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Debt Rattle August 1 2026

Aug 012026
 
 August 1, 2026  Posted by at 9:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , ,  19 Responses »


Jackson Pollock Shooting Star 1947


• US Pulls Troops, Patriot Systems From Northern Iraq Amid Iranian Attacks (ZH)
• Trump Announces Deal for Hamas to Disarm While Israel Withdraws from Gaza (CTH)
• Alex, I’ll Take ‘Peace Deals That Ain’t Gonna Happen’ for $400 (Stephen Green)
• Trump Pauses Notion of Giving Ukraine Patriot or Tomahawk Missiles (CTH)
• John Cleese Drops Truth Bombs About Islamic Culture (Catherine Salgado)
• Elon Musk Was Right: Pedro Sánchez Is a Traitor (Aaron Hanscom)
• Other European Leaders See Spain’s Invasion and Panic (Catherine Salgado)
• The Media Takes the Fifth (Jonathan Turley)
• The Curse It Is Cast (James Howard Kunstler)
• Don’t Forget the Role the ‘Scarf Queen’ Played in the Fauci Cabal (Tim O’Brien)
• What’s Next for Fauci? (Eric Florack)
• Senate Schedules Contempt Vote for Fauci (ET)
• This Liberal Says Democrats Will ‘Deserve to Lose’ in November (Margolis)

 


 

https://twitter.com/MAGAlwr5/status/2082804400074998063?s=20 https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/2082678594208182617?s=20 https://twitter.com/SternDrewCrypto/status/2082851849540153803?s=20

 


 


Seems to be part of an old plan, no cigar.

• US Pulls Troops, Patriot Systems From Northern Iraq Amid Iranian Attacks (ZH)

There are new reports Friday of more US troop pullback initiatives in the wake of the last couple weeks of US-Iran fighting, and Iranian ballistic missile and drone strikes which have targeted American bases with increased regularity, especially in Jordan and Kuwait. One regional media publication freshly reports, “The United States military has started to draw down its last remaining forces from Iraq stationed in the vicinity of Erbil’s airport in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, well-placed sources with close knowledge of the process confirmed to Al-Monitor.”


Significant US anti-air defenses are also being pulled back, given they and their radar systems have increasingly been targeted. “Patriot mobile air-to-surface air-defense systems that detect and shoot down incoming missiles, drones and other airborne enemy equipment have already been removed from the military compound, the sources said, without providing further details,” Al Monitor continues. mThe pullback from the Iraqi Kurdistan region reportedly began last week and is still in progress, given all the heavy equipment has to be pulled out.

The missile batteries are expected to be ‘redeployed’ – but this could be further away from within the vicinity of Iran and the Persian Gulf, such as in Israel. Al Monitor notes: Regional officials described the pullout as routine and in line with the US commitment to withdraw all its forces from Iraq by a Sept. 30 deadline that was agreed with Baghdad. However, coming amid sustained attacks by Iran and its Shiite proxy militias, and on the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in particular, the withdrawal has left the Kurds feeling badly exposed.

It’s not just Iran which has targeted US personnel and assets in Iraq, but Iraqi Shia paramilitary units have at times targeted Erbil facilities going back years: While the Patriot systems were deployed to protect US forces, the Kurds have benefited immensely from the security umbrella as well. Erbil’s airport has come under constant attack from Iran and Iran-backed militias since the start of the Iran conflict in February, including this week. US interceptors successfully deterred at least 95% of those attacks, the sources said.

The bulk of Iranian and militia attacks have targeted armed Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in the Kurdistan Region. However, the Erbil compound has also been targeted multiple times. The Patriots have an operational range of between 60 to 100 miles (100-160 kilometers). Iran’s strategy seems to focused on permanently pushing US forces back in the region, while expanding the scope of the war, in what some analysts have called ‘horizontal escalation’. One writer calls this a process of ‘debasification’:

In contrast to the previous hot phase of the war, in which Iran targeted bases across the entire theater simultaneously, this wave started with the targets close to Iranian shores, and has progressed steadily to the Israeli border. After destroying much of the radar network protecting regional US Axis bases in the previous hot phase of the war, Iranian planners have prioritized targeting fuel storage, drone hangers, refueling tankers, and barracks. The American response has been to pull assets back ever further from Iran, to bases in Israel and Jordan. We’ll call this process debasification. Iran’s debasification strategy takes advantage of the inherent asymmetry between the vastly different force structure and capabilities of Iranian rocket forces and US Axis air forces.

Iraq’s north has long been a place where US forces can feal more at ease with ‘friendly’ Kurdish groups, rather than the dwindling presence in the rest of the country. But the Kurds have also come under immense pressure within the Iraq war, especially given headlines alleging they were ready to support an Iranian Kurdish uprising inside the Islamic Republic.

Read more …

We’re sceptical.

• Trump Announces Deal for Hamas to Disarm While Israel Withdraws from Gaza (CTH)

According to the announcements:


• Hamas agrees to gradually surrender weapons in exchange for Israeli troop withdrawal, under a phased plan announced by Donald Trump.

• Verification & Oversight: A verification committee will monitor disarmament and troop withdrawal, with weapons stored under a new Palestinian administration.

• International Mediation: Agreement brokered by Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, and the US-led Board of Peace, aiming to enable Gaza reconstruction and humanitarian access.


PRESIDENT TRUMP – Via Truth Social – “Today, the Board of Peace reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza. This is a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY. This agreement is a critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government that will work closely with the Board of Peace to help the Palestinian people. At the same time, Israel will have the security it deserves, with Gaza no longer used as a base for terror attacks.

This is a major milestone in the implementation of the Trump 20-Point Plan. The agreement will be carried out in carefully structured phases. As disarmament is completed, Israeli forces will withdraw, and the International Stabilization Force will work with a new Palestinian police force to take responsibility for Gaza being safe for its residents and its neighbors. One year ago there was a violent raging war, humanitarian crisis and hostages kept in brutal captivity. We have made historic progress and there is still much work to do.

I want to thank the mediators—Egypt, Qatar, and Türkiye—for their important efforts, and especially my outstanding team, whose tireless work made this historic breakthrough possible. The threat that emerged from Gaza on October 7 will NOT be allowed to rebuild! Under this agreement, Gaza will finally be in the hands of a new Palestinian government that serves its PEOPLE.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL ON THIS AMAZING DEVELOPMENT, THAT EVERYBODY SAID COULD NEVER BE ACHIEVED!

DONALD J. TRUMP

Optimism for the proposal/plan is primarily driven by the fact that Turkey, Egypt and Qatar are coordinating the terms and conditions for the disarming. From the Palestinian perspective, the U.S. and Israeli influence upon the Board of Peace is mitigated and balanced by the presence of Turkey and Egypt as pragmatic insurance. This is a very tenuous agreement with multiple points of potential collapse, not the least of which is the Israeli government refusing to permit a stabilizing police force Netanyahu doesn’t control.

(VIA MSM) – […] Based on the premise of “zero trust”, each stage of the plan is supposed to be verifiable and should be accompanied by Israeli withdrawal. But hours after the deal was agreed, an Israeli air strike wounded several Palestinians in Gaza. Under the ceasefire agreement of last October, the IDF was given control of about 53 per cent of Gaza but has since expanded its territory to include an estimated 60 to 70 per cent of the territory. “An agreement has been reached regarding the issue of weapons. Furthermore, an agreement has been reached on a gradual withdrawal of [Israeli forces] from the strip,” a Hamas official said.

Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas negotiating team, told Al Jazeera. “We will not take any action regarding disarmament prior to Israel’s withdrawal from the Strip.” This appeared to contradict Mr Trump’s statement, which said: “As disarmament is completed, Israeli forces will withdraw…” However, an official familiar with the negotiations told The Telegraph that Hamas understood “disarmament” to refer to the end of the process. By contrast, “decommissioning” would involve Palestinian security forces storing the weapons, meaning that if Israel reneged on its commitments under the deal, Hamas could take back the weapons.

“The idea, in theory, is that all this can be reversed. That way you can agree to a process which is staged and verifiable,” the official said. It is understood, however, that precise practical details of how and where the weapons would be stored have yet to be agreed, but under the agreement they could not be transferred to Israel. The UK, principally through Jonathan Powell, the national security adviser, has been a strong behind-the-scenes proponent of the “Northern Ireland-model” of decommissioning. Israel has not yet commented formally on the agreement, but a US official said the Jewish state was “very sceptical” about Hamas complying.

Israeli officials were reported on Friday as saying that the country did not agree with the “shape” of the agreement, and had conveyed its concerns to Sir Tony Blair, who is working for Mr Trump’s board of peace on the issue. The deal also depends on the creation of a Palestinian police force. However, a Western official said that while much of the preparatory work had been done in identifying recruits, Israel was dragging its feet in allowing training to take place. (read more)

Read more …

I would trust neither Hamas nor Israel.

• Alex, I’ll Take ‘Peace Deals That Ain’t Gonna Happen’ for $400 (Stephen Green)

President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace laid out its comprehensive 15-point plan for the Gaza Strip on Friday, following Trump’s announcement Thursday that Hamas has agreed to disarm. The Board includes representatives from 28 founding nations, including a few questionable picks like Belarus (effectively Russia), Qatar, and Turkey. When I read that Hamas has agreed to lay down arms, I automatically presumed it was only because they’d found better places to stash them. Still, let’s look at the deal and see if there’s anything in there that might work.


The first point lays out that plan’s ambitious goals aimed at “ending the cycle of destruction, securing the complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza Strip, restoring normal life, enabling Palestinian governance, reconstruction, security, recovery and economic development, rehabilitating damaged sectors and facilitate launching a credible political path that achieves self-determination and Statehood.” The devil, as always, is in the details.

Point 2 calls for “the cessation of military operations” by both sides, so that the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) “shall enter the Strip and start to assume its responsibilities” for governing the territory. Then there’s point 3, which says that the International Verification Committee (IVC) must verify each step before both sides move on to the next.Points 4 and 5 call on Hamas to turn over governing authority to NCAG, and for NCAG to “maintain the continuity of civilian institutions and public services” and basically to act as a decent government. There’s also the matter of $400 million in international funds it’s supposed to spend wisely.

Points 6 through 11 all deal with security in the Strip, and that’s where the details get particularly devilish.

The quick and dirty version is that NCAG will run civilian affairs according to Palestinian law and “good governance standards,” and if you have doubts about compatibility, so do I. New police will “undergo a comprehensive vetting,” and “all police weapons shall be transferred to the responsibility and authority of NCAG upon its entry into Gaza and the assumption of its missions.” Heavy weapons, military production sites, depots of weapons, and tunnels will all be decommissioned. The process of transferring authority to NCAG (and security to the International Stabilization Force [ISF]) will be done in stages and linked to a phased Israeli withdrawal.

There’s also a “Social Peace Agreement” that seems to involve deradicalizing Hamas terrorists that the peace plan insists on referring to as “militias.” In fact, neither “terror” nor “terrorist” appear in any of the 15 points. There’s also the little matter of the value of any “social peace” that’s “signed in accordance with Palestinian norms and laws.” But I digress. Points 12-14 involve the ISF and withdrawal of Israeli forces. ISF “shall monitor compliance by all parties with the ceasefire, train the Palestinian police, secure the protection and delivery of humanitarian assistance and essential supplies into Gaza Strip, and support the NCAG, at its request, in any other non-policing mission,” but NCAG handles all internal policing.

The last point is reconstruction, supervised by the Board of Peace and NCAG, assuming things ever get that far. Short-term, you have to doubt whether Hamas will actually disarm or just put on a pretense by giving up some weapons while stashing the rest even deeper underground. Looking further out, you have to wonder whether NCAG or even ISF will become wholly-owned subsidiaries of Hamas, just like the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) did.

And I’m having an impossible time getting past the absurdity of the Social Peace Agreement. Probably better just to let Israel do now what they’ll probably have to do later anyway and fully root out Hamas themselves.

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“It should be remembered that both the U.K and Ukraine were part of the political system attempting to remove President Trump from office.”

• Trump Pauses Notion of Giving Ukraine Patriot or Tomahawk Missiles (CTH)

CTH is very happy to see President Trump pause his consideration of giving Ukraine Patriot and Tomahawk missile system technology and licenses. As noted by President Trump there is always a possibility of those systems being used against the USA if the conflict shifts and Ukraine becomes our enemy.

Germany and Ukraine have been asking for Tomahawks (offensive missile systems), while mostly Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been requesting the Patriot (defensive) missiles. Both systems are closely guarded, held and maintained by strict security protocols in the U.S. military arsenal. President Trump responded to the question during his Camp David cabinet meeting (prompted):

Zelenskyy likely did himself no favors when he announced his intention to build missile and drone factories in the U.K. No doubt several Trump administration officials noted that statement and contrast it against Zelenskyy’s requests. It would be exceptionally risky for the USA to allow Patriot and Tomahawk systems to be built in the U.K. as the secrecy behind the technology would certainly leak and our strategic advantage lost. It should be remembered that both the U.K and Ukraine were part of the political system attempting to remove President Trump from office.

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This is better when written by women.

”Islamic sacred texts endorse pedophilia and rape of non-Muslims. They also promote jihad, domestic abuse, sex slavery, honor killings, and other horrific evils.”

• John Cleese Drops Truth Bombs About Islamic Culture (Catherine Salgado)

Western civilization’s self-immolation is no joke. Comedian John Cleese of Monty Python fame just made a completely accurate but incredibly daring argument you’ll rarely find a celebrity making: not all cultures are morally equal. Cleese posted July 30 in response to an X poll about his possible motives, “I’m not a racist. I’m a culturalist[.] I believe some cultures are superior to others.” He went on, “For example, I prefer cultures that do not encourage wife beating, paedophilia, clitorectomies, stoning and constant inflation of the male ego[.] I am also aware of the difference between Islamoscepticism and Islamophobia.”


He ended with a point that he has probably had to make many times to his former friends and colleagues: “Notice that hate does not come into this. Only moral preferences.” Unfortunately, most Western celebrities have become incapable of moral distinctions.The scenes from Spain right now are proof enough of how suicidal Western immigration policies have become.

The British mass migration crisis likewise made international headlines recently over bodycam footage of Henry Nowak’s death and the rape gang inquiry. Nowak was a young Polish-British boy who bled out on the ground while pleading for help. UK cops cuffed him, sneered at him, and listened empathetically to his murderer’s fake story of racism. The rape gang inquiry found that 250,000 British girls and women have been victims of the gang abuse, with the overwhelming majority of perpetrators being Muslim. One Welsh girl was raped 1,000 times, which is almost unimaginable.

