Nov 062023
 
 November 6, 2023  Posted by at 10:28 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  52 Responses »


Max Ernst Santa Conversazione 1921

 

‘America Is Waging The War In Gaza’: Hassan Nasrallah (Cradle)
Iran Defense Minister: ‘Serious Strike’ On US If Gaza War Continues (Sp.)
Why Israel is Losing Opportunity to Beat Hamas – Scott Ritter (Sp.)
Nuking Gaza is a Possibility – Israeli Minister (RT)
Western Leaders Know Ukrainians Steal Their Money – Kremlin (RT)
Proxy War in Ukraine Exposed NATO’s ‘Failed’ New Warfare Tactics (Sp.)
Why West is Terrified of Transferring Seized Russian Assets to Ukraine (Sp.)
The New Electric War Campaign (Helmer)
Europe in the Crossfire: Can All Crises Be Managed Simultaneously? (Oncan)
Does Any Member of the US Government Represent Americans? (Paul Craig Roberts)
Connecticut Judge Orders New Bridgeport Mayoral Primary (NYP)
Election Fraud Cases Break Out In 3 Democrat States (JTN)
Trump Leads Biden In 5 Battleground States In New York Times Poll (JTN)
Two Men Who Exposed the Bidens’ Corruption in Ukraine (21CW)

 

 

 

 

QueenRania

 

 

Finkelstein

 

 

 

 

As the US makes sure we blame Bibi, Hezbollah knows who’s behind the curtain..

‘America Is Waging The War In Gaza’: Hassan Nasrallah (Cradle)

Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah delivered his first speech since the start of the Gaza-Israel war, in which he blamed the US government for the conflict in the occupied Palestinian territories. “Washington is entirely responsible for the war in Gaza, while Israel is merely a tool. The US is preventing the condemnation of Israel at the UN Security Council and a ceasefire in Gaza,” Nasrallah said on 3 November. The Lebanese resistance leader declared “Hezbollah is not intimidated” by the deployment of nearly a dozen US warships to the Eastern Mediterranean. “Your fleets do not scare us, nor have they ever, and we are all set for them,” Nasrallah stressed. sHe then addressed US planners directly, telling them: “You can stop the aggression against Gaza because this is something you unleashed. Whoever wants to prevent a regional war must hasten to stop this aggression.”

“What’s happening now in Gaza is not a usual war; it is not like wars before. This is a decisive conflict,” the Hezbollah leader added. He also highlighted that Hezbollah “has been escalating its operations day by day and forcing Israel to keep its forces near the Lebanese border instead of Gaza or the occupied West Bank.” “What is happening on our front is extremely important and influential, but it will not remain restricted for too long […] All options on the Lebanese front are open. All choices are on the table, and we may decide at any moment,” the resistance leader warned. On Thursday, Hezbollah launched the biggest attack on Israel since the end of the 2006 war. Nearly 60 Hezbollah fighters have died since the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in Gaza.

Read more …

Iran knows it too..

Iran Defense Minister: ‘Serious Strike’ On US If Gaza War Continues (Sp.)

Iranian Defense Minister Mohammad Reza Ashtiani on Sunday threatened to conduct a “serious strike” against the United States if it does not put an end to the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip. “Our advice to the Americans is to stop the war immediately between Israel and Palestine and ensure a ceasefire, or else the US will face a serious strike,” the brigadier general was quoted as saying by Iranian news agency Tasnim. On October 7, Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise large-scale rocket attack against Israel from the Gaza Strip and breached the border, killing and abducting people in neighboring Israeli communities.

Israel launched retaliatory strikes and ordered a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip, home to more than 2 million people, cutting off supplies of water, food, and fuel. On October 27, Israel launched a large-scale ground incursion inside the Gaza Strip to eliminate Hamas fighters and rescue the hostages. The escalation of the conflict has resulted in the deaths of around 1,400 people in Israel and over 9,000 in the Gaza Strip and raised the risk of a wider regional conflagration due to concerns about Iran or Lebanese militant group Hezbollah joining the fray.

Read more …

“They’re also kids of a nation that is averse to casualties. They don’t want their boys and girls coming home in body bags..”

Why Israel is Losing Opportunity to Beat Hamas – Scott Ritter (Sp.)

If the Israeli military hope to defeat Hamas in Gaza, they need to get all the way down to the underground tunnels, veteran former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, and UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter tells Sputnik. But Israel doesn’t want to do that, because “they want war on the cheap,” the geopolitical observer emphasized. “They’re fighting above ground. They’re doing limited tunnel operations. But they’re not succeeding in defeating Hamas. To defeat Hamas, you’ve got to go all the way underground, and you’ve got to shut down the entire tunnel network.” Scott Ritter reiterated that all Israel was doing at present was “destroying the existing infrastructure” amid the soaring civilian death toll,” adding. “The idea still resides that eventually the tunnels would be rebuilt, Hamas will be regrown and Israel will never defeat this ‘idea of resistance’.”

[..] On Sunday, the IDF also said that the Israeli army had gained access to Hamas underground tunnels in the north of the Gaza Strip. Throughout the past weeks, scenes from the bombardment-ravaged Gaza Strip, where Israel had ordered a complete blockade, cutting off supplies of water, food, and fuel, have prompted thousands of protesters to take to the streets of various cities, including the US capital, Washington, DC, to protest against Israeli military activities in the enclave. However, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as he met with Middle Eastern leaders in Jordan, again rejected calls for a ceasefire. Washington has been voicing its support for “humanitarian pauses”. Looking back at the initial Hamas incursion in October, and the way the militant group was able to breach the so-called ‘iron wall’, with its ‘smart technology’, Scott Ritter explained that the myth of the “infallibility of Israeli intelligence” has been busted.

Over the years, the Israeli Defense Force “has been propped up” by American technology, said the pundit. “One of our main goals and objectives in supporting Israel is to ensure that Israel sustains technological supremacy over any potential enemy. That’s why we give them the most advanced American weapons, etc… But the IDF itself – outside of, for instance, the pilots, some senior officers and senior NCOs – the vast majority of the defense force is a conscript military,” clarified Ritter. He went on to explain that this meant that the battalions operating at present in Gaza are composed of “18, 19, 20-year-old kids with no meaningful experience whatsoever.” “They’re also kids of a nation that is averse to casualties. They don’t want their boys and girls coming home in body bags,” said Ritter.

According to the Sputnik contributor, the IDF does a lot of “posturing”, using “stand-off strikes” and hiding “behind their technology”. “However, the IDF, when you tangle with them… What you find out is they can’t win. They didn’t beat Hezbollah in 2006. They didn’t beat Hamas in 2014. They’re not beating Hamas now because you can’t win a major conflict with a conscript-based military when you’re not willing to let these people die … But, you know, if you’re going to kill 50,000 Hamas fighters, understand you need to be prepared to lose 20,000 Israelis,” said Ritter. In his opinion, the IDF is “no longer seen as invincible”, but rather “incompetent” and even “weak”. “And this is bad for Israel because it’s a small country. And one of the best tools it had to hold off the forces that are arrayed against it is the mythology of the invincibility of the IDF, and the infallibility of Israeli intelligence. Both those myths have been shattered,” the ex-UN weapons inspector and WMD whistleblower insisted.

Read more …

Bibi can suspend him, but this sentiment is not limited to him..

Nuking Gaza is a Possibility – Israeli Minister (RT)

Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu has suggested that his country could launch a nuclear strike on Gaza. The controversial remarks caused outrage across the Israeli government, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suspending Eliyahu indefinitely. In a Sunday interview with Radio Kol Berama, when asked if Israel could drop an atomic bomb on the Palestinian enclave, the minister, who is a member of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, replied that “this is one of the possibilities.” Eliyahu also spoke out against helping inhabitants of the enclave, which has been under Israeli siege for several weeks now, arguing that “we wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid,” and that “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza.” Shortly after the controversial remarks, Netanyahu announced that the minister had been suspended from all government meetings.

Writing on X (formerly Twitter), his office quoted him as saying that “Eliyahu’s statements are not based in reality,” adding that Israel is “operating in accordance with the highest standards of international law to avoid harming innocents.” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant condemned what he called Eliyahu’s “baseless and irresponsible words,” adding in a post on X that “it’s good that these are not the people in charge of Israel’s security.” Those remarks were echoed by opposition leader Yair Lapid, who called Eliyahu an “extremist” and pointed out that his statement “caused harm to the families of the hostages, Israeli society, and our international standing,” urging Netanyahu to fire the minister.

The minister’s remarks also did not go unnoticed by Hamas, which launched a surprise attack on Israel last month. It stated that the comments are an “expression of the occupiers’ Nazism and [their] genocide practices,” which came after Israel’s “military failure in the face of the [Palestinian] resistance”. Meanwhile, Eliyahu attempted to control the damage, insisting that “it’s clear to anyone with a brain that the remark about the atom was metaphorical.” He maintained, however, that Israel “must display a forceful and disproportional response to terror,” adding that this approach will show “the Nazis and their supporters that terrorism isn’t worthwhile.” Israel has never publicly confirmed or denied having nuclear weapons. However, it is widely believed to have possessed such arms since the late 1960s. According to a Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimate, the nation has a total of 90 warheads.

Read more …

“Even such extremely powerful economies as the United States can’t do this indefinitely. They have a lot of problems of their own…”

Western Leaders Know Ukrainians Steal Their Money – Kremlin (RT)

Western countries have come to realize that Ukrainian officials are using the funds they receive from their supporters to line their own pockets, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov has said. In an interview with Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin released on Sunday, Peskov claimed that Western leaders “understand that a certain part of the money they give to Ukraine is, simply put, stolen,” adding that this reality is recognized by US policymakers at various levels. According to Peskov, when confronted with rampant corruption in Ukraine, American lawmakers “have to explain to their constituents why there is no proper mechanism [to oversee] the fund disbursement [and] why they turn a blind eye to this” while debating further aid packages.

He went on to add that both the US and Kiev’s backers in Europe are “getting tired of the Ukrainian topic, the Kiev regime, and the burden that they have put on their shoulders,” referring to the massive military and financial assistance Ukraine receives from the West. “Even such extremely powerful economies as the United States can’t do this indefinitely. They have a lot of problems of their own… At some point, all this will become an excessive burden that they can no longer bear,” he stressed. Peskov’s comments come after Politico reported in early October that the administration of US President Joe Biden was “far more worried about corruption in Ukraine than they publicly admit.” A sensitive document cited by the magazine stressed that the widespread graft in Ukraine could force Western allies to abandon Kiev in its fight with Russia.

The Politico article was echoed by a CNN report, which was released around the same time, alleging that US officials were pushing Kiev to do more to fight corruption, with a State Department diplomatic note compiled this summer linking anti-graft efforts to continued direct budget support. Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s request for Congress to approve a new security package, which included more than $60 billion for Ukraine, met with strong opposition from the Republicans. Some GOP lawmakers called on the president for more accountability and to clarify what he thinks the endgame in the conflict would look like.

Read more …

“..NATO doctrine put into practice in its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine clashed with the demands of the times.”

Proxy War in Ukraine Exposed NATO’s ‘Failed’ New Warfare Tactics (Sp.)

The Kiev regime has been sending its troops against Russian defenses, racking up massive human losses while failing to turn the tide of its botched counteroffensive, despite massive shipments of NATO weaponry. Furthermore, Russia’s state-of-the-art unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have been used en masse to target Ukrainian military equipment. The Ukraine conflict has not only compellingly shown that modern-day warfare has changed, but has also exposed the complete failure of NATO war tactics in the face of these new conditions, reported military-focused US publication 19FortyFive. NATO patrons of the Kiev regime have been increasingly exasperated over how Ukraine’s counteroffensive has failed to deliver results, despite the billions’ worth of weapons continuously sent there.

Both Western supporters of Kiev and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky have been egging on Ukrainian troops towards “massive assaults” that “have become suicidal,” the publication stated. But the “fast, large-scale blitzkrieg they envisioned” remained a figment of their imagination. One of the reasons for this is that the advance of drone technology has transformed warfare into a “war of a thousand cuts,” the outlet said. The colorful reference relates to Lingchi, a form of capital punishment that results in a slow, lingering death. Traced back to the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), it was meted out to offenders in Asian countries like China, Vietnam, and Korea. The practice is believed to have ended around the early 1900s. Current warfare is similarly “more gradual,” the report insisted. It drew attention to how NATO doctrine put into practice in its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine clashed with the demands of the times.

Furthermore, Ukrainian troops’ training by NATO failed to “cover the reality of modern drone warfare,” the outlet stated, referencing US Army veterans’ expert opinions. Thus, the alliance’s “offensives based on combined arms maneuver,” such as tanks and infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) breaching defense lines, supported by an array of artillery and air power, failed to work for Ukraine, as per the columnist. Ukrainian attempts at assaults utilizing large armored units resulted in heavy losses. Such attacks, where success hinges on a superlative level of coordination, is a feat that NATO armies “spend years” honing, it was added. However, in Ukraine’s Armed Forces, staffed with mostly recently mobilized civilians, such attacks become what pundits call a “meat grinder.” Furthermore, throwing such troops at Russia’s superlative defense lines, with vast minefields, anti-tank ditches, and anti-tank pyramid-shaped concrete defense obstacles, known as “dragon’s teeth,” is futile – something that Russia has been proving repeatedly throughout its special military operation.

Read more …

“..this could destabilize the global financial system and in particular diminish the dollar’s and the euro’s captive investors among central bank reserve managers.”

Why West is Terrified of Transferring Seized Russian Assets to Ukraine (Sp.)

The political battle for Russian state assets trapped abroad continues to intensify. Last week, European Union leaders approved in principle a controversial measure allowing the bloc to skim profits from Russian assets for use in “Ukraine reconstruction,” and called on the European Commission to “accelerate work with a view to submitting proposals” in this direction. Across the Atlantic, US officials have similarly stepped up efforts to try to make use of the seized Russian assets, although these efforts have so far stuck to behind-the-scenes negotiations in the corridors of power occasionally reported on by the media. The discussions about legal justifications to seize the Russian funds outright or at least skim interest comes at a difficult time for the Ukrainian proxy war’s sponsors, with Western lawmakers with the power to dole out extra money for Kiev and the public at large turning their focus to the Palestinian-Israeli crisis.

The reevaluation of priorities could not have come at a worse time for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose government’s dependence on Western handouts has reached dangerous proportions. Actually seizing Russia’s frozen assets and handing them over to Ukraine is easier said than done, with more than 20 months of threats and talking on the matter yet to bear fruit for advocates of the idea in Washington, Brussels, and Kiev. Part of the problem may relate to difficulties finding the money. While it was initially reported that some $300+ billion in Russian Central Bank funds got trapped abroad in February 2022, Washington-based financial experts revealed at the end of that year that the actual amount seized was closer to $80-100 billion, and that the US and the EU have had trouble finding the frozen funds. This past February, US business media reported that actually only about $36.5 billion had been found by the EU (which was estimated to contain over two thirds of seized funds to begin with), to date.

But the real problem isn’t technical or legal, but relates to reputational risks. In an op-ed in a major British business newspaper on Sunday, commentator Martin Sandbu explained that “legal obstacles” are only the “ostensible justification” for the failure to deliver Russian money to Ukraine, since, theoretically, Western countries could join Canada in making changes to legislation and citing legal arguments claiming Russia has “no legal resource” to its money to justify the seizure and transfer. But the West hasn’t moved against Russia, given “the fear that confiscating Russia’s assets will make other non-Western countries pull their own reserves out of the West, in case one day the same treatment could be meted out to them,” the observer noted.

“The concern,” Sandbu writes, “is that this could destabilize the global financial system and in particular diminish the dollar’s and the euro’s captive investors among central bank reserve managers. The European Central Bank has issued a strong warning to European policymakers against even taxing EU companies making windfall profits on blocked Russian assets – which seems the most that the sanctions coalition is currently willing to contemplate.” And although the commentator spends the rest of the op-ed suggesting that this danger is overblown, and demanding that Russian reserves be seized and transferred “now” before the Ukrainian proxy war ends, the reality seems otherwise, with major powers which have spent decades fattening up Western banks and subsidizing the West’s development now thinking twice about parking assets in the US and Europe after seeing what was done to Russia.

Regulators in China, for example, held an emergency conference with major domestic and foreign banks last year to brainstorm ways to protect PRC assets should the US impose sanctions similar to those it has slapped on Russia, with officials reportedly “put on alert” of the West’s ability to arbitrarily seize foreign assets. Beijing, for the record, is one of Washington’s biggest foreign creditors, owning about $860 billion in US Treasuries alone, and amassing assets abroad worth nearly $10 trillion. Saudi Arabia, another major creditor and investor in the US and Europe, whose allegiance is crucial in propping up the petrodollar, has also watched the West’s actions vis-à-vis Russia closely, and has made major moves this year to dramatically diversify geostrategic alignment, normalizing ties with Iran, joining the BRICS bloc, and rejecting US requests to ramp up oil production to offset the global economic downturn sparked by NATO’s proxy war with Russia.

Read more …

Drones galore.

The New Electric War Campaign (Helmer)

In the coming winter phase of the Russian offensive in the Ukraine, the electric war will be run quite differently from the way the first electric war was directed last winter. The impact on the Ukrainian grid and on the country’s and military’s capacities to cope will be more destructive than a year ago. The reason for this, Ukrainian sources have been saying publicly and Russian military assessments now confirm, is that most of the money which the US, the European Union, and the World Bank have provided Kiev officials over the past nine months to repair, reconstruct, and prepare the country’s power generating and distribution system for the coming winter has been stolen. The US and NATO command and control centres inside the country for running the war will be operating in the dark, not only because of the precision of the Russian missiles and drone operations, but because of the corruption of the Ukrainians.

They understand that defeat and capitulation are coming; they are running away with the loot before it’s too dark, too late. In the latest Ukrainian press reports, the battlefield evidence indicates the new electric war has begun. “Kiev said,” according to this summary, “two dozen Russian drones and a missile were downed overnight as concern grows that Moscow is once again targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure ahead of winter. Officials in Kharkiv reported civilian targets were hit by shelling and drone attacks…Police in Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine reported that at least 10 Russian drones hit civilian infrastructure and triggered multiple fires in the city and shelling also damaged buildings. The overnight raids are part of a recent rise in Russian attacks. More than 100 settlements in eastern Ukraine, including Kharkiv, were targeted on Wednesday, the heaviest day of shelling so far in 2023…Ukraine and its partners in the West worry that Russia could try to replicate a strategy it followed last winter, squeezing Ukraine by targeting energy infrastructure as temperatures fall.”

There is no corroboration in the latest bulletin from the Russian Ministry of Defense that the new round of aerial attacks was targeted on energy infrastructure. “From October 28 to November 3, 2023, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation carried out fifteen group strikes with precision weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles on warehouses of rocket and artillery weapons, places of storage of weapons and military equipment, as well as temporary locations of Ukrainian servicemen, nationalists and foreign mercenaries. As a result of the strikes, hangars for preparing Ukrainian aircraft for takeoff, production sites for unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned boats, groups of foreign instructors and mercenaries were destroyed.” The problem for the Ukrainians is that the electricity generating plants and the power grids are now more vulnerable to precision attack triggering cascading system failure than they were a year ago.

Read more …

They can’t even manage one…

Europe in the Crossfire: Can All Crises Be Managed Simultaneously? (Oncan)

Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has not only triggered anti-Russian sanctions and financial/military aid for Ukraine but has also exposed the multiple threats confronting Europe. As the West, led by the United States, seeks to wield Ukraine, a product of color revolutions, as a strategic lever, Europe bears the brunt of the ensuing political and economic tensions. Presently, Europe grapples with escalating energy prices stemming from the Ukrainian crisis and anti-Russian sanctions. Additionally, unrest fueled by Ukraine’s grain restrictions on European countries, a deteriorating economy, the ongoing migration wave, and the challenges it presents continue to be pressing issues awaiting resolution.

Meanwhile, Israel’s actions in Gaza and the U.S.’s supportive declarations further complicate matters for Europe. Despite hopes that a resolution in the Israel-Palestine conflict might shift Ukraine from the forefront, European leaders are expected to navigate both crises simultaneously, with few exceptions like Spain. Quoting Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, who remarked, “It is evident that the Middle East conflict casts a shadow on events in Ukraine,” Politico anticipates that EU leaders will assert their capacity to address both the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East concurrently.

It’s not limited to just Ukraine and Israel; there are also revealed color revolution plans in Kosovo-Serbia, ongoing issues in Georgia, an anticipated political crisis in Armenia due to Azerbaijan’s actions in Karabakh, and political pressure on opposition parties in Moldova, among other concerns. It’s evident that all of these matters are interconnected with unresolved crises in the former USSR region, and they are, in a broader context, part of the United States’ strategy to encircle Russia. Meanwhile, Europe is directly grappling with the consequences of these developments, which align with the broader interests of the United States on the global stage, all while striving to enhance its own geopolitical influence.

Read more …

” Israel, considered a rich country, does not need foreign aid, but any member of Congress who does not vote for Israel’s billions finds in his next election a challenger financed by Israel’s billions..”

Does Any Member of the US Government Represent Americans? (Paul Craig Roberts)

US Representative Matt Gaetz has courage and principles, for the most part good ones. It was Gaetz who had the courage and leadership ability to get rid of Rino McCarthy as Speaker of the House. It is Gaetz who understands that hardly any member of Congress in either party represents Americans. Instead, they represent the military/security complex’s power and profits, the profits of the pharmaceutical companies, the profits of agri-business (ethanol for example), the profits of Wall Street, the profits of energy, timber, and mining, and so forth. And especially, the US Congress represents the artificial state of Israel and all of Israel’s agendas. Indeed, Matt Gaetz himself cannot escape having to support an occupier of Palestinians’ land, claiming that it is Israel’s.

The fact that even a brave man like Matt Gaetz has to support an aggressor against a people abandoned by the “moral” West shows how captured the US government is at all levels by vested monied interests. Gaetz along with the entirely of the US Congress and the President are purchased by the billions of dollars that American taxpayers are forced to hand over to Israel each year. American taxpayers are forced to give Israel annually billions of dollars that are used to purchase our government. Israel, considered a rich country, does not need foreign aid, but any member of Congress who does not vote for Israel’s billions finds in his next election a challenger financed by Israel’s billions and himself a victim of Israel’s slander machine.

The same thing happens if you vote against an excessive military/security budget or against the agendas of powerful organized interests. A government whose election is financed by interest groups has to represent those interest groups. So, obviously, the solution is not term limits on members of Congress. The solution is to take the money that Congress gives Israel to buy our government out of politics along with the ability of corporations to purchase the US government, thanks to an unconstitutional ruling of the US Supreme Court that it is a “free speech right” for corporations and foreign interests to purchase the US government for their own use. There you have it. The US government is a purchased entity. It has nothing whatsoever to do with American interests or protecting the interests of the American people.

Read more …

It IS possible…

Connecticut Judge Orders New Bridgeport Mayoral Primary (NYP)

A Connecticut judge ordered a new Democratic mayoral primary in Bridgeport as surveillance footage showed multiple workers allegedly stuffing absentee ballots into an outdoor ballot box days before the original primary. In September, Incumbent Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim defeated challenger John Gomes by 251 votes out of 8,173 cast in the primary election, according to NBC. However, Gomes released a video in October that appeared to show two women stuffing heaps of ballot papers into drop boxes at least four locations across the city. Superior Court Judge William Clark determined the amount of evidence left the court “unable” to determine the result for the state’s largest city.

“The volume of ballots so mishandled is such that it calls the result of the primary election into serious doubt and leaves the court unable to determine the legitimate result of the primary,” Clark wrote in his ruling on Wednesday. The judge ruled that the abnormally large numbers of absentee ballots were cast in certain voting districts and that video evidence showing the alleged ballot stuffing violated state elections law. “The videos are shocking to the court and should be shocking to all the parties,” Clark wrote in his ruling. Judge Clark ruled two women made or were directly involved in 15 incidents of drop boxes being stuffed with ballots.

Read more …

“That particular gentleman has spent more time in prison than he spent out, but he is a good man and he’s the individuals I’m fighting for in the city of Springfield. We’re running an election that is inclusive.”

Election Fraud Cases Break Out In 3 Democrat States (JTN)

A new primary election has been ordered by a Connecticut state court amid alleged fraud, while Democrats in Massachusetts and New Jersey are also accused of or charged with election fraud. This brings the total of election-related criminal cases across the country to at least three. Democrats in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey are facing various allegations of election fraud, as two instances are related to this year’s elections while two more are with regard to prior elections. On Wednesday, Bridgeport Superior Court Judge William Clark overturned the results of a Democratic mayoral primary and ordered a new election in connection to allegations of absentee ballot abuse.

The judge made the decision after a video was posted online that appeared to show a supporter of incumbent Democrat Mayor Joe Ganim stuffing stacks of papers into a ballot drop box, according to WNPR Connecticut Public Radio. The general election for mayor was set for Nov. 7. A new primary date has yet to be set, but the judge told lawyers that they had 10 days to work with city and state election officials to determine a potential date for the new election, the Associated Press reported. Judge Clark determined the allegations of possible malfeasance were sufficient to toss out the results of the Sept. 12 primary, which incumbent Ganim won by 251 votes out of 8,173 cast. Absentee ballots secured Ganim’s margin of victory, WNPR Connecticut Public Radio also reported. Judge Clark said, “the videos are shocking to the court and should be shocking to all the parties.”

Meanwhile, in neighboring Massachusetts, a Democratic mayoral candidate is accused of bribing residents to vote. Election officials for the city of Springfield say they witnessed voters being brought to the city hall for early voting and that at least some expected to be given cash after they voted for Democratic candidate Justin Hurst, according to local news outlet The Republican. Video footage has also been released of a man associated with Hurst’s campaign allegedly handing cash to voters last weekend. City officials claim in sworn affidavits that the distribution of $10 bills, clearly visible in surveillance footage, represents voter fraud, The Republican also reports.

Hurst denied all the allegations ahead of Election Day on Tuesday. “Any accusations that my team paid residents in exchange for their vote is unequivocally false,” he said, according to Western Mass News. He also addressed the video in which a man appears to be handing out cash to voters. “That gentleman has volunteered on many campaigns,” Hurst stated. “That particular gentleman has spent more time in prison than he spent out, but he is a good man and he’s the individuals I’m fighting for in the city of Springfield. We’re running an election that is inclusive.”

Read more …

“..71% of respondents said Biden is “too old to be an effective president..”

Trump Leads Biden In 5 Battleground States In New York Times Poll (JTN)

Former President Donald Trump is leading President Joe Biden in five of the six major swing states, according to new polls released Sunday, as voters largely express disapproval of the current president. Trump leads Biden by 10 points in Nevada, 6 in Georgia, 5 in Arizona, 5 in Michigan and 4 in Pennsylvania, according to new polls by The New York Times and Siena College. He is down by 2 points in Wisconsin. Biden carried all six of the states in 2020, but now, 59% of voters in those states say they disapprove of Biden’s job performance, while 38% say they approve. Meanwhile, 71% of respondents said Biden is “too old to be an effective president,” compared to 39% who said the same about Trump. Additionally, 62% of voters said Biden does not have the mental sharpness to be an effective president, while just 35% said he does.

As to Trump’s mental acuity, 54% of voters said he is sharp enough to be an effective president compared to 44% who said he is not. More than half of all registered voters surveyed (53%) also said Biden’s policies have personally hurt them, while 51% of voters said Trump’s policies have personally helped them. The polls of 3,662 registered voters across the six swing states were taken from Oct. 22 to Nov. 3 and, when taken together, had a 1.8% margin of error. While Trump has not been formally nominated as the Republican presidential nominee for 2024, he is far ahead of all other candidates. While other Democratic candidates are running for the nomination, the Democratic Party has said it fully supports Biden’s reelection bid and will not host primary debates.

Abrams

Read more …

“..doing your patriotic duty and publicly standing up for Ukrainian national interests, and trying to prevent a dangerous distortion in Ukraine-US relations, which could be harmful to both countries – had actually placed him in the firing line, literally.”

Two Men Who Exposed the Bidens’ Corruption in Ukraine (21CW)

Andriy Derkach started his career in big politics in the mid-90s. At different times he held positions in presidential administrations and the government, as well as managing a large state-owned enterprise, the energy corporation Energoatom, and was involved in parliamentary activities for more than 20 years. Everything changed after the United States initiated its regime change operation in Ukraine in 2014, and its “Revolution of Dignity”, which resulted in pro-Russian President Yanukovych fleeing the country, and eventually replaced by Ukrainian oligarch, Petro Poroshenko. Poroshenko, who seemed more interested in his own shady business schemes than reforming a state wracked with institutional corruption, immediately outsourced key nodes of governance of the country to proxies of America’s Democratic administration – all managed through the U.S. Embassy in Kiev.

Not long after, the new government and coalition began to make a series of unconstitutional decisions and laws at the request of various US-linked international organizations, and old ‘disloyal’ officials were gotten rid of through a process of “lustration”, as the influence of the courts and law enforcement system were gradually eroded by the creation of externally-controlled shadow government bodies – the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), the High Anti-Corruption Court and others. As the Ukrainian state found itself increasingly under the thumb of United States operatives, the active opposition figures began to emerge, one of whom was Ukrainian politician, Andriy Derkach, who began to fight against this foreign subterfuge and control by Democratic Party top brass.

The first open confrontation between Derkach and the Democrats occurred in 2017, when Derkach filed an official application for criminal proceedings on the fact of interference of NABU in the 2016 US presidential elections. As Derkach claimed, in the midst of the campaign, NABU Director Artem Sytnyk had deliberately (at the request of certain representatives of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine) publicized information about the receipt of money in Ukraine by political consultant and Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort. The document in question became known as “The Party of Regions’ barn book”. From this incident, it became clear the goal of NABU head Sytnyk was to help Trump’s 2016 opponent, Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton, by knocking out Trump’s chief of staff right at height of a national election cycle.

The dodgy document and media hype which entailed led to Manafort being removed from Trump campaign headquarters, followed by a 21 month prison sentence in the US for other unrelated federal charges. As a result, Ukraine, with its own hands, helped to undermine the US election process, something which couldn’t have been done without the help of agents within the Democrat Party and US government. Derkach sought to expose this and other instances of corruption, but quickly discovered that doing your patriotic duty and publicly standing up for Ukrainian national interests, and trying to prevent a dangerous distortion in Ukraine-US relations, which could be harmful to both countries – had actually placed him in the firing line, literally.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fish Cafe

 

 

So good
https://twitter.com/i/status/1720858446000456107

 

 

Polar

 

 

Food

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Sep 282023
 
 September 28, 2023  Posted by at 9:20 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  44 Responses »


Claude Monet The Pond at Montgeron 1876

 

Trump Rages At “Deranged” NY Judge’s ‘Corporate Death Penalty’ Decision (ZH)
Trump Says Net Worth ‘Much Greater’ Than Financial Statements (JTN)
Real Estate Insiders: Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Worth At Least $300M, Not $18M (NYP)
Russian “Alabuga” Complex to Be “More Powerful Than a Nuclear Bomb” (Zlatko)
US’ Ukraine Reforms is Signal to Zelensky That His Time is Up (Sp.)
US Aid to Ukraine May Dry Out, But Not Because of House GOP (Sp.)
Is World War III About to Start? Part II: The MIC and Deep State (Cook)
Western Left Abandoned The People To Fuel NATO’s Carnage (Rogatyuk)
Ukraine Offered To Strike Iran And Syria – Guardian (RT)
Fauci Was ‘Smuggled’ Into CIA HQ To “Influence” Covid-19 Origins Probe (ZH)
EcoHealth is a “CIA Front Organization” (ZH)
100s Of Pages Of Newly Released Memos Spark Fresh Biden Corruption Charges (ZH)
FBI Refuses To Release Nationwide Voter Registration Fraud Probe Docs (JTN)
Disappearing Americans (Paul Craig Roberts)

 

 

 

 

Paperclip

 

 

Canada nazis

 

 

 

 

Tucker Bill O’Reilly Short&Long

 

 

Jimmy Dore

 

 

 

 

“From 2011-2021, the Palm Beach County Assessor appraised the market value of Mar-a-Lago at between $18 million and $27.6 million because of various land use restrictions. The judge simply restated the appraisal which is an undisputed fact.”

The assessor, and now the judge, are the only people who claim the assessment is correct. Everyone else puts the value at 20-30 times that, if not more.

They’re simply trying to bankrupt Trump, and think a 10-day window is enough: “..must dissolve all business interests in the state and exit within 10 days..”

They think they can sell off his property for cheap.

Trump Rages At “Deranged” NY Judge’s ‘Corporate Death Penalty’ Decision (ZH)

Right on cue, in a stunning decision on Tuesday, a New York State judge found – with no trial or jury – that Donald Trump, his family, and his business, theTrump Organization, was liable for fraud, and ordered what experts in New York financial crimes say amounts to the dissolution of his company. In a 35-page ruling, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron (D) revoked the New York “business certificates” belonging to the Trump Organization and any other New York-based business run by Trump or his family – while ordering that an independent third party will be tasked with “managing the dissolution of the cancelled LLCs.” “It’s a staggering judgement,” said John Moscow, a former financial crimes prosecutor for the Manhattan district attorney’s office. “It means you are no longer a company, and the judge is appointing someone to take over the assets and distribute them as the court sees fit.”

“It’s comparable to once a person dies. A dead person can’t sell property. Only the executor of the estate can do that – or in this case, the receiver.” Experts are calling it the “corporate death penalty.” As Sundance at TheConservativeTreehouse.com put it: “All the banks and lenders did their own due diligence on the financing. All operational loans and business loans were paid back. There were no defaults or banking interests adversely impacted. There are no victims of what the State calls “fraud,” yet the judge is ruling the Trump organization must dissolve all business interests in the state and exit within 10 days.” As you might expect, President Trump was enraged, blasting “The widespread, radical attack against me, my family and my supporters have now devolved to new, un-American depths,” calling Engoron “deranged” and James a “completely biased and corrupt ‘prosecutor.’”

“We are rapidly becoming a communist country, and my civil rights have been taken away from me,” he continued. “This is Democrat political lawfare and a witch hunt at a level never seen before.” Trump plans to appeal the decision, his attorneys said. “Today’s outrageous decision is completely disconnected from the facts and governing law,” Christopher Kise, a lawyer for Trump, said in a statement. “President Trump and his family will seek all available appellate remedies to rectify this miscarriage of justice.” Eric and Don Jr. Trump took to X to slam the Judge’s valuation of his father’s Mar-a-Lago resort, which Trump claims is over a billion dollars, but Engoron ruled is worth between $18 million and $27.6 million – which is absurd when you look at the surrounding property values.

 

 

Read more …

“..the Florida property “IS WORTH POSSIBLY 100 TIMES THAT AMOUNT..”

Trump Says Net Worth ‘Much Greater’ Than Financial Statements (JTN)

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday said his net worth is “much greater” than that shown on his financial statements, which he says contained a “disclaimer clause” stating that the information should not be relied upon, after a New York judge found that the former president, his two eldest sons and his businesses could be held liable for fraud in the state attorney general’s civil case against them.Trump wrote on Truth Social: “In addition to the fact that my Net Worth is much greater than the number shown in the Financial Statements, there is a POWERFUL Disclaimer Clause … explaining that there should be no reliance placed on these Financial Statements, but instead everyone should do their own independent research, analysis, and due diligence.” He also said banks understood the clause and there were no problems with it.

Judge Arthur Engoron ruled Tuesday that New York Democrat Attorney General Letitia James demonstrated that Trump, his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, several of the family’s entities and former employees, could be liable for “repeated and persistent fraud by preparing, certifying and submitting to lenders and insurers false and misleading financial statements” in violation of New York law. Trump specifically took issue with Engoron’s evaluation of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, which the judge said could be worth as little as $18 million, citing an appraisal from the Palm Beach County Assessor.

Trump said in a separate Truth Social post that the Florida property “IS WORTH POSSIBLY 100 TIMES THAT AMOUNT” and that the judge’s “anger & hatred is politically motivated & unprecedented by those who watched!” James is also attempting to get $250 million in damages from Trump and the other defendants in the case, as well as an order barring the former president and his two eldest sons from being leaders at New York-based companies. That trial is set to begin Oct. 2.

Read more …

“..a 2-acre wooded lot at 1980 S. Ocean Blvd., just 5 minutes from Mar-a-Lago, is currently listed for $150 million. Mar-a-Lago, situated at 1100 S. Ocean Blvd., dwarfs this lot tenfold and operates as a commercial business..”

Real Estate Insiders: Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Worth At Least $300M, Not $18M (NYP)

A New York judge’s Tuesday ruling valuing Donald Trump’s sprawling, headline-making Florida estate at $18 million has left industry experts perplexed. In his verdict, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron delivered a bombshell ruling that the former president committed fraud by inflating the value of his wealth, with details including the monetary value associated with Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. This decision, which came down without a jury, has sent shockwaves through political — and real estate — circles, especially that $18 million base value for the property. One prominent Palm Beach real estate broker, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Post, “It’s utterly delusional to think that property is only worth $18 million.”

The insider added, “If that property were on the market today, I would list it at around $300 million, minimum … at least. He also has the separate golf course minutes away.” Engoron’s verdict holds Trump, 77, along with his family and his business empire, the Trump Organization, liable for fraud — a central allegation in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit against the defendants. In a 35-page judgment, Engoron sided with James, asserting that Trump had made unequivocally false statements in official documents to secure favorable terms with financial institutions. Notably, Trump’s claims, such as his triplex penthouse in Trump Tower being 30,000 square feet when it was closer to 11,000, were also described by Engoron as “fraudulent” given their significant discrepancies.

However, the ruling raised eyebrows when Engoron, a Democrat who ran unopposed in the general election on Nov. 3, 2015, evaluated the worth of Trump’s prized Mar-a-Lago Club resort at $18 million, ruling that the property was inflated by 2,300%. He cited a basic Palm Beach Assessor valuation that ranged from $18 million to $28 million between 2011 and 2021, with industry sources saying it fails to take into consideration the fair market value. This valuation is far from Trump’s 1985 purchase price of $10 million, $8 million less than what the judge declared it was worth today. There are also nearby comps. To put it in perspective, a 2-acre wooded lot at 1980 S. Ocean Blvd., just 5 minutes from Mar-a-Lago, is currently listed for $150 million. Mar-a-Lago, situated at 1100 S. Ocean Blvd., dwarfs this lot tenfold and operates as a commercial business with around 500 members as part of the golf club.


Eric Trump: “These homes are about 1/30 the size of Mar-a-Lago, not on the beach (let alone the beach and intercostal), don’t span from once side of the Palm Beach Island to the other… it is a travesty of justice and an embarrassment to the court.”

Read more …

X thread.

Russian “Alabuga” Complex to Be “More Powerful Than a Nuclear Bomb” (Zlatko)

In Russia, the development of a missile equipped with a high-frequency generator of significant power is underway, which would allow neutralizing the enemy without firing a single shot. In the West, “Alabuga” is referred to as “secret weaponry” that is “more powerful than a nuclear bomb” and capable of “disabling entire armies.” The electromagnetic missile can disrupt all enemy electronics within a radius of 3.5 kilometers. “The military plans to install this weapon on state-of-the-art Russian drones to deter enemy aircraft.

Among other uses, such a system could be employed to destroy missile warheads and communication devices on aircraft. Additionally, it disables tank loading mechanisms, detonates artillery shells inside gun turrets, and eliminates enemy soldiers hiding underground at depths of up to 100 meters using radiation,” Daily Star reported this already in 2017. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently mentioned the development of weapons based on new physical principles at the Eastern Economic Forum.

“Even when it comes to security matters, weapons based on new physical principles will ensure the security of any country in the near historical perspective. We understand this perfectly well and are working on it,” the president stated. Moreover, this summer, Russian troops already received the “Listva” remote-controlled mine-clearing vehicles. They can detect and disable radio-controlled mines using super high-frequency emissions.

Read more …

“..the elimination of corruption in Ukraine is the number one priority: reforms in this sphere should be accomplished within a three-month timeframe…”

US’ Ukraine Reforms is Signal to Zelensky That His Time is Up (Sp.)

Earlier this week, Deputy White House National Security Adviser for International Economics Mike Pyle sent a draft list of reforms to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, as per Ukrainian media. The document was also forwarded to the multi-agency Donor Coordination Platform, a group of organizations including the EU, G7 governments, and the main international financial organizations, including the IMF, the World Bank, and others. Later, the US Embassy in Ukraine confirmed that Kiev had been “provided a proposed list of priority reforms for discussion and feedback at the multi-donor coordination platform in Brussels”. The document titled “Reforms Linked to Conditions on US Assistance” details the necessary changes in order of urgency – 0-3 months, 3-6 months, one year, and 18 months.]

Some of the provisions have additions in italics, like “EU MFA [macro-financial assistance] conditionality”; “IMF Structural Benchmark”; “requirements for Ukraine to begin EU accession process”; and “IMF MEFP [Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies]” suggest that the list covers not only US assistance, but also aid from Western-led international organizations. The document clearly indicates Ukraine will further lose its sovereignty in favor of EU and NATO institutions. Per the White House list, the elimination of corruption in Ukraine is the number one priority: reforms in this sphere should be accomplished within a three-month timeframe.
· Ukraine has to reform the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), in line with the parameters of the IMF structural benchmark.
· Increase the number of detectives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) by at least 300; provide them with wiretapping capability; and preserve the agency’s “independence and exclusive investigative authority over high-profile corruption matters.”
· Reinstate mandatory asset and financial disclosure requirements for public officials, judges, and political parties.
· Select new head of the National Agency for Corruption Prevention (NACP).
· Complete the High Council of Justice (HCJ) reboot by establishing a Service of Disciplinary Inspectors with direct and meaningful participation of independent experts to restore the HCJ “disciplinary function.”

Furthermore, in the three-to-six month timeframe, the Kiev regime has to expand the number of judges on the nation’s High Anti-Corruption Court; establish a new specialized court (the High Administrative Court of Ukraine [HACU]) for administrative cases against national state agencies; reform Ukraine’s Supreme Court (SC). Remarkably, at the same time, Kiev is required to “limit” the powers of the infamous Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) “to those associated with counter-intelligence, counter-espionage, cybersecurity, and counterterrorism,” and reshuffle the agency. “Create a credible disciplinary committee and replace staff who do not meet ethical and professional standards,” the document reads. “Enhance parliamentary and civilian oversight of SBU. Restructure process for requesting lawful intercept (wiretapping), and allow other institutions to conduct judicial intercept separate from SBU.”

Read more …

The Pentagon plays tricks.

US Aid to Ukraine May Dry Out, But Not Because of House GOP (Sp.)

The Biden administration wants the US Congress to pass a $24 billion package for Ukraine along with other spending initiatives as soon as possible. Washington has already committed over $110 billion in Ukraine assistance to date. While House Republicans appear skeptical about further financial and military assistance to the Kiev regime, which has failed to succeed with its summer counteroffensive, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy proposed to pass a stopgap measure to avoid a looming government shutdown. September 30 is the deadline. GOP lawmakers have signaled that they won’t include any funds for Ukraine in their stopgap bill. On September 22, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Capitol Hill to lobby for a hefty multi-billion package.

Even though McCarthy (unlike his predecessor Nancy Pelosi) did not provide the Ukrainian president with an opportunity to address the House, he held a conversation with Zelensky. The day after the meeting with Zelensky, McCarthy told reporters in the Capitol that he had decided to keep the $300 million in Ukraine aid in the Pentagon funding bill, adding that another spending measure set for the State Department and foreign operations would also include money for Kiev. The development is by no means surprising, according to retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense. “The Pentagon has stated that Ukraine funding and aid would continue unabated by any government shutdown, and this includes the payment of salaries for tens of thousands of Ukrainian government employees and bureaucrats – even as paychecks for US government employees, and bureaucrats can and likely would be held back in the event of a shutdown,” Kwiatkowski told Sputnik.

“I think this is a Pentagon and administration attempt to remove the ability of the Congressional GOP Freedom Caucus to argue that they desire to pay American salaries, before they pay Ukrainian ones – by saying we (the Biden admin) are paying Ukrainian salaries no matter what you (the House America First-types) do.” When it comes to the larger $24 billion package, the former Pentagon analyst has a sense that “if serious negotiations are forced on Speaker Kevin McCarthy, they will find a way to reduce this amount, or to separate this aid out for separate and subsequent Congressional consideration.” The Biden administration has publicly promised this aid to Ukraine, but they do not control the appropriations – the House does, she emphasized.

“However – the Pentagon could simply provide it to Ukraine using a recalculation ‘trick’ and devaluing of past aid in the amount of $24 billion. I give this a 50% chance of happening in some way,” Kwiatkowski said. For example, in late June, the Pentagon said that it had overestimated the value of the arms it supplied to Kiev by $6.2 billion over the past two years. Four weeks earlier, the US Department of Defense cited an accounting error of at least $3 billion. Eventually, the “surplus” simply went back into the Pentagon’s pot allocated for Ukraine within the president’s drawdown authority (which allows providing Kiev with weapons directly, without Congressional approval).

“I think there is a good chance Ukraine will be able to wring out much of the promised $24 billion – but that the political battle, here in the US, to make that happen will reveal much to Congress and the American people about both the shady accounting ‘principles’ of the Pentagon and the honest situation in Ukraine,” Kwiatkowski said. Still, trouble is brewing for Kiev: it seems like many in Congress on both sides of the political aisle are beginning to understand the practical and political need for Kiev and Washington to end the conflict immediately, according to the former Pentagon analyst. She suspects that “the truth about the terrific loss on the battlefield and in Ukrainian military capability in the past 18 months is getting to the various committees in both the House and the Senate.”

Read more …

“.. the MIC is probably the principal economic engine of the U.S. as a whole..”

“So are we going to tell what adds up to tens of millions of people, sorry, your services are no longer needed? Good luck with that.”

Is World War III About to Start? Part II: The MIC and Deep State (Cook)

Today about 2.1 million people are employed by the defense industry. According to Acara Solutions, a major MIC recruiting firm, their average annual salary is $106,700, 40 percent higher than the national average. The companies they work for produced revenues in 2022 of $741 billion. How much of their production is high-priced junk, no one knows. The performance of U.S.-produced armaments in the Ukraine conflict does not seem impressive. No modern U.S. weapons have ever been tested in an industrial-type war against an equal adversary. The MIC also includes active-duty uniformed personnel of 1.37 million and reserves of 849,000. There are 750 U.S. military bases in more than 80 countries outside of the U.S. More than 100,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed in Europe.

Annual salary and benefits of the military are currently $146 billion per year, escalating with COLAs compounded at two to three percent annually, sometimes more. Some former U.S. military personnel are assumed to be fighting in Ukraine as mercenaries or helping direct the fighting from safe locations like Kiev or Lvov. Then there are the civilian employees. According to the DoD, it employs more than 700,000 civilians “in an array of critical positions worldwide,” with compensation totaling about $70 billion. According to the Government Accountability Office, we may also add 560,000 contractor employees, whose compensation is typically higher than the career workforce. We can also add hundreds of thousands of executives, managers, employees and contractors of the three-letter Deep State agencies, such as the CIA, NSA, DEA, FBI, and now DHS, etc., who interface with the MIC day in and day out and are part of the same fabric of state-sanctioned force and enemy identification and interdiction.

Added to the above are members of Congress who vote on military budgets and make the laws that protect the MIC from accountability, lobbyists who pressure those members to cast votes favorable to their MIC clients, private sector financial service employees who handle the retirement accounts of the MIC multitude, foreigners who are employed at overseas bases, and various scoundrels and hangers-on. I would include in the latter category the multitude of MIC cheerleaders from Hollywood who produce trashy spectacles like Top Gun. On top of everything else, there are millions of retirees drawing annuities in excess of what most working-class Americans earn, many of these retirees double- or triple-dipping with lucrative jobs in business or government.

Each of the above individuals supports multiple family members, workers, and vendors within the civilian economy who, with the ripple effect and velocity of money, keep entire towns, cities, states, regions, and industries afloat. An example is building the F-35 that has workers assembling it in 350 congressional districts. It is probably no exaggeration to say that given the vast exiting of civilian U.S. factories and jobs over the last half-century to cheap-labor countries abroad, the MIC is probably the principal economic engine of the U.S. as a whole. So are we going to tell what adds up to tens of millions of people, sorry, your services are no longer needed? Good luck with that. And isn’t it obvious that all these people, especially the higher echelons, are going to do everything within their power to persuade us that their jobs are so essential that without them we will shortly be overwhelmed and eaten alive by every “enemy” on the planet?

Read more …

The real warmongers.

Western Left Abandoned The People To Fuel NATO’s Carnage (Rogatyuk)

After the breakout of the First World War, the Second International and the numerous socialist organizations affiliated with it across Western Europe threw their weight behind their governments’ new military adventurism and became completely oblivious to the suffering of their fellow man at the hands of their countries’ economic and political elites. More than a century later, many of their modern-day counterparts have joined the chorus of Western governments, and their respective military-industrial complexes, in their proxy war hymn against Russia. And some of them have gone as far as giving a standing ovation to a literal member of the Waffen-SS, Yaroslav Hunka, when he was presented as a “veteran who fought for Ukrainian independence against Russia during WWII” in the Canadian parliament. It seems that even praising Nazis has become an acceptable part of the Western progressives’ discourse against all things Russian.

While many of the social democrats of the 1970s and 80s throughout Western Europe strongly opposed NATO’s expansionism and the presence of US military bases, the modern-day progressive and green parties go out of their way to roll out the red carpet for foreign soldiers on their soil. The examples are numerous. There’s Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister from the Greens, who made headlines around the world for admitting that Germany is “fighting a war against Russia,” the former prime minister of Finland, Sanna Marin, who attended the funeral of a well-known neo-Nazi leader in Ukraine, Mette Frederiksen of Denmark, the first to pledge F-16 jets to Kiev, and Spain’s Pedro Sanchez, one of the first to promise Zelensky Leopard tanks.

In the United States, the Squad – a group of relatively young members of Congress elected in 2018 and 2022 on a progressive left-wing platform – was once considered something of an alternative to the Democratic Party establishment, but has equally fallen under the spell of the siren war song of President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Except for criticism of the delivery of cluster munitions and depleted uranium shells and supporting Bernie Sanders’ proposal to cut military spending, the Squad has consistently voted in favor of progressively bigger and bigger military aid packages to Kiev, while largely ignoring the threat posed by the various neo-Nazi armed groups in Kiev’s employ.

Even the trade unions, long considered the backbone of the anti-war movement, are not immune to the whims of the mass Russophobia and the warmongering spirit of the progressive and liberal leaders. The British Trade Union Council’s resolution urging Rishi Sunak’s government to commit further arms deliveries and financial assistance to the regime in Kiev is a stab in the back for the Stop the War coalition and millions of British workers who view the cost-of-living crisis as far more important than the delivery of military aid to a government that has thrown the rights of its own workers back to the 19th century with the new law 5371.

Read more …

Imagine dreaming of WWIII because you think it will save you.

Ukraine Offered To Strike Iran And Syria – Guardian (RT)

The Ukrainian government urged its Western backers last month to conduct missile strikes on drone factories in Iran and Syria, offering to launch the attacks itself if given the weapons to do so, according to a document seen by The Guardian. The document in question was handed to G7 governments by Ukrainian officials in August, the British newspaper reported on Wednesday. In it, the Ukrainians claimed that kamikaze drones used by Russian forces are built by Iranian manufacturers in Iran and Syria, and contain Western components. Kiev has alleged that Russia uses Iranian-made Shahed-131 and Shahed-136 drones, and that these contain 51 and 57 Western-made parts respectively.

“Among the manufacturers are companies headquartered in the countries of the sanctions coalition: the United States, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Japan, and Poland,” the document reportedly stated. Russia denies using Iranian drones, insisting that the Shahed-like craft it launches at Ukrainian military and infrastructure targets are designed and made in Russia. According to The Guardian, the report recommended “missile strikes on the production plants of these UAVs in Iran [and] Syria, as well as on a potential production site in the Russian federation.” “The above may be carried out by the Ukrainian defense forces if partners provide the necessary means of destruction,” the document continued.

While Israel occasionally strikes military factories in Syria and is widely believed to be behind similar attacks in Iran, it is highly unlikely that the US or its allies would consider a direct attack on Iran. Likewise, it is unlikely that Ukraine would be given the long-range missiles necessary for such an operation, considering the US has even expressed reservations about providing Kiev with missiles capable of hitting targets inside Russia. Additionally, Moscow claims that Ukraine has lost 83,000 men since June in its failing effort to breach Russian defensive lines near Zaporozhye and Donetsk. With losses mounting, the chances of Ukraine being able to fight foreign forces 1,500km away are extremely slim.

Read more …

He financed it all.

Fauci Was ‘Smuggled’ Into CIA HQ To “Influence” Covid-19 Origins Probe (ZH)

Dr. Anthony Fauci was smuggled into CIA headquarters, “without a record of entry,” where he “participated in the analysis to “influence” the Agency’s” Covid-19 investigation, according to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Fauci’s alleged CIA meeting was revealed in a Tuesday night letter from Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) to the Inspector General of the US Department of Health and Human Services, which demands documents, communications and other evidence between Fauci and the CIA. This allegation is even more interesting in light of a report from two weeks ago that the CIA bribed analysts to say Covid-19 did not originate in a Chinese lab. According to a ‘senior-level’ CIA whistleblower, the agency ‘tried to pay off six analysts who found SARS-CoV-2 likely originated in a Wuhan lab if they changed their position and said the virus jumped from animals to humans.’

“According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” reads the letter from Wenstrup. “The seventh member of the Team, who also happened to be the most senior, was the lone officer to believe COVID-19 originated through zoonosis. “The whistleblower further contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position,” the letters continue, adding that the analysts were “experienced officers with significant scientific expertise.”

Wenstrup and Turner also asked for documents and communications between the CIA and other federal agencies, including the State Department, FBI, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Energy Department. In a separate letter, the House committee leaders identified former CIA Chief Operating Officer Andrew Makridis as having “played a central role” in the COVID investigation and asked him to sit for a transcribed interview. -NY Post In June, the US Intelligence Community declassified a 10-page report on COVID origins, in which it found “biosafety concerns” and “genetic engineering” taking place in Wuhan, but that most of its “agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not genetically engineered.” As the Committee noted on Tuesday;

Dr. Fauci’s questionable presence at the CIA, coupled with recently uncovered evidence that he, Dr. Fauci, “prompted” the drafting of “Proximal Origin” — the infamous paper that was used to attempt to “disprove” the lab leak theory — lends credence to heightened concerns about the promotion of a false COVID-19 origins narrative by multiple federal government agencies. Chairman Wenstrup is seeking all documents and communications related to Dr. Fauci’s access to CIA facilities and CIA employees as it relates to these allegations. Also, after becoming aware of additional information, the Select Subcommittee is requesting Special Agent Brett Rowland appear for a transcribed interview regarding Dr. Fauci’s purported movements to and from the CIA. As mounting evidence continues to imply that federal government officials covered-up the origins of COVID-19, investigating any improper influence will ensure future accountability of not only the intelligence community, but also public health officials.

