Orban also reportedly suggested that US President Joe Biden is “not in a position to change the current [US] pro-war policy.” However, he is said to have written that if Trump is reelected, he will “immediately be ready to act as a peace mediator.” Trump also “has detailed and well-founded plans” for ending the conflict, the letter reportedly said. Trump, who survived an assassination attempt at the weekend, has promised to end the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev within 24 hours if elected.

A Politico report earlier this month suggested that the presumptive Republican candidate could strike a deal under which “NATO commits to no further eastward expansion,” specifically into Ukraine and Georgia, while holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin “over how much Ukrainian territory Moscow can keep.” Orban’s recent ‘peace mission’ sparked a fierce backlash in the West. Michel himself declared that the Hungarian leader “has no mandate to engage with Russia on behalf of the EU” and stressed that “no discussions about Ukraine can take place without Ukraine.” Orban urged Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky to agree to a ceasefire during their meeting, although the latter rejected the proposal, insisting that the Hungarian prime minister lacked the clout to negotiate an end to the conflict.

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“How do republics collapse? When judges are pressured or removed for ruling against favored parties.”

• “This is How Republics Collapse” (Turley)

“This is how republics collapse.” Those ominous words captured the hand-wringing, hair-pulling reaction to the dismissal of the Florida case against Donald Trump by Judge Aileen Cannon. It was not just that she reached a conclusion long supported by some conservative lawyers and a Supreme Court justice. To rule in favor of Trump in such a dismissal is, once again, the end of Democracy as we know it. The 93-page order methodically goes through the governing cases and statutes for the appointment of prosecutors. There has long been a debate over how an attorney general like Merrick Garland can circumvent the constitutional process for the appointment of a U.S. Attorney and unilaterally elevate a citizen to wield even greater power. With the expiration of the Independent Counsel Act in 1999, attorneys general have long relied upon their inherent authority to appoint “inferior officers” to special counsel investigations.

The issue has never been conclusively ruled upon by the Supreme Court, even though lower courts have rejected this challenge. The Trump ruling is certainly an outlier and the odds favor prosecutor Jack Smith on appeal. Many point to a challenge in 2019 in the D.C. Circuit to the appointment of Robert Mueller. The court found that “binding precedent establishes that Congress has ‘by law’ vested authority in the Attorney General to appoint the Special Counsel as an inferior officer.” That is the view of many lawyers and judges. However, Judge Cannon disagreed and found a lack of clear authority for both the appointment and the appropriations used for Smith. Nevertheless, legal experts were incredulous and irate. Jed Shugerman, a Boston University Law professor, is quoted as expressing shock that Judge Cannon is essentially saying, “I’m not bound by the DC Circuit, and I think they misinterpret this.” He added that it showed an “astonishing level of dismissiveness.”

However, in point of fact, Judge Cannon is not bound by the D.C. Circuit. As a federal judge in Florida, she is bound by the 11th Circuit and, of course, the Supreme Court. She is allowed to reach a different conclusion on a matter of law. Laurence Tribe, a law professor at Harvard University, declared that “Judge Cannon just did the unthinkable,” He added, “This finally gives Jack Smith an opportunity to seek her removal from the case. I think the case for doing so is very strong.” (Tribe previously declared that he was certain “without any doubt, beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond any doubt” that Trump could be charged with the attempted murder of former Vice President Michael Pence). It does not matter to these critics that other lawyers and judges agree with Judge Cannon.

Justice Clarence Thomas recently expressed the same view in the Trump immunity decision in his concurrence. He did not view this as a settled question and wrote “if this unprecedented prosecution is to proceed, it must be conducted by someone duly authorized to do so by the American people. The lower courts should thus answer these essential questions concerning the special counsel’s appointment before proceeding.” Yet these experts believe that a judge without a direct controlling case on the question should be removed for reaching the same conclusion as a member of the Supreme Court and at least two former U.S. Attorneys General. Of course, these experts would be aghast at any suggestion that D.C. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan should be removed after being reversed by the Supreme Court in the recent immunity opinion. Such experts are not raising questions of bias over Chutkin’s rulings in favor of Smith or the similar pattern of Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan. Yet Cannon is viewed as not simply wrong, but partisan in ruling for Trump. How do republics collapse? When judges are pressured or removed for ruling against favored parties.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Lion
https://twitter.com/i/status/1813042360386781389

 

 

Croc

 

 

Antelope

 

 

Flirting

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle Bastille Day 2024

Jul 142024
 
 July 14, 2024  Posted by at 9:31 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  93 Responses »


Salvador Dali Meditative rose 1958

 

• Trump Hit By Bullet At Pennsylvania Rally (ZH)
• Trump Suggests Simultaneous Mental Test With Biden (RT)
• Take Away the Car Keys (Hamilton)
• Tulsi Gabbard – The Ultimate Insurance Policy for Trump (Luongo)
• Musk Enters 2024 Fight With ‘Sizable’ Gift To Trump Super PAC (ZH)
• Trump’s Facebook, Instagram Restrictions Rolled Back (RT)
• Democrats Plotting To Oust Biden From Race – Axios (RT)
• Major Donors Blackmailing US Democrats Over Biden – NYT (RT)
• Democratic Party Insiders Struggle to Force Biden Out (Miles)
• Viktor Orbán Deserves The Nobel Peace Prize (RM)
• Russia Initiates Call With Pentagon On Ukraine and NATO (ZH)
• The Yemen–Russia Riddle (Pepe Escobar)
• European Cities Prime Targets For Russian Missiles – Moscow (RT)
• 72% of Israelis Want Netanyahu To Resign – Poll (RT)
• Israeli Newspaper Says Country ‘Collapsing’ as 46,000 Businesses Shutter (Sp.)
• Africans Support Russia – EU’s Borrell (RT)
• ‘Borrell Views Africa As ‘Jungle Full Of Zombies’ (RT)
• ChatGPT Maker Secretly Developing New Type Of AI – Reuters (RT)

 

 

So glad the man’s alive. The shooter was well over 100 yards away. Trump surviving was pure luck. Or fate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alex doesn’t see an incident, or a lone wolf

 

 

Costas
https://twitter.com/i/status/1812169689793245427

 

 

Rogan Dore

 

 

Sidney Powell
https://twitter.com/i/status/1811899942048530690

 

 

Biden 1994

 

 

T.S. Eliot from The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock:

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

 

 

 

 

They’ve been calling for it. Maybe that stops now. Don’t recall anyone asking for Biden to be shot.

• Trump Hit By Bullet At Pennsylvania Rally (ZH)

• Shooter identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, NY Post
• Trump has responded, saying on Truth Social “I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.”
• Secret Service says one spectator was killed and two were critically injured.
• Former President Donald Trump was shot in the ear by a would-be assassin at a Butler, Pennsylvania rally on Saturday.
• Trump could be seen grabbing his ear and falling to the ground, before standing up and walking off stage.
• Approximately nine shots rang out.
• A member of the crowd, as well as the shooter, are dead following the assassination attempt.
• One Trump supporter says he alerted Secret Service before the shooting and was ignored.
• Trump’s team reportedly asked for ‘beefed up protection’ and was rebuffed over and over by Biden DHS.

According to The Federalist’s Sean Davis, “A source familiar with Trump’s security detail tells @FDRLST that the former and future president’s detail has been asking for beefed up protection and resources for weeks, but has been rebuffed time and again by Biden’s DHS. DHS, which oversees Secret Service protective detail “wasn’t responsive to those requests” for more resources, the source said.”

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“..For the first time we’ll be a team, and do it for the good of the Country..

• Trump Suggests Simultaneous Mental Test With Biden (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has urged incumbent leader Joe Biden to immediately take a cognitive test to prove his fitness for office. Trump expressed his readiness to take the test together with Biden, stating the two would work for the first time as a “team.” Trump produced the call on Friday in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. “Joe should immediately take a Cognitive Test, and I will go with him, and take one also. For the first time we’ll be a team, and do it for the good of the Country,” Trump wrote. Such tests should also be made mandatory for all presidential hopefuls in the future, he argued. “From now on, all Presidential candidates should be mandated to take a Cognitive Test and Aptitude Test, regardless of their age!!!” he added.

Concerns over Biden’s cognitive and physical capacities skyrocketed in the aftermath of the disastrous presidential debate held late last month. The subpar performance of the president has prompted growing dissent within the Democratic Party, with an increasing number of high-profile members and major donors urging him to quit the reelection race. Facing mounting criticism, Biden has repeatedly dismissed any possibility of dropping his campaign, insisting he is the only person capable of defeating Trump in November. He has also angrily reacted to speculation about his health, stating he did not need any cognitive tests, given his job.

“I have a cognitive test every single day. Every day, I have that test. Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world. Not – and that’s not hi – sounds like hyperbole, but we are the essential nation of the world,” Biden told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in an explosive interview last week. The effort to convince the nation he was still fit for office, however, appears to have yielded little and may have had the opposite result. According to a fresh survey by CBS News/YouGov in the wake of the debate, 72% of registered voters do not believe that Biden has the “mental and cognitive health necessary to serve as president.”

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Not sure what he tries to prove, but I get the main point.

• Take Away the Car Keys (Hamilton)

One of the saddest moments of my life was the day I felt compelled to tell my father that he should give up his car and stop driving. He resisted, but only briefly. It was an example of the kind of man my father was. And it is an example for us today when we consider the peril our republic faces with President Biden clinging to his reelection bid. We all know the liberating feeling we had when we got our first driver’s license. The opposite feeling comes when it is time to turn it in. In my dad’s case, the problem was diminished eyesight. A resilient man, he had learned to live with many handicaps, including loss of a leg and use of an arm. He told me of a trick he successfully used at traffic intersections to compensate for his difficulty discerning red lights from green: He waited for other cars to move. Okay, I said, how will you feel if you end up hurting someone? That was all it took. He sold his car.

Such a moment has come now to Joseph Biden. The chances of him winning in November are virtually non-existent. Yet, he continues to make statements that defy reason in order to keep the keys to the White House. The president’s performance in his recent debate with Donald Trump was a shock to anyone with eyes and ears. His handlers have limited his unscripted interactions with journalists for precisely this reason. Yet he and his staff insist he is as intellectually vigorous as ever and trot out ludicrous excuses for why he stumbled. One of the excuses, jetlag from recent trips abroad, showed the opposite of what was intended – that is, that it takes the president 11 days to recover from travel.They argue that he is the best person to beat Donald Trump in November. After all, they say, he is the only one who has bested Trump at the ballot box. On close inspection, however, the statement is nearly meaningless. Trump has only been in two election races, and the one he won was fluky, to say the least.

His opponent, Hillary Clinton, ran a poor campaign – and still won the popular vote. Several Democrats have a better chance than Biden of beating Trump this time round. It is sad to hear Biden claim he is intellectually up to the job at the same time he says the polls are not all that bad. As the RealClearPolitics Poll Average shows, Trump is decidedly ahead of Biden. Moreover, Biden probably needs around 52% of the popular vote to win, given how the Electoral College functions. It might be comforting to think that there is still time to turn things around. But anyone can see that Biden is losing voters, not gaining them. The best that can be said is that the battle lines have been fixed in Trump’s favor. Biden has been lagging for months and that shows no signs of changing.

It is understandable that the president seeks supportive advice from staff as well as his wife, Jill, and his son, Hunter Biden. We all want reassurance. But we also need to seek out those who will give us a point of view that we do not want to hear. Contrary to what Biden is claiming, the elites are not out to get him. Taking on the mantle of victimhood only makes Biden seem unhinged – and more like Trump. Polls show that nearly three-quarters of Americans think Biden is not fit to serve, mainly as a result of the impacts of aging. The issue is not Biden’s age, per se. Donald Trump, 78, is not much younger than the president. The issue is that in recent years Biden’s acuity and physical presence have shown noticeable decline. Whatever one wants to say about Trump, he is vigorous.

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“Obama thought “…I sure don’t want to get shot, who could I pick for VP that would make even an assassin think twice? Oh, I know, Joe Biden. No one wants that dumbass in charge!”

• Tulsi Gabbard – The Ultimate Insurance Policy for Trump (Luongo)

Having watched/listened to hundreds of hours of Tulsi Gabbard over the years, I’ve noticed a few things. First, she’s not a natural public speaker, nor is she really comfortable in front of the camera. So, she has worked very hard on crafting a public persona which is not easy for her to slip into but which is also authentically her. Because she is uncomfortable, that face begins to slip after a while…. about an hour. I always get the sense that there is a ‘macho military’ version of Gabbard lurking just below the surface, that swears like a mafia don and prays like a priest. And every once in a while it leaks out. But it will never do so in a six-minute segment on Fox News. You’ve got to get past that fatigue barrier. The reason I bring all of this up is because Gabbard was recently on the Keep Hammering Collective podcast with Cameron Hanes for nearly two hours.

She did that podcast after spending the day with him doing his triathalon he calls Lift, Run, Shoot which I suggest you watch the video of, especially if your name is Donald Trump. Why? You know why. I’ve already made my case for why I thought Gabbard is the ‘box-ticking’ favorite to be Trump’s running mate this fall. I think, however, in retrospect, that was a little unfair to Tulsi Gabbard. I, like the Davosians who tried to groom her into their perfect barista of globalism, made the mistake of not really getting past the character she plays, the boxes she ticks. There’s a fiery person underneath that calm face she wears in front of the camera. Her book, which I’ve read, makes this point ad infinitum. And the rounds she’s making supporting the book are showing us a Tulsi Gabbard hinted at, but she hasn’t really shown us before.

What’s, uh, the VP deal? Dexter White’s recent post reminded us about why Joe Biden was selected to be Barack Obama’s VP, “the life insurance policy for the first black president…” Obama thought “…I sure don’t want to get shot, who could I pick for VP that would make even an assassin think twice? Oh, I know, Joe Biden. No one wants that dumbass in charge!” Over the years, we’ve gotten so caught up in the political game that is choosing a Vice-President we forgot what the actual job description is… to be the person to step into the role should the President not be there, physically, mentally, or otherwise. I say this to remind the ghost of Al Haig that we still don’t want him in charge. It is precisely because Kamala Harris was picked to be Biden’s veep for every other reason than the job description that the Democrats and Davos are in the bind they are in as I write this.

It was never about Harris’ competence, capability, or commitment that landed her in the Naval Observatory. It was the boxes she ticked, the perception of her moral fluidity, and her solidification of the black female vote at a time when black men were drifting into Der Trumpenfuhrer’s orbit that made her the center of their Venn Diagram. Notice how she was never a person to them… just a series of attributes. For Trump, who has held back his choice for vice-president for months, the big question has been, if he wins the election will the blob/Deep State/Davos/etc. just kill him off before the inauguration? It’s a real conundrum.

So, I say, turn about is fair play. Biden was Obama’s insurance policy, make Gabbard Trump’s. Because, if there is one person of all the people on the short list to be Trump’s VP that Davos et.al. do not want to see on the ticket it is Tulsi Gabbard. Because she really is that person who walked away from power, has a strong moral center, and is authentically motivated by service. And that motivation, coupled with their previous shots against her, like they’ve done with Trump, should scare them maybe more than he does.

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“..Liz Peek said Musk and his companies were under investigation by the Department of Justice, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.”

• Musk Enters 2024 Fight With ‘Sizable’ Gift To Trump Super PAC (ZH)

There’s been another major plot twist in the 2024 election saga, as Elon Musk has made a “sizable donation” to a super PAC working to return Donald Trump to the White House. Completing something of a Black Friday for Democrats, the story broke just hours after the New York Times reported that major donors had frozen $90 million pledged donations commitments to Biden’s top super PAC, having concluded that Biden is a dead man walking — politically if not otherwise. The news comes four months after Musk said he was staying on the sidelines: The world’s richest man clearly had a change of heart: Citing anonymous sources “close to the matter,” Bloomberg on Friday evening broke the potentially game-changing news that Musk had given money to America PAC, which is largely focused on “ground-game” initiatives, such as voter-canvassing and get-out-the-vote efforts. Among the constellation of Trump-backing groups, America PAC is spending the most money of any of them on direct voter outreach.

The amount of Musk’s donation wasn’t disclosed, but Bloomberg said sources “characterized the figure as a sizable amount.” Per Federal Election Commission rules, the PAC will provide its updated list of donors on Monday. While super PACs aren’t allowed to contribute directly to candidates or parties, or “coordinate” their efforts, they can collect unlimited contributions. With a Forbes-estimated net worth of $250 billion, Musk has obvious potential to fundamentally alter a fundraising war in which Democrats were already reeling from the mushrooming effects of President Biden’s disastrous performance in his June 27 debate with Trump, his poor interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and gaffe-filled NATO summit press events on Thursday. The donation seemingly completes a political metamorphosis: Musk has said he voted for Barack Obama, gave money to and voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

However, Musk has displayed growing discontent with Democrats’ approach to a variety of issues. One of them is border control: Earlier this year, Musk told an audience that “unvetted immigration at large scale is a recipe for disaster.” He’s also called out Democrats’ opposition to photo-ID requirements for voting, saying the “far left” wants to make it “impossible to prove voter fraud.” Over the weekend, he expressed dismay at Biden’s commitment to veto a bill that would require proof of citizenship to vote. In 2022, Musk tweeted that he voted for a Republican for the first time, backing Texas Republican Mayra Flores in a special US House election. Last month, Musk told Tesla shareholders that he’s “had some conversations with [Trump], and he does call me, out of the blue, for no reason… I don’t know why, but he does.”

In what may be a more potent motivator than policy issues, Musk repeatedly finds himself in the crosshairs of Democrats’ weaponized government, with a federal target on his back since buying Twitter in 2022 with a goal of ridding it of its leftist, government-serving censorship regime. Within two weeks of Musk closing on the purchase, Biden told reporters that “Elon Musk’s cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at. Whether he is doing anything inappropriate, I’m not suggesting that. I’m suggesting they’re worth being looked at.” With an ominously whimsical tone, he concluded, “there’s a lot of ways…” Summarizing the breadth of the attacks at The Hill in December, Liz Peek said Musk and his companies were under investigation by the Department of Justice, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Musk has expressed concern over Trump’s own victimization via politically-motivated lawfare, as he did in May when the former president was convicted in New York on mindbendingly-contrived charges relating to his 2016 funding of hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, who’d claimed the two had a one-night intimate encounter in 2006. The Trump campaign’s financial fortunes changed dramatically after that conviction, as irate sympathizers expressed their outrage with dollars, vaulting him into the lead. Musk’s entry into the game exacerbates Democrats’ dire situation, and is certain to accelerate efforts to jettison Biden from the top of the ticket…while exponentially increasing the anguish of leftists who thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse.

Biden Elon The dumbest brain in the US talks about the smartest one.

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“Restoring his access is like handing your car keys to someone you know will drive your car into a crowd and off a cliff..”

• Trump’s Facebook, Instagram Restrictions Rolled Back (RT)

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced on Friday it would lift its restrictions on content posted by former US President Donald Trump. While the former US president’s accounts were unblocked 17 months ago, Meta had maintained limits on his ability to post. “Former President Trump, as the nominee of the Republican Party, will no longer be subject to the heightened suspension penalties”, the statement read. Meta claimed the penalties were imposed in response to “extreme and extraordinary circumstances.” Trump was booted from the platforms following the riot at the US Capitol in January 2021. Facebook’s parent company announced in January 2023 that it would reinstate Trump’s accounts but that he faced “heightened penalties for repeat offenses” as a way to “deter” a repeat of previous behavior.

“American people should be able to hear from the nominees for President on the same basis,” Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, wrote in a blog post on Friday. Joe Biden’s reelection campaign has condemned Meta’s move. “Restoring his access is like handing your car keys to someone you know will drive your car into a crowd and off a cliff,” Biden campaign spokesperson Charles Lutvak told The Hill. “Without question, it is a direct attack on our safety and our democracy,” Lutvak slammed the decision, claiming it will allow Trump to reach Americans with “fundamentally undemocratic, un-American misinformation.”

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“..The group primarily includes veterans of the Obama and Clinton administrations..”

• Democrats Plotting To Oust Biden From Race – Axios (RT)

A growing number of “very-connected” Democrats are scheming to get US President Joe Biden to withdraw from the election race, Axios reported on Friday, citing “members” of this committee. The group primarily includes veterans of the Obama and Clinton administrations, who are seeking to field a candidate they believe has a better chance of winning the November election. The two former presidents are apparently supporting the group by having kept mostly silent since they publicly offered support for Biden following his disastrous debate against Donald Trump last month. “Silence is a very loud form of speech. No one is saying ‘come hell or high water,’” said James Carville, a veteran political assistant and one of the key figures behind Bill Clinton’s campaign. The members of the clandestine group insist it has no actual leadership or benefactor behind it, describing it instead as a ‘network’ of like-minded individuals.

“No one is more than one person away from everyone else,” an unnamed member of the group described as a “central player” told Axios. So far, the public campaign to pressure Biden into dropping out, launched by prominent elected Democrats and major party donors, has flopped and apparently produced an opposite effect, making the incumbent president adamant about his desire to win reelection. “The Clinton diaspora is freaking the hell out. But all these people going on the record aren’t helping. All it seems to have done is cause the Bidens to dig in deeper,” an anonymous former official from the Clinton White House said.

Still, it remains unclear whether the covert approach to the Biden problem will work either, given that the president has an overwhelming majority of Democratic delegates backing him for the nomination in August, a “veteran operative” member of the group admitted. They added that a decision to withdraw his candidacy can be taken only by Biden himself. “You need a psychiatrist more than a spin doctor,” he told Axios. The push to oust Biden from the race was prompted by his subpar performance during the first presidential debate in late June. The US president and his campaign have provided various excuses for the debacle, including that he had a cold, dismissing concerns over the state of his health. Over the past two weeks, Biden has repeatedly said he will not drop out of the race, insisting that he is the only person fit to beat Trump in the upcoming election.

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Blackmailing? Is that the word you’re looking for?

• Major Donors Blackmailing US Democrats Over Biden – NYT (RT)

An estimated $90 million in donations to a group key to US President Joe Biden’s campaign has been put on hold until the Democrats replace him, the New York Times reported on Friday. The Times cited two unnamed sources “briefed on the conversations” between major donors and Future Forward, a political action committee (PAC) that was expected to raise $700 million for Biden’s re-election. “Multiple eight-figure commitments” are currently frozen and the PAC is “in a defensive crouch” until it is clarified whom the Democrats will actually run in November, according to the Times. The Biden campaign tapped Future Forward as its main super PAC in the 2024 race, and the group has already announced it would spend $250 million on TV and digital advertising after the Democratic National Convention next month.

Following Biden’s catastrophic performance at the June 27 debate with Republican challenger and former president Donald Trump, however, the PAC tested potential alternatives. The poll was later leaked to the media and showed Biden with “a worse overall favorability rating than all the alternatives,” which included Vice President Kamala Harris, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. The current president has doubled down on staying in the White House. “I believe I’m the best qualified to govern. And I think I’m the best qualified to win,” Biden told reporters at a press conference on Thursday. While the White House and the campaign have held up the press event as proof that Biden was doing just fine, Democrats in Washington continued to lament the present situation.

“Candidates and campaigns are supposed to make you feel something – hope, optimism, courage – but instead most of us felt nothing after that presser. And feeling nothing is how you lose elections,” a veteran Democratic operative told Politico. A Democrat member of the US House of Representatives told the same outlet that a group of “super friends” is getting together, with the intent to make their case to the White House that Biden has to step aside because “we’re going to get our asses kicked if he doesn’t.” On Thursday, several Biden campaign aides told NBC that Biden will “never recover” and that they saw no path to victory, describing his chances in November as “zero.” Multiple Democrats have raised concerns that down-ballot races might be put at risk, costing the party seats in Congress.

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The “Unofficial Committee to Unelect the President”.

• Democratic Party Insiders Struggle to Force Biden Out (Miles)

As concern mounts over the president’s political viability Biden is reportedly intent on proving his critics wrong. A loose alliance of donors, campaign advisors and other party leaders are working to convince Joe Biden to abandon his campaign for reelection without bruising the US president’s ego, according to reports in US media. But the “unofficial Committee to Unelect the President” is struggling to convince the famously stubborn head of state, according to insiders familiar with the matter, with Biden only becoming more determined as Democratic Party figures intensify their efforts. “It’s hard to deny that in the two weeks since the debate, it’s the arrogant and small Joe Biden we’ve seen most – hanging on, bragging, defensive, angry, weak,” wrote former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett on X. “Who else but him? he wonders aloud. Only God could change his mind, he tells us.”

Lovett, who has disparaged the octogenarian president’s refusal to bow out on his Pod Save America podcast, has been among Biden’s most prominent liberal critics in recent days. But he is joined by several others. The editorial boards of The New York Times and the Washington Post have been unsparing in their admonishment since the president’s performance during a debate against former President Donald Trump last month sparked public concern over his mental acuity. Many media personalities have joined the chorus. “I think that Biden debated as well as Abraham Lincoln,” said late-night television host Stephen Colbert Monday. “If you dug him up right now.” Former Clinton and Obama operatives have also chimed in. “President Biden is a historic figure, and a lot of that is gonna be tainted if he persists and loses this race,” said Obama chief strategist David Axelrod. Clinton strategist James Carville said keeping Biden on as the Democratic Party’s nominee would be an “idiotic choice” that would lead to “disaster.”