Islamic sacred texts endorse pedophilia and rape of non-Muslims. They also promote jihad, domestic abuse, sex slavery, honor killings, and other horrific evils. These are the facts behind Cleese’s comments. I also particularly applaud Cleese’s clarification because he more eloquently expressed a point I have made before. For instance, if America or England or Spain offered to welcome in some of the persecuted Nigerian and Syrian Christians, or the Persian freedom fighters who draw their inspiration from America, or the Israeli Jews so persecuted in Palestinian Authority-controlled areas, I would understand it (provided we have some clear vetting and a numbers limit).

We have many of the same basic moral principles in Western civilization as all the above-mentioned people have, even if our music and food and village traditions are different. But it is obvious that almost any country that is overwhelmingly Muslim or Communist will train most of its citizens or subjects to honor values completely at variance with ours. I, too, am a culturalist. Nor are all cultures morally equal.

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Spain -and Sánchez- claim this morning that almost all of the 60,000 have returned to Morocco.

• Elon Musk Was Right: Pedro Sánchez Is a Traitor (Aaron Hanscom)

Search for “traitor” on X this week, and one man will flood your timeline: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. The reason? Shocking images of thousands of migrants from Morocco crossing the border and flooding into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. The head of the association that represents Spain’s Civil Guard officers in Ceuta told the Associated Press that the border had “totally collapsed.” After watching video footage of migrants breaking through fences to get into the city, one would be justified in using the word “invasion” to describe what’s happening. Indeed, Santiago Abascal, the leader of the rising populist/conservative Vox party, called it just that and wrote that “Pedro Sánchez is its main promoter and guilty of all its consequences.”


The migrants don’t disagree. Video footage captured some of the arrivals chanting, “Viva Pedro Sánchez!” or “Long live Pedro Sánchez!”


Their gratitude to the Socialist prime minister is due to his mass amnesty plan, which received 1.2 million applications by its June 30, 2026, deadline. As I wrote in So, How’s Spain’s Mass Amnesty Working Out?, “Sánchez, of course, looks at every new immigrant as a potential future voter who won’t care about the mind-boggling corruption within his Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). As increasing numbers of Spaniards take to the streets to demand the prime minister’s resignation, Muslim migrants are among his most loyal supporters.”

In that article, I linked to a video of a Muslim store owner with a poster of Sánchez on his wall who says Muslims who become citizens are “100%” going to vote for the prime minister because of his support for Palestine and Iran. This is why I’ve called him the West’s most hostile leader toward Israel. (The Gazans who celebrated Spain’s World Cup victory would agree with me.)Elon Musk dubbed Sánchez something else: a traitor. After the prime minister defended his amnesty plan in April, Musk wrote on X, “Dirty Sánchez is guilty of high treason.” Sánchez responded cheekily at the time, “Mars can wait. Humanity can’t.”

How’s that humanity working out? Juan Jesús Vivas, the president of Ceuta, said the current situation was an “absolute humanitarian and social emergency.” Reuters reports that Vivas also said that facilities for unaccompanied minors were operating at 2,400% of capacity and that 60 bodies had been recovered at sea over the previous few months. As for the fate of Europe’s citizens, Abascal said Sánchez had “opened the doors of Europe to all dangers.” He described the prime minister’s high treason more vividly than Musk did: “For every rape, every stabbing, and every slash to the pockets of Spaniards to keep them afloat… there is a direct culprit: the mafia boss desperately calling in more hitmen to stay in power.”

Sánchez, who is mired in corruption scandals, can’t go out in public now because, as Abascal says, everyone knows he doesn’t defend Spain’s interests and is only interested in holding on to power. (Watch him get heckled here as he visits areas affected by Spain’s wildfires.) The lower house of the Spanish parliament called on the prime minister to resign last month in a non-binding vote, but he somehow remains in power as one of Europe’s great political survivors.

Could these images of the border invasion be the last straw for Sánchez? Hundreds of Spanish citizens are reportedly already taking to the streets of Ceuta to protest, and they aren’t alone in their anger at the prime minister. I’ll end with several prominent voices echoing what Musk said several months ago: Sánchez is a traitor.

English freedom fighter Tommy Robinson:

https://twitter.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/2082843294732570900?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2082843294732570900%7Ctwgr%5E9d9bddcc7aac1f0fbdb6f379271249240f3bdab4%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Faaron-hanscom%2F2026%2F07%2F30%2Felon-musk-was-right-pedro-sanchez-is-traitor-n4955625

Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet:

Political journalist Eric Daugherty:

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2082836475482161587?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2082836475482161587%7Ctwgr%5E9d9bddcc7aac1f0fbdb6f379271249240f3bdab4%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Faaron-hanscom%2F2026%2F07%2F30%2Felon-musk-was-right-pedro-sanchez-is-traitor-n4955625

Actor and comedian Rob Schneider:

https://twitter.com/RobSchneider/status/2082827168233513027?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2082827168233513027%7Ctwgr%5E9d9bddcc7aac1f0fbdb6f379271249240f3bdab4%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Faaron-hanscom%2F2026%2F07%2F30%2Felon-musk-was-right-pedro-sanchez-is-traitor-n4955625

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60,000 Moroccan men? i doubt it. But African men.

• Other European Leaders See Spain’s Invasion and Panic (Catherine Salgado)

To survive or not to survive, that is Europe’s question. What is happening in Spain with up to 60,000 Moroccan men rushing the borders of Spanish territory over a couple of days is actually what has happened to almost every single Western nation, just sped up and condensed into a small timeframe. But even some European leaders who have overlooked the crisis till now are panicking as they watch the literal invasion of Spain by Muslim men.


Spain is part of the Schengen Area, a group of countries that agreed to cut down on almost all of their border restrictions for individuals in the member countries, allowing for travel without passports. But given the horrific scenes unfolding in Spain, Italian and Finnish representatives, among others, are suddenly realizing the dangers of this system. Dutch Party for Freedom Chairman Geert Wilders posted the following:


Visegrád 24 reported Friday on the Schengen Area countries that are already rushing to complain about how the influx into Spain’s North African territory could affect them. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has been a critic of the mass migration crisis before, said the other member nations should expel Spain from the Schengen visa-free zone as she worries about Italy’s borders from the gargantuan horde of Muslim illegal aliens. “Italy will not stand idle,” Meloni warned.

Her initiative is already backed by Finland, Czechia, and Denmark — forming a bloc of four states with Italy. France has already introduced border controls with Spain. “Spain has completely failed to protect the external Schengen border. This cannot continue. Countries that do not fulfill their obligations cannot remain members of the Schengen area,” the Finnish minister stated. Commentator Eyal Yakoby reported that Austria also wants Spain booted.

It’s incredibly ironic that France, where the government habitually tries to cover up for the massive explosion of migrant-caused violence, is even on board with some border safeguards. Just last month, French President Emmanuel Macron was joining with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to bash Meloni’s repatriation policies. Now that Sánchez’s idiocy led to a full-on invasion, maybe French elites are backtracking?

The tens of thousands of Moroccans who invaded Ceuta and Melilla broke into homes, trashed businesses, and set cars on fire. I have yet to see almost any women among their ranks. It is entirely accurate to say this was a military-style invasion by an entirely male force, likely religiously influenced, and they took over without firing a shot. It took the Spanish almost 800 years to drive out the last Muslim invasion, and this time the enemy just had to show up.

Maybe this could finally be the wake-up call that idiotic European oligarchs need.

Read more …

“The Media Takes the Fifth and Denounces Those Questioning Fauci as an “Assault on Science”

• The Media Takes the Fifth (Jonathan Turley)

Lodovico Carracci St. Sebastian Thrown into the Cloaca Maxima

As I wrote yesterday, Dr. Anthony Fauci was not the only one taking the Fifth yesterday on his record during the pandemic. The media effectively invoked the same privilege to avoid self-incrimination for their years of deifying the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Across the cable networks, hosts and guests were going into vapors as Republican senators pummelled Fauci over his COVID policies and the glaring contradictions found in his diary entries. Some, like Dr. Scott Ratzan, echoed Fauci’s own prior claim that any questioning of his judgment was an attack on science.


Once again, Fauci had every right to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. That does not mean that it was the right thing to do. Fauci already had a pardon that notably extended back to 2014 when his agency approved gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab in China. Any prosecution would be difficult in light of the pardon. It would not be impossible since he could be charged with perjury for any false statements. Yet, that was the same threat that existed during countless prior hearings for Fauci.

So what was the difference now? The answer is found in diary entries and other evidence that contradicts Fauci’s public statements on subjects ranging from the lab theory to school closures. It is not that Fauci would have been tripped into false answers but that he did not have any obvious answers to some of these criticisms. Instead, Fauci invoked the privilege 111 times. That fell short of Vito Genovese’s record, who invoked the privilege 150 times.

Rather than address the long list of criticisms and contradictions for Fauci, the media rallied around the scientist. Fauci was portrayed as something akin to the St. Sebastian of Science, taking barbs and arrows for his faith. It did not matter that over 1.2 million people died, an economy shut down, and millions of children prevented from going to school based on these alleged errors. Fauci would remain silent rather than risk being charged with false testimony.

On CNN, Dr. Scott Ratzan repeated Fauci’s much-maligned claim in June 2021 that “attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.” Yesterday, Ratzan declared: “This is an assault on science and scientists, and unfortunately, Dr. Fauci is in that seat. 38 years of service to the country, one of the best known scientists for infectious disease, unfortunately, has taken a lot of heat…”It was a maddening statement, repeated by many, that treated Fauci as inviolate, if not infallible. Fauci was wrong about issues that produced tragic costs for this country. When confronted about policies such as school closures, he insisted he had never recommended them while privately admitting he had.

Fauci owes the public explanations, including millions who lost loved ones. Instead, he refused to take the risk of being accused of perjury. Fauci is no Sebastian. Notably, Sebastian remained silent in public to conceal his faith, but when discovered by Diocletian, he remained faithful. The price was to be shot through with arrows, but he somehow survived. After being nursed back to health by Irene of Rome, he immediately confronted Diocletian in public and denounced his abuses. For that act he was beaten to death with clubs and tossed into a sewer.

Fauci spoke endlessly in public and remained silent only when asked to address the contradictions in his diaries and the costs of his alleged errors. What is also frustrating for many is the reappearance of figures who toed the line on prior narratives about masks, the virus’s origin, and other issues. They are now claiming victimization in being asked to account for evidence that they were wrong. As Dr. Scott Atlas has laid out, many of those who abused dissenting scientists faced no repercussions after those scientists were largely vindicated in later research.

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“I have nothing to hide. I can explain and validate everything that I’ve done.” —Dr. Anthony Fauci, recorded for TV in 2022.

“They want to put your sons in a cocktail dress. They want mutts from savage lands slavering on your daughters in a drainage ditch. Will half the people in this country really vote for that again?”

• The Curse It Is Cast (James Howard Kunstler)

However you cut this Fauci business, one thing Americans have learned is how slippery and treacherous this thing called The Law has become. You saw it in the sundry Trump prosecutions of 2024, too — a marvelous demonstration of how to play Hide-the-Salami with the truth about anything and everything. You saw it in the structured failure to adjudicate election fraud in 2020. You saw it in the Jan-6 prosecutions and the Congressional Jan-6 Committee charade that followed. And much more.


And one thing it’s good for is demoralizing the whole citizenry to the max. Who in this land was not mortally depressed watching Rand Paul’s Senate hearing Wednesday starring Dr. Fauci? (One last time, the center of attention!) We have become a procedural republic, slipping into an impotence of legalistic self-fuckery the way old folks slip into dementia, one lost memory at a time. There sits the murderer of millions cloaked in the banality of his evil — as it was at Nuremburg eighty years ago — and this time, you just have to lump it, America. The law can’t touch him at all.

Dr. Fauci ran his own titanically corrupt fiefdom out of the nation’s public health complex. Half-a-million a year wasn’t enough for — let’s call him what he was — an executive bureaucrat. He doled out millions in grants to universities, drug companies, and putative public service orgs, and extracted his vig, about a million bucks in prize money during the Covid-19 episode, not counting his share of royalties from drug patents. A modest million. He must have thought: who will even notice. . . who would ever be bothered by that tiny number when Congress, the Federal Reserve, and everybody else is drowning in numbers with so many zeros it gives them tachycardia just to glance at the balance sheet.

Plus, the thoroughly dishonorable news media was busy making Dr. Fauci a rock-star. He had everything but the stadiums. The grand old gals of Hollywood were going all moist over him. “Julia Roberts sent me flowers today,” he typed into his government-issue diary. Barbra Streisand called him on the phone. “I told her that I work listening to her songs on ALEXA,” He gushed. His work resulted in the deaths of millions and the injury of millions more. Neverminding that, he carefully tracked and marveled at his burgeoning fame:

“Big front-page article abut [sic] me appeared in the Washington Post, [Dr. Fauci wrote]. Very flattering. The situation with my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable. It is not hyoperbole [sic] to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable peson [sic] in the world.”

Did Dr. Fauci know that his work-product, the Covid-19 episode and the operations around it, were aimed at setting up conditions to get President Trump bum-rushed out of office in favor of the vacant and pliable tool that was “Joe Biden?” Did others on the White House Covid Task Force know how that would work? Did they know who or what they were in league with?

Anyway, it didn’t turn out as well as they’d planned, of course. The four years of “Joe Biden” only proved how much that coalition of Deep Staters, globalists, and domestic riffraff hated the old American republic and its pain-in-the-ass Constitution. But when they foundered in 2024 — when old Joe-from-Scranton finally gave away the game on that fatal debate stage — and the party had to stuff his idiot veep into the nomination, the Democratic Party crossed an event horizon into total detachment from reality, where they remain to this day.

So then, where did the Democratic Party get the idea that going balls-out Bolshevik-Jacobin would be their salvation after what they already did to try to wreck our country? And by Bolshevik-Jacobin I mean the marriage of murderous envy with civic psychosis. The line it is drawn; the curse it is cast, Dylan prophesied half a century ago. They’re in your face now. Just listen to them. They mean it. They want all your stuff and they want you dead. They want to put your sons in a cocktail dress. They want mutts from savage lands slavering on your daughters in a drainage ditch. Will half the people in this country really vote for that again?

Yet great forces unseen just now are driving the nation to an autumn reckoning, and the main thing to be reckoned is the survival of the USA as a functioning republic with the credibility of law restored and the demons of lawfare crushed. The possibility of legislated election reform slips away day by day, it’s true. But, please understand, this president will not allow the coming election to get pounded down a rathole. If nothing else, we are going to get an intervention under a national security executive order, on the president’s constitutional duty (and his oath) to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

The ensuing fight over this will be short and decisive. These mad dogs will be put down, as mad dogs must be. We are going to take our country back. Depend on it.

Read more …

“She traveled the country in the summer of 2020 to lobby governors and state health officials to institute strict guidelines on masking and reducing the sizes of indoor gatherings ..”

