Apr 122022
 


Jean Metzinger Soldier playing chess 1915

 

The WHO Is Building A Global Vaccine Passport (Bexte)
‘Unfriendly Visit’: Austrian Chancellor Meets With Putin (ZH)
Corporate Media Deploys the Big Guns on Ukraine (Ray McGovern)
A Fake Massacre For The Sake Of Real Sanctions (Milacic)
The Pimps of War (Chris Hedges)
The Fascinating Self-Immolation Of Europe (Denninger)
AIDS-Like “Chronic Covid” is Taking Over Europe, Australia and NZ (Chudov)
Kyiv Independent: The West’s In-Kind Answer to Putin’s Propaganda (MP)
US Firm With Ties to WEF, DOD Implicated in Bioweapons Cover-Up (CHD)
Another Suppressed Covid Treatment You Haven’t Heard Of (Blaze)
The Riptide (Jim Kunstler)
Jim Jordan Spots Major Shift In Hunter Biden Story (WE)
The Biden Family Scheme Unravels (Devine)

 

 

The Azov batallion accuses Russia of chemical attacks. And the entire western press parrots them. Next up is Bellingcat confirming this? Credibility is overrated in today’s world. There’s a new Russian massacre every single day, so no-one has the time to care about evidence.

 

 

Dotted line: Biden inauguration.

 

 

Fuelmilch

 

 

Zelkensky thanks Azov

 

 

 

 

“..the push for a global vaccine passport coincides with the WHO’s drafting of a global pandemic treaty, which would legally bind member states to the WHO’s International Health Regulations..”

The WHO Is Building A Global Vaccine Passport (Bexte)

The World Health Organization (WHO) has contracted German-based Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Systems to develop a global vaccine passport system, with plans to link every person on the planet to a QR code digital ID. Indeed, despite the minuscule threat posed by new variants and dubious-at-best vaccine efficacy, the WHO is adamant that a global QR code-based vaccine passport system is vital for all future health emergencies, not just COVID. “COVID-19 affects everyone. Countries will therefore only emerge from the pandemic together. Vaccination certificates that are tamper-proof and digitally verifiable build trust. WHO is therefore supporting member states in building national and regional trust networks and verification technology,” says unit head of the WHO’s Department of Digital Health and Innovation Garrett Mehl.

“The WHO’s gateway service also serves as a bridge between regional systems. It can also be used as part of future vaccination campaigns and home-based records.” It should be noted that besides the moral implications of implementing health-based restrictions in the wake of future pandemics — whether they be COVID, polio, or anything else — a global vaccine passport also brings up national security concerns, as the WHO and its backers would have access to these “home-based records.” In terms of feasibility, as previously reported by Reuters, T-Systems has a lot of experience developing discriminatory health apps, having worked to create Germany’s Corona-Warn-App tracing and Europe’s vaccine passport.

“Corona has a grip on the world. Digitization keeps the world running. Digital vaccination certificates like the EU’s are key to this. We are pleased to be able to support the WHO in the fight against the pandemic,” said T-Systems CEO Adel Al-Saleh. Moreover, as reported by The Counter Signal, the push for a global vaccine passport coincides with the WHO’s drafting of a global pandemic treaty, which would legally bind member states to the WHO’s International Health Regulations and allow the organization to dictate all future pandemic responses, utterly quashing national health sovereignty. The WHO began drafting its treaty in December 2021 during a special session entitled “The World Together.” The treaty is to be upheld by the WHO’s constitution, which under Article 19 “[provides] the World Health Assembly with the authority to adopt conventions or agreements on any matter within WHO’s competence.”

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Austria=EU but not NATO.

‘Unfriendly Visit’: Austrian Chancellor Meets With Putin (ZH)

On Monday Austria’s Chancellor Karl Nehammer became the first EU leader to meet face-to-face with Vladimir Putin since the war began on Feb.24. He said that talks were “open and tough” but that it was “not a friendly visit.” Following the meeting which was at Putin’s Novo-Ogaryovo residence just outside Moscow, the Austrian leader’s office issued a statement saying, “This is not a friendly visit. I have just come from Ukraine and have seen with my own eyes the immeasurable suffering caused by the Russian war of aggression.” Nehammer is said to have confronted Putin on multiple war crimes and human rights abuses alleged against Russian troops during the 75-minute meeting. Austria’s official statement of the meeting continued:

”I addressed the serious war crimes in Bucha and other places and emphasized that all those responsible for them must be held accountable,” Nehammer said, according to the statement. “I also told President Putin in no uncertain terms that sanctions against Russia will remain in place and will continue to be tightened as long as people are dying in Ukraine.” On what’s widely being alleged in the West as the ‘Bucha massacre’ – which left a reported 300 Ukrainian civilians dead, many of them in the streets – Nehammer described that when confronted Putin blamed Ukrainian militants, saying they were “responsible for the crimes in Bucha” and not Russian troops.

The Austrian head of state came under fire for the visit, as going to Moscow to meet Putin face-to-face was hugely controversial in some quarters among EU officials. However, Nehammer described the purpose as to confront the Russian President “with the facts”. “What is important is a personal meeting, phoning is one thing, but you really need to look each other in the eye, you need to talk about the cruelty of war,” Nehammer described of the rationale for the official visit. He told Putin that those guilty of war crimes “have to be brought to justice.”

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“At first I thought it a sickening flashback. Two nights ago, there were Judy Miller and former NATO commander Philip Breedlove on TV pontificating on Ukraine.”

Corporate Media Deploys the Big Guns on Ukraine (Ray McGovern)

Judith Miller and AF General Philip Breedlove are back! At first I thought it a sickening flashback. Two nights ago, there were Judy Miller and former NATO commander Philip Breedlove on TV pontificating on Ukraine. For younger readers, Judy was the NY Times Archdeacon blessing all those reports of “weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (that weren’t there) and ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda (that weren’t there either). As for Breedlove, as a sad sign of the times, he appears (via Radio Free Europe) on Reader Supporter News, with zero allusion to his pedigree on truth and falsehood. Breedlove’s all-too-familiar, damn-the-torpedoes line on the need to confront Russia head-on in Ukraine brought back more sickening memories. For this is precisely what he tried to do – behind President Obama’s back – when he was commander of NATO troops (2013-2016).

It got so bad that we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) sought to warn German Chancellor Angela Merkel about Breedlove’s checkered record for credibility in advance of a NATO summit in early July, 2014. We urged Merkel to temper Breedlove’s distemper. Verbatim excerpts are below: “We longtime U.S. intelligence officers again wish to convey our concerns and cautions directly to you prior to a critically important NATO summit – the meeting that begins on July 8 in Warsaw. We were gratified to learn that our referenced memorandum reached you and your advisers before the NATO summit in Wales, and that others too learned of our initiative via the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which published a full report on our memorandum on Sept. 4, the day that summit began.

“The Warsaw summit is likely to be at least as important as the last one in Wales and is likely to have even more far-reaching consequences. We find troubling – if not surprising – NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s statement at a pre-summit press event on July 4 that NATO members will agree to “further enhance NATOs military presence in the eastern part of the alliance,” adding that the alliance will see its “biggest reinforcement since the Cold War.” “The likelihood of a military clash in the air or at sea – accidental or intentional – has grown sharply, the more so since, as we explain below, President Obama’s control over top US/NATO generals, some of whom like to play cowboy, is tenuous. Accordingly we encourage you, as we did before the last NATO summit, to urge your NATO colleagues to bring a “degree of judicious skepticism” to the table at Warsaw – especially with regard to the perceived threat from Russia.

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It’s one after the other, with no time in between for scrutiny.

A Fake Massacre For The Sake Of Real Sanctions (Milacic)

Brussels is proposing to completely block Russian energy supplies and close ports for Russian ships. This is already a last-ditch measure, after which it will be simply impossible to introduce anything else. However, you’ve got to have something to justify the fast-growing tariffs and prices, so the images and “evidence” from Bucha arrived right in time. The investigation of the events in the Bosnian Srebrenica once allowed ratcheting up anti-Serb sentiments in Europe. Now, Zelensky’s “personal Srebrenica” allows the Ukrainian president to drum up more European support, and ideally, to bring about absolutely unprecedented sanctions against Moscow. The organizers of the “Bucha Scandal” are hardly bothered by the questions that any sane person would ask himself.

Why didn’t the Russian troops, retreating in perfect order and without any pressure from the Kiev garrison (the Russians are not falling back, they are simply moving their forces to the Donbass region) remove the corpses from the streets? They have all the equipment they possibly need to pick up all the dead bodies and take them to the crematorium in Bryansk, thus hiding the traces of their “crimes” once and for all. Why did the Russians evenly distribute the corpses throughout the city and did not shoot Ukrainian activists all in one place? Finally, why didn’t the bloodthirsty Russians burn down and mine the city during their retreat? They had enough time to do that. However, despite all these unanswered questions, Russia will be condemned. London, Washington, Paris and Brussels have already decided everything.

The emergency meeting by UN Security Council will end in nothing as both Russian and Western resolutions will be blocked and the parties will be left even more dissatisfied with each other. Bucha is only the beginning though. The directors working with the good actor, Mr. Zelensky, have surely prepared the second and third acts of this drama for us to watch. They are quite banal, but effective nonetheless. It might be a mass grave and some “torture chambers.” This time round they will prepare better, without hiccups. The victims’ hands will be tied with the same ropes, and secret protocols of interrogations and coerced confessions will be properly signed without errors. What they will hardly be able to explain to a thinking audience, however, is why the Russians would want to commit such atrocities in the first place.

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” Like some mutant strain of an antibiotic-resistant bacteria, they cannot be vanquished.”

The Pimps of War (Chris Hedges)

The same cabal of warmongering pundits, foreign policy specialists and government officials, year after year, debacle after debacle, smugly dodge responsibility for the military fiascos they orchestrate. They are protean, shifting adroitly with the political winds, moving from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party and then back again, mutating from cold warriors to neocons to liberal interventionists. Pseudo intellectuals, they exude a cloying Ivy League snobbery as they sell perpetual fear, perpetual war and a racist worldview, where the lesser breeds of the earth only understand violence.

They are pimps of war, puppets of the Pentagon, a state within a state, and the defense contractors who lavishly fund their think tanks — Project for the New American Century, American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy Initiative, Institute for the Study of War, Atlantic Council and Brookings Institute. Like some mutant strain of an antibiotic-resistant bacteria, they cannot be vanquished. It does not matter how wrong they are, how absurd their theories, how many times they lie or denigrate other cultures and societies as uncivilized or how many murderous military interventions go bad. They are immovable props, the parasitic mandarins of power that are vomited up in the dying days of any empire, including that of the U.S., leaping from one self-defeating catastrophe to the next.

I spent 20 years as a foreign correspondent reporting on the suffering, misery, and murderous rampages these shills for war engineered and funded. My first encounter with them was in Central America. Elliot Abrams — convicted of providing misleading testimony to Congress on the Iran-Contra Affair and later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush so he could return to government to sell us the Iraq War — and Robert Kagan, director of the State Department’s public diplomacy office for Latin America — were propagandists for the brutal military regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala, as well as the rapists and homicidal thugs that made up the rogue Contra forces fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, which they illegally funded. Their job was to discredit our reporting.

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“Ukraine and Russia are at war yet Ukraine is not only allowing the gas to flow which Russia has to sell to fund itself but at the same time they’re still getting paid for the transport!”

The Fascinating Self-Immolation Of Europe (Denninger)

[..] to fill the gap between what was real and what was promised Europe put together pipelines and bought Russian gas and oil — specifically gas. Natural gas is hardly what you’d call “green” but it is more-efficient than coal, simply on energy content. Coal is carbon, or “C” where natural gas is almost-all CH4, or methane. CH4 has more energy that is released when it is burned compared with just the carbon part. But natural gas is not just burned for fuel; it is an essential feedstock for fertilizer, since nitrogen must be “fixed” in order to be usable. If this was not true you wouldn’t need nitrogen in fertilizer at all since about 79% of the atmosphere, which obviously is in contact with the ground, is nitrogen.

Modern agriculture relies on fertilization for the high yields it currently enjoys. Without them significant portions of the world population will undergo famine — and some will die. We have, in short, built a world population model around fossil fuel energy which is not just reliant on it to power cars for personal transportation — it is also reliant on to produce, process and transport the very food required for humans to survive in the density we currently have. Since Europe doesn’t have much natural gas resource where does Europe get all of this? Why, from Russia, which has it in abundance. Now of course trade with Russia is considered a very bad thing. Quite amusingly the people of Europe seem to think they can sanction Russia, essentially impounding or even stealing the money they pay for gas with and thus taking said gas for free, and continue to get more gas.

I’m not sure what sort of mental gymnastics were required to reach that conclusion, but reach it they did. What’s even more insane is the belief that being at war with someone will not ultimately result in them ceasing trade with you entirely, especially when they have something you need and there is another nation, with which they are not at war, willing to buy the product. Contemplate that today many cars are Japanese, Honda and Mazda, to name two. How many cars do you think Japan would have exported to the United States during WWII after Pearl Harbor while the US and Japan were busy with their soldiers all trying to kill one another? Now think about this: What if Europe was buying those cars from Japan, they were not at war with Japan but the US was, and in order to get to Europe the cars had to be shipped through the United States?

Do you really think we’d have “cooperated” with Europe in such an endeavor while the Japanese were blowing up our stuff and shooting at our guys? Do you think Japan would have continued to export said cars? This is the situation we have today with Ukraine in that Ukraine is not the supplier of any of the gas flowing through those pipes — Russia is. Ukraine and Russia are at war yet Ukraine is not only allowing the gas to flow which Russia has to sell to fund itself but at the same time they’re still getting paid for the transport! Exactly what sort of mental gymnastics are involved when you have two nations at war where both are continuing to engage in commerce with each other’s state-owned enterprises and other nations backing one of the combatants is also still engaged in commercial transactions with the belligerent directly via said state-owned enterprises they claim is at fault and don’t want to win? In what sort of insane world do you directly fund the nation who you want to lose a war?

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“Herd immunity is enjoyed only by unvaccinated countries.”

AIDS-Like “Chronic Covid” is Taking Over Europe, Australia and NZ (Chudov)

When Omicron appeared around December of last year, the powers-to-be in most Western countries found themselves in a situation of mass vaccine failure, where a Covid variant Omicron, about infectious as measles, was spreading like wildfire, while at the same time evading vaccine immunity. So, the clever solution was to abolish containment altogether, wish “illness and death” on the unvaccinated people, and hope that the vaccinated world gains “herd immunity” while enjoying relatively low mortality. Unfortunately for them and for us, things did not work out this way. Hospitals are overwhelmed by the vaccinated. Endless Covid short term reinfections, plaguing the UK and the rest of the Western world, are sliding towards “Chronic Covid”. Herd immunity is enjoyed only by unvaccinated countries.

Chronic Covid is a situation where the vaccinated cannot develop natural immunity, cannot quickly clear infections, and remain ill and infectious for extended period of time. Such repeat infections progressively damage their immunity to the point of not being able to clear Covid at all. That would lead to people being chronically infected, infecting others, and overwhelmed with toxic Covid viral proteins, while remaining immunosuppressed. [..] in summary we have original antigenic sin inviting first several reinfections. These reinfections might seem mild outwardly, but fail to clear the virus for up to 9 days. The result of each reinfection is progressive damage to monocytes and the immune systems.

All of this is in addition to numerous reports, much discussed in my and others’ article, that mRNA vaccination itself is damaging to the immune systems. Some people even use term VAIDS to describe such immune problems. I explained this term in my article two months ago. How will it end up? I am not sure if it will end up well. I hope it does. It may actually end up with mass fatalities. I hope for as few as possible but dread that it could be very many.

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Not sure which part is similar to “Putin’s Propaganda”. The Kyiv Independent was set up for the express purpose of the Ukraine war. Since the set up happened in November, feel free to ask questions.

Kyiv Independent: The West’s In-Kind Answer to Putin’s Propaganda (MP)

As the Russian attack on Ukraine has come to dominate global news feeds, so has a previously little-known outlet called The Kyiv Independent. Since its inception in November of last year, the Independent’s profile has risen rapidly and has been promoted and endorsed by both social media giants and the corporate press. The Kyiv Independent has become the toast of the town. It seems virtually impossible to turn on cable news without seeing its reporters on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, or other networks. Its staff has been given the opportunity to write multiple op-eds in the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post, something considered the ultimate seal of approval by many journalists. NPR listeners might also have heard interviews with reporters from the Independent.

But, while almost universally presented as a collective of unbiased journalists producing credible content, the Independent’s history, funding sources, and the proximity of many of its key staff to Western governments suggest that the news organization is not nearly as independent as its name implies. Since November, the outlet has amassed over two million Twitter followers, up from around just 20,000 one week before the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Twitter also constantly promotes its content on its homepage, encouraging hundreds of millions of people to read and follow them. The Independent has also managed to raise more than $3.2 million from two separate crowdfunding campaigns on GoFundMe and rakes in more than $72,000 per month from supporters on Patreon.

This is partially down to ringing endorsements from the likes of The Washington Post, CBS News and PBS, who endorsed their funding drives as the perfect way to do something to help Ukrainians. “Journalists with The Kyiv Independent have done tremendous work covering the war, offering the world constant updates as they fear for themselves, their families, and their homes,” the Post wrote. Meanwhile, the Times has regularly signal-boosted its coverage as well, recommending it to readers as a way to “avoid drowning in an ocean of information.” Another article instructing teachers on how to discuss the war states that “Ukrainian sources like The Kyiv Independent” are a “good starting point” as “reliable news sources.” In short, there has been nothing short of a ringing, wall-to-wall endorsement of the startup news organization. However, few, if any, of these reports and appearances hint at how close The Kyiv Independent and many of its staff members are to Western governmental power.

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Plus ties to CIA, Hunter Biden.

US Firm With Ties to WEF, DOD Implicated in Bioweapons Cover-Up (CHD)

As evidence of a potential bioweapons cover-up has started emerging, a company called Metabiota is gaining prominence. The links between Metabiota and several key players in the COVID pandemic and/or the Ukraine labs story are manifold, so there’s no really simple way to unravel it in a logical sequence. That said, let’s start with what Metabiota does and the connections of its founder, and expand from there. Metabiota’s mission is to make the world more resilient to epidemics by providing “data, analytics, advice and training to prepare for global health threats and mitigate their impacts.” Through data analysis, they help “decision makers across government and industry” to estimate and mitigate pandemic risks. But they also claim to support “sustainable development,” which seems to have little to do with pandemic risk management.

That term, “sustainable development,” is one promoted by Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF). It’s part and parcel of Schwab’s plan for a global Great Reset and transhumanist revolution (aka, the Fourth Industrial Revolution). It’s not surprising, then, to find out that the founder of Metabiota, Nathan Wolfe, not only has close ties to the WEF, but is also a rising star there. He’s a WEF Young Global Leader graduate and was awarded the WEF’s Technology Pioneer award in 2021. Metabiota was a core partner of a United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Pandemic Threat Program called PREDICT, which sought to identify viruses with pandemic potential. Contractors funded through this program have included the EcoHealth Alliance, headed by Peter Daszak.

The PREDICT program, directed by Dennis Carroll, appears to have served as a proof of concept for the Global Virome Project that Carroll founded. According to a recent investigation by U.S. Right to Know (USRTK), Carroll appears to have diverted government funds from the PREDICT program while he was still running it, to fund this personal side project, which was set up with the intention to collect, identify and catalogue 1 million viruses from wildlife in an effort to predict which ones might cause a human epidemic. Metabiota receives funding from several interconnected organizations and agencies, including:

• Pilot Growth Management, cofounded by Neil Callahan. Callahan is also a cofounder of Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners, and he sits on Metabiota’s board of advisers.
• The Global Virome Project, which reportedly paid (or was planning to pay) Metabiota $341,000 to conduct a cost-benefit analysis.
• In-Q-Tel, a CIA venture capital firm that specializes in high-tech investments that support or benefit the intelligence capacity of U.S. intelligence agencies.
• The U.S. Department of Defense’s Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). Specifically, in 2014, DTRA awarded Metabiota $18.4 million in federal contracts for scientific and technical consulting services to the DTRA’s labs in Ukraine and Georgia.
• By outsourcing work to private companies, DTRA is able to circumvent Congressional oversight. Russia is now accusing the U.S. of funding secret and illegal bioweapons research in these Ukraine labs, and claims this was the real reason behind its invasion.
• Rosemont Seneca, an investment fund co-managed by Hunter Biden. If Russia’s accusations turn out to be true, this tie may prove deeply problematic for the White House, as this means the Biden family was more or less directly involved in the funding of that research.

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proxalutamide

Another Suppressed Covid Treatment You Haven’t Heard Of (Blaze)

One day, we will learn the extent of the malicious war that was waged by politicians and Big Pharma against COVID treatments. But if the newest study on proxalutamide in COVID patients reflects reality, you can add one more drug to the list of treatments that could have saved countless lives but which were purposefully stifled to please the gods of lockdowns, panic, and experimental injections. Last week, Kintor Pharmaceuticals announced the results of a randomized controlled trial of the use of anti-androgen proxalutamide, a prostate cancer drug, in mild to moderate COVID patients. It found that among the 721 American patients who received at least one day of treatment, there were seven patients in the control group who were hospitalized and one fatality compared to two hospitalized patients and zero fatalities in the proxalutamide group. Among patients with more than seven days of treatment (N=693), six patients who received placebo were hospitalized and one died, compared to no hospitalizations/deaths in the proxalutamide group.

Doctors who actually studied the pathophysiology of COVID came to the conclusion a long time ago that hormone levels helped facilitate the ACE2 and TMPRSS2 binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, and therefore, males seemed to be more vulnerable than females, and bald men seemed to be at greater risk as well. Brazilian board-certified endocrinologist and internist Flavio A. Cadegiani has been the leading voice in favor of using androgen blockers against COVID. A randomized controlled trial published by Cadegiani in 2021 demonstrated an 86% reduction in hospitalization. Another trial published later in the year showed a 78% reduction in mortality even among late-stage patients. This was all for the Gamma variant, which was regarded as the most fatal and pathogenic of all the strains of this virus.

[..] Kintor is the maker of proxalutamide, but unlike Pfizer, Moderna, Merck, and Gilead, which all made billions off drugs that the companies personally made and studied, Kintor doesn’t have the same financial incentive for corruption. The other drugs that were made standard of care are very expensive and come with automatic government contracts, whereas proxalutamide is available in Brazil for just $11 for a full course of treatment. The use of anti-androgens is just one of many examples of how doctors who actually understand pharmacology and biochemistry will innovate to treat ailments rather than allowing people to die. Whether it’s hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, nitazoxanide, metformin, aviptadil, budesonide, fluvoxamine, fenofibrate, famotidine, cyproheptadine, methylprednisolone, and dozens of other vitamins and supplements, the medical industry has shunned all research on cheap treatments.

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“A stable, agricultural Ukraine will be a benefit to a hungry world, while it will no longer be in a position to launch hostilities..”

The Riptide (Jim Kunstler)

[..] NATO has acted as a conduit for arming and training a 400,000-troop Ukrainian army, a violation of several formal agreements between Russia and the West. NATO, otherwise, does not have the will, or even the means, to engage militarily with Russia. And America, at the head of NATO, has so far refrained from starting World War Three by way of sending US troops or war-planes into Ukraine. So, Russia has gone about the plodding business of neutralizing Ukraine’s trouble-seeking military and rearranging the map so that Ukraine won’t be able to act as a proxy antagonist in America’s ill-conceived campaign to destroy Mr. Putin and his country.

The operation will probably end this month. My guess is that Mr. Zelensky will be allowed to remain president of what remains on the map, minus Donbas and the region along the Black Sea coast from Mariupol to Odessa. Mr. Zelensky will not have a functioning military to make trouble with. Other patches of Western Ukraine may be distributed among Poland, Moldova, Romania, and Hungary, leaving a large rump of Ukraine between Lvov and the Dnieper River devoted mostly to the growing of wheat. A stable, agricultural Ukraine will be a benefit to a hungry world, while it will no longer be in a position to launch hostilities or be of much use as a money-laundering facility. In short, with some luck, Ukraine will cease to be a threat to world peace.

Ukraine may have been “Joe Biden’s” last opportunity to screw things up on the world scene. As the military conflict resolves, Ukraine can’t be used by the White House as a shield to divert America’s attention from the political cancer of Biden family corruption, and the systemic illness of the nation’s institutions. Merrick Garland may not be able to contain the open case against Hunter Biden to mere rinky-dink tax violations — and if he tries to limit the US Attorneys in charge of the case, he will be setting himself up for an obstruction of justice rap some months from now. The laptop is out now, too many people have copies of the hard drive, and some are working diligently to make the mess of it more easily searchable. So, expect much more to come.

It won’t be easy for the Democratic Party to get rid of “Joe Biden.” Nobody can feature Kamala Harris in the oval office, and were she to somehow gracefully remove herself from the scene, next-in-line would be Nancy Pelosi who, in addition to being long-in-the-tooth, seems to be literally drunk half the time in her public appearances. And behind her: Patrick Leahy, Senate President Pro Tem, who is nearly as senile and incoherent as “Joe Biden.”

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“Remember, it started off as, ‘Oh, it wasn’t his laptop.’ Then it was, ‘Well, it was his laptop, but it was Russian disinformation.’ Now it’s, ‘No, it wasn’t Russian disinformation, but Joe had nothing to do with it,'”

Jim Jordan Spots Major Shift In Hunter Biden Story (WE)

Rep. Jim Jordan said on Sunday it “sure seems” the president’s son is on his way to being indicted, though the congressman acknowledged he could not say for certain. He pointed to an upswell in reporting on the authentication of contents on a laptop believed to have belonged to Hunter Biden, coinciding with a wave of grand jury activity. “You mentioned those two stories from the Washington Post 10 days ago,” the Ohio Republican told host Maria Bartiromo on Fox News. “I understand they were four minutes apart. One was at 11:00. One was at 11:04. So two eight-page-long stories four minutes apart from the news organization that said 18 months ago there was no story here, this was Russian disinformation. That tells you something is up. You don’t see the Washington Post do that.”

While the New York Post led the charge in reporting on the contents of the abandoned laptop, which contained emails detailing Biden’s business dealings and rollercoaster personal life, other major media outlets sought to cast doubt on its authenticity, and Big Tech companies even took steps to suppress its spread in the final weeks of the 2020 election. Jordan, who is the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, remarked how “interesting” it is that the “story has evolved” in recent weeks, coinciding with rising suspicions that President Joe Bidsen himself could be drawn into a federal criminal investigation, even as the White House has been adamant in asserting that the president is not involved and that his 52-year-old son did not commit any crimes.

“Remember, it started off as, ‘Oh, it wasn’t his laptop.’ Then it was, ‘Well, it was his laptop, but it was Russian disinformation.’ Now it’s, ‘No, it wasn’t Russian disinformation, but Joe had nothing to do with it,'” Jordan said. “And now, finally, it is, ‘Well, Joe had something to do with it, but he really didn’t do anything wrong.’ In fact, that’s what his chief of staff, Ron Klain, told us last Sunday on the Sunday shows,” he added. “So, my, how this story has changed. And now, we find out these text messages and emails that link the entire family, not just Hunter and Joe and — but also uncle, the — Joe’s brother, James Biden, is involved in this as well.”

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As I said before, you can’t investigate Hunter without also investigating Joe.

The Biden Family Scheme Unravels (Devine)

If the grand jury in Delaware investigating Hunter Biden’s business ventures does its job properly, it will be pulling on the threads that lead to the president, and already there are signs that is happening. Regardless of the extraordinary statement last week by White House chief of staff Ron Klain, that the president is confident his son has done nothing wrong, and that the inquiry has nothing to do with Joe Biden or anyone else in the White House, publicly available evidence says otherwise. It is not just the emails and other material on Hunter’s abandoned laptop that point to Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s multimillion-dollar global influence-peddling schemes when he was vice president.

There is also the six-hour interview Hunter’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski gave to the FBI last year, along with a trove of documents, emails and encrypted messages. Bobulinski has publicly named Joe Biden as the “Big Guy,” referenced in emails, whose 10% equity in a joint venture with Chinese energy company CEFC was held for him by Hunter. Now the identity of the Big Guy has become a topic for the Delaware probe. At least one of the witnesses before the grand jury has been asked: Who is the Big Guy? Sources familiar with the investigation say Bobulinski has yet to appear, but if he does not testify before the grand jury, something is very wrong. Perhaps US Attorney David Weiss is saving the best for last.

The pressure on Weiss is immense, as the four-year investigation into the president’s son and his business partners, including his uncle James Biden, Joe’s younger brother, threatens to become an election issue in November. Alarm bells are starting to ring in Democratic circles as the White House stonewalls in the face of increasing media inquiries. In two absurd statements in recent days, White House spokespeople said the president stands by his pre-election statement that Hunter never received any money from China, and he continues to deny that he knew anything about his son’s overseas business dealings. The White House position is unsustainable.

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From a main stream sports channel in Australia

 

 

 

 

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Aug 272018
 


Hasui Kawase Moon at Megome (woodblock print) 1930

 

BIS Warns Of “Perfect Storm” For Global Economy (ZH)
BIS’s Carstens Warns Of Economic Risks Of Protectionism (R.)
No-Deal Brexit Thrusts UK Into ‘Legal Vacuum’ – Labour (G.)
Britain Prepares for War Against Russia (SCF)
UK’s Biggest Payday Lender Wonga ‘On The Brink Of Collapse’ (G.)
Malaysia’s Reaction Shows China Needs To Review Belt And Road Plan (SCMP)
China To Block More Than 120 Offshore Cryptocurrency Exchanges (SCMP)
Michael Cohen’s Attorney Backpedals On Trump-Russia Claims (ZH)
Becoming Serfs (Chris Hedges)
Former Top Vatican Official Says Pope Should Resign Over Abuse Crisis (R.)
‘Foreign Specialists’ May Stage Chemical Attack In Syria In 2 Days – Russia (RT)
Greece Tops Eurozone In Overtaxation (K.)
Lesbos Refugees Pushed To ‘Absolute Breaking Point’, Warns Report (Ind.)

 

 

Carstens’ comments on letters of credit are interesting. Non-US banks will need access to dollars, or trade stops. Not sure where Tyler got that quote.

BIS Warns Of “Perfect Storm” For Global Economy (ZH)

Carstens highlighted the potential catalysts that could unleash the “perfect storm” he highlighted as the key risk resulting from the interaction of real and financial risks, namely: the trillions in outstanding dollar-denominated debt – whereby a dollar-shortage threatening to cripple international trade – and the growing risk of currency wars:

Consider that non-US banks provide the bulk of dollar-denominated letters of credit, which in turn account for more than 80% of this source of trade finance. The Great Financial Crisis highlighted the fragility of this setup, since non-US banks depend on wholesale markets to obtain dollars. Ten years on, we should not forget how the dramatic fall in trade finance in late 2008 played a key part in globalising the crisis. Any dollar shortage among non-US banks could cripple international trade. On top of that, trade skirmishes can easily escalate into currency wars, although I hope that they will not.

As we saw earlier with Mexico, imposing tariffs on imports tends to weaken the target country’s currency. The depreciation could then be construed as a currency “manipulation” that seemingly justifies further protectionist measures. If currency wars break out, countries may put financial markets off-limits to foreign investors or, on the other side, deliberately cut back foreign investment, politicising capital flows. In addition, we must be mindful of long-observed knock-on effects from tighter US monetary conditions, given the large stock of dollar borrowing by non-banks outside the United States, which has now reached $11.5 trillion.”

His conclusion: “Policymakers in advanced economies should not shrug off the growing evidence that abrupt exchange rate depreciations reduce investment and economic growth in emerging market economies. This has implications for everybody, in that weaker economic activity reduces demand for exports from advanced economies.” “In the long term, protectionism will bring not gain but only pain,” Carstens said, echoing a familiar talking point of establishment economists. “Not just for the United States, but for us all.”

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Yeah, well, so called free trade is their thing.

BIS’s Carstens Warns Of Economic Risks Of Protectionism (R.)

Agustin Carstens, general manager of the Bank of International Settlements, on Saturday delivered a scathing critique of rising protectionism, a not-so-subtle rebuke to U.S. President Donald Trump’s use of tariffs and trade talks to wring concessions from China, Mexico and many other countries. Reversing globalization “could increase prices, raise unemployment and crimp growth,” Carstens, the former head of Mexico’s central bank, told fellow former and current central bankers at the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank’s annual economic symposium here. Higher tariffs could drive up U.S. inflation and force the Fed to raise rates, driving up the dollar and hurting both U.S. exporters and emerging market economies in the process, Carstens said

Protectionism also threatens “to unsettle financial markets and put a drag on firms’ capital spending, as investors take fright and financial conditions tighten,” he said. The BIS released a research paper at the same time as Carstens’ speech that estimated revoking the North American Free Trade Agreement, as Trump has threatened, would mean a loss to GDP of $37 billion in Canada, $22 billion in Mexico, and $40 billion in the United States, with non-tariff trade barriers accounting for the lion’s share of the losses. Wages would also fall across North America, the research found.

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It’s already a given. There’s no time left.

No-Deal Brexit Thrusts UK Into ‘Legal Vacuum’ – Labour (G.)

Theresa May and the government would face a race against time to pass a slew of new laws, or risk creating an “unsustainable legal vacuum”, if Britain plunged out of the EU without a deal, Labour’s Keir Starmer has warned. Dominic Raab insisted last week that the government had the legislation in place to cope, if Britain is forced to leave in March 2019 without a withdrawal agreement. “Our laws will be on the statute book, the staff will be in place, the teams will be in post and our institutions will be ready for Brexit – deal, or no deal,” the Brexit secretary said. But Labour’s analysis suggests new legislation would have to be passed hastily in four key policy areas: • EU citizens’ rights. • Immigration rules for EU travellers entering Britain. • Criminals held under the European arrest warrant. • The Irish border.

The government has long promised an immigration bill – but has not yet even published a white paper. The home affairs select committee warned recently that “if there’s no deal, [the immigration system] is going to be completely chaotic as no one will know what the arrangements will be until the very last minute and there is going to be no time for anyone to plan at all”. The government has long promised an immigration bill – but has not yet even published a white paper. The home affairs select committee warned recently that “if there’s no deal, [the immigration system] is going to be completely chaotic as no one will know what the arrangements will be until the very last minute and there is going to be no time for anyone to plan at all”.

Several new regulators or other public bodies would also have to be created, including in medicines and aviation, Labour claims. The withdrawal bill gives ministers some powers to do this, but they are tightly curtailed. Starmer described last week’s release of 24 technical notices on how the government is preparing for a no deal as a “poorly executed PR stunt designed to convince Tory MPs to back the prime minister’s discredited Chequers proposal”. He said the government has “barely scratched the surface” of what would need to be done to prepare the UK for a no-deal scenario, and there was a serious risk of an “unsustainable legal vacuum”.

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Britain and the military-industrial complex impoverish the population.

Britain Prepares for War Against Russia (SCF)

The Brexit pantomime is taking place in an era in which it is recorded that “As benefits are cut and rents soar, Britain has seen a staggering rise in homelessness: the number of rough sleepers in England alone has more than doubled since 2010. Almost 1.2 million older people in Britain, as well as another one million disabled people, are living without the social care they need for basics such as eating, dressing and washing. It’s horrific: severely ill people forced to wait 14 hours to go to the toilet or wheelchair users who, with no assistant to help them cook, are now malnourished.” But this dreadful state of affairs means nothing to those who lack for nothing — which includes politicians of the governing Conservative Party who demand that more taxpayers’ money must be spent on military hardware.

The previous defence minister, Michael Fallon (who had to resign because he was found out to have indulged in some sexual shenanigans), told the BBC last year that “we will be adding to defence, there will be new equipment and the budget will grow every year” and the present one, Gavin Williamson (the man who said that Russia should “go away and shut up”), demanded in June that Britain increase its annual military spending by about $25 billion. The strange thing about agitating to spend more money on armaments is that, apart from an indubitable terrorist menace, there is no military threat whatever to Britain. On the other hand, there is a social crisis of the most serious magnitude.

As the New York Times reported in May, “the protracted campaign of budget cutting, started in 2010 by a government led by the Conservative Party, has . . . yielded a country that has grown accustomed to living with less, even as many measures of social well-being — crime rates, opioid addiction, infant mortality, childhood poverty and homelessness — point to a deteriorating quality of life.” But the government’s answer lies in buying missiles and whooshing new aircraft, and two aircraft carriers of incalculable expense and nuclear submarines that the BBC reports are to cost “£31 bn (including inflation), with a contingency of a further £10 bn, spread over 35 years…”

[..] So on August 18 the UK’s Daily Express newspaper, a sad wreck of its former self, and now competing with the Daily Mail in publicising ‘celebs’ and headlining articles of ultra-nationalist tripe, ran a piece headlined “Royal Navy’s £3bn warship launches to tackle ‘frightening’ Russians.” Just how it’s going to deter anyone is not explained, because it hasn’t any aircraft and won’t be operational until 2021. It cost over 4 billion dollars and its yet-to-arrive 36 F-35 aircraft will cost a minimum of 90 million dollars each. This is in a country where the Joseph Rowntree Foundation records that some 14 million people live in poverty – more than one in five of the population.

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Payday loans are the lowest point in a society. If that doesn’t even work anymore….

UK’s Biggest Payday Lender Wonga ‘On The Brink Of Collapse’ (G.)

Britain’s biggest payday lender, Wonga, is teetering on the brink of collapse following a surge of customer compensation claims in recent weeks that could cause it to call in administrators. The short-term loan provider has reportedly lined up accountancy firm Grant Thornton to handle a potential administration of the company should its board believe it is unable to avoid falling into insolvency. The report from Sky News said Wonga could appoint Grant Thornton as soon as this week. The flood of claims facing the company relate to loans taken out before 2014, when Wonga was the poster child for outrage in the payday lending industry that resulted in rules capping the cost of borrowing.

Campaigners claimed the firm and others in the industry fleeced consumers with high interest rates and targeted vulnerable customers with slick marketing. Wonga has shown signs of mounting difficulties in recent weeks. Earlier this month, it emerged the company received a £10m emergency cash injection from shareholders to save it from going bust. At the time, a spokesman said the firm was facing “a marked increase in claims related to legacy loans, driven principally by claims management company activity”. Should the company fall into administration, it would signal a remarkable fall from its previous status as one of the fastest-growing financial companies in the UK. The company was once touted for a stock exchange listing that could have valued it at more than $1bn (£780m) but was recently reported to be worth just $30m.

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Don’t even remember when I first said BRI is a Chinese scheme to export overcapacity and make others pay for it. Others who, of course, will become debt slaves because of it.

Malaysia’s Reaction Shows China Needs To Review Belt And Road Plan (SCMP)

Five years ago in September, during a visit to Kazakhstan, President Xi Jinping first proposed building the Silk Road Economic Belt, which included countries along the ancient Silk Road leading through Central Asia and the Middle East to Europe. In October that year, while visiting Indonesia, he followed up by suggesting a “21st Century Maritime Silk Road”, tracing the old trading routes that took Chinese merchants to Southeast Asia, Arabian countries and all the way to eastern Africa. Since then, Xi’s proposals – collectively known as the “Belt and Road Initiative” – have promised trillions of US dollars worth of investments in infrastructure to enhance connectivity and boost trade in more than 60 countries.

[..] From last month, state media have ramped up propaganda to mark the fifth anniversary of the grand plan and catalogue achievements ranging from China-built railways in Ethiopia to the China-owned Greek port of Piraeus. But the celebratory mood was somewhat marred by Malaysia’s decision last week to cancel two China-financed mega projects in the country, the US$20 billion East Coast Rail Link and two gas pipeline projects worth US$2.3 billion. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said his country could not afford those projects and they were not needed at the moment. Interestingly, Mahathir announced the decision even before leaving China, and said both Xi and Premier Li Keqiang understood the reasons behind the cancellations and accepted them.

The Chinese government put on a brave face in response, with a foreign ministry spokesman saying it was inevitable there would be problems or different points of views between any two countries. But Mahathir’s announcement has transcended bilateral cooperation, and should serve as a timely warning to the Chinese leadership about the importance and urgency with which they should conduct a comprehensive review of the belt and road strategy and recalibrate it by reining in its ambitious investment plans. Indeed, Mahathir’s decision is just the latest setback for the plan, as politicians and economists in an increasing number of countries that once courted Chinese investments have now publicly expressed fears that some of the projects are too costly and would saddle them with too much debt.

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Volume is way down, as is price. Wyy the heavy hand now?

China To Block More Than 120 Offshore Cryptocurrency Exchanges (SCMP)

China is poised to block more than 120 foreign cryptocurrency exchanges as part of the government’s broader crackdown on activities related to digital money, according to state media. Authorities will block access in China to 124 websites operated by offshore cryptocurrency exchanges that provide trading services to citizens on the mainland, the Shanghai Securities News, a newspaper affiliated with the country’s financial and markets regulators, reported on Thursday. It said authorities will also continue to monitor and shut down domestic websites related to cryptocurrency trades and initial coin offerings (ICOs), and ban payment services from accepting cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin.

The newspaper cited people close to the Leading Group of Internet Financial Risks Remediation, which was set up by China’s cabinet in 2016 and headed by Pan Gongsheng, a deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China – the country’s central bank. The report marks the latest effort by Beijing to intensity the clampdown on cryptocurrency activities because of concerns about financial instability. Censors recently shut down at least eight blockchain and cryptocurrency-focused online media outlets, some of which raised several million dollars in venture capital. These entities found their official public accounts on WeChat blocked on Tuesday evening, owing to violations against new regulations from China’s top internet watchdog.

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I dealt with Lanny David a few days ago in Fixers. No surprise he turns out to lie about this too. I asked in that article if Cohen was sure he wanted him as his lawyer. He must be asking himself that now.

Michael Cohen’s Attorney Backpedals On Trump-Russia Claims (ZH)

Lanny Davis – the attorney for Michael Cohen, has massively backpedaled on “confident assertions” that Cohen would share information with investigators that President Trump knew of Russian efforts to undermine Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton – a lifelong friend of Davis’. The Washington Post reported on Sunday that Davis said in an interview that he is “no longer certain about claims he made to reporters on background and on the record in recent weeks about what Cohen knows about Trump’s awareness of the Russian efforts.” “Davis told The Washington Post that he cannot confirm media reports that Cohen is prepared to tell special counsel Robert S. Mueller III that Trump had advance knowledge of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting” -WaPo

CNN reported in July that Cohen claimed to have witnessed Trump approving the meeting between Trump Jr. and Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, arranged by an associate of opposition research firm Fusion GPS. The day after CNN’s report, the Washington Post – using an “anonymous source” they now admit was Davis, peddled the same story that “Cohen had told associates that he witnessed an exchange in which Trump Jr. told his father about an upcoming gathering in which he expected to get information about Clinton,” however the Post didn’t say Trump Jr. told Sr. it was the Russians. “I should have been more clear — including with you — that I could not independently confirm what happened,” Davis said, adding perhaps the most difficult four words for an attorney to utter: “I regret my error.”

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“..The New Deal programs were paid for by taxing the rich. Even in the 1950s, during the Eisenhower presidency, the top marginal rate was 91%..”

Becoming Serfs (Chris Hedges)

We live in a new feudalism. We have been stripped of political power. Workers are trapped in menial jobs, forced into crippling debt and paid stagnant or declining wages. Chronic poverty and exploitative working conditions in many parts of the world, and increasingly in the United States, replicate the hell endured by industrial workers at the end of the 19th century. The complete capture of ruling institutions by corporations and their oligarchic elites, including the two dominant political parties, the courts and the press, means there is no mechanism left by which we can reform the system or protect ourselves from mounting abuse. We will revolt or become 21st-century serfs, forced to live in misery and brutally oppressed by militarized police and the most sophisticated security and surveillance system in human history while the ruling oligarchs continue to wallow in unimagined wealth and opulence.

“The new tax code is explosive excess,” the economist Richard Wolff said when we spoke in New York. “We’ve had 30 or 40 years where corporations paid less taxes than they ever did. They made more money than they ever did. They have been able to keep wages stagnant while the productivity of labor rose. This is the last moment historically they need another big gift, let alone at the expense of the very people whose wages have been stagnant. To give them a tax bust of this sort, basically reducing from 35% to 20%, is a 40% cut. This kind of crazy excess reminds you of the [kings] of France before the French Revolution when the level of excess reached an explosive social dimension. That’s where we are.”

When capitalism collapsed in the 1930s, the response of the working class was to form unions, strike and protest. The workers pitted power against power. They forced the oligarchs to respond with the New Deal, which created 12 million government-funded jobs, Social Security, the minimum wage and unemployment compensation. The country’s infrastructure was modernized and maintained. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) alone employed 300,000 workers to form and maintain national parks. “The message of the organized working class was unequivocal,” Wolff said. “Either you help us through this Depression or there will be a revolution.” The New Deal programs were paid for by taxing the rich. Even in the 1950s, during the Eisenhower presidency, the top marginal rate was 91%.

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True, but it won’t make any difference.

Former Top Vatican Official Says Pope Should Resign Over Abuse Crisis (R.)

Pope Francis said on Sunday he would not respond to a former top Vatican official who accused him of having known for years of allegations of sex abuse by a prominent U.S. cardinal, calling on the pontiff to resign in an unprecedented broadside against the pope by a Church insider. Francis, speaking to reporters on the plane returning from a trip to Dublin, said dismissively that a statement containing the accusations “speaks for itself”. In a detailed 11-page bombshell statement given to conservative Roman Catholic media outlets during the pope’s visit to Ireland, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano accused a long list of current and past Vatican and U.S. Church officials of covering up the case of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who resigned last month in disgrace.

In remarkably blunt language, Vigano said alleged cover-ups in the Church were making it look like “a conspiracy of silence not so dissimilar from the one that prevails in the mafia”. “Pope Francis has repeatedly asked for total transparency in the Church,” wrote Vigano, who has criticized the pope before. “In this extremely dramatic moment for the universal Church, his extremely dramatic moment for the universal Church, he must acknowledge his mistakes and, in keeping with the proclaimed principle of zero tolerance, Pope Francis must be the first to set a good example for cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick’s abuses and resign along with all of them,” Vigano said.

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Russia is getting very specific, as per the time, location, chemicals used etc.

‘Foreign Specialists’ May Stage Chemical Attack In Syria In 2 Days – Russia (RT)

“Foreign specialists” have arrived in Syria and may stage a chemical attack using chlorine in “the next two days,” the Russian Defense Ministry said. This will be filmed for international media to frame Damascus forces.
Defense Ministry Spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said the operation is planned to unfold in the village of Kafr Zita in Syria’s northwestern Hama Province in “the next two days.” Konashenkov said that “English-speaking specialists” are already in place to use “poisonous agents.” While a group of residents from the north has been transported to Kafr Zita and is currently being prepared “to take part in the staging of the attack” and be filmed suffering from supposed “‘chemical munitions’ and ‘barrel bombs’ launched by the Syrian government forces.”

The groups of residents will be used to assist “fake rescuers from the White Helmets.” They will be filmed apparently suffering from the effects of chemical weapons and then be shown in “the Middle Eastern and English-language media.” The defense ministry earlier warned that the US, UK, and France are preparing to use the planned attack as a pretext for airstrikes against Syria. The USS The Sullivans, an Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer, was already deployed to the Persian Gulf a couple of days ago. On August 22, US National Security Adviser John Bolton stated that “if the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons, we will respond very strongly and they really ought to think about this a long time.”

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Lowest incomes, highest taxes. That’s recovery. And there’s much more to come.

Greece Tops Eurozone In Overtaxation (K.)

Greece has taken the lead among eurozone countries in the taxes-to-GDP ratio, rising from 13th place in 2008, before the country requested a bailout to stabilize its finances, to first place as of 2016. A tax-to-GDP ratio of over 27% is unprecedented in the country, at least since the restoration of democracy in 1974. At the same time, Greece set a record in terms of the speed with which the “taxation shock” was implemented, with the tax-to-GDP ratio jumping by 7 percentage points over eight years of bailouts.

Direct or indirect overtaxation has been the main driver for the reduction of the huge deficits Greece had to tackle at the beginning of the economic crisis. In 2008, taxes on production and imports accounted for 12.6% of GDP, while in 2017 the figure rose to 17.5%, according to data from the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT). Taxes on income stood at 8.1% in 2008 and 10.2% in 2017. In social security contributions the ratio stood at 12.7% in 2008, reaching 14.6% in 2017.

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Give it some time, and it’ll get as bad as Nauru. If Merkel and Juncker would have wanted to stop this, they’ve had plenty time. They didn’t and they don’t.

Lesbos Refugees Pushed To ‘Absolute Breaking Point’, Warns Report (Ind.)

Thousands of refugees are living in perpetual fear and at risk of developing serious illnesses as the situation on the Greek island of Lesbos reaches “absolute breaking point”, new research shows. A report by Refugee Rights Europe warns that physical and mental health problems are rife on the island, as unsanitary conditions contribute to the spread of disease and growing desperation grips the men, women and children who are stuck there. Reports of violence and racially motivated attacks on refugees by police have also become commonplace, with nearly half of the 311 asylum seekers surveyed for the report saying they had been attacked by officers – usually with tear gas.

There are currently an estimated 8,000 refugee men, women and children on Lesbos, making it the largest host out of the Greek islands. A third come from Syria, 27% are from Afghanistan, 13% are Iraqi and the remaining are mainly from African countries. A series of accounts from asylum seekers in the report exposes the squalor and dangers they endure, including only having access to a shower once every few weeks and being unable to access medical care for their sick children. Respondents also reported being too afraid to leave their tents at night due to lack of security in the camps. Others expressed suicidal thoughts, with one refugee telling researchers: “I prefer to die than be here”.

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