Jul 292022
 


Odilon Redon Sunset n.d.

 

Ukraine Shells Prison Holding POWs – Donbass Official (RT)
US Should Not Fund Ukrainian ‘Blacklist’ (Scott Ritter)
Provoking Beijing (MoA)
UK Official Says Nuclear War Threat Higher Than During the Cold War (Antiwar)
US GDP Drops 0.9 Percent In Second Quarter (PM)
‘Horror Chart’ Suggests Germany On Brink Of Huge Energy Crisis (RT)
Hanover Becomes First German City To Ban Hot Water In Public Buildings (DM)
EU Ban On Russian Gas ‘Impossible’ – Austria (RT)
EU Gas Solidarity Complicated By Lack Of Fuel Sharing Deals (R.)
Worst Is Yet To Come From Trudeau Liberals (Jordan Peterson)
Bill Barr To Merrick Garland: Appoint A Special Counsel Already (Fed.)
Joe Biden Met With 14 Of His Son’s Business Associates (RT)
They Can’t Let Him Back In (Michael Anton)

 

 

 

 

Never forget

 

 

 

 

Don’t miss O’Looney


https://twitter.com/i/status/1552438998009790465

 

 

Hesitancy

 

 

 

 

Breaking, not confirmed.

Ukraine Shells Prison Holding POWs – Donbass Official (RT)

Dozens were killed after Ukrainian forces struck a jail with POWs in Donbass, local official says Ukrainian troops shelled a prison housing POWs in Yelenovka early Friday morning, Donetsk People’s Republic Deputy Information Minister Daniil Bezsonov wrote on his Telegram channel. “There was a direct hit at a building with prisoners,” Bezsonov wrote. “The results as of now: 40 killed, 130 wounded.” The minister added that he believes Kiev used US-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers for the attack. The facility reportedly housed Ukrainian fighters captured by Russian and allied forces during the siege of the Azovstal steel mill in the city of Mariupol.

Read more …

“Many on this list are citizens of the United States, some of whom, like me, have taken an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

US Should Not Fund Ukrainian ‘Blacklist’ (Scott Ritter)

Dear Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, and Congressman Tonko, My name is Scott Ritter. I am a New York State resident, currently residing in the Town of Bethlehem, in Albany County. My family and I have lived at our current address since July 2000. I am writing to you in your collective role as my elected representatives in the United States Congress, specifically regarding H.R. 7691, the Additional Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2022, which became Public Law 117-128 on May 21, 2022, which each of you voted in favor of. I draw your attention to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, specifically the following language: “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

By enacting Public Law 117-128, you appear to have abrogated your Constitutional responsibilities in so far as you may have, in fact, made a law which both abridges the freedom of speech and a free press by enabling the Government of Ukraine, through the use of US taxpayer dollars appropriated under Public Law 117-128, to publish a “blacklist” singling out US citizens as “Russian propagandists” for exercising their Constitutional rights pertaining to free speech and a free press. The “blacklist” in question was published on July 14, 2022, by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation, and consists of a list of politicians, academics, and activists who the Center claims promote “Russian propaganda.” Many on this list are citizens of the United States, some of whom, like me, have taken an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.

While the specific criterion used by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation for selecting persons for inclusion on this “blacklist” is not known, in my case the Ukrainian government appears to have taken umbrage against my articulation of Ukraine as a NATO base of operations, my analysis of the Bucha Massacre in early March which assigns responsibility to Ukrainian security services, and my description of the current Ukraine-Russian conflict as a “proxy conflict” being waged on behalf of the United States. Whether one agrees with my positions on these and other matters pertaining to Ukraine is not the point; by articulating my views, I am exercising my rights under the Constitution of the United States. While the Government of Ukraine is free to express its opinions regarding my viewpoints as it sees fit, the Government of the United States, by using funds appropriated by the United States Congress, should not facilitate the actions of the Government of Ukraine in this regard.

[..] As a constituent whose name has appeared on a so-called “blacklist” published by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation, my personal and professional life has been, and continues to be, detrimentally impacted by the chilling effect of being labeled a “Russian propagandist” for simply exercising the right to free speech guaranteed by the United States Constitution. Moreover, Ukraine has a history of converting “blacklists” of this nature into “kill lists”, where those who speak out against the policies of the Ukrainian government are being murdered or threatened with violence.

Read more …

Nancy missed the past 30 years.

Provoking Beijing (MoA)

Yves Smith is aghast about the U.S. eyepoking of China: “The neocons above all seem unable to process that the days of US hegemony are over. It boggles the mind that they are not just eyepoking but escalating greatly with China via the still-planned Pelosi visit to Taiwan in August. As we’ll explain, China is fully cognizant of the fact that Pelosi is number two in line after Harris should something happen to the increasingly addle-brained Biden. And they don’t buy for a second that Pelosi is operating without the explicit approval of the Administration. Note that it’s entirely possible that Pelosi revived her Taiwan trip plan (recall she put it off after coming down with Covid) all on her own. The Pentagon gave her a face-saving out by saying they didn’t recommend it. China, which is routinely screechy when it is upset about what it perceives to be foreign transgressions, has managed to find new registers in its objections the proposed Pelosi visit.”

Pelosi is not only number two in line but has been hostile to the Chinese government for more than 30 years. In 1991 she and two other members of Congress made a stunt on the Tiananmen square where two years before protests had taken place. The multiday protest in the square had ended peacefully. But outside of the square bloody riots took place over several days and nights during which hundreds of soldiers and rioters got killed. The protest and riots had been a U.S. instigated color revolution attempt with the father of the color revolution concept, Gene Sharp, being personally in the Beijing and consulting the protest leaders. After the attempt had failed the CIA organized the exit of hundreds of protest leaders and agents to Hong Kong where they formed the base for the 2020 color revolution attempt there. Lots of those ‘activists’ have now moved to Taiwan.

In 1991 Pelosi and two congressmen unfolded a banner on Tianamen in front of the international media that said: “To those who died for democracy in China.” Police immediately intervened and ended the stunt. The stunt had a positive echo in U.S. media (Note: The video title says it is 1989 but the announcer says it is two years later). Pelosi may think she can recreate another positive media echo by traveling to Taiwan. But the China of 2022 is no longer the China of 1991. It is now the world’s biggest economy and its military force rivals the one the U.S. has. It no longer condones eyepoking and ‘human rights’ stunts. It knows a U.S. provocation when it sees one. In the 1950s and 60s the U.S. financed terrorism in Tibet. In 1989 it coached and financed a bloody color revolution attempt in Beijing. In the 1990s it brought Islamist terrorism to Xinjiang. In this century the U.S. instigated several periods of riots in Hong Kong.

Read more …

“..during the Cold War, there was an “understanding of the Soviet doctrine and capabilities — and vice versa” because they kept more negotiation channels open.”

UK Official Says Nuclear War Threat Higher Than During the Cold War (Antiwar)

British National Security Advisor Stephen Lovegrove warned on Thursday that there is a greater risk of nuclear war today than there was during the Cold War due to a lack of communication channels. “The Cold War’s two monolithic blocks of the USSR (Soviet Union) and NATO — though not without alarming bumps — were able to reach a shared understanding of doctrine that is today absent,” Lovegrove said. He said during the Cold War, there was an “understanding of the Soviet doctrine and capabilities — and vice versa” because they kept more negotiation channels open. “This gave us both a higher level of confidence that we would not miscalculate our way into nuclear war,” Lovegrove said.

“Today we do not have the same foundations with others who may threaten us in future — particularly with China,” he said. Today, there is only one remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the US and Russia, the New START, which limits the deployment of nuclear warheads, bombers, submarines, and missiles. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the US has abandoned diplomacy with Moscow, and US officials have said they can’t imagine negotiating a replacement of New START before it expires in 2026. The US has no nuclear arms control treaties with China, which has a vastly smaller arsenal than the US or Russia. Current estimates put Beijing’s arsenal at around 350 warheads, while the US has 5,550 and Russia has about 6,200.

During the Trump administration, the US tried to get Beijing to take part in trilateral arms control talks with Moscow and Washington. But China has little interest in such talks while its arsenal is so much smaller. If the US were serious about getting China involved, it would need to work with Russia to significantly reduce its stockpiles. Besides the lack of communication, the risk of nuclear war is significantly higher today because the US is funding a war on Russia’s border and helping Ukraine with intelligence to carry out attacks on Russian forces. The US is also stoking tensions with China by deploying more military forces in the South China Sea and increasing support for Taiwan.

Read more …

What Is A Woman? – Part 2

US GDP Drops 0.9 Percent In Second Quarter (PM)

The Bureau of Economic Analysis has released their report on the second quarter GDP. “Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 0.9 percent in the second quarter of 2022, according to the ‘advance’ estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP decreased 1.6 percent.” By standard definitions, two consecutive quarters of declining GDP growth indicates that a nation is in an economic recession. President Joe Biden said on Monday that the US is not facing a recession. “We’re not going to be in a recession, in my view,” Biden said. “The unemployment rate is still one of the lowest we’ve had in history. It’s in the 3.6 percent area. We still find ourselves with people investing.”

“The decrease in real GDP reflected decreases in private inventory investment, residential fixed investment, federal government spending, state and local government spending, and nonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by increases in exports and personal consumption expenditures (PCE). Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased,” the BEA reports. The White House last week adjusted the definition of recession to distinctly not mean that two consecutive quarters of declining GDP growth is a recession. “While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle,” the White House wrote.


“Instead, both official determinations of recessions and economists’ assessment of economic activity are based on a holistic look at the data—including the labor market, consumer and business spending, industrial production, and incomes. Based on these data, it is unlikely that the decline in GDP in the first quarter of this year—even if followed by another GDP decline in the second quarter—indicates a recession,” the White House said.

Read more …

Zschaepitz : “This horror chart suggests that #Germany is heading for a huge energy crisis. Not only are gas prices near record highs, but electricity prices in particular are signaling stress.”

‘Horror Chart’ Suggests Germany On Brink Of Huge Energy Crisis (RT)

Germany is heading for a “huge energy crisis,” a senior editor at one of the country’s most influential newspapers, Die Welt, warned on Wednesday. “Not only [are] gas prices near record highs, but electricity prices in particular are signaling stress,” Holger Zschaepitz, a senior editor on the daily’s economic and financial desk, wrote on Twitter. In what he called a “horror chart” that he posted with his tweet, Zschaepitz showed that the price of electricity had reached almost €400 per megawatt hour on the energy exchange, or €0.40 per kilowatt-hour. If consumer prices reflected such market rates, Germans would be paying around €0.80 per kilowatt-hour rather than the current €0.30, including taxes and fees. However, such a sharp increase would be socially explosive, Zschaepitz suggests.

Meanwhile, in such a case energy companies would no longer be able to produce competitively, he adds. Electricity prices in Germany are influenced by the price of natural gas, which is the source of 15% of the country’s electricity, according to official statistics. Gas prices have nearly quadrupled this year, primarily due to shrinking flow from Russia, the continent’s major supplier. The price crunch has already led to a partial nationalization of one of Germany’s largest energy supply companies. The German government announced last week it would acquire a 30% stake in Uniper after the company asked for a bailout, citing “extreme financial pressure” caused by the reduced Russian natural gas deliveries.

The curtailment of gas flows meant that rather than being able to fully rely on its long-term contracts at a fixed price, Uniper has recently been forced to buy gas on the spot market at a much higher price to make up for shortages. According to a recent report by Bloomberg, European energy firms are racking up debt to cover the soaring costs, with their liabilities having reportedly reached over $1.7 trillion.

Read more …

Shoot. Foot.

Hanover Becomes First German City To Ban Hot Water In Public Buildings (DM)

The Germany city of Hanover has become the first big city in Europe to ban hot water and central heating in public buildings in response to Vladimir Putin’s weaponizing of gas supplies. The drastic step comes as Germans have been told to expect sky high electricity bills and sweeping gas rationing measures that will affect their day-to-day lives. In a sign of things to come, Hanover, the capital of Lower Saxony in the north west of the country, will cut off the hot water in public buildings, swimming pools, sports halls and gyms. Other desperate gas-saving measures include switching off public fountains and blacking out night-time lights on major buildings such as the town hall and museums. The city’s mayor, Belit Onay, spoke of an ‘imminent gas shortage’ that meant they had to reduce the city’s energy consumption by 15 per cent.


The plans call for shutting off heating within public buildings between April and September each year, and thermostats set at just 20C (68F) for the rest of the year, although there will be some exemptions. There will also be a ban on portable air conditioners, heaters and radiators among the general populace as the average German begins to pay a price for standing up to the Russian dictator. The panic among European states – especially Germany – will likely come as music to Putin’s ears, as he is seen to be cutting energy supplies in retaliation for countries that have supported Ukraine after he invaded the country. Germany, like most of Europe, has been enjoying a hot summer which should soften the blow of the cold showers, but public officials are introducing the measures now in fear of what awaits them when the season turns.

Read more …

“..the German industry also depends on it, and if it collapses, the Austrian industry will also collapse, and we will face mass unemployment..”

EU Ban On Russian Gas ‘Impossible’ – Austria (RT)

The European Union cannot ban Russian natural gas, as the step would harm EU members more than Russia, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer warned on Thursday, as cited by Austrian media outlets. Chancellor Nehammer made the comments during a visit to Vienna by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. “Sanctions must hit those against whom they are directed more, but not harm those who decide them,” Nehammer told the Austria Press Agency. A ban on gas supplies from Russia – an idea that has been circulating within the EU since Moscow started its military operation in Ukraine – would lead to a domino effect in Europe, the Austrian chancellor suggested.

“Austria’s position is that an embargo on gas is impossible. Not only because Austria depends on Russian gas, the German industry also depends on it, and if it collapses, the Austrian industry will also collapse, and we will face mass unemployment,” Nehammer said, as cited by Lenta.ru. Viktor Orban criticized the gas rationing plan approved by the EU – which aims to reduce gas consumption within the bloc by 15% from August to March next year – earlier this week. According to the Hungarian PM, the mandatory rationing of natural gas is “the first sign of a war economy,” and warned of a possible recession and unemployment in Europe.

Europe has seen reduced gas flow from Russia – a major supplier – due to technical issues at a major pipeline. Nord Stream 1 is currently operating at 20% capacity. The reduction comes as the continent is trying to top up its gas reserves ahead of the heating season. The EU pledged earlier this year to end the bloc’s reliance on Russian energy. A partial embargo on oil was agreed upon, but several rounds of sanctions have not included similar restrictions on Russian natural gas.

Read more …

The EU is made up of bureaucrats, so of course pratical things do not get done.

EU Gas Solidarity Complicated By Lack Of Fuel Sharing Deals (R.)

The European Union clinched a deal this week to cope with a gas supply crisis, but to make it work member states need to establish bilateral pacts to share gas and, right now, most have no such agreement in place. Only six such deals have been secured, leaving most of the EU’s 27 countries without firm terms on how and when they would share gas in a supply crunch, or the financial compensation they would give or get for doing so. “[Bilateral deals] are really … the only thing that will hold at the end of the day if there is a real supply crisis,” Christian Egenhofer, associate senior research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies, said. “They organise the legal stuff, the compensation, the financial but also the infrastructure constraints,” he said.

Fearing Russia may completely halt gas flows, EU countries agreed on Tuesday to curb their gas use by 15% over winter, to fill storage and free up fuel to share around in a supply crisis. But it is up to individual countries to sort out how that sharing of fuel will happen in practice. EU laws oblige member states to send gas to a neighboring state whose households or essential services like hospitals face a severe shortage. To make that happen, governments arrange bilateral deals. However, just eight countries are covered by the six agreements so far – including between Germany and Austria, Estonia and Latvia, and Italy and Slovenia. “This is not sufficient,” EU energy policy chief Kadri Simson said last month, urging countries to arrange more.

A handful of countries are negotiating new two-way agreements, government officials said. A German-Czech deal is due to be signed by winter, and Germany is working on further agreements with Poland and Italy, its economy ministry said. But some countries heavily reliant on Russian gas – such as landlocked Hungary, which opposed this week’s deal – have none. Italy and France are the EU’s biggest gas users after economic powerhouse Germany. Italy has just one bilateral deal on emergency gas sharing and France has none. A senior Italian official said the country was negotiating a deal with Greece on gas storage.

Read more …

“I simply cannot believe that this absolute failure of economic policy is now being trumpeted as a positive accomplishment.

Worst Is Yet To Come From Trudeau Liberals (Jordan Peterson)

I have had the great privilege of travelling to 40 American cities in just about as many states and to 15 European countries in the last four months, in the waning days of the great COVID panic, and I have learned many things about our great and self-conscious nation. First: I have not travelled anywhere else where the citizens and the government are more neurotically “concerned” about the pandemic. It may have escaped Canadians’ notice, but virtually nowhere else in the developed world is it now required to wear a mask, as is still mandatory in many of Canada’s airports and on flights out of our benighted country. There is absolutely no excuse for this, except the punitive self-righteousness of the Trudeau Liberals.

What else might you expect, however, from a government that also includes Chrystia Freeland, a deputy prime minister who has bragged about her colleagues’ appalling economic performance, claiming that it is actually good for Canadians to empty their wallets at the gas pumps, because of its implications in fighting the “climate emergency.” I simply cannot believe that this absolute failure of economic policy is now being trumpeted as a positive accomplishment. Here’s a hint for you saintly progressives: if you cared about the poor (the real poor, not the hypothetical poor you are hypothetically saving in the future), you would seek to drive down the cost of energy — energy that is precisely equivalent to work and, therefore, to the wealth that ameliorates poverty.

Second: it is almost impossible to overstate the degree to which Canada’s international reputation has been damaged by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The Americans I have talked to (including people very well-placed politically on the Democratic and Republican fronts alike) listen in disbelief when I recount the claim brought forth by the Trudeau Liberals: that the trucker Freedom Convoy was financed by Americans hell-bent on bringing about a Jan. 6-style insurrection in Ottawa. Who would benefit from that, even in principle? Even if the Americans (Republican MAGA-types, say) cared about us — which they don’t — why in the world would they want to destabilize Canadian democracy? What’s the motive, to justify the crime? There is none. Even the American Democrats think that idea is insane.

Read more …

Barr 180º.

Bill Barr To Merrick Garland: Appoint A Special Counsel Already (Fed.)

Recent developments warrant the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, former Attorney General William Barr says. “[I]ntervening events, especially recent reports about FBI whistleblowers and the possible reach of the investigation, warrant adding the protections of special counsel status to assure that key decisions are made independently without political ‘favor,’” Barr told The Federalist. President Joe Biden’s son Hunter has been under federal investigation since 2018 for issues related to his foreign business practices, including obtaining investments and board positions from politically compromised figures in communist China and other trouble spots. Multiple U.S. attorney’s offices were tasked with components of the investigation, with the Delaware office being the lead.

Hunter Biden’s problems became much more public with the news that he had left a laptop full of incriminating information at a computer repair store in Delaware. That news was then suppressed by Democrat-allied intelligence officials falsely claiming it was Russian disinformation. This week, multiple FBI whistleblowers, including those in senior positions, accused FBI headquarters of “improperly discredit[ing] and falsely claim[ing] that derogatory information about Biden’s activities was disinformation, causing investigative activity and sourcing to be shut down,” according to a Monday letter from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. That fact, as well as concern over the investigation’s complexity and scope, convinced the former attorney general of the need for a special counsel.

By highlighting the apparent breadth of the still-pending investigation into Hunter Biden’s affairs, Barr’s comments confirm concerns of three insiders, reported by The Federalist on Wednesday, that “the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office investigating Hunter Biden lacks the wherewithal and resources to adequately probe the dubious financial dealings of the Biden family and their business partners.” Barr’s view that a special counsel is now warranted to continue the investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings represents a change from the position he took in December 2020.

During a December 21, 2020 press conference, when asked whether he agreed with Republicans that a special counsel was needed to handle the Biden investigation, Barr negated the idea. “I think it’s being handled responsibly and professionally currently within the department, and to this point I have seen no reason to appoint a special counsel, and I have no plan to do so before I leave,” the outgoing attorney general told reporters.

Read more …

Get that counsel.

Joe Biden Met With 14 Of His Son’s Business Associates (RT)

Despite repeated denials that he ever spoke to his son Hunter about the latter’s overseas business dealings, Fox News reported on Thursday that President Joe Biden met with at least 14 of Hunter’s business associates from the US, Mexico, Ukraine, China and Kazakhstan. Abandoned in a Delaware computer repair shop some time before the 2020 election and unearthed by the New York Post, Hunter’s laptop contained presumed evidence of numerous foreign deals in which businessmen offered tens of millions of dollars for introductions to Joe Biden, as well as graphic proof of Hunter’s drug use and dalliances with prostitutes.

“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Biden insisted in 2019. When last month Britain’s Daily Mail published a 2018 voicemail featuring Biden speaking to Hunter about a deal with Chinese oil firm CEFC, the official line remained the same, with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying that “what the president said still stands.” Fox News’ latest report casts serious doubt on Biden’s denial. According to the news site, Joe Biden met with Mexican businessmen Miguel Aleman Velasco and Miguel Aleman Magnani in 2014, giving the pair a tour of the White House. A year later, Biden reportedly spoke by video with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and all three Mexicans – whom Hunter was doing business with or in negotiations with at the time – visited them at the vice presidential residence in Washington DC.

In a text message found on the laptop, Hunter told his business partner, Jeff Cooper, that he had spoken to his father about the deal involving Slim. Joe Biden also reportedly met with former Colombian President Andres Pastrana Arango and Eric Schwerin, another of Hunter’s business partners, in 2012, before dining with Arango and Juan Esteban Orduz, a Colombian businessman, later that same day. Files from the laptop show that during a single dinner in 2015, Joe Biden met with Hunter’s business associates from Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia, including an executive from Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company that paid Hunter a reported $50,000 per month from 2014 to 2018 to sit on its board. The following day, the Burisma executive emailed Hunter, thanking him for “giving an opportunity to meet your father.”

Read more …

Anton is a former Trump WH adviser.

They Can’t Let Him Back In (Michael Anton)

Why? They say Jan. 6. But their determination began much earlier. And just what is so terrible about Trump anyway? I get many of his critics’ points, I really do. I hear them all the time from my mother. But even if we were to stipulate them all, do Trump’s faults really warrant tearing the country apart by shutting out half of it from the political process? Love him or hate him, during Trump’s presidency, the economy was strong, markets were up, inflation was under control, gas prices were low, illegal border crossings were down, crime was lower, trade deals were renegotiated, ISIS was defeated, NATO allies were stepping up, and China was stepping back (a little). Deny all that if you want to. The point here is that something like 100 million Americans believe it, strongly, and are bewildered and angered by elite hatred for the man they think delivered it.

Nor was Trump’s record all that radical—much less so than that of Joe Biden, who is using school-lunch funding to push gender ideology on poor kids, to cite but one example. Trump’s core agenda—border protection, trade balance, foreign restraint—was quite moderate, both intrinsically and in comparison to past Republican and Democratic precedent. And that’s before we even get to the fact that Trump neglected much of his own agenda in favor of the old Chamber of Commerce, fusionist, Reaganite, Conservatism, Inc., agenda. Corporate tax cuts, deregulation, and bombing Syria: These are all things Trump’s base doesn’t want, but the oligarchs desperately do, which Trump gave them. And still they try to destroy him.

Again, why? I think it’s because, while Trump’s core MAGA agenda is decidedly not outside the historic bipartisan mainstream, it is well outside the present regime’s core interests. Our rulers’ wealth and power rise with open borders, trade giveaways, and endless war. Trump, at least in principle, and often in practice, threatens all three. The old America—the one in which Republicans cared about the heartland and weren’t solely valets to corporate power, Democrats were pro-worker and anti-war, and Bill Clinton and The New York Times could advocate border security—is in the process of being replaced, if it hasn’t already been, by one in which there is only one acceptable opinion on not just these, but all other issues.

Anti-Trump hysteria is in the final analysis not about Trump. The regime can’t allow Trump to be president not because of who he is (although that grates), but because of who his followers are. That class—Angelo Codevilla’s “country class”—must not be allowed representation by candidates who might implement their preferences, which also, and above all, must not be allowed. The rubes have no legitimate standing to affect the outcome of any political process, because of who they are, but mostly because of what they want. Complaints about the nature of Trump are just proxies for objections to the nature of his base. It doesn’t help stabilize our already twitchy situation that those who bleat the loudest about democracy are also audibly and visibly determined to deny a real choice to half the country. “No matter how you vote, you will not get X”—whether X is a candidate or a policy—is guaranteed to increase discontent with the present regime.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Bear

 

 

 

 

Gerry Ritz

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Jul 262022
 
 July 26, 2022  Posted by at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Gustave Moreau Orpheus at the Tomb of Eurydice 1891

 

Ukraine Government Issues Blacklist Of ‘Russian Propagandists’ (Unherd)
Needless Death and Misery (Rickards)
Gazprom Halts Another Nord Stream Turbine Cutting Flows In Half (ZH)
Russia’s Gazprom To Make Drastic Cut To Europe’s Gas Supply From Wednesday (G.)
Gazprom Receives Documents On Nord Stream Turbine Return (RT)
Germany Now ‘Hostage’ To Putin After US Poured Billions Into Defending It (DC)
Implications of the UN’s Ukraine Grain and Russia Fertilizer/Food Deals (NC)
Moscow Says It Aims To Overthrow Zelensky And His Government (AP)
No Farmers, No Food, No Life (Peeters)
The Wrecking Crew Will Be Overcome (Kunstler)
Russia Accuses Ukrainian Troops Of War Crimes (RT)
Greek Electricity Subsidy In Excess Of 1.1 Bln Euros In August (K.)
Hunter Biden Evidence Falsely Labeled Disinformation By FBI: Whistleblower

 

 

 

 

 

 

MLK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Senator Rand Paul, Glenn Greenwald, Tulsi Gabbard, John Mearsheimer and Col Douglas McGregor. Blacklisted.

Zelensky starts censoring America. What a world.

Ukraine Government Issues Blacklist Of ‘Russian Propagandists’ (Unherd)

The Government of Ukraine has issued a blacklist of individuals who they judge to be “promoting Russian propaganda” — including a number of prominent Western intellectuals. The “Center for Countering Disinformation,” established in 2021 under Volodymyr Zelensky and headed by former lawyer Polina Lysenko, sits within the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine. Its Its stated aim is to detect and counter “propaganda” and “destructive disinformation” and to prevent the “manipulation of public opinion.” On July 14th it published on its website a list of politicians, academics, activists that are “promoting Russian propaganda” — including several high-profile Western intellectuals and politicians.

Republican Senator Rand Paul, former Democrat Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, military and geopolitical analyst Edward N. Luttwak, realist political scientist John Mearsheimer and heterodox journalist Glenn Greenwald were all included on the list. The list does not explain what the consequences are for anyone mentioned. The exact criteria for inclusion are also unclear, although next to each name the report lists the “pro Russian” opinions the individual promotes. For example, Edward Luttwak’s breach was to suggest that “referendums should be held in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions”; Mearsheimer’s breach is recorded as him saying that “NATO has been in Ukraine since 2014” and that “NATO provoked Putin.”

[..] American political scientist and expert in international relations John Mearsheimer also told UnHerd how disappointed he was to be labelled in this way: “When I was a young boy, my mother taught me that when others can’t beat your arguments with facts and logic, they smear you. That is what is going on here. “I argue that it is clear from the available evidence that Russia invaded Ukraine because the United States and its European allies were determined to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border, which Moscow saw as an existential threat. Ukrainians of all persuasions reject my argument and instead blame Vladimir Putin, who is said to have been bent on conquering Ukraine and making it part of a greater Russia. “But there is no evidence in the public record to support that claim, which creates real problems for both Kyiv and the West. So how do they deal with me? The answer of course is to label me a Russian propagandist, which I am not.”

Read more …

“Russia will take somewhere between a third and half the country and keep it. The parts that Russia is taking control of include the industrial nexus, the largest natural resource deposits and the most fertile land.”

Needless Death and Misery (Rickards)

Almost everything you heard about the war in Ukraine from U.S. media over the course of March, April and May was a lie. You heard that Putin was losing the war. You heard that Russians had poor training and low morale and were deserting in droves. You heard that Ukrainians were destroying Russian armor in large numbers to blunt the Russian advance. None of this was true. In fact, Russian troops have achieved major victories in Mariupol, Kherson, Severodonetsk, Lysychansk and other key targets that control rivers, ports and junctions in Ukraine. This article isn’t about strategy and I don’t want to get too deeply into the weeds, but Russia’s next targets are Slovyansk and Bakhmut, which will consolidate Russia’s control over the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

[..] What we know right now is the economic damage to the U.S. economy will get much worse before the economy gets better. Biden won’t stop the sanctions soon. That means the trashing of the U.S. economy will continue. Meanwhile, Russia is “temporarily” shutting down the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline to Germany for repairs. Of course, the temporary shutdown may become permanent. It’s just more proof that U.S.-led sanctions only hurt the U.S. and Europe, not Russia. Here’s another potentially dangerous side effect of the failed sanctions campaign against Russia: Economic sanctions may now facilitate war instead of preventing or stopping it. Why? Because U.S. sanctions on Russia are a complete failure.

Nations considering invasions that might have been deterred because of sanctions threats may now feel emboldened and that they can proceed with confidence. How this new dynamic plays out in hotspots like the Taiwan Strait remains to be seen. But it would be deeply ironic if sanctions actually encouraged China to move against Taiwan. These are the sorts of issues that should be thoroughly thought through before action is taken. But our political leaders are incapable of thinking even one move ahead. The U.S. has already committed about $56 billion to assist Ukraine, which will likely turn out to be a very poor investment. But American taxpayers might be fleeced even more… The prime minister of Ukraine has calmly asked an international conference for $750 billion of assistance to rebuild Ukraine after the war. Nice try.

There are a few problems with this. First of all, there will be no Ukraine to rebuild, at least not in its current form. Russia will take somewhere between a third and half the country and keep it. The parts that Russia is taking control of include the industrial nexus, the largest natural resource deposits and the most fertile land. Russia will be able to finance the reconstruction of their conquests using the very industrial capacity, mining and agricultural output they have captured. Russia will also control the ports and major rivers and will be able to tax the remainder of Ukraine for access. The gradual result will be a prosperous part of Ukraine controlled by Russia and a desperately poor part of Ukraine left to the corrupt oligarchs under Zelenskyy.

Read more …

The whole system needs repair, not just one turbine.

Gazprom Halts Another Nord Stream Turbine Cutting Flows In Half (ZH)

Europeans, and especially Germans, breathed a sigh of relief last Thursday when amid fears that Moscow would not restart flows along the Nord Stream 1 pipeline after its 10 day maintenance period, Putin turned the gas back on, if just to its pre-maintenance peak level of about 40% of maximum capacity Alas Europe’s muted celebration were not meant to last, and with many speculating that Russia was just waiting for the right opportunity to turn the screws on Germany, both literally and metaphorically, that’s precisely what happened moments ago when shortly after Siemens finally delivered transport documents for the controversial Nord Stream turbine that had been stuck in Canada for weeks, Gazprom unexpectedly announced it would halt one more Nord Stream turbine at its Portovaya compressor station from July 27, “taking into account the technical conditions of the engine,” the Russian company says in a statement.

This means that as had been whispered much of last week, gas flows from Portovaya will drop to as much as 33 million cubic meters per day from 7am Moscow time on July 27, which means flows along NS1 will decline by half, from 40% of capacity to just 20%. According to Bloomberg energy expert Javier Blas, with “Nord Stream 1 flowing at just 20% of capacity from July 27, Germany will NOT have enough natural gas to make it throughout the whole winter **unless big demand reductions are implemented**. Berlin will need to activate stage 3 of its gas.” Translation: unless Putin changes his mind, Germany is facing not just a freezing winter, but a bitter recession. Needless to say, Germany was not happy with the latest reminder who holds all the cards in Europe:

“GERMAN ECONOMY MINISTRY, ON ANNOUNCED REDUCTION IN NORD STREAM 1 GAS FLOWS, SAYS THERE IS NO TECHNICAL REASON FOR A REDUCTION IN SUPPLIES.” GERMAN ECONOMY MINISTRY, ON ANNOUNCED REDUCTION IN NORD STREAM 1 GAS FLOWS, SAYS THE SANCTIONS-RELATED CONDITIONS FOR APPROVAL OF DELIVERY OF THE TURBINE HAVE BEEN MET. Bloomberg’s Vanessa Dezem adds that while it is positive that Germany’s gas stock levels rose again – at least heading into today’s Gazprom news – the country is still far from a comfortable situation to cope with the winter. Levels are back on a “proper path,” according to Klaus Mueller, head of the agency known as BNetzA. But if Russian gas flows through the Nord Stream pipeline remain low, Germany will not be able to fill the reservoirs to 95% in November, as targeted by the government, the agency said in a statement. Without the necessary buffer, Germany’s energy security remains at risk and prices remain volatile, and sure enough, in kneejerk response, European (TTF) nat gas prices spiked 10% and are likely to keep rising…

Read more …

All EU countries have allegedly agreed to a voluntary 15% gas usage cut.

Russia’s Gazprom To Make Drastic Cut To Europe’s Gas Supply From Wednesday (G.)

The Russian state-controlled energy company Gazprom has announced a drastic cut to gas deliveries through its main pipeline to Europe from Wednesday, prompting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to accuse Moscow of waging a “gas war”. The Russian gas export monopoly said it was halting the operation of one of the last two operating turbines due to the “technical condition of the engine”, cutting daily gas deliveries via the Nord Stream pipeline to 33m cubic metres a day – about 20% of the pipeline’s capacity. “We are monitoring the situation very closely in close exchange with the federal network agency and the gas crisis team,” the German economy ministry said in a statement on Monday after Gazprom’s announcement. “According to our information, there is no technical reason for a reduction in deliveries.”

Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address on Monday, said the move was deliberate and urged the European Union to agree tougher sanctions against Russia. “All this is done by Russia on purpose to make it as difficult as possible for Europeans to prepare for winter. And this is an open gas war that Russia is waging against a united Europe,” he said. Moscow’s “gas blackmail of Europe” represented “an incentive for the EU’s eighth sanctions package to be significantly stronger,” he said. The Nord Stream 1 pipeline resumed pumping last week, after a 10-day maintenance break, but the European Commission has warned that a complete gas shut down by Russia is likely The announcement came as EU governments sparred over a plan for a 15% gas savings target intended to avoid a winter crisis if the Kremlin turns off the taps to Europe. The EU’s goal is to use less gas now to build storage for winter.

The EU executive last week accused Moscow of using energy as a “weapon” and called on 27 member states to accept a voluntary 15% gas savings target, which could become mandatory if Brussels declares a supply emergency. [..] Spain’s deputy prime minister Teresa Ribera said last week her country was being asked to make a “disproportionate sacrifice”, as she pointed to investments her country had made on liquefied natural gas infrastructure, costs that had fallen on Spanish companies and consumers, she said. “Unlike other countries, we Spaniards have not lived beyond our means from an energy point of view,” Ribera said in unusually pointed comments. Portugal was “totally against” the proposals its energy minister, João Galamba, told local media last week, saying they did not address the needs of Spain or Portugal, which have little gas interconnection with the rest of Europe.

The Iberian countries are also using more gas to generate electricity because a fierce drought has reduced hydropower production. Greece also opposes the 15% EU-wide target, which it argues overburdens its economy and consumers. Meanwhile, Poland has raised concerns about its energy security. A Polish official said Warsaw would “not agree to any solutions that may lead to the use of Polish natural gas reserves for the needs of other member states”. France, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands and Poland were among the countries that opposed giving the commission the power to declare a supply emergency. Instead it is proposed that EU member states make that critical decision.

Read more …

“..the return of the equipment may not help Gazprom increase export volumes to their former level, as several more turbines at the Nord Stream pumping station are in need of repairs.”

Gazprom Receives Documents On Nord Stream Turbine Return (RT)

Russian state energy major Gazprom has received documentation from German industrial giant Siemens, allowing the return of a turbine for the Nord Stream 1 natural gas pipeline, business daily Kommersant reported on Sunday. The paperwork will first need to be amended, due to sanctions-related changes in the original agreement between Gazprom and Canada, the business daily writes. According to the existing contract, Gazprom was supposed to collect the item from Canada after repairs, but when Ottawa imposed sanctions on the Russian company, this became impossible. Siemens then agreed to ship the turbine to Russia via Germany, but the export documentation was not adjusted accordingly, Kommersant explains, adding that it was unable to obtain comments on the matter from either company.

Paperwork discrepancies already led to the turbine, which is currently in Germany, to miss a planned ferry trip to Russia via Finland on Saturday. According to Kommersant, the equipment can be sent to Russia in the middle of this week, if Gazprom provides the necessary customs declarations. Gazprom blamed the turbine’s delayed return for a 60% reduction in its gas supplies to the EU last month. According to Kommersant, however, the return of the equipment may not help Gazprom increase export volumes to their former level, as several more turbines at the Nord Stream pumping station are in need of repairs. The current license allows Siemens Energy to accept five more turbines before the end of 2024.

Gazprom resumed its gas deliveries to Germany at 40% of capacity last week after the completion of annual maintenance on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, despite widespread fears in the EU that gas the flow would not be resumed, for political reasons. Russia has repeatedly insisted that it honors all its obligations to customers.

Read more …

“Germany’s energy transition to green energy has been an incredibly expensive disaster.”

Germany Now ‘Hostage’ To Putin After US Poured Billions Into Defending It (DC)

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s temporary shutdown of the NordStream 1 pipeline in July sent gas prices soaring and Germany bracing for permanent energy insecurity. While the U.S. has invested heavily in Europe’s defenses as a counter to Russia, Germany could still lose out to Russia on economic terms. The U.S. made Germany a cornerstone of its European defense, investing billions of dollars and thousands of troops to man the front lines of the Cold War against Russia over previous decades, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation. But Germany’s botched transition to renewable energy sources has given Russia, which controls a third of Germany’s gas imports according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the power to cripple Germany’s economy and expose it to a brutal winter.

“Foolish decisions by the German government have made the country hostage to Russia,” Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment, told the DCNF. “Germany’s energy transition to green energy has been an incredibly expensive disaster.” After Germany joined its Western allies in levying sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, Putin cut gas flows to Europe. Germany’s economy crumbled from the lack of access to cheap energy, sending it scrambling for alternatives, like coal and nuclear, it previously spurned. If Russian gas flows stop, Germany could lose up to 5% of its GDP in 2022, with losses deepening in 2023 and 2024, according to the IMF. Failure to find a substitute for Russian gas could lead to “people freezing to death next winter, as well as industrial collapse,” Ebell said.

Germany has been reliant on Russian energy for decades, since the West German government shared its knowledge of industrial production with the former USSR in exchange for natural gas, Peter Earle, an economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, explained to the DCNF. Former U.S. President Donald Trump had warned Germany against overreliance on Russian energy at a UN General Assembly meeting in 2018. The German delegation present mocked him. Former chancellor Angela Merkel, known as the “climate chancellor” for her focus on reducing emissions, decided to shift away from nuclear energy in 2021, Reuters reported. Critics said this would sabotage Germany’s efforts to transition away from natural gas from Russia.

Read more …

“They believed they could break Russia’s economy and use the resulting chaos to resume 1990s-style looting, either by splitting up the country or installing Yeltsin 2.0.”

Implications of the UN’s Ukraine Grain and Russia Fertilizer/Food Deals (NC)

Since the battlefield action in Ukraine has slowed down a tad as Russia has been rotating troops and allegedly moving in more materiel, the big news story has been the UN success in consummating two deals. The one much talked about is coming up with a process for getting grain supposedly stuck in the Ukraine ports shipped out. The text for “Initiative for the Safe Transportation of Grain and Food Products from Ukrainian Ports” is embedded at the end of this post. The second agreement, which has gotten very little attention, is that of the UN committing to “facilitate the unimpeded exports to world markets of Russian food and fertilizer.” This goes well beyond the process established for transport of grain out of Ukraine. To work, several elements of the current sanctions against Russia and Belarus would need to be unwound.

Since as we will explain, we doubt this will happen to the degree needed. If so, Russia will have succeeded in firmly establishing that blame for hunger resulting from reduced shipments of its fertilizer and food will lay squarely with the so-called Collective West. More generally, these two agreements illustrate the fix that the US, Europe, and their Asian allies have gotten themselves into, by throwing massive economic sanctions at a country that is a major player in way too many commodities they can’t live without, from oil and gas to aluminum, titanium, neon, wheat…to nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium fertilizers. They believed they could break Russia’s economy and use the resulting chaos to resume 1990s-style looting, either by splitting up the country or installing Yeltsin 2.0.

Instead, Russia is recovering from the sanctions body blow, although some sectors like auto parts are still in a great deal of pain, while the difficulties the West is experiencing, particularly politically destabilizing inflation in food and fuel, and potentially even shortages, are set to get worse. So far, the sanctions bosses have been unwilling to roll back their programs, no matter how clear it becomes that they are hurting the US and its allies more than Russia. Instead, the West remains firmly committed to trying to increase the Russia punishments, even when they’ve run out of measures that have any teeth, as the EU’s new, seventh round of sanctions shows. And the sanctions cheating they’ve allowed hasn’t done much to mitigate the damage. For instance, Europe playing along with Poland’s posturing that it isn’t buying Russian gas has just hurt Europe. Poland is buying Russian gas, laundered through Germany, backflowed through the Yamal-Europe pipeline.

But Russia reduced Europe’s supply to reflect Poland no longer making direct purchases, so Europe is having to make do with less gas. Similarly, who is kidding whom with Russia selling discounted oil to India, which then makes its way back to buyers in Europe that pretend they are on a Russian oil fast? One of the big issues is that the US and its allies have made the anti-Russia programming so loud and pervasive that they are now caught in their own narrative. They would perceive it as too much of a loss of face to roll back sanctions, even counterproductive ones. And they’ve made companies correctly afraid of being seen as giving succor to the enemy. They worry that they are exposed not just to secondary sanctions but also to reputational damage. That is why, for instance, so many Western companies pulled out of Russia right after the special military operation started even though most weren’t required by sanctions to do so.

Read more …

“..propaganda intended to ensure that Ukraine “becomes the eternal enemy of Russia.”

Moscow Says It Aims To Overthrow Zelensky And His Government (AP)

Russia appears to have reversed course, with the country’s top diplomat now saying that Moscow’s overarching goal is to topple the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as Russian artillery barrages and air strikes continue to pummel cities across Ukraine. The remark from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov comes amid Ukraine’s efforts to resume grain exports from its Black Sea ports, something that would help ease global food shortages, under a new deal tested by a Russian strike on Odesa over the weekend. Speaking to envoys at an Arab League summit in Cairo late Sunday, Lavrov said Moscow is determined to help Ukrainians “liberate themselves from the burden of this absolutely unacceptable regime.”

Lavrov accused Kiev and “its Western allies” of spouting propaganda intended to ensure that Ukraine “becomes the eternal enemy of Russia.” “Russian and Ukrainian people would continue to live together, we will certainly help Ukrainian people to get rid of the regime, which is absolutely anti-people and anti-historical,” he said. Lavrov’s remarks contrasted sharply with the Kremlin’s line early in the war, when Russian officials repeatedly emphasized that they weren’t seeking to overthrow Zelensky’s government. Lavrov argued that Russia was ready to negotiate a deal to end hostilities in March when Kyiv changed tack and declared its intention to rout Russia on the battlefield, adding that the West has encouraged Ukraine to keep fighting. “The West insists that Ukraine must not start negotiations until Russia is defeated on the battlefield,” Lavrov said.

It was not yet clear when grain shipments would resume following Russia and Ukraine signing identical agreements with the United Nations and Turkey on Friday in Istanbul. The deals are aimed at clearing the way for the shipment of millions of tons of desperately needed Ukrainian grain, as well as the export of Russian grain and fertilizer. The Kremlin insisted Monday that the attack on the port of Odesa over the weekend targeted military assets and would not affect grain shipping. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the strike had to do “exclusively with the military infrastructure.” “This is in no way related to the infrastructure involved in fulfilling the agreements and exporting grain. So this can’t and shouldn’t affect the start of the shipment process in any way,” Peskov said.

Read more …

“Many will be forced to shutter, including people whose families have been farming for up to eight generations.”

No Farmers, No Food, No Life (Peeters)

Throughout history many times natural or manmade disasters led to food insecurities for longer periods of time, resulting in hunger, malnutrition (undernourishment) and mortality. The Covid-19 pandemic has worsened the situation. Since the global pandemic began, access to food estimates show that food insecurity has likely doubled, if not tripled in some places around the world. Moreover, during the pandemic, global hunger rose to 150 million and is now affecting 828 million people, with 46 million at the brink of starvation facing emergency levels of hunger or worse. In the hardest hit places, this means famine or famine-like conditions. At least 45 million children are suffering from wasting, which is the most visible and severe form of malnutrition, and potentially life-threatening.

With global prices of food and fertilizers already reaching worrying highs, the continuing impacts of the pandemic, the political forces to realize climate change goals and the Russia-Ukraine war raise serious concerns for food security both in the short and the long term. The world is facing a further spike in food shortages, pushing more families worldwide at risk for severe malnutrition. Those communities which survived former crises are left more vulnerable to a new shock than before and will accumulate the effects, diving into famine (acute starvation and a sharp increase in mortality). Furthermore, growth of economies and development of nations are currently slowing down due to a lack of workforce due to a sharp decrease in well-being and higher mortality rates.

In the wake of new nitrogen limits that require farmers to radically curb their nitrogen emissions by up to 70 percent in the next eight years, tens of thousands of Dutch farmers have risen in protest against the government. Farmers will be forced to use less fertilizer and even to reduce the number of their livestock, in some cases up to 95%. For smaller family-owned farms it will be impossible to reach these goals. Many will be forced to shutter, including people whose families have been farming for up to eight generations. Moreover, a significant decrease and limitations of Dutch farmers will have huge repercussions for the global food supply chain. The Netherlands is the world’s second largest agricultural exporter after the United States. Still, the Dutch government pursues their agenda on Climate Change while there is currently no law to support the implementation, while they will not change much in the planet’s major air pollution.

Read more …

“..this time the Left will be pro-war and the Party of Chaos will send out its ragtag army of Antifa trannies to make the street protests bloodier. It will be seen for what it is: the ruling regime’s war on its own people. And it will be overcome.”

The Wrecking Crew Will Be Overcome (Kunstler)

In keeping with the principles of mass formation psychosis, the maliciously insane people in charge of our nation’s affairs will expect you to swallow ever-greater absurdities to maintain their control (and protect themselves). But we’re way beyond the “women-with-penises” stage of the mind-fuckery program. Nobody with a functioning brain believes that bullshit anymore — except the people who run the California prison system. Next up, apparently, is a hot little war with Russia or China, a useful distraction from the systematic self-dismantling of Western Civ.

“Joe Biden” has sent troops from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions to Europe, supposedly to “train” the NATO forces of Euroland. Is this some kind of bluff? Or does “Joe Biden” and Company imagine that they’ll pull off some blitzkrieg counter-offensive on-the-ground in Ukraine and recapture territory secured by Russia painfully since February? If we send troops into Ukraine proper, it would amount to a deliberate sacrifice of our supposedly best soldiers in a meat-grinder. Maybe the purpose is simply to further weaken the US military, humiliate NATO, and hasten the death of the West.

Of course, we have no real strategic national interest in Ukraine. We had no quarrel all the years that the Russian Soviets owned and operated it. We set in motion the current conflict by cooking up the 2014 color revolution. (There followed the fat years for Hunter Biden converting US aid money into revenue for his many shell corporations.) I doubt that a plurality of Americans will fall for another such stupid Hate Russia ploy. We’ve had enough pointless and costly foreign misadventures. This would be a war exceeding the unpopularity of Vietnam and could easily unleash widespread street protests. Only this time the Left will be pro-war and the Party of Chaos will send out its ragtag army of Antifa trannies to make the street protests bloodier. It will be seen for what it is: the ruling regime’s war on its own people. And it will be overcome.

Read more …

“Criminal cases have also been launched against citizens of the UK, the US, Canada, Georgia and the Netherlands..”

Russia Accuses Ukrainian Troops Of War Crimes (RT)

Preliminary probes have found that more than 200 members of the Ukrainian military have been involved in “crimes against the peace and security of mankind,” the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee said on Monday. A total of 92 commanders and subordinates have already been charged with the offenses, he revealed. More than 1,300 criminal cases, involving over 400 individuals, have been launched over violations committed by the Ukrainian side since the start of Russia’s military operation on February 24, Alexander Bastrykin told newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

According to the Investigative Committee chief, it had already been established that more than 220 suspects, “including representatives of the high command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and commanders of military units which fired at civilians, had been involved in crimes against the peace and security of mankind, which don’t have a statute of limitations.” Charges have been filed against 92 Ukrainian commanders and subordinates to date, with 96 suspects being placed on the wanted list, he added. “There can be no justification for the use of force by the Ukrainian nationalists,” Bastrykin insisted. “They are intensively shelling the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. They brutally and cynically target peaceful citizens, civilian infrastructure, including children’s institutions.”

