Feb 122024
 


Vincent van Gogh Snowy landscape with Arles in the background 1888

 

How Ball Got Rolling With Tucker Carlson’s Putin Interview Proposal (Sp.)
Egypt Warns Israel: Rafah Invasion Could Negate ’79 Peace Treaty (ZH)
Ukraine Should Be A ‘Buffer Zone’ – Orban (RT)
EU Openly Threatened Orban For His Reluctance To Finance Kiev (TASS)
Ukraine ‘Must Accept New Reality’ – Kremlin (RT)
10 Million More Refugees Could Flee To Germany If Ukraine Falls – Welt (RT)
Zaluzhny’s Photo With Banderite a ‘Threat’ to Zelensky (Sp.)
Russia Must Permanently Abandon Europe And Turn Fully To Asia (Karaganov)
Farmers Bring Poland To Standstill (RT)
“That is Not the Judgment of the Press” (Turley)
“Oh What a Tangled Web Biden Weaves, When He First Practices to Deceive” (VDH)
Could Trump Win By Simple Attrition Rather than Vindication? (Turley)
Soaring Debt Pushing Wealthy Nations To ‘Fiscal Death’ – Economist (RT)
Peaceful Protests Are a Waste of Time and Energy (Paul Craig Roberts)
The Crime Of The Century: Midazolam Murders – Euthanizing The Elderly (Kelly)

 

 

 

 

Liberal tears
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756706512540499971

 

 

Ads
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756692976426701093

 

 


Maria Zakharova: “After watching Putin’s interview, Scholz and Sunak disobeyed the orders of the USA.

“Scholz disobeyed the order of the USA not to watch the interview. If he continues to violate the instructions of the White House, he may lead Germany out of the crisis. The recent Prime Ministers of Britain, weak-willed individuals, they carried out the will not of the British people or even their own personal will, but obediently waltzed, led by Washington towards the boudoir.”

 

 

Nikki Haley

Trump Haley
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756832137980838180

 

 

Biden Superbowl
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756726329695973841

 

 

Sure this is not a Trump ad?!

 

 

 

 

“..the Kremlin had concerns even before the interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin that there would be a “persecution” of Tucker Carlson. ”

How Ball Got Rolling With Tucker Carlson’s Putin Interview Proposal (Sp.)

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, released Thursday, lasted more than two hours and covered a range of topics, including the Ukraine conflict, sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline, and Russia-NATO relations. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has told reporters that Tucker Carlson himself proposed the interview with Vladimir Putin and that the president quickly agreed. He also noted that the West is becoming more and more unpredictable, and that the Kremlin had concerns even before the interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin that there would be a “persecution” of Tucker Carlson.

Peskov believes that Tucker Carlson foresaw the heated sentiments around the interview with Vladimir Putin, but that it added to the popularity of the American journalist. “He’s still having a hard time, as far as I’m aware. But he is a clever enough man, I think he foresaw things would get heated. It’s fair to say that this interview has greatly raised his popularity,” Peskov said. On Thursday night, Carlson published his interview with the Russian president, which lasted for over two hours. Prior to that, the journalist faced criticism from his Western colleagues just for sitting down with the Russian leader. The interview sparked huge interest around the world, and has received more than 180 million views on X and 12 million on YouTube.

Oz dub
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756802067711115605

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“..if past is prologue, watch for the Israeli government to disregard the protests of its partners and benefactors — protests that may be offered primarily for domestic consumption..”

Egypt Warns Israel: Rafah Invasion Could Negate ’79 Peace Treaty (ZH)

With Israel on the verge of invading Gaza’s southernmost city, Egypt is warning that such a move could trigger a suspension of the treaty that has maintained peace between the two countries since 1979, the Wall Street Journal reports. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday directed the Israeli Defense Forces to plan the evacuation of the city of Rafah, which lies on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt and reportedly holds more than a million refugees already forced from their homes elsewhere in the 25-mile-long strip. One particularly sensitive slice of real estate is the so-called Philadelphi Route or Philadelphi Corridor, which stretches nine miles along the Gaza-Egypt border. Diplomatic accords establish limits on the number of troops that either Israel or Egypt can position in several delineated zones along and near the border, and certainly don’t authorize large numbers of Israeli troops and armored vehicles.

In late December, Netanyahu said the Philadelphi Route “has to be in our hands” if Gaza is to be effectively and permanently demilitarized. In January, an Egyptian official said, “It must be strictly emphasized that any Israeli move in this direction will lead to a serious threat to Egyptian-Israeli relations.” While an Egyptian diplomatic delegation visited Tel Aviv on Friday to discuss the situation in Gaza, Mexican Egyptian President Sisi has rejected several phone calls from Netanyahu over recent weeks, sources tell the Journal. The threat that large numbers of Palestinian refugees could soon be pouring across the border raises many deep concerns for Egypt. Perhaps more than the challenge of managing a humanitarian crisis, if displaced Palestinians launch attacks on the IDF from Egypt, that could trigger Israeli retaliatory strikes across the border. If Israel doesn’t allow the Palestinians to return, tensions between Israel and Egypt would be sharply increased for years to come.

Since the war began, Egypt has been reinforcing its border with Gaza, building a concrete, barbed-wire-topped wall that extends six meters into the ground below it, while also boosting surveillance capabilities, and moving tanks and armored vehicles into the vicinity. The Israel-Hamas war is proving costly for Egypt in other ways, as Suez Canal traffic has plummeted some 30%. Egypt’s warning comes alongside expressions of concern by a variety of countries both inside and outside of the region: “Military operations right now would be a disaster for those people, and it’s not something that we would support,” said US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

“Invading Rafah… which is the last refuge for hundreds of thousands of civilians whom the brutal Israeli aggression displaced will have [grave] consequences,” said the Saudi foreign ministry. “Deeply concerned about the prospect of a military offensive in Rafah – over half of Gaza’s population are sheltering in the area,” tweeted UK foreign secretary David Cameron. “The people of Gaza cannot disappear into thin air…[it is a] “humanitarian catastrophe in the making,” said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. A Rafah invasion would create an “unspeakable humanitarian catastrophe,” said EU Foreign Minister Joseph Borrell. Israel’s plan “threatens to cause the loss of more innocent life and exacerbate the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip,” said the United Arab Emirates foreign ministry. However, if past is prologue, watch for the Israeli government to disregard the protests of its partners and benefactors — protests that may be offered primarily for domestic consumption.

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“Ukraine offers Europeans no additional security because most of us are already members of NATO, which is much stronger than Russia..”

Ukraine Should Be A ‘Buffer Zone’ – Orban (RT)

Ukraine’s best geopolitical bet would be to become a “buffer zone” between Russia and the West, under arrangements made to guarantee the country’s future security, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said. The Hungarian premier made the remarks while debating former Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schussel, with excerpts from the exchange published by the Vienna daily Die Presse. Orban disagreed with Schussel’s contention that the Ukraine crisis could be solved only if the immediate start of negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU and NATO coincided with the start of ceasefire talks. [BQ] Whether we like it or not, whether Ukrainians like it or not, Ukraine is on the map where it is. The best prospect for it would be to form a buffer zone between Russia and the West – with security guarantees, of course.

In any other case, according to the prime minister, “Ukraine will lose its land,” and “the Russians will destroy Ukraine again and again.” He stressed that Moscow would “never accept an EU and NATO member like Ukraine on its doorstep.” Orban also rejected claims by officials in Brussels and Kiev that Ukraine is “defending” Europe. “Ukraine offers Europeans no additional security because most of us are already members of NATO, which is much stronger than Russia,” he stated, adding that there is “no risk” that Russia could attack a bloc member. He also pushed back against Schussel’s argument that a ceasefire would mean a de facto defeat for Ukraine, saying that this depends on how a person sees the future as Kiev could potentially lose more territory.

According to Orban, the EU is also in no position to provide Ukraine with an adequate amount of weapons and money, adding that the bloc’s citizens are “dissatisfied because their governments are giving Ukraine more and more financial support”. Russia has repeatedly voiced concerns about NATO’s unchecked expansion towards its borders after the collapse of the Soviet Union, with President Vladimir Putin citing Ukraine’s push to join the alliance as one of the key reasons for the current conflict. In December 2021, weeks before the start of the hostilities, Moscow submitted a draft of security guarantees to the US and NATO, demanding that the West ban Kiev’s accession to the military bloc and retreat to its borders as of 1997. The overture, however, was rebuffed.

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Nice club to be a member of…

EU Openly Threatened Orban For His Reluctance To Finance Kiev (TASS)

Leaders of the European Union openly threatened to undermine the Hungarian economy if its government refuses to approve financial aid to Ukraine, said Balazs Orban, the political director of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Financial Times reported on January 29, citing an internal EU document, that Brussels was drawing up a confidential plan to undermine Hungary’s economy if it continued to refuse to approve funding for Ukraine. According to the article, the EU threatened to completely freeze Hungary’s outstanding funds and collapse the exchange rate for the national currency, the Hungarian forint, in order to harm the Central European country’s economy and impair its investment attractiveness. “When the heads of EU states and governments talked to the prime minister by phone, they openly threatened him with these particular consequences,” the official told Austria’s Exxpress news portal.

At the EU summit in Brussels on December 14-15, 2023, the Hungarian prime minister blocked amendments to the community’s budget for 2024-2027 that called for allocating 50 bln euros to Ukraine. Instead, Viktor Orban proposed providing financial aid to Kiev on an annual basis with strict controls over expenditures. On February 1, the European Union summit approved the allocation of 50 billion euro from the EU budget to Ukraine spread out over the next four years. At the same time, they accepted Hungary’s proposal and established a mechanism to control the spending of funds. In a year from now, the EU will discuss this issue again, and in two years, it will revise the amount of financial aid to Ukraine in light of its own new budget drafting.

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“Should we begin the same negotiations, there’s a completely different reality now. And this new reality, no matter how painful it may be for the Kiev regime, must be recognized..”