“Silence is a very loud form of speech,” the political advisor added, noting that party leaders who voiced continued support for Biden immediately after last month’s debate have grown quiet in recent days. Beyond the relative few Democratic Party figures who have publicly called for Biden to drop out are dozens more who have privately voiced concerns and are working behind the scenes to convince the president, according to insiders.But Biden remains convinced he is the best candidate to defeat Trump, pointing to his victory in 2020 and the Democrats’ better-than-expected performance in the 2022 midterm elections. The president is reportedly motivated by an intense desire to prove his detractors wrong, something that has driven him since his early days in politics. “You need a psychiatrist more than a spin doctor,” one longtime campaign operative told the online outlet Axios.

Biden is one of the longest-tenured figures in national US politics, first being elected to the Senate in 1972. He is considered a conservative politician, historically taking right-wing positions on issues from segregation to drug policy and criminal justice. His previous attempts to seek the presidency flamed out after a plagiarism scandal and comments in 2007 that many people deemed racially offensive. “You got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” Biden said of then-candidate Barack Obama. He apologized for the remark and Obama later chose him as his running mate the following year, elevating him to the vice presidency when the ticket won the 2008 election.

Democratic Party leaders intervened heavily in 2020’s primary to ensure Biden won the presidential nomination after Senator Bernie Sanders’ insurgent candidacy seemed inevitable. Now those same insiders appear powerless to remove him from the pedestal they placed him on. One strategist claimed a “donor strike” is underway, with powerful financial backers of the party moving funds to congressional races and away from Biden’s presidential campaign. George Clooney, Netflix founder Reed Hastings and businessman Ari Emanuel are reportedly among the wealthy figures seeking a candidate to replace Biden. With last month’s House primary between George Latimer and Jamaal Bowman shaping up to be the most expensive in history, money is more important than ever in competitive US politics. If contributions to his campaign effort dry up, insiders say Biden’s hand could finally be forced, with billionaire donors casting the most powerful vote in America’s pay-to-play system.

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Second.

• Viktor Orbán Deserves The Nobel Peace Prize (RM)

Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary, stands out for his audacity and persistence in the realm of contemporary politics. His tireless efforts in diplomacy and steadfast commitment to national and global stability merit serious consideration for the Nobel Peace Prize. His relentless pursuit of peace, even amidst widespread criticism, underscores the kind of leadership the world desperately needs today. The Nobel Peace Prize, despite its controversies, remains one of the highest accolades for contributions to global peace and reconciliation. Historical recipients, from the European Union in 2012 for turning Europe from a continent of war to a continent of peace, to Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama for their diplomatic endeavors, have set a precedent for recognizing transformative efforts in international relations. While some decisions have sparked debate, the prize continues to honor those who genuinely strive for global harmony.

For over two decades Viktor Orban has been a central figure in Hungarian politics. His tenure has seen Hungary navigate through the 2008 financial crisis and emerge with strengthened national sovereignty and economic stability. Orban’s policies have focused on reducing national debt, increasing employment, and supporting families, thereby fostering a social cohesion that is essential for lasting peace. Economic stability, after all, is a cornerstone of societal tranquility. Recently, Orban’s diplomatic missions have further highlighted his unwavering commitment to peace. As the head of the rotating EU presidency, he has been at the forefront of international diplomacy, particularly concerning the Ukraine conflict. His proactive visits to key leaders—including Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev, Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Xi Jinping in Beijing, and next, Donald Trump in Florida—demonstrate his dedication to engaging with global leaders and promoting dialogue. These are not mere photo opportunities but substantive efforts to foster real change.

Orbán’s vigorous diplomatic activities have undoubtedly stirred the waters in Brussels. Critics argue that Orban’s methods sometimes breach diplomatic protocols, but his engagement with pivotal figures in the Ukraine conflict illustrates the kind of bravery and initiative that many modern politicians lack. Orban’s actions transcend superficial diplomacy; he is actively striving to move continents towards real solutions during a time of great division. Orban’s peace efforts have drawn significant criticism, especially from European and German political leaders. However, his bold and relentless pursuit of peace positions him as a modern-day Robin Hood, fighting for stability and harmony in Europe. While many leaders prefer the comfort of their offices, Orban is on the global stage, engaging with world leaders and taking decisive steps to bring about peace.

Many politicians focus on short-term gains and superficial gestures, but Orban stands out as a leader willing to take bold actions for the greater good. His approach to diplomacy—meeting with adversaries, challenging the status quo, and prioritizing long-term stability over fleeting popularity—lays the groundwork for meaningful peace talks and steps toward the de-escalation of the Ukraine conflict. These substantial contributions to peace warrant recognition. Viktor Orban embodies the spirit of a modern-day Robin Hood, daring to undertake actions that many politicians shy away from. For his relentless pursuit of peace and stability, Orban deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

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“Ukraine has been attacked by- by Russia. So the most important thing we should do is to step up our support to Ukraine to ensure that Ukraine prevails,..

• Russia Initiates Call With Pentagon On Ukraine and NATO (ZH)

In a rare positive development, the heads of the US and Russian militaries have held a rare phone call in an effort to deescalate tensions. But Moscow is livid at certain recent developments and pledges from the West. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday spoke by phone Russian Minister of Defense Andrey Belousov for the second time in less than a month. The call was initiated by Moscow just after the close of the NATO summit hosted by Biden in Washington this week. A Pentagon readout said Austin “emphasized the importance of maintaining lines of communication amid Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine,” deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told a briefing. The two sides had been quiet since a call in March 2023, but communications have been picking up, after a June 25th call which reestablished communications.

But Russia likely registered its anger at the NATO summit committing to an “irreversible path” for Ukraine’s NATO membership. NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg still admitted in will be a very long path, as much as ten years or more. He said in a CBS News interview days ago: “Well, no one has said exactly 10 years but- but- but it’s obvious that it is a very serious issue to bring in Ukraine. Because Ukraine is now a country at war.” “Ukraine has been attacked by- by Russia. So the most important thing we should do is to step up our support to Ukraine to ensure that Ukraine prevails,” he continued. “That’s a precondition for any future membership for Ukraine.” According to The Hill, another recent issue which has roiled Russia and was likely conveyed by Belousov to Austin, is seen in the following:

“What’s more, NATO has backed Ukraine’s push for more latitude in its use of Western-supplied weapons to strike inside Russia, with the United Kingdom announcing it would allow Kyiv to hit targets over Russian borders with British-provided long-range missiles.” There’s also the US decision to deploy long-range missiles to Europe in violation of the previously in place INF treaty, which the US pulled out of in 2019. The missiles are expected to be deployed to Germany soon. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has warned this could make Germany or other places in Europe a target: “There has always been a paradoxical situation: the United States has deployed a variety of missiles of different ranges in Europe, which are traditionally aimed at our country,” he said, and warned: “Accordingly, our country designated European locations as targets for our missiles.”

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“..support the Palestinian people and respond to the American and British airstrikes on Yemen.”

• The Yemen–Russia Riddle (Pepe Escobar)

Yemen’s stellar strategic maneuvering in defense of Palestine from its dramatically ascendant role in West Asia’s Axis of Resistance is acquiring the contours of an epic odyssey – eagerly scrutinized by the Global Majority. As if the unprecedented humiliation of the US Navy in the Bab al-Mandab and the Red Sea was not enough, Ansarallah targeted an Israeli ship with a Hatem-2 hypersonic missile, a remarkable advancement in indigenous technological development. These prodigious strategic-military advances displayed by Ansarallah at the same time revived the always simmering, unfinished war and blockade launched against Yemen in 2015 by Saudi Arabia and the UAE with the usual US and UK backing.

Riyadh abhors the Yemeni resistance like the plague. Instead of Sanaa, Yemen’s recognized capital city, it supports an anti-Ansarallah’ government’ sitting in Aden, sort of recognized by the ‘rules-based international order.’ In truth, though, that government actually sits in a luxury Riyadh hotel. Ansarallah has tried hard to negotiate a prisoner exchange involving captured Saudi pilots traded for jailed Hamas members in Saudi Arabia. Riyadh has not only refused but threatened that bank transfers to and from Yemen would be blocked, and Sanaa’s international airport and sea ports would be shut down. Ansarallah’s response was stark: if Yemeni banking is blocked, the Saudi Arabian banking system would be destroyed. If Sanaa airport is targeted, the same would happen to Saudi airports.

So, the war that never ended is suddenly and ominously back on track. Ansarallah would have no problem targeting Saudi Arabia’s oil production as retaliation to a full blockade – considering its proven capability with brand-new missiles and naval drones. The consequences for global oil markets would be catastrophic. Yemen represents the classic case of a fierce resistance actor in the context of the emerging multipolar, multi-nodal world. So that begs the question of where multipolar/multi-nodal champion Russia stands when it comes to Yemen’s fight. Which brings us to the fascinating case of two Yemeni delegations that recently visited Moscow. One of them, led by a senior Ansarallah official, met in Moscow with the Russian President’s Special Envoy to the Middle East (West Asia) and Africa, Mikhail Bogdanov.

They discussed not only the ongoing Gaza genocide but also what Ansarallah describes as “the American–British aggression on Yemen,” a reference to ongoing western naval operations in the Red Sea that have – unsuccessfully – sought for months to thwart Yemeni ops against Israel-bound and Israel-associated shipping vessels. A retaliatory siege, if you will. The Yemenis reassured the Russians that their maritime operations “do not pose a threat to international navigation or target anyone, but rather support the Palestinian people and respond to the American and British airstrikes on Yemen.” Ansarallah praised Russia’s understanding and expressed gratitude for:

Russia’s position against the American–British aggression on Yemen and their support for the humanitarian and political process in our country. We also reviewed the outcomes of the de-escalation efforts between Yemen and the aggressor countries and highlighted the necessity of reaching a comprehensive solution that ensures Yemen’s unity and sovereignty.

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“..While Washington continues to “profit” from the escalation, the EU nations are only serving as targets in the standoff..”

• European Cities Prime Targets For Russian Missiles – Moscow (RT)

Moscow has enough capabilities to counter such hostile moves by Washington as its just-announced deployment of new missiles to Europe, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. European nations, however, are only becoming victims of the standoff between the US and Russia. The spokesman made the remarks to Russian Journalist Pavel Zarubin, who published the excerpts of the interview on his social media on Saturday. “There has always been a paradoxical situation: the US deployed different types of missiles, of different ranges, but traditionally aimed at our country. Our country, accordingly, identified European locations as targets for our missiles,” Peskov stated. While Washington continues to “profit” from the escalation, the EU nations are only serving as targets in the standoff, Peskov explained.

“Our country is in the crosshairs of American missiles located in Europe. We’ve been through all this before. All this has already happened. We have enough potential to deter these missiles. But the potential victims are the capitals of these states,” he said. On Wednesday, Washington announced plans to start deploying long-range weapons in Germany in 2026, including SM-6 and Tomahawk systems, “as part of planning for enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future.” Moscow has already vowed to “calmly” prepare a military response to the hostile move, with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov describing the plans as “one of the elements of intimidation that, today, is almost the main component of the NATO and US” approach towards Russia.

In late June, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Moscow could resume the production and global deployment of ground-based intermediate- and shorter-range missiles in response to the hostile actions of the US. “We now know that the US is not only producing these missile systems but has also brought them to Europe, Denmark, to use in exercises. Not long ago, it was reported that they were in the Philippines. It is unclear whether they have taken these missiles out of the Philippines or not,” Putin said at the time. The munitions of this type were restricted by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which collapsed in 2019. However, Moscow has abstained from producing and deploying them, as long as Washington also refrained from doing so.

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Democracy.

• 72% of Israelis Want Netanyahu To Resign – Poll (RT)

Nearly three quarters of Israelis want Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resign over his government’s failures during the October 7 Hamas attack, according to a poll published by Channel 12 on Friday. Of the 72% of respondents who said that the prime minister should step down, 44% believe he should leave office immediately, while 28% suggested he should resign after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conclude their military operation in Gaza. Israeli citizens have repeatedly organized protest rallies against Netanyahu since the war in Gaza erupted, with many calling for a ceasefire and urging the government to bring back the remaining hostages held by Hamas. On October 7 last year, Hamas and allied Palestinian militants carried out a surprise raid on Israeli military bases, villages and farming communities.

In many places, the IDF were seemingly caught off-guard and quickly overwhelmed, as civilians were forced to either defend themselves or flee. The Israeli media described the attack as a “devastating intelligence failure,” with Channel 12 reporting that the army failed to properly maintain a signal system at the border with Gaza. The York Times reported in November that Israeli intelligence and military officials obtained Hamas’s plan for the October 7 incursion more than a year before it occurred, but believed it was too unrealistic to pull off. On Thursday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant urged the government to form a state commission that would investigate the failures in response to the October 7 raid. Netanyahu, however, has argued that such a probe can only be launched after the war ends.

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“Israel’s GDP fell by nearly 20% from October to December 2023..”

• Israeli Newspaper Says Country ‘Collapsing’ as 46,000 Businesses Shutter (Sp.)

Israel’s GDP fell by nearly 20% from October to December 2023, though it rebounded with a 14% gain the next quarter, that was less than economists expected. Roughly 46,000 Israeli businesses have shut down since October 7, according to the Hebrew-language newspaper Maariv. The Israeli economy has been declining rapidly since it launched its campaign in Gaza,particularly after the Yemen Ansar Allah movement (aka Houthi) and the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon have been taking action in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza. The Houthis have blockaded the Red Sea from ships it says are connected with Israel or the United States. Because of their actions, the southern port of Eilat –the country’s busiest port before the war– has been virtually shut down since October 2023. Exacerbating the situation further, foreign tourism has also collapsed during the war, and as of December, nearly half a million Israelis have left the country and that was before tensions inflamed significantly between Iran and Israel.

Meanwhile, the Ansar Allah movement has been attacking Israel’s north, forcing tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate the area, virtually wiping out businesses in the area. However, businesses around all of Israel are struggling, the paper said, with construction and ancillary industries being hurt the most but it noted that nearly every industry is being affected. Yoel Amir the CEO of Coface Bdi, a services and credit risk management firm, told the paper that they estimate 60,000 Israeli businesses could shut down by the end of the year. “This is a very high number that encompasses many sectors. About 77 percent of the businesses that have been closed since the beginning of the war, which make up about 35,000 businesses, are small businesses with up to five employees, and are the most vulnerable in the economy,” Amir said.

In December, South Africa brought a case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, accusing it of genocide. Since then, a dozen countries have joined it and many more have publicly welcomed the case. More than 38,300 Palestinians have been confirmed killed and another nearly 88,300 have been seriously injured in Gaza since Israel began its campaign, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. That number is largely assumed to be a massive undercount because of a lack of health services and thousands who remain missing are presumed to be buried under the rubble. A recent study by the British medical journal The Lancet estimates that more than 186,000 Palestinians have likely died as either a direct or indirect result of the Israeli campaign.

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“..successfully delivered 200,000 tons of wheat to six low-income African nations, free of charge, making it the biggest humanitarian initiative ever conducted by Russia.”

• Africans Support Russia – EU’s Borrell (RT)

The EU’s chief diplomat has expressed surprise at the high level of backing for Russian President Vladimir Putin among people in Africa. “In Africa, people support Putin. They say Putin saved Donbass,” Josep Borrell said on Thursday, speaking at the NATO Public Forum. Borrell emphasized the need for a new approach to defense, focusing on information warfare rather than traditional military tactics. “We need a different army. We need people watching the network and people explaining what is going on, reprogramming the listeners, giving them correct information, in order to prevent an intervention in electoral processes,” the EU foreign policy chief stated.

“Don’t dismiss this kind of war. It’s not just sending bombs and tanks, it’s just sending news and occupying the cyberspace. And on that the European Union has a certain important contribution to do,” he claimed. In May, in an exclusive interview with RT, Chadian envoy Mahamoud Adam Bechir stated that Putin’s reelection was beneficial not only for the Russian people, but for the entire world, including Africa. Bechir said Putin had strengthened relations with Africa, adding that Russia is led by a “great president.” Meanwhile, during a meeting with the Russian President on February 20, Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev reported that Moscow had successfully delivered 200,000 tons of wheat to six low-income African nations, free of charge, making it the biggest humanitarian initiative ever conducted by Russia.

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“..there’s no way a responsible African will abandon Russia, China or the BRICS alliance in favor of NATO or Western interests..”

• ‘Borrell Views Africa As ‘Jungle Full Of Zombies’ (RT)

Western powers lack moral authority when they try to impose their interests on African nations, former Nigerian presidential contender Adamu Garba II has told RT. The politician was reacting to controversial ideas expressed by EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell earlier this week. While speaking about European influence internationally, he voiced surprise at the level of pro-Russia sentiment among African people, and argued that information warfare tools should be developed to counter “disinformation.” “Don’t dismiss this kind of war. It’s not just sending bombs and tanks, it’s just sending news and occupying the cyberspace,” Borrell warned. “We need people watching the network and people explaining what is going on, reprogramming the listeners, giving them correct information.” Adamu Garba II said that judging by Borrel’s statements, he appears to view Western Europe as a guardian for other parts of the world.

“Perhaps he sees Africa as a jungle full of zombies that can be programmed to do their interests,” the politician joked, in an apparent reference to another controversial idea from Borrel. In 2022, the diplomat declared that Europeans live in a “garden,” while most of the outside world is a “jungle.” He later apologized for his words, which drew a wave of condemnation. On relations with Moscow, Adamu Garba II said: “there’s no way a responsible African will abandon Russia, China or the BRICS alliance in favor of NATO or Western interests, who do everything possible to take our resources from us.” The BRICS group of non-Western economies, founded in 2006 by Brazil, Russia, India, and China, with South Africa joining in 2011, has become an attractive alliance for African nations, with some expressing their will to join. Speaking on the sidelines of the BRICS Parliamentary Forum in St. Petersburg this week, Ethiopian parliament speaker Agegnehu Teshager told RT that “most of the African countries have an appetite to be a member of BRICS.”

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AI for profit is dangerous.

• ChatGPT Maker Secretly Developing New Type Of AI – Reuters (RT)

OpenAI, the creator of virtual assistant ChatGPT, is working on a novel approach to its artificial intelligence technology, Reuters has reported. As part of the project, code-named ‘Strawberry,’ the Microsoft-backed firm is trying to drastically improve the reasoning capabilities of its models, the agency said in an article on Friday. The way Strawberry works is “a tightly kept secret” even within OpenAI itself, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. The source said the project involves a “specialized way” of processing an AI model after it has been pre-trained on extensive datasets. Its aim is to enable artificial intelligence to not just generate answers to queries, but to plan ahead sufficiently to conduct so-called “deep research,” by navigating the internet autonomously and reliably, the source explained. Reuters said it had reviewed an internal OpenAI document, detailing a plan for how the US firm could deploy Strawberry to perform research.

However, the agency said it was not able not establish when the technology will become available to the public. The source described the project as a “work in progress.” When addressed on the issue, an OpenAI spokesperson told Reuters: “We want our AI models to see and understand the world more like we [humans] do. Continuous research into new AI capabilities is a common practice in the industry, with a shared belief that these systems will improve in reasoning over time.” The spokesperson did not address Strawberry directly in his response. Current AI large language models are capable of summarizing vast amounts of text and putting together coherent prose quicker than people do, but usually struggle with common sense solutions that are intuitive to humans. When this happens, the models often “hallucinate” by trying to represent false or misleading information as facts.

Researchers who talked to Reuters said that reasoning, which has so far eluded AI models, is key to artificial intelligence achieving human or super-human level. Last week, one of the world’s leading experts in artificial intelligence and a pioneer in deep learning, Yoshua Bengio, again warned of the “many risks,” including possible “extinction of humanity,” posed by private corporations racing to achieve AI of human-level and beyond. ”Entities that are smarter than humans and that have their own goals: are we sure they will act towards our well-being?” the Montreal University professor and scientific director of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA) said in an article on his website. Bengio urged the scientific community and society as a whole to make “a massive collective effort” to figure out ways to keep advanced AI in check.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Viv

 

 

Kate
https://twitter.com/i/status/1812148191455756313

 

 

Cora

 

 

Meonk

 

 

Mission
https://twitter.com/i/status/1812050003231199446

 

 

Mother’s love
https://twitter.com/i/status/1812075811857396034

 

 

Adopt don’t shop
https://twitter.com/i/status/1812154000734556277

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle July 3 2024

Jul 032024
 
 July 3, 2024  Posted by at 8:49 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


René Magritte The son of man 1946

 

• Trump Sentencing Delayed Two Months, ‘If Such Is Still Necessary’ (ZH)
• SCOTUS Ruled For The Office of the President, Not Trump (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Age of Rage: Critics Unleash Threats and Abuse on the Supreme Court (Turley)
• No, The Supreme Court Did Not Remove All Limits on the Presidency (Turley)
• Ex-Hillary Aide: Debate Setup “Soft Coup” By Democrats To Replace Biden (MN)
• Major US Democrat Donors Threatening Party Over Biden (RT)
• The Long Sordid Career of Creepy Joe Biden (Jeffries)
• What US Allies Should Learn From The Biden-Trump Debate (Amar)
• Democrats Hint At Assassination In Response To SCOTUS Immunity Decision (ZH)
• BBC Presenter Calls For Trump To Be Assassinated (RT)
• Trump Could End NATO Expansion – Politico (RT)
• UK Military Unprepared For Conflict Of Any Kind – Ex-Defense Official (RT)
• Zelensky’s New ‘Plan’ Possible ‘First Step’ To Negotiations (DeMartino)
• Le Pen Accuses Macron Of Preparing ‘Coup d’État’ (RT)
• France Rapidly Being ‘Brought to its Knees’ Regardless of Vote Outcome (Sp.)
• UniCredit Challenges Order To Leave Russia (RT)
• Chevron Deference (Spike Cohen)

 

 

 

 

Short
https://twitter.com/i/status/1807931860128854162

 

 

Trump lawfare
https://twitter.com/i/status/1807907184631861446

 

 

Poso
https://twitter.com/i/status/1807878480476156148

 

 

Tucker Obama
https://twitter.com/i/status/1807538203458683010

 

 

RFK Dr. Phil

 

 

Trump Taliban
https://twitter.com/i/status/1808179617397719127

 

 

 

 

All the charges and indictments appear to be -slowly- falling apart.

• Trump Sentencing Delayed Two Months, ‘If Such Is Still Necessary’ (ZH)

Update (1505ET): Donald Trump’s sentencing date has been kicked down the road more than two months – from July 11th to September 18th, ‘if such is still necessary.’

https://twitter.com/james_jinnette1/status/1808215098797838392

Interestingly, New York prosecutors agreed to a delay.

[..] Hours after the US Supreme Court granted Donald Trump immunity for official acts committed in office, the former president began an effort to toss his recent conviction in Manhattan and postpone his upcoming sentencing over 34 felony counts related to his cover-up of a sex scandal leading up to the 2016 US election. In a letter to judge Juan Merchan just hours after the Supreme Court ruling – and 10 days before he’s set for sentencing, Trump’s lawyers sought permission to file a motion to set aside the verdict while Merchan considers whether the Supreme Court ruling affects the conviction. That said, Trump’s attempt might be a long shot given the fact that the Manhattan case revolves around acts Trump took as a candidate, not as president.

As the NY Times notes, however, Trump’s lawyers are likely to argue that prosecutors partially built their case using evidence from his time in office. Under the Supreme Court’s new ruling, prosecutors may not charge a president for official acts, but also cannot cite evidence involving official acts that affect other accusations. It is unclear how the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which brought the case, will respond, or whether the judge will delay the first sentencing of an American president. But Mr. Trump’s effort appeared to cause at least a brief interruption: The district attorney’s office did not on Monday make a sentencing recommendation to the judge about whether to imprison Mr. Trump, as was expected. Merchan may also punt on the request, as the deadline for filing post-trial motions ended last month. Instead, Merchan may instruct Trump’s attorneys to raise the issue when they appeal the conviction post-sentencing.

As the Times further notes, Merchan faces an ‘unprecedented conundrum’ with massive legal and political ramifications. Imprisoning Trump would drop-kick a hornet’s nest, while sparing Trump from prison would immediately draw the wrath of vengeful Democrats who say he gave Trump special treatment. While there’s no requirement that Trump be sentenced to time behind bars, Merchan could sentence him to months or several years in prison – or he could be sentenced to home confinement or probation. He could also postpone any sentence until after the election, or after Trump serves another term in office, should be he reelected. Meanwhile, Trump’s other criminal cases have been largely derailed or otherwise postponed – including his trial in Washington DC, where he stands accused of mishandling classified information while still in office.

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“..the legal machinery the corrupt Democrats have employed against Trump is too corrupt to be able to do its assigned political assassination.”