• Don’t Forget the Role the ‘Scarf Queen’ Played in the Fauci Cabal (Tim O’Brien)

Rush Limbaugh called her “the scarf queen” in reference to her failed attempts to humanize herself through a common female fashion accessory – her trademark scarves that she wore when she conducted White House Coronavirus Task Force Briefings in 2020. She is Deborah Birx, who served as the White House coronavirus response coordinator under President Donald Trump in his first term, finishing in that role once Trump was safely out of office and the Biden regime had taken control.


You may remember her as the taller, handsome woman who often appeared alongside Anthony Fauci at press briefings and task force events. She was tapped to serve on that task force after serving as the U.S. Global AIDS coordinator, which was considered an ambassador-level job within the State Department. From 2014 under President Barack Obama through 2019-2020, she had overseen American programs whose stated purpose was to counter the global spread of HIV. Before that, she ran the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) global HIV/AIDS division. Only in the federal government can failure give you upward mobility.

In her memoir Silent Invasion, Birx painted herself as a heroine for what she framed as balancing Trump administration skepticism over COVID-19, politics, media narratives, the need to treat millions of Americans, and the effort to prevent or mitigate the spread of the virus. In that book, Birx admitted that she was integral to the effort to extend the initial lockdowns beyond the “15 days to slow the spread.” “No sooner had we convinced the Trump administration to implement our version of a two-week shutdown than I was trying to figure out how to extend it. Fifteen Days to Slow the Spread was a start, but I knew it would be just that. I didn’t have the numbers in front of me yet to make the case for extending it longer, but I had two weeks to get them”, she wrote.

Technically, Birx was a Trump insider. He relied on her, Fauci and their team to give him the advice he relied upon to make critical national decisions. But as we’ve seen with Fauci, who clearly worked against Trump and his administration, Birx was more discreet but still a kindred spirit.

She played a major role from the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 with the “15 days to slow the spread” messaging theme and related policies. Those policies, which she advanced, included limiting group gatherings, social distancing, and the closure of churches, gyms, places of employment, restaurants and bars, but not, curiously, liquor stores. She pushed for policies to keep asymptomatic people trapped in their homes under lockdown. She advocated for the quarantine of an entire household if just one member tested positive for COVID-19.

And she was aggressive in her push to test everyone, including those with no symptoms. More than anyone else on the White House task force, Birx championed mask-wearing in spite of existing evidence that the masks would prove ineffective at mitigating the spread of COVID-19. She pushed to mask indoors and even at home.

She traveled the country in the summer of 2020 to lobby governors and state health officials to institute strict guidelines on masking and reducing the sizes of indoor gatherings they would permit. She did all of this while at the same time, leftist governors like Pennsylvania’s Tom Wolf were out encouraging people to join large groups of “peaceful protestors” to support Black Lives Matter. At the time, she expressed worry, but even on pandemic grounds, she did not condemn those “peaceful protests.”

Because of Birx and Fauci and their people, you couldn’t go to a funeral for a family member; you couldn’t visit loved ones in the hospital; your kids couldn’t go to school; you couldn’t go to church or work; you couldn’t gather in full for Thanksgiving or Christmas; you had to cancel that wedding and that elective health procedure because “group size.”

She took particular issue with White House advisor Scott Atlas, who took an entirely different stance on managing the pandemic. Atlas rejected the Birx/Fauci approach of masking, testing, and the arbitrary “six-feet social distancing” requirements. He correctly advocated for testing just those with symptoms or who were clearly sick. He wanted to manage the nation’s response to COVID-19 until herd immunity could take over, which is how most epidemics throughout history had been effectively handled. Isolate those with symptoms, treat them with all the means at your disposal, and get to herd immunity as quickly as possible.

More to the point, Atlas subscribed to something called the Great Barrington Declaration, which stated: “We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza. As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.

The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.” Medical doctors and public health professionals who openly advocated for the declaration were widely canceled by the left and the Birx/Fauci cabal. In fact, social media platforms broadly censored that declaration and those who supported it. Birx tried to get Atlas kicked off the White House task force.

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“..several Democrats on the panel rushed to Fauci’s defense mid-hearing. Clearly, they’re not interested in the truth of the matter. ”

• What’s Next for Fauci? (Eric Florack)

What’s next for the guy who managed to make Josef Mengele and Jack Kevorkian both look like amateurs by comparison, Anthony Fauci? There are several possibilities here, and I’ll try to cover all the ones I can foresee. I warn you that like many of my deep analytical dives, this is going to get a little messy. So, stay with me here. Understand that I make no claims to actually covering all possibilities, of course, but here’s how I see things at the moment.


Sen. Rand Paul has scheduled a committee vote for August 5, on whether to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer a single question. Fauci invoked the Fifth more than 100 times during the hearing—some reports say 111, which is either a constitutional strategy or a new Olympic event—and the vote will almost certainly break down along party lines, since several Democrats on the panel rushed to Fauci’s defense mid-hearing. Clearly, they’re not interested in the truth of the matter.

Several GOP members, Sen. Josh Hawley chief among them, argue Fauci has no valid Fifth Amendment claim in the first place, since Biden’s pardon already grants him immunity from criminal prosecution. The idea being, you can’t incriminate yourself with testimony if there’s no crime left to charge you with. Our own Matt Margolis caught the moment yesterday, quoting Hawley directly: “Let’s just get one thing straight, you don’t have any rights under the Fifth Amendment because you’ve been pardoned,” Hawley said. “As you very well know, as the Supreme Court has been clear for a century and more, Brown v. Walker, 1896. When he has been pardoned, he may not stand upon his privilege.”

Paul himself called this legal theory “untested,” saying it would likely have to be decided by a court. Far be it from me to correct Sen. Paul, but I doubt that very much. The test happened already—in 1896, in fact—under the name Brown v. Walker, 161 U.S. 591. I’m interested that Paul didn’t know that, and also that Hawley hadn’t mentioned it to him.

Here’s the short version of the Walker case review, for anyone who skipped that week of law school. Walker, a railroad officer, got subpoenaed to testify before the Interstate Commerce Commission about rate-fixing collusion. He refused to answer, invoking the Fifth, even though a federal immunity statute already promised nothing he said could be used against him. Walker’s position was that statutory immunity wasn’t good enough—that only a pardon, or the total impossibility of prosecution, could strip him of the right to stay silent. He got held in contempt, and the case climbed to the Supreme Court.

The question the court had to settle: does the Fifth Amendment protect against self-incrimination itself—any admission that makes you look bad—or only against testimony that could actually convict you of something? By a 5-4 vote, the Court sided with the government. Justice Henry Billings Brown, writing for the majority, held that the privilege tracks the risk of prosecution, not the risk of embarrassment.

Once that prosecution risk disappears entirely—by statutory immunity, or by pardon—the constitutional basis for silence disappears with it. A pardoned witness, Brown wrote, “stands, with respect to such offense, as if it had never been committed.” He didn’t pull that out of thin air, either—he grounded it in English common law and the Aaron Burr treason trial, so the “untested” label doesn’t even survive contact with the 19th century, let alone the 21st.

The logic holds up fine today: the Fifth protects against testimony that could convict you. Erase the possibility of conviction, and there’s nothing left for the privilege to attach to.

A later case, Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79, brushes up against this, though I doubt it changes the outcome here. Burdick was a journalist Woodrow Wilson tried to pardon specifically to force him to testify. Burdick refused the pardon outright and got held in contempt anyway for pleading the Fifth. The Court sided with him, ruling unanimously that a witness can still refuse to testify if he declines the pardon offered to him. Crucially, that doesn’t help Fauci—everyone knows he’s already accepted his. And we also know he was campaigning for it to be granted.

Fauci’s team is left arguing the pardon only covers conduct through the date it was signed, so any new admission could expose him to fresh charges. That’s a shaky proposition at best, resting on three narrow legs: First, anything Fauci says today that amounts to a new offense—perjury, false statements to Congress—isn’t covered by a pardon issued before he said it, and it revives full Fifth Amendment protection for those specific answers. Second, a presidential pardon covers federal offenses only; it does nothing to block state prosecution under the dual-sovereignty doctrine, and I’m already seeing chatter that a few state AGs are circling this exact opening. Our Catherine Salgado touched on this.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier evidently was keeping an eye on the proceedings, because after the hearing on Wednesday, he posted on X, Fauci’s lack of candor to Congress is unbelievable. My office is launching an investigation into Dr. Fauci. It’s past time we get the truth of what happened during COVID. Third, the pardon addresses criminal exposure and nothing else—it says nothing about civil suits, and sworn testimony today becomes fair game as an admission in any civil case where Fauci’s a party or witness. That last one may be the real engine behind the blanket silence, whatever the pardon technically covers.

Bottom line: Hawley and Paul had the stronger textbook argument in the room. For conduct squarely inside the pardon’s window, Fauci’s blanket Fifth Amendment invocation doesn’t rest on solid ground—not against better than 130 years of precedent, anyway.

Read more …

He was the boss of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022. Far too long.

• Senate Schedules Contempt Vote for Fauci (ET)

The Senate has scheduled a vote on holding Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Aug. 5 will consider a contempt resolution for Fauci. The resolution has not been released as of yet. If the panel approves the resolution, then it will be sent to the Department of Justice with a recommendation to prosecute Fauci, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), chairman of the Senate panel, said during an appearance on CBS on July 30.


Paul has previously requested prosecution of Fauci for allegedly lying to Congress, but federal prosecutors have not brought any charges to date. Fauci, who led the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022, read an opening statement at a hearing of the committee on July 29, then refused to answer any questions. Fauci said he was following advice from his lawyers and invoking his right under the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, which protects people against self-incrimination.

Paul noted at the end of the hearing that a preemptive pardon from then-President Joe Biden issued in early 2025 covers Fauci for any crimes he may have committed from Jan. 1, 2014, through Jan. 19, 2025. Paul asked Fauci whether he, at any point during the time period the pardon covers, destroyed any federal record or instructed others to. Fauci declined to answer, pointing to the Fifth Amendment. “My question was limited to the period of your pardon only. I find your objection unsupported,” Paul said. bFauci said in his opening statement that Paul is obsessed with calling for his prosecution.

“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,'” Fauci said.Some senators said the situation called to mind what transpired with Lois Lerner, an IRS official who read an opening statement while appearing before a congressional panel in 2013 before refusing to answer any questions. The House of Representatives voted to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress.

Congress more recently approved contempt resolutions against Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, onetime advisers to President Donald Trump. The men were convicted of contempt and spent time in prison. bPeople convicted of contempt of Congress can land a fine of up to $100,000 and a prison term of up to 12 months. Several legal experts told The Epoch Times that Fauci wrongly invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to some of the questions.

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The only chance they have is to not play by the rules.

• This Liberal Says Democrats Will ‘Deserve to Lose’ in November (Margolis)

Democrats have a socialism problem, and even one of their own on Fox News’s The Five isn’t pretending otherwise. On Thursday, Harold Ford Jr., who is far and away smarter than Jessica Tarlov, ripped into his party for propping up socialist candidates like Abdul El-Sayed, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Michigan.


Ford didn’t hedge. His argument was straightforward: the Democrat Party has drifted so far from ordinary voters that its own candidates no longer resemble what the country is asking for. “Because the American people are not being ambiguous at all about what they want,” Ford said. “They want lower prices; they want not-forever wars. They want their kids to have better futures and an opportunity to achieve the American dream.”

Ford then turned to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the democratic socialist who has spent years boosting candidates well to his left. Ford summed up the platform creeping into his party’s fringe in a single breath. “No prisons, no borders, pro-Hamas, no Senate,” he said. He added that he’d never once heard Sanders personally endorse those positions, and that’s exactly the problem. “Senator Sanders, you have to denounce them,” he said.

Ford made clear he doesn’t think Sanders actually believes in abolishing prisons or police. “I don’t believe you’re for no police; I don’t believe you’re for no prisons,” he said. “You are better than that.” His demand was simple: Democrats who reject the radical fringe need to say so loudly instead of letting it define the party for everyone else. Ford then pointed to El-Sayed, who is trailing badly in a race Democrats can’t afford to lose. “We’re 15 points behind with the fellow in Michigan, who probably is a nice guy, but he doesn’t deserve to be in the U.S. Senate if he can’t win,” Ford said. He was careful to note he wasn’t shilling for Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), El-Sayed’s Democrat rival.

“We Democrats will deserve to lose if these are the people that we put up to run in the fall,” Ford concluded. Ford is right that nominating unelectable ideologues in the name of purity is a losing strategy dressed up as principle. He’s also right that a party that can’t manage a firm no to abolishing prisons, abolishing borders, and cheering Hamas has a branding problem that no amount of spin will fix. Where I part ways with Ford is with his implication that this is a fringe problem rather than a party-wide one. The far-left positions he described extend well beyond a few primary long shots.

Democrat leadership has tolerated, indulged, or quietly embraced those positions for years, and pretending otherwise lets the party off far too easily. Still, his larger point stands. Democrats have almost everything working in their favor heading into November: a favorable midterm map, an energized base, and a president whose approval numbers give them plenty to campaign against. If they still manage to lose because they couldn’t resist nominating candidates who can’t win a general election, they will have earned every bit of that defeat.

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https://twitter.com/ConstitustionX/status/2083104167279915256?s=20 https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/2082958182754742540?s=20 https://twitter.com/ConstitustionX/status/2082944999835185658?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 25 2022

Jul 252022
 
 July 25, 2022  Posted by at 9:14 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  58 Responses »


Mathew Brady Abe Lincoln 1864

 

• Five Months Into The Special Military Operation (Saker)
• Moscow Reveals Target Of Strike On Odessa Port (RT)
• Russia Not Asking For Sanctions Removal – Lavrov (RT)
• On the Future of Europe: A Proposition from 1 January 2023 (Batiushka)
• Hungary Warns Of Shift In World Order (RT)
• Hungary Spreading ‘Russian Propaganda’ – Ukraine (RT)
• Logistical Nightmares For The Ukrainian Army (Milacic)
• Media Miss Major Moves on Russia-Ukraine (Ray McGovern)
• Jan. 6 Committee Still Probing Links Between Trump And Extremist Groups (CBS)
• How Mario Draghi Broke Italy (Fazi)

 

 

 

 

Tulsi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1551154675394744320

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carl Sagan

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The truth is that by the laws of warfare the Ukraine lost the war in less than a week.”

• Five Months Into The Special Military Operation (Saker)

[..] if you look at the size of the Russian force which took the Antonov airport near Kiev (one airborne regiment) and the size of the force which moved by land towards that airport, you can easily convince yourself that this force was not intended to attack or invade Kiev. This force did exactly what it was intended to do, it forces the Ukronazis to move forces to protect Kiev and, thereby, it pinned them down just long enough to establish air superiority, attack and cut off the forces near and in the Donbass, destroy the Ukrainian C4I and almost the entire Ukrainian air force. This took just a few days and once that mission was completed, these forces withdrew as they had literally nothing to gain by staying in place. If anything it is the Ukrainian side which is running out of weapons, supplies and soldiers (more about that later). The Russians have all the firepower they need for many years ahead.