Ukraine ‘Must Accept New Reality’ – Kremlin (RT)

Ukrainian authorities must accept the “new reality” no matter how “painful” it might be for them, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. He was responding to a question on the prospects of new talks between the two warring countries. Peskov made the remarks in an interview released by Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin on Sunday. Should Russia and Ukraine ever actually get back to the negotiating table, the potential talks will not be the same as those held early in the ongoing conflict, Peskov suggested. “Should we begin the same negotiations, there’s a completely different reality now. And this new reality, no matter how painful it may be for the Kiev regime, must be recognized,” he stressed.

While Peskov did not elaborate, he presumably referred to the territorial changes, namely incorporation of the four formerly Ukrainian regions, Zaporozhye and Kherson, as well as Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics into Russia following referendums in late 2022. Kiev, however, has repeatedly vowed to seize all its former territories from Moscow, including Crimea which broke away from Ukraine in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup and subsequently joined Russia. The March 2022 negotiations between Moscow and Kiev culminated in the signature of a preliminary agreement between the two nations, signed in Istanbul. The deal obliged Russia to withdraw its troops from around the Ukrainian capital, but Kiev violated the agreement almost immediately after it had been signed.

According to recent revelations by David Arakhamia, the leader of president Vladimir Zelensky’s party in the Ukrainian parliament, and a key negotiator at the botched talks, then-UK PM Boris Johnson played a pivotal role in orchestrating the failure of the talks. As Arakhamia put it, Johnson at the time simply told the Ukrainians “let’s just continue fighting” and urged them not to sign anything with Russia. Moscow has repeatedly insisted it was ready to settle the hostilities through negotiations, blaming the lack of any diplomatic effort on the matter on Kiev. The stance was reiterated by the Russian President Vladimir Putin during the conversation with the American journalist Tucker Carlson last week. “The President of Ukraine [Vladimir Zelensky] has legislated a ban on negotiating with Russia. He signed a decree forbidding everyone to negotiate with Russia. But how are we going to negotiate if he forbade himself and everyone to do this? We know that he is putting forward some ideas about this settlement. But in order to agree on something, we need to have a dialogue,” Putin stated.

RFK Ukraine

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EU governments would be overthrown.

10 Million More Refugees Could Flee To Germany If Ukraine Falls – Welt (RT)

As many as 10 million more refugees could flood into Germany if Ukraine disintegrates, Welt am Sonntag has said, citing estimates from officials. Despite the worsening situation regarding the conflict with Russia, the German government still believes this worst-case scenario is not likely to materialize this year, the media outlet added. Since the conflict between Kiev and Moscow flared up almost two years ago, 1.1 million Ukrainians have fled to the country, according to the German Interior Ministry. Meanwhile, the flow of newcomers from other countries, including Syria, Afghanistan, and African nations, shows no sign of abating. In 2023, more than 350,000 people applied for asylum in Germany, the highest number since 2016, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) reported last month.

The German government estimates that approximately 10 million people would flee Ukraine if the country falls apart, Die Welt, citing anonymous security officials and a lawmaker, said in an article on Saturday. The vast majority of these people would head westward in hopes of reaching Germany, the media outlet claims. Roderich Kiesewetter, an MP from the opposition Christian Democratic Party, told reporters that European nations should pick up the slack as US President Joe Biden’s aid package remains deadlocked in Congress. “If we don’t change our strategy on support for Ukraine, the worst-case scenario of a massive exodus from Ukraine and a spread of the war to NATO states will be much more likely,” the lawmaker predicted. Kiesewetter went on to warn that in this case, “ten million refugees are a rather lowball assumption.” Last week, the governor of the German state of Hesse, Boris Rhein, announced that the federal government and all 16 states of the country had agreed to issue special debit cards to refugees, which are supposed to supersede cash payments during the course of the year.

According to the official, the cards will “prevent the possibility of transferring money from state subsidies to countries of origin, and thus combat… human-trafficking.” Pre-paid cards will apparently have limited functionality, with features such as free cash withdrawal and transfers to recipients inside and outside of Germany disabled. They will also not work outside of the country, or even a designated municipality within it. Last month, the German parliament passed legislation that facilitates the deportation of failed asylum seekers and grants additional powers to the police. The new rules considerably extend the custody period pending deportation, in order to prevent situations in which failed applicants simply abscond around the time they are supposed to be sent home.

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“..while Zaluzhny was respected by his troops and liked by the civilian population, Syrsky evokes the opposite reaction..”

Zaluzhny’s Photo With Banderite a ‘Threat’ to Zelensky (Sp.)

Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fired the top General for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, after weeks of speculation and conflicting reports. The weekend before, after media outlets reported on his imminent firing but before it became official, the Ukrainian commander of the 67th Mechanized Brigade Andriy Stempitsky posted an image of himself smiling next to Zaluzhny with a portrait of former Nazi Stepan Bandera and a red and black Banderaite flag. Mark Sleboda, an international relations and security analyst told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Friday that the image was an “explicit threat against Zelensky.” “We saw Zaluzhny pose over [the] last weekend for a photo with a commander of the Right Sector*, the Banderite fascist, neo-Nazi battalion that is now an official part of the military,” Sleboda recounted. “In front of his giant portrait of Stepan Bandera, the West Ukrainian genocidal Nazi collaborator […] and next to a red and black Banderite flag with the inscription ‘victory without negotiations.’ So, I saw that as a pretty explicit threat against Zelensky.”

Sleboda noted unconfirmed reports that the Ukrainian intelligence agencies were given orders to watch for soldiers leaving the front but also noted that any potential unrest depends largely on Zaluzhny’s next move. “Does he do anything to incite this? Does he maneuver behind the scenes with other political figures against Zelensky? Does he stay quiet and actually put the interest of the regime above his personal ego for the time being?” Sleboda asked. “I don’t know about that because he refused to resign and decided to make, obviously, a political issue out of this,” he concluded, referring to Zaluzhny’s reported refusal to resign. March 15, will be a date to watch, Sleboda said. March 15 is when Zelensky’s current presidential term should end but likely won’t because of a martial law declaration that has been in place in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s special military operation, but Sleboda thinks forces in Ukraine may use that date to make a move against the president.


Zaluzhny with Ukrainian 67th Mechanized Brigade commander Andriy Stempitsky post with a metal in front of a portrait of Stepan Bandera.

“There may be political forces unhappy with Zelensky within the regime that will use that as the point to say that he is not a legitimate leader after that and seek to seize control,” Sleboda speculated. Sleboda also explained that he does not believe Zaluzhny’s dismissal was based on bad strategy but for personal reasons. “This was all personal,” Sleboda explained. “He made mistakes, there’s no question there but most […] on both sides, seem to regard Zaluzhny as more intelligent, more competent and more, shall we say, [an] out of the box thinker than [Zaluzhny’s replacement General Oleksandr] Syrsky.” Earlier in the interview, Sleboda explained that while Zaluzhny was respected by his troops and liked by the civilian population, Syrsky evokes the opposite reaction.

“He was the commander of the ground forces, he was responsible for the unsuccessful defenses of [Artemovsk] and […] Soledar,” Sleboda explained. “They call him General Butcher and General 200 (ed. note: ‘Cargo 200’ – military slang used in the Soviet and post-Soviet states referring to the transportation of the deceased soldiers) and neither one of those are favorable,” Sleboda continued. “It is in reference to his seemingly casual way of throwing away the lives of his own men.” Despite his Russian background, Syrsky was picked because of his loyalty to Zelensky, Sleboda explained. He also speculated that Syrsky would be more willing to commit reinforcements to Avdeyevka than Zaluzhny was, just like Syrsky did in the failed defense of Artemovsk. “This is evidently where we’re going, and General Butcher […] is going to be throwing more Kiev regime lives away,” he predicted.

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Professor Sergey Karaganov, honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and academic supervisor at the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow.

Russia Must Permanently Abandon Europe And Turn Fully To Asia (Karaganov)

At the end of the 2000s, with a group of young colleagues, we began to argue the merits and necessity of Russia’s “eastern pivot” (at the same time, current Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu – and his colleagues – were working in the same direction). The concepts and development focus of this challenge included the whole of Siberia and the Urals – a single historical, economic and human region. However, it turned out differently – pivot to Asia and its markets went administratively mainly through the Pacific Far East, and then the Arctic was added to it. The turn that began in the 2010s was successful, but only partially, largely because the Far East was artificially disconnected from the much more populous, industrialized and resource-rich eastern and western Siberia. It also continued to suffer from the “continental curse” – remoteness from markets.

Now, the new geostrategic situation urgently requires a return to the original idea – the eastward turn of all of Russia through the primary development of all of Siberia, including, of course, the Urals. In other words, we are talking about the “Siberization” of the whole country. Western Europe will be closed for many years and should never again become a first-class partner, while Asia is developing rapidly. The war provoked and unleashed by the West in Ukraine should not distract us from the movement towards the south and the east – where the center of human development is shifting. This new, but long foreseen, situation calls us to return to our “home.” A European journey of more than 300 years has given much, but long ago – a century ago, in reality – and has exhausted its usefulness.

Without this journey, initiated by Peter the Great, Russia would not have had many achievements. Foremost among them is the world’s greatest literature – the result of combining Russian culture, religion and morals with Western European culture. Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Gogol, then Blok, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn – and other giants of the mind who have shaped our modern identity – would hardly have emerged without the “European injection.” During these three centuries, we have half-forgotten the eastern roots of our state and our people. The Mongols plundered, but they also promoted development. Finally, in opposition and cooperation with them, we learned from many elements of their statehood, which allowed us to build a powerful centralized state and continental thinking. From Genghis Khan’s empire we also seem to have inherited our cultural, national and religious openness. The Mongols did not impose their culture or their beliefs. Indeed, they were religiously open. That is why, in an effort to preserve Russia, Holy Prince Alexander Nevsky made an alliance with them.