Read more …

“..NAIAD, under the direction of Dr. Fauci, went ahead with the research in Wuhan, China and at several sites across the U.S…”

EcoHealth is a “CIA Front Organization” (ZH)

According to a January, 2022 Twitter (now “X”) thread by [former EcoHealth Alliance scientist Andrew] Huff, who worked at EcoHealth from 2014 to 2016, “I knew in December of 2019 that COVID was likely a lab leak.” Huff then claimed that “Not only is EcoHealth Alliance a CIA front organization, but the United States of America is primarily responsible for COVID, not China.” Huff also told Fox Business in January: “This was actually a failed intelligence operation. We were actually trading China advanced biotechnology for access to and collect intelligence on their bioweapons laboratory. I believe. I can’t prove that but a number of agencies that I discuss in the book, including Dr. Peter Daszak telling me he worked with the CIA.” From Huff’s book, “The Truth About Wuhan”:

“These discussions resulted in publications indicating that Dr. Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, was working with the CIA, and that the biological agent commonly known as COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) had been in development at EcoHealth Alliance since 2012, and other evidence suggested that SARS-CoV-2 began earlier than 2012. The development of SARS-CoV-2 included several prominent US-based scientists and US academic institutions that received funding from numerous federal government agencies and private non-governmental organizations to complete the gain of function work on SARS-CoV-2.”

Huff also posted a document obtained by Project Veritas and published in January of 2022 purportedly authored (and not denied) by Maj. Joseph Murphy (USMC), which states “SARS-CoV-2 is an American-created recombinant bat vaccine” which was “created by an EcoHealth Alliance program at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).” Project Veritas has obtained a separate report to the Inspector General of the Department of Defense written by U.S. Marine Corp Major, Joseph Murphy, a former DARPA Fellow. The report states that EcoHealth Alliance approached DARPA in March 2018, seeking funding to conduct gain of function research of bat borne coronaviruses. The proposal, named Project Defuse, was rejected by DARPA over safety concerns and the notion that it violates the basis gain of function research moratorium. According to the documents, NAIAD, under the direction of Dr. Fauci, went ahead with the research in Wuhan, China and at several sites across the U.S. -Project Veritas

Read more …

Impeachment inquiry starts today.

“..the Biden family foreign influence peddling operation suggests an effort to sway U.S. policy decisions.”

100s Of Pages Of Newly Released Memos Spark Fresh Biden Corruption Charges (ZH)

[..] Republicans have portrayed the initial hearing as merely a summary or review of the evidence obtained to date, but Mr. Comer announced Sept. 26 that his panel received in response to subpoenas two previously unknown wire transfers to Hunter Biden from Chinese businessmen with numerous links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). “On July 26, 2019, Hunter Biden received a $10,000 wire from Wang Xin. On August 2, 2019, Hunter Biden received a $250,000 wire from Jonathan Li and Tan Ling. Both wires originated in Beijing and Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home is listed as the beneficiary address for both wires,” Mr. Comer said in a statement. The transfers directly contradict claims by the President and Hunter Biden’s lawyer that no funds were received from China.

In addition, Mr. Comer pointed out that “evidence shows Joe Biden developed a familiar relationship with Jonathan Li during his vice presidency and prior to these payments to Hunter Biden. Devon Archer, a Biden business associate, described [to the oversight committee in closed-door testimony] how Joe Biden met with Jonathan Li in Beijing, China, had a phone call with him, and later wrote college recommendation letters for his children.” Then on Sept. 27, Mr. Smith’s panel made public 700 pages of additional evidence provided by two IRS whistleblowers who were deeply involved in the government’s long-running investigation of Hunter Biden’s failure to pay taxes on income he received in 2014 and 2015.

The Ways and Means panel made the new evidence public following a closed-door executive session in which all 18 Democrats opposed the release. The new materials made public by Mr. Smith indicated the Biden family received at least $19 million in income from entities in at least 23 countries around the world which was channeled through 20 shell companies. The income was ultimately received directly or indirectly by multiple members of the Biden family, including the president while he was vice president.

The materials also included numerous references in emails and telephone messages to the senior Biden playing an active role in what Mr. Smith described to reporters during a Capitol Hill news conference following the executive session as “a complex and lucrative enterprise operated by the Biden family to enrich themselves to the tune of at least $20 million, with much of Hunter Biden’s share going unreported for taxes.” Mr. Smith further claimed the new evidence makes clear that “then Vice President Joe Biden’s political power and influence was ‘the brand’ that Hunter Biden was selling all over the world. Even more alarming, the Biden family foreign influence peddling operation suggests an effort to sway U.S. policy decisions.”

Read more …

“The material you requested is located in an investigative file which is exempt from disclosure.” Like for the next 5 years?!

FBI Refuses To Release Nationwide Voter Registration Fraud Probe Docs (JTN)

The FBI took over a 2020 probe into voter registration fraud that began in Michigan but has denied a Freedom of Information Act request regarding the investigation, citing an exemption in that law regarding ongoing investigations. According to the dozens of pages of police reports from the Muskegon Police Department and Michigan State Police, a firm called GBI Strategies was under scrutiny as an organization central to alleged voter registration fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The matter was initially investigated by city and state authorities before the FBI took over. Contacts between local law enforcement and the FBI continued into 2022 but there is no evidence of what happened after that in the memos obtained by Just the News through requests made under Michigan’s own Freedom of Information Act.

Last week, the FBI denied a Freedom of Information/Privacy Acts request from Just the News regarding records from the investigation into GBI Strategies. The request sought “copies of all reports, documents, and records about GBI Strategies, including all communication and correspondence regarding investigations of GBI Strategies with Michigan government officials, city and state law enforcement agencies in Michigan, and all other state government officials and law enforcement agencies involved in investigations of GBI Strategies.” The FBI’s response partially reads: “The material you requested is located in an investigative file which is exempt from disclosure.”

The FBI cited 5 U.S. Code § 552(b)(7)(A) for exempting disclosure of the records, specifically, “records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that the production of such law enforcement records or information … could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.” The agency’s response continued: “The records responsive to your request are law enforcement records; there is a pending or prospective law enforcement proceeding relevant to these responsive records, and release of the information could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.”

Read more …

“As a nation, the United States no longer exists. What was once a country is today just a geographical location.”

Disappearing Americans (Paul Craig Roberts)

Washington lies to American citizens for the benefit of non-citizens and well-connected citizens such as Big Pharma, agri-business, and the military-security complex. To prove the point, the anti-American Biden Regime’s “Justice” Department is suing Elon Musk for hiring American Citizens instead of immigrant-invaders. The anti-American Biden Regime calls immigrant-invaders “asylees” and “refugees” and although they do not have green cards, that is, permission to reside and work in the US, the anti-American Biden Regime gives the immigrant-invaders equal footing with American citizens and green card holders to employment rights. Elon Musk, a patriot who wishes to employ American citizens is being sued for employing Americans instead of immigrant-invaders. This is the fate of Americans under the America-Hating-Democrats. Here is what the Biden Department of “Justice” said:

“Our investigation found that SpaceX failed to fairly consider or hire asylees and refugees because of their citizenship status and imposed what amounted to a ban on their hire regardless of their qualification, in violation of federal law,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Our investigation also found that SpaceX recruiters and high-level officials took actions that actively discouraged asylees and refugees from seeking work opportunities at the company. Asylees and refugees have overcome many obstacles in their lives, and unlawful employment discrimination based on their citizenship status should not be one of them. Through this lawsuit we will hold SpaceX accountable for its illegal employment practices and seek relief that allows asylees and refugees to fairly compete for job opportunities and contribute their talents to SpaceX’s workforce.”

Dear insouciant Americans: This is what the Biden Regime’s “Justice” Department is telling you: Your citizenship as an American citizen means nothing whatsoever. Your status as an American citizen places you on the same level, or even lower, than the status of an immigrant-invader. If you hire an American Citizen instead of an immigrant-invader you have violated US law! Insouciant Americans send their sons and daughters to fight for rights of immigrant-invaders who have turned our country into a Tower of Babel. Take a moment and consider, what was the consequence of the fake “war on terror” other than massive acceptance of “refugees” from our own attacks on the Middle East and North Africa? What is the consequence of our war against Russia in Ukraine other than millions of immigrant-invders into the US and Europe?

Every time the anti-Americans who rule us launch a war, whether against “terror,” or “to build democracy,” or against “Putin reconstructing the Soviet Empire,” we get more boatloads of immigrant-invaders who demand rights at the expense of American citizens. Washington’s wars and open borders have destroyed the cohesiveness of American society and the homogeneousness of the American population. The anti-Americans in Washington have turned the United States of America into a Tower of Babel. As a nation, the United States no longer exists. What was once a country is today just a geographical location.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Trevi

 

 

 

 

Butterfly

 

 

DogDucks
https://twitter.com/i/status/1707258166101066190

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Sep 122023
 
 September 12, 2023  Posted by at 8:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  47 Responses »


Claude Monet O Rio (The River) 1881

 

Zelensky ‘Senses’ Weakening Western Support (RT)
Zelensky Threatens To Terrorize Europe (MoA)
Ukrainians Blame Zelensky For Corruption – Poll (RT)
EU Believes Ukraine Is ‘A Very Corrupt Country’ – Politico (RT)
Blinken Contradicts Ukraine On Peace Negotiations (RT)
Elon Musk Responds To Ukraine ‘Treason’ Claims (RT)
Medvedev Advocates Suspending Diplomatic Relations With EU (TASS)
Russian Customs Chief Accuses EU Of ‘Total Lawlessness’ (RT)
Brazilian Court To Decide About Putin If He Attends G20 Summit – Lula (TASS)
Lies And Pretence In New London Novichok Hearing (Helmer)
The Gun Charge Against Hunter Is the Way of Covering Up the Real Issues (PCR)
The “Why Not” Culture: The Georgia Final Report Should Worry Us All (Turley)
The Mills of the Gods (Jim Kunstler)
9/11 After 22 Years (Paul Craig Roberts)

 

 

 

 

RFK

 

 

 

 

Trump 9/11


https://twitter.com/i/status/1701253565702938885

 

 

 

 

Isaacson

 

 

“A judge in Pennsylvania has ruled that former President Trump has ‘presidential immunity’ and cannot be sued over statements he made about 2020 election fraud.”

 

 

 

 

He’s directly threatening Europe now:

“..the millions of Ukrainian refugees now residing in foreign nations. They have generally “behaved well,” but if the hosts “drive these people into a corner,” the end result will not be “a good story” for Europe..”

Zelensky ‘Senses’ Weakening Western Support (RT)

If Western nations do not maintain their assistance to Kiev, they could face defeats at the ballot box and trouble from the millions of Ukrainian refugees they host, President Vladimir Zelensky has warned. In an interview with The Economist, Zelensky complained about weakening support from senior Western officials, which he claimed to have seen in their eyes during meetings. “I see that he or she is not here, not with us” contrary to spoken assurances, he said, according to the interview published on Sunday. According to Zelensky, failure to support Ukraine amounts to siding with Russia in the conflict, which escalated into open hostilities in February 2022. “If partners do not help us, it means they will help Russia to win,” he stated.

Zelensky believes that Western voters will not forgive their leaders if they “lose Ukraine.” Further trouble may also come from the millions of Ukrainian refugees now residing in foreign nations. They have generally “behaved well,” but if the hosts “drive these people into a corner,” the end result will not be “a good story” for Europe, the president added. The Ukrainian leader said he is “morally” ready for a long war with Russia, but this will require the country to switch to a “totally militarized economy.” He added that now is “a bad moment” for peace talks with Russia, due to the lackluster battlefield progress over the three months of Kiev’s summer ‘counteroffensive’. Moscow has estimated Ukrainian losses during the push at over 66,000 troops and 7,600 heavy weapons.

The Economist noted that the Zelensky government had built up expectations for the offensive, but now he is “carefully adjusting his message to reality.” The Ukrainian president also appeared to take credit for the drone attacks deep inside Russian territory, which Kiev formally refuses to claim as its own. Explaining his strategy, he said public support for the Russian government will fall “because our drones will land.”In a “long war,” Moscow will lose regardless of how the Russians feel because the Russian economy will fail, he added. The Russian government expects the economy to grow by 2.5% or more in 2023. Recent forecasts by the World Bank and the IMF have upgraded their predictions for Russia due to strong industrial production and higher-than-expected energy revenues.

Read more …

Moon of Alabama noticed it too.

“I have seen such threats from low ranking individuals of the fascist Bandera fringe. They spoke of terrorism they would unleash in the West should it end its support for Ukraine. That the Ukrainian president now reinforces such threats shows how deeply he immersed himself in that mindset..”

Zelensky Threatens To Terrorize Europe (MoA)

The Economist published another interview with the Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenski. It includes his usual unrealistic platitudes about not ending the war until Russia has completely pulled back. Speaking with an English language media he didn’t miss to mention the ever misunderstood story about Chamberlain’s move in Munich: “Tapping loudly on the table, Mr Zelensky rejects outright the idea of compromise with Vladimir Putin. War will continue for “as long as Russia remains on Ukrainian territory”, he says. A negotiated deal would not be permanent. The Russian president has a habit of creating “frozen conflicts” on Russia’s borders (in Georgia, for example), not as ends in themselves but because his goal is to “restore the Soviet Union”. Those who choose to talk to the man in the Kremlin are “tricking themselves”, much like the Western leaders who signed an agreement with Adolf Hitler at Munich in 1938 only to watch him invade Czechoslovakia. “The mistake is not diplomacy. The mistake is diplomacy with Putin. He negotiates only with himself.”

In 1938 Chamberlain had no other choice but to give in on Czechoslovakia. Britain was not ready for war and the parts Hitler wanted to annex from Czechoslovakia had undeniably a largely German population: “He contended that Sudeten German grievances were justified and believed that Hitler’s intentions were limited”. Zelenski goes on to threaten, in rather unthankful fashion, those countries which have delivered aid to Ukraine but may want to cut their losses: “Curtailing aid to Ukraine will only prolong the war, Mr Zelensky argues. And it would create risks for the West in its own backyard. There is no way of predicting how the millions of Ukrainian refugees in European countries would react to their country being abandoned. Ukrainians have generally “behaved well” and are “very grateful” to those who sheltered them. They will not forget that generosity. But it would not be a “good story” for Europe if it were to “drive these people into a corner”.

I have seen such threats from low ranking individuals of the fascist Bandera fringe. They spoke of terrorism they would unleash in the West should it end its support for Ukraine. That the Ukrainian president now reinforces such threats shows how deeply he immersed himself in that mindset. A previous Economist story shows that Ukraine has already set up the necessary infrastructure to wage a terrorist campaign: “In modern Ukraine, assassinations date back to at least 2015, when its domestic security service (SBU) created a new body after Russia had seized Crimea and the eastern Donbas region. The elite fifth counter-intelligence directorate started life as a saboteur force in response to the invasion. It later came to focus on what is euphemistically called “wet work”.

“Valentin Nalivaychenko, who headed the SBU at the time, says the switch came about when Ukraine’s then leaders decided that a policy of imprisoning collaborators was not enough. Prisons were overflowing, but few were deterred. “We reluctantly came to the conclusion that we needed to eliminate terrorists,” he says. A former officer of the directorate describes it in similar terms. “We needed to bring war to them.” In 2015 and 2016 the directorate was linked to the assassinations of key Russian-backed commanders in the Donbas; Mikhail Tolstykh, aka “Givi”, killed in a rocket attack; Arsen Pavlov, aka “Motorola”, blown up in a lift; Alexander Zakharchenko, blown up in a restaurant.

Intelligence insiders say the SBU’s fifth directorate is playing a central role in counter-Russia operations. From there it is just a short step towards total war: “Meanwhile, a long war of attrition would mean a fork in the road for Ukraine. The country would lose even more people, both on the front lines and to emigration. It would require a “totally militarised economy”. The government would have to put that prospect to its citizens, Mr Zelensky says, without specifying how; a new social contract could not be the decision of one person. Almost 19 months into the war, the president says he is “morally” ready for the switch. But he will only broach the idea with his people if the weakness in the eyes of his Western backers becomes a “trend”. Has that moment come? No, not yet, he says. “Thank God.” Does Zelenski know of any country with a totally militarized economy that survived? I have yet to hear of one.

Read more …

“..78% of Ukrainian adults see Zelensky as “directly responsible” for Kiev’s corruption problem..”

“..only 18% of Ukrainian adults disagreed with the statement that Zelensky bears responsibility…”

And we hand him tens of billions.

Ukrainians Blame Zelensky For Corruption – Poll (RT)

The vast majority of Ukrainians believe that President Vladimir Zelensky is at fault for widespread corruption in the country’s government and military, a new study has revealed. The poll, released on Monday, found that 78% of Ukrainian adults see Zelensky as “directly responsible” for Kiev’s corruption problem. It was conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Charitable Foundation and the Kiev International Institute of Sociology. Prior to the launch of Russia’s military offensive in February 2022, Ukraine consistently ranked among the world’s most corrupt nations, but it was touted as a bastion of freedom and democracy as the US and its NATO allies rallied public support for massive aid to Kiev. However, Ukrainian corruption remains a concern and could hinder the country’s bid to join the European Union, an unidentified Western diplomat told Politico on Monday.

Ukraine is a “very corrupt country,” the diplomat said, adding that Zelensky’s plan to use the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to prosecute graft cases could “send the wrong message.” Upon landing in Kiev for a surprise visit on Monday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock reportedly said Ukraine needed to step up its efforts to fight corruption. The Ukrainian poll was conducted from July 3 to July 17 in face-to-face interviews with thousands of citizens across the country. There were no major differences in findings based on region or socioeconomic factors. Respondents aged 60 and older took a harsher view, with 81% saying Zelensky was responsible for government corruption. The rate was 70% in the youngest segment, ages 17 to 29. Overall, only 18% of Ukrainian adults disagreed with the statement that Zelensky bears responsibility.

Documents obtained by the International Association of Investigative Journalists in 2021 showed that Zelensky and his business partners set up offshore companies to purchase lavish properties in central London. Zelensky transferred his stake in one of the companies to an aide just before he was elected president in 2019. Supporters of former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko accused Zelensky and his associates of using their offshore accounts to evade taxes. Zelensky has purged officials in his government for alleged corruption, including an embezzlement scheme involving humanitarian aid. Just this month, he sacked Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov, who came under fire earlier this year over purchases of military rations at inflated prices. However, the new defense chief, Rustem Umerov, is reportedly under investigation for alleged crimes in his previous job.

Read more …

If everyone’s corrupt, who investigates?

EU Believes Ukraine Is ‘A Very Corrupt Country’ – Politico (RT)

Widespread corruption in Ukraine could hamper Kiev’s bid for EU membership, a western European diplomat told Politico on Monday. He said Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s efforts to tackle the problem have also alarmed Brussels. Ukraine applied for membership in the European Union last February, and was formally granted candidate status four months later. Although European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is expected to address the issue of enlargement during her state of the union speech on Wednesday, and EU Council President Charles Michel has vowed to admit all candidate nations by 2030, Ukraine’s bid could be hamstrung by rampant corruption. Ukraine is a “very corrupt country,”an anonymous western European diplomat told Politico.

“We want to give a positive signal to Ukraine but things such as this proposal to give more power to [Ukraine’s] intelligence [services] over corruption can send the wrong message.” The proposal in question was raised by Zelensky last month. Following a purge of allegedly corrupt officials at the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, Zelensky announced that he would task the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) with probing and prosecuting corruption cases, taking investigative power away from the country’s multiple anti-graft agencies. The SBU reports solely to Zelensky. Representatives of Ukraine’s existing anti-corruption agencies told Politico last month that by making the SBU the only body allowed to investigate these cases, Zelensky is essentially giving himself the power to decide which corrupt officials to prosecute and which ones to shield.

There is precedent for these fears, the head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center (ACAC), Vitaly Shabunin, said. Oleg Tatarov, the deputy head of Zelensky’s office, was under investigation by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) last year, when the case was unexpectedly transferred to the SBU. “It was buried there,”Shabunin said. “Now [Zelensky’s] office wants to make that into practice.” Ukraine has for years been ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, as of 2022, the country ranked 116th out of 180. Aside from corruption concerns, disputes between Ukraine and European nations over agriculture could also hold up Kiev’s membership bid. Ukrainian farmers could undercut their European counterparts with cheap grain exports, meaning that the EU will likely have to reform its Common Agricultural Policy if Ukraine is to be admitted, Politico noted.

Read more …

“..Russia controlled more land last month than it did at the beginning of the counteroffensive..” But Blinken said Ukraine reclaimed 50%.

Blinken Contradicts Ukraine On Peace Negotiations (RT)

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has claimed that the Ukrainian government will agree to peace talks with Russia if Moscow offers to negotiate first. Ukrainian leaders have argued otherwise, however, and insist that peace “needs to be won on the battlefield.” “Thus far, we see no indication that [Russian President] Vladimir Putin has any interest in meaningful diplomacy,” Blinken told ABC News on Sunday. “If he does, I think the Ukrainians will be the first to engage, and we’ll be right behind them,” he added. Blinken and other top American officials have long insisted that the Ukrainian government will decide when to seek peace with Russia, and that the US will continue to supply Kiev with weapons until that time comes.

Ukraine agreed in principle to a Turkish-mediated peace deal in April 2022, but walked away from the agreement after a visit to Kiev by then-British prime minister Boris Johnson. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has since issued a decree forbidding any negotiations with Putin’s government, as well as repeatedly vowing to take back the territories of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, Zaporozhye, and Crimea – the latter of which voted to join Russia in 2014 – by force. Retaking this land, however, has proven costly for Kiev. More than three months into its long-awaited summer counteroffensive, the Ukrainian military has lost more than 66,000 troops and 7,600 pieces of heavy weaponry, according to the latest figures from the Russian Defense Ministry.

In exchange, Kiev’s forces have only managed to reclaim a handful of villages near Zaporozhye, while Russia controlled more land last month than it did at the beginning of the counteroffensive, according to the Washington Post. Nevertheless, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba declared last week that the conflict “cannot be ended by simply bringing belligerent parties to the table for negotiations.” “It needs to be won on the battlefield for Russia to become serious about negotiating peace,”Kuleba added. Russia maintains that it is open to a diplomatic solution to the conflict, but that any peace deal would have to take into account the “new territorial reality” – that Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, Zaporozhye, and Crimea will never be ceded back to Ukraine. Furthermore, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said negotiations would be held “not with Zelensky, who is a puppet in the hands of the West, but directly with his masters.”

Read more …

“..if anyone is treasonous, it is those who call me such. Please tell them that very clearly.”

Elon Musk Responds To Ukraine ‘Treason’ Claims (RT)

American tech billionaire Elon Musk has responded to criticism over his refusal to help enable a Ukrainian drone attack on Russian naval forces in Crimea by pointing out that he’s a citizen of only the US and isn’t obliged to fight for Kiev. “I am a citizen of the United States and have only that passport,” Musk said on Monday in a post on his X (formerly Twitter) social media platform. “No matter what happens, I will fight for and die in America.” He added that in light of the fact that the US Congress hasn’t declared war on Russia, “if anyone is treasonous, it is those who call me such. Please tell them that very clearly.”

At issue is Musk’s decision last year to prevent his Starlink satellite network from being used to guide Ukrainian naval drones for an attack against the Russian Black Sea Fleet on the Crimean coast. When news of Musk’s refusal came to light last week, US media outlets suggested that he had been traitorous, and Ukrainian presidential aide Mikhail Podoliak accused him of “committing evil and encouraging evil.” The Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder gave Ukraine free use of more than 20,000 Starlink terminals after Russia launched its military offensive against Kiev in February 2022. His aim was to keep Ukrainians from losing internet access and communications capabilities amid the conflict.

However, Musk expressed concern about his network being used for offensive purposes and potentially playing part in triggering a wider conflict. He therefore refused Kiev’s pleas to extend the country’s Starlink coverage all the way to Sevastopol. “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.” CNN host Jake Tapper argued on Sunday that Musk had “effectively sabotaged” an American ally, and he asked US Secretary of State Antony Blinken whether the “capricious billionaire” should therefore face “repercussions.” Blinken declined to condemn Musk and pointed out that Starlink had been a vital tool for Ukraine’s defense.

Read more …

..”straightforward and honest Brussels bosses” who “told all Russians directly and without beating around the bush: you are second-class people for us.”

Medvedev Advocates Suspending Diplomatic Relations With EU (TASS)

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev has called for suspending diplomatic relations with the EU in response to the EU decision to bar Russian citizens from entering the EU with everyday personal items, calling it a spit in the face of every Russian. “What should we do about it? Certainly not impose tit-for-tat retaliatory restrictions on EU citizens. We are not racists, in contrast to many leaders of those countries whose relatives served in the SS (Schutzstaffel, the notorious paramilitary organization under Germany’s Nazi regime – TASS). Moreover, those [Europeans] who travel here usually have a love and appreciation for Russia. It would be better just to suspend diplomatic relations with the EU for a while.

And to call our diplomatic personnel home,” Medvedev suggested, commenting on the European Commission’s clarification on the EU’s ban on importing automobiles, smartphones, suitcases and shampoo, among an entire range of items, into the EU from Russia, even for strictly personal use. Medvedev mockingly “praised” the EU leaders, calling them “straightforward and honest Brussels bosses” who “told all Russians directly and without beating around the bush: you are second-class people for us.” And the EU’s decision is clearly not meant as just punishment for what Brussels sees as the “criminal and aggressive regime in the Kremlin.” Rather, “this is a spit in the face of every citizen of Russia,” Medvedev emphasized. In suggesting measures to suspend Moscow’s diplomatic relations with the EU, Medvedev noted that only such a move could make Brussels officials truly afraid, “because embassies are [traditionally] evacuated before certain very specific events.”

“Who knows what else these ‘orcs’ from that immense ‘Mordor’ are capable of?” Medvedev asked sarcastically, using a common derogatory slur used in the West to refer to Russia and Russians, equating them to the goblin-like humanoid creatures in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy novel “The Lord of the Rings.” The European Commission’s clarification dated September 8 bans the import from Russia to the EU of goods listed in Annex 21 to EU Regulation No. 833/2014, regardless of the purpose of their use and the duration of stay in the EU, including cars with less than 10 seats. The EC emphasized that it does not matter whether the vehicles are being used for private or commercial purposes. The list contains a wide range of all sorts of items from cellular telephones and audio and video recording devices, to suitcases, hold-alls, articles of clothing, toothpaste, shampoo and other hygiene products.

Read more …

“Goods that are classified as prohibited – even shampoo and toilet paper – should be confiscated..”

“..at least “they have not banned [Russian nationals] from wearing pants when crossing the border.”

Russian Customs Chief Accuses EU Of ‘Total Lawlessness’ (RT)

Russia’s interim customs chief has blasted the European Commission’s instruction to EU member states to confiscate personal possessions of arriving Russian tourists. “How do we take the European Commission’s ban on traveling by personal car or with smart phones? Well, it’s utter nonsense,”Ruslan Davydov told journalists on Monday on the sidelines of an economic forum in the city of Vladivostok. The EU slapped wide-ranging sanctions on trade with Russia over the Ukraine conflict. Last Friday, however, Brussels explained that the restrictions should also apply to items for personal use brought by tourists crossing the bloc’s border. Goods that are classified as prohibited – even shampoo and toilet paper – should be confiscated, according to the clarification. The European Commission urged “EU operators [to] identify, assess, and understand the possible risks of sanctions circumvention” when conducting customs checks.