• SCOTUS Ruled For The Office of the President, Not Trump (Paul Craig Roberts)

The US Supreme Court has ruled that a president has immunity for official acts, but not for personal acts. Which is which will be a contentious issue. For example, if a president were to have the CIA, FBI, or Secret Service murder a political rival that would be a personal act. But when President Obama had the US military murder a US citizen suspected of being a terrorist, it was an official act. But was it? The justification for the murder was suspicion alone, a bare-faced accusation unconfirmed by a trial and therefore in violation of due process. Has it ever been established that it is an official act for a president to have a US citizen murdered without due process? Perhaps it has happened secretly by the CIA but my impression is that President Obama’s murder of the Muslim religious leader who was an American citizen was the first public murder without due process and conviction delivering a death penalty.

Nothing was made of the murder because Americans had been indoctrinated with fear of Muslim terrorists and regarded the murder as an act of war. When vice president Biden bragged on TV that he forced by withholding billions of dollars in US aid from the Ukraine government unless it fired the prosecutor investigating the Ukrainian company that paid his son $50,000 a month as a director, was it an official act or a personal act? Why has there been no investigation of this self-serving use of presidential authority? The Supreme Court majority emphasized that a president must have immunity for official acts or he can be stopped by law suits and politically motivated charges from performing his designated functions. In other words, the Court’s decision is based on elementary common sense.

If a president believes an election is fraudulent, it is his responsibility, and thereby an official act, for him to have the election verified. However, the Democrats and whore media defined the issue as “Trump overthrowing the election.” Even experts with the evidence in their hands were indicted for aiding and abetting Trump’s attempted overthrow of the election. In other words, the criminal indictment brought against Trump assumed without justification that there was no evidence of election fraud. As Trump had appointed a Justice Department and an entire government consisting of his enemies, his own government treated his official action as his private action. A rally in support of Trump was mischaracterized by Democrats, whore media, and Republicans such as Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell as an “insurrection.”

What we should be disturbed about is the ability of the Democrats and the whore media to disrupt the 4-year term of a US president with a series of false charges that were never confirmed and then to use unconfirmed charges to indict a former president in an effort to prevent him from again running for president. Prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling, the indictments against Trump were falling apart. The biased “special counsel” prosecuting Trump was caught lying to the federal judge, who has put the case on hold. Fani Willis entrusted by the White House with Trump’s prosecution in Atlanta has been found to have given her lover $700,000 of taxpayers’ money with which he took Fani on vacations. Her case against Trump is also on hold. In other words, the legal machinery the corrupt Democrats have employed against Trump is too corrupt to be able to do its assigned political assassination.

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“The Supreme Court was designed to be unpopular; to take stands that are politically unpopular but constitutionally correct.”

• Age of Rage: Critics Unleash Threats and Abuse on the Supreme Court (Turley)

Within minutes of the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity, liberal politicians and pundits seemed to move from hyperbole to hyperventilation. When not breathing into paper bags, critics predicted, again, the end of the republic. CNN’s Van Jones declared that it was “almost a license to thug, in a way.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) declared: “My stomach turns with fear and anger that our democracy can be so endangered by an out-of-control court” and denounced six justices as “extreme and nakedly partisan hacks — politicians in robes.” Blumenthal has previously shown greater intestinal fortitude, as when he threatened the justices that they would either rule as Democrats demanded or face “seismic” changes to their court. Jones warned the justices that “politically it’s bad” for them to rule this way. The comment captures the misguided analysis of many media outlets. The Supreme Court was designed to be unpopular; to take stands that are politically unpopular but constitutionally correct.

Indeed, the Democrats have become the very threat that the court was meant to resist. Recently, senators demanded that Chief Justice John Roberts appear to answer to them for his own decisions. (Roberts wisely declined.) Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer previously declared in front of the Supreme Court, “I want to tell you, [Neil] Gorsuch, I want to tell you, [Brett] Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.” Now Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) announced that she will seek the impeachment of all six of the conservative justices. She was immediately joined by other Democratic members. Notably, scholars have long disagreed where to draw the line on presidential immunity. The court adopted a middle approach that rejected extreme arguments on both sides. Yet, because Ocasio-Cortez disagrees with their decision, she has declared that this “is an assault on American democracy. It is up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture.”

Previously, Ocasio-Cortez admitted that she does not understand why we even have a Supreme Court. She asked “How much does the current structure benefit us? And I don’t think it does.” Other members, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have called for packing the Court with additional members to immediately secure a liberal majority to rule as she desires. For these pundits and politicians, justice is merely an extension of politics and subject to the whims of the majority. These are same voices who chastised Judge Aileen Cannon for “slowwalking” her decisions by holding hearings on constitutional questions. They pointed to Judge Tanya Chutkan, who supported the efforts of special counsel Jack Smith to try Trump before the election, turning her court into a rocket docket. Chutkan quickly set aside this challenge, as well as other objections from Trump.

Indeed, at the oral argument, Chief Justice Roberts marveled at the conclusory analysis by Patricia Ann Millett in upholding Chutkan. He referred to the opinion celebrated by the left as little more than declaring “a former president can be prosecuted because he’s being prosecuted.” Chutkan and the DC Circuit were fast but ultimately wrong. Indeed, the Supreme Court noted that the judge created little record for the basis of her decisions. In a perverted sense, Democrats are giving the public a powerful lesson in constitutional law. As Alexander Hamilton stated in The Federalist No. 78, judicial independence “is the best expedient which can be devised in any government to secure a steady, upright and impartial administration of the laws.” This is the moment that the Framers envisioned in creating the Court under Article III of the Constitution. It would be our bulwark even when politicians lose faith in our Constitution and seek to dictate justice for those who they dislike.

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“President Biden’s hyper-ventilated response is crushingly ironic. He was vice president when President Barack Obama killed an American citizen without a trial or a charge. ”

• No, The Supreme Court Did Not Remove All Limits on the Presidency (Turley)

One of the most glaring moments in the address came when President Biden declared that “for all…for all practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do.” That is not true. The Court found that there was absolute immunity for actions that fall within their “exclusive sphere of constitutional authority” while they enjoy presumptive immunity for other official acts. They do not enjoy immunity for unofficial, or private, actions. The Court has often adopted tiered approaches in balancing the powers of the branches. For example, in his famous concurrence to Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952), Justice Robert Jackson broke down the line of authority between Congress and the White House into three groups where the President is acting with express or implied authority from Congress; where Congress is silent (“the zone of twilight” area); and where the President is acting in defiance of Congress.

Here the Court separated cases into actions taken in core areas of executive authority, official actions taken outside those core areas, and unofficial actions. Actions deemed personal or unofficial are not protected under this ruling. It is certainly true that the case affords considerable immunity, including for conversations with subordinates. However, this did not spring suddenly from the head Zeus. As Chief Justice John Roberts lays out in the majority opinion, there has long been robust protections afforded to presidents. There are also a host of checks and balances on executive authority in our constitutional system. This includes judicial intervention to prevent violations of the law as well as impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors. President Biden’s hyper-ventilated response is crushingly ironic. He was vice president when President Barack Obama killed an American citizen without a trial or a charge.

When former Attorney General Eric Holder announced the “kill list” policy (that included the right to kill any American citizen), he was met with applause, not condemnation. The Obama-Biden administration then fought every effort by the family to sue the government. President Biden would have been outraged by any attempt of a Republican district attorney to charge him or President Obama with murder. He would also be outraged by prosecutors pursuing criminal charges for the deaths associated with the deluge of undocumented persons over the Southern border. In his address, President Biden also claimed that “the law would no longer” define “the limits of the presidency.” That is also untrue. This case was remanded for the purpose of defining what of these functions would be deemed private as opposed to official. Even on official actions, former president Donald Trump could be prosecuted if the presumptive immunity is rebutted by prosecutors.

What was most glaring for many civil libertarians was President Biden’s portrayal of himself as a paragon of constitutional fealty. He declared that “I know I will respect the limits of the presidential powers as I have for the last three-and-a-half years.” That was also untrue. President Biden has racked up an impressive array of losses in federal courts where he was found to have violated the constitution. This includes rulings that his administration has exceeded his authority and engaged in racial discrimination in federal programs. Indeed, Biden has often displayed a cavalier attitude toward such violations. For example, the Biden administration was found to have violated the Constitution in its imposition of a nationwide eviction moratorium through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Biden admitted that his White House counsel and most legal experts told him the move was unconstitutional.

But he ignored their advice and went with that of Harvard University Professor Laurence Tribe, the one person who would tell him what he wanted to hear. It was, of course, then quickly found to be unconstitutional. Biden showed the same disregard over the unconstitutionality of his effort to unilaterally forgive roughly half a trillion dollars in student debt. Courts have already enjoined that effort as presumptively unconstitutional (though an appellate court in one of those cases relaxed aspects of the injunction). The address was used to reinforce his “democracy is on the ballot” campaign theme. Pundits have repeated the mantra, claiming that if Biden is not elected, American democracy will perish. While some of us have challenged these predictions, the other presidential candidates are missing a far more compelling argument going into this election. While democracy is not on the ballot this election, free speech is.

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“They wanted to test him against Trump early while there was still time to replace him if he failed to rise to the occasion. Which, of course, he did spectacularly..”

• Ex-Hillary Aide: Debate Setup “Soft Coup” By Democrats To Replace Biden (MN)

Sources close to the Democratic Party have claimed that the debate last week was purposefully setup for Biden to fail as part of a “soft coup,” by insiders who know he is incapable of winning or serving a second term. A former Hillary Clinton aide told The Daily Mail that they wanted Biden to be exposed so he can be replaced by a more capable candidate. “There has never been a debate this early before,” the source stated, adding Traditionally, the debates are held after the Republican and Democratic conventions, which are in July and August.” “There is a growing belief this was a ‘soft coup’ because they know he isn’t fit to govern and have known for some time,” the aide further asserted. “They wanted to test him against Trump early while there was still time to replace him if he failed to rise to the occasion. Which, of course, he did spectacularly,” the source added.

Another insider told the Mail that “Publicly, the Democratic leadership has been backing Biden because they can’t appear to be disloyal to the President. But privately, there have been discussions going on for a long time that he’s too old to beat Trump.” “There were whispers for weeks that ‘Joe’s going down at the debate,’” the source further stated. The Mail also claims that Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer “secretly” sent out an advance team to Washington DC weeks ago to prepare a snap presidential campaign.

The report claims “The team has been ‘on manoeuvres’ and meeting with Democratic officials,” with one source saying “Gretchen was the first to act. Now the floodgates have been opened.” Despite these claims, prominent Democrats including the Clintons, Obama and Nancy Pelosi are still defending Biden and publicly stating he remain the nominee. Pelosi told CNN Sunday that Biden “has the stamina (to continue)” and that “there are uh, uh, health care professionals, who think that uh, Trump has dementia. That his connection, his thoughts do not go together.” Meanwhile, despite his public support for Biden, Obama is privately lobbying to get rid of him, telling insiders he cannot defeat Trump, according to another insider.

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“..72% of Americans say Biden does not have the mental and cognitive health capabilities to serve as president.”

• Major US Democrat Donors Threatening Party Over Biden (RT)

A growing number of top Democratic donors are fuming over US President Joe Biden’s performance in his debate with GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, the Daily Mail reported on Tuesday. Biden’s performance during Thursday’s face-off with Trump, widely seen as incoherent and fumbling, has also highlighted concerns about the US president’s ability to govern. Several US media outlets reported that the showdown had left many Democrats and their donors scrambling to find a replacement for Biden as the party’s presumptive presidential nominee. The British daily claimed that the discontent “appears to be turning into a full-blown party revolt” in the wake of the event, adding that key Democratic donors are threatening to “pull the plug” unless Biden drops out of the race.

Former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson, who has donated several hundred thousand dollars to the Democratic Party, lashed out at the US president, telling the Daily Mail: “For Biden’s own good and the good of the country, he should step aside immediately.” He added that the incumbent had so far failed to reassure any party donors, which he claimed “confirms my worst fears.” Meanwhile, several Democrats interviewed by the tabloid vented their frustration at what they called attempts by Biden’s team to “gaslight” them into believing there was nothing to worry about. Tilson echoed this sentiment, saying: “They’re p**sing on our legs and telling us it’s raining… How stupid do they think we are?” An Axios report also provided insight into the campaign’s push to reassure donors during a Zoom call on Monday. The outlet claimed, citing sources, that while “there wasn’t much panic” during the call, there was a lot of skepticism. “It was a damage-control call,” one source said.

However, the report said Biden’s team had not tried to put a positive spin on the debate debacle, instead echoing the president’s own assessment, in which he acknowledged that “I don’t debate as well as I used to.” At the same time, Biden officials reportedly gave donors data and made arguments designed to prove that the president still has a chance of beating Trump. A CNN flash poll conducted after the debate found that 67% of the viewers thought Trump had performed better. Meanwhile, according to a CBS News poll, 72% of Americans say Biden does not have the mental and cognitive health capabilities to serve as president.

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“If you have a piece of crack cocaine no bigger than this quarter that I’m holding in my hand, one quarter of one dollar, we passed a law — with leadership of Sen. Thurmond and myself and others — a law that says: you’re caught with that, you go to jail for five years..”

• The Long Sordid Career of Creepy Joe Biden (Jeffries)

[..] people might not remember quite everything about Joe Biden’s lengthy career as a beloved resident of the Washington, D.C. swamp that Trump promised to drain. Biden was first elected as a U.S. Senator from Delaware in 1973. Even I was very young then. In 1981, the great “liberal” senator strongly supported the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, passed in the wake of CIA whistleblower Philip Agee’s disclosures about the Agency is his best-selling book Inside the Company. Biden declared that “I do not think anybody has any doubt about Mr. Agee. We should lock him away in my opinion.” The good senator really liked locking people up, it seems. As a strong supporter of the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, he took credit for a draconian provision that mandated a five year sentence for possessing small amounts of crack cocaine.

Little did Biden know that, decades later his own troubled son Hunter would be caught with enough crack cocaine to garner a long prison sentence under the original 1986 Act, which was softened a bit in 2010. With every ounce of “liberal” ardor that he could muster, Biden bragged at the time, “If you have a piece of crack cocaine no bigger than this quarter that I’m holding in my hand, one quarter of one dollar, we passed a law — with leadership of Sen. Thurmond and myself and others — a law that says: you’re caught with that, you go to jail for five years. You get no probation, you get nothing, other than five years in jail. Judge doesn’t have a choice.” Senator Biden also authored the horrendous 1994 crime bill which featured “three strike you’re out” and mandatory sentencing, significantly increasing the prison population.

A JFK assassination researcher attended a Joe Biden seminar in 2005. He was able to briefly question Biden about the assassination. As recounted on a discussion forum, this was the short conversation: “Senator Biden, do you believe JFK was killed as a result of a conspiracy?” Answer: “No.” “So do you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald, alone and unaided, killed President Kennedy?” Answer: “Yes.” This is hardly surprising, of course, but reflects Biden’s ironclad establishment mindset. In 2019, the American Prospect published a piece headlined, “Joe Biden’s Love Affair With the CIA.” Biden was very helpful to Reagan’s CIA Director William Casey, who praised him in a classified early 1980s memo to his intelligence staff. Biden would state, in a speech at Stanford, that the intelligence community had been compromised by leaks.

Nasty piece of work

So Joe Biden was never one of the Democratic Party politicians I admired back in my misguided youth. He wasn’t going to expose the abuses of the intelligence agencies, like a Frank Church. He wasn’t interested in any “sunshine” laws that would make it easier for the People to be informed about their government. His concern then about “leaks” would evolve into concern over whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. In a January, 2023 tweet, Snowden would comment on Biden’s classified documents scandal, accusing the Department of Justice of suppressing the story until after the election, and declared, “Worth noting that the President seems to have absconded with more classified documents than many whistleblowers.” Biden is on the record as saying that Snowden should “face the consequences of his actions.”

Following Julian Assange’s release from exile last week, some assumed that the Biden administration had been responsible for it, given Biden’s recent statements that he was “considering” dropping the charges against the Wikileaks founder. However, the White House would issue a statement maintaining that they had not played a role in Assange’s plea deal. A deal which, incidentally, made the disappearance of all those troubling DNC emails a prerequisite for his release. So if you’re tempted to think that perhaps, after over fifty years of serving the interests of the corrupt Deep State, Joe Biden finally did something good, you’d be wrong. Why spoil a perfect record? Even Barack Obama commuted Bradley/Chelsea Manning’s sentence.

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“..Democratic Party apparatchiks are engaging in Orwellian falsifications to cover Biden’s catastrophic cognitive failure..”

• What US Allies Should Learn From The Biden-Trump Debate (Amar)

There is very little to say about the content of the recent televised debate between the current American president, Joe Biden, and the former and likely next president, Donald Trump. That’s because the one feature that mattered was so obvious: Biden is, as those with eyes to see have known for a long time, deeply senile. That is a personal if not uncommon tragedy. Given Biden’s many sins – a lifelong record of systematic, almost compulsive lying, of policies that have, for decades, abused the weak and the poor and pandered to the rich, and, last but not least, the Gaza genocide co-perpetrated with his Zionist friends – it is impossible to feel pity for him. But given the unfortunate power of America, his mental decline is also a global scourge. Yet another one the ‘indispensable’ nation is inflicting on the rest of us on this planet.

The difference between before and after the debate is simply that now even the most mendacious Democratic Party hacks and behind-the-scenes manipulators cannot deny this fact any longer. Don’t get me wrong: Many of them are at least pretending to try, including former president Barack Obama, despite ongoing, widespread, and irrepressible speculation that Michelle Obama, his wife, might enter the fray at the last minute in the melodramatic role of – nobly reluctant – savior. And, of course, Democrats are also blaming anyone but themselves and their atrocious president. Yet their efforts are largely in vain. Even in America, with its post-truth media, the “secret” that never really was, is out, and the taboo is broken.

Panicked by the return of Donald Trump, key outlets of extreme Centrism, such as, to name only three, the very popular TV ‘news’ (really, agitation and propaganda) show Morning Joe, the de facto Democratic Party newspaper the New York Times, and The Economist, the British Pravda of the American empire, are openly and insistently calling for Biden to quit. Polls in the US indicate that the public has had enough, too: According to a CBS News poll, only 28% of registered voters think Biden should stay in the race, while 72% acknowledge the obvious: Biden is mentally unfit for the presidency.

Yet none of this is a surprise. What is more interesting now is what the political fallout of Biden’s debate fiasco reveals about the nature of two things that, unfortunately, still shape much of our world: American ‘democracy’ and American empire. Regarding ‘democracy’, even in the US, some observers – such former President Jimmy Carter and researchers at Princeton University, have long understood that it’s silly to describe their country as a democracy. Instead, any halfway objective assessment of its real political system has to start from the fact that it is an oligarchy. But Carter and the Princeton researchers acknowledged that fact a decade ago. The question is where are we now?

Spoiler alert: Things have only gotten worse. Exhibit A – the manner in which the Biden dementia debate debacle is being handled. It is not only the fact that Democratic Party apparatchiks are engaging in Orwellian falsifications to cover Biden’s catastrophic cognitive failure that enables us to see with our own eyes. It is also the way in which Biden’s family (or would clan be a more exact term?) is still widely treated as having the apparently divine privilege to help him decide whether finally to drop out or not. A family matter? A political system in which issues of obvious and extremely urgent public interest are up to a totally unaccountable ‘family council’ – such as whether a dementia case should have final say over almost 5,000 nuclear weapons – does not qualify as a democracy. Indeed, it does not even qualify as a republic anymore. It may, with a ginormous dose of generosity, pass as a rather rotten monarchy. Less charitable observers would class it as a form of mafia or mobster rule.

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“..these “theories” on how Biden could respond to the Supreme Court are not simple hypotheticals for the sake of argument, there is an element of desperation and bloodlust.”

• Democrats Hint At Assassination In Response To SCOTUS Immunity Decision (ZH)

Nobody likes to lose but leftists take indignant defeat to a whole new level. Though they claim to “defend democracy” in their spare time, Democrats also have a tendency to abandon the democratic process when that process interferes with their intentions to remain in power. Case in point: The Supreme Court’s recent decision to give immunity from prosecution to Donald Trump in the case of “some official acts” taken during his tenure in office. Leftists have responded with outrage at the 6-3 decision with much of their political hopes resting on the strategy of burying Trump in as many legal battles as possible to keep him from running for president again. Democrats are now flooding social media and the news feeds with suggestions that the SC decision makes it possible for Joe Biden as president to eliminate the conservative competition “as a part of his official duties.”

The tools for legally punishing presidents already exist, including impeachment and charges of treason. And, keep in mind, if Trump does not have immunity for previous actions as president, then neither does any other president. How many skeletons are in the closets of men like Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Barack Obama? Beyond this, assassination of a political opponent or the conservative members of the Supreme Court is not recognized as an official duty of the presidency. Democrats, as usual, take their conclusions to the dramatic extreme in order to provoke public fear through emotionally energized disinformation. Leftists have been fantasizing publicly about murdering Trump for some time now. However, these “theories” on how Biden could respond to the Supreme Court are not simple hypotheticals for the sake of argument, there is an element of desperation and bloodlust.

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Satire? Switch around the names Trump and Biden, and see how that feels.

• BBC Presenter Calls For Trump To Be Assassinated (RT)

BBC presenter David Aaronovitch has called for the “murder” of former US President Donald Trump in a post on X (formerly Twitter). Aaronovitch later deleted his message following a backlash, claiming it had been “satire.” Aaronovitch, the voice behind the British state broadcaster’s Radio 4 program ‘The Briefing Room’, tweeted on Monday: “If I was Biden I’d hurry up and have Trump murdered on the basis that he is a threat to America’s security.” The post was accompanied by the hashtag #SCOTUS, indicating that the comment had been triggered by Monday’s confirmation from the US Supreme Court that former presidents have “absolute immunity” from prosecution for their official actions. Aaronovitch was forced to delete the post after an online backlash, and claimed in a follow-up message that he had been accused of inciting violence by “a far right pile.” The presenter insisted his tweet was “plainly a satire.”

On Monday, the highest US court ruled that under “our system of separated powers, the President may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts.”In an interview with Fox News Digital, Trump touted the verdict on presidential immunity as a “big win for our Constitution and for democracy.” President Biden attacked the Supreme Court ruling, urging citizens to “di ssent” against the verdict. US federal prosecutors have charged Trump with four criminal counts related to the 2020 presidential election, alleging that he “conspired” to overturn the results. The Supreme Court verdict still grants lower courts the right to hold evidentiary hearings to determine whether the actions are official or unofficial. Unofficial acts by the president are not covered by immunity from prosecution. Trump has repeatedly called his prosecution politically motivated, describing it as a “witch hunt” launched by Biden and his administration.

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“..EU countries are “plainly not prepared to fill a dramatically expanded military role anytime soon..”

• Trump Could End NATO Expansion – Politico (RT)

The former and possibly future US President Donald Trump is reportedly considering a deal with Russia not to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia, according to a Politico article citing anonymous sources. Trump is the presumptive Republican challenger to the incumbent President Joe Biden in the November election. His campaign has not yet named a national security team, or published a new agenda for NATO, but Politico Magazine pieced together a possible one in a story published on Tuesday. “As part of a plan for Ukraine that has not been previously reported, the presumptive GOP nominee is mulling a deal whereby NATO commits to no further eastward expansion — specifically into Ukraine and Georgia — and negotiates with Russian President Vladimir Putin over how much Ukrainian territory Moscow can keep,” the story said, citing two “Trump-aligned national security experts.”

One anonymous source supposedly familiar with Trump’s thinking said he was “open to something foreclosing NATO expansion and not going back to the 1991 borders for Ukraine,” but did not exclude any other options, “including supplying large amounts of weapons” to Kiev. While Trump is “unlikely” to quit NATO outright, he is likely to overhaul the US-led bloc to make its European members take on more responsibilities – something Politico’s sources worry they are not actually capable of. European members of the bloc that don’t spend at least 2% of their GDP on the military “wouldn’t enjoy the defense largess and security guarantee” of the US, according to one anonymous Trump-aligned source. The US “does not have enough military forces to go around,” Elbridge Colby, Trump’s deputy assistant defense secretary for strategy, told Politico. “We can’t break our spear in Europe against the Russians when we know the Chinese and Russians are collaborating, and the Chinese are a more dangerous and significant threat.”

European members of the bloc “need to be producing combat credible forces to deal with a Russian attack, like now,” Colby added. As part of a “radical reorientation” of NATO under Trump, the US would maintain its air and naval bases in Europe, but leave the “bulk of infantry, armor, logistics and artillery” to be handled by the continental allies. According to Politico, EU countries are “plainly not prepared to fill a dramatically expanded military role anytime soon,” while the continent is “weaker economically and more dependent on US energy supplies than ever before.” “It’s important to note that all these opinions are not from Donald Trump,” Richard Grenell, his former acting director of national intelligence, said on X (formerly Twitter) in response to the Politico article. The Trump campaign did not respond to the outlet’s requests for comment.

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True for all of NATO. Yes, including the US.