Great Russia would not have come into being, and probably would not have survived on the Russian plain, besieged by rivals and enemies from the west and south, if our people had not moved en masse “behind the stone” (the Urals) “to meet the sun” from the 16th century onwards. Inexplicable, apart from the intervention of God’s will, is the speed of their impulse. The Cossacks reached the Great Ocean in six decades. The development of Siberia made the ancient Rus’, the Russian kingdom, into Great Russia. Even before it was proclaimed an empire, the resources of Siberia – first “soft gold,” then silver, gold, and other minerals – allowed us to create and equip a powerful army and navy. The caravans of the Northern Silk Road, carrying Chinese goods in exchange for furs to Russia and beyond, played an important role in this. There in Siberia, the Russians, competing and trading, began to work closely with the Central Asians, the ‘Bukharans’ as our people called them at the time.

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More protests to come.

Farmers Bring Poland To Standstill (RT)

Traffic in cities and town across Poland was severely obstructed on Friday as farmers staged protests over what they consider to be unfair competition from cheap Ukrainian produce, as well as the EU’s green policies. Over the past few months, Polish agricultural workers have also repeatedly blocked the border with Ukraine. The month of January saw similar demonstrations in other EU nations, including Germany, France, and the Netherlands, over Brussels’ climate policies which have led to fuel price hikes. German farmers have been demanding that Chancellor Olaf Scholz reverse the proposed scrapping of a diesel fuel subsidy worth as much as €3,000 ($3,260) annually. The authorities in neighboring France withdrew plans to cut similar subsidies after farmers blocked a major highway near Paris last month.

Organized by the Solidarity trade union, Friday’s protest affected around 260 localities across Poland, with thousands of farmers blocking or slowing down traffic with tractors and other heavy machinery. They also blocked several border crossings with Ukraine. Several highways leading to the capital, Warsaw, were congested as a result of the demonstration, local police reported. In a statement released ahead of the protest last week, Solidarity said it was planning to set up road blockades until March 10. The trade union called out the Polish government for readily accepting the EU’s guidelines on the “import of agricultural produce and food products from Ukraine.” The protesters also called the position adopted by Brussels at the latest EU summit “unacceptable.”

Similar rallies were held across Poland in January. A separate protest by another group of farmers and truckers blocking a key border crossing with Ukraine saw Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government capitulate to the protesters’ demands, which included reinstating a permit system for Ukrainian truckers, adopting government subsidies for Polish corn, and a moratorium on tax hikes. Last Thursday, the European Commission proposed extending the suspension of customs duties on agricultural goods from Ukraine and Moldova through 2025. The measure was originally scheduled to expire this year. Thousands of farmers from across the bloc descended on Brussels ahead of that summit, throwing eggs, rocks, and fireworks at the EU Parliament building and setting huge piles of manure on fire.

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“The problem is Hur, not a President who not only appeared confused in the press conference but openly lied about various established facts…”

“That is Not the Judgment of the Press” (Turley)

“That is not the judgment of the press.” Those words from President Joe Biden were a telling moment after a reporter noted that there is widespread concern that he is mentally diminished. Biden’s cranky response was overshadowed by his confusion on other points during the press conference, including mixing up the presidents of Egypt and Mexico. However, it captured the sense of license and expectation of the Biden White House that the press is supposed to toe the line, as it has for three years. In the disastrous press conference, CNN correspondent MJ Lee reminded Biden that he had urged Americans to “watch me” when he was confronted over his age: “Many [of the] American people have been watching, and they have expressed concerns about your age.” The President angrily responded: “That is your judgment!. That is your judgment! That is not the judgment of the press.”

The next day, many in the media came to Biden’s defense and attacked the Special Counsel report which detailed his “diminished faculties.” Others cleaned up the remark about the press. Biden clearly stated “That is your judgment! That is your judgment. That is not the judgment of the press.” NBC did not include the line in articles on the press conference despite showing it on the live coverage. Roll Call actually edited the President’s remarks to insert “for” in the key line: “That is not the judgment [for] the press.” That changed the line from questioning the right of the press to make such judgments to telling a reporter what the press view should be. Even if it was a Freudian slip, it was a telling slip. Other media inserted or suggested “public” rather than the press in the line. The obvious exasperation of the President reflects years of a passive, enabling media that shielded Biden from difficult questions on various scandals, including the corruption scandal.

What was striking, however, was the degree to which President Biden and his staff spent this week putting out clearly false statements. In an administration that has pushed for the censorship of citizens accused of disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation, the President openly lied about his conduct and the report. President Biden, for example, stated that the Special Counsel report found that he did not willfully retain material. It found the opposite . . . repeatedly. He stated that he did not disclose classified material to his ghostwriter. Special Counsel Hur found precisely the opposite. Biden stated that the material was not highly classified with “that red stuff…around the corners.” In fact, Hur found that the material was “highly sensitive,” including an Afghanistan-related memo from the National Security Adviser to President Barack Obama in 2009 marked “TOP SECRET/SCI” (Sensitive Compartmented Information).

Biden stated that all of the material was kept in locked or lockable filing cabinets. That was a lie. As the pictures vividly demonstrated, Hur found material in unlocked areas and virtually spilling out of torn boxes in his garage. What is notable is that Biden works almost entirely off teleprompters, reading statements clearly crafted by his staff. That would indicate that some of these comments were promulgated by staff. Even in the press conference on Friday, Ian Sams, spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office ran into a skeptical reporter in the form of Jon Decker, the White House correspondent for Gray Television. Decker is the former head of the White House Correspondents Association and one of my former students. Decker is the gold standard for reporters and has always been objective, tough, and fair. His approach has not changed from the Trump to the Biden Administration.

Decker challenged Sam on coming to the podium to address the President’s statements and proceeding to make a false claim that this is the first Special Counsel to end his investigation without charges. So why would the White House risk looking like it is going full “Baghdad Bob” in denying readily observable facts? Because this is no real risk. The reason was evident the day after the report. While usually supportive outlets had to acknowledge the President’s false claims, media figures from MSNBC and CNN quickly fell into line and launched a full attack on Hur, often repeating identical words used by the White House about his observations being “gratuitous.” The problem is Hur, not a President who not only appeared confused in the press conference but openly lied about various established facts.

5 minutes

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“..who exactly had serially lied about Beau Biden’s demise, by claiming that he had died while on duty in Iraq, serving in the Delaware National Guard as a Judge Advocate? Joe Biden.”

“Oh What a Tangled Web Biden Weaves, When He First Practices to Deceive” (VDH)

Joe Biden and his White House handlers continue to peddle misinformation if not lies about his removal of classified files. The worst is that Biden—supposedly so unlike Trump—came forward willingly as soon as he realized that he had unlawfully, but inadvertently, removed and possessed classified files. And thus he cooperated fully and promptly with federal authorities. The truth is far, far different. Biden removed files improperly both as a Senator and Vice President. He held some of them in his unlawful possession for perhaps at least 14 years without a word to authorities, dating back at least to his departure from the Senate on January 15, 2009 when he resigned to become Vice President—or if not longer over his some 36-year Senate career. In fact, in 2017 Biden was fully aware that he had wrongly removed these classified files. As Hur noted, there is a taped conversation on record between Biden and his ghostwriter to just that effect.

Biden, at home in Virginia, was recorded as remarking, “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs”. And yet Biden apparently did nothing. He never came forward to any federal authorities for nearly the next five years. So given that knowledge, why did the attorneys belatedly disclose Biden’s possession of the files on November 2, 2022? Civic virtue? Altruism? Respect for the law? Hardly. Otherwise, Biden would have disclosed his unlawful possession at any time during either the intervening prior years when he was a private citizen or during the first 18 months of his presidency, when he knowingly still possessed classified files and still did nothing about it. In truth, Biden would likely never have come forward, save for one insurmountable problem: Merrick Garland had likely decided to appoint Jack Smith as a special prosecutor to investigate the Trump files that the FBI had swooped into Mar-a-Lago looking for 3 months earlier on August 8, 2022.

In other words, knowing that Smith or a generic special counsel would very quickly be appointed (Smith was sworn in a little over two weeks later, on November 18, 2022), suddenly Biden and Co. preempted that announcement, in fear that Biden had done virtually the same thing as Trump—albeit without presidential declassification power and for at least 14 years in possession of classified files. Had the attorneys and Biden not come forward, Trump and others would have asked whether Biden had not also removed files. So to get out in front of the formal announcement of the Smith appointment, they preempted, misleadingly and disingenuously, preening that civic virtue had prompted Biden’s “voluntary” disclosures and “cooperation”.

A final note: one of the more disturbing moments in Biden’s catastrophic press conference was his flare up at Hur’s revelation (“How dare he bring up that!”) that in formal interviews an enfeebled Biden had not remembered the general date of his son’s tragic death from a glioblastoma brain tumor on May 30th, 2015 at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington DC. Biden went on to vent at Hur. But Hur was simply documenting his analysis that Biden was severely cognitively impaired, and not as VP Kamala Harris claimed, gratuitously smearing Biden. But who exactly had serially lied about Beau Biden’s demise, by claiming that he had died while on duty in Iraq, serving in the Delaware National Guard as a Judge Advocate? Joe Biden.

Mayorkas

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“Trump has a curious fortune in critics who seem over time to combust in rather spectacular fashion..”

Could Trump Win By Simple Attrition Rather than Vindication? (Turley)

While Woody Allen once said that “80 percent of success is showing up,” former president Donald Trump proved this week that the same could be said about “just sticking around.” Trump had one of the best weeks as cases and critics seemed to implode from the disqualification effort in Washington to the scandal in Georgia. Yet, Trump is not out of the woods and is facing significant threats in what is becoming a war of attrition. In Washington, the Supreme Court gave a chilly reception to the disqualification effort that bordered on the glacial. While law professors like Harvard’s Laurence Tribe insisted that the basis for barring Trump from office under the 14th Amendment was “unassailable,” the justices seemed utterly unconvinced and there is the possibility that the entire effort could now be defeated unanimously. Even liberal justice Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson called the effort anti-democratic.