“Russia had to change her plans and tactics because of the heavy losses suffered by the Russian military early in the operation” Actually, there is a grain of truth here, but not the correct explanation. As I have mentioned several times, the special military operation is “special” because it is an operation which is not a regular combined arms operation. The Russians began the SMO with fewer soldiers than the opposing side, and they privileged maneuver and long range strikes over the taking and holding of towns and cities. Most crucially, the Russians very deliberately tried all they could to minimize Ukrainian casualties and to preserve the Ukrainian civilian infrastructure (unlike the “democratic” countries out there who first destroy power plants, bridges, water stations, etc. to inflict the maximum of “shock and awe” on the civilian population!). The Russians could have easily turned, say, Kiev into Baghdad or Belgrade under US/NATO bombs, but they deliberately chose to save as many lives and civilian infrastructure as possible, even at the cost of lives of Russian soldiers).

What apparently did take the Russians by surprise is the willingness of the Ukrainian forces in some towns to attack the Russian columns even though the local authorities seemed to have indicated to the Russians that, like in, say, Kherson, their city would not resist. Simply put, they chose the Mariupol model rather than the Kherson model. This choice was mainly dictated by the very powerful Nazi death squads who would at best arrest anybody negotiating with Russia and, at worst, simply shoot them on the spot. The Russians found plenty of bodies of executed Ukrainian soldiers. But this does not tell the full story either. The truth is that by the laws of warfare the Ukraine lost the war in less than a week.

What is my evidence for such an apparently outlandish and over-the-top statement? Simple: since the beginning of the SMO, the Ukrainians failed to execute a single operational level attack or counter-attack. At most they were able to execute small, tactical level attacks, the vast majority of which almost instantly failed, a few were defeated in a few days, and, crucially, not a single one gave the Ukrainian side the operational initiative. Not once.

Read more …

Are these sanctions gone or not?

“Russia and the United Nations signed a memorandum providing for the UN’s involvement in lifting international sanctions on the export of Russian grain and fertilizers..”

• Moscow Reveals Target Of Strike On Odessa Port (RT)

The Russian Ministry of Defense has confirmed striking targets in the major Ukrainian port of Odessa on Saturday, revealing that its missiles hit military infrastructure and arms stockpiles. “In the seaport of Odessa, on the territory of a shipyard, a docked Ukrainian warship and a warehouse of Harpoon anti-ship missiles, supplied by the US to the Kiev regime, have been destroyed by sea-based high-precision long-range missiles,” the ministry said on Sunday. The attack also crippled a repair facility where vessels of the Ukrainian navy have been fixed, it added. The strike on the target in Odessa, which is a major trade hub in the southwest of Ukraine, came a day after the signing of a UN-brokered deal to unblock grain exports from Ukrainian ports.

During the conflict that has been underway since February 24, Moscow has insisted that its troops only fire at Ukrainian forces and military infrastructure, not civilian facilities. According to Kiev officials, four cruise missiles were used in the attack on the port of Odessa, allegedly targeting grain silos located there. Two of the missiles were intercepted and two made it through, but failed to inflict significant damage, they said. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky described the strike as “barbarism” and insisted “Russian Kalibr missiles destroyed the very possibility of statements” on the need for dialogue and any agreements with Moscow. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “unequivocally condemns” the attack on the port of Odessa, his spokesman said.

According to Guterres, “the full implementation [of the deal] by Russia, Ukraine and Turkey is imperative” because the products that are covered by it are “desperately needed to address the global food crisis and ease the suffering of millions of people in need around the globe,” he added. The Russia-Ukraine agreement, which had been agreed on Friday with the mediation of Turkey and the UN, sets out a framework for resuming Ukrainian grain exports via the Black Sea ports, which had been disrupted by the fighting. In addition, Russia and the United Nations signed a memorandum providing for the UN’s involvement in lifting international sanctions on the export of Russian grain and fertilizers to world markets.

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“As far as food is concerned, our Western colleagues… should remove the obstacles they themselves have created..”

• Russia Not Asking For Sanctions Removal – Lavrov (RT)

Moscow is not asking for the lifting of sanctions, but urges Western states to fix the problems they have created on the global food market, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Sunday. “We are not asking for the removal of sanctions – those are problems that deserve to be dealt with separately. We will simply develop our economy now by counting on reliable partners and not on those who have once again proved their total incapacity… As far as food is concerned, our Western colleagues… should remove the obstacles they themselves have created,” the diplomat said after talks with his Egyptian counterpart, Sameh Shoukry, in Egypt.

He noted that Moscow would not have agreed to Friday’s deal unblocking Ukraine’s grain exports if the issue of freeing up Russian exports had not been resolved. Moscow is now counting on the UN to stick to its promise and assist in removing restrictions holding back Russian grain shipments. “Those illegitimate restrictions that were imposed… prevented operations with Russian grain, including insurance, including the admission of our ships to foreign ports and foreign ships’ entry into Russian ports,” Sergey Lavrov said. “After the signing of agreements in Istanbul at the initiative of the UN Secretary General, he volunteered to seek the removal of these illegitimate restrictions. Let’s count on him to succeed,” the foreign minister added. Lavrov recently accused the West of intentionally “keeping silent” about the impact of Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia’s exports.

At a news conference last month, he said: “There is a problem with the export of Russian grain. Although the West loudly reminds everyone that grain is not subject to sanctions, for some reason they are bashfully silent about the fact that ships carrying Russian grain are subject to sanctions. They are not accepted in European ports, they are not insured, and, overall, all logistics and financial matters, which are associated with the supply of grain to the world markets, are under sanctions of our Western colleagues.” Representatives of Ukraine, Russia, the UN and Turkey signed a deal to unblock exports of grain, food, and fertilizers from Ukrainian ports on Friday. In addition to the agreement, Russia and the UN signed a memorandum implying UN involvement in lifting restrictions on the export of Russian grain and fertilizers to world markets.

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“..where does the US/NATO defeat in the Ukraine leave the European peninsula?..”

• On the Future of Europe: A Proposition from 1 January 2023 (Batiushka)

As schoolchildren will tell you, the names of the continents begin and end with the same letter, A: Asia, Africa, America, Australia, Antarctica. There is one exception: Europe, which though still beginning and ending with the same letter, the letter is not A, but E. Why the difference? Is it perhaps because Europe is not really a Continent? After all, it is not a vast landmass surrounded by an ocean (if it were a small one, it would be called an island). Its borders are arbitrary, having frequently changed, were only relatively recently pushed to the Urals, and are still much disputed. In reality, surely Europe is the artificially isolated north-western peninsula of Asia? It is not a geographical Continent at all, it is an ideological construct. That is why the slogan of so many EU-fanatics, like the former French President Chirac, was: ‘Faisons l’Europe’ – ‘Let’s Create Europe’.

We ask the above question because in this winter of 2022-2023 the old EU and Non-EU Europe has had to face a new reality following the war that the US/NATO lost in the ‘Ukraine’, as it used to be called. Europe-wide, indeed worldwide, food riots with looting of supermarkets and ‘bill boycotts’ (the wave of civil disobedience with the refusal/inability to pay soaring fuel bills) made this clear. Obviously, a worldwide reconfiguration is coming. Already the new world is becoming multipolar, with several main centres within the old BRICS, Russia, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, and now more to come, perhaps Iran, Türkiye, Argentina, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Mexico, Lebanon and Indonesia. In general, all Asia, Africa and Latin America now at last have their own future.

Not only are the old, thoroughly corrupted international organisations like the UN, WTO, WEF or IMF rightly disappearing into the sewers of history along with their discredited puppet-master, the US elite, but so too are pro-US regional groupings, like its European political and economic arm the EU and its European military arm, NATO. And here precisely, we ask where does the US/NATO defeat in the Ukraine leave the European peninsula, both the EU part of it and the rest of it, outside the EU? After World War I Europe had to be reconfigured, and again after World War II. Now, after whatever you call the 2022 Western rout in the Ukraine (World War III, or World War I, Part III), what is its destiny?

Surely the greatest revelation of the US proxy war in the Ukraine is Europe’s dependence on Russia. Without Russia, it simply cannot survive – though Russia can survive without it. The fact is that for the last few centuries, the largest European country has been Russia for surface area and, over the last century and a half, for population. The most common European language in Europe is Russian, the second German, the third French, the fourth English, the fifth Italian. As regards natural resources, whether agricultural or mineral, and as regards military power, the most important country, once again, is Russia.

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The topic is so taboo that only the black sheep can mention it.

• Hungary Warns Of Shift In World Order (RT)

The Russia-Ukraine conflict could end the West’s dominance and shift the balance of power in the world, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said. Russia launched a military campaign against the neighboring country in late February. Orban argued that the decision to impose sanctions on Moscow and supply Kiev with heavy weapons de facto turned the EU and NATO member states into participants in the conflict, but ultimately yielded no results. “Instead, today we are sitting inside a car with flat tires on all four wheels,” Orban said in a speech in the Romanian city of Baile Tusnad on Saturday. “The world is not only not with us, but it is demonstratively not with us,” the PM added, arguing that, instead of thinking about gaining the upper hand on the battlefield in Ukraine, the West should now focus on achieving peace through negotiations.


Orban also warned that the conflict could easily put an end to Western supremacy and “create a multipolar world order.” “We must try to persuade the West to develop a new strategy,” the PM said. He later added that the conflict “will end when the Americans and the Russians come to an agreement.” Hungary has refused to send weapons to Ukraine, while Orban said this month that the EU “shot itself in the lungs” with its ill-considered sanctions. Hungarian officials also criticized the proposal by Brussels to ration gas in an attempt to phase out deliveries from Moscow. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto traveled to Moscow on Thursday to negotiate the purchase of additional gas volumes in order to ensure that the country has enough reserves for the winter. “It is currently simply impossible to buy this much extra natural gas in Europe without Russian sources,” Szijjarto told reporters.

Read more …

Huh? “..Orban’s remarks about the ineffectiveness of anti-Russia sanctions are “a classic example of Russian propaganda..”

• Hungary Spreading ‘Russian Propaganda’ – Ukraine (RT)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s remarks about the ineffectiveness of anti-Russia sanctions are “a classic example of Russian propaganda,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko claimed on Sunday. Orban said on Saturday that the decision to impose sanctions on Moscow and supply Kiev with heavy weapons had turned the EU and NATO member states into de facto participants in the conflict, while failing to deliver results. Responding in a Facebook post, Nikolenko said the idea that “sanctions did not shake Russia” represent “a classic example of Russian propaganda.” The Foreign Ministry spokesman claimed that sanctions are effective, as they have “significantly reduced” the capabilities of the Russian military, while Western arms supplies have helped to save the lives of Ukrainians.

He claimed that if sanctions and weapons were ineffective, the Kremlin would not have used “crazy resources” to stop them. Moscow has been warning the West against supplying Kiev with weapons, saying it will not prevent Russia from achieving its military goals, but will lead to extra casualties. Russian officials have also pointed to the boomerang effect of Western sanctions. In a speech in the Romanian city of Baile Tusnad on Saturday, Orban said the conflict could put an end to Western supremacy and “create a multipolar world order.” The Hungarian leader argued that the West needs to develop “a new strategy.” Nikolenko countered that “Europe is in an economic crisis not because of sanctions, but because of Russia’s hybrid war.” Moscow, meanwhile, categorically denies accusations of using energy supplies as a political weapon.

The Ukrainian official said Russian President Vladimir Putin “will not stop until he destroys the European order based on democratic values,” meaning that “joint decisive action” is needed. “Together, we will surely defeat Russia, even despite the head of the Hungarian government’ fears that the Russian army has an ‘asymmetrical advantage,’” Nikolenko said, referring to Orban’s claim that Ukraine cannot win the war due to the disparity of forces. Nikolenko has lambasted Western politicians in the past. Earlier this month, Nikolenko accusedUS Congresswoman Victoria Spartz of attempting to bring “Russian propaganda” into American politics. Spartz called for a mechanism to track military aid provided to Kiev, and expressed doubts over the reliability of President Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff. Nikolenko advised Spartz “to stop trying to earn extra political capital on baseless speculation around the topic of war” and “stop undermining the existing mechanisms of providing US military assistance to Ukraine.”

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Nothing fits anymore.

• Logistical Nightmares For The Ukrainian Army (Milacic)

In early July, right after Lisichansk was won by the Russian forces, the Russian military and its allies from DNR and LNR, put on display there a large number of captured Ukrainian military equipment. Rows of tanks, rocket launchers and armored vehicles stretched for hundreds of meters. All this was seized by the Russians in just one sector of the front alone. Let’s be honest, most of the Western military assistance to Ukraine is quickly destroyed or falls into the hands of the Russian military, without having any significant impact on the course of the war, and successful exceptions like the US-supplied M142 HIMARS only confirm the rule. Why is this happening?

The whole thing might be pretty simple: while receiving Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, Javelin anti-tank systems and French Ceasar self-propelled guns, the Ukrainian army must quickly switch to a single NATO standard, strengthen its combat capability in the wish to stop Russian army. On closer examination, however, it turns out that everything is way more complicated. The unified NATO standard is mainly associated with the calibers of ammunition, and not with the unification of equipment. It is impossible to switch from the German “Leopard” to the French “Leclerc” without a long and serious preparation. A good MRLS operator, used to the Soviet-designed Grad, will not be able to handle America’s famous HIMARS. Each weapon system handed over to Kyiv also requires special retraining of Ukrainian military specialists. And this is just the tip of the iceberg though.

The delivery of one or two self-propelled guns with perfectly trained crews may look good in propaganda videos, but it turns into a logistical nightmare for the Ukrainian military suppliers. Full-fledged confrontation with the enemy requires units trained and equipped with unified weapons, not a battery recruited from different European and Soviet models using five different types of shells. All of them need different parts and accessories. Moreover, gun and tank crews will most likely be unable to replace each other. They are trained to fight with different models of high-tech weapons systems.

This is actually why the Eastern European countries are delivering to Ukraine what is left of their old Warsaw Pact-era stockpiles, not the latest European models. After all, mass-scale training of specialists takes months and calls for multiple instructors. The Kyiv authorities are having problems even with specialists trained in the use of Soviet-era technology. For example, on July 20, numerous telegram channels posted a video with an elderly Ukrainian tank captain, a reservist, who, after being taken prisoner by the Russians, said that all the junior officers of his brigade were over 45 years old, most of whom had received military training in Soviet universities (in the USSR, reserve officers were trained in civilian universities).

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The US midterms are the main consideration.

• Media Miss Major Moves on Russia-Ukraine (Ray McGovern)

Corporate media are ignoring the stark implications of Russia’s stated intention to take control of more Ukrainian territory than just Donetsk and Luhansk. I discussed this on The Critical Hour yesterday and supplement those thoughts in the paragraphs below. On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced Moscow’s broadened aims, explaining, “Now the geography is different. It’s far from being only the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, it’s also Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts and a number of other territories.” (I had just written on this.) In his interview, Lavrov pointed specifically to HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, made by Lockheed-Martin) as the kind of “weapon that will pose a direct threat to our territory and the territories of those republics who have declared their independence (Donetsk and Luhansk).”

The HIMARS being provided to Ukraine have a range of 50 miles, putting them also at easy reach of Crimea – which Kyiv (and the U.S.) insist is legally still part of Ukraine. It all depends on “geography. Just a few hours after the Lavrov interview was reported came the announcement by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that the US will give Ukraine four more HIMARS, bringing the total to 16. Austin bragged that HIMARS have already “made a difference on the battlefield.” But which battlefield? Lavrov and Russian President Putin can have no illusions that the wider, strategic “battlefield” includes Russia. Indeed, this is the same benighted Lloyd Austin who let that cat out of the bag three months ago: “One of the US’s goals in Ukraine is to see a weakened Russia. … The US is ready to move heaven and earth to help Ukraine win the war against Russia.”

It seems a sure thing that Biden’s advisers anticipate being engaged in a proxy war in Ukraine at least until this November when the US mid-term elections take place. Until then the Democrats surely will not want to appear to be slackers in confronting Russia on this critical issue (which, truth be told, they themselves did so much to create). The reality, of course, is that US policy makers go blithely along, enriching the MICIMATT (and enhancing campaign coffers) by giving advanced weaponry to Ukraine – and replacing them as needed. It’s very good for the multifaceted profiteering business. What is really troublesome is that there appears to be little understanding of the high stakes involved; little appreciation of what it means that Russia considers US/NATO behavior in Ukraine an existential threat – one that Russia is determined to remove, and can.

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@ScottAdamsSays: We’re all the way down to “He probably knows someone bad.”

This is going down like everything Schiff is involved in. “We have evidence that…”

• Jan. 6 Committee Still Probing Links Between Trump And Extremist Groups (CBS)

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, said Sunday the panel is still examining possible links between former President Donald Trump and far-right extremist groups, including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, members of which have been charged for their roles in the attack. “That remains an ongoing part of our investigation,” Schiff said in an interview on “Face the Nation.” “We have certainly shown some links between the president, the key advisors like Roger Stone and Mike Flynn, and elements of these white nationalist groups, but that component of our investigation continues.” More than a dozen members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, including their respective leaders Stewart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio, have been charged with seditious conspiracy for their alleged roles in the Jan. 6 assault.

Federal prosecutors claim the members conspired to storm the Capitol to oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power by delaying by force the required tallying of state electoral votes. The select committee has examined the role of far-right extremist groups on Jan. 6 and last Thursday held its eighth public hearing mapping out what investigators described as a multi-pronged campaign from Trump to thwart the transfer of presidential power. The hearing focused on the 187-minute span on Jan. 6 from when the former president ended his speech at a rally on the Ellipse to when he issued a tweet telling the mob of his supporters to leave the Capitol, during which committee members said Trump did nothing to quell the violence that unfolded.

“I think we really need to think about what we’ve demonstrated already, about the president’s knowledge that the election wasn’t stolen, and his response and his intent, and to me that is most graphically demonstrated, when he told top Justice Department officials basically to just say the election was stolen or just say it was corrupt and that he would take care of the rest,” he said. “Those kind of pieces of testimony, they’re directly on the president’s knowledge and intent.” The California Democrat said he believes Trump engaged in the “most supreme dereliction of duty ever” with his inaction to stop the violence at the Capitol, and the former president’s multiple attempts to reverse the outcome of the election “invoke various criminal laws, and his conduct ought to be the subject of investigation.”

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One man wrecking crew.

• How Mario Draghi Broke Italy (Fazi)

Mario Draghi’s defenestration has left the Italian — and indeed international — establishment reeling in horror. This is not surprising. When he was nominated as Italy’s prime minister at the beginning of last year, Europe’s political and economic elites welcomed his arrival as a miracle. Virtually every party in the Italian parliament — including the two formerly “populist” parties that won the elections in 2018, the Five Star Movement and the League — offered their support. The tone of the discussion was captured well by the powerful governor of the Campania region, Vincenzo De Luca (PD), who compared Draghi to “Christ” himself. Everyone agreed: a Draghi government would be a blessing, a final opportunity to redeem its sins and “make Italy great again”. Draghi, they said, simply by virtue of his “charisma”, “competence”, “intelligence” and “international clout”, would keep bond markets at bay, enact much-needed reforms, and relaunch Italy’s stagnant economy.

Alas, reality hasn’t exactly lived up to expectations: Draghi leaves behind a country in tatters. The latest European Commission macroeconomic forecast predicted that Italy will experience the slowest economic growth in the bloc next year, at just 0.9%, owing to a decline in consumer spending due to rising prices and lower business investment — a result of rising borrowing and energy costs, as well as disruptions in the supply of Russian gas. Italy is also experiencing one of the fastest-growing inflation rates in Europe — which is currently at 8.6%, the highest level in more than three decades. Interest rates on Italian government bonds have also been steadily climbing ever since Draghi came to power, rising four-fold under his watch; today they stand at the highest level in almost a decade.

And this “polycrisis” has taken its toll on Italian society: 5.6 million Italians — almost 10% of the population, including 1.4 million minors — currently live in absolute poverty, the highest level on record. Many of these are in work, and that number is bound to increase as real wages in Italy continue to fall at the highest pace in the bloc. Meanwhile, almost 100,000 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are at risk of insolvency — a 2% increase compared to last year. So much for “Super Mario”, then. Of course, one could argue that other countries are experiencing similar problems, but it would be a mistake to let Draghi off the hook. He has been one of the staunchest supporters of the measures that led to this situation, having been a driving force in pushing for tough EU sanctions against Moscow — sanctions that are crippling Europe’s economies, while leaving Russia largely unscathed.

Draghi even boasted about the bold measures adopted by Italy to wean the country off Russian gas — the result being that Italy is now the country that pays the highest wholesale electricity prices in the entire EU. The absurdity of these policies becomes apparent when we consider his attempt to reduce Italy’s dependence on Russian gas by reviving several coal-fired power plants — coal that Italy largely imports from Russia.

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Princess and Emmanuel

 

 

 

 

Surf dogs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1550852001763717121

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 17 2022

Jul 172022
 
 July 17, 2022  Posted by at 8:58 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  41 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Guernica 1937

 

• Germany Is Facing The Biggest Crisis The Country Has Ever Had (Cody)
• Berlin’s Quit Decades Of Courting Both Moscow And Washington (Davydov)
• The War Of Economic Corridors Is In Full Swing (Escobar)
• Republicans Wince As Their Ukrainian-born Colleague Thrashes Zelensky (Pol.)
• In Search of Enemies (Femi Akomolafe)
• Italy May Soon Be Unable To Arm Ukraine – Foreign Minister (RT)
• To Hell or Not to Hell? (Batiushka)
• ‘Experts’ Broke The World. But They’re Rapidly Losing Power… (Black)
• Gazprom Requests Documents On Nord Stream Turbine Return (RT)
• Saudi Arabia Outlines What It Will Do For Oil Output (RT)
• Biden Visits Saudi Arabia, Returns with an Empty Tin Cup (CTH)
• China Issues Phosphate Quotas To Rein In Fertiliser Exports (R.)
• Dr. Birx Praises Herself While Revealing Ignorance, Treachery, and Deceit (BI)
• Judge Questions FBI’s Aggressive Arrest Of Peter Navarro (ZH)
• Ankara Not Likely To Accept F-16 Strings (K.)

 

 

 

 

Emmanuel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1548256134020022273

 

 

 

 

 

 

And it will export that crisis.

• Germany Is Facing The Biggest Crisis The Country Has Ever Had (Cody)

Germany is facing an unprecedented crisis due to a potential Russian gas cut that will erase the prosperity Germans have grown accustomed to, warned Rainer Dulger, head of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations. “We are facing the biggest crisis the country has ever had. We have to be honest and say: First of all, we will lose the prosperity that we have had for years,” Dulger told the Süddeutsche Zeitung regarding the consequences of a gas shortage to everyone. While many are urging more government intervention to help prop up the German economy, Dulger argues that in general, the fewer the interventions, the better. He says that when it comes to the economy, private businesses always do better than the government.

However, he does believe certain measures need to be implemented to provide support for people in increasingly stressed economic situations. “More net earnings from the gross amount must now arrive into every citizen’s account,” he claimed, emphasizing the importance of not reducing the net income of the citizens and ensuring the fair redistribution of profits generated during the crisis. Dulger is not the only one warning of a crisis in Germany. Economy Minister Robert Habeck warns of a “catastrophic winter” ahead over Russian gas cut fears. According to him, Germany will face a “crucial test that we haven’t faced for a long time.” Other experts are predicting mass bankruptcies, inflation, and energy rationing that will send “shockwaves” through the German economy.

The Bavarian Business Association (VBW) warned that as many as 5.6 million jobs across Germany could be lost in the case of a gas supply stoppage from Russia. According to the association’s calculations, a German boycott of Russian gas could also reduce the country’s economic output by 12.7 percent, with immediate abandonment of the raw material hitting the glass, iron, and steel industries particularly hard; losses in these sectors would be almost 50 percent. Dulger sees the significant cause of the current situation as the lack of ability to be self-sufficient. For too long, Germany had disregarded something that former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt warned about in the 1970s. When deliveries of gas to Russia began at the time, Schmidt said: “We can do it, but we must not depend on Russian gas for more than 30 percent.”

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Post-WWII took a lot of diplomacy. That is now gone.

• Berlin’s Quit Decades Of Courting Both Moscow And Washington (Davydov)

Germany’s new leadership has gone “all in” on its alliance with the US, overturning a strategy that had underpinned its success What was known as the “memory culture” was an essential element of the foreign policy strategy of post-war Germany. Wise leaders were able to gradually restore the importance of the country on the international stage and achieve strategic goals. A prime example was Chancellor Willy Brandt’s ‘Ostpolitik,’ based on ideas of repentance and overcoming post-war enmity. The historical reconciliation between Bonn and the USSR became the basis for the future unification of Germany – solving the main task of the country’s political elites after the end of World War II.

However, less gifted politicians find historical memory a handicap and a hardship. For neighbours, the ambitions of German leadership in Europe bring back painful memories. Indeed, historical documents such as the Treaty of German Unification, limit the military capabilities of the state – which is a direct obstacle to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s dream for the creation of “the strongest army in Europe.” Today, the image of a peace-loving nation that has re-educated itself after the tragedy of two world wars does not fit well with active arms deliveries to Ukraine. “This war must end,” Scholz recently warned, while in Kiev. Meanwhile, his government’s website is regularly updated with information on weapons already delivered and planned to be delivered to the Ukrainians. This is what you might call a paradox.

Let’s look at some of the rhetoric coming out of Berlin. On June 21, on the eve of Russia’s Day of Remembrance and Sorrow, Economy Minister Robert Habeck called the reduction of Russian gas supplies “an attack on Germany.”Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has claimed that “Russia deliberately uses hunger as a weapon.” By the way, behind the unfounded lies are real historical data – more than four million Soviet citizens were starved to death during the Nazi occupation. At the G7 summit last month, Scholz called on participants to prepare a new “Marshall Plan”for Ukraine, twisting the meaning of the programme that helped Western Europe recover from the horrors of fascism. It feels like a policy of remembrance is being replaced by a policy of deliberate amnesia.

[..] Scholz’s approach is the opposite of what Willy Brandt and his followers worked on. Berlin has finally narrowed the once dynamic and multifaceted eastern policy solely in support of Kiev. In international relations, however, simplification rarely reduces contradictions. This sort of primitivization does not add credibility to the German leadership, but it does raise doubts about its competence. The granting of EU candidate status to Ukraine, actively supported by Berlin, could also turn out to be an embarrassment. And it is not just about the five other official members of the waiting list and several potential contenders, who have been waiting or are still waiting years for this decision, all the while trying to fulfil the EU’s strict requirements. In Germany’s foreign policy approach, showmanship and symbolism are gradually replacing order and consistency.

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“..all five Caspian Sea littoral states agreed that no NATO warships or bases will be allowed on site…”

• The War Of Economic Corridors Is In Full Swing (Escobar)

The War of Economic Corridors is now proceeding full speed ahead, with the game-changing first cargo flow of goods from Russia to India via the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) already in effect. Very few, both in the east and west, are aware of how this actually has long been in the making: the Russia-Iran-India agreement for implementing a shorter and cheaper Eurasian trade route via the Caspian Sea (compared to the Suez Canal), was first signed in 2000, in the pre-9/11 era. The INSTC in full operational mode signals a powerful hallmark of Eurasian integration – alongside the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and last but not least, what I described as “Pipelineistan” two decades ago.

Let’s have a first look on how these vectors are interacting. The genesis of the current acceleration lies in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan’s capital, for the 6th Caspian Summit. This event not only brought the evolving Russia-Iran strategic partnership to a deeper level, but crucially, all five Caspian Sea littoral states agreed that no NATO warships or bases will be allowed on site. That essentially configures the Caspian as a virtual Russian lake, and in a minor sense, Iranian – without compromising the interests of the three “stans,” Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. For all practical purposes, Moscow has tightened its grip on Central Asia a notch.

As the Caspian Sea is connected to the Black Sea by canals off the Volga built by the former USSR, Moscow can always count on a reserve navy of small vessels – invariably equipped with powerful missiles – that may be transferred to the Black Sea in no time if necessary. Stronger trade and financial links with Iran now proceed in tandem with binding the three “stans” to the Russian matrix. Gas-rich republic Turkmenistan for its part has been historically idiosyncratic – apart from committing most of its exports to China. Under an arguably more pragmatic young new leader, President Serdar Berdimuhamedow, Ashgabat may eventually opt to become a member of the SCO and/or the EAEU. Caspian littoral state Azerbaijan on the other hand presents a complex case: an oil and gas producer eyed by the European Union (EU) to become an alternative energy supplier to Russia – although this is not happening anytime soon.

Iran’s foreign policy under President Ebrahim Raisi is clearly on a Eurasian and Global South trajectory. Tehran will be formally incorporated into the SCO as a full member in the upcoming summit in Samarkand in September, while its formal application to join the BRICS has been filed. Purnima Anand, head of the BRICS International Forum, has stated that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are also very much keen on joining BRICS. Should that happen, by 2024 we could be on our way to a powerful West Asia, North Africa hub firmly installed inside one of the key institutions of the multipolar world. As Putin heads to Tehran next week for trilateral Russia, Iran, Turkey talks, ostensibly about Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is bound to bring up the subject of BRICS.