• UK Military Unprepared For Conflict Of Any Kind – Ex-Defense Official (RT)

Britain’s military is in such a bad state that it may not be able to defend the country, let alone mount an expeditionary force of any significant strength, a former official tasked with assessing the armed forces has told the Financial Times. Rob Johnson, director of the Oxford Changing Character of War Centre, was appointed in May 2022 for a two-year term as head of the Defense Ministry’s Office for Net Assessment and Challenge (SONAC). The researcher told the FT he wanted to share his grim conclusions with the public because he is “deeply worried” about what he discovered. He insisted his assessment is realistic, rather than alarmist. The armed forces “cannot defend the British homelands properly” and have a “bare minimum” to conduct small-scale peacekeeping missions, disaster relief operations, evacuations of civilians from war zones and anti-sabotage activities, according to the article published on Monday.

“In any larger-scale operation, we would run out of ammunition rapidly” Johnson warned. “Our defenses are too thin, and we are not prepared to fight and win an armed conflict of any scale.” If the UK were to deploy an expeditionary force comparable to those dispatched during the Falklands (Malvinas) War of 1982 or the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it “would be under-equipped, leaving troops at risk.” The deficiencies are spread across the military branches, according to Johnson. British air defenses could be unable to stop large-scale long-range missile strikes, the Royal Navy does not have enough ships to patrol the North Atlantic, while the Royal Air Force needs to double its fleet of fighter jets.

“The government is not taking the public into its confidence about the scale of the threat because it knows it’s not ready,” Johnson said. The revelations do not damage national security because “the Russians already know this anyway,” he claimed, referring to the fact that London considers Russia an imminent military threat to Britain. The British government last year set out to restore the UK’s global prominence as part of its foreign policy. The state of the military does not support that, Johnson indicated, saying: “We have to cut our coat to fit our cloth.” The warning adds to a plethora of similar British media reports and remarks by officials, who advocate ramping up defense spending.

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“..still based in the fantasy land that he can dictate terms to Russia while losing the war..”

• Zelensky’s New ‘Plan’ Possible ‘First Step’ To Negotiations (DeMartino)

Ukraine’s illegitimate President Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent promise to put forth a new “comprehensive plan” to end the conflict in Ukraine may be the first tentative steps by the regime to sit down at the negotiating table with Russia. Zelensky announced on Friday during a press conference in Kiev that he was creating a new plan that should be “supported by the majority of the world.” He also used the opportunity to, for the first time, admit high casualties on the battlefield. International relations and security expert Mark Sleboda told Sputnik’s Final Countdown that while Zelensky’s comments are still based in the fantasy land that he can dictate terms to Russia while losing the war, the change in tone could represent the regime’s first tentative steps towards admitting reality. “The fact that he said he’s willing to speak to Russia through an intermediary at some undisclosed point months in the future, I guess that is progress, but not much,” Sleboda explained.

“There is a possibility that this is a first tentative, one step forward, two steps back in the direction of eventual negotiations to end the conflict.” Zelensky made the comments not long after his so-called “peace summit” fell flat on its face, with China declining to attend and several influential countries outside of the West refusing to sign the final document, including Brazil, South Africa, India and Saudi Arabia. Iraq and Jordan asked for their signatures to be removed the day after they signed. “Certainly, I think [Zelensky’s] statement is representative of coming out of the failed Kiev regime war rally. Sentiment within the rest of the world outside of the West, i.e. the real international community – the global majority, that [said] they want real peace negotiations, and, perhaps, at least this is a nod in that direction,” Sleboda speculated.

The change in Zelensky’s tone is not just a reflection of the failed so-called “peace summit” but also the reality on the battlefield, where Ukraine is losing significant ground regularly. On Monday, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that they had liberated Stepovaya Novoselovka in the Kharkov region and Novopokrovskoye in the Donbass People’s Republic. “Even if [Zelensky’s comments] are a symbolic step in that direction [of negotiations], it is driven by the desperate state on the battlefield that the Kiev regime is facing,” Sleboda argued. “Once again, [Ukraine] stripped veteran troops from Toretsk in Nyu-York, they moved them to Kharkov. Russia knew about it immediately, of course, and launched a significant offensive in the area and has made significant progress. Now, the Kiev regime is scrambling and shuffling troops around again and again.”

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“Le Pen said that if her party came to power, it would reverse these appointments so it “could govern.”

• Le Pen Accuses Macron Of Preparing ‘Coup d’État’ (RT)

French President Emmanuel Macron is undertaking a last-minute reshuffling in government agencies in order to prevent National Rally leader Jordan Bardella from governing as he wishes, former party leader Marine Le Pen believes. The RN is widely expected to gain a plurality in this Sunday’s runoff. RN and its allies secured the lead in the first round of the snap parliamentary election last week, while projections in the French media anticipate the party ultimately winning between 230 and 280 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly. “It’s a kind of administrative coup d’état,” Le Pen told France Inter radio on Tuesday, commenting on press reports that claimed Macron was rushing to appoint senior civil servants, including to top EU jobs.

Over the past days, Macron reportedly appointed several top officials, including the military governor of Paris, the new chief of the General Staff of the French Air Force, the new director of the EU at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and three ambassadors. He also proposed in Brussels last week reappointing Thierry Breton as France’s European commissioner. According to Le Pen, “the aim” of such appointments is “to prevent Jordan Bardella from governing the country as he wishes,” should the RN win a majority in Sunday’s runoff. Le Pen said that if her party came to power, it would reverse these appointments so it “could govern.”

“When you want to counter the electorate’s vote, the results of elections, by appointing people of your own, so that they prevent you within the state from being able to carry out the policy that the French want … I call that an administrative coup d’état,” Le Pen concluded. Macron called early parliamentary elections after the RN’s strong performance in last month’s European Parliament elections. The party formerly led by Le Pen and now by Bardella won 30 of the 81 French seats in the EU legislature. The first round of early parliamentary elections was held on June 30. The RN and its allies came in first with 33.15% of the vote. The left-wing alliance New Popular Front took second place with 27.99%, while Macron’s Ensemble coalition garnered just 20.04%.

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“I remind you that France has an official public debt of 3,000 billion euros, and that this sum is absolutely non-repayable..”

• France Rapidly Being ‘Brought to its Knees’ Regardless of Vote Outcome (Sp.)

President Emmanuel Macron’s center-right alliance Ensemble was practically wiped out by Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally (RN) in the first round of France’s snap legislative elections. Projections regarding the outcome of the second round on July 7 suggest that Macron’s coalition is set to hemorrhage seats in the National Assembly. Whatever the outcome of the parliamentary elections, France today “no longer has the means for its policy,” Emmanuel Leroy, president of the Institut 1717, for a new Franco-Russian alliance, told Sputnik. He underscored that quite possibly next Sunday, Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally (RN) will not obtain an absolute majority required to govern in the country, creating “an objectively uncontrollable situation.” “Without an absolute majority, the country will be in a state of incapacity to be governed in a valid manner and we will probably observe a crisis situation which will bring France completely to its knees on the international political level,” speculated the French political scientist.

“Emmanuel Macron’s bet today is to play on the victory of this party [RN] in such a way as to create a situation of political chaos in France,” Leroy suggested. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has already stated that Macron’s centrist coalition will pull out around 60 of its candidates to allow other contenders to have a chance at defeating the RN. But this could be nothing more than a “window dressing,” said Leroy. The analyst noted that whether France switches to a right-wing or left-wing policy, this wouldn’t change the fundamentals. And these fundamentals are that the France of Emmanuel Macron, which has been “at the forefront in the desire to completely engage in this war in Ukraine to help the regime [led] by Zelensky,” is in phenomenal debt. “I remind you that France has an official public debt of 3,000 billion euros, and that this sum is absolutely non-repayable,” the former Russia adviser to Marine Le Pen stressed.

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Too expensive.

• UniCredit Challenges Order To Leave Russia (RT)

UniCredit has appealed to the EU’s top court to clarify an order issued by the European Central Bank (ECB) for the Italian institution to reduce its presence in Russia. The lender has applied to the General Court of the European Union for “definitive legal clarification” of obligations set by the ECB for winding down its Russian business, UniCredit said in a statement on Monday. UniCredit said that while it is complying with the regulator’s request to slash its activities in Russia, it is concerned “about the terms upon which this reduction has to take place as provided for in the decision issued by ECB, that goes beyond the current legal framework.” The ECB has pressured EU banks with operations in Russia to speed up their exit from the country amid the threat of harsher US sanctions on Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine.

In May, the Frankfurt-based regulator sent letters to lenders with a request for an “action plan” to end their business in Russia as early as June. UniCredit currently has the second largest exposure to the Russian market among EU-based banks, and is included in the Russian central bank’s list of 13 systemically important credit institutions. Other EU banks – including Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI), Dutch lender ING, Germany’s Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank, Hungary’s OTP Bank, Italy’s Intesa SanPaolo, and Sweden’s SEB – also maintain a presence in the Russian market despite Western sanctions. Announcing its legal challenge, the bank noted that it had reduced its cross-border exposure to Russia by 91% and its domestic exposure by 65% since February 2022. The Italian lender said the application could take several months and asked for an interim suspension of the regulator’s decision.

“Unprecedented circumstances, the complexities inherent in the geo-political and economic scenario and the lack of a harmonized regulatory framework applicable to it and the potential for serious unintended consequences of implementing the decision that would impact not only the Russian subsidiaries” compelled UniCredit to seek clarity. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani welcomed the bank’s challenge, saying the ECB “must take into account the situation in which Italian companies operate in Russia, in compliance with EU sanctions.” “Hasty decisions merely risk damaging Italian and EU companies,” Reuters quoted him as saying. UniCredit operates in Russia through a subsidiary, with some 3,100 employees and more than 50 branches.

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X thread. “It will be used, for years to come, to roll back federal agencies, and we’ll all be better of for it. And that’s why politicians and corporate media are freaking out about it.”

• Chevron Deference (Spike Cohen)

For those who don’t understand what is, and why SCOTUS ended it, here’s the long and short of it: A family fishing company, Loper Bright Enterprises, was being driven out of business, because they couldn’t afford the $700 per day they were being charged by the National Marine Fisheries Service to monitor their company. The thing is, federal law doesn’t authorize NMFS to charge businesses for this. They just decided to start doing it in 2013. Why did they think they could away with just charging people without any legal authorization? Because in 1984, in the Chevron decision, the Supreme Court decided that regulatory agencies were the “experts” in their field, and the courts should just defer to their “interpretation” of the law. So for the past 40 years, federal agencies have been able to “interpret” laws to mean whatever they want, and the courts had to just go with it.

It was called Chevron Deference, and it put bureaucrats in charge of the country. It’s how the OHSA was able to decide that everyone who worked for a large company had to get the jab, or be fired. No law gave them that authority, they just made it up. It’s how the ATF was able to decide a piece of plastic was a “machine gun”. It’s how the NCRS was able to decide that a small puddle was a “protected wetlands”.

It’s how out-of-control agencies have been able to create rules out of thin air, and force you to comply, and the courts had to simply defer to them, because they were the “experts”. Imagine if your local police could just arrest you, for any reason, and no judge or jury was allowed to determine if you’d actually committed a crime or not. Just off to jail you go. That’s what Chevron Deference was. It was not only blatantly unconstitutional, it caused immeasurable harm to everyone. Thankfully, it’s now gone. We haven’t even begun to feel the effects of this decision in the courts. It will be used, for years to come, to roll back federal agencies, and we’ll all be better of for it. And that’s why politicians and corporate media are freaking out about it.

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SNL

 

 

Spaghetti dance

 

 

Dogslide

 

 

McDo
https://twitter.com/i/status/1807747770314588287

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle April 3 2024

Apr 032024
 
 April 3, 2024  Posted by at 8:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  38 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Field with Irises near Arles 1888

 

• Moscow Condemns Assassination Of Iranian Generals (RT)
• Israel Attack on Iranian Consulate And Netanyahu’s Pending Defeat in Gaza (Sp.)
• Shia Army: How Iran Formed A Ring Of Enemies Around Israel (Juma)
• Trump Posts $175 Million, Preventing Seizure of Buildings in Civil Fraud Case (ET)
• It’s This Election That’s The Referendum On Democracy (Tucker Carlson)
• Just 8% of Ukrainians Ready To Take Up Arms Against Russia (RT)
• Kiev Has Lost More Than 80,000 Troops Since January – Russian MoD (RT)
• West to Use Hypothetical Russia-Ukraine Talks to Supply Arms to Zelensky (Sp.)
• Ukraine’s Defeat May Help EU Establishment (RT)
• Stop Covering Up Kiev Role In Bucha Events – Zakharova (TASS)
• Why ISIS Is Now Targeting Geopolitical Enemies Of The West (Ma Xiaolin)
• Biden a ‘Threat To Democracy’ – RFK Jr (RT)
• Biden Sinks To New Lows Over Moscow Bombing And RussiaGate Fake News (Jay)
• Judge Denies Hunter Biden Motions to Dismiss Tax Charges (Turley)
• “#arrestme”: JK Rowling Dares Scotland to Enforce Anti-Free Speech Law (Turley)

 

 


Trump post on Truth Social April 1

 

 

Lies about Trump

 

 

 

 

J6
https://twitter.com/i/status/1774734557998162397

 

 

 

 

Netflix
https://twitter.com/i/status/1775194637377974655

 

 

 

 

Targeting consulates and embassies is a road to nowhere good.

• Moscow Condemns Assassination Of Iranian Generals (RT)

Russia has rebuked Israel after an airstrike that demolished the Iranian consulate in Damascus on Monday evening. The attack reportedly killed several Iranian diplomats as well as seven officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including two generals – Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi. Tehran has vowed to avenge their deaths. The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday that Moscow views as unacceptable any attack on diplomatic missions, which are protected under the Vienna conventions on diplomatic and consular relations. It noted that bombing of the building, located in a residential area, posed a high risk to Syrian civilians.

“We consider it necessary for all responsible members of the international community to declare their positions clearly and give their legal assessments of this action,” the statement said. It warned that Israel could trigger a major regional escalation with its attacks in Syria and other nations in the region. Israel has not commented on the strike, which its usual practice with such operations. Israeli officials have previously acknowledged targeting Iran-linked forces in Syria, with dozens of such raids attributed to the Jewish state over the years. The White House did not immediately comment on the incident. Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Monday that Washington was “looking into it”. A national security spokesperson quoted by Axios said the US “had no involvement in the strike and we did not know about it ahead of time.” A senior US official told the news outlet that Washington “has communicated this directly to Iran”.

Israel notified its key ally minutes before the strike took place, when its fighter jets were already in the air, the Axios article said. The Israelis allegedly said they were going to kill General Zahedi, but did not offer details of their operation, such as his location at the Iranian consulate. General Zahedi was a senior commander with the Quds Force, the IRGC unit responsible for operations on foreign soil, while General Rahimi was his deputy. Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated in a US drone strike during a visit to Iraq in January 2020, was the commander of the same division.

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“So I think Iran’s response would be two-fold in a manner that is not satisfying the Israeli aim of widening the war..”

• Israel Attack on Iranian Consulate And Netanyahu’s Pending Defeat in Gaza (Sp.)

Israel’s attack on the Iranian consulate in Syria suggests that it is trying to “widen” the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip by drawing Iran into it, said Foad Izadi, an associate professor at the University of Tehran’s Department of American Studies. “They have been trying to start a military confrontation between the United States and Iran for many years. And they think that they have an opportunity to have this done fighting Iran using American soldiers,” he told Sputnik, apparently suggesting that the US would be quick to leap to Israel’s defense if the latter were threatened by Tehran. Izadi also remarked that Israel displayed a blatant disregard for international law by attacking a diplomatic compound, which is a violation of the Vienna Convention. “That is what Israelis are trying to do. Netanyahu realizes that he has lost the war in Gaza. He has managed to kill more than 30,000, mostly women and children, without achieving any goals except killing these people and ruining their homes,” Izadi said.

“They say that they want to destroy Hamas, but that’s not a goal they can achieve. Obviously, they would have done that if they could. That’s why criminal acts and genocide in Gaza continue. And Netanyahu realizes that sooner or later this war needs to end. And that would be the end of his prime ministership. And so he’s trying to prolong the war, he’s trying to widen the war,” Izadi added. Noting that Iran’s attempt to seek justice via the UN Security Council may be unsuccessful due to the likelihood of the US vetoing a resolution critical of Israel, Izadi suggested that Tehran may opt to “cause pain for the Israelis so that these types of actions are not repeated.” “Because Iranian officials realize that if there is no pain in engaging in this type of activity, then they will continue,” he elaborated. “So I think Iran’s response would be two-fold in a manner that is not satisfying the Israeli aim of widening the war. I think that’s what Iranian leaders will do.”

WCK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1775063630494720093

Gaza

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Did they form it or was it already there?

• Shia Army: How Iran Formed A Ring Of Enemies Around Israel (Juma)

On Monday, the Israeli Air Force struck a building near the Iranian embassy in the Syrian capital. As a result of the attack, the consulate building was destroyed and the commanders of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) unit, Generals Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, were killed. President Ebrahim Raisi has already warned that “this unfair crime won’t go unanswered.” “Zionists must know that they will never achieve their sinister goals with such inhumane actions and, day by day, the resistance front and the disgust and hatred of free nations against their illegitimate nature are being strengthened, and this cowardly crime will also not go unanswered,” he said. What the answer will be is still unknown. However, in recent years, Tehran has managed to become a full-fledged superpower in the region, with support in many countries in the Middle East.

The escalation of the conflict in Gaza, which started with the Hamas-led invasion of Israel last October (“Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”) and the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) subsequent military operation that claimed tens of thousands of lives, gave rise to much speculation about the weakness and short-sightedness of the Israeli leadership and the exceptional military training of Israel’s opponents. And it’s not just Hamas that we’re talking about, but Iran. Iran was immediately accused of being involved in the Hamas attack. The WSJ reported that Iran had trained the Palestinians and instructed them on how to break through the Israeli border. Moreover, it was said that Tehran had green-lighted the attack. The detailed coordination of the operation allegedly took place during a meeting between senior members of Hamas, Hezbollah, and two other Iran-backed militant groups in Beirut shortly before October 7. Officers of the IRGC also attended the meeting.

Later, the IRGC stated that the Hamas attack had been planned as revenge for the 2020 murder of the head of the Quds Force (part of the IRGC), General Qassem Soleimani. However, rumors about Iran’s direct involvement in the anti-Israeli operation haven’t been verified. On November 3, 2023, the secretary general of the Lebanese movement Hezbollah, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, publicly stated that Iran had not been involved in operation Al-Aqsa Flood. “The decision behind this operation was 100% Palestinian, and its implementation was 100% Palestinian. [It was launched] in order to draw the attention of the whole world to this problem. Its planners hid it from everyone, even from the movements of the Axis of Resistance,“ he said. “Absolute secrecy is what ensured the brilliant success of the operation through the element of astonishing surprise. The Islamic Republic of Iran publicly supports the resistance movements but it does not exercise any guardianship over them [or] over their leaders.”

Ritter
https://twitter.com/i/status/1774948467191767045

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“..the judge and attorney general had access to his finances because of the monitorship requirement, saw a figure close to $464 million cash, and decided that was what they were going to make him pay..”

• Trump Posts $175 Million, Preventing Seizure of Buildings in Civil Fraud Case (ET)

Former President Donald Trump has posted $175 million in his New York civil fraud case, meeting the 10-day deadline given on March 25 and staying execution of judgment in the case. The payment prevents any seizure of President Trump’s assets as his appeal of the case is heard. “As promised, President Trump has posted bond. He looks forward to vindicating his rights on appeal and overturning this unjust verdict,” the president’s attorney Alina Habba said in a statement. New York Attorney General Letitia James sued the 45th president in 2022, accusing him of inflating his net worth and defrauding insurers and banks, and therefore the public, in Trump Organization annual statements of financial condition. Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg and comptroller Jeffrey McConney, and several Trump Organization holding companies were named codefendants in the case presided over by New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron in a three-month bench trial.

The judge ultimately ordered $363 million disgorgement with 9 percent backdated interest, totaling $464 million, with the lion’s share to be paid by President Trump; as well as prohibiting the defendants from holding director positions in any business or legal entity in New York for a period of time, and a minimum three-year monitorship of Trump Organization after which there may be additional penalties. The posting of the judgment amount was not required in order for President Trump to appeal the case, but had been a requirement to stay enforcement of the judgment in the meantime. “I’ll fight this all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary,” President Trump told Fox News days before the deadline. “They can’t take away your property before you’ve had a chance to appeal the decision of a Trump-hating, incompetent judge who has been overturned more than any judge in the state.”

Days before President Trump posted bond, he said on social media that he had nearly $500 million in cash but intended to use much of it on his presidential campaign. He accused his political opponents of trying to make him spend that cash fund on legal battles rather than on his campaign for president. State law would have required President Trump to post the full judgment amount within 30 days in order to stay the execution of judgment, but the appellate court lowered the $454 million requirement to $175 million on the last day of the deadline. It gave him a 10-day window to post the new amount, and did not comment on the underlying reasons for the change. President Trump said the appellate division’s ruling was further evidence that the original bond requirement was unreasonable.

“This is a confrontation between a Judge and those that rule above him – A very bad situation in which to place New York State and the Rule of Law!” President Trump stated of the appellate decision. “This is the 5th time in this case that he has been overturned, a record. His credibility, and that of Letitia James, has been shattered.” Justice Engoron, who presided over the bench trial and issued the massive disgorgement figure. The attorney general had asked for $250 million in disgorgement before trial, and changed that number to $370 million near the end of the trial. President Trump claimed in a press conference that the judge and attorney general had access to his finances because of the monitorship requirement, saw a figure close to $464 million cash, and decided that was what they were going to make him pay. He told reporters he did have the cash necessary to stay judgment, but wanted to use it to campaign and not satisfy who he described as “crooked” officials.

Putting all his cash into an escrow account where neither he nor the state could touch it for the duration of the appeal was one option to stay judgment. A bond was another, and would not have required President Trump to move his cash reserves, but would have required him to have higher amounts of cash to serve as collateral—$577 million, by his attorneys’ estimates, after negotiations with 30-plus surety companies fell through. For weeks, defense attorneys argued in the appellate division that securing a $464 million bond was “impossible.” Surety companies just don’t issue bonds that big, they argued. A second problem was that for them to consider doing so they would have needed 120 percent in cash as collateral plus a high premium or two. This came out to be far more cash than Trump Organization had, as a real estate company.

Watters

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X thread. “If Joe Biden gets reelected, democracy is a freaking joke..”

• It’s This Election That’s The Referendum On Democracy (Tucker Carlson)

Lex Fridman: You said some degree the election was rigged. Was it stolen?
Tucker Carlson: It was a hundred percent stolen. Are you joking?
Lex Fridman: It was rigged to that large of a degree?
Tucker Carlson: Yeah. They completely change the way people vote right before the election on the basis of COVID, which had nothing to do with-
Lex Fridman: So in that way it was rigged, meaning manipulated.

Tucker Carlson: One hundred percent. Then you censor the information people are allowed to get, anyone who complains about COVID… Which is like, by the way, it might’ve hurt Trump. But I mean it’s like whatever. I mean you could play it many different ways. You can’t have censorship in a democracy by definition. Here’s how it works. The people rule. They vote for representatives to carry their agenda to the capitol city and get it enacted. That’s how they’re in charge. And then every few years they get to reassess the performance of those people in an election. In order to do that, they need access, unfettered access to information. And no one, particularly not people who are already in power, is allowed to tell them what information they can have.

They have to have all information that they want, whether the people in charge want it or don’t want it or think it’s true or think it’s false, it doesn’t matter. And the second you don’t have that, you don’t have a democracy. It’s not a free election, period. And that’s very clear in other countries, I guess. But it’s not clear here. But I would say it’s this election that… It took me a while to come to this, but it’s this election that’s the referendum on democracy. Biden is senile. He’s literally senile. He can’t talk, he can’t walk. The whole world knows that, leave our borders. Everybody in the world knows it. A senile man is not going to get elected in the most powerful country in the world unless there’s fraud, period. Who would vote for a senile man? He literally can’t talk. And nobody I’ve ever met thinks he’s running the US government because he’s not. And so I think the world is looking on at this coming election and saying… And a lot of the world hates Trump. Okay, it’s not an endorsement of Trump, but it’s just true. If Joe Biden gets reelected, democracy is a freaking joke. That’s just true.

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“The Institute “has been trying to avoid surveys directly related to the military action” because mobilization is a “sensitive issue” of state policy..”

• Just 8% of Ukrainians Ready To Take Up Arms Against Russia (RT)

Most Ukrainians expect their country to win in the armed conflict with Russia, but just 8% are willing to fight to further their cause, the head of a leading Kiev-based polling agency has claimed, in an interview published on Tuesday. The Ukrainian leadership has said that it is seeking to boost the military’s ranks by up to 500,000. Additional troops are required to relieve forces on the frontline, some of which have not been properly rotated in years, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry has claimed. Vladimir Paniotto of the International Institute of Sociology discussed how the Ukrainian people’s worldview is reflected in research conducted by his organization with local news outlet Ukrainskaya Pravda.

