The Automatic Earth

Salvador Dali City of drawers – The Anthropomorphic Cabinet 1936

Short
https://twitter.com/i/status/1824525304641278172

Kamala does Trump ads

JUST IN: At her rally in North Carolina, Kamala puts the final nail in her campaign coffin, reminds everyone what her administration did to the cost of living this country..

WHOEVER WROTE THIS SPEECH IS GETTING FIRED..

pic.twitter.com/FzMDyLWxjw

— Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto) August 16, 2024

Corey
https://twitter.com/i/status/1824531470666313993

Gouging
https://twitter.com/i/status/1824613097652314265

Gutfeld

NEW: Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld absolutely rips Kamala Harris for her economic policy rollout that is being labeled as “communist” by some in the media.

Gutfeld’s rant came after co-host Jessica Tarlov said she likes Harris because of her “middle class upbringing.”

“I would rather… pic.twitter.com/Q6Y4rlhPpB

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 17, 2024

Stone

Nearly a year ago, I predicted that Kamala would briefly become president just before the 2024 election.

The Hill is just now figuring it out… https://t.co/jhmwEDYiY2 pic.twitter.com/o8A5EiM9gV

— Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) August 18, 2024

Rickards/Navarro: Take Cover Behind The Media

“What they are doing is purposefully increasing the possibility of full-blown civil war.”

• Kamala Harris’ Economic Proposals Aim to Stoke US Class Warfare – Luongo (Sp.)

The so-called “opportunity economy” Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris claims she will build if she becomes president does not really differ much from “Bidenomics,” says financial and geopolitical analyst Tom Luongo. “Democrats are looking to rebrand the same agenda they had during both Obama’s two terms and Biden’s one term,” Luongo explains to Sputnik. “It’s all an extension of the original plan, which is to nationalize all the important sectors of the economy – housing, health care, energy, transportation – that the Federal Government didn’t already control, e.g. communication and defense.” According to him, this strategy essentially amounts to breaking the “private economy,” which involves the displacement of millions of workers and the disruption of supply chains, only to “create new ‘opportunities’ for those most harmed by these policies, the lowest strata of wage earners young people, by giving them handouts.”

“This is classic ‘divide and rule’ politics engaged in by the oligarch class to set the lower class, in their terminology the ‘proletariat,’ against the middle class, the ‘bourgeoisie’,” Luongo notes. “Nothing new here. Typical ‘break your legs and hand you a crutch’ politics.” Luongo argues that Harris and “her handlers” are perfectly aware of the fact that a law against price gouging will inevitably cause shortages, because “all price floors and price ceilings lead to shortages, never surpluses.” “In fact, they are counting on creating shortages. It’s part of the strategy in the end to destroy the country they lead. This is not stupidity or incompetence. It is policy,” he says. He also warns that Harris’ target audience is young voters who are “entering a broken workforce and economic landscape today and seeing nothing but a lack of real opportunities.” “They are hoping for a new round of ‘Obama Youth’ to marshal into an effective fighting force for ‘Hope and Change’,” Luongo claims. “What they are doing is purposefully increasing the possibility of full-blown civil war.”

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“.. the World Bank and even the Federal Reserve have recently warned about the dangers of price controls – Those guys are corrupt, but they aren’t crazy like Kamala..”

• Kamala Price Control Plan Would Cause A Widespread Supply-Chain Crisis (ZH)

The Democrats have been instituting a propaganda campaign to hide or deny the effects of inflation ever since Joe Biden took office in 2021. At first, they claimed there was no inflation threat. Then they claimed inflation was “transitory.” When the CPI hit 40 year highs they were forced to admit that inflation was an issue, but refused to admit the true cause (helicopter money from the Federal Reserve to fund various stimulus programs the US cannot afford). Instead, Biden and Harris argued that the business world was to blame and high prices were a product of “price gouging.” The establishment media has been running with this narrative for years even though it has been thoroughly debunked. Retail prices have risen in direct correlation to the increases in production costs. As prices in raw materials and manufacturing rise, the prices on the shelf rise. And, as too many dollars chase too few goods the manufacturing sector struggles to keep up with labor demands. More labor with higher wages and a strained supply mean, again, higher prices.

Using producers as a scapegoat for economic failure is a time-honored tradition of socialist governments that refuse to take responsibility for their own failures. It is also a way for politicians to pretend like they’re fixing the problem; temporarily treating the symptoms but never actually dealing with the source of the illness (because they are the source). Rising costs were a top challenge for manufacturers in 2023 and this year looks to be no different. Inflation caused prices to spike not only for materials, but wages and energy and the problem is expected to persist well into 2025. Industry reports also suggest that declines in consumer demand have combined with inflation in prices, putting a strain on profits and the supply chain. As demand falters and costs increase manufacturers have to reduce supply. As supply declines, either shelves will be empty or prices will climb even higher on the black market.

The Kamala Harris campaign recently released their economic policy plan to solve the ongoing stagflationary crisis, and it’s not surprising that Harris intends to continue the very same strategies that caused the problem in the first place. She intends to print even more money to create even more handouts in order to bribe low-information voters. Analysts are calling her plan an attempt to institute communist economic restrictions and upend what’s left of the free market. This is true, but what does this mean in terms of consequences? Beyond causing the death of what’s left of the free market in the US, the bigger threat is the immediate damage that price controls will cause to the supply chain. With already thin profit margins for manufacturers and rising labor costs there is little room to maneuver. Price controls would put a low ceiling on revenues and without profit incentives, there is no reason for companies to continue producing.

They will slow production of goods or shut down completely until better market conditions return. It’s interesting to note that both the World Bank and even the Federal Reserve have recently warned about the dangers of price controls – Those guys are corrupt, but they aren’t crazy like Kamala. The last time the US instituted price controls was during the early-1970s during the onset of the last stagflation crisis. This was after the Nixon-era removal of the Dollar from the gold standard. It was an unmitigated disaster. On Aug. 15, 1971, in a nationally televised address, Nixon announced, “I am today ordering a freeze on all prices and wages throughout the United States.” After a 90-day freeze, increases would have to be approved by a “Pay Board” and a “Price Commission,” with an eye toward eventually lifting controls. This move was initially popular and helped win Nixon a second term in office. However, by 1973 and the advent of the OPEC Oil Embargo it had become clear that price controls did not work. As the New York Times noted in June of 1973:

“Housewives searching their supermarket shelves this coming week will find most of what they want still there. But widening circle of food processors and retailers are caught in a profit squeeze resulting from the price freeze, and this is beginning to curtail production of some foods…It could lead to shortages of many items in the next month.Every echelon of the food industry, from farmers to retailers are criticizing the ceilings imposed on meat in March and on all other items on June 13. Their unhappiness about the ceiling has contributed to recent warnings of shortages.” In June 1973, Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw explain in The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy: “Ranchers stopped shipping their cattle to the market, farmers drowned their chickens, and consumers emptied the shelves of supermarkets…” The government is in no position to police prices. These controls will only cause more damage in the long run and Kamala Harris and her team of Biden advisors are not intelligent enough to deal with the problem anyway.

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“Is this a call to violence?” asked the Libs of TikTok..”

• Biden Endorses Violence, Tells Dems to ‘Beat the H*ll Out of’ Republicans (HUSA)

Joe Biden urged supporters on Aug. 15, 2024, to “beat the h*ll out of” Republicans in the 2024 election. The Daily Wire reported that the violent rhetoric came during Biden’s first public appearance with Kamala Harris since he dropped out of the 2024 race. Harris became the Democratic Party’s nominee to face off against Donald Trump. “Let me tell you what our Project 2025 is: beat the h*ll out of them,” Biden told the crowd during an event in Prince George’s County, Maryland. After the far-left audience cheered for violence, Biden doubled down by saying, “I mean it!” Conservatives on social media quickly criticized Biden and leftists who supported him. “Disgusting!” the Trump War Room account wrote in a post while also noting that Biden’s remark came just a month after the attempted assassination against Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa. “Is this a call to violence?” asked the Libs of TikTok account on Twitter, which is operated by Chaya Raichik and has over 3.3 million followers.

Collin Rugg, who has an X account with 1.4 million followers, also responded to the violent rhetoric. “If Trump said this, it would be wall-to-wall coverage on MSNBC for the next three weeks,” he wrote, adding that the Washington Post “would be putting the ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’ banner up.” In June, Trump faced Biden in a debate hosted by CNN, and just weeks after the disastrous Biden performance, the leftist establishment removed him as a presidential candidate and replaced him with Harris. Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton are expected to speak at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week. Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., are expected to accept their nominations and deliver remarks. Biden’s violent rhetoric was just another example of Democrats’ evil nature. It was also recently revealed that Nancy Pelosi issued death threats to pro-Trump Republicans as well.

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Long article, worth your time.

Echoes of the Mar-a-Lago raid.

Ritter’s home was raided last week. The FBI took his archive that can prove “weapons of mass destruction” was always a hoax.

“And now it is gone.”

• A Farewell to Truth (Scott Ritter)

The only record of the truth about United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM)’s work in Iraq disarming Iraq that isn’t controlled by the U.S. government, which continues to promulgate lies about the reasons it invaded Iraq. Simply put, the F.B.I. seized the literal truth. In the receipt provided to me, the F.B.I. simply wrote down “documents.” There is no way the F.B.I. will be able to wrap its head around these documents. I spotted one of the senior F.B.I. agents walking around with several Vu-Graph slides I had made in support of a briefing I had prepared for a meeting in the White House Situation Room with the Deputies Committee where I would detail an inspection concept of operations targeting sensitive sites in downtown Baghdad. The White House had asked me to prepare a Power Point presentation, but that was beyond what I could do at UNSCOM. Instead, I took a bunch of maps, photos and diagrams to the local Kinko’s, where I slapped together a number of Vu-Graph’s.

“The Kinko’s brief!,” I said as she walked past. The look in her eyes underscored that she had no clue what I was talking about. And therein lies the rub. While I am confident I will not get into any trouble about the archive (how can I? It is unclassified), I do not have any confidence that the F.B.I. will return the documents. The U.S. government simply cannot allow an archive such as this to exist “in the wild.” They will find some excuse. This archive isn’t just my personal collection of documents. This is an archive of truth.

Indisputable fact. A source of knowledge and information unique in the world which has served a very useful purpose — to expose the lies of the government. I am a journalist — my record clearly reflects this reality. And as such, I am part of what the Founding Fathers called “a free press.” In his concurring opinion of the landmark 1971 Supreme Court decision, The New York Times v. The United States, Justice Hugo Black noted the following: “The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”

As wielded by me, my UNSCOM archive literally fulfilled its duty of helping me “bare the secrets of the government and inform the people” to prevent the government from “deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.” By seizing this archive, the F.B.I. literally engaged in an act of censorship. In seizing my archive, the F.B.I. invoked the notion of “national security.” But, as Justice Black noted, “The word ‘security’ is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security.” There can be no doubt that my UNSCOM archive did more than any other source of documented information to apprise the American people about the lies of their government when it came to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

And now it is gone.

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“..the situation in the country resembles the “dark times of McCarthyism..”

• US Moving Towards Total Censorship – Moscow (RT)

Freedom of speech in the US is only permitted for those who express pro-American views, while dissenters are subjected to a “political inquisition,” Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, has said. The diplomat was commenting on an FBI search at the home of Russian-born US political analyst and author Dimitri Simes in Rappahannock County, Virginia, on Tuesday. Simes, who is critical of President Joe Biden’s administration, has been co-hosting a geopolitical talk show on Russia’s Channel 1 since 2018. The targeting of Simes is another example of a “witch hunt” in the US in the run up to the presidential election on November 5, Antonov wrote in a post on Telegram on Saturday. “Hundreds of people are declared undesirable just because they dare to contradict the policies of the administration. They are forbidden from having their own point of view” and government agents are “breaking into homes, performing searches and seizing documents,” he stated.

According to the ambassador, the situation in the country resembles the “dark times of McCarthyism,” a campaign against suspected communists led by Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. “The local ruling circles have decisively embarked on the path of total censorship. Freedom of speech in modern America is sacred only if this speech is pro-American. All dissidents are subject to political inquisition, especially when it comes to those who fight against one-sided and biased views on Russia,” he said. Antonov accused Washington of double stands when it comes to democracy and freedom of speech. While “easily” neglecting the rights provided by the First Amendment at home, US officials, “at the same time continue to lecture the whole world on democratic values and human rights,” he wrote.

Simes is a naturalized US citizen, who immigrated from the Soviet Union in 1973. He served as an aide to President Richard Nixon and as the publisher and CEO of National Interest magazine, which advocates a realist approach to international relations and geopolitics. At the height of Russiagate, Simes was among those investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as a suspected contact between Donald Trump and the Russian government. The report by Muller in 2019, which failed to find any evidence of collusion between Moscow and Trump’s 2016 campaign, also vindicated Simes. FBI agents arrived at his property in Virginia a week after a search took place at the home of former US Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter in New York state. Ritter, who is now a journalist and commentator, said the US authorities appeared to be “primarily concerned” with his “relationship” with Russian media outlets – RT and Sputnik news agency.

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Dead horse.

• Nord Stream 2 Bombing And Zelensky’s “Three Men And a Boat” Story (Jay)

Nord Stream 2 bombing is in the headlines again, with a recent report which appears to come from Kiev claiming that it was the Ukrainians all along who were behind it. The claims, which have been denied by Zelensky naturally, are preposterous as they are ill-timed. But what’s really behind this latest fake news story? In a nutshell, Joe Biden needs to clean up his backyard to help Kamala Harris get elected and in Ukraine there is quite a bit of tidying up which needs doing – not only for Ukraine itself to sustain relations with a new administration in Washington but also for America’s relations with Germany and the EU. And so a fable has been invented which both tidies up any loose ends between Washington and Germany – as the U.S. bombing the pipelines creates unease and tensions between the Biden administration and that of Scholz’s – as well as helping the Ukrainians and Harris.

The whole Nord Stream2 pipeline bombing which happened in September 2022, a few months after the Russian invasion, is a clever web of lies crafted by the Americans, when all along it was U.S. special forces with the help of the Norwegians who planted the devices in June of the same year, three months before they were finally detonated. Initially, it was very suspicious at the speed of how Russia was blamed. “Everything is pointing to Russia,” blared a POLITICO headline two days after the explosions. Quoted in the piece were a number of foreign commentators including a top German spymaster arguing that only Russia had the means and motives to do it. There is no elaboration however on motive given that it was Russia’s gas supply deal to Germany which was being abruptly halted. Remarkably, a lie moves so quickly while the truth is still putting its shoes on. Within days, respectable leading analysts were also pointing the finger at Russia without a trace of evidence to support their ludicrous claims.

“We still don’t know 100 percent that Russia was responsible,” said Olga Khakova, deputy director for European energy security at the Atlantic Council. “But everything is pointing to Russia being behind this.” U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told BBC on Sept. 30 that it “seems” Russia was behind the sabotage. Most western journalists followed the narrative put out by the Americans and chose just simply to not look at it too closely or too sceptically. If any had, they might have simply asked who are the winners and losers? They would have only needed to look at the gas market in the following weeks and to see that the U.S. firms had new clients in Europe who were paying three times the normal price. That should have been a clue.

Secondly, the geopolitics and Germany. Biden hade it very clear just two weeks before the Ukraine war started when the German chancellor visited the Oval Office in February 2022, what Biden was planning on doing both about the pipelines and Germany itself whose leader Scholz was very reluctant to go to war with Ukraine. “If Russia invades – that means tanks and troops crossing . . . the border of Ukraine again,” Biden said, “there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” When asked how he could do so as the pipeline was under Germany’s control, the U.S. president spelled it out: “We will, I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.” Six months later, when the pipelines blew up, Germany quickly came on board with the war plan. Game changer.

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NATO planned it.

• Ukraine Planned Incursion Into Russia For Over A Year – NBC (RT)

Kiev had been planning an incursion-style attack on Russia such as the one underway in Kursk Region for some time, NBC has reported, citing an unnamed senior adviser to the Ukrainian government. On August 6, Ukraine launched its largest attack on internationally recognized Russian territory since the outbreak of the conflict in February 2022. The advance into Kursk Region was swiftly halted by Russia’s military, but Ukrainian troops still hold a number of settlements in the border area. According to the adviser, whose comments were shared by the US broadcaster in an article on Friday, the idea of an incursion into Russia has been “on the table for more than a year” in Kiev. The goal of the operation was to divert Russian attention from other parts of the front line, especially from Donbass, where Moscow’s forces have been steadily advancing since the start of the year, he said.

NBC described the attack on Kursk Region as a “high stakes gamble” by the Ukrainian authorities. The broadcaster reminded that this week, the Russian military announced the capture of three settlements from Kiev’s forces in Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic, and approached the strategic town of Krasnoarmeysk (called Pokrovsk by the Ukrainians) where the evacuation of the population has been announced. “The question now is how long Ukraine wants to — and can — hold onto it [area under its control in Kursk Region] without sacrificing more of its own eastern heartland,” the article read.

Earlier this week, Major-General Apty Alaudinov, commander of the Akhmat Special Forces from Russia’s Chechen Republic, said that the intelligence obtained by the Russian military suggests that the actual aim of the Ukrainian incursion was to capture the Kursk nuclear power plant. Kiev expected its troops to be able to achieve this by August 11, he added. “This blitzkrieg by [Ukrainian leader Vladimir] Zelensky, which was supposed to see the seizure of the nuclear power plant in Kurchatov and the start of negotiations with an ultimatum for us [Russia] to leave some places or to do something, has failed,” Alaudinov stressed.

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“The Ukrainian government has received orders from its Western backers to “escalate as much as possible..”

• Ukraine Preparing ‘Dirty Nuke’ Attack (RT)

Ukrainian forces have begun preparations to target nuclear waste storage sites at a Russian power plant with radioactive warheads and to then blame Moscow, according to intelligence received by Russia. Kiev’s forces have already struck the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), Europe’s largest, and started a fire at one of the cooling towers, while accusing Russia of bombing itself. “Sources on the other side report that the [Ukrainians] are preparing a nuclear false flag – an explosion of a dirty atomic bomb,” military journalist Marat Khairullin said Friday on his Telegram channel. “They plan to strike the storage sites of spent nuclear fuel of a nuclear power plant.” The special warheads intended for the attack have already been delivered to the Vostochny Mining and Processing plant in Zhovti Vody, in Ukraine’s Dnepropetrovsk Region, according to Khairullin.

As possible targets of the attack, Khairullin indicated either the Zaporozhye NPP in Energodar or the Kursk NPP in Kurchatov, noting that the Ukrainian government and its Western backers are “desperate and willing to try anything.” A security official in the Russian Military Administration of Kharkov Region corroborated Khairullin’s claim to RIA Novosti on Friday. The attack is intended to use radioactive warheads to target spent fuel storage sites at a nuclear power plant, and the ammunition has already been delivered to Zhovti Vody. Kiev’s intention is to accuse Moscow of a false flag so it could justify using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, the security official said. The Ukrainian government has received orders from its Western backers to “escalate as much as possible,” he added. According to the security official, the intelligence came from Ukrainian prisoners of war.

RIA Novosti also quoted Sergey Lebedev, introduced as leader of the Nikolaev Region underground, who said the planned attack would be carried out with NATO weapons, with the consent of the West. “Banderites are planning to carry out a missile attack with NATO weapons on the Kursk and Zaporozhye nuclear power plants in the near future,” Lebedev told the agency. “Western intelligence agencies, mainly British, are supervising the terrorist attack. Long-range missiles do not fly without their knowledge.” Lebedev pointed out that a large number of Western journalists have already arrived in the Sumy Region near Kursk, as well as the Ukrainian-controlled part of Zaporozhye, suggesting that this is part of Kiev’s preparations for the nuclear false flag.

Ukraine plans to detonate dirty bombs with nuclear material in Russia. Intelligence services claim that Zelenskyy and his Western backers provoke nuclear war. Who asked Americans & Europeans if they are ok with this? Reckless leaders will get you killed. pic.twitter.com/AbHxMi91y3

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) August 17, 2024

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italian media embedded with the invading troops. That shows they were not expecting much resistance.

• Italian Media ‘Whitewashing’ Ukrainian Crimes – Zakharova (RT)

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has accused the Italian state media company Rai of spreading falsehoods about the situation in Kursk Region, and warned that journalists who illegally crossed the country’s border could be prosecuted. On Wednesday, Rai released a TV report on Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk Region, in which its journalists drove deep into Russian territory, accompanied by Ukrainian troops. In the clip, the reporters’ car drove past what appeared to be destroyed Western-supplied Ukrainian armor, later arriving at the town of Sudzha, which sustained significant damage during the fighting. On Friday, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the Italian ambassador in Moscow, Cecilia Piccioni to lodge a “strong protest” over the Rai journalists’ trip. The film crew “illegally entered the territory of the Russian Federation to cover the criminal terrorist attack by Ukrainian militants in the Kursk region,” the ministry said.

It added that the Italian reporters “used their presence in our country to whitewash the crimes of the Kiev regime” and accused them of a “gross violation of Russian legislation and elementary rules of journalistic ethics”. Speaking on the Russia-24 channel, Zakharova also noted that Rai’s report “did not even distort facts, but rather rewrote them and turned them upside down… Black was called white, and white was called black.” According to Zakharova, the Western media – which she said had concocted numerous misleading reports about the Ukraine conflict that have since been debunked by Moscow – used the trip into Russia to bolster their narrative. “This is how they presented their fabrications in their materials as the truth, as if they were there, because otherwise no one would have believed them,” the spokeswoman argued.

Ukrainian forces launched an attack on Kursk Region last week, which has become the largest incursion into Russia since the start of the conflict. Russia has denounced the assault as a provocation, accusing Kiev of targeting civilians. Ukrainian troops are subjecting Russian civilians to violence and humiliation in Kursk Region, according to statements by local officials and video evidence circulating on social media. At least 12 civilians have been killed and over 120 injured in Kursk Region, the local administration reported earlier, although the exact death toll cannot be established in Kiev-controlled territories. While Kiev has made some gains, the Russian Defense Ministry has said its advance has been halted, with fighting still raging in border areas. Moscow has estimated Ukrainian losses at up to 2,800 service members and more than 400 armored vehicles.

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“It’s quite obvious that this coalition has major problems finding common ground,” Habeck said regarding the recent disputes. “The ideas are falling apart.”

• Germany To Ban All New Ukraine Military Aid (ZH)

Three days ago, in the aftermath of the WSJ report seeking to radically shift the narrative over the Nordstream sabotage, where instead of the CIA being blamed for the explosion of the critical gas pipeline from Russia to Europe, unnamed “intelligence” sources forged on with a hilarious script according to which a top Ukraine general (operating initially under the instructions of Zelensky but then going rogue wen Z got “cold feet”) was responsible for coordinating the sabotage using a handful of rank amateurs who somehow managed to sneak to the bottom of the Baltic sea and conduct an unprecedented military operation, we said that – no matter the laughable veracity of the report – relations between Germany and Ukraine are “about to turn ugly”, and we asked why this story is coming out just now?

We didn’t have long to wait to get the answer: as German media reports, this U-turn in the narrative (which according to some meant that NATO should now unleash its full military power against…. Ukraine, which had single-handedly attacked German assets by blowing up the Nordstream) was meant to soften the blow from Germany’s decision to finally cut off Ukraine’s – and Zelensky’s – unprecedented grift. According to a Saturday report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the German government will stop new military aid to Ukraine as part of the ruling coalition’s plan to reduce spending. The report, which cited non-public documents and emails as well as discussions with unnamed sources, goes on to note that the moratorium on new assistance – which is already in effect – will affect new requests for funding, not previously approved aid,

In a letter sent to the German defense ministry on Aug. 5, Finance Minister Christian Lindner said that future funding would no longer come from Germany’s federal budget but from proceeds from frozen Russian assets, according to the German newspaper. And since we already know that recent attempts to liquidate Russian assets crashed and burned over fears of escalating Russian retaliation, this effectively means no more aid for Ukraine. Berlin, which is Europe’s main supplier of military aid to Kyiv, had previously signaled a change in course on Ukraine last month, when the governing coalition of the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Liberals adopted a preliminary deal on a draft budget for 2025. The compromise detailed plans to slash future assistance to Ukraine by half to €4 billion to fulfill other spending priorities. And, it now appears, that even this token amount is about to be cut to zero.

As we reported in June, the G7’s decision to extend a USD 50 billion loan to Ukraine, backed by immobilized Russian assets, was this summit’s most significant step forward. This loan structure reflects a typical compromise between the US and Europe. While the straightforward solution would involve seizing all of Russia’s frozen assets (estimated at USD 280 billion) to directly fund Ukraine’s war efforts, European countries – particularly France, Germany, and Belgium – aggressively shied away from this, viewing it as too aggressive and fearing Russian reciprocation.

Instead, they opted for using the interest on matured assets, which amounts to only a few billion dollars per year. The first option would be a game changer, we said, “whereas the second option falls embarrassingly short.” And now Ukraine will have to be satisfied with receiving whatever meager interest seized Russian funds generate. Meanwhile, the primary source of funding for Ukraine – the Biden family and various deep state operatives – is about to dry out, after Biden finally leaves the White House and quit politics forever in three months. Speaking after the Cabinet approved the draft budget in mid-July, Germany FinMin Lindner said Ukraine would have to rely more on funds from “European sources” as well as the frozen Russian assets. But it’s still unclear if, and when, that money will flow.

According to Politico, contentions over Ukraine aid reportedly deepened the rifts in the ruling coalition in Berlin, already tattered by weeks of internal fights over a series of issues from the budget to welfare. Green leader and Economy Minister Robert Habeck said this week he plans to run for chancellor as the Greens’ candidate in the 2025 federal election, casting doubt on the survival of the governing alliance of which he is a member. “It’s quite obvious that this coalition has major problems finding common ground,” Habeck said regarding the recent disputes. “The ideas are falling apart.” Which is also why Zelensky will have no choice but to resort to ever-more-desperate and shocking provocations and diversions to keep the money flowing, as the alternative is complete devastation for Ukraine and its Western backers.

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UK has troops in Kursk.

• Zelensky Openly Criticizes British Government (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has said that his administration will “insist” that its Western allies take further “bold steps” to support Kiev’s war effort, singling out the UK as a country that once showed “real leadership” but is now falling behind. In his daily address on Friday, Zelensky expressed his intention to “fix” the situation with Western allies allegedly limiting Ukraine’s “long-range capabilities” and preventing Kiev from fully utilizing donated weapons to support its incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region. ”The long-range capabilities of our forces are the answer to all the most important, to all the most strategic issues of this war,” he said. He promised to “intensify our diplomatic work” with the US, UK, France, and “other partners” to remove any barriers on using the arms.

”In particular, we have seen throughout this war that the United Kingdom has shown real leadership. In weaponry, in politics, and in supporting the life of Ukrainian society… This is what reflects the strength of the United Kingdom,” Zelensky claimed. But now, unfortunately, the situation has slowed down. We will discuss how to fix this. Because long-range capabilities are a matter of principle for us.

”We will insist on the need for bold steps, bold decisions. We need things that truly change the course of the war, leading it to a just peace,” he stated, referring to his so-called ‘peace formula,’ which Moscow has repeatedly dismissed as “detached from reality.” On August 6, Ukrainian forces launched their largest attack on Russian territory since the conflict escalated in February 2022. Western officials have celebrated and voiced support for the Ukrainian incursion but denied any prior knowledge of or involvement in the operation. Some troops involved in the incursion into the Kursk Region were trained by British military specialists in the weeks leading up to the surprise attack, according to The Times. Ukrainian forces were also reported to be using British Challenger 2 tanks inside Russia’s Kursk Region, according to Sky News.

Despite Kiev’s pleas, the British government has reportedly refused to allow Ukraine to use Storm Shadow missiles to support the incursion. British Defense Secretary John Healey stated that the UK was providing weapons to Kiev for the “defense of their sovereign country,” adding that this “does not preclude them hitting targets in Russia.” However, he specified that Britain would not be involved in any such attacks. Kiev’s forces have repeatedly used long-range missiles supplied by their Western allies to launch indiscriminate strikes against Russia. They maintain that their policies permit Ukraine to use Storm Shadows and other long-range missiles to strike any areas claimed by Kiev, including Crimea, but not “internationally recognized” Russian territory. A Pentagon spokeswoman reiterated this week that the US has also not allowed the Ukrainian military to use American longer-range missiles for strikes deep into Russia.

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“It is always a chilling sensation when the policy wonks from the “indispensable nation” start telling you that your nation is dispensable.”

• Should The US Abandon Europe? (Amar)

Foreign Affairs has published a remarkable article. Under the title, “A Post-American Europe: It’s Time for Washington to Europeanize NATO and Give Up Responsibility for the Continent’s Security,” the authors, Justin Logan and Joshua Shifrinson, make, in essence, one simple argument: the US should leave Europe’s defense to the Europeans because it is no longer in Washington’s interest to do their job for them. Moreover, Logan and Shifrinson add, the Europeans clearly have the resources – economically and demographically – to look after themselves. This is a smart piece written in the idiom of Realism, that is, the broad school of thinking about international relations and geopolitics which is based on two premises: that states’ interests can be defined and understood rationally, and that most of the time, state leaderships seek to act according to such interests.

Logan and Shifrinson also strive to be realistic in the broader sense of the term, acknowledging, for instance, that Russia is not poised to “sweep across” Europe’s NATO member states and poses no hegemonic threat to them. These qualities make their intervention stand out among the “value” pep talks and ideological scaremongering that, unfortunately, often pass for policy analysis now. Apart from its refreshing quality, there are other reasons to pay attention to this article. Foreign Affairs, belonging to the influential Council on Foreign Relations, is the older of the two journals (the other being Foreign Policy) that set or reflect the agenda of debate among the US international policy establishment (aka, courtesy President Obama’s former National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, “the Blob”). Logan is the Director of Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, an influential libertarian-conservative think-tank.

Shifrinson is a prominent, though in today’s climate certainly not universally loved, expert on US foreign policy who has repeatedly taken unpopular positions, such as reminding the West that promises made to Russia after the end of the Cold War were indeed broken and criticizing the American over-engagement in Ukraine as well as NATO expansion. For Logan and Shifrinson, the US has only one national interest with regard to Europe that can justify taking over its defense: “Keeping the continent’s economic and military power divided” to prevent the emergence of a regional hegemon, be it Germany – tried twice, defeated twice with US help – or the former Soviet Union, in the case of which it’s actually unclear if it ever even intended to build an all-European hegemony (not the same, of course, as the eastern European sphere of influence it maintained between 1945 and 1989). In any case, Washington thought it might.

Today, Logan and Shifrinson argue, the danger of such a European hegemon that could bundle resources to ultimately challenge US power in one way or the other has disappeared. In particular, they – correctly – insist that Russia does not pose such a threat. Thus, they conclude, “with no candidate for European hegemony lurking, there is no longer any need for the United States to take the dominant role in the region.” There is, it is true, a twist to their argument that will make readers in, for instance, the Baltics very uncomfortable. With the sharp, cold eye of the Realist, they spot a difference between, on one side, those parts of Europe that must under no circumstances ever fall under Russian influence – “the core areas of military and economic power” – and, on the other, small nations in eastern Europe that simply do not matter much to the US national interest. “France and Latvia,” they write with bracing candor, “are both European countries, but their defense needs—and relevance to the United States – differ.”

It is always a chilling sensation when the policy wonks from the “indispensable nation” start telling you that your nation is dispensable. Logan and Shifrinson spell out some recommendations. As a whole they boil down to a gradual – but not slow; the term “several years” appears, not “several decades” – withdrawal from providing security for the Europeans, while dishing out tough love to them to stimulate their abysmally lacking self-reliance in matters of spending, weapons manufacturing, and fielding their own modernized armies. Last but not least, while the US would stay in NATO, it would push the Europeans to run – and, clearly, finance – the outfit. The best of both worlds for Washington: no need to leave or dismantle NATO, a foot in the door and a place at the table, but no longer having to make it work.

For the US, Logan and Shifrinson point to the large rewards of such a policy against a background of, as we used to say in the ‘90s, imperial overstretch. A country “staring down $35 trillion in debt, a $1.5 trillion annual budget deficit, a growing challenge in Asia, and pronounced political cleavages… with no indication that the fiscal picture will improve or evidence that domestic pressures are abating” should listen up when advised that the estimated “budgetary savings of shedding the conventional deterrence mission in Europe” would be at least 70-80 billion dollars per year. Not to speak of the reduction in military risks, political headaches, and – let’s face it – exposure to recurrent Euro-peskiness.

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Tulsi is a nice addition. She knows Kamala.

• Trump Makes Key Campaign Changes (RT)

Former US president Donald Trump has re-hired key members of his 2016 campaign team, hunkered down for debate prep with ex-Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, and tapped his sons and major donors to lead his official transition team, as polls show the Republican neck and neck with Vice President Kamala Harris. Corey Lewandowski, who managed Trump’s successful 2016 campaign, will return to help the Republican retake the White House this November, campaign co-managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement on Thursday. Lewandowski will be joined by Taylor Budowich, Alex Pfeiffer, Alex Bruesewitz, and Tim Murtaugh, who were described by Wiles and LaCivita as “veterans of prior Trump campaigns”

Lewandowski was fired by the Trump campaign shortly before the 2016 election, after he allegedly groped a female reporter. Brought back four years later to lead a pro-Trump fundraising committee, he was fired again in 2021 over separate allegations of sexual misconduct. Wiles and LaCivita did not say what precise roles Lewandowski and the four staffers will play in this year’s campaign, but Trump told reporters on Thursday that Lewandowski will be a “personal envoy or he’ll be at some level.” Trump and Harris are currently even in most polls, with Harris holding a lead of less than 1% over the former president, according to data compiled by RealClearPolitics. Amid rumors that Trump blames his campaign staff for the erosion of his four-point lead over President Joe Biden, he has enlisted the help of ex-Democrat Tulsi Gabbard ahead of his upcoming debate with Harris, the New York Times reported on Friday.

Gabbard, a former US Representative and vocal opponent of the Democratic Party’s interventionist foreign policy, was credited with ending Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign with a single debate performance. In the 2019 showdown, Gabbard eviscerated Harris’ record as California’s attorney general, slamming her for jailing thousands of marijuana offenders “and then laughing about it,” for her use of prison labor, and for blocking evidence that would have freed innocent men on death row.

“There is no excuse for that and the people who suffered under your reign as prosecutor, you owe them an apology,” Gabbard said, leaving Harris unable to respond. Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the former president met with Gabbard, claiming that he “does not need traditional debate prep but will continue to meet with respected policy advisors and effective communicators like Tulsi Gabbard, who successfully dominated Kamala Harris on the debate stage.”

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“Brazil is engaged in a sweeping crackdown on free speech led by a Supreme Court justice.”

• X ‘Immediately’ Shuts Brazil Office After ‘Secret’ Censorship Orders (ZH)

Elon Musk on Saturday announced that effective immediately, X will be shuttering operations in Brazil due to what it called “censorship orders” from Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes (aka ‘Darth Vader’). According to the company, Moraes secretly threatened an X layer if he did not comply with legal orders to remove content from the platform. “Last night, Alexandre de Moraes threatened our legal representative in Brazil with arrest if we do not comply with his censorship orders. He did so in a secret order, which we share here to expose his actions,” reads a Saturday post from X’s Global Government Affairs account. “Despite our numerous appeals to the Supreme Court not being heard, the Brazilian public not being informed about these orders and our Brazilian staff having no responsibility or control over whether content is blocked on our platform, Moraes has chosen to threaten our staff in Brazil rather than respect the law or due process.”

“As a result, to protect the safety of our staff, we have made the decision to close our operation in Brazil, effective immediately.” Musk replied to the post, saying “Due to demands by Justice @Alexandre in Brazil that would require us to break (in secret) Brazilian, Argentinian, American and international law, X has no choice but to close our local operations in Brazil. “He is an utter disgrace to Justice,” Musk continued. Acording to Musk, X remains available to the people of Brazil. Earlier this year, Moraes ordered X to block certain accounts while he investigated so-called “digital militias” accused of spreading fake news. Moraes also opened an inquiry into Musk after he said he would reactivate X accounts that the judge had ordered blocked. Musk has called Moraes’ orders “unconstitutional,” and called Moraes himself “Brazil’s Darth Vader.” In an April post to X, Musk said that Moraes had “brazenly and repeatedly betrayed the constitution and people of Brazil,” and should “resign or be impeached.”

De Moraes said that as part of his decision to open an inquiry, that “X shall refrain from disobeying any court order already issued, including performing any profile reactivation that has been blocked by this Supreme Court,” Reuters reported at the time. The justice said that Musk would face a fine that equates to approximately $20,000 each time an account is reactivated on X. The TWITTER FILES BRAZIL, reported by investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger, and colleagues David Agape and Eli Vieira, reveal that “Brazil is engaged in a sweeping crackdown on free speech led by a Supreme Court justice.” Sitting members of Brazil’s Congress and journalists were among those named by Brazil’s highest court for censoring, Mr. Shellenberger said of his findings, which he has shared on X.

He named lower house members Carla Zambelli of former President Jair Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party and Marcel van Hattem of the NOVO party as targets of orders targeting posts the court deemed misinformation. According to the internal files Mr. Shellenberger shared, Twitter in Brazil was threatened with a $30,000 fine. The company had one hour to remove the Congress members’ posts or pay the court for noncompliance.The article reports that the justice had even been jailing individuals without trial for things posted on social media. According to Mr. Shellenberger, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes allegedly made demands to Twitter to allow access to its internal data, in violation of Twitter’s own policies on the handling of user data. -Epoch Times.

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Judge Nap.

• When Presidents Kill (Andrew Napolitano)

Sometime before he withdrew from the presidential race, President Joe Biden secretly reaffirmed his own self-willed and self-created authority to kill persons in other countries, so long as the CIA and its military counterparts have “near certainty” that the target of the homicide is a member of a terrorist organization. That standard was concocted by the George W. Bush administration in 2002. There is no “near certainty” standard in the law, as the phrase is oxymoronic and defies a rational definition – like “nearly pregnant.”Just as one is either pregnant or not, one is either certain or not. There is no “near” there. Yet, the creation of this standard underscores the lamentable absence of the rule of law in government today. The Biden administration and its three immediate predecessors have all deployed drones to kill persons who were not engaged in acts of violence at the time of their killing, irrespective of the near certainty of their membership in any organizations.

“Terrorist” cannot be a standard for extrajudicial murder because it is subjective. To King George III, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were terrorists. To the poor folks in Libya and Syria, to the popularly elected governments toppled by CIA-inspired violence in Iran in 1953 and in Ukraine in 2014, to the innocents tortured by the CIA at black sites around the world, the CIA is a terrorist organization. The presidential use of drones to kill persons overseas began in 2002 with Bush-ordered targeted killings. It continued under President Barack Obama – who even killed Americans overseas. The rules for killing were made up by each president. They were relaxed under President Donald Trump, who gave CIA senior personnel and military commanders the authority to kill without his express approval for each killing. Trump’s folks infamously murdered an Iranian general and his companions on their way to lunch with Iraqi generals to negotiate peace between the two countries.

The Biden administration quietly took back the Trump grants of authority so that today only the president can authorize targeted killing. Yet, there is no moral, constitutional or legal authority for these killings. But presidents of both political parties do it anyway.The laws of war – a phrase itself that is oxymoronic – which are generally codified in the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Charter, all of which were spearheaded, written and ratified by the United States, mandate essentially that lawful wars can only be defensive and must be proportional to the threat posed or the harm already caused. Stated differently, treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory restrain the president from killing persons in other countries with which the U.S. is not lawfully at war.

Under the Constitution, treaties sit alongside the Constitution itself as the supreme law of the land. The last four occupants of the White House have ignored this when it comes to secret killings. Each has claimed publicly or secretly that the Authorization for Use of Military Force of 2001, or its cousin, the AUMF of 2002, somehow provide congressional authorizations for presidents to kill whomever they please – and somehow Congress can lawfully authorize these killings. Yet the AUMF of 2001 purported to authorize Bush to hunt down and kill the folks whom he failed to see coming on 9/11 (those would be his friends, the Saudis), and whom he reasonably found caused 9/11. The AUMF of 2002 authorized Bush to invade Iraq in pursuit of the weapons of mass destruction that he was told by experts inside and outside the CIA Saddam Hussein did not possess. Both AUMFs no longer have a valid purpose today, yet they remain the law.

The Constitution authorizes Congress to declare war against foreign countries, not random killings of persons. Neither of the AUMFs was or is a valid declaration of war, which the Constitution requires as a predicate for all extrajudicial presidential killings. A declaration of war defines the target and sets the end. It is not open-ended as the last four presidents have claimed with respect to these two Bush-era statutes. If the presidents are right, and the AUMFs authorize them to kill whomever they wish – including Americans – then they are not presidents answerable to the law and the Constitution, but kings who can kill on a whim without transparency or legal consequence. The whole purpose of confining the war-making power to Congress and the war-waging power to the president was to keep those powers separate. History is littered with examples of tyrants using the powers of the state to kill for no moral purpose. American presidents have given themselves the power to kill. It is the functional equivalent to a loaded gun in a drawer of the president’s desk.

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Catch a snake

How to catch a snakepic.twitter.com/L0z3CNgCJ2

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) August 17, 2024

Ryker
https://twitter.com/i/status/1824790981058744678

Puck
https://twitter.com/i/status/1824803390297096690

Galaxy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1824531253028159770

Zebra

Mother zebra rescuing her foal from Lion pic.twitter.com/z8mPwoOi08

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) August 17, 2024

Surf
https://twitter.com/i/status/1824740477913972799

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