Davydov branded the decision as “total lawlessness” that defies the normal logic of customs controls. Moscow has little influence on the policies, since the EU broke all cooperation with Russia, he noted. “The way they regulate customs procedures on their soil can only invoke regret and incomprehension,” he added. But at least “they have not banned [Russian nationals] from wearing pants when crossing the border.”=The official assured that the Federal Customs Service, which he heads, shall not adopt a similar policy regarding tourists arriving from the EU. The Russian embassy in Helsinki urged citizens on Sunday not to travel to Finland in cars with Russian license plates, citing the risk of seizure stemming from the new guidelines.

Read more …

Lula opens the door and closes it at the same time. Putin as Schrödinger’s president: “..the decision [on a possible arrest] is within the power of the judiciary, not my government..”

Brazilian Court To Decide About Putin If He Attends G20 Summit – Lula (TASS)

The issue of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s arrest during his visit to the G20 summit in Brazil in 2024 will be considered by the country’s court taking into account the arrest warrant issued for the Russian leader by the International Criminal Court (ICC), the country’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said. “If Putin decides to attend [next year’s summit], the decision [on a possible arrest] is within the power of the judiciary, not my government,” Reuters quoted the politician as saying. On September 9, in an interview with the Indian TV channel Firstpost, Lula da Silva said that as long as he was president of Brazil, “he [Putin] will not be arrested without the authorization of the authorities.” At the same time, Reuters pointed out the president questioned Brazil’s membership in the ICC. He recalled that neither Russia, China nor the US are members of the organization.

According to the leader, such agreements harm developing countries. On March 17, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, alleging that they were responsible for the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children. It could theoretically be executed if the Russian leader arrives in one of the countries that recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction. Moscow has rejected such accusations, calling “the very phrasing of the question” outrageous and pointing out that Russia does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC, so its decisions are null and void for Russia.

Read more …

“Sergei Skripal, the original target and survivor of the Novichok attack allegations in the official narrative, must never be allowed to testify publicly..”

Lies And Pretence In New London Novichok Hearing (Helmer)

In a London courtroom last week, lawyers for the British government and the presiding judge, Lord Anthony Hughes (lead image, centre), revealed they will resist the efforts of the Dawn Sturgess family to obtain a multi-million pound settlement in compensation for what they claim, and the government says, was her death five years ago from Novichok poisoning by Russian state agents. Secrecy is the key, not only to the big money claim, but to the government’s aim to defeat it and at the same time preserve the official story that the Kremlin ordered and carried out the chemical warfare attack in England in 2018.

Lord Hughes is defending the government’s effort to keep secret enough of the evidence in the case to block Adam Straw KC and Michael Mansfield KC, the Sturgess family lawyers, from demonstrating that the British security services should have known in advance – and did know enough — to have protected Sturgess from the Russian cause of her death. Their argument has been that for this negligence a very large sum of money should be paid to Sturgess’s heirs, to Rowley, and to the lawyers. The judge, the government, and the lawyers have agreed, however, there is one secret they must all keep. Sergei Skripal, the original target and survivor of the Novichok attack allegations in the official narrative, must never be allowed to testify publicly to what he knows.

To cover this up, Straw, Mansfield, and a lawyer representing the British press lied in court last week, claiming they want “open justice” from the secret services and the police. According to Jude Bunting KC representing the media, “open justice is about avoiding ill-informed speculation about proceedings and, insofar as material is in the public domain because of assertion, or even because of state-sponsored [Russian] misinformation, that is all the more reason for disclosing that material in open rather than in closed.” Hughes claimed to be seeking the same openness. “One of the difficulties of this inquiry and this case…is that everybody popularly supposes that they know the answer. They may or may not be right, but the purpose of the inquiry is to find out.” Hughes was pretending.

Read more …

Paul Craig Roberts. “The gun charge is just a way of getting rid of the real charges..”

The Gun Charge Against Hunter Is the Way of Covering Up the Real Issues (PCR)

Conservatives and Republicans are gleeful that the DOJ has been forced off its sweetheart gun charge deal for Hunter and might now have to bring a felony gun charge. The conservatives and Republicans do not realize that the gun charge is the least serious or important of the charges and that by making the gun charge the issue the real issues, which are threats to Joe Biden, don’t get a day in court. The gun charge is just a way of getting rid of the real charges. Moreover, if Hunter is convicted, something a Democrat jury is unlikely to do, and doesn’t get a suspended sentence, Joe will pardon him.

The conservatives and Republicans don’t understand that they and President Trump, not the Bidens, are the prosecutors’ target. We now have a black quota-hire Fulton County prosecutor adding US Senators and Trump lawyers to her racketeering indictment. The ridiculous indictment is so broadly framed that anyone who expressed doubt about the election is covered by the indictment. When you give power over law to people who see law only as a weapon with which to get enemies, you destroy the rule of law. That’s what the dumbshit white liberals have done.

Read more …

“..But the question is whether such requests are evidence of a crime…”

The “Why Not” Culture: The Georgia Final Report Should Worry Us All (Turley)

With the release of the special grand jury final report in Georgia, the nation finally was able to see what foreperson Emily Kohrs last February was giggling about in interviews. Call it the “Why not?” report. Back then, when Kohrs was asked if there were recommended charges, she chuckled and said, “Can you imagine doing this for eight months and not coming out with a whole list of recommended indictments? It’s not a short list. It’s not.’” In addition to nodding at an expected Trump indictment, she added, “There may be some names on that list that you wouldn’t expect.” After all, why not? The final product did not disappoint. The members recommended 39 people for prosecution, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and former Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.).

They also included lawyers who argued for recounts or investigations into alleged election fraud. While the report expressly claims that the Fulton County District Attorney’s office did not create the list, it was the office of Fani Willis that presented the law, the evidence and potential targets to the special grand jury. During that process, these members concluded that politicians voicing support for the former president and his allegations could be criminally charged for doing so. The news that Willis did not indict Graham and others infuriated many on the left. Liberal websites were inundated with comments like “I want all the enablers charged, tried, and given long sentences as traitors to our country” and asking why the list did not include Senators Grassley, Cruz, Lee and “147 current and former members of the House, just to name a few.”

[..] The question is when advocacy or inquiries or negotiations become criminal acts. Willis’s first grand jury clearly believed that senators who called for recounts or Raffensperger’s resignation should go to prison. The comparison between their recommendations and the eventual indictment does not clearly answer how such acts are distinguishable as crimes. The same lack of limiting principle is evident in the new theory being pushed by various experts under the 14th Amendment to bar Trump from ballots on the grounds that he “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or gave “aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” Beyond the tendentious claim that the Jan. 6 riot was an actual insurrection, they also maintain that the provision is self-executing, requiring no vote of Congress for secretaries of state to bar Trump from next year’s ballots.

Even though Trump has not been charged, let alone convicted, of insurrection (or even incitement), these advocates believe that he can be removed from the ballot because of his election claims, his inflammatory rhetoric and his delay in calling for supporters to leave the Capitol. This is one of the most dangerous legal theories to arise in decades. This week, Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes aptly described the claimed right to disqualify as a “radical” measure that would “encompass every elected office in our government — state, local, federal, and so forth.” Indeed, Democrats have called for barring not just Trump but 120 Republicans in Congress from running for office.

As with the Georgia special grand jury, the question is “Why not?” If the standard is “giving aid or comfort” to insurrectionists, then why not throw hundreds of other Republicans who supported the challenge to certification on Jan. 6 off the ballot? And while we’re at it, why not bar every lawyer who helped file claims of voting fraud from ever running for office? They all gave aid or comfort with their actions. By this reasoning, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and other Democrats could have been barred from ballots for opposing Trump’s certification in 2016 without any basis, along with leaders such as Hillary Clinton, who continued to call the election “stolen” for years. In 2016, there were also violent riots in Washington opposing Trump’s inauguration, thanks in no small part to such rhetoric. We can then have different candidates of both parties removed from ballots in every state.

Read more …

“Mr. Gaetz pushed through an agreement that the process to remove and replace the Speaker of the House could be activated by one vote. Mr. Gaetz reiterated last week that he means business. He’s the one vote.”

The Mills of the Gods (Jim Kunstler)

Do you think that more than half of the US public may be getting a little irked with “Joe Biden’s” lawfare elf, AG Merrick Garland, as he rolls one innocent J-6 protester after another into decades of hard-time for strolling through the US Capitol building — while the special counsels assigned to only a few of the Biden family crimes play hide-the-salami with due process? For all their cheap talk about “our democracy,” it’s a little scary to see what Democratic Party lawyers actually think of the legal system that is supposed to allow a society based on liberty to function fairly. Court filings last week indicate that Special Counsel David Weiss is about to indict Hunter Biden on that gun charge they have used as the joker in a three-card Monte game for going on five years.

Last time, they ran the game before Delaware federal judge Maryellen Noreika, she detected a teeny-weeny, sneaky clause in the plea agreement to a watered-down gun charge that would have granted immunity to Hunter B from any other past wrongdoing, including, of course, the entire alleged Biden family racketeering operation that had the First Son acting as prime broker and bag-man for tens of millions of dollars in bribes from foreign actors in countries less than friendly to US interests, funneled into any number of Biden family shell corporations. Judge Noreika nixed the plea agreement. Now, Mr. Weiss’s crew seems to be saying that the immunity clause is still tied to any plea deal answering a forthcoming September 29 indictment.

The move would appear to be timed to exactly the moment that a House impeachment committee would begin its inquiry into the Biden family’s moneygrubbing activities. In ordinary House committee hearings, DOJ officials like to use the excuse of “an ongoing investigation” to demur from answering questions. Merrick Garland has done this dozens of times. Will they now try to upgrade that to “an ongoing prosecution?” Could that move lead to a constitutional impasse, requiring the Supreme Court to rule? Or does a House impeachment panel enjoy special privileges of inquiry? It also appears that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FLA) intends to force the issue of opening an impeachment ASAP against “Joe Biden.” In last January’s maneuvering to seat a new Republican House majority, Mr. Gaetz pushed through an agreement that the process to remove and replace the Speaker of the House could be activated by one vote. Mr. Gaetz reiterated last week that he means business. He’s the one vote.

The argument that Republicans should leave hands-off “Joe Biden” so they can run against the feeble old grifter in 2024 is preposterous because there is no way that the “JB” can possibly run for reelection under any circumstances. It’s just another trip being laid on the American public — and one that illustrates how tragic and dangerous is the absence of an honest news media for challenging such insolent gambits. The President can barely totter into a room now without making some embarrassing pratfall or gaffe. He couldn’t possibly survive a debate, especially with all the new records of his crimes unearthed since the last time around in 2020 when he pretended to know nothing about his son’s business dealings.

Read more …

“..it is pretty clear who is responsible for 9/11 and why. Many Americans today understand what really happened..”

“It is paradoxical that President Trump is in the dock for questioning an election, while Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives, and the whore media that covered up for them, never faced a single charge.”

9/11 After 22 Years (Paul Craig Roberts)

Today is the 22nd Anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon known as 9/11. A generation of 22-year olds has grown up after 9/11, and the event probably means nothing to them. They learn that it was an attack on America like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and 9/11 disappears into history. It is unlikely that anyone under 40 is much concerned with 9/11. A 40-year old today would have been 18 in 2001 and would likely dismiss 9/11 concerns as conspiracy theory. Today’s youth are more likely to be marching in support of sexual perversion than wondering about the source and purpose of the 9/11 attack.

Over the years I have reported the mounting evidence provided by scientists and by architect Richard Gage’s Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth until the organization he created removed him at the request of the government, effectively destroying the organization. But for me the proof that 9/11 was an inside job has always been that no one in government and security agencies was ever held accountable for the worst humiliation ever inflicted on an alleged “superpower.” Instead, it took a year before the White House even agreed to an official coverup with the 9/11 Commission, another in the long line of commissions like the Warren Commission that validates the official story. If a few young Saudi Arabians had actually defeated the entire national security apparatus of the United States, the White House would have been screaming, and heads would have rolled.

The neoconservatives had just called for a “new Pearl Harbor” so they could launch their wars of destruction of Israel’s enemies in the Middle East. They immediately blamed 9/11 on “Muslim terrorists” and began their invasions that halted only when Russia blocked the neoconservatives’ overthrow of Syria. So it is pretty clear who is responsible for 9/11 and why. Many Americans today understand what really happened, but the government will never admit it. It takes decades for the truth to come out, and by then everyone affected by the event is dead, and the event becomes ancient history. It is paradoxical that President Trump is in the dock for questioning an election, while Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives, and the whore media that covered up for them, never faced a single charge.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Great Depression
https://twitter.com/i/status/1701337655886102874

 

 

Smile
https://twitter.com/i/status/1701205047835521236

 

 

Left my heart

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jul 282023
 


Andy Warhol Judy Garland 1978

 

Experts Say Expecting Kiev To Win Is Definition Of ‘Insanity’ – USA Today (RT)
Why is Ukraine’s ‘New Offensive’ Doomed? (Burunov)
US Experts Slowly Admitting Ukraine Can’t Win, Hope for Stalemate (Sp.)
How Far Will The NATO Allies Go To Fight Their Losing War In Ukraine? (Helmer)
US Military Planners to Blame for ‘Stupid’ Ukraine Counter-Offensive (Tweedie)
Biden Admin Played Vital Role in Crimean Bridge Attacks – Sy Hersh (Sp.)
Ukrainian Corruption Threatens US Assistance (RT)
The Western Elite Just Gave Itself A ‘World Peace And Liberty’ Award (Marsden)
Will Collapse of Hunter Biden Plea Deal End Up in Joe’s Impeachment? (Sp.)
Hunter Biden’s Judge Raised The One Question The White House Most Fears (FP)
Hunter’s Court Transcript Debunks Major Biden Lies Central To Bribery Scheme (TP)
New Charges Added to Trump Mar-a-Lago Case, Third Defendant Named (Sp.)
The Russia-Global South Connection: Africa as Strategic Partner (Pepe Escobar)

 

 

 

 

Macgregor


 

 

Hannity

 

 

Comer Cruz

 

 

 

 

“..Zelensky has locked himself into a position in which he “can’t win, but can’t afford to lose, either.”

Experts Say Expecting Kiev To Win Is Definition Of ‘Insanity’ – USA Today (RT)

Continuing to arm Ukraine and expecting it to defeat Russia is “strategic insanity” for Washington and other NATO members because Kiev is locked in an unwinnable stalemate with a foe that never aimed to conquer the former Soviet republic, USA Today has reported, citing multiple US foreign-policy experts. The report, published on Thursday, hints at a shifting narrative for Western media outlets, which had been touting Ukraine’s alleged battlefield successes, as well as vows by the Biden administration that Kiev must be supported with massive military and economic aid for “as long as it takes” to win the conflict with Russia.

Georgetown University professor Sean McFate, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, told the newspaperthat Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has begun to lose credibility – Kiev’s “main asset” – with Western benefactors. He claimed that Zelensky has locked himself into a position in which he “can’t win, but can’t afford to lose, either.” “NATO is experiencing donor fatigue and disappointment with Zelensky’s bluster,” said McFate, a US Army veteran who also has consulted for the Pentagon and the CIA. He added that continuing to send billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry to Ukraine on expectations that Zelensky’s regime can win the conflict is “the definition of strategic insanity.”

Air Force veteran Steven Myers, an entrepreneur who has advised the US State Department on foreign policy, told USA Today that a stalemate was the most likely outcome because, contrary to the Western political and media narrative, Russian President Vladimir Putin never intended a war of conquest. While NATO members have argued that Ukraine must be supported because Putin planned to conquer Kiev and move westward, Myers suggested that Russia has proven otherwise. Russian military tactics during the conflict have been “completely inconsistent with conquest,” Myers said. Rather, he added, Putin’s only real agenda was to keep Ukraine out of NATO. “Strategically, this war was lost by both sides before it started. It will end in stalemate, which I think was Putin’s intent from the get-go.”

US defense officials have continued to insist that Kiev can defeat Russia, even as Ukraine suffers heavy losses of troops and Western-supplied weaponry in a long-heralded counteroffensive that began in early June. The situation at the front is “not a stalemate,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday at the White House. He acknowledged that Ukrainian forces are “not going as far or as fast as they would like.” Kiev has now begun the “main thrust” of its counteroffensive by bringing forward thousands of troops who had been held in reserve, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing unidentified Pentagon officials. White House and Pentagon officials are “watching the increased activity with keen interest,” the newspaper said, adding that one senior aide called Kiev’s latest push “the big test.”

However, Steven Myers told USA Today that Western and Ukrainian leaders have made vows on which they can’t possibly deliver. “President Biden, NATO and Zelensky have trapped themselves in a Catch 22 of their own making – unable to deliver on unrealistic expectations they created,” he said. Ukrainian forces are suffering casualties at ten times the rate of the Russian military as they press forward with their “failed”counteroffensive, Putin has said. He reported on Sunday that more than 26,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed since their counteroffensive began. Russian units also have destroyed dozens of Western-supplied tanks and other armored vehicles.

Read more …

“..Ukraine’s “new counteroffensive” as “the fruit of creativity of the US and the UK’s joint headquarters.”

Why is Ukraine’s ‘New Offensive’ Doomed? (Burunov)

Kiev’s alleged second stage of the counteroffensive is nothing but a propaganda trick by the West to demonstrate that Kiev is still able to carry out certain missions, Moscow-based military expert and retired Russian Army colonel Anatoly Matviychuk told Sputnik. All attempts by the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) to re-launch their counteroffensive have been halted and the enemy has been pushed back, suffering heavy losses, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday. Speaking at the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg, he said that during the UAF’s latest attack, more than 200 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and that Russian forces had destroyed at least 26 enemy tanks. He added that 60% of the UAF’s military hardware had already been obliterated during the renewed hostilities.

According to him, “the enemy was not successful in any of the directions of firefight.” The Russian president spoke after a US newspaper reported about UAF forces launching “the main thrust of its counteroffensive” as they threw in “thousands of troops held in reserve, many of them Western-trained and equipped.” The way Western media are trumpeting about this so-called new offensive indicates “a provocative propaganda trick to show that Ukraine can still perform some tasks,” Anatoly Matviychuk said. Dwelling on whether there is “any prospect” related to Ukraine’s “new offensive,” the expert said that he remains “skeptical,” first of all due to the UAF’s “very low system of fire support for troops.”

“Secondly is the complete absence of the UAF’s presence in the air, with the Russian Air Force controlling the enemy throughout the entire depth of its operational area. I think that this ‘offensive’ may have some temporary tactical successes … but I do not foresee any changes at the frontline. And everything will most likely end the way Ukraine’s ‘first’ advance wrapped up,” he pointed out. When asked why the UAF picked the Zaporozhye direction for the current phase of its counteroffensive, Matviychuk said that it is the area where “military and political interests intersect.” According to the Russian expert, if it captured the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, the UAF could imitate a possible radioactive contamination of the area and demand that Russia withdraw its troops from there and demilitarize the area, allegedly in order to protect Europe from a radioactive cloud.

“Also, this area directly leads to Crimea via the shortest route. The most interesting thing is that there are many English-speaking military personnel in the UAF being spotted in this area, including advisers, instructors, and even the UK army’s ‘special air service’”, Matviychuk noted, describing Ukraine’s “new counteroffensive” as “the fruit of creativity of the US and the UK’s joint headquarters.” He explained that Russian forces would tackle the UAF with the help of “mobile reserves” that “have been created in the form of tanks, combat vehicles, infantry, and armored personnel carriers.” “Most importantly, our aviation has practically shifted to systematic combat actions in the entire Russian special military operation zone … That is, we are currently conducting a so-called active defense to weaken the enemy by launching attacks,” the expert concluded.

Read more …

A stalemate is when both parties can’t move…

US Experts Slowly Admitting Ukraine Can’t Win, Hope for Stalemate (Sp.)

Ukraine has been throwing wave after wave of men and equipment at Russia’s defensive lines, but has yet to make any significant gains. This has seemingly caused a shift in the Western narrative regarding the conflict. US media has begun to shift gears and acknowledge the Ukraine conflict is more likely to not be the win Western leadership once touted, with one outlet quoting experts openly admitting Ukraine cannot defeat Russia on the battlefield, and that Russia never planned to conquer Ukraine or move West after the special military operation. Steven Myers, an Air Force veteran and former adviser to the State Department told mainstream media that Russia’s tactics have been “completely inconsistent with conquest,” countering Western media and governments’ narrative that alleged Russia would attack other European nations after the special operation.

Myers added that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s only goal was to keep Ukraine out of NATO. “Strategically, this war was lost by both sides before it started. It will end in stalemate, which I now think was Putin’s intent from the get-go,” Myers said. Myers also pointed to unrealistic expectations set by NATO, the US and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about what their tactics could achieve. Zelensky has consistently promised to return Ukraine to its pre-2014 borders, despite the situation on the ground making that a near impossibility. “President Biden, NATO and Zelensky have trapped themselves in a Catch 22 of their own making – unable to deliver on unrealistic expectations they created,” Meyers said. It should be noted that Meyers called for mediation to end the conflict in February, writing then that “the situation is desperate” for Ukraine, and that it was time to “end this tragedy.”

However, the outlet also talked to Sean McFate, a professor of strategy at the National Defense University and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and a senior fellow of the notoriously pro-war Atlantic Council think tank. But even McFate predicted Ukraine would be unable to expel Russia from its former territories, admitting Ukraine’s counteroffensive “has been floundering” and that “NATO is experiencing donor fatigue and disappointment with Zelensky’s bluster.” A feat that is causing the former comedian-turned-president to lose his credibility with his NATO allies, which he called “Ukraine’s main asset.” That bluster, McFate said, has put Zelensky “in a box. He can’t win but he can’t afford to lose either.” He added that providing more weapons to Ukraine and expecting them to win is “the definition of insanity.”

The narrative in the West has so far been that Ukraine is winning the conflict, that Russia’s Army is on the verge of collapse and that a Ukrainian breakthrough is just around the corner. But after months of the same claims, the narrative appears to be shifting significantly, especially after it became apparent that Ukraine’s much-hyped counteroffensive would not provide the gains that its Western benefactors have awaited. US officials, however, appear to be keeping a brave face despite Ukraine’s failures. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby earlier insisted the front has not devolved into a stalemate and said Ukrainian forces were “moving.” However, even he admitted that they are “not going as far, or as fast, as they would like.”

Putin

Read more …

“..if the Poles move east, the Germans will be motivated to move east as well, in order to recover the Prussian territories Germany lost in its defeat and capitulation at the end of World War II. ”

How Far Will The NATO Allies Go To Fight Their Losing War In Ukraine? (Helmer)

When the Ukrainian and NATO forces have lost their war in eastern Ukraine by Christmas, what will happen to the rump of western Ukraine? The Russian warning, issued last Friday at the Security Council by President Vladimir Putin, is that the Russian Army will defend western Ukraine, known as Galicia, from any attempt at intervention by Polish forces under either a NATO “peacekeeping” formula, or a bilateral defence arrangement between the Kiev regime and Warsaw to slip Galicia under NATO Article Five protection. Putin’s warning was concrete, explicit, geographically limited. It applied to the current western borders of the Ukraine, the eastern border of Poland, and the Polish-Belarus border. “I would also like to remind you what Poland’s aggressive policy led to.

It led to the national tragedy of 1939, when Poland’s Western allies threw it to the German wolf, the German military machine. Poland actually lost its independence and statehood, which were only restored thanks in a large measure to the Soviet Union. It was also thanks to the Soviet Union and thanks to Stalin’s position that Poland acquired substantial territory in the west, German territory. It is a fact that Poland’s western lands are a gift from Stalin. Have our Warsaw friends forgotten this? We will remind them.” The Warsaw friends weren’t the only audience Putin intended. His warning is also addressed to the Berlin friends, the Baltic friends, the Paris, Brussels, and Budapest friends, and of course, the Washington friends.

In December 2021, they were offered the terms of mutual security and non-aggression in Europe in treaties for the US and NATO tabled by the Russian Foreign Ministry. They were dismissed in diplomatic negotiations lasting less than a month. By Christmas of this year, as Putin has just pointed out, the Ukrainian army and the NATO forces will have expended their capacities to continue the fight. “The whole world sees that the vaunted Western, supposedly invulnerable, military equipment is on fire”, he added. What can happen next is “an extremely dangerous game, and the authors of such plans should think about the consequences.” This is a warning that if the Poles move east, the Germans will be motivated to move east as well, in order to recover the Prussian territories Germany lost in its defeat and capitulation at the end of World War II.

Hungary too will be motivated to change its northeastern border in order to rescue the ethnic Hungarian population of Transcarpathia in southwest Ukraine. In short, Putin was announcing that “Stalin’s gift”, as he called it, was the stability of the post-1945 territorial settlement. Now, in defeating NATO’s attempt to destroy the Russians east of Kiev, the Russians are warning afresh that if NATO attempts to change its defence lines west of Kiev, the Russian army will dictate an entirely new territorial settlement in which NATO will be an even bigger loser of military capacity and territorial extension than the non-aggression treaties of December 17, 2021, offered. The 1990 promise of not one inch eastward for NATO is reversing by one thousand kilometres westward.

Read more …

“politicians in uniform” looking out for lucrative directorships in the big arms firms..”

US Military Planners to Blame for ‘Stupid’ Ukraine Counter-Offensive (Tweedie)

NATO’s proxy conflict with Russia in Ukraine has reached crisis point after the much-hyped southern offensive failed to break through Russian lines. Retired US diplomat and former Republican Senate foreign policy adviser Jim Jatras said Washington politicians and Pentagon leaders cared little for those dying at the front. US military strategists are guilty of “criminal” incompetence in their plan for Ukraine’s disastrous offensive, a Washington advisor has said. According to the Russian ministry of Defence, Ukrainian forces have taken tens of thousands of casualties and lost around 1,250 tanks and other armoured vehicles — including the latest US and German models — more than 400 artillery pieces and more than two dozen jet aircraft and helicopters in the first few weeks of their attempt to cut off Crimea from the Russian mainland.

Russian President Vladimir Putin judged that those losses had led to “no success.” US military pundits have pointed out that the Pentagon would never have launched such a military campaign without first gaining air superiority — which they admit Ukraine is incapable of. Retired diplomat Jim Jatras told Sputnik that the US-devised plan for Ukraine’s southern offensive was not only “stupid” but “criminal.” “These people sent the Ukrainian forces into this meat grinder, knowing exactly what the result was going to be,” Jatras charged. “The only thing I can think of is they had some idea they could use this as some kind of a jujitsu to justify a direct military intervention of perhaps close air forces in Ukraine. That doesn’t seem to be on the cards either, now.” Russian president Vladimir Putin has condemned the US and other NATO nations for fighting a proxy conflict with Russia “to the last Ukrainian.”

“This disregard for life is really, truly criminal,” Jatras said. “I’m a little bit surprised that Ukrainians are still willing to do the powerlessness of their so-called supporters. You really wonder at what point Ukrainian soldiers start deciding that they’re safer trying to shoot their officers than trying to shoot the Russians, because they just these men to just keep going to their deaths.” The Washington adviser drew a distinction between real military leaders and the “politicians in uniform” looking out for lucrative directorships in the big arms firms. But he rejected the idea that US President Joe Biden had been forced into the scheme of using Ukraine as a proxy belligerent against Russia by the Military-Industrial Complex.

“I don’t think Joe Biden is being steamrolled. I think he is corrupt up to his eyeballs, including corruption from Ukraine, and he doesn’t care any more than the rest of them,” Jatras argued. Biden is “more than willing to go through the motions and send these people to their deaths and keep enriching all of the interests.” The US mainstream media have been complicit in beating the drum for confrontation with Russia in Ukraine. “The Wall Street Journal carries waters for the industries we’re talking about. And the blood of people, especially foreigners, doesn’t matter that much to them,” Jatras noted. “The question is, where do they go from here? I think that we are really nearing a kind of a double inflection point — do these people find some way to back out of this thing?”