They tend to “wish for conflicting things,” he mused, such as capitalist liberalization alongside robust social support by the state, or democracy as well as the “strong arm” of the government. The conundrum is present in what Ukrainians are willing to do to defeat Russia – an outcome that they overwhelmingly believe will end the ongoing hostilities. ”Certainly, many people are willing to act, to send donations or work as volunteers,” Paniotto said. “But facing a direct risk to life and taking part in military action – that is much harder… We estimate that the share of those willing to take arms is roughly 8% across all categories.” The figure may be overestimated, since the pollster takes the responses at face value without conducting follow-up studies to confirm the respondents’ true intentions. The Institute “has been trying to avoid surveys directly related to the military action” because mobilization is a “sensitive issue” of state policy, he explained.

The Ukrainian parliament is considering a major reform of the military system, which would facilitate the draft, including by imposing serious penalties for evasion. Fighting-age Ukrainian men residing in foreign nations, for example, would not be able to replace their expired passports without the consent of a conscription officer after the bill goes into force, MP Fyodor Venislavsky told the media last week. The lawmaker is a member of the parliamentary Committee for National Security, Defense and Intelligence. The Russian military said on Tuesday that Ukrainian frontline losses since January have surpassed 80,000.

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No wonder there are few volunteers.

• Kiev Has Lost More Than 80,000 Troops Since January – Russian MoD (RT)

Ukrainian forces have lost more than 80,000 troops since the beginning of the year, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Tuesday, adding that the Russian military is continuing to reduce “the enemy’s combat potential.” More than 14,000 units of military hardware have also been destroyed by Russian forces since January, including 1,200 tanks and other armored combat vehicles. During the same period, Moscow has liberated some 403 square kilometers of Russia’s new territories, Shoigu said. Despite Kiev’s lack of success on the battlefield, the Ukrainian leadership “is still trying to convince its Western sponsors of its ability to resist the Russian Army,” he said. To do so, Kiev has resorted to terrorism and long-range strikes on Russian territories, targeting the civilian population, the minister added.

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Not the first time..

• West to Use Hypothetical Russia-Ukraine Talks to Supply Arms to Zelensky (Sp.)

The West will use hypothetical negotiations between Moscow and Kiev to supply weapons to Ukraine and to regroup its forces, Konstantin Gavrilov, the head of the Russian delegation at the talks in Vienna on military security and arms control, told Sputnik. “Even if we imagine the hypothetical possibility of resuming negotiations, it is clear that the [Kiev] regime’s curators will use them to give the Ukrainian armed forces time to rest, pump them up with weapons, and complete a regrouping of troops,” Gavrilov said in an interview dedicated to the 75th anniversary of NATO marked on April 4. The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington, D.C. on April 4, 1949.

A repeat of a scenario that emerged after the March 2022 talks in Istanbul when the Ukrainian armed forces received time to rest is unacceptable for Russia, Gavrilov added. Gavrilov also said that the West will use hypothetical negotiations between Moscow and Kiev to supply weapons to Ukraine and to help Kiev regroup its forces. “We have been through this before after the Istanbul talks in the spring of 2022, and the repetition of such a scenario is unacceptable to us. Therefore, at the moment, the future of the Ukrainian conflict is being decided on the battlefield, where our troops hold the initiative along the entire front line,” Gavrilov said in an interview dedicated to the 75th anniversary of NATO marked on April 4.

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“If Ukraine’s position weakens, there may be a ‘rallying behind the flag effect’ more favorable to the forces in place..”

• Ukraine’s Defeat May Help EU Establishment (RT)

With polls showing ‘nationalist’ parties surging in popularity ahead of the upcoming European Parliament election, Kiev’s worsening situation could prove useful to the bloc’s powers that be, according to a new book by French investigative journalist Charles Sapin. Most of the EU has been outspoken in supporting the Ukrainian government in the conflict with Russia, sending an estimated €77 billion ($83 billion) worth of weapons, equipment, ammunition and even cash to Kiev. Sapin’s analysis, however, implies that bad news from the battlefield could bolster the European People’s Party (EPP) and the second-largest group, the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) in upcoming elections. “If Ukraine’s position weakens, there may be a ‘rallying behind the flag effect’ more favorable to the forces in place,” he was quoted as saying by Politico EU on Monday.

Sapin is a reporter for the weekly Le Point who spent six years researching what he calls the “nationalist” parties that form the Identity and Democracy (ID) bloc in the European parliament – such as Hungary’s Fidesz, Portugal’s Chega, Spain’s Vox, France’s National Rally, Brothers of Italy and the Sweden Democrats. The final result was the book called ‘Les Moissons de la Colere’ (The Harvests of Wrath), presented as a deep dive into “nationalist Europe.” One major weakness of the parties in the ID grouping, according to Sapin, is that they have different opinions on the Ukraine conflict. Nationalists’ numbers might be rising but they are “isolated” in Brussels because of their particularism, he contends. Their victories in the upcoming election would move the needle to the right, but to the benefit of the EPP, currently the majority group. This may help explain why French President Emmanuel Macron brought up Ukraine at a recent brainstorming session about the upcoming elections.

Amid the strategy discussions the French leader suddenly voiced a concern that Ukraine “could fall very quickly,” according to sources that spoke with Politico. He then set up a ‘New Europeans’ coalition, an alliance of liberal parties from France, Denmark, Poland, Romania and Slovenia. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban – long the sole dissenter when it came to aiding Kiev – doubled down on calls for a ceasefire in Ukraine and a negotiated peace. According to Sapin, parties like Orban’s have gained power thanks to semantic tricks and ideological acrobatics, converting “old bourgeois” voters by talking about immigration, identity and the environment and abandoning calls for leaving the EU. His book includes insights from both the closest political advisers to Orban, from Italian PM Giorgia Meloni and French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen – and from their political enemies.

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“Bucha” has become a curious narrative.

• Stop Covering Up Kiev Role In Bucha Events – Zakharova (TASS)

Russia is calling upon international organizations to stop covering up for the Kiev regime and its role in perpetrating the events almost two years ago in the Kiev suburb of Bucha, and instead to push for a thorough investigation, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a comment ahead of the second anniversary of what she called the staged incident in Bucha. “Once again, we demand that international organizations stop covering up for the Kiev regime and instead work toward conducting a thoroughgoing investigation that will, at long last, disclose the names of those killed, the time and cause of their deaths <…> as well as of those responsible for that terrible crime committed by the Kiev regime,” Zakharova said.

Meanwhile, numerous previous calls by Russia for international organizations, including agencies of the United Nations, to conduct a serious investigation of precisely what transpired in Bucha two years ago have to date remained unanswered, the Russian diplomat added. “Multiple Russian calls on international organizations, including appeals to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, to investigate every detail of what happened <…> in Bucha or [reveal] other information remain unanswered,” Zakharova lamented. “It shows that the organizers of that deadly operation have something to conceal,” she said. According to Zakharova, this year, Ukrainian officials will be pursuing the goal of preventing the international community from focusing too much on the dire situation in Ukraine and along the line of engagement.

Russian Investigative Committee Chairman Alexander Bastrykin said in April 2022 that a criminal investigation had been launched under Article 207.3 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Public Dissemination of False Information about the Use of the Russian Armed Forces”) following a Ukrainian false flag operation in Bucha, a suburb of Kiev. He noted that the Ukrainian Defense Ministry had provided video footage purportedly taken in Bucha to Western media outlets, describing it as proof of mass killings of civilians, in a bid to discredit the Russian Armed Forces. However, statements made by the mayor of Bucha on March 31, 2022, combined with other reports, have substantiated the fact that the Russian Army pulled out of the town on March 30. Moreover, a video filmed by Ukrainians that surfaced on social media immediately after the withdrawal of Russian troops made no mention at all of the alleged killing of civilians in the town.

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X thread by Arnaud Bertrand.

• Why ISIS Is Now Targeting Geopolitical Enemies Of The West (Ma Xiaolin)

[..] a top Chinese international relations scholar (Ma Xiaolin, director of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies at Zhejiang International Studies University) shares his view on why ISIS is now targeting geopolitical enemies of the West. I translated his article in full (original in Chinese here: https://tidenews.com.cn/news.html?id=2754250) below:

“On March 26th, a commuter vehicle for the Dasu Hydropower Project in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan, was attacked by terrorists, resulting in the deaths of five Chinese personnel and one Pakistani staff member. This was the second such suicide bombing attack on the project in three years, with “Islamic State Khorasan Province” (ISKP) being a major suspect. Prior to this, on March 22nd, a serious terrorist attack occurred near Moscow, killing 143 people and injuring nearly 200, with ISKP claiming responsibility. On January 3rd, a series of suicide bombings in Kerman, Iran, killed nearly a hundred people, with ISKP also claiming responsibility. Within three months, Iran, Russia, and China became targets of terrorist attacks, indicating that the Islamic State, which had long considered the US and Europe as enemies, is changing its attack direction, increasingly targeting countries considered adversaries by the US and Europe.

This represents a new trend of turning enemies into friends and shifting disaster eastward, along with submitting a declaration of intent to traditional foes. Following the Moscow attack, Russian security agencies arrested eight suspects, confirming them to be Tajikistan nationals hired for the attack. This atypical “Islamic State” terrorist attack, which involved fleeing instead of a suicide mission, was immediately claimed by ISKP, which also released on-site video evidence. Before the end of 2017, the Islamic State was essentially defeated as a territorial entity, suffering a fatal blow and being forced to disband and go underground, with its focus shifting from West Asia to Central Asia. The Khorasan branch, active in Afghanistan and Pakistan, became the main force, taking up the banner of terrorism and frequently acting, gradually adjusting its survival rules and strategic direction.

Over the years, there have been signs that the Islamic State’s targets for revenge have clearly shifted to Eastern countries, no longer viewing the US and Europe as primary enemies, and completely deviating from its original goals of ending US global dominance and “liberating Palestine”. In the past six months, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has caused heavy casualties. The Iran-led “Axis of Resistance” has pressured Israel in various ways, with China and Russia also actively promoting a ceasefire. However, the Islamic State has launched attacks on Iran, Russia, and even China, leading some to speculate that it may have aligned with the United States or even come under control of Israel’s Mossad.

Despite the US indirectly or directly warning Iran and Russia of Islamic State attacks, suspicions remain. The defeat of the Islamic State in the Middle East was a collective achievement of the international anti-terrorism alliance, credited to both the US-led 62-nation coalition’s continuous airstrikes and the close cooperation of the “Shia Crescent” led by Russia and Iran, especially in ground combat and siege warfare. However, the continuous attacks by Islamic State remnants on Iran and Russia, ignoring the reality of “Israel killing people with American knives,” indicate their use of complex geopolitical conflicts to adjust policies and directions, seeking survival by allying with former enemies.

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“President Biden is the first candidate in history – the first president in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech, so to censor his opponent.”

• Biden a ‘Threat To Democracy’ – RFK Jr (RT)

President Joe Biden could be a bigger danger to US democracy than former president and presumptive 2024 election rival Donald Trump, another presidential candidate, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has said. Biden is the first president in US history to mobilize federal agencies to silence his political opponents, the politician stated. Speaking on CNN on Monday, Kennedy Jr pointed to his being blocked on various social media platforms during Biden’s term in office and branded this as an effort to “censor political speech” that violated the First Amendment of America’s constitution. He also attributed the ‘censorship’ to pressure from the White House. Pressed by CNN’s Erin Burnett on who he believes poses a bigger threat to democracy, Kennedy stated that he still views Biden as a bigger danger, even though Trump played a role in the January 6 riot at the US Capitol.

“The question was, who is a worse threat to democracy? And what I would say is … I’m not going to answer that question. But I can argue that President Biden is, because the First Amendment, Erin, is the most important,” the candidate told presenter Erin Burnett. “I can make the argument that President Biden is the much worse threat to democracy, and the reason for that is President Biden is the first candidate in history – the first president in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech, so to censor his opponent.” The politician’s Instagram page was suspended in 2021 over what its parent company, Meta, described as “repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines.” The account was reinstated in 2022, shortly after Kennedy announced his election campaign. In December, the Supreme Court barred him from joining a challenge to a case dealing with the Biden administration’s communication with social media platforms over posts the government considered disinformation. The politician also had a similar case pending in a lower court.

Last year, Kennedy testified before the House Judiciary’s subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government, where he spoke as part of a House Republicans’ inquiry into alleged social media censorship against conservatives. The politician also made freedom of speech a focus of his presidential campaign. Kennedy, 70, is the son of former US Attorney General Robert Kennedy and the nephew of former US President John F Kennedy, each of whom was assassinated during the 1960s. He has gained notoriety recently for being a prominent critic of vaccines, in addition to calling for an end to “proxy wars” conducted by the US – but some of his critics have dismissed many of his positions as being conspiratorial in nature. The former Democratic Party candidate is now campaigning as an independent ahead of the November vote.

RFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1774977436561670316
https://twitter.com/i/status/1775338106398372288

Read more …

“The crafted fake news narrative of everything starting from the day of the Russian invasion will no longer wash once Russian forces overthrow the Zelensky government and the West will be humiliated beyond its wildest nightmares..”

• Biden Sinks To New Lows Over Moscow Bombing And RussiaGate Fake News (Jay)

Are we all preparing for the inevitable? Trump returning to the White House? It would seem that certainly the Biden administration is doing just that given recent events. Moscow’s terror attack has taken centre stage of world news in recent days yet not one western journalist seems able to call out the ISIS warning from the U.S. for what it was: sham. And not only the warning was disingenuous but the sheer bad taste vitriol of Washington which was on a level only matched by the suspicious outright and swift rejection that Kiev had no part in the attack. Bad taste seems to be the hallmark of the Biden administration with a failed foreign policy which trails in second place. If Americans didn’t know before that the U.S. could not control two proxy wars on two separate fronts, now they know. As the aid parcels which drop onto Palestinians – sometimes even killing them – makes a statement in itself, it’s interesting to see how Biden is always looking in the past in almost everything he does.

Even RussiaGate has been dragged out of its dank grave and had new life breathed into by Biden’s press people who are now preparing the American public for a Biden failure in December. The biggest fear for Biden is the “hack and leak” attack which pushed many democrats over a line with Hillary Clinton when her emails revealed what an utterly morose political figure she is. Who could forget that “there are terrorists there [in Syria] but they’re on our side” comment when talking about the early days of the Syrian crisis which started in 2011? For Biden, there must be many troves for the Russians to leak at the given moment, with corruption in Ukraine being at the top of the list. But one salient question might be, does Putin even need to worry about “election interference”? This comical expression, coined by the Americans and slung at Moscow is done in such a fashion as to trick the humble observer that it was a dirty Russian invention despite the Americans practically inventing the practice and using it to their own means for the last 70 years in Latin America.

The reality is that Putin doesn’t need to interfere. He’s on a win-win ticket as, if Biden is re-elected the then senile U.S. president will be defeated in Ukraine and the American people will not only see all of the corruption stories emerge from that country but also the link between the Obama administration’s election meddling in 2014 to overthrow a Russian-aligned leader and today’s war. The crafted fake news narrative of everything starting from the day of the Russian invasion will no longer wash once Russian forces overthrow the Zelensky government and the West will be humiliated beyond its wildest nightmares into signing whatever is handed to them. This, in part, explains how the NATO press machine – and most European governments – are going into overdrive on the subject of the need to beef up Europe’s military capabilities. This is entirely a ruse to act as a distraction for when Kiev falls and western elites are ready with their soundbites. The Russians are coming. We told you so.

Read more …

“As the Court stated at the hearing, Defendant filed his motion without any evidence..”

• Judge Denies Hunter Biden Motions to Dismiss Tax Charges (Turley)

Despite hours of argument by the counsel for Hunter Biden, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Scarsi denied his eight motions to dismiss tax charges with a stringing rebuke that the defense omits one thing from its argument: actual evidence. Hunter Biden has been arguing that he is the victim of selective prosecution despite a documented history of receiving special treatment as the son of the President. However, he has proven a key witness against himself in swatting down defenses raised by his counsel and publishing self-incriminating facts in his book. The filings also did not address the fact that the Justice Department not only allowed the statute of limitations to run on major crimes, but sought to finalize an obscene plea agreement with no jail time for Hunter. It only fell apart when a judge decided to ask a couple of cursory questions of the prosecutor, who admitted that he had never seen an agreement this generous for a defendant.

Special Counsel David Weiss noted in his filing that they filed new charges only after Hunter’s legal counsel refused to change the agreement and insisted that it remained fully enforceable. One only has to look at the series of superseding indictments against Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., to see how Hunter continues to receive special treatment. Rather than the four original counts, Menendez now faces 18 counts with his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, and alleged co-conspirators Wael Hana and Fred Daibes. What is most notable is not the proliferation of counts but the lack of comparative charges in the pending case against Hunter Biden. Some of us have long raised concerns over the striking similarity in the alleged conduct in both cases, but the absence of similar charges against the president’s son. Judge Scarsi made fast work of the Biden filings as entirely insufficient to dismiss these charges. Abby Lowell and the defense team seem to be doubling down on the same claims despite the uniform rejection by courts.

The judge noted: “As the Court stated at the hearing, Defendant filed his motion without any evidence. The motion is remarkable in that it fails to include a single declaration, exhibit, or request for judicial notice. Instead, Defendant cites portions of various Internet news sources, social media posts, and legal blogs. These citations, however, are not evidence.” Lowell disagreed with the court’s order and pledged “to vigorously pursue Mr. Biden’s challenges to the abnormal way the Special Counsel handled this investigation and charged the case.” In truth, the “abnormal” treatment of Hunter was giving him advance notice of attempts to interview him and searches of Biden property. It was allowing the statute of limitations to run despite having an agreement on the table to keep potential felonies alive. It was trying to secure a plea agreement that even the prosecutor admitted in court was like nothing he had ever seen in his career.

The court even makes reference to Schrödinger’s cat, a paradox suggested by physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935 that a cat in a thought experiment could be viewed simultaneously both alive and dead: “The Court understands that its decision rests on an interpretation of the agreement neither party advocated—that the Diversion Agreement is a binding contract but performance of its terms is not yet required. The Court, therefore, invites the parties to stipulate to further pretrial motion practice to the extent there are additional disputes that arise from the Court’s Schrödinger’s cat-esque construction of Defendant’s immunity under the Diversion Agreement.”

Bobulinski

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“April Fools! Only kidding. Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren’t women at all, but men, every last one of them.”

• “#arrestme”: JK Rowling Dares Scotland to Enforce Anti-Free Speech Law (Turley)

We have previously discussed the growing anti-free speech movement in Scotland with the expanding criminalization of political and religious speech. The new Scottish law is a perfect nightmare for free speech, expanding the potential of a jail sentence for merely insulting language. In response, author JK Rowling has taken a stand and dared the Scottish police to come and arrest her for criticizing transgender status. The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 illustrates how these laws create a slippery slope of speech criminalization as more and more speech is banned. We previously discussed the law when it was first introduced. The new crime covers “stirring up hatred” relating to age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex. That crime covers insulting comments and anything reasonably “that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive.”

It is enough that a person is found to have likely understood that the comments would be abusive or insulting as opposed to intending to be abusive or insulting. For that ill-defined crime, you can be sent to jail for seven years. Police officers are currently being given a two-hour training program to enforcing the law. Rowling has been the target of a global campaign due to her rejection of transgender laws and policies. Many on the left have unleashed book bans and burnings. I have been critical of that campaign. Even third parties who have supported Rowling’s right to free speech have been targeted in cancel campaigns. On April 1, Rowling posted a reference to various trans campaigners and other individuals as women. She then ended the thread with “April Fools! Only kidding. Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren’t women at all, but men, every last one of them.”

She stated “Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal.” Even if meant as a joke, Scottish censorship laws have never been a laughing matter with comedians raising objections. That could clearly fall within the law. The law is so broad that it allows arbitrary enforcement. To that end, Rowling made it plain: “I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.#arrestme.” The law is a disgrace, but hardly new. Free speech has been in a free fall in the United Kingdom as well as other Western countries. I discuss this trend in my new book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.

The decline of free speech in the United Kingdom has long been a concern for free speech advocates. A man was convicted for sending a tweet while drunk referring to dead soldiers. Another was arrested for an anti-police t-shirt. Another was arrested for calling the Irish boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend a “leprechaun.” Yet another was arrested for singing “Kung Fu Fighting.” A teenager was arrested for protesting outside of a Scientology center with a sign calling the religion a “cult.” We also discussed the arrest of a woman who was praying to herself near an abortion clinic. English courts have seen criminalized “toxic ideologies” as part of this crackdown on free speech. Scotland has now pulled ahead in the race to the bottom of speech criminalization. The home of David Hume and Adam Smith is now imposing laws as stringent as those founds in Iran, Russia, and China. It is a shocking denial of a right that once defined Western Civilization

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Legend

 

 

Hitchens

 

 

VdB
https://twitter.com/i/status/1775285512426660206

 

 

1903

 

 

 

 

Baby owl

 

 

Alien

 

 

Catfish

 

 

Baby elephant

 

 

Faa Sai
https://twitter.com/i/status/1775051957352235364

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle December 7 2023

Dec 072023
 
 December 7, 2023  Posted by at 9:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  59 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Self-Portrait with Straw Hat Aug-Sep 1887

 

• Amid Fear of Trump ‘Dictatorship’, Some See Assassination (Robert Bridge)
• The ‘Jan. 6 Jurisprudence’ About to Be Unleashed on Trump (Julie Kelly)
• Israel Headed for Strategic Defeat in Gaza (Scott Ritter)
• Erdogan Sees Netanyahu Balancing On Brink Of Collapse (TASS)
• Putin Visits to UAE, Saudi Arabia Prompted by Global Dynamics of Gaza War (Sp.)
• Russia Will Attack NATO – Biden (RT)
• US Is Withholding Aid To Push Ukraine Towards Negotiations With Russia (MoA)
• Is Ukraine Aid ‘Dead’? (Sp.)
• Yellen Says Ukraine’s Defeat Would Be Fault of the US (Sp.)
• US Aid To Ukraine Laundered Back To Military-Industrial Complex – Massie (RT)
• Ukraine Won’t Get Operational Pause in Winter – Scott Ritter (Sp.)
• Ramaswamy in GOP Presidential Debate Says Ukraine Conflict ‘Pointless’ (Sp.)
• Hunter Biden Threatened With Contempt Of Congress If He Bails On Testimony
• US State Dept Sued For Conspiring To Censor American Media Companies (ZH)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UNDER THE CLOUDS OF WAR, IT IS HUMANITY HANGING ON THE CROSS OF IRON

 

 

Nap/Ritter

 

 

 

 

Ireland

 

 

Escobar

 

 

 

 

First thing they did was try to undo everything Trump did.

“..by the end of his ninth day at the White House, Biden had signed 40 executive orders, actions, and presidential memorandum – an all-time record..”

• Amid Fear of Trump ‘Dictatorship’, Some See Assassination (Robert Bridge)

As polls show Donald Trump has taken a broad lead over U.S. President Joe Biden in five battleground states, the Liberal media has shifted into full-panic mode, while making some not-so-subtle calls for the Orange Man’s ‘elimination.’ Whether real or imagined, Washington, D.C. appears to be heading for its own ‘Caesarian moment’ as the mainstream media is talking up the prospects of a dictatorship descending upon the fair land should a Trump restoration come to pass. “Are you afraid of a Donald Trump dictatorship,” asked Greg Sargent in an opinion piece in The Washington Post. “Well, know this: The only thing you have to fear is fear of Tyrannus Trumpus itself.”

Brace yourself, dear reader, for the remainder of the hit piece is littered with no less preposterous forms of government rule to describe Donald Trump, without ever providing an iota of proof to support the claims: “authoritarian rule,” “full-blown autocracy,” Trumpian tyranny,” “dictatorial intentions,” “despotism,” “threat to democracy,” “antidemocratic menace,” violent coup.” and “autocratic threat.” It’s just a little ironic that for all the Liberal handwringing over the possibility of The Donald seizing “autocratic powers” come November, there was no such consternation when Joe Biden behaved worse than any Caligula just hours after being elected in 2020.

The septuagenarian leader, alone at his desk and donning a black mask, signed off on dozens of executive orders that served as a death sentence for: a viable U.S.-Mexico border wall; the $9 billion, 1,200-mile Keystone XL pipeline from Canada that would have made America energy independent; biological males from using the female bathrooms and changing rooms, and a raft of other issues that were resolved without an ounce of congressional debate. Incredibly, by the end of his ninth day at the White House, Biden had signed 40 executive orders, actions, and presidential memorandum – an all-time record. Despite all of this, Biden is now acting like he is the Maginot Line against the possibility of all-out tyranny/ authoritarianism/ dictatorship/ autocracy, take your pick.

“If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running. But we cannot let him win,” the 81-year-old Democrat told a fundraiser event in Massachusetts. In a cloud of self-righteousness and grand delusion, the Liberals sincerely believe that Trump is about to enjoy, in the words of Robert Kagan, the premier neocon who co-wrote the infamous tract Project for a New American Century, “a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and it is getting shorter every day.” Unfortunately, Kagan didn’t think to apply the brakes there, but went on to provide an apocalyptic-sounding fender-bender that many people took as the latest call to ‘take out’ Trump, the upcoming “president for life.”

“Are we going to do anything about it? To shift metaphors, if we thought there was a 50 percent chance of an asteroid crashing into North America a year from now, would we be content to hope that it wouldn’t? Or would we be taking every conceivable measure to try to stop it, including many things that might not work but that, given the magnitude of the crisis, must be tried anyway?” [..] Maybe Trump, should he be re-elected, will focus his attention on media harassment. In the meantime, however, he seems to be having fun trolling his opponents. Trump mocked questions about ‘dictatorial rule’ this week, saying he would be a dictator only on “day one,” and then he’s going to shut down the border and get to drilling for oil. “After that, I’m not a dictator, OK?” It’s tempting to ask how the ancient Romans would have responded to such a deal.

Read more …

“..Washington “is the worst possible place for any Jan. 6 defendant, but especially Donald Trump, to have a trial.”

• The ‘Jan. 6 Jurisprudence’ About to Be Unleashed on Trump (Julie Kelly)

Defense attorneys have coined the term “January 6 Jurisprudence” to describe the treatment received by the more than 1,200 defendants arrested so far in connection with the events of Jan. 6, 2021. This carve-out legal system involves the unprecedented and possibly unlawful use of a corporate evidence-tampering statute; excessive prison sentences and indefinite periods of pretrial incarceration; and the designation of nonviolent offenses as federal crimes of terrorism. A universal feature is the requirement that a Jan. 6 defendant, usually a supporter of Donald Trump, face trial in Washington, D.C., a city overwhelmingly populated by Democrats. Federal judges have denied every change of venue motion filed in Jan. 6 cases, arguing those who protested at the Capitol can get a fair trial in the nation’s capital. The results so far appear to contradict the court’s collective conclusion.

Court records show the jury selection process has repeatedly revealed a strong degree of bias against anyone tied to Jan. 6. At least 130 defendants have been convicted at trial – not one has been acquitted by a jury – and hundreds have been sentenced to prison time ranging from seven days to 22 years. Defense lawyers say this track record helps explain why the vast majority of defendants have opted for a plea deal rather than go to trial. This is the same environment that now awaits the former president as he prepares to stand trial in Washington on March 4, 2024 for election interference, in addition to an array of criminal and civil cases against him elsewhere. While Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team and Trump’s counsel spar over a number of issues, perhaps the biggest dispute will concern whether it will be possible to seat an impartial jury for the presumptive 2024 GOP nominee in a city that voted 92% for Joe Biden in 2020.

After Smith indicted Trump in August, a Jan. 6 defense attorney who is not representing the former president, J. Daniel Hull, told the New York Times that Washington “is the worst possible place for any Jan. 6 defendant, but especially Donald Trump, to have a trial.” U.S. District Court Judge Tanya S. Chutkan recently set a jury selection schedule for Smith’s four-count indictment against Trump for the events of Jan. 6. She ordered both parties to begin developing a questionnaire, due Jan. 9, 2024, that hundreds of D.C. residents will be asked to complete so the court can begin the initial step of weeding out unqualified jurors. Stakes are high for both sides. Trump’s lawyers must navigate constraints on how many jurors can be stricken from consideration to ensure their client gets a fair trial. The Department of Justice must convince the American people that a case brought by a Democratic administration and handled by a Democratic-appointed judge with a record of inflammatory statements about the former president will be heard by unbiased jurors.

The Sixth Amendment guarantees, among other rights, “the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.” In extreme cases, criminal defendants can petition to move their trial out of the prosecuting jurisdiction for a number of reasons, not the least of which is sustained, negative press coverage that taints the jury pool. Trump’s lawyers are not discussing their strategy publicly, but sources have indicated to RealClearInvestigations that the defense will file a change of venue motion in the next month or two. Given the partisan composition of Washington, saturation coverage of the former president’s ongoing legal woes, and the city’s relatively small population, Trump will have a strong argument in favor of moving the trial outside of the nation’s capital. Yet a review of Jan. 6 cases to date suggests the odds are against that. Not a single judge on the D.C. District Court has granted a change of venue motion even for high-profile trials such as those for members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, the so-called “militia” groups involved in the Capitol protest

Read more …

“War, the Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz famously noted, is politics by other means. Hamas has proven the maxim to its fullest extent, accomplishing politically that which could only be initiated by Israel’s criminal use of force against the Palestinian people.”

• Israel Headed for Strategic Defeat in Gaza (Scott Ritter)

The attack carried out by Hamas on October 7 against Israeli military positions and settlements which, collectively, formed what is known as the “Gaza barrier system”, triggered a massive Israeli military response. There are two aspects of this cause-and-effect relationship that stand out. First, and perhaps most importantly, it was the goal and objective of Hamas to have Israel respond impulsively. Hamas did not have to think out of the box, so to speak, to imagine such a reaction—since 2006, it has been established and well-known Israeli policy to conduct military campaign based upon the premise of collective punishment of a civilian population. Moreover, given the Israeli predilection for revenge that dates to the massacre of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich summer Olympics, a massive military incursion into Gaza to hold to account those responsible for the October 7 attacks was likewise as predictable as snow falling in Siberia in the wintertime.

Second, and less predictable than the first, was the poor performance of the Israeli security establishment, including the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and Israeli intelligence. Not only did the Israeli security forces fail to act on what appears to have been ample evidence pointing to a Hamas attack along the lines of that executed on October 7, but once the Hamas attack began, the failure of the IDF to defend against the attack, and the plodding, indiscriminate nature of the Israeli counterattack, which appears to have inflicted significant casualties on Israeli civilians that the Israeli authorities have attributed to the Hamas attackers, seriously eroded the notion of the invincibility and infallibility of the Israeli military and security establishment. But this was only the beginning of what would amount to a strategic Israeli defeat at the hands of Hamas. The Israelis proceeded to mobilize some 300,000 reservists, most of whom were sent to the Gaza front.

While these forces were assembled, the Israeli Air Force began a bombing campaign against the civilian infrastructure of Gaza, including hospitals, mosques, schools, and refugee camps, which shocked the world in terms of its lethality. By ignoring the fundamental precepts of international humanitarian law, Israel allowed itself to be characterized as a practitioner of genocide, and its actions against Gaza as war crimes. This is the core of the Hamas victory—the political defeat of Israel on the global stage, where international sympathies rapidly aligned with the people of Gaza and Palestine, and away from Israel. War, the Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz famously noted, is politics by other means. Hamas has proven the maxim to its fullest extent, accomplishing politically that which could only be initiated by Israel’s criminal use of force against the Palestinian people.

But even as international pressure began to accumulate for Israel to halt its offensive, Hamas was able to achieve what many outside observers had believed to be unthinkable—it fought the IDF to a standstill in Gaza itself, inflicting significant human and material losses on the IDF. After declaring that Israel would never agree to a ceasefire or an exchange of prisoners with Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suddenly caved into international pressure to sign up for what became a six-day “pause” where humanitarian goods were delivered to the Palestinian civilians in Gaza, and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel were exchanged for hostages seized by Hamas on October 7.

One of the major reasons for this decision lay not in the extreme pressure being put on Israel by the United States and its European allies for such an outcome, but the fact that the IDF was suffering serious losses on the battlefield in Gaza and along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, where Hezbollah was engaged in military operations in support of Hamas. The casualties among Israeli main battle tanks were unsustainable, and the morale of the IDF soldiers was collapsing—indeed, Israel had to courts-martial two IDF officers who withdrew their battalion from the Gaza battlefield under pressure from Hamas.

Ritter

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“This coalition is breaking apart. Don’t think that they are strong, they will quit [politics]. We already said 50 to 60 days ago that Netanyahu is going away..”

• Erdogan Sees Netanyahu Balancing On Brink Of Collapse (TASS)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is balancing on the verge of collapse, something that he may indicate any time soon, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. “Israeli Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu is on the brink of collapse or bankruptcy right now. And he may make such an announcement at any moment,” the state-run Anadolu agency quoted the Turkish president as saying upon returning from Qatar. “And then there is the West which connives with the wrongdoings of both Netanyahu and his administration. Fortunately, the West has largely reconsidered its view of Israel since October 7,” Erdogan told Turkish journalists.

Erdogan described the ruling coalition in Israel as unhealthy. “This coalition is breaking apart. Don’t think that they are strong, they will quit [politics]. We already said 50 to 60 days ago that Netanyahu is going away,” the Turkish leader said. “Now, certain people emerge who are telling Israel: ‘We are tired of feeding you’,” he maintained. “Look at France that in the early days was making statements of support [for Israel]. Now French President [Emmanuel] Macron is making completely different statements,” the Turkish president said. “Many other Western countries, too, are no longer making the statements of the kind they were making in the first days [of the conflict],” Erdogan noted as he urged patience before the world revisits its attitude toward Israel’s actions.

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“For the Gulf States, relations with Russia are seen as an essential leverage in adapting to their changing relationship with the US..”

• Putin Visits to UAE, Saudi Arabia Prompted by Global Dynamics of Gaza War (Sp.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday to meet with UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and discuss bilateral, regional, and international affairs. As part of his brief Middle East tour, the Russian leader is also visiting Saudi Arabia, while later hosting Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Moscow. Vladimir Putin’s visit to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia could be used by the Arab countries “as a signal, perhaps to the West,” to show that “we have other options and we’re not really happy with your policy towards Gaza,” Abdulaziz Algashian, a Saudi political analyst, told Sputnik. The Russian President’s trip to the Middle East comes amid turbulent developments in the region, with the Russian leader acutely aware of the “international dynamics of the Gaza war,” pointed out Algashian. He added that the Arab countries might seek to “leverage this visit and relations with Russia” relative to the Palestinian issue.

“For the Gulf States, relations with Russia are seen as an essential leverage in adapting to their changing relationship with the US,” agreed Sami Hamdi, Saudi political analyst and head of the International Interest, a risk analysis group. “There are concerns in the Gulf capitals that the US is no longer committed to their security or their interests, and there is therefore a belief that relations with Russia are essential in order to both advance their interests by pursuing alternative alliance structures and simultaneously strongarm Washington into upholding its commitment to them,” he pointed out. Looking ahead, “the extent of future cooperation with Russia as it stands remains dependent on the nature of the US-Gulf relationship. Although Gulf States will preserve their ties, the eagerness to expand those ties will correlate and fluctuate in accordance with the nature of their relationship with the US,” the Saudi political analyst speculated.

On a broader scale, there are a wide swathe of reasons for why Vladimir Putin chose this moment to embark upon his first foray to the region since 2019, underscored Algashian, a research fellow with SEPAD international research network and collaborative project based at Lancaster University’s Richardson Institute. These range from the Middle East’s resentment over the West’s stance on Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza to a need for further “entrenching” of economic relations, the pundit stressed.

Read more …

“Washington’s speculations about a potential stand-off show that “[US] authorities have finally lost touch with reality..”

• Russia Will Attack NATO – Biden (RT)

If Russia prevails in the Ukraine conflict, it may find itself in a position to launch an attack on NATO that could trigger a global conflict involving American troops, US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday, when he urged Congress to pass a $111 billion national security package. The bill, which was backed by Democrats, included aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. He also lashed out at Republicans – who have been reluctant to support the measure due to disputes over security at the southern US border, saying that by doing so, they “are willing to give [Russian President Vladimir] Putin the greatest gift he could hope for.” “If Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there,” Biden argued. “If Putin attacks a NATO ally…, well, we’ve committed as a NATO member that we’d defend every inch of NATO territory,” he stated, adding that Washington would like to avert this kind of a stand-off because it could result in “American troops fighting Russian troops.”

However, Republicans remained unconvinced, blocking the spending package in the Senate, with the final vote being 49 in favor and 51 against. The measure was opposed by all GOP lawmakers, as well as independent Senator Bernie Sanders, who normally votes with Democrats, but this time expressed concerns about Israel’s military strategy in the conflict with Hamas. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also voted “no” in order to have a chance to reintroduce the package later. Moscow’s ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov, commenting on Biden’s remarks about a potential clash between Russia and NATO, suggested that “such bogeyman stories are fabricated in order to justify to taxpayers and sober-minded political forces the huge expenses for ‘containing’ the Russian Federation.” Washington’s speculations about a potential stand-off show that “[US] authorities have finally lost touch with reality,” he added. “This kind of provocative rhetoric is unacceptable for a responsible nuclear state.”

Biden

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“..the Republicans as well as the Democrats, likely in consent with the White House, have so far blocked all further aid.”

• US Is Withholding Aid To Push Ukraine Towards Negotiations With Russia (MoA)

It would have been easy for the Democrats to commit a few billions for border security. But Biden wants to end the war in Ukraine. Starving it of money is the easiest way to push it towards negotiations. All this was planned by the Pentagon think tank RAND which, early this year, published a study about how to end the war in Ukraine: “Avoiding a Long War – U.S. Policy and the Trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict” (A 2019 study by RAND, Extending Russia – Competing from Advantageous Ground, had recommended to openly arm Ukraine to keep Russia busy. It has been the basis of U.S. Ukraine policy ever since.)

But in early 2023 RAND had turned a corner and argued that a prolonged war in Ukraine will be too costly for the U.S. to sustain: “The biggest Ukraine problem the White House currently has is President Vladimir Zelenski who has rejected any and all negotiations with Russia.” The RAND study had foreseen such a situation and had found ways to push Ukraine towards talks with Russia: “[T]he United States could decide to condition future military aid on a Ukrainian commitment to negotiations. Setting conditions on aid to Ukraine would address a primary source of Kyiv’s optimism that may be prolonging the war: a belief that Western aid will continue indefinitely or grow in quality and quantity. At the same time, the United States could also promise more aid for the postwar period to address Ukraine’s fears about the durability of peace. Washington has done so in other cases, …”
…
Linking aid to Ukrainian willingness to negotiate has been anathema in Western policy discussions and for good reason: Ukraine is defending itself against unprovoked Russian aggression. However, the U.S. calculus may change as the costs and risks of the war mount. And the use of this U.S. lever can be calibrated. For example, the United States could level off aid, not dramatically reduce it, if Ukraine does not negotiate. And, again, a decision to level off wartime support pending negotiations can be made in tandem with promises about postwar sustained increases in assistance over the long term. That was a nice plan. But how well the aid lever can be calibrated depends of course on Congress, not on the president’s say so.

There are also downsides to withholding or giving aid promises: “Clarifying the future of U.S. aid to Ukraine could create perverse incentives depending on how the policy is implemented. Committing to increased wartime assistance to Ukraine to reduce Russian optimism could embolden the Ukrainians to obstruct negotiations, blame failure on Moscow, and gain more Western support. Announcing a decrease or leveling off in assistance to Ukraine to reduce Kyiv’s optimism about the war could lead Russia to see the move as a signal of waning U.S. support for Ukraine. If it took this view, Russia might keep fighting in the hope that the United States would give up on Ukraine entirely. Although recognizing that Ukraine is fighting a defensive war for survival and Russia an aggressive war of aggrandizement, the United States would nonetheless have to carefully and dispassionately monitor events and target its efforts to create the intended effect on whichever side’s optimism is determined to be the key impediment to starting talks.

This would probably have been a good way to go if Biden had control over dispensing or withholding funds to Kiev. But the Republicans as well as the Democrats, likely in consent with the White House, have so far blocked all further aid. Their current path then seems to be a different one towards negotiations with Russia – regime change in Kiev. President Zelenski is unwilling to take up peace talks. If he can be pushed out of office during the next few months his likely replacement, General Zaluzny, will probably be more inclined to seek an end of the war. Thus the current tactic is to pressure Zelenski into leaving by withholding all future funds. If another Ukrainian leader comes in, aid might again flow to prevent a total takeover of the country by Russia. Still – the aid calibration would be a problem. So maybe giving up and leave, as Biden did in Afghanistan, might be the preferred option.

Read more …

“We remember the old quotes about the money being carted around in Iraq on palettes and not even weighed or metered… I think that that’s what’s happening again in Ukraine.”

• Is Ukraine Aid ‘Dead’? (Sp.)

Investigative journalist Christopher Helali joined Sputnik’s Political Misfits program Wednesday to discuss the growing opposition within the United States towards continued funding for Ukraine’s proxy conflict against Russia. The reported size of the latest proposed foreign aid package – some $110.5 billion – provoked incredulity from host John Kiriakou. “What has the United States not given Ukraine that would have such an enormous price tag?” asked Kirkiakou. Helali said that the “aid package is not only military assistance but also funding for rebuilding, for infrastructure… it’s funding for Ukraine, it’s funding for Israel, it’s also… a very small amount for the Palestinians.”
However Helali clarified that “Ukraine is at the forefront,” noting that the lion’s share of funding in the bill was earmarked for the Kiev regime.

“This is funding for rearmament, for new weapons systems, and things like that,” the analyst stressed. Rampant corruption in Ukraine has repeatedly stymied aspirations to join the European Union and other international bodies. Some Western politicians also point out the very high level of corruption in Ukraine. The business dealings of Hunter Biden in Ukraine, the son of US President Joe Biden, have also come under harsh criticism. President Biden has claimed he had no involvement in his son’s business ventures. “But of course there’s no real oversight,” added Helali, “there’s been a lot of reporting – I’m sure you’ve all been seeing it – about the rampant corruption, some officials have been buying yachts and houses and all sorts of fine luxury items. I think it’s going to be held up because there’s a lot of questions around this amount of money.”

Helali noted the large amounts of money that have gone unaccounted for in previous US-backed military operations, saying, “We remember the old quotes about the money being carted around in Iraq on palettes and not even weighed or metered… I think that that’s what’s happening again in Ukraine.” Funding for Ukraine did in fact fail in the US Senate on Wednesday when the legislative body refused to advance a supplemental foreign aid bill. Republican legislators, led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Mike Johnson, have used the opportunity to call for increased funding for US border security to secure GOP support.

Helali said that increased border funding is a nonstarter for segments of the Democratic Party base, claiming they see US border policy as an ““instrument of oppression” and a “remnant of colonialism and US empire.” The journalist nevertheless believes the Biden administration will be forced to compromise on the issue, claiming, “I think eventually Democrats will have to cave because they need this funding.”

Read more …

Meet the new war expert.

• Yellen Says Ukraine’s Defeat Would Be Fault of the US (Sp.)

US lawmakers are debating a $111 billion supplemental spending package, of which $61 billion would be included for Ukraine. The spending package would also include funding for Israel, Taiwan, and US border security. During a trip to Mexico City on Tuesday, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the US would be responsible for Ukraine’s defeat should Congress fail to approve US President Joe Biden’s latest supplemental spending package, according to media reports. “I’ve talked to members of Congress, my colleagues have. I think they understand this, that this is a dire situation and we can hold ourselves responsible for Ukraine’s defeat if we don’t manage to get this funding to Ukraine that’s needed, and I’m including direct budget support here because that’s utterly essential,” Yellen told the media.

At the US Institute of Peace this week, Andrey Yermak, President Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff, said not receiving this most recent spending package from the US exposes Ukraine to a “big risk” in losing its war. The package would include $61 billion to Ukraine, which is nearly as much as the US has already spent on helping to weaponize the country. The US government has spent more than $75 billion on Ukraine thus far, a figure that does not include all war-related spending which is estimated to be about $113 billion. “Ukraine is just running out of money,” Yellen said. “They’re spending more than every penny they’re taking in, in tax revenue, on military salaries and defense, and they wouldn’t have any schools or hospital or first responders if not for the money we’re sending to them to support them,” added the US Treasury Secretary.

[..] US House Speaker Mike Johnson said Republican support for the Biden Administration latest supplemental spending package will have to include permanent changes to the US border policy. Before any further spending, wrote Johnson, funding is first dependent upon “enactment of transformative change to our nation’s border security laws”. “Second,” Johnson wrote in a letter to Young, “Congress and the American people must be provided with answers to our repeated questions concerning: the Administration’s strategy to prevail in Ukraine; clearly defined and obtainable objectives; transparency and accountability for U.S. taxpayer dollars invested there; and what specific resources are required to achieve victory and a sustainable peace.”

Read more …

“But no one mentions that we have abetted the killing of an entire generation of Ukrainian men that will not be replaced. To fight a war that they cannot win..”

• US Aid To Ukraine Laundered Back To Military-Industrial Complex – Massie (RT)

The US Congress is continuing to vote in favor of sending billions of dollars to Ukraine because a lot of those funds end up being laundered back to the US military-industrial complex, Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie has said. In an interview with Tucker Carlson on X (formerly Twitter) published on Wednesday, the politician was asked to explain why Washington continued to push for more funding for Ukraine despite it becoming obvious that Kiev’s forces “cannot win.” Massie, who has repeatedly voted against sending money to fund Kiev’s operations, alleged that a lot of the funds that are sent to Ukraine ultimately end up “enriching” people within specific US districts and “stockholders, some of whom are congressmen.”

“You know, people are getting rich, so let’s do it. It’s an immoral argument, but it is one. But that’s not the argument they’re making in public,” he said, noting that those supporting the funding of Ukraine with US tax dollars are instead arguing that it is a “moral obligation” to do so. “You’re a bad person if you’re against this,” he complained, referring to a statement recently made by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who suggested that failing to support “the fight for freedom in Ukraine” meant letting Russian President Vladimir Putin “prevail.” “But no one mentions that we have abetted the killing of an entire generation of Ukrainian men that will not be replaced. To fight a war that they cannot win,” Massie noted.

The congressman surmised that, in order to support the US government’s proposals on Ukraine aid, a person has to be “economically illiterate and morally deficient.” Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden has hit out against Republicans like Massie, who have refused to aid packages to Ukraine, calling the failure to support Kiev “absolutely crazy” and “against US interests.” The US leader has repeatedly pledged that Washington would support Kiev for “as long as it takes” in its conflict with Russia.

Read more …

“..The goal and objective of Russia is demilitarization. Demilitarization could have been done peacefully. Right now it’s being done violently. And it means the absolute destruction of the Ukrainian military. And that is going to happen this winter. It will be destroyed in its totality.”

• Ukraine Won’t Get Operational Pause in Winter – Scott Ritter (Sp.)

It was expected that Zelensky would inform American congressmen about the latest developments on the ground in Ukraine and urge them to disburse over $60 billion for Ukraine.On the same day, the upper chamber failed to vote on a Ukraine aid bill because Democrats threw out GOP border reforms from it. In response, Republicans made it clear that they will not support any further assistance to Kiev unless border measures are included in the legislation. Meanwhile, the current Ukraine military package has almost been exhausted. There are also rumors in the Western press that NATO allies want Zelensky either to hold the talks or to freeze the conflict along the line of contact. Will the Kiev regime be forced to take a pause during the winter season?

“Well, what we won’t see is a pause,” Scott Ritter, former Marine intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector, told Sputnik. “I mean, the Ukrainians and even the collective West, they’re throwing terms out there like: ‘You know, it’s a frozen conflict. We fought them to a standstill.’ No, it’s not a frozen conflict and they haven’t fought the Russians to a standstill. Last winter, you know, the Ukrainians had their victory in Kharkov and Kherson. The Russians were consolidating their defenses, they had mobilized 300,000 men, and they were building the defenses. And so there was a pause that allowed [Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Gen. Valery] Zaluzhny to plan an operation. They had the luxury of time to build the nine, I think they actually built 12 brigades, equipped them, prepared them for this counteroffensive, etc.”

“Right now, we have a situation where the Russians are ready. Those 300,000 are fully trained. The majority of them have not been committed to the battlefield. In addition to that, over 450,000 volunteers and contract soldiers were absorbed. The Russians are at full strength with all the equipment, all the wherewithal. There will be no operational pause. The Ukrainians, on the other hand, have nothing to replace what’s happening. They’re now literally grabbing teenagers and pregnant women and putting them on the battlefield to fill the holes in the lines. There’s nothing coming behind, and the West is out of money. There’s no equipment. The Russians are not going to hit the pause button to give Ukraine a chance to catch their breath. The entire purpose of the Russian approach has been to grind the Ukrainians down to the point of exhaustion. And now we’re there.” [..] nobody is going to give Ukraine a pause, according to Ritter. While Moscow has repeatedly made it clear that it is open to constructive peace negotiations, the absence of Kiev’s initiative would mean the prolongation of the conflict, the former Marine officer believes.

“We’re going to see increasingly the elimination of cohesion on the battlefield as Ukrainians will retreat, as holes will be punched in the line. The Ukrainians are, I believe, in a very short period of time, going to be compelled to make a precipitous retreat back to more defensive positions. And that in itself is a very difficult military maneuver, one which Russia could exploit. You know, if they’re prepared to push them back even further, but this winter will be a winter of continued death and destruction for the Ukrainians. And the Russians will continue to put the pedal to the metal and keep putting the pressure on the Ukrainians. The goal and objective of Russia is demilitarization. Demilitarization could have been done peacefully. Right now it’s being done violently. And it means the absolute destruction of the Ukrainian military. And that is going to happen this winter. It will be destroyed in its totality.”

