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Debt Rattle September 14 2024

Sep 142024
 
 September 14, 2024  Posted by at 8:41 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  23 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Autumn landscape 1885

 

• No More Debates – Trump (RT)
• No More Debates, No More Mistakes (Quoth the Raven)
• What You Don’t Know Might Surprise You (Kunstler)
• The Trump-Kamala “Debate” Left Untouched What Is Really At Stake (PCR)
• Russia Warns NATO of ‘Direct War’ Over Ukraine (RT)
• Putin’s Warning Heard Loud And Clear – Kremlin (RT)
• War Is Upon Us or Will Putin Blink Again (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Musk Channels Star Wars Over WWIII Threat (RT)
• Ukraine a Non-Sovereign State Ruled by ‘Political Frankenstein’ Zelensky (Sp.)
• NATO Plans to Send Troops to Ukraine to Force Russia Into Talks – Moscow (Sp.)
• ‘Negotiation’ Only Way To End Ukraine, Gaza Conflicts – Beijing (RT)
• The Big Collapse Awaits (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Brazil Seizes Musk’s Money (RT)
• The Folly of Criminalizing “Hate” (Njoya)

 

 

 

 

He wants them all to see
https://twitter.com/i/status/1834372286184570982

 

 

Hat

 

 

Overtime

 

 

Bongino
https://twitter.com/i/status/1834350085909741738

 

 

Blumenthal
https://twitter.com/i/status/1834436362046472646

 

 

Jesse

 

 

Girdusky

 

 

 

 

She/they sort of seemed to have a lead there for a fleeting second, but handed the baton right back to him. Now it’s his call, not theirs.

NOTE: They should have a debate on X.

• No More Debates – Trump (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has ruled out another debate with Kamala Harris, comparing the vice president to a boxer who lost a fight and wants a rematch. Harris, who rejected two earlier debate offers from Trump, said the two candidates “owe it to the voters” to face off again. Harris was widely regarded as winning Tuesday night’s ABC News debate against Trump, although subsequent polls have shown little change in voter attitudes and several informal surveys found undecided voters backing Trump after the primetime showdown. The vice president’s campaign immediately called for a second debate, and Trump appeared open to the idea, telling Fox News on Wednesday that he would take part, but only if the debate was hosted by “a fair network.” In a post to his Truth Social platform on Thursday, however, the Republican announced that he wouldn’t debate his Democratic rival again.

“When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I WANT A REMATCH’,” Trump wrote.“Polls clearly show that I won the debate against Comrade Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ radical left candidate, on Tuesday night, and she immediately called for a second debate.” “She was a no-show at the Fox Debate, and refused to do NBC and CBS,” Trump continued, concluding: “KAMALA SHOULD FOCUS ON WHAT SHE SHOULD HAVE DONE DURING THE LAST ALMOST FOUR YEAR PERIOD. “We owe it to the voters to have another debate,” Harris’ campaign wrote on X on Thursday. Trump initially asked Harris to agree to three debates: one hosted by Fox News on September 4, another hosted by ABC on September 10, and a third hosted by NBC News on an unconfirmed date.

Harris’ campaign only agreed to the ABC debate, although Trump wavered about committing to this showdown, accusing the network of “ridiculous and biased” coverage of him. Throughout the debate, Trump was repeatedly interrupted and fact-checked by ABC hosts David Muir and Linsey Davis, the latter of whom was a member of Harris’ sorority in Howard University in Washington. Harris was not subjected to the same fact-checking, despite both candidates making misleading claims. “So many things I said were debunked, like totally debunked,” Trump told Fox News on Wednesday. “But she could say anything she wanted. My stuff was right, but they would correct you,” he continued, calling the debate “totally rigged.”

Fact check

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“..news networks don’t deserve the ratings of another debate or the trust of the American people..”

• No More Debates, No More Mistakes (Quoth the Raven)

Strategically, I think the Trump campaign is making the right decision by saying there will not be a third debate. It could be strategy to get terms he wants for another debate, but I’m hoping it is what it appears to be on its face, closing the book on further debates. Trump didn’t “win” the first debate, but I don’t think that’s why he’s not agreeing to another debate. And I know a lot of people are going to write this off as Trump being scared to debate Kamala Harris again, but I think we all know that’s not the case. I believe this is the right move, likely being made for multiple strategic reasons which I want to explain. First, let’s not forget that Kamala Harris has had ample opportunity to agree to another debate already but has chosen not to do so. She declined offers from networks like NBC and Fox in advance of the first debate and only brought up the idea of another debate after the last one. Her lack of courage and indecision in not agreeing to another debate should rightfully come back to bite her in the ass. Harris wants another bite at the apple because she didn’t do as badly as everybody thought she would, and now she can’t have it because she didn’t believe in herself enough to agree to terms ahead of time. Tough rocks for her.

Second, not doing a debate pigeonholes Harris to the poor policy explanations and reasoning she put forth in the last debate. The entire world watched both candidates this week, and though Harris may have performed better artistically, she came up light on policy prescriptions and details on her plans are for crucial issues like the economy and immigration. This was reflected in several post-debate interviews, including ones from Reuters and CNN, where independent voters were not swayed to her side. She was given a chance to talk policy and thought it would be far more useful to take jabs at Donald Trump instead. As I noted the night of the debate, this may have been a short-term success, but as the hours turn to days after the last debate and independent-minded critical thinkers start looking for more substance, it’s going to backfire.

Third, Harris’s team was asking for provisions and rule changes up to the very last minute of the debate. Putting aside the fact that Trump already did another debate with an entirely different candidate before knocking him out of the race after agreeing to the rules set by the Democratic Party, Harris tried to change the rules of the ABC debate all the way up until the last minute, asking for mics to be live on the day of. As I’ve commented before, Democrats are obsessed with micromanaging every last detail of these debates and their candidate because they lack significant substance on policy. Harris’ appearance was more of a successful public relations event than it was an opportunity to explain her policy positions to the American people. Trump, so far, has done two debates on enemy territory, CNN and ABC, and has not been shy about taking interviews or holding press conferences throughout his entire campaign. Putting policy aside in favor of nitpicky tactics of trying to modify every last detail so the opposing airhead candidate has her best chance to deliver some type of catchphrase or polish on her flip flops is simply not something Republicans need to put up with again.

Fourth, the next debate will be the vice presidential debate, and JD Vance is far more articulate in explaining policy positions than Donald Trump is. If policy is going to rule the day, I’m certain Vance will out-joust Tim Walz. I’m basing this on watching both of their media appearances over the last month or so and common-sense policy prescriptions that I think most Americans in the middle are looking for. Not having another presidential debate shows the Republicans’ confidence in JD Vance, and frankly, I think he’s going to do a significantly better job than Trump did. It’ll make the vice presidential debate the official sendoff for both sides heading into the general election. Tim Walz can brush up on how best to spin his way through sounding like his administration actually has policy ideas, but I’m not sure there’s anything he can do to keep pace with Vance in a debate.

Finally, news networks don’t deserve the ratings of another debate or the trust of the American people, whether Democrats know it or not. The previous debate was so blindingly biased towards Harris, both in the lines of questioning and in how the moderators interjected on her behalf, that network news in general doesn’t deserve to be trusted with another debate. Megyn Kelly said it best in her post-debate analysis when she stated that Republicans should never agree to another debate after what took place this week. As I’ve noted, I think the American public will see the objective truth that this was an ambush on Donald Trump and not an objective forum for two candidates to debate each other on the merits.

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“Prepare to duck-and-cover, or possibly to put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.”

• What You Don’t Know Might Surprise You (Kunstler)

Now, as for the Harris-Trump debate, otherwise, and given the rigged features of the exercise, it’s obvious that Mr. Trump muffed several major scoring opportunities. When Ms. Harris dredged up the notorious hoax about “very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville, Mr. Trump could have addressed the moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis and asked them why they did not “fact-check” the utterance, which had been thoroughly debunked by the Left-wing site Snopes.com, advertising itself as “the definitive Internet reference source for researching urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.” Nor did they fact check the likewise debunked “suckers and losers” hoax about US soldiers supposedly uttered by Mr. Trump at the Normandy D-Day cemetery. Actually, Muir and Davis “fact-checked” Mr. Trump over thirty times and Ms. Harris hardly at all.

In any case, Mr. Trump blew many other chances to pin Ms. Harris with her own lies and hypocrisies — like, failing to state plainly that in nearly four years she never actually visited the Mexican border (whatever her designated title was: “Border Czar,” “Root Causes Detective”) . . . failing to clarify that the president has been removed from the abortion debate altogether and has no role in telling women what to do with their own bodies under current law. . . that Ms. Harris’s voteless selection as nominee was a paradigmatic affront to “our democracy” that even her own fellow party members ought to recognize . . . that the War in Ukraine was actually started in early 2014 by Barack Obama, Victoria Nuland, and the CIA, not by Mr. Putin . . . and omitting to state that all — every last one — of the 2020 election lawsuits across the nation were dismissed on procedural grounds and not on the merits of their arguments, which were never heard in court.

That’s just a short list. It is also rumored that Ms. Harris got the debate questions beforehand, since her husband, Hollywood lawyer Doug Emhoff, is a close friend of Dana Walden, Co-chair of the Disney Corporation board of directors (Disney owns ABC-News.) Anyway, that much-awaited event is over now and we are into the homestretch of this election. Kamala Harris has still shown no disposition to meet the press, to answer any questions impromptu and unscripted. The voting public seems to be losing patience with that. Her poll numbers are sinking, despite her admirable ability to speak in declarative sentences and lead joyful laugh-fests.

What remains for our sore-beset country beyond that vortex of nefarious blobbery and balloting lawfare is the interesting development that our government is now pressing to commence World War Three before the election can happen. “Joe Biden,” of course, is lately as absent from the public consciousness as Rutherford B. Hayes, but whoever acts in the president’s name these days just gave permission for Ukraine to strike targets inside Russia with long-range missiles. So far, the UK and the Netherlands have officially jumped in on that decision. Note that the Ukrainians have no ability to actually do the targeting of said missile themselves, which involves satellite technology, meaning whatever missiles happen to get fired into Russia will be done by NATO personnel. Mr. Putin has made it clear that such action will have consequences. We might infer that means Russia will strike back at some NATO targets. I must imagine his primary target will be NATO headquarters in Brussels. Other targets would probably follow, perhaps even in the USA. Prepare to duck-and-cover, or possibly to put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.

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“It is about who controls the US government–the people or the ruling elites.”

• The Trump-Kamala “Debate” Left Untouched What Is Really At Stake (PCR)

What we need to understand about American presidential elections is that normally the candidates of both parties are chosen by the ruling elites. Therefore, it matters not to them who is elected. Trump is hated by the ruling elites because he took the nomination away from their list of approved Republican candidates in 2016, and they have been trying to get rid of him ever since. Trump is dangerous to the ruling establishment because he says he stands with the people against them. In other words, this is not an election contest between Republicans and Democrats. It is about who controls the US government–the people or the ruling elites.

I can say with complete confidence that for many decades the universities and law schools have undermined Americans’ beliefs in the US Constitution and in the belief system that is the basis of the United States. This undermining has had an effect on the American population. Democrat members of the population are convinced that white Americans, especially if they are southerners, are racists who have oppressed black Americans. They are also convinced that men oppress women. They are also convinced that the concept of sexual perversion is bigotry. The Democrats project all these alleged faults of white people not on their own white selves but onto Republican voters–“Trump deplorables” in Hillary Clinton’s words. So, Trump has two targets on his back. The ideological one of being a white male who oppresses blacks and women and the upstart who challenges the rule of the military/security complex, Wall Street, Big Pharma, and the other interest groups including the Israel Lobby whose money elects the members of the House and Senate.

Very few, including Trump, dare to admit the Israel Lobby’s control of the US government. That control is manifest in Netanyahu, a war criminal with a policy of genocide, being invited to address the House and Senate and being received with 53 standing ovations. The members of the House and Senate understand that they are in office due to the campaign contributions of their donors. Therefore, they are responsive to the donors whose money elects them, not to the people who vote. They understand that if they take issue with official narratives, they will lost office. As Kamala has not challenged the ruling establishment and as she is female and part black, she is immune to the ideological denunciation. Trump is at the disadvantage, because accused of being a racist and a misogynist, he proves the point when he attacks Kamala, who is free to sit there and gaslight the American public.

CNN’s “instant poll” following the Trump-Kamala “debate” assigns victory to Kamala by a 63% to 37% margin. In actual fact, there is no debate. There is a carefully constructed list of questions prepared by a partisan media that representatives of the presstitute media ask the candidates. The questions are artfully constructed to aid the preferred candidate. Sometimes the questioners even jump in and aid the favored candidate in “correcting” the unfavored candidate. It is likely that the favored candidate is provided with the questions in advance. The entire purpose of the “debate” is to aid the theft by boosting the image of the preferred candidate. The reason RINO Republicans such as Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell are opposed to Trump is that they prefer a candidate that is as acceptable to the ruling elites as the Democrat candidate. Be sure to understand that what you are seeing in the Trump-Kamala contest is the ruling elite’s determination to have its candidate in office, not the people’s candidate.

Of course, many American voters are too insouciant to understand the process and the stakes, and enough of them vote for the candidate of the ruling elite to keep the ruling elite in power and the people out of power. This is what Trump is up against. Possibly, Trump has gained more realization than voters of how elections are rigged whether or not votes are stolen. What is at stake is not a political party’s platform. What is at stake is who rules–the people or the elites. The answer is seldom the people. Even when the elite’s candidate loses, they continue to rule by filling up the winning candidate’s administration with their people, as they did Trump, and they continue to control majorities in the House and Senate, irrespective of party. Trump is not perfect. My view is that if the people do not support him, never again will a candidate of either party dare speak for the people. If Trump is again denied office, what has been done to Trump for the last eight years will be a lesson for all future political candidates: Get on the wrong side of the elite, and you will be crucified–and the people will not come to your aid.

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“If such a decision is made, that means NATO countries are starting an open war against Russia..”

• Russia Warns NATO of ‘Direct War’ Over Ukraine (RT)

Granting Kiev permission to use Western-supplied weapons would constitute direct involvement in the Ukraine conflict by NATO, Russia’s envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, has said. Moscow will treat any such attack as coming from the US and its allies directly, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, explaining that long-range weapons rely on Western intelligence and targeting solutions, neither of which Ukraine is capable of. NATO countries would “start an open war” with Russia if they allow Ukraine to use long-range weapons, Nebenzia told the UN Security Council on Friday.

“If such a decision is made, that means NATO countries are starting an open war against Russia,” Moscow’s envoy said. “In that case, we will obviously be forced to make certain decisions, with all the attendant consequences for Western aggressors.” “Our Western colleagues will not be able to dodge responsibility and blame Kiev for everything,” Nebenzia added. “Only NATO troops can program the flight solutions for those missile systems. Ukraine doesn’t have that capability. This is not about allowing Kiev to strike Russia with long-range weapons, but about the West making the targeting decisions.”

Russia considers it irrelevant that Ukrainian nationalists would technically be the ones pulling the trigger, Nebenzia explained. “NATO would become directly involved in military action against a nuclear power. I don’t think I have to explain what consequences that would have,” he said. The US and its allies placed some restrictions on the use of their weapons, so they could claim not to be directly involved in the conflict with Russia, while arming Ukraine to the tune of $200 billion. Multiple Western outlets have reported that the limitations might be lifted this week, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy visited Kiev. Russia has repeatedly warned the West against such a course of action.

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“..if the West allows Kiev to hit targets deep inside Russia, “this will mean that NATO countries, the US, European countries are fighting against Russia..”

• Putin’s Warning Heard Loud And Clear – Kremlin (RT)

The West has received and understood the latest warning by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. Putin stated earlier that allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied weapons to hit targets deep inside Russia would make these countries directly involved in the conflict. The UK was the first country to announce the shipment of its own long-range missiles to Ukraine in May 2023, followed by France several months later. Washington revealed that it had supplied Kiev with ATACMS missiles this spring. However, Kiev’s backers have publicly prohibited Ukraine from using the weapons against targets located deep inside internationally recognized Russian territory. Kiev has been demanding that these limitations be lifted since at least May. Several media outlets have suggested that Washington and London will soon do so, or secretly have already.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Peskov described Putin’s latest warning as “very important.” The Russian president’s statement was “clear, unequivocal, and doesn’t lend itself to multiple interpretations,” the spokesman said. He added that “we have no doubt that this statement has reached its recipients.” On Thursday, Putin explained that the Ukrainian military lacks the capabilities to use Western long-range systems and requires intelligence from NATO satellites and Western military personnel to operate them. In light of this, if the West allows Kiev to hit targets deep inside Russia, “this will mean that NATO countries, the US, European countries are fighting against Russia,” he said.

“Their direct participation [in the Ukraine conflict], of course, significantly changes the very essence, the very nature” of the hostilities, the president stressed. Putin added that Russia will “make the appropriate decisions based on the threats facing us.” Ahead of their visit to Kiev earlier this week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy hinted that their countries could give Ukraine the green light for long-range strikes on Russian territory with British and American missiles.

Putin

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“The insane recklessness of Collective Biden..”

https://gilbertdoctorow.substack.com/p/the-insane-recklessness-of-collective

• War Is Upon Us or Will Putin Blink Again (Paul Craig Roberts)

Gilbert Doctorow, a cautious commentator, has arrived at a position similar to my own. On September 10, Doctorow wrote in his article, “The insane recklessness of Collective Biden,” that “I cannot say how close we are to midnight on the nuclear war watch. But a Third World War fought at least initially with conventional weapons is now just days, at most weeks away.” What has pushed the cautious Dr. Doctorow to my position “is the near certainty that the United States and Britain have just agreed to give the Zelensky regime permission to use the long-range missiles which have been delivered to Ukraine, certainly including Storm Shadow and likely also the 1500 km range stealth missile known as JASSM to strike deep into the Russian heartland, and so ‘to bring the war to Russia’ as the Zelensky gang put it.” Doctorow reasons that Russia’s destruction of Ukraine’s army has prompted the neoconned Biden regime into one last desperate and reckless act of trying to deprive Russia of its victory “by escalating the conflict to a world war.”

Simultaneously with this US idiocy of underwriting missile attacks deep into Russia, Doctorow believes that “the United States has given Israel the go-ahead to launch a full-blown war on Lebanon.” This despite the fact that Lebanon has Iran’s protection, and Iran has Russia’s protection. So, we have at hand two prospects for the outbreak of major wars that will go nuclear. Extraordinary, isn’t it, that there is no discussion whatsoever of this duel crisis in the Western media or in the “debate” between Trump and Kamala. It is as if the US has no foreign policy experts and no Russian experts, but only supporters of the official narrative. The controlled narrative world in which we live makes us blind to reality. Indeed, it does seem that we do live in The Matrix in which there are no explanations other than the fraudulent ones protected by “fact checkers” in the official narratives.

Doctorow concludes that “a presently localized conflict in the Middle East can in a flash become a regional war that in a further flash becomes a second front to the war between the United States and Russia which I foretold above when speaking about Ukraine.” Doctorow is a person with whom I can agree. But I have a doubt. Just as for eight years Putin was lost in his delusion about the Minsk Agreement and failed to prepare for the coming conflict, and just as Putin seems yet to realize that he is at war with NATO, not conducting a “limited military operation in Donbas,” and just as Putin has refused to realize that by conducting a never-ending war he has permitted the West to become totally involved, thus changing the character of the conflict and vastly expanding it, can it be that Putin is still in denial of reality and does not see the war that is unfolding, partly because of his own inaction?

With the Russian media itself reporting that the Chinese are cooperating with Washington’s sanctions against Russia and refusing to handle Russian/Chinese financial transactions, thus accepting Washington’s wedge into the purported Chinese-Russian alliance, perhaps Washington will prevail over those who challenged the American hegemonic order but were unwilling to move forward with their challenge. Putin’s problem is that he is a mid-20th century American liberal who believes in good will. His Western opponent is operating on the Marxist principle that violence is the only effective force in history.

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“..X account Wall Street Silver, which warned that the US is “expected to launch WW3 this weekend and authorize attacks deep in Russian territory.”

• Musk Channels Star Wars Over WWIII Threat (RT)

US entrepreneur Elon Musk has reacted with foreboding to President Vladimir Putin’s warning to NATO about the consequences of potential long-range strikes against Russia with weapons provided by the US-led military bloc. Putin said on Thursday that Ukraine would depend on satellite intelligence and programming by NATO specialists to enable long-range strikes deep into Russia. Any such attacks “will mean that NATO nations, the US and European countries, are at war with Russia,” he stated. Musk shared a video of Putin’s remarks posted by the popular X account Wall Street Silver, which warned that the US is “expected to launch WW3 this weekend and authorize attacks deep in Russian territory.”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” the billionaire commented, using a catchphrase popularized by the Star Wars character Han Solo upon seeing the Death Star space station. Ukraine has been asking for the capability to strike targets deep inside Russia with Western weapons for months, claiming that the lack of permission to do so has undermined its positions on the front line. UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer is meeting with US President Joe Biden in Washington on Friday, where they will discuss relaxing restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range Western weapons.

The meeting comes after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Kiev with his British counterpart, David Lammy. Both NATO members have provided long-range weapons to Ukraine, which have been used against targets inside territories that Kiev claims, but not inside internationally-recognized Russian territory. The original post with Putin’s remarks attribute personal responsibility for a possible outbreak of a world war to Biden and US Vice President Kamala Harris, who is also the Democratic Party’s nominee in the upcoming presidential election. Musk is a supporter of Republican candidate Donald Trump. The former president has accused his opponents of putting the world at risk of a nuclear war during his campaign.

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The opposition. What’s left of it.

• Ukraine a Non-Sovereign State Ruled by ‘Political Frankenstein’ Zelensky (Sp.)

Chairman of the Council of the Other Ukraine movement Viktor Medvedchuk gave an interview to EADaily on September 12 about the causes of the Ukrainian crisis, Russia’s mission and the destructive influence of the collective West. “For a long time an independent Ukraine has not been existing politically, economically, or legally,” Ukrainian opposition politician and Chairman of the Council of the Other Ukraine movement Viktor Medvedchuk told EA Daily. “The country is ruled by an illegitimate president who has usurped power, becoming a dictator.” The Western-backed Euromaidan coup d’etat of 2014 dealt a heavy blow to Ukrainian sovereignty and legitimate power. For 30 years the West has fuelled anti-Russian sentiment, distorted history and facilitated the rise of Nazism in Ukraine.

The Minsk agreements of 2015 corresponded to EU interests, but the UK and US, who sought to start a war, deliberately disrupted the settlement process. Washington’s plan was “to destabilize the situation on Russia’s borders, and then inside Russia. The first step succeeded, the second did not. The US managed to break Ukraine and Europe, but not Russia.” In 2020 Ukraine got a chance to nullify the adverse consequences of the 2014 regime change through democratic means. “Our party ‘Opposition Platform – For Life’ won local elections in 2020, after we were ranked second in the 2019 parliamentary elections, and began to lead in polls across the country,” Medvedchuk said.

But in February 2021 the Zelensky regime illegally blocked broadcasting of opposition channels, slapped sanctions on Medvedchuk and his wife, groundlessly accused him of treason and arrested him in May 2021. Other Ukrainian opposition politicians were also subjected to persecution. The special military operation in Ukraine would not have begun if Zelensky had abandoned the idea of joining NATO.The situation in Ukraine and in the world will improve after the West stops pouring billions into propping up Zelensky, who is a “political Frankenstein”.

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They mean talks on Zelensky’s “peace plan.” Not going to happen.

But you just wait till the first German and French troops come home in body bags. That’ll change the mood at home.

• NATO Plans to Send Troops to Ukraine to Force Russia Into Talks – Moscow (Sp.)

NATO countries are making plans to send their troops to Ukraine in order to ensure conditions to force Russia to hold talks in line with Kiev’s formulas, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin said at the opening of the 11th Xiangshan Security Forum in Beijing. “In order to ensure conditions for forcibly coercing Russia into negotiations in line with Kiev’s formulas, NATO countries are making plans to send their troops to Ukraine. This is a dangerous game that could lead to a direct military clash between nuclear powers,” Fomin said.

Russian weapons have proven their effectiveness in combat conditions, Alexander Fomin said. “Russian weapons have fully proven their effectiveness in combat conditions, while Western weapons systems, which allegedly have high tactical and technical characteristics… burn perfectly on the battlefield with no chance of recovery,” Fomin said. The United States is actively working on a new version of its nuclear doctrine, in which the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons can be significantly lowered, Fomin said.

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“..nations should “never interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, never violate other countries’ rights and interests.”

• ‘Negotiation’ Only Way To End Ukraine, Gaza Conflicts – Beijing (RT)

Negotiating is the only solution to the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts, Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun said at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Xiangshan Forum on defense and security. The annual event is hosting around 20 defense ministers and 700 delegates from around 100 countries this year, including representatives from Moscow and Kiev. The senior official called on world powers to promote peace through facilitating political settlements of conflicts. “To resolve hotspot issues such as the crisis in Ukraine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, promoting peace and negotiation is the only way out. There is no winner in war and conflict, and confrontation leads nowhere,” Dong said, calling on all countries to promote “peaceful development and inclusive governance.”

The more acute the conflict, the more we cannot give up dialogue and consultation. The end of any conflict is reconciliation. According to Dong, in order to solve regional tensions, neighboring countries should “seek strength through unity,” and on the global scale, nations should “never interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, never violate other countries’ rights and interests.” “Major countries must take the lead in safeguarding global security, abandon a zero-sum mindset, and refrain from bullying the small and the weak,” he stated. China has repeatedly said that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine must be resolved through negotiations.

This May, along with BRICS partner Brazil, it presented a six-point proposal on a diplomatic settlement to the crisis. The plan highlighted diplomacy as the sole means to bring about peace and advocated for an international summit that both Russia and Ukraine would attend. A previous conference in Switzerland this summer was held without Russia and focused solely on Kiev’s demands, which Moscow has outright rejected. Russia, which has often expressed eagerness to resolve the Ukraine conflict diplomatically, had previously signaled that it would welcome the Chinese-Brazilian plan as a foundation for a potential peace settlement. Kiev, however, refused to consider the initiative. Speaking to Metropoles news outlet earlier this week, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky called the proposal “destructive,” and accused Beijing and Brasilia of “colluding” with Russia.

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“..the Federal Reserve, where there has never been any intelligence. Today there is no sign of intelligence anywhere in the US government..”

• The Big Collapse Awaits (Paul Craig Roberts)

In the 1970s when I served in the congressional staff and in the 1980s when I served in the executive branch, there was still some intelligence in the US government, with the exception of the Federal Reserve, where there has never been any intelligence. Today there is no sign of intelligence anywhere in the US government. That fact is documented every day on my website. As I recently reported, about 900,000 new jobs that had been claimed over the preceding year have just disappeared in a revision. A further downward revision could follow. These non-existent jobs were the Federal Reserve’s evidence for a hot inflation-prone economy justifying high interest rates. All the time the Fed was preaching inflation, the Fed was contracting the money supply, a contraction that has been underway for 2.5 years. This in itself is proof that the “inflation” was really higher prices caused by the shortages the senseless Covid lockdowns caused.

In other words, the higher prices were due to mandated shortages, not to inflation. A central bank too stupid to recognize this is too stupid to justify its existence. Whenever the Fed contracts the money supply recession follows. If the contraction is too large and lasts too long, as it was following the 1929 stock market crash, the result is a decade of depression and high unemployment. A contraction in the money supply means that the same level of economic activity and employment cannot be maintained at the same level of prices. Either economic activity and employment fall or prices fall. Historically, it has been economic activity and employment that fall first, and prices follow. Generally, that means profits fall. Now that it has dawned on the dummies at the Fed that they have set a recession in place, the talk is interest rate reductions. Wall Street is salivating over a possible half of one percent beginning.

For Wall Street, a reduction in interest rates means an increase in money, and it is liquidity increases that drive stock prices higher. What usually happens is that stock prices rise in expectation of the Fed loosening, but by the time the Fed loosens the economy is in a recession. So stock prices rise while profits fall, with the market banking on recovery to bring profits up to the level implied by the stock prices that have jumped the gun. Things, however, can go wrong. Expectations of lower interest rates is a signal to start up home building. But if a recession is in place, who is going to be purchasing homes? If the builders’ loans are due before the houses sell, the builder goes bust. In today’s immigrant-invader overrun America, there is a new consideration. According to even presstitute media reports, in blue cities immigrant invader gangs are seizing homes and apartment buildings, and soon, if not already, newly constructed homes.

If you are sufficiently stupid to live in a blue city, you can go to the grocery store and return to find your home occupied by immigrant-invaders. The police will not remove them. If you are stupid enough to live in a blue city, what this means is that you cannot risk going shopping, or to a medical appointment, or to pick up your kids from the school that indoctrinates them unless you hire a security service to occupy your home in your absence. You cannot possibly risk your home by going on a vacation. Builders will have to provide armed security for nearly finished homes, apartments, or any type of structure. No, I am not delusional. This is what is already happening. Keep in mind also my reports on The Great Dispossession. Federal regulators have taken away your ownership of your investments and bank account and given them, in the event that your depository institution enters financial difficulties, to the creditors of your depository institution.

This is what is meant by a “bail-in.” If you thought you didn’t need to read my articles, you made a mistake. Use the search feature and find them. To be clear, we already own nothing if there is another financial difficulty. Given the Federal Reserve’s record, such a difficulty is certain. Will it be this time, or the next time, or the one after?

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Theft.

“..He also froze Starlink’s assets, calling it part of a “de facto economic group” with X..”

• Brazil Seizes Musk’s Money (RT)

The Brazilian Supreme Court has unblocked the bank accounts of X and Starlink, only to withdraw $3.3 million from them in order to enforce a fine levied against Elon Musk’s social media platform. Judge Alexandre de Moraes banned X’s operations in Brazil at the end of August. He also froze Starlink’s assets, calling it part of a “de facto economic group” with X. “With the full payment of the amount due, [de Moraes] considered that there was no longer any need to keep the bank accounts blocked and ordered the immediate unblocking of the bank accounts/financial assets, motor vehicles and real estate of the aforementioned companies,” the court said in a statement on Friday. According to the court, a total of 18.35 million Brazilian reals (around $3.3 million) was withdrawn from both accounts, of which 11 million was from Starlink and the rest from X.

The companies were fined “for not removing content after an order from the [court] in ongoing investigations, in addition to having removed its legal representatives from Brazil,” the court said. Musk has not yet commented on the seizure of the funds. Earlier this month, he said the blocking of Starlink’s accounts was “absolutely illegal” since it was a separate company with different shareholders. The tech magnate also threatened to go after Brazilian state assets in retaliation. “Unless the Brazilian government returns the illegally seized property of X and SpaceX, we will seek reciprocal seizure of government assets too,” Musk wrote at the time. “Hope Lula enjoys flying commercial,” he added, referring to Brazilian President Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva. De Moraes has also threatened a fine of 50,000 Brazilian reals ($8,874) per day against anyone who used a virtual private network (VPN) to access X.

There have been no reports of the fine being enforced, however, and multiple prominent Brazilians – including several political parties – have continued posting on the platform. The dispute between the US entrepreneur and Brazilian authorities began in April, when de Moraes ordered X to delete the accounts of several supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, accusing them of spreading “disinformation” about himself and the court. Musk refused, saying this would violate Brazilian laws. X’s Global Government Affairs team has said that de Moraes had threatened their Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment and froze all of her bank accounts even after she resigned. The judge then cited lack of counsel as the reason for the fine and the ban on the platform’s operations. “Unlike other social media and technology platforms, we will not comply in secret with illegal orders,” X said in a statement at the time.

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“..the only goal of these types of “hate” laws is to create a special category of crime based entirely on the identity of the victim. Identity politics is now part of criminal law…”

• The Folly of Criminalizing “Hate” (Njoya)

Many people were shocked when over 1,000 protesters were arrested in the UK and jailed for various offenses including “violent disorder” and stirring up racial hatred. Most shocking were the cases of those arrested for posting social media comments on the riots, despite not being present at the scene and there being no evidence that anybody who joined in the riots had read any of their comments.

In societies which uphold the value of individual liberty, the only purpose of the criminal law should be to restrain and punish those who commit acts of aggression against other people or their property. The criminal law should not be used to prevent people from “hating” others or to force them to “love” each other. In announcing yet another raft of laws “to expand the list of charges eligible to be prosecuted as hate crimes,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said that “During these challenging times, we will continue to show up for each other. We are making it clear: love will always have the last word in New York.” To that end, she introduced “legislation to significantly expand eligibility for hate crime prosecution.”

Attempts to promote love between different racial or religious groups in society, for example, by charging people with stirring up “hate” when they protest against immigration, misunderstands the role of the criminal law. Threats to public order entail violating the person or property of others—as happens in a violent riot—not merely the exhibition of “hate” towards others. Yet increasingly, public order offenses are linked to hate speech or hate crimes.

Laws prohibiting hate speech and hate crimes typically define “hate” as hostility based on race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or religion. Often, hostility is understood simply as words that offend others. For example, in the UK, the Communications Act 2003 prohibits sending “a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.” The Online Safety Act 2023 targets illegal content online including both “inciting violence” and the publication of “racially or religiously aggravated public order offenses.” Conduct online includes writing posts or publishing blogs or articles on websites.

Given that inciting violence is already a crime—“conduct, words, or other means that urge or naturally lead others to riot, violence, or insurrection”—there seems to be no discernible purpose in adding the concept of “hate” to such crimes. To give an example, writing “burn down the store” on social media might be seen as inciting violence, but writing “burn down the Muslim store” in the same circumstances would be categorized as a hate crime. Arson (actually burning down the store) is a crime, but based on the racial or religious identity of the store owner arson is deemed to be a “worse” crime—a hate crime—even though the harm in both cases and the loss suffered by store owners who are victims of arson does not vary based purely on their race or religion.

Therefore, no “hateful conduct” laws are needed to further “criminalize” what is already a crime. The conclusion is inescapable that the only goal of these types of “hate” laws is to create a special category of crime based entirely on the identity of the victim. Identity politics is now part of criminal law. “Hate” based on race or religion is now a priority in criminal law enforcement with resources increasingly diverted towards it. For example, New York has devoted a budget of $60 million to “fight hate.”

Events in the UK over the past week chillingly illustrate the consequences of an identity-based approach to law enforcement. In the ongoing police purge of rioters, those who wrote “hate speech” posts on social media platforms were charged with “inciting racial hatred” and sentenced to prison terms of up to two to three years. Far from fighting against “hate,” this is likely only to further fuel resentment and racial antagonism.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

RFK Gates

 

 

RFK portal

 

 

Top gear

 

 

Hug
https://twitter.com/i/status/1834471936270762494

 

 

Friday
https://twitter.com/i/status/1834466374594241022

 

 

Cub and pup

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle September 4 2024

Sep 042024
 
 September 4, 2024  Posted by at 8:27 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  64 Responses »


René Magritte Memory of a Journey 1955

 

• Musk ‘Can’t Wait’ To Be Part Of Trump’s Team (RT)
• Robert Reich Calls for Arrest of Elon Musk for Resisting Censorship (Turley)
• Musk Threatens To Go After Brazilian Government Assets (RT)
• Brazilians to be Fined $9000 a Day for Receiving News from X (Turley)
• Why Did Zuckerberg Choose Now to Confess? (Tucker)
• Can They Really Reinvent Kamala Harris in 70 Days? (Victor Davis Hanson)
• Harris’ So-Called ‘Surge’ Is Thanks To Oversampling: Pollsters (ZH)
• Kamala Harris Will Not Bring Prices Down. Her Plan Needs Inflation (Lacalle)
• Durov ‘Too Free’ For The West – Lavrov (RT)
• ‘Developing in All Directions’: Putin Praises Russia-Mongolia Relations (Sp.)
• Mongolia Told ICC To Get Lost With Putin Warrant – Medvedev (RT)
• Mongolia Explains Why It Didn’t Arrest Putin (RT)
• Serious International Crimes to Be Brought to Justice – Moscow (Sp.)
• Netanyahu Refuses Surrender to Israeli Protesters Demanding Hostage Deal (Sp.)
• Epstein Client List ‘Will Be’ Made Public – Trump (RT)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reagan

 

 

51 days

 

 

Kash Patel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1830814009420918825

 

 

Sen. Kennedy

 

 

Kamala ad

 

 

But nobody knows Kamala

 

 

O’Leary CNN
https://twitter.com/i/status/1830841829987860546

 

 

Tucker WWII

 

 

 

 

“There is a lot of waste and needless regulation in government that needs to go..”

• Musk ‘Can’t Wait’ To Be Part Of Trump’s Team (RT)

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said he is eager to join Donald Trump’s team if he wins the presidential election in November. According to the Washington Post, Trump is planning to establish a special commission to review the work of federal agencies and is considering Musk for a role on this team. The outlet reported on Monday that the former president and his team had been discussing the initiative behind closed doors in recent weeks. The commission would reportedly be led by prominent business executives, whose task would be to “comb through the government books to identify thousands of programs to cut,” according to the Washington Post.

While Trump has previously dismissed the idea of having Musk join his cabinet due to his sprawling business empire, he said the tech tycoon was a “very smart guy” and could be a helpful consultant to the federal government and provide “some very good ideas.” Trump has also praised Musk for the cost-cutting measures that he implemented after acquiring Twitter (now X) in 2022. Following the takeover, Musk infamously laid off some 6,000 workers, or nearly 80% of the platform’s workforce. Responding to the Washington Post’s claims that he is being considered for the auditing commission, Musk wrote on X on Tuesday that he “can’t wait.” “There is a lot of waste and needless regulation in government that needs to go,” the billionaire said.

Previously, Musk has written that he is “fully” endorsing Trump in the upcoming election and that he is “willing to serve” under the former president if he secures a second term in office. In a post on X last month, the billionaire also shared an AI-generated image of himself standing behind a lectern labeled ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ with the acronym DOGE, referring to the meme-based DOGE coin cryptocurrency, which Musk has personally backed in the past. Last week, Musk also warned that the US was on a “fast lane to bankruptcy” due to government overspending, saying that this is causing rampant inflation in the country. The billionaire also shared a forecast suggesting that the US budget deficit could increase from $1.8 trillion to almost $16.3 trillion over the next ten years at the current rate of spending.

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“..despite their critical role in various national security efforts, including the possible rescue of the stranded two astronauts currently in space. None of that matters to Reich..”

• Robert Reich Calls for Arrest of Elon Musk for Resisting Censorship (Turley)

We have previously discussed the anti-free speech views of Clinton’s former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, who has tried to sell citizens on the perfectly Orwellian view that more freedom means tyranny when it comes to the freedom of expression. He also demanded that former president Donald Trump be banned from ballots as a “traitor” — all in the name of protecting democracy from itself. Last week, Reich wrote a column declaring Elon Musk “out of control” in his refusal to censor citizens and appeared to call for his arrest. Reich has long been a prominent voice in the anti-free speech movement discussed in my recent book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage. Indeed, he has given a voice to the rage in calling for others to be silenced or arrested. Elon Musk has long been the primary target of Reich and his allies after dismantling the censorship system at Twitter, now X.

Reich called Musk’s purchase of Twitter with a pledge to reduce censorship to be “dangerous nonsense.” Notably, Reich’s friend, Hillary Clinton, was one of the first to call for a crackdown on Musk after his purchase of Twitter. Hillary Clinton and other Democratic figures turned to Europe and called upon them to use their Digital Services Act to force censorship against Americans. Reich has always shown a chilling fluidity in how free speech is protected and argued that public interest should be able to trump the right of any citizens in espousing views that he believes are dangerous. In denouncing Musk, Reich encouraged a campaign to counter his efforts to resist censorship. He wrote that Musk “may be the richest man in the world. He may own one of the world’s most influential social media platforms. But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless to stop him.”

Like Hillary Clinton, Reich is calling on foreign governments and censors to silence American citizens including Musk: “Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X.” He even appears willing to undermine national security programs to stop unfettered free speech. He called for the U.S. government to cut off contracts with his companies despite their critical role in various national security efforts, including the possible rescue of the stranded two astronauts currently in space. None of that matters to Reich who appears to view free speech as a greater threat to our nation: “Why is the US government allowing Musk’s satellites and rocket launchers to become crucial to the nation’s security when he’s shown utter disregard for the public interest?

Why give Musk more economic power when he repeatedly abuses it and demonstrates contempt for the public good?” Reich’s call to regulate speech in the public interest is the Siren’s Call of every authoritarian regime in history. He will presumably tell us what speech is no longer tolerable for public policy reasons. Our “Indispensable Right” will, according to Reich, be safely in the hands of the European censors who can protect us from errant and dangerous thoughts. As he explained earlier, “the kinds of things that we do about this is, focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed.” In this way, speech regulations can keep us “moving towards how we recommend content and … how we direct people’s attention is leading to a healthy public conversation that is most participatory.” The “healthy public conversation” with Robert Reich increasingly appears to be his talking and the rest of us listening.

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“Unless the Brazilian government returns the illegally seized property of X and SpaceX..”

• Musk Threatens To Go After Brazilian Government Assets (RT)

Tech mogul Elon Musk has vowed to seek the seizure Brazilian government assets in the US, if Brazil does not return property belonging to his companies X (formerly Twitter) and Space X. Last week, the Supreme Court of Brazil ordered the operations of X to be “immediately suspended” and threatened a fine of 50,000 Brazilian reals ($8,874) per day against anyone trying to sidestep the ban on accessing the platform using a VPN. The judge gave Google and Apple five days to remove X from their app stores. The ruling was upheld Monday by a panel of federal supreme court justices. The court also froze the accounts of satellite internet provider Starlink, a subsidiary of Musk’s SpaceX, to ensure the payment of fines imposed for failing to appoint a new legal representative for X in Brazil.

“Unless the Brazilian government returns the illegally seized property of X and SpaceX, we will seek reciprocal seizure of government assets too,” Musk wrote on his social media platform. “Hope Lula enjoys flying commercial,” the billionaire added, referring to Brazilian President Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva. Musk was responding to a tweet of a news report about the US government’s confiscation of a jet allegedly used by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, claiming it violated Washington’s sanctions against Caracas. The fierce dispute between the Brazilian authorities and the US entrepreneur began in April, when Brazilian Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered X to delete the accounts belonging to several supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, calling them “digital militants” who spread “disinformation” about himself and the court.

The billionaire rejected the demand, highlighting that to comply with the order would violate Brazilian laws. Musk announced plans to suspend operations in the country, citing what he called censorship orders that his company refused to comply with. Commenting on the seizure of Starlink’s accounts, Musk objected to the “absolutely illegal action” taken without any due process, pointing out that X and SpaceX are “two completely different companies with different shareholders.” He also pledged to provide free internet access to the company’s Brazilian customers while the accounts remain blocked. On Monday, Reuters reported a senior state official as saying that Brazilian telecommunications regulator Anatel could introduce sanctions against Starlink, which is currently the only company that refused to comply with the ruling to shut down X. Anatel has warned that the company’s license for operating in the country could be revoked.

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Brazil’s no. 1 news source.

• Brazilians to be Fined $9000 a Day for Receiving News from X (Turley)

Brazil has not just banned X (formerly Twitter) from the entire country, but citizens will now be fined $9000 a day (more than the average salary in the country) for using VPNs to access the platform. X is the main source of news for Brazilians, who will now be left with government-approved sources or face financial ruin in seeking unfettered information. The Guardian is reporting that the confiscatory fines are part of a comprehensive crackdown on efforts to get news through X, including ordering all Apple stores to remove X from new phones. The move puts Brazil with China in the effort to create a wall of censorship between citizens and unregulated information. For the anti-free speech movement, Brazil is a key testing ground for where the movement is heading next. European censors are arresting CEOs like Pavel Durov while threatening Elon Musk.

However, it is Brazil that foreshadows the brave new world of censorship where entire nations will block access to sites committed to free speech values or unfettered news. If successful, the Brazilian model is likely to be replicated by other countries. The reason is that censorship is not working. As discussed in my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” we have never seen the current alliance of government, corporate, academic, and media interest against free speech. Yet, citizens are not buying it. Despite unrelenting attacks and demonizing media coverage, citizens are still using X and resisting censorship. That was certainly the case in Brazil where citizens preferred X to regulated news sources. The solution is now to threaten citizens with utter ruin if they seek unfettered news.

The question is whether Brazil’s leftist government can get away with this. The conflict began with demands to censor supporters of the conservative former president Jair Bolsonaro. When X refused the sweeping demands for censorship, including the demand to name of a legal representative who could be arrested for refusing to censor users, the courts moved toward this national ban. The man behind the effort is Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has aggressively used censorship to combat anything that he or the government deems “fake news” or disinformation. With socialist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, they are the dream team of the anti-free speech movement. The question is whether Brazil will become a nightmare for free speech around the world as other nations seek to force citizens to read and hear news from approved, state-monitored sites.

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Because he thinks Trump will win.

• Why Did Zuckerberg Choose Now to Confess? (Tucker)

On many subjects important to public life today, vast numbers of people know the truth, and yet the official channels of information sharing are reluctant to admit it. The Fed admits no fault in inflation and neither do most members of Congress. The food companies don’t admit the harm of the mainstream American diet. The pharmaceutical companies are loath to admit any injury. Media companies deny any bias. So on it goes. And yet everyone else does know, already and more and more so. This is why the admission of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was so startling. It’s not what he admitted. We already knew what he revealed. What’s new is that he admitted it. We are simply used to living in a world swimming in lies. It rattles us when a major figure tells us what is true or even partially or slightly true. We almost cannot believe it, and we wonder what the motivation might be.

In his letter to Congressional investigators, he flat-out said what everyone else has been saying for years now. “In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree….I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it. I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today. Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction – and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.”

A few clarifications. The censorship began much earlier than that, from March 2020 at the very least if not earlier. We all experienced it, almost immediately following lockdowns. After a few weeks, using that platform to get the word out proved impossible. Facebook once made a mistake and let my piece on Woodstock and the 1969 flu go through but they would never make that mistake again. For the most part, every single opponent of the terrible policies was deplatformed at all levels. The implications are far more significant than the bloodless letter of Zuckerberg suggests. People consistently underestimate the power that Facebook has over the public mind. This was especially true in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles. The difference in having an article unthrottled much less amplified by Facebook in these years was in the millionfold. When my article went through, I experienced a level of traffic that I had never seen in my career. It was mind-boggling.

When the article was shut down some two weeks later – after focused troll accounts alerted Facebook that the algorithms had made a mistake – traffic fell to the usual trickle. Again, in my entire career of closely following internet traffic patterns, I had never seen anything like this. Facebook as an information source offers power like we’ve never seen before, especially because so many people, especially among the voting public, believe that the information they are seeing is from their friends and family and sources they trust. The experience of Facebook and other platforms framed the reality that people believed existed outside of themselves. Every dissident, and every normal person who had some sense that something odd was going on, was made to feel like some sort of crazy cretin who held nutty and probably dangerous views that were completely out of touch with the mainstream.

What does it mean that Zuckerberg now openly admits that he excluded from view anything that contradicted government wishes? It means that any opinions on lockdowns, masks, or vaccine mandates – and all that is associated with that including church and school closures plus vaccine harms – were not part of the public debate. We had lived through and were living through the most significant far-reaching attacks on our rights and liberties in our lifetimes, or, arguably, on the history record in terms of scale and reach, and it was not part of any serious public debate. Zuckerberg played an enormous role in this. People like me had come to believe that average people were simply cowards or stupid not to object. Now we know that this might not have been true at all! The people who objected were simply silenced!

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“Harris is not so much a flip-flopper as a padder, who supports anything, without any worry about framing each new position by renouncing her original and opposite one.”

• Can They Really Reinvent Kamala Harris in 70 Days? (Victor Davis Hanson)

Harris’s well-funded 2019 campaign quickly blew up early. Indeed, she never entered much less won a single primary–and captured no delegates through voting. In the frenzy following George Floyd’s death, and the mayhem and nationwide rioting and violence of late spring and summer, panicked 2020 nominee Joe Biden announced in advance he would select a diversity candidate as a running mate. And in no time, and under increasing pressure to trump his braggadocious promise, he boxed himself in by assuring his handlers that his running mate would be preselected as a black woman. Given there were then no black female governors and only two black women in the Senate, Kamala Harris was a choice of last resort—even though, as a candidate and competitor of Joe Biden, she had condemned him before a nationwide audience as a veritable racist who had habitually cozied up to segregationists.

When she labels her own running mate a racist it becomes hard to take her charges of racism against Trump seriously. As vice president, Harris predictably proved inept. In a variety of tasks as “border czar” and point woman on space exploration, she proved not merely clueless but embarrassingly so—sappy, cackling, and variously labeled by ex-staff and Democratic insiders as “out of her league” and “way over her head.” Her chief role was to break a sometimes 50/50 deadlocked Senate and therefore, in every one of those votes, owns the passage of hard-left legislation that often turned disastrous. As Biden’s cognitive decline accelerated at a geometric rate, a widely derided Harris was seen by the Bidens as Joe’s Spiro Agnew insurance policy: a vice president so bumbling and unimaginable as a future president that if Biden only breathed, he would be still judged preferable to the travesty of a Harris succession.

Biden utterly imploded on June 13 during a stress-test national debate. His collapse ended the 42-month-long charade that he was “fit as a fiddle.” In 24 hours, Biden was transmogrified by his handlers from an Arnold Schwarzenegger-like health nut to physically and mentally unable to continue as the Democratic nominee. Left unsaid was that his diving polls, not his debility, doomed Biden. Otherwise, he would have survived his latest public humiliation had his approval ratings been respectable. Harris’s race, gender, and status as vice president made it impossible not to anoint her as the new Democratic candidate.

Her machinations to preempt any challengers were achieved almost instantaneously in the same anti-democratic fashion as the removal of Biden himself from the ticket. In the way of the current Democrats, whatever the billionaire donor class and the DEI apparat decide is reified almost instantly by fiat. We now suffer a zombie presidency for the next five months. Biden’s own party insists that he is too enfeebled to campaign as a nominee but not too demented to serve as president. Weirder still, a presidential candidate, who has never in her life won a primary and just days ago was written off by her own party as linguistically challenged, is being reinvented in 70 days as the second coming of Barack Obama.

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Is this how Hillary got that 97% likelihood to win in 2016?

• Harris’ So-Called ‘Surge’ Is Thanks To Oversampling: Pollsters (ZH)

As we’ve been highlighting since 2016, polls are not to be trusted thanks to various ‘tricks of the trade’ – most commonly, oversampling. Last month we noted how the founder of the main outside spending group backing Kamala Harris for president says their own internal opinion polling is “much less rosy” than public polls. “Our numbers are much less rosy than what you’re seeing in the public,” said Future Forward super PAC president Chauncey McLean said during a Monday event hosted by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. Now, the Washington Times reports that some pollsters are even sounding the alarm over Vice President Kamala Harris’ so-called ‘surge’ in the polls – which Harris pulled ahead in after replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee on July 21.

Since the switch, Harris is leading Trump nationally by nearly 2 percentage points and is either leading or tied with him in all seven battleground states. However, Republican analysts argue that these polling numbers may not accurately reflect voter sentiment due to biased polling methodology. Critics point out that many polls have been sampling a disproportionately smaller share of Republican voters compared to exit poll data from the 2020 presidential election. The result, they say, is a misleading “phantom advantage” for Ms. Harris. According to them, this skewed sampling could be a strategic move to boost enthusiasm and fundraising for Ms. Harris’ campaign. Trump campaign strategist Jim McLaughlin echoed this sentiment, stating, “They undersample Republicans” intentionally “to tamp down support and donations for Trump.” He added that the polls are part of a larger effort to create a narrative that favors Harris.

Trump has openly criticized the poll results. “It’s fake news,” Trump declared during a rally in Michigan. “They can make those polls sing.” Harris’ recent poll numbers have indeed helped fuel excitement among her supporters, as evidenced by her campaign’s announcement of a $540 million fundraising haul in July, more than four times what Mr. Trump raised in the same period. Still, the growing skepticism over the legitimacy of the polls has prompted some to question whether the surge in support is as real as it appears.

Recent polls that show a Harris lead, such as the Suffolk University/USA Today poll, included more respondents identifying as Democrats (37.1%) than Republicans (33.8%). The poll found Ms. Harris leading Trump by 5 percentage points, a significant turnaround from earlier in the year when Trump was ahead by 4 points vs. Biden. Similarly, a Yahoo News/YouGov poll released on August 27 found Ms. Harris ahead of Mr. Trump by 1 percentage point, with Democrats making up 33% of respondents compared to only 29% for Republicans. The discrepancy in party sampling is causing concern among poll watchers. Data from the 2020 exit polls showed a nearly equal split, with 36% identifying as Republican and 37% as Democrat. Yet, recent polls seem to favor Democrats disproportionately, leading to claims of deliberate skewing.

Mr. Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, has argued that these polls are designed to suppress support for Mr. Trump. In a memo, he stated, “Once again, we see a series of public surveys released with the clear intent and purpose of depressing support for President Trump.” Pollsters like Don Levy of the New York Times/Siena Poll counter that these claims lack substance. They argue that any gaps between recalled 2020 vote and actual 2020 results are not evidence of intentional bias but may reflect the complexity of polling dynamics, including response bias where Democrats are more likely to participate in polls. Despite these excuses, the controversy surrounding these polls has left many wondering about the true state of the race. Polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight shows Ms. Harris’ approval rating ticking up to 42.3%, up from 37.1% in early July. Yet, doubts persist over how she has managed to rise in the polls without significantly improving her historically low job approval ratings.

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“Inflation is the way in which the government tricks citizens into believing that administrations can provide for anything..”

• Kamala Harris Will Not Bring Prices Down. Her Plan Needs Inflation (Lacalle)

In a recent interview with CNN, Kamala Harris said that Bidenomics is working and that she is “proud of bringing inflation down.” However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics published the latest CPI at 2.9%, despite annual inflation being 1.4% when she took office. Inflation is a disguised tax and accumulated inflation since January 2021, when the Biden-Harris administration started, has increased more than 20%. Of course, Democrats blame inflation on the war, the pandemic, and the science-fantasy concept of “supply chain disruptions.” No one believed it, because most commodities have declined and supply tensions disappeared back to normality, but prices continued to rise. As a result, Harris invented the concept of greedy grocery stores and evil corporations to blame for inflation and justify price controls.

Is it not ironic? She blames grocery stores and corporations for inflation, but when price inflation drops, she proudly takes credit. The reality is that the Kamala Harris plan, like all interventionist governments, creates and strives for inflation. Inflation is a hidden tax. Governments love it and perpetuate it by printing money through deficit spending and imposing regulations that harm trade, competition, and technological creative destruction. Big government is big inflation. Inflation is the way in which the government tricks citizens into believing that administrations can provide for anything. It disguises the accumulated debt, quietly transfers wealth from the private sector to the government and condemns citizens to being dependent hostages of government subsidies. It is the only way in which they can continue to spend a constantly depreciated currency and present themselves as the solution.

Furthermore, it is the perfect excuse to blame businesses and anyone else who sells in the currency that the government creates. Kamala Harris will do nothing to cut inflation because she wants inflation to disguise the monster deficit and debt accumulation. In the latest figures, the deficit has soared to $1.5 trillion in the first ten months of the fiscal year. Public debt has soared to $35 trillion, and in the administration’s own forecasts, they will add a $16.3 trillion deficit from 2025 to 2034. It is worse. The previously mentioned figure does not include the $2 trillion in additional debt coming from Kamala’s economic plan.

Harris is aware that her proposals to impose an unrealized capital gains tax, an economic aberration, and other tax hikes will not generate the $2 trillion in additional taxes she seeks. So, she needs the Fed to monetize as much as possible, eroding the US dollar’s purchasing power and making all Americans poorer in the process, only to blame corporations and grocery stores later. Furthermore, it is a way to present the government as the solution to the problem they create, promising the lunacy of price controls and enormous subsidies in a constantly depreciated currency.

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“..too slow [to react to] or did not listen at all to Western advice about the so-called moderation of his brainchild..”

• Durov ‘Too Free’ For The West – Lavrov (RT)

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is facing charges in France because he refused to moderate his platform in accordance with Western demands, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has claimed. Durov was arrested after landing in Paris in late August and charged with multiple offenses, including complicity in “administering an online platform” used by criminal groups to conduct illicit activities, and refusing to cooperate with investigators. The Russian tech entrepreneur, who also has citizenship of France, the UAE, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, was released on €5 million ($5.55 million) bail last week. He is banned from leaving the country while the case against him is ongoing. During a meeting with students and educators at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations on Monday, Lavrov suggested that Durov is being persecuted because he “turned out to be too free.”

The Telegram CEO was “too slow [to react to] or did not listen at all to Western advice about the so-called moderation of his brainchild,” he said. Durov is not the only tech entrepreneur to face such pressure from Washington and its allies, the minister stressed, noting how the head of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg “had been summoned to the US Senate and agreed to cooperate, as he himself admitted.” “The West does not pull any punches when dealing with other large platforms either,” he added. What the US and the EU are now doing to Durov is “analogous to their actions related to the abuse of globalization,” Lavrov noted. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said over the weekend that Moscow also had issues with the Telegram CEO in the past, but – unlike Paris – never tried to arrest him.

Holding Durov accountable for crimes committed by other people using his app is the same as arresting the heads of French automobile makers Renault or Citroen because “terrorists also use cars,” Peskov argued. Durov, who was born in St. Petersburg, formally left Russia in 2014 after law enforcement agencies accused him of refusing to grant investigators access to the communications of terrorism suspects. The dispute was settled in 2020 when the Russian telecoms regulator announced that it had no further issues with Telegram. In an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson in April, Durov insisted that he has repeatedly refused to provide user data to any authorities, including US intelligence services, or to install a surveillance “backdoor” in the app, which has almost a billion monthly users.

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“..last year, 90% of gasoline and diesel fuel entered the Mongolian market from Russia..”

• ‘Developing in All Directions’: Putin Praises Russia-Mongolia Relations (Sp.)

On Monday, Putin arrived in Mongolia for an official visit, during which he is anticipated to participate in celebrations marking the 85th anniversary of the joint victory of Soviet and Mongolian armed forces at the Khalkh River. “Indeed, relations between Russia and Mongolia are developing in all directions,” Putin said at a meeting with Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh. Putin underscored the effective work in humanitarian areas, in particular in the field of education. “Today, during the course of our work, we will certainly return to the main areas of our cooperation in the economy,” Putin noted. Russia and Mongolia contribute to Asia’s security by cooperating along military-technical lines, as well as countering terrorism, Putin said. “When considering issues of military-technical and anti-terrorist cooperation, it was noted that Russian-Mongolian cooperation in these areas contributes to ensuring security in Asia,” Putin said after talks with Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh.

Moscow is open to implementing peaceful nuclear energy projects with the East Asian country, Putin said. “We are also open to implementing joint peaceful nuclear energy projects based on the most modern Russian technologies, including the use of small-module reactors,” Putin told reporters following the talks with Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh. Russia sees prospects for cooperation with Mongolia in the gas sector, President Putin said. “We see good prospects for cooperation in the gas sector,” Putin said after talks with his Mongolian counterpart, adding that the possibility of Russian gas supplies to Mongolian consumers is under consideration. Russia has consistently responded to Mongolia’s requests to meet its growing demand for fuel and lubricants, including on preferential terms, the president said, adding that Russia will also continue to supply Mongolia with electricity.

“Our country has long and reliably provided the Mongolian economy with the energy resources it needs. Thus, last year, 90% of gasoline and diesel fuel entered the Mongolian market from Russia,” he added. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that he had exchanged views on current international and regional issues at talks with Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh. Moscow and Ulaanbaatar have paid special attention to advancing trade and investment ties during the talks in the Mongolian capital, Putin added.

“Special attention was paid to building up mutually beneficial trade and investment ties. Russia is one of Mongolia’s main foreign economic partners,” Putin said after talks with Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh. Commercial settlements between Russia and Mongolia are almost entirely carried out in currencies other than the dollar and euro, the president added. In turn, the President of Mongolia thanked Putin for the visit, which coincides with a year of significant celebrations for both nations. This year marks the 85th anniversary of their joint victory at the Khalkhin Gol River and the 50th anniversary of the founding of Erdenet.

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“..go do to themselves something that Russians and Mongols found a word for together, back in the 13th century” and get lost..”

• Mongolia Told ICC To Get Lost With Putin Warrant – Medvedev (RT)

The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin turned out to be a meaningless scrap of paper, his predecessor Dmitry Medvedev has said. His comments came after Putin arrived in Mongolia, an ICC member state, without facing any obstacles. Writing on Telegram on Tuesday, Medvedev, who now serves as Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council, mocked the Western reaction to Putin’s visit to Ulaanbaatar. “The servile European Union has reportedly expressed ‘concern’ to Mongolia over the visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin,” he said. However, the Asian country “has just told the ICC and Eurodegenerates to go do to themselves something that Russians and Mongols found a word for together, back in the 13th century” and get lost, Medvedev suggested.

The ex-president went on to argue that the ICC – which he labeled a “half-baked ‘court’” – should be afraid of “a scenario where some madman tries to carry out their illegal arrest warrant. […] In that case, their lives would be worth no more than the piece of paper on which this shitty statute is written,” he warned. In March 2023, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for allegedly participating in unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. Moscow does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction and declared the order null and void. Russia says that Ukrainian children were evacuated for safety reasons, and that they can be returned to their parents or guardians upon request.

Putin’s visit to Mongolia was his first foreign trip to a country that recognizes the ICC statute. Ahead of the trip, the court’s spokesman, Fadi el-Abdallah, said that the country had to cooperate with the ICC on the detention, adding that failure to do so could trigger an “appropriate” response from the body. However, the Rome Statute, under which the ICC operates, provides for exemptions if an arrest would “breach a treaty obligation” with another country or violate the “diplomatic immunity of a person or property of a third state.” Before Putin landed in Ulaanbaatar, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov allayed fears of a potential attempt to arrest the Russian leader. “We have excellent relations with our friends from Mongolia,” he said, noting that Moscow “has no concerns” about the ICC warrant.

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“Mongolia has always maintained a policy of neutrality in all its diplomatic relations..”

• Mongolia Explains Why It Didn’t Arrest Putin (RT)

Mongolia is dependent on its neighbors for energy and maintains a policy of neutrality, a government spokesperson has said, responding to demands to detain Russian President Vladimir Putin on a “war crimes warrant.” The International Criminal Court (ICC), Ukraine and the EU have all called on Ulaanbaatar to arrest the Russian leader, citing a 2023 warrant for “forcible deportations” of Ukrainian children. Although Mongolia is a signatory party to the ICC, it did not do so. “Mongolia imports 95% of its petroleum products and over 20% of electricity from our immediate neighborhood, which have previously suffered interruption for technical reasons. This supply is critical to ensure our existence and that of our people,” a government spokesperson told Politico EU via email on Tuesday. “Mongolia has always maintained a policy of neutrality in all its diplomatic relations, as demonstrated in our statements of record to date,” the spokesperson added.

Putin traveled to Mongolia at the invitation of his counterpart, Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh, and met with top officials in Ulaanbaatar to discuss the two countries’ strategic partnership. The Russian president also attended the ceremony marking the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Khalkhin Gol, a decisive victory of Soviet and Mongolian forces over the Imperial Japanese Army that secured the USSR’s eastern flank for most of WWII. During their meeting Putin invited his Mongolian counterpart, Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh, to the BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan next month. Khurelsukh has accepted the invitation. By refusing to arrest Putin, Mongolia has chosen to share “responsibility for his war crimes,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Georgy Tykhy said on social media, adding that Kiev “will work with partners to ensure that this has consequences for Ulaanbaatar.”

Mongolia is landlocked between Russia to the north and China to the south, and has maintained good relations with both Moscow and Beijing. Ulaanbaatar also signed the Rome Statute and joined the ICC in 2002, and one of its judges was appointed to the court earlier this year. While the court could formally condemn Mongolia for failing to enforce its writ, it lacks authority to impose penalties such as fines or sanctions. Russia has said it considers the ICC’s warrant null and void, since it is not a party to the Rome Statute. Moscow has also rejected the accusations as absurd, pointing out that evacuating civilians from a combat zone, where they faced imminent danger from Ukrainian artillery and drone strikes, was not a crime.

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“The reputation of both the Kiev regime and the ICC is well known. Neither of them are independent and have anything to do with law or justice..”

• Serious International Crimes to Be Brought to Justice – Moscow (Sp.)

“Ukrainian criminals guilty of serious international crimes against their own and Russian citizens, as well as their henchmen, will be brought to justice and will be punished as they deserve to be,” Zakharova said.
Kiev wants to withdraw its citizens from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), but keep criminal prosecution of foreign citizens, Maria Zakharova said. “In fact, they want to withdraw their citizens from the jurisdiction of even this court, which is as loyal to them as possible, but at the same time reserve the right to criminal prosecution in The Hague of citizens of other countries on charges made up by Kiev itself,” Zakharova said.
Kiev’s words on the ratification of the Rome Statute with conditions shows its true attitude to international humanitarian law, the diplomat added.

“Such a step cannot be regarded otherwise than as an undisguised intention to give their military carte blanche to commit serious war crimes,” Zakharova added. Neither Ukraine nor the International Criminal Court have anything to do with law and justice, Zakharova said. “The reputation of both the Kiev regime and the ICC is well known. Neither of them are independent and have anything to do with law or justice,” Zakharova said. On August 24, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law to ratify the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the ICC. Ukraine will not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction over its citizens for seven years after the adoption of the draft law.

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Netanyahu is not Israel. Trump should learn that too.

• Netanyahu Refuses Surrender to Israeli Protesters Demanding Hostage Deal (Sp.)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a defiant late-night speech amid mass protests in Tel Aviv Monday, rejecting pressure from the Israeli public to secure a deal to return hostages and bring about a ceasefire in Gaza. “I will not surrender to the pressure,” said Netanyahu during the unusual press conference one day after a general strike shut down much of the country. “No one is more committed to freeing the hostages than me. But no one will preach to me,” he added, insisting there were “certain things we won’t compromise on” in negotiations with Hamas. Key to the controversy is the question of who will maintain control over the so-called Philadelphi corridor, a narrow strip of land separating the Gaza Strip’s southern portion from Egypt. The corridor has been jointly controlled by Egypt and Palestinian authorities since Israel’s military disengagement from Gaza in 2005, with the terms of 1978’s Camp David Accords granting Egypt control of the Rafah border crossing that falls within the route.

But the IDF has seized control of both the Philadelphi corridor and the Rafah border crossing in recent months, insisting that Israeli authority over both is necessary for security reasons. That stance has proven to be a poison pill in ongoing negotiations with Hamas as Netanyahu refuses to compromise on his establishment of a “buffer zone” along the Gazan side of the route. “This corridor is essential for our existence,” Netanyahu said Monday. “For this reason Hamas is insisting on it. And for the same reason I’m insisting on it.” The Israeli leader claimed weapons are smuggled into Gaza over the 8.7 mile border, allowing Hamas to maintain its armed resistance. Netanyahu has controversially allowed money and resources from Iran and Qatar to reach Hamas in an effort to strengthen the group and maintain Gaza’s political separation from the West Bank, which is overseen by the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support the bolstering of Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” said Netanyahu during a meeting with members of his Likud party in 2019, making explicit the symbiotic relationship between the armed group and the hardline Israeli prime minister. “This is part of our strategy to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” US President Joe Biden has at times appeared flustered by Netanyahu’s intransigence amid months of unfruitful peace talks between Israel and Hamas, while Israeli military officials have publicly rebuked the prime minister for his effective sabotage of a hostage deal. Critics have claimed Netanyahu is merely stalling for time, working to prolong hostilities in Gaza in an effort to maintain his grip on power. The Israeli leader faces prosecution on corruption charges if he is forced to step down from his position.

Observers have speculated Netanyahu is attempting to “run out the clock” until November elections in the United States, after which Donald Trump’s possible return to the White House would provide him with more latitude in solving the Palestinian question. Provocative attacks on leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah on foreign soil have led to speculation the prime minister is seeking to provoke a regional conflict during which the US would presumably come to Israel’s support. Netanyahu has long attempted to goad the United States into a war against Iran, traditionally Israel’s most powerful and influential critic in the region. About 101 Israeli captives are thought to remain in Gaza after Hamas’ surprise operation on October 7, during which several dozen hostages were taken back to the Palestinian territory. Meanwhile Israel continues to hold more than 3,600 Palestinians, many of them children, in so-called administrative detention without charge. Recent polling reveals Netanyahu enjoys the approval of about 29% of the Israeli public.

Israel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1830799717300871552

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He can give this to Bobby Kennedy, along with the JFK files.

• Epstein Client List ‘Will Be’ Made Public – Trump (RT)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has suggested that the “black book” with deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s client list would be made public should he be elected president. Epstein worked as a financier and socialized with the rich and famous for years, introducing them to dozens of young women – some of whom were underage at the time – and flying them to his private island in the Caribbean on the jet dubbed the ‘Lolita Express’. “I never went to his island, fortunately. But a lot of people did,” Trump said in an interview with the Lex Fridman podcast, published on Tuesday. “It’s very interesting, isn’t it? Probably will be, by the way,” Trump told Fridman, after the host said it was “very strange” that the list of people who traveled to Little St. James has never been made public.

Trump compared the Epstein disclosures to declassifying the last remaining documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and said he would “certainly take a look at it” and would “be inclined to” release the client list. Trump has previously said that as president (2017-2021) he tried to release the Kennedy files, only for the US intelligence community to persuade him at the last moment that this would somehow be damaging. He has since made a promise to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to declassify the documents about his uncle’s assassination, after the former Democrat endorsed him last month. Revelations that Epstein lured young women – many below the legal age of consent – and pimped them out to powerful and prominent acquaintances were instrumental in the financier’s arrest in 2019.

FBI searches of his New York residence and Caribbean island reportedly came up with videos potentially containing compromising material on his “guests.” That evidence remained under lock and key even after Epstein died in his Manhattan cell in August 2019, officially due to suicide. Epstein’s sometime girlfriend and accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, was arrested in 2020. She wound up convicted of child sex trafficking and sentenced to 20 years behind bars. While the public found out some of the names of the trafficked teens, the names of people they were trafficked to have remained a secret.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

RFK kid

 

 

Tiger mom

 

 

Baby elephant sleep

 

 

Ball
https://twitter.com/i/status/1831004843927867832

 

 

Grandma
https://twitter.com/i/status/1830927268547276820

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 31 2024

Aug 312024
 
 August 31, 2024  Posted by at 8:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  38 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Five women 1907

 

• Trump Threatens Zuckerberg With Life In Prison (RT)
• Nuclear War Is World’s Biggest Threat – Trump (Sp.)
• World Leaders, Even Macron, Still Use Telegram Despite Durov Arrest (Sp.)
• Kremlin Affirms Putin, Durov Never Held Any Meetings (Sp.)
• France Stoops To Hostage-taking of Pavel Durov (SCF)
• 3 Key Battlegrounds May Still Omit Kamala (HUSA)
• Tulsi Gabbard About Endorsing Trump: ‘This Is Personal For Me’ (ZH)
• The Significance of the Passage of Time (Kunstler)
• Judge Bans X In Brazil For Refusing To Comply With Demands (ZH)
• Musk’s X Lawsuit Against Media Matters Can Proceed To Trial: Judge (ZH)
• US To Give Zelensky ‘Free Hand’ On Deep Strikes Into Russia – Moscow (RT)
• Ukraine Says Its Biggest Problem Is Western Concern for Escalation (Antiwar)
• Medvedev Believes He Knows Why Kiev Wants Donbass (RT)
• Putin ‘Not Worried’ About ICC Warrant On Mongolia Trip – Kremlin (RT)
• Look, If You Guys Have To Go, We’re Behind You All The Way (Alastair Crooke)
• “That Little Piece of Paper” of the Founders (Turley)

 

 

 

 

Death machine
https://twitter.com/i/status/1829454153401155836

 

 

CNN
https://twitter.com/i/status/1829344582146183408

 

 

Arlington

 

 

Zack

 

 

Shanahan

 

 

Alina

 

 

 

 

“We already know who you are. Don’t do it! Zuckerbucks, be careful..”

• Trump Threatens Zuckerberg With Life In Prison (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has accused Mark Zuckerberg of plotting against him during the 2020 election and has warned the Meta CEO against doing it again in the vote this November, according to an excerpt from his soon-to-be released book seen by Politico. Titled ‘Save America’ and set to be published next week, Trump’s book features a photograph of himself meeting with Zuckerberg in the White House when he was president. Under the photo Trump wrote a caption stating that the Meta chief “would come to the Oval Office to see me. He would bring his very nice wife to dinners, be as nice as anyone could be, while always plotting to install shameful Lock Boxes in a true plot against the president.” Trump, Politico’s report says, appears to be referring to a $420-million contribution that Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan made during the 2020 presidential election to fund voting infrastructure.

The former president went on to claim that Zuckerberg had told him that there was “nobody like Trump on Facebook” but at the same time had “steered it against me.” “We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison – as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election,” Trump reportedly warns in the book. The excerpt examined by Politico follows similar statements made by Trump in the past. In July, the Republican presidential candidate also wrote on his Truth Social platform that, if elected, he would pursue “election fraudsters at levels never seen before” and would send them to prison for “long periods of time.” “We already know who you are. Don’t do it! Zuckerbucks, be careful,” Trump wrote.

While Meta has not commented on the former president’s allegations and warnings, earlier this week Zuckerberg sent a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, confessing that senior officials from US President Joe Biden’s administration had “repeatedly pressured” Facebook to “censor” Covid-19 content back in 2021. The Meta CEO noted in the letter that he believed that “government pressure was wrong” and expressed regret for not speaking out about it at the time. Zuckerberg went on to declare that he will no longer compromise Facebook’s content standards due to pressure “from any administration in either direction.” He pledged to “push back if something like this happens again,” and will remain politically “neutral” ahead of the November election.

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“..help maintain stability around the world by keeping lines of communication open..”

• Nuclear War Is World’s Biggest Threat – Trump (Sp.)

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said during a town hall event in the state of Wisconsin that the biggest challenge the United States and the international community face is preventing a nuclear war in the near future. “In my opinion, the biggest problem our country has, the biggest problem the world has, is nuclear weapons,” Trump said on Thursday. “They are a destructive force, the likes of which nobody has ever seen before, and we have to make sure they’re never used.” Trump said he’d be able to help maintain stability around the world by keeping lines of communication open, adding “I could do it with telephone calls, by being smart.”

Trump mentioned that the United States and Russia are the biggest nuclear powers, but expects that China will catch up in about five years as it builds up its nuclear arsenal. Trump is expected to enter arms control talks with Russia if he returns to the White House after the November election.

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“The list could go on indefinitely..”

• World Leaders, Even Macron, Still Use Telegram Despite Durov Arrest (Sp.)

Despite recent allegations that Telegram is being used for criminal activities, leaders from around the world, including French President Emmanuel Macron, continue to actively utilize the encrypted messaging service. Earlier this week, Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, faced preliminary charges for allegedly facilitating criminal activities on his encrypted platform. These charges include accusations of enabling drug trafficking and the sharing of sexual images of minors due to inadequate moderation. Durov’s arrest has not deterred President Macron from using the messaging app. According to European press reports, on August 26, the head of state was indicated to have logged into Telegram “recently.” Additionally, French lawmakers, cabinet members, and presidential advisers frequently use the messaging platform, as revealed by the media.

Macron has been active on the platform since the early days of his first presidential campaign. He has over 112,000 followers and his latest post is dated August 12. Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who boasts over 1.6 million followers, shares posts on Telegram practically on a daily basis. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is also active on Telegram, with his most recent post dated August 28. A verified account belonging to Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador also exists on the platform. On August 30, he began sharing a series of posts about the Tren Maya, a renowned railway project in Mexico. Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s account, which boasts almost 200,000 followers, makes use of Telegram for official announcements. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu runs an official account on the messaging service in Russian. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali takes to Telegram regularly to shed light on the African nation’s urgent issues. The list could go on indefinitely. The platform has evolved into a convenient means for world leaders to engage with their constituents.

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“No, as far as I know, they never met..”

• Kremlin Affirms Putin, Durov Never Held Any Meetings (Sp.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Telegram founder Pavel Durov have never held meetings, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. On August 24, Durov, the Russian-born founder of Telegram, was detained at a Paris airport on charges related to the criminal use of his messaging app, including terrorism, child pornography, drug trafficking, money laundering and fraud. The 39-year-old billionaire holds citizenship of several countries, including France. On Wednesday, Durov was released under judicial supervision, banned from leaving France and ordered to pay a 5 million euro ($5.5 million) bail. “No, as far as I know, they never met,” Peskov told reporters. Durov had not held any negotiations with the Kremlin, the official said, adding that there were no agreements.

Peskov on also refused to comment on the detention of two Colombian citizens in Russia, redirecting the question to the relevant departments. “I have no information at all about the detention of Colombian citizens. I suggest you contact the relevant services — the Ministry of Internal Affairs or the FSB. This is not a topic for the Presidential Administration,” Peskov told reporters. Earlier in the day, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said that it had detained two Colombian citizens suspected of participating in military operations on Ukraine’s side as mercenaries.

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“Why not arrest the owners of telephone companies based on the same logic..”

“Why shouldn’t Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk be arrested next ..?

• France Stoops To Hostage-taking of Pavel Durov (SCF)

The charges against Durov are not only draconian but also absurd. The notion of holding the owner of a social network platform as being responsible for or complicit in the content of the network is preposterous. Why not arrest the owners of telephone companies based on the same logic? It’s ridiculous and indicates an ulterior motive. Telegram was founded in 2013-2014 by Durov (and his older brother). He left Russia in 2014 because he refused to comply with Russian authorities on allowing access to the privacy of users. Over the years, Telegram has grown worldwide to become one of the major messaging apps with nearly one billion monthly users. It has gained a reputation for secure communications and fierce independence from governments.

Pavel told American journalist Tucker Carlson in an interview earlier this year that he has routinely been harassed by U.S. authorities to hand over the encryption keys of Telegram, which he has refused to do. By contrast, Western-based competitor apps such as WhatsApp and Western-controlled internet companies are known to have relented to pressure from the U.S. and European authorities on allowing “backdoor access” to supposedly private communications between individuals and groups. Having said that, however, the content of these Western apps is also tainted with crime networks and horrendously sordid material. Why shouldn’t Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk be arrested next on similar charges to those leveled at Pavel Durov? The difference is that Telegram has refused to comply with Western state intelligence services as it previously did with Russian counterparts. A case can be made that the Telegram owner is a “free speech absolutist”.

Much more important than the marginal criminal use of Telegram (as all apps are prone to), is the preponderant use of the platform for disseminating independent news and analysis. Telegram has gained an enviable reputation for its accurate information on the war in Ukraine. Numerous independent news channels have flourished on Telegram to bring reliable and critical information about the conflict. Unlike Western media and social network platforms that kowtow to Western governments and NATO propaganda, Telegram has enabled a much more informed view of the war that exposes the Western narratives as a sham. Defense of Ukrainian democracy? More like defense of a NeoNazi regime and defense of Western war economies. The fact is Telegram has become a globally important independent media network that is not controlled by Western regimes.

It is for this reason that it is in the cross-hairs for repression, not because of alleged criminal activity by its owner. The latter reason is a pathetic pretext. At a time when the U.S.-led NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia has entered a disastrous phase of defeat, the Western elite must shut down all and every critical media. It is no coincidence that following the outrageous persecution of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange (five years in solitary confinement in a British dungeon) for exposing U.S. and NATO war crimes, we now see a surge in cases of cracking down on free media. American commentator Scott Ritter who has been a valued critic of the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine, recently had his home raided by the FBI. Other independent journalists have been arrested or harassed in Britain, France, Germany and across Europe for their critical views on the war in Ukraine or the Western-supported Israeli genocide in Palestine.

Western so-called democracies are increasingly using fascist jackboot attacks on independent journalism and freedom of thought. The Western elites and their fascistic power cannot abide any criticism or dissent that is fatal to their charade of authority. Emmanuel Macron, with his pretensions of grandeur and brittle egotism, embodies the Western elite. Pavel Durov is awaiting the outcome of a vague and nebulous cybercrime investigation that may take years to complete. After which he may be imprisoned for another 10 years and pay huge financial fines. France which claims to uphold the highest principles of free speech has just descended to hostage-taking of innocent people for the vile purpose of killing free speech and independence of thought.

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“..the deadline for removing Biden from the ballot has already long since passed in Georgia, Wisconsin and Nevada.”

• 3 Key Battlegrounds May Still Omit Kamala (HUSA)

Earlier this month, leftist secretaries of state pounced at the opportunity to attack Trump-backing billionaire Elon Musk over allegations that his artificial intelligence chatbot had errantly suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris would not make the ballot in several states. Curiously enough, the complaint appeared to ignore three major battleground states where the law still stipulates that President Joe Biden will appear on the ballot as the Democrat candidate, according to a leading conservative think-tank, which suggested that claims of Harris being eligible to appear in all 50 states may be the real disinformation. Grok—which is available only to subscribers of the premium versions of X—debuted last year and was touted by Musk as a “rebellious” AI chatbot that would answer “spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems.” However, not all of its responses may be entirely accurate.

Top election officials from Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Washington sent a letter to Musk on Aug. 5 complaining that the chatbot had produced false information about state ballot deadlines shortly after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race. According to the letter, Grok had indicated that the deadline for replacing Biden had already passed in nine states states where it had not: Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington. “In all nine states the opposite is true: The ballots are not closed, and upcoming ballot deadlines would allow for changes to candidates listed on the ballot,” the secretaries wrote. Following the fix, the chatbot now says, “For accurate and up-to-date information about the 2024 U.S. Elections, please visit Vote.gov” before listing responses to election-related questions.

“We appreciate X’s action to improve their platform and hope they continue to make improvements that will ensure their users have access to accurate information from trusted sources in this critical election year,” the secretaries of state wrote. Even while Biden was in the race, ballot eligibility in Ohio, Alabama and Washington was a source of concern since all three initially had ballot deadlines that took effect prior to last week’s Democrat convention in Chicago. In each case, however, the state legislature or the secretary of state worked to resolve the loophole and ensure that the Democrat nominee would be on the ballot. That nominee, of course, proved not to be Biden but rather Harris, his former running mate, after party elites forced the incumbent president out of the race. To play it safe, Democrats conducted a virtual nominating process that took place prior to Harris’s ceremonial nomination and acceptance speech at last week’s convention.

Yet, despite the focus on states where Harris is now assured her spot on the ballot, major questions remain as to whether she will be eligible to appear in at least three other crucial swing states. According to the Heritage Oversight Project, an election-integrity watchdog launched by prominent conservative think-tank the Heritage Foundation, the deadline for removing Biden from the ballot has already long since passed in Georgia, Wisconsin and Nevada. [..] Mike Howell, the executive director of the Oversight Project, told Headline USA in an email that its researchers “were not mistaken at all” about their read on the state laws. Democrats are “not out of the woods yet … and I’m wondering why no one with standing is suing,” Howell said. “The DNC and Biden claimed that Biden was already the nominee before he was taken out, Howell added. “So now they have two nominees, without formally withdrawing and substi[tu]ting one of them, and I’m not sure why Secretaries of State are okay with that process.”

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“He would meet with whoever he needed to pursue peace. Kamala Harris criticized Donald Trump for doing exactly that.”

• Tulsi Gabbard About Endorsing Trump: ‘This Is Personal For Me’ (ZH)

Former Democrat Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (HI) offered a detailed explanation for her endorsement of former President Donald Trump’s 2024 White House bid earlier this week on Fox Business’s “Kudlow.”

DAVID ASMAN: since you and RFK are part of the Trump campaign, explain why did you go with Trump?

TULSI GABBARD: The choice in this election is very clear and the differences between President Trump and Vice President Harris couldn’t be more stark. Frankly, to put it simply, the choice for the American people is a choice with Donald Trump, a man who values peace, prosperity, and freedom. He has a record that proves that. And Vice President Kamala Harris, whose record shows an increasingly tyrannical government undermining our freedoms. We are embroiled in multiple wars and the world is closer to the brink of nuclear war than ever before, with increasing economic hardship for Americans throughout the 3Ω years she served as Vice President of the United States. The contrast couldn’t be more clear.

This is personal for me, the endorsement of President Trump. As a soldier for over 21 years, I deployed to multiple war zones in different parts of the world, putting my life on the line for the safety, security, and freedom of the American people. It is important to me and every one of my brothers and sisters in uniform that we have a Commander-in-Chief who values every one of our lives, who carries that responsibility as Commander-in-Chief very seriously, and who will exhaust all diplomatic avenues before seeing war truly as a last resort.

The last point that I will make on this—another point of contrast—is that President Trump showed through his last administration that not only did he not start any new wars, but he took action to prevent them by courageously meeting with adversaries, allies, partners, dictators. He would meet with whoever he needed to pursue peace. Kamala Harris criticized Donald Trump for doing exactly that. That shows if she is elected President, she will not do what is necessary in the pursuit of peace, and I’m certain she will lead us very quickly into a war to mask the weakness and insecurity that she feels and try to project strength using the lives of my brothers and sisters in uniform to do so.

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Zero Hedge is right: the title should have been “Why Haven’t You Done That Already?”. Jim is one round behind.

• The Significance of the Passage of Time (Kunstler)

Did you think Kamala would still be rising on the joyful billows of hot air that blew out of the Democratic Convention? Like so many of the magic tricks in the party’s repertoire, that one was a spoof of artificial levitation, to give the appearance of something holding up, like, say, the US economy, when there is actually nothing underneath. Nothing real, that is. What’s giving the economy its appearance of loft has been “Joe Biden” pouring government money into scores of party-connected NGOs as pure grift. The main effect of that is the inflation that everybody notices. Meanwhile, nobody gets hooked up to promised broadband and only eight EV charging stations get built for $7.5-billion allocated to the Department of Transportation.

The current prank, though, is to artificially pump-up Ms. Harris in the polls in the attempt to justify the coming ballot fraud to be executed two months from now, as engineered by election lawfare maestro Marc Elias, now on the Harris campaign payroll. That is, an effort to obviate any apparent discrepancies between actual poll numbers and harvested ballots flooding in at two o’clock in the morning on Nov 6. As it happens, Ms. Harris’s poll numbers have begun to sink the past week, as the tactic of hiding the candidate from the press has backfired. As of August 29, Nate Silver has her chance of winning down at 42.7 to Mr. Trump’s 56.7. Voters have begun to notice that the candidate represents nothing except whatever happened the past four years in Biden-Land — which is to say, open borders, war for the sake of arms profiteers, flagrant censorship, inflation, cratering business activity, and overt DOJ political persecutions. Martin Armstrong, for instance, has estimated Kamala Harris’s true polling number in the ten percent range. Yikes.

So, what was the net effect of the CNN interview with Ms. Harris? It couldn’t have helped. They had to get her out of hiding, considering the significance of the passage of time in an election campaign. Even the in-the-tank news media was starting to complain about her holing-up on the bus. Dana Bash was surprisingly harsh at times when the veep confabulated about her plans to “fix” America’s problems, like asking, “Why haven’t you done that already?” The answer was the bizarre, “We can do what we’ve accomplished so far.” Roger that. You’re probably wondering: how Mr. Trump will play this? He’d best be polite about it and assume that the voters can see and understand the obvious: that the Democrats have put up an especially inadequate candidate who can’t explain away the fiascos of the past four years. He doesn’t have to rub in so hard that it seems cruel.

His own policy intentions are a quite clear alternative to four years of hoaxes, pranks, trips, gaslighting, and grift. Installing Ms. Harris without any input or votes from the party rank-and-file was about as desperate an affront to “our democracy” as anyone could imagine, like something straight out of the old Soviet politburo, picking an Andropov or a Chernenko. Mr. Trump should remind audiences of this at every opportunity if the Democrats keep yapping about “our democracy,” which seems to be all they’ve got. Something is slip-sliding out there, perhaps the solidarity of the news media. Even The New York Times dissed Kamala Harris — Bret Stephens called her interview “vague and vacuous” the day after. One thing you have to give CNN credit for: they didn’t show a whole lot of Kamala Harris cackling in her trademark manner — to cover that mental vacuum. The cackle has been getting very mixed reviews, anyway, when you disconnect it from the fake “joy” trope. Maybe a laugh-riot is what’s in the missing 23-minutes that CNN edited out of the 41-minute recording.

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“..In the days to come, we will publish all of Judge de Moraes’ illegal demands and all related court filings..”

• Judge Bans X In Brazil For Refusing To Comply With Demands (ZH)

As we previewed overnight, Elon Musk’s X has been ordered ‘immediately suspended’ by Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes, citing the company’s refusal to comply with a legal order to censor the judge’s political opponents, Bloomberg reports. Officially, the ruling was due to Musk’s refusal to name a legal representative for the social network (after the judge froze his last attorney’s bank accounts). On Thursday, X’s global government affairs account said that it would “not comply in secret with illegal orders,” and said that it would publish Moraes’ demands and related court documents for transparency.

More: “When we attempted to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts. Our challenges against his manifestly illegal actions were either dismissed or ignored. Judge de Moraes’ colleagues on the Supreme Court are either unwilling or unable to stand up to him. We are absolutely not insisting that other countries have the same free speech laws as the United States. The fundamental issue at stake here is that Judge de Moraes demands we break Brazil’s own laws. We simply won’t do that. In the days to come, we will publish all of Judge de Moraes’ illegal demands and all related court filings in the interest of transparency. Unlike other social media and technology platforms, we will not comply in secret with illegal orders. To our users in Brazil and around the world, X remains committed to protecting your freedom of speech.”

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The judge in Brazil wants to bring in Starlink in a suit vs X. Media Matters wants to bring in Tesla. But these are all separate companies, in completely different industries. You can’t hold the shareholders of one company responsible for what happens at another.

• Musk’s X Lawsuit Against Media Matters Can Proceed To Trial: Judge (ZH)

A federal judge in Texas has ruled that a lawsuit brought by Elon Musk’s X against Media Matters can proceed to trial, after dismissing a request by the Democrat-run enterprise. “Because the Court has personal jurisdiction over Defendants, venue is proper, and Plaintiff has properly pled its claims, Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss is denied,” wrote Judge Reed O’Connor in his ruling. X, formerly known as Twitter, filed the suit in November after Musk threatened to bring a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against the left-leaning nonprofit and “all those who colluded” for “completely misrepresenting” the real user experience on X.” According to the lawsuit, Media Matters – founded by Democratic operative David Brock, who left the organization in 2022, used manipulative and deceptive tactics to convince advertisers like Apple, IBM and Disney that ‘hateful’ content was being displayed next to their brands – leading them to pause their X advertising campaigns. X claims Media Matters fabricated the results. From the original complaint:

“Media Matters has opted for new tactics in its campaign to drive advertisers from X. Media Matters has manipulated the algorithms governing the user experience on X to bypass safeguards and create images of X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts adjacent to racist, incendiary content, leaving the false impression that these pairings are anything but what they actually are: manufactured, inorganic, and extraordinarily rare. Media Matters executed this plot in multiple steps, as X’s internal investigations have revealed. First, Media Matters accessed accounts that had been active for at least 30 days, bypassing X’s ad filter for new users. Media Matters then exclusively followed a small subset of users consisting entirely of accounts in one of two categories: those known to produce extreme, fringe content, and accounts owned by X’s big-name advertisers.

The end result was a feed precision-designed by Media Matters for a single purpose: to produce side-by-side ad/content placements that it could screenshot in an effort to alienate advertisers. But this activity still was not enough to create the pairings of advertisements and content that Media Matters aimed to produce. Media Matters therefore resorted to endlessly scrolling and refreshing its unrepresentative, hand-selected feed, generating between 13 and 15 times more advertisements per hour than viewed by the average X user repeating this inauthentic activity until it finally received pages containing the result it wanted: controversial content next to X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts.”

Andrew Carusone, president of Media Matters and one of the defendants, said that it was a “frivolous lawsuit” that was “meant to bully X’s critics into silence.” Judge O’Connor didn’t buy it, and denied the nonprofit’s effort to have the case dismissed, ruling that X “had properly pled its claims.” In August, O’Connor dismissed a request by Media Matters to force Musk to list Tesla as an interested party in X’s lawsuit against the nonprofit. O’Connor said at the time in a legal filing that “there is no evidence that shows Tesla has a direct financial interest in the outcome of this case.” O’Connor was also overseeing a recently filed antitrust lawsuit by X against a global advertising association and its member companies like Unilever, Mars and CVS Health. O’Connor then recused himself from the lawsuit. Although he didn’t provide a reason for the recusal, a recent financial disclosure showed that the judge invests in Unilever.” -CNBC

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“..Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov compared the US and their allies to “children playing with matches” over their continued speculations about greenlighting Ukrainian strikes..”

• US To Give Zelensky ‘Free Hand’ On Deep Strikes Into Russia – Moscow (RT)

Washington is prepared to lift its ban on Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russia’s territory with the use of US-supplied weapons, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. Last week, Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said that US “policy does allow for Ukraine to conduct counter fires to defend itself from Russian attacks coming over that border region,” including Kursk Region, where an incursion by Kiev’s forces has been ongoing since early August. On Monday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters that Washington was aware of Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s “desire” to be allowed to fire US weapons such as ATACMS missiles, which have a range of up to 300km (186 miles), deep into Russia. “We will keep the conversations with the Ukrainians going [on the issue], but we are going to keep them private,” he said.

“Extremely serious conclusions” can be drawn from the latest statements coming from Washington, Zakharova said on Friday. “Ukraine has been given a carte blanche for operations in Russian regions,” she added. “Furthermore, the administration of [US President] Joe Biden is obviously getting ready to make new concessions to Zelensky and give him a free hand to use virtually any type of American weapons, including [for attacks] deep into Russian territory,” the spokeswoman stressed, as cited by RIA Novosti. Through its continued support for Kiev, Washington “has effectively become a party to the armed conflict over Ukraine,” she insisted.

“The US course towards escalation is becoming increasingly outrageous. It seems that the American elites have cast aside the last vestiges of common sense and believe that anything is allowed to them,” Zakharova said. Earlier this week, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov compared the US and their allies to “children playing with matches” over their continued speculations about greenlighting Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russian territory. “It is a very dangerous thing to do for grown-ups, who are entrusted with nuclear weapons in one or another Western country,” he said. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned earlier that Moscow might engage in an asymmetrical response to the US supply of long-range systems to Ukraine, by arming groups or countries hostile to Washington – such as North Korea – with advanced weaponry.

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We should welcome nuclear war.

• Ukraine Says Its Biggest Problem Is Western Concern for Escalation (Antiwar)

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Wednesday that the biggest problem Kyiv has faced in its war against Russia is the Western concern for escalation and the risk of provoking Moscow. “Ever since the beginning of the large-scale invasion, the biggest problem Ukraine has been facing is the domination of the concept of escalation in the decision-making processes among our partners,” Kuleba said, according to Reuters. The foreign minister’s comments come as Ukraine is pushing hard for the US to allow long-range strikes inside Russian territory using US-provided missiles. Russia has strongly warned against the move and suggested that it would risk World War III. “The war is always about a lot of hardware: money, weapons, resources but the real problems are always here, in the heads,” Kuleba said.

“Most of our partners are afraid of discussing the future of Russia… This is something that is very upsetting because if we do not speak about the future of the source of threat, then we cannot build strategy.” Throughout the war, the US and NATO have taken steps that they previously ruled out over escalation concerns, such as providing tanks and fighter jets. The most recent significant escalation was President Biden’s decision to give Ukraine the greenlight to use US weapons in attacks on Russian border regions. A few months later, Ukraine launched its invasion of Kursk. Kuleba made the comments during a conversation with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who expressed support for allowing Ukraine to launch long-range strikes with NATO weapons. Sikorski said NATO should “let Ukraine fight with whatever it has, with whatever we have delivered them, and let’s deliver them more.”

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“..the natural resources located in Donbass are estimated to be worth $7.3 trillion..”

• Medvedev Believes He Knows Why Kiev Wants Donbass (RT)

Ukraine is fighting for Donbass because of the region’s vast natural resources, which Kiev and its foreign backers want to exploit, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday. The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which officially joined Russia together with Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions in the fall of 2022, are “completely alien” to Ukraine in terms of culture, Medvedev wrote on Telegram. The reason why the Kiev authorities are trying to get them back so desperately, he explained, “is trivial: money is needed.” “The criminal clique” of Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, which “has stolen so heavily,”has led the country’s economy to “disaster,” while Kiev’s backers in the US and the EU have also “spent a lot” on aiding Ukraine during conflict, which “irritates” their populations, Medvedev, who serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, also pointed out.

The West needs a “payback” from Ukraine, he said, adding that it has nothing to do with Zelensky personally. “This kid will be gone soon, but the debt will remain. And it must be paid off, with interest,” the former president noted. Medevdev reminded readers that, according to open-source data, the natural resources located in Donbass are estimated to be worth $7.3 trillion. The area is rich in coal, metals, rare-earth elements and other valuable materials, including lithium, he added. “To get access to the coveted minerals, the Western parasites shamelessly demand that their wards [in Kiev] wage war to the last Ukrainian,” he wrote. Western politicians are “directly voicing” their plans, the official said, referring to a statement made by South Carolina’s Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.

In June, the Republican lawmaker called Ukraine a “gold mine” due to its vast reserve of “critical minerals.” Graham argued that Washington should keep helping Kiev in the conflict with Moscow to make sure those “assets could be used by Ukraine and the West, not given to Putin and China.” With the Russian military making steady gains in Donbass since the start of the year and now approaching the strategic town of Pokrovsk, “the fact remains that the economic basis of Ukrainian statehood has been undermined,” Medvedev wrote. The resource base that had been “illegally obtained” by Kiev after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 “has returned to its native country,” which is Russia, he said. As for Ukraine, the Western aid it gets “will soon dry up” and all that awaits the country is “rapid decomposition and imminent disintegration,” the former president concluded.

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The ICC has now “ordered” Mongolia to arrest Putin.

• Putin ‘Not Worried’ About ICC Warrant On Mongolia Trip – Kremlin (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin is not concerned that Mongolia might arrest him on International Criminal Court charges during his upcoming trip, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. Putin is scheduled to visit Mongolia on Monday for a World War II commemoration. This would theoretically put him at risk of arrest on the ICC’s “war crimes” warrant, as Ulaanbaatar recognizes the court’s jurisdiction. “We have excellent relations with our friends from Mongolia,” Peskov told reporters on Friday. All issues concerning Putin’s visit have been “worked out separately” he added, noting that Moscow “has no concerns” about the ICC warrant. Putin is expected to attend a ceremony commemorating the 1939 Battle of Khalkhin Gol. The Soviet-Mongolian victory over the Imperial Japanese Army secured the USSR’s eastern flank until 1945. The Russian president received assurances from the Mongolian government that he will not be arrested, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing two sources familiar with the matter.

The ICC issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest in March 2023, accusing the Russian president of “unlawful deportation of population (children)” and “unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.” Moscow has rejected the claims as ridiculous, noting that evacuation of civilians from combat zones – where they were targeted by Ukrainian artillery and drones – was not a crime. Moreover, neither Russia nor Ukraine signed the Rome Statute, so the ICC has no jurisdiction in the matter. Mongolia, however, ratified the ICC’s founding document in 2002. Six months ago, one of its judges was appointed to sit on the court in a historic first for the Central Asian nation. Mexico has rejected Ukraine’s demand to detain the Russian leader should he travel there later this year for the inauguration of the new Mexican president.

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“..it sets up expectations of available military success from which wrong conclusions will be drawn. We have been here before. It didn’t go well …”

• Look, If You Guys Have To Go, We’re Behind You All The Way (Alastair Crooke)

“The successful thwarting of Hizbullah’s attack on Sunday, symbolized Israel’s intelligence and operational edge”: According to the IDF spokesman, the Hezbollah attack was thwarted for the most part – thanks to 100 Israel aircraft carrying out around the clock – pre-emptive strikes that destroyed “thousands of missile launchers”. “The group [Hizbullah], did manage to fire hundreds of rockets at northern Israel, but the damage they caused was quite limited”, the Israeli spokespersons disdainfully suggested (amidst a complete blackout on publication, under full censorship, in Israel of any reporting on damage caused to strategic Israeli infrastructure or to military sites). In effect, it was ‘theatre’ mounted by both sides: By limiting their 20 minute strike to within 5 kms of the border – and by Hizbullah staying within the ‘equations’ of war – both sides signalled plainly to each other they were not looking for all-out war.

The ‘winner narrative’ from Israel was to be expected in today’s psy-war atmosphere. Yet it comes at a cost: Amos Harel in Haaretz suggests that “there’s a tendency in Israel [as a result] to view the success in foiling Sunday’s attack as renewed evidence of the consolidation of regional deterrence and [of western] strategic supremacy. But such an assessment” he concedes, “appears to be far from accurate”. Indeed it is (far from accurate). The Sunday theatre concluded with no change to the strategic situation in the north of Israel: Daily attrition continues from across the frontier of Lebanon, down to the new 40 km border defining the extent of Israel’s loss of territory to the Hizbullah no-go zone. The strategic point is not that this narrative of a successful thwarting of Hizbullah’s capabilities is highly misleading. Rather, it sets up expectations of available military success from which wrong conclusions will be drawn. We have been here before. It didn’t go well …

Seymour Hersh, doyen of U.S. investigative journalism, this week re-posted a piece that he wrote in August 2006 about U.S. thinking in the context of an Israeli war on Hizbullah – and on its intended role as a pathfinder-project for a subsequent U.S. strike on Iran. What Hersh wrote then represents a striking déjà vu of today’s situation. It remains to the point because U.S. neocon thinking rarely evolves, but remains constant.

“The big question for our [U.S.] Air Force”, Hersh noted in 2006, “was how to hit a series of hard targets in Iran successfully”, the former senior intelligence official said. “Who is the closest ally of the U.S. Air Force in its planning? It’s not Congo—it’s Israel”. The official continued: “Everybody knows that Iranian engineers have been advising Hezbollah on tunnels and underground missile emplacements. And so the USAF went to the Israelis with some new tactics and said to them: ‘Let’s concentrate on the bombing and share what we have on Iran – and what you have on Lebanon.’”. “The Israelis told us [that Hesballah] would be a cheap war with many benefits,” a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said: “Why oppose it? We’ll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran”. “I was told by the consultant that the Israelis repeatedly pointed to the war in Kosovo as an example of what Israel would try to achieve.

“The NATO forces … methodically bombed and strafed not only military targets but tunnels, bridges, and roads, in Kosovo and elsewhere in Serbia, for seventy-eight days …“Israel studied the Kosovo war as its role model … The Israelis told Condi Rice: You did it in about seventy days, but we need half of that—thirty-five days’ [to finish off Hizbullah]””. “The Bush White House”, a Pentagon consultant said, “has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a preëmptive blow against Hizbullah”; adding, “It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it … According to a Middle East expert, with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments: Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah—and shared it with Bush Administration officials—well before the July 12th [2006] kidnappings: “It’s not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into,” he said, “but there was a strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it”, Hersh wrote.

“The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because – if there were to be a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities – it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both”, Hersh was told”. “The Bush Administration was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced … that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations – some of which are also buried deep underground”.

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“..Americans becoming “slaves” to the U.S. Constitution and that the Constitution itself is now the problem for the country..”

• “That Little Piece of Paper” of the Founders (Turley)

We have been discussing Democratic leaders and activists who have been calling for revolutionary change and a rejection of the foundation of the American constitutional system. The latest is Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson, who spoke at the National Democratic Convention. In an earlier speech, Robinson rejected what she referred to as the Founders’ “little piece of paper” and called for the reimagining of our constitutional system. The voices calling for radical change have been growing for years, including among law professors and legal commentators. Viewers now get a steady diet of figures like MSNBC commentator Elie Mystal who called the U.S. Constitution “trash” and argued that we should simply just dump it. In a New York Times column, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for the Constitution to be “radically altered” to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”

Georgetown University Law School Professor Rosa Brooks went on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” to lash out at Americans becoming “slaves” to the U.S. Constitution and that the Constitution itself is now the problem for the country. I was recently called for a response to Robinson’s call. Yet, it is not clear if Robinson is speaking about the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution as that “little piece of paper.” However, she insists that “[i]n this moment, we’ve got to reimagine it with people that look and love like us at the center.” Robinson added: “And I think for us right now is about reimagining freedom and this American story in a way that is more revolutionary than what our Founders actually put down on that little piece of paper, but instead is the type of democracy that is by and for all of the people in this country. That’s the opportunity that we have.” Her comments did include positive views of the progress made under the current system:

“The story of America is the story of progress towards freedom. In just a few generations, my family went from being enslaved in Mississippi to the first free Black family in Muscatine, Iowa, to preparing to elect President Kamala Harris. Progress is happening my friends!” As someone who has supported LGBT rights for over four decades, I have nothing but admiration for those who fight for equal rights for everyone to be able to live their lives according to their own values and associations. However, a radical “reimagining” of our constitutional system is a popular and growing call on the left. It is often left vague in terms of what such a reimagination would entail, but suggests structural, not just policy, changes. It is that “little piece of paper” that has secured the equal rights for members of this community. Assuming that the “little piece of paper” is a reference to the Madisonian constitution, it is a “type of democracy” that has proven the oldest and most successful constitutional system in the history of the world.

It has survived precisely because it was designed for the most pluralistic nation in the world. It allows for tremendous social and political changes but does so within a framework that protects individual rights. Before we start “reimagining” our way out of the most stable constitutional system in history, we may want to consider how the alternatives have been faring around the world. It is that “little piece of paper” that introduced a revolutionary concept of governance that permits a nation of rivaling factions and values to govern as one. That does not mean that we do not have deep and at times bitter divisions. However, we are joined in a common article of faith in the Constitution. While he spoke more about democracy in general, Churchill’s famous comment could as easily refer to the Madisonian system: it may be “the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

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Trick
https://twitter.com/i/status/1829471131893399937

 

 

Puppy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1829470542186885245

 

 

Tai chi

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 18 2024

Aug 182024
 
 August 18, 2024  Posted by at 8:53 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  90 Responses »


Salvador Dali City of drawers – The Anthropomorphic Cabinet 1936

 

• Kamala Harris’ Economic Proposals Aim to Stoke US Class Warfare – Luongo (Sp.)
• Kamala Price Control Plan Would Cause A Widespread Supply-Chain Crisis (ZH)
• Biden Endorses Violence, Tells Dems to ‘Beat the H*ll Out of’ Republicans (HUSA)
• A Farewell to Truth (Scott Ritter)
• US Moving Towards Total Censorship – Moscow (RT)
• Nord Stream 2 Bombing And Zelensky’s “Three Men And a Boat” Story (Jay)
• Ukraine Planned Incursion Into Russia For Over A Year – NBC (RT)
• Ukraine Preparing ‘Dirty Nuke’ Attack (RT)
• Italian Media ‘Whitewashing’ Ukrainian Crimes – Zakharova (RT)
• Germany To Ban All New Ukraine Military Aid (ZH)
• Zelensky Openly Criticizes British Government (RT)
• Should The US Abandon Europe? (Amar)
• Trump Makes Key Campaign Changes (RT)
• X ‘Immediately’ Shuts Brazil Office After ‘Secret’ Censorship Orders (ZH)
• When Presidents Kill (Andrew Napolitano)

 

 

 

 

Short

 

 

Kamala does Trump ads

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

Gutfeld

 

 

Stone

 

 

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.

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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.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Catch a snake

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

Zebra

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle April 10 2024

Apr 102024
 
 April 10, 2024  Posted by at 8:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  43 Responses »


Pieter Bruegel the Elder The Fall of the Rebel Angels 1562

 

• (Hunter) Biden-Linked Burisma Used For Terror Attacks In Russia – Moscow (RT)
• Burisma ‘Vehicle To Launder Taxpayer Money’ – Lawyer (RT)
• Musk Warns Of Terrorist Threat To US (RT)
• No Russian Misinfo On X, But Western Influence Ops Present – Musk (RT)
• Musk: Starlink Free for Brazil Schools If Government Cancels Contract (ET)
• ‘Automated Murder’: Israel’s ‘AI’ in Gaza (Patrick Lawrence)
• Ukraine ‘Losing The War’ – Chuck Schumer (RT)
• Ukrainian NATO Membership ‘Fundamentally Unacceptable’ – Moscow (RT)
• ‘High-Intensity War In Europe No Longer A Fantasy’ – Borrell (RT)
• China Sending Message That ‘It Has Russia’s Back’ If West Escalates (Sp.)
• ‘Russiagate’ About Seizing Power as Much as Stopping Trump (Sp.)
• Jack Smith Urges SCOTUS to Reject Trump’s Presidential Immunity Claim (ET)
• Trump Body-Slams Lindsey Graham For Insisting On Nationwide Abortion Limit (ZH)
• Neom: Saudi Arabia ‘Scales Back’ Goals Of Megacity Project (MEE)
• Boeing Shares Tumble After NYT Reveals Whistle-Blower Report (ZH)

 

 

 

 

Chasing Trump

 

 

Colbert AOC

 

 

 

 

RFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1777710201937732085

 

 

CIA contractor

 

 

Finkelstein
https://twitter.com/i/status/1777519791168696416

 

 

 

 

“The same company that hired Hunter Biden and paid Joe Biden to get the prosecutor fired who was investigating them.”

• (Hunter) Biden-Linked Burisma Used For Terror Attacks In Russia – Moscow (RT)

Criminal probes into the financing of terrorist activities in Russia and abroad have been launched against several private companies, the country’s Investigative Committee announced on Tuesday. The list of suspects includes the Ukrainian industrial conglomerate Burisma Holdings, linked to a corruption scandal surrounding the Biden family that has been dragging on for years. The criminal investigation stems from a complaint filed by a group of Russian MPs and public figures in the aftermath of the deadly Crocus City Hall attack outside Moscow last month. The original complaint identified the US and its allies as allegedly organizing a string of attacks on Russian soil. So far, investigators have “established that the funds, flowing through commercial organizations, including the oil and gas conglomerate Burisma Holdings, operating in Ukraine, have been used in recent years to carry out terrorist attacks in Russia,” committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said.

Terrorist activities have also reached beyond the country, aimed at the “elimination of prominent political and public figures, as well as causing economic damage,” she added. The committee’s specialists have been working “in cooperation with other intelligence services and financial intelligence,” Petrenko noted. The scrutiny currently revolves around “checking sources of income and further movement of funds in the amount of several million US dollars,” and examining the potential involvement of “specific individuals from among government officials, people with civic and commercial organizations of Western countries,” the spokeswoman stated. Burisma is probably best known internationally for its controversial ties to the current first family in the US. In the spring of 2014, following the US-backed coup in Kiev, the Ukrainian energy firm hired Hunter Biden and his business partner Devon Archer on its board of directors, offering $1 million a year in pay.

Biden’s father Joe was President Barack Obama’s vice president at the time, and oversaw Washington’s Ukraine policy. He once famously bragged about getting a corruption prosecutor fired – which just happened to occur after that prosecutor began investigating Burisma. Nikolay Zlochevsky’s company also offered protection payments to the government in Kiev, according to former Ukrainian MP Andrey Derkach. Zlochevsky paid some “800 million hryvnias [over $21 million] for terrorism financing” in “various jurisdictions,” Derkach claimed in January. “The leaders of Ukraine’s security services make no secret of the fact that they carry out terrorist acts and political assassinations for extra-budgetary cash,” he said at the time. “Once again: Biden’s partners in the corruption business in Ukraine finance terrorist acts, thus avoiding responsibility for corruption in Ukraine.” Derkach claimed it was common practice for the owners of large businesses in Ukraine to ‘donate’ to the war effort in exchange for immunity from prosecution. He pointed to a criminal case against Zlochevsky relating to a $6 million cash bribe that ended with the Burisma owner paying a $1,800 fine.

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It’s ideally situated for the purpose.

• Burisma ‘Vehicle To Launder Taxpayer Money’ – Lawyer (RT)

The Russian Investigative Committee on Tuesday said it launched a criminal probe into the financing of terrorism, naming the Ukrainian industrial conglomerate Burisma among the suspects. RT spoke about the unfolding scandal to Arnaud Develay, an international human rights advocate and the author of a book covering ties between the Ukrainian company and the family of US President Joe Biden. “This is something that the Russian Investigative Committee is going to have to determine to be sure, but this is nothing new,” Develay stated, describing the Ukrainian company as a “vehicle to launder taxpayers’ money.” The investigators have already “established that the funds, flowing through commercial organizations, including the oil and gas conglomerate Burisma Holdings, operating in Ukraine, have been used in recent years to carry out terrorist attacks in Russia” and beyond.

Should the allegation prove to be true, the West will try its best to swipe the whole affair under the rug, as well as to derail any attempts to bring it before international bodies, Develay believes. “They would try to fight tooth and nail to basically deny it,” he said, adding that an attempt to establish a UN-backed tribunal to handle the affair is bound to get vetoed by the “Big Three” – the US, the UK and France. “This is something that is going to have to be handled a different way,” he warned. Develay’s work, titled ‘Foreign Entanglements: Ukraine, Biden & the Fractured American Political Consensus’ is set for public release on Wednesday.

Webb Burisma

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“..the ability of illegal migrants to cross the US-Mexico border and claim asylum without showing any identification “has turned America into a refuge for the world’s worst criminals.”

• Musk Warns Of Terrorist Threat To US (RT)

Elon Musk has warned that a terrorist attack on the scale of September 11, 2001 could take place in the US unless the crisis at the southern border and the uncontrolled influx of migrants is addressed. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO made the remarks in response to an X post by former Republican presidential candidate and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, who called for mass deportations and the sealing of the US-Mexico border. “Even if only 0.1% of illegal aliens who’ve crossed our border have hostile intentions, that’s tens of thousands of would-be attackers,” Ramaswamy pointed out, suggesting that unless special attention is paid to the issue, “we’re paving the way for another 9/11-scale tragedy.” Musk replied, saying it is “only a matter of time” before such a disaster unfolds.

Previously, the billionaire argued that the ability of illegal migrants to cross the US-Mexico border and claim asylum without showing any identification “has turned America into a refuge for the world’s worst criminals.” His claim followed reports that Venezuela’s homicide rate had dropped to its lowest in 22 years – with some suggesting this was due to Venezuelan gangs moving to the US. Meanwhile, a Politico report published last month suggested that US President Joe Biden was considering offering permanent residency to millions of illegal immigrants. Musk responded to the news by accusing the US Democratic party of intentionally opening up the southern border in order to “import voters.”

There are currently thought to be around 10.5 million illegal immigrants living in the US, according to data compiled by Pew Research in 2021. However, according to figures from the Department of Homeland Security, at least 6.3 million more have entered the US in the years since. In February, Musk claimed Biden’s plan to keep the Democrats in power was a “very simple” one, which involves getting “as many illegals in the country as possible,” then legalizing those people “to create a permanent majority.” The state of the US-Mexico border has become one of the key issues in US politics over the past year amid a historic influx of millions of immigrants. Republican lawmakers have been demanding tighter controls and more money to be set aside to deal with the border crisis, prompting them to use a multi-billion-dollar aid package for Ukraine as leverage.

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“A lot of people still run under the illusion that the legacy newspapers they read are actually true. There is so much nonsense in them..”

• No Russian Misinfo On X, But Western Influence Ops Present – Musk (RT)

The owner of X (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk, has rejected accusations that Russian misinformation was widespread on his platform. The entrepreneur, who describes himself as a champion of free speech, has been accused of making the social network vulnerable to Russian activities by changing its content moderation protocols after purchasing Twitter in 2022. His latest denial came on Tuesday, while he was discussing X on ‘In Good Company’, a podcast. Host Nicolai Tangen suggested that Russian activity via fake accounts was “huge” in Germany. “We don’t see a lot of Russian activity, to be frank, on the system. We see very little,” Musk responded. “We do see a lot of attempts to influence things, but they seem to be coming from the West, not from Russia.”

Tangen’s remark apparently referred to claims made by Berlin in January. The German government said that the use of specialized monitoring software had allowed it to identify an estimated 50,000 fake accounts engaged in a pro-Russian misinformation campaign on X. Local press claimed that the messaging was strikingly similar to that of the right-wing opposition party AfD. Germany is not alone in its wariness regarding Moscow’s influence; this week US Congressman Mike Turner, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, accused some fellow Republicans of repeating ‘Russian propaganda’ in the chamber.

“It is absolutely true we see, directly coming from Russia, attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” the Ohio congressman told CNN’s Jake Tapper. Similar remarks came last week from House Foreign Affairs chair Michael McCaul, another Republican lawmaker. In his interview, Musk hailed X as arguably “the best source of truth on the Internet” that, he argued, by far surpasses traditional news outlets in terms of accuracy thanks to user-driven fact-checking tools. “A lot of people still run under the illusion that the legacy newspapers they read are actually true. There is so much nonsense in them,” he lamented.

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“We need to get our employees in Brazil to a safe place or otherwise not in a position of responsibility, then we will do a full data dump..”

• Musk: Starlink Free for Brazil Schools If Government Cancels Contract (ET)

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said he will provide Starlink services free of charge for schools in Brazil if the government chooses to follow through and cancel a contract for the service in the country. Many schools in Brazil have reported using the company to provide internet access to their citizens. Starlink terminals connect to the company’s satellites in low Earth orbit and provide high-speed communications. Brazil’s government has reportedly announced plans to suspend all contracts with Starlink. Prompting Mr. Musk to offer the service free of charge. “Starlink will provide free Internet for schools in Brazil if the government won’t honor their contract,” he said in an April 8 social media post. The moves come amid a growing stoush between social media company X, also owned by Mr. Musk, and the Brazilian government.

According to an April 6 post on the platform, the global affairs team announced they were being “forced by court decisions to block certain popular accounts in Brazil.” “We do not know the reasons these blocking orders have been issued. We do not know which posts are alleged to violate the law. We are prohibited from saying which court or judge issued the order, or on what grounds,” the post said. The global affairs team claimed the company had been threatened with fines if they didn’t comply with the order. They also said they were unable to provide a list of which accounts were impacted. “We believe that such orders are not in accordance with the Marco Civil da Internet or the Brazilian Federal Constitution, and we challenge the orders legally where possible,” the post from the global affairs team said.

“The people of Brazil, regardless of their political beliefs, are entitled to freedom of speech, due process, and transparency from their own authorities.” The announcement came after a report by investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger and colleagues David Ágape and Eli Vieira, titled “Twitter Files Brazil.” Mr. Shellenberger said that sitting members of Brazil’s Congress and journalists were among those named by Brazil’s highest court for censorship. He has shared his findings on X. Mr. Musk announced soon after he had removed all content restrictions in Brazil in defiance of the order.

[..] Mr. Musk has made serious allegations of corruption against Justice de Moraes and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In a follow-up April 8 post, Mr. Musk claims that events have since escalated and all Twitter Brazil employees are in danger of arrest. Once safe, he will release the information proving his allegations. “We need to get our employees in Brazil to a safe place or otherwise not in a position of responsibility, then we will do a full data dump,” he said. “They have been told they will be arrested. Save the Brazilian X employees.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1777796067225989299

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“A second AI system, sadistically named “Where’s Daddy?”—and how sick is this?—was then used to track Hamas suspects to their homes..”

• ‘Automated Murder’: Israel’s ‘AI’ in Gaza (Patrick Lawrence)

ZURICH—“Technological change, while it helps humanity meet the challenges nature imposes upon us, leads to a paradigm shift: It leaves us less capable, not more, of using our intellectual capacities. It diminishes our minds in the long run. We strive to improve ourselves while risking a regression to the Stone Age if our ever more complex, ever more fragile technological infrastructure collapses.” That is Hans Köchler, an eminent Viennese scholar and president of the International Progress Organization, a globally active think tank, addressing an audience here last Thursday evening, April 4. The date is significant: The day before Köchler spoke, +972 Magazine and Local Call, independent publications in Israel–Palestine, reported that as the Israel Defense Forces press their savage invasion of the Gaza Strip, they deploy an artificial intelligence program called Lavender that so far has marked some 37,000 Palestinians as kill targets.

In the early weeks of the Israeli siege, according to the Israeli sources +972 cites, “the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based.” Chilling it was to hear Köchler speak a couple of news cycles after +972 published these revelations, which are based on confidential interviews with six Israeli intelligence officers who have been directly involved in the use of AI to target Palestinians for assassination. “To use technologies to solve all our problems reduces our ability to make decisions,” Köchler asserted. “We’re no longer able to think through problems. They remove us from real life.” Köchler titled his talk “The Trivialization of Public Space,” and his topic, broadly stated, was the impact of technologies such as digital communications and AI on our brains, our conduct, and altogether our humanity.

It was sobering, to put the point mildly, to recognize that Israel’s siege of Gaza, bottomlessly depraved in itself, is an in-our-faces display of the dehumanizing effects these technologies have on all who depend on them. Let us look on in horror, and let us see our future in it. We see in the IDF, to make this point another way, a rupture in morality, human intelligence, and responsibility when human oversight is mediated by the algorithms that run AI systems. There is a break between causality and result, action and consequence. And this is exactly what advanced technologies have in store for the rest of humanity. Artificial intelligence, as Köchler put it, is not intelligence: “It is ‘simulated intelligence’ because it has no consciousness of itself.” It isn’t capable, he meant to say, of moral decision-making or ethical accountability.

In the Lavender case, the data it produced were accepted and treated as if they had been generated by a human being without any actual human oversight or independent verification. A second AI system, sadistically named “Where’s Daddy?”—and how sick is this?—was then used to track Hamas suspects to their homes. The IDF intentionally targeted suspected militants while they were with their families, using unguided missiles or “dumb” bombs. This strategy had the advantage of enabling Israel to preserve its more expensive precision-guided weapons, or “smart” bombs. As one of +972’s sources told the magazine: “We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity… . On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”

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BUT: “.. if Kiev gets the money, “they will win the war and beat Russia.”

• Ukraine ‘Losing The War’ – Chuck Schumer (RT)

Ukraine is failing on the battlefield because of a lack of American funding, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Monday. He demanded the House Republicans pass the $61 billion aid bill as soon as possible. Schumer, a New York Democrat, brought up Ukraine in a speech about the upcoming US legislative agenda. The Democrat-majority Senate passed the funding proposal in mid-February, but the Republican-majority House has not voted on it yet. “The situation in Ukraine is desperate,” Schumer said, claiming that the funding bill has been “collecting dust” for 55 days while “our friends in Ukraine fight and die on the battlefield with no support.” With each passing day, Ukraine is running out of more soldiers, ammunition and hope, he added. “Let’s be blunt: the biggest reason Ukraine is losing the war is because the hard-right in the Congress has paralyzed the US from acting. That’s it, that’s the reason,” Schumer said.

By passing the bill, House Speaker Mike Johnson would “do the right thing for Ukraine, for America, and for democracy,” the New York Democrat argued. Otherwise, he claimed, the Republicans would hand a “large victory” to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Schumer made much the same argument while visiting Ukraine in late February, claiming that if Kiev gets the money, “they will win the war and beat Russia.” Democrats have sought to split the GOP into “moderates” and “MAGA Republicans” – referring to former US President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ – to get support for their legislative agenda in both chambers of Congress. The tactic has paid off in the Senate, where 22 Republicans voted in favor of funding Ukraine, more than offsetting three Democrats who were opposed.

Republicans currently have a razor-thin majority in the 435-member House, with 218 seats to the Democrats’ 213. Johnson became speaker in late October, after a group of disgruntled GOP lawmakers voted to oust his predecessor Kevin McCarthy for striking a secret deal with the Democrats to pass Ukraine funding. The US has provided Ukraine with $113 billion in various forms of assistance since the start of hostilities. Meanwhile, Russia has repeatedly condemned Western arms shipments to Ukraine, saying these will only prolong the conflict, while making the West a direct participant in the hostilities.

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Everybody knows.

• Ukrainian NATO Membership ‘Fundamentally Unacceptable’ – Moscow (RT)

Ukrainian accession to NATO would pose a threat to Russia’s national security and is fundamentally unacceptable, Moscow’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, has said. The Russian envoy was responding to comments by US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, who claimed at a press briefing on Monday that Kiev could become a member of the military bloc once the conflict with Moscow has ended. “Ukraine’s accession to NATO is unacceptable to us under any circumstances,” Antonov stated on Tuesday. “This is a threat to Russia’s national security.” “Only politicians ignorant of the fundamental interests of the Russian Federation can expect that we could accept Kiev’s entry into a bloc which is hostile to us,” he added. Antonov further accused Washington of ignoring Moscow’s core interests and refusing to accept Russia’s “categorical opposition” to Kiev’s potential NATO membership.

Speaking at a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted that Ukraine will be allowed to join the bloc, claiming that the commitment of its members to Kiev remains “rock solid.” The purpose of NATO’s next summit in July will be to “help build a bridge to that membership and to create a clear pathway for Ukraine moving forward,” Blinken added. Russia has for years voiced concern about NATO’s expansion toward its borders, viewing the US-led bloc’s policies as an existential threat. Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned for nearly two decades that NATO’s eastward expansion undermines Russian national security, and that moving the bloc’s forces into Ukraine would cross a “red line.” According to Antonov, Moscow offered the West a diplomatic way to defuse tensions over NATO expansion and Ukraine in 2021, but the appeal was rejected by Washington.

Arestovich

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All this ‘pre-war’ talk is crazy irresponsible. Kick ’em by the curb.

• ‘High-Intensity War In Europe No Longer A Fantasy’ – Borrell (RT)

A full-scale military conflict in Europe has become more likely due to the standoff with Russia, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, has claimed, while warning member states against relying on the US to defend them. Several other European officials have cited a heightened military threat in recent months, with UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps saying last week that the world is moving from a “post-war to a pre-war” state due to the alleged threat emanating from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk made a similar “pre-war” assessment in March. Speaking at a Forum Europa gathering in Brussels on Tuesday, Borrell claimed that the “possibility of a high-intensity conventional war in Europe is no longer a fantasy” and that the bloc must “do everything to avoid it”.

The EU’s top diplomat alleged that Russia poses a growing threat to the continent, citing the conflict with Ukraine, and accused Moscow of seeking to destabilize the union. According to Borrell, while a military conflict in Europe is not imminent and “not going to start tomorrow,” citizens should understand that the “US umbrella that has protected us during the Cold War and after, may not be open all the time.” “Maybe, depending on who is ruling Washington, we cannot rely on the Americans’ support and American capacity to protect us,” he said. Describing the EU as being surrounded by a “ring of fires” and instability, Borrell called on member states to become more self-sufficient with their security and to ramp up their defense spending.

He added that while NATO is as “irreplaceable” as ever, Europeans should start building their own “pillar” within the US-led bloc. The diplomat acknowledged that Brussels’ stance on the conflicts in Gaza and in Ukraine is not fully shared by many non-Western audiences. Borrel’s remarks follow suggestions from numerous Western civilian and military officials in recent months that Russia could attack NATO within a few years. Speaking in late March, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed such speculation as “nonsense.” He argued that talk of a potential Russian attack on Poland, the Czech Republic, or the Baltic countries is propaganda coming from governments that seek to scare their citizens “to extract additional expenses from people, to make them bear this burden on their shoulders.”

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China’s been saying this for a while, but not many in the west seem to know it.

• China Sending Message That ‘It Has Russia’s Back’ If West Escalates (Sp.)

On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, sending a strong message to the West that the two countries will continue their strategic relationship. The meeting came a day after US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen traveled to China and warned it against partnering with Russia. The meeting between Lavrov and Xi, particularly right after Yellen’s visit, is a “message” to the West that China “will have the back of Russia” if the conflict in Ukraine is escalated by the West, lawyer and journalist Dimitri Lascarus told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Wednesday. “The timing of announcements such as these tell you a lot,” Lascarus said, pointing to not only Yellen’s visit but the increasingly provocative attacks on Russia by Ukraine’s intelligence services such as the mass shooting outside of Moscow which Russia has blamed Ukraine and its backers in the US and UK for, among other provocations.

“Of course, we have this ongoing drama with little Napoleon in France [French President] Emmanuel Macron, talking about sending a few thousand French troops to their deaths in Odessa,” Lascarus recalled. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it has been interpreted by both the Russian and Chinese governments as an attempt to provoke Russia into a direct attack on a NATO country.” “I think [China is] sending a message that China will have the back of Russia if this escalates. And, no one should have any illusions about that,” Lascarus explained. “They see, I believe, that there is a series of escalations happening here and there are no adults in the room, and they need to send an unequivocal signal that China will have Russia’s back in the event that this escalates out of control,” he added.

While neither government has any “reservations about the necessity” of their alliance, Lascarus argued that the West is forcing them to strengthen their relationship because of its aggressive actions. “Every day, Western governments are acting in a way which makes this partnership even more compelling to the Russian and Chinese governments.” With public sentiment turning against the “Ukrainian disaster” in both Europe and the US, Lascarus noted that polls show that the vast majority of French citizens think the country is heading in the wrong direction. “[France] has been one of the primary architects of this disastrous neocon policy in Ukraine,” he explained. “So we’re seeing already, that the political days of these characters are all numbered.” “The real question we have to confront as citizens of the West is, do we have an actual, competent, ethical, and principled alternative to these people? I don’t know that we do. But one thing is for sure, the public has enough and they’re on the way out the door.”

Lavrov
https://twitter.com/i/status/1777580903339876516

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“..to literally take over these social networks, [which] all these big tech people thought was going to be this lovely garden of earthly delights and turn it into a prison.”

• ‘Russiagate’ About Seizing Power as Much as Stopping Trump (Sp.)

On Sunday, US Rep. and chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Michael R. Turner (R-OH) claimed that it is “absolutely true” that members of the US Republican party are repeating “pro-Russia messages” on the House floor, without naming the members. The US establishment disproven conspiracy that former US President Donald Trump was controlled by the Kremlin is about seizing control of social media and the internet as much as it is designed to harm Trump’s political ambitions, Serbian-American journalist and columnist Nebojsa Malic told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Tuesday. Malic argues that the “completely fabricated” Russiagate conspiracy was “not just to sabotage the Trump presidency, but to literally take over these social networks, [which] all these big tech people thought was going to be this lovely garden of earthly delights and turn it into a prison.”

Last year, a panel of federal judges ruled that the US intelligence agencies’ contact with social media companies, urging them to take down specific posts and block or ban certain users, likely constituted government censorship. The administration of US President Joe Biden has appealed the case to the Supreme Court. “Russiagate was the pretext that started this entire ball rolling, and it wasn’t even based on anything real. And now they want to do it all over again,” Malic explained. “I was listening to [Senate Majority Leader, Senator] Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speak yesterday about how Ukraine is losing the war because [House Speaker, Rep.] Mike Johnson (R-LA) doesn’t want to give them money. No, Ukraine is losing the war because it has always been [losing] because it is fighting an industrial war it cannot win,” Malic continued. “The West can’t win because it doesn’t have the industrial capabilities because in the past 30 years, we shut down our industry and turned everything over to finance, but Chuck Schumer is too thick to understand that.”

The reality on the ground in Ukraine has turned many against US support for NATO’s proxy war in Russia, with more Americans (37%) saying the US spends too much on Ukraine than too little (27%) and only 13% responded that they were either “extremely confident” or “very confident” Ukraine will defeat Russia, compared to 49% who say they are “Not too confident” or “Not confident at all.” People are asking “How is this helping freedom and democracy, exactly?” Malic contended. “And [the establishment’s] response is ‘shut up, Russian Agent.’” “This is a breakdown. Because, again, the blob’s agenda is to use Russia’s phantom menace for a power grab at home on one hand, and to push for this geopolitical fantasy that Russia needs Ukraine to be a global empire,” Malic said, explaining that Russia doesn’t want a global empire.

“They voluntarily dissolved the Soviet Union in ‘91, believing all of these stories about freedom and democracy and capitalism and human rights, and they got taken advantage of. Demographically, the country was worse off in the ‘90s than during World War Two,” Malic explained. “When we talk about the golden age of the 1990s, post-Cold War, freedom, democracy, transition from socialism, this is a horror story to these people and nobody in America seems to understand this because they didn’t live through it.” However, Malic said that it is “theoretically possible” that the “blob” actually wants Trump to win the election to give them an excuse to get out of Ukraine. “Maybe they want to get out of this Ukrainian quagmire and blame somebody else for it. They might want Trump to get elected so they can say ‘Okay, well, it’s all his fault. Had we kept the Democrats in power, we would have totally won the war. But, oh, well, what can we do? We just have to move on to the next war,’ which will be China.”

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“..from 1789 to 2023, no former or sitting president has faced criminal charges for their official acts, and for good reason..”

• Jack Smith Urges SCOTUS to Reject Trump’s Presidential Immunity Claim (ET)

Special counsel Jack Smith in his final filing before the hearing is urging the Supreme Court to reject former President Donald Trump’s presidential immunity claim and deny any motions to delay a trial on charges related to the 2020 federal election conspiracy case. Prosecutors from the DOJ allege President Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 election result on Jan. 6, 2021, charging him with four counts of conspiracy and obstruction. Former President Trump has denied he did anything wrong by calling for transparency and audits of the vote counts in swing states, and maintains presidential immunity for his actions on that day, which prevents prosecution for any actions he took while still in the top job. In a fresh court brief on April 8, Mr. Smith pressed that President Trump’s argument for presidential immunity over official acts as president has no grounding in the Constitution, the nation’s history, or Americans’ understanding that presidents are not above the law.

“The President’s constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed does not entail a general right to violate them,” Mr. Smith said in the brief. “The Framers never endorsed criminal immunity for a former President, and all Presidents from the Founding to the modern era have known that after leaving office they faced potential criminal liability for official acts.” According to Mr. Smith, former President Richard Nixon’s official conduct revealed during the Watergate scandal is the closest historical precedent for this situation. Mr. Smith says President Nixon eventually accepted a pardon from his successor, former President Gerald Ford, and that “his acceptance of a pardon implied his and President Ford’s recognition that a former President was subject to prosecution.”

“Since Watergate, the Department of Justice has held the view that a former President may face criminal prosecution, and Independent and Special Counsels have operated from that same understanding,” he said. Mr. Smith claims that despite President Trump’s claim of presidential immunity, all former presidents knew and wholly understood they were open to facing criminal charges for conduct while in the White House. [..] “The effective functioning of the presidency does not require that a former president be immune from accountability for these alleged violations of federal criminal law,” he said. “To the contrary, a bedrock principle of our constitutional order is that no person is above the law, including the president.”

Former President Trump has continued to argue that official acts by presidents should have immunity from criminal prosecution. Last month, he asked the Supreme Court to hold that he and other former presidents enjoy absolute criminal immunity from prosecution for official acts during their time in office. According to him, from 1789 to 2023, no former or sitting president has faced criminal charges for their official acts, and for good reason. “The President cannot function, and the Presidency itself cannot retain its vital independence if the President faces criminal prosecution for official acts once he leaves office,” President Trump’s brief to the Court says. “The threat of future prosecution and imprisonment would become a political cudgel to influence the most sensitive and controversial Presidential decisions, taking away the strength, authority, and decisiveness of the Presidency.”

[..] the Court has historically upheld a level of presidential independence and ruled in the 1982 decision of Nixon v. Fitzgerald that a president enjoys absolute immunity from civil liability for acts that fall within the “outer perimeter” of his official duties. A secondary issue that may be addressed is the demarkation between personal and official acts during President Trump’s tenure, and a possible separation of actions he can be prosecuted for, and actions covered by presidential immunity. The outcome for the case could impact President Trump’s other legal battles, in which he also argues presidential immunity as a defense. A federal appeals court recently ruled that several civil cases against President Trump related to Jan. 6 could go forward, finding that the actions cited personal acts of a candidate rather than official acts of a president. The question whether this immunity applies to former presidents is also new territory.

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He gets blamed for adhering to the Supreme Court decision.

“I blame myself for Lindsey Graham, because the only reason he won in the Great State of South Carolina is because I Endorsed him!”

• Trump Body-Slams Lindsey Graham For Insisting On Nationwide Abortion Limit (ZH)

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham dared to criticize Donald Trump’s new stance advocating that abortion law should be left to individual states — and was promptly subjected to withering fire from the former president. On Monday morning, Trump posted a video in which he implicitly rejected the idea of creating a federal limit on abortions, saying that, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v Wade, abortion is now a state-by-state issue: “States will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land; in this case, the law of the state. Many states will be different…many will have a different number of weeks, or some will [be] more conservative than others, and that’s what they will be. At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.”

The announcement disappointed proponents of a federal ban who had been encouraged by February media reports that Trump had told his advisors and others that he favored a 16-week federal limit on abortions, with exceptions for rape, incest or to save the mother’s life. Graham quickly posted a tweet-thread declaring his “respectful” disagreement with Trump’s new stance, saying that a states’ rights rationale against a federal limit “will age about as well as the Dred Scott decision,” which helped perpetuate slavery. Trump responded via Truth Social, writing that “Senator Lindsey Graham is doing a great disservice to the Republican Party, and to our Country.” He elaborated on the political realities: “[Democrats] love this Issue, and they want to keep it going for as long as Republicans will allow them to do so. Terminating Roe v. Wade was, according to all Legal Scholars, a Great Event, but sometimes with Great Events come difficulties. Many Good Republicans lost Elections because of this Issue, and people like Lindsey Graham, that are unrelenting, are handing Democrats their dream of the House, Senate, and perhaps even the Presidency…”

A few hours later, Trump was back for more, this time chiding both Graham and Marjorie Dannensfelser, who leads SBA Pro-Life America. Dannensfelser had issued a statement saying her organization was “deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position.” With that particular scolding message, Trump took a more philosophical tack, saying Graham and Dannensfelser “should study the 10th Amendment.” A cornerstone of federalism, that final component of the Bill of Rights states that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” By deferring to the states on abortion, Trump is taking the truly “conservative” position on the issue, compared to those who advocate for national regulation. As James Madison summed up the federal system:

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. [Federal powers] will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce… The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people.” In a third Truth Social posting, Trump threw in another jab at Graham while also boasting about the power of a Trump endorsement: “I blame myself for Lindsey Graham, because the only reason he won in the Great State of South Carolina is because I Endorsed him!”

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Live 500 meter high in a flat in a 170km straight-line city. No thanks.

• Neom: Saudi Arabia ‘Scales Back’ Goals Of Megacity Project (MEE)

Saudi Arabia has scaled back some of its ambitions for its desert megacity Neom, according to a report by Bloomberg. The $1.5 trillion megacity project, which organisers claim will be 33 times the size of New York City, is due to include a 170km straight-line city. When launching The Line in 2021, the Saudi government had announced that 1.5 million people would be living in the city by 2030. Officials now expect there to be fewer that 300,000 residents by that time, according to a source cited by Bloomberg on Friday. The source said that officials expected only 2.4km of the 170km city to be completed by 2030. As a result of the scaling back, one contractor dismissed some of the workers it employs on site, according to a document seen by Bloomberg.

Neom – part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 strategy to diversify the economy and move away from oil reliance – is being built in the northwestern Tabuk province. Middle East Eye reported last year that construction was under way on The Line, based on satellite imagery. The Line is due to have no cars or roads, and a high-speed rail service running across the length of the city, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced three years ago. Two parallel, mirrored buildings that are nearly 500 metres tall and 120km wide are also planned as part of the project, according to designs uncovered in 2022.

In addition to the horizontal city, Neom is also touted to include an eight-sided city that floats on water, a ski resort with a folded vertical village, and a Red Sea luxury island resort called Sindalah. The Sindalah project is due to open later this year. Sources told Bloomberg that work was continuing on other parts of the Neom project, and Saudi officials still backed the overall aims of The Line. The sources added that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which is providing most of the funding for the project, has yet to confirm its 2024 budget for Neom. The scaling back of the megacity project comes as the Public Investment Fund cash reserves dropped to $15bn in September, its lowest levels since 2020.

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Fell just 2%? Barely a tumble.

• Boeing Shares Tumble After NYT Reveals Whistle-Blower Report (ZH)

Shares of Boeing are moving lower in early afternoon trade following a report from The New York Times of an engineer at the airplane manufacturer turned whistle-blower, revealing that sections of the 787 Dreamliner fuselage are improperly fastened together, posing structural integrity risks. Sam Salehpour, who worked on the 787 Dreamliner fuselage for more than a decade, detailed to NYT in a series of interviews that were packaged into documents and sent to the Federal Aviation Administration that the widebody plane is produced in several large sections by different manufacturers, and not all pieces were the same shape when they were fitted together. He said this could create structural issues over time. On April 17, Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat of Connecticut and the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s investigations subcommittee, will hold a hearing featuring Salehpour to address his concerns about the 787 Dreamliner.

“Repeated, shocking allegations about Boeing’s manufacturing failings point to an appalling absence of safety culture and practices — where profit is prioritized over everything else,” Blumenthal said in a statement. Recall, in 2014, an Al Jazeera undercover report found that workers at the 787 factory in South Carolina were not confident in the plane’s manufacturing quality, with at least one worker callin it “f**king sh*t.” “This is the culture that Boeing has allowed to exist,” Katz said, adding, “This is a culture that prioritizes production of planes and pushes them off the line even when there are serious concerns about the structural integrity of those planes and their production process.” Boeing responded to the NYT report and said it was “fully confident in the 787 Dreamliner,” adding, “These claims about the structural integrity of the 787 are inaccurate and do not represent the comprehensive work Boeing has done to ensure the quality and long-term safety of the aircraft.” Investors were spooked by the report, which is yet another issue for Boeing. Shares in New York tumbled 2% around noon.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Heroes

 

 

Cloud seeding

 

 

Red Wolf

 

 

Humpback

 

 

Parkour
https://twitter.com/i/status/1777445115415482483

 

 

Swan

 

 

Dolly

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle April 8 2024

Apr 082024
 
 April 8, 2024  Posted by at 8:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  40 Responses »


James McNeill Whistler Arrangement in Pink, Red and Purple 1883-4

 

• Facing Nuclear War (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Take up the NATO Man’s Burden. Send Forth The Worst Ye Breed (Hayes)
• US Reluctant to Cut Off Israel’s Arms Pipeline (Sp.)
• Ex-German Chancellor Calls For Diplomatic Solution To Ukraine Conflict (RT)
• Ukraine May Have To Compromise With Russia – Stoltenberg (RT)
• Stoltenberg’s Dido Moment Might Put A Halt To West’s Lies (Jay)
• Kiev ‘Hostage’ To US Politics – Zelensky (RT)
• UK To Pressure US House Speaker On Ukraine Aid (RT)
• FSB Reveals Crocus City Attackers’ Plan To Escape To Ukraine (RT)
• IAEA Chief Calls Attack on Zaporozhye NPP Violation of Security Principles (Sp.)
• Morality Challenged (Michael Brenner)
• Col. Macgregor Urges US to Stop ‘Marching’ Into Foreign Countries (Sp.)
• Appeals Court Vacates ‘Disinformation’ Monitoring Of Jan. 6 Defendant’s Computer (ET)
• Elon Musk Says X Will Defy Order From Brazil’s Supreme Court (ET)
• Outgoing Boeing CEO Bags $33 Million Pay-Off Despite 737 Max Accidents (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

Fundraiser

 

 

Palestine
https://twitter.com/i/status/1776811771376111937

 

 

Pepe
https://twitter.com/i/status/1775855559012434117

 

 

Putin Macron
https://twitter.com/i/status/1776833714820989431

 

 


Temperance is a tree which has for its root very little contentment, and for its fruit calm and peace. – Buddha

 

 

 

 

“..that the US needs to defend against a Russian or Chinese invasion is an absurdity when the US is being overrun daily by immigrant-invaders..”

• Facing Nuclear War (Paul Craig Roberts)

The invention of nuclear weapons was an act of total insanity. If the massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons are not dismantled and destroyed, sooner or later they will destroy planet Earth. We have survived so far because the Cuban Missile Crisis awoke President Kennedy and Soviet leader Khrushchev to the danger of distrust between nuclear powers. For the remainder of the 20th century Washington and Moscow worked to defuse tensions and to build transparency and trust. Sufficient success was achieved to avoid false indications from warning systems showing incoming ICBMs from resulting in the launch of nuclear war. Today there is no trust. In the 21st century all of the arms agreements hammered out over the decades of the Cold War have been abandoned, first by Washington and then in response by the Kremlin. The Soviet collapse in 1991 gave rise to the neoconservative doctrine of US hegemony, an assertion of American unilateralism, a claim of American supremacy. Such an absurd and unrealistic claim is totally inconsistent with the existence of nuclear weapons.

All trust has been erased. In the US Russia has been demonized to an unprecedented extent. It is so extreme that anyone who gives an objective analysis is branded a “Putin agent/dupe.” This makes realistic assessments impossible. In Russia trust of Washington has been completely destroyed by broken promises, such as NATO will not move one inch to the East, broken arms agreements, deceit over the Minsk Agreement, and by Washington’s endless rejections of Russian requests for a mutual security agreement. Today all it takes for the world to end is one false warning of incoming missiles. It was Washington, not Russia, that created this situation, and nothing is being done about it. The world is content with the Sword of Damocles hanging by a thread over the planet. Whenever I raise this most serious of all issues, a gaggle of idiots pronounce that nuclear weapons will never be used because there can be no winners. All the while Putin is warning that Washington and its NATO puppets are pushing Russia into nuclear war. There is no end of people too stupid to see the dire threat.

If Biden, the defense secretary, anyone in Washington had any sense, they would call Putin and declare that we need more than a mutual security agreement. We need to dismantle and destroy all nuclear weapons–the US, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel, France and the UK. To demonstrate our newly acquired good intentions, Washington should announce that it is closing its worldwide network of illegal bioweapon research laboratories and abandoning its effort to substitute Washington’s self-serving “rule-based order” for established international law. The notion that the US needs to defend against a Russian or Chinese invasion is an absurdity when the US is being overrun daily by immigrant-invaders. According to official numbers, immigrant-invaders recruited from 160 countries by NGOs financed with federal tax dollars are entering unopposed our country monthly in numbers equivalent to the population of Pittsburgh.

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“..intransigent Sunnis, who don’t know their place of half devil and half child in the Pax Americana’s scheme of things..”

• Take up the NATO Man’s Burden. Send Forth The Worst Ye Breed (Hayes)

Fast forward to Easter 2024 and consider this report by Irish state broadcaster RTE on Israel’s latest attack on the Zaynab shrine. Note how this Irish government outlet (feebly) argues that Israel is entitled to attack the shrine and to hell with the collateral human damage because it is a Hezbollah (read Shia) stronghold. The reality, had these genocidal apologists bothered to check, is that Hezbollah have to guard all Shia locales because Israel and their NATO proxies continually attack them and slaughter every and all Shias that they can. Think of a Russian Orthodox Church in Western Ukraine and you get the picture. I asked a good friend of mine, a female secular Sunni tour guide, if the Zaynab shrine was always so heavily guarded. She said that prior to NATO’s war against Syria, it only had normal security, the type that would be common in the mid West of the USA. Syria, before NATO launched its genocidal war against it, was considered one of the safest countries one could travel in. And that was probably their mistake, that it looked like easy meat for NATO’s cut throats.

But let’s forget Syria and Maaloula (which the Western media conveniently forgot about once Hezbollah and the Syrian Army freed it from NATO’s nun-torturing proxies). Let’s move on to Gaza or, rather to the BBC’s sickening coverage of it, as exemplified by examples of the BBC’s complicity in this most disgusting of war crimes. The sufferings the people of Gaza are enduring is the plainest example there is today of a war crime committed by war criminals, who should answer for their crimes. That the BBC considers Gaza is just some sort of pedantic philosophical talking point is a criminal indictment of the BBC on a par with anything the Nazis stood accused of in Nuremberg. And then there is NATO’s most recent criminal attack on Moscow, which is brilliantly addressed here by British maverick Russell Brand, who uses [an] article from WSWS, which often features in this site’s Editor’s Picks.

Although Brand easily and convincingly argues that NATO’s instant denials of Ukrainian intelligence involvement in these terror attacks are not in the least credible, Maaloula, Zaynab, Gaza and a million other places show that the criminal case against NATO goes much further and deeper than that. We have, in essence, two great forces operating against each other in the West. On the one hand, we have the business model of NATO and Israel, which see themselves fulfilling their manifest destiny by cleansing the lands they conquer of Shias, Armenian Christians, and elderly Russian monks and nuns. Their logic is quite simple. By cleansing the Middle East of its minorities, NATO can argue that the war there is between their pampered Israeli puppets and intransigent Sunnis, who don’t know their place of half devil and half child in the Pax Americana’s scheme of things.

On the other side of the ledger sheet, you have the Armenians, the Assyrians, the Mandaeans, the Shia, the Yezidi, secular Sunnis and many more who just want to live out their lives in peace, observing the customs their ancestors have observed since the dawn of time. This is not so much the Clash of Civilizations NATO’s mouthpieces harp on about but NATO, being utterly devoid of civilisation, trying to wipe everything from Maaloula and Zaynab to Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Masha and Mishka from the face of the earth. Hyperbole? Consider the case of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the man who flew to Kiev to order the cross dressing Zelensky to fight to the last pregnant woman. This “cultured” man suggested that Palmyra, one of the jewels in Syria’s cultural crown, be allowed fall into ruin but that it should be recreated in some British controlled virtual world or other. True to form, this modern day Kipling has not a thought on how Palmyra, Maaloula or Zaynab fit into the greater glory of Greater Syria and the entire Fertile Crescent. Johnson would make a good Israeli, brash, boorish, and so arrogantly full of piss and wind that he is.

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“..John Kirby said the US did not know whether American-supplied weapons were used in the Israeli strike..”

• US Reluctant to Cut Off Israel’s Arms Pipeline (Sp.)

Despite the verbal rhetoric and political fanfare emanating from the White House over Israel’s actions in Gaza, the Biden administration shows no willingness to cut off Tel Aviv from Washington’s arms supplies. While Biden urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take steps to minimize civilian harm in the war against Hamas, at no point during a recent phone call did he specifically threaten to limit US arms shipments, according to media reports. Biden “has the power to limit any foreign arms deliveries, even those previously approved by Congress,” the New York Times noted. But there was no specific “or else” delivered by Biden to Netanyahu during their exchange, the outlet added, citing officials. The call itself was inevitable, prompted by a wave of outrage over Israel’s deadly strike on the World Central Kitchen (WCK) humanitarian convoy in Gaza.

The Israeli strike killed seven WCK workers from Australia, Poland, the United Kingdom, and Palestine, as well as a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. Their humanitarian convoy was traveling in a “deconflicted zone” in two armored vehicles emblazoned with the organization’s logo and a soft-skinned vehicle when it was attacked. The team had just unloaded more than 100 tons of food aid it had brought into Gaza. After the strike, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli troops had “unintentionally harmed non-combatants” in Gaza, adding that “this is what happens in war. The flood of official statements from the White House stands in stark contrast to the detachment the US has shown in the face of the escalating civilian death toll in Gaza since the Palestinian-Israeli conflict escalated in the wake of the Hamas attack on October 7. 32,916 Palestinians have died since hostilities began, according to Gaza health officials.

U.S. President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that the strike on humanitarian workers and the overall humanitarian situation in Gaza were “unacceptable.” White House national security communications adviser John Kirby said the US did not know whether American-supplied weapons were used in the Israeli strike. The US is the largest supplier of arms to Israel. It will account for 69% of Israel’s arms imports between 2019 and 2023, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The US signed a ten-year military agreement with Israel in 2016 that guarantees Israel $3.3 billion a year to purchase weapons from the US. An additional $500 million per year is earmarked for missile defense. “The continued supply of the world’s most advanced weapons technology will ensure that Israel has the ability to defend itself from all manner of threats,” former President Barack Obama said at the time.

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“Berlin and Paris Should Spearhead Efforts To End The Bloodshed..”

• Ex-German Chancellor Calls For Diplomatic Solution To Ukraine Conflict (RT)

Berlin and Paris should be leading the way toward a negotiated solution to the Ukraine conflict, Gerhard Schroeder, who served as German chancellor between 1998 and 2005, has argued. The veteran politician also refused to disavow his long-time friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, adding that it could make him a good mediator in the current situation. In 2014, Schroeder threw a birthday party in St. Petersburg, with the Russian leader in attendance. Back in 2006, he became the head of the shareholders’ committee of Nord Stream AG, later also accepting a role on the board of Russia’s Rosneft energy giant. Schroeder stepped down from the latter post several months after the conflict between Russia and Ukraine began in February 2022. In an interview with Suddeutsche Zeitung published on Thursday, the 80-year-old expressed the view that it is still possible to secure a peace deal. “I am firmly convinced that [President] Putin is also interested in that,” Schroeder clarified.

The former German chancellor told the newspaper that he did not believe the conflict would spread further beyond Ukraine, or that it would lead to the use of nuclear weapons. He also lauded German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for refusing to provide long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine. However, according to the politician, Germany and France should do more on the diplomatic front to end the bloodshed. Schroeder also expressed cautious optimism over the fact that there is now talk within the ruling Social Democratic Party about potential ways out of the Ukraine conflict, such as the freezing of the hostilities. In an interview with the press agency dpa last week, he similarly named diplomacy as the only way out of the crisis.

Speaking of his personal ties to the Russian president, Schroeder said: “We have worked together sensibly for many years. Perhaps that can still help to find a negotiated solution.” The former chancellor has previously called for a diplomatic resolution, claiming that Western Europe “failed” to seize the opportunity to push for peace in March 2022 during talks between Kiev and Moscow in Istanbul. Around the same time, Schroeder himself reportedly traveled to Türkiye and Russia on a “peace mission.” Russia has repeatedly asserted that it is in principle ready to engage in peace negotiations with Ukraine. According to Moscow, Kiev and its Western backers, however, have been setting unrealistic preconditions for talks.

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But the career puppet also says: “real peace” can only be achieved with a Ukrainian victory..”

• Ukraine May Have To Compromise With Russia – Stoltenberg (RT)

Ukraine may ultimately have to agree to some kind of compromise with Russia to end the conflict, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said. In an interview with the BBC published on Saturday, the NATO chief reiterated that the West must support Ukraine in the long term “even if we believe and hope that the war will end in the near future.” He added that Western countries should invest in Kiev’s defense capabilities to make it more resilient in the event of future hostilities. At the same time, he signaled that it was up to Ukraine to choose when and under what conditions to seek peace with Russia. “At the end of the day, it has to be Ukraine that decides what kind of compromises they’re willing to do,” Stoltenberg said, adding that the West’s role is to help Kiev reach a negotiating position that could produce an “acceptable result.”

That said, Stoltenberg emphasized that he was not pushing Kiev toward any concessions, adding that “real peace” can only be achieved with a Ukrainian victory. Earlier this week, the NATO boss made a strong plea to support Kiev in the long term, urging the bloc’s members to “rely less on voluntary contributions and more on NATO commitments.” According to several reports, Stoltenberg proposed a five-year €100 billion ($107 billion) military aid package to Ukraine. The exact details of the initiative are reportedly now under discussion. Throughout the conflict, Russia has maintained that it is open to talks with Ukraine. However, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky banned any negotiations with the current leadership in Moscow after four former Ukrainian territories overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in the autumn of 2022.

The Ukrainian leader has been advicating a ten-point ‘peace formula’ demanding that Moscow withdraw its troops from territory Kiev claims as its own, as well as for a tribunal to be established to prosecute Russian officials for alleged war crimes. Moscow has dismissed the initiative as “detached from reality.” In an interview with Politico on Saturday, Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, claimed that while Ukrainians were tired of the conflict, they would vehemently oppose any compromise with Russia. However, last month Zelensky suggested that a return to Ukraine’s 1991 borders was no longer a precondition for negotiations with Russia. Nevertheless, he still insisted that Kiev must regain the territory it lost to Moscow in 2022. Moscow has said Ukraine must take into account the fact that its borders have changed drastically since the start of the hostilities.

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“The greatest lie of all is the one about Russia having its sights on European countries to invade and conquer..”

• Stoltenberg’s Dido Moment Might Put A Halt To West’s Lies (Jay)

Lying seems to be the ubiquitous theme now of NATO and western elites so I can be forgiven. Those were, of course the immortal words of Dido from the song White Flag – a narrative which would work well with the NATO supremo who you could easily imagine singing along too at the lights in Oslo in his Volvo estate with the “baby on board sticker” on the rear window. In reality, ponder what the old fool really said. “The sooner we can convince Moscow that it will not win on the battlefield, the sooner we can reach a peace agreement in which Russia understands that it cannot win the war, but must sit down and negotiate an agreement in which Ukraine becomes a sovereign, independent state.” Interesting how the official line is shifting all the time. Our man Jens is now talking about Russia “not winning” compared to Biden just a few weeks ago who told press room wasters that “Putin was losing in Ukraine”.

But here is our NATO man actually now calling for peace talks as it becomes embarrassingly patent that NATO has nothing to celebrate on its birthday and that Ukraine is falling village by village, town by town, to Russian forces. Of course Ukraine and NATO are both banking on the Americans signing off a 60bn dollar of military aid for Ukraine, as though that will make a difference to a war machine which siphons off so much which arrives in Kiev, leaving some pundits recently writing about how much even the staplers in government ministries are being stolen each day, such is the depth and severity of the crisis. But it’s the lying and level of lying which is astonishing. As Anthony Blinken stunned journalists just recently by saying that “Ukraine will join NATO” – perhaps the biggest lie ever of the entire war as western leaders know this is impossible and can never happen, without, that is the full defeat and exit of Russian forces. Actually it’s the second biggest lie.

The greatest lie of all is the one about Russia having its sights on European countries to invade and conquer which is something that Stoltenberg constantly says but not one EU leader believes which is evident in their irresponsible depletion of their own missiles. Macron also plays a key role in the manufacture of these untruths with his recent success in convincing journalists to write up the “we could send French troops into Ukraine” when, in fact, he packed that statement with so many caveats that he really didn’t say it at all. What is clear is that there is a state of panic now which is palpable from the West in general and that Macron, as well as NATO leaders, are having informal talks – or at least are having talks about possible talks – with Russia over some sort of what the Americans like to call an “off ramp” for Ukraine and the West. You could call it a “white flag” which has probably left you humming the song.

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“..rebuking US lawmakers for what he called an “immature approach” to the conflict and global security as a whole..”

• Kiev ‘Hostage’ To US Politics – Zelensky (RT)

Ukraine’s issues have become caught up in US domestic politics and this jeopardizes its ability to fight against Russia, President Vladimir Zelensky has complained. At this stage Kiev, he explained on national TV on Saturday, would agree to any kind of support from Washington, even in the form of a loan. Zelensky expressed hope that the US Congress would eventually approve a supplemental aid package for Kiev which has been in limbo for months worth of tens of billions of dollars. Describing the long-awaited assistance as critical, Zelensky said he believes that “we can get a positive vote from the US Congress.” “Unfortunately, we are hostage to the fact that this is the electoral process… Russia’s war against Ukraine has today become an internal political issue in the United States,” he complained, rebuking US lawmakers for what he called an “immature approach” to the conflict and global security as a whole.

The Ukrainian president also signaled that Kiev would accept assistance from the US in the form of a loan. “You know, one senator was recently there, and he asked: would you agree to loan money? Let’s be frank: we will agree to any option,” he said, adding that Ukraine’s fate is hanging in the balance. Zelensky was referring to senior Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who traveled to Kiev last month to promote the loan idea first put forward by GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. Graham claimed at the time to have been direct with Zelensky, telling him, “it’s not unfair for me to ask you and other allies: Pay us back down the road, if you can.”

Later, Politico reported that while Kiev is ready to consider the proposal, some Ukrainian officials find it “somewhat offensive.” US President Joe Biden has been urging Congress for several months to approve his aid package which would earmark $60 billion for Ukraine. Many Republicans have opposed the measure, demanding more efforts to strengthen security on the Mexican border. However, House Speaker Mike Johnson signaled earlier this month that the package could come up for a vote soon with “some important innovations,” including a proposal to extend a loan to Ukraine, as well as seizing frozen Russian sovereign assets and transferring them to Kiev. Moscow has described the blocking as “theft” and warned of retaliation if the funds are seized.

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UK Foreign War Secretary David Cameron also gets involved in domestic US politics?!

• UK To Pressure US House Speaker On Ukraine Aid (RT)

UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron is planning to use his upcoming trip to the US to persuade House Speaker Mike Johnson to unblock a $61 billion military aid package for Ukraine, the Telegraph reported on Sunday, citing sources at the Foreign Office. The additional funding has been delayed for several months due to political in-fighting in Congress. Cameron will fly to Washington, DC next week to meet with Johnson, as well as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the Telegraph said. “If Congress does not help Ukraine, Ukraine will lose the war,” President Vladimir Zelensky warned earlier this week, following multiple complaints about the shortage of ammunition on the battlefield. Cameron renewed his appeal to keep helping Kiev in a piece for the Telegraph on Sunday, arguing that the West must “stop” Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Ukraine must win this war. If Ukraine loses, we all lose. The costs of failing to support Ukraine now will be far greater than the costs of repelling Putin,” Cameron wrote in an op-ed co-authored with French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne. He previously argued on social media that the security of the US, UK and EU is “on the line in Ukraine.”

Earlier this year, the British government stepped up its military assistance to Ukraine, pledging $3.2 billion in military aid, while the EU unveiled a plan to provide €50 billion ($54 billion) in loans and grants. House Republicans, however, have so far refused to advance the aid bill sought by President Joe Biden, arguing that the White House should agree to tougher border security measures. Johnson said before Congress went on a two-week Easter break that he was working on “important innovations” to the proposed legislation, signaling that the bill could be put to a vote soon. Russia has repeatedly said that no amount of foreign aid will change the course of the conflict in Ukraine, and will merely increase the risk of a further escalation.

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“..abandon the car near the border” and then call their handler for further instructions..”

• FSB Reveals Crocus City Attackers’ Plan To Escape To Ukraine (RT)

Two escape routes were prepared in Ukraine for the terrorists who attacked a packed concert hall outside Moscow last month, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Sunday. The FSB showed snippets from interrogation videos, in which the suspects confessed that they were promised money in Kiev. On March 22, four Tajik nationals opened fire inside the Crocus City Hall music venue and then set the building on fire. A total of 145 people were killed and more than 500 were injured in the attack. The suspected assailants were detained the next day while trying to flee to Ukraine by car, the authorities said. More suspects were arrested in the following days, most of them of Tajik origin. The jihadist group Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) has claimed responsibility for the attack. FSB chief Aleksandr Bortnikov, however, suggested that the US, UK, and Ukraine may also be linked to the attack, possibly using Islamists as proxies. Ukraine and its Western backers have denied any involvement.

In the interrogation videos aired on Russian TV, the suspects said that they were following instructions from the handler they knew as Sayfullo. The authorities are currently working to determine his identity. The handler told the suspects to escape to Ukraine where they expected to receive 1 million rubles each ($11,000), they said. “Sayfullo told us that guys would wait for us at the Ukrainian border and that they would help us to cross the border and arrive in Kiev,” suspect Muhammadsobir Fayzov told his interrogator. According to investigators, the suspects took the M3 highway that leads to the border with Ukraine, but were eventually intercepted about 140 kilometers (87 miles) from Ukraine’s Sumy region.

Suspect Shamsidin Fariduni said that they were told to “abandon the car near the border” and then call their handler for further instructions on how to cross into Ukraine. Russian officials said previously that a “window” for crossing the border had been arranged on the Ukrainian side.The FSB said on Sunday that the Ukrainians were conducting “demining activities” near the villages of Chuykovka and Sopych, which points to two possible escape routes. According to investigators, the suspects were expected to destroy their vehicle and cross the border on foot, using woodlands as cover. Russia’s Investigative Committee said earlier this week that pro-Ukrainian images were discovered on the phone of one of the suspects.

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“Such reckless attacks significantly increase the risk of a major nuclear accident and must cease immediately,” Grossi was quoted as saying..”

• IAEA Chief Calls Attack on Zaporozhye NPP Violation of Security Principles (Sp.)

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi characterized the recent drone attack on the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (ZNPP) as a violation of nuclear security principles and called for an end to such “reckless attacks” Sunday. The IAEA confirmed minor damage to the sixth power unit of the plant as a result of the drone attacks. “This is a clear violation of the basic principles for protecting Europe’s largest [nuclear power plant]. Such reckless attacks significantly increase the risk of a major nuclear accident and must cease immediately,” Grossi was quoted as saying in the IAEA statement. Earlier in the day, Ukrainian kamikaze drones attacked the territory of the power station immediately after an inspection carried out by IAEA experts, the plant’s press service said. The attack left three of the facility’s workers injured, with one of them sustaining serious injuries, Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom said.

The IAEA had previously confirmed damage to the plant in a separate statement. “IAEA experts confirmed physical impact of drone attacks at ZNPP today, incl. at 1 of its 6 reactors,” the agency said. “One casualty reported. Damage at unit 6 has not compromised nuclear safety, but this is a serious incident with potential to undermine integrity of the reactor’s containment system.” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the international community must respond to Ukraine’s attack, calling it “an act of nuclear terrorism.” “The world community must realize and react to an act of nuclear terrorism on the part of the Kiev regime,” Zakharova said on Telegram. The Zaporozhye nuclear plant, constructed in the 1980s by the Soviet Union, is Europe’s largest and one of the world’s largest. The massive power station is reportedly now completely reliant on a single 750-kilowatt line for external power after previous attacks.

A connection to outside electricity is necessary to ensure the plant is able to cool its reactors – an interruption in the delivery of power could precipitate a catastrophic meltdown. Russia took control of the sensitive asset in March 2022 and it has endured Ukrainian fire ever since. Ukrainian drones, missiles, and artillery have all been used against the plant by Kiev, which has repeatedly attempted to reassert control. Kiev claims Russia is storing weapons at the power station and using it as cover to attack Ukrainian troops. Observers worry Ukraine may create a disaster at the plant, blaming Russia and spoiling newly-Russian territory. Kiev has repeatedly employed US-provided cluster munitions during fighting in the Donbass, raising the prospect of unexploded bomblets creating a hazard for decades to come.

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Long from Brenner.

• Morality Challenged (Michael Brenner)

Is there now a moral void at the heart of Western societies? That question haunts us as governments in the United States and Europe act as accomplices in Israeli’s atrocious crimes against the Palestinians. The Jewish state’s conduct meets the standard of genocide as stated in the United Nations Convention on Genocide of which they all are signatories. Confirmation is likely to come soon in a conclusive determination by the International Court of Justice. The ICJ already in January recognized a prime facie case for genocide. The UN’s top court ordered Israel to take all measures to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza. The ICJ found it did have jurisdiction on the matter, and decided there was a plausible case under the 1948 Genocide Convention. At least some of the acts and omissions by Israel “fall within the provisions of the (Genocide) Convention,” the judges said.

The ICJ issued a set of stipulations “to protect the rights claimed by South Africa that the Court has found to be plausible,” including “the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide.” One reasonably expected that the stark moral issues thereby highlighted – along with subsequent atrocities – would spark an animated, anguished public debate as a prelude to decisive action. Yet, the political class in its near totality disregards or sublimates them. Silence reigns. Gaza exhibits singular features that set it apart from other relatively recent instances of systematic, targeted attacks on civilians. One, the West’s response is not one of indifference leading to passivity – as in regard to Ruanda.

Governments have been active participants in Israel’s indiscriminate punishment of the Palestinians. They provide Israel with vast amounts of weapons critical to their military assault; they offer unqualified political support and diplomatic cover; they acquiesce in the siege that prevents foodstuffs, medicines and other humanitarian aid from entering the strip – causing mass famine and disease among the civilian population; they lend credence to crude propaganda lines from Jerusalem without question or qualification: the phony rape stories, alleged Hamas nests in hospitals, etc. etc..; they pressure their mass media to publicize those fabrications as hard news; and they suppress both public demonstrations and individual calls for measure to alleviate Palestinian suffering – instead, denouncing them as pro-Hamas and/or anti-Semitic. Germany, France and now Britain have gone so far as to criminalize public expressions of anti-Zionist viewpoints.

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“..trying to force people to become like us..”

• Col. Macgregor Urges US to Stop ‘Marching’ Into Foreign Countries (Sp.)

Former Pentagon Adviser Col. Douglas Macgregor said Sunday the United States should stop “marching” into foreign nations to expand their political influence. “We need to stop marching into other peoples countries and trying to force people to become like us,” Macgregor said on the X social media platform. Earlier this week US Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed the US-led NATO alliance is a defensive organization that has “no designs” to seize the territory of any other country in the world. NATO has carried out bombings and interventions in countries including Libya, Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan over its 75-year history.

The alliance also partnered with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to sponsor Operation Gladio, a covert program that backed far-right paramilitaries throughout Europe. In March, the Russian Mission to the United Nations requested a Security Council meeting to mark the 25th anniversary of the bombing campaign carried out by NATO against Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War in 1999. Several US-aligned states raised objections to the proposed meeting, saying it was not relevant under the UN Security Council agenda category of “threats to international peace and security.”

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The judge really wants to go after Tucker Carlson.

• Appeals Court Vacates ‘Disinformation’ Monitoring Of Jan. 6 Defendant’s Computer (ET)

A sentencing requirement that Jan. 6 defendant Daniel Goodwyn have his computer monitored by the government for “disinformation” has been vacated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The court on March 26 published a mandate sending the case back to U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton to remove the computer monitoring requirement he issued as part of the sentencing judgment in the case on June 15, 2023.
“Judge Walton had no legal basis to issue the special condition,” Carolyn Stewart, Mr. Goodwyn’s attorney, told The Epoch Times in an April 3 email. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the judge “plainly erred” in imposing the computer monitoring. Judges Gregory Katsas, Naomi Rao, and Bradley Garcia issued a per curiam order vacating the monitoring provision.

Judge Walton, when imposing a 60-day jail sentence in June 2023, said Mr. Goodwyn spread “disinformation” during a broadcast of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on March 14, 2023. Judge Walton ordered that Mr. Goodwyn’s computer be subject to “monitoring and inspection” by a probation agent to check if he spread Jan. 6 disinformation during the term of his supervised release. The judge also referred to Mr. Goodwyn spreading alleged “misinformation,” using the term interchangeably with “disinformation.” Mr. Goodwyn, 35, of Corinth, Texas, pleaded guilty on Jan. 31, 2023, to one misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority. The charge could have meant up to a year in prison. On June 6, 2023, Judge Walton sentenced Mr. Goodwyn to 60 days in prison, a year of supervised release, a $2,500 fine, and a $500 restitution payment.

Federal prosecutors had asked for 90 days in jail, 36 months of supervised release, a $25,676 fine, and $500 in restitution. The recommended fine amount represented proceeds of a GiveSendGo web page Mr. Goodwyn uses to raise funds for his legal fees. Mr. Goodwyn asked for a sentence of time served with three months of supervised release. He received credit for three weeks he spent in pretrial detention, but not for the 13 months he spent in home detention. He completed his incarceration at the Federal Correctional Institution at Bastrop, Texas, on Aug. 25, 2023. Mr. Goodwyn said the Court of Appeals made the correct decision. “Judge Walton’s imposition of the computer monitoring restriction is inconsistent with American law and tradition,” Mr. Goodwyn told The Epoch Times. “It’s unbelievable, in my opinion, that he would unlawfully order feds to spy on me in direct violation of the First and Fourth Amendments, under threat of locking me back up in prison.”

[..] During the sentencing hearing, Judge Walton criticized Mr. Goodwyn for having the “false impression” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from President Donald Trump. “And there is just no proof whatsoever that that was, in fact, the case,” the judge said, according to the official court transcript for the June 6 portion of the hearing. It was Mr. Goodwyn’s appearance on Mr. Carlson’s Fox News program that drew some of the sharpest fire from Judge Walton. He called Mr. Carlson a “lightning rod” who “has said and done things that I think clearly have been divisive.” Mr. Carlson gave the impression “that individuals who have been charged in reference to the events on January 6th of ‘21 have been treated unfairly,“ the judge said. ”And I see no evidence that, in fact, was the case.”

When being interviewed by Mr. Carlson, Mr. Goodwyn “made no attempt to correct the record,” Judge Walton said. “And when Carlson suggested that all the defendant did was go into the Capitol and walk around for less than a minute and leave, that just wasn’t correct. And that misinformation that is disseminated to the American public has contributed to the discord that now exists in our country in reference to the presidential election and what occurred on January 6th.”

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“You’re going to save my country. We could never repay you.”

• Elon Musk Says X Will Defy Order From Brazil’s Supreme Court (ET)

Owner of X Corp. Elon Musk said on the platform on April 6 that the company had decided to lift all restrictions on Brazilian accounts targeted by an order from the nation’s Supreme Court. “We are lifting all restrictions. This judge has applied massive fines, threatened to arrest our employees and cut off access to X in Brazil. As a result, we will probably lose all revenue in Brazil and have to shut down our office there. But principles matter more than profit,” Mr. Musk wrote, explaining X’s decision. The announcement came in response to reporting by investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger and colleagues David Ágape and Eli Vieira, titled “Twitter Files Brazil.” In his reporting, Mr. Shellenberger cited records released by X, formerly known as Twitter, during Mr. Musk’s 2022 takeover that allegedly show 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 that the court deemed misinformation. According to the internal files that Mr. Shellenberger shared, Twitter in Brazil was threatened with a $30,000 fine. The company had one hour to remove the congressmembers’ posts or pay the court for noncompliance. The article reports that the justice had even been jailing individuals without trial for their social media posts. 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.

He also allegedly ordered that Twitter deplatform the individuals responsible for the specific posts that he wanted censored “without giving users any right of appeal or even the right to see the evidence presented against them.” Brazil’s “Twitter Files” also show that the justice “sought to weaponize Twitter’s content moderation policies against supporters of then-president [Jair Bolsonaro],” Mr. Shellenberger said—a similar trend to what the “Twitter files” revealed was happening to former President Donald Trump and conservative voices in the United States. The origin of the order to censor Brazilians’ posts was also revealed in the internal Twitter files, he said. He said Justice de Moraes, Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court, and Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court declined to respond to the report.

Last year, Justice de Moraes also ordered an investigation into executives at social messaging platform Telegram and Alphabet’s Google, who were in charge of a campaign criticizing a proposed internet regulation bill. Mr. Musk said of Brazil’s Twitter Files, which he released to Mr. Shellenberger, “This aggressive censorship appears to violate the law & will of the people of Brazil.” Journalist Paulo Figueiredo, a contributor to The Epoch Times who was censored by the court order, replied: “You’re going to save my country. We could never repay you.” He had replied to an earlier post urging X to not comply with the court order, saying the independent platforms Rumble and Locals did not comply. “You’re powerful enough to make a difference,” Mr. Figueiredo said.

Rogan X

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For running the company into the ground.

• Outgoing Boeing CEO Bags $33 Million Pay-Off Despite 737 Max Accidents (Sp.)

Boeing’s departing CEO Dave Calhoun’s 2023 pay package jumped by 45 percent to about $33 million, according to an annual proxy statement filed on Friday. Boeing reported that Calhoun’s compensation mainly consists of deferred stock options. Boeing’s share price has slumped almost 30 percent this year as of March 29, 2024 following the mid-air blowout of an Alaska Airlines B737 MAX 9 jet door plug on January 5. A preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board revealed that Boeing failed to correctly install the four bolts required to secure the door on the Alaska jet. The revised figure for Calhoun’s overall earnings in 2023 totalled $24.8 million. The departing CEO pocketed $22.6 million the previous year, according to the regulatory filing.

The Seattle-based planemaker is in financial and regulatory trouble after several accidents with its B737 Max short-medium haul airliners. It has suffered a drop in new orders and mounting concerns over quality control and corporate governance raised by regulators and customers. Last February, an expert panel found Boeing’s safety practices “inadequate and confusing” and noted a “disconnect” between the company’s senior management and front-line workers. In March, a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) probe found multiple issues within Boeing’s 737 Max production, including quality control violations by major supplier Spirit AeroSystems. The FAA conducted 89 product audits of which 33 failed, totalling 97 instances of noncompliance. Based on FAA findings, Spirit AeroSystems underwent 13 audits, failing seven.

Calhoun was appointed CEO of Boeing in January 2020. His 2023 pay-packet is his highest yet, despite the transnational corporation’s litany of woes. sFollowing the Alaska incident, Boeing’s executive compensation committee adjusted the payment structure for top officials in 2024. Executives in the commercial aircraft division will now have their pay split into 60 percent based on operational performance and 40 percent based on financial performance. Previously, three-quarters of pay was based on financial metrics.

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Birx

 

 

Baby elephant
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Toddler puppy

 

 

Hawk mallard

 

 

Horse
https://twitter.com/i/status/1777095055255433356

 

 

Toothpaste
https://twitter.com/i/status/1777182076950974843

 

 

PolyGlu

 

 

Table cloth

 

 

 

 

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Lula: Peace Club to De-dollarization

Apr 152023
 
 April 15, 2023  Posted by at 11:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  4 Responses »


Brian Griffin Memorial to the Conquerors of Space, Moscow, Russia 1974

 

 

 

Andrew Korybko:

 

Brazilian President Lula was successful in reaching an agreement to de-dollarize his country’s trade with China, the significance of which was earlier explained in the context of his country’s grand strategy here, but failed to convince his counterpart to join a so-called “peace club” on Ukraine during their summit. This is no small shortcoming either since it was promoted by his Foreign Minister as one of the reasons behind his trip in an interview that he gave to the Financial Times (FT) late last month.

Globally prominent outlets such as Bloomberg, France24, the US Government-run “Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty” (RFERL), and others all accordingly reported that this issue would be high on the agenda during Lula’s talks with President Xi. His supporters on social media also went wild getting everyone’s expectations up about this as well, even though “Brazil & China Are Poles Apart When It Comes To Their Envisaged End Games In Ukraine” so it was never likely that anything would come of this.

While China, India, and South Africa have consistently abstained from anti-Russian UNGA Resolutions, Brazil bucked the BRICS trend by always voting against Russia except when it came to suspending it from the Human Rights Council. Lula became the first BRICS leader to personally condemn Russia in his joint statement with Biden back in February, after which he ordered his diplomats to vote in support of the latest anti-Russian UNGA Resolution later that same month.

Foreign Minister Vieira was obviously well aware of the sharp differences between Brazil and China’s officially envisaged end games to this conflict yet he still made it seem to FT like there was a chance that the People’s Republic would tacitly support his country’s position via participation in the “peace club”. That was nothing more than wishful thinking, which belied Brazilian diplomats’ refusal to acknowledge China’s principled approach to this conflict since they in hindsight seemed to assume that it was flexible.

Reality slapped them and their supporters in the face upon the publication of the joint Brazilian-Chinese communique on Friday, which can be read in English on the official website of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs here. The ninth paragraph of that document will now be shared in full so as to prove Lula’s failure to sway President Xi to his country’s side contrary to the unrealistic expectation that Vieira set for his trip when talking to the FT late last month:

“Both parties stated that dialogue and negotiation are the only viable way out of the crisis in Ukraine and that all efforts leading to a peaceful solution to the crisis must be encouraged and supported. Brazil received in a positive way the proposal by China that offers reflections conducive to the search for a peaceful solution to the crisis. China received in a positive way the efforts by Brazil in favour of peace. The parties made an appeal for more countries to play a constructive role in the promotion of a political solution to the crisis in Ukraine. The parties decided to keep in contact on this matter.”

As can be seen, absolutely nothing of tangible significance came from Lula’s over-hyped “peace club” proposal. This paragraph of their joint statement is purely perfunctory and simply acknowledges their shared interest in peace without touching upon their sharp differences in terms of how this should be achieved. The “positive way” in which China “received” “the efforts by Brazil in favour of peace” is similar in spirit to Russia’s reported support of the optics connected to Lula’s peace rhetoric.

What’s meant by this was explained more in detail here last week but just refers to Russia and China’s interest in showing the world that the international community wants peace as soon as possible instead of indefinitely perpetuating this proxy war. Their soft power interests in no way even remotely imply endorsement of Lula’s envisaged end game as articulated in his joint condemnation of Russia with Biden and the anti-Russian UNGA Resolution that he ordered his country’s diplomats to vote in support of.

China wasn’t ever going to be manipulated into de facto taking the US’ political side in this conflict against Russia by dint of joining Lula’s “peace club” and thus extending credence to his hostile demand that their shared BRICS partner immediately withdraw from all the territory that Kiev claims as its own. Doing so would have discredited President Xi’s signature peace proposal that his diplomats unveiled on the one-year anniversary of the conflict and which he discussed at length with President Putin in March.

Lula therefore failed in his function as Biden’s “Trojan Horse” for tricking the Chinese leader into informally adopting an anti-Russian policy, but this unfriendly gamble didn’t spoil their much larger success in agreeing to de-dollarize bilateral trade. About that, while it’s indisputably a positive development that’ll accelerate the global systemic transition to multipolarity, his Finance Minister Fernando Haddad made it clear that neither this nor the trip in general were aimed against the US.

In his own words, “It doesn’t make sense to get closer to China and move away from the United States. We want the best relations with the United States and the European Union.” This aligns with the insight that was hyperlinked to in the introduction regarding Brazil’s grand strategy, which was elaborated upon in this piece here from Friday that discusses the significance of Lula’s reported plans to launch a global influence platform in joint partnership with the US Democrats.

To summarize, he believes that Brazil can “balance” – however clumsily and imperfectly – between de-dollarizing with China and aggressively propagating liberal–globalism across the world with the US, thus enabling his country to preemptively avert potentially disproportionate dependence on either. Relations with Russia are limited in this paradigm to commodities (including energy investments) and cooperation on BRICS’ new reserve currency, which are important but pale in comparison to China and the US’ roles.

All told, the grand strategic significance of Lula’s de-dollarization success with China far outweighs his failure to trick it into tacitly adopting an anti-Russian policy by joining his proposed “peace club”, but the second-mentioned outcome still deserves to be discussed. Those who expected this to happen must cogently account for the fact that it didn’t occur, though without resorting to the conspiracy theories that have become popular among his supporters, if they want to retain a semblance of credibility.

 

 

 

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De-Ideologization Of Russia’s Relations With Latin America

Apr 042023
 
 April 4, 2023  Posted by at 10:54 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  8 Responses »


Georgia O’Keeffe Red poppy No. VI 1928

 

Andrew Korybko:

 

“The Old Cold War Paradigm Is Irrelevant In The New Cold War”, which Indian Professor of International Relations Rajesh Rajagopalan just discovered, but it’s important for everyone else to be aware of this as well. Unlike during the Old Cold War where the US and USSR competed to promote their capitalist and communist worldviews correspondingly, the New Cold War is being fought over whether the global systemic transition continues evolving towards multipolarity or retains most of unipolarity’s trappings.

Multipolar conservative-sovereigntists (MCS) respect every country’s sovereign right to develop according to whichever models they’d like while unipolar liberal-globalists (ULG) want to force everyone to apply Western models. For the most part, the Sino-Russo Entente and the Global South embrace MCS while the US-led West’s Golden Billion and its vassals promote ULG. There are a few notable exceptions, but this insight represents the simplified geopolitical-ideational fault lines of the New Cold War.

Intrepid readers can learn more about the dynamics of this competition in the following analyses:

* 15 May 2022: “What’s Dishonestly Smeared As ‘Russian Propaganda’ Is Just The Multipolar Worldview”

* 5 August 2022: “The Russian Foreign Ministry Comprehensively Explained The Global Systemic Transition”

* 29 October 2022: “The Importance Of Properly Framing The New Cold War”

* 9 March 2023: “Towards Tri-Multipolarity: The Golden Billion, The Sino-Russo Entente, & The Global South”

* 21 March 2023: “China’s Global Civilization Initiative Is Its Response To The West’s Liberal-Globalism”

The abovementioned analyses add context to Russia’s new foreign policy concept that can be read here.

The present piece focuses on the 58th paragraph and its four subclauses concerning Russia’s relations with Latin America, which are of relevance to the Western Hemispheric dimension of its grand strategy as articulated in the preceding hyperlinked document from 31 March. For everyone’s convenience, this part of that detailed policy paper will now be shared in full below prior to analyzing its importance in the larger context:

“58. Given the progressive strengthening of the sovereignty and multifaceted potential of Latin American and Caribbean states, the Russian Federation intends to develop relations with them on a pragmatic, de ideologized and mutually beneficial basis, giving priority attention to:

1) supporting interested Latin American states under pressure from the United States and its allies in securing sovereignty and independence, including through the promotion and expansion of security, military and military-technical cooperation;

2) strengthening friendship, mutual understanding and deepening multifaceted mutually beneficial partnership with the Federative Republic of Brazil, the Republic of Cuba, the Republic of Nicaragua, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, developing relations with other Latin American states, taking into account the degree of independence and constructiveness of their policy towards the Russian Federation;

3) increasing mutual trade and investment with Latin American and Caribbean States, including through cooperation with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Common Market of the South. The Central American Integration System, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of the Americas, the Pacific Alliance, and the Caribbean Community;

4) expanding cultural, scientific, educational, sports, tourism and other humanitarian ties with the states of the region.”
 
Immediate attention should be drawn to the open sentence about the “pragmatic, de ideologized and mutually beneficial basis” of Russia’s envisaged relations with Latin America. This approach perfectly aligns with the precepts of MCS, particularly Moscow’s respect for its partners’ right to develop according to whichever models they’d like. In practice, this means that Russia’s comparatively more right-wing socio-cultural policies at home aren’t an impediment to expanding ties with left-wing states.

That explains why it’s extremely close with Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, all three of which have either abstained from or voted against anti-Russian Resolutions at the UNGA since the start of Moscow’s special operation. It also signals Russia’s intent to continue exploring the expansion of mutually beneficial economically driven relations with Brazil in spite of their increasingly diverging worldviews under Lula’s third term as explained in detail citing official sources in these analyses here and here.

Unlike the US’ ULG, Russia’s MCS policymakers don’t care how their country’s partners organize their economic, political, and/or socio-cultural systems, hence why they’re extending an offer of support to strengthen their sovereignty via military-technical and other means despite their different models. All that’s important for the Kremlin is that its partners remain reliable and continue respecting Russia’s legitimate interests without criticizing them or meddling in its related affairs.

Should they continue to do so and this pragmatic worldview expands further throughout the region, then the geopolitical-ideational basis will be more solidly established for comprehensively advancing Russia’s relations with those regional integration platforms mentioned in the third clause above. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) is the most promising of them all, however, and Venezuelan President Maduro’s expectations of its future global role complement Russian interests.

The final clause regarding people-to-people ties is important for sustaining both sides’ mutually beneficial cooperation in the New Era, the present decade of which can also be described as the Age of Complexity. Ideologically driven disinformation agents are already at work trying to brainwash Latin Americans into thinking that Russia’s comparatively more right-wing socio-cultural policies at home preclude the possibility of any left-wing governments ever pragmatically cooperating with it.

According to this information warfare narrative, it would allegedly be a “betrayal” of their movements’ beliefs to work together with any country that holds polar opposite ones in some respects, the notion of which is weaponized by the US’ ruling liberal–globalists to divide-and-rule Russia and Latin America. The so-called “New Left” that’s rising in the region differs from the “Old Left” in the sense that the former are largely insincere in their working-class rhetoric and care more about fighting “culture wars”.

Their obsession with so-called “critical race theory” and aggressive propagation of non-traditional sexual relations onto all members of society (including children) take precedence over tangibly improving the living conditions of the population whose economic interests they purport to represent. These causes are the same as those that are being imposed by the US’ Democrats onto their own people and aggressively propagated across the world, hence these movements’ informal alliance with one another.

Upon falling under the influence of the US’ liberal-globalists, the Latin American “New Left” (which the Workers’ Party’s elite during Lula’s third term can also be characterized as per the prior analyses earlier shared in this piece) gradually began to align with their ally’s foreign policy. This explains why the Brazilian leader became the first BRICS one to personally condemn Russia in his joint statement with Biden from February and decided to continue Bolsonaro’s policy of voting against it at the UNGA.

At the same time, however, the “Old Left” that’s represented by Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and also Bolivia (which for whatever reason wasn’t mentioned by name in Russia’s new foreign policy concept despite being a reliable partner) continues setting a positive geopolitical-ideational example. They’re more focused on tangibly improving their people’s living conditions than on fighting “culture wars”, hence why they remain resistant to the US Democrats’ influence, unlike the Workers’ Party’s elite.

Accordingly, they haven’t voted against Russia at the UNGA either, once again unlike Lula’s Brazil. The emerging challenge across Latin America will therefore be for the “Old Left” to positively influence the “New Left” at least in the geopolitical sense of appreciating the mutually beneficial importance of pragmatically expanding ties with Russia despite pressure from their newfound US ideological ally to distance themselves from it and vote against Moscow at the UNGA.

It’s with this imperative in mind that Russia’s official de-ideologization of its relations with Latin America deserves maximum attention. Those “New Left” movements that continue falling under the US Democrats’ pernicious geopolitical influence due to their overlapping ideational interests will ultimately end up doing some of that declining unipolar hegemon’s bidding in the New Cold War. The failure to stop and reverse this Hybrid War trend could ultimately doom all of Latin America to US vassalhood.

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle February 24 2023

Feb 242023
 
 February 24, 2023  Posted by at 10:10 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  73 Responses »


Constantin Brancusi Portrait of George 1911

 

• China Unveils Roadmap To End Ukraine Conflict (RT)
• China Publishes Its Proposals On Ukrainian Crisis Settlement (Az.)
• Elon Musk Accuses Victoria Nuland Of ‘Pushing War’ In Ukraine (RT)
• US Seeks To Discuss New START Implementation With Russia – Nuland (TASS)
• 19% Of Americans Have Confidence In Biden’s Handling Of Ukraine Conflict (SN)
• Russia-EU Relations ‘No Longer Exist’ – Moscow (RT)
• Moscow Analyzes Brazil’s Peace Initiatives On Ukraine (TASS)
• Seymour Hersh Explains Why US Blew Up Nord Stream (RT)
• Why Putin Went to War — One Year Later (Lauria)
• Google Accused Of Destroying Evidence In Antitrust Suit (RT)
• Hunter Biden’s Latest Rebrand Is Just Smoke And Errors (Turley)
• The Immediate Need To Screen Blood For mRNA And Spike Protein (Horowitz)

 

 

 

 

Tedros

 

 

 

 

 

 

Malone

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Short version…

• China Unveils Roadmap To End Ukraine Conflict (RT)

The international community should encourage all efforts to end the Ukraine conflict peacefully, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a 12-point political roadmap published on Friday. In a statement on its website, the ministry urged each side to “stay rational and exercise restraint.” “All parties should support Russia and Ukraine in working in the same direction and resuming direct dialogue as quickly as possible, so as to gradually deescalate the situation and ultimately reach a comprehensive ceasefire,” the document said. “All efforts conducive to the peaceful settlement of the crisis must be encouraged and supported,” the plan stressed, adding that Beijing would “continue to play a constructive role” in the matter.

China called for abandoning “the Cold War mentality,” arguing that “the security of a region should not be achieved by strengthening or expanding military blocs.” There is “no simple solution to a complex issue,” the proposal said, and countries should “prevent bloc confrontation” and work towards building “a balanced, effective and sustainable European security architecture.” Beijing warned against “armed attacks” on nuclear power plants and called on the parties to “resolutely avoid man-made nuclear accidents.” China also said it opposes sanctions that are not approved by the UN Security Council. “Unilateral sanctions and maximum pressure cannot solve the issue; they only create new problems.”

Unlike many Western countries, ChinaA has refused to condemn Russia’s military operation in Ukraine and has not imposed economic restrictions on Moscow. Chinese officials have stressed that Beijing wants to find a peaceful solution rather than fuel the conflict by sending weapons to Kiev. Russia sent troops to Ukraine exactly a year ago, citing the need to protect the people of Donbass and Kiev’s failure to implement the 2014-2015 Minsk peace accords. Ukraine, meanwhile, accused Moscow of unprovoked aggression. Ceasefire negotiations effectively broke down by April 2022. Chinese State Councilor Wang Yi traveled to Moscow this week, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin later said that he was expecting Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit Russia sometime in the future.

Read more …

… and long version…

Pepe Escobar: “On the Chinese peace proposal. A post-mod epigone of Diogenes, the Cynic would say, with a nod and a wink: The ONLY thing that really matters for Beijing are the New Silk Road corridors across Eurasia. This war is bad for business. Over and out.”

• China Publishes Its Proposals On Ukrainian Crisis Settlement (Az.)

The foreign ministry of China published its proposals for a political settlement of the crisis in Ukraine on its website on February 24, Report informs referring to TASS. The 12-point settlement plan, put forward by the Chinese side, includes a call for de-escalation and ceasefire. “All sides should show rationality and restraint, avoid fueling tensions or taking steps to aggravate the conflict, avert further escalation and prevent the situation from spinning out of control, assist contacts between Russia and Ukraine and resumption of direct dialogue, promote gradual de-escalation and detente until the fire and hostilities cease completely,” the document says. “Peace negotiations should begin. Dialogue and negotiations are the only way to settle the crisis in Ukraine. All efforts aimed at resolving the crisis peacefully need to be encouraged and supported.”

Besides, China urges to pay attention to, and ease in a proper way legitimate security interests and concerns of all countries. “Cold War mentality should be abandoned. Security of one country should not be ensured through harming the security of other states, and regional security cannot be maintained through strengthening and expansion of military blocs,” the Chinese foreign ministry said. “Legitimate security interests and concerns of all countries should be taken into account, and properly eased.” Also, Beijing urges to resolve the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and prevent it from spreading. “The humanitarian crisis needs to be resolved. All measures that help to mitigate the humanitarian crisis need to be encouraged and supported. Humanitarian missions should be conducted in accordance with the principle of neutrality and impartiality, in order not to politicize humanitarian issues,” the document says, adding that safety of civilians needs to be properly ensured.

“It is necessary to increase humanitarian aid to relevant areas, improve the humanitarian situation, ensure prompt, safe and unhindered humanitarian access and prevent the crisis from spreading,” the Chinese foreign ministry said. Besides, China supports the prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine and calls for creating favorable conditions for that. “The protection of civilians and prisoners of war needs to be ensured,” the ministry said. “China supports a prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine, all sides should create more favorable conditions for that.” The document emphasized that all parties to the conflict should adhere to the international humanitarian law, avoid attacks on civilians and civilian facilities, protect women and children and defend the basic rights of prisoners of war.

It also calls for ensuring that grain exports to the global market continue: “All sides must honor the agreement on grain transportation via the Black Sea – signed by Russia, Türkiye, Ukraine and the United Nations – in a balanced, all-encompassing and effective form.” The document also urges to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and avoid a nuclear crisis, and calls to maintain security of nuclear power plants. “Strategic risks need to be reduced. Nuclear weapons must never be used, a nuclear war must never be unleashed. It is necessary to resist the use of nuclear weapons and threats to use it, to prevent nuclear proliferation and to avert a nuclear crisis,” the document says. “China strongly opposes attacks on nuclear power plants and other civilian nuclear facilities. We call upon all sides to respect the international law, including the Convention on nuclear safety.”

On top of that, “China opposes development and use of biological and chemical weapons by any country, under any circumstances.” Also, the foreign ministry of China opposes any unilateral sanctions over the crisis in Ukraine, imposed without a relevant decision of the UN Security Council. “Unilateral sanctions [should be] stopped,” the document says. “We oppose introducing any unilateral sanctions without the UN Security Council’s decision. “Stability of supply and delivery chains needs to be ensured. All sides should duly protect the existing system of the global economy, oppose attempts to politicize, instrumentalize and weaponize it,” the statement continues. It also calls for a joint effort to mitigate the crisis and its effects on global cooperation in the sectors of energy, finance, food trade and transport.

Read more …

“.. Trump called Nuland and “others like her” in the Biden administration “warmongers and ‘America Last’ globalists.”

• Elon Musk Accuses Victoria Nuland Of ‘Pushing War’ In Ukraine (RT)

“Nobody is pushing” the conflict in Ukraine more than US State Department official Victoria Nuland, Twitter CEO Elon Musk said on Wednesday. Nuland, who largely orchestrated the pro-Western coup in Kiev in 2014, is now backing military strikes on the Russian territory of Crimea. Nuland’s declaration last Thursday that Russian military bases in Crimea are “legitimate targets” for Ukrainian forces was received by the Kremlin as proof of “US involvement in the Ukraine conflict.” In a post on Telegram, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned that Moscow would respond to such attacks “using weapons of any kind.” “Nobody is pushing this war more than Nuland,” wrote Musk, who has previously warned that nuclear war could break out unless Ukraine abandons its claims to Crimea and both sides agree to peace talks.

Nuland’s involvement in the Ukraine conflict predates Russia’s military operation, ordered one year ago on Friday by President Vladimir Putin. As assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs in 2014, Nuland helped organize the coup that saw Ukraine’s democratically-elected president, Viktor Yanukovich, replaced with the pro-Western Pyotr Poroshenko, who then began a campaign of military repression against the people of Donetsk and Lugansk.= During the coup, Nuland handed out cookies to protesters in Kiev and promised pro-Western politicians military aid and a billion-dollar loan guarantee program. In an infamous leaked call between Nuland and then-US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, the two discussed which person should replace Yanukovich from a list of opposition politicians.

After leaving the State Department during Donald Trump’s presidency, Nuland is now serving as President Joe Biden’s deputy secretary of state for political affairs. In recent months, she has endorsed regime change in Russia, celebrated the US’ alleged destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, and called for the indefinite flow of arms into Ukraine. sMusk is not the only prominent American to condemn Nuland’s role in instigating the conflict in recent days. In a campaign video released on Tuesday, former President Donald Trump called Nuland and “others like her” in the Biden administration “warmongers and ‘America Last’ globalists.” Nuland was “obsessed with pushing Ukraine towards NATO,” he declared, claiming that the conflict would have “never happened if I was your president.”

Read more …

Washing her hands.

• US Seeks To Discuss New START Implementation With Russia – Nuland (TASS)

The US authorities would like to get back to inspections as part of the New START nuclear arms control treaty and have a chance to discuss with Russia the implementation of this agreement, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said in an interview with Washington Post. When asked if Russia’s suspension of the treaty would make any difference for the US in terms of behavior, the top State Department official said: “We will not [do this] and we’ve made that clear to the Russians.”


According to Nuland, Washington has “no intention or need” to resume testing. “We would like to get back into mutual inspections. We would like to get back to a place where we can sit at a table and talk about implementation [of the treaty],” she said. Nuland also assured that the US is not interested in rebuilding its nuclear weapons. The top State Department official said the US is trying to understand what Russia’s decision on suspending its participation in New START would mean in practical terms.

Read more …

Can’t enter a war with those numbers.

• 19% Of Americans Have Confidence In Biden’s Handling Of Ukraine Conflict (SN)

An Associated Press and NORC poll has found that fewer than 20 percent of Americans have a “great deal” of confidence in the way Joe Biden is involving the U.S. in the Ukraine conflict. The survey reveals that only 19 percent of the public have a “great deal” of confidence in Biden’s ability, while 37 percent say they have “only some” confidence,” and 43 percent have “hardly any” confidence.

The poll also found that only 42 percent approve of the way Biden is handling the U.S.’ relationship with Russia, while 54 percent disapprove. The poll also found that a quarter of respondents believe the U.S. shouldn’t be playing any role in the war, with a further 49 percent saying that the U.S. should only have minor role. Just 26 percent believe the U.S. should be playing a major role.

The poll also found that while 59 percent of Democrats said they were in favour of sending government funds directly to Ukraine, just 21 percent of Republicans concur. The figures represent a decrease in support among both groups, as last year 63 percent of Democrats and 28 percent of Republicans said they were in favour. The findings come after Biden’s probable 2024 opponent Donald Trump declared that he would negotiate a peace deal and end the conflict within 24 hours, as well as ousting all the “demented warmongers and globalists” currently occupying the U.S. National Security establishment.

Read more …

“..Never in the history of Europe has the continent been so “subservient” to the US..”

• Russia-EU Relations ‘No Longer Exist’ – Moscow (RT)

Relations between the European Union and Russia are practically nonexistent, consumed by the abyss of EU subservience to the US, the Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vassily Nebenzia told the Security Council on Thursday. Moscow had said in June 2022 that the “bottom had fallen out” when it came to relations with Brussels, Nebenzia said in his speech at the UN. “It turns out there was an entire abyss below still, that swallowed up not only our relations – which are basically nonexistent now – but also the EU itself,” he said. “A year after completely severing ties with our country, the GDP growth of the EU has stuck near zero. At the same time, record inflation rates are measured by double-digit indicators. Rejoicing that it jumped off the ‘Russian gas needle,’ the EU got hooked on ‘hard drugs’ – expensive American liquefied natural gas,” the Russian diplomat added.

Nebenzia also accused the EU of openly discussing how to dismember and destroy Russia. Earlier this week, the Estonian prime minister suggested Russian history needs to be rewritten and its population re-educated, to protect Europe from “Russian imperialist dreams.” Never in the history of Europe has the continent been so “subservient” to the US, Nebenzia argued, pointing to last September’s sabotage of Nord Stream. “Things have come to the point where Brussels has silently swallowed that its closest ally blew up the main gas pipeline, which was also paid for by European investors,” he said, adding that EU members are even covering up inconvenient truths in order to shield the US.

The twin pipelines running under the Baltic Sea were built to supply the continent with Russian natural gas via Germany. Denmark, Sweden and Germany have refused Russian requests for information about their investigation into the blasts. In an article published earlier this month, American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claimed the US and Norway had conspired to destroy the pipelines and described how they carried it out. Russia has called for a UN investigation into the sabotage. The US has denied any responsibility for the Nord Stream bombing.

Read more …

BRICS. India next.

• Moscow Analyzes Brazil’s Peace Initiatives On Ukraine (TASS)

Moscow is studying Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s peace proposals for Ukraine, but it is taking into account the evolving situation “on the ground”, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin said in an interview with TASS. “We took note of the President of Brazil’s statements on the subject of possible mediation in order to find political ways to prevent escalation in Ukraine, correcting miscalculations in the field of international security on the basis of multilateralism, and considering the interests of all players. We are examining initiatives, mainly from the standpoint of Brazil’s balanced policy, and, of course, taking into consideration the situation ‘on the ground’,” he said. Galuzin emphasized the importance of Brazil’s view, which is Moscow’s strategic partner both bilaterally and globally.


“We are interacting constructively in the BRICS, G20, UN and its Security Council, where this nation is now represented as a non-permanent member,” he added. Russia appreciates Brazil not supplying weapons to Kiev despite US pressure, Deputy Foreign Minister emphasized. “I would like to emphasize that Russia values Brazil’s balanced position in the current international situation, its rejection of unilateral coercive measures taken by the US and its satellites against our country, and the refusal of our Brazilian partners to supply arms, military equipment, and ammunition to the Kiev regime,” he said. “At the same time, we can see how Washington is putting pressure on Brazil. Such sovereign stance deserves respect,” Galuzin added. Earlier, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stated that the country’s officials had no intention of transferring weapons and ammunition to third countries to be used in the Ukrainian conflict.

Read more …

“It’s not going to help the war. What he was doing it for, was to prevent Germany and Western Europe, in case the winter came quickly, from opening up the pipeline..”

• Seymour Hersh Explains Why US Blew Up Nord Stream (RT)

US President Joe Biden ordered the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in order to make sure Germany could not change its mind about sanctions against Russia and weapons shipments to Ukraine, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said in an interview with ‘Going Underground’. Earlier this month, Hersh published an article that blamed the US and Norway for the series of explosions that disabled both Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, the pipelines under the Baltic Sea built to supply Western Europe with Russian natural gas. In an interview with Afshin Rattansi this week, Hersh said the US intelligence community hatched the plan “in late 2021,” before the escalation of hostilities in Ukraine.

When Biden and Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland both publicly spoke about “stopping” and “ending” Nord Stream 2, however, Hersh claimed the spies were upset, “because it was supposed to be a covert operation.” “The people who did this thing in the intelligence community, they initially thought it was a great idea,” Hersh told Rattansi. According to his story, the bombs were planted in June, during the scheduled BALTOPS 2022 naval exercise off the Danish island of Bornholm. The bombs went off in late September, as Ukraine was facing “a serious issue” on the battlefield. “It’s not going to help the war. What he was doing it for, was to prevent Germany and Western Europe, in case the winter came quickly, from opening up the pipeline,” Hersh said.

The rationale for the mission was “to make sure that Europe keeps on supporting NATO and keeps funneling arms into what is clearly a proxy war against Russia that’s being fought right now,” he added. Asked whether Moscow had somehow missed the American involvement, and focused on the UK instead, Hersh said he had not spoken to anyone in Russia. One thing he could say is that it would be “absolutely insane” for Russia to blow up its own pipeline. Just about everyone in the pipeline business agrees with that assessment, he added. The White House, the Pentagon and the State Department have all disavowed Hersh’s article as “fiction” and denied all accusations of US involvement in the attack on Nord Stream. Russia has called for an independent UN investigation into what it described as an act of international terrorism.

Read more …

“It is the start of the final collapse of Western colonialism.”

• Why Putin Went to War — One Year Later (Lauria)

It is instructive to compare Russia’s war aims expressed on Feb. 24, 2022 to the state of the conflict today — a year long war of attrition that Russia is slowing winning on the ground. But what was unleashed a year ago today is far from settled and is fraught with supreme danger for all of humanity. The West’s economic war, intended to spur Russians to overthrow their government, has failed spectacularly. The ruble did not collapse despite sanctions on the Russian central bank. Nor has the economy. Instead an alternative economic, commercial and financial system that excludes the West is rising with China, India and Russia in the lead, and most of Asia, Africa and Latin America taking part. It is the start of the final collapse of Western colonialism.


The sanctions instead backfired on the West, especially in Europe. The West is on the outside looking in. The information war has failed across the world. Only the United States and Europe, which consider itself “the world,” believe their own “information.” Even The New York Times on Thursday recognized this. Washington itself is split between realists who want a diplomatic solution and neoconservatives who keep “doubling down” on supporting Ukraine in the slim hope that it can win on the battlefield, without sparking a direct NATO-Russia war. There will either be a negotiated settlement in which Ukraine loses territory; a total Russian victory; or a third world war, potentially the final war.

Read more …

“Google systematically destroyed an entire category of written communications every 24 hours.”

• Google Accused Of Destroying Evidence In Antitrust Suit (RT)

The US Department of Justice has accused Google of “systematically” destroying records linked to ongoing antitrust litigation, saying the company failed to preserve its internal communications despite a previous order to do so. In a legal filing issued in a Washington, DC federal court on Thursday, DOJ officials said Google has refused to change a feature on its company chat which automatically deletes employees’ logs, adding that it “falsely” claimed to have ended the practice back in 2019. “Google’s daily destruction of written records prejudiced the United States by depriving it of a rich source of candid discussions between Google’s executives, including likely trial witnesses,” said DOJ attorney Kenneth Dintzer.

While the government said Google was required to end the auto-delete function under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the company did not “preserve potentially relevant chats,” meaning that for nearly four years since the antitrust case was launched, “Google systematically destroyed an entire category of written communications every 24 hours.” The DOJ has asked the court to rule that the tech giant violated a civil procedure guideline, and requested a hearing to determine how to penalize Google and demand more information about its internal communications.

In a statement issued on Thursday, Google said it “strongly” rejected the allegations, with a spokesperson arguing its teams have “conscientiously worked for years to respond to inquiries and litigation.” They added that the company has “produced over 4 million documents in this case alone, and millions more to regulators around the world.” The antitrust case against Google was opened in 2020, when the Justice Department said the company is a “monopoly under traditional antitrust principles” in the search engine industry and “must be stopped.” While the government argued the firm has used its market power to disadvantage smaller competitors, Google later slammed the suit as “deeply flawed,” insisting it would “do nothing to help consumers.”

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“..as Joker stated in The Dark Knight, Madness … is a lot like gravity. All it takes is a little push.”

• Hunter Biden’s Latest Rebrand Is Just Smoke And Errors (Turley)

Welcome to the latest Hunter Biden reboot. Call it Dark Biden rises. Hunter has long been a reclamation project for the media and the Biden team. Despite ample evidence that he and his family may have engaged in one of the largest influence-peddling operations in history, the media have struggled to find a redeeming image for someone who’s committed his life to a toxic mix of nepotism, narcissism and narcotics. First there was “Hunter: the wrongly accused international businessman.” This blanket denial of wrongdoing was maintained by his father and dutifully repeated by the media. Hunter Biden did “nothing wrong,” and reporters pressing questions of corruption were immediately attacked. Then came “Hunter Biden: victim of Russian disinformation.”

Before the 2020 election, the media repeated the false claim that the Hunter laptop was likely “Russian disinformation.” Despite the denial of American intelligence and self-verifying emails on the laptop, the media accepted without question the dubious claims of former intelligence figures pushed by longtime Democratic operatives. Then it was “Hunter Biden: heroic recovering addict.” As the media denials became more difficult to maintain, Biden released a book that detailed his struggle with drugs and debauchery. The media again launched into the same fawning, unquestioning mode. Now we have the Dark Biden. Hunter’s handlers are reinventing Hunter in a more menacing image. He is an edgy and aggressive antagonist ready to fight fire with fire against Republicans.

A team was assembled to reportedly attack potential witnesses and critics. With a possible criminal indictment and congressional investigations looming, Hunter the wronged businessman or Russian victim or recovering addict will not do. Hunter appears to have acquired lawyers by the gross, including high-profile lawyer Abbe Lowell. Lowell recently sent out a letter that caused a stir by not only confirming the authenticity of the laptop but threatening a host of critics. Lowell categorically refused to turn over a single document to House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), saying there was no “legitimate legislative purpose” for the investigation. He left open the possibility the House might convince Hunter to cooperate.

It’s all bravado and the posturing will be even less credible in the future when he backs down. Congress clearly has a legitimate interest in investigating whether millions of dollars from foreign interests, including some connected to foreign intelligence, were funneled to the Biden family to influence President Biden. [..] Despite the considerable risk, Hunter is keeping to his new character. He has not shared information on his art sales. Now his art dealer, Georges Berges, has also reportedly refused to provide the House Oversight Committee with identities of the buyers. It won t work. Indeed, it is a strategy that could lead to a criminal charge entirely separate from the underlying allegations. It just shows, as Joker stated in The Dark Knight, Madness … is a lot like gravity. All it takes is a little push.

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This issue will explode.

• The Immediate Need To Screen Blood For mRNA And Spike Protein (Horowitz)

You might be part of that small percentage of adults who were smart enough to avoid the COVID gene therapy and lucky enough not to have it forced upon you to keep your job. But what happens if you ever need blood in the hospital? Or what about those who got the jabs but were lucky enough to have the spike protein leave their systems without much harm? What if you were forced to accept more spike protein through blood transfusions due to a medical emergency? New research points to the imperative for state lawmakers to pass laws requiring that blood banks screen out spike protein from the blood supply. Danish microbiologists published a shocking finding this week in the Journal of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology.

They took samples of blood from 108 hepatitis C patients, and one of the discoveries was that “full-length or traces of SARS-CoV-2 spike mRNA vaccine sequences were found in blood up to 28 days after COVID-19 vaccination.” Lest you think that they were picking up on spike protein from natural infection still lingering in the blood, the researchers meticulously distinguished not just between infection- and vaccine-induced spike protein, but even between the genetic codes of Pfizer and Moderna. It turns out five of those detected were positive for the Pfizer nucleotides and five had the Moderna ones. “To our knowledge, our study is the first to detect Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccine sequences in blood after vaccination, and therefore provides new knowledge regarding the timeframe in which the mRNA can be detected,” observed the authors.

One the one hand, we should be thankful that most did not have detectable spike protein circulating in the blood plasma. But the fact that they found it in 10% of the samples (and contrasted to a control group) raisess the obvious question: How many blood supplies in the blood banks from the general population have spike protein, and if this sample detected spike protein up to 28 days (the extent of the study period), how much longer can it potentially last? Remember, the bombshell study from Stanford last year found spike antigen remaining in germinal cells up to 60 days after injection, and researchers did not study beyond that time frame. Even more disturbing, a study by St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix found exosomes containing spike protein were detectable for up to four months after vaccination. Another paper in Frontiers in Immunology revealed the detection of some spike in monocytes for 15 months!

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Birds

 

 


Elephant throws a 500 kg buffalo into the air like a rag doll – Kim Maurer

 

 

Horse chicken
https://twitter.com/i/status/1628618176425775104

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle January 11 2023

Jan 112023
 
 January 11, 2023  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  86 Responses »


Dorothea Lange Ex-slave with long memory, Alabama 1937

 

• Zelensky Achieves Unique Results In The Destruction Of Ukraine (Zadorozhnaya)
• Wagner Group Claims Full Control Of Soledar (RT)
• What Would It Take? (Saker)
• A Rift in the Lute? (Batiushka)
• G7 Seeks Two Price Caps For Russian Oil Products (RT)
• G7 Wants To Force India To Accept Russian Oil Price Cap – Reuters (RT)
• The Ukrainian Crisis And Europe – The Opinion Of Experts (Milacic)
• Why The CIA Attempted A ‘Maidan Uprising’ In Brazil (Escobar)
• Biden’s Classified-Records Headache Is Garland’s Nightmare (Turley)
• Biden May Have Taken Secret Documents For His Book (Turley)
• We Now Have Evidence Pfizer Committed Fraud (midwesterndoctor)
• Excess Deaths In 2022 Among Worst In 50 Years (BBC)

 

 

 

 

Tucker op-ed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you read one thing today… Alyona Zadorozhnaya, translated for the Saker. Devastating.

• Zelensky Achieves Unique Results In The Destruction Of Ukraine (Zadorozhnaya)

By the end of 2022, Vladimir Zelensky has achieved unique and in many ways tragic results. He managed to reduce the population of Ukraine to the level of a century ago, put the country in bondage to the West and deprive fellow citizens of the elementary benefits of civilization. What other “successes” could be added to Zelensky’s track record? In 2023, a catastrophic drop in the birth rate is expected in Ukraine. This was stated by the director of the Ptukha Institute of Demography and Social Research, academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Ella Libanova. According to her, by 2030 the population will decrease to 35 million people, and the reduction process has been going on since 1994. At the same time, Libanova assures that 34-35 million people still live in Ukraine.

However, these figures are questionable. The number of refugees who arrived in Russia from the territory of Donbass and Ukraine has already exceeded five million people. In the summer, according to the UN, there were about 6.3 million Ukrainian citizens who left the country in all the European states. Experts are convinced that Libanova gives inflated figures – and already today there are significantly fewer people living in Ukraine than she claims.. “Even before the start of the SVO, it was difficult to understand how many people really live in Ukraine. Official figures were around 40 million people, while in reality there were approximately 33 million people, if not less,” economist Ivan Lizan told the newspaper VZGLYAD. “From 2016 to 2019, Ukrainians were leaders among those who obtained primary residence permits in Poland. Every year, up to 500 thousand people “flowed out” this way. Also, do not forget that a large number of their refugees have recently moved to Europe,” the expert emphasizes.

“Thus, there are at best 25-27 million people left in Ukraine, which is comparable to the population as of the 1920s of the last century. Mostly men remained in the country, because they were simply banned from traveling abroad,” the source notes. “I am sure that these trends will continue in 2023. We will also observe internal migration. In those areas of the front where the situation is heating up, people will run away. As, for example, from the Kiev–controlled part of Donbass, local residents fled to Dnepropetrovsk,” the economist claims. “A terrible situation is developing in the labor market. State employees mostly live on bare salaries. Teachers who are forced to move to other regions of Ukraine due to the proximity of hostilities have enough money only to pay for rented housing,” says Lizan.

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Bakhmut is next.

• Wagner Group Claims Full Control Of Soledar (RT)

Units of Wagner Group have taken control of the “entire territory” of Soledar, the head of the private military company Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed on Tuesday evening. Fighting is still going on in the center of town, where an unknown number of Ukrainian soldiers has been encircled. “There is a cauldron in the center of town, where urban fighting is taking place,” Prigozhin said in a statement released to the media. “We’ll announce the number of prisoners tomorrow.” He added that only Wagner “and no other units” had taken part in the storming of Soledar. A video showing two Wagner fighters standing calmly outside the town administration building was released on social media earlier in the day.


Such recordings, usually accompanied with geospatial coordinates, have commonly been used during the conflict to announce territorial control. Named after its salt mines, Soledar had around 10,000 residents before the conflict. The Ukrainian army turned it into a strongpoint after being pushed out of Popasnaya in mid-2022. Russian control over the town creates problems for Kiev’s forces in the embattled bastion of Artyomovsk, which Ukraine has renamed Bakhmut. Prigozhin said last week that his objective was not necessarily to take the towns, but “the destruction of the Ukrainian army and the reduction of its combat potential.” On Sunday, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky acknowledged that the situation in Soledar was “very difficult” and called it “one of the bloodiest spots along the front line,” but vowed that Ukrainian troops would continue to hold “no matter what.”

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“..it appears that 40% of the Ukrainian electrical grid is down forever, since nobody (except Russia) can replace the extremely heavy (and costly) transformers..”

• What Would It Take? (Saker)

NATO did “celebrate” the Orthodox Nativity, but in its own way. First, a few headlines:
Remember the truce offered by Russia? It was rejected. Instead we got this:
• Donetsk shelled in first minute of Christmas truce – authorities
• Two Serbs shot in Kosovo Christmas Eve attack
And, just to clarify, NATO uses Serbia as a defenseless victim to show Russia what it can do to its allies, the message being, as Stoble Talbott said, “after Serbia, you are next”, so the link here is strong. NATO did not stop at that, it also continued its policy of persecutions, see these headlines:
• Zelensky sanctions over 100 Russian public figures
• Zelensky deprives Orthodox priests of citizenship – media.
Speaking of issues of freedom of religion, NATO is planning to completely ban the parishes which used to have an autonomous status under the Moscow Patriarchate, which then turned against Moscow and condemned the SMO. But that was not enough, so, just like in NATO occupied Kosovo, the persecution of Orthodox clergy and faithful is both a “feel good” operation for Orthodoxy-haters and a “message” to Moscow. NATO did not stop at that, it also announced yet another military aid package for Banderastan: (no translation needed I suppose)

None of that will be enough to make a difference, but there are many more such “aid” programs being discussed, so NATO wants to continue to draw out this war for as long as possible and fight the Russians down to the last Ukrainian. Not that any of this did any good to “Ze” and his gang: having rejected the Russian truce, the Ukronazis are now loosing the towns of Soledar and Artemovsk (see here for details), which are not only tactical victories for the Russians, but this now threatens the operational defenses of the Ukronazis which will have to fall back on what we could call a “third line of defense” if they want to restabilize the front.


Russia has also continued with her strikes, including an absolutely huge explosion at the NATO base in Ochakovo and a retaliatory attack following the HIMARS strike which killed nearly 100 Russian soldiers. The retaliatory attack was aimed at two barracks in Kramatorsk and, according to the Russian, it killed 600 Ukronazis soldiers. Finally, it appears that 40% of the Ukrainian electrical grid is down forever, since nobody (except Russia) can replace the extremely heavy (and costly) transformers needed to reconnect that grid (now all electrical power is local, with no means to distribute it through the grid).

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“Civil war in the USA. Bankruptcy in the UK. Collapse in Germany. Revolt in France and Southern Europe. Chaos in Eastern Europe. The end of NATO.”

• A Rift in the Lute? (Batiushka)

There is no such thing as racial superiority among modern woke Americans, only of moral superiority. This is in fact even more insulting and condescending nonsense, which means the acceptance of ‘our’ values, i.e. ‘freedom and democracy’. Thus, Victorian London imposed the Puritan Englishman as the model for salvation (‘wash more often and your skin will become as white as ours’), whereas ‘liberal’ Washington says ‘wear jeans and trainers, eat at MacDonalds, drink coca cola and watch Disney, and you too will be saved, even though you are the wrong skin colour’. Same old, same old. Among the Victorians there were politicians with personalities: Palmerston, Disraeli and Gladstone, the only one adored by Bulgarians. Of course, the first two were obnoxious imperialists – but they did have personalities.

Among them we can also include the Kurd-gassing Churchill and the Pinochet-loving Thatcher. They were Victorians in their mentality. Racist to the core. But they did have personalities. It seems now that they were the last of the line. After Thatcher came a series of nonentities, the believing in his own delusions Blair and then in 2022 the three geniuses: Johnson, whose name is now a synonym for a buffoon; Truss, who gave the world a new word, a ‘Trussism’, e.g. ‘Peru is the capital of Africa’ or ‘Inflation is overcome by printing more money’; and then there is the Indian banker, sunny Sunak, not quite a billionaire, but well on his way. Say no more.

Such British geniuses should recall that the neocons who run NATO and then think that if they extend their war in the Ukraine and hope to drag it out for a decade or so, that will destroy Russia. Clearly, they live not in the real world, but in a virtual world. The longer it lasts, the greater the damage to the West. This is what they will create: Civil war in the USA. Bankruptcy in the UK. Collapse in Germany. Revolt in France and Southern Europe. Chaos in Eastern Europe. The end of NATO. The trouble is that, as Col. Douglas MacGregor always quotes his Spanish NATO friend as saying: ‘The USA is not another country, it is another planet’. Having been to different parts of the USA four times, visiting from the Old World, I can confirm the words of the Spanish officer.

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Exercise in futility.

• G7 Seeks Two Price Caps For Russian Oil Products (RT)

The Group of Seven (G7) coalition will seek to set two price caps on Russian refined products in February, one for products trading at a premium to crude oil and the other for those trading at a discount, a G7 official said, Report informs via Reuters. The coalition – which consists of Australia, Canada, Japan and the United States, plus the 27-nation European Union – introduced a $60 per barrel price cap on Russian crude from Dec. 5, on top of the EU embargo on imports of Russian crude by sea. From Feb. 5, the coalition will also impose price caps on Russian products, such as diesel, kerosene and fuel oil, to further reduce Moscow’s revenue from energy exports and its ability to finance its invasion of Ukraine. But capping Russian oil product prices is more complicated than setting a price limit on crude alone, because there are many oil products and their price often depends on where they are bought, rather than where they are produced, the official said, asking not to be named.

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India is an independent country.

• G7 Wants To Force India To Accept Russian Oil Price Cap – Reuters (RT)

The G7 intends to impose two price caps on Russian petroleum products in February that will target refined products trading at a premium to oil and those which are being sold at a discount, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing an unnamed G7 official. Additional restrictions would come on top of the previously agreed upon price ceiling on oil products, such as diesel, kerosene and fuel oil, which is due to come into force on February 5. Late last year, the EU, G7 countries, and Australia introduced a price cap on Russian seaborne oil exports, which bans Western companies from providing insurance and other services to vessels transporting Russian oil unless the cargo is purchased at or below the set price. Imposing a price ceiling on refined products is more complicated than capping crude alone, the official told Reuters, explaining that the price of oil products “often depends on where they are bought, rather than where they are produced.”


Meanwhile, India may also join the Russian oil price cap if crude costs go above $60 per barrel, The Telegraph reported on Tuesday, citing the country’s oil ministry and industry officials. Oil supplies to India, which remained Russia’s top importer for three months in a row as of December, have not been affected by Western sanctions, as the country is buying crude at a discount with prices standing between $53 to $56 per barrel, the outlet said, quoting sources familiar with the matter. Russia supplied a record 1.17 million barrels a day to New Delhi in December, up from November volumes by 24%, according to oil-flow tracking data from energy intelligence company Vortexa. Indian authorities, however, are “weighing options” to slash oil imports from Russia if the EU imposes additional restrictions for nations buying crude from the sanctioned country or if the price crosses the set limit of $60 per barrel, according to the outlet.

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“Treating Ukrainian soldiers in German hospitals is a good sign of humanity. Sending weapons and training soldiers has nothing to do with humanity.”

• The Ukrainian Crisis And Europe – The Opinion Of Experts (Milacic)

Since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, we have been bombarded with mass information and opinions about the war and Europe’s attitude towards it. As someone who deals with geopolitics, I carefully followed the conferences and debates of European experts and politicians and their arguments. That is exactly why I would recommend the online conference and debate that was held on January 5th. The information presented in the debate is very interesting for anyone dealing with the Ukrainian crisis and European policy towards the crisis.

Hansjörg MÜLLER (former member of Bundestag from AfD): Training soldiers makes Germany participant of the war. A Bundestag council stated that Russia would be right if attacking Germany in the framework of international law, because Germany started participating in anti-Russian aggression. Treating Ukrainian soldiers in German hospitals is a good sign of humanity. Sending weapons and training soldiers has nothing to do with humanity. It is act of aggression of war. Regarding the peace opposition in Germany: about 40 percent of German citizens do not believe the media propaganda that Russia started the war. Every history has its prehistory. The war did not start 24.2.2022, but six days earlier, when Ukraine started to shell Donbass 10 times more than before.

The prehistory for that is the illegal coup on Maidan, which was financed and operated by the Americans. In Bratislava conference NATO drew a red line where Baltic States, Ukraine and Belarus should be dragged into NATO. All this started in the beginning of the 20th century, when the Anglo-Saxons realised that if the German empire develops further, there will be a power independent of Anglo-Saxon control of seaways, which was the initial spark of the WWI. The ongoing crisis is nothing more than continuation of the ongoing Anglo-Saxon aggression against Germany and Russia for more than 120 years. Land-Lease of 1941 was renewed in 2022. Who provoked this war? It is the Anglo-American weapons industry. There will be no regime change in Russia. The main questions is: who has bigger warehouses and production of weapons. When Russia wins, it will be a change for the new financial system and a big blew for the US.

Patrick POPPEL (geopolitical expert from Austria): Austria is part of the West in this conflict and supporting the interest of NATO. NATO is supporting Ukraine. Austria is a neutral country by constitutional law but in practice not. Also during the pandemics, many politicians worked against the law and the constitution of Austria. People in our government and the media are not neutral. Neutrality is the special weapon of Austria. This neutrality was given to us by Russia, because SovietUnion liberated us. Austria was kept outside NATO and Warsaw Pact and given a constitution of neutrality. Supporting Ukraine is a big mistake because Austria is loosing the reputation of neutral country.

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BRI.

• Why The CIA Attempted A ‘Maidan Uprising’ In Brazil (Escobar)

The failed coup in Brazil is the latest CIA stunt, just as the country is forging stronger ties with the east. A former US intelligence official has confirmed that the shambolic Maidan remix staged in Brasilia on 8 January was a CIA operation, and linked it to the recent attempts at color revolution in Iran. On Sunday, alleged supporters of former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace, bypassing flimsy security barricades, climbing on roofs, smashing windows, destroying public property including precious paintings, while calling for a military coup as part of a regime change scheme targeting elected President Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva. According to the US source, the reason for staging the operation – which bears visible signs of hasty planning – now, is that Brazil is set to reassert itself in global geopolitics alongside fellow BRICS states Russia, India, and China.

That suggests CIA planners are avid readers of Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar, formerly of the New York Fed. In his ground-breaking 27 December report titled War and Commodity Encumbrance, Pozsar states that “the multipolar world order is being built not by G7 heads of state but by the ‘G7 of the East’ (the BRICS heads of state), which is a G5 really but because of ‘BRICSpansion’, I took the liberty to round up.” He refers here to reports that Algeria, Argentina, Iran have already applied to join the BRICS – or rather its expanded version “BRICS+” – with further interest expressed by Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Indonesia. The US source drew a parallel between the CIA’s Maidan in Brazil and a series of recent street demonstrations in Iran instrumentalized by the agency as part of a new color revolution drive: “These CIA operations in Brazil and Iran parallel the operation in Venezuela in 2002 that was highly successful at the start as rioters managed to seize Hugo Chavez.”

Straussian neo-cons placed at the top of the CIA, irrespective of their political affiliation, are livid that the “G7 of the East” – as in the BRICS+ configuration of the near future – are fast moving out of the US dollar orbit. Straussian John Bolton – who has just publicized his interest in running for the US presidency – is now demanding the ouster of Turkey from NATO as the Global South realigns rapidly within new multipolar institutions. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his new Chinese counterpart Qin Gang have just announced the merging of the China-driven Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Russia-driven Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). This means that the largest 21st century trade/connectivity/development project – the Chinese New Silk Roads – is now even more complex, and keeps expanding.

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“..some of those experts have rushed to distinguish the two cases and assure us that there really is no comparison..”

• Biden’s Classified-Records Headache Is Garland’s Nightmare (Turley)

The Justice Department reportedly is investigating the discovery of 10 classified documents found in an old private office used by President Biden when he served as vice president. The discovery could not come at a worse time for the Justice Department — or a better time for former President Trump. While there are significant differences in the number of the documents involved in each case and the reported response of the Biden and Trump teams, the underlying allegation — removing and retaining classified material — is the same. Moreover, there remain questions that are likely to be pursued by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in the coming weeks. Those questions not only deal with the scope of the alleged violations but the increasingly conflicted and irreconcilable positions of Attorney General Merrick Garland regarding the Biden and Trump investigations.

Biden’s lawyers have said they found the documents just days before the midterm elections and are “cooperating with the National Archives and the Department of Justice regarding the discovery of what appear to be Obama-Biden Administration records.” The White House Counsel’s Office notified the National Archives on Nov. 2 of the discovery as it was closing out a Washington office, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, that Biden used as part of his relationship with the University of Pennsylvania after he left the vice presidency in 2017. That academic appointment itself is considered controversial by some Biden critics. Biden was made an honorary professor from 2017 to 2019 and reportedly paid nearly $1 million for a few visits to the school. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, he was paid $371,159 in 2017 and $540,484 in 2018-2019. He has used the appointment to claim the status of a professor in speeches.

The newly discovered material reportedly includes some top-secret files with the “sensitive compartmented information” designation, also known as TS-SCI, which is used for highly sensitive information obtained from intelligence sources. There is no accusation of false statements or obstruction in this instance, both of which are being investigated in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago matter. However, the incident further highlights AG Garland’s unintelligible position. This controversy will again raise prior cases of knowing or negligent removal of classified material by government officials and the relatively light punishment given in even some of the most egregious cases. After the raid on Mar-a-Lago, experts and pundits went into a frenzy about Trump being given an “orange jumpsuit,” and some insisted that even a misdemeanor conviction should bar him from office. It is not clear if the same view (which I criticized then) will now apply to Biden — but some of those experts have rushed to distinguish the two cases and assure us that there really is no comparison.

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“.. Biden insisted “if I had intended to cheat, would I have been so stupid?” Many are likely to be asking the same question in the weeks ahead.”

• Biden May Have Taken Secret Documents For His Book (Turley)

“How that could possibly happen, how anyone could be that irresponsible,” President Biden, struggling to find words to express his revulsion at the very idea of moving classified material to Mar-a-Lago in a “60 Minutes” interview. “And I thought what data was in there that may compromise sources and methods.” So how does Biden explain the roughly dozen documents found sitting in a closet at a private office supplied by the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement? For the moment, he is not saying anything at all. It is easy to understand why. According to reports, the clearly marked classified documents include those at the highly classified “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information” (TS/SCI) level. The documents reportedly include material related to Iran, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. When the documents on such subjects were found at Mar-a-Lago, media experts immediately opined that Donald Trump may have sold material or was endangering national security for a book or vanity.

For two days, Biden has refused to answer questions from reporters as his allies in the media struggle for a spin out of this scandal. His silence is hardly surprising. Biden has always been better at expressing revulsion than responsibility. Time and again, he has literally rushed before cameras to denounce others, often without basis, for alleged crimes. He has not waited for investigations, let alone trials. For instance, when mounted agents were falsely accused of whipping migrants in Texas, the president was there. Even though the whipping story was clearly refuted by the available videotape, Biden rode the wave of media outrage, declaring: “It was horrible what — to see, as you saw — to see people treated like they did: horses nearly running them over and people being strapped. It’s outrageous. I promise you, those people will pay.” This week, the president appeared on the southern border and held a photo op with border agents. Yet he has never had the decency to apologize to the agents who were cleared of all whipping allegations. Instead, his administration is still seeking to punish them on other grounds.

Biden may have to take responsibility for this debacle, but he faces a potential criminal charge. While Attorney General Merrick Garland has again refused to appoint a special counsel, any acknowledgment of Biden’s knowledge or interaction with the documents could have serious legal ramifications. These documents may have been relevant to his last book. The book, “Promise Me, Dad,” released in November 2017, was marketed as his insider view of America’s relations with countries like Iran and Ukraine: “As vice president, Biden traveled more than a hundred thousand miles that year, across the world, dealing with crises in Ukraine, Central America, and Iraq.” If he worked off these documents, it is impossible to deny the violation — or his hypocrisy in his comments on Mar-a-Lago.

He is now the subject of the same inquiries he raised with CBS’s Scott Pelley: “I thought what data was in there that may compromise sources and methods. By that, I mean, names of people helped or et cetera.” The fact is past cases of the removal or mishandling of classified material have not resulted in major prosecutions. Yet many in the Democratic Party and the media have insisted on criminal charges in the Mar-a-Lago case, including barring Trump from office for even a misdemeanor conviction on unlawful possession. Biden has previously weathered scandals, often by denying culpable intent. When accused of plagiarism, for instance, Biden insisted “if I had intended to cheat, would I have been so stupid?” Many are likely to be asking the same question in the weeks ahead.

Dem top lawyer Aug 2022

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“..although by all reasonable standards, Pfizer and Moderna should be criminally convicted for allowing such a dangerous vaccine on the market (they clearly knew the vaccines had to be dangerous), nothing has been done..”

• We Now Have Evidence Pfizer Committed Fraud (midwesterndoctor)

Fraud is a huge allegation to put forward, so since that time we did our best to vet the discovery and sent it out to independent parties who could validate it prior to publishing. Based on the feedback we have received since publishing this, I am no longer sure if one of my allegations holds (that the image being a digital straight line means it was not representative of the actual proteins present) as there was an additional approach to evaluating this we were not aware of at the time of publication. I still believe the central allegation (that the vaccines do not contain what was advertised) holds true and is critically important to understand, but we do not presently have the information to determine if the numerous suspicious characteristics we specifically identified in Pfizer’s western blots could be explained by something besides fraud.

One of the things that is less appreciated about governance is that governments will never have the resources to address every single problem that arises in their territory. Because of this, governments inevitably prioritize addressing problems which would otherwise cause them to lose money, and will prioritize protecting the (typically financial) interests of the upper class who support government officials (e.g., by paying for their election). This has lead to the curious phenomena whereby there are much harsher penalties for institutional level fraud than there are for an institution harming members of the general public. For example, as I have tried to show throughout this Substack, pharmaceutical companies frequently commit egregious harm against consumers and clinical trial participants, but in spite of this, most of our institutions will refuse to prosecute them for this conduct.

Conversely, one of my friends who is a paralegal in the industry has told me that pharmaceutical companies have to be honest with their investors, or they can and will be sued for financial fraud. For this reason, you can get typically get the most accurate information on their products by reviewing what pharmaceutical companies share with their investors. Similarly, although by all reasonable standards, Pfizer and Moderna should be criminally convicted for allowing such a dangerous vaccine on the market (they clearly knew the vaccines had to be dangerous), nothing has been done. However, Brook Jackson is currently pushing through a whistleblower lawsuit against Pfizer which makes the case that Pfizer conducted their clinical trials in a fraudulent manner, and by extension, committed fraud. The sale of the vaccines to the US government was predicated upon their clinical trial data and thus if that data was fraudulent, Pfizer’s sales constitute fraud.

Because fraud has much greater standing in our legal system than harming the general public, Brook’s lawsuit is critically important, and if it succeeds in proving fraud on Pfizer’s end, can collapse this entire vaccination campaign. Likewise, Brook has an even stronger case if a smoking gun were to be present which: 1) Showed that Pfizer beyond a shadow of a doubt intentionally committed fraud. 2) This fraud directly undermined the entire basis for their product. So understandably, we wanted to make sure our allegations were correct before moving forward.

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Does mention the vaccine, but only to insist that couldn’t be it.

• Excess Deaths In 2022 Among Worst In 50 Years (BBC)

More than 650,000 deaths were registered in the UK in 2022 – 9% more than 2019. This represents one of the largest excess death levels outside the pandemic in 50 years. Though far below peak pandemic levels, it has prompted questions about why more people are still dying than normal. Data indicates pandemic effects on health and NHS pressures are among the leading explanations. Covid is still killing people, but is involved in fewer deaths now than at the start of the pandemic. Roughly 38,000 deaths involved Covid in 2022 compared with more than 95,000 in 2020. We are still seeing more deaths overall than would be expected based on recent history. The difference in 2022 – compared with 2020 and 2021 – is that Covid deaths were one of several factors, rather than the main explanation for this excess.

So what else might be going on? A number of doctors are blaming the wider crisis in the NHS. At the start of 2022, death rates were looking like they’d returned to pre-pandemic levels. It wasn’t until June that excess deaths really started to rise – just as the number of people waiting for hours on trolleys in English hospitals hit levels normally seen in winter. On 1 January 2023, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine suggested the crisis in urgent care could be causing “300-500 deaths a week”. It is not a figure recognised by NHS England, but it’s roughly what you get if you multiply the number of people waiting long periods in A&E with the extra risk of dying estimated to come with those long waits (of between five and 12 hours).

It is possible to debate the precise numbers, but it’s not controversial to say that your chances are worse if you wait longer for treatment, be that waiting for an ambulance to get to you, being stuck in an ambulance outside a hospital or in A&E. And we are seeing record waits in each of those areas. In November, for example, it took 48 minutes on average for an ambulance in England to respond to a suspected heart attack or stroke, compared to a target of 18 minutes. Some of the excess may be people whose deaths were hastened by the after-effects of a Covid infection. A number of studies have found people are more likely to have heart problems and strokes in the weeks and months after catching Covid, and some of these may not end up being linked to the virus when the death is registered. As well as the impact on the heart of the virus itself, some of this may be contributed to by the fact many people didn’t come in for screenings and non-urgent treatment during the peak of the pandemic, storing up trouble for the future.

[..] The rise in cardiac problems has been pointed to by some online as evidence that Covid vaccines are driving the rise in deaths, but this conclusion is not supported by the data. One type of Covid vaccine has been linked to a small rise in cases of heart inflammation and scarring (pericarditis and myocarditis). But this particular vaccine side-effect was mainly seen in boys and young men, while the excess deaths are highest in older men – aged 50 or more. And these cases are too rare – and mostly not fatal – to account for the excess in deaths.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1612944674322321409

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