Menu Icon

Debt Rattle DayX 2024

Feb 202024
 
 February 20, 2024  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  49 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Lane near Arles 1888

 

• Julian Assange Judge Previously Acted For MI6 (Dec.UK)
• Brandon, Rotting in the (White) House (Kunstler)
• Democratic Lawmaker Urges Vote Against Biden (Sp.)
• Biden’s Lies On Top Of Lies On Top Of Lies (Victor Davis Hanson)
• US Threatens to Veto New Gaza Ceasefire Resolution at UNSC (Antiwar)
• A Nuclear Power Cannot Lose In War (Medvedev)
• Putin Is The New Climate Change (Marsden)
• Euromaidan Triggered Ukraine’s Nine-Year War on Donbass (Sp.)
• Ukraine Used US Chemical Weapons Against Russian Troops – MoD
• Helping Crimea Recover From Decades Of Ukrainian Misrule (Scott Ritter)
• About Navalny’s Death (Lubos Blaha)
• Germany Gives Timeframe For Possible Russian ‘Attack’ On NATO – Bloomberg (RT)
• Czech PM Labels Protesting Farmers ‘Supporters Of Moscow’ (RT)
• Houthis Attacked UK Ship in Gulf of Aden, Vessel Severely Damaged (Sp.)
• 2024 Is the Last Year of Free Speech and Democracy in the Western World (PCR)

 

 

 

 

RFK Assange

 

 

Ai Weiwei

 

 

Yanis Julian

 

 

Waters

 

 

Assange DDN

 

 

Hillary

 

 

Liz Cheney

 

 

Udo

 

 

 

 

Eric Trump

 

 

 

 

Craig Murray syas he’s at the courthouse, but doesn’t know if he can attend the hearing. Julian doesn’t know either if he can attend his own hearing.

• Julian Assange Judge Previously Acted For MI6 (Dec.UK)

One of the two High Court judges who will rule on Julian Assange’s bid to stop his extradition to the US represented the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Ministry of Defence, Declassified has found. Justice Jeremy Johnson has also been a specially vetted barrister, cleared by the UK authorities to access top secret information. Johnson will sit with Dame Victoria Sharp, his senior judge, to decide the fate of the WikiLeaks co-founder. If extradited, Assange faces a maximum sentence of 175 years. His persecution by the US authorities has been at the behest of Washington’s intelligence and security services, with whom the UK has deep relations. Assange’s journalistic career has been marked by exposing the dirty secrets of the US and UK national security establishments. He now faces a judge who has acted for, and received security clearance from, some of those same state agencies.

As with previous judges who have ruled on Assange’s case, this raises concerns about institutional conflicts of interest. Exactly how much Johnson has been paid for his work for government departments is not clear. Records show he was paid twice by the Government Legal Department for his services in 2018. The sum was over £55,000. Justice Johnson became a deputy High Court judge in 2016 and a full judge in 2019. His biography states he has been “often acting in cases involving the police and government departments”. As a barrister, in 2007 he represented MI6 as an observer during the inquests into the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed. Johnson worked alongside Robin Tam QC, previously described by legal directories as a barrister who “does an enormous amount of often sensitive work” for the UK government.

Johnson was appointed to “sit in on the hearing” At the time, Foreign Office sources could not recall “a previous occasion when MI6 [had] appointed lawyers to an inquest”. MI6 was reportedly “so concerned by possible revelations” during the inquest that Johnson was appointed to “sit in on the hearing”. He reportedly received a brief from MI6 in advance of the inquest, and was tasked with providing “such assistance as the coroner may require”. Johnson has also represented the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) on at least two occasions. In 2013, he acted for the department during the high-profile Al-Sweady inquiry, which looked into allegations that “British soldiers torture and unlawfully killed Iraqi prisoners” in 2004. The MoD’s lawyers said the Iraqi allegations were a “product of lies” and that those making the claims “were guilty of a criminal conspiracy”.

Johnson argued there was “compelling and extensive and independent forensic evidence” to refute the case. The five-year inquiry, which cost around £25m, exonerated the British troops. Johnson also acted for the MoD in 2011, in an appeal case against Shaun Wood, a Royal Air Force (RAF) serviceman. Wood had the previous year won his case claiming compensation against the MoD, arguing his neurological condition akin to Parkinson’s disease was caused by exposure to organic solvents while serving in the RAF. The judge upheld Wood’s claim against the MoD, which had admitted a breach of duty but disputed that this had caused the damage claimed by him.

Read more …

“What have they got left? AI-contrived photos of Mr. Trump having sex with a manatee in the intercoastal waterway off Mar-a-Lago?”

• Brandon, Rotting in the (White) House (Kunstler)

We’re also informed in recent days by the Department of Justice that “Joe Biden” is not mentally competent to answer for anything in a court of law, should someone inquire into the signal irregularities emerging from the fugitive annals of his long career. Of course, “Joe Biden” running for reelection is one of the greatest gags ever put over on the American public. But more astounding yet is that half the country persists in pretending to believe it. They are egged on in every possible way by persons in high places of government fearful of going to prison if the Democratic Party loses its grip on the levers of power.

Since “Joe Biden” is not actually calling the shots, one naturally wonders who is responsible for all the dubious achievements of the past three years. I guess we’ll find out when Mr. Trump wins that election in November, an outcome increasingly guaranteed unless “Joe Biden” (or, let’s face it, our Intel Community) takes the final decisive step of bumping off the Golden Golem of Greatness. What have they got left? AI-contrived photos of Mr. Trump having sex with a manatee in the intercoastal waterway off Mar-a-Lago?

In New York City, the Woke lunatics did a victory dance after Judge Arthur Engoron, beaming his Joker smile, laid a $350-million fine on Mr. Trump for conducting a set of normal real estate transactions with a bank that profited from doing business with him. Many are still trying to figure out how that amounts to a crime of any sort. Don’t suppose that the check is in the mail, though. There is an appeals process that leads, you may be sure, to a dismissal of that inane judgment and the puerile hypotheticals that the case derived from. And, by and by, you also might expect a countersuit for malicious prosecution when all that smoke clears. New York Attorney General Letitia James, lacking impulse control, is for the moment enjoying the fulfillment of her campaign promise to “get Trump.” Waiting to see how much she enjoys losing her law license in the days to come.

Every reaction provokes an equal and opposite reaction, Newton’s Third Law states. It manifested shortly after Judge Engoron’s end zone dance when a call went out over the Internet for America’s truckers to refuse loads inbound to New York City. We’ll have to stand by to see how that develops. No more bok choy, Texas beef, or Meyer Lemons for you, “progressive” denizens of the Five Boroughs! Embrace the suck! The genius part is that, unlike the 2022 Canadian truckers’ action in Ottawa, the American truckers will not be cluttering up New York’s streets with their rigs, license plates on view, leaving them vulnerable to such pranks as the shutdown of their bank accounts. All they’ll do is sit innocently at home back in Kentucky and Missouri, enjoying a break from the rigors of the highway. Is that a crime? Arguably no more than doing a normal real estate deal in good faith with a willing lender was a crime.

The truckers have promised to include Washington DC next in their delivery boycott. The K-Street lobbying gang won’t be buying any influence for a while over platters of grilled branzino and Mariscos Molcajete. Maybe there will be a few Cliff Bars left in the Farragut Square 7-Eleven and they can do business in their cars. As for “Joe Biden,” his minders have probably laid in enough Ensure for a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory to get by for a few weeks — until the magic moment when, alas, he must needs be thrown under the bus of expediency to keep their game going.

Read more …

“..Trump won Michigan in 2016 with a margin of just 10,700 votes; Michigan has an Arab American population of some 211,000..”

• Democratic Lawmaker Urges Vote Against Biden (Sp.)

In the latest example of opposition to US President Joe Biden from within his own party, Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib publicly urged Michigan voters to oppose the president in the state’s primary election next week. Rep. Tlaib made the call Saturday in a video posted by the Listen to Michigan campaign on the X social media platform. Listen to Michigan is an organization of pro-Palestine activists in the state organizing opposition to Biden’s support for Israel’s deadly campaign in Gaza, which has killed some 29,000 people. “It is important as you all know to not only march against the genocide, [to] not only make sure that we’re calling our members of Congress and local electeds and passing city resolutions all throughout our country, it is also important to create a voting bloc – something that is a bullhorn to say ‘enough is enough,” said Tlaib, the first Palestinian American member of US Congress. “We don’t want a country that supports wars and bombs and destruction,” she added. “We want to support life. We want to stand up for every single life killed in Gaza.”

Tlaib and other activists are urging Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in the party’s presidential primary election next Tuesday rather than supporting Biden or any of his challengers. Activists portray the move as a show of opposition to the president’s handling of the Palestine-Israel crisis. Biden has attempted to express modest criticism of Israel through leaked statements to the press alleging consternation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but the US president has continued to back the country with the frequent provision of financial support and lethal aid. In December the Biden administration even bypassed Congress to rush an “emergency” arms shipment to Israel, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken affirming the move was necessary in response to an alleged imminent security threat to the United States.

Observers have noted Blinken could be impeached on perjury charges for the dubious claim, which is unlikely to generate opposition given the significant influence of AIPAC and other Zionist groups in US politics. “This is the way you can raise our voices,” Tlaib continued. “Don’t make us even more invisible. Right now we feel completely neglected and just unseen by our government. If you want us to be louder then come here and vote ‘uncommitted.’” Tlaib made the statement standing outside of an early voting location in Dearborn, a major hub of the Arab American community in Michigan. Pro-Palestine activists have warned Biden that his unrelenting support for Israel could cost him reelection in November, with Michigan representing a crucial swing state for the president. Former President Donald Trump won Michigan in 2016 with a margin of just 10,700 votes; Michigan has an Arab American population of some 211,000.

Read more …

X thread.

“Well apart from his cognitive decline, Biden himself is a pathological prevaricator.”

• Biden’s Lies On Top Of Lies On Top Of Lies (Victor Davis Hanson)

In the last week, Joe Biden had flat-out lied in the most egregious fashion in so many ways. In his disastrous press conference of last week, he claimed that special counsel Hur’s report exonerated him. Anyone who read the findings concluded exactly the opposite. According to Hur, Biden would have been indicted for his willfully unlawful removal of classified documents except for two reasons: one, the Department of Justice protocols apparently prohibit indicting a sitting president; and two, Biden suffers such cognitive decline that the special counsel believes a jury would more likely pity him into acquittal than convict him of what he is certainly guilty. He lied that Hur brought up his son’s death (“How in the hell dare he raise that?”).