Read more …

Nikki=Corrupt

• Ramaswamy in GOP Presidential Debate Says Ukraine Conflict ‘Pointless’ (Sp.)

US entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy during the fourth Republican primary presidential debate said the Ukraine conflict is pointless and slammed former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley for not backing efforts to reach a peace deal. “I was the first person to say we need a reasonable peace deal in Ukraine. Now a lot of the neocons are quietly coming along to that position, with the exceptions of Nikki Haley and [President] Joe Biden, who still support what I believe is a pointless war in Ukraine,” Ramaswamy said on Tuesday during the debate in Alabama. Ramaswamy and Haley were joined on stage by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in what some expect to be the final debate of the 2024 primary. Haley maintains 9% support in the Republican Party primary, trailing former US President Donald Trump’s 64% support and DeSantis’ 16% support, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released in November.

Vivek Nikki
https://twitter.com/i/status/1732592114603794574

Read more …

“Hunter Biden is trying to play by his own rules instead of following the rules required of everyone else..”

• Hunter Biden Threatened With Contempt Of Congress If He Bails On Testimony

Hunter Biden will be slapped with contempt of congress if he skips out on his Dec. 13 closed-door deposition, according to a Wednesday letter from House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan to Hunter’s defense attorney, Abbe D. Lowell. “Contrary to the assertions in your letter, there is no ‘choice’ for Mr. Biden to make; the subpoenas compel him to appear for a deposition on December 13. If Mr. Biden does not appear for his deposition on December 13, 2023, the Committees will initiate contempt of Congress proceedings,” reads the letter, issued a week after Lowell suggested that Hunter should instead be allowed to testify publicly.

Hunter was subpoenaed on Nov. 8 to appear for a deposition before the committee. In response, Comer said: “Hunter Biden is trying to play by his own rules instead of following the rules required of everyone else,” adding “Our lawfully issued subpoena to Hunter Biden requires him to appear for a deposition on December 13.” Comer and Jordan are investigating extensive evidence that the Biden family was running an international influence peddling scheme, raking in tens of millions of dollars from foreign business partners despite no obvious product or service in exchange. House lawmakers are also seeking testimony from Hunter’s uncle James Biden, as well as multiple former business associates.

Read more …

“”The State Department is tasked with foreign relations and has no authority over domestic affairs..”

• US State Dept Sued For Conspiring To Censor American Media Companies (ZH)

Following bombshell censorship revelations exposed over the last year, beginning with the Twitter Files, the state of Texas, The Daily Wire, and The Federalist have filed a lawsuit against the US State Department on Tuesday, alleging that the government agency funded censorship technology designed to bankrupt domestic media outlets which have disfavored political opinions. According to the Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak; “The State Department is tasked with foreign relations and has no authority over domestic affairs, yet it took a government office designed for countering foreign terrorist propaganda, the Global Engagement Center (GEC), and unleashed it against Americans engaged in what it claimed was “disinformation,” according to the lawsuit, filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas on Tuesday night by the New Civil Liberties Alliance. It was “one of the most audacious, manipulative, secretive, and gravest abuses of power and infringements of First Amendment rights by the federal government in American history,” said the suit, which also names Secretary of State Antony Blinken and five other officials as defendants.”

Of note, the GEC, founded in 2011 under a different name to combat foreign propaganda in a counterterrorism capacity. In establishing the entity, Congress made clear that “none of the funds authorized” for the program “shall be used for purposes other than countering foreign propaganda.” They of course ignored all that, and turned its focus on Americans according to the complaint, using taxpayer funds to finance and promote censorship shops such as NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which target conservative outlets – ZeroHege included – with the stated goal of killing ad revenue. “Through its Global Engagement Center, the State Department actively intervened in the news-media market to limit the reach and business viability of domestic news organizations by funding censorship technology and private censorship enterprises,” reads a Wednesday press release from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. “The State Department’s mission to obliterate the First Amendment is completely un-American. This agency will not get away with their illegal campaign to silence citizens and publications they disagree with.”

As the lawsuit explains, The Daily Wire, The Federalist, and other conservative news organizations were “branded ‘unreliable’ or ‘risky’ by the government-funded and government-promoted censorship enterprises… starving them of advertising revenue and reducing the circulation of their reporting and speech—all as a direct result of [the State Department’s] unlawful censorship scheme.” The outlets are being represented by The New Civil Liberties Alliance’s Mark Chenoweth, who said that “the federal government cannot do indirectly what the First Amendment forbids it from doing directly.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Piers Corbyn

 

 

Robert Frost

 

 

Cat paws
https://twitter.com/i/status/1732420884194119778

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 31 2023

Aug 312023
 
 August 31, 2023  Posted by at 9:24 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


Pablo Picasso The Dream 1932

 

• US Headed For ‘Hot War’ With Russia – Tucker Carlson (RT)
• Biden Looks to Prevent Future President From Ending Ukraine War (Antiwar)
• Trump Vows To Lock Up Political Enemies If He Returns To White House (G.)
• Ukraine’s Fate Sealed Long Before Failing Counteroffensive (Scott Ritter)
• Ukraine To Review All Draft Exemptions – Zelensky (RT)
• French Troops Reportedly Given Until September 3 to Withdraw From Niger (Sp.)
• Coup In Gabon, Situation In West Africa A Big Issue For Europe – Borrell (RT)
• EU Imports Of Russian LNG Leap By 40% Since Ukraine Invasion (G.)
• Expanded BRICS Set to De-Dollarize the World, Control Global Energy Supply (ET)
• What if Biden Backs Out of the Race? (RCW)
• Majority of Voters Are Skeptical of Possible Biden Impeachment (Manley)
• Hunter Biden Helped Plan State Dinners During Dad’s VP Days (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

One thing you can not do today is not watch the Tucker Carlson interview. I picked some snippets AND the full interview.

“They can’t lose. They will do anything to win. So how do they do that? They’re not going to do COVID again…They’re going to go to war with Russia is what they’re going to do. There will be a hot war between the United States and Russia within the next year…They need to declare war footing in order to assume war powers in order to win. I believe that and I think all the evidence suggests that’s true.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1696853567942819962

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1696842931372429744

 

 

Full interview:

 

 

 

 

Rogan Anthony


https://twitter.com/i/status/1696969298407772388

 

 

Yeadon

 

 

 

 

“..the American empire is in freefall right now – and we’re going to lose the US dollar, and when that happens we’re going to have real poverty here, like Great Depression-level poverty.

And it comes from this war..”

• US Headed For ‘Hot War’ With Russia – Tucker Carlson (RT)

The US proxy war against Russia is likely to become an open war within the next year, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said on Wednesday. The ruling Democrats need the war to keep power and too many Republicans are willing to go along, he added. “They will do anything to win,” Carlson said in an hour-long interview with radio host Adam Carrolla. He argued that another coronavirus lockdown is unlikely, as too many people would refuse to comply, so “they’re going to go to war with Russia, that’s what they’re going to do.” “There will be a hot war between the US and Russia in the next year,” Carlson said. “I don’t think we’ll win it.” “We’re already at war with Russia, of course, we’re funding their enemies,” he added.

The US has allocated over $130 billion for Kiev over the past 18 months for weapons, military equipment, ammunition, and the salaries of government officials. “I think that could easily happen,” the former cable TV host continued. “I think we could ‘Tonkin Gulf’ our way into it, where all of a sudden missiles land in Poland, ‘The Russians did it! Our NATO ally has been attacked! We’re going to war’! I can see that happening very easily.” In August 1964, the US fabricated an incident with the North Vietnamese navy in the Gulf of Tonkin as a pretext to deploy ground troops in South Vietnam. The scenario Carlson described already happened as well, when a Ukrainian air-defense missile struck a village across the Polish border last November, killing two local civilians.

Warsaw and Washington were quick to debunk Kiev’s claim that it had been a Russian strike, however. Carlson argued that the US could “force a peace in Ukraine tonight” by cutting off Kiev’s funding. “Otherwise, and I would bet my house on it, we are going to war with Russia,” he said. “And, of course, the stakes are everything. Life on the planet. These are the two biggest nuclear arsenals in the world, facing off against each other.” The US has “already lost control of the world – the American empire is in freefall right now – and we’re going to lose the US dollar, and when that happens we’re going to have real poverty here, like Great Depression-level poverty.

And it comes from this war,” Carlson told Carolla. He added that most Americans may not be able to see that, but it’s “super obvious” when one leaves the US, even for a short while. Moreover, he argued, the US “crushed” the German economy “when the Biden administration blew up Nord Stream” last September, and its Ukraine policies have done a lot to undermine Western Europe, Washington’s only real ally in the world. Carlson has just returned from Hungary, where he took part in a conference and interviewed Prime Minister Viktor Orban for his new show on X, formerly Twitter. Carlson made Elon Musk’s social media platform his new home after Fox News canceled his top-rated evening show in April, for reasons that have never been made public.

Read more …

The naked power of Raytheon.

• Biden Looks to Prevent Future President From Ending Ukraine War (Antiwar)

The Biden administration is working to reach a deal with Ukraine for long-term military support to keep backing the war with Russia that would be difficult for a future president to exit, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. The effort is part of a commitment made by G7 nations at the recent NATO summit in Vilnius to negotiate their own bilateral security deals with Ukraine. Besides the G7 nations, 18 other countries have agreed to provide long-term military support for Kyiv. The idea of the long-term commitment is to show Russia that it can’t wait out the Biden administration. The Journal report reads: “Western officials are looking for ways to lock in pledges of support and limit future governments’ abilities to backtrack, amid fears in European capitals that Donald Trump, if he recaptures the White House, would seek to scale back aid.” Trump, who escalated US involvement in Ukraine during his term by taking the step to provide Javelin missiles, has said he would end the Ukraine war within “24 hours” if elected in 2024.

The former president is the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination. The Journal report acknowledged that the Biden administration could not legally bind a future president from exiting a deal with Ukraine, but Republican hawks in Congress could make it difficult. During his time as president, Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, but the majority of Republicans in Congress supported exiting the agreement. A US official told the Journal that one proposal being considered for Ukraine would be a memorandum of understanding (MOU), which would not require congressional approval. President Biden has previously floated the idea of an “Israel model” for Ukraine. The US provides Israel with $3.8 billion in military aid each year under a 10-year MOU but does not provide mutual defense guarantees. The Journal report said that French officials have suggested military aid commitments for Ukraine should be over a four-year period.

Read more …

“Do you regret not locking [Clinton] up? And if you’re president again, will you lock people up?” Trump said: “The answer is you have no choice, because they’re doing it to us.”

• Trump Vows To Lock Up Political Enemies If He Returns To White House (G.)

Donald Trump says he will lock up his political enemies if he is president again. In an interview on Tuesday, the rightwing broadcaster Glenn Beck raised Trump’s famous campaign-trail vow to “lock up” Hillary Clinton, his opponent in 2016, a promise Trump did not fulfill in office. Beck said: “Do you regret not locking [Clinton] up? And if you’re president again, will you lock people up?” Trump said: “The answer is you have no choice, because they’re doing it to us.” Trump has encouraged the “lock her up” chant against other opponents but he remains in considerable danger of being locked up himself. Under four indictments, he faces 91 criminal charges related to election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments to a adult film star. He denies wrongdoing and claims to be the victim of political persecution. Trials are scheduled next year.

Earlier this month, Politico calculated that Trump faced a maximum of 641 years in jail. After the addition of 13 racketeering and conspiracy charges in Georgia, Forbes upped the total to more than 717 years. Trump is 77. Both sites noted, however, that if convicted, the former president was unlikely to receive maximum sentences. Nor would convictions bar Trump from running for president or being elected. On that score, Trump dominates national and key state polling regarding the Republican presidential nomination. In his Tuesday interview on BlazeTV, Trump also said he “never hit Biden as hard as I could have” while in office. Trump’s first impeachment concerned attempts to find dirt on rivals including Biden, related to politics and business in Ukraine. Now, in Congress, Trump’s Republican allies are threatening to impeach Biden over unsubstantiated allegations connected to his surviving son, Hunter.

Trump told Beck that Biden was behind the indictments against him. In fact, all were brought by prosecutors independent of the White House: 44 by the justice department special counsel Jack Smith, 34 by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, and 13 by Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton county, Georgia. Trump also claimed “the woman that I never met, that they accused me of rape, that’s being run by a Democrat, a Democrat operative, and paid for by the Democrat [sic] party”. That was a reference to civil claims brought by E Jean Carroll, a writer who says Trump sexually assaulted her in New York in the 1990s. Earlier this year, Trump was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation and fined about $5m. A second trial is due next year.

The judge in the case has said Trump has been adjudicated a rapist. Also facing investigations of his business affairs, Trump said Democrats and other opponents were “sick people … evil people”. The twice impeached, four times indicted, 91 times charged ex-president also told Beck he “always had such great respect for the office of the president and the presidency”.

Read more …

“..the Ukrainian high command will be confronted with the reality that they will need to order a general retreat to more defensive positions..“

• Ukraine’s Fate Sealed Long Before Failing Counteroffensive (Scott Ritter)

While Ukraine, with the support of its NATO allies, has accrued sufficient military capacity to engage in concerted military operations against Russia since the counteroffensive began in early June, the reality is that this effort is unsustainable. In short, Ukraine has reached the end of its tether. While the tactical situation along the line of contact with Russia fluctuates daily, and Ukraine has been able to achieve some limited success in certain areas, the cost that comes with these successes has been so high that Ukraine lacks not only the ability to exploit these successes, but is in danger of not being able to maintain a military presence along the entirety of the frontline sufficient to hold back any concerted Russian offensive operations.

The heavy casualties suffered by Ukraine, combined with the failure of the counteroffensive to breach even the first line of the prepared Russian defenses, have prompted the Ukrainian army to commit its strategic reserve into the fight. This reserve, consisting of some of the best trained and equipped forces available to the Ukrainians, was meant to exploit the advances made by the initial offensive operations. The fact that the strategic reserve has been committed to achieve objectives that all preceding attacking units had failed to accomplish only underscores the futility of the Ukrainian effort, and the inevitability of its ultimate defeat.

The collapse of Ukrainian military cohesion along the line of contact with Russia is occurring even as the last vestige of the Ukrainian counteroffensive bleeds itself white in the fields of Zaporozhye. Because of battlefield losses suffered by Ukraine in the months leading up to the initiation of the June counteroffensive (mainly, but not exclusively, in the Battle for Artemovsk), Ukrainian forces were stretched thin as units were reshuffled along the front to replace those that had been depleted in battle. As the counteroffensive floundered, military resources were withdrawn from other sectors of the front to make up for the losses.

This thinning of the Ukrainian lines provided opportunities for the Russian forces, leading to major advances in the vicinity of Kupyansk. As Ukrainian losses continue, this thinning will only become more prevalent, creating gaps in the Ukrainian defenses which can be exploited by a Russian military which has upwards of 200,000 well-trained, well-equipped reserves which have yet to be committed into the battle. This cause-effect relationship will continue, since Ukraine has no more reserves available to replace battlefield losses which will continue to accrue all along the line of contact. Eventually, the Ukrainian posture will be unsustainable, and the Ukrainian high command will be confronted with the reality that they will need to order a general retreat to more defensive positions—perhaps as far back as the right bank of the Dnepr River—or face the inevitability of the total destruction of their army.

Read more …

“Earlier this week, mobile operator Kievstar mentioned “400,000 heroes” who had “gone to eternity” in a charity drive, before quickly deleting the post.”

• Ukraine To Review All Draft Exemptions – Zelensky (RT)

The National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) of Ukraine decided on Wednesday to review every single draft exemption issued since the start of the conflict with Russia, citing widespread corruption. “All cases where [exemption] decisions are clearly groundless and illegal should be dealt with by law enforcement,” President Vladimir Zelensky announced after the NSDC meeting. The council also decided to fully digitize the entire Armed Forces database and revise the criteria for determining fitness for military service, to prevent “manipulation”and give field commanders more opportunities to find appropriate roles for soldiers. NSDC head Aleksey Danilov said that Ukraine is rolling out a “newly approved” plan for further mobilization, calling up as many men as it may need to continue the fighting.

Zelensky sacked the heads of all enlistment offices in early August, after the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) announced the discovery of a “widespread conspiracy” to forge health exemptions by military-medical commissions in 11 regions of the country. The conspirators allegedly charged up to $6,000 for fraudulent papers, which draft-dodgers then used to leave the country. The government in Kiev has ordered several waves of conscription since the hostilities with Russia escalated in February 2022. In late June, recruitment centers in several regions stopped sending individual summons, issuing blanket notifications to all men of military age instead.

After Zelensky’s purge of enlistment commissioners, the Financial Times reported that some fraudulent exemptions could cost up to $10,000, and that almost 20,000 Ukrainians have been caught trying to dodge the draft, citing official government figures. The BBC spoke of a widespread social media movement to help the draft-dodgers, with groups with as many as 100,000 members offering tips, tricks and other assistance. Meanwhile, photos posted on social media in recent months have shown cemeteries across Ukraine rapidly filling up, due to the death toll of the grinding offensive against Russian strongholds in the south. Earlier this week, mobile operator Kievstar mentioned “400,000 heroes” who had “gone to eternity” in a charity drive, before quickly deleting the post.

Read more …

Only…They can’t fire at them and give France an excuse to invade..

• French Troops Reportedly Given Until September 3 to Withdraw From Niger (Sp.)

Niger’s National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP) has reportedly demanded the complete withdrawal of French troops from the West African country by September 3. Earlier in the day, Saudi media reported the CNSP had announced the annulment of all security and military agreements with France. By the end of the week, supporters of the pullout are going to stage an indefinite protest against the presence of the French military in Niger. Some residents have reportedly demanded that the authorities cut water and power supply to the French base, as well as halt food deliveries.

Last week, the Nigerien Foreign Ministry called on French Ambassador Sylvain Itte to leave the country within 48 hours. Paris said it took note of Niger’s request to the ambassador, but noted Niger’s military leadership has no authority to make such decisions. On July 26, Niger’s presidential guard ousted and detained President Mohamed Bazoum. The guard’s commander, Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, proclaimed himself the president of the caretaker CNSP-led government. Most Western countries as well as ECOWAS condemned it. In early August, ECOWAS adopted a plan for a potential military intervention in Niger.

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“..how we can improve our policy in respect with these countries..”

Decades too late.

• Coup In Gabon, Situation In West Africa A Big Issue For Europe – Borrell (RT)

European Union defense ministers will meet to discuss the situation in the Central African state of Gabon, after soldiers of the former French colony announced earlier that they had assumed control, the bloc’s foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell said on Wednesday. “If this is confirmed, it is another military coup which increases instability in the whole region,” Borrell said, during a meeting of EU defense ministers in the Spanish city of Toledo reported-on by Reuters. A group of Gabonese soldiers appeared on national television in the early hours of Wednesday, saying they had dissolved state institutions and canceled the results of the country’s disputed elections.

The move came after Gabon’s longtime leader, Ali Bongo, was declared the winner of last week’s presidential election, giving him the green light to govern for a third term. The soldiers denounced the “irresponsible, unpredictable governance” of Bongo, claiming his 14 years in office had resulted in a “deterioration in social cohesion that risks leading the country into chaos.” The coup in Gabon is the latest in a series of military takeovers in Africa in recent years, coming just weeks after soldiers seized power in Niger. The new military rulers in Niger, another former French colony, have refused to release ousted President Mohamed Bazoum and restore democratic rule, despite pressure from the 15-nation West African Regional bloc, ECOWAS.

The regional authority has activated a standby force for a military intervention backed by France, which it has threatened to use against the coup leaders in Niamey if diplomatic efforts fail. Mali and Burkina Faso, both military-ruled countries, have warned against armed action directed at their counterparts in Niger. While expressing concern about the situation in Gabon, which has a population of nearly 2.5 million, Borrell stated that coups in other parts of the continent are “a big issue for Europe.” “The whole area, starting with Central African Republic, then Mali, then Burkina Faso, now Niger, maybe Gabon, it’s in a very difficult situation and certainly the [EU] ministers… have to have a deep thought on what is going on there and how we can improve our policy in respect with these countries,” he said.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1697003725531779096

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Ha! Ha! Sanctions.

• EU Imports Of Russian LNG Leap By 40% Since Ukraine Invasion (G.)

EU imports of Russian liquified natural gas (LNG) have increased by 40% since the invasion of Ukraine despite efforts to cut down supplies. Member states have bought more than half of Russia’s LNG on the market in the first seven months of this year, according to analysis of data by Kpler, which tracks marine and tanker traffic. Spain and Belgium, which acts as major gateways for LNG supplies to the bloc, have emerged as the second and third-biggest customers of Russian LNG respectively after China. “EU countries now buy the majority of Russia’s supply, propping up one of the Kremlin’s most important sources of revenue,” said Jonathan Noronha-Gant, a senior fossil fuel campaigner at the anti-corruption group Global Witness, which did the analysis.

Europe’s pipeline gas flows from Russia have fallen to historic lows since the invasion last year as countries wean themselves off it, but to make up for the shortfall shipments of cooled LNG from all over the world, including Russia, have surged and are not subject to any EU sanctions. EU countries bought 22m cubic metres of Russian LNG between January and July 2023, compared with 15m during the same period in 2021, Global Witness said. “Buying Russian gas has the same impact as buying Russian oil. Both fund the war in Ukraine, and every euro means more bloodshed. While European countries decry the war, they’re putting money into Putin’s pockets,” Noronha-Gant said. “These countries should align their actions with their words by banning the trade of Russian LNG that is fuelling both the war and the climate crisis.”

Spain and Belgian said the numbers did not reflect national purchasing but the fact that their ports were major gateways for the rest of the continent. European leaders spent 2022 reducing their reliance on Russian energy and trying to build alternative supplies after the country’s president, Vladimir Putin, closed off the gas taps to Europe. The EU imposed sanctions on imports of Russian oil and coal after Moscow’s forces invaded Ukraine in February last year. It also banned Russian entities from storing gas in the bloc and prohibited most new investments in the Russian energy sector. Fears of winter blackouts led to people in many countries being asked to turn down their heating thermostats by 1C and night-time illumination of public buildings across the bloc, including the Eiffel Tower, was stopped. In some cities street lights were turned off after midnight to save energy.

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Irreversible.

• Expanded BRICS Set to De-Dollarize the World, Control Global Energy Supply (ET)

“The expansion of BRICS has made it clear that the de-dollarization of the international finance system is inevitable.” This view, from economist William Gumede—who’s also executive chairperson of the Democracy Works Foundation in South Africa—has been echoed around the world since BRICS leaders announced the expansion of the bloc on Aug. 24 at a summit in Johannesburg. Current BRICS members are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. In January, BRICS—originally established in 2009 to represent the world’s strongest emerging market economies—will add Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to its ranks. Mr. Gumede, one of South Africa’s leading academics and thought-leaders, has been researching the potential impacts of de-dollarization since 2014.

He told The Epoch Times the average per capita GDP of the G7 economies was currently six times that of BRICS economies. But, the unexpectedly swift expansion of BRICS would increase the trade bloc’s share of the global economy much faster than earlier predictions. “These forecasts did not take into account that BRICS would expand its membership very quickly. A larger BRICS will mean the world will increasingly use U.S. dollars less,” he said. Mr. Gumede said the bigger BRICS alliance would eventually rival the Group of Seven (G7) large industrial economies of the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, France, Japan, Italy, and Canada, which together are home to 16 percent of the world’s population and account for 62 percent of the global economy.

Welcoming the new members in Johannesburg last week, Brazil’s President Lula da Silva said their addition would mean BRICS would represent 46 percent of the global population and 37 percent of the world GDP. The expansion means BRICS now consists of some of the globe’s largest oil producers: Russia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Egypt. Nigeria, another major oil exporter, is set to join when the bloc gets even bigger, probably at its next summit in Russia in 2024. “BRICS is going to dominate the world’s energy supply,” said Mr. Gumede. “The strength of the U.S. dollar is also partially based on the currency as underpinning oil trade—the so-called petrodollar—and members of OPEC settle their accounts in U.S. dollars.

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Look at the phrasing:

“One candidate who is already running, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., would stay in the race, trading on his family name rather than his conspiracy-fueled ideas.”

• What if Biden Backs Out of the Race? (RCW)

President Biden has declared he’s running for a second term, but it’s far from certain he actually will. His infirmity and low poll numbers raise serious doubts. His physical decline shows when he walks or climbs the stairs of Air Force One. His cognitive decline shows when he refuses to hold press conferences or answer even the simplest questions, like how he feels about the devastating fires in Maui. His decline in the public’s estimation shows when pollsters ask Americans how they’re doing. Four out of five answer, “Not good. Not good at all.” Voters also say they don’t want another general election choice like the last one. So many votes in 2020 were negative ones “against the worse candidate,” not in favor of the better one. They don’t want another grudge match between two unpopular candidates.

