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Debt Rattle February 17 2024

Feb 172024
 
 February 17, 2024  Posted by at 9:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Francisco Goya The Dog 1819-23

 

• Trump Slams Judge After $364 Million Verdict; Vows To Appeal (ZH)
• Trump Responds To Judge Engoron’s Decision (ZH)
• Speed. . . and. . . Action (Jim Kunstler)
• Musk Decries US Government Censorship (RT)
• ‘Want to Get ‘Radicalized’, See Russia’- Scott Ritter (Sp.)
• An Anti-Russian Europe Is a Europe That Destroys Itself (Dionisio)
• Russian Space Nukes and Navalny’s Death… U.S. Psyops Go Ballistic (SCF)
• Ohio Rep. Part of Shadowy Cabal Aiming to Destroy Russia – Scott Ritter (Sp.)
• Russian Media Thrilled By Biden’s LNG “Gift” To Putin (ZH)
• Axis of Resistance: from Donbass to Gaza (Pepe Escobar)
• Why Israel’s War on UNRWA is so Sinister (Cradle)
• Political, Economic Indicators Not Promising for Biden (Gallup)
• How the CIA Destabilizes the World (Jeffrey Sachs)
• Bombing Muslims for Peace (Bill Astore)

 

 

 

 

Tucker Mike Benz

 

 

Fani Maddow

 

 

 

 

FANI Grand Jury Foreman

 

 

 

 

 

 

The judge and AG are essentially saying they know more about banking than the “defrauded” bankers, who made a hefty profit. This will never pass in the Supreme Court.

But: “He is expected to launch an appeal, which would put the verdict on hold until a higher court reviews the case. But if he wants to avoid paying the fine or have personal assets seized while the appeal process plays out, he still has to deposit the full amount to be held by the court within 30 days.”

For people like Letitia James and Fani Willis, “get Trump” is a career move. As promised in their White House talks.

• Trump Slams Judge After $364 Million Verdict; Vows To Appeal (ZH)

New York Judge Arthur Engoron has ordered former President Donald Trump to pay $364 million for allegedly defrauding banks in order to acquire loans and other benefits – loans which the banks themselves testified they were satisfied with after doing their own due diligence. Trump is also barred “from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York for a period of three years,” while his sons have been barred from serving as New York executives for two years. New York Attorney General Letitia James had sought $370 million from Trump, his company, and its top executives for what she claimed was “repeated and persistent fraud” – which included allegations of falsifying records and financial statements to the tune of as much as $2.2 billion. Trump maintains that his financial statements to banks were conservative, and has called the case a “fraud on me.”

“This is a case that should have never been brought, and I think we should be entitled to damages,” Trump said on Jan. 11. Following Friday’s decision, Trump’s attorneys hit back – calling it “manifest injustice” in a statement. The months-long civil trial included testimony from Trump and his oldest children. The former president was combative in his day on the stand, blasting James as a “hack” and calling the judge “extremely hostile.” Trump repeatedly complained about Engoron before and throughout the trial, and the judge slapped him with a partial gag order after he started blasting the judge’s law clerk as well. Trump’s complaints led to a flood of death threats against the clerk, as well as Engoron, court officials said, and Trump was fined $15,000 for twice violating the order. -NBC News

During the trial, Deutsche Bank executive David Williams, who directly worked on at least one of several loans obtained by Trump over several decades, testified that it’s “atypical, but not entirely unusual” for a bank to internally slash a client’s stated asset values by 50% and approve a loan anyway, as they did with Trump, Bloomberg reported in November. “It just depends on the circumstances,” said Williams, a managing director at the bank. “Deutsche Bank, which loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump for properties in Miami, Chicago and Washington, cut his stated net worth in 2011 and 2012 from about $4.2 billion to $2.3 billion, according to internal bank credit memos. The same documents indicated the bank approved the loans anyway because it expected them to generate a profit based on Trump’s history of successful developments and other criteria.

Trump, who denies wrongdoing and claims the case is politically motivated, is calling to the stand this week four current and former Deutsche Bank employees — including the family’s former private banker Rosemary Vrablic — as part of his defense case, seeking to flip the script on the state’s version of events”. -Bloomberg. The testimony undermined AG James’ premise, that Trump defrauded the German bank. But of course, none of that matters to Engoron – while Trump’s Martyr status just intensified. Expect this decision to be reflected in upcoming polls.

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“Trump has responded to Judge Engoron’s decision, calling him a “crooked” judge who’s just committed election interference (and much, much more)..”

• Trump Responds To Judge Engoron’s Decision (ZH)

“A Crooked New York State Judge, working with a totally Corrupt Attorney General who ran on the basis of “I will get Trump,” before knowing anything about me or my company, has just fined me $355 Million based on nothing other than having built a GREAT COMPANY. ELECTION INTERFERENCE. WITCH HUNT (more to follow!),” said Trump in a post to Truth Social. “The Justice System in New York State, and America as a whole, is under assault by partisan, deluded, biased Judges and Prosecutors. Racist, Corrupt A.G. Tish James has been obsessed with “Getting Trump” for years, and used Crooked New York State Judge Engoron to get an illegal, unAmerican judgment against me, my family, and my tremendous business. I helped New York City during its worst of times, and now, while it is overrun with Violent Biden Migrant Crime, the Radicals are doing all they can to kick me out….”

And according to the former president, Engoron conspired with New York Attorney General Letitia James. “This Election Interference and tyrannical Abuse of Power by a Crooked Judge and Crooked Attorney General cannot be tolerated. My case was already won in the Appellate Division, and more than 80% of the frivolous claims were wiped out. Yet, as I suspected, and in order to hurt me and the Republican Party politically, Crooked and Corrupt Judge Arthur Engoron ignored his loss at the Appellate Division, and came up with an outrageous $355 Million Dollar fine against me. Using a statute that has never been applied like this before, the Corrupt Judge conspired with the Crooked Attorney General, Letitia James, and punished a liquid and beautiful Corporate Empire that started in New York, and has been successful all around the world…..

“There were no victims, and not one person testified there was any fraud. The actual witnesses established my Net Worth exceeded that reported in my Financial Statements as those Statements never included my most valuable Asset – the TRUMP Brand. The Highly Respected Expert Witness said my Financial Statements were among the best he has ever seen. I paid over $300 Million Dollars in taxes to New York City and State, and they want me gone. They are Crazed Lunatics who are destroying everything in their way. It all starts with Biden’s attacks on his Political Opponent!” Trump also said he’d appeal Engoron’s decision.

“The actual bankers who were involved in the loan transactions testified I was a highly sought-after “whale” of a client with “one of the strongest personal balance sheets” they had ever seen, and I was overqualified for the loans. Those banks earned more than $100 Million Dollars in profits doing business with me and my companies. But to justify his crazed attack on me and my family, this biased, Trump Hating Judge, ignored all this, and even said Michael Cohen told the truth, although Cohen admitted to lying hundreds of times, and lied right in front of the Judge during the trial. This shocking and corrupt Interference in the Free Markets for political gain places every New York business transaction at risk. We must make sure Corrupt Politicians and Judges cannot continue to abuse the power of their office, and violate the public trust. We have already won, and will continue the fight on appeal!”

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“The reason the lovebirds could take so much time cavorting across the Caribbean and California — vineyard tours featuring “pairings of champagne, chocolate, and caviar,” Ms. Willis testified — is because their Fulton County case was entirely prepped for them out of DC by Mary McCord..”

• Speed. . . and. . . Action (Jim Kunstler)

Have you noticed yet that America has turned into a Coen Brothers movie? Everywhere you look, you see madcap characters disgracing themselves while doing their bit to burn the whole country down. It’s a panoramic extravaganza of everything gone wrong, with slapstick overtones, driving toward an apocalyptic climax — civil war, nuclear war, economic collapse, maybe all three. And all because the people on-screen just can’t stop lying. Yesterday was Fani Willis’s turn, her big scene. The Fulton County, Georgia, DA, wasn’t even scheduled to testify, but she barged into Judge Scott McAfee’s courtroom and seized possession of the witness stand, like it was home-base in a game of ringolevio. This was after the morning vivisection of her boyfriend, the feckless Nathan Wade, testifying to the couple’s fun-filled romantic travels during the months they were supposedly busy constructing a racketeering case against Donald Trump and eighteen others scooped into their dragnet.

The reason the lovebirds could take so much time cavorting across the Caribbean and California — vineyard tours featuring “pairings of champagne, chocolate, and caviar,” Ms. Willis testified — is because their Fulton County case was entirely prepped for them out of DC by Mary McCord, the veteran blob lawyer active in every Get-Trump hoax cooked up since 2016. (And I’d bet cash-money that she had plenty of assistance from Lawfare blobsters Norm Eisen and Andrew Weissmann.) The complex particulars of the case were all teed up, ready to go. All Ms. Willis and her lead prosecutor, Mr. Wade, had to do was get the trial date set, raise the curtain, and follow the script. Alas, the couple got carried away in the raptures of amour and, all of a sudden, we’re in something like The Real Housewives of Atlanta. And then they lied about the details under oath, especially around the money involved. If they are not disqualified from participating in the Trump “racketeering” case — in which their own behavior would be centerpiece evidence of an ineptly tainted and malicious prosecution — and/or if the case is not tossed summarily, then it will have to be removed to another county and most likely delayed until after the 2024 elections. Nice work, Party of Chaos!

That little opéra bouffe is but one sub-plot in the larger scenario. Also this week, the scandal of the century was re-kindled when alt-news reporters Taibbi, Shellenberger, and Gutentag filed the story of how Barack Obama and CIA Director John Brennan, with his chore girls, Avril Haines and Gina Haspel, cooked up the RussiaGate caper and fed it to the FBI, with a major assist from The New York Times, the WashPo, CNN, and other useful idiot news media vectors. All of this had actually been well-documented for years, but the reporters dredged up new corroboration from disgusted blob insiders further clarifying the origins of the hoax. The cast of characters in that part of the big movie has been consistent through eight full years of anti-Trump hysteria and the associated trips laid on our country. Ms. McCord, for instance, was U.S. Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security during the birth of RussiaGate; later served as counsel to the House Committee that kicked-off Trump Impeachment No. 1 (coordinating the Eric Ciaramella “whistleblower” scam); then became counsel to Rep. Bennie Thompson’s J6 committee investigation, and now turns up as Fani Willis’ legal tutor, and probably also tutor to New York State Attorney General Letitia James and her preposterous Get Trump real estate valuation case under Judge Engoron.

(Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA on the Stormy Daniels case against Mr. Trump, was coached by then US Associate Attorney General Matthew Colangelo who was hired out of the DOJ directly into Mr. Bragg’s office for tutoring purposes.) All of this coaching post Jan 20, 2021, was coordinated by the “Joe Biden” White House. Speaking of whom, the evermore spectral “president” was not having a great week either after DOJ Special Counsel Robert Hur painted him into a corner in his final report as either too demented to face charges in the purloined documents case (and, by inference, not mentally capable to be president), or else a criminal trafficking in top secret documents he was not authorized to possess as Senator and Veep. Looks like that puts an end to “JB’s” game of pretending to run for reelection (that is, lying about it) and leaves the Democratic Party holding a flaming bag of dog doo-doo.

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Musk is paying good attention to what happens to Trump: “How far will they go to stop me?”

• Musk Decries US Government Censorship (RT)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has claimed that his foray into social media – buying the former Twitter (since renamed X) and trying to make it a bastion of free speech – made him and all of his businesses targets for constant attacks by governments and their censorship allies. “The public still doesn’t understand even a tiny fraction of the power of the censorship-government-industrial complex,” Musk said on Friday in a post on X. “As predicted, my companies and I came under relentless attack the moment the censorship of this platform was lifted. How far will they go to stop me?” The US billionaire made the comments in response to a post by podcast host David Sacks, who warned that “regime Democrats” are working every day to undermine Americans’ free-speech rights and freedom from political persecution.

Musk also agreed with a suggestion that his political enemies are “just getting started” after winning a Delaware court ruling late last month voiding his $56 billion compensation package at Tesla. Musk, who heads several other companies, has previously claimed that he’s at “quite significant” risk of being killed. His father, Errol Musk, said in an interview last September that he feared his son could be assassinated by a “shadow government” because of the influence he wields. Ranking as America’s richest man with a fortune estimated by Forbes at over $200 billion, Elon Musk has been hit with a flurry of legal attacks and negative media coverage since buying Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022 and vowing to end censorship on the platform. Advertiser boycotts cut into X’s revenue, and President Joe Biden’s administration sued Musk’s SpaceX company for allegedly discriminating against refugees in its hiring practices.

Biden reacted to the Twitter takeover by suggesting that Musk should be investigated by the federal government. Asked whether Musk could jeopardize US national security, the president told reporters, “I think that Elon Musk’s cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at.” Under its previous ownership, Twitter was among the social media platforms that helped Biden win the 2020 US presidential election by censoring a bombshell report on alleged influence-peddling in Ukraine and China by his family. Republican lawmakers have accused the FBI of colluding with Twitter executives to squash the report. Musk also released internal Twitter documents exposing government involvement in the censoring of speech regarding the Covid-19 pandemic. “Thank God for Elon Musk for allowing to show us and the world that Twitter was basically a subsidiary of the FBI, censoring real medical voices with real expertise that put real American lives in danger because they didn’t have that information,” US Representative Nancy Mace said last year.

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“Russia is a nation, not a city. And the Russians love their country..”

• ‘Want to Get ‘Radicalized’, See Russia’- Scott Ritter (Sp.)

The knives are out for Tucker Carlson in the Washington establishment and the legacy media as he continues to debunk myths and stereotypes about Russia with a series of videos about life in the capital in the midst of the West’s sanctions ‘total war’. In the latest of a series of clips posted to his internet channel about his experiences from his eight-day stay in Russia, Carlson praised Moscow’s grocery prices. “I went from amused to legitimately angry,” Carlson said after purchasing a week’s worth of groceries for the equivalent of about $105 US. “Coming to a Russian grocery store, the ‘heart of evil’, and seeing what things cost and how people live, it will radicalize you against our leaders. That’s how I feel, anyway – radicalized,” Carlson said after dragging US leaders through the mud for “wrecking people’s lives” through “filth and crime and inflation.”

The independent conservative journalist’s comments sparked immediate outrage from detractors, with neocon Republican lawmaker Thom Tillis echoing Hillary Clinton, blasting Carlson as a “useful idiot” and mocking him for suggesting Russia “is so much better than the US with all those cheap groceries and lavish subway stations.” Another neocon group, ‘Republicans Against Trump’, blasted Carlson as a “Kremlin propagandist” and accused him of running a program called “Russia is awesome, the US is crap.” The hate was echoed by establishment media, with the USA Today publishing a column suggesting Tucker should do “everything he can to get his followers to move to Russia.” MSNBC host Chris Hayes immediately jumped in to suggest that the discrepancy in grocery prices is the result of America being a “rich country” and that “if you are an american [sic] and go to a country that is poorer, things will be cheaper there.”

Others suggested Tucker’s experiences were unique to Moscow, and that he would see something different if he went to “real Russia” outside the “Potemkin village” Russian capital. “It’s like a modern day equivalent of John Reed’s classic ‘10 Days That Shook the World’ – ‘8 Days That Radicalized Tucker Carlson’,” former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter told Sputnik of Carlson’s eye-opening experiences during his visit to Russia. “We all saw the interview with Vladimir Putin, over 1 billion of us, and we’ve seen Tucker Carlson’s video clips of his experience in Moscow, the Moscow Metro, shopping in a Moscow market, a visit to the Russian McDonald’s [equivalent]. Everything that Tucker Carlson said is true, 100%. The Metro is an amazing place, clean, it’s a work of art. There is no food shortage in Moscow. Yes, Russian fast food is not only as tasty as its American equivalent, but because of the GMO laws, yes, Tucker, you should have asked that question, healthier,” Ritter said.

Pointing to those dishing out of hate Carlson’s way and claiming his experiences were somehow “fake,” Ritter, who has traveled to Russia extensively over the past year, Ritter assured that he has “been to the rest of Russia,” and could confirm that what the former Fox News host saw in Moscow could be observed in other Russian cities as well. “In May, when I made my first visit to Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the first city I landed in wasn’t Moscow. It was Novosibirsk. Now is Novosibirsk is brilliantly lit up as Moscow? No, it’s not a city of 13 million. It’s not the capital of the Russian Federation. It’s not the center of commerce for Russia. But Novosibirsk is the third largest city in Russia and the largest developing economy. You know, when you go to a supermarket in Novosibirsk, it’s every bit as well stocked as those you will find in Moscow. Why? Because Russia is a modern state.

Russia is a state that has the ability to transport food products throughout the great expanse of the nation. Russia is not Moscow. Russia is a nation of over 150 million people who live with the same level of modernity as the rest of the world,” Ritter said. “In Novosibirsk, I saw a people who live their lives just like everybody else – [with] a public transportation system that’s clean, efficient, streets that are clean, efficient. Why? Because throughout Russia, the Russian people care about their cities as much as the residents of Moscow care about theirs. Russia is a nation, not a city. And the Russians love their country,” he added.

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“Russia did everything it could to free itself from US domination in the terrible 1990s, and Ukraine did everything it could to integrate itself under US control, mainly from 2004 onwards..”

• An Anti-Russian Europe Is a Europe That Destroys Itself (Dionisio)

According to Syrsky, the new commander-in-chief of Kiev’s troops, the lives of Ukrainian soldiers are the most important thing the army has. An assumption that was only made when it became obvious to everyone that there was no chance of victory in a direct fight against Russia. As long as it was possible to feed the idea that „Ukraine was beating Russia“, when it was Russia that had the initiative — and never lost it — the lives of Ukrainian soldiers were worth little. Men — and some women — in their hundreds of thousands were thrown into muddy trenches, poorly fed and with ammunition in short supply, against an opponent who never lacked anything.

The fact is that when the Kiev forces had combat capability — not to be confused with „the ability to win“ — the official communication was that „Ukraine was winning the war“; when it became clear that the cost of fighting the Russian forces was so high that it could not be sustained, the pro-Kiev media, financed by Uncle Sam’s NGOs and primary sources of Western official information, began to say „Ukraine cannot lose the war“; when it could no longer be hidden that the „counter-offensive“ had failed and with it, the hopes — fanciful — of a Kiev victory, we moved on to the „Ukraine and Russia are in a stalemate“ phase. The Ukrainian reality, under the Kiev regime, is characterized by always being in direct contradiction with the Russian reality and, coincidentally, with the concrete observable reality. This is why the relationship between the two realities is an invaluable dialectical example from a pedagogical point of view.

While living with Russia, Ukraine has become one of the world’s greatest powers. There is not, and never has been, a successful Ukraine without Russia on its side. Vladimir Putin did not lie about the fact that Russia has always helped Ukraine. For those who don’t know, it wasn’t out of any kind of adventurism that the Donbass was annexed to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1917, Ukraine was an eminently rural and de-industrialized region of the Russian empire, so, in 1918, in order to guarantee conditions for the territory’s development and, in this way, a more harmonious development of the nascent Soviet state, the Donbass became part of the Ukrainian Socialist Republic, as a way of guaranteeing the progress of the newly formed homeland.

The truth is that, in 1991, Ukraine had more than 50 million inhabitants, one of the largest armies in Europe (perhaps the second largest), an enviable military-industrial complex, a highly qualified, talented and productive population, capable of revealing itself in all aspects of human life, from the arts to science, from agriculture to sport. After surviving many tensions imposed from outside and introduced by the usual suspects, in 2004-2005, the Orange Revolution accelerated the process of creating an anti-Russia. The idea was not new and had already crossed the minds of people linked to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and beyond. From then on, the balance of power between the Russian-speaking and Russian-sympathetic peoples and the peoples who had become „Russian-phobic“ began to reverse and, gradually, the anti-Russian forces began to infect the entire territory, gradually conquering new strongholds, from the outskirts of Galicia to the center of Kiev.

From then on, what would be the imported „solution“ to fill Ukraine’s lack of national identity began to take shape. As a country that had never existed until 1918, and only became fully independent in 1991, Ukraine had to create a national identity in order to guarantee its existence. Not an easy thing to do in a country built up by ruler and square in successive waves of annexation. The induced „choice“ was to turn Ukraine into an „anti-Russia“. Everything Russia would be, Ukraine would have to be the opposite.

It’s clear to see that this „choice“ would have to be induced, since in the case of a country with the same language, or languages with the same root (for those who separate „Ukrainian“ from „Russian“), with the same religion, culture and national past, the natural choice would never be antagonism, since one and the other thrived on a symbiotic relationship. And this relationship was mutually fruitful right up until the moment when Russia did everything it could to free itself from US domination in the terrible 1990s, and Ukraine did everything it could to integrate itself under US control, mainly from 2004 onwards. The chronological succession leaves no doubt: Russia freed itself from American tutelage during the late 90s and early 2000s, Ukraine embraced it from 2004 onwards.

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“..The U.S. media have claimed (preposterously) that if the military aid is not supplied then Ukraine’s defeat could result in American troops being deployed to prevent Russian rampaging across Europe.”

• Russian Space Nukes and Navalny’s Death… U.S. Psyops Go Ballistic (SCF)

The claims about Russian space-based nuclear weapons unraveled to become a joke. Fortunately, the death of Western-sponsored dissident Alexei Navalny then occurred to enable Western media to go into a frenzy of anti-Russia headlines. First up was the scaremongering story about Russia allegedly developing a space-based nuclear weapon. Initially, it was dramatically trailed as posing a serious national security threat to the United States. Despite the sensational reporting, the story quickly became a laughingstock. Even some U.S. lawmakers dismissed it as “bullshit” and a blatant attempt by the Biden White House and intelligence agencies to push Congress into passing a new mega military aid bill for Ukraine worth $61 billion.

We’ll get to the Navalny story in a moment. But let’s just first parse the orchestration of the alleged Russian space nukes. The drama began on Wednesday when Mike Turner, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee (a dodgy source if ever there was one), made public appeals to President Joe Biden to declassify intelligence on “a serious threat to national security”. Turner is a Republican member of the House of Representatives but he is a close ally of the Democrat White House in terms of keenly supporting military aid to Ukraine. The latest bill passed the upper chamber of the U.S. Senate the day before, February 13, but it is unlikely to be approved by the House where many Republican lawmakers are staunchly opposed to it.

Accompanying the “concerns” of the intel committee chairman Turner, media outlets then vented anonymous US intelligence sources “revealing” that the national security threat was from Russian nuclear weapons allegedly under development for destroying American communication satellites in space. The White House then “confirmed” the intel the next day, February 15. It was a flagrant put-up job. But the Biden administration sought to tamp down any public panic by saying that the threat was not imminent and the alleged Russian satellite-killing weapon had not been deployed in orbit, nor would there be any danger to Earth. (So, what was all the fuss about?)

Ironically, derisive comments from incredulous U.S. lawmakers were also echoed by the Kremlin. The latter’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov made a similar assessment that the Biden administration was playing tricks to push through the military funding package for Ukraine. That bill has been delayed since the end of last year. The Biden administration has been cajoling Congress for months to vote it through. After the Senate finally passed the bill this week, President Biden put pressure on the House, saying that “history is watching you”. The bill has been exalted as having existential importance in defeating “Russian aggression” in Ukraine. The U.S. media have claimed (preposterously) that if the military aid is not supplied then Ukraine’s defeat could result in American troops being deployed to prevent Russian rampaging across Europe.

The American public, as with the European public, has become increasingly skeptical about the relentless funneling of taxpayer funds and weapons to Ukraine. Many citizens in the West – a majority, according to polls – have become critical of fueling a bloody war for the dubious cause of “defending democracy” in a regime dominated by NeoNazis. At a time of deep social and economic hardship in the U.S. and Europe, the Western public is rightly disdainful of hundreds of billions of dollars and euros being wasted on death and destruction and also being siphoned off by a corrupt cabal in Kiev. The $61 billion in military aid to Ukraine is just the latest tranche that Washington is seeking to throw at the black hole of its proxy war against Russia – a war that is really all about defeating Russia as a geopolitical obstacle to U.S. hegemony. Another driver is the massive profits that taxpayers are subsidizing the military-industrial complex at the rotten heart of Western capitalism.

Navalny

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“There’s no ammunition left. There’s nothing left. Ukraine has got nothing.” “And he [Turner] knows he’s looking at it, saying ‘it’s over, game set match – Russia, they win,’” he added.“

• Ohio Rep. Part of Shadowy Cabal Aiming to Destroy Russia – Scott Ritter (Sp.)

Ohio Representative Mike Turner (R-OH) made waves this week when he warned of an alleged “serious national security threat” to the United States. The supposed risk was soon revealed to be Russian in nature, with a media cycle quickly emerging over the danger of alleged “space nukes” the country could detonate to disable US satellite communications. The timing of the revelation raised eyebrows as Turner had visited Ukraine just days ago as part of a Congressional delegation in solidarity with the country’s embattled President Volodymyr Zelensky. Turner’s claims also come as the Biden administration struggles to continue funding the US-backed Ukrainian proxy war, with key Republicans blocking a compromise bill with aid for Kiev and Tel Aviv.

Former UN weapons inspector and whistleblower Scott Ritter joined Sputnik’s Fault Lines program on Thursday to discuss the latest Russophobic hysteria, speculating Turner is part of a secret group of lawmakers and intelligence officials hellbent on undermining Russia at any cost. “There’s a cabal,” claimed Ritter, who was shunned in Washington after defying intelligence claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction during the George W. Bush administration. “Turner is… part of the cabal of people that view this Ukrainian conflict [as] not about defense of democracy – knock off this nonsense – it’s about defeating Russia, the strategic objective of the United States by using Ukraine as a proxy in a conflict against Russia.”

“You’ve heard everybody say this, ‘we’re killing them without losing a single American, we’re weakening Russia, we’re creating the conditions to destroy Russia, to collapse Russian society, to bring down [Russian President] Vladimir Putin,’” noted Ritter. “He believes that this is a good thing. He believes that’s the direction the United States should be going. And he understands that Ukraine right now is in freefall. Their military is being slaughtered on the battlefield. The Americans have no clue what’s happening on the battlefield right now.”

Ukraine has faced declining fortunes in the Donbass conflict since the spectacular failure of the country’s vaunted “counteroffensive” last year. In recent days Russian forces have achieved an advantage in the city of Avdeyevka, where for months they’ve endured a stalemate with Ukrainian troops. Shortages in ammunition have undermined Ukrainian reinforcements in the past weeks, allowing Russia to break down Kiev’s foritifications. “The Russians aren’t losing anywhere,” said Ritter. “Maybe in the Black Sea they lost a ship, big deal, but on the ground, they’re routing Ukraine. There’s no ammunition left. There’s nothing left. Ukraine has got nothing.” “And he [Turner] knows he’s looking at it, saying ‘it’s over, game set match – Russia, they win,’” he added. “‘Therefore, we need to make people understand the consequences of a Russian victory.’”

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“Pravda argued that Germany will eventually have to return to buying Russian gas because it will have no other choice..”

• Russian Media Thrilled By Biden’s LNG “Gift” To Putin (ZH)

This week, President Vladimir Putin praised President Joe Biden as a more experienced and predictable president than Donald Trump, hoping the 81yo president “with a poor memory” wins a second term. Meanwhile, Trump made remarks during a campaign rally Wednesday night in South Carolina on Putin’s comments: “He’s just said that he would much rather have Joe Biden as president than Trump. Now that’s a compliment. A lot of people said, ‘Oh, gee, that’s too bad.’ No, no, that’s a good thing.” Democrats spent years framing Trump as ‘Putin’s puppet,’ but the actions by Biden, essentially handing over the global energy kingdom to Moscow by halting permits for new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects in Texas, is a stark reminder of why Putin prefers the elderly and weak president. Last month, the Wall Street Journal editorial board called Biden’s LNG export license halt “an election-year gift to Russia and Iran.” And the editorial board is out with another piece titled “Biden’s LNG ‘Gift’ to Vladimir Putin.”

This latest note by the editorial board points out how Russian media is “thrilled” by Biden’s LNG gas export ban: “Now it is not Russia, but the United States that wants to bring the Germans to their knees,” gloated the Russian newspaper Pravda after the Energy Department imposed a moratorium on permits for new LNG export projects last month. Pravda argued that Germany will eventually have to return to buying Russian gas because it will have no other choice, and it may be right. They cite another Russian media outlet: RedDigest, a Russian-based news source, also predicted Europe will need to buy more Russian gas and be forced to pay a higher price. “The EU may well turn to Moscow for additional supplies. Of course, there will be no talk of any discounts,” a Feb. 3 article sneered. Mr. Biden’s LNG embargo will leave Europe more vulnerable to Mr. Putin’s energy blackmail.

And another: Bloknot, a pro-war Russian media outlet, accused the U.S. of scheming to replace Russian gas and then pulling the rug from under Europeans. “A brilliant scam: how the States fooled Europe with gas,” read a Bloknot headline. RT (formerly Russia Today) gloated that Mr. Biden’s “very timely decision to ban LNG exports” was a “gift to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.” In a separate note, WSJ said Biden’s attempt to punish Texas over the border dispute is part of a campaign by wealthy donors – including the Rockefeller family – to pressure the government into shifting away from LNG. Why are America’s elites and an elderly president with a “poor memory” giving Putin the keys to the global energy kingdom under the guise of ‘climate change’?

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“Scratch the veneer of who’s in power in Kiev and Tel Aviv, and who pulls their strings, and you will find the same puppet masters controlling Ukraine, Israel, the US, the UK, and nearly all NATO members..”

• Axis of Resistance: from Donbass to Gaza (Pepe Escobar)

During my recent vertiginous journey in Donbass tracking Orthodox Christian battalions defending their land, Novorossiya, it became starkly evident that the resistance in these newly liberated Russian republics is fighting much the same battle as their counterparts in West Asia. Nearly 10 years after Maidan in Kiev, and two years after the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, the resolve of the resistance has only deepened. It’s impossible to do full justice to the strength, resilience, and faith of the people of Donbass, who stand on the front line of a US proxy war against Russia. The battle they have been fighting since 2014 has now visibly shed its cover and revealed itself to be, at its core, a cosmic war of the collective West against Russian civilization.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin made very clear during his Tucker Carlson interview seen by one billion people worldwide, Ukraine is part of Russian civilization – even if it is not part of the Russian Federation. So shelling ethnic Russian civilians in Donbass – still ongoing – translates as attacks on Russia. He shares the same reasoning as Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement, which describes the Israeli genocide in Gaza as one launched against “our people”: people of the lands of Islam. Just as the rich black soil of Novorossiya is where the “rules-based international order” came to die; the Gaza Strip in West Asia – an ancestral land, Palestine – may ultimately be the site where Zionism will perish. Both the rules-based order and Zionism, after all, are essential constructs of the western unipolar world and key to advancing its global economic and military interests.

Today’s incandescent geopolitical fault lines are already configured: the collective west versus Islam, the collective west versus Russia, and soon a substantial part of the west, even reluctantly, versus China. Yet a serious counterpunch is at play. As much as the Axis of Resistance in West Asia will keep boosting their “swarm” strategy, those Orthodox Christian battalions in Donbass cannot but be regarded as the vanguard of the Slavic Axis of Resistance. When mentioning this Shia–Orthodox Christianity connection to two top commanders in Donetsk, only 2 kilometers away from the front line, they smiled, bemused, but definitely got the message. After all, more than anyone else in Europe, these soldiers are able to grasp this unifying theme: on the two top imperial fronts – Donbass and West Asia – the crisis of the western hegemon is deepening and fast accelerating collapse.

NATO’s cosmic humiliation-in-progress in the steppes of Novorossiya is mirrored by the Anglo–American–Zionist combo sleepwalking into a larger conflagration throughout West Asia – frantically insisting they don’t want war while bombing every Axis of Resistance vector except Iran (they can’t, because the Pentagon gamed all scenarios, and they all spell out doom). Scratch the veneer of who’s in power in Kiev and Tel Aviv, and who pulls their strings, and you will find the same puppet masters controlling Ukraine, Israel, the US, the UK, and nearly all NATO members.

Read more …

“I =srael’s allegations are not based on any evidence. They are instead part of a classified plan prepared in advance by Israel’s foreign ministry to destroy UNRWA..”

• Why Israel’s War on UNRWA is so Sinister (Cradle)

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is facing the gravest existential crisis in its 74-year history, as funding cuts by several western countries come on top of ongoing atrocities perpetrated by Israel in Gaza. The UN agency is unique in being the only one dedicated to a specific group of refugees in specific areas, and the only relief organization that operates a full-fledged educational system. UNRWA is also the only organization mandated to work in Gaza and distribute aid to the two million people currently trapped and starved in the besieged enclave. To compound these challenges, the occupation wants to see it dismantled. In January, Israel alleged that Palestinian members of UNRWA’s staff participated in the resistance’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October, leading the US and 18 other nations to swiftly suspend funding for the organization.

The suspensions were met with shock, as UNRWA plays a key role in providing food and medicine to starving Gazans struggling to survive Israel’s siege and bombardment of the coastal enclave. However, Israel’s allegations are not based on any evidence. They are instead part of a classified plan prepared in advance by Israel’s foreign ministry to destroy UNRWA. It believes that UNRWA “works against Israel’s interests” by perpetuating the dream of the right of return of Palestinian refugees and the idea of armed struggle against occupation. The foreign ministry plan leaked to Israel’s Channel 12 on 28 December, set out a three-stage process to eliminate UNRWA in Gaza, using the Hamas-led resistance operation as a pretext:

First, prepare a case alleging UNRWA’s cooperation with Hamas; second, reduce UNRWA’s field of activity and find replacement service providers; and third, transfer UNRWA’s responsibilities to another entity. Channel 12 noted that Israel wants to move slowly, given that the US government sees UNRWA as crucial to humanitarian efforts in Gaza. The foreign ministry is seeking to gradually build the case for ousting the organization as part of the discussions on “the day after” the war – should Hamas be dismantled. According to a report by The New York Times, the “sequence of events” that led the US to suspend UNRWA funding began on 18 January when Amir Weissbrod, a deputy director general at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, met with Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA in Tel Aviv.

Weissbrod showed Lazzarini a dossier from Israeli intelligence claiming that 12 UNRWA employees had participated in the 7 October attacks. After the meeting in Israel, Lazzarini made no effort to confirm the validity of the claims. Instead, he flew to New York to meet with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and immediately began firing the employees, a UN official said. The Guardian reported that Lazzarini was later asked in a press conference if he had looked into whether there was any evidence for the allegations presented to him by Weissbrod. “No,” Lazzarini replied, “the investigation is going on now.” Lazzarini said he made the “exceptional, swift decision” due to “the explosive nature of the claims,” rather than any evidence. Lazzarini said he did not even read the dossier himself because it was in Hebrew. Instead, Weissbrod “was reading this and translating for me,” he said.

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Better grow the economy, Joe.

• Political, Economic Indicators Not Promising for Biden (Gallup)

Several key indicators of the 2024 election environment indicate that President Joe Biden faces an uphill climb to win a second term. His job approval rating, Americans’ satisfaction with how things are going in the country and their confidence in the economy are below the levels associated with successful reelection bids in recent elections. While Democrats hold a slight edge in national party identification and partisan leanings, that advantage is smaller than what it has been in past presidential elections won by Democratic incumbents. In less direct measures of the electoral environment, Americans are more inclined to say that they are worse off financially, that it is harder to buy things and that the U.S. is as respected throughout the world as it was before Biden took office.

Biden’s fate will ultimately be determined by whether Americans’ views on these metrics improve over the course of the year (as they did for Bill Clinton in 1996 and Barack Obama in 2012), stay the same or get worse (as they did for George H.W. Bush in 1992 and Donald Trump in 2020). Incumbent job approval is arguably the best predictor of reelection success. Presidents with approval ratings of 50% or higher close to Election Day have all been reelected. All but one president with a sub-50% approval rating lost, the exception being George W. Bush. He won reelection with a 48% approval rating in Gallup’s final 2004 preelection poll taken in late October. However, he registered multiple 50% readings earlier in the month and had a 51% approval rating among likely voters in that final survey.

Among the approval ratings that did not carry incumbents to victory, Trump’s 46% approval rating is the highest and Gerald Ford’s 45% is close behind. The inauspicious ratings descend from there, all the way down to 34% for George H.W. Bush. Biden’s 41% job approval rating, the lowest among incumbents in January of an election year, puts him in a precarious spot. It has not been unusual for incumbents to be below the 50% threshold this early on. But Biden’s reelection may depend on his ability to boost his numbers close to that threshold, something Clinton, Obama and Richard Nixon were able to do but Trump and Ford were not. Other presidents, including George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, saw significant declines in approval during their fourth year in office.

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“..Given Burns’ stature and diplomatic accomplishments, perhaps he would support the urgently needed accountability..”

• How the CIA Destabilizes the World (Jeffrey Sachs)

Once in a while, a former U.S. official spills the beans, such as when Zbigniew Brzezinski revealed that he had induced Jimmy Carter to assign the CIA to train Islamic jihadists to destabilize the government of Afghanistan, with the aim of inducing the Soviet Union to invade that country. In the case of Syria, we learned from a few stories in the New York Times in 2016 and 2017 of the CIA’s subversive operations to destabilize Syria and overthrow Assad, as ordered by President Barack Obama. Here is the case of a dreadfully misguided CIA operation, blatantly in violation of international law, that has led to a decade of mayhem, an escalating regional war, hundreds of thousands of deaths, and millions of displaced people, and yet there has not been a single honest acknowledgment of this CIA-led disaster by the White House or Congress.

In the case of Ukraine, we know that the U.S. played a major covert role in the violent coup that brought down Yanukovych and that swept Ukraine into a decade of bloodshed but to this day, we don’t know the details. Russia offered the world a window into the coup by intercepting and then posting a call between Victoria Nuland, then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State (now Under-Secretary of State) and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt (now Assistant Secretary of State), in which they plot the post-coup government. Following the coup, the CIA covertly trained special operations forces of the post-coup regime the U.S. had helped bring to power. The U.S. government has been mum about the CIA’s covert operations in Ukraine. We have good reason to believe that CIA operatives carried out the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline, as per Seymour Hersh, who is now an independent reporter. Unlike in 1975, when Hersh was with the New York Times at a time when the paper still tried to hold the government to account, the Times does not even deign to look into Hersh’s account.

Holding the CIA to public account is of course a steep uphill struggle. Presidents and the Congress don’t even try. The mainstream media don’t investigate the CIA, preferring instead to quote “senior unnamed officials” and the official cover-up. Are the mainstream media outlets lazy, suborned, afraid of advertising revenues from the military-industrial complex, threatened, ignorant, or all of the above? Who knows. There is a tiny glimmer of hope. Back in 1975, the CIA was led by a reformer. Today, the CIA is led by William Burns, one of America’s long-standing leading diplomats. Burns knows the truth about Ukraine, since he served as Ambassador to Russia in 2008 and cabled Washington about the grave error of pushing NATO enlargement to Ukraine. Given Burns’ stature and diplomatic accomplishments, perhaps he would support the urgently needed accountability.

The extent of the continuing mayhem resulting from CIA operations gone awry is astounding. In Afghanistan, Haiti, Syria, Venezuela, Kosovo, Ukraine, and far beyond, the needless deaths, instability, and destruction unleashed by CIA subversion continues to this day. The mainstream media, academic institutions, and Congress should be investigating these operations to the best of their ability and demanding the release of documents to enable democratic accountability. Next year is the 50th anniversary of the Church Committee hearings. Fifty years on, with the precedent, inspiration, and guidance of the Church Committee itself, it’s urgently time to open the blinds, expose the truth about the U.S.-led mayhem, and begin a new era in which U.S. foreign policy becomes transparent, accountable, subject to the rule of law both domestic and international, and directed towards global peace rather than subversion of supposed enemies.

Read more …

“..Think of them as being possessed by a monomania for war akin to my urge to play with toy soldiers. The key difference? When I played at war, I was a wet-behind-the-ears 10 year old..”

• Bombing Muslims for Peace (Bill Astore)

Like many American boys of the baby-boomer generation, I played “war” with those old, olive-drab, plastic toy soldiers meant to evoke our great victory over the Nazis and “the Japs” during World War II. At age 10, I also kept a scrapbook of the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and its various Arab enemies in the Middle East. It was, I suppose, an early sign that I would make both the military and the study of history into careers. I recall rooting for the Israelis, advertised then as crucial American allies, against Egypt, Syria, and other regional enemies at least ostensibly allied with the Soviet Union in that Cold War era. I bought the prevailing narrative of a David-versus-Goliath struggle. I even got a book on the Yom Kippur War that captivated me by displaying all the weaponry the U.S. military had rushed to Israel to turn the tide there, including F-4 Phantom jets and M-60 main battle tanks. (David’s high-tech slingshots, if you will.)

Little did I know that, in the next 50 years of my life, I would witness increasingly destructive U.S. military attacks in the Middle East, especially after the oil cartel OPEC (largely Middle Eastern then) hit back hard with an embargo in 1973 that sent our petroleum-based economy into a tailspin. As one jokester quipped: Who put America’s oil under the sands of all those ungrateful Muslim countries in the Middle East? With declarations like the Carter Doctrine in 1980, the U.S. was obviously ready to show the world just how eagerly it would defend its “vital interests” (meaning fossil fuels, of course) in that region. And even today, as we watch the latest round in this country’s painfully consistent record of attempting to pound various countries and entities there into submission, mainly via repetitive air strikes, we should never forget the importance of oil, and lots of it, to keep the engines of industry and war churning along in a devastating fashion.

Right now, of course, the world is witnessing yet another U.S. bombing campaign, the latest in a series that seems all too predictable (and futile), meant to teach the restless rebels of Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and possibly even Iran a lesson when it comes to messing with the United States of America. As the recently deceased country singer Toby Keith put it: Mess with this country and “We’ll put a boot (think: bomb) in your ass.” You kill three soldiers of ours and we’ll kill scores, if not hundreds, if not thousands of yours (and it doesn’t really matter if they’re soldiers or not), because… well, because we damn well can! America’s leaders, possessing a peerless Air Force, regularly exhibit a visceral willingness to use it to bomb and missile perceived enemies into submission or, if need be, nothingness. And don’t for a second think that they’re going to be stopped by international law, humanitarian concerns, well-meaning protesters, or indeed any force on this planet. America bombs because it can, because it believes in the efficacy of violence, and because it’s run by appeasers.

Yes, America’s presidents, its bombers-in-chief, are indeed appeasers. Of course, they think they’re being strong when they’re blowing distant people to bits, but their actions invariably showcase a distinctive kind of weakness. They eternally seek to appease the military-industrial-congressional complex, aka the national (in)security state, a complex state-within-a-state with an unappeasable hunger for power, profit, and ever more destruction. They fail and fail and fail again in the Middle East, yet they’re incapable of not ordering more bombing, more droning, more killing there. Think of them as being possessed by a monomania for war akin to my urge to play with toy soldiers. The key difference? When I played at war, I was a wet-behind-the-ears 10 year old.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

On purpose

 

 

Donuts

 

 

 

 

Jaguar
https://twitter.com/i/status/1758482520239214824

 

 

Pelican

 

 

Newborn dolphin
https://twitter.com/i/status/1758471327562809740

 

 

Goats Jump

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle September 25 2023

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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Debt Rattle April 8 2023

Apr 082023
 
 April 8, 2023  Posted by at 8:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  46 Responses »


John William Waterhouse It’s Sweet Doing Nothing / Dolce Far Niente 1879

 

• Iran and Saudi Arabia: A Chinese win-win (Pepe Escobar)
• Xi Divides And Conquers During Macron’s China Visit (Fomenko)
• The Hero’s Journey (Kunstler)
• More Classified US Documents Shared In New Leak – NYT (RT)
• The Leaked ‘Secret Plan’ For A Ukrainian Military Offensive Doesn’t Add Up (MC)
• NATO Should Not Be Near Russian Borders – Lula (TASS)
• West Didn’t Allow Time For Peace In Ukraine – Lula (RT)
• West In No Position To Issue Instructions On Ukraine To Beijing – Envoy (TASS)
• Moscow Reacts To Blinken’s Counteroffensive Claim (RT)
• Kiev Prepares Provocation To Discredit Russia – Russian Defense Ministry (TASS)
• US Resumes Biolabs Program In Ukraine – Russian MOD (RT)
• How Was ERIC Used to Steal Elections? (Emerald)
• Attack of the Censorship Karens! (Shellenberger)
• Proud Boys Attorney Wants to Unmask Informants During Jan. 6 Trial (NW)
• ‘A Silver Lining’: How Covid Ushered In A Vaccines Golden Era (G.)
• Cancer And Heart Disease Vaccines ‘Ready By End Of The Decade’ (G.)

 

 

 

 

Habba


Byron Donalds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get MAD
https://twitter.com/i/status/1644410537990828033

 

 

 

 

Gonzalo

 

 

 

 

Pepe on Twitter:
“5,000 years of civilization. Against a bunch of upstart barbarians. BRIICSS is already on. Led by RICs. With Iran and Saudi close to the front seat. Bring it on, suckers.”

• Iran and Saudi Arabia: A Chinese win-win (Pepe Escobar)

The idea that History has an endpoint, as promoted by clueless neoconservatives in the unipolar 1990s, is flawed, as it is in an endless process of renewal. The recent official meeting between Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Beijing marks a territory that was previously deemed unthinkable and which has undoubtedly caused grief for the War Inc. machine. This single handshake signifies the burial of trillions of dollars that were spent on dividing and ruling West Asia for over four decades. Additionally, the Global War on Terror (GWOT), the fabricated reality of the new millennium, featured as prime collateral damage in Beijing.

Beijing’s optics as the capital of peace have been imprinted throughout the Global South, as evidenced by a subsequent sideshow where a couple of European leaders, a president, and a Eurocrat, arrived as supplicants to Xi Jinping, asking him to join the NATO line on the war in Ukraine. They were politely dismissed. Still, the optics were sealed: Beijing had presented a 12-point peace plan for Ukraine that was branded “irrational” by the Washington beltway neocons. The Europeans – hostages of a proxy war imposed by Washington – at least understood that anyone remotely interested in peace needs to go through the ritual of bowing to the new boss in Beijing.

Tehran-Riyadh relations, of course, will have a long, rocky way ahead – from activating previous cooperation deals signed in 1998 and 2001 to respecting, in practice, their mutual sovereignty and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. Everything is far from solved – from the Saudi-led war on Yemen to the frontal clash of Persian Gulf Arab monarchies with Hezbollah and other resistance movements in the Levant. Yet that handshake is the first step leading, for instance, to the Saudi foreign minister’s upcoming trip to Damascus to formally invite President Bashar al-Assad to the Arab League summit in Riyadh next month. It’s crucial to stress that this Chinese diplomatic coup started way back with Moscow brokering negotiations in Baghdad and Oman; that was a natural development of Russia stepping in to help Iran save Syria from a crossover NATO-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) coalition of vultures.

Then the baton was passed to Beijing, in total diplomatic sync. The drive to permanently bury GWOT and the myriad, nasty ramifications of the US war of terror was an essential part of the calculation; but even more pressing was the necessity to demonstrate how the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Iran nuclear deal, had become irrelevant. Both Russia and China have experienced, inside and out, how the US always manages to torpedo a return to the JCPOA, as it was conceived and signed in 2015. Their task became to convince Riyadh and GCC states that Tehran has no interest in weaponizing nuclear power – and will remain a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Then it was up to Chinese diplomatic finesse to make it quite clear that the Persian Gulf monarchies’ fear of revolutionary Shi’ism is now as counter-productive as Tehran’s dread of being harassed and/or encircled by Salafi-jihadis. It’s as if Beijing had coined a motto: drop these hazy ideologies, and let’s do business.

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“Beijing is by no means out of the game, because as much as the US can play divide and conquer against EU countries, so can China – and the outcome of the visit demonstrates that very well..”

• Xi Divides And Conquers During Macron’s China Visit (Fomenko)

French President Emmanuel Macron has wrapped up a three-day visit to China, accompanied partly by European Commission Chief Ursula von der Leyen, who went home a day earlier. The dual visit came at a time when EU nations, worried about a growing Sino-Russian partnership, are looking for ways to strengthen their own diplomatic engagement with Beijing. Von der Leyen’s presence on the trip was widely seen as a “check” on Macron, there to ensure he complied with “European unity” on the matter of the EU’s relationship with China. Before the visit, she gave a hawkish address warning China against supporting Russia in the Ukraine conflict and slamming Beijing for becoming “more repressive at home and more assertive abroad.”

[..] the US has long been pushing very aggressively to undermine China’s prospects in the EU. It has been waging a public opinion war against Beijing, using its own state-sponsored think-tanks, and pushing issues such as human rights to create negative sentiment and to block engagement, such as on the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI), which was proposed back in 2013 and is still pending ratification a decade later. Similarly, the US uses bilateral and unilateral diplomacy to undermine China’s relationships with specific European countries in a bid to wreck its attempts to engage with the bloc as a whole. For example, the US explicitly supported Lithuania in undermining the ‘One China’ principle by opening a “Taiwan representative office.” It also forced the Netherlands to agree to new export controls on sending advanced lithography machines (used for making computer chips) to China.

Similarly, because the EU could never agree to a comprehensive ban of Huawei’s application in 5G networks in 2020, the US simply resorted to bilaterally approaching countries one by one, making them agree to the ban until those states that were not on board, such as Germany, were effectively isolated and could not drive the EU agenda. Ultimately, the EU is a bloc which can only operate by consensus between all of its member states, but if the US can undermine that consensus, it can throw a spanner in the works and break the entire machine. This is why it is so difficult for Europe to truly create an “autonomous” foreign policy capable of serving coherent “European interests.” This means when nations such as France and Germany declare their desire for engagement with China, they of course have influence, but the overall effect is never truly consistent.

The bloc is being subjected to a constant tug of war in its foreign policy direction, which ultimately shows that Europe remains more of a passenger, rather than a player, in the world of US-China competition. However, despite the traditional dominance of the US over Europe, Beijing is by no means out of the game, because as much as the US can play divide and conquer against EU countries, so can China – and the outcome of the visit demonstrates that very well. Having given von der Leyen and her message of “unity” a noticeably cooler reception, the Chinese hosted a cordial tea ceremony for Macron, after signing a joint communique that spoke at length about improving trade, economic and cultural ties, but made barely any mention of the main political sticking point between China and the EU – Beijing’s good relations with Moscow and Xi’s refusal to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine crisis.

For China, this is a clear win. For France, this is a win in terms of enduring business and economic relations with China, but a loss in that all of Macron’s attempt to change Xi’s mind on Putin and Ukraine were comprehensively stonewalled. For von der Leyen, whose mission in Beijing was purely political, it was a complete failure. Not only did her message fall on deaf ears, the wooing of France continued unabated under her nose. But perhaps most importantly, the result of this visit dealt a blow to US agenda, showing that positive relations between China and the EU are worth working towards and Washington’s attempts to drive wedges between them are, so far, futile.

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“I’m aboard for the ride. It’s going to be goshdarn interesting and I hope the bastards don’t try to kill him, because that will really be the end for us.”

• The Hero’s Journey (Kunstler)

There is a deep, primal wish in the American psyche to correct the damage to our country caused by the murders of John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert. November 22, 1963 was exactly when this nation went off the rails, and many Americans understand that. RFK, Jr. has stated unambiguously that he believes the CIA killed his uncle, the president. And he recently supported the parole of his father’s killer, Sirhan B. Sirhan, suggesting that there was a whole lot more to Bobby’s assassination than that patsy. Here’s the heart of the matter: that wish to correct the abominations of history is a sentiment much stronger than anything else currently whirring in the fog of emotion that grips a nation in extremis, certainly stronger than all the bullshit embedded in equity, diversity, and inclusion and the bad faith aspirations of the climate change / Great Reset claque. RFK, Jr., represents a way out of all that. He may be strong enough and honorable enough to make that our new national reality.

Then there is Mr. Trump. He’s been on his own even stranger hero’s journey, considering his origins in real estate and showbiz, and his personal peccadillos. Mr. Trump also recognized the evil afoot in our country and he set out to correct all that. He was attacked unfairly and incessantly by people of bad character and ill intent, even to this day as he faces an absurd political prosecution in Manhattan. You have to admire his fortitude and resilience in the face of such massed official bad faith. His first time around in the White House, though, Mr. Trump kind of muffed the job. He had many opportunities to disarm and fire antagonists like Christopher Wray and the perfidious generals who kept backstabbing him, but he just didn’t do it. He got played on the whole Covid fraud and still hasn’t renounced the killer “vaccines” developed in the Warp Speed flimflam.


While I consider the New York case brought by DA Alvin Bragg to be a disreputable shuck and jive, over which Mr. Trump will prevail, and while I recognize him as the current leader in the battle against a Globalist putsch, I think Mr. Kennedy would be a far better choice to clean up the mess that has been made of us. I was particularly unnerved by Mr. Trump’s speech at Mar-a-Lago the night of his indictment. I know many find his manner charming, but to me his mode of speaking seems childish and weirdly inarticulate — and the last thing this country needs is more rhetorical confusion. And I’m also disturbed by the histrionic trappings that went with it — the grandiose music, the myriad flags and seals. It actually has a banana republic flavor. Mr. Kennedy, on the other hand, brings a solemn humility to the scene. Even in his quavering voice, he speaks clearly and with insight. He’s an excellent writer. He reminds me much more of what was good about our country and the men it once produced than the flamboyant Golden Golem of Greatness. I’m aboard for the ride. It’s going to be goshdarn interesting and I hope the bastards don’t try to kill him, because that will really be the end for us.

RFKjr Camus

Watters RFK jr

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“..the new leak does not stop with Ukraine and covers a variety of other subjects, including “sensitive briefing slides on China, the Indo-Pacific military theater, the Middle East and terrorism..”

• More Classified US Documents Shared In New Leak – NYT (RT)

Scores of secret US national security files have appeared online after another major leak, the New York Times reported, noting that the new documents include “sensitive” material related to Ukraine, China, the Middle East and terrorism. The breach comes just one day after other “top secret” papers showing US and NATO war plans in Ukraine made the rounds on social media. The new trove of documents was spotted on Twitter and other sites on Friday afternoon, in what one senior US intelligence official described as a “nightmare” for Western security services, according to the Times. While the full scope of the leak has yet to be determined and the authenticity of the files remains unverified, the outlet suggested the latest breach could include “more than 100 documents” in total.

Similar to another classified disclosure first reported on Thursday, some of the files detail intelligence related to the conflict in Ukraine. One “top secret” document shows a US assessment of the situation in the city of Artyomovsk (known as Bakhmut in Ukraine), which has largely come under Moscow’s control after months of bitter fighting. However, the new leak does not stop with Ukraine and covers a variety of other subjects, including “sensitive briefing slides on China, the Indo-Pacific military theater, the Middle East and terrorism,” the Times added, stating that the scale of the breach appears to have caught the White House “off guard.”

The Pentagon said on Thursday that it would investigate the matter, while the Justice Department later announced its own separate probe. It said it was in communication with military officials, but neither have shared any additional details. Following the prior leak earlier this week, officials said they were working to remove the material from the internet, though those efforts appear to have been unsuccessful so far, as many of the documents remain accessible on social media. According to one unnamed official cited by the Times, determining the source of the breach would begin with “identifying which officials had access to them.” Staffers at several national security agencies described a “rush” to find the leaker, voicing concerns that this week’s disclosures would turn into a “steady drip of classified information” published online.

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A “processed”, “prepared” leak?

From ‘Military Chronicle’ Telegram channel.

• The Leaked ‘Secret Plan’ For A Ukrainian Military Offensive Doesn’t Add Up (MC)

On Friday, photos appeared of a document allegedly containing details on a planned imminent Ukrainian offensive on territories controlled by Russia. The ‘leak’ coincided with suggestions that the NATO Defender 2023 exercises – planned for the end of this month – could be a cover for an operation to supply and support Ukrainian units. However, upon closer examination, doubts arise concerning the document’s authenticity. When did it appear? The supposed secret plans to support an offensive by Kiev’s forces hit the internet the day before Anthony Blinken made a statement on the subject. The US Secretary of State said the operation will begin “within a few weeks.”

What information does it contain?There hasn’t been a leak of this nature since Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine began, over 13 months ago. It is noteworthy that the published plans contain not only a schedule for supplying Ukrainian units with NATO weapons and ammunition, but also information about the structure of the brigades and battalions allegedly preparing for the offensive. The document, dated March 1, says Kiev’s brigades need 253 tanks, more than 380 infantry fighting vehicles and APCs, 480 vehicles, 147 artillery pieces, and 571 HMMWV armored vehicles to carry out the offensive.

Which information is most suspect? The probable locations of Russian units, indicated on the combat map in red, appear to have been collected from open sources. Several pro-Kiev resources that track military operations contain almost identical information. Also, the ratios of killed and wounded for the Ukrainian and Russian Armed Forces which initially appeared in these ‘secret plans’ have since been changed. When first posted, the losses for the Ukrainian side were underestimated at about 16,500 –17,000 people. Then (probably to be more realistic), they increased almost fivefold, up to 65,000 – 75,000. At the same time, the numbers given for Russia’s purported losses of vehicles and equipment coincide with data published by Kiev’s Ministry of Defense.

What else is wrong with the published AFU offensive plans? The blatant falsification of data on the readiness of Ukrainian military formations catches the eye. The document states that, of the nine supposedly to be trained up to US and NATO standards by March 31 and April 30, five of Kiev’s brigades have had zero training: these are the 82nd Airborne, the 32nd, 117th, and 118th Territorial Defense, as well as the 21st separate mechanized. Even if only two or three companies in these brigades were trained, and self-preparation wasn’t completed, their level of training couldn’t be zero. At the same time, the highest percentage of readiness was recorded only in the 47th mechanized(40%) and the 46th airborne assault (60%).

What’s the upshot? The plan also gives perplexing figures for military equipment. For example, out of 109 M2 Bradley BMPs sent to armed forces, for some reason only 99 are to participate in the offensive. Moreover, the vehicles are not distributed among the brigades and only assigned to one formation – Kiev’s 47th mechanized brigade, which doesn’t have heavy tanks. Rather than Soviet T-72s or T-64BVs, this grouping has only Slovak T-55Ss with 105mm guns, which are difficult to use in a large-scale offensive. The small, but important, errors and inaccuracies in the calculations of equipment, the adjusted accounting of losses, as well as the presence of units with ‘zero’ readiness, indicate that this document, which was issued as a ‘secret plan,’ was probably prepared and distributed not by the military but by a group of civilians, probably pro-Kiev analysts.

The purpose of this planted misinformation may be to underreport the actual number of combat-ready Ukrainian units to be deployed for the offensive or to distract attention from other events related to the real operation.

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“Lula da Silva said that Russia was the guarantor of a long-lasting peace in the world..”

• NATO Should Not Be Near Russian Borders – Lula (TASS)

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva insists that the North Atlantic Alliance should not be close to Russia’s borders and that this issue could be a provision at peace talks on Ukraine. “NATO should not be able to deploy [its forces] on [Russia’s] borders,” he said at a press breakfast on Thursday. However, he said, all parties to the conflict should make concessions. According to him, the ownership of Crimea, “perhaps, must not be discussed at all,” while the new Russian regions are worth understanding. “But [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky may not count on anything he wants,” the politician argued. Earlier, Lula da Silva said that Russia was the guarantor of a long-lasting peace in the world. He has come up with an initiative to develop a new international format for the potential Moscow-Kiev talks, as he stressed he was ready to mediate direct negotiations between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky, if need be.

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“We think that the developed world, especially the EU and the US, had the option not to enter the war the way they did, so fast, without spending time trying to negotiate..”

• West Didn’t Allow Time For Peace In Ukraine – Lula (RT)

Neither Ukraine nor Russia can achieve every goal they’ve set in their conflict, but they need a mediator to facilitate peace talks, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has told journalists. The EU and the US were too quick to back Kiev, he has concluded, instead of trying to deescalate the situation. “It is not necessary to have a war,” Lula said on Thursday, during a media breakfast at the Palacio do Planalto, the official presidential workplace. He also criticized the US and its allies for their role in the conflict. “We think that the developed world, especially the EU and the US, had the option not to enter the war the way they did, so fast, without spending time trying to negotiate,” he explained. “Negotiating peace is very complicated.”

The Brazilian leader is set to travel next week to China, a nation with a similar position on Ukraine to his own. He said he hoped that his contacts with President Xi Jinping will help bring about a conversation “that we should have had a year ago.” India and Indonesia may have a role, too, he added. Explaining his view on how the hostilities could end, he suggested that the status of Crimea should be excluded from the discussion, but stressed that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot keep the land in Ukraine.” Citizens in Crimea voted in 2014 to break away from Ukraine and rejoin Russia, after an armed coup in Kiev. A similar drive for independence arose in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, but Moscow urged the breakaway Donbass to remain part of Ukraine. Kiev deployed military force in an attempt to quash the rebellion but failed.

Moscow has cited continued Ukrainian military attacks against the then-self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as Kiev’s stonewalling of an EU-brokered reconciliation plan, as key reasons for the deployment of troops against Ukraine in February 2022. Later in the year, the two Donbass regions, along with the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, held referendums on rejoining Russia. Kiev dismissed the ballots, which voted to rejoin, as “sham,” but Moscow said the status of its new parts was not subject to negotiation. Lula believes that Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky “can’t want everything either.” Kiev has declared a military victory over Russia and a return of all lands, including Crimea, as preconditions for entering peace talks.

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“What China is doing can be described in a single phrase: calling for peace and facilitating negotiations. We will continue to stand steadfastly for peace, dialogue and historical justice..”

• West In No Position To Issue Instructions On Ukraine To Beijing – Envoy (TASS)

The West is not in any position to give instructions to Beijing concerning the situation in Ukraine, Chinese Ambassador to Russia Zhang Hanhui said in an interview with the Izvestia daily, published on Friday. “The West is in no position to be issuing instructions to China, the more so since it doesn’t have any authority to shift responsibility over to Beijing. Since the crisis began, China has consistently put forward [for discussion] ‘four needs,’ ‘four commonalities’ and ‘three topics for consideration,’ as well as a position paper titled ‘China’s Position on a Political Solution to the Ukrainian Crisis,’ [and has] actively been promoting efforts to resolve the issue through dialogue and negotiations,” the envoy pointed out, commenting on the West’s accusations that China is supporting Russia in the conflict in Ukraine.


The diplomat also stressed that Beijing had not provided weapons to any party to the conflict. “China does not have its own interests in the Ukraine issue, but it is not merely an outside observer and certainly does not seek to add fuel to the fire, or seize an opportunity to benefit from the situation. What China is doing can be described in a single phrase: calling for peace and facilitating negotiations. We will continue to stand steadfastly for peace, dialogue and historical justice,” the Chinese ambassador noted.

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“..Blinken’s remarks appeared to be “a statement that is a subject for examination by our military.”

• Moscow Reacts To Blinken’s Counteroffensive Claim (RT)

The Russian military will likely scrutinize comments made by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken after he predicted a potential timeframe for a Ukrainian counteroffensive, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. In an interview on Friday with Ouest-France and German media group Funke, Blinken stated that the US and its allies should “do everything… to help Ukraine reconquer the territories taken by Russia, including through a counteroffensive, expected in the coming weeks.” In response, Peskov noted that Russia uses all available information in planning its operations in the conflict with Ukraine, and that Blinken’s remarks appeared to be “a statement that is a subject for examination by our military.” “They thoroughly track all the relevant information and take it into account when planning the continuation of the special military operation,” the presidential spokesman explained.

Kiev and its Western backers have increasingly talked up a major counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces, supposedly set to take place sometime during the spring. The operation will reportedly involve tanks and other hardware provided by the West, as well as Ukrainian troops trained abroad. The advance would purportedly be aimed at restoring Ukraine’s borders as they were before 2014. This includes the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions, which all voted to become part of Russia in referendums last autumn, as well as Crimea, which reunited with Moscow nine years ago.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy head of the Security Council, previously cast doubt on Ukraine’s ability to carry out such a large-scale operation, arguing that the claims by officials in Kiev were merely “propaganda.” On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon had launched an investigation after a trove of classified data on US and NATO activities to prepare Kiev for a counteroffensive were leaked online. The papers, whose source is unclear, assessed areas such as troop strengths, timelines for arms shipments, and ammunition expenditure. However, they did not state when exactly the operation was scheduled to start.

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“..to divert the attention of the international community from the facts of numerous war crimes published by the UN, committed by the Ukrainian army and militants of nationalist groups.”

• Kiev Prepares Provocation To Discredit Russia – Russian Defense Ministry (TASS)

Kiev is preparing a large-scale information campaign to discredit Russia on the international arena. A representative of the interdepartmental coordination headquarters of Russia for humanitarian response in Ukraine said this to reporters on Saturday. “According to available data, confirmed by several independent sources, a large-scale provocation aimed at discrediting the Russian Federation on the international arena is being prepared under the leadership of the office of the President of Ukraine,” the headquarters said. They specified that the Kiev regime would hold a special information campaign to divert the attention of the international community from the facts of numerous war crimes published by the UN, committed by the Ukrainian army and militants of nationalist groups.

Lavrov
https://twitter.com/i/status/1644286793057968130

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What a surprise. Maybe they should hire Fauci.

• US Resumes Biolabs Program In Ukraine – Russian MOD (RT)

The US has quietly resumed its controversial biolabs program in Ukraine and is focusing on the construction of secretive new facilities and the training of personnel, the Russian Defense Ministry has claimed. A new trove of documents on alleged US-funded biological programs in Ukraine was presented by the commander of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defense Forces, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, during a media briefing on Friday. Kirillov cited the protocol from a meeting dated October 20, 2022, which was attended by representatives of the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and multiple Ukrainian officials, as well as figures from the Jacobs/CH2M engineering company. The meeting reportedly focused on the resumption of biological research in Ukraine, which was “paused” due to the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev.

“Now, the project has been resumed with focus on renewal of legislative support, revision of training schedule, as well as conclusion and resumption of construction work,” the Ukrainian-language protocol stated, citing Jacobs/CH2M’s David Smith. The program was previously known as ‘Joint biological research’ but has been rebranded as ‘Biological control research’, the document indicated. It cited concerns over an alleged “Russian disinformation campaign” on the issue. The US has engaged in damage control efforts to prevent potential leaks from Ukrainian specialists on the true nature of the biological research programs, Kirillov asserted. “Hiding from responsibility for participating in military biological projects, many suspects left the territory of Ukraine. To prevent a possible leak of information about the illegal activities of the Pentagon, the US administration is taking emergency measures to search for and return them,” the commander argued.

US damage control began shortly after the outbreak of the conflict in February 2022, another document suggested. The Russian military presented a draft memo titled ‘Reducing the Threat of Ukrainian Expertise Proliferating to US Adversaries’, penned by Laura Denlinger, a senior counterproliferation adviser with the US State Department. “The Russian invasion of Ukraine has resulted in… the exodus of highly capable technical experts from Ukrainian facilities that produce missile components and advanced conventional weapons (ACW), as well as those with expertise that could be redirected and exploited by others for a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) weapon,” reads the memo, dated March 11, 2022. Moscow raised allegations of a sprawling network of secretive US-funded biological laboratories in Ukraine early in the conflict, and has since frequently published troves of documents on the matter. Russia took the issue of biolabs to the UN last October, requesting an international probe. The motion, however, was turned down by the UN Security Council, with the US, UK, and France voting against it.

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“In other words, ERIC was a Democrat activist group pretending to be a non-partisan voting rights organization.”

• How Was ERIC Used to Steal Elections? (Emerald)

Did you know that a system called the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) was used in America’s recent elections to subvert our democracy? What is ERIC, you ask?This is how its designers describe the system in a short video.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1625671317910441985

Seems helpful, doesn’t it? Keeping America’s voter rolls “up to date” seems a worthy mission for a non-profit. That’s why 30 states signed up (at one point) to use this supposedly “non-partisan” system.It turns out that ERIC was not really a “non-partisan” system of course — since it was used by Democrats to cheat in our recent elections. How was ERIC used maliciously in recent elections exactly?

In a bombshell report, Hayden Ludwig has uncovered records full of coordination between state election officials using ERIC and Mark Zuckerberg’s Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR) going back to 2020. Emails showed election officials in Georgia and Rhode Island sharing voter information from ERIC with Zuckerberg’s Democrat activists. Georgia elections officials actually sent ERIC data to CEIR to generate a list of eligible-but-unregistered individuals (to target with registration mailers) that was sent back to ERIC and then sent along to Georgia! In other words, ERIC was a Democrat activist group pretending to be a non-partisan voting rights organization. In fact, ERIC was apparently created by a Democrat lawyer named David Becker in 2012 — and that same David Becker left ERIC to work for Zuckerberg’s CEIR in 2016.


Convenient, isn’t it? Now you know why some blue states don’t want to clean up their voter rolls at all. In fact, election integrity groups have been forced to sue states like Michigan to clean up their rolls against the wishes of election officials. The good news is that Florida, West Virginia, and Missouri just announced they were leaving the ERIC partnership last month — following Louisiana, Alabama, Ohio, and Iowa out the door. That’s seven states. Texas and Alaska may soon follow.This groundswell of resistance has created a panic in the corrupt corporate media too. That should tell you everything you need to know. Election officials in notoriously corrupt Georgia and Utah (a mail-in ballot state!) vowed to keep using the system of course. South Carolina still won’t quit ERIC either. There’s still plenty of work to do — even in red states.

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Maybe Elon Musk should speak out on this.

• Attack of the Censorship Karens! (Shellenberger)

In the early afternoon yesterday, we heard from a whistleblower: “There will be a full court press coming up against the Twitter files and the reporters,” the person said. “The press will also be targeting each of you, your histories, and your personal and business connections. This by resistance network folks at the NGO’s and think-tanks.” Not exactly a message we were happy to hear. But we can’t say we were surprised, either. On Wednesday night, “disinformation researcher” Joan Donovan, who was forced to leave the Harvard Kennedy School earlier this year, hinted that an attack on us was imminent. It turned out that the counter-offensive had already begun.

MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan tweeted out videos from an interview with Twitter Files reporter Matt Taibbi, who Hasan claimed had overestimated the number of tweets censored by the “Election Integrity Project” of the Stanford Internet Observatory. The actual number, Hasan claimed, was only 3,000 tweets, not 22 million tweets. Then, like clockwork, Stanford Internet Observatory’s Alex Stamos, who revealed that his colleague, Renee DiResta, had worked for the CIA, weighed in. “Taibbi’s claim is false,” Stamos tweeted. “The core role of the EIP was to document and analyze election misinformation. 22M is the number we calculated *after* the election of the number of Tweets regarding false claims.” But what Stamos said was “misleading” and thus “malinformation” of the exact same kind that he and DiResta seek to censor.

“Stamos & EIP worked to get entire NARRATIVES banned outright,” explained Mike Benz, the State Department official-turned-whistleblower. “Those narratives, by EIP’s own math, had millions of associated posts.” Taibbi pointed out that the 3,000 number was chosen to hide the full extent of the censorship. “They’re playing games with terms like ‘unique original URL,’” tweeted Taibbi, “where more than 1000 tweets can be “collapsed” into one ‘incident.’” Here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter how many posts they censored. No amount is acceptable. What’s more, trying to normalize censorship, as both Stamos and DiResta are constantly doing, is anathema to the letter and spirit of the First Amendment. Stamos, of course, insists that he and his colleagues did not violate the Constitution. “The EIP is an academic coalition with the 1st Amendment-protected right to analyze the election-related claims of others and to publish our findings, as we did, publicly, over and over again,” he said.

And if that were all they did, they might be okay, but it wasn’t. Instead, Stanford worked hand-in-glove with the Department of Homeland Security’s “Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency,” CISA, to pressure Twitter and Facebook to censor American citizens. Violations of the First Amendment by government proxy are still violations of the First Amendment, which CISA knows perfectly well, and is the reason the agency recently scrubbed its website of its description of its domestic censorship efforts.

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“..two other law enforcement agencies outside of the FBI had undercover agents at the January 6 riots [..] there were at least 40 undercover agents at the riots..”

• Proud Boys Attorney Wants to Unmask Informants During Jan. 6 Trial (NW)

An attorney for a member of the Proud Boys recently called on the U.S. government to unmask all of the informants and undercover agents involved in the January 6 Capitol riots. In a motion filed on Wednesday, the attorney for Proud Boys member Dominic Pezzola compelled the government “to reveal all informants, undercover operatives and other Confidential Human Sources (CHSs) relating to the events of January 6.” “Pezzola recently learned that a federal agency other than FBI—the Homeland Security Investigations (HIS) unit—was handling and running undercover CHSs on Jan. 6,” the motion said. “The federal prosecutors in this case are refusing to disclose information regarding these non-FBI informants. The existence, and likely conduct of these CHSs is almost certainly exculpatory for Pezzola.”

The motion this week comes amid the ongoing trial for the Proud Boys, where members including Pezzola, as well as Ethan Nordean, Enrique Tarrio, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl, have been accused of seditious conspiracy and several other charges, in connection to the January 6 riots at the Capitol. The trial has faced several hiccups over the past few months as the attorneys for the Proud Boys have filed numerous motions. Last month, the trial was halted after the government revealed that one witness scheduled to testify was an informant. “During this period of time, the CHS [Confidential Human Source] has been in contact via telephone, text messaging and other electronic means, with one or more of the counsel for the defense and at least one defendant. During this period of time, the CHS also participated in prayer meetings with members of one or more of the defendants’ families,” Carmen Hernandez, an attorney for Rehl, wrote in a motion on March 23.

Additionally, an attorney for Nordean previously filed a motion after “hidden messages” between two FBI agents were revealed. According to the motion filed in early March, government witness Special Agent Nicole Miller provided the court all digital messages related to her testimony; however, a further review of an Excel sheet showed additional messages that appeared to be hidden. In the motion filed this week, Pezzola’s attorney, Roger Roots wrote that two other law enforcement agencies outside of the FBI had undercover agents at the January 6 riots, including “13 undercover plain-clothes agents” with the Washington D.C. Metro Police Department. In total, there were at least 40 undercover agents at the riots, the motion said. “Some of these undercover Metro officers marched with the Proud Boy march. And some appear to have played roles of instigators, in that they are seen on body-worn videos chanting ‘Go! Go!,’ ‘Stop the Steal!,’ and ‘Whose house? Our house!’ on Jan. 6. Others generally followed demonstrators toward the Capitol,” the motion said.

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Two pieces from the Guardian on vaccines to show you how wide the divide is on the topic.

• ‘A Silver Lining’: How Covid Ushered In A Vaccines Golden Era (G.)

The Covid-19 pandemic has been awful for many reasons. But if there is a bright side to the past three years, it is vaccines. Development and testing has advanced at an unprecedented pace since the arrival of Covid-19, enabling technologies that might otherwise have taken another decade to undergo late-stage clinical testing, regulatory approval and manufacturing scale-up to prove their mettle in millions of people. These advances have set the stage for further breakthroughs in the next five to 10 years that could help to combat some of the greatest scourges of humanity, from common respiratory infections to cancer. “We were anticipating the arrival of a golden era for vaccines before the pandemic, but like during a war, technology tends to develops a lot quicker during a pandemic. I guess a silver lining has been the rapid development of different vaccine technology platforms,” said Prof Brendan Wren, a molecular biologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Much of the excitement centres on mRNA-based vaccines, which use the same platform as the Covid-19 shots developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. Unlike traditional vaccines, which are manufactured in biological systems such as yeast or chicken’s eggs, mRNA vaccines are synthesised chemically, similar to most drugs. “It’s a huge advance, because it is essentially the same synthetic process every time, which means we can scale it,” said Prof Sir Andrew Pollard, the director of the Oxford Vaccines Group at the University of Oxford. Although often sold as a new technology, companies had, in fact, been working on mRNA vaccines for about 20 years, mostly in the context of cancer. However, the pandemic provided the funding and political power to drive this technology over the finish line and prove its worth in hundreds of millions of people.

Since then, the number of trials exploring mRNA vaccines for other diseases has exploded. Last month, the National Institute of Health in the US launched early-stage trials of three experimental mRNA vaccines for HIV. BioNTech is already running trials of mRNA vaccines for malaria, shingles and influenza. Moderna is also testing mRNA vaccines against flu, plus RSV, Zika virus, cytomegalovirus (a leading cause of childhood birth defects) and Nipah virus, a potential pandemic threat. It is also planning clinical trials of an inhaled mRNA therapy for cystic fibrosis, in collaboration with Vertex Pharmaceuticals.

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If you ask me, someone should file a complaint against the Guardian for these Big Pharma puff pieces. People wind up injured, disabled, dead.

• Cancer And Heart Disease Vaccines ‘Ready By End Of The Decade’ (G.)

Millions of lives could be saved by a groundbreaking set of new vaccines for a range of conditions including cancer, experts have said. A leading pharmaceutical firm said it is confident that jabs for cancer, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases, and other conditions will be ready by 2030. Studies into these vaccinations are also showing “tremendous promise”, with some researchers saying 15 years’ worth of progress has been “unspooled” in 12 to 18 months thanks to the success of the Covid jab. Dr Paul Burton, the chief medical officer of pharmaceutical company Moderna, said he believes the firm will be able to offer such treatments for “all sorts of disease areas” in as little as five years. The firm, which created a leading coronavirus vaccine, is developing cancer vaccines that target different tumour types. Burton said: “We will have that vaccine and it will be highly effective, and it will save many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives. I think we will be able to offer personalised cancer vaccines against multiple different tumour types to people around the world.”


He also said that multiple respiratory infections could be covered by a single injection – allowing vulnerable people to be protected against Covid, flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) – while mRNA therapies could be available for rare diseases for which there are currently no drugs. Therapies based on mRNA work by teaching cells how to make a protein that triggers the body’s immune response against disease. Burton said :“I think we will have mRNA-based therapies for rare diseases that were previously undruggable, and I think that 10 years from now, we will be approaching a world where you truly can identify the genetic cause of a disease and, with relative simplicity, go and edit that out and repair it using mRNA-based technology.” But scientists warn that the accelerated progress, which has surged “by an order of magnitude” in the past three years, will be wasted if a high level of investment is not maintained.

Ladapo
https://twitter.com/i/status/1644054399696642049

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Parrot

 

 

French revolution
https://twitter.com/i/status/1644081399304187905

 

 

CATTREE

 

 

Moose

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle February 12 2023

Feb 122023
 
 February 12, 2023  Posted by at 9:58 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  85 Responses »


Cave of swimmers, Gilf Kebir plateau, Sahara c6000 BCE

 

• Serbian President Sees “Major Escalation” In Ukraine Over Next 6 Months (RT)
• Serbia Responds To ‘Cancel-Russian-Culture’ Calls (RT)
• Censorship: Covid, War, and More (Spruance)
• Who Benefitted From This Chaos? (Tucker)
• The War of Terror of a Rogue Superpower: Cui Bono? (Escobar)
• Russia Ready For Talks With Ukraine, With No Preconditions – Deputy FM (TASS)
• Latest Nord Stream Findings Deserve Emergency NATO Summit – Zakharova (TASS)
• Zakharova Warns Baerbock Against Making Irreparable Mistake On Ukraine (TASS)
• Zakharova Urges To Legally Seal West’s Deceit On Minsk Agreements (TASS)
• IMF To Meet Ukraine Officials In Warsaw Next Week (R.)
• Tulsi Gabbard Slams ‘Dangerous’ Clinton Following India Trip (RT)
• Twitter Censorship Is The Modern-Day Red Scare (Turley)
• Trump & Epstein: The Recycled Smear (Roger Stone)
• UK Has Secret Plans For EU – Bloomberg (RT)
• Estimated 13 Million People Worldwide Killed By The Covid Vaccines (Kirsch)

 

 

 

 

Kirsch JFKjr autism
https://twitter.com/i/status/1624190004950859776

 

 


Lightning struck Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro on February 10, 2023

 

 

Boosted kids
https://twitter.com/i/status/1624434992607535107

 

 

 

 

Mortality rate
https://twitter.com/i/status/1624430874719551490

 

 

Yeadon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1624534926241538050

 

 

Hatay

 

 

 

 

Original title: “Serbia may soon be forced to sanction Russia – Vucic”. The smaller countries that have independent ideas, Serbia, Croatia, Austria, Hungary, are vassals to their allies.

Vucic’s main message: “The fighting to date will feel like “almost nothing, compared to what’s coming..” And then watch Gonzalo’s tweet. The US has sent Samantha Power to Budapest to trip Orban. A literal power game.

• Serbian President Sees “Major Escalation” In Ukraine Over Next 6 Months (RT)

The moment is approaching when Serbia will have no choice but to give in to Western demands to sanction its ally Russia, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has said. In an interview with Prva broadcaster on Friday, Vucic said he expects “a major escalation” in the conflict in Ukraine over the next six months. The fighting to date will feel like “almost nothing, compared to what’s coming,” he warned. This situation “will affect our country as the pressure on Belgrade, in terms of its relations with Russia, will become two or three times tougher – despite already being very strong now,” the president said. Sanctioning Moscow over its military operation in Ukraine and recognizing the independence of the breakaway province of Kosovo have been singled out by Brussels as key conditions for Belgrade’s bid to join the EU.

Vucic, who has been rejecting both demands for months, now says the moment may eventually come when Belgrade would have to join the EU’s curbs on Moscow. “Let us push like this as long as we can, I will know when the moment is right, and I will not hide anything from people. That moment [when Serbia sanctions Russia] has been approaching for a long time, I am afraid that it’s not even months away,” he said. The Serbian president revealed that he used to believe that the West, which is backing the Kiev government with weapons, funds and intelligence, was getting the upper hand in Ukraine. However, “at this moment, it’s no longer entirely clear who is winning in Ukraine,” he added.

Moscow’s chances of succeeding have been boosted by the fact that there is now “unity” among the Russian people regarding the conflict, especially after the announcement by Berlin and some other countries last month that German-made Leopard tanks would be supplied to Kiev, he said. According to Vucic, it’ll be “difficult” for Serbia no matter who prevails in Ukraine. “The West doesn’t want a country allied with Russia in the middle of Europe. On the other hand, Russia doesn’t want to lose everything it has in the Balkans,” he said. That’s why Belgrade remains among the few international players who speak about the need for a diplomatic solution to the crisis, but “no one is allowed to mention peace anymore,” he stated.

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“..the notion that Serbia should “break completely with Russia,” and “throw out Dostoyevsky, Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy” is equally absurd. “That can’t be Serbia, we have to take care of the soul of our people..”

• Serbia Responds To ‘Cancel-Russian-Culture’ Calls (RT)

Serbia will not jump on the Russia-bashing bandwagon and cancel the country’s culture, President Aleksandar Vucic has told media. He explained that preserving the Russian classics in the public domain is as important as guarding national financial interests. In an interview with Serbia’s Prva news channel broadcast on Friday, Vucic acknowledged that his country largely depends on the West in terms of investment. For this reason, the president noted, those who call on Belgrade to cut these ties “don’t know how the country works.” Vucic went on to argue that the notion that Serbia should “break completely with Russia,” and “throw out [novelist] Dostoyevsky, [composer] Tchaikovsky and [writer] Tolstoy” is equally absurd. “That can’t be Serbia, we have to take care of the soul of our people,” the president clarified.

Last month, during a press conference in the Russian embassy in Belgrade, President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy on international cultural cooperation, Mikhail Shvydkoy, announced that Belgrade and Moscow were discussing holding a year of cultural exchange in 2024. Several renowned Russian musicians will visit Serbia already this year. On top of that, a meeting of Russian and Serbian academia is also in the pipeline, Shvydkoy revealed.Following the start of Russia’s military operation against Ukraine in late February 2022, a number of European cultural venues have canceled the staging of artworks which have Russian origins and have also barred some Russian performers who have refused to denounce Moscow’s actions.

Certain politicians in the EU have also spoken in favor of such bans. As recently as early January, Lithuanian culture minister Simonas Kairys spoke in favor of a “mental quarantine” on Russian culture, claiming the latter is being used by Moscow as a “weapon.” Earlier, the Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra in Wales erased music by Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky from a concert program, while Britain’s Royal Opera House called off a tour by the Bolshoi Ballet. Netflix, in turn, put on hold the production of ‘Anna K,’ an adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s novel ‘Anna Karenina’. Commenting on these tendencies, Russian President Vladimir Putin has drawn parallels between Western efforts to cancel Russian culture to the Nazi practice of book burning.

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“..an inconvenient narrative arises, the government and lemmings in the media slander it as false and dangerous, and, months later, the dispute in question turns out to be true..”

• Censorship: Covid, War, and More (Spruance)

Wednesday morning, Seymour Hersh published “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline.” The Nord Stream 1 and 2 Pipelines exploded in September 2022. The Nord Stream 1 has delivered natural gas from Russia to Europe for over a decade, and Russia was developing the Nord Stream 2 at the time. Outlets like The New York Times called the explosions “a mystery.” The sabotage presented a major energy crisis for the United States’ European allies. Europe imports nearly 40% of its gas from Russia, and the Nord Stream 1 was responsible for delivering approximately one third of that supply. Now, Hersh reports that “the United States executed a covert sea operation” with Navy divers to sabotage Russia’s pipelines with explosives. For a less obsequious press corps, this should have been an easy story to crack.

In the weeks leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, President Biden announced his intention to act against the pipelines in the event of war. “If Russia invades… there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,” he told reporters. “We will bring an end to it.” “How will you do that exactly?” a reporter asked. “I promise you we will be able to do it,” President Biden said with a slight smile. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland was equally as explicit. “I want to be very clear to you today,” she told reporters in January 2022. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed “Anglo-Saxons” in the West for “terror attacks” on the pipelines. “Those who profit from it have done it,” Putin told the press.

President Biden chastised Putin’s accusation for “pumping out disinformation and lies.” “Just don’t listen to what Putin’s saying,” Biden added. “What he’s saying we know is not true.” White House National Security spokeswoman Adrienne Watson backed up Biden’s claim, referring to Putin’s accusation as “Russia’s disinformation.” Russia’s U.N. ambassador also implied that the United States had been involved in the sabotage. Richard Mills, U.S. deputy ambassador to the U.N., responded by calling the claims “conspiracy theories and disinformation.” Despite the Commander and Chief’s explicit announcement that he would take action against the Nord Stream pipeline, a credulous press corps has dutifully parotted government talking points that accusations of western involvement in the sabotage are “baseless” “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “conspiracy theories.”

This all follows a similar pattern to the informational warfare of the Covid era: an inconvenient narrative arises, the government and lemmings in the media slander it as false and dangerous, and, months later, the dispute in question turns out to be true (or at least highly plausible). Arguments over natural immunity, vaccine efficacy, masks, the lab leak hypothesis, school shutdowns, lockdowns, and the scientific basis of social distancing are just a few examples that followed this cycle of reporting. This was the same pattern as The New York Post’s coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop. Now, at hearings to investigate corruption that implicated Big Tech, intelligence officials, and the federal government, Raskin and his cohorts return to their familiar censorship ploys. For censors, augmentation of power, not truth, remains the chief objective. To achieve this goal, they conflate dissent with domestic terrorism.

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Not every point is equally strong.

• Who Benefitted From This Chaos? (Tucker)

Let’s just go through the list of beneficiaries I first compiled two years ago.

1. The tech companies that became so enraptured with the digital world—and we can include online retailers in this—that they forgot all the people who cannot and do not want to live entirely outside the physical world. To be sure, many of these high flying companies are now coming back to earth thanks to higher interest rates. Even Zoom may be falling on hard times. To which I say: Schadenfreude.

2. The pharmaceutical companies with hundreds of billions of investment in labs and distribution circles that wanted to ply their wares in the midst of emergencies, in addition to the PCR testing industry, not to mention mask and ventilator makers and so many other grifting companies in this space. They not only gain from tremendous subsidies and indemnification from damages; they even got governments to conscript their customer base.

3. Public health intellectuals, who for at least a decade and a half had fallen for the romance of computer modeling, were itching to try out a new method for disease mitigation. They must have gotten quite a kick out of watching the experiment tried out in real time. Speaking of: we haven’t heard from these people in a very long time. They seem conveniently very quiet. Notice how the prophets of doom who were all over the news three years ago, with their magic ability to see the future with precision, have completely vanished?

4. The mega-billionaire Bill Gates found himself vexed by computer viruses that were wrecking his Windows operating system and thereby developed a passion for blocking viruses in general, while failing to understand the difference between biology and computer hardware. He seems to have done very well for himself, not only with his investments but now with his new book telling us how he will single-handedly change the path of the global climate.

5. Government officials certainly had a field day trying out new uses of power. My goodness, they even got their mitts on social media, scripting who gets to speak and who cannot. The national security state hasn’t had this much fun since the Cold War. It was, in short, the most successful ramp up of government power the world over in modern times or maybe ever. Disease panic proved more advantageous to them than ever war and economic depression.

6. Media companies, who live on clicks and know with certainty that public panic is the best way to guarantee consumer attention, did especially well, given that millions were locked at home with nothing else to do. Talk about a captive audience!

7. The Chinese government, which was supremely annoyed at the Trump administration’s trade policies, successfully trolled the West into believing that China nixed the virus through totalitarian controls. It can now brag to have scripted the pandemic response for the whole world, and is now goading the World Health Organization into doing ever more of it.

8. Rabid opponents of the Trump administration, who had failed to wreck it through accusations of Russian collusion and then impeachment over a phone call to Ukraine, finally turned to creating tremendous social, economic, and political chaos by massively overblowing the severity of a widespread viral pathogen, which itself became a metaphor for the political infection they believed afflicted the country. This was the final undoing of the administration, much to the celebration of his political opponents.

9. School teachers’ unions that have been wanting to strike for years in order to extract pay and benefits from the taxpayer, worried that doing so would turn their public against them; for them, lockdowns were the perfect excuse to find another way. They abandoned their jobs and got paid anyway. Then they tried to make the racket last as long as possible.

10. A ruling-class population that has lost touch with people who cannot live on their computers, had become increasingly detached from the flow of life as it exists in the physical world, utterly failed to empathize with the suffering of others under lockdown. But they rather warmed up to the mess they had created because it meant they could make the big bucks while never changing out of their PJs.

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War OF terror vs war ON terror.

“A positive screamer is that Hersh – rather, his key source – had the MI6 completely vanish from the narrative..”

• The War of Terror of a Rogue Superpower: Cui Bono? (Escobar)

When it comes to the Global South, what the Hersh report imprints is Rogue Superpower, in giant blood red letters, as state sponsor of terrorism. Everyone with a brain already knew the Empire did it. Now Seymour Hersh’s bombshell report not only details how Nord Stream 1 and 2 were attacked, but also names names: from the toxic Straussian neoliberal-con trio Sullivan, Blinken and Nuland all the way to the Teleprompter Reader-in-Chief. Arguably the most incandescent nugget in Hersh’s narrative is to point ultimate responsibility directly at the White House. The CIA, for its part, gets away with it. The whole report may be read as the framing of a scapegoat. A very fragile, shoddy scapegoat – what with those classified documents in the garage, the endless stares into the void, the cornucopia of incomprehensible mumbling, and of course the whole, ghastly, years-long family corruption carousel in and around Ukraine, still to be completely unveiled.

Hersh’s report happened to pop up immediately after the deadly earthquakes in Turkey/Syria. This is an investigative journalism earthquake in itself, straddling over fault lines and revealing countless open air fissures, nuggets of truth gasping for air amidst the rubble. But is that all there is? Does the narrative hold from start to finish? Yes and no. First of all, why now? This is a leak – essentially from one Deep State insider, Hersh’s key source. This 21st century “Deep Throat” remix may be appalled at the toxicity of the system, but at the same time he knows that whatever he says, there will be no consequences. Cowardly Berlin – ignoring the nuts and bolts of the scheme all along – will not even squeak. After all the Green gang has been ecstatic, because the terror attack has thoroughly advanced their medieval de-industrialization agenda.

In parallel, as an extra bonus, all the other European vassals receive further confirmation this is the fate that awaits them if they don’t follow His Master’s Voice. Hersh’s narrative frames the Norwegians as the essential accessory to terror. Hardly surprising: NATO’s Jens “Peace is War” Stoltenberg has been a CIA asset for perhaps half a century. And Oslo of course had its own motives to be part of the deal; to collect loads of extra cash selling whatever spare energy it had for desperate European customers. A little narrative problem is that Norway, unlike the U.S. Navy, still does not have any operational P-8 Poseidon. What was clear at the time is that an American P-8 was commuting back and forth – with mid-air refueling – from the U.S. to Bornholm island.

A positive screamer is that Hersh – rather, his key source – had the MI6 completely vanish from the narrative. SVR, Russian intel, had focused like a laser on MI6 at the time, as well as the Poles. What still cements the narrative is that the combo behind “Biden” provided the planning, the intel and coordinated the logistics, while the final act – in this case a sonar buoy detonating the C4 explosives – may have been perpetrated by the Norwegian vassals. The problem is the buoy may have been dropped by an American P-8. And there’s no explanation of why one of the sections of Nord Stream 2 escaped intact.

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“..talks that should be based on the existing reality..”

• Russia Ready For Talks With Ukraine, With No Preconditions – Deputy FM (TASS)

Russia is ready to engage with Ukraine, but there should not be any preconditions for talks that should be based on the existing reality, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin said in an interview with Zvezda television. “Yes, according to the classics, any hostilities end up in talks, and, naturally, as we have said before, we will be ready for such talks, but only if those are talks with no preconditions, talks that would be based on the existing reality,” the senior Russian diplomat said, according to a fragment of the interview posted on the TV channel’s website. However, it is not Kiev, but Washington and Brussels who make the decision on talks with Moscow, Vershinin said.


“First of all, there have been [talks] before – you remember Minsk and you remember Istanbul. And you remember that those were broken off by Ukraine, but you are well aware that decisions are being made not in Kiev, decisions are being made in other capitals, primarily in Washington and Brussels. So, inquiries should be sent there,” he added. Commenting on whether such talks could be held under the current US president, Joe Biden, Vershinin said, “This does not depend on us, we have made our position clear, and if only Mr. Biden were cautious and wise enough, I mean him and his entourage,” he added.

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UN summit perhaps?

Is Russia pushing Zakharova forward? See her a lot.

• Latest Nord Stream Findings Deserve Emergency NATO Summit – Zakharova (TASS)

The Russian Foreign Ministry’s official spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said the latest findings about explosions at the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, published by US journalist Seymour Hersh, deserve to be discussed at an emergency NATO summit. “There have been a plenty of facts: pipeline explosions, [clear] motives and indirect evidence obtained by journalists. So when will an emergency NATO summit gather to analyze the situation?” she asked rhetorically. On February 8, Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article where he said, citing a source, that explosives were planted under the Russian Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines by US Navy divers under the guise of the Baltops exercise in June. The story stated that US president Joe Biden personally authorized the operation.


US State Department Spokesman Ned Price said earlier that the US denies they were involved in the explosions on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines and believes its explanations on the matter are credible. He called the theory laid out by Hersh complete and utter nonsense. On September 27, 2022, Nord Stream AG reported unprecedented damage that occurred the day before on three strings of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 offshore gas pipelines. On September 26, Swedish seismologists registered two explosions on the pipeline routes. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office launched a criminal case based on charges of international terrorism.

Mao Ning

Read more …

Baerbock swallowed her words. “..if you are hypocritical again, you are making an irreparable mistake this time,” Zakharova wrote..”

• Zakharova Warns Baerbock Against Making Irreparable Mistake On Ukraine (TASS)

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who admitted that her words about Europe being at war with Russia had been a mistake, against making irreparable mistakes concerning Ukraine, Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel on Saturday. Earlier on Saturday, Baerbock admitted that she had made a mistake claiming in late January that the European Union “is fighting a war with Russia.” “The one who doesn’t make mistakes, doesn’t live,” Baerbock quoted this saying in an interview with Der Tagesspiegel newspaper, explaining her words. According to Zakharova, it was a pivotal statement of Baerbock.


“Once you realize your mistake sincerely, you will understand this. You have to. However, if you are hypocritical again, you are making an irreparable mistake this time,” Zakharova wrote. The Russian diplomat called on the German foreign minister “if you believe that everyone has the right to make mistakes because it is part of human life, stop engaging in escalating the crisis that leads to killings of people with Western weapons.” Zakharova recalled that Germany had been supporting the Ukrainian regime, which was killing people in Donbass, for eight years, and that Russia had launched its special military operation to stop the bloodshed and curb the threats of its escalating into another world war. “And then NATO criminals started pouring fuel on the fire, turning it all into a massive carnage,” she added.

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“There was a [malicious] intent that dealt a blow to global security..”

• Zakharova Urges To Legally Seal West’s Deceit On Minsk Agreements (TASS)

The Western nations’ deceit regarding the Minsk agreements on Ukrainian reconciliation needs to be formally sealed and qualified within the legal framework, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s official spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said. “The fact that those countries, those politicians deceived the international community, and the people of Ukraine were the first to suffer from their deceit, deserves to be formally sealed within the framework of the law,” she told the Right to Know TV show on Russia’s TVTs television. “Instead of talk, there must be a [legal] qualification, and it must be made by law experts.”


“The thing is that they deceived the UN Security Council,” she said.According to Zakharova, from the very outset, Germany, France and Ukraine implied something totally opposite to what they had openly pledged to their people, to Europe and the world in general. “They <…> gave the Kiev regime time to rearm. This means that they planned to deceive the international community from the very start. The intentions that they declared were totally different from what they had in mind,” she added. The diplomat described this as a real sham and a global-scale fraud. “There was a [malicious] intent that dealt a blow to global security,” she added.

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Signed, sealed, delivered. No longer your country.

• IMF To Meet Ukraine Officials In Warsaw Next Week (R.)

International Monetary Fund staff will meet with Ukrainian officials in Warsaw next week, a source familiar with the plans said on Friday, as Ukraine presses for a multi-billion dollar borrowing program to cover its funding needs given Russia’s war. The Interfax Ukraine news agency earlier this month quoted Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko as saying that Ukraine hopes to start negotiations with the IMF during the second quarter of 2023. The IMF had no immediate comment on the staff mission, which comes two months after the IMF’s board approved a four-month monitoring program for Ukraine that is aimed at maintaining economic stability following Russia’s invasion, and at helping promote donor financing.


At the time, the IMF said “program monitoring with board support”, or PMB, “should help pave the way toward a possible full-fledged IMF-supported program.” The scope of that program is a source of ongoing debate, given existing IMF constraints on lending to a country at war. Ukrainian government officials have said the country will need $38 billion this year to cover the budget deficit and another $17 billion for urgent energy repairs and reconstruction of critical infrastructure. Experts say the country’s needs could be far higher, given the extent of damage caused by Russian attacks in recent months.

Fierce mother Ukraine
https://twitter.com/i/status/1624190239488061441

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“..if there’s a war to be fought, she wants to be the one with her finger on that proverbial trigger.”

• Tulsi Gabbard Slams ‘Dangerous’ Clinton Following India Trip (RT)

Former Democratic US Representative Tulsi Gabbard has continued her long-running feud with Hillary Clinton following the ex-Secretary of State’s recent visit to India. She told Fox News that the trip served little purpose, and shows that former presidential candidate is a “dangerous character” who is “envious” of Joe Biden. Clinton arrived in India on February 5, visiting salt pan workers in Gujarat where she announced a $50-million initiative intended to empower women and communities to fight against climate change. However, Gabbard – who left the Democrat Party last year – has since said that Clinton’s visit to drum up support for alternative clean energy shows that she still covets diplomatic authority and is “envious” of Joe Biden’s presidency.

“Her desire to be commander-in-chief that she’s had for a very long time has nothing to do with ensuring the safety and security of the American people,” Gabbard said on FOX News’ ‘Jesse Watters Primetime’ show Thursday. “It has everything to do with the fact that if there’s a war to be fought, she wants to be the one with her finger on that proverbial trigger.” She added that she believes Biden to be “channelling her warmongering ways.” Clinton has previously referred to Gabbard as a “Russian asset,” which prompted the former Hawaii Democrat to launch a defamation lawsuit. Gabbard also stated that Clinton’s visit to India did nothing to address India’s more pressing issues, such as tensions with its neighbor Pakistan, and that its only benefit was to increase her own public profile.

“This is what makes her such a dangerous character,” Gabbard said. “She feels that she’s not accountable to anyone because she’s not suffering those consequences.” While in India, Clinton said that the country was ideally positioned to implement clean energy methods, which, she claimed, would increase economic growth. She referenced solar power facilities at a salt pan farm she’d visited in Surendranagar as evidence of this. Clinton also used the visit to praise self-employed Indian women who have chosen to work in roles such as street vendors, farmers and laborers.

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“While some like McCaskill yell “Russians!” others use more modern labels, such as “conspiracy theorists.” That notably includes the FBI itself..”

• Twitter Censorship Is The Modern-Day Red Scare (Turley)

“The Democratic Party [is] the bedfellow of international communism.” Those words from Sen. Joe McCarthy captured the gist of the Red Scare and the use of blacklists and personal attacks to silence critics. The Democrats this week appear to have taken up the same cudgel in labeling opponents and critics Russian sympathizers and fellow travelers in opposing government involvement in a massive censorship system. The Red Scare is back and it is going blue. I testified this week in Congress on the Twitter Files and how they suggest what I have called “censorship by surrogate” or proxy. The files show dozens of FBI and government employees actively seeking the censorship of citizens and others for their viewpoints.

In my testimony, I warned that this was reminiscent of the McCarthy period where the FBI played a role in the establishment of blacklists for socialist, communists, and others. I encouraged Congress not to repeat its failures from the 1950s by turning a blind eye to such abuse. This view was amplified by former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who became persona non grata for her anti-war sentiments in Congress. She was later labeled a “Russian asset” by Hillary Clinton, who has refused to support that scurrilous claim of a former member. For years, the Democrats pushed a Russian collusion theory that collapsed. It was later disclosed that the Clinton campaign hid and then lied about funding the infamous Steele Dossier. Nevertheless, people like Carter Page were falsely accused of being Russian agents and critics labeled as Russian apologists.

Ironically, the FBI was warned that the dossier appeared to be the result of Russian disinformation and relied on a presumed Russian agent. If anything, my warning of McCarthy-like attacks and measures seemed to be taken more as a suggestion than an admonition by some. Yet soon after the end of the hearing, MSNBC contributor and former Sen. Claire McCaskill appeared on MSNBC to denounce the member witnesses (Sen. Chuck Grassley, Sen. Ron Johnson, and former Rep. Gabbard) as “Putin apologists” and Putin lovers. She exclaimed, “I mean, look at this, I mean, all three of those politicians are Putin apologists. I mean, Tulsi Gabbard loves Putin.” (For the record, she also attacked me as not being “a real lawyer.”)

[..] In the 1950s, it was easy for politicians to avoid discussing underlying views by just labeling their opponents as fellow travelers. We are watching the same use of personal attacks today as a way to evade the troubling disclosures in the Twitter Files. While some like McCaskill yell “Russians!” others use more modern labels, such as “conspiracy theorists.” That notably includes the FBI itself. When criticized for the role FBI agents played in secretly targeting citizens for censorship, the FBI called critics “conspiracy theorists . . . feeding the American public misinformation.”

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Roger Stone did a lot of research on the topic for his book.

• Trump & Epstein: The Recycled Smear (Roger Stone)

Trump turned down numerous invitations to Epstein’s hedonistic private island and his Palm Beach home. There is no evidence Trump did anything improper. Norma Foerderer, Trump’s longtime personal assistant, told me that Trump thought Epstein was “creepy.” “The one time I visited his Palm Beach home, the swimming pool was full of beautiful young girls,” Trump told a member of his Club, Mar-a-Lago. “‘How nice,’ I thought, ‘he let the neighborhood kids use his pool.’” According to his personal security guard, Trump left Epstein’s home within 15 minutes of arrival, feeling uncomfortable with the strange ratio of men to much younger women. Many of the Epstein-based smears against Trump that are now recycled by Ron DeSantis’ organized flying monkeys on the internet, originated with the Clinton campaign.

Epstein provided millions in seed funding for the Clinton Global Initiative, was a heavy donor to the Clinton Foundation. Bill Clinton visited Epstein’s island on at least 17 occasions, as well as being identified by FAA records as having been on Epstein’s plane on at least 26 occasions. The Clinton Foundation provided one-hundred percent of the funding for TerraMar, a nonprofit controlled by Epstein pimp Ghislaine Maxwell, which was utilized to hire young female interns to allegedly work on environmental projects while actually constituting a grooming pool. Unlike the Clintons, Trump cut Epstein off after he heard about an inappropriate advance by Epstein toward a young woman who worked at the Spa at Mar-a-Lago, and Trump told security that Epstein was barred from the property. The Clintons continued to socialize and fundraise with Jeffrey Epstein after his state conviction.

The Clinton Foundation actually took a donation from Epstein after he had a probable cause affidavit filed on him by Palm Beach Police in May of 2006. Trump cut Epstein off well before state charges were brought against the sex-trafficker. The Clintons were desperate to distract from their own relationship with Epstein by trying to throw shade on Trump. Now, the “influencers” propping up Ron DeSantis are recycling the same trash. Recent weeks have seen this vicious assault on President Donald Trump; distorting the facts about his “connection” to Jeffrey Epstein, which, as I have stated above, is an obscene distortion of the facts. The repetitive drumbeat of their talking points are obviously prepared by Governor DeSantis’ Ukrainian handler bleed through in the posting of her internet-based corp of flying monkeys. The uniform language blows the op. It was a smear in 2016 and it’s a smear today.

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Brexit Lite.

• UK Has Secret Plans For EU – Bloomberg (RT)

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has privately asked members of his cabinet to work out ways of rebuilding connections with the EU that had been severed after Brexit in 2020, government sources have told Bloomberg. Plans are currently being put together at 10 Downing Street to boost ties between London and Brussels in such areas as defense, migration and the economy, including trade, energy and international standards, the agency reported on Saturday. According to British ministers, diplomats and officials, who all spoke on condition of anonymity, the rapprochement is being prepared in order to compensate for the fallout of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, in which London positions itself among the prime backers of the Kiev authorities.

In the coming days, Sunak’s government is hoping to announce a solution to the longstanding dispute with the EU over post-Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland. London’s plan is to capitalize on this development and make it the basis for further improving ties with the 27-member bloc. Bloomberg pointed out that by moving in this direction, the PM is risking causing anger among the anti-EU lawmakers from his ruling Conservative Party. Another challenge for Sunak would be overcoming the skepticism of European leaders, who got tired of top British politicians using the bloc as a “punch bag for their domestic audience” since the Brexit vote in 2016, it added. One of the sources assured Bloomberg that the alleged turn towards Europe didn’t mean that Brexit was a mistake but was merely a reflection of the changing geopolitical situation.

According to another official, Sunak’s subordinates were able to persuade the Prime Minister, who has been in office since late October, that in the current reality of “a more dangerous world, rising authoritarianism and protectionism,” closer cooperation with allies was absolutely essential for the UK. Achieving this would require Britain to give up on its “madman strategy” of resisting the EU, in favor of a stable relationship with the bloc as critical friends, he said. By standing together, London and Brussels would be able to withstand economic turbulence and threats posed by Russia and China more effectively, the source explained.

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And counting.

• Estimated 13 Million People Worldwide Killed By The Covid Vaccines (Kirsch)

The paper suggests you can take the number of vaccine doses delivered, divide by 1,000 to get an estimate of the number of people killed by the COVID vaccine. The tweet directly from the author sums it up:

The paper: Age-stratified COVID-19 vaccine-dose fatality rate for Israel and Australia


The paper finds that the vDFR (vaccine-dose fatality rate) is exponential with respect to age.

The paper points out that “it is not unreasonable to assume an all-population global value of vDFR = 0.1 %”. For the US, 670M doses have been given, so the estimate is 670,000 people have been killed by the COVID vaccines in the US. I have said for a long time that the URF in VAERS is 41, and there are 16,300 excess US deaths in VAERS (subtracting 250 background deaths per year which gets reported into VAERS) which comes to 668K.668K is very close to 670K, isn’t it? What an amazing “coincidence”!The paper gives a simple way to estimate the number of people a country has killed by deploying the COVID vaccines: 0.001*# of doses. In short, you can just take the number of vaccine doses in millions and just change “millions” to “thousands” to estimate the number of people killed by the vaccine.


Using data from Israel and Australia, the paper estimates 13 million deaths worldwide from the COVID vaccines: The COVID-19 vaccines did not only not save lives but they are highly toxic. On the global scale, given the 3.7 million fatalities in India alone, having vDFR = 1 % (Rancourt, 2022), and given the age-stratified vDFR results presented in this work, it is not unreasonable to assume an all-population global value of vDFR = 0.1 %. Based on the global number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered to date (13.25 billion 24 doses, up to 24 January 2023, Our World in Data), this would correspond to 13 million deaths from the COVID-19 vaccines worldwide. By comparison, the official World Health Organization (WHO) number of COVID-19 deaths to date is 6.8 million (6,817,478 deaths, reported to WHO, as 3 February 2023), which are not detected as COVID-19 assignable deaths in ACM studies.

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Pi

 

 

Triangular impossible object, devised in the 1950s by Lionel Penrose and his son, Nobel Prize-winning mathematician Sir Roger Penrose
https://twitter.com/i/status/1624400863732047873

 

 

 

 

Woodcock
https://twitter.com/i/status/1624096393156521984

 

 

Wonderful world

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle January 20 2023

Jan 202023
 
 January 20, 2023  Posted by at 10:15 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  127 Responses »


Rembrandt van Rijn Portrait of his father 1628-29

 

• Russian Orthodox Church Issues Apocalyptic Warning (RT)
• Going, Going, Gone: Fiddling While the West Burns (Batiushka)
• World Economic Forum Wants You to Trust Them (ET)
• ‘Russiagate’ Is Dead, But Social Media Control Is Here To Stay (Livshitz)
• Global South: Gold-Backed Currencies To Replace The US Dollar (Escobar)
• Economist: Turkey Could Be On ‘Brink Of Dictatorship’ (K.)
• Over 1 Million Workers Hit French Streets Against Macron’s Pension Reform (ZH)
• How A Corrupt FBI Could Save Joe Biden In Classified-Docs Scandal (Bovard)
• CDC Knowingly Left Serious Adverse Events Off Post-Vaccination Surveys (ET)
• How the CDC Became the Speech Police (Soave)
• Safety Signals for Heart, Blood, Reproduction in Yellow Card Vaccine Data (DS)
• Fauci Lied; 120,000 US Children Died (Exp.)
• Twitter Files Show Authoritarian “Cult Of Identity” Controls The Media (Gurri)

 

 

 

 

Tucker Nixon (Must see)
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616322813794680832

 

 

 

 

Our Birthright

 

 

Mike Rowe We’re at war with the things we need

 

 

MSM Pfizer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616157050912014337

 

 

Watters

 

 

 

 

“We pray to the Lord so that he enlightens those madmen and helps them understand that any desire to destroy Russia will mean the end of the world..”

• Russian Orthodox Church Issues Apocalyptic Warning (RT)

Any attempts to destroy Russia could spell disaster for the entire world, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, warned on Thursday. Speaking after a religious service marking the Orthodox Christian holiday of Epiphany, the primate claimed that both the international community and Russia are facing “very huge threats.” According to Patriarch Kirill, the root of the problem is that some “madmen” believe that Russia, which “has powerful weapons and is populated by extremely strong people… who had never given in to an enemy and had always emerged victorious, could be defeated under the current circumstances.” Neither would it be possible to “impose on them certain values that cannot even be called values, so that they would be like everyone else and obey those who have the power to control most of the world,” he noted.


“We pray to the Lord so that he enlightens those madmen and helps them understand that any desire to destroy Russia will mean the end of the world,” he added. The Patriarch’s remarks echo a statement by former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday, who warned the countries that want to see Moscow defeated in Ukraine that nuclear powers such as Russia had “never lost a major conflict on which their fate depended.” Should such a nation lose a conventional war, such an outcome could trigger a nuclear conflict, he added. Earlier this month, the head of the Russian Church appealed to both Moscow and Kiev’s forces to establish a truce in the run-up to and during Orthodox Christmas on January 7 to give the faithful a chance to attend religious services. Hours later, the proposal was supported by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered Moscow’s troops to stand down for 36 hours. The ceasefire, however, was rejected by Kiev, with Ukrainian officials dismissing the offer as “hypocrisy” and a military ruse.

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“Europeans hate their elites. The spoilt elites may tell their peoples: ‘Let them eat cake’. But they have forgotten that what the people want is bread.”

• Going, Going, Gone: Fiddling While the West Burns (Batiushka)

Let us not forget that the conflict in the Ukraine is about the struggle of the United States to maintain its dinosaur’s status as the world’s last superpower. More exactly, it is about America’s attempt to destroy China as a rival. For since China, allied with Russia, is unbeatable, China has to be attacked through Eurasian Russia. In this crazed neocon video-game fantasy, the USA has overlooked Western Europe. In one sense that is understandable, since its leaders are just a pack of mindless Pavlovian dogs, intent on copying their master in Washington – and a pile of dollars greatly helps their salivating capacity for imitation. However, the US mistake is as usual to look only at its puppets. This was the same mistake as in Baghdad and Kabul, or for that matter in Tehran and Saigon, not to mention in Manila and a host of capitals in Latin America. Appoint an English-speaking yes-man, give him a Swiss bank account full of dollars and a US passport, ensure he has control over the capital and its TV and radio station and then you will control the whole country. Only Hamid Karzai didn’t and you won’t either.

Western Europe, the EU and the UK, with a few other bits and pieces, is also inhabited by 500 million people (the other 50 odd million belong to the elite). Some, especially from the elites, live in the capitals. The vast majority do not live there and generally despise those who do live in the capitals. Ask a Frenchman what he thinks of ‘les sales parisiens’ (filthy Parisians), ask a Romanian what he thinks of the elite in Bucharest, a Pole what he thinks of those in Warsaw or an Englishman what he thinks of Londoners. If you don’t believe me, ask Macron in France. Alternatively, ask any Frenchman what he thinks of France’s real rulers – the grossly overpaid super-elite in Brussels. The English hated them so much, they had Brexit. A lot of Germans, who by a huge majority never wanted to give up the Deutschmark, got quite jealous of that, even though the incompetent and perfidious British elite totally mishandled the Brexit negotiation process.

If in Western Europe, the vast majority don’t like their leaders, they will eventually – even the passive British – get rid of them and they will appoint leaders whom Washington does not like, Le Pen, Farage etc. Remember Orban? He is already in power, as is Erdogan (though he is in Turkey). The Ukrainian conflict is already reshaping Europe’s totally outdated (1945) security architecture and forcing a reconfiguration. The realignment will not be in Washington’s favour. Demonstrations against NATO are already starting in various European countries. But what is more likely to topple the US puppet elite is strikes and protests. Europeans hate their elites. The spoilt elites may tell their peoples: ‘Let them eat cake’. But they have forgotten that what the people want is bread.

Once Western Europe, including even the UK, has gone, the end of the short unipolar era will be here. The domino effect, from Kiev to Dublin, is surely only a matter of time. Remember the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989? Within twenty-five months the whole of the Soviet Eastern European Empire fell, one country after another, until in December 1991, the Soviet Union itself fell. Berlin to Vladivostok. Well, the time is now up for the American Empire in its turn. It will also fall, and for the same reasons. The SU (Soviet Union) went. So will its reverse, the US (United States). Red stars, white stars, they have both had their time. Keep your eyes on Western Europe.

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Could have fooled me….

• World Economic Forum Wants You to Trust Them (ET)

One of the central themes of the World Economic Forum summit this week is “restoring trust”; this initiative comes at a moment when progressive corporate organizations such as the WEF are being scrutinized for violating U.S. antitrust laws. A WEF panel discussion called “Disrupting Distrust” featured speakers from Mastercard, the United Way, and Consumers International, as well as communications consultant Richard Edelman. It proceeded under the slogan: “Trust is at the heart of meaningful multi-stakeholder cooperation … Yet levels of distrust are higher than ever.” The panel was hosted by Kathleen Kingsbury, an opinion editor at The New York Times.

The discussion opened with a report from Edelman’s Annual Edelman Trust Barometer, which found that trust in government had declined substantially, leaving corporations as the most trusted institutions in society. Edelman also warned of a “growing mass class divide” in public opinion. The divergence of public opinion started in 2013 in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, he said, and it has now “metastasized” to three-quarters of the countries in the world. Helena Leurent, director of Consumers International, said “economic pain” is the top issue causing mistrust. “The consumer is embattled,” she said, citing dramatic increases in food and fuel prices over the past two years. “The cost of living is the body blow.” “I find a lot of irony in this,” Joel Griffith, research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Epoch Times.

“The energy crisis that we’re facing now across the world is a problem that by and large has been caused by the 50-plus world leaders that are gathered there, because almost in lockstep these world leaders, from [President Joe] Biden, to the European Union leaders, to our counterpart in Canada, have declared a long-term war on fossil fuels,” Griffith said. “They’ve created this energy crisis, they’ve created the inflation crisis, created the rising price trajectory, and they are not acknowledging responsibility.” Another topic on the trust agenda was what Edelman called the “battle for truth.” Rather than what had previously been the “Moses model,” in which truth is handed down from higher institutions to the masses, Edelman said, “now trust is local, in my employer and in my company and my CEO.” Speaking for The New York Times, Kingsbury said that “in journalism, we struggle with an issue of a lack of trust … particularly in our expertise.”

Tucker WEF
https://twitter.com/i/status/1615896188573700096

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“the relationship between the number of posts from Russian foreign influence accounts that users are exposed to and voting for Donald Trump is near zero..”

• ‘Russiagate’ Is Dead, But Social Media Control Is Here To Stay (Livshitz)

Donald Trump’s time as president was dominated by years of mainstream news headlines declaring that his unexpected victory was attributable to Saint Petersburg’s Internet Research Agency (aka ‘The Russian IRA’). The company reportedly corralled online networks of bots and trolls that perpetuated pro-Trump propaganda in a bid to get the outsider elected at the Kremlin’s request. This narrative quickly became widely accepted among US liberals, and remains entrenched today – but a new study decisively shows it to be false. The paper, published in the respected academic journal Nature, investigates the exposure of Twitter users to alleged activity on the social media platform by the IRA during the 2016 US election, “and its relationship to attitudes and voting behavior.”

The study’s findings speak for themselves. For example, 70% of purported IRA-connected posts during that campaign were seen by just 1% of the network’s users, “who strongly identified as Republicans.” Coverage of these posts was moreover “eclipsed by content from domestic news media and politicians.” The academics also found “no evidence of a meaningful relationship” between exposure to these tweets, and “changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior.” Alleged IRA posts seen on Twitter by users were “overshadowed – by an order of magnitude – by posts from national news media and politicians.” For every four IRA tweets published in the last month of the 2016 election campaign, 106 per day from national news media and 35 per day from US politicians were seen on average. In other words, 25 times and nine times more posts respectively.

The academics also probed whether there was any connection between exposure to alleged IRA posts and “changes in respondents’ positions on salient election issues” and political polarization, surveying them on “eight major policy issues salient during the election, and respondents’ self-reported political ideology.” They bluntly concluded that there were not “statistically significant relationships between exposure on any of the issue-based and polarization outcomes.”
Extensive data-based analyses were also conducted to “examine the relationship between exposure to Russian foreign influence accounts and vote choice.” Again, the conclusion couldn’t be more damning – “the relationship between the number of posts from Russian foreign influence accounts that users are exposed to and voting for Donald Trump is near zero (and not statistically significant).”

RFKjr
https://twitter.com/i/status/1615834413149065218

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“..India’s purchases of Russian crude have increased year-by-year by a whopping factor of 33..”

• Global South: Gold-Backed Currencies To Replace The US Dollar (Escobar)

First: One of the key take aways from the World Economic Forum annual shindig in Davos, Switzerland is when Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan, on a panel on “Saudi Arabia’s Transformation,” made it clear that Riyadh “will consider trading in currencies other than the US dollar.”So is the petroyuan finally at hand? Possibly, but Al-Jadaan wisely opted for careful hedging: “We enjoy a very strategic relationship with China and we enjoy that same strategic relationship with other nations including the US and we want to develop that with Europe and other countries.”

Second: The Central Banks of Iran and Russia are studying the adoption of a “stable coin” for foreign trade settlements, replacing the US dollar, the ruble and the rial. The crypto crowd is already up in arms, mulling the pros and cons of a gold-backed central bank digital currency (CBDC) for trade that will be in fact impervious to the weaponized US dollar. The really attractive issue here is that this gold-backed digital currency would be particularly effective in the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) of Astrakhan, in the Caspian Sea. Astrakhan is the key Russian port participating in the International North South Transportation Corridor (INTSC), with Russia processing cargo travelling across Iran in merchant ships all the way to West Asia, Africa, the Indian Ocean and South Asia.

The success of the INSTC – progressively tied to a gold-backed CBDC – will largely hinge on whether scores of Asian, West Asian and African nations refuse to apply US-dictated sanctions on both Russia and Iran. As it stands, exports are mostly energy and agricultural products; Iranian companies are the third largest importer of Russian grain. Next will be turbines, polymers, medical equipment, and car parts. Only the Russia-Iran section of the INSTC represents a $25 billion business. And then there’s the crucial energy angle of INSTC – whose main players are the Russia-Iran-India triad. India’s purchases of Russian crude have increased year-by-year by a whopping factor of 33. India is the world’s third largest importer of oil; in December, it received 1.2 million barrels from Russia, which for several months now is positioned ahead of Iraq and Saudi Arabia as Delhi’s top supplier.

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He’s been in charge for 20 years already.

• Economist: Turkey Could Be On ‘Brink Of Dictatorship’ (K.)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, or rather his shadow, has made the cover of this week’s issue of the Economist in a decidedly unflattering way, as a leader that has taken his country “to the brink of disaster.” As the introduction to the financial paper’s report on the state of the country ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections states, “Mr Erdogan’s behavior as the election approaches could push what is today a deeply flawed democracy over the edge into a full-blown dictatorship.” The Economist says Erdogan’s now 20-year-old reign was initially beneficial to Turkey: he mended the economy, neutralized the country’s meddling generals and secured, in 2005, the formal opening of accession talks to the EU, while putting his islamist agenda, which had alarmed the long-dominant secularist heirs to Kemal Ataturk, the Turkish Republic’s founder, mostly to the side.

But, as the paper points out, “the longer Mr Erdogan has been in power, the more autocratic he has grown.” Moving on from Prime Minister to President, he turned that mostly ceremonial post into a really powerful one in the service of an autocracy. “Approaching his third decade in power, he sits in a vast palace snapping orders at courtiers too frightened to tell him when he is wrong. His increasingly eccentric beliefs swiftly become public policy,” the article says. Erdogan once likened democracy to a tram journey: when you reach your destination, you get off. His treatment of mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, whom the Economist calls the “most plausible rival” for the presidency is indicative. A 2-year prison term and a ban from politics for calling election officials who had annulled his first election “idiots” have taken Imamoglu out of the presidential race if the conviction is not annulled or overturned and have cast doubt that the election will be fair or free, the Economist says.


Internationally, Erdogan could cause trouble for Greece and Cyprus by “foment[ing] fiercer territorial quarrels; he could “create further confusion and strife in Syria”; he could “allow the 5m migrants and refugees in Turkey to set sail for southern Europe.” And he could continue to block the accession of Finaland and Sweden into NATO. Yet, the Economist contends, Erdogan cannot afford to make a total break with the West, because he needs investments and he needs armaments. But, the article argues, it is time for a firmer stance by western powers, beginning with the US. “Mr Erdogan is a bully who sees timidity as a reason to press his advantage and toughness as an incentive to mend fences,” the Economist says.

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“On Thursday the walls of the Élysée palace must tremble..”

• Over 1 Million Workers Hit French Streets Against Macron’s Pension Reform (ZH)

President Macron’s retirement and pension reform program has unleashed the expected mass demonstrations, strikes, and likely soon to be riots on the streets of France. The much anticipated reform bill headed through parliament will see the official retirement age rise by two years, from the age of 62 to 64. And just like that, it’s popping off… as French authorities brace for more chaos in the coming weeks. Previously, the unions promised the “mother of all battles”. As a result, public transport has seen significant disruptions in service, while many schools are already closed, amid some 200+ well-attended protests all across France on Thursday. Various forms of public transport were brought to a standstill in Paris, Toulouse, Marseille, Nantes and Nice, due to the strikes, and the Eiffel Tower was closed to visitors as well as the protests spread.

Eight major unions had designated Thursday the “first day of strikes and protests” – with promises of many more to come. France’s education ministry said that over 40% of primary school teachers, as well as one-third of high school teachers are participating in the strikes, forcing many to close their doors for the day, and possibly weeks ahead. French rail authority SNCF reported a “severe disruption” across the country, with metro lines in the capital having to implement partial closures. “On some rail lines, as few as one in 10 services were operating, while the Paris metro was running a skeleton service,” BBC reported. A reported over one million people total are believed to have participated in Thursday’s protests and strikes, according to the unions, which plan to keep up the intense pressure until Macron’s bill is defeated.

Likely the demonstrations will get more and more radical and violent, as French protests tend to go… All the country’s unions – including so-called “reformist” unions that the government had hoped to win to its side – have condemned the measure, as have the left-wing and far-right oppositions in the National Assembly. “On Thursday the walls of the Élysée palace must tremble,” Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel said on Tuesday.In many places, crowds clashed with police, who deployed riot control measures including tear gas and batons, as they struggled to clear streets against vastly superior numbers.

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“It looks bad — but the FBI got Hillary out of a worse legal tar pit.”

• How A Corrupt FBI Could Save Joe Biden In Classified-Docs Scandal (Bovard)

The White House is being whipsawed by the discovery of secret documents from President Joe Biden’s vice presidency recklessly stored around his garage, his Delaware house and his rented Washington office. The appointment of a special counsel to investigate Biden’s classified-document violations could imperil the president’s survival. But Biden may be saved by the charades the FBI concocted to rescue Hillary Clinton. But breaking news Tuesday night revealed the investigation may already be turning into a farce. Amazingly, the Justice Department is permitting Biden’s personal lawyers to control the evidence — without the FBI. Federal law penalizes the removal or mishandling of classified documents via “gross negligence” by up to 10 years in prison.

The number of clearly marked confidential documents discovered on Biden’s turfs is up to 20 — all of which were supposedly “inadvertently misplaced” (for at least six years), per White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. It looks bad — but the FBI got Hillary out of a worse legal tar pit. Clinton’s presidential campaign was roiled by the disclosure she’d used an insecure private email server to handle top-secret documents while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. In 2015, the FBI Counterintelligence Division opened a criminal investigation of the “potential unauthorized storage of classified information on an unauthorized system.” The FBI treated Clinton and her coterie like royalty worthy of endless deference, according to a 2018 report by the Justice Department inspector general.

The FBI agreed to destroy the laptops of top Clinton aides after a limited examination of their contents (including a promise not to examine any post-Jan. 31, 2015, emails or content). When BleachBit software and hammers were used to destroy email evidence under congressional subpoena, the FBI treated it as a harmless error. The IG criticized federal investigators for relying on “rapport building” with Team Hillary instead of using subpoenas to compel the discovery of key evidence. The IG recommended possible disciplinary penalties for five FBI employees who sent blatant anti-Trump texts (some of those agents later staffed special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of President Donald Trump). FBI investigators shrugged off every brazen deceit they encountered.

The IG report quoted an unnamed FBI agent responding to a fellow agent’s question on how an interview went with a witness who worked with the Clintons at their Chappaqua residence: “Awesome. Lied his ass off. Went from never inside the scif [sensitive compartmented information facility for classified documents] at res [residence], to looked in when it was being constructed, to removed the trash twice, to troubleshot the secure fax with HRC a couple times, to everytime there was a secure fax i did it with HRC. Ridic.” The agency waited until the end of the investigation in July 2016 to question Clinton and refused to videotape that crucial interview. Bizarrely, the FBI planned to absolve her “absent a confession” by Clinton during the interview, the IG report noted.

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“Updated versions of the protocol list the same 15 adverse events. None of the conditions were included in the actual surveys.”

• CDC Knowingly Left Serious Adverse Events Off Post-Vaccination Surveys (ET)

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) didn’t include serious adverse events like heart inflammation on post-vaccination surveys even though the agency knew the issues could be linked to COVID-19 vaccines, documents show. Even before the surveys were rolled out in December 2020 after the first vaccines were authorized, the CDC knew that myocarditis—a form of heart inflammation since confirmed as being caused by the Pfizer and Moderna shots—and other serious adverse events were of “special interest” when it came to the vaccines, according to a newly disclosed version of the protocol for the survey system. The Nov. 19, 2020, protocol for V-safe, the survey system, lists myocarditis, stroke, death, and a dozen “prespecified medical conditions.”

The protocol was obtained by the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), a nonprofit that seeks transparency around health information. All of the conditions can cause severe symptoms. V-safe is a system of surveys that was introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic to monitor vaccine safety. It was developed and is managed by the CDC. Updated versions of the protocol list the same 15 adverse events. None of the conditions were included in the actual surveys. Respondents could check boxes if they experienced certain symptoms, but only 10 lower-level problems such as fever and nausea were listed as options.

“It’s deeply troubling that the CDC would construct V-safe in a manner that does not permit it to be able to easily assess the rate of harm from adverse events the CDC had already identified as potentially being caused by these products,” Aaron Siri, a lawyer representing ICAN, told The Epoch Times. “This calls into question what the CDC was really trying to accomplish with V-safe. Was it trying to assess the actual safety of these products? Or was it trying to design a system that would be more likely to affirm its previous public pronouncements regarding the safety of these products?”

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“We’ve never had a situation where the federal government at very high levels is coordinating or coercing social media to do its bidding in terms of censoring people.”

• How the CDC Became the Speech Police (Soave)

Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s most prominent authority on COVID-19, had his final White House press conference two days before Thanksgiving 2022. The event served as a send-off for the longserving director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who was finally stepping down after nearly four decades on the job.Ashish Jha, the Biden administration’s coronavirus response coordinator, hailed Fauci as “the most important, consequential public servant in the United States in the last half century.” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre described him as a near-constant “source of information and facts” for all Americans throughout the pandemic.

Indeed, the U.S. public’s understanding of COVID-19—its virality, how to prevent its spread, and even where it comes from—was largely controlled by Fauci and bureaucrats like him, to a greater degree than most people realize. The federal government shaped the rules of online discussion in unprecedented and unnerving ways. This has become much more obvious over the past few months, following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. Musk granted several independent journalists access to internal messages between the government and the platform’s moderators, which demonstrate concerted efforts by various federal agencies—including the FBI, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and even the White House—to convince Twitter to restrict speech. These disclosures, which have become known as the Twitter Files, are eye-opening.

But Twitter was hardly the only object of federal pressure. According to a trove of confidential documents obtained by Reason, health advisers at the CDC had significant input on pandemic-era social media policies at Facebook as well. They were consulted frequently, at times daily. They were actively involved in the affairs of content moderators, providing constant and ever-evolving guidance. They requested frequent updates about which topics were trending on the platforms, and they recommended what kinds of content should be deemed false or misleading. “Here are two issues we are seeing a great deal of misinfo on that we wanted to flag for you all,” reads one note from a CDC official. Another email with sample Facebook posts attached begins: “BOLO for a small but growing area of misinfo.”

[..] Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, professors of medicine at Stanford University and Harvard University, respectively, have claimed that social media platforms repeatedly muzzled their opposition to lockdowns, mask requirements, and vaccine mandates. The New Civil Liberties Alliance, a public interest law firm that has joined the lawsuit, thinks the federal government’s campaign to squelch contrarian coronavirus content was so vast as to effectively violate the First Amendment. “What’s at stake is the future of free speech in the technological age,” says Jenin Younes, the group’s litigation counsel. “We’ve never had a situation where the federal government at very high levels is coordinating or coercing social media to do its bidding in terms of censoring people.”

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“..many adverse events will go unrecorded, and this becomes more likely the longer the delay between treatment and the associated adverse reaction.”

• Safety Signals for Heart, Blood, Reproduction in Yellow Card Vaccine Data (DS)

The strength of the C-19VYC reporting scheme is that it is capable of generating an enormous amount of valuable information about adverse reactions to the experimental COVID-19 vaccines. Reports of suspected adverse reactions can be submitted not only by physicians but also by the recipients of the vaccines themselves, providing valuable feedback to the MHRA based on first-hand experience. This inclusive aspect of the C-19VYC reporting scheme has proved very successful, with nearly half a million adverse event reports submitted, roughly one for every hundred recipients of the COVID-19 vaccines in the U.K. Despite this strength in terms of quantity of data, the C-19VYC reporting scheme has a number of serious weaknesses related to the nature of the data collected.

These weaknesses place limits on the scheme’s ability both to detect and to measure safety signals. The first problem is that the scheme does not identify or include a control group of individuals, who have not taken the vaccine, against which to compare those who have. Other major weaknesses are that reporting is passive rather than planned and takes place at a single point in time. Thus, reporting relies on the sufferer of the adverse reactions or his or her physician making the connection between the vaccine treatment and the adverse reaction. As a consequence, many adverse events will go unrecorded, and this becomes more likely the longer the delay between treatment and the associated adverse reaction. Reporting rates of adverse reactions are also likely to represent only a fraction of actual cases because physicians or recipients may have too little time to fill out the onerous paperwork, may not have knowledge of the Yellow Card scheme, or may be unwilling to countenance the idea of harms resulting from a medication in which they have placed trust.

As well as being low, reporting rates are expected to vary substantially between different sectors of the population. Experience shows that females post roughly three times more adverse event reports than males, and the reporting rate for adverse reactions varies with age, dropping off in the elderly population where adverse reactions may be obscured by multiple forms of pre-existing chronic illnesses. In addition, reporting rates are likely to vary with the severity of the adverse reaction. Individuals are far more likely to have the motivation and tenacity to file a report if their adverse reaction is severe than if it is mild. On the other hand, if the adverse event results in death, grieving friends or relatives may be too preoccupied to file a C-19VYC report.

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“..nearly half a million children and young adults died within a year of his fateful announcement with over 118,000 of those deaths suspected to be due to the Covid-19 vaccine..”

• Fauci Lied; 120,000 US Children Died (Exp.)

Time and time again throughout 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci, stood at the podium, the bright lights of the cameras blinding him as he faced the nation. With a steady hand, he held up a vial of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine, promising it would be the key to protecting America and its children from the “deadly” Covid-19 disease supposedly ravaging the country. But little did the public know, the truth about the Covid vaccine’s safety had been buried deep within Fauci’s own lies and deceit and confidential U.S. Government and Pfizer documents. Fauci used propaganda, lies and manipulation to coerce parents into getting their children vaccinated.

But the weight of the lives lost has quickly come crashing down on him and the nation, as a secret Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report has revealed that nearly half a million children and young adults died within a year of his fateful announcement with over 118,000 of those deaths suspected to be due to the Covid-19 vaccine’s dangerous side effects. The CDC report should spark widespread outrage and be on the front page of every single major newspaper. But instead, it has been and will continue to be met with a deafening silence. Despite the staggering death toll the report will be buried and swept under the carpet.

The mainstream media, consumed with working overtime to distract the public with propaganda on the war in Ukraine, alleged climate change and the cost of living crisis, has paid and will pay no attention to the devastating consequences of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s deception. The public wil continue to be kept in the dark, and the U.S. Government will move quickly to cover up its own involvement in the tragedy. With Dr Fauci quietly announcing his “retirement” in August 2022. It’s all business as usual and simply just another day at the office. But it is also a shocking failure of transparency and accountability, and the people of the United States should be forever haunted by the lives lost due to the Covid-19 vaccine scandal.

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“If Elon Musk successfully purchases Twitter, it could result in World War 3 and the destruction of our planet..”

• Twitter Files Show Authoritarian “Cult Of Identity” Controls The Media (Gurri)

Only yesterday, Elon Musk was a hero to progressives. He had made the electric car sexy and organized a migration to Mars to save humanity from the coming ecological apocalypse. Musk voted for Barack Obama twice and for Biden once. When he offered to purchase Twitter on April 14 of last year, he clearly believed he was reconnecting progressivism to its liberal roots. “For Twitter to deserve public trust it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally,” he said. Famously, Musk characterized himself as “a free speech absolutist.” But elites took that for a declaration of war and changed their tightly synchronized minds about the man. Twitter in the hands of Musk was “dangerous to our democracy,” said Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren.

“If Elon Musk successfully purchases Twitter, it could result in World War 3 and the destruction of our planet,” wrote David Leavitt. The White House expressed newfound concern about “the power of large social media platforms … over our everyday lives … tech platforms must be held accountable for the harm they cause.” Before Musk’s takeover, Twitter management had gone on record stating, “We do not shadow ban [i.e., secretly block users]. And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.” Thanks to Twitter’s internal emails and messages released by Musk, we now know both claims were false. “Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users,” wrote journalist Bari Weiss. The targets were offenders against elite orthodoxy—a conservative activist, a right-wing talk show host, and a Covid-dissenting doctor, among others.

In December, Musk invited Weiss, Matt Taibbi, and Michael Shellenberger to examine the company’s internal Slack messages and emails. Taibbi and Weiss are fierce critics of establishment media; Shellenberger is a strong anti-establishment voice on energy and homeless policy. All are, in Weiss’ phrase, “politically homeless,” neither right nor left, but tend to write about aspects of the struggle between the elites and the public. Taibbi, Weiss, and Shellenberger are clear thinkers and good writers but two traits, in my opinion, separate them from the pack: independence and integrity. Musk could have bought himself a passel of hired hacks who would have churned out whatever spin he wished. With these three authors, he gave up control over the Twitter Files output in exchange for their ironclad credibility.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Lavrov
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616066295719677954

 

 

 

 

GoreWEF
https://twitter.com/i/status/1615808847544999941

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1616132119549329408

 

 

Fetch
https://twitter.com/i/status/1615833809077010432

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1613580927946592258

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle January 8 2023

Jan 082023
 
 January 8, 2023  Posted by at 9:56 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  116 Responses »


Dorothea Lange On the road to Los Angeles, California 1937

 

• What Have We Bargained for in Ukraine? (Dougherty)
• Ukraine Running Out Of Time – Former US Officials (RT)
• The WORST Political Upheaval EVER (Denninger)
• The Right Played Hardball in Congress. The Left Should Take Notes. (Jacobin)
• Twitter Fires More Censors (RT)
• Zelensky Sanctions Over 100 Russian Public Figures (RT)
• Adam Schiff and the Underbelly of American Censorship (Turley)
• Trump Suggests Biden Provoked Putin Into Invading Ukraine (PM)
• Donald Trump Slams Arrest Of Ashli Babbitt’s Mother (PM)
• Kristi Noem Blasts Jan. 6 Committee After Social Security Numbers Leaked (CB)
• Greece To Build Fence On Border With Türkiye (RT)
• Every Fourth European Has Trouble Heating Their Home (RT)
• Faced With A New Wave Of Covid, China Is Opening Its Borders (Zagorenko)
• Switzerland Slated To Destroy Millions Of mRNA Vaccine Doses In 2023 (Eugyp)

 

 

 

 

Tucker Jan 6 – Excellent
https://twitter.com/i/status/1611972143482568704

 

 

 

 

Fauci
https://twitter.com/i/status/1611796697847308288

 

 

 

 

“They”

 

 

J6

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The dangers of the conflict are much greater than hawks would have us believe.”

• What Have We Bargained for in Ukraine? (Dougherty)

‘Your money is not charity,” Volodymyr Zelensky told a joint session of the U.S. Congress a few weeks ago. “It is an investment in global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way.” And many conservative hawks, hoping to hold back the rising tide of skepticism among Republicans, have echoed this line. After the speech, Representative Dan Crenshaw called the idea of ending aid to Ukraine “absurd” and said America had “made a pretty good investment here.” My friend and colleague Matthew Continetti writes that “securing America’s position and freedom’s future without direct intervention and for a rounding error in the federal budget is a strategic bargain. Ukraine needs more, not less, U.S. aid, and it needs it now.” In Commentary in November, Noah Rothman wrote that “Kyiv’s victories are our victories, too, insofar as they advance a core American national interest: preserving the stable European covenant that has blessed Western powers with the longest, most durable peace on the Continent in the modern age.”

This view holds that for pennies on the dollar, the U.S. has been able to preserve a democracy threatened by an authoritarian regime, cripple a rival military, strengthen the NATO alliance, prevent Vladimir Putin from an inevitable invasion of NATO territory, and scare off Xi Jinping from ever messing with Taiwan. For these conservatives, the policy preferred by Joe Biden and the Democrats is one whose costs are greatly outweighed by its benefits. Except, none of this is quite true. Crippling a rival military is only worthwhile when you have a strategic reason for doing so, and we conspicuously lack one. The NATO alliance’s duties have been radically expanded with no radical expansion in the share of the alliance’s burdens shouldered by Europe.

Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist project is at odds with the democratic and liberal-internationalist values that are used to sell the conflict abroad. The conflict’s financial and moral costs to the U.S. have been growing for nearly a decade, and taking on Ukraine as a permanent dependent will grow them even more. The arc of the conflict is just as likely to encourage as to discourage Xi in his pursuit of Taiwan, given the ways in which our enmeshment in Europe will deplete our attention, resources, and will to be the world’s cop. And finally, no conflict in this blood-stained area of the globe is a mom-and-pop bingo game in which you can cash out your modest investments at any time; Vladimir Putin and Russia have a say in how this ends.

The advocates for continued aid to Ukraine must downplay the costs involved, because support for continued aid began to drop precipitously when the Biden administration began briefing the press on our strategy. It didn’t help the hawks’ cause when retired general David Petraeus went on Sunday morning television and claimed that if Russia used a so-called tactical nuke in Ukraine, the U.S. would enter the war as a full belligerent, annihilate Russia’s army, and launch decapitation strikes on the Kremlin. It instead made people ask themselves how Russia would respond to such drastic countermeasures, and to shudder at the possible answers.

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Gates and Rice. A veiled push for more and faster.

• Ukraine Running Out Of Time – Former US Officials (RT)

Former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates have admitted that Ukraine’s economy and military are almost completely reliant on bailouts from the West, and barring a dramatic turnaround, its chances of victory are slipping away. Ukraine’s “economy is in a shambles,” the ex-diplomat and former Pentagon chief wrote in the Washington Post on Saturday. The country’s “military capability and economy are now dependent almost entirely on lifelines from the West,” they continued, arguing that should Ukraine fail to mount a successful offensive in the near future, President Zelensky will be pressured by the West to negotiate a ceasefire with Russian President Vladimir Putin – something the Ukrainian leader has repeatedly refused to consider.

With the frontline relatively static since autumn, Russian forces have ground down their Ukrainian opponents in fierce fighting near Bakhmut/Artyomovsk, with an American mercenary commander recently acknowledging that Ukraine is suffering “extraordinarily high casualties” in that sector, and Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada, Vadim Pristaiko, describing his side’s casualties as “huge” and “indigestible.” Kiev has publicly proclaimed that it plans a major offensive in the spring, but Rice and Gates wrote that Ukraine may have “weeks, not months” to stay in the fight. To that end, they advocated sending the country more and heavier weapons. Although the US has already allocated more than $110 billion in military and economic aid to Ukraine since February, they said that Washington won’t send heavy tanks. Germany “and other allies” should fill this need instead, they argued.

The Biden administration announced on Friday that it would give Ukraine 50 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles – the most modern armor sent to Kiev so far – as part of a $3 billion weapons package. France also pledged a number of wheeled ‘light tanks’, and Germany promised 40 Marder infantry fighting vehicles. Nevertheless, Kiev says it needs more. In an interview with The Economist last month, Ukrainian general Valery Zaluzhny said he would need 300 more tanks, up to 700 infantry fighting vehicles, and 500 howitzers to conduct offensive operations. This is more than the number of such vehicles in the entire British or German inventory. Russia, meanwhile, has repeatedly insisted that “pumping” Ukraine with weapons will ultimately have no effect on the outcome of the conflict and will only serve to prolong the hostilities and lead to more bloodshed.

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“..what’s going on now is in fact much less than we’ve come through before..”

• The WORST Political Upheaval EVER (Denninger)

The polarization caused by the last three years didn’t come from a virus: It came from what so-called “leaders” did when the virus showed up and we, the people in this nation let them do every bit of it. The 2022 midterms were a clean demonstration of this and those actions were nasty in terms of their impact. Several states saw their margins of victory for either GOP or Democrat governors increase, not narrow, and yet the margin didn’t come from people shifting allegiance within the state; it came from migration either to or from said state. DeSantis and Lee both gained margin precisely because people left NY, Michigan, Illinois, California and other “Blue” states and moved to “Red” ones.

This had no value for DeSantis or Lee because once you win by one vote you have the same outcome as if you win by one million votes but that same shift meant that illogical repeat performances, such as Witmer, won as well because the GOP voters who left meant what remained was enough for her not to be fired. (While Pritzker also easily won that race was never really in doubt even if people didn’t leave Illinois, so I’m intentionally excluding it.) It didn’t help that the GOP ran candidates that were ridiculously outside of where mainstream public opinion is — for example, Michigan’s GOP ran a candidate opposed to abortion in all cases, including rape and incest. The GOP had to be out of its mind to do this, but do it they did and they lost.

At its core the problem, however, does not lie there: It lies in the destruction of norms that society has relied on. Don’t kid yourself no matter who screams about it: Without heterosexual reproduction and the resilience afforded by stable, two-parent homes as an “ordinary and normal” thing society eventually collapses because without a productive next generation you have nothing. Have we put any thought into this and how to at least move things back toward a more-stable outcome in that regard, and thus are we inevitably consigned to a hellscape and collapse? It’s easy to argue “No. Not one bit.” But I’ll take the other side of that wager simply because what’s going on now is in fact much less than we’ve come through before, and the pendulum will, with a high degree of probability, swing back the other way.

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The left, WITH the media, and WITH intel, played hardball since 2015. But that was never a problem.

• The Right Played Hardball in Congress. The Left Should Take Notes. (Jacobin)

Kevin McCarthy has been at the head of the Republican’s House caucus since 2019. In any other ordinary year, the position of Speaker of the House would have been his almost automatically following the Republicans’ narrow victory in last year’s midterm election. But a small group on the party’s right wing turned a coronation into a multi-round fight. Twenty congressmembers were at the core of the right-wing rebellion; all but one are connected to the House Freedom Caucus, the ideological home of the party’s rightmost flank. These Republicans are notorious for their support of Donald Trump and the January 6 riots. They deserve every decent person’s scorn. But when it comes to tactics, one has to admit that they know how to play.

Desperate for their support, McCarthy had to give on issue after issue. McCarthy folded early on policy questions. He fought against the 2022 lame-duck spending bill, a core right-wing priority. He called for the resignation or impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a target of the Right’s ire. McCarthy also agreed to create a new subcommittee in the House Judiciary Committee to investigate the “weaponization” of the federal government by the Biden administration and the FBI and CIA. More significant in the long term, he also agreed to rules changes and committee assignments that will dramatically strengthen the Right’s hand.

McCarthy agreed to add three members from the Freedom Caucus to the House Rules Committee. That will allow the far right to help shape the issues to be considered by the House. McCarthy’s own PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, agreed not to intervene in open primaries against far-right candidates. McCarthy agreed to bring back the Holman Rule, which allows legislators to propose defunding specific federal programs, to fire specific federal officials, and to slash officials’ pay. Most significantly, he agreed to bring back the “motion to vacate the chair,” which will allow just one Republican to call for a snap vote to remove the speaker. This is a rule that the right wing previously used to remove John Boehner. Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a leading conspiracy theorist from the Republican fringe, extracted a much sought-after seat on the House Oversight Committee from McCarthy in return for her support.

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It would appear there’s still tons of them left.

• Twitter Fires More Censors (RT)

The social network has fired at least a dozen employees responsible for handling the “misinformation policy, global appeals and state media” at its Dublin and Singapore offices, Bloomberg reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the latest in a series of radical reforms conducted by the company’s new CEO Elon Musk. Twitter’s head of Trust and Safety, Ella Irwin, told the publication that in order to “consolidate teams,” the company only eliminated duplicate positions and cut jobs with not enough workload to justify their existence. The Friday’s cuts reportedly affected the head of site integrity for Twitter’s Asia-Pacific region, Nur Azhar Bin Ayob, and senior director of revenue policy, Analuisa Dominguez, while others asked not to be identified.

In a separate statement to Reuters, Irwin admitted some fresh cuts in her department, but said that the company still has “thousands of people” responsible for content moderation and has “not made cuts to the teams that do that work daily.” After finalizing his purchase of Twitter for $44 billion in October, Musk acknowledged that bankruptcy was a possibility for the social media giant if it does not start generating more cash. In an attempt to cut costs, he fired half of the company’s staff, including most of the top executives and ordered the remaining employees to stop working from home. All in all, an estimated two-thirds of the company’s employees and contractors globally were laid off, fired or quit.

As the site’s new owner, Musk also pushed to scale back content restrictions, vowing to make Twitter a refuge for free speech, while ushering in a range of policy changes which triggered backlash from the media establishment and its celebrity allies. He reactivated the accounts of dozens of its more controversial users and began sharing internal company communications hinting at a massive political conspiracy between the US administration, intelligence agencies and the Big Tech platforms to censor politically inconvenient stories, opinions and people. The billionaire appeared to acknowledge that not everyone supported his recent political diversions this week, polling his followers as to whether he should “stay out of politics” or “keep shooting his feet.” He later joked, that “if I dig my grave deep enough, maybe it comes out the other side of Earth.”

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Everybody just sanctions and censors.

• Zelensky Sanctions Over 100 Russian Public Figures (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed a decree on Saturday, imposing personal sanctions on some 119 Russian public figures. Kiev’s new blacklist includes prominent artists and journalists. Ukraine sanctioned Oscar-winning film director Nikita Mikhalkov, pop singer Philipp Kirkorov, as well as stand-up comedian Evgeny Petrosyan and opera star Anna Netrebko. Kiev also targeted a number of Russian journalists, including RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and head of the Rossiya Segodnya media group Dmitry Kiselyov. The restrictions imposed for a 10-year period include freeze of assets, travel and visa bans, stripping of Ukrainian state awards, and some other measures. Kiev has repeatedly sanctioned Russian officials and public figures amid the ongoing conflict, with hundreds of them blacklisted already.


Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian president Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.” Shortly before the hostilities broke out, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Last September, Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, were incorporated into Russia following referendums.

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“We don’t do this.”

• Adam Schiff and the Underbelly of American Censorship (Turley)

“We don’t do this.” That response from Twitter to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is a singular indictment, coming at the height of Twitter’s censorship operations. Apparently, there were some things that even Twitter’s censors refused to do. One of those things was silencing critics of Schiff and his House committee. In the latest tranche of “Twitter Files,” journalist Matt Taibbi revealed that Twitter balked at Schiff’s demand that Twitter suspend an array of posters or label their content as “misinformation” and “reduce the visibility” of them. Among those who Schiff secretly tried to censor was New York Post columnist Paul Sperry. Sperry drew Schiff’s ire by writing about a conversation allegedly overheard by one of his sources.

Sperry’s article, which appeared in RealClearInvestigations, cited two sources as overhearing two White House staffers discussing how to remove newly-elected President Trump from office. The article raised the possibility of bias on the part of an alleged key player in launching the first Trump impeachment, CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella. The sources reportedly said that Ciaramella was in a conversation with Sean Misko, a holdover from the Obama administration who later joined Schiff’s staff. The conversation — in Sperry’s words — showed that “just days after [Trump] was sworn in they were already trying to get rid of him.” Rather than simply refute the allegation, Schiff wanted Sperry and other critics silenced.

His office reportedly laid out steps to cleanse Twitter of their criticism, including an instruction to “remove any and all content about Mr. Misko and other Committee staff from its service — to include quotes, retweets, and reactions to that content.” The date of Schiff’s non-public letter in November 2020 is notable: Earlier that year, I wrote a column for The Hill criticizing Schiff for pushing for censorship of misinformation in a letter that he sent to social media companies. His office promptly objected to the very suggestion that Schiff supported censorship. We now know Schiff was actively seeking to censor specific critics on social media. These likely were viewed as more than “requests” since Schiff was sending public letters threatening possible legislative action against these same companies. He wanted his critics silenced on social media. After all, criticizing his investigations or staff must, by definition, be misinformation — right?

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US was building up Ukraine under Trump presidency too.

• Trump Suggests Biden Provoked Putin Into Invading Ukraine (PM)

Saturday night, speaking from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, former President Donald Trump suggested that Joe Biden influenced Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine in February 2022. Speaking of Biden, Trump said in video posted by Jack Posobiec on Instagram, “We have a man who has no mind left and his mind in prime time wasn’t any good, but he has no mind left. And this is the guy negotiating for us. We have a man that convinced Putin to go into Ukraine.” “Because if you look at the psychology that he used, it’s the exact opposite,” Trump said in reference to Biden’s January 2022 comments referring to Putin’s expansion into Ukraine as a “minor incursion.”

Biden said during a press conference before Putin invaded Ukraine, “I think what you’re gonna see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades. And it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and we end up having to fight about what to do and not do, etc.” “Putin would have never ever gone in,” Trump said and remarked of Biden, “he knew the ramifications.” “Do you remember when Biden said, well they might take some small parts of Ukraine,” Trump said in reference to the “minor incursion” remarks. “That was what Putin wanted to hear. That there would be no problem if you take some parts of Ukraine,” Trump added.

Trump had been speaking of the war in Ukraine and the escalating conflict, including the danger of nuclear war. Trump referred to nuclear as the second “n-word” you should never say. The US has sent over $60 billion to Ukraine to aid in their ongoing war with their Russian invaders since February 2022. Congress is set to greenlight more money for Ukraine as President Volodymyr Zelensky asks the US for continued aid.

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A very dark side of America.

• Donald Trump Slams Arrest Of Ashli Babbitt’s Mother (PM)

Speaking at an event at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday evening, Donald Trump slammed the Biden regime over the arrest of Ashli Babbitt’s mother. Ashli Babbitt was killed by a United States Capitol Police officer on Jan. 6. Witthoeft was arrested outside of the Capitol on Friday, the two-year anniversary of her daughter’s death. Trump brought up the arrest during a special CPAC event at Mar-a-Lago, pointing to the weaponization of law enforcement under the Biden regime. “We have a weaponized country right now with law enforcement. It’s a disgrace what’s happening to our country. Ashli Babbitt’s mother was arrested yesterday, because she was protesting the death of her daughter being shot by a lunatic who got a record of— not so good.

“And then they try and protect him and they do things— what they’ve done to that family. That they shot her, there was no reason, and then they arrested— because the mother was in a group— and they arrested yesterday the mother of Ashli Babbitt. So she loses her daughter and then on top of it, she gets arrested. “We’re not gonna let this go on. We’re not gonna let this go. on these people are horrible, horrible. And what they’ve done to protest us. I mean, these were protesters, they were protesting a dishonest election. “And whenever you mentioned that they don’t want to ever talk to you because they don’t want to have that out there. The one thing they don’t want to talk about is a dishonest election. Because they know and they’ve been caught.”

In footage circulated on social media by streamer Woke Societies, Micki Witthoeft was seen being handcuffed and taken into custody by multiple police officers while onlookers protested. “You murdered [Ashli] inside the Capitol, now you’re going to arrest her?” one onlooker said. “I did not murder her daughter,” one officer replied in front of the crowd of people. On Jan. 6, 2021, Babbitt, an unarmed Air Force veteran, was fatally shot by Lt. Michael Byrd. while attempting to make entry into the interior of the Capitol Building. According to The National Pulse’s Raheem Kassam, Witthoeft was arrested for “jaywalking.”

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That leak feels like warfare.

• Kristi Noem Blasts Jan. 6 Committee After Social Security Numbers Leaked (CB)

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem blasted members of the now-disbanded House Jan. 6 Committee after her Social Security number, along those of her family members, were allegedly leaked to the public. In a tweet, the GOP governor appeared to suggest she would take legal action against members. “My lawyers have asked the @WhiteHouse, the @USNatArchives, and @BennieGThompson which of them is responsible for leaking the Social Security Numbers of me, my husband, my 3 kids, and my son-in-law,” she tweeted on Friday, in a post that included images of a letter her attorneys have sent to the aforementioned parties. “What specific measures and remedies will be taken to protect our identities?” — Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) January 6, 2023

The Washington Times reported the leak: “The recently sunsetted House Jan. 6 committee released Trump White House visitor logs from December 2020 containing nearly 2,000 unreacted Social Security numbers. At least three of the numbers, inadvertently leaked as part of the hoard of documents the committee posted online in recent weeks, belonged to members of Trump’s cabinet others. Several Republican governors and floods of other Trump allies have been caught up in the privacy breach. “House Jan. 6 Committee leaks thousands of Trump allies’ Social Security numbers: Report — The Washington Times (@WashTimes) January 7, 2023”

The document was taken down on Wednesday, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the leak, but the Government Publishing Office, which was responsible for posting the file online, does not appear to have notified the individuals whose private information was leaked. Attorneys for Noem demanded to know “how the breach of privacy occurred, who was responsible, what steps each of you has taken to remedy the breach, and what specific measures and remedies will be taken to protect Governor Noem and her family in light of the public dissemination of their private information and the heightened risk for identity theft and any other future privacy violations.” Ian Fury, a spokesman for the governor, said, “To my knowledge, we were not notified. The governor was not notified” of the leak, Slay News noted.

Former Trump Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, whose information was also leaked, told the Washington Post: “Whether it was a careless and sloppy handling of records or a deliberate disregard of decorum, either scenario is a perfunctory and callous display of government and a frightening reminder of the current state in Washington. … President Reagan was a savant indeed — the nine most frightening words to hear are ‘I am from the government and here to help.’”

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What good will it do?

• Greece To Build Fence On Border With Türkiye (RT)

Greece is planning to build a new 140-km fence to cover its whole European border with neighboring Türkiye in an effort to contain the significant flows of illegal migrants, Minister of Citizen Protection Takis Theodorikakos has announced. Construction of the first 35-km span of the new fence is set to begin “immediately,” the official told the broadcaster SKAI on Saturday. “It is a final decision of the government to create a 140-kilometer fence on the Evros [River],” Theodorikakos stated. Greece and Türkiye share an approximately 200-km common border in Europe that runs primarily along the Evros River, yet there is a stretch of dry land between the two countries. Greece already has concrete and barbed wire barrier installed at over 40km of the border, namely along the span near the Turkish city of Edirne. The fence was originally erected in 2012 and was extended in 2021.


The Evros River on its own has not proven to be a sufficiently challenging obstacle for illegal migrants, Theodorikakos noted, with the eponymous province remaining a hotspot for irregular crossings. “In Evros, the Greek police, with their deployment, have prevented the illegal invasion of the country by 256,000 illegal immigrants,” the minister said without providing a time span for this “invasion.” Over the past year, the EU has seen the highest level of illegal migration since the 2015-2016 migrant crisis. According to the latest figures by Frontex, the bloc’s border agency, some 308,000 “irregular entries” were detected across the external borders of the EU during the first 11 months of 2022, constituting a sharp 68% increase from the same period in 2021. The Western Balkan and Central Mediterranean routes have seen the most illegal migrant traffic over the past year, according to Frontex.

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Just the poor parts.

• Every Fourth European Has Trouble Heating Their Home (RT)

More than a quarter of Europeans are experiencing problems heating their homes and paying debts for housing and utilities, the Hungarian media reported on Friday citing a survey by the Szazadveg think tank. According to the survey, dubbed Europe Project, 26% of EU residents, or roughly 100 million people, are unable to properly heat their homes. Greeks appeared to be the worst affected, with 56% of the population facing difficulties with heating. In Portugal and France, 34% of residents described the same problems. Finland, Hungary, Austria and Denmark were the least affected, with less than 15% of residents admitting to difficulties. Every fourth respondent in the survey said they were unable to pay their heating bill at least once during the past year.


That figure was also the highest in Greece, with 51% of the population affected, followed by Cyprus with 37%, Ireland and Bulgaria, with 35% each. The respondents blamed inflation for their problems, as rising prices on everything from energy to food impact their ability to pay bills. According to the survey, heating bills have become far less affordable than in 2021. The authors noted that in 2021, based on data from Europe’s official statistics agency Eurostat, only 6.9% of European households (some 29.9 million people) were unable to adequately heat their homes, and 6.4% struggled with paying bills. The survey was conducted among 38,000 randomly selected European adults between October 13 and December 7, 2022. The research covered the EU, UK, Norway, Switzerland, Moldova, Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

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No other choice?!

• Faced With A New Wave Of Covid, China Is Opening Its Borders (Zagorenko)

The situation is now much less dire. The authorities can focus on protecting the elderly and improving the nation’s immunity. A new push to get more people vaccinated has already been announced, although the corresponding official document does not go into specifics about how the authorities will go about it. Besides, people are much more aware of the virus and of the methods of protection. Pedestrians still go about their days in masks, still take care with hygiene and still avoid unnecessary close contacts. And more freedom does not mean that people will go out of their way to get infected. As one local Twitter user pointed out: “So in Beijing, now that everyone is free to go anywhere, ppl are exercising that right by staying at home.”

The hardest test of the new lighter rules begins on January 8, when China reopens its borders. People will be able to enter and leave the country freely and, soon after that, the Spring Festival trips will begin in earnest. Travel to and from will not be the same as before, at least at first. A number of countries, including the US, UK, France, and Spain, now have mandatory testing of everyone arriving from China to prevent the virus from spreading further. However, even if the number of daily cases rises for a short time, the world is much less vulnerable to Covid now.

China will still need to carefully weigh each step on its path towards the pre-pandemic normal. The rules might change once again and there might be setbacks or new local lockdowns. However, the process of making life easier and more predictable for a large part of the world has begun. The protests might have brought these changes about sooner than expected, or they might have simply happened at the right time. Whatever the case, China was bound to change its policy sooner or later. After all, no emergency can last forever.

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“..nervously awaiting the delivery of a further 2 million in the coming weeks, and surely lamenting that 11.6 million more are scheduled to arrive by the end of 2023..”

• Switzerland Slated To Destroy Millions Of mRNA Vaccine Doses In 2023 (Eugyp)

Switzerland, home to less than 9 million people, is one of the biggest mRNA vaccine customers in the world relative to population. The’ve already received a staggering 33 million Covid vaccine doses, only a little over half of which were ever administered. The small country is now sitting on 13.5 million doses, nervously awaiting the delivery of a further 2 million in the coming weeks, and surely lamenting that 11.6 million more are scheduled to arrive by the end of 2023. The vast majority of these will sit for some months in freezers before the Swiss Confederation destroys them. The country already binned more than eleven million doses last year, the greater part of them after a deal to supply surplus snake oil to the third world via the failed Covax initiative fell through because nobody in Africa wants this stuff either.


Vaccine credulity may still be the mainstream, politically acceptable position, but revealed preferences show that enormous majorities everywhere are done with mass vaccination. Pharmaceutical executives can sing their doubtful hymns to the miraculous safety and efficacy of their jabs, but the quiet worldwide rejection of their garbage products is a stinging rebuke, suggesting that billions across the world harbour unexpressed scepticism towards the mRNA Covid vaccines. From here, it is only downhill for the vaccinators.

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Schaffer

 

 

 

 

Fungi

 

 

Great White

 

 

Walnut

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle December 19 2022

Dec 192022
 
 December 19, 2022  Posted by at 9:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  89 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Portrait de femme (Dora Maar) 1943

 

• One Year Ago, Russia Gave The West A Last Chance (Lukyanov)
• A Lexicon for Disaster (Scott Ritter)
• EU Sued Over Anti-Russia Sanctions (RT)
• Lawyer Claims Eva Kaili Followed EU Parliament Chief’s Orders In Qatar (Eur.)
• Will the Fallout from “Qatargate” Splatter the European Commission? (NC)
• Biden’s Latest JFK Document Dump Is A JOKE (OffG)
• Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Linked to Blood Clotting: FDA (ET)
• FDA Uncovers Yet Another Dangerous Side Effect of the Covid-19 ‘Vaccines’ (KB)
• TWITTER FILES Supplemental (Taibbi)
• Musk Asks Twitter If He Should Step Down (ZH)
• Twitter Censorship Contributed to Destructive Pandemic Policies (ET)
• Democratic Members Warn Facebook Not to “Backslide” on Censorship (Turley)
• Democrats Like Adam Schiff Are Scrambling To Save Censorship (Devine)
• Former FBI Agent Calls Assertion Oath Keepers are Anti-Government ‘Absurd’ (ET)
• US Doublespeak Will Not Stop Gold’s Imminent Surge (Von Greyerz)

 

 

 

 

BRICS

 

 

 

 

Child vaccine

 

 

Red Balloon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1604437989865971712

 

 

 

 

 

 

“NATO and the Americans categorically refused to discuss the main political issue: a formal rejection of NATO expansion.”

• One Year Ago, Russia Gave The West A Last Chance (Lukyanov)

It’s been a year since a Russian document outlining proposals (or demands, if you prefer) for long-term guarantees on European security was delivered to NATO and the US. This was the starting point of the major politico-military crisis that defines the global situation today. Was the Russian ultimatum (and that is how it was formulated) designed to be rejected, or did it envisage a path to negotiations? President Vladimir Putin probably reasoned along the following lines: after so many years of ignoring our wishes and convictions, let’s give it one last chance. Let’s put forward the maximum set of demands, everything that has been said before, but outline them in one place and in a concentrated form, and see what happens.

If they realize that this time that it’s extremely serious, and with that in mind, decide on a real discussion, we are ready. However, if they start to waste time again, then that’s it. Let’s cut to the chase. If the response from the West was not satisfactory, the military operation in Ukraine would be the next step. There was apparently no chance of avoiding it by then. After all, the logic behind the need for the offensive was outlined in Putin’s big article in the summer of 2021. That is, the security demands were made when the internal readiness for action was already in place. The scale of the consequences leads many to return to the question: Was what happened inevitable? The argument that “we had no choice,” often heard at the highest level in Moscow, is problematic because it effectively means that Russia’s previous policies were wrong. A policy which leads to no alternative solution, i.e. forcing one to act in a certain way and no other way, cannot be considered successful.

So an analysis of the long period since the early 2000s will at some point be an important lesson for the future. Was there an urgent need to make demands and initiate the military operation at that point in time? Based on what we know now (which is probably not everything), there was room for maneuver and an opportunity to prepare better. Strategically, a conflict over Ukraine was probably inevitable, but the specific circumstances and timetable could have been different. Is anyone in the West kicking themselves right now? An ultimatum can only be accepted by great powers, and even more so by superpowers, as a result of a military defeat. So there was, I think, no chance of the demands being accepted. I have to say that the consultations that took place in January 2022 showed that the US was ready for some concessions on specific issues of military security.

To a greater extent than they had indicated before the demands were made. However, this amounted to very little relative to the overall picture. Most importantly, NATO and the Americans categorically refused to discuss the main political issue: a formal rejection of NATO expansion. For them, this is unacceptable because the military bloc’s enlargement is the basis of the entire international security philosophy as it has been understood in the West since the end of the Cold War. But even beyond this, in the West there is a complete absence (or perhaps a disappearance) of reflection on the history behind current events.

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Arms treaties and diplomacy have been abandoned. They’re bad for business.

• A Lexicon for Disaster (Scott Ritter)

With no common language, there can be no common vision, no common purpose. Russia continues to seek arms control agreements which serve to restrict the arsenals of the involved parties to prevent dangerous escalatory actions while imposing a modicum of predictable stability on relations. The U.S. seeks only unilateral advantage. Until this is changed, there can be no meaningful arms control interaction between the U.S. and Russia. Not only will the New START treaty expire in February 2026, but it is also unlikely the major verification component of the treaty — on site inspections — will be revived between now and then. Moreover, it is impossible to see how a new arms control agreement to replace the expired New START treaty could be negotiated, ratified, and implemented in the short time remaining to do so.


There is no trust between Russia and the U.S. when it comes to arms control. With no treaties, there is no verification of reality. Both the U.S. and Russian arsenals will become untethered from treaty-based constraint, leading to a new arms race for which there can be only one finishing line — total nuclear war. There is a long list of things that must happen if meaningful arms control is ever to resume its place in the diplomatic arsenals of either the U.S. or Russia. Before either side can resume talking to one another, however, they must first re-learn the common language of disarmament. Because the current semantics of arms control is little more than a lexicon for disaster.

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62 lawsuits. So far.

• EU Sued Over Anti-Russia Sanctions (RT)

Dozens of Russians and Belarusians have filed lawsuits at the EU Court of Justice, to challenge their inclusion on the sanctions list, the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported on Saturday. The Luxembourg-based court has reportedly received claims from one company and 61 individuals from Russia and Belarus, placed on the EU blacklist over their alleged support for Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine. The business figures are seeking to challenge what they view as a violation of their rights, and the freeze of their assets by EU authorities. According to the media report, the plaintiffs in Luxembourg include Russian billionaire and former owner of the English football club Chelsea, Roman Abramovich, ESN Group owner Grigory Berezkin, and Gennady Timchenko, who owns Volga Group, a Russia-based company with interests in energy, transportation and construction.


Alfa Group co-founder Mikhail Fridman and Alisher Usmanov, the owner Russia’s largest iron ore producer, are also among those suing. The EU has adopted nine rounds of anti-Russia sanctions since February 24, when Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine. Aside from business people, the penalties include measures against Russian journalists and companies. On Friday, the EU blacklisted 141 Russian individuals and 49 legal entities, including ministers, governors, judges, parliament members, singers and presenters, as well as five political parties. The latest measures also deprived four more Russian media outlets of their broadcasting licenses in the EU, introduced a number of export bans, and extended restrictions on three more banks. Export restrictions were extended to 168 additional Russian entities closely linked to the Russian military-industrial complex, bringing the total number of sanctioned companies to 410.

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Could be an interesting court case. Note Borrell’s involvement.

• Lawyer Claims Eva Kaili Followed EU Parliament Chief’s Orders In Qatar (Eur.)

Qatar had no need to bribe socialist MEP Eva Kaili as the latter was implementing a wider EU plan and was getting orders from EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola, Kaili’s lawyer Michalis Dimitrakopoulos alleged on Tuesday. Metsola’s office told EURACTIV that the president gave instructions on how to represent the institution’s position and “nothing else”. Last Friday, Greek MEP Eva Kaili, her partner Francesco Giorgi, and ex-MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri, president of the NGO Fight Against Impunity, were arrested by the Belgian police on suspicion of corruption. On a political level, with an overwhelming majority, the EU House sacked her yesterday from the vice presidency.

In an almost unanimous vote, EU lawmakers removed Eva Kaili as vice president of the European Parliament on Tuesday (13 December), following the so-called Qatargate, one of the biggest corruption scandals in the EU’s history. On Thursday, Belgian courts will decide whether she will remain in jail until the adjudication of the case. In an interview with Greek MEGA TV channel, Dimitrakopoulos said Kaili has nothing to do with bribery from Qatar. “What the public opinion needs to know is that Qatar did not need to bribe Ms Kaili because she went to Qatar as a representative of the European Parliament, the speeches, the interviews she gave were after the agreement and order of the President Roberta Metsola,” Dimitrakopoulos said.

He added that documents prove this and explained that Kaili did not take any initiative or have an agenda. “Ms Metsola sent her to Qatar, what she was going to say had Ms Metsola’s approval […] Ms Metsola had also sent EU official Mr Roberto Bendini with her to watch all of Ms Kaili’s meetings”, he explained. “I am telling you the words of Ms Kaili, she was carrying out a plan that had started in 2019, High Representative Josep Borrell and Ylva Johansson [Commissioner for Home Affairs] had decided at the Commission level, to cooperate with Qatar, Kuwait and Oman,” the lawyer added.

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“..he resisted those calls and in 2020 was bumped up to the European Commission, as so often happens with scandal-tarnished domestic politicians in the EU…”

• Will the Fallout from “Qatargate” Splatter the European Commission? (NC)

For the moment, it is far from clear just how far this burgeoning scandal will reach. One thing that is clear is that the reputational damage will be large and lasting. The European Union’s ability to lecture the misbehaving governments of Member States and third-party countries on how to govern will be further diminished. As Hungary’s Victor Orban said in a video uploaded to his Facebook page, “It is time that we drain the swamp here in Brussels.” And he is right. EU institutions need to get their house in order once and for all, and fast. And that is unlikely to happen. The EU ombudsman Emily O’Reilly said this week that Von der Leyen’s proposed plan for a new ethics body is likely to end up as “something with no teeth, something that will possibly sit there passively, wait for complaints to come in.”

What the body really needs, O’Reilly said, is investigatory and sanctions powers. But that might actually threaten to derail the gravy train Brussels has become. And the problem is not just illegal cash payments stuffed away in paper bags and briefcases; it is the vast lobbying apparatus that has built up in Brussels, which is now the second largest lobbying capital in the world after Washington. As in Washington, lobbying reaches into just about every aspect of governance. In its 2015 report, CEO reported that lobbyists representing businesses and trade associations made up 75% of all high-level Commission lobby meetings and more than 80% in certain areas such as financial regulation or the internal market. The inevitable result, as in Washington, is that policies are made almost exclusively in the service of vested corporate interests.

Sometimes corporate lobbies even draft the EU’s legislation. This is the business model of modern governance. Lastly, if Borrell is indeed caught up in this burgeoning scandal and, by some miracle, loses his job, it would be no great loss to the EU’s 450 million citizens. He is the least diplomatic of diplomats. Just about every time he speaks, whether on the wonders of European colonialism or the vast untamed jungle that lies beyond Europe’s borders, damage is inflicted on the EU’s relations with some other part of the world. Since long before the Ukraine conflict he has played a leading role in escalating tensions with Russia, the EU’s biggest neighbor and energy supplier. He is also no stranger to scandal, having been convicted, in 2018, of insider trading in Spain. That resulted in him being placed on the Spanish market regulator’s blacklist. The ensuing scandal triggered calls for his resignation as Spain’s then-Foreign Minister. But he resisted those calls and in 2020 was bumped up to the European Commission, as so often happens with scandal-tarnished domestic politicians in the EU.

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“..two days later and on a complete whim, he decided to sneak back into the police station carrying a gun and shoot a man he had never met for no reason at all..”

• Biden’s Latest JFK Document Dump Is A JOKE (OffG)

Waiting for a government – any government – to release their “secret” files is a waste of your time, and reading anything they eventually publish is doubly so. If you didn’t learn that from the nothing-burger that was the 28 pages on 9/11, or the pathetic exercise in revisionism that made up the Afghanistan Papers…you should definitely have learned it today. Yes, Joe Biden’s administration has just released their promised “secret” JFK papers. Turns out that Oswald acted alone. I know, I was shocked too. Further, the release dials back on the (very slight) anti-Russia messaging of last year’s release. In December 2021, the previous batch of “secret” files revealed Oswald met with a KGB agent in the days running up to the assassination.

The latest batch reassures us that Oswald never worked for the KGB, and that the Russians thought he was “too crazy” to recruit. One gets the impression that has as much to do with managing propaganda positioning over the war in Ukraine as anything else. Either way, its a ridiculously transparent attempt to reinforce the “lone wolf” lie. “He was too crazy and unstable even for the Russians!” Laughable. Further, one particular “secret” memo claims… the Central Intelligence Agency has no indication that Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald ever knew each other, were associated, or might have been connected in any manner”. Yes, before Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald they were apparently “not connected in any manner”. He had never met Oswald before the assassination, and barely had any idea who he was when he shot him on November 24th.

This means the current “official story” is that Ruby randomly chose to attend the press conference where Oswald spoke on the evening of November 22nd, despite not being a member of the press. During this press conference, Ruby correctly pointed out Oswald had joined the “fair play for Cuba committee” (presumably an inspired guess, seeing as they did not know one another). Then, two days later and on a complete whim, he decided to sneak back into the police station carrying a gun and shoot a man he had never met for no reason at all, in the parking lot of a police station, while surrounded by police officers. That’s what these “secret files” tell us…the same ridiculous story as the very unsecret Warren Commission.

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While we have been talking about bloodclots fior at least two years, the FDA only just discovered them. But: “..still under investigation and require more robust study.”

This costs lives.

• Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Linked to Blood Clotting: FDA (ET)

Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine has been linked to blood clotting in older individuals, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). FDA researchers, crunching data from a database of elderly persons in the United States, found that pulmonary embolism—blood clotting in the lungs—met the initial threshold for a statistical signal and continued meeting the criteria after a more in-depth evaluation. Three other outcomes of interest—a lack of oxygen to the heart, a blood platelet disorder called immune thrombocytopenia, and another type of clotting called intravascular coagulation—initially raised red flags, researchers said. More in-depth evaluations, such as comparisons with populations who received influenza vaccines, showed those three as no longer meeting the statistical threshold for a signal.


Researchers looked at data covering 17.4 million elderly Americans who received a total of 34.6 million vaccine doses between Dec. 10, 2020, and Jan. 16, 2022. The study was published by the journal Vaccine on Dec. 1. The FDA said it was not taking any action on the results because they do not prove the vaccines cause any of the four outcomes, and because the findings “are still under investigation and require more robust study.” Dr. Peter McCullough, chief medical adviser for the Truth for Health Foundation, told The Epoch Times via email that the new paper “corroborates the concerns of doctors that the large uptick in blood clots, progression of atherosclerotic heart disease, and blood disorders is independently associated with COVID-19 vaccination.”

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“The FDA said it was not taking any action based on the study because the findings do not prove the vaccines cause any of the four outcomes.”

• FDA Uncovers Yet Another Dangerous Side Effect of the Covid-19 ‘Vaccines’ (KB)

A recent study drawing on over thirty million datapoints from the the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) data system shows a heightened risk of pulmonary embolism, as well as the known elevated risk for myocarditis. “We evaluated 14 outcomes of interest following COVID-19 vaccination using the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) data covering 30,712,101 elderly persons,” the international study in the journal Elsevier stated. “The CMS data from December 11, 2020 through Jan 15, 2022 included 17,411,342 COVID-19 vaccinees who received a total of 34,639,937 doses. We conducted weekly sequential testing and generated rate ratios (RR) of observed outcome rates compared to historical (or expected) rates prior to COVID-19 vaccination.”

The findings supply yet more evidence that the Covid mRNA shots should not be recommended without the standard risks of serious side effects. “Four outcomes met the threshold for a statistical signal following BNT162b2 vaccination including pulmonary embolism (PE; RR = 1.54), acute myocardial infarction (AMI; RR = 1.42), disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC; RR = 1.91), and immune thrombocytopenia (ITP; RR = 1.44),” the study found. The term RR [Risk Ratio] is an expression of the relative risk of the pharmaceutical product versus a placebo. An RR of 1.5 represents a 50% heightened risk for the given side effect.

The study couches the findings in the typical manner: Claiming that the benefits of the ‘vaccines’ outweigh the ‘risks.’ However, that would only be clearly the case if a patient did not have natural antibodies and was at increased due to risk factors such as age, obesity, or immunocompromisation. Seroprevalence data show that nearly every American in the United States has been exposed to SARS-CoV-2. The FDA said it was not taking any action based on the study because the findings do not prove the vaccines cause any of the four outcomes. The FDA claimed the findings “are still under investigation and require more robust study.”

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Musk has shaken the tree pretty hard. It’s now up to the rest of us.

• TWITTER FILES Supplemental (Taibbi)

On Friday, I posted a series of exchanges between Twitter and the FBI. One that required a bit too much explaining was left out. But it’s an important document, because it clearly demonstrates that Twitter will not only take requests from the government, it will even act quickly to align its analyses with its “partners.” 2. In July of 2020, San Francisco FBI agent Elvis Chan tells Twitter executive Yoel Roth to expect written questions from the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), the inter-agency group that deals with cyber threats. 3.The questionnaire authors seem displeased with Twitter for implying, in a July 20th “DHS/ODNI/FBI/Industry briefing,” that “you indicated you had not observed much recent activity from official propaganda actors on your platform.”

4 .One would think that would be good news. The agencies seemed to feel otherwise. 5.Chan underscored this: “There was quite a bit of discussion within the USIC to get clarifications from your company,” he wrote, referring to the United States Intelligence Community. 6.The task force demanded to know how Twitter came to its unpopular conclusion. Oddly, it included a bibliography of public sources – including a Wall Street Journal article – attesting to the prevalence of foreign threats, as if to show Twitter they got it wrong. 7.Roth, receiving the questions, circulated them with other company executives, and complained that he was “frankly perplexed by the requests here, which seem more like something we’d get from a congressional committee than the Bureau.” 8.He added he was not “comfortable with the Bureau (and by extension the IC) demanding written answers.”

The idea of the FBI acting as conduit for the Intelligence Community is interesting, given that many agencies are barred from domestic operations. 9. He then sent another note internally, saying the premise of the questions was “flawed,” because “we’ve been clear that official state propaganda is definitely a thing on Twitter.” Note the italics for emphasis.10. Roth suggested they “get on the phone with Elvis ASAP and try to straighten this out,” to disabuse the agencies of any notion that state propaganda is not a “thing” on Twitter. 11. This exchange is odd among other things because some of the “bibliography” materials cited by the FITF are sourced to intelligence officials, who in turn cited the public sources. 12. The FBI responded to Friday’s report by saying it “regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities.”

https://twitter.com/NameRedacted247/status/1604641866342756352

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”..the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive.”

• Musk Asks Twitter If He Should Step Down (ZH)

Elon Musk, perhaps finally fed up with micromanaging twitter or just really drunk after partying with Qatari royals (and Jared) after today’s terrific World Cup Final… … has asked Twitter users and his 122 million followers whether he should step down as head of the social media site and pledged that he would abide by the result of the 12 hour unscientific poll. Four hours into the vote, with some 9 million votes cast, 56.7% of those polled said Musk should, in fact, stand down. It wasn’t clear what percentage of bots of mailed in ballots had been cast. Musk prefaced the vote by tweeting that “Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again.”

Subsequently, in response to tweeted comments that Musk should “hire someone as Twitter CEO… that way when things go wrong you can blame that person, but you still ultimate control as the owner”, the billionaire responded that “The question is not finding a CEO, the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive.” Musk also clarified to prospective replacements that any new CEO “must like pain a lot. One catch: you have to invest your life savings in Twitter and it has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy since May. Still want the job?” Musk then stated that the whole exercise is a Catch 22 as “No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor.” Which then begs the question how Musk will abide by a poll that seeks his replacement if there is “no successor” in mind.

He then doubled down by paraphrasing Jack Handey and, of course, Gladiator:

Whether Musk was drunk or not when he sent out the tweet (early am Qatari time), the outcome as some cynics have noted, is unlikely to have any material impact on what happens at twitter. Musk’s pledge to hold votes on policy changes came after Twitter on Sunday announced it will remove accounts “created solely” to promote other social media platforms. Accounts promoting rivals and containing links to sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Mastodon will be taken down, the company said. A few hours later the tweet revealing that policy change was deleted.

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“When decisions were being made in 2020 and imposed upon the public, that’s when censorship counted the most..”

• Twitter Censorship Contributed to Destructive Pandemic Policies (ET)

The recently revealed censorship that has plagued Twitter in recent years is “criminal,” according to former White House COVID adviser Dr. Scott Atlas, as it allowed “lies to be imposed on the public” during a pandemic that wrought untold damage worldwide. “When correct science policy is blocked, people die, and people died from the censorship,” Atlas, a special coronavirus adviser during the Trump administration and contributor to The Epoch Times, said in an interview. Atlas was speaking days after Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, released troves of internal files showing how the previous Twitter team built a blacklist to limit disfavored tweets’ visibility without the knowledge of those using the platform.

Among those flagged was Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, whose tweet criticizing pandemic lockdowns shortly after joining the platform last August got him on the “trends blacklist” preventing the amplification of his tweets. But such revelations, Atlas said, are “only the tip of the iceberg.” “There’s a far larger story here that we need to hear,” he said, which he considers “far more nefarious and more systemic than isolated tweets being pulled down.” “This seems to be criminal behavior, and I think it needs to be investigated in the courts,” he said. Atlas wants to direct attention back to 2020, when health officials followed in the Chinese Communist Party’s footsteps to implement blanket COVID-19 lockdowns. In November of that year, while Atlas was still on the White House’s coronavirus task force, Twitter took down his post that argued mask-wearing was not effective in curbing the spread of the virus—a decision celebrated by some proponents of the measures, including fellow task force member Dr. Deborah Birx.

“One would think that the American public should hear what the adviser to the president is saying during the pandemic of 2020. Yet Twitter decided to simply block that discussion from the public,” he said. [..] Despite most states having a mask mandate until early this year, a number of studies found children and teenagers to be at a far lower risk of getting or dying from COVID-19, even with the emergence of new variants. But the “censorship of 2020,” be it deleting individual tweets, suspending accounts, or blocking the amplification of posts, had done its damage. “When decisions were being made in 2020 and imposed upon the public, that’s when censorship counted the most,” Atlas said.

“It created this illusion that there was a consensus among science and public health policy experts that lockdowns should be imposed; it created and perpetrated lies that if you were opposed to lockdowns, you were choosing the economy over lives, and that if you were opposed to lockdowns, you were somehow calling for letting the infection spread without any mitigation whatsoever,” he said. “They absolutely contributed to policies that killed massive numbers of people and destroyed children and low-income people, who are the most vulnerable. That’s why it’s criminal.”

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They will lose their powers when the new Congress is installed.

• Democratic Members Warn Facebook Not to “Backslide” on Censorship (Turley)

With the restoration of free speech protections on Twitter, panic has grown on the left that its control over social media could come to an end. Now, some of the greatest advocates of censorship in Congress are specifically warning Facebook not to follow Twitter in restoring free speech to its platform. In a chilling letter from Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), André Carson (D-Ind.), Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Facebook was given a not-so-subtle threat that reducing its infamous censorship system will invite congressional action. The letter to Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, is written on congressional stationery “as part of our ongoing oversight efforts.”

With House Republicans pledging to investigate social media censorship when they take control in January, these four Democratic members are trying to force Facebook to “recommit” to censoring opposing views and to make election censorship policies permanent. Otherwise, they suggest, they may be forced to exercise oversight into any move by Facebook to “alter or rollback certain misinformation policies.” In addition to demanding that Facebook preserve its bans on figures like former president Donald Trump, they want Facebook to expand its censorship overall because “unlike other major social media platforms, Meta’s policies do not prohibit posts that make unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud.”

Clegg is given Schiff’s telephone number to discuss Facebook’s compliance — an ironic contact point for a letter on censoring “disinformation.” After all, Schiff was one of the members of Congress who, before the 2020 presidential election, pushed the false claim that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, and he has been criticized for pushing false narratives on Trump-Russia collusion in the 2016 election. (Schiff has previously pressured social media companies to expand the censorship of opposing views).

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“Dangerous and unfounded election denial content” must be kept off the platform…”

• Democrats Like Adam Schiff Are Scrambling To Save Censorship (Devine)

Adam Schiff popped up on CNN’s “State of The Union” show Sunday morning to issue barely veiled threats to Elon Musk for trying to restore free speech on Twitter. Ostensibly, the lame duck chairman of the House Intelligence Committee joined Jake Tapper to crow about expected charges against Donald Trump Monday from his January 6 star chamber. But Schiff moved on to complain about the “big problem right now with social media companies and their failure to moderate content and the explosion of hate on Twitter, the banning of journalists on Twitter.” Then he suggested ominously that Twitter and social media companies may not continue to enjoy “immunity from responsibility and liability.” In other words, keep policing free speech as an arm of the federal government or watch your business go up in smoke.


Schiff is a calculated propagandist, who lies under oath as easily as breathing, and knowingly peddles misinformation to Congress and to media outlets like CNN and MSNBC, whose gullible hosts keep bringing him back on their shows to mislead their audiences. In the dying days of his powerful reign as overseer of the nation’s intelligence agencies, abusing his access to the nation’s secrets, Schiff’s final assignment is to preserve the censorship regime his side of politics entrenched across Big Tech. On Tuesday he, and three other Dems he roped in, wrote a menacing letter “as part of our ongoing oversight efforts” to Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta (Facebook’s new name), warning that, if the company went down Twitter’s path of free speech, the consequences would be dire. “Dangerous and unfounded election denial content” must be kept off the platform.

This is not 2 or 3 years ago, this is now

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“That is a far cry from overthrowing the U.S. government by force of violence.”

“‘Absurd’ To Call Oath Keepers Insurrectionists Or A National Security Threat, Former FBI Agent Testifies”

• Former FBI Agent Calls Assertion Oath Keepers are Anti-Government ‘Absurd’ (ET)

The Oath Keepers did not try to overthrow the U.S. government on Jan. 6 and are not a threat to national security because the group is anti-tyranny, not anti-government, a former FBI agent and Department of Defense analyst testified Dec. 15-16 in Alaska Superior Court. John Guandolo, who handled counter-terrorism and criminal investigations during nearly 13 years as an FBI special agent, said he found “absurd” the idea that Oath Keepers tried to overthrow the federal government. Guandolo was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a personal capacity. Some of the Oath Keepers might have broken federal laws on Jan. 6 for allegedly trying to delay the counting of Electoral College votes, Guandolo said, “but to conflate that to being the same as the entire organization wants to overthrow the U.S. government by violence … that’s absurd,” Guandolo said.

“And I think it’s an unprofessional assessment.” Guandolo’s testimony came on the third and fourth days of a state trial to determine if Rep. David Eastman (R-Wasilla) should be removed from office under the Alaska Constitution because he is a life member of the Oath Keepers. Eastman won reelection on Nov. 8 by a 24-point margin. Alaska Superior Court Judge Jack McKenna issued a temporary restraining order preventing the state of Alaska from certifying the House 27th District election results until the trial ends. Former GOP candidate Randall Kowalke—who left the Republican Party in 2019—sued Eastman personally in July, claiming a loyalty clause in the Alaska Constitution should bar him from office because the Oath Keepers allegedly advocate for the overthrow of the federal government.

Earlier in the bench trial before McKenna, two analysts from centers on domestic extremism testified that the Oath Keepers went into the Capitol on Jan. 6 and tried to overthrow the government. Testifying from his office in Dallas, Guandolo told the judge there is no evidence to support that accusation. He ripped the testimony of analysts Jonathan Lewis and Matthew Kriner as “grossly incomplete” and “wholly unprofessional.” Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III and Oath Keepers Florida leader Kelly Meggs were found guilty of seditious conspiracy on Nov. 29 for actions on Jan. 6, in a jury trial in U.S. District Court in Washington. Four other defendants were acquitted of seditious conspiracy, but convicted of other offenses.

“The phrase that I saw most often [in indictments] was that so-and-so intended to affect the government by stopping or delaying the congressional proceeding, which was to certify the election,” Guandolo said when questioned by defense attorney Joseph Miller. “That is a far cry from overthrowing the U.S. government by force of violence.”

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“$300 trillion of global debt and $2 quadrillion of quasi debt in the form of derivatives can only end in currencies going to zero..”

• US Doublespeak Will Not Stop Gold’s Imminent Surge (Von Greyerz)

The clouds look extremely dark for 2023 and beyond. As I have pointed out above, there is no attempt to reach a peace settlement in Ukraine. Weapons and money are pouring in to keep the war going. And the sanctions forced upon Europe by the US are having a devastating effect for the citizens of most European countries. Energy costs are up 2-3X or more for many consumers and food inflation in Germany for example jumped 21% year on year in November. In the UK, many ordinary people cannot afford to keep their heating on or to eat properly. And this is before the cold winter sets in. The situation in Ukraine seems to deteriorate and with Russia and the US involved, as well as China in the periphery, it could easily escalate.

But as I have spelt out numerous times, $300 trillion of global debt and $2 quadrillion of quasi debt in the form of derivatives can only end in currencies going to zero and sovereign borrowers defaulting. A global sovereign default should be seen as an indisputable fact and it is only a question of how long it takes. These events are normally a process. As Hemingway said, you go bankrupt “Gradually and then suddenly”. The beginning can be a slow process and then at some point the shock comes so fast that no one will have time to react. So no-one must believe that there will be time to get out once the early “gradual” phase starts. Just to be clear, the gradual phase is here already although the world is in denial. The buy the dip mentality is still prevailing as evidenced by the partial recovery in stock markets.

Few realise that this is it and the next devastating fall in stocks is going to fool practically all investors. The majority will not get out but hope for a correction so they can exit at a higher level. And once the correction comes, they will be bullish again. Once everyone is back into the market it will fall again. Most of the investors will be fooled most of the time until their portfolio is virtually worthless. The Western world hasn’t experienced a real bear market since 1929-32. That time it took 25 years for the Dow to recover to the 1929 high. The generosity of Central banks has made stock investments a one way game since the early 1980s. But now the game is up and few will realise it until they have lost everything. So the “suddenly” will be like an earthquake seemingly coming out of nowhere. It can come in 2023 or it might take a few years.

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Oppenheimer

 

 

Boys keep swinging

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 30 2022

Nov 302022
 
 November 30, 2022  Posted by at 9:20 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  35 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Coffee maker 1943

 

• Twitter Stops Enforcing COVID-19 Misinformation Policy (ZH)
• ‘Negative Efficacy’ Should Have Stopped COVID Vaccine Recommendations (ET)
• 12 Ways To Hold Big Pharma Accountable For Covid Evils (Fed.)
• A Look from Inside – The Fauci Deposition
• Elon Musk’s Twitter Is A Monster Of The Left’s Own Making (QTR)
• Musk Says Exposé of Twitter’s ‘Free Speech Suppression’ Coming ‘Soon’ (ET)
• Kremlin Outlines Conditions For Ukraine Talks (RT)
• NATO Says ‘Door is Open’ for Ukraine Membership….But (Celente)
• EU Fails To Agree On Russian Oil Price Cap As Full Ban Looms (ZH)
• Rand Paul Calls Out Complete Lack Of Oversight On Ukraine Aid (SN)
• The Four Fuckeries (Jim Kunstler)
• Will The US Try To Pull Off A “Grenada” In Serbia? (Saker)
• US Paralyzed By Islamic Republic Of Iran’s Strategic Swing (Escobar)
• Apple Turns Off China Protest Communication Tool (SN)
• SBF Doesn’t Know What Happened To His Twitter Stake (Axios)

 

 

 

 

Actual scientists are speaking out. Watch. “Most of them fall asleep crying.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1597663704044408832

 

 

 

 

Finland PM Marin Sanna visits New Zealand.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1597825029324296192

 

 

 

 

A good step, but only step no. 1. You will have to address the lives lost due to censorship of for instance doctors, on top of the whole Pfizer/Fauci/White House/EU terror. Twitter is complicit in this.

• Twitter Stops Enforcing COVID-19 Misinformation Policy (ZH)

Twitter will no longer enforce its Covid-19 misinformation policy, under which users who deviated from prevailing establishment narratives frequently had their accounts locked or suspended. The longstanding policy did not apply to misinformation from government officials, who regularly lied about things such as transmission, masks, vaccine efficacy, side effects, or any of the other ‘science’ which turned out to be patently false. Twitter did not officially announce the change, rather, the company added a note to a page on its website outlining its Covid-19 policy. “Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy,” reads the note, which follows a line that still reads: “As the global community faces the COVID-19 pandemic together, Twitter is helping people find reliable information, connect with others, and follow what’s happening in real time.”

What’s more, Sky News reports that the company’s Covid-19 ‘misleading information’ policy was nuked, which showed that the company operated on a strike system in which those who had a label added to their tweets were given one strike, while those with deleted tweets were given two strikes. Users with two to three strikes would have a 12-hour lockout, while those with four strikes were permanently suspended. “The platform suspended more than 11,000 accounts and removed nearly 98,000 pieces of content for violating its COVID misinformation policy between January 2022 and September 2022, according to information published by Twitter. The site also reduced the visibility of tweets or accounts believed to be in violation of the policy by stopping tweets or retweets from those accounts appearing in certain parts of Twitter, displaying their replies in lower positions in conversations and excluding their tweets or account from recommendations on the site.” -Sky News

Of note, half of Twitter’s content moderation, human rights and communications teams were laid off when new owner Elon Musk took over. Hundreds more left after Musk issued an ultimatum to staff requiring them to sign up for “long hours at high intensity” or leave.


Twitter reports that since January of 2020, 11.72M accounts were “challenged,” 11,230 accounts were suspended, and 97,674 pieces of content were “removed.”

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Talk about sliding scales. Not even when we knew the mRNA was endangering and killing people, did we stop.

• ‘Negative Efficacy’ Should Have Stopped COVID Vaccine Recommendations (ET)

It is a well known fact that COVID vaccine effectiveness wanes quickly as time goes on; this is confirmed by countless studies. Although the official narrative for COVID-19 vaccines nowadays only emphasizes its efficacy on protection against ICU admission and death rates, it actually implies the indisputable fact that vaccines don’t protect, contrary to their design, against infection or even symptomatic infection, especially after the emergence of various Omicron variants. Even the protection two shots offers against hospitalization drops to about 40 percent after less than a year. It’s actually looking worse for protection against severe symptoms, as efficacy rates seem to drop into the negatives about five months into full vaccination.


When a vaccine’s efficacy drops into the negatives, it means that vaccination actually elevates the risks of hospitalization and severe diseases rather than reducing the risks. In simple terms, it does more harm than good when the efficacy is negative. During the time prior to the pandemic, any vaccine with an efficacy less than 50 percent would be regarded as a poor product. When a product shows negative efficacy, it should be banned. It seems that the pandemic isn’t only bad for our health, but also is tugging at our common sense.

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No room for all twelve here.

• 12 Ways To Hold Big Pharma Accountable For Covid Evils (Fed.)

What is the common denominator between the pharmaceutical companies, the public health bureaucracy, medical associations, the corporate media, and Big Tech companies when it comes to censorship and medical misinformation? Money, of course. According to Statista, the pharmaceutical and medical industry spent $5.6 billion on U.S. television advertising in 2021, second only behind the life and entertainment industry at $10.1 billion. For reference, total U.S. TV ad spending is expected to exceed $68 billion in 2022. According to eMarketer, pharmaceutical and health care companies combined spent an estimated $9.5 billion on digital media in 2020, with 56 percent going toward search advertising, dominated by Google and Facebook, which have aggressively censored medical information that deviated from the official public health narrative.

This accounted for about 7.1 percent of all U.S. digital ad spending. The pharma industry pays, in the form of user fees, for 75 percent of the FDA’s drug review budget, according to Forbes, and 45 percent of its overall budget. One investigation showed that 40 of 107 physician advisers on the FDA committees examined “received more than $10,000 in post hoc earnings or research support from the makers of drugs that the panels voted to approve, or from competing firms.” According to an analysis by the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has numerous conflicts of interest, including openly accepting private gifts through the CDC Foundation, accepting supposedly “prohibited” donations, and “automatic” conflict of interest waivers for advisory committee members.

In 2010, the CDC inspector general noted a “systemic lack of oversight” of its ethics program. The CDC uses taxpayer money to develop patents and then receives money from pharma companies in the form of licenses and royalties. The NIAID, headed by Fauci, also accepts donations, such as a $100 million pledge by Bill Gates for work on gene therapies. Individual public health officials and scientists, including Fauci and former NIH Director Francis Collins, receive royalties on patents used by the industry, teaching hospitals accept industry donations, and doctors accept “consulting fees,” and other travel and meals payments from pharma companies when they promote their products.

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Strange story: a 7-hour Fauci deposition, and absolute crickets from the media.

Jim Hoft and attorney John Burns were present at the deposition. Excellent read.

• A Look from Inside – The Fauci Deposition

Here are some observations and highlights from the Fauci deposition: ** Fauci is a skillful liar. As we have seen now for months in his public comments, he lies when he feels he can get away with it or when he feels there will be no meaningful consequences. ** Fauci frequently lied unless and until he was confronted with alternate facts. For example, he claimed he really wasn’t familiar with Ralph Baric (creator of the COVID virus) or Peter Daszak (who brokered Fauci’s NIAID grant money to the Chinese biolab in Wuhan), until he was confronted with evidence that his own chief of staff emailed him describing Daszak and Baric as being part of Fauci’s team! ** Fauci claimed that he had no knowledge that his communications team did not coordinate with social media companies to stop “misinformation and disinformation” until he was forced to admit that he actually did know of certain instances of coordination.

** Fauci continued to push the now-debunked assertion that COVID-19 was a naturally occurring virus. ** Fauci said disinformation and misinformation (information he disagrees with) puts lives at risk. ** Fauci refused to define “gain of function” research saying it was too broad of a term to define. ** FUN FACT: until VERY recently, Fauci’s daughter worked for Twitter. ** FUN FACT: Fauci is a hypochondriac. In a bizarre and stunning segment during the deposition, Fauci blew off some of his frustration on the poor court reporter. The court reporter transcribing the deposition sneezed, and Fauci stopped the deposition and scolded the court reporter: “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU??? Do you have some sort of respiratory illness, because in the era of COVID, I’m concerned about being near you.” Court Reporter: “I’m not sick, I just have allergies. I can wear a mask though.” Fauci: “Ok. Thank you, because the last thing I want is to get COVID. [notably, (1) Fauci himself did not wear a mask at any point during the deposition, and (2) he appeared to be several feet away from the court reporter].

** FUN FACT: in another Fauci hypochondria spasm, Fauci conspicuously mean-mugged Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry after Landry sneezed into his suit coat jacket. ** Gamesmanship. Whenever introduced to a difficult topic, he dishonestly refused to define key terms so he could avoid being pinned down and held accountable. For example, when discussing the topic of “gain of function” research, he refused to acknowledge what the term meant, objecting that it was a term so broad it could not be defined. ** Fauci repeatedly claimed that he “couldn’t recall” or “couldn’t remember,” and attempted to bolster these incredible statements by appealing to the volume of emails he would receive or issues or studies that would come across his desk. This is simply not credible for nearly all of such statements, because the incidents in question were either recent or within the past three years, and they were all highly politically charged.

[..] ** Other Fauci deceit tactics: throwing subordinates under the bus. Fauci is a famous survivor among bureaucrats. One way he has survived this long is by only taking credit for wins and pawning off losses on hapless subordinates. This trend continued in his deposition, in which he brazenly argued that, while he is the head of the NIAID and its $6 billion dollar budget, he repeatedly didn’t have any knowledge about what his immediate direct reports were doing right under his nose. Fauci supports accountability, so long as he has a subordinate to sacrifice.

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“The social media platform had been the topic of political discussions about censorship, but no one had really done anything about it.”

• Elon Musk’s Twitter Is A Monster Of The Left’s Own Making (QTR)

I don’t believe Musk about everything, as my long-time followers know, but I do believe him when he says the platform has become more popular since he took it over. Not only is it more entertaining than its ever been, it’s simply a nice feeling not to have to run my Tweets over in my head before publishing them, thinking: “What would some hyper left-wing hipster in a beret in an office in San Francisco working a 4 hour work week as a content moderator think of what I’m about to post?” But this article isn’t just for those who are enjoying Twitter’s re-birth. More importantly, it’s for those who are having emotional meltdowns over it. What these users, former users, advertisers and general fragile individuals need to understand is that Elon Musk buying Twitter never even happens without an environment that creates the impetus for it to take place.

Putting Musk’s actual motives aside (I have often wondered if he actually wanted to buy Twitter when it came down to brass tacks), he projected publicly that his interest in taking a stake in the company was because they were actively suppressing free speech. Soon, a public discussion about Twitter’s censorship – which had kicked off years prior when Tim Pool publicly skewered head Twitter censor Vijaya Gadde on Joe Rogan’s podcast – was on the table. The social media platform had been the topic of political discussions about censorship, but no one had really done anything about it. Nobody made drastic moves to affect change. And love him or hate him, that’s exactly what Elon Musk did. The impetus for Musk to throw his hat in the ring on the discussion wasn’t just run-of-the-mill moderation issues, either. It was, instead, an incessant and burning need to eliminate content that Twitter didn’t view as favorable to its political leanings.

No matter what side of the aisle you’re on politically, it’s tough to push back against the idea that conservatives were targeted for suspension disproportionately on the platform. Furthermore, legitimate news stories that otherwise would have been worthy of Pulitzer Prizes – like the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story – were actively blackballed from the platform and users who discussed them risked being suspended or banned. These are nearly the very same actions that Beijing takes on Chinese social media when a story or narrative gets out that isn’t stamped with the government’s approval. Now, it looks as though we’re going to find out exactly what was going on behind the scenes at Twitter when the decision to actively censor a major story that could have had an impact on the 2020 election was made. And I don’t care who is running the platform, that type of transparency is sorely needed.

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This goes back to the lives lost to mRNA. Let’s see you do it.

• Musk Says Exposé of Twitter’s ‘Free Speech Suppression’ Coming ‘Soon’ (ET)

Elon Musk said Monday that Twitter’s internal files on the company’s “free speech suppression” will be revealed “soon,” raising expectations that light will be shed on the circumstances around Twitter’s censorship of the New York Post’s explosive story that exposed information on a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden. “The Twitter Files on free speech suppression soon to be published on Twitter itself. The public deserves to know what really happened …” Musk said in a post late Monday. Critics have long held that Twitter has used vague standards to censor or suspend accounts and that the ones targeted are predominantly those expressing conservative views. Twitter has denied any bias in its actions, repeatedly insisting it is simply following its content moderation policies.

Weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post published an article that allegedly detailed meetings President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, had with a Ukrainian energy firm before then-Vice President Biden pressured Ukrainian government officials to fire a prosecutor probing the company. The story was seen by Biden’s political opponents as evidence of corruption and the news quickly spread across Twitter, prompting the social media firm to start removing links to the article and, for a period of time, suspending the New York Post’s Twitter account. Conservatives saw Twitter’s actions in this regard as evidence of the company’s pro-Biden, anti-Trump bias. Twitter said at the time that it was simply enforcing its rules on hacked materials, which prohibit distribution of information that is obtained through hacking.

Musk in April spoke out in opposition to Twitter’s decision to temporarily suspend New York Post’s Twitter account. “Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate,” Musk said in April, responding to a post about the Hunter Biden laptop story. Musk, who took over Twitter in late October, has vowed to make the platform into a politically unbiased bastion of free speech. He said in an open letter following his acquisition of Twitter that he bought it because “it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence.” “There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society,” Musk added.

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“Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky emphasized that “there will be no Minsk-3 [agreement], which Russia would violate right after sealing it.”

Of course Zelensky knows full well Russia didn’t violate Minsk 1 and 2. Ukraine did. And US.

• Kremlin Outlines Conditions For Ukraine Talks (RT)

Peace negotiations could start between Russia and Ukraine if Moscow sees genuine “political will” on the part of Kiev to engage in dialogue, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said. Earlier this month, he noted that the Ukrainian leadership seemed reluctant to sit down for talks at present. When asked by Russian journalists on Tuesday whether there are any preconditions for any potential dialogue to begin between Moscow and Kiev, Peskov said: “It has to be political will, readiness to discuss those Russian demands which have been known for long.” Speaking via video-link during the G20 summit in Indonesia’s Bali in mid-November, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky emphasized that “there will be no Minsk-3 [agreement], which Russia would violate right after sealing it.”

The Ukrainian head of state was referring to the Minsk-1 and Minsk-2 agreements brokered by Germany and France back in 2014 and 2015, respectively. The accords, among other things, envisaged special status for Donetsk and Lugansk regions within the Ukrainian state. Russian President Vladimir Putin cited Kiev’s failure to implement the agreements as one of the reasons for the start of Moscow’s military campaign against its neighbor in late February 2022. Commenting on Zelensky’s remarks at the G20 summit, Peskov argued at the time that they “absolutely confirm” Kiev’s unwillingness to engage in talks. Addressing leaders in Bali, the Ukrainian head of state proposed ten steps that, in his view, would lead to peace. Among the key points of his plan is the complete withdrawal of Russian forces from all Ukrainian territories and respect for the country’s borders drawn up in 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, Moscow claims some of those regions, most notably Crimea, as its own, following referendums it had held there. It came shortly after The Washington Post reported in early November that the Biden administration had privately asked Zelensky to signal willingness to hold talks with Russia, if only just for show. Washington was reportedly concerned that Kiev’s irreconcilable position could see support from some of its Western allies dwindle amid what anonymous White House officials described as a growing “Ukraine fatigue.” The article claimed that Washington was not serious about getting Kiev to negotiate, and only sought to ensure that weapons and other aid kept flowing from as many nations as possible.

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Escalation tactics. Anytime it’s clear Russia is winning, they bring in heavier weaponry. Forcing Russia to follow suit. Same with dangling NATO membership in front of Zelensky. The war must go on.

• NATO Says ‘Door is Open’ for Ukraine Membership….But (Celente)

Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of NATO, dangled the possibility that Ukraine may someday, in the future, join the Alliance and benefit from the protection of Article 5 that, when distilled, says: an attack on one, is an attack on all. He made the comment during a two-day summit in Bucharest where Ukraine’s electric grid and Russia’s relentless air campaign took center stage. The Russian strikes have left millions in the dark as temperatures hit 19 degrees in Kyiv. “NATO’s door is open,” he said, according to The New York Times. But he noted that the calvary is not coming during this conflict. “NATO will continue to stand for Ukraine as long as it takes. We will not back down.” In September, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, announced that Kyiv filed a new, expedited application to join NATO in light of Russian President Vladimir Putin annexing four occupied regions in the country.

Zelensky, correctly said in a statement that Finland and Sweden benefited from an accelerated accession into the Alliance. (But neither of those countries are members.) “De facto, we have already proven interoperability with the Alliance’s standards, they are real for Ukraine — real on the battlefield and in all aspects of our interaction,” Zelensky said. “Today, Ukraine is applying to make it de jure. Under a procedure consistent with our significance for the protection of our entire community. Under an accelerated procedure,” the statement continued. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, killed the idea and said, the issue should be taken up “at a different time.”

NATO’s refusal to accept Ukraine into the fold is understandable because it would assure the beginning of WWIII. But it has still been a sensitive subject in Kyiv. Last summer, Ihor Zhovkva, the deputy chief of staff for Zelensky, said in an interview that Kyiv was told by NATO that it is “not a member because we do not want you.” “NATO is telling us we are not giving you anything,” he said in an interview with a local news outlet in Kyiv, according to Bloomberg. Some could argue that Ukraine was the victim misleading public statements from the U.S. and NATO prior to the invasion. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Stoltenberg said Moscow would be met with a“forceful” response if there was an invasion. Blinken went further and said the U.S. has a “sacred obligation” to defend its allies.

Under Article 10 of the 1949 Washington Treaty, NATO has the right to invite any willing European country into the fold. But Stoltenberg made it clear, before the invasion, that there is a distinction between a NATO partner and ally. Kyiv is a partner. NATO is compelled to only defend allies. NATO countries never embraced Ukraine as an ally because it meant certain war with Russia.

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“(see, it was all theater, everything – from day one – and politicians knew it as soon as they did the math)”

• EU Fails To Agree On Russian Oil Price Cap As Full Ban Looms (ZH)

In its relentless pursuit of virtue-signaling hills that it is willing to die on within minutes, several months ago the EU had a brilliant idea: let’s implement a toothless oil price cap on Russian oil exports, one which actually has zero impact on deeply discounted Russian oil and thus doesn’t lead to any more European energy shocks, but because of the optics and the much “lower” permitted transaction price, it will make for great headlines and show the world just how powerful the EU is. Well, the plan almost worked… until Poland and the Baltics forgot to read the fine print, thought that Europe actually does mean business, and blew up the deal. Recall on Friday, negotiations on the Russian oil price cap were suspended – despite a willingness by most European nations to just cross the checkmark and move on – as Poland and the Baltic states objected to a proposed ceiling of $65.

There was some hope that this opposition was just for show, and that come Monday the Poles would relent after some “closed door” negotiations, Europe would slap a $65 price cap, Russia would continue to sell its oil to China and India, and – quietly – to Europe, and gradually renormalize a fractured oil market where India and China pay a 25% discount for oil while the rest of the world has to pay a premium as an offset. However, it was not meant to be, and on Monday European Union governments again failed to agree on a price cap on Russian seaborne crude oil, as Poland again insisted that the cap had to be set lower than proposed by the G7 to cut Moscow’s ability to finance its invasion of Ukraine, diplomats told Reuters. “There is no deal. The legal texts have now been agreed, but Poland still can’t agree to the price,” one diplomat said.

No new date for talks has been set yet, diplomats said, even though a far worse outcome may await Europe in just one week: as a reminder, the price cap mechanism is to enter into force on Dec. 5. And if there is no agreement on the G7 price cap idea by next Monday, the EU would implement harsher measures agreed at the end of May – a ban on all Russian crude oil imports from Dec. 5 and on petroleum products from Feb. 5, Polish diplomats said. That would be a truly catastrophic scenario, and one which could promptly send the price of oil into the stratosphere as JPMorgan explained not too long ago. To be sure, it’s not too late for Poland to fall in line: Hungary and two other landlocked central European states secured exemptions from that ban for the pipeline imports they rely on.

Meanwhile, even the G-7 group of nations has proposed a softer version of the EU ban to keep oil supply to the global economy steady, because Russia supplies 10% of the world’s oil (see, it was all theater, everything – from day one – and politicians knew it as soon as they did the math). It proposed that the EU and other global customers keep buying Russian crude, but only if its price is at or below a G7 agreed level. That would cut the Kremlin’s revenues. The G7 has proposed a cap of $65-70 per barrel, but Poland and some others argue this will not hurt Moscow because Russian crude is already trading below that range at $63.50, and after today’s oil price rollercoaster, the “Russian” price briefly dipped below $60. With Russian production costs estimated at around $20, Moscow has a very large profit from its oil exports. Poland, Lithuania and Estonia have been pushing for a price cap of $30 per barrel.

And yet, despite consensus that Polish opposition would be overturned, the country’s resolve has only hardened: “The Poles are completely uncompromising on the price, without suggesting an acceptable alternative,” the EU diplomat said. “Clearly there is growing annoyance with the Polish position.” Which is hilarious because only Poland is adhering to the principle of what the price cap was supposed to achieve – namely choke off Russian oil profits; and yet for all the pompous rhetoric by G-7 nations, everyone is happy to keep the spectacle going knowing full well that this is just one giant virtue-signaling scheme. Everyone, except Poland that is… and as a result the “annoyance” is not with Putin but with the “Polish position” which is keeping fat European technocrats away from their well-deserved 3-star meals for a fake job well done.

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“..the Biden administration inspected only 10% of 22,000 weapons the U.S. has provided to Ukraine..”

• Rand Paul Calls Out Complete Lack Of Oversight On Ukraine Aid (SN)

Senator Rand Paul reacted Monday to news that the Biden administration is struggling to account for some $20 billion in aid that was sent to Ukraine, noting that both political parties ignored his call for an inspector general to overlook it. A report from Fox News, linked in a tweet by Paul, notes that according to the Washington Post, the Biden administration inspected only 10% of 22,000 weapons the U.S. has provided to Ukraine between February and November. It also outlines how Republicans could push for audits to determine where all the military aid is going and how much of it is ending up in the wrong hand.


“Didn’t someone try to legislatively mandate a special inspector general to scrutinize Ukrainian spending?” Paul urged, adding “Oh, that’s right, it was my amendment and most Democrats AND Republicans opposed any semblance of oversight.” Just a fortnight ago, following the throughly debunked “Russian missile attack” on a Polish border town, which turned out to be a Ukrainian missile that had stayed off course, Biden asked Congress to provide another $37.7 billion in emergency aid to Ukraine. The United States has already pledged more than 52 billion euros in military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine since the war began in February 2022 and October 3, way more than any other nation or nations combined.

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“..and also stranded the media in an endless loop of ass-covering they are still locked into..”

• The Four Fuckeries (Jim Kunstler)

“We want to save the planet, and the life upon it, but we’re not willing to pay the price and bear the consequences. So we make up a narrative that feels good and run with it.” — Raul Ilargi Meijer.” I doubt there is another era in the history of Western Civ when the forces in-motion acting on society were so mystifying to those acted upon. And isn’t it especially galling that this is so in an age after rational scientific practice had decoded so many of nature’s secrets? Did that project somehow fail in the end? Has the Enlightenment been defeated? How have we become trapped like frogs being boiled haplessly in our own pond-water? I have reduced these forces to four obvious streams of the sheerest seemingly evil fuckery, which is to say nefariously managed events meant to harm us. They are surely all related in some way. Let’s try to de-mystify them to understand what we’re up against.

First: Covid-19. How is it that we don’t know for sure how this organism came into the world, or understand what ensued after it did? Answer: the people who caused it to happen in the Wuhan lab have been busy covering their asses for three years, and successfully so. Yet we know exactly what Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins, Peter Daszak, Ralph Baric and others did. The paper trail in correspondence and patents alone is clear. We just can’t seem to do anything about it. We don’t know why they did it yet, too, but there are plausible guesses. Maybe Dr. Fauci wanted to cap his long, checkered career with a final heroic triumph: the introduction of world-saving mRNA vaccines — incidentally, a great financial boon to himself and the pharma industry he secretly served. Like everything else Fauci worked on for forty years, this experiment ended in disaster: a Frankenstein disease that persists in the population and vaccines that maim and kill people. How did Fauci and company get away with it? Here’s how:

Two: Government’s war on its own citizens. I’d date this for the sake of simplicity to the DOJ’s and FBI’s campaign to defenestrate Donald Trump starting in 2016 for the crime of winning an election. What began as the Russia collusion prank morphed into RussiaGate, another ass-covering extravaganza in which public officialdom gave itself blanket permission to lie about everything it was doing. The likes of James Comey, Andrew McCabe and Barack Obama’s girl squad in the White House — to name just a few of many participants — also managed to hook in the mainstream news media under the supposition that they were the good guys fighting a disgusting, pussy-grabbing supervillain, which disposed the news media to go along with all the FBI and DOJ lies, and also stranded the media in an endless loop of ass-covering they are still locked into.

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“..it was simply impossible to fail no matter how inept and incompetent the entire invasion was..”

• Will The US Try To Pull Off A “Grenada” In Serbia? (Saker)

Remember the 1983 US invasion of Grenada aka “Operation Urgent Fury”? It all began on October 23, 1983 when two truck bombs blew up the buildings housing the US and French “Multinational Force in Lebanon”. This attack resulted in 307 people killed including 241 U.S. and 58 French military personnel. Following the bombings, US diplomats engaged in their usual frantic flag-waving and promises to never ever give in to terrorism. The biggest problem for the US was that it had no way to retaliate in a way which would satisfy the flag-waver’s desire for blood. Just blowing up random buildings in Lebanon made very little impact, as for the promises to stay for as long as needed, it was obvious PR – it was clear to everybody that the time to pack and leave had come.

Of course, this was very humiliating for the wannabe “indispensable nation” cum “city upon a Hill”,,, So Reagan, with his undeniable genius for PR and optics, ordered the invasion of Grenada just two days after the bombings in Beirut. Why Grenada? Well, for one thing it was barely defended (mostly by Cuban engineers and locals with small arms) and truly tiny (so tiny, in fact, that the overwhelming majority of US Americans had no idea where it was or why there was suddenly an urgent need to invade. Second, it was very close to the USA, so everybody could get a slice of the cake, including the 1st and 2nd battalions of the US Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment, the 82nd Airborne and the Army’s rapid deployment force, U.S. Marines, Army Delta Force, Navy SEALs, and ancillary forces totaling 7,600 troops.

In terms of hardware, the US brought in 7,300 troops, 4 tanks, 1 LHA (USS Saipan LHA-2), 1 aircraft carrier, 3 destroyers, 2 frigates, 1 ammunition ship and even 27 F-14A Tomcats. All that against a few hundred construction workers armed only with small arms! I won’t go into all the details here, but let’s just say that this invasion was one of the worst and most poorly executed operation in the history of warfare: a truly HUGE US force was brought in to strike at a basically defenseless tiny island nation with the sole purpose of changing the optics of the disaster in Lebanon.

But, no to worry, the Pentagon handed our more medals than the number of participants, while some US special forces who wanted to press charges against helicopter pilots for cowardice (who abandoned the SOF on a runway because of small arms fire) were “counseled” against the idea. Bottom line is this: after the epic disaster in Beirut, the US wanted a quick and easy war to restore the “prestige” of the US armed forces, only to end up with yet another epic disaster, but at least in the case of Grenada, it was simply impossible to fail no matter how inept and incompetent the entire invasion was.

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Iran=BRI, SCO, INSTC, BRICS+.

• US Paralyzed By Islamic Republic Of Iran’s Strategic Swing (Escobar)

Iran’s parliament has just approved the accession of the Islamic Republic to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), previously enshrined at the Samarkand summit last September, marking the culmination of a process that lasted no less than 15 years. Iran has already applied to become a member of the expanding BRICS+, which before 2025 will be inevitably configured as the alternative Global South G20 that really matters. Iran is already part of the Quad that really matters – alongside BRICS members Russia, China and India. Iran is deepening its strategic partnership with both China and Russia and increasing bilateral cooperation with India.

Iran is a key Chinese partner in the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It is set to clinch a free trade agreement with the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and is a key node of the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), alongside Russia and India. All of the above configures the lightning-fast emergence of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a West Asia and Eurasia big power, with vast reach across the Global South. That has left the whole set of imperial “policies” towards Tehran lying in the dust. So it’s no wonder that previously accumulated strands of Iranophobia – fed by the Empire over four decades — have recently metastasized into yet another color revolution offensive, fully supported and disseminated by Anglo-American media.

The playbook is always the same. Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei actually came up with a concise definition. The problem is not bands of oblivious rioters and/or mercenaries: “the main confrontation”, he said, is with “global hegemony.” Ayatollah Khamenei was somewhat echoed by American intellectual and author Noam Chomsky, who has remarked how an array of US sanctions over four decades have severely harmed the Iranian economy and “caused enormous suffering.”

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Apple is not looking good lately.

• Apple Turns Off China Protest Communication Tool (SN)

As it mulls kicking Elon Musk’s Twitter off the app store, it has now been revealed that Apple restricted the use of AirDrop in China, a move that harmed the organizational efforts of demonstrators protesting against the CCP’s lockdowns. Over the past week, multiple major cities across China have seen massive protests against lockdowns, with the normally compliant Chinese exploding into rage in response to their government’s ‘zero COVID’ policy. Much of the unrest blew up in response to an incident in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi, where at least 10 people, some say up to 40, were killed during an apartment fire because lockdown rules stopped residents from fleeing the burning building.

Most of the city’s residents have been prevented from leaving their homes for over 100 days as a result of the draconian rules, which are still in place nearly three years after the pandemic began. With Beijing now trying to contain what some are calling the most serious mass uprising since Tiananmen Square, Apple is apparently helping them to crush dissent. Earlier this month, Apple restricted the use of AirDrop in China, which protesters had been using to evade censorship. AirDrop allows local connections between devices, meaning it cannot be monitored or censored by local authorities. However, Apple launched an update to the app in China that restricted usage to just 10 minutes, making it harder for protesters to communicate with other activists, as well as send messages nearby bystanders and tourists.

AirDrop was also being used by protesters in Hong Kong, who were brutally suppressed by the CCP during months of unrest in 2019. The smartphone company chose to roll out the new “feature” in China only right as the country experienced its biggest demonstrations in decades, which some would suggest is more than just a coincidence. “Apple has helped Beijing to suppress public dissent multiple times, mostly by complying with its requests to remove apps used by protestors for information and communication,” reports Reclaim the Net. “Apple also helps the Chinese Communist Party prevent users from remaining private by banning VPNs in the region.”

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“..Bankman-Fried, as of Nov. 10, either believed that Alameda owned a stake in Musk’s Twitter, or that he was uncertain, and therefore misleading potential investors.”

• SBF Doesn’t Know What Happened To His Twitter Stake (Axios)

Sam Bankman-Fried tells Axios that he always intended to roll over at least a portion of his former firm’s $100 million Twitter stake into the new, privately held entity led by Elon Musk. But the former FTX CEO said in an interview on Monday night that he’s not sure that ever happened with the Alameda Research controlled stake. It’s the first time Bankman-Fried has addressed the question around his Twitter stake since Musk said last week that neither SBF nor FTX ever held a position in the privatized Twitter, a statement that contradicted a Semafor news report. Alameda Research, the entity that Bankman-Fried said owned the Twitter stake, is the trading firm that he controlled and is the entity at the center of FTX’s implosion.

A text message seen by Axios that Bankman-Fried sent to Musk said the Twitter stake Alameda owned was worth around $100 million. “I believe that that it was intended for Alameda to rollover at least $20 million or more,” Bankman-Fried told Axios. “I don’t know for sure whether that ultimately happened.” Bankman-Fried noted that at least some of the Twitter stake may have been sold prior to Twitter going private, but he could not confirm. Bankman-Fried, through his advisers, had offered to help Musk buy out Twitter in the spring with potentially billions of dollars. But he later backed out of his offer after the two spoke by phone, Axios previously reported.

Bankman-Fried said at the time that he was interested in rolling the stake into the privatized company, with Musk acknowledging that Bankman-Fried was “welcome to roll.” The Twitter stake was listed on a Nov. 10 balance sheet shown to prospective FTX investors before the company went bankrupt, according to the Financial Times. The balance sheet, upon which Semafor also relied for its reporting, listed $43.3 million of Twitter stock as an illiquid deliverable — or sellable — asset. That suggests that Bankman-Fried, as of Nov. 10, either believed that Alameda owned a stake in Musk’s Twitter, or that he was uncertain, and therefore misleading potential investors.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Big house cats. Sound on.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1597818714631852033

 

 

Backwards dog

 

 

Blob top jellyfish
https://twitter.com/i/status/1597658696481312768

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 4 2022

Nov 042022
 
 November 4, 2022  Posted by at 9:16 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  88 Responses »


Martin Johnson Heade Thunderstorm on Narragansett Bay 1868

 

• $2.5 Quadrillion Disaster Waiting to Happen – Egon von Greyerz (USAW)
• No Sign Russia Preparing To Use Nuclear Weapons – White House (RT)
• G7 To Set Fixed Price On Russian Oil (RT)
• No Pain, No Grain: Putin’s Black Sea Comeback (Escobar)
• Russian MP Urges Doubling Of Military Service Time (RT)
• Thieves’ Paradise In Kiev (Helmer)
• Turkey Holds Off On Finland And Sweden In NATO (DW)
• Sense Of National Unity In Russia On The Rise (RT)
• They Will Never Understand The Islamic Republic (Mirzaei)
• UN Security Council Votes Against Probe Into US Biolabs (RT)
• Twitter’s “Red Wedding” Moment Arrives As Musk Layoffs Begin (ZH)
• Multinational Advertisers Begin Pulling Out of Twitter (CTH)
• Judge Rejects Attempt To Block Censorship Depositions Of Biden Officials (JTN)
• GOP Rep. Asks Musk About Twitter Censorship of Hunter Biden Laptop Story (ET)
• DOJ Mulls Special Counsel Investigation Should Trump Run Again (JTN)
• New York Judge Appoints Monitor To Oversee Trump Organization Dealings (JTN)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ursula is a weird specimen

https://twitter.com/i/status/1588272447694016512

 

 

 

 

50% myocarditis
https://twitter.com/i/status/1587232910708441089

 

 

 

 

Tucker Klain

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Central banks only use one kind of medicine, and that is more printed money. Now, you are getting negative returns on printed money. So, that is not going to save anything.”

• $2.5 Quadrillion Disaster Waiting to Happen – Egon von Greyerz (USAW)

Egon von Greyerz (EvG) stores gold for clients at the biggest private gold vault in the world buried deep in the Swiss Alps. EvG is a financial and precious metals expert. EvG is a former Swiss banker and an expert in risk. He says the risk in the global markets has never been this high. EvG explains, “Credit has increased dramatically through derivatives. All instruments being issued now by banks, pension funds, stock funds, it’s all synthetic. here is no real underlying payments in anything almost. Therefore, my estimate for derivatives would be at least $2 quadrillion, and I think that is probably conservative. Then, we have debt on top of that of $300 trillion, and we also have a couple hundred trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities. So, we are talking about $2.5 quadrillion, and that’s with a global GDP of $80 trillion.

So, there is a disaster waiting to happen, and especially because all this created money has created no value whatsoever. . I always knew this would collapse, and it’s taken longer than I expected, but I think we are at the end of a major era. . . . These derivatives, at some point in the coming few years, will actually turn into debt. Central banks will have to cover all the outstanding liabilities of the commercial banks as we are seeing now with Credit Suisse, Bank of England and etc. This is going to happen across the board. Whether it’s called derivatives or called debt, as far as I am concerned, it’s the same thing. It will have the same effect on the world financial system, which will be disastrous, of course.” EvG says the derivative markets were simply a way for financial institutions to carry debt and not show it on their balance sheets. In the end, everything will balance out.

EvG goes on to say, “Nobody can repay the debt, and they can’t even pay interest. . . So, therefore, when the debt implodes, so will the assets that were financed by this debt. So, both sides of the balance sheet have to come down. Whether it comes down by 50%, 75% or 90%, I don’t know. . All I think about is risk, and the financial system will not survive in its present form. Central banks only use one kind of medicine, and that is more printed money. Now, you are getting negative returns on printed money. So, that is not going to save anything. Sadly we are looking at a situation when this system will start to implode . . The rich are still rich, but the poor are really poor. . Overall in the UK, Germany and most European countries, people don’t have enough money to live.

This is a human disaster already. With food costs going up 25% and energy going up the same and gasoline, interest rates and rents, people don’t have enough money, and that is happening now. It’s a human disaster of mega proportions. It’s so sad, and governments will have no chance of doing anything about it.” In closing, EvG says, “This is why it is getting closer for implosion because the whole system can’t take this. .The risk is increasing exponentially. So, I think people should be prepared . . Most asset markets have lost money, and it is going to get worse.”

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“..Biden continued to wonder why Russia keeps “talking about” nuclear weapons..”

Putin hasn’t mentioned them even once.

• No Sign Russia Preparing To Use Nuclear Weapons – White House (RT)

The US does not see any indications that Russia is getting ready to use its nuclear arsenal in the conflict in Ukraine, White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday. However, he added that Washington considers such a possibility “deeply concerning” and takes it “seriously.” Earlier on Wednesday, the New York Times published a piece, citing “multiple senior American officials,” who claimed some Russian generals had been discussing “when and how Moscow might use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine.” Russian President Vladimir Putin was not involved in these discussions, the paper said. The conversations took place at some point in mid-October, it added.

This is not the first time the White House has made such a statement. Last month, Kirby stated that Washington saw no indications that Russia was preparing to deploy a nuclear weapon. The threat of a nuclear war has been a hot topic recently after Putin vowed to defend Russia’s territory and people using “all the forces and resources we have” in late September. His remarks were then widely interpreted by Western pundits and officials as a veiled nuclear warning, which prompted US President Joe Biden to warn about a potential “nuclear Armageddon.” Putin clarified his statement later by saying that Moscow has not even mentioned tactical nuclear weapons, let alone threatened to use atomic weapons.

His words, however, did not alleviate fears in Washington, as Biden continued to wonder why Russia keeps “talking about” nuclear weapons if it does not plan to use them. Meanwhile, top Western diplomats and defense ministers largely brushed off Russia’s concerns about Kiev potentially using a so-called ‘dirty bomb’ to frame Moscow. Such a munition uses conventional explosives to scatter radioactive material over a wide area. Moscow also raised the issue in the UN Security Council, prompting the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to send an inspection to several Ukrainian facilities to investigate the claims.

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Fanning the flames.

• G7 To Set Fixed Price On Russian Oil (RT)

The Group of Seven (G7) countries and Australia have agreed to set a fixed price for Russian oil instead of a floating rate pegged to an oil price index, Reuters reported on Friday, citing sources. “The Coalition has agreed the price cap will be a fixed price that will be reviewed regularly rather than a discount to an index… This will increase market stability and simplify compliance to minimize the burden on market participants,” a source told Reuters. The source added that linking the price to an oil price index, for example, the Brent international benchmark, which was one of the options discussed, could lead to increased volatility and diminish the desired effect of the cap. For instance, if Brent started to rise due to lower supply on the market, the cap would rise accordingly, which would benefit Russia.

According to the report, the actual price has not been decided on yet, but will be in the coming weeks. The price will be regularly reviewed, and may be revised in the future if the coalition partners see the need to do that. The G7 countries have been discussing a price cap on Russian oil for months now, planning for the measure to reduce Russia’s profits from oil exports without damaging supply. The cap is to come into effect on December 5 for oil and on February 5 next year for petroleum products. Russia, however, has repeatedly said it will not sell oil to countries that introduce price caps. Moscow’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, recently warned that price caps may further worsen the global energy crisis.

“The recipe for ‘face-saving’ developed in the Department of Treasury – the so-called ‘price cap’ for Russian oil – leads a global economy to even darker corners of this kind of Knossos labyrinth. At the same time, the promised Ariadne’s thread – our willingness to sell ‘black gold’ at a loss – was nothing more than a myth from the very beginning. We will not ensure the well-being of others at our own expense. We will not sell resources to those who artificially hold back prices,” the diplomat wrote in an article for the National Interest magazine.

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“What changes with Russia “suspending” its own deal with Ankara and the UN, is that from now on, Moscow can proceed any way it deems fit to neutralize terrorist threats and even invade and take over Ukrainian ports..”

• No Pain, No Grain: Putin’s Black Sea Comeback (Escobar)

The attack on Sevastopol may have been the catalyst leading to a Russian move to close down the Black Sea – with Odessa converted into an absolutely priority for the Russian Army. There are serious rumblings across Russia on why Russophone Odessa had not been the object of pinpointed targeting before. Top infrastructure for Ukrainian Special Forces and British advisers is based in Odessa and Nikolaev. Now there’s no question these will be destroyed. Even with the grain deal in theory back on track, it is hopeless to expect Kiev to abide by any agreements. After all, every major decision is taken either by Washington or by the Brits at NATO. Just like bombing the Crimea Bridge, and then the Nord Streams, attacking the Black Sea Fleet was designed as a serious provocation.

The brilliant designers though seem to have IQs lower than refrigerator temperatures: every Russian response always plunges Ukraine deeper down an inescapable – and now literally black – hole. The grain deal seemed to be a sort of win-win. Kiev would not contaminate Black Sea ports again after they were demined. Turkey turned into a grain transport hub for the poorest nations (actually that’s not what happened: the main beneficiary was the EU). And sanctions on Russia were eased on the export of agricultural products and fertilizers. This was, in principle, a boost for Russian exports. In the end, it did not work out because many players were worried about possible secondary sanctions.

It is important to remember that the Black Sea grain deal is actually two deals: Kiev signed a deal with Turkey and the UN, and Russia signed a separate deal with Turkey. The corridor for the grain carriers is only 2 km wide. Minesweepers move in parallel along the corridor. Ships are inspected by Ankara. So the Kiev-Ankara-UN deal remains in place. It has nothing to do with Russia – which in this case does not escort and/or inspect the cargoes. What changes with Russia “suspending” its own deal with Ankara and the UN, is that from now on, Moscow can proceed any way it deems fit to neutralize terrorist threats and even invade and take over Ukrainian ports: that will not represent a violation of the deal with Ankara and the UN. sSo in this respect, it is a game-changer.

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“For decades in the Soviet Union, and later in Russia, draftees were required to serve for two years in infantry units and three years in the Navy.”

• Russian MP Urges Doubling Of Military Service Time (RT)

Russia could extend the term of compulsory military service from one to two years, Viktor Bondarev, a senator who chairs the defense committee of the upper chamber of the parliament, has said. Bondarev said that consultations on the topic would be held with the Defense Ministry. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that President Vladimir Putin’s administration has “no stance”on the issue. Speaking to Russia’s RIA Novosti media outlet on Thursday, Bondarev said: “We absolutely need to introduce a two-year stint of military service.” He explained that the twelve months that draftees must currently serve are not enough to become acquainted with modern weaponry.

The senator refused to specify a time frame for the proposed change to be implemented. “I think all of this will be supported,”Bondarev concluded, arguing that “it’s life itself that is telling us that we must do it.” Calls to extend compulsory military service have previously been made by other Russian lawmakers. When asked for comment on the proposal, Peskov told journalists on Thursday that “the final say here should rest with the Defense Ministry.” He said that any changes should be dictated by the ministry’s needs, adding that it had not requested an extension of the current military service term. “We see statements, read [them], but here we have no stance on this matter,” Peskov said.

The current one-year period of mandatory military service for draftees was introduced back in 2008 as part of a major reform of the Russian army instigated by the government. The authorities were seeking to transition away from a conscript army to a professional one. For decades in the Soviet Union, and later in Russia, draftees were required to serve for two years in infantry units and three years in the Navy.

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“..the IMF admits it cannot tell how much of the $35 billion in foreign cash grants and loans promised to Kiev has been disbursed, or to whom..”

• Thieves’ Paradise In Kiev (Helmer)

A new report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reveals that the Ukraine has become a thieves’ paradise in which corporate loan defaults are written off; embezzlement from banks is not traced; the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) no longer audits the country’s bank liabilities and reserves; and the IMF admits it cannot tell how much of the $35 billion in foreign cash grants and loans promised to Kiev has been disbursed, or to whom. “Disbursements of all committed funds over the remaining months of the year is urgently needed and will make a difference,” declares Kristalina Georgieva (lead image), the IMF Managing director since 2019, “especially in light of the recent horrific damage to energy infrastructure.” Georgieva was speaking in Berlin on October 25.

“In a best-case scenario,” she added, “we estimate that Ukraine’s financing needs would be about $3 billion per month. When we incorporate some additional financing for higher gas imports and some repair of critical infrastructure, we quickly reach $4 billion per month. The recent missile attacks, which have clearly caused much more damage, not only confirms the validity of these estimates but leads us to consider $5 billion upper range.” However, in a 32-page IMF staff report on the state of Ukrainian budget finance and the risk of system-wide financial collapse, the Fund experts have concluded that “large-scale forbearance with a delayed recognition of NPLs [commercial bank non-performing loans] and the suspension of NBU enforcement actions and audits of financial statements make a comprehensive assessment of the impact of the war difficult and uncertain.” [..]

“Uncertainty” is IMF officialspeak for black hole. “The balance of probabilities,” according to the staff paper dated October 3, “would suggest that Ukraine has an unsustainable level of debt.” According to the Fund rules, this should suspend or stop IMF and all other foreign government cashflows. Georgieva and the IMF board, dominated by the US, say otherwise. The black hole, the staff report goes on to say, is “unique to the extreme circumstances now prevailing in Ukraine, [so] very high uncertainty makes it difficult, at present, to estimate with sufficient precision the impact of the war on the debt outlook, and what would be required to restore sustainability.” sInstead, they have accepted a promise issued in a letter to the Fund dated October 1 from the Ukrainian Finance Minister Sergei Marchenko and NBU Governor Kirill Shevchenko.

“We commit to undergoing a new safeguards assessment of the National Bank of Ukraine and will continue providing IMF staff with the NBU’s audit reports and authorize its external auditors to hold discussions with staff.” This is a future promise. The NBU audit reports already received by the Fund in Washington ought to show exactly how much foreign cash has been received at the NBU, and what has happened to it in the disbursement throughout the Ukrainian public finance system. They don’t. In fact, the staff report tables show “disbursed and prospective official financing” conflating the two numbers together, and treating both as imprecise and unreliable because they are “2022 proj[ected].”

Read more …

Are they going to extradite their citizens?

• Turkey Holds Off On Finland And Sweden In NATO (DW)

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu poured cold water over Sweden and Finland’s aspirations to rapidly join NATO on Thursday, saying that, despite some progress, the countries had not met all the conditions of the three-way deal struck to allow them to enter the military alliance. “Both countries are expressing that they are committed to the memorandum, but what matters is the execution,” Cavusoglu said at a press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Istanbul, according to a translation by Turkish broadcaster TRT. Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO in May, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but has faced opposition from Ankara, which accused the countries of supporting “terrorism” by harboring Kurdish militants wanted by the Turkish state.

The three countries struck a deal in June in which the Nordic states pledged to “address Turkey’s pending deportation or extradition requests of terror suspects expeditiously” and lift an alleged arms embargo on Ankara. The agreement cleared the only major obstacle for the countries to join the military alliance. Unanimous consent from the 30 NATO members is necessary. Cavusoglu said the countries had made positive steps, such as with export rules. “But, he added, “right now we cannot say that all those commitments have been lived up [to] by those countries.” Stoltenberg, who met with leaders from Sweden and Finland in recent days, said the countries were doing their bit to implement the joint memorandum. Sweden is in the process of banning membership in terrorist organizations, which will help with the number of people who can be extradited, he noted.

“Sweden and Finland have delivered,” Stoltenberg said. “It is time to welcome Finland and Sweden as full members of NATO,” he said. Having the two already close partners join NATO’s ranks was crucial “to prevent any misunderstanding or miscalculation in Moscow” and to send a clear sign that the alliances door remains open, Stoltenberg stressed.

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Makes sense.

• Sense Of National Unity In Russia On The Rise (RT)

The number of Russians with a sense of national unity has increased dramatically amid Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) reported on Thursday. According to a new poll from the center published on the eve of Unity Day, 56% of respondents believe there is national unity in Russia. This is “the maximum figure since the measurements started,” VCIOM said, noting that, last year, only 31% of Russians reported sharing this view. In 2012, when the survey was conducted for the first time, those who believed that the country was unified was less than 23%, while 56% believed there was no such thing. “Russians themselves point to positive changes. Every other person believes that national unity in the country has increased over the past year (49%),” VCIOM said.


Around 15% of respondents view the peaceful coexistence of different people in Russia as a key manifestation of unity, and 9% believe that “at difficult times, Russia comes together” – the same percentage say the “majority of the population supports one leader and his policy.” Among those who believe there is unity, 28% say this is due to the attitude of Western countries towards Russia amid the military operation in Ukraine. According to the research center, which interviewed 1,600 adults by phone on October 28, all socio-demographic groups have a sense of “the unity of the people” in a more or less similar way – this is stronger in small towns (62%) and villages (60%) than in Moscow and St. Petersburg (both 45%). As would be expected, fewer and fewer people now say that national unity is declining – 37% – compared to last year’s 61%.

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“They fear only God and consider fighting against oppression a religious duty..”

• They Will Never Understand The Islamic Republic (Mirzaei)

Iran is not Libya or Iraq during Saddam Hussein who stood alone in face of a NATO onslaught. Iran is both powerful on its own, and has powerful allies. Tehran is not alone in facing the evil empire and today, not just regional allies but great powers such as Russia and China have major stakes in Iran. Any foreign intervention, or bombing campaign against Iran will be met with missiles raining on Israel and US bases across the entire West Asia. If they want to test the Islamic Republic´s capabilities, then they must be ready to make very big sacrifices, because the era of hit and run attacks is over. The westerners didn’t understand why Iranians were angry at them in 1979 and why they overthrew a “modern king” in favour of a “backward Islamic theocracy”.

Many westerners still cannot understand how the Islamic Republic can be so popular among the Iranian people, and often just refuse to believe it. Why would they understand? They don’t know how 200 years of humiliation and subservience to others feel. They don´t know how it feels to have elected a prime minister, only to see him overthrown by foreigners who returned an unpopular dictator to the throne. They don´t know how it feels to have their country´s natural resources plundered by foreigners for decades. Throughout the years since the Revolution, the Islamic Republic and its allies have given a lot martyrs for the cause of liberating West Asia from the Zionist empire.

From the war against Saddam´s Iraq, where hundreds of thousands of young men were martyred, to the wars against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, these martyrs were inspired and driven by Imam Hussein´s immortal struggle against oppression. This is the ideology on which the Islamic Republic was formed and still rests on. They do not fear the US and its fabled “military might”. They do not fear American “super duper” bombs and missiles. They fear only God and consider fighting against oppression a religious duty, just like Imam Hussein did 1400 years ago. This is what the westerners do not understand when they try to intimidate Iran and its allies.

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Again: Why does the US have biolabs in Ukraine?

• UN Security Council Votes Against Probe Into US Biolabs (RT)

The UN Security Council has rejected Russia’s call for an international investigation into claims that the US used laboratories in Ukraine to develop biological weapons. While China backed Russia’s proposal, the US, Britain, and France voted against it, and the ten rotating council members abstained. Russia insists that the US and Ukraine have been violating the 1972 international convention that bans the development, production, and stockpiling of biological weapons. According to Moscow, several laboratories in Ukraine were working on a secret “military-biological” program, which involved studies and the stockpiling of samples of anthrax, cholera, and other infectious diseases.

Washington and Kiev both deny developing biological weapons. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said in March that the laboratories were conducting “ordinary scientific research.” During the vote in the Security Council on Wednesday, US envoy, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, argued that the Russian proposal for a probe is “based on disinformation, dishonesty, bad faith, and a total lack of respect for this body.” Thomas-Greenfield reiterated that the activities under the Pentagon’s Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program in Ukraine and other former Soviet states “are not for military purposes.

The US Mission to International Organizations in Geneva, Switzerland said in April that the CTR’s goal in Ukraine was to help the country “consolidate and secure pathogens and to continue to ensure Ukraine can detect and report disease outbreaks before they pose security or stability threats.” Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s deputy envoy to the UN, meanwhile, said he was “deeply disappointed” by the vote. He said “the Western countries are simply afraid” of an international investigation into the issue.

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“To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended..”

• Twitter’s “Red Wedding” Moment Arrives As Musk Layoffs Begin (ZH)

Twitter – long considered a safe space for election-influencing jackboots drunk on their own arrogance – is having its ‘Red Wedding’ moment, as one Employee characterized the widely anticipated mass layoffs following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media giant. Indeed, with the abruptness of a guillotine, the company’s 7,500 employees were suddenly notified in a Thursday email that the layoffs had begun. According to the NY Times, workers were instructed to go home and not come back on Friday as the cuts proceeded. “In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global work force,” read the email. “We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.”

According to previous internal messages and an investor, around half of Twitter’s employees were just laid off – however the final number is unknown. On Wednesday employees circulated a message on Slack that suggested 3,738 people could be fired, but that changes could still be made to the list. On Thursday evening, employees posted heart emojis and salutes in their Slack channel. The mass layoffs come a little more than a week after Musk completed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter – after which he immediately fired its chief executive and other top managers, while other execs have since resigned or were fired. Managers were asked to make lists of employees based on performance. Meanwhile, Musk brought over 50 engineers and employees from his other businesses – including Tesla – to assist with the firings.

[..] “Has the red wedding started?” one employee wrote on Slack, a reference to a massacre scene in “Game of Thrones.” Nine minutes later, the company sent the email informing workers of the layoffs. Employees who will keep their jobs would receive a message saying so on their corporate accounts, the message said, while employees being laid off would be notified on their personal accounts. As the Times further points out, keeping employees out of the office on Friday means that laid off workers can’t take any items from the company (or sabotage it). “To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended,” the email continues.

Read more …

” Multinational corporations are political entities.”

• Multinational Advertisers Begin Pulling Out of Twitter (CTH)

In the prediction section of the recent Twitter discussion CTH mentioned the reason and unspoken motive behind a prediction that multinational corporations would start to pull their advertising money from Elon Musk. We are simply in an era where there is no distinction between the WEF guidance for multinational corporations and the instructions toward governments’ they support. Free speech and freedom of expression are against both their interests. Multinational corporations are political entities. The former distinctions between the private and public sector have been purposefully erased. Evidence can be found in the vaccination mandate and within corporate responses to voter outcomes during elections. As predicted, it begins….

(Via Wall Street Journal) –” Food company General Mills Inc., Oreo maker Mondelez International Inc., Pfizer Inc. and Volkswagen/Audi are among a growing list of brands that have temporarily paused their Twitter advertising in the wake of the takeover of the company by Elon Musk, according to people familiar with the matter. Some advertisers are concerned that Mr. Musk could scale back content moderation, which they worry would lead to an increase in objectionable content on the platform. Others are temporarily halting their ads because of the uncertainty at the company as top executives exit and Mr. Musk considers a raft of changes, some of the people said. Kelsey Roemhildt, a spokeswoman for General Mills, whose brands include Cheerios, Bisquick and Häagen-Dazs, confirmed the company has paused Twitter ads.”

Fascism was traditionally defined as an authoritarian government working hand-in-glove with corporations to achieve objectives. A centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, using severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition. That system of government didn’t work in the long-term, because the underlying principles of free people reject government authoritarianism. Fascist governments collapsed, and the corporate beneficiaries were nulled and scorned for participating. Then, along came a new approach to achieve the same objective.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) was created to use the same fundamental associations of government and corporations. Only this time, it was the multinational corporations who organized to tell the government(s) what to do. The WEF was organized for multinational corporations to assemble and tell the various governments how to cooperate with them, in order to be rewarded by them. Corporatism was/is the outcome. The government is now doing what the multinationals tell them to do, and in return the multinationals install the compliant politicians.[..] What results is a slightly modified definition of fascism: “…A massive multinational corporate conglomerate; telling a centralized autocratic government leader what to do; and using severe economic and social regimentation as a control mechanism; combined with forcible suppression of opposition by both the corporations and government.”

Read more …

Put Fauci on the stand.

• Judge Rejects Attempt To Block Censorship Depositions Of Biden Officials (JTN)

A judge has rejected an attempt by several top Biden administration officials to keep them from having to testify in a lawsuit alleging the administration colluded with social media companies to suppress opposing viewpoints. Judge Terry Doughty, of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, on Wednesday denied the partial stays requests from Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly and White House Digital Strategy Director Rob Flaherty.


Other defendants in the case filed last month by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry include White House Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and former Disinformation Governance Board Director Nina Jankowicz. The attorneys general alleged the administration worked to encourage social media platforms to censor “disfavored” views and speakers. “The Court finds that both the public interest and the interest of the other parties in preserving free speech significantly outweigh the inconvenience the three deponents will have in preparing for and giving their depositions,” Doughty, a Trump appointee, wrote in his ruling this week.

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“We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.”

• GOP Rep. Asks Musk About Twitter Censorship of Hunter Biden Laptop Story (ET)

A Republican congressman is urging Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, to hand over all records related to the social media company’s suppression of a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the weeks leading to the 2020 presidential election. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, said in a letter that he expects Twitter’s new leadership to cooperate with the investigation into “the Biden family’s pattern of influence peddling to enrich themselves and President Biden’s involvement in these schemes.” “As part of this investigation, Committee Republicans are reviewing the role Big Tech—including Twitter—played in supporting the Biden campaign in 2020 by suppressing certain stories implicating the Bidens,” Comer wrote in an Oct. 28 letter to Musk.

A previous attempt to obtain relevant information from Twitter was unsuccessful, according to Comer, as former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal never responded to the congressional request that the company “preserve all documents and communications” regarding the decision to limit the reach of a New York Post article about emails retrieved from Hunter Biden’s laptop. Those emails, according to the Post, showed a direct link then-presidential candidate Joe Biden had with his son’s dubious business dealings in China and Ukraine. Shortly after the story’s publication, Twitter not only prohibited users from sharing it, but also suspended the Post’s account for two weeks. Users who tried to share the story’s link were greeted with a message saying, “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.”

Those who tried to open the link in existing posts were also warned that it was “potentially spammy and unsafe.” Meanwhile, Facebook also algorithmically censored the laptop story after getting a general warning against “Russian disinformation” from the FBI. Musk has expressed sympathy with the Post, saying in April that “suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate.” In a more recent post, the billionaire said the reason he acquired Twitter is that “it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence.”

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Going after Trump again.

• DOJ Mulls Special Counsel Investigation Should Trump Run Again (JTN)

Department of Justice officials have reportedly discussed the possibility of appointing a special counsel to oversee the investigations related to former President Donald Trump should he opt to run again for the nation’s top job in 2024. Though they are waiting for the midterm elections to pass before making major public moves, the DOJ is reportedly bringing on additional experienced prosecutors and preparing for a potential slew of indictments against major figures in Trump world, CNN reported, citing “sources familiar with the matter.” “Now federal investigators are planning for a burst of post-election activity in Trump-related investigations,” CNN reported.

“That includes the prospect of indictments of Trump’s associates – moves that could be made more complicated if Trump declares a run for the presidency.” Trump has previously faced a special counsel investigation from Robert Mueller, who explored the now-thoroughly-debunked Trump-Russia collusion narrative. While the DOJ seeks to avoid the appearance of partisan political activity, federal officials have already prompted a bevy of external criticism for alleged political persecution, most notably in the wake of the FBI’s raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in early August.

Officials reportedly hope that an independent special counsel handling Trump matters might insulate the DOJ somewhat from accusations of partisanship, though Trump-related issues are far from the only matters attracting such scrutiny. Whistleblowers have come forward from within the bureau over the alleged bias senior officials have shown in their handling of sensitive investigations, especially those involving Trump or first son Hunter Biden. While Trump has not yet made any formal announcement of his candidacy, he has repeatedly hinted that he plans to seek another term in the White House.

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And again…

• New York Judge Appoints Monitor To Oversee Trump Organization Dealings (JTN)

A New York judge on Thursday handed state Attorney General Letitia James a big win in her civil fraud case against the Trump Organization by appointing an independent monitor to oversee the company’s major financial transactions. Justice Arthur Engoron also required the company to secure court approval before transferring its major assets, per NBC. Under the terms, the monitor will require 30 days’ advance notice of any company restructuring or plans for “disposing or refinancing of significant Trump Organization assets.”

Trump attorney Chris Kise denounced the order, insisting that “It’s really about seizing control of a successful company,” but James’s office insists the order was necessary to guard against “ongoing fraudulent activity or deceptive activity.” The “Trump Organization has a consistent record of not complying with court orders. It should not be incumbent on the court or the attorney general to be looking over their shoulder,” said Kevin Wallace, an attorney with James’s office, per the outlet. James filed the request for an injunction against the Trump Organization in mid-October, asserting that the company was restructuring to avoid legal obligations.

“The Trump Organization now appears to be taking steps to restructure its business to avoid existing responsibilities under New York law,” James wrote at the time. “Indeed, in many areas, the Trump Organization has continued using practices they knew to be improper or fraudulent.” The New York Democrat is pursuing a fraud case against the company, asserting that it has grossly overstated the value of its assets. She has previously rejected a settlement offer from the company and former President Donald Trump himself has denounced the suit as a political witch hunt.

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Biden Union Station
https://twitter.com/i/status/1587967989676122112

 

 

 

 

Weekend at Biden’s

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle November 2 2022

Nov 022022
 
 November 2, 2022  Posted by at 8:33 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  70 Responses »


Balthus Girl at a window 1957

 

• Pentagon Confirms US Boots Are On The Ground In Ukraine (ZH)
• Outrage Ensues After The Atlantic Suggests ‘Amnesty’ For Pandemic Authoritarians (ZH)
• We Need Covid Accountability, Not Amnesty (QTR)
• New World Order: The West Will Have To Live Within Its Means (Karaganov)
• Zelensky ‘Nullified’ Grain Shipping Deal – Russian Duma Speaker (RT)
• There Will Be No Deal – Zelensky Broke The Rules! (Milacic)
• Russia Offers Alternative To Ukraine ‘Grain Deal’ (RT)
• Russia Demands Black Sea Corridor Guarantees From Ukraine (RT)
• Russia Responds To Kiev’s Nuclear Plant ‘Hypocrisy’ (RT)
• Blue Checkers Revolt Over Musk’s Threatened Monthly Charge (Turley)
• UK Households Face ‘Very, Very Hard’ Winter – National Grid (RT)
• Cockamamie Story (Kunstler)
• The Tale of Two Greedy Landlords (Catte Black)
• Censorship and Suppression of Covid-19 Heterodoxy (Springer)
• Fatal Flaw: 42% False Discovery Rate for SARS-CoV-2 nonQ-RT-PCR Test (PR)

 

 

 

 

 

 

GW

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..this is the start of perhaps inevitable ‘mission creep’..”

• Pentagon Confirms US Boots Are On The Ground In Ukraine (ZH)

Two bombshell reports by the Associated Press and Washington Post Monday and Tuesday have confirmed that the United States has boots on the ground in the Ukraine conflict. Crucially, these troops are performing tasks separate from mere embassy security. The American troops are said to be performing “inspections” of US weapon caches after last week the State Department and Pentagon unveiled a new plan to track US-supplied weapons in efforts to implement accountability for the billions of dollars worth of arms and ammunition transferred to Ukrainian forces since near the start of the war eight months ago.

“A small number of U.S. military forces inside Ukraine have recently begun doing onsite inspections to ensure that Ukrainian troops are properly accounting for the Western-provided weapons they receive, a senior U.S. defense official told Pentagon reporters Monday,” the AP/WaPo reporting revealed. A Pentagon briefing confirmed this “small” contingency of troops has been advised to not do inspections “close” to the front lines of fighting: The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide a military update, would not say where the inspections are taking place or how close to the battlefronts the U.S. troops are getting. The official said U.S. personnel can’t do inspections “close to the front lines,” but said they are going where security conditions allow.

There have already been “several inspections” overseen by U.S. Defense attache and a US Office of Defense Cooperation team based out of the Ukrainian capital. The report underscores that “U.S. President Joe Biden has ruled out any combat role for U.S. forces inside Ukraine.” However, what’s clear is that despite the White House’s ruling out of “combat” troops, this is the start of perhaps inevitable ‘mission creep’ – as has been seen in other conflict zones (such as Syria). If US troops are doing inspections of Ukrainian arms and ammo, and presumably Russia is currently targeting any and all Ukrainian military bases, this puts American troops and assets in Russia’s crosshairs, greatly increasing the possibility that the US and Russia could stumble into a direct shooting war.

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“Hey I’m sorry we scared the hell out of you & lied for years & persecuted & censored anyone who disagreed but there was an election going on & we really wanted to beat Donald Trump so it was important to radically politicize the science even if it destroyed your children’s lives.”

• Outrage Ensues After The Atlantic Suggests ‘Amnesty’ For Pandemic Authoritarians (ZH)

The Atlantic has come under fire for suggesting that all the terrible pandemic-era decisions over lockdowns, school closures, masking, and punishing an entire class of people who questioned the efficacy and wisdom of taking a rushed, experimental vaccine – for a virus with a 99% survival rate in most, should all be water under the bridge. “We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID,” writes Brown Professor Emily Oster – a huge lockdown proponent, who now pleads from mercy from the once-shunned. “Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward,” she continues. Except, they weren’t “in the dark” about Covid.


There were numerous sources pointing out the actual science that ran contrary to the mandate claims, and they were deliberately silenced by a vast media campaign. Evidence suggests that media platforms worked in tandem with Big Tech, the CDC and the Biden Administration. It was not a simple matter of overreaction, there was collusion to remove all counter-information. Nice try, Emily. As the Daily Sceptic’s Michael P. Senger puts it: “There’s a lot wrong here. First, no, you don’t get to advocate policies that do extraordinary harm to others, against their wishes, then say, “We didn’t know any better at the time!” Ignorance doesn’t work as an excuse when the policies involved abrogating your fellow citizens’ rights under an indefinite state of emergency, while censoring and cancelling those who weren’t as ignorant. The inevitable result would be a society in which ignorance and obedience to the opinion of the mob would be the only safe position.”

And look at that ratio: In one epic Twitter thread, Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Matthew J. Peterson (@docMJP) excoriates Oster’s entire premise; “Hey—sorry you lost your job b/c of the vax that doesn’t work and your grandmother died alone and you couldn’t have a funeral and your brother’s business was needlessly destroyed and your kids have weird heart problems—but let’s just admit we were all wrong and call a truce, eh? It’s too bad we shut the entire economy down & took on tyrannical powers that have never been used before in this country—looking back, you should have been able to go to church and use public parks while we let people riot in the streets—but it was a confusing time for everyone.

Hey I’m sorry we scared the hell out of you & lied for years & persecuted & censored anyone who disagreed but there was an election going on & we really wanted to beat Donald Trump so it was important to radically politicize the science even if it destroyed your children’s lives. OK, yes we said unvaccinated people should die & not get healthcare while never questioning Big Pharma once but we are compassionate people which is why even though we shut down the entire economy we also bankrupted the nation & caused inflation. You’re welcome! Let’s be friends.”As QTR’s Fringe Finance notes, Oster’s plea for the decency that her ilk failed to offer up to most Americans during the throws of the pandemic comes at a point where the Covid narrative has been all but lost by the Democrats and the mainstream media.

There have been several recent large wins for the unvaccinated who had the constitution and backbone to stand up for themselves throughout a year of being constantly berated and ferociously scorned as second class citizens.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1587148452055629826

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Starting with Emily Oster and the Atlantic..

• We Need Covid Accountability, Not Amnesty (QTR)

And now Emily Oster has the gall to write a ho-hum style piece calling for “amnesty” with nary a worthy apology to be seen? Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to see any common sense making its way through the cracks. I support the apologies to the unvaccinated and the court rulings because I think they are just. I haven’t been gloating about them because I’m over the topic in general and because I’m simply ready to move on and not dwell on it. But the same hubris and arrogance that caused all of this poor decision-making to begin with is still dripping off of The Atlantic’s latest “mea culpa”, which makes an attempt to rewrite history and trivializes the trauma many endured. “Some of these choices turned out better than others,” the article casually writes at one point.

At another point, like an alcoholic who can’t stop himself from taking another swig from the bottle, it begrudgingly has to make a perfunctory and obligatory reference to “misinformation”: We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty. We can leave out the willful purveyors of actual misinformation while forgiving the hard calls that people had no choice but to make with imperfect knowledge. Instead of an apology, we are left with this kumbaya moment: The standard saying is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop as well. Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward.


The Atlantic article can lead me to only one conclusion: many of the left simply don’t know how to apologize. After all, it wasn’t enough to tell honest people that they were wrong during the course of the pandemic for decisions that turned out to be right, The Atlantic now wants to tell them they’re wrong again if they don’t forgive those who made their lives hell over the last two years. A little tip for The Atlantic: next time, write a piece focused on apologizing instead of issuing orders about exactly how, when and why people should be forgiving you. In case you didn’t notice, it was trying to micromanage other peoples’ lives that got you in this mess in the first place. Talk to us when you offer up accountability, not amnesty.

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Professor Sergey Karaganov, honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and academic supervisor at the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow

• New World Order: The West Will Have To Live Within Its Means (Karaganov)

We are living in a dangerous period, on the brink of a full-fledged third world war that could end humanity’s existence. But if Russia wins, which is more than likely, and the hostilities do not escalate into a full-blown nuclear conflict, we should not look at the coming decades as a time of dangerous chaos (as most in the West are saying). We have been living in this period for a long time. It will be, if we choose a world of constructive creation and the attainment of freedom, justice and dignity by peoples and nations. The old system of institutions and regimes has already collapsed (freedom of trade and respect for private property). Meanwhile, institutions like the WTO, the World Bank the IMF, the OSCE and the EU are, I am afraid, reaching their last years.

New bodies are beginning to emerge to which the future belongs. They are the SCO, ASEAN+, the Organisation of African Unity and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The Asian Development Bank is already lending many times more than the World Bank. Not all new institutions will survive, and let us hope that a number of them will survive, especially in the UN system, which urgently needs reform to primarily represent the Global Majority in the secretariat, rather than the West. The main thing is to prevent a losing West from stalling history or derailing it through a world war. Not only Global Majority countries, but Western countries can live quite happily in this world.

The West will simply lose the opportunity to plunder the rest of the planet and it will have to shrink a bit. They will have to live within their means. I am afraid that this new world taking shape now will be created beyond my intellectual or physical life. But my young colleagues and certainly their children will see it. But this beautiful vision has to be fought for, first of all by preventing a third world war, because of the attempted revenge of the West. Again, it was in Europe that the first two world wars were unleashed. Russia is now fighting, among other things, to ensure that the prerequisites for a third are not ripe. But conflicts will occur in an era of rapid change. So the struggle for peace should be one of the main themes of our intellectual community and the world at large.

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Wonder how this will end.

• Zelensky ‘Nullified’ Grain Shipping Deal – Russian Duma Speaker (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has rendered the internationally brokered grain shipping agreement void by using the safe passage in the Black Sea to strike Russian warships, Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, said. Moscow claims that Kiev dispatched attack drones via the route designated for grain vessels. “The resumption of the grain deal is impossible as long as the safe corridor is being used for terrorist attacks,” Volodin wrote on his Telegram channel on Tuesday. “With his actions, Zelensky has nullified all of the agreements that were brokered by Türkiye and the UN. ”The senior legislator said the use of the safe corridor for the attack on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is “unacceptable” and that the grain agreement “cannot exist on the old terms.”

Under the deal struck in July, the sides agreed to unblock the export of grain and other agricultural products from Ukrainian ports. Ukraine, a major producer, is among the vital suppliers of wheat, corn, and barley. On Saturday, Moscow accused Kiev of sending aerial and seaborne drones to strike warships in the city of Sevastopol in Crimea, which hosts a naval base. A minesweeper was damaged in the raid, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. The ministry claimed that the drones moved along the corridor set up for grain ships, and that one device may have been launched from a civilian vessel hired to transport grain. Moscow also said that a British Navy unit masterminded the attack. London has dismissed the accusation. Russia subsequently announced the closure of the corridor on Monday.

Zelensky accused Russia of blackmail and “deliberately exacerbating the food crisis.” Speaking to reporters on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that only 3-5% of grain that had been shipped through the safe corridor went to poorer countries. The UN, however, reported last month that 27% of the ships went to “low and lower-middle income countries” such as Egypt, Kenya, and Bangladesh. It said that 26% went to “upper-middle income countries” such as Türkiye and China, while 47% went to “high-income”nations such as Spain and Italy.

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“Western insurance companies, despite official permission, refused to insure cargoes of food and fertilizers from Russian ports under various pretexts.”

• There Will Be No Deal – Zelensky Broke The Rules! (Milacic)

Just a few hours after the attack by sea “drones” on the ships of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation in the early morning of October 29, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced the suspension of the “grain deal” – an agreement that had been in force since July 22 of this year. The fact that Russian military claims that naval drones have passed through the territory included in the “grain deal”, where there is no Russian fleet – it only made that decision stronger! The “grain deal” allowed Kyiv to freely export grain from the Black Sea ports under the auspices of the UN, in exchange for some easing of sanctions against Russian exports of grain and fertilizers. Formally, this agreement was strictly humanitarian and its sole purpose was to provide grain to the countries of Africa and Southeast Asia, dependent on food imports.

During the passage of the Bosporus, ships traveling from Ukraine and back were examined by UN inspectors to exclude the possible import and export of prohibited goods. But the Kremlin did not receive its benefit from the deal … Ukraine, having unblocked the export of grain by sea, at the same time was able to unload land communications and receive a significant income from the export of agricultural products. In addition, its Western partners were once again able to resell Ukrainian grain, which, with the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, rose significantly in price. But Russia continued to face difficulties in securing the export of its grain. Western insurance companies, despite official permission, refused to insure cargoes of food and fertilizers from Russian ports under various pretexts.

At the same time, information was increasingly appearing in the media that American and European authorities were putting significant pressure on insurers. Naturally, Moscow was more and more dissatisfied with the terms of the deal concluded before November 19 and doubted the possibility of its extension. The attack on Sevastopol gave the Kremlin a great trump card – the deal was instantly suspended, although the Russian fleet did not suffer significant damage. The military response of Russia also followed very quickly, the communications center and the base of the special forces of the Ukrainian fleet in Ochakiv were destroyed. However, both the attack on the Russian base and the actual breach of the deal with Russian exports are just the tip of the iceberg.

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“Currently, Russia is “not ready to say” what conditions would have to be met for it to resume its participation in the deal.”

• Russia Offers Alternative To Ukraine ‘Grain Deal’ (RT)

Russia is ready to provide poorer grain-importing nations with supplies from its own stocks to replace Ukrainian exports, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Monday. Earlier, Russia suspended its participation in the so-called “grain deal” with Ukraine following an attack on its navy base in Sevastopol. “We can guarantee the Russian side’s readiness to compensate for the missing [grain export] volumes from its own stocks,” Peskov said. Earlier, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said Moscow would continue to support African nations despite halting its compliance with the pact. The Kremlin spokesman also said only a tiny portion of all Ukrainian agricultural products exported under the deal were destined for the poorest nations anyway, while “not-so-poor nations located in Europe got the rest.”

Moscow also believes that the grain deal between Russia and Ukraine, which was reached in Istanbul with UN and Turkish mediation, is now in limbo for security reasons. “The deal could hardly be implemented when Russia says it cannot guarantee maritime security in the designated waters” of the Black Sea, Peskov said, adding that the implementation of the agreement is now “much more risky, dangerous and not guaranteed.” The Kremlin has not said the deal is dead altogether, however. Moscow is “still in contact” with other parties, including the UN and Türkiye, Peskov said. Currently, Russia is “not ready to say” what conditions would have to be met for it to resume its participation in the deal.

Under the agreement reached in July, Russia provided a secure “grain corridor” through the Black Sea waters to facilitate the exportation of Ukrainian agricultural products. The agreement was praised as critical for easing the global food crisis and helping the world’s poorest nations to avoid starvation. Last week’s decision by Russia to halt its compliance with the deal caused a grain price surge. Moscow suspended its participation in the deal last week after a massive drone attack on its naval base in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the naval drones launched as part of the attack used the grain corridor to reach their targets and one of them may even have been launched from a civilian vessel supposedly chartered to ship Ukrainian grain.

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“Moscow is now ready to supply African nations with “large volumes” of grain and fertilizers out of its own stocks for free..”

• Russia Demands Black Sea Corridor Guarantees From Ukraine (RT)

Kiev should provide “real guarantees” that it would not use the Black Sea corridor created as part of an Istanbul grain deal in its military activities, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a phone conversation on Tuesday. The two were discussing the circumstances that could convince Moscow to return to its own commitments under the agreement. Russia indefinitely suspended its participation in the deal last week following a massive drone attack on its naval base in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol. Some of the naval drones launched by Kiev allegedly used the Black Sea grain corridor’s security zone to close in on their targets, according to the Russian military.

“It is necessary to conduct a detailed investigation of … this incident, as well as to get real guarantees from Kiev that it would rigorously abide by the Istanbul agreements, including the non-use of the humanitarian corridor for military purposes,” the Russian president said, according to the Kremlin’s press release. Russia would only consider re-opening this corridor if that happened, Putin added. He also pointed out that the part of the deal that involved lifting restrictions on Russia’s own agricultural and fertilizer exports had never been implemented. The corridor was touted as a way to secure food supplies to the neediest nations as a matter of priority. But this goal has not been reached in the three months since the agreement was established, Putin noted. “Moscow is now ready to supply African nations with “large volumes” of grain and fertilizers out of its own stocks for free, the president confirmed.

The Russian military closed the Black Sea grain corridor on Monday, arguing that its security could not be guaranteed while Kiev used it for military purposes. Moscow had previously blamed Ukraine and UK Navy specialists for the attack on Sevastopol. London has dismissed the accusation. The Russian Defense Ministry said that the corridor would stay closed at least until all the circumstances of the attack were established. Russia has also repeatedly said that it has not left the deal entirely but only suspended its own commitments under the agreement. In the wake of Moscow’s decision, the UN insisted that “food must flow” regardless of the circumstances. Civilian vessels “can never be a military target or held hostage,” the UN coordinator for the Black Sea grain initiative, Amir Abdulla, said.

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“Ukrainian troops are shelling the region almost on a daily basis, threatening the lives and safety of people, but they keep silent about it, while expressing concerns about the fish..”

• Russia Responds To Kiev’s Nuclear Plant ‘Hypocrisy’ (RT)

Kiev’s accusations that Moscow is responsible for an alleged environmental disaster at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant sound hypocritical, given that Ukraine has been constantly targeting the facility, Vladimir Rogov, a member of the administration of Russia’s Zaporozhye Region, said on Tuesday. His statement comes after the Ukrainian state-owned operator, Energoatom, claimed that Russian actions had led to a massive die-off of fish in the facility’s cooling pond.Rogov denounced Kiev’s accusations as the “wildest hypocrisy that knows no bounds.” “Ukrainian troops are shelling the region almost on a daily basis, threatening the lives and safety of people, but they keep silent about it, while expressing concerns about the fish,” he told RIA Novosti.

Moreover, he noted that the plant’s energy units had been shut down precisely because Kiev’s forces have been constantly targeting the area around the facility. On Monday, Ukraine’s Energoatom said that the shutdown of the plant’s energy units had resulted in a decrease in the water temperature in the cooling pond, which led to “mass fish death.” The fish had been “performing a sanitary function” by destroying the green algae and cleaning the cooling tubes of the turbine condenser, it said. However, Ukraine had gone to great lengths to paralyze the plant’s operations and prevent it from coming online again, according to Rogov.

The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which is Europe’s largest, has been under Russian control since March. Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin officially placed the facility under Moscow’s management. The Russian leader signed the relevant order as Moscow was finalizing the accession of Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions, as well as the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, to Russia following referendums that overwhelmingly supported the move. Russia has on numerous occasions accused Ukraine of shelling the Zaporozhye facility, warning that the attacks could lead to a nuclear disaster. Kiev has denied the allegations, blaming Russia for the shelling instead.

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“Musk is looking for ways to reduce the dependency on advertisers and many of us would support that effort.”

• Blue Checkers Revolt Over Musk’s Threatened Monthly Charge (Turley)

As a regular MSNBC pundit is calling for Elon Musk to be stripped of his citizenship for trying to reintroduce free speech protections to Twitter, the new owner is outraging blue checkers by suggesting a monthly charge for verified users. Figures like CNBC’s Jim Cramer declared: “I’m not paying them anything. They should pay me.” Some of us would be willing to pay an added monthly fee to support a true free speech alternative on social media if Musk keeps his word. Of course, for full disclosure, I would first have to get a blue check to get charged for a blue check. I have been barred from being verified for years by Twitter despite being a columnist for newspapers like USA Today and the Hill as well as a legal analyst for CBS, NBC, BBC, and now Fox over the last two decades.

I have been ranked in the top five law professors on Twitter, but I was still turned me down over a dozen times under multiple categories. I have previously joked about the bar on verification and I am not sure how much the blue check honestly does for individuals. Indeed, there are some advantages. I can presumably deny prior statements since they were made by an entirely unverified person using my name for over a decade. Yet, as a long-time critic of Twitter’s censorship system, there has been a long curiosity over the denial. Musk has indicated that he is now looking into such concerns and there may be greater transparency in the weeks to come. However, Musk is looking for ways to reduce the dependency on advertisers and many of us would support that effort.

Recently, General Motors suspended advertising on Twitter until it can evaluate the implications of Musk’s new policies. Some of us immediately criticized the action by GM over the move. The company had no problem with supporting Twitter when it was running one of the largest censorship systems in history — or supporting TikTok (which is Chinese owned and has been denounced for state control and access to data). Twitter has been denounced for years for its bias against conservative and dissenting voices, including presumably many GM customers on the right. None of that was a concern for GM but the pledge to restore free speech to Twitter warrants a suspension.

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“..rolling blackouts could happen during “those deepest darkest evenings in January and February..”

• UK Households Face ‘Very, Very Hard’ Winter – National Grid (RT)

Many British households will struggle to pay energy bills this winter that could be double what they are accustomed to despite a government price cap, the National Grid’s CEO, John Pettigrew, has warned. In an interview with the Financial Times on Tuesday, he said he was “under no illusions” and that Brits would find the upcoming winter “financially very, very hard.” “Even with the [taxpayer-funded] price cap this is a doubling-up of what people are used to paying for their energy bills,” Pettigrew said, adding: “Therefore, inevitably there are going to be people who are going to struggle.” The British government has capped the unit cost of energy until April, meaning that an average household would pay about £2,500 ($2,885) over a year on average.

But last winter the equivalent amount was £1,277 ($1,474). Each household will also receive a £400 rebate on utility bills with additional means-tested payments through Social Security benefits. However, that will still be unable to make up the difference given the soaring energy prices. Pettigrew said the National Grid was working on a number of emergency plans to protect the UK against a shortfall of energy from Europe. Earlier, the grid operator’s boss warned that the country could face power cuts on “really cold” evenings this winter due to Europe’s continuing energy squeeze. He said that rolling blackouts could happen during “those deepest darkest evenings in January and February,” likely between 4pm to 7pm.


Such measures were “unlikely,” according to Pettigrew, who warned, however, that there were potential scenarios where Britain’s power generators would fail to secure sufficient supplies from Europe. Normally, during the coldest months and extreme weather events, the UK imports gas and electricity from continental Europe for its gas-fired power plants. However, this year European countries are themselves facing a severe energy crisis exacerbated by anti-Russian sanctions and a sharp decrease in Russian energy supplies.

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Top spot for craziest story.

• Cockamamie Story (Kunstler)

So far, police have not disclosed how DePape journeyed from Berkeley to Pacific Heights at 2:00 o’clock in the morning, about fourteen miles. Did he walk from Berkeley across the Bay Bridge and then halfway across town? Mr. DePape is apparently also known to the police as a gay hustler, that is, a person who sells sex for money. Unless I’m mistaken, the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) has a detective department — experienced men and women who go around the city seeking clues, evidence, and testimony in order to make sense of perplexing crimes — and then solve them! Shall we assume they are on-the-job? Now, Paul Pelosi, 82, who made a $300-million fortune running a car service (also shrewd investments in real estate and the stock market), has been in quite a bit of trouble this year.

On May 28, 2022, he was arrested for Driving Under the Influence (DUI) in Napa (near a vineyard estate he owns with Nancy) when his 2021 Porsche crashed into a 2014 Jeep driven by one “John Doe” (as the police identified him). KGO-TV, ABC’s affiliate in the San Francisco area, said that there was a second person in the Porsche with Pelosi at the time of the accident. He has never been identified. In August, Mr. Pelosi was sentenced to five days in jail, a fine of roughly $7,000, a three-month drinking-and-driving course, eight hours of public service, and having an “interlock” device installed on his car that would require him to blow into an alcohol sensor before the engine can ignite. By any chance, were the Napa Police or the County Court contacted in the matter at some point by the US Capitol Police or the FBI? We may never know.

If David DePape didn’t walk fourteen miles from Berkeley to Pacific Heights, or take a cab (expensive), how did he get there? Here’s a theory: he rode the BART subway from Berkeley to the Church Street and Mission station in the city, a five-minute walk to the Castro, San Francisco’s fabled gay district. Sometime before 2:00 a.m. closing time, he met up in a bar there with Paul Pelosi, who drove DePape to the Pelosi house in a car not equipped with an interlock device. That is to say, David DePape was let into the house by Mr. Pelosi. The police and the news media have theorized that DePape broke into the place by smashing a glass door in back. Uh-huh…. Ask yourself: would there not be an alarm system at least on all the ground floor windows and doors in the house? Would there not be security cameras on the back side of the house — the side that burglars might prefer, if they could get over the wall?

Would the Speaker of the House, with a discretionary budget on top of a $300-million fortune, and in a time of epic political rancor, not have a team of security guards in place at her private home? Initial news media chatter had both DePape and Paul Pelosi dressed in their underwear, struggling over a hammer which turned out to belong to Mr. Pelosi. Not until the police entered the house did DePape wrest the hammer from Mr. Pelosi and commence to brain him with it. What does the arrest report actually say about the two men’s state-of-dress? It is not public information. How and why were the police just watching until DePape assaulted Mr. Pelosi — who was hospitalized afterward and had surgery on his cracked skull? (Uh, how did a blow that literally broke his skull not kill the elderly Mr. Pelosi?)

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“what would we do without the Banker to guide us!?”

• The Tale of Two Greedy Landlords (Catte Black)

Once upon a time in a land far away and in a time of plenty there were two rich and prosperous Landlords who each owned large and spacious adjoining buildings wherein many people lived. The apartments were warm and comfortable and every week there was a market where grain was brought from Landlord B’s land and fruit and meat and vegetables from Landlord A’s. While wood from Landlord B’s copses kept the Communal Woodpile stocked with seasoned logs. Everyone was happy. The Landlords were both friends with a Banker. The Banker was richer than both the Landlords combined and in fact he owned their houses and their land and watched carefully what they did with them. And one day he invited them to a sumptuous dinner at his house and said “things could be better”.

“How could things be better, friend Banker?” asked Landlord B, “there is food in our granaries and money in our coffers, and everyone is happy”. “Your people are charged too little for too much luxury. They expect fuel for their stoves and food in their markets, and are never grateful enough to you for your kindness.” The two Landlords looked at each other and realized this might be true, for they rarely disagreed with the Banker. “Yes,” said Landlord A, sadly shaking his head, “our people are feckless children that never give enough thanks for our largesse, but alas, what can we do?”. “They need to be taught their place”, the Banker said. “They need to pay a proper price for what you provide and learn to be grateful. You should triple the price of food from your farms and fuel from the Communal Wood Pile”.

The two Landlords looked at each other in apprehension. They were greedy and liked the sound of this very much, but they were also cowards. “But”, said Landlord B, “but if we do that they may just become annoyed and might refuse to pay or break our windows or our bones and then we will be worse off not better!” This was true. And caused the Landlords to shake their heads regretfully. But the Banker was cleverer than either of them. He merely smiled. “They are children”, he said, “and children require stories in order to learn about life’s harsh truths. So, you will tell them a story”. The two Landlords looked at him, but did not understand.

“You will tell them there is a new and terrible plague which has broken the Supply Chain and consequently fuel and food are three times more expensive!” “But…but there is no new and terrible plague”, stammered Landlord A. “Of course there is”, smiled the Banker, “why else would hundreds of people be dying?” “But hundreds of people are not dying”, stammered Landlord B. “Of course they are,” smiled the Banker, “how could they not when there is a new and terrible plague?” They looked at him for a long time before gradual understanding dawned, and their puzzled frowns turned to smiles. “Of course!” they said in unison, “what would we do without the Banker to guide us!?”

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Pierre Kory, MD MPA @PierreKory:

A high quality Sociology journal finally publishes the truth about what happened in Medical Science during Covid.
Phenomenal paper.
Cue censorship by mass media and social media.
Hope Chief Twit starts making changes fast.

• Censorship and Suppression of Covid-19 Heterodoxy (Springer)

Abstract: The emergence of COVID-19 has led to numerous controversies over COVID-related knowledge and policy. To counter the perceived threat from doctors and scientists who challenge the official position of governmental and intergovernmental health authorities, some supporters of this orthodoxy have moved to censor those who promote dissenting views. The aim of the present study is to explore the experiences and responses of highly accomplished doctors and research scientists from different countries who have been targets of suppression and/or censorship following their publications and statements in relation to COVID-19 that challenge official views.


Our findings point to the central role played by media organizations, and especially by information technology companies, in attempting to stifle debate over COVID-19 policy and measures. In the effort to silence alternative voices, widespread use was made not only of censorship, but of tactics of suppression that damaged the reputations and careers of dissenting doctors and scientists, regardless of their academic or medical status and regardless of their stature prior to expressing a contrary position. In place of open and fair discussion, censorship and suppression of scientific dissent has deleterious and far-reaching implications for medicine, science, and public health.

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Ouch.

• Fatal Flaw: 42% False Discovery Rate for SARS-CoV-2 nonQ-RT-PCR Test (PR)

We have just published a new study that shows that nonQ-RT-PCR (non-quantitative RT-PCR testing as used to diagnose COVID-19 from 2020 to the present day suffers a flaw that ultimately draws into question all of what has been reported on COVID-19 by official channels, including the results of COVID-19. Specifically, assuming a 5% prevalence rate, the high false discovery rate (42%) of the use of nonQ-RT-PCR means


1. For every 50 true positives out of 1,000, a total of 86 people with or without SARS-CoV-2 infection or residual fragments will be reported. Of these, 36 of these will be false positives.
2. For every 50 true positives, 86 people without SARS-CoV-2 infection or residual fragments will be have to be isolated/quarantined. Of these, 36 will not be infected.
3. For every 50 true positives that are tested and found positive in-hospital, 86 people with or without SARS-CoV-2 infection or residual fragments will be told that they “have COVID-19”. If the 36 false positive patients are hospitalized with other COVID-19 patients, they will likely then contract a SARS-CoV-2 infection.
4. The number of “cases” via positive PCR has been overstated by a factor of 72% (the original post read “80:1” assuming a prevalence of 5%).
5. This is true for generic case reporting up until May 2021 when CDC decided to reduce the PCR cycle threshold value (Ct) for the vaccinated to less than 27, leaving the unvaccinated rate biased by high false discovery rate of arbitrarily high Ct, biasing all reported rates in these two groups favoring cases in the unvaccinated from that point on.
6. This +72% bias is true in any clinical trial or any study that used arbitrarily high Ct values, INCLUDING THE VACCINE STUDIES. As a direct result of this fatal flaw, combined with CDC’s gaff “PCR+ = COVID-19″? There are no credible COVID-19 vaccine trial data.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

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