In fact, Biden as is his serial wont, raised it, and does on a regular basis, usually deliberately and further lying that his son died while on military duty in Iraq (he died six years subsequently as a civilian in Walter Reed Hospital), and always contorting the death to enhance his own greater sense of grieving. He lied that he notified authorities when he discovered that he unlawfully had taken out classified documents to various residencies (perhaps for over some 30 plus years during his senatorial and Vice Presidential tenures). In fact, Biden only admitted that he had apparently for decades unlawfully removed classified files in 2017, to his ghostwriter in a recorded tape, and then he hid that fact and kept quiet for five years—until his administration’s special counsel began to investigate Trump for the same thing. Note the worried ghostwriter erased the tape of Biden’s confession as soon as he learned there was an appointment of a special counsel. (Destroy evidence much?)

He lied that the files bore no classification marks. In fact, they did and do. He lied that he kept the files safe in a secure location. In fact, the special counsel report includes several photographs of the Biden garage, in which there were sloppily stored, open, and torn boxes of classified documents amid a complete mess of junk. He lied that Trump’s once secure border is somehow responsible for Biden’s intentionally open border. He just lied that Trump caused the 2022 Putin invasion of Ukraine on Biden’s watch that never occurred on Trump’s. It is not enough that the Biden team must wildly lie daily that the non-compos-mentis President is dynamic, impressive in his recall and cognition, and stands out as the most astute mind in most of this meetings. Well apart from his cognitive decline, Biden himself is a pathological prevaricator.

Read more …

“The US has already used its veto power on the Security Council to veto two resolutions calling for an end to the onslaught..”

• US Threatens to Veto New Gaza Ceasefire Resolution at UNSC (Antiwar)

The US is threatening to veto a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza at the UN Security Council as the US continues to provide political cover for the Israeli massacre of Palestinians. US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in a statement that if the resolution, which is being drafted by Algeria, was brought to a vote, it would not be adopted. Thomas-Greenfield justified US opposition to a ceasefire by pointing to US efforts to push for a new hostage deal between Israel and Hamas. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vetoed hostage talks last week, and Qatar, the mediator of the negotiations, said Saturday that things were not looking “promising.” Thomas-Greenfield said Algeria’s resolution would “run counter” to US efforts on the hostage deal. “We have communicated this concern repeatedly to our colleagues on the Council.

For that reason, the United States does not support action on this draft resolution. Should it come up for a vote as drafted, it will not be adopted,” she said. The US has already used its veto power on the Security Council to veto two resolutions calling for an end to the onslaught. The Biden administration has also dismissed the International Court of Justice’s ruling that it’s “plausible” Israel is committing genocide and continues to provide unconditional military support for the slaughter. Thomas-Greenfield said the resolution would get in the way of US “diplomacy” related to pushing for a hostage deal. “It is critical that other parties give this process the best odds of succeeding, rather than push measures that put it — and the opportunity for an enduring resolution of hostilities — in jeopardy,” she said.

Read more …

X thread.

• A Nuclear Power Cannot Lose In War (Medvedev)

“Some time ago I wrote in my Telegram channel: “A nuclear power cannot lose in war.” Immediately, sniveling Anglo-American lackeys popped up with hysterical cries: “No, that’s not true at all, even the USA has lost wars.” This is an obvious lie. I wasn’t talking about Vietnam, Afghanistan, or dozens of other places where Americans waged colonial wars of conquest. I was writing about historical wars where defending one’s Homeland occurs. Defending one’s land, people, and values. These are the wars nuclear powers have never lost to anyone. Why am I writing about this again? Well, I’m reading the words of various Pistoriuses with shaps, and I’m thinking: are they really such idiots or are they just pretending? “The world cannot afford Russia’s victory in this war.” How so? Here’s how.

Okay. Let’s imagine for a moment that Russia lost, and “Ukraine with its allies” won. What would such a victory mean for our enemies – the neo-Nazis and their Western sponsors? Well, as it has been said many times, a return to the borders of 1991. That is, the direct and irreversible collapse of present-day Russia, which includes new territories according to the Constitution. And then a furious civil war with the final disappearance of our country from the world map. Tens of millions of victims. The death of our future. The collapse of everything in the world. And now the main question: do these idiots really believe that the Russian people will swallow such a division of their country? That we will all reason approximately like this: “Well, alas, it happened. They won. Present-day Russia has disappeared. It’s a pity, of course, but we have to continue living in a collapsing, dying country, because nuclear war is much scarier for us than the death of our loved ones, our children, our Russia…”? And in such a case, will the leadership of the state headed by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation hesitate to make the most difficult decisions?

So here’s the thing. It will be completely different. The collapse of Russia will have much more terrifying consequences than the results of a normal, even the most protracted war. Because attempts to return Russia to the borders of 1991 will lead to only one thing. To a global war with Western countries using all the strategic arsenal of our state. Towards Kyiv, Berlin, London, Washington. Towards all the other beautiful historical places long targeted by our nuclear triad. Will we have the courage for this, if the disappearance of our thousand-year-old country, our great Motherland, is at stake, and the sacrifices made by the Russian people over the centuries will turn out to be in vain? The answer is obvious. So it’s better to let them return everything before it’s too late. Or we’ll take it back ourselves with maximum losses for the enemy. Like Avdeevka. Our warriors are heroes!”

Read more …

“..von der Leyen laments the Russian president’s attempt to “blackmail” Europe with fossil fuels while at the same time saying that whatever’s left of them can’t disappear fast enough. If that seems like a contradiction, it is.”

• Putin Is The New Climate Change (Marsden)

It’s hard to tell if she’s blaming him or crediting him, but European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told a meeting of the Paris-based Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on February 13th that “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s attempt to blackmail our union has utterly failed. On the contrary, he really pushed the green transition.” [..]

Germany is the canary in the coal mine for the EU green transition, having gone all-in, and clearly wind and solar weren’t ready for prime time when the cheap Russian gas tap was effectively turned off – first through the EU’s own anti-Russian sanctions that complicated payment for sales, then when it was blown up altogether. This is why the German economy is taking a hit, with the country’s own national statistics office now qualifying the economic environment as “marked by multiple crises,” as last year’s GDP dropped by 0.3%, with high energy prices as one of the top contributing factors. If mighty gusts of wind could singlehandedly prevent German deindustrialization as industry bails to less fantasy-powered jurisdictions, then Queen Ursula’s speeches alone would have long since done the job. In this latest one, von der Leyen laments the Russian president’s attempt to “blackmail” Europe with fossil fuels while at the same time saying that whatever’s left of them can’t disappear fast enough. If that seems like a contradiction, it is.

The truth is that Putin just served as a convenient pretext for something that Brussels had long wanted to do anyway, but was prevented from doing because of how it feared the average EU citizen would react. It’s now obvious what the impact of the green transition is on inflation as energy costs have skyrocketed. If the EU had pulled a stunt like this by simply caving to Washington’s relentless insistence that it renege on Nord Stream pipeline gas, telling Europeans that it was pivoting to far pricier US liquified natural gas – at least until it could figure out how to use the basic elements of earth to live like a developed country using tactics from the Stone Age – people would have gone ballistic and wondered what the heck was really going on. Putin came along just in time to rescue the transition from the growing skepticism of the climate-change excuse, fueling popularity for the right-wing populist parties calling the Brussels establishment out for its use of it to manipulate citizens into compliance with their agenda.

What agenda, exactly? Profits, first and foremost. Ask the farmers currently protesting all across Europe against a heavy-handed Brussels bureaucracy put into place that increasingly controls their production using everything from climate change policies that put precious farmland into the state’s hands through buyouts of climate change policy offenders, to pro-Ukraine trade policies that crush domestic production in favor of Ukraine’s Western-backed corporate Big Farming, like Bayer, Monsanto, Cargill, and DuPont. When the Ukraine conflict went hot, Queen Ursula just substituted Putin for the climate-change excuse, then kept hammering the need to plough cash into renewable energy projects that just happen to be dominated by European and American big finance and their investors, like US defense contractor General Electric, Germany’s BASF, Shell, and BP. Von der Leyen dropped a hint herself that all this is about not wanting to share the pie outside of her coffee klatch.

“The old fossil fuel economy is all about dependencies. The new clean energy economy is all about inter-dependencies,” she said, pointing out that “clean energy can be produced anywhere.” And that means being able to keep the profits among your friends and supporters. Interesting that she used the term “inter-dependencies” rather than “independence.” You’d think that national sovereignty would be a good thing. But apparently not when it could mean a country being able to tell Brussels to bugger off. Both climate change and national security are profitable causes, first and foremost. They should just be honest about that rather than trying to hard-sell it with virtue-signaling and bogeymen. But it’s the increased authoritarianism to control emissions or the ubiquitous “Russian threat” by introducing policies and tools that can also be used to quash domestic dissent, that are even more troubling. And for Brussels that seems to be a nice bonus.

Read more …

“It all started back in 2004, when the first Maidan, dubbed the Orange Revolution, and [the West’s] interference in the presidential elections happened. I think at that moment everyone realized exactly what was happening.”

• Euromaidan Triggered Ukraine’s Nine-Year War on Donbass (Sp.)

The “Russian Spring” in Donbass was a grassroots movement that began when the Euromaidan protests were raging in Kiev, Alexander Matyushin, call sign “Varyag,” former commander of the “Varyag” detachment and war correspondent, told Sputnik. The protests started on November 21, 2013, with up to 2,000 protesters gathering in Kiev’s central square, Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), after then-President Viktor Yanukovich refused to sign an EU association agreement. “Nikolai Azarov, Yanukovich’s closest aide and adviser, at the 11th hour calculated that switching to European standards would indebt Ukraine at a scale one had never imagined,” Matyushin said. “The transition envisaged changing everything, starting from sockets to railway tracks, everything had to be rebuilt. [The Yanukovich government] concluded it was unprofitable and refused [to sign the agreement with the EU – Sputnik]. After that, students took to the streets and were dispersed by Berkut on camera, which caused a wave of indignation in Kiev. From that point Euromaidan started to gain momentum.”

“Historically, the southeast [of Ukraine] has always gravitated towards Russia,” Matyushin said. He recalled that in 1919, Vladimir Lenin, then head of the Soviet government, integrated Donbass into the Ukrainian Socialist Republic against the will of the region’s population. After the collapse of the USSR, the 1994 plebiscite in Donbass concerning the region’s federalization and making Russian a second official language was similarly ignored by the then-Ukrainian government. By the time of Euromaidan, the southeastern and northwestern parts of Ukraine had already been divided over the future of the country: the former sought to integrate with the EU, while the latter wanted to develop economic ties with Russia, according to Matyushin. “The southeast included the territories from Kharkov to Odessa, the so-called Novorossiya, along with Crimea. And separately, there was the northwest, where these Ukrainian [nationalist] tendencies were strong,” he said.

The split became especially visible in 2004, when the Western-backed Orange Revolution on Maidan square brought Viktor Yushchenko to power in Kiev, the war correspondent pointed out. “And all the economic vicissitudes starting from 2004, when there was a severance of relations [between Russia and Ukraine], i.e. the gas war, the sugar war, etc., hit Donbass very hard because its industries relied, in particular, on cheap Russian gas.” In 2005, the Yushchenko government unilaterally initiated a review of tariffs for the transit of Russian gas to Europe through the territory of Ukraine, which led to the termination of a long-term Russo-Ukrainian gas contract that had fixed the fuel price for Kiev at $50 per 1,000 cubic meters until 2010. The increase in gas price dealt a blow to Donbass, which “blamed the Western Ukraine protege Yushchenko” for the economic turndown, Matyushin noted.

Another driver for the split was the glorification of WW2-era Nazi collaborators by the Yushchenko government. Yushchenko openly praised the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)* responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Jews, Russians, Roma, and Poles during Nazi Germany’s occupation of Ukraine and granted the titles of Hero of Ukraine to OUN-UPA leaders Roman Shukhevych and Stepan Bandera in 2007 and 2010, respectively. He also declared Ukrainian NATO membership a priority in 2008. According to the war correspondent, over 10 years – from 2004 to 2014 – the ideological and political rift between western and eastern Ukraine deepened dramatically. The 2014 Euromaidan events became the catalyst for the final division, he underscored.

“We had understood from the very beginning that everything that happened on Maidan could not lead to anything good,” Maya, warrant officer and commander of the support platoon of the 1st Slavic Brigade, told Sputnik. “I think the majority [of Ukrainians] also knew and understood that the West was involved in this. It was not the first time that the West had interfered in the domestic affairs of our state. It all started back in 2004, when the first Maidan, dubbed the Orange Revolution, and [the West’s] interference in the presidential elections happened. I think at that moment everyone realized exactly what was happening.”

Read more …

Surprised?

• Ukraine Used US Chemical Weapons Against Russian Troops – MoD

Russia has recorded cases of Ukrainian troops using US chemical munitions during the special military operation, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense troops of the Russian armed forces, said on Monday. “During the special military operation, cases of US chemical weapons used by the armed forces of Ukraine were recorded,” Kirillov told a briefing The Ukraine military used US-made chemical grenades dropped from UAVs several times against the Russian armed forces in 2023, and this January, Ukrainian units used an unknown toxic chemical against the Russian troops, which led to burns, nausea and vomiting. “Ukraine, with the complicity of Western countries, does not limit itself to the use of non-lethal chemicals, actively using chemicals from the list. I would like to draw attention to the statement by representatives of the Ukraine armed forces about the availability of such compounds at their disposal, including analogues of the combat toxic substance Tabun, which is included in List 1 of the Convention [on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction],” Kirillov said.

The head of the Kherson region administration, Saldo, was poisoned with ricin in August 2022, the substance was detected in biomedical samples, the head of the Russian Chemical Defense Forces, Kirillov, has said. The head of the Lugansk People Republic Leonid Pasechnik in December 2023 received a severe poisoning with phenolic compounds, said the head of the RHBZ troops Kirillov. Before that, Pasechnik’s poisoning had not been reported. The Russian Defense Ministry reported on the facts of the use of poisonous substances by the Ukrainian military:
• On August 19, 2022, a toxic chemical, an analog of the warfare poisoning agent “Bi-Zet,” was used.
• A similar substance was found on January 28, 2024, during operational-search activities in a cache in Melitopol. It was in vials labeled “Biosporin”.
• On February 8 and 16, 2023, cases of using hydrocyanic acid with drones were registered.
• On January 31, 2024, the Ukrainian Armed Forces used an unknown toxic chemical that caused burns. Analysis showed the presence of a compound known as anthraquinone.
• On December 28, 2023, American-made gas grenades loaded with a substance called “CS” capable of causing skin burns and respiratory paralysis were dropped in the area of Krasny Liman.
• On June 15, 2023, a drone carrying a plastic container with a mixture of chloroacetophenone and chloropicrin was used against Russian troops near Rabotino.

Read more …

“Ukraine effectively destroyed Crimea’s agricultural industry..”

• Helping Crimea Recover From Decades Of Ukrainian Misrule (Scott Ritter)

As the Russian military operation against Ukraine approaches its third year, the focus on the ongoing conflict has allowed another anniversary to go relatively unnoticed – it’s now around ten years since the violent events in Kiev’s Maidan square that put in motion the circumstances which precipitated the current conflict. Over the course of five days, from February 18 to 23, 2014, neo-Nazi provocateurs from the Svoboda (All Ukrainian Union ‘Freedom’) Party and the Right Sector, a coalition of far-right Ukrainian nationalists who follow the political teachings of Stepan Bandera and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, engaged in targeted violence against the government of President Viktor Yanukovich. It was designed to remove him from power and replace him with a new, US-backed government. They were successful; Yanukovich fled to Russia on February 23, 2014.

Soon thereafter, the predominantly Russian-speaking population of Crimea undertook actions to separate from the new Ukrainian nationalist government in Kiev. On March 16, 2014, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, both of which at that time were legally considered to be part of Ukraine, held a referendum on whether to join Russia or remain part of Ukraine. Over 97% of the votes cast were in favor of joining Russia. Five days later, on March 21, Crimea formally became part of the Russian Federation. Shortly afterwards, Ukraine built a concrete dam on the North Crimean Canal, a Soviet-era conduit transporting water from the Dnieper River that provided around 85% of the peninsula’s water supply. In doing so, Ukraine effectively destroyed Crimea’s agricultural industry. Then, in November 2015, Ukrainian nationalists blew up pylons carrying power lines from Ukraine to Crimea, thrusting the peninsula into a blackout that prompted a declaration of emergency by the regional government.

The Ukrainian assault on Crimea’s water and electricity was merely an extension of the lack of regard shown to the Crimean population during the two-plus decades that Kiev ruled the peninsula. The local economy was stagnant, and the pro-Russian locals were subjected to a policy of total Ukrainization. In general, the Gross Regional Product (GRP) of Crimea was well below the average of Ukraine (43.6% less in 2000, and 29.5% less in 2013.) In short, the Kiev government made no meaningful attempt to develop Crimea culturally or infrastructurally. The Crimean Peninsula was in a state of decay perpetrated by Ukrainian governments. The damming of the North Crimean Canal and the destruction of the electrical transmission lines were simply the radical expression of the indifference shown by Kiev.

In the years that followed the return of the peninsula to Russian control, there has been a gradual improvement in the economy of Crimea. The Russian government undertook a $680 million program to bolster water supplies which involved repairing long-neglected infrastructure, drilling wells, adding storage capacity, and building desalination plants. While this effort wasn’t sufficient to save much of Crimea’s agriculture, it did provide for the basic needs of the population. The Russian government also constructed the Crimean ‘Energy Bridge’, laying down several undersea energy cables across the Kerch Strait that effectively compensated for the loss of power brought on by the destruction of the Ukrainian power lines.

But the greatest symbol of Russia’s commitment to the people of Crimea was the construction of a $3.7 billion, 19-kilometer-long road-and-rail bridge connecting Krasnodar Region in southern Russia with the Crimean Peninsula. The bridge is the longest in Europe. Construction began in 2016, and it was opened for car traffic in a little more than two years. It has become a symbol of pride for the Russian people and their leadership; President Vladimir Putin personally drove across the bridge during its formal opening ceremony in 2018. The rail line was opened to passenger traffic in 2019, and freight traffic in 2020. The construction of the Crimean Bridge coincided with the building of the Tavrida Highway, a 250-kilometer, $2.5 billion four-lane road connecting the Crimean Bridge with the cities of Sevastopol and Simferopol. Construction of the road began in 2017 and is still ongoing.

Read more …

X thread. Lubos Blaha is Vice Speaker of the Slovak Parliament.

• About Navalny’s Death (Lubos Blaha)

It’s sad, of course, that the man died, but it’s strange that the whole West is now cheerfully promoting conspiracy theories here, and his death has not even been investigated. Putin definitely didn’t need his death, Navalny would have had to spend the next decades in prison and he didn’t threaten anyone politically. According to officials, the cause of his death was a blood clot. We don’t know anything else, the case is being investigated, everything else is conspiracies. I will not pretend that I will cry all night because of Navalny now – thousands of children are dying in Gaza and all the media spit on them, they will now talk on air for a week only about this one American agent.

They better look at what the British and Americans are doing to Julian Assange, who is in custody on the verge of death in this glorious West, which prides itself on freedom of speech and protection of journalists. Let them remember how they remained silent when the American journalist Gonzalo Lira, who criticized Zelensky, recently died in Ukrainian custody. They didn’t even remember about it. And today they will moralize about Navalny’s death. Again, it’s always sad when a person dies, but this is pure hypocrisy. – FRWL reports

Read more …

”I can’t predict if and when an attack on NATO territory might occur,”[..] “But it could happen in five to eight years..”

• Germany Gives Timeframe For Possible Russian ‘Attack’ On NATO – Bloomberg (RT)

Russia may attack NATO within the next five to eight years, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has claimed in an interview with Bloomberg. Pistorius was speaking on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference over the weekend. NATO leaders and defense officials met in Germany to discuss current geopolitical challenges, in particular the situation in Ukraine and military aid to Kiev. ”I can’t predict if and when an attack on NATO territory might occur,” Bloomberg quoted Pistorius as saying. “But it could happen in five to eight years,” he claimed. According to the outlet, EU countries are increasingly alarmed over Russia’s success on the battlefield, the potential reduction in US support for the region, and the fact that they are not prepared for an attack.

On Saturday, Russian forces liberated the key town of Avdeevka in a significant battlefield victory, inflicting heavy casualties on Ukrainian troops. The Ukrainian defeat came as a $60 billion emergency aid package for the country remains held up in the US Congress. “The problem with Europe is it doesn’t provide enough of a deterrence on its own because it hasn’t taken enough of an initiative,” J.D. Vance, a Republican senator and an opponent of Ukraine aid said in Munich, as quoted by Bloomberg. “The American security blanket has allowed European security to atrophy,” he added.

German tabloid Bild reported last month that the German Defense Ministry was developing a plan of action in case Russia attacks a NATO state following a victory in its conflict with Ukraine. In December, Bild cited the intelligence service of a European country as saying that Russia could attack Europe in the winter of 2024-25. Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed the same month that Russia has never had plans to attack NATO. The fears of a ‘Russian threat’ in the EU are being fueled by the US, as Washington fears losing its dominance on the European continent, Putin said.

Read more …

Idiot.

• Czech PM Labels Protesting Farmers ‘Supporters Of Moscow’ (RT)

Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala has claimed farmers protesting against EU agriculture policies, environmental requirements and high energy prices are “supporters of Russia”. On Monday, hundreds of tractors blocked off sections of Prague and disrupted traffic outside the country’s Agriculture Ministry as demonstrators demanded that the EU’s Green Deal, which calls for regulations on the use of certain chemicals and greenhouse gas emissions, be rejected. The farmers have argued that the Brussels’ proposals place a heavy burden on their businesses, making products more expensive and less competitive, especially when compared to non-EU imports, such as those coming from Ukraine.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), however, Fiala dismissed the demonstration and suggested that the farmers who took their tractors to Prague on Monday have “little to do with the fight for better conditions for farmers.” “The demonstration is organized by people who, for example, do not hide their support for the Kremlin and pursue goals other than the interests of farmers,” Fiala wrote, adding that the Czech government would only deal with those who “really represent farmers and talk together about what our agriculture needs.” He also noted that Monday’s protests in the Czech capital were not organized by the country’s largest farmers organizations, such as the Agrarian Chamber, the Agricultural Union, and the Association of Private Agriculture.

The three groups have announced plans to hold a separate demonstration against the EU’s green policies on Thursday in a joint action with farmers’ associations from other EU member states. The Agrarian Chamber has stated that farmers will lead their tractors and other machinery in convoys to the Czech border, but have stressed that the demonstration would be symbolic and will not interfere with the operation of the border. Similar protests have swept the EU in recent months, taking place in countries like Poland, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Hungary, Bulgaria, Latvia, and Slovenia. Demonstrators have been demanding more government aid for the agriculture sector, less bureaucracy from Brussels, as well as tighter controls on imports from non-EU countries.

Read more …

“As a result of the extensive damage the ship suffered, it is now at risk of potential sinking in the Gulf of Aden..”

• Houthis Attacked UK Ship in Gulf of Aden, Vessel Severely Damaged (Sp.)

Yemen’s Houthi movement, also known as Ansar Allah, has attacked a UK Rubymar cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said on Monday, adding that the vessel was severely damaged.”The Naval forces of the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out a specific military operation, targeting a British ship in the Gulf of Aden, ‘RUBYMAR,’ with a number of appropriate naval missiles. Among the results of the operation were the following: The ship suffered catastrophic damages and came to a complete halt. As a result of the extensive damage the ship suffered, it is now at risk of potential sinking in the Gulf of Aden,” Saree said in a statement on Telegram. The Yemeni air defenses were also able to shoot down a US-made Drone, MQ9, “with a suitable missile while it was carrying out hostile missions against our country on behalf of the Zionist entity,” the spokesman added.

Read more …

“our” government in Washington is financing the replacement of American Democracy subject to the will of the people with the government’s protection of the elite institutions..”

• 2024 Is the Last Year of Free Speech and Democracy in the Western World (PCR)

Tyranny is easy to establish over peoples who have confidence in their Constitutional rights and integrity of their institutions. The more patriotic the population is, the more susceptible it is to deception and betrayal by government. Try telling patriots what is happening to them, and they will call you a commie for speaking badly about their beloved country. Christian evangelicals have no opposition to the evil that is engulfing us, because they have been brainwashed that they will escape it by being wafted up to Heaven. The growth of evil is actually their escape from a sinful world into Heaven. The more evil, the sooner their escape. For most of the rest, liberal interventionists and hegemonic neoconservatives have taught that America is exceptional and indispensable, so how can anything go wrong.

Combine these awareness-blockers with the fact that uncomfortable truths are a bad news turnoff, and that censorship is being established as a national security matter with the argument that it makes us safe and “protects democracy.” Consequently, the criminalization of truth is rushing ahead. Even the word “truth” is slated to become a hate word that cannot be spoken. Any information that you have saved that helps you to understand the tyranny that is engulfing us should be stored in thumb drives and not in the cloud as all information undermining of the “consensus-building institutions” will be consigned to the memory hole. [..] Note: The Atlantic Council, one of the main anti-democratic “consensus-building (false narrative) organizations,” is possibly associated with the Burisma/Hunter Biden scandal.

Burisma, a Ukrainian company, put Hunter Biden on its board and paid him large sums of money for his father’s protection against prosecution of the company by Ukrainian authorities. US Vice President Biden actually admitted on TV, indeed he was proud of it, that he used billions of dollars in US taxpayers money to threaten Ukraine to withhold the US aid unless Ukraine fired the prosecutor, an offer Ukraine could not refuse. Atlantic Council board members Sally Painter is under investigation by the US Justice (sic) Department for illegal lobbying on behalf of Burisma. She and former Atlantic Council board member Karen Tramontano created a partnership between the Atlantic Council and Burisma. Burisma contributed $300,000 to the Atlantic Council. Perhaps it was the purchase price for Burisma officials to speak at Atlantic Council forums and for prestigious Atlantic Council members to speak at a Burisma conference in Ukraine in 2018. All of this to show American protection of the company to Ukrainian prosecutorial authorities.

In 2021 the United Arab Emirates Embassy donated more than $1 million to the Atlantic Council, and the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs added another $100,00-250,000. This might have been the purchase price for the Atlantic Council to use its influence to have the UN choose the UAE for the location of its 2023 climate change conference. Apparently, the Atlantic Council did not make the required or proper disclosures of the UAE’s donations. The Atlantic Council, a principal member of the anti-democratic censorship industry is supported by the hapless, unaware American taxpayers by grants of taxpayer’s money from the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy and by the US Agency for International Development. Thus, it is clear that “our” government in Washington is financing the replacement of American Democracy subject to the will of the people with the government’s protection of the elite institutions that have changed the definition of democracy to mean the service of their agendas.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Elon law

 

 

 

 

Deep sleep

 

 

 

 

Covers
https://twitter.com/i/status/1759649058069623161

 

 


I said no pictures!

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 7 2023

Feb 072023
 
 February 7, 2023  Posted by at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  63 Responses »


Georgia O’Keeffe Sunflower, New Mexico I 1935

 

• World Heading Into ‘Wider War’ – UN chief (RT)
• Ukraine Using Chemical Weapons In Donetsk – DPR leader (TASS)
• Ukrainian Refugees Are Becoming A Burden To The Baltic States (Milacic)
• FTX Demands Politicians Return Millions In SBF Donations (ZH)
• Why Shinzo Abe Was Assassinated (Chung)
• India Predicts 500% Increase In Domestic Natural Gas Demand (ZH)
• India and Russia Ditching Dollar In Energy Deal – Novatek (RT)
• ‘Doctor Doom’ Says US Dollar Reign Is Ending (RT)
• Welcome To the Death Spiral (John Rubino)
• Incentives Matter (Denninger)
• GB News Presenter Quits After Channel Tries To Make Him Pay Ofcom Fines (G.)
• Fauci Makes Absurd Amount of Money for “Speaking Engagements” (TP)
• Mind-Blowing Reality of Death after Injection (MOL)
• Chinese Spy Balloon Carried Explosives To Self-detonate (PM)

 

 

 

 

Putin

 

 

 

 

Ausexit
https://twitter.com/i/status/1622679275466891264

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gonzalo: Zelensky going to Brussels? Now? Really. Just as Bakhmut is about to fall—and the Russians launch their offensive. Just as all his supporters have been purged from the government—and he might be next. I bet Zelensky doesn’t return to Kiev from this trip. I bet he’s running.

 

 

 

 

“We need to wake up – and get to work..” Well, what are you waiting for? Get a peace conference together.

• World Heading Into ‘Wider War’ – UN chief (RT)

The world has come close to a global conflict, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Monday. The global community is not “sleepwalking” into “a wider war” but marches towards it “with its eyes wide open,” he stressed in a speech to the General Assembly. “The prospects for peace keep diminishing. The chances of further escalation and bloodshed keep growing,” Guterres said, denouncing the lack of “strategic vision” and “bias” that prevent political decision-makers from taking steps in the right direction. “This near-term thinking is not only deeply irresponsible – it is immoral,” he argued, adding that politicians and entrepreneurs became too absorbed with clinging to power and their business cycles.

The secretary-general also blasted the erosion of international law and order based on UN principles, which, according to him, led to the present sorry state of affairs. “If every country fulfilled its obligations under the [UN] Charter, the right to peace would be guaranteed,” he noted, calling on UN members to “to transform our approach to peace by recommitting to the Charter – putting human rights and dignity first, with prevention at the heart.” “We need to wake up – and get to work,” Guterres said, adding that 2023 had placed humanity in front of a “confluence of challenges unlike any in our lifetimes.”


The UN chief also pointed to the fact that scientists have moved the symbolic “Doomsday clock,” which reflects the potential annihilation of humanity, from 90 seconds to midnight – the closest it has ever been to a possible Armageddon. The UN chief’s words came after the US and its allies vowed to send dozens of Western-designed modern battle tanks to Ukraine amid the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev. The Pentagon also announced supplying the Ukrainian forces with munitions that have a 150-kilometer range, adding that it would allow Kiev to use them as it sees fit. Moscow has previously repeatedly warned that continued weapons supplies to Ukraine by the US and its allies risk further escalation that might spiral into a direct conflict between Russia and NATO.

Read more …

There are videos floating around.

• Ukraine Using Chemical Weapons In Donetsk – DPR leader (TASS)

A search for additional ways to protect troops from the chemical weapons that Ukrainian forces are using is underway in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the region’s Acting Head Denis Pushilin said on Monday.”We currently seek to equip our units [with chemical protection suits]. Then again, we have some of the things that we need but it’s not always comfortable to constantly wear chemical protection suits while in position. Certainly, it makes it harder for our forces to perform their missions so we are looking for additional ways to protect our troops,” he told the Rossiya-24 TV channel. Pushilin pointed out that experts had not yet had the chance to figure out what substances the Ukrainian forces were using.


“They trigger coughing, followed by watery eyes and general discomfort,” he said, describing the effect of the Ukrainian chemical weapons. Yan Gagin, an advisor to the Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DPR) leader, said earlier that the Kiev regime’s forces had used chemical weapons along the Soledar and Artyomovsk frontlines on February 5. He stressed that it wasn’t the first time that Ukraine had used chemical weapons. Gagin added that the Ukrainian military made no secret that it had prohibited weapons, posting videos showing imported gas grenades and drones designed for discharging them. Pushilin said on Monday that evidence corroborating the use of chemical weapons by the Armed Forces of Ukraine had also been found along the Ugledar frontline.

Read more …

“Ukrainians feel like the masters of Lithuania here. No one talks about this, but in Lithuania, almost every administrative institution has a flag of Ukraine. In our parliament, the flag of Ukraine also hangs.”

• Ukrainian Refugees Are Becoming A Burden To The Baltic States (Milacic)

Every conflict, including this one in Ukraine, always leads to refugees. Considering the size of Ukraine, it is not surprising that a large number of Ukrainian refugees are in Russia and in Europe. Ukrainian refugees were the topic of an interesting online conference, where you could hear very interesting information from experts about Ukrainian refugees in the Baltics. The name of the online conference was “Ukrainian refugees in the Baltic States, social aspects of integration into society”. During the meeting, experts from the Baltic countries discussed the problem of Ukrainian refugees and their impact on the lives of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The conference was held in Russian. It is curious that even 32 years after the collapse of the USSR, the inhabitants of the Baltic countries prefer Russian rather than English in interstate communication.

[..] “Ukrainians feel like the masters of Lithuania here. No one talks about this, but in Lithuania, almost every administrative institution has a flag of Ukraine. In our parliament, the flag of Ukraine also hangs. This is very painful for us Lithuanians!” The Baltics are also annoyed by “imaginary” refugees who travel to European countries from regions where there are no hostilities. And they require special treatment and all kinds of support. Allan Hantsom, editor-in-chief of the Estonian newspaper Delovye Vedomosti: “There are people who are fleeing the war, but the majority quietly leave those regions where there are no hostilities or rocket attacks. Very different people. Some come on buses with trunks, others – on expensive cars, and they also demand free rations and free accommodation. Especially now there is a crisis in the countries and now the Europeans are more and more concerned about their own problems: inflation, shortage of fuel and housing.”

After all, Europe’s resources for accepting refugees from Ukraine are running out, which leads to the curtailment of assistance programs and the cessation of accepting new migrants. At the same time, the Baltics should be prepared for the fact that refugees from Ukraine will remain there for many years even after the end of the conflict. The inhabitants of the Baltics are increasingly tired of forced guests, but they can’t do anything, because the course of the authorities is the same: “Everything for the sake of Ukraine, and let their residents survive somehow on their own!

Because of that, Estonians began to object. Why does a person who came from a foreign country, who does not know the language and has nothing to do with Estonia, get everything, and local people from the provinces are forced to live in poverty, work at low-paid jobs? Why not provide them with conditions? A refugee arrives in the capital – here’s a ration for you, here’s your living allowance. A lot of people from the Estonian hinterland would also like to live in hotels and on ferries, so that the state pays for everything. Ukrainian refugees, instead of learning the language and considering the Baltic states as their “second homeland”, impose their customs and rules of behavior.

Read more …

They should ask for Ukraine’s money back too. That would make it real funy.

• FTX Demands Politicians Return Millions In SBF Donations (ZH)

Just when you thought the FTX travesty couldn’t get any more bizarre, the now bankrupt company is trying to claw back political donations and other spending that took place at the direction of former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. A press release made its way out mid-day Sunday that FTX’s debtors and the company had sent “confidential messages to political figures, political action funds, and other recipients of contributions or other payments that were made by or at the direction of the FTX Debtors, Samuel Bankman-Fried or other officers or principals of the FTX Debtors” requesting the funds back. “These recipients are requested to return such funds to the FTX Debtors by February 28, 2023,” the release states. It continues: “The messages follow the December 19, 2022, announcement by the FTX Debtors that they have established arrangements for such recipients to return funds voluntarily by contacting ([email protected]).”


Then, the release threatens legal action to those who are unwilling to return funds: “To the extent such payments are not returned voluntarily, the FTX Debtors reserve the right to commence actions before the Bankruptcy Court to require the return of such payments, with interest accruing from the date any action is commenced.” “Recipients are cautioned that making a payment or donation to a third party (including a charity) in the amount of any payment received from a FTX Contributor does not prevent the FTX Debtors from seeking recovery from the recipient or any subsequent transferee,” the release says. We noted back in December that $73 million in political donations were now at risk as a result of the bankruptcy. SBF also donated to Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York, who last year was one of 8 members of Congress who lobbied against regulating crypto. “Nobody ends up looking great in this,” said University of Rochester political science professor, David Primo, at the time.

“While there’s precedent for forcing political entities to return contributions in cases of fraud, recovery prospects are unclear in FTX’s case. Recouping campaign funds as part of the bankruptcy proceedings is a complicated and lengthy process, and the scope of the total funds eligible for clawback depends on myriad federal and state laws. It is also subject to the bankruptcy lawyers’ judgment on what money, which may be long spent by the time the FTX trustees try to go after it, is worth the effort. Bankman-Fried is facing additional scrutiny for recently saying he gave equally to Republicans and Democrats, but funded conservatives through “dark money” groups that don’t identify donors. The claim is almost impossible to verify unless the recipients voluntarily disclose they received money from him.” -Bloomberg

Read more …

“..Abe was not willing to sell off Japan as a satrapy, however, that was exactly what the western diktat was essentially demanding of Japan..”

Worth reading the whole piece.

• Why Shinzo Abe Was Assassinated (Chung)

Former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe was assassinated July 8th, 2022, and though no longer in the position of Prime Minister of Japan at the time of his assassination (having served from 2006-2007 and 2012- September 16, 2020) he was the longest serving prime minister in Japanese history and continued to exert major influence on policy-shaping within Japan. News of Abe’s assassination was received around the world with an admixture of very strong emotion from both extremes. Some were horrified by his death and praised what he had done for Japan as something almost saintly. Others ecstatically celebrated his death, thinking no possible good could come from him due to his attempts to revive the dark side of Japan’s imperial past and his public displays of tribute to the Japanese fascists from WWII. When the news was still fresh and the frenzy of confusion at its peak, many even blamed China for the orchestration of Abe’s death, thinking they were clearly the ones to benefit from such an act.

It is true that Abe had a very dangerous and destructive mission to restore Japan to its status as an imperialistic empire. He was a corrupt insider who pushed for the dangerous privatization of the Japanese government and increased the gap between the wealthy and middle-class citizens. However, it is also too simplistic as to celebrate his death as an absolute triumph. As we can clearly see seven months after Abe’s assassination, Japan has not become more peaceful and ready for dialogue with its eastern partners but rather has become much more bellicose and stauncher in its cooperation with the increasingly war frenzied western demands. Japan has also greatly severed motion towards greater economic and political cooperation with Russia and China, which was still moving forward when Abe was alive.

It is also interesting to note that Abe was assassinated weeks before Pelosi’s Circus Tour to Taiwan. Although Pelosi’s provocation did not amount to any military confrontation, we cannot say that that was not its intention, nor that things could have played out very differently in terms of a military confrontation between China and the United States. The reader should be reminded that in 2014, Japan had changed or “reinterpreted” its constitution which gave more powers to the Japan Self-Defense Forces, allowing them to “defend other allies” in case of war being declared upon them. The United States, of course, fully supported the move. This “reinterpretation” of Japan’s constitution effectively entered it into NATO. In December 2022, Japan announced a new national security strategy. This new strategy would double defense spending. Japan also plans to invest in counter-strike capabilities, including buying U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles and developing its own weapons systems.

It was precisely Abe’s grand vision of Japan returning to its “glory” days as an empire that was problematic for the League of Nations vision, for if Japan saw itself on par with other great empires, or perhaps even greater, it meant that it did not ultimately intend to bend the knee. That is, Abe was not willing to sell off Japan as a satrapy, however, that was exactly what the western diktat was essentially demanding of Japan. Under this western diktat Japan was being ordered to accept its fate to collapse economically and sink into desperation, become increasingly militaristic and extremist and lead a kamikaze charge into a war with China and Russia which would lead to the ruination of the Japanese civilization. It does not look like Abe was going to go along with that stark vision for Japan.

Read more …

“I will be very frank,” Puri said, “we will play the market card …”

• India Predicts 500% Increase In Domestic Natural Gas Demand (ZH)

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday projected that the country’s gas demand would rise 500% due to the rapid pace of development, while its share of global oil demand would more than double. While the Indian prime minister did not offer a specific time frame for this major boost in demand, he said that the country’s energy demand would be highest in the present decade. Modi’s statement, delivered during the opening ceremony of India Energy Week 2023, coincides with a recent OPEC report that expects India to be the largest contributor to incremental demand, with the country expected to add some 6.3 million bpd until 2045. Overall, OPEC said it saw demand increasing to 110 million bpd in 2045, up from 97 million bpd in 2021. Modi predicts India’s share in global oil demand will increase from 5% to 11%.


The Indian prime minister used the occasion to highlight the country’s plans to boost exploration and production, which he said would provide opportunities for investors. Right now, India relies on imports for some 85% of its energy needs, with India and China being the largest importers of oil and gas in the world. With this in mind, India will remove significant restrictions on exploration, reducing “no-go” areas for E&P companies. India also plans to expand its refining capacity, along with its LNG import capacity by 2030. Asia is now the biggest buyer of Russian crude since the imposition of Western sanctions following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Some 70% of Russian Urals January loading cargoes were bound for India, according to Reuters data. India’s oil minister, Hardeep Singh Puri, also said on Monday that regardless of Western sanctions, the country would not shun Russian oil, which it receives at a discount to Brent crude. “I will be very frank,” Puri said, “we will play the market card …”

Read more …

LNG.

• India and Russia Ditching Dollar In Energy Deal – Novatek (RT)

Russia’s largest independent gas producer, Novatek, is in talks with India over long-term contracts on supplies of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the company’s CEO, Leonid Mikhelson, announced on Monday. Negotiations with several Indian companies are underway as Russia is keen to invest in the country’s energy sector and further expand cooperation, he told reporters on the sidelines of the India Energy Week forum. “We want to be not just LNG suppliers, Indian engineering companies are already taking part in our projects and there’s a certain share of Indian suppliers in equipment. We want to expand and increase it,” Novatek’s CEO pointed out.


Mikhelson added that his company was interested in a broader investment into the Indian market, including the construction of regasification terminals for LNG production. He also revealed that the sides were considering settling LNG supply payments in national currencies – rupees or rubles – bypassing US dollar transactions. “We discussed it with the energy minister [Hardeep Singh Puri],” Mikhelson confirmed without specifying exact numbers. Earlier, Reuters reported that India’s main gas distributor GAIL was discussing the terms of a long-term contract on LNG imports with Novatek. The companies are close to signing a preliminary agreement, according to sources in the industry.

Read more …

We’re all saying that. Question is the timing.

• ‘Doctor Doom’ Says US Dollar Reign Is Ending (RT)

The US dollar’s status as the world’s main reserve currency is in jeopardy, renowned economist Nouriel Roubini, who predicted the global financial crisis of 2008, wrote in an article for the Financial Times on Sunday. While no currency is yet capable of replacing the greenback on the pedestal altogether, the US currency is quickly losing its competitive advantage to the Chinese yuan, Roubini said. “Given the increased weaponization of the dollar for national security purposes, and the growing geopolitical rivalry between the west and revisionist powers such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, some argue that de-dollarization will accelerate…In a world that will be increasingly divided into two geopolitical spheres of influence – namely those surrounding the US and China – it is likely that a bipolar…currency regime will eventually replace the unipolar one,” the economist, dubbed ‘Doctor Doom’ by Wall Street for his tendency toward grim predictions, stated.

Sceptics note that the yuan cannot become a true reserve currency unless Beijing lifts capital controls, accepts permanent current account deficits, and the yuan’s exchange rate becomes more flexible. But the economist argues that such points are no longer valid, as Washington is actively undermining the allure of its currency with sanctions. “Complete exchange rate flexibility and international capital mobility is not necessary in order for a country to achieve reserve currency status…And while China may have capital controls, the US has its own version that may reduce the appeal of dollar assets among foes and relative friends. These include financial sanctions against its rivals, restrictions to inward investment in many national security-sensitive sectors and firms, and even secondary sanctions against friends who violate the primary ones,” Roubini argued.


The economist also noted that China has been stepping up yuan transactions with its foreign partners, and said this trend will likely continue, with more emerging market economies welcoming “the ability to trade oil in [yuan] and to hold a greater share of their reserves in the Chinese currency… given that they do a great deal more trade with China than the US.” He added that new technologies, like CBDCs, Alipay-like payment systems, swap lines between China and its partners and national analogs of the SWIFT messaging system, “will hasten the advent of a bipolar global monetary and financial system.” “For all these reasons, the relative decline of the US dollar as the main reserve currency is likely to occur over the next decade. The intensifying geopolitical contest between Washington and Beijing will inevitably be felt in a bipolar global reserve currency regime as well,” Roubini concluded.

Read more …

“This year the government’s annual interest bill will break $1 trillion. Combine that with the soaring cost of Medicare and Social Security as millions of Baby Boomers retire, and Washington is looking at $2 trillion a year just in just interest and entitlements..”

John Rubino has been a strong supporter of the Automatic Earth since the start. Which reminds me, I totally forgot that we had our 15th anniversary on Jan. 22.

• Welcome To the Death Spiral (John Rubino)

Gold bugs and other long-suffering critics of fiat currency and endless credit expansion have for decades been predicting that soaring debt would eventually blow up the financial world. As the story went, governments with unlimited printing presses would spend and borrow too much, forcing their central banks to keep interest rates unnaturally low to make interest costs manageable, which would encourage even more credit growth, causing inflation to spike, and so on, until everyone loses faith in fiat currencies and the misbegotten things fall to their intrinsic value of zero. That’s a bit hard to visualize when it’s explained in long, convoluted sentences. But it’s a lot clearer when you line up the relevant charts. So let’s start with US government debt, which has gone parabolic.

Ever-increasing debt is manageable if interest rates fall concurrently so the interest on that debt doesn’t change. And that’s what happened between 1980 and 2021. The Fed pushed down interest rates, which minimized interest costs, which lulled a shockingly gullible investment community and political class into the belief that this process could continue forever.

But of course it couldn’t continue forever. As the critics predicted, soaring debt required ever greater currency creation which eventually caused the cost of living to jump by 10% in 2022, leading regular people to demand that it stop. So the Fed now has to raise interest rates to counter inflation. You can see this happening on the far right of the above chart. As the US borrows more money and its existing debts roll over at higher rates, the cost of that debt is soaring. This year the government’s annual interest bill will break $1 trillion. Combine that with the soaring cost of Medicare and Social Security as millions of Baby Boomers retire, and Washington is looking at $2 trillion a year just in just interest and entitlements, which it will have to borrow to fund, which will send interest costs even higher, which will require more borrowing, and so on, until it all comes crashing down.

Read more …

Part of the death spiral.

• Incentives Matter (Denninger)

An interesting data point: A stunning percentage of those young people without children now never intend to have them. In fact one relatively recent survey found the number was as high as one third. The most-common reason cited? Its too expensive. Now you can try to point to this as some sort of selfishness but that’s a dodge on the real issue: You, that is us older people, made it too expensive. Specifically homes and medical care are two places where all the “older people” cheer; we get the “best” but the next can’t buy it at all. Our federal government tries to interfere in both markets and allows blatantly illegal activity when it comes to medical care, specifically as relates to price fixing, which has been a felony for over 100 years. Nobody cares and nobody will prosecute.

Since all criminal offenses in the United States are “the people .v. whoever” — that is, there’s no right of private prosecution as there is with a lawsuit, it never ends since nobody goes to jail and in fact there is a formal government policy not to indict large corporations for felony criminal acts (which could debar them permanently from government and some private activity) after Arthur Anderson. Health care has gone from about 4% to 20% of our domestic output; that is, it has multiplied in price by five. Just having a child is expensive, never mind the near-inevitable little thing here and there. Your kid breaking a leg playing a sport could bankrupt you in this country, and God forbid said child contracts a serious childhood disease such as Leukemia.

Then there’s the always-required housing. One or more kids means more bedrooms, of course; at least one more. When a one-bedroom apartment runs $12,000 a year exactly how am I supposed to pay for that if I don’t make at least $40,000 annually? Oh, we’ll just “subsidize” that you say? Uh, no you won’t because all that does is force the price even higher by throwing printed government credit at it, since the government refuses to tax what it spends first. The last two years have made clear what all the credit emission does: Food, anyone? And kids are hungry, especially teens. I had one; she was a vacuum cleaner in the fridge and pantry and boys are worse. That’s normal. How are you going to pay for it?

Of course nobody seems to think this is a problem, not even Jerome Powell at The Fed, who is saying that he has “the tools” to make inflation come down to 2%. Eventually. Note that what he didn’t say is that he will tighten credit until the price of houses returns to what it was before the 2006-2007 bubble, which was in fact still ridiculously expensive in terms of average wages which is why the bubble happened in the first place — people running up the price by using hinky financial engineering. No, importing millions of people from other lands, most with no skills, will not fix this. They come here with no skills but a willingness to pop out some kids — which makes it worse. That’s basic economics: No skills means low or no wages but demand for goods and services which of course makes the price go up even more.

Read more …

One more independent voice silenced.

• GB News Presenter Quits After Channel Tries To Make Him Pay Ofcom Fines (G.)

One of GB News’s leading presenters has quit after the channel tried to make him personally responsible for paying fines issued by the media regulator Ofcom. Mark Steyn, who presented the station’s 8pm peak-time slot, is already subject to two investigations by the media regulator after he used his show to cast doubt on the safety of Covid vaccines. The presenter’s departure has led some viewers of GB News – which has given airtime to conspiracy theorists warning of a globalist elite takeover – to suggest the channel has itself sold out to shadowy globalist forces. Steyn, who has been off-air since last year after suffering two heart attacks, told fans on his personal website that the station bosses initially insisted he could not return unless a defibrillator was fitted in the studio.

He said this was fixed with a call to “Defibrillators R Us”, only for Angelos Frangopoulos, GB News’s chief executive, to demand Steyn agree to personally cover the costs of dealing with Ofcom and paying any fines for breaches of the broadcasting code. This is a highly unusual situation given the fines are the legal responsibility of the broadcast licence holder, not the individual presenter. Steyn, who was employed on a freelance basis, said his response was that “you may be a homicidal maniac intent on bringing on a third fatal heart attack but you’ll have to do better than this”. The presenter said he used to call GB News’s in-house compliance officer “Ofcom’s bitch” when they argued about what he was allowed to say on air. “Well Ofcom’s bitch has had his revenge now,” said Steyn in his video.


Steyn said the proposal would be untenable. “I’m on the hook for Ofcom fines but I don’t have any say in our defence against an Ofcom complaint – that’s all done by GB News. Ofcom’s bitch, as I call the compliance officer, will be making the weedy defence to Ofcom and then I’m the one who has to pay the £40,000 fine,” he added. Although Ofcom has the ability to regulate the content of broadcast television and radio channels, it has no control over online streams – meaning Steyn is able to broadcast whatever he wants online to a potentially bigger audience without any intervention. The contractual terms offered to Steyn suggest GB News bosses are concerned about the impending judgment in the Ofcom investigations – which could scare away some of its remaining advertisers. Earlier this year all staff were put on mandatory Ofcom training.

Read more …

Time for a hearing under oath. In public.

• Fauci Makes Absurd Amount of Money for “Speaking Engagements” (TP)

Dr. Anthony Fauci faced criticism online on Sunday after reports emerged about his speaking fee. Critics were stunned to discover that the once highest-paid federal U.S. government employee is charging up to $100,000 for speaking engagements. This news has raised questions about Fauci’s financial motivations and independence in light of his high-profile role as a public health expert during the COVID-19 pandemic. The information was brought to light by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ rapid response director, Christina Pushaw, who tweeted a screenshot from the Leading Motivational Speaker’s Agency’s website. The screenshot showed that Fauci is listed as a motivational and healthcare keynote speaker, with a fee ranging from $50,000 to $100,000.

Many argued that his high speaking fee undermines his credibility and raises ethical concerns, regardless of the public response. On October 19, 2020, President Trump called Dr. Fauci “a disaster.” The chief medical adviser to Biden is scheduled to deliver the 2023 Yale Medical School commencement speech in May. He has also been a keynote speaker at several other university commencement ceremonies, including the University of Maryland, Roger Williams University, and The City College of New York. According to a Freedom of Information Act request, Fauci was once considered the highest-paid employee of the U.S. government, earning more than even the president. In 2019, Fauci’s income reached a record high of $417,608.00, and over the previous two years, he earned $384,625.00.


Between 2010 and 2019, Forbes reported that Fauci, as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, earned $3.6 million. Watchdog group OpenTheBooks found that the Fauci family’s net worth expanded from $7.5 million in 2019 to $12.6 million by the end of 2021, due to investment gains, awards, compensation, and royalties.

Read more …

“..approximately one-quarter of a million American lives were lost during the first year of the catastrophic COVID-19 vaccine campaign..”

• Mind-Blowing Reality of Death after Injection (MOL)

Many individuals around the globe appear to have fallen into a trance where those who have undergone COVID-19 vaccination do not recognize, nor do they care when large numbers of individuals are dying suddenly without explanation days or months also after taking one of the COVID-19 vaccines. In this issue of the Report, we have an excerpt from the Headwinds documentary “The Psychology of Totalitarianism,” where Dr. Mattias Desmet, Ph.D., gives a summary of mass formation and some of the behaviors it explains, including the fear-driven affiliation with a group who believes so strongly in the vaccine, that they will do unimaginable things to the unvaccinated. Broken families, job loss, and careers ruined for the unvaccinated by those in the formation who are hell-bent on every last person taking a COVID-19 vaccine.


Cumulative excess deaths Scandinavia.

At the same time, the United States is facing catastrophic casualties with the mass vaccination program. Several sources of data emerged in 2021, pointing to a biopharmaceutical public health disaster with the COVID-19 vaccine campaign. Pfizer recorded 1223 deaths occurring shortly after administration of their product within the first 90 days of use starting December 10, 2020. Pantazatos and Seligmann reported an excess in all-cause mortality from vaccine administration and US census data during 2021 between 146k and 187k, with a midpoint of 166k deaths. By the end of December 2021, the CDC VAERS system had reported ~8K with an under-reporting factor of 30; the casualty estimate from that source was 240k. In a recent paper published in BMC Infectious Diseases, Dr. Mark Skidmore used a valid representative survey to learn from population reporting.


A total of 22% knew of someone who was seriously injured by the vaccine, and the estimate based upon deaths attributed to the vaccine by respondents was 278K deaths. In the Skidmore analysis, the average age of death reported was 48 years. This paper is important since it triangulates with two other sources for the same time interval with a conclusion that approximately one-quarter of a million American lives were lost during the first year of the catastrophic COVID-19 vaccine campaign. During 2021 the Delta outbreak took an additional toll, with lives lost to the infection, and there was no evidence to support a tradeoff. That is, no randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of COVID-19 vaccination demonstrated a reduction in death as a component of a primary or secondary endpoint. The consent form for immunization does not list mortality reduction as an expected benefit, yet it mentions death is possible with the vaccine. I anticipate more direct sources of information will become available, including vaccine administration information from the CDC linked with the National Death Index.

Unvaxxed women
https://twitter.com/i/status/1622705584435867648

Read more …

“..200 feet tall, weighed thousands of pounds, and its payload was the size of a jetliner..”

• Chinese Spy Balloon Carried Explosives To Self-detonate (PM)

Following the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon over the weekend, Pentagon officials have revealed that the balloon potentially was carrying explosives to destroy itself. According to the Daily Mail, Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, commander of US Northern Command, revealed in a Monday call with reporters that the Balloon, in addition to potentially carrying explosives, was 200 feet tall, weighed thousands of pounds, and its payload was the size of a jetliner. VanHerck’s comments came following a briefing by National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, who defended Biden’s decision to wait to shoot down the balloon until the weekend. “Because the president decided they wouldn’t shoot it down until he could do so safely, and that meant over water, that afforded us a terrific opportunity to gain a better understanding, to study the capabilities of this balloon,” Kirby said.

/

On the coast of South Carolina on Saturday afternoon, the US military, using an F-22 fighter jet, shot down the balloon with a missile. Shortly before the balloon was shot down, Federal Aviation Administration had issued a ground stop for three airports in the Carolinas located in Wilmington, North Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The balloon had entered US airspace on January 28 and was known to the Biden administration for nearly a week before its report in the news on Thursday, February 2. The White House reportedly tried to keep its presence secret to not disrupt Secretary of State Antony Blinken scheduled trip to China, which was postponed after the public’s discovery of the balloon.

Read more …

 

 

 

C seeds
https://twitter.com/i/status/1621997452445229056

 

 

 

 

Ring
https://twitter.com/i/status/1622408086081396737

 

 

 

 

Funeral sheep

 

 


A massive sculpture of a legendary bird has taken shape at Jatayu Earth’s Center in Kerala, India, in 2020. Jatayu, the noble bird of divine origin, as recreated in concrete at the Center is 61 meters long, 46 meters wide, and 21 meters tall

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle September 10 2018

Sep 102018
 
 September 10, 2018  Posted by at 9:31 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  15 Responses »


Salvador Dali The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory 1954

 

• Trump To Declassify Bruce Ohr, Carter Page Documents As Early As This Week (ZH)
• Stronger US Economy May Warrant ‘Restrictive’ Rates: Boston Fed’s Rosengren (R.)
• Brexit Will Fail Regardless Of Boris Johnson And Theresa May’s Jabs (Ind.)
• Battle Over EU Copyright Law Heads For Showdown (G.)
• US Senator: MI6 Planning Fake Chemical Weapons Attack On Syria (WaPo)
• What Caused The Crash Of 2008 Now Shapes Our Post-Modern 1930s (Varoufakis)
• Greek Bank Profits Are Hurt By Credit Contraction (K.)
• Greek PM Promises Relief Measures After Years Of Austerity (G.)
• Petition To Offer Assange Asylum To Be Presented To New Zealand Parliament (RT)
• US Lawyers Say They Have ‘Explosive’ Documents About Monsanto In Europe (EN)
• Turtles, Whales And Birds Under Threat From Brexit Funding Cuts (Ind.)

 

 

Nice way to start the week. I said this would happen, become a trend. Open thee, Sesame.

• Trump To Declassify Bruce Ohr, Carter Page Documents As Early As This Week (ZH)

President Trump is expected to declassify documents connected to the Obama administration’s surveillance of the Trump campaign during the 2016 US election, according to Axios, citing allies of the president who say it could happen as soon as this week. Specifically mentioned are documents concerning former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, as well as the “investigative activities of Justice Department lawyer Bruce Ohr” – who was demoted twice for lying about his extensive relationship with Christopher Steele – the former MI6 spy who assembled the sham “Steele Dossier” used by the FBI in a FISA surveillance application to spy on Page.

Republicans on the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees believe the declassification will permanently taint the Trump-Russia investigation by showing the investigation was illegitimate to begin with. Trump has been hammering the same theme for months. • They allege that Bruce Ohr played an improper intermediary role between the Justice Department, British spy Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS – the opposition research firm that produced the Trump-Russia dossier, funded by Democrats. (Ohr’s wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS on Russia-related matters during the presidential election – a fact that Ohr did not disclose on federal forms.) • And they further allege that the Obama administration improperly spied on Carter Page – all to take down Trump. -Axios

Ohr, meanwhile, met with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska in 2015 to discuss helping the FBI with organized crime investigations, according to The Hill’s John Solomon. The meeting with the Putin ally was facilitated by Steele. Three weeks ago, Trump called Ohr a disgrace, while also tweeting: “Will Bruce Ohr, whose family received big money for helping to create the phony, dirty and discredited Dossier, ever be fired from the Jeff Sessions “Justice” Department? A total joke!” According to emails turned over to Congressional investigators in August, Christopher Steele was much closer to Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie than previously disclosed.

Steele and the Ohrs would have breakfast together on July 30, 2016 at the Mayflower Hotel in downtown Washington D.C., days after Steele turned in installments of his infamous “dossier” on July 19 and 26. The breakfast also occurred one day before the FBI formally launched operation “Crossfire Hurricane,” the agency’s counterintelligence operation into the Trump campaign. “Great to see you and Nellie this morning Bruce,” Steele wrote shortly following their breakfast meeting. “Let’s keep in touch on the substantive issues/s (sic). Glenn is happy to speak to you on this if it would help

Read more …

To reiterate once again: not long after Lehman, Bernanke said the Fed had entered ‘uncharted territory’. They’re still there, groping in the dark. Not a clue, but faking it like pros.

• Stronger US Economy May Warrant ‘Restrictive’ Rates: Boston Fed’s Rosengren (R.)

When Boston Federal Reserve Bank President Eric Rosengren switched from advocating low interest rates to tighter monetary policy, he argued it was time to start crawling back toward “normal” rates even with 5% unemployment and weak growth and inflation. Two years later, Rosengren has joined colleagues in beginning to lay the groundwork for those rate hikes to potentially continue longer and to a higher level than currently expected as the outlook for the economy strengthens. Rates may not only need to become “restrictive,” but the definition of that may be moving up as well, Rosengren said in an interview with Reuters on Saturday following an economic conference here.

“This is not hair on fire. There is upward pressure on inflation, and given that we are already at 2%, labor markets are already tight … that is going to be a situation where we start persistently having inflation above what our target is,” Rosengren said. “There is an argument to normalize policy and probably be mildly restrictive.” The Fed maintains a 2% inflation target, which it is only now reaching after a decade struggling to consistently hit and maintain it. He said the Fed does not need to move faster than the current gradual pace, which has translated into roughly one rate hike per quarter, with the next expected later this month. That steady pace is a luxury gained by starting early, he said, skirting the need to move more quickly and catch up with a tightening economy.

Read more …

Incompetent one and all.

• Brexit Will Fail Regardless Of Boris Johnson And Theresa May’s Jabs (Ind.)

When Boris Johnson decides to go on leadership manoeuvres he tends to be noisy. His latest line is that the prime minister is like some sort of incompetent suicide bomber, handing over the ignition button on her suicide vest to none other than Michel Barnier. Presumably, Mr Johnson would like us to believe that he would in fact willingly blow himself to kingdom come, shouting “Leave means Leave” on his way to enjoying the company of the promised 72 virgins of the Leave campaign. These may prove as mythical as the extra £350m a week for the NHS he once promised his own fanatical supporters. Or something like that.

As Mr Johnson has discovered, metaphors around Brexit can easily get misconstrued and extended way too far. With the suicide bomber analogy, Mr Johnson displayed his usual contempt for good taste and, as ever, took delight on winding up his opponents. These include two of his own former ministers at the Foreign Office, Alistair Burt and Sir Alan Duncan, who know his ways well and may be forgiven for letting off steam. Sir Alan called it disgusting. True, but it did the trick: Johnson is dominating the headlines again, just ahead of the Tory conference and crucial EU summits. It’s pretty obvious what he is up to.

On the substance though, there was little new in this intervention. Mr Johnson has, at least privately, let it be known that he regards the issue of the Irish border as a subsidiary one, unnecessarily getting in the way of his vision of Brexit. He apparently now regards the whole question as a plot by closet Remainers to keep the UK either in the EU or as close to the EU as makes no difference – Brexit in name only.

Read more …

The EU can’t solve these issues by moving back to laws that cover traditional media. They need education, or this will fail spectacularly.

• Battle Over EU Copyright Law Heads For Showdown (G.)

Fought with hashtags, mailshots, open letters and celebrity endorsements, the battle over the European Union’s draft directive on copyright heads for a showdown this week. After two years of debate, members of the European parliament will vote on Wednesday on the legislation, which could change the balance of power between producers of music, news and film and the dominant websites that host their work. Proposed in 2016 to update copyright law for the age of Facebook and Google, the directive has unleashed a ferocious lobbying war. Lawmakers have been bombarded with millions of emails and thousands of calls, many based on standard scripts written by lobbyists. Some have even received death threats, according to the French MEP Virginie Rozière.

Critics claim the proposal will destroy the internet, spelling the end of sharing holiday snaps or memes on Facebook. Proponents are exasperated by such claims, described by German Christian Democrat Axel Voss as “totally wrong” and “fake news”. Amid last-minute writing and rewriting of amendments, the final outcome cannot be predicted. The proposals were rejected by the European parliament in July, despite earlier support in a relevant committee. Among the latest to mobilise in favour were 165 film-makers and screenwriters, including the British director Mike Leigh, who launched an appeal at the Venice film festival last week calling on EU lawmakers to pass the law. In July McCartney pressed MEPs to stop tech firms exploiting musicians.

Europe’s biggest news agencies have also urged MEPs to vote for the law, as they accused Google and Facebook of “plundering” the news and their ad revenues, resulting in a “threat to democracy”. “For the sake of Europe’s free press and democratic values, EU lawmakers should press ahead with copyright reform,” said a statement signed by 20 agencies, including the Press Association and Agence France-Presse. Opponents are no less forceful. Wikipedia shut down its pages in some countries in protest at the plans, which it claims would force the closure of its user-generated encyclopaedia. Berners-Lee is among 70 internet luminaries to oppose the law, arguing it would be transform the internet from an open platform into a tool for “automated surveillance and control”. The UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, David Kaye, has raised concerns about “prepublication censorship”.

Read more …

RT reports first US chemical attck in Syria over the weekend.

• US Senator: MI6 Planning Fake Chemical Weapons Attack On Syria (WaPo)

Fresh off a sitdown with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Virginia state senator Richard Black turned up on Arab TV last week making an extraordinary claim about one of the US’ closest allies. Mr Black said Britain’s MI6 intelligence service was planning a chemical weapons attack on the Syrian people, which it would then blame on Mr Assad. “Around four weeks ago, we knew that British intelligence was working towards a chemical attack in order to blame the Syrian government, to hold Syria responsible,” Mr Black said on Al Mayadeen, an Arab news channel based in Beirut. Mr Black said later that he meant the British were planning not to carry out an attack themselves, but to either direct rebels to do so or stage a phoney attack, with actors posing as victims.

Mr Black also said some chemical attacks previously reported to have occurred in Syria were British fakes, pulled off with help from volunteer first responders known as “White Helmets”. “From what I can tell, they have been planning a fake attack, not a genuine one, but one where they actually move people out of a town and they have trained people to portray victims of a gas attack,” Mr Black said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And the plan is to use the White Helmets who have always been involved in these notorious deceptions, to portray an attack.” The State Department flatly rejected Mr Black’s allegations, which echoed what it called “outrageous” Russian and Assad-regime claims that Britain and the US have carried out chemical attacks with help from the White Helmets.

Read more …

Not sure looking backward is the way to go. Tempting because of choice details that seem to fit, but this is new.

• What Caused The Crash Of 2008 Now Shapes Our Post-Modern 1930s (Varoufakis)

In the autumn of 2008 events unfolded in Wall Street that the crushing majority of people around the world had been led to believe could never occur. It was the financial equivalent of watching the sun spinning out of control soon after it rose above the horizon. Humanity watched on in collective disbelief. The ancient Greeks had a term for moments like that one: aporia – a state of intense bafflement urgently demanding a new model of the world we live in. The Crash of 2008 was such a moment. Suddenly, the world ceased to make sense in terms of what, a few weeks before, passed as conventional wisdom.

Before long, the repercussions were felt everywhere. The certainties created by decades of of establishment thinking were gone, along with around $40 trillion of equity globally, $14 trillion of household wealth in the US alone, 700,000 US jobs every month, countless repossessed homes everywhere; the list is as long as the numbers it includes are unfathomable. Even McDonald’s, for goodness’ sake, could not secure an overdraft from Bank of America! The collective aporia intensified by the response of governments that had hitherto clinged tenaciously onto fiscal conservatism, as perhaps the 20th century’s last surviving ideology: the pouring of trillions of dollars, euros, yen etc. into a financial system which had been, until a few months before, on a huge roll, accumulating fabulous profits and provocatively professing to have found the pot of gold at the end of some globalised rainbow.

And when that response proved too feeble, our Presidents and Prime Ministers, men and women with impeccable anti-statist neoliberal credentials, embarked upon a spree of nationalising banks, insurance companies and automakers that put even Lenin’s 1917 exploits to shame. Ten years on, the crisis unleashed in Wall Street in 2008 is still with us. It takes different forms in different countries (i.e. a Great Depression in places like Greece, a scourge of middle class savers in countries like Germany, history’s greatest sponsor of brutal inequality in the United States, a permanent cause of geopolitical and trade tensions in Asia, Eastern Europe etc.). It migrates from continent to continent, from country to country. It morphs from an unemployment-generator to a deflation-machine, to another banking crisis, to a maximiser of trade and capital global imbalances.

Read more …

Given their role in the whole crisis, why do these banks still exist?

• Greek Bank Profits Are Hurt By Credit Contraction (K.)

The return of Greek banks to profit becomes particularly fragile as long as the credit contraction persists. The reduction of loan issues, which has gone on for almost a decade, is depriving the credit system of its main source of revenues – takings from interests – while undermining efforts to improve the expenditure index that in the first half of the year deteriorated for local banks. Domestic lenders’ January-June financial results point to a fresh reduction in interest revenues, ranging from -1.5% to -22.5%, depending on the bank.

At the same time, revenues from commissions have increase by between 0.5% and 5.5% as banks have shifted their focus to increasing takings from commissions, especially after the imposition of capital controls in June 2015. However, the commissions are just a fraction of the interest revenues and cannot offset the losses from the main source of operating profits of banks. The biggest drop in interest revenues in the first half of the year belonged to National Bank (-22.5% to 564.4 million euros), which is attributed to the application of the new accounting standards (IFRS 9) in the first quarter and the repricing of mortgage loans amounting to 800 million euros. At the same time the NBG’s loan issues dropped 7.1% year-on-year.

Read more …

Perfecting the art of faking it.

• Greek PM Promises Relief Measures After Years Of Austerity (G.)

Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras has announced a raft of relief measures “to mend wounds” created during Greece’s prolonged economic crisis, as he attempts to recover the popularity he has lost since enforcing contentious austerity measures. In his first major policy address since debt-stricken Athens ended more than eight years of foreign tutelage under international bailout in August, the leftist leader pledged to raise wages, cut taxes and forge ahead with welfare spending. Far from backsliding on the fiscal progress the crisis-plagued country has made, the counter measures would help kickstart growth, Tsipras said, hailing a “new era of rebirth”.

“Higher wages, labour market regulation and respect for labour rights … are a prerequisite for growth,” he told delegates attending the Thessaloniki International Fair where annual economic policy goals are traditionally laid out. “The Greek economy is stabilised … we are a normal country now.” Tsipras said the tax cuts will include dramatically reducing a property levy for those worst affected by the crisis in 2019, and lowering sales VAT in 2021. Corporate tax, the bane of business development in the nation long on the frontline of the euro crisis, would be reduced from 29% to 25% by 2022. “It is the least we can do to mend wounds, reduce great burdens and create a growth dynamic in the Greek economy,” Tsipras said.

Other measures ranged from reinstating collective wage bargaining – a highly sensitive point among international creditors who have sought to trim the power of unions – and applying retroactive pay rises worth €1bn for university professors, the police, military and judiciary. [..] On Sunday, in his annual state of the nation press conference, Tsipras said because Greece was “outperforming all fiscal targets” his government would not only meet the new goals but argue that other cuts Athens has committed to were no longer necessary. At the behest of eurozone creditors the government has agreed to further scale back pensions in January 2019. “The economy is doing well,” Tsipras told reporters assembled in Thessaloniki. “I don’t know if you understand that, but the economy is doing well.”

Read more …

By someone who doesn’t support it.

• Petition To Offer Assange Asylum To Be Presented To New Zealand Parliament (RT)

A petition with thousands of signatures supporting Julian Assange’s political asylum will be presented to New Zealand’s parliament. Labour Party politician Greg O’Connor said while he personally does not support Assange obtaining asylum in NZ, he will present the petition to parliament after more than 2,000 people signed their names in support of the WikiLeaks founder, reports Newstalk ZB. The parliamentary petition, launched in July 2018, will now be delivered to the Clerk of the house for allocation to a select committee for formal consideration. The ‘Free Assange NZ’ group said they haven’t forgotten the Australian’s plight and are following whistleblower Chelsea Manning on her tour of the country to remind people of the petition and its political progress. On Saturday night Assange supporters gathered outside the Embassy Theatre where Manning was speaking.

Read more …

Let’s see them.

• US Lawyers Say They Have ‘Explosive’ Documents About Monsanto In Europe (EN)

US lawyers say they have “explosive” documents about crisis-hit agribusiness giant Monsanto and their affairs in Europe. Those involved in a successful lawsuit against the firm have been in Brussels, addressing a European Parliament special committee. Last month, Monsanto was ordered to pay 289 million dollars to a former school groundskeeper dying of cancer, after it was agreed the firm’s Roundup weedkilled contributed to his disease. “What we have is the tip of the iceberg. And in fact we have documents now in our possession, several hundreds documents, that have not been declassified and some of those are explosive,” said US lawyer Robert Jr. Kennedy.

“And many of them are pertinent to what Monsanto did here in Europe. And that’s just the beginning.” Beyond the environmental battle, what’s happened also raises the issue of transparency. For one Green MEP, the US legal battle is also one for democracy. “They are fighting a fight for more democracy and for transparency and to get a better insight in how big corporation such as Monsanto act and try to manipulate the facts,” said Belgium’s Bart Staes. Last November, the EU approved the use of glyphosate, a chemical used in Monsanto’s Roundup product, for five years after a heated debate over whether it causes cancer.

Read more …

Britain has shrunk to a sixe too small to have overseas territories.

• Turtles, Whales And Birds Under Threat From Brexit Funding Cuts (Ind.)

Whales migrating across the Atlantic Ocean, turtles in the Caribbean and unique cloud forests in St Helena are all under threat as EU conservation projects are set to grind to a halt after Brexit. Following reports of the Falkland Islands’ penguins entering troubled waters as European funding dries up, conservationists working across Britain’s overseas territories have raised the alarm about the wider impact of this lost money. Due to their unusual status as neither fully parts of the UK nor independent states, these territories cannot access most domestic and international funding. This means EU money has offered a lifeline, and supports around a third of their conservation efforts.

There is currently no plan to make up for the shortfall that will emerge when existing projects finish. Stretching from the British Antarctic Territory to the Cayman Islands, the 14 UK overseas territories are home to hundreds of creatures found nowhere else on Earth. “There’s lots still unknown about the territories, they are quite a frontier,” said Jonathan Hall, who leads the RSPB’s overseas territories operations. “But they do hold at least 1,500 unique species – compared to the UK which has about 90.” These forgotten corners of the globe are home to more penguins than any other nation, a third of the world’s albatrosses and the largest coral atoll on the planet.

Many of the animals and plants found in these territories are critically endangered, and scientists estimate there are more than 2,000 species still awaiting discovery in their forests and lagoons. As the Brexit date looms, the government has promised to continue supporting ongoing projects in these regions, but beyond that local environmental groups are worried about how they will stay afloat. “It’s a huge concern,” said Charlie Butt, Caribbean territories programme manager at the RSPB. “The loss of a third of funding would be catastrophic from a conservation perspective.”

Read more …