Biden’s dismal poll numbers form a somber backdrop for his reelection campaign. That backdrop is even darker now that his health problems are so visible. These mounting problems may not prevent him from running, but they do lessen the chances. True, he keeps saying he is running. But, like all politicians, he may be deceiving the public or himself. The biggest “tell” is that Biden is avoiding the very things active candidates do. He’s not campaigning. He’s not attending a lot of small events with big donors. He’s not running ads. He’s not using the White House’s bully pulpit to address the nation on our challenges and his response to them. Still, those signs are not definitive. Biden might be lying low because the Republicans are fighting among themselves. Why get in their way? Better to wait until late autumn to ramp up his campaign.

He might be unsure if he really is running, uncertain if he is up to the arduous task, physically and mentally. Or he might have already decided, privately, that he will not run but is delaying the announcement since it would immediately turn him into a powerless lame duck. At this point, it’s impossible to know what he has decided. He might not know himself. But it is well worth considering the implications if Biden limits himself to one term and waits until late fall or early spring to make the announcement. The first implication is that a late withdrawal favors some Democratic candidates over others. It favors those with high name recognition, existing campaign operations, and the ability to fund expensive national efforts, either from outside donations or their own pockets.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has already established his campaign-in-waiting and can raise lots of money, especially from big donors in his home state. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is a billionaire who can fund his own run and has begun setting up a national team. Michigan’s Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, by contrast, would be several steps behind and would need to raise a lot of money quickly to become a viable candidate. So would Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, or others who might step into the wide-open race. One candidate who is already running, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., would stay in the race, trading on his family name rather than his conspiracy-fueled ideas.

[..] The second consequence of a Biden withdrawal would be a fight over the future of Kamala Harris. She is the least popular vice president in polling history, and for good reason. Voters think she’s incompetent, inauthentic, and inarticulate, an empty-calorie word salad without any policy achievements. She’s the living embodiment of the “Peter Principle,” where people keep getting promoted until they reach their level of incompetence.

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Given GOP’s track record…

• Majority of Voters Are Skeptical of Possible Biden Impeachment (Manley)

A poll published on Wednesday has revealed that a majority of American voters (56%) see a possible impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden as more of a partisan political stunt than those (38%) who view it as a “serious effort to investigate important problems.” At least 53% of Independents who responded to the poll also agreed that an impeachment inquiry would be more of a political stunt. The poll was conducted by Public Policy Polling and commissioned by the Congressional Integrity Project, both groups of which lean Democrat. Some 37% of those who responded to the poll said they were Democrat, while 32% said they were Republican and 31% said they were Independent. About 88% of Biden voters said an impeachment of the president would be a “partisan political stunt” while just 20% of former US President Donald Trump’s voters said the same. When grouped politically, 81% of Democrats held this view, while 30% of Republicans said the same. Another 73% of Trump voters, and just 7% of Biden backers said the impeachment inquiry would be a “serious effort to investigate important problems.”

The survey then asked respondents whether Republicans should still move to impeach Biden if “no evidence is found” in the investigation. In response, 61% said they should not impeach him, while 32% said they should, and 7% said they were not sure. “MAGA Republicans’ impeachment promises are nothing more than a partisan political stunt designed to hurt President Biden, and the American people know it,” said Leslie Dach, a senior adviser for the Congressional Integrity Project. “Republicans have failed to find a single shred of evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden and voters see right through their partisan games.” A possible impeachment investigation in Biden appears to be on the horizon for Congress as summer comes to a close. Last week, US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said he would launch an impeachment inquiry in September should the Biden administration fail to turn over documents he believes are tied to an alleged bribery scheme involving his family.

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Seating his donors…

• Hunter Biden Helped Plan State Dinners During Dad’s VP Days (Sp.)

A number of emails obtained from the US National Archives and Records Administration revealed more than 1,000 emails between the office of then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s advisory firm Rosemont Seneca Partners, America First Legal said in a statement. “We obtained new docs from our lawsuit against the National Archives revealing over 1,000 emails between Rosemont Seneca and the Office of Vice President,” the statement said on Wednesday. “The vast majority of these emails consisted of direct communications between Rosemont Seneca employees, including Hunter Biden, and the Office of the Vice President.”

The emails contradict Joe Biden’s claims that there was a wall between personal and government business, the statement said, underscoring that Hunter Biden was “intimately involved in planning for high-profile White House events” despite lacking any official role. One of the findings revealed that Hunter Biden took part in planning a 2011 luncheon with Chinese officials, arrival ceremony with the then German chancellor, 2012 state dinner with UK dignitaries, 2013 state luncheon with Turkish officials and a state dinner with French officials in 2014. The “Biden name” was used to gain access to the White House for Rosemont Seneca and their associates, the statement said, detailing a December 2013 incident in which a lobbyist “reached out” to Hunter’s business partner for last-minute tickets to a Christmas tour of the White House.

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Sean Penn
https://twitter.com/i/status/1696950646979670408

 

 

 

 

Quail
https://twitter.com/i/status/1696789527984025741

 

 

Octopus

 

 

Cheetah

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle January 4 2020

Jan 042020
 
 January 4, 2020  Posted by at 10:02 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  14 Responses »


Jack Delano Near Shawboro, North Carolina, Florida migrants on way to Cranberry, NJ 1940

 

• The Dubious Official Story Behind the Soleimani Assassination (Whitney Webb)
• Israel Had Advance Notice Of US Plan To Kill Iranian General Suleimani (LAT)
• How Trump Decided To Kill Iran’s Soleimani (Pol.)
• Inside The Plot By Iran’s Soleimani To Attack US Forces In Iraq (R.)
• Iraqi PMF Militias Retract Claims Of Medics Targeted By US Airstrike (RT)
• The Dogs of War (Kunstler)
• Fed Policymakers Broadly See Eye To Eye On 2020 Outlook (R.)
• Fed’s Mester Warned Of Inflation Risks, Says Current Policy ‘Well Calibrated’ (R.)
• Australian Troops Called To Tackle Fires (BBC)
• Slow Burn (John Quiggin)
• Australia’s Bushfires Push Countless Species To Extinction (G.)
• Mexico President Calls For Julian Assange To Be Released From UK Prison (R.)

 

 

See far too many people pretending they’re far too sure about what’s going on. Mostly in line with their pre-conceived views, but others, too, appear to think there’s shame in not having a strong opinion on things they don’t know much about (there will be a war!). While Israel and Saudi are almost completely missing from those opinions and reports.

First victim of war is truth, guys, and that war for now only exists in opinions. And don’t believe everyone in Iran is in deep mourning now. There, too, in the upper echelons there’s a constant power battle, with lots of bloodshed and torture and renditioned people. Just like in America. Plenty Iranians will be happy to see Soleimani gone.

• The Dubious Official Story Behind the Soleimani Assassination (Whitney Webb)

Much has been written by MintPress and other outlets about the long-standing efforts by prominent neoconservatives in the U.S. as well as the Israel lobby and Israeli government to prod the U.S. into a major war with Iran. Neoconservative efforts at regime change in Iran have been decades in the making and the current presidential administration has several notable Iran hawks in prominent positions. Furthermore, both President Trump and his foremost ally in the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are facing domestic efforts aimed at removing them from office and are facing fresh elections, giving both leaders incentive to ratchet up tensions abroad to distract from their own domestic conflicts.

Yet, the current pressure facing both Trump and Netanyahu in their respective policies is only the latest factor that has pushed both administrations into a renewed and increasingly desperate push to satisfy the decades-old effort of Iran hawks in both countries to stoke war and “reshape” the Middle East in favor of the U.S.-Israel axis. Given the recent assassination of Soleimani, however, it is essential to point out that the U.S. airstrike targeting the Quds Force leader came just a few months after Israel tried but failed to assassinate the general. Indeed, the most recent of these failed attempts was slated to occur early last October and, per The Times of Israel:

“The assassins planned to dig under a religious site associated with Soleimani’s father and set off an explosion under the building when he was inside, and then try to deflect blame so that it ignited an interfaction[al] religious war. The assassins prepared some 500 kilograms to use for the bomb.” Israel’s government did not comment on the alleged plot, though it is notable that the plan to dig below a Muslim holy site and plant a bomb has been attempted by Israeli extremist groups in the past, groups which have a major foothold in Israel’s current government.


This alleged attempt by Israel to kill Soleimani came after claims that, in 2018, the Trump administration had given Israel a “green light” to assassinate the general. The report claimed that “there is an American-Israeli agreement” that Soleimani is a “threat to the two countries’ interests in the region” and was published by the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida, which is widely considered to be “an Israeli platform for conveying messages to other countries in the Middle East,” according to Israeli media.

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Geez, what a surprise.

• Israel Had Advance Notice Of US Plan To Kill Iranian General Suleimani (LAT)

Israel had advance notice of the U.S. plan to kill Iranian military leader Gen. Qassem Suleimani, Israeli military and diplomatic analysts reported Friday night while refraining from providing further details due to heavy military censorship. “Our assessment is that the United States informed Israel about this operation in Iraq, apparently a few days ago,” Barak Ravid, a journalist and commentator with deep sources in the Israeli security establishment, said on Channel 13. An Israeli army officer with knowledge of Israeli military assessments, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not have permission to speak to reporters, told the Los Angeles Times that the attack on Suleimani “did not come as a surprise.”

The reactions of Israel’s political leadership to Suleimani’s assassination were mostly positive, though deep concern was registered throughout the leadership. Iran and Israel maintained warm relations for almost four decades before the 1979 Islamic Revolution that overthrew the shah and imposed a theocratic Shiiite Muslim regime that for four decades now has called for “death to Israel” and is accused of backing and masterminding numerous terrorist attacks against Israeli or Jewish targets, including the 1992 and 1994 attacks on the Israeli Embassy and the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that left over 100 people dead. Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based Iranian proxy militia, has in recent years been accused of perpetrating further attacks against Israeli targets in India, Thailand and Bulgaria.


[..] Due to the heightened alarm, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cut short a visit to Greece, where he had signed an agreement for a regional gas pipeline. He made a statement on the tarmac ahead of boarding his flight back to Israel, saying that the United States had the right to defend itself. “Qassem Suleimani is responsible for the death of American citizens and many other innocent people. He was planning more such attacks. President Trump deserves all the credit for acting swiftly, forcefully and decisively. Israel stands with the United States in its just struggle for peace, security and self-defense.” The Israeli army officer described the situation as “definitely higher readiness than usual, but not DEFCON One. We want to err on the side of caution, but we know we are not the first target. We are the second.”

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Lots of stories of Trump spilling the beans before the attack to run of the mill Mar-a-Lago guests. While Howie Carr didn’t know anything until afterwards. Don’t let news outlets shape your opinions for you.

• How Trump Decided To Kill Iran’s Soleimani (Pol.)

Hours before the U.S. military sent a Reaper drone to kill one of the most wanted men on the planet, President Donald Trump was relaxing at his palatial Florida properties. In the morning, he played 18 holes at Trump International, his West Palm Beach golf club. At around 3 p.m., he returned to Mar-a-Lago, the historic oceanfront estate he’s branded “the Winter White House,” and waited, donning a navy blue suit with a powder-blue tie and an American flag pinned to his lapel. He’d already made a risky—and potentially world-altering—decision to allow the U.S. military to kill Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite paramilitary forces.

Earlier this week, he’d been surrounded at Mar-a-Lago by top officials like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, national security adviser Robert O’Brien and Legislative Affairs Director Eric Ueland. Throughout the entire week, Trump sought input from other advisers by phone. “He was calm, cool and collected,” said conservative radio host Howie Carr, who spoke with Trump on Thursday at Mar-a-Lago soon after the news first broke, as the president dined with GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy. “I had no idea there was anything out of the ordinary going on until I got home.”

As rocket attacks against U.S. bases in Iraq intensified over the last two months, the president had granted the Pentagon extraordinary latitude: The U.S. military had his permission to kill Soleimani the next time it had an opportunity to do so, according to a senior defense official who was not authorized to speak on the record. “We had authority before the strike to take that action,” said the official, who wouldn’t say how recently Trump gave the Pentagon that authorization—whether it was hours, weeks or even months earlier. As recently as New Year’s Eve, the president was telling reporters that he didn’t want war with Iran.


For a man U.S. officials have portrayed as a terrorist mastermind, an evil genius responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, Soleimani often flaunted his influence as he jetted between Tehran, Baghdad and Beirut for meetings with local potentates. “I don’t think it was so hard [to find him] because he was not below the radar in the last two or three years,” said a former senior Israeli government official, who noted that Soleimani had previously moved around under strict operational secrecy. “But the last two or three years, he worked in the open.”

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We simply don’t know what is fact and what fiction. And that’s okay.

• Inside The Plot By Iran’s Soleimani To Attack US Forces In Iraq (R.)

In mid-October, Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani met with his Iraqi Shi’ite militia allies at a villa on the banks of the Tigris River, looking across at the U.S. embassy complex in Baghdad. The Revolutionary Guards commander instructed his top ally in Iraq, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and other powerful militia leaders to step up attacks on U.S. targets in the country using sophisticated new weapons provided by Iran, two militia commanders and two security sources briefed on the gathering told Reuters. The strategy session, which has not been previously reported, came as mass protests against Iran’s growing influence in Iraq were gaining momentum, putting the Islamic Republic in an unwelcome spotlight.

Soleimani’s plans to attack U.S. forces aimed to provoke a military response that would redirect that rising anger toward the United States, according to the sources briefed on the gathering, Iraqi Shi’ite politicians and government officials close to Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi. Soleimani’s efforts ended up provoking the U.S. attack on Friday that killed him and Muhandis, marking a major escalation of tensions between the United States and Iran. The two men died in air strikes on their convoy at a Baghdad airport as they headed to the capital, dealing a major blow to the Islamic Republic and the Iraqi paramilitary groups it supports. Interviews with the Iraqi security sources and Shi’ite militia commanders offer a rare glimpse of how Soleimani operated in Iraq, which he once told a Reuters reporter he knew like the back of his hand.


Two weeks before the October meeting, Soleimani ordered Iranian Revolutionary Guards to move more sophisticated weapons – such as Katyusha rockets and shoulder-fired missiles that could bring down helicopters – to Iraq through two border crossings, the militia commanders and Iraqi security sources told Reuters. At the Baghdad villa, Soleimani told the assembled commanders to form a new militia group of low-profile paramilitaries – unknown to the United States – who could carry out rocket attacks on Americans housed at Iraqi military bases. He ordered Kataib Hezbollah – a force founded by Muhandis and trained in Iran – to direct the new plan, said the militia sources briefed on the meetings. Soleimani told them such a group “would be difficult to detect by the Americans,” one of the militia sources told Reuters.

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That second strike everyone’s talking about? Did it even happen?

• Iraqi PMF Militias Retract Claims Of Medics Targeted By US Airstrike (RT)

The Iranian-backed Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) have dropped their claims that a medical convoy was destroyed in a US air raid along Taji road, north of Baghdad. In a new press release cited by several news agencies, the PMF leadership retracted their statement in which the group said their medics were hit by a US airstrike. This happened after Reuters cited Iraqi Army sources who said that six people were killed in a raid near Taji. The Iraqi Army, however, later denied that an airstrike took place there. In a statement quoted by local media, the military urged everyone to be “careful” about spreading unverified information and “rumors” in the future. The US-led coalition in Iraq also said that no air raids have been conducted in that area in recent days.

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“..the little towns that dotted that landscape where all the carnage and horror played out. Not a strip-mall in the whole gorgeous panorama. The rolling fields neatly fenced in the stillness of a summer’s day. A peaceful tranquility we today cannot even imagine.”

• The Dogs of War (Kunstler)

In that mercifully quiet week between Christmas and New Years, I re-watched Ken Burns’ documentary of the first Civil War, in contemplation of a possible second. What an almighty bloodbath that was. Thousands butchered in minutes in one battle after another, heads and limbs flying, men turned inside-out, and horses, too. The blue and the gray were hostage to their battlefield tactics and didn’t seem to learn from the insane extravagance of souls wasted in massed assaults against massed artillery again and again and again. The population of the whole nation (Confederacy included) was 31 million in 1860 and the war killed two percent of that, almost entirely young men.

Another impression left by that documentary was the startling beauty of the countryside in that day, and of the little towns that dotted that landscape where all the carnage and horror played out. Not a strip-mall in the whole gorgeous panorama. The rolling fields neatly fenced in the stillness of a summer’s day. A peaceful tranquility we today cannot even imagine. Everything human-scaled and so many buildings graced with beauty deliberately made: pediments, steeples, cupolas, columns, and swags. Walt Disney could not have imagined a more tender and appealing place. The lyrical names of those towns are linked to rivers of blood: Shiloh, Spotsylvania, Missionary Ridge, Cold Harbor….


And the last impression accumulated over each installment was that this we did it to ourselves, and couldn’t seem to stop, just as today various parties to current events can’t seem to stop their provocations to a new episode of national domestic violence. This time it is the very government at war with itself, and so far the war is merely legalistic, the battles of lawyers — of which, one senses, we have far too many for our own good. The Department of Justice in particular is at war with itself, one faction in it refusing to cooperate with the other, hiding documents, trafficking in political muck, kluging up the works with deceptions, and still at it in the yet-unresolved case of General Flynn, which should have been thrown out of court months ago based on obvious prosecutorial malice.

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These people think you are really really stupid…

• Fed Policymakers Broadly See Eye To Eye On 2020 Outlook (R.)

Federal Reserve policymakers who last year were frequently at odds over where to set U.S. borrowing costs opened 2020 telegraphing confidence in the state of the economy and signaling broad agreement that monetary policy is right where it should be. In their first remarks in the new year, heads of several regional Fed banks noted a strong job market, robust consumer spending and a rising optimism for a resolution to the trade tensions that had nicked growth in the second half of 2019.


And after cutting interest rates three times last year to bring the Fed’s target to a range of 1.5% to 1.75% and ensure global headwinds didn’t short-circuit the longest U.S. economic expansion in history, “I think most of us think that we are well-calibrated now,” Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank President Loretta Mester said in an interview on the sidelines of an economics conference in San Diego. Based on forecasts of her fellow policymakers on the Fed’s rate-setting committee, she said, “the committee thinks a flat path (for interest rates)… is appropriate.” Mester had been among a handful of Fed policymakers who argued last year that the U.S. economy did not need lower rates to continue to grow.

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… so stupid, in fact, that they say whatever sounds good, truth be damned.

• Fed’s Mester Warned Of Inflation Risks, Says Current Policy ‘Well Calibrated’ (R.)

Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank President Loretta Mester, among the Fed policymakers most concerned that easy monetary policy would risk excessive inflation, said on Friday she has put those fears to rest for now and is willing to leave rates at their current level absent some substantial change in the economy. Her comments in an interview with Reuters on the sidelines of the American Economic Association conference suggest how firmly the Fed is anchored to its current setting for overnight interest rates, fixed in a range of between 1.5% and 1.75% after three rate cuts last year. Advocates for even deeper rate reductions now agree the current setting is helping the economy enough that the Fed can stand pat while Mester and others who worried that lower rates might court faster inflation or risky lending have concluded that at this point there is little cause for concern.


I have been kind of forecasting inflation to go up to 2% for quite a while and we have been undershooting,” said Mester, who assumes a voting role this year on the Fed’s policy-setting committee. Mester, who was skeptical last year that rate cuts were needed, said, “I think we are really well calibrated now.” A rate increase would not be needed, “until I see either financial stability issues looming or some indication that inflation is going to pick up strongly. I don’t see that now and it is not in my forecast.” “You want to see that inflation really is at 2%. You want persistence. You want to be able to say that I am confident now that inflation is meeting our goal,” which was set at 2% in 2012 but never consistently achieved, she said.

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Finally, and even then it’s just reserve troops.

• Australian Troops Called To Tackle Fires (BBC)

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced 3,000 reserve troops will be deployed to help tackle raging bushfires across the country. Defence Minister Linda Reynolds said this is the first time this has happened in Australia’s history. Temperatures have surpassed 40C (104F) in parts of south-east Australia. Officials had warned that Saturday was set to be a “dangerous day”. Since September, fires in Australia have killed at least 23 people. Speaking at a press conference on Saturday, Mr Morrison told reporters: “We have seen this disaster escalate to an entirely new level.”


An emergency warning was issued for areas of eastern Victoria that told remaining residents it was now too late to leave. “The safest option is to plan how you will safely take shelter indoors as conditions worsen,” the warning said, adding: “Leaving now would be deadly.” Residents were instructed to attempt to take shelter indoors or in a large clearing or body of water. Dozens of people are missing and some 1,500 homes have already been lost this fire season. Mr Morrison also announced A$20m (£10m) has been allocated to lease four water bomber planes. Defence force bases would provide temporary accommodation, he said.

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Just think about all the plastics and paints etc. that are burning.

• Slow Burn (John Quiggin)

At least eighteen people have already been killed by this season’s bushfires — and, with most of January and all of February still to come, that number is sure to rise. But these dramatic deaths are far outweighed by the hundreds, perhaps thousands, that will ultimately result from the toxic smoke blanketing Australian cities.

The most dangerous component of bushfire smoke are tiny particulates, no more than 2.5 micrometres in diameter, known as PM2.5. Over the past twenty years, studies have shown that high levels of PM2.5 have contributed to millions of premature deaths in highly polluted cities like Beijing and Delhi. Sydney, Canberra and other Australian cities have recently joined this list. In 2016 alone, exposure to PM2.5 contributed to an estimated 4.1 million deaths worldwide from heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, chronic lung disease and respiratory infections.

Even before the current cataclysm, air pollution was a major health hazard. While Sydney’s prevailing average of 6 micrograms per cubic metre (6 μg/m3) is within international health standards, it is above the levels observed in most European and American cities. A study led by the Sydney Public Health Observatory’s Richard Broome estimated that particulates and associated forms of pollution already account for between 310 and 540 premature deaths annually.

As far as can be determined, the mortality and health risks of PM2.5 are a linear function of the level of exposure. Being exposed to 6 μg/m3 every day for a year, for example, amounts to 2190 “microgram days.” Broome and his colleagues’ work implies that each microgram day is associated with between 0.14 and 0.25 premature deaths. This figure is consistent with a range of international studies they cite.

The overall mortality effects are also a linear function of the number of people exposed. That’s why a city like Delhi, with thirty million people and an average PM2.5 of 150 μg/m3, suffers tens of thousands of premature deaths every year.

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Think anyone cares? Always had the impression white Australia only wants to sell off all resources as fast as they can, because they know they stole all of them to begin with. Before you get caught, make sure the money’s in your pocket.

• Australia’s Bushfires Push Countless Species To Extinction (G.)

Close to the Western River on Kangaroo Island, Pat Hodgens had set up cameras to snap the island’s rare dunnart – a tiny mouse-like marsupial that exists nowhere else on the planet. Now, after two fires ripped through the site a few days ago, those cameras – and likely many of the Kangaroo Island dunnarts – are just charred hulks. “It’s gone right through the under storey and that’s where these species live,” said Hodgens, an ecologist at Kangaroo Island Land for Wildlife, a not-for-profit conservation group. “The habitat is decimated.” On Friday afternoon word came through that three other Land for Wildlife sites protecting dunnarts and other endangered species, including the southern brown bandicoot, had also been consumed by fire on the island off the South Australian coast.


Prof Sarah Legge, of the Australian National University, said the prognosis for the Kangaroo Island dunnart was “not good” and its plight was symbolic of what was happening all across the east coast of Australia. “Many dozens” of threatened species had been hit hard by the fires, she said. In some cases “almost their entire distribution has been burnt”. So far, the Australian bushfire season has burned through about 5.8m hectares of bush, known across the world for its unique flora and fauna. Ecologists say the months of intense and unprecedented fires will almost certainly push several species to extinction. The fires have pushed back conservation efforts by decades, they say, and, as climate heating grips, some species may never recover. Climate scientists have long warned that rising greenhouse gases will spark a wave of extinctions.

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AMLO doesn’t appear to be very effective so far, certainly not internationally. A socialist right on America’s doorstep. Can’t be easy.

• Mexico President Calls For Julian Assange To Be Released From UK Prison (R.)

Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday called for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to be released from prison in London, urging an end to what he described as his “torture” in detention. Assange, 48, is in a British jail for skipping bail when he sought asylum in Ecuador’s embassy in London, where he spent nearly seven years to avoid extradition to Sweden over allegations of rape that were dropped in November. Assange is also battling U.S. attempts to extradite him over Wikileaks’ publication of vast caches of leaked military documents and diplomatic cables. He faces a lengthy prison term if extradited to the United States.


A U.N. human rights investigator last year said Assange has suffered psychological torture from a defamation campaign and should not be extradited to the United States where he would face a “politicized show trial.” Lopez Obrador, a leftist who has close ties with Britain’s opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, expressed his solidarity with Assange and said he hoped the former hacker and activist is “forgiven and released” from prison. “I don’t know if he has recognized that he acted against rules and norms of a political system, but at the time these cables demonstrated how the world system functions in its authoritarian nature,” Lopez Obrador said in response to a question about Assange at a regular government news briefing. “Hopefully consideration will be given to this, and he’s released and won’t continue to be tortured.”

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