Jun 052024
 


Vincent van Gogh The good Samaritan (after Delacroix) 1890

 

Trump Calls For Supreme Court To Intervene Before Sentencing (MN)
Dershowitz: Trump Could Fast-Track His Appeal To Supreme Court (ZH)
Republicans Vow To Scorch the Earth After Trump Conviction (RCW)
The Fake Conviction (Newt Gingrich)
Joe Biden’s Health Is About To Be Put To A Severe Test (Sadygzade)
Biden Does ‘We Gotta Secure The Border!’ Routine (ZH)
“A Blatant Lie” (Turley)
Freedom of Speech in the USA? Think again! (Gilbert Doctorow)
Swiss Senate Votes Against Aid For Kiev (RT)
NATO Member Turkiye Would Like to Join BRICS – Top Diplomat (Sp.)
NATO Preparing Troop Plans For Potential Russia Conflict – Telegraph (RT)
Punish Hungary To Ensure EU’s Future – Bloc Presidency Holder Belgium (RT)
Orban Believes Trump, EU Could End Ukrainian Conflict In 24 Hours (TASS)
People are Not Reading Your Stuff: Publisher Drops Truth Bomb at WaPo (Turley)
The Military-Industrial Complex Is Killing Us All (Vine/Arriola)
Musk Corrects “Liar” CNBC Journo Over Nvidia Report (ZH)
Pakistan Overturns Imran Khan’s Treason Conviction (RT)

 

 

 

 

“He’s polling right up there with fungal infections!”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1798001509697032668

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1797758238215016770

 

 

 

 

Hunter jurors

 

 

 

 

Border poll

 

 

Gaetz
https://twitter.com/i/status/1798004447362343011

 

 

O’Leary Musk
https://twitter.com/i/status/1798142196753048004

 

 

 

 

Before July 11th.

Trump Calls For Supreme Court To Intervene Before Sentencing (MN)

Donald Trump has called for the Supreme Court to step in before he is sentenced in the ‘falsified business documents’ case on July 11th. In a Truth Social post, Trump said he has not done anything wrong and referred to the prosecutors as “Fascists.” He added “A Radical Left Soros backed D.A., who ran on a platform of ‘I will get Trump,’ reporting to an ‘Acting’ Local Judge, appointed by the Democrats, who is HIGHLY CONFLICTED, will make a decision which will determine the future of our Nation?” “The United States Supreme Court MUST DECIDE!” Trump asserted. The sentencing date has been set a few days before the RNC Convention in Wisconsin. Trump is currently at the mercy of Judge Merchan, with the potential sentence being up to four years in jail for each of the 34 charges.

Merchan is a Columbian immigrant whose daughter is president of a political consulting firm that works closely with Democratic candidates. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was literally funded into office by George and Alex Soros’ Open Society, with the latter gloating about the verdict last week and calling for Democrats to repeatedly label Trump a “convicted felon.” “Repetition is the key to a successful message,” Soros declared. In the wake of the verdict, there was a massive spike in Google searches for how to donate to Trump, and he has raised over $200 million and counting since. It is an unprecedented amount for a candidate. Despite Trump being convicted on 34 counts, there has been no negative impact on his support and even a slight increase in favorability, especially amongst independent voters.

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“..the Supreme Court has an obligation to review the case before the election so that the American public has resolution..”

Dershowitz: Trump Could Fast-Track His Appeal To Supreme Court (ZH)

In a Friday interview with Megyn Kelly, Dershowitz suggested that Trump’s legal team should immediately push to get their appeal heard before the New York Court of Appeals, asking them to bypass the Appellate Division – which, Dershowitz suggested, are elected and more likely to work against Trump. “The Appellate Division or Manhattan judges that are elected and they don’t want to have to face their families and say you were the judge who allowed Trump to become the next President of the United States. They don’t want to be Dershowitz’ed,” he said, referring to the fact that he defended Trump during his first impeachment trial in the Senate. “They don’t want to be treated in New York, the way I have been treated in Martha’s Vineyard and Harvard and New York because I defended Donald Trump, so they should skip the Appellate Division.”

And so, to avoid the politicized Appellate Division, Trump’s attorneys should ask the Court of Appeals for an expedited appeal while preparing to argue in front of the US Supreme Court that the Manhattan case was rushed to try and get a verdict before the election. Dershowitz further suggested that the Supreme Court has an obligation to review the case before the election so that the American public has resolution. As Tom Ozimek of the Epoch Times notes further, Dershowitz has in the past accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of unfairly building the case against the former president by using a novel legal theory to elevate misdemeanor business falsification charges into a felony by alleging that the records fraud was carried out to conceal an underlying crime. In the Trump case, the underlying crime that was alleged was seeking to interfere in the 2016 election by using non-disclosure agreements to prevent unfavorable media coverage about an alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels that the former president has denied.

Mr. Dershowitz said that Trump attorneys should consider supporting their petition to the New York Court of Appeals by highlighting two issues, with the first relating to the fact that the state’s highest court recently reversed Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction because the trial judge prejudicially allowed testimony on allegations unrelated to the case. The retired law professor alleged that Judge Juan Merchan “improperly” allowed irrelevant salacious details of President Trump’s alleged tryst with Ms. Daniels to be admitted into the record, while also raising the so-called “missing witness” issue. The second point that Mr. Dershowitz said would bolster a petition for an expedited review to the New York Court of Appeals is that the judge allegedly didn’t instruct the jury properly on why prosecutors didn’t call former Trump Organization CFO Alan Weisselberg to testify in the case. The judge was open to having Mr. Weisselberg testify but the prosecution didn’t call him, framing him as an unreliable witness due to earlier perjury charges in an unrelated case, while the defense also didn’t call him, citing the fact that prosecutors had undermined his credibility.

Mr. Dershowitz argued that failure to call Mr. Weisselberg left a hole in proving the case because it was expected that his testimony would have undermined some of the claims from another witness, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who testified against the former president. “Number two, I think would be the failure to give an instruction on the missing witness,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “The way the judge and the prosecution handled Allen Weisselberg really denied the defendant the right to a presumption that the only reason he wasn’t called was because he would not have corroborated the very important testimony, lying testimony of Michael Cohen.” Mr. Dershowitz said those two issues are what Trump attorneys should highlight in their request for an expedited appeal. “This is a winnable appeal,” he insisted.

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“They’ve broken a seal,” Lee said of the Trump conviction. “I don’t know that it can be contained.”

Republicans Vow To Scorch the Earth After Trump Conviction (RCW)

Spurred by the volcanic temper of their base, Republicans are now preparing to scorch the earth in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s conviction, potentially setting off a chain reaction that could fundamentally alter the American political system entirely. No one knows exactly how far they will go in their response. What is clear is that conservatives have no patience for President Biden’s argument Friday morning that justice was served in Manhattan, that “the American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed.” They see the conviction instead as unprecedented “lawfare” meant to interfere with the coming election and, some say, an unprecedented response is now in order. “The good guys must be as tough as the villains or freedom is doomed,” senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller told RealClearPolitics without offering exact details. Rep. Mike Collins, meanwhile, was explicit. “Time for Red State AGs and DAs to get busy,” the Georgia Republican said Thursday, floating the idea that Republicans should begin using the courts to pursue their political enemies.

“Hillary Clinton’s campaign-funded Steele dossier is a good start,” Collins continued, referencing how the former Secretary of State’s presidential campaign misreported their spending on the infamous opposition research document. Clinton was later fined $11,000 by the Federal Election Commission. No criminal charges were brought. “The statute of limitations expired but I’m told that’s not a thing anymore,” Collins said. Republicans on Capitol Hill are preparing a more traditional counter-offensive, one within established parliamentary rules. Led by Utah Sen. Mike Lee, eight Republicans have vowed to oppose all major legislation “not directly relevant to the safety of the American people” and blockade all judicial nominees in protest of Trump’s conviction. “We can’t pretend that our political world didn’t change yesterday pretty dramatically and for the worse,” Lee told RCP. The Utah Republican admitted that legislation normally slows ahead of an election but White House efforts to get anything through the Senate “just got a lot harder for them.”

A legislative blockade alone may not satisfy a conservative base hell-bent on retribution. “I don’t want to hear elected Republicans complaining. I don’t need to see their tweets and statements condemning the verdict. The only thing I want to hear from these people is which Democrats they will have arrested. Don’t tell us that you’re sad about the verdict. We don’t give a shit about your feelings. We want to see corrupt Democrats frog marched on camera in handcuffs. If you won’t do that, then shut up,” Matt Walsh, a Daily Wire columnist with a following in the millions, wrote on the social media website X. Replied conservative influencer Chaya Raichik: “Exactly. Where’s the list! Here’s a start: Obama Hillary Joe Biden Hunter Biden.”

Mike Davis, a longtime Republican strategist floated as a potential Trump attorney general, told Axios he wants prosecutors in red states like Georgia and Florida to open criminal probes into Democrats for allegedly conspiring to interfere in the election by indicting the former president. For his part, Lee stopped short of endorsing those efforts. He likened it to some campaigns on the left to pack the Supreme Court, an initiative he has long opposed, warning that it would lead to “lawlessness” and “politicization.” “I think this is an analogous circumstance,” the senator said of the prosecution of a major presidential candidate, something that the Department of Justice has long avoided. “They’ve broken a seal,” Lee said of the Trump conviction. “I don’t know that it can be contained.”

He held out one remote possibility: If Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his team experience a change of heart during the appeals process. “They could confess error on appeal,” Lee said. “Other instances of lawfare, wherever they exist, could be dropped. You could put this genie back in the bottle still, but not for very much longer.”

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“..You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree.”

The Fake Conviction (Newt Gingrich)

Americans are now being forced to think through the first fake conviction in the history of presidential politics. As an historian, I am really bothered when I hear lawyers on television describe these proceedings as though they were somehow related to the rule of law and the normal legal process. It is clear that what happened to President Donald J. Trump in Judge Juan Merchan’s court was not a legitimate conviction. Nearly every element of the prosecution was false. Therefore, the outcome is false. To say President Trump is now a convicted felon – as the left and its propaganda media allies are practically singing – is to legitimize the most corrupt judicial event in American presidential history. The burden of proof is not on President Trump. He remains an innocent citizen framed by an astonishingly corrupt district attorney, judge, and Biden Justice Department. Don’t take my word for it alone. Consider what a host of experts have to say.

Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard, sat through much of the trial and condemned it with strong language in his newsletter: “I have observed and participated in trials throughout the world. I have seen justice and injustice in China, Russia, Ukraine, England, France, Italy, Israel, as well as in nearly 40 of our 50 states. But in my 60 years as a lawyer and law professor, I have never seen a spectacle such as the one I observed sitting in the front row of the courthouse yesterday. “The judge in Donald Trump’s trial was an absolute tyrant, though he appeared to the jury to be a benevolent despot. He seemed automatically to be ruling against the defendant at every turn.” George Washington Law professor and legal analyst Jonathan Turley said, “Before jurors left, however, Judge Juan Merchan framed their deliberations in a way that seemed less like a jury deliberation than a canned hunt.” Attorney Mike Davis on the Just the News “No Noise” TV show said: “I would say the first one is there is no crime here. They waited until after this multi-week trial to even tell the criminal defendant what the legal allegations he was supposed to defend himself in that prior trial. He had no opportunity to defend himself.”

An innocent citizen being “hunted,” in Turley’s language, cannot be honestly convicted. That is why I argue this is a fake conviction. Again, I’m not the only one who thinks this. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is hardly a fan of President Trump, said, “These charges never should have been brought in the first place. I expect the conviction to be overturned on appeal.” House Speaker Mike Johnson called it “a shameful day in American history,” and continued, “Alvin Bragg targeted a political opponent, made up unprecedented charges, and denied him his Constitutional right to a fair trial.” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik summarized the corruption and dishonesty brilliantly: “The facts are clear: this was a zombie case illegally brought forward by a corrupt prosecutor doing Joe Biden’s political bidding in a desperate attempt to save Joe Biden’s failing campaign. She pointed out that the case hinged on the word of Michael Cohen, who has a history of perjury and an axe to grind with Trump.

She pointed out that Judge Merchan’s own family members benefited financially from the case, that he levied unconstitutional gag orders on Trump, and repeatedly sided with the prosecution throughout the case. Mark Steyn captured why we must insist that the conviction is fake and reject any effort to suggest that Trump is guilty. As Steyn wrote: “pretending that there is anything ‘great’ about this that should command our ‘respect,’ is making evil and corruption respectable and bi-partisan.” Ironically, in a Senate hearing involving smears and sexually salacious accusations chaired by then-Sen. Joe Biden 33 years ago, we were taught how to stand up to outrageous, corrupt, and disgusting behavior by then-Supreme Court Justice nominee Clarence Thomas. After being repeatedly slandered by senators on Biden’s committee, on Oct. 11, 1991, Thomas said:

“This is a circus. It’s a national disgrace. And from my standpoint as a black American, as far as I’m concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree.” A generation later, President Trump, is learning what Justice Thomas learned in 1991: Challenge the establishment, and it will go all out to destroy you. Every time you talk with someone who says President Trump is a convicted felon, point out it is a fake conviction. Challenge them to defend the dishonest, corrupt people who are putting the nation through this mess – starting with President Biden, the leader of the corrupt and dishonest.

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“Biden is described as a “healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander-in-Chief.”

Joe Biden’s Health Is About To Be Put To A Severe Test (Sadygzade)

The Biden administration managed to keep the discourse surrounding his health out of the mainstream political discussion, and all stumbles and falls were attributed to fatigue and a heavy schedule, or written off as commonplace. However, the situation changed with the publication of Robert Hur’s report in February 2024, where the special prosecutor responsible for investigating a scandal involving Biden’s handling of secret documents commented on his health. Hur’s report states that during his investigation “evidence was found that President Biden intentionally retained and disclosed secret materials after the end of his vice-presidency when he was a private individual.” However, Hur concluded that “the evidence does not support guilt beyond reasonable doubt.” He reasoned that “in court, Mr. Biden would likely appear before the jurors just as he was during our interview with him – a charming, affable elderly man with poor memory.”

In Hur’s opinion, “it would be difficult to convince jurors that they should convict him – the by then former president, deep into his eighties – for a serious criminal offense requiring intent.” The widespread resonance of Hur’s report required immediate action by the Biden administration to mitigate the damage caused by its publication. This response was the publication of the president’s current health report on February 28, 2024. The examination was conducted by the president’s physician Kevin O’Connor from The George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences. According to the document, addressed to the president’s assistant and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Biden is described as a “healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander-in-Chief.”

This triggered an additional flurry of discussions about Biden’s health. Questions also arose about the position of the Democratic administration members regarding their support for Biden’s nomination for another presidential term, as Robert Hur is a subordinate of US Attorney General Merrick Garland, a very influential person in the structure of the Democratic party. Given the realities of political life in the US, it is fair to say that a new presidential campaign begins on the day of the inauguration of the elected president. However, the last year, especially the last six months before federal elections, are the most challenging for the candidate. This stage is characterized by frequent trips to undecided states, public appearances at rallies, and participation in debates. All this requires the candidate to have robust health and a significant amount of energy. For the incumbent president, this stage is even more challenging, as he is forced to combine election campaigning with the duties of the President of the United States.

In April of this year, Biden stated in an interview on “The Howard Stern Show” that he plans to participate in debates with the likely candidate from the Republican party, Donald Trump. “I’m happy to debate him,” Biden said, dispelling doubts about his participation in presidential debates, which traditionally take place in three different states. Later, in May, Biden’s team agreed to participate in debates organized by CNN, which are tentatively scheduled for June 27. Biden’s decision to participate in the debates pursues two important goals: to change the public narrative that Biden avoids direct discussion with his Republican opponent, and to improve his standing in the polls (according to most voter surveys, Biden is either trailing Trump or is on par).

If, in order to solve the first task, Biden simply needs to appear on stage at the appointed time; the second task may prove to be more challenging. The incumbent president, like any politician defending his position through participation in debates, needs to be persuasive, logical, and demonstrate mental agility. And all this in the conditions of a 90-minute live broadcast with a very strong debater – Donald Trump. Predicting the possible consequences of Joe Biden’s health on the upcoming elections is mere speculation and guesses. The analysis of possible scenarios directly depends on the actual state of health of the president and his diagnoses, which are unknown to the general public. But undoubtedly, Joe Biden’s health will become one of the main elements of Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric, including during the first face-to-face debates scheduled for June. However, how convincing these arguments will be will depend on Biden’s public appearance during the main summer-autumn phase of the 2024 presidential race.

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40-odd months of open borders later, and 10-20 million illegals, the story will now be: see, we secured the border, as the GOP refused. And half the population will buy that.

Biden Does ‘We Gotta Secure The Border!’ Routine (ZH)

After shredding Donald Trump’s ‘xenophobic’ Executive Orders on border security his first day in office more than three years ago, resulting in what some estimate to be upwards of 20 million illegal migrants pouring into the United States (which Trump plans to deport), President Joe Biden is quietly signing an executive order on Tuesday aimed at slowing migrant crossings. As we noted on Friday, the EO would slash asylum claims by roughly two-thirds of where they stand today – and would cap the number of daily encounters at an average of 2,500 crossings per day (or 912k per year), however Biden would allow mass asylum claims to resume once border encounters fall to around 1,500 per day. US Border Patrol recorded approximately 4,300 daily encounters in April – which of course doesn’t include ‘gotaways’ – those who enter the US without notice. The move comes three months after the White House said Biden was no longer considering using executive action to secure the border.

According to Bloomberg, lawmakers and others have been invited to a Tuesday afternoon event at the White House. The order is Biden’s most aggressive move yet to address the crisis on the US-Mexico border, which has seen record levels of migrants and taxed communities across the country struggling to deal with the influx of new arrivals. A bipartisan Senate plan that would have given Biden similar powers was blocked by Republicans at Trump’s behest earlier this year, denying the president a political win and prompting him to act unilaterally. Tuesday’s order is politically risky. It will invite criticism from Biden’s left flank, which has blasted moves to ramp up deportations as an inhumane approach to the crisis. That has the potential to stymie his efforts to shore up an electoral coalition already riven by divisions over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war and overarching concerns over his age and fitness to serve a second term. -Bloomberg

The Biden administration’s move underscores how the administration has been compelled to act just months before the 2024 US election – as it’s become a centerpiece issue for Republicans on the campaign trail. Donald Trump has been constantly hammering Biden over the border as polls continue to show that voters think the border and immigration are critical issues. The Executive Order is also timed to reflect an effort to deter a seasonal increase in crossings that typically occurs each summer and early fall (right before the election), and comes as Mexico welcomes a new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who was elected on Sunday. She doesn’t take office until Oct. 1, and it’s unknown what actions she will take on the border situation.

In recent weeks the Biden administration has taken other steps to tighten immigration rules. Last month, they proposed a rule that would allow the US to expedite the expulsion of certain undocumented migrants trying to claim asylum. According to the report, Biden will use Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act – which Trump invoked – which are anticipated to invite legal challenges. House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News Sunday that the move is “too little too late,” adding “The only reason he’s doing that is because the polls say that it’s the biggest issue in America.”

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It’s a pattern: taking credit for other people’s achievements. And again: half the population will buy that.

“A Blatant Lie” (Turley)

Winston Churchill once said that “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” It often seems like the Biden White House and campaign has embraced that warning as an operating principle. The most recent target was the veteran Fox news anchor John Roberts, who was accused of airing “a blatant lie” in questioning Biden’s claim that he was the first president to push through a cap of $35 on insulin treatments. Roberts was entirely correct, but the campaign has still not removed the false attack on his integrity and accuracy. In the interests of full disclosure, I am a legal analyst for Fox News and I have known Roberts for decades. There is no one who I hold in higher regard for his integrity or his intellect than John Roberts. We have known and worked with each other at different networks through the years. Roberts is an old-school journalist with impeccable credentials.

Yesterday, the Biden campaign launched the attack on Roberts for his questioning of the claim of President Joe Biden that he solely secured the insulin cap. Roberts remarked that he had a recollection that it was former President Donald Trump who pushed the cap. “I seem to remember that back in May of 2020, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid said that President Trump had signed an executive order to cap the price of insulin for Medicare recipients at 35 bucks. Now, maybe I’m misremembering that, but I think it kind of already happened.” The Biden campaign then called it “a blatant lie” in a posting on X that has reached over a million people. Contrary to the Biden campaign’s claims, Roberts’s recollection was entirely correct. Under the Trump Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced in May 2020 that the Part D Senior Savings Model participating plans would cap insulin copays to $35 per month’s supply, and over 1,750 Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D plans applied to offer lower insulin costs.

Trump praised the new policy, which was widely covered by the press. There was a Rose Garden event where Trump was praised for his actions: Trump later, in July 2020, signed four executive orders aimed at lowering the cost of insulin. That included Executive Order 13937, which required Federally Qualified Health Centers to pass 340B discounts on to patients. Notably, Biden later reversed Executive Order 13937 before those cost-saving measures could take effect.

This is obviously not the first false statement from the President. However, it is notable that his campaign spread obvious disinformation that was picked up by over a million people but then declined to take down the false claim. The campaign is now in a worse position. To take down the posting is to acknowledge not just that it has lied about Roberts, but that the President lied in taking sole credit for this cap. This is the same administration supporting the banning, blacklisting, and throttling of those responsible for disinformation. I would not support such censorship of the campaign. This and other columns refuting the false account is sufficient to combat a “blatant lie” by the Biden campaign. Whether it is his uncle being eaten by cannibals or insulin caps, free speech can correct false claims without government regulation. However, President Biden and his administration continue to push for censorship of others accused for false or misleading statements. The fact that John Roberts was right is hardly surprising. However, there remains a “blatant lie” on the Biden campaign’s social media that must still be corrected.

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Not only Scott Ritter was pulled off that plane to St Petersburg, so was Judge Nap(olitano).

Freedom of Speech in the USA? Think again! (Gilbert Doctorow)

First there was the news that Scott Ritter, a former U.S. military intelligence officer, was pulled off his plane which, with further flight connections would have taken him to St Petersburg, Russia where he was designated as a high level invited guest and would speak at the International Economic Forum that opens tomorrow. Upon being removed from the plane, his documents were taken from him. He was eventually released but his U.S. passport was kept by officials. Clearly Scott is not headed anywhere for some time. For those of you who have not been paying close attention to the U.S. “dissident movement,” allow me to explain that Scott Ritter has been a very active and widely listened to critic of American foreign policy, particularly as it relates to Russia and the Ukraine war. The weight of his messaging has been reinforced by his having been an insider and implementer of U.S. policies a couple of decades ago. Scott was one of the few U.S. inspectors of Iraq’s alleged programs of weapons of mass destruction. When snippets from his interviews are aired by Russian state television, they never fail to remind audiences of his past in U.S. intelligence.

Following his visit to Russia a year ago to promote a book he had just published, Scott became especially warm to the Putin ‘regime,’ as they would say in Washington. My first reaction upon hearing about this blatantly political act by the Biden Administration to knee-cap its critics and stifle free speech, was to look for an explanation in Ritter’s past military service. This viciousness of powers-that-be against one of their own sounded like what happened in Canada in the year before the onset of Covid to a very widely read and authoritative blogger, Patrick Armstrong. He was a former diplomat and had served in the Canadian embassy in Russia. Armstrong was visited by Justin Trudeau’s storm troopers who advised him to close his blog lest he lose not only his state pension but all of his savings. Patrick understood where things stood and fell silent. However, the follow-up news on the Yandex-Dzen website regarding events in Scott Ritter’s plane yesterday is still more damaging to my vision of free speech in the U.S.A. at present.

One other passenger was taken off the plane by U.S. government officials to prevent his appearing at the St Petersburg Economic Forum: Judge Andrew Napolitano. Judge Napolitano is the moderator of the very widely watched interview program “Judging Freedom” which is disseminated on youtube as well as on the main social media. He is a very responsible and informative critic of U.S. foreign policy, as are his regular guests. He is at the higher level of intellectual discourse a peer to the journalist Tucker Carlson who caters to the hoi polloi. He also is known for defending Donald Trump’s positions on a variety of issues. The deprivation of travel rights served on Judge Napolitano is a gross infringement of freedom of speech that the Biden administration cannot live down. All talk from the Oval Office of defending American democracy is shown through actions like these to be crass lies and utter hypocrisy. It is a long way to the November elections, but hopefully American voters will ‘throw the bums out’ and save what is left of freedom of speech.

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“..Lavrov argued that Switzerland was no longer a neutral party and had “turned from neutral to openly hostile.”

Swiss Senate Votes Against Aid For Kiev (RT)

Switzerland’s upper house of parliament rejected a 5 billion Swiss franc ($5.58 billion) aid package to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine on Monday. Lawmakers cited concerns that it would violate borrowing restrictions in the neutral country, Reuters has reported. The proposed aid was part of a wider package that also included additional funding for the Swiss military, the outlet said. The Council of States, one of Switzerland’s two houses of parliament, announced plans to set up a special 15-billion-franc ($16.7 billion) fund in April, proposing to allocate 10.1 billion francs to the Swiss Army and send the rest to Ukraine to support its economic development and reconstruction. The fund, despite initially being backed by a Swiss parliamentary committee, had faced opposition from right-wing lawmakers and was widely expected to be defeated, the report noted.

With 28 votes against and 15 in favor, the House rejected both the additional funding for the Swiss Army and the reconstruction aid for Ukraine. Opposition came from the conservative Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and the liberals from the Free Democratic Party (FDP), as well as from left-wing parties. According to the report, lawmakers argued that the package would breach a so-called “debt brake” provision in Switzerland, and would result in budget restrictions.In May, the Federal Council indicated that neither the funding for the Swiss military nor the aid for Ukraine met the “statutory requirements for extraordinary expenditure.” “The contribution amount can be controlled, which is why this expenditure cannot be recognized as extraordinary,” the government said.

The Council noted that the creation of such a fund under special legislation would have to be properly financed, whether through savings or additional revenue. The latest funding was rejected two weeks before the Swiss government is due to host a summit on the Ukraine crisis. The so-called ‘peace conference’ is scheduled to take place on June 15 and 16 at the Burgenstock Resort near Lucerne. Russia has not been invited to the summit. Switzerland has been under increased pressure from Western countries urging Bern to provide more help to Kiev. While refusing to supply Ukraine with military aid, citing its long-term neutrality policy, Bern has provided economic and humanitarian funding worth over $3 billion since the start of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, according to Swiss government data. In April, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov argued that Switzerland was no longer a neutral party and had “turned from neutral to openly hostile.”

Mearsheimer

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Might not go smooth.

NATO Member Turkiye Would Like to Join BRICS – Top Diplomat (Sp.)

BRICS was established in 2009 as a cooperation platform for the world’s largest emerging economies, bringing together Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. On January 1, 2024, the bloc was expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Turkiye would like to become a member of BRICS and will monitor the developments in the organization, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Tuesday. “Certainly, we would like to become a member of BRICS. So we’ll see how it goes this year,” Fidan said during an event at the Centre for China and Globalisation (CCG) in Beijing, as quoted by the South China Morning Post newspaper. The BRICS bloc outperformed the G7 – the conglomerate of wealthy industrialized nations – in GDP in 2022. According to a forecast, BRICS economies will account for more than 50 percent of global GDP by 2030. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization have become key pillars in the emerging multipolar world.

Economic experts stress that BRICS is also a locomotive of de-dollarization of the global economy since members of this bloc are increasingly switching to national currencies in trade relations – for instance, 90% of settlements between Russian and Chinese companies are now made in rubles and yuans The BRICS doubled its membership last year, becoming the BRICS+ after including Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on January 1, 2024. Russia welcomes Turkiye’s interest towards BRICS, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on uesday. “We, of course, all welcome this increased interest in BRICS on the part of our neighboring states, including our important partners such as Turkiye. Of course, the topic of this interest will be on the agenda of the BRICS summit, which will be chaired by Russia,” Peskov told reporters.

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“..training exercises have exposed red tape and infrastructure bottlenecks that prevent the rapid transfer of personnel and materiel across the continent.”

NATO Preparing Troop Plans For Potential Russia Conflict – Telegraph (RT)

NATO is working on plans to rush tens of thousands of US troops along “land corridors” in Europe in the event of war with Russia, a senior strategist has told The Telegraph. Last year, members of the US-led military bloc agreed to keep 300,000 troops ready for deployment, purportedly in response to a potential Russian attack. However, training exercises have exposed red tape and infrastructure bottlenecks that prevent the rapid transfer of personnel and materiel across the continent. NATO military leadership is therefore working to ensure that the flow of troops would not be stopped by likely Russian strikes on ports used by the US military to unload its cargos, The Telegraph reported on Tuesday.

“It is clear that huge logistics bases, as we know it from Afghanistan and Iraq, are no longer possible because they will be attacked and destroyed very early on in a conflict situation,” Lieutenant General Alexander Sollfrank, head of NATO’s JSEC logistics command, told the newspaper. The primary route for American troops in the event of war with Russia would be via the Dutch port of Rotterdam to Germany and Poland, the report said. Alternative corridors would start in Italy, Greece, and Türkiye, and would respectively run through Slovenia and Croatia to Hungary and through Bulgaria and Romania. There are also plans to involve Norway, Sweden, and Finland for backup logistics.

The US and its allies have claimed that Moscow could attack NATO, and that sending arms to Ukraine to fight Russia will help stall or prevent that outcome. Moscow has denied having any such intentions, and has accused Western governments of creating false threats to deceive their populations over the Ukraine conflict. Russian officials have described the hostilities with Ukraine as a US-initiated proxy war aimed at undermining Russian development, in which Ukrainian soldiers serve as “cannon fodder” while weapons, intelligence, training, and planning is contributed by the West. A direct conflict with NATO would be an existential threat to Russia, according to Moscow, considering the bloc’s superiority in conventional forces. Consequently, any such clash would warrant the deployment of nuclear weapons under Russian nuclear doctrine, it has warned.

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“If we go all the way with this mechanism, it must work. If it doesn’t work, we have to reform it. That’s the future of the European Union.”

Punish Hungary To Ensure EU’s Future – Bloc Presidency Holder Belgium (RT)

The EU should strip Hungary of its voting rights to safeguard the union’s future, Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib has argued. Budapest is scheduled to take over the EU Council’s rotating presidency in July. Belgium, the current holder, is in a group of countries voicing frustration over Hungary’s opposition to key EU plans – including support for Ukraine in the conflict with Russia. “I think we need to have the courage to make decisions: go right to the end of Article 7, activate Article 7 right to the end, which provides for the end of the right of veto,” the Belgian diplomat told Politico on Sunday. Article 7, which involves a suspension of voting rights, is often referred to as a “nuclear option” against member states considered to have breached the EU’s values.

The European Parliament voted to launch the procedure against Hungary in 2018, accusing Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government of undermining the rule of law through alleged attacks on the media and judiciary – but the process stalled due to disagreements between member states. Orban is a vocal critic of the Western stance on the Ukraine crisis. He has argued that the arming of Kiev against Moscow has failed to stop the hostilities, and that sanctions have inflicted more harm on the EU than on Russia. Budapest has repeatedly used its veto power to block trade restrictions on Russia that it views as a threat to Hungarian interests, and to restrict funding for Ukraine. Lahbib accused the Orban government of “increasingly adopting a transactional, blocking and veto attitude” to the bloc’s affairs.

“This is a moment of truth,” she said of the Article 7 threat. “If we go all the way with this mechanism, it must work. If it doesn’t work, we have to reform it. That’s the future of the European Union.” Hungary is the only EU member currently facing such proceedings. In May, Brussels dropped a similar inquiry into Poland’s domestic policies. Warsaw aligns with Brussels on Ukraine, but until recently had a conservative government that opposed it on other matters, including refugees and LGBT rights. This changed last December, when Donald Tusk – a longtime EU supporter and former president of the European Council – returned to office as Polish prime minister. “You can do anything as long as you’re one of them, as long you’re part of the Brussels mainstream,” Polish MEP Radoslaw Fogiel said at the time, in an interview with the news outlet Hungarian Conservative.

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The man that Belgium thinks should be punished:

“We must not forget that the war is waged by people, and these very people, if they are willing, have every opportunity to make peace..”

Orban Believes Trump, EU Could End Ukrainian Conflict In 24 Hours (TASS)

Donald Trump, the potential Republican candidate in the US presidential election, and the European Union could put an end to the conflict in Ukraine in 24 hours, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said. “If Trump and the EU wanted to end the war [in Ukraine], they could have done it in 24 hours. We must not forget that the war is waged by people, and these very people, if they are willing, have every opportunity to make peace. I think that if Trump became president, he could achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine in one day, and then start talks,” the prime minister told the Il Giornale newspaper. According to him, the EU strategy on the Ukrainian issue has failed even from a tactical point of view. “We don’t understand that we are playing with fire. We should ask ourselves what are Europe’s strategic interests and demand a ceasefire. Our citizens want peace, not war, which could be a political game,” Orban added.

The prime minister said that he expects a new right-wing majority in the European Parliament after the elections scheduled for June 8-9. “The current European Commission has failed on the agricultural issue, on the conflicts, on the migration issue, on the economy, and now its leadership must go. Strengthening democracy means electing a new commission, different from the current one, which was the worst in my memory,” Orban said. At the same time, he hinted that much depended on the decision of his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the European conservatives, and Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French National Rally party’s parliamentary group. “The right-wing parties must cooperate, we are in the hands of two women who must come to an agreement,” the Hungarian prime minister concluded.

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“..you need to return to being reporters and not advocates; you need to start reaching an audience larger than yourself and your friends.”

People are Not Reading Your Stuff: Publisher Drops Truth Bomb at WaPo (Turley)

Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis is being denounced this week after the end of the short-lived tenure of Executive Editor Sally Buzbee and delivering a truth bomb to the staff. Lewis told them that they have lost their audience and “people are not reading your stuff.” It was a shot of reality in the echo chambered news outlet and the response was predictable. However, Lewis just might save this venerable newspaper if he follows his frank talk with meaningful reforms to bring balance back to the Post. As someone who once wrote for the Washington Post regularly, I have long lamented the decline of the paper following a pronounced shift toward partisan and advocacy journalism. There was a time when the Post valued diversity of thought and steadfastly demanded staff write not as advocates but reporters. That began to change rapidly in the first Trump term.

Suddenly, I found editors would slow walk copy, contest every line of your column, and make unfounded claims. In the meantime, they were increasingly running unsupported legal columns and even false statements from authors on the left. When confronted about columnists with demonstrably false statements, the Post simply shrugged. One of the most striking examples was after its columnist Philip Bump had a meltdown in an interview when confronted over past false claims. After I wrote a column about the litany of such false claims, the Post surprised many of us by issuing a statement that they stood by all of Bump’s reporting, including false columns on the Lafayette Park protests, Hunter Biden laptop and other stories. That was long after other media debunked the claims, but the Post stood by the false reporting.

The decline of the Post has followed a familiar pattern. The editors and reporters simply wrote off half of their audience and became a publication for largely liberal and Democratic readers. In these difficult economic times with limited revenue sources, it is a lethal decision. Yet, for editors and reporters, it is still professionally beneficial to embrace advocacy journalism even if it is reducing the readership of your own newspaper. Lewis, a British media executive who joined the Post earlier this year, reportedly got into a “heated exchange” with a staffer. Lewis explained that, while reporters were protesting measures to expand readership, the very survival of the paper was now at stake: “We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around,” Lewis said. “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.” Other staffers could not get beyond the gender and race of those who would be overseeing them. One staffer complained “we now have four White men running three newsrooms.”

The Post has been buying out staff to avoid mass layoffs, but reporters are up in arms over the effort to turn the newspaper around. The question is whether, after years of creating a culture of advocacy journalism and woke reporting, the Post is still capable of reaching a larger audience. If you want to read about certain stories, you are not likely to go to the Post, NPR or other outlets. Likewise, with reporters referring to the January 6th riot as an “insurrection,” there is little doubt for the reader that the coverage is a form of advocacy. Again, such stories can affirm the bona fides for reporters, but they also affirm the bias for readers. I truly do hope that the Washington Post can recover. The newspaper has played a critical role in our history and a towering example of journalism at its very best from the Pentagon Papers to Watergate. If you want people to “read your stuff,” you need to return to being reporters and not advocates; you need to start reaching an audience larger than yourself and your friends.

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“Americans should pray it never actually has to defend the United States..”

The Military-Industrial Complex Is Killing Us All (Vine/Arriola)

The Emergence of a Monster: To face what it would take to dismantle the MIC, it’s first necessary to understand how it was born and what it looks like today. Given its startling size and intricacy, we and a team of colleagues created a series of graphics to help visualize the MIC and the harm it inflicts, which we’re sharing publicly for the first time.

The MIC was born after World War II from, as Eisenhower explained, the “conjunction of an immense military establishment” — the Pentagon, the armed forces, intelligence agencies, and others — “and a large arms industry.” Those two forces, the military and the industrial, united with Congress to form an unholy “Iron Triangle” or what some scholars believe Eisenhower initially and more accurately called the military-industrial–congressional complex. To this day those three have remained the heart of the MIC, locked in a self-perpetuating cycle of legalized corruption (that also features all too many illegalities). The basic system works like this: First, Congress takes exorbitant sums of money from us taxpayers every year and gives it to the Pentagon. Second, the Pentagon, at Congress’s direction, turns huge chunks of that money over to weapons makers and other corporations via all too lucrative contracts, gifting them tens of billions of dollars in profits. Third, those contractors then use a portion of the profits to lobby Congress for yet more Pentagon contracts, which Congress is generally thrilled to provide, perpetuating a seemingly endless cycle.

But the MIC is more complicated and insidious than that. In what’s effectively a system of legalized bribery, campaign donations regularly help boost Pentagon budgets and ensure the awarding of yet more lucrative contracts, often benefiting a small number of contractors in a congressional district or state. Such contractors make their case with the help of a virtual army of more than 900 Washington-based lobbyists. Many of them are former Pentagon officials, or former members of Congress or congressional staffers, hired through a “revolving door” that takes advantage of their ability to lobby former colleagues. Such contractors also donate to think tanks and university centers willing to support increased Pentagon spending, weapons programs, and a hyper-militarized foreign policy. Ads are another way to push weapons programs on elected officials.

Such weapons makers also spread their manufacturing among as many Congressional districts as possible, allowing senators and representatives to claim credit for jobs created. MIC jobs, in turn, often create cycles of dependency in low-income communities that have few other economic drivers, effectively buying the support of locals. For their part, contractors regularly engage in legalized price gouging, overcharging taxpayers for all manner of weapons and equipment. In other cases, contractor fraud literally steals taxpayer money. The Pentagon is the only government agency that has never passed an audit — meaning it literally can’t keep track of its money and assets — yet it still receives more from Congress than every other government agency combined.

As a system, the MIC ensures that Pentagon spending and military policy are driven by contractors’ search for ever-higher profits and the reelection desires of members of Congress, not by any assessment of how to best defend the country. The resulting military is unsurprisingly shoddy, especially given the money spent. Americans should pray it never actually has to defend the United States. No other industry — not even Big Pharma or Big Oil — can match the power of the MIC in shaping national policy and dominating spending. Military spending is, in fact, now larger (adjusting for inflation) than at the height of the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq, or, in fact, at any time since World War II, despite the absence of a threat remotely justifying such spending. Many now realize that the primary beneficiary of more than 22 years of endless U.S. wars in this century has been the industrial part of the MIC, which has made hundreds of billions of dollars since 2001. “Who Won in Afghanistan? Private Contractors” was the Wall Street Journal‘s all too apt headline in 2021.

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Musk: on X: “Laura “Liar” Kolodny”.

The move makes a lot of sense.

Musk Corrects “Liar” CNBC Journo Over Nvidia Report (ZH)

Another day, another Tesla report to take with a big grain of salt until further notice. In the latest report from CNBC, citing “emails written by Nvidia senior staff” and “correspondence from Nvidia staffers” that “Musk presented an exaggerated picture of Tesla’s procurement” of Nvidia’s flagship artificial intelligence chip, the H100, diverting “a sizable shipment of AI processors” from Tesla to X and xAI. Update: Further notice has occurred… the salt was wise. In a Tuesday morning post on X, Musk said: “Tesla had no place to send the Nvidia chips to turn them on, so they would have just sat in a warehouse,” adding “The south extension of Giga Texas is almost complete. This will house 50k H100s for FSD training.” According to Musk, “Of the roughly $10B in AI-related expenditures I said Tesla would make this year, about half is internal, primarily the Tesla-designed AI inference computer and sensors present in all of our cars, plus Dojo,” adding that Nvidia hardware “is about 2/3 of the cost.”

Musk estimated that Tesla purchases of Nvidia hardware will be “$3B to $4B this year.” As CNBC continues; By ordering Nvidia to let privately held X jump the line ahead of Tesla, Musk pushed back the automaker’s receipt of more than $500 million in graphics processing units, or GPUs, by months, likely adding to delays in setting up the supercomputers Tesla says it needs to develop autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots. “Elon prioritizing X H100 GPU cluster deployment at X versus Tesla by redirecting 12k of shipped H100 GPUs originally slated for Tesla to X instead,” an Nvidia memo from December said. “In exchange, original X orders of 12k H100 slated for Jan and June to be redirected to Tesla.”

A more recent Nvidia email, from late April, said Musk’s comment on the first-quarter Tesla call “conflicts with bookings” and that his April post on X about $10 billion in AI spending also “conflicts with bookings and FY 2025 forecasts.” The email referenced news about Tesla’s ongoing, drastic layoffs and warned that headcount reductions could cause further delays with an “H100 project” at Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory. The new information from the emails, read by CNBC, highlights an escalating conflict between Musk and some agitated Tesla shareholders who question whether the billionaire CEO is fulfilling his obligations to Tesla while also running a collection of other companies that require his attention, resources and hefty amounts of capital. Really? Does it highlight the escalating conflict?

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But he will remain in jail because of all the other indictments.

Pakistan Overturns Imran Khan’s Treason Conviction (RT)

The Islamabad High Court on Monday vacated the former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s conviction for leaking state secrets. He remains behind bars, however, for allegedly violating Islamic tradition with his marriage. Khan, 71, was ousted in April 2022. Since then, he has faced over 100 indictments, which his party has denounced as politically motivated. The state secrets case saw him sentenced to ten years in prison in February, just ahead of the national elections. “Thank God, the sentence is overturned,” Naeem Panjutha, a spokesman for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, said after the court announced its decision. Former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi (2018-2022) was also acquitted of the charges. Khan has cited a classified cable as proof that the Pakistani military conspired with the US to overthrow his government after he visited Russia. The US has denied the accusation.

The government in Islamabad has claimed that by revealing the contents of the cable, Khan violated the state secrets law. “It is a fact that a national security document was used for political purposes,” government spokesman for legal issues Aqeel Malik said at a press conference on Monday, noting that PM Shehbaz Sharif’s government might appeal Khan’s acquittal to the Supreme Court. Two other convictions against Khan, handed out just days before the February 8 vote, have been stayed pending appeal. In one case, he and his wife Bushra were sentenced to 14 years for illegally selling state gifts. Khan remains in prison because of the seven-year conviction for allegedly violating Islamic tradition by marrying Bushra too soon after her divorce. According to his party, the case has no leg to stand on, as Bushra herself had the sole right to decide on the timing of the marriage.

Multiple convictions have been used to bar Khan and PTI from running for office in the February election. The party’s candidates still got 93 out of the 266 directly elected seats in the legislature, but were kept from power by a coalition of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which won 54 and 73 seats, respectively. While Monday’s acquittal is a “huge political and legal victory” for Khan, the cricket-star-turned-politician won’t be released any time soon, journalist and political analyst Mazhar Abbas told Reuters.

Read more …

 

 

From Jim Kunstler’s site. Obviously, we have the same issues. Credit card expiration is a point that warrants attention. Our Patreon revenue is down 25%. So is Paypal.

“Note to Readers: We’ve just come through the time of year when credit cards expire. My Patreon revenue is down and I doubt it is because you’re disappointed in this blog’s content. Plus, it comes to you absolutely reliably twice-a-week, without fail. You can continue reading it for free — there’s no pay-wall — but just know that I depend on this support to make a living. Back in the day, a newspaper would pay me a salary, but this is no longer that day and now public voices like mine must perform like buskers on the street. Acknowledging that times are tough and getting tougher, if you are a regular reader here, please consider kicking in maybe two bucks a month for the eight blog-columns you’ll get and probably appreciate, just as I will be grateful to get paid for the work I do putting them out there. Just sayin’. . . .”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Orca
https://twitter.com/i/status/1797838232970834430

 

 

Hug
https://twitter.com/i/status/1798046998677115057

 

 

Excavator

 

 

Owl head
https://twitter.com/i/status/1797883246233231396

 

 

Mom
https://twitter.com/i/status/1797738846701969634

 

 

Pick up
https://twitter.com/i/status/1797671289047703651

 

 

Dog toys

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 012024
 
 March 1, 2024  Posted by at 9:38 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  39 Responses »


Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) German artist, philosopher, composer, mystic Cosmic Tree

 

West Flirting With Nuclear War – Putin (RT)
What Comes Next As The Ukrainian Army Collapses (Helmer)
How Realistic Is Putin? (Paul Craig Roberts)
West Destroying Its Own Financial System – Putin (RT)
The CIA in Ukraine – The NY Times Gets a Guided Tour (Patrick Lawrence)
CIA in Ukraine (John Kiriakou)
The Internationalization of the Neo-Liberal Shock (Dionísio)
Maddow and Others Denounce SCOTUS for Review of Presidential Immunity (Turley)
Yellen Voices Support For Permanent Inflation (Denninger)
‘State-minus’: Biden’s Palestine Solution (Cradle)
Federal Judge Blocks New Texas Law to Arrest Illegal Immigrants (ET)
Obama’s CIA Asked Foreign Intel Agencies To Spy on Trump Campaign (Chernin)
Hunter Finally Admits Joe Biden Is “The Big Guy” (ZH)
Julian Assange and Gaza Civilians (Amar)
Biden Arrives At Border To Address His Voters (BBee)

 

 

 

 

Not sure what Biden does, but I don’t think it’s called ‘walking’. Closest thing is Elon Musk’s new humanoid robot.

 

 

 

 

WH doc

 

 

 

 


“The judge who just threw Trump off the ballot in Illinois typically “presides over minor traffic violations”

 

 

Loan
https://twitter.com/i/status/1763341500627480884

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..now the consequences for potential invaders would be far more tragic.”

West Flirting With Nuclear War – Putin (RT)

Western officials indulging in escalatory rhetoric should realize that they are effectively invoking the specter of an all-out nuclear war, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned in a speech to legislators in Moscow on Thursday. He also once again accused the West of instigating the Ukraine conflict. Putin addressed the topic in the opening minutes of his annual state-of-the-nation speech, a key event in which the president declares his plans and priorities in a televised address to both houses of the Federal Assembly of Russia, the national legislature. President Putin insisted that recent claims by Western officials that Moscow is planning to attack NATO are “nonsense.” At the same time, those same nations are “selecting targets to conduct strikes on our territory,” the Russian head of state claimed, adding that there is now talk of “deploying NATO military contingents to Ukraine.”

Putin reminded would-be aggressors that all previous attempts to conquer Russia have ended in failure, warning that “now the consequences for potential invaders would be far more tragic.” He pointed out that Russia has a massive nuclear arsenal, which is in a state of “complete readiness for guaranteed deployment.” “Everything that they are thinking up now, that they are scaring the world with, it all really poses the threat of a conflict involving nuclear weapons, and therefore, the destruction of civilization. Don’t they understand this?” The Russian president suggested that Western politicians making those escalatory remarks “have already forgotten what war is.” Unlike Russians, who have faced “difficult trials” in recent decades, Westerners apparently “think that these are just some cartoons,” President Putin opined.

The Russian president’s remarks came after his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, toyed with the idea of a potential ground deployment of Western militaries to Ukraine while talking to reporters on Monday, saying “in terms of dynamics, we cannot exclude anything.” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg hastened to emphasize that “there are no plans for NATO combat troops on the ground in Ukraine.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in turn, declared that there will be “no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil, who are sent there by European or NATO countries” in the future. The leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Finland also chimed in with similar assurances. Commenting on Macron’s remark, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that such a development would mean that “we have to talk not about the probability, but rather the inevitability” of an all-out military confrontation between NATO and Russia.

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“I would like to remind you that just a month ago, the French Foreign Minister denied Paris’s involvement in recruiting mercenaries for the Kiev regime, and called direct evidence ‘crude Russian propaganda.’”

What Comes Next As The Ukrainian Army Collapses (Helmer)

The collapse of the Ukrainian army following the battle of Avdeyevka, and its disorganized retreat, have accelerated Russian military thinking of how far westward the NATO allies will decide that the Ukrainian statelet can be defended against the expected Russian advance – and how fast new NATO defences can be created without the protection of ground-to-air missile batteries like Patriot, long-range artillery like the M777, and mobile armour like the Abrams, Bradley, and Caesar: all of them have already been defeated in the east. In short, there is no longer a NATO-command line of fortification east of the Polish border which deters the Russian General Staff. Also, no bunker for the Zelensky government and its NATO advisors to feel secure. Cutting and pasting from the Russian military bloggers and the Moscow analytical media, as a handful of US podcasters and substackers are doing as often as their subscribers require, is the Comfy-Armchair method for getting at the truth.

Reading the Russian sources directly, with the understanding that they are reporting what their military and intelligence sources are saying off the record, is still armchair generalship, but less comfy, more credible. Offence is now the order of the day up and down the contact line. The daily bulletin from the Ministry of Defense in Moscow calls this “improving the tactical situation” and “taking more advantageous positions”. In the past three days, Monday through Wednesday, the Defense Ministry also reported the daily casualty rate of the Ukrainian forces at 1,175, 1,065, and 695, respectively; three M777 howitzer hits; and the first Abrams tank to be destroyed. Because this source is blocked in several of the NATO states, the Russian military bloggers, which reproduce the bulletins along with videoclips and maps, may be more accessible; also more swiftly than the US-based podcasters and substackers can keep up.

Moscow sources confirm the obvious: the operational objective is to apply more and more pressure at more and more points along the line, in as many sectors or salients (“directions” is the Russian term) as possible simultaneously. At the same time, air attack, plus missiles and drones, are striking all rear Ukrainian and NATO airfield, road, and rail nodes, ammunition storages, vehicle parks, drone manufactories, fuel dumps, and other supply infrastructure, so as make reinforcement and redeployment more difficult and perilous. What cannot be seen are the Russian concentrations of forces aimed in the north, centre and south of the battlefield. Instead, there is what one source calls “an educated guess is that when the main blow comes, it will be North, Chernigov, Sumy, Kharkov, Poltava, or Centre, Dniepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, or both simultaneously.” For timing, the source adds, “after the Russian election.”

That is now less than three weeks away, on March 17. President Vladimir Putin will then reform his new government within four to six weeks for announcement by early May. Ministerial appointments sensitive to the General Staff’s planning are the Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who is expected to remain in place; and the Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who may retire. Following the call of French President Emmanuel Macron for the “possibility” of French ground force deployment to the Ukraine battlefield, and the subsequent clarification by French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu, the Russian assessment has been derisory. “As for Emmanuel Macron’s statements about the possibility of sending NATO troops to Ukraine,” replied Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova, “I would like to remind you that just a month ago, the French Foreign Minister denied Paris’s involvement in recruiting mercenaries for the Kiev regime, and called direct evidence ‘crude Russian propaganda.’

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“The West is unreasonable. Putin still thinks he can reason with the West. This is a mistake that is fatal for mankind.”

How Realistic Is Putin? (Paul Craig Roberts)

As readers know, I am concerned that Putin’s tolerance of a too-long-continuing-Ukraine-conflict is encouraging the conflict to spin-out-of-control. I have written about this risk neglected by the Kremlin many times. On February 27 I was interviewed by Finian Cunningham about this risk. If the interview is posted online, I will link to it hopefully before it is taken down by the narrative controllers. There is no doubt that I have been proven correct that the provocations, accepted by the Kremlin with only words in opposition, have increased in severity over the past two years. First the West would send to the Ukrainians helmets and sleeping bags. Then small arms ammunition. Then artillery. Tanks were mentioned, but Washington and NATO said, “never tanks.” Then tanks were sent. Then, after first being denied, drones and intermediate-range missiles. Then targeting information. Then mercenaries.

Then after being denied, now long-range missiles and US F-16s capable of penetrating deep into Russia herself far from the battlefront are under consideration. And now the latest, the French President’s proposal to send NATO troops. “We will never send troops,” declares NATO’s Stoltenberg. But all the denials previously were breached and meant nothing. So the question before us is: Has Putin reduced the threat of the conflict spinning out of control by fighting it on a low key basis limited to Donbass and the Russian areas, or has his low-key behavior convinced Washington’s neoconservatives that Putin is a paper tiger who will accept any provocation and any insult. If the latter, the provocations will increase in severity until the conflict spins out of control. Clearly from helmets to NATO troops is an immense escalation. Putin understands that the West intends Russia’s destruction, so why does he prolong conflicts that provide opportunities for the West to expand conflict?

The Kremlin and the Western media whores see the fundamental issue as Ukraine becoming a member of NATO. The neoconservatives who control US foreign policy seem to think that Putin will stand aside from this just as he did from being called by the President of the United States “the new Hitler” and “a son-of-a-bitch.” No American official of any rank ever spoke in public of Soviet leaders in such terms. On his way to Reykjavik, Iceland, for his meeting with Gorbachev, Reagan told his entourage that one word of rudeness to the Soviet officials and you were fired on the spot. Reagan’s goal was to end the Cold War, and he did. It was the neoconservatives and the US military/security complex that restarted it. As the deceased Steven Cohen and I emphasized, the threat of nuclear war today is much higher than during the Cold War.

In those years, leaders on both sides worked to reduce tensions and to achieve mutual security that would reduce the danger of nuclear confrontation. I was part of the effort and perhaps I am one of a small handful of people still alive who know and lived the experience. Once the Soviet Union collapsed when the Politburo placed Russian President Gorbachev under house arrest, the neoconservatives saw their chance at world hegemony and began their assault on Russia. All of the security-enhancing agreements worked out over the years of the Cold War were cancelled by Washington. NATO’ Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is Washington’s puppet. But he is not sufficiently stupid to knowingly start a war with Russia. Who can possibly imagine Europe, which is incapable of protecting its own borders from being over-run by unarmed immigrant-invaders, possibly fighting Russia. The war, if Putin could bring himself to fight it, would be over in a few minutes.

[..] It is Putin’s refusal to impose restraint on a weak and collapsing West that is leading to nuclear Armageddon. I am not writing because I want a Russian victory. I am writing because I do not want nuclear Armageddon. The West is unreasonable. Putin still thinks he can reason with the West. This is a mistake that is fatal for mankind.

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“They’re sawing off a branch they’ve been sitting on for decades..”

West Destroying Its Own Financial System – Putin (RT)

The West is discrediting its own currencies and banking system, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his annual address to the Federal Assembly on Thursday, adding that the established monopolies and stereotypes in the global economy are crumbling. “The West itself is discrediting its own currencies and banking system. They’re sawing off a branch they’ve been sitting on for decades,” Putin said. Meanwhile, Russia together with so-called ‘friendly’ nations will focus on creating new financial infrastructure that will be free from politics as it seeks to unite efforts in the face of global challenges, he said. The president was referring to the global trend of moving toward using national currencies in trade rather than the US dollar that has gained significant momentum after Russia was cut off from the Western financial system and had its foreign reserves frozen in 2022.

A number of both Russian and foreign officials have repeatedly warned that the US currency has long been used as a weapon, noting that such actions have prompted countries around the world to reduce their dependence on the greenback. Putin emphasized that Moscow is working with its allies on the basis of equality and respect of mutual interests. Because of this, he said, more and more countries are seeking to join groups such as BRICS, the Eurasian Economic Union, and Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Together with its partners Russia will continue building “safe” transport corridors based on new technology and create a new global financial network “free from political interference” at a time when the world economy, trade and finance are undergoing rapid changes, the president noted.

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“..They cannot afford to lose a war they cannot win..”

The CIA in Ukraine – The NY Times Gets a Guided Tour (Patrick Lawrence)

If you have paid attention to what various polls and officials in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West have been doing and saying about Ukraine lately, you know the look and sound of desperation. You would be desperate, too, if you were making a case for a war Ukrainians are on the brink of losing and will never, brink or back-from-the-brink, have any chance of winning. Atop this, you want people who know better, including 70 percent of Americans according to a recent poll, to keep investing extravagant sums in this ruinous folly. And here is what seems to me the true source of angst among these desperados: Having painted this war as a cosmic confrontation between the world’s democrats and the world’s authoritarians, the people who started it and want to prolong it have painted themselves into a corner. They cannot lose it. They cannot afford to lose a war they cannot win: This is what you see and hear from all those good-money-after-bad people still trying to persuade you that a bad war is a good war and that it is right that more lives and money should be pointlessly lost to it.

Everyone must act for the cause in these dire times. You have Chuck Schumer in Kyiv last week trying to show House Republicans that they should truly, really authorize the Biden regime to spend an additional $61 billion on its proxy war with Russia. “Everyone we saw, from Zelensky on down made this very point clear,” the Democratic senator from New York asserted in an interview with The New York Times. “If Ukraine gets the aid, they will win the war and beat Russia.” Even at this late hour people still have the nerve to say such things. You have European leaders gathering in Paris Monday to reassure one another of their unity behind the Kyiv regime—and where Emmanuel Macron refused to rule out sending NATO ground troops to the Ukrainian front. “Russia cannot and must not win this war,” the French president declared to his guests at the Elysée Palace. Except that it can and, barring an act of God, it will.

Then you have Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s war-mongering sec-gen, telling Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty last week that it will be fine if Kyiv uses F–16s to attack Russian cities once they are operational this summer. The U.S.–made fighter jets, the munitions, the money—all of it is essential “to ensure Russia doesn’t make further gains.” Stephen Bryen, formerly a deputy undersecretary at the Defense Department, offered an excellent response to this over the weekend in his Weapons and Strategy newsletter: “Fire Jens Stoltenberg before it is too late.” Good thought, but Stoltenberg, Washington’s longtime water-carrier in Brussels, is merely doing his job as assigned: Keep up the illusions as to Kyiv’s potency and along with it the Russophobia, the more primitive the better. You do not get fired for irresponsible rhetoric that risks something that might look a lot like World War III.

What would a propaganda blitz of this breadth and stupidity be without an entry from The New York Times? Given the extent to which The Times has abandoned all professional principle in the service of the power it is supposed to report upon, you just knew it would have to get in on this one. The Times has published very numerous pieces in recent weeks on the necessity of keeping the war going and the urgency of a House vote authorizing that $61 billion Biden’s national security people want to send Ukraine. But never mind all those daily stories. Last Sunday it came out with its big banana. “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin” sprawls—lengthy text, numerous photographs. The latter show the usual wreckage—cars, apartment buildings, farmhouses, a snowy dirt road lined with landmines.

But the story that goes with it is other than usual. Somewhere in Washington, someone appears to have decided it was time to let the Central Intelligence Agency’s presence and programs in Ukraine be known. And someone in Langley, the CIA’s headquarters, seems to have decided this will be O.K., a useful thing to do. When I say the agency’s presence and programs, I mean some: We get a very partial picture of the CIA’s doings in Ukraine, as the lies of omission—not to mention the lies of commission—are numerous in this piece. But what The Times published last weekend, all 5,500 words of it, tells us more than had been previously made public.

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“If Republicans in Congress end military funding to Kiev, the CIA may have to scale back.”

CIA in Ukraine (John Kiriakou)

The New York Times on February 25 published an explosive story of what purports to be the history of the CIA in Ukraine from the Maidan coup of 2014 to the present. The story, “The Spy War: How the CIA Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin,” is one of initial bilateral distrust, but a mutual fear and hatred of Russia, that progresses to a relationship so intimate that Ukraine is now one of the CIA’s closest intelligence partners in the world. At the same time, the Times’ publication of the piece, which reporters claimed relied on more than 200 interviews in Ukraine, the US, and “several European countries,” raises multiple questions: Why did the CIA not object to the article’s publication, especially with it being in one of the Agency’s preferred outlets? When the CIA approaches a newspaper to complain about the classified information it contains, the piece is almost always killed or severely edited. Newspaper publishers are patriots, after all. Right?

Was the article published because the CIA wanted the news out there? Perhaps more important was the point of the article to influence the Congressional budget deliberations on aid to Ukraine? After all, was the article really just meant to brag about how great the CIA is? Or was it to warn Congressional appropriators, “Look how much we’ve accomplished to confront the Russian bear. You wouldn’t really let it all go to waste, would you?” The Times’ article has all the hallmarks of a deep, inside look at a sensitive—possibly classified—subject. It goes into depth on one of the intelligence community’s Holy of Holies, an intelligence liaison relationship, something that no intelligence officer is ever supposed to discuss. But in the end, it really isn’t so sensitive. It doesn’t tell us anything that every American hasn’t already assumed. Maybe we hadn’t had it spelled out in print before, but we all believed that the CIA was helping Ukraine fight the Russians. We had already seen reporting that the CIA had “boots on the ground” in Ukraine and that the U.S. government was training Ukrainian special forces and Ukrainian pilots, so there’s nothing new there.

The article goes a little further in detail, although, again, without providing anything that might endanger sources and methods. For example, it tells us that: • There is a CIA listening post in the forest along the Russian border, one of 12 “secret” bases the US maintains there. One or more of these posts helped to prove Russia’s involvement in the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. That’s great. But the revelation exposes no secrets and tells us nothing new. • Ukrainian intelligence officials helped the Americans “go after” the Russian operatives “who meddled in the 2016 US presidential election.” I have a news flash for the New York Times: The Mueller report found that there was no meaningful Russian meddling in the 2016 election. And what does “go after” mean? • Beginning in 2016, the CIA trained an “elite Ukrainian commando force known as Unit 2245, which captured Russian drones and communications gear so that CIA technicians could reverse-engineer them and crack Moscow’s encryption systems.” This is exactly what the CIA is supposed to do. Honestly, if the CIA hadn’t been doing this, I would have suggested a class action lawsuit for the American people to get their tax money back. Besides, the CIA has been doing things like this for decades. The CIA was able to obtain important components of Soviet tactical weapons from ostensibly pro-Soviet Romania in the 1970s.

• Ukraine has turned into an intelligence-gathering hub that has intercepted more Russian communications than the CIA station in Kiev could initially handle. Again, I would expect nothing less. After all, that’s where the war is. So of course, communications will be intercepted there. As to the CIA station being overwhelmed, the Times never tells us if that is because the station was a one-man operation at the time or whether it had thousands of employees and was still overwhelmed. It’s all about scale. • And lest you think that the CIA and the U.S. government were on the offensive in Ukraine, the article makes clear that, “Mr. Putin and his advisers misread a critical dynamic. The CIA didn’t push its way into Ukraine. U.S. officials were often reluctant to fully engage, fearing that Ukrainian officials could not be trusted, and worrying about provoking the Kremlin.” It’s at this point in the article that the Times reveals what I believe to be the buried lead: “Now these intelligence networks are more important than ever, as Russia is on the offensive and Ukraine is more dependent on sabotage and long-range missile strikes that require spies far behind enemy lines. And they are increasingly at risk: “If Republicans in Congress end military funding to Kiev, the CIA may have to scale back.”

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Dionísio starts off talking about Astrid Klein, not Naomi. Normally such mistakes would make me switch off. But I like the topic of The Shock Doctrine on a wider scale.

The Internationalization of the Neo-Liberal Shock (Dionísio)

Looking at the present day, under the light of the formulation revealed by Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” is an enlightening challenge and absolutely reveals the historical importance of the analysis that is carried out, even if, in my opinion, it suffers from a certain “historical punctuality” considering the moments of application of a process that has come to be known as “neo-liberal economic shock theory”. Klein’s analysis, based on known historical facts, recounts secret CIA experiments in psychology and psychiatry, the application of the techniques in Pinochet’s Chile and many other countries (including post-Soviet Russia), and the neo-liberal doctrine of Milton Friedman’s “Chicago Boys”, tells us of a process whereby the population is put into a permanent state of shock in order to leave it unresponsive (as in lobotomy treatments), so that, under the cover of the generated amorphism, extremely unpopular measures are applied which, above all, are diametrically opposed to the interests of the majority.

The very process of discrediting politics and politicians also serves as a pretext for the same type of action. Take Trump, Bolsonaro, Milei, Meloni, Duda or Zelensky. The kind of demagogic shock (using corruption, mass migration, etc.) gives birth to a pretext that works under the same assumptions. However, and bearing in mind the unquestionable topicality of the approach, analyzing the world today according to this theory reveals a truth that, in my opinion, negates the idea of a certain “historical punctuality” of the neo-liberal economic shock. In my opinion, Naomi Klein’s approach, at that time, showed us a world in which the US was unleashing — and is unleashing — processes of transformation aimed at subverting the national and popular sovereignty, democracy and freedom of the peoples, in order to place their nations at the service of the process of neo-liberal and imperialist accumulation.

The successive clashes are taking place in circumscribed national spaces and in a chronology whose origins go back to Pinochet’s Chile, but which lacks a certain continuity, as if we were dealing with a gang that was jumping from country to country, without ever reaching the whole. Now, while Klein’s approach proposes a certain national circumscription, the historical events of the last 23 years point us towards a globalization or internationalization of the shock doctrine, towards its historical continuity and towards a totalizing dimension, encompassing all dimensions of our lives from the outset and not just on arrival. Given what we know today, I can’t help but think that the chronologically linked examples of the application of the shock doctrine are nothing more than experiments, constantly being perfected, aimed at an epilogue, an epilogue that we are experiencing today. The globalization and internationalization of the neo-liberal shock, along with its phenomenological diversification.

It no longer only affects the economic or social component, but also health, the state, security, defense, information and propaganda. This is the clear materialization of another doctrine, the doctrine of “full spectrum dominance”. With the turn of the 21st century, everything changed! On September 11, 2001, the world was shocked by a terrorist attack of spectacular proportions, which culminated in the collapse of three towers in New York. As if Hollywood had been asked to prepare a terrorist attack. The American — and Western — population was in a state of shock, stunned, and we soon began to see direct attacks on the way of life that so many considered to be eternal — remember Fukuyama — and historically perfected. In the US, we saw the publication of the Patriot Act and the start of the War on Terror. State surveillance became part of American life and, a little later, European life, particularly after renewed waves of terrorist shocks in Spain, England and France.

The proven link between the perpetrators of terrorist acts — Al-Qaeda — and their creators, very few took, or wanted to take, notice of. Today, we go into a supermarket, visit a museum, make a phone call or take a photograph and we have the guarantee that, somewhere in space, that information will be processed, aggregated, integrated, analyzed and stored. Terrorism has become part of our lives and, under that pretext, mass surveillance. Bin Laden became the devil himself, the demon who terrorized the dreams of our little children, who would be protected by the omnipresent Pentagon and other “deep state” agencies. It was this “deep state” that took the opportunity to generalize and normalize torture, concentration camps like Guantánamo and the secret, or not so secret, prisons where all those who oppose the imperial designs are still held today. It was time to internationalize the terror that the Middle East had felt almost since the founding of the Anglo-Saxon spearhead in the region, the Zionist state of Israel and its infamous Mossad.

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The Supreme Court will have to issue an opinion, whether it likes to or not.

Maddow and Others Denounce SCOTUS for Review of Presidential Immunity (Turley)

Yesterday, the Supreme Court granted review of the presidential immunity question, but set an expedited schedule for the review of the question with oral argument scheduled for April. Former president Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that “Legal Scholars are extremely thankful for the Supreme Court’s Decision today to take up Presidential Immunity.” As I mentioned last night in the coverage, legal scholars are hardly doing a conga line in celebration. Indeed, this morning had the usual voices attacking the Court as “craven” and partisan for granting review in the case. Despite the Court (including three Trump appointees) repeatedly ruling against Trump and conservative causes in past cases, the same voices declared that the Court was a cabal of politically compromised lickspittles.

MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow was outraged on the air and denounced “the cravenness of the court.” She noted that the Court took a whole two weeks to consider the question, ignoring the usual schedule of months of such deliberation. She added: “Obviously, pushing all of the cases that they can push to a point where Trump will be standing for election before any of us have heard the verdicts in any of those cases. Got it. It is the timing…This is BS, and you are doing this as a tactic to help for political friend, partisan patron. For you to say that this is something the court needs to decide because it is unclear in the law is fragrant bullpucky and they know it and don’t care that we know it. That is disturbing about the future legitimacy of the court.” Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner dismissed the review as a political effort to do Trump “an enormous favor.” Kirschner also said that it was “clear” the court “sold American democracy down the river” to help Trump.

Mary Trump, the niece of the former president, declared that “the Supreme Court of the United States just reminded us with this corrupt decision that the insurrection did not fail–it never ended.” In other words, the Supreme Court itself is now part of the “insurrection.” It is that easy. Once you start to remove people from the ballot by declaring a riot an insurrection, even courts become insurrectionists by allowing for a review of lower court rulings. For years, liberal law professors and pundits have filled the media with dire predictions that the Supreme Court was about to carry out a long-planned “coup” and “power grab” — one even wrote that the court could be on the brink of establishing “one-party rule” in the United States. These commentators often ignore the countervailing cases where conservative justices voted against conservative causes and immediately return to these sensational claims whenever the Court is seen as a hinderance of their agenda, even in the simple act of granting review of a long-debated constitutional question.

[..] There are a variety of reasons why the Court could have put this on the calendar for further argument. While I still believe that Trump will not be able to secure a majority on his sweeping immunity theory, some justices may be concerned over D.C. Circuit opinion and the lack of clarity on when a president is protected for actions taken in office. It is possible to uphold the lower court in its outcome but change the rationale or analysis. The Court has not been particularly eager to reenter this area of constitutional law, but it may now be prepared to lay down new precedent and bring greater clarity for future presidents.

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“..The inflation of the last few years is directly traceable to the end of this practice, and it was our sanctions that caused it…”

Yellen Voices Support For Permanent Inflation (Denninger)

No, seriously, that’s exactly what she’s now promoting (although I doubt she realizes it): WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday offered her strongest public support yet for the idea of liquidating roughly $300 billion in frozen Russian Central Bank assets and using them for Ukraine’s long-term reconstruction. “It is necessary and urgent for our coalition to find a way to unlock the value of these immobilized assets to support Ukraine’s continued resistance and long-term reconstruction,” Yellen said in remarks in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors are meeting this week.” In other words, steal the funds. Yellen goes on to say she believes there is a strong international law case for stealing the funds. Well perhaps there is and perhaps not; I will not pass judgment on whether one can find justification in international law for such an action.

I can and will, however, pass judgment on the immediate and permanent outcome of such an action, because that is both obvious and inevitable. It will force trade settlement into all bilateral currency forms immediately and permanently. Now this might not sound so bad and were our government not running a ~7% fiscal deficit right now it might not be. But we are running a 7% fiscal deficit, and kneecapping having trade settlement performed in dollars — or Euros — or Pounds — or whatever else by taking this action will permanently and immediately force all fiscal deficits (not just in the US) to reflect back into that nation’s economy in the form of inflation. We have, in the United States, benefited to an enormous degree from this temporary sequestration over the last 20 years. That was unwound to a large degree when the first round of sanctions was laid and now effectively all trade with either side of the Russian / Ukraine conflict is no longer using dollars as a funding currency.

Why does this matter? Because if that trade goes from $1 trillion a year to $2 trillion a year during the period of time when it increases there is $1 trillion in deficit spending that is effectively “impounded” while the goods are in transit. It is the increase in such trade that drives this, not the volume (since once the transaction settles those funds wind up back into the flow of commerce in the US.) But as international commerce has expanded and the dollar and, to a lesser extent the Euro, were used as the currencies while in-transit our nations have enjoyed a sizeable “sink” for deficit spending without having it immediately rebound back into consumer and producer prices. The inflation of the last few years is directly traceable to the end of this practice, and it was our sanctions that caused it. The Covid deficit spending was certainly a factor but much of that was absorbed and would have stayed absorbed as trade rebounded post pandemic but for our sanctions activity when the war in Ukraine broke out.

Now Yellen claims that the “frozen” assets were not just sequestered — she wants to take them. Most of these funds are in the EU, not the US — but the problem with the action is that producers and customers have no way to influence or prevent such an action by their government in the future and thus this is an external risk that can only be controlled by not exposing yourself to it; thus you demand payment in your local currency. Removing this leg of the stool leaves only one way to get inflation under control: Deficit spending must be cut to no more than the increase in productivity in the economy. When the “PIGS” problems showed up in Europe the EU’s response to this was to mandate no more than a 3% fiscal deficit — which reasonably aligns with productivity.

Meeting this today in the United States would require a cut in federal spending of more than $1 trillion dollars this fiscal year alone, and an escalating amount as existing treasury debt is rolled over at higher rates. Within the next two to three years the total cut required would be more than two trillion or approximately the entire Medicare and Medicaid spend this fiscal year. If that’s not done? We will get runaway — exponentially so — inflationary pressure and be forced to do it anyway at even greater levels of economic pain. If you are betting on lower rates at any time in the next decade, given this position of our government, you’re going to be sorely disappointed both in the outcome and in asset prices.

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“..the Biden administration refuses to clarify what it means by a ‘Palestinian state.’”

‘State-minus’: Biden’s Palestine Solution (Cradle)

Is it sadly ironic that the issue of Palestinian statehood – unresolved for over 75 years – has resurfaced only after Israel’s wholesale carpet-bombing of the Gaza Strip, killing over 30,000 civilians, injuring tens of thousands more, and destroying significant swathes of the territory’s infrastructure. University of California (UCLA) historian James Gelvin states the case plainly: “There would have been no serious discussion of a two-state solution without [the events of] 7 October. As a matter of fact, putting the Palestine issue back on the front burner of international and West Asian politics was one of the reasons Hamas launched its operation.” As Gelvin explains it to The Cradle, Hamas has already scored several victories since its Al-Aqsa Flood operation: “The Palestine issue is back on the international agenda, it is negotiating the release of its captives as an equal partner to Israel,” and has demonstrated that it is “more effective in realizing Palestinian goals than its rival, Fatah.”

While the unprecedented, brutal Israeli military response has indeed illustrated the urgency for establishing a Palestinian safe haven, it is impossible to ignore that western state backers of the 1993 Oslo Accords – which laid out the essential framework for the establishment of a Palestinian state – have then so assiduously ignored and neglected that responsibility. Even greater hypocrisy emerges from the fact that these western powers, led by Washington, have now decided to force the discussion of Palestinian statehood in the midst of Gaza’s carnage, with an Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is infamously opposed to it. So, why is this debate possible now? Why was it ignored before 7 October – or even prior to Netanyahu’s return to the prime ministership?

After enormous public and international pressure, US President Joe Biden has, at least rhetorically, reopened the issue of Palestinian statehood. According to the New York Times, the Biden White House’s new doctrine would “involve some form of US recognition of a demilitarized Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in return for strong Palestinian guarantees that their institutions could never threaten Israel.” In addition, the US president’s plan also envisages Saudi–Israeli normalization and a tough military stance against Iran and its regional allies. However, many analysts have already raised questions about the viability of a plan that does not reflect current ground realities.

While Netanyahu rejects the very notion of a Palestinian state, the ‘Biden doctrine’ and its offering of some limited-sovereignty version of a demilitarized Palestinian state is nothing less than humiliating for Palestinians. Dr Muhannad Ayyash, Professor of Sociology at Mount Royal University, observes that there is no fundamental change of approach by the US on this issue. In short, the Biden administration refuses to clarify what it means by a ‘Palestinian state.’ Its initiative appears mainly to advance a form of a two-state solution that would be palatable to Israel. Ayyash points out that the key issues related to Palestinian statehood are left unanswered, including the issue of sovereignty, Jewish settlements, the status of East Jerusalem, a necessary West Bank/East Jerusalem with the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian right to return, and so forth.

Aid

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“I haven’t seen, and the state of Texas can’t point me to any type of military invasion in Texas,” Judge Ezra said.”

Federal Judge Blocks New Texas Law to Arrest Illegal Immigrants (ET)

A federal judge on Feb. 29 temporarily blocked a Texas law that would allow state police to arrest people who are suspected of illegally crossing the U.S.–Mexico border. Senate Bill 4, which was signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in December 2023, was slated to go into effect on March 5. However, U.S. District Judge David Ezra ruled that it violated the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause that grants the federal government sole authority over immigration matters. The judge also rejected Texas’s arguments that it was being invaded under the Constitution’s Article IV. In his order, Judge Ezra, a Reagan appointee, said the law would run afoul of federal immigration laws and claimed Texas would then be able to “permanently supersede federal directives,” which would “amount to nullification of federal law and authority.”

According to the judge, that’s a “notion that is antithetical to the Constitution and has been unequivocally rejected by federal courts since the Civil War.” As a result, he argued, the federal government would “suffer grave irreparable harm” because other states would be inspired to pass similar measures. “SB 4 threatens the fundamental notion that the United States must regulate immigration with one voice,” he wrote. At a Feb. 15 hearing, Judge Ezra expressed skepticism as the state pleaded its case for what is known as Senate Bill 4. He also said he was somewhat sympathetic to the concerns expressed by Mr. Abbott and other state officials about the unprecedented influx of illegal aliens. Judge Ezra then expressed his concern that the United States could become a confederation of states enforcing their own immigration laws. “That is the same thing the Civil War said you can’t do,” he told the attorneys.

A lawyer for the state of Texas argued in court that because of the deluge of illegal immigrants, enabled by drug cartels and smugglers, it’s tantamount to an invasion and that the state has the right to defend itself under the Constitution. However, the judge said that while he was “sympathetic” to the state’s concerns, he was skeptical of the lawyer’s argument. “I haven’t seen, and the state of Texas can’t point me to any type of military invasion in Texas,” Judge Ezra said. “I don’t see evidence that Texas is at war.” Hours later, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton confirmed that he filed an appeal against the judge’s ruling, describing it as an “incorrect decision.” “Texas has a clear right to defend itself from the drug smugglers, human traffickers, cartels, and legions of illegal aliens crossing into our State as a consequence of the Biden Administration’s deliberate policy choices,” he said.

“I will do everything possible to defend Texas’s right to defend herself against the catastrophic illegal invasion encouraged by the federal government.” Mr. Abbott, a Republican, has backed the law, saying that it would complement his efforts to provide better border security, noting that his state has dealt with a surge of illegal crossings in recent years. Other measures that Mr. Abbott has implemented are a barrier in the Rio Grande, razor wire barriers at certain border crossings, and prohibiting federal agents who have been tasked by the Biden administration with undoing the measures from accessing border areas in Texas. Other state Republicans who back the law have said it wouldn’t target immigrants already living in the United States because of a two-year statute of limitations on the illegal entry charge and would be enforced only along the state’s border with Mexico.

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“We must not allow the politicization of intelligence to go unchecked, nor can we tolerate the involvement of foreign powers in our democratic processes.”

Obama’s CIA Asked Foreign Intel Agencies To Spy on Trump Campaign (Chernin)

The revelation that the U.S. intelligence community, under the Obama administration, sought the assistance of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance to surveil Donald Trump’s associates before the 2016 election is a chilling reminder of the lengths to which the Deep State will go to protect its interests and challenge its adversaries. (The Five Eyes countries are the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.) This bombshell, reported by a team of independent journalists, exposes a dark chapter in American political history, where foreign intelligence services were reportedly mobilized against a presidential candidate. The alleged operation against Trump and his associates, which predates the official start of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, is a stark example of political weaponization of intelligence.

The involvement of foreign allies in surveilling American citizens under the pretext of national security raises serious questions about the integrity of our democratic processes and the autonomy of our nation’s intelligence operations. The narrative that has been pushed for years, that the investigation into Trump’s campaign began with an Australian tip about a boastful Trump aide, now appears to be a cover for a more extensive and coordinated effort to undermine Trump. If reports are accurate, British intelligence began targeting Trump on behalf of American intelligence agencies as early as 2015, long before the official narrative claims.

The implications of this are profound. It suggests an unprecedented level of collusion between U.S. intelligence agencies and their foreign counterparts to influence the outcome of an American presidential election. The use of foreign intelligence to circumvent American laws and surveillance limitations represents a grave threat to our nation’s sovereignty and the principles of democracy. The fact that this operation was reportedly initiated at the behest of high-ranking officials within the Obama administration, including CIA Director John Brennan, only adds to the severity of the situation. Brennan’s alleged identification of Trump associates for surveillance by the Five Eyes alliance, and the directive to “bump” or make contact with them, illustrates a deliberate strategy to entangle the Trump campaign in a web of suspicion and intrigue.

Moreover, the reported involvement of foreign intelligence in crafting the Russia collusion narrative not only delegitimizes the subsequent investigation but also highlights the willingness of certain elements within the U.S. government to exploit international partnerships for domestic political gain. This revelation demands a thorough and transparent examination to ensure that such abuses of power are brought to light and severely punished to discourage them from being repeated. As more details emerge, it is imperative that the American public demand accountability from those who orchestrated and executed this operation. The sanctity of our electoral process and the trust in our intelligence agencies are at stake. We must not allow the politicization of intelligence to go unchecked, nor can we tolerate the involvement of foreign powers in our democratic processes.

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“Hunter’s stated purpose for joining Burisma’s board is a new claim that indicates bizarre reasoning never before revealed..”

Hunter Finally Admits Joe Biden Is “The Big Guy” (ZH)

Hunter Biden on Wednesday testified to Congress that his father, Joe, was indeed “the big guy” referenced in an email pertaining to a business deal with a Chinese state-linked energy company that made the Biden family and friends millions of dollars. He denied, however, that Joe Biden ever received a 10% stake as was indicated in the text message. “At one point, we asked Hunter about the 10% for the ‘big guy,’” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told Breitbart News following the first son’s six-hour, closed-door deposition. “We showed him the email … And he said, ‘Oh, that was after my father left office.’” she told the outlet. Hunter then tried to downplay the 10% idea: “What’s wrong with having a pie-in-the-sky idea? When he [Joe Biden] left office in 2017, it thought he was done. I had no idea was gonna run for president. What’s wrong with just some pie?’ … thinking that he [Joe Biden] could be in the business.” -Breitbart

Greene said that Hunter insisted that “there was no percentage for my father in the business,” and that the 20 speakerphone calls Joe Biden joined was considered normal. “He was saying it’s totally normal for your parents to call you,” said Greene. “He just totally kept on saying, ‘Oh, this is normal. This is normal.'” “Greene also confirmed Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-KY) statement that Hunter testified he joined the board of Burisma Holdings to counter Russian aggression. “He said he was picked to serve on Burisma ‘s board to defend democracy and Burisma was stopping Russian aggression,” Greene said. Hunter’s stated purpose for joining Burisma’s board is a new claim that indicates bizarre reasoning never before revealed. In 2015, Burisma was under suspicion of money laundering and public corruption. Prosecutor Victor Shokin investigated the case before his termination due to pressure from then-Vice President Joe Biden, who threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid from Ukraine if the Ukrainian government did not fire the prosecutor investigating Burisma. Joe Biden later bragged about the firing during a 2018 appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations.” -Breitbart

According to Greene, Republicans need to “get ready” for Democrats to fabricate another Russian disinformation hoax related to Hunter and the 2024 election – and that it would likely fit the media’s existing narrative against both Trump and protecting the Biden family. “I have a prediction that they’re gonna move it on to members of Congress like me and others, Jim Jordan, Jamie Comer, any of us that got hot and heavy on this Ukraine Burisma stuff, that they’re somehow going to say that Republicans are Russian sympathizers. They’re gonna call me that anyway, because I won’t fund the Ukraine war. They’re probably going to accuse us of being Russian sympathizers and falling for Russian disinformation and its election meddling. And then Democratic members of Congress here already saying they will not certify Trump’s election if he wins.” -MTG “It was there’s a really weird theme in there with the whole Russian thing,” said Greene.

In November, the House Oversight Committee revealed that President Biden received $40,000 in Chinese funds which were “laundered” through his brother, James Biden, in a “complicated financial transaction” marked as a ‘loan,’ which took place just weeks after Hunter Biden threatened the Chinese with his father’s wrath in a July 30, 2017 text message to a CEFC China Energy employee. “The alleged 2017 transfer from first brother James Biden to the future president involves the same business deal in which Joe Biden was called the “big guy” and penciled in for a 10% cut — and would be the first proven instance of the commander-in-chief getting a piece of his family’s foreign income…. The money ended up in Joe Biden’s bank account on Sept. 3, 2017, via a check labeled “loan repayment” from his younger brother, who partnered with Hunter in the venture”. -NY Post

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“..a plethora of political pathologies, including merciless cruelty, politicized “justice,” mass media disinformation, and, last but not least, that old specialty of the “garden” West, peak hypocrisy.”

Julian Assange and Gaza Civilians (Amar)

Recently, two of the defining injustices of the contemporary West have been the object of legal proceedings. And while one involves mass murder and the other the torture but not murder of a single victim (at least not yet), there are good reasons to juxtapose the two systematically. The suffering involved is different, but the forces that cause it are intricately linked and, as we will see, reveal much about the nature of the West as a political order. In The Hague, the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) – also known as the World Court – has held extensive hearings (involving 52 states and three international organizations) on Israel’s post-1967 occupation – or de facto annexation – of Palestinian territories. These hearings are connected to, but are not the same as, the genocide case against Israel also currently proceeding at the ICJ.

All of this is happening against the backdrop of Israel’s relentless genocide of the Palestinians by bombing, shooting (reportedly including small children, in the head), blockade, and starvation. As of now, the constantly growing – and conservative – victim count stands at about 30,000 killed, 70,000 injured, 7,000 missing, and at least 2 million displaced, often more than once, always under horrific conditions. In London, the Royal Courts of Justice have been the stage for Julian Assange’s fight for an appeal against Washington’s demand to extradite him to the US. Assange, an activist and publisher of investigative journalism, has already been in confinement – of one kind or the other – for more than a decade. Since 2019, he has been held in the Belmarsh high security prison. In fact, what has already happened to him is the modern equivalent of being locked away in the Bastille by royal “lettre de cachet” in absolutist, pre-revolutionary, Ancien régime France.

Multiple observers, including a UN special rapporteur, have argued compellingly that Assange’s treatment has amounted to torture. The essence of his political persecution – in reality, there is no good-faith legal case – is simple: Through his WikiLeaks platform, Assange published leaked materials that exposed the brutality, criminality, and lies of the US’ and UK’s (and, more generally, the West’s) post-9/11 wars. While leaking state secrets is not legal – although it can be morally obligatory and even heroic, as in the case of Chelsea Manning, who was a major WikiLeaks source – publishing the results of such leaks is legal. Indeed, that principle is an acknowledged pillar of media freedom and independence. Without it, media cannot fulfil any kind of watchdog function. Yet Washington is obstinately and absurdly trying to treat Assange as a spy. If it succeeds, “global media freedom” (for what it’s worth…) is toast. This is what makes Assange objectively the single most important political prisoner in the world.

If extradited to the US, whose highest officials have at times plotted his assassination, the WikiLeaks founder will definitely not get a fair trial and will die in prison. In that case, his fate will irreversibly turn into what Washington and London have been working on for over a decade, namely making an example of him by delivering the most devastating blow imaginable against free speech and a truly open society. That Gaza and Assange have something in common has occurred to more than one observer. Both stand for a plethora of political pathologies, including merciless cruelty, politicized “justice,” mass media disinformation, and, last but not least, that old specialty of the “garden” West, peak hypocrisy. There also is the grotesquely arrogant American sense of global entitlement: The Palestinians’ rights or, indeed, humanity count for nothing if Israel, Washington’s closest and most lawless ally, wants their land and their lives. Assange, of course, is an Australian citizen.

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“He is going to destroy this country unless he’s stopped by people buying my new Trump sneakers. Look at these beautiful gold sneakers..”

Biden Arrives At Border To Address His Voters (BBee)

Amid record-breaking illegal immigration at the southern border, President Biden arrived in Brownsville Texas to address his voters, who had crossed into the United States the previous night. “Welcome, voters, make yourselves at home!” said Biden to a group of military-aged male Chinese nationals and a crowd of convicted felons from a maximum security Venezuelan prison. “My nurse Jill always says you people are unique breakfast tacos and I couldn’t have said it better. We’re excited for you to live here. You have plenty of great states to choose from, like Ohio, Pennsylvania, or any other crucial battleground states. I was… I… I…” “… well, anyway.” The confused migrant crowd was then directed to a welcome station to receive their smartphones, visa gift cards, and mail-in ballots.

Trump, who also visited the border today, was quick to condemn Biden’s speech and his handling of the border. “Biden is possibly the worst president of any country in the history of the world, or maybe even the entire universe, and maybe all the other universes as well, possibly,” said Trump to reporters. “He is going to destroy this country unless he’s stopped by people buying my new Trump sneakers. Look at these beautiful gold sneakers. They’re the greatest sneakers ever made. So, so beautiful.” Following the Biden border visit, the White House confirmed that there is no crisis at the border. “Everything is fine and there are no illegal immigrants,” said gay black Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre. “There is no crisis and Biden is doing a great job and he’s very smart and sharp and mentally with it and you are a racist.” At publishing time, illegal immigrant support for Biden increased another 33 points.

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Cat reaction

 

 

 

 

Porcupine
https://twitter.com/i/status/1763289492897628313

 

 

Salmon

 

 

Illusions

 

 

Coke ad

 

 

Set the table

 

 

Nemo

 

 

Elephant

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Feb 142024
 
 February 14, 2024  Posted by at 9:41 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  80 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Acrobat 1930

 

The Nuts And Bolts Of Replacing Candidate Biden, Before/After Convention (ZH)
Biden Age a ‘Legitimate Issue’ – Hillary Clinton (RT)
Biden And Trump Trying To Hide Their Age – Mitt Romney (RT)
Can Biden Be Removed Under the 25th Amendment? Don’t Bet on It (Turley)
The Absurd Border Con (Victor Davis Hanson)
The One Border Question Dems Can’t Answer (Miele)
House Speaker Says Will Not Take Up Senate’s $95B Ukraine-Israel Aid Bill (Sp.)
Putin and Xi Will Regret Challenging America – Schumer (RT)
Scott Ritter: Tucker-Putin Interview Shows Americans ‘Hungry for Information’ (Sp.)
Tucker’s Interview Reveals An Increasingly Formidable Putin (Arestovych)
US Pushing Israel and Palestine Towards Catastrophe – Lavrov (Sp.)
Bobulinski Says China Successfully Sought To Infiltrate And Compromise WH (NYP)
Life During Wartime – On the Road in Donbass (Pepe Escobar)
Think About It (Kunstler)
Net-Zero Is Pulling the Plug on America’s Electrical Life Support System (ET)

 

 

 

 

Jon Stewart

 

 

Weinstein

 

 

 

 

Migration grows 10X
https://twitter.com/i/status/1757258031392280674

 

 

Borrell

 

 

Miller

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..things would really get wild if Biden were to be nominated at the convention only to subsequently die, resign or be disabled..”

The Nuts And Bolts Of Replacing Candidate Biden, Before/After Convention (ZH)

On Monday, Politico examined avenues by which the Democratic Party might navigate toward a different candidate. First, note that the expiration of most ballot-filing deadlines means it’s too late for a heavyweight to enter the Democratic primary, and the obscure Rep. Dean Phillips challenge campaign — which has emphasized Biden’s weakness as a candidate — hasn’t gained any traction. Politico’s Charlie Mahtesian and Steven Shepard also think it’s unlikely we’ll see a floor revolt by Biden delegates at the Democratic Convention. Rather, they focus on a scenario in which Biden sees the primary process all the way through, and then — under mounting public, media and political pressure — announces he will not seek re-election after all and is releasing his delegates to vote for someone else at the national convention, which will be held in Chicago Aug. 19 to 22. Biden might well endorse a candidate, but his delegates wouldn’t be obliged to vote for his pick.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s been running an odd non-campaign of his own — to include debating then-GOP hopeful Ron DeSantis — would be among the top contenders, along with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. It could all make for great entertainment, writes Politico: The Democrats’ convention, typically a staid affair, would be filled with drama. While Democrats stripped their so-called “superdelegates” of most of their power after 2016, those current and former party leaders and elected officials would get a vote on a potential second ballot at the convention. That would give them significant sway in picking a nominee in a floor fight, but perhaps at the expense of reopening the 2016-era controversy about the role played by party elites in stifling Bernie Sanders’ chances at the nomination

One thing Politico didn’t note is that the convention is already likely to feature high drama, in the form of protests by Democrats and others infuriated by the Biden administration’s blank-check backing of Israel’s unbridled destruction of Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel. A floor-fight for the nomination could mean there’s chaos both inside and outside Chicago’s United Center. While a Biden pre-convention withdrawal would make for quite a spectacle, things would really get wild if Biden were to be nominated at the convention only to subsequently die, resign or be disabled. In that scenario, party rules direct the party chair to “confer with the Democratic leadership of the … Congress and the Democratic Governors Association” and then report to the approximately 450-member Democratic National Committee, which would then choose a new nominee.

The chaos wouldn’t be confined to the Democratic Party: States would be forced to scramble to produce new ballots. Ballots for overseas military service members are shipped just a couple weeks after the late-August Democratic convention, and in-person voting kicks off on Sept. 20 in Minnesota and South Dakota. None of this is to say that Biden won’t keep mumbling, shuffling, blank-staring and gaffing his way all the way to the Nov 5 general election finish line. However, after last week, fewer people are willing to wager that Biden will be the Democratic nominee:


Line Chart: Price of a contract that pays $1.00 if Biden is the Democratic nominee (via PredictIt)

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“It’s a legitimate issue for Trump who’s only three years younger, right? So it’s an issue.”

Biden Age a ‘Legitimate Issue’ – Hillary Clinton (RT)

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said President Joe Biden’s advancing age is a “legitimate issue” on the campaign trail, as he seeks to secure a second term in the White House in the election later this year. Speculation about Biden’s cognitive abilities was once again raised last week when the 81-year-old confused the leaders of Egypt and Mexico, shortly after dismissing claims that his mental state is declining. The verbal misstep followed an announcement that Biden will not face criminal prosecution for mishandling classified government documents, after a prosecutor described him as an “elderly man with a poor memory.” According to Clinton, who unsuccessfully ran against Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential race, the debate about Biden’s age is valid.

“I talked to people in the White House all the time, and you know, they know it’s an issue, but as I like to say, ‘look, it’s a legitimate issue,’” Clinton told MSNBC last week. “It’s a legitimate issue for Trump who’s only three years younger, right? So it’s an issue.” But instead of seeking to ignore concerns about his age, Clinton said that the Biden campaign team should expand on his experience as a legislator ahead of November’s election. “I think Biden also should lean into the fact that he’s experienced and that experience is not just in the political arena,” Clinton said. “It’s like, the stuff of, you know, human experience, character, wisdom.” A poll published last week by NBC News found that some 76% of respondents had concerns over Biden’s age and health, should he be reelected to another four-year term. Similar concerns were voiced by 61% regarding Trump, who will be 78 by the time of the election in November.

In October, the Republican frontrunner sparked questions of his own mental acuity when he incorrectly referred to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban as the leader of Türkiye. Meanwhile, Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, on Sunday described special counsel Robert Hur’s description of the US president’s mental wellbeing as a “shabby work product.” The Republican-led critique of Biden was “misleading,” Bauer told CBS, adding that the report into his retention of classified documents “went off the rails.” According to a YouGov poll of 1,000 US citizens earlier this month, Trump holds a one-point advantage over Biden in a hypothetical match-up between the two likely presidential candidates.

JFK Jr

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“It’s one thing to say you passed a competency test. But it’s another thing to actually have the American people listen to you debate..”

Biden And Trump Trying To Hide Their Age – Mitt Romney (RT)

President Joe Biden and his likely election opponent Donald Trump are avoiding debates for fear of showing “how old they are”, Senator Mitt Romney has claimed. Romney, a Republican senator for Utah and 2012 presidential election runner-up, was speaking to the Associated Press on Monday amid widespread public concern over Biden’s advanced age and apparently failing memory. Romney argued that presidential candidates should engage in public debates, calling them a crucial part of the campaign process. “This is a democracy of the United States of America. We need to hear from the people who want to be president and see if they have mental capacity and see what their positions are on issues,” Romney argued.

It’s one thing to say you passed a competency test. But it’s another thing to actually have the American people listen to you debate. I want to hear both President Biden and President Trump. So far, neither Biden nor former President Trump have agreed to take part in any debates. While Biden’s reelection campaign has repeatedly sidestepped media inquiries regarding a televised face-off with Trump, the Republican has feuded with both the party’s National Committee, refusing to join primary debates – and with the nonpartisan commission hosting general election debates, over its rules.

“People always find excuses for why they don’t want to debate. But you got a couple of old guys that don’t want to have people see how old they are,” Romney said. The 76-year-old senator called time on his political career last summer, opting to retire when his current term ends in January 2025 without seeking re-election. “At the end of another term, I’d be in my mid-80s,” Romney said at the time. “Frankly, it’s time for a new generation of leaders. They’re the ones that need to make the decisions that will shape the world they will be living in.”

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“..constitutional removal would require more than just memory lapses and “get off my lawn” press conferences…”

Can Biden Be Removed Under the 25th Amendment? Don’t Bet on It (Turley)

[..] as I wrote with regard to the Trump demands at the time, calls for Biden’s removal ignore the true purpose and standard for removal. The issue of “disability” of a president was briefly raised in the Constitutional Convention in 1787. It was a delegate from Biden’s home state of Delaware who asked how they would respond to a disability, “and who is to be the judge of it?” John Dickinson’s question was left unanswered in the final version of the Constitution. What followed were persistent controversies over succession. This issue came to a head after President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a stroke. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Congress finally addressed the issue in the 25th Amendment. The amendment addresses the orderly succession of power as well as temporary disabilities when presidents must undergo medical treatment or surgeries.

It is Section 4 that allows the removal of a president. One option is what I have called the “mutiny option.” It requires a vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to declare that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” and notify Congress that the vice president intends to take over. If Vice President Kamala Harris could get eight Cabinet officers to go along with a letter to Congress, her status as the “Acting President” would likely be short-lived. Joe Biden (who yesterday declared, “I’m elderly and know what the hell I’m doing”) would only have to declare to Congress that “no inability exists.” Biden would then resume his powers. Harris would have to send another declaration with the Cabinet members within four days to the president pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House, rejecting Biden’s claims.

With that second declaration, Congress would have 48 hours to assemble to debate the issue. It would then have 21 days to vote on the removal. However, that would require two-thirds majorities in both houses. If Congress did not vote within 21 days, the president would resume and keep power. In other words, it is about as likely as François Mitterrand coming forward to say that he faked his death and has indeed been in communication with Biden. The question on the merits is whether “diminished faculties” constitute an incapacity. While the 25th Amendment was written with physical disabilities in mind, it clearly can apply to mental or cognitive disabilities. Yet if Biden’s decline is viewed as a barrier to prosecution, would it necessarily be a barrier to the presidency? The answer is complicated. A study in Psychology Today of the first 37 presidents suggests half of them experienced some form of mental illness. They were still able to perform their duties.

Memory problems are not a compelling basis for removal. However, it is a matter of degree. Biden’s cognitive problems are becoming increasingly evident, but the sole question is whether he can carry out the duties of his office. The standard is not whether he can carry out those duties well. There is a difference between Biden confusing names and actually carrying on conversations with dead people. The latter would clearly be grounds for removal. Of course, it is hard for the public to know the degree of Biden’s decline. The White House staff has clearly shielded Biden from the public and the press for years. Even during the 2020 campaign, many suspected that the staff was hiding Biden’s mental struggles. In that sense, the concern over Biden’s fitness is legitimate. However, it will take much more of a showing to establish a case for his removal under the 25th Amendment.

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“..no Republican should have ever imagined that giving open-border Democrats everything they asked for was a smart strategic position, but that’s what they very nearly did..”

The Absurd Border Con (Victor Davis Hanson)

For the past three years of President Biden’s mass influx, the left has applauded open borders. That is, until late last year, when overwhelmed southern border state governors began bussing and flying illegal immigrants en masse to northern sanctuary-city jurisdictions. For years, these sanctuary zones had preened their liberality about open borders. They smeared as “racists” and “xenophobes” any who insisted on legal-only immigration. But now they were subject to the real-life ramifications of their own destructive ideologies. Major blue-state cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington became outraged that they were inundated with tens of thousands of immigrants, all without legality, veritable identification, or background checks. Some proved violent. Others crowded out scarce resources essential to millions of inner-city poor.

The liberal architects of illegal immigration are usually rich and powerful enough to be insulated from the consequences of their utopian policies. But not so their poor or minority constituents. They deal first-hand with spiking crime, appropriation of their parks and civic centers, and restricted access to now-overwhelmed social services. So the once open-border Democrat Party and President Biden are in a quandary. They now fear mass defections of core Latino and black voters in an election year. But how can they square the circle of insisting on open borders with the need to appear to their own voters as determined to close them? We saw the absurd answer this week. Shameless Democrats tried to enlist naive and foolish Republicans to bail them out with a “comprehensive immigration bill.” It was really designed to keep the border open while spending billions of dollars to facilitate more rapid and orderly transits—and more substantial welfare support for millions of illegals here and still to come.

Now Democrats claim that anyone who did not sign on to codify and regulate illegal immigration was responsible for their own deliberate open border policies in the first place! To add insult to injury, they next sought to piggyback their toxic immigration bill onto massive aid for Israel and Ukraine. It was a transparent effort to blame any Republicans for harming Israel and aiding Russian President Vladimir Putin, should they not sign on to a more efficient open border. The real agenda of the bill’s supporters is absolutely no return to President Trump’s legal-only immigration and a secure border. That simple solution requires no new legislation and almost no new spending. But it does imply acknowledgment that the hated President Trump had solved the problem executively—and that admission is apparently taboo.

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“If the border can be shut down when more than 5,000 illegal immigrants cross per day, then why can’t it be shut down immediately, right now?”

The One Border Question Dems Can’t Answer (Miele)

Conservative Republicans have managed to defeat the fake border security bill wrapped in a political ploy inside of a Ukraine bailout bill. Of course, no Republican should have ever imagined that giving open-border Democrats everything they asked for was a smart strategic position, but that’s what they very nearly did. Republicans had already passed a real border security bill within a few months of taking control of the House of Representatives following the 2022 midterm elections. HR-2 actually secured the border – by demanding that the Biden administration finish the border wall, ending Biden’s power to process aliens who don’t enter at ports of entry, and shutting off the federal spigot that funds NGOs who aid and abet illegal aliens (“inadmissible non-U.S. citizens”) by providing lodging and other resources. Moreover, HR-2 shut down the ability of the Biden administration to grant asylum to the millions of migrants who don’t meet the legal criteria for asylum.

But those are just a few of the vital components of HR-2, which is indeed a border security bill. If Democrats really wanted border security, they would have passed HR-2 in the Senate last year. But even if they didn’t want to give Republicans a win with HR-2, Democrats still could have incorporated the language of HR-2 in their grand compromise to prove that they really meant it when they said they wanted to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States. Instead, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell teamed up with his buddy Chuck Schumer to use their fake border security bill as a fig leaf to cover up their real goal – freeing billions of dollars to go to Ukraine and Israel. McConnell sent his sacrificial lamb, Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, into the lions’ den of lean and hungry Democrats as his chief negotiator to craft a “compromise” border bill, but he was apparently instructed not to involve House Speaker Mike Johnson or any other border hawks in his negotiations.

Moreover, the contents of the bill were kept secret until three days before Schumer intended to bring it to a vote in the Senate. By that time, it was obvious what the game was. Democrats and their media allies created a narrative that Trump had ordered Republicans to vote against the bill in order to give him a political issue in November. This is just the latest instance where Democrats have gotten the cart before the horse. Trump does not give anyone orders; he just listens to the people and provides them a voice. It is the people who spoke out against this fake border bill, and any Republicans foolish enough to vote against the people are at risk of following former Speaker Kevin McCarthy out the door. The people’s voice was mocked throughout the process. When details of the border bill were leaked to the media, Lankford characterized them as Internet rumors and dismissed them. “Wait for the text of the bill to be released,” he repeatedly said.

But when the text was released, it was just as the people had feared. Most importantly, the centerpiece of the bill was a provision that ordered the president to shut down the border if illegal entries exceeded 5,000 a day on average for seven days. Our masters in the media tell us that doesn’t mean up to 5,000 illegal entries per day would be allowed, but let’s be realistic. First of all, the U.S.-Mexican border is not controlled by the Border Patrol; it is controlled by the Mexican cartels. If the human traffickers need to keep border crossings under 5,000 a day in order to keep doing business, then they will do just that. But there is one question that completely destroys the Democrat and globalist Republican talking point that the “5,000 a day” number is somehow being misunderstood by Harvard Law School graduates like Sens. Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton.

Here’s how NBC described the provision: “DHS could close the border if Border Patrol encountered 4,000 or more migrants on average over seven days. The border would have to be shut down if those encounters reached a seven-day average of 5,000 or if they exceeded 8,500 in a single day.” Now, here’s the question that Democrats have no answer to: If the border can be shut down when more than 5,000 illegal immigrants cross per day, then why can’t it be shut down immediately, right now? The answer is obvious – because Joe Biden and the Democrats don’t want to shut down the border. Instead, they have sanctioned the invasion of our country by millions of non-citizens. With this bill, they attempted to codify that invasion and they thought they could get Republicans to just look the other way. Maybe a few years ago, that would have worked. But this is the new Republican Party, tired of playing Charlie Brown and being humiliated time and again by Democratic Party Lucys.

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“In the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters..”

House Speaker Says Will Not Take Up Senate’s $95B Ukraine-Israel Aid Bill (Sp.)

US House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Monday that he will not bring the Senate’s $95 billion foreign aid bill to the House floor for consideration if it reaches the lower chamber. The Senate could pass the foreign aid bill as early as Wednesday. “In the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters,” Johnson said in a statement. Johnson said the Senate’s foreign aid bill fails to address the United States’ most pressing issue: border security.

The House Speaker added that the Senate should have pushed to include meaningful border security measures in the $95 billion foreign aid bill, which includes approximately $60 billion for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel and additional funding to address US national security concerns in the Indo-Pacific region. Last week, Senate Republicans blocked a $118 billion national security supplemental package that includes $60 billion for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel and border policy reforms. Republicans claim the reforms in the bill would not do enough to deter illegal immigration on the US southern border. The House Speaker also said that the bill would be “dead on arrival” if it reached the House of Representatives.

Rand Paul
https://twitter.com/i/status/1757431948329275630

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“..it would bring the total amount of US aid to Kiev to almost $200 billion..”

Putin and Xi Will Regret Challenging America – Schumer (RT)

American senators from both parties coming out in support of aid for Ukraine and Israel is a powerful signal to Russia and China, as well as Washington’s allies, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday. The 100-member chamber approved the $95 billion “national security” funding bill with 70 votes in favor and 29 opposed. Eight Republican senators spent most of the night filibustering against the proposal. “Today we make [Russian President] Vladimir Putin regret the day he questioned America’s resolve, and we make clear to others, like China’s President Xi [Jinping], not to test our determination,” Schumer said in a speech after the vote. “And we send a clear, bipartisan message of resolve to our allies in NATO.” Schumer also praised the passage of the bill as greatly impacting “the security of Western democracy.”

The Senate bill would give Ukraine $61 billion in aid, as well as $14 billion to Israel for its war against Hamas, and almost $5 billion for arming Taiwan. The White House originally bundled it with a “border reform” proposal but proceeded with foreign aid only after Democrats and Republicans could not agree on immigration. Republicans opposing the Ukraine funding bill have pointed out that it would bring the total amount of US aid to Kiev to almost $200 billion. Democrats have countered that it was good for the US weapons industry and that not continuing to send money to Kiev would damage Washington’s reputation and “resolve” in the world. Their arguments ended up swaying 22 of the Republicans.

Though it has passed in the Senate, the bill now needs the backing of the House of Representatives, where Republicans have a razor-thin majority. “The bill before us today… will never pass in the House, will never become law,” Senator Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, said in a floor speech on Tuesday morning. House Speaker Mike Johnson has previously described the proposal as “dead on arrival.” With so many Republicans willing to cross the aisle to back the Democrats when it comes to funding Ukraine, it is entirely possible the bill might pass and make its way to President Joe Biden’s desk.

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“..Carlson could face sanctions for giving the interview. “For what sin?” Ritter asked. “For the sin of letting a Russian president speak?”

Scott Ritter: Tucker-Putin Interview Shows Americans ‘Hungry for Information’ (Sp.)

The success of the Tucker-Putin interview was the result of Americans being “hungry for information about what Russia is thinking,” former US Marines Corps intelligence officer and author Scott Ritter told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Monday. “They are worried about the consequences of condemning Russia out of hand and rushing to a war based upon words Russia is not allowed to say for us to consider,” he added. Earlier, Ritter spoke about attempts to punish Tucker for giving the interview, including former Belgian prime minister and current member of the European Parliament who suggested Carlson could face sanctions for giving the interview. “For what sin?” Ritter asked. “For the sin of letting a Russian president speak?” The interview has over 198 million views on X, more than 15 million views on YouTube, plus an unknown amount across other platforms including Carlson’s website.

Ritter noted that Tucker’s interview is protected by free speech, which “does not automatically equate to wise speech,” he argued. “But the thing about free speech is that the antidote to bad speech is better free speech,” Ritter explained. “Meaning, that if you have a problem with what somebody’s saying […] come up with better ideas and put them out there.” While Ritter called Tucker an “idiot” for not being better prepared for the interview, he said that the important thing is that Putin got to speak to the American people through their own lens. “[Putin’s] words are resonating because [Americans are] going, ‘Wait a minute. I was told that this guy is the personification of evil. I was told he doesn’t want a negotiated settlement. I was told that he deliberately invaded, that he wants to invade NATO,’”

Ritter explained. “And [Putin is] saying that he is more than happy to sit down at the table and talk if anybody will talk, that the problem here isn’t Putin, the problem is the United States […] and the light bulb is going off around America.” Earlier, despite his criticisms, Ritter said he hopes a future President will recognize the service he [Tucker Carlson] did for the world and “[bring] him to the White House and put the Presidential Medal of Freedom around his neck.”

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Oleksiy Arestovych is Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s former advisor and spokesman.

Tucker’s Interview Reveals An Increasingly Formidable Putin (Arestovych)

I watched Putin’s interview. Alas, I do not share (thank God) the general opinion about “…a worthless grandfather.” And now I will try to massage your tailbone, because you don’t want to think for yourself, but want to repeat other people’s mantras, not wanting to analyze the consequences of what you saw. Putin is completely adequate. He understands what he is doing very well and is in good physical, mental and emotional shape. Hello to those who buried him a year ago. Putin sets out a coherent system of views that he himself believes in (hello, jokes about the Merovingians and Ladoga). Putin is psychologically increasingly getting rid of his pro-Western orientation – the only thing that was holding him back from within. “Oh, this is a mythology divorced from real history!..” the average person puffs on social networks and runs to hide in the bathroom from Putin’s missiles flying at him.

I have a simple question: — When will you start thinking – at least about the reasons that directly determine your life? Myth. Come on, name me at least one state ideology that is not based on mythology, which to one degree or another does not correspond to real history? Who and when did this prevent them from acting in the present? Let’s say it’s good: the villain Putin is the only one who relies on a fictitious ideology and mythology. So what if, in view of this mythology, he takes completely material actions? “An idea, taking possession of the masses, becomes a material force”–remember that? A specific mythology has taken hold of the masses and forty thousand volunteers come to Russian military registration and enlistment offices every month. And they are not going to stop.

And how many volunteers come to our military registration and enlistment offices every month, dear real historians? Ahh? What kind of true stories do we tell if our “volunteers” have to be grabbed by force on the street? And what stories does the West tell that it cannot collectively produce a million shells a year, in a situation where North Korea produces one and a half? Putin will not stop. He will carry out his tasks, which are dictated to him by the picture of the world, to the end. Moreover, judging by his statements, he is improving in his picture of the world, in the sense of acquiring more and more motivation. Yes, he lies a lot and deliberately, distorts, manipulates. Okay, we have defeated funny Putin with his stupid myths. — Maybe someone can name our clever myths: ours and the West? Our truth, lack of manipulation, directness? — And what is this so-called “world system” of yours worth, so reasonable, so strong, so free, if “… one funny, out-of-touch pseudo-historian” managed to render it inoperative?

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“..the recent expansion of Israel’s ground operation further into the Gaza Strip dramatically undermines a potential resolution to the ongoing conflict..”

US Pushing Israel and Palestine Towards Catastrophe – Lavrov (Sp.)

Russia’s top diplomat Sergey Lavrov has addressed attendees of the 13th annual Middle East Conference of the Valdai Discussion Club. The event entitled Time for decisive action: a comprehensive settlement for the sake of stability in the region is supported by the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In his speech, Lavrov touched upon a variety of pressing issues about the unraveling developments in the Middle East. No Prospects for Palestine-Israel Settlement at the Moment The minister emphasized that the recent expansion of Israel’s ground operation further into the Gaza Strip dramatically undermines a potential resolution to the ongoing conflict. “Taking into account the uncompromising attitude of the Israeli leadership to continue the military operation in Gaza, now extending it to Rafah, we do not see prospects for the rapid stabilization of the situation in this sector,” Lavrov noted.

It is necessary to look for a way out of this catastrophic situation, the minister said, adding that it is the US that is “pushing Palestine, Israel and the entire Middle East into a catastrophe.” Washington intends to exclude Moscow from international efforts for a Middle East crisis settlement, as the US is betting on its own dominance in the region, Lavrov added. “The Americans have chosen to bet on their dominance in the region and already work on excluding Russia from various international efforts aimed at creating conditions for lasting peace and stability,” he underlined. The FM recalled that Washington effectively “blocked the work of international mediators on the Middle East settlement, consisting of Russia, the US, the UN and the EU.”

Lavrov added that in the current situation, the US applies “its recipes that are divorced from reality and one-sided solutions that ignore the specifics of either countries or the region as a whole.” Russia Suggests Holding Intra-Palestinian Dialogue According to the Russian foreign minister, Moscow plans to hold an inter-Palestinian meeting in the “foreseeable future” with the support of the Palestinians themselves. “We propose holding an inter-Palestinian meeting with the participation of all leading factions to overcome the internal division,” the minister shared. Lavrov also pointed out that at the UN, Russia had drawn attention to the long-standing Russian initiative to hold consultations involving key countries in the region in order to harmonize their approaches and support the creation of a Palestinian state.

Lavrov also noted that Russia continues to try to evacuate citizens of the Russian Federation and other countries from the Gaza Strip. “We continue to work on the evacuation of citizens of Russia, Israel and other countries from the combat zone. We cooperate with Egypt, Israel, and the Palestinians from Gaza. We have evacuated about 1,200 of our compatriots and their families, including citizens of other countries… We keep pursuing these efforts,” he concluded.

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“Joe Biden was aware of the CEFC transaction, enabled it, and had a constitutional responsibility and obligation to the American people to shut it down before it began..”

Bobulinski Says China Successfully Sought To Infiltrate And Compromise WH (NYP)

A former Biden family business associate-turned-whistleblower alleged in explosive testimony before House impeachment probers Tuesday that the president was “the Brand” being sold by relatives in their lucrative dealings in countries such as China and Ukraine. Tony Bobulinski — a former Navy officer who worked with first son Hunter Biden and first brother James on a venture with CEFC China Energy — is considered one of the Republicans’ best hopes of scoring damning new details confirming the president’s ties to his relatives’ Chinese government-linked relationships. “For nearly four years, I have tried to tell the American people the truth about serious corruption at the very top of their government,” Bobulinski said in opening statements to House probers from both sides of the political aisle in the closed-door session. “The Biden family business was Joe Biden, period,” Bobulinksi alleged. “It is clear to me that Joe Biden was ‘the Brand’ being sold by the Biden family.

“The Chinese Communist Party through its surrogate, China Energy Company Limited, or ‘CEFC’ — a CCP-linked Chinese energy conglomerate — successfully sought to infiltrate and compromise Joe Biden and the Obama-Biden White House. “Joe Biden was aware of the CEFC transaction, enabled it, and had a constitutional responsibility and obligation to the American people to shut it down before it began,” Bobulinski said. CEFC, a since-defunct reputed cog in Beijing’s “Belt and Road” foreign influence campaign, paid Hunter and James Biden more than $7 million in 2017 and 2018 for largely unknown business services, according to reports from congressional Republicans. A different former Biden family associate, Rob Walker, testified on Jan. 26 that the Bidens’ business relationship with CEFC began in 2015 when Joe Biden was still vice president and that Joe Biden himself attended a meeting at the Four Seasons hotel in or around March 2017 with CEFC chairman Ye Jianming, who has since gone missing in China amid corruption allegations.

Walker disbursed an initial tranche of more than $1 million to the Bidens beginning in March 2017 — after Joe Biden left office as vice president that January — and did not dispute in his deposition new evidence of emails in March 2016, while Joe Biden was VP, among himself, Hunter Biden and CEFC officials. Bobulinski is expected to face tense grilling from Democrats in the closed-door session after infuriating them in 2020 by sandbagging Biden moments before his final debate against then-President Donald Trump. At the time, Bobulinski publicly corroborated details from Hunter’s abandoned laptop about Hunter and first brother James Biden’s lucrative relationship with CEFC China Energy. CEFC transferred $5.1 million to bank accounts linked to Hunter and James Biden within 10 days of Hunter writing to a China-based CEFC associate that he was “sitting here with my father” and warning of retribution if an agreed-upon deal was not executed.

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“With your callsign, inscribed in your heart./ From the war, as a small souvenir:/Far away, but eternally near..”

Life During Wartime – On the Road in Donbass (Pepe Escobar)

You are given a name by the War:/it’s a call sign, not nickname – much more./Lack of fancy cars here and iPads,/But you have APC and MANPADS./Social media long left behind,/Children’s drawings with “Z” stick to mind./’Likes” and “thumbs up” are valued as dust,/But the prayers from people you trust./Hold On, Soldier, my brother, my friend,/The hostility comes to an end./War’s unable to stop its decease,/Grief and suffering will turn into peace./Life returns to the placid format,/With your callsign, inscribed in your heart./ From the war, as a small souvenir:/Far away, but eternally near.
Inna Kucherova, Call Sign, in A Letter to a Soldier, published December 2022

It’s a cold, rainy, damp morning in the deep Donbass countryside, at a secret location close to the Urozhaynoye direction; a nondescript country house, crucially under the fog, which prevents the work of enemy drones. Father Igor, a military priest, is blessing a group of local contract-signed volunteers to the Archangel Gabriel battalion, ready to go to the front lines of the US vs. Russia proxy war. The man in charge of the battalion is one of the top-ranking officers of Orthodox Christian units in the DPR. A small shrine is set up in the corner of a small, cramped room, decorated with icons. Candles are lit, and three soldiers hold the red flag with the icon of Jesus in the center. After prayers and a small homily, Father Igor blesses each soldier.

This is yet another stop in a sort of itinerant icon road show, started in Kherson, then Zaporozhye and all the way to the myriad DPR front lines, led by my gracious host Andrey Afanasiev, military correspondent for the Spas channel, and later joined in Donetsk by a decorated fighter for the Archangel Michael battalion, an extremely bright and engaging young man codename Pilot. There are between 28 and 30 Orthodox Christian battalion fighting in Donbass. That’s the power of Orthodox Christianity. To see them at work is to understand the essentials: how the Russian soul is capable of any sacrifice to protect the core values of its civilization. Throughout Russian history, it’s individuals that sacrifice their lives to protect the community – and not vice-versa. Those who survived – or perished – in the siege of Leningrad are only one among countless examples. So the Orthodox Christian battalion were my guardian angels as I returned to Novorossiya to revisit the rich black soil where the old “rules-based” world order came to die.

This is yet another stop in a sort of itinerant icon road show, started in Kherson, then Zaporozhye and all the way to the myriad DPR front lines, led by my gracious host Andrey Afanasiev, military correspondent for the Spas channel, and later joined in Donetsk by a decorated fighter for the Archangel Michael battalion, an extremely bright and engaging young man codename Pilot. There are between 28 and 30 Orthodox Christian battalion fighting in Donbass. That’s the power of Orthodox Christianity. To see them at work is to understand the essentials: how the Russian soul is capable of any sacrifice to protect the core values of its civilization. Throughout Russian history, it’s individuals that sacrifice their lives to protect the community – and not vice-versa. Those who survived – or perished – in the siege of Leningrad are only one among countless examples. So the Orthodox Christian battalion were my guardian angels as I returned to Novorossiya to revisit the rich black soil where the old “rules-based” world order came to die.

The traveling priesthood exits the digs of the Archangel Gabriel battalion and heads to a meeting in a garage with the Dmitry Donskoy orthodox battalion, fighting in the Ugledar direction. That’s where I meet the remarkable Troya, the battalion’s medic, a young woman who had a comfy job as a deputy officer in a Russian district before she decided to volunteer. Onwards to a cramped military dormitory where a cat and her kittens reign as mascots, choosing the best place in the room right by the iron stove. Time to bless the fighters of the Dimitri Zalunsky battalion, named after St. Dimitri of Thessaloniki, who are fighting in the Nikolskoye direction. At each successive ceremony, you can’t help being stricken by the purity of the ritual, the beauty of the chants, the grave expressions in the faces of the volunteers, all ages, from teenagers to sexagenarians. Deeply touching. This in so many aspects is the Slavic counterpart of the Islamic Axis of Resistance fighting in West Asia. It is a form of asabiyya – “community spirit”, as I used it in a different context referring to the Yemeni Houthis supporting “our people” in Gaza.

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“Expect all of us to feel a renewed sense of gratitude for being here instead of rage, resentment, and grievance, because it’s likely there will be far fewer of us around..”

Think About It (Kunstler)

American oil production may be at an all-time peak now at about 13-million barrels-a-day, but most of that — about 8-million — is shale oil, which is a manifestation of our tremendous debt roll-up since 2009. Now that we’re at the absolute limits of debt, we’re also at the limits of shale oil. The production of shale oil paralleled the accumulation of all that debt both in size and rate of increase, and as the debt goes bad — meaning, unpayable — the organized capital sector will blow and shale oil production will fall as sharply as it rose. It is also a fact that shale oil is subject to natural limits — we’re out of “sweet spots” to drill.

That’s America. Europe is way worse because aside from whatever oil is left in the North Sea (not much), Europe has no oil. Europe’s largest gas field — Groningen in the Netherlands — is scheduled to cease operations in October of this year. You all know what happened to the Nord Stream pipelines. And then Germany, in some psychotic fugue state, shut down its entire nuclear power industry, while France is just not replacing its nuke plants as they age-out. Europe is completely screwed. They won’t have anything we might call modern industry. In the meantime, the WEF is playing them like a flugelhorn, keeping them distracted with “green” politics, an unchecked immigrant invasion, and sexual confusion.

A lot of the same nuttery afflicts us in the USA, of course, but none of that alters the real macro trends. Our federal government is not really getting more powerful, it’s cracking up, starting from the very top, with a mentally incompetent president — the secret that everybody knows. Agencies like the DOJ and Homeland Security may seem more tyrannical for the moment, but they are actually breaking as institutions because in their lawlessness they’ve lost the trust of the people — and nothing is more fundamental to a civilized society than trust in the law. That’s what consent of the governed means.

So, the period of disorderly transition we’re in is not moving toward greater dominance by giants, but to the survival of the small and nimble. We will not see capital formation like the orgy of recent times; rather the vanishing of things falsely presumed to be capital, contraction not expansion. You’ll be struggling to identify and preserve real wealth, which you’ll find in unexpected places, like the friends you can count on, your reputation for honesty, your dependability, acquired skills, and your health, physical and psychological.

The WEF won’t be able to impose its Globalist nightmare of elite transhumanism and surveilled bug-eating serfs, and they know it now. They’re running scared. The vile Yuval Noah Harari has even said so publicly. The political figures and agents serving that cabal will be lucky if they are not hanged in the public squares. The political criminals here in America, the hoaxsters, the grifters, the seditionists, the Lawfare agents, the election fraudsters, know very well the danger of their looming prosecutions, and that’s exactly why the Democratic Party and its blob henchmen and flunkies are acting like desperate lunatics.

Expect: failed national governments, maybe even state governments; failed supply lines; failed electric supply, failed trucking, failed big box stores, failed supermarkets, failed giant companies; failed banks, failed investments, failed money, failed news orgs, failed airlines, failed car dealers, failed hospitals, failed colleges, and much more. But don’t discount human ingenuity and resourcefulness, our ability to work-around and reinvent systems for daily life, even if it’s on a downscaled and more modest level.

Expect rebuilt local economies from production to wholesale to retail. Expect smaller stores, fewer things to buy but much of it better quality. Expect a lot less long-distance travel but a lot more happening in your locality. Expect the rebirth of local culture — theaters, live music, news-sheets, dances — to replace all the canned entertainments we’re used to. Expect small private academies to rise to replace the shuttered central schools. Expect small, local clinics to appear from the ashes of the medical conglomerates. Expect Americans to return to churches as an organizing mechanism for community relations. Expect more formality and less slobbery in public. Expect all of us to feel a renewed sense of gratitude for being here instead of rage, resentment, and grievance, because it’s likely there will be far fewer of us around.

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“And we realized, if this could happen in Texas, the energy capital of the world, then the electric grid is really being undermined.”

Net-Zero Is Pulling the Plug on America’s Electrical Life Support System (ET)

Electricity is among the most essential sources of America’s unparalleled prosperity and productivity; it is also the greatest vulnerability. The United States has become so utterly dependent upon an uninterrupted supply of affordable electricity that, as our grid becomes ever more fragile American society has become fragile along with it. Former CIA director James Woolsey testified before the U.S. Senate in 2015 that, if America’s electric grid were to go down for an extended period, such as one year, “there are essentially two estimates on how many people would die from hunger, from starvation, from lack of water, and from social disruption. “One estimate is that within a year or so, two-thirds of the United States population would die,” Mr. Woolsey said. “The other estimate is that within a year or so, 90 percent of the U.S. population would die.”

Chris Keefer, president of Canadians for Nuclear Energy, concurred. “The energy grid is a civilizational life support system, and without it, modern society collapses very quickly,” he said. Mr. Keefer is one of the experts featured in energy analyst, author, and documentarian Robert Bryce’s new film, “Juice: Power, Politics and the Grid.” This five-part docuseries looks at how and why America is now “fragilizing” and destabilizing the engineering marvel that is the central pillar of our society. “We are seeing the grid’s reliability, resilience, and affordability all declining,” Mr. Bryce told The Epoch Times. “We wanted to get people and policy makers to understand that our most important energy network is being fragilized, and we ignore this danger at our peril,” Mr. Bryce said.

He has been fixated on America’s electric grid for decades and authored the 2020 book, “A Question of Power,” one of the more comprehensive studies of how electricity grids work and why they may not work as well in the coming years. Steven Pinker, author and Harvard psychology professor, wrote in a review of the book that “energy is our primary defense against poverty, disorder, hunger, and death.” And yet, many nations in the West have engaged in a game of Russian roulette with their power grids, in an attempt to reduce global temperatures. The warnings don’t just come from the analysts featured in the documentary; electricity regulators are becoming more vocal in sounding the alarm as well. In a May 2023 report, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), charged with overseeing grid reliability, stated that a majority of America’s grid is now at heightened risk levels for outages.

“This report is an especially dire warning that America’s ability to keep the lights on has been jeopardized,” National Rural Electric Cooperative Association CEO Jim Matheson stated. It was the near-collapse of Texas’s power grid during winter storm Yuri in 2021 that compelled Mr. Bryce to make the documentary. He partnered with film director Tyson Culver, who along with Mr. Bryce, experienced the crisis first-hand while living in Austin. “I didn’t plan to make another documentary after we made our first film that we released in 2019,” he said. “I just thought, ‘I can’t do this; it costs too much and takes too long.’ “But then we learned that the [Texas] grid nearly failed, and if it had failed, tens of thousands of people would have died,” he said. “And we realized, if this could happen in Texas, the energy capital of the world, then the electric grid is really being undermined.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

NY

 

 

Kaku

 

 

Manta
https://twitter.com/i/status/1757263351959224399

 

 

Belly

 

 

Kindness
https://twitter.com/i/status/1757371139557634393

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jan 282024
 
 January 28, 2024  Posted by at 9:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  49 Responses »


Balthus Therèse dreaming 1938

 

RFK Jr. Praises Texas In Battle With Biden Over Border (Hill)
Biden Vows To Shut Border If Lawmakers Pass Budget Deal (RT)
How Trump and US Conservatives Deal a Blow to Ukraine Aid Package (Sp.)
US Promised To Seize Russian Assets – Kiev (RT)
Seizing Russia’s Money Would Endanger Euro – Italian Central Bank (RT)
EU and NATO Heading for the Abyss Over Foreign Policy Foibles (Jay)
‘No Threat’ Of Russia Attacking NATO – Germany (RT)
Davos, Dictators, and the Real ‘Threats to Our Democracy’ (Hollis)
WH’s New Strategy on Ukraine ‘Will De-Emphasize’ Retaking ‘Lost Territory’ (Sp.)
Putin Vows To Eradicate Nazism For Good (RT)
ICJ Ruling May Entail Dire Consequences for Israel (Sp.)
Who is Kevin Morris? Even Hunter’s Lawyer Seems Unsure (Turley)
Hunter Biden Partner Rob Walker Confirms Payments To Biden Family (JTN)
Boeing’s Nosedive: How Greed Ruined A Great American Company (Johnston)
83 million? (Victor Davis Hanson)

 

 

The alleged rape supposedly took place in 1996. With a script straight out of Law and Order. 16 years later, she’s a big fan of her “rapist”.

Note: the 83 million is not for the “rape”, but for defamation. Which she says cost her her job at ELLE magazine. ELLE has denied this.

 

 

Tucker Texas cartels

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..Biden’s failure to secure the border leaves states no choice but to take matters into their own hands..”

RFK Jr. Praises Texas In Battle With Biden Over Border (Hill)

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday backed Texas in its ongoing battle with the federal government over border authority, criticizing the Biden administration for its handling of the U.S. southern border. “Texas is right. Biden’s failure to secure the border leaves states no choice but to take matters into their own hands,” Kennedy wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “As President, I will end this humanitarian crisis once and for all. I will secure the border and destroy the business model of the drug cartels. A country without borders is not a country at all.” Kennedy joins a growing list of politicians, most of them Republican, who have thrown their support behind Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) fight against the federal government over the fencing and razor wire installed by Texas at the U.S.-Mexico border. In a major blow to Abbott, the Supreme Court ruled earlier this week that border agents can remove the razor wire erected on the border, siding with the Biden administration.

Abbott has defended the fencing as necessary for his state’s security, claiming he was forced to take matters into his own hands due to what he characterizes as a lack of action on the Biden administration’s part. The federal government, meanwhile, contends the state does not have the power to build the fencing, which it says prevents it from managing the border. Abbott railed against the high court ruling and contended his authority is the “supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes.” Texas appeared to continue installing razor wire after the ruling came down. Kennedy has previously spoken out against what he sees as a “border crisis” that is leading to the smuggling of drugs and humans. He called Biden’s border policies a “disaster” in a Newsweek op-ed last year. Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley also spoke out in support of Abbott on Thursday and called Biden’s position “absolutely ridiculous.”

RFK border

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“Biden already has authority to shut down illegal immigration. And now he’s telling us he’s willing to do that, but only if we pass a new law — one whose authors refuse to share with the public or even their own colleagues. Something’s not right here.”

Scott Adams: “The plan is to close the barn door after too many horses get out.”

Biden Vows To Shut Border If Lawmakers Pass Budget Deal (RT)

US President Joe Biden has again urged Republican lawmakers to approve a long-stalled budget deal, vowing to shut down his country’s southern border as soon as he’s given the authority to do so. Republicans have been blocking the White House’s attempts to push through a $106 billion ‘national security package’ for Ukraine and Israel since October. They have demanded tougher security measures on the southern frontier be included in the agreement. ”For too long, we all know the border’s been broken. It’s long past time to fix it,” Biden outlined in a written statement on Friday. He described the border deal, now being negotiated in the Senate, as “the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country.”

“It would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law,” Biden vowed. Under the bipartisan agreement, the administration would, among other things, be required to shut the border down if the number of migrants trying to get into the US illegally on any given day reaches 5,000, the New York Times reported. This threshold had been surpassed “routinely” in recent months, the paper stressed. Finding common ground on the immigration deal would be “a win for America,” the president insisted. “If you’re serious about the border crisis, pass a bipartisan bill, and I will sign it,” Biden said, addressing the Republican lawmakers.

The Washington Post described the comments as “a remarkable shift” in the Democratic president’s rhetoric on the immigration issue. The media outlet underscored “the urgency” of the situation on the border for his re-election bid. Biden’s statement came as Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Friday that if the leaks about the deal’s content were accurate, it would be “dead on arrival” in the lower chamber. The likely Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, slammed the border deal earlier this week, warning that it “would be another gift to the radical left Democrats.” The agreement “will be meaningless in terms of border security,” Trump argued, reiterating that the only way to solve the immigration issue would be voting for him in November.

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“..the draft bipartisan agreement could allow up to 5,000 migrants to enter the US daily at the border..”

How Trump and US Conservatives Deal a Blow to Ukraine Aid Package (Sp.)

Former US President Donald Trump and Republican policymakers have subjected a draft bipartisan US border security deal to harsh criticism, casting doubt on the future of military aid packages for Ukraine and Israel. The border security deal is seen by Democratic lawmakers as a necessary evil to ram a new multi-billion Ukraine aid bill through the US Congress. Last December neither chamber managed to reach a compromise on the provision of further funds to Kiev despite pleas and even threats from the White House. Eventually, Republican and Democratic senators come up with a draft border agreement. Even though the formal text of the deal has not been officially released yet, leaks keep coming irritating US conservatives, as per Just the News, an independent US media outlet.

Media reported that the draft bipartisan agreement could allow up to 5,000 migrants to enter the US daily at the border. To that end, the White House is reportedly requesting at least $14 billion to help cities to absorb the flow of migrants released by US border authorities into the country. Former President Donald Trump denounced that as a bad deal in every way: “I do not think we should do a Border Deal, at all, unless we get everything needed to shut down the invasion of millions and millions of people, many from parts unknown, into our once great, but soon to be great again, country!” he wrote on his Truth Social media site on January 25. The US mainstream media warns that the former president’s comment was a “serious blow to the talks”. Trump has emerged as the leading Republican presidential candidate following the party’s first two primaries this month, with the power to influence the outcome of the negotiations.

Punchbowl News reported that Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell told his colleagues on Wednesday that the situation had “changed,” and that Trump was going to build his re-election campaign around the border crisis. “We don’t want to do anything to undermine him,” McConnell allegedly said. However, on Thursday the GOP leader appeared to backpedal on his remarks, asserting to the press that he still backed the bipartisan migration deal. Deputy White House Press Secretary Olivia Dalton also signaled that the Biden administration as supporting the bipartisan immigration agreement. “The president has been clear, we need action on the border,” Dalton told reporters on Thursday. “We’ve been engaging in good faith, bipartisan negotiations with both Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans to that end. And we believe that there’s no reason that shouldn’t continue.”

Still, some US senators warn that the effort is doomed. US Senator Ted Cruz said on Wednesday that the Ukraine aid-border security supplemental bill is a train wreck and has no chance of passing the US House of Representatives. Senator Rick Scott echoed Cruz, saying that the bill will be dead on arrival in the House. Earlier this week the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft suggested that House Republicans may kill the foreign aid bill even if a bipartisan border security and immigration deal is passed. The lower chamber’s Republican majority has no appetite for throwing good money after bad to Ukraine, according to the institute. The DC-based think-tank also noted House Speaker Mike Johnson’s ardent support for a sweeping migration reform and his record of opposing Ukraine funding packages. Some House Republicans, such as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, even threatened to introduce a “motion to vacate” and oust the speaker if Johnson passes funding to Ukraine.

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“..a US Senate committee approved the “Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity (REPO) for Ukrainians Act..”

US Promised To Seize Russian Assets – Kiev (RT)

The US assured Kiev that the Russian assets that remain frozen in the West are going to be seized and used to rebuild Ukraine after the conflict, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal has said. The US, EU, and their allies blocked some $300 billion of Russian central bank assets as part of sanctions in response to Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine. Around $200 billion of that money is held in the EU. Politico reported on Thursday that it asked Shmygal if he was concerned that US funding for the Kiev government would come to a complete stop if Donald Trump won the presidential election in November and returned to the White House for his second term. ”We have all the assurances from the US about long-term support for Ukraine – for example, the seizure of Russian assets to fund the Ukrainian recovery,” he claimed.

On Wednesday, a US Senate committee approved the “Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity (REPO) for Ukrainians Act,” which should help pave the way for such a move by Washington. If it passes both houses and is signed into law by President Joe Biden, Washington could seize the Russian central bank assets, using such a measure against a country that it’s not directly at war with for the first time in history. Reuters reported this week, citing a senior official in Brussels, that the EU will be unlikely to join the US in confiscating the Russian funds as there’s no agreement on such a step between the bloc’s member-states. Earlier in January, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warned that Moscow would respond to a possible seizure of its assets by the West, inducing tit-for-tat measures.

Previously, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the confiscation of Russian funds would amount to “outright theft” by the West. He told reporters that it would undermine the trust in the US and EU financial systems around the globe. Shmygal also stated that Kiev is “working hard with the administration of President Biden and with Congress to have support for 2024.” As for the continuation of the aid in 2025, “we’ll see how conditions develop,” he stressed. ”I believe that any president of the US will support our fight for civilized values, our mutual values,” the Ukrainian PM said. The US has provided Ukraine with around $111 billion in economic and military support amid the conflict with Russia. But the flow of funds subsided dramatically in recent months as Republican lawmakers continue to resist attempts by the White House to push through another $60 billion in assistance for Kiev.

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“..weaponizing a currency inevitably reduces its attractiveness and encourages the emergence of alternatives..”

Seizing Russia’s Money Would Endanger Euro – Italian Central Bank (RT)

The EU should not use the euro as a tool in sanctions wars and political disputes, as it would harm the currency’s image and standing, Bank of Italy Governor Fabio Panetta warned on Friday. He as commenting on discussions in Brussels regarding frozen Russian assets. The EU, US, Japan and Canada froze some $300 billion of Russian central bank assets in 2022 as part of Ukraine-related sanctions against Moscow. Some $200 billion of that is held in the EU, largely in the Belgian clearing house Euroclear. Brussels is currently working on plans to apply a windfall tax to the profits Euroclear is making on the frozen funds, while opting not to seize the immobilized money outright.

However, Italy is one of several EU member states, including Germany and France, that have been skeptical of moves involving the assets, arguing that using them could prompt investors from other countries to doubt the safety of their own holdings in the EU and quit the bloc’s market, ultimately weakening the euro. “This power must be used wisely,” Panetta said, referring to euro’s standing as a global reserve currency. “International relations are part of a ‘repeated game’: weaponizing a currency inevitably reduces its attractiveness and encourages the emergence of alternatives,” he warned at an event in Riga, marking the 10th anniversary of Latvia adopting the euro. According to the official, the recent surge in the use of the yuan in trade between China and Russia is “instructive in this respect,” because it was Western sanctions that prompted the trend, as they made it difficult for Russia to use US dollars and euros in cross-border trade.

“The Chinese authorities are explicitly promoting [the yuan’s] role on the global stage and encouraging its use in other countries, including those sanctioned by the international community following the invasion of Ukraine,” Panetta said, adding that the share of Chinese trade financed in the domestic currency has doubled in the past three years, allowing the yuan to overtake the euro as the world’s second most-used trade currency. The official warned if the need to “be alert to the possibility that politics will have a greater impact on international currencies in the coming years.” Western currencies have been largely phased out in Russia-China trade, as nearly 95% of all transactions between the countries are now carried out either in rubles or yuan. Russia is not the only major economy to use the Chinese currency for trade settlements, as more and more nations seek alternatives to the dollar and euro. These include Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Iran.

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“..this BS is being fed into the echo chamber because a panic is setting in both on a EU level and national one as elections are looming and the smell of defeat is beginning to fill the lungs of the corrupt..”

EU and NATO Heading for the Abyss Over Foreign Policy Foibles (Jay)

A number of odd statements have been coming from the EU in recent days, coupled with some even odder skulduggery giving rise to thought that the entire project is having its ‘last days of the Roman Empire moment’. Is it possible that the EU that we know is on its last legs and what we are witnessing is the final demise? Ursula von der Leyen, whose grandparents were probably Wafen SS officers has said that if she doesn’t get her way in finding new money for Ukraine she will have to resort to dirty tricks. Well, she didn’t actually say “dirty tricks” but this is what is implied. And what might those underhand moves might be? In fact, there is already a motion in the EU corridors to make Hungary effectively a non-EU member state, a sort of rogue member which is still in the EU but has no voting rights.

Given that the EU is anything but a democracy and that the institutions in Brussels are monolithic and consensus-driven (there is no ‘opposition’ in Brussels like in most democratic countries) it is hardly surprising to see nefarious activities which would make an African dictator proud of his handy work. The EU, or rather the super federalist elite which run it in Brussels like von der Leyen and her mates as Pfizer – yes, multinational corporations really wield the most power in Brussels and more or less own the European Parliament – are getting worried. The project is starting to indulge in in-fighting and creating a lot of mixed message in the media. Gardner-in-chief Josep Borrell wants a new shiny state for the Palestinians but Ursula is perfectly happy with the present genocide program. Perhaps she sees in investment opportunities in offshore gas off the coast of Gaza?

And so with the economy in the doldrums and the EUs most powerful member state Germany looking more and more like the Czech Republic in the late 90s, the uber elites like Ursula and the most vile MEP the European Parliament ever had – Guy Verhofstadt – are worried that the project can be hijacked by far-right MEPs come the next euro election in the summer. Ironically, in such a scenario where the European parliament’s main majority bloc would be a far-right group, the support for Netanyahu would peak and even save him from falling into his own quagmire of corruption charges, as the far-right in Europe support the Zionists, shifting from the once popular idea of wiping them out under Hitler’s ‘final solution’ plan.

But the EU would never be the same again. These MEPs support reversing the centralisation of power back to member states. And so it is hardly any surprise at all that Verhofstadt, a man so bereft of charm that he makes a pile of damp towels look exciting, gives another one of his fiery speeches in the European parliament with always the same theme: all our problems can be resolved if we has more money, more power and an EU army. The fault is with member states, the European parliament’s top wanker-in-chief argues as he throws his head around and animates very much like a power hungry leader in the 1930s who got us in this mess in the first place. Have you noticed lots of media reports pointing to war with Russia? Wonder what this is based on? Of course there is no imminent war with Russia but the pundits can’t help presenting one to us, proclaiming that Putin wants to take the odd European country, like a rich man who collects them like pets.

The reality is that this BS is being fed into the echo chamber because a panic is setting in both on a EU level and national one as elections are looming and the smell of defeat is beginning to fill the lungs of the corrupt who have been feeding from the same trough for too long. Create a panic about a war looming and enough stupid Europeans and Americans will accept spiralling consumer prices, high pump prices, insane utility bills (like in the UK), poor growth and no jobs. Few westerners see through the lies and see the ruse in the making. Even the Germans.

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“..this is just a “snapshot” of the current situation and there’s no way of knowing how things would turn out in the future..”

‘No Threat’ Of Russia Attacking NATO – Germany (RT)

There’s currently no threat of Russia attacking NATO or any of the partners of the US-led military bloc, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has suggested. Moscow’s military is now fully occupied with the Ukraine conflict, Pistorius explained, in an interview with the tabloid Bild on Friday. ”At the moment, I don’t see any danger of a Russian attack on NATO territory or on any NATO partner-country,” he added. However, the minister stressed that this is just a “snapshot” of the current situation and there’s no way of knowing how things would turn out in the future. Pistorius warned against underestimating the alleged risks related to Russia, saying that NATO needs to rely on “the principle of deterrence, as we know it from the times of the Cold War.” During that time, things between the West and Moscow were “much more predictable than the situation we have today,” he argued.

”We are coming out of 30 years of peace… from which we have all benefited. And now the journey is going the other way,” the minister said. NATO and Germany must “really pick up the pace” in order to be able to face the emerging challenges, he stressed. Germany has given to Ukraine “a lot of systems” that Berlin needed for itself since the outbreak in February 2022 of fighting between Moscow and Kiev, but “we will get them again,” Pistorius vowed. Earlier this week, commenting on the possibility of a direct conflict between NATO and Russia, the bloc’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that “we don’t see any direct or imminent threat against any NATO ally.” He stressed, however, that NATO “closely monitors what Russia does” and has increased its “vigilance and presence in the eastern part of the alliance” in order to be able to counter any moves by Moscow.

Pistorius told ZDF on Monday that Germany should be ready to respond to a possible Russian attack. In order to be able to resist an aggression “that you don’t know if and when it will occur, then that means you have to arm yourself – and that’s what we’re currently doing together with allies in NATO,” he explained. On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed Pistorius’ speculation about a possible conflict between Russia and NATO, saying that, due to internal problems the EU faces, its politicians “now need to somehow pump up public opinion, artificially agitate it, by inventing an external enemy.” Speaking at UN headquarters in New York the following day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that “no one wants a big war,” especially Moscow. “We have lived through ‘big wars’ many times in our history,” he added. President Vladimir Putin last month rejected as “complete nonsense” claims that Russia could attack NATO. Moscow has “no geopolitical, economic… or military interest” in doing so, he pointed out. Russia is, on the contrary, interested in developing ties with the bloc, he said.

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“..American voters see where the threats of authoritarianism truly lie, and it isn’t with Donald Trump…”

Davos, Dictators, and the Real ‘Threats to Our Democracy’ (Hollis)

The former Soviet Union collapsed politically because its centrally planned economy suffered disaster after disaster. Government takeover of the Venezuelan economy destroyed that once-prosperous country, plunging its residents into abject poverty. When the president of Sri Lanka banned nitrogen-based fertilizer, the country’s agricultural sector collapsed, as did its exports, leaving Sri Lankans without adequate food, fuel, or oil to heat their homes. Here in the United States, we have witnessed the nasty consequences of plenty of government policy failures: the health risks of COVID-19 shots; the spectacular failure of wind power in Texas during the 2021 winter storm; the inability of electric vehicles to start in the bitter temperatures across the northern U.S. two weeks ago; California’s water shortages and the struggling capacity of its electrical grid.

Egotists like WEF founder Klaus Schwab and his God-complex, like-minded cronies across the globe never consider that they could be wrong about anything. But they are always wrong about something. Trump voters do not want a dictator; they do not want an imperial presidency at all. They want a president who understands that free and independent businesses operating in a minimally regulated environment are the lifeblood of American prosperity. They recognize that an executive branch that refuses to enforce federal laws is failing in its primary constitutional obligations to the American public. They understand that a justice system that picks and chooses whom to prosecute based upon their race, ethnicity, or political belief is no justice at all. They are tired of inflation caused by misguided energy, trade, and environmental policies.

They are tired of our veterans suffering and dying with their physical and mental health needs unmet; tired of homeless people living in the streets; tired of open borders, of tens of thousands of Americans dying of fentanyl overdoses, and tired of unpunished crime, all while hundreds of billions of our hard-earned tax dollars get laundered through foreign wars into the pockets of multinational defense contractors, corruptocrat politicians, and warmongering toadies who never saw a foreign conflict they didn’t want to exploit. These Americans reject the globalist overlords pushing their anti-human philosophies down everyone’s throats, and they fear being enslaved by governments infiltrated by mindless drones in thrall to the latest apocalyptic power grab. The press and the Left can hand-wave and hyperventilate all they want about “threats to our democracy.” But American voters see where the threats of authoritarianism truly lie, and it isn’t with Donald Trump.

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Just give up.

WH’s New Strategy on Ukraine ‘Will De-Emphasize’ Retaking ‘Lost Territory’ (Sp.)

The Biden administration’s new strategy will “de-emphasize” Kiev’s recovery of the so-called “lost territories” this year and instead focus on Washington helping the Zelensky regime survive amid Russia’s ongoing special military operation, the Washington Post quoted unnamed sources as saying. The sources were apparently referring to the territories previously reunited with Russia as a result of popular referendums. They claimed that the Biden administration, “still smarting” from Kiev’s bungled counteroffensive in 2023, is “putting together the new strategy,” which includes helping the Zelensky regime strengthen its armed forces and economy in the face of the Ukraine funding impasse in the U.S. Congress.

The strategy’s other purpose is to help Kiev strengthen its fighting force and economy in the face of Ukraine funding-real impasse in the US Congress, according to the sources. “The emerging plan is a sharp change from last year, when the US and allied militaries rushed training and sophisticated equipment to Kiev in hopes that it could quickly push back Russian forces,” insiders pointed out. One source added that “it’s pretty clear” that it will be difficult for the Ukrainian Armed Forces to try to achieve “the same kind of major push on all fronts that they tried to do last year.” The idea is help Ukraine “hold its position on the battlefield for now, […] and “get them on a more sustainable path,” per the source. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu declared in late December that the Russian armed forces had achieved last year’s main goal by thwarting Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive.

“The main efforts of the past year were focused on achieving the goals of the special military operation. The main one was to stop the counter-offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which was loudly proclaimed by Ukraine and its NATO allies. This task was successfully accomplished,” Shoigu emphasized at the time. The statement came after Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov told reporters that Ukraine had lost some 160,000 troops and over 3,000 armored vehicles, including 766 tanks, as well as 121 aircraft and 23 helicopters in all areas during the six-month counteroffensive.

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“..in a number of European countries, Russophobia is being promoted as the state policy.”

Putin Vows To Eradicate Nazism For Good (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to crush modern-day forces that promote Nazism, singling out Ukraine and the Baltic states as countries where the authorities have embraced such ideologies. Speaking on Saturday at the opening of a memorial to Soviet civilians killed by Nazi German forces in Leningrad Region, the Russian head of state said: “these days the outcomes of the Nuremberg trials are effectively being revised.” He claimed that some countries have gone from rewriting history and whitewashing the Nazis to “arming themselves with Hitlerites’ ideology and methods.”

President Putin cited the Baltic states, in an apparent reference to their treatment of Russian-speaking minorities, which Moscow deems discriminatory. “The regime in Kiev lionizes Hitlers’ accomplices, SS members, and uses terror against” those who resist it, the Russian leader alleged, accusing the Ukrainian authorities of subjecting the elderly, women and children to “barbaric shelling.” According to President Putin, “in a number of European countries, Russophobia is being promoted as the state policy.” “We will do everything – everything to undercut and eradicate Nazism for good,” the Russian head of state pledged.

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“..South Africa was after the provisional ruling to force Israel to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza.”

ICJ Ruling May Entail Dire Consequences for Israel (Sp.)

“Provisional measures is what South Africa wanted,” noted Carrillo, “that there is enough evidence to show that Israel has violated the 1948 Genocide Convention. “This is what South Africa wanted when they filed this suit because a final ruling by the courts can take months, it can take years. South Africa was after the provisional ruling to force Israel to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza.” Still, Carrillo noted that Israel often ignores world opinion and discounts measures taken against it in the international arena, such as when the Soviet Union led a 1975 effort in the United Nations to declare that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination. “Israel has a long history of disregarding the rulings or the opinions of international organizations,” said Carillo. “They do as they will, and they have the complete protection of the United States who at best is going to issue a lukewarm statement about protecting civilians. That’s what I think we should expect.”

However, host Jamarl Thomas noted the significant “moral weight” the decision carries as Carillo insisted Israel “did not refute any of the evidence, they did not disprove any of the South African evidence.” Amidst a rapidly emerging multipolar world order, Carillo suggested Global South countries and their allies may enforce material consequences against Israel for their actions in Gaza, where 70% of the more than 26,000 deaths are said to be of women and children. “We will have to see, because we are seeing a polar shift in the geopolitical sphere,” said the analyst. “Maybe we will see countries like Russia, maybe like China, or maybe like South Africa or other BRICS members, find a way to stop or to punish Israel in a way.”“Economically, Israel is already facing dire consequences,” Carillo claimed. “Its ports are empty, its workforce is completely depleted, and, among other things, their currency is on the downward trend.

So if you add on top of these, as you said, the moral weight of committing genocide and then more than likely not stopping, how are nations not aligned with the US, why would they continue dealing with Israel? Where is the benefit?”Israel also continues to face economic repercussions as a result of the effective blockade in the Red Sea enforced by the Houthi movement in Yemen. Despite Yemen’s status as one of the poorest countries in the Middle East, Yeminis have demonstrated strong support for the Palestinian cause, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets to protest US and UK-led retaliatory strikes in the country. “There will always be resistance to oppression,” Carillo insisted. “Always. We know this through human history.”

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“The problem is that when you are “everything” to a client, you may end up with nothing when it comes to confidentiality.”

Who is Kevin Morris? Even Hunter’s Lawyer Seems Unsure (Turley)

Kevin Morris testified last week in the House. The question that lingered then, and now, is who is Kevin Morris. The Hollywood lawyer, producer and Democratic donor has emerged as a major figure in the corruption scandal surrounding Hunter Biden.For years, some of us have complained that we are not sure what Morris was at any given moment.What became clear in the deposition is that Morris does not appear certain himself. He’s Hunter’s confidant, art patron, business partner, and his lawyer. That could prove his undoing … both for himself and his client. Morris seems to move effortlessly between roles in his relationship with Hunter Biden.Hunter met Morris when he attended a political fundraiser as a major donor. Soon thereafter, he warned Biden associates that Hunter’s unpaid taxes raised political problems during Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential run.

He later proceeded to pay off Hunter’s taxes and to subsidize his lavish lifestyle. He also took an apparent lead in planning public campaigns against the critics of the Bidens, reportedly pushing a scorched-earth approach to attack potential witnesses and accusers. Then Morris seemed to take on the role of Hunter’s bank and art patron. He reportedly gave millions to Hunter while insisting that they are loans, not gifts. Most recently, it was revealed that, despite accounts of buyers flocking to buy Hunter’s overpriced art, it was Morris all along who bought most of the pieces. The overpriced art could be used to excuse some of these “debts” — a type of special crafts project for the president’s son to write off millions. The most striking thing about the deposition from his House interview was the speed at which Morris seemed to put on and remove his various hats.

He invoked attorney-client privilege at least 17 times over questions related to his payments and work for Hunter Biden. Yet, while refusing to answer those questions, he admitted to an array of other financial ties and transactions with his “client.” To the extent that Morris was not acting as a lawyer but as a businessman or a friend, these conversations (and related records) may not be protected. In his deposition, Morris also discusses his ownership of 10% of Bohai Harvest RST LLC (BHR), through his acquisition of interest in Skaneateles LLC. Those are business interests associated with Hunter Biden Morris seemed to be working through his own identity crisis with the help of House investigators. While insisting that his legal representation of Hunter Biden was “global and complete,” Morris detailed how his relationship floated from loan giver to friend to patron to film producer.

His counsel insists that all loans and roles were clearly laid out for Hunter in writing and reviewed by outside counsel. House investigator: “How did it come up that you were going to purchase Skaneateles? Or why did you buy Skaneateles of all the companies that Hunter Biden was involved with? Why that one?” Morris: “That’s privileged. I am not going to answer that because of attorney-client privilege.” That prompted a quick intervention by his lawyer. Morris reversed and agreed it was not protected and said that he “evaluated it as a businessman, and I thought it was something that could be a very successful investment.” Morris’ confusion often left his answers in an unintelligible morass. When asked about his decision to do a movie on his client, Morris again seemed to merge his roles, saying these are “just materials being collected for representation that may be used in the future after the representation.”

Later, Morris seemed to invoke an open-ended, running privilege. At one point, Morris claimed he was “like a general counsel” in Hunter Biden’s “virtual corporation.” He explained, “Counsel, in my job, I represent high-profile individuals. … [H]igh-profile individuals have basically virtual corporations. And in those virtual corporations, they have all kinds of staff and assistants. You know, agents and managers … publicists. You know, whatever. And what I do is I oversee … sort of the squad. Sort of like a general counsel.” With that, Morris was viewed as asserting a type of floating privilege because “I am involved in everything. And the same is with Hunter. If you check my retainer agreements, you’ll see that it’s not — it says all matters.” The statement is both factually accurate and ethically dubious. It seeks sweeping privilege claims despite the layers of different relationships, from loaner to donor to lawyer to producer. If Morris is called to testify in court, this may not fly. The problem is that when you are “everything” to a client, you may end up with nothing when it comes to confidentiality.

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“..The relationship between James Biden, Hunter Biden, Ye, and other partners resulted in at least $9 million in payments to Biden-connected companies in 2017 alone after Joe Biden returned to private life..”

Hunter Biden Partner Rob Walker Confirms Payments To Biden Family (JTN)

Hunter Biden associate Rob Walker appeared for a transcribed interview with the House Oversight Committee Friday as the latest witness in the impeachment inquiry and weeks before Hunter Biden is set to testify. According to a source familiar with Walker’s testimony, he confirmed reports that Hunter Biden’s work for the Chinese energy company CEFC began while Joe Biden was still Vice President, in 2015. In December, Just the News reported that the impeachment inquiry had assembled a growing body of evidence that Hunter’s work with the Chinese energy company started years before its million dollar payments began to flow into the Biden family coffers in 2017, following Joe Biden’s departure from office. “Today we learned that Joe Biden met with the now-missing Chairman of CEFC, Ye Jianming, as Hunter Biden and his associates received $3 million from a Chinese entity CEFC controlled. Evidence continues to reveal the Bidens sold the ‘Biden Brand’ to enrich the Biden family,” Oversight Chairman James Comer said in a statement released by the Oversight Committee.

“Today’s interview confirmed Hunter Biden and his associates’ work with the Chinese government-linked energy company began over a year before Joe Biden left the vice presidency, but the Bidens and their associates held off being paid by the Chinese while Joe Biden was in office,” he continued. “The Chinese company paid Hunter Biden and his associates $3 million shortly after Joe Biden left office as a ‘thank you’ for the work they did while Joe Biden was in office. Members of the Biden family received payments from the Chinese deal even though they did not work on it. This is the type of swampy influence peddling the American people want us to end,” Comer said. The relationship between James Biden, Hunter Biden, Ye, and other partners resulted in at least $9 million in payments to Biden-connected companies in 2017 alone after Joe Biden returned to private life.

The payments included a $3 million “thank you” in March 2017, a $5 million loan in August 2017, and a $1 million legal retainer fee to Hunter Biden from CEFC official Patrick Ho after he was indicted on bribery charges, according to documents gathered by Congress and federal prosecutors. Yet, evidence from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop and FBI interviews with Biden business partners provided to Congress show that the relationship dates back to at least 2015 and 2016. One email from Rob Walker to another of Hunter Biden’s business partners referenced an apparent letter from Hunter to Zang Jianjun, the executive director of CEFC China Energy, who worked directly for its founder and Chairman Ye Jianming.

In an interview with the FBI, Walker told investigators that he recalls two meetings that Vice President Biden had with CEFC officials, one after leaving office in 2017 and another while he was still in office. The interview was provided by IRS Whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joe Ziegler to the House Ways and Means Committee in their probe of the IRS and DOJ investigation into Hunter Biden. “Any times when he was in office or did you hear Hunter say that he was setting up a meeting with his dad with them (CEFC) while dad was still in office?” an FBI agent asked Walker. “Yeah,” Walker responded. After this admission, the investigators inexplicably changed course and did not follow up on what Walker had just told them.

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“..hunter killer assassins meeting boy scouts.”

Boeing’s Nosedive: How Greed Ruined A Great American Company (Johnston)

The singular event cited as marking the beginning of Boeing’s downfall was its 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas, which put it on a collision course with a culture steeped in cost-cutting and financial performance. Somewhat perversely, although Boeing had acquired McDonnell, it was the latter that took over. McDonnell’s executives ended up running the company and its culture became ascendant. Scores of cut-throat managers battle-hardened in the company’s perform-or-die culture were brought in. A federal mediator once likened the partnership to “hunter killer assassins meeting boy scouts.” The self-effacing and introspective Bill Allen, Boeing’s genteel CEO through the post-war era and the man behind the 707 gamble, described his company’s ethos as “to eat, breathe, and sleep the world of aeronautics.”

But a new generation of leaders was emerging who brought new priorities and a new vocabulary. It was no longer about making great airplanes; it was about “moving up the value chain.” What it was really about was maximizing shareholder value. Now looming like a colossus over Boeing was the figure of Harry Stonecipher, McDonnell’s CEO. The blunt, hard-nosed son of a coal miner, Stonecipher was known for vicious cost-cutting, emails written in all caps – and for jettisoning executives who didn’t hit financial targets. But Stonecipher was a ‘winner’: McDonnell’s stock price had risen fourfold under his tenure. What predictably ensued was nothing short of a complete transformation of Boeing from being a company run by engineers to one that prized financial profit over all, and was willing to cut all manner of corners to reduce costs and boost returns.

The quality of the product was, to put it mildly, severely compromised. Downstream from these changes are the spectacular failures we all know about: the outrageous cost overruns, delays and production issues in making the Boeing 787, which ended up being temporarily grounded for battery fires that regulators attributed to flaws in manufacturing, insufficient testing and a poor understanding of an innovative battery; the abject failure of the jimmy-rigged 737 MAX, which saw two deadly crashes and, most recently, a harrowing incident in which a sealed-off emergency exit blew out mid-air in an Alaska Airlines flight, leaving a gaping hole in the fuselage. m It is possible to see Boeing’s merger with McDonnell as simply an unfortunate mistake, and the rise of the likes of Harry Stonecipher as simply an instance in which the wrong person found his way to the top; and the outsourcing and cost-cutting as simply a misbegotten strategy.

But this would miss the wider trends at work in the American corporate landscape at the time. Boeing was hardly alone on this path. The writer David Foster Wallace once wrote that “America… is a country of many contradictions, and a big contradiction for a long time has been between a very aggressive form of capitalism and consumerism against what might be called a kind of moral or civic impulse.” What is evident is that starting roughly in the 1970s, this “aggressive form of capitalism” became ascendant in the US and for a long time overwhelmed – and is arguably still overwhelming – the “moral and civic impulse.” However, to view this as simply a moral failing is to miss the greater economic pressures at work.

The ‘70s were, in the words of historian Judith Stein, the “pivotal decade” that “sealed a society-wide transition from industry to finance, factory floor to trading floor, [and] production to consumption.” America had emerged from World War II with unquestioned manufacturing supremacy, but within a few short decades, US companies had begun falling behind. Whereas Japan, Germany, and, later on, China invested heavily in their industrial bases in the post-war period, the US came to emphasize innovation at the expense of capital investment. The 1970s were when nascent industrial powerhouse Japan pulled off its so-called ‘revolution of quality,’ which went a long way toward putting American manufacturers on the back foot.

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“..Trump will have to soldier on. He must stay controlled amid the tsunamis, not play into the hands of his accusers, and remember that he may soon be the only eleventh-hour hope to stop this mockery of American law, customs and traditions.”

83 million? (Victor Davis Hanson)

Donald Trump in furor stormed out of a New York courtroom for a while, in the defamation suit brought by author and dating/boyfriend/sex-advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. It was just settled against Trump for $83.3 million! The Carroll suit was largely subsidized by Reid Hoffman the billionaire capitalist, and mega-donor to the Democratic Party and leftwing causes. The subtext of Trump’s rage, aside from the outrageous monetary size of the defamation ruling, is that he was facing—and angered—a leftwing claimant, a quite hostile leftwing judge, and a leftwing New York jury. The civil suit serves as a mere preview of four additional leftwing criminal prosecutions, leftwing judges, and leftwing juries to come—all on charges that would never had been filed if Trump either had not run for president or been a liberal progressive. Yet here we are.

The E. Jean Carroll case is the most baffling of all five. She, the alleged victim, did not remember even the year in which the purported sexual assault took place, nearly three decades ago. Observers have pointed out dozens of inconsistencies in her story. It was never clear what were the preliminaries that supposedly (Trump denies meeting her) led both, allegedly, willingly to retreat together to a department store dressing room, where during normal business hours the alleged violence took place. Moreover, the sexual assault complaint came forward decades post facto—and only after Trump was running for and then president. Carroll eventually sued him for battery, but well after the statute of limitations had expired and thus the case seemed defunct.

Her claims of defamation injuries arise from being fired from her advice column job at ELLE magazine. She claimed that Trump’s sharp denials and ad hominem retorts led to her career ruin. But the loss for anyone of a column at 76 does not seem such a rare occurrence, and the absence of a salaried job in one’s late seventies for four years does not seem to equate to a $83 million hit. And note the allegation that her dispute with Trump led to her firing was strongly denied by the very magazine that cut her loose. But then another strange thing happened. In 2022, a new law (“The Adult Survivors Act”) was passed in the New York legislature. It also post facto established a twelve-month window (beginning six months from the signing of bill) that permitted survivors of long ago alleged sexual assaults suddenly to sue the accused long-ago perpetrator—regardless of the previous statute of limitations.

That unexpected opening suddenly gave Carroll’s prior unsuccessful efforts a rebirth. And she quickly refiled with the help of arch-Trump hating billionaire Hoffman. Yet the bill may have been introduced with Trump particularly in mind—given the legislator who introduced it, Brad Hoylman-Siga, was known as another Trump antagonist. More interestingly, he had earlier introduced and had passed another Trump-targeted bill. That “TRUST” act had empowered particular federal Congressional committees to have access to the New York State once sealed tax returns of high-ranking government officials—such as Trump. That bill’s generally agreed subtext was a green light for anti-Trump members of Congress to obtain legal access to Donald J. Trump’s tax returns.

So there is an eerie feeling that the New York legislature may have abruptly passed legislation that was aimed at the past conduct of Donald Trump but only after he entered the political arena. While these are not quite bills of attainder, there is something unsettling if they are post facto laws aimed at targeting the most famous and controversial man in America and the leading candidate for the presidency. In essence they were targeted statutes designed to make Trump’s prior legally unactionable behavior suddenly quite legally actionable. Trump will be subject to such special treatment all summer and fall. Prosecutors Bragg, James, Smith, and Willis will synchronize their court business for maximum effect.

Trump again will face leftwing prosecutors, judges, and juries on charges that are politically driven, involving alleged behavior that is either usually not criminalized or not to the same degree as Trump’s case. (Do we remember the nearly $375,000 federal fine belatedly leveled at an exempt Obama but only five years after his 2008 illegal garnering of, and not reporting, foreign campaign contributions?) The stakes are higher each day as Trump closes in on the nomination and thus becomes the hope of half the country to end the Biden madness. Somehow Trump will have to stay calm, give no opening to his legion of hostile prosecutors, while conducting a nonstop campaign against Biden (and for a while Hayley), and while fighting to keep his name on various state ballots.

So what we are witnessing is not even the extralegal efforts of Steele/Fusion GPS, Perkins Coie/DNC/Hillary Clinton in 2016, or the 2020 “Russian disinformation” ruse/change the voting laws/infuse half a billion dollars to absorb the work of the registrar machinations against Trump. We are way beyond all that. The legal system itself, hand-in-glove with leftwing politicos (compare campaign boasts of James and Willis, or prosecutorial visits to the January 6 committee and the White House) is turning the process of balloting and elections into an embarrassing farce. Still, Trump will have to soldier on. He must stay controlled amid the tsunamis, not play into the hands of his accusers, and remember that he may soon be the only eleventh-hour hope to stop this mockery of American law, customs and traditions.

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Wild dogs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1751228420925562943

 

 

Baby goat
https://twitter.com/i/status/1751252951375712290

 

 


The bearded vulture is the only known animal whose diet is almost exclusively bone

 

 

Fata morgana

 

 

Monarch
https://twitter.com/i/status/1751398451152044152

 

 

Clay
https://twitter.com/i/status/1751471302169227699

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Sep 222023
 
 September 22, 2023  Posted by at 8:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  36 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Girl Before A Mirror 1932

 

Ukraine Has Already Lost In Its Conflict With Russia – Seymour Hersh (RT)
Ukraine Shows US Military Not Ready for Major War (Scott Ritter)
Can Ukraine Use Corruption Charges to Blackmail Biden? (Tweedie)
US May Be Supporting ‘Neo-Nazis’ by Aiding Ukraine – Congressman (Sp.)
McCarthy Says GOP Hardliners Want to ‘Burn the Whole Place Down’ (Sp.)
Zelensky Accuses The Notoriously Russophobic Polish Of Helping Moscow (Marsden)
Poland Makes U-turn On Ukraine Aid (RT)
Polish Politician Reveals Why Warsaw Changed Its Tune on Ukraine (Sp.)
NATO Expansion & Ukraine’s Destruction (Jeffrey Sachs)
Half of US’ F-35 Fleet Not Capable of Flying at Any Time – Watchdog (Sp.)
Our Self-Induced Catastrophe at the Border (Hanson)
Third IRS Official Says DOJ Blocked Weiss From Charging Hunter Biden (WE)
Russell Brand Is Unlikely To Face Actual Justice (Hryce)
Intel-linked UK Official Pushing Censorship Of Russell Brand (GZ)
The Valorization of the Tyrants (Jeffrey Tucker)

 

 

 

 

Do watch please. Ken Paxton

 

 

Tim Ballard
https://twitter.com/i/status/1704614152549916967

 

 

 

 

Shaman

 

 

 

 

“‘The war is over. Russia has won. There is no Ukrainian offensive anymore, but the White House and the American media have to keep the lie going.’”

Ukraine Has Already Lost In Its Conflict With Russia – Seymour Hersh (RT)

US intelligence analysts believe that Ukraine has given up on its counteroffensive against Russia and the only thing prolonging the conflict is the unwillingness of Washington and Kiev to acknowledge their failure, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has claimed. Writing on Substack on Thursday, the veteran reporter cited an unnamed source, who “spent the early years of his career working against Soviet aggression and spying” as rejecting the Ukrainian narrative about a slow but steady progress of the counteroffensive. “‘It’s all lies,’” the source said, according to Hersh. “‘The war is over. Russia has won. There is no Ukrainian offensive anymore, but the White House and the American media have to keep the lie going.’”

This sentiment is shared by many figures in the US intelligence community, and the CIA in particular has been skeptical of Kiev’s claims of a continued push forward, unlike the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), he explained. Trent Maul, the director of analysis for the DIA, touted Ukraine’s success to The Economist earlier this month and claimed Kiev’s forces had a “realistic” chance to break through Russian defense lines this year. The British outlet contrasted the assessment with that of an unnamed senior US intelligence official, who said the battlefield “could look broadly similar” in five years. The source cited by Hersh blasted the leadership in both Moscow and Washington for acting “stupid”during the crisis. Russian President Vladimir Putin got “provoked [into] violating the UN charter” with a poorly-prepared military campaign, he argued. US President Joe Biden retaliated with a proxy war and has had to rely on the vilification of Putin by the media “in order to justify our mistake.”

“The truth is if the Ukrainian army is ordered to continue the offensive, the army would mutiny. The soldiers aren’t willing to die any more, but this doesn’t fit the B.S. that is being authored by the Biden White House,” the source concluded. Moscow has denied the US claim that the operation against Ukraine was an act of “unprovoked aggression,” insisting that the people of Donbass had the right of self-determination under the UN Charter and acted accordingly when they broke away from Ukraine after the 2014 armed coup in Kiev. The Russian government has maintained that it acted lawfully when it recognized the independence of the Donetsk and Luganks People’s Republics in February 2022. Days later, after Kiev refused to stop attacks on Donbass and pull out its troops, Moscow launched its offensive.

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“..80-90 out of every 100 men mobilized become casualties in this conflict. Calculating that roughly 90 days transpired between the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive and Putin’s comments, this means that Ukraine was losing around 790 casualties per day.”

Ukraine Shows US Military Not Ready for Major War (Scott Ritter)

Before the Ukrainian conflict began, the US Army, drawing upon Cold War estimates, assessed in the 2019 edition of Field Manual (FM) 4-0 (Sustainment Operations) that US Army theater medical planners “may anticipate a sustained rate of roughly 3,600 casualties per day, ranging from those killed in action to those wounded in action or suffering disease or other non-battle injuries”, putting the US Army on track to lose some 50,000 casualties in two weeks of sustained combat operations against a Russian-style threat. Are these numbers realistic? Ask Ukraine. In the lead up to the current counteroffensive, Ukraine built up three brigades-worth of troops (around 20,000 soldiers) along with another nine brigades (some 37,000 troops) trained and equipped by NATO, all of which were slated to participate in the main offensive effort in and around the village of Rabotino, in southern Zaporozhye.

These forces were supplemented by an additional 40,000 territorial forces formed into eight so-called “shock brigades” intended to be deployed offensively in the vicinity of the city of Artemovsk (Bakhmut). The total number of Ukrainian troops mobilized and trained specifically for the counteroffensive was just under 100,000 men. Back in January 2023—five months before the start of the current counteroffensive, and two months before the Battle of Artemovsk (Bakhmut), US General Christopher Cavoli, the commander of US and NATO forces in Europe, told an audience at an Oslo defense forum that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine “out of proportion with all of our [NATO] recent thinking,” adding that “the magnitude of this war is incredible.” Cavoli spoke of artillery expenditure rates by the Russian Army that exceeded, on average, 20,000 rounds per day.

Violence begets violence, and with this much high explosive being sent down range, the Ukrainians were certain to be sustaining very high losses. Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking to the Eastern Economic Forum, stated that in the three months that have transpired since the Ukrainian counteroffensive was begun, Ukraine had suffered some 71,000 casualties (killed and wounded), or roughly seven out of every 10 men participating. This number is consistent with a statement made by a Ukrainian official responsible for the mobilization of troops in the Poltava Region, which indicated that 80-90 out of every 100 men mobilized become casualties in this conflict. Calculating that roughly 90 days transpired between the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive and Putin’s comments, this means that Ukraine was losing around 790 casualties per day.

The US Army currently has approximately 100,000 troops deployed to Europe, around 40,000 of which are organized into combat units expected to bear the brunt of the fighting. If these troops were subject to casualty rates approximating those sustained by Ukraine in the prosecution of its counteroffensive, the US Army would exhaust its combat power within 50 days. Of course, this calculation is misleading since it speaks of 100% casualty rates. According to US Army doctrine, if a unit is at 50 to 69 percent strength, it becomes combat ineffective, meaning it is no longer capable of accomplishing its assigned mission. The reality is that US combat forces subjected to the level of violence experienced by Ukraine at the hands of the Russians would become combat ineffective after around 2 weeks of fighting.

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“They have to worry about not only Biden, but people like Sullivan, people like Blinken, who are both demonstrably guilty of fooling around with elections..”

Can Ukraine Use Corruption Charges to Blackmail Biden? (Tweedie)

The Kiev regime could use its knowledge of the Biden family’s dealings in Ukraine to blackmail the US president into continued support for a losing conflict with Russia, says an ex-CIA commentator. Republican House of Representatives speaker Kevin McCarthy has scheduled impeachment hearings into US president Joe Biden’s alleged influence peddling through his son Hunter — revealed among the contents of his abandoned laptop computer — to begin next week. This time McCarthy snubbed the Ukrainian leader by denying his request to address Congress. But Biden still found time to invite his protégé, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, to visit Washington again after his poorly-attended UN General Assembly address.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern told Sputnik that the US ever-escalating involvement in Ukraine was dangerous, as nobody knows the extent of “Biden’s personal stakes in this” not just for his son Hunter but himself and his brother James. “The evidence is accumulating. What do the Ukrainians know about all this bribery?” McGovern asked. “If Ukraine were the pristine, pure nation of the world where there was no under underhanded stuff, no corruption, that would be one thing. But they’re the picture-boy for corruption.” The former intel-cruncher noted that Biden seems caught in a death spiral of support for Kiev’s military campaigns against Russia despite the increasingly pessimistic outlook for achieving any kind of victory. “So what does Zelensky … know about Biden that has Biden in more of a pickle than most of us even realize?” McGovern asked.

“Given the way the counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces, supported by US troops and material, that’s going south, what else does Biden worry about?” But he said more important was how Russia’s political leaders viewed the lay of the land in the Washington DC swamp. “They have to worry about not only Biden, but people like Sullivan, people like Blinken, who are both demonstrably guilty of fooling around with elections,” McGovern pointed out. “Blinken has revealed that, having collected 51 former intelligence leaders to say that [Hunter] Biden’s laptop was not genuine, that it had the smell or all the earmarks of a Russian disinformation operation. Well, that’s hooey now. But it helped get Joe Biden elected.” The intelligence community insider said the level of corruption in Washington now was “as bad as I’ve ever seen it, and that goes back six decades.” “The question is, how will this impede Biden from doing anything sensible with respect to Ukraine before the election, or even after the election?” McGovern asked.

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“It is imperative that both Congress and the American taxpayers know how much of this sum has been allocated to vicious anti-Semitic neo-Nazis..”

US May Be Supporting ‘Neo-Nazis’ by Aiding Ukraine – Congressman (Sp.)

In a letter addressed to the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, US Congressman Paul Gosar voiced his misgivings about the Section 8138 of Public Law 117-328 that specifically prohibits the provision of US funds to the Azov Battalion, an infamous Ukrainian neo-Nazi unit*. In the missive dated September 20 and obtained exclusively by Sputnik, Gosar pointed out that not only does the Azov Battalion continue to exist despite having a “long history of human rights abuses,” it has been incorporated into the Ukrainian military and National Guard. “Thus, US aid of any type sent to Ukraine is being delivered, in contravention of the law, to this Nazi battalion. It is immoral and illegal for the United States to send money to a Nazi regime,” the congressman wrote.

Gosar also noted that Azov has a number of “spinoff units,” such as the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade that is a “component of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” “The US has foolishly allocated four rounds of Ukraine aid totaling at least $113 billion. As if this staggering sum is not enough, Mr. Biden recently called on more than $24 billion more to be sent to Ukraine. It is imperative that both Congress and the American taxpayers know how much of this sum has been allocated to vicious anti-Semitic neo-Nazis,” Gosar declared in the letter. While it is already bad enough that the US government willingly provided billions of dollars “to the authoritarian and corrupt Kiev regime,” the fact that Ukraine “may be able to make a fool out of the American people by abusing technicalities in Federal law to ensure neo-Nazis receive US security assistance” is worse, he added.

The US government ended up funneling billions of dollars’ worth of financial assistance and military equipment to the regime in Kiev after the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict in February 2022, prompting concerns among some members of the US Congress who were not amused by this generosity at the American taxpayers’ expense. While the US leadership and mainstream media sought to portray the Kiev regime as some kind of force for good that fights to uphold the ideals of freedom and democracy, it became increasingly clear that the Ukrainian military is rife with neo-Nazis who routinely engage in human rights abuses.

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They want no more money to Ukraine. How is that burning the place down?

McCarthy Says GOP Hardliners Want to ‘Burn the Whole Place Down’ (Sp.)

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy sent House members home on Thursday for a three-day weekend despite failing to find a resolution that would help the government avoid a shutdown at the end of the month.Five GOP hardliners demanded additional spending cuts, blocking the debate on a key military funding bill. After vowing to work through the weekend in order to find a solution to the crisis, those plans were canceled with members being told they would get “ample notice” if any votes are rescheduled. Failing to find a solution to the crisis, members are showing little faith in McCarthy’s ability to avoid a government shutdown, which could begin in just 11 days. House Republicans have voiced their frustrations regarding intraparty fighting to the media.

“We are very dysfunctional right now,” Rep. Tim Burchett, (R-TN) said, before fuming that GOP leaders “obviously can’t count” votes. He then compared McCarthy to his predecessor, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) saying: “Speaker Pelosi, love her or hate her, she put something out there and they’d rally around it.” “This is painful. It gives me a headache. This is a very difficult series of missteps by our conference,” US Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) said. “If you can’t do [the defense bill], what can you do?” US Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), a moderate Republican, seethed that the bickering within his party was a “clown show.” He added that Republicans will have to compromise if they want to get any work done in a government that is so heavily controlled by Democrats.

“For my colleagues, they have to come to a realization: If they are unable or unwilling to govern, others will. And in a divided government where you have Democrats controlling the Senate, a Democrat controlling the White House, there needs to be a realization that you’re not going to get everything you want,” he said. “And just throwing a temper tantrum and stomping your feet, frankly not only is it wrong — it’s pathetic,” he added McCarthy also slammed his conservative colleagues for wanting to “burn the place down.” “It’s frustrating in the sense that I don’t understand how anyone votes against bringing the idea up and having the debate,” he said. “This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down. That doesn’t work.”

The vote on Thursday failed 212 to 216, with five Republicans – Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Matt Rosendale of Montana and Andy Biggs and Eli Crane, both of Arizona – voting no. Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole, Oklahoma, also participated in the vote. Crane and Greene originally voted for the rule earlier this week, but changed their vote on Thursday, catching fellow Republicans off-guard. Absences also affected the Thursday voting outcome. Crane, a member of the House Freedom Caucus and a newcomer to Congress, said he is demanding lower spending levels and wants no more aid for Ukraine. “[Constituents] understand there’s no appetite to quit spending money we don’t have, and they expect me to do whatever I can to stop it and to change how we do business up here,” he said. With the House stuck in a sort of paralysis, the new plan is for Republicans to try and complete work on individual, long-term spending bills, as their short-term funding bill did not have enough GOP votes amid hardliner opposition, according to one American news source.

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“..you’re a side piece hoping for a ring and using toxic tactics to try to manipulate everyone into getting whatever you want all the time..”

Zelensky Accuses The Notoriously Russophobic Polish Of Helping Moscow (Marsden)

Ukraine and Poland’s relationship has apparently reached the throwing toys out of the pram phase. Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly this week, President Vladimir Zelensky said it was “alarming to see how some in Europe… are helping set the stage for a Moscow actor.” Who could he have been talking about? “I hope these words are not addressed to Poland,” replied a Polish government spokesman. If you have to ask yourself the question, you probably already know the answer. Yep, Zelensky is accusing Poland of cheating – with Russia. [..] It seems like just yesterday that Poland was bullying its fellow European Union member states to cough up gifts of weapons for Zelensky. Back in May, it managed to get Denmark and Finland on board with sending their German Leopard tanks to Kiev and browbeat Berlin for dragging its feet on giving permission to re-export the vehicles.

“Even if, eventually, we do not get this permission, we – within this small coalition – even if Germany is not in this coalition, we will hand over our tanks, together with the others, to Ukraine,” declared Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki at the time. Fast forward to this week. “We are no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine because we are now arming Poland with more modern weapons,” Morawiecki said. In other words, Warsaw has decided that it needs to focus on itself. Isn’t that what every exasperated partner says after spending time on a therapist’s couch and coming to their senses? Last week, Poland withdrew – along with Hungary and Slovakia – from the EU’s platform to coordinate Ukrainian grain imports. Sources claimed that the countries feared that details from any such involvement could be used against them in a lawsuit that Kiev filed earlier this week.

This was at the World Trade Organization in response to them maintaining their bans on Ukrainian grain imports despite Brussels’ decision to lift them on September 15. Thus, Poland has gone from loudly proclaiming its love for Kiev to suddenly acting like a party to a potentially messy divorce, now taking self-preservation measures against a toxic partner. One who keeps making demands even when you say “no.” And that’s exactly what these countries did by insisting that Ukraine’s grain be banned lest it compete with their own farmers’ produce, driving its value down – and not even a month before the next Polish parliamentary election on October 15. Instead of trying to see the situation from these countries’ perspectives, Kiev blew a gasket.

“The systemic approach of Budapest and Warsaw of ignoring the position of the EU institutions in trade policy, I think that will be a problem for the EU in general because there is no unity there,” said Taras Kachka, a trade representative. Kiev is acting like it can’t understand why Brussels is backing the three while it keeps stringing Ukraine along with promises of commitment.It’s because they’re in a binding relationship with the EU. By contrast, you’re a side piece hoping for a ring and using toxic tactics to try to manipulate everyone into getting whatever you want all the time. The gloves have really come off now, though, with Ukraine daring to suggest that the EU isn’t united. That threatens to ruin the main theme of unelected European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s virtue signaling.

Kiev is now doubling down on the psycho-ex vibe by threatening that unless the unilateral bans on grain are lifted, it will go after Polish apples and onions and Hungarian cars with retaliatory restrictions. (Why do bad breakups always have to target innocent cars – whether it’s keying/scratching, smashing, or blocking?) Poland has since pushed back in a tit-for-tat. “I warn the Ukrainian authorities because if they escalate this conflict in this way, we will add more products to the ban on import into the territory of the Republic of Poland,” Prime Minister Morawiecki said on Wednesday.

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That was quick.

Poland Makes U-turn On Ukraine Aid (RT)

The Polish government has attempted to walk back Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s threat to halt weapon shipments to Ukraine. Government spokesman Piotr Muller has stressed that Poland will continue to send military supplies to Ukraine under its existing agreements. “Poland is only carrying out previously agreed supplies of ammunition and armaments, including those resulting from the contracts signed with Ukraine,” the spokesman said, noting that Poland has “consistently helped” Kiev in the conflict. His statement comes after Morawiecki declared on Thursday that Warsaw will no longer provide arms to the Ukrainian military and will instead focus on arming its own forces with modern weapons. “Ukrainian authorities do not understand the degree to which Poland’s farming industry has been destabilized” by imports, the prime minister said.

One Polish government official, however, told Bloomberg on the condition of anonymity that the prime minister’s words had been wrongly interpreted. Another official claimed that while Poland has no more weaponry left that can be donated, it will continue to make ammunition shipments to Ukraine. Kiev’s public falling out with one of its staunchest supporters throughout the Russian-Ukraine conflict comes amid an escalating diplomatic row over Ukrainian grain imports to Europe. Poland, along with Hungary and Slovakia, had previously decided to go against the EU’s decision to lift the embargo on Ukrainian grain. Warsaw explained the unilateral move by stating it protecting its farmers and preventing cheap Ukrainian agricultural products from flooding the market and disrupting the agricultural industry.

Kiev responded to the move by condemning it as “illegal” and announcing that it would file a dispute with the World Trade Organization (WTO) against the three Eastern European countries. It also threatened to ban the import of Polish fruits and vegetables. The EU, meanwhile, has demanded that Warsaw, Budapest, and Bratislava reverse their bans because EU members are not allowed to take unilateral measures on trade. However, according to a report by the Financial Times, Brussels is now considering whether to protect the three countries against Kiev’s WTO filing. It is allegedly working to “coordinate” its legal rebuttals to the claim.

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“..Warsaw’s rhetoric is all about the upcoming parliamentary elections, “which the ruling Law and Justice party would lose by continuing to uncritically support Kiev.”

Polish Politician Reveals Why Warsaw Changed Its Tune on Ukraine (Sp.)

Relations between Warsaw and Kiev have soured recently after Polish authorities, along with their Hungarian and Slovakian counterparts, moved to restrict imports of cheap Ukrainian grain in a bid to protect local farmers. Kiev promptly retaliated by filing a complaint with the World Trade Organization against all three countries and even threatened to block certain agricultural imports from Poland and Hungary if the ban on Ukrainian grain was not lifted. Many prominent Polish politicians appeared unamused by this turn of events, with Poland’s Minister of Defense Marius Blaszczak insisting that Warsaw essentially protects Polish farmers from the schemes of “Ukrainian oligarchs” who want to sell Ukrainian grain in Poland.

Polish politician and independent commentator Konrad Rekas, however, argued that Warsaw’s rhetoric is all about the upcoming parliamentary elections, “which the ruling Law and Justice party would lose by continuing to uncritically support Kiev.” “Of course, Ukraine does not intend to make the internal games easier for its Polish allies, fully understanding that it will receive everything it demands from the next Polish government, regardless of which party forms the government,” Rekas told Sputnik. He claimed that the spat between Ukraine and Poland is not really related to the matter of Ukrainian grain exports or Warsaw’s alleged intent to occupy certain Ukrainian territories and that it is unlikely to affect the course of the Ukrainian conflict.

“Poland will still be a hub for the Western military aid for the Kiev regime. Poles will continue to pay millions for the Ukrainian resettlement to Poland,” Rekas surmised. Since the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict in February 2022, Poland supplied large quantities of military hardware to the regime in Kiev, including battle tanks and warplanes, and helped accommodate tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees on Polish soil. This week, however, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced that his country now focuses on arming itself with modern weapons and no longer transfers armaments to Kiev, while Polish government Press Secretary Piotr Muller said that Warsaw apparently has not got plans to continue supporting Ukrainian refugees in Poland next year.

These statements come ahead of the parliamentary election in Poland slated to take place on October 15, and it remains unclear whether Polish politicians are going to fulfill their promises or if it is all merely an attempt to sway voters. Meanwhile, Slovakia, another prominent backer of the Kiev regime, may change its stance on the Ukrainian conflict after the September 30 election in the country. Former Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, whose social-democratic Smer (Direction) party dominates the recent polls, has already stated that Slovakia will no longer “send any arms or ammunition to Ukraine” should his party form part of a new government.

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“..the entire Russian political class, not just Putin, was dead-set against NATO enlargement..”

NATO Expansion & Ukraine’s Destruction (Jeffrey Sachs)

According to the U.S. government and the ever-obsequious New York Times, the Ukraine war was “unprovoked,” the Times’ favorite adjective to describe the war. Putin, allegedly mistaking himself for Peter the Great, invaded Ukraine to recreate the Russian Empire. Yet last week, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg committed a Washington gaffe, meaning that he accidentally blurted out the truth. In testimony to the European Union Parliament, Stoltenberg made clear that it was America’s relentless push to enlarge NATO to Ukraine that was the real cause of the war and why it continues today. Here are Stoltenberg’s revealing words:

“The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition to not invade Ukraine. Of course, we didn’t sign that. The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second-class membership. We rejected that. So, he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite.”

To repeat, he [Putin] went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. When Prof. John Mearsheimer, I, and others have said the same, we’ve been attacked as Putin apologists. The same critics also choose to hide or flatly ignore the dire warnings against NATO enlargement to Ukraine, long articulated by many of America’s leading diplomats, including the great scholar-statesman George Kennan, and the former U.S. ambassadors to Russia Jack Matlock and William Burns. Burns, now C.I.A. director, was U.S. ambassador to Russia in 2008, and author of a memo entitled “Nyet means Nyet.” In that memo, Burns explained to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the entire Russian political class, not just Putin, was dead-set against NATO enlargement. We know about the memo only because it was leaked. Otherwise, we’d be in the dark about it.

Why does Russia oppose NATO enlargement? For the simple reason that Russia does not accept the U.S. military on its 2,300 km border with Ukraine in the Black Sea region. Russia does not appreciate the U.S. placement of Aegis missiles in Poland and Romania after the U.S. unilaterally abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Russia also does not welcome the fact that the U.S. engaged in no fewer than 70 regime change operations during the Cold War (1947-1989), and countless more since, including in Serbia, Afghanistan, Georgia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, and Ukraine. Nor does Russia like the fact that many leading U.S. politicians actively advocate the destruction of Russia under the banner of “Decolonizing Russia.” That would be like Russia calling for the removal of Texas, California, Hawaii, the conquered Indian lands, and much else, from the United States.

Even Zelensky’s team knew that the quest for NATO enlargement meant imminent war with Russia. Oleksiy Arestovych, former adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine under Zelensky, declared that “with a 99.9 percent probability, our price for joining NATO is a big war with Russia.”

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$1.7 trillion for jets that don’t fly.

Half of US’ F-35 Fleet Not Capable of Flying at Any Time – Watchdog (Sp.)

Almost half the F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that are supposed to be operational are not capable of flying and it will cost $1.3 trillion to keep them operational, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a new report. “The F-35 fleet mission capable rate – the percentage of time the aircraft can perform one of its tasked missions – was about 55% in March 2023, far below program goals,” the report said on Thursday. The GAO called this level of operational readiness “unacceptably low.” “The program was behind schedule in establishing depot maintenance activities to conduct repairs. As a result, component repair times remained slow with over 10,000 waiting to be repaired – above desired levels,” the report said.

Organizational-level maintenance has also been affected by a lack of technical data and training, the report added. It will cost $1.3 trillion to keep the full F-35 fleet operational and flying even if or when all the repair and maintenance bottlenecks, as well as ongoing development problems with the aircraft’s cannon, ejector seat, software and hardware are fixed, the report said. However, despite the downfalls associated with the F-35 program, the report also determined that the Biden administration and the Department of Defense remain committed to a $1.7 trillion expenditure on buying a total of 2,500 F-35s for the US armed forces.

“In the coming decades, the Department of Defense plans to spend an estimated $1.7 trillion on nearly 2,500 F-35s,” the report stated, acknowledging that the majority of the funds will go to operating, maintaining, and repairing the aircraft. The F-35 aircraft now represents a growing portion of the Defense Department’s tactical aviation fleet with about 450 of the aircraft fielded, the GAO said. From the start of the F-35 program, officials have dealt with a variety of major setbacks with the fleet, ranging from costly fixes to sensitivities with overheating and lightning strikes. More recently, the program made global headline news after a US Marine Corps F-35B crashed in South Carolina and sent authorities on a hunt after being unable to track the fighter once its pilot safely ejected.

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“The ethnic chauvinists and Democratic Party elites needed new constituents, given their increasingly unpopular agendas.”

Our Self-Induced Catastrophe at the Border (Hanson)

Since early 2021 we have witnessed somewhere between 7 and 8 million illegal entries across the now nonexistent U.S. southern border. The more the border vanished, the more federal immigration law was rendered inert, and the more Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas spun fantasies that the “border is secure.” He is now written off as a veritable “Baghdad Bob” propagandist. But how and why did the Biden administration destroy immigration law as we knew it? The Trump administration’s initial efforts to close the border had been continually obstructed in the Congress, sabotaged by the administrative state, and stymied in the courts. Nonetheless, it had finally secured the border by early 2020. Yet almost all its successful initiatives were immediately overturned in 2021.

The wall was abruptly stopped, its projected trajectory cancelled. The Obama-era disastrous “catch-and release” policy of immigration non-enforcement was resurrected. Prior successful pressure on Mexico’s President Andrés Obrador to stop the deliberate export of his own citizens northward ceased. Federal border patrol officers were forced to stand down. New federal subsidies were granted to entice and then support illegal arrivals. No one in the Democratic Party objected to the destruction of the border or the subversion of immigration law. However, things changed somewhat once swamped southern border states began to bus or fly a few thousand of their illegal immigrants northward to sanctuary city jurisdictions—especially to New York, Chicago, and even Martha’s Vineyard.

The sanctuary-city “humanists” there who had greenlighted illegal immigration into the southern states suddenly shrieked. They were irate after experiencing the concrete consequences of their own prior abstract border agendas. After all, their nihilism was always supposed to fall upon distant and ridiculed others. New York mayor Eric Adams went from celebrating a few dozen illegal immigrants bused into Manhattan, to blasting his own party by allowing tens of thousands to swamp his now bankrupt city. But why did the Biden administration deliberately unleash the largest influx across the southern border in U.S. history? The ethnic chauvinists and Democratic Party elites needed new constituents, given their increasingly unpopular agendas.

They feared that the more legal Latino immigrants assimilated and integrated into American society, the less happy they became with leftwing radical abortion, racial, transgender, crime, and green fixations. Democratic grandees had always bragged that illegal immigration would create what they called “The New Democratic Majority” in “Demography is Destiny” fashion. Now they slander critics as “racists” who object to leftwing efforts to use illegal immigration to turn southwestern red states blue. Mexico now cannot survive as a modern state without some $60 billion in annual remittances sent by its expatriates in America. But many illegal immigrants rely on American state and federal entitlements to free up cash to send home.

Mexico also encourages its own abject poor and often indigenous people from southern Mexico to head north as a safety-valve of sorts. The government sees these mass exoduses northward as preferable to the oppressed marching on Mexico City to address grievances of poverty and racism. The criminal cartels now de facto run Mexico. An open border allows them to ship fentanyl northward, earn billions in profits—and kill nearly 100,000 Americans a year. Illegal immigrants pay cartels additional billions to facilitate their border crossings.

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Weiss is two-faced.

Third IRS Official Says DOJ Blocked Weiss From Charging Hunter Biden (WE)

A third IRS official confirmed that Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss faced roadblocks when attempting to bring charges against Hunter Biden, contradicting denials issued Wednesday by Attorney General Merrick Garland. IRS Director of Field Operations Michael Batdorf told the House Ways and Means Committee in a closed-door interview on Sept. 12 that he felt “frustrated” by the refusal of the Justice Department to approve tax charges that IRS agents viewed as well-supported by evidence, according to a transcript of the interview obtained by the Washington Examiner. He also said the IRS removed agent Gary Shapley, a whistleblower, from the Hunter Biden case at the direction of Weiss despite having done nothing wrong.

Batdorf’s testimony was the latest piece of evidence to suggest Weiss did not enjoy the unfettered authority to pursue Hunter Biden that Garland and others claimed he had. Still, Batdorf, who was above Shapley in the IRS chain of command, stopped short of attributing the DOJ’s actions to bias in favor of President Joe Biden. In addition to the two Joe Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys who refused to allow Weiss to bring charges against Hunter Biden in their districts, Batdorf said the DOJ Tax Division opposed bringing charges. Batdorf said DOJ Tax argued against charges for Hunter Biden during a June 2022 meeting with Weiss and IRS officials, who were in favor of advancing the case. “DOJ Tax would have to authorize charges prior to David Weiss recommending an indictment or prosecution,” Batdorf said during his interview.

“So, I mean, my understanding is that, I mean, he can’t make that decision without DOJ Tax authorization,” Batdorf said. The IRS supervisor confirmed that Hunter Biden’s defense team was given an unusual number of chances, possibly as many as four, to meet with DOJ Tax investigators and argue why its client should not face charges. Tensions between DOJ Tax and the IRS investigators over the strength of the case began after DOJ Tax officials started meeting with Hunter Biden’s defense lawyers, Batdorf said. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) asked Garland on Wednesday about whether DOJ Tax had the ability to stop a U.S. attorney from proceeding on a tax case. “Most of the time, but not when the attorney general has granted authority to a U.S. attorney to do what he thinks is best,” Garland said at the House Judiciary Committee hearing.

But Weiss did not appear to have that authority at the time. Batdorf said he sensed frustration on the team that Weiss had found roadblocks on multiple paths to prosecuting Hunter Biden. “I was frustrated,” he said. “[Weiss] was probably a little frustrated … because he now had to make some decisions on what he was going to do.” Then, in the fall of last year, the investigation seemed to stall. Batdorf said the case was effectively dormant from October 2022 until May this year. During the intervening months, investigators had little else to do except wait for Weiss to make a decision about whether to move the case forward or end it. Weiss did not decide to proceed until Shapley had already begun the process of testifying to Congress about the investigation. “David Weiss made his decision to go forward in May. I’m not sure what drove that decision,” Batdorf said.

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The MeToo manual.

Russell Brand Is Unlikely To Face Actual Justice (Hryce)

Last week, the controversial comedian and movie star Russell Brand became the latest high-profile target of the #MeToo movement. This should not come as a complete surprise, given his celebrity status and sordid history of self-confessed promiscuity. Brand has been a potential target in waiting for some years – and it was probably just a matter of time before the movement zeroed in on him. The attack on Brand followed the well-rehearsed, standard #MeToo modus operandi. A number of anonymous women, none of whom could ever hope to attain the celebrity status of their male target, have accused Brand of various kinds of sexual misconduct – including, most seriously, rape. These alleged acts occurred some years ago, and none were reported to the police at the time they supposedly occurred.

Nor have these acts been reported to the police even now. Making a formal complaint to the police would, of course, involve the police independently investigating the allegations – at least to the extent that the British police are capable of impartially investigating allegations of this kind. The ideological predisposition of the police in respect of such matters can perhaps be gauged from the statement issued by them after the media storm against Brand broke last week – the police immediately urged any victims of Brand’s sexual indiscretions to contact them and make complaints against him. It is unlikely that the women who have targeted Brand will make formal complaints to the police at this stage – that usually occurs long after the media campaign against the target has destroyed his reputation and career, and seriously prejudiced the likelihood of a fair trial occurring.

#MeToo complainants tend to avoid the courts if they can – because the law is based upon notions such as the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial. The law also requires complainants to justify their allegations by means of credible evidence; and subjects them to cross-examination. Such notions and practices are completely foreign to the persecutory #MeToo modus operandi. More to the point, they afford the accused a degree of protection that, in some cases, may even enable them to escape the destructive rage of the movement altogether. Complainants prefer trial by an ideologically compliant media, as Brand is now discovering to his cost.

[..] Brand has already been found guilty as charged by the media. In the space of a few days, his reputation has been irretrievably damaged and his career is being progressively destroyed. Brand’s current stand-up comedy tour in Britain has been cancelled. He has been condemned by media organisations that once vied to employ him, and celebrities who once willingly basked in his reflected glory. Charities that he has supported have cast him aside, and ex-wives and former girlfriends have vengefully denounced him.

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“Rumble “stands for very different values,” and “emphatically reject[s] the UK parliament’s demands.”

Intel-linked UK Official Pushing Censorship Of Russell Brand (GZ)

Allegations of sexual impropriety and abuse by comedian and podcaster Russell Brand by the British media prompted YouTube to demonetize the star’s popular channel on September 20. The Grayzone can now reveal that YouTube’s financial censorship of Brand is the result of an effort waged by a former British government minister who was responsible for London’s crackdown on dissent during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her husband has also participated in that campaign of state repression as deputy commander of 77th Brigade, the British Army’s psychological warfare division. YouTube justified its demonetization of Brand on the grounds that he violated its “creator responsibility policy.” This marks the first time a content creator has been financially punished by the company for reasons other than the videos published on the site.

A spokesperson has claimed, “if a creator’s off-platform behaviour harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action.” The allegations against Brand date from betwee 2006 and ’13, and have yet to be proven in court. There is no indication the charges are being investigated by law enforcement in Britain or the US, where the offenses allegedly occurred. Brand has vehemently denied accusations of abuse and rape. Brand’s videos analyzing political developments and topics such as the Covid-19 pandemic, corporate media propaganda and the Ukraine proxy war have earned him an audience of millions, making him one of the world’s most influential alternative media personalities. For this, he appears to have been marked as a threat to the narratives spun out by Washington and London.

New developments suggest YouTube’s censorship of Brand was driven by direct British government decree. On September 19, the social media companies TikTok and Rumble received a pair of almost identical letters dispatched from Caroline Dinenage, the head of the UK parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Dinenage informed the companies she was “concerned that [Brand] may be able to profit from his content” published on both platforms. She then suggested they impose financial penalties: “We would be grateful if you could confirm whether Mr Brand is able to monetise his […] posts, including his videos relating to the serious accusations against him, and what the platform is doing to ensure that creators are not able to use the platform to undermine the welfare of victims of inappropriate and potentially illegal behaviour.”

The Committee’s letter to Rumble contained a direct demand for demonetization: “we would like to know whether Rumble intends to join YouTube in suspending Mr Brand’s ability to earn money on the platform.” In a withering response to Dinenage’s letter, Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski asserted that while noting his company “obviously deplores sexual assault, rape, and all serious crimes, and believes that both alleged victims and the accused are entitled to a full and serious investigation.” Pavlovski went on to slam YouTube’s demonetization of Brand, declaring that Rumble “stands for very different values,” and “emphatically reject[s] the UK parliament’s demands.”

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“Everything she did during the COVID era flies in the face of values that the West has held for almost a thousand years since the Magna Carta.”

The Valorization of the Tyrants (Jeffrey Tucker)

This is surely one of the strangest twists in official narratives in perhaps hundreds of years. The bad guys have been christened as the good guys, and the good guys have been purged, deplatformed, canceled, and demonized. It’s a turn of events none of us could have imagined back in 2020. It cries out for an explanation. I truly fear knowing the answer as to why. Just consider the fate of former New Zealand Prime Jacinda Ardern. She locked down her country, trampling all rights of the people under the guise of controlling the spread of a virus. You could not go to church. You could not be unmasked. You could not leave the country and return. No one could travel there without official permission. As bad as the United States and Europe were during this period, New Zealand was worse, and it was backed up by speech controls.

Anyone protesting the policies was risking everything. And when the vaccine came along, Ardern outright said it: the people who get it will have rights but those who do not will not. It was a new biomedical caste system. Eventually, the country did open. Now speakers decrying the whole period are attracting audiences in the thousands, and Ardern is widely unpopular. Her successor who continues to defend all this despotism is under a cloud and also deeply unpopular. The tables have completely turned. Of course the virus came anyway, as it must, so the junta that did this has turned their attention to climate change, the defense of censorship, and the escalation of the Russia/Ukraine war. Five years ago, anyone would have supposed that a leader that acted this way would live in shame. I certainly assumed so.

My supposition is that Ardern had made horrific misjudgments and would be widely decried as a confused tyrant. She would live out her days in disrepute, surely. The opposite has happened. She is now the subject of celebratory biographies. She is lauded by mainstream media. She addressed the United Nations last year in a speech that was an open call for a new global censorship regime. True, the fact-checkers disagree with this interpretation. Instead she was merely calling out “the weaponization of free speech societies and platforms by misinformation agents.” Oh. In any case, in my imagination, I could not have dreamed up a specimen of error and tyranny more deserving of devaluing than Jacinda Ardern. Everything she did during the COVID era flies in the face of values that the West has held for almost a thousand years since the Magna Carta.

But I was wrong. Completely. I underestimated just how broken the world is. Instead of being disgraced, she is enjoying not one but two fellowships at Harvard University where she enjoys massive prestige and adoration by faculty, staff, and students. To me, this seems like the Twilight Zone—an ending to the story that I could not have imagined. Are we supposed to be against segregation, house arrest, forced medical treatments, locking people in nations, and censorship? I thought at least we would agree on that much. Apparently not. Apparently, it is the opposite. Everything that I believed was deprecated is exalted and all the public virtues I believed we extolled are now denounced.

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F-35
https://twitter.com/i/status/1704551135065805100

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

May 142023
 


Claude Monet Misty Morning on the Seine 1897

 

They Are Propagandizing For Nazis But Won’t Tell You That (MoA)
Zelensky Plotted Attacks Inside Russia – WaPo (RT)
Zelensky Rejects Pope’s Mediation Offer (RT)
Ukrainian Troops Active Only In Certain Sectors Of Frontline (TASS)
Majority Of Germans Oppose NATO Membership For Ukraine – Poll (RT)
We Need an Economic Bill of Rights (Jacobin)
Avenatti Warns Unseen Evidence May Benefit Trump In Bragg Case (JTN)
The Blackout On Biden Corruption Is Truly ‘Pulitzer-level Stuff’ (Turley)
Republicans Demand Biden Take Cognitive Test Or Drop Out (RT)
US Officials Admit Losing ‘Operational Control’ Of Border (JTN)
Judge Orders FDA to Speed Up Release of COVID-19 Vaccine Trial Data (ET)
Official Report: Ventilators Killed Nearly All Covid Patients (TPV)
The Betrayers of Julian Assange (John Pilger)

 

 


Look magazine. USA, March 14, 1939

 

 

RFK Brand Military project

 

 

 

 

Khmelnitsky

 

 

 

 

Putin debt

 

 


“China’s trade with #BRI countries is now larger than China’s *combined* trade with US, EU and Japan. People in America and Europe are stuck in the past and cannot see the trend. Rise of Asia and the Global South will define this century.”

 

 

 

 

“..even the FBI said is notorious for its “association with neo-Nazi ideology”

They Are Propagandizing For Nazis But Won’t Tell You That (MoA)

At the start of the recent war in Ukraine ‘western’ media changed their mind about Ukrainian Nazi groups. What they had condemned over years in their headlines and pieces was first whitewashed and when was not enough simply eliminated from the context. As example I had pointed to the changing headlines and descriptions of the fascist Azov militia in the pages of the New York Times. Mar 15 2019: “On his flak jacket was a symbol commonly used by the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary organization.” Feb 11 2020: “Defenders of the Ukrainian Azov Battalion, which the F.B.I. calls “a paramilitary unit” notorious for its “association with neo-Nazi ideology,” accuse us of being part of a Kremlin campaign to “demonize” the group.”


Mar 17 2022: “Facebook last week said it was making an exception to its anti-extremism policies to allow praise for Ukraine’s far-right Azov Battalion military unit, “strictly in the context of defending Ukraine, or in their role as part of the Ukraine National Guard.“ Apr 29 2022: “These scenes are from videos shared online in recent days by the Azov regiment, a unit in the Ukrainian military, which says they were taken in the mazelike bunkers beneath the sprawling Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine.” As I had written previously: What was once “a Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary organization” which even the FBI said is notorious for its “association with neo-Nazi ideology” was first relabeled as merely “far right” before it became a normal “unit in the Ukrainian military”.

In yesterday’s report about some dubious Ukrainian military success near Bakhmut the Times has taken its next step which is to avoid mentioning Azov at all: May 12 2023: “Videos released on Friday by Ukraine’s 3rd Separate Assault Brigade showed soldiers piling out of armored personnel carriers and assaulting a Russian trench. “Forward, forward!” a soldier yelled in the video, filmed on a helmet camera. The soldiers dived for cover as Russian fighters threw a hand grenade, then ran forward and threw their own grenade into a Russian bunker. The video could not be independently verified.” When one throws “Ukraine’s 3rd Separate Assault Brigade” into a web search engine one is likely to be pointed to Wikipedia which then reveals the complete name of that military unit:


The 3rd Separate Assault Brigade Azov is a brigade of the Ukrainian Ground Forces formed in 2022. … History: “The brigade, which was established in November 2022, emerged from the Azov Special Operations Forces (SSO) and initially comprised veterans of the Azov Regiment. Since than its a fully operational combat unit within the Ukrainian Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” During the war Azov has grown through active recruiting from “the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary organization” into the Azov Regiment and, after losing in Mariupol, into a brigade size unit.

Zel Bandera

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The UK just gave him the missiles to do it.

Zelensky Plotted Attacks Inside Russia – WaPo (RT)

Despite public assurance that he would limit military action to his own territory, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky formed plans to conduct attacks on Russian soil and suggested that Kiev “destroy” the industry of Hungary, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing leaked Pentagon documents. Citing US intelligence reports recently published on a gaming server, the Post described how Zelensky suggested at a meeting in January that his troops “conduct strikes in Russia,” while moving across the border to “occupy unspecified Russian border cities” in order to “give Kiev leverage in talks with Moscow.” Less than two months later, the Ukraine-based Russian Volunteer Corps launched a cross-border raid that left two civilians dead in Russia’s Bryansk Region. A member of the group told Western media that Kiev had approved the attack, and further assaults have taken place since.

With Ukraine’s Western backers reluctant until recently to provide him with long-range missiles for fear he would use them against targets within Russia, Zelensky suggested to his top military commander, General Valery Zaluzhny, that he use drones to “attack unspecified deployment locations in Rostov” in February, the Post reported. Prior to and after the alleged meeting, Ukrainian forces used drones to attack infrastructure in Rostov Region, which borders the formerly Ukrainian territory of Lugansk. In a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svridenko in February, Zelensky reportedly suggested that Ukraine “blow up” the Druzhba oil pipeline, which transports Russian oil to Hungary. According to the US report cited by the Post, Zelensky suggested that “Ukraine should just blow up the pipeline and destroy…Hungarian [Prime Minister] Viktor Orban’s industry, which is based heavily on Russian oil.”

American spies listening to his meeting with Svridenko concluded that Zelensky was issuing “hyperbolic, meaningless threats.” Nevertheless, the Druzhba pipeline has come under attack on several occasions since the meeting, most recently when it was hit by drone-dropped explosives on Wednesday. The Post’s article corroborates a CNN report last month claiming that US spies have been intercepting Zelensky’s communications. Contacted by the newspaper, Zelensky dismissed the incidents described in the report as “fantasies,” and claimed that “no one in our country has given orders for offensives or strikes on Russian territory.” This is plainly not the case. Apart from the above mentioned Bryansk raids and Rostov drone strikes, the Russian regions of Belgorod and Kursk have been shelled by Kiev’s forces in recent months, Moscow has blamed Ukrainian terrorists for bombing the Crimean Bridge and attempting to assassinate President Vladimir Putin, and one of Ukraine’s top intelligence chiefs has taken credit for the assassination of several Russian public figures. Such acts of terrorism, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement earlier this month, will “not be left unanswered.”

Larry

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He doesn’t want peace.

Zelensky Rejects Pope’s Mediation Offer (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has rejected Pope Francis’ offer to help negotiate an end to the conflict in his country. Zelensky previously banned all contact between his government and Moscow, and has since rejected all offers of foreign mediation. “With all due respect to His Holiness, we don’t need mediators, we need a just peace,” Zelensky told Italian talk show host Bruno Vespa on Saturday, after a meeting with the pontiff in the Vatican. “It was an honor for me to meet His Holiness, but he knows my position: the war is in Ukraine and the [peace] plan must be Ukrainian,” Zelensky continued. “You can’t mediate with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”

While the Vatican has called on Russia to unilaterally cease its military operation in Ukraine, Pope Francis has offered on multiple occasions to help Kiev and Moscow reach a “consensual” end to the conflict, while praising mediation efforts by Türkiye last year. The Turkish-brokered talks collapsed last April when the Ukrainian delegation pulled out after a surprise visit to Kiev by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who urged Zelensky to keep fighting. Officials in Moscow and Ankara have both stated that the US and its allies didn’t want Ukraine to sign any peace deal with Russia. Zelensky has since issued a decree banning any contact between his officials and the Kremlin, while Kiev, Washington, and Brussels have all rejected a broad peace plan published by China earlier this year.

With the US and EU pledging to supply him with weapons for “as long as it takes,” Zelensky insists that the only peace plan Ukraine will abide by is its own – a ten-point document demanding that Russia pay reparations, surrender its officials to face war crimes tribunals, and forfeit all of its territory claimed by Kiev, including Crimea. Russia understands that any peace talks will not be held “with Zelensky, who is a puppet in the hands of the West, but directly with his masters,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier this month.

Podolyak

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“The situation is completely under control in our sector..”

Ukrainian Troops Active Only In Certain Sectors Of Frontline (TASS)

Commander of the Akhmat commando unit and Deputy Commander of the 2nd Army Corps Apty Alaudinov said on Saturday that Ukrainian troops increased their activity only in some sectors of the line of engagement. Earlier, Yan Gagin, an advisor to Acting DPR Head Denis Pushilin, reported that Ukrainian units had become more active along the entire line of combat engagement. “The Ukrainian units became active not along the entire line of combat engagement, only in certain parts and still the situation has not significantly changed,” Alaudinov told TASS. “The situation is completely under control in our sector,” he added. Earlier, the Akhmat commander said that his unit was responsible for the zone from Soledar in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) to Kremennaya in the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR).

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Makes sense.

Majority Of Germans Oppose NATO Membership For Ukraine – Poll (RT)

More than half of Germans do not support the idea of Ukraine joining NATO, a YouGov poll commissioned by Germany’s dpa news agency has shown. As many as 54% of the survey respondents opposed such a prospect, the news agency reported on Friday. Only 27% of those polled said they would agree to offer Kiev the prospect of membership in the US-led military bloc. In April, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky claimed that most Europeans would not understand if Kiev does not get a “well-deserved invitation” to join NATO. The Ukrainian leader is now expected to take part in a NATO summit in Lithuania in July, according to dpa. Germans, meanwhile, mostly want Kiev to start negotiations with Moscow instead, the YouGov poll showed.

According to the survey, 55% of respondents called for negotiations between Russian and Ukraine on ending the ongoing conflict. Only 28% opposed such an initiative. The poll comes as Berlin has just announced another massive weapons package for Ukraine. Worth more than €2.7 billion ($2.95 billion), the new arms delivery is expected to include four German-made ground-based IRIS-T air-defense systems – something the German Armed Forces themselves do not yet possess – as well as 30 Leopard 1 battle tanks, 20 infantry fighting vehicles, 100 armored personnel carriers, 18 wheeled self-propelled artillery systems and 200 reconnaissance drones.

“With this valuable contribution of urgently needed military equipment, we are showing once again that Germany is serious about its support,” Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Saturday. He did not elaborate on when the arms are expected to be delivered to Ukraine, though. The deputy head of the Conservative Union (CDU/CSU) parliamentary faction, Johann Wadephul, has called on Berlin to allow Ukrainians to use the German-made weapons against targets inside Russia. “Neither under international law nor politically is there any reason why Ukraine shouldn’t be allowed to attack targets in Russia,” he told Tagesspiegel daily. Meanwhile, the German public has been wary of the massive military support provided to Kiev throughout the conflict. In February, almost two thirds of Germans polled opposed providing Kiev with fighter jets, a survey showed.

In December 2022, a YouGov poll indicated that 45% were against sending German Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine. A number of German celebrities and public figures also sent two open letters addressed to Chancellor Olaf Scholz in which they asked Berlin to stop sending arms to Ukraine and to “do everything” instead to reach a ceasefire “as soon as possible” and find a “compromise that both sides can accept.” Russia previously repeatedly warned that “pumping” Ukraine with weapons would only prolong the human suffering and create risks of further escalation of the hostilities up to a direct confrontation between Moscow and NATO. It also said it was ready for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, as long as its goals are achieved and its interests are taken into account.

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We do?

We Need an Economic Bill of Rights (Jacobin)

Although the United States is richer and more productive than it ever has been, over forty million Americans live in poverty — roughly the same number as in 1933, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt came to office during the height of the Great Depression, and 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson announced his “war on poverty.” Despite these troubling numbers, many economists assert the American Dream is alive and well, and that inequality is simply the price we as a nation must pay for economic growth. For years, both Republicans and Democrats accepted this fiction, though lately some Democrats have begun to return to fighting for more democratic control over the economy to broaden prosperity to the working class. Yet the party has no plan to address economic insecurity and poverty and better provide Americans with genuine freedom in their pursuit of happiness.

An economic bill of rights — one that expands on the freedoms enumerated in the Constitution by guaranteeing Americans basic economic security — should be the first step. It’s one that an increasing number of Americans support. This spring, polling by Data for Progress found that 69 percent of likely voters are in favor of legislation guaranteeing economic security, while just 24 percent are opposed. Young voters, who are less likely to achieve the upward mobility America promises, are even more likely to support the idea, with four out of five voters under forty-five in favor of passing universal economic security. Among voters edging closer to economic peril, those making under $50,000, nearly three out of four want economic rights enshrined in law. This support transcends party affiliation: majorities of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans all favor the passage of an economic bill of rights.

Economic rights are not a new idea. On January 11, 1944, as the Allies were turning the tide against fascism, President Roosevelt sat before an array of microphones to deliver his eleventh State of the Union address, which included his demand that Congress immediately take up an economic bill of rights to provide all Americans the right to a job at a living wage; the right to medical care; the right to a home; the right to an education; the right to economic protection from old age, sickness, and accident; and more. Roosevelt had sold Americans on the war as a fight for four freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from fear, and freedom from want. It was time to focus on the last of these: to guarantee “cradle-to-grave economic security.”

Although Roosevelt’s proposal was sui generis, he was drawing on an all-American history that reached back to its founding. Thomas Paine, the firebrand whose pamphlets spurred a fledgling nation to revolution, had called in Common Sense for the abolition of inheritance rights and the embrace of economic equality as essential in the fight for democracy. Alexander Hamilton argued that a strong centralized state, one that would shape markets and direct the economy to meet human needs, was the nation’s best “guarantor of liberty.” And Abraham Lincoln, through both the Homestead Act and Special Field Order No. 15, had sought to redistribute land to ensure universal economic security for white and black Americans alike (though without consideration for Native Americans, who were forcibly dispossessed through violent measures to provide parcels for white homesteaders).

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This Bird Is Singing! | Avenatti Tweets Warning From Prison

Avenatti Warns Unseen Evidence May Benefit Trump In Bragg Case (JTN)

Tweeting from prison, former Stormy Daniels lawyer Michael Avenatti has warned that there is considerable evidence in the Trump hush money payment scandal that could benefit the former president if the case reaches the trial stage. Avenatti rose to fame in 2018 while representing Daniels in legal efforts to invalidate her non-disclosure agreement related to the 2016 payment. During that time, he also mulled a presidential campaign and regularly appeared on cable networks. The former Daniels lawyer lost a defamation suit he brought against Trump on Daniels’ behalf. He was arrested in 2018 and has since been convicted of extortion, wire fraud, and other crimes. He has continued to tweet sporadically while serving his sentence.

“There are many critical facts and pieces of evidence (texts, emails, etc.) relating to the hush money scandal that have yet to see the light of day,” he said last week of Bragg’s investigation. “And they will unfortunately be very damaging to the prosecution if Trump stands trial. At this point, you simply can’t build a case on the testimony of Cohen & Daniels.” The former Daniels lawyer did not elaborate as to the nature of that evidence. Avenatti posted the warning prior to Trump’s Saturday announcement that he expected to be arrested this week, a development that has not yet occurred. He also said that Trump’s current attorney, Joe Tacopina, is a much more formidable legal advisor to Trump than any of the semi-celebrity lawyers with whom he has been known to associate.

“Atty Joe Tacopina is no Rudy Giuliani/Sydney Powell. The guy knows his way around a criminal courtroom. He will destroy Michael ‘Dumb as a Box of Rocks’ Cohen on the stand, esp. seeing as Cohen publicly lied for 15 mos. and now won’t stop talking on TV,” he asserted. Tacopina has previously addressed many of the potential arguments against his client. In an MSNBC interview last week, he contended that Trump’s payment to Cohen was a legitimate legal fee to settle a bill, noting that Cohen paid Daniels directly beforehand. “The payments were made to a lawyer, not to Stormy Daniels. The payments were made to Donald Trump’s lawyer, which would be considered legal fees,” he said.

The Trump attorney has also attempted to rebut the notion that such a payment would have been a campaign finance violation, claiming Trump would have made the payment regardless of whether or not he was seeking the presidency. “If the spending were the fulfillment of a commitment or the expenditure would exist irrespective of a campaign, it’s not a campaign law violation,” he added. “End of story. This would exist irrespective of the campaign.”

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“…The response was virtually immediate. Despite showing nine Biden family members allegedly receiving millions through a labyrinth of LLCs and accounts, The New Republic quickly ran a story headlined “Republicans Finally Admit They Have No Incriminating Evidence on Joe Biden.”…

The Blackout On Biden Corruption Is Truly ‘Pulitzer-level Stuff’ (Turley)

The brilliance of the Biden team was that it invested the media in this scandal at the outset by burying the laptop story as “Russian disinformation” before the election. That was, of course, false, but it took two years for most major media outlets to admit that the laptop was authentic. But the media then ignored what was on that “authentic laptop.” Hundreds of emails detailed potentially criminal conduct and raw influence peddling in foreign countries. When media outlets such as the New York Post confirmed the emails, the media then insisted that there was no corroboration of the influence peddling payments and no clear proof of criminal conduct. It entirely ignored the obvious corruption itself. Now that the House has released corroboration in actual money transfers linking many in the Biden family, the media is insisting that this is no scandal because there is not directly proof of payments to Joe Biden.

Putting aside that this is only the fourth month of an investigation, the media’s demand of a direct payment to President Biden is laughably absurd. The payments were going to his family, but he was the object of the influence peddling. The House has shown millions of dollars going to at least nine Bidens like dividends from a family business. As a long-time critic of influence peddling among both Republicans and Democrats, I have never seen the equal of the Bidens. The whole purpose of influence peddling is to use family members as shields for corrupt officials. Instead of making a direct payment to a politician, which could be seen as a bribe, you can give millions to his or her spouse or children. Moreover, these emails include references to Joe Biden getting a 10 percent cut of one Chinese deal. It also shows Biden associates warning not to use Joe Biden’s name but to employ code names like “the Big Guy.”

At the same time, the president and the first lady are referenced as benefiting from offices and receiving payments from Hunter. Indeed, Hunter complains that his father is taking half of everything that he is raking in. None of that matters. The New York Times ran a piece headlined, “House Republican Report Finds No Evidence of Wrongdoing by President Biden.” That is putting aside evidence against all the family members around Joe Biden. It also ignored that other evidence clearly shows Biden lied about this family not receiving Chinese funds or that he never had any knowledge of his son’s business dealings. The fact is that the Times may indeed be trying for another Pulitzer Prize. The newspaper previously won a Pulitzer for the now debunked Russian collusion story. It was later revealed that this story was based on a dossier funded by the Clinton campaign and placed in the media by Clinton officials. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward warned the co-winner The Washington Post that the story was unreliable but was ignored. The Pulitzer Committee refused to withdraw the award.

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Someone will fake it for him.

Republicans Demand Biden Take Cognitive Test Or Drop Out (RT)

US President Joe Biden must pass a cognitive exam or abandon the 2024 presidential race, 61 Republican members of the House of Representatives demanded on Thursday in an open letter to the commander-in-chief. “The United States’ national security relies on a cognitively sound Commander in Chief, and it is evident that you do not fit that bill,” the letter stated, citing the concerns of the American public – 57% of voters don’t think Biden is “mentally fit” to lead the country, according to one recent poll – and the president’s own refusal to address those concerns in the first three years of his term. Led by Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, a former White House doctor, the letter’s signatories urged Biden to “submit to a clinically validated cognitive screening assessment and make those results available to the public” or retire and “allow a mentally fit leader to emerge.”

The physical exams he underwent in 2021 and earlier this year, which included a testimonial from White House doctor Kevin O’Connor that Biden is a “healthy, vigorous 80-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency,” do not count, they argued, as these did not include a cognitive assessment – not a public one, anyway. “Over the past two years, public appearances where you shuffle your feet, trip when you walk, slur your words, forget names, lose your train of thought and appear momentarily confused have become more of a common occurrence […] so common and noticeable that if you search ‘Biden gaffes’ online, over 14,000,000 results appear,” the congressmen pointed out.

Questions about the president’s mental fitness have dogged him since the 2020 primary season, when the candidate Biden would occasionally forget the name of the city or state he was appearing in, the words to the Declaration of Independence, or even the president under whom he served as vice president for eight years. At least three other letters urging the president to submit to a cognitive assessment have gone unanswered since he took office in 2021. Already the oldest president in US history, Biden announced his reelection bid last month. If he wins, he would be 86 at the end of his second term. His leading Republican challenger, former president Donald Trump, is no spring chicken himself at 76, but has spearheaded the call for the incumbent to receive a cognitive evaluation, insisting there is something “wrong” with his opponent.

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“..we’re only going to have 10% of our border patrol agents actively patrolling the border, and the cartels will own every inch of the border.”

US Officials Admit Losing ‘Operational Control’ Of Border (JTN)

With just two words, the top uniformed officer in the Customs and Border Protection agency sent shockwaves across official Washington two months ago when asked whether his agency has operational control of the southern U.S. border. “No, sir,” Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz told Congress in a shocking admission that exposed just how badly border security has deteriorated under President Joe Biden. At the time, illegal crossings at the border in March were averaging 5,000 a day, far more than the historical average of 2,000 daily at the end of the Trump administration. By last week, those crossing had exploded to a record 10,000 a day as the pandemic-related Title 42 order allowing migrants to be turned away expired. Border officials says illegal crossings will soon shoot up to 11,000 to 16,000 daily.

With each increase under Biden, more border patrol agents are being torn from their security roles and moved to process migrants and release them into the country. When the total hits 16,000 daily, only 10% of available border agents will be on patrol and the drug cartels will have full control, says Brandon Judd, a border patrol agent and the president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing border agent. Judd says the crisis point will emerge in a few weeks when media attention to the end of Title 42 subsides and the cartels take full advantage. “As the talk starts to die down, as you start to see the media go away from the border, that’s when we’re going to see the numbers start to shoot right back up,” Judd told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Friday. “So we can expect post-Title 42, we can expect that our numbers are going to go up anywhere between 13,000 to 16,000 apprehensions per day.”


Judd provided unprecedented detail on how border secutity patrols decrease as illegal migrants rise. “When we’re apprehending 3,000 people, we’re pulling resources out of the field,” he explained. “We don’t have as many Border Patrol agents patrolling the border. When we’re apprehending 5,000 people a day – now we only have 50% of our border patrol agents patrolling the border. When we hit 10,000 apprehensions a day, that means we’re only deploying 30% of our border patrol agents to patrol the border. “And when that happens, the cartels are able to gain ground on the vast majority of our border, as they start controlling the vast majority of our border. Once those numbers go up to 13,000 to 16,000, we’re only going to have 10% of our border patrol agents actively patrolling the border, and the cartels will own every inch of the border.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1657342559084228610

Read more …

“Democracy dies behind closed doors..”

Judge Orders FDA to Speed Up Release of COVID-19 Vaccine Trial Data (ET)

A federal judge in Texas this week ordered the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to make public data it relied on to license COVID-19 vaccines—Moderna’s for adults and Pfizer’s for children—at an accelerated rate, requiring all documents to be made public by mid-2025 rather than, as the FDA wanted, over the course of around 23.5 years. In a decision hailed as a win for transparency by the lawyer representing the plaintiffs (the parents of a child injured by a COVID-19 vaccine) in a lawsuit (pdf) against the FDA, the Texas judge ordered the FDA to produce the data about ten times faster than the agency wanted. “Democracy dies behind closed doors,” is how U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman opened his order, issued on May 9, which requires the FDA to produce the data on Moderna’s and Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines at an average rate of at least 180,000 pages per month.

The FDA had argued it would be “impractical” to release the estimated 4.8 million pages at more than between 1,000 and 16,000 pages per month, which would have taken at least 23.5 years. Aaron Siri of Siri & Glimstad, who represents the plaintiffs in the legal action against the FDA, called the decision “another blow for transparency and accountability” that builds on an earlier court order targeting Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine data for those aged 16 and older. The January 2022 order (pdf), also issued by Pittman, forced the FDA to produce all its data on Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for those aged 16 and older at a rate of 55,000 pages per month, or much faster than the 75 years the agency had sought. “That production should be completed in a few more months,” Siri said in a statement, referring to the earlier Pfizer data for those aged 16 and up. The latest order requires the FDA to produce all of its data on Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds (and Moderna’s product for adults) by June 31, 2025.

While the judge noted in his order that the court recognizes the FDA’s limited resources dedicated to freedom of information requests (FOIA), he argued that “the number of resources an agency dedicates to such requests does not dictate the bounds of an individual’s FOIA rights.” “Instead, the Court must ensure that the fullest possible disclosure of the information sought is timely provided—as ‘stale information is of little value,’” Pittman wrote. In order to ensure the FDA can meet the accelerated deadline—so around ten times faster than the agency wanted—the judge ordered the parties to the lawsuit to confer and submit a joint production schedule for the data by May 23, 2023.

Read more …

“..mortality related to the virus itself is relatively low, but other things that happen during the ICU stay, like secondary bacterial pneumonia, offset that.”

Official Report: Ventilators Killed Nearly All Covid Patients (TPV)

Nearly all COVID-19 patients who died in hospital during the early phase of the pandemic were killed as a direct result of being put on a ventilator, a disturbing new report has concluded. A new analysis suggests that most patients who were forced to be hooked up to a ventilator due to a COVID-19 infection also developed secondary bacterial pneumonia. This pneumonia was responsible for a higher mortality rate than the COVID-19 infection. So while COVID-19 may have put these patients in the hospital, it was actually a secondary infection brought on by the use of a mechanical ventilator that caused their deaths. “Our study highlights the importance of preventing, looking for, and aggressively treating secondary bacterial pneumonia in critically ill patients with severe pneumonia, including those with COVID-19,” says Benjamin Singer, a pulmonologist at Northwestern University in Illinois.

Sciencealert.com reports: The team looked at records for 585 people admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, also in Illinois. They all had severe pneumonia and/or respiratory failure, and 190 had COVID-19. Using a machine learning approach to crunch through the data, the researchers grouped patients based on their condition and the amount of time they spent in intensive care. The findings refute the idea that a cytokine storm following COVID-19 – an overwhelming inflammation response causing organ failure – was responsible for a significant number of deaths. There was no evidence of multi-organ failure in the patients studied.

Instead, COVID-19 patients were more likely to develop ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) and for longer periods. Cases where VAP didn’t respond to treatment were significant in terms of the overall mortality rates in the study. “Those who were cured of their secondary pneumonia were likely to live, while those whose pneumonia did not resolve were more likely to die,” says Singer. “Our data suggested that the mortality related to the virus itself is relatively low, but other things that happen during the ICU stay, like secondary bacterial pneumonia, offset that.” These results suggest that ICU outcomes could be improved if there were better strategies to diagnose and treat VAP episodes – something that the researchers say needs to be addressed in the future.

It’s worth bearing in mind that if a patient’s requirement for a ventilator to treat COVID-19 complications leads to VAP, this doesn’t imply that a COVID-19 infection is less dangerous, nor does it decrease the number of COVID-19 fatalities. As the authors write in their paper, “The relatively long length of stay among patients with COVID-19 is primarily due to prolonged respiratory failure, placing them at higher risk of VAP.”

Read more …

“Do not forget Assange, or you will lose him.”
– John Pilger

The Betrayers of Julian Assange (John Pilger)

I have known Julian Assange since I first interviewed him in London in 2010. I immediately liked his dry, dark sense of humour, often dispensed with an infectious giggle. He is a proud outsider: sharp and thoughtful. We have become friends and I have sat in many courtrooms listening to the tribunes of the state try to silence him and his moral revolution in journalism. My own high point was when a judge in the Royal Courts of Justice leaned across his bench and growled at me: “You are just a peripatetic Australian like Assange.” My name was on a list of volunteers to stand bail for Julian, and this judge spotted me as the one who had reported his role in the notorious case of the expelled Chagos Islanders. Unintentionally, he delivered me a compliment.


I saw Julian in Belmarsh prison not long ago. We talked about books and the oppressive idiocy of the prison: the happy-clappy slogans on the walls, the petty punishments; they still won’t let him use the gym. He must exercise alone in a cage-like area where there is sign that warns about keeping off the grass. But there is no grass. We laughed; for a brief moment, some things didn’t seem too bad. The laughter is a shield, of course. When the prison guards began to jangle their keys, as they like to do, indicating our time was up, he fell quiet. As I left the room, he held his fist high and clenched as he always does. He is the embodiment of courage. Those who are the antithesis of Julian: in whom courage is unheard of, along with principle and honour, stand between him and freedom.

Assange and Khan

I am not referring to the Mafia regime in Washington whose pursuit of a good man is meant as a warning to us all, but rather to those who still claim to run a just democracy in Australia. Anthony Albanese was mouthing his favourite platitude, “enough is enough” long before he was elected prime minister of Australia last year. He gave many of us precious hope, including Julian’s family. As prime minister he added weasel words about “not sympathizing” with what Julian had done. Apparently we had to understand his need to cover his appropriated posteria in case Washington called him to order.


We knew it would take exceptional political if not moral courage for Albanese to stand up in the Australian Parliament — the same Parliament that will disport itself before Joe Biden in May — and say: “As prime minister, it is my government’s responsibility to bring home an Australian citizen who is clearly the victim of a great, vindictive injustice: a man who has been persecuted for the kind of journalism that is a true public service, a man who has not lied, or deceived — like so many of his counterfeit in the media, but has told people the truth about how the world is run.”

Imran Khan

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meteora

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1657370340274601985

 

 

 

 

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Feb 052020
 


Max Ernst Inspired hill 1950

 

Hi, it’s me again, with more virus stories. I know you may think it’s enough now, but I do want to do this one. Actually, I haven’t written all that much about it, just two essays, 2019-nCoV and The Party and the Virus, but the topic has become a staple of my daily Debt Rattle news aggregators lately. So much that I find I need to remind myself all the time that it’s been a news item for only two weeks, going back to January 20 or so.

Through those two weeks, I’ve seen a number of studies, simulations, models, of where the virus can be expected to go going forward. And I want to take a look at some of them. I said early on that I didn’t like people talking about the economy as soon as the first people died, but 2 weeks later, given the growth of the epidemic, that doesn’t appear avoidable anymore.

People are starting to wonder what’s going to happen to society at large, and in “the markets” -or what’s left of them after central bank manipulation- if and when the virus remains an issue for an X amount of time. I think I can explain some of the parameters, though I want to make clear predicting what viruses do is, even for virologists, crystal ball material, and I ain’t got one of those.

 

China injected $242.74 billion into the markets via reverse repos on Monday and Tuesday, and stocks seem to have made up for their $445 billion losses on Monday. But what exactly is that optimism based on? Is it that “investors” think the PBOC will have their backs no matter what? Is it the reports of companies like Gilead testing possible solutions, vaccines?

I’m not an expert, but I do know it takes a sophisticated drug company about a year to develop a drug/vaccine for a novel disease, as “WuhanCorona” is. From what I can gather, the Gilead drug (co-)tested by the Chinese is basically an anti-viral developed with Ebola in mind, which may or may not work. Ebola is somewhere related to “WuhanCorona”, in a third cousin twice removed kind of way, but that’s it. HIV drugs could also perhaps work to some extent, but that’s a big question.

So what the optimism in the “markets” is based on, you tell me. Are people so afraid of what might be coming that their minds switch off, are they afraid to get informed, or do they genuinely think it’ll all soon be over? Me, I hope it’ll turn out fine, but I wouldn’t put any money on it. And that’s based on what I’ve been reading.

 

When reporting on the Wuhan situation started for real in the west, let’s say January 20 (that’s just 16 days ago!), there were 291 registered infection cases. There are 27,648 now, and 564 people have died. Those are “official” Chinese numbers, and there are plenty doubts about their accuracy (see today’s stories about Tencent posting 10x higher numbers), but let’s roll with the official ones for the moment. I’m going to hop through time a little, but please bear with me, there is a logic.

First, there’s this from January 28 in the SCMP (South China Morning Post), a major Hong Kong news outlet owned by -very Chinese- Alibaba. Zhong Nanshan is a scientist working for the government. My first reaction when I saw this was: it looks like he’s doing damage control for the CCP.

 

Chinese Experts Say Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak Will Not Last

One of China’s top experts said the Wuhan coronavirus infection rate could peak in early February. “I estimate that it will reach its peak in around the next week or 10 days, after that there will be no more major increases,” said Zhong Nanshan, the respiratory disease scientist who played the pivotal role in China’s fight against the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) coronavirus epidemic in 2002-03.


[..] Gao Fu, the director of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention [said] he was “optimistic” that the outbreak’s “turning point” could arrive by February 8 if current disease control protocol is maintained.

3 days earlier, January 25 (that’s just 11 days ago!), the SCMP ran this piece on the same Zhong Nanshan, which reinforces my image of him a bit more. One might argue that Beijing has become more transparent recently, but the facts remain that for instance the WuhanCorona virus can be traced back to early December if not earlier, and that after the first death on December 9 no testing at all was done in Wuhan for a week.

Just to name a few things. So for a scientist to claim that “Beijing has no secrets to hide” and “has not held back information in reporting the outbreak in Wuhan” is at the very least over the top.

 

China Has Been Transparent About Wuhan Outbreak, Virus Expert Zhong Nanshan Says

Chinese officials have been transparent in handling the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak and the participation of a Hong Kong professor through the process indicates that Beijing has no secrets to hide, said one of the country’s leading experts on communicable diseases. Dr Zhong Nanshan, whose team is advising the leadership on how to handle the crisis, told a news conference in Guangzhou on Tuesday that China had not held back information in reporting the outbreak in Wuhan, which has sickened more than 300 people across the country since early December.

But also on January 25, there was this Zero Hedge piece about British scientist Jonathan Read, who had completely different ideas about the outbreak. Note: both predictions focus on Feb 4.

 

UK Researcher Predicts Over 250,000 Chinese Will Have Coronavirus In Ten Days

[..] in 10 days time, or by February 4, 2020, Read’s model predicts the number of infected people in Wuhan to be greater than 250 thousand (with an prediction interval, 164,602 to 351,396); [..] Read estimates that only 5.1% of infections in Wuhan are identified (as of Jan 24)..


[..] Read’s model alleges that Beijing was woefully late in its response and that recently imposed “travel restrictions from and to Wuhan city are unlikely to be effective in halting transmission across China; with a 99% effective reduction in travel, the size of the epidemic outside of Wuhan may only be reduced by 24.9% on 4 February.”

Very different. Remember his “travel restrictions from and to Wuhan city are unlikely to be effective in halting transmission across China”, it’ll come in handy later. Now, I’ve been posting a few math sequences, Fibonacci and otherwise, and those are way too negative, or at least would seem to be.

Problem with that is, as with many facets of the whole thing, we don’t know. There are simply too many scientists who state that real infection- and fatality numbers are much higher than what Beijing reports. They do that based on models, simulations etc. Not because they want The Party (CCP) to look bad, but because the models tell them.

An example: SCMP reported early Tuesday that the mortality rate for the city of Wuhan has reached 4.9%, while the mortality rate for Hubei province as a whole is 3.1%. They added that the mortality rate is predicted by doctors to drop, because extra medical attention is available etc. But we know that extra attention threatens to be overwhelmed by too many patients, shortages of beds, equipment, test kits, protective clothing etc. Nice try, but…

 

All this just to get to why I started writing this, which is a report published at The Lancet on January 31, from Hong Kong University (HKU). I have cited previously that it estimated 75,815 people had been infected in Wuhan on January 25, a far cry from the 1,300 official number at that point. And yes, I do want to use the discrepancy to cast at least some doubt on the official numbers.

But there’s something else that I would like to focus on. The same report also says that the epidemic -or episode, pandemic- would end “around April” 2020, so between, say, mid-March and mid-May, 6 weeks and 14 weeks from now, if certain conditions are met. And that’s just Wuhan. Add another 2 weeks “across cities in mainland China”.

The full name of the paper by Prof Joseph T. Wu, PhD, Kathy Leung, PhD and Prof Gabriel M. Leung, MD is “Nowcasting and forecasting the potential domestic and international spread of the 2019-nCoV outbreak originating in Wuhan, China: a modelling study”

It says: “We estimated that if there was no reduction in transmissibility, the Wuhan epidemic would peak around April, 2020, and local epidemics across cities in mainland China would lag by 1–2 weeks.”

[..] In this modelling study, we first inferred the basic reproductive number of 2019-nCoV and the outbreak size in Wuhan from Dec 1, 2019, to Jan 25, 2020, on the basis of the number of cases exported from Wuhan to cities outside mainland China. We then estimated the number of cases that had been exported from Wuhan to other cities in mainland China. Finally, we forecasted the spread of 2019-nCoV within and outside mainland China, accounting for the Greater Wuhan region quarantine implemented since Jan 23–24, 2020, and other public health interventions.

Figure 2 summarises our estimates of the basic reproductive number R0 and the outbreak size of 2019-nCoV in Wuhan as of Jan 25, 2020. In our baseline scenario, we estimated that R0 was 2·68 (95% CrI 2·47–2·86) with an epidemic doubling time of 6·4 days (95% CrI 5·8–7·1;).

We estimated that 75 815 individuals (95% CrI 37 304- 130 330) had been infected in Greater Wuhan as of Jan 25, 2020. We also estimated that Chongqing, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, had imported 461 (227–805), 113 (57–193), 98 (49–168), 111 (56–191), and 80 (40–139) infections from Wuhan, respectively.

Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen were the mainland Chinese cities that together accounted for 53% of all outbound international air travel from China and 69% of international air travel outside Asia, whereas Chongqing is a large metropolis that has a population of 32 million and very high ground traffic volumes with Wuhan. Substantial epidemic take-off in these cities would thus contribute to the spread of 2019-nCoV within and outside mainland China.

 


Figure 2 – Posterior distributions of estimated basic reproductive number and estimated outbreak size in greater Wuhan
NOTE: a zoonosis is an infectious disease that can spread between animals and humans. FOI = force of infection

 

Figure 4 shows the epidemic curves for Wuhan, Chongqing, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen with a R0 of 2·68, assuming 0%, 25%, or 50% decrease in transmissibility across all cities, together with 0% or 50% reduction in inter-city mobility after Wuhan was quarantined on Jan 23, 2020.

The epidemics would fade out if transmissibility was reduced by more than 1–1/R0=63%. Our estimates suggested that a 50% reduction in inter-city mobility would have a negligible effect on epidemic dynamics.

We estimated that if there was no reduction in transmissibility, the Wuhan epidemic would peak around April, 2020, and local epidemics across cities in mainland China would lag by 1–2 weeks.

If transmissibility was reduced by 25% in all cities domestically, then both the growth rate and magnitude of local epidemics would be substantially reduced; the epidemic peak would be delayed by about 1 month and its magnitude reduced by about 50%.

A 50% reduction in transmissibility would push the viral reproductive number to about 1·3, in which case the epidemic would grow slowly without peaking during the first half of 2020.

However, our simulation suggested that wholesale quarantine of population movement in Greater Wuhan would have had a negligible effect on the forward trajectories of the epidemic because multiple major Chinese cities had already been seeded with more than dozens of infections each.

The probability that the chain of transmission initiated by an infected case would fade out without causing exponential epidemic growth decreases sharply as R0 increases (eg, <0·2 when R0>2).

As such, given the substantial volume of case importation from Wuhan, local epidemics are probably already growing exponentially in multiple major Chinese cities.

Given that Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen together accounted for more than 50% of all outbound international air travel in mainland China, other countries would likely be at risk of experiencing 2019-nCoV epidemics during the first half of 2020.

 


Figure 4 – Epidemic forecasts for Wuhan and five other Chinese cities under different scenarios of reduction in transmissibility and inter-city mobility

 

Ergo: reducing mobility is ineffective because too much mobility had already happened prior to the lockdowns. That ship has sailed. Not that one shouldn’t try to limit mobility, but it can’t stop the disease from spreading. The HKU team doesn’t say much about how they would see transmissibility lowered, but that seems to come down to more, and intense, lockdowns.

There’s a cruise ship floating off Yokohama where everyone is ordered to stay in their cabin because of the virus. Think along those lines: ordering people to stay in their homes. Sort of like the Black Death plague in 14th century Europe.

Perhaps there are anti-virals that can lower transmissibility somewhat, but that is by no means sure. The discovery ofasymptomatic transmitters doesn’t help either. You can’t very well test everyone, you test those with symptoms.

Chinese health authorities have identified a number of patients who have become carriers and transmitters of the coronavirus despite showing no outward symptoms of the disease. Li Xingwang, chief infectious diseases expert at Beijing Ditan Hospital, said most of the “dormant” carriers were related to and had caught the virus from patients with symptoms.


“These [carriers] have the virus and can transmit it. The amount of virus correlates to the severity of the illness, which means these patients carry less of the virus and their ability to transmit disease is weaker,” Li said.

 

Lunar New Year holidays have been extended everywhere across China, except in a few rare places. Major cities are under full lockdown. Western companies are scrambling to find alternative suppliers. Just 2 weeks into the epidemic. What happens when the factories stay closed for 6 or 16 more weeks?

Where will Chinese and western stocks be then? Xi Jinping has declared the WuhanCorona virus the number 1 threat. How can he order the factories to re-open before mid-April at the earliest then, when the peak of the epidemic hasn’t even been reached? But at the same time, can he afford to order all production shut for 2-3-4 months?

Thing about such peaks is, you can only see them in the rearview mirror. But you can bet that in 2-3 weeks max, people will solemnly declare the peak is here. Because the existing but especially potential economic damage will be so great. Bur declaring a peak too soon, let alone the end of the epidemic, is too much of a risk.

The way things are going, pretty soon there won’t be any westerners left in China, other than those who wish to stay permanently. Many if not most factories will be closed. No Chinese will be allowed to visit the rest of the world, while Chinese products will not ship there.

The big lockdown has just begun. Because once you start it, you can’t go back until you can prove that everything is safe. And that will in all likelihood take a long time, months. When will absolutely everybody have faith that everything is safe? When nobody falls ill anymore, when nobody can infect other people anymore.

But that’s a long way away. April, May, or later? And that in an economic system built on just-in-time delivery? Chinese oil demand is allegedly down 20% already. How can oil prices not fall if that is true? Since those prices are linked to the US dollar, what will happen with the currency?

There are too many questions that nobody can answer, or even try to. That’s complex systems for you. And I really really hope I’m wrong, but the way out of the lockdown is not clear at all.

The world cannot afford the risk of consciously helping to spread a lethal pandemic. And the only way to prevent it may be the big lockdown. Unless there’s a vaccine. But there isn’t one right now.

Overly alarmist, you say? Let’s hope so.

 

 

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Oct 022019
 


Salvador Dali Bather 1924

 

The US and UK are both at risk of severe legal challenges and hence “barrelling down towards great troubles” as I wrote yesterday in Twisted Pair 1 – US. The reasons are not exactly the same in both cases, but they’re close. It’s about who holds the ultimate power.

Before moving on to the UK’s specific issues, I want to share this from the BBC, one of many pieces yesterday that discuss President Trump talking to foreign leaders, and that all accuse him in one way or another of wanting to ‘dig up dirt’ about Joe Biden (something that could just as well be defined as trying to find out how Russiagate started).

This one is about Trump asking Australia for help because obviously there’s a strong connection to the country in the person of former Australia High Commissioner to the UK Alexander Downer, who claims Trump ‘aid’ George Papadopoulos told him in May 2016 that Moscow had dirt on Hillary Clinton. Papadopoulos has always denied saying it.

But it appears the world media have made it their task to vilify Trump’s efforts to investigate Russiagate, so expect much more of it. The article for instance also mentions Bill Barr talking to Italian and British intelligence. Yeah, they’re serious about wanting to find out what happened. I’d suggest you get used to that. But here’s what I want to share:

[..] while the Ukraine call is linked to the serious issue of potential influencing of an upcoming US election, the Australian one refers to events around a past election. White House spokesman Hogan Gidley suggested this was uncontroversial. “I’m old enough to remember when Democrats actually wanted to find out what happened in the 2016 election,” he said.

I thought that was pretty good. But on to Albion, where the legal mess is likely much bigger than in the States, because its laws are so opaque. Sure, NOW people are clamoring for a written constitution, but NOW is a tad late. I read the other day in a Dutch paper that Queen Elizabeth had asked her advisors if she could sack Boris Johnson, and couldn’t find coverage of it in any UK paper. Still can’t. Isn’t that curious? We’ll have to do with yesterday’s New York Post: “It was the first time in her 67-year reign that the Queen asked for clarification on how to dismiss a British prime minister, the report claimed.”

The Queen didn’t actually look to fire Johnson, she simply didn’t know the laws surrounding the topic, she wanted to know what her legal position is. And that seems to typify the entire situation unfolding in the country. Nobody has any idea who has the -ultimate- power to execute any far-reaching policies and decisions. That would appear to be a very dangerous conundrum, because it may allow the loudest, -physically- strongest and perhaps even most deceitful to prevail.

There was someone in a recent Automatic Earth comments section who listed all 11 UK Supreme Court judges and concluded they were all “Remainers”. That is a slippery slope too many. Because if you intend to disqualify the highest court in a country, you invite in anarchy. Now, you may favor “Leave”, but that kind of thing will surely come back to bite you in the face.

Besides, the Supreme Court decision to declare Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament unlawful was the only one a highest court could possibly have made. Because Britain, like so many other western nations, is a parliamentary democracy. The only thing I’ve seen that looks like a constitution there says in eight words that parliament is senior to the monarch. That means it is senior to the executive branch as well. It has to.

 

Whereas a Scottish court ruled a few weeks ago that the prorogation decision was justiciable, and declared it unlawful, a lower UK court said it was non-justiciable, that is was up to Parliament, and that Parliament could “sit” whenever it wanted. But Parliament hasd just been prorogued, and therefore could NOT sit whenever it wanted. That lower court even contradicted itself: “Parliament is the master of its own proceedings. It is for parliament to decide when it sits. Parliament can sit before and after prorogation..”

So they have to make up their minds. It would be demonstrably silly if the Queen could fire the Prime Minister. It would be much less silly if Parliament could do it, though. Which would also be less silly than the Prime Minister being allowed to shut down Parliament with impunity in a parliamentary democracy. You have to look at the legal implications.

Now, the world is increasingly divvied up in antagonistic (i.e. twisted) pairs. In the US, if you don’t hammer Trump ten times a day and twice on Sundays, you get accused of effectively supporting him. In the UK, if you question Boris Johnson’s quest towards Halloween Brexit, you’re against ‘the people’, and their will. And that’s why we have laws. It’s just that British laws are terribly vague, and that’s why the courts became involved (as I predicted they would for a long time).

Today, Boris Johnson is sending a ‘plan’ to Europe that he has labeled ‘take it or leave it’. Which leads many to question his desire to reach a deal at all. More importantly, the European Union (Withdrawal) (No 2) Act 2019, aka the Benn Act, was passed by parliament last month and requires the government to ask for an extension until 31 January 2020 if no deal is agreed.

Boris has suggested he will ignore it. But that would mean the executive branch is effectively senior to the legislative branch. It would also mean the end of the parliamentary democracy that Britain has been for what is it, 400 years?! I have no horse in this fight or dog in this race, but that to me looks extremely dangerous. Be careful what you wish for.

 

The UK Supreme Court is in for the by far busiest time of its existence. And by the way, you can criticize the court, but only really by criticizing the way the judges on it are appointed, and then take action to change that way. If you try to question its credibility, however, you destroy the credibility of the entire judicial system, all of it.

Again, be careful what you wish for. It’s not hard to understand why and how people point to the 2016 Brexit referendum to justify a Brexit strategy, but they too will still have to follow the rules and laws, or they will create mayhem. That goes for both sides, of course, but for Boris Johnson to try and take the UK out of the EU in violation of the Benn Act would unleash a lot of disorder that he and his people may not fully comprehend yet

And there’s something else going on in the UK that I wrote about recently in “The Will of the People”, but which still doesn’t generate much interest. That is, this whole issue is no longer about Leave vs Remain, there is a third group, Leave But With A Deal. Ironically, the Leave side seeks to group these people in with the Remainers, which is both not honest and may not serve their own interests.

That is because Leave But With A Deal may well be the largest group out there. There are Tories and Labour supporters in it, plus independents and some LibDems, and they’re there for the taking for Boris. Only, they insist on a deal with the EU being in place. If there’s no such deal on October 19, they automatically become Boris’s opponents. But why would he let them? Why not get a serious deal on the table?

Johnson will attempt to blame the failure of his latest proposal, plus all previous ones, on the EU. But has Brussels been all that unreasonable in the negotiations? I’m no EU fan, but it’s an honest question. They have one large issue: Ireland. The Good Friday agreement is sacred for them, because it is for Ireland. And Boris today allegedly proposing some kind of border infrastructure regardless will not fly.

 

A difficult topic, for sure, but then we’re 3,5 years on from the referendum, and what has the UK done since then? London gives the impression that peace in Ireland is less important for them than it is for Brussels, and that is not wise. As former Northern Ireland negotiator Jonathan Powell said in a video I posted earlier today, what will happen is easy to predict:

Even if you just put in a camera on the border, the dissident Republicans will shoot at it. Then you put in police to protect the camera, they’ll shoot at the police. Next up is the army to protect the police, and so on and so forth. Perhaps a unified Ireland is a solution, though that will take time, but a hard Brexit certainly is not. But Boris appears to play games with this, suggesting there will have to be customs facilities some way or another: “Each of the IRA campaigns started as a border campaign”, says Powell.

Summarized, we have this third group, not Leave or Remain but Leave But With A Deal, and they are being ignored and/or labeled Remain. Whereas they could be key to Johnson and his supporters’ desire to Leave. Look, Boris has no majority in Parliament anymore, not even if the DUP he apparently sucked up to vote with him. He needs something else but is running out of time.

Then again, Boris has pledged to Leave by Halloween. Now his personal credibility is at stake, and it’s become more important than the credibility of his party, of Parliament and even of the entire court system. Next up: the Queen. Who didn’t want to sack him but was royally miffed about him advising her to prorogate which put her in a very not amused position when her own Supreme Court declared her decision unlawful.

It would appear to be in Johnson’s own interest, if he wants to carry through Brexit, for him and his team to do a lot more homework. He’s already mightily miffed the Queen, the Supreme Court has accused him of attempting to push through an unlawful act, and he’s lost his party’s majority in Parliament.

Boris’s support may seem solid in his own party conference in Manchester today, but let’s hope he doesn’t get even more blinded by that than he already is, because the consequences could well be catastrophic. And of course I see, and understand, all the people who want the result of the referendum honored, but there’s a whole new ball game underway today, and it would be foolish to ignore that.

You can still go for Brexit, but Good Friday is a giant and unnecessary leap too far to achieve it. As is trying to make the executive branch claim seniority over the legislative one, or the Supreme Court, to achieve your goal. You can wish, but beware.

 

 

 

 

Jan 152019
 
 January 15, 2019  Posted by at 9:52 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  9 Responses »


Ivan Aivazovsky Moonlight c1850

 

May Faces Crushing Brexit Defeat Despite Last-Minute Plea To MPs (G.)
100 Of May’s Own MPs Set To Vote Against Her Brexit Deal (Ind.)
No-Deal Brexit Means ‘Social And Economic Catastrophe’ -Banks (Ind.)
Brexit Preppers: ‘I Don’t Trust The Government To Look After Me Or My Dog’ (G.)
Global Economy Fears Grow As China And Eurozone Slump (G.)
Hunting for Golem (Jim Kunstler)
FBI Investigation Of Trump As National Security Threat Is A Serious Danger (GG)
Trump Reportedly Said He Wanted To Pull The US From NATO (CNBC)
WikiLeaks Starts Suing Guardian Over Assange-Manafort Fake News Story (RT)
Antarctic Losing 500% More Ice A Year Than In 80s – NASA (Ind.)
Wildlife: The Real Crisis At The US-Mexico Border (PI)
98% Of Ground Insects Vanish From Puerto Rican Rainforest In 35 Years (G.)

 

 

““We have an instruction from the British people to leave and it’s our duty to deliver on that..”

May Faces Crushing Brexit Defeat Despite Last-Minute Plea To MPs (G.)

Theresa May appears to be on course for a crushing defeat in the House of Commons as Britain’s bitterly divided MPs prepare to give their verdict on her Brexit deal in the “meaningful vote” on Tuesday. With Downing Street all but resigned to losing by a significant margin, Guardian analysis pointed to a majority of more than 200 MPs against the prime minister. Labour sources said that unless May made major unexpected concessions, any substantial margin against her would lead Jeremy Corbyn to call for a vote of no confidence in the government – perhaps as soon as Tuesday night. But since Conservative MPs are unlikely to offer Corbyn the backing he would need to win a no-confidence vote, he would then come under intense pressure to swing Labour’s weight behind a second referendum.

Cabinet ministers have not yet been told how May plans to keep the Brexit process on track if her deal is defeated – and they remain split on how she should proceed. Leavers are convinced that the prime minister should return to Brussels and press for fresh concessions, while remainers hope she will seek a compromise with Labour. On Monday, May issued one final call to parliament to back her, urging MPs to “take a second look” at her deal and stressing that it was the only option on the table that could deliver an “orderly” exit from the EU. But there was little evidence of movement after her speech.

[..] There is growing speculation at Westminster that whichever course May pursues, she will be forced to announce that she will ask the EU27 to extend article 50. The prime minister refused to rule out doing so categorically on Monday, saying only that she didn’t believe it should be necessary. “We’re leaving on 29 March. I’ve been clear I don’t believe we should be extending article 50 and I don’t believe we should be having a second referendum,” May said. “We have an instruction from the British people to leave and it’s our duty to deliver on that, but I want to do it in a way that is smooth and orderly and protects jobs and security.”

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Her own party turns against her, but May’s plans when she loses: fly to Brussels. She should leave and never come back.

100 Of May’s Own MPs Set To Vote Against Her Brexit Deal (Ind.)

Theresa May has made a desperate last-ditch plea begging her own MPs to back her Brexit plans in the face of an expected historic defeat. The prime minister beseeched Conservative MPs at a closed meeting to think of the future of their party and compromise, with around 100 of them considering voting against her. But Brexiteers still left the meeting determined to reject her plans, while Ms May also now faces up to 12 separate attempts from rebel and opposition MPs to re-shape her strategy before the final vote on Tuesday. She gave no indication as to her course of action if she loses, but Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn spoke to his own MPs in a room nearby restating his determination to call a motion of no confidence and trigger an election.

After 19 months of negotiation, a dozen EU summits and countless hours taking questions at the despatch box, Ms May will finally put her Brexit deal to a vote of the Commons on Tuesday. With her final chance to address all MPs coming shortly before the vote due after 7pm, she held a private gathering of Tories on Monday night to try to win over rebels. [..] Much of the opposition to her deal to focuses on the hated “Irish backstop”, which would come into play if no future trading arrangement is in place by December 2020, and could keep the UK in a customs union indefinitely. [..] On Monday night, Ms May’s deal suffered its first official parliamentary defeat in the House of Lords as peers voted by 321 votes to 152 to reject it.

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Every possible outcome will mean chaos.

No-Deal Brexit Means ‘Social And Economic Catastrophe’ -Banks (Ind.)

A no-deal Brexit would be an economic and social “catastrophe”, a senior banking industry leader has warned. Stephen Jones said leaving the European Union (EU) without an agreement could lead to a 1930s-style economic depression, with widespread job losses, homeowners unable to afford their mortgages, and mass defaults on loans. “A no-deal Brexit on 29 March, where we crash out of European Union, is a catastrophe,” the head of the UK Finance trade body told Channel 4 News. “It’s a social catastrophe, it’s an economic catastrophe.” The devastation caused by a disorderly exit would not just hurt the banks’ bottom lines, but hit ordinary people, he warned. “I don’t wish to be labelled a doom mongerer… but if our economy contracts by 10 per cent that’s 1930s-style contraction,” he said.

“That is a massive increase in credit card losses, mortgage losses, vehicle loan losses. “This is about jobs, this is about people not being able to pay their mortgages, not being able to pay back their loans, and that’s really bad news and it’s an outcome we can avoid.” Mr Jones, who leads the British banking sector’s lobby group, added: “I think there is a real risk of No Deal happening by accident… if the prime minister’s deal is voted down, we are in totally uncharted territory.” Asked if he backed Mrs May’s deal to prevent a no-deal scenario, Mr Jones would only say he backed a “solution that avoids a no-deal Brexit”. He added: “It’s not a great deal, there’s an awful lot of money being paid for a political declaration, which quite frankly is not worth the paper it is written on.”

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People unsure whether epilepsy drugs for their children will be available.

Brexit Preppers: ‘I Don’t Trust The Government To Look After Me Or My Dog’ (G.)

[..] it’s not just about food for Elgarf and her family. One of her four-year-old twins, Nora, who has been sitting happily on her mum’s lap as we talk, has a rare brain condition called polymicrogyria. She has lots of prescriptions, but without two of them – Epilim and Keppra – for her epilepsy, she would have multiple seizures a day. “She can’t do without them,” says Elgarf. Both Epilim and Keppra are imported. If she could stockpile these medicines, she would. But they are controlled, and she can only get a month’s supply at a time. “It should be all right,” she has been told by doctors and the pharmacists. But when it’s your daughter’s life that’s at stake, “it should be all right” isn’t good enough.

Many of the people who join the Facebook group have concerns about medicines, Elgarf says. There are a lot of diabetics and coeliacs among them. What they need is some reassurance. “We need to know for certain they have got a proper plan in place for anybody who depends on meds.” She has heard rumours that the most critical medicines may have to be collected from central hubs, which would be stocked on the basis of lists provided by GPs. [..] Helena, who has a politics degree and works for a charity, doesn’t come across as crazy. None of the people I speak to do. Informed: tick. Cautious: tick. Organised: tick. Very organised, in Helena’s case: she has – and shares with me – a spreadsheet, colour-coded according to what is fully purchased (eg tinned tomatoes and loo paper, alongside a note that the average person uses 110 rolls a year), part-purchased (eg cereal), waiting delivery (powdered coconut), or pending testing (dried falafel mix).

Falafel! I’m going straight round to Helena’s. She also has booze and biscuits. Brexit party in Cardiff on Friday 29 March, everyone. And she’s got makeup! We’re going to be looking good as the good ship Britannia goes down. Helena is not just prepping for herself. She is doing it for her dog, Charlie, too. And while she has about three months’ worth of supplies for herself, she is looking at more like a year for the dog, as she doesn’t see that pet food will be a priority. “I don’t really trust the government to look after me; I certainly don’t trust them to look after my dog,” she says. As well as dog food, there are treats and toys on the spreadsheet. Charlie is going to enjoy a hard Brexit.


Helena’s dog, Charlie, with his Brexit stockpile. Photograph: Gareth Phillips for the Guardian

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Brexit will shake the markets.

Global Economy Fears Grow As China And Eurozone Slump (G.)

Fears are growing over the state of the global economy after China recorded a shock fall in exports, while European factory output declined by the biggest margin in almost three years. In a sign that the worldwide slowdown is gathering pace, official figures showed Chinese exports were down 4.4% in December – the largest fall since 2016 – on the back of faltering demand in most of its key markets. Imports fell 7.6% to reflect waning domestic demand. The unexpected downturn for the biggest global exporter of manufactured products came as eurozone industrial output shrank in November.

The EU statistics office, Eurostat, estimated industrial production slipped 1.7% in November compared with the previous month, and 3.3% on the year, reflecting the struggles facing several European economies in recent months. The latest snapshot confirmed disappointing readings of industrial output in several major eurozone nations, raising the prospect of some of the EU’s biggest economies, including Germany and Italy, slipping into recession in the second half of 2018. Several major European economies, including the UK, have struggled with faltering levels of car production in recent months as factories adjust to handling new vehicle emissions tests introduced after the VW scandal.

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Link to transcript of Lisa Page’s testimonies is here.

Hunting for Golem (Jim Kunstler)

As another president once remarked in a different context — LBJ speaking to a hanger full of grunts in Vietnam — “go on out there, boys, and nail that coonskin to the wall!” That was around the time the war was looking like a lost cause, with 1000 soldiers a month coming home in a box and even the Rotarians of Keokuk, Iowa, starting to doubt the official story of what exactly we thought we were doing over there. It was also, arguably, around the time America stopped being, ahem, “great” and commenced the long, nauseating slide into idiocracy and collapse. The news media has taken LBJ’s place in today’s Wile E. Coyote phase of our history, cheerleading the congressional hunt for the glittering golden scalp of You-Know-Who in the White House.

[..] The CBS 60 Minutes Show took its turn last night with a puff piece on Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland), incoming chairman of the House oversight Committee, which, CBS interlocutor Steve Kroft delighted in pointing out, “can investigate any [old] thing.” And so, Rep. Cummings will be the ringmaster of this new “Greatest Show on Earth,” aimed at climaxing in an orgasmic impeachment operation. Mr. Kroft could hardly contain his glee onscreen. The facts say something a bit different about the actual reality-based Russia Collusion case, namely, that it’s been a two-year smokescreen to cover the collective ass of a rogue leadership in the Department of Justice and its step-child, the FBI, who deliberately and repeatedly broke the law in dishonestly pursuing a way to annul the 2016 election result.

It also reflects darkly on the Obama White House and its participation in all this huggermugger. Wads of information around this matter also came out in the past week — which you can be sure the news media would not touch — including congressional testimony from last July with former FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, revealing that the traffic controller for the so-called Steele Dossier was one John Carlin, Assistant Attorney General at the time, and formerly then-FBI Director Robert Mueller’s chief-of-staff. Ms. Page herself characterized Mr. Carlin as “a political appointee.” Was he Mr. Mueller’s clean-up man?

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Glenn Greenwald makes a valid point comparing the Trump probe with those of Henry Wallace and George McGovern by Hoover. What he misses out on, though, is how they differ: unlike in the cases of Wallace and McGovern, the FBI is now used not just to smear a politician, but to try and oust a president.

FBI Investigation Of Trump As National Security Threat Is A Serious Danger (GG)

It is not difficult to understand what is so ominous and even tyrannical about the FBI investigating domestic political figures whose loyalties they regard as “suspicious,” and whose political career they regard as a “national security threat,” simply because those politicians express policy positions about U.S. adversaries that the FBI dislikes or regards as insufficiently belligerent. It’s the FBI’s job to investigate possible crimes under the law or infiltration by foreign powers, not ideological sins. If a politician adopts policy views that are “threatening” to U.S. national security or which is unduly accommodating to America’s adversaries or “enemies,” that’s not a crime and the FBI thus has no business using its vast investigative powers against a politician who does that.

That’s why it’s so easy to see that Hoover’s investigative scrutiny of Henry Wallace, and George McGovern, and an endless array of domestic dissenters, was so anti-democratic and dangerous. If a politician adopts “threatening” policy views or is too subservient toward or accommodating of a foreign adversary, it’s the job of the American voting public or Congress in its political oversight and lawmaking role to take action, not the FBI’s job to criminalize policy differences through investigations. It should not be difficult for a rational brain free of partisan muck to see this same principle at play when it comes to the FBI’s investigation of Trump on the ground that he may be, in the eyes of FBI officials, a “national security threat.”

Even if you’re someone who hates Trump’s overtures toward Russia or even believes that they are the by-product of excessive subservience to the Kremlin, the dangers of having the FBI take on the role of investigating that rather than the political wings of the U.S. political system should be obvious – as obvious as they are in the case of Henry Wallace and George McGovern. [..] The person elected by the U.S. electorate to make foreign policy for the United States and to determine “America’s interests” was Donald Trump, not the FBI. It’s the role of elected officials in the White House and Congress, not the unelected police agents who report to them, to decide what is and is not in “America’s interests.” If Trump’s foreign policy is misguided or “threatening,” that’s a matter for the Congress and/or the American public, not the FBI.

Read more …

More so-called revelations. It’s never been a secret what Trump thinks of NATO in its present form: he thinks the US pays too much. But now the NYT presents this as some dark conspiracy story.

Like the Guardian, the New York Times has moved beyond caring about its credibility: both think there are enough people swallowing everything they get served up.

Trump Reportedly Said He Wanted To Pull The US From NATO (CNBC)

U.S. President Donald Trump privately said several times last year that he wanted to withdraw his country from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, The New York Times reported on Monday. The newspaper’s findings, which cited unnamed senior administration officials, are likely to resurface worries of a breakdown in the military alliance that was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada and some European nations. Those concerns were first sparked last year when the U.S. leader hinted that he could leave the 29-member defense bloc without Congressional approval. At the time, Trump was pushing member countries to increase spending. Since then, however, the Republican has backtracked on that threat.

After a chaotic NATO meeting in July 2018, Trump claimed that allies had committed to his request and said that U.S. withdrawal from the organization would be “unnecessary.” Responding to the New York Times’ report, a White House official repeated some of Trump’s remarks from July when the president said Washington’s commitment to NATO is “very strong” and the alliance is “very important.” As the Times notes, a weakened NATO is thought to be a major geopolitical goal of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump’s dislike for participation in international organizations is well known to global leaders by now. Early in his White House tenure, the president withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate accord and a massive Pacific trade pact.

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If the Guardian, or another British paper, runs an entirely false story like this about you or me, we would need to raise a similar amount just to defend ourselves from such smear.

WikiLeaks Starts Suing Guardian Over Assange-Manafort Fake News Story (RT)

WikiLeaks says it has collected enough funds to file a lawsuit against the Guardian for publishing an uncorroborated story about alleged meetings between former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and Julian Assange. The whistleblowing website has thanked all its supporters who contributed to its GoFundMe campaign, launched on November 27 following the publication of an article by the Guardian, which claimed that US President Donald Trump’s disgraced former campaign manager Paul Manafort had held secret talks with Julian Assange at least three times in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where the Australian has been holed up since 2012.

The donations have recently hit the $50,000 threshold, enabling the whistleblowing site to formally launch proceedings against the renowned British newspaper, WikiLeaks said, calling on its supporters to keep the money flowing. “Legal action will now commence (but more is required to complete),” it tweeted on Monday. When it launched the campaign, WikiLeaks set up the ambitious target of $300,000. It has so far raised $51,749. WikiLeaks seeks to challenge the Guardian in court over its source-based ‘bombshell,’ co-authored by its former Moscow correspondent Luke Harding, alleging that Manafort had traveled to London three times over four years prior to the publication of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) email leaks.

The report relies on Ecuadorean intelligence sources and documents provided to the Guardian by the country’s intelligence agency. In its GoFundMe appeal, WikiLeaks suggested that the intelligence agency might have deliberately fed the British publication false information, which it was happy to take at a face value. WikiLeaks also noted that it was not the first time the Guardian put out a false story about Assange.

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Just the tip of the iceberg. Happy driving.

Antarctic Losing 500% More Ice A Year Than In 80s – NASA (Ind.)

The Antarctic ice sheet is losing six times as much ice each year as it was in the 1980s and the pace is accelerating, one of the most comprehensive studies of climate change effects on the continent has shown. More than half an inch has been added to global sea levels since 1979, but if current trends continue it will be responsible for metres more in future, the Nasa-funded study found. The international effort used aerial photos, satellite data and climate models dating back to the 1970s across18 Antarctic regions to get the most complete picture to date on the impacts of the changing climate. It found that between 1979 and 1990 Antarctica lost an average of 40 gigatonnes (40 billion tonnes) of its mass each year.

Between 2009 and 2017 it lost an average 252 gigatonnes a year. This has added 3.6mm per decade to sea levels, or around 14mm since 1979, the study shows. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak,” Professor Eric Rignot from University of California, Irvine and lead author of the study published in Nature Geoscience. “As the Antarctic ice sheet continues to melt away, we expect multi-metre sea level rise from Antarctica in the coming centuries.”

Read more …

“..the wall “may very well lead to the extinction of the jaguar, ocelot … and other species”..”

Wildlife: The Real Crisis At The US-Mexico Border (PI)

While debate swirls around the border wall — whether it’s immoral, whether it even works — one huge impact, while understood, is just not being discussed: The wall is already an ecological catastrophe, devastating rare and endangered species, carving up critical habitats, exacerbating flooding, even worsening climate change. The Center for Biological Diversity estimates that the wall “may very well lead to the extinction of the jaguar, ocelot … and other species” in America. This is tragic, as the 2,000-mile border, stretching from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico along the Rio Grande, passes through three mountain chains, North America’s two largest deserts, and the Tijuana Estuary, a salt marsh that offers habitat for 400 species of birds.

An astonishing 25 million acres of protected public lands lies near the border on the American side, including wildlife refuges, national parks, and wilderness areas with large refuges on the Mexican side as well, all created by the long, hard work of many organizations and agencies aiming to protect land that is biologically unique and fragile. It’s a diverse area, too: A 2011 study documented 134 mammal, 178 reptile, and 57 amphibian species living in the wall region; 56 of these species that already been hurt by the wall, including five that are at risk for extinction, one the jaguarundi, a small cat.

The jaguar, that cat’s bigger cousin, is the poster child for the wall’s ecological impact. Once hunted to extinction in the U.S., jaguars in northern Mexico have been spotted moving back into Arizona. Protected both here and in Mexico, its U.S. recovery plan — written by the federal government (!) — calls for free movement of these 300-pound predators across the border. The few cats that have reclaimed their American habitat will not recover if they cannot return to Mexico to find mates.


Fernando Llano / AP

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And there’s no panic. There’s hardly any concern. The web of life is disappearing and we watch TV.

98% Of Ground Insects Vanish From Puerto Rican Rainforest In 35 Years (G.)

Scientist Brad Lister returned to Puerto Rican rainforest after 35 years to find 98% of ground insects had vanished “We knew that something was amiss in the first couple days,” said Brad Lister. “We were driving into the forest and at the same time both Andres and I said: ‘Where are all the birds?’ There was nothing.” His return to the Luquillo rainforest in Puerto Rico after 35 years was to reveal an appalling discovery. The insect population that once provided plentiful food for birds throughout the mountainous national park had collapsed. On the ground, 98% had gone. Up in the leafy canopy, 80% had vanished. The most likely culprit by far is global warming.

“It was just astonishing,” Lister said. “Before, both the sticky ground plates and canopy plates would be covered with insects. You’d be there for hours picking them off the plates at night. But now the plates would come down after 12 hours in the tropical forest with a couple of lonely insects trapped or none at all.” “It was a true collapse of the insect populations in that rainforest,” he said. “We began to realise this is terrible – a very, very disturbing result.” Earth’s bugs outweigh humans 17 times over and are such a fundamental foundation of the food chain that scientists say a crash in insect numbers risks “ecological Armageddon”. When Lister’s study was published in October, one expert called the findings “hyper-alarming”.

The Puerto Rico work is one of just a handful of studies assessing this vital issue, but those that do exist are deeply worrying. Flying insect numbers in Germany’s natural reserves have plunged 75% in just 25 years. The virtual disappearance of birds in an Australian eucalyptus forest was blamed on a lack of insects caused by drought and heat. Lister and his colleague Andrés García also found that insect numbers in a dry forest in Mexico had fallen 80% since the 1980s. “We are essentially destroying the very life support systems that allow us to sustain our existence on the planet, along with all the other life on the planet,” Lister said. “It is just horrifying to watch us decimate the natural world like this.”

Read more …

Jun 192018
 
 June 19, 2018  Posted by at 12:07 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  14 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Why are you angry? 1896

 

Yes, you have every right to be outraged at the disgraceful treatment of children on America’s borders. But that does not give you the right to NOT be outraged by what America has done and is today still doing to children in, just to name a few places, Syria, Libya and Yemen. Be outraged, but don’t make it an echo chamber issue. Because if you do, you, too, are in a cage.

So if you see the wives of former presidents speak out about the child separation policies, ask yourself where they get the moral authority to speak out on such issues, after their husbands have bombed the crap out of many countries, killing many many children in the process. And don’t let’s get started about Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State.

Presently in Yemen, 20 million people depend on humanitarian aid, and the US are helping Saudi Arabia et al bomb the only port left through which that aid can reach them, to smithereens. 8.5 million Yemenis are already starving, and some 3 million of them are children. Where is your outrage over that?

Where is the outrage over the American and international treatment of Julian Assange, who has been in the Ecuador embassy in London for six years today? Where is it?

Don’t get coaxed into selective outrage by your news media, who like nothing better than to tell you what to be outraged by, and what not. If you allow that to happen, you have lost your freedom and your independence. Ask why they tell you a certain story at the moment they tell it. Ask why they tell it the way they do.

Yes, it has come to this. Every single story you read or hear needs to be scrutinized. Because there’s an agenda behind all of them, left, right or middle. And because the media have figured out that constantly driving you from one selective outrage to another is very profitable for them. Critical thought is not.

Yes, there are sociopaths in the Trump administration. But that’s nothing new. There have been sociopaths in every administration. It’s how our political systems work. Sh*t floats to the top.

Yes, US border policies have intensified. But whatever you think of that, migrants and refugees are not a new issue. Nor are the reasons why people flee their homes and communities. Whether it’s Africa or Central America, people flee because of what western governments, military and intelligence services have done to their homelands.

And until we stop doing that, they will keep coming. So much of our prosperity and power is derived directly from other people’s poverty and despair. So much of our wealth has been stolen from other people’s resources. If you want to be outraged at something or someone, start with yourself. Start thinking.

What is happening today is awful. But so many awful things happened in the past that you never showed outrage about. And yet these things are all inextricably linked. One leads to another.

America shouldn’t be outraged about Trump without being outraged about its entire political system, and all of its actors. Without that, outrage about Trump has no meaning, and will lead to nothing at all. Or rather, it will lead to a more divided country, full of people played for profit and political games.

The US invasion of Vietnam ended to a large extent because of protests in the streets. Perhaps that is what is needed once again. But the underlying issues, the ones that had led to the invasion in the first place, were not solved then. And that is what it is all about.

Nor is it an American problem per se. Europe is just as culpable. Children drowning, children in cages, what’s the difference, in the end it all comes from the same mindset. Which needs a radical reset. But what are the odds of that happening?

Our cultures are based on exploiting other peoples and nations, and then telling ourselves we deserve what we have. How are you going to change that? The only way to resolve the global refugee problem is to make sure people have a future where they are born. And the only thing we actually do is to make that impossible.

Yes, be outraged.