Civil War Archives - The Automatic Earth

JUST IN: At her rally in North Carolina, Kamala puts the final nail in her campaign coffin, reminds everyone what her administration did to the cost of living this country..

WHOEVER WROTE THIS SPEECH IS GETTING FIRED..

pic.twitter.com/FzMDyLWxjw

— Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto) August 16, 2024

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

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

Gutfeld

NEW: Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld absolutely rips Kamala Harris for her economic policy rollout that is being labeled as “communist” by some in the media.

Gutfeld’s rant came after co-host Jessica Tarlov said she likes Harris because of her “middle class upbringing.”

“I would rather… pic.twitter.com/Q6Y4rlhPpB

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 17, 2024

Stone

Nearly a year ago, I predicted that Kamala would briefly become president just before the 2024 election.

The Hill is just now figuring it out… https://t.co/jhmwEDYiY2 pic.twitter.com/o8A5EiM9gV

— Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) August 18, 2024

Rickards/Navarro: Take Cover Behind The Media

“What they are doing is purposefully increasing the possibility of full-blown civil war.”

• Kamala Harris’ Economic Proposals Aim to Stoke US Class Warfare – Luongo (Sp.)

The so-called “opportunity economy” Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris claims she will build if she becomes president does not really differ much from “Bidenomics,” says financial and geopolitical analyst Tom Luongo. “Democrats are looking to rebrand the same agenda they had during both Obama’s two terms and Biden’s one term,” Luongo explains to Sputnik. “It’s all an extension of the original plan, which is to nationalize all the important sectors of the economy – housing, health care, energy, transportation – that the Federal Government didn’t already control, e.g. communication and defense.” According to him, this strategy essentially amounts to breaking the “private economy,” which involves the displacement of millions of workers and the disruption of supply chains, only to “create new ‘opportunities’ for those most harmed by these policies, the lowest strata of wage earners young people, by giving them handouts.”

“This is classic ‘divide and rule’ politics engaged in by the oligarch class to set the lower class, in their terminology the ‘proletariat,’ against the middle class, the ‘bourgeoisie’,” Luongo notes. “Nothing new here. Typical ‘break your legs and hand you a crutch’ politics.” Luongo argues that Harris and “her handlers” are perfectly aware of the fact that a law against price gouging will inevitably cause shortages, because “all price floors and price ceilings lead to shortages, never surpluses.” “In fact, they are counting on creating shortages. It’s part of the strategy in the end to destroy the country they lead. This is not stupidity or incompetence. It is policy,” he says. He also warns that Harris’ target audience is young voters who are “entering a broken workforce and economic landscape today and seeing nothing but a lack of real opportunities.” “They are hoping for a new round of ‘Obama Youth’ to marshal into an effective fighting force for ‘Hope and Change’,” Luongo claims. “What they are doing is purposefully increasing the possibility of full-blown civil war.”

“.. the World Bank and even the Federal Reserve have recently warned about the dangers of price controls – Those guys are corrupt, but they aren’t crazy like Kamala..”

• Kamala Price Control Plan Would Cause A Widespread Supply-Chain Crisis (ZH)

The Democrats have been instituting a propaganda campaign to hide or deny the effects of inflation ever since Joe Biden took office in 2021. At first, they claimed there was no inflation threat. Then they claimed inflation was “transitory.” When the CPI hit 40 year highs they were forced to admit that inflation was an issue, but refused to admit the true cause (helicopter money from the Federal Reserve to fund various stimulus programs the US cannot afford). Instead, Biden and Harris argued that the business world was to blame and high prices were a product of “price gouging.” The establishment media has been running with this narrative for years even though it has been thoroughly debunked. Retail prices have risen in direct correlation to the increases in production costs. As prices in raw materials and manufacturing rise, the prices on the shelf rise. And, as too many dollars chase too few goods the manufacturing sector struggles to keep up with labor demands. More labor with higher wages and a strained supply mean, again, higher prices.

Using producers as a scapegoat for economic failure is a time-honored tradition of socialist governments that refuse to take responsibility for their own failures. It is also a way for politicians to pretend like they’re fixing the problem; temporarily treating the symptoms but never actually dealing with the source of the illness (because they are the source). Rising costs were a top challenge for manufacturers in 2023 and this year looks to be no different. Inflation caused prices to spike not only for materials, but wages and energy and the problem is expected to persist well into 2025. Industry reports also suggest that declines in consumer demand have combined with inflation in prices, putting a strain on profits and the supply chain. As demand falters and costs increase manufacturers have to reduce supply. As supply declines, either shelves will be empty or prices will climb even higher on the black market.

The Kamala Harris campaign recently released their economic policy plan to solve the ongoing stagflationary crisis, and it’s not surprising that Harris intends to continue the very same strategies that caused the problem in the first place. She intends to print even more money to create even more handouts in order to bribe low-information voters. Analysts are calling her plan an attempt to institute communist economic restrictions and upend what’s left of the free market. This is true, but what does this mean in terms of consequences? Beyond causing the death of what’s left of the free market in the US, the bigger threat is the immediate damage that price controls will cause to the supply chain. With already thin profit margins for manufacturers and rising labor costs there is little room to maneuver. Price controls would put a low ceiling on revenues and without profit incentives, there is no reason for companies to continue producing.

They will slow production of goods or shut down completely until better market conditions return. It’s interesting to note that both the World Bank and even the Federal Reserve have recently warned about the dangers of price controls – Those guys are corrupt, but they aren’t crazy like Kamala. The last time the US instituted price controls was during the early-1970s during the onset of the last stagflation crisis. This was after the Nixon-era removal of the Dollar from the gold standard. It was an unmitigated disaster. On Aug. 15, 1971, in a nationally televised address, Nixon announced, “I am today ordering a freeze on all prices and wages throughout the United States.” After a 90-day freeze, increases would have to be approved by a “Pay Board” and a “Price Commission,” with an eye toward eventually lifting controls. This move was initially popular and helped win Nixon a second term in office. However, by 1973 and the advent of the OPEC Oil Embargo it had become clear that price controls did not work. As the New York Times noted in June of 1973:

“Housewives searching their supermarket shelves this coming week will find most of what they want still there. But widening circle of food processors and retailers are caught in a profit squeeze resulting from the price freeze, and this is beginning to curtail production of some foods…It could lead to shortages of many items in the next month.Every echelon of the food industry, from farmers to retailers are criticizing the ceilings imposed on meat in March and on all other items on June 13. Their unhappiness about the ceiling has contributed to recent warnings of shortages.” In June 1973, Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw explain in The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy: “Ranchers stopped shipping their cattle to the market, farmers drowned their chickens, and consumers emptied the shelves of supermarkets…” The government is in no position to police prices. These controls will only cause more damage in the long run and Kamala Harris and her team of Biden advisors are not intelligent enough to deal with the problem anyway.

“Is this a call to violence?” asked the Libs of TikTok..”

• Biden Endorses Violence, Tells Dems to ‘Beat the H*ll Out of’ Republicans (HUSA)

Joe Biden urged supporters on Aug. 15, 2024, to “beat the h*ll out of” Republicans in the 2024 election. The Daily Wire reported that the violent rhetoric came during Biden’s first public appearance with Kamala Harris since he dropped out of the 2024 race. Harris became the Democratic Party’s nominee to face off against Donald Trump. “Let me tell you what our Project 2025 is: beat the h*ll out of them,” Biden told the crowd during an event in Prince George’s County, Maryland. After the far-left audience cheered for violence, Biden doubled down by saying, “I mean it!” Conservatives on social media quickly criticized Biden and leftists who supported him. “Disgusting!” the Trump War Room account wrote in a post while also noting that Biden’s remark came just a month after the attempted assassination against Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa. “Is this a call to violence?” asked the Libs of TikTok account on Twitter, which is operated by Chaya Raichik and has over 3.3 million followers.

Collin Rugg, who has an X account with 1.4 million followers, also responded to the violent rhetoric. “If Trump said this, it would be wall-to-wall coverage on MSNBC for the next three weeks,” he wrote, adding that the Washington Post “would be putting the ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’ banner up.” In June, Trump faced Biden in a debate hosted by CNN, and just weeks after the disastrous Biden performance, the leftist establishment removed him as a presidential candidate and replaced him with Harris. Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton are expected to speak at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week. Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., are expected to accept their nominations and deliver remarks. Biden’s violent rhetoric was just another example of Democrats’ evil nature. It was also recently revealed that Nancy Pelosi issued death threats to pro-Trump Republicans as well.

Long article, worth your time.

Echoes of the Mar-a-Lago raid.

Ritter’s home was raided last week. The FBI took his archive that can prove “weapons of mass destruction” was always a hoax.

“And now it is gone.”

• A Farewell to Truth (Scott Ritter)

The only record of the truth about United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM)’s work in Iraq disarming Iraq that isn’t controlled by the U.S. government, which continues to promulgate lies about the reasons it invaded Iraq. Simply put, the F.B.I. seized the literal truth. In the receipt provided to me, the F.B.I. simply wrote down “documents.” There is no way the F.B.I. will be able to wrap its head around these documents. I spotted one of the senior F.B.I. agents walking around with several Vu-Graph slides I had made in support of a briefing I had prepared for a meeting in the White House Situation Room with the Deputies Committee where I would detail an inspection concept of operations targeting sensitive sites in downtown Baghdad. The White House had asked me to prepare a Power Point presentation, but that was beyond what I could do at UNSCOM. Instead, I took a bunch of maps, photos and diagrams to the local Kinko’s, where I slapped together a number of Vu-Graph’s.

“The Kinko’s brief!,” I said as she walked past. The look in her eyes underscored that she had no clue what I was talking about. And therein lies the rub. While I am confident I will not get into any trouble about the archive (how can I? It is unclassified), I do not have any confidence that the F.B.I. will return the documents. The U.S. government simply cannot allow an archive such as this to exist “in the wild.” They will find some excuse. This archive isn’t just my personal collection of documents. This is an archive of truth.

Indisputable fact. A source of knowledge and information unique in the world which has served a very useful purpose — to expose the lies of the government. I am a journalist — my record clearly reflects this reality. And as such, I am part of what the Founding Fathers called “a free press.” In his concurring opinion of the landmark 1971 Supreme Court decision, The New York Times v. The United States, Justice Hugo Black noted the following: “The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”

As wielded by me, my UNSCOM archive literally fulfilled its duty of helping me “bare the secrets of the government and inform the people” to prevent the government from “deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.” By seizing this archive, the F.B.I. literally engaged in an act of censorship. In seizing my archive, the F.B.I. invoked the notion of “national security.” But, as Justice Black noted, “The word ‘security’ is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security.” There can be no doubt that my UNSCOM archive did more than any other source of documented information to apprise the American people about the lies of their government when it came to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

And now it is gone.

“..the situation in the country resembles the “dark times of McCarthyism..”

• US Moving Towards Total Censorship – Moscow (RT)

Freedom of speech in the US is only permitted for those who express pro-American views, while dissenters are subjected to a “political inquisition,” Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, has said. The diplomat was commenting on an FBI search at the home of Russian-born US political analyst and author Dimitri Simes in Rappahannock County, Virginia, on Tuesday. Simes, who is critical of President Joe Biden’s administration, has been co-hosting a geopolitical talk show on Russia’s Channel 1 since 2018. The targeting of Simes is another example of a “witch hunt” in the US in the run up to the presidential election on November 5, Antonov wrote in a post on Telegram on Saturday. “Hundreds of people are declared undesirable just because they dare to contradict the policies of the administration. They are forbidden from having their own point of view” and government agents are “breaking into homes, performing searches and seizing documents,” he stated.

According to the ambassador, the situation in the country resembles the “dark times of McCarthyism,” a campaign against suspected communists led by Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. “The local ruling circles have decisively embarked on the path of total censorship. Freedom of speech in modern America is sacred only if this speech is pro-American. All dissidents are subject to political inquisition, especially when it comes to those who fight against one-sided and biased views on Russia,” he said. Antonov accused Washington of double stands when it comes to democracy and freedom of speech. While “easily” neglecting the rights provided by the First Amendment at home, US officials, “at the same time continue to lecture the whole world on democratic values and human rights,” he wrote.

Simes is a naturalized US citizen, who immigrated from the Soviet Union in 1973. He served as an aide to President Richard Nixon and as the publisher and CEO of National Interest magazine, which advocates a realist approach to international relations and geopolitics. At the height of Russiagate, Simes was among those investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as a suspected contact between Donald Trump and the Russian government. The report by Muller in 2019, which failed to find any evidence of collusion between Moscow and Trump’s 2016 campaign, also vindicated Simes. FBI agents arrived at his property in Virginia a week after a search took place at the home of former US Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter in New York state. Ritter, who is now a journalist and commentator, said the US authorities appeared to be “primarily concerned” with his “relationship” with Russian media outlets – RT and Sputnik news agency.

Dead horse.

• Nord Stream 2 Bombing And Zelensky’s “Three Men And a Boat” Story (Jay)

Nord Stream 2 bombing is in the headlines again, with a recent report which appears to come from Kiev claiming that it was the Ukrainians all along who were behind it. The claims, which have been denied by Zelensky naturally, are preposterous as they are ill-timed. But what’s really behind this latest fake news story? In a nutshell, Joe Biden needs to clean up his backyard to help Kamala Harris get elected and in Ukraine there is quite a bit of tidying up which needs doing – not only for Ukraine itself to sustain relations with a new administration in Washington but also for America’s relations with Germany and the EU. And so a fable has been invented which both tidies up any loose ends between Washington and Germany – as the U.S. bombing the pipelines creates unease and tensions between the Biden administration and that of Scholz’s – as well as helping the Ukrainians and Harris.

The whole Nord Stream2 pipeline bombing which happened in September 2022, a few months after the Russian invasion, is a clever web of lies crafted by the Americans, when all along it was U.S. special forces with the help of the Norwegians who planted the devices in June of the same year, three months before they were finally detonated. Initially, it was very suspicious at the speed of how Russia was blamed. “Everything is pointing to Russia,” blared a POLITICO headline two days after the explosions. Quoted in the piece were a number of foreign commentators including a top German spymaster arguing that only Russia had the means and motives to do it. There is no elaboration however on motive given that it was Russia’s gas supply deal to Germany which was being abruptly halted. Remarkably, a lie moves so quickly while the truth is still putting its shoes on. Within days, respectable leading analysts were also pointing the finger at Russia without a trace of evidence to support their ludicrous claims.

“We still don’t know 100 percent that Russia was responsible,” said Olga Khakova, deputy director for European energy security at the Atlantic Council. “But everything is pointing to Russia being behind this.” U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told BBC on Sept. 30 that it “seems” Russia was behind the sabotage. Most western journalists followed the narrative put out by the Americans and chose just simply to not look at it too closely or too sceptically. If any had, they might have simply asked who are the winners and losers? They would have only needed to look at the gas market in the following weeks and to see that the U.S. firms had new clients in Europe who were paying three times the normal price. That should have been a clue.

Secondly, the geopolitics and Germany. Biden hade it very clear just two weeks before the Ukraine war started when the German chancellor visited the Oval Office in February 2022, what Biden was planning on doing both about the pipelines and Germany itself whose leader Scholz was very reluctant to go to war with Ukraine. “If Russia invades – that means tanks and troops crossing . . . the border of Ukraine again,” Biden said, “there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” When asked how he could do so as the pipeline was under Germany’s control, the U.S. president spelled it out: “We will, I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.” Six months later, when the pipelines blew up, Germany quickly came on board with the war plan. Game changer.

NATO planned it.

• Ukraine Planned Incursion Into Russia For Over A Year – NBC (RT)

Kiev had been planning an incursion-style attack on Russia such as the one underway in Kursk Region for some time, NBC has reported, citing an unnamed senior adviser to the Ukrainian government. On August 6, Ukraine launched its largest attack on internationally recognized Russian territory since the outbreak of the conflict in February 2022. The advance into Kursk Region was swiftly halted by Russia’s military, but Ukrainian troops still hold a number of settlements in the border area. According to the adviser, whose comments were shared by the US broadcaster in an article on Friday, the idea of an incursion into Russia has been “on the table for more than a year” in Kiev. The goal of the operation was to divert Russian attention from other parts of the front line, especially from Donbass, where Moscow’s forces have been steadily advancing since the start of the year, he said.

NBC described the attack on Kursk Region as a “high stakes gamble” by the Ukrainian authorities. The broadcaster reminded that this week, the Russian military announced the capture of three settlements from Kiev’s forces in Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic, and approached the strategic town of Krasnoarmeysk (called Pokrovsk by the Ukrainians) where the evacuation of the population has been announced. “The question now is how long Ukraine wants to — and can — hold onto it [area under its control in Kursk Region] without sacrificing more of its own eastern heartland,” the article read.

Earlier this week, Major-General Apty Alaudinov, commander of the Akhmat Special Forces from Russia’s Chechen Republic, said that the intelligence obtained by the Russian military suggests that the actual aim of the Ukrainian incursion was to capture the Kursk nuclear power plant. Kiev expected its troops to be able to achieve this by August 11, he added. “This blitzkrieg by [Ukrainian leader Vladimir] Zelensky, which was supposed to see the seizure of the nuclear power plant in Kurchatov and the start of negotiations with an ultimatum for us [Russia] to leave some places or to do something, has failed,” Alaudinov stressed.

“The Ukrainian government has received orders from its Western backers to “escalate as much as possible..”

• Ukraine Preparing ‘Dirty Nuke’ Attack (RT)

Ukrainian forces have begun preparations to target nuclear waste storage sites at a Russian power plant with radioactive warheads and to then blame Moscow, according to intelligence received by Russia. Kiev’s forces have already struck the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), Europe’s largest, and started a fire at one of the cooling towers, while accusing Russia of bombing itself. “Sources on the other side report that the [Ukrainians] are preparing a nuclear false flag – an explosion of a dirty atomic bomb,” military journalist Marat Khairullin said Friday on his Telegram channel. “They plan to strike the storage sites of spent nuclear fuel of a nuclear power plant.” The special warheads intended for the attack have already been delivered to the Vostochny Mining and Processing plant in Zhovti Vody, in Ukraine’s Dnepropetrovsk Region, according to Khairullin.

As possible targets of the attack, Khairullin indicated either the Zaporozhye NPP in Energodar or the Kursk NPP in Kurchatov, noting that the Ukrainian government and its Western backers are “desperate and willing to try anything.” A security official in the Russian Military Administration of Kharkov Region corroborated Khairullin’s claim to RIA Novosti on Friday. The attack is intended to use radioactive warheads to target spent fuel storage sites at a nuclear power plant, and the ammunition has already been delivered to Zhovti Vody. Kiev’s intention is to accuse Moscow of a false flag so it could justify using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, the security official said. The Ukrainian government has received orders from its Western backers to “escalate as much as possible,” he added. According to the security official, the intelligence came from Ukrainian prisoners of war.

RIA Novosti also quoted Sergey Lebedev, introduced as leader of the Nikolaev Region underground, who said the planned attack would be carried out with NATO weapons, with the consent of the West. “Banderites are planning to carry out a missile attack with NATO weapons on the Kursk and Zaporozhye nuclear power plants in the near future,” Lebedev told the agency. “Western intelligence agencies, mainly British, are supervising the terrorist attack. Long-range missiles do not fly without their knowledge.” Lebedev pointed out that a large number of Western journalists have already arrived in the Sumy Region near Kursk, as well as the Ukrainian-controlled part of Zaporozhye, suggesting that this is part of Kiev’s preparations for the nuclear false flag.

Ukraine plans to detonate dirty bombs with nuclear material in Russia. Intelligence services claim that Zelenskyy and his Western backers provoke nuclear war. Who asked Americans & Europeans if they are ok with this? Reckless leaders will get you killed. pic.twitter.com/AbHxMi91y3

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) August 17, 2024

italian media embedded with the invading troops. That shows they were not expecting much resistance.

• Italian Media ‘Whitewashing’ Ukrainian Crimes – Zakharova (RT)

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has accused the Italian state media company Rai of spreading falsehoods about the situation in Kursk Region, and warned that journalists who illegally crossed the country’s border could be prosecuted. On Wednesday, Rai released a TV report on Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk Region, in which its journalists drove deep into Russian territory, accompanied by Ukrainian troops. In the clip, the reporters’ car drove past what appeared to be destroyed Western-supplied Ukrainian armor, later arriving at the town of Sudzha, which sustained significant damage during the fighting. On Friday, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the Italian ambassador in Moscow, Cecilia Piccioni to lodge a “strong protest” over the Rai journalists’ trip. The film crew “illegally entered the territory of the Russian Federation to cover the criminal terrorist attack by Ukrainian militants in the Kursk region,” the ministry said.

It added that the Italian reporters “used their presence in our country to whitewash the crimes of the Kiev regime” and accused them of a “gross violation of Russian legislation and elementary rules of journalistic ethics”. Speaking on the Russia-24 channel, Zakharova also noted that Rai’s report “did not even distort facts, but rather rewrote them and turned them upside down… Black was called white, and white was called black.” According to Zakharova, the Western media – which she said had concocted numerous misleading reports about the Ukraine conflict that have since been debunked by Moscow – used the trip into Russia to bolster their narrative. “This is how they presented their fabrications in their materials as the truth, as if they were there, because otherwise no one would have believed them,” the spokeswoman argued.

Ukrainian forces launched an attack on Kursk Region last week, which has become the largest incursion into Russia since the start of the conflict. Russia has denounced the assault as a provocation, accusing Kiev of targeting civilians. Ukrainian troops are subjecting Russian civilians to violence and humiliation in Kursk Region, according to statements by local officials and video evidence circulating on social media. At least 12 civilians have been killed and over 120 injured in Kursk Region, the local administration reported earlier, although the exact death toll cannot be established in Kiev-controlled territories. While Kiev has made some gains, the Russian Defense Ministry has said its advance has been halted, with fighting still raging in border areas. Moscow has estimated Ukrainian losses at up to 2,800 service members and more than 400 armored vehicles.

“It’s quite obvious that this coalition has major problems finding common ground,” Habeck said regarding the recent disputes. “The ideas are falling apart.”

• Germany To Ban All New Ukraine Military Aid (ZH)

Three days ago, in the aftermath of the WSJ report seeking to radically shift the narrative over the Nordstream sabotage, where instead of the CIA being blamed for the explosion of the critical gas pipeline from Russia to Europe, unnamed “intelligence” sources forged on with a hilarious script according to which a top Ukraine general (operating initially under the instructions of Zelensky but then going rogue wen Z got “cold feet”) was responsible for coordinating the sabotage using a handful of rank amateurs who somehow managed to sneak to the bottom of the Baltic sea and conduct an unprecedented military operation, we said that – no matter the laughable veracity of the report – relations between Germany and Ukraine are “about to turn ugly”, and we asked why this story is coming out just now?

We didn’t have long to wait to get the answer: as German media reports, this U-turn in the narrative (which according to some meant that NATO should now unleash its full military power against…. Ukraine, which had single-handedly attacked German assets by blowing up the Nordstream) was meant to soften the blow from Germany’s decision to finally cut off Ukraine’s – and Zelensky’s – unprecedented grift. According to a Saturday report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the German government will stop new military aid to Ukraine as part of the ruling coalition’s plan to reduce spending. The report, which cited non-public documents and emails as well as discussions with unnamed sources, goes on to note that the moratorium on new assistance – which is already in effect – will affect new requests for funding, not previously approved aid,

In a letter sent to the German defense ministry on Aug. 5, Finance Minister Christian Lindner said that future funding would no longer come from Germany’s federal budget but from proceeds from frozen Russian assets, according to the German newspaper. And since we already know that recent attempts to liquidate Russian assets crashed and burned over fears of escalating Russian retaliation, this effectively means no more aid for Ukraine. Berlin, which is Europe’s main supplier of military aid to Kyiv, had previously signaled a change in course on Ukraine last month, when the governing coalition of the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Liberals adopted a preliminary deal on a draft budget for 2025. The compromise detailed plans to slash future assistance to Ukraine by half to €4 billion to fulfill other spending priorities. And, it now appears, that even this token amount is about to be cut to zero.

As we reported in June, the G7’s decision to extend a USD 50 billion loan to Ukraine, backed by immobilized Russian assets, was this summit’s most significant step forward. This loan structure reflects a typical compromise between the US and Europe. While the straightforward solution would involve seizing all of Russia’s frozen assets (estimated at USD 280 billion) to directly fund Ukraine’s war efforts, European countries – particularly France, Germany, and Belgium – aggressively shied away from this, viewing it as too aggressive and fearing Russian reciprocation.

Instead, they opted for using the interest on matured assets, which amounts to only a few billion dollars per year. The first option would be a game changer, we said, “whereas the second option falls embarrassingly short.” And now Ukraine will have to be satisfied with receiving whatever meager interest seized Russian funds generate. Meanwhile, the primary source of funding for Ukraine – the Biden family and various deep state operatives – is about to dry out, after Biden finally leaves the White House and quit politics forever in three months. Speaking after the Cabinet approved the draft budget in mid-July, Germany FinMin Lindner said Ukraine would have to rely more on funds from “European sources” as well as the frozen Russian assets. But it’s still unclear if, and when, that money will flow.

According to Politico, contentions over Ukraine aid reportedly deepened the rifts in the ruling coalition in Berlin, already tattered by weeks of internal fights over a series of issues from the budget to welfare. Green leader and Economy Minister Robert Habeck said this week he plans to run for chancellor as the Greens’ candidate in the 2025 federal election, casting doubt on the survival of the governing alliance of which he is a member. “It’s quite obvious that this coalition has major problems finding common ground,” Habeck said regarding the recent disputes. “The ideas are falling apart.” Which is also why Zelensky will have no choice but to resort to ever-more-desperate and shocking provocations and diversions to keep the money flowing, as the alternative is complete devastation for Ukraine and its Western backers.

UK has troops in Kursk.

• Zelensky Openly Criticizes British Government (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has said that his administration will “insist” that its Western allies take further “bold steps” to support Kiev’s war effort, singling out the UK as a country that once showed “real leadership” but is now falling behind. In his daily address on Friday, Zelensky expressed his intention to “fix” the situation with Western allies allegedly limiting Ukraine’s “long-range capabilities” and preventing Kiev from fully utilizing donated weapons to support its incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region. ”The long-range capabilities of our forces are the answer to all the most important, to all the most strategic issues of this war,” he said. He promised to “intensify our diplomatic work” with the US, UK, France, and “other partners” to remove any barriers on using the arms.

”In particular, we have seen throughout this war that the United Kingdom has shown real leadership. In weaponry, in politics, and in supporting the life of Ukrainian society… This is what reflects the strength of the United Kingdom,” Zelensky claimed. But now, unfortunately, the situation has slowed down. We will discuss how to fix this. Because long-range capabilities are a matter of principle for us.

”We will insist on the need for bold steps, bold decisions. We need things that truly change the course of the war, leading it to a just peace,” he stated, referring to his so-called ‘peace formula,’ which Moscow has repeatedly dismissed as “detached from reality.” On August 6, Ukrainian forces launched their largest attack on Russian territory since the conflict escalated in February 2022. Western officials have celebrated and voiced support for the Ukrainian incursion but denied any prior knowledge of or involvement in the operation. Some troops involved in the incursion into the Kursk Region were trained by British military specialists in the weeks leading up to the surprise attack, according to The Times. Ukrainian forces were also reported to be using British Challenger 2 tanks inside Russia’s Kursk Region, according to Sky News.

Despite Kiev’s pleas, the British government has reportedly refused to allow Ukraine to use Storm Shadow missiles to support the incursion. British Defense Secretary John Healey stated that the UK was providing weapons to Kiev for the “defense of their sovereign country,” adding that this “does not preclude them hitting targets in Russia.” However, he specified that Britain would not be involved in any such attacks. Kiev’s forces have repeatedly used long-range missiles supplied by their Western allies to launch indiscriminate strikes against Russia. They maintain that their policies permit Ukraine to use Storm Shadows and other long-range missiles to strike any areas claimed by Kiev, including Crimea, but not “internationally recognized” Russian territory. A Pentagon spokeswoman reiterated this week that the US has also not allowed the Ukrainian military to use American longer-range missiles for strikes deep into Russia.

“It is always a chilling sensation when the policy wonks from the “indispensable nation” start telling you that your nation is dispensable.”

• Should The US Abandon Europe? (Amar)

Foreign Affairs has published a remarkable article. Under the title, “A Post-American Europe: It’s Time for Washington to Europeanize NATO and Give Up Responsibility for the Continent’s Security,” the authors, Justin Logan and Joshua Shifrinson, make, in essence, one simple argument: the US should leave Europe’s defense to the Europeans because it is no longer in Washington’s interest to do their job for them. Moreover, Logan and Shifrinson add, the Europeans clearly have the resources – economically and demographically – to look after themselves. This is a smart piece written in the idiom of Realism, that is, the broad school of thinking about international relations and geopolitics which is based on two premises: that states’ interests can be defined and understood rationally, and that most of the time, state leaderships seek to act according to such interests.

Logan and Shifrinson also strive to be realistic in the broader sense of the term, acknowledging, for instance, that Russia is not poised to “sweep across” Europe’s NATO member states and poses no hegemonic threat to them. These qualities make their intervention stand out among the “value” pep talks and ideological scaremongering that, unfortunately, often pass for policy analysis now. Apart from its refreshing quality, there are other reasons to pay attention to this article. Foreign Affairs, belonging to the influential Council on Foreign Relations, is the older of the two journals (the other being Foreign Policy) that set or reflect the agenda of debate among the US international policy establishment (aka, courtesy President Obama’s former National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, “the Blob”). Logan is the Director of Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, an influential libertarian-conservative think-tank.

Shifrinson is a prominent, though in today’s climate certainly not universally loved, expert on US foreign policy who has repeatedly taken unpopular positions, such as reminding the West that promises made to Russia after the end of the Cold War were indeed broken and criticizing the American over-engagement in Ukraine as well as NATO expansion. For Logan and Shifrinson, the US has only one national interest with regard to Europe that can justify taking over its defense: “Keeping the continent’s economic and military power divided” to prevent the emergence of a regional hegemon, be it Germany – tried twice, defeated twice with US help – or the former Soviet Union, in the case of which it’s actually unclear if it ever even intended to build an all-European hegemony (not the same, of course, as the eastern European sphere of influence it maintained between 1945 and 1989). In any case, Washington thought it might.

Today, Logan and Shifrinson argue, the danger of such a European hegemon that could bundle resources to ultimately challenge US power in one way or the other has disappeared. In particular, they – correctly – insist that Russia does not pose such a threat. Thus, they conclude, “with no candidate for European hegemony lurking, there is no longer any need for the United States to take the dominant role in the region.” There is, it is true, a twist to their argument that will make readers in, for instance, the Baltics very uncomfortable. With the sharp, cold eye of the Realist, they spot a difference between, on one side, those parts of Europe that must under no circumstances ever fall under Russian influence – “the core areas of military and economic power” – and, on the other, small nations in eastern Europe that simply do not matter much to the US national interest. “France and Latvia,” they write with bracing candor, “are both European countries, but their defense needs—and relevance to the United States – differ.”

It is always a chilling sensation when the policy wonks from the “indispensable nation” start telling you that your nation is dispensable. Logan and Shifrinson spell out some recommendations. As a whole they boil down to a gradual – but not slow; the term “several years” appears, not “several decades” – withdrawal from providing security for the Europeans, while dishing out tough love to them to stimulate their abysmally lacking self-reliance in matters of spending, weapons manufacturing, and fielding their own modernized armies. Last but not least, while the US would stay in NATO, it would push the Europeans to run – and, clearly, finance – the outfit. The best of both worlds for Washington: no need to leave or dismantle NATO, a foot in the door and a place at the table, but no longer having to make it work.

For the US, Logan and Shifrinson point to the large rewards of such a policy against a background of, as we used to say in the ‘90s, imperial overstretch. A country “staring down $35 trillion in debt, a $1.5 trillion annual budget deficit, a growing challenge in Asia, and pronounced political cleavages… with no indication that the fiscal picture will improve or evidence that domestic pressures are abating” should listen up when advised that the estimated “budgetary savings of shedding the conventional deterrence mission in Europe” would be at least 70-80 billion dollars per year. Not to speak of the reduction in military risks, political headaches, and – let’s face it – exposure to recurrent Euro-peskiness.

Tulsi is a nice addition. She knows Kamala.

• Trump Makes Key Campaign Changes (RT)

Former US president Donald Trump has re-hired key members of his 2016 campaign team, hunkered down for debate prep with ex-Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, and tapped his sons and major donors to lead his official transition team, as polls show the Republican neck and neck with Vice President Kamala Harris. Corey Lewandowski, who managed Trump’s successful 2016 campaign, will return to help the Republican retake the White House this November, campaign co-managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement on Thursday. Lewandowski will be joined by Taylor Budowich, Alex Pfeiffer, Alex Bruesewitz, and Tim Murtaugh, who were described by Wiles and LaCivita as “veterans of prior Trump campaigns”

Lewandowski was fired by the Trump campaign shortly before the 2016 election, after he allegedly groped a female reporter. Brought back four years later to lead a pro-Trump fundraising committee, he was fired again in 2021 over separate allegations of sexual misconduct. Wiles and LaCivita did not say what precise roles Lewandowski and the four staffers will play in this year’s campaign, but Trump told reporters on Thursday that Lewandowski will be a “personal envoy or he’ll be at some level.” Trump and Harris are currently even in most polls, with Harris holding a lead of less than 1% over the former president, according to data compiled by RealClearPolitics. Amid rumors that Trump blames his campaign staff for the erosion of his four-point lead over President Joe Biden, he has enlisted the help of ex-Democrat Tulsi Gabbard ahead of his upcoming debate with Harris, the New York Times reported on Friday.

Gabbard, a former US Representative and vocal opponent of the Democratic Party’s interventionist foreign policy, was credited with ending Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign with a single debate performance. In the 2019 showdown, Gabbard eviscerated Harris’ record as California’s attorney general, slamming her for jailing thousands of marijuana offenders “and then laughing about it,” for her use of prison labor, and for blocking evidence that would have freed innocent men on death row.

“There is no excuse for that and the people who suffered under your reign as prosecutor, you owe them an apology,” Gabbard said, leaving Harris unable to respond. Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the former president met with Gabbard, claiming that he “does not need traditional debate prep but will continue to meet with respected policy advisors and effective communicators like Tulsi Gabbard, who successfully dominated Kamala Harris on the debate stage.”

“Brazil is engaged in a sweeping crackdown on free speech led by a Supreme Court justice.”

• X ‘Immediately’ Shuts Brazil Office After ‘Secret’ Censorship Orders (ZH)

Elon Musk on Saturday announced that effective immediately, X will be shuttering operations in Brazil due to what it called “censorship orders” from Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes (aka ‘Darth Vader’). According to the company, Moraes secretly threatened an X layer if he did not comply with legal orders to remove content from the platform. “Last night, Alexandre de Moraes threatened our legal representative in Brazil with arrest if we do not comply with his censorship orders. He did so in a secret order, which we share here to expose his actions,” reads a Saturday post from X’s Global Government Affairs account. “Despite our numerous appeals to the Supreme Court not being heard, the Brazilian public not being informed about these orders and our Brazilian staff having no responsibility or control over whether content is blocked on our platform, Moraes has chosen to threaten our staff in Brazil rather than respect the law or due process.”

“As a result, to protect the safety of our staff, we have made the decision to close our operation in Brazil, effective immediately.” Musk replied to the post, saying “Due to demands by Justice @Alexandre in Brazil that would require us to break (in secret) Brazilian, Argentinian, American and international law, X has no choice but to close our local operations in Brazil. “He is an utter disgrace to Justice,” Musk continued. Acording to Musk, X remains available to the people of Brazil. Earlier this year, Moraes ordered X to block certain accounts while he investigated so-called “digital militias” accused of spreading fake news. Moraes also opened an inquiry into Musk after he said he would reactivate X accounts that the judge had ordered blocked. Musk has called Moraes’ orders “unconstitutional,” and called Moraes himself “Brazil’s Darth Vader.” In an April post to X, Musk said that Moraes had “brazenly and repeatedly betrayed the constitution and people of Brazil,” and should “resign or be impeached.”

De Moraes said that as part of his decision to open an inquiry, that “X shall refrain from disobeying any court order already issued, including performing any profile reactivation that has been blocked by this Supreme Court,” Reuters reported at the time. The justice said that Musk would face a fine that equates to approximately $20,000 each time an account is reactivated on X. The TWITTER FILES BRAZIL, reported by investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger, and colleagues David Agape and Eli Vieira, reveal that “Brazil is engaged in a sweeping crackdown on free speech led by a Supreme Court justice.” Sitting members of Brazil’s Congress and journalists were among those named by Brazil’s highest court for censoring, Mr. Shellenberger said of his findings, which he has shared on X.

He named lower house members Carla Zambelli of former President Jair Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party and Marcel van Hattem of the NOVO party as targets of orders targeting posts the court deemed misinformation. According to the internal files Mr. Shellenberger shared, Twitter in Brazil was threatened with a $30,000 fine. The company had one hour to remove the Congress members’ posts or pay the court for noncompliance.The article reports that the justice had even been jailing individuals without trial for things posted on social media. According to Mr. Shellenberger, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes allegedly made demands to Twitter to allow access to its internal data, in violation of Twitter’s own policies on the handling of user data. -Epoch Times.

Judge Nap.

• When Presidents Kill (Andrew Napolitano)

Sometime before he withdrew from the presidential race, President Joe Biden secretly reaffirmed his own self-willed and self-created authority to kill persons in other countries, so long as the CIA and its military counterparts have “near certainty” that the target of the homicide is a member of a terrorist organization. That standard was concocted by the George W. Bush administration in 2002. There is no “near certainty” standard in the law, as the phrase is oxymoronic and defies a rational definition – like “nearly pregnant.”Just as one is either pregnant or not, one is either certain or not. There is no “near” there. Yet, the creation of this standard underscores the lamentable absence of the rule of law in government today. The Biden administration and its three immediate predecessors have all deployed drones to kill persons who were not engaged in acts of violence at the time of their killing, irrespective of the near certainty of their membership in any organizations.

“Terrorist” cannot be a standard for extrajudicial murder because it is subjective. To King George III, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were terrorists. To the poor folks in Libya and Syria, to the popularly elected governments toppled by CIA-inspired violence in Iran in 1953 and in Ukraine in 2014, to the innocents tortured by the CIA at black sites around the world, the CIA is a terrorist organization. The presidential use of drones to kill persons overseas began in 2002 with Bush-ordered targeted killings. It continued under President Barack Obama – who even killed Americans overseas. The rules for killing were made up by each president. They were relaxed under President Donald Trump, who gave CIA senior personnel and military commanders the authority to kill without his express approval for each killing. Trump’s folks infamously murdered an Iranian general and his companions on their way to lunch with Iraqi generals to negotiate peace between the two countries.

The Biden administration quietly took back the Trump grants of authority so that today only the president can authorize targeted killing. Yet, there is no moral, constitutional or legal authority for these killings. But presidents of both political parties do it anyway.The laws of war – a phrase itself that is oxymoronic – which are generally codified in the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Charter, all of which were spearheaded, written and ratified by the United States, mandate essentially that lawful wars can only be defensive and must be proportional to the threat posed or the harm already caused. Stated differently, treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory restrain the president from killing persons in other countries with which the U.S. is not lawfully at war.

Under the Constitution, treaties sit alongside the Constitution itself as the supreme law of the land. The last four occupants of the White House have ignored this when it comes to secret killings. Each has claimed publicly or secretly that the Authorization for Use of Military Force of 2001, or its cousin, the AUMF of 2002, somehow provide congressional authorizations for presidents to kill whomever they please – and somehow Congress can lawfully authorize these killings. Yet the AUMF of 2001 purported to authorize Bush to hunt down and kill the folks whom he failed to see coming on 9/11 (those would be his friends, the Saudis), and whom he reasonably found caused 9/11. The AUMF of 2002 authorized Bush to invade Iraq in pursuit of the weapons of mass destruction that he was told by experts inside and outside the CIA Saddam Hussein did not possess. Both AUMFs no longer have a valid purpose today, yet they remain the law.

The Constitution authorizes Congress to declare war against foreign countries, not random killings of persons. Neither of the AUMFs was or is a valid declaration of war, which the Constitution requires as a predicate for all extrajudicial presidential killings. A declaration of war defines the target and sets the end. It is not open-ended as the last four presidents have claimed with respect to these two Bush-era statutes. If the presidents are right, and the AUMFs authorize them to kill whomever they wish – including Americans – then they are not presidents answerable to the law and the Constitution, but kings who can kill on a whim without transparency or legal consequence. The whole purpose of confining the war-making power to Congress and the war-waging power to the president was to keep those powers separate. History is littered with examples of tyrants using the powers of the state to kill for no moral purpose. American presidents have given themselves the power to kill. It is the functional equivalent to a loaded gun in a drawer of the president’s desk.

Catch a snake

How to catch a snakepic.twitter.com/L0z3CNgCJ2

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) August 17, 2024

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

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

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

Zebra

Mother zebra rescuing her foal from Lion pic.twitter.com/z8mPwoOi08

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) August 17, 2024

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

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Debt Rattle August 5 2024

Aug 052024

August 5, 2024 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:37 am Finance Tagged with: Apple, Belarus, Buffet, catastrophic war, Civil War, F-16, Kamala, Poland, Putin, Trump 85 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Portrait of Ambroise Vollard 1910

• If You Thought Things Were Bad Under Biden, Just Wait (Moore)

• We Reap the Harvest of Lies (Bell)

• Guess Who Kamala Harris Blames For Disastrous Jobs Report? (ZH)

• Kamala Harris and the Masque of Magical Thinking (Kimball)

• What Donald Trump Should Beware of In The Debate With Kamala Harris (Bridge)

• Trump Congratulates Putin On ‘Great Deal’ (RT)

• Israel and US Stoke the Fire as China Pursues Peace (Manley)

• US Sends Forces to Middle East, Fear Catastrophic War Is Imminent (Sp.)

• Why is Poland Massing Troops on Frontier With Belarus?

• American Jets Spotted Over Ukraine (RT)

• Destruction of NATO F-16s Sent to Ukraine Will Boost Russia’s Image (Sp.)

• Warren Buffet Unloads Apple Shares (RT)

• New York State Supreme Court Blocks Attempt to Pause Migrant Arrivals (ET)

• Elon Musk Speculates Civil War ‘Inevitable’ as Violence Sweeps UK (Sp.)

• British Rioters Torch Migrant Hotel (RT)

Snipers

I don't know what shocked me more, finding out that the Secret Service had never provided Trump counter sniper protection until the Butler rally or that they didn't provide the Secret Service snipers radios but told them to use their personal cell phones to text each other. pic.twitter.com/7Y16GNiFaE

— @amuse (@amuse) August 4, 2024

Kama cloud

Kamala Harris explains cloud storage.

This isn’t satire.pic.twitter.com/BmscfvC1b2

— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) August 3, 2024

Debate

Great comments by Charlie Hurt on the debate controversy.

“They don’t want Kamala to have an unscripted interview because of all the dumb things she says”. 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/Sav93jssAw

— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) August 4, 2024

Michaela
https://twitter.com/i/status/1819831108558864468

Rogan

"Before COVID, I thought vaccines were the most important invention in human history.

After COVID, I don't think we went to the moon

I think Michelle Obama’s got a d___

I think Pızzagatə is real"

Joe Rogan is awake, are you?

Share this everywhere!!
pic.twitter.com/DLgM9TBPtz

— TaraBull (@TaraBull808) August 4, 2024

ICYMI – Joe Rogan jokes about dying of Covid; “The funniest way for me to die is if I die from Covid. Don’t think I didn’t think it. When I got Covid the first thought I had was ‘Oh my god you better not die.‘ I talked SO MUCH shit. I talked so much shit!”pic.twitter.com/7PeZxtp8xc

— Overton (@OvertonLive) August 4, 2024

“This was a man who pledged to unite the country and did just the opposite..”

• If You Thought Things Were Bad Under Biden, Just Wait (Moore)

President Joe Biden’s time in the White House is mercifully coming to an end. He is now officially a lame duck with six months to go. How could they be so unpatriotic? From his first days in the Oval Office, Biden governed from the far left on everything from climate change, to radical income redistribution, to massive government expansionism, to racial politics, to a “blame America first” foreign policy, to his dangerous weaponization of every agency of government from the Internal Revenue Service to the FBI to the Justice Department and, perhaps, even to the Secret Service. He made President Richard Nixon look like an amateur. It is hard to point to a single policy that he got right. On the economy, he was catastrophically bad. The trillions of dollars of debt he rung up bought nothing. He sent inflation to the highest levels in almost forty years.

The average family lost $2,000 of income after inflation during his reign. More people died of COVID during his presidency than Trump’s — despite the availability of the vaccine. Interest rates rose. Biden declared war on American energy. He put America back into the Paris Climate Accord—and the rest of the world went on using more fossil fuels than ever. By impeding U.S. oil and gas production and pipelines he played into the hands of our enemies — China and Iran. Gas prices rose. Small business confidence sagged. Poverty rates rose. Then there was the sheer incompetence. The bungled Afghanistan withdrawal was a national security disaster. The border became a broken dam with millions seeking to illegally enter the country. The government spent $7.5 billion on electric vehicle chargers and only a handful got built. Biden gave away hundreds of billions of dollars for an illegal and immoral student loan forgiveness program. He put regulators in charge of key agencies even though — or because — they hate business.

A majority of his appointees had no business experience. It showed. When he departs the White House in the months ahead he will leave the nation poorer, weaker, more divided, more in debt, more vulnerable, and less respected than when he entered office. This was a man who pledged to unite the country and did just the opposite. He deserves to go down in history as one of the five worst presidents of the 20th and 21st century. Here is my list starting with the worst: 1) Woodrow Wilson; 2) Herbert Hoover: 3) Jimmy Carter; 4) Joe Biden; 5) Barack Obama. Now the Democrats want to run Vice President Kamala Harris, who was on board with every Biden policy and helped oversee the worst border catastrophe in modern history. Just when you thought things could not get any worse.

“.. the fourth estate that was to shed light on them has embraced the darkness.”

• We Reap the Harvest of Lies (Bell)

Public life has become disorienting. Most people, by and large, previously expected to hear the truth, or some semblance of it, in daily life. We would generally expect this from each other, but also from public media and authorities such as governments or international agencies set up ostensibly for our benefit. Society cannot function in a coherent and stable way without it, as so much in our lives requires us to place trust in others. To navigate the complexity of existence, we generally look for guidance to certain trusted sources, freeing up time to sift through the more questionable ones. Some claim they always knew everything was fake, but they are wrong, as it wasn’t (and still isn’t). There were always liars, campaigns to mislead, and propaganda to drive us to love or to hate, but there was a core within society that had certain accepted norms and standards that should theoretically be followed. A sort of anchor.

Truth is indestructible but the anchor cable connecting us to it, ensuring its influence, has been cut. Society is being set adrift. This really broke in the past four or five years. We were already in trouble, but now public discourse is broken. Perhaps it broke when governments elected to represent the people openly employed behavioral psychology to lie to their constituencies on a scale we had not previously seen. They combined to make their peoples do things they rationally would not; accept bans of family funerals, cover faces in public, or accept police brutality and the isolation and abandonment of the elderly. The media, health professionals, politicians, and celebrities all participated in this lie and its intent. Virtually all our major institutions. And these lies are continuing, and expanding, and have become the norm.

We are now reaping the harvest of untruth. The media can openly deny what they said or printed just months earlier about a new candidate for presidency or the efficacy of a mandated vaccine. A whole political party can change its narrative almost overnight about the fundamental characteristics of its leader. People paid as “fact-checkers” twist reality to invent new facts and hide the truth, unflustered by the transparency of their deceit. Giant software companies curate information, filtering out truths that run contrary to the pronouncements of conflicted international organizations. Power has displaced integrity. Internationally, we are pummeled by agencies such as the UN, World Bank, G20, and World Health Organization to give up our basic rights and hand their new masters our wealth on claims of threats that can unequivocally be shown to be false.

Paid-off former leaders, grasping legitimacy through the legacy of greater minds, reinforce mass falsehoods for the benefit of their friends. Once aberrations that a free media might highlight, fallacies have become norms in which the same media is openly complicit. The frightening part is not the lies, which are a normal aspect of humanity, but the broad disinterest in truth. Lies can stand for a time in the presence of a people and institutions that value truth, but they will eventually fail as they are exposed. When truth loses its value, when it is no longer even a vague guide for politics or journalism, then recovery may not occur. We are in an incredibly dangerous time, because lies are not just tolerated but are now the default approach, at the national and international level, and the fourth estate that was to shed light on them has embraced the darkness.

“..what was the true shock in Friday’s “data” is the long overdue admission that the US is effectively in a recession..”

• Guess Who Kamala Harris Blames For Disastrous Jobs Report? (ZH)

Following last week’s horrendous jobs report, the Kamala Harris campaign issued a statement blaming – you guessed it – Donald Trump! “Donald Trump failed Americans as president, costing our economy millions of jobs, and bringing us to the brink of recession,” said Harris for President spokesperson James Singer in a statement. “Now, he’s promising even more damage with a Project 2025 agenda that will decimate the middle class and increase taxes on working families, while ripping away health care, raising prescription drug costs, and cutting Social Security and Medicare — all while making his billionaire donors richer.”

According to Singer, “We’ve made significant progress, but Vice President Harris knows there’s more work to do to lower costs for families,” and “will make building up the middle class the defining goal of her presidency, taking on greedy corporations that are price gouging consumers, banning hidden fees, and capping unfair rent increases and drug costs.” So – robotic talking points centered around blaming the guy who’s been out of office for 3.5 years. On Friday the Labor Department revealed that US job growth cooled sharply in July, while the unemployment rate unexpectedly rose to the highest level in nearly three years. According to the report, the US added just 114K payrolls, a huge miss to expectations of 175K and also a huge drop from the downward revised June print of 206K, now (as always ) revised to just 179K. This was the lowest print since December 2020 (at least prior to even more revisions)…

As we wrote in response, these being numbers published by the corrupt Biden, pardon Kamala Department of Goalseeked bullshit, the previous months were revised lower as usual, with May revised down by 2,000, from +218,000 to +216,000, and the change for June was revised down by 27,000, from +206,000 to +179,000. With these revisions, employment in May and June combined is 29,000 lower than previously reported. It gets better because as shown in the next chart shows, 5 of the past 6 months have now been revised lower.

But while we have long known that the real payrolls number is far worse than reported, what was the true shock in Friday’s “data” is the long overdue admission that the US is effectively in a recession because as the rule named for pro-Biden/Kamala socialist Cluadia Sahm indicates, a recession has now been triggered. The rule, for those who don’t remember is that a recession is effectively already underway if the unemployment rate (based on a three-month moving average) rises by half a percentage point from its low of the past year. And that’s what just happened, with the unemployment rate surging 0.6% from the year’s low.

“Once her views are made known to the public,” Piereson notes, “Harris’s support will begin to melt away. . . . [B]y mid-September, Trump will have opened up a six-point lead in the polls that will remain intact for the balance of the campaign.”

• Kamala Harris and the Masque of Magical Thinking (Kimball)

Although the last few weeks have had their alarming aspects – chief among which was the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13, the odds-on favorite candidate for president – they have also had their amusing moments. In the latter category, I place the sudden queen-for-a-day-like coronation of Kamala Harris. True, that coronation was in the nature of an anti-democratic semi-soft-coup (or anti-democratic “inversion of a coup”). Biden and his handlers, right up until the morning of July 21, were insisting that he was not dropping out, that he was “in it to win,” etc. But someone made him an offer he couldn’t refuse and out he went. Here’s the amusing bit. Until the moment Biden was chased out of the race, Kamala Harris functioned primarily as political life insurance. “You might not like me,” Biden communicated, “but if I go, you’re stuck with her.” Biden’s polls were in the toilet and, following his catastrophic debate with Donald Trump, were circling the drain, poised for oblivion.

But Kamala’s polls were even worse. She was cordially disliked by—well, by everyone. Her staff, her colleagues, but above all, by voters. In the 2020 race, she got no delegates: none, zero, zip. She dropped out of the race for president but was then tapped to be VP only because this half Indian, half Jamaican woman was swarthy enough to pass as black and Biden had promised to select a black female as a running mate. Kamala truly is, as Biden himself acknowledged recently, a DEI vice president. And sure enough, Kamala was every bit the disaster people predicted she would be. As a matter of clinical interest, she proved that senility is not the only cause of supreme rhetorical incoherence. Some people, and she is one, come by it naturally. Her tenure as vice president is littered with examples, and she provided another doozy just a couple of days ago when she attempted to comment on the prisoner exchange with Russia.

It’s painful, as are all the many video clips of Harris angrily denouncing people who say “Merry Christmas,” of her presiding as “border czar” over the disaster of our non-existent southern border, of her outlining how she wants to give Medicare, as well as the franchise, to all illegal immigrants, and how she wants to develop a national data base of gun owners so that she can confiscate firearms by force. Can such a person win the presidency? No. Then, how can we explain the sudden efflorescence of Harrismania? Democrats are wetting themselves with glee over their sudden fundraising windfalls ($200 million in a week, it is said) and sudden surge in the polls. New York magazine just beclowned itself with a cover showing Kamala sitting on top of the world with Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and even Joe Biden dancing and whooping it up below. “Welcome to Kamalot,” we read: “In a matter of days, the Democratic Party discovered its future was actually in the White House all along.”

Was it? Again, the answer is no. It is a temporary sugar high caused partly by the feeling of liberation following the sudden release from Joe Biden, partly by the slobbering media jumping all over the reinvention of Kamala like dogs vibrating over a bitch in estrus. The feeling of intoxication may linger through the Democratic convention, but there are already signs that it is fading. I think James Piereson is correct. Kamala’s position now is akin to that of Michael Dukakis (remember him?) in 1988. Dukakis was way ahead of George Bush in the summer of 1988. Then it all unraveled. His helmet-moment in the tank sealed the deal. But it was his whole left-wing outlook that really did him in. And Dukakis was Ronald Reagan compared to Kamala Harris. “Once her views are made known to the public,” Piereson notes, “Harris’s support will begin to melt away. . . . [B]y mid-September, Trump will have opened up a six-point lead in the polls that will remain intact for the balance of the campaign.”

Although I would hesitate to be quite so arithmetically precise, I think that Piereson is also by and large correct in his electoral prediction. “Notwithstanding the euphoria today,” he writes, Trump will win the election by six points—forty-nine to forty-three percent—winning 339 electoral votes, including all of the so-called swing states, plus the Democratic-leaning states of Virginia, Minnesota, and New Hampshire. Republicans will pick up three or four seats in the Senate and perhaps twenty seats in the House, giving them safe majorities in both chambers. This will give Trump the margins he needs to implement a good piece of his agenda in 2025 and 2026. I think this is right—though, again, I hesitate to be quite so exact in attaching numbers to Trump’s victory.

He’ll be labeled racist, sexist, misogynist: “..she attempts to portray herself as the deserving underdog in a white man’s game..”

• What Donald Trump Should Beware of In The Debate With Kamala Harris (Bridge)

Mark your calendar, ladies and gentlemen, Kamala Harris has done something extraordinary. She has become the only candidate in half a century to become the presidential nominee without winning a single primary vote. Biden’s vice got enough delegate votes in the virtual roll call process to become the official Democratic nominee. Interesting how not winning votes has had an uncanny way of getting this severely unqualified woman one cackle closer to the Oval Office. But the shock and awe does not stop there, so be advised to have a seat. The absolutely, positively 100% legitimate corporate media monstrosity with blood-soaked hand to its heart reports: Harris is now more popular than Joe Biden or Donald Trump have been at any point in the 2024 election cycle.

Yes, a Morning Consult poll of 11,538 registered voters between July 26 and 28 found 50 percent have a favorable opinion of the sitting vice president, while 46 percent have an unfavorable opinion. According to the pollster, “Harris’s 4-point net favorability is a higher rating than Biden or Trump have posted all cycle.” Is anyone really buying any of this, aside from those people who would rather see Donald Duck, for example, as commander-in-chief than Donald J. Trump? Incidentally, let’s not forget that this is the same unbelievable, super-sensational candidate who had her presidential dreams (temporarily) demolished in less than five minutes by a tenacious Tulsi Gabbard during the 2020 Democratic primary debates. The problem, however, had nothing to do with the deeply unlikeable Deep State darling, of course, but rather with a little problem known in the world of politics as cash flow, the primary grease responsible for slipping the most despicable people into positions of power over the years.

As CNBC reported shortly after the debate debacle, “[w]ith Harris falling behind former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, among others, some of Harris’ lead bundlers have struggled to convince members of their networks to write checks to her campaign. In some cases, many of her supporters have told the campaign that they will not host events for her.” Now, just four lackluster years later, without a serious signature project to call her own, cash is no longer a problem for female, Black and Asian-American Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s ultimate DEI hire. The Harris campaign announced over the weekend it had raised $310 million in July, more than double Trump’s take last month, thereby strongly pointing to the obvious: for whatever reason, the money and media machine is churning in high gear for the political left, as it has since time immemorial, and woe to the mortal who thinks this has anything to do with power-hungry vultures perched on Capitol Hill, waiting for their next feeding time.

And this is where Trump has all the reason in the world to distrust the merchants of media – even if they happen to be the notorious backstabbers at Fox News – as it plays ‘neutral’ arbitrator in the upcoming debates. As proof, as if proof were needed, here is something that Harris and not some AI-generated body double uttered just a few days ago during a rally: “Donald Trump does not care about border security; he only cares about himself,” the invisible border czar told a crowd of worshipful supporters. “And when I am president, I will actually work to solve the problem.” The fact that Kamala Harris is able to utter such inanities without any pushback or laugh track shows that the media is seriously gas-lighting the American people, and not playing fair with Trump. But in the perennial fight against left-wing media forces, Trump has a knack for being his personal Darth Vader, namely due to his willingness to speak his mind, and occasionally the truth, no matter who it hurts. In a less moronic age that was known and welcomed as candidness.

[..] On top of the race card, Trump will also be entering the lion’s den as a climate-change-denying “convicted felon,” misogynist, and an anti-abortion supporter – quaint little sound bites that Harris is certainly remembering by heart. However this tragicomedy plays out, expect lots of handwringing and lecturing from the female (check), Black (check), Indian (check) candidate as she attempts to portray herself as the deserving underdog in a white man’s game.

“We got our people back, but boy we make some horrible, horrible deals..”

• Trump Congratulates Putin On ‘Great Deal’ (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has blasted President Joe Biden’s prisoner exchange deal with Moscow, suggesting that Russian President Vladimir Putin got the better end of the bargain. The US and Russia exchanged a total of 26 prisoners held in several countries earlier this week, in the largest such deal since the end of the Cold War. Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan – both of whom were convicted of espionage in Russia – were sent to the West, as were 14 other foreign agents, opposition activists, and criminals. In return, ten Russian nationals were sent to Moscow, among them alleged intelligence agents and cybercriminals. The most prominent name on the list was Vadim Krasikov, an FSB agent who was convicted of the murder of a former Chechen militant commander in Germany in 2021.

“I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal,” Trump declared at a campaign rally in Georgia on Saturday. “Did you see the deal we made? They released some of the greatest killers anywhere in the world, some of the most evil killers they got.” “We got our people back, but boy we make some horrible, horrible deals,” he continued, adding that “it’s nice to say we got them back, but does that set a bad precedent?” Prior to the swap, Trump claimed that only he could secure the release of Gershkovich. In a post to his Truth Social platform in May, he wrote that the Wall Street Journal reporter “will be released almost immediately after the election, but definitely before I assume office,” and that the US would be “paying nothing” for his return.

With Gershkovich back in the US, Trump has switched tone, arguing that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris – who is running for the presidency against Trump – are inept negotiators who paid too high a price for his freedom. “We got 59 hostages, I never paid anything,” he told his supporters on Saturday. However, while Trump did secure the release of dozens of American prisoners during his presidency without making any concessions, he did trade captives on multiple occasions. Among these deals were two one-for-one swaps with Iran, and the 2019 exchange of an American and an Australian for three senior Taliban leaders held in an Afghan jail.

“The facts are that the US will lose. It cannot fight a multi-pronged war against superpowers but it seems dead set on continuing to do that..”

• Israel and US Stoke the Fire as China Pursues Peace (Manley)

Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed Wednesday in an attack on his residence in Tehran. Hamas has blamed Israel and the US for Haniyeh’s death and vowed retaliation. On Friday, Intelligence Minister Ismail Khatib said Israel ordered the strike after receiving a green light from the US. The Global Times reported Thursday that China firmly opposed and condemned the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh that took place on Wednesday in Tehran. Fu Cong, China’s permanent representative to the United Nations, said the act was a blatant attempt to “sabotage peace efforts and wantonly trampled on the fundamental UN Charter principle of respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states.” Fu added that China is “deeply worried” the incident could trigger further upheaval in the Middle East.

KJ Noh sat down with Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program this week to discuss China’s response to the assassination of Haniyeh. Noh, who is a political activist, writer and teacher, suggested China is open to peaceful negotiations while Israel and the US appear to be escalating tensions. “China’s approach is to settle differences through dialogue and negotiation and reconciliation and to develop, to look for win-win solutions, to have mutual respect, to build and not to bomb,” Noh explained. “And what Israel has done [is] they’ve essentially toppled any chance of a political settlement by assassinating their interlocutor. [It] can’t get any more naked than that.” “If you kill the person across the table who you’re talking to, that means you’re not interested in any peaceful negotiation,” the writer added. “What’s clear, both in the case of Ukraine and in the case of Israel, is I think the US does not want negotiation. It wants what Israel wants, which is ethnic cleansing and genocide.”

On Tuesday, US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said the US is “far behind” China in Africa and other regions in the Global South and has “much more work to do” in competing with China. In an opinion piece, the Global Times suggested the US’ call for “more work to do” in the Global South is a “strategy to manipulate and weaponize these nations, using them as tools against China.” “Kurt Campbell wants war, and he has said that he would unleash a magnificent symphony of death. That’s the way he thinks, but he also knows that the US cannot fight China by itself,” Noh said. “And so, everything that the US is pivoting to do right now is to weaponize as many proxies as possible, and therefore this is their strategy towards the Global South – force them into blocs and turn them into weapons against China.”

“The US wants more and it wants to block confrontation and it wants win-lose relations or lose-lose relations. China wants win-win relations and it wants to develop the world on the basis of mutual benefit and equality,” he added. “That’s the foundational difference. And we can see that the US, by appointing Campbell and everything else they’re saying and doing is doubling down on this pathway to planetary destruction.” The US is at risk of losing in the event of multiple conflicts with adversaries due to a lack of capabilities and capacity reported Sputnik Monday, citing a report from the US Congress affiliated Commission on the National Defense Strategy.

“They want to come to a different conclusion, despite being confronted by the same facts. The facts are that the US will lose. It cannot fight a multi-pronged war against superpowers but it seems dead set on continuing to do that,” said Noh. The report also found that the US military lacks both the capabilities and capacity required to be confident in its ability to deter and prevail in combat. It added that China remains the “preeminent challenge” to US interests and the country’s most formidable military threat. “So, once again, having come to the same conclusions, they do not suggest a way out or a reasonable accommodation with the rest of the world. They still want to double down on US supremacy. They want more war, preferably spending more money, using more proxies and more instruments of death,” the activist added.

“On Saturday, Tehran told Arab diplomats that they did not care if their response leads to war.”

• US Sends Forces to Middle East, Fear Catastrophic War Is Imminent (Sp.)

Nearly 40,000 people in Gaza have been killed since Israel’s operation in Gaza began in October, according to the territory’s health ministry. Fears of an imminent regional or world war are rising as the United States sends military forces to the Middle East to safeguard Israel after its latest escalation in the region. On Friday US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he had ordered more ballistic missile defense-capable cruisers and destroyers to the Middle East and Europe. An additional fighter jet squadron will be sent to the Middle East as the US increases their “readiness to deploy additional land-based ballistic missile defense,” it was reported. The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group will also be moved to the Middle East as a way to “maintain a carrier strike group presence”, the report added. Fears of a regional war in the Middle East have been growing since the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in an attack on his residence in Tehran.

Just hours prior, Israel also struck south Beirut and killed Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr. Hamas has blamed Israel and the US for Haniyeh’s death and vowed retaliation. On Friday, Intelligence Minister Ismail Khatib said Israel ordered the strike after receiving a green light from the US. Israel’s provocation has resulted in Iran-backed groups in the Middle East swearing vows of vengeance. Groups from Lebanon, Yemen, Kiraq and Syria have already addressed the war in Gaza between the Palestinian group Hamas, and Israel whose military efforts have been supported by the US. The US has given Israel more aid than any other nation since World War II. On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Iran had refused to moderate its response to the assassination of Haniyeh and was planning to launch a massive retaliatory strike against Israel, with analysts claiming Tehran’s barrage could last multiple days.

On Saturday, Tehran told Arab diplomats that they did not care if their response leads to war. Iran said on Saturday that it expects Hezbollah to strike deep within Israel and to no longer confine their attacks solely to military targets. A Lebanese security source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said a Hezbollah member was killed in an “Israeli drone” strike on a vehicle in south Lebanon Saturday, according to an AFP report. Late on Friday Israel carried out strikes on truck convoys entering Lebanon from Syria, the report added.

“Some Poles also consider the lands of western Belarus as the Polish ‘borderlands’..”

• Why is Poland Massing Troops on Frontier With Belarus?

Poland kicked off a large-scale military operation along the border with Belarus on August 1, ostensibly to secure the frontier in the face of what Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz characterized as a migrant-fueled “hybrid war” against Warsaw. Why does Minsk have reason to be wary of Warsaw’s official justifications? The Polish border defense operation, dubbed ‘Safe Podlasie’ (referring to the northeastern Polish province of Podlaskie) involves about 17,000 troops led by the 18th Mechanized Division of the Polish Armed Forces, with the officially-stated aim of the deployment being to fight illegal migrant flows in a dispute with Belarus that goes back to 2021. “Our soldiers will counter illegal crossings in places that are not intended for this. This operation is a response to illegal immigration from the east, which poses a challenge to Poland’s internal security,” Kosiniak-Kamysz said ahead of the deployment.

Poland has already built a 186 km long, five-meter high, $400 million anti-immigration border fence along part of the border, and plans to construct a massive, 200-meter to 2 km-wide “buffer zone” at some point in the future. But Operation ‘Safe Podlasie’ was kicked off simultaneously with Operation Eastern Aurora, a NATO mission ostensibly meant to secure Polish airspace “in the face of unpredictable Russian actions,” thus potentially betraying Warsaw’s true intentions and rationale for the troop buildup. Belarus has long been skeptical of Warsaw’s military deployments on its western frontier. With over 216,000 personnel under arms (the Belarusian military has about 65,000 troops total, for comparison), Poland has the third-largest military in NATO after the US and Turkiye, and has dramatically ramped up the deployment of alliance assets and troops (including a new American missile defense facility in Redzikowo, northern Poland with offensive capabilities) in recent years.

In March, Poland hosted the Dragon 24 wargames, involving some 20,000 NATO troops and 3,500 pieces of military equipment. Successive Polish governments have had long-standing ambitions to topple Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to install a more European Union and NATO-friendly government, sponsoring and lending other forms of aid to radical opposition forces in the country, most recently in 2020. Some Polish geostrategists see Belarus as a key piece of the ‘Intermarium’, a geopolitical concept first conceived by Polish statesman Jozef Pilsudski in the first part of the 20th century to ‘reunite’ the territories of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to contain Russia from the Baltic to the Black Seas. Some Poles also consider the lands of western Belarus as the Polish ‘borderlands’. In 2020, Lukashenko accused Warsaw of harboring plans to annex Grodno region amid the foreign-backed post-election unrest facing Belarus at the time. The Polish government vocally denied the claims.

“These planes will appear, their number will gradually decrease, they will be shot down and destroyed..”

• American Jets Spotted Over Ukraine (RT)

US-made F-16 fighter jets have been spotted in Ukrainian airspace, according to videos shared online by local residents. They appear to show at least one jet conducting a surveillance flight over the city of Odessa. Kiev was promised the planes in 2023 by a number of NATO states, including the US, France, Bulgaria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Sweden. They formed the so-called ‘F-16 coalition’, pledging to provide Kiev with the fighter jets and train Ukrainian pilots to operate them. No delivery date was set, however, and Kiev has recently expressed its impatience. A report by Bloomberg, citing sources in Kiev, indicated that the first batch of jets arrived earlier this week, and that the number delivered so far was “small.” Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky confirmed the delivery in a statement on his official Telegram channel on Sunday.

He did not disclose the number of planes supplied but singled out Denmark and the Netherlands to express his gratitude for the delivery. The two countries were to provide Kiev with 24 and 19 F-16s respectively from their own stocks. Zelensky hailed the long-awaited arrival of the jets, claiming they will help Kiev deliver “exactly such combat results that will bring our victory closer – our just peace for Ukraine.” Moscow has warned that F-16s, just like any other Western weapons provided to Kiev, will not change the outcome of the conflict and will only prolong it. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier this week that there is no “magic pill” for Kiev and that it will not have this “panacea” for long. “These planes will appear, their number will gradually decrease, they will be shot down and destroyed. They will not be able to significantly influence the dynamics of events at the front,” Peskov stated.

“Russia’s air defense systems would make it too risky for Ukraine to try to use the jets to support its troop movements on the front line..”

• Destruction of NATO F-16s Sent to Ukraine Will Boost Russia’s Image (Sp.)

The first F-16s have been delivered to Ukraine, media reported earlier in the week. Promised to the Kiev regime a year ago, it took far longer than predicted to train Ukrainian pilots on the jets, with media speculating about what the F-16s will be used for, citing air defense as an option. Deliveries of aging F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine will play into Russia’s hands and improve its image, The Independent has speculated. Russian President Vladimir Putin “would savor the image that destroying F-16s from NATO countries would bring,” the UK media outlet noted. Russia’s Armed Forces will likely “destroy the F-16s on the ground with long-range missiles,” the publication further predicted. It went on to underscore that Russia’s Su-35 fighter jet would be “one of the biggest threats” to the F-16s, and noted that sophisticated air surveillance radars would be used against them. Russia’s air defense systems would make it too risky for Ukraine to try to use the jets to support its troop movements on the front line, analysts cited by the outlet acknowledged.

The fact that Kiev’s pilots only got a nine-month training “crash course” on using the F-16s as compared to the typical three-year course Western pilots receive was also noted. Ukraine recently received a handful of F-16s from the Netherlands. Denmark, Belgium, and Norway have promised to provide the Kiev regime with more over the next few months. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned the United States and its NATO allies that Moscow sees the presence of nuclear-capable F-16s in Ukraine as a nuclear threat. President Vladimir Putin emphasized that Western-supplied F-16 jets to Ukraine would not have the power to alter the situation on the battlefield. He warned that if these fighter jets are deployed from the territory of third countries, they will be considered legitimate targets for Russian forces. Every previous alleged game-changing weapon has failed to turn the tide of the West’s proxy conflict in Ukraine, as Russia has had effective countermeasures ready and waiting for each of them.

Apple does so well, he’s taking a break.

• Warren Buffet Unloads Apple Shares (RT)

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has significantly cut its investment in Apple, offloading nearly half of its holding since the start of the year, according to a quarterly earnings report released on Saturday. The value of the holding company’s stake in Apple dropped from $174.3 billion as of the end of last year to $84.2 billion on June 30. In the final quarter of last year, Berkshire also sold around 10 million Apple shares, or roughly 1% of its holding. Despite the sell-off, Apple remains the largest investment in Berkshire’s portfolio. Nevertheless, the persistent offloading of Apple shares is notable for Buffett, who is famous for being a long-term investor and a vocal Apple fan. During the Berkshire annual meeting in May, Buffett said he believed the tech giant would remain one of the conglomerate’s core holdings.

However, during the same meeting, he hinted that his selling of Apple stock is partly motivated by tax considerations, and also by his plans to build up Berkshire’s cash position. In total, Berkshire sold off $75.5 billion in stock in the second quarter, a move that lifted its cash holdings to a record high of $277 billion, up from $88 billion in the first quarter of 2024. It was the seventh straight quarter in which the company sold more stock than it bought. Cash now represents roughly 30% of Berkshire’s market value of over $900 billion. Some analysts say the company’s cash buildup may signal Buffet’s concerns about the US economy.

“I would be getting a little worried,” Jim Shanahan, an analyst for Edward Jones told MarketWatch in a note. Buffett’s recent moves “make me concerned about his outlook for the markets and economy. It’s incredible how much the cash has grown,” he wrote. Apple stock had a rough start to this year amid concerns over weakness in iPhone sales and competition from other tech majors, but started rapidly gaining after the company unveiled Apple Intelligence, its batch of new AI features, in early June. A rally last month pushed the iPhone maker’s stock price to over $230 per share and its market cap to over $3.5 trillion, the highest any publicly traded company has ever achieved. The shares have since given back some of the gains, closing at roughly $219 per share on Friday.

First you welcome them, but then you file a lawsuit against 17 charter bus companies?! Shouldn’t you sue Texas, if anyone? Yourself, perhaps?

• New York State Supreme Court Blocks Attempt to Pause Migrant Arrivals (ET)

The New York State Supreme Court has denied New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s request for a preliminary injunction against busing illegal immigrants from Texas to the city. Adams, who faces challenges from New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and others in his reelection bid next year, filed a lawsuit against 17 charter bus companies in January. His goal was to stop the companies from busing migrants, many of them undocumented, from communities in Texas to New York. The mayor cited Social Services Law 149, which stipulates that any person “who knowingly brings, or causes to be brought, a needy person from out of state into this state for the purpose of making him a public charge” has an obligation “to convey such person out of state or support him at his own expense.” But in her nine-page July 29 ruling, Judge Mary V. Rosado found that the lawsuit was “unconstitutional.”

The judge found that the matter was similar to a 1941 Supreme Court case, Edwards v. California, in which the Supreme Court found that an “essentially identical” law in California was unconstitutional for violating the Interstate Commerce Clause. She cited the ruling, saying, “The Court finds that it cannot grant the … request for injunctive relief as the merits of [the] claim are dubious at best given myriad constitutional concerns.” The state supreme court’s ruling is a setback for the Adams administration, whose legal moves had succeeded in getting one bus company, Roadrunner Charters Inc., to enter into an agreement to pause busing migrants to the city until the court reached a decision. Now, Roadrunner Charters and other bus services are free to continue transporting migrants to New York. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott quickly responded to the ruling on X, formerly Twitter, writing, “Another WIN! … Until the Biden-Harris Administration secures the border, Texas will continue to send migrants to sanctuary cities.”

Adams’s position was that dropping thousands of people in New York strained social services and the amount of available shelter space past the limit, costing more than $700 million. In a similar spirit to the busing lawsuit, the mayor has sought to enforce a 60-day limit on shelter space for asylum seekers in the city. In the past two years alone, a reported 205,000 migrants have arrived in the city, straining existing social services and prompting the Adams administration to set up more than 200 emergency shelter sites.

The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), which filed an amicus brief in the case, argued that people have a right to come to New York regardless of their immigration status or whether they are self-sufficient and that the injunction Mayor Adams sought was unconstitutional. “The court has rightly rejected the city’s cruel attempt to limit newly arrived immigrants from traveling to and making a home here in New York City. Everyone, whether or not they are a citizen and no matter their resources, has the right to travel and reside anywhere within the United States—including Texas and New York,” Beth Haroules, a senior staff attorney at the NYCLU, said in a statement. “New Yorkers deserve better than xenophobia and discrimination masquerading as policy,” she continued, adding that the NYCLU looks forward to the court’s full dismissal of the mayor’s case.

What inept looks like. It doesn’t matter what government, they’re all the same.

• Elon Musk Speculates Civil War ‘Inevitable’ as Violence Sweeps UK (Sp.)

Angry anti-migrant protests have swept across the UK, with the latest unrest set off by the horrific stabbing of three children in Southport by the 17-year-old son of Rwandan immigrants. Manchester, Liverpool, and Birmingham have witnessed violent demonstrations, with mosques attacked, police premises ransacked, and cars and buildings set ablaze. US billionaire Elon Musk has speculated that the UK is heading towards civil war. Musk weighed in on the wave of violence sweeping across the country amid uncontrolled migration and soaring crime, posting on X a succinct post that read, “Civil war is inevitable.” The Tesla CEO and owner of X made the comment under one of many videos showing scenes of unrest gripping towns and cities in Britain during the past days. The latest wave of interethnic violence was triggered by a recent tragedy in the town of Southport, where a 17-year-old teen of Rwandan origin stabbed three girls to death on July 29.

Police arrested dozens of people on Saturday, as projectiles and fireworks were set off, and storefronts set on fire. Footage posted on social media shows crowds chanting anti-immigrant slogans such as “stop the boats” in Liverpool, in a reference to the dinghies used by asylum seekers to cross the English Channel to the UK. Former Home Secretary Priti Patel denounced Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and his Labour Party for complacency amid the riots, writing on X that Parliament ought to be recalled from summer break. The UK’s newly minted Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has inherited the migrant crisis from his predecessor, faces an uphill battle to tackle illegal migration. The number of people crossing the English Channel is currently estimated to be more than 10,000 this year alone. Previous measures resorted to by the UK government have failed to stanch the tide of illegals.

“..Starmer did not discuss any of the root causes of the unrest. Instead he pinned all blame for the violence on “far right hatred” and online “misinformation.”

• British Rioters Torch Migrant Hotel (RT)

Right-wing protesters in the English town of Rotherham have set fire to a hotel housing asylum seekers, as demonstrations against immigration and Islam continue across the country. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vowed that the rioters will “face the full force of the law.” Hundreds of people gathered outside the Holiday Inn Express in Rotherham on Sunday afternoon, pelting police officers with wood and bottles and chanting “get them out,” referring to the 130 asylum seekers housed in the hotel since 2022. South Yorkshire police said at least ten officers were injured in clashes with the rioters, who broke windows and set dumpsters ablaze outside the building, before setting a fire inside the hotel’s ground floor. Multiple arrests were made, and the fire was extinguished shortly afterwards.

Dozens of British towns and cities have been rocked by right-wing protests and riots since Monday, when a British teenager of Rwandan descent stabbed three children to death and injured ten others in the town of Southport, near Liverpool. Although initially sparked by a false rumor that the knifeman responsible for the stabbings was Muslim, the demonstrations have since grown into a wider backlash against Islam, mass immigration, and the perception that political leaders are more concerned with suppressing right-wing dissent than tackling immigrant crime. More than 150 people were arrested after riots in Liverpool, Manchester, Stoke, Leeds and other cities on Saturday. Similar riots took place in locations including Middlesbrough, Blackburn, and Tamworth on Sunday. Mobs of Muslim protesters, some armed with knives and machetes, have been seen in some cities, including Bolton and Stoke.

In a speech on Sunday, Starmer warned that more arrests would follow. “Those who have participated in this violence will face the full force of the law,” he declared, warning that those responsible “will regret taking part in this disorder.” In Sunday’s address and in a similar speech earlier this week, Starmer did not discuss any of the root causes of the unrest. Instead he pinned all blame for the violence on “far right hatred” and online “misinformation.” Rotherham is infamous for its Muslim ‘grooming gang’, a group of predominantly British-Pakistani men who sexually abused around 1,400 young girls between the late 1980s and 2013. Three separate reports published in 2013, 2014, and 2015 found that local politicians and police covered up the gang’s crimes, partly out of fear that identifying and punishing the perpetrators would be seen as “racist.”

Tucker coast guy

Neil Oliver: "There was no pandemic."

"What we ended up with was a pandemic of testing, with the misapplication of PCR tests that were never designed, according to their designer, to be used as diagnostic tools."

"They simply took an opportunity to do something that they were… pic.twitter.com/q7762NG7Sv

— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) August 4, 2024

Renz

“We Incentivized MURDERING Patients in Hospitals”

• “If you go to the hospital and you get a positive COVID test, then the hospital gets more money.”

• “If you get put on remdesivir, the hospital gets more money.”

• “If you get put on a vent, the hospital gets more money.” pic.twitter.com/buDwJ75qLM

— (Honest/Ethical/Safe Dr) David Cartland (@CartlandDavid) August 4, 2024

Dog toy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1820101192543768864

Cubs

So beautiful story.

pic.twitter.com/rjogSPyREt

— The Best (@ThebestFigen) August 4, 2024

Moose

5. The size of a moose pic.twitter.com/GacO97pqSa

— Creepy.org (@creepydotorg) August 4, 2024

Newquay
https://twitter.com/i/status/1820091457086071157

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Debt Rattle May 6 2024

May 062024

May 6, 2024 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:44 am Finance Tagged with: antisemitism, Civil War, corruption, Foreign Legion, jamming, Orthodox Easter, Trump, Xi Jinping 37 Responses »

Pablo Picasso La lecture 1932

• Americans See Civil War Within 5 Years, Upcoming Election as Flashpoint (Sp.)

• Ukrainians are God’s Chosen People – Zelensky (RT)

• Zelensky Can’t ‘Mobilize God’ – Russian Church (RT)

• Moscow Ridicules Zelensky’s Claim About God and Ukraine (RT)

• Trump Develops ‘Detailed’ Plan On Achieving Ukraine Peace: Telegraph (ZH)

• Corruption Sped Up Ukraine’s Retreat More Than Weapons Shortage

• New US Antisemitism Law Turns Israeli Genocide Critics Into Criminals (GR)

• French Foreign Legion Dispatched to Ukraine, Ex-DoD Official (Sp.)

• Ukraine Could Request Western Military Intervention – MP (RT)

• Israel’s Not So Little War Against Russia (Helmer)

• Xi jinping to Visit Three Key Countries During Trip to Europe (Sp.)

• You Need 2 Years of Food – Martin Armstrong (USAW)

May 5
https://twitter.com/i/status/1787107339939860718

Falcon heavy

Maiden launch of Falcon Heavy, the most powerful operational rocket on Earth, with the first dual rocket landing
pic.twitter.com/CrzQGeQWU8

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 5, 2024

Optimus

"Optimus will be more valuable than everything else combined. Tesla's A.I. Inference efficiency is vastly better than any other company. There's no company even close to the efficiency of Tesla."

一 Elon Musk pic.twitter.com/JsTdvmMNTJ

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) May 5, 2024

https://twitter.com/i/status/1787082089315139886

Poso
https://twitter.com/i/status/1787151253509706036

Putin Steele

January, 2017. Putin is asked about the Trump-Russia Steele dossier. He says that the people who push these kind of hoaxes are worse than prostitutes and have no moral limitations.

He was right. pic.twitter.com/zIpRP3jkKm

— MAZE (@mazemoore) May 5, 2024

“I’m not stupid. If you don’t vote for Trump, this great big empire is gonna crumble.”

• Americans See Civil War Within 5 Years, Upcoming Election as Flashpoint (Sp.)

Surveys show many believe Americans will take up arms against each other in the coming years as political polarization in the country remains at an all-time high. A new poll reveals a startlingly large percentage of Americans anticipate a second civil war within the next few years, with many citing this year’s presidential election as a potential flashpoint for a conflict. The survey by US pollster Rasmussen Reports found that 41% of likely voters think the country is likely to see a civil war by 2029, including 16% who think a civil war in that timeframe is “very likely.” Researchers discovered a significant partisan component to the issue, with 37% of respondents saying civil war is more likely if current US President Joe Biden is reelected in November. Some 25% said the outcome would be more likely under a second Donald Trump presidency, while 30% said the outcome of this fall’s election would make little difference.

Surprisingly, more than half of Republican voters anticipate a civil war within the next five years, with 54% of them saying the outcome is likely. Women, young adults, and non-white voters were found to be most likely to predict an imminent conflagration in the survey of 1,105 US voters. “The possibility that America could face another civil war soon is not too far-fetched for a lot of voters,” said the polling firm. “Such discussions got a boost after the new movie ‘Civil War’ made its debut as number one at the box office last month.” The Alex Garland film is not the only recent Western movie or television show predicting a dystopian near-future. British director Adam Curtis’ film HyperNormalization recognized the trend nearly a decade ago.

“Halfway through Adam Curtis’s mind-blowing documentary on the current socio-political turmoil in the world… there is a montage from Hollywood apocalypse movies,” noted critic J.J. McDermott. “The montage segues from one dramatic scene to another with prolonged gasping effect… the White House is destroyed in Independence Day, a giant dino-creature chucks cars about the streets of New York in Godzilla and a giant comet looms over North America in Deep Impact.” “The fascination with 9/11 as a witnessed spectacle has persisted in movie studios and in the minds of their ‘disaster’ directors ever since and the summer blockbuster season is never without at least one example every year now.” Curtis’s provocative film posits that society has increasingly retreated inward in recent years, with the rise of the Internet serving as a substitute for an increasingly unpredictable and chaotic Western world. Brexit and the election of Trump are offered as two key events signifying a descent into political turmoil.

But the existential angst has apparently found its way online as well, with entire Internet communities dedicated to discussing the likelihood of imminent war or apocalypse. The r/Collapse forum on the website Reddit devotes itself to “discussion regarding the potential collapse of global civilization, defined as a significant decrease in human population and/or political/economic/social complexity.” Other surveys in recent years have revealed similar results, with one by YouGov in 2022 finding 43% of Americans think a civil war is likely in the next decade and another poll conducted that year finding 50.1% think it is a possibility.“No matter what happens here – the verdict – Trump’s gonna win or there will be a civil war,” said one supporter of the former president protesting outside his current trial in New York City. “I’m not stupid. If you don’t vote for Trump, this great big empire is gonna crumble.”

Orthodox Easter is a big one.

• Ukrainians are God’s Chosen People – Zelensky (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has proclaimed that God is an “ally” of Ukraine in the conflict with Russia. Despite his invoking of the Almighty, Zelensky has led a crackdown on the Orthodox Church for the last two years. As Orthodox Christians celebrated Easter on Sunday, Zelensky released a video address from Kiev’s Saint Sophia Cathedral, in which he accused Russia of “breaking all the commandments.” “The world sees it, God knows it,” he said. “And we believe God has a chevron with the Ukrainian flag on his shoulder. So, with such an ally, life will definitely win over death.” Zelensky’s appeal to Christians came as Ukraine’s parliament examines legislation that would close down the country’s largest Christian church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). While the law has sat in parliament for months, Zelensky’s government has moved to restrict the Church’s activity since the conflict began in 2022.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has opened dozens of criminal cases against UOC priests, has sanctioned clerics, and stripped at least 19 bishops of their Ukrainian citizenship, according to TASS news agency. Church property has been seized, and monks evicted from the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, an ancient monastery and the most prominent Orthodox site in Ukraine. The UOC has deep historical ties with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), which it renounced after Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. Despite declaring autonomy from the ROC, Zelensky has accused the UOC of functioning as an “agent of Moscow,” and promoted the government-created Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) as its replacement.

A non-canonical organization, the OCU was established by the government of President Pyotr Poroshenko after the US-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014. Earlier this year, a group of lawyers wrote to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, warning him that banning the UOC could cause “serious harm to Orthodox Ukrainians” and have “dire ramifications for Ukraine’s entry into the European Union and its place in the Western world.”

“The Lord is not a resident of the Kiev region for Zelensky to mobilize him and put him in the Ukrainian army..”

• Zelensky Can’t ‘Mobilize God’ – Russian Church (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has no way to enlist God in his fight against Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church has said, rebuking a statement Zelensky made during his Easter Sunday speech. In a video address, Zelensky described God as “an ally” of Ukraine who “has a chevron with the Ukrainian flag on his shoulder.” “The Lord is not a resident of the Kiev region for Zelensky to mobilize him and put him in the Ukrainian army. His statements don’t merit any attention,” Vakhtang Kipshidze, the head of the Russian church’s public relations department, told news outlet news.ru. Kipshidze further blasted the Ukrainian leader as “a non-believer” who “claims that he can decide for God whose ally he is.”

Kiev has stepped up the crackdown on its largest Christian church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), accusing its clergy of being “agents of Moscow.” The UOC renounced its historical ties with Moscow after Russia launched its military operation in the neighboring state in February 2022. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian authorities have since launched criminal cases against more than 60 priests and seized a number of monasteries and other assets in favor of the state-backed Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). Last year, the Ukrainian government introduced a bill that would pave a way for an eventual ban of the UOC. The legislation, however, has since been stalled. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has repeatedly condemned the campaign against the UOC, denouncing it as a violation of religious rights.

“..Zakharova ridiculed the statement, suggesting it was the result of a “drug overdose.”

• Moscow Ridicules Zelensky’s Claim About God and Ukraine (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has apparently lost touch with reality, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suggested after the Ukrainian President described God as Kiev’s “ally” in the conflict with Moscow. On Sunday, as Orthodox Christians celebrated Easter, Zelensky issued a video address in which he accused Moscow of “violating all the commandments,” claiming that “God knows it.” “We believe [that] God … wears a chevron with a Ukrainian flag on his shoulder,” the president stated, referring to the higher power as Kiev’s “ally,” who would guarantee Ukraine victory in the ongoing standoff. Zakharova ridiculed the statement, suggesting it was the result of a “drug overdose.” “A chevron on God’s [sleeve] is the same story as the rituals of ancient Ukrainians [performed] by them somewhere in Mesopotamia at a time when they discovered America,” the spokeswoman said, apparently referring to some internet memes mocking Kiev’s narratives about the nation’s origins.

Zelensky’s statements came amid the continued retreat of the Ukrainian military in Donbass, amid an ongoing Russian offensive. Earlier on Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that Moscow’s forces had taken control over the village of Ocheretino in the north of the Donetsk People’s Republic – a major logistics hub for Kiev’s troops. In February, Moscow’s forces liberated the strategic Donbass town of Avdeevka and have been steadily pushing westward ever since, taking control of several smaller settlements in the area. In April, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that Moscow’s troops were firmly in control of the initiative in the conflict, and steadily pushing Kiev’s forces back. Earlier this week, he estimated that the Armed Forces of Ukraine had lost 111,000 this year alone. Ukraine’s top military commander, General Aleksandr Syrsky, told Kiev’s backers the same month that his nation’s armed forces face a “difficult operational and strategic situation, which has a tendency to get worse.”

“..Mr Trump will style himself as the only candidate who can end the war, with a simple “bumper-sticker” slogan..”

• Trump Develops ‘Detailed’ Plan On Achieving Ukraine Peace: Telegraph (ZH)

Trump has long touted on the campaign trail that he can stop the Ukraine war in 24 hours while taking shots a Biden’s inability to oversee a negotiation that would ultimately end the war. The Daily Telegraph is now reporting, citing an unnamed source who is said to be close to the former president and current GOP frontrunner going into the November election, that Trump has developed a detailed plan for achieving Ukraine peace. “There is a plan, but he’s not going to debate it with cable news networks because then you lose all leverage,” the source said. Below is the section of the Friday Telegraph report which previews the plan: A source close to the Trump campaign has told The Telegraph that a detailed Ukraine-Russia peace plan has been drawn up but will not yet be disclosed in any detail before his in an effort to maintain leverage. Mr Trump will style himself as the only candidate who can end the war, with a simple “bumper-sticker” slogan, they said.

“He wants to stop the killing,” said the source. “That’s the bumper sticker: Trump will stop the killing.” Last month a Washington Post report claimed that key to Trump’s plan would be pressuring Kiev to permanently give up Crimea and part of the Donbas to the Russians. The Post had cited aides who said the plan is to push for “Ukraine to cede Crimea and Donbas border region to Russia” in return for an end the Russian occupation and invasion. But the truth is that at the very least Kiev would have to forever relinquish claims of sovereignty over Crimea. Moscow is also never going to let go to the four annexed territories in the east. But Trump had slammed the apparently premature report as “fake news”. At the time a statement from the Trump campaign said “The whole thing is fake news from the Washington Post. They’re just making it up.” Spokesman Jason Miller did emphasize, however, that “President Trump is the only one talking about stopping the killing. Joe Biden is talking about more killing.”

Meanwhile, things on the battlefield are making it increasingly clear that Ukraine may soon have no other option. The country’s military and intelligence leadership also appears to be coming around to the hard reality that it will have to surrender territory, or else continue suffering massive losses and ceded ground. The Telegraph writes in its fresh report: Ukraine is preparing for peace talks with Russia as there is “no way to win on the battlefield alone”, Kyiv’s deputy spy chief has said. Maj Gen Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy head of Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency, said both sides were currently vying for “the most favorable position” ahead of possible negotiations in 2025. As with virtually all wars, negotiations will likely be the final stage of the conflict, he told the Economist. Yet President Zelensky himself has yet to echo this perspective.

Instead he’s currently urging the West for more and more advanced weapons, and talking about “ten year defense” plans ensured by the US and Kiev’s backers. He has further recently said that if Ukraine ever hopes to formally join NATO, it must ‘win’ against Russia – which at this point seems in the realm of fantasy. The White House has so far done nothing to dispel this fantasy, but has instead encouraged it. Russian state media had captured and translated key lines of Zelensky’s address. “I believe that we will be in NATO only if we win. I don’t think that we will be admitted […] during the war,” Zelensky had said during a meeting with officers. Ukrainian sources also confirmed the remarks.

“..they are laying the groundwork for departure. While preparing to escape Ukraine, they create some kind of financial safety net for themselves..”

• Corruption Sped Up Ukraine’s Retreat More Than Weapons Shortage

The rapid crumbling of Ukrainian defenses, leading to military retreat, prompts questions about the Kiev regime’s failure to maintain the front line. Russian troops continue to advance along the entire 1000-kilometer-long front line and squeeze the Ukrainian military from the Donetsk People’s Republic after the liberation of Avdeyevka. After taking control of Chasov Yar and Ocheretino, the Russian Armed Forces will get access to the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration and destroy the Kiev regime’s defense line west of Avdeyevka. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has consistently criticized the West for hesitating to provide air defense systems, weapons, and ammunition, citing it as the primary reason for his military’s failures. However, it has been revealed that the shortage of ammunition has not been the Ukrainian Army’s main issue Kiev previously allocated almost 38 billion hryvnia ($960 million) to build a multi-layered network of fortifications; however, Ukrainian troops testify that the lines of defense barely exist, as quoted by the Associated Press.

The Ukrainian military contends that these works should have been completed last year during a temporary operational pause, rather than amid a retreat. “One can assume that a year ago, when the budget was planned, Ukrainians didn’t believe that the counteroffensive would fail. In general, the strategy was to attack and establish defensive positions on newly acquired territories. That is, fortifications were meant for offense, not defense,” Vadim Kozyulin, head of the Institute of Contemporary International Studies Under Diplomatic Academy of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Sputnik. “But the situation has changed. Moreover, we see that this happened rapidly, and, most likely, unexpectedly. The Ukrainians probably saw what it was leading to, but they could not openly admit it, because they feared it could impact financing. They had to maintain some kind of optimism among Western partners. This let them down, catching them off guard,” he explained. “The second issue is corruption. It’s an old Ukrainian problem and we don’t know its extent, given that everything is classified amid the hostilities,” the expert continued.

Where is the Money? Funds allocated to strengthen Ukrainian defenses were stolen with the tacit approval of the nation’s government officials, presumed Vadim Mingalev, a military expert and political analyst. He likewise drew attention to the fact that Andriy Yermak, a Ukrainian film producer who was appointed by Zelensky as the head of his office, supervised the project. The Ukrainian president also played a role in this farce by visiting the sites that were nothing short of Potemkin villages, i.e. an impressive facade designed to hide an inconvenient truth, the expert noted. According to Mingalev, the fuss surrounding the US $61 billion tranche arose from the Kiev regime’s desire to allocate a portion of these funds towards its delayed fortification construction projects. “As in any construction business, a certain estimate is first prepared,” the military expert said, explaining how the money might have vanished. “The estimate is then increased by one and a half or two times. Then, as construction progresses, it can go up three times, and so on.

Accordingly, a certain amount of concrete, cement, and other building materials are not supplied for creating the defensive lines. What’s on paper often differs significantly from what is actually delivered. There is a rather sophisticated scheme [to steal funds].” Military purchases and tenders are currently classified and do not go through Ukraine’s public procurement platform ProZorro, allowing corrupt politicians and their business partners to steal quietly, according to Kozyulin. Moreover, he added, the same individuals who seize these funds are responsible for overseeing their expenditure. One might ask why Ukrainian authorities and business sectors are shooting themselves in the foot by undermining the country’s defensive capabilities. “Ukrainian oligarchs who support Zelensky and work with him understand perfectly well that their fate is sealed, and they are laying the groundwork for departure. While preparing to escape Ukraine, they create some kind of financial safety net for themselves,” Mingalev explained.

“..Policing speech, religion, and assembly is not the role of the federal government. In fact, it’s expressly prohibited by the U.S. Constitution…”

• New US Antisemitism Law Turns Israeli Genocide Critics Into Criminals (GR)

On Wednesday May 1st, the House overwhelmingly passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act by a 320-91 vote, with only 21 Republicans joined by 70 Democrats against it. Expanding the scope of what is legally considered antisemitism, this is another bipartisan uniparty trap to ensnare the thousands of protesters exercising their free speech against the apartheid Israel’s extermination of Palestinians, in effect criminalizing those that are critical of the genocide. This is piece of legislation is a betrayal of our First Amendment rights and a betrayal of the American people, and a testimonial how AIPAC Israel through bribery and blackmail have turned our constitutional republic into a totalitarian technocratic police state. Foreign national influence is outlawed in the United States except with one exception, the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) that allows Zionist Israel money and bribery control to essentially own the treasonous US Congress.

Through intelligence agencies Mossad, CIA and MI6 in addition to AIPAC, US politicians are systemically coerced, bribed and blackmailed into unconditional support for Israel. As Tucker Carlson admitted recently to Joe Rogan, politicians are afraid to not vote in line with these intimidation tactics imposed by foreign agent operatives, that threaten kiddie porn on their computers or truth exposing pedo-blackmail activity, to ensure that Zionist Israel always gets what it wants with total impunity. With this kind of captured control over politicians, and now with this latest antisemitism law, dare criticize Israel or Zionism or Jewish power, it can now get us locked up under antisemitic hate speech. Zionist bloodline moneychangers like the Rothschilds and Rockefellers would not want it any other way.

A Thursday May 2nd Truthout article states: House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to approve legislation directing the U.S. Department of Education to consider a dubious definition of antisemitism, despite warnings from Jewish-led groups that the measure speciously conflates legitimate criticism of the Israeli government with bigotry against Jewish people. Uniparty Republicans and Democrats passing this new antisemitism bill destroying US Constitution’s First Amendment that guarantees our citizens’ free speech rights, confirms that US Congress panders and grovels in submission to their master Zionist Jewish State and its bloodline master founding owner, the Rothschild banking cartel. America’s uniparty is owned and operated by foreign agent AIPAC Israel.

Again, look at what inexhaustible lengths our Congress goes to, to protect the rights, security and safety of Jews, while Palestinian Arabs are brutally massacred daily and American citizens’ disappearing constitutional rights, our safety and national security are blatantly trampled upon. Only the apparent “chosen ones” receive preferential legal protection under bipartisan US law, while all the rest of us members of the human race, to Israel and US Congress, are all Palestinians in the genocidal crosshairs of our common Zionist Darkside enemy.

My article on Global Research last week is titled “In Defense of Genocide and War on ‘Antisemitism’, There Go Our Constitutional Liberties.” I cite the increasing number anti-hate speech laws grossly conflating criticism of Israeli genocide with antisemitism conveniently misused to falsely justify criminalizing and silencing our fundamental First Amendment rights of free speech, including the right to assemble for peaceful protest. On Saturday April 27th, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) called out his colleagues over this very same issue: Some of my colleagues are introducing legislation to create federally sanctioned ‘antisemitism monitors’ at colleges. I’ll vote No. Policing speech, religion, and assembly is not the role of the federal government. In fact, it’s expressly prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.

To do what?

• French Foreign Legion Dispatched to Ukraine, Ex-DoD Official (Sp.)

Media reports earlier stated that NATO currently does not have any operational plans for sending a military contingent to Ukraine even though the alliance has allegedly established “the two red lines” for its direct intervention in the conflict. “France has sent its first troops officially to Ukraine,” former US deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, Stephen Bryen, has claimed in an article published by the Asia Times. Bryen went on to write that the forces have been deployed “in support of the Ukrainian 54th Independent Mechanized Brigade in the city of Slavyansk.” The French soldiers have reportedly been drawn from the 3rd Infantry Regiment, one of the main components of France’s Foreign Legion. French authorities have not commented on the matter yet. “These troops are being posted directly in a hot combat area and are intended to help the Ukrainians resist Russian advances in Donbass. The first 100 are artillery and surveillance specialists,” Bryen argued.

According to him, about 1,500 French Foreign Legion soldiers are scheduled to arrive in Ukraine in the foreseeable future. The ex-US deputy undersecretary of defense wondered in this regard “whether this crosses the Russian red line on NATO involvement in Ukraine” and if “the Russians will see this as initiating a wider war beyond Ukraine’s borders?” Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper reported earlier on Sunday that NATO – “in a very confidential manner and without official communique – has established at least two red lines, beyond which there could be the alliance’s direct intervention in the conflict in Ukraine.” At the same time, NATO does not plan to immediately send its military contingent to Ukraine, according to the newspaper. Earlier this week, French President Emmanuel Macron once again did not rule out the possibility of NATO sending troops from Europe to Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denounced Macron’s statement as “very dangerous”, with the statement also slammed by groups in Britain, France, Hungary, Italy, and Slovakia.

“..NATO has no justification to send troops to Ukraine, because Kiev is not a member of the bloc..”

• Ukraine Could Request Western Military Intervention – MP (RT)

Kiev could request that Western troops be deployed on its soil if it deems the situation on the battlefield to have become bad enough, a senior Ukrainian lawmaker has said. In an interview with French broadcaster LCI on Saturday, Aleksey Goncharenko, who represents Odessa in the Ukrainian parliament, thanked French President Emmanuel Macron for not ruling out sending Western military to his country. The French leader earlier suggested that this issue could be put up for consideration on two conditions, first, “if the Russians were to break through the front lines [and, second,] if there were a Ukrainian request.” Describing Macron’s remarks as a “very good signal” to Russia, Goncharenko noted that foreign troops in Ukraine could be tasked with training Kiev’s military and performing other missions without engaging Moscow’s forces head-on.

When asked whether Ukraine would ask the West for direct assistance if Russian troops were to approach Kharkov or Kiev, the MP said he did not rule out any scenarios. “Yes, I think it is possible… If the frontline situation shows us that Ukraine cannot stop [Russian President Vladimir] Putin alone without European military support and troops, this is absolutely possible,” he said, voicing the hope that such a drastic measure wouldn’t be necessary. He also stressed that it would be in the EU’s interest to heed the appeal for assistance that he described, as it would be easier to stop Moscow with Ukraine than without it. On Saturday, Emmanuel Macron said that he supported “strategic ambiguity” towards Russia, which, he said, is aimed at deterring Moscow. According to the French president, his stance on potential Western military action in Ukraine was in line with this approach.

However, UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron has voiced skepticism about the idea, warning that NATO troops in Ukraine “could be a dangerous escalation.” This sentiment was echoed by Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto and by Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, while Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico recalled that NATO has no justification to send troops to Ukraine, because Kiev is not a member of the bloc. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called Macron’s statement “very important and very dangerous,” describing it as further testament to Paris’ direct involvement in the conflict. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has also warned that “nothing will remain” of NATO forces if they are deployed in Ukraine. In recent weeks, the Russian military has reported a steady advance, capturing numerous settlements in Donbass, with Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu recently declaring that Moscow is in full control of the situation on the battlefield.

Jamming.

• Israel’s Not So Little War Against Russia (Helmer)

Since last November the regime of Vladimir Zelensky in Kiev has been advertising the products of a company called Piranha-Tech for newly developed electronic warfare (EW) technologies which the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu (right) is now supplying the Ukraine for operations against Russia. According to a Russian military blogger report published on May 4, Israeli companies specializing in electronic jamming and drone technologies are behind a Ukrainian government, US, and UK-funded drone production line and deployment of the weapons on the Ukrainian battlefield. Piranha-Tech, according to this source, is 49% owned by Israeli shareholders, who developed the technology, and 51% owned by Ukrainians who are managing the battlefield supplies. Piranha-Tech anti-drone guns and jammers are based on Israeli military technologies, the report claims.

The first official disclosure came from Kiev on November 2, 2023. According to a tweet published by Mikhail Fedorov, a cyber technology specialist with government rank in Kiev, “efficient protection from Russian UAVs for armored vehicles & personnel. Quite unique electronic warfare system — Piranha AVD 360. It creates protective dome up to 600 meters around & jams satellite navigation systems, such as RuGLONASS. New tech supported by @BRAVE1ua”. BRAVE1 stands for “Ukrainian Defense Innovations”, a Ukrainian government coordinating agency for “stakeholders of the defense tech industry by providing them with organizational, informational, and financial support for defense tech projects.” Source: https://twitter.com/fedorovmykhailo?lang=en

A US and Ukraine-based defence technology blog picked up the story immediately. The report called the Piranha-Tech system “a cutting-edge electronic warfare system designed to safeguard armored vehicles from Russian drones, has successfully completed field trials and is now poised for mass production.” It added: “the Piranha system disrupts satellite navigation systems, including Russia’s GLONASS.” According to the American outlet, Piranha Tech was an “achievement in Ukrainian defense technology.” There was no mention of the Israeli military base for the Ukrainian operation. The Israeli links behind Piranha Tech were first published in Paris on May 3, 2024.

The Paris-based website called Intelligence Online reported that the Ukrainian Piranha-Tech technology is in fact Israeli. “Behind the Ukrainian company supplying anti-drone equipment to the Ukrainian armed forces and the government of Myanmar is a network of Israeli electronic warfare companies.” Intelligence Online is a product of Indigo, a media group owned by Maurice Botbol, who is of Moroccan Jewish extraction. In the competitive London corporate investigations market, Botbol’s Intelligence Online has a controversial reputation. In the past, it was favourable to the press operations of a Russian metals oligarch now under US sanctions.

In Moscow, The Militarist, a widely read military news and analysis blog, followed with an extensive report of the Israeli operation of Piranha-Tech on May 4. The Russian report says: “While Ukraine continues to develop its EW [electronic warfare] technologies as much as possible, incubators working in this field, such as Brave1 attract foreign specialists. Brave1 provides substantial support and subsidies to Piranha Tech, in particular, for its UAV [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles] Piranha AVD 360 anti-UAV system, which is used by the APU [Armed Forces of Ukraine]. The Ukrainian company, whose Ukrainian anti-UAV systems are praised on social media by the talkative Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, Mikhail Fedorov, seems to have close ties with Israel.”

“..Xi’s diplomatic visit to Europe – his first in five years..”

• Xi jinping to Visit Three Key Countries During Trip to Europe (Sp.)

An article in The New York Times suggests China shares skepticism towards US hegemony with some European countries, but the Asian power maintains positive cultural, economic, and historical ties as well. “Xi Visits Europe, Seeking Strategic Opportunity,” declared the headline of a New York Times piece Sunday on the Chinese leader’s trip to the continent. “The Chinese president… appears intent on seizing opportunities to loosen the continent’s bonds with the United States and forge a world freed of American dominance,” its authors continued, following in the controversial newspaper’s tradition of staunch advocacy for US hegemony. Xi’s diplomatic visit to Europe – his first in five years – certainly comes during a period when the United States’ global leadership is in doubt.

The US’ leveraging of coercive unilateral economic sanctions against nearly one-third of the world’s population has endangered the dollar’s position as the de facto global reserve currency, leading various world powers to seek alternatives. Countries throughout the Global South have chafed under the United States’ insistence they must follow its lead in isolating Russia after the launching of its special military operation in the Donbass. This phenomenon is observed vividly in North Africa, with a slew of nations ending military cooperation with the US and ejecting American troops. Even within Western Europe the United States’ image has taken a beating. NATO officials are scrambling to prepare for a possible future without the guiding role of Washington, fearing a second Donald Trump presidency could see the US cut funding or even pull out of the military alliance.

Historical allies’ perception of the country seems permanently altered after the controversial real estate magnate’s chaotic time at the helm; one-third of Europeans now say the United States cannot be trusted while more than two-thirds say it is not a model democracy. The New York Times documents various reasons for shared skepticism towards the United States among China and the three countries Xi plans to visit during his trip. France has long sought to resist US influence over its affairs, with revered statesman Charles de Gaulle famously refusing to place French troops under NATO command. Current President Emmanuel Macron has advocated for “strategic autonomy” in European affairs, positioning the EU as a third major power independent of China and America. Hungary, too, has challenged US influence over its internal affairs, rejecting criticism of its self-declared “illiberal Christian democratic” Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Opposition towards the United States is perhaps strongest in Serbia, where the lasting impact of NATO’s 1999 bombing of Belgrade is still felt. Increased rates of cancer and birth defects persist decades after the alliance’s use of depleted uranium in its assault on the capital city. The US’ bombing of Beijing’s embassy in Belgrade during the attack is still commemorated regularly by both China and Serbia. But beyond these countries’ shared objection to US dominance, there are also strong cultural, economic and historical links. Beijing’s relations with Serbia extend back to the days of the former Yugoslavia, when both countries shared an egalitarian socialist vision. Hungary became the largest recipient of Chinese direct investment in 2015, with Orban enthusiastically participating in Belt and Road infrastructure projects. French-Sino relations, meanwhile, go back to the Middle Ages; the Chinese monk Rabban Bar Sauma was hosted by France’s King Philip IV during a diplomatic trip by the Uyghur emissary throughout Europe. Today, both countries are joined together by their shared status as G20 economies, members of the UN Security Council, and major regional powers.

“Looking to the future, peace and development remain the trend of history and the aspiration of the people,” proclaimed Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi in 2023. “China’s experience shows that the path of peaceful development has worked and worked well. There is no reason for us to discontinue but every reason to stay the course, and come together with more countries in the pursuit of peaceful development.” “When all countries pursue peaceful development, the future of humanity will be full of promise,” he concluded. As China continues to grow in economic power and influence the country insists it is committed to peaceful development and concern for humanity’s common advancement. Xi’s visit to Europe suggests the country is willing to search for allies in its cause wherever they may be found, even as broader trends threaten to drive world powers apart.

“..a big turn on or about May 7th of next week. Armstrong predicts a recession will start then and go on until 2028..”

• You Need 2 Years of Food – Martin Armstrong (USAW)

Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong has new data on how well the Biden economy is doing. Spoiler alert: It’s not doing well, and the financial system is about to tank. I asked Armstrong if the US government could default on its debt if countries around the world continue to stop buying it? Armstrong explained, “I think the US could default on its debt as early as 2025, but probably in 2027. We have kicked the can down the road as far as we can go. It’s not just in the United States. Europe is in the same boat. So is Japan. This is why they need war. They think by going into war, that’s the excuse to default on the debt. They simply will not pay China. If they try to sell their debt–good luck. We are not redeeming it. The same thing is happening in Europe. So, once that happens, you go into war, and that is their excuse on this whole debt thing to collapse, which wipes out pensions etc. Then they can blame Putin. This is the same thing Biden was doing before saying this was Putin’s inflation. Then, with the whole CBDC thing (central bank digital currency) . . . . the IMF has already completed its digital coin, and they want that to replace the dollar as the reserve currency for the world. . . . These people are desperately just trying to hang on to power. Nobody wants to give it up, and nobody wants to reform.”

I asked Armstrong what should the common person be doing now? Armstrong surprisingly said, “I think you need, safely, two years’ worth of food supply. . . .This is what I have. It’s not just prices will go up, but mainly because there will be shortages. Then, you do not know what they are going to do with the currency. . . . They will do whatever they have to do to survive. That’s what governments always do.”

Armstrong says his most recent data suggests that government approval ratings in the USA are worse that Biden’s 8% approval rating. Congress, according to Armstrong, is dragging the bottom with a 7% approval rating. Armstrong has long said that people will buy gold and silver when faith in government crashes. That is exactly what Armstrong is seeing around the world today. Gold is bouncing around the $2,300 level, and Armstrong sees “a new gold and silver rally coming soon.” War is also coming sooner than later with the announcement that Ukraine will be joining NATO as early as July. When the next war starts, Armstrong warns, “You are going to have to watch the bank because long term interest rates are going to go up. Nobody wants to buy government debt, and you are going to have to hunker down at that stage in the game.”

Armstrong is also predicting a big turn on or about May 7th of next week. Armstrong predicts a recession will start then and go on until 2028. GDP will continue to fall, and inflation will continue to rise. Armstrong says it is the perfect storm for a dreaded “stagflation economy.”

Buster hat

Incredible hat work by Buster Keaton. pic.twitter.com/t1NKqmQEen

— Fascinating (@fasc1nate) May 5, 2024

Tubs

A Pitbull’s simple request brings joy to the whole neighborhood pic.twitter.com/J7IwgZrcED

— B&S (@_B___S) May 5, 2024

Fren
https://twitter.com/i/status/1786932827084427491

Smile
https://twitter.com/i/status/1787111053538820414

Be kind to dogs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1787123323748704526

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Debt Rattle April 7 2024

Apr 072024

April 7, 2024 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: Civil War, extremism, Fani Willis, NATO, Pelosi, Ramadan, Sotomayor, war machine 28 Responses »

James McNeill Whistler Miss Ethel Philip Reading 1894

• Extremism On The Ballot (Keenan)

• America Is Hurtling Toward a Full Blown Hot Civil War (BP)

• Liberals Trying to Force Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to Retire (ET)

• Trump Accuses Biden of Unfairly Targeting 71-Year-Old Jan. 6 ‘Hostage’ (ET)

• Fani Willis Accused Of Illegally Recording Lawyer, Till Monday To Recuse (ZH)

• US, Allies Understand Ukraine Will Never Join NATO – Journalist (TASS)

• Russia and Ukraine Must Talk – Austrian Chancellor (RT)

• NATO 75 Years On… A War Machine Long Past Its Sell-By Date (SCF)

• NATO’s ‘Losing War’ and an Empty Promise to Ukraine (Sp.)

• New Rustled-Up Joint NATO Mission Shows West ‘Has No Real Plan in Ukraine’ (Sp.)

• 1992 Explicit NATO Pledge Not to Meddle in Russia’s Neighborhood (Sp.)

• Pelosi Joins Call For Biden To Stop Arming Israel (ZH)

• Scott Ritter: Israeli Attack on Consulate Could ‘Throw World Into Chaos’ (Sp.)

Superman

Come on! This has to be one of the best videos of all time! pic.twitter.com/cplVZgqovt

— Wayne DuPree  (@WayneDupreeShow) April 6, 2024

What time it is
https://twitter.com/i/status/1776328737874743402

O’Reilly

I'm not usually a fan of Bill O'Reilly, but this list of how Trump can fix America is actually really good. pic.twitter.com/9GxSE0faGR

— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) April 5, 2024

GenZ

Mike Rowe: “Nothing in the history of Western civilization has gotten more expensive, more quickly than a 4-year degree”

“People are starting to realize that the diploma hanging on their wall is really a receipt.”

“The ship is turning… Gen Z is looking around and saying ‘No,… pic.twitter.com/4tJRbpwFzB

— Holden Culotta (@Holden_Culotta) April 5, 2024

MEP, Christine Anderson

"You cannot comply your way out of a tyranny… Start rebelling. They are out to get you if you do not resist."

German MEP, Christine Anderson: The so-called "pandemic" was a beta test—orchestrated by globalists—to determine how easy it would be to seize totalitarian control,… pic.twitter.com/AW3G6jGfMI

— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) April 6, 2024

Post human
https://twitter.com/i/status/1776488310304604352

Trump 1987
https://twitter.com/i/status/1776642658657505457

“The 2024 election is between a dangerous madman and Donald Trump…”

• Extremism On The Ballot (Keenan)

I hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful day with family and friends on the holiest day of America’s liturgical year, the Transgender Day of Visibility. I had never heard of this blessed Federal holiday until a few days ago, but my kids loved it. We had a visit from the Easter Drag Bunny and it/they filled the kids’ baskets with all kinds of treats. Puberty blockers, dilators, lipstick for the boys, packers for the girls. She/They is risen—and you will bow down and worship Her/Them! Of course, Joe Biden’s Easter sacrilege was only the latest travesty that proves what you and I already know, which is that the 2024 presidential election is a contest between common-sense centrism and dangerously radical extremism. One candidate is a classical liberal whose positions are squarely in the middle of the political spectrum. On nearly every issue, his views are anodyne, conventional, mainstream—positions that were the norm, nationwide, in every state, on both sides of the aisle, within recent memory (not including a few fringe strongholds in Berkeley and the West Village).

His opponent, however, is a dangerous radical extremist; a divisive, fanatical agent of chaos who holds frightening positions that threaten to destroy America. To preserve what’s left of Our Sacred Democracy, the extremist must be stopped. The radicals we are up against are so deranged that they are embracing and even leaning into the Replacement Theory they once vilified and dismissed as fake. You will recall that “replacement theory” was a taboo conspiracy only racists and bigots believed in until about 15 minutes ago. But the extremists running the country recently decided that akshally, “replacement” is the perfect strategy to finish off what’s left of what you and the country formerly known as “America.” Replacement means you don’t need to worry about convincing Congress to pass new laws or give speeches or waste time governing. To get your way, just replace everyone. But the extremists in charge are not going to stop after replacing you with “newcomers.” They’re replacing everything not nailed down.

Easter just got replaced with a demonic child abuse cult festival. Jews are getting erased, literally chased out of cities, harassed out of college, and replaced with ululating Hamas enthusiasts. Your grandchildren got replaced with fur babies. Formerly great universities have been replaced with plagiarizing paperclip factories. Your borders have been replaced with Welcome Centers. Your retirement has been replaced with twenty more years of work to pay for safe injection sites for your kids and free gender affirmation surgeries for the world. As Elon Musk likes to point out on X, Americans are just four percent of the Earth’s population. Soon, they’ll be just four percent of their own country. This is, in President Biden’s own words, going according to plan. “Just like we drew it up,” he tweeted ominously. An explosion in robberies and violent crime. Two dangerous new foreign wars. Forced conversion therapy on normal people to make them believe children can change their sex. Rampant hate crimes and open, gleeful discrimination against people who are not “of color.”

Who is the extremist again? The dangerous tyrant seeking re-election has the full support of our bloodthirsty elites, a warmongering foreign policy establishment, virulently antisemitic academia, and the entire mainstream media apparatus. Sometimes it’s hard to even fathom what we are facing, but then you remember that they had the nerve to arrest and sentence a young man to prison for… wait for it… sharing a funny Hillary Clinton meme. That actually happened in real life. The humble moderate whom these frightening cretins hope to defeat this fall faces expropriation of his property to satisfy hundreds of millions of dollars in absurd fines, plus hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees to fight regime lawfare on a Hiroshima scale. The threat of prison looms. His support comes not from wealthy celebrities, titans of industry, or the tech billionaires. It comes from the peasants. The rabble. A ragtag coalition of nobodies, the working class, the powerless middle class, and a few anonymous dissidents forced to post samizdat from undisclosed locations to avoid the eye of Sauron.

The radical extremist we face wants to empty our treasury so he can continue to launder hundreds of billions of our dollars through the most corrupt nation in Europe, which for decades was the world’s number one producer of child pornography, among other evils.

“.. an evil, unrestrained, immoral freedom that is no freedom at all, a bringer of Death..”

• America Is Hurtling Toward a Full Blown Hot Civil War (BP)

In an ideal and perfect world, all Americans would be following a righteously guided conscience and their better angels, and they could trust that their elected leaders were doing likewise; but, we live in a far from perfect world or society, and the fools of the country have abandoned Christian kindness, the Golden Rule and humanity for the evil of trans-humanism. Heartwarming words advocating for true freedom and liberty are far and few between in today’s society and political arenas, in a manner not too unlike the years between 1850 and 1860 that led to the Civil War; and tho’ some on both side of the political aisle still exude goodness in a way that makes each day seem a bit brighter, by and large, the Democratic Party has been completely infiltrated by Marxist-Maoist Communists, who are driving the nation towards the darkest tyranny and bloodiest days ever witnessed in America, as they attempt to stamp out the tenderness and beauty in each person’s soul and reduce us all to mere mindless cogs in their authoritarian machine.

Look around. Half or more of America’s citizenry have lost their minds and are six steps or more removed from reality, either due to the mind-numbing communist indoctrination they have absorbed from their “education” in the public school system, something genetic or a trauma from their life, some new maniacal drug that has them hooked and out of their minds, or a combination of all three. Some would suggest that we set about immediately reforming public education to promote and defend the ideas that originally built America, but we don’t have time to change hearts and minds to counter a movement that started over a hundred years ago and now sits on the cusp of being able to solidify its current stranglehold on America, if the tide swings its way in the 2024 Election or they are able to steal the election through current fraud facilitating mechanisms.

Although we can still move to properly educate the next generation in a newly reformed education system or through homeschool, now is the time to organize and assemble those within the country who already know and hold to the truth of American principles and all the freedom and liberty that follow — time to gather our like-minded American patriots and those Lions of Liberty who have had enough of witnessing this America we love so well so sorely abused, put upon and assaulted. It doesn’t help when we have self-serving, corrupt people in high office promising to save the gullible and ill-informed from their hell and the misery it brings, if only they will support more madness to be placed in U.S. code. Vote for more economy killing “climate change” change regulations and initiatives and “we’ll put more money on your EBT cards, courtesy of Uncle Sam and the American taxpayer”.

“Help us make sure the government has the final say over everybody’s children and can kill babies as they exit the birthing canal, and we’ll make certain you get privilege over all other Americans”, one can almost hear Traitor Joe whispering in some dimly lit concert hall. “You can be a champion among champions”, they say — “Let us help you change your gender”. And if anyone stands in your way in the pursuit of any evil, it is they who will be called evil and fallen upon by the full weight of the U.S. Federal Government. Oh yea. And as if that isn’t bad enough, Biden is now moving as fast as he can to forgive $144 billion more in student loans. He plans to announce this on Monday, April 8th 2024, and for anyone with eyes to see, this is simply corruption at its worst and Biden buying votes in the upcoming presidential election. What a slap in the face of Americans who couldn’t afford to go to college but now will be forced to bear the tax burden this move will bring.

I see the immorality growing every day, the people who revel in its evil, freaks from some futuristic sideshow that bodes ill and speaks to the destruction of humanity. and with each passing day, I find myself moving farther and farther away from those with whom I have little or nothing in common with, adrift from most of humanity too. Not in any manner that lends itself to any sadness over my situation, but rather as if to say “whew” in a realization of the relief that has come by way of my separation from those I despise most. It’s sort of like I’m standing on the river bank watching the “ship of fools” sailing over the river falls in denial of their own mortality, thinking their crazy ideas will save them and hold them invincible, or worse, knowing they are going to die and not caring who they drag to Hell along with them. They think we’re crazy for defending America’s righteous and true founding principles and virtues and the liberty associated with them, and we think them mad for denying God, reality and the best mankind has to offer in exchange for an evil, unrestrained, immoral freedom that is no freedom at all, a bringer of Death.

They’re scared stiff Trump will win.

• Liberals Trying to Force Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to Retire (ET)

Liberals are mounting a pressure campaign to force liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to retire from the bench so President Joe Biden, who faces a tough reelection fight in November, can appoint a younger liberal successor before the election. Democrats fear that the 6–3 conservative majority on the nation’s highest court could become a 7–2 conservative majority if President Donald Trump wins the election in November and she dies during his second term of office. They point out that President Trump was able to replace liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died of pancreatic cancer complications on Sept. 18, 2020, at 87, with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett days before the 2020 election. Justice Ginsburg refused to step down despite her fragile health. Justice Barrett’s appointment, they say, helped supply the votes on the Court needed to overturn abortion rights precedent Roe v. Wade by a 5–4 vote in June 2022.

The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization found there was no right to abortion in the U.S. Constitution and returned the regulation of abortion to the states, which Roe had taken away. Justice Sotomayor, 69, is reportedly in good health, but activists have seized on the fact that she has had Type I diabetes since she was 7 years old and that she has had some health scares. They note that she is the only Supreme Court justice to have traveled with a medic and remarked she was “tired” during a talk in January at UC Berkeley Law School. In January 2018, she was reportedly treated at her home for low blood sugar by paramedics but was able to report for work afterward. Left-wing activists seem emboldened because they successfully pressured liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, now 85, to retire in June 2022, which allowed President Biden to replace him with liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, now 53.

In an April 3 broadcast on NBC News, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), said Justice Sotomayor should consider stepping down soon. “Justices have to make their personal decisions about their health, and their level of energy, but also to keep in mind the larger national and public interest in making sure that the Court looks and thinks like America,” the senator said. “We should learn a lesson, you know? And it’s not like there’s any mystery here about what the lesson should be—that the old saying, ‘graveyards are full of indispensable people,’ ourselves in this body included.” Before that, left-wing commentator Mehdi Hasan published a column in The Guardian (UK) saying it pained him to argue that Justice Sotomayor should make way for a younger successor who can serve for decades on the Court because she is a good standard bearer for the progressive cause. He described Justice Sotomayor as “the greatest liberal to sit on the Supreme Court in my adult lifetime.” Mr. Hasan added that she is “the first Latina to hold the position of justice, [and] she has blazed a relentlessly progressive trail on the highest bench in the land.”

Liz Cheney’s the one who belongs in jail.

• Trump Accuses Biden of Unfairly Targeting 71-Year-Old Jan. 6 ‘Hostage’ (ET)

Former President Donald Trump has criticized President Joe Biden and the Justice Department for “unfairly” targeting a 71-year-old woman dubbed the “J6 Praying Grandma” who entered the U.S. Capitol for around 10 minutes on Jan. 6, 2021. Rebecca Lavrenz was convicted on April 4 on four federal misdemeanor charges, including entering and remaining in a restricted building, and disorderly and disruptive conduct. She faces up to a year in prison and $200,000 in fines, with her sentencing scheduled for Aug. 12. President Trump took to social media on Friday to denounce the conviction. “Rebecca Lavrez, also known as the ‘J6 Praying Grandma,’ has been unfairly targeted by Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, and now faces up to 1 YEAR in prison for peacefully walking around the Capitol, and praying for our Failing Nation on January 6th!” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.

President Trump said that Ms. Lavrez, a 71-year-old grandmother and small business owner from Colorado, has now become “one of Joe Biden’s J6 HOSTAGES!!!” President Trump has made the alleged mistreatment of Jan. 6 defendants a cornerstone of his reelection campaign, vowing to use executive power to issue pardons and free Jan. 6 “hostages” soon after taking office, if elected. “Crooked Joe Biden spends more time prosecuting Patriots like Rebecca, AND ME, than Violent Criminals, Thugs, Murderers, and ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS who are destroying our Country. THIS IS WHAT WE ARE UP AGAINST,” President Trump added in his post. President Biden has been sharply critical of President Trump’s statements about the Jan. 6 defendants, while Attorney General Merrick Garland has promised to press ahead with more Jan. 6 prosecutions—and to cast the Justice Department’s dragnet even more widely to include people who weren’t even present at the Capitol that day.

“As I said before, the Justice Department will hold all January 6 perpetrators, at any level, accountable under the law—whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy,” Mr. Garland said in a speech on Jan. 5. More than 1,350 people have been charged with various crimes in relation to the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, ranging from misdemeanor offenses such as trespassing to felonies such as seditious conspiracy and assaulting police officers. Of these, roughly 800 have been sentenced, with nearly two-thirds receiving some time in prison.

Fani’s biggest talent is compromising herself.

• Fani Willis Accused Of Illegally Recording Lawyer, Till Monday To Recuse (ZH)

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been accused of illegally recording a lawyer in the Trump-Georgia case. During an interview with Townhall columnist and legal analyst Phil Holloway, an attorney for Trump co-defendant Harrison Floyd, Christopher Kachouroff, claimed that Willis recorded a phone call between herself and one of his colleagues in Maryland. “Fani did reach out to one of my colleagues in Maryland” said Kachouroff. “And was rude and abrupt with him on the phone … and she ended up recording him.” He further noted that Maryland is a “two party state,” meaning that both parties on a phone call have to consent to being recorded. “So, are you saying she illegally recorded a phone call?” asked Holloway. “Oh yeah, it’s a felony in Maryland,” Kachouroff replied. Maryland is one of 11 states which require two-party consent. Under the state’s Wiretap Act, recording a private conversation without consent from both parties is punishable by up to five years in prison, a fine of up to $10,000, or both.

Harrison Floyd, the defendant, has given Fani until noon on Monday to recuse herself from the case or he “may have no other choice than to pursue all lawful remedies.” As Redstate notes: In Floyd’s tweet, it refers to Willis providing a copy or a recording of a call to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution between herself and Carlos J.R. Salvado, an attorney in Maryland, who also represents Floyd on an unrelated matter. Atlanta News First and Newsweek have reached out to Willis’ office for comment on this new allegation but she doesn’t appear to have weighed in yet. It will be interesting to see what her response to this allegation is. Floyd, who served as a senior campaign staffer for Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, was indicted by Willis on three felony counts stemming from his alleged efforts to help Trump overturn his loss in the state. The charges include conspiracy to solicit false statements, influencing witnesses, and racketeering. He has also been accused of assaulting an FBI agent in Maryland. He has pleaded not guilty.

Fani’s wiretapping accusation is the latest debacle involving Willis’ RICO case against Trump and his allies. On Wednesday, special prosecutor Nathan Wade’s estranged wife filed contempt of court proceedings against him. Wade and Willis’ romantic relationship was the focal point of the disqualification efforts against the district attorney’s office. However, Judge Scott McAfee ultimately allowed Willis to remain on the prosecution so long as Wade stepped down. Wade handed in his resignation hours after McAfee’s ruling. -Newsweek. Floyd, a former Black Voices for Trump leader, turned himself in without a lawyer or bond agreement on August 24 of last year, and was released August 30 on $100,000 bond. He is one of 19 defendants in the case.

https://twitter.com/hw_floyd/status/1776060884546113790

“.. join a defensive alliance when the need for defense is over..”

• US, Allies Understand Ukraine Will Never Join NATO – Journalist (TASS)

The US administration and authorities of NATO member-countries understand full well that Ukraine will never join the alliance, senior editor of The American Conservative Sumantra Maitra said in his article. “Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated that Ukraine will one day join NATO. It is a meaningless, almost theological gesture—practically pagan hymn-chanting at this point. Blinken knows his promise to be untrue. European allies know it to be untrue. The majority of Americans either don’t care about Ukraine or are actively opposed to further engagement in Europe,” Maitra said. “It is, of course, deeply cynical to dangle the NATO carrot in front of Ukraine especially, when NATO did not let them join after the Bucharest summit [in 2008] and will not in future,” he noted.

“The argument goes that NATO members will welcome Ukraine only once they have solved their existing security issue, i.e. join a defensive alliance when the need for defense is over. To any sane person, that sounds absurd—that would mean the security issue will not be solved in this lifetime, and it will continue to be a frozen conflict,” Maitra said. “There will not be any NATO cavalry over the hills,” the journalist wrote. “The best we can do is seek a compromise making Ukraine and Georgia neutral buffers, similar to Austria during the Cold War. But for that, Washington needs bolder leadership to admit some hard truths and render some strategic coherence,” Maitra concluded.

Slovakia, Hungary, Austria speak with reason. The countries closest to Ukraine.

• Russia and Ukraine Must Talk – Austrian Chancellor (RT)

The Ukraine conflict can only be resolved if Russia is present at the negotiating table, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer has said. In an interview with the French daily Le Figaro on Friday, the chancellor reiterated that the West should continue to be in “full solidarity” with Kiev and support it in its fight against Russia. However, Nehammer said “it is also important to think about how the conflict could end.” The Austrian leader noted that when he went to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in April 2022, several weeks into the conflict, Moscow and Kiev were still engaged in direct talks. ”This is no longer the case today, because Russia shows no desire to negotiate. But without the Russian Federation there will be no peace,” he said, adding that the situation remains difficult. “But the resumption of a dialogue, when the day comes, is a necessity,” he stressed.

Moscow and Kiev held several rounds of talks early on in the conflict, which revolved around Ukrainian neutrality. While the negotiations initially made some headway, Kiev later walked away. Moscow has claimed that the peace process was derailed by then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who advised Ukraine to keep fighting, which Johnson has denied. Russia also maintains that it is open to new talks with Kiev. However, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed a decree banning all negotiations with the current leadership in Moscow after four former Ukrainian territories voted overwhelmingly in favor of joining Russia in autumn 2022. Meanwhile, Nehammer has said he has some disagreements regarding support for Ukraine with French President Emmanuel Macron, who recently stated that he cannot rule out the possibility of putting NATO troops on the ground in the embattled country.

The chancellor noted that while he and Macron believe in the need to support Ukraine and that Moscow and Kiev should eventually engage in diplomacy, they are at odds over the way to achieve this. ”I am in favor of the precautionary principle. The French president is a supporter of the principle of deterrence,” Nehammer said, acknowledging that some elements of this approach are “convincing” given what he called Russia’s “aggressiveness.” “However, I also think that we must apply the precautionary principle to avoid an uncontrollable escalation,” he added. In a rare phone call earlier this week, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu warned his French counterpart, Sebastien Lecornu, that Paris would only “create problems for itself” if it decides to send troops to Ukraine.

“..the United States and its NATO partners embarked on an orgy of aggression and militarism over the next three decades..”

• NATO 75 Years On… A War Machine Long Past Its Sell-By Date (SCF)

This week marks the 75th anniversary of NATO’s founding in April 1949. The organization has become a global danger to peace and security and should have been disbanded more than 30 years ago when the Cold War supposedly ended. That the alliance was not disbanded attests that its real purpose was always to serve as a weapon for U.S.-led Western imperialism. Barely four years after the end of World War Two – the greatest calamity in world history – and amid the ruins of a devastated Europe and Asia, Western imperialism was once again reinventing its nefarious internal forces. Nearly 30 million citizens of the Soviet Union had died at the hands of Nazi Germany. And yet despite the horror and evil of war, the Western powers were busy reconfiguring their military forces to confront again the Soviet Union. With the defeat of the Nazi war machine largely by the Soviet Red Army, the Western imperialists innovated a new instrument in the form of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The betrayal and treachery were not just to the Soviet people. All of humanity was once again subjected to the warmongering designs and necessities of a global elite under Western imperialism. NATO’s declared purpose was to defend Europe from Soviet aggression. The same pretense exists today in the claim that the alliance is defending Ukraine from Russian belligerence. The proof of NATO’s real function is demonstrated by the fact that the organization did not disband in 1991 when the Soviet Union was dissolved. Over the ensuing 33 years, the military bloc has doubled its membership to 31 nations. Russia has replaced the Soviet Union as the Western-designated security threat to Europe. But such rationale turns reality on its head. NATO has always existed as a tool of aggression for Western imperialism. Where Nazi Germany failed to do the job of conquering the Soviet Union, NATO tacitly took over the task, and when the Soviet Union disappeared, the new enemy of convenience became the Russian Federation.

Twenty-five years ago, the U.S.-led NATO axis engaged in a pivotal step change when it unilaterally bombed former Yugoslavia in an audacious aggression based on duplicity and lies (as usual). That illegal military intervention was the opening of a new phase of Western imperialism that blatantly snubbed international law and the United Nations Charter. In the same year, 1999, the NATO alliance began its rapid expansion by acquiring new members across Eastern Europe up to Russia’s borders. Having smashed legal restraints against war, the United States and its NATO partners embarked on an orgy of aggression and militarism over the next three decades, invading and sabotaging countless countries and unleashing global problems of terrorism, displacement, poverty, and mass migration.

In 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a seminal speech at the Munich Security Conference in which he warned of the looming chaos and conflict from unbridled Western militarism. The next year, in 2008, the NATO alliance declared that it would admit Ukraine and Georgia to its ranks. Neither of the former Soviet Republics has yet joined the bloc, but for Moscow, such a move has long been demarcated as an intolerable red line. The expansion of NATO all the way to Russia’s doorstep is not some ad hoc innocent development. It is a deliberate plan of aggression to strategically defeat Russia for the conquest of its natural wealth by Western imperialism.

“Clearly the US does not like to lose wars or to be associated with losing wars. And clearly they don’t want to be associated with a losing war that Biden is responsible for..”

• NATO’s ‘Losing War’ and an Empty Promise to Ukraine (Sp.)

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated Thursday that Ukraine will eventually join NATO. It was the same message the US has been repeating since 2008, although the alliance has not revealed a concrete timeline for Ukraine’s accession. US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (often referred to as MTG) and US Senator JD Vance took to social media to decry Blinken’s comments as irresponsible and dangerous, saying inviting Ukraine to join NATO during a war is to “invite our nation to war.” KJ Noh, a scholar, educator and journalist and member of Veterans for Peace, joined Sputnik’s Political Misfits on Friday to discuss these developments. Sputnik’s Michelle Witte asked Noh what would happen if Republicans decided that opposing NATO expansion is a winning political message. “I think it would signal the end of NATO,” answered Noh. “I mean, it’s an interesting situation because this entire war was provoked on the idea that Ukraine would eventually join NATO. So they can’t, from this administration, can’t abandon the concept completely.”

“But let’s come back to MTG and JD Vance. You know, they are not the most informed people in the political classes, they’re clearly pandering to the base,” he claimed. “And as I said if you recall on this show, the US public tends to reflexively support most US wars initiated by their elites until they start losing and then they stop supporting them.” “I think it has to do with the fact that they don’t believe it’s a winning proposition to be associated with NATO, which is currently losing a war, and this is a NATO war. And, of course, it also has to do with the fact that [former President Donald] Trump himself has a very mercantile, business view of NATO. He sees them as free riders on the American military, and he wants the quid pro quo.” “Clearly there is popular opposition to the Ukraine war. Clearly the US does not like to lose wars or to be associated with losing wars. And clearly they don’t want to be associated with a losing war that Biden is responsible for,” Noh concluded.

Former President Donald Trump said recently he would “100%” keep the US in NATO should he return to the Oval Office, as long as European countries pay their “fair share” and “play fair.” The former president told British media the US pays for “90% of NATO,” adding that it is the “most unfair thing.” NATO estimates that for 2023 Poland was actually the top spender and allocated 3.9% of its GDP to the alliance, which was more than twice the amount it had spent in 2022. In contrast, the US spent 3.5% of its GDP – about the same amount it has been spending for the last decade. However, only 35% of NATO member states meet the alliance’s spending targets on defense, prompting criticism from Trump and aligned “America First” conservatives. Proposals to resurrect European countries’ weakened defense industries have been greeted with skepticism as the continent is rocked by protests over economic concerns.

“..support for Ukraine is “limited to certain logistic, advisory and training functions,” and under the current North Atlantic Treaty, “it would not be possible to do more.”

• New Rustled-Up Joint NATO Mission Shows West ‘Has No Real Plan in Ukraine’ (Sp.)

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski’s thoughts regarding a new joint NATO mission in Ukraine are “more a wish than reality,” strategic analyst Paolo Raffone told Sputnik. “To date, nobody in NATO is willing to engage with a stable allied military presence in Ukraine,” said the director of the CIPI Foundation in Brussels. “Sikorski’s thoughts do not match with David Cameron’s statements at the NATO summit in Brussels. The UK foreign secretary acknowledged that the ‘war will be lost if the allies don’t step up,’ but when asked whether Western nations should send troops into Ukraine, Lord Cameron replied ‘no,’” Paolo Raffone said. The Polish foreign minister earlier told journalists after a meeting of the Ukraine-NATO council that members of the alliance had decided to establish a joint mission in Ukraine.

“This does not mean that we are entering a war, but it means that we will now be able to use NATO’s coordinating, training, and planning capabilities to support Ukraine in a more coordinated manner,” the minister clarified. Sikorski added that more Ukrainian troops will be undergoing training in Poland. As for the alliance’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, he said that there were no plans for deploying NATO troops on the territory of Ukraine. “We don’t have any plans of having any NATO combat troops inside Ukraine, there have been no requests for that, but the Ukrainians are asking for equipment, for ammunition, for weapons and we are providing that to Ukraine — that doesn’t make NATO allies party to the conflict,” Stoltenberg told a press conference. He did, however, add that NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) is working on a proposal to enhance the alliance’s coordinating security role in Ukraine.

According to officials, this would presuppose bringing the Ukraine Defense Contact Group – currently led by the US –under NATO’s control. It is this group that coordinates the delivery of weapons to Kiev. [..] Paolo Raffone underscored that the alliance’s support for Ukraine is “limited to certain logistic, advisory and training functions,” and under the current North Atlantic Treaty, “it would not be possible to do more.” “Diplomats in Brussels do not see any concrete space for a direct engagement of NATO troops in Ukraine. NATO posturing is to avoid the collapse of Ukraine under the constant Russian pressure with the strategic aim to create the conditions for a negotiated settlement, whatever it may be,” the analyst said.

“We would like to establish [the] most friendly relations with all the former Soviet republics. This will suit our common interests and as such we will be able to provide more lasting stability..”

• 1992 Explicit NATO Pledge Not to Meddle in Russia’s Neighborhood (Sp.)

The US National Security Archive dropped a fresh trove of documents this week on previously classified conversations between senior Russian officials and their US and NATO counterparts in the period between 1992 and 1995, detailing what at the time seemed like rosy prospects for cooperation, and featuring a key pledge related to the internal affairs of the new post-Soviet republics. A transcript of a meeting between then-chairman of the Russian parliament Ruslan Khasbulatov and NATO secretary general Manfred Woerner dated February 25, 1992, exactly two months after Mikhail Gorbachev declared the USSR defunct and resigned from office, features an unmistakably blunt commitment by Woerner that the alliance will not meddle in the internal political affairs of Russia and other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

“We would like Russia and all other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States to join the Council for Cooperation [under NATO, ed.],” Woerner said during his conversation with Khasbulatov in Moscow. “From what I hear, -and you yourself talked about this – that some people still doubt our intentions. I would like to state here very clearly that we need stability, or some kind of stabilizing element for peace. We are not going to interfere in Russia’s internal affairs, as well as the internal affairs of other sovereign member states of the CIS. We would like to establish [the] most friendly relations with all the former Soviet republics. This will suit our common interests and as such we will be able to provide more lasting stability. We will all be better off as a result,” the NATO chief assured.

“We want to see close cooperation between states in a Europe composed of sovereign democratic states. How can this be achieved? We want to build a Europe that will inhabit a new security environment from [the Urals] to the Atlantic. It will be a unified Euro-Atlantic community built on three pillars. The first is the Helsinki process, the second – the European Community [predecessor to the European Union, ed.], which will create a basis for a solid political future for our community, and the third pillar is NATO,” Woerner added. A second document, dated March 8, 1994, and recording a conversation between senior Russian Duma leaders and Clinton Defense Secretary William Perry, offered clues of the extent of security concerns felt even by members of the liberal, highly pro-American Yeltsin government regarding US and NATO policy toward Russia.

By that time, the Clinton administration had firmly committed to the expansion of the Western alliance in Eastern Europe in spite of fervent (but impotent) opposition by Yeltsin. “As Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Defense, I am interested in a whole range of issues,” lawmaker Sergei Yushenkov was recorded as saying. “These include US military doctrine…NATO’s prospects in connection with the end of the Cold War, issues of our collaboration in peacekeeping actions, concrete approaches to the implementation of the Partnership for Peace program (which I consider a thin veil for NATO expansion), prospects for the ratification of START-2 and the implementation of START-1,” Yushenkov said.

“..vehemently opposed to any Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, or any person who has an ounce of humanity” attending the event..”

• Pelosi Joins Call For Biden To Stop Arming Israel (ZH)

A divide among Democrats over whether to halt defense aid to Israel is growing more fierce, causing a crisis and headache for Biden strategists ahead of the presidential election, which has only intensified in the wake of last week’s Israel Defense Forces (IDF) attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy in Gaza, which left seven international workers dead, including an American. This intensifying fragmentation of Biden’s base has been on display this weekend also given former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – still very influential among Dems – has publicly come out against Biden’s policy to continue arming Israel. The issue is entering the heart of the Democratic establishment, threatening unity. Axios reports that she “signed onto a call by progressive members of Congress for the U.S. to stop transferring weapons to Israel over a strike that killed seven aid workers in Gaza.”

The letter she signed, and which was led by Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), included the signatures of some 40 Democrats. “In light of the recent strike against aid workers and the ever-worsening humanitarian crisis, we believe it is unjustifiable to approve these weapons transfers,” the lawmakers stated in the letter addressed to President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “If this strike is found to have violated U.S. or international law, we urge you to continue withholding these transfers until those responsible are held accountable,” the lawmakers wrote. However, a follow-up statement from a Pelosi representative to Axios has this to say: “Speaker Pelosi knows President Biden’s support for Israel and empathy with the innocent civilians in Gaza, and she respects his judgment in how to proceed.” This trend of the Gaza war becoming a bright red dividing line among Democrats is also on display with recent stories like the following from Epoch Times– Pro-Israel Democrat Group Endorses ‘Squad’ Primary Opponents:

“A Democrat pro-Israel group has endorsed candidates challenging incumbents who are members of the far-left congressional group “The Squad.” Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) announced on April 3 its backing of Westchester County Executive George Latimer and St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell. DMFI did not state its reasons for backing the two other than through announcing a slate of endorsements.” So now the ‘fight’ is on and it’s becoming a real issue with campaign money lining up on either side. Still, those voters who put the Squad members in office in the first place are more than likely to come down on the anti-Israel side. Another indicator that the internal Democrat divide is accelerating is that the controversy has completely altered a long-standing White House tradition. Muslim leaders are boycotting an annual White House Ramadan gathering which marks the end of the Muslim season of fasting:

“The Biden administration is hosting a scaled-down Ramadan gathering for Muslim and Arab Americans after several community leaders declined the invite over the unrelenting and steadfast nature of US support for Israel’s war on Gaza. The event scheduled for Tuesday will be in stark contrast to previous Muslim celebrations and gatherings under the Biden administration, which have seen packed ballrooms of Muslims from all over the country joining the White House festivities. This year, the iftar will be confined to staffers only, and a separate gathering will take place for Muslim community members.” One such Muslim community leader and activist told Middle East Eye that Palestinian-Americans are “vehemently opposed to any Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, or any person who has an ounce of humanity” attending the event. All of this is of course a plus for Trump’s chances of retaking the White House going into November, also given the Israel-Gaza issue is much less of a divisive flashpoint issue for Republican voters.

Sachs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1776496160821449125

“..wasn’t just a onetime ‘oops’. It was three deliberate attacks designed to kill everybody involved in the WCK convoy, to leave no survivors. And they left no survivors..”

• Scott Ritter: Israeli Attack on Consulate Could ‘Throw World Into Chaos’ (Sp.)

Israel targeted the Iranian Embassy compound in Damascus, Syria on Monday, killing 16 people, including a top IRGC Quds Force commander. The same day, IDF drones struck three World Central Kitchen vehicles in Gaza, killing seven aid workers. Scott Ritter tells Sputnik how these events are connected. “In the span of a week, the world has witnessed two wanton violations of international law and the norms and standards of civilized nations by the state of Israel,” Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector and retired US Marine Corps intelligence officer, said, commenting on the twin April 1 attacks in Syria and Gaza. The Damascus attack ostensibly targeted high-ranking IRGC officers operating in Syria. “But the fact that Israel views these officers as legitimate targets doesn’t give them the permission to violate the protections that are afforded to these structures. Diplomatic immunity is a reality, and these buildings (consulates, embassies), are afforded inviolability, protection of international law, and Israel opted to violate this,” Ritter emphasized.

The consequences of the Embassy attack “have yet to be fully borne out…but based on Israel’s own reaction and anticipation could be quite severe. And this could throw not just the region but the world into chaos, turmoil and conflict, all because Israel decided that it could operate above the law,” the observer warned. As for the strikes against vehicles carrying World Central Kitchen (WCK) charity workers in Gaza, Ritter doesn’t buy Israeli assurances that they were accidental. “This wasn’t an accident. The Israelis claim it was a mistake, an accident. It wasn’t. These aid workers were driving on a route that had been identified to the Israeli military in advance and approved. They were riding in three clearly-marked vehicles. And the attack that took place wasn’t just a onetime ‘oops’. It was three deliberate attacks designed to kill everybody involved in the WCK convoy, to leave no survivors. And they left no survivors,” Ritter stressed. The consequences of the WCK were predictable, the observer said.

“Almost immediately, ships filled with humanitarian aid turned around and refused to offload their life-sustaining cargoes in Gaza out of fear of being attacked by Israel. Israel achieved its objective. It is terrorizing, intimidating international aid groups so that they don’t provide the assistance necessary for the sustainment of life in Gaza, because that’s what the Israeli policy in Gaza is all about,” Ritter said. Ritter expects Israeli “crimes” and “wanton” lawlessness to continue unless and until Tel Aviv is made to face consequences for its actions, and for so long as the government of Benjamin Netanyahu remains in power.

Assange Al Jazeera 25 m.

Watch Al Jazeera's 'The imprisonment of Julian Assange' as they take a look at the WikiLeaks publisher who gave us an unprecedented insight into the Iraq war, including the infamous 'Collateral Murder' release which occured 14 year ago this week #FreeAssangeNOW @AJFaultLines pic.twitter.com/52s27eSNr8

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 6, 2024

Eclipse

Ready?

In two days, a total solar eclipse will cross North America from Mexico to Canada across most part of the U.S.

It will be the most visible & longest total solar eclipse for the United States in 100 years with a central duration of 4' 28".pic.twitter.com/HayeD2MIrC

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) April 6, 2024

Trump experiences a very special Solar Eclipse.

Wait for the ending.

Brilliant work from Il Donaldo.pic.twitter.com/muBpMz1y3y

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) April 5, 2024

https://twitter.com/i/status/1776687977772515458

Kitten
https://twitter.com/i/status/1776532560497070579

Horse
https://twitter.com/i/status/1776583393590821029

Cartoons

The store manager leaves the TV on every day so the children can watch cartoons. pic.twitter.com/rVRjSuCr3w

— The Best (@ThebestFigen) April 5, 2024

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

Debt Rattle December 15 2023

Dec 152023

December 15, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:40 am Finance Tagged with: breathing, Civil War, denazifying, DOJ, Hunter Biden, Jack Smith, Orban, pawn, Putin, special counsel 81 Responses »

Vincent van Gogh Seine with Pont de Clichy 1887

• The Era of the West Has Passed (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Ukraine Conflict A “Great Tragedy”, “Civil War” Between Brothers– Putin (RT)

• Goal of Denazifying Ukraine Remains In Place – Putin (TASS)

• US Engineered Ukraine Conflict – Putin (RT)

• Orban, Fico Branded ‘Pro-Russian’ Simply for Sticking to National Interests (Sp.)

• Ukraine Debased to ‘Pawn’ on Geopolitical Chessboard – Scott Ritter (Sp.)

• Putin Reveals Number Of Troops In Ukraine Conflict Zone (RT)

• 400,000 Ukrainians Killed in Action Explains a Whole Lot (ET)

• Putin Criticizes New Argentine President’s Dollarization Plan (RT)

• What if Jack Smith Held a Trial and No One Came? (Turley)

• Will the Corrupt US Department of Justice (sic) Be Held Accountable? (PCR)

• Hunter Biden’s Contempt of Congress Has Wider Consequences (Turley)

• That New Hunter Biden Indictment (Patrick Lawrence)

• Breathing Contributes To Global Warming – Study (RT)

• Italian Ex-Minister Faces Vax Murder Probe (CN)

Pepe Putin

4 hours and 4 minutes. Non-stop.

Fielding unscripted questions across the spectrum.

No collective West "leader" is capable of anything remotely similar. pic.twitter.com/Eg6lRIHbUX

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) December 14, 2023

Trump Israel

Trump have said that Netanyahu does not want to resolve the situation with the Palestinians.

"I thought the Palestinians were impossible and that the Israelis would do anything to make peace and a deal.

I found that not to be true.”@MyLordBebo
pic.twitter.com/KWyiPWEHoX

— Dr. Anastasia Maria Loupis (@DrLoupis) December 14, 2023

Jimmy Dore

pic.twitter.com/1oe3FRLCy1

Here’s exactly why Twitter/Facebook/Instagram should not be allowed to censor :

— Jimmy Dore (@jimmy_dore) December 14, 2023

Kory

Horrifying… Dr. Pierre Kory and Laura Ingraham discussing what's behind the decline in life expectancy, FDA saying that life expectancy decline is "catastrophic", new study finding alarming rise in cancer rates among people under 50, 158000 more unexpected U.S deaths than… pic.twitter.com/JwcRSSOzA7

— Camus (@newstart_2024) December 15, 2023

“A tower of babel is not a nation..”

• The Era of the West Has Passed (Paul Craig Roberts)

Globalists, who intend the destruction of sovereign nations, have labeled concerns with mass immigration to be racism as a way of discrediting the concerns and preventing discussion of the threat. Immigrant-invaders, or as the euphemisms “refugees” and “asylum seekers” label them, are used to overwhelm ethnic nationalities and turn them into towers of babel in which there are no common interests, values, morals, religion, or culture. A tower of babel is not a nation. At best it is a geographical location, but it is not even that if it has no borders, which the US and Europe do not have. Advocates of open borders say that the US is a nation of immigrants. But they don’t say that it was controlled immigration consisting of immigrants from white European countries who as a condition of admittance had to learn English, pass an exam on the US Constitution, and integrate themselves into the existing society and culture.

They were not allowed to set up separate cultures, and businesses answered the phone only in English. Additionally, the immigration was periodically halted in order to allow time for assimilation before accepting more immigrants. Today millions of non-white people from unrelated cultures walk across the border every year. Businesses answer telephones in Spanish and English. Federal agencies respond to 40 or more foreign languages. Separate cultures with non-Christian religions exist as independent entities, and a system of preferences that favors non-white people has been institutionalized. In other words the society, politics, and culture of the ethnic nationalities that created what formerly was a nation are being erased. In education, health care, business, and government power is passing out of the hands of the ethnic majority that created the nation.

Great Britain has an Indian prime minister. The London mayor is a Muslim. Recently two federal judges born in India ruled against President Trump, a ruling that violates both the Constitution and powers of the President. The CEO of IBM, Arvind Krishna is an Indian. He pulled IBM ads from X, accusing Elon Musk of racism, and he announced that he will fire, demote, or strip bonuses from IBM managers who don’t hire enough blacks, Hispanics, and Muslims, or who hire too many Asians and whites. The communications director of Red Hat, an IBM subsidiary, said that Red Hat had terminated employees because they weren’t willing to engage in racial discrimination through hiring and promotion quotas. Hiring, promotion, and “inclusion” quotas are violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and they are unconstitutional under the US Constitution and its amendments, such as the 14th.

But notice that the Indian running IBM has no hesitancy about using his power to force IBM executives and managers to violate US law and Constitution in order to advance “preferred minorities” at the expense of members of the white ethnic majority and Asians. This is what happens when a nation ceases to require assimilation. The CEO of IBM is an unassimilated immigrant who has no respect for US law or the US Constitution. An article by Ian Henderson in Chronicles magazine in July, 2022, showed that, unlike Western governments, both Russia and China protect the ethnic culture from immigrants and prevent cultural destruction by Woke ideologues and moral destruction by sexual perverts. Henderson points out that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “strongly upholds traditional views on gender roles, race, sexuality, and family—more so than the Republican Party or mainstream conservatives in America.

A major example of China’s conservatism is the CCP’s view on LGBTQ rights. Same-sex couples are unable to marry or adopt, and households headed by such couples are ineligible for the same legal protections available to heterosexual couples, and no anti-discrimination protections exist for LGBTQ people. Contrast these policies with the views of mainstream American conservatism, which now seems deeply committed to gay marriage, an institution enthusiastically endorsed by the likes of National Review and the National Conservatism Conference.” “In short, Chinese leaders seek to promote masculinity and strength, and to uphold and expand their inherited Han civilization. They feel they cannot do that with homosexuals, transgenders, or feminists running government institutions and the military—or even exerting influence over forms of entertainment.”

“[The West] has largely lost its sovereignty,” suggested Putin, pointing out that many Western nations, with the exception of countries like Hungary, constantly make decisions that only end up hurting themselves…”

• Ukraine Conflict A “Great Tragedy”, “Civil War” Between Brothers– Putin (RT)

Russia has been trying for decades to build normal relations with Ukraine “at any cost,” but this was made impossible after the coup d’etat in 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a live marathon press conference on Thursday. The president was asked if he could foresee a normalization of relations with the West in the near future. Putin responded by stressing that Russia has never tried to intentionally ruin or sever ties with any nation. Instead, it was the West that spoiled relations with Russia by constantly trying to push the country aside and neglecting its national interests, Putin said.The culmination of that was the coup d’etat in Ukraine that was staged by Russia’s geopolitical “opponents” in 2014, which has ultimately led to the current situation, according to the president.

Putin described the ongoing conflict as a “great tragedy” that is essentially a “civil war” between brothers. He stressed that at their core, in spite of the current hostilities, Russians and Ukrainians are one people. The president noted that Moscow always had good relations with southeast Ukraine, which tended to be pro-Russian because these territories had historically belonged to Russia. “But after the coup d’etat of 2014, it became clear to us that we would no longer be allowed, by force, to build any sort of normal relations with Ukraine,” Putin said, recalling that the US had publicly admitted to spending $5 billion dollars on overthrowing the government of Ukraine.

That, coupled with NATO’s “uncontrollable desire to creep towards our borders” by inviting Ukraine into the bloc, and the eight-year-long bloodbath in Donbass, has ultimately led to the tragedy that is currently unfolding, Putin summarized. “So how are we supposed to build relations with them?” asked the Russian president, noting that the West has continued to pretend like it doesn’t remember doing any of the aforementioned things, only occasionally admitting that it was signing deals – such as the Minsk Accords, which were meant to be a path towards peace – with their fingers crossed behind their back. “[The West] has largely lost its sovereignty,” suggested Putin, pointing out that many Western nations, with the exception of countries like Hungary, constantly make decisions that only end up hurting themselves.

“Well, how is that so, when a national hero, the famous Bandera, who is not just a nationalist, but a Nazi, has been elevated to the rank of a national hero. How is that so?”

• Goal of Denazifying Ukraine Remains In Place – Putin (TASS)

The issue of Ukraine’s denazification remains relevant, after the head of the Kiev administration applauded a former SS soldier in a manifestation of Nazism, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at his combined Direct Line Q&A session and year-end press conference. “Here is what is happening in terms of denazification. During the negotiation process, which had a certain phase after the drafting of a possible agreement, as officials in Kiev mentioned recently, in general, they did not agree that some kind of denazification was needed, saying that there was no fascistization, no increase in such sentiments,” the president said. “Well, how is that so, when a national hero, the famous Bandera, who is not just a nationalist, but a Nazi, has been elevated to the rank of a national hero. How is that so?”

“When the head of the current Kiev administration, in front of the whole world, stands up to applaud a former SS soldier, who was directly involved in the Holocaust, the extermination of one and a half million Jews in Ukraine, Russians and Poles, stands up to applaud, is this not a manifestation of Nazism?” Putin said. “So the issue of denazification, it is relevant. It is true that during the negotiation process we were told that in principle they do not exclude the possibility of adopting some legislative acts in Ukraine. But that was then, during the talks in Istanbul.” Speaking about the goal of Ukraine’s demilitarization, the president said certain parameters had been agreed upon in 2022 during the talks in Istanbul. “It’s just that these agreements were later tossed out,” he said. “But we did agree on that. There are other options either to agree or to achieve this by force. This is what we will strive for,” Putin said.

“..Ukraine has “largely lost its sovereignty” and has been making “many decisions to their own detriment” ..

• US Engineered Ukraine Conflict – Putin (RT)

The US was responsible for orchestrating the 2014 coup in Ukraine that overthrew President Viktor Yanukovich and ultimately led to the current conflict, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. He added that Washington “needed to create a conflict” for its own purposes. Speaking during a marathon Q&A session on Thursday, Putin said the US “plotted and organized everything” while European leaders “silently watched” and pretended they were not aware of what was happening. As a result, Ukraine has “largely lost its sovereignty” and has been making “many decisions to their own detriment” since then. Following the 2014 coup, the then-Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk, known as Donbass, refused to accept the new government, which increasingly embraced nationalist ideology, and proclaimed their independence instead. Kiev responded with a violent military campaign that prompted a years-long conflict.

The Russian leader went on to accuse the West of having a short memory, pointing to the 2015 Minsk agreements, which were brokered by Russia, Germany and France and were designed to end the hostilities. The West had “no intention” of implementing the agreements, which Putin said were “signed and immediately forgotten.” Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron later admitted that the agreements were a strategic ploy aimed at buying Ukraine more time to prepare for a conflict with Russia. In an interview with CNN in 2015, then-US President Barack Obama also openly admitted that the US had “brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine.”

In September 2022, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as the parts of Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions under Russian control, voted to join Russia in a referendum which Ukraine and its Western backers denounced as illegitimate. Moscow has insisted that Kiev must recognize this “new territorial reality” as a prerequisite for any peace talks. Despite receiving a constant flow of weapons and aid from its Western backers since the current conflict broke out in February 2022, Kiev’s six-month counteroffensive against Russia has failed to yield significant results and Ukraine has lost some 125,000 military personnel and 6,000 pieces of heavy equipment since the beginning of June, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

“..Europe is now weak and is going through a very deep, systemic economic, monetary and political crisis, unfortunately..”

• Orban, Fico Branded ‘Pro-Russian’ Simply for Sticking to National Interests (Sp.)

At his big year-end presser on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary and Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia were among the only defenders of national interests left in the West. Sputnik reached out to a leading Hungarian foreign policy analyst for his take on Putin’s remarks. Vladimir Putin dismissed the characterization the leaders of Hungary and Slovakia as “pro-Russian.” “I have already said many times before that they are not ‘pro-Russian’ politicians, but rather pro-national – they defend their [national] interests. There are no others like this, they simply don’t exist…[This is] tied to a great dependence on ‘Big Brother,’ on the United States,” the Russian president said.

“I completely agree with President Putin. I have been saying for a long time that when Orban’s opponents reproach him for being ‘pro-Russian,’ this is just a label, nothing more. Orban proceeds from Hungarian national interests,” Gabor Stier, a senior foreign policy analyst at Magyar Nemzet, a leading Hungarian conservative daily newspaper, told Sputnik. “And I would add not just about Hungarian interests, but on some issues European interests. It’s a pity that Europeans and European politicians, especially the leaders of the European Union, do not proceed from European interests,” Stier added. The foreign affairs observer also agreed with Putin’s Europe’s dependence on its American “big brother,” saying the EU in its current form has become a “vassal of America, unfortunately.”

As an example, Stier pointed to the frantic drive by Brussels to try to incorporate Ukraine into the bloc, notwithstanding the threat to its own stability and well-being. “Whether Ukraine is ready or not is not something that needs to be explained to a normal person. The European Union is not ready either. Because if this expansion occurs earlier than in 15 years, it will deepen frictions within the European Union. The European Union is not ready economically, politically, and so on. That makes Orban a pragmatist, who proceeds from national interests on many issues, and from European interests on many issues. Orban is not destroying Europe. Orban wants to see a strong Europe. Europe is now weak and is going through a very deep, systemic economic, monetary and political crisis, unfortunately,” the observer said. Fico is “similar to Orban,” even if he’s not prepared to so openly clash with Brussels’ bureaucracy, in Stier’s estimation. “This means he’s ready for more compromises, but mainly he proceeds from Slovak interest,” the analyst stressed.

“..Ukraine’s government appears to be pushing to have its people exterminated, Putin noted in his year-end presser.”

• Ukraine Debased to ‘Pawn’ on Geopolitical Chessboard – Scott Ritter (Sp.)

Vladimir Putin defends his country’s sovereignty at every step, while Volodymyr Zelensky has allowed Ukraine to become a compliant tool of a West “willing to sacrifice that nation, its solders, and its people on a battlefield where they will get nothing but death and destruction,” Scott Ritter has underscored. President Vladimir Putin cares about the Russian people, soldiers, and nation, and therein lies the profound difference between his approach to the current conflict, and that of Ukraine’s President, the former US Marine Corps intelligence officer told Sputnik. “For a country like Russia, the existence, simply the existence of our country, without sovereignty is impossible,” Putin said during the joint “Direct Line” Q&A session and annual press conference on Thursday. “The primary objective is to bolster Russia’s sovereignty, fortify border security, and safeguard the rights and freedoms of [our] citizens,” the president remarked.

The present reality clearly demonstrates the very different approach to the Ukraine conflict shown by Russia, on the one hand, and the US, its allies in the West, on the other. “If you engage in an armed conflict, there will be consequences, there will be dead, wounded, but it’s incumbent upon the government, the state to prevent unnecessarily casualties of war,” said Ritter. Here lies the “secret” of the Russian approach, he added, as Putin has shown he is always prepared to put the interests of the Russian people, and Russia’s soldiers first and foremost. Volodymyr Zelensky, in contrast, instead of accepting the generous terms set forth by Moscow that could have saved the lives of Ukrainian soldiers, yielded to the pressure put on him by then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, other Western leaders, who said, ‘Don’t accept peace terms,’ and ‘continue the conflict’.

It was evident that it was physically impossible for the Ukrainian army to defeat Russia’s military, yet this is the premise that Zelensky “bought into” when he accepted Western military assistance… However, the question is: to what end? “Was this to serve Ukraine’s interests, or the interests of the West?” Scott Ritter mused. “Zelensky is not about serving the people of his own country… He allowed Ukraine’s sovereignty to be subordinated to NATO, EU, and US interests. The conflict has no consideration for Ukraine, and every consideration for the Western interests,” the pundit pointed out. Ukraine’s government appears to be pushing to have its people exterminated, Putin noted in his year-end presser. Indeed, as the West continues to funnel billions-worth of military aid to Kiev, despite the botched counteroffensive and enormous human casualties, Ukraine’s soldiers are little more than “pawns to be sacrificed on a geopolitical chessboard where the West is only looking out for their interests.”

“I want to repeat myself: the line of contact [with Ukraine] is more than 2,000km long. There are now 617,000 people in the combat zone..”

• Putin Reveals Number Of Troops In Ukraine Conflict Zone (RT)

Russia has deployed more than half a million service members, including many volunteers, in the combat zone of the Ukraine conflict, President Vladimir Putin has revealed. Speaking during his Q&A session on Thursday, the Russian leader was asked to comment on complaints that military volunteers often rely on aid fundraised by their fellow citizens rather than on state support. Putin emphasized that supplies provided by the government account for 99% of all assistance, but noted that Moscow welcomes and will in no way hinder pure-hearted efforts to provide Russian soldiers with various types of equipment and supplies. Still, he admitted that there could be a lack of specialized high-tech hardware, such as electronic warfare equipment, at a given time and place, and promised to look into the matter.

I want to repeat myself: the line of contact [with Ukraine] is more than 2,000km long. There are now 617,000 people in the combat zone … So, of course, there could be some problems in some places. According to Putin, 244,000 of those in the combat zone are troops that were called up when Russia announced partial mobilization in September 2022. They were deployed in a bid to stabilize the situation, protect new territories, and conduct further offensives. At the time, Moscow mobilized 300,000 troops. However, Putin said that 41,000 had since been discharged for health reasons, or after reaching the maximum age. Moscow has repeatedly denied it plans to announce a second wave of mobilization, with the Russian president explaining that there was no need for such a move. Instead, Russia is relying on a steady stream of volunteers willing to sign contracts with the military.

Putin noted that the authorities had signed up some 486,000 soldiers in this large-scale recruitment campaign, adding that more are ready to enlist. However, he did not say how many of them have been deployed to the front, are undergoing training, or are stationed elsewhere. Commenting on the battlefield situation, Putin remarked that Russian troops “to say it humbly, are improving their positions” along the entire frontline. He also said that Ukraine’s much-hyped counteroffensive – which began in early June – has been a complete failure, with no territorial gains. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu earlier this month estimated Kiev’s losses at more than 125,000 troops since the start of the push.

8-to-1 ratio.

• 400,000 Ukrainians Killed in Action Explains a Whole Lot (ET)

Estimates of Ukrainians killed in action (KIA) range from a low of just over 30,000 to a high of over 400,000. Obviously, these two estimates can’t be reconciled. And it really, really matters to the people of Ukraine which one is closer to the truth. While 30,000 deaths is tragic, anything approaching 400,000 KIA and the accompanying hundreds of thousands of causalities is a humanitarian catastrophe that makes talks of continuing offensive operations next year, or even believing in a stalemate, wishful thinking that will result in even more fruitless Ukrainian deaths. Unsurprisingly, since the war began, the United States and its allies have unswervingly pushed the narrative that Russia is incurring far more casualties than Ukraine.

This casualty narrative was critical to maintaining any plausibility that Ukraine could defeat a country that has four to five times more men of military age and that was recently rated as having the world’s most powerful military. Hence, given the need to maintain the plausibility of a Ukrainian victory, it isn’t surprising that NATO intelligence asserted that the battle of Bakhmut saw Russia losing at least five soldiers KIA for every one of Ukraine’s. However, since the fall of Bakhmut to Russia, the failure of the much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive, and signs that Ukraine’s military is nearing collapse, we’re no longer hearing about five-to-one casualty rates. Still, the most recent estimates from United States and British officials claim that Russia has suffered 120,000 KIA while Ukraine has suffered “only” 70,000 KIA (more than the United States suffered in over 10 years of the Vietnam War).

But not everyone agrees with U.S./British casualty estimates for an army that started the war by mobilizing early 1 million men in arms and, over the course of the war, mobilized another estimated 1 million. Among the growing number of those who don’t agree is the former director of the Joint Operations Center at Supreme Headquarters Europe and one of the key leaders in achieving the legendary victory in the mass tank battle of 73 Easting, retired U.S. Army Col. Douglas Macgregor. In a recent interview with myself, Col. Macgregor agreed that while estimates putting Russian KIA at as high as 50,000 to 60,000 are defensible, most estimates for Ukrainian KIAs are not. In what many will undoubtedly find shocking given the countless stories disparaging Russia’s military skills and capabilities while uncritically fawning over Ukraine’s military prowess, Col. Macgregor puts Ukrainian KIA at over 400,000 out of the 2 million Ukraine has mobilized.

Col. Macgregor arrived at this shocking number using a wide variety of sources, including contacts within U.S. intelligence and contacts on the ground in Ukraine and Poland who have intimate knowledge of what’s really happening in Ukraine. In particular, he noted that his U.S. intelligence contacts have expressed shock as to just how far from reality the narrative being pushed by the Biden administration is from what’s happening in Ukraine and its real war losses. Likewise, Col. Macgregor’s Ukraine contacts relayed to him accounts of thousands of wounded Ukrainians being left to die on the battlefield, growing numbers of Ukrainian commanders and troops refusing orders to conduct suicide attacks against heavily fortified Russian positions, Ukrainian soldiers surrendering en masse to Russia, hospitals overflowing with Ukrainian wounded, and many other accounts that testify to horrendous casualty rates that contradict the narrative pushed by Western media.

“.. a “significant loss of the country’s sovereignty..”

• Putin Criticizes New Argentine President’s Dollarization Plan (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has criticized his Argentine counterpart’s plan to ditch the national currency, the peso, for the US dollar. Speaking during a live press conference on Thursday, Putin said that the pledge of newly elected Argentine President Javier Milei to adopt the greenback would result in a “significant loss of the country’s sovereignty.” Dollarization is one of Milei’s core proposals, aimed at taming triple-digit inflation and supporting Argentina’s beleaguered economy amid low cash reserves and high government debt. Adopting the US dollar would take control of monetary policy away from Argentina’s central bank and hand it over to the US Federal Reserve.

The announced policy goes contrary to the de-dollarization trend pioneered by Russia and supported by many other developing economies, which has been gaining momentum since the imposition of Ukraine-related sanctions on Moscow. In response to the restrictions that effectively cut the country off from Western financial markets, Russia and its leading trade partners within the BRICS group of developing economies have started to switch to national currencies in trade. Argentina was set to join the bloc, made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, on January 1, 2024, but the new government scrapped the decision. According to Putin, Milei’s plan to scrap the peso or peg the national currency to the dollar could also result in social instability as it would trigger a sharp reduction in social spending.

“If there is no national currency, you can’t print anything, there is only one way – reducing budget spending for the social sphere, a severe cutting of wages, pensions, expenses on medicine, on roads and domestic security,” the Russian president maintained. Argentina’s new government announced earlier this week the start of its “economic shock therapy” policy, namely a sharp devaluation of the peso, cuts to energy and transportation subsidies and a freeze in spending on some major state programs. The South American nation is trying to battle inflation that hovers around 150% year-on-year. country owes $44 billion to the International Monetary Fund, and 40% of Argentinians reportedly live below the poverty line.

“..At some point, the mad rush for a March trial will look illogical and gratuitous if key legal issues remain unresolved..”

• What if Jack Smith Held a Trial and No One Came? (Turley)

In 1966, Charlotte E. Keyes wrote a famous article for McCall’s magazine titled “Suppose They Gave a War and No One Came.” Special Counsel Jack Smith may be contemplating the same fate. Putting the tongue-in-cheek title aside, the odds are that some people will come to any trial of President Donald Trump. After all, a lot of people have to come from the judge to the jurors and counsel. However, Smith has had an ominous week that could severely complicate his plans for convicting Donald Trump before the election. Moreover, a trial after the election could mean no trial at all. Before this week, Smith found himself on the losing end of the schedule in Florida in his prosecution of Trump for his retention of classified documents. Judge Aileen Cannon has scheduled a trial for May 20, 2024, but that could easily move with additional delays or appeals in the case.

I have always viewed that case to be the strongest against Trump, but the huge number of classified documents have (as predicted) slowed the prosecution. Despite Smith’s pushing for a pre-election trial, his structuring of the charges undermined that schedule. Smith then pushed hard for a pre-election trial in the January 6th case in Washington where he seemed to have a supportive judge in Judge Tanya Chutkan who shoehorned the start just before the Super Tuesday elections. Now, however, Judge Chutkan has been forced to stay the case indefinitely pending the appeal of the presidential immunity claim made by Trump. The matter is now before both the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court gave Trump until December 20th to respond to Smith’s request for an expedited review — leapfrogging over the D.C. Circuit.

Smith’s filing conveys priority, if not a necessity, in trying Trump before the election. The Supreme Court may not share that sense of urgency. Traditionally, the Supreme Court has preferred to wait to allow appellate courts to render decisions. Since a conviction will not make Trump ineligible to run for the presidency, the question is why the March date should short circuit the review process. If the Supreme Court ultimately does not rule on the merits, the period for review would easily supplant the trial schedule since an appeal could be taken to the entire D.C. Circuit (en banc) and then to the Supreme Court. That did not change the March 4 trial date, but it could well make that date unworkable if the appeals drag on. Then to make the week complete, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in United States v. Fischer. That case turns on the proper interpretation of the obstruction provision under Section 1512(c)(2).

Fischer was charged with obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and based solely on his trespass in the Capitol. A ruling in his favor could effectively cut away half of the case against Donald Trump. Among the four counts brought by Smith, Trump is charged under 18 U.S.C. § 1512(k) (Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding) (Count Two) and 18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(c)(2), 2 (Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding) (Count Three). If those two counts fell to the wayside, Smith would be left with a count on conspiracy to defraud the United States (Count One) and conspiracy against rights (Count 4). Those counts contain other challengeable elements which would have to be appealed after any conviction. At some point, the mad rush for a March trial will look illogical and gratuitous if key legal issues remain unresolved and pre-trial motions and discovery remain incomplete in February.

The problem for Smith is that a trial after the election could mean no trial at all. If Trump is elected, he could give himself a preemptive self-pardon, though some disagree with this view. Moreover, the new Attorney General could scuttle or undermine the prosecution. In other words, it is possible that Jack Smith might never see a jury in either case. That would still leave the New York and Georgia cases, which are not subject to presidential pardons. However, those cases (particularly the one in New York) have their own challengeable elements.

“..a totally corrupt Department of Justice (sic), every member of which should be indicted for weaponizing law and using it as a weapon against Trump, his attorneys, and his supporters.”

• Will the Corrupt US Department of Justice (sic) Be Held Accountable? (PCR)

It is a paradox that Jack Smith, who in my opinion has less integrity than the infamous Stalinist prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky who prosecuted Stalin’s show trials of the Bolsheviks, was appointed director of the Justice (sic) Departments Office of Public Integrity. Perhaps recognizing Smith’s lack of concern with justice, Merrick Garland, the worst Attorney General in US history, sicced Jack Smith on President Trump and Trump supporters who attended the Trump rally labeled an “insurrection” by the whore media and Democrat Party. The way Smith got his convictions was to intentionally misapply law in order to coerce innocent people with a 20 year prison threat into a plea bargain. In other words, by intentionally misusing law he forced people to convict themselves via self-incrimination, which is what a plea bargain is.

Federal judge Carl Nichols threw out charges against three defendants based on Smith’s wrongful use of law. This has led to a situation in which the US Supreme Court announced yesterday that it would take up the defendants complaint that Jack Smith illegitimately used evidence-tampering law to prosecute Trump supporters and force them into self-incrimination to avoid a 20 year sentence. Smith’s pressure on one defendant, Matthew Perna, caused him to commit suicide. In my opinion, Jack Smith should be indicted for murder. Defense attorney Joseph McBride said that the DOJ’s misuse of law “is rooted in corruption and political hatred.” Defense attorney William Shipley predicted that the Supreme Court’s decision to take up the case would put an end to the case against Trump: “The decision by SCOTUS today to take up the appeal on the 1512 ‘obstruction of an official proceeding’ case means the Trump D.C. case will not be going to trial.”

After the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up the clearly wrongful conviction of Derek Chauvin, I haven’t as much confidence as Shipley in the Supreme Court’s interest in justice. But I hope Shipley is right as the result will be the release of the hundreds of innocent Americans wrongly convicted on purpose by in my opinion a totally corrupt Department of Justice (sic), every member of which should be indicted for weaponizing law and using it as a weapon against Trump, his attorneys, and his supporters.

“..President Biden “was certainly familiar with what his son was going to say,” which suggests that the president spoke with his son before his act of contempt and discussed his statement. If that is true, it was a breathtaking mistake.”

• Hunter Biden’s Contempt of Congress Has Wider Consequences (Turley)

Congress is often a theater of the absurd, from Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) pulling a fire alarm before a major vote to former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) being, well, a member of Congress at all. However, none of that compares to what unfolded on Wednesday as Hunter Biden stood outside Congress and defied a subpoena as being “beyond the absurd.” What happens next could be even more bizarre. Hunter was under a subpoena from the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability to appear for testimony. As I previously wrote, he had two choices: He could appear and either testify or invoke his right to remain silent. The only thing that he could not do is what he did — just refuse to go into the hearing room. Yet, there he was, with counsel Abbe Lowell by his side,holding forth with a public press conference while refusing to appear in the closed-door deposition being held in the building behind him.

By staying on the Senate side of the Capitol, Hunter guaranteed that the House sergeant at arms did not pull him into the hearing room. Ironically, that would have been a better option than his blowing a raspberry at the committee and then speeding away. Many pundits immediately claimed this was a clever move because the subpoena was not really enforceable until the House voted on the formal impeachment inquiry a few hours later. I disagree. As I noted in my testimony in the first impeachment inquiry, there is no requirement for a formal vote to initiate an impeachment inquiry. Indeed, that is precisely what then-majority Democrats did with the impeachment of then-President Donald Trump. While I encouraged the House to hold a formal vote on the inquiry, it is not constitutionally required.

Moreover, this is an oversight committee which has independent authority to issue subpoenas. The subpoena was issued not only by the Oversight Committee but by the Judiciary Committee. It was issued under three different authorities, including Rule 12(g) of the Oversight Committee which allows for subpoenas “in the conduct of any investigation or activity or series of investigations or activities within the jurisdiction of the Committee.” In holding this spectacle, Biden and his legal team committed another unforced error. This one could prove as costly as pushing for an obscenely generous plea agreement and then telling prosecutors to “rip it up” in July. Few people expected Hunter to testify in the deposition. The evidence against him is overwhelming, as shown in his second federal indictment on tax charges.

He and his uncles were allegedly engaged in one of the largest influence-peddling operations in history involving millions of dollars from various foreign sources. Hunter simply could have done what prior witnesses have done: Go in and take the Fifth. That is what attorney and former IRS official Lois Lerner did — twice — when House Republicans wanted to ask her about the Obama administration targeting conservative groups. It was a no-brainer that someone appears to have radically over-thought on the Hunter Biden legal team.Hunter can now be held in contempt of Congress. That will force the hand of Attorney General Merrick Garland, who aggressively pursued Trump figures for contempt, including former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. Despite some of us writing to the contrary, Bannon claimed his lawyers told him he did not have to appear before a House committee. He was swiftly charged and convicted by Garland’s prosecutors.

In this instance, the contempt case would go to the U.S. Attorney in D.C., Matthew Graves, who previously declined to assist in bringing tax charges against the president’s son. Yet by pulling a Bannon, Hunter now faces the expectation in many circles that he will get the full Bannon treatment from Garland. There is another possible cost to this move. Fox News quoted White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying that President Biden “was certainly familiar with what his son was going to say,” which suggests that the president spoke with his son before his act of contempt and discussed his statement. If that is true, it was a breathtaking mistake. One of the four most obvious potential articles of impeachment that I laid out in my prior testimony was obstruction. There already are questions over special treatment potentially being given to Hunter in the form of alleged felonies being allowed to expire, warnings about planned federal raids, and sweetheart deals.

“.. continue the DoJ’s “investigation”—let’s go with quotation marks at this point—into what corporate media like to describe as Hunter Biden’s “shenanigans.”

• That New Hunter Biden Indictment (Patrick Lawrence)

Before wading through the latest indictment of Hunter Biden, this one for nine counts of assorted tax violations, we must consider briefly the record of David Weiss, the special counsel who signed the 56–page document made public last Thursday. Only then can we read the grand jury findings unsealed last week for what they are and are not. David Weiss is the Justice Department attorney in Delaware who has run the DoJ’s lengthy (as in slow-walked) investigation into Hunter Biden’s alleged violations of tax and gun laws. Among much else, David Weiss appears to have connived with other Justice officials to cover up a Federal Bureau of Investigation finding that Hunter and President Biden accepted bribes of $5 million each from Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company where Hunter sat on the board from April 2014 to April 2019.

David Weiss made sure that Internal Revenue investigators did not have access to Hunter’s infamous laptop after the FBI took possession of it in December 2019. David Weiss made sure that investigators—his investigators among them—were denied a requested warrant to search a cottage on Joe Biden’s Delaware estate. David Weiss let Hunter’s lawyers know in advance that investigators planned to search a storage unit Hunter kept. David Weiss barred IRS agents from interviewing members of the Biden family. David Weiss, as overseer of the investigation, let Hunter know in advance that IRS and FBI agents intended to interview him in California, so allowing Hunter to evade them.

David Weiss, after all this and probably more that is not visible to our naked eyes, put together the agreement that let Hunter plead to misdemeanor charges earlier this year and immunized him from whatever findings of criminal conduct that may come to the surface in the future. A properly disinterested judge assigned to validate that preposterous bargain, Maryellen Noreika, could not believe her eyes when she saw it last summer and promptly deep-sixed it. At that point, it followed naturally that Attorney General Merrick Garland rewarded David Weiss for all his good, loyal work by naming him special counsel, so giving him expanded powers to continue the DoJ’s “investigation”—let’s go with quotation marks at this point—into what corporate media like to describe as Hunter Biden’s “shenanigans.”

Now David Weiss has signed an indictment—the second Hunter faces, the other covering the gun charges—laying out three charges of tax evasion, three charges of failing to file and pay taxes, and three more for filing false or fraudulent tax returns. And now, with a few snippets from David Weiss’s c.v. in hand, we are ready to read and evaluate this document for what is in it and what is missing.

“We would urge caution in the assumption that emissions from humans are negligible.”

This just had to get absurd.

• Breathing Contributes To Global Warming – Study (RT)

Human breathing contributes to global warming, according to a study published Wednesday in PLoS One. The authors argued that human respiration’s contribution to climate change has been underestimated and merits further study. After measuring the gas composition in the exhaled breaths of 328 study participants, the researchers concluded human breath comprises 0.05% of the UK’s methane emissions and 0.1% of its nitrous oxide. Both of those gasses “have a much higher global warming potential than carbon dioxide,” the study notes. “Exhaled human breath can contain small, elevated concentrations of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), both of which contribute to global warming,” the researchers, led by atmospheric physicist Nicholas Cowan of the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, wrote.

“We would urge caution in the assumption that emissions from humans are negligible.” While Cowan explained that “CO2 contribution in human breath to climate change is essentially zero” because plants absorb nearly all the carbon dioxide humans breathe out, the other two gasses are left in the atmosphere. Methane traps 80 times the amount of heat as carbon dioxide during its first 20 years in the atmosphere, though this potency decreases over time. A detailed analysis of test subjects’ diets failed to yield any indication that meat eaters produced more of either gas. While all test subjects exhaled nitrous oxide, only 31% exhaled methane. These individuals, referred to as “methane producers” in the paper, were more likely to be female and over 30 years of age, though the researchers were unable to determine why this was the case.

The study authors cautioned that their research only looked at breath and called for further research into the total picture of human gas emissions, insisting it could reveal more about the “impacts of an aging population and shifting diets” on the planet. In recent years, environmental campaigners have focused on methane emissions from cows, whose herbivorous diet is broken down by methane-producing bacteria in their multiple stomachs. Policymakers’ focus on the resulting methane-tainted belches and farts have been the subject of much parody from climate change skeptics.

The UK has legally committed itself to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 78% by 2035 compared to 1990. Residents have been strongly encouraged to reduce meat consumption in order to achieve this goal, with some estimates placing the share of global greenhouse gas emissions from raising livestock for meat at 15%. However, the researchers behind Wednesday’s study pointed out that shifting to a high-fiber vegetarian diet could potentially cause more methane and nitrous oxide emissions, a phenomenon they called “pollution swapping.”

“..after emails revealed he knew mRNA shots were killing people, just as leaked NZ health department data has shown..”

• Italian Ex-Minister Faces Vax Murder Probe (CN)

New Zealand’s politicians have all been sent an email informing them that the former Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza is under investigation for homicide after emails revealed he knew mRNA shots were killing people, just as leaked NZ health department data has shown. The emails were sent by US vaccine safety campaigner and tech entrepreneur Steve Kirsch, who organised statisticians and other experts to analyse NZ Ministry of Health data leaked by whistleblower Barry Young. The NZ health bureaucrats, supported by media, are using legal threats to censor and suppress access to the “pay-per-dose” data, which reveals of thousands of deaths in close proximity to mRNA vaccinations.

But New Zealand’s new government has agreed to carry out as a matter of urgency a “full scale, wide-ranging, independent inquiry” into how the Covid-19 pandemic was handled, regardless of the whitewashing “Royal Commission of Inquiry” set up by the Ardern Labor government. The new government’s inquiry will cover lockdowns, vaccine procurement and efficacy, the social and economic impacts on both regional and national levels and whether the decisions made and steps taken, were justified. The inquiry will also be conducted publicly with local and international experts. In Italy, Speranza is accused of giving orders to local health authorities to conceal deaths and serious side effects in order to reassure Italian citizens of the vaccines’ “safety” and to not jeopardize the vaccination campaign. NZ and Australian health officials acted similarly.

The main charges Speranza faces include ideological falsehood, multiple manslaughter, marketing of an imperfect, dangerous drug. Speranza is currently a deputy of the Democratic Party, and like Australian and New Zealand health ministers, was co-opted by the WHO and the global pharma cartel to push the mRNA shots. The Speranza investigation was announced on Italian TV channel Rete 4, on the program Fuori dal Coro. The channel is owned by the Mediaset group run by the heirs of the late Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a strong supporter of the vaccination campaign, who died in June this year. According to Italian website Gospa News, there was not much coverage in the national media which focused more on the statements of Speranza’s lawyer instead of examining the merits of the investigation resulting from the complaint by the State Police union OSA and by other organisations seeking to support vaccinated people.

The accusations have been reported on by German and Italian news networks but studiously ignored by Reuters and the western mainstream media. The closest reports Cairns News found were from months ago when the former Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Speranza were placed under investigation on suspicion of “aggravated culpable epidemic” and manslaughter in connection with the government’s response at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. They were later cleared.

Ducks
https://twitter.com/i/status/1735286013042307534

Momma bear
https://twitter.com/i/status/1735272196874895825

Cheetah

This cheetah proudly shows her cubs to a photographer.

You would feel so honoured that those spectacular creatures are confident enough to come up close to you.pic.twitter.com/030aGrbHq8

— Figen (@TheFigen_) December 14, 2023

This 2,000 year old tree is located at Zwigodini Village of Mutale in Limpopo, South Africa. Venda people call it, “Muri Kunguluwa”, which means, “The Tree That Roars”. The tree actually makes a roaring sound when the wind blows through its branches. It is also called, “The Tree Of Life”, because it serves as a source of life to the animals and the community that lives around it. 80% of its trunk consists of water and it can hold up to 4,500 liters, making it a water source for the community and the animals.

Elephants eat the bark. Baboons eat the fruit. Leaves can also be eaten. Birds, bees, fruit bats and bush babies nest in the tree. Humans use the dried fruit powder in drinks, as a source of vitamins, antioxidants and minerals. The bark can be used to make rope, baskets, mats, cloth and paper. It also holds a spiritual significance for African people. In ancient times, leaders and elders would hold meetings under huge baobab trees, to discuss important matters. They believed that the spirit of the baobab would help them make wise decisions.

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Debt Rattle October 12 2023

Oct 122023

October 12, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:25 am Finance Tagged with: Abraham Accords, beheaded babies, Biden, Civil War, DSA, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, smartest people, Zelensky 38 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Self portrait with palette 1906

• Israeli Assault on Gaza is Doomed to Fail (Scott Ritter)

• Western Virtue Signaling Goes Hypersonic Over Israel (Marsden)

• The Silence Of The Bears – Russia Is Reorienting Towards The Arabs (Helmer)

• Russia Always Supported Establishment Of Palestinian State – Putin (TASS)

• How A US ‘Peace Plan’ Brought War To Israel’s Doorstep (Fomenko)

• Source of Dubious ‘Beheaded Babies’ Claim Is Israeli Settler Leader (GZ)

• Extensive Gas Reserves Off The Gaza Coastline (Monotti)

• Scott Ritter: Untracked US Arms to Client Regimes Land in Terrorist Hands (Sp.)

• Western Political System Doesn’t Bring Smartest People To The Top – Putin (RT)

• Zelensky ‘Starting To Annoy’ Everyone In US, Europe – Peskov (TASS)

• Elon Musk Predicts ‘Civil War’ In Europe (RT)

• Biden Classified Doc Scandal Deepens (ZH)

• VP Biden Emailed About Son’s Business 29,000+ Times (Fed.)

• The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) May Undermine Fundamental Rights (BR)

Nap/Ritter

Assad

President of Syria, Bashar Al-Assad, gave a masterful speech at the start of the Russian Ukrainian conflict.

"The West has proven that it does not have friends or enemies. It only has one enemy – anyone who stands in the way of its material interests."

The lie that the WEST… pic.twitter.com/fkJGaSXaCY

— DD Geopolitics (@DD_Geopolitics) October 11, 2023

Rand Paul
https://twitter.com/i/status/1712108710909091959

RFK

My first campaign ad! What do you guys think — run it during the Super Bowl? #Kennedy24 pic.twitter.com/PZ60UV9XQZ

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) October 11, 2023

“The Israeli military today is more comfortable making TikTok videos and posting Instagram photographs..”

• Israeli Assault on Gaza is Doomed to Fail (Scott Ritter)

Israel has amassed some 300,000 troops, armed with tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and artillery, and supported by helicopters and fixed wing aircraft. Their mission is to secure the perimeter around Gaza to make sure that Hamas fighters are not able to sortie forth and commit atrocities against the citizens of Israel like those that occurred on October 7 and 8. At some point it is estimated that these troops will be ordered into Gaza for the purpose of destroying Hamas as an organization. But the sad fact is that the Israeli Army today is not up to such a mission. It lacks the training and fortitude for a task like that, regardless of outcome, and will cost Israel thousands of lives if seen to fruition. Any Israeli assault on Gaza is doomed to fail before it even begins.

A short look back at the preparedness and training of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) helps underscore the reasoning behind such a bleak assessment. Earlier this year, over the course of two weeks, stretching from late May through early June, the IDF carried out a massive exercise, code named “Firm Hand,” which tested the Israeli capability to wage war on multiple fronts. Like a similar exercise held the year before, code named “Chariots of Fire,” the “Firm Hand” event focused on a major air campaign being waged against Iran, and a major ground war being waged against Hezbollah, in northern Israel/southern Lebanon. Both exercises envisioned that there would be outbreaks of localized violence in the West Bank and along the Gaza Strip that would need to be contained by forces allocated to the Central and Southern military commands, respectively.

The focus of effort for both exercises was the Northern Command, and more specifically, the border with Lebanon. There, beyond the border, were located the forces of Hezbollah, a Lebanese political party which maintained a militia larger, better trained, and better equipped than most armies. Israel fought a 34-day war with Hezbollah in August 2006, pitting a force that had grown to over 30,000 troops, backed by tanks, artillery, helicopters, and fixed wing aircraft, against a lightly armed unit of around 3,000 fighters. The war was an unmitigated disaster for the IDF. Hezbollah commanders found that Israeli troops were by and large poorly organized and disciplined, with very little training that was relevant to the rigors of modern war. Israeli tank operators were unfamiliar with tactics relevant to the terrain they were operating in, leaving themselves open to Hezbollah attacks that ended up destroying 20 of Israel’s vaunted Merkava tanks.

Israel has been struggling to overcome the stain of its 2006 defeat at the hands of Hezbollah. In 2016, the IDF embarked on Project Gideon, a five-year plan designed to reconfigure and retrain the Israeli Army so that it would not repeat the mistakes of 2006. When Project Gideon was completed, Israel then embarked on what it called the “Tnufa” (“Momentum”) plan, intended to build on the changes effected under Project Gideon. Part of the Tnufa plan is something called Ground Horizon, a series of technical innovations designed to make Israeli ground forces more effective. The IDF forces participating in both the Chariots of Fire and Firm Hand exercises had been at the receiving end of the Project Gideon/Tnufa/Ground Horizon changes. Two of the IDF’s premier units, the 91st “Galilee” Division, responsible for defending against Hezbollah from Lebanon, and the 36th Ga’ash (“Golan”) Armored Division, which is responsible for the Syrian border, took the lead in the exercises.

They carried out a multidivisional exercise where they conducted combined arms training against a Hezbollah-like foe. The Central Command and Southern Command practiced several counterterrorism exercises which emphasized the security of residents in Judea and Samaria. When the Firm Hand exercise was completed, the IDF high command declared it a success. They had not exercised against an event like the Hamas attacks of October 7-8 of this year. Urban combat is extraordinarily difficult. It is made even more so when a defender can settle in amongst the rubble of a destroyed city. Ask the Germans at Stalingrad. Ask the French, British, Indians, and Poles who fought at Monte Casino. Ask either the Ukrainians or Russians about Mariupol and Artemovsk (Bakhmut).

The Israeli military today is more comfortable making TikTok videos and posting Instagram photographs than they are in perfecting the skillsets needed to close with and destroy your enemy through firepower and maneuver. This is a military that, with a few exceptions found in the elite reconnaissance units of the IDF, has grown accustomed to a peacetime ritual more akin to the life of a corrections officer than soldier. The IDF has become experts at arresting children, beating up women, and murdering unarmed men. Digging a competent enemy out of the rubble of a destroyed city, especially when they have prepared and organized for such a battle, is deadly work. The Israeli troops who have been assembled outside of Gaza are not ready for this fight. They are not trained or equipped for this fight. They are not psychologically prepared for this fight.

“..some egghead in Brussels is watching coverage of all the gas guzzling pickup trucks used by Hamas to raid villages and kidnap people and asking, “What’s the carbon footprint on those?”

• Western Virtue Signaling Goes Hypersonic Over Israel (Marsden)

“Israel has the right to defend itself – today and in the days to come. The European Union stands with Israel,” tweeted European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, effectively blessing a carte blanche response by the notoriously measured and restrained Israeli leadership in response to the Hamas attacks. “Who do you think you are? You’re unelected, and have no authority to determine EU foreign policy, which is set by @EUCouncil,” replied Irish MEP Clare Daly. “Europe does NOT ‘stand with Israel’. We stand for peace. You do not speak for us. If you’ve nothing constructive to say, and you clearly don’t, shut up.” In a single tweet, von der Leyen managed to position all of Europe as more militant than even the editorial staff of one of Israel’s main national newspapers, Haaretz, which placed blame for the attacks squarely on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him of “annexation and dispossession” which “openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.”

The implication is that no action occurs in a vacuum absent the risk of sparking a reaction. The danger of Europe’s unelected Queen Ursula unilaterally launching hypersonic virtue signaling missiles in a knee-jerk emotional response is that it can’t possibly substitute for foreign policy decided in more sobering moments. Yet these days, more often than not, it’s the only kind of foreign policy we get, on everything from Israel to Ukraine. In yet another example of symbolism getting ahead of policy pragmatism, the EU announced withdrawal of its support for Palestine … before walking back the move just hours later. On Monday, Israel’s defense minister announced that the IDF was going to blockade Gaza even more than usual by preventing any entry of water, food, fuel, and electricity.

And just a couple hours later, EU Neighborhood and Enlargement Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi said the bloc was joining the cause – by withholding its humanitarian funding for the Palestinian people. Germany and Austria were the first to get the ball rolling on funding withdrawal. However, a few hours later, the EU aid freeze was reversed by the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, after an apparent epiphany that it would only end up “punishing all the Palestinian people” and would have “only further emboldened terrorists.” There’s no way Brussels may have been inadvertently funding those terrorists in the first place, is there? [..] Or maybe, given all the climate-conscious verbiage attached to the aid, the EU just got angry that Hamas’ hang gliders were motorized. You just know that some egghead in Brussels is watching coverage of all the gas guzzling pickup trucks used by Hamas to raid villages and kidnap people and asking, “What’s the carbon footprint on those?”

All the virtue signaling in the world can’t now compensate for a lack of due diligence that the schizophrenic withdrawal and subsequent reinstatement of Palestinian funding suggests. It wouldn’t be the first time that innocent people suffered because of Brussels’ incompetence. Just ask the people of the entire European bloc currently facing seemingly endless economic hardship so their leaders can keep patting themselves on the back for supporting Ukraine. And just like in Ukraine, Brussels doesn’t seem too interested in availing itself of an opportunity to play any kind of a mitigating or thoughtful role amid this conflict, but is rather taking its usual seat in riding shotgun to the US neocons on whatever the current thing happens to be.

While even Secretary of State Antony Blinken says that there’s no “smoking gun” tying Iran to the latest Hamas attacks, that hasn’t stopped the usual neocon warmongers on the American side of the Transatlantic alliance from substituting sloganeering for actual policy, either – in favor of Iranian regime change, of course. “This is one of history’s best cases for regime change,” said former US National Security Advisor John Bolton. Because, when it comes to drumming up Iranian regime change, neocons are suddenly willing to take Hamas’ word to the bank as their trustworthy source for Iran’s involvement. “The Biden Administration should get a spine and pin the blame on Tehran where it belongs,” Bolton later added. It “belongs,” facts and policy be damned, because it fits the radical neocon narrative, even if it ends up being to the detriment of American lives and interests.

“..Erdogan and Putin are contemplating a Turkish ship convoy of aid to Gaza, protected from Israeli attack by the Russian Navy from its Tartous base on the Syrian coast, and by the Russian Air Force from Hmeimim..”

• The Silence Of The Bears – Russia Is Reorienting Towards The Arabs (Helmer)

From a policy of equivalence and equivocation between Israel and the Arabs, Russia has reached the policy of engagement on the Arab side. The driver has been the US war to defeat and destroy Russia through the Ukraine. The longer the new Palestinian war lasts, the more clearly Russian military and political strategy in the Middle East will pursue a new anti-American line. The consequences are as great as the defeat of the US and NATO which Russia is now inflicting in Europe, and of the western sanctions war in the global commodity markets and the trading lanes at sea. “We are witnessing a sharp deterioration of the situation in the Middle East,” Putin said in his public welcome for Iraq’s prime minister, Muhammed Shia al-Sudani, at the Kremlin on Tuesday morning.

“I think that many will agree with me that this is a clear example of the United States’ failed policy in the Middle East, which tried to monopolise the settlement process, but, unfortunately, was not concerned with finding compromises acceptable to both sides, but, on the contrary, put forward its own ideas about how this should be done and put pressure on both sides, truly both — first on one, then on the other. But each time without considering the fundamental interests of the Palestinian people, bearing in mind, first of all, the need to implement the decision of the UN Security Council on the creation of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state.” The Foreign Ministry followed Putin later in the afternoon, when the regular weekly briefing by Maria Zakharova was advanced several days early in order to report there have been direct negotiations with the leaders of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, the Arab League, Iran, and Turkey – not with Israel.”*

“The US bet on the ‘freezing’ of the status quo and the promotion of ‘economic peace’, as well as the use of collective formats tailored for crisis response, has not justified itself,” Zakharova said. “Everyone sees the result…The statements of American politicians and public figures calling for ethnic cleansing in the region look monstrous. They openly call for one group of people [to be] near-doomed to complete destruction. Once again, aggression, violation of the rule of law, and the caveman’s hatred have emerged on the surface of the American declarations of good looks and human rights dogmas.” In the first direct Russian warning to the US Navy force in the Eastern Mediterranean, Zakharova added: “So far we see that the situation is developing along the path of escalation. There is a great risk of involving third forces in this conflict. And this is fraught with long-term consequences for the region and for the world.”

Putin followed in the evening on the telephone with the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “The need for an immediate ceasefire by both sides and the resumption of the negotiation process was emphasised,” according to the Kremlin’s communiqué. “Mutual readiness to actively contribute to this was expressed…Separate issues of Russian-Turkish cooperation in various fields were also touched upon.” Erdogan’s press release was more revealing. He and Putin had “touched upon what initiatives can be taken to meet humanitarian needs in the region, as the Turkish president told Putin that targeting civilian settlements is worrying and Türkiye does not welcome such move.” Erdogan’s twitter announcement adds: “President Erdogan and President Putin of Russia also exchanged views on potential initiatives to meet humanitarian needs in the region.”

This is a hint that Erdogan and Putin are contemplating a Turkish ship convoy of aid to Gaza, protected from Israeli attack by the Russian Navy from its Tartous base on the Syrian coast, and by the Russian Air Force from Hmeimim. This humanitarian operation by sea would aim at breaking the blockade of the coast by the Israelis, and running the gauntlet of the USS Gerald Ford and its squadron further offshore. If this operation, a reminder of the Gaza Flotilla of 2010, is in planning now – the open signals are warning Washington and the US Navy to expect it – then the confrontation, and the risk to the US and Israel of strategic defeat at sea, are unprecedented.

“..those who have been trying for decades to solve this problem by force have the upper hand. Unfortunately, this leads to such tragic events as we are witnessing now..”

• Russia Always Supported Establishment Of Palestinian State – Putin (TASS)

Russia has always advocated the implementation of the UN Security Council’s decision on the creation of an independent Palestinian state, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the plenary session of the Russian Energy Week. “We have always supported the implementation of the decisions of the UN Security Council, I mean, first of all, the creation of an independent Palestinian state. This is the root of all problems,” Putin pointed out. He also said that Russia’s position on the settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict did not emerge as a result of the recent tragic events, but was formed over the past decades. “And this position is well known both to the Israeli side and to our friends in Palestine,” the Russian president added.

He noted that the Palestinian-Israeli issue has been accompanied and aggravated by “mediation activities” of a number of countries in recent years. According to the Russian president, there are still political figures and experts in these countries today who believe that it is necessary to follow the path of creating an independent state. “And there are such people in Israel. But those who have been trying for decades to solve this problem by force have the upper hand. Unfortunately, this leads to such tragic events as we are witnessing now,” Putin said.

Abraham Accords. Trump, Kushner, Pompeo.

• How A US ‘Peace Plan’ Brought War To Israel’s Doorstep (Fomenko)

Conflict between Israel and Palestine is about as common as the sun rising in the East, but this time it is different, not only because of the frightening number of victims on both sides over just a few days, but because such conflicts have not constituted a formal war since 1973, and the legally recognized territory of Israel has not been invaded by an enemy since 1948. The stakes are huge, but one might question, how exactly did it come to this? Why is this happening now? And how does it relate to the broader context of not only the Middle East, but the world? Two words: Abraham Accords. The United States’ push to create a one-sided, unbalanced and effective appeasement of Israel’s actions, coupled with an attempt to use such to isolate Iran, has led to the calculation by Hamas that the only way to salvage its cause is to unleash a full-scale armed struggle.

In doing so, the militants’ goal is not to destroy Israel head on, because we must acknowledge that such an outcome is not possible. Rather, it is to turn the diplomatic and political tide in the region against Israel and the US in the name of a new Jihad. The Abraham Accords are a peace initiative started in 2020 by the Trump administration that seeks to get Arab countries to unilaterally recognize the State of Israel, without West Jerusalem itself making any concessions regarding the issue of Palestinian statehood. Through the accords, driven by the pro-Israel fanaticism of former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the US was successful in getting the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Morocco, and Bahrain to open up diplomatic relations with Israel. The US typically incentivized this by making unilateral concessions to these countries as part of a deal, such as removing Sudan from the State Sponsor of Terrorism list or recognizing Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara.

The Abraham Accords were not a serious peace initiative because all they did was bribe countries to effectively side with Israel and abandon Palestine, instead of seeking peace in one of the most prominent simmering conflicts in the region. Moreover, the accords’ true geopolitical intention was to facilitate the diplomatic isolation of Iran by weakening and splitting the anti-Zionist cause. The grander strategy, by extension, was to facilitate American hegemony over the Middle East, given Israel’s very close relations with the US. Opposition to the US in the region has always gone hand-in-hand with opposition to Israel, be it through Arab nationalism (Syria, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and, historically, Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt) or Islamic fundamentalism (Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas).

In line with this, the US hoped that, by diplomatically isolating Iran, imposing tough sanctions on it and attempting to force it to capitulate on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, Washington could sustain its order over the Middle East and maintain its favourable security relationships in the region. The Abraham Accords, to this end, encouraged appeasement of Israel, rather than making a mutually acceptable compromise which sought to move towards a two-state solution. In promoting this, the US was happy to allow Israel under Netanyahu to continually move the goalposts towards a “one-state solution” and to effectively ignore Palestinian resistance, which it now describes as “unprovoked.”

”..who incited riots to ‘wipe out’ Palestinian village..”

• Source of Dubious ‘Beheaded Babies’ Claim Is Israeli Settler Leader (GZ)

After an Israeli reserve soldier named David Ben Zion told a reporter Palestinian militants “cut [off] heads of babies,” Biden, Netanyahu, and the international media amplified the dubious claim. The Grayzone has identified Ben Zion as a fanatical settler leader who incited riots by demanding a Palestinian town be “wiped out.” An international outcry erupted when Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced that Palestinian militants from the besieged Gaza Strip had killed 40 “babies,” and beheaded several of them during an incursion into Kfar Aza, a kibbutz on the Gaza border. President Joseph Biden repeated the inflammatory claim during an October 10 White House Rose Garden address, while networks across the West carried the story without a shred of critical scrutiny.

According to CNN correspondent Nic Robertson, apparently citing Israeli military sources, Palestinian militants carried out, “ISIS-style executions,” in which they were “cutting the heads off of people,” including babies and pets. The Grayzone has now identified a key source of the claim that Palestinian militants beheaded Israeli babies. He is David Ben Zion, a Deputy Commander of Unit 71 of the Israeli army who also happens to be an extremist settler leader who incited violent riots against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank earlier this year. In an October 10 interview with reporter Nicole Zedek of the Israeli state-sponsored i24 network, Ben Zion stated, “We walked door to door, we killed a lot of terrorists. They are very bad. They cut heads of children, they cut heads of women. But we are stronger than them.” He added, “We know that they are animals,” referring to Palestinians, “but we found that they don’t have any heart.”

Hours after his interview with i24, still in the village of Kfar Aza, a uniformed Ben Zion could be seen repeatedly grinning ear-to-ear in a video posted to his Facebook – an odd disposition for a supposed witness to the methodical butchering of babies. Earlier that day, i24’s Zedek declared during a live report from Kfar Aza, “About 40 babies were taken out on gurneys… Cribs overturned, strollers left behind, doors left wide open.’” Zedek’s report has been viewed tens of millions of times on Twitter and promoted by Israel’s Foreign Ministry – which underwrites her network. Hours later, she qualified her statement, stating, “Soldiers told me they believe 40 babies/children were killed. The exact death toll is still unknown as the military continues to go house to house and find more Israeli casualties.” Yet the unverified tale quickly made its way to the highest levels of leadership, as if by design.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman stated unequivocally that babies and toddlers were found with their “heads decapitated,” while President Joe Biden himself vaguely gestured towards “stomach-churning reports of babies being killed.” Likewise, cable news has flown into a frenzy, breathlessly reporting the story despite the IDF walking back its initial confirmation. Meanwhile, some reporters who initially carried the official Israeli allegations about beheaded babies began issuing qualifications of their own. Oren Ziv, an Israeli reporter who joined the military’s official tour of Kfar Aza, commented on Twitter, “I’m getting a lot of question about the reports of ‘Hamas beheaded babies’ that were published after the media tour in the village. During the tour we didn’t see any evidence of this, and the army spokesperson or commanders also didn’t mention any such incidents.”

X thread.

• Extensive Gas Reserves Off The Gaza Coastline (Monotti)

Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline: “It should be noted that 60 percent of the gas reserves along the Gaza-Israel coastline belong to Palestine. The BG Group drilled two wells in 2000: Gaza Marine-1 and Gaza Marine-2. Reserves are estimated by British Gas to be of the order of 1.4 trillion cubic feet, valued at approximately 4 billion dollars. These are the figures made public by British Gas. The size of Palestine’s gas reserves could be much larger.

Who Owns the Gas Fields?
The issue of sovereignty over Gaza’s gas fields is crucial. From a legal standpoint, the gas reserves belong to Palestine. The death of Yasser Arafat, the election of the Hamas government and the ruin of the Palestinian Authority have enabled Israel to establish de facto control over Gaza’s offshore gas reserves. British Gas (BG Group) has been dealing with the Tel Aviv government. In turn, the Hamas government has been bypassed in regards to exploration and development rights over the gas fields.

In 2006, British Gas “was close to signing a deal to pump the gas to Egypt.” (Times, May, 23, 2007). According to reports, British Prime Minister Tony Blair intervened on behalf of Israel with a view to shunting the agreement with Egypt.

Gaza and Energy Geopolitics. The military occupation of Gaza is intent upon transferring the sovereignty of the gas fields to Israel in violation of international law.”

“We do that everywhere we go. We just give the weapons away and we walk away…

• Scott Ritter: Untracked US Arms to Client Regimes Land in Terrorist Hands (Sp.)

US military aid to its client regimes goes unaccounted for — and often finds its way to terrorist groups, says a former UN weapons inspector. Video emerged this week of a Hamas guerrilla thanking the US for the rifle he carried in the groups incursion into Israel, saying it came from a shipment of weapons to Ukraine that had found its way onto the black market. Scott Ritter told Sputnik that Washington is lackadaisical when it comes to keeping track of arms it gifts to its foreign proxies. “We’ve seen the weapons some of the Hamas assault squads are making use of American-made M4 rifles,” Ritter noted. “So it’s not a question of whether or not they have them. We know they have them. The question is, where did they get them from?” “Historically we tend to flood a client state with weapons as part of our security agreement,” Ritter said.

“The American calculation is never about the quality of the assistance being provided, but the quantity, because the quantification is linked to a dollar figure that the US Congress has established.” “That dollar figure needs to be translated into a deliverable that could be reported back to Congress, saying that we have provided this much money for this and that. And so weapons is the easiest thing we will send in,” he added. He recalled how during the Western occupation of Iraq, advisers to the new police force asked for rifles and handguns from the US — which corrupt officers then sold on the black market. The firearms ultimately ended up in the hands of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)* militants in neighboring Turkiye, where they were captured by police and traced back to the US.

“We do that everywhere we go. We just give the weapons away and we walk away,” Ritter said. Washington’s failure to keep track of its arms handouts to the Kiev regime is also being felt acutely in West Africa.”We see the same thing in Africa, where weaponry that we provided to Ukraine, in particular handheld anti-tank missiles, are showing up in the Lake Chad region in the hands of Boko Haram, the Islamist terrorist group that’s using them against Niger forces, the forces from Chad, forces from Nigeria, forces from Cameroon, many of these forces whom we train,” Ritter said. “Our weapons that we send to Ukraine get in the hands of the people that are fighting the forces that are ostensibly friendly to us. So this is a big problem.”

The former US Marine said government officials seemed unconcerned where the billions of dollars’ worth of military aid ends up. “There’s literally no accounting for these weapons,” Ritter warned. “There’s no quality control in terms of being able to tell Congress or tell anybody, American policymakers, what the status of these weapons is.”

“Europe could have just said: ‘Open this route now. We need it to support our economy. But no..”

• Western Political System Doesn’t Bring Smartest People To The Top – Putin (RT)

Russia sees absolutely no sense in the EU’s current policy of forgoing Russian energy supplies, particularly gas, President Vladimir Putin told the Russian Energy Week forum on Wednesday. He added that “the modern political system in [the West] obviously sometimes brings not the smartest people to the top.” Speaking about the issue of Russian gas exports to Europe, he pointed to what he called a lack of common sense in some European capitals. “There is no sensible explanation to why some European economies, including Germany’s, should behave like this,” the president said, referring to the situation in the European energy market. He called it “surprising” that European nations did not demand that Kiev reopen one of the Russian gas pipelines going through Ukraine after it was shut down.

Ukraine halted Russian gas transit along one of the routes running through its territory back in May, arguing that it had lost control over one of the gas compressor stations. The station in question is located in the Lugansk People’s Republic, which voted to join Russia last year. The Ukrainian pipeline operator claimed that Russian forces controlling the compressor station were somehow “interfering” with its technical processes and shut down its part of the line. Moscow denied the allegations and warned that Russian gas exports could not be effectively re-routed to other pipelines to compensate for the shutdown. In July, Kiev said that it might cut Russian gas supplies to Europe altogether as it does not intend to renew the transit deal with Moscow. “I believe, by the winter of 2024, Europe will not need Russian gas at all,” Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko told Politico.

The 2019 transit agreement allows Russia to export some 40 billion cubic meters of gas per year via Ukraine until the end of 2024. A third of this volume should have reached Europe via a pipeline that Kiev has already cut off. “Europe could have just said: ‘Open this route now. We need it to support our economy. But no,” Putin said, commenting on Kiev’s actions. A similar approach could have been used when Poland terminated a supply contract with Russia ahead of its end-2022 expiry date. Warsaw rejected Moscow’s demand for ruble payments in May 2022 and started using its leg of the Yamal-Europe Pipeline to pump stored gas from Germany. The Yamal-Europe Pipeline, which links European customers to the natural gas fields in Russia’s north, used to carry nearly half of Gazprom’s westbound gas deliveries.

Moscow repeatedly stated that it was ready to restart supplies of natural gas to the EU via this route, adding that the shipments had been halted in the first place for political reasons. Germany might have pointed to the fact that it was the biggest donor to the EU common budget while Poland was the largest recipient of EU funds, Putin said, adding that Berlin might have told Warsaw “not to bite the hand that feeds you.” The German government could have also approved the use of the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the Russian leader stated. One of the two pipeline strings remained operable after a series of underwater explosions that destroyed the other three strings of Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2. “Nord Stream 2 is a direct [route] to Germany,” Putin said, adding that it could have “delivered 27.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year.” Instead, Germany “opts to buy [gas] with a 30% premium and not use our energy resource. That’s their choice,” the president added.

“People are starting to wonder: What is this man spending our money on if Ukraine is a country most famous for, you know, being such an oasis of corruption on Earth?”

• Zelensky ‘Starting To Annoy’ Everyone In US, Europe – Peskov (TASS)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has found himself in a rather challenging situation, as he is getting on the nerves of everyone in the United States and Europe, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with the Moscow. The Kremlin. Putin TV program, an excerpt of which was posted on anchor Pavel Zarubin’s Telegram channel. “Zelensky is in a rather tricky position. First of all, he is starting to touch a nerve. He is starting to annoy everyone both in America and Europe,” Peskov said. “People are starting to wonder: What is this man spending our money on if Ukraine is a country most famous for, you know, being such an oasis of corruption on Earth?” the Kremlin spokesman said.

“Certainly, nobody likes it, and this dissatisfaction with Zelensky will grow,” Peskov concluded, pointing out that the Ukrainian president feels this and “is beginning to crack.” Moreover, the Kremlin spokesman continued, “he [Zelensky] still has that professional greed: How could the weapons promised to me be given to Israel?” “That is why things are not so easy for him. Things are not so easy. Traditionally, they are already spoiled and are used to this sort of mentorship. We will wait and see how [the situation] unfolds from here,” the Russian presidential spokesman added.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1712198515244630379

Immigration.

• Elon Musk Predicts ‘Civil War’ In Europe (RT)

US entrepreneur Elon Musk has suggested that European Union may face the prospect of civil war due to its immigrant-welcoming policies. Two weeks ago, he visited the US southern border, wading into the bitter debate over immigration in his home country. “If current trends continue, civil war in Europe is inevitable,” he claimed in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday. Musk was responding to a thread by Moscow-born British satirist and political commentator Konstantin Kisin. He denounced what he called “people celebrating rape and murder by a proscribed terrorist organisation as the police stand and watch in major European cities.” Kisin was referring to pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the wake of the deadly incursion by Hamas into southern Israel last week.

Some residents of European nations focused on condemning Israel for mistreatment of people in the West Bank and Gaza rather than condemning the killings and kidnappings of Israelis by the Palestinian militant movement. “We import more people who think this way every day,” Kisin noted, decrying the lack of “a sensible immigration policy” screening for people with “cultural values that match our own.” He was presumably referring to the EU rather than the UK, where Conservative governments have ramped up immigration controls since Brexit. Kisin concluded that British author Douglas Murray was correct when he argued that European civilization was committing suicide in his 2017 book ‘The Strange Death of Europe’. Immigration is a hot-button issue in the US as well, as critics of the administration of President Joe Biden accuse him of turning a blind eye to illegal border crossings for the sake of ideological and political goals.

Musk weighed in on the debate in late September, when he visited the border city of Eagle Pass in Texas. The US should “smooth out legal immigration and stop a flow of people that is of such magnitude that we’re leading to a collapse of social services,” Musk urged at the time. He declared himself “extremely pro-immigrant,” citing his own status as a naturalized citizen. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York attacked her colleague, Tony Gonzales of Texas, who gave Musk a tour of the border area. She said the Republican “decided to skip town to joyride with a billionaire” instead of staying in Washington DC and working on ways to avoid a government shutdown. Congress has since passed a compromise stopgap spending bill, prolonging the fight over budgetary priorities. Musk has previously branded Ocasio-Cortez “not very smart” on immigration issues.

“There is no reasonable explanation as to why this many White House employees and lawyers were so concerned with retrieving boxes they believed only contained personal documents and materials..”

1/ He was not allowed at any time to have any of the -highly classified- docs. Period.
2/ He now says (paraphrased) that he didn’t know they were there.
3/ That only makes it worse.

• Biden Classified Doc Scandal Deepens (ZH)

More than a year before White House lawyers claim to have ‘discovered’ classified documents at the Penn Biden Center in November of 2022, evidence has emerged that White House employees ‘inspected’ or ‘took inventory’ of them, while another official removed “a few” boxes containing Biden materials that October, according to the House Oversight Committee. According to a letter to White House counsel Edward Siskel from Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), the official timeline of events provided by the Biden team “omitted months of communications, planning, and coordinating.” Comer says that a Penn Biden Center employee told the committee that on March 18, 2021, senior White House aide Annie Tomasini “[took] inventory of President Biden’s documents and materials” stored at the center, where he established a private office after his vice presidency.

The same witness also said that on Oct. 13, 2022, Oval Office deputy director of operations, Ashley Williams, removed “a few” of Biden’s boxes. The White House has previously claimed that all relevant documents were either moved to the National Archives or the DOJ, while Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, said that the documents were discovered on November 2, 2022 – a total lie. The committee, which has conducted three witness interviews, says on five occasions, White House employees, including former White House Counsel Dana Remus, and the president’s former assistant Kathy Chung, a current Department of Defense employee, went to the Penn Biden Center to take inventory, pack up or remove materials. These visits occurred between March 2021 and mid-October 2022. -CBS News

“There is no reasonable explanation as to why this many White House employees and lawyers were so concerned with retrieving boxes they believed only contained personal documents and materials,” said Comer in his letter. The letter requests transcribed interviews with Remus, Williams, Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, a top adviser to the first lady, and Katie Reilly, a West Wing aide, according to CBS News. It is also asking for documentation and communication related to the documents. The committee has already interviewed Chung, who was then-Vice President Biden’s assistant. Democrats, of course, have resorted to whataboutism…

“Former President Trump’s willful retention of hundreds of highly classified documents, his defiance of court-ordered subpoenas, his reported disclosure of our country’s most sensitive national security information, and false statements to law enforcement should worry the Chair of a congressional committee with jurisdiction over government records,” said a spokesman for Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. “Instead Chairman Comer is using the Committee to focus on President Biden whose complete cooperation with the Special Counsel’s investigation stands in stark contrast, including voluntarily participating in a two-day interview with the Special Counsel, and opening the doors to his Penn Biden Center office and private residence to investigators.”

As Jonathan Turley noted earlier, the ‘ultimate punchline’ here could be that Special Counsel Robert Hur may be in a sticky situation if he actually finds evidence of a crime. On its face, the President claims that he had no knowledge of these documents appears dubious at best. Some classified material reportedly goes back to Biden’s time as a senator — material that he would have had to remove from a sensitive compartmented information facility or secure room on Capitol Hill. More importantly, the documents from the Obama Administration were removed when Biden left as vice president. They were then divided and repeatedly moved to different locations. That suggests not just knowledge but a purpose. Why were they divided and some documents were found in his garage and possibly his library?

If Hur found fingerprints that contradict Biden’s statements, he could face not just some of the same charges brought against Trump but also possible false statement or obstruction charges. Notably, Biden used counsel to conduct searches and (as in the Trump case) additional classified materials were found after the Biden team said that they had finished their searches. There are serious questions over whether, in allowing uncleared counsel to search through these documents, evidence may have been lost in how they were stored or appeared in locations like the garage. Hur can bring charges against third parties, who would not be barred from indictment under the DOJ policy. But what does Hur then do if he has evidence against the President himself?

4 years as VP is some 1450 days. That’s 20 mails per day, every single day. That’s a lot. Doesn’t mention the pseudonym accounts.

• VP Biden Emailed About Son’s Business 29,000+ Times (Fed.)

President Joe Biden denied long before he was inaugurated that he ever discussed business with his son. A new FOIA obtained by America First Legal via lawsuit, however, revealed that Joe emailed his son Hunter Biden, his brother James “Jim” Biden, and their respective firms tens of thousands of times over the course of his vice presidency. In a joint status report published by the Washington D.C. District Court on Friday, the National Archives and Records Administration reluctantly admitted that it knew of 4,243 emails between then-Vice President Joe and Hunter Biden, another 1,751 emails between Joe and Jim, 19,335 emails between Joe and Hunter’s private equity firm Rosemont Seneca, and 3,738 emails between Joe and Jim’s Chinese-communist party connected consulting firm Lion Hall Group.

Joe, Hunter, Jim, and the firms listed in the court documents are at the center of the GOP investigation into the Biden family influence-peddling operation. “These damning numbers further confirm that there was never a wall separating the Office of the Vice President and Hunter Biden’s business endeavors. In fact, there was extensive commingling between them,” AFL wrote in a statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter. It’s unclear what exactly the emails said since NARA claimed it would take more than 15 months to sort through the data requested by AFL. The existence of the emails, however, is proof alone that Biden has lied about his involvement in his family’s scheme to sell political favors to foreign oligarchs.

Biden insisted in 2019 that “there will be an absolute wall between personal and private [business interests] and the government.” “I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or with anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses. Period,” Biden said. From the October 2020 debate stage, the then-presidential candidate specifically denied that Hunter “made money” on China. At the time, the New York Post had already reported on emails from Hunter’s abandoned laptop detailing how the younger Biden pursued business deals with one of China’s largest energy companies with hopes of cashing in “for me and my family.” Since then, receipts, White House visitor logs, testimonies from Biden business partners, text messages, and documents eviscerating Joe’s lies have surfaced.

Hunter’s text messages, obtained by the House Ways and Means Committee, indicate the Bidens saw Joe as the one and “only asset” of the Biden family “brand” that they sold to foreign businessmen in exchange for cash. This pay-to-play racket, receipts suggest, enriched members of the Biden family, including Hunter and Jim, by at least $20 million. Despite corporate media trying to cover for his flip-flop by claiming that his relationship with Hunter’s business partners has “long been known,” Joe’s involvement as the “big guy,” who would receive a cut from a deal with Chinese energy company CEFC and other foreign players, was apparent from the start.

“Trusted Flaggers..”

• The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) May Undermine Fundamental Rights (BR)

The Digital Services Act (DSA) aims to provide a European solution to an important societal challenge: illegal content and misinformation online. These are real and significant problems, for which new legislation was needed indeed. The DSA was developed and approved during the pandemic. It is a lengthy and complex text, and I believe it has received insufficient political and public scrutiny. The DSA does contain highly valuable provisions, e.g. providing mechanisms for fighting child abuse and for enforcing transparency requirements in online advertising and recommendation systems. However, there are also concerning parts, which may undermine fundamental rights, especially freedom of expression and information, a cornerstone of European democracies and enshrined as Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Hereunder, I summarize my understanding of some key points in the DSA, omitting technical details and nuances, and emphasizing those potential risks.

• The DSA requires that online platforms make it easy for anyone to report allegedly illegal content. Online platforms (and providers of so-called ‘hosting services’ more generally), such as social media platforms, must provide user-friendly mechanisms that allow anyone to ‘notify’ (i.e. flag or report) content on the platform (e.g., a message on X) that they believe to be illegal (Art 16).

• Online platforms become liable for reported content. Once notified, platforms (e.g., X) become liable for the notified content, if it is indeed illegal (Art 6, and Art 16 paragraph 3). They then must quickly take appropriate action against it (suppression, removal of the content, suspension or blocking of the author…) (Art 16).

• Notices submitted by so-called Trusted Flaggers must be handled with priority. Trusted Flaggers are organizations that will be certified as such by the so-called national Digital Service Coordinators (DSCs) (see below and Art 49-51). Platforms must handle notices submitted by Trusted Flaggers as a matter of priority (Art 22). Trusted Flaggers that notify content too often inaccurately can lose their privileged status, but they risk nothing more than that (Art 22, par 6-7).

• Complaint and redress procedures must be established, but they will take time. Complaint and redress procedures must be established and clearly communicated (see e.g. Art 16 par 5, and Art 17 par 3(f)). Such procedures must include an internal complaint-handling system (Art 20), out-of-court dispute settlement bodies (Art 21), and judicial redress. However, these procedures can drag on for months, during which time the measure (suppression, removal, etc.) remains in force.

• Terms & Conditions (T&Cs) are used as a means against undesirable (but not illegal) content. Notifications can compel a platform to take measures for two possible reasons (e.g., Art 17 par 1):
1/ because the platform also deems the content to be illegal (or, perhaps more often, because it does not have the time or resources to investigate, and thus prefers to err on the side of caution), or
2/ because the content violates the platform’s T&Cs (but is not necessarily illegal).

Vampire squid

Vampire squid propelling itself across the sea floor by flapping the fins on its side
pic.twitter.com/r74UzHWxdq

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) October 11, 2023

Cuttlefish

The giant cuttlefish also known as the Australian giant cuttlefish (Sepia apama), is the world's largest cuttlefish species, growing to 50 cm (20 in) in mantle length and up to 100 cm (39 in) in total lengthpic.twitter.com/O0ZXTYbdTq

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 11, 2023

Dogs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1712336414795334018

Turtle
https://twitter.com/i/status/1712120874944598105

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Debt Rattle August 27 2023

Aug 272023

August 27, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:50 am Finance Tagged with: Civil War, creep, forever war, impeachment inquiry, Prigozhin, Shokin, special counsel, Tiktok 27 Responses »

Gustave Dore Dante and the Angel of the Church before the Door of Purgatory 1868

• ‘US In Conflict With Itself’ – Medvedev (RT)

• Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Has Failed – It’s Time to Reevaluate (Greenwald)

• Biden Staffers Met With Special Counsel Aides Before Trump Indictment (NYP)

• The House Has No Alternative to an Impeachment Inquiry into Joe Biden (Turley)

• Fired Ukraine Prosecutor Corroborates Biden Corruption (ZH)

• World Laughing At EU Over Russia Sanctions – Hungary (RT)

• Tucker Carlson Blasts ‘Creep’ US Ambassador To Hungary (RT)

• No, Biden Can’t Wage Forever War in Ukraine (Sp.)

• Biden Administration Sought Control Over TikTok (RT)

• Prigozhin, Putin, and What Next? (VandenHeuvel)

• I Just Want To Sell Titty Pictures (ZH)

VDH

Victor Davis Hanson: "We are in the middle of a cultural revolution."

If I said 10 years ago that in the future… nobody would believe it:

• Biological men compete in women's sports.
• Saying there are only two genders can get you fired.
• 2.3 million people illegally enter… pic.twitter.com/CzJg4mxe9y

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) August 26, 2023

Macgregor

The last people who are consulted, the last people who are benefitting from anything that goes on in Washington are Americans..

pic.twitter.com/U1E874OOC8

— Douglas Macgregor (@DougAMacgregor) August 27, 2023

“Such domestic conflicts often end with a civil war.”

“Biden’s resolve to aid Kiev against Russia has made him “a hostage of Ukraine, which is very sad for both Ukraine and the US..”

• ‘US In Conflict With Itself’ – Medvedev (RT)

The highly toxic political climate in the US feels like the confrontation between Democrats and Republicans can spiral into a full-blown civil war, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has said. Speaking to RT and news agency TASS on Saturday, Medvedev said that there was “a colossal rift between the elites” in the US. “It’s a clash between the conservative Republican establishment and the liberal segment, represented by the Democratic Party, which has actually torn America apart.” “America is currently in a state of internal strife. America is conflicting with itself,” Medvedev, who is currently the deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council, argued. “Moreover, in my view, this strife is irreconcilable in some aspects. Such domestic conflicts often end with a civil war.”

“I don’t know what will happen in the US, but the level of the conflict right now is [high],” the Russian politician noted. To illustrate his point, Medvedev brought up the ongoing criminal prosecution of ex-president Donald Trump, who is seeking the Republican Party nomination to run against incumbent Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election. Medvedev claimed that the charges against Trump were brought “not for the sake of justice, but to prevent Trump from participating in the new election.” Asked whether there were similarities between the administration of Barack Obama and the Biden White House in terms of dealing with conflicts, Medvedev said that there was more “pragmatism” during the Obama years.

He went on to argue that Biden has been more “involved mentally, politically and economically” in Ukraine, which had “tied up his hands.” Biden’s resolve to aid Kiev against Russia has made him “a hostage of Ukraine, which is very sad for both Ukraine and the US,”Medvedev said. Trump is facing a litany of criminal charges, including for allegedly mishandling classified documents and attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. On Saturday, he was booked at a Georgia jail and released on bail, becoming the first US leader to have a mugshot taken.

“..the war in Ukraine is following exactly the same pattern as every other U.S. war fought over the last 50 years.”

• Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Has Failed – It’s Time to Reevaluate (Greenwald)

There is no question that the war in Ukraine has radically changed. Even Western media outlets that have been steadfastly cheerleading for this war – and, indeed, even Ukrainians themselves – are now admitting what battlefield realities dispositively prove. The much-vaunted Ukrainian counter-offensive – the imminent dramatic event we were assured for months would be transformative in finally giving Ukraine the upper hand and dislodging entrenched Russian positions inside Ukraine: a claim that doubled as a propaganda tool to assuage a growingly restless Western population about their endless support for this war – is now, no matter how you slice it, a failure.

After months of multi-pronged attacks, Ukraine’s gains are so minimal and trivial as to be barely worth noting. Russia continues to occupy a very significant chunk of both Eastern and southern Ukraine, along with Crimea which they have held since 2014. Even Western intelligence reports acknowledge that the Russians’ defensive positions are more fortified and entrenched than any seen in decades. The U.S. has already depleted its own stockpiles of artillery and other vital weapons and simply does not have to give Ukraine what they need to have any hope of changing this situation in anything resembling the near- or the short-term future.

What makes all of this vastly worse is that the cost to Ukrainians in their lives is staggeringly high. Consider just this one harrowing data point: more Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the first 18 months of this war than the number of American soldiers killed during the decade-plus war in Vietnam. The Ukrainian men who were eager to fight and who volunteered to do so have long ago been used up – killed, maimed, or exhausted. Zelensky’s only option for continuing combat is to increase domestic repression, impose greater and greater punishment for desertion, and use harsher and harsher means to force those unwilling to fight to do so against their will. In so many ways, this conflict resembles some of the worst horrors of World War I, including the need to put unwilling men who do not want to fight the deeply grim choice of either offering themselves up as cannon fodder or facing unimaginably harsh punishments by a government completely unconstrained by basic considerations of human rights or legal process, operating under full-scale martial law.

At this point, debates over who is to blame for this war barely matter. All that does matter is the question of how this will end, and who will end it. It is simply becoming unsustainable – politically, economically, and morally – to justify having Western nations pour their resources into fueling and continuing this war that Ukraine has less and less chance of winning. At the start of the war, many who claim that the real goal of the US was not to save Ukraine and Ukrainians but rather to destroy them – at the altar of their geostrategic goal of weakening Russia – were accused of being callous and conspiratorial. Now, there is little reasonable space to contest that they were right all along.

Joe Biden just asked for another $25 billion to keep this war going – as he offered $700 checks per household to the victims of the Maui fire and as profits for the European arms industry reach such record heights that they do not even bother to conceal their glee. Even if you were someone who supported the US role in Ukraine back in February of 2022 with the best of intentions – namely, you wanted to help a country seeing to avoid Russian domination – the failed nature of this mission has to compel a re-evaluation of perspective and policy. The last thing this war is doing is protecting Ukraine and Ukrainians. It is destroying both of those while imposing suffering among everyone in the U.S. and Western countries other than a tiny sliver of arms dealers and intelligence agencies. In other words, the war in Ukraine is following exactly the same pattern as every other U.S. war fought over the last 50 years.

“..they have trashed every ethical rule that exists and they have created a state police. It is a Biden state prosecutor and a Biden state police..”

• Biden Staffers Met With Special Counsel Aides Before Trump Indictment (NYP)

The White House counsel’s office met with a top aide to Special Counsel Jack Smith just weeks before he brought charges against former President Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents — raising serious concerns about coordinated legal efforts aimed at President Biden’s likely opponent in 2024. Jay Bratt, who joined the special counsel team in November 2022, shortly after it was formed, took a meeting in the White House on March 31, 2023, with Caroline Saba, deputy chief of staff for the White House counsel’s office, White House visitor logs show. They were joined in the 10 a.m. meeting by Danielle Ray, an FBI agent in the Washington field office. Nine weeks later, Trump was indicted by Smith’s office on June 8, 2023.

Bratt, 63, also met with Saba at the White House in November 2021, when Trump was mired in negotiations with the National Archives, who were demanding the return of presidential records from his Mar-a-Lago estate before a formal investigation had not yet been opened. Saba, who is not an attorney, left the White House in May to attend law school. Bratt had a third meeting in the White House in September 2021, this time with Katherine Reily, an advisor to the White House chief of staff’s office. The logs offer no information about what was discussed at the meetings. Critics and legal experts questioned why Bratt was taking meetings at all with the White House counsel’s office while part of an active investigation into President Biden’s likely 2024 Republican opponent.

“There is no legitimate purpose for a line [DOJ] guy to be meeting with the White House except if it’s coordinated by the highest levels,” said former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a one-time top federal prosecutor in the Southern District. Caroline Saba, a deputy chief of staff for the White House counsel’s office, met with Jay Bratt at the White House, records show. When asked if he believed the White House and special counsel were coordinating the prosecution of Trump, Giuliani said: “You’re damn right I do.” “What’s happening is they have trashed every ethical rule that exists and they have created a state police. It is a Biden state prosecutor and a Biden state police,” he continued.

“While Garland seems incapable of imagining any crime involving the president, he has made a conclusive — if unintended — case for an impeachment inquiry.“

• The House Has No Alternative to an Impeachment Inquiry into Joe Biden (Turley)

House Republicans had previously demanded that Weiss and his team answer questions about the investigation and the plea bargain. And an appearance before a House committee was planned when Garland suddenly preempted that by doing what many of us have demanded for years: He appointed a special counsel. To the amazement of many, though, he appointed the one prosecutor who should have been categorically excluded — David Weiss. Section 600.3 of the DOJ’s code on special counsels requires an appointment from outside the Justice Department, for obvious reasons. While another prior special counsel, John Durham, also came from within the Justice Department, Durham was retiring from the department at the time of his appointment.

Not only did Garland have to ignore his own regulations to appoint Weiss but he also had to ignore the main qualification: The appointed outside counsel should be someone with “a reputation for integrity and impartial decision-making.” Weiss could well have a legitimate defense to Republican complaints that he ran a fixed investigation into Hunter or accusations that he made false statements to his own team. However, he clearly remains under suspicion by many people. That is reflected in an ABC News/Ipsos poll in which almost half of Americans lack trust that the DOJ will conduct the Hunter Biden investigation in a “fair and nonpartisan manner.” In addition to this controversial appointment, Garland again refused to expressly extend the special counsel’s mandate to include influence-peddling allegations involving President Biden.

Even some liberal pundits are mystified by these moves and why Garland would not simply appoint someone in compliance with the regulations who could guarantee a new and full investigation. So Weiss is now investigating crimes that continue to dwindle in number due to the long delays in prosecution. It is like waiting for winter to go goose hunting in Canada, long after the geese have flown South. Everyone just gets dressed up and fires aimlessly into an empty sky. While Hunter still can be charged on the same meager grounds (and possibly the addition of a Foreign Agents Registration Act charge), the alleged fix remains in the Biden investigation. Now, however, Congress will have a more difficult time getting answers out of Weiss because he can claim he is engaged in an ongoing special counsel investigation, and he can use the eventual special counsel report as much to defend his own actions as to detail any potential crimes.

At the same time, the Biden administration still is resisting the sharing of information with the House, including records held by the National Archives. For months, I have discussed a potential impeachment of the president with Republican House members and have encouraged them not to repeat the abuses of House Democrats in the use of “snap impeachments” and the discarding of fact hearings in the House Judiciary Committee. Garland, however, has effectively forced their hands. While Garland seems incapable of imagining any crime involving the president, he has made a conclusive — if unintended — case for an impeachment inquiry.

With the investigative impediments created by the Weiss appointment and by Garland’s refusal to expressly extend the special counsel’s mandate to the allegations of Biden family influence-peddling, there is little choice but to commence an impeachment inquiry. The authority of the House is at its apex when carrying out its duties under the impeachment clause. Whatever interest — or ability — remains to prosecute Hunter Biden, Congress has a separate duty to confirm any high crimes and misdemeanors committed by President Biden. Indeed, the Democrats themselves established precedent for carrying out retroactive impeachments for prior offices, including any which may have occurred when Biden was vice president. With the current state of the Hunter Biden investigation and the baffling conduct of Attorney General Garland, there is no alternative for the House but to launch the impeachment inquiry.

“The fact that Joe Biden gave away $1 billion in U.S. money in exchange for my dismissal – my firing – isn’t that alone a case of corruption?”

• Fired Ukraine Prosecutor Corroborates Biden Corruption (ZH)

Victor Shokin, the fired Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Biden family corruption (that Donald Trump was impeached for asking about) has spoken out for the first time since 2019 – and says the Bidens did it. To review – Shokin had an active and ongoing investigation into Ukrainian energy company Burisma and its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, according to a 2020 US Senate Committee report. Zlochevsky, who hired Hunter Biden to sit on his board, granted his own company (Burisma) permits to drill for oil and gas in Ukraine while he was Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources. Shokin stated in a 2019 deposition that there were five criminal cases against Zlochevesky, including money laundering, corruption, illegal funds transfers, and profiteering through shell corporations while he was a sitting minister.

Now, Shokin tells Fox News that be believes the Bidens were taking bribes. “I do not want to deal in unproven facts. But my firm personal conviction is that yes, this was the case. They were being bribed,” Shokin told the outlet. “The fact that Joe Biden gave away $1 billion in U.S. money in exchange for my dismissal – my firing – isn’t that alone a case of corruption?” he asks in another clip. The full interview with Shokin will air Saturday evening at 8pm ET with Brian Kilmeade. According to the White House, Fox News is giving a “platform to lies” by airing the interview. Republicans, meanwhile, aren’t letting this one go. Earlier this week we noted that memos obtained by Just the News via FOIA request reveal that the Obama Administration was still actively communicating with Shokin after Biden’s December 2015 threat to withhold $1 billion in US aid unless then-President Petro Poroshenko fired him.

The memos reveal: • Senior State Department officials sent a conflicting message to Shokin before he was fired, inviting his staff to Washington for a January 2016 strategy session and sent him a personal note saying they were “impressed” with his office’s work. • U.S. officials faced pressure from Burisma emissaries in the United States to make the corruption allegations go away and feared the energy firm had made two bribery payments in Ukraine as part of an effort to get cases settled. • A top U.S. official in Kyiv blamed Hunter Biden for undercutting U.S. anticorruption policy in Ukraine through his dealings with Burisma. Meanwhile, nobody else seems interested in what Shokin has to say.

Shokin

Viktor Shokin – The Ukrainian Prosecutor Joe Biden BRAGGED about getting FIRED speaks out

SHOKIN: "The fact that Joe Biden gave away one billion dollars – in exchange for my dismissal, my firing. – Is that alone a case of corruption?" pic.twitter.com/gy3VCc6JqE

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 25, 2023

“..we are literally destroying Europe.”

• World Laughing At EU Over Russia Sanctions – Hungary (RT)

Europe is “destroying” itself in the name of supporting Ukraine, and the EU’s sanctions policy is a laughing stock on the global stage, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has declared. He repeated his government’s position that the conflict in Ukraine “must end this minute.” It would be a “baroque and poetic exaggeration” to say that sanctions against Russia have succeeded in crippling the Russian economy, Szijjarto told attendees at the Tranzit political festival on Saturday. “The policy of sanctions has failed,” he said, adding that “everywhere in the world, the European sanctions policy is being laughed at.” The EU has imposed 11 successive rounds of sanctions on Russia since Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine last February. While the EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, claimed on Saturday that the sanctions are “producing hard, tangible effects across Russia’s economy,” the IMF has forecast that the Russian economy will continue to grow by 0.7% this year and 1.3% in 2024.

By contrast, the Eurozone entered recession earlier this year after the bloc voluntarily cut itself off from Russia, its largest foreign energy supplier. With the energy crunch crippling German industrial output in particular, Russia overtook Germany as the world’s fifth-largest economy last year, according to the World Bank. European leaders have embraced these self-harming sanctions because they “are in a war psychosis,” Szijjarto said, adding that EU military aid to Kiev is also directly threatening security on the continent. “The USA has pushed Europe into the competition of who will help Ukraine and how much: a military aid competition,” he said, lamenting that European politicians “accepted this provocation” even though “we are literally destroying Europe.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has refused to allow Western weapons to enter Ukraine via Hungarian territory, and Szijjarto has repeatedly voted in Brussels against increasing the EU’s arms fund for Kiev. Although Hungary is a party to all of the EU’s sanctions packages, Orban has managed to carve out exemptions for Hungary to continue oil and nuclear fuel imports from Russia in exchange for supporting these measures. Orban and Szijjarto have both repeatedly called for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, arguing that Kiev cannot hope to defeat Russia on the battlefield, and that the longer the conflict persists, the greater the risk of escalation, and the worse the final terms will be for Ukraine. “The only morally tenable position is [that] the war must end this minute,” he said on Saturday.

“It’s a Christian country, and they hate that. That is enough to incite our policymakers in the United States. That’s exactly why they hate Russia, by the way.”

• Tucker Carlson Blasts ‘Creep’ US Ambassador To Hungary (RT)

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has called for the firing of US Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman, saying the diplomat has undermined the interests of Americans by trying to impose an LGBTQ agenda rather than building stronger relations with Budapest. Speaking at an event earlier this week in Budapest, Carlson said he was compelled to apologize for the treatment of Hungary by President Joe Biden’s administration. “The world is realigning at high speed and turning against the United States, but the Biden administration is spending its time harassing one of our last sincere allies in Europe, Hungary, for the crime of being too Christian,” he said. Carlson claimed that Biden administration officials hate Hungary, just as they hate Russia, for defending Christian values.

Pressman, a California-born lawyer who formerly worked as an aide to then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, has harangued Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government for policies restricting promotion of LGBTQ lifestyles. “For a creep like David Pressman . . . to show up in your country and lecture you about your culture – and threaten you because you do things differently from the way they do things where he lives – hurts the United States and is a grave embarrassment to me as an American and an outrage to me as someone who pays his salary,” Carlson said. “It’s disgusting.” He added, “I’m embarrassed that I share a country of birth with a man, with a villain like this. It’s horrifying.” Carlson argued that Pressman works on behalf of special interests, rather than the American people.

He added, “They hate Hungary, and they hate it not because of what it’s done but because of what it is. It’s a Christian country, and they hate that. That is enough to incite our policymakers in the United States. That’s exactly why they hate Russia, by the way.” He suggested that Hungarians “wait it out” because the US is on an unsustainable political path. “You can’t run a global empire on the imposition of boutique sexual politics on countries that don’t want them.” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto rebuked Pressman in February for allegedly meddling in Budapest’s internal affairs. The US ambassador had accused Hungarian leaders of pushing policies endorsed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Szijjarto declared that the era of foreign envoys telling Hungarians how to live was over.

Carlson likened Pressman’s behavior to the dictates of the Soviet Union, saying the Biden administration was engaged in “exactly the same kind of tyranny.” He added that just as the Soviets imposed their ideology, Washington demands that you “worship transvestites. It’s not so different. It’s a foreign power pushing its weird boutique religion on you, and it’s wrong.” Formerly host of the most highly rated cable news show in US history, Carlson now attracts an even larger audience on his X (formerly known as Twitter) channel. Major US media outlets have lied about the Russia-Ukraine crisis to the extent that most Americans falsely believe that Kiev is winning the conflict, he added. “It’s embarrassing to be from a place that has been lied to at scale and believed the lies so thoroughly.”

“..the territorial gains of Ukraine’s much vaunted counteroffensive have been so miniscule, they are barely visible on a map.”

• No, Biden Can’t Wage Forever War in Ukraine (Sp.)

The US mainstream media has hinted at the possibility of a new Ukraine counteroffensive next year. Reportedly, Biden administration officials are privately bracing for a “war of attrition” that will last well into next year. According to The Wall Street Journal, “military strategists and policymakers across the West are already starting to think about next year’s spring offensive” while preparing for a protracted conflict. Having analyzed the publications, one DC-based think tank, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, has raised the question whether the White House is going to unleash a new “forever war” in Ukraine. “I do not believe the US and NATO have sufficient weapons and ammunitions to help Ukraine fight Russia until next spring and beyond,” David T. Pyne, an EMP Task Force scholar and former US Department of Defense officer, told Sputnik.

“Credible US media reports earlier this year stated that the Biden administration had informed the Ukrainian government that it lacked the ability to support Ukraine militarily at a high rate past summer 2023. There is nothing that has been done to increase US munitions or weapons production since those reports came out that would allow the US to arm the Ukrainian military to enable it to fight Russia at the same intensity level beyond that timeframe. The main problem is munitions, specifically heavy artillery shells. This increasing artillery shell shortage will only serve to increase Russian superiority over Ukraine in terms of missiles, rockets, and artillery systems if the war continues beyond September.” The provision of more NATO-grade conventional weapons won’t become a “magic bullet” for Ukraine, either, according to the military analyst.

Pyne takes the reports about planned deliveries of General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcons to Kiev and training of Ukrainian pilots undertaken by the US and its NATO allies with a pinch of salt. He believes that the provision of 50-60 early-model F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine is unlikely to make much of a difference in the course of the conflict. “Russia has over fifteen times more fighter aircraft than Ukraine has right now so these additional fighters will not serve to meaningfully diminish Russian air superiority over Ukraine,” Pyne said. “Furthermore, it will take five to eight months to train Ukrainian pilots to fly these F-16 after they have completed English language training, meaning they will not likely see combat until early 2024 at the earliest.”

The military expert noted that US advocates of further weapons supplies to Kiev have been insisting since April 2022 that “if the West just provides with a limited number of additional major weapon systems, then somehow that will enable Ukraine to force Russian troops back to Russia’s pre-2014 borders.” However, all those predictions have proven wrong. “The reality is that there is no conventional weapon system that NATO could provide to Ukraine that would serve as a ‘game changer’ to enable it to defeat Russia which has over five times as many tanks, combat aircraft and artillery systems than Ukraine has. Russia also has 300,000 reserve troops bordering on Kharkov oblast which could be used for a major offensive to surround tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops in southeast Ukraine to force Ukraine to admit defeat and accept a ceasefire and armistice agreement on Russian terms,” Pyne stressed.

What’s more, the Biden administration is going to have a difficult time getting additional aid approved by Congress, according to the former Pentagon officer. “America First conservative Republicans wield substantial influence in the US House of Representatives, and they are very much averse to providing Ukraine with additional assistance of any kind, let alone another $13 billion in direct military assistance. Furthermore, even pro-war congressional Republicans are reportedly questioning the wisdom of providing additional military assistance to Ukraine since the territorial gains of Ukraine’s much vaunted counteroffensive have been so miniscule, they are barely visible on a map.”

”TikTok has over 150 million American users spending 90 minutes or more on the platform..”

• Biden Administration Sought Control Over TikTok (RT)

The Biden administration sought to gain control over nearly every aspect of the inner workings of social media behemoth TikTok as part of negotiations allowing its continued operation in the US, according to a draft agreement obtained by Forbes last week. The agreement, which runs to nearly 100 pages, would reportedly give the White House a level of control over the Chinese-owned platform even greater than that which it was found last year to be exercising over US-based competitors like Facebook and Twitter, allowing government officials to not only monitor and influence the conversation on the platform but also to interfere in the day-to-day operations of TikTok in the US.

Government agencies like the Department of Justice and Department of Defense would have full authority to examine TikTok’s servers, equipment, records, facilities, and other properties, according to the draft. They could also block changes to the app’s US terms of service, privacy policy, and moderation policies and veto the hiring of any individual involved in data security for the US. The agreement would also force TikTok and its parent company ByteDance to submit to outside audits, assessments, code inspections, and cybersecurity checks by supposedly independent entities chosen by the US government. The company would be required to foot the bill for these intrusions.

The platform’s US staff could even have been required to exclude ByteDance’s executives from security-related decisions, instead deferring to an executive security committee whose actions would also be concealed from ByteDance. This committee’s primary responsibility would be maintaining US national security first and TikTok’s profitability second. The draft seen by Forbes, dated last summer, is the product of months of exchanges between ByteDance and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which oversees foreign involvement in business deals that could potentially impact national security and has been investigating ByteDance for four years. TikTok has repeatedly been threatened with a blanket ban or forced sale of its US assets to an American competitor as both President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump claimed the platform is used by Beijing for information warfare.

CFIUS renewed the call for a ban or sale in March after the DOJ launched an investigation into ByteDance employees using TikTok to spy on American journalists. A spokesperson for ByteDance confirmed the surveillance but attributed it to rogue employees who have since been fired. TikTok has over 150 million American users spending 90 minutes or more on the platform. While the company pledged in 2021 to isolate US user data on servers owned by tech giant Oracle to assuage spying concerns, Biden prohibited its use by federal employees in December and dozens of state and city governments have followed suit.

“He went so far as to declare that it was in fact Russia who militarized Ukraine by launching the invasion..”

• Prigozhin, Putin, and What Next? (VandenHeuvel)

A Russian friend texted me soon after learning that the head of Wagner private military company (PMC), Yevgeny Prigozhin, had been killed in a private plane crash, midway between Moscow and his native city of St. Petersburg. My friend had just seen the New York Post headline, “Russian dissident Prigozhin reported dead after a plane crash outside Moscow.” My friend, a longtime independent editor whose paper has published—and protected—dissidents, was apoplectic. “Dissident!?” Between May 2022 and May 2023, the Russian government paid $1 billion to Wagner for military and other services (including inflated catering prices for poorly paid soldiers). Indeed, Putin has said, “We fully funded this group.” (At the time this went to press, Prigozhin’s death had still not been officially confirmed.) If Prigozhin was not already a household name in Russia following the attempted rebellion that The New York Times says exposed him as Putin’s “biggest threat,” he certainly was after his Embraer private jet crashed.

Prigozhin’s Wagner Group operated in several African countries, including the Central African Republic and Sudan, as well as in Syria as of 2015 and in Ukraine since 2014. It captivated governments and media across the globe and made international headlines after having declared a “March on Moscow” to remove what they decried as the incompetent and corrupt Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. Following Wagner’s seizure of a regional military command, the downing of seven Russian aircraft on their way to Moscow, and Putin’s determined speech accusing the mutineers of treason and vowing punishment, the rebellion was halted in dramatic fashion. The charges leveled against Prigozhin and his supporters were dropped following a still unclear agreement ostensibly mediated by Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko.

Nevertheless, Prigozhin’s ultimately aborted armed rebellion mesmerized Western audiences who had long believed that Putin’s downfall was just around the corner. The June events followed Wagner’s brutal, yet ultimately successful, tactics in Ukraine–most infamously in the battle of Bakhmut. Although Wagner had initially been seen as subordinate to the Ministry of Defense, Prigozhin increasingly became one of the loudest critics of the Russian invasion from the nationalist right. He demanded more ammunition for his fighters and the intensification of the war effort, and he directly criticized the military leadership–eventually questioning Putin’s justifications for the “special military operation” itself.

During the months-long battle for Bakhmut, commentators had rationalized Prigozhin’s freedom to directly criticize the war’s conduct as due to his being in Russia’s so-called “party of war” camp, which fervently supports the extension of the conflict into a full-scale war. Nevertheless, Prigozhin’s confidence (or desperation) had been visibly increasing in the months prior to the attempted rebellion. He had directly questioned, via his 1,000,000 followers on Telegram, the objectives of the “special military operation,” one of which was to demilitarize Ukraine. Prigozhin remarked how before the full-scale invasion of 2022, Ukraine had “maybe 500 tanks” and “twenty thousand skillful fighters,” but now it had thousands of tanks and hundreds of thousands of skilled fighters. He went so far as to declare that it was in fact Russia who militarized Ukraine by launching the invasion that caused unprecedented military aid to be delivered by the coalition supporting Kyiv. As Anatol Lieven, of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, points out, Putin initially encouraged Wagner as a “rival force” to the professional army, but this ultimately had “damaging results” for his regime.

Demonetized.

• I Just Want To Sell Titty Pictures (ZH)

Sex workers – who frequently face financial discrimination, losing access to payment apps and banking apps such as PayPal, Venmo and CashApp due to their profession – began using cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin as an alternative for payments, which bypass traditional banking systems and avoid service fees from platforms such as OnlyFans. According to data by the Free Speech Coalition, 2/3 of sex workers have lost access to a bank account or financial service, with 40% having an account closed within the last year, Wired reports. “I just want to sell titty pictures,” said Allie Eve Knox, a professional dominatrix and fetish performer. “I never wanted to be an expert in financial discrimination.” After starting out in sex work in 2014, Knox, like others in the field, has become something of a financial pariah.

The first to ban her were the payment apps—PayPal, Venmo, and CashApp—which prohibit the sale of adult content as policy. But then Knox lost her bank account too. It took a week to recover her money. Nine years on and 30-plus bans later, Knox is jaded: “I don’t want to have to know how to run money to different places. I don’t want to deal with any of this bullshit.” -Wired. Another sex worker, Allie Rae, an ICU worker by training, began posting on OnlyFans when her husband was placed on work furlough. After a short period of time, she was making nearly $500,000 per month more than her day job – but she says she quickly ran into trouble. After her OnlyFans account was discovered by her employer, she was fired. She also found that realtors shunned her, lenders refused to extend a mortgage and accountants ghosted her.

Rae eventually established a corporation to run her business through, however no major bank would open a business account. “Left and right, it’s been a struggle,” she told the outlet. “I was very naive—I didn’t understand the magnitude of the discrimination.” In short, in a world that embraces the gig economy, where YouTubers and Instagram influencers can become millionaires, sex workers have found themselves in a peculiar form of exile. Given the systemic discrimination throughout the banking sector, many sex workers have turned to cryptocurrencies as a means of both storing wealth and accepting payment. For a while, things were great. Digital currencies allowed customers to pay discreetly without supplying personal information, while sex workers now had a way to bypass the banking system entirely.

Knox, for example, began accepting crypto in 2014 – holding up a QR code through which viewers could tip her in crypto. Another sex worker, former escort-turned-porn star Lira Roux, told the outlet that she began to accept crypto in 2015 at the request of clients. Initially, she would exchange the crypto for dollars, however when new laws came into effect – after which many adult-friendly advertising sites were barred from accepting regular money – she began to pay for ads with crypto too. “By and large, crypto is useful for people that aren’t being taken care of properly by the government,” Roux said. “For sex workers, who aren’t well-served by banks, it becomes a useful option.”

Now, thanks to regulatory scrutiny which has gone into overdrive since the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, sex workers are ‘bumping up’ against limitations – and are finding that ‘decentralized’ crypto is no more detached from the banking system than traditional currency – as sex workers are finding it increasingly difficult to convert crypto into dollars. Typically, this is done via an exchange, which then allows one to withdraw to a traditional bank account. Sex workers are now being banned from crypto exchanges. “You get on an exchange for as long as you can, until they shut your ass down,” said Knox. “You quickly [run out of exchanges], so you sit on a lot of useless money. The whole ‘crypto is permissionless and censorship-resistant’ thing is a bunch of bullshit.”

Handpan
https://twitter.com/i/status/1695363907282444337

Polly
https://twitter.com/i/status/1695439851510706578

Frederik

Frederik the Great is a Friesian stallion that lives in Arkansas's Ozark Mountains. He was imported to this farm from the Netherlands when he was six years old. In May 2016, he became known for unofficially being the "world's most handsome horse"pic.twitter.com/dvAp1NfGao

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) August 26, 2023

Roar

todays beautiful message pic.twitter.com/HLN4uVxIAk

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) August 25, 2023

Puppies- so cute….
https://twitter.com/i/status/1695328439937429802

The saiga antelope is a critically endangered antelope that originally inhabited a vast area of the Eurasian steppe zone

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

Debt Rattle September 7 2022

Sep 072022

September 7, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:22 am Finance Tagged with: BioNTech, Civil War, Erdogan, Gazprom, Putin, Roger Waters, Salvini, SPR, SWIFT, Zelensky 58 Responses »

Salvador Dali Cabaret scene 1922

• Putin Has Pushed Europe Into Inflationary Depression, Currency Collapse (Every)

• West Reluctant To Put Putin On Trial, Say Ukrainian Officials (G.)

• US Shares Blame In Ruined Ties With Russia – Clinton’s Defense Secretary (RT)

• Open Letter To Olena Zelenska – Stop The Slaughter (Roger Waters)

• Salvini: Russia Sanctions Backfired, Citizens Are ‘On Their Knees’ (Celente)

• Our Latest Interview with Jacques Baud (Postil)

• Sanctioned Russian Bank Bypasses SWIFT (RT)

• Gazprom Signs Gas Deal With China To Convert Payments To Ruble, Yuan (Fox)

• The Case for a New American Civil War (Dmitri Orlov)

• Stop Pretending US Is a Functioning Democracy (Chris Hedges)

• Greece Braces For Tougher, Bolder Erdogan As Turkish Media Enters ‘War Mode’ (ZH)

• Greece Tells Erdogan: “We Completely Reject Neo-Ottoman Bullies” (KTG)

• Global Covid19 Vax Propaganda Means Mass Casualties – Dr. Pierre Kory (USAW)

• BioNtech Sued For Vaccine Damage For 1st Time In Germany (R24)

Europe needs to find €2 trillion in energy costs. Good luck.

I followed the science for 1000 days but I only found 99.9% survivability, myocarditis, communism, small business eradication, 574 new billionaires, grandma saying goodbye over FaceTime, penetrated world cabinets, bug-diet advocation, men getting pregnant, 162 genders and 8 mice.

— TY LEMMON (@tuxlemons) September 5, 2022

40% is like a war. Edward Dowd has almost entirely been banned, censored, disappeared. But not 100%.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1566995822616748032

US SPR at lowest level since 1984

Trump – A Nation in Decline

Donald Trump just DROPPED most powerful video you'll see today— CHILLS. pic.twitter.com/rT6AJfs64P

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 6, 2022

Barron Trump is reportedly considering getting into crack cocaine, Russian prostitutes, and corrupt international business dealings to get the FBI to leave him alone.

No, he has not. They did it themselves. That is elementary.

• Putin Has Pushed Europe Into Inflationary Depression, Currency Collapse (Every)

As pointed out on Twitter, Russia’s move is so blatant there is no way Europe can fudge an agreement with it the way some might have over ‘technical issues’ with the pipeline. (As was Russian President Putin also approving a new foreign policy doctrine backing a “Russian world” covering all Russian speakers, including some in the EU, while building up relations with all the countries the USSR was friendly with to boot.) This is a gun to the EU’s head. So was OPEC+ agreeing on a token 100,000 barrel a day cut to production. So was Iran saying no to the nuclear deal unless the IAEA backs off from investigating the serious breaches of the last nuclear deal it didn’t stick to.

Assuming Europe cannot retreat, that means a severe recession with very high inflation, and if anything were to happen to gas flows via Ukraine, which could easily occur, Europe would need to make swinging cuts to demand in order to avoid unplanned ‘gas outs’. German Economy Minister Habeck just said: “Expect the worst.” As mentioned yesterday, existential choices now need to be made, because there may not enough energy to go round. The choices are obviously unappetising. First, Germany is to delay mothballing some nuclear reactors – so common sense at gunpoint. Yet Europe and the UK will not ration energy by price because it means the staggering bills already being seen, and then stagflation, incession, or ‘inpression’ (an inflationary depression).

They will instead subsidize businesses and households even if that means wholesale energy prices march even higher. Germany’s latest EUR65bn energy bailout will do just that; so will Sweden’s and the Netherlands’ measures, and France’s and Spain’s: and Brussels is talking about an EU-wide energy price cap. Only part of these subsidies will flow from windfall taxes (which also remove the industry capital needed to invest in new energy supply). New UK PM Truss, just selected with an underwhelming 57% mandate of a tiny Tory electorate, has also floated Covid-furlough sized spending to cap business and household energy bills; and huge tax cuts; and a 2.5% trend GDP growth rate target. Good luck with the latter.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1567315217935114241

You would have to put Zelensky on trial, too. And a whole range of western leaders.

• West Reluctant To Put Putin On Trial, Say Ukrainian Officials (G.)

Ukraine’s major western allies have yet to sign up to establish a tribunal to try Vladimir Putin and his inner circle for the crime of aggression, wanting to leave space for future relations with Russia, according to Ukraine’s top officials. “It’s big politics. On the one hand, countries publicly condemn the aggression but on the other, they are putting their foot in the closing door on relations with Russia so that it doesn’t close completely,” said Andriy Smyrnov, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, who is leading the country’s effort to establish the international tribunal. “They are attempting to keep some space for diplomatic manoeuvres,” said Smyrnov. “We know that agreements with Russia are not worth the paper they are written on.”

His claims come as the US president, Joe Biden, said on Monday that Russia should not be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism, something Ukrainian officials and some US politicians had pushed for. Russia had previously said such a designation would mean Washington had crossed the point of no return. Ukrainian officials say that since April, they have been trying to convince their western allies to establish an ad hoc tribunal which would hold Russia’s senior leadership responsible for the crime of aggression for invading Ukraine. Aggression is viewed as the supreme crime under international law because without the transgression of borders during an invasion, subsequent war crimes would not have been committed.

So far only the Baltic states and Poland have pledged support for the tribunal, said Ukraine’s officials. “We are expecting broader support,” said Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin. “For us, the support of the UK and the US is very important as well as the rest of the civilised world,” said Smyrnov. The UK’s newly elected prime minister, Liz Truss, told Times Radio in May, when she was foreign secretary, that she would consider supporting the tribunal. The Council of Europe is due to discuss support for such a measure on 13 September.

Just 30 years ago, the official attitude was much less hawkish.

• US Shares Blame In Ruined Ties With Russia – Clinton’s Defense Secretary (RT)

The US antagonized Russia by ignoring its post-USSR suffering and intrinsic security interests and needs to acknowledge this before ties with Moscow can be mended, William J. Perry, who served as secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton has said. Perry, a veteran advocate for the reduction of weapons of mass destruction, called for some introspection in Washington DC in an opinion piece published on Monday by the outlet Outrider. Subsequent US administrations pursued policies that antagonized the Russian people after the collapse of the USSR, Perry argued. The US didn’t care much about the suffering that Russia’s transition to a capitalist economy brought and ignored Russian concerns about NATO’s encroachment on its borders, he said.

“The combination of the West failing to act during Russia’s financial crisis, and ignoring their strongly-held views on NATO expansion, reinforced a prevailing Russian belief that we didn’t take them seriously,” the article said. “Indeed, many in the West saw Russia only as the loser of the Cold War, not worthy of our respect.” Perry, who headed up the Pentagon between 1994 and 1997, was a strong supporter of a program called Partnership for Peace. This was a compromise that allowed Eastern European nations and Russia to train with NATO troops but, in a nod to Russian objections, didn’t bring former Warsaw Pact nations into NATO.

The Clinton administration ultimately pushed for a formal expansion of the military bloc, setting the stage for an increasingly tense relationship with Russia that culminated in the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. The American attitude pushed Russians towards supporting Vladimir Putin, a person he describes as “an autocratic leader who would instead demand respect and power through force.” Perry said he considers the Russian leader an enemy of the US but argued that “there is no organic reason” why Russia itself should be one. “We must work to rebuild connections with Russia, treat the Russian people with respect, and rebuild our relationships, in the hopes that we can once again return to the path of friendship,” he concluded.

“He stood on the election platform of the following promises. • To end the civil war in the East and bring peace to the Donbas and partial autonomy to Donetsk and Luhansk. • And to ratify and implement the rest of the body of the Minsk 2 agreements.”

• Open Letter To Olena Zelenska – Stop The Slaughter (Roger Waters)

Dear Mrs Zelenska,

My heart bleeds for you and all the Ukrainian and Russian families, devastated by the terrible war in Ukraine. I’m in Kansas City, USA. Iread an article on BBC.com apparently taken from an interview you have already recorded for a program called Sunday with Laura Kuenssburg which broadcasted on the BBC on September 4th. BBC.com quotes you as saying that if support for Ukraine is strong the crisis will be shorter. Hmmm? I guess that might depend on what you mean by “support for Ukraine?” If by “support for Ukraine,” you mean the West continuing to supply arms to the Kiev government’s armies, I fear you may be tragically mistaken. Throwing fuel, in the form of armaments, into a firefight, has never worked to shorten a war in the past, and it won’t work now, particularly because, in this case, most of the fuel is (a) being thrown into the fire from Washington DC, which is at a relatively safe distance from the conflagration, and (b) because the “fuel throwers” have already declared an interest in the war going on for as long as possible.

People like you and me actually want peace in Ukraine, don’t want the outcome to be that you have to fight to the last Ukrainian life – and possibly even, if the worst comes to the worst, to the last human life. If we, instead, wish to achieve a different outcome we may have to seek a different route and that route may lie in your husband’s previously stated good intentions. Yes, I mean the platform upon which he so laudably ran for the office of President of Ukraine, the platform upon which he won his historic landslide victory in the democratic election in 2019. He stood on the election platform of the following promises. • To end the civil war in the East and bring peace to the Donbas and partial autonomy to Donetsk and Luhansk. • And to ratify and implement the rest of the body of the Minsk 2 agreements.

One can only assume that your husband’s electoral policies didn’t sit well with certain political factions in Kiev and that those factions persuaded your husband to diametrically change course ignoring the people’s mandate. Sadly, your old man agreed to those totalitarian, anti-democratic dismissals of the will of the Ukrainian people, and the forces of extreme nationalism that had lurked, malevolent, in the shadows, have, since then, ruled the Ukraine. They have, also since then, crossed any number of red lines that had been set out quite clearly over a number of years by your neighbors the Russian Federation and in consequence they, the extreme nationalists, have set your country on the path to this disastrous war.

I won’t go on. If I’m wrong, please help me to understand how? If I’m not wrong, please help me in my honest endeavors to persuade our leaders to stop the slaughter, the slaughter which serves only the interests of the ruling classes and extreme nationalists both here in the West, and in your beautiful country, at the expense of the rest of us ordinary people both here in the West, and in the Ukraine, and in fact ordinary people everywhere all over the world. Might it not be better to demand the implementation of your husband’s election promises and put an end to this deadly war?

Love,
Roger Waters

Kim Dotcom: “The biggest army in the history of the world will soon achieve a decisive victory against the US proxy war in Ukraine: European protesters.”

• Salvini: Russia Sanctions Backfired, Citizens Are ‘On Their Knees’ (Celente)

Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s far-Right League party, said Sunday that the economic sanctions that have been leveled against Russia are taking their toll on the average Italian and are leaving citizens “on their knees.” Daniele Franco, Italy’s economy minister, recently announced that the country’s net energy import costs will likely double this year and that Rome will not be able to “indefinitely to cushion the blow on the economy,” Reuters reported. “To keep offsetting, at least in part, rising energy prices through public finances is very costly and we could never do enough,” he said. “What matters is to bring the price of gas and energy back to sustainable levels.”

“Several months have passed and people are paying two, three, even four times more for their bills. And after seven months, the war continues and Russian Federation coffers are filling with money,” he told RTL radio. He tweeted earlier that “those who have been sanctioned are winners and those who put the sanctions in place are on their knees.” He called on the EU to “protect businesses and families” like it did during the COVID-19 outbreak. Russia’s Gazprom announced that it will indefinitely suspend gas flow on its Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which sent the price of the benchmark Dutch TTF hub up to €281 per megawatt hour, up 31 percent. Russia blamed technical issues that cannot be resolved due to sanctions that have been imposed.

EURACTIV said it obtained a leaked paper that outlines the European Commission plan to cap wholesale gas prices that would target Russia. The process would cap the price of imported gas from Moscow and would set up pricing zones for countries that are particularly impacted by the prices. The paper admitted that the pricing zones will be more challenging to implement and “would require significant regulatory and technical complex preparations,” the report said.

Jacques Baud is a former Swiss army colonel, now intelligence & security consultant.

“..the exclusion of disabled athletes, cats, even Russian trees from competitions, the dismissal of conductors, the de-platforming of Russian artists, such as Dostoyevsky, or even the renaming of paintings..”

• Our Latest Interview with Jacques Baud (Postil)

You have just published your latest book on the war in Ukraine—Operation Z. “The aim of this book is to show how the misinformation propagated by our media has contributed to push Ukraine in the wrong direction. I wrote it under the motto “from the way we understand crises derives the way we solve them.” By hiding many aspects of this conflict, the Western media has presented us with a caricatural and artificial image of the situation, which has resulted in the polarization of minds. This has led to a widespread mindset that makes any attempt to negotiate virtually impossible. The one-sided and biased representation provided by mainstream media is not intended to help us solve the problem, but to promote hatred of Russia.

Thus, the exclusion of disabled athletes, cats, even Russian trees from competitions, the dismissal of conductors, the de-platforming of Russian artists, such as Dostoyevsky, or even the renaming of paintings aims at excluding the Russian population from society! In France, bank accounts of individuals with Russian-sounding names were even blocked. Social networks Facebook and Twitter have systematically blocked the disclosure of Ukrainian crimes under the pretext of “hate speech” but allow the call for violence against Russians. None of these actions had any effect on the conflict, except to stimulate hatred and violence against the Russians in our countries. This manipulation is so bad that we would rather see Ukrainians die than to seek a diplomatic solution.

As Republican Senator Lindsey Graham recently said, it is a matter of letting the Ukrainians fight to the last man. It is commonly assumed that journalists work according to standards of quality and ethics to inform us in the most honest way possible. These standards are set by the Munich Charter of 1971. While writing my book I found out that no French-speaking mainstream media in Europe respects this charter as far as Russia and China are concerned. In fact, they shamelessly support an immoral policy towards Ukraine, described by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, president of Mexico, as “We provide the weapons, you provide the corpses!”

Still relatively small amounts; $1.6 million. But that will grow.

