Sep 222024
 
 September 22, 2024  Posted by at 9:05 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  62 Responses »


René Magritte Golconda 1953

 

An American Coup? (Neuburger)
72 Minutes (Scott Ritter)
‘It’s Over For Russia’ – Boris Johnson (RT)
Has The EU Suddenly Realized How Much It Has Screwed Itself Over? (Marsden)
EU Leadership Urges Europe To Be Ready To Fight Russia In 6-8 Years (ZH)
The DEI Trojan Horse Has Undermined US Military (Sp.)
TikTok Wipes Out Sputnik Accounts (Sp.)
No One Is Safe: The Global Threat of Israel’s Weaponized Pagers (Sweidan)
When Vladimir Putin Was Pootie-Poot (Adam Dick)
All of Europe Does Business With Russia – Hungary (RT)
Indian State Oil Refiners Seeking Long-term Deals With Russia – Media (RT)
Harris ‘Too Busy’ To Talk To Media – Adviser (RT)
Secret Service Allowed ‘Multiple Failures’ Before Trump Shooting – Report (RT)
America’s Healthcare Dead Last in Rich Nation Rankings (Sp.)
Words You Can’t Ignore (Max Jones)

 

 

 

 

Tucker Carmela excellent
https://twitter.com/i/status/1837206654711980070

 

 

RFK sued Trump

 

 

Ireland

 

 

Thiel

 

 

Dimon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1837245042056105994

 

 

Mars
https://twitter.com/i/status/1837626546074325240

 

 

India
https://twitter.com/i/status/1837643524600148279

 

 

Maher

 

 

 

 

Easily the prime article/video this weekend. Because it puts everything on its head.

Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell “and critic of America’s wars”, states that the Pentagon has taken over US foreign policy. And that is as stark as it sounds. Wilkerson says that Biden, Harris, Blinken and Jake Sullivan have all been sidelined because the Pentagon doesn’t want to go to war, not in Ukraine and not in Gaza. “No dice”. And they can’t do a thing without the Pentagon.

Judge Nap: “COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Can Ukraine Make It to Nov 5th?”

We have some transcript below, but do watch the whole interview.

An American Coup? (Neuburger)

In a 30-minute interview with Judge Napolitano on September 18, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell and critic of America’s wars, described a recent event in which Pentagon chief Gen. Lloyd Austin told President Biden that, in Wilkerson’s words, “the Pentagon has taken over, essentially, diplomacy as well as any action, militarily speaking, with regard to both theaters of war,” meaning Ukraine and Israel. Wilkerson added, “And so they’re now in charge.” Austin, according to this telling, listened “to the people in the bowels of the Pentagon who know the truth” and forced the President to back down. Biden was furious, we’re told, but “took that advice.” Except, as Wilkerson tells it, it wasn’t advice, but instruction. “No dice,” as Wilkerson characterized the message, sounds pretty final. This is good news and bad news. The good, U.S. policy is now: To Netanyahu, if you invade Lebanon or attack Iran, you’re on your own. To Zelenskyy, no to long range missiles reaching deep into Russia.

So we and the world are safer, at least for a while. The bad: Is this a coup? Has the military stood up to the President, forced him to change policy? If the answers are yes, we’re on our way once more to revising the Constitution-as-practiced. Both political parties have already confirmed that the Fourth Amendment can be ignored. That’s now the “new normal.” So what’s this encroachment of the Pentagon into foreign policy, if not another “new normal”? Has MacArthur finally won?

Whatever the truth, you won’t see this reported in what people call the “news,” but I doubt Wilkerson’s sources are wrong. At any rate, we’ll know soon enough by the way Zelenskyy and Netanyahu act. Welcome to the future of U.S. foreign policy.

Wilkerson: I think what we’re seeing here is another attempt, because a 100-plane strike didn’t do it, by Netanyahu to provoke Hezbollah to some sort of action that he can then declare is warlike to the extent that he can do what he wants to do with them — even though I’m told with great confidence in the sources that the latest two visits by the Central Command Unified Commander were to tell him [Netanyahu] that we would not be with him in the event of his going to war with Hezbollah that he provoked. Nor will we be with him going to war with Iran that he provoked. And we made it quite clear that we would know if he provoked it.

Napolitano: You’re speaking of General Kurilla [CENTCOM commander since April 2022].

Wilkerson: Yes. Yes.

Napolitano: So Scott Ritter agrees with you, Doug Macgregor says he can’t imagine Austin and Blinkin letting General Kuralla do that. It’s very very interesting. … Is this speculation on your part or is it based on sources?

Wilkerson: It’s based on some pretty reliable sources. And here’s the bigger picture and I hope the others told you this too. Biden’s fury — and you could see it — he was seething when he met with the British Prime Minister.

Napolitano: Yes, yes, we have that clip. He was out of control with anger.

Wilkerson: And what he [had] just been told, apparently, was by the Pentagon, “No dice, Mr President. No dice on Ukraine and no dice on Gaza. We’re in charge now.”

Napolitano: No dice. You’re talking about no dice on the long range missiles reaching deep into Russia, even though Tony Blinkin had intimated all week in Kyiv with his British counterpart that this was happening. And Sir Keir Stormer, the British Prime Minister, had every reason to believe as he’s flying across the Atlantic that Joe Biden’s answer would be yes.

Wilkerson: He was embarrassed. He was embarrassed by the fact — he was pulling out his maps with target data and Biden told him, “Don’t even pull them out. We’re not going to talk about that.” I’ve been told, again by fairly reliable sources, that Blinkin and Sullivan — Blinkin primarily, but Sullivan too — have been sidetracked, and what’s happened is the Pentagon has taken over, essentially, diplomacy as well as any action, militarily speaking, with regard to both theaters of war. And so they’re now in charge. I have to change my evaluation of Secretary Austin if that’s the case, because it means he listened finally to the people in the bowels of the Pentagon who know the truth, and he’s reacting to that, and he’s told the President Biden that, and to Biden’s credit, even though he was furious, he finally took that advice.

Napolitano: Colonel, you once ran the State Department [as Secretary Colin Powell’s chief of staff under George Bush]. How does the Defense Department engage in diplomacy?

Wilkerson: They engage in diplomacy every day. Every day. There are four-stars in the various syncdoms, the regions that they control, the AORs [Areas of Responsibility] [who] are the true U.S. diplomats. And some of them are very good at it. I saw some of them. I worked with some of them who are very good at it, better than any Secretary of State. But it shouldn’t be that way. That’s a parenthetical remark. We shouldn’t have the military leading diplomacy. But we often do. And the Japanese prime minister once told me why to my face. He said, “Larry, when your East Asia and Pacific Assistant Secretary comes out here, he’s not got anything but his briefcase. When the man from Honolulu comes out here, from Camp Smith in Hawaii, he’s towing air wings, submarines, battle groups, Marine amphibious groups, Army divisions. I listened to him. This is the Prime Minister of Japan.

Napolitano: Who told General Kurilla to tell Prime Minister Netanyahu, “If you invade Lebanon, you’re on your own?”

Wilkerson: It was, I think, Austin. But that’s the chain of command. Austin conveyed that message to him [Kurilla]. But I think it was Austin that convinced Biden to give him that command so he could transmit it to Kurilla.

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“..everything you thought you lived your life for would be dead. And if you survived? To quote Nikita Khrushchev, “The survivors would envy the dead.”

72 Minutes (Scott Ritter)

Most Americans approached last weekend thinking about how they would spend the much-anticipated end of the work week with their friends and family. Few realize how close they came to actualizing the scenario so horrifyingly spelled out in Annie Jacobsen’s alarming must-read book, Nuclear War: A Scenario. 72 minutes. That is all it takes to end the world as we know it. That is less time than most movies playing at the local cinema. Most people could not drive to the local home improvement store to buy the materials needed to do the little repairs around the home that usually wait for the weekend. Walk the dogs? Play with the kids? Forget about it. 72 minutes. And everything you thought you lived your life for would be dead. And if you survived? To quote Nikita Khrushchev, “The survivors would envy the dead.”

Ukraine, together with many of its NATO allies, has been asking for permission from the United States, the United Kingdom, and France to be able to employ precision-guided long-range weapons systems provided by these countries against targets deep inside Russia. On Sept. 6, at a meeting of the Ramstein Contact Group, a forum where U.S.-NATO military support to Ukraine is coordinated, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky personally appealed to the group for more weapons support from its Western allies and called on allies to allow Ukraine to use the weapons they provided to strike deeper inside Russia. “We need to have this long-range capability,” Zelensky said, addressing the attendees, who included U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, “not only on the divided territory of Ukraine but also on Russian territory so that Russia is motivated to seek peace. We need to make Russian cities, and even Russian soldiers think about what they need: peace or Putin.”

Secretary Austin, in comments made afterwards, said he didn’t think the use of long-range missiles to strike inside Russia would help end the war, adding that he expected the conflict would be resolved through negotiations. Moreover, Austin noted, Ukraine had its own weapons capable of attacking targets well beyond the range of the British Storm Shadow cruise missile. Despite Austin’s pushback, President Joe Biden appeared to be on track to give Zelensky the green light he was looking for regarding the use of British-provided Storm Shadow cruise missiles and U.S.-provided long-range ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) missiles for strikes on Russian soil. On Sept. 11, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, accompanied by British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, visited Ukraine, where they held meetings with Zelensky and his newly appointed foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha.

Blinken and Lammy, however, failed to make the announcement the Ukrainians were waiting with bated breath to hear. Instead, Blinken and Lammy reiterated the full support of their respective nations to Ukraine’s victory, adding that they would adapt their support to meet Ukrainian needs. “The bottom line is this: We want Ukraine to win,” Blinken said after his meeting with Zelensky. The stage was now set for Keir Starmer, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, to fly to Washington, D.C., last Friday, where he would meet with Biden and jointly agree to give Ukraine permission to use Storm Shadow and ATACMS against targets inside Russia. Russia has long made it clear that it would view any nation which authorized the use of its weapons to strike Russia as a direct party to the conflict. In comments to the media in Russia last Thursday — one day before the Biden-Starmer meeting at the White House — Russian President Vladimir Putin made it clear that any lifting of the restrictions on Ukrainian use of U.S.- and U.K.-provided long-range weapons would change “the very essence of the conflict.” He said:

“This will mean that NATO countries, the United States, European countries are fighting Russia. And if this is the case, then…we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, speaking after Putin’s announcement, noted that the Russian president’s words were “extremely clear” and that they had reached their intended audience — U.S. President Biden. Biden didn’t seem happy about the message. In responding to a question from reporters prior to his meeting with Prime Minister Starmer at the White House about what he thought about Putin’s warning, Biden snapped angrily, “I don’t think much about Vladimir Putin.” The evidence suggests otherwise.

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Update from another planet.

‘It’s Over For Russia’ – Boris Johnson (RT)

Russia must understand that “it’s over,” and that Ukraine will not concede any territory for peace, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has argued. For this goal to be achieved, however, Kiev will need long-range weapons, NATO membership, and half a trillion dollars, Johnson added. In an op-ed published in The Spectator on Saturday, Johnson argued that Ukrainian forces still have the “ability to win,” if only the West would cave to every single one of Kiev’s demands. These include, he wrote, permission to strike deep inside Russian territory with Storm Shadow and ATACMS missiles, and immediate invitation to NATO with Article 5 security guarantees, and “half a trillion dollars… or even a trillion.” Disregarding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent warning that enabling long-range strikes would place NATO in a state of war with Russia as “bluster and saber-rattling,” Johnson argued that these steps are necessary to “send the crucial message to the Kremlin.”

“The message is: that’s it. It’s over. You don’t have an empire any more. You don’t have a ‘near abroad’ or a ‘sphere of influence’. You don’t have the right to tell the Ukrainians what to do, any more than we British have the right to tell our former colonies what to do,” he asserted. “It is time for Putin to understand that Russia can have a happy and glorious future, but that like Rome and like Britain, the Russians have decisively joined the ranks of the post-imperial powers, and a good thing, too,” he continued. The West, Johnson argued, “must abandon any idea that the Ukrainians will do a deal” or “trade land for peace.” “We in the West would be mad to try to impose that outcome,” he added. Ironically, Russia and Ukraine reportedly agreed to a peace deal during talks in Istanbul in 2022. The agreement would have involved Ukraine declaring military neutrality, limiting its armed forces, and vowing not to discriminate against ethnic Russians. In return, Moscow would have joined other leading powers in offering Ukraine security guarantees.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky withdrew from the talks at the last moment. According to Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia, former US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, and several Ukrainian media reports, Johnson was instrumental in convincing Zelensky to abandon negotiations. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and the deputy leader of Türkiye’s ruling party, Numan Kurtulmus, have also claimed that several Western states conspired to scupper the deal. Five months after the Istanbul talks, Russia assumed control of four former regions of Ukraine. According to the most recent figures from the Russian Defense Ministry, the Ukrainian military has lost nearly half a million men since February 2022, and the Pentagon concluded last year that Ukraine stands little chance of regaining its former territories.

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“..unscrewing everything they screwed up over the past two and a half years through self-inflicted idiocy in the interests of impressing their girlfriend Vladimir Zelensky (aka president of Ukraine).”

Has The EU Suddenly Realized How Much It Has Screwed Itself Over? (Marsden)

The EU is having a full-blown existential crisis. Someone has really screwed up its economy, and the culprit is conspicuously absent from a new report outlining the carnage. Are there no mirrors in Brussels? Former European Central Bank president and Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, has published a new “economic competitiveness” report after a year of work at the request of unelected ‘Queen’ Ursula von der Leyen’s ‘Royal’ European Commission. And it’s a real page-turner, one of the great mysteries of our times. One is left to breathlessly leaf through the 400-page document looking for a culprit responsible for the massive amount of economic carnage detailed by Draghi. “For the first time since the Cold War we must genuinely fear for our self-preservation,” he told reporters in Brussels. How about starting off by not actively self-sabotaging?

Draghi said that the bloc desperately needs to keep up with China and the US, but has been failing. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the EU readily jumped in to ride shotgun alongside Uncle Sam along regime change highway, but now finds itself kicking dirt on the roadside and wanting to make its own way. “Now conditions have changed,” Draghi said. “World trade is slowing. China is actually slowing very much, but it’s become much less open to us, and actually it’s competing with us in global markets on all accounts. We’ve lost our main supplier of cheap energy, Russia. And now we have to start for our defense again for the first time since the Second World War.” Apparently, the jokers ruling Europe from the big top tent in Brussels are shocked to discover that they’ve been victimized. Who could possibly have done such a thing?

Gotta love the use of the passive there. “Lost” their cheap energy from Russia. Like it just fell out of their pocket like a set of house keys on the way back from the store. Listening to Draghi, you’d also think that the EU hasn’t actually adopted “de-coupling” from China as a strategy, egged on by Washington, which wanted Europe all to itself, before EU officials rebranded it a “de-risking” when they realized how stupid a move it would be to fully alienate China as the bloc’s top trading partner and customer. And now, oh gee, the EU has to start thinking about its own defense again, Draghi said, rather than just using it to shake free some natural resources from all the places with fortuitously-located terrorist problems. The Ukraine conflict has been an equally convenient excuse to make more weapons at taxpayer expense for the EU’s own defense after emptying out the old junk from its closets.

Good thing, too, because making more weapons is about the only real easy answer for improving the economy right now, judging by the dire state of things outlined in this new report. Still, the EU can’t even do the military-industrial racket right. Draghi has pointed out that EU members are basically idiots for buying most of their weapons abroad, with nearly two-thirds coming from the US. Big mystery as to why Washington wants to keep the party going in Ukraine when it’s making bank by drumming up the need to ramp up weapons purchases for EU members under the guise that their former top economic lifeline and energy supplier (Russia) was suddenly a big threat to them. The bonus: making Europe more dependent on the US for pricier gas, too.

The whole report is just loaded with gems, like this one: “If Europe cannot become more productive, we will be forced to choose. We will not be able to become, at once, a leader in new technologies, a beacon of climate responsibility and an independent player on the world stage. We will not be able to finance our social model. We will have to scale back some, if not all, of our ambitions. This is an existential challenge…” Draghi’s going on about all these grand ambitions like leading new tech and being a climate and social icon, while European elites have been yelling at the plebs to turn down the heating and air conditioning to stick it to Putin and cheering mild winters like we’re living in the dark ages. Draghi also said that the EU needs another €800 billion ($890 billion), which is about 4.5% of the entire bloc’s GDP, just to be able to stay globally competitive. And that competitiveness can only be achieved by thoroughly unscrewing everything they screwed up over the past two and a half years through self-inflicted idiocy in the interests of impressing their girlfriend Vladimir Zelensky (aka president of Ukraine).

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They made some Baltic Lunatic the EU’s new defense commissioner.

EU Leadership Urges Europe To Be Ready To Fight Russia In 6-8 Years (ZH)

NATO’s tiny Baltic states have continued to be among the most hawkish within the alliance when it comes to ‘confronting Russia’ and making war plans. One Lithuanian official is making headlines for saying that eventual NATO war with Russia is inevitable, and that Europe must begin preparing now. Andrius Kubilius, a former Lithuanian prime minister and the EU’s new defense commissioner, has told Reuters that Europe must prepare to go to war with Russia withing the next six to eight years. “Defense ministers and NATO generals agree that Vladimir Putin could be ready for confrontation with NATO and the EU in 6-8 years,” Kubilius said in his capacity as the European Union’s first-ever Defense Commissioner. “If we take these assessments seriously, then that is the time for us to properly prepare, and it is a short one. This means we have to take quick decisions, and ambitious decisions,” he added.

Kubilius’ appointment is seen as an indicator that the EU is getting more serious about war-spending as a bloc, though EU leadership has no decision-making capacity when it comes to NATO. Apparently he’s unconcerned with the dangers of nuclear-armed confrontation. Russia has said it would deploy nuclear weapons if its territory and population faces existential threat of annihilation. Kubilius described further in his statement, “The European Union won’t have defense plans or military leadership, like NATO does — but the European Union has instruments to get larger financing, which NATO doesn’t.” He has called for a total investment of a gargantuan sum: 500 billion euros in the coming years in order to ramp-up the readiness of European militaries.

European Parliament has recently passed a largely symbolic resolution approving the Zelensky government’s use of long-range weapons to attack inside Russia. The head of Russia’s State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, has responded by saying “What the European Parliament is calling for leads to a world war using nuclear weapons.” Thinks looking bleak: A newly-created EU leadership position and the very first directive issued relates to future war with Russia… Clearly peace is on the minds of few. The only way to avoid escalation leading to nuclear-armed showdown in the heart of Europe is the negotiating table, but both Moscow and Kiev have of late issued statements denying that they are even close to sitting down together to seek settlement or ceasefire.

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Better not get into a fight. Unwinnable.

The DEI Trojan Horse Has Undermined US Military (Sp.)

The US military is facing what has been characterized as its worst recruitment, morale, and public trust crisis in modern history. Here’s what the Biden administration’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has to do with it. An analysis of a trove of internal documents by The Daily Caller has revealed that the US Air Force has been excluding white male applicants from its popular Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program in favor of minorities. Highlighting the Biden administration’s obsession with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), the prejudice reflects a broader push by Washington’s liberal establishment to turn Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote about not judging people “by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” on its head. Team Biden went to work on DEI and “equity” (not to be confused with “equality”) guidelines for the military immediately after stepping into office, firing off three key executive orders in January 2021, including:

EO 13985: “Advancing Racial Equality and Support for Undeserving Communities Through the Federal Government” (including the military). EO 13988: “Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender-Identity or Sexual Orientation.” EO 14004: “Enabling All Qualified Americans to Serve Their Country in Uniform” – aimed at easing transgender individuals’ ability to serve. Together with the June 2021 EO 14035 on “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce,” the trio of directives kicked off a fundamental transformation of the military, sparking a series of bizarre scandals and leading to an unprecedented drop in readiness and morale:

In 2021, the Air Force and Navy faced widespread derision after rolling out maternity flight suits, with Tucker Carlson calling the move a “mockery of the US military,” and highlighting the absurdity of having “pregnant women…fight[ing] our wars.” In June 2023, facing an outcry from conservative lawmakers, the military banned drag shows on base, deeming them “inconsistent with regulations regarding the use of resources,” with DoD spokespeople scrambling to assure that “the Department does not fund drag shows or drag activities.” In October 2023, the advocacy group which won a historic Supreme Court case against race-conscious admissions to US universities brought cases against West Point and the US Naval Academy on grounds of DEI-based bias. The Supreme Court binned the West Point case in February 2024, with the Naval Academy’s affirmative action trial kicking off this past week.

The staggering costs of Pentagon DEI initiatives has also garnered considerable attention and criticism, with spending jumping from $68 million in 2022, to $86.5 million in 2023, and $114.7 million in 2024. The funds provide for things like mandatory diversity training and the hiring of onsite “diversity officers” to ensure compliance with DEI regulations. The Biden Pentagon has been hailed as the most diverse in history, with racial and sexual minorities receiving a host of top jobs, from a proud lesbian tapped to serve as Air Force under secretary, to a transgender assistant secretary of defense, to Lloyd Austin – the Pentagon’s first black chief. But these DEI “milestones” have not exactly helped the military achieve its goals over the past four tumultuous years, with the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and the Navy’s impotence against the Houthis from January 2024 on showing that more diversity does not mean more won battles.

In fact, the DEI seems to have made things worse, with the military facing an unprecedented “crisis of recruitment, trust, and spending,” as a Newsweek piece recently put it, forcing some observers and lawmakers on Capitol Hill to consider returning the draft, or offering immigrants citizenship in exchange for service amid recruitment numbers dropping between 20-40%, public trust in the military plummeting from 73% in 2019 to 60% today, and morale and readiness described as being among the lowest since World War II. DEI, combined with other Biden policies aimed at the military, including mandatory COVID shots, have been blamed for the crisis.

Read more …

Only one opinion allowed.

TikTok Wipes Out Sputnik Accounts (Sp.)

The US Department of the Treasury issued a statement on September 4 announcing sanctions against Sputnik’s parent media group Rossiya Segodnya, RIA Novosti, RT, Sputnik, and Ruptly. The sanctions also targeted Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of Rossiya Segodnya, and a number of other senior executives. On the morning of September 21, the video-sharing platform TikTok removed the Sputnik International account of the Sputnik news network, just days after the US announced new sanctions targeting Russian media. TikTok has not yet commented on the development.

TikTok, which is part of the Chinese company ByteDance, has been under intense pressure from US authorities in recent months. In April, US President Joe Biden signed into law a bill passed by Congress that would ban TikTok in the United States if it refuses to divest from its Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance. TikTok and ByteDance have since challenged the measure in court. Earlier this month, the US State Department tightened the operating conditions of Rossiya Segodnya and its subsidiaries, designating them as “foreign missions.”

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“Israel’s actions signal a new level of risk to global trade, where civilian products may be tampered with for political or military advantage. What was once a matter of state-to-state conflict is now a threat to individual households.”

No One Is Safe: The Global Threat of Israel’s Weaponized Pagers (Sweidan)

Israel’s coordinated attacks on Lebanon, marked by the near-simultaneous explosion of thousands of pager and walkie-talkie devices over two days, resulted in the deaths of at least 37 people, including children, and left thousands severely wounded. This brutal terrorist attack should serve as a dire warning to the world: a stark reminder that the occupation state’s criminal actions know no limits, indiscriminately targeting those who challenge its interests, or those of its western allies. In the wake of this aggression, who can guarantee that Israeli exports to other countries won’t be weaponized in future conflicts? The “pager attack” serves as yet more evidence that Israel poses a global threat, ushering in a dangerous, dystopian new era in which civilians are no longer safe, even in their own homes. When analyzing the pager detonations from a legal standpoint, it becomes clear that Israel’s killing spree in Lebanon this week lies somewhere between a war crime and an act of terrorism.

The legal classification depends on the current state of affairs between Lebanon and Israel. If Lebanon is considered to be at war with Israel, the targeting of civilians — non-combatants — through the bombing of pagers blatantly violates international laws of warfare, including the Geneva Conventions. Article 51 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions (1949) strictly prohibits indiscriminate attacks on civilians, and Article 85 lists attacks on civilians as grave breaches that amount to war crimes. In this case, we must identify who qualifies as a “combatant” under international humanitarian law. A combatant is defined as someone under military command, wearing a distinguishable uniform and openly carrying weapons. Without these markers, those targeted in the pager attack are considered civilians under international law. Additionally, the attack violates the principles of distinction and proportionality, fundamental tenets of international humanitarian law.

The principle of distinction mandates that combatants must be differentiated from civilians — a rule clearly ignored in Israel’s attacks, evidenced by the deaths of children. The principle of proportionality prohibits attacks where the harm to civilians is excessive compared to the military advantage gained. In this instance, the minimal military impact pales in comparison to the devastating toll on civilians, including the psychological and moral damage inflicted. Therefore, Israel’s adoption of a strategy of indiscriminate violence during its recent aggression against Lebanon is a war crime. The Guardian notes that half a century after the Second World War, a global treaty — to which Israel is a signatory — came into force, which “prohibited in all circumstances to use booby-traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects that are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material.”

However, if we consider that Lebanon is not in a formal state of war with Israel, the aggression falls under a different legal classification: terrorism. According to the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings (1997), Israel’s actions can be categorized as a “terrorist bombing.” The use of civilian devices, like pagers, in non-military zones with the intent to spread fear aligns with the convention’s definition of terrorism, which criminalizes the unlawful use of explosives to target civilians or infrastructure with the intent to intimidate populations or coerce governments.

The UN General Assembly Declaration on Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism (1994) defines terrorism as any act aimed at causing death or serious bodily harm to civilians for the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or international organization to act. Accordingly, the pager bombings were intended to intimidate the Lebanese and the resistance or force them to make concessions, which is consistent with the definition of terrorism under customary international law. Yesterday, Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Petra De Sutter condemned the “massive terrorist attack” in Lebanon and Syria, while Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote in a statement that the attack “violates international human rights law, and, to the extent applicable, international humanitarian law.”

Israel’s pager bombing has also sparked global concerns about the security of international supply chains. If Israel has indeed begun weaponizing civilian devices through third parties in other countries, this raises the terrifying prospect that supply chains once thought to be safe could be compromised at any time. In an interview with India Today TV, a technologist expressed concern that Israel’s actions could lead to similar risks in other countries, creating the possibility of booby-trapped electronics infiltrating homes worldwide. The implications are profound: Israel’s actions signal a new level of risk to global trade, where civilian products may be tampered with for political or military advantage. What was once a matter of state-to-state conflict is now a threat to individual households.

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In 1990, the CIA were sure Putin was -literally- their man.

When Vladimir Putin Was Pootie-Poot (Adam Dick)

United Sates President Joe Biden has spent most of his presidency refusing to talk with Russia President Vladimir Putin. This is despite — or maybe because of — the fact that such discourse could have led to an agreement ending the US government’s proxy war against Russia. Instead of talking out a resolution to the fighting, Biden has kept pumping dollars, weapons, and intelligence to the Ukraine government, resulting in a rising death toll and expanding war. Also advanced has been the risk of drawing the US and Russia directly into a war against each other that could go nuclear. Still, Biden will not pick up the phone or fly on a plane to talk things over with the president of Russia. “I have no good reason to talk to Putin right now,” said Biden on July 11, 2024 in response to a reporter’s question at one of Biden’s rare press conferences.

We know Biden loves his vacation time, but, really, isn’t ending the Ukraine War and preventing its further escalation a good enough reason to start chatting with Putin? How about putting in a little effort to give peace a chance? Long, long ago, during the presidency of George W. Bush, a US president not only regularly talked with Putin, including in in-person meetings, he even had an affectionate nickname for the Russia president. For Bush, Putin was Pootie-Poot. How things have changed. Not every American president before Biden had a cute nickname for counterparts among the long line of Russia leaders, and Soviet leaders during the decades when Russia was subsumed in the Soviet Union.

Yet, they all were willing to talk. This includes Ronald Reagan who called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and pushed for increased US military spending to counter what he presented as a Soviet threat. Reagan met with and kept in regular contact with Soviet leader Michail Gorbachev, succeeding in putting in place arms control deals between the nations. Other US presidents, while directly and by proxy militarily countering the “red spread” and “Soviet expansion,” kept in communication with Soviet leaders. They wanted to be dedicated cold warriors while minimizing the risk of outright war between the US and Soviet Union. Biden should give Putin a call. And when Biden makes that call, why not give Putin a nice nickname too? Doing this may run counter to Biden’s nature, but it could be the first step down the path to peace. Unfortunately, there is little indication that seeking peace is even a small component of the Biden administration’s agenda.

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“The difference between us and the others in general is that we speak honestly and openly about this issue..”

All of Europe Does Business With Russia – Hungary (RT)

A significant number of companies in the EU continue to discreetly do business with Russia despite the bloc’s sanctions, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said. “Here I would like to disappoint the idealists, as the situation is that everyone in Europe is doing this,” Szijjarto said in Budapest on Friday.“ The difference between us and the others in general is that we speak honestly and openly about this issue. All of Europe does business with the Russians, but some deny this; we don’t need that.” Szijjarto added that Hungary does not agree with the sanctions, but since this is EU policy, Budapest respects them. Hungary typically vetoes specific EU proposals if they seriously harm national interests, he said, adding that developing economic cooperation with Russia is one of those interests.

The EU imposed sanctions on Moscow in 2014, and expanded them after the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022. The main targets are high-value sectors of the Russian economy, including energy, finance, and trade. Hungary has long been at odds with the EU over its approach to the Ukraine conflict and its sanctions policy towards Moscow. This makes it difficult for the EU to agree on new restrictions, Euractiv reported in August, citing diplomatic sources. Many experts in both Russia and the West have warned that unilateral sanctions bring more harm to the countries that impose them than to Russia itself. EU officials have also acknowledged that Moscow has been successful in sidestepping the restrictions. In June, Finance Ministry data showed that Russian budget revenues from oil and gas soared by 73.5% in January-May this year, compared to the first five months of 2023.

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“Long-term deals are expected to help avoid price swings and provide India with steady access to Russian oil at a lower price..”

Indian State Oil Refiners Seeking Long-term Deals With Russia – Media (RT)

India’s state-owned oil refiners are in talks with Russia about clinching long-term supply deals, the news outlet Business Standard reported this week, citing sources at the country’s Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. Agreements could reportedly be sealed as soon as next April when the new fiscal year starts. India, the world’s third-largest consumer of crude oil, depends on imports for up to 85% of its needs. Russia is India’s top oil supplier, and New Delhi has often noted that Moscow has been instrumental in ensuring the nation’s energy security. Nevertheless, while India’s private refiners already have annual deals for Russian oil supplies, the state companies have tended to buy it in the spot markets, reserving long-term contracts for sources from the Middle East. According to the ministry’s sources, however, the high volatility in spot prices has rendered this arrangement no longer attractive for the state refiners.

Long-term deals are expected to help avoid price swings and provide India with steady access to Russian oil at a lower price. India stepped up purchases of Russian crude in 2022 shortly after the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict and the first rounds of Western sanctions on Moscow. New Delhi has taken advantage of the discounts Moscow offered on its oil after the latter effectively lost its traditional buyers in the West. Last month, India even overtook China as the largest buyer of Russian crude. Ramping-up purchases of Russian oil not only helped India bolster its domestic energy security, but made it one of the leading exporters of petrochemicals to Europe. India’s exports of refined oil products to European countries jumped by 2,539 times since 2018, The Print reported earlier this month, citing data from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

Western states have been pressuring India to stop buying Russian oil, but New Delhi has remained adamant that it would continue to do so. Indian officials have also argued on more than one occasion that the decision to buy Russian oil has helped prevent a global energy crisis. In an interview with RT in July, India’s minister of petroleum and natural gas, Hardeep Singh Puri, stated that without Russian oil on the market, global prices would have hit $250-300 per barrel.

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Nobody seems to know what she is busy with.

Harris ‘Too Busy’ To Talk To Media – Adviser (RT)

US Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t given many media interviews because “she’s a very busy person,” one of her campaign advisers, Keisha Lance-Bottoms, has told CNN. Even liberal pundits have criticized Harris for dodging the spotlight. In the two months since she announced her presidential campaign, Harris and running mate Tim Walz have given a total of seven sit-down interviews, while former President Donald Trump and running mate J.D. Vance have given 70 interviews and press conferences, according to a tally compiled by Axios this week. When conversations with partisan allies – for instance Trump’s live chat with X owner Elon Musk – are counted, the former president pulls even further ahead of Harris, who has largely stuck to scripted rallies to reach voters. Asked why Harris is not doing more interviews, Lance-Bottoms told CNN on Friday that “we would love to see her sit down every single day with CNN and do interviews, but it’s that she’s a very busy person.”

“She’s the vice president as well as a candidate,” Lance-Bottoms continued, reiterating that Harris is simply “too busy” to match Trump’s media schedule. Harris has come under fire from the New York Times for avoiding unscripted appearances, while CNN commentator Scott Jennings hammered the vice president on Friday for deliberately avoiding “hostile media.” The night before, Harris spoke at length to TV host Oprah Winfrey, although the interview was friendly and featured a host of Harrris’ celebrity supporters, including Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lopez, Julia Roberts, Chris Rock, and Ben Stiller. Harris’ campaign believes that “limiting interactions with the press is the right strategy – even if it frustrates reporters,” Axios reported, citing sources close to the campaign. According to a recent New York Times/Siena poll, 31% of voters feel that they don’t know enough about Harris, while only 12% are unsure who Trump is or where he stands on key issues.

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Too many failures to be failures.

Secret Service Allowed ‘Multiple Failures’ Before Trump Shooting – Report (RT)

Multiple “operational and communications failures” by the US Secret Service allowed a gunman to open fire on former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally in July, an internal review has found. Trump narrowly avoided death while speaking to a crowd in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July, when a bullet fired from around 150m away grazed his ear. The gunman, a 21-year-old named Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired from a rooftop that had apparently been left unprotected by the Secret Service, killing one rally goer and injuring two others before he was shot dead by a sniper. In the aftermath of the incident, it emerged that local police had spotted Crooks using a range-finder an hour before he opened fire and passed a photo on to Secret Service agents. The agents noticed the gunman on the roof 20 minutes before the incident, but took no action until the first shots rang out.

In a preliminary report released on Friday, the Secret Service stressed that local police were responsible for securing the roof in question. However, the report stated, the officers covering this building had no contact with the Secret Service. Some information about the shooter relayed by local law enforcement never made it to the Secret Service, the report stated, blaming a lack of radio communication between the various agencies working at the rally site. As a result, information about Crooks’ appearance and movements had to be relayed by chains of phone calls and text messages, it claimed. Shortly before the rally began, Crooks was able to fly a camera-equipped drone over the site without being stopped or questioned. The Secret Service report stated that while the agency deployed a counter-drone team to the site, “there were some technical difficulties” with their equipment.

Regarding the choice of venue, the report stated that a Secret Service team had visited the site beforehand and noted that the line of sight between the rooftop and the stage where Trump spoke could pose a “challenge.” However, “the security measures to alleviate these concerns were not carried out.” The internal investigation is still ongoing, and a final report is expected in the coming weeks. While much of Friday’s summary appeared to pass blame on to local law enforcement, Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe told reporters that the agency nevertheless needs “a shift in paradigm in how we conduct our protective operations.” Rowe’s predecessor, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned ten days after the shooting. Several other high-ranking agents were placed on leave during the investigation.

Trump survived another attempt on his life earlier this month, when a pro-Ukraine activist aimed a rifle at the former president at one of his golf courses in Florida. Secret Service agents fired several shots at the man and arrested him after he fled the scene. Republican Representative Matt Gaetz claimed earlier this week that some GOP lawmakers believe there is a “mole inside the Secret Service providing information about points of vulnerability” to would-be assassins.

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“Recent surveys indicate that healthcare is among the top priorities for voters in the November presidential election..”

America’s Healthcare Dead Last in Rich Nation Rankings (Sp.)

The percentage of Americans able to access quality healthcare hit a new low of 55% in 2024, according to the West Health-Gallup Healthcare Affordability Index. Affordability of healthcare has become one of the top issues ahead of the 2024 US presidential election. The US healthcare system continues to lag far behind other high-income countries, an analysis by the Commonwealth Fund shows. It has retained its dismal ranking since 2004, when the nonprofit launched its surveys. Ten nations, including Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US, were compared on healthcare system aspects such as access, care process, administrative efficiency, equity, and health outcomes. The US showed the worst overall performance despite spending more per capita on healthcare than any other nation (16% of its GDP in 2022).

It ranked lowest in both accessibility and healthcare outcomes, with 26 million Americans having no insurance, and a quarter of the working age population underinsured. As inflation fuels costs, over 40% of Americans spent at least $1,000 on healthcare out-of-pocket last year, per the survey. At 77.5 years, US life expectancy is over four years below the 10-country average (the same as sanction-riddled Iran). The US has the highest rates of preventable and treatable deaths for all ages. Over 107,000 people died from overdoses in 2023 amid a raging substance abuse crisis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were 43,000 gun-related deaths in 2023, according to a report by the National Institute of Health Care Management. Recent surveys indicate that healthcare is among the top priorities for voters in the November presidential election.

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“..children are meant to play, to be loved, to be accepted and protected..”

Words You Can’t Ignore (Max Jones)

A frightened little girl trembles and screams “in terror after mistaking thunder for an Israeli airstrike.” – Times of Gaza. Most of the people — and especially the children — who survive this genocidal slaughter will forever be traumatized. Children are meant to play, to be loved, to be accepted and protected. The children of Gaza will never get to be children. Most will never get to be adults either. Like this little girl, they will be stuck in the past, unable to experience something as simple as rainfall and thunder. When the rain falls and the thunder booms, their scars will take them back to their terror — the only thing that once separated them from the explosions destroying their homes, the blood and gore of their friends and relatives, and the reality that at any moment they might be killed. I urge you to not look away from this poor girl — look openly enough and you will see yourself. The times you were afraid and no one was there. The times you needed someone to assure you that things would be ok, and no one did. The times you needed to be accepted.

A four-year old girl, Rahaf Ziad Abu Suweirih, died the other day in Gaza when Israeli bombs shelled her home — but the bombs did not kill her. Her little heart stopped, incapable of handling the horrors imposed upon her by Israel’s genocide. As I said above, children are meant to play, to be loved, to be accepted and protected. The children of Gaza will never get to be children. Rahaf Ziad Abu Suweirih’s body knew this so well — and thus, knew that Rahaf should never have experienced the terror, violence, and abandonment that Israel’s genocide forced her to endure — that her tiny heart spared her. Her loved ones will mourn her death. They will try to make sense of the pain they feel, and how anyone could weaponize such hatred against something so innocent. The scars her death left them will remain tender for the rest of their lives. A story true for all the survivors of Gaza. But death is not merely an inducer of pain. It is also a protectorate; a unifier. It reaches up from the deepest depths of the soul to hug the broken human when no one else can.

It takes all the fragments that the tribulations of life shatter and pieces them back together. It is death that can lift a blanket over the abandoned child, or the terrorized adult, and give them permission to rest when the world cannot. This is especially evident in Gaza, where children cannot be children. They have to be survivors. Fighters. Being a child in Gaza only makes easy prey for the hunters playing blood sport. For a child, who again, is only meant to play, to be loved, accepted and protected, this creates a living hell that they have to believe is traversable, either by themselves or the adults they look to for guidance. Of course, no one can navigate the constant and unpredictable patterns of bombs, death and terror. But for the child, what choice do they have between believing the lie that they can control something, or succumbing to death itself? The reality is that Israel creates an uninhabitable space for Gazans, a “labyrinth of death,” that no one could ever survive without the chance of luck.

[..] But protecting one’s self, and one’s children, from the bombs of genocide means denying reality and believing, in one way or another, that you still possess some control of your own fate. To survive, the victims cannot accept that they are effectively “mice in a trap.” They must create different versions of reality in which they can prevail. In other words, they must become multiple people living different fantasies — all to protect their physical self. While these different realities may protect the survivors from death, they will not cease to exist once the war is over. This will send them scrambling in search of the unity that they were forced to abandon. In fleeting moments, they will find places of refuge that unite their broken spirits. These places will tend to the wounds that their traumas left them with “treatments” of comfort and solace.

Yet in time, these places will obscure the unity they at first grant. Whether the survivor finds shelter in the fuzzy feeling of a white opiate, in a bottle of liquor, in a toxic relationship, or any other pathology that detaches them from the pain of reality, the survivor will end up mistakenly believing that they are only complete with the help of the “treatment” that temporarily soothes their pain. This lie will lead them into a new trap: one much harder to see but just as real as the “mice trap” of Gaza. Without realizing it, they will never stop searching for the person that they were never allowed to be, and they will cling to the places that offer the illusion of fulfillment.

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No. 1

 

 

GROK

 

 

Cats

 

 

Blondie
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Jenga

 

 

 

 

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Feb 112024
 


Vincent van Gogh Landscape with snow 1888

 

War With Russia Could Be Decades Long – NATO Chief (RT)
Tucker Carlson Committed Treason to Talk To Putin… and the World Loved It (SCF)
Tucker-Putin ‘History Lesson’ Shows Russian-US Friendship Possible (Sp.)
The Real Propagandists Are Those Who Dismiss Tucker-Putin Interview (Marsden)
Tucker Carlson Is A ‘Traitor’ – Boris Johnson (RT)
Boris Johnson Nears £5m In Earnings Since Leaving Office (BBC)
Tapping Frozen Russian Assets Is ‘Economic Racketeering’ – Moscow (RT)
Ukraine At Risk Of ‘Cascading Frontline Collapse’ – NYT (RT)
White House Frustration With Garland Grows (Pol.)
Germany on Edge of Ruin Thanks to Energy War Against Russia (Sp.)
Whom the Gods Would Destroy, They First Make Insane (Paul Craig Roberts)
Mail-In Ballot Fraud Study Finds Trump ‘Almost Certainly’ Won In 2020 (ET)
Jailed Imran Khan Claims Electoral Win (Cradle)
Chernobyl Wolves Have Anti-Cancer Genome (RT)
The Artist Holding Valuable Art Hostage to Protect Julian Assange (Beard)

 

 

 

 

KJP

 

 

Trump ad
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756099327141851444

 

 

Trump
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756409781625946376

 

 

Begala

 

 

 

 

Pentagon files
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756411956813082770

 

 

NATO

 

 

 

 

Watters

 

 

Tucker

 

 

 

 

He sleeps better knowing that when he dies of old age, at least there will still be a war happening.

War With Russia Could Be Decades Long – NATO Chief (RT)

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has called on the bloc’s members to increase defense production in anticipation of “a confrontation” with Russia “that could last decades.” Stoltenberg has repeatedly warned that Western economies are ill-prepared for such a conflict.With Ukraine’s counteroffensive fizzled out and Russian forces poised to capture the key Donbass stronghold of Avdeevka, media reports have for weeks highlighted the worsening shortage of men and ammunition facing Kiev. Amid warnings of “a cascading collapse along the front,” Stoltenberg told Germany’s Die Welt newspaper that NATO members must increase arms production to meet Ukraine’s demand. “We need to restore and expand our industrial base more quickly so that we can increase supplies to Ukraine and replenish our own stocks. That means switching from slow production in times of peace to fast production, as is necessary in conflicts,” he said.

NATO recently signed contracts worth $1.2 billion to produce around 220,000 155-millimeter artillery shells, bringing to more than $10 billion the amount spent by the bloc on ammo deals in the past six months. However, the latest contracts will not be fulfilled until the end of 2025, and earlier ammo pledges to Ukraine – like the million artillery shells promised by the EU – have not been met. Meanwhile, American stockpiles have been depleted by Washington’s effort to arm both Ukraine and Israel, and a $61 billion military aid package promised by the White House remains stalled in Congress.“NATO is not looking for war with Russia. But we have to prepare ourselves for a confrontation that could last decades,” Stoltenberg told Die Welt. “If [Russian President Vladimir] Putin wins in Ukraine, there is no guarantee that Russian aggression will not spread to other countries.”

Stoltenberg is one of multiple Western political and military leaders to predict a looming Russian attack on the bloc. Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen, Swedish General Micael Biden, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, and British Defense Minister Grant Shapps have all stated in recent weeks that such a conflict could break out in as little as three years. Aside from the fact that attacking NATO territory would enter Russia into a war with the entire alliance, Russian officials have repeatedly stressed that Moscow has no geopolitical, economic, or military interests in Poland or the Baltic states.

“It is absolutely out of the question,” Putin told American journalist Tucker Carlson earlier this week. “You just don’t have to be any kind of analyst, it goes against common sense to get involved in some kind of global war. And a global war will bring all of humanity to the brink of destruction. It’s obvious.” Putin argued that Western leaders are “trying to intimidate their own population with an imaginary Russian threat.” These predictions, he said, “are just horror stories for people in the street in order to extort additional money from US taxpayers and European taxpayers” to keep weapons and ammo flowing to Ukraine.

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“..the relentless allocation of public money to prop up a corrupt regime in Kiev..”

Tucker Carlson Committed Treason to Talk To Putin… and the World Loved It (SCF)

The Western states and their media can deprecate Russia’s perspective as much as they like but there is such a thing as historical truth. Most people around the world, including informed American scholars like John Mearsheimer, diplomats like Jack Matlock, and commentators like Jeffrey Sachs, know that the conflict in Ukraine has a much greater dimension than the Western propagandistic media would try to purvey. There is such a thing as the ring of truth. Most people, even those who have been formerly benighted by misinformation, generally appreciate a version of history that accords with the facts and rational analysis. Western politicians and media cannot deliver such an edifying account because they have systematically lied about and distorted the causes of conflict in Ukraine and more generally on the relations between the West and Russia. Putin went a long way towards setting the record straight in his interview with Tucker Carlson this week. It was by no means the first time that the Russian leader had done so.

For those who follow the Ukraine conflict outside of the confines of Western media propaganda, what Putin said would have been quite familiar. The powerful effect of Carlson’s interview is that he succeeded in bringing an important perspective to a wider American and Western audience who regrettably have been up to now badly misinformed by Western media. Already, growing numbers of American and European citizens have become wary and critical of the futile war in Ukraine and the relentless allocation of public money to prop up a corrupt regime in Kiev. Carlson deserves immense credit for having the courage and integrity to seek out a perspective that sheds light not just on why there is a bloody conflict in Ukraine but also on the corruption that is endemic in the Western states: the illusions of independent journalism, free speech, and promoting democracy.

Sooner or later, people will realize that the United States and its European vassals are nothing but rogue states whose imperialist crimes know no bounds. The Western media corporate machine plays a vital part in the cover-up of imperial crimes, not just in Ukraine, but also currently in Syria, Gaza, Yemen, Iraq, and beyond. Any lifting of the veil on this naked Western despotism must be shut down immediately. Hence the furious reaction to Carlson’s interview. But it’s too late. The truth is out. The escaping truth will have inevitable political and historical consequences. In regard just to Ukraine, the U.S.-led NATO proxy war is no longer tenable. Elitist Western regimes must be – and will be – held to account for the fueling of this war and the vast squandering and theft of public money to pursue their secretive imperialist interests.

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“..Why do we want to be in a state of internal friction and even war with this country? The only answer I come to is money.”

Tucker-Putin ‘History Lesson’ Shows Russian-US Friendship Possible (Sp.)

On Thursday, US Journalist and former Fox News Contributor Tucker Carlson interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin, the first such interview by a Western journalist since Russia launched its special operation in Ukraine. One controversial aspect of the interview was Putin’s insistence on starting with an extensive summary of the histories of Russia and Ukraine that lasted for nearly half an hour at the start of the interview. Many observers criticized the decision, fearing that it would cause those with shorter attention spans to tune out the interview before Putin addressed his decision to launch the special operation. Rick Sanchez, an American journalist, former anchor for CNN and current host of two shows on RT, told Sputnik’s Fault Lines that the history lesson was a necessary aspect of the interview to show Americans that the conflict in Ukraine did not start in February 2022 and that the US and Russia could have struck up a partnership in the wake of the Cold War.

“The word that comes to mind is necessary,” Sanchez said of the interview. “For some damn reason in this country, we have decided that we will allow our government officials, our State Department, oftentimes, people who aren’t even elected, to determine whom we are allowed to hear and whom we are allowed to listen to.” Sanchez argued that the segment of the interview that focused on the fall of the Soviet Union and Putin’s rise to the Presidency roughly a decade later illustrated how the United States rebuffed his overtures of friendship, despite verbal support from Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. “It almost seems as you listen to the man, that we have done everything possible to make sure Russia is not our friend. Even when they came to us offering to embrace and make friendship,” Sanchez explained. ”One can’t help but wonder why… Why do we want to be in a state of internal friction and even war with this country? The only answer I come to is money.”

On the subject of whether the history lesson segment went on too long, Sanchez agreed it might have been off-putting to Americans used to cable news and two-and-a-half minute interviews but noted that is not part of Russian culture and Putin likely wanted to provide the context Americans have been lacking in the conflict. “I think Putin went in saying, ‘I’ve got a long and important story to tell, and it begins with A [and] ends with Z.’ He was hell-bent on taking him through that,” Sanchez explained, noting that Putin’s knowledge of history and geopolitics and his ability to recall them was impressive to watch. “Say what you will about [Putin], you’re allowed to hate him, you’re still allowed to be mad at him about Ukraine or about anything else, but you can’t walk away from that interview and say ‘oh, that guy’s an idiot.’”

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“..might initiate a, quote, ‘surprise attack’” on Russia. “I didn’t say that,” Putin interjected. “Are we having a talk show or a serious conversation?”

The Real Propagandists Are Those Who Dismiss Tucker-Putin Interview (Marsden)

American establishment media spent the days in the run-up to Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin pre-judging it as propaganda, and soliciting the opinions of establishment figures, like former US secretary of state, first lady, and presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, who dismissed Carlson a “useful idiot.” All this before they even had the slightest notion of the interview’s content. All they knew was that Putin would have an opportunity to speak, and that ever since Carlson left Fox News and turned independent, there wasn’t any obvious establishment figure to babysit him or control what went out. Worse, it would air on the X platform (formerly Twitter) owned by Elon Musk, who describes himself as a “free speech absolutist.” So it did not bode well for the kind of propagandistic framing that the Western establishment enjoys when it comes to locking down narratives under the guise of fighting a war on fake news.

The fact that journalists balked at the very notion of Carlson interviewing Putin reeked of professional jealousy. There isn’t a credible journalist out there who wouldn’t leap at the same opportunity if given the chance. Which is why, as journalists from CNN and the BBC confirmed, they’d long sought their own interviews with Putin — unsuccessfully. Presumably, Carlson’s format, audience reach, and freedom from establishment media constraints were appealing enough to land him the opportunity. Good for him. And for the journalistic record that can only benefit from any and all contributions. It’s not like other media outlets don’t also benefit from their Western colleagues questioning Putin. I experienced this myself when invited to ask a question during one of Putin’s marathon press conferences. For the record, no one had any clue what I’d be asking.

Neither did I, actually, as about five or six different themes suddenly went on spin cycle in my mind as I stood to speak. My question ultimately ended up being what Putin thinks about then President Donald Trump’s assertion that Islamic State had been defeated in Syria — Trump’s rationale for announcing the withdrawal of American troops just the day before. Putin’s response, in agreeing with Trump’s assessment, was newsworthy, and was quickly picked up by CNN and other Western media. The difference between me and Carlson? No competitors had to credit me as the source of the question. So the information Putin provided could safely be used without having to credit a “competitor” and denting any egos, as is often the case in press conferences. Not so with exclusive interviews.

Focusing on Carlson as some kind of flawed messenger serves as a convenient pretext for ignoring critical information and analysis. The fact that some journalists may think that Carlson’s questioning or approach was misguided — or that he didn’t push back enough for their tastes — doesn’t mean that they can’t subsequently take what Putin said and analyze it themselves. Every bit of information, analysis, or interview of any world leader is a valuable contribution. Litmus tests have no place in objective, impartial journalism. Many of those who criticize Carlson are the same ones who routinely search the Wikileaks database for leaked and dumped classified information to flesh out their own stories about various political issues and events that have since materialized — all while refusing to acknowledge that the publisher, Julian Assange, is as much of a journalist as they are.

Carlson’s flaws arguably even served the American and global public. Much like Carlson erroneously claimed prior to the interview that other journalists couldn’t be bothered to interview Putin before he came along, he also played fast and loose with his very first question to the Russian president, stating that Putin said in his February 22, 2022, national address, at the onset of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, that he “had come to the conclusion that the United States, through NATO, might initiate a, quote, ‘surprise attack’” on Russia. “I didn’t say that,” Putin interjected. “Are we having a talk show or a serious conversation?” Carlson’s lack of precision, sounding like a guy who thought he was having a chit-chat with another dude over beers in a bar, created an opportunity for Putin to launch a history lesson going back 2,000 years on how the Ukraine conflict came about.

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“..Nothing and no one could have stopped those lion-hearted Ukrainians from fighting for their country – and nothing will..”

Tucker Carlson Is A ‘Traitor’ – Boris Johnson (RT)

Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has denounced journalist Tucker Carlson as a “traitor” for failing to antagonize President Vladimir Putin during his interview with the Russian leader in a video posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday. “We must not fall for this tissue of lies, above all the notion that Putin is somehow fated to succeed in Ukraine,” Johnson said. “On the contrary, he is doomed to fail.” The British politician, who resigned in disgrace in 2022 amid mounting scandals regarding his government’s flouting of its own Covid-19 rules, implored his followers to read the lengthy condemnation of Carlson’s sit-down with the Russian leader he penned for the Daily Mail. Johnson’s op-ed repeatedly invoked Adolf Hitler, insisting that Carlson was being “a traitor to journalism” by playing “Dictaphone to the dictator.”

The Russian president’s extended explanation of the history of Ukraine was merely a “mixture of semi-masticated Wikipedia and outright falsehood” – insisting Putin “demolished his own thesis” by “reckless and criminal violence” against Ukraine. Carlson had fallen down on the job by not asking “tough questions” or taking him to task “for the torture, the rapes, the blowing up of kindergartens” supposedly committed by the Russian military – atrocities often invoked by Ukraine’s supporters in the West in the absence of evidence. Johnson especially took issue with what he called the “ludicrous suggestion that the UK government persuaded the Ukrainians to fight on, rather than surrender to Putin’s tender mercies, in the spring of 2022,” claiming that “every member of the Ukrainian government will confirm” that it was Kiev that made the decision to tear up the peace treaty.“ Nothing and no one could have stopped those lion-hearted Ukrainians from fighting for their country – and nothing will,” he wrote.

He likened Carlson’s interview to the American newspapers that published sympathetic interviews with Hitler, insisting Putin was “exactly like” the Nazi bogeyman because he discoursed at length about “the alleged injustices suffered by speakers of his native tongue.” Johnson infamously pressured Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky not to accept what he called a “bad peace deal” in May of 2022, insisting that negotiating with Putin was the equivalent of reasoning with “a crocodile when it’s got your leg in its jaws,” given the Russians’ advances through Ukrainian territory. After successfully scuttling the negotiations, the British leader declared through a spokesperson that “the world must avoid any outcome where Putin’s unwarranted aggression appears to have paid off.” The 15-point peace deal negotiated between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul would have involved Kiev renouncing its efforts to join NATO and committing to neutrality in exchange for a withdrawal of Russian troops from parts of the country.

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“The £4.8m in earnings that Mr Johnson has declared since leaving No 10 just over five months ago is more than 50 times his yearly £84,144 MP salary..”

Boris Johnson Nears £5m In Earnings Since Leaving Office (BBC)

Boris Johnson has registered an advance payment of nearly £2.5m for speaking events, in his latest declaration of outside earnings. It brings the former prime minister’s declared income since leaving office last September to almost £4.8m. He has previously recorded nearly £1.8m in speaking fees since his departure. Mr Johnson has also registered a further £13,500 in accommodation from JCB boss Lord Bamford and his wife Carole for January and February. It brings the total value of accommodation he has registered from the couple for him and his family since leaving Downing Street to £74,000.The nearly £2.5m advance in his latest declaration is from the New York-based Harry Walker speaking agency, for an unspecified number of speeches.

It comes on top of almost £1.8m he has registered since leaving office for nine speeches delivered in the US, India, Portugal, the UK and Singapore. As well as a £510,000 advance for his political memoirs from publisher HarperCollins, he has also declared £1,943 since leaving No 10 in royalty payments for previously written books. Under ministerial rules, former ministers are not allowed to take jobs that involve influencing government for two years after leaving their post. But Mr Johnson’s latest declarations are the latest demonstration of how much former leaders can earn shortly after leaving office through book deals and on the lucrative speaking circuit. The £4.8m in earnings that Mr Johnson has declared since leaving No 10 just over five months ago is more than 50 times his yearly £84,144 MP salary.

A company set up to support his activities as a former PM has also received £1m from crypto currency investor Christopher Harborne. Mr Harborne has previously donated more than £15m to the Conservatives, the Brexit Party, and Reform UK. Mr Johnson was forced to resign by his ministers last July after a series of controversies prompted a mass walk-out among his ministers. He attempted a comeback after his successor, Liz Truss, quit within weeks of taking office last September. But despite obtaining enough support from Tory MPs to run in the contest to replace her, he ultimately stood aside, clearing the way for Rishi Sunak to become prime minister in October.

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“..EU members “clearly do not want to continue paying for the doomed ‘Ukrainian project’ from their own wallets..”

Tapping Frozen Russian Assets Is ‘Economic Racketeering’ – Moscow (RT)

The EU’s plan to seize the profits from frozen Russian assets and hand them over to Ukraine would be a gross violation of international law, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow has told RIA Novosti. Belgium-based clearing house Euroclear, which holds an estimated €196.6 billion ($211 billion) in Russian assets, accumulated nearly €4.4 billion in interest from funds in sanctioned Russian accounts last year. EU ambassadors recently agreed to use the profits to support Ukraine. The proposal has yet to be approved by the European Council and would reportedly stop short of touching the assets themselves. Russia, however, regards any actions against its sovereign assets and those belonging to its citizens and companies “as economic racketeering on the part of the collective West,” the Foreign Ministry stated on Saturday.

“[The EU’s] invention of openly fraudulent schemes for the seizure of income from Russian assets is dictated by the need to create the illusion of legitimacy over attacks on our property and thereby camouflage what is in fact an outright theft,” the ministry added. It claimed that EU members “clearly do not want to continue paying for the doomed ‘Ukrainian project’ from their own wallets,” which is “why they are so tempted by the idea of spending funds stolen from our country to support the Zelensky regime.”

Last week, the EU agreed on a €50 billion aid package for Kiev over the next four years, although the decision was reached only after Hungary withdrew its veto amid pressure from Brussels. Meanwhile, a $60 billion US aid package for Ukraine has stalled in Congress, as Washington pushes for the confiscation of Russian assets to secure alternative funding. In total, the US and its allies have frozen an estimated $300 billion in Russian assets and reserves since the start of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Moscow has condemned the measures, warning of tit-for-tat responses and lawsuits.

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“..Kiev only has enough air defense assets to last until March..”

Ukraine At Risk Of ‘Cascading Frontline Collapse’ – NYT (RT)

Ukraine’s worsening lack of ammunition and battle fatigue will most likely force Kiev to abandon its current frontline positions unless it receives new aid from the West, the New York Times reported on Friday. The paper said that Ukrainian defenses near the key stronghold of Avdeevka in Russia’s Donetsk Region are reeling under relentless attacks, and Kiev’s problems extend beyond one single battle. Ukrainian troops, the NYT added, are exhausted and suffer from a lack of weapons and ammunition, especially with regard to air defense systems. According to unnamed US officials interviewed by the outlet, Kiev only has enough air defense assets to last until March, unless it receives new shipments. This is far from certain, as the US – Ukraine’s main backer – is locked in congressional gridlock over President Joe Biden’s request to approve a $118 billion security bill, $60 billion of which is earmarked for Kiev.

Many Republicans have been reluctant to support the measure, claiming it does too little to improve security on the border with Mexico. Western officials believe that without US aid, “a cascading collapse along the front is a real possibility” in 2024, the article says. Nevertheless, they reportedly estimate that it will take at least a couple of months for the shortages to take a toll. According to analysts, by March, Ukraine could be struggling to carry out local counterattacks, and by summer, Kiev could find it difficult to repel Russian assaults. Without continued US support, NYT sources say “it’s hard to see how Ukraine will be able to maintain its current positions on the battlefield.”

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly complained of a shortage of ammunition, calling it “a very real and pressing problem.” Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported on Friday, citing a senior EU official, that “It will not be easy for the Europeans to substitute for the US” in terms of military assistance. Last year, the EU announced an ambitious plan to provide Ukraine with 1 million shells by the spring of 2024. However, the bloc has struggled to deliver on this pledge, with top EU diplomat Josep Borrell saying Kiev will receive only half of that amount by March. Russia has repeatedly condemned Western arms shipments to Ukraine, warning that they will only prolong the conflict without changing the ultimate outcome.

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“..had Garland moved sooner in his investigation into former President Donald Trump’s election interference, a trial may already be underway or even have concluded..”

White House Frustration With Garland Grows (Pol.)

Joe Biden has told aides and outside advisers that Attorney General Merrick Garland did not do enough to rein in a special counsel report stating that the president had diminished mental faculties, according to two people close to the president, as White House frustration with the head of the Justice Department grows. The report from special counsel Robert Hur ultimately cleared Biden of any charges stemming from his handling of classified documents that were found at Biden’s think tank and his home. But Hur’s explanation for not bringing charges — that Biden would have persuaded the jury that he was a forgetful old man — upended the presidential campaign and infuriated the White House.

Biden and his closest advisers believe Hur went well beyond his purview and was gratuitous and misleading in his descriptions, according to those two people, who were granted anonymity to speak freely. And they put part of the blame on Garland, who they say should have demanded edits to Hur’s report, including around the descriptions of Biden’s faltering memory. In White House meetings, aides have questioned why Garland felt the need to appoint a special counsel in the first place, though Biden has publicly said he supported the decision. While Biden himself has not weighed in on Garland’s future, most of the president’s senior advisers do not believe that the attorney general would remain in his post for a possible second term, according to the two people.

“This has been building for a while,” said one of those people. “No one is happy”. Frustration within the White House at Garland has been growing steadily. Last year, Biden privately denounced how long the probe into his son was taking, telling aides and outside allies that he believed the stress could send Hunter Biden spiraling back into addiction, according to the same two people. And the elder Biden, the people said, told those confidants that Garland should not have eventually empowered a special counsel to look into his son, believing that he again was caving to outside pressure. In recent weeks, President Biden has grumbled to aides and advisers that had Garland moved sooner in his investigation into former President Donald Trump’s election interference, a trial may already be underway or even have concluded, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss private matters.

That trial still could take place before the election and much of the delay is owed not to Garland but to deliberate resistance put up by the former president and his team. A spokesperson for the Department of Justice declined to comment. But one former senior Justice Department official noted that some of the frustrations being directed at Garland are better directed toward the White House. The president’s team had the option to exert executive privilege over elements of Hur’s report but declined to do so. And had Garland made edits to the report, he would have had to explain those redactions to Congress.

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“I am really uncertain that we can halt this trend. Many things would have to change very quickly.”

Germany on Edge of Ruin Thanks to Energy War Against Russia (Sp.)

In 2022, Berlin dutifully followed the Biden administration’s instructions to cut Germany off from Russian gas and ramp up arms deliveries to Ukraine for NATO’s proxy war against Russia. Two years on, alarming predictions of a major economic crisis and the wholesale deindustrialization of Europe’s biggest industrial economy are coming to pass. Germany’s industrial production has dropped for the seventh-straight month, reaching negative 1.6 percent in December, from negative 0.2 percent in November, according to data released Wednesday by Germany’s national statistics office. Among the sectors most heavily affected was the chemical industry, which faced losses of a whopping 7.6 percent – its worst showing since 1995. Construction suffered a 3.4 percent decline. Business media took the data as a sign of serious problems in the German economy, with Bloomberg running a piece entitled ‘Germany’s Days as an Industrial Superpower Are Coming to an End’, and citing the energy crisis stemming from the loss of Russian energy supplies as the straw that broke the back of the declining European economic powerhouse.

“There’s not a lot of hope, if I’m honest,” Stefan Klebert, CEO of GEA Group AG, a Dusseldorf-headquartered special purpose industrial machinery company, told the outlet. “I am really uncertain that we can halt this trend. Many things would have to change very quickly.” The company Klebert manages is nearly 150 years old, surviving 20th century crises from the two world wars to the 1929 depression. Now, it and its 18,000+ employees face an uncertain future. “Despite the motivation of our employees, we have arrived at a point where we can’t export truck tires from Germany at competitive prices,” Maria Rottger, head of Northern Europe operations at French-headquartered tire-making giant Michelin, said. “If Germany can’t export competitively in the international context, the country loses one of its biggest strengths,” he noted.

Some 5,000 of Michelin’s 66,000+ European employees are based in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In late 2023, the company announced cuts of over 1,500 jobs to its German operations. Goodyear, the American tire giant, announced the closure of two plants in the country, cutting 1,750 jobs. “You don’t have to be a pessimist to say that what we’re doing at the moment won’t be enough,” Volker Trier, the foreign trade chief at Germany’s Chambers of Commerce and Industry, said. “The speed of structural change is dizzying.” Dozens of other major German businesses have been affected by the energy crisis, with European chemical giant BASF SE recently slashing 2,600 jobs, and Cologne-headquartered specialty chemicals company Lanxess AG cutting 7 percent of its German workforce.

German businesses have spent years sounding the alarm about problems with infrastructure, an aging workforce, bureaucracy, economic costs associated with the pandemic and falling investment in education and other public services. The crisis in economic ties with Russia, combined with efforts by Berlin’s transatlantic “ally” to pluck high-tech industrial manufacturers out of Germany using generous subsidies, and growing competition from China, have combined to create a perfect storm of unprecedented industrial malaise. “We are no longer competitive,” German Finance Minister Christian Lindner admitted at a business event in Frankfurt on Monday. “We are getting poorer because we have no growth. We are falling behind.”

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“All that remains of America is an insane government with nuclear weapons.”

Whom the Gods Would Destroy, They First Make Insane (Paul Craig Roberts)

The prime minister of formerly “Great Britain,” an Indian named Sunak, Scholz and Macron, the non-entities who head Washington’s puppet states of Germany and France, and the non-entities in Norway, Finland, Poland and the rest of the militarily and economically impotent puppet governments that comprise the American Empire, declare their preparation for war with Russia. What a joke! None of these territories–they are so over-run by third world immigrant-invaders that they no longer rank as countries, just territories open for the taking–have confident nationalistic populations willing to lose their lives in defense of their subservience to Washington and their domestic oppression. Can anyone seriously imagine Sweden, whose military-aged ethnic males are afraid to prevent immigrant-invaders’ rapes of ethnic Swedish women because they would be arrested for hate crimes, forming an army capable of facing Russian troops?

Or Germans for that matter, a task beyond the Wehrmacht, possibly the finest army in modern history. Or the French–a task beyond Napoleon. Certainly not the Italians, again over-run, or the Dutch lost in sexual and drug lusts. Or for that matter Americans. Americans, whose main fighting element–Southern White Males–are racially discriminated against by Biden’s black Pentagon chief, who has prevented their promotions because “there are too many white officers,” have ceased to enlist. After all, what Southern “heterosexual white supremacist racist,” as the Biden regime describes its would be recruits, wants to be denied promotion because of his race and, because of his race and “sexual preference,” be lorded over by black female commanders and homosexuals, and soon by transgendered and illegal immigrant-invaders.

I am confident that it is impossible for any Western country to be capable of fielding an army that would not be wiped out instantly by a Russian force, a Chinese force, or even by an Iranian force. The last wars that the US won were against Spain in the 1890s and against Japan in 1945. After a 20-year effort, the US military was driven out of Afghanistan by a few thousand lightly-armed Taliban, just as it was driven out of Vietnam. I regret that this statement hurts the feelings of those who thought they were fighting for something important, but they were deceived for the profits of the military/security complex and for Washington’s hubris. In the entirety of the Western World the belief system has been destroyed. The destruction of essential beliefs has been going on since the 1960s when university students began their chant “Western Civilization has to go.” Well, it is gone. All that remains of America is an insane government with nuclear weapons.

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“Over 43 percent of 2020 votes were cast by mail..”

Mail-In Ballot Fraud Study Finds Trump ‘Almost Certainly’ Won In 2020 (ET)

The Heartland Institute study tried to gauge the probable impact that fraudulent mail-in ballots cast for both then-candidate Joe Biden and his opponent, President Donald Trump, would have had on the overall 2020 election results. The study was based on data obtained from a Heartland/Rasmussen survey in December that revealed that roughly one in five mail-in voters admitted to potentially fraudulent actions in the presidential election. After the researchers carried out additional analyses of the data, they concluded that mail-in ballot fraud “significantly” impacted the 2020 presidential election. They also found that, absent the huge expansion of mail-in ballots during the pandemic, which was often done without legislative approval, President Trump would most likely have won.

“Had the 2020 election been conducted like every national election has been over the past two centuries, wherein the vast majority of voters cast ballots in-person rather than by mail, Donald Trump would have almost certainly been re-elected,” the report’s authors wrote. Over 43 percent of 2020 votes were cast by mail, the highest percentage in U.S. history. The new study examined raw data from the December survey carried out jointly between Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports, which tried to assess the level of fraudulent voting that took place in 2020. The December survey, which President Trump called “the biggest story of the year,” suggested that roughly 20 percent of mail-in voters engaged in at least one potentially fraudulent action in the 2020 election, such as voting in a state where they’re no longer permanent residents.

In the new study, Heartland analysts say that, after reviewing the raw survey data, subjecting it to additional statistical treatment and more thorough analysis, they now believe they can conclude that 28.2 percent of respondents who voted by mail committed at least one type of behavior that is “under most circumstances, illegal” and so potentially amounts to voter fraud. “This means that more than one-in-four ballots cast by mail in 2020 were likely cast fraudulently, and thus should not have been counted,” the researchers wrote. A Heartland Institute research editor and research fellow who was involved in the study explained to The Epoch Times in a telephone interview that there are narrow exceptions where a surveyed behavior may be legal, like filling out a mail-in ballot on behalf of another voter if that person is blind, illiterate, or disabled, and requests assistance. However, the research fellow, Jack McPherrin, said such cases were within the margin of error and not statistically significant.

In addition to reassessing the likely overall degree of fraudulent mail-in ballots in the 2020 election, Heartland analysts calculated the potential impact that fraudulent mail-in ballots might have produced in the six key swing states that President Trump officially lost. This, then, was used to determine the impact of potentially fraudulent mail-in ballots on the overall 2020 election result. First, the researchers analyzed the electoral results for the six swing states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—under the 28.2 percent fraudulent mail-in ballot scenario that they estimated based on the raw survey data. Then they calculated the electoral results in the six states under the different scenarios, each with a lower assumed percentage of fraudulent ballots, ranging from 28.2 percent all the way down to 1 percent. For each of the 29 scenarios that they assessed, the researchers calculated the estimated number of fraudulent ballots, which were then subtracted from overall 2020 vote totals to generate a new estimate for vote totals.Overall, of the 29 different scenarios presented in the study, the researchers concluded that President Trump would have won the 2020 election in all but three.

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“You kept my trust, and your massive turnout has stunned everyone,” the AI voice said in the video..”

Jailed Imran Khan Claims Electoral Win (Cradle)

Independent candidates affiliated with imprisoned Pakistani political leader Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party have won the most seats in elections for the National Assembly. Vote counting is ongoing, but the Election Commission of Pakistan announced that independent candidates have won 98 seats so far, with the winners of 22 seats still undetermined. The majority of the independents are affiliated with Khan’s PTI party. Members of the PTI ran as independents after the party was effectively banned last month. The Pakistani Supreme Court ruled that the party could not use its traditional electoral symbol, a cricket bat. Because many PTI supporters in rural areas are illiterate, the symbol would be the only way to identify the party on the ballot for many. Khan was slapped with three jail sentences last week and barred from holding any public post for ten years. The former premier has been the target of lawfare since being ousted in a US-backed legislative coup in early 2022.

The PTI has been the target of harassment and even abductions of its candidates by pro-military elements that do not wish to see Khan or his party return to power. The party has also seen restrictions imposed on rallies and media coverage, as authorities ordered journalists and television stations not to mention Khan’s party as part of their election coverage. The Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz Party (PMLN) has won 69 seats, while the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has the third-most with 51 seats. None of the country’s three major parties will win the necessary 169 seats to form a government on their own, meaning a coalition must be formed to determine the next prime minister. Khan used an AI-generated video of himself to claim victory in the election from prison, asking his supporters to “now show the strength of protecting your vote.”

“You kept my trust, and your massive turnout has stunned everyone,” the AI voice said in the video. Khan’s opponent, former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, was previously deposed in a coup and spent years abroad to avoid prison on corruption charges. However, Sharif is currently viewed as the military establishment’s choice. However, some PTI candidates who ran as independents could be pressured to align with other parties when forming a coalition. According to Michael Kugelman, the director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center, “the military will likely pressure them to do so.” Sharif’s PMLN may also be able to form a coalition with other parties and exclude the PTI from the government, Kugelman added.

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“The density of the wolf population within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone [..] is estimated to be seven times greater than in surrounding reserves..”

Chernobyl Wolves Have Anti-Cancer Genome (RT)

Wolves in the irradiated Chernobyl Exclusion Zone have developed resistance to cancer, research which may help fight the disease in humans has shown.Biologists from Princeton University found that wolves are exposed to over 11 millirem of cancer-causing radiation daily for their entire lives. A standard chest X-ray, in comparison, exposes the whole body to around 1 to 2 millirem. In 1986, a nuclear reactor exploded at the power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, around 80 miles north of Kiev. The blast released 400 times more radiation than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan during World War II, and over 100,000 people were evacuated from the city. In the three decades since the accident, Chernobyl has remained abandoned. Local wildlife, however, reclaimed much of the area.

The density of the wolf population within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, which is considered unsafe for human habitation, is estimated to be seven times greater than in surrounding reserves. Scientists put radio collars on wolves roaming the wastelands of the zone to monitor their movements and make real-time measurements of the radiation they are exposed to. Researchers also took blood samples to see how the wolves’ bodies respond to cancer-causing radiation. The study found that the reason why the animals are thriving in the radioactive zone is that part of their genetic information is resilient to the increased risk of the disease and their immune systems become similar to those of cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy. Scientists say the bodies of dogs and wolves fight cancer in much the same way as the human body. The research may identify protective mutations that can increase the chances for humans to survive cancer, they added.

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“.. On the day the hearing begins, two video cameras in Cauterets, one fitted in a corner of the safe and one outside it, will begin live streaming on YouTube. In the event that Assange should die in prison, a remote-control button will be activated to set off the chemical reaction, and the contents of the safe will disintegrate..”

The Artist Holding Valuable Art Hostage to Protect Julian Assange (Beard)

One unusually warm January afternoon, I arrived in Cauterets, a small spa town in the Pyrenees, in southwest France, to meet the Russian artist Andrei Molodkin. There was a scattering of fromagerie stalls in the streets. Low-slung cable cars ferried skiers to the mountaintop, casting moving shadows over the families wandering through the town. Walking among them, I wondered what they’d think if they knew what Molodkin was doing up the hill. A few years ago, Molodkin bought a large nineteenth-century sanatorium, a stately, symmetrical, magnolia-yellow building with tiled floors and a gabled roof with a wrought-iron frame. On the day of my visit, Molodkin, who is fifty-seven, was wearing utilitarian black trousers, black work boots, and a black insulated jacket as he ushered me into the sanatorium’s spacious entrance hall. At one end of it was a freestanding, thirty-two-ton Swiss bank safe, about thirteen by nine feet, which Molodkin had imported from Amsterdam.

It had been brought into the building piecemeal, via forklift, last fall; the artist, along with several men who worked in a nearby factory, guided panels of the safe inside, then bolted them together with the help of two security advisers from Berlin. As Molodkin strained to open the heavy metal door of the safe, I counted five different locks. Inside were a handful of custom-built plywood crates, which will eventually hold a group of works donated by artists and collectors. There will be pieces by Picasso, Rembrandt, and Andy Warhol, as well as more contemporary works by artists such as Andres Serrano, Santiago Sierra, and Sarah Lucas, which Molodkin estimates at a collective value of around forty million dollars. “We have sixteen art works so far, but people keep offering to donate more,” he said, a note of satisfaction detectable in his voice.


A Swiss safe, part of Molodkin’s project “Dead Man’s Switch,” stands in the entrance hall of a former sanatorium in Cauterets, France.

In the middle of the crates was a small pneumatic pump connecting two white barrels, one containing acid powder and the other an accelerator that could cause a chemical reaction strong enough to turn the entire contents of the safe to debris within two hours. The project is called “Dead Man’s Switch,” and the “dead man” in question is the Australian WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, who is currently jailed on remand in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison. In 2010, WikiLeaks published a spate of leaks from the Army private Chelsea Manning about U.S. military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan. After Sweden issued a European arrest warrant for Assange in connection to sexual-assault allegations (a case that has since been dropped), Assange took refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012, where he remained for seven years. A hacking charge against Assange was unsealed in April, 2019; one month later, the U.S. government added new charges, indicting him for violating the Espionage Act for his part in WikiLeaks’ disclosure of secret military and diplomatic documents.

The indictment has raised concerns over its implications for First Amendment rights and journalists who report on national-security issues. On February 20 and 21, 2024, Assange will face a court hearing on what may be his final bid to appeal the United States’ order to extradite him. On the day the hearing begins, two video cameras in Cauterets, one fitted in a corner of the safe and one outside it, will begin live streaming on YouTube. In the event that Assange should die in prison, a remote-control button will be activated to set off the chemical reaction, and the contents of the safe will disintegrate. Only if Assange is released as a free man, Molodkin said, will the art be returned to its owners. Molodkin believes that Assange’s extradition to the United States and incarceration there would put his life “in great danger.” “Assange is a red line,” he said.

Molodkin met Stella Assange and members of WikiLeaks last March, in London, at an exhibition by a/political, an art organization. The organization was launched, in 2013, by the Kazakhstan-born entrepreneur and art collector Andrei Tretyakov (who helped Molodkin buy the sanatorium), and it supports the work of a number of artists who often engage with provocative political subjects. The members of WikiLeaks “are not involved,” Molodkin said.

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CO2

 

 

Hercules beetle
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756303584499576860

 

 

Love is the answer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756245509306564893

 

 

Parrot
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756327412428570966

 

 

Epstein

 

 

 

 

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Jan 302023
 


Charles Camoin Village Street in Collioure 1912

 

Boris Johson “Reveals” Vladimir Putin’s Threat To Assassinate Him (DM)
Ukraine: The War That Went Wrong (Chris Hedges)
Is The Mood Shifting In Washington? (Livshitz)
Scholz Says He Will Continue Telephone Talks With Putin (TASS)
German MP Condemns ‘US-led Proxy War Against Russia’ (GPE)
Latin America Refuses To Send Ukraine Weapons, Despite Western Pressure (Norton)
2nd Hunter Biden Email From Laptop With Classified Information Uncovered (GP)
A “Debt Doom Loop” Is Now Fully Engaged (QTR)
How to Create your own Shadow Government (Ugo Bardi)
FDA Sued for Withholding COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Analyses (ET)
Top Israel Scientist Speaks Out Against COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines (Pulse)
Deaths Running 26% Above Pre-Pandemic Levels – Vaccines a Leading Suspect (DS)
Do COVID-19 RNA-Injections Affect Male Fertility? (PF)
Link Between Massive Drop in Birth Rates, mRNA Vaccines Undeniable (Latypova)

 

 

 

 

Bhakdi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1619962132115902464

 

 

 

 

MIT Prof

https://twitter.com/i/status/1619949843052462082

 

 

Gohmert

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ha ha ha! Boris misses the spotlight, he wants to feel important. It’s a fine line between important and impotent.

Boris Johson “Reveals” Vladimir Putin’s Threat To Assassinate Him (DM)

Vladimir Putin threatened to assassinate Boris Johnson in the run-up to the Ukraine war, it emerged last night. The former prime minister said the Russian leader had bragged it would ‘take only a minute’ to kill him with a missile after he warned him to abandon his plans to attack Ukraine. The astonishing threat was made in February last year after Mr Johnson visited Kyiv to assure Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky that Britain would back his country if Russia invaded. Mr Johnson said that on his return, he had ‘a very long, most extraordinary call’ with Putin. At the time, the Russian president was publicly denying that he planned to invade Ukraine, despite massing tens of thousands of troops on its borders. Mr Johnson told him that war would be an ‘utter catastrophe’ and trigger unprecedented Western sanctions.


He played down the prospect of Ukraine joining Nato, given the opposition from members such as France and Germany, but warned that war could galvanise support behind Kyiv and would result in ‘more Nato, not less Nato’ on Russia’s borders. Mr Johnson said: ‘He said, “Boris, you say that Ukraine is not going to join Nato any time soon… what is any time soon?” And I said, “Well, it’s not going to join Nato for the foreseeable future. You know that perfectly well”. ‘He sort of threatened me at one point and said, “Boris, I don’t want to hurt you, but with a missile it would take only a minute”.. ‘I think from the very relaxed tone that he was taking, the sort of air of detachment that he seemed to have, he was just playing along with my attempts to get him to negotiate.’ The revelation comes in a BBC documentary series called Putin v the West, which is due to be broadcast tonight.

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“Empires in terminal decline leap from one military fiasco to the next.”

Ukraine: The War That Went Wrong (Chris Hedges)

Empires in terminal decline leap from one military fiasco to the next. The war in Ukraine, another bungled attempt to reassert U.S. global hegemony, fits this pattern. The danger is that the more dire things look, the more the U.S. will escalate the conflict, potentially provoking open confrontation with Russia. [..] NATO military commanders understand that the infusion of these weapons systems into the war will not alter what is, at best, a stalemate, defined largely by artillery duels over hundreds of miles of front lines. The purchase of these weapons systems — one M1 Abrams tank costs $10 million when training and sustainment are included — increases the profits of the arms manufacturers. The use of these weapons in Ukraine allows them to be tested in battlefield conditions, making the war a laboratory for weapons manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin. All this is useful to NATO and to the arms industry. But it is not very useful to Ukraine.

The other problem with advanced weapons systems such as the M1 Abrams, which have 1,500-horsepower turbine engines that run on jet fuel, is that they are temperamental and require highly skilled and near constant maintenance. They are not forgiving to those operating them who make mistakes; indeed, mistakes can be lethal. The most optimistic scenario for deploying M1-Abrams tanks in Ukraine is six to eight months, more likely longer. If Russia launches a major offensive in the spring, as expected, the M1 Abrams will not be part of the Ukrainian arsenal. Even when they do arrive, they will not significantly alter the balance of power, especially if the Russians are able to turn the tanks, manned by inexperienced crews, into charred hulks. So why all this infusion of high-tech weaponry? We can sum it up in one word: panic.

Having declared a de facto war on Russia and openly calling for the removal of Vladimir Putin, the neoconservative pimps of war watch with dread as Ukraine is being pummeled by a relentless Russian war of attrition. Ukraine has suffered nearly 18,000 civilian casualties (6,919 killed and 11,075 injured). It has also seen around 8 percent of its total housing destroyed or damaged and 50 percent of its energy infrastructure directly impacted with frequent power cuts. Ukraine requires at least $3 billion a month in outside support to keep its economy afloat, the International Monetary Fund’s managing director recently said. Nearly 14 million Ukrainians have been displaced — 8 million in Europe and 6 million internally — and up to 18 million people, or 40 percent of Ukraine’s population, will soon require humanitarian assistance. Ukraine’s economy contracted by 35 percent in 2022, and 60 percent of Ukrainians are now poised to live on less than $5.5 a day, according to World Bank estimates.

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“..the extent of NATO allies’ indirect involvement in the war is breathtaking in scope..”

Is The Mood Shifting In Washington? (Livshitz)

The RAND Corporation, a highly influential elite national security think tank funded directly by the Pentagon, has published a landmark report stating that prolonging the proxy war is actively harming the US and its allies and warning Washington that it should avoid “a protracted conflict” in Ukraine. The report has an unequivocal title, “Avoiding a long war: US policy and the trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine conflict,” which provides a strong indication as to its contents. It starts by stating that the fighting represents “the most significant interstate conflict in decades, and its evolution will have major consequences” for Washington, which includes US “interests” being actively harmed. The report makes it very clear that while Ukrainians have been doing the fighting, and their cities have been “flattened” and “economy decimated,” these “interests” are “not synonymous” with Kiev’s.

The US ending its financial, humanitarian and particularly military support promptly would cause Ukraine to completely collapse, and RAND cites several reasons why doing so would be sensible, not least because a Ukrainian victory is regarded as both “improbable” and “unlikely,” due to Russian “resolve,” and its military mobilization having “rectified the manpower deficit that enabled Ukraine’s success in the Kharkiv counteroffensive.” From the perspective of US “interests,” RAND warns that while the Kremlin has not threatened to use nuclear weapons, there are “several issues that make Russian use of nuclear weapons both a plausible contingency Washington needs to account for and a hugely important factor in determining the future trajectory of the conflict.”

The think tank believes the Biden administration “has ample reason to make the prevention of Russian use of nuclear weapons a paramount priority.” In particular, it should seek to avoid a “direct nuclear exchange” with Moscow, a “direct conflict with Russia”, or wider “NATO-Russia war.” On the latter point, RAND worries that US general Mark Milley’s demand that the conflict stay “inside the geographical boundaries of Ukraine” is on the verge of being disrespected, as “the extent of NATO allies’ indirect involvement in the war is breathtaking in scope,” including “tens of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and other aid” and “tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support,” along with “billions of dollars monthly in direct budgetary support to Kiev.”

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Call Boris.

Scholz Says He Will Continue Telephone Talks With Putin (TASS)

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz considers it necessary to continue telephone talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I will have telephone conversations with Putin again as it is necessary to talk to each other,” Scholz said in an interview with Der Tagesspiegel daily published on Sunday. The tone of such conversations “is not impolite,” despite “absolutely different” views on the situation, the German chancellor noted, referring to Russia’s special operation in Ukraine in this context as “an awful senseless war.” “Sometimes the issue was about particular questions of prisoner swap, grain export, Zaporozhye NPP,” Scholz said. “But I consider it important to always bring the conversation back to a particular topic on the way for the world to get out of this awful state. The conditions for that are clear – the pullout of Russian troops,” he added. German Chancellor and Russian President last had a telephone conversation on December 2, 2022.

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“Sevim Dagdelen has been a member of Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, since 2005. She is the spokeswoman for the Die Linke (Left Party) parliamentary group on the Bundestag’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, a deputy member of the Defense Committee, and spokeswoman for international policy and disarmament.”

German MP Condemns ‘US-led Proxy War Against Russia’ (GPE)

I would like to deal in my talk with the following questions: How can the origins of this war be explained? What are the global effects of the war, particularly on countries of the Global South that are not involved in the war but are severely affected by its consequences? What ways could there be to resolve this conflict, and what prospects could there be for a world order based on peaceful coexistence and fairness?The war in Ukraine has set humanity back several years, if not decades, on this path. Against this backdrop, I would like to deal in my talk with the following questions: How can the origins of this war be explained? What are the global effects of the war, particularly on countries of the Global South that are not involved in the war but are severely affected by its consequences? What ways could there be to resolve this conflict, and what prospects could there be for a world order based on peaceful coexistence and fairness?

My initial hypothesis comprises three parts. Firstly, the proxy war in Ukraine is indicative of an attempt by the United States to preserve its absolute global predominance in the twilight of a unipolar age. An elementary part of this strategy has been the US quest since the end of the Cold War to prevent the creation of a common security system in Europe that includes Russia. The resultant war is therefore partly due to the inability of Europe and the EU, because of the political rule of a comprador bourgeoisie, to cast off their dependence on the United States and to pursue a sovereign policy attuned to the interests of their own population, a policy aimed at peace, stability, and prosperity. Secondly, the war against Russia, which is being waged primarily on the economic front, is also an inwardly targeted social assault.

In Europe, the senseless economic war is tantamount to economic self-amputation, and is conducive to a shift in the balance of power within the Western alliance in favor of the United States. The unprecedented militarization in the context of the mobilization against Russia is also being accompanied by a massive bottom-up redistribution of wealth within NATO countries. While low-earners despair of meeting the rocketing cost of energy and food because of the economic sanctions, the energy companies are reaping billions in windfall profits. Thirdly, in the hegemonic conflict with Russia, the West is holding the countries of the Global South hostage, and so is increasingly isolating itself.

Orban

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“How can the world’s largest economic power say that it has no milk for children after President Biden announced $40 billion to buy arms meant for the war in Ukraine?”

Latin America Refuses To Send Ukraine Weapons, Despite Western Pressure (Norton)

Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia have rejected requests by the United States and European Union that they send weapons to Ukraine. The commander of the US military’s Southern Command (Southcom), which operates in Latin America and the Caribbean, revealed on January 19 that Washington has been pressuring countries in the region to arm Ukraine. Southcom wants Latin American nations to “replace [their] Russian equipment with United States equipment – if those countries want to donate it to Ukraine”, said Army General Laura J. Richardson. But Latin America’s left-wing leaders have refused, instead maintaining neutrality and urging peace. The socialist governments in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua blamed NATO expansion and US meddling for causing the war in Ukraine.

Mexico’s progressive President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) offered to hold peace talks to end the conflict. And the leftist governments in Bolivia and Honduras have joined Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia in refusing to be part of the proxy war. Germany announced on January 25 that it would send tanks to Ukraine, in a significant escalation of the NATO proxy war against Russia.Berlin subsequently asked Brazil to ship tank munitions to Kiev. But newly inaugurated left-wing President Lula da Silva declined to do so. Lula was a co-founder of the BRICS bloc, consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. He has long called for a multipolar world, and supports South-South cooperation and regional integration.

Lula has denounced Western governments for ramping up the violence in Ukraine instead of encouraging peace negotiations. During his presidential campaign in 2022, Lula criticized the White House, asking, “How can the world’s largest economic power say that it has no milk for children after President Biden announced $40 billion to buy arms meant for the war in Ukraine?”.

Norton

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And still no inquiry?

2nd Hunter Biden Email From Laptop With Classified Information Uncovered (GP)

The Biden crime family made millions in Ukraine performing nefarious and criminal activities including espionage. TGP reported on Thursday that the Bidens were using classified information to the benefit of the Hunter Biden family business. Miranda Devine provided one email that appeared to include classified material from the US government. TGP determined that this information from the 22-point email came from the US State Department and it was classified. This email included this classified information and Hunter had no security clearance or reason to have this information. This was not the first time Hunter Biden had access to classified information. Today we have another email showing more Biden family crimes. A second email on Hunter’s laptop shows that Hunter Biden had access to classified information and used it to the Biden family’s financial advantage.

The Biden’s were asked to obtain visas for Burisma executives to travel to the US in early November of 2015. In a response to the request, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer reached out to a friend with ties to the US Deep State, John Sandweg. John Sandweg worked as the Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from August 2013 to February 2014. Sandweg had a short tenure working in this role for the Obama administration. Sandweg was happy when the Biden gany replaced the Trump administration and expressed his happiness that habitual liar Alejandro Mayorkas was taking over Homeland Security. John Sandweg, a former Homeland Security Department official in the Obama administration, said his former colleagues still in government told him there is a hopeful atmosphere as Trump officials made way for their Biden replacements.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Sandweg. “There is a very palpable sense of excitement that [DHS Secretary-designate Alejandro] Mayorkas is coming back. It’s not tied to policy or politics. It’s a management and leadership issue.” In the email string below taken from the Hunter laptop, Sandweg emailed Eric Schwerin at Rosemont Seneca (Hunter Biden’s firm) on November 2, 2015. Sandveg relayed information on one of the individuals from Burisma for whom Hunter was trying to get a visa for was Mr. Zlochevskyi. Sandweg in his email says that he obtained a search:”…from the Department of Homeland Security and Customs databases did not reveal any prohibitions on Mr. Zlochevskyi ability to enter the United States. Unfortunately, after receiving the initial report, I suspected that the individual I asked to run the search only queried DHS/Customs databases and not State Department databases. As such, I asked another individual to query both databases. This search revealed the cancellation of the visa and the legal basis for the cancellation.”

Sandweg includes two attachments, one of which is labeled “Zlochevski Visa Denial”. Schwerin shared this information with Burisma, Hunter, and Devon Archer. Here are the problems with what was revealed in this email.
• Sandweg worked for Homeland Security and Customs last in 2014 and this email was from November 2015.
• Sandweg obtains information from the Department of Homeland Security and Customs databases which he should not have access to. He may have a security clearance but this would not grant him access to the systems. The information that he obtained on the visa application denial is classified.
• Sandweg shares the classified visa information with Hunter’s firm which is not a government agency.
• Hunter’s firm shares the classified information that he never should have had with Burisma, a foreign company – this is espionage.

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“We have seen this movie before..”

A “Debt Doom Loop” Is Now Fully Engaged (QTR)

We have seen this movie before. The Fed tightens, things break, the Fed reacts by opening the monetary flood gates and the cycle begins all over again. Before things break you generally see signs that trouble is coming. We call this rivets popping. There is always a lag effect between monetary policy and economic results. This current period reminds us of Summer 2007 when the Bear Stearns CDS funds failed. The GFC was 15 months later in the second half of 2008. One very large rivet that has already popped is Great Britain as we described above. Another hugely important rivet that has not popped yet, but in our opinion is close is the US Stock Market.


We think the pain has just started. Particularly in the stock market where as the chart below shows, street estimates (blue bars) are looking for continued earnings growth as if no recession is imminent. Green bars show earnings decline in recessions. The economy is slowing rapidly and will almost surely enter a recession given the record inversion in the yield curve as seen in the 2year/10year bond spread. With softening demand and increased labor costs, earnings will suffer. The Wall Street analysts who are projecting further earnings growth are on drugs in our opinion. Additionally, with higher interest rates, price multiples to earnings will compress.

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“..if you can rule from the shadows, you save yourself a lot of hassles and, if things really go bad, you may avoid most of the blame..”

How to Create your own Shadow Government (Ugo Bardi)

Not long ago, a friend of mine explained to me that he was completely sure that our elites are not just evil, but they actually practice worship of an evil deity called “Baphomet.” I must admit that I was skeptical, even though he showed me an image found somewhere in the dark web, purportedly showing the hierarchy of the worshiping organization. Yet, after some mulling over, I came to think that there is something in this idea. Much more than it would seem at first sight. Of course, I understand that you are probably already moving your mouse to click away from this page. But, if you don’t succumb to the anti-conspiracy memes implanted in your brain, let me try to explain what I have in mind. I am not saying that Baphomet could exist for real (but, who knows?) but, in our times, when politicians “create their own reality,” astral entities such as Baphomet may have assumed a memetic consistency that makes him (?) a force to be reckoned with. An AI called “Baphomet” could actually be worshiped.

Suppose you want to build a shadow government to take control of the state. It is a good idea for several reasons, the main one being that, not having to report to anyone or justify what you are doing, you can do a lot of evil things that normal governments have a harder time doing. Then, if you can rule from the shadows, you save yourself a lot of hassles and, if things really go bad, you may avoid most of the blame. But how to create such a hidden government? There have been historical cases of governments dominated by an “éminence grise,” someone who has a great influence on the leader(s). One is that of the Roman philosopher, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, said to have been the actual ruler of the Roman Empire as long as he could control his pupil, Emperor Nero. Unfortunately for Seneca, Nero eventually decided that he wanted to rule alone and got rid of his old master by ordering him to commit suicide.

That’s typical: the shadow leader gets older with time, while the young leader becomes bolder and more experienced. The end of the story is obvious. So, if you want to build a working shadow government you need to do much more than have an old man whispering words of wisdom in the ear of the leader. You need a hidden structure that controls all the layers of the apparent government. It needs to be a true alternate government, even though hidden from sight. But how could such a structure be created? How could it function? What could give it the power to operate? Let’s see if we can learn from one of the first known attempts in this sense: the Knights Templar.

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Pull the plug.

FDA Sued for Withholding COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Analyses (ET)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been sued for withholding the results of key COVID-19 vaccine safety analyses. The FDA’s actions violate federal law, the new lawsuit, filed on Jan. 26 in federal court in Washington by the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense (CHD), alleges. The suit is seeking the raw results from the FDA’s analyses of reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). The system, which the FDA runs with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), accepts reports of post-vaccination adverse events. As part of its vaccine safety monitoring, the FDA pledged to run an analysis called Empirical Bayesian (EB) data mining on the reports to see if any safety signals were triggered. These signals give agencies an idea of which problems may be caused by vaccines.


Agencies are supposed to research signals to verify them or rule them unrelated to vaccination. “A report to VAERS does not mean that a vaccine caused an adverse event. But VAERS can give CDC and FDA important information. If it looks as though a vaccine might be causing a problem, FDA and CDC will investigate further and take action if needed,” the CDC states on its website. The FDA denied CHD’s request for the results of the data mining, claiming that the records are “intra-agency memoranda consisting of opinions, recommendations, and policy discussions within the deliberative process of FDA, from which factual information is not reasonably segregable.” The FDA also claimed that the sought-after information “contains a discussion of legal and policy matters and fall within the attorney work product and attorney-client privileges as enunciated by the Supreme Court.”

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“There are other vaccines that are far more effective. There are countries with lower vaccination rates that bore [the pandemic] just fine,”
– Shapira

Top Israel Scientist Speaks Out Against COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines (Pulse)

Professor Shmuel Shapira, M.D., MPH, who served as the Director General of the Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) between 2013 and 2021, is one of thousands of renowned scientists who have raised serious concerns with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. The COVID-19 pandemic marked the first time in history when renowned vaccine experts, developers, scientists and doctors were ridiculed and labelled as “anti-vaxxers” en masse. [..] Shapira is also the former head developer of Israel’s experimental coronavirus vaccine. He played a central role in the original development of Israel’s BriLife COVID-19 vaccine. It was a protein based live virus vaccine, not an mRNA shot.

The IIBR was tapped early in the pandemic, in February 2020, to develop a vaccine and seemed to be making significant progress until efforts were slowed and Israel launched its mass vaccination campaign with the Pfizer-BioNTech shot last December. The vaccine was eventually scraped, and ever since he has been quite critical about mRNA based COVID-19 vaccines. Despite having been vaccinated himself, Shapira feels that he and many others were coerced, pressured, and forced to take the jab. Lest we forget, many people lost their ability to work, put food on the table, pay their bills, travel, and more for choosing not to get vaccinated.

According to Shapira, the approval and distribution of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines was not done from a place of ‘good’ and with the intention to serve others, but rather to “rake in billions.” He stated that they are “mediocre” vaccines and calling them even moderately effective is “pretty generous.” Last May, Shapira stepped down from the directorship of the Biological Institute in a surprise turn of events that cast doubt on the future of the local inoculation venture. In a new book, he claimed that heavy government interference, unexplained regulatory delays, and some level of “sabotage” were also at play.

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“The appearance is of something generally raising the likelihood of death, or equivalently, reducing life expectancy.”

Deaths Running 26% Above Pre-Pandemic Levels – Vaccines a Leading Suspect (DS)

Deaths continue to run at extraordinary levels in England and Wales. In the week ending January 13th 2023 there were 17,381 deaths, which is 2,837 or 19.5% above the five-year average. This is despite the five-year average having risen due to the early 2021 Covid wave. Compared to the pre-pandemic five-year average of 13,822 it is 3,559 or 25.7% above average. There were 922 deaths with Covid registered on the death certificate, of which 654 were registered as due to Covid as underlying cause. This leaves 2,183 excess deaths from a different underlying cause. Since the wave of excess non-Covid deaths began in April the total now stands at 34,691.

[..] It’s clear, however, that these correlations with booster rollouts are far from determinative of the overall shape of the curve. In particular, deaths remained high during the summer and have spiked over the winter, despite few boosters being delivered in those periods. The Health Advisory and Recovery Team (HART) has noted this week that high-level mortality data like these do not contain an “obvious smoking gun” pointing to vaccines causing high numbers of deaths specifically during the vaccination campaigns. Rather, the excess deaths are broadly spread throughout the year. The appearance is of something generally raising the likelihood of death, or equivalently, reducing life expectancy.

The lack of correlation with vaccination programmes has led some to question the role that vaccines are playing in driving the excess deaths and advance arguments in support of other possible explanations, such as Long Covid, the NHS crisis and the legacy of lockdown including missed treatment. While some of these other contributors may be valid, it would be wrong to rule out a role for the vaccines simply on the basis of a lack of correlation with vaccination campaigns. This is because the mechanisms by which a vaccine may injure a person are not fully understood, and those for which understanding is more developed, such as auto-immune reactions due to the persistence of spike protein in the blood and organs, give plenty of scope for a delayed effect. In particular, we should note that many of the excess deaths are related to the heart and circulatory system, and the vaccines are known to increase the risk of such deaths.

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9 months.

Do COVID-19 RNA-Injections Affect Male Fertility? (PF)

The study entitled “Do COVID-19 RNA Injections Affect Male Fertility? Latest Facts and Perspective” from Germany provides a detailed overview of the data on vaccination side effects as a result of Covid injections on male fertility. The authors are the German molecular biologist Prof. Dr. Klaus Steger, who conducts research in the field of molecular andrology at the Biomedical Research Center of the University of Giessen, and Prof. Dr. Werner Bergholz – an expert in quality management and data analysis. Various databases on the occurrence of male reproductive tract diseases as a result of Covid injections were analyzed, as well as previously published studies investigating the effects of Covid injections on sperm quality or the success rate of assisted reproduction treatments. A comprehensive molecular biology background analysis details the actual long-term risks posed by vaccination side effects of mRNA technology on the male reproductive tract.

In summary, previously published studies on pre- & post-analysis of semen samples show massive deficiencies in the study design – especially the observed measurement periods over which vaccination side effects should be measured. Database analyses (UK Yellow Card, US VAERS as well as deStatis) show a clear association between erectile dysfunction (ED) and heart failure as well as a significant decline in fertility exactly 9 months after the start of the vaccination campaign, which may also be attributable to secondary infertility (infertility due to concomitant diseases of the reproductive tract). It was also pointed out that the mRNA used is not “simple mRNA”, as is often claimed, but so-called “modRNA” (modified RNA), which has a completely different effect in the body and inevitably entails hitherto unnoticed risks.

A significant decline in live births was observed in Europe and worldwide at the beginning of 2022. In particular, the decline in live births also started in Germany exactly 9 months after the start of the vaccination campaign, with the authors concluding: “However, vaccination and birth statistics are considered accurate, at least within a margin of error of 10%. Therefore, the presented coincidence between vaccination and the nine-month delayed abrupt decline in live birth rate can be considered statistically certain.” Accurate correlations in this sense can also be derived in Switzerland, even depending on the vaccination rate of the canton.


Figure 1: Monthly statistics for Germany showing a time lag of exactly nine months between vaccination of the relevant age cohorts and the abrupt decline in live births. Similar correlations exist for most other European countries. Taken from Bergholz & Steger, 2023

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9 months.

Link Between Massive Drop in Birth Rates, mRNA Vaccines Undeniable (Latypova)

During 2022 births per 100,000 women 18-45 yo in Sweden have declined progressively, reaching the lowest levels -12.7% and -11.5% in October and November, respectively. For the year, the average was -8.6% compared to same period in 2020-2021. Swedish birth rates have followed a declining trend over the last century. Exceptional negative or positive changes (plus or minus 6% over the birth rate from the preceding year) have occurred, for example following the significant peak in the 1920s and after baby booms in the 1940s, 1960s and 1990s. Except for 1922, however, there has never been such a sharp decline in birth rate over a single year as occurred in 2022.


In contrast to the alarming trend in the birth rates is Sweden’s excess mortality data that shows overall lack of excess deaths post vax rollout despite very high uptake. However, in my opinion, the graphs in this dataset are a bit bizarre – why are 70-79 and 50-59 age groups exhibiting completely opposite trends (and so are the 80+) from the rest of the population? It should be noted that Sweden is exhibiting same alarming birth rate declines starting 9 months after the rollout of the vaxxes as the rest of Europe and other countries with high uptakes of the miracle juice. Why their mortality data is so different – I have no idea. Speculations include manipulated death statistics (not out of the question) and the possibility of different formulations applied in particular countries.

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Dolphin

 

 


Painted grasshopper (Poekilocerus pictus)

 

 

Crows

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Nov 242022
 


Salvador Dali Bay of Cadaques 1925

 

The Fear of Fear Itself: The Gripping Truth Out of Ukraine (Butler)
It Was Never About Ukraine (Antiwar)
Black Holes And Digestive Systems, Or Why Hegemon Is Doomed (FMAN)
New York Times Confirms SBF To Speak Alongside Zelensky, Yellen (ZH)
EU Parliament Brands Russia ‘State Sponsor Of Terrorism’ (RT)
Russia Is Not ‘State Sponsor Of Terrorism’ – US Ambassador (RT)
Huge Swathes Of Ukraine Without Power & Water (ZH)
Ukraine – Lights Out, No Water And Soon No Heat (MoA)
Germany Rejects Boris Johnson Claims It Said Ukraine Should Fold To Russia (G.)
EU Has ‘No Right’ To Get Tired Of Ukraine Conflict – Kiev (RT)
Ukraine Halts Russian Oil Transit To EU – Transneft (RT)
EU Claims To Have Fully Substituted Russian Gas (RT)
China Secretly Hoarding Gold To Ditch Dollar – Media
NATO Contacts Claim Is Media ‘Invention’ – Moscow (RT)
Anti-Twitter Advertisers Have Been Under-Performing The Market For Months (ZH)
Elon Musk: Coalition of Political Groups Behind Lack of Moderation Council (ET)

 

 

 

 


Jim Garrison in his book, “On the Trail of the Assassins.”
“I knew by now that when a group of individuals gravitated toward one another for no apparent reason…inexplicably headed in the same direction as if drawn by a magnetic field..as often as not the shadowy outlines of a covert intelligence operation were somehow becoming visible”

 

 

Elon AOC

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Since Putin’s gas hike was not enough to stir Americans into a blood ritual for total war, the liberal world order is throwing grocery prices into the mix.”

The Fear of Fear Itself: The Gripping Truth Out of Ukraine (Butler)

Now we are asked to be afraid of Vladimir Putin weaponizing gas! We must act in defense of the Russian’s weaponizing food! And Vladimir Putin personally killed J.F.K. with a BB-Gun from the Texas book depository in Dallas. Did Russia’s leadership wake up one morning in 2014 and decide a NATO regime was needed in next-door Ukraine? Well, no. Were the Russians shelling people with Polish DNA in Kyiv for eight years? Certainly not. The EU, NATO, and the New York Times would have informed us of that. So why would Russia act the way she has recently? I see no one out there gazing with practical eyes on this situation. Oh, commodities and controlling them! Money! Tons and tons of money! That has to be it.

Some weeks back, Vladimir Putin’s government decided to allow the free passage of grain ships through the Black Sea out of southwestern Ukraine. The “food” was ostensibly headed to the starving people of Africa and Asia that Washington, London, and Brussels were berserk over. Even the United Nations has held that starving people worldwide need to blame Russia. I was reading a Voice of America report on recent UN meetings about the Ukraine/Black Sea shipments, and it reads like intel for Wall Street commodities brokers. And there’s the point. Food security worldwide is now the red-hot poker western elites are jabbing Russia with now. Since Putin’s gas hike was not enough to stir Americans into a blood ritual for total war, the liberal world order is throwing grocery prices into the mix.

For those in the dark or dizzied by all these events, and I am often with you, the accessible version is to simply call this World War III. Yes, we are already in it. But think about the sequence of recent events and their impact for proper clarity. First, Nord Stream was blown up. The next day a pipeline from Norway to Poland carrying much more expensive natural gas went into operation. A few days after this, the Poles demanded trillions in reparations from the Germans for WW2 grievances settled decades ago. The essentials that power economies and people are being weaponized, but the perpetrators hide in plain sight behind the media they own.

Retired U.S. Colonel Douglas MacGregor gave the best appraisal of the situation in a talk with Aaron Maté and Katie Halper. MacGregor, dubbed “America’s Greatest Warfighter,” is a war hero and former strategy advisor during the Trump administration. He says, in no uncertain terms, that Washington and London’s leaders are on a mission to destroy Germany and the German-Russian cooperative potential. I believe he is right on all counts, but he leaves off how the western elites (banksters) are profiteering from it all. This is a multiple-pronged strategy, not some haphazard knee-jerking.

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“Russia refused to play by the rules..”

It Was Never About Ukraine (Antiwar)

In his March 21 press briefing, State Department spokesman Ned Price told the gathered reporters that “President Zelenskyy has also made it very clear that he is open to a diplomatic solution that does not compromise the core principles at the heart of the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.” A reporter asked Price, “What are you saying about your support for a negotiated settlement à la Zelenskyy, but on whose principles?” In what still may be the most remarkable statement of the war, Price responded, “this is a war that is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine.” Price, who a month earlier had discouraged talks between Russia and Ukraine, rejected Kiev negotiating an end to the war with Ukraine’s interests addressed because US core interests had not been addressed. The war was not about Ukraine’s interests: it was bigger than Ukraine.

A month later, in April, when a settlement seemed to be within reach at the Istanbul talks, the US and UK again pressured Ukraine not to pursue their own goals and sign an agreement that could have ended the war. They again pressured Ukraine to continue to fight in pursuit of the larger goals of the US and its allies. Then British prime minister Boris Johnson scolded Zelensky that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with.” He added that, even if Ukraine was ready to sign some agreements with Russia, the West was not.” Once again, the war was not about Ukraine’s interests: it was bigger than Ukraine. At every opportunity, Biden and his highest ranking officials have insisted “that it’s up to Ukraine to decide how and when or if they negotiate with the Russians” and that the US won’t dictate terms: “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

But that has never been true. The US wouldn’t allow Ukraine to negotiate on their terms when they wanted to. The US stopped Ukraine from negotiating in March and April when they wanted to; they pushed them to negotiate in November when they did not want to. The war in Ukraine has always been about larger US goals. It has always been about the American ambition to maintain a unipolar world in which they were the sole polar power at the center and top of the world. Ukraine became the focus of that ambition in 2014 when Russia for the first time stood up to American hegemony.

Alexander Lukin, who is Head of Department of International Relations at National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow and an authority on Russian politics and international relations, says that since the end of the Cold War Russia had been considered a subordinate partner of the West. In all disagreements between Russia and the US up to then, Russia had compromised, and the disagreements were resolved rather quickly. But when, in 2014, the US set up and supported a coup in Ukraine that was intended to pull Ukraine closer into the NATO and European security sphere Russia responded by annexing Crimea, Russia broke out of its post Cold War policy of compliance and pushed back against US hegemony. The 2014 “crisis in Ukraine and Russia’s reaction to it have fundamentally changed this consensus,” Lukin says. “Russia refused to play by the rules.”

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“This black hole is now swallowing the entire Energy System of the country as you read this, and attracting dangerously some of the closest objects to its orbit such as Poland, the Baltic Bonsai Countries and the neighboring EU..”

Black Holes And Digestive Systems, Or Why Hegemon Is Doomed (FMAN)

Ukraine is like a black hole. It swallows everything you throw at it… Billions of dollars in assistance, millions of tons of military material, and (I hope not) hundreds of thousands of lives of Khokhol and its Nazi buddies, especially if they allow the Clown-Zirkus to remain in power for much longer without a check. This black hole is now swallowing the entire Energy System of the country as you read this, and attracting dangerously some of the closest objects to its orbit such as Poland, the Baltic Bonsai Countries and the neighboring EU, all of them being steered directly to the void, in suicide mode, by their (brain disabled, dim-witted, deranged and psychopathic) ruling elites.

But what are really black Holes? You can ask yourself. From an astronomical standpoint, it is simply a star (of some mass) that, at the end of its life, collapses into a point (the singularity) due to the gravity produced by its own mass. This gravity is so intense that not even light can escape from it, hence the name “Black Hole”. They can achieve this state through a variety of processes, but the end result is always the same: something from which you cannot escape if you fall within its event horizon. And that is only defined by its mass, electric charge, and momentum. Whatever falls behind its event horizon is forever out of reach of observers on the outside.

There might be another (more convenient) meaning for this particular Ukrainian black hole. I read in my university days an anthology edited by Jerry Pournelle, where he said that Russians never use the term, because it has some eschatological connotations… some kind of biology-related obscenity. I don’t know if it is true, but I have to say that comparing Banderastan to the black hole at the end of the digestive system of some kind of mythological beast (let’s call it Hegemon) looks like much more pertinent in this case. This end has a particularly long and interesting list of possible denominations.

The beast, has an insatiable hunger, if allowed it would devour us all. The crazy psychopaths ruling elites in the West are feeding it as quickly as possible and as much as they can (wasting in the process the wealth, health and resources of those they govern) because they are also part of the parasites sucking the life and energy off the beast. The more they throw into the mouth, the more they suck out of it. The system works perfectly for them and, what is left, once processed and liberated of most of the real substance and value, is excreted through the blackhole at the end.

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Max Keiser:
• I guess the good news about the FTX racketeering scandal is that it looks like it’ll take down several high profile media outlets, the entire ‘crypto’ farce and many scammy VC’s and banks.
• [NYTimes] @dealbook just indicted itself as being part of a criminal enterprise and participating in the FTX racketeering scandal.

New York Times Confirms SBF To Speak Alongside Zelensky, Yellen (ZH)

As we discussed last night, Sam Bankman-Fried has now demonstrated that he is both a pathological liar and a sociopath, the kind who in “explaining” to his employees how he stole billions (over $4 billion according to new FTX CEO John J. Ray) from the now bankrupt FTX, an act which left it insolvent and without liquidity, called it “loans” which were “generally” not used for “large amounts of personal consumption” (just “small amounts” used for such trivial items as $40 million penthouses and private jets). And the only reason we don’t officially call him a criminal just yet, is because he has not yet confirmed he used clienOutrage After New York Times Confirms SBF To Speak Alongside Zelenskyy, Yellent money from his exchange to fund his personal hedge fund, an act which would cost any other individual decades in jail… but not prominent democrats like SBF or Jon Corzine, of course.

Plus it’s the US legal system’s job to do that, not ours. Although we are growing increasingly skeptical this prominent Democratic donor will ever see the inside of a courtroom. It’s not just us: with much of the entire world demanding to know how this corpulent 30-year-old still has not been thrown in prison, or at least charged with a variety of crimes, the NYT just confirmed to the entire world what a farce the one-time paper of record has become, and how it is willing to whore itself out for clicks – not to mention prominent Democrat donors – because moments after SBF tweeted that he will be speaking with Andrew Ross-Sorkin moderated NYT “summit” on Nov 30… … Sorkin quickly confirmed as much.

And so, instead of being under arrest, SBF will instead be treated like a luminary alongside other such other Democrat icons as Zelenskyy (who according to some may have been intimately familiar with FTX fund flows in the past year) and of course the woman who along with Ben Bernanke and Jerome Powell, made it all possible by blowing the biggest asset bubble of all time: Janet Yellen. And while we are certain that the NYT – which we assume is done writing puff pieces on behalf of SBF after it became a laughing stock last week – would be quick to mercilessly cancel and expel from its “prestigious” conference anyone who had misgendered some post-op transsexual, it is willing to give this thieving pathological liar and sociopath a forum in which to profess his innocence to the entire world, and by association with other Democrat “celebrities”…

 

 

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Europe is not where the brains are.

EU Parliament Brands Russia ‘State Sponsor Of Terrorism’ (RT)

The European Parliament adopted a non-binding resolution designating Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism” on Wednesday. In a strongly worded but largely symbolic document, MEPs also called on the European Union to further reduce diplomatic ties with Moscow and quickly adopt a ninth package of anti-Russia sanctions. Diplomatic relations with Russia should be cut “to the absolute minimum necessary” and Russian “state-affiliated institutions,” such as Russian cultural centers and diaspora organizations, should be closed and banned, the MEPs said. As the European Union cannot officially designate states as sponsors of terrorism at present, the parliament called on bloc members to put in place the necessary legal framework and to consider adding Moscow to the relevant list.

It also urged EU members to initiate “a comprehensive international isolation” of Russia and “to swiftly complete its work on a ninth sanctions package.” The resolution, which was supported by a vast majority of parliamentarians, accused Russia of conducting “deliberate attacks and atrocities” against Ukrainian civilians, of destroying critical infrastructure in the country, and of violating human rights. Therefore, it said, the European Parliament “recognizes Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and as a state which uses means of terrorism.” Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky welcomed the resolution, tweeting that “Russia must be isolated at all levels and held accountable.”

In recent weeks, similar largely symbolic declarations were adopted by NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. While Kiev has repeatedly urged the West to declare Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism,” only a few countries – including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic – have heeded the call, and their actions have been limited to symbolic gestures. Those with the power to enforce anti-terrorism sanctions against other states, specifically the US, have so far refused to take such a step. In August, the Russian Foreign Ministry warned Washington that designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism would become “a point of no return” in bilateral relations.

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“..Van Schaack said the US is “very interested in what the Europeans are doing,” adding that such a resolution “carries great weight.”

Russia Is Not ‘State Sponsor Of Terrorism’ – US Ambassador (RT)

The US cannot designate Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism” since it simply does not fit the relevant criteria, the US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack told a briefing on Tuesday, while commenting on a similar initiative by European lawmakers. The EU parliament adopted a resolution calling Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism” on Wednesday. “The designation of a state sponsor of terror in terms of the way US law defines it is not a good match for Russia here,” Van Schaack told journalists. Washington is currently “exploring other potential designations” that would allow it to potentially imposed further sanctions on Moscow, the ambassador added. According to Van Schaack, such a label would not be necessary since the US is already “utilizing our sanctions to an incredible degree.”

The non-binding resolution by the EU parliament was supported by 494 MEPs while 58 voted against it and 44 abstained. The MEPs particularly stated that Russia’s attacks on “the civilian population of Ukraine [and] the destruction of civilian infrastructure” amount to “war crimes” and “acts of terror.” The document also called on Brussels to develop a relevant legal framework allowing it to officially designate entire nations as sponsors of terrorism, adding that it is currently not possible. The resolution also demanded what it called the “comprehensive international isolation” of Russia, including the further reduction of diplomatic relations and the swift adoption of a new round of sanctions. “Contacts with its official representatives at all levels (should) be kept to the absolute minimum necessary,” the document said.

On Tuesday, Van Schaack said the US is “very interested in what the Europeans are doing,” adding that such a resolution “carries great weight.” The EU parliament’s document adopted so far is largely symbolic as it does not impose any legal commitments on Brussels. On Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry blasted any such designations as a way for the West to legitimize their “unilateral coercive measures” against their perceived adversaries. “A number of nations representing the ‘collective West’ use such labels as a ‘terrorist state,’ ‘terrorist regime’ or a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’ to designate those nations [they consider] ‘unwelcome’ and not fitting their warped perceptions of democracy,” Ivan Nechayev, the deputy head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Information and Press Department, told the Russian media.

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“Everything is fine with the station. There is nowhere to generate electricity.”

Huge Swathes Of Ukraine Without Power & Water (ZH)

Ukraine’s energy operator Energoatom has announced Wednesday emergency power shutdowns in effect across all regions of the country amid a new large wave of Russian airstrikes. Sirens have been sounding throughout the day across the country. President Volodymyr Zelensky in follow-up estimated that 10 million Ukrainians now lack access to electricity due to the attacks. “There are emergency shutdowns in addition to planned, stabilization ones,” he explained. “The elimination of the consequences of another missile attack against Ukraine continues all day.” Casualties have been reported in the eastern cities of Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia, and at least one person has been reported killed in Kiev.

Speaking of the renewed attacks on the capital, Mykhailo Podolyak, head of the Office of the Ukrainian President’s office said, “A new massive attack on infrastructure facilities is underway.” He described, citing recent anti-air defense systems acquired from Western countries, “While someone is waiting for World Cup results and the number of goals scored, Ukrainians are waiting for another score – number of intercepted Russian missiles. A new massive attack on infrastructure facilities is underway. In NASAMS, IRIS-T and Air Defense Forces we trust.” Kiev’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, issued an emergency message on social media warning that ongoing Russian strikes are “Hitting one of the capital’s infrastructure facilities. Stay in shelters! The air alert continues.”

Also alarming is that the mayor in a follow-up message said that water services have been suspended in Kiev after the major strikes. While it’s not the first time that some war-hit parts of Ukraine have been left without electricity and water, the country is now in an extremely dire and urgent phase, having already seen an estimated half its national power infrastructure degraded or destroyed. Temperatures are quickly dropping, with the capital having witnessed its first snow earlier this month. Nuclear power generation is also being severely impacted: Several units were shut down at the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine due to a loss of power during Russian air raids across Ukraine, Ukraine’s nuclear energy firm Energoatom said. An Energoatom spokesperson said, “Everything is fine with the station. There is nowhere to generate electricity.”

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“To stop these attacks requires a political solution. Ukraine will have to give up and find some agreement with Russia.”

Ukraine – Lights Out, No Water And Soon No Heat (MoA)

Earlier today the Russian military shut down the Ukrainian electricity network. Previous attacks had limited the distribution capacity to some 50% of demand. Controlled blackouts over several hours per day allowed to give some electricity for a few hours to most parts of the country. The attack today created a much larger problem. Not only were distribution networks attacked but also so the elements that connect Ukraine’s electricity production facilities to the distribution network. All four nuclear power stations of Ukraine with their 15 reactors are now in shutdown mode. Kiev along with most other cities of Ukraine no longer has electricity. Moldavia is likewise effected as it received some 20% of its electricity from Ukraine. When the Ukrainian network shut down the only local thermal power plant shut down too. It is likely that it can be switched on again but that can be a complicate process.

Limited electricity imports from the European system into Ukraine may still be possible but that electricity would only be available in Ukraine’s western cities. Before today’s attack the Washington Post reported of the difficulties in repairing the network. As we ad explained before the Russian attacks are hitting the transformers that connect the national 330 kilovolt backbone network. These are hard to replace: “As the scope of damage to Ukraine’s energy systems has come into focus in recent days, Ukrainian and Western officials have begun sounding the alarm but are also realizing they have limited recourse. Ukraine’s Soviet-era power system cannot be fixed quickly or easily. In some of the worst-hit cities, there is little officials can do other than to urge residents to flee — raising the risk of economic collapse in Ukraine and a spillover refugee crisis in neighboring European countries….

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that about half of the country’s energy infrastructure was “out of order” following the bombardment…. For weeks, Russian missiles have targeted key components of Ukraine’s electrical transmission system, knocking out vital transformers without which it is impossible to supply power to households, businesses, government offices, schools, hospitals and other critical facilities. During a briefing for reporters on Tuesday, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the head of Ukrenergo, the state-run power grid operator, called the damage to the power system “colossal.”… Russians, he said, were mainly targeting substations, nodes on the electrical grid where the current is redirected from power stations. The main components of these substations are autotransformers — “high-tech and high-cost equipment” that is difficult to replace….

A list of “urgent needs” from DTEK, the country’s largest private energy company, circulating in Washington, lists dozens of transformers along with circuit breakers, bushings and transformer oil…. But it is the autotransformers — the “heart” of the substations, in the words of Kudrytskyi — that are at the top of the Ukrainians’ list of needs and the key to keeping the country’s electrical grid functioning. The Ukrainians have tried to buy up every autotransformer they can find, going as far as South Korea to purchase them, but they still need to place orders for more to be built.“We try to collect everything around the world that they have now, and order more,” said Olena Zerkal, an adviser to Ukraine’s Energy Ministry. Any attempts to repair the network are useless as long as Russia continues to attack it. To stop these attacks requires a political solution. Ukraine will have to give up and find some agreement with Russia.

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Ha ha ha. I bet Boris spoke the truth for once.

Germany Rejects Boris Johnson Claims It Said Ukraine Should Fold To Russia (G.)

Germany has angrily dismissed claims by Boris Johnson that in the run-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine it said it would be better for Ukraine to fold than to become embroiled in a long war. Johnson, interviewed by CNN, also claimed that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, was in denial about the threat of invasion, and that Italy, led at the time by Mario Draghi, said it could not help because it was so dependent on Russian hydrocarbons.A spokesperson for the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, rejected the claims with a diplomatically phrased dig at Johnson. “We know that the very entertaining former prime minister always has a unique relationship with the truth; this case is no exception,” the official said. Miguel Berger, the German ambassador to the UK, backed the dismissal of Johnson’s account.

Johnson’s claims appear similar to comments from Andriy Melnyk, the former Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, who has said German politicians told him before the invasion that they expected Ukraine to be defeated within three days and so it was pointless to provide any help. Melnyk claimed on Twitter in March: “On 14 February we were warning German politicians: ‘Kyiv may be bombed in the coming days! We urgently need 12 thousand anti-tank rockets from Germany.’ In response: just mockery. So sad. So furious.” He later claimed that the German finance minister, Christian Lindner, was against supplying weapons to Ukraine or cutting Russia off from the international Swift banking payments. Melnyk told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that Lindner had told him with a smile that he thought Ukraine would collapse within a few hours and that he was ready to talk to a puppet regime that would be installed by Russia.

The German finance ministry denied the accusation. Macron was broadcast before the invasion making desperate pleas to Vladimir Putin to hold talks with Joe Biden. Johnson stressed in his interview that EU nations had later rallied behind Ukraine and were providing steadfast support, but he said that was not universally the case in the period before the invasion in February. “This thing was a huge shock … we could see the Russian battalion tactical groups amassing, but different countries had very different perspectives,” Johnson told CNN’s Richard Quest in Portugal. “The German view was at one stage that if it were going to happen, which would be a disaster, then it would be better for the whole thing to be over quickly and for Ukraine to fold,” he claimed, citing “all sorts of sound economic reasons” for that approach.

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This should stop EU support right there and then, of course. First give us your billions, then we’ll read you your rights. And cut off your energy.

EU Has ‘No Right’ To Get Tired Of Ukraine Conflict – Kiev (RT)

The European Union must cast aside all doubts about new anti-Russia sanctions and double down on slapping Moscow with new restrictions that would curb its missile industry, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said on Tuesday. Speaking at a regular briefing, Kuleba urged the EU to speed up the work on its ninth sanctions package, which he described as long overdue. “We are only hearing about an attempt to start serious work on its preparation. Such a situation is totally unacceptable,” the minister said. In the same vein, he called on his EU colleagues “to put aside any doubts or, as it is fashionable to say, ‘fatigue,’ and to start to quickly complete the ninth sanctions package.” “If the Ukrainians are not tired, then the rest of Europe, all the more, has neither the moral nor the political right to get tired,” Kuleba stressed.

He called on the EU to focus on sanctions impacting Russia’s capability to produce missiles, which are used by Moscow to conduct strikes on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. Russia has been targeting Ukrainian energy facilities, including power stations, since October 10, after accusing Kiev of attacking Russian structures, including the strategic Crimean Bridge. Due to these strikes, Ukraine has been experiencing rolling blackouts, with authorities there saying that these attacks have knocked out about 40% of the nation’s energy infrastructure. On Tuesday, Politico reported that the EU has not officially started working yet on the ninth sanctions package against Russia. However, according to two of the outlet’s sources, the new measures may potentially focus on Russian individuals that can be linked to the Ukraine conflict.

The previous sanctions package was adopted by the EU in early October and sought to deprive Moscow of €7 billion ($7.2 billion) in revenues from the import of products which support the Russian economy, including steel products, various machinery, textiles and non-gold jewelry. Following the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in late February, Western countries imposed sweeping new sanctions on Moscow, freezing around half of Moscow’s gold and foreign exchange reserves. According to Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, these assets “have been essentially stolen” by the West. Last week, Nikolay Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s National Security Council, claimed that the US, which has supported the sanctions, is seeking to weaken and destroy Russia, and is using Ukraine as a “battering ram” to achieve that goal.

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See? Just to make their point that you have “No Right’ To Get Tired Of Ukraine Conflict”, they cut off your gas…

Ukraine Halts Russian Oil Transit To EU – Transneft (RT)

Kiev has stopped the operation of a section of the southern branch of the ‘Druzhba’ (Friendship) oil pipeline that transits Ukraine, RIA Novosti reported on Wednesday, citing Russian oil-exporting company Transneft. According to the report, oil transmission has been suspended for an indefinite period. “In Ukraine, the section [of Druzhba] has been stopped, from Brod to the Carpathians,” said Igor Demin, an adviser to the president of Transneft. He added that deliveries via the Belarusian section of the pipeline were continuing. Last week, Kiev stopped oil flows to Hungary through the Druzhba pipeline, explaining the suspension was linked to a Russian air strike that reportedly had hit a transformer station near the border with Belarus.


It stated that the service was suspended due to a “drop in voltage.” Kiev later announced plans to raise transit fees for Russian oil running through the pipeline to the EU, due to higher costs resulting from Russian air and missile attacks targeting the country’s energy infrastructure. Ukrainian oil transit fees have already been raised twice this year. The last hike, in April, reportedly brought the total increase on an annualized basis to 51%. Built in the 1960s, Druzhba is one of the longest pipeline networks in the world, which carries crude some 4,000km from Russia to refineries in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

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We don’t believe you. But still, question: what did you pay?

EU Claims To Have Fully Substituted Russian Gas (RT)

The European Union has entirely replaced Russian natural gas imports with LNG and pipeline gas from alternative reliable suppliers, Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson told a plenary session of the European Parliament on Wednesday. The bloc is due to debate a gas price cap proposal on Thursday to prevent sky-high costs for consumers. “Diversification, demand reduction, a common storage policy [and] our #RepowerEU actions are making a difference,” Simson tweeted after the session, adding: “But we need to stay vigilant.” The substitution of Russian pipeline gas came on the back of the increased purchases of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States, experts told RIA Novosti. According to the European Commission, between January and August the total volume of gas imports from Russia, including LNG, decreased by 39 billion cubic meters (bcm).


During the same period, LNG supplies from the United States jumped by almost 80% in annual terms. Last year, Russia accounted for around 45% of the EU’s gas imports. According to the International Energy Agency, Moscow supplied 155 bcm to the bloc, while this year imports are expected to drop to a little over a third of that (around 60 bcm). Meanwhile, analysts from the research firm Kpler warned this month that replacing Russian pipeline gas supplies with LNG would result in significant costs for the EU. Unlike pipeline gas, which is usually supplied under long-term contracts, LNG is more often purchased on the spot market, and its cost tends to be many times higher. Meanwhile, increased purchases by the EU have been making it difficult for developing countries to buy LNG, as they are being now forced to compete on price with wealthier nations.

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“Gold purchases by regulators more than quadrupled in the July-September period and totaled 399.3 tons..”

China Secretly Hoarding Gold To Ditch Dollar – Media

Central banks across the world have stepped up their gold purchases after Russia’s overseas assets were frozen as part of sanctions this year, according to strategists cited by the Japanese business daily Nikkei Asia. Some $300 billion of Russian foreign reserves, and billions more from individuals and businesses, have reportedly been frozen by the US and its allies. The Kremlin has repeatedly slammed the seizures as “theft.” Gold purchases by regulators more than quadrupled in the July-September period and totaled 399.3 tons, according to data revealed in the November report of the World Gold Council. The figure marks a dramatic surge from 186 tons recorded in the preceding quarter, and 87.7 tons in the first quarter of this year. Meanwhile the year-to-date total surpasses any full year since 1967.

Emin Yurumazu, a Japan-based economist from Turkey, told the media that “anti-Western countries are eager to accumulate gold holdings on hand,” after nations saw how Russia’s overseas assets were frozen as part of sanctions. The central banks of Turkey, Uzbekistan and India previously said they had bought 31.2 tons, 26.1 tons and 17.5 tons, respectively. It is currently unclear which nations purchased the rest of the 300-ton total calculated in the industry group’s report. Some unidentified purchases are to be expected, but an unspecified slice of “this magnitude is unheard of,” Koichiro Kamei, a financial and precious-metals analyst, was cited by the agency as saying. “China likely bought a substantial amount of gold from Russia,” market analyst and former Japan director for the World Gold Council, Itsuo Toshima, said.

He explained that the People’s Bank of China likely purchased a portion of the Central Bank of Russia’s gold holdings of over 2,000 tons. The analyst noted that this is typical behavior from the Chinese monetary regulator, which did not disclose any gold purchases from 2009 to 2015, and then reported it had increased the reserves by 600 tons. The People’s Bank of China has not published any new reports on gold purchases since 2019. The gold-buying frenzy comes as part of the latest attempts made by central banks to protect their assets by reducing their exposure to the US dollar. China has been a dominant force in the current de-dollarization trend. According to data from the US Treasury Department, the nation sold $121.2 billion in US bonds between March and October.

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Of course they talk. The US wants to know what Russia is thinking.

NATO Contacts Claim Is Media ‘Invention’ – Moscow (RT)

Russia’s top military commander, Valery Gerasimov, did not communicate with Rob Bauer, the chair of NATO’s Military Committee, contrary to what some Western media outlets have claimed, the Russian Defense Ministry has stated. Reports about “typical” conversations between the two military officials and an agreement on the “safe passage of ships in the Black Sea” are “an invention from the start to the end,” a statement released on Wednesday said. Earlier in the day, the news outlet EurActiv, which specializes in covering EU affairs, cited a NATO source as saying that some Eastern European members of the alliance “raised their reservations” about alleged contact between Bauer and Gerasimov.

The source claimed that the two had regular exchanges aimed at deescalating the conflict, particularly in the Black Sea, and that the parties had agreed to “be careful” to avoid accidents. Unnamed members of the alliance questioned the practice, but others said Bauer was entitled to have his channel of communication with Russia. The Dutch admiral served as the chief of defense in his home country before becoming the chair of NATO’s Military Committee in June last year. The Military Committee is composed of the defense chiefs of all member states, while Bauer has the role of the topmost adviser on military strategy to the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s decision-making body. General Gerasimov heads the Russian General Staff, a position equivalent to that of a chief of defense in NATO states.

The EurActiv source claimed that the US, Türkiye, and nations in western and southern Europe “fortunately” countered the push by the UK, Eastern European, and Scandinavian members for “a zero-sum approach” in relations with Russia. Berlin’s role in the alliance has been reduced to virtually nothing, the outlet claimed. “Germans pay, give and don’t speak,” the source was quoted as saying. Nevertheless, NATO members were mostly on the same page in terms of supporting Ukraine, as long as it didn’t compromise their own national security, according to the same tip. The report said that applicants Finland and Sweden were unlikely to join the US-led bloc before June next year, when Türkiye holds national elections. Ankara blocked their accession, claiming that the two nations were not committed to fighting terrorist groups threatening Turkish national security.

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“Oddly, the advertisers are abandoning the platform as its user-base is growing to record highs…”

Anti-Twitter Advertisers Have Been Under-Performing The Market For Months (ZH)

The last few months have seen a growing number of companies choosing to exercise their freedom of speech by choosing to abandon any advertising platforms that dare allow freedom of speech to virulently spread among its users. Since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the fearmongery and virtue-signal-ery has been turned up to ’11’ as the ‘woke-est’ of those companies have reportedly pulled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of advertising from the social media platform (despite Musk’s insistence that “Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged.”) Oddly, the advertisers are abandoning the platform as its user-base is growing to record highs…

So, in an effort to quantify just how broke you can become if you go woke, we created the ‘woke advertisers’ basket. This is a market-cap weighted index of 34 stocks representing our best aggregation of the woke-est companies who have publicly claimed they are withdrawing/pausing their advertising on Twitter… and in most cases, have played the ‘virtue signal’ card while doing so over the “dangers” of being on such a “hate-filled” platform”.

Note: an * means the company has issued a statement or was publicly reported as stopping its ads on Twitter and subsequently confirmed. Otherwise, companies identified on this list are “quiet quitters”, based on a Media Matters analysis of Pathmatics data. These companies were previously advertising on Twitter, but then stopped for a significant period of time following direct outreach, controversies, and warnings from media buyers. Since the start of June, when US economic surprise data started to turn down and economic weakness began to be acknowledged – the companies that make up the basket of stocks that have decided to pull back from advertising on Twitter have been underperforming (-11.4% vs S&P -1.9%)…

Additionally, the anti-Twitter basket has significantly underperformed since 03/25 when Musk made his initial offer to buy Twitter (-17% vs S&P -11%) and also underperformed since Musk took over Twitter on 10/27 (+3.3% vs S&P +5.1%), even as the broad market has squeezed notably higher. Is the signaling of how virtuous they are by antagonizing Elon Musk merely a cover for extensive cost cutting and marketing budget reductions as the C-Suite sees recession imminent… Who knows? sBut we suspect that if things are about to shift from bad to worse in the global economy, these anti-Twitter companies are perhaps more likely to underperform (having shown their cards already).

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“They broke the deal..”

Elon Musk: Coalition of Political Groups Behind Lack of Moderation Council (ET)

Elon Musk said Tuesday that Twitter is lacking a moderation council because of the actions of a “large coalition of political and social activists.” The billionaire businessman took over the platform in October and promised shortly after that Twitter would be forming a “content moderation council” that had “widely diverse viewpoints” and that “no major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.” However, the Tesla CEO said on Tuesday that the absence of a moderation council was due to a group of political and social activists who he claimed broke an agreement with him by encouraging companies to stop advertising on Twitter. Musk was responding to a Twitter user who accused him of penning a “completely fictional” tweet regarding the establishment of a moderation council.


“A large coalition of political/social activist groups agreed not to try to kill Twitter by starving us of advertising revenue if I agreed to this condition,” Musk wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “They broke the deal,” he added. [..] Earlier this month, Musk claimed that Twitter’s revenue was declining because of “activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.” “Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America,” Musk said. The businessman later threatened to name and shame the advertisers who were boycotting the platform following his takeover of the site and despite his assurance that the platform would not become a “free-for-all hellscape” where anything could be said, “with no consequences.” “In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all,” Musk wrote in an open letter to advertisers in October.

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Schwaub Schools Dr Urso

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peach Faced Lovebird Parrot on a Saguaro Cactus, Phoenix, Arizona

 

 

 

 

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May 022018
 


Edvard Munch Separation 1894

 

Tomorrow, May 3, across England, in local elections more than 4,000 seats are being contested in around 150 councils – including all 32 London boroughs. Mayoral elections are also taking place in Hackney, Lewisham, Newham, Tower Hamlets. GOOD! That is Britain’s chance to tell Theresa May and her racist bigoted tribe to go take a hike. But if that doesn’t happen, beware.

“The Biggest Election Threat Facing Labour Is Complacency”, headlines the Guardian’s Owen Jones, saying the party’s so sure of victory they won’t make enough of an effort. No, Owen, sorry, Labour has two main problems. First, Tony Blair’s lasting influence and following. Second, the refusal to speak out loud and clear on many issues, from Brexit to Windrush.

They should have been much louder, and much earlier, in their condemnation of the indefinite detention and subsequent deportation of British grandmas and grandpas of Caribbean descent. They were not. And that will make voters think, and worry. That and much more. Britain has exposed itself once more as a feudal society, and those things are hard to topple.

 

Initially I was going to write “Britain Is Going To The Dogs”, but then I realized that wouldn’t be accurate. It’s not going, going, it’s gone. Long gone, far gone, gone deep. It’s outta here. It has scaled the Green Monster. Future generations will have to pick up the pieces of what’s being concocted these days, and they’ll have to do it in bitter poverty and abject deprivation.

But mostly they seem to only be able to get excited over sports, dancing celebrities, new princes and royal weddings to TV stars. As their nation is sinking like a stone, both financially and ethically. That royal family of theirs reminds one more of Marie Antoinette by the day. They all sit idly by, with the rest of the entitled, as the country declares open war on anyone black and/or poor. Even as that TV star is (half?)-black.

In the Windrush tragedy, elderly people of Caribbean descent who’ve lived in Britain their entire lives, are made homeless, denied healthcare, placed in indefinite detention, separated from their British families, only to be deported on secret charter flights to countries they’ve never known.

Meanwhile, 100,000 more children live in poverty today than did this time last year.

 

Food, Clothes, A Mattress And Three Funerals. What Teachers Buy For Children

“There are 4.1 million children – nearly a third of the entire child population – living in households on less than 60% of the average income.” “..it is not so much that poverty is more severe, but that it has spread. “It’s everybody. Your average family is like that now.” “Heads in poor catchments notice a difference when they attend meetings at other schools. “If you go and see kids in two different areas, they’ll be noticeably different heights..” “..a million and a half more children will sink below the poverty line by 2021 thanks to benefit changes.”

This is open war by a government on its children. This is the third world. This sounds like Marie Antoinette and Charles Dickens are having an affair. Britain is going back in time, first 100 years, then another 100. The elites who feel most entitled to their long lost empire are sitting pretty, comfortably sure that they can make the ‘rest’ also ‘long back’ for that empire. Cue newborn Prince Louis (Marie Antoinette also married one of those, didn’t she?!).

What about the ‘other side’, the political left? Well, does it really exist? Labour remains stuffed with Blairites, i.e. left in name only. Tony Blair is making the rounds again promoting war, this time with Iran. As the British war industry makes billions with their involvement in Saudi Arabia’s nullification of Yemen, and Britain’s own role in Syria et al.

While the present actual Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, continues to be smeared with allegations about anti-semitism and receiving support from Russia. In Britain, you can print absolutely anything on newspaper frontpages, and so that’s what they do. Corbyn, for some reason, can’t seem to get a grip on all the slander. He is therefore toothless. Which doesn’t seem to bode well for those elections. Corbyn needs to grow a pair, he has to tell the Tories and their media to F*ck Off; but that won’t happen before tomorrow, if ever.

 

Yeah, the Skripal story is bizarre. Big bold accusations 8 weeks ago, more expelled diplomats than ever in history, but never a shred of evidence. Only to now find a total media silence. Not a letter has been printed about the allegedly poisoned father and daughter recently.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said:

“British journalists lapsed into silence in a day as if, let’s speak openly, there had come an order for everyone to keep silent. [..] Nobody is looking for anyone, nobody is carrying out any investigations, nobody is demanding from the British side either photos or videos of the affected persons, or as we have been told, the affected persons..”

“The case does not exist in the media space. Nevertheless, without any doubt, Russia’s Investigative Committee, Russia’s Embassy to the United Kingdom and Foreign Ministry will be cheering them up with news from the front. We have something to tell them..”

Former UK ambassador Craig Murray wrote the other day he thinks a D-Notice has been issued on the Skripal case, effectively a full media gag order. Maybe that’s why the Telegraph came with a story of BP CEO Bob Dudley having been ‘poisoned’ in Russia 10 years ago (BP calls it a ‘complete urban myth’). And the Mail on Sunday ‘reported’ that Yulia Skripal’s fiance has vanished and is thought to be a Putin agent. You guessed it, that was an ‘exclusive’.

Put it next to an exposé about the flower arrangements at the royal wedding to a TV star and everyone in Britain will eat it up. But I’ll give the following from the Independent a few nods:

 

Sajid Javid Could Yet Be The Victim The Windrush Scandal Needs

She is a British woman. She has been in Britain since the 1960s. Then she was denied access to basic services by the Home Office, including letters she appears to have written and signed herself, and now she finds herself out of a job. Amber Rudd may have tried to take responsibility for the Windrush scandal. In fact she is merely its latest victim. You don’t even need to be an abused ethnic minority British pensioner to know who’s really responsible for the Windrush scandal. But it helps.

It also helps that ever since Amber Rudd resigned from the Home Office, actual Windrush victims have formed an orderly queue to point out they don’t hold her responsible. They hold Theresa May responsible. And when you’re under that kind of pressure, it’s very important that somebody else be found to take the blame as quickly as possible.

On Monday afternoon, the home secretary came to the House of Commons to answer an urgent question on the “government’s handling of the Windrush scandal”. It cannot be ignored that the home secretary who came to the despatch box to do it was not the same home secretary as when the urgent question had been granted. But it almost made no difference. Sajid Javid, a few hours into his new job, still had the wherewithal to repeat his best Windrush lines.

“I myself am a second generation migrant. It could have been my mum, or my uncle, or even me,” he attempted to boom. I mean, it could have been him. Sajid Javid is after all, the son of a bus conductor from Pakistan. But there are certain registers of righteous anger that are simply not accessible to a chap that was first made a director at Deutsche Bank at the age of 31. It could have been me. I mean, it wasn’t me. Come on. Don’t be daft. I’m absolutely loaded. But it could have been me. And that will have to do.

Though there had been a radical recasting of the lead character, the script was the same. Just as on Thursday, when Amber Rudd had come to the Commons for what turned out to be the curtain-raiser for the final season of her Windrush Apology boxset, the same cameos were there. Philip Davies and Iain Duncan Smith were there to urge the new home secretary NOT to allow the systematic abuse of British pensioners to fool him into going soft on illegal immigrants, because that, after all, is the main point.

 

 

Now, it doesn’t matter one bit who holds whom responsible for Windrush. Theresa May is responsible. She designed the entire ‘hostile environment’ environment. She ordered the buses that said Go Home. She knew about the status of many Windrush people, but counted on her ilk to agree that they should be kicked out anyway. And on no press for the issue.

On that last bit, she was right for years. But then she wasn’t. The Guardian seeks all the kudos for that, but they were silent for years as well. And NOW May says of course they are Britons, they belong to us, we will compensate them for what went wrong. As those secret charter flights just keep flying and still deport more of those same people. Marie Antoinette herself would have been appalled.

 

It seems unthinkable in a civilized nation that all this would not bring down its architect. But even if it doesn’t, Brexit will. And besides, we have to wonder how civilized Britain truly is. As for Brexit, a satisfactory solution to the issue -or rather, the plethora of issues- does not exist under the present circumstances, and therefore cannot be found by May. Not that she would find it if it were there.

May represents, on Brexit too, a narrow view shaped by the blinders of entitlement. Europe is simply not going to give the UK elite what they feel entitled too, and May will not be able to sell that at home. The best she can do is say: ‘They don’t think we’re special’, and try to make that into some kind of scandal. By the time the British figure out what’s really going on, it’ll be too late.

They’ve let May and Boris negotiate tons of things that will prove either irreversible or very costly to reverse. Even if there will be a second Brexit vote, it won’t just erase all the things that have already been agreed. Rudderless, bereft of all ethics and morals, wealthy, May and Boris and Gove et al are the very last people to negotiate anything for a country.

But in our ‘democratic’ systems, that’s precisely why they are handed that role. The people we elect to represent us have no intention whatsoever of representing us, they represent themselves and their sponsors. They’re just good at making us think otherwise. We elect the best liars, not the best people.

Economist Dambisa Moyo identifies the problem and offers a -shaky- solution:

 

In the UK, a 2012 study found that the number of career politicians (that is, politicians with minimal experience outside of politics) had more than quadrupled between 1983 and 2010. This rise has coincided with growing cynicism about the effectiveness of elected leaders. So the process for selecting candidates could be altered to discriminate against someone seeking to enter parliament after five years as a political researcher.

It would instead favour candidates with a wider range of experience outside politics and a good knowledge of the broader workings of the economy in key sectors such as business, agriculture, education and healthcare. A further move to improve credibility could be to link politicians’ pay to the broader progress of the country. MPs or senators could be rewarded on how the country performs in key areas. In this way, voters would be better able to judge politicians come election time.

Singapore is an example of how this can work. Ministers receive bonus payments if the government hits key targets around GDP growth, income growth (including for the lowest 20% of earners) and unemployment.

 

We could talk about this until the cows have left and come back home 100 times. One addition from yours truly: make politics an unappealing prospect from a financial point of view. Moderate pay and no revolving doors. No campaign financing from sponsors who can profit from political connections. But it would still be tough. The system self-selects for sociopathic types.

Jeremy Corbyn is one of those rare politicians that I would guess is not a natural born liar. But then, perhaps that’s exactly why he’s having such a hard time, and why it’s so easy for the Tories, and the Blairites in his own party, to throw him off balance and effectively muffle and muzzle him.

 

Regardless, after tomorrow we’ll know quite a bit more about how many Britons themselves are racists and bigots. Because after what’s come out recently, every single person who votes for the party that May represents, can not credibly claim to not be one. May’s attitude, and that of the rest her entitleds, is: ‘Look, we said we’d pay them off, so stop blaming us anymore for making their lives living hell for a decade or more’.

That is textbook “First they came for the Jews, and I wasn’t one of them” territory. Britain is a very troubled society all across the board, granted, but at least weed out the worst of it tomorrow, while you can, and then work on the rest. It won’t be easy, but you have no choices left. You ran out.

Vote for the bigots, and you become one. Every single person, every single vote.

 

 

Mar 222018
 


Edward Hopper The Circle Theater, New York 1936

 

US Democrats Plan Crackdown On Booming Stock Buybacks (CNN)
‘Mother Of All Yield Shocks’ Is About To Crush Stocks – Stockman (MW)
Forget The Fed, Libor Is The Story Of The Year (ZH)
Fed’s Powell: Some Asset Prices Elevated, Overall Vulnerabilities ‘Moderate’ (MW)
Federal Reserve Raises Interest Rates Again Amid ‘Strong’ Jobs Market (G.)
Mark Zuckerberg Says He’s ‘Really Sorry’ (CNBC)
Facebook Shareholders Sue As Share Price Tumbles (Ind.)
App Developer Kogan Calls Facebook’s Side Of The Story A “Fabrication” (BBG)
Austrian Lawyer Took on Facebook in Europe. He’s Ready to Do It Again (BBG)
Dutch Referendum On Spy Agency Tapping Powers Result Too Close To Call (R.)
‘Scary’ That Boris Johnson Represents A Nuclear Power – Russia (RT)
Scale Of UK Problem Debt At ‘Epidemic Levels’ – Archbishop Of Canterbury (Ind.)
EU Approves Buyout Of Monsanto By German Chemical Firm Bayer (R.)

 

 

There goes the S&P 500.

US Democrats Plan Crackdown On Booming Stock Buybacks (CNN)

Democrats in Congress want to rain on Wall Street’s buyback parade. Senator Tammy Baldwin plans to introduce a bill on Thursday that would prohibit companies from repurchasing their shares on the open market, Baldwin told CNNMoney. While the legislation faces an uphill battle getting through Republican-controlled Congress, it demonstrates a growing backlash against companies using extra cash to reward shareholders instead of sharing it with workers. Buybacks, which boost stock prices by making shares scarcer, have exploded in 2018 thanks to the huge windfall created by President Trump’s new tax law. American companies like Pepsi and Cisco have announced a total of $229 billion of buybacks so far this year, according to research firm TrimTabs.

Companies are on track to buy back the largest number of shares in at least a decade. Critics say this trend is deepening the chasm between America’s rich and poor because affluent families own the vast majority of the stocks. They argue the money would be better spent by investing in the future, paying workers more or offering better benefits and retraining programs. “I fear that if we don’t act, the impact on our economy and growth is going to be horrendous,” Baldwin told CNNMoney Wednesday. “This very partisan corporate tax bill has fueled a surge in stock buybacks that is hurting economic growth and shared prosperity for workers.” The bill, which is co-sponsored by Democrats Elizabeth Warren and Brian Schatz, would explicitly “prohibit public companies from repurchasing their shares on the open market.”

It would also repeal a 1982 SEC rule that gave companies the green light to buy back vast amounts of their own stock. Since 2008, US companies have spent $5.1 trillion to buy back their own stock, according to Birinyi Associates. Between 2007 and 2016, companies in the S&P 500 devoted 54% of their profits to stock buybacks, according to research by University of Massachusetts Lowell professor William Lazonick, who advised Baldwin’s office on the legislation. “This was not good for the US economy,” said Lazonick. He called Baldwin’s proposed crackdown “hugely positive,” even for long-term shareholders who will benefit from companies investing in something “instead of simply propping up the stock price.”

Read more …

And Libor.

‘Mother Of All Yield Shocks’ Is About To Crush Stocks – Stockman (MW)

David Stockman, the so-called “Father of Reaganomics,” hasn’t been shy — or close to right — about his frantically bearish calls in recent years Just last summer, he warned of a “horrendous storm” that could take the S&P 500 index all the way down to 1,600. From there, he took it up a notch in September, saying stocks are headed for a retreat of up to 70%. Well, it’s still up at 2,700. But the market’s volatile behavior of late has emboldened some bears to refresh and even ramp up their doomsday scenarios. Stockman is one of them. “There is not a snowball’s chance in the hot place that the mother of all yield shocks can be avoided,” Stockman wrote on his blog this week.

He explains that we’re in a uniquely dangerous position, one that really couldn’t have even happened under previous administrations. “Had Lyndon Johnson, Tricky Dick, Jimmy Carter or even Ronald Reagan suggested that the Federal Reserve buy government debt at rates which exceeded annual issuance by the U.S. Treasury, as was the case during the peak years of QE, they would have been severely attacked — if not subjected to impeachment — for advocating rank financial fraud,” Stockman claimed. He said ever since former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan “commenced the age of monetary central planning,” Wall Street has used deficits as a tool in Washington’s kit of “whatever it takes,” instead of something to be feared.

“Anything that could fuel even the appearance of short-term economic growth was embraced unthinkingly,” he said, “because ‘growth’ of any shape, form or quality became the predicate for endless increases in the stock market averages.” That’s a recipe for disaster, says Stockman.

Read more …

Whack-a-mole central bank style.

Forget The Fed, Libor Is The Story Of The Year (ZH)

We’ve been saying it for over a month: the most important, if widely underappreciated, factor for risk assets has been the surge in Libor and the blow out in the Libor-OIS spread, or short-term funding costs, which impacts everything from bank lending costs to the marginal cost of trillions in floating rate debt. Yesterday, Citi’s Matt King confirmed as much in a lengthy note explaining why the blowing out Libor, and Libor-OIS spread, are sending increasingly ominous signals: LIBOR is still the reference point for the majority of leveraged loans, interest-rate swaps and some mortgages. In addition to that direct effect, higher money market rates and weakness in risk assets are the two conditions most likely to contribute towards mutual fund outflows.

If those in turn created a further sell-off in markets, the negative impact on the economy through wealth effects could be greater even than the direct effect from interest rates. Now, another bank has joined the growing chorus of warnings over the soaring Libor and Libor-OIS. Jonathan Garner, Morgan Stanley’s Chief Strategist for Asia and Emerging Markets, told Bloomberg that the rising Libor rates is a bigger concern right now than a more hawkish Federal Reserve, and in fact, is “the story of the year.” As we have documented nearly daily, most recently yesterday, Libor has been rising since Feb. 7 for 31 consecutive sessions, reaching 2.2711% this morning, the highest since 2008. Meanwhile, its gap over risk-free rates, known as the Libor-OIS spread, has more than doubled since the end of January to 55.6 basis points, a level unseen since 2009.

“That’s a key reason why markets have struggled. The acceleration in the private borrowing market is the story of the year, not the Fed,” Garner told BloombergQuint. “What I think is really interesting is that in the private, LIBOR markets, the USD Libor has already moved far more aggressively than Fed Funds, so if you look at 6M USD Libor, it’s actually reached 2.375% whereas the Fed is likely to raise Fed Funds by a quarter of a point to 1.75%, so we’ve actually already for the interest rate that really determines corporate costs are experiencing a very significant increase in interest rates. So unless the Fed is in some ways super dovish, I think we’re already looking at a significant tightening of monetary policy in the US and in addition China is tightening monetary policy at the same time and this joint tightening is a key reason why we are so cautious on markets.”

Read more …

Jay Powell was hired to bore everyone to tears.

Fed’s Powell: Some Asset Prices Elevated, Overall Vulnerabilities ‘Moderate’ (MW)

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Wednesday said some asset prices are elevated but said there weren’t many risks from it to the financial system. While some asset prices are elevated, particularly “some” equity prices and pockets of commercial real estate, financial vulnerabilities are still not at extreme levels, Powell said. He didn’t identify where specifically in the stock market he saw elevated prices. “The current view of the [FOMC] is that financial stability vulnerabilities are moderate,” Powell said during his first press conference, in answer to a question from MarketWatch. It was “key,” Powell said, that the housing sector is not in bubble territory.

Powell said he was not worried about excess leverage in the financial sector. The banking sector and household balance sheets are in good shape, he said. While there are “relatively elevated levels of borrowing” in nonfinancial corporations, “nothing… suggests serious risks.” “Overall, if you put all that into a pie, what you have is moderate vulnerabilities in our view,” he added. Powell said the Fed had “some tools” to combat financial instability “and I think we certainly use them.”

Read more …

Time to quit Fed watching.

Federal Reserve Raises Interest Rates Again Amid ‘Strong’ Jobs Market (G.)

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates again on Wednesday, arguing that the US jobs market was “strong” and signalled it may accelerate the pace of increases next year. The quarter percentage point rise to a range of 1.5% to 1.75% was the sixth such increase since 2015 and comes as the Fed appears to be moving, slightly, more quickly to end an era of historically low interest rates that began during the last recession. The announcement came as the Fed chair, Jerome “Jay” Powell, gave his first press conference in the role he took over from his predecessor Janet Yellen in February. His surprise-free performance left US financial markets barely changed.

“The economic outlook has strengthened in recent months,” the Fed said in a statement. “Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in January indicates that the labor market has continued to strengthen and that economic activity has been rising at a moderate rate,” the Fed said in a statement. The rise, which was unanimously approved, comes after Congress passed two major bills that may spur the economy. In January Donald Trump signed off on a $1.5tn tax cut that reduces corporate and income tax rates. In February Congress agreed to a $300bn two-year increase in federal funding.

The Trump administration has claimed the tax cuts will fuel US economic growth above 3% next year, significantly above the 2.5% growth it achieved last year, but Powell said the Fed did not expect growth above 3% in the near future. “We have been through many years of growth rate around 2%,” said Powell. While there are elements in the tax cuts that could boost growth “we don’t know how big those effects will be”.

Read more …

Must have been some long sessions with the legal team. And people were asking “where’s Mark?”.

Mark Zuckerberg Says He’s ‘Really Sorry’ (CNBC)

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has explicitly apologized forthe Cambridge Analytica data scandal that’s been making headlines over the last several days. “This was a major breach of trust, and I’m really sorry that this happened,” Zuckerberg said on CNN Wednesday evening, elaborating on the statement he posted to his Facebook page earlier in the day. People had criticized Zuckerberg on social media for not explicitly apologizing in his earlier post. Zuckerberg was addressing bombshell reports by The Observer and The New York Times published over the weekend alleged that London-based firm Cambridge Analytica improperly gained access to the personal data of more than 50 million users.

Since the news broke, Facebook’s stock price has plummeted, U.K. officials have opened a probe, and U.S. lawmakers have called for Zuckerberg to appear before a panel to address its handling of user data. Zuckerberg told CNN that he would be willing to testify before Congress, though he avoided committing himself to an appearance. “What we try to do is send the person at Facebook who will have the most knowledge,” Zuckerberg said. “If that’s me, then I am happy to go.” One of the issues at the heart of the incident is whether or not Facebook has done enough to safeguard users’ personal information.

In 2013, Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan created an app called “thisisyourdigitallife” that harvested Facebook information from the roughly 300,000 people who used it as well as from their friends. Facebook changed its policies in 2014 to limit the data third-party apps could receive, but there were still tens of millions of people who would have had no idea that Kogan’s app had collected their data in the first place, or that it had ultimately been passed to Cambridge Analytica.

Read more …

If this ever comes before a real court, you get Pandora’s box. Expect Facebook to pay before a court date. And that will lower the shareholders’ shares even more.

Facebook Shareholders Sue As Share Price Tumbles (Ind.)

Facebook is being sued by US investors over the company’s tumbling share price after allegations that millions of users’ profile data had been harvested. A class-action lawsuit was filed in federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday after Facebook shares fell as much as 5.2% on Monday. By Wednesday the shares had crashed by 11%, wiping more than $57bn (£41bn) off the company’s value as it deals with the erupting privacy scandal. The undisclosed number of Facebook shareholders, led by Fan Yuan, say that they suffered losses after a whistleblower told The Observer that UK-based data company Cambridge Analytica had harvested and improperly used profile data of 50 million Facebook users.

“As a result of [Facebook’s] wrongful acts and omissions, and the precipitous decline in the market value of the company’s common shares, plaintiff and other class members have suffered significant losses and damages,” the lawsuit said. The legal action represents investors who bought Facebook shares between 3 February 2017 and 19 March 2018 – two days after news of the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke. It alleges that throughout the period, Facebook made “materially false and misleading statements regarding the company’s business, operational and compliance policies”.

Read more …

Not even that part of the narrative is true.

App Developer Kogan Calls Facebook’s Side Of The Story A “Fabrication” (BBG)

The app developer who surreptitiously gathered and shared 50 million Facebook user profiles says the company was officially notified of his actions but failed to stop it. Aleksandr Kogan, a research associate in the department of psychology at the University of Cambridge, turned over his Facebook-generated personality research to the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. In an email to university colleagues he called Facebook’s side of the story a “fabrication.” He said that in 2014 he used an official Facebook Inc. platform for developers to change the terms and conditions of his app from “research” to “commercial use,” and that at no point then did the social media company object.

Kogan’s position contradicts Facebook’s stance that Kogan violated the company’s terms and services and then lied about it. “We clearly stated that the users were granting us the right to use the data in broad scope, including selling and licensing the data,” Kogan wrote in a March 18 email obtained by Bloomberg. “These changes were all made on the Facebook app platform and thus they had full ability to review the nature of the app and raise issues.” [..] Kogan’s interpretation of events is potentially critical in better understanding what Facebook knew and when. [..] In the email, Kogan says that he hadn’t been interviewed by the FBI or any other law enforcement agencies, but would have no problem doing so.

He wrote that his app originally started as an academic project but turned to a commercial venture after being approached by the U.K. affiliate of Cambridge Analytica, SCL Group, around 2013. He then formed a company called Global Science Research Ltd, and changed the name of his app to GSRApp, while also modifying the privacy terms from academic to commercial.

Read more …

Sue the intelligence community. Much more effective.

Austrian Lawyer Took on Facebook in Europe. He’s Ready to Do It Again (BBG)

Seven years ago, Max Schrems took on Facebook, ultimately winning a court order that led to stricter rules on international data transfers for the social network and other American tech giants. If your company has any contact with residents of Europe, he has this message: You could be next. Regulatory changes coming this spring “open unprecedented doors,” says Schrems, a 30-year-old lawyer from Austria. “Companies looking to make extra money with people’s data are on my target list.” The EU measure, called the General Data Protection Regulation, permits mass lawsuits similar to class actions in the U.S., he says, allowing him to increase pressure on companies to protect consumer data.

Schrems founded a group called noyb—for none of your business—that he aims to use as a vehicle for lawsuits he’ll start filing as soon as the rules kick in on May 25. He set up a crowdfunding campaign for noyb that has raised more than €300,000 ($370,000) from 2,500 contributors as well as the city of Vienna, labor unions, and small tech companies—and he already has a stack of potential complaints sitting on his desk in the small office he’s rented around the corner from Vienna’s opera house. “We will look for the bigger cases, where we’ll have the greatest impact,” he says.

[..] Schrems examined how Facebook treats customer data and says he discovered that the company didn’t fully purge information users had deleted. Although he never submitted the assignment, his research became the core of 22 complaints to data protection authorities in Ireland, Facebook’s European base. Schrems created a website called europe-v-facebook.org—but insists he bears no grudge against the social network. The company is “more of a test case,” he says. “I thought I’d write up a few complaints. I never thought it would create such a media storm.”

Read more …

Almost half of them voted to be spied on.

Dutch Referendum On Spy Agency Tapping Powers Result Too Close To Call (R.)

Dutch voters were on track to narrowly reject a nonbinding referendum granting spy agencies the power to install bulk taps on Internet traffic. With 83% of the vote counted in the early hours of Thursday, the “no” vote was 48.9%, against 47.2% “yes.” An exit poll by national broadcaster NOS had showed the yes camp narrowly winning. Though the referendum is nonbinding, Prime Minister Mark Rutte had vowed to take the result seriously, without committing to abide by the result. The tapping law has already been approved by both houses of parliament.

Dubbed the “trawling law” by opponents, the legislation will let spy agencies install taps targeting an entire geographic region or avenue of communication, store information for up to three years, and share it with allied spy agencies. Digital rights group Bits of Freedom, which had advised a “No” vote, said the law is not all bad, given that taps must be approved beforehand by an independent panel. But the group said it still fears privacy violations and urged that the law be reconsidered. Before the vote, Rutte said the law was needed to prevent terrorist attacks. “It’s not that our country is unsafe, it’s that this law will make it safer,” he said.

Read more …

You don’t compare the country that suffered most in WWII, to those who caused that suffering.

‘Scary’ That Boris Johnson Represents A Nuclear Power – Russia (RT)

British foreign minister Boris Johnson is poisoned with hatred and anger so it is scary that he represents a nuclear power, Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman said on Wednesday. Maria Zakharova was commenting on Johnson’s earlier statement that compared Russia’s hosting of this year’s World Cup to the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. “Any such parallels and comparisons between our country, that lost millions of lives in the fight against Nazism, fought with an enemy on its own territory, and then liberated Europe [and Nazi Germany] are absolutely unacceptable,” she said, in a statement published on Facebook.

The Russian ministry spokeswoman then added that such statements are “unworthy of a head of a European state’s diplomatic service … It is clear that [Boris Johnson] is poisoned with hatred and anger,” she said, also denouncing his words as “unprofessional” and “rude.” It is “scary” that “this man is a representative of a nuclear power that bears a special responsibility for its actions in the international arena as well as for the preservation of international peace,” Zakharova said. Now “it is beyond the shadow of a doubt that all London’s actions … were aimed at setting up a spectre of an enemy out of Russia, using any, even the most absurd reasons,” Zakharova said. She then added that British politicians are now apparently seeking to fully boycott the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

Earlier on Wednesday, Johnson once again blatantly accused Russia of being behind the poisoning of the former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, as he was being quizzed by the Commons foreign affairs committee. He also said he believes the comparison between the World Cup and the 1936 Olympics “is certainly right” just because the sporting event would somehow “glorify” Putin, from his point of view.

Read more …

How will Britain not be like Greece in a few years time?

Scale Of UK Problem Debt At ‘Epidemic Levels’ – Archbishop Of Canterbury (Ind.)

The scale of problem debt is at “epidemic levels”, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said. The Most Rev Justin Welby made the comments in the foreword of a report compiled by debt help charity Christians Against Poverty (CAP). The report said, on average, CAP clients’ outstanding debt equates to 96% of annual household income when they seek help. Mr Welby, the charity’s patron, says in the report: “In 2017 we have seen warnings from many of our financial institutions about the scale of consumer borrowing. “Achieving economic stability together with economic justice for all is too easily overlooked.” He continues: “The scale of problem debt in our country is at epidemic levels.

“Jesus calls us to be hope-bringers and peace-givers. Where there are still lives filled with an oppressive hopelessness, where darkness has a grip, our mission is not done.” In 2013, the archbishop voiced concerns about energy price hikes and he also said in that year that the Church of England wanted to drive payday lenders out of business through the creation of credit unions. [..] The CAP report said that for people in severe financial hardship, a home may not be a place of refuge but rather a place without food in the cupboard, without heating, hot water or working household essentials. More than 1,000 CAP clients were asked about life before they got help from the charity. The research found nearly four in 10 (37%) clients were afraid to leave the home, 60% were afraid to answer the door and 73% were too scared to answer the phone.

Read more …

One day after the report about disappearing insects and birds in France, Brussels votes for more pesticides and GMOs. Nobody wants them.

EU Approves Buyout Of Monsanto By German Chemical Firm Bayer (R.)

German conglomerate Bayer won EU antitrust approval on Wednesday for its $62.5bn (£44.5bn) buy of US peer Monsanto, the latest in a trio of mega mergers that will reshape the agrochemicals industry. The tie-up is set to create a company with control of more than a quarter of the world’s seed and pesticides market. Driven by shifting weather patterns, competition in grain exports and a faltering global farm economy, Dow and Dupont, and ChemChina and Syngenta had earlier led a wave of consolidation in the sector. Both deals secured EU approval only after the companies offered substantial asset sales to boost rivals.

Environmental and farming groups have opposed all three deals, worried about their power and their advantage in digital farming data, which can tell farmers how and when to till, sow, spray, fertilise and pick crops based on algorithms. The European Commission said Bayer addressed its concerns with its offer to sell a swathe of assets to boost rival BASF [..] “Our decision ensures that there will be effective competition and innovation in seeds, pesticides and digital agriculture markets also after this merger,” European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement. “In particular, we have made sure that the number of global players actively competing in these markets stays the same.”

[..] Vestager said the Commission, which received more than a million petitions concerning the deal, had been thorough by examining more than 2,000 different product markets and 2.7 million internal documents to produce a 1,285-page ruling. [..] Online campaigns group Avaaz criticised the EU approval. “This is a marriage made in hell. The Commission ignored a million people who called on them to block this deal, and caved in to lobbying to create a mega-corporation which will dominate our food supply,” Avaaz legal director Nick Flynn said.

Read more …