In Georgia, the case against Trump is floundering as allegations mount against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over her intimate relationship with her subordinate special prosecutor Nathan J. Wade. This week, a court filing alleged that Willis and Wade filed false claims in court on when their relationship began. The two prosecutors have insisted that they only became intimate after Willis hired Wade. Wade’s former lawyer has reportedly come forward to contest that claim. That allegation, if true, could make the continuation of Willis and Wade in the case untenable. Various defendants being prosecuted in Georgia are accused of false statements and filings in court. Of course, the removal of Willis and Wade will not necessarily end the case, but it will present logistical and optical problems for the office. There are also calls for the removal of Alvin Bragg in New York, who is accused of being lax on crime overall despite his determined effort to convict Trump.

Trump has a curious fortune in critics who seem over time to combust in rather spectacular fashion. Michael Cohen, his former lawyer, went to jail and lost his law license. At the Justice Department, various FBI officials from the Russian investigation were accused of wrongdoing and forced out of the Justice Department. That included James Comey who was found to have removed FBI material after Trump fired him and gave it to a friend who leaked it to the press. Another official pleaded guilty to criminal conduct associated with the Russian investigation. In politics, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who attacked Trump for his treatment of women, was forced out of office for sexual harassment. Michael Avenatti was sentenced to a long prison term for fraud and other crimes. Senator Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) who voted for Trump to be convicted in the Senate is now under indictment for corruption.

Even in the arts, Trump critics have fallen from great heights. Comedian Kathy Griffin has not only become persona non grata after her gory depiction of a beheaded Trump but she is now beseeching people to buy tickets for a languishing come-back tour. Alec Baldwin, who scathingly played Trump, has been criminally charged after shooting a movie crew member. Of course, it is fair to note that some of Trump’s allies have fared equally badly, including those convicted or facing trial such as Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and others. Yet, there is no question that time has worked in Trump’s favor in fulfilling certain narratives. He has accused the Democrats of trying to rig elections. While debunking claims in 2020, Democrats like Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold bulldozed any high ground by trying to prevent citizens from voting for Trump as he leads in the polls.

Read more …

“Global debt has surged by $100 trillion from a decade ago and hit a record of $307.4 trillion last September..”

Soaring Debt Pushing Wealthy Nations To ‘Fiscal Death’ – Economist (RT)

Major economies that fail to address their mounting debt issues will die a “fiscal death,” the head of investment and wealth advisory Laffer Tengler Investments, Arthur Laffer, has warned. In an interview with CNBC this week, he predicted a “decade of debt,” adding that the borrowing crisis has embraced both developed and emerging countries, and it is not going to “end well.” Global debt has surged by $100 trillion from a decade ago and hit a record of $307.4 trillion last September, amid the biggest surge in global interest rates in 40 years, according to the economist. Wealthy countries such as the US, UK, France, and Japan account for more than 80% of that increase due to their uncontrolled accumulation of debt.

China, India, and Brazil saw the most pronounced growth of borrowings among emerging markets. “I would expect that some of the bigger countries that don’t address their debt issues will die a slow fiscal death,” Laffer said, adding that some emerging economies “could quite conceivably go bankrupt.” While low-income countries are at high risk of debt distress, repaying debt would be particularly problematic for high-income countries due to an aging population and a lack of workforce, the economist warned. The most recent report by the Institute of International Finance shows that the share of debt has hit a staggering 336% of global GDP compared to an average debt-to-GDP ratio of 110% in 2012 for advanced economies, and 35% for emerging markets.

Read more …

“If Putin and Xi and the Iranians think that they can sit out the conflict, they are mistaken. You cannot sit out a conflict that is directed at you.”

Peaceful Protests Are a Waste of Time and Energy (Paul Craig Roberts)

Will protesters ever learn that peaceful protests do not work when governments care not what people think and represent private agendas and not the people? The protests that work are the violent ones by Black Lives Matter and Antifa. It appears that one-tenth of a million Gazans have already been killed or maimed by the American-financed and militarily-supplied Israeli intended genocide of the remnants of the Palestinian population, a people who have been evicted from their lands and villages bit by bit since 1947. This time the violence is massive, and only the Houthis, a poor population in Yemen that survived years of Washington-inspired attacks from Saudi Arabia, has lifted a hand to help the Palestinians. The “civilized West” responded to the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians by cancelling their contributions to the UN agency that provides Palestinians with humanitarian aid.

Consequently, now 1,000,000 Palestinians are facing starvation as Israel has blocked food deliveries and medicines, knocked out the water supply, hospitals, sanitation, and intends to drive any surviving Palestinians into Egypt. So what do we hear from the governments of the “great moral West”? We hear about Israel’s right of “self-defense.” The Western governments, immoral to the hilt and all enthralled to Israel, have redefined genocide as self-defense. The West’s citizens are so successfully propagandized by Israeli disinformation over decades and generations that the subservience of Western “democracies” to Israel goes unremarked among the small part of the world that is considered to be the West. But not in the rest of the world. The United States and Israel have achieved the status of pariah states, the agents of Satan.

Why, despite this realization, does the rest of the world sit watching the destruction of a people, as Romans watched for entertainment lions devouring Christians in the Colosseum? Russia, China, Iran, and the rest with the exception of South Africa, which took Israel to the International Court of Justice, have not lifted a finger to help the Palestinians. Washington claims to protest but keeps sending Israel the weapons. This despite the fact that the governments of Russia, China, and Iran know that the real target is them. Israel and the neoconservatives intend the destruction of Iran, which will release “jihadists” into the Russian Federation and deprive China of oil. It is Japan in the 1930s all over again, and yet the targeted countries do nothing. If Putin and Xi and the Iranians think that they can sit out the conflict, they are mistaken. You cannot sit out a conflict that is directed at you.

Read more …

“The widespread and persistent use of Midazolam in UK suggests a possible policy of systemic euthanasia.”

The Crime Of The Century: Midazolam Murders – Euthanizing The Elderly (Kelly)

If the data is correct, the only conclusion is that tens of thousands of elderly English were murdered with an injection of the end of life drug Midazolam. These deaths were then falsely blamed on Covid, which was the basis of the public fear campaigns used to justify the lockdowns and mass mandated injections of the public (including children) with an experimental medical intervention that had zero long term safety data. And along the way, a small group pushing the need for mass mandated injections made billions.

https://researchgate.net/publication/377266988_Excess_Deaths_in_the_United_Kingdom_Midazolam_and_Euthanasia_in_the_COVID-19_Pandemic

This paper shows that the UK spike in deaths, wrongly attributed to COVID-19 in April 2020, was not due to SARS-CoV-2 virus, which was largely absent, but was due to the widespread use of Midazolam injections which were statistically very highly correlated (coefficient over 90 percent) with excess deaths in all regions of England during 2020. The widespread and persistent use of Midazolam in UK suggests a possible policy of systemic euthanasia.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

SolarActivity

 

 

RFK vaccines

 

 

Biolabs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756606702634348580

 

 

 

 

Model X

 

 

CO2

 

 

Fish
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756426580446834935

 

 

 

 

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Jun 202023
 
 June 20, 2023  Posted by at 5:00 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  6 Responses »


Thomas Cole The Course of Empire – The Consummation of Empire 1836

 

 

Andrew Korybko:

 

Putin’s Three Latest Appearances

President Putin strongly suggested in a series of appearances last week that a political solution to the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine is still possible. Those of his supporters in the Alt-Media Community who convinced themselves that the special operation won’t stop until Russian forces reach the Polish border are bound to be infuriated by this assessment, but it’s based on his own words as proven by the official Kremlin website. Here are the three appearances that will be cited in this analysis:

* 13 June: “Meeting with war correspondents

* 16 June: “Plenary session of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum

* 17 June: “Meeting with heads of delegations of African states

What follows are relevant excerpts from each appearance along with a one-sentence summary of the point that he conveyed in each passage. After going through all three of them, the next subchapter will summarize President Putin’s envisaged end game to this proxy war. Finally, the last part of this analysis will then conclude with a few thoughts about the viability of his plans, which are arguably quite reasonable if one takes the time to calmly dwell upon them.

Meeting With War Correspondents

* Russia still intends to achieve its original objectives in the special operation.

– “[The goals and tasks of the special military operation] are changing in accordance with the current situation but of course overall we are not changing anything. Our goals are fundamental for us.”

* The demilitarization of Ukraine remains on track.

– “We are dealing with this gradually, methodically…The Ukrainian defence industry will soon cease to exist altogether. What do they produce? Ammunition is delivered, equipment is delivered and weapons are delivered – everything is delivered. You won’t live long like that, you won’t last. So, the issue of demilitarisation is raised in very practical terms.”

* Kiev’s counteroffensive is failing.

– “If we look at irretrievable losses, clearly, the defending side suffers fewer losses, but this ratio of 1 to 10 is in our favour. Our losses are one-tenth of the losses of the Ukrainian forces. The situation is even more serious with armour…By my calculations, these losses are about 25 or maybe 30 percent of the equipment supplied from abroad.”

* Attacks against Russia’s pre-2014 territory are designed to divert its forces from the frontlines.

– “As for border areas, there is a problem, and it is connected – and I think you understand this too – mainly with a desire to divert our forces and resources to this side, to withdraw part of the units from those areas that are considered the most important and critical from the point of view of possible offensive by the armed forces of Ukraine.”

* The creation of buffer zones to protect Russia’s pre-2014 territory is being considered.

– “If this continues, then we will apparently have to consider the issue – and I say this very carefully – in order to create some kind of buffer zone on the territory of Ukraine at such a distance from which it would be impossible to reach our territory. But this is a separate issue, I am not saying that we will start this work tomorrow. We have to see how the situation develops.”

* The now-defunct draft treaty with Ukraine helped Russia solidify its eastern and southern gains.

– “Even though they tossed it, nevertheless, we used this time to get where we are now which is practically all of Novorossiya and a significant portion of the Donetsk People’s Republic with access to the Sea of ​​Azov and Mariupol. And almost all of the Lugansk People’s Republic, with a few exceptions.”

* Russia might mobilize if it decides to move on Kiev again, but there’s no need for that today.

– “Do we need to go back [to Kiev] or not? Why am I asking this rhetorical question? Clearly, you do not have an answer to it, only I can answer that. But depending on our goals, we must decide on mobilisation, but there is no need for that today.”

* One of the fundamental factors of this conflict is that the West is flooding Ukraine with arms.

– “You know, this is a fundamental question, absolutely fundamental. When we say – I said it, and you repeated it – that the West is flooding Ukraine with weapons, this is a fact, nobody is hiding this; on the contrary, they are proud of it.”

* Russia’s military-technical production surged over the past year.

– “During the year, we increased the production of our main weapons by 2.7 times. As for the manufacture of the most in-demand weapons, we increased this by ten times. Ten times!”

* Not every one of Russia’s responses to the crossing of its “red lines” is covered by the media.

– “Not everything may be covered by the media, although there is nothing to be ashamed of. Are strikes on Ukraine’s energy system not an answer to them crossing the red lines? And the destruction of the headquarters of the main intelligence directorate of the armed forces of Ukraine outside Kiev, almost within Kiev’s city limits, is it not the answer? It is.”

* The Ukrainian state exists and must be treated with respect, but it’s unacceptable to threaten Russia.

– “With regard to ‘what Ukraine are they talking about,’ Ukraine, such as it may be, does exist and we must treat it with respect…If they want to live in our historical territories, then they should influence their political leadership so that it establishes proper relations with Russia and no one poses a threat to us from these territories. This is the issue. This is what the issue is all about.”

* It’s debatable that the West will continue supplying weapons to Ukraine no matter its losses.

– “This is debatable (which was said in response to a war correspondent’s claim that ‘Clearly, no matter what losses Ukraine suffers, the Western countries will continue to supply weapons to it’).”

* There’s no guarantee that Russia will go on the offensive after the failure of Kiev’s counteroffensive.

– “I think that, being aware – I say this with good reason – of the catastrophic losses, the leadership, whatever it may be it has a head on its shoulders, should think about what to do next. We will wait and see what the situation is like and take further steps based on this understanding.”

* Depleted uranium shells are being shipped to Ukraine because the West already ran out of all others.

– “They simply have no shells, but they have depleted-uranium shells in warehouses. It appears that they have now decided to use these shells for the time being. They have swept the warehouses clean”.

* The EU’s snowballing economic problems will impede its plans to produce more arms for Ukraine.

– “The (EU’s) economic problems are snowballing…So, it is not so easy to produce everything there, and even more difficult to expand production and build new facilities. This will come in handy for us, because Russia has a special situation. We must build up our armaments; we will have to, and we will accumulate strategic reserves in warehouses.”

* American mission creep is creating very serious risks for Russia.

– “The United States is getting more and more involved in this conflict, almost directly involved, provoking serious international security crises. Correcting the movements of drones that are attacking our warships is a very serious risk. This is very serious, and they should know that we know about it. We will think about what to do with this in the future. In general, this is how it is.”

* Peace talks could resume and the Istanbul draft treaty be revived if the US cuts off Kiev’s arms supply.

– “We have never refused – as I said a thousand times – to participate in any talks that may lead to a peace settlement…Ultimately it is about the United States’ interests. We know that they hold the key to solving issues. If they genuinely want to end today’s conflict via negotiations, they only need to make one decision which is to stop supplying weapons and equipment. That’s it. Ukraine itself does not manufacture anything. Tomorrow, they will want to hold talks that are not formal, but substantive, and not to confront us with ultimatums, but to return to what was agreed upon, say, in Istanbul.”

* Many Americans are afraid of their country starting World War III since they know it won’t win.

– “[The US] pretend(s) not to be [afraid to endlessly escalate the situation and raise the stakes]. In fact, there are many people there who think clearly and are unwilling to lead the world into a third world war in which there will be no winners; even the United States will not come out of it as a winner.”

Plenary Session Of The St Petersburg International Economic Forum

* President Putin repeated Russia’s military-technical statistics from his last appearance.

– “Our defence industry is gaining momentum every day. We have increased military production by 2.7 times during the last year. Our production of the most critical weapons has gone up ten times and keeps increasing.

* Basing Ukraine’s NATO-supplied F-16s outside that country would pose a serious danger for Russia.

– “The F-16s will be burning too (if they’re sent to Ukraine), no doubt about it. But if they are located at air bases outside Ukraine and are used in hostilities, we will have to think about how and where we can hit the resources that are used against us in the hostilities. There is a serious danger of NATO’s further involvement in this armed conflict.”

* The door to diplomacy remains open if the West decides to resume talks with Russia.

– “We never closed [the door to diplomacy]. They were the ones who decided to close it, yet they keep peeking through the crack at us”.

* Attacks inside Russia are designed to provoke an overwhelming response.

“Knowing that there is little chance of success (on the frontline), they are provoking us (through the Belgorod and Kremlin attacks) into making a harsh response, hoping to point the finger at us and say, ‘Look at them; they are malicious and cruel; nobody should have any dealings with them.’ They want to say this to all the partners we are working with now. So, no, there is no need to take such actions.”

* Nevertheless, a buffer zone is still in the cards, though Russia won’t let this distract it from the front.

– “As for these adjacent territories, it is an attempt to distract our attention from the possible key areas of the main offensive they are considering, an attempt to force us to redeploy units we have amassed in other areas of combat, and so on…I have already said that if these attacks on our adjacent territories continue, we will consider the possibility of creating a buffer zone in the Ukrainian territory. They should know what this can lead to. We use long-range high-precision weapons against military targets, and we are succeeding in all these areas.”

* Russia isn’t contemplating a nuclear first strike and will only use these weapons in self-defense.

– “I have already said that the use of the ultimate deterrent is only possible in case of a threat to the Russian state. In this case, we will certainly use all the forces and means at the disposal of the Russian state. There is no doubt about that.”

Meeting With Heads Of Delegations Of African States

* Russia will still talk with Ukraine despite the possibility that it might withdraw from other agreements.

– “Russia has never rejected any talks…Turkiye hosted a whole series of talks between Russia and Ukraine to work out confidence-building measures, which you have just mentioned, and draft the text of the treaty…But after we withdrew our forces from Kiev, as we had promised, the Kiev authorities, just like their masters usually do, dumped it into the dustbin of history, let’s put it mildly, I will try to avoid any foul expressions. They rejected this. Where are the guarantees that they will not withdraw from other agreements? But even amidst such circumstances, we never refused to hold talks.”

Putin’s Envisaged End Game

The preceding subchapters highlighted the most relevant excerpts from President Putin’s latest media appearances with respect to his envisaged end game. At present, he’s clearly reluctant to escalate the conflict through a second round of mobilization, which he said could precede another march on Kiev. That’s not needed for the time being, however, since the first one already served its military purpose of solidifying Russia’s gains in the east and south even if its political one of reaching a peace deal failed.

The demilitarization of Ukraine remains one of President Putin’s most important objectives, which he said is proceeding as proven by the destruction of its military-industrial complex. Although the enemy continues attacking Russia’s pre-2014 borders, he believes that this is aimed at diverting his country’s forces from the front, which is why he’s hesitant to carve out a buffer zone there right now even though it remains in the cards and could possibly be achieved with only missiles instead of dispatching troops.

The NATO-Russian “race of logistics”/”war of attrition” that Secretary-General Stoltenberg finally acknowledged in mid-February is trending in Moscow’s favor as evidenced by its military-industrial output spiking between 2.7-10 times depending on the particular product. The West is already running very low on supplies to Ukraine and that’s why it’s now resorting to the dispatch of depleted uranium, President Putin noted, since it literally doesn’t have any other shells left.

He believes that these abovementioned military-strategic dynamics could combine with the EU’s “snowballing” economic problems to make it impossible for NATO to defeat Russia in the “race of logistics”/”war of attrition”. In that event, peace talks might resume upon the end of Kiev’s NATObacked counteroffensive, during which time the now-defunct draft treaty with Ukraine could be revived as the basis for facilitating a speedy resolution to this conflict.

The abovementioned scenario is only possible if the US cuts off its arms supply to Ukraine, which House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul said is possible if the counteroffensive fails since Congress might then be unable to pass a supplemental spending package for sustaining this aid. Nevertheless, the US’ mission creep could lead to an incident with Russia in the air, at sea, and/or concerning the basing of Ukraine’s promised F-16s in a NATO country before that happens.

This might even be deliberate if its liberalglobalist elite became desperate enough to escalate the conflict if they thought that doing so might coerce Russia into abandoning its newly unified regions and thus helping them “save face” before voters if they agree to a peace deal. Should a 1962-like nuclear standoff emerge as a result of a US-initiated provocation, President Putin would likely regard it as a bluff but would still only use nukes in self-defense instead of a first strike like an influential expert suggested.

He obviously doesn’t want it to get to that point, but it’s America’s prerogative whether it does or not. Russia is more than capable of staying in the “race of logistics”/”war of attrition” if the US refuses for whatever reason to cut off Kiev’s arms supply after the end of its failed counteroffensive, but the latter is unlikely to be able to rely on the EU much any longer since it’s already mostly run through all its stockpiles. This fact raises the chances of a meaningful de-escalation unless warmongers intervene.

Concluding Thoughts

President Putin believes that the odds favor at least freezing the Line of Contact (LOC) through a ceasefire, if not outright ending the conflict by reviving last year’s now-defunct draft treaty with Ukraine, albeit with amendments reflecting the new ground reality of Kiev having lost four more regions. There’s even the chance that a creative diplomatic-legal solution can be found for making the LOC the new international border without violating the Russian Constitution’s prohibition on ceding territory.

Speculation about the devilish details of a peace treaty aside, the point is that these discussions could begin taking place literally the day after the US cuts off Kiev’s arms supply should it tacitly cede victory to Russia in the “race of logistics”/”war of attrition” after the counteroffensive ends. Its ruling liberal-globalist elite might instead escalate out of desperation to coerce sensitive concessions from Russia in order to “save face” before voters if they agree to a peace deal, however, which could lead to a standoff.

In any case, President Putin doesn’t presently have any plans to escalate Russia’s involvement in the conflict as proven by him ruling out a second round of mobilization, remaining reluctant to carve out a buffer zone, and refusing to publicize every response to the crossing of his country’s “red lines”. Right now, he’s wagering that Kiev’s failed counteroffensive, the EU’s economic troubles, and NATO’s depleted stockpiles will combine to revive last year’s now-defunct draft treaty, which is actually quite reasonable.

 

 

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Feb 162023
 
 February 16, 2023  Posted by at 5:36 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  22 Responses »


Cy Twombly Fifty Days at Iliam: Like a Fire that Consumes All before It 1978

Andrew Korybko has more time to write articles than I do these days. And I must transfer his Word files to my own editor. Not obvious. What can I say? I don’t like Bill Gates. Plus, I need to find a new apartment here in Athens,  a perfectly affordable place until recently, where now real estate agents seem to think they live in Manhattan. It just takes so much time… Andrew:

Andrew Korybko:

Speculation has been swirling over the past month about why the US-led West’s Golden Billion so decisively shifted its “official narrative” about the Ukrainian Conflict from prematurely celebrating Kiev’s supposedly “inevitable” victory to seriously warning about its potential loss in this proxy war. This took the form of related remarks from the Polish Prime Minister, President, and Army Chief as well as the US’ Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, after which the New York Times admitted that the sanctions failed.

The reason why they decided to so decisively shift the “official narrative” was because NATO’s military-industrial crisis, which the New York Times warned about last November and was then touched upon by Biden’s Naval Secretary last month, finally became undeniable. Putting all prior speculation about this to rest, NATO’s Secretary-General declared a so-called “race of logistics” against Russia on Monday precisely on this pretext and thus confirmed the bloc’s crippling military-industrial crisis.

According to the transcript of Jens Stoltenberg’s pre-ministerial press conference that was shared by NATO’s official website ahead of his meeting with this anti-Russian alliance’s Defense Ministers, he said the following of relevance to this subject:

“It is clear that we are in a race of logistics. Key capabilities like ammunition, fuel, and spare parts must reach Ukraine before Russia can seize the initiative on the battlefield.

 

 Ministers will also focus on ways to increase our defence industrial capacity and replenish stockpiles. The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of munitions, and depleting Allied stockpiles. The current rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production. This puts our defence industries under strain.

 

For example, the waiting time for large-calibre ammunition has increased from 12 to 28 months.

Orders placed today would only be delivered two-and-a-half years later. So we need to ramp up production. And invest in our production capacity.

 

 Well, this is an issue we started to address last year, because we saw that an enormous amount of support for Ukraine, the only way to deliver that was to dig into our existing stocks. But of course, in the long run, we cannot continue to do that we need to produce more, to be able to deliver sufficient ammunition to Ukraine, but at the same time, ensure that we have enough ammunition to protect and defend all NATO Allies, every inch of Allied territory.

 

 Of course, in the short run, the industry can increase production by having more shifts, by using existing production facilities more. But really to have a significant increase, they need to invest and build new plans. And we see a combination both of utilizing existing capacity more and also by making decisions to invest in increased capacity. This has started but we need more.

 So what I said was that the current rate of ammunition consumption is higher, bigger than the current rate of production. That’s a factual thing. But since we have been aware of that for some time, we have started to do something. We’re not just sitting there idle and watching this happening.  

 And of course the industry has the capability to increase the production also short term, sometimes this on some non-used or not utilized capability there. But even when you have a factory running, you can have more shifts. You can even work during weekends.

 

 So yes, we have a challenge. Yes, we have a problem. But problems are there to be solved and we are addressing that problem and we have strategies to solve it both in the short term and also longer term to as a mobilized defense industry. And if there’s anything NATO Allies, and our economies and our societies have proved over decades, is that we are dynamic, we are adaptable, we can change when needed.

 

 And let me also add, of course this is –the challenge of having enough ammunition is also a big challenge for Russia. So it just shows that this is a war of attrition, and the war to attrition becomes a battle of logistics and we focus on the logistical part of the defence capacity, defence industry capacity to ramp up production.”

As proven by Stoltenberg’s press conference, there should thus be no doubt that NATO is experiencing an unprecedented military-industrial crisis, which is responsible for reshaping its members’ narratives and overall strategy towards the Ukrainian Conflict.

This self-declared “race of logistics”, which he also described as a “war of attrition”, first of all proves that the bloc wasn’t prepared for waging a prolonged proxy war against Russia otherwise they’d have preemptively retooled their military-industrial complexes accordingly. The New York Times’ recent admission that the anti-Russian sanctions are a failure also suggests that NATO completely miscalculated in this respect by expecting Russia to collapse as a result of those restrictions, which didn’t happen.

These two factors add crucial context to why the Golden Billion’s “official narrative” about the conflict so decisively shifted over the past month. They simply can’t sustain the pace, scale, and scope of their armed assistance to Kiev, especially not after their much-ballyhooed sanctions failed to catalyze Russia’s economic collapse or at the very least give their proxy an edge in this “race of logistics”/”war of attrition”. As a result, they were forced to change how they present this conflict to their people.

Most tellingly, the Polish President didn’t rule out the scenario of Kiev making territorial concessions to Russia in his recent interview with Le Figaro, which he said should solely be that country’s choice to make and not anti-war Republicans’. Even Stoltenberg let slip during his latest press conference that “we must continue to provide Ukraine with what it needs to win. And to achieve a just and sustainable peace”, which also didn’t include his usual explicit condemnation of the territorial concession scenario.

That selfsame “just and sustainable peace”, according to the Jerusalem Post’s Dave Anderson, can actually be achieved by Kiev finally giving up its territorial claims. In his opinion piece about how “Ukraine can win against Russia by giving up land, not killing troops”, which was coincidentally published on the same day as Stoltenberg’s press conference, he argued that this swift resolution of Ukraine’s territorial disputes with Russia could result in its accelerated admission to NATO.

That outcome would thus sustainably ensure its security, thereby representing a victory over Russia, at least according to Anderson’s view. In the broader context of this analysis and in particular the interpretation of Stoltenberg’s remarks from his latest press conference, his article can thus be seen as the latest contribution to decisively shifting the “official narrative” about the Ukrainian Conflict in the direction of preconditioning the Western public to accept some sort of “compromise” with Russia.

All of this, the reader should be reminded, is occurring because of NATO’s military-industrial crisis hamstringing its members’ capabilities to sustain their bloc’s pace, scale, and scope of armed assistance to Kiev. Their “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” against Russia is obviously trending towards Moscow’s favor after that Eurasian Great Power proved that it truly has the wherewithal to sustain the pace, scale, and scope of its special operation in spite of the Golden Billion’s unparalleled sanctions against it.

If someone still remained in denial about the existence of NATO’s military-industrial crisis in spite of Stoltenberg’s surprisingly candid admission on Monday, then they should also be made aware of Politico’s exclusive report that was published on the same day, which reinforced his claim. Four unnamed US officials told this outlet that their country can’t send Kiev its requested “Army Tactical Missile Systems” (ATACMS) because “it doesn’t have any [of them] to spare”.

This revelation should thus serve as the proverbial “icing on the cake” proving that NATO is in the midst of such a serious military-industrial crisis right now that its US leader itself can’t even afford to spare important munitions that could give its proxies in Kiev the edge that they so desperately need right now. What’s so stunning about this strategic dynamic is that the combined military-industrial capabilities of the bloc’s two and a half dozen countries can’t compete with their single Russian adversary’s.

That insight in turn shows just how mighty Russia’s military-industrial complex is that it’s still capable of sustaining the same pace, scale, and scope of the ongoing special operation in Ukraine despite the sanctions against it while 30 Golden Billion countries can’t collectively do the same. Should its rumored full-scale offensive transpire, then it’s likely to deal a deathblow to NATO’s proxies due to Russia’s edge in this “race of logistics”/”war of attrition” and thus force them to finally cede their disputed regions.

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May 022022
 


Andy Warhol Mick Jagger 1975

 

The Balance In Attrition (BoT)
Ukraine Is Now America’s War, Too (New Yorker)
Lavrov Interview With The Xinhua News Agency (Saker)
How Ukraine’s ‘Ghost Of Kyiv’ Legendary Pilot Was Born (BBC)
Russia Will Quit The International Space Station Due To Sanctions (DM)
Belarus Opposition Seeks US Technology Help (F24)
UK, EU Tell Elon Musk Free Speech Will Not Be Allowed on Twitter (DE)
Pfizer TV Ad Recommends People Take IVM, HCQ, Z-Pak, Fluvoxamine (Kirsch)
8,607 Unreported Vaccinated COVID Deaths In Canada (Yakk)
Food Shortages In Six Months (Alt-M)
Food Shortages: Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste (Fox)

 

 

Thank you so much for doing our laundry!

 

 

Chomsky Trump

 

 

 

 

Ukraine HRC

 

 

@Trevornoah: “In America you have the right to seek the truth and speak the truth, even if it makes people in power uncomfortable.”
Unless your name is Julian Assange, in which case you face a gulag for the rest of your life.

 

 

CNN Musk

 

 

Twitter thread by “Baron of the Taiga”.

“..this is all ‘Phase 3’ stuff. Ukraine has to make it through Phase 2, and currently, even the most ardent Ukraine supporters who think Russia got battered in Phase 1, don’t think it is going well ..”

The Balance In Attrition (BoT)

However Russia used artillery in Phase 1, it is now using it several times more effectively, pressing its material and positional advantages in Donbas. It is following a method of wave strikes, taking however long they need to, before troops advance on the destroyed lines. We see Russia making good use of drones now, particularly for artillery correction. It is also locating and destroying more covert resource bases for the Ukrainian Army (like the aluminum plant recently). Russian air power is beginning to support infantry movement with success. On the other side, Ukraine is unable to respond effectively. It has an advantage in prepared fortifications and fallback positions set up well in advance (encirclement, while not impossible, is proving difficult outside a few stunning examples). But it is outgunned.

Whatever was going on in Phase 1, neither side was actually committed to a full-blown war of artillery. It was too slow for Russia’s phase objectives, and Ukraine lacked the equipment for it. It is now an artillery war, and NATO has really failed to equip the UAF to match Russia. Saying “we’re going to give you Dutch howitzers, they’ll be there in a month” is no good to Ukraine. They need top-of-the-line field guns, in Eastern Ukraine, yesterday. And they need a lot of them. The fact they continue to abandon anti-tank weapons in such numbers says a lot. By the time Russian tanks or other armored vehicles enter a settlement, not only have Ukrainian units been obliterated by artillery, but hardened infantry have swept in. Russia has learned its lesson.

If the current state of affairs persists, Russia will continue to decrease Ukraine’s holdings in Donbas. Many will not be encircled and captured, due to the way the defensive lines are set up, but those pushed out the other side will be decimated in terms of numbers. Of course, this plays into Kiev’s only strategy at this point, which is to buy time. It knows it cannot defeat Russia in Donbas, and certainly is not relying on any kind of logistical breakdown for Moscow (only Bellingcat thinks this will happen). Aside from whatever games are being played over Transnistria, the Ukrainian play seems obvious: • Maximize foreign support as much as possible • Reinforce every settlement west of the Dnieper with modern artillery, and at least a somewhat competent army.

If they can make the potential costs so high for Russia to advance on Nikolaev and especially Odessa, they could force a freeze in the battle lines, and then maybe play out some obscene hostage scenario in Tiraspol (unacceptable for Russia). A huge amount can go wrong (and is wrong) with this plan, including the lack of consideration of morale, how losing the east will affect western backing, the quality of any new army they can patch together, and how exhausted Russia might be. But of course, this is all ‘Phase 3’ stuff. Ukraine has to make it through Phase 2, and currently, even the most ardent Ukraine supporters who think Russia got battered in Phase 1, don’t think it is going well.

Read more …

Full proxy.

Ukraine Is Now America’s War, Too (New Yorker)

America has crossed a threshold in Ukraine, both in its short-term involvement and its long-term intent. The U.S. was initially cautious during the fall and winter as Russia, a nuclear country with veto power at the U.N. Security Council, amassed more than a hundred and fifty thousand troops along the Ukrainian border. It didn’t want to poke the Russian bear—or provoke Vladimir Putin personally. Two days after long convoys of Russian tanks rolled across the border, on February 24th, the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, still claimed that America’s goal—backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid—was simply to stand behind the Ukrainian people. The White House sanctioned Russia—initially targeting a few banks, oligarchs, political élites, government-owned enterprises, and Putin’s own family—to pressure the Russian leader to put his troops back in their box, without resorting to military intervention.

“Direct confrontation between nato and Russia is World War Three, something we must strive to prevent,” President Joe Biden said, in early March. Yet in just over nine weeks, the conflict has rapidly evolved into a full proxy war with Russia, with global ramifications. U.S. officials now frame America’s role in more ambitious terms that border on aggressive. The goal—backed by tens of billions of dollars in aid—is to “weaken” Russia and insure a sovereign Ukraine outlasts Putin. “Throughout our history, we’ve learned that when dictators do not pay the price for their aggression, they cause more chaos and engage in more aggression,” the President told reporters on Thursday. “They keep moving. And the costs, the threats to America and the world, keep rising.”

Having basically run out of appropriated funds, Biden has asked Congress for thirty-three billion dollars—for new military, economic, and humanitarian support—in the latest of several packages for Ukraine. “The cost of this fight is not cheap,” the President acknowledged. (As Politico noted, the new aid is about half the size of the entire Russian defense budget—and also more than half of the U.S. State Department’s annual budget. Over the next five months, U.S. aid to Ukraine will average more than two hundred million dollars a day.) The investment, Biden said, was a small price “to lessen the risk of future conflicts” with Russia.

For Putin, the war in Ukraine always seemed to be, at least in part, a proxy fight with nato and its U.S. leadership. Ahead of his invasion, he publicly expressed deep paranoia about the military alliance and its further expansion into countries once aligned with the Soviet Union. He also brokered a five-thousand-word agreement with the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, to form a de-facto alliance of authoritarian regimes. They jointly opposed nato enlargement. Biden tried to resist that framing. At the start of the invasion, the U.S. invoked the principles of sovereignty, a democratically elected government, and territorial integrity. During the past week, however, Ukraine’s existential crisis has increasingly appeared to be America’s war, too. On April 24th, Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin took a train with blacked-out windows into Kyiv to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky and symbolically reinforce American support.

The stealthy trip reflected the increasingly ambitious U.S. goal. “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Austin told reporters, near the border in Poland. Blinken said, “We don’t know how the rest of this war will unfold, but we do know that a sovereign, independent Ukraine will be around a lot longer than Vladimir Putin is on the scene.” On Tuesday, Austin assembled defense leaders from more than forty countries—well beyond the nato framework—at Ramstein, a U.S. base in southwest Germany, to coördinate support for Ukraine. Austin, a retired general involved in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, announced the formation of a new coalition of “nations of good will” that will meet monthly to “intensify” an international campaign to win “today’s fight and the struggles to come.” In appealing for more aid, Biden said, “We have to do our part as well, leading the alliance.”

Read more …

“..the Russian military personnel are doing everything in their power to avoid victims among civilians..”

Lavrov Interview With The Xinhua News Agency (Saker)

[..] the special military operation is proceeding according to plan. Under this plan, the Russian military personnel are doing everything in their power to avoid victims among civilians. Blows are carried out with high-precision weapons, first of all at military infrastructure facilities and places where armoured vehicles are concentrated. Unlike the Ukrainian army and nationalist armed groups that use people as living shields, the Russian army provides the locals with all kinds of assistance and support. Humanitarian corridors open daily from Kharkov and Mariupol to evacuate people from dangerous districts, but the Kiev regime demands that the “national battalions” in control of those areas do not release the civilians. Nevertheless, many are able to leave with the assistance of Russian, DPR and LPR servicemen.

During the special military operation, the hotline of the Interdepartmental Coordination Headquarters of the Russian Federation for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine has received requests for assistance in evacuating 2.8 million people to Russia, including 16,000 foreign citizens and employees of UN and OSCE international missions. In total, 1.02 million people have been evacuated from Ukraine, the DPR and LPR, of which over 120,000 are citizens of third countries, including over 300 Chinese nationals. There are over 9,500 temporary accommodation facilities operating in Russian regions. They have space for rest and hot meals, and everything that may be necessary. Newly arrived refugees are provided with qualified medical and psychological assistance.

Russia is taking measures to ensure civilian navigation in the Black and Azov seas. A humanitarian corridor opens daily, a safe lane for ships. However, Ukraine continues to block foreign ships, creating a threat of shelling in its internal waters and territorial sea. Moreover, Ukrainian naval units have mined the shore, the ports and territorial waters. These explosive devices disconnect from their anchor lines and drift into the open sea, so they pose a serious danger to both the fleets and the port infrastructure of the Black Sea countries.

Read more …

Obvious and abject nonsense from day 1. But it fits the overall coverage.

How Ukraine’s ‘Ghost Of Kyiv’ Legendary Pilot Was Born (BBC)

Ukraine’s fighter pilots are vastly outnumbered by the Russians, and have become legendary – thanks in part to the story of an alleged flying ace called the “Ghost of Kyiv”. This hero is said to have downed as many as 40 enemy planes – an incredible feat in an arena where Russia controls the skies. But now the Ukraine Air Force Command has warned on Facebook that the “Ghost of Kyiv is a superhero-legend whose character was created by Ukrainians!”. “We ask the Ukrainian community not to neglect the basic rules of information hygiene,” the message said, urging people to “check the sources of information, before spreading it”. Earlier reports had named the ace as Major Stepan Tarabalka, 29. The authorities confirmed that he was killed in combat on 13 March and honoured with a Hero of Ukraine medal posthumously.

Now, the air force stresses that “Tarabalka is not ‘Ghost of Kiev’, and he did not hit 40 planes”. It describes the “Ghost of Kyiv” as “a collective image of pilots of the Air Force’s 40th tactical aviation brigade, who defend the sky over the capital”, rather than a single man’s combat record. For weeks, Ukrainians did not have a name to go with the “Ghost of Kyiv” – but that did not stop the story going viral on social media. It was used as a marketing brand by a Ukrainian model aircraft manufacturer, while Ukrainian Iryna Kostyrenko showed off a military badge inspired by the legend. And the defence ministry tweeted a video celebrating Tarabalka’s heroism. Military experts told the BBC they doubted that one pilot could have downed as many as 40 Russian planes.

Ukrainian military historian Mikhail Zhirohov described the Ghost of Kyiv story as “propaganda for raising morale”. Speaking to the BBC from Chernihiv, he said that early on in the war the Russians dominated Ukrainian airspace, so a Ukrainian pilot “could only shoot down two or three”. “It’s essential to have this propaganda, because our armed forces are smaller, and many think we can’t be equal to them [the Russians]. We need this in wartime,” he said.


Took just 2 days…

Read more …

Russis has kept it running.

Russia Will Quit The International Space Station Due To Sanctions (DM)

Russia is set to pull out of the International Space Station and will no longer work with NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), according to the head of its space programme. General Director of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin told Russian state TV earlier today that Moscow will no longer co-operate with its international partners aboard the ISS, confirming that the decision to withdraw has already been taken. He said Roscosmos is not required to give an exact date of its withdrawal, but affirmed the Russian space programme will adhere to the stipulated year-long notice period. ‘The decision has been taken already, and we are not obliged to discuss it publicly, Rogozin told Rossiya 24 – though on Friday he said Russia would continue to work on the ISS ‘according to the time frame set out by our government, until at least 2024.’

It comes after Rogozin posted a storm of since-deleted tweets earlier this month in which he slammed Western sanctions imposed on Russia amid its invasion of Ukraine. ‘I believe that the restoration of normal relations between partners in the International Space Station and other joint projects is possible only with the complete and unconditional lifting of illegal sanctions,’ the space chief tweeted. Space is one of the last remaining areas of cooperation between Moscow and Western nations, and Russia has for decades carried American astronauts to and from the ISS on board its Soyuz rockets, but ceased to do so in 2020.

The U.S. and Russia were conducting negotiations for a resumption of shared flights in February, but the invasion of Ukraine put paid to the plans and triggered a wave of unprecedented sanctions on Russian state-linked entities. NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei shared a Russian ride back to Earth in late March after a U.S. record 355 days at the ISS alongside two Russian cosmonauts, and suggested the relations between the crew aboard the ISS had remained unaffected by the war in Ukraine. ‘About my relationship with my Russian crewmates, they were, are and will continue to be very dear friends of mine,’ the American Vande Hei said during a press conference earlier this month.

Read more …

When was the last time the US tried a color revolution in Belarus? Two years ago?

Belarus Opposition Seeks US Technology Help (F24)

The leader of Belarus’ opposition said Friday that the United States is looking at stepping up technological assistance in the struggle against strongman Alexander Lukashenko. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who along with Western observers says she won a 2020 election against Lukashenko, spoke with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other senior US officials and lawmakers on a trip to Washington. “I was assured of full support for the Belarusian democratic movement,” she told the State Department Correspondents’ Association. “We also spoke about providing Belarusian journalists and activists with equipment and technology,” she said. She said that she discussed ways to circumvent regime disinformation including broadcasts of forced confessions.


Franak Viacorka, a senior advisor to Tikhanovskaya, said pro-democracy forces have also spoken to US technology companies to seek an end to lumping Belarus into the “Russian media ecosystem,” which is closely censored. Lukashenko, who has grown closer to Moscow as he cracks down on dissent following the 2020 election, has been one of the main international supporters of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Tikhanovskaya said she shared with US officials evidence of Lukashenko’s support for the war as well as a list of companies and countries that help circumvent Western sanctions on the regime. “We spoke about making sanctions more effective, closing remaining loopholes, freezing Lukashenko’s assets and blocking the money given to him by the IMF,” she said.

Read more …

“The board [of Twitter] must be sure that if it operates in Europe it must fulfil the obligations..”

UK, EU Tell Elon Musk Free Speech Will Not Be Allowed on Twitter (DE)

Firms that fail to comply with British censorship after the passage of the Online Harms Bill would likely face fines of up to 10% of their global revenue, with executives facing consequences that include jail time if they refuse to placate Big Brother. London Mayor Sadiq Khan has also called for further regulation on social media sites in the name of preventing “prejudice.” “Free speech can’t imply a free go for hatred,” the mayor wrote online after information of the acquisition emerged. “We should not overlook the impacts of online hate speech, which followers the flames of prejudice and results in appalling and tragic real-world violence.” “Social media corporations should do extra, not much less, to guard their communities,” he additionally wrote.

While Britain has some of the most high-profile censoring regimes in the Western World, it is far not the only nation where lawmakers have been taking aim at the idea of unfettered social media discourse. Thierry Breton, the European Union’s Tsar for the Internal Market, has asked that Musk follow all of the EU’s laws and regulations, including those governing the censoring of unpopular ideas. “Elon, there are guidelines,” the Monetary Instances stories Breton is saying. “You’re welcome however these are our guidelines. It’s not your guidelines which are able to apply right here.”

“Anybody who desires to profit from this market must fulfil our guidelines,” the EU bigwig reportedly continued. “The board [of Twitter] must be sure that if it operates in Europe it must fulfil the obligations, together with moderation, open algorithms, freedom of speech, transparency in guidelines, obligations to adjust to our personal guidelines for hate speech, revenge porn [and] harassment.” “If [Twitter] doesn’t adjust to our regulation, there are sanctions — 6 per cent of the income and, in the event that they proceed, banned from working in Europe,” the EU bureaucrat went on to threaten.

Read more …

Pfizer won’t be allowed to market the Paxlovid brand until full FDA approval”

Pfizer TV Ad Recommends People Take IVM, HCQ, Z-Pak, Fluvoxamine (Kirsch)

See that pill? They are OBVIOUSLY promoting ivermectin, HCQ, Z-Pak, fluvoxamine, zinc, and vitamin D! Finally! Pfizer thinks they are promoting Paxlovid, but we all know what they are really promoting 🙂


“Pfizer said in its full-year earnings announcement last month that it expects Paxlovid sales worth an enormous $22 billion for 2022. Getting the word out now is a clear strategy to get antiviral treatments to patients. [..] Pfizer won’t be allowed to market the Paxlovid brand until full FDA approval. That explains why its COVID pill ad serves more as an awareness campaign of oral treatments in general.”

Read more …

Interesting Twitter thread by Sheldon Yakiwchuk.

8,607 Unreported Vaccinated COVID Deaths In Canada (Yakk)

There are currently 8,607 Unreported Vaccinated COVID deaths in Canada. This is up from 7994 from last month – average 20/day COVID mortalities missing. Why isn’t Health Canada Reporting them? If you visit the COVID tracker by Health Infobase Canada – PHAC, you will find the following chart. The chart indicates that From December 14, 2020 to April 10, 2022 that there were 15,775 (green) COVID mortalities.

In this, 9511 Unvaccinated have Died (60.3%) and 6264 (39.7%) from the various stages of vaccinated COVID deaths. What’s important about this is how many deaths are reported in this time. 15,775 – Dec14, 2020-Apr10, 2022. A look back to December 14, 2020 shows that on this day, there were 13,553 deaths. Vaccinations hadn’t rolled out in Canada yet, so these were 100% unvaccinated.

April 10, 2022 – due to delays in reporting, there were 37,935 COVID deaths – as of April 8th, 2022.

37,935 – 13,553 = Total Deaths in this Time period = 24, 382. Where as the Current Dashboard (top image) only shows 15,775 or a difference of 8,607 – unreported deaths. Having a 60/40 split on vaccinated deaths in this time is shocking in itself…but what if those missing deaths are all in various stages of being Vaccinated? We’d be adding the unreported 8,607 to the reported 6,264 given a possible total of 14,871 Vaccinated deaths. 14,871/24,382 ->61% of the deaths in Vaccinated. 9,511/24,382 -> 39% of the COVID reported Deaths in the Unvaccinated Camps – Completely reversing the reported Statistics. Which is even more shocking than a 60/40 split of unvaccinated to vaccinated.


Problem is…even as bad as these statistics look – having been corrected…a closer look actually reveals that in the last week over week comparison of these, 81% of deaths are in the vaccinated 55% are in the boosted. Moving from 40% of mortality to 60% is insane…moving that to 81% of COVID Mortalities being in the Vaccinated Community can no longer support the safe and effective, especially seeing as 55% of these ->greater than unvaccinated are in the fully boosted population. And the problem with the Health Canada Reporting of this, is that these deaths are: 1. Not being accurately recorded as Vaccine Injuries. 2. This problem has grown by over 600 deaths in the last Month.

Read more …

“The IMF, the BIS, World Bank, The UN, the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Economic Forum, Bank of America and even Biden himself are all predicting a major food crisis in the near term..”

Food Shortages In Six Months (Alt-M)

A week ago there was a torrent of press releases from global institutions all mentioning the same exact same concern: Food shortages within the next 3 to 6 months. These statements line up very closely with my own estimates, as I have been warning regularly about impending dangers of inflation leading to food rationing and supply chain disruptions. The IMF, the BIS, World Bank, The UN, the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Economic Forum, Bank of America and even Biden himself are all predicting a major food crisis in the near term, and it is not a coincidence that the policies of these very institutions and the actions of puppet politicians that work with them are causing the crisis they are now predicting. That is to say, it’s easy to predict a disaster when you created the disaster.


The claim is that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the primary cause, but this is a distraction from the real issue. Yes, sanctions against Russia will eventually lead to less food supply, but the globalists and the media are purposely ignoring the bigger threat, which is currency devaluation and price inflation created by central banks pumping out tens of trillions of dollars in stimulus packages to prop up “too big to fail” corporate partners. In 2020 alone, the Fed created over $6 trillion from nothing and air dropped it into the economy through covid welfare programs. Add that to the many trillions of dollars that the Fed has printed since the credit crash in 2008 – It has been a nonstop dollar destruction party and now the public is starting to feel the consequences. Lucky for the central bankers that covid struck and Russia invaded Ukraine, because now they can deflect all the blame for the inflationary calamity they have engineered onto the pandemic and onto Putin.

Read more …

That energy transition they talk about? It will never happen.

Food Shortages: Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste (Fox)

A top Biden official said Sunday that the global food shortage crisis would push farmers toward relying on more green energy. “Never let a crisis go to waste,” U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Chief Samantha Power told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week.” Speaking of the global consequences of Russia’s war with Ukraine, the Biden official said that fertilizer shortages would provide farmers the opportunity to “hasten” their “transition” from fertilizer to more “natural” resources. “Fertilizer shortages are real now because Russia is a big exporter of fertilizer. Even though fertilizer is not sanctioned, less fertilizer is coming out of Russia,” she explained. “As a result we’re working with countries to think about natural solutions like manure and compost and this may hasten transitions that would have been in the interest of farmers to make eventually anyway. So never let a crisis go to waste.”


Power added that the administration was still asking Congress to pass more relief. Last week, President Biden requested an additional $33 billion from Congress for military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine. “But we really do need this financial support from the Congress to be able to meet emergency food needs, so we don’t see the cascading deadly effects of Russia’s war extend into Africa and beyond,” she said. President Biden’s Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm made similar remarks back in March, pushing for Congress to use this crisis to pass “clean energy” legislation and to “wean off” fossil fuels. “This crisis in Europe, and the crisis our allies are facing and the reduction of supply of natural gas and oil from Russia creates a moment that we should be acting,” she said at a clean energy summit.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Philadelphia

 

 

 

 

Tulsi Obama
https://twitter.com/i/status/1520713806086696960

 

 

Dogs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1520682823010721792

 

 

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