• Sanctioned Russian Bank Bypasses SWIFT (RT)

One of Russia’s top banks, VTB has become the first lender in the country to launch money transfers to China in yuan, sidestepping the global financial messaging system SWIFT. “The new reality is leading to a massive abandoning of the use of the US dollar and the euro in international payments,” VTB CEO Andrey Kostin said in a statement, highlighting the importance of creating and developing payment systems as an alternative to SWIFT. “We are the first Russian bank to install an alternative cross-border bank transfer service with China and plan to increase the volume of these transactions by five times by next year,”he added.

According to a VTB press release, the maximum amount of a single money transfer was equivalent to 20 million rubles ($325,000) with the maximum monthly limit set at 100 million rubles ($1.6 million). The bank also announced plans to begin lending in the yuan and other non-Western currencies later this year. “The launch of the yuan transfer system is expected to significantly simplify the work of Russian companies and individuals with Chinese partners, increasing the popularity of the yuan in our country,” Kostin added. Ukraine-related sanctions cut Russia’s biggest banks off from SWIFT, limiting their access to the dollar and euro markets. The drastic measures forced Moscow to develop its own financial infrastructure in cooperation with nations that haven’t imposed sanctions.

As goes your gas, so goes your currency.

• Gazprom Signs Gas Deal With China To Convert Payments To Ruble, Yuan (Fox)

Russia’s Gazprom on Tuesday said it had reached an agreement with China to start fulfilling its gas supply contracts with payments made in rubles or yuan instead of euros or dollars. The announcement on Telegram comes just six months after a 30-year deal was signed between Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation in early February, which said Russian gas supplies would be paid in euros as Russia looked to separate itself from the U.S. just weeks before it invaded Ukraine. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said the payment arrangement would prove “mutually beneficial” for both state owned energy agencies as Russia and China look to bolster their economies amid flagging relations with the West.

“I believe that it will simplify the calculations, become an excellent example for other companies, and give an additional impetus to the development of our economies,” Miller said. Russian President Vladimir Putin enforced a mandate in March that required all Gazprom sales to Europe be paid in rubles after the U.S. and NATO hit Moscow with steep international sanctions immediately following its invasion in Ukraine. Moscow has since cut gas to several European nations including Germany, Denmark, Poland, Bulgaria, Finland and the Netherlands after they refused to abide by Putin’s mandate. Gazprom, which has repeatedly staunched its supplies to Europe over alleged “maintenance” issues, said Monday it would not resume pumping gas until Germany energy company Siemens Energy adheres to its equipment repair demands.

“To keep the US population at bay, the oligarchy must keep it supplied with vast quantities of junk food, liquor, drugs and pornography…”

• The Case for a New American Civil War (Dmitri Orlov)

Will the USA hold together through 2024? Earlier this year Covid-related complications took the life of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the bombastic perennial leader of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party. He was known not just for his inimitable oratory but also for the uncanny accuracy of his predictions. For example, he predicted the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation in the Ukraine almost to the day—months before the fact and at a time when nobody else had much of a clue as to what would happen. Another prediction of his reads as follows: “There won’t be a US presidential election in 2024 because there will no longer be a United States.” Will he turn out to be prescient on this count too? Let’s watch!

Zhirinovsky is by no means alone with making such a prediction. Recent opinion polls show over 40% of Americans expressing apprehensions that a new civil war is likely to break out over the next decade or so. Perish the thought that the good people surveyed had performed an independent analysis, based on which they were able to compute the probability of a civil war! By now, the vast majority of the people in the US have been conditioned to perceive reality as a mosaic composed of short news clips, sound bites, scenes no longer than can fit between two television commercials and miniature narratives that present this or that imaginary object in a positive or a negative light. They think that a civil war is likely because that’s what they have been told through mass media or the invisibly yet relentlessly chaperoned social media.

The oligarchy, which controls all of the above, is toying with two alternative business plans. Plan A, which is more profitable and less risky, doesn’t feature a civil war while Plan B, risky though still profitable, does. In either case, the profits accrue from confiscating wealth from the population; with Plan A, less of that wealth gets blown up, hence more profit. But Plan A requires securing complete obedience and docility from an increasingly distressed and restive population. Paraphrasing Klaus Schwab, they have to put up with having nothing and pretend to be happy (as a condition for being allowed to stay indoors and fed).

To keep the US population at bay, the oligarchy must keep it supplied with vast quantities of junk food, liquor, drugs and pornography. And in spite of all the propaganda urging people to sort themselves into a rainbow of genders, most of them sterile, some women may still manage to get pregnant, refuse to have an abortion and actually give birth to children, preventing the population from shrinking as fast as the dwindling resource base. “Listen, women are getting pregnant every day in America, and this is a real issue,” quoth VP Kamala Harris. In spite of the politically incorrect term “women”—wombed men, that is—her message is crystal clear: her fellow-Americans should be spayed and neutered like the proper domestic animals she thinks they are. Your pets aren’t sterilized, don’t you now; they are transgender! Doesn’t that sound much more fashionable?

“..the poorer and more vulnerable you are, the more you are exploited, thrust into a hellish debt peonage from which there is no escape..”

• Stop Pretending US Is a Functioning Democracy (Chris Hedges)

The U.S. continues to posit itself as a champion of opportunity, freedom, human rights and civil liberties, even as half the country struggles at subsistence level, militarized police gun down and imprison the poor with impunity, and the primary business of the state is war. This collective self-delusion masks what America has become — a nation where the citizenry has been stripped of economic and political power and where the brutal militarism practiced overseas is practiced at home. In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union, economics was subordinate to politics. But under inverted totalitarianism, the reverse is true. There is no attempt, unlike fascism and state socialism, to address the needs of the poor.

Rather, the poorer and more vulnerable you are, the more you are exploited, thrust into a hellish debt peonage from which there is no escape. Social services, from education to health care, are anemic, nonexistent or privatized to gouge the impoverished. Further ravaged by 8.5 percent inflation, wages have decelerated sharply since 1979. Jobs often do not offer benefits or security. In my book America: The Farewell Tour, I examined the social indicators of a nation in serious trouble. Life expectancy in the U.S. fell in 2021, for the second year in a row. There have been over 300 mass shootings this year. Close to a million people have died from drug overdoses since 1999. There are an average of 132 suicides every day. Nearly 42 percent of the country is classified as obese, with one in 11 adults considered severely obese.

These diseases of despair are rooted in the disconnect between a society’s expectations of a better future and the reality of a system that does not provide a meaningful place for its citizens. Loss of a sustainable income and social stagnation causes more than financial distress. As Émile Durkheim points out in The Division of Labor in Society, it severs the social bonds that give us meaning. A decline in status and power, an inability to advance, a lack of education and adequate health care, and a loss of hope result in crippling forms of humiliation. This humiliation fuels loneliness, frustration, anger and feelings of worthlessness.

Erdogan has elections next year. His base is nationalists. Inflation in Turkey is 90+%. Nuff said.

• Greece Braces For Tougher, Bolder Erdogan As Turkish Media Enters ‘War Mode’ (ZH)

Both Turkish and Greek media reports over the last days have been filled by heightened speculation that the two Mediterranean powers (and NATO “allies”… ironically enough) could be headed to war. This follows Saturday comments from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wherein he issued a thinly veiled threat of military action against Greece. Charging that Greece is “occupying” islands off Turkey’s coast and militarizing them, Erdogan said in a fiery speech aimed at Athens that “When the time comes, we’ll do what’s necessary. As we say, we may come down suddenly one night.” He added: “Look at history, if you go further, the price will be heavy.”

An English-language publication covering Greece, The National Herald, observed on Monday in follow-up to Erdogan’s threat: “Greece is bracing for what’s expected to be an emboldened Turkish President Recep Tayyip drawing lines in the sea and becoming more aggressive in asserting his claims to areas in the Aegean and East Mediterranean.” Via Anadolu Agency: In his message, Erdogan mentions Izmir, a province on Türkiye’s western Aegean Sea coast that the Turkish army liberated from Greek occupation in 1922 during its War of Independence. The publication notes that something seems different this time compared to prior threatening rhetoric coming from top Turkish officials over the past two years: Erdogan typically mouths off against Greece with fiery rhetoric that frequently is followed by him backing away from threats but he’s been upping the ante and the volume, raising tension and growing worries of a conflict.

Seeing the European Union, NATO, United Nations and United States reluctant to provoke him, the hard-line Turkish leader has demanded Greece remove troops from islands near Turkey’s coast and said it would be a cause for war if Greece doubles its maritime boundaries to 12 miles. All of this comes also as Ankara has lodged a formal complaint with NATO headquarters, saying that Greece last month achieved radar lock on its F-16s which had been flying over the Mediterranean. Further, Turkey has charged that Greek jets have violated its airspace over 250 times in harassing maneuvers. “The ministry also informed that the Greek warplanes violated the Turkish airspace 256 times since the beginning of 2022,” Hurriyet reported. “In addition, they harassed the Turkish jets 158 times this year, the ministry said. On the sea, the Greek coastal guards violated the Turkish territorial waters 33 times, it added.”

“We might come suddenly one night..”

• Greece Tells Erdogan: “We Completely Reject Neo-Ottoman Bullies” (KTG)

“It is unacceptable for Greece to be receiving threats that reach the point of disputing Greek sovereignty from a country that is an ally within NATO, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said at noon on Tuesday as Ankara has increased his escalating hostile rhetoric and threats and thus via the president himself Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “Greece’s fixed position supports dialogue on the basis of international law, the international law of the sea and good-neighbor relations, the PM said during a meeting with the President of Slovakia, Zuzana Caputova who is officially visiting Greece. “Turkey creates tension undermining security and stability in the region,” the PM underlined.

Tuesday afternoon, it was the turn of Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias to respond to Erdogan’s unprecedented threats “We completely reject the Neo-Ottoman bullies,” Dendias stressed during a meeting with his French counterpart Catherine Colonna. The FM said that Greece daily faces a series of threats and statements that he described as “outrageous”, pointing out to “maps that are periodically published depicting Greek islands as Turkish territory.”

Recalling Erdogan’s latest threat “We might come suddenly one night” that is a clear statement implying an invasion of Greek territory, Dendias “advised” “anyone who dreams of attacks and conquests to think 3 or 4 times, adding “we are sufficient to defend the integrity and territorial independence.” He recalled also that Turkey threatens Greece with a casus belli if Athens exercises its rights as they derive from the International Law. The Greek FM sent a clear message to Turkey saying that Greece has faced much more serious threats in its history and stressed “we completely reject the neo-Ottoman bullies.”

“We have never had this much power and this much propaganda . . . never the same story being told to the entire globe at the same time and the same lie.”

“..It’s not going to start in America because this is the United States of Pharma.”

• Global Covid19 Vax Propaganda Means Mass Casualties – Dr. Pierre Kory (USAW)

Dr. Kory is actively trying to find treatments for people harmed by the CV19 vax, but that is not the biggest problem he faces. Dr. Kory says, “People are being told things (like getting CV19 booster shots) that are putting them at grave risk. I don’t know how to combat a global technological propaganda instrument. We have never had that before. I don’t think we have ever had the same messages and the same stories being shot out 24/7. I have been saying this for a while, and the world has gone mad because of unrelenting propaganda and censorship. We have never had this much power and this much propaganda . . . never the same story being told to the entire globe at the same time and the same lie.”

Dr. Kory says, “Not only no more shots, but I would say we need a national cry to stop the vaccine campaign. . . It’s not going to start in America because this is the United States of Pharma.” This is why cheap, effective drugs such as Ivermectin are being banned here in America and around the world. Dr. Kory says, “We are at war here. You cannot have Ivermectin in the marketplace. It threatens the vaccine, Paxlovid, monoclonal-antibodies and Remdesivir. Ivermectin is a drug that is the biggest financial threat to the biggest market in pharmaceutical history.”

Google translate.

• BioNtech Sued For Vaccine Damage For 1st Time In Germany (R24)

A Dusseldorf law firm has filed six-figure lawsuits against vaccine manufacturer Biontech for damage to health caused by their vaccine. The lawyers denounce the company’s disrespectful and irresponsible treatment of people who have been vaccinated. According to media reports, the law firm Rogert and Ulbrich stated that they could not reach an out-of-court agreement with Biontech. As a result, lawsuits in the six-figure range have now been filed in several matters. The lawyers sharply criticize the behavior of the vaccine manufacturer: Instead of reacting correctly to claims for damages and information and dealing with the respective facts, they merely referred to a Pfizer form. Marco Rogert stated: “The victims feel that they are not being taken seriously.

They are not only plagued by significant, life-limiting health problems since the vaccination. Now the company responsible is arrogantly giving them the cold shoulder instead of fulfilling their responsibility.” The lawyer’s clients had usually already described their tale of woe elsewhere, for example to the EMA or the PEI. “Especially in cases involving significant damage to health, the least the victims can expect would be for the facts to be dealt with seriously.” Tobias Ulbrich sees a clear connection between Covid vaccination and various diseases: “More and more vaccine damage is coming to light worldwide and many vaccinated people are only now beginning to realize that their current diseases are related to the mRNA injection,” he stated.

In fact, Ulbrich has already commented on this topic several times before on Twitter – he tweeted on August 28 that “VAIDS” is not a disease, but a description of the condition, because the values of those affected confirmed an impairment of the immune system after the vaccination. He sees the vaccine manufacturers as having a duty to prove that there is no connection between the health problems and the vaccination – and not the vaccinees. This is regulated in the Medicines Act. The law firm Rogert and Ulbrich in Düsseldorf has specialized in the legal processing of vaccination damage and its consequences. Those affected by the facility-related vaccination requirement are also advised and represented.

Puzzle

Ok, my brain hurts.pic.twitter.com/xNaNdwrZut

— Sahil Bloom (@SahilBloom) September 6, 2022

Prophet 2020

This commentary was dismissed as a wild conspiracy theory back in 2020. It now looks like a prophetic warning.pic.twitter.com/QUjAP0ZkYH

— James Melville (@JamesMelville) September 6, 2022

Peacock
https://twitter.com/i/status/1567262158295076866

Kookaburra

The laughing kookaburra is known as the “bushman’s alarm clock” because it has a very loud call, usually performed by a family group at dawn and dusk, that sounds like a variety of trills, chortles, belly laughs, and hoots [source: https://t.co/kQQLUzJnXW] pic.twitter.com/P9aWewacvL

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) September 6, 2022

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A Winter of Anger

Aug 062022

August 6, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 12:28 pm Finance Tagged with: anger, Civil War, cold, EU, farmers, hunger, overreach, peace, Rutte, Trudeau, Zelensky 31 Responses »

Vincent van Gogh Beach at Scheveningen in Stormy Weather 1882

It is very simple: if you’d ask most citizens of whichever EU country if they are willing to risk being unable to feed and heat their children in order to support Ukraine and Zelensky, they would say NO. Hell no! But that is what they’re all being pushed towards. Food prices look to at least double from here, after they’ve doubled once already, while energy prices are set to triple or worse. And there’s no logical reason for it.

This is not due to some inevitable market mechanism, it’s because the west decided to halt all Russian imports after the latter’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine. All western leaders found that reason enough to cut all, or nearly all, imports from Russia. Gas, oil, fertilizer, food. Essentials. They could have been sitting around a negotiating table, but chose not to. Which only works as long as things remain sort of affordable. And then, it does not.

Problem is, they had and have no alternative to the Russian supplies of these goods (and there’s many more). See, this is how we know they don’t make their own decisions. Those are made in Brussels and Davos, and then the “leaders” have to carry out the preconceived programs, and they will.

No elected official on his/her own would risk to destroy their own country’s energy or food safety, with elections coming up every few years. But their WEF/Davos connections have changed that “logic”. The WEF makes sure no western leader gets elected who is not a member of their club. There’s only one path to power these days.

But these people grossly underestimate the effect that hunger and cold -will- have on their citizens. The first signs of that are visible in the protests of truckers and farmers, but that’s just a start. You just wait till the cold sets in, and the running blackouts, and the hunger. Wait till people have to feed their kids scraps from a bare table in a cold dark home.

That’s when you will see who people really are. People in the west are overfed, and lazy, and not too sharp, but wait till their kids, and their families, are truly suffering. They’ve seen the example of the farmers and truckers. Wait for people to see the link between their own lives, and the farmers; then you will see who they really are.

“Leaders” like Trudeau and Rutte think they have this under control, that they can make the farmers do what their governments say they must, if need be with assistance from police or even the army. But you cannot send cops and soldiers against your farmers, because 1) they make your food, 2) the people support them, 3) they have a centuries-old democratic right to be farmers, and 4) they don’t take no sh*t for an answer.

This goes back 100s of years, much longer than the right of any politician to tell them what to do. The Dutch farmers on Friday told Rutte to prepare for the hardest actions yet, and they’re still not joking. My guess would be this time they will paralyze the country. Not because they are crazy; 10,000 of them would need to close shop if Rutte gets what he wants, and they won’t let that happen. Farmers will not idly stand by while their neighbor is forced out of business.

No, they are not crazy. They refuse to talk to Rutte, in a sign a of how much they trust him. He assigned a mediator, from his own political club, and all farmer org’s but one refused to talk to him too. The one that did, found the talk useless. Rutte wants the 10,000 scalps no matter what, but it’s just not going to happen. He is shown the limits of his power. Having been PM for 12 years, that’s a bit of a shock.

Obviously, this is all strongly connected to the past 2,5 years of measures and mandates and all. The political class got a taste of power that they did not have before, and got carried away. Well, they went too far this time. One telling number was that of US parents letting their youngest kids be vaxxed: what was it, 0.45%?! And 220 million adult Americans have either never been vaxxed or never boosted. No connection to the farmers? You wait and see.

The game is over. People’s patience with their politicians is ending. But the politicians themselves don’t see that; how could they when they censor all discontent and reports from doctors and scientists who don’t follow the “official” line? They’ve lost touch with the very world they’re supposed to represent. All they get to see is the info that is left after their own “norms” have censored the rest. They see only what they like to see.

In Europe, the Germans and Dutch will manage to be sort of OK, but only at the expense of poorer EU countries. And that won’t even be their main problem; that problem will be at home; their own farmers will come for them. And their poorest. Countries will leave the EU (and the euro). Hungary first to go?! In Greece, there’s already talk of rolling blackouts this winter, and they get most of their electricity from hydro. Italy is a shambles. How many present “leaders” will still be in place January 1 2023? How about June? After a winter of great discontent?

And they’re all telling you that “we” have to win in Ukraine first, and everything will be alright. But “we” have already lost in Ukraine, we did on February 24, and “we” should be talking to, and making peace with, Russia. Why are we not? Because we don’t want food and energy? The folks in Brussels and Davos will not be hungry and cold. But in other EU places they will be. And they will come to balance this thing out.

As for the US, I’m scared there too. Energy prices may not get as bad as in Europe, but food will be real bad (and how about housing?!). And there’s this fight between two factions going on, that starts to feel like what went on before the Civil War. I hope I’m wrong, but I feel it everywhere: Overreach.

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Debt Rattle July 4 2022

Jul 042022

July 4, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:12 am Finance Tagged with: Bezos, Biden, Cassidy, Civil War, Luhansk, Lysychansk, mRNA, social media history, Zelensky 58 Responses »

Salvador Dali Invisible Sleeping Woman, Horse, Lion 1930

• Russia Claims Control Of Pivotal Eastern Ukrainian Province (AP)

• To Avoid Civil War, Learn to Tolerate Different Laws in Different States

• Yes, You CAN Blame Biden For High Energy Prices (Shellenberger)

• Bezos Slams Biden Appeal For Lower Gasoline Prices (F24)

• Supreme Court Marshal Calls on States To Crackdown on Protesters (Turley)

• NY To Require 3 Years Of Social Media History For Gun Carry Permit (PM)

• Text Messages Show Cassidy Hutchinson Referring To Jan 6 Committee As ‘BS’ (DC)

• Are the Covid mRNA Vaccines Safe? (Kulldorff)

• Spartacast 01 (Spartacus)

• US Drag Queens Stand Their Ground Amid Intimidation By The Far Right (G.)

“France now imports more Russian liquefied natural gas than at any time in history, writes Welt.
The requirement to pay for gas in rubles does not apply to LNG supplies, and France has as many as four terminals for receiving such tankers.”

Dude

Dude.pic.twitter.com/2qMQBPOZEB

— Gonzalo Lira (@GonzaloLira1968) July 2, 2022

Myocarditis cases in USA, Ages 12-20:
2019: 16
2020: 9
2021: 2,301

The MSM still can’t do normal reporting on Ukraine. Because Russia keeps winning.

• Russia Claims Control Of Pivotal Eastern Ukrainian Province (AP)

Russia claimed control Sunday over the last Ukrainian stronghold in an eastern province that is key to achieving a major goal of Moscow’s grinding war. The General Staff of Ukraine’s military reported that its forces had withdrawn from Lysychansk in Luhansk province. President Volodymr Zelenskyy acknowledged the withdrawal but said the fight for the city was still raging on its outskirts. If confirmed, Russia’s complete seizure of Luhansk would provide its troops with a stronger base from which to press their advance in the Donbas, a region of mines and factories that President Vladimir Putin is bent on capturing in a campaign that could determine the course of the entire war. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told Putin that Russia’s troops, with a local separatist militia, “have established full control over the city of Lysychansk” and now hold all of Luhansk, according to a ministry statement published Sunday.

As is typical with such descriptions, the Russian statement characterized the victories as “the liberation of the Luhansk People’s Republic.” Separatists in Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk, which make up the Donbas and are home to significant Russian-speaking populations, declared independence from Kyiv in 2014 and their forces have battled Ukrainian troops there ever since. Russia formally recognized the self-proclaimed republics days before its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian and Russian forces fought fiercely for Lysychansk in recent days after the neighboring city fell last week. On Sunday evening, the General Staff of Ukraine’s military confirmed on social media that its forces had withdrawn from Lysychansk “to preserve the lives of Ukrainian defenders.”

In his nightly video address, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy noted the withdrawal. But he added that “Ukraine does not give anything back” and vowed to return with more modern weapons. Citing his forces’ success in recapturing other territory, he promised, “There will be a day when we will say the same about Donbas.” Earlier, Zelenskyy said Kyiv’s forces were still battling Russian soldiers on Lysychansk’s outskirts “in a very difficult and dangerous situation.” “We cannot give you the final judgment. Lysychansk is still being fought for,” Zelenskyy told a news conference in Kyiv given alongside Australia’s visiting prime minister. He noted that territory can move quickly from one side to the other.

Good advice. And a good day for it too.

• To Avoid Civil War, Learn to Tolerate Different Laws in Different States (Mises)

Most commentary on the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—which overturns Roe v. Wade—has focused on the decision’s effect on the legality of abortion in various states. That’s an important issue. It may be, however, that the Dobbs decision’s effect on political decentralization in the United States is a far bigger deal. After all, the ruling isn’t so much about abortion as it is about the federal government’s role in abortion. State governments are free to make abortion 100 percent legal within their own borders. Some states have already done so. The court’s ruling limits only the federal government’s prerogatives over abortion law, and this has the potential to lead to many other limitations on federal power as well. In this way, Dobbs is a victory for those seeking to limit federal power.

The decentralization is all to the good, and there’s nothing novel about it. Historically, state laws in the US have varied broadly on a variety of topics from alcohol consumption to divorce. This was also true of abortion before Roe v. Wade. Moreover, decentralizing abortion policy in this way actually works to defuse national conflict. This is becoming even more important as cultural divides in the United States are clearly accelerating and become more entrenched. Rather than fight with increasing alarm and aggression over who controls the federal government—and thus who imposes the winner’s preferences on everyone else—people in different states will have more choices in choosing whether to live under proabortion or antiabortion regimes.

In other words, decentralization forces policymakers to behave as they should in a confederation of states: they must tolerate people doing things differently across state lines. This will be essential in avoiding disaster, and laissez-faire liberals (i.e., “classical liberals”) have long supported decentralization as a key in avoiding dangerous political conflicts. Ludwig von Mises, for example, supported decentralization because, as he put it, it “is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil … wars.”

Huh? “If Biden got America on a wartime footing, as he should be given Russia’s aggression in Europe, we would see the lowering of oil, gas and petroleum prices in less than one year.”

• Yes, You CAN Blame Biden For High Energy Prices (Shellenberger)

This July 4th, as you fill up your car or truck, you might be tempted to blame President Joe Biden for high gasoline prices. You shouldn’t, say some experts. It’s Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fault, they say. The US had to cut off Russian oil imports to punish Putin for invading Ukraine. Meanwhile, Biden himself has blamed the American energy industry. “At a time of war,” Biden wrote in an open letter to the industry on June 15, “high refinery profit margins being passed directly onto American families are not acceptable… companies must take immediate actions to increase the supply of gasoline, diesel, and other refined product.” But US refineries are already operating at 94 percent of their capacity, with US refineries in the Gulf of Mexico running at 98 percent, which is the highest rate in 30 years.

Running refineries at a higher capacity than that risks damaging the equipment. As such, Biden isn’t just wrong, he insulted some of the hardest working people operating in one of the most dangerous industries in America. But, on May 12, Biden’s Interior Department blocked a proposal to open up more than one million acres of land in Alaska for oil and gas drilling. Two days later, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency blocked plans to expand an oil refinery in the US Virgin Islands. Biden and his defenders said he had to block the expansion of the Virgin Islands refinery, given how polluting it was. But had Biden’s EPA allowed the Virgin Island refinery to expand, the owners would have poured nearly $3 billion into retrofitting the plant so it produced gasoline and other products more cleanly, while significantly increasing production at the same time.

Furthermore, anybody who cares about air pollution and climate change should want more oil and gas drilling, not less. US emissions declined 22% between 2005 and 2020, mostly because cheap natural gas has replaced coal. In truth, there are many things Biden could have done, and still should do, to lower energy prices. He could invoke the National Defense Act to accelerate the rate of oil and gas permits. He could set a floor of $80/barrel for re-filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which would be a powerful incentive for the industry, because it would prevent prices from falling to unprofitable levels. Biden could announce trade agreements with American allies to supply them with liquified natural gas, which would incentivize more natural gas production and lower prices. If Biden got America on a wartime footing, as he should be given Russia’s aggression in Europe, we would see the lowering of oil, gas and petroleum prices in less than one year.

“99% of gas stations in America are small business owned. The average gas station’s profit actually DROPPED from April to May. ”

• Bezos Slams Biden Appeal For Lower Gasoline Prices (F24)

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has criticized President Joe Biden for calling on oil companies to lower sky-high gasoline prices, prompting the White House to come to the US leader’s defense on Sunday. “My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril,” Biden tweeted Saturday. “Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product. And do it now,” Biden added. Bezos said Biden’s remarks amounted to “either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics.” “Ouch. Inflation is far too important a problem for the White House to keep making statements like this,” the US billionaire tweeted Saturday.

Gasoline prices at the pump have become a symbol of broader price rises in the United States, and they are sapping Biden’s approval rating ahead of legislative elections in November. Biden has regularly attacked oil companies, saying they only care about profits and not the well-being of the average consumer. The companies say in turn they have increased production to try to tame prices but that these are set on the world market and are subject to dynamics that are not under the control of US oil giants. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Twitter Sunday that oil prices have dropped about $15 a barrel over the past month. “But prices at the pump have barely come down. That’s not ‘basic market dynamics.’ It’s a market that is failing the American consumer,” she wrote.

Gasoline prices have been above $5 a gallon since early June, which is unprecedented in the car-crazy nation. Prices have fallen slightly since, but remain far from the $3 a gallon level of a year ago. John Kirby, White House spokesman on national security issues, also defended the president Sunday in an appearance on Fox News. “The president is working very, very hard across many fronts… to try to bring that price down,” Kirby said.

Governors refuse.

• Supreme Court Marshal Calls on States To Crackdown on Protesters (Turley)

In a rare move, Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley has sent letters to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich, and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin demanding that authorities put an end to picketing and “threatening activity” outside the homes of SCOTUS justices. The letter seeks to use state laws to achieve what the Justice Department has clearly rejected under federal law. If the letter prompts arrests, we could see a major free speech challenge in the courts. The timing of the letter, however, is particularly interesting and may reflect a recognition of the limits of the federal law. Like most Americans, I have denounced these protests targeting the homes of justices as excessive and reckless (though one law professor actually suggested that such protests could be more aggressive).

However, I have also questioned the use of a federal law to arrest protesters. Under a federal law, 18 U.S.C. 1507, any individual who “pickets or parades” with the “intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer” near a U.S. court or “near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer” will be fined or “imprisoned not more than one year, or both.” I believe that a court would declare the use of the federal law against protesters on public sidewalks to be unconstitutional. There are issues of free speech, assembly, and vagueness that would be likely raised in federal court. Indeed, if you apply the broad interpretation of the law, even protests outside of the Supreme Court building could result in arrests since courthouses are also included.

However, the timing is particularly interesting. After the release of the decision in in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, I noted that it would be even harder to use this law because the statute refers to “interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge … in the discharge of his duty.” With the release of the decision, there is no chance that the protesters are interfering, impeding, or influencing the decision. Thus, even if the constitutional arguments were rejected, a court could question whether the law can be read as applying to protests generally against the justices for their views. That is what makes the date so interesting. Dobbs came out on June 24, 2022. One week later, Curley sought enforcement of state laws as an alternative to federal enforcement.

It may reflect the view that, even if the law is constitutional to arrest protesters, it would be narrowly construed in light of the fact that Dobbs is now on the books. Since it was clear for weeks that the Justice Department would not enforce the law to arrest protesters outside of these homes, the timing of the letter could reflect a dwindling likelihood of enforcement in light of the end of the term. Curley wrote Gov. Hogan: “I would respectfully request that you direct the Maryland State Police to enforce Maryland and Montgomery County laws that squarely prohibit picketing at the homes of Supreme Court Justices who reside in Maryland.” Both the Maryland and Virginia governors responded by calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to use his authority under federal law to stop the protesters.

That’s a first for me. Sounds crazy.

• NY To Require 3 Years Of Social Media History For Gun Carry Permit (PM)

New York Governor Kathy Hochul once again signed sweeping gun legislation into law on Friday that created several severe new restrictions on obtaining a gun in the state, including drastically increasing concealed carry regulations and requiring applicants to turn over social media history. According to the the legislation, part of Hochul’s new criteria to obtain a concealed carry permit will be an applicant giving the government a list containing three years of history of their current and inactive social media accounts. Applicants must also have 16 hours of firearm training, provide four character references, and list the contact information for any domestic partners or adults of any kind they live with.

Potential applicants will also be required to show “good moral character,” meaning “the essential character, temperament and judgment necessary to be entrusted with a weapon and to use it only in a manner that does not endanger oneself and others. At a press conference regarding the new legislation, Hochul said “we are creating a definitive list of sensitive locations where individuals will not be able to carry firearms.” This list includes “schools, summer camps, libraries, daycares, parks and playgrounds, places children gather, theaters, museums, entertainment venues, places of worship for religious observation, polling places, educational institutions, and health medical facilities. Federal State Local government buildings, homeless and domestic violence shelters, places where alcohol is consumed, restaurants, bars, public transportation, subway buses, airports and at public demonstrations and rallies, and in Times Square.”

Another new rule is a “Default of No Concealed Carry on Private Property and Businesses Unless Deemed Permissible by Property Owners.” Hochul said of this law, “We are making ‘no open carry’ the default position for private businesses. That means that any business, grocery store, retail, private home, place that wants to allow guns on their premises will have to demonstrate that and establish that they put a sign out there that says concealed carry guns are welcome here.”

She is a strange story.

• Text Messages Show Cassidy Hutchinson Referring To Jan 6 Committee As ‘BS’ (DC)

The January 6 committee’s key witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, called the committee “bs” in a text message obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller. On Feb 1. Hutchinson sent a text to a conservative activist with connections to the First Amendment Fund, which is a group started by the American Conservative Union that helps Trump officials cover costs for Jan. 6 lawyers. Matt Schlapp said Hutchinson approached CPAC for help through the First Amendment Fund. Schlapp said he is happy they did not end up assisting her because she was relaying White House “hallway gossip as fact.” In the text message, Hutchinson says: “Hey (redacted)! This is Cassidy Hutchinson. Kind of a random question, but do you still work for the Schlapp’s at the ACU?” To which the person responded, “Hi, Yes!”

Hutchinson then said, “Do you happen to know a First Amendment fund POC I could reach out to? I was subpoenaed in early Nov., but the committee waited to serve me until last week (after Ben’s deposition).” “I had to accept service because the U.S. Marshalls came to my apartment last Wednesday, but I haven’t made contact with the Committee. I’m just on a tight timeline and just trying to figure out what my options are to deal with this bs,” Hutchinson added. In another text message reviewed by the Daily Caller, Hutchinson told the conservative activist that she does not want things to get “unnecessarily elevated” in regards to the Jan. 6 committee. Hutchinson made headlines after testifying before the Jan. 6 committee, where she claimed former President Donald Trump lunged for the steering wheel in an effort to reroute the car to the Capitol where protesters were gathering. Sources close to the Secret Service have denied her claims.

Kulldorff tries too hard to sound reasonable. No, they are not safe. So say so.

• Are the Covid mRNA Vaccines Safe? (Kulldorff)

Covid-recovered people have natural immunity that is stronger than vaccine-induced immunity. So, the benefit of vaccination is – at best – minimal. If the risk of adverse reactions is the same as in the randomized trials, there is a negative risk-benefit difference. Why are we mandating people in this group to be vaccinated? It is both unethical and damaging to public health. While everyone can get infected, children have a minuscule risk of covid mortality. There is very limited safety data from the trials on children. If the risk of adverse reactions is the same as for adults, the harms outweigh the risks. Children should not receive these vaccines. Older people above 70 have a much higher risk of covid mortality than the population in the Fraiman study. If their risk of adverse reaction is the same, then the benefits outweigh the harms.

Hence, older people who have never had covid and are not yet vaccinated may benefit from these vaccines. However, we do not know if they are better than the Johnson & Johnson and Astra-Zeneca vaccines. It is unclear from the clinical trial data whether the benefits outweigh the risks for working-age adults who have not been vaccinated and who have not already had covid. This is true both historically, for the original covid variants, and currently for the newer ones. The Fraiman study analyzes data after the first and second doses. Both risks and benefits may differ for booster shots, but no randomized trial has properly evaluated the trade-off. These results concern only the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines. Fraiman et al. did not analyze data on the adenovirus-vector vaccines marketed by Johnson & Johnson and Astra-Zeneca.

Benn et al. found that they reduced all-cause mortality (RR=0.37, 95% CI:0.19-0.70), but nobody has used trial data to analyze AESIs for these vaccines. Critically, the Fraiman and Benn studies had a follow-up of only a few months after the second dose because Pfizer and Moderna, unfortunately, terminated their randomized trials a few months after receiving emergency use authorization. Of course, a longer-term benefit can provide a basis to tolerate negative or neutral short-term risk-benefit differences. However, that is unlikely since we know from observational studies that mRNA vaccine efficacy deteriorates a few months after the second dose.

There may also be long-term adverse reactions to the vaccine regarding which we do not yet know. Since the randomized trials ended early, we must look at observational data to answer that question. The publicly available data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System is of low quality, with both under- and over-reporting. The best observational data is from CDCs Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) and FDA’s Biologics and Effectiveness Safety System (BEST), but there have only been limited reports from these systems. Fraiman and colleagues have produced the best evidence yet regarding the overall safety of the mRNA vaccines. The results are concerning. It is the responsibility of the manufacturers and FDA to ensure that benefits outweigh harms. They have failed to do so.

Haven’t followed the Spartacus group for a bit.

• Spartacast 01 (Spartacus)

SARS-CoV-2 was not the product of natural zoonosis. It was not the product of an accidental lab leak, either. It was the product of deliberate, willful bioterrorism by what I’ve come to call the Biodefense Mafia. This Biodefense Mafia grew out of an expansion of USAID, DARPA, BARDA, and DTRA-affiliated civilian biolabs, both in the US and elsewhere, thanks to the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program and Robert Kadlec’s expansion of biodefense after Amerithrax. That initial expansion of the Biodefense Mafia involved Kadlec awarding rigged contracts to Fuad El-Hibri’s company, BioPort, for anthrax vaccines. BioPort was a spinoff of DynPort, which, in turn, was spun off from the American mercenary company DynCorp in a partnership with Porton in the UK.

Yes, the same DynCorp that Kathryn Bolkovac blew the whistle on in Bosnia for sex trafficking of young girls, the same DynCorp that continued to receive US State Department contracts even after soliciting “dancing boys” in Afghanistan, and the same DynCorp whose OV-10 Bronco turboprops loaned from the US State Department for coca eradication crop dusting with RoundUp in Colombia happened to have the same tail number as a helicopter mentioned in Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs, N474AW, on one of the aircraft. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Robert Kadlec again awarded rigged contracts for COVID-19 vaccines to Fuad El-Hibri and Emergent BioSolutions, which is what BioPort renamed themselves to. Emergent BioSolutions came under fire due to the scandalous condition of their vaccine manufacturing facilities and the poor quality-control practices exercised there.

Throughout the 2000s, Michael Callahan was part of an effort by the US State Department called the BioIndustry Initiative, authorized in the Defense and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2002, where US scientists would visit various former Soviet biowarfare labs in Russia and discuss technologies the Soviets developed that could be patented, commercialized, marketed, and “peacefully” used in drugs and therapies. He was on the ground in Wuhan in 2019 and 2020, as DARPA’s “Man in Wuhan”, suggesting that the H2 blocker famotidine might be useful for treating COVID-19, based on observations of patient data.

Nothing against drag queens, but don’t push them on little kids.

• US Drag Queens Stand Their Ground Amid Intimidation By The Far Right (G.)

The drag queens were out in force across New York’s recent Pride parade triggering cheers and waves with their flamboyant and extravagant costumes. But this year the world of American drag has been marred by growing fears of violence and intimidation as they have been specifically targeted by conservatives and extremist far-right and militia groups amid a general rise in anti-LGBTQ hate. One of the main targets for rightwing ire has been Drag Queen Story Hour events where drag queens will read books to children at public libraries. Three weeks ago at a reading in a library in San Lorenzo, 30 miles from San Francisco, a group of men, one wearing a T-shirt stenciled with the image of an assault rifle, interrupted a drag performer reading The Kindness Book to pre-schoolers, frightening all.

Authorities said at least five men who appeared in the black and yellow uniform aligned with the extremist Proud Boy group hurled homophobic and transphobic slurs at the story hour’s performer, Panda Dulce, who later said the interruption was “a brazen act of vitriolic intimidation”. The incident is being investigated as a hate crime. Members of the same organisation – designated a hate group by The Southern Poverty Law Group – also disrupted a Pride story-time event in South Carolina where kids were being read Daddy and Dada and Heather Has Two Mommies. One parent was told they were a child abuser. Last week a drag event at a California bar, Mojos, was cancelled after protestors yelling homophobic abuse sought to enter the premises.

The pattern of intimidation, in cases not limited to the intimidation of drag queens, comes as Pride month itself has become a target for rightwing extremists in the US. Recently in Idaho a group of far-right Patriot Front extremists were arrested amid fears they intended to attack a Pride march in the state. Drag queens themselves, however, are standing their ground.

Chinatown

When JACK NICHOLSON won a BAFTA for Chinatown, he accepted the award from the set of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. One of the great acceptance speeches. pic.twitter.com/kRSrJkUlXx

— All The Right Movies (@ATRightMovies) July 2, 2022

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