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Ukraine corruption is on the list of things we can’t talk about.

• Republicans Wince As Their Ukrainian-born Colleague Thrashes Zelensky (Pol.)

House Republicans gave Ukraine-born Rep. Victoria Spartz a coveted platform to speak out against Russia’s war. They’re coming to regret that. Spartz (R-Ind.), who has traveled to Ukraine a half-dozen times since the war began and spoken passionately about the conflict, shocked lawmakers in both parties recently with her intense criticisms of the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and his confidants. She drew a rare rebuke last weekend from the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, which accused her of “trying to earn extra political capital on baseless speculation.” Inside the House GOP Conference, there’s a widespread fear that her posture is damaging U.S.-Ukraine relations at the worst possible time — and that she’s being played by forces that aim to weaken the Western alliance.

GOP national-security hawks also worry that the MAGA wing of their party, where there’s already resistance to supporting Ukraine, will point to Spartz’s comments as justification.They’re concerned that Spartz’s public break from Zelenskyy — and her corruption accusations about his closest aides — could portend future cracks in U.S. support for Ukraine, especially as the midterm elections approach. “Her naiveness is hurting our own people,” said a GOP lawmaker who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, granted anonymity to speak candidly about a colleague. “It is not helpful to what we’re trying to do and I’m not sure her facts are accurate … We have vetted these guys.” The Republican warned that Spartz’s comments could “hurt” the war effort.

Asked for comment on Spartz’s remarks, one senior House Republican who was granted anonymity for the same reason offered a blunt reply: “What the fuck.” A third House Republican granted anonymity to speak candidly about Spartz said she has a reputation for elbowing her way into briefings and meetings for committees she doesn’t belong to, like the Foreign Affairs panel, where multiple members have tried to address her comments behind closed doors. The Biden administration is even getting involved — another sign of growing worries that Spartz’s comments may damage cohesion among the Western coalition in defense of Kyiv. A Foreign Affairs Committee aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. intelligence community is planning to brief Spartz about her claims in a classified setting Friday morning.

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“It’s the wrong game for a great nation. And the players we’ve got are losers.”

• In Search of Enemies (Femi Akomolafe)

We are in July and while the Russians are not letting up on the grinding of the Ukrainian forces, the West has already lost interest in its latest misadventure. Many Western countries have already announced that they have no more weapons to spare, and the EU’s powerhouse, Germany, has been reduced to dusting off ancient mothballed tanks to send off to battle against an already defeated Russians! That’s when German officials are not too busy trying to placate an irascible and ungrateful Ukrainian officials with an obscene and gratuitous sense of entitlement. Or maybe the Ukrainians should feel perfectly entitled since they were foolish enough to sell off their country for whatever pieces of silver they got!

The question here is: Why are Westerners so dumb that they cannot ask where their leaders who can’t find the money to repair their shattered economies, suddenly find the money to provide weapons to Nazis in Ukraine? Another question: After the war is settled – in Russia’s favor (my bet), do Westerners expect the Russians to forgive them for providing support to Nazis 2.0? For a people without enough resources to cater for themselves, and one that proclaims its rationality all the time, it is beyond belief that Westerners keep on searching for enemies! Besotted with their self-generated image of superiority, Westerners appear to live in a bubble, unaware of what goes on outside their self-created cocoon.

The Russians made it plain what they felt about the West’s insane push to their borders. From President V Putin to FM Lavrov to the inimitable Spokeswoman for the Russian FM, Maria Zakharova, the Russians told whoever would listen that there were bound to be severe repercussions if their core security concerns were ignored. Ignored them, the West did. Last year, the Russians emphasized the urgency of their concerns by dispatching drafts of Treaties to both Washington and Brussels. The West rather haughtily brushed them aside. The Russians openly warned about taking “technical and military” means if the West persists in its folly. The West arrogantly ignored the warnings.

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Arming Ukraine is not biggest problem here: “If the government falls on Wednesday, we won’t have the power to sign any new energy contracts and this is serious because we are headed into winter..”

• Italy May Soon Be Unable To Arm Ukraine – Foreign Minister (RT)

Political turmoil in Italy could soon see Rome unable to continue supporting Ukraine with weapons deliveries, the country’s foreign minister has warned. According to Luigi Di Maio, this would be the case should the incumbent government not survive a no-confidence vote next week. In a phone interview with US media outlet Politico on Friday, Di Maio said that those in Italy who want the collapse of Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s government are playing into the hands of the Kremlin. “The Russians are right now celebrating having made another Western government fall,” the minister argued. Di Maio went on to express doubt as to whether Italy will be able to keep supplying arms to Ukraine under these circumstances, adding that “it is one of the many serious problems.”

The official explained that, should the government collapse, it would still remain in power for some time in a caretaker capacity. However, in this case, its powers would be reduced, meaning, among other things, that the government wouldn’t be able to continue weapons deliveries to Ukraine. “If the government falls on Wednesday, we won’t have the power to sign any new energy contracts and this is serious because we are headed into winter,” the minister added. According to Di Maio, Italy could also end up without a 2023 budget as the document is normally passed by parliament between July and December. Should there be elections in September or October, however, it could take months before a new coalition government is formed, meaning that the budget would be postponed, the minister explained.

He added that it took 100 days to form a government the last time. On Thursday, the Five Star Movement, which is part of Prime Minister Draghi’s coalition government, boycotted a no-confidence vote, with the premier offering to resign in response. However, Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella refused to accept his resignation, with Draghi’s government facing another no-confidence vote on Wednesday. Di Maio, who had been one of the Five Star Movement’s leaders but left the party last month over a row concerning arms deliveries to Ukraine, laid into his former allies, accusing them of “helping Putin’s propaganda and autocracy over democracy.”

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“..the world that started on 12 October 1492 died on 24 February 2022..”

• To Hell or Not to Hell? (Batiushka)

In recent months, here and there in various Western European countries, I have seen two or three flags being flown together, the EU One Ring ‘to rule them all’, sometimes the local national flag, and beneath it the Ukrainian one. This represents Western supremacism, the Nazi ideology which proclaims the long-desired Westernisation of the Ukraine. It says that any who do not accept ‘Western values’ are to be destroyed or, as they say now, ’cancelled’ – with Western fake news, Western arms and Western death. Who are today’s aristocratic warlords, today’s Franks, Lombards, Goths, Vandals and Vikings? They are Stoltenberg, Biden, Johnson, von der Leyen, Blinken, Nuland, Kagan, Scholz, Macron and all the other knowing and unknowing neocons who fly these flags together.

The barbarians were there sacking civilisation in August 476 and in August 1914, they were there sacking civilisation in late 1492 and in early 2022. However, the world that started on 12 October 1492 died on 24 February 2022 and a new era has begun. On 14 July 2022 the Serbian President Vucic said: ‘Now the whole Western world is at war with Russia through Ukrainian intermediaries and today’s armed conflict can almost be called a world war’. ‘I know what awaits us. As soon as Vladimir Putin has finished his work in Seversk, Bakhmut and Soledar and then reaches the second line in Slaviansk-Kramatorsk-Avdeevka, he will make an offer. And if they (the West) don’t accept – and they don’t intend to – we shall take the road to hell’.

So what happens if the Western world chooses not to go to hell? What happens after the barbarians, after the final demise of the myths of ‘The West and the Rest’ and ‘The West is Best’? At the moment, the alternative is an alphabet soup of BRI, BRICS, EAEU, SCO etc. BRICS itself is becoming old-fashioned, as it may well soon be joined by Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and maybe Argentina and then, who knows? Does that make BRICSITESAA? An alternative name like ‘The Anti-West’ is purely reactive, negative and refers to the 530 years before 24 February 2022. It is especially inappropriate since the EU is clearly collapsing and it is obvious that, at the very least, countries like Serbia, Hungary (whom the EU elite wishes to expel from the EU) and Germany, if it is to survive, will be joining the to-be-renamed BRICS.

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“..there are a lot of solutions and technologies on the horizon that could make this all go away relatively quickly… just as soon as they get out of the way.”

• ‘Experts’ Broke The World. But They’re Rapidly Losing Power… (Black)

It’s rare to find someone, anyone, who has yet to witness, hear about, or directly experience the devastating consequences of the supposed leadership that ‘experts’ have unleashed on us over the past few years. They have engineered and mishandled crisis after crisis after crisis… The world over, from California to Sri Lanka, people everywhere are suffering from their incompetence. Western Europe is on the verge of a major energy crisis; the 4th-largest economy in the world (Germany) is dimming its street lights lights and thinking about firing up its coal power plants (previously considered UNTHINKABLE!) because they’re running out of energy. Even in Texas, which could be considered the world’s 10th-largest economy by GDP, the independent energy grid is so fragile that power companies are remotely turning down people’s home thermostats to save on energy supply.


We have also just seen a leaked hour+ video showing the ‘authorities’ in Uvalde, Texas– fully armed law enforcement professionals– ignoring the literal screams of dying children only a few dozen feet away. Instead they texted on their phones and sanitized their hands. You know, because of Covid. I guess that was the priority. All of this is an utter indictment of how pitifully our experts and authorities have betrayed us. In short, the people in charge broke the world. But the good news is that their reign of ineptitude is rapidly coming to an end.. That much is obvious. And even better, there are a lot of solutions and technologies on the horizon that could make this all go away relatively quickly… just as soon as they get out of the way.

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It’s still not moving.

• Gazprom Requests Documents On Nord Stream Turbine Return (RT)

Russian state energy major Gazprom has officially asked German industrial giant Siemens to provide documents allowing the return of a crucial gas turbine, which had been stuck at the firm’s Canada factory due to sanctions. “On July 15, Gazprom officially requested Siemens to provide documents that, in spite of the current sanctions regimes of Canada and the European Union, would allow the export of a gas turbine engine for the Portovaya compressor station, a critically important facility for the [Nord Stream] gas pipeline, to Russia, and the fulfillment by the Siemens group of companies of its obligations regarding the repair and maintenance of gas turbine engines,” the statement by Gazprom read, as cited by Interfax news agency.

Gazprom warned that failure to return the turbine would jeopardise the functioning of the Nord Stream pipeline, linking Russia to Germany, and the supply of natural gas to European consumers. The Nord Stream pipeline, one of the main routes for Russian gas exports to Europe, is currently out of action due to a scheduled 10-day maintenance period. However, prior to the shutdown it had been operating at just 40% of capacity for several weeks, due to a turbine from the pipeline’s Portovaya compressor station being stuck at the Siemens facility in Montreal, where it had undergone repairs.

Canada initially refused to return the device, due to sanctions arising from the Ukraine conflict. However, after negotiations with Berlin, Ottawa earlier this week decided to allow the turbine to be shipped back. It will first travel to Germany, and from there to Russia, allowing Canada to avoid violating its own sanctions by using an indirect delivery route. The documents requested by Gazprom are necessary to facilitate the final trip of the turbine from Germany to Russia.

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Very little.

• Saudi Arabia Outlines What It Will Do For Oil Output (RT)

Saudi Arabia is ready to increase oil production to its maximum of 13 million barrels per day but does not have the capacity to pump out more, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said during his address at the US-Arab summit in Jeddah on Saturday. “The kingdom has announced an increase in its production capacity level to 13 million barrels per day, after which the kingdom will not have any additional capacity to increase production,” he was quoted as saying by UAE’s newspaper The National. The crown prince also said that the global community should join forces to support the global economy, but noted that unrealistic policies regarding energy sources would only worsen the situation.

“Adopting unrealistic policies to reduce emissions by excluding main sources of energy will lead in coming years to unprecedented inflation and an increase in energy prices and rising unemployment, and a worsening of serious social and security problems,” he stated. Mohammed bin Salman’s words come a day after his talks with Joe Biden, who was in Saudi Arabia on his first visit as US president, and urged the kingdom to increase oil production in order to reduce global reliance on supplies from Russia. Commenting on his trip to the kingdom, Biden said Saudi Arabia’s “energy resources are vital for mitigating the impact on global supplies of Russia’s war in Ukraine.”

Saudi Arabia, one of the globe’s largest oil exporters and the leading producer within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), currently pumps out more than 12 million barrels of oil per day. The kingdom previously said it plans to reach production capacity of 13 million barrels per day by 2027. The Crown Prince did not reveal whether the timeframe for the boost in capacity has changed

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“Is it any surprise that Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador want’s nothing to do with the other two knuckleheaded leaders of North America..?”

• Biden Visits Saudi Arabia, Returns with an Empty Tin Cup (CTH)

Joe Biden is heading back from an embarrassing trip to Saudi Arabia and the middle east. Putting aside the fact that physically and mentally Biden looked weak, foolish, and generally incoherent, in an odd way he was appropriately representative of the current of U.S. influence on the global stage. Before getting to detail, first it is important to emphasize a point that doesn’t get attention domestically. Democrats are exceptionally weak on all aspects of foreign policy, specifically because their modern ideology is based on hypocrisy of a stunning magnitude. Domestically, the U.S. media protect democrats by spinning everything into the best light possible. However, on the world stage the non-western leaders like Putin, Xi and MbS use that hypocrisy like geopolitical ammunition.

Examples… Domestically the U.S. media do not bring up the Joe Biden Afghanistan mess, the rise -and current legitimacy- of the terrorist Taliban; or the brutal mess Barack and Hillary created in Libya; or the unauthorized intervention into Syria that created ISIS; or the complete fubar that was an illegitimate invasion of Iraq; or Hillary’s insufferable “reset” in Russia; or their inability to deal with China’s proxy province of North Korea, because they pretend it’s not; or the current circus célebrè in Ukraine. Each region, and there are many more, a typical example of how modern democrats are fundamentally weak on foreign policy. It is not just Joe Biden either; just about every leftist head of state within the alliance of “western democracies” are also pathetically impotent when it comes to influence on a global stage.

The U.K’s Boris Johnson, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern and France’s Emmanuel Macron are collectively as pathetic as Biden when it comes to leadership and influence. Once they step out of their ‘liberal democracy‘ bubble, and head into a nation that doesn’t have state run media like CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, Politico and/or The New York Times, those leaders look like the pathetic fools they are. Biden and the rest of the leftist heads of state decry “autocracy,” and wax philosophically about “western democratic values”, while standing atop two years of their authoritarian pandemic rules, regulations, mandates and unilateral fiats. Consider their chase for their beloved climate change energy policy and contrast it against their political pearl-clutching over the energy inflation they created.

Is it any surprise that Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador want’s nothing to do with the other two knuckleheaded leaders of North America who are selling windmills while regulating traditional oil, coal and natural gas out of existence? At a certain point, a good neighbor has to look at the duct-taped landscaping and say this is ridiculous. I digress.

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“..a 45% drop from China’s shipments of 5.5 million tonnes in the same period a year ago.”

• China Issues Phosphate Quotas To Rein In Fertiliser Exports (R.)

China is rolling out a quota system to limit exports of phosphates, a key fertiliser ingredient, in the second half of this year, analysts said, citing information from the country’s major phosphate producers. The quotas, set well below year-ago export levels, would expand China’s intervention in the market to keep a lid on domestic prices and protect food security while global fertiliser prices are hovering near record highs. Last October, China also moved to curb exports by introducing a new requirement for inspection certificates to ship fertiliser and related materials, contributing to tight global supply. Fertiliser prices have been buoyed by sanctions on major producers Belarus and Russia, while surging grain prices are boosting demand for phosphate and other crop nutrients from farmers around the world.


China is the world’s biggest phosphates exporter, shipping 10 million tonnes last year, or about 30% of total world trade. Its top buyers were India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, according to Chinese customs data. China appears to have issued export quotas for just over 3 million tonnes of phosphates to producers for the second half of this year, said Gavin Ju, China fertiliser analyst at CRU Group, citing information from about a dozen producers who have been informed by local governments since late June. That would mark a 45% drop from China’s shipments of 5.5 million tonnes in the same period a year ago. [..] Other major producers of phosphates, such as widely used diammonium phosphate (DAP), include Morocco, the United States, Russia and Saudia Arabia. The surge in prices over the last year has raised concerns for Beijing, which needs to guarantee food security for its 1.4 billion people even as all farm input costs surge.

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” So it was all a sleight-of-hand: she was staying home; it’s just that she has several homes! This is how the power elite comply, one supposes..”

• Dr. Birx Praises Herself While Revealing Ignorance, Treachery, and Deceit (BI)

The December 2020 resignation of Dr. Deborah Birx, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator under Trump, revealed predictable hypocrisy. Like so many other government officials around the world, she was caught violating her own stay-at-home order. Therefore she finally left her post following nine months of causing unfathomable amounts of damage to life, liberty, property, and the very idea of hope for the future. Even if Anthony Fauci had been the front man for the media, it was Birx who was the main influence in the White House behind the nationwide lockdowns that did not stop or control the pathogen but have caused immense suffering and continue to roil and wreck the world. So it was significant that she would not and could not comply with her own dictates, even as her fellow citizens were being hunted down for the same infractions against “public health.”

In the days before Thanksgiving 2020, she had warned Americans to “assume you’re infected” and to restrict gatherings to “your immediate household.” Then she packed her bags and headed to Fenwick Island in Delaware where she met with four generations for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, as if she were free to make normal choices and live a normal life while everyone else had to shelter in place. The Associated Press was first out with the report on December 20, 2020. “Birx acknowledged in a statement that she went to her Delaware property. She declined to be interviewed. She insisted the purpose of the roughly 50-hour visit was to deal with the winterization of the property before a potential sale — something she says she previously hadn’t had time to do because of her busy schedule.

“I did not go to Delaware for the purpose of celebrating Thanksgiving,” Birx said in her statement, adding that her family shared a meal together while in Delaware. Birx said that everyone on her Delaware trip belongs to her “immediate household,” even as she acknowledged they live in two different homes. She initially called the Potomac home a “3 generation household (formerly 4 generations).” White House officials later said it continues to be a four-generation household, a distinction that would include Birx as part of the home.” So it was all a sleight-of-hand: she was staying home; it’s just that she has several homes! This is how the power elite comply, one supposes. The BBC then quoted her defense, which echo the pain experienced by hundreds of millions:

“My daughter hasn’t left that house in 10 months, my parents have been isolated for 10 months. They’ve become deeply depressed as I’m sure many elderly have as they’ve not been able to see their sons, their granddaughters. My parents have not been able to see their surviving son for over a year. These are all very difficult things.” Indeed. However, she was the major voice for the better part of 2020 for requiring exactly that. No one should blame her for wanting to get together with family; that she worked so hard for so long to prevent others from doing so is what is at issue.

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“..Navarro rejected a plea deal offered by prosecutors in the case, proposing to drop one of the two charges and not seek more than the minimum 30-day jail time.”

• Judge Questions FBI’s Aggressive Arrest Of Peter Navarro (ZH)

A federal judge has questioned why the FBI made a public spectacle out of arresting former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro at Reagan National Airport last month, rather than simply summoning him for a court appearance. Navarro was handcuffed, denied food and water, and denied a request to phone his lawyer, as he was on his way to a speaking engagement in Nashville, Tennessee. He faces two misdemeanor contempt of Congress charges for doing exactly what Obama AG Eric Holder did (with zero consequences) – ignore a Congressional subpoena, according to Politico. Of course, Holder was held in contempt for concealing documents related to the “fast & furious” scandal, which was tied to the death of an estimated 150 Mexican civilians – while Navarro is refusing to answer House Democrats’ questions surrounding the 2020 election and the January 6th riot.

“It is curious…at a minimum why the government treated Mr. Navarro’s arrest in the way it did,” US District Court Judge Amit Mehta said during a Friday hearing on Navarro’s case. “It is a federal crime, but it is not a violent crime.” Mehta, a former federal defender, said it was puzzling that prosecutors didn’t just tell Navarro he was going to be charged and allow him to walk into an FBI office, as some white-collar defendants are permitted to do. “It is a surprise to me that self-surrender was not offered,” the judge said. However, he proposed no particular response and did not demand any explanation from prosecutors”. -Politico. The FBI has accused Navarro of making “numerous false statements” about his arrest, and said that his first request to use the phone that day was for a lawyer – rather, a TV producer about a scheduled interview.

One of his lawyers, John Rowley, suggested that the FBI’s treatment suggested “animus” toward Navarro, considering that two other Trump White House aides who similarly ignored subpoenas – Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino – were not charged (much less arrested at an airport). “Rowley also suggested Navarro had been placed in leg irons by the FBI when he was arrested, but his client clarified after the hearing that the shackles were used by deputy U.S. Marshals when he arrived at the courthouse for his initial appearance last month. The FBI agents “are responsible for those leg irons,” Navarro told reporters. It also emerged at the hearing Friday that Navarro rejected a plea deal offered by prosecutors in the case, proposing to drop one of the two charges and not seek more than the minimum 30-day jail time.” -Politico

“This is the first time in our nation’s 250-year history that a senior adviser to a president has been criminally charged for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena,” said Rowley. “The Justice Department…has longstanding policies about not prosecuting someone criminally for this kind of situation, so I wonder, what changed?….and we intend to find out,” said defense attorney John Irving.

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“..the discussion has even opened up about a possible expulsion of Turkey from the Alliance.”

• Ankara Not Likely To Accept F-16 Strings (K.)

The approval this week of a relevant amendment by the US Congress which is seen as a first step to stop the sale of new F-16 aircraft to Turkey and the upgrading of its existing ones has caused optimism in Greece that its positions are being heeded. But there are also several opposing forces at play, which are making the situation complicated. According to Dr Triantafyllos Karatrantos, an analyst at the Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) think tank, a clearly positive development would be that any agreement to sell or upgrade aircraft to Turkey is accompanied by a strict framework stipulating good neighborly relations and avoiding provocations, disputes or engagement with third countries.

However, he expressed reservations as to whether Ankara would agree to such a restrictive framework at the current juncture. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he said, is in pre-election mode and with the issue of nationalism high on the agenda would not accept such an agreement. He added that it is no coincidence that Ankara, in an attempt to exert pressure on the US administration, is signaling that, just as it did not hesitate to go ahead with the Russian S-400 deal, it will not hesitate to seek another solution for the purchase of fighter jets if the prospect of buying the F-16s does not come to fruition. Meanwhile, in light of Turkey’s stance on Sweden and Finland’s NATO accession process, the discussion has even opened up about a possible expulsion of Turkey from the Alliance.

This position was put forward in a letter to the Financial Times by Mark Wallace, former US ambassador to the United Nations, and Madeleine Joelson, executive director of the NGO Turkish Democracy Project. Karatrantos points out that there is practically no mechanism for expelling a member from NATO, only a voluntary withdrawal procedure.

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China population set to be cut in half…. Nigeria, DR Congo to quadruple

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 14 2021

Nov 142021
 
 November 14, 2021  Posted by at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  74 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Landscape 1920

 

• The Texas Miracle (Steve Kirsch)
• CDC: No Record of Naturally Immune Transmitting COVID-19 (ET)
• Houston Doctor Suspended For ‘Spreading Dangerous Misinformation’ (ABC13)
• Dr. Scott Atlas Unloads On Fauci, Birx, Redfield In Forthcoming Memoir (Fox)
• Fauci and Birx Stuck To ‘Irrational’ Lockdown Policies – Atlas (DM)
• Deaths In Children, Young People In UK With Covid Infection In 1st Year (RS)
• CDC Shifts Pandemic Goals Away From Reaching Herd Immunity (LAT)
• As America Falls Apart, Profits Soar (Taibbi)
• Bezos Predicts Only Limited Number Of People Will Get To Remain On Earth (RT)
• God Develops Ultra-Realistic Metaverse, Calls It ‘Universe’ (BBee)

 

 

 

 

Melbourne
https://twitter.com/i/status/1459635157070233602

 

 

 

 

“..unvaccinated people were 40 times more likely to experience COVID-19-associated death than fully vaccinated people.”

• The Texas Miracle (Steve Kirsch)

Someone texted this article to me and asked me what I thought. My immediate reaction is that if you are vaccinated, you’d want to move to Texas. And if you are unvaccinated, I suggest you move to another state where you will be safer! OK, just kidding. The study says this: “From January 15, 2021 to October 1, 2021, unvaccinated people were 40 times more likely to experience COVID-19-associated death than fully vaccinated people.” Wow. A 40X death benefit. That’s impressive. I read the Pfizer Phase 3 6 month study and it showed just a 2X death benefit. But the numbers were small there. The study also says this: “According to the state’s study, between Jan. 15 and Oct. 1, “unvaccinated people were 45 times more likely to have an infection with COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people.”

OK, if the Texas study is right, then how do we explain the Harvard study Figure 1? The line should slope the other way since cases would be way down the more fully vaccinated you are. And how do we explain the UCSF study which showed the same viral loads for vaccinated and unvaccinated which means the vaccine didn’t work at all? Here’s what one of my team members wrote (I think she missed seeing the full report): “If you can get the data, I can try to make a proper interpretation. This one they present, is clearly garbage.” Another wrote: “My best friend in Dallas is a firefighter and EMT who drives ambulances. He told me before I flew to San Juan that almost everyone they drove was vaccinated.” Whoops! That anecdote has to be pretty embarrassing for their study! Reality seems to match the Harvard study.


Generally, the techniques they use to game these studies are: • Definitions of “vaccinated” restricted • Most cases during period of legacy variants • No accounting for naturally immune • No accounting for early treatment • Since unvaxxed are tested in the hospital with all kinds of fatal conditions and the vaxxed are not, many dying of other conditions are swept into the unvaxxed C19 group without clinical C19. All designed to frighten Texas into vaccinating.

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There’s that definition of “Naturally Immune” again.

• CDC: No Record of Naturally Immune Transmitting COVID-19 (ET)

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says it has no record of people who are naturally immune transmitting the virus that causes COVID-19. The federal health agency was asked during the fall by a lawyer on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network for documents “reflecting any documented case of an individual who: (1) never received a COVID-19 vaccine; (2) was infected with COVID-19 once, recovered, and then later became infected again; and (3) transmitted SARS-CoV-2 to another person when reinfected.” Persons who recover from COVID-19 are also known as naturally immune. In a response dated Nov. 5 and made public this week, the CDC said it does not have any documents pertaining to the request.

The CDC confirmed to The Epoch Times that its Emergency Operations Center did not find any records responsive to the request. The agency declined to say whether any documentation had been found between Nov. 5 and Nov. 12, directing The Epoch Times to file a Freedom of Information Act Request for that information, which it did. “You would assume that if the CDC was going to crush the civil and individual rights of those with natural immunity by having them expelled from school, fired from their jobs, separated from the military, and worse, the CDC would have proof of at least one instance of an unvaccinated, naturally immune individual transmitting the COVID-19 virus to another individual. If you thought this, you would be wrong,” Aaron Siri, a lawyer who sought the records on behalf of the network, said in a blog post.

The CDC’s disclosure drew responses from several medical experts, including Johns Hopkins Dr. Marty Makary, who said it underlined how little data the agency has released concerning the recovered. Makary called on the CDC to make public data on any re-infections that have resulted in hospitalization or death, with information on the patient’s comorbidities or lack thereof. “CDC should be transparent with data on natural immunity. Instead we get glimpses from FOIA requests like this one,” he wrote on Twitter.

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“She recently tweeted that she was focusing on treating the unvaccinated..”

• Houston Doctor Suspended For ‘Spreading Dangerous Misinformation’ (ABC13)

Houston Methodist has suspended privileges for a Houston doctor after officials claim she was ‘spreading dangerous misinformation’ about the COVID-19 vaccine and treatments. Dr. Mary Bowden, an ear, nose and throat specialist with a popular private practice on Kirby Drive, has been outspoken about vaccine mandates and treatments. She recently tweeted that she was focusing on treating the unvaccinated. Friday night, a spokesperson with Houston Methodist said her privileges had been suspended pending an investigation. In response, Dr. Bowden defends her tweets, and said she has the utmost respect for Houston Methodist and her colleagues. Her suspension came just days after the U.S. Surgeon General released a guide to stop misinformation, which he called an urgent threat to public health.

Houston Methodist officials posted a statement on Twitter about Bowden’s suspension. “Dr. Bowden is using her social media accounts to express her personal and political opinions about the COVID-19 vaccine and treatments. These opinions, which are harmful to the community, do not reflect reliable medical evidence or the values of Houston Methodist, where we have treated more than 25,000 COVID-19 inpatients, and where all our employees and physicians are vaccinated to protect our patients.” The hospital added she is “spreading dangerous misinformation which is not based in science.” Houston Methodist said Bowden recently joined the medical staff and, as of Friday, had never admitted a patient. She also told the hospital she is vaccinated, as is required.

Her attorney, Steven Mitby, released a statement Friday night. “Dr. Mary Bowden is a Stanford-trained physician who owns a successful medical practice in Houston and has provided top quality care to thousands of Houstonians. Dr. Bowden has treated more than 2,000 patients with COVID-19, many with co-morbidities, and has yet to have one of her patients end up in the hospital. Her early treatment methods work and are saving lives. If America had more doctors like Dr. Bowden, COVID outcomes would be much better. Dr. Bowden is not anti-vaccine. Like most Americans, Dr. Bowden believes that people should have a choice and believes that all people, regardless of vaccine status, should have access to the same high quality health care without discrimination. Dr. Bowden has the utmost respect for Houston Methodist and is proud of the work she has done along with her colleagues at Houston Methodist.”

“The press is hunting physicians in coordination with Big Pharma.”

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The first expert annihilated by Fauci and Pfizer et al.

• Dr. Scott Atlas Unloads On Fauci, Birx, Redfield In Forthcoming Memoir (Fox)

Former White House Coronavirus Response team member Dr. Scott Atlas blasted Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx and former CDC Director Robert Redfield in a new book saying that he was “disgusted” by their dismissal of scientific data he presented to them during the Trump administration. In the book, “A Plague Upon Our House” which Fox News Digital obtained an advance copy of, Atlas says he presented data and studies showing that schools should be reopened and that children are not significant spreaders of the coronavirus but was virtually ignored by Fauci and others on the team. “As I finished, there was silence,” Atlas wrote. “No one offered any contrary data. No one spoke of scientific studies. No one even mentioned the discredited Korea study. Zero comments from Dr. Birx. Nothing from Dr. Fauci.

And as always, not a single mention by Birx or Fauci about the serious harms of school closures. In my mind, this was bizarre. Why was I the only one in the room with detailed knowledge of the literature? Why was I the only one considering the data on such an important topic with a critical eye? Were the others simply accepting bottom lines and conclusions, without any analytical evaluation? Weren’t they supposed to be expert medical scientists, too? I waited.” Atlas said that Birx told him his opinion was “out of the mainstream” and said he was part of a “fringe” group of people who believed schools should be opened. “Meanwhile she insisted that all experts agreed with her,” Atlas wrote.

“I shook my head, thinking of some of the world-class epidemiologists who agreed with me—John Ioannidis and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, Carl Heneghan and Sunetra Gupta of Oxford—and wondered if she or Fauci had ever read a single publication by them.” Atlas wrote that he “explained with numbers” that children did not have a significant risk of illness or death from the virus and cited statistics from New York City, California, and elsewhere documenting that while also noting data from Sweden showing zero deaths despite schools not closing and also not imposing mask mandates. “The icing on the cake was the evidence that almost all coronavirus transmission to children comes from adults, not the other way around,” Atlas wrote.

“That was not a predicate for opening schools, given the massive harms to kids if they were closed. But that evidence was already shown by contact tracing and other studies in Iceland, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Japan, Switzerland, and elsewhere. Opened schools and childcare centers did not show significant dangers to children, adults, or teachers…”They found zero instances of a child passing the infection to an adult.” Atlas says Redfield responded to the data by saying “the jury is still out.” “I was disgusted at Redfield’s apparent lack of knowledge, shocked at his ignoring the scientific studies that had been published from around the world,” Atlas wrote. “I looked around the room, wondering if anyone else understood the glaring incompetence on display. Clearly, Pence needed more input.”

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“..she refused to attend meetings where he would be present..”

• Fauci and Birx Stuck To ‘Irrational’ Lockdown Policies – Atlas (DM)

‘By the time I arrived, lockdowns had already been implemented throughout the country for months—including strict business restrictions and school closures as well as quarantines of healthy, asymptomatic people,’ he writes. ‘Those lockdowns were continually pushed, successfully, by Drs. Fauci and Birx to nearly all governors and throughout the media. ‘Those policies – the Birx-Fauci lockdowns – were widely implemented, and they were destroying America’s children and families. ‘Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of deaths kept piling up, including tens of thousands of elderly Americans – their policies were in place and were failing.’ Throughout, he portrays his role as critical thinker, asking awkward questions of the conventional wisdom while his opponents sought to block the president’s wishes.

Why, he asks, were scientists developing and promoting White House policy when their role should have been to offer advice and expertise to the nation’s elected leaders. Instead, Atlas says he pushed for reopening coupled with shielding of those at risk. Testing and isolating healthy people, he said, was a waste of time and resources, and compounded a culture of fear. Leaks quickly suggested he was pushing for a policy of ‘herd immunity,’ essentially by letting the virus spread until the level of natural immunity meant the coronavirus had nowhere left to go. He denies that is what he was proposing, instead describing how he once described the principle of ‘herd immunity’ in a meeting. ‘Not once did I advocate allowing infections to spread – not in that meeting nor in any other meeting, and never to the president,’ he says.

Throughout, he expresses frustration that the White House coronavirus task force was dominated by the views of Fauci and Birx – even as they advocated policies that contradicted Trump’s stated desire to reopen schools and businesses. Trump’s inner circle, he writes, seemed reluctant to rock the boat and reduce the power of two advisers that were popular with the public ahead of the election. ‘They had let Birx and Fauci tell governors to prolong the lockdowns and school closures and continue the severe restrictions on businesses – strategies that failed to stop the elderly from dying, failed to stop the cases, and destroyed families and sacrificed children,’ he writes. ‘The closest advisers to the president, including the VP, seemed more concerned with politics, even though the task force was putting out the wrong advice, contrary to the president’s desire to reopen schools and businesses.’

The result, he says, was dangerous and confusing mixed messaging from the White House. Atlas resigned in November, shortly before his term was due to end. Since then Fauci has been a target of Republicans, who accuse him of flip-flopping in his recommendations and of misleading the public over ‘gain-of-function’ research that they say may have triggered the pandemic. Both have been unstinting in their criticism of Atlas. In recent closed-door testimony to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, Birx accused Atlas of using incomplete information to draw dangerous conclusions.

‘I was constantly raising the alert in the doctors’ meetings of the depth of my concern about Dr. Atlas’ position, Dr. Atlas’ access, Dr. Atlas’ theories and hypothesis, and the depths and breadths of my concern,’ she said. She also confirmed that she refused to attend meetings where he would be present. ‘I felt like by my presence and my discussions with him, by even legitimizing my responses to him, that I was giving his theories credibility,’ she said.

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“..a mortality rate of 2/million..” What’s the myocarditis rate?

• Deaths In Children, Young People In UK With Covid Infection In 1st Year (RS)

Background Deaths in children and young people (CYP) following SARS-CoV-2 infection are rare. Quantifying the risk of mortality is challenging because of high relative prevalence of asymptomatic and non-specific disease manifestations. Therefore, it is important to differentiate between CYP who have died of SARS-CoV-2 and those who have died of an alternative disease process but coincidentally tested positive.

Methods During the pandemic, the mandatory National Child Mortality Database (NCMD) was linked to Public Health England (PHE) testing data to identify CYP (<18 years) who died with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test. A clinical review of all deaths from March 2020 to February 2021 was undertaken to differentiate between those who died of SARS-CoV-2 infection and those who died of an alternative cause but coincidentally tested positive. Then, using linkage to national hospital admission data, demographic and comorbidity details of CYP who died of SARS-CoV-2 were compared to all other deaths. Absolute risk of death was estimated where denominator data were available.

Findings 3105 CYP died from all causes during the first pandemic year in England. 61 of these deaths occurred in CYP who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. 25 CYP died of SARS-CoV-2 infection; 22 from acute infection and three from PIMS-TS. 99·995% of CYP with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test survived. The 25 CYP who died of SARS-CoV-2 equates to a mortality rate of 2/million for the 12,023,568 CYP living in England. CYP >10 years, of Asian and Black ethnic backgrounds, and with comorbidities were over-represented compared to other children.

Interpretation SARS-CoV-2 is very rarely fatal in CYP, even among those with underlying comorbidities. These findings are important to guide families, clinicians and policy makers about future shielding and vaccination.

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Goal posts are made to be shifted.

• CDC Shifts Pandemic Goals Away From Reaching Herd Immunity (LAT)

Since the earliest days of the pandemic, there has been one collective goal for bringing it to an end: achieving herd immunity. That’s when so many people are immune to a virus that it runs out of potential hosts to infect, causing an outbreak to sputter out. Many Americans embraced the novel farmyard phrase, and with it, the projection that once 70% to 80% or 85% of the population was vaccinated against COVID-19, the virus would go away and the pandemic would be over. Now the herd is restless. And experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have set aside herd immunity as a national goal. The prospects for meeting a clear herd-immunity target are “very complicated,” said Dr. Jefferson Jones, a medical officer on the CDC’s COVID-19 Epidemiology Task Force.

“Thinking that we’ll be able to achieve some kind of threshold where there’ll be no more transmission of infections may not be possible,” Jones acknowledged last week to members of a panel that advises the CDC on vaccines. Vaccines have been quite effective at preventing cases of COVID-19 that lead to severe illness and death, but none has proved reliable at blocking transmission of the virus, Jones noted. Recent evidence has also made clear that the immunity provided by vaccines can wane in a matter of months. The result is that even if vaccination were universal, the coronavirus would probably continue to spread. “We would discourage” thinking in terms of “a strict goal,” he said. To Dr. Oliver Brooks, a member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, it was a sobering new message, with potentially worrisome effects.

With just 58.5% of all Americans fully vaccinated, “we do need to increase” the uptake of COVID-19 shots, said Brooks, chief medical officer of Watts Healthcare in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, he said, Jones’ unexpected admission “almost makes you less motivated to get more people vaccinated.” Brooks said he worries that as the CDC backs off a specific target for herd immunity, it will take the air out of efforts to run up vaccination levels. And if public health officials stop talking about the “herd,” people may lose sight of the fact that vaccination is not just an act of personal protection but a way to protect the community. A public tack away from the promise of herd immunity may also further undermine the CDC’s credibility when it comes to fighting the coronavirus.

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“BREAKING REPORT: Judge in Rittenhouse Trial receiving MULTIPLE THREATS ahead of closing arguments..”

A fair trial? Not possible. Media. Found it remarkable that hardly anyone knows the people he shot, after they attacked him, were not black.

• As America Falls Apart, Profits Soar (Taibbi)

The Mayhem Watch is on. Closing arguments in the trial of “Kenosha Shooter” Kyle Rittenhouse are expected Monday, and after weeks of hype, the country is primed to explode again. Wisconsin governor Tony Evers announced 500 National Guard troops will be on hand for potential post-verdict “unrest,” which seems almost guaranteed, no matter the result.

As with all major news stories lately, the Rittenhouse case saw idiosyncrasies wash away as coverage accumulated, with pundits pounding the trial into yet another generalized referendum on American culture war. Prestige media made Rittenhouse a stand-in for the Proud Boys, January 6th, school board protests, anti-mask protests, QAnon, Blue Lives Matter, Trump, “Domestic Terrorism,” fascism, school shooters, and every other naughty thing, with everyone from then-candidate Joe Biden to The Intercept blithely declaring him a white supremacist. The efforts to cast Rittenhouse as a symbol of racism and white rage have been awesome in quantity and transparently, intentionally provoking, with even leading papers like the New York Times standardizing a practice of underscoring Rittenhouse’s race (“white teenager”) while leaving the identities of those shot out of coverage. Glenn Greenwald pointed out that his old outlet, The Intercept, noted Rittenhouse’s race 20 times in one piece while keeping schtum about the color of those shot. This has gone on for so long, we’ve seen a foreign newspaper misreport that the two people killed in the case were black. In the public consciousness, they might as well have been.

Because Rittenhouse from the day of the shooting was made a symbol of Fox-watching, Trump-loving conservatives, he was also quickly adopted in red media as a hero, which “he surely wasn’t,” as Andrew Sullivan put it. This turbo-charged the freakout even more, as Rittenhouse’s defenders turned his case into a referendum on everything from media coverage of last summer’s protests of Black Lives Matter to the performance (or non-performance, as it were) of police during the George Floyd/Jacob Blake demonstrations, to a dozen other things that made public passions rise in the last year.

Rittenhouse in other words became a symbol of so many things to so many people that the specifics of his legal case have ceased to be relevant. There seems to be no such thing as an editorialist who has negative feelings about, say, Rittenhouse posing with Proud Boys, yet also believes that incident can’t be evidence since it happened after the shooting. Everyone picks a side and stays there. Pundits are telling us that any opinion on how the jury should rule can only be understood as a reflection of racial attitudes. “If you’re defending Kyle Rittenhouse, you might be a white supremacist. Just sayin,” is how Tweeter-with-beard and sometimes-journalist David Leavitt puts it.

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Not the Onion. Can’t decide who’s crazier, he or Zuckerberg.

• Bezos Predicts Only Limited Number Of People Will Get To Remain On Earth (RT)

Humanity will move most industry into space and allow only a select few to remain on our planet, which will be turned into a natural resort, according to self-funded space explorer Jeff Bezos. The Amazon billionaire enthusiastically shared his predictions for what human civilization will look like in the future – with him personally helping to bring that future closer – during a talk at the annual Ignatius Forum in Washington, DC. He expects vast cylindrical space colonies spinning to create artificial gravity for millions of residents to take over most industrial production. Meanwhile, Earth will be turned into a natural reserve with restricted access similar to US national parks today.

“This place is special, we can’t ruin it,” the founder of Amazon said of our planet. “Millions of people will move from Earth to space over time. And that’s the vision of Blue Origin – millions of people working in space,” he said, referring to his own firm. “Over centuries, most or many of the people will be born in space. It will be their first home. They will be born on these colonies, they will live on these colonies. They may visit Earth the way you would visit Yellowstone National Park,” Bezos predicted. He said that the colonies themselves “will have rivers and forests and wildlife,” which arguably brought his speech out of the realm of futurology and towards optimistic science fiction.

Amazon is infamously resourceful when it comes to squeezing its workers for every drop of productivity. That’s why the similarly rosy description of ‘Amazon factory towns’ solving economic inequality in the US was met with horror, when it was proposed by a Bloomberg columnist in September. Bezos referred to Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill, who proposed the concept of space habitats in 1976, as the source of inspiration for him. He said the sort of expansion he predicted was inevitable, if humanity is to grow in a sustainable way. “This Earth can support, let’s say, 10 billion people to a certain degree. We’d have to work really hard to figure out how to do that without degrading the planet… The solar system can support a trillion people,” he said.

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We know where to send Bezos.

• God Develops Ultra-Realistic Metaverse, Calls It ‘Universe’ (BBee)

In a bold announcement to all of His children, God unveiled the creation of an ultra-realistic metaverse where people can talk, learn, and work with other people, stating this unique new metaverse will be called “Universe.” “This is more realistic than any virtual reality I’ve experienced before,” said reality enthusiast Miles Kann while walking through one of the Universe’s city parks in real-time. “I can literally smell the fresh air, touch the cool grass, and interact with other players in incredible ways.” Another early adopter of God’s Universe demonstrated how detailed and immersive the player-to-player interaction was as she showed off her humble home, complete with husband, children, and dog.


She thanked God for providing her with a sense of purpose and fulfillment unmatched by any competing product. Critics were quick to point out possible bugs in the Universe, listing wars, injustices, violence, and disease, and suggested God either label it “Early Access” or reboot altogether. These criticisms, however, were countered by God’s supporters who were well-versed in the instruction manual, stating a truly realistic Universe must come with the full experience of joy and pain, choice and accountability, life and death, but that the end game was worth it. According to witnesses, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg screamed in terror at the frightening, immutable reality of God’s Universe.

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