Read more …

“What will Putin do? We don’t think that far. Our national strategy is that Zelensky can do whatever he wants to do. There’s no adult supervision.”

Biden Admin Played Vital Role in Crimean Bridge Attacks – Sy Hersh (Sp.)

The Biden Administration played a vital role in both recent deadly attacks on the Crimean Bridge, providing Ukraine with the necessary technology, US journalist Seymour Hersh reported on Thursday, citing a US official.v “Of course it was our technology,” the US official was quoted by Hersh as saying. “The drone was remotely guided and half submerged—like a torpedo.” When Hersh asked if there was any thought before the bridge attacks about the possibility of Russia’s retaliation, the official responded with “What will Putin do? We don’t think that far. Our national strategy is that Zelensky can do whatever he wants to do. There’s no adult supervision.” On October 8, 2022, a car detonated on the Crimean Bridge, which connects the Crimean Peninsula with Russia’s mainland. Five people, including the driver of the truck, were killed. The bridge itself was seriously damaged.

On July 17, a submersible drone carried out another attack on the Crimean Bridge, killing a woman and a man and wounding their teenage daughter. In addition, the journalist reported that Ukraine shipped drugs and Russian oil under the cover of the UN-mediated Black Sea Grain Deal, an accord that was meant to bolster global food security. “Odessa’s exports included illegal stuff like drugs and the oil that Ukraine was getting from Russia,” according to the US official quoted by Hersh. nRussia refused to extend the Black Sea deal last week, following its long-time criticism of the UN’s failure to facilitate its own grain and fertilizer exports as was required under the agreement.

The decision also came following the July 17 attack on the Crimean bridge with marine surface drones, which killed a couple who were driving across when the blast occurred and wounded their teen daughter. According to the correspondent, the US and Ukrainian military now abstain from making forecasts regarding future success in the counteroffensive because Russia has a clear advantage on the battlefield. “The American and Ukrainian military are no longer making any predictions,” the US official was quoted by Hersh as saying. “The Ukrainian army has not gotten past the first of three Russian defense lines. Every mine the Ukrainians dig up is replenished at night by the Russians.”

The reality, the interlocutor clarified, “is that the balance of power in the war is settled. Putin has what he wants.” Ukraine is not capable of returning Crimea, Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and the Zaporozhye Region, the official stressed, while Volodymyr Zelensky has “no plan, except to hang on,” the interviewee observed. Ukraine launched a counteroffensive in early June, trying to break through the defense lines of the Russian armed forces in the Donetsk and Zaporozhye regions. Their attempts have been unsuccessful and resulted in heavy losses in armored equipment and manpower of Kiev’s forces, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

Read more …

They all like this as opaque as can be.

Ukrainian Corruption Threatens US Assistance (RT)

The US is struggling to keep track of billions of dollars it has sent to Kiev since February 2022, the effectiveness of which may be reduced by government and private corruption in Ukraine. This was the most recent finding of the US State Department’s Office of the Inspector General. The redacted version of the State Department OIG report, published this week, notes that “corruption in the Ukrainian government and private sector poses risks to the effectiveness of US foreign assistance over the longer run.” Concerns about corruption are well-documented, the OIG adds, and the State Department “intends to develop a plan to address anti-corruption in connection with assistance to Ukraine, including for reconstruction.”

According to the report, the US Congress has appropriated more than $113.4 billion for Ukraine since the hostilities with Russia escalated last year. The State Department has been responsible for about $31 billion, of which $22.9 billion was marked “direct budget support” for the Ukrainian government. The OIG review focused on just these funds, administered by the Office of the Coordinator of US Assistance to Europe and Eurasia (EUR/ACE), and not the tens of billions in military aid that went through the Pentagon. Among the report’s revelations was that “all foreign assistance” to Ukraine is ultimately channeled through the Assistance Coordinator (ACOORD) team at the US embassy in Kiev, which apparently consists of just two people – described as a “Senior Foreign Service officer and a locally employed staff member.”

The embassy’s Integrated Country Strategy (ICS) was last updated in 2018. To make up for it, the EUR/ACE has drafted several planning documents approved by the National Security Council. However, each of them “lacked some or all” of the elements required by internal rules, including goals and objectives “with clear desired results and associated performance indicators.” The documents also “did not set forth an overarching strategy for Ukraine or assign responsibility for achieving goals.” The limited number of embassy staff and Ukraine’s travel restrictions have created “significant challenges in monitoring programs,” the OIG said. Most of the monitoring is done remotely, using online protocols adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic.

One office has created a smartphone app to do photo verification of equipment deliveries. Another contracted with an American NGO to “monitor and verify demining operations.” The OIG inspectors “largely conducted the review remotely” between mid-October 2022 and early March 2023. President Joe Biden’s administration has repeatedly pledged to support the government in Kiev “for as long as it takes” to win the “war” against Russia. Earlier this month, the White House opposed a proposal by congressional Republicans to set up an independent special inspector for Ukraine aid, arguing that the Pentagon inspector general and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) were already working to “ensure accountability.”

Read more …

Fits the EU.

The Western Elite Just Gave Itself A ‘World Peace And Liberty’ Award (Marsden)

Get a load of who won – and presented – a new honor that’s modestly being compared to the Nobel Peace Prize. If you haven’t heard of the World Law Foundation non-profit organization, you could be forgiven. But despite only existing since 2019, it has already created an award described by the Western press as nothing less than the “judicial equivalent” of the world’s top award for promoting peace. Wonder where they got that idea, if not from the organization itself. Can anyone just create a think tank and put it in charge of an award branded as the latest version of the Nobel Peace Prize? Good luck with that – unless, of course, your board is loaded up with establishment heavyweights – in which case, people just tell themselves that it must be legit since all these VIPs wouldn’t otherwise be involved.

So a few days ago, the humble folks of the World Law Foundation gathered at the United Nations in New York for the World Law Congress. One of the big items on the agenda was to hand out this year’s World Peace and Liberty Award to none other than European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, unelected de facto Queen of Europe, who accepted it on behalf of the commission. Wow, didn’t see that one coming. Particularly with a former EU commissioner being the vice president of the group’s board, which also includes former Polish and French prime ministers, former Slovenian and Latvian presidents, a former EU vice president, and various Western establishment corporate figures, academics, and jurists.

You’d think that the same Von der Leyen-led EU Commission would have been a controversial candidate for a peace award given that it’s constantly sided with Washington’s military interventionism or at least have done little to nothing to stop it, and even led the way in the case of Libyan regime change. Most recently, the EU had a chance to stop the conflict in Ukraine before it even started by demanding Kiev’s adherence to the Minsk agreements and rejecting the West’s arming and training of anti-Russian fighters on the border with Russia.

“For the first time ever, the European Union will finance the purchase and delivery of weapons and other equipment to a country that is under attack,” von der Leyen said last year, calling it “a watershed moment.” Know what else is a watershed moment? Giving a peace award to someone whose knee-jerk reaction to armed conflict was to flood the zone with even more weapons. Then again, maybe the Nobel Peace Prize is indeed the right comparison, given that it was prematurely awarded to former US President Barack Obama even before he could order more bombing in Africa and the Middle East.

[..] These World Peace and Liberty folks were apparently like, “Who could we get to present this that embodies freedom and peace? Hey, how about that dude in Canada who did the Freedom Convoy crackdown and whose country helped train the Azov neo-Nazis to wage war against Russia then tried to hide it from the press to avoid embarrassment?” Enter Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Nothing says freedom like invoking a martial law-style crackdown over a bunch of honking truckers protesting against the two-tier society fostered by Trudeau’s authoritarian Covid mandates – and then blocking their bank accounts as a dissuasion technique. “Brexit left many wondering if the union would continue to hold strong. Euroskepticism was on the rise. And protectionism and authoritarianism were becoming more prevalent,” Trudeau said, presumably as a newly-minted authority on authoritarianism, having just recently dabbled in it himself.

Read more …

“Archer has already received threats prior to the scheduled testimony.” Which is Monday, not today.

Will Collapse of Hunter Biden Plea Deal End Up in Joe’s Impeachment? (Sp.)

The collapse of first son Hunter Biden’s plea deal could have various implications, including the possibility of an impeachment inquiry, according to some US legal observers. Hunter Biden’s plea agreement hearing on Wednesday went not quite as well as the US president’s son apparently expected: Judge Maryellen Noreika rejected the deal and he wound up submitting a not guilty plea. At the root of Noreika’s bewilderment was the fact that the Justice Department agreed to grant Hunter immunity even though its investigation into the commander-in-chief’s son remained ongoing, according to US conservative media. In other words, the DoJ appeared to be ready to forgive Hunter’s other sins – not just the latest tax and gun-related charges. “Is this even constitutional?” Noreika asked, ordering those involved in the deal to file briefs explaining its structure.

Commenting on the abrupt collapse of the much-discussed plea deal, renowned legal scholar Jonathan Turley suggested it could have political implications for Joe Biden’s 2024 election bid. “This deal was, in my view, almost laughable,” Turley told a US broadcaster on Wednesday. The IRS whistleblowers just a week ago told Congress that there was an opportunity for the Department of Justice to extend the statute of limitations on the 2014 and 2015 tax matters. “That’s the Burisma issue, those are Ukraine questions,” said Turley. “And, according to the whistleblowers, the Department of Justice had that opportunity and let them expire. Why?” The legal expert anticipates these questions could be raised more frequently, and that they may expose any other potential crimes committed by Hunter Biden.

In fact, chief among them would be suspected violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Earlier, Turley wrote on his blog that the DoJ somehow overlooked Hunter acting as a de facto unregistered foreign agent, an offense Trump-era associate Paul Manafort was promptly accused of. It’s believed Hunter Biden likely violated FARA rules while striking business deals with foreign entities, including in China, Romania and Ukraine during and after his father’s vice presidency. Meanwhile, Devon Archer, Hunter’s longtime former business partner, is due to give a closed-door testimony on Monday before congressional lawmakers. It’s speculated Archer may spill the beans on Joe Biden’s involvement with his son’s business deals prior to assuming the presidency. Reportedly, Archer has already received threats prior to the scheduled testimony.

Read more …

The probe is closed, but we can’t give you the docs, because the probe is ongoing.

Hunter Biden’s Judge Raised The One Question The White House Most Fears (FP)

Watch as Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley reveals why Democrats are now panicking over Hunter Biden, and the question of whether he is, or is not, a foreign agent. “I think part of the problem is they really did want to cap out the case.” “The Department of Justice wanted to cap this investigation. But they didn’t want to say that it was now over.” “From the very beginning, the Hunter Biden team said this is a close-out plea agreement. There would be nothing left to investigate.” “But the Department of Justice is telling Congress we’re not going to give you these witnesses or these documents because there’s an ongoing investigation. “You can’t do both things when a judge is asking you to specifically address whether this is a close-out or a continuing investigation…”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1684435341451870209

“This is a big problem. This was all supposed to be scripted. It was all supposed to be easy. And now it is off script and it is anything but easy. “Because the judge just raised the one charge that the White House most fears which is the chance that Hunter was a foreign agent. And if he was a foreign agent, the question is foreign agent for who and for what purpose?” “The president was that purpose. If you’re influence peddling, it’s influence over the president. So if you go for FARA, it’s going to bring all of this stuff in.” “Including some of these tax accounts for 2014 and 15 that the Department of Justice allowed to run, allowed the statute of limitations to expire.” “All of that can get boot strapped into a FARA issue. The whole purpose of this deal is collapsing as we’re watching it. And it’s taken Washington by utter surprise. I was on the Hill talking with members and everyone was floored.”

Read more …

FARA.

Hunter’s Court Transcript Debunks Major Biden Lies Central To Bribery Scheme (TP)

Chris Clark, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, made several admissions in court that effectively debunked major lies that Joe Biden told the public about his family’s income from foreign countries according to Breitbart News. In 2020, Joe Biden publicly asserted on a debate stage with President Donald Trump that “My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China…The only guy who made money from China is this guy [Donald Trump]. He’s the only one. Nobody else has made money from China.” This comment has now come back to haunt Joe Biden as Clark informed the court that Hunter Biden made over $1 millions in overseas business transactions and with $664,000 alone coming from CEFC, a company linked to the Chinese Communist Party and China’s intelligence agency.

The court transcript reveals that Biden’s lawyer said, “During calendar year 2017, Biden earned substantial income, including: just under $1 million from a company he formed with the CEO of a Chinese business conglomerate [BHR Partners]; $666,666 from his domestic business interests; approximately $664,000 from a Chinese infrastructure investment company [CEFC].” The topic of Hunter Biden’s money from Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy business, also came up in court. Mr. Clark told the court that “From 2017 to 12 2019, he [Hunter] served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company and a Chinese private equity fund. He further negotiated and executed contracts for business and legal services that paid millions of dollars of compensation to him and/or his domestic corporations, Owasco, PC and Owasco, LLC. Through at least early 2017, he also was employed by a prestigious multi-national law firm in an ‘of counsel’ capacity. For this work, he earned substantial income, totaling more than $2.3 million in 2017 and $2.1 million in 2018.”

Biden’s income from Burisma Holdings is of particular interest as this is the entity that allegedly bribed Joe Biden when he was Vice President to shut down investigations into the company by Ukrainian prosecutors in exchange for a $10 million bribe. $5 million went to Joe Biden and the other $5 million went to Hunter Biden. So far no admission has been by Hunter Biden about this item. Mr. Clark also acknowledged other foreign revenue streams for Hunter Biden such as Romania. The Biden family is under congressional investigation for acting as a conduit for Joe Biden’s alleged influence-peddling schemes. With the unearthing of an FBI memo detailing allegations of bribery by the aforementioned Ukrainian energy company, calls to impeach the president have become more vocal and have gained greater credence. Even Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) commented that he would be looking into it.

Read more …

The cleaning lady?

New Charges Added to Trump Mar-a-Lago Case, Third Defendant Named (Sp.)

Former US President Donald Trump and two others are facing new charges as part of US special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the mishandling of classified documents at the former president’s Florida residence. A superseding indictment attached to the ongoing case added four charges to an earlier complaint and named Carlos De Oliveira, who reportedly serves as the head of maintenance at Mar-a-Lago, as a third defendant. Both Trump and aide Walt Nauta were hit with two new obstruction charges over efforts to allegedly erase surveillance footage from the summer of 2022 captured at Trump’s Florida home. De Oliveria was slapped with false statements and representations over an interview with federal agents in January 2023. A summons for De Oliveria requires him to appear before a federal court on July 31.


The new defendant allegedly helped Nauta move 30 boxes with classified documents around Mar-a-Lago following the Justice Department’s first subpoena against Trump in May, US media reported. Trump was indicted in June on 37 charges related to the mishandling of classified documents, including those the FBI uncovered in a raid of his Florida home. The former president pleaded not guilty to the charges, and has condemned the offenses as a politically-driven attack intended to shutter his 2024 election bid. According to the indictment, the classified documents Trump stored in boxes at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida included information about defense and weapons capabilities of both the US and foreign countries, US nuclear programs, potential vulnerabilities of the US and its allies to military attack, and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.

Read more …

Meanwhile, Putin is building.

The Russia-Global South Connection: Africa as Strategic Partner (Pepe Escobar)

The Russian-African Conference of the Valdai Club functioned like a sort of final expert watch synchronization in the run-up to St. Petersburg. The first session was particularly relevant. That came after the publication of a comprehensive analysis by President Putin of Russia-Africa relations, with a special emphasis on the recently collapsed grain deal involving the UN, Turkey, Russia and Ukraine. Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the Russian Federation Council, has stressed how “Ukraine, Washington and NATO were interested in the grain corridor for sabotage”. In his Op-Ed, Putin explained how, “for almost a year, a total of 32.8 million tons of cargo were exported from Ukraine under the ‘deal’, of which more than 70% went to high-and above-middle-income countries, including the European Union, while countries such as Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia, as well as Yemen and Afghanistan accounted for less than 3% of the total volume – less than one million tons.”

So that was one of the key reasons for Russia to leave the grain deal. Moscow published a list of requirements which would need to be fulfilled for Russia to reinstate it. Among them: a real, practical end to sanctions on Russian grain and fertilizers shipped to world markets; no more obstacles for banks and financial institutions; no more restrictions on charter of ships and insurance – that means clean logistics for all food supplies; restoration of the Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline. And a particularly crucial item: the restoration of “the original humanitarian nature of the grain deal.” There’s no way the collective West subjected to the Straussian neocon psychos who control US foreign policy will fulfill all or even some of these conditions. So Russia, by itself, will offer grain and fertilizers free of charge for the poorest nations and contracts for grain supply at normal commercial terms for the others. Supply is guaranteed: Moscow had the biggest grain harvest ever during this season.

This is all about solidarity. At the Valdai session, a key discussion was around the importance of solidarity in the struggle against neo-colonialism and for global equality and justice. Oleg Ozerov, Ambassador-at-Large of the Russian Foreign Ministry, and Head of the Secretariat of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum, stressed how European “former” partners persist on the one-way track of shifting blame to Russia as Africa is “acquiring agency” and “denying neo-colonialism.” Ozerov mentioned how “France-Afrique is collapsing – and Russia is not behind it. Russia is ensuring that Africa acts as one of the powers of the multipolar world”, as “a member of the G20 and present in the UN Security Council.” Moreover, Moscow is interested to expand Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) free trade deals towards Africa.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Ice Cube race
https://twitter.com/i/status/1684545169301856256

 

 

 

 

Kings

 

 

All kinds
https://twitter.com/i/status/1684270012117180431

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jul 202023
 


Andy Warhol Grace Kelly 1984

 

RFK Jr’s Racist, Antisemitic And Xenophobic Views Go Back Decades (G.)
Anything Anything Anything To Avoid Debating RFK Jr. (Patrick Lawrence)
RFK Jr. Floats Plan to Back Dollar With Bitcoin, Gold (Tweedie)
Why the Ukraine Conflict Will Unravel NATO and Biden (Desai)
West Ready To Turn Blind Eye To Any Crimes Of Kiev – Kremlin (TASS)
How Much Of The $185 Billion Given By The West To Ukraine Was Stolen? (Trenin)
Mosquitoes And Pinpricks: Warmaking As Public Relations (Helmer)
World Is Getting Tired Of Ukraine Conflict – Lula (RT)
West Not Prepared For Conflict With China – FT (RT)
The Latest Racist Attacks on Clarence Thomas (Turley)
Trump Could Face ‘Seditious Conspiracy’ Charge in Jan. 6 Probe (ET)
Europe to See ‘Devastating Migration Crisis’ After Grain Deal Suspension (Sp.)
Julian Assange Is ‘Dangerously Close’ to Extradition (Cohn)

 

 


One of these songs got removed because the lyrics were “too offensive” the other song was number 1 on billboard….

 

 

Donalds
https://twitter.com/i/status/1681776860567314434

 

 

FD-1023
https://twitter.com/i/status/1681816534212026368

 

 

MTG

 

 

Big guy

 

 

Ziegler

Joseph Ziegler #IRSwhistleblower:
Money IRS found that was paid to Hunter Biden and associates from 2014-2019:
From Romania $3.1 million
CEFC subsidiary: $3m
Hudson West III [CEFC]: $3.7m
Burisma $6.5m
Total foreign income streams: $17m

 

 

 

 

Macgregor
https://twitter.com/i/status/1681822628502200320

 

 

Putin:

Russia showed miracles of patience, constantly extending the grain deal;
Failure to fulfill obligations to the Russian Federation under the grain deal is impudence and impudence;
The West has done everything to derail the grain deal;
The West once pushed Africa into the abyss of wars, famine and poverty, and now continues its neo-colonial policy;
The West obstructs even the free transfer of fertilizers by Russia to the poorest countries;
The grain deal resulted in direct losses for Russian farmers in the amount of $1.2 billion;
Russia is ready to replace Ukrainian grain on the world market both on a gratuitous and commercial basis;
Putin confirmed the readiness of the Russian Federation to return to the grain deal if the obstacles to its agricultural exports are removed;
Putin called the resumption of work of the Togliati-Odessa ammonia pipeline one of the conditions for the resumption of the grain deal;
The West completely “emasculated and perverted” the originally humanitarian essence of the grain deal, made it an instrument of enrichment for speculators;
To resume the grain deal, it is necessary to return its humanitarian essence;
Russia will immediately return to the grain deal if all its conditions are met.

 

 

 

 

Wanna know how the US elections will be narrated? Look no further. And this is the Guardian, not even American. No shame, no balance. And it isn’t even Luke Harding. Please read the whole article.

RFK Jr’s Racist, Antisemitic And Xenophobic Views Go Back Decades (G.)

Robert Kennedy Jr, a long-shot Democratic candidate for US president, has a long history of racism, antisemitism and xenophobia, and should be denied a national platform, according to a damning report seen by the Guardian. Kennedy, who provoked anger last week when he was filmed falsely suggesting that the coronavirus could have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, is due to testify at the US Capitol in Washington on Thursday. The Congressional Integrity Project, a political watchdog, called for Republicans to disinvite Kennedy after releasing a report that details his meetings with and promotion of racists, antisemites and extremist conspiracy theorists. “Kennedy embraces virtually every conspiracy theory in existence,” the report states.

“His horrific antisemitic and xenophobic views are simply beyond the pale, and he has frequently met with and promoted antisemitic conspiracy theorists. Kennedy’s anti-vaccine conspiracies go back decades and have had deadly real world consequences.” Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, is running against Joe Biden in the Democratic presidential primary and has drawn big and enthusiastic crowds and polled as high as 20%. But the Project’s document argues that Kennedy’s recent comments about Jewish and Chinese people, which were quickly hailed by neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers as “100% correct”, were not an aberration but fitted a long pattern. Earlier this summer Kennedy touted a meeting with Ice Cube, a rapper who issued bizarre antisemitic tweets, and publicly defended musician Roger Waters, who was embroiled in controversy after donning a costume intended to evoke Nazi attire at a concert in Germany.

The report says Kennedy has also repeatedly promoted and praised fringe online broadcaster James Corbett, a Sandy Hook and 9/11 conspiracy theorist who has claimed that “Hitler and the Nazis were 100% completely and utterly set up”. Kennedy has often allied himself with the National of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan, who regularly unleashed tirades about alleged Jewish control of media and government. Kennedy met Farrakhan at his Chicago home in 2015, with Farrakhan later tweeting that they discussed “a vaccine that is designed to affect Black males”.

The Project details how Kennedy himself has frequently invoked Nazi Germany when pushing debunked theories about vaccines. He put out a video that showed the infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci with a moustache reminiscent of Adolf Hitler and used the word “holocaust” to describe children he believes were hurt by vaccines in 2015.

Read more …

“..a man who knows who is doing what to develop bioweapons and says so with no apparent fear or favor… and we must conclude he hates Jews.”

Anything Anything Anything To Avoid Debating RFK Jr. (Patrick Lawrence)

The Post had the integrity to publish a 1–minute 47–second video—a snippet or the whole is not clear—that either Levine or a colleague recorded during the lunch. I cannot comment on the decisive question concerning the breaking of wind at Tony’s, but nothing raucous goes on in the video, and what Levine chose to quote in his copy was (1) a provocative misrepresentation of Kennedy’s point and (2) left out the most startling part of his comments. [..] To the first point, anyone who finds it odd for someone to state that diseases strike some groups of people more severely than others is simply too prone to malign suggestion to make his or her way in our propagandized world. It has been understood for who knows how long that sickle-cell anemia strikes hardest in Black and Latin American communities, to take one common example.

Covid–19 is no different. The Mayo Clinic has a report on its website analyzing the relative vulnerabilities of various racial and ethnic groups to Covid–19 infections. As to Kennedy’s reference to European Jews and the Chinese, he clarified subsequent to the lunch that this relied on a study conducted by the Cleveland Clinic indicating that some ethnic and racial groups, among them Ashkenazi Jews, were less susceptible to the Covid–19 virus than other groups, among which are Blacks. This—the blood simmers as I write this sentence—is the basis of the charge that R.F.K. Jr. displayed anti–Semitic tendencies while consuming his pasta with white clam sauce at Tony’s earlier this month. Here is the portion of Kennedy’s recorded remarks I found revelatory. In it, he reiterates that scientific studies show Caucasians and Blacks to be most vulnerable to Covid–19 infection and European Jews and Chinese are least vulnerable, “because of the genetic structures, the genetic differentials among different races:”

“And we need to talk about bioweapons. I know a lot about bioweapons because I’ve been doing a book on them for the past two and a half years. And… the technology we now have… we’ve put hundreds of millions of dollars into ethnically targeted microbes. The Chinese have done the same thing…. We know the Chinese are spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing ethnically targeted bioweapons, and we are developing ethnic bioweapons. That’s what all those labs in the Ukraine are about. They’re collecting Russian DNA. They’re collecting Chinese DNA so they can target people by race.”

Why aren’t our mainstream media picking up on this interesting, highly consequential story? Believe me, they will go nowhere near the question of American-made bioweapons and those three dozen laboratories in Ukraine. Nah, the fantasies of a conspiracy theorist. We have a man who has spent his professional life in the precincts of science, a man who researched the topic of ethnically targeted bioweapons for two-plus years and is writing a book about them, a man who is plainly conversant with the pertinent scientific vocabulary and the theories expressed therein, a man who knows who is doing what to develop bioweapons and says so with no apparent fear or favor… and we must conclude he hates Jews.

Read more …

“Fiat currency was invented to fund wars..”

RFK Jr. Floats Plan to Back Dollar With Bitcoin, Gold (Tweedie)

US presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he will underpin the dollar with more solid assets — including Bitcoin. Kennedy, the nephew of assassinated president John F. Kennedy, is mounting an outsider challenge to incumbent Joe Biden for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in the 2024 election. Speaking at an event organised by the Heal-the-Divide political action committee (PAC) on Tuesday, Kennedy outlined some unorthodox ideas for shoring up the value of Treasury bills, government-issued short-term investment securities. “My plan would be to start very, very small, perhaps one percent of issued T-bills would be backed by hard currency, by gold, silver platinum or Bitcoin,” Kennedy said.

Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency on the market since its launch in 2009 by an enigmatic developer or developers known as Satoshi Nakamoto, is not backed by gold reserves or a national economy and continues to fluctuate wildly in value. However, its creators have set a final limit on how many of the virtual ‘crypto coins’ will be in circulation, preventing their debasement. “Backing dollars and US debt obligations with hard assets could help restore strength back to the dollar, rein in inflation and usher in a new era of American financial stability, peace and prosperity,” the Democrat argued. He also made a rare argument against the use of Fiat money — currencies not backed by gold or other commodities — as the the greenback has been since 1971 when president Richard Nixon took it off the Gold Standard.

Kennedy’s late uncle JFK “understood the importance of hard currency and the dangers of having pure fiat currency with no other option,” he said. “He understood the relationship between fiat currency and war … and also these giant aggregations of wealth and the unbalance, the disparities in wealth that are the ultimate yield of every fiat currency.” He also linked the shift to Fiat currency, with the option of inflationary ‘quantitative easing’ to America’s endless series of imperialist conflicts overseas. “Fiat currency was invented to fund wars,” Kennedy stressed. “I like base currencies because they make it more difficult, you have to go to the public. You can’t just print money to fund the war and tax the public through the hidden tax of inflation.”

Read more …

“Europe can thank its stars that the critical aid and immense sacrifices of Soviet and Chinese forces ensured victory in the Second World War..”:

Why the Ukraine Conflict Will Unravel NATO and Biden (Desai)

Always a work-in-progress, NATO unity has got more difficult as US power has declined. In recent decades, its chief glue has been US military power. If it too ceases to bind – as is clear from the string of military failures culminating in the humiliating exit from Afghanistan – then the self-sacrifice Biden has demanded, and some extent received, from the Europeans on Ukraine – is the dime on which the future of US leadership over what remains of its allies and of its chief instrument, NATO, will turn.Understanding such imminent fundamental change requires a return to fundamentals beneath the appearance of NATO unity. The much-vaunted Article 5 may state, famously, that ‘an armed attack against one … shall be considered an attack against … all’.

However, if you think this obliges all members to rush to the defence of attacked members with all they’ve got, think again. The article specifies further that each ally will ‘will assist … by taking forthwith … such action as it deems necessary [emphasis added]’. So, allied solidarity turns out to be a moveable feast, meaning only what each member country ‘deems necessary’. On the matter of the US commitment to Europe, which NATO is held to powerfully instantiate, even the early Cold War commitment to defend Western Europe against the big bad Soviet Union, amounted, practically, to schemes that were ‘always far-fetched and recognised as such’.

If you are shocked, consider this: the US ‘aided’ Europe during the two World Wars on a more or less commercial basis, vastly increasing its economic and financial clout at the expense of ‘allies’. Ruinously for them, it demanded repayment of its war loans after the First World War and, equally ruinously, demanded policy alignment after the Second. Europe can thank its stars that the critical aid and immense sacrifices of Soviet and Chinese forces ensured victory in the Second World War, and that the alleged threat of an imminent Soviet attack on Western Europe was little more than a figment of the very hysterical US imagination that has kept its military industrial complex is such fine fettle down the decades.

Read more …

“This is nothing new, it has happened before. It will happen again, we understand it very well.”

West Ready To Turn Blind Eye To Any Crimes Of Kiev – Kremlin (TASS)

Moscow fully understands that the West has been and will continue to turn a blind eye to any crimes committed by the Kiev regime, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Commenting on the reaction of Western countries to the terrorist attack on the Crimean Bridge, the spokesman said: “The West is ready to turn a blind eye to any terrorist attack organized by the Kiev regime in our country. In this case they are silent. This is nothing new, it has happened before. It will happen again, we understand it very well.”


Ukrainian forces used two surface drones to carry out a terrorist attack on the Crimean Bridge in the early morning hours of Monday, the National Antiterrorism Committee told TASS. The Russian Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case under the article “Act of Terrorism.” The terrorist attack resulted in the deaths of two adults, a married couple from the Belgorod Region, and injuries to their minor child. As well, the bridge’s road surface was damaged. Traffic on the bridge has been suspended since the morning. Train traffic has already resumed and a ferry crossing is now operating. Passenger cars will soon be able to transit to the mainland from Crimea via ferry, but trucks must take a northern overland detour through the new regions.

Read more …

“Corruption there is beyond belief. It always has been. And that doesn’t change. That’s all I was writing about,” Hersh said.”

How Much Of The $185 Billion Given By The West To Ukraine Was Stolen? (Trenin)

The problem persists despite the fact that for many years, the US has invested funds to battle corruption in Ukraine. The funds were allocated to the Prosecutor General’s office, the local media, and other organizations. This was stated by the administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Samantha Power, at a congressional hearing. Despite this, the crimes in Ukraine continue. Some time ago, Ukrainian anti-corruption police arrested the deputy minister of infrastructure on suspicion of receiving a bribe of €367,000 for the purchase of generators at an inflated price. And recently, the head of Ukraine’s Supreme Court was accused of corruption. Then, there was the investigation by a Ukrainian newspaper which reported that Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense had concluded contracts for food supplies for front line troops at a price two to three times higher than normal – an investigation that caused a big scandal.


The Pentagon’s concerns that weapons supplied to Ukraine may end up on the black market have also been confirmed. “Very early [in the conflict], Poland, Romania, other countries on the border were being flooded with weapons we [the US and allies] were shipping for the war to Ukraine. In other words, commanders of I don’t know what level – often it wasn’t generals, it was colonels and others, who were given shipments of some weapons, [who] would personally resell them to the dark market,” Hersh told ‘Going Underground’ host Afshin Rattansi. He added that everybody in Ukraine’s government is now getting third parties involved, as this increases their chances of earning money on the side. “Corruption there is beyond belief. It always has been. And that doesn’t change. That’s all I was writing about,” Hersh said.

Read more …

“..of course Ukraine has to decide how it conducts this war in defence of its umm territory, its people, ahhh its freedom.”

Mosquitoes And Pinpricks: Warmaking As Public Relations (Helmer)

On the battlefield the Ukraine has pioneered the Mosquito Tactic – that’s sending units of dozens of soldiers running towards Russian defence fortifications in several swarms at the same time, across a half-dozen salients up and down the line of contact. In parallel, in the air and on the sea President Vladimir Zelensky and his general staff have devised the Bloody Pinprick Tactic – that’s drones exploding on Russian targets like the Crimean Bridge or the Kremlin Senate Dome. The purpose of both, mosquitoes and pinpricks, is warmaking as public relations, Zelensky is advertising the illusion that the Ukrainian army can win its offensive against Russia, no matter how great the loss in Ukrainian men and materiel; notwithstanding how little the impact on Russian forces.

The real target of this bloody PR isn’t the Russians. It is Zelensky’s NATO allies and paymasters who secretly warned him during the July 11-12 NATO summit meeting that the cashflow and the enthusiasm are already running down, and may be cut by Christmas. The tactic of bloody PR means making daily defeat look like imminent victory, with conditions: NATO fighter-bombers pretending to be Ukrainian; Polish troops around Lvov pretending to be the revival of the Polish-Lithuanian union of 1386; and grain carriers as warships on the Black Sea, pretending to feed the hungriest populations of the world. In its statement on the Crimean Bridge attack twelve hours later, the Russian Foreign Ministry said “if the investigation finds that the surface drones that attacked the bridge are of Western origin, and that Western countries played a role in planning, sponsoring and conducting this operation, it will confirm their complicity in the Kiev regime’s terrorist activity.”

Asked to comment, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “this is a situation we are monitoring. Ah, and I don’t really have anything in particular to offer on that, err, just, ahh, I can say that as a general proposition, of course Ukraine has to decide how it conducts this war in defence of its umm territory, its people, ahhh its freedom.”

Read more …

Yes.

World Is Getting Tired Of Ukraine Conflict – Lula (RT)

Countries around the world are beginning to grow weary of the ongoing military conflict between Moscow and Kiev, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told reporters on Wednesday. “The world is starting to get tired. Countries are starting to get tired,” he said following a two-day meeting of EU and Latin American leaders in Brussels, as quoted by Bloomberg. The Brazilian president predicted that there will eventually come a moment when there will be peace in Ukraine, and insisted that a group of countries will have to be able to talk to both Moscow and Kiev Lula, who has been pushing for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, also objected to efforts to single out Moscow as the sole culprit behind the conflict.

He insisted that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, as well as US leader Joe Biden, were equally to blame for failing to negotiate with Russian leader Vladimir Putin to prevent the conflict. During this week’s summit between the EU and the Community of South American and Caribbean States (CELAC), European officials had hoped to sign a final statement which would feature an explicit condemnation of Russia’s actions in Ukraine. However, EU leaders failed to persuade all of their Latin American counterparts, as a number of states, including Brazil and Nicaragua, objected to the inclusion of any strong language on Russia in the document. The final declaration, which included promises of investment and several deals, ended up being signed by all members of the summit except Nicaragua, which objected to the inclusion of even a single paragraph referring to the Ukraine conflict.

Despite NATO’s commitment to stand with Ukraine “for as long as it takes,” a number of Western officials have recently started to predict that support for Kiev could soon begin to wane as “war fatigue” sets in over the prolonged conflict. Last week, Czech President Petr Pavel stated that Ukraine should aim to regain as much territory as possible before the 2024 US presidential elections, which could see Kiev’s backers in Washington reconsider the volume of military aid sent to Ukraine. In March, Slovakian President Zuzana Caputova also warned that military aid for Kiev was not unlimited and claimed that public support for Ukraine was “running out.”

Read more …

What conflict?

West Not Prepared For Conflict With China – FT (RT)

Ammunition shortages laid bare by the Ukraine conflict have prompted some US think-tanks to check on stockpiles in the West and find them wanting, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. The military industry of NATO allies is not able to help, either. A Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) wargame of a conflict with China over Taiwan showed that the US had only about 450 long-range anti-ship missiles, enough for about a week. Another think tank, the Center for New American Security (CNAS), said the existing missile inventory is “too small to blunt an initial invasion, let alone prevail in a protracted conflict against China.” To deter and defeat Beijing, the Pentagon “needs large stockpiles of stand-off missiles, maritime strike weapons, and layered air and missile defenses,” CNAS concluded.

According to FT, the US Department of Defense has asked for $1.1 billion in the 2024 fiscal year to buy 118 long-range anti-ship missiles (LRASM), compared to half that amount for 83 missiles the year before. The Pentagon also wants $30 billion for ammunition, a 23% increase over 2023 levels, and $315 billion for new weapons. CNAS has noted that the Pentagon tends to prioritize big-ticket items such as ships, planes and tanks, “leaving missiles and munitions with inadequate funding.” FT revealed that the collective West has spent a combined $170 billion on military and financial aid to Ukraine since February 2022. Kiev is still complaining about ammunition shortages, however.

The US military-industrial complex has spent decades prioritizing efficiency and adopting the just-in-time supply chain used by other industries, according to FT, leaving it unable to scale up production in wartime. Parts and labor shortages are currently a problem as well. “The defense industry is so consolidated that it can’t very quickly expand to support a greater demand,” said Stacie Pettyjohn of CNAS. “So we’re slow and behind and don’t have enough of anything.” Only five companies are responsible for major Pentagon contracts, and some parts are made by only one or two suppliers, with no way to make up the shortage elsewhere. Nor can NATO allies step in to pick up the slack, because the US push to promote American-made weapons has left the European defense industry stunted and fractured, multiple think-tank experts told FT.

Read more …

“The racist attack from the top lawyer in the state of Minnesota was not condemned by a single democrat.”

The Latest Racist Attacks on Clarence Thomas (Turley)

In July 1991, Clarence Thomas, a relatively unknown D.C. Circuit judge, was nominated by President George H.W. Bush to replace Thurgood Marshall on the United States Supreme Court. Thomas soon found out that the only thing more perilous than replacing a historical icon on the Court is replacing a liberal with a conservative. Thomas would become an icon in his own right for conservatives: an unyielding defender of textualism and conservative jurisprudence. Yet, liberals seem more preoccupied by his race than his rigidity. This week, a leading Democrat, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison unleashed another openly racist attack on Thomas and neither the media nor the political establishment condemned the remarks.

Ellison condemned Thomas as a house slave working for white people, analogizing him to the vile character “Stephen,” played by Samuel L. Jackson in the film “Django Unchained.” (Jackson himself called Thomas “Uncle Clarence” after the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade). Ellison added that, because he disagreed with Thomas’ conservative opinions, the justice is “illegitimate” and “needs to be impeached.” That is, of course, nonsensical from a constitutional standpoint. However, what was most striking is the response to statements. The racist attack from the top lawyer in the state of Minnesota was not condemned by a single democrat. Not Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who previously falsely declared that hate speech is not constitutionally protected under the First Amendment and declared himself a champion against bigotry and racist rhetoric.

Not from senior Senator Amy Klubuchar, who has repeatedly denounced racist tropes and rhetoric of Republicans. Not from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who rightfully condemned the comments of Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville on white nationalism but made no comment on a racist attack of Thomas in the same week. Not from President Joe Biden, who has repeatedly denounced racial rhetoric and “codes” by Republicans. Indeed, the day that Ellison’s comments were being aired nationally, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre went to the press room to denounce Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at length for his statements suggesting that Covid-19 may have been engineered to spare Jewish and Chinese people. Jean-Pierre declared that “it is important that we essentially speak out” when such racist or anti-Semitic comments are made, but then made no mention of the racist attack on Thomas as nothing more than a house slave.

Read more …

“Ms. Kelly believes the DOJ approached the Proud Boys trial in a way that seemed to lay the groundwork for bringing the same charge against Mr. Trump..”

Trump Could Face ‘Seditious Conspiracy’ Charge in Jan. 6 Probe (ET)

Prosecutors should first ask for a voluntary appearance before subpoenaing the target of a criminal investigation, according to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Justice Manual. Also, lawyers usually discourage their clients from going before a grand jury if they are the target of the investigation—it can be avoided by invoking the right against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment, says Marc Ruskin, a former FBI agent and assistant U.S. attorney. However, that may be Mr. Smith’s goal, according to Mr. Ruskin. He noted that Mr. Trump is already facing indictments in New York and Florida and pleading the Fifth in Washington gives another talking point to his opponents. “It could be a tactical and procedural move just to make him look bad,” he said.

“You have Trump, a former president who is running to be president again, pleading the Fifth. I guess from their point of view, it’s going to help make him less attractive as a candidate.” If the target is not asked to testify, “the prosecutor, in appropriate cases, is encouraged to notify such person a reasonable time before seeking an indictment in order to afford him or her an opportunity to testify before the grand jury,” the manual says. Mr. Trump indicated he believes charges against himself are imminent, saying that being told to report to the grand jury, “almost always means an Arrest and Indictment.” Some commentators have long predicted Mr. Trump will face charges in the probe, including Julie Kelly, an independent journalist who had closely followed the trials of Jan. 6 participants.

“I’ve warned of this for over a year. I take no pride in being right,” she commented in a July 18 tweet. “Only question now is what charges Smith will bring (strong possibility he’ll seek indictment on seditious conspiracy) and who is charged with him. (Any conspiracy charge requires at least one conspirator).” In April, she highlighted several members of the pro-Trump Proud Boys group who were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Ms. Kelly believes the DOJ approached the Proud Boys trial in a way that seemed to lay the groundwork for bringing the same charge against Mr. Trump. During the closing arguments, it seemed to her that prosecutors tried to tie Proud Boys to Mr. Trump, particularly regarding a comment by Mr. Trump during a 2020 presidential debate that the Proud Boys should “stand down and stand by.” She pointed to a comment by one of the prosecutors that “defendants saw themselves as Donald Trump’s army, fighting to keep their preferred leader in power no matter what.”

Read more …

And again blame Russia…

Europe to See ‘Devastating Migration Crisis’ After Grain Deal Suspension (Sp.)

Europe, which will be flooded with migrants from low-income countries that rely on grain exports from Ukraine and Russia, will suffer the most from the suspension of the grain deal, international experts told Sputnik on Wednesday. On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia’s participation in the grain deal had been terminated with immediate effect, although it would return to it if commitments toward Moscow were fulfilled. “Europe may soon experience a devastating migration crisis following Russia’s decision to leave the deal. The biggest victim of higher grain prices and shortages in the developing countries will be the European Union,” Yusuf Alabarda, a Turkish political expert and a representative of the M5 Strategy Journal, told Sputnik.

“We know very well that Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and a couple of other African countries are mainly dependent on Ukrainian and Russian grain imports. Europe will be overwhelmed by migrants fleeing hunger.” Eugen Schmidt of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, in commentary for Sputnik, also predicted a dire impact of the deal’s suspension for the European Union. “Unfortunately, Western countries are deliberately provoking hunger in regions dependent on Ukrainian and Russian grain supplies, which will inevitably incite huge hungry masses to storm European borders,” Schmidt said. “It is unlikely that the ruling political elites of the EU do not understand what the failure of the grain deal threatens them with, but apparently they do not care at all about the impending hunger and the further flooding of Europe with migrants.”

The German lawmaker added that today Europe, and especially Germany, is not independent in its foreign policy and acts only in the interests of “external forces, which has an extremely negative effect on the state of affairs in Germany itself. As several key European nations, including Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Austria, have already called on Russia to restore its participation in the grain initiative, the expert called on them to take responsibility on their behalf for the suspension of the agreement as Russia’s concerns have not been met.

Putin grain
https://twitter.com/i/status/1681738877059432450

Read more …

I’m running out of words…

Julian Assange Is ‘Dangerously Close’ to Extradition (Cohn)

Article 4(3) of the Extradition Treaty forbids extradition if the request was “politically motivated.” The legally unprecedented and selective nature of the prosecution in focusing on leaked national security information speaks to the political character of the prosecution and request for extradition, the appeal says. Assange’s lawyers wrote that “this prosecution is motivated by matters other than the proper and usual pursuit of criminal justice. It is motivated instead by a concerted intent to destroy or inhibit the publishers of evidence of state criminal ability, and thereby put a stop to the process of investigating, prosecuting and preventing such international crimes in the future.”


The appeal papers point out that Assange is being prosecuted for exposing “wholescale abuse and war crimes” committed by the United States. If instead he had “exposed war crimes or crimes against humanity committed by a state such as the Russian Federation,” the defense lawyers write, “there can be no doubt that his prosecution for such revelations would be regarded as both a political offence (within the Treaty) and an impermissible prosecution motivated by a desire to punish him for his political opinions/acts.”

“While the leakers of such materials have been prosecuted albeit selectively, no prosecution for the act of obtaining or publishing state secrets has ever occurred,” the appeal says. That is “[b]ecause the First Amendment protects the free press and it is vital that the press expose rather than ignore … not because journalists are somehow privileged but because the citizenry has a right to know what is going on,” Mark Feldstein, journalism professor at University of Maryland, testified at Assange’s extradition hearing.

Article 10 of the ECHR protects freedom of expression. Columbia law professor Jameel Jaffer testified that the indictment is focused “almost entirely” on things that national security journalists do “routinely and as a necessary part of their work,” including “cultivating sources, communicating with them confidentially, soliciting information from them, protecting their identities from disclosure, and publishing classified information.” The conviction of Assange would chill journalists from fulfilling their function as watchdog for the public. The appeal quotes the 1996 case of Goodwin v. the United Kingdom:

Press freedom assumes even greater importance in circumstances in which State activities and decisions escape democratic or judicial scrutiny on account of their confidential or secret nature. The conviction of a journalist for disclosing information considered to be confidential or secret may discourage those working in the media from informing the public on matters of public interest. As a result, the press may no longer be able to play its vital role as “public watchdog” and the ability of the press to provide accurate and reliable information may be adversely affected.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Plimer

 

 

 

 

Barbie

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jul 142023
 
 July 14, 2023  Posted by at 8:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Femme nue couchée (Marie-Thérèse Walter) 1932

 

NATO Ultimatum To Ukraine – Win By Winter Or Die (Helmer)
Putin ‘Already Lost’ War In Ukraine, Biden Says (Hill)
NATO Suffering Delusions Of Grandeur – Lavrov
Russia Will Treat F-16s In Ukraine As Nuclear Threat – Lavrov (RT)
Putin: Ukraine in NATO Will Create Security Threat for Russia (Sp.)
NATO Summit Serves Up Cringe Nothing-Burger (Scott Ritter)
NATO Can’t Exist Without An Enemy – Moscow (RT)
Wagner PMC Formally Doesn’t Exist – Putin (TASS)
Biden Offered Erdogan IMF Support To Ratify Sweden NATO Bid – Hersh (RT)
US to Supply ‘Significant Military Equipment’ Soon – Greek PM (Sp.)
Rampant Corruption Is One Reason Behind Ukraine’s Failed NATO Bid (RMX)
How The End Of The US Dollar’s Global Dominance Will Play Out (Salikhov)
New Twitter Files Contradict FBI Director’s Testimony (Turley)
Drugs Discovered Three Times At White House Since 2022 (JTN)
Hollywood Grinds To A Halt As Actors And Writers Go On Strike Together (ZH)

 

 

 

 

RFK TNI

 

 

Biden quietly sends 3,000 active US troops to Europe. Ukraine?!

 

 

Macgregor

 

 

 

 

Caviezel

 

 

 

 

Agenda 21

 

 

EP WHO

 

 

 

 

“Whatever is achieved by the end of this year will be the baseline for negotiation..”

NATO Ultimatum To Ukraine – Win By Winter Or Die (Helmer)

For all its public talk, NATO has agreed on a secret six-month plan for Ukraine. It’s a case of do or die by December. Either the Ukrainian forces, firing everything the NATO allies can give them — from US cluster munitions to Franco-English Storm Shadow missiles and German Leopard tanks — will gain territory and advantage over the Russians; or else the Kiev regime will be destroyed and must fall back on Lvov while NATO beats its own retreat westward from the Polish and Romanian borders — its military capabilities defeated but its Article Five intact. This is hardly a secret. “Whatever is achieved by the end of this year will be the baseline for negotiation”, the Czech President Petr Pavel, former Czech and NATO army general, announced on the first day of the summit meetings in Vilnius. There is no more than a six-month window of opportunity, Pavel added, which will “more or less close by the end of this year”. After that, “we will see another decline of willingness to massively support Ukraine with more weapons.”

The difference between the Czech’s “more or less” was explained to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky by Henry Kissinger on the telephone. But the telephone was rigged, and Kissinger was talking instead to the Stavka in Moscow, in the guise of the pranksters Vovan and Lexus. After justifying himself at length for initially opposing NATO membership of the Ukraine, and then mispronouncing the word “anomalous”, Kissinger acknowledged there is a problem for the Biden Administration to combat European government opposition to NATO membership for the Ukraine. The Ukrainians must fight against that, too, he implied. So long as the US is backing Zelensky, it is necessary for the Ukrainian offensive to demonstrate small territorial advantages; abandon more ambitious ones (like Crimea); and only then agree to ceasefire talks. Although Kissinger told Zelensky he had been speaking with US “military people”, he gave no hint that they had warned him the Ukrainians are facing defeat on the battlefield, and the loss of both territory and European support.

The Russian General Staff calculation is different. At the current rate of battlefield casualties – announced by the Defense Ministry counting conservatively — by December 31 the Ukrainian army will lose between 75,000 and 100,000 dead, and up to 300,000 wounded and out of combat. In parallel, the destruction of NATO weapons will accelerate faster than the NATO states can resupply and deliver them, or replacement parts to keep the surviving stock going at the front. By the time Russia’s General Winter takes control of the battlefield, there will be too few Ukrainian fighting men left, and insufficient weapons and ammunition, to resist the start of the Russian offensive. A demilitarized zone of mines and cluster bomblets will have taken shape over several hundred kilometres west of the surrendering Odessa, Nikolaev, and Kharkov; they will abandon Kiev when Kiev abandons them.

The Russian target then will be to drive what remains of the Ukrainian regime, its flags, tattoos, money, and stay-behind terrorism plans, into an enclave around Lvov. The NATO window, as General Pavel called it, will have been opened, but then will be closed to keep NATO itself from catching cold. One of the unreported outcomes of the Wagner mutiny, and of the June 29 meeting in Moscow between President Vladimir Putin and Yevgeny Prigozhin, is Putin’s commitment to fight for nothing short of the Ukraine’s rout to Lvov, and the NATO retreat westward in the footsteps of the Grande Armée and the Wehrmacht. This too is incomprehensible at NATO headquarters.

Read more …

How are they going to walk this back in a few months’ time? Blame Zelensky?

Putin ‘Already Lost’ War In Ukraine, Biden Says (Hill)

President Biden said Thursday there is “no possibility” of Russian President Vladimir Putin winning the war in Ukraine while adding he’s “already lost” the conflict as Biden capped a trip to Lithuania and Finland as a show of strength against Russian aggression. Biden, in a joint press conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö, was asked whether his assurance that Ukraine will be able to join the NATO alliance once its war with Russia ends might encourage Putin to drag out the conflict. Biden noted no country can join NATO while in the middle of a war, because it would drag the entire alliance into conflict — a stance Biden and his administration have been stressing this week as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticized the alliance’s resistance to fast-tracking its membership.

“The issue of whether or not this is going to keep Putin from continuing to fight, the answer is Putin’s already lost the war,” Biden continued. “Putin has a real problem. How does he move from here? What does he do?” “And so, the idea that there’s going to be what vehicle is used, he could end the war tomorrow. He could just say, ‘I’m out,’” Biden added. “But what agreement is ultimately reached depends on Putin and what he decides to do. But there is no possibility of him winning the war in Ukraine. He’s already lost that war.” Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and the fighting has dragged on in the 17 months since with no end in sight. The U.S. and its allies have provided billions of dollars in support for Ukraine to defend itself.

Biden has previously argued Putin will not be able to win the war in Ukraine because the Ukrainians have put up a staunch defense in response to the Russian invasion, and his aggression has galvanized the NATO alliance. The president this week attended a NATO Summit in Lithuania, where continued support for Ukraine was at the top of the agenda. The U.S. and its Group of Seven allies announced plans Wednesday for security negotations with Ukraine to ensure it had the military support it needed in the short-term and in the future to defer further Russian aggression.

Read more …

“..apparently, we are not even allowed now to have a relationship [with China], or so they wish.”

NATO Suffering Delusions Of Grandeur – Lavrov

The US and its allies are targeting Russia and China because of their strong relationship, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has claimed, citing the final communique from this week’s NATO summit in Lithuania. The NATO document stated that “the deepening strategic partnership between [China] and Russia and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules-based international order run counter to our values and interests.” Commenting on Thursday during a trip to Indonesia, Lavrov said that “apparently, we are not even allowed now to have a relationship [with China], or so they wish.” The diplomat noted that the US had previously limited itself to referring to Russia and China as its “rivals.”

The NATO statement further justifies Russia’s efforts to oppose “modern forms of colonialism” and to advocate international relations based on respect, Lavrov insisted. “People in NATO are obviously not prepared for [the same approach]. Delusion of grandeur is expressed in all actions of the NATO leadership, as well as member states, frankly speaking. Everybody sees that,” the Russian minister claimed. Lavrov accused the West of attempting to preserve its hegemony and dress it up as a “rules-based order,” but predicted that multipolarity would ultimately prevail. He also alleged that NATO’s appetite for spreading its influence globally was causing destabilization outside of the North Atlantic region.

“They already have plans to build up NATO military infrastructure in the [Asia-Pacific] region, including in the nations that were invited to the summit in Vilnius… I mean Australia, New Zealand, Japan, [South] Korea,” said the minister. Canberra violated its own commitment to keep the Pacific free from nuclear weapons when it agreed to host “elements of infrastructure” related to nuclear arms under the AUKUS arrangement, Lavrov argued. Tokyo and Seoul “have been signaling that they would not oppose stationing American nuclear weapons or obtaining some of their own,” he added. The Russian foreign minister was speaking in Indonesia after a summit with ASEAN, a regional integration bloc. He claimed the US was pushing for the Southeast Asian organization to be replaced by structures under Washington’s control, so that it could undermine China.

Read more …

“The very fact of the appearance of such systems within the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be considered by us as a threat from the West in the nuclear domain..”

Russia Will Treat F-16s In Ukraine As Nuclear Threat – Lavrov (RT)

Moscow can’t ignore the nuclear capability of US-designed F-16 fighter jets that may be supplied to Ukraine by its Western backers, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. By continuing to provide more sophisticated arms to Kiev, “the US and its NATO satellites create the risk of a direct armed confrontation with Russia, and this may lead to catastrophic consequences,” Lavrov warned in his interview with Lenta.ru on Wednesday. The plans to supply F-16s to Kiev is yet another example of an escalatory move by the West and in itself is “an extremely dangerous development,” he stated. “We have informed the nuclear powers – the US, UK and France – that Russia can’t ignore the ability of these aircraft to carry nuclear weapons,” the foreign minister continued.

“No assurances [by the West] will help here,” he warned. In the midst of fighting, the Russian military isn’t going to investigate whether any specific jet is equipped to deliver nuclear weapons or not, he added. “The very fact of the appearance of such systems within the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be considered by us as a threat from the West in the nuclear domain,” Lavrov said. In an interview on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Vilnius on Wednesday, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said “there will be the transfer of F-16s [to Ukraine], likely from European countries that have excess F-16 supplies.” A day earlier, Denmark announced that a “coalition” – which includes the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, the UK and Sweden – would begin training Ukrainian airmen to fly the US-designed aircraft in August.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba suggested earlier this week that the first F-16s piloted by Ukrainians could take to the skies“by the end of the first quarter of next year.” Kiev has been pressing its foreign backers for fourth-generation F-16 warplanes for months, arguing that they are crucial in providing air cover for Ukraine’s troops and defending Ukrainian airspace amid a massive Russian missile campaign targeting military facilities and energy infrastructure. The US and its allies initially ruled out deliveries of the jets, saying the F-16 wasn’t the type of hardware that Ukraine needed, but changed their stance on the issue over time. In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin said there was no doubt that the F-16s “will burn”once they’re delivered to Ukraine, just like what has happened to tanks and other Western-supplied weapons.

Read more …

“I am sure that this will not increase the security of Ukraine itself..”

Putin: Ukraine in NATO Will Create Security Threat for Russia (Sp.)

In early June, Zelensky said that Kiev hoped to receive a clear invitation to join the bloc at the Vilnius summit. He also said Kiev was disappointed that it had not yet received a clear positive response about joining both the European Union and NATO. Ukraine’s possible membership in NATO will create a security threat for Russia and will not increase security of Ukraine itself, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday. “As for Ukraine’s membership in NATO, we have repeatedly spoken about this, this creates threats to Russia’s security. Obviously. And as a matter of fact, the reason for the special military operation, one of the reasons, is the threat of Ukraine’s entry into NATO. I am sure that this will not increase the security of Ukraine itself,” Putin said.


Speaking about Western missiles and tanks supplied to Ukraine, Vladimir Putin noted that they ause damage but do not pose a critical threat in the combat zone. “As for the supply of weapons, various weapons, we see how many hopes were placed on the supply of missiles with a sufficiently long range. Well, yes, they cause damage, but nothing critical happens in the combat zone with the use of missiles. The same goes for foreign-made tanks, infantry fighting vehicles,” Putin said on air of the Rossiya 24 broadcaster. The president added that 311 pieces of military equipment used by Ukraine has been destroyed since June 4, and at least one third of those were Western-made. “I can tell you that Ukrainian servicemen often refuse to even get into these tanks, because they are a priority target for our guys,” Putin said, adding that foreign tanks “burn better” than the Soviet-made ones.

Read more …

“Zelensky confronted his erstwhile allies with the harsh reality that not only would the conflict with Russia not be ending any time soon, but also the growing realization that, when it did end, it would be as a decisive Russian military victory.”

NATO Summit Serves Up Cringe Nothing-Burger (Scott Ritter)

The Vilnius Summit was intended to showcase the alliance’s unity and resolve in the face of the challenges presented by Russia and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. There had been a great deal of discussion prior to the summit about the prospects of Ukrainian membership in NATO. It was understood by all parties that, while the conflict between Ukraine and Russia remained in an active phase, Ukrainian membership was impossible, if for no other reason that, under Article 5 of the NATO charter, NATO would immediately find itself in a war with Russia which had a good chance of going nuclear. The working premise going into the Vilnius Summit was that NATO would empower Ukraine to carry out a massive counteroffensive designed to break through the Russian defenses and drive to the Sea of Azov, thereby severing the land bridge between Crimea and Russia, forcing Russia to negotiate an end to the conflict.

At that juncture, having “frozen” the conflict on terms that would be unfavorable to Russia, NATO would extend an invitation to Ukraine for membership, thereby shrouding Ukraine’s gains with Article 5 protections while effectively checking any future Russian offensive operations. In the weeks leading up to the summit, Ukraine was desperately trying to do its part, throwing its newly constituted NATO-trained and equipped assault brigades at prepared Russian defenses in actions which made the infamous “Charge of the Light Brigade” seem like the epitome of military planning and execution by comparison. With much of its NATO-provided weaponry, including the much-touted Leopard tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, destroyed or damaged without ever reaching the main Russian defensive positions, and some 20,000 Ukrainian casualties, the Ukrainian counteroffensive fizzled out.

Instead of presenting his NATO partners with a decisive Ukrainian victory, Zelensky confronted his erstwhile allies with the harsh reality that not only would the conflict with Russia not be ending any time soon, but also the growing realization that, when it did end, it would be as a decisive Russian military victory. Confronted with this reality, NATO sought to soften expectations about Ukrainian membership. Rather than provide Ukraine with a concrete road map to membership, NATO declared that it would extend an invitation to Ukraine when “conditions are met”, one of which is that the conflict with Russia must be over. NATO offered up as a consolation prize the establishment of a NATO-Ukraine Council “to advance political dialogue, engagement, cooperation, and Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO,” and promised to “continue our support for as long as it takes.”

Scott Ritter

Read more …

“..catastrophic consequences for European security, Ukraine, and the alliance itself.”

NATO Can’t Exist Without An Enemy – Moscow (RT)

NATO needs enemies so it could justify its existence, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko said on Thursday, reflecting on the Western bloc’s recent meeting in neighboring Lithuania. “Expansion is one of the instruments used by NATO countries to maintain confrontation,” Grushko told Russia’s Channel One. “Therefore, unfortunately, history has forced us to conclude that NATO cannot exist without an adversary. Otherwise, it would lose all meaning.” Grushko stressed that the admission of Ukraine into the US-led bloc would have “catastrophic consequences for European security, Ukraine, and the alliance itself.” At the same time, Western countries use the prospect of NATO membership as a way to control Ukraine’s domestic politics, the diplomat argued.


Although NATO has refused to grant an immediate membership or a concrete accession timetable to Kiev, the bloc’s members affirmed at the summit in Vilnius on Tuesday that the country would be invited to join in the future. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that Ukraine was “closer to NATO than ever before.” Russia considers NATO’s expansion eastward a threat to its own national security, and has warned that the delivery of heavy weapons and other military aid to Ukraine makes the alliance a de facto participant in the conflict. Western countries insist that NATO is a strictly defensive alliance and claims that it poses no threat to Russia.

Read more …

“..there is no such legal entity.””The [Wagner] Group exists, but it is judicially non-existent..”

Wagner PMC Formally Doesn’t Exist – Putin (TASS)

Legalizing private military companies is a complicated issue that should be handled by the government and the parliament, because formally companies such as Wagner PMC are non-existent in Russia at this point, Russian President Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying. Kommersant’s special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov quoted the Russian president as saying in response to a question about the organization’s future that, from the point of view of the Russian legislation, “Wagner PMC does not exist.” The president explained that Russia has no law on private military companies and, therefore, “there is no such legal entity.””The [Wagner] Group exists, but it is judicially non-existent,” the report quotes Putin as saying.


“The formal legalization is a separate issue that should be addressed by the State Duma [the lower chamber of the Russian parliament] and the government. It’s a complicated issue.” The president believes that the Wagner Group controversy “is very simple and clear for [members of] the Russian society.” “Wagner’s ordinary members were fighting with dignity… so it is very regrettable that they became embroiled into these events,” Putin added. On Thursday, the Russian president took part in the plenary session of the Future Technologies Forum. After the event was over, he had a conversation with Russian journalists. Excerpts of the talk, where the issue of Ukraine, NATO and the grain deal were raised, were published by the Kremlin website and aired by the Rosssiya-24 television channel.

Read more …

Erdogan is in big financial trouble.

Biden Offered Erdogan IMF Support To Ratify Sweden NATO Bid – Hersh (RT)

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh claimed on Thursday that US President Joe Biden offered his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan more than $11 billion in IMF assistance to ratify Sweden’s bid to join the NATO bloc. In an article posted to his Substack account, Hersh wrote that he had been informed by an anonymous source that “Biden promised that a much-needed $11-13 billion line of credit” would be established for Türkiye by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This was to be in return, Hersh suggested, for Erdogan removing Ankara’s objection to Stockholm joining the US-led military bloc ahead of the NATO summit that took place this week in Lithuania.

Erdogan, who was re-elected as Turkish leader in late May, is currently facing the mammoth task of replacing or repairing hundreds of thousands of buildings damaged or destroyed in February’s earthquakes in which at least 50,000 lost their lives. Türkiye had previously opposed Sweden’s accession to the bloc, largely due to Ankara’s stance that Stockholm has harbored militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which was involved in an armed conflict with the Turkish state in the 1980s. The PKK has been designated a terrorist organization by Türkiye, Sweden, Europe and the United States. “What could be better for Erdogan,” Hersh wrote of the American and Turkish presidents’ alleged arrangement, quoting an official familiar with it, than him “finally having seen the light and realizing he is better off with NATO and Western Europe?”

The report also referenced a June financial analysis of Ankara’s coffers by the independent think tank Council on Foreign Relations, which cast a dire economic outlook for Erdogan to navigate in the early stages of his latest term as leader. It said that Türkiye stands on the precipice of an “imminent financial crisis” and if facing a choice “between selling its gold, an avoidable default, or swallowing the bitter pill of a complete policy reversal and possibly an IMF program.” Hersh, 86, generated headlines earlier this year when he claimed he had been informed –also by an anonymous source– that the United States was responsible for last year’s explosions that neutered the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines that supply energy from Russia to Europe. Washington dismissed the claims as “complete fiction.”

Read more …

To balance out the support for Turkey…

US to Supply ‘Significant Military Equipment’ Soon – Greek PM (Sp.)

The United States will soon provide Greece with “significant military equipment” for free, announced Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. “I mean not only the approval of [the delivery of] F-35 [fighter jets], which is very important, but also the possibility of getting surplus [military] equipment, significant surplus equipment that will be given to us for free. That is what the US is doing and has every reason to do it to a greater extent for a good ally like Greece,” Mitsotakis said in an interview with Greek broadcaster while expressing hope that F-35s would be delivered in 2028. The prime minister noted that Athens was engaged in talks with Washington, having signed “a very strong defense agreement for five years,” adding that he believed Greece hopes for support “regardless of what happens in the negotiations with Turkiye.”

Mitsotakis also said that the construction of French-made Belharra-class frigates for Greece was ahead of schedule, adding that the first frigate would be delivered in September. He noted that Athens are aimed at having “a very strong deterrence capacity,” adding that he believed Greece “has been able to achieve that at a rapid pace.” In 2019 and 2021, Washington and Athens amended the Mutual Defense Cooperation Agreement, which allowed the US to establish new military bases on the territory of Greece and expanded the term of the agreement from one to five years. Until 2019, the US had only one military base in Greece but now has nine. The US was granted access to the port of Alexandroupolis in the north of the country, which is used for the delivery of military equipment to Eastern Europe and Ukraine. Mitsotakis then said that the amended agreement made Greece Washington’s main partner in the region.

Greece is implementing 19 arms procurement programs worth 11.5 billion euros ($12.9 billion). Among them are the purchase of 24 French-made Rafale fighter aircraft, Belharra-class frigates and the modernization of 83 F-16 Block 52+ and 52+ Advanced fighters to the Viper variant — the most advanced variant of F-16. The Greek air force already received two F-16 Viper fighters in September 2022. Moreover, Athens is planning to purchase over 20 F-35 fifth-generation fighters.

Read more …

Ukraine has never been more corrupt. The enormous influx of money and weapons systems guarantees it.

Rampant Corruption Is One Reason Behind Ukraine’s Failed NATO Bid (RMX)

Ukraine must implement reforms to fight corruption and strengthen its institutions if it wants to be eligible to join NATO, said Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, during the second day of the NATO summit in Vilnius. Von der Leyen encouraged Ukraine to implement further reforms and pledged the support of the European Union. According to Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet, von der Leyen’s statement “said in plain language that there was still so much corruption and opacity in Ukraine’s institutions that it could not yet get the green light to join NATO or the European Union.” However, the paper also noted that von der Leyen noted the country’s efforts were appreciated and it had made a lot of progress.

The European Commission already identified systemic corruption in Ukraine in 2021. Although the EU had launched a number of initiatives to reduce the potential for corruption and proposed a wide range of measures, the EU commission’s report at the time found that no progress had been made on this issue in 2021. At that time, there was a significant decline in the judiciary, and anti-corruption institutions were also under threat, according to the report. The authors also noted that oligarchs and vested interests are the biggest problem, as they are an obstacle to the rule of law and economic development in Ukraine.

Brussels is keen to bring Ukraine into the European Union. However, even EU officials do not dare mention in their reports anything concrete or substantial to suggest that Ukraine is ready for integration, and Von der Leyen’s remarks indicate that the situation has still not improved. As Remix News reported last week, the Federation of Employers of Ukraine, representing Ukrainian entrepreneurs, issued an appeal to President Volodymyr Zelensky, demanding action to curb the abuse of power by government officials. The abuse of power by military officials and judges has crossed all lines, according to Ukrainian entrepreneurs, who are calling for the establishment of a public registry to identify corrupt officials. They further argue that corruption on an unprecedented scale is eroding Ukraine’s defensive capabilities.

Read more …

Anybody’s guess.

How The End Of The US Dollar’s Global Dominance Will Play Out (Salikhov)

A more important factor than the nominal share of the US dollar in international reserves is the changing approach to the management and accumulation of foreign assets. The same IMF data shows that the total value of central bank reserves has remained virtually unchanged at $11.5-12 trillion over the past decade, even as the global economy has grown. China’s foreign exchange reserves peaked at $4 trillion in 2014 and have been declining ever since. Their current value is $3.2 trillion, down 20% from 2014. Many other developing countries are not increasing their international reserves, if not reducing them. This does not mean, however, that external assets are not being created.

They can be formed in “non-standard” forms, such as assets of sovereign wealth funds, state banks, development institutions and other structures not directly related to central banks. Foreign direct investment by government structures can also be classified as a type of reserve asset. Such a strategy is not aimed at maximising the availability and liquidity of assets, but at securing one’s own economic interests in foreign markets. To some extent, it provides greater protection against the political risks of asset freezes, as their legal status is less transparent. A similar strategy is being pursued by China, which is seeking to gradually “internationalize” its currency. Formally, the yuan’s share of central banks’ international reserves is small, amounting to no more than 3%. Moreover, between a third and a half of this demand is provided by the Bank of Russia.

China’s strategy is to secure the international status of the RMB through trade rather than investment. In recent years, China has actively sought to motivate and encourage its partners to trade in RMB rather than other currencies. This is being done in a number of ways, including infrastructure development, its own analogue of the SWIFT system, development of clearing, international lending in the currency and so on. Many people have heard of the term “petroyuan” – an analogue of the petrodollar. In essence, it is the signing of long-term contracts for the supply of oil in yuan in return for a flow of goods and equipment. So, trade is already being conducted in yuan rather than US dollars. This creates demand outside the Chinese economy. At the same time, the Chinese authorities maintain restrictions on capital transactions.

***
The de-dollarization of the global financial system will continue. This will be facilitated in particular by progress in financial technology. The development of automated trading platforms will reduce the cost of exchanging one currency for another. Central banks will seek to directly clear each other’s currencies without directly using the currencies of Western countries. In the future, central banks’ digital currencies may also be used for international transactions, reducing costs for economic agents. However, this process will be slow and we should not expect a fundamental change in the global financial system in the foreseeable future.

Read more …

“..when there’s a glitch, and the accounts remain up, the FBI immediately writes back and says, what’s the deal? We just wrote to you, why is it still up?”

New Twitter Files Contradict FBI Director’s Testimony (Turley)

Yesterday’s hearing with FBI Director Christopher Wray was another maddening experience of faux contrition and open evasion. Wray apologized for violations that have already been established by courts or Congress (often over the best efforts of the FBI). However, on ample public evidence of new violations, Wray continued to use his favorite testimonial trilogy to dismiss any questions: expressing (1) lack of knowledge, (2) ongoing investigations, and (3) promises of later answers or briefings. He did, however, hold forth in detail after Rep. Eric Swalwell asked him about FBI Family Day. Despite the near total lack of substance, Wray did make one surprising denial. He insisted that the FBI does not engage in censorship efforts, focuses only on “foreign disinformation,” and does not pressure companies to censor others.

Those denials are not only directly contradicted by the recent 155-page opinion of a federal court and the Twitter Files, but a new release from the Twitter Files and journalist Matt Taibbi. Wray said that “…The FBI is not in the business of moderating content, or causing any social media company to suppress or censor.” He then added that these companies are not under any pressure in making their own decisions whether to censor people or groups flagged by the FBI. The statement is obviously false. The FBI maintained a large operation of agents actively seeking the censorship of thousands, as discussed in my prior testimony. Taibbi, however, has released another example of how aggressive the FBI was with social media companies. In the latest Twitter Files release, there is one email exchange where Twitter “immediately” suspended accounts flagged by the FBI without investigation.

Taibbi explained: “In one shot, you can see the FBI asks to remove three accounts, that gets forwarded to Twitter, Twitter immediately suspends them, the accounts. But more importantly, when there’s a glitch, and the accounts remain up, the FBI immediately writes back and says, what’s the deal? We just wrote to you, why is it still up? So, that shows the nature of the relationship basically that it’s not really a collaboration. It’s much more like somebody reporting to an authority. … [W]hat happens in these instances in the ones that I was showing, they’re just forwarding names of accounts that they say are associated with foreign threat actors. It’s very vague. And Twitter is taking them down before they even investigate. In this case, they later determined that they couldn’t find anything connecting them to any bad actors. In fact, one of them was from Canada. And so, that’s the problem. If it’s not connected with a crime, they’re just asking to take accounts down because they don’t like the profile of them.”

Read more …

”..everything they do is to move along to the next story. They know there will be another Biden crime crisis.”

Drugs Discovered Three Times At White House Since 2022 (JTN)

Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert said after the Secret Service briefing Thursday on cocaine found July 2 at the White House that drugs have been found two other times since last year in the building. The Colorado lawmaker also confirmed that Secret Service officials said at the briefing the agency likely won’t find a suspect in connection to the cocaine discovery and that the probe will conclude Friday. “There’s a list of more than 500 individuals that they looked into their backgrounds for prior drug records or use, and nothing was determined from from their analysis,” she said. “And the Secret Service is very eager to close this within the next couple of days.”

The cocaine was reportedly found in a cubby near the White House’s West Executive entrance and weighed less than a gram. Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, who like Boebert is a member of the House Oversight Committee and attended the briefing, also confirmed with Just the News the investigation will be closed Friday without a suspect. “The cocaine caper is going to be concluded without any outcome. No suspects, no resolution,” the South Carolina lawmaker said after the briefing, “which is frustrating, because every time there’s something unsavory happening on the president, the White House’s administration, we never get an answer. And it’s just ironic and interesting and frustrating.”

Boebert said the drug found twice before in roughly the past year was marijuana and that she thinks the Secret Service closed the investigation without a suspect “because everything in this administration is about covering up for the Biden crime family.” “This is the third time that drugs have been found on the White House property since 2022, and we did not even hear about the marijuana,” she also said. “I certainly did not hear about the marijuana that was found in 2022, two times, and now there’s cocaine on the property. So everything they do is to move along to the next story. They know there will be another Biden crime crisis.”

Read more …

TV vs internet.

Hollywood Grinds To A Halt As Actors And Writers Go On Strike Together (ZH)

Actors and writers in Hollywood have staged the first joint walkout in six decades, saving the country – if not the world, from the production of crappy, woke entertainment, at least for now. The Screen Actors Guild, which represents approximately 160,000 performers, announced the strike on Thursday after failing to reach a new labor agreement with Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, which represents studios including Walt Disney Co. and Netflix Inc, Bloomberg reports. The Writers Guild of America, meanwhile has been on strike since May 2, shutting down late-night TV programs like The Tonight Show, halting many projects in progress and imperiling the traditional release of new broadcast TV shows starting in September.

In a statement after the strike announcement, the studio alliance said the union “has regrettably chosen a path that will lead to financial hardship for countless thousands of people who depend on the industry.” -Boomberg According to the studios, double-digit percentage increases in salaries and higher pension and health benefits, plus a boost in residuals (the money actors and other receive when shows are rerun), weren’t enough. Also offered were protections against the use of actors’ digital likenesses. A key dispute which remains unresolved is compensation from streaming services as online video entertainment cannibalizes broadcast and cable TV.

“I cannot believe how far apart we are in so many things,” said SAG president Fran Drescher. “The entire business model has been changed by streaming. This is a moment of history. That is a moment of truth.” The move has halted work on shows such as Abbott Elementary and Netflix’s Stranger Things. if the strikes last more than a few days, the impact will be far greater than just the writer’s strike alone. Meanwhile, actors will have to stop promoting upcoming projects and refuse to attend events such as Comi-Con International which is scheduled for next week.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Obesity

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bison

 

 

Moth
https://twitter.com/i/status/1679299872401268742

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jun 272023
 
 June 27, 2023  Posted by at 12:47 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  4 Responses »


Thomas Cole The Course of Empire – Desolation 1836

 

I’m still full of questions. Prigozhin and his men are now gathering 100 km from Kiev, instead of 200 km from Moscow. With Putin’s full approval. Lucky coincidence?

 

 

Andrew Korybko thinks he has a few answers. Again, fair enough.

 

Andrew Korybko:

The Wagner Chief Speaks

Prigozhin released an over ten-minute-long audio message on Telegram in which he shared his version of events from over the weekend. It can be listened to at his press service’s account here, while those who don’t understand Russian can read a rough automated translation here. Upon doing so, they’ll see that he predictably twisted the truth about his failed coup. In fact, one of the purposes behind his message was to deny that he had any such regime change intent, instead claiming that it was only just a protest.

Was Wagner Really Going To Be Fully Disbanded?

The Wagner chief started off by alleging that his group would have ceased to legally exist by 1 July after refusing to sign contracts with the Defense Ministry (DM) despite all of its accomplishments in advancing Russian interests across the world and especially in the course of the special operation. While that might have been the case in terms of the law, it’s doubtful that Russia would have fully disbanded the same fighting force that functions as the pillar of its African policy, which was explained here, here, and here.

Wagner members might have been prohibited from participating in the special operation and had their activities inside Russia restricted due to their group’s lack of legal status, but there are no grounds to believe that its African-based fighters would have been prevented from fulfilling their duties there. Considering the patriotism that characterizes most of their members, the vast majority would probably have redeployed to that continent in order to continue serving their country.

Prigozhin Admits To Russian Blood On His Hands

The next point that Prigozhin made was to claim that Wagner gathered their equipment ahead of time in anticipation of handing it all over to the DM in Rostov by 30 June in the event that a last-minute deal wasn’t reached to enable them to continue operating as before without signing contracts with the DM. He then claimed that the DM launched a surprise strike against them on Friday, resulting in the death of over 30 members, which is why the decision was made to march on Rostov and Moscow later that day.

None of the above can be independently confirmed, but the bombing was denied by both the DM and the FSB, for what it’s worth. A cynic might suspect that Prigozhin is just spinning a story to explain why Wagner gathered all that equipment in advance if it didn’t supposedly plan to carry out a coup. This narrative also presents his forces as acting out of self-defense, which is important when it comes to winning and retaining the population’s support, especially after what he soon thereafter admitted.

Prigozhin confirmed that his forces did indeed fire on the Russian Air Force exactly as was reported, which readers can learn more about in detail here if they aren’t already familiar, but said that they regretted it and only did so after bombs were dropped on them first. This detail discredits the popular conspiracy theory swirling around the Alt-Media Community claiming that the coup attempt was a false flag cooked up by President Putin, which some say was to secretly open a northern front against Ukraine.

There’s no way that he colluded with Prigozhin to kill their country’s pilots, especially since last weekend’s events attracted much more attention to Wagner than if its fighters quietly dispersed over the weeks and then gradually reassembled at a later date in Belarus and/or on Russia’s pre-2014 borders with Ukraine. It’s everyone’s right to believe whatever they want, but it’s beyond kooky for anyone to still insist on this after now knowing that Russian pilots were killed during the failed coup.

Why Wasn’t Wagner Stopped En Route To Moscow?

Moving on after debunking that ridiculous conspiracy theory, Prigozhin then claimed that his forces locked down and neutralized all military facilities along the route of their march to Moscow without killing anyone on the ground despite a few of their own suffering casualties. Like what he alleged about the DM bombing Wagner, this also can’t be independently confirmed but might be speculatively due to President Putin’s reluctance to have the military resort to force except as an absolute last resort.

Despite saying during his national address that “The Armed Forces and other government agencies have received the necessary orders” to have those involved in the events “punished” and “answer before the law”, those tasked with doing so could have been told to use their discretion when it comes to force. After all, the Russian leader also said during his address that “We will not allow [Russians killing Russians and brothers killing brothers] to happen again”, so it’s a credible possibility and not baseless conjecture.

In that scenario, those at the military facilities along that route might have decided not to resort to force to stop Wagner so long as that group didn’t fire first, instead calculating that it’s best to heed President Putin’s words as much as is realistically possible under those tense circumstances while waiting to see if the crisis will soon end on its own. As for Prigozhin’s next claim that his fighters knew the ultimate goal of their march and weren’t forced to participate in it, that might only be partially true too.

What Were Wagner’s Fighters Really Thinking?

Many might have truly thought that it was an “anti-corruption” campaign like their boss told them and didn’t hear President Putin’s national address until later since they reportedly had to hand over their cell phones before heading out. If what he said was true about their compatriots not stopping them along their route, especially for the reasons speculated above, then this impression would have persisted until they approached Moscow and realized that blood would definitely be shed if they didn’t back down.

At that moment, they’d have known that something was wrong and that the Armed Forces were willing to use force to oppose them, thus dispelling the illusion that they had the Russian leader’s tacit support for what they’d hitherto sincerely thought was their “anti-corruption” campaign. If Prigozhin didn’t intend to challenge the head of state, then he’d have called off their march the moment that the latter demanded this of him during his national address instead of defiantly continuing on to the capital.

This observation therefore contradicts the Wagner chief’s claim that this was just a protest aimed at bringing to justice those who he says allegedly bungled the special operation since Prigozhin already caught President Putin’s attention by the time of his speech yet still kept marching towards Moscow. Nevertheless, what he said regarding the support that his group received from some of the public is true since it’s backed up by video evidence, but all isn’t as simple as he makes it seem.

What Were Wagner’s Supporters In Rostov Really Thinking?

Anti-corruption causes and criticism of the military brass for their conduct of the special operation thus far are legitimately popular among a segment of the population, many of whom had up until this point assumed that Prigozhin had the support of people in the Presidential Administration. The very fact that he wasn’t apprehended or at least charged for violating the otherwise strictly enforced law prohibiting defamation of the Armed Forces was interpreted by them as evidence that he had powerful patrons.

Even after President Putin sharply condemned him for treasonously stabbing their country in the back due to his “Inflated ambitions and personal interests”, some might have thought that the Russian leader was a so-called “palace hostage” of the supposedly corrupt military and thus said this under duress. Placed in traditional historical terms, they could have imagined that he was “the good tsar surrounded by bad boyars who had to be freed by a good boyar for the sake of the country”.

The point is that it shouldn’t be assumed that all those in Rostov who publicly supported Prigozhin did so because they shared his thinly disguised intent to overthrow President Putin after he refused to make the personnel changes in the DM that were demanded of him. It should also be said that the number of people in that footage represents an insignificant proportion of the population, though as was earlier written, there’s also no denying that Prigozhin’s self-professed causes resonate with many more than that.

What Was The Real Reason Why Prigozhin Retreated?

What’s beyond dispute, however, is that practically everyone in the country regardless of their stance on this crisis was relieved that Prigozhin turned around after approaching Moscow and concluding that there was no way to continue his march without provoking enormous bloodshed. What he said about not wanting to spill any Russian blood isn’t true though since he himself earlier admitted in this same audio message that his side did indeed fire on the Russian Air Force, albeit out of self-defense he said.

Blood was therefore already spilled by his fighters regardless of their reason behind doing so, thus meaning that this explanation isn’t sincere and that he probably decided to turn around at that point since he thought that it would be a suicide mission to try to take the capital. The second explanation that he shared for this decision is that he’d already demonstrated his protest, which he insists was never intended to topple the government, though this also isn’t true either.

As was earlier written, he defiantly challenged the head of state by continuing onward after explicitly being told by him to stop, which leaves no doubt that his march had transformed into a regime change operation by that point even if one believes that it was only an “anti-corruption” campaign until then. In any case, he claims that this marked the moment when Belarusian President Lukashenko intervened to offer Wagner the option to continue legally operating by relocating to that allied country.

Can Wagner’s March Really Be Compared To The Special Operation?

In his closing remarks, Prigozhin said that this march exposed serious security problems in the country due to his force’s neutralization of all those military facilities along their route, though this was already accounted for in the analysis. The next part about them having traveled further during this march than the Russian Armed Forces did at the beginning of the special operation, and this supposedly proving that the latter could have ended right away if properly executed, is also questionable.

Even though it’s true that Wagner is universally regarded as an elite force that stands head and shoulders above their peers, they weren’t being fired at by their compatriots over the weekend, unlike the resistance that they’d have been expected to receive from their Ukrainian foes. This makes his comparison an inaccurate and manipulative one, especially when remembering that Kiev was able to muster enough meat to hold Wagner back from capturing Artyomovsk for months.

That’s not to imply that they’re equals since that battle ground down Ukraine’s capabilities and forced it to throw literally dozens of formations against that single one, but just that this example shows in hindsight that nobody should have expected a quick victory no matter how the special operation began. The point that he’s trying to make is obviously intended to score political points, redeem his reputation after last weekend’s failed coup, and also hammer home the harsh criticisms that he’s made of the DM.

Concluding Thoughts

Altogether, his first audio message since last weekend’s events saw him sticking to his demands for justice, still denying any intent to overthrow President Putin, and insisting that those pilots who his forces shot at and which reports claimed were killed had been targeted in self-defense. This fact-check proves that he’s twisting the truth in all regards, which is likely being done out of ego as well as the possibility that he still has some political ambitions that he hopes to revive sometime in the future.

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site. Thank you for your support.

 

 

 

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

 

Jan 252023
 


Edward Hopper Tables for ladies 1930

 

Germany: Ukraine Losing Hundreds of Soldiers Every Day (Antiwar)
The Nightmare of NATO Equipment Being Sent to Ukraine (Scott Ritter)
US and Germany Ready To Send Tanks To Ukraine – Reports (RT)
Biden To Announce Deliveries Of Abrams Tanks To Ukraine On Wednesday (TASS)
Stoltenberg: Putin Is Planning For New Offensives (Az.)
Ukraine Advises West On How To Negotiate With Russia (RT)
Kremlin Comments On Direct Contact With Zelensky (RT)
Potential For Arms Control Dialogue With US Still Exists – Russia (TASS)
Kiev Fires Many Of Its Officials Amid Corruption Scandals (RT)
Western ‘Theft’ Will Backfire, Russian Tycoon Warns (RT)
Over 90% Of Western Firms Have Remained In Russia (RMX)
EU Gas Price Cap Threatens Market Stability – Regulators (RT)
Shostakovich: The End of the Siege and the Triumph of the Spirit (Hoppe)
Tactics without Strategy is the Noise Before Defeat (Saker)
The End of Reality Consensus Disorder (Kunstler)
California Lawmakers Move to Tax People Who Have Left the State (Turley)

 

 

 

 

UK excess deaths- crickets

 

 

 

 

Vaccine dead
https://twitter.com/i/status/1617632284902932481

 

 

Truth Justice

 

 

Chief of Staff

 

 

 

 

The idea has become popular that Russia doesn’t care about losing its soldiers. That supposedly balances the fact that Ukraine truly does not.

Germany: Ukraine Losing Hundreds of Soldiers Every Day (Antiwar)

The German foreign intelligence service assesses that Kiev is losing a “three-digit number” of soldiers daily, according to a report in Der Spiegel. Berlin informed politicians of the assessment during a secret meeting this week. Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) is “alarmed” by the high number of losses Ukraine is suffering. The report says Berlin believes Ukraine was losing a three-digit number of soldiers every day during the battle of Bakhmut with Russian forces. The BND informed German politicians of the high number of injured and killed Ukrainian forces during a covert Bundestag meeting last week. The BND believes the Ukrainian casualties will have severe consequences during future battles. The German intelligence service also believes that Russia is suffering high casualties and using its soldiers as “cannon fodder.”


Reuters reported officials in Washington believe Kiev spent significant resources attempting to defend Bakhmut. The White House is currently advising Ukraine not to launch any major counteroffensives to recapture the city. The Joe Biden administration is additionally advising Kiev that continuing to pour soldiers into defending Bakhmut is preventing Ukrainian forces from attacking Russians defending other cities. Ukraine is seeking tanks from its NATO partners. However, many countries, including the US and Germany have resisted sending their modern tanks to Ukraine. Bakhmut is located in the Donetsk region. The BND believes if Russia takes the city, it will open the door for additional gains. Bakhmut has seen fierce fighting for several months, but the intensity picked up last week. Russian forces have made some gains in the city.

Read more …

As I said: assisted suicide.

The Nightmare of NATO Equipment Being Sent to Ukraine (Scott Ritter)

The most recent convocation of the Ramstein Contact Group took place in the shadow of an interview given by the commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, to The Economist, in December 2022. According to Zaluzhnyi, the primary problem facing Ukraine was the need “to hold this line [i.e., the Soledar-Bakhmut defensive belt] and not lose any more ground.” Since that interview, Soledar has fallen to the Russians, and Bakhmut is threatened with being surrounded. Moreover, Russian forces are on the offensive north and south of the Bakhmut front, in some instances advancing up to seven kilometers per day. Zaluzhnyi also stated that the second priority for Ukraine was “to get ready for this war which can happen in February [2023]. To be able to wage a war with fresh forces and reserves.

“Our troops are all tied up in battles now, they are bleeding. They are bleeding and are being held together solely by courage, heroism, and the ability of their commanders to keep the situation under control.” The Ukrainian commander noted that the February “war” would have Ukraine resuming the attack: “We have made all the calculations — how many tanks, artillery we need and so on and so on. This is what everyone needs to concentrate on right now. May the soldiers in the trenches forgive me, it’s more important to focus on the accumulation of resources right now for the more protracted and heavier battles that may begin next year.” The goal of this offensive, Zaluzhnyi said, was to push Russia back to the borders that existed on Feb. 23, 2022, the start of the Russian invasion. He also indicated that the liberation of Crimea was an objective.

“In order to reach the borders of Crimea, as of today we need to cover a distance of 84 km to Melitopol [a strategic city in the south of the Donetsk Republic]. By the way, this is enough for us, because Melitopol would give us a full fire control of the land corridor, because from Melitopol we can already fire at the Crimean Isthmus.” Zaluzhnyi exuded confidence. “I know that I can beat this enemy,” he said. “But I need resources. I need 300 tanks, 600-700 IFV’s [infantry fighting vehicles], 500 Howitzers. Then, I think it is completely realistic to get to the lines of February 23rd.” Zaluzhnyi spoke of an upcoming meeting with U.S. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “I will tell him [Milley] how much it is worth, how much it costs. If we don’t get it, of course we will fight to the end. But as a movie character said, ‘I don’t vouch for the consequences.’ The consequences are not hard to foresee. This is what we have to do.” In short, Zaluzhnyi was saying he could win the war with Russia if he received the requested amount of military equipment. Otherwise, Ukraine would likely lose the conflict.

The End of NATO – Macgregor/Ritter

Read more …

With hardly any training.

US and Germany Ready To Send Tanks To Ukraine – Reports (RT)

After months of reluctance, the US and Germany reportedly plan to send tanks to Ukraine, in what Kyiv hopes will be a game-changer on the battlefield. US President Joe Biden’s administration is expected to announce plans to send at least 30 M1 Abrams tanks. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has also reportedly decided to send at least 14 Leopard 2 tanks. Russia’s ambassador to the US blasted the news as “another blatant provocation”. Ukrainian officials have said such shipments could help its forces seize back territory from the Russians. Until now, the US and Germany have resisted internal and external pressure to send their tanks to Ukraine. Washington has cited the extensive training and maintenance required for the high-tech Abrams.

Berlin has expressed caution about Nato becoming a direct party to the war with Russia. Citing anonymous sources, US media outlets are reporting that an announcement regarding Abrams shipments to Ukraine could come as soon as Wednesday. Unnamed officials were cited as saying at least 30 of the vehicles could be sent. The timeline of any potential delivery, however, remains unclear, and it could take months or even years for the US combat vehicles to reach the battlefront. According to US media reports, German officials had privately insisted they would only agree to the transfer of Leopard 2s to Ukraine if the US also sent M1 Abrams.

“If the Germans continue to say we will only send or release Leopards on the conditions that Americans send Abrams, we should send Abrams,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons, a Biden ally, told Politico on Tuesday. Britain has already said it will send Challenger Two tanks to Ukraine. Poland this week said it wants to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, but they are made in Germany and so Berlin needs to approve their export. At least 16 European and Nato countries have the Leopard 2 tanks, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Not all will send tanks to Ukraine – but Mr Scholz’s apparent decision now means they can, should they wish.

Read more …

“The report says the equipment will be purchased from contractors rather than drawn from existing US stockpiles.”

Big Serge: “Now the Washington Post claims that the Abrams going to Ukraine may be a new order from the manufacturer, rather than from US stocks. If so, the war might be over before they reach Europe. In any case, seems clear that this wasn’t well thought out.”

Biden To Announce Deliveries Of Abrams Tanks To Ukraine On Wednesday (TASS)

US President Joe Biden will make a formal announcement about the deliveries of Abrams tanks to the Kiev government on Wednesday, Al Jazeera reported citing an unnamed US administration official. “President Biden will announce his decision to supply Abrams tanks to Ukraine tomorrow, on Wednesday,” the TV channel reported on Tuesday night. According to the channel’s source, the tanks will be contracted, not taken from the Pentagon’s arsenals. The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday citing US officials that the US Administration is inclined to ship a significant number of M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, adding that the announcement of these shipments could be made this week already.


According to the WSJ, this step would become a part of the agreement with Germany, which includes shipment of a small number of Leopard 2 tanks to Kiev by Berlin itself, as well as Germany’s approval of shipment of these German-made tanks by Poland and other countries. Later in the day, the Politico newspaper reported citing US administration sources that the United States may send at least 30 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine as military aid. Two sources told the paper that an announcement on the subject may be made later this week. The report says the equipment will be purchased from contractors rather than drawn from existing US stockpiles.

Read more …

“..the only way to lasting peace is to make clear that Russia cannot win on the battlefield..”

Stoltenberg: Putin Is Planning For New Offensives (Az.)

Putin is planning for new offensives, and there are no indications he has changed his goal of controlling Ukraine, so the only way to lasting peace is to make clear that Russia cannot win on the battlefield, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told a meeting with Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, Report informs, referring to the NATO’s website. He stressed that the only way to lasting peace is to make it clear to Putin that he will not win on the battlefield: “Therefore, we must provide heavier and more advanced systems so that the Ukrainian forces are able to repel the Russian forces.

Read more …

We see this a lot with Ukraine: accuse the other side of exactly what you are doing. It’s a well-known tactic. But really, how do you sell this idea, when Merkel, Hollande, Poroshenko have all said they cheated on Minsk? You just say no, Putin cheated, and then that becomes true?

Ukraine Advises West On How To Negotiate With Russia (RT)

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba has claimed that Kiev negotiated in good faith for years, while Moscow used the Minsk process mediated by Paris and Berlin to buy time for war. He also argued the West is not enough for peace, which can only come when the Global South sides with Ukraine. “For eight years, Ukraine and the West tried to end the war by means of politics and diplomacy,” Kuleba argued in a Politico op-ed on Tuesday, titled “How Not to Negotiate with Russia.” The Minsk process, initiated in 2014 by France and Germany, saw Ukraine agree to “years of fruitless negotiations” in order to “avoid escalation and preserve peace in Europe,” he wrote.

“While we were holding back, Russia was building up,” Kuleba said, claiming that Moscow was “preparing for a full-scale war on Ukraine” all along, in order to “destroy the democratic international order with a single devastating blow.” Ukraine fully adhered to the Minsk process, while Russia “never sought fair peace and fair play,” Kuleba claimed. The claims, for which Kuleba provided no evidence, contradicted the recent testimonies by German and French leaders at the time, as well as Ukraine’s own former president. Former German chancellor Angela Merkel said last month that the purpose of Minsk was to “give Ukraine valuable time” to build up its military. Former French president Francois Hollande confirmed this to Ukrainian media at the end of December.

Pyotr Poroshenko, who ran Ukraine between 2014 and 2019, said openly in June last year that Minsk “meant nothing” and was a ploy to “delay the war – to secure eight years to restore economic growth and create powerful armed forces.” In Kuleba’s Politico history, none of this happened. Instead, the Ukrainian foreign minister claimed that “deception lies at the core of Russia’s foreign policy and the way it treats international partners — both in Europe, Africa, Asia and other regions” and that Moscow prefers to talk with “victims, weaklings, henchmen.”

On Monday, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev warned Moscow’s diplomats that the West was “trying to enlist as many votes as possible in support of their anti-Russian initiatives, using underhanded means such as economic pressure, extortion and political bribery.” In Tuesday’s editorial, Kuleba claimed that “the voice of the West is not enough” to restore global security, and that peace in Ukraine now hinged on the countries of “Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America stepping up and using their weight and influence” at places like the UN, where their votes counted.

Read more …

“Since Zelensky’s government is not in control of its own foreign policy, it makes no sense talking with him, Lavrov suggested..”

Kremlin Comments On Direct Contact With Zelensky (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has not spoken to his Ukrainian counterpart for a number of years, his spokesman has confirmed. Dmitry Peskov was asked about contact between the two leaders by RIA Novosti during a press conference. The news agency referred to the Russian president’s public itinerary, which suggests he last met Zelensky in person during “Normandy format” talks mediated by France and Germany in 2019. The following year, they spoke by phone twice, in February and June. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had previously revealed that Moscow and Kiev were on the verge of signing a truce during the early stages of the conflict on terms suggested by the Ukrainian side. However, the process was stopped by Kiev’s Western sponsors, who want to prolong the conflict to harm Russia, he said.


Since Zelensky’s government is not in control of its own foreign policy, it makes no sense talking with him, Lavrov suggested. And, in any case, talks with Russia are currently banned under Ukrainian law, he added. The Russian diplomat was referring to an order of the Ukrainian national security council prohibiting any negotiations with Moscow so long as Putin remains in power. Zelensky signed it into law in October. Ukraine agreed to a 2014-2015 peace roadmap as a ploy to rebuild its army, according to its former president Pyotr Poroshenko and the leaders of Germany and France at that time, Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande. The same approach was apparently used for the peace negotiations last year, which were partially mediated by Türkiye. Kirill Budanov, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, confirmed last week that he had used an asset in Ukraine’s team of negotiators to stall the process and win time for a military regrouping.

Read more …

“We declare once again that we will be ready to consider new sound ideas on this matter, should our US counterparts present any..”

Potential For Arms Control Dialogue With US Still Exists – Russia (TASS)

Russia proceeds from the understanding that it is still possible to resume and develop a dialogue with the United States on future arms control, including with the participation of all key actors, Russia’s permanent representative at the UN office in Geneva Gennady Gatilov said at the annual session of the Conference on Disarmament on Tuesday. “We believe that the understanding the Russian and US delegations reached in Geneva in 2021 has left the door open for resuming and developing a comprehensive and substantive dialogue on future arms control, including with the participation of all key actors,” Gatilov said.

“Although Russian-US consultations are still frozen through the fault of the United States, sooner or later we will still have to work out a new global ‘security equation’ that will incorporate all significant factors of strategic stability, such as the whole range of offensive and defensive weapons, deployed and non-deployed and nuclear and non-nuclear ones, capable of influencing the balance of power and the situation in the field of international security,” Gatilov said. “We declare once again that we will be ready to consider new sound ideas on this matter, should our US counterparts present any,” he stressed.

Gatilov drew attention to the fact that the world was struggling through “a period of profound transformation, accompanied by an upsurge of conflict potential, instability and unpredictability.” In a situation like this “collective efforts united by a common goal – to make the world safer in the field of arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation are needed more than ever,” Gatilov stated.

Read more …

And will now declare once again that Ukraine is corruption free.

Kiev Fires Many Of Its Officials Amid Corruption Scandals (RT)

Multiple senior Ukrainian officials were relieved of their duties by the country’s government on Tuesday. The ongoing reshuffle was announced by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in his daily video address and affects officials “on different levels, in ministries and other bodies of central and provincial authority, and law enforcement.” The government has dismissed deputy defense minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov, deputy social policy minister Vitaly Muzychenko, as well as two deputies of the minister of regional development, Vyacheslav Negoda and Ivan Lukerya. Shortly before the government’s decision, Shapovalov himself announced his resignation, which was swiftly accepted by his boss, Alexey Reznikov. The move has been prompted by an ongoing graft scandal within the ministry, which had allegedly been procuring food for troops at abnormally high prices.

“Vyacheslav Shapovalov, who was in charge of the logistics of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, asked to be dismissed so as not to pose a threat to a stable supply of the military as a result of a campaign of accusations related to food procurement,” the defense ministry said in a statement, branding the allegations “unreasonable and baseless” and lauding Shapovalov’s resignation as an “honorable deed in line with traditions of European and democratic politics.” According to a Ukrainian media investigation that emerged over the weekend, various foodstuffs for the military ended up costing several times more than the average prices offered by retailers. Reznikov has rejected the allegations, stating the documents cited in the investigation were inaccurate and some prices ended up inflated due to a “technical error.” The minister also rubbished the comparisons with consumer prices, insisting that military procurements include costs that retail ones do not.

Apart from the deputy ministers, the government has also dismissed multiple heads of regional military administrations, including Aleksey Kuleba, the head of Kiev Region. According to reports by some Ukrainian outlets, Kuleba is poised to replace Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff, Kirill Timoshenko, who resigned earlier in the day. Deputy Prosecutor General Aleksey Simonenko became another victim of the ongoing reshuffle, ending up dismissed on Tuesday as well. The official became embroiled in a public scandal earlier this month, after spending the New Year’s holidays in Spain. Apart from getting bad publicity for relaxing at a foreign resort during the ongoing military conflict with Russia, the official faced allegations of corruption as he’d purportedly used the car of a wealthy businessman with a security detail hired by its owner during the ill-fated trip.

Read more …

“Potanin nevertheless expressed confidence that the West “will come to their senses” sooner or later..”

Western ‘Theft’ Will Backfire, Russian Tycoon Warns (RT)

Western countries are sawing off the branch they are sitting on by confiscating Russian assets, billionaire businessman Vladimir Potanin believes. Following the launch of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in February last year, multiple countries have frozen assets belonging both to the Russian state, and private companies and individuals to the tune of more than $300 billion. In an interview with Russian media outlet RBK published on Monday, Potanin, the largest shareholder of mining giant Nornickel, said: “The confiscation [of assets] is a covert or overt form of theft,” and destroys “the investment climate of the jurisdiction where this is happening.”

Potanin noted that the countries comprising the ‘collective West’ had based their societies upon respect for private property. The recent freezing of Russian assets “will backfire on them,” he said, adding that Russia should refrain from mirroring these measures. He went on to suggest that by exercising respect for property rights, Moscow will be in a stronger moral position when it fights for its frozen assets in the West, and will send the right signals to entrepreneurs at home. Potanin also warned against nationalizing property left behind in Russia by Western businesses – instead, the authorities need to “give the investment community the opportunity to solve this problem on its own.”

He noted that the exodus of Western companies from Russia has allowed local investors to buy up assets at relatively low prices. Potanin described the Western sanctions as “absolutely destructive and even, apparently, absolutely illegal,” and in his view, what we are seeing right now is the destruction of basic global rules. The billionaire acknowledged that Western sanctions have put his plans for overseas business expansion on hold and have adversely affected his ability to travel the world, though he has now switched to exploring Russia instead, he added. Potanin nevertheless expressed confidence that the West “will come to their senses” sooner or later.

Read more …

And there is Potanin again…

Over 90% Of Western Firms Have Remained In Russia (RMX)

Only 8.5 percent of all EU and G7 companies have actually left Russia, according to research from the University of St. Gallen and the IMD business school in Lausanne, Switzerland. Before the outbreak of war, there were more than 2,400 company branches and 1,400 companies from the EU and G7 operating in Russia. By the end of November last year, only 120 companies had left Russia or sold their company there. The research indicates that the news of a mass exodus of Western firms from Russia has been largely exaggerated. In fact, businesses have resisted calls from governments, media, and civil society, according to the Belgian daily newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws. Companies remain skeptical and reluctant about leaving Russia over fears of losing their business and staff.


Those who have left have ended up transferring assets into Russian hands, even for a single symbolic ruble or euro, as was the case with Renault and Nissan. According to Forbes, the biggest beneficiary was oligarch Wladimir Potanin, whose Interros company bought Rosbank from Societe Generale, making nearly 50 billion rubles (€667 million) in the process. The second-biggest earner was Vladyslav Sviblov, whose Highland Gold Mining bought the assets of Canada’s Kinross corporation, which netted him almost 40 billion rubles. Not far behind was Ivan Tirishkin from SPB, who bought 49.5 percent of the shares in HKF-Bank LLC, making over 35 billion rubles. Fourth on the list was the state research center FSUE NAMI, which took over the plants owned by Renault and Nissan, gaining assets worth just under 35 billion rubles.

Read more …

“The mechanism could potentially lower levels of market-based gas flows between the EU’s different market areas, which would lead to a less integrated internal gas market..”

EU Gas Price Cap Threatens Market Stability – Regulators (RT)

Europe’s new gas market correction mechanism, the price cap which launches next month, is likely to affect the way the region’s exchange-traded gas markets operate, the EU’s financial and energy market regulators said in a report on Monday. According to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), market participants may change their behavior to avoid the activation of the mechanism or in order to adapt to it. “By curbing the key price discovery function of regulated markets, the mechanism will not come without consequences on market participants’ trading behavior and may have an effect on the ability of all market participants to effectively manage their risks,” ESMA said. Traders may then be forced to switch to contracts and marketplaces not affected by the price cap.

“Such adaptations could be achieved by various means, notably by shifting trading to OTC (over the counter) or to non-EU venues… It could trigger significant and abrupt changes of the broader market environment, which could impact the orderly functioning of markets, and ultimately financial stability,” the agency warned, stressing that this may also lower open interest and undermine liquidity on regulated markets for the EU’s benchmark TTF gas contracts. The EU Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) echoed this opinion in a separate report, warning that the measure could lead to the relocation of trading volumes from EU to foreign gas exchanges. The agency also said the mechanism could jeopardize energy supply if the price levels put in place by the activated cap lower the appeal of EU markets for global LNG suppliers.

“The mechanism could potentially lower levels of market-based gas flows between the EU’s different market areas, which would lead to a less integrated internal gas market,” ACER stated. EU countries agreed in December to set a price cap on natural gas, in an effort to keep energy costs from spiraling. The cap will be triggered if the TTF gas hub spot prices trade above the €180-per-megawatt-hour level ($196) for three consecutive days. The mechanism is to come into force on February 15. The measure was introduced as a way to help avoid price spikes, like the most recent one in August, when EU gas prices reached a historic high of €345 ($375) per megawatt-hour due to concerns over Russian energy supplies.

Read more …

Lovely story.

Shostakovich: The End of the Siege and the Triumph of the Spirit (Hoppe)

On 15th July 1941, impelled and galvanised by the ominous atmosphere of war and the great trepidation he felt for his motherland and his beloved city, Shostakovich began to work feverishly on the first movement of a composition that was to become his seventh symphony. The first movement of the symphony was written during a relentless bombardment of the city. Shostakovich recalled: “Neither the savage raids, nor the German planes, nor the sinister atmosphere of the besieged city could hinder the flow. I worked with an inhuman intensity that I had never achieved before.” On 2nd September, the day that the Germans intensified their bombardment of the city, Shostakovich began work on the second movement. Working at high intensity in between dashes to the nearest bomb shelter, he completed it within two weeks. On 8th September, Leningrad was locked in the fateful Siege.

On 16th September, the composer made a special radio broadcast (an excerpt of this broadcast) to encourage the soldiers at the front, saying: “An hour ago I completed the second part of my new work. If I manage to complete the third and fourth parts of this composition, and if it turns out well, I shall be able to call it the Seventh Symphony…. Despite the war-time conditions, despite the danger which is threatening Leningrad, I have written the first two parts in a comparatively short time. Why am I telling you this? I am telling you this so that listeners tuned in now should know that life in our city is normal. Despite the threat of invasion, things are going on as usual in our city. All of us are soldiers today, and those who work in the field of culture and the arts are doing their duty on a par with all the other citizens of Leningrad… Soviet musicians, my dear, numerous comrades-in-arms, my friends! Remember that grave danger faces our art. Let us defend our music, let us work honestly and selflessly… Comrades, I shall soon be completing my Seventh Symphony. My mind is clear and the drive to create urges me on to conclude my composition. And then I shall come on the air again, with my new work and shall nervously await your stern, friendly judgment. I assure you in the name of all Leningraders, in the name of all those working in the field of culture and the arts, that we are invincible and that we are ever at our posts… I assure you that we are invincible.”

That same evening Shostakovich had invited several musicians to his apartment to hear what he had written so far. After he finished the first movement, there was a long silence. An air-raid warning sounded. No one moved. Everyone wanted to hear the piece once more. But the composer briefly excused himself to take his wife Nina and their children Galina and Maxim to the nearest air-raid shelter. When he returned to his guests, he repeated the first movement to the blasts of Luftwaffe bombs and anti-aircraft fire and then proceeded to play the next movement. Their deeply emotional reactions encouraged him to start that night on the Adagio – the third part. He completed this movement on 29th September.

Read more …

“In other words, the Russians also destroyed this 3rd iteration of the “Ukrainian” military (in reality NATO military)..”

Tactics without Strategy is the Noise Before Defeat (Saker)

Furthermore, geography is a bitch and, in our case, the entire Donbass is one huge cauldron, open only on the western side, which makes it rather tricky to plan anything more than small, local, attacks. For the Russians, however, this means that they can attack from any one of these axes: from the north, the East and the South or even any combination therefore. By now, following the partial mobilization, Russia does have the figures needed to chose any option she wants. Pretty soon, the West ran out of ex-WTO weapons. The West responded by sending wave after wave of “volunteers”, PMCs, even “deserters” (like this US Navy SEAL). Recruitment offices where hastily organized worldwide and the Russian side began hearing more and more radio transmissions not on Russian or Ukrainian, but in Polish and English (and even Arabic!).

The problem now is hardware. First, NATO cannot replace “one for one” ex-WTO MBTs, IFV/APCs, SAM, etc. Not only is NATO hardware expensive, there are simply not enough stores to fully compensate for the huge losses inflicted by the Russians. Second, WTO hardware was not only familiar to the Ukrainians, but it was much easier to secure the kind of supply/maintenance flows needed to operate it than would be the case with NATO hardware (which is mostly inferior to ex-WTO kit, with a few exceptions). Third, most of NATO hardware performed terribly. None of the promised Wunderwaffen made any real difference, at least in military terms. In terms of murdered civilians, the Russians have now reported that since the delivery of long range munitions to the NATO forces in the Ukraine (because that is what they are), the number of civilian victims murdered by NATO has increased by a factor of four!

But, of course, nobody in the West cares about that. Initially, the West responded by sending all its own surplus gear, old stocks, especially against a promise by the USA to compensate for these systems sent to the Ukraine with much newer systems. Pretty quickly those stