Nov 082023
 
 November 8, 2023  Posted by at 9:23 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  56 Responses »


Paul Cézanne The Card Players 1895

 

Israel’s Final Solution for the Palestinians (Chris Hedges)
‘We’re a War Machine as a Nation’ (Hedges/Kucinich)
The Great Schism – Will It Be Quietly Ignored? (Alastair Crooke)
Will the Hamas-Israel Conflict Spin Out of Control? (Paul Craig Roberts)
Israel Wants To Dump Palestinian Refugees On Canada (Marsden)
Lavrov: West Pushing Middle East Towards Major War (Sp.)
‘Nuke Gaza’ Comment From Israeli Minister Raises Eyebrows In Moscow (Cradle)
Stable Eurasia Important To Multipolar World – Putin (RT)
US Senate Blocks Aid For Israel Over Ukraine (RT)
Türkiye Warns US About ‘Tarnished Reputation’ – Media (RT)
Europe ‘Powerless Against Kremlin Propaganda’ – Media (RT)
PsyWar & Washington DC’s Bureaucracy (Robert Malone)

 

 

 

 

Levy

 

 

Nurse

 

 

Norman Finkelstein RESPONDS to Bernie Sanders statement OPPOSING GAZA CEASEFIRE

 

 

 

 

 

 

“[W]e see not just a growing Israeli fascism but racism akin to Nazism in its early stages.”

Israel’s Final Solution for the Palestinians (Chris Hedges)

I covered the birth of Jewish fascism in Israel. I reported on the extremist Meir Kahane, who was barred from running for office and whose Kach Party was outlawed in 1994 and declared a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States. I attended political rallies held by Benjamin Netanyahu, who received lavish funding from rightwing Americans, when he ran against Yitzhak Rabin, who was negotiating a peace settlement with the Palestinians. Netanyahu’s supporters chanted “Death to Rabin.” They burned an effigy of Rabin dressed in a Nazi uniform. Netanyahu marched in front of a mock funeral for Rabin. Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995 by a Jewish fanatic. Rabin’s widow, Lehea, blamed Netanyahu and his supporters for her husband’s murder.

Netanyahu, who first became prime minister in 1996, has spent his political career nurturing Jewish extremists, including Avigdor Lieberman, Gideon Sa’ar, Naftali Bennett, and Ayelet Shaked. His father, Benzion — who worked as an assistant to the Zionist pioneer Vladimir Jabotinsky, who Benito Mussolini referred to as “a good fascist” — was a leader in the Herut Party that called on the Jewish state to seize all the land of historic Palestine. Many of those who formed the Herut Party carried out terrorist attacks during the 1948 war that established the state of Israel. Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Sidney Hook and other Jewish intellectuals, described the Herut Party in a statement published in The New York Times as a “political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to Nazi and Fascist parties.”

There has always been a strain of Jewish fascism within the Zionist project. Now it has taken control of the Israeli state. “The left is no longer capable of overcoming the toxic ultra-nationalism that has evolved here,” Zeev Sternhell, a Holocaust survivor and Israel’s foremost authority on fascism, warned in 2018, “the kind whose European strain almost wiped out a majority of the Jewish people.” Sternhell added, “[W]e see not just a growing Israeli fascism but racism akin to Nazism in its early stages.” The decision to obliterate Gaza has long been the dream of Israel’s crypto-fascists, heirs of Kahane’s movement. These Jewish extremists, which make up the ruling coaltion government, are orchestrating the genocide in Gaza, where hundreds of Palestinians are dying daily. They champion the iconography and language of their homegrown fascism.

Jewish identity and Jewish nationalism are the Zionist versions of blood and soil. Jewish supremacy is sanctified by God, as is the slaughter of the Palestinians, who Netanyahu compared to the Biblical Ammonites, massacred by the Israelites. Enemies — usually Muslims — slated for extinction are subhuman who embody evil. Violence and the threat of violence are the only forms of communication those outside the magical circle of Jewish nationalism understand. Millions of Muslims and Christians, including those with Israeli citizenship, are to be purged. A leaked 10-page document from the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence dated Oct. 13, 2023 recommends the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

It is a grave mistake not to take the blood curdling calls for the wholesale eradication and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians seriously. This rhetoric is not hyperbolic. It is a literal prescription. Netanyahu in a tweet, later removed, described the battle with Hamas as a “struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.”

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Kucinich is a longtime anti-war voice.

‘We’re a War Machine as a Nation’ (Hedges/Kucinich)

Israel’s ongoing massacre in Gaza has stirred worldwide calls for a ceasefire to stop the genocide unfolding. The United States has been no exception, which countless demonstrators taking to the streets in recent weeks. That hasn’t stopped the US government from backing Israel’s horrific campaign in Gaza to the hilt. The White House has refused to heed calls for a ceasefire and even deployed two aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean—not to defend Palestinians, but to dissuade regional powers from joining the fray to defend Palestine. As the possibility of a regional war looms with the entry of Yemen into the conflict, many wonder how the US might respond to such a scenario. Former US Congressperson Dennis Kucinich joins The Chris Hedges Report for a discussion on the US war machine—what it is, how it works, and how it might respond should the war in Palestine spiral into a wider conflagration.

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“..the revolutionary spark lighting a transformation in the Middle Eastern and the Global South’s consciousness..”

The Great Schism – Will It Be Quietly Ignored? (Alastair Crooke)

Dominique De Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, who famously led France’s opposition to the Iraq war, recently described the term ‘Occidentalism’ (currently the prevalent sentiment in much of Europe) as being the notion that “the West, which for five centuries managed the world’s affairs, will be able to quietly continue to do so”. He continues: “There is this idea that, faced with what is currently happening in the Middle East, we must continue the fight even more, towards what might resemble a religious or a civilizational war”. “That is to say, to isolate ourselves even more on the international stage”. “They’ve gone “all in” on a certain moral and ethical framework of the world, and faced with a situation where the West’s moral fabric has been openly exposed and refuted, they find it extremely difficult—and perhaps fatally impossible—to withdraw”.

It is ditto for an Israel (which is umbilically linked to the West): Were Israel to imagine that its former Arab allies might look the other way, whilst the Jewish state attempts to annihilate resistance in Gaza,- and then expect these allies to help police and pay for a Gaza security apparatus to rule there, they would be guilty of wishfull thinking. And, if either Washington or Israel assume this ‘after-Gaza’ plan can unfold in the same moment that militant settlers on the other side of the terrain build their settlement kingdom with the express goal of founding Israel on the Land of Israel (thus expunging Palestine altogether), that notion too would constitute a fantasy, both strategically and morally incoherent. It won’t work. Israel will not be able to generate either the Palestinian partners, nor the global allies, it needs to co-operate in such a scheme. The situation in the Middle East has radically transformed. Whereas Palestine was about national liberation, today Palestine is the symbol of a wider civilisational re-awakening – the ‘end to centuries of Regional humiliation’.

Equally, whilst Zionism in Israel was largely a secular political project (Greater Israel), today it has become messianic and prophetic. The point here is that we continue to think about the Gaza issue in the ‘old way’ – through the prism of secular material rationalism. This leads to conclusions such as ‘Hamas objectively is weaker than Israel’s IDF’, and therefore rationally the latter must prevail as being the stronger party. In this way of thinking, though, there is only ‘one single reality’ with only the descriptions and interpretations of this ‘reality’ differing. Yet there is demonstrably more than ‘one reality’ as collectively, we progress from one consciousness to another. In one consciousness, for example, ‘Hamas is destined to fail’, and the discussion turns to US and Israeli notions of ‘what follows in Gaza’.

In another state of consciousness however – one becoming ever more prevalent in the region – the ‘reality’ is that any ‘rationally’ negotiated compromise between two clashing eschatological structures is impossible. The more so should the conflict escalate horizontally – overflowing the boundaries of Gaza. Other ‘fronts’ likely might open, as Gaza is seen – whether or not Hamas is crushed – as the revolutionary spark lighting a transformation in the Middle Eastern and the Global South’s consciousness (note the list of Global South states now cutting diplomatic ties with Israel). The West however, has opted to back itself in a silo of its own making – as defined by its demand for a singularity of messaging that all of Europe ‘stand with Israel’; refusing any ceasefire; and saying ‘no limit’ to Israeli action (subject to law).

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“.. Americans and Europeans are getting no help from their governments or media in understanding that Putin is doing his best to save them from a world war..”

Will the Hamas-Israel Conflict Spin Out of Control? (Paul Craig Roberts)

According to Iran’s PressTV, the Iranian defense minister announced that the US “will be hit hard” it Israel’s war on Gaza does not halt. It is unclear why the defense minister’s target is the US and not Israel. By US he probably means US bases in Syria and Iraq. Add this puzzle to the growing collection. For example, if Iran and Hezbollah are behind Hamas’ October 7 attack, why wasn’t Hamas provided with air defense capability against what everyone had to know would be massive Israeli bombing of Gaza? Why did Russia provide Syria with the S-300 air defense system and prevent Syria from using it against Israeli and US aircraft that attack Syrian territory? I explained that the October 7 attack on Israel has the Biden regime’s neoconservatives and Netanyahu’s fingers all over it.

It is not only Palestine that is Netanhayu’s goal, but also Greater Israel which runs according to Zionists from the Nile to the Euphrates. The intent is to draw into the conflict Iran and Syria so that the neoconservatives can reopen the wars in the Middle East against Hezbollah’s suppliers. Without weapons and money from Iran and Syria, Hezbollah would not be able to prevent Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon. I doubt that Biden understands this. Most likely the neoconservatives in the government told him that having a strong US military presence on the scene would keep things from getting out of hand. Many Americans think that the president knows everything and is in control, but the fact is that he only knows what his officials tell him, and the neoconservatives have their own agenda.

That the intent is to widen the conflict is supported by the enormous quantities of weapons, troops and air power that the US is assembling in the area. This concentration supplemented with German and French troops, according to media reports, go far beyond what is needed to subdue Hamas. The official explanation for this concentration of Western military resources is to protect Israel from Hezbollah and Iran. Adding to the collection of puzzles, if Israel is so vulnerable from attacking Gaza, why would Israel risk it. It makes no sense to risk defeat for the sake of revenge. Israel must have known in advance that US forces would instantly be on the scene. How did Israel know that if October 7 was a surprise?

Putin and it seems Biden have realized that if Iran and Hezbollah are enticed into the conflict a wider regional conflict will emerge that could result in World War III. Putin has been restraining the Muslims and Biden has tried to restrain Netanyahu. If Putin succeeds, the neoconservatives and Netanyahu will likely initiate a false flag attack on Israel and blame Hezbollah, and the neoconservatives who run the Biden regime will use the false flag attack to widen the war. Certainly Americans and Europeans are getting no help from their governments or media in understanding that Putin is doing his best to save them from a world war. Instead, hate continues to pour out against Putin.

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And why not…

Israel Wants To Dump Palestinian Refugees On Canada (Marsden)

Israel’s Intelligence Ministry has come up with a creative solution for dealing with those displaced by the Gaza conflict, of which there are an estimated 1.4 million and counting: Go west — all the way to Canada. As Gaza residents were being directed by Israel to clear out and move towards the southern border with Egypt – while the IDF pelted the northern part of the enclave, where most Hamas forces are reportedly concentrated, with missiles – one of the big questions some of us asked was where over 2 million Palestinians would possibly go. Thanks to a leaked Israeli government document, dated October 13 and published by Israeli news site Sicha Mekomit, there’s now some insight into what at least some Israeli government officials have been floating. This paper, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office says presents “initial thoughts” that won’t be considered until the war is over, envisions the refugees heading to Egypt first.

But, because Egypt has previously refused to absorb Gaza residents, it may ultimately just end up being used as a staging ground for their mass relocation to other countries. The proposal is for Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to at least provide financial support for this mass displacement, if not offer to take in some refugees themselves, either in the short or long term. But the real kicker is that one particular Western country – way over on the other side of the world from the conflict – is singled out for its “lenient” immigration policy, making it a place where Israeli officials figure the displaced Palestinians could feasibly be resettled. And that country is Canada. Because despite its strict points-based immigration system that selects for potential newcomers based on their skills and education, Canada still clearly has a reputation for being a refugee welcome mat – even though today’s reality is a far cry from this perception.

Not that our big-mouthed Canadian officials have helped. “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted in January 2017, in reaction to then-US President Donald Trump’s executive order banning refugees from a list of Muslim countries. But it wasn’t long before Trudeau had to send out members of his own administration to explain to these same migrant communities that his tweets were a bit more obtuse than official policy. Nor does the image of Canada as a freeloader’s paradise jibe with real life upon arrival in the country. By 2019, Canada had welcomed nearly 60,000 Syrian refugees amid the US-backed regime change war against President Bashar Assad.

Images abound of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau handing out winter jackets to arriving families at Toronto’s Pearson airport. “You’re safe at home now,” Trudeau told them. That was back in 2015. Just four years later, some provinces had ditched all aid for immigration and refugee programs and just 24% of male and 8% of female refugees from Syria had found employment, according to government data.

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“.. the ultimate result being the loss or weakening of statehood in these countries..”

Lavrov: West Pushing Middle East Towards Major War (Sp.)

Western politicians are provoking a major conflict in the Middle East, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during a marathon event at the Znanie Society within the framework of the Russia International Exhibition-Forum. Russia’s foreign minister has asserted that Western nations are actively steering Middle Eastern countries toward a potential large-scale conflict. Lavrov pointed out that historically, such “Anglo-Saxon strategies” have precipitated waves of terrorism and forced the migration of countless refugees. “Right now, we are witnessing how the Anglo-Saxons are literally pushing the Middle East to the brink of a major war,” he said. The consequences of this Western approach are evident in Ukraine, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, with the ultimate result being the loss or weakening of statehood in these countries, the top diplomat emphasized.

“Other consequences include a surge in terrorism and extremism, shattered human destinies, broken families and the massive influx of refugees,” Lavrov noted in his speech at the “Znanie” (lit. “Knowledge”) Society event. The methods used by the United States and its allies are sowing chaos in various regions of the world, fueling conflicts between countries and peoples, exacerbating inter-religious and inter-ethnic tensions. The West has grown accustomed to solving its own problems at the expense of others and exploiting other people’s resources and, contrary to global processes, hopes to rule the world by interfering in the internal affairs of states, Lavrov concluded.

In a recent flare-up, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict reignited on October 7 after a major rocket attack on Israel from Gaza. Subsequently, Hamas infiltrated the southern border areas, attacking military and civilian targets in Israel and taking hostages. In response, Israel launched Operation Swords of Iron in the Gaza Strip, taking control of border settlements, conducting airstrikes, including on civilian targets, and imposing a complete blockade, cutting off supplies of essential goods. Moscow has called on both sides to cease hostilities. Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Middle East crisis can only be resolved on the basis of the United Nations Security Council’s “two-state” formula, which calls for an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with its capital in East Jerusalem.

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“..anyone waving a Palestinian or Hamas flag “shouldn’t continue living on the face of the earth.”

‘Nuke Gaza’ Comment From Israeli Minister Raises Eyebrows In Moscow (Cradle)

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on 7 November said that recent remarks by Israeli Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu, in which he said dropping a nuclear bomb in the Gaza Strip is “a possibility,” raised a multitude of questions. “It raised a great number of questions. Question number one: Does this mean we are hearing an official statement acknowledging [Israel’s] possession of nuclear weapons? Accordingly, the next set of questions that everyone has is: Where are the international organizations, including the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]; where are the inspectors?” Zakharova said during a televised interview. Estimates of Israel’s nuclear stockpile range between 80 and 400 warheads, which can be delivered via aircraft, submarine-launched cruise missiles, and the Jericho series of intermediate to intercontinental-range ballistic missiles.

Its first deliverable nuclear weapon is thought to have been completed in late 1966 or early 1967, making it the sixth country in the world to have developed them. Israel has never openly tested its nuclear weapons nor signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), making it the world’s only unacknowledged atomic power. The country has also never been subjected to an inspection from the UN nuclear watchdog. Asked in an interview with Radio Kol Berama last week whether an atomic bomb should be dropped on Gaza, Israeli minister Eliyahu answered: “This is one of the possibilities.” Eliyahu, from the Jewish supremacist Religious Zionist party, stated further that “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza” and that, therefore, no humanitarian aid should be allowed into the besieged enclave.

He also expressed his support for depopulating Gaza and reconquering it to reestablish Jewish settlements there. Regarding the Palestinian population, he said: “They can go to Ireland or deserts; the monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves.” Eliyahu added that anyone waving a Palestinian or Hamas flag “shouldn’t continue living on the face of the earth.” In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suspended Eliyahu from participating in cabinet meetings and dismissed his statement, calling it “not based in reality.” Russia’s UN envoy has previously stated that, as an occupying state, Israel has “no right” to self-defense.

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Which is why the US is destabilizing it.

Stable Eurasia Important To Multipolar World – Putin (RT)

Russia and Kazakhstan have a true strategic partnership and are working together to advance a more just and multi-faceted world order, President Vladimir Putin said in an interview on Tuesday. Putin spoke with the outlet Kazakhstanskaya Pravda, ahead of the planned visit to Astana later this week for talks with his Kazakh counterpart Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. “Development of a new and fairer world order based on the primacy of international law has been a prevailing trend,” Putin told the outlet. “Russia believes that establishment of a common peaceful, stable and prosperous Eurasian space is an integral part of this process.” He noted that Russia and Kazakhstan share the world’s longest land border – almost 7,600 kilometers – and that some 6,000 Russian companies have invested around $17 billion in the Central Asian neighbor.

The two countries’ partnership is “forward-looking, extensive and multifaceted, time-tested and developing in an upward direction,” the Russian president said. In addition to oil and natural gas exploration, Russia and Kazakhstan are also collaborating on uranium mining and nuclear power projects. Astana is currently considering the construction of an atomic power plant on Kazakh territory and should it decide to proceed, Russia’s state corporation Rosatom stands ready to develop it using “the most advanced technologies,” Putin noted. The Russian leader specifically addressed Kazakhstan’s presidency over the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). At the organization’s summit in July, Tokayev had introduced the Initiative on World Unity for Just Peace and Harmony.

“The SCO attracts with its focus on creation and multifaceted cooperation, mutual consideration of interests, equality, openness, and respect for cultural and civilizational diversity,” Putin said, which makes it superior to Western-promoted initiatives with but a handful of handpicked participants. He described cooperation within the SCO as “one of the key pillars for strategic relations of friendship and alliance” between Russia and Kazakhstan. “As for economic stability, the Eurasian Economic Union no doubt has a crucial role to play in this area,” Putin added. The Kremlin has confirmed that Putin will travel to Kazakhstan on Thursday, adding that his agenda will include talks with Tokayev, signing a number of agreements, and attending the 19th Russia-Kazakhstan Interregional Cooperation Forum.

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Lost cause.

US Senate Blocks Aid For Israel Over Ukraine (RT)

Senate Democrats on Tuesday blocked a House bill that would have provided emergency aid to Israel without funding to Ukraine, demanding the Republicans agree to President Joe Biden’s $106 bundle request instead. The White House proposal has sought to combine the aid for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and migration policy – presented as “border security” – in order to overcome opposition by some Republicans to continued funding of Kiev. The Republican-majority House of Representatives, however, passed a $14 billion standalone package for Israel last week, to be offset by cuts to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). “Time is of the essence and it’s imperative that the Senate not delay delivering this crucial aid to Israel another day,” Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas said on Tuesday, urging the Democrats to agree to the House bill.

“Our allies in Ukraine can no more afford a delay than our allies in Israel,” replied Patty Murray of Washington, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Biden has already said he would veto the House bill were it somehow to be approved in the Senate, where Democrats control 51 out of the 100 seats. Unlike the simple-majority rules of the House, a bill requires 60 votes to pass in the Senate, meaning at least nine Republicans would need to cross the aisle. According to the Pentagon, the US has sent Ukraine over $44 billion in military aid since February 2022, including weapons, equipment and ammunition. The US has insisted this does not make it a party to the conflict with Russia, however. American taxpayers have also coughed up around $4 billion in humanitarian aid and almost $27 billion in “economic assistance,”including paying the salaries of Ukrainian government employees.

A secret deal with the White House to fund Ukraine cost the former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy his job in early October, leading to a three-week deadlock in the lower house of Congress. The new speaker, Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson, has voted against continued funding of Kiev and expressed support for single-item bills. The Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), which the Pentagon has used to buy new equipment for Kiev from the US military industry, ran out earlier this week, according to the White House. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has told the Senate that Ukraine would lose the conflict with Russia without continued US assistance. Senate Democrats are reportedly working on their own funding proposal and hope to introduce it later this week, according to Reuters.

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Erdogan gets serious.

Türkiye Warns US About ‘Tarnished Reputation’ – Media (RT)

Türkiye has told the US that its stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict has both tarnished its reputation and put the entire world community in a tough spot, Hurriyet reported on Tuesday. According to the Turkish daily, Ankara conveyed that message during a meeting between Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday, which concerned the current crisis in the Middle East. The sit-down came amid heightened tensions between Türkiye and Israel, Washington’s key ally in the region, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently accusing the Jewish state of “war crimes” in Gaza and denouncing its ground assault as “an open, vicious massacre.” Israel maintains that it has no intention of harming the civilian population in the Palestinian enclave, stressing that its main objective is to defeat Hamas, which launched a surprise attack on the country on October 7.

Hurriyet claimed that Fidan and his delegation “clearly explained” to Blinken what was happening in Gaza, and that the US vow to stand by Israel while refusing to call for a ceasefire, was “putting everyone in trouble.” “You are also putting your own image in trouble because you are seen as the patron of the crimes committed by Israel,” the delegation reportedly said. Following the meeting, the two sides did not issue a joint statement or hold a joint press conference. Speaking to reporters, however, Blinken said that he had a very “productive” conversation with Fidan, including about the need to “significantly expand humanitarian assistance” to Gaza and avoid escalating the conflict.

His remarks came after US President Joe Biden called for a humanitarian “pause” in hostilities. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later signaled that his government was open to “little pauses” in the fighting. After Hamas attacked Israel last month, the latter responded with air and missile strikes on Gaza while announcing a “complete siege” of the enclave. To date, the fighting has claimed the lives of more than 10,000 Palestinians, and more than 1,400 Israelis. Meanwhile, Politico reported on Monday that a group of low- and mid-level US diplomats had urged the Biden administration to condemn Israel’s bombing of civilians and demand a ceasefire. They reportedly argued that failure to do so “contributes to regional public perceptions that the United States is a biased and dishonest actor.”

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“pro-Russian conspiracy narratives..”

Europe ‘Powerless Against Kremlin Propaganda’ – Media (RT)

Despite the EU’s best efforts to sanction and ban Russian news outlets, Europeans can still read RT and Sputnik, and “pro-Russian conspiracy narratives” are becoming more popular, the editor-in-chief of Luxembourg’s Tageblatt complained in a recent op-ed. Less than a week after Russian troops entered Ukraine last year, the European Commission announced sanctions on RT and Sputnik, suspending their TV broadcasting licenses and blocking both websites for readers across the EU. Just as 11 rounds of sanctions failed to crater the Russian economy, the crackdown on RT and Sputnik “promised a lot and delivered little,” Tageblatt editor-in-chief Tobias Senzig wrote in an editorial on Monday.

“With just a few tricks – a simple change in the network settings of your computer is enough – you can easily access the RT and Sputnik websites,” he griped, referring to the fact that RT remains accessible to readers using a VPN, the Tor browser, or the Psiphon censorship-bypass tool. Although Senzig argued that free access to information is one of the “grassroots democratic principles that the internet rightly upholds,”he called the EU’s sanctions “long overdue.” RT and Sputnik are not “public broadcasters,” he claimed, but “pure offshoots of the Kremlin’s propaganda department.”

“Not only are they trying to represent the ‘Moscow view’ to the rest of the world, but they are also aggressively interfering in intra-European affairs,” he elaborated.“Our democracies are portrayed as broken and dysfunctional, and Moscow’s antagonists are constantly being attacked: Social Democrats, Greens, ‘do-gooders’, Brussels, Ukraine.” Moscow argues that the Western media outlets are working in lockstep with Western governments against Russia. These outlets “receive instructions and manuals from their special services, they get leaks of information – which are mostly, very often, specially and professionally prepared falsehoods – and do this round the clock,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in August.

Russia has set out to compete with them “very gingerly, but quite successfully,” he added. RT is “laughing up its sleeve,”Senzig declared, noting that according to a study published by German think tank Cemas last November, “approval ratings for pro-Russian conspiracy narratives surrounding the Ukraine war have increased ‘significantly’ among the overall German population since April 2022.” “In other words,” he explained, “more people in Germany believed Putin’s lies after the attack than before the war.” Senzig is not the first pundit or official to decry the apparent power of RT. The commander of United States Southern Command Gen. Laura Richardson, complained last month that the US is losing the “conflict in the information domain” to RT, Sputnik, and TeleSUR in Latin America.

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Malone ventures away from vaccines.

PsyWar & Washington DC’s Bureaucracy (Robert Malone)

In many ways the modern American Administrative and Deep State, with its “public-private partnerships”, has come to resemble the 17th through 19th century British monarchy, with an entrenched bureaucracy (the permanent administrative state) functionally managed by a largely hereditary elite, surrounded by the concentric status rings of courtiers which comprise the Deep State (in the current embodiment). Within the growing hereditary ruling American oligarchy there is some degree of turnover and palace intrigue, as the fortunes of some wane while others rise. As with the rise of the British bourgeoisie and mixing of gentry with financially successful upper middle castes, this often reflects broader financial and technological trends within the overall geo-political and geo-economic context in which a globalized oligarchy competes.

The obvious irony being that this type of system was precisely what the American Revolution was intended to overturn, and precisely what the US Constitution was written to prevent. And above all of this, we have now added a transcendently powerful new capability to the Leviathan of old. The rise of the CIA and its “Mockingbird/Mighty Wurlitzer” infiltration of both media and academia, the FBI and its politically weaponized COINTELPRO-type surveillance, infiltration and disruption capabilities, the DoD and its PsyOps/PsyWar capabilities designed for offshore conflicts but turned against domestic citizenry to support executive branch-defined “crisis” management, and the explosive growth of a new censorship-industrial complex has yielded a “Leviathan” with reality-bending information control capabilities the likes of which the historic British monarchy could only dream of. Propaganda has come a long way from the days of Edward Bernays’ seminal 1928 book by the same name.

The Washington DC-based Administrative/Deep State has emerged as a separate entity unto itself, with its own culture, purpose, privileges and prerogatives. A key characteristic of this separate cultural phenomenon and mindset- often geographically referred to as the “inside the beltway” set (referring to the I 495 freeway loop encircling DC and environs)- is a focus on self-preservation and personal advancement, rather than on achieving a mission, producing a deliverable, or serving the needs of outside-the-beltway flyover state serfdom. Imperial DC beltway denizens form an incestuous culture, much like any historic imperial court. Passive-aggressive “slow walking” of initiatives has been refined to a fine art. Sexual favors are routinely exchanged to seal short-term alliances, both within agencies and between contractors and “Govies”.

Nuances of administrative regulations are weaponized to enable petty counterproductive one-upmanship. “Beltway Bandit” corporations, lobbyists (registered and unregistered) and “think tanks” cultivate, collect and support Deep State “swamp monsters” when the political wing they are allied with is out of power for a period, anticipating that these courtiers will be rotated back in with the next political shift or Executive branch “change” in leadership. And all are tied together in a revolving maypole dance. Together, they collectively weave a Uniparty in which the commonalities of shared commitment to advancing the interests of the Administrative/Deep State court are far more important and lasting than any inconvenient superficial narrative about serving the interests of the general electorate and citizenry. In this beltway culture, actually solving national problems takes a back bench to the pageantry and Machiavellian machinations of the elite courtiers and their allies.

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Letitia

 

 

 

 

Grok is Elon’s new AI toy.

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Sep 272023
 
 September 27, 2023  Posted by at 9:04 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  46 Responses »


Frederick Carl Frieseke Girl In Blue Arranging Flowers 1915

 

Hersh Reveals US Motive For Destruction Of Nord Stream Pipelines (MoA)
Biden Planned On Blowing Nord Stream Before Ukraine Conflict Began – Hersh (RT)
Nord Stream Blast: Why the West Still Can’t Name the Culprit (Sp.)
Canadian Parliament Speaker Resigns After Honoring Ukrainian Nazi (RT)
Russian Foreign Ministry Responds To Canada Honoring Nazi Veteran (RT)
Nazi Hunter: Canada Failed Miserably in Bringing Nazis to Justice (Sp.)
Russian Black Sea Fleet Commander Seen Alive and Well (Sp.)
Nothing Is Off Table To Get Ukraine Into EU – Parliament President (G.)
How Russia Will Deal With American Tanks in Ukraine (Sp.)
US Judge Finds Trump Committed Fraud by Inflating Wealth, Assets (Sp.)
Hunter Biden Sues Rudy Giuliani for Spreading Contents From Laptop (Sp.)
Hunter Biden Used Dad’s Classified Doc House For $250K China Wire Transfer (ZH)
EU Warns Elon Musk After X Found To Have Highest Rate Of Disinformation (G.)

 

 

 

 

NYC Sanctuary

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yeadon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1706538481135104245

 

 

 

 

Russell

 

 

 

 

On the first anniversary of the Nordstream blast, lots of articles. Also about “alternative explanations”. But Sy Hersh doesn’t make things up. That’s not his MO at all.

“And thus followed the ultimate fear: that America would lose its long-standing primacy in Western Europe.”

Hersh Reveals US Motive For Destruction Of Nord Stream Pipelines (MoA)

It was no surprise to the agency’s secret planning group when on January 27, 2022, the assured and confident Nuland, then undersecretary of state for political affairs, stridently warned Putin that if he invaded Ukraine, as he clearly was planning to, that “one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” The line attracted enormous attention, but the words preceding the threat did not. The official State Department transcript shows that she preceded her threat by saying that with regard to the pipeline: “We continue to have very strong and clear conversations with our German allies. … The German leader was considered then—and now—by some members of the CIA team to be fully aware of the secret planning underway to destroy the pipelines.

What I did not know then, but was told recently, was that after Biden’s extraordinary public threat to blow up Nord Stream 2, with Scholz standing next to him, the CIA planning group was told by the White House that there would be no immediate attack on the two pipelines, but the group should arrange to plant the necessary bombs and be ready to trigger them “on demand”—after the war began. “It was then that we”—the small planning group that was working in Oslo with the Royal Norwegian Navy and special services on the project—“understood that the attack on the pipelines was not a deterrent because as the war went on we never got the command.” After Biden’s order to trigger the explosives planted on the pipelines, it took only a short flight with a Norwegian fighter and the dropping of an altered off-the-shelf sonar device at the right spot in the Baltic Sea to get it done.

By then the CIA group had long disbanded. By then, too, the official told me: “We realized that the destruction of the two Russian pipelines was not related to the Ukrainian war”—Putin was in the process of annexing the four Ukrainian oblasts he wanted—“but was part of a neocon political agenda to keep Scholz and Germany, with winter coming up and the pipelines shut down, from getting cold feet and opening up” the shuttered Nord Stream 2. “The White House fear was that Putin would get Germany under his thumb and then he was going to get Poland.”

All of this explains why a routine question I posed a month or so after the bombings to someone with many years in the American intelligence community led me to a truth that no one in America or Germany seems to want to pursue. My question was simple: “Who did it?” The Biden administration blew up the pipelines but the action had little to do with winning or stopping the war in Ukraine. It resulted from fears in the White House that Germany would waver and turn on the flow of Russia gas—and that Germany and then NATO, for economic reasons, would fall under the sway of Russia and its extensive and inexpensive natural resources. And thus followed the ultimate fear: that America would lose its long-standing primacy in Western Europe.

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“We realized that the destruction of the two Russian pipelines was not related to the Ukrainian war..”

Biden Planned On Blowing Nord Stream Before Ukraine Conflict Began – Hersh (RT)

US President Joe Biden initially planned on destroying the Nord Stream gas pipelines to deter Russia from launching its military operation in Ukraine, American journalist Seymour Hersh reported on Tuesday. However, Hersh alleged that the sabotage operation went ahead later not to deter Russia, but to harm the German economy. The Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, which connected Russia and Germany under the Baltic Sea, were destroyed in a series of underwater explosions exactly a year ago on Tuesday. Competing theories have emerged as to who was to blame, with mainstream media in the West blaming a Ukrainian commando unit and Seymour Hersh claiming that the CIA carried out the operation under direct orders from Biden.

In a blog post on Tuesday, Hersh alleged that US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan convened a series of meetings in late 2021, tasking intelligence officials with coming up with a means of deterring Russian President Vladimir Putin from sending troops into Ukraine. “The White House’s policy was to deter Russia from an attack,” an intelligence source told Hersh. “The challenge it gave to the intelligence community was to come up with a way that was powerful enough to do that, and to make a strong statement of American capability.” By January, as Russian forces were massing on the Ukrainian border, the CIA had “solved the problem,” the source said. With a plan in place to plant remotely-detonated explosives on the pipelines under the Baltic Sea, Biden warned in early February that in the event of military action by Russia, “there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Following Biden’s statement, which was delivered alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the CIA team tasked with sabotaging the pipelines received new orders, Hersh claimed. Instead of immediately destroying Nord Stream, the team was instructed to plant the explosives for detonation at a later date. “It was then that we understood that the attack on the pipelines was not a deterrent because as the war went on we never got the command,” a member of the team told Hersh. “We realized that the destruction of the two Russian pipelines was not related to the Ukrainian war,” the source continued. “But was part of a neocon political agenda to keep Scholz and Germany, with winter coming up and the pipelines shut down, from getting cold feet and opening up.”

According to Hersh’s earlier reporting, CIA divers planted the explosives last summer with the help of the Norwegian navy, using a NATO exercise in the region as cover. By the time the bombs were triggered in September, the flow of Russian gas to Germany via Nord Stream 1 had already been slowed to a trickle by Russia in response to Western sanctions, while Nord Stream 2 was never certified to begin operation by Scholz’s government. However, with the German economy heavily dependent on Russian gas, Biden reportedly feared that Scholz would choose reproachment with Moscow over support for Ukraine. “The President of the United States would rather see Germany freeze than [see] Germany possibly stop supporting Ukraine,” Hersh declared earlier this year.

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“Giraldi said that he feels that Hersh’s narrative is “correct in every detail.”

Nord Stream Blast: Why the West Still Can’t Name the Culprit (Sp.)

Gas leaks from the Nord Stream pipeline system were detected on 26 September 2022, with the EU leadership admitting that this could be the result of a “deliberate attack”. Two days later, on 28 September, the Kremlin announced that Russia was ready to consider applications from EU countries for a joint investigation into the Nord Stream incident. However, not only did the West snub Moscow’s request but also blamed Russia for destroying its own pipelines. Later, European and American officials backtracked on their accusations but fell short of naming a potential perpetrator. On 12 October 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the incident “an act of international terrorism”. Meanwhile, as gas prices soared and US energy producers secured lucrative LNG contracts with European countries, it became clear that Washington had been the major beneficiary from the Nord Stream destruction. Furthermore, the US leadership had previously issued several threats that it would destroy the pipelines.

“We know that the United States President Joe Biden, threatened openly that he would stop Nord Stream 2 if the Russians were to militarily intervene in Ukraine,” Philip Giraldi, former CIA station chief and now an executive director of the Council for the National Interest, told Sputnik. “That was repeated by Victoria Nuland, who was Number Three at the State Department. She said basically the same thing. So we had the President and a senior official both saying that they would stop the pipeline if this were to happen. So we have a statement coming from the government itself saying it would do this.” “And then I would say on top of that, the United States – given its military capabilities – had the capability to do this. They sent divers down to attach explosives and to arrange for a drone satellite that would ignite the charges and blow up the pipelines.

“It had the capability to do it. And it also had the motive, which was basically to weaken Russia’s ability to use its energy resources to affect politics in Europe. So this is what it was all about,” Giraldi continued. On 8 February 2023, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell, detailing an apparent plot by Team Biden and the US intelligence community to blast the Nord Stream pipelines with the help of Norwegian operatives. Reflecting on Hersh’s version, Giraldi said that he feels that Hersh’s narrative is “correct in every detail.” “And I can confirm to you that Sy Hersh, whom I know somewhat, has excellent sources inside CIA and inside the Pentagon. So what he’s telling us comes straight from people who know about it,” the CIA veteran said.

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Scapegoat.

Canadian Parliament Speaker Resigns After Honoring Ukrainian Nazi (RT)

Canadian House Speaker Anthony Rota stepped down on Tuesday after a Nazi veteran was his invited guest at a speech by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. The invitation has faced widespread condemnation. Rota apologized on Monday for the presence of 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka at Zelensky’s address to Canadian lawmakers on Friday, but refused to resign. Although lawmakers from all parties – including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – cheered and applauded Hunka at the event, calls for Rota’s resignation grew over the weekend as the incident drew worldwide attention, particularly from the governments of Russia and Poland. Rota eventually announced his resignation on Tuesday afternoon, stating that he would leave his position at the end of Wednesday’s session.

“The work of this house is above any of us. Therefore, I must step down as your speaker,” Rota said. “I reiterate my profound regret for my error.” Politicians from the opposition New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois parties issued the loudest demands for Rota’s resignation, with New Democrats leader Peter Julian describing the invitation as “an unforgivable error which puts the entire House in disrepute.” Trudeau, who leads the Liberal Party, of which Rota is a member, did not call for the speaker’s resignation, but described the ceremony as “deeply embarrassing for the House and for Canada.” During the event, Rota hailed Hunka as “a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero… who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians.”

Rota did not mention that Hunka fought in Hitler’s elite Waffen SS, but the nonagenarian was identified by the Associated Press as a member of the First Ukrainian Division, a volunteer unit created by the Nazis in 1943. Also known as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, the unit is known to have committed atrocities against Jews and Poles during its campaign on the Eastern Front. “There should be no confusion that this unit was responsible for the mass murder of innocent civilians with a level of brutality and malice that is unimaginable,” the Toronto-based Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) said in a statement on Sunday.


The Ukrainian Postal Service is now issuing stamps of Waffen SS Nazi Galicia Yaroslav Hunko

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“..the ultra-liberal ideology propagated in Canada and permeated with hatred for Russia, its culture, religious and traditional values, essentially has the same roots as Nazism.”

Russian Foreign Ministry Responds To Canada Honoring Nazi Veteran (RT)

The Canadian Parliament’s public celebration of a Ukrainian Nazi veteran last week is a cynical abuse of the memory of the victims of Nazism and an example of the blatant Russophobia embraced by the Canadian government, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement published on Tuesday. The message comes after the Canadian House of Commons on Friday gave a standing ovation to 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, a member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier division of the SS, which was responsible for countless war crimes during the second half of World War II. The commemoration took place during a visit by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. The Russian Foreign Ministry stated that the incident was “the best possible way to characterize the regime of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has embraced unbridled Russophobia.”

After facing backlash from Jewish and Polish communities over the incident, House Speaker Anthony Rota apologized for inviting the Nazi veteran, while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the situation as “profoundly embarrassing.” The Russian ministry stressed, however, that despite Canada’s apologies, “the fact remains that the ultra-liberal ideology propagated in Canada and permeated with hatred for Russia, its culture, religious and traditional values, essentially has the same roots as Nazism.” Moscow added that it was “no coincidence” that Canada has monuments to Ukrainian nationalist leaders while the government allows the overwhelming majority of Nazi veterans like Hunka, who was granted asylum in Canada after the end of World War II, to live out their days “in safety, honored and cared for (in particular, by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland) as ‘fighters against Russian Communism.’”

The ministry concluded its statement by stressing that the “hostile actions” of the Canadian government, such as the continuous expansion of anti-Russian sanctions and blacklists of Russian nationals will not be left unanswered and that Moscow will not tolerate the fact that “Canadian liberals are flirting with Nazism.” “We expect that healthy forces in Canadian society will speak out against the ‘Nazification’ of history and daily life encouraged by the country’s officials, which goes hand-in-hand with aggressive Russophobia,” it said.

Russia to Canada
https://twitter.com/i/status/1706499953432924204

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“Canada is not a unique situation. Ten thousand Nazi war criminals emigrated to the United States, thousands to Australia, Great Britain, and in fewer numbers to New Zealand.”

Nazi Hunter: Canada Failed Miserably in Bringing Nazis to Justice (Sp.)

Ninety-eight-year-old Ukrainian Nazi veteran Yaroslav Hunka, who fought in the ranks of the Schutzstaffel’s (SS) 14th Waffen Grenadier Division, was enthusiastically hailed by Canadian lawmakers and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The incident triggered a wave of fierce criticism, prompting House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota to apologize for featuring a Nazi soldier in the Canadian legislature. Sputnik reached out to Dr. Efraim Zuroff, a legendary Nazi hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the director of its Israel Office, to ask why the scandalous honoring of a Nazi became possible in a modern Western state. “It’s no secret that hundreds, at least hundreds, if not thousands of people who committed Holocaust crimes and/or collaborated with the Nazis were able to emigrate to Canada,” Dr. Zuroff told Sputnik.

“And by the way, Canada is not a unique situation. Ten thousand Nazi war criminals emigrated to the United States, thousands to Australia, Great Britain, and in fewer numbers to New Zealand.” Dr. Zuroff is unfamiliar with the particular case of Yaroslav Hunka, but it is still well known that the Waffen SS Galicia Division was “very involved in the mass murder of Jews and Poles in eastern Poland and Galicia,” he pointed out. “And it’s a very sad thing that the heroes, the leadership of the Ukrainian nationalists during World War II, which was headed by Stepan Bandera, for example and the UPA*, the army raised by the Ukrainians to fight with the Germans, with the Waffen SS, which was led by Roman Shukhevych, these are the heroes of Ukraine,” the Nazi hunter highlighted.

It is common knowledge that Nazi Germany played the lead role in the Holocaust – the systematic state-sponsored killing of European Jews in the Second World War. Still, Westerners are not fully aware of the incredibly important role played by local collaborators in the mass murder of the Jewish people, according to Dr. Zuroff. Nazi Germany’s Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units organized by the SS (tasked with the “final solution of the Jewish question, i.e. the genocide of the ethnic group), “covered an area from Tallinn in the north of Estonia, all the way down to Odessa, near the Black Sea, a front of 1,500 kilometers, and murdered 1.5 million, primarily Jews, in less than two years,” the expert said.

“There were only several thousand people who served in the Einsatzgruppen, and they were working in territory, which they didn’t know the language, they didn’t know the topography. They needed help from the locals,” he explained, adding that this help was provided. “And they’re [locals] the ones who carried out these murders, in many cases without any Germans present. We know in Lithuania, for example, that there were less than a thousand Germans in Lithuania. In Lithuania, there were 220,000 Jews who lived under the Nazi occupation, of whom 212,000 were murdered, 90% of them by shooting near their homes.”

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The Black Sea Fleet command convenes in an underground bunker.

Russian Black Sea Fleet Commander Seen Alive and Well (Sp.)

Western media reported that Russian Black Sea Fleet commander Admiral Viktor Sokolov was killed in Ukrainian attack on Sevastopol, citing Ukrainian officials, without verifying the information. Ukraine used several British-sourced Storm Shadow cruise missiles to target the HQs building of the Russian Fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea last Friday. Russian Black Sea Fleet commander Admiral Viktor Sokolov has turned up alive and well, taking part in a Defense Ministry board meeting alongside Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Tuesday. Sokolov’s appearance follows claims in dozens of Western media outlets quoting Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces claiming that he had been killed in last week’s strike on the Black Sea Fleet’s HQ in Sevastopol.

The Russian Defense Ministry said six people were injured in the September 22 attack, with one person unaccounted for and the HQ’s historic building suffering damage. These figures are a far cry from estimates made by Kiev – which claimed that dozens of servicemen and officers were killed and over 100 injured. US reconnaissance forces were spotted in the area near the HQ two days prior to the attack, prompting Russian and US military observers to tell Sputnik that they suspect direct NATO involvement in the strike. The UK approved the delivery of Storm Shadow cruise missile systems to Ukraine in May, with Ukraine’s armed forces subsequently using them liberally, including to attack built-up civilian areas in the Donbass. Despite generous arms deliveries, intelligence and other support to Kiev, the United States and most of its allies refuse to admit that the Ukrainian crisis is a NATO proxy war against Russia.

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Where do they find these people?

Nothing Is Off Table To Get Ukraine Into EU – Parliament President (G.)

The European Union must begin a major wave of change to prepare for the arrival of Ukraine as a member state, the leader of its parliament has said, with “nothing off the table”, including removing trade tariffs and giving Kyiv access to internal markets before full membership. Speaking exclusively to the Guardian, Roberta Metsola, an MEP from Malta who became the European parliament’s youngest ever president last year, said she expected member states to begin formal negotiations with Ukraine as soon as December. “If they are going fast, we should match that speed,” she urged. Metsola was the first political leader to visit Ukraine after Russia’s invasion, meeting the country’s president, President Zelenskiy, in Kyiv on 1 April 2022, when the capital was still under curfew and surrounded by tanks.

She has made the images of that encounter a symbol of her presidency: a poster of the pair in military green, shaking hands, hangs over the Parliament courtyard. Defying caution and outright antagonism from some member states, she has given unequivocal support to Ukraine’s attempt to join the EU, a process which has advanced even as the country’s attempts to join Nato have stalled. Ukraine is one year into a what many expect will be four or five year journey. But Metsola reflects fresh thinking among some EU leaders that the bloc needs to accelerate access to Ukraine- and the Balkan states that have also applied- in order to curb the risk of Russian interference in these former Soviet territories.

“Pushing the can down the road” on enlargement will only fuel nationalism and the far-right, she warned. “It increases the extremes on the political spectrum, the Euroscepticism. Campaigns in accession countries are fought, and lost or won, on the basis of the dream and hope of the EU.” Metsola wants formal talks to begin before Christmas. The decision rests with EU ministers, who will meet formally in December after a public report in October on Ukraine’s progress in reforming its judiciary, curbing corruption and opening its markets. “I expect a concrete outcome because the worst signal could be that we have given these people targets and deadlines which we can’t meet ourselves,” said Metsola.

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They strip off the protective parts before shipping them to Kiev.

How Russia Will Deal With American Tanks in Ukraine (Sp.)

Ukraine has received some of its long-promised Abrams tanks, with the rest scheduled to be delivered later this fall. The long wait began in January, when US President Joe Biden announced that a battalions’ worth of America’s best tanks would be sent to “improve” Ukraine’s “ability to maneuver in open terrain.” The Abrams are the last of three NATO heavy tank platforms to be delivered to Ukraine to date, with Washington using promises about their deployment to get the alliance’s European members, particularly Germany, to approve the sending of their Leopard series MBTs (hundreds of Leopard 1 and Leopard 2 tanks have been sent to Kiev since then). The UK also joined in, sending 14 of its fearsome Challenger 2s – boasting the status of one of the only major MBTs in NATO armies’ service never to have been destroyed by the enemy in battle.

Russian forces taking on Ukraine’s NATO-equipped army during the summer counteroffensive soon changed all that, with dozens of Leopard 1 and Leopard 2s knocked out, and at least two of Britain’s “unbeatable” tanks taken out in fierce fighting in Zaporozhye after finally appearing on the battlefield earlier this month. [..] The Abrams tanks that Ukraine is getting aren’t up to the same standard as those used by the US military. While its tanks are receiving the same controversial depleted uranium munitions which the US and NATO have already successfully used to poison vast swathes of the former Yugoslavia and Iraq, they are not equipped with the same layer of ultra-thick DU armor plates for enhanced protection of the tank and its crew that US Army Abrams have.

Ukraine’s Abrams are made from refurbished hulls and turrets from California’s Sierra Army Depot, with their DU armor plating removed for secrecy reasons. With the tanks proving vulnerable to enemy anti-tank systems even with the DU armor installed, Russian forces should have no problem using any or all of the above-mentioned weapons systems to target them.

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Wonder what’s in the tax filings (not inflated numbers!). Wonder if the banks saw those. And if not, why.

US Judge Finds Trump Committed Fraud by Inflating Wealth, Assets (Sp.)

A New York state judge on Tuesday found former US President Donald Trump liable for fraud in a civil lawsuit that accuses the one-time commander of intentionally inflating his wealth and asset value. The 35-page ruling, brought forward by the New York Attorney General’s Office, determined Trump and company submitted multiple misleading valuations for real estate assets in official statements to insurers and other financial institutions in order to secure favorable loans and lower insurance premiums throughout the years. Properties listed in the suit included Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Florida resort, his golf course in Scotland, Trump Park Avenue, and his Seven Springs property in New York’s Westchester County, among other sites.

“In defendants’ world, rent-regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air,” Judge Arthur Engoron wrote in the decision. “That is a fantasy world, not the real world.” In granting a partial summary judgement to NY Attorney General Letitia James, Engoron outlined that such business maneuvers violated the law and as such canceled the business certificates of Trump and listed defendants, including those of his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. Also named were Allen Weisselberg, who served as the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, and company executive Jeff McConney. Additionally, Engoron ordered individual sanctions of $7,500 against lawyers who represented the listed Trump defendants and required that within 10 days’ time each defendant submit three independent receivers to manage the dissolution for the business certificates.

The Trump camp has argued claims laid out in the civil filing are barred due to the statute of limitations, with lawyer noting banks involved in the Trump-affiliated deals were far from victims as the same entities turned profits. The former president has also rejected committing any wrongdoing, instead claiming James’ suit is a politically-driven attack. The Tuesday ruling, which denied a request by Trump to end the civil fraud lawsuit, did not settle six other claims at the center of James’ lawsuit. In fact, a non-jury trial set to start on October 2 will address the remaining key points. The New York attorney general is seeking about $250 million in damages and is looking to enforce a ban on Trump doing any business in the Empire State.

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He should have given the laptop to WikiLeaks.

Hunter Biden Sues Rudy Giuliani for Spreading Contents From Laptop (Sp.)

The lawsuit, which relies on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, was filed in the Central District of California. Neither Rudy Giuliani nor Hunter Biden live in that district and the alleged crimes took place in Delaware. Whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld told Sputnik the choice was the result of “venue shopping.” Embattled first son Hunter Biden is continuing to file lawsuits against individuals he blames for the release of the contents of a laptop he reportedly abandoned at a Delaware computer repair store. The lawsuit is against former New York City mayor and Donald Trump lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. The suit, filed in the Central District of California, accuses the former mayor of “looking for, hacking into, tampering with, manipulating, copying, [and] disseminating … data that was taken or stolen,” thereby violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

It is the latest string of lawsuits brought by Hunter Biden against individuals surrounding his laptop. He also sued the owner of the non-profit Marco Polo, which has been publishing the contents of the laptop, the owner of the computer repair shop where Biden reportedly abandoned the laptop and the FBI for allegedly violating his privacy when two FBI agents told Congress and the media they were concerned the agency was slow-walking the investigation. The laptop in question first made headlines in October 2020, shortly before the 2020 presidential election. Reportedly, the computer repair shop owner had given the laptop to the FBI months before, but after not hearing anything about it on the news, contacted Giuliani’s lawyer at the time Bob Costello and provided him a copy of the computer’s hard drive. Costello is also a defendant in Biden’s latest lawsuit.

Contents of the laptop were published by the New York Post, showing the future first son smoking what appears to be crack cocaine, fornicating with suspected prostitutes and other salacious details. Further reporting on the laptop revealed emails related to Hunter Biden’s foreign business deals and financial records showing the Biden family received millions of dollars from foreign businesses, including those in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, China and Russia. Some of the email and text messages found on the iPhone backup implied that current US President Joe Biden may have joined in on some business calls with his son and references to payments made to “the big guy” have been pointed to by critics as proof the elder Biden was more involved in his son’s business deals than the president claimed. As recently as August, the US president has reiterated he “never talked business” with his son.

The laptop was originally called “Russian disinformation” by multiple media outlets in the United States, and more than 50 former senior intelligence officers signed a letter saying it had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” One by one, the various outlets who discredited the laptop as disinformation quietly admitted it was legitimate and a former CIA official testified to the House Judiciary Committee that former Biden campaign adviser and now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken “played a role in the inception.” Giuliani’s spokesman Ted Goodman pointed to the changing story of the laptop’s detractors when responding to the lawsuit. “Hunter Biden previously refused to admit ownership of the laptop. I’m not surprised he’s now falsely claiming his laptop hard drive was manipulated by Mayor Giuliani, considering the sordid material and potential evidence of crimes on that thing,” Goodman said.

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My son is the smartest man I know.

Hunter Biden Used Dad’s Classified Doc House For $250K China Wire Transfer (ZH)

Hunter Biden used his Dad’s Delaware home where classified documents were found strewn about the garage to receive more than $250,000 in Chinese wire transfers, according to the House Oversight Committee. The wires were from Wang Xin and Jonathan Li, the latter of whom ran a Chinese private equity fund (BHR) which Hunter was listed as being on the board of directors. Hunter also arranged for a meeting between Li and Joe Biden while Joe was VP, while Joe allegedly gave Li’s son a letter of recommendation. Here’s the breakdown of events from the Committee:

• 2009-2017: During his time as Vice President and prior to later payments to Hunter Biden, evidence shows Joe Biden developed a familiar relationship with Jonathan Li. Devon Archer, a Biden business associate, described how Joe Biden met with Jonathan Li for coffee in Beijing, China, had a phone call with him, and wrote college recommendation letters for his children.
• April 25, 2019: Joe Biden announced his candidacy in the 2020 presidential election.
• July 26, 2019: Wang Xin wired $10,000 with Joe Biden’s home listed on the wire.
• August 2, 2019: Jonathan Li wired $250,000 with Joe Biden’s home listed on the wire.
• October 13, 2019: George Mesires, who served as Hunter Biden’s lawyer, stated, in part, that Hunter Biden served with BHR “only as a member of its board of directors,” which was purportedly an “unpaid position.”
• October 22, 2020: During a presidential debate, Joe Biden said, “My son has not made money […] in China.”

Of note, Hunter was living at the Wilmington house while he was raking in millions of dollars from CCP-linked business dealings. Hunter was living there… Seamus Bruner (researcher for legendary bombshell-dropper Peter Schweizer), reports via Breitbart News, that “While addicted to drugs, cavorting with prostitutes, and making deals with businessmen tied to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence, Hunter Biden lived in the house where Joe Biden stored classified documents.” Second, the Washington Free Beacon reported in January that photos from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop place him at the Wilmington House in July, 2017. Of note, the classified documents were reportedly brought to the house in January of that year. The photos ‘are the most concrete evidence to date’ that Hunter – who was actively negotiating a deal with a CCP-linked Chinese energy company – had access to areas of his father’s home where classified documents were stored.

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I know there’s the EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation, and I know there’s the Digital Services Act, but I don’t know who decided that Musk is violating either.

Oh, and it’s basically all Russia Russia. Ring a bell? It’s like Trudy reacting to the Nazi he celebrated by saying we should all be wary of Russian disinformation. Same thing. Diversion. Squirrel!

EU Warns Elon Musk After X Found To Have Highest Rate Of Disinformation (G.)

The EU has issued a warning to Elon Musk to comply with sweeping new laws on fake news and Russian propaganda, after X formerly known as Twitter was found to have the highest ratio of disinformation posts of all large social media platforms. The report analysed the ratio of disinformation for a new report laying bare for the first time the scale of fake news on social media across the EU, with millions of fake accounts removed by TikTok and LinkedIn. Facebook was the second worst offender, according to the first ever report recording posts that will be deemed illegal across the EU under the Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force in August.

Nevertheless, Facebook and other tech giants, including Google, TikTok and Microsoft, have signed up to the code of practice the EU drew up to ensure they could get ready in time to operate within the confines of the new laws. Twitter left the code of practice but it is obliged under the new law to comply with the rules or face a ban across the EU. Mr Musk knows he is not off the hook by leaving the code of practice, said the European commissioner Vera Jourova, who is responsible for the implementation of the new anti-disinformation code. There are obligations under the hard law. So my message for Twitter/X is you have to comply. We will be watching what you do.

X, formerly Twitter, is the platform with the largest ratio of mis/disinformation followed by Facebook, she told reporters. The 200-page report is an account of the work the large platforms have done in the first six months of 2023 to prepare for compliance with the new law and lifts the lid on the behind-the-scenes efforts made by Facebook and others to crack down on Russian propaganda, hate speech and other disinformation. The Russian state has engaged in the war of ideas to pollute our information space with half truth and lies to create a false image that democracy is no better than autocracy, said Jourova.

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This five-month-old bar-tailed godwit smashed the record for long-distance migration following a non-stop, 11-day flight from Alaska to Tasmania: a 13,560 km journey beating the previous record, a godwit which flew 13,000 km

 

 

Burzynski

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Sep 262023
 
 September 26, 2023  Posted by at 8:10 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  43 Responses »


SalvadorDali Girl At The Window 1925

 

Zelensky’s Failed Visit to US Shows ‘End is Coming’ for Ukraine (Sp.)
Zelensky’s Wife Unsure If He Will Seek Reelection (RT)
Ukraine To Surrender On Moscow’s Terms Or Cease To Exist – Duma Speaker (TASS)
How to Prevent a Third World War (Sp.)
Slouching Towards Beelzebub (Kunstler)
Canada Saluting A Ukrainian Nazi Was No Coincidence (Eva Bartlett)
How Canada Became a Safe Haven for Ukrainian WWII-era Nazis (Sp)
Hillary Clinton Claims Russia Seeks to Meddle in 2024 Election (Tweedie)
EU to Rely on US LNG ‘For Decades’ (Sp.)
Diamonds Aren’t Forever For The Belgians – War Against Russia Instead (Helmer)
War of Economic Corridors: the India-Mideast-Europe Ploy (Pepe Escobar)
The ‘Last Man’ Teleology and the Fall of the West (Alistair Crooke)
Senator Menendez Broke the ‘Goldilocks Rule’ of Corruption (Turley)
Scientists ‘Shocked’ And ‘Alarmed’ At What’s In The mRNA Shots (Barnett)

 

 

 

 

Tucker

 

 

 

 

GOPUkr

 

 

American troops in Ukraine?

 

 

Effective
https://twitter.com/i/status/1706178028018008199

 

 

 

 

CIA Covid

 

 

USGovLie

 

 

 

 

Hmmm. Let’s see it first.

Zelensky’s Failed Visit to US Shows ‘End is Coming’ for Ukraine (Sp.)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s lackluster receptions in Washington and at the UN in his trip to the US last week, and inability to achieve major objectives, shows that his moment has passed and the end is near for Kiev, experts told Sputnik. Zelensky visited Washington on Thursday for the second time since Russia launched its special military operation. Unlike his Democratic predecessor Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy declined Zelensky’s request to address a joint session of Congress. It also came as the lower congressional chamber is struggling to pass a short-term spending plan to avoid a government shutdown at the end of the month, with continued financial support for Kiev being one of the sticking points among Republicans.

Biden did announce a new security package for Kiev, although it did not include the ATACMS long-range missiles Zelensky sought. However, according to media reports, Biden during the visit informed Zelensky that the US will send a small number of ATACMS to Ukraine for the first time. A White House National Security Council spokesperson declined a Sputnik request to confirm and comment. Retired US Army Lt. Col. and international consultant Earl Rasmussen, former Vice President of the Eurasia Institute, said Ukraine’s leader failed to achieve many objectives during his trip to the US, including isolating Russia at the Security Council and securing greater international support. Nor did he receive a strong reception from US Congress, Rasmussen observed. One would assess the US adventure as one absent of excitement and a definite disappointment, Rasmussen continued.

“There were no mass pro-Ukrainian or anti-Russian demonstrations in New York or Washington. The UN Assembly Hall was at best half full for his presentation, which seemed more based on an alternative universe,” Rasmussen told Sputnik. “Essentially this visit was a non-event with even The New York Times publishing a critical article the day before his appearance in the UN. Coincidence? Likely not.” This all comes to mean one thing – a reality that Ukraine should grasp by now, Rasmussen said. “The end is rapidly coming both for Zelensky and Ukraine,” Rasmussen said. “A military defeat is near… The question is do we seek a settlement and end the killing, or do we escalate more to try to prolong the conflict and as a result see even more lives lost and an increased chance of direct conflict.”

Former Pentagon analyst Chuck Spinney speculated that Zelensky might even be realizing his chance to rally the West behind his cause once again has come and gone. “I think Zelensky’s phony ‘Churchillian Moment’ has passed,” Spinney told Sputnik. “His body language suggests that he knows he is losing touch with his audience.” Nicolai Petro, who serves as a professor of political studies at the University of Rhode Island, said Zelensky’s trip to the United States revived public interest in the issue of Ukraine, but that he had to endure complaints from some of his sponsors about Ukraine’s lack of military success and corruption. “Alas, there is little that can be done about either of these,” Petro said. “The fact that lax oversight controls over funding and military shipments to Ukraine predictably resulted in a significant percentage of it disappearing was not revealed yesterday – sources in the White House were aware of it in April 2022 and CBS News reported on it in August 2022.” The widespread corruption that guaranteed the waste and misuse of US and NATO-supplied weapons systems would likely continue unabated, Petro predicted.

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His safe way out?

Zelensky’s Wife Unsure If He Will Seek Reelection (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky might not run for reelection next year, his wife, First Lady Elena Zelenskaya, told CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday. The difficulties of organizing elections amid a military conflict, with millions of eligible voters scattered all over the surrounding continents, might influence her husband’s decision on whether to run again, Zelenskaya said. She added that she would nevertheless “support him whatever decision he takes.” “It will also depend whether our society would need him as a president, if he will feel that Ukrainian society would no longer wish him to be the president, he will probably not run,” she added, admitting that she was uncertain of her husband’s intent.

While Zelenskaya claimed she “didn’t fully endorse” his first attempt at the presidency, she acknowledged that a second try would be “not as scary” due to the couple’s experience. She called the moderator’s question – about how she would feel if Zelensky launched a reelection bid – a “difficult” one. The Ukrainian head of state visited the US last week to meet with President Joe Biden and other leaders, coming back with a pledge of “up to $325 million” for “critical security and defense needs” from the White House, after reportedly warning American lawmakers that Kiev may lose to Russia otherwise. Washington has reportedly handed over $75 billion to Kiev in the last two years, with most of that – $46.6 billion – being military aid.

A survey published earlier this month revealed nearly eight in 10 Ukrainians blame Zelensky for the rampant corruption that plagues their country – another reason the president might be apprehensive about running for reelection. He has also complained about weakening Western support as well, using an interview with the Economist to denounce his unfaithful erstwhile benefactors as closet Russia supporters and threaten them with losses in their own elections if Kiev succumbs militarily, and social problems, should the millions of Ukrainian refugees scattered throughout Europe get unruly.

Ukrainian martial law prohibits elections, and Ukrainian security officials recently acknowledged to the Washington Post that a vote would be essentially impossible with most of the population deployed on the front lines or living outside the country. However, Kiev is facing increasing pressure from the West to at least maintain the appearance of a functioning democracy, a demand the government cannot afford to dismiss outright given the degree to which it is financially dependent on American and European largesse. In June, Zelensky acknowledged a vote could only take place after the conflict was settled, only to reverse course in August and say it was possible – as long as he got an additional $135 million.

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“Ukraine has lost 53.7% of its population since 2014..”

Ukraine To Surrender On Moscow’s Terms Or Cease To Exist – Duma Speaker (TASS)

Ukraine is fated either to capitulate on Moscow’s terms or cease to exist as a state, Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the Russian State Duma (lower house of parliament), said. “When speaking about the conflict in Ukraine, [US President Joe] Biden, [NATO Secretary General Jens] Stoltenberg and other Western officials have started calling it ‘a war of attrition.’ They have put huge amounts of money into militarizing the Kiev regime. Where has it gotten them? The simple facts are these: the West is experiencing weapons and ammunition shortages, people in Europe and the US have lost trust in politicians, and the Kiev regime’s counteroffensive has failed,” Volodin stated.

According to him, the outcome of the “war of attrition” also includes economic problems in Europe and the US, a lack of manpower for the Ukrainian armed forces, and ultimately bankruptcy and demographic disaster for Ukraine. “These seven facts speak for themselves: Ukraine will cease to exist as a state unless the Kiev regime capitulates on Russia’s terms,” Volodin stressed. “More than 10.5 million people have fled Ukraine. Another 11.2 million residents of Crimea, Sevastopol, the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions decided to join Russia. Ukraine has lost 53.7% of its population since 2014,” the State Duma speaker highlighted.

Volodin noted that, in June, then-British Defense Minister Ben Wallace stated that Western countries had run out of stockpiles of those weapons that they could send to Kiev from their own national arsenals. Biden, in turn, admitted in July that the decision to provide Ukraine with cluster munitions had been driven by the fact that stocks of conventional ammunition were exhausted. “The approval ratings of EU and US leaders have hit historical lows. The share of people who disapprove of their leaders’ performance stands at 57% for Biden, at 69% for [French President Emmanuel] Macron, and at 72% for [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz. The majority of people in the United States and European countries oppose weapons supplies to Ukraine,” the Duma speaker added.

In addition, the senior lawmaker emphasized that the NATO-backed Ukrainian military had suffered huge troop and equipment losses, while “the lack of achievements has disappointed [Kiev’s] Western sponsors.” “The economies of the Eurozone countries are going through a recession. The costs of Ukraine’s militarization have forced Germany to cut benefit payments to poor families. France has reduced the number of beneficiaries; people in need no longer receive food packages and reimbursements for drug costs. International agencies have downgraded the United States’ long-term investment rating as they expect the financial situation in the country to worsen in the next three years,” Volodin said.

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“..the moral, political, intellectual, social, and economic multi-level crisis plaguing the bulk of the collective West.”

How to Prevent a Third World War (Sp.)

The unfolding Ukraine crisis could be a prologue for a larger and more dangerous conflict, according to Russian political scientist Sergei Karaganov. “In Ukraine, we have finally stood up to the United States/West, but we have so far let them grab the initiative in matters of escalation,” Karaganov wrote in his new article. “They continuously expand and deepen their aggression by supplying increasingly deadly and dangerous weapons.” This situation is further aggravated by the evident degradation of Western elites, according to the political scientist. He particularly referred to “the moral, political, intellectual, social, and economic multi-level crisis plaguing the bulk of the collective West.” “It will only get worse in the foreseeable future,” warned Karaganov.

“Each new call from Western leaders is more foolish, reckless, and ideologically charged than the previous one, making it more dangerous for the world. They are consciously fuelling the disintegration of their societies by promoting anti-human values.” Meanwhile, modern information technology and the internet has become a convenient tool for demonization and manipulation of public perceptions. “Even now, to fight the hated Russians, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are being sent to their deaths,” wrote the scholar. “Clearly, many more are dying from the collapse of infrastructure and healthcare. These victims are either completely forgotten or deliberately downplayed. Clearly, there is an even worse attitude toward demonized Russians. Russophobia has reached almost unprecedented proportions, perhaps comparable to how the Nazis viewed Slavs and Jews.”

This is happening against the backdrop of a broken dialogue system and the collapse of the arms control system, which, while not always useful and sometimes even harmful in the past, at least provided channels of communication between leading military powers, according to Karaganov. Meanwhile, a global realignment is underway with the West waging a “desperate final battle to preserve its dominance,” as per the Russian scholar. “A seismic shift is taking place in global geopolitics, geostrategy, and geoeconomics, and it is gaining momentum. New continents are rising, and global problems are worsening. The emergence of new sources of friction and conflicts is inevitable,” he wrote. Amid this unprecedented rapid redistribution of global power from the West to the global majority, Russia has become historically designated as “its military and political core,” according to Karaganov.

[..] “Humanity is facing an existential challenge to prevent the inexorably approaching catastrophe of the Third World War within the next decade or so by forcing the West, primarily the United States, to step back and adapt to the new reality. To achieve this, we need to compel their ‘deep state’ to refresh, as much as possible, the ruling elites, whose low quality does not meet the challenges facing humanity today. The falling West may drag everyone along, including its deep state,” he highlighted. To that end, Western elites should once again realize that nuclear armageddon poses a real threat to the world, according to the scientist.

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“Never in history has such a move into tyranny been fronted by such an embarrassingly un-charismatic empty vessel..”

Slouching Towards Beelzebub (Kunstler)

From early on, our government lied about the safety of the vaccines, at the same time that they lied and confabulated about the origins of the Covid-19 virus. They continue lying about all of this to this day even as they appear to prepare for a replay of a pandemic. Now that the weekend is over, you will not read about any of this in The New York Times. Why is that? I will offer my theory: that newspaper’s business model, based on pages and pages of print advertising, is completely broken and it is on financial life-support from the CIA and / or DARPA, probably facilitated by private sector cut-outs laundering the money. That’s how dishonorable the flagship of the US news media is.

And, of course, there is the added layer of government-directed censorship, also through private sector cut-outs, that is aimed at suppressing the truth about Covid from every angle, especially the vaccines. Doesn’t all of this look rather sinister? Choose one of two possible explanations: 1) the Covid-19 episode from the beginning was a fantastic fiasco of blundering incompetence by hundreds of officials from many agencies plus elected leaders, and at every stage was made worse by additional incompetent actions aimed at concealing massive chains of prior misdeeds producing more misdeeds resulting in the wholesale collapse of authority in our country. In other words, an epic clusterfuck.

Or 2) The entire Covid episode is a chain of crimes committed deliberately with malicious intent to kill and injure large numbers of people while contriving to deprive the survivors of their basic liberties and their property. Because identical events are seen in all the other nations of Western Civ, it would be reasonable to infer some kind of coordination managed by a supervisory force or entity. What we see is a globalist coalition formed of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), The European Union (EU), the United Nations (UN), the pharmaceutical industry, the “Five Eyes” intel alliance, the global banking establishment, The Democratic Party, and scores of well-endowed non-governmental agencies such as the George Soros constellation of councils and foundations. What else is unseen?

One conspicuously strange element of the whole picture is the phantom leadership of the supposed world hegemon USA in the figurehead, “Joe Biden.” Never in history has such a move into tyranny been fronted by such an embarrassingly un-charismatic empty vessel. Never in our country’s history have our affairs whirled in such a mystifying flux of bewildering forces. Even our Civil War was a more straightforward clash of interests. Events are moving quickly now. They’re setting up the steam-table for that banquet of consequences.

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“There are even monuments honoring Nazi collaborators and Ukrainian Insurgent Army criminals still standing in Canadian cities..”

NOTE: Trudy saying he didn’t know who the guy was is nonsense. He met him the day before.

Canada Saluting A Ukrainian Nazi Was No Coincidence (Eva Bartlett)

The stomach-churning scene of the Canadian parliament giving a standing ovation three days ago to a former Waffen SS Nazi has by now made the rounds on the internet. During Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s visit to Canada, and following his predictably bombastic pan-handling speech, House Speaker Anthony Rota went on to gush praise over a Ukrainian-Canadian in parliament that day: Yaroslav Hunka, a World War II-era Nazi, calling him “a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero” and thanking him for his service. Two days later, Rota issued an apology for lauding the man, saying he had “recognized an individual in the gallery” and had subsequently become aware of “more information which causes me to regret my decision to do so.”

Just to be clear – since Rota was not – the individual he meekly referred to was Yaroslav Hunka, and the information which made Rota remorseful was that Hunka had been a voluntary member of 1st Galician Division of the Waffen SS – you know, the one accused of mass murdering Poles, Jews and Ukrainians in Ukraine and Poland, as well as committing other atrocities. Whereas Rota claims he was unaware of Hunka’s service as a Nazi, given that he had also praised Hunk for fighting “for Ukrainian independence against the Russians,” one can assume this is the service he referred to. In his apology, Rota stated, “no one, including fellow parliamentarians and the Ukraine delegation, was aware of my intention or of my remarks before I delivered them.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office denied any knowledge of Hunka and his Nazi service, stating, “The Speaker had his own allotment of guest seating at Friday’s address, which were determined by the Speaker and his office alone.” Whether Trudeau (and his Stepan Bandera-sympathizing deputy PM Chrystia Freeland) knew about Yaroslav Hunka or not, the question remains: why was he never brought to justice? He, or any of the other 2,000 SS Nazis Canada reportedly took in in the years following WW2. Having been accepted as anti-communist refugees with little to no scrutiny, these suspected war criminals and collaborators have been allowed to live out the rest of their days in peace, and most of them have done so openly under their own names, as the Simon Wiesenthal Center has repeatedly reported.

There is much to be said about Canada’s history with Ukrainian Nazis. Not only did it take them in after WW2, but the government-backed Ukrainian Canadian Congress, which, until recently, listed Nazi-collaborator veterans organizations as members, as well as government-funded Ukrainian ‘youth centers’ that celebrate Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevich. There are even monuments honoring Nazi collaborators and Ukrainian Insurgent Army criminals still standing in Canadian cities. Canada has also supported modern-day Nazis in Ukraine itself, by training members of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion on Canadian soil, although Canadian corporate media has in recent years attempted to downplay this.

Radio Canada reported in April 2022 that the Canadian Armed Forces, “did contribute to the training of soldiers of the Azov regiment in 2020, to the point where this unit is now boasting of being able to train its own soldiers according to Western standards.” The Ottawa Citizen, writing about this report, cited a 2017 briefing by Canada’s Joint Task Force Ukraine as saying, “Multiple members of Azov have described themselves as Nazis.” In November 2021, the same Ottawa Citizen journalist wrote about Canadian officials meeting with leaders from the Azov Battalion in June 2018. Canadian officers and diplomats, “did not object to the meeting and instead allowed themselves to be photographed with battalion officials despite previous warnings that the unit saw itself as pro-Nazi.”

Hunka
https://twitter.com/DD_Geopolitics/status/1706215091878744123

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“When the news of her relative’s true past leaked out, Ottawa immediately characterized it as a “Russian disinformation” campaign aimed at “destabiliz[ing] Western democracies..”

How Canada Became a Safe Haven for Ukrainian WWII-era Nazis (Sp.)

Before World War II, Ukrainian Canadians were among the most tightly knit, pro-labor, pro-Moscow, and anti-fascist migrant communities living in the True North Strong and Free. That began to change after the war and the arrival of thousands of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators wanted for war crimes across Eastern Europe. This is their story. The scandal over the Canadian parliament’s move to honor Ukrainian Waffen SS veteran Yaroslav Hunka continues to swirl, with Canada’s opposition leader, Poland, Jewish groups, Russia and the United Nations demanding accountability. Hunka, 98, was in attendance during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to the House of Commons last Friday, and was introduced to lawmakers as a veteran of the “struggle for Ukrainian independence against the Russians during the Second World War.” He received a standing ovation from the legislature.

It soon emerged that the former soldier carried out his “struggle for Ukrainian independence” as a member of the infamous 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the Nazi SS, also known as 14th SS-Volunteer Division Galicia. Formed in 1943 and made up mostly of ethnic Ukrainians, the Wehrmacht-subordinated fighting formation was recruited from among fascist radicals, and was responsible for the mass murder of anti-fascist and communist Ukrainians, Red Army troops, anti-fascist partisans, and Polish, Jewish, Russian and Slovak civilians. Between 1943 and its surrender to the Western allies in May 1945, 14th SS-Volunteer Division Galicia rampaged through Eastern Europe. It was used for “police actions” against Polish and Soviet partisans in western Ukraine and eastern Poland, deployed to wipe out up to hundreds of civilians at a time in the Polish settlements like Huta Pieniacka, Podkamien, Chodaczkowo Wielkie, Prehoryle, Smogligow, and Borow, and thrown into meat grinders against the Red Army (where it took heavy losses approaching 75 percent during brutal fighting at Brody, Lvov region in July 1944).

The remnants of the division were evacuated and deployed in Slovakia in the late summer of 1944 to put down the Slovak National Uprising, and then sent to suppress partisan operations in Yugoslavia in January 1945. In March 1945, the formation retreated to Austria, taking heavy losses while trying to hold back Soviet forces in and around Graz during the desperate closing months of the war. Ukrainian fascist forces later incorporated into the division also took part in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising between August and September of 1944, although the division itself did not take part. [..] The scandal surrounding Hunka is not the first of its kind. In 2017, independent media outlet Consortium News was attacked by Canadian authorities after revealing that Chrystia Freeland, the senior Trudeau cabinet member then serving as Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, had attempted to cover up her grandfather Mykhailo Khomiak’s past as an editor of a Nazi newspaper in occupied Poland during WWII.

Canadian media later followed up on the allegations, confirming the information, and revealing that Freeland not only knew of her grandfather’s dark past, but helped edit an academic article in the Journal of Ukrainian Studies by her uncle, John-Paul Kimka, professor emeritus at the University of Alberta, in the 1990s a bid to whitewash the Nazi propagandist’s activities. When the news of her relative’s true past leaked out, Ottawa immediately characterized it as a “Russian disinformation” campaign aimed at “destabiliz[ing] Western democracies,” with Freeland claiming her grandparents fled the war in 1939 as “political exiles with a responsibility to keep alive the idea of an independent Ukraine.” After the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis in early 2022, Freeland, now deputy prime minister, got into more trouble after tweeting (and after public outrage deleting) a photo of herself holding a banner sporting the colors of the notorious fascist militant formation known as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrainian acronym UPA), along with the UPA’s slogan “Slava Ukraini” (lit. “Glory to Ukraine”).

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I’m not terribly unpopular. That can’t be it. People love me.

Hillary Clinton Claims Russia Seeks to Meddle in 2024 Election (Tweedie)

Failed presidential runner Hillary Clinton has repeated her discredited claims of Russian interference in US elections. Clinton dusted off the 2016 ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy theory she used to explain her defeat by Donald Trump in an interview with MSNBC’s Jen Psaki — the former White House press secretary renowned for her inability to answer journalist’s questions. Psaki claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “interfered in our elections in the past” — directly contradicting the findings of special counsel John Durham’s inquiry that the claim was “uncorroborated” — and asked Clinton if she feared it would happen in 2024. “I don’t think, despite all of the deniers, there is any doubt that he interfered in our election, or that he has interfered in many ways in the internal affairs of other countries, funding political parties, funding political candidates, buying off government officials in different places,” Clinton claimed.

Her tone became increasingly paranoid as she went on. “He hates democracy. He particularly hates the West and he especially hates us,” Clinton ranted. “And he has determined that he can do two things simultaneously. He can try to continue to damage and divide us internally, and he’s quite good at it.” The former secretary of state and senator, the wife of disgraced ex-president Bill Clinton, even believed that Putin had a personal grudge against her. “Part of the reason he worked so hard against me is because he didn’t think that he wanted me in the White House,” Clinton complained. “Part of the challenge is to continue to explain to the American public that the kind of leader Putin is.” She then reeled off a series of unproven allegations against the Russian president, including that he was responsible for the deaths of opposition figures and journalists — and interfered in the 2016 US elections to ensure she lost to Trump.

“I fear that the Russians will prove themselves to be quite adept at interfering, and if he has a chance, he’ll do it again,” Clinton concluded. Durham’s report, finally released in June 2023, found that former Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) Director James Comey’s operation Crossfire Hurricane probe — oddly named after a Rolling Stones lyric — was founded on “raw, un-analyzed and uncorroborated” intelligence and should never have been launched. It said the FBI was guilty of misconduct and was in need of reform, but did not lay individual blame on any of the numerous officials involved — from Comey to Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, two agents entwined in an extra-marital affair at the federal agency.

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Brussels sold out the EU.

EU to Rely on US LNG ‘For Decades’ (Sp.)

The European Union’s much-touted self-harming intention to diversify from Russian natural gas means it will be forced to rely on America’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) for decades to come, the bloc’s top energy official has admitted. The EU’s ambitious climate goals and pledge to phase out fossil fuels are also likely to be shoved on the back burner, as Ditte Juul Jorgensen, director general for energy at the European Commission, told a media report that the bloc’s reliance on exports of US LNG was not going away any time soon. While the official touted “conservation” and more renewable energy, such as wind and solar, as the “instruments” at the disposal of the EU that would allow it to survive another energy crisis in the coming winter, she added: “We will need some fossil molecules in the system over the coming couple of decades. And in that context, there will be a need for American energy,” said Jorgensen in an interview in New York.

Last year, when Brussels cobbled together package after package of sanctions targeting Russia over Ukraine, anyone with a clear understanding of the energy needs of the 27-member bloc could have foreseen that it was backing itself into a corner. The EU’s proclaimed decision to wean itself off Russian gas, along with “net zero carbon emissions by 2050” goals were a tough act to follow through on. Sure enough, now, for all intents and purposes, Brussels will continue to consume expensive US LNG beyond the end of the decade, to the frustration of politicians and environmental campaigners. Brussels waded into an agreement with the administration of US President Joe Biden in March 2022 to “work toward the goal of ensuring, until at least 2030, demand for approximately 50 billion cubic metres (bcm) of additional US LNG.” At the time, the pact was struck on the basis that it was consistent with EU and US shared climate goals.

“We aim to reduce this dependency on Russian fossil fuels and get rid of it. This can only be achieved through… additional gas supplies, including LNG deliveries,” EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said at a joint news conference with Joe Biden at the time. Jorgensen’s new statements will help European buyers “clear the path forward” now, the report added, citing initial evidence of reluctance to sign deals with US suppliers past the 2030 deadline. America’s LNG exports to EU member states surged more than twofold last year, reaching 56 bcm in 2022. Just a year before that, the shipped amount had been 22 bcm annually. There has been an echo of frustrated voices from some European politicians complaining that US LNG contracts are fraught with risks to the EU’s climate goals. But the reality is that US LNG companies are signing increasingly more long-term supply deals with Europe. Thus, America’s largest LNG exporter – Cheniere Energy – has struck a deal for two contracts with Europe-based Equinor and BASF to ship 2.55mn tons annually far into the 2040s.

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“Russian production is less than demand in developing countries.”

Diamonds Aren’t Forever For The Belgians – War Against Russia Instead (Helmer)

[..] the US-NATO blockade of the Russian tanker trade is Napoleonic in the obviousness of the miscalculation; it is also Napoleonic in the magnitude of losses on the NATO side — and the acceleration of profits on the Russian side. In today’s new episode, the battleground is the diamond trade based in Antwerp, Belgium. Almost $14 billion worth of diamonds are imported annually for cutting, polishing, and trading there, and about the same value is exported. In their rough form, most of the diamonds in the Belgian market have been mined in Russia, and either sent direct to the Antwerp diamond market, or indirectly through India. Most of the diamonds exported from Antwerp have been going to India, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Israel. The Israeli diamond processing business exports mostly to the US jewellery market.

The diamond trade in Europe has traditionally been a Jewish operation; until the Germans arrived in 1940 that was based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, for four hundred years. German race hatred wiped out the Jews of Amsterdam; Belgian race hatred for Russians is about to wipe out the Antwerp diamond market. The Jewish business is about to become an Arab one. As one Antwerp diamantaire described the situation, “if the Belgian government thinks it’s giving the finger to the Russians, all that will happen is that the diamond on that finger will move, and the finger will be what Dubai will be pointing.” Martin Rapaport’s price sheet for the trade in Tel Aviv and New York reports that in Belgium “sentiment [is] very low. Serious concerns for coming months.

0.50 and 1 ct. [carat] diamonds especially weak due to sluggish US orders. Many hope holiday activity will kickstart trading. Uncertainty surrounds Russian diamonds as fresh sanctions loom.” Rapaport, a dual Israeli-American citizen and self-reported “world’s largest and most trusted marketplace for diamonds & jewelry”, has been promoting fresh sanctions against Russian diamonds to cut the volume of Russian rough in the global market; these have been causing diamond inventories to overflow, diamond prices to fall, and Israeli margins to shrink. “Russia was the wild card in 2022. Whereas it was assumed the sanctions imposed in February by the US on Russian-sourced diamonds would lead to shortages, the goods continued to enter the market — propping up polished inventories.”

[..] “The G7 countries account for about 80-90 million carats of diamond consumption per year. As for India and China, this figure is at the level of 60 million carats. That is, the Group of Seven is ahead in this area, but taking into account the fact that Russia produces about 40 million carats annually, India and China can take all this volume. As for the possible restrictions in this industry, I think the situation will be similar to similar sanctions against oil, which is now being quietly sold to India and China, albeit at a certain discount to the world price. As far as I understand, after cutting, it is quite difficult to separate diamonds of Russian origin from other stones. But if, after all, technology will somehow control the process of selling diamonds, then the Russian Federation, taking into account the capacity of the markets, can really send supplies to developing countries. Russian production is less than demand in developing countries.”

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“..dangling an enticing Divide and Rule carrot that promises Things That Cannot Be Delivered..”

War of Economic Corridors: the India-Mideast-Europe Ploy (Pepe Escobar)

The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) is a massive public diplomacy op launched at the recent G20 summit in New Delhi, complete with a memorandum of understanding signed on 9 September. Players include the US, India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the EU, with a special role for the latter’s top three powers Germany, France, and Italy. It’s a multimodal railway project, coupled with trans-shipments and with ancillary digital and electricity roads extending to Jordan and Israel. If this walks and talks like the collective west’s very late response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched 10 years ago and celebrating a Belt and Road Forum in Beijing next month, that’s because it is. And yes, it is, above all, yet another American project to bypass China, to be claimed for crude electoral purposes as a meager foreign policy “success.”

No one among the Global Majority remembers that the Americans came up with their own Silk Road plan way back in 2010. The concept came from the State Department’s Kurt Campbell and was sold by then-Secretary Hillary Clinton as her idea. History is implacable, it came down to nought. And no one among the Global Majority remembers the New Silk Road plan peddled by Poland, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Georgia in the early 2010s, complete with four troublesome trans-shipments in the Black Sea and the Caspian. History is implacable, this too came down to nought. In fact, very few among the Global Majority remember the $40 trillion US-sponsored Build Back Better World (BBBW, or B3W) global plan rolled out with great fanfare just two summers ago, focusing on “climate, health and health security, digital technology, and gender equity and equality.”

A year later, at a G7 meeting, B3W had already shrunk to a $600 billion infrastructure-and-investment project. Of course, nothing was built. History really is implacable, it came down to nought. The same fate awaits IMEC, for a number of very specific reasons. The whole IMEC rationale rests on what writer and former Ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar deliciously described as “conjuring up the Abraham Accords by the incantation of a Saudi-Israeli tango.” This tango is Dead On Arrival; even the ghost of Piazzolla can’t revive it. For starters, one of the principals – Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman – has made it clear that Riyadh’s priorities are a new, energized Chinese-brokered relationship with Iran), with Turkey, and with Syria after its return to the Arab League.

Moreover, both Riyadh and its Emirati IMEC partner share immense trade, commerce, and energy interests with China, so they’re not going to do anything to upset Beijing. At face value, IMEC proposes a joint drive by G7 and BRICS 11 nations. That’s the western method of seducing eternally-hedging India under Modi and US-allied Saudi Arabia and the UAE to its agenda. Its real intention, however, is not only to undermine BRI, but also the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INTSC), in which India is a major player alongside Russia and Iran. The game is quite crude and really quite obvious: a transportation corridor conceived to bypass the top three vectors of real Eurasia integration – and BRICS members China, Russia, and Iran – by dangling an enticing Divide and Rule carrot that promises Things That Cannot Be Delivered.

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How did Brzezinski and Fukuyama ever become so influential?

The ‘Last Man’ Teleology and the Fall of the West (Alistair Crooke)

As is well known, the Mackinder ‘Pivot of History’ doctrine (1904) of ‘he who controls the Asian heartland controls the world’ was cemented into the U.S. zeitgeist as the unassailable doctrine that a united Heartland – which might challenge the U.S. – must never be allowed. To which Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser, added that the Ukraine, by virtue of its divided national identities, entwined in old complexities, should be seen as the hinge around which heartland power revolved: ‘Absent Ukraine, Russia would never become the heartland power; but with Ukraine, Russia can and would’, Brzezinski averred. Well, that was the idea – to mobilise fierce Ukrainian ultranationalism versus a weak Russia, and put them to fight each other.

But the evolution of the ‘Brzezinski doctrine’ – quite surprisingly – segued into a series of western mythological errors: First, that Russia was easily defeated in Afghanistan, by a few lightly armed jihadists (not true). Secondly, that the Soviet Union and its satellites were overthrown by ‘Revolutions from Below’ (also not true). And thirdly, that a powerful U.S. Security-State ‘Leviathan’ could ensure U.S. hegemony (through mounting ‘Revolutions from Below’). Brzezinski’s prime intent may originally have been to keep Russia and China divided from each other. But the Soviet Union’s sudden implosion (unrelated to Afghanistan) was crafted narratively to lend credence to Francis Fukuyama’s End of History and the Last Man meme. After the Cold War and the Soviet communist empire’s collapse, the American political, cultural and economic model was widely held to be the ‘Last Man Standing’.

‘Afghanistan’ also fostered the myth of Islamic insurgents as the ideal solvents for ‘backward’ states needing new western, forward-thinking leaders. (It was Brzezinski who persuaded Carter to insert Islamic radicalism into Afghanistan to undermine the Russian-supported, socialist Najibullah). ‘Afghanistan’ effectively was the pilot for the ‘Arab Spring’ – a global ‘house-cleaning’ that, it was claimed, would end vestiges of earlier Soviet influence, and create new stability. The excitement in neo-con circles was palpable. And America’s Cold War success was attributed (apart from western culture’s ‘genetic’ advantages) to the empowerment of the military-security apparati. In theory, the end to the Cold War might have been an opportunity to return to the U.S. Founders’ original principles of distance from European conflicts and of caution toward military and security Leviathans.

The Soviet implosion seemed a harbinger of global tensions vented; pressures released. But then, ‘something’ extraneous, out-of-the-blue, happened; something that in a stroke, reversed the logic of the Cold War expected ‘peace dividend’ by “invigorating the military-security state to new heights”, Gordon Hahn notes. The power of the military-security state began, from this point onward, to be deployed abroad – in the service of the globalising cultural war. What had happened was ‘9/11’. But then a new ‘twist’ took America away, on an entirely different path. Barack Obama infused new energy into the military-security state. The Obama administration however, was not so much motivated by overseas hegemony (though not opposed to it). The focus though was on bringing forward the cultural revolution underway in the U.S. What had happened? And how is Ukraine connected to this?

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“..Menendez pursued gifts with a reckless abandon, endangering others whose corruption was more circumspect..”

Senator Menendez Broke the ‘Goldilocks Rule’ of Corruption (Turley)

In 2010, I defended a federal judge, Thomas Porteous, in his impeachment trial, against charges that he had taken gifts and misused his office for personal gain. The curious thing about Senate trials is that you have a jury composed of people you could strike for cause in a real court. Menendez was among those sitting in judgment of Porteous, but he wasn’t just another face in the Senate crowd — he stood out. It was like arguing a piracy case with Captain Jack Sparrow sitting on the jury. Menendez himself would later go on trial in 2017 in a major bribery and fraud case involving luxury gifts allegedly exchanged for official favors. Most of us expected the worst when, during jury deliberations, one juror asked the court, “What is a senator?” Menendez dodged the bullet. The jury hung and the Justice Department dropped all charges.

Now Menendez has been slapped with a massive new bribery indictment. The facts are all too familiar, with a long list of lavish gifts allegedly made in exchange for favors. The indictment details gold bars, hundreds of thousands of dollars, furnishings and other gifts. His wife was allegedly actively involved in this corruption conspiracy and is also facing criminal charges. During the Porteous trial, I noted that, at the time of the underlying acts, the senators themselves were accepting free lunches. It was not until later that the rules changed on such gifts. Menendez now stands accused of accepting a host of gifts at that time, including an $8,000 free flight in October 2010, in addition to luxury trips to Paris and a Caribbean villa.

Yet Menendez still demanded the conviction of Porteous, even though the judge was never charged with bribery, and free lunches and the other gifts would not be enough to even register with Menendez. The question is whether this level of corruption is now enough for Democrats. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) recently suggested a type of Goldilocks rule for corruption. He warned that people in Washington had better be careful if they want to crack down on the Biden family’s influence-peddling. “If that’s the new criteria, there are a lot of folks in a lot of industries — not just in politics — where people have family members and relationships and they’re trying to parlay and get a little influence and benefit in that respect. That’s hardly unique.” It would appear that the question is not corruption, but when a little corruption is “just right.”

If these allegations against Menendez are proven, then he violated Washington’s Goldilocks rule. It would mean that Menendez pursued gifts with a reckless abandon, endangering others whose corruption was more circumspect. Consider the timeline: It would mean that during the Porteous trial, Menendez was allegedly accepting gifts while condemning and removing from office a judge accused of receiving gifts. Later, after the jury hung in his first corruption trial, Menendez (according to the Justice Department) almost immediately started taking gifts from new sources. In a town known for a certain finesse in influence peddling, Menendez broke with industry custom by allegedly accepting direct items like gold and a car. This is classic bribery stuff. There was no labyrinth of shell companies and accounts — just crude old-school corruption, with cash stuffed in clothing and gold bars squirreled away for a rainy day.

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“..under the Gene Technology Act (2000) definition, the DNA contamination is a genetically modified organism (GMO)..”

Scientists ‘Shocked’ And ‘Alarmed’ At What’s In The mRNA Shots (Barnett)

Early in 2023, genomics scientist Kevin McKernan made an accidental discovery. While running an experiment in his Boston lab, McKernan used some vials of mRNA Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines as controls. He was ‘shocked’ to find that they were allegedly contaminated with tiny fragments of plasmid DNA.McKernan, who has 25 years’ experience in his field, ran the experiment again, confirming that the vials contained up to, in his opinion, 18-70 times more DNA contamination than the legal limits allowed by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In particular, McKernan was alarmed to find the presence of an SV40 promoter in the Pfizer vaccine vials. This is a sequence that is, ‘…used to drive DNA into the nucleus, especially in gene therapies,’ McKernan explains.

This is something that regulatory agencies around the world have specifically said is not possible with the mRNA vaccines. Knowing that the contamination had not been disclosed by the manufacturers during the regulatory process, McKernan raised the alarm, posting his findings to Twitter (now X) and Substack with a call-out to other scientists to see if they could replicate his findings. Other scientists soon confirmed McKernan’s findings, though the amount of DNA contamination was variable, suggesting inconsistency of vial contents depending on batch lots. One of these scientists was cancer genomics expert Dr Phillip Buckhaults, who is a proponent of the mRNA platform and has received the Pfizer Covid vaccine himself. In September of this year, Dr Buckhaults shared his findings in South Carolina Senate hearing.

‘I’m kind of alarmed about this DNA being in the vaccine – it’s different from RNA, because it can be permanent,’ he told those present. ‘There is a very real hazard,’ he said, that the contaminant DNA fragments will integrate with a person’s genome and become a ‘permanent fixture of the cell’ leading to autoimmune problems and cancers in some people who have had the vaccinations. He also noted that these genome changes can ‘last for generations’. Dr Buckhaults alleges that the presence of high levels of contaminant DNA in the mRNA vaccines ‘may be causing some of the rare but serious side effects, like death from cardiac arrest’. He added, ‘I think this is a real serious regulatory oversight that happened at the federal level.’ Dr Buckhaults’ concerns are shared by McKernan, who presented his findings to the FDA in June.

At the time of writing, McKernan had not received any response from the FDA on the matter. Dr Buckhaults said in the Senate hearing that he had emailed his findings to the FDA, but he had not received a response either. In Australia, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) maintains that Covid vaccines cannot alter a person’s DNA. A spokesperson for the TGA stated, ‘The mRNA in the vaccines does not enter the nucleus of cells and is not integrated into the human genome. Thus, the mRNA does not cause genetic damage or affect the offspring of vaccinated individuals.’ They also said, ‘All batches of Covid vaccines distributed to Australians have been tested for the presence of contaminants including residual DNA template levels.’

However, a legal case filed in the Australian Federal Court in July of this year alleges that the TGA is not the appropriate regulator of Covid mRNA vaccines because, under the Gene Technology Act (2000) definition, the DNA contamination is a genetically modified organism (GMO). The plaintiff, Victorian doctor and pharmacist Dr Julian Fidge, is seeking an injunction to stop Pfizer and Moderna from distributing their mRNA Covid vaccines because they never obtained a license from the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR), which is the agency that oversees all GMO related products. The TGA did not require tests for genotoxicity or carcinogenicity before providing provisional approval and, eventually, full registration of both the Moderna and Pfizer Covid vaccines.

OGTR guidance strongly suggests such tests should be undertaken where there exists a risk of harm to human health. McKernan, who provided expert advice on the case, agrees that the DNA contamination in the mRNA vaccines fits the Australian legal definition of a GMO. But there is also a second component of the mRNA vaccines that fits the definition. That’s the mRNA itself, which is actually modified RNA wrapped in lipid nanoparticles (LNPs). The case argues that this ‘LNP-mod-RNA complex’ falls under the legal definition of a GMO and that, like the DNA contamination, it has the capacity to enter the cell nucleus and integrate into the human genome.

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Hoof

 

 

 

 

Drink my house
https://twitter.com/i/status/1706211277100536040

 

 

PianoElephant

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Sep 252023
 
 September 25, 2023  Posted by at 8:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  43 Responses »


Vincenzo Camuccini La Morte Di Cesare 1804

 

Russia Will Ask Canada to Explain Decision to Honor Nazi Veteran (Sp.)
“They’re All Afraid” (WeltWoche.ch)
US Government Stopped Me From Interviewing Putin – Tucker Carlson (RT)
Dossier To Accuse Russia Of Deliberately Causing Starvation In Ukraine (G.)
Zelensky’s Vow to Continue Offensive Through Winter is Wishful Thinking (Sp.)
Western Officials Pressuring Zelensky To Hold Elections – WaPo (RT)
Brussels Should Buy Ukrainian Grain For Africa – Lavrov (RT)
Russell Brand, Another Truth Warrior ‘Guilty Until Proven Innocent’ (Bridge)
Is Censorship a Partisan Issue? (RCP)
Trump Leading Biden By Double Digits – Poll (RT)
Biden Scapegoats ‘Extreme’ Republicans For Looming Government Shutdown (Sp.)
My Addiction: A Playlist in Three Acts (Scott Ritter)

 

 

1997

 

 

Freak show

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the Russians, this is the same as supporting the Azov batallion.

“..it is impossible to do business with the current Trudeau cabinet, which is the personification of neoliberal fascism..”

“I believe that this is not a mistake. This is simply a consequence of the impunity of former Nazi criminals, the impunity of the activities of the Canadian Ukrainian Congress..”

Russia Will Ask Canada to Explain Decision to Honor Nazi Veteran (Sp.)

Russian Ambassador to Canada Oleg Stepanov told Sputnik that on Monday he would request explanations from the Canadian Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister’s office in connection with the invitation and honoring in the country’s parliament of Ukrainian Nazi veteran Yaroslav Hunka. On Friday, Hunka, a 98 years-old Ukrainian Nazi veteran who fought in the ranks of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the Nazi SS during the Second World War, was given a standing ovation by the entire Canadian legislature. Hunka’s recognition happened as the Speaker of the House of Commons, Anthony Rota, was giving introductory remarks prior to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to the Canadian parliament.

“The embassy will take appropriate official steps. We will, of course, demand clarification from the Canadian government,” Stepanov said, adding that the notes would be sent on Monday to the Foreign Ministry and the office of the Prime Minister. At the same time, Stepanov noted that he has no illusions about the response of the Canadian government as it has become “a nest for Nazi criminals.” “We, of course, will make the necessary demarches, but I have no illusions because it is impossible to do business with the current Trudeau cabinet, which is the personification of neoliberal fascism,” Stepanov added. But Stepanov does not believe the invitation was the merely the result of negligence, but rather stems from Canada’s policy towards former Nazi party members.

“I believe that this is not a mistake. This is simply a consequence of the impunity of former Nazi criminals, the impunity of the activities of the Canadian Ukrainian Congress, which consists of children and grandchildren, who are mainly descendants of these Nazi henchmen, punishers, SS men,” Stepanov said. He also recalled the process of the extradition of Helmut Oberlander, which was dragged out until the death of this Nazi collaborator “in the comfort and care of Western medicine,” about the monuments to the punishers of the 14th SS-Volunteer Division “Galicia” and the Nachtigall Battalion in Canadian cemeteries, etc.

“The fact that in our time this is possible in a country that was a member of the anti-Hitler coalition, which is considered civilized, tolerant, and a supporter of respect for all human rights, the fact that neo-Nazism lives and flourishes here is simply unacceptable, but apparently Canada, under the auspices of the United States, is getting away with everything,” Stepanov added. On Sunday, Rota apologized for his decision to invite Hunka. Trudeau’s office said, in turn, that neither the Canadian prime minister nor Zelensky’s delegation were notified in advance of the invitation of Hunka.

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“They’re trying to put Trump in prison for the crime of running against Joe Biden … That’s what this election’s about.”

“They’re All Afraid” (WeltWoche.ch)

Tucker Carlson is unstoppable. Since his sudden departure from Fox News he scores record viewer ratings. In an exclusive interview with Weltwoche, the political media star demolishes the mainstream media’s manipulation machine, reveals his concerns about a potential Donald Trump Restoration, he speaks about the disturbing state of the Biden family and discusses what’s next for him in a Post-Fox News Order. When Tucker Carlson departed the Fox News Channel in April, his enemies cheered. But if they thought the happy warrior had finally been defeated, their judgment was as dismal as their approval ratings. With an assist from Elon Musk, Carlson is reaching an even larger, global audience with his new show, “Tucker Carlson on Twitter (now known as ‘X’).”

The veteran newscaster has expanded his mission: to defeat the mainstream media’s suffocating bias and incuriosity not just about critical events at home but in capitals around the world. When we reach him, Carlson has just returned from the United Arab Emirates where he met with its president, Mohamed bin Zayed. Carlson pronounces the sheikh “the most interesting, wisest leader I’ve ever spoken to” — a provocative assessment given that the talk show host sat across from Donald J. Trump last month. Of the Arab leader, Carlson enthuses, “I’ve never met a more humble leader, ever — and I believe humility is a prerequisite for wisdom.” Carlson is far less kind about his colleagues in the press. “They’re all fearful people,” the 54-year-old scoffs. Instead of holding the powerful to account, “they do exactly the opposite.” Indeed, “they do their bidding.”

Looking ahead to the Presidential elections in 2024, he says: “They’re trying to put Trump in prison for the crime of running against Joe Biden … That’s what this election’s about. Are we going to allow that, or aren’t we? And I just don’t think we can.”

Weltwoche: Since leaving Fox and going solo with your new show, “Tucker Carlson On Twitter (now known as ‘X’),” your posts have logged tens and sometimes hundreds of millions of views. You’re taking off like Buzz Lightyear. Are you feeling the freedom? To explore more topics and ideas? To express your views?” Tucker Carlson: “Well, definitely. If anything, I’ve expressed my views less. I haven’t done many straight-to-camera scripts where I write the script and give my opinion. I’ve done what I’ve wanted to do for a long time but couldn’t, which is get on an airplane and go see the rest of the world. I couldn’t because I had a daily show I had to do.

I’ve become convinced over the past several years — particularly since the war in Ukraine began — that the world is changing much more quickly than most Americans understand. And because there’s virtually no coverage of the rest of the world in American media, Americans don’t have a good sense of it. What we, in this country, refer to as the “Post-War Order” — the institutions set up in the wake of World War II to keep the world peaceful and prosperous and the United States at the top of the pyramid, and that would include the dominance of the dollar, the SWIFT system, NATO — all of that appears to me to be crumbling. That’s my view of it. I’ve wanted to travel and see if that is, in fact, happening — and it is.

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“I’m a much more loyal American than, say, Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, who didn’t even grow up in this country; she grew up in Canada. And they’re telling me what it is to be a loyal American?”

US Government Stopped Me From Interviewing Putin – Tucker Carlson (RT)

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has alleged in a recent interview that unnamed figures in Washington obstructed his attempts to interview Russian president Vladimir Putin. “I tried to interview Vladimir Putin, and the US government stopped me,” Carlson claimed in an interview with Swiss publication Die Weltwoche published on Thursday. He also explained that he felt let down by the lack of support for his situation that he says he received from US news media. He said: “I don’t think there was anybody who said ‘wait a second. I may not like this guy but he has a right to interview anyone he wants, and we have a right to hear what Putin says’.” The 54-year-old added: “You’re not allowed to hear Putin’s voice. Because why? There was no vote on it. No one asked me.”

The often-controversial media personality didn’t elaborate on the circumstances under which he says there was government intrusion into his plans to interview Putin but it appeared to suggest that it was the current Biden administration which was behind the meddling. Carlson also didn’t mention when the interview with the Russian leader was supposed to take place. “I’m an American citizen,” Carlson told Die Weltwoche. “I’m a much more loyal American than, say, Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, who didn’t even grow up in this country; she grew up in Canada. And they’re telling me what it is to be a loyal American?” Carlson –previously Fox News’ biggest star– parted ways with the broadcaster in April shortly after the news network settled for $787.5 million a lawsuit with voting-machine company Dominion Voting Systems. Fox News had regularly discussed claims on some of its shows that Dominion’s machines were involved in ‘rigging’ the 2020 US presidential election.

Carlson’s show Tucker Carlson Tonight, during which he frequently discussed issues like gender, race, sexuality and ‘woke’ ideology, was specifically referenced in the Dominion lawsuit. Since leaving Fox News, Carlson has broadcast abridged versions of his news show on X (formerly Twitter) which regularly draw tens of millions of views. Meanwhile, Russia TV news channel Rossiya 24 has aired a teaser trailer for a weekend show it says is to be hosted by Carlson. The promo was first broadcast earlier this month and again on September 22 along with the words “at the weekend.” It adds that the “high-profile American presenter is moving to another level. Here.” Rossiya 24 didn’t state when the show will debut or if it will be original content or translated versions of Carlson’s X broadcasts.

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Shut up, Guardian.

Dossier To Accuse Russia Of Deliberately Causing Starvation In Ukraine (G.)

Human rights lawyers working with Ukraine’s public prosecutor are preparing a war crimes dossier to submit to the international criminal court (ICC) accusing Russia of deliberately causing starvation during the 18-month-long conflict. The aim is to document instances where the Russian invaders used hunger as a weapon of war, providing evidence for the ICC to launch the first prosecution of its kind that could indict the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Yousuf Khan, a senior lawyer with law firm Global Rights Compliance, said “the weaponisation of food has taken place in three phases,” starting with the initial invasion where Ukrainian cities were besieged and food supplies cut.

Among the incidents documented was when 20 civilians were killed in Chernihiv in the early morning of 16 March 2022, when Russian fragmentation bombs exploded outside a supermarket in the city where Ukrainians were queueing for bread and food. Investigators are also focusing on the siege of Mariupol, Khan added. Food supplies were cut to the city and humanitarian relief corridors blocked or bombed, making it very difficult or impossible for desperate, starving civilians to escape. The second phase includes the destruction of food and water supplies as well as energy sources across Ukraine during the fighting, which the lawyer described as “objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population”.

Such attacks, Khan argued, were “not crimes of result but crimes of intent” because “if you are taking out objects that civilians need, like energy infrastructure in the dead of winter, there is a foreseeability to your actions”. Cities such as Mykolaiv in the south were left without drinking water from early in the conflict after Russian forces captured the pumping station that supplied it. The remaining residents were forced to rely on water being driven in daily to ensure they could drink and wash safely. The third element is Russian attempts to prevent or restrict exports of Ukrainian food. “Then we’ve seen Russia attack grain facilities on the Danube and engage in muscle flexing on the Black Sea,” Khan said, citing reports from Ukrainian officials that 270,000 tonnes of the foodstuff were destroyed in late July and early August.

Fresh accusations that Russia sought to starve Ukrainians are particularly emotive in the light of the two countries’ history: in 1932-33, millions died of hunger in the Holodomor, an enforced famine engineered by Joseph Stalin’s Soviet government. But they have been given a renewed emphasis after the passage of a UN security council resolution in 2018 which condemned the use of starvation as a weapon of war, and revisions to the ICC’s governing Rome statute in 2019, to expand the type of cases that can be brought.

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“Who will they send to the frontline? In reality, they can assemble a new army by spring, train it at the training grounds, teach it to shoot, teach it to use equipment..”

Zelensky’s Vow to Continue Offensive Through Winter is Wishful Thinking (Sp.)

The Kiev regime is reportedly going to continue its “counteroffensive” in autumn and through winter, as per President Volodymyr Zelensky. But does Ukraine have enough resources for that? Ukraine’s president has argued that the country made a mistake by taking a pause last year after gaining some of the territory previously liberated by Russia. Speaking to the US press, after a day of meetings on Capitol Hill and the White House, Zelensky pledged to keep fighting through the autumn and winter this year. He also vowed to take Artemovsk (also known as Bakhmut) and a couple “more cities”. He said that US assistance should keep flowing to Ukraine, despite growing calls in the US Congress to reduce or halt the financial assistance altogether.

Zelensky’s vows appear to be nothing but wishful thinking: it’s unclear where he would get more troops and munitions for the protracted fighting according to Aleksey Borzenko, a military journalist and deputy chief editor of the “Literary Russia” newspaper. “Who will attack? Over the past two or three months, the Russian Army has crushed a large number of [Ukrainian] personnel, armored vehicles and howitzers. So who will attack? This question is very important. Who will they send to the frontline? In reality, they can assemble a new army by spring, train it at the training grounds, teach it to shoot, teach it to use equipment,” Borzenko told Sputnik. It’s unlikely that they would come with some sort of a sophisticated offensive strategy, according to the expert.

They have already used both Western and old Soviet tactics to attack Russia’s positions; they tried to push through Russia’s defenses in large groups and in small groups. However, they got bogged down, sustained heavy losses, and eventually failed to move through Russia’s multi-layered defenses, Borzenko noted. Likewise, they are unlikely to use NATO-grade heavy tanks during autumn and winter, since these heavy armored vehicles are not meant for dire weather conditions, the expert continued. He suggested that the Ukrainian military will use what it has left of its Soviet-era T-72 stash. “What other weapon [could be used]? They are waiting for aviation, but the F-16 will not change much,” he said. “[Russian forces] will hunt for them and shoot them down.

But they also need F-16s not so that they can organize air battles on the line of contact with [Russian] fighters, but in order to launch tactical missiles. These are all the latest missiles that they received in a few months, and they are waiting for ATACMS. Still, Zelensky specified during his recent interviews with US media that those long-range missiles would be used to “strike targets deeper” in Russia’s territory. This fits into Kiev’s terrorist tactics of launching strikes against civilian areas, nuclear power plants and infrastructure facilities in Russia. Yet this does not have anything to do with the balance of power on the battlefield. When it comes to the battleground, artillery duels and counter-battery combat, Ukrainians don’t have enough munitions, per the analyst. They are expecting to get more 155 mm shells from NATO but it will take time. Their 152 mm ammo stockpiles have been depleted too, he noted. “How many 152 mm shells do they have left? They receive them from the countries of the former Warsaw Pact. These are still old stock from the 1980s,” Borzenko said.

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To show how popular he is? There’s nobody left to run against.

Western Officials Pressuring Zelensky To Hold Elections – WaPo (RT)

Ukrainian officials are resisting calls from Kiev’s Western backers to hold parliamentary and presidential elections, even as martial law prohibits such processes, the Washington Post reported on Sunday. Several Western politicians, including Tiny Kox, head of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, and Democratic US Senators Richard Blumenthal and Elizabeth Warren, have urged Kiev to hold elections, the report says. Their efforts were also supported by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who described a ballot in Ukraine not only as “an act of defiance against the Russian invasion, but an embrace of democracy and freedom.” However, according to officials in Ukraine and experts interviewed by the Post, holding elections in a country embroiled in a major conflict “is virtually impossible and also ill-advised.”

The conundrum stems from the Russian military presence in regions that Ukraine claims as its own, as well as from the fact that millions have fled the country and tens of thousands of soldiers are deployed. Officials in Kiev reportedly believe that a major vote would require local authorities to overcome enormous financial, logistical, and legal hurdles. Some are said to be wary that Russia could exploit the elections by fomenting division, infiltrating its assets and weakening Ukraine from within. “The Russians are pushing for this through their secret channels,” an anonymous Ukrainian security official told the outlet. “There is no situation in which it is possible to have a democratic election during the war.” However, according to the Washington Post article, Kiev cannot dismiss out of hand the calls for elections without risking alienating its Western backers, who have emerged as crucial sources of financial and military support.

However, the Biden administration is said to be sympathetic to the obstacles facing Kiev and is not pushing for elections. Martial law, first imposed shortly after the start of Russia’s military campaign in February 2022 and repeatedly extended since then, prohibits the holding of presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine. In June, President Vladimir Zelenksy said that the vote could take place only after the end of hostilities. In August, however, he conceded that an election could take place but on condition that the parliament quickly change national legislation and the West provide an additional $135 million in funding. The latter statement was denounced by US Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy as a “ballot-box shakedown.”

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Good idea.

Brussels Should Buy Ukrainian Grain For Africa – Lavrov (RT)

The European Commission should buy the Ukrainian agricultural produce that the bloc says it doesn’t need and ship it to African countries, Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has said at the UN General Assembly (UNGA). Western allies have repeatedly accused Moscow of trapping millions of tons of grain in Ukrainian Black Sea ports and of exacerbating a global food crisis, particularly across the African continent. “Since the European Commission is wasting tens of billions of dollars on Ukraine… it can buy the grain that Ukraine wants to sell and EU countries don’t want [to buy] for reasons of competitiveness, and send it to Africa,” Lavrov told the UNGA.

According to Russia’s top diplomat, Ukrainian agricultural produce is “being supplied to European countries in abundance” but many of them don’t want to buy it, because “they have their own farmers and don’t want them to go bust due to competition.” He also questioned the integrity of last year’s grain deal, pointing out during his speech at the UN that only 3% of the grain that was moved under this deal had reached the poorest countries in Africa. In addition, Lavrov said that some 260,000 metric tons of Russian fertilizers have been impounded in EU ports since 2022 and that Moscow was ready to ship these fertilizers to African nations for free. Russian fertilisers became the crucial point in talks over resuming the Black Sea Grain Deal that was clinched last year between Russia and Ukraine and brokered by the UN and Türkiye.

The deal was aimed at allowing Ukraine to export grain from its ports to countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, in exchange for lifting Western sanctions that prevented Russian agricultural exports. However, Moscow withdrew from the agreement in July, saying that the West was still making it impossible for Russia to ship food and fertilizer. Lavrov said that the Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia, Sergey Vershinin, is currently discussing the key issues related to the deal with UN representatives. He stressed also that Western states would be misleading UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres by saying that the grain deal was about to resume. According to the minister, the deal can resume once Russia’s demands regarding its agricultural exports are fulfilled.

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“It’s a sick reality, but that’s the depraved sort of ‘journalism’ Western audiences can expect to receive – until they demand better.”

Russell Brand, Another Truth Warrior ‘Guilty Until Proven Innocent’ (Bridge)

Imagine what a wonderful world it would be if journalists dug into stories like ‘Russian election collusion’ and ‘Hunter Biden’s laptop’ with the same amount of gusto as they do with stories involving the sordid sex lives of celebrities. And not just any celebrities, but specifically those who have touched the third rail, so to speak, exposing the establishment for their egregious crimes against humanity. Russell Brand is/was that sort of spirited and fearless individual. While initially part of the Hollywood circuit, appearing in films and performing stand-up comedy, the loquacious Brit eventually found himself ostracized from tinsel town after pointing out during the 2013 GQ Awards that the sponsor of the event, Hugo Boss, manufactured uniforms for the Nazi Party during World War II.

Having successfully torched his Hollywood career, Brand began to focus attention on his YouTube channel, where his fierce wit, intelligence and machine-gun-style delivery saw his number of subscribers climb to almost 7 million in 10 years. These are the sort of figures that land social media personalities on the ‘truth radar,’ a system backed by an army of left-wing fanatics and civil rights nut jobs devoted to enforcing ‘community standards’ with pure fascist fervor. Brand fell so far afoul of the mainstream media narrative that he was playing in an entirely differently stadium. It’s hard to say exactly when the powers-that-be decided to take down the YouTube sensation, but his March 2023 appearance on the Bill Maher show would be a safe bet. Appearing alongside John Heilemann, a national affairs analyst with MSNBC, and Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders, Brand went on a tangent about the Covid-19 pandemic and the pharmaceutical industry.

“The pandemic created at least 40 new Big Pharma billionaires; pharmaceutical corporations like Moderna and Pfizer made $1,000 in profit every second from the Covid-19 vaccines; more than two-thirds of Congress received campaign funding from pharmaceutical companies in the 2020 election; Pfizer Chairman Albert Bourla told Time magazine in July 202 that his company was developing a Covid vaccine for the good of humanity, not for money, and of course Pfizer made a $100 billion dollars in profit in 2022.” Maher, desperately trying to get a word in edgewise on his own show, reminded Brand that “a lot of people would be dead without the vaccine.” To which Brand snapped back: “If you have an economic system in which pharmaceutical companies benefit hugely from medical emergencies, where the military industrial complex benefits from war, where energy companies benefit from energy crisis, you are going to generate states of permanent crisis where the interests of ordinary people separate from the interests of the elite.”

Ever since the emergence of the #MeToo movement, the legacy media and social media have developed a mob justice mentality, refusing to allow for the possibility that the accused (male) may actually be innocent. In fact, that’s the agenda from the start. And it goes without saying that the media are in the extremely powerful position to mold public opinion to their will. This was evident in a Channel 4 video of the anonymous victims, some of them portrayed by actual actors, discussing their experiences. The production is complete with ominous background music and close-up silhouettes of the emotional women. This is cinematic manipulation that would certainly help to sway the public, not to mention some future jury, and not in a way favorable to Russell Brand’s defense team. Why is the media, which is supposed to take an unbiased approach to its reporting, resorting to manipulating the emotions of their audience? The answer is obvious.

Much like was the case with Julian Assange, who faced similar age-old charges after releasing information damning to the U.S. establishment, Brand is a very articulate individual who is not afraid of speaking truth to power. Much like Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, and hundreds of other dissident voices, his anti-establishment opinions could not be tolerated, and once again the mainstream media was activated to do the dirty work of character assassination. It’s a sick reality, but that’s the depraved sort of ‘journalism’ Western audiences can expect to receive – until they demand better.

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Fear of freedom.

Is Censorship a Partisan Issue? (RCP)

[..] the most glaring gap is between conservatives and liberals, i.e., between Republicans and Democrats. On the issue of free expression, at least, Republicans are not the authoritarian party. That distinction belongs to the Democrats, the party launched by Thomas Jefferson — the Founding Father who famously said that if he were forced to choose between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” This is a relatively new development.

Traditionally, opposing censorship — whether imposed by government or corporations — was a bedrock principle of liberalism in this country. The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 to promote and defend free expression. And this ideal was at the heart of liberal thought, liberal lawmaking, and liberal jurisprudence during most of the 20th century. But times change. And notwithstanding the controversial current push by social conservatives to denude public school libraries of content they dislike, the new RealClear Opinion Research poll is the latest to document the gradual change that has taken place on the left when it comes to this free expression. Here are some of its findings:

• Republican voters (74%) and independents (61%) believe speech should be legal “under any circumstances, while Democrats are almost evenly divided. A bare majority of Democrats (53%) say speech should be legal under any circumstances, while 47% say it should be legal “only under certain circumstances.”

• Nearly one-third of Democratic voters (34%) say Americans have “too much freedom.” This compared to 14.6% of Republicans. Republicans were most likely to say Americans have too little freedom (46%), while only 22% of Democrats feel that way. Independents were in the middle in both categories.

• Although majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents agree the news media should be able to report stories they believe are in the national interest, this consensus shifts when it comes to social media censorship. A majority of Democrats (52%) approve of the government censoring social media content under the rubric of protecting national security. Among Republicans and independents, this percentage is only one-third.

• Poll respondents were read this statement: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Only 31% of Democratic voters “strongly agreed” with that sentiment, compared to 51% of Republicans.

• Fully three-fourths of Democrats believe government has a responsibility to limit “hateful” social media posts, while Republicans are more split, with 50% believing the government has a responsibility to restrict hateful posts. (Independents, once again, are in the middle.)

• Democrats are significantly more likely than Republicans to favor stifling the free speech rights of political extremists. Also, Republicans don’t vary by the group: Only about half of GOP voters favor censorship — whether asked about the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis, or the Communist Party.

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WaPo doesn’t like its own poll.

Trump Leading Biden By Double Digits – Poll (RT)

If an election were held today, former US President Donald Trump would defeat President Joe Biden by a 10% margin of the popular vote, a Washington Post/ABC News poll has found. The result shows the strongest lead for Trump since both men declared their candidacy for the 2024 election. Published on Saturday, the poll found that 52% of respondents would choose Trump and 42% would side with Biden, while the remainder are either undecided or would not vote. When the Post/ABC pollsters asked the same question in February, Trump led Biden by four points, at 48% to 44%. The result is at odds with a slew of recent polls, all of which placed Trump and Biden in or near a statistical dead heat.

An NBC News poll, also published on Saturday, showed Trump and Biden tied at 46%, while a Fox News survey last week placed Trump ahead of Biden at 48%-46%, and a Quinnipiac University poll put Biden in the lead by 47%-46%. Before facing off against Biden for a second time, Trump will have to defeat an ever-expanding group of Republican challengers hoping to clinch the party’s nomination. However, every major poll shows the former president with a commanding lead over the pack, and Biden told donors on Wednesday that he thinks Trump “is destined to be the nominee again.” According to the Post/ABC survey, Trump has an almost 40-point lead over his nearest Republican rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, at 54% to 15 %. No other GOP challenger managed to break double digits in the survey.

Biden and Trump both face significant obstacles in their respective bids for the White House. Trump will enter election season next year fighting more than 90 felony charges in four separate cases, stemming from his alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, mishandling of classified documents, and improper reporting of ‘hush-money’ payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Trump maintains that the indictments against him are politically-motivated, and that Biden’s Justice Department is engaged in a “Stalinist” attempt to take him out of the 2024 race.

For Biden, a key concern will be convincing voters that he is fit for office. According to the latest poll, three quarters of respondents, regardless of political persuasion, said that Biden is too old to serve a second term. Biden has long been attacked by Republicans for his apparent cognitive decline, but concerns over the president’s mental fitness have surfaced in most recent polls. According to a a CBS News poll published last Sunday, 34% of US voters believe that the 80-year-old president would finish a second term in office, while the same number believe that Biden lacks the mental and cognitive health necessary for the job.

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Just separate Ukraine from the main budget. Problem solved.

Biden Scapegoats ‘Extreme’ Republicans For Looming Government Shutdown (Sp.)

US President Joe Biden said that all citizens of the country would “pay the price” if “extreme” members of the Republican Party do not vote on the new budget and allow the federal government to shut down. “Just a few months ago, after long negotiations between myself and the new [House of Representatives] speaker [Kevin McCarthy], we agreed the spending level of government will fund essential domestic and national security priorities while still cutting the deficit by $1 trillion over the next decade. Now, a small group of extreme Republicans don’t want to live up to the deal, so now everyone in America could be forced to pay the price,” Biden said addressing the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.

He warned that the government shutdown will affect “everything from food security to cancer research.” “It’s time for the Republicans to start doing the job America elected them to do,” he added. The inclusion of funds intended for Ukraine in the US defense budget faced strong opposition from a number of members of the House of Representatives and became a stumbling block to its adoption. Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said earlier this week that she would vote against Pentagon bill as long as it includes Ukraine aid funds. The US Congress needs to adopt a full or short-term budget before October 1, the end of the current fiscal year, in order to avoid a government shutdown.

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Sort of Ritter’s diary. Good read.

My Addiction: A Playlist in Three Acts (Scott Ritter)

On April 23, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt, less than a year removed from serving as the President of the United States, delivered a speech at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. Entitled “Citizenship in a Republic,” the speech has gone down in history as “The Man in the Arena speech,” largely on the weight of the words contained in the following passage: “It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

I have often drawn upon this passage when reflecting upon my own life, especially when trying to come to grips with my failure to prevent the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. I still struggle with the fact that, despite being empowered with the experienced-based knowledge that there were no viable weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (I had served as a weapons inspector with the United Nation in Iraq from 1991 until 1998, where I participated in more than 45 inspections—14 as Chief Inspector—involved in accounting for Iraq’s chemical, biological, nuclear, and long-range ballistic missile weapons—collectively referred to as “weapons of mass destruction”, or WMD.) Roosevelt’s words helped bring me some solace—at least I had stood in the arena in pursuit of a worthy cause.

In 2008, I was asked to participate in a panel of military veterans who would provide commentary and take questions from the audience in response to a theatrical adaptation of Tim O’Brien’s classic war novel, The Things They Carried. As I watched the play, I became increasingly agitated. This was a story about war, and the cost of war. Looking around me, I saw a theater full of people who knew nothing about war, and the cost it took on those who waged it. I resented the fact that I had agreed to allow myself to be put on display as some sort of zoo exhibit—“Here is a veteran; let’s ask him about the emotional trauma of war.” When the play ended, I took my place on stage, flanked by several other veterans of America’s many wars. I was well known at the time, and so I was picked to answer the first question, “Did the play trigger any memories for you of war?”

My response stunned even me. “As I look out among the audience, I see people who lack any military experience. People who know nothing of war. This play talks about the most intimate aspects of a soldier’s life—the things he carried at the time of his death. This is a conversation I can have with the men sitting here with me on stage. But it’s not a conversation I’m going to have with you. You haven’t earned that right.” I got up and left. I justified my actions by reflecting on Roosevelt’s speech. I had spent my time in the arena of conflict. They had not. They did not have a right to peer into my soul about issues of this emotional magnitude.

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Octopus

 

 

 

 

 

 

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May 222022
 


El Greco La Pietà c1575

 

Revealed: Hillary Clinton’s Role In The Alfa Bank Scandal (Turley)
Hillary Clinton’s Trump/Russia Media Strategy Revealed (Techno Fog)
Biden Keeping Up Employment At The Gaffe Factory (Howie Carr)
Russia Rewrites the Art of Hybrid War (Escobar)
Is US Drawing Up Plans To Sink the Russian Black Sea Fleet? (Antiwar)
A Thread on “Azov” (RWA)
Gen. Milley Warns West Point Graduates Of ‘Increasing’ Risk Of Global War (Fox)
mRNA Vaccines Hurt Long-term Immunity To Covid (Berenson)
Once A Liberal Democracy, Canada Is Now An Authoritarian State (Arora)
American Farmer Warns Of Impending Food Shortages (ZH)
Labor Win Presents ‘Great Opportunity’ In Fight To Free Julian Assange (LE)

 

 

 

 

Ed Dowd

 

 

 

 

Malone

 

 

Still waiting to see why Mook did what he did. After all, he knows all about the revenge of the Clintons.

Revealed: Hillary Clinton’s Role In The Alfa Bank Scandal (Turley)

The trial of former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann crossed a critical threshold Friday when a key witness uttered the name “Hillary Clinton” in conjunction with a plan to spread the false Alfa Bank Russian collusion claim before the 2016 presidential election. For Democrats and many in the media, Hillary Clinton has long held a Voldemort-like status as “She who must not be named” in scandals. Yet, there was her former campaign manager, Robby Mook, telling a jury that Clinton personally approved a plan to spread the claim of covert communications between the Trump organization and the Russian bank. It was one of the most successful disinformation campaigns in American politics, and Mook implicated Clinton as green-lighting the gas-lighting of the electorate.

The mere mention of Clinton’s name sent shockwaves through Washington. In past scandals, the Clintons have always evaded direct responsibility as aides were investigated or convicted, from the Whitewater land dealings to cattle futures. Even when long-sought documents in Whitewater were discovered outside of the family quarters and bearing Hillary Clinton’s fingerprints, Washington quickly moved on. Clinton was not supposed to be the object of the Sussmann trial, because Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama appointee, issued a series of orders limiting the scope of the trial and its evidence. The orders were viewed as “spar[ing] the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee … potential embarrassment.”

Yet, even after winning such limiting orders, it was the defense that called Mook to the stand — out of order, in the midst of the prosecution’s case, because he was scheduled to leave on vacation — and he proceeded to confirm that Clinton herself approved of the tactic. It was Washington’s worst-kept but least-acknowledged secret. On July 28, 2016, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s alleged plan to tie Donald Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” Obama reportedly was told how Clinton allegedly approved “a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”

Thus, Mook testified that Clinton did precisely what Brennan warned Obama was being planned. The date of Brennan’s warning is important: It was three days before the FBI’s collusion investigation began. It also was a couple of months before Sussmann contacted then-FBI general counsel Jim Baker while claiming he was not representing any client. (He was counsel to the Clinton campaign and, according to prosecutors, billed the meeting time to the campaign.) There is a strikingly familiar pattern in both the Steele dossier — which became the basis for the Russia collusion investigation — and the Alfa Bank tale. Campaign associates developed both claims while actively seeking to conceal their connections from the public and the government, including reportedly denying the funding of the Steele dossier and concealing that funding as legal costs.

Information laundering

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“We authorized a staff member of the campaign to provide it to the media.”

Hillary Clinton’s Trump/Russia Media Strategy Revealed (Techno Fog)

Robert Mook, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager, also testified before the jury Friday. In his testimony, he stated that Hillary Clinton personally approved a plan to spread the lie that Trump was colluding with Russia via secret servers to the media. He also admitted to being briefed on the conspiracy.

Q: Okay. In connection with the general focus on Mr. Trump and Russia, did there come a time when you learned of potential links between the Trump organization, Mr. Trump’s business, and a Russian bank called Alfa-bank?
A: I did. Yes, I was briefed on that.
Q: Approximately when were you first briefed on that, if you remember?
A: I honestly can’t recall.
Q: Who participated in the briefing, if you remember?
A: Myself, Marc Elias, Jen Palmieri, Jake Sullivan, John Podesta. There might have been others, but those are the ones I definitely recall being there.

Mook also admitted that the Clinton campaign was focused on Trump’s relationship with Russia before Summer of 2016.
Q: In the Summer of 2016, was Mr. Trump’s relationship with Russia something that the campaign focused on?
A: Yes. I mean, it was frankly something we were focused on before that time. But absolutely.

Mook however did deny that the Clinton campaign directed Sussman to go to the FBI, despite admitting that Clinton approved the Trump-Russia allegations to be shared with the media.
Q: Were you aware that Mr. Sussman went to the FBI in September of 2016 to give them a heads-up about a New York Times story about Trump and Alfa-Bank?
A: No.
Q: Do you have any recollection of anyone talking to you about going to the FBI on behalf of the campaign on the Trump/Alfa-Bank issue?
A: No.
Q: Did you direct Mr. Sussman to go to the FBI on behalf of the campaign?
A: Absolutely not.
Q: Did you authorize Mr. Sussman to go to the FBI on behalf of the campaign?
A: No.
Q: Did anyone else from the campaign, to your knowledge, direct or authorize Mr. Sussman to go to the FBI on behalf of the campaign?
A: To my knowledge, no.

Mook also said the decision to push the debunked Russia conspiracy to the media was made by him, Sussman, John Podesta, and Palmeri, and that Hillary Clinton agreed with the decision.
Q: And once you learned about it [the Trump-Russia allegations], you started discussing with the campaign whether the campaign should affirmatively push it in the media, right?
A: Correct.
Q: And you had that discussion with Mr. Sullivan?
A: Correct.
Q: With Mr. Podesta?
A: Just to be clear. This is what – I recall those people, correct.
Q: Okay. You had a discussion with Mr. Sullivan?
A: Yes, I recall, yes.
Q: Whether to push it in the media right?
A: Correct.
Q: With Ms. Palmieri?
A: Correct.
Q: With Mr. Podesta?
A: Correct.
Q: But in any event, the decision to provide this to the media was authorized by the campaign, correct?
A: We authorized a staff member of the campaign to provide it to the media.

Regarding Hillary Clinton, Mook said:
Q: Mr. Mook, before the break you had testified that there was a conversation in which you told Ms. Clinton about the proposed plan to provide the Alfa-Bank allegations to the media; is that correct?
A: Correct.
Q: And what was her response?
A: All I remember is that she agreed with the decision.

Some final thoughts: while this trial is about Sussmann’s false statements to the FBI, it’s also more than that. This is Special Counsel John Durham telling the public the story of the Clinton opposition research machine, and how the campaign, through their lawyers and contractors (Fusion GPS), developed and spread lies to the media to influence the election. It’s the story of Clinton Campaign lawyers to using the FBI to further that strategy of deception. With that in mind, do not forget the Igor Danchenko case. Is it the case that Charles Dolan, a Hillary Clinton friend and supporter, was coincidentally feeding false information to Christopher Steele’s primary sub source? And on that thread, what are the odds that another Clinton ally – Alexander Downer – took his “info” to the FBI?

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“That’s how it works when leaders derive their powers from the consent of the government from from the consent of the governed.”

Biden Keeping Up Employment At The Gaffe Factory (Howie Carr)

It’s Weekend at Biden’s again, and Dementia Joe Biden has been pondering the dysfunction that plagues these fruited plains. Specifically, Brandon frets about mentally impaired people wandering America’s streets: “(People) who are just deranged, who are, who are susceptible, who are, who are just lost and and don’t know what to do, and they’re easily taken, they’re easily sucked in, and it’s gotta stop, we have to admit it, I don’t know why we don’t admit what the hell’s goin’ on. Anyway …” Got a mirror, Mr. President? As always, all dialogue guaranteed verbatim. Now Biden is in Asia visiting, among other places, South Korea and “President Moon Yoon” (his name is Yoon Seok-Youl). But before Brandon departed the assisted-living facility at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he warmly welcomed some visitors to the White House:

“I thank all of you for being here, and I want you to enjoy the rest of the recession.” Technically, Mr. President, the recession hasn’t even started yet. You said you’d have to be a “mind reader” to have seen the baby-formula shortage coming. But apparently you are able to foresee what economic calamities your policies are causing in the weeks ahead. FDR said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Now Brandon says, “I want you to enjoy the rest of the recession.” At the White House or on the road, Dementia Joe must sometimes introduce other people. It’s not getting any easier for him to remember who anybody is, or what they do. Just ask “President Harris.” Or the president of “Fine Finland,” whom he called “Nisto.” His name is “Niinisto.” He said Sen. Rick Scott of Florida represents Wisconsin. He called Raytheon “Ray Raython.”

[..] On the teleprompter, he misreads wages as rages, reflect as refect, eligibility as elibility. Wholly becomes holly, only comes out as swonly. The teleprompter says changes, he reads it as charges. Dementia Joe dares to ask questions no one else will: “How many police officers have multiple times and put a lion and had to do things that they’d have to think they’d have to do?” Good question, Brandon! Other than telling everyone to enjoy the recession, Dementia Joe had one other Freudian slip recently. He was discussing how well a system of checks and balances has served the American people, until … Democrats. “That’s how it works when leaders derive their powers from the consent of the government from from the consent of the governed.”

Herridge

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“Fully exposing the whole maze, from the start, was one of Putin’s stated objectives.”

Russia Rewrites the Art of Hybrid War (Escobar)

The ironclad fictional “narrative” imposed all across NATOstan is that Ukraine is “winning”. So why would weapons peddler retrofitted as Pentagon head Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin literally beg since late February to have his phone calls answered by Russian Defense Minister Shoigu, only to have his wish finally granted? It’s now confirmed by one of my top intel sources. The call was a direct consequence of panic. The United States Government (USG) by all means wants to scotch the detailed Russian investigation – and accumulation of evidence – on the US bioweapon labs in Ukraine, as I outlined in a previous column. This phone call happened exactly after an official Russian statement to the UN Security Council on May 13: we will use articles 5 and 6 of the Convention on the Prohibition of Bioweapons to investigate the Pentagon’s biological “experiments” in Ukraine.

That was reiterated by Under Secretary-General of the UN in charge of disarmament, Thomas Markram, even as all ambassadors of NATO member countries predictably denied the collected evidence as “Russian disinformation”. Shoigu cold see the call coming eons away. Reuters, merely quoting the proverbial “Pentagon official”, spun that the allegedly one-hour-long call led to nothing. Nonsense. Austin, according to the Americans, demanded a “ceasefire” – which must have originated a Siberian cat smirk on Shoigu’s face. Shoigu knows exactly which way the wind is blowing on the ground – for Ukrainian Armed Forces and UkroNazis alike. It’s not only the Azovstal debacle – and Kiev’s all-around army breakdown. After the fall of Popasnaya – the crucial, most fortified Ukrainian stronghold in Donbass – the Russians and Donetsk/Luhansk forces have breached defenses along four different vectors to north, northwest, west and south.

What’s left of the Ukrainian front is crumbling – fast, with a massive cauldron subdivided in a maze of mini-cauldrons: a military disaster the USG cannot possibly spin. Now, in parallel, we can also expect full exposure – on overdrive – of the Pentagon bioweapons racket. The only “offer you can’t refuse” left to the USG would be to present something tangible to the Russians to avoid a full investigation. That’s not gonna happen. Moscow is fully aware that going public with illegal work on banned biological weapons is an existential threat to the US Deep State. Especially when documents seized by the Russians show that Big Pharma – via Pfizer, Moderna, Merck and Gilead – was involved in several “experiments”. Fully exposing the whole maze, from the start, was one of Putin’s stated objectives.

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Whether it’s true or not, why would this guy expose it?

Is US Drawing Up Plans To Sink the Russian Black Sea Fleet? (Antiwar)

Shortly after Reuters published an exclusive story that the White House was looking to move advanced anti-ship missiles to Ukraine, an official in Kiev said that the US is making a plan to sink Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs adviser Anton Gerashchenko tweeted, “The US is preparing a plan to destroy the [Russian] Black Sea Fleet. The effective work of the Ukrainians on [Russian] warships convinced [the US] to prepare a plan to unblock the [Ukrainian] ports. Deliveries of powerful anti-ship weapons are being discussed.” Gerashchenko cited the Reuters report on Washington’s effort to ship Harpoon and Naval Strike Missiles to Ukraine. The missiles have a range of up to 300 km and cost $1.5 million each.

Three US officials and two Congressional sources told the outlet the White House was still working out the details for sending the advanced weapons to Ukraine. Logistical issues and the possibility the US would have to remove a launcher from one of its ships to send to Ukraine are current obstacles to completing the transfer. Responding to a question from Newsweek, the State Department did not deny it was working on a plan to take out the Russian fleet. “As the conflict is changing, so too is our military assistance to deliver the critical capabilities Ukraine needs for today’s fight as Russia’s forces engage in a renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine,” a spokesperson said.

However, the Department of Defense issued a sharp denial of the claims made by the Ukrainians official. “I can tell you definitively that that’s not true,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Thursday afternoon. The Pentagon denial applied only to the Ukrainian official’s assertion the US was helping sink the Black Sea fleet, and did not refer to the proposed anti-ship weapons transfer. Gerashchenko said the attack would help to open up Ukraine’s ports. Russia currently controls the Black Sea and maintains a blockade. The UN has called for an easing of restrictions in the sea to allow food exports from Ukraine to help alleviate global food shortages.

Moscow has offered a diplomatic solution to the Black Sea standoff. On Thursday, the Kremlin proposed lifting the blockage in exchange for sanctions relief. The Russian Foreign Ministry said the problem goes beyond the blockade and includes Western sanctions restricting fertilizer exports. “You have to not only appeal to the Russian Federation but also look deeply at the whole complex of reasons that caused the current food crisis. [Sanctions] interfere with normal free trade, encompassing food products including wheat, fertilizers and others,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko said.

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Thread by Russians With Attitude.

A Thread on “Azov” (RWA)

The roots of “Azov” can be found in the Neonazi soccer hooligan scene of Kharkov. Andrei Biletsky was the central figure of the nascent movement for the longest time. A Kharkov native, he joined numerous nationalist organizations, e.g. the Lvov-based “Tryzub”. He also actively supported the Kharkov cell of the “Social-National Party of Ukraine” (nowadays “Svoboda”). In 2006, Biletsky founded “Patriot of Ukraine”, a nationalist organization that engaged in street violence & even terrorism. Biletsky’s patron during this period was Arsen Avakov, Armenian-Ukrainian “entrepreneur” & politician. In 2005-2010, Avakov was the governor of Kharkov oblast. During this period, “Patriot of Ukraine” was unofficially deputized by Kharkov police. Biletsky’s gang helped the police patrol the streets for illegal immigrants, & also to combat illegal businesses.

Aside from their political activities, they serves as enforcers for Avakov’s “business ventures”. That’s how they reached a significant level of political protection. Avakov, of course, also became Minister of the Interior after the Euromaidan coup d’etat; their fruitful relationship continued. Russian Neonazi Sergei Korotkikh aka “Botsman” is a personal friend of Avakov’s son. Botsman also leads a separate Azov unit, the “Botsman Boys”. In 2011, Biletsky and several of his comrades were arrested for organized robbery; in early 2014, Avakov became Minister of the Interior & had them released from prison. Even before that, Biletsky’s “Patriot of Ukraine” had joined the Euromaidan protests & the “Right Sector”. Biletsky’s men took part in the civil strife that followed the Euromaidan coup d’etat.

Then known as “Little black men from Kharkov”, they published threatening video messages to the Russian population; they rode around the country & engaged in political violence. They came to Odessa & participated in the May 2nd massacre; they attacked Anti-Maidan protests in Kharkov or straight up had pro-Russian acvitists “disappeared” with the help of Ukrainian security services. This is a long introduction, but it’s important. Soon after, the civil strife turned into civil war. The Euromaidan government in Kiev realized that Ukraine doesn’t have an army. Its elite military units were getting humiliated by coal miner militias in Donbass. That’s when, under the patronage of Avakov, the “Volunteer Battalions” were created. Azov, Aidar, Donbas, Tornado, Dnipro — these & many other Ministry of the Interior formations are infamous for their horrifying reign of terror in Eastern Ukraine.

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To infinity and beyond with Milley Mouse.

Gen. Milley Warns West Point Graduates Of ‘Increasing’ Risk Of Global War (Fox)

Gen. Mark Milley told cadets graduating from U.S. Military Academy West Point Saturday to be prepared for increasing risk of global conflict and a host of new weapons technologies in their careers. “The world you are being commissioned into has the potential for a significant international conflict between great powers. And that potential is increasing, not decreasing,” Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the cadets at the 2022 commencement ceremony in West Point, New York. “And right now, at this very moment, a fundamental change is happening in the very character of war. We are facing right now two global powers, China and Russia, each with significant military capabilities, and both who fully intend to change the current rules based order,” Milley said.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is teaching the world that “aggression left unanswered only emboldens the aggressor,” Milley said. “Let us never forget the massacre that we have just witnessed in Bucha nor the slaughter that occurred in Mariupol. And the best way to honor their sacrifice is to support their fight for freedom and to stand against tyranny,” Milley said. The urban character of the war in Ukraine is something Milley sees as a characteristic of future battlefields, which will be “highly complex and almost certainly decisive in urban areas against elusive, ambiguous enemies that combine terrorism and warfare alongside conventional capabilities — all embedded within large civilian populations.” Weapons technology will also change dramatically in future decades, Milley said, and the shift will be as radical as the change from musket to the rifle, the rifle to the machine gun or from sailing to steam ships.

And the technological edge is no longer automatically in America’s favor. “You’ll be fighting with robotic tanks and ships and airplanes,” Milley said. “We’ve witnessed a revolution in lethality and precision munitions. What was once the exclusive province of the United States military is now available to most nation states with the money will to acquire them.” Artificial intelligence is “resulting in that profound change, the most profound change ever in human history,” Milley said. “Whatever overmatch we the United States enjoyed militarily for the last 70 years is closing quickly. And the United States will be, in fact, we already are challenged in every domain of warfare in space and cyber, maritime air and, of course, land.”

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Want to get Covid? Take a vaccine. Might work for monkeypox too.

mRNA Vaccines Hurt Long-term Immunity To Covid (Berenson)

Unvaccinated people are much more likely to develop broad antibody immunity after Covid infections than people who have received mRNA shots, a new study shows. The gap remains large whether people had mild, moderate, or severe Covid infections, the study showed – undercutting a crucial argument that vaccine advocates have made to defend the shots. The research draws on data from Moderna’s 30,000-person clinical trial for its mRNA shots. It may help explain why so many Americans now suffer multiple Covid infections, sometimes within months. Researchers already knew that many vaccinated people do not gain antibodies to the entire coronavirus after they are infected with Covid.

Unvaccinated people nearly always gain antibodies to the nucleocapsid protein, which covers the virus’s core of RNA, as well as its spike protein, which allows the virus to attack our cells. Vaccinated people often lack those anti-nucleocapsid antibodies and only have spike protein antibodies. Vaccine advocates claim the lack of nucleocapsid antibodies may occur because the mRNA shots prime people to fight off the Covid infections more quickly and have lower viral loads. In this view, the narrow immune response is a feature, not a bug – vaccinated people are less seriously infected and so do not need to generate anti-nucleocapsid antibodies. This study essentially demolishes that theory.

Scientists from the National Institutes of Health and Moderna quietly posted the paper a month ago as a pre-print, but it has received little attention despite its import. The researchers examined the development of anti-nucleocapsid antibodies in people who had been part of Moderna’s clinical trial and were infected with Covid. As they expected, the scientists found that the vaccinated people were far less likely to develop the anti-nucleocapsid antibodies. Only 40 percent of people who received the shots had antibodies, compared to 93 percent of those who did not. But they then went a step further. Because the infected people had been in the trial, their viral loads had been precisely measured when they were found to have Covid.

So the researchers were able to compare vaccinated and unvaccinated people who had the same amounts of virus in their blood. Once again, they found that unvaccinated people were far more likely to develop anti-nucleocapsid antibodies than the jabbed. An unvaccinated person with a mild infection had a 71 percent chance of mounting an immune response that included those antibodies. A vaccinated person had about a 15 percent chance.

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Few countries have fared as poorly as Canada.

Once A Liberal Democracy, Canada Is Now An Authoritarian State (Arora)

Two decades ago, when I was 4 years old, my parents immigrated to Canada from India in search of greater freedoms, autonomy and economic opportunities. They’re core Canadian values — enshrined in our national anthem, which gloriously heralds “The True North strong and free.” However, the past two years have seen a near complete erosion of the foundational liberal values that have attracted millions of immigrants like myself to this country. Under the once-righteous guise of COVID safety and online protections, the Canadian government has taken its power to extreme levels once only imaginable — let alone permissible — in a dissent-stifling authoritarian state. The control has extended to nearly every element of Canadian society, but nowhere more so than in our everyday personal lives.

Take my own case contending with Canada’s COVID bureaucracy a few months back. I was returning to Canada from the US when multiple Air Canada employees refused to let me on the plane. Although I had a negative COVID test, the government was suddenly requiring even returning citizens to be vaccinated (unvaccinated foreigners were already barred from entering). Since the most documented adverse effect associated with COVID vaccination — heart inflammation — is concentrated in young men ages 15 – 25, I chose not to get vaccinated. I am 21 years old, have already recovered from COVID and have no co-morbidities. I’m at low risk from serious COVID illness, which is why I remain unvaccinated. But this can make air travel difficult — especially in Canada. Minutes before my boarding gate was closed, a sympathetic Air Canada staffer “begged” his manager to let me board the plane.

“I just gave you a massive favor. No one else would do this,” he said as I finally made my way down the jetway. In the Canada of Justin Trudeau’s making, you must now go to extreme measures simply to be allowed to return to your own nation. And for what? COVID is just the beginning of the Canadian madness. The internationally recognized trucker protests earlier this year were the most flagrant display of political control ever witnessed within the ranks of the Canadian government. After trying to dismiss the truckers as a “fringe minority” of “swastika wavers,” Trudeau manufactured a National Emergency in order to justify truly outrageous tactics. Not only did he suspend the insurance of the truckers’ vehicles, he regulated the cryptocurrency transfers and froze the bank accounts of folks simply donating to the trucker cause.

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“We only have a short window of opportunity to give farmers funding.”

American Farmer Warns Of Impending Food Shortages (ZH)

NewsNation’s Leland Vittert asked one American farmer: “How close are we to the next food crisis?” The answer: “We are in a crisis right now as far as the food chain goes with the farmer in this country,” John Boyd Jr., the President of the National Black Farmers Association, said. Boyd points out some farmers are unable to plant because of adverse weather conditions. He said farmers in the Northern Plains haven’t been able to get tractors in the fields because of soggy conditions, and the war in Ukraine has knocked out an entire region of food production. He warned, “We’re going to see a lot of empty shelves and a lot more high food prices.” In his forty-year career as a farmer, Boyd said he never imagined he would be “paying $5.63 for a gallon of diesel fuel, $900 a ton for fertilizer, and all-time high prices for soybean seeds.”


All of the prices he mentioned are at record highs, pressuring farmers’ margins. He said the American people need to wake up to the crisis in the farming industry, adding, “farming isn’t Republican or Democratic, it’s food, the land is neutral … this is the time the American people need to support the American farmer and put pressure on the Biden administration to put things in place to help farmers.” He mentioned that banks need to provide emergency funding to farmers to get their crops in the ground. Out-of-control inflation has left some farmers unable to plant because of soaring costs. Boyd said, “We only have a short window of opportunity to give farmers funding.” He stated the worst-case scenario is “a lot of shortages” of food that could materialize later this year.

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New PM Anthony Albanese looks as inept as his predecessor, but he might have one advantage.

Labor Win Presents ‘Great Opportunity’ In Fight To Free Julian Assange (LE)

The father of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the election of a Labor government is a “great opportunity” for the movement to free the WikiLeaks founder from imprisonment. Speaking at a Sydney Q&A screening of documentary Ithaka, which documents his efforts to free Assange, John Shipton said a groundswell of parliamentarian support was growing for his son’s plight and he was buoyed up by the prospect of an incoming Labor government. “Of course things would change [if Labor were elected] … this is a great opportunity for us,” he said. “A fresh parliament has a lot of room to move … I speak to many of them. They don’t want this hanging around their neck like an albatross.”


Shipton said he had had several lunches with Anthony Albanese, and had been assured the opposition leader would do “whatever he can” to free his son and “enough’s enough”. The 76-year-old said when he began advocating for Assange in 2019, two parliamentarians supported him – independent MP Andrew Wilkie and Greens senator for Tasmania Peter Whish-Wilson. “Now there are 29 and peripherally, there are other supporters,” he said. “The deputy prime minister while in the US … said publicly … that Julian ought to be charged if he’s done anything in the UK … other than that, send him home. “There’s a core in the Labor party, there’s a core in the National party, the Greens are all supporting [Julian] … it’s a popular concern and parliamentarians recognise that.”

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Rebel Davos

 

 

 

 

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Jan 312022
 


Pablo Picasso Women running on the beach 1922

 

1 in 5 Canadians May Never Be Comfortable Without Masks, Vaccine Mandates (I.)
Did Justin Trudeau Pick the Wrong Fight With Canadian Truckers? (Bridge)
Unvaccinated and Undeterred: Austria Holdouts Dig In Despite New Law (Y!)
Concern As Republicans Push To Make Dubious Covid Cures Easier (G.)
University of Minnesota Ivermectin Trial Nearing Completion (Star T.)
Japan’s Kowa Says Ivermectin Effective Against Omicron In Phase III Trial (R.)
University Offers Help To Students ‘Affected By A Free Speech Event’ (DM)
US Close To Approving ‘Mother Of All Sanctions’ Against Russia (G.)
EU Threatens To Halt Nord Stream 2 & Cut Russia Off From SWIFT (RT)
Year in Review 2021 Part 3 – Rise of Global Authoritarianism (Dave Collum)
Biden Promises To Replace Tom Brady With A Woman Of Color (BBee)

 

 

Joe Rogan

 

 

We are standing at the battle line.

 

 

U turn

 

 

 

 

Mass formation.

1 in 5 Canadians May Never Be Comfortable Without Masks, Vaccine Mandates (I.)

As we approach the second anniversary of the declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic and viral case loads continue to break records, it’s not surprising that many Canadians are wary about “returning to normal.” A new Ipsos poll conducted on behalf of Global News shows that while one in five (18%) Canadians feel things are normal now, the same proportion (19%) say they’re not sure they’ll ever be ready to live without masks or vaccine mandates. Regardless of when Canadians feel the new normal will materialize, two thirds (64%) agree (27% strongly, 37% somewhat) that governments are not doing enough to facilitate the return to normal, a figure that is higher among Albertans[..].


How will we reach the new normal? Four in ten (38%) Canadians think mandatory vaccination is the most effective means of getting COVID-19 under control. This opinion is stronger among men (42% vs. 34% women) and Boomers (50% vs. 37% Gen X, 29% Millennials, 27% Gen Z). The use of border closings and rapid tests in the workplace are also both favoured by 14%. Relatively few Canadians believe that removing all public health measures and allowing COVID-19 to spread more quickly (10%), penalizing people who don’t get their vaccines (i.e. a tax, further restrictions, etc.) (9%), or shutting down all non-essential businesses (8%) would be the most effective way to get the pandemic under control.

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“This is, perhaps, the greatest act of cowardice from a sitting Canadian PM in this nation’s history..”

Did Justin Trudeau Pick the Wrong Fight With Canadian Truckers? (Bridge)

Since Jan. 15, unvaccinated truckers entering Canada are required to be tested and quarantined for 15 days; the U.S. mandated similar restrictions on Jan. 22. Naturally such regulations made their job impossible to perform. Thus, the mandates have removed some 20-25% of the estimated 175,000 cross-border American and Canadian truckers due to noncompliance in both countries. But these sidelined workers are not leaving their jobs without a fight, and it seems that many Canadians support the cause.


While mainstream media and social media has largely been able to control the flow of information that Canadians receive with regards to Covid and the vaccination mandates, the trucker convoy has given the public a chance to really express themselves. Judging by early indications it doesn’t look particularly good for the Trudeau administration. Telegram, the censorship-free messenger application, is chockfull of videos and photographs of overpasses near Toronto loaded with placard-waving supporters as the convoy grinds its way towards Ottawa to the east. Other platforms showed the local residents of small towns handing out meals to the truckers despite the frigid temperatures.

Undoubtedly the most influential advocate of the truckers’ cause thus far has been Elon Musk, who tweeted a three-word message that certainly did not sit well with Justin Trudeau: “Canadian truckers rule.” Speaking of Trudeau, the 50-year-old leader of the Labor Party announced just this week that he had been “exposed to Covid-19,” and would therefore be isolating at home for five days. That announcement sparked a small riot on social media, with many suggesting that the Canadian leader had used the excuse of Covid to hopefully avoid the truckers. Keean Bexte, a journalist with Counter Signal, suggested in a tweet that a new variant of “Coward-19” was detected.


“This is, perhaps, the greatest act of cowardice from a sitting Canadian PM in this nation’s history,” Bexte wrote in an accompanying article. “When Canadians finally take a stand, finally take real action, Trudeau merely waves it away, practically flipping them the bird through a single Tweet, ending it with “please get vaccinated” to rub salt in wounds he’s opened.” This is the problem when the media and government refuses to permit any sort of formal debate on a serious issue that affects millions of people on so many different levels. Trudeau has given his countrymen just one option, and that is to get the vaccination or essentially become second-class citizens in their own country. Unlike other effected industries, however, truckers have the option of putting their machines to use for a very effective form of protest, and one that promises to cause severe logistical problems as far as transport goes.

Sikh
https://twitter.com/i/status/1487882022844448769

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“..there is already this parallel community. It’s already being built. There is already everything,”

Unvaccinated and Undeterred: Austria Holdouts Dig In Despite New Law (Y!)

Despite vaccination against Covid-19 becoming mandatory in Austria on Friday, musician Katharina Teufel-Lieli insists she won’t bow to pressure to get the jab. “I have the right to decide over my body… to simply say ‘no,'” the harpist told AFP at her home in Neumarkt-am-Wallersee, not far from the western city of Salzburg. Austria this week becomes the first European Union country to make Covid-19 vaccination legally compulsory for adults. Under the new law, those holding out against the jab can face fines of up to 3,600 euros ($4,100) from mid-March after an introductory phase. Teufel-Lieli, 49, is one of tens of thousands to have joined massive demonstrations against the law and other coronavirus-related measures since November, when plans for the legal change were announced.

The mother of six said that she used to be “apolitical” but the state is “overstepping the mark” by “attacking people” through this act of “totalitarianism”. Access to certain services has already been restricted since last year under government-imposed measures. Entry to restaurants, hairdressers, hotels, non-essential shops, sports and cultural venues has only been permitted since November to those who are vaccinated or recently cured. This has sparked complaints within the retail sector about staff having to act as “an auxiliary police” in checking vaccine passes in shops. Frustrations since the beginning of the pandemic have also led opponents to create a new political party, known by its acronym, MFG which stands for People, Freedom, Fundamental Rights.

One of three MFG representatives to have already won a state legislature seat, Dagmar Haeusler, said that she just did not see the point of compulsory Covid vaccination. “If there was a valid reason, as with smallpox which has a mortality rate of 20 to 30 percent, we could talk about mandatory vaccination, which would benefit everyone. “But in the case of Covid-19, I don’t see the point,” the 38-year-old biomedical scientist and MFG co-founder told AFP. Demonstrators and other opponents say the measures just create a “parallel society” — with the unvaccinated forced to do things under the radar. According to Teufel-Lieli, there are already hairdressers willing to cater to those not vaccinated or cured, while people still have coffee together in private meet-ups, mostly organised over social networks. “In fact, there is already this parallel community. It’s already being built. There is already everything,” she said.

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“..legislation that they say keeps the government from interfering with doctors..”

Concern As Republicans Push To Make Dubious Covid Cures Easier (G.)

Republican state lawmakers across the United States have proposed – and in some cases passed – legislation that they say keeps the government from interfering with doctors who want to prescribe ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to help prevent and treat Covid-19. But those treatments have not proven effective at preventing or treating Covid and infectious disease experts see the bills as examples of right-wing lawmakers politicizing medicine – a trend that is increasing as the pandemic wears on in America in to its third year amid an increasingly fraught political atmosphere. And so it goes with the latest suspect Covid-19 treatment that has become about more than just a drug, but rather about whether to trust established public health organizations or doctors who stray from their guidelines, and podcast and cable news hosts.


“We really need to have the politicians step aside and let scientists and public health officials make the decisions on what is going to be beneficial in preventing and treating Covid,” said Sunil Parikh, an associate professor of epidemiology and infectious diseases at the Yale School of Public Health. Kansas is one of at least 11 states, according to Buzzfeed, where Republican lawmakers have proposed, and in some cases passed, legislation to limit medical licensing boards’ ability to take action against providers who prescribe ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, another drug that has not been shown to be effective against Covid but nevertheless promoted by some politicians on the right. “We are leaving it up to medical professionals like it should be, not bureaucrats trying to maintain a single message,” said Kansas state Senator Richard Hilderbrand, the chair of the committee that sponsored the legislation.

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“..the nation’s first clinical trial of ivermectin to treat COVID-19..”

Just how crazy is that?

University of Minnesota Ivermectin Trial Nearing Completion (Star T.)

University of Minnesota researchers expect to finish enrollment this week in the nation’s first clinical trial of ivermectin to treat COVID-19, and the study’s highly anticipated results could be only a month away. The COVID-OUT study is reviewing three common drugs, including the antidepressant fluvoxamine and the diabetes treatment metformin, but gained attention for its inclusion of ivermectin. The controversial drug has been championed by opponents of COVID-19 vaccines, despite a warning from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that ivermectin is cleared only to treat parasitic infections, head lice and certain skin conditions. Anti-inflammatory benefits of all three medications prompted the U study, which was delayed by slow enrollment over the summer until the delta and omicron waves of the pandemic emerged.

Lead researcher Dr. Carolyn Bramante said the results will provide clinical guidance to doctors who are facing record pandemic cases and to the FDA about whether to authorize the drugs for treatment of COVID-19. “Sooner would have been better, but I’m really proud of my team,” she said. “We will be done very quickly.” Proven outpatient COVID-19 treatments have been limited, and supplies in Minnesota have been scarce. Providers in the state discontinued two types of monoclonal antibody infusions in December because they were ineffective against the omicron variant, and providers had to ration the effective types. New antiviral COVID-19 pills that have received emergency FDA approval are coming in small shipments every other week to Minnesota.

[..] The U trial is enrolling 1,100 patients with COVID-19 to receive fluvoxamine and ivermectin, alone or in combination with metformin, or a nonmedicating placebo for comparison. The study is tracking whether patients taking the drugs for 14 days avoid hospitalization and maintain healthy blood oxygen levels. Bramante said the drugs have potential to reduce excessive inflammation — a hallmark of some of the most severe and fatal COVID-19 cases. Ivermectin has been tried in other countries, such as India, with less access to vaccine, despite a World Health Organization warning against its use outside clinical trials until its benefits are proven. Some global studies of the drug have been debunked while others in the U.S. are behind the U study.

Duluth-based Essentia Health on Monday announced it was joining the ongoing national ACTIV-6 clinical trial that is studying ivermectin in combination with fluvoxamine and fluticasone, an inhaled steroid. “The aim of the study is to see if these medications make you feel better sooner and prevent hospitalization,” said Dr. Rajesh Prabhu, an Essentia infectious disease specialist. Bramante is not allowed to see the patient data from the U study until after enrollment is finished, but she said it is a positive sign that a data safety monitoring board has allowed it to continue. That means the drugs aren’t causing harm but also there is no proof yet they absolutely work or don’t work against COVID-19.

Read more …

Japan goes its own way.

Japan’s Kowa Says Ivermectin Effective Against Omicron In Phase III Trial (R.)

Japanese trading and pharmaceutical company Kowa Co Ltd said on Monday anti-parasite drug ivermectin has been found effective for treating the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in a Phase III trial. The trial found ivermectin has “an antiviral effect” against the variant, Kowa said without providing further details. The firm has been working with Kitasato University, a medical university in Tokyo. Clinical trials evaluating the drug, which is used to treat parasites in animals and humans, are ongoing but promotion of the drug as a COVID-19 treatment has generated controversy. The drug is not approved for treatment of COVID-19 in Japan and the U.S. Federal Drug Administration has repeatedly warned against its use.

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Yes, it’s about vaccines.

University Offers Help To Students ‘Affected By A Free Speech Event’ (DM)

Colorado State University is promoting resources aimed at students who claim to be ‘affected by a free speech event’ on campus. A sign was spotted on campus and posted to social media which reads: ‘If you (or someone you know) are affected by a free speech event on campus, here are some resources.’ The sign then proceeds to list 17 different departments or offices on the university campus that may be of help. It includes Multicultural Counseling, Incidents of Bias Reporting, the Office of Equal Opportunity, and a Victim’s Assistance Hotline. Even university staff are taken care of with specific services for employees including the Office of Ombuds, and the Employee Assistance Program.

The roll call continues with a host of departments and programs set up to assist minority students, including Student Diversity Program centers for Asian Pacific, Black/African, and Native Americans. LGBTQ+ are not forgotten either with various services and cultural resources designated for the community. Students with disabilities and given their own hotline together with women, through the Women and Gender Advocacy Center. Campus Reform first reported on the sign. The sign was posted on the Instagram account Turning Point USA Rockies Territory. Turning Point Action is an American nonprofit organization that advocates for conservative values on high school, college, and university campuses across the country. The account called out the school for ‘intolerance,’ adding, ‘We haven’t even had an event yet gotta love the intolerance of @coloradostateuniversity.’

Colorado State University, where tuition is $31,712 a year for out-of-state students, has been hostile in recent months to conservative organizations. Several incidents occurred during the fall 2021 semester. In one, a student was filmed harassing Turning Point group members calling them ‘right-wing goons’ and noting that ‘disrupting one of your activities is actually probably one of the most ethical and best things I can do with my time.’ [..]Also in the fall, a student was caught as they stole a sign advocating against vaccine mandates after the university threatened any student who didn’t register their vaccine status with arrest for trespassing. The university later clarified their policy saying that they were ‘not arresting students who are unvaccinated’, so long as they provided their vaccination information or declared an exemption.

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Whole cloth.

US Close To Approving ‘Mother Of All Sanctions’ Against Russia (G.)

The leaders of the Senate foreign relations committee said on Sunday they were on the verge of approving “the mother of all sanctions” against Vladimir Putin, warning there would be no appeasement as the Russian president contemplates an invasion of Ukraine. “We cannot have a Munich moment again,” the panel’s Democratic chair, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, told CNN’s State of the Union, referring to the 1938 agreement by which allies ceded parts of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, believing it would stave off war. “Putin will not stop if he believes the west will not respond,” Menendez said. “We saw what he did in 2008 in Georgia, we saw what he did in 2014 in pursuit of Crimea. He will not stop.”

Menendez said he believed bipartisan negotiations for severe sanctions were “on the one-yard line”, despite disagreements with Republicans over whether measures should be imposed before or after any Russian invasion. The UK government promised to ramp up sanctions against Putin and his associates. The negotiations come ahead of an expected UN security council meeting on Monday, at the request of the US, to give Russia the opportunity to explain its actions. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, said: “We’re going to go into the council prepared to listen to Russia’s security concerns, but we’re not going to be distracted by their propaganda.”

On Sunday, Kyiv urged Moscow to pull back its troops from Ukraine’s border and continue dialogue with the west if it was “serious” about de-escalating tensions that have soared amid fears of a Russian invasion. Canada moved its Ukraine-based military units westward on Sunday and announced the temporary withdrawal of all non-essential employees from its Kyiv embassy, citing ongoing Russian threats along the border. “We will continue to take all precautions necessary to keep our Canadian Armed Forces safe and secure,” said Canada’s Defense Minister Anita Anand at a press conference in Kyiv. Canada has 900 military members supporting the Nato mission in Ukraine via “land, air and sea,” she said.

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Eurocrat

EU Threatens To Halt Nord Stream 2 & Cut Russia Off From SWIFT (RT)

The EU is discussing the possibility of excluding Russia from the SWIFT international bank payment system and completely putting a halt on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline if Moscow launches an invasion of Ukraine, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has revealed. Speaking to CNN on Thursday, the Eurocrat said the EU would not rule out any possible angles for sanctions, adding that nothing is “off the table.” The EU and the US are currently working on a package of measures designed to deter Russia from considering a military incursion into Ukraine. Moscow stands accused of placing 100,000 troops on the border, with some alleging it is planning an attack. This claim has repeatedly been denied by the Kremlin.

Von der Leyen’s latest statement comes despite some reports that many foreign leaders have given up on some of the harshest sanctions, including on the financial and energy sectors, due to fears that the European economy and the continent’s energy security could see significant blowback. These include the suggestion that the EU could place a total ban on the usage of Nord Stream 2, a controversial gas pipeline that connects Russia to Germany. “I want to be very clear: Nothing is off the table, everything is on the table,” von der Leyen said when asked directly if the EU would make sure the energy system is stopped from ever being used. She repeated the same line when also asked about SWIFT. “The Commission is responsible for designing, shaping, and developing the sanctions – in the financial field, in the economic field, in the technology field. This includes everything,” she explained.

According to von der Leyen, any EU sanctions against Russia would have a devastating effect. Brussels is Moscow’s largest trading partner, and 75% of direct foreign investment in Russia comes from the EU, she explained, suggesting that economic measures would be painful. Earlier in January, German newspaper Handelsblatt reported that the EU and the US had refused to consider disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT international bank payment system. It noted that it could destabilize financial markets and help create an alternative payment infrastructure that would no longer be dominated by Western nations.

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Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
~ Albert Einstein

Year in Review 2021 Part 3 – Rise of Global Authoritarianism (Dave Collum)

So, here we are at the third and final part of the 2021 Year in Review and it’s no longer 2021. Sorry about that pfuck-up. Think of it as not in 2021 but from 2021. You may have noticed that the first 200 pages (parts 1 and 2) were laced with a recurring catchphrase, “WTF is happening?” It was a literary device for noting that the events ceased to make sense within a conventional worldview, suggesting it is time to torch the old model and start anew. Our response to a disease that was killing a very small slice of the population was to sequester and vaccinate the entire population with an experimental drug of real but unquantified fatality rate. The apparent scientific illiteracy was not some mass psychosis. Y’all just got suckered by America’s Most Trusted Psychopathic Mass Murderer assisted by an epic media blitz sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry that had a distinct authoritarian quality.

During the brief period after uploading part 2 while grinding on this last portion, the Supreme Court took on the vaccine mandate issue, ruling that the only people forfeiting control of their own healthcare are the healthcare workersref 2 The court also illustrated their profound ignorance of the pandemic and what they were even charged to assess—the Constitutionality of mandates, not the efficacy.ref 3 The CEO of a major insurer reported a 40% spike in fatalities within the 18–65 age bracket that was not from Covid.ref 4 He said 10% would be a 3-sigma, once-every-200-year event: 40% is unheard of. Although he refrained from identifying a cause—deaths of despair, neglected healthcare, or a toxic vaccine—he knows precisely what did them in. They have been studying this stuff for centuries. I suspect his real message was that the insurance industry is about to contribute to inflation with rising premiums.

Meanwhile, the pathological liars running the covid grift decided after two years the masks you’ve been wearing served no medical purpose and that the vaccines don’t work either. Wait: who said the masks and vaccines don’t work?

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“I was a civil rights hero, darn it! It’s time for the rest of the world to catch up!”

Biden Promises To Replace Tom Brady With A Woman Of Color (BBee)

Legendary quarterback Tom Brady has announced his plan to retire from the NFL to spend more time carving little wooden toys for his grandkids. In response to the earth-shattering news, President Joe Biden has announced his commitment to replace the outgoing football star with a woman of color. “Listen, folks, it’s time,” said Biden to the press. “In the hundred-year history of the NFL, not a single quarterback has ever been a woman of color. That’s racist! We all know that poor women are just as smart and powerful as white kids. As president, I will nominate a new quarterback to replace Tom Brady that reflects America’s diversity.”


When told he doesn’t have the authority to nominate quarterbacks to the NFL, Biden told his staff he would just sign the executive order and let the courts deal with it later. “There’s no excuse,” said Biden. When I used to play Nine Pins with Jehoshaphat Jenkins and the townsfolk, we always used to let the black women play with us. I was a civil rights hero, darn it! It’s time for the rest of the world to catch up!” So far, candidates being considered for the empty position include Michelle Obama, Tyler Perry, and Colin Kaepernick in a woman’s wig.

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McCullough

 

 

Super immunity

 

 

 

 

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Oct 122020
 


Edward Hopper The barber shop 1931

 

 

How their beloved neighbors see America, a comment by Automatic Earth commenter ByronBishop. I don’t think I need to add much. Took the title from a comment on the comment.

 

 

ByronBishop: I live in rural Canada and I do not have television, so my information on the American presidential election comes from newspapers and some online blogs. But what impresses me the most in this cycle is what good theatre it is!

It is my view that the choice for American voters is simply this: which collection of billionaires will run the country? The Democrats or Republicans? At root, their policies are not very different; their principal goal is to maintain and extend their privilege, and to continue to develop the legal and fiscal framework that supports their activities. This framework consists of, among other things, the following policies, and most crucially, broad public acceptance of the righteousness of these policies:

• To maintain very low taxes on income and capital gains, favourable treatment of dividend and interest income, and no inheritance tax

• In the financial manipulation field, improve public and regulatory acceptance of the attitude usefully articulated by JH Kuntsler as “nothing matters and anything goes”. This allows (among many other things) private equity firms to buy up useful and productive enterprises, strip out all the assets in fees and special dividends and through the sale of high-yield (and chancy) bonds, and to then release the debt-ridden hulk back into the marketplace to sink (mostly) or swim (rarely). Also supports share buybacks, collateralised debt instruments, relocation of factories to low-wage states and countries.

• Keep the American military actively working around the world, preferably using expensive armaments. Where possible avoid stationing troops in warzones as casualties provoke bad publicity. Promote demand for novel and very expensive war materiel. (Smart bombs and drones sell to government on a cost-plus basis.)

• Support the National Rifle Association, which is in fact an association of arms manufacturers and merchants with a noisy public relations arm consisting of private members defending their Second Amendment rights. Until forty years ago the Second Amendment right was the right to join a well-regulated militia, but now it is the right to have many expensive weapons in your house.

• Everyone must recognise that public healthcare is un-American. It is a moral issue: if you cannot afford healthcare you do not deserve it. Some of the highest paid executive teams in the US are in the healthcare field, while executive teams in Canadian and European countries are mostly paid on a civil service scale. Shareholders in American healthcare companies become very rich. Were healthcare to become nationalised like in Canada and most European nations, most of the private profit would be lost

• Large corporations must be permitted to manipulate share prices through buybacks and curious business practices (Boeing, the airlines), but must then be protected by bailouts if their business falters.

• The financialisation of the economy must be regulated as lightly as possible so that fees can continue to flow.

• Regulatory capture must be celebrated (under a different name). The two-way flow of personnel from regulated industries to regulatory government departments ensures that little impedes business development.

• To ensure that the courts at all levels are staffed with conservative, business-friendly judges.

• To ensure that environmental protection regulations do not unduly interfere with business operations

I do not for a moment think that the billionaires and multi-millionaires conspire to run the American system. They are not a cabal; they do not meet. Rather, theirs is an emergent system: many individuals working towards their own goals will thus help others pursuing their own goals. It is like a flock of shorebirds wheeling and swooping in perfect unison; they are not directed, but they are simply responding to the actions of their neighbouring birds.

The billionaires achieve this through owning mainstream media companies, funding think tanks and policy research institutes, and supporting lobbyist groups and public relations shills. And they have been astonished , I am sure, to discover how cheaply they can buy the support of members of Congress. Chump-change donations to campaign funding pays off in spades. Lobbyists have language ready to drop in to any bill, to achieve corporate aims. That’s how emergency support of American workers became bailouts for cruise companies, who are based offshore and pay few American taxes.

And then members of Congress have to be made part of the investing class. For example, a fabulous oil & gas play is spun off into a Special Purpose Vehicle whose success is assured, and select politicians are invited to invest in it. If they cannot afford to purchase shares a private loan is arranged and documented and subsequently repaid, all above board. The company is spectacularly successful and the “investors” score big-time and repay any loans. Didn’t George W Bush succeed in an investment in professional sports in Texas, in a similar way? And by the way, how did Senate Majority Leader McConnell amass a self-declared net worth of $10 million after a lifetime of working as a civil servant at $200k per year?

All of the rest is theatre. In this election cycle the hot-button issues are access to abortion (again), racism and social justice (again), overseas wars, China as an economic threat, Russia! Russia! Russia!, voting systems and practices, and the age and personalities of the presidential candidates. All theatre. The billionaires don’t care about any of these things, as almost none of these things personally affect them. Safe and discreet abortion is always available somewhere in the world where private jets fly. Billionaires do not ever see people of different colour or status or class unless they choose to, and then only in circumstances they control. Russia and China are opportunities, not threats. And the presidential candidates can be influenced very cheaply. A Nevada casino magnate had the American embassy moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem for only $25 million in campaign donations to a notoriously cheap candidate.

The one thing that most amazes me is how the billionaires can continue to convince people to vote against their own best interests, whether economic interest, social interest or even national interest. At one time they used “race” quite openly, appealing to feelings of racial superiority or to fears of being electorally overwhelmed by “those people”, whether black or brown or oriental or poor. When openly racist campaigning became no longer acceptable, some genius concluded that “abortion” would make an excellent substitute, as it can combine all of the race and class issues and can bring in all of the family values baggage as well. Few other issues can motivate such a wide cross-section of the American public, and it can motivate people on either side of the issue. With so much focus on abortion who has time to worry about the domination of government by corporate interests?

Many commentators focus on the gross inequality of incomes and wealth in the USA, and a recent report by the Rand Corporation brings this in to clear focus. They analysed the growth in incomes across the entire working population of the USA for the period from the end of World War II to the present, and they found that up until 1975 or so the increase in general prosperity in the nation was shared equally across all income groups. Starting in the mid-1970’s however, most of the increase in prosperity was arrogated by the top income earners, so that the rich got richer and no-one else shared in the good times. The astonishing figure that the Rand researchers came up with was that the top 1% has actually taken all of the $50 trillion dollars in new wealth from everyone else in the 45 year period to 2020. There is a reason why so many people feel that the American Dream has passed them by – it’s because it actually has.

The usual remedy for this sort of gross inequality of power and wealth in society is revolution. The French Revolution comes to mind, but also the Russian Revolution. I wonder what was the root cause of the great social and political upheavals in Europe in 1848? (I can’t remember.) A less frequent remedy is the rise of a genuine populist movement, one that can actually re-distribute power (and thus wealth and opportunity). As Gwnne Dyer usefully says: populism is not an ideology, it is a technique. In America, I suspect that a true populist leader could only arise at the state level, and then from outside the two main parties.

If the current polarisation in American politics continues, the states may become the primary protector of social values (progressive or conservative) and the regulations that flow from them (access to abortion, gun rights and restrictions, access to health care, role of religion in public life, etc), and it may be that a true populist, charismatic leader can emerge and accrue the political power and authenticity to restrict the ability of the elites to organise state society. And that might spread, state by state. We outsiders can only hope that our fellow citizens in the USA can get their sh!t together at some point. Watching civil unrest unfold is no fun – I have cousins in America.

 

 

 

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May 142020
 


Byron Street haberdashery, New York 1900

 

95,000 Entered UK By Air In 25 Days During Lockdown (G.)
Australia Saw Overseas Visitors Fall 99% In April (R.)
Why California Is Struggling To Control Coronavirus (LAT)
Real UK Care Home Death Toll Double Official Figure (G.)
Pensioners 34 Times More Likely To Die Of COVID19 Than Working Age Brits (G.)
Only 4.4% of French Population Infected By Coronavirus (R.)
Wisconsin Supreme Court Strikes Down State’s Stay-at-Home Order (NBC)
72 People In Wisconsin Test Positive After Attending ‘Large Gathering’ (DM)
36.6% of COVID19 Patients In NY Study Develop Acute Kidney Injury (R.)
Ontario Redeploys Educators Into Nursing Homes, As One Records 56 Deaths (R.)
Why Are So Many People Getting Sick And Dying In Montreal From Covid-19? (G.)
COVID-19 Bailout Gave Wall Street a No-Lose Casino (Taibbi)
FBI Accidentally Reveals Name Of Saudi Embassy Official Suspected In 9/11 (Y!)
US Judge Asks If Michael Flynn Should Be Held In Contempt (R.)
Flynn Case Requires Letting The Sun Shine On Comey And Mueller (McLaughlin)

 

 

• US New cases 21,449

• New deaths 1,896 (yesterday 1,894, Monday: 830, Sunday: 776)

• Russia breaks its chain of 10 consecutive days of more than 10,000 new cases with 9,974

 

 

 

Cases 4,451,226 (+ 93,006 from yesterday’s 4,358,220)

Deaths 298,520 (+ 5,284 from yesterday’s 293,236)

 

 

 

From Worldometer yesterday evening -before their day’s close-

 

 

From Worldometer

 

 

From SCMP:

 

 

From COVID19Info.live:

 

 

 

 

The UK never had an actual lockdown, they just pretended they did.

18.1 million arrivals to the UK by air, land and sea from 1 January to 23 March, pre-“lockdown”. Another 95,000 just by air between 1 April and 26 April, during the lockdown. With tons of stories of very few if any checked out.

The government stopped issuing guidance at the border to arrivals from specific countries – including from Italy and China – to self-isolate on 13 March, 10 days before the lockdown was imposed.

95,000 Entered UK By Air In 25 Days During Lockdown (G.)

At least 95,000 people have entered the UK from overseas since the coronavirus lockdown was imposed, one of the government’s chief scientific advisers has revealed, while repeatedly failing to provide an estimate of how many of these people had Covid-19. Appearing before MPs on the science and technology committee, Prof John Aston, the chief scientific adviser at the Home Office, admitted that had tougher restrictions been introduced at the border, the peak of the virus may have been delayed – but he did not say by how long, or if this would have saved lives. Aston, who attends meetings of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), which is advising the government during the crisis, was asked repeatedly for the estimated proportion or number of people arriving in the UK with Covid-19.

He insisted instead that a more “robust” assessment was the ratio of imported cases to domestic cases. This model, formulated by Sage, estimates 0.5% of all cases on any given day are imported from overseas. The government stopped issuing guidance at the border to arrivals from specific countries – including from Italy and China – to self-isolate on 13 March, 10 days before the lockdown was imposed. Since then, there has been little intervention other than advice provided on leaflets and posters. Arrivals will have been subjected to the same lockdown restrictions imposed on the wider population since 23 March. [..] Yvette Cooper, the chair of the home affairs select committee, [..] asked Aston if ministers had a central estimate of the number of people arriving each week who might have Covid-19 when the decision to stop asking any arrivals to self-isolate was made.

[..] Cooper [..] said: “Previously people were asked to self-isolate at the border for 14 days. Inexplicably when other countries were increasing their restrictions or their requirements to self-isolate, the UK lifted them all. It was before the peak in Spain, it was still around the peak in Italy, it was several weeks before the peak in UK.” Aston’s evidence comes as the government prepares to enforce a 14-day quarantine for arrivals by air at the UK border – a policy that some have suggested would have been more appropriate prior to the UK lockdown on 23 March. There were 18.1 million arrivals to the UK in the period from 1 January to 23 March across air, land and sea, of whom 273 air passengers were formally quarantined. Aston told the committee that between 1 April and 26 April there were 95,000 arrivals into the UK by air, of whom about 53,000 were UK citizens.

Read more …

This looks more like a lockdown. Just 6,500 non-Australians arrived in April.

Australia Saw Overseas Visitors Fall 99% In April (R.)

Australia saw overseas arrivals collapse to almost nothing in April as it closed its borders to fight the coronavirus pandemic, in a massive blow for the tourist industry. Preliminary data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics released on Wednesday showed arrivals of 21,600 in April, down 98.7% from a year earlier. Returning Australian citizens accounted for 15,100 of them. The biggest decline was in arrivals from New Zealand, which dived by 161,950 to just 1,180. Arrivals from China, where closures had already badly curbed tourism in March, dropped 132,040 to only 320. Departures from Australia likewise plunged 96.5% to 63,500, mostly foreigners returning home.

Read more …

50% of people still leave their homes every day. Not a lockdown.

Why California Is Struggling To Control Coronavirus (LAT)

The Times asked UC San Francisco epidemiologist and infectious disease expert Dr. George Rutherford, a former epidemic intelligence service officer with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about why the plateau persists. “As long as it’s going up, it has not ended. It’s got to come down for it to end,” he said. Rutherford offered two reasons why the disease is persisting: a certain percentage of people still must go out to work, and others are getting fed up with staying at home. A significant part of the population has chosen not to say home or has been unable to do so because they’re essential workers manning supermarkets, meat processing plants, prisons and nursing homes.

A CDC study estimated that around April 1, about two weeks into a regional stay-at-home order, nearly 50% of residents in five Bay Area counties were still leaving home, down from 80% in late February. “That’s still 50%,” Rutherford said, adding that people can still get infected even if they limit their trips outside the home to buy a loaf of bread at the supermarket. Essential workers who must leave home — people working in the food industry, making deliveries and staffing medical facilities — are among those contracting the coronavirus. A UC San Francisco study of thousands of residents and workers in the city’s Mission District found that 57% of those tested must leave their homes for work, and those who had to leave home to work accounted for 90% of the positive cases.

Nearly 89% of those who tested positive earn less than $50,000 a year, and most live in households with three or more people. While Latinos made up 44% of those tested, they accounted for more than 99% of the positive COVID-19 cases. Many residents and workers in the Mission District are employed in essential services such as agriculture, construction, manufacturing, restaurants, grocery stores and janitorial and domestic services, the university said. Staying home, the researchers said, clearly seemed to make a difference.

Read more …

Ambrose Evans Pritchard quotes a “London cardiologist friendly to Boris”:

“We discharged known, suspected and unknown cases into care homes which were unprepared with no formal warning that the patients were infected, no testing available, and no PPE to prevent transmission.”

Real UK Care Home Death Toll Double Official Figure (G.)

More than 22,000 care home residents in England and Wales may have died as a direct or indirect result of Covid-19, academics have calculated – more than double the number stated as passing away from the disease in official figures. Academics at the London School of Economics found that data on deaths in care homes directly attributed to the virus published by the Office for National Statistics significantly underestimated the impact of the pandemic on care home residents and accounted for only about four out of 10 of the excess deaths in care settings recorded in recent weeks in England and Wales. ONS statisticians said on Tuesday that 8,314 people had died from confirmed or suspected Covid-19 in English care homes up to 8 May.

The figures suggest the impact of the virus in care homes is finally reducing. They are based on reports filed directly from care home operators to the regulator, the Care Quality Commission. Care Inspectorate Wales has said Covid was confirmed or suspected in a further 504 cases in homes up to the 8 May in Wales. But academics at the care policy and evaluation centre at the LSE found that when excess deaths of other care residents and the deaths of care home residents from Covid-19 in hospitals are taken into account, the toll that can be directly and indirectly linked to the virus pandemic is likely to be more than double the current official count.

[..] Care homes have been running at 10% to 20% staff absence rates and many homes have been trying to isolate residents in their rooms to reduce infection spread, but this can also make their normal care more difficult and residents’ needs less visible.

Read more …

Well, if you put them all together and insert known patients, no wonder. Do the same with younger people and you get the same result.

Pensioners 34 Times More Likely To Die Of COVID19 Than Working Age Brits (G.)

As Britain edges back to work and employees consider the risks of moving beyond lockdown, official figures underscore that working-age Britons are 34 times less likely to die of coronavirus than over-65s. About 12% of all deaths relating to Covid-19 have occurred among those under 65 – a total of 4,066 deaths. Most victims have been in the over-65 category, accounting for 30,978 fatalities. There have been 8.4 deaths per 100,000 people among the under-65 category, which rises to 286 deaths per 100,000 in the over-65 group, meaning pensioners are 34 times more likely to die of the illness. The contrast is even starker in data concerning those under 45. According to the Office for National Statistics figure, there have been just 401 deaths in this age group – one death for every 100,000 people, or around 1% of the overall death toll.

However, age is just one of the factors that will affect a person’s vulnerability to the virus. Research has shown that ethnicity, deprivation, pre-existing health conditions and occupation also contribute to an individual’s risk of dying. The death rate among the working population differs by gender. The death rate for men is 9.9 per 100,000 people and 5.2 per 100,000 women. This may also be driven by the death rate in particular occupations, as some workers appear to be more vulnerable depending on exposure to the virus.

Death rates among some minority ethnic groups are also disproportionately high, according to a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. It found the death rate among British black Africans and British Pakistanis from coronavirus in English hospitals was more than 2.5 times that of the white population. Guardian reporting also found that areas with high BAME populations tended to have higher death rates.

New data released by the ONS on Monday showed for the first time that people in low-paid manual jobs were at much greater risk of dying from Covid-19. Men in low-paid jobs were almost four times more likely to die from coronavirus than professionals, with 21.4 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 5.6 among white-collar male workers, according to the analysis. Jobs which were found to have high death rates included security guards, care workers, construction workers, plant operatives, cleaners, taxi drivers, bus drivers, chefs and retail workers. Commenting on the findings, Professor Neil Pearce, a professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “The observations are almost certainly due to … exposure to people….”

Read more …

Probably a lowball, but very far from herd immunity.

Only 4.4% of French Population Infected By Coronavirus (R.)

A study led by the Pasteur Institute says a mere 4.4% of the French population – or 2.8 million people – have been infected by the novel coronavirus, much higher than the official count of cases but way too low to achieve so-called “herd immunity”. In a study published on Wednesday in the journal Science, researchers say the infection rate in the worst-hit parts of France – the eastern part of the country and the Paris region – is between 9 and 10 percent on average. “Around 65% of the population should be immune if we want to control the pandemic by the sole means of immunity”, the study says. Herd immunity refers to a situation where enough people in a population have immunity to an infection to be able to effectively stop that disease from spreading. The rate of infection was measured by the Pasteur Institute as of May 11, the day when France started to unwind its almost two-month-long national lockdown.


“As of a consequence, our results show that, without a vaccine, the herd immunity alone will not be enough to avoid a second wave at the end of the lockdown. Efficient control measures must thus be upheld after May 11”, researchers say. France’s overall death toll from the virus rose to 27,074 on Wednesday, the fifth-highest in the world, and total number of cases officially stood at 177,700, the seventh-highest total. The Pasteur Institute also said the lockdown put in place on March 17 in France led to a drastic decline of the coronavirus’ reproduction rate, going from 2.9 to 0.67 over the 55-day virtual standstill of the country. A Spanish study also published on Wednesday showed similar results, saying about 5% of the country’s population had contracted the disease and that there was no herd immunity in Spain, also emerging progressively for long lockdown.


Large sero-survey in Spain with 60,000 participants shows ~5% of population tested positive for #coronavirus antibodies, 11% in region with highest incidence (Madrid)
1) Infection fatality rate ~1.2%
2) Herd immunity is not an option

Read more …

Why then have a law that says you can’t drive through city center at 200 mph? Same difference. “I will not give up my freedom for your safety”.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Strikes Down State’s Stay-at-Home Order (NBC)

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down the state’s stay-at-home order during the coronavirus pandemic as “unlawful, invalid, and unenforceable” after finding that the state’s health secretary exceeded her authority. In a 4-3 ruling, the court called Health Services Secretary Andrea Palm’s directive, known as Emergency Order 28, a “vast seizure of power.” The order directed all people in the state to stay at home or at their places of residence, subject only to exceptions allowed by Palm, the ruling says. The order, which had been set to run until May 26, also restricted travel and business, along with threatening jail time or fines for those who don’t comply.


The ruling says the judges weren’t challenging Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ emergency powers, but the decision effectively undercuts his administration and forces him to work out a compromise with the Republican-controlled Legislature. One of the dissenting justices, Rebecca Dallet, said her conservative colleagues in the majority were the ones who were exceeding their authority, and she noted precedent for Palm’s directives — a monthslong stay-at-home order during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. “This decision will undoubtedly go down as one of the most blatant examples of judicial activism in this court’s history,” she said. “And it will be Wisconsinites who pay the price.” [..] During oral arguments, Justice Rebecca Bradley suggested that the order amounted to “tyranny,” and at another point, she referred to Japanese Americans’ internment during World War II.

Read more …

A protest meeting.

72 People In Wisconsin Test Positive After Attending ‘Large Gathering’ (DM)

More than 70 people in Wisconsin have tested positive for coronavirus after admitting they attended a ‘large gathering’ in the state – around the same time that thousands of protesters were pictured ignoring social distancing and shunning face masks at a mass anti-lockdown rally. The state’s Department of Health Services (DHS) confirmed that 72 individuals who were diagnosed with the deadly virus on or after April 26 had all attended a large gathering not long before their diagnosis. ‘We were able to pull some limited data – out of 1,986 cases with onset/diagnosis on or after 4/26, there were seventy-two cases who reported attending a large gathering,’ DHS spokesperson Jennifer Miller told The Progressive.


Two days earlier on April 24, thousands of protesters gathered outside Wisconsin’s capitol building in Madison demanding Democratic Governor Tony Evers reopen the state for business. It marked one of the largest anti-lockdown rallies to take place across the country. At the time there were 5,356 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Wisconsin and 262 people had died. As of Wednesday, cases have almost doubled to 10,611 and the death toll has reached 418. [..] ‘Possible exposures during protests haven’t been specifically added to the database because we already ask about large gatherings,’ Miller told The Progressive. ‘Contact tracers do ask if patients attended mass gatherings, but not specifically about protests, so there’s really no data on who may have contracted COVID-19 at a protest.’ Miller added: ‘No, it doesn’t specifically state that the 72 were at a rally, but this is the data we have.’

Read more …

Right before they go on the ventilator.

36.6% of COVID19 Patients In NY Study Develop Acute Kidney Injury (R.)

Over a third of patients treated for COVID-19 in a large New York medical system developed acute kidney injury, and nearly 15% required dialysis, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday. The study was conducted by a team at Northwell Health, the largest health provider in New York state. “We found in the first 5,449 patients admitted, 36.6% developed acute kidney injury,” said study co-author Dr. Kenar Jhaveri, associated chief of nephrology at Hofstra/Northwell in Great Neck, New York, whose findings were published in the journal Kidney International. Acute kidney injury occurs when the kidneys fail and become unable to filter out waste. Of those patients with kidney failure, 14.3% required dialysis, Jhaveri said in a phone interview.


The study is the largest to date to look at kidney injury in COVID-19 patients. It may be helpful, Jhaveri said, as other hospitals face new waves of patients with the disease caused by the novel coronavirus that has infected more than 4.3 million people and killed over 295,000 globally. Several groups have noted increased rates of kidney failure among patients with COVID-19. Jhaveri and colleagues set out to quantify it by combing through medical records of 5,449 COVID-19 patients hospitalized between March 1 and April 5. They found that kidney failure occurred early on, with 37.3% of patients arriving at the hospital with failing kidneys, or developing the condition within the first 24 hours of being admitted. In many cases, the kidney failure occurred around the time severely ill patients needed to be placed on a ventilator, Jhaveri said.

Read more …

Canada’s not doing well.

Ontario Redeploys Educators Into Nursing Homes, As One Records 56 Deaths (R.)

The Canadian province of Ontario is allowing its education staff, including teachers and custodians, to voluntarily redeploy into the province’s long-term care homes, the provincial government said on Wednesday, as the coronavirus outbreak at just one Toronto-area home alone has killed dozens. Coronavirus deaths in long-term care nursing homes account for 815 of 1,765 total deaths in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, according to provincial data released on Wednesday. Camilla Care Community recorded 56 deaths, according to the home’s owner, Sienna Senior Living, on Wednesday. The regional health authority reported 179 residents and 39 staff have tested positive at the facility.


In March, Ontario closed schools in an effort to stop the spread of the virus, requiring many educators and other staff to leave their jobs. This latest redeployment focuses on training and moving any employees who volunteer into nursing homes. Ontario has previously moved workers from hospitals into long-term care homes, and Wednesday’s announcement expands the province’s support for the facilities, which have been hit hard by the virus. The province also issued an emergency order on Wednesday morning, allowing the provincial government to issue mandatory management orders to any long-term care home struggling to deal with an outbreak.

Read more …

Not just care homes, poor parts of town as well.

Why Are So Many People Getting Sick And Dying In Montreal From Covid-19? (G.)

Springtime in Montreal is normally a cause for celebration. After the city’s long, arduous winters, people emerge from the confines of their apartments at the first inkling of warmth to lounge in parks and on patios – or terrasses – and enjoy a meal, beverage and the company of friends. Not this year. Montreal, a city touted by tourist guides as “North America’s Europe” for its rich culture and joie de vivre, is Canada’s centre for Covid-19. Of the entire country’s 70,000 cases and 5,000 deaths, the city of 2 million people has 20,000 cases and more than 2,000 deaths, or about 64% of the entire province’s death toll. Those numbers have catapulted Quebec into an unfavourable position: it is now the seventh deadliest place in the world for daily coronavirus deaths, according to Quebec newspaper La Presse.


[..] Earlier this month, the province admitted that its effort to manage staffing shortages by moving workers around the long-term care network could be spreading the virus. Montreal North feels the consequences of that. One in five Montrealers infected with Covid-19 are healthcare workers – none of whom are receiving danger pay. In Montreal North, 23% are infected, said community organizer Will Prosper. “It’s these people who are still taking care of us, when not too long ago they were the people who we wanted to kick out,” said Prosper.

Read more …

Just a bigger casino.

COVID-19 Bailout Gave Wall Street a No-Lose Casino (Taibbi)

The $2.3 trillion CARES Act, the Donald Trump-led rescue package signed into law on March 27th, is a radical rethink of American capitalism. It retains all the cruelties of the free market for those who live and work in the real world, but turns the paper economy into a state protectorate, surrounded by a kind of Trumpian Money Wall that is designed to keep the investor class safe from fear of loss. This financial economy is a fantasy casino, where the winnings are real but free chips cover the losses. For a rarefied segment of society, failure is being written out of the capitalist bargain. This is a fresh take on a long-developing dynamic. Dating to the late Eighties, when then-Fed-chief Alan Greenspan slashed interest rates after the 1987 stock-market crash, there’s been an understanding that the government would be there to help Wall Street back on its feet in hard times.

[..] What’s happening in the COVID-19 crisis is the next step: a financial bubble where the Fed isn’t the cleanup mechanism, but the source of the mania itself. While the real economy is seeing record disruptions, Wall Street has seen prolonged rallies of “rational exuberance” over the Fed’s decision to usher in “QE infinity” and essentially ban losing in finance capitalism. Though this is a Trump bill — El Pompadour is so determined that the CARES Act be remembered as his work, he fought to get his signature on relief checks — it passed unanimously, by voice vote in the House, and 96-0 in the Senate. Talk to Democrats on the Hill and they will tell you this is a bailout to be cheered and supported, nothing like the 2008 rescue. This time is different, the argument goes: Three-quarters of the money goes to real people.

[..] Technically, “only” about $500 billion of the congressionally passed rescue package goes to “big business.” Moreover, the big-business aid ostensibly comes with a range of draconian-sounding conditions barring greedy hijinks, meaning no layoffs, no stock buybacks, no big bonuses, etc., if companies want the handout. The loophole comes via $454 billion created as part of that big-business package. This “emergency fund” will be dumped into a “special-purpose vehicle” used to backstop further lending by the Federal Reserve. That $454 billion is designed to grow by a factor of 10 or more. “We can lever up to $4 trillion,” said Steve Mnuchin, playing the “free-spending Goldman Sachs-trained Treasury secretary” role that apparently is a prerequisite for financial-disaster narratives in modern America.

Read more …

Lovely.

FBI Accidentally Reveals Name Of Saudi Embassy Official Suspected In 9/11 (Y!)

The FBI inadvertently revealed one of the U.S. government’s most sensitive secrets about the Sept. 11 terror attacks: the identity of a mysterious Saudi Embassy official in Washington who agents suspected had directed crucial support to two of the al-Qaida hijackers. The disclosure came in a new declaration filed in federal court by a senior FBI official in response to a lawsuit brought by families of 9/11 victims that accuses the Saudi government of complicity in the terrorist attacks. The declaration was filed last month but unsealed late last week. According to a spokesman for the 9/11 victims’ families, it represents a major breakthrough in the long-running case, providing for the first time an apparent confirmation that FBI agents investigating the attacks believed they had uncovered a link between the hijackers and the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

It’s unclear just how strong the evidence is against the former Saudi Embassy official — it’s been a subject of sharp dispute within the FBI for years. But the disclosure, which a senior U.S. government official confirmed was made in error, seems likely to revive questions about potential Saudi links to the 9/11 plot. It also shines a light on the extraordinary efforts by top Trump administration officials in recent months to prevent internal documents about the issue from ever becoming public. “This shows there is a complete government cover-up of the Saudi involvement,” said Brett Eagleson, a spokesman for the 9/11 families whose father was killed in the attacks. “It demonstrates there was a hierarchy of command that’s coming from the Saudi Embassy to the Ministry of Islamic Affairs [in Los Angeles] to the hijackers.”

Still, Eagleson acknowledged he was flabbergasted by the bureau’s slip-up in identifying the Saudi Embassy official in a public filing. Although Justice Department lawyers had last September notified lawyers for the 9/11 families of the official’s identity, they had done so under a protective order that forbade the family members from publicly disclosing it. Now, the bureau itself has named the Saudi official. “This is a giant screwup,” Eagleson said.

Read more …

Or should the FBI be held in contempt?

US Judge Asks If Michael Flynn Should Be Held In Contempt (R.)

A U.S. judge on Wednesday signaled reluctance to allow the Justice Department to drop its criminal prosecution of Michael Flynn, tasking a retired judge with advising on whether the former Trump administration official should face an additional criminal contempt charge for perjury. In a short written order, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington asked John Gleeson, a former federal judge in New York, to present arguments in the case as an amicus curiae, or friend of the court. Sullivan said he was seeking Gleeson’s recommendation on whether Flynn should face a criminal contempt charge for perjury because he testified under oath that he was guilty of lying to the FBI but then reversed course and said he had never lied. Sullivan also said he wanted Gleeson to make the case for why a motion to dismiss the Flynn case filed by the Justice Department last week should be rejected.


The Justice Department’s bombshell May 7 decision to drop its case against Flynn came on the heels of growing pressure from Trump and Trump’s political allies who repeatedly accused the FBI of improprieties in how it handled the investigation. Up until that point, the Justice Department had staunchly defended the FBI’s actions in the case. Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general who served as an adviser to Trump during the 2016 campaign, pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his interactions with Russia’s U.S. ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the weeks before Trump took office. However, later in the case he switched lawyers and tactics, accusing the FBI of tricking him and seeking to have his guilty plea withdrawn.

Read more …

Appointed by President Ronald Reagan, Patrick M. McLaughlin served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio from 1984-1988 and as an assistant U.S. attorney from 1978 to 1984.

Flynn Case Requires Letting The Sun Shine On Comey And Mueller (McLaughlin)

For most Americans, it must be absolute confusion trying to decipher truth from non-truth as charges and countercharges are leveled by the Democrats and Republicans, and the media weigh in on the Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn case. My suggestion is to ignore the talking heads and read the DOJ’s 20-page motion to dismiss the criminal information against Flynn, and all the exhibits attached to that motion. Then, you will have the facts necessary to come to an informed opinion. I have done that, so let me give a primer. The DOJ determined that “continued prosecution of this case would not serve the interests of justice” because the interview of Flynn by the FBI was unjustified by the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Flynn, since that investigation “had yielded an ‘absence of any derogatory information.’”

The DOJ is unpersuaded that Flynn’s interview “was conducted with a legitimate investigative basis” and does not believe that Flynn’s statements “were material even if untrue.” In addition, in consideration of all the evidence “including newly discovered and disclosed information,” the government doubts that it can prove “either the relevant false statements or their materiality beyond a reasonable doubt.” The motion, plus 86 pages of exhibits, provides evidence, at best, of the dereliction of duty by the FBI under James Comey and, at worst, possible criminal misconduct. Only a full disclosure of all relevant information, documents, and testimony under oath by participants will satisfy the right of Americans to have the evidence we deserve in order to form our opinions unfiltered by the talking heads. Let the real facts fall where they may.

[..] When you review the DOJ’s filing, put yourself in Flynn’s shoes and consider how you would feel if the government treated you in the same manner and, to top it off, hid material exculpatory information from your defense team and the court. Overlay on that: How would you handle it if legal fees had wiped you out financially and the agents and prosecutors were threatening to indict a member of your family to pressure you to cave? The conduct of Comey’s FBI, of the Special Counsel, and of some at Main Justice should be placed under the microscope of a truth-seeking, nonpartisan inquiry with the interests of the nation in mind. Find out what happened and why — then fix it.

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Jun 142019
 


Henri Matisse Woman with a hat 1905

 

US Consults Allies On How To Protect Shipping In Wake Of Tanker Attacks (R.)
Julian Assange Is Not On Trial, British Justice Is (Wight)
The Hitlerization of Jeremy Corbyn – Among Others (Hopkins)
US Retirement Savings Gap Grows By $3 Trillion Each Year (MW)
The Fed Is Pushing On A String
The State of the Canadian Debt Slaves (WS)
Canada Rejects Idea Of Halting Extradition Of Top Huawei Executive To US (R.)
Elizabeth Warren To Propose Cancelling Up To $50,000 In Student Debt (MW)
UK Government Blew Billions on “Help to Buy” Scheme (DQ)
Varoufakis, Kotzias And The Dwindling ‘Progressive Army’ (K.)
School’s Purpose is Indoctrination (Carbone)
Carnival Cruise Ships Pollute 10 Times More Than All Cars in Europe (D.)

 

 

There are Japanese ships in the Persian Gulf literally every moment of every day. But Iran only decides to attack them when the first Japanese PM ever(?!) visits the country. Bolton is dementing.

US Consults Allies On How To Protect Shipping In Wake Of Tanker Attacks (R.)

The United States is discussing with its allies a variety of options on how to protect international shipping in the Gulf of Oman in the wake of tanker attacks that Washington has blamed on Iran, senior Trump administration officials said on Thursday. Two officials, speaking to a small group of reporters on condition of anonymity, said the United States wants to ensure the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and make sure international commerce is not disrupted. Two oil tankers were attacked on Thursday and left adrift in the Gulf of Oman. “We don’t think this is over,” one official said of the possibility of more such attacks. The official said options are being reviewed.


“We’re discussing and will be discussing with our partners and allies suggestions on how we collectively can take steps to ensure, one, that we maintain freedom of navigation and international commerce is not disrupted and, second, that we protect our forces’ interests and our commercial assets and those of our partners and allies,” the official said. The official said the attacks appeared “designed to have a political outcome” and suggested it could have been an attempt to disrupt a visit to Tehran by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. “We are going to obviously evaluate our presence in the region and the growing threat and make subsequent decisions,” the official said. “We have to look at the threat, as we always do, to our personnel and our forces but the threat to a strategic chokepoint. There’s a significant amount of trade that transits the Strait of Hormuz every day.”

Read more …

Another hearing today.

Julian Assange Is Not On Trial, British Justice Is (Wight)

The most honest man in Britain today is Julian Assange, while the most dishonest are those who are engaged in his ongoing persecution. The latest instalment in that persecution is a court hearing in London on June 14, where details of the request for his extradition to the US, it is expected, will be revealed for the first time. The formal request for the extradition of the founder of WikiLeaks was made to the UK by US authorities earlier in the week – and with British Home Secretary Sajid Javid signing the relevant papers sanctioning it, the final decision on whether Julian Assange’s extradition to the US goes ahead now rests with the courts.

[..] In revealing to the world the beast of US hegemony that resides behind the velvet curtains of democracy and human rights, Julian Assange exposed the lie upon which this American Empire (and make no mistake, it is an empire) depends. It depends on it in order to persuade its supposed beneficiaries – i.e. people living in the West – to continue to suspend disbelief as to the reality of a system they’ve been conditioned to believe is rooted in values that emanate from the human heart rather than from the heart of the machine. The end result is that in exposing this lie, Assange and WikiLeaks became a bigger threat to the ability of US hegemony to function normally than a million bayonets. As such, it became imperative that he, as the founder and face of WikiLeaks, be destroyed.

Britain’s role in this process couldn’t be any more sordid or shameful. Its legal system and judiciary has effectively been turned into a subsidiary of its US counterpart; its function not to dispense justice but to deliver a man into the arms of injustice. The fate to befall Assange proves that there’s a world of difference between believing that you live in a free society and behaving as if you do. He is the canary down the coalmine of Western democracy, signalling the warning that its foundations are rotten to the core.

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“..American Hitler (i.e., Donald Trump) will “push back” (i.e., intervene) against British Hitler (i.e., Jeremy Corbyn)..”

The Hitlerization of Jeremy Corbyn – Among Others (Hopkins)

Apparently, American Hitler and his cronies are conspiring with some secret group of “Jewish leaders” to stop British Hitler from becoming prime minister and wiping out all the Jews in Great Britain. Weird, right? But that’s not the weird part, because maybe American Hitler wants to wipe out all the Jews in Great Britain himself, rather than leaving it to British Hitler … Hitlers being notoriously jealous regarding their genocidal accomplishments. No, the weird part is that everyone knows that American Hitler does not make a move without the approval of Russian Hitler, who is also obsessed with wiping out the Jews, and with destroying the fabric of Western democracy. So why would Russian Hitler want to let American Hitler and his goons thwart the ascendancy of British Hitler, who, in addition to wanting to wipe out all the Jews, also wants to destroy democracy by fascistically refunding the NHS, renationalizing the rail system, and so on?

It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it? In any event, here’s the official story. In “a recording leaked to The Washington Post,” and then flogged by the rest of the corporate media, Reichsminister des Auswärtigen, Mike Pompeo, told a group of unnamed “Jewish leaders” that American Hitler (i.e., Donald Trump) will “push back” (i.e., intervene) against British Hitler (i.e., Jeremy Corbyn) to protect the lives of Jews in Great Britain if British Hitler becomes prime minister (and is possibly already doing so now). The identities of these “Jewish leaders” have not been disclosed by the corporate media, presumably in order to protect them from being murdered by Corbyn’s Nazi hit squad.

Whoever they were, they wanted to know whether American Hitler and his fascist cabinet were “willing to work with [them] to take on actions if life becomes very difficult for Jews” after Jeremy Corbyn seizes power, declares himself Führer of Communist Britannia, and orders the immediate invasion of France. To anyone who has been closely following the corporate media’s relentless coverage of Jeremy Corbyn’s Nazi Death Cult (i.e., the UK Labour Party) and the global Anti-Semitism Pandemic, it comes as no real surprise that this group of “Jewish leaders” (whoever they are) would want to stop him from becoming prime minister. I doubt that their motives have much to do with fighting anti-Semitism, or anything else specifically “Jewish,” but … well, I’m kind of old-fashioned that way. I still believe there’s a fundamental difference between “the Jews” and the global capitalist ruling classes.

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Thanks to the Fed.

US Retirement Savings Gap Grows By $3 Trillion Each Year (MW)

Many Americans haven’t saved as much money as they need for retirement — and the gap is expected to widen dramatically in the next 30 years. The retirement savings gap — between what people have and should have — was $28 trillion in the U.S. in 2015, but by 2050, it’s expected to swell to $137 trillion, according to the World Economic Forum, a Cologny-Geneva, Switzerland-based nonprofit that researched international financial affairs. The disparity grows $3 trillion every year in the U.S.

The organization calculated this gap assuming most individuals’ retirement income sources would include a combination of government-provided pensions (such as Social Security), employer pensions in the public or private workforce and individual savings. They also analyzed the level of savings across expectations of income needs and life expectancies, assuming individuals would retire between 60 and 70 years old, for countries including China, Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom. The gap is most pronounced in the U.S., followed by China and Japan tied for $11 trillion in 2015. China is also expected to see a significantly wider discrepancy in 2050, at $119 trillion, followed by India, with an $85 trillion gap. Overall, the eight countries the WEF analyzed will see a $400 trillion disparity.

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Velocity of money and inflation.

The Fed Is Pushing On A String (Roberts)

Historically, the reason the Fed cuts rates, and interest are falling, is because the Fed has acted in response to a crisis, recession, or both. [..] Secondly, after a decade of QE and zero interest rates inflation, outside of asset prices, (as measured by CPI), remains muted at best. The reason that QE does not cause “inflationary” pressures is that it is an “asset swap” and doesn’t affect the money supply or the velocity of money. QE remains confined to the financial markets which lifts asset prices, but it does not impact the broader economy.

Unfortunately, the Fed is still misdiagnosing what ails the economy, and monetary policy is unlikely to change the outcome in the U.S., just as it failed in Japan. The reason is simple. You can’t cure a debt problem with more debt. Therefore, monetary interventions, and government spending, don’t create organic, sustainable, economic growth. Simply pulling forward future consumption through monetary policy continues to leave an ever growing void in the future that must be filled. Eventually, the void will be too great to fill.

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Time to start defaulting?

The State of the Canadian Debt Slaves (WS)

Canadian households are known around the world for their uncanny ability to pile on debt. And American debt slaves, who’d gotten trampled during the Great Recession, turn out to be lackadaisical these days in comparison. The share of disposable income (total incomes from all sources minus taxes) that Canadian households spent on making principal and interest payments on their ballooning mortgage debts and non-mortgage debts reached a new record of 14.9% in the first quarter, despite still ultra-low interest rates and despite the highest disposable income ever, according to data released today by Statistics Canada:

[..] So how do Canadian debt slaves stack up against American debt slaves? Statistics Canada released a report on just this topic at the end of March perhaps because authorities in Canada should get a tad nervous. [..] The annualized data it provided included the household debt-to-disposable income ratios for Canada and for the US through 2018. The ratio shows how large debt is relative to disposable income. For Canada, this ratio was 175% annualized in 2018, one of the highest in the world, and rising. For the US, it was 103%, and declining:

Canada’s household debts have continued to surge since the year 2000 except for a brief dip during the Financial Crisis. But US household debts plunged during years of deleveraging after the Financial Crisis, in part by consumers defaulting on their mortgages and credit cards. Household debts didn’t start growing again until 2013. And it took until 2017 before they surpassed the pre-Financial Crisis peak. But over the decade since the Financial Crisis, the US population has grown, and the number of working people has grown, and the national disposable income has increased, and so the ratio of household debt to disposable income has continued to drop.

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“..could make Canadians around the world less safe..”

Canada Rejects Idea Of Halting Extradition Of Top Huawei Executive To US (R.)

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland on Thursday dismissed a suggestion that Ottawa block the extradition of a top executive from China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd to the United States, saying it would set a dangerous precedent. Huawei’s Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested on U.S. fraud charges in Vancouver last December, will challenge Washington’s extradition request at hearings that are set to begin next January. China angrily demanded Canada release Meng and detained two Canadians on spying charges. It has also blocked imports of Canadian canola seed and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he fears further retaliation.


The Globe and Mail newspaper on Thursday said former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien had floated the idea of the government intervening to stop the extradition case and thereby improve ties with Beijing. “When it comes to Ms Meng there has been no political interference … and that is the right way for extradition requests to proceed,” Freeland told a televised news conference in Washington. “It would be a very dangerous precedent indeed for Canada to alter its behavior when it comes to honoring an extradition treaty in response to external pressure,” she added, saying to do so could make Canadians around the world less safe.

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And what about all the others?

Elizabeth Warren To Propose Cancelling Up To $50,000 In Student Debt (MW)

Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to cancel student debt will soon be one step closer to reality — even if she doesn’t become president. The Democratic Senator of Massachusetts plans to introduce legislation in the coming weeks that mirrors her presidential campaign proposal to cancel at least a portion of the student debt held by many of the nation’s 44 million borrowers, her Senate office announced Thursday. Rep. James Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina and the house majority whip, will introduce companion legislation in the House of Representatives. Warren’s office hasn’t yet released a draft of the legislative text, but the bill is slated to propose cancelling up to $50,000 in student debt for the bulk of student loan borrowers, her office said.


Under the proposal Warren released as part of her presidential campaign in April, borrowers with a household income of less than $100,000 would have $50,000 of their student debt cancelled and borrowers with an income between $100,000 and $250,000 would be eligible for some student debt cancellation — though not the full $50,000. Borrowers earning $250,000 or more would receive no debt cancellation. Her campaign estimated the plan would cost $640 billion, which would be paid through a tax on the ultra-wealthy. The idea of student debt cancellation has been popular in some circles for years, but Warren’s campaign proposal nudged it into the mainstream. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent seeking the Democratic nomination, has vowed to cancel “massive amounts of student debt,” though hasn’t offered specifics.

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All governments blow housing bubbles.

UK Government Blew Billions on “Help to Buy” Scheme (DQ)

Here’s how the scheme works: First-time property buyers get to put down a deposit of as little as 5% on a new-build home worth as much as £600,000 ($761,000) and receive an “equity loan” from the government. The size of the loan varies depending on where borrowers live. In London, where the price of property is an order of magnitude higher than in most other places, buyers can receive as much as 40% of the property price. Across the rest of the country the upper limit is 20%. The rest of the financing is covered by a traditional mortgage. While Help to Buy may have had a limited effect in terms of making housing affordable for first time buyers who are genuinely priced out of the market, it has proven to be effective at sustaining the UK’s all-important housing bubble by jacking up the prices of new-build houses, resulting in even less affordable housing.


Since Help to Buy was first launched in 2013, average UK house prices have increased by 35%, from £167,000 to £226,000, according to the Office for National Statistics. Through the scheme, the government has so far issued around 211,000 loans worth £11.7 billion ($14.8 billion) to home buyers. According to the NAO, this has helped increase sales of new-build properties from 61,357 a year in 2013-14 to 104,245 a year in 2017-18. That, in turn, has helped fuel a spike in profits for the UK’s biggest home builders. The nine largest builders dished out £2.3 billion in dividends in their most recent financial year, 39 times greater than the £53 million they paid out in 2012, a year before the scheme was introduced.

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Greeks have had enough of ‘left’; look what it brought them.

Varoufakis, Kotzias And The Dwindling ‘Progressive Army’ (K.)

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has been blindsided and thrown completely off his game plan. His narrative of a “progressive army” and a fresh rally of forces for elections “that will determine the future” is coming under constant attack. The Progressive Alliance was intended to move SYRIZA closer to the center so that it could resonate more strongly with the broader “progressive” section of voters – though what constitutes progressive and conservative in today’s world is a matter of debate – and to more fully acquire the characteristics of one of the two pillars of the two-party system, pushing center-left Movement for Change to the sidelines.

Tsipras’ plan, however, has been scuppered by two developments in the broader area of the Left, which are of significant symbolic importance and may affect the balance of power. What he hopes to achieve in the next few weeks is to convince many of the voters who chose not to vote in the European elections and who are mainly former supporters of SYRIZA to return to the fold and put their weight behind the big battle against the “socially insensitive, neoliberal” Kyriakos Mitsotakis of the opposition New Democracy party. His path in this ambitious plan, however, is littered with obstacles. The first was the surprisingly strong performance of Yanis Varoufakis’ DiEM25 party in the European elections, which shook things up.

There is now a party to the left of SYRIZA that is pro-European and has a leader with what a leftist voter might see as a convincing position. Moreover, he is neither Zoe Constantopoulou nor Panagiotis Lafazanis. He is a TV star who is in a position to boost his popularity thanks to his strong social media presence. It is also quite likely, if not certain, that he will make it into Parliament next month, and not just by scraping by with 3 percent. You can say a lot about Varoufakis, but what is certain is that he represents the thinking of a significant portion of the people who voted for SYRIZA in January 2015. He exercises charm over this portion of voters, and this is something that will be evident at the polls.

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Has been true for a very long time. Still poorly written though.

School’s Purpose is Indoctrination (Carbone)

The near sole purpose of present-day academia is indoctrination. This is a fairly bold thesis, but the evidence is in its favor. The increasingly progressive leftist agenda is sweeping through academia and conservatives are passively watching it happen. The main indoctrination stories you hear are those of radical professors on college campuses, outlandish majors created to forward social justice movements, and, on occasion, a political outburst by a high school teacher. Although these issues need addressing, by far the biggest – and the one that should scare everyone the most – is the silent indoctrination.


Indoctrination is no longer dependent upon the political beliefs of teachers. We are now past that. Course material is blatant political propaganda. Not just the course material for gender studies and similar. The core curricula of grade school through college. Sciences, economics, literature – any core course you can think of is politically influenced. The only course that may still be an exception is mathematics. Unless you account for the left-wing system of common core – which is a complete disaster. If you don’t believe this, sit through a grade school math class or open up your child’s text book. Disaster.

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But who ever measures sulfur oxides?

Carnival Cruise Ships Pollute 10 Times More Than All Cars in Europe (D.)

Commercial cruise lines are some of the world’s worst polluters, and Carnival is near the top of that list according to a study of European cruise line operators. Research found that Carnival alone is responsible for almost 10 times as much sulfur dioxide release as all 260 million of Europe’s cars combined. The study from Transport & Environment says that the 203 cruise ships that operated in European waters in 2017 emitted a combined total of 62 kilotons of sulfur oxides (SOx), which form airborne gases known to cause lung cancer and acid rain. During the same period, Europe’s 260 million known registered vehicles let out just 3.2 kilotons, the study found.

Of these 62 kilotons of SOx, more than half allegedly were the product of the 47 ships operated by Carnival Cruise Lines or its subsidiaries. Of the 20 worst offenders, seven are Carnival properties, which together made up half of the industry’s SOx emissions in Europe. Carnival denied any wrongdoing when asked for comment by Fast Company, pointed the finger at the rest of the maritime transportation industry, and insinuated that the study’s methodology was unscientific. [..] This statement arrived days after Carnival agreed to a $20 million fine and undergo increased scrutiny of its plastic and sewage disposal practices, which included dumping both directly into the ocean in large quantities. Carnival allegedly tried to hide these activities from regulators by falsifying records or pressuring the United States Coast Guard to relax the terms of its environmental compliance agreement.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Jun 042019
 


Henri Matisse Still Life with Apples on Pink Cloth 1925

 

Repeal the Espionage Act (FFF)
Swedish Court Rejects Request To Detain Julian Assange (G.)
US Moving Toward Major Antitrust Probe Of Tech Giants (R.)
Tech Stocks Crushed by Potential “Unprecedented, Wide-Ranging Probe” (WS)
Amazon and Facebook Both Want To Read Human Emotions (Kesel)
House To Vote Next Week On Whether To Find Barr, McGahn In Contempt (R.)
The Zeitgeist Knows (Kunstler)
New Poll Finds 61% Would Back Remain In A Second Referendum (TNE)
Canadian Inquiry Calls Deaths Of Indigenous Women ‘Genocide’ (R.)
The Great Insect Dying (Hance)
Arctic Is Thawing So Fast Scientists Are Losing Their Measuring Tools (TO)
High Likelihood of Human Civilization Coming to an End in 2050 (Nafeez Ahmed)

 

 

A good place to start.

Repeal the Espionage Act (FFF)

World War I is the gift that just keeps on giving. Although the U.S. government’s intervention into this senseless, immoral, and destructive war occurred 100 years ago, the adverse effects of the war continue to besiege our nation. Among the most notable examples is the Espionage Act, a tyrannical law that was enacted two months after the U.S. entered the war and which, unfortunately, remained on the books after the war came to an end. In fact, it is that World War I relic that U.S. officials are now relying on to secure the criminal indictment of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks head who released a mountain of evidence disclosing the inner workings and grave wrongdoing on the part of the U.S. national-security establishment, especially with respect to the manner in which it has waged it undeclared forever wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Some news media commentators are finally coming to the realization that if the Espionage Act can be enforced against Assange for what he did, it can be enforced against anyone in the press for revealing damaging inside information about the national-security establishment — i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. Therefore, they are calling on the Justice Department to cease and desist from its prosecution of Assange. Of course, they are right, but the problem is that they don’t go far enough. Their mindsets reflect the customary acceptance of the status quo. The mindset is that we Americans simply have to accept the way things are and plead with the government to go easy on us.

That’s just plain nonsense. It is incumbent on the American people to start thinking at a high level, one that doesn’t just accept the existence of tyrannical laws and instead calls for their repeal. [..] Wilson had to force American men to fight in World War I. He conscripted them. Enslaved would be a better word. When a government has to force its citizens to fight a particular war, that’s a good sign that it’s a bad war, one that shouldn’t be waged. In fact that was one of the reasons for the Espionage Act—not to punish people for spying but rather for criticizing the draft and the war. The law converted anyone who publicly criticized the draft or attempted to persuade American men to resist the draft into felons. And make no mistake about it: U.S. officials went after such people with a vengeance, doing their best to punish Americans for doing nothing more than speaking.

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The only thing that makes any sense is to close the case immediately.

Swedish Court Rejects Request To Detain Julian Assange (G.)

An attempt to extradite Julian Assange to Sweden has suffered a setback after a court in Uppsala said he did not need to be detained. The ruling by the district court prevents Swedish prosecutors from applying immediately for an extradition warrant for Assange to face an allegation of rape dating back to 2010. Assange denies the accusation. Assange is serving a 50-week sentence in Britain for skipping bail after he spent seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London attempting to avoid extradition to Sweden. Swedish prosecutors dropped their rape investigation in 2017 but reopened it after Ecuador rescinded its grant of asylum to Assange in April this year and allowed British police to arrest him.

The 47-year-old Australian was too ill to appear last week at the latest hearing at Westminster magistrates court in relation to a rival US extradition request. US government lawyers are seeking his removal to the US where he is charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, which carries a maximum penalty of five years. He also faces additional charges of violating the Espionage Act by publishing classified information through WikiLeaks. If both Sweden and the US present competing extradition requests, it will be up to the UK home secretary, Sajid Javid, to decide which application takes priority. At the Swedish court on Monday, a judgment was read out saying that since Assange was already in a British prison he did not need to be formally detained to be questioned by Swedish prosecutors.

“As Julian Assange is currently serving a prison sentence, the investigation can proceed with the help of a European investigation order, which does not require Julian Assange’s detention (in Sweden). The court therefore does not find it proportional to detain Julian Assange,” the judgment said. Assange’s Swedish defence lawyer, Per Samuelson, argued that Assange’s imprisonment in Britain meant there was no flight risk. “He is in prison for half a year at least, and he is detained on behalf of the United States. So there is no point detaining him in Sweden too,” Samuelson said.

Responding to the ruling, the Swedish prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson said: “The investigation continues with interviews in Sweden. I will also issue a European investigation order in order to interview Julian Assange. No date has been set yet. We will constantly review the state of the investigation.” Before the judgment, the prosecutor confirmed that if the court granted her request she intended to issue a European arrest warrant for Assange “concerning surrender to Sweden”.

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May take years.

US Moving Toward Major Antitrust Probe Of Tech Giants (R.)

The U.S. government is gearing up to investigate whether Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google misuse their massive market power, sources told Reuters on Monday, setting up what could be an unprecedented, wide-ranging probe of some of the world’s largest companies. The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, which enforce antitrust laws in the United States, have divided oversight over the four companies, two sources said, with Amazon and Facebook under the watch of the FTC, and Apple and Google under the Justice Department.


With jurisdiction established, the next step is for the two federal agencies to decide if they want to open formal investigations. Results are not likely to be quick. A previous FTC probe of Google took more than two years. Technology companies face a backlash in the United States and across the world, fueled by concerns among competitors, lawmakers and consumer groups that the firms have too much power and are harming users and business rivals. Shares of Facebook Inc fell 7.5% on Monday while Google’s owner Alphabet Inc shed more than 6%. Amazon.com Inc shares fell 4.6% and Apple Inc dipped 1%.

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Pretty wild swings.

Tech Stocks Crushed by Potential “Unprecedented, Wide-Ranging Probe” (WS)

It’s a rare moment in recent years that US government regulators are suddenly going after four tech and social media giants simultaneously – Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple. These four companies are part of my FANGMAN index that also includes Microsoft, Nvidia, and Netflix. The index dove 4.3% today, the biggest percentage decline since the infamous 4.6% drop on December 24, 2018. In terms of dollars, $137 billion in market capitalization was wiped out. Over the past four trading days the FANGMAN index has dropped by 6.6%. I highlighted today’s move in red (market cap data via YCharts):

The index has gone through some brain-twisting surges and plunges over the past two years. It peaked on August 31, 2018 (at $4.63 trillion), then plunged 29% by December 24 (to $3.29 trillion), then exploded 40% higher by April 29. But that day, at $4.61 trillion, it failed to take out the August high. And then the selling started. Since April 29, the FANGMAN index has dropped 14.0%, or by $645 billion in market cap, giving up 49% of the post-Christmas rally in just five weeks.

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And here’s that Orwell guy again.

Amazon and Facebook Both Want To Read Human Emotions (Kesel)

Facebook and Amazon’s insanity only seems to continue with no sign of slowing down anytime soon. Now, the two big conglomerate giants want to move into the uncharted territory of reading human emotions, both in their own ways. Facebook wants a robot that has five senses which can read human emotions. Facebook wants “emotionally sensitive” robots that can explore the world, identify objects and people and enable its users to make more friends, Dailymail reported. The robots would be fitted with wheels or tank-like caterpillar treads that would allow them to trundle about their environment. Alternatively, such robots could be fitted out with drive systems that would allow them to move around underwater, fly through the air or float in space, Facebook suggest in their patent.


I am not sure why anyone would trust Facebook with data ever again, let alone biometric data, after all the numerous scandals Activist Post has documented including data mining. But to each their own I guess. Amazon is also looking into reading human emotions in a completely different way by utilizing a voice-activated wearable device, that will sense its wearer’s state of mind by the tone of voice, Bloomberg reported. It’s worth noting that both companies have a smart home device, and after reading this you should fear what information is being gathered by the cameras and microphones attached to those electronics … besides the typically targeted advertising to turn consumers into the product.

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The Democrats need to hurry with that impeachment plan, lest ‘the other side’ starts handing out indictments.

House To Vote Next Week On Whether To Find Barr, McGahn In Contempt (R.)

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote next week on whether to hold Attorney General William Barr and former White House counsel Don McGahn in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with subpoenas related to the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the No. 2 House official said on Monday. “Next Tuesday, I will bring a resolution to the House floor forcing Attorney General Barr and former White House counsel McGahn to comply with congressional subpoenas that have been duly issued by the House Judiciary Committee,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said in a statement. “The resolution will authorize the Judiciary Committee to pursue civil action to seek enforcement of its subpoenas in federal court,” said Hoyer, a Democrat.


The House move escalated the fight between the Republican White House and Democrats who control the House and are seeking documents and testimony relating to various investigations, ahead of the 2020 presidential election in which President Donald Trump is seeking a second term. The House Judiciary Committee voted on May 8 to recommend that the full House cite Barr, the top U.S. law enforcement official and a Trump appointee, for contempt of Congress after he defied its subpoena to hand over an unredacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on 2016 Russian election interference. Democrats had also subpoenaed McGahn to testify before the Judiciary Committee last month, but he did not appear after the White House directed him not to comply.

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“Everybody’s broke, one way or another, even though they are up to their eyeballs in products designed to fall apart in a few years.”

The Zeitgeist Knows (Kunstler)

Who said the global economy was a permanent installation in the human condition? The head cheerleader was The New York Times’s Tom Friedman, with his 1999 book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, the trumpet blast for the new order of things. Since then, we partied like it was 1999, with a few grand mal seizures of the banking system along the way, some experiments in creating failed states abroad, and the descent of America’s middle-class into a Disney version of Hieronymus Bosch’s Last Judgment — which is kind of what you see on the streets of Los Angeles these days.

Guess what: the global economy is winding down, and pretty rapidly. Trade wars are the most obvious symptom. The tensions underlying that spring from human population overshoot with its punishing externalities, resource depletion, and the perversities of money in accelerated motion, generating friction and heat. They also come from the fact that techno-industrialism was a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end — and we’re closer to the end than we are to the middle. There will be no going back to the prior party, whatever way we pretend to negotiate our way around or through these quandaries.

The USA-China romance was bound to end in divorce, which Mr. Trump is surreptitiously suing for now under the guise of a negotiated trade rebalancing. The US has got a chronic financial disease known as Triffin’s Dilemma, a set of disorders endemic to any world reserve currency. The disease initially expressed itself in President Nixon’s ditching the US dollar’s gold backing in 1971. By then, the world had noticed the dollar’s declining value trend-line, and threatened to drain Fort Knox to counter the effects of holding those dollars. Since then, all world currencies have been based on nothing but the idea that national economies would forever and always pump out more wealth.

It turns out that they pump out more debt in the pursuit of that chimerical wealth until the economic viziers and banking poohbahs begin to declare that debt itself is wealth — and now all the major players around the world are choking to death on that debt, especially the USA and China, but also Japan and the dolorous commune known as the EU. Everybody’s broke, one way or another, even though they are up to their eyeballs in products designed to fall apart in a few years. Better learn how to fix stuff, especially machines, because a lot of it won’t be replaced going forward.

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Explosive.

New Poll Finds 61% Would Back Remain In A Second Referendum (TNE)

New polling has found that 61% of those who would vote in a second referendum would vote to Remain in the European Union. The YouGov survey for KIS Finance found that between the choice of Theresa May’s Brexit deal or remaining in the EU, 61% of those who confirmed they would vote stated they wanted the UK to stay in the European Union. When a no-deal scenario is added into the mix, 53% of people would vote to Remain, while 34% would vote for no-deal, and just 12% would vote for Theresa May’s deal. The research also uncovered that 1 in 10 have put off important financial decisions, such as buying their first home, moving house, spending money on home improvements, investing and making major purchases such as a car, until the future of Brexit is clear. In London this figures rises to 1 in 5 who have delayed key financial decisions as a direct result of Brexit.

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No words. How can a country allow this to happen?

Canadian Inquiry Calls Deaths Of Indigenous Women ‘Genocide’ (R.)

The deaths in Canada of more than a thousand aboriginal women and girls in recent decades was a national genocide, a government inquiry into murdered and missing indigenous women concluded in a report on Monday. The 1,200-page report, which resulted from an inquiry launched by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government in 2016, blamed the violence on long-standing discrimination against indigenous people and Canada’s failure to protect them. It also made sweeping recommendations to prevent future violence against indigenous women. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police revealed in 2014 that 1,017 aboriginal women had been murdered between 1980 and 2012.


The inquiry, which was beset by delays and staff resignations, opened painful wounds as it heard testimony from 468 family members of missing or murdered women. “This colonialism, this discrimination and this genocide explains the high rates of violence against indigenous women, girls, 2SLGBTQQIA people,” Marion Buller, the chief commissioner of the inquiry, said at a ceremony held to present the report. The 2SLGBTQQIA group refers to two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual people. “An absolute paradigm shift is required to dismantle colonialism in Canadian society. And this paradigm shift must come from all levels of government and public institutions,” Buller said.

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“To assess the range of scientific opinion, Mongabay interviewed 24 entomologists and other scientists working on six continents, in more than a dozen countries, to better determine what we know, what we don’t, and, most importantly, what we should do about it. This is part one of a four-part exclusive series by Mongabay senior contributor Jeremy Hance.”

The Great Insect Dying (Hance)

Humans like to think we run the world, believing in our omnipotence. But while we shape and engineer — make, muddle and destroy — we are not, according to scientists, the world’s ultimate controllers. That role clearly falls to insects, “the little things that run the world,” as E.O. Wilson, the world’s pre-eminent entomologist, told us back in 1987. Insects may be tiny, but they are mighty and superabundant. British entomologist and ecologist C.B. Williams once estimated a population of one million trillion insects on Earth at any given time. They are everywhere that there is land and sky — intimately involved with everything.


Mirror image? Two look-alike insects photographed in Southeast Asia. Image by Tan Ming Kai

Insects tend to every square centimeter of living soil; they aerate and fertilize; they breakdown the billions of bits of organic debris and waste that other Earth residents produce, disposing of everything from leaf litter to elephant dung. Insects are the original recyclers, digesting dead wood and dead bodies. They also reside at the base of the food chain, feeding tens of thousands of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish — and, by extension, us. More than 300,000 known plants are pollinated by animals, most of them insects.


It’s estimated that all the world’s arthropods, a group that includes insects, arachnids, millipedes, centipedes and crustaceans, weigh 17 times more than the planet’s 7.5 billion humans. Take away this vast mass of crawling, fluttering, skittering insects — comprising maybe 90 percent of all animal species — and you’re truly staring planetwide ecological breakdown in the eye. Waste will pile up; soil will shed nutrients without replacement; animals will starve; and potentially hundreds of thousands of plant species will vanish. Extinction would stalk the land like a famished beast, and the future of humanity would be at stake.


The Schoenherr blue weevil (Eupholus schoenherrii) is a spectacular blue and turquoise beetle from New Guinea. Image by Rhett Butler/Mongabay

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Tools swallowed up by thawing soil.

Arctic Is Thawing So Fast Scientists Are Losing Their Measuring Tools (TO)

Greenland is melting much faster than previously understood, as melting has increased six-fold in recent decades, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “We wanted to get a long precise record of mass balance in Greenland that included the transition when the climate of the planet started to drift off natural variability, which occurred in the 1980s,” study co-author Eric Rignot told CNN. “The study places the recent (20 years) evolution in a broader context to illustrate how dramatically the mass loss has been increasing in Greenland in response to climate warming.”

Rignot added, “As glaciers will continue to speed up and ice/snow melt from the top, we can foresee a continuous increase in the rate of mass loss, and a contribution to sea level rise that will continue to increase more rapidly every year.” The study also shows how sea level rise is accelerating, and will continue to do so with each passing year, as the effects compound upon themselves. On that note, Indonesia recently announced it will be moving its capital city of Jakarta, partly due to the sinking of the land and sea level rise. This is a city of 10 million people.

Permafrost in the Arctic is now thawing so fast that scientists are literally losing their measuring equipment. This is due to the fact that instead of there being just a few centimeters of thawing each year, now several meters of soil can become destabilized in a matter of days. Adding insult to injury, another study revealed that this permafrost collapse is further accelerating the release of carbon into the atmosphere, possibly even doubling the amount of warming coming from greenhouse gases released from the tundra. Already in Greenland, the ice sheet’s melt season began about a month early while in Alaska, several rivers saw winter ice break up on their earliest dates on record.

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It’s life, captain, but no longer as we know it.

The headline may look crazy, but Nafeez is not a crazy man.

High Likelihood of Human Civilization Coming to an End in 2050 (Nafeez Ahmed)

A harrowing scenario analysis of how human civilization might collapse in coming decades due to climate change has been endorsed by a former Australian defense chief and senior royal navy commander. The analysis, published by the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, a think-tank in Melbourne, Australia, describes climate change as “a near- to mid-term existential threat to human civilization” and sets out a plausible scenario of where business-as-usual could lead over the next 30 years. The paper argues that the potentially “extremely serious outcomes” of climate-related security threats are often far more probable than conventionally assumed, but almost impossible to quantify because they “fall outside the human experience of the last thousand years.”

On our current trajectory, the report warns, “planetary and human systems [are] reaching a ‘point of no return’ by mid-century, in which the prospect of a largely uninhabitable Earth leads to the breakdown of nations and the international order.” The only way to avoid the risks of this scenario is what the report describes as “akin in scale to the World War II emergency mobilization”—but this time focused on rapidly building out a zero-emissions industrial system to set in train the restoration of a safe climate.

The scenario warns that our current trajectory will likely lock in at least 3 degrees Celsius (C) of global heating, which in turn could trigger further amplifying feedbacks unleashing further warming. This would drive the accelerating collapse of key ecosystems “including coral reef systems, the Amazon rainforest and in the Arctic.” The results would be devastating. Some one billion people would be forced to attempt to relocate from unlivable conditions, and two billion would face scarcity of water supplies. Agriculture would collapse in the sub-tropics, and food production would suffer dramatically worldwide. The internal cohesion of nation-states like the US and China would unravel.

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“If we are (almost) the only animal with a sense of justice, it is because we also are (almost) the only animal with a sense of cruelty.”
– Nassim Nicholas Taleb