He also accused the Ukrainian forces of having struck their own territory “in order to blame the Russian military for this.” During the conflict, Moscow has insisted that its troops never target civilians, only striking Ukrainian forces and military infrastructure. More than 7,000 civilian facilities have been destroyed in attacks by the Ukrainian side, including homes, schools and kindergartens, with over 91,000 people being designated as victims, the Investigative Committee chief said. Criminal cases have also been launched against citizens of the UK, the US, Canada, Georgia and the Netherlands for their involvement in the conflict as mercenaries, while Ukrainian nationalist units have been accused of torturing Russian POWs, attacking Russian embassies in foreign countries, and other acts, he said.

Read more …

Thank you sanctions. But where does the money come from?

Greek Electricity Subsidy In Excess Of 1.1 Bln Euros In August (K.)

Greece will extend subsidies to power bills at a cost of more than 1.1 billion euros in August to support households and businesses amid a spike in energy prices, Energy Minister Kostas Skrekas said on Monday. Final consumer prices for electricity are expected to be set at 15-17 cents per kilowatt-hour in August, according to the minister’s announcements. The subsidy for household tariffs will be without any income criteria, concern all consumption and all residences (main and secondary) and amount to €337 per megawatt-hour (or €0.337/KWh).


The total amount of subsidies reaches €1.136 billion next month and absorbs up to 90% of the increase for all residential consumers for the total monthly consumption and for main and secondary residences, 100% of the increase for beneficiaries of the Social Rates, 80% of the increase for small and medium-sized professionals with power supply up to 35 kVa and 82-99% of the increase for farmers. For industrial consumers, the subsidy will be €250 euros/MWh to absorb up to 67% of the increase. For natural gas and for commercial consumers, the subsidy amounts to €30 euros per thermal MWh.

Read more …

How does one investigate the FBI? The President?

Hunter Biden Evidence Falsely Labeled Disinformation By FBI: Whistleblower

The FBI’s investigation into Hunter Biden wrongly labeled verified evidence as “disinformation,” agency whistleblowers claimed. Agents investigating President Joe Biden’s son “opened an assessment which was used by an FBI headquarters team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease,” according to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). Grassley revealed the claim after his office received “a significant number of protected communications from highly credible whistleblowers” about the investigation. The Republican claimed one of the communications shows “verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation.”

FBI supervisory intelligence agent Brian Auten opened in August 2020 the assessment that was later used by the agency, according to the disclosures. One of the whistleblowers claimed the FBI assistant special agent in charge of the Washington field office, Timothy Thibault, shut down a line of inquiry into Hunter Biden in October 2020 despite some of the details being known to be true at the time. A whistleblower also said Thibault “ordered closed” an “avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting,” according to Grassley, even though “all of the reporting was either verified or verifiable via criminal search warrants.” The senator said Thibault “ordered the matter closed without providing a valid reason as required” and that FBI officials “subsequently attempted to improperly mark the matter in FBI systems so that it could not be opened in the future,” according to the disclosures.

Whistleblowers alleged investigators from an FBI headquarters team “were in communication with FBI agents responsible for the Hunter Biden information targeted by Mr. Auten’s assessment” and that their findings on whether the claims were true or disinformation were placed “in a restricted access sub-file” in September 2020, according to the senator. The whistleblower disclosures “appear to indicate that there was a scheme in place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation,” Grassley said. The new allegations, summarized by Grassley in a Monday letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, were previously unknown.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Drumming
https://twitter.com/i/status/1550911126287929346

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Jul 162020
 


Irving Underhill Irving Trust Building, Trinity Church, Wall Street, New York 1931

 

‘Over Half’ Of Trial Participants Had Adverse Reactions To Moderna Vaccine (JTN)
Obesity May Stack the Deck for COVID-19 Risk (WebMD)
Victoria Gov’t Refuses To Say How Many Health Workers Have COVID19 (G.)
Italy’s Call For Urgent Help Was Ignored As Virus Swept Through Europe (G.)
Hackers Convinced Twitter Employee to Help Them Hijack Accounts
Twitter Silences Some Top Accounts After Internal Systems Hacked (R.)
Twitter Hack Is A Nightmare Not Just For Twitter (BV)
Delta’s Passenger Revenue -94%. How it Plans to Stay Alive (WS)
Adam Schiff Just Can’t Stop Lying (Roger Stone)
“They Always Do It Within 24 to 48 Hours” – Sidney Powell (GP)
Ghislaine Maxwell Is Married, Refuses To Name Spouse (G.)
Cleaners Remove Banksy Artwork From London Tube Train (BBC)
Indigenous Group Accidentally Blows Up Rio Tinto’s Headquarters (Chaser)

 

 

The most disturbing thing about the Twitter hacks may not even be how easy it is to break into the company and take control over many things, but that, as screenshots show, Twitter very much DOES appear to have the power to shadow ban etc. accounts. And that is not what @jack told Congress.

 

 

Both the US and the world come up just short of new records. But there are rumblings about manipulated and inflated Florida numbers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moderna

 

 

So much for a rapid vaccine: “..they intend to follow participants “for 1 year after the second vaccination..”

‘Over Half’ Of Trial Participants Had Adverse Reactions To Moderna Vaccine (JTN)

A highly anticipated clinical trial for a potential COVID-19 vaccine managed in part by the American drug company Moderna has resulted in some adverse effects in more than half of the trial’s participants, with one test group reporting “severe” symptoms. The trial, which is also being sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, administered the vaccine “as a 0.5-ml injection in the deltoid muscle” in two shots spaced about one month apart. Two separate groups received 25-microgram and 100-microgram doses, respectively. A third group with a 250-microgram dose was subsequently added. The vaccine “induced anti–SARS-CoV-2 immune responses in all participants,” the research team reported Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers said that “no trial-limiting safety concerns were identified.” Yet a majority of participants still reported at least one side effect. “Solicited adverse events that occurred in more than half the participants included fatigue, chills, headache, myalgia, and pain at the injection site,” the report states. Fever, joint pain and nausea were also reported. Side effects grew more common with more (and larger) injections, the scientists write: “Systemic adverse events were more common after the second vaccination, particularly with the highest dose, and three participants (21%) in the 250 microgram dose group reported one or more severe adverse events.”

Notably, every participant in the two larger-dose groups reported adverse reactions after their second injections. One study participant in the smallest-dose group, meanwhile, was removed due to having developed hives after the first round of injections. The scientists said that due to the ongoing status of the project, they are not yet “able to assess the durability of the immune responses” generated by the vaccine, but that they intend to follow participants “for 1 year after the second vaccination” and examine regular blood samples to monitor the vaccine’s effects.

Read more …

Overall big risk. As is smoking, which also returns as a major COVID risk.

Obesity May Stack the Deck for COVID-19 Risk (WebMD)

Stephen O’Rahilly recently spent a week in a hospital, sick with COVID-19 and struggling to breathe. “My lungs were quite badly affected,” says O’Rahilly, 62, who spent almost a week getting extra oxygen in what’s known as a high-intensity care unit in the U.K. The experience got him thinking: While about 80% of cases of COVID-19 can be treated at home, why do some people, including him, wind up with more severe infections? Besides his age, O’Rahilly knew he had another strike against him when it comes to COVID-19 infection: his weight. His BMI, or body mass index, is over 30. O’Rahilly, who directs the MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit at Cambridge University, is considered one of the world’s leading obesity researchers.

He was knighted in 2013 by Queen Elizabeth II for his work, which includes the discovery of a genetic condition that robs the body of the hormone leptin, which controls appetite and weight. And so after his brush with the coronavirus, he started digging into exactly what it is about obesity that makes it so risky for a COVID-19 infection. It has become clearer that people who are obese are one of the groups at highest risk from the disease, regardless of their age. The CDC recently refined its risk categories for COVID-19, stating that obesity was as big a risk for COVID as having a suppressed immune system or chronic lung or kidney disease. The agency also lowered the bar for where that risk starts — from a BMI of 40 to a BMI of 30. Roughly 40% of Americans have a BMI over 30.

The CDC’s change in BMI risk comes after a British study of more than 17 million people found that people living with severe obesity were about twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as people who were not obese. That was true even after other things like their age and sex were taken into account. The study also found that risk rises with the degree of obesity. The bigger a person, the higher their risk of a COVID-19 death. [O’Rahilly] he thinks the risk comes from the fact that fat makes and regulates hormones. For example, people who are obese make more of something called “complement” proteins. These proteins can trigger out-of-control blood clotting, which is a problem in patients with severe COVID-19.

People with obesity also have lower blood levels of a hormone called adiponectin. Recent studies in mice show that adiponectin protects the lungs. O’Rahilly thinks that if you have lower levels to begin with, you may be more likely to have lung inflammation during an infection like COVID-19. Adiponectin also helps keep blood vessels clean and open. So if the insides of your blood vessels are sticky, and a virus causes your immune system to go haywire and create more blood clots, that sets the stage for blockages. These blockages can cause heart attacks, strokes, and lung damage — all problems seen in COVID-19 patients. To compound the problem, people with obesity appear to have more ACE2 receptors on their cells than others. ACE2 receptors are the doors the virus uses to infect cells and then make more copies of itself.

Read more …

Oh, why not, you’re at the other end of the world anyway.

Victoria Gov’t Refuses To Say How Many Health Workers Have COVID19 (G.)

The Victorian government has refused to answer questions about hospital surge capacity or the number of healthcare workers and medical institutions coping with outbreaks of Covid-19, with hundreds of health staff now in precautionary quarantine due to potential exposure to the virus. An email from the chief executive of Victoria’s largest public health service, Monash Health, said 77 staff across the service were in precautionary quarantine following three potential sources of exposure. Infections have been found in five employees. Monash Health services a quarter of the state. “We must use this opportunity to reinforce processes, to make sure that we all understand them, and are doing what we need to do to stay safe,” the email said, urging staff to use protective gear properly and undertake frequent infection risk assessments.


Meanwhile, 14 staff from St Vincent’s hospital in Melbourne are recovering from the virus, an email sent from the chief executive to staff on Thursday said. The emergency and general medical departments of the hospital are undergoing deep cleaning following “potential exposures,” the email said. All emergency staff have undergone testing. There are 10 inpatients with Covid-19 at the hospital. The email said “a small number of emergency department staff” had contracted the virus, so precautions were being taken. There had also been a potential exposure in the intensive care ward, the email said. Contact tracing is underway and several intensive care and general medical team staff are now in isolation. As of Thursday, 70 staff associated with the Royal Melbourne Hospital were also in precautionary quarantine, with 12 positive staff and 48 inpatients with the virus. The ABC has confirmed Melbourne’s Northern Health has 142 staff in self-isolation.

Read more …

EU has zero power, and zero decision-making process.

Italy’s Call For Urgent Help Was Ignored As Virus Swept Through Europe (G.)

It was a moment of chilling clarity. On 26 February, with the numbers of Italians known to be infected by coronavirus tripling every 48 hours, the country’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, appealed to fellow EU member states for help. His hospitals were overwhelmed. Italian doctors and nurses had run out of the masks, gloves and aprons they needed to keep themselves safe, and medics were being forced to play God with the lives of the critically-ill due to an acute lack of ventilators. An urgent message was passed from Rome to the European commission’s Berlaymont headquarters in Brussels. The specifications of Italy’s needs were uploaded into the EU’s Common Emergency Communication and Information System (CECIS). But what happened next came as a shock. The distress call was met with silence.

“No member state responded to Italy’s request and to the commission’s call for help,” said Janez Lenarcic, the European commissioner responsible for crisis management. “Which meant that not only is Italy is not prepared … Nobody is prepared … The lack of response to the Italian request was not so much a lack of solidarity. It was a lack of equipment.” It was as millions of Europeans prepared for their New Year’s Eve celebrations that officials in the Stockholm office of the EU public health agency, the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC), first received notice of a cluster of pneumonia cases in China of unknown origin. Established in 2005 in reaction to the Sars outbreak two years before, the ECDC offers scientific advice. It can do no more.

Responsibility for health remains entirely with the national governments of the EU, and not in the European commission or its agencies. Despite its limitations, the ECDC’s job is to look to the full European horizon, and call the alarm whether capitals listen or not. The agency gave its first threat assessment on 9 January, the body’s director Dr Andrea Ammon recalled. “At that time, the notion [was] most of the cases were linked to this live animal market [in the Chinese city of Wuhan]”, she told the Guardian. “Roughly two weeks later it turned out it is human to human transmission which of course changes what you need to do”. The initial concern was how to keep the disease outside the EU’s borders. On 17 January a first coronavirus conference call was held by another EU body born out of previous health crises – but again lacking the powers retained by the national governments.

[..] The stark reality was that in the months and years before coronavirus arrived in Europe, stocks of personal protective equipment (PPE) had dwindled. Emergency supplies of masks had expired, been destroyed and never replaced. Pandemic preparedness plans were out of date. “Several European countries had a strategic stock of masks that were outdated … Most of them were just destroyed,” said one scientific adviser. France held 1.7bn protective masks in 2011, but now had only 117m. Between January and March this year it incinerated 1.5m. In 2017, Belgium ordered the destruction of 38m masks and they were never replaced. No one, it appeared, had a hold on what was out there. Up until 23 February, flights carrying donations of PPE were leaving Europe for China in the hope of containing the virus there. But the unpalatable truth was that Europe itself was exposed.

Read more …

Hmmm…looks like@jack lied to Congress.

“Alleged leaked pictures from the Twitter admin control panel that was compromised showcase the buttons ‘Trends Blacklist’ and ‘Search Blacklist’, indicating Twitter DOES have the ability to shadowban its users.”

What is Congress going to do about that?

Hackers Convinced Twitter Employee to Help Them Hijack Accounts

A Twitter insider was responsible for a wave of high profile account takeovers on Wednesday, according to leaked screenshots obtained by Motherboard and two sources who took over accounts. On Wednesday, a spike of high profile accounts including those of Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Uber, and Apple tweeted cryptocurrency scams in an apparent hack. “We used a rep that literally done all the work for us,” one of the sources told Motherboard. The second source added they paid the Twitter insider. Motherboard granted the sources anonymity to speak candidly about a security incident. A Twitter spokesperson told Motherboard that the company is still investigating whether the employee hijacked the accounts themselves or gave hackers access to the tool.

The accounts were taken over using an internal tool at Twitter, according to the sources, as well as screenshots of the tool obtained by Motherboard. One of the screenshots shows the panel and the account of Binance; Binance is one of the accounts that hackers took over today. According to screenshots seen by Motherboard, at least some of the accounts appear to have been compromised by changing the email address associated with them using the tool. In all, four sources close to or inside the underground hacking community provided Motherboard with screenshots of the user tool. Two sources said the Twitter panel was also used to change ownership of some so-called OG accounts—accounts that have a handle consisting of only one or two characters—as well as facilitating the tweeting of the cryptocurrency scams from the high profile accounts.

Twitter has been deleting some screenshots of the panel and has suspended users who have tweeted them, claiming that the tweets violate its rules. The panel is a stark example of the issue of insider data access at tech companies. Whereas in other cases hackers have bribed workers to leverage tools over individual users, in this case the access has led to takeovers of some of the biggest accounts on the social media platform and tweeted bitcoin related scams in an effort to generate income. The screenshots show details about the target user’s account, such as whether it has been suspended, is permanently suspended, or has protected status. One of the screenshots is a Twitter user posting images of the panel themselves. At the time of writing that account has been suspended.

Data breach monitoring and prevention service Under The Breach obtained a similar screenshot and tweeted it as the worker hijacked several accounts. The person in control of the Under The Breach account told Motherboard Twitter then removed the tweet with the screenshot and suspended them for 12 hours. A message replacing the tweet now says it violated the Twitter rules.

Read more …

Most are back up.

Twitter Silences Some Top Accounts After Internal Systems Hacked (R.)

Twitter said hackers accessed its internal systems to hijack some of the platform’s top voices including U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden, reality TV star Kim Kardashian, former U.S. President Barack Obama and billionaire Elon Musk and used them to solicit digital currency. Twitter said employees with access to its internal systems had been successfully targeted by hackers who “used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf.” “We’re looking into what other malicious activity they may have conducted or information they may have accessed and will share more here as we have it,” the company said.


Twitter temporarily took the extraordinary step of preventing for several hours at least some verified accounts from publishing messages altogether. It said it would restore access only when it was certain it could do so securely. Publicly available blockchain records show the apparent scammers received more than $100,000 worth of cryptocurrency. Chief Executive Jack Dorsey earlier said the company was diagnosing the problem and pledged to share “everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.” “Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened,” he said in a tweet. Shares in the social media company tumbled almost 5% in trading after the market close before paring their losses.

Read more …

“Twitter’s average monetizable daily active users hit 166 million in the first quarter, an almost 25% increase.”

Twitter Hack Is A Nightmare Not Just For Twitter (BV)

A hack of prominent Twitter accounts is a nightmare for more than just the social network itself. Fake tweets soliciting digital currency on Wednesday from figures like Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk and U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden mean Twitter’s cybersecurity costs will rise. But if that’s all that happens, founder Jack Dorsey can count himself lucky. Posts on the social network have the potential to move markets, or worse. The intrusion was severe enough that Twitter locked down so-called verified accounts – its label for those owned by high-profile people. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, former President Barack Obama and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos were among those that had appeared to solicit bitcoins from other users – saying that whatever was given would be doubled by them and returned. It sent Twitter’s stock down by almost 4% in after-market trading.

For investors in tech companies, a major hacking incident usually means one thing: higher costs. Twitter’s expenses already rose nearly 20% in the first quarter of the year, resulting in an operating loss of $7 million compared to a profit of $94 million a year earlier. Ideally, that’s offset by a reduced risk of future embarrassing events. The scam, though, could have been worse. Tweets from business leaders can move markets. Then there’s President Donald Trump, who uses the platform to announce new policies – and communicate with, or about, other world leaders. It’s not hard to see how a fake tweet could send markets reeling, or even pose a national security risk.

So what can be done? Users with public profiles could start behaving differently online, even if Trump doesn’t. The company, like other social media networks, benefits from having highly active celebrity users, and Covid-19 has actually proved good for business. Twitter’s average monetizable daily active users hit 166 million in the first quarter, an almost 25% increase. Fewer prominent tweeters could impact that trend, and hurt ad revenue. And if users don’t proceed with caution, regulators could also step in. Expect law enforcement agencies, and Congress, to want to know more about Twitter’s security processes. The social network could even emerge stronger for the scrutiny. The world, as well as the company’s investors, should hope it does.

Read more …

There go the jobs.

Delta’s Passenger Revenue -94%. How it Plans to Stay Alive (WS)

Delta Airlines confirmed today why Warren Buffett dumped his huge stake in mid-crash: Airlines are in an existential crisis, and there is no V-shaped recovery, according to Delta’s earnings report for the second quarter this morning, which was beyond dismal. There were the huge losses. In the quarter ended June 30, Delta booked a pretax loss of $7.01 billion and an after-tax net loss of $5.72 billion. That translates into a loss of $9.01 a share. These losses include $2.1 billion in write-downs of its stakes in Latam Airlines and Aeromexico, both of which filed for bankruptcy in the US recently, and in Virgin Atlantic Airways, which may go into “administration” in the UK.

Then there were the revenues, with a breath-taking plunge:
• Passenger revenue – which last year was 90% of total revenues – collapsed by 94% year-over-year to just $678 million.
• Its highly profitable business cabin and other premium sales (usually over 1/3 of total revenues): -95%.
• Revenues, domestic flights -93%; Atlantic -97%; Latin America -98%; Pacific -95%.
• Cargo revenue: -42% to just $108 million.
• “Other revenues” (loyalty programs, its own refinery, etc.): -31% to $682 million.
• Total revenues: -88%, to $1.47 billion, from $12.5 billion a year ago

So Delta is shrinking into “a smaller, more efficient airline,” and is shedding its older less efficient planes this year, including all of its ancient MD-88, MD-90, plus its 777 and 737-700 fleets, and portions of its 767-300ER and A320 fleets. Shedding these planes comes with shedding the people that fly them and take care of them. Today, Delta said it would “proactively manage headcount and rescale operations” via “voluntary separation and early retirement programs.” In late June, Delta said it would send WARN notices to nearly 20% of its pilots, notifying them of potential furloughs. On October 1, the layoff restrictions attached to the bailout funds expire, and then the involuntary layoffs can commence.

Read more …

Let Stone talk for a minute. He has as much right as anyone else.

Adam Schiff Just Can’t Stop Lying (Roger Stone)

On Dec. 10, 2017 Schiff once again stated, “We have all of these facts in chronology, you’d have to believe that these were all isolated incidents, not connected to each other — just doesn’t make rational sense … We do know this: the Russians offered help, the campaign accepted help, the Russians gave help and the president made full use of that help. That is pretty damning, whether it is proof beyond a reasonable doubt of conspiracy or not.” Again, the Trump campaign accepted and made use of nothing. But don’t interrupt little Adam Schiff when he’s on a rhetorical roll. Schiff stated on Feb. 7, 2018 that there was “certainly a lot of evidence” of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. He added, “In terms of ethical violations and acting against the interest of the United States, that evidence is already ample and in the public view.”

Again, the congressman from West Hollywood has produced evidence of no such thing. In what appeared to be a direct reversal, Schiff appeared on ABC’s “The View” on March 1, 2018. He refused to cite any specific evidence the panel he co-chaired had found that proved that the Trump campaign “colluded” with the Russian government during the 2016 election. Yet on April 15, appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Schiff made a point to say that it was “simply not true” that there had been no evidence the 2016 presidential campaign for Donald Trump colluded with Russia. Schiff, the ever-hopeful wannabe star, continued making headlines such as this one on April 27, 2018: “ADAM SCHIFF ANNOUNCES DEMOCRATS HAVE EVIDENCE OF TRUMP/RUSSIA COLLUSION.” The story quoted Schiff: “In fact, we found evidence of collusion in the abundant secret meetings and communications between Trump campaign officials and associates.”

None of this of course even touches on his ridiculous antics during the Ukrainian impeachment hoax where Schiff once again got caught lying about contact with the so-called “whistleblower.” Now, incredibly, Schiff is trying to fan the embers of the Russian collusion delusion one more time. One thing is abundantly clear. If Robert Mueller and his minions had any proof whatsoever that I worked with Russian intelligence to steal and disseminate data from the democrats, they most certainly would have charged me with it. If Mueller and his henchmen had any evidence that I had received documents from WikiLeaks and passed them on to the Trump campaign, they would have charged me with that. In fact, if Mueller and his 12 angry Democrats had any proof beyond the plea bargain-induced uncorroborated claims of convicted liars Michael Cohen and Rick Gates that I ever even spoke to Donald Trump about WikiLeaks, they surely would have indicted me on that charge and would have used it to impeach the president.

Read more …

It’s not Bill Barr, it’s her.

“They Always Do It Within 24 to 48 Hours” – Sidney Powell (GP)

General Michael Flynn was lied to, set up multiple times before and after the Trump inauguration, excessively and to the point of illegally unmasked, targeted, ambushed in the White House, falsely accused, threatened with his son being indicted, provided corrupt legal counsel (the same firm where corrupt Obama former AG Eric Holder works), harassed for 3 years, belittled, slandered, besmirched by the judge, harassed by the judge, and then the attorneys going after him were the same attorneys who represented the corrupt Sally Yates who lied and told President Trump General Flynn lied.

The government reviewed General Flynn’s case and determined it never should have occurred. When the government and Flynn’s attorneys, including Sidney Powell, went to the court to have the case thrown out, the judge overseeing the case wouldn’t do it. Next the government and Powell went to the DC Circuit court to have the case thrown out and the Circuit Court two weeks ago ordered Judge Sullivan to do so. This interview discusses the entire case from Sidney Powell’s perspective and the current status of this corrupt case not being thrown out by this corrupted judge. At the 1:30 mark in the video the following exchange occurs:

Jan Jekielek: The DC Circuit Court of Appeals has basically said, has ordered Judge Sullivan to close the case and I think he had 24 hours to do so and he didn’t do it, so what’s going on? Where we at here?

Sidney Powell: Well they don’t really put a time limit on the order but I can’t say in my decades of practice, and we’re not going to number those, that I’ve ever seen a judge not do what he was told to do by what’s called a ‘writ of mandamus’ or extraordinary writ order directly from the Circuit Court of Appeals to do something. They always do it within 24 to 48 hours. I just haven’t seen that happen with the possible exception of one case way back when I had to get a writ of mandamus against a Federal District Judge twice in the same case. Now we are certainly hoping that doesn’t have to happen here and that the order will be signed shortly. Because he’s not party to the case. That doesn’t mean the full court can’t review the case on its own but it would be unprecedented to do so in these circumstances.

Read more …

Let’s go crazier. Anyway, no bail for her, which would have set up a storm.

Ghislaine Maxwell Is Married, Refuses To Name Spouse (G.)

The British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who faces federal charges in Manhattan for allegedly enabling Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of minor girls, is married, prosecutors said during a court proceeding. Prosecutors made the revelation on Tuesday when arguing that Maxwell should be detained pending trial. Maxwell, who had asked for release on a $5m bond co-signed by six people, was ultimately denied bail. Maxwell pleaded not guilty to the charges. They also said Maxwell had “declined” to identify her spouse to court officials. “In addition to failing to describe in any way the absence of proposed co-signers of a bond, the defendant also makes no mention whatsoever about the financial circumstances or assets of her spouse whose … identity she declined to provide to pretrial services,” assistant US attorney Alison Moe told Judge Alison Nathan.

“There is no information about who will be co-signing this bond or their assets and no details whatsoever.” News of Maxwell’s purported marriage surfaced in earnest on Wednesday morning. Maxwell’s arraignment and bail proceeding was conducted via video, and audio repeatedly cut out for those observing from the courthouse; transcripts that became available late last night filled in some of these gaps. However, many details of Maxwell’s secretive personal life were audible – including information on how she wound up living on the 156-acre Bradford, New Hampshire, estate where she was arrested on 2 July. A real estate agent involved with the property’s sale told an FBI agent that the buyers introduced themselves as “Scott and Janet Marshall, who both have British accents”.

“Scott Marshall told her that the … that he was retired from the British military and he was currently working on writing a book. Janet Marshall described herself as a journalist who wants privacy. They told the agent they wanted to purchase the property quickly through a wire and that they were setting up an LLC,” Moe said, noting that this conversation took place in November 2019. “Following [Maxwell’s] arrest, the real estate agent saw a photograph of [Maxwell] in the media and realized that the person who had introduced herself as Janet Marshall … was the defendant, Ghislaine Maxwell.”

Read more …

Love it. This is why he made the video. But it’s still a few million pounds they cleaned off.

Cleaners Remove Banksy Artwork From London Tube Train (BBC)

It was a smudge on a cleaning cloth long before the artist revealed on social media he’d done it. In the current climate, it is perhaps reassuring that the cleaners on the Tube did their job quickly and efficiently and cleaned off the work so quickly. Graffiti is regarded – certainly in the transport world and by many commuters – as something that contributes to a threatening, unwelcoming atmosphere. Of course there will be those who say it should have been kept or protected as art but that is somewhat academic. You get the feeling Banksy, who has previously destroyed his art on purpose, knew exactly what would happen to his work by putting it inside a carriage.


This was perhaps all part of the plan. An official statement said the art was removed “some days ago” in line with the London Underground’s “strict anti-graffiti policy”. All public transport users in London must wear a face covering, and TfL said it appreciated “the sentiment of encouraging people” to do so. “We’d like to offer Banksy the chance to do a new version of his message for our customers in a suitable location,” it added.

Read more …

Bit of Australian humor.

Indigenous Group Accidentally Blows Up Rio Tinto’s Headquarters (Chaser)

The Pinikura Aboriginal Corporation have today apologised to the traditional owners of the Rio Tinto headquarters located in urban-Australia after learning that the site held special importance to the group who hold claim over the land. “We apologize to the traditional owners of the site,” explained a representative for the indigenous group, “and we hope that we can work together in the future to ensure that other mining-related artifacts aren’t destroyed without consultation with the corporation’s elders.” However, critics have pointed out that Rio Tinto was simply getting in the way of progress, with the P.A.C. acting well within their rights to explore for minerals underneath the skyscraper.


“We can’t seriously expect to just waste such precious resources because of some group that superstitiously believes that some rocks are valuable and are a source of power,” explained one Aboriginal expert with a degree in White Studies. “The reality is that at the end of the day, if we lost a few accounting books tracing the history of the company, that’s a small price to pay for progress.” Asked what they will be doing to make amends, the Aboriginal group said it all happened in the past, so instead of any meaningful action they will simply put up a plaque explaining why blowing up a building might be considered bad in hindsight, but also pointing out that people three hours ago held different views around these things so we shouldn’t judge them by the standards of the current time.

Read more …

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, your support is now an integral part of the process.

Thank you.

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime.