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Debt Rattle November 5 2023

Nov 052023
 
 November 5, 2023  Posted by at 10:31 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  31 Responses »


Hieronymus Bosch St. Jerome in Prayer 1482

 

• The US and Hezbollah Want The Same Thing From Israel-Hamas War (Scott Ritter)
• Iraqis Warn Of Western Plan To Move Gazans To Anbar Desert (Cradle)
• Ireland’s Most Popular Party Wants Israeli Ambassador Expelled (RT)
• Gaza Conflict ‘Taking Away Focus’ From Ukraine – Zelensky (AFP)
• US Plans Reshuffle of Ukrainian Elites Due to Corruption – Putin (Sp.)
• West Nudges Ukraine Towards Peace Deal With Russia (Sp.)
• We Won’t Talk To Russia – Zelensky (RT)
• NATO’s Backfired Ukraine Strategy Built on Ideology, Bribery & Blackmail (Sp.)
• Ukraine Aid Drying Up – White House (RT)
• Long Read (Kim Dotcom)
• There Is Only One Putin – Kremlin (RT)
• Tony Bobulinski Issues A Challenge To The Biden Family (DM)
• Can Jack Smith Convict Trump For Being Lured By Bad Lawyers’ Advice? (Turley)
• Tucker Carlson Visits Assange In Prison (RT)

 

 

 

 

 

 

WCNSF

 

 

Gideon Levy

 

 

 

 

Obama

 

 

Russell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Long excerpt for a complex issue.

• The US and Hezbollah Want The Same Thing From Israel-Hamas War (Scott Ritter)

[..] both the US and Hezbollah were, and are, implementing a model of conflict management known as the ‘escalation ladder’. And while this reality might prove frustrating for those on either side of this conflict who seek a decisive, one-sided victory, it is the only responsible path that can be taken to avoid turning a local conflict into a regional war that could have global ramifications. The escalation ladder process focuses on how the parties involved escalate and de-escalate against competitors, measuring these actions against the different levels of escalation, which equate to the ‘steps’ on the ‘ladder’ used to visualize the model. By assessing the possible upward or downward trajectory of escalation at each level, based upon the actions of each party and their outcomes, the model helps participants to predict plausible outcomes and, as such, plot future scenarios.

The most popular expression of the escalation ladder is what is known as ‘linear escalation’, where a sequential line of actions is plotted from lowest to highest, and the relationship between two competing powers assessed accordingly. Linear escalation as a model works if there are only two participants to the crisis in question. The problem with the ongoing Gaza conflict is that there are many parties to the conflict, all of which have differing goals and objectives. As such, the escalation model that is most applicable to this scenario is what is known as horizontal escalation, where within a given escalation vector, differing participants can be segregated based upon their respective goals and objectives, allowing a sub-set of comparative escalatory calculations to take place, which in turn can be subjected to factors that influence their specific escalation, de-escalation, and maintenance issues separate from other parallel escalation management trajectories.

By way of example, one can speak of a ‘horizontal escalation’ model, where a US/Israeli track is paired off against a Hamas/Hezbollah track. However, the US/Israeli track is also paired off against itself, since the US and Israel are at odds over ceasefire options, the provision of humanitarian air, and specific military tactics. The same applies to Hamas/Hezbollah, where the Palestinian-specific goals of Hamas may clash with the regional aspirations of Hezbollah. Moreover, the specific actions of the US and Israel, when competing, can impact the Hamas and Hezbollah escalation calculations differently, causing these two tracks to lose their equilibrium by having one party escalate when the other may be seeking either maintenance and/or de-escalation. The horizontal escalation model becomes even more complex when other tracks, such as the United Nations, the international community, Iran, Yemen, and the Iraqi and Syrian Shia militias become involved.

When seen in this light, the horizontal escalation model becomes horribly complicated, requiring all parties to be cognizant about the competing interests of everyone involved, and develop a sound understanding of the intricacies associated with every facet of the cause-effect relationships involved. When deciphering the presentations given by both Blinken and Nasrallah, the casual observer might be compelled to be highly critical of the less-than decisive content provided. But a careful parsing of the language used by both men shows that each, in his own way, is cognizant of the complexity of the issues at play, and the absolute need to manage the pressures generated by the emotions of all parties involved so that a crisis that could easily expand into a regional war remains localized.

However, one cannot escape the reality that, at the end of the day, there cannot be a solution that is satisfactory to all parties. Israel seeks the destruction of Hamas as a military and political entity. Hamas seeks a Palestinian homeland built in its image. These two visions of victory are mutually incompatible. Both parties will seek to manipulate the escalation ladder in a way that best promotes their respective desired outcome. The key to the other parties is how to prevent this inherent incompatibility from spinning out of control, and to manage defeat as well as victory. It is this aspect of the escalation management process where Hamas has the advantage. As Nasrallah repeatedly noted in his presentation, the most important aspect of the anti-Israeli resistance is its ability to persevere.

Israel finds itself in an increasingly untenable situation, where the political and military methodologies undertaken are increasingly rejected by its supporters. The friction between the US and Israeli positions was evident in Blinken’s address. This friction will only increase if the conflict between Israel and Hamas is maintained on its current trajectory. The only chance Israel has to break this paradigm is if the conflict escalates, forcing the US to reevaluate its conflict resolution model with larger geopolitical concerns, such as a war with Iran. Blinken has made it clear that the Biden administration is not seeking such an outcome. Neither is Hassan Nasrallah. It is in this light that one must examine the totality of Nasrallah’s speech, and the complexity of his argument. There is not a single facet of the Israeli-Hamas conflict he left unexamined. Moreover, he not only discussed each of these matters in isolation, but also in respect to how they relate overall. Nasrallah’s speech was the embodiment of how to manage a complex horizontal escalation model and achieve a desired outcome.

Let there be no doubt – Hamas is on the trajectory toward victory, though not the kind of victory a casual observer might imagine as its end goal. When the definitive history of the Hamas-Israeli conflict is finally written, rest assured that the speech given by Hassan Nasrallah will be recorded as one of the critical moments in shaping the conflict so that it avoided exploding into a wider war, and instead allowing the various parties to focus on the more limited, although admittedly complex, issues relating to the core matters as defined by Hamas – a prisoner exchange, freedom of religion at the Al Aqsa Mosque, and Palestinian statehood. These limited objectives, and not the destruction of Israel, are the likely outcomes of this conflict. And for that we can all thank Hassan Nasrallah, a man who knows how to effectively manage the complexities of the horizontal escalation model.

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A new dimension.

• Iraqis Warn Of Western Plan To Move Gazans To Anbar Desert (Cradle)

The settlement of Palestinians in the Anbar desert, western Iraq, has become a topic of renewed discussion among Iraqis, thanks to the US-championed “Deal of the Century.” As far back as February 2020, Iraqi MP al-Baldawi, the representative of the al-Fatah coalition in Iraq’s parliament, was alleging: “The US is plotting to keep out Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units, or PMU) from the western provinces of Iraq, specially al-Anbar province, in a move to provide a proper ground for sheltering the Palestinians inside Iraq.” But now, the renewed interest in the topic coincides with the recent, unpublicized visit of the British ambassador to Iraq to Anbar Governorate. Since the unveiling of the Trump era peace plan in 2019, reports have surfaced suggesting that the continued US presence in western Iraq has broader intentions beyond establishing military bases.

It is speculated that the goal is to create an “alternative homeland” for Palestinian refugees in the Anbar desert. This notion might have remained confined to the realm of “conspiracy theories” if it weren’t for suggestions made by Israeli leaders following the 7 October Al-Aqsa Flood resistance operation, and their unprecedented genocidal aggression against the Gaza Strip. Israeli media leaked a document issued by the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence, proposing the displacement of 2.4 million Palestinians from Gaza to the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt and other regions, a proposal strongly rejected by both Cairo and Amman. The leaked plan has renewed serious Iraqi interest in the potential project to displace Palestinians to Anbar. Concerns of another Nakba have been echoed in statements from Iraqi political and religious leaders, including leading figures like Muqtada al-Sadr and Qais al-Khazali, as well as representatives of the Iraqi parliament – particularly those hailing from Anbar Governorate.

The leader of the National Resolution Alliance, Jamal al-Karbouli, condemned “the suspicious projects that attempt to displace the Palestinians out of Palestine,” and warned “everyone who dares to go too far with the people of Anbar and donate its land to please his masters.. Karbouli’s statements prompted Parliament Speaker Muhammad al-Halbousi, the representative of Anbar in the council, to emphatically reject any attempt to implement the Deal of the Century in Iraq. But observers like political analyst Mohsen al-Amiri believe that Karbouli’s claims forced Halbousi into issuing a denial: “It seems as if Anbar’s representative in parliament Al-Halbousi, who has close relations with foreign countries, especially the United Arab Emirates (the UAE has led the Arab normalization process with Israel), was trying to distance himself from these accusations.”

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Ireland’s next PM?!

• Ireland’s Most Popular Party Wants Israeli Ambassador Expelled (RT)

Israeli ambassador Dana Erlich “should no longer enjoy diplomatic status in Ireland,” Sinn Fein party leader Mary Lou McDonald said on Friday. McDonald’s party, which has deep historical ties to the Palestinian cause, has repeatedly condemned Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. “[The Israel Defence Forces] are engaged in a ferocious military offensive against a civilian population; breaking international law by targeting civilians, destroying civilian infrastructure, forcing mass population displacement and cutting off vital supplies of water, food, medicines and fuel,” McDonald told reporters. Erlich’s presence in Ireland has become “untenable,” McDonald continued, adding that the ambassador should “no longer enjoy diplomatic status in Ireland while Israel refuses the imperative for ceasefires and as the suffering and death toll grow.”

Earlier on Friday, McDonald discussed the conflict with diplomats from Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Morocco, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Israel’s embassy in Dublin criticized the Sinn Fein leader for not inviting Erlich to the meeting, accusing her of “only [seeking] to isolate Israel, rather than offer a forum for constructive engagement.” “To exclude Israel from such a forum is quite telling of Sinn Fein’s position on the conflict,” the embassy said in a statement. Sinn Fein is Ireland’s most popular political party, with a 13-point lead on its closest rival, the centrist Fine Gael. Sinn Fein is excluded from power, however, by a coalition agreement between Fine Gael and historical rivals Fianna Fail, as well as the Green Party.

As the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Sinn Fein’s support for the Palestinian cause is long-standing. The party’s supporters, particularly in Northern Ireland, view their own struggle against British colonialism as analogous to the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation. While the IRA has laid down its arms, Sinn Fein has remained in contact with Hamas; former party leader Gerry Adams met with Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza in 2009, while McDonald hosted an online conference with the militant group’s foreign relations head, Dr Basem Naim, in 2020. Sinn Fein “will never rule out meeting or talking to anybody, because that doesn’t serve any purpose” in securing peace in the Middle East, the party’s foreign affairs spokesman, Matt Carthy, said last month.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has adopted a more neutral stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict, declaring on Friday that Israel “has a right to defend itself [and] has the right to go after Hamas, so they can not do this again.” Varadkar also condemned Israel’s response to Hamas’ October 7 attack, stating that it “isn’t just self-defense, it resembles something more approaching revenge.” Ireland voted last month for a UN resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and opposed a now-scrapped EU plan to suspend aid payments to the enclave. However, Varadkar told reporters on Friday that he is “not sure [the Israelis] listen very closely to what we have to say, quite frankly.”

Sinn Fein

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“Zelensky said the war between Israel and Hamas had also drawn attention away from Ukraine, and said that this was “Russia’s goal”.

Excuse me, how does this work?

• Gaza Conflict ‘Taking Away Focus’ From Ukraine – Zelensky (AFP)

The sprawling frontline between the two warring sides has barely moved in almost a year, with one senior Ukrainian official warning this week that the conflict was deadlocked. “Time has passed, people are tired… But this is not a stalemate,” Zelensky told a press conference in Kyiv with EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen. The Ukrainian leader also rejected the idea Western countries were putting pressure on Kyiv to enter negotiations with Russia, amid reports US and EU officials had discussed what such talks would entail. “No one among our partners is pressuring us to sit down with Russia, talk to it, and give it something,” he said. With the war now in its 20th month and Ukraine struggling to gain ground in its counteroffensive, Zelensky has routinely met Western leaders in a bid to stave off fatigue with the conflict.

Zelensky said the war between Israel and Hamas had also drawn attention away from Ukraine, and said that this was “Russia’s goal”. “Of course, it’s clear that the war in the Middle East, this conflict, is taking away the focus,” Zelensky said. “We have already been in very difficult situations when there was almost no focus on Ukraine,” he said, but added: “I am absolutely sure we will overcome this challenge.” Ukraine’s backers, including the United States, have maintained they are ready to support Kyiv with military and financial support for as long as it takes to defeat Russia. Zelensky’s comments came as EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen visited Kyiv to discuss Ukraine’s progress toward joining the 27-member bloc.

Kyiv received EU candidacy status several months after Russia invaded last year, but analysts have warned it faces a long and difficult path to membership. “You have reached many milestones,” von der Leyen told Zelensky. “Reforming your justice system. Curbing the oligarchs grip. Tackling money laundering and much more,” she said. “We should never forget you are fighting an existential war, and at the same time you’re deeply reforming your country,” she added. She said she was “confident” Ukraine would progress with the accession process when these reforms were implemented. The EU Commission has proposed an additional 50 billion euros ($54 billion) in funding for Ukraine until 2027, von der Leyen said.

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“..every political move in Ukraine has a kind of fixed price..”

• US Plans Reshuffle of Ukrainian Elites Due to Corruption – Putin (Sp.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed that corruption in Ukraine is almost legalized and the West will not be able to fight it. He added that this is why he was not surprised by reports about Ukrainian weapons in the Middle East. “There [in Ukraine] this corruption, it is actually legalized. Why are Americans trying to fight this corruption and nothing is working? I think it will not work,” Putin said at a meeting with the new members of the Civic Chamber of Russia. Putin recalled that Ukrainian politicians and high-ranking government officials told him that every issue can be solved for a price, and that his “jaw dropped” when he heard this, meaning that he was shocked by the blatant corruption.

He stressed that every political move in Ukraine has a kind of fixed price. Putin added that the US is plotting a change of political and economic elites in Ukraine, but he believes that this will not solve the problem and that “everything will remain the same.” He emphasized that this should not be the case for Russia and instead, Russia must implement its own legal standards in the new regions. He referenced the progress made in ushering in the legal framework in Crimea and stated, “It is not an easy task, but we are going to do it, and we are already doing it.” Putin concluded.

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“..There’s a growing sense that it’s too late, and it’s time to do a deal..”

• West Nudges Ukraine Towards Peace Deal With Russia (Sp.)

As Kiev flounders with its counteroffensive, political support for propping up the Volodymyr Zelensky regime gradually wanes in some US political circles; meanwhile, Israel’s war on Hamas takes center stage, prompting speculation as to how swiftly Ukraine fatigue will gather momentum, and what it may spill out into. Quiet conversations are already reportedly taking place between US and European officials on the one hand, and the Ukrainian government on the other, about possible peace negotiations with Russia. The discussions have touched upon concessions Ukraine might need to agree to if any deal is to be possible, according to current and former senior Washington officials cited in a US report.

A meeting of representatives from more than 50 nations, including NATO members supporting the Kiev regime, known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, held in October, purportedly served as a venue for some of these “delicate” talks, as per the report. “…There’s a growing sense that it’s too late, and it’s time to do a deal,” one former senior Washington official was quoted as saying. As to why these talks have been gathering momentum, the outlet’s sources acknowledged that they have been triggered by both, military dynamics on the battlefield, where Ukraine faces a botched counteroffensive, and the political situation in the US and Europe. First of all, there is growing acknowledgement that no amount of military assistance to Ukraine has helped its efforts to break through Russia’s defense lines.

Even a top Ukrainian general, Valery Zaluzhny, admitted that despite “NATO’s textbooks” and “calculations,” Kiev needed to take a massive technological leap to break the current “stalemate” in its counteroffensive against Russian troops. “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough,” he underscored in an interview with the UK’s Economist magazine. Moscow, however, understandably took issue with the word “stalemate,” denying there was a battlefield impasse, and vouching for the fact that Russia consistently continues to conduct the special military ops to achieve its set objectives.

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Well, someone will..

• We Won’t Talk To Russia – Zelensky (RT)

Ukraine is not willing to hold any talks with Russia, President Vladimir Zelensky said on Saturday during a joint press conference with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. He also denied recent media reports that Kiev’s Western backers are pushing it to engage in negotiations. “Now, none of the EU, US leaders, our partners are putting pressure on us in terms of sitting down [at the negotiating table] with Russia, talking to it or surrendering something to it,” he told journalists. “This is not going to happen,” he added. Zelensky then said he “does not know” who even publishes such reports. He did admit, however, that he had “got an impression”that the Ukrainian media and Ukrainians themselves are speculating about the idea of potential talks with Russia and about Western nations allegedly pushing Kiev towards such a decision.

The president went on to say that he was “surprised” by such sentiments. Earlier on Saturday, NBC reported that Western officials were holding behind-the-scenes talks with Kiev about the possibility of negotiating with Russia and were even exploring potential concessions Ukraine might agree to in order to end the conflict. The report also said that the Western nations were concerned about a potential “stalemate” in the conflict and Ukraine “running out of forces” in the future. Russia has repeatedly signaled its readiness to engage in negotiations with Kiev but has insisted that such talks should take Moscow’s security interests and the “reality on the ground” into account. In autumn 2022, four former Ukrainian territories, including the two Donbass republics, officially joined Russia following a series of referendums.

Kiev never accepted their results, branding the votes a “sham” and seeking to restore its control over the four territories, as well as Crimea, which joined Russia in 2014 following another referendum. In October 2022, Zelensky also signed a decree banning Ukraine from holding any talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This past September, Putin said that if Kiev is willing to end the conflict it should demonstrate its intentions publicly, including by revoking the 2022 decree. “If their wish to achieve something through negotiations is genuine, let them do that,” he said at that time. “Let the Ukrainians themselves say it… announce it publicly,” the Russian president added.

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“Everyone is ready for that except for Zelenksy, Biden, Blinken, Sullivan, Nuland, Senator Graham, and Congressman Schiff..”

• NATO’s Backfired Ukraine Strategy Built on Ideology, Bribery & Blackmail (Sp.)

Moscow was swift to shoot down Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny’s claims earlier in the week of a battlefield impasse as being far from the truth, emphasizing that Russia fully intends to reach all the objectives of its special military operation. The US-led Western master plan implemented in Ukraine backfired because it was “not fact-based”, with Washington dipping into its playbook of utilizing both “bribery” and “blackmail”, Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, told Sputnik. NATO’s “strategy” was “ideology and domestic interest-based – in some cases based on financial bribery and energy blackmail by the US. It was a strategy of finance and military aid/contracts rather than an actual strategy”, pointed out Kwiatkowski.

Earlier, the Ukrainian army’s Commander-in-Chief General Valery Zaluzhny admitted that Kiev needed to take a massive technological leap to break the current “stalemate” in its counteroffensive against Russian troops. “There will, most likely, be no deep and beautiful breakthrough,” he highlighted in an interview with the UK’s magazine ‘The Economist’. “In a world with well-informed, logical and humanitarian leadership in Kiev and Washington, we would indeed consider Valery Zaluzhny’s evaluation as a precursor to immediate negotiations with Russia. Everyone is ready for that except for Zelenksy, Biden, Blinken, Sullivan, Nuland, Senator Graham, and Congressman Schiff,” said the pundit. Espressing himself in both an article and then an interview, Zaluzhny conceded that “NATO’s textbooks” and “the math” that Kiev used in planning its much-heralded counteroffensive had failed to stop Russian forces from tackling Ukrainian troops.

Zaluzhny speculated that the aforementioned NATO textbooks and the calculations had suggested that “four months should have been enough time for us [the Ukrainian army] to have reached Crimea, to have fought in Crimea, to return from Crimea and to have gone back in and out again.” He was referring to the peninsula which chose to split off from Ukraine after the February 2014 Euromaidan coup, voting overwhelmingly in a referendum in March 2014 to rejoin Russia. Ukraine boasted of plans to use its summer counteroffensive to seize Crimea. Zaluzhny also added that he was concerned about the fact that “sooner or later [Kiev] will realize that we simply don’t have enough people to fight”. Accordingly, he struck up the familiar tune of demanding more weapons from the West – one that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky appears to have perfected. Thus, warning that there were “heavier battles to come,” the Ukrainian top general solicited assistance for Ukraine’s missile and air defense, and offered “calculations” as to “how many tanks, artillery we need and so on and so on”.

In effect, however, no amount of sophisticated weaponry worth however many billions of dollars would be sufficient to help Kiev in its counteroffensive. The US-spearheaded Western strategy had been to use Ukraine as a pawn in its proxy war to attempt to “isolate Russia economically, to weaken Russia’s military capability, and to strengthen Ukraine as a potential EU and even NATO member,” Kwiatkowski emphasized. However, “in each of these publicly stated objectives, if there was a strategy to do these things, it backfired and failed in all cases,” added the retired Lieutenant Colonel. Such “across the board failures” can only mean that “either the strategy was so bad it should have never made it off the table, or the aim had been to fail be destroyed, just not publicly stated,” Kwiatkowski stressed.

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The White House can sneak out, and blame Mike Johnson. Perfect for them.

• Ukraine Aid Drying Up – White House (RT)

The White House is running out of funds to finance arms deliveries to Ukraine, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has said, urging Congress to approve US President Joe Biden’s request for more aid that has been stonewalled by Republicans. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday, the spokeswoman said that the Pentagon had announced new arms deliveries for Ukraine. The latest package, which is worth $425 million, includes HIMARS and NASAMS missiles, artillery rounds, and other military equipment. Of this sum, $300 million was from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), which the Pentagon uses to contract new equipment for Kiev. The remaining $125 million came from the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which allows the Biden administration to transfer weapons from US stocks without congressional approval in case of an emergency.

Jean-Pierre noted that this package “exhaust[s] the remaining USAI funds currently available to support Ukraine.” She added that while the White House still has PDA authorities to “fulfill Ukraine’s immediate battlefield needs,” the US is starting to provide Kiev with “smaller PDA packages in order to stretch out our ability to support Ukraine for as long as possible.” With this in mind, she urged Congress to approve Biden’s supplemental aid request and send “an important message” to the world that the US continues to stand with Ukraine. Last month, the Biden administration asked US lawmakers to greenlight a security package to the tune of more than $100 billion, including $61.4 billion for Ukraine, and $14.3 billion for Israel. But some Republicans have opposed aid to Ukraine, accusing Biden of lacking a strategic vision for the conflict and insisting on more accountability.

They have also insisted that the issues of aid to Israel and Ukraine be treated separately. On Thursday, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill on aiding Israel in its conflict with Hamas, to which Democrats voiced strong opposition, with some accusing their colleagues across the isle of politicizing the issue. Another provision listed in the legislation included defunding the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), also a non-starter for Democrats. Meanwhile, Mike Johnson, the newly installed House speaker, has yet to reveal his plans for Ukraine funding, vowing that the relevant discussions “will come in short order.” Russia has repeatedly warned the West against sending weapons to Ukraine, arguing that doing so only prolongs the conflict while making it a direct participant in the hostilities.

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X thread.

• Long Read (Kim Dotcom)

The West is probing Zelenskyy on concessions to Russia. Russia and Ukraine were ready to sign a peace deal in 2022. It was blocked by Joe Biden. Since then 600k+ people died, the EU economy lost $1.5 trillion, Ukraine lost 20% of its territory and the US added 3 trillion in debt Russia is now in a much stronger position. It won’t trust any deal with Ukraine due to past treaty breaches instigated by the West. Ukraine is running out of money and forces. The US, EU and NATO have lost their proxy war and Russia can keep this conflict going for a long time thanks to failing sanctions. Low cost Russian arms production and artillery shells from partners cause the West to deplete their reserves and bleed billions more into the black hole that is Ukraine.

Russia will likely take more territory in Ukraine and turn it into a rump state without access to the Black Sea. Ukraine will not be allowed to become a NATO or EU member. Russia will ensure that the US coup in Ukraine will be reversed and that a pro-Russian Govt will be installed. Only then will the conditions improve for Ukraine. The NATO big-mouth alliance will crumble after this embarrassing defeat. The US and EU will fall into a deep recession and the BRICS alliance will grow in power and influence. The US dollar will lose reserve currency status and excessive US money printing will cause hyperinflation and devalue most US assets to junk status. The failure in Ukraine will be Biden’s and Zelenskyy’s legacy. They will be remembered as the most inept leaders of our time. Most of the EU leaders will be seen as failed US puppets who followed a dementia patient and a comedian into the sewer of history.

China is the big winner in all of this. They get the discounted Russian energy that made Europe a manufacturing powerhouse and the multipolar alliance of BRICS countries can turn decades of global wars and chaos into the most peaceful era of growth and prosperity for humanity. That’s how it should be. But the most likely outcome is that the evil empire of lies will not leave the stage quietly. The US Govt will smash the geopolitical chess board against the wall and go out in a tantrum of nuclear war that will end civilization as we know it. Only the American people could prevent this from happening but I wouldn’t bet my money on that. Most US brains have been fried by endless propaganda or dumbed down by a Neanderthal education system and TikTok 😉 The best insurance for your family is to have a Plan B in the far south of the southern hemisphere. That area will have the most survivors. May the force be with you.

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“..the Russian leader has “fantastic fitness for working” and can work nonstop for several days in a row..”

• There Is Only One Putin – Kremlin (RT)

The Kremlin has dismissed speculation that it could be using body doubles of President Vladimir Putin for some events. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov ridiculed such claims as “amusing.” “We have only one Putin!” Peskov said at the ‘Russia’ exhibition that opened in Moscow on Saturday. He said that many ridiculous, absurd, and amusing things appear in various news outlets and on social media, naming the rumors about the Russian president’s alleged body doubles as examples. The Kremlin spokesman joked that “experts” on the internet are now wondering how many doppelgangers Putin has and which ones they are seeing each day. “Today [the Russian officials and public figures led by Putin] laid flowers to the Minin and Pozharsky Monument… Was it [Putin’s] third or fourth body double? I have no idea,” the spokesman jokingly added.

On November 4, Russia celebrates Unity Day, a holiday that commemorates the end of the ‘Times of Troubles’ in the 17th century and the expulsion of the Polish-Lithuanian occupation forces from Moscow by a volunteer militia army led by Prince Dmitry Pozharsky and a merchant, Kuzma Minin. The Kremlin already laid to rest the rumors about Putin’s doppelgangers last week after the UK’s Mirror newspaper reported on the issue, citing an anonymous Russian Telegram channel called General SVR. The paper claimed that the president’s body doubles were even used for some public appearances, including foreign visits. It also cited a recent Japanese TV report claiming that Putin had doppelgangers.

Similar statements have also been made by the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kirill Budanov. Peskov had previously already dismissed reports about Putin’s doppelgangers, calling them “lies” back in April. He also said that the Russian leader has “fantastic fitness for working” and can work nonstop for several days in a row. The Kremlin spokesman added that he has experienced this firsthand while working directly under Putin’s leadership.

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“..Tony Bobulinski has challenged the Biden family to testify under oath beside him before Congress..”

• Tony Bobulinski Issues A Challenge To The Biden Family (DM)

Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski has challenged the Biden family to testify under oath beside him before Congress, after Hunter’s lawyer accused Bobulinski of lying. Bobulinski, a Navy veteran, worked with Hunter Biden and his uncle Jim – Joe’s brother – in 2017 to invest in China. Bobulinski in 2020 produced a May 2017 email detailing a proposed equity split for a Chinese investment, with the suggestion of ’20’ for ‘H’ and ’10 held by H for the big guy?’ Bobulinski has claimed that ‘the big guy’ was Joe Biden, who was vice president until January 2017. Joe Biden has always said he was not involved in Hunter’s business dealings. Hunter’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has written a letter to prosecutors claiming that Bobulinski has lied to the FBI. Bobulinski, in response, on Friday challenged the Bidens to provide public sworn testimony.

Tony Bobulinski was in business with Hunter Biden, and has claimed that Joe Biden was also involved in a May 2017 deal with China ‘If Hunter Biden and the Biden family are so determined to ensure that the full truth is put before the American people, Hunter, Jim, Joe and I should all appear together before Congress, publicly and under oath,’ said Bobulinski, in a statement sent to Fox News. ‘They can name the date, time and place, and I would certainly be willing to do that for the American people.’ Bobulinski said that Lowell’s letter, sent to Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, was untrue. ‘All of the allegations contained in Mr. Lowell’s 10-page letter to U.S. Attorney Graves are patently false, and I look forward to exposing these lies and laying out the facts in a public forum in short order,’ said Bobulinski. ‘The sad thing for our country is that Hunter, Jim and Joe Biden along with Abbe Lowell know they are all false and are trying to weaponize the DOJ against me.’

Lowell, in his letter, claimed Bobulinski ‘lied about the business discussions among the partners involved’ in the joint venture. He said Bobulinski was guilty of ‘making things up’, and urged Graves to investigate him. Lowell accused Bobulinski, who insists he is not political, of being intent on attacking the Bidens. ‘The materials reveal the extraordinary lengths Mr Bobulinski and other individuals were willing to go to implicate Mr Biden or members of his family in some false and meritless allegations of wrongdoing,’ Lowell wrote. ‘Even in an era in which people peddle knowing lies with the goal of their falsehoods being repeated and disseminated for their political advantage, these statements by Mr Bobulinski cannot and must not go unchecked.’ Hunter Biden’s business deals are being investigated by several committees in Congress: the House Oversight Committee; House Judiciary; and House Ways & Means Committees.

The Oversight Committee on X accused Lowell of attempting to intimidate Bobulinski, who might be called to testify. ‘Hunter Biden and his legal team are once again attacking anyone who speaks out against the Bidens,’ the Oversight Committee wrote. ‘This time, their target is Tony Bobulinski, a potential witness in our investigation. ‘We will not tolerate witness intimidation. The truth will come out soon enough despite the Biden team’s threatening tactics. ‘We will give Hunter the opportunity to clear the air and speak with us soon.’

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Turley makes the exact same point I did a few days ago. Can you indict Trump for having bad lawyers? Sidney Powell and Lin Wood went way overboard after the election. But how was he supposed to know at the time? They were his lawyers… They presented it to him, and to the media, as an open and shut case.

• Can Jack Smith Convict Trump For Being Lured By Bad Lawyers’ Advice? (Turley)

In Homer’s “Odyssey,” Odysseus faces one of his most fearsome threats — the three Sirens, beautiful sea creatures who lure sailors to their ruin with their seductive songs. Special Counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis have offered a modern version of the Sirens in the lure of bad lawyering. Three lawyers have recently pleaded guilty in Georgia, and they may join other former counsel in testifying against their former client. What is novel is the criminal “Siren’s call” theory of these cases. Former President Donald Trump is being prosecuted for following the advice of his counsel, who are now effectively saying that he should not have believed what they were telling him. Indeed, some sound like they were lured by the Siren call of Trump, led astray from their better legal judgment.

Kenneth Chesebro’s attorney, Scott Grubman, says that “Mr. Chesebro never believed in ‘the Big Lie’” and believes that Biden won the election. Likewise, Sidney Powell has argued that “no reasonable person would conclude that my statements were truly statements of fact” as opposed to opinions. Jenna Ellis recently stated “Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.” Yet these lawyers were not just confident but enthusiastic after the election in pursuing the claims they now repudiate. Moreover, their plea agreements had a number of notable omissions. First, none pleaded guilty to a conspiracy with Trump or to racketeering. Second, none will face jail time, and the prosecution has agreed that they did not commit crimes of moral turpitude. All three could keep their licenses.

It is also not clear that these attorneys would implicate Trump if called. They could prove more damaging to other defendants such as Rudy Giuliani, or they could still prove harmful to the prosecution’s overall theory. They secured no jail deals, but only agreed to testify truthfully. Some, like Ellis, may now have animus but lack evidence against Trump in establishing a conspiracy or racketeering claim. Both the federal and state prosecutions are premised on the claim that Trump never believed what he was saying about a stolen election. If Trump actually did believe he had viable claims in the courts or Congress, the prosecutions would collapse. Even Smith admits that Trump’s early election claims were protected political speech, but at some point became a criminal conspiracy when Trump had to know that his claims were baseless.

he most dangerous aspect to the federal indictment is that Smith leaves the line entirely undefined for future cases. If Trump crossed the Rubicon into criminal conduct in his election claims, Smith should be able to point to the river on the map. Instead, Smith offers no limiting principle on when election claims move from the sensational to the criminal. That is particularly concerning, since many election claims in the courts or Congress have been unfounded. For example, Marc Elias, who served as general counsel to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and played a key role in its secret funding of the infamous Steele dossier, challenged past elections on such grounds. After the 2020 election, he challenged a New York election by claiming that voting machines had flipped the results in favor of the Republicans through mistabulations.

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Wonder what format he will give it. No cameras..

• Tucker Carlson Visits Assange In Prison (RT)

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson visited Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at London’s Belmarsh Prison on Thursday, Carlson revealed in a post on X (formerly Twitter) later that day. The American journalist included a photo of himself walking with Assange’s wife, Stella Moris. The post garnered positive reactions from activists who have collaborated with Wikileaks in the past, including Mega founder Kim Dotcom and former British MP George Galloway. While Carlson did not elaborate on the nature of his visit, media commentary suggested it was an interview for Carlson’s popular self-titled show on X. He previously interviewed Assange’s father and brother for a Fox News segment in 2021, and again earlier this year.

 Carlson has condemned Assange’s continued incarceration as a violation of the Wikileaks founder’s First Amendment rights, and said it sets a disastrous precedent for other journalists and publishers who work with classified material. Assange has appealed his pending extradition to the US, where he faces up to 175 years in prison on charges of violating the Espionage Act. The charges stem from Wikileaks’ publication of a trove of secret documents leaked by US Army intelligence analyst and whistleblower Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning in 2010, which dealt with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Wikileaks publisher has been imprisoned in Belmarsh since 2019, when he was expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he had lived for seven years. Assange was granted political asylum and later Ecuadorian citizenship, both of which were revoked ahead of his arrest.

While Caroline Kennedy, the US ambassador to Australia, hinted in August that Washington might consider a plea deal allowing Assange to return to his home country if he pleaded guilty to lesser charges, legal experts have pointed out that any such deal would almost certainly require him to travel to the US for a formal admission of guilt – a condition he is unlikely to accept. Additionally, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has shown no signs of relenting in pursuit of the publisher, recently rejecting overtures from Canberra with the explanation that Assange’s actions had “risked very serious harm to our national security, to the benefit of our adversaries, and put named human sources at grave risk of physical harm, grave risk of detention.” Members of Congress hailing from both parties have petitioned the presidential administration of Joe Biden to drop the extradition request and abandon the prosecution of Assange.

Read more …

 

 

 

 


Siegfried Sassoon

 

 

Ackman

 

 


On Waihee Beach Park, Maui, Hawaii, this tree grew by the sea and coastal eroison exposed its roots, making it look like it’s running.

 

 

Shavo

 

 


Photographer Wu Yung-sen on a blackwater dive—unable to see the bottom and surrounded by impenetrable space—chanced upon a rare larval Wunderpus octopus, totally transparent.

 

 

Butterfly puppy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1720795302167216287

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle October 5 2022

Oct 052022
 
 October 5, 2022  Posted by at 7:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  58 Responses »


Odilon Redon The boat 1900

 

• CIA Chief Weighs In On Putin’s Alleged Nuclear Threat (RT)
• Russia ‘Fully Committed’ To UN Consensus On Nuclear War (RT)
• US Risks ‘Direct Conflict’ With Russia Over Ukraine – UN Envoy (RT)
• The Strong, and the Merely Powerful (Patrick Lawrence)
• Putin Spox Weighs In On Elon Musk’s Attempt At Ukraine Peace Deal (ZH)
• Elon Musk Proposes To Buy Twitter At Original $44B Price To Avoid Trial (NYP)
• Roger Waters Says He’s On Ukrainian ‘Kill List’ (RT)
• Kremlin Reacts To Zelensky Banning Talks With Putin (RT)
• Russian Partial Mobilization Numbers Revealed (RT)
• Maneuver Warfare (Schryver)
• Capital Controls – The Third Horseman Of The Unholy Trinity (Hubble)
• Fauci Gives Daszak Millions More To Study Gain Of Function (NYP)
• Hunter Biden Committed ‘Fraud’ Against Business Partners – Bobulinski (Fox)
• The Morning After (CJ Hopkins)
• Why Does Time Go Forwards, Not Backwards? (Henriques)

 

 

 

 

Truss

 

 

Just economists losing their minds over Liz Truss’ economics

 

 

 

 

Gerald Ford

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is none.

“..we don’t see any practical evidence today in the US intelligence community that [Putin] is moving closer to actual use” or that there’s any “imminent threat of using tactical nuclear weapons.”

• CIA Chief Weighs In On Putin’s Alleged Nuclear Threat (RT)

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) does not believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin is currently preparing to deploy nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the agency’s chief William Burns said in an interview on Sunday. “We have to take very seriously [any] kind of threats, given everything that’s at stake,” Burns told CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell. However, he acknowledged that “we don’t see any practical evidence today in the US intelligence community that [Putin] is moving closer to actual use” or that there’s any “imminent threat of using tactical nuclear weapons.” Asked if the Russian leader was bluffing when speaking about being ready to use “all the means at [its] disposal” if the country’s territorial integrity were threatened, Burns said it was “very hard to say at this point.”

The CIA director described the rhetoric from Putin and other high-ranking officials as “reckless and deeply irresponsible.” He also suggested that it was up to US policymakers to communicate to Moscow that such a decision would have “severe consequences.” UK Secretary of Defense Ben Wallace claimed on Sunday that Russia was“highly unlikely” to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but claimed the Russian leader was also “totally irrational.” The issue has been at the fore since Putin announced a partial mobilization two weeks ago and warned that Moscow was ready to use any weapons from its extensive arsenal to defend itself if necessary. “If the territorial integrity of our nation is threatened, we will certainly use all the means that we have to defend Russia and our people. It’s not a bluff,” Putin stated at the time.

He reiterated the message on Friday in an address at the signing of the unification treaties for the accession of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, along with the Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, into Russia. “We will defend our land with all the forces and resources,” the president vowed. Putin’s words have been interpreted by politicians and media in the West as a veiled threat that Moscow may deploy nuclear weapons in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. In late September, Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov rejected such speculation, saying: “we are not threatening anyone with nuclear weapons.” The diplomat referred journalists to Russia’s military doctrine, which states that nuclear weapons may only be employed if such arms or other weapons of mass destruction are being used against the country, or it is faced with an existential threat from conventional arms.

Read more …

The reason this has been so fully distorted, can not be a good one.

• Russia ‘Fully Committed’ To UN Consensus On Nuclear War (RT)

Moscow maintains that a war between nuclear-armed countries should never be fought, the top nonproliferation official in the Russian foreign ministry told the UN General Assembly’s First Committee on Tuesday. “We believe that one of the most important tasks is to maintain adherence by all countries of the ‘nuclear five’ to the postulate that any war between countries possessing nuclear weapons cannot be allowed to happen, which was reflected in the January joint statement of the leaders of nuclear powers. Russia is fully committed to it,”said Vladimir Yermakov, director of the arms control and nonproliferation department at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The committee, which is in charge of arms control and international security, heard the statement through Konstantin Vorontsov, deputy head of the Russian delegation to the UNGA.

Yermakov’s remarks follow a clarification from the Kremlin that Moscow will only use nuclear weapons based on its official doctrine – meaning, in self-defense from weapons of mass destruction, or where its survival was threatened by conventional means. “There can be no other considerations here,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday. Russia has been repeatedly accused by the US and its allies of threatening the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Putin’s spokesman Peskov has repeatedly directed reporters to the official doctrine in order to dispel any misunderstandings. According to Russia’s nuclear posture, Moscow reserves the right to use atomic weapons only “in response to the use of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction against Russia or its allies,”as well as “in response to a conventional attack that threatens the very existence”of Russia as a sovereign state.

Over the weekend, however, head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov proposed using “low-yield nuclear weapons” as one of the “more drastic measures”regarding the conflict in Ukraine. Kadyrov was addressing the withdrawal of Russian troops from a Donetsk Region town due to a persistent Ukrainian assault. While Russian regional heads – including Kadyrov, who Peskov said has “contributed a lot” to the operations in Ukraine – are free to express personal opinions, they cannot give free rein to their emotions, “even in difficult times,”the Kremlin spokesman said.

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“Continued American deliveries of weapons, intelligence and even fighters to Ukraine are approaching the “dangerous line” of direct confrontation with Moscow..”

• US Risks ‘Direct Conflict’ With Russia Over Ukraine – UN Envoy (RT)

Continued American deliveries of weapons, intelligence and even fighters to Ukraine are approaching the “dangerous line” of direct confrontation with Moscow, Russian diplomat Konstantin Vorontsov told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. Shortly before that, the Pentagon announced the contents of another military shipment to Ukraine, valued at $625 million. “The US is increasing the deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, providing its military with intelligence information, ensuring the direct participation of its fighters and advisers in the conflict,”Vorontsov, who is the deputy head of the Russian delegation, told the General Assembly’s First Committee, a body charged with arms control and security issues.

This “not only prolongs hostilities and leads to new casualties, but also brings the situation closer to the dangerous line of a direct military clash between Russia and NATO,” Vorontsov added. Moscow has repeatedly warned the US and its allies against sending weapons, ammunition and equipment to Ukraine, but Washington and NATO vowed to keep doing so for “as long as it takes, ”while insisting that doesn’t make them a party to the conflict. According to the Pentagon, the US has spent more than $19.6 billion in “security assistance” to Ukraine since 2014, and another $16.8 billion since February 24, when the Russian military operation began. The US will continue to provide Ukraine with “key capabilities” and to address Kiev’s “evolving battlefield requirements,” the military added.

The latest batch of weapons and equipment, valued at $625 million, includes four High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and ammunition for them, 16 each of the 155mm and 105mm howitzers, 75,000 rounds for artillery ammunition – including guided rounds and remote mine-laying ones – small arms and mortar rounds, and 200 MRAP armored vehicles.

Macgregor: “Other than Poland, no one in NATO is interested in going to war with Russia. If we persist on this line, we will see NATO dissolve and fragment.”

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“Strong nations serve their people as their primary responsibility.”

• The Strong, and the Merely Powerful (Patrick Lawrence)

There are various ways to interpret what Putin, Xi, and their allies among non–Western nations are working toward. In my view, they draw a distinction none has put into words but which is nonetheless essential to their vision: There are strong nations and there are the merely powerful. In the world order as we have it the powerful dominate — ever more evidently by force alone. In the world order now emerging, it is genuinely strong nations that will at last prevail over those reliant on power alone, and force will have little to do with it. [..] Strong nations serve their people as their primary responsibility. This is where I begin as I characterize them. They have a purpose, a telos, as the ancient Greeks put it, and a shared belief in the worth of their ideal.

They have a commitment to advancing the well-being of their citizens — to constructive action in the interest of the commonweal. They value their cultures, their histories, their memories. These common characteristics confer on strong nations solid but flexible social fabrics and an assumed sense of shared community. They are a source of identity and at the same time expressions of identity. Ironically, strength of the kind I describe tends to generate power. But it is power judiciously deployed. Genuinely strong nations have no need to dominate others. They are ungiven to subterfuge or subversion, seeing no purpose in it. They value mutual benefit in their relations with others simply because this is the surest way to stability and a peaceful order.

Let us not traffic in impossible ideals or in the thought of nations as pure as snow. There are none. A strong nation may have many things about it that are not to be admired — awful things, even. A strong nation may also be powerful. China is such a case. I am of the view — and I realize there are others — that China does not use its power to malign purpose. Remove the Sinophobia and anti–Chinese paranoia, and the record supports this.

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“Achieving peace without fulfilling Russia’s conditions is absolutely impossible. Many ideas there deserve attention,” he said..”

• Putin Spox Weighs In On Elon Musk’s Attempt At Ukraine Peace Deal (ZH)

The Russian Presidency’s office has responded to billionaire Elon Musk’s “Russia-Ukraine Peace” Twitter poll which he put out Monday, and resulted in swift backlash among pundits who accused the Tesla and SpaceX founder of mimicking “pro-Russian” talking points. Musk pushed back against the avalanche of detractors, explaining that he’s interested in exploring ways to arrive at a peaceful settlement, and not continued escalation toward nuclear war. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday told reporters, “We consider it very positive that a man like Musk is looking for a peaceful way out of the situation around Ukraine,” according to Interfax.

Musk had floated the idea of “redoing” last week’s referendums on the four Ukrainian territories in the east joining the Russian Federation under UN supervision. He also controversially said that as basis of a peace deal Ukraine would have to permanently cede Crimea. It was particularly the Crimea aspect which sparked an immediate backlash and pile-on of pundits, journalists, and even diplomats – on up to Ukrainian President Zelensky himself – who suggested this means Musk “supports Russia”. According to more of Peskov’s words via Interfax (machine translation): “At the same time, he recalled that from the very beginning, Russia advocated that the conditions put forward by Moscow be fulfilled through negotiations. Unlike many professional diplomats, Peskov noted, Musk is still trying to find ways to achieve peace. “Achieving peace without fulfilling Russia’s conditions is absolutely impossible. Many ideas there deserve attention,” he said..”

But Peskov underscored there can be no “redo” of the referendums, given Moscow has already moved to bestow legal recognition of the four regions’ integration into Russia. “And there can be nothing else here. Today the president will sign decrees, and this will become the territory of the Russian Federation. But I repeat once again, the fact itself is very positive, when such people think, try to think logically, what could be done, to switch to a peaceful course,” Peskov said. To review, Musk’s poll had laid out four proposals: • Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is will of the people. • Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake). • Water supply to Crimea assured. • Ukraine remains neutral. After more than 2.7 million votes, of which Musk said many were bots attempting to skew the results, it’s clear that public opinion remains fiercely divided on the war, given sizeable groups on either side. Meanwhile Chinese state media pundit Hu Xijin pointed out the following…

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We presume.

• Elon Musk Proposes To Buy Twitter At Original $44B Price To Avoid Trial (NYP)

Elon Musk has offered to close his original deal to buy Twitter for a whopping $44 billion — a bid to avoid a court trial over the hotly contested agreement slated for later this month, sources told The Post. The billionaire Tesla CEO is in talks for a settlement to acquire the social network for $54.20 per share — the same price he agreed to in April before saying in July he was pulling out of the deal, according to sources close to the talks. Twitter shares spiked more than 13% to $48.13 immediately following an earlier report of Musk’s proposal by Bloomberg and were halted for pending news. Musk sent a letter to Twitter with the offer, according to Bloomberg. Musk notified Twitter’s lawyers of the offer to go through with the deal under its original terms late Monday night, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The two sides worked toward hashing out an agreement in a Delaware Court of Chancery hearing this morning that was closed to the public, the source said. Another hearing will likely be held this afternoon but it’s unclear whether the judge hearing the case, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, will make it open to the public. Months of bad blood between Twitter and Musk have made Twitter insistent that the Delaware court supervise the closing process in the coming days. If everything goes as expected and Musk doesn’t try to pull any last-minute “gotchas” on Twitter, the deal should realistically close within days or at most a week, a source familiar with the matter said. Twitter sued Musk over his refusal to go through with the deal in a trial that was set to open on Oct. 17.

Musk was scheduled to be deposed by Twitter’s attorneys on Thursday and Friday this week, raising the prospect that the last-minute deal was made in part to avoid the deposition. [..] Analysts who cover Twitter say that $54.20 is an astronomically high price to pay for the scandal-plagued social media site. Without Musk’s involvement, Twitter would be trading in the $20 range, analysts say.

BBee musk

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The kill list has Kiev government support, which in turn has massive US/UK support. The list now includes US/UK citizens. Can’t make it up? Well, you don’t have to. This is a government that actively supports, to the tune of tens of billions, a foreign government that threatens to kill its citizens.

• Roger Waters Says He’s On Ukrainian ‘Kill List’ (RT)

British rock star Roger Waters, a co-founder of Pink Floyd, has allegedly been placed on a Ukrainian “kill list”after speaking out against Western military meddling and calling on Kiev to make peace with Russia. In an interview with Rolling Stone published on Tuesday, the 79-year-old pushed back against accusations that he’s been repeating Russian talking points about the conflict in Ukraine. “Don’t forget, I’m on a kill list that is supported by the Ukrainian government. I’m on the fu**ing list, and they’ve killed people recently… When they kill you, they write ‘liquidated’ across your picture. Well, I’m one of those fu**ing pictures.” Waters gave the example of Darya Dugina, the Russian journalist murdered in August after appearing on the Ukrainian Mirotvorets list.

As the musician noted, her entry on the list was marked “liquidated” after she was killed in a car-bombing. Others who have questioned or criticized the Kiev regime, such as photojournalists Andrea Rocchelli of Italy and Andrei Stenin of Russia, have also been killed after appearing on the Mirotvorets list. The site lists personal information on its blacklist targets, which also include politicians and NGO activists. Mirotvorets, or “Peacemaker,” is an independent database of individuals whom anonymous moderators consider to be threats to Ukrainian national security. The site denies being a kill list; rather, it claims to be a source of information for law-enforcement agencies and “special services” about pro-Russian terrorists, separatists and war criminals, among others. It allegedly has links to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry.

Waters stirred backlash earlier this year, when he suggested that US President Joe Biden was a “war criminal” for fueling the Ukraine crisis and sent an open letter to the wife of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, urging her to help “stop the slaughter” by pushing for a negotiated peace deal with Russia. He later sent an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, asking for guarantees that Russia wouldn’t expand beyond Crimea and the Donbass region. Pressed by Rolling Stone on why he isn’t supportive of Ukraine’s resistance against Russian forces, Waters said, “Because it’s an unnecessary war, and those people should not be dying. And Russia should not have been encouraged to invade Ukraine.” He also dismissed reports of Russian war crimes in Ukraine as Western propaganda.

Two concerts that Waters had scheduled for next April in Krakow, Poland, may be canceled because of his push for a negotiated peace in Ukraine, the musician said late last month. “Draconian censoring of my work will deny them the opportunity to make up their own minds,” he said of his Polish audiences. The wide-ranging Mirotvorets kill list also includes Faina Savenkova, a 13-year-old girl in the Lugansk People’s Republic who called for the United Nations to end the fighting that has dragged on in her region since 2014.

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We’ll wait for his successor.

• Kremlin Reacts To Zelensky Banning Talks With Putin (RT)

To resume peace talks with Kiev, Moscow will wait for either a change of stance by the current Ukrainian president or for a new leader, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. This comes after President Zelensky signed a decree ruling out negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Even before the launch of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in late February, Moscow “was the supporter of the idea of achieving the terms put forward by the Russian side through diplomatic means,” Peskov told journalists on Tuesday. Russia is still ready to look for a negotiated solution to the conflict between the neighbors, according to the spokesman. But “it takes two parties to negotiate,” he noted. “We’ll now be waiting for the current president to change his stance or for the arrival of the future president of Ukraine, who would change his position in the interests of the Ukrainian people,”Peskov said.

On Tuesday, Zelensky signed a decree on Ukraine officially rejecting peace talks with Putin. It rubber stamped decisions made by Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, on Friday, just hours after Putin signed agreements on Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions joining Russia. One of the resolutions was: “stating the impossibility of conducting negotiations with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.” Zelensky recorded a video address after the meeting claiming that “we [Ukraine] are ready for dialogue with Russia, but with another president of Russia.” In his speech on Friday, Putin called upon Ukraine to “cease all hostilities, stop the war it started back in 2014 and return to the negotiating table.”

However, he made it clear that the decision to unite with Russia, which the people of Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions made during referendums, was not up for discussion. Kiev should treat the “free choice” of the four territories “with respect,” Putin said, adding that it was “the only way for peace.” Moscow and Kiev have not sat down at the negotiating table since talks in Istanbul in late March. The Russian side, which initially expressed optimism on the peace process, later accused Ukraine of backtracking on all the progress achieved in Türkiye, saying it had lost trust in Kiev’s negotiators. In recent months, Ukraine has been either putting forward terms that Moscow deemed ‘unrealistic’ for the resumption of talks, or said that they can only begin after Russia is defeated on the battlefield.

During the conflict, Zelensky has also, on several occasions, proposed meeting with Putin face-to-face in order to find a way to end the hostilities. But Moscow insisted that the two leaders should only get together to sign concrete agreements already prepared for them by the negotiating teams.

Read more …

These things take time.

• Russian Partial Mobilization Numbers Revealed (RT)

Russia’s partial mobilization plans are already more than two-thirds complete, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced during a conference call on Tuesday. It comes almost two weeks after President Vladimir Putin called to bolster the military amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. The defense chief said that over 200,000 persons have so far been added to the Russian Armed Forces, all of whom are now undergoing the necessary training. Shoigu has instructed relevant officials to provide the mobilized recruits with all the necessary clothing and other items and appoint them to military positions.

The minister added that there is also a significant number of volunteers showing up at the military commissariats wanting to join the army, and stressed that it is “extremely important” to assess each appeal carefully and to not reject anyone unless there are serious reasons to. He also explained that those who have been called into service in the past two weeks will only be sent to take part in Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine after they finish training and develop combat coordination with units that are already on the ground. In order to speed up the training process, the minister has ordered commanders to provide fresh recruits with additional training under the guidance of officers with combat experience.

Furthermore, the ministry announced that conscripts who fall under the upcoming draft, which will take place in November and recruit some 120,000 people, will serve in units not involved in the military operation. Meanwhile, those who have just finished their mandatory service in Russia’s armed forces will be returning home. Speaking in a televised address on September 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a partial mobilization, looking to recruit some 300,000 reservists to take part in the ongoing military conflict with Ukraine which began in late February. The Russian Defense Ministry has since clarified that the mobilization prioritizes those who have served in the military and who’ve had previous combat experience as well as the necessary specializations needed on the front line.

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“British intelligence has warned the General Staff that these forces may be concentrating for a Russian counter-attack..”

• Maneuver Warfare (Schryver)

For weeks now, the vastly outnumbered Russian forces have been executing a fighting retreat – ceding territory to the advancing Ukrainians, briefly occupying strong prepared defensive positions from which they inflict severe losses on the Ukrainian attackers, and then retreating yet again to another line of prepared positions. As is always the case during an ongoing battle, reliable casualty numbers are difficult to ascertain. But the nature of the terrain, the strength of the prepared Russian defenses, and the Russians’ overwhelming superiority in terms of air power and artillery have afforded them a huge battlefield advantage.

Contributing to this advantage has been the frequently displayed rashness of almost suicidal banzai-like Ukrainian assaults on hardened Russian positions which, although their significant numerical superiority ultimately permitted them to compel another Russian retreat, hugely disproportionate losses of manpower and military equipment have been inflicted on the Ukrainian attackers. Late last week, in my article entitled Turning Point, I described how the Ukrainians had expended thousands of troops and hundreds of vehicles in their quasi-fanatical attempts to take both Kupyansk and Liman. Nevertheless, those two towns were taken, and the Ukrainians have continued to make modest advances since then while the Russians prepare yet another hardened defensive line several kilometers further east.

I’ve also been reporting for weeks now regarding the never-ending trains of Russian equipment and troops streaming into the region from various directions – and yet few if any of these major reinforcements have found their way to the front lines, much to the chagrin of those cheering on the Russian cause, and who have been devastated by what appear to be repeated Russian defeats. However, in just the last few hours, reports have been leaking out that western intelligence has detected a major buildup of Russian forces in and around Belgorod, just across the border of the Kharkov Oblast, and immediately north of the current line of contact. The reliability of this intelligence is not yet determined, and even if true, its significance remains as yet unknown, but I will share two of the reports I’ve seen on Telegram in the past couple hours – reports that are circulating among both Russian- and Ukrainian-friendly sources with a reasonable degree of established credibility.

First from a Ukrainian-friendly channel that has long exhibited connections to a source within the Ukrainian government: “Our source reports that the Office of the President received a warning that the risk of a Russian strike and counter-offensive behind Ukrainian lines remains. “The only thing is that no one can say exactly when, how, and where it will happen. The movement can abruptly begin along the entire border of Ukraine. The Russians know that Zelensky instructed everyone to remove reserves from the border regions and send them to the front line for an offensive (blitzkrieg). “That is, once again entering the Sumy region, the RF Armed Forces can easily take hundreds of kilometers under them, not to mention an attack on the northern part of the Kharkov region, or Belarus joining the game.”

A Russian-friendly source (presumably also relying on a Ukraine-friendly source) reports as follows: “MI6 has passed intelligence to the Office of the President (Zelensky) and the General Staff (Zaluzhny) that Russia continues to amass forces in the Belgorod region and appear to be in no rush to use them as a reserve. “British intelligence has warned the General Staff that these forces may be concentrating for a Russian counter-attack along the border of the Oskol River to cut off the increasingly stretched Ukrainian forces grouping that has only a few supply routes available to it.”

Read more …

“..central bankers and governments are going to get sick of being humiliated by financial markets. They’ll decide that significant currency intervention is needed to stabilise exchange rates.”

• Capital Controls – The Third Horseman Of The Unholy Trinity (Hubble)

According to an economic theory called the Unholy Trinity, governments can only ever have two of the following three things: pegged exchange rates, independent monetary policy and free capital flows. The reason why this is so is quite complicated. But the point is that they must choose two of the three, making the third a pressure valve for the problems created by their attempts to control the other two. Of course, governments occasionally try to have all three. But it always ends in humiliation. It’s only a question of when. In this context, humiliation may mean the breaking of the (managed) currency peg. Think of what happened to sterling on Black Wednesday, 16 September 1992, when the currency was forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) and subsequently plunged.

Alternatively, humiliation may mean the loss of control of monetary policy, and rampant inflation. There are plenty of contemporary examples. Finally, humiliation may involve massive capital flight from the country in question, which results in the imposition of capital controls. Apartheid-era South Africa provides a good example. Just look at the news today for the latest example of the Unholy Trinity being on the move… In Japan, the authorities re pegging interest rates low to help the economy and the government deal with too much debt. This is a major reason why the yen has been hammered in foreign exchange markets this year.

In the UK, there are fears of a currency crisis because interest rates can’t go higher without triggering a debt crisis. In Sweden, the central bank was forced to hike interest rates a full percent to try and stem the tide in the falling currency. The pressure valves are whistling. Currencies and monetary policy are colliding with each other. And policy makers are being humiliated. But what about the third part of the Unholy Trinity? For now, capital flows are still free. In my view, at some point, central bankers and governments are going to get sick of being humiliated by financial markets. They’ll decide that significant currency intervention is needed to stabilise exchange rates. And they won’t be willing to give up on controlling monetary policy. But that means they’ll be forced to unleash the third horseman of the Unholy Trinity: capital controls.

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It cannot -should not- be that Fauci gets to terrorize the nation for 2+ years, double his wealth in the process, retire in peace with the largest US pension ever, and pay Daszak millions more for gain-of-function research.

• Fauci Gives Daszak Millions More To Study Gain Of Function (NYP)

A shadowy NYC non-profit run by a scientist who tried to squelch the theory that COVID-19 emerged from a Chinese lab has received millions more from the National Institutes of Health to study similar viruses in Southeast Asia. A $653,392 grant to Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance, awarded Sept. 21, is being administered by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — whose director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, announced in August that he was stepping down at the end of this year. The grant is the first installment of a five-year award totaling $3.3 million — and was doled out on the same day NIAID awarded EcoHealth more than $2.1 million for two more ongoing studies, one of which involves so-called “gain-of-function” to make viruses more dangerous.

EcoHealth Alliance previously received millions in grants — directing some of those funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, from where many believe COVID-19 leaked into the city of 11 million and trigged the worst global pandemic in 100 years. Previously released emails have documented a close relationship between Daszak and Fauci, who received a “personal thank you” from the EcoHealth chief in April 2020 for backing the theory that COVID-19 spread naturally from bats to humans. Vanity Fair reported in June of last year that Daszak personally organized a February 2020 statement signed by 27 scientists and published in the influential British medical journal The Lancet.

The statement, which deplored the lab leak idea as a conspiracy theory, included the signatures of six scientists who had either worked at or been funded by EcoHealth Alliance — conflicts that, along with Daszak’s ties to the Wuhan lab, were not disclosed. Daszak has so far declined to answer questions from lawmakers about EcoHealth’s work with the Wuhan lab, leading Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) to call for the organization to be blocked from receiving federal funds until its leader comes clean. “This is like a bad sequel with the same plot and characters, but a bigger budget,” Ernst told The Post in a statement Monday.

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“He effectively swapped out an entity that he owned 20% of to a business that he owned 100% of, which is fraud.”

• Hunter Biden Committed ‘Fraud’ Against Business Partners – Bobulinski (Fox)

Tony Bobulinski says his former associate, Hunter Biden, committed crimes against his business partners by tampering with key documents to funnel over $5 million into a company he owned. “It’s called fraud,” Bobulinski told Fox News host Tucker Carlson, during an in-depth conversation that will air during “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Tuesday. Bobulinski, a retired lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, is the former CEO of SinoHawk Holdings, which he has long said was the partnership between a Chinese energy firm and the Biden family. He believes Hunter Biden changed references to a SinoHawk-linked LLC called Oneida Holdings in a 2017 limited liability company agreement to divert millions of dollars to a company he held a larger stake in.


“It’s sort of staggering that that document is exactly the same document as SinoHawk Holdings, LLC. And it appears that Hunter Biden, Jim Biden and the Biden family literally copied the same document down to typos… they removed Oneida Holdings, which was the Delaware LLC that represented Jim Biden, Hunter Biden, myself, Rob Walker and James Gilliar,” Bobulinski said. “Hunter and his lawyer, Jorge Misires, replaced it with Owasco, which was Hunter Biden’s law firm or business that he operated,” Bobulinski said. “He effectively swapped out an entity that he owned 20% of to a business that he owned 100% of, which is fraud.” Carlson then asked Bobulinski if he saw any other possible explanation than fraud committed by Hunter Biden. “I’m sure you can reach out to the Biden family and get comment from them, but there are calls,” Bobulinski said. “He received over $5 million.”

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“When you’re radically destabilizing and restructuring a society, you hit them hard with the Shock-and-Awe for a few weeks, or months (or years in this case), and then you gently ease them into the new “reality.”

• The Morning After (CJ Hopkins)

This is the weirdest part of the PSYOP. It’s like the morning after an office party on which you wake up almost terminally hungover to hazy memories of having performed a Tequila-fuelled blowjob on Bob in Accounting in what was either the 9th Floor Reception Area or possibly the downstairs lobby of your building while someone vaguely resembling that smirking kid in the Mail Room filmed it on his phone. Yes, it’s the Morning After … that revolting regurgitant chorus you’re hearing is the sound of millions of Covidian Cultists down on their knees in their gender-neutral bathrooms praying to the Porcelain God. It has been quite a trip these last two and a half years, but the orgy of fear and hatred is over, the mass hysteria is wearing off, and the reality of the damage they have done is beginning to become undeniable.

Countless thousands of people have been killed, seriously injured, and permanently disabled, victims of experimental “vaccines” they did not need but were coerced into taking. Societies have been torn apart, economies crippled, institutions discredited, democratic precepts like the rule of law and constitutional rights made mockeries of themselves, friends and families turned against each other, and so on, and the dust hasn’t even settled yet. It will take many years to assess the damage…or, rather, to recontextualize, rationalize, deny, and memory-hole the damage (while simultaneously “normalizing” the fascistic biosecurity dystopia the damage made it possible to implement). This process is now well underway.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed over the past several months, governments, global health authorities, the corporate and state media, the culture industry, and other key components of “The New Normal Reich” have been quietly phasing out their “Covid restrictions,” rewriting “The Science,” rewriting history (i.e., the science and history they had previously rewritten), executing limited hangouts, and otherwise transitioning the masses out of “emergency” mode and into the New Normal. In other words, everything is going to plan. You can’t keep people whipped up into a state of full-blown hysteria indefinitely. When you’re radically destabilizing and restructuring a society, you hit them hard with the Shock-and-Awe for a few weeks, or months (or years in this case), and then you gently ease them into the new “reality.”

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Time is in the eye of the beholder.

• Why Does Time Go Forwards, Not Backwards? (Henriques)

Here’s the problem: when you zoom in to the level of, say, one water molecule colliding and bouncing off another, the arrow of time disappears. If you watched a microscopic video of that collision and then you rewound it, it wouldn’t be obvious which way was forwards and which backwards. At the very smallest scale, the phenomenon that produces heat – collisions of molecules – is time-symmetric. This means that the arrow of time from past to future only emerges when you take a step back from the microscopic world to the macroscopic – something first appreciated by the Austrian physicist-philosopher Ludwig Boltzmann. “So the direction of time comes from the fact that we look at big things, we don’t look at the details,” says Rovelli.

“From this step, from the fundamental microscopic vision of the world to the coarse-grained, the approximate description of the macroscopic world – this is where the direction of time comes in. “It’s not that the world is fundamentally oriented in space and time,” Rovelli says. It’s that when we look around, we see a direction in which medium-sized, everyday things have more entropy – the ripened apple fallen from the tree, the shuffled pack of cards. While entropy does seem to be inextricably bound up with the arrow of time, it feels a bit surprising – perhaps even disconcerting – that the one law of physics that has a strong directionality of time built into it loses this directionality when you look at very small things. “What is entropy?” Rovelli says. “Entropy is simply how much we’re forgetting about the microphysics, how much we are forgetting about the molecules.”

If there is an arrow of time, where did it come from in the first place? “The answer is embedded in the beginning of the Universe,” says Carroll. “The answer is because the Big Bang had low entropy. And still, 14 billion years later we are swimming in the aftermath of that tsunami that started near the Big Bang. That’s why time has a direction for us.” The extraordinarily low entropy of the Universe at the Big Bang is both an answer and an enormous question. “The thing we understand the least about the nature of time, is why the Big Bang had low entropy, why the early Universe was like that,” says Carroll. “And I think honestly, as a working cosmologist, I think that my fellow cosmologists have dropped the ball on this one. They don’t really take that problem seriously enough.”

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8 minutes of Bobulinski

 

 

 

 


With the head of a vulture and body of a parrot, the Dracula Parrot is one of nature’s most beautiful and unnerving birds. Photo by Ondrej Prosick

 

 

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

 

 

 

Debt Rattle October 29 2020

Oct 292020
 
 October 29, 2020  Posted by at 9:38 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  20 Responses »


Gustav Klimt Pine forest II 1901

 

• Senate Committee: All Bobulinski Materials Reviewed To Date Legitimate (DC)
• Tucker Carlson: Bobulinski Documents Intercepted and Removed (sundance)
• Zuckerberg: ‘I Would Guess That Our Employee Base Skews Left-Leaning’ (JTN)
• Gundlach: Trump Will Win Next Week, “Some Sort Of Revolution” By 2027 (ZH)
• Professor Deliberately Catches COVID19 To Test His Immune Response (ST)
• Cable News October Ratings Explode As Fox News Hits Historic Highs (Hill)
• CNN Won’t Run Trump Ad Warning Biden Will Raise Taxes On Middle Class (Hill)
• ‘Anonymous’ Anti-Trump Official Revealed As CNN Pundit Miles Taylor (Fox)
• ALICE Doesn’t Work Here Anymore (CHS)
• The Fed MUST Have Inflation (Rickards)
• Ornstein: Impeach Amy Coney Barrett (Turley)
• Bellingcat Smears OPCW Whistleblower, Journalists With False Letter (Maté)
• Greece Has Protected Its Jobs Better Than The Rest Of The EU (K.)
• Jack Dorsey Hires Homeless Man To Fill In For Him At Senate Hearings (BBee)

 

 

“If you can’t expose crime in the government you don’t really have a government. You have a dictatorship that is dressed up like a government.”

– Joe Rogan

 

 

Joe Rogan Greenwald

 

 

“I appreciate that the FBI has a job to do, and I am glad they are finally taking an interest in these concerning financial matters that our Committees have been investigating for months..”

• Senate Committee: All Bobulinski Materials Reviewed To Date Legitimate (DC)

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has been successful in verifying all materials reviewed so far from Hunter Biden’s ex-business partner Tony Bobulinski, the Daily Caller has learned. Committee Chairman Sen. Ron Johnson will not call Bobulinski to testify before the November 3 elections, as the committee is working to review all the information provided to the committee by Bobulinski. The information has to be verified, as it is subject to the same false information to Congress laws that verbal or written testimony does. However, a Johnson spokesperson told the Caller that all the material provided by Bobulinski that has been reviewed so far has turned out to be legitimate. The committee has “also” not come across any “signs” or evidence to suggest the content is false, the spokesperson added.


Bobulinski, who said Tuesday he believes “Joe Biden and the Biden family are compromised” in an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, has turned over evidence to the FBI alleging he met twice in the past with the former vice president in regards to business with his son Hunter. The Biden family has not yet disputed this information. [..] Johnson had the chance to interview Bobulinski on Friday and released a statement shortly after saying: “I appreciate that the FBI has a job to do, and I am glad they are finally taking an interest in these concerning financial matters that our Committees have been investigating for months,” Sen. Johnson said. “I expect that Mr. Bobulinski will speak with our committee as soon as possible and fully share his insights into the Biden family’s business dealings.”

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Strange story. He has copies.

• Tucker Carlson: Bobulinski Documents Intercepted and Removed (sundance)

Tucker Carlson revealed this evening that someone intercepted an envelope containing documents of evidence supporting the claims by Tony Bobulinski. The documents were mailed by a “well known overnight transport” company and mysteriously were removed in transit from New York to LA. I have a hunch what happened…. but first, WATCH:

Tucker missing documents

I review this story from a position that I cannot fully explain. However, I have personal experience -recent experience- with a similar and rather unusual situation that cannot be explained by any method other than DHS surveillance. So here’s what I think took place. The package, likely a Fed-X delivery, was intercepted by FBI agents using mechanisms for tracking and surveillance that open targeting through portals connected to DHS. As an outcome of the U.S. Patriot Act, the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security has an agreement in place with mail shipping companies, public/private services, that essentially allows them a portal to track all in-state and interstate mail deliveries.

The FBI has access to this data network in the same way the FBI has access to federal transportation records. Just like when you book a flight and DHS portals are open that allow FBI to track your movements domestically. This type of portal is also accessed in private company transportation like Uber, Lyft etc. DHS, and as a consequence the FBI, can easily track your whereabouts. Without much hesitation I will bet the FBI was monitoring the communication of Bobulinski, and by extension the entire Tucker Carlson production network. Once the shipment was known to be taking place, the DHS portals are opened; the package is tracked; and the FBI moves in to intercept the delivery.

The transport company doesn’t need to be participating because they are essentially unneeded. Their system network is connected to the FBI. That’s the likely scenario. Wanna bet?

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Every time these people come in for questioning, nothing happens.

• Zuckerberg: ‘I Would Guess That Our Employee Base Skews Left-Leaning’ (JTN)

Under questioning from Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday that the employees at his company “skew left-leaning.” “Would you say that the political ideology of the employees at your company is, let’s say, 50:50, conservative versus liberal progressive or do you think it’s closer to 90% liberal and 10% conservative?” Johnson asked during a hearing with the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Google on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. “I don’t know the makeup of our employees because it’s not something we ask or focus on,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey responded. “It’s not something I look for.”

In response to the same question, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said more than 50% of Google’s 100,000 employees are from outside of California. “It does tend to be proportionate to the areas that we are in,” he said. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said: “I don’t know the exact number but I would guess that our employee base skews left-leaning.” According to OpenSecrets.org, the employees of Facebook, Google and Twitter favored Democrats over Republicans with political contributions in this election cycle. Johnson also asked Dorsey and Zuckerberg if they had “any evidence” that the New York Post’s recent reporting on content from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden was based on Russian disinformation.

“We don’t,” Dorsey said. Later in the hearing, GOP Sen. Roger Wicker, the committee chairman, asked Zuckerberg if he has evidence that Russia was the source of the information in the New York Post’s reporting. “I would rely on the FBI to make that assessment,” Zuckerberg said but added that he personally does not have that evidence. “I do not, myself.”

@tedcruz and @jack

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“Some people will hedge their bets and split their vote towards retaining the Republican Senate because they view Biden as risky..”

• Gundlach: Trump Will Win Next Week, “Some Sort Of Revolution” By 2027 (ZH)

Back at the start of 2016, when nobody else would even consider such an outcome, DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeff Gundlach shocked the economic, financial and political establishments when during the January Barron’s roundtable of that year, he predicted that Donald Trump would become the next US president. He was right. Fast forward to today when one week before the elections, and in an environment when most polls predict that Biden will crush Trump and where Nate Silver gives Trump just as 13% chance of defeating Trump, Jeffrey Gundlach is predicting another victory for President Donald Trump.


As Financial Advisor magazine reported, during a Tuesday webcast as part of Schwab’s 2020 IMPACT conference, Gundlach said that despite polls, analysis and betting odds that suggest otherwise, Trump is likely to outpace former Democratic vice president Joe Biden in the contest. “The polls right now say he isn’t going to win, but they said that four years ago,” said Gundlach referring to the following chart. “Mind you, my conviction is way lower than it was four years ago. But back in [that period], when Trump was little more than an asterisk in the betting odds, I predicted he was going to win. This one is much more murky, but in my eyes, it favors a Trump win.”

Addressing the elephant in the room, Gundlach said that public political polls are often “designed to create impressions” rather than illustrate reality, said Gundlach, and shouldn’t be trusted. He also argued that many Trump voters are unwilling to engage with pollsters and the media because they fear retribution for their political beliefs, also known as the “shy voter” phenomenon according to which “Over 10% Of Trump Voters Won’t Admit Preferences To Pollsters.” Biden also faces an enthusiasm problem, said Gundlach. Gundlach then went on to crush hopes of a Blue Wave, arguing that Republicans will likely keep the Senate regardless of who wins – mainly because of uncertainty around Biden.


“Some people will hedge their bets and split their vote towards retaining the Republican Senate because they view Biden as risky,” said Gundlach, who noted that Trump is often portrayed as riskier than Biden. And yet, in the four years of his presidency, there have been no international conflicts, despite some outrageous and bellicose language. “You might dislike Trump or some of his policies, but risk is not what you’re getting with him, particularly compared to turning the presidency over to another party, and particularly when that party’s candidate isn’t saying what some of his policy positions are.”

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“His conclusion is that there will be no collective immunity to coronavirus despite earlier hopes. The virus is here to stay for a long while, and while vaccines may give immunity this is likely to be temporary.”

• Professor Deliberately Catches COVID19 To Test His Immune Response (ST)

Alexander Chepurnov had already recovered once when he re-infected himself in an experiment. The virologist experimented with his own health to check how long the body’s immune response lasted after his first bout of COVID-19. A former researcher at the Vector Centre of Virology and Biotechnology who currently works at the Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Chepurnov was first infected at the end of February 2020. ‘I was on my way to a skiing holiday from Siberia to France with a stopover in Moscow,’ he said. ‘After getting to the mountains I felt unwell with a high fever and sharp chest pain. My sense of smell has gone, too.’ It was impossible back then to do a COVID-19 test in Europe, he told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper in Novosibirsk.

He cut the holiday short, returned home to Novosibirsk, and was promptly diagnosed with double pneumonia. A month later in March he did a test which showed antibodies to Covid, confirming that he had been infected with the new virus. ‘I was the first in my team who had COVID-19,’ he said. ‘We started to follow the way antibodies ‘behaved’, how strong they were, and how long they stayed in the body. ‘The observation showed that they were fast to decrease. By the end of the third month from the moment I felt sick the antibodies were no longer detected.’ The scientist, 68 when he was first hit by COVID-19, said that he wanted to study the probability of getting re-infected.

To test the strength of his own immune response, Chepurnov deliberately exposed himself to COVID-19-positive patients wearing no protection. ‘My body’s defence fell exactly six months after I got the first infection. The first sign was a sore throat. The nasopharyngeal PCR smear immediately showed a positive reaction to COVID-19 on the 27th cycle, and two days later already on the 17th cycle, which corresponds to a high viral titre’, Chepurnov said of the second bout. The second illness was more acute, with Chepurnov needing hospitalisation after his saturation fell below 93. ‘For five days, my body temperature remained above 39C,’ he said. ‘I lost the sense of smell, my taste perception changed.

‘On the sixth day of the illness, the CT scan of the lungs was clear, and three days after the scan the X-ray showed double pneumonia. ‘The virus went away rather quickly – after two weeks it was no longer detected in the nasopharyngeal or in other samples.’ His conclusion is that there will be no collective immunity to coronavirus despite earlier hopes. The virus is here to stay for a long while, and while vaccines may give immunity this is likely to be temporary. ‘We need a vaccine that can be used multiple times, a recombinant vaccine will not suit,’ he said. ‘Once injected with the adenoviral vector-based vaccine we won’t be able to repeat it because the immunity against the adenoviral carrier will keep interfering.’

Read more …

I’d be more interested in seeing these numbers for social media.

• Cable News October Ratings Explode As Fox News Hits Historic Highs (Hill)

Cable news ratings exploded in October across Fox News, CNN and MSNBC as all three networks saw record numbers for the month, with Fox News having the highest-rated month in cable news history, according to Nielsen Media Research. The month included a positive coronavirus test for the president, who was briefly hospitalized, and a fever pitch on the presidential campaign trail. The month also included a presidential debate, a vice presidential debate and multiple town hall events. Fox News led the way with a whopping 4.9 million total viewers in prime time, the highest number in the history of cable news dating back 40 years. MSNBC was second with 2.7 million viewers, followed by CNN with 2.4 million.


The top five shows for the month included Fox’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” with an average of 5.3 million viewers, followed by “Hannity” with 5.2 million and “The Five” with 4.1 million despite airing before prime time in the 5 p.m. EDT slot. “The Ingraham Angle” delivered an average of just over 4 million total viewers, finishing fourth overall, with MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show” rounding out the top five with 3.7 million. All three of the major cable news networks also saw substantial growth when compared to the same month last year. Fox News was up 83 percent year-over-year in total viewers and 139 percent in the key 25-54 demographic that advertisers covet most in prime time. CNN saw a 98 percent increase in total viewers when compared to October 2019, and a 116 percent jump in the demographic, while MSNBC is up 38 percent in total viewers and 45 percent in the younger category.

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“..the ad has been approved to run on ABC, AMC, Cooking, CBS, Comcast, DIY, Discovery, ESPN, Food Network, Fox, HGTV, History, Lifetime and The Weather Channel.”

• CNN Won’t Run Trump Ad Warning Biden Will Raise Taxes On Middle Class (Hill)

CNN has informed the largest outside group supporting President Trump’s reelection that it will not run one of its new ads, saying the ad is false because it warns Democratic nominee Joe Biden will raise taxes on the middle class and implies that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) supports socialist policies. The ad, from America First Action (AFA), says Biden “sided with socialists,” while showing pictures of Pelosi and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). The narrator of the ad also warns that Biden will “raise taxes on the middle class” and that “his liberal agenda will cost millions of jobs.” America First Action says the ad has been approved to run on ABC, AMC, Cooking, CBS, Comcast, DIY, Discovery, ESPN, Food Network, Fox, HGTV, History, Lifetime and The Weather Channel.

But in an email, an account executive at Warner Media said the clearance team rejected it. “WarnerMedia Commercial Clearance has not accepted America First Action’s advertisement ‘We Are America’ for its networks as the ad does not meet its commercial clearance standards,” the email states. “Specifically, the ad asserts that Biden will raise taxes on the middle class. That claim is not adequately substantiated and has been judged false by independent fact-checkers. The advertisement also mischaracterizes Nancy Pelosi as a socialist.” [..] In a letter to lawyers at Warner Media, an attorney representing AFA accused the media company of censoring normal political speech that is “at the very least a matter worthy of debate.”

“While AFA’s opponents are, of course, permitted to purchase air time to try to rebut AFA’s claims, it is not the job of your network to censor a statement that is factually supported and relates to an important issue in the upcoming election,” wrote Stephen Kenny of Jones Day. “Indeed, every other cable network is currently airing AFA’s ad. If you continue to decline to air the ad, please let us know why the factual support outlined above is insufficient.”

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The New York Times offers anonymous editorial space to complete nobodies these days. Sweet Jesus. Anything to smear Trump.

• ‘Anonymous’ Anti-Trump Official Revealed As CNN Pundit Miles Taylor (Fox)

The anonymous senior Trump administration official who authored the infamous New York Times op-ed in 2018 declaring to be part of the “resistance” revealed himself on Wednesday to be former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor. Taylor, who previously came forward as a critic of President Trump and a supporter of Joe Biden in August, explained that he wrote his 2019 book “A Warning” as Anonymous as a “caution to voters that it wasn’t as bad as it looked inside the Trump administration – it was worse.” “While I claim sole authorship of the work, the sentiments expressed within it were widely held among officials at the highest levels of the federal government,” Taylor wrote in a statement published on Medium. “In other words, Trump’s own lieutenants were alarmed by his instability.”

Taylor was hired by CNN as a contributor in September. However, it is now known that he lied to the network by denying authorship of the op-ed during an Aug. 21 interview with his now-colleague Anderson Cooper. “There was an op-ed, there was a book by someone calling themselves ‘Anonymous.’ Are you aware of who that is?” Cooper asked. “I’m not,” Taylor responded. “Look, that was a parlor game that happened in Washington D.C. of a lot of folks trying to think of who that might be. I’ve got my own thoughts about who that might be, but-” “You’re not Anonymous,” Cooper interjected. “I wear a mask for two things, Anderson: Halloweens and pandemics. So, no,” Taylor answered.

[..] According to CNN anchor Jake Tapper, who broke the news on his network on Wednesday afternoon, “We did not know this until today. [..] White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany released a statement knocking Taylor as a “low-level, disgruntled former staffer,” as well as “a liar and a coward who chose anonymity over action and leaking over leading. “He was ineffective and incompetent during his time as DHS Chief of Staff which is why he was promptly fired after only serving in this role for a matter of weeks,” McEnany added. “It is appalling a low-ranking official would be granted anonymity and it is clear the New York Times is doing the bidding of Never-Trumpers and Democrats.”

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows also piled on the former Trump official. You have got to be kidding me. Miles Taylor? That’s who the New York Times granted an anonymous editorial article? I’ve seen more exciting reveals in Scooby-Doo episodes. What a monumental embarrassment,” Meadows tweeted.

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“ALICE will never go back to her insecure, low-wage job, ever.”

• ALICE Doesn’t Work Here Anymore (CHS)

Meet ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, at least she was employed until the pandemic presented impossible choices between taking care of her children and their education, and her aging parents, and keeping her demanding, low-wage job. Though it doesn’t fit in with the cute mythology of “capitalism” that apologists love to promote, ALICE wasn’t working to get ahead–she was working to barely survive in an economy where wages have stagnated for decades and recently lost ground at an alarming rate as costs for everything from rent to childcare to utilities have soared while her hours have been cut.

This is the neofeudalism I’ve often described here: the modern-day equivalent of the landless (i.e. owns no capital) serf is a landless (i.e. owns no capital) debt-serf with student loans, an auto loan and credit card debt and income that is constrained by globalization, financialization and the scarcity of high-paying work that isn’t reserved for insiders and the privileged few who chose their wealthy, well-educated, socially connected parents wisely. Lacking capital and any realistic means of acquiring any, the debt-serf has only labor to sell, and in a globalized world in which everyone selling their labor is competing globally for work producing tradable goods and services, ordinary labor has lost purchasing power for the past 45 years (see charts below).

The dominance of Big Tech monopoly platforms has created new fields for the exploitation of ordinary labor in the low-paid gig economy and fulfillment centers. The traditional neofeudal fiefdoms (retail outlets, hospitality and restaurants) have been hit by the pandemic pullback in consumer spending, and the other low-wage fiefdoms (fast food and domestic service) have been in structural decline for years. Meanwhile, the owners of the Financial Nobility’s fiefdoms and Big Tech monopolies have enjoyed unprecedented gains in income and wealth (see charts below) as wages’ share of the economy has declined for decades, in effect transferring trillions from labor to the Financial Nobility.

This neofeudal arrangement is about to change as Universal Basic Income (UBI) or its equivalent becomes the accepted status quo solution to neofeudalism’s soaring inequality. Since there’s no limit to how much currency can be created by the Federal Reserve, then why not distribute enough “free money” to the serfs to tamp down the brewing revolt? What the political class and the Financial Nobility don’t yet grasp (due to their complete disconnect from neofeudal daily life) is that ALICE will never go back to her insecure, low-wage job, ever. No matter how meager the UBI, permanent unemployment, stimulus or whatever the political class calls the distribution of “Fed free money,” ALICE will find a way to escape the bonds of neofeudal serfdom.

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But can’t create it, or print it. I’m not a fan of using all sorts of different kids of inflation, but in this case the point remains the same.

• The Fed MUST Have Inflation (Rickards)

The Fed says that “price stability” is part of their dual mandate and they are committed to maintaining the purchasing power of the dollar. But the Fed has a funny definition of price stability. Common sense says price stability should be zero inflation and zero deflation. A dollar five years from now should have the same purchasing power as a dollar today. Of course, this purchasing power would be “on average,” since some items are always going up or down in price for reasons that have nothing to do with the Fed. And how you construct the price index matters also. It’s an inexact science, but zero inflation seems like the right target. But the Fed target is 2%, not zero. If that sounds low, it’s not. Inflation of 2% cuts the purchasing power of a dollar in half in 35 years and in half again in another 35 years.


That means in an average lifetime of 70 years, 2% will cause the dollar to 75% of its purchasing power! Just 3% inflation will cut the purchasing power of a dollar by almost 90% in the same average lifetime. But for the Fed, there’s a problem: They can’t produce 2% inflation. Inflation depends on consumer psychology. We have not had much consumer price inflation, but we have had huge asset price inflation. The “inflation” is not in consumer prices; it’s in asset prices. The printed money has to go somewhere. Instead of chasing goods, investors have been chasing yield. Inflation would help diminish the real value of the debt, but central banks have obviously proved impotent at generating inflation. Now central banks face the new depression and more deflation with few policy options to fight it.

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” There is not a single case in history where such a recusal of the justice has occurred under this type of flimsy claim.”

• Ornstein: Impeach Amy Coney Barrett (Turley)

My column this morning in the Hill discussed a call by columnist and professor Norm Ornstein to impeach Amy Coney Barrett if she does not yield to a demand to recuse herself from any election challenge before the Court. A demand for such recusal was filed yesterday in the Supreme Court. Ornstein’s call for impeachment is the latest unhinged response to Barrett nomination and further decouples our national debate from any sense rationality and restraint. Ornstein declared on Twitter: “If Amy Coney Barrett goes on the Court and immediately votes for PA voter suppression, she should quickly be impeached. Trump asked her openly to act to tilt the scales of the election.”

I have already addressed the recusal calls as entirely baseless. Recusal under these circumstances would create a dangerous precedent for future nominees who are pressured to recuse solely to influence the outcome of pending or expected cases. There is not a single case in history where such a recusal of the justice has occurred under this type of flimsy claim. Barrett has no personal, professional, or financial interest in pending election cases. We have had only one justice ever impeached in our history. That was Samuel Chase in 1804 and he was acquitted by the Senate in 1805.

The Chase case is a telling point of comparison. Like today, the politics of the time were lethal and hysterical. Chase was a highly partisan Federalist who was tainted by the use of the Alien and Sedition Acts to attack political critics during the Administration of John Adams. The impeachment, supported by Thomas Jefferson, was based on Chase’s presiding on controversial trials for figures like James Callender. Despite the Federalist being in the minority in the Senate, the senators overwhelmingly rejected the case against Chase. It remains to be seen if we have a bipartisan majority of senators equally committed to the integrity of the Court and the Constitution today.

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Bellingcat is a dangerous arm of US, UK intelligence. We will see that soon again in the MH17 mess.

• Bellingcat Smears OPCW Whistleblower, Journalists With False Letter (Maté)

Bellingcat, the NATO member state-funded website that has participated in a propaganda effort to accuse Syria of a chemical weapons attack in April 2018 and justify the US-led bombing that followed, has published a new falsehood-ridden attack on an OPCW whistleblower whose suppressed findings exposed the pro-war deception. According to Bellingcat, a leak that it has obtained not only “proves that a chemical attack did occur,” in the Syrian city of Douma in April 2018, but also, “shows that any notion of a cover-up at the OPCW is false.” Contrary to Bellingcat’s account, the website has only added a new chapter to the OPCW cover-up scandal by publishing an article beset with multiple demonstrable falsehoods and outlandish or unsupported claims.

It also features a malicious effort to dox and discredit a veteran, highly-regarded OPCW inspector who challenged the censorship of his team’s investigation. The anonymously authored Bellingcat article’s problems begin with its very premise, which turns out to be a blatant falsehood. The article is based on excerpts of a leaked draft letter that, Bellingcat claims, was sent in June 2019 by OPCW Director General Fernando Arias to Brendan Whelan, a member of the OPCW’s Douma team. However, The Grayzone can reveal that the text that Bellingcat published was never actually sent to Whelan. Indeed, the text of the letter featured by Bellingcat was actually an unsent draft that Whelan never received. This fact dismantles the heart of the NATO state-backed website’s argument.

Dr. Whelan, a 16-year OPCW veteran, first challenged the censorship of his team’s investigation in June 2018, weeks after the OPCW team returned from Syria. A series of leaks show that Whelan and the other OPCW inspectors who deployed to Syria found evidence that undermined allegations of a chemical attack in Douma. Yet their data was suppressed, and, when the censorship was challenged, the inspectors were removed from their own investigation. The cover-up coincided with pressure on the OPCW from the U.S. government, which had bombed Syria, along with the UK and France, in April 2018 based on the pretext that the Syrian government was culpable. The OPCW’s final report in March 2019 omitted the suppressed findings and strongly implied Syrian government guilt.

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Well, it’s something.

• Greece Has Protected Its Jobs Better Than The Rest Of The EU (K.)

The Greek government’s measures to protect workers from the effects of the pandemic have served as a shield against unemployment, according to the course of the jobless rate in Greece and the rest of the European Union as revealed by Eurostat figures. In the second quarter of the year, when most of the bloc was in lockdown, the share of workers in Greece who lost their job was below 2% of those employed, against over 6.5% in Spain and between 3.5% and 5% in Italy. Across most EU countries, that rate ranged between 2% and 3.5%, according to an experimental study by the bloc’s statistical service.


Greece achieved that thanks to the introduction of contract suspensions and the subsidy of 534 euros per month to each worker furloughed, which is continuing for more than 160,000 recipients. This puts this country among the member-states that proved best at protecting jobs in the April-June period. On Thursday 116,860 workers will receive the special-purpose compensation for September, adding up to €58 million, and another 41,504 will collect a total of €10.6 million through the Syn-Ergasia labor subsidy program.

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“Don’t harsh my mellow, man. I’m doing this for a couple bags of blow and a $20, man. You suck!”

• Jack Dorsey Hires Homeless Man To Fill In For Him At Senate Hearings (BBee)

Jack Dorsey was summoned to the Senate’s hearing on Big Tech today, but he was tripping on acid with the spider-monkeys off the southern coast of St. Bart’s, so he quickly called up his office and had his people hire a homeless man hanging out in front of Twitter’s headquarters to fill in for him. The hobo was holding up a sign reading “Will Go to Senate Hearing for Crack,” and Dorsey’s assistants quickly hired him for the hearing. “Yeah, uh, censorship, I like that. That’s good stuff,” said the hobo to the confused panel. “The apocalypse is coming, man. The signs are all around us!”

“Sorry, Mr., uh, Dorsey, we were expecting a professional-looking CEO, but you’re clearly just a hobo off the streets of San Francisco,” said Senator Mike Lee. “Couldn’t you at least have taken a shower before talking to the United States Senate?” “Hey, bro, chill out,” the hobo responded. “Don’t harsh my mellow, man. I’m doing this for a couple bags of blow and a $20, man. You suck!” For his part, Mark Zuckerberg programmed a lookalike android to testify.

Ron Johnson @jack

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Joe Rogan Greenwald Clapper

 

 

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Debt Rattle October 28 2020

Oct 282020
 
 October 28, 2020  Posted by at 9:21 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  34 Responses »


Gustav Klimt Pine forest I 1901

 

• Last Round-up at the Wokester Corral (Jim Kunstler)
• Multi-Organ Impairment In Low-Risk Individuals With Long COVID (medrxiv)
• UK Study Finds Evidence Of Waning Antibody Immunity To COVID19 Over Time (R.)
• Spanish Doctors In First Walkout In 25 Years To Protest New COVID19 Order (ZH)
• White House Watch: Biden 49%, Trump 47% (Rasmussen)
• Don’t Believe The Polls – Trump Is Winning (Hill)
• Bobulinski Says He Met Joe Biden Twice In Connection With Chinese Venture (JTN)
• How The Authenticity of Hunter’s Laptop Became Immaterial (Turley)
• Biden Calls Russia #1 Threat But Slammed Romney For Saying It In 2012 (JTN)
• Senate Investigates Hunter Biden’s Failure to Register as Foreign Agent (RCI)
• The Last Days of the Trumpian Reich (CJ Hopkins)
• ‘Covid First’ China Is Trumping ‘America First’ In Economic Recovery (Roach)
• Banksy’s Foolproof Plan for Dealing With Anyone Who Steals His Art (Y!)
• Newly Sworn-In ACB Immediately Orders All Women To Wear Handmaid Outfit (BBee)

 

 

 

 

Kim Dotcom Joe Biden

 

 

“…a free society is obliged to tolerate the expression of disagreeable ideas up to the limit, as the Supreme Court put it, of “crying ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”

• Last Round-up at the Wokester Corral (Jim Kunstler)

I have some questions for former friends who have dumped me on account of my support for Mr. Trump’s re-election — which is mostly a vote to prevent the Democratic Party and its fellow travelers from running the government. On the whole, these former friends are college-educated, mature in experience, and cultured. Some of them are well-acquainted with history, which is to say, they ought to know better than to support the obviously illiberal motives of the political Left. Are you against the principle of free speech? The Democratic Party is. They used to be champions of the First Amendment; now they want to make it conditional on ideas and sentiments they support. Contrary ideas are to be labeled “hate speech,” and suppressed, along with anything that might hurt somebody’s feelings.

How did you come to such a complete misunderstanding of what free speech means? Namely, that a free society is obliged to tolerate the expression of disagreeable ideas up to the limit, as the Supreme Court put it, of “crying ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.” I will answer my own question partially by saying: you have been programmed against free speech by what used to be the very vehicles of it, the newspapers and TV News channels, which have, amazingly, come out against freedom of the press and turned into propaganda outlets for Woke Progressivism and its illiberal agenda — thereby inadvertently committing suicide of the entire profession. We’ve seen this acted-out most vividly just the past week in the social media companies’ efforts to suppress all news of the Biden family’s global business operations, along with The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NPR, and other leading news organizations that Americans used to depend on to know what was happening in the nation.

This is especially unforgivable during a national election. Did you support the movement on campus in recent years to shut down events featuring speakers such as Charles Murray (The Bell Curve), Heather Mac Donald of City Journal, Dinesh D’Souza, and many others who represented not-so-Woke ideas that “offended” you? Since when are your feelings so special that they negate the open exchange of ideas in the places that used to be dedicated to it, the universities? Should higher education only entertain ideas that you and your cohorts approve of? What if, in some future, a different cohort gains control of higher education and seeks to exclude your ideas on the grounds that they’re “offensive” (i.e. they just don’t like them)?

Are you in favor of a politicized Department of Justice and CIA? That is what the Democratic Party’s Resistance League deliberately brought about during the 2016 election, and they continue to promote it. Is it okay for bureaucrats to break the law to disable their political adversaries? That was the essence of the RussiaGate ruse. Former employees of those agencies, such as ex-CIA chief John Brennan and Andrew Weissmann, who ran the Mueller investigation, to this day still hype “Russian collusion” falsehoods to deflect attention from their own misdeeds. You let them get away with that.

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201 participants, median age 44, 70% women, large majority not high risk. Only 18% hospitalized. Median time 140 days from first symptom: 99% suffered at least four symptoms. 42% suffered at least ten. In 66%, injuries in at least one organ, in 25% in at least two organs.

• Multi-Organ Impairment In Low-Risk Individuals With Long COVID (medrxiv)

Background Severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection has disproportionately affected older individuals and those with underlying medical conditions. Research has focused on short-term outcomes in hospital, and single organ involvement. Consequently, impact of long COVID (persistent symptoms three months post-infection) across multiple organs in low-risk individuals is yet to be assessed.

Methods An ongoing prospective, longitudinal, two-centre, observational study was performed in individuals symptomatic after recovery from acute SARS-CoV-2 infection. Symptoms and organ function (heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, pancreas, spleen) were assessed by standardised questionnaires (EQ-5D-5L, Dyspnoea-12), blood investigations and quantitative magnetic resonance imaging, defining single and multi-organ impairment by consensus definitions.

Findings Between April and September 2020, 201 individuals (mean age 44 (SD 11.0) years, 70% female, 87% white, 31% healthcare workers) completed assessments following SARS-CoV-2 infection (median 140, IQR 105-160 days after initial symptoms). The prevalence of pre-existing conditions (obesity: 20%, hypertension: 6%; diabetes: 2%; heart disease: 4%) was low, and only 18% of individuals had been hospitalised with COVID-19. Fatigue (98%), muscle aches (88%), breathlessness (87%), and headaches (83%) were the most frequently reported symptoms. Ongoing cardiorespiratory (92%) and gastrointestinal (73%) symptoms were common, and 42% of individuals had ten or more symptoms.

There was evidence of mild organ impairment in heart (32%), lungs (33%), kidneys (12%), liver (10%), pancreas (17%), and spleen (6%). Single (66%) and multi-organ (25%) impairment was observed, and was significantly associated with risk of prior COVID-19 hospitalisation (p<0.05).

Interpretation In a young, low-risk population with ongoing symptoms, almost 70% of individuals have impairment in one or more organs four months after initial symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection. There are implications not only for burden of long COVID but also public health approaches which have assumed low risk in young people with no comorbidities.

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It’s the combination of the article above, and this one, that has me thinking. Both talk about what happens in a 6 month period or longer.

• UK Study Finds Evidence Of Waning Antibody Immunity To COVID19 Over Time (R.)

Antibodies against the novel coronavirus declined rapidly in the British population during the summer, a study found on Tuesday, suggesting protection after infection may not be long lasting and raising the prospect of waning immunity in the community. Scientists at Imperial College London have tracked antibody levels in the British population following the first wave of COVID-19 infections in March and April. Their study found that antibody prevalence fell by a quarter, from 6% of the population around the end of June to just 4.4% in September. That raises the prospect of decreasing population immunity ahead of a second wave of infections in recent weeks that has forced local lockdowns and restrictions.

Although immunity to the novel coronavirus is a complex and murky area, and may be assisted by T cells, as well as B cells that can stimulate the quick production of antibodies following re-exposure to the virus, the researchers said the experience of other coronaviruses suggested immunity might not be enduring. “We can see the antibodies and we can see them declining and we know that antibodies on their own are quite protective,” Wendy Barclay, head of the Department of Infectious Disease at Imperial College London told reporters. “On the balance of evidence I would say, with what we know for other coronaviruses, it would look as if immunity declines away at the same rate as antibodies decline away, and that this is an indication of waning immunity at the population level.”

Those for whom COVID-19 was confirmed with a gold standard PCR test had a less pronounced decline in antibodies, compared to people who had been asymptomatic and unaware of their original infection. There was no change in the levels of antibodies seen in healthcare workers, possibly due to repeated exposure to the virus. The study backs up findings from similar surveys in Germany which found the vast majority of people didn’t have COVID-19 antibodies, even in hotspots for the disease, and that antibodies might fade in those who do.

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“The order requires doctors and nurses to report to any of a range of assignments that could be handed to them by the government during the state of emergency..”

• Spanish Doctors In First Walkout In 25 Years To Protest New COVID19 Order (ZH)

Doctors across Spain have walked out on Tuesday in what media outlets have called the first medical strike to rock the country in 25 years. As the coronavirus pandemic rages across Spain, where the Health Ministry reported another 18,418 new daily cases on Tuesday, doctors are beginning the strike, which was called in defiance of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s latest emergency order, which was implemented on Sunday. The order requires doctors and nurses to report to any of a range of assignments that could be handed to them by the government during the state of emergency, which could be in place for months. Doctors complained that the new law violated their rights, and compromised the standard of care for patients, as doctors would end up working in an area they weren’t specialized in.


The strike will continue indefinitely, with doctors set to continue striking on the last Tuesday of every month until a deal has been reached. For the first time, 200,000 new cases were confirmed in Spain over the previous two weeks, and cases on Tuesday were up 33% compared with the prior week. And over the last 24 hours, another 267 people have died. “The Health Ministry hasn’t even dignified us with a meeting to try and get us to call off the strike,” he told Spanish health journal iSanidad. Spain’s hospitals harbor nearly 16,700 active COVID-19 patients – up more than 600 compared to Monday, with one quarter of all the country’s ICU units used to treat those with an infectious disease.

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The day before, Trump was ahead.

• White House Watch: Biden 49%, Trump 47% (Rasmussen)

Democrat Joe Biden has edged back ahead in Rasmussen Reports’ daily White House Watch survey. The latest national telephone and online survey of Likely U.S. Voters shows Biden earning 49% support to President Trump’s 47%. Three percent (3%) like some other candidate, while two percent (2%) are still undecided. Yesterday, Trump was ahead for the first time since mid-September – by a minimal 48% to 47%. The race has been tightening since early in the month.


Rasmussen Reports has been releasing White House Watch weekly on Wednesdays since the beginning of July. But starting this week, White House Watch will be posted daily at 10:30 am Eastern. Trump earns 82% support among Republicans. Biden has 78% of the Democrat vote and leads by three among voters not affiliated with either major party. The survey of 1,500 Likely Voters was conducted October 22 and 25-26, 2020 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 2.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.

Trump: VOTE

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FYI.

• Don’t Believe The Polls – Trump Is Winning (Hill)

We predict that President Trump is going to win the 2020 presidential election — and win big. While the majority of the polls suggest that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is leading, or at best that it’s close, those polls suffer from at least three problems. First, the tone of the questions. There is significant evidence from behavioral psychology that suggests that the way a question is framed predetermines the range of potential answers. In fact, Gallup has found that respondents can answer very differently to questions with the same topic even in the same survey based on the language that’s used. And the use of metaphors can even dwarf the importance of pre-existing differences between Republicans and Democrats.

One of the reasons respondents do that is because of a tendency to give socially desirable answers, which was the case especially during the 2016 election. Most people don’t like confrontation, so the easiest, albeit not necessarily the best, solution is to avoid it. Right now, saying that you’re voting for Trump/Pence is often not the socially desirable answer. In fact, a recent poll by the Cato Institute suggests that nearly two-thirds of Americans say that the political climate is sufficiently harsh that they don’t want to give their genuine opinion about politics.

Second, the sample of respondents. Who responds depends on many factors, including the medium (e.g., landline versus cellphone), the location, the sample size and demographic factors. Moreover, the pool of respondents is not necessarily the same as the pool of likely voters. Even though election polls all contain a margin of error, that margin of error is unreliable if the underlying sample does not reflect the population. Researchers have also identified self-screening as the major contributing factor to the polling failures during the 2016 election cycle. For example, distrust of pollsters also leads to lower response rates for Trump supporters. Rasmussen finds that 17 percent of likely U.S. voters who “strongly approve” of the job President Trump is doing say they are less likely to let others know how they intend to vote in the upcoming election.

By comparison, only 8 percent of those who “strongly disapprove” of the president’s performance say the same. While proper sampling methodology matters more than the size, having a representative sample with enough people still helps considerably. Robert Cahaly of the Trafalgar Group notes how their work to create minimum samples sizes of 1,000 voters, added to their work to doggedly pursue the “quiet Trump voter,” led to Trafalgar being one of the most successful battleground polling firms in the country in 2016. Cahaly explains that “we don’t do a state with less than a thousand. You see these polls, 400, 500, 600 people for a state. I don’t buy that. Your margin of error is far too high.”

Third, the content of the current news cycle. What’s going on in a particular moment in time can influence voter attitudes, particularly in swing states. For example, the recent revelation of Hunter Biden’s hidden emails on his laptop, coupled with the link to his father, has come at an opportune time for the president. Moreover, if the economic recovery continues, the good news may continue putting wind in Trump’s sails.

Leaflet left on reporters’ chairs in Airforce One.

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Crickets in the MSM.

• Bobulinski Says He Met Joe Biden Twice In Connection With Chinese Venture (JTN)

In a lengthy interview with Tucker Carlson on Tuesday night, former Biden family business associate Tony Bobulinski accused Joe Biden of a “blatant lie” in denying any familiarity with his son Hunter’s business undertakings, claiming he himself met with Biden on two separate occasions to discuss prospective ventures into Chinese markets. Bobulinski painted a picture of the Democratic presidential nominee as actively aware in broad strokes of plans for the Biden family to enter into a business partnership with Chinese nationals closely tied to the Chinese Communist Party and People’s Liberation Army — yet with Biden himself maintaining enough distance from the operational details in face-to-face encounters to preserve what his brother Jim Biden would characterize as “plausible deniability.”


Biden’s family members, Bobuilnski claimed, were “putting their entire family legacy on the line” in their dealings with the Chinese. “They knew exactly what they were doing,” he said. They were dealing with a Chinese owned enterprise … that had strong financial support and political support from the Chinese Communist Party. That’s how it was presented to me. That’s not my own words. That’s how they presented it to me and read me in on it.” Bobulinski made headlines last week when he claimed to have firsthand evidence of Biden’s involvement in those deals. “I’ve seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business,” Bobulinski said in a statement. “I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true.”

Tucker Bobulinkski

In a largely unbroken 45-minute interview with Carlson on Tuesday, Bobulinski further went on the record, telling the Fox host that he was approached by the Biden family and several associates in 2017 in order to help manage a business venture in China. Bobulinski said he met with Biden at the Milken Institute’s 2017 Global Conference in Los Angeles. “They were wining and dining me to get me more engaged,” he told Carlson. “I didn’t request to meet with Joe,” Bobulinski said. “They requested I meet with Joe.” Bobulinski, a retired U.S. Navy lieutenant, said he met with Biden twice in the course of his association with the family. Biden reportedly told Bobulinski to “keep an eye on Hunter and [Biden’s brother] James” during their dealings.


Chinese officials, Bobulinski said, looked at him as “irrelevant,” seeing “the Biden family” as the main focus of their dealings. He claimed that the Bidens received a $5 million no-collateral, no-interest loan from Chinese officials. Bobulinski was motivated to come forward, he told Carlson, after California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff denounced recently leaked emails involving Hunter Biden as “Russian disinformation.” That allegation, Bobulinski told Carlson, also smeared his own family’s name. “I was at the end of the rope,” he said. “I called [Biden associate] Rob Walker. I told him if that statement wasn’t retracted by midnight on Sunday then I was going on record.”

Tucker Bobulinkski 8 Minutes
https://twitter.com/i/status/1321285423793131527

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“It simply does not matter. It is disinformation because it is simply inconvenient to treat it as real information.”

• How The Authenticity of Hunter’s Laptop Became Immaterial (Turley)

Yesterday, former Vice President Joe Biden was again insisting that the scandal involving Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation despite the direct refutation of that claim by the FBI. No mainstream reporter bothered to ask the simple question of whether this was his son’s laptop and emails, including emails clearly engaging in an influence peddling scheme and referring to Joe Biden’s knowledge. Instead, media has maintained a consistent and narrow focus. Indeed, in her interview, Leslie Stahl immediately dismissed any “scandal” involving Hunter in an interview with the President on 60 Minutes. It was an open example of what I previously noted in a column: “After all, an allegation is a scandal only if it is damaging. No coverage, no damage, no scandal.”

In her interview with Joe Biden, CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell did not push Biden to simply confirm that the emails were fake or whether he did in fact meet with Hunter’s associates (despite his prior denials). Instead O’Donnell asked: “Do you believe the recent leak of material allegedly from Hunter’s computer is part of a Russian disinformation campaign?” Biden responded with the same answer that has gone unchallenged dozens of times: “From what I’ve read and know the intelligence community warned the president that Giuliani was being fed disinformation from the Russians. And we also know that Putin is trying very hard to spread disinformation about Joe Biden. And so when you put the combination of Russia, Giuliani– the president, together– it’s just what it is. It’s a smear campaign because he has nothing he wants to talk about. What is he running on? What is he running on?”

It did not matter that the answer omitted the key assertion that this was not Hunter’s laptop or emails or that he did not leave the computer with this store. Recently, Washington Post columnist Thomas Rid wrote said the quiet part out loud by telling the media: “We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren’t.” Let that sink in for a second. It does not matter if these are real emails and not Russian disinformation. They probably are real but should be treated as disinformation even though American intelligence has repeatedly rebutted that claim. It does not even matter that the FBI has seized the computer as evidence in a criminal fraud investigation or that a Biden confidant is now giving his allegations to the FBI under threat of criminal charges if he lies to investigators. It simply does not matter. It is disinformation because it is simply inconvenient to treat it as real information.

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Times change. RussiaRussia has become indispensible.

• Biden Calls Russia #1 Threat But Slammed Romney For Saying It In 2012 (JTN)

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden recently identified Russia as the number one threat to America but in 2012, when he was vice president, Biden called then-GOP presidential nominee Gov. Mitt Romney “out of touch” for taking the same position. Biden said Romney views the “world through a Cold War prism that is totally out of touch with the realities of the 21st century.” Biden slammed Romney for referring to Russia as “our number one geopolitical foe,” which was greeted with laughter from members of the audience watching Biden’s address in April 2012. “Governor Romney is mired in a Cold War mindset,” Biden said in a foreign policy speech at New York University in 2012.

Biden referred to Romney’s criticism of Obama’s handling of the New START treaty, which was a nuclear arms control treaty reached with Russia in 2010. “Governor Romney was part of a very small group of Cold War holdovers who never met an arms control treaty that he likes,” he said. “He was way out of the mainstream on this issue, unless you think that’s just political hyperbole.” “He acts like he thinks the Cold War is still on, Russia is still our major adversary,” Biden said in an interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” in 2012. “I don’t know where he has been. We have disagreements with Russia, but they’re united with us on Iran. One of only two ways we’re getting material into Afghanistan to our troops is through Russia … if there is an oil shutdown in any way in the Gulf, they’ll consider increasing oil supplies to Europe. This is not 1956.”

In October 2012, Obama mocked Romney’s position on Russia as the top threat to the U.S. during a presidential debate. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years,” Obama said. In a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday evening, Biden said Russia is the greatest threat to the U.S. “The biggest threat to America right now in terms of breaking up our security and our alliances is Russia,” he said.

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“The email indicates Hunter was familiar with the requirements of the law. It is a crime to knowingly violate FARA. Violations carry a maximum punishment of five years in prison.”

• Senate Investigates Hunter Biden’s Failure to Register as Foreign Agent (RCI)

A search of Justice Department databases reveals that Hunter Biden failed to register as a foreign agent while promoting the interests of foreign business partners in Washington, including brokering meetings with his father and other government officials, and RealClear Investigations has learned at least one Senate committee is investigating whether Joe Biden’s son violated federal laws requiring disclosure of such foreign contacts. The Obama administration did not prosecute Hunter Biden for potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, despite its much more aggressive pursuit of FARA cases relative to other administrations — including its opening of criminal investigations on no fewer than six Trump campaign advisers in 2016.

One of them, Paul Manafort, ended up in prison in part for failing to publicly disclose his lobbying on behalf of Ukrainian clients and partners. Newly discovered April 2015 emails show Hunter Biden appeared to be helping a Ukrainian energy executive meet with and lobby his father, who was vice president at the time. Hunter, who held a lucrative seat on the board of Ukrainian gas giant Burisma at the time, also sought meetings with State Department officials. None of these contacts was publicly disclosed in government filings, according to a search of both FARA and Lobbying Disclosure Act records, which show Hunter registered as a federal lobbyist in 2001 and stopped filing disclosures in 2008. In contrast, Hunter’s former law partner and fellow lobbyist, William Oldaker, has registered as a foreign agent under FARA. Oldaker is Joe Biden’s longtime campaign lawyer and fundraiser.

At least one Senate committee is actively investigating Hunter’s compliance with the FARA law. Though it has not sent a criminal referral to Justice, RCI has also learned that a public-interest law firm is preparing a complaint to Justice regarding Hunter Biden’s arranging meetings between his foreign contacts and his father when he was vice president. Former investigators and prosecutors say the uneven enforcement of the federal statute smacks of politics. “It’s a double standard, 100%,” said former assistant FBI director Chris Swecker, who led public corruption cases out of Washington. Added Swecker, who also served as a prosecutor: “It’s strange how in this election there is no curiosity whatsoever about foreign influence on a potential president of the United States, especially from this country’s greatest threat — China.”

[..] In a May 2017 email, their mutual business partner, James Biden, sent his nephew Hunter, Bobulinski and other partners a list of friendly American political contacts whom they could exploit to advance the proposed joint venture with their Chinese partners. Among the “key domestic contacts” were: Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, former Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California, who is now Joe Biden’s vice presidential running mate. (FARA records show James Biden has not registered as a foreign agent, either.) In an earlier email that same month, Hunter sought to avoid registering as a foreign agent as part of the venture. “We don’t want to have to register as foreign agents,” he told Bobulinski on May 1, 2017, and suggested setting up a U.S. shell company to work around it. The email indicates Hunter was familiar with the requirements of the law. It is a crime to knowingly violate FARA. Violations carry a maximum punishment of five years in prison.

@RobertPLewis: “I didn’t think the audio from Hunter Biden’s laptop could be worse than the child endangerment pics, but it is. Verbal admission from Hunter that he knew he and his dad were in bed & business with Chinese intelligence. Bruh. That’s treason”

Hunter: F*cking spy chief of China

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“Trump will face some sort of Nuremberg trial, where he will have to answer for mass-murdering six million people with the Coronavirus by taking off his mask on the White House balcony. Hillary Clinton will be appointed … something.”

• The Last Days of the Trumpian Reich (CJ Hopkins)

So, according to the corporate media, this is it for Russian-backed Hitler. Game over. The walls are closing in. It’s the last days of the Trumpian Reich. Get those vuvuzelas ready! Yes, apparently, the American people, who were all a bunch of Putin-worshipping, white-supremacist neo-Nazis when they elected Trump in 2016, have come to their senses and are going to deliver a landslide victory to “Slappy” Joe Biden and bring down the curtain on this “Age of Darkness,” or save the world from “racial Orwellianism” or the “bottomless pit of facsism,” or whatever. White supremacy will be defeated and globalization will rise from the ashes! Decency will be restored! Love will trump hate! Black lives will matter!

Slappy and Kamala will immediately fly down and liberate the concentration camps. Trump will face some sort of Nuremberg trial, where he will have to answer for mass-murdering six million people with the Coronavirus by taking off his mask on the White House balcony. Hillary Clinton will be appointed … something. Exuberant liberals will pour into the streets, chanting unintelligible slogans through their designer masks and plastic head bubbles. OK, sure, the global economy will be ruined, and millions of people will be unemployed, and homeless, or will have needlessly died, so that GloboCap could simulate an apocalyptic global plague, and foment racialized civil unrest, and just generally create an atmosphere of confusion, depression, and paranoia, but the War on Populism will finally be over … and GloboCap will start to “Build Back Better!”

OK, it won’t be “better” right away. As our friends at the World Economic Forum note: “Thanks to the ongoing pandemic, the world is off-balance – and it will remain so for years to come. Far from settling into a ‘new normal’, we should expect a Covid19 domino effect, triggering further disruptions – positive as well as negative – over the decade ahead. The wave of civil unrest that spread across America and beyond recently may be one example …” So, all right, maybe not quite the end of the War on Populism, but at least a new stage of it. A chaotic, destructive, violent stage of it, which will require a lot of “emergency measures” and will end up radically transforming the planet into one big pathologized-totalitarian marketplace.

Read more …

Stephen Roach knows a thing or two.

• ‘Covid First’ China Is Trumping ‘America First’ In Economic Recovery (Roach)

Just as China led the world in economic recovery in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, it is playing a similar role today. Its post-Covid rebound is gathering momentum amid a developed world that remains on shaky ground. Unfortunately, this is a bitter pill for many to swallow – especially in the United States, where demonisation of China has reached epic proportions. The two crises are, of course, different. Wall Street was ground zero for the 2008 crisis, while the Covid-19 pandemic was spawned in the wet markets of Wuhan. But in both cases, China’s crisis-response strategy was far more effective than that deployed by the US. In the five years following the onset of the 2008 crisis, annual real GDP growth in China averaged 8.6 per cent (on a purchasing power parity basis).

While that was slower than the blistering (and unsustainable) 11.6 per cent average pace of the five previous years, it was four times the US economy’s anaemic 2.1 per cent average annual growth over the post-crisis 2010-14 period. China’s pandemic response hints at a comparable outcome in the years ahead. The GDP report for the third quarter of 2020 suggests a rapid return to the pre-Covid trend. The 4.9 per cent year-on-year figure for real GDP growth does not convey a full sense of the self-sustaining recovery that is now emerging in China. Measuring economic growth on a sequential quarterly basis and converting those comparisons to annual rates – the preferred construct of US statisticians and policymakers – provides a much cleaner sense of real-time shifts in the underlying momentum of any economy.

On that basis, China’s real GDP rose at an 11 per cent sequential annual rate in the third quarter, following a 55 per cent post-lockdown surge in the second quarter. The comparison with the US is noteworthy. Both economies experienced comparable contractions during their respective lockdowns, which came one quarter later for the US. China’s 33.8 per cent sequential (annualised) plunge in the first quarter was almost identical to the 31.2 per cent US contraction in the second quarter. Based on incoming high-frequency (monthly) data, the so-called GDPNow estimate of the Atlanta Federal Reserve puts third-quarter sequential real GDP growth in the US at around 35 per cent. While that is a welcome and marked turnaround from the record decline during the lockdown, it is about 20 percentage points short of China’s post-lockdown rebound and still leaves the US economy about 3 per cent below its peak of late 2019.

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“The big problem I had with people removing my street work wasn’t that it was exploiting and stealing from the community — it was because the stolen stuff looked so much better than what I was making in the studio..”

• Banksy’s Foolproof Plan for Dealing With Anyone Who Steals His Art (Y!)

Contemporary art is a tricky business. If you’ve collected a painting or sculpture by a modern artist, odds are good that you’ll have some record of the transaction, and some method of verifying that the work you have is both genuine and genuinely obtained. That becomes a bit more complicated when the artist in question — though world-famous — has a penchant for anonymously leaving their work in urban spaces to create impromptu public art. Yes, we’re talking about Banksy, and one of his lesser-known practices which has recently come into sharp relief. Last week, a clip from Antiques Roadshow went viral. It features a man looking to get a small painting by Banksy evaluated. When asked how he’d come by it, the man admit he’d seen it while walking down a street in Brighton one night.

Recognizing it as Banksy’s handiwork, he then removed it from where it had been screwed into place. What follows is a brief and memorable lesson in morality. Pro tip: it’s generally considered poor form to admit to stealing something while being recorded for television. As the show’s host reveals, Banksy has established a virtual portal to authenticate whether specific works of his are both genuine and genuinely obtained — and, as the guy trying to get a painting valued admits, he’d visited the site and been told that the painting could not be validated because it was not obtained legally. Dubbed Pest Control, the service offers an easy-to-use interface to determine a particular work’s validity.

Elsewhere on Pest Control’s site, they offer a more extensive explanation of what they do — namely, issue certificates of authenticity. As for what that means, well — here’s what Pest Control themselves have to say: “The certificate of authenticity (COA) means you can buy, sell or insure a piece of art knowing it’s legitimate and the wheels won’t fall off,” they write. “Pest Control is the only source of COA’s for Banksy. We issue them for paintings, prints, sculptures and other attempts at creativity. We don’t issue them for things like stickers, posters, defaced currency or anything which wasn’t originally intended as a ‘work of art’.” Pest Control also offers a “Keeping It Real” service, which lets prospective buyers of a work by Banksy confirm that the work is, in fact, legitimate.

[..] “The big problem I had with people removing my street work wasn’t that it was exploiting and stealing from the community — it was because the stolen stuff looked so much better than what I was making in the studio,” he told artnet news.

Read more …

“All women are now required to bear at least seventeen babies.”

• Newly Sworn-In ACB Immediately Orders All Women To Wear Handmaid Outfit (BBee)

After being sworn in as a Supreme Court justice, Amy Coney Barrett immediately issued a decree that all women are to wear red handmaid’s outfits for the rest of their lives. “Execute papal order 66,” she said, her eyes glowing red. “Implement the theocratic state.” Barrett sent out squads of soldiers to round up women and make sure they wear the garment at all times. All women are now required to bear at least seventeen babies. Attendance at Catholic Mass is also mandatory. Those who violate the order will be executed, “no exceptions,” said Barrett. “She can’t do this! This is unconstitutional!” screamed Rachel Maddow as enforcement squads kicked in the doors at MSNBC’s studios and grabbed her for reconditioning as a subservient handmaid. “I warned you! I WARNED ALL OF YOU!” The whole country turning into a Christofascist state seems to be a negative to many, but the nation is quite a bit more peaceful now.

Read more …

 

 

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Debt Rattle October 23 2020

Oct 232020
 
 October 23, 2020  Posted by at 8:21 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  16 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Nude, Green Leaves and Bust 1932

 

• Senate Demands Hunter Biden Turn Over A Mountain Of Evidence (ZH)
• Biden Campaign Implies Hunter’s Ex-Biz Partners Are Russian Assets (ZH)
• Bobulinski’s Statement In Full (DM)
• Report on Biden Activities with China (Balding)
• Fourth Turning Election Year Crisis (Jim Quinn)
• Iran Diplomatic Protest Over ‘Absurd’ Accusation Of US Election Meddling (RT)
• Asia Suffering ‘Worst Recession In Living Memory’ (BBC)
• The Women Who Brought Down Greece’s Golden Dawn (G.)
• What Evil Lurks (John Michael Greer)
• Mask-Wearing Study Rejected By Journals Not ‘Brave’ Enough To Publish (RT)
• Climate Scientists Fly “Significantly” More Than Other Researchers (BNE)
• Edward Snowden Granted Permanent Residency In Russia (RT)

 

 

Inevitably, everyone thinks their side won the debate. Here’s a few Twitter polls, but it would be no problem finding some that point in the opposite direction. Because journalism has died in America.

 

 

 

The real winner:

 

 

 

12 days. Where is Hunter?

• Senate Demands Hunter Biden Turn Over A Mountain Of Evidence (ZH)

Senate investigators have demanded that Hunter Biden turn over a mountain of evidence following bombshell emails and text messages which appear to show he and his business partners engaging in an international influence-peddling scheme while his father was Vice President of the United States, according to CBS News’ Catherine Herridge – who brought receipts as usual. “According to recent reports that published emails allegedly from your client’s laptop, the Committees have identified your client as an individual involved in one or more of these business arrangements or financial transactions,” reads a Wednesday letter from Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley.

“As part of the ongoing efforts to validate and verify the information in those emails, the Committees request that your client provide all records related to any of your client’s business dealings—including, but not limited, to bank records, wire transfers, account balances, gifts, business transactions, travel records—with Joe Biden, James Biden, Ye Jianming, Chi Ping Patrick Ho, Zang Jian Jun, Gongwen Dong, Mervyn Yan, Gabriel Popoviciu, or any other associates regarding CEFC China Energy Co. Ltd or any other transactions related to business in Romania, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Czech Republic, or any other countries.” Biden’s lawyers have until Friday to comply.

Over the last week, alleged emails, text messages and compromising photographs from Hunter Biden’s laptop and his former business partners reveal that Joe Biden was directly involved in Hunter’s business dealings, and appears to have directly profited from them. The deals span several countries, from Ukraine – where Joe was ‘introduced’ to a representative from energy giant Burisma before strong-arming the Ukrainian government into firing their chief prosecutor who was investigating the company, to China, where a top Chinese official offered the Biden family a $5 million “interest-free” loan, to Russia, where Hunter took $3.5 million from the former mayor of Moscow’s ex-wife.

Tucker Hunter

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“..if the Biden campaign says that the Hunter scandal is “Russian misinformation,” then his ex-business partners must be Russian operatives..”

• Biden Campaign Implies Hunter’s Ex-Biz Partners Are Russian Assets (ZH)

Ahead of tonight’s presidential debate, the Biden campaign has drawn a red line in the sand on the Hunter Biden pay-for-play scandal, insisting that “If we see tonight from Donald Trump these attacks on Vice President Biden’s family, I think we need to be very, very clear that what he’s doing here is amplifying Russian misinformation.” To review – the undisputed contents of a laptop alleged to be Hunter Biden’s were published by the New York Post last week – after a Delaware computer repair shop owner saw troubling content on at least one laptop dropped off by Biden (who signed a work order). In addition to photos of Hunter with a crack pipe in his mouth and what Rudy Giuliani said are numerous pictures of young girls in compromising situations and one which is “out-and-out pornography,” Hunter’s alleged laptop, which the Biden camp hasn’t disputed the authenticity of, contains evidence that Joe Biden was deeply involved in Hunter’s international business dealings, contrary to past claims of non-involvement.


And while pundits and ‘former intelligence officials’ say this smells like a Russian disinformation operation – there is exactly zero evidence that it is. Meanwhile, the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, explicitly stated that the laptop “is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign,” while the FBI – which sat on the laptop evidence for a year (which would have exonerated Trump and immediately ended the impeachment proceedings) also said it’s not a Russian op. But wait, there’s much more… Forget the laptop for a second. Two ex-business partners of Hunter Biden’s have released text and email evidence, along with formal statements, attesting to Joe Biden’s involvement in Hunter’s business dealings. Ergo, if the Biden campaign says that the Hunter scandal is “Russian misinformation,” then his ex-business partners must be Russian operatives, no?

Read more …

Tony Bobulinski will hand over a ton of evidence to the Senate Committee(s) today.

• Bobulinski’s Statement In Full (DM)

My name is Tony Bobulinski. The facts set forth below are true and accurate; they are not any form of domestic or foreign disinformation. Any suggestion to the contrary is false and offensive. I am the recipient of the email published seven days ago by the New York Post which showed a copy to Hunter Biden and Rob Walker. That email is genuine. This afternoon I received a request from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs and the Senate Committee on Finance requesting all documents relating to my business affairs with the Biden family as well as various foreign entities and individuals. I have extensive relevant records and communications and I intend to produce those items to both Committees in the immediate future.


I am the grandson of a 37 year Army Intelligence officer, the son of a 20+ year career Naval Officer and the brother of a 28 year career Naval Flight Officer. I myself served our country for 4 years and left the Navy as LT Bobulinski. I held a high level security clearance and was an instructor and then CTO for Naval Nuclear Power Training Command. I take great pride in the time my family and I served this country. I am also not a political person. What few campaign contributions I have made in my life were to Democrats. If the media and big tech companies had done their jobs over the past several weeks I would be irrelevant in this story. Given my long standing service and devotion to this great country, I could no longer allow my family’s name to be associated or tied to Russian disinformation or implied lies and false narratives dominating the media right now.

After leaving the military I became an institutional investor investing extensively around the world and on every continent. I have traveled to over 50 countries. I believe, hands down, we live in the greatest country in the world. What I am outlining is fact. I know it is fact because I lived it. I am the CEO of Sinohawk Holdings which was a partnership between the Chinese operating through CEFC/Chairman Ye and the Biden family. I was brought into the company to be the CEO by James Gilliar and Hunter Biden. The reference to ‘the Big Guy’ in the much publicized May 13, 2017 email is in fact a reference to Joe Biden. The other ‘JB’ referenced in that email is Jim Biden, Joe’s brother.

Hunter Biden called his dad ‘the Big Guy’ or ‘my Chairman,’ and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing. I’ve seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business. I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true, because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business, they said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line. I realized the Chinese were not really focused on a healthy financial ROI. They were looking at this as a political or influence investment. Once I realized that Hunter wanted to use the company as his personal piggy bank by just taking money out of it as soon as it came from the Chinese, I took steps to prevent that from happening.

The Johnson Report connected some dots in a way that shocked me — it made me realize the Bidens had gone behind my back and gotten paid millions of dollars by the Chinese, even though they told me they hadn’t and wouldn’t do that to their partners. I would ask the Biden family to address the American people and outline the facts so I can go back to being irrelevant — and so I am not put in a position to have to answer those questions for them. I don’t have a political ax to grind; I just saw behind the Biden curtain and I grew concerned with what I saw. The Biden family aggressively leveraged the Biden family name to make millions of dollars from foreign entities even though some were from communist controlled China. God Bless America!!!!

Bobulinski

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Can’t do this justice in the Debt Rattle format. Christopher Balding -certainly not a Trump supporter- has received a report from his Chinese connections (not the gov’t). Zero Hedge has a good write-up.

• Report on Biden Activities with China (Balding)

Lost among the salacious revelations about laptop provenance is the more mundane reality of influence and money of major United States political figures. Ill informed accusations of Russian hacking and disinformation face the documented reality of a major Chinese state financial partnership with the children of major political figures. A report by an Asian research firm raises worrying questions about the financial links between China and Hunter Biden. Beginning just before Joe Bidens ascendancy to the Vice Presidency, Hunter Biden was travelling to Beijing meeting with Chinese financial institutions and political figures would ultimately become his investors. Finalized in 2013, the investment partnership included money from the Chinese government, social security, and major state-owned banks a veritable who’s who of Chinese state finance.


It is not simply the state money that should cause concern but the structures and deals that took place. Most investment in specific projects came from state owned entities and flowed into state backed projects or enterprises. Even the deals speak to the worst of cronyism. The Hunter Biden investment firm share of a copper mine in the Congo was guaranteed with assets put at risk by the larger copper company to ensure deal flow to Hunter’s firm. In another instance, Bank of China working on an IPO in Hong Kong gave its share allocation to the BHR investment partnership. They were able to do this because even though the Hunter Biden firm completed no notable work on the IPO, it is counted as a subsidiary of the Bank of China. The Hunter Biden Chinese investment partnership is literally invested in by the Chinese state and a subsidiary of the Bank of China owned by the Chinese Ministry of Finance.

The entire arrangement speaks to Chinese state interests. Meetings were held at locations that in China speak to the welcoming of foreign dignitaries or state to state relations. The Chinese organizations surrounding Hunter Biden are known intelligence and influence operatives to the United States government. The innocuous names like Chinese People’s Institute for Foreign Affairs exist to “…carry out government-directed policies and cooperative initiatives with influential foreigners without being perceived as a formal part of the Chinese government.” Interestingly the CPIFA is under the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When the investment partnership was struck in 2013, the Minister of Foreign Affairs was Yang Jiechi. Yang would have been very familiar with Hunter Biden from his days in Washington as the Chinese Ambassador to the United States from 2001 to 2005 during which he met regularly with Joe Biden chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.


Today the same individual who oversaw institutions helping shepherd Hunter’s investment partnership as the Minister of Foreign Affairs is Xi Jinping’s right hand man on foreign affairs and member of the powerful Politburo. Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family. Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion. While this number cannot be completely replicated, given that two deal alone were worth in excess of $1.6 billion this number is not unrealistic at all. A 2% annual fee on assets under management would generate $130 million annually. Add in the 20% fee on capital gains the firm would recognize and it is not difficult to see Hunter’s stake being worth in excess of $50 million.

Read more …

“..a completely captured corporate media has turned a blind eye to the truth as they have acted as accomplices of the coup culprits..”

• Fourth Turning Election Year Crisis (Jim Quinn)

“The next Fourth Turning is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation and empire. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

[..] The dystopian use of disinformation, false narratives, blatant lies and propaganda by the totalitarians constituting the Deep State, as their never-ending coup attempt against a duly elected president attests, will be the catalyst for the next vicious phase of this Fourth Turning. For the last four years the Russiagate coup has dogged Trump, as Obama, Clinton, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Mueller and a myriad of lesser co-conspirators have propagated the Big Lie to cover-up their traitorous actions of trying to overthrow Trump.

An honest truth-seeking press with unbiased journalists would have uncovered this conspiracy and revealed the truthful facts to a concerned public. Instead, a completely captured corporate media has turned a blind eye to the truth as they have acted as accomplices of the coup culprits. Just as evil is the suppression of truth through censorship and keeping silent regarding the truth. Huxley understood how totalitarian propagandists operated decades before the current batch of Silicon Valley authoritarians initiated their national truth repression scheme.

“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.” – Aldous Huxley

A perfect example of this is my local ABC news affiliate doing an hour long broadcast last night with absolutely no mention of the Hunter Biden – Joe Biden pay for play scandal. The truth dies in silence. The left-wing media dominated by six mega-corporations and social media billionaire titans (Bezos, Zuckerberg, Dorsey) have colluded with other left wing billionaires (Soros, Bloomberg) and the traitorous Deep Staters (Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Clinton) to bring down a sitting president and now to memory hole proof of Joe Biden corruption and his son’s illegal dealings with foreign enemies.

Read more …

“Unlike the US, Iran does not interfere in other country’s elections. The world has been witnessing US’ own desperate public attempts to question the outcome of its own elections at the highest level..”

• Iran Diplomatic Protest Over ‘Absurd’ Accusation Of US Election Meddling (RT)

Tehran has denied that it is trying to interfere in the US presidential contest, arguing that unlike Washington, it doesn’t involve itself in foreign elections. Curiously, the US says Iran is both trying to damage and help Trump. Iran summoned the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, who serves as a diplomatic go-between for the two rivals, to file a formal complaint against Washington’s “baseless” claim that the Islamic Republic has been meddling in the upcoming election. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe announced on Wednesday that Iran and Russia have allegedly obtained US voter data as part of a purported plot to “communicate false information to registered voters” in hopes of “causing confusion” ahead of the American electoral contest. He went on to claim that Iran was behind a series of threatening emails that were sent to Democratic voters, apparently in an attempt to “intimidate voters, incite social unrest and damage President Trump.”

A spokesman for Iran’s mission to the United Nations dismissed the allegations as completely unfounded and quipped that Tehran would never mirror Washington’s own tactics. “Unlike the US, Iran does not interfere in other country’s elections. The world has been witnessing US’ own desperate public attempts to question the outcome of its own elections at the highest level,” Alireza Miryousefi said. He described the claims as “absurd” and said Tehran has no interest in trying to influence the outcome of the contest between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden. “The US must end its malign and dangerous accusations against Iran,” the spokesman added.

The 2020 election has been fraught with allegations of foreign meddling, following debunked claims of Russian “collusion” with the Trump campaign in 2016. US intelligence agencies have accused Tehran, Moscow and Beijing of trying to tip the scales for their purportedly preferred candidates. Ratcliffe said on Wednesday that Russia has not taken any concrete actions to interfere in the election, but instead has only secured access to some voter information “just as they had in 2016.”

Read more …

Anywhere but China.

• Asia Suffering ‘Worst Recession In Living Memory’ (BBC)

Asia Pacific is set to recover from its worst recession in living memory, the IMF says. Growth forecasts for the region have been downgraded again, this time from -1.6% to -2.2% for this year. However, the glimmer of hope is for a bounceback of almost 7% next year, according to the IMF. China will play a big part in the region’s growth next year, with its latest data showing continued recovery from the downturn caused by the virus. But there are still many black clouds on the horizon as countries, including India, the Philippines and Malaysia, continue to battle with Covid-19 infections. “The scars will be deep,” said the IMF, pointing to lower investment which will have a knock-on effect by the middle of the decade.


Not only are economies in the region dealing with the fallout from the pandemic, but they are also affected by the US-China trade war, and the growing hostilities between the two economic superpowers. Speaking to BBC’s Asia Business Report on Thursday, Jonathan Ostry, the IMF’s acting director for Asia and Pacific, said: “This is something, for a very export-orientated region, that is going to be a big risk going forward. “We worry about decoupling of major technology hubs – not just in China and the US but more broadly, which would have the affect of diminishing hi-tech trade leading to inefficient production.” Earlier this week, China released its data for the July to September quarter which showed economic growth of 4.9% compared to the same quarter last year. China is seen as “a rare positive figure in a sea of negatives” by the IMF.

Read more …

Real girl power. Love it.

• The Women Who Brought Down Greece’s Golden Dawn (G.)

Behind the bench, before her mostly male audience, as the marathon trial of Golden Dawn entered its last act, supreme court justice Maria Lepenioti did what she has done every week: she kept the peace. It has not been easy. Emotions have often run high. Even as the curtain was about to come down on proceedings with a ruling on whether those convicted should be jailed pending appeal, the Greek judge, both laconic and low-key, has had to pull off an extraordinary balancing act presiding over a case that has put more Nazi leaders and sympathisers in the dock than at any time since Nuremberg. In her court every word has counted. There has been no tolerance for the extreme rhetoric that fuelled the neo-fascist group’s spectacular rise. Nor for jibes from the other side.

“Day after day, session after session, she has managed to keep the harmony,” says Giota Tessi, a reporter with the centre left Syntaktwn paper who has observed the proceedings almost since they began in April 2015. “Her knowledge of the case file is incredible. She has been a model of restraint but she has also been very aware of the weight of the moment.” Historians will look back at the women who played a seminal role in Golden Dawn’s downfall. Under Lepenioti’s seemingly expressionless gaze, the three-member tribunal has gone where many in Greece had formerly feared to tread. After its landmark verdict that the far-right, ultra-nationalist party was a criminal organisation bent on extinguishing enemies real or perceived, sentences have been delivered that will almost certainly ensure its leadership remain behind bars for years to come.

The party’s founder, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, and the tattooed macho militants who comprised his inner circle, all received 13-year prison terms. With the last chapter in the story of Europe’s most violent political force finally written, it will not be lost on the protagonists that punishment, in the end, was meted out by a woman. “It’s undeniable that in this case justice was female,” said Maria Stratigaki, professor of gender studies at Panteion University, noting the number of female prosecutors and investigators who also participated in drawing up the dossier against Golden Dawn. “For a party whose ideology is based on male supremacy, whose worldview is so militaristic, it’s humiliating and will hurt.” [..] “Justice stepped in where others should have stepped before,” Stratigaki told the Guardian. “And our justice system is full of female judges because it is they who do better at exams and rise to the top.”

Read more …

Haven’t posted any Archdruid in quite a while.

• What Evil Lurks (John Michael Greer)

First we need to encounter Shadow #3, the one that Swiss psychologist Carl Jung anatomized in so troubling a fashion. Jung, as I hope most of my readers are aware, started out as a disciple of Sigmund Freud but broke with him in 1913 over basic disagreements over the nature and meaning of the unconscious mind. To sum those up very briefly, Freud insisted that the unconscious was simply the instinctual, animal mind—the id, in Freudian terms—which was mostly interested in sex, and had to be disciplined and controlled by the ego in obedience to the conscience, the voice of the superego.

Jung found in his own work with himself and his patients that the unconscious mind could not be summed up so simply, and at first saw the unconscious as containing two layers. One of them consisted of those things the ego didn’t want to recognize in itself, and so was entirely personal in nature: the personal unconscious, as Jung called it. The second layer consisted of contents that were not personal, had never been conscious in the first place, and formed the deep structure of the human psyche. This layer he termed the collective unconscious.

Until the start of the 1930s—that decade again—that was Jung’s basic theory. What happened then was that he traced the roots of the conscious self and the personal unconscious right down into the collective unconscious. The basic structures of the collective unconscious, he came to see, were the archetypes: a set of roles or functions that were hardwired into the human mind at a deep level, and served as expressions in consciousness of the basic biological instincts we inherit from our animal ancestors. Once you reach a certain stage of sexual maturity, for example, your mind is hardwired to look for a lover: that’s one of the most obvious archetypes, the one Jung called the anima or animus (depending on your gender and sexual orientation).

For all practical purposes, once it’s triggered by some complex set of psychological stimuli, the anima or animus functions as a prolonged case of beer goggles, projecting itself onto the other person and making them look just like the woman or man of your dreams, no matter how faint the resemblance might be in the eyes of your friends. That’s how all archetypes work: they scoop up the relevant contents of your mind, constellate them (that is, fit them into the archetypal pattern), and project that onto the nearest available target. What Jung came to realize as he pursued his investigations into archetypes is that what he’d been calling the conscious self and the personal unconscious were also archetypes. Who you think you are is a construct made up of all the things you think you ought to be, constellated around the archetype Jung called the ego.

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Mask mandates will come forward everywhere as a big issue.

• Mask-Wearing Study Rejected By Journals Not ‘Brave’ Enough To Publish (RT)

A large-scale study in Denmark that sought to determine if masks help stop the spread of Covid-19 has been rejected by several prestigious journals. The authors hinted that their findings were inconvenient to the status quo. The Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the American Medical Association Journal all turned down the paper, Danish media reported on Thursday. The study, which began in late April, involved 6,000 Danes, half of whom were asked to wear masks at all times in public places. The other half were selected as a control group and were instructed not to cover their faces. After a month, participants were tested for Covid-19 as well as for antibodies against the virus. The study’s researchers have remained tight-lipped about their findings, but they’ve dropped plenty of clues that suggest it was the paper’s conclusion, not its methodology, that led to the journals’ rejections.

“We can’t start discussing what they are dissatisfied with. For if so, we must also explain what the study showed. And we do not want to discuss this until it has been published,” Christian Torp-Pedersen, professor and chief physician at the research department at North Zealand Hospital, told Denmark’s Berlingske daily. [..] Denmark currently requires masks to be worn on public transport, as well as in bars and restaurants when patrons leave their table. There is a raging debate worldwide over mask mandates that purport to halt the transmission of coronavirus. Japanese researchers recently published a study that found that masks can offer some degree of protection from airborne Covid-19 particles, but noted that even professional-grade face coverings can’t completely eliminate the risk of contagion.

Curiously, at the start of the pandemic, many health officials and organizations urged against widespread mask use in the general public, describing such policies as ineffective. For example, in a March interview, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House Covid-19 task force, insisted there was no reason for seemingly healthy people to be “walking around in a mask.” At the time, his views reflected a wide consensus among medical institutions and professionals, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the US surgeon general. Fauci, the WHO, and the CDC later reversed their recommendations and supported mask mandates. However, many have argued that there is still inadequate data to support mandatory mask-wearing. Deborah Cohen, the medically qualified UK correspondent of BBC2’s Newsnight, reported in July that the WHO committee reviewing the organization’s mask recommendation was motivated by political lobbying, not new scientific evidence.

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Got to love it.

• Climate Scientists Fly “Significantly” More Than Other Researchers (BNE)

The large, international survey of more than 1,400 university researchers was carried out by the UK Centre for Climate and Social Transformation (CAST), which is coordinated by Cardiff University. A follow-up experiment with more than 350 researchers found that providing information about the impacts of aviation and support for workplace policies increases intentions to fly less. The large-scale study—the first of its kind to survey climate academics about their travel for conferences, fieldwork and meetings—is published in the journal Global Environmental Change. Director of CAST Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh, who led the study, said the findings were “unexpected” but said it also suggested “knowledge alone is not enough” to tackle global warming.

“Our findings highlight that climate scientists, like many other professionals, can struggle to square their environmental commitments with competing professional and personal demands, and academia itself is not doing enough to change this culture,” she said. “Crucially, our research demonstrates the need for policies and ways of working to encourage and enable low-carbon travel and use of virtual alternatives—something which is already happening in light of COVID-19. “Travel restrictions have required businesses, including universities, to replace a lot of physical travel with virtual interaction, such as online conferencing. These virtual options can be just as effective as face-to-face meetings, but at a fraction of the cost, as well as being more accessible for those with caring commitments.”

Flying is one of the most carbon-emitting actions and there have been growing calls from both within and outside the research community for scientists, and in particular climate researchers, to do more to curb their flying so their crucial message on the need to reduce aviation emissions is not undermined. This study found “significantly” higher levels of flying among climate change researchers for work than researchers from other disciplines. The data indicated climate experts take about five flights per year, while non-climate researchers took four. Climate and sustainability experts conduct more fieldwork, but even accounting for this, their international travel was still higher. It also found that levels of flying rose with job seniority.

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More good news from Moscow.

• Edward Snowden Granted Permanent Residency In Russia (RT)

Seven years after he landed in Moscow and received sanctuary from Washington’s attempts to silence him, US National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden has been granted a Russian permanent residency permit. Snowden has been living in exile in Russia since 2013 when he blew the lid off unprecedented mass surveillance operations conducted by US Intelligence. The Americans have demanded his extradition to face charges for violating the Espionage Act ever since. “Snowden was granted an open-ended residence permit earlier today,” his lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena said Thursday.


The 37 year-old former CIA and NSA contractor faces the prospect of up to 30 years in prison if convicted but his extradition is unlikely any time soon, especially given his newly-minted residency status. Lately, the whistleblower has been engaged in a battle over royalties from his memoir ‘Permanent Record,’ published last September. Earlier this month, a federal judge ruled that the US government may seize the $5.2 million in book royalties Snowden garnered from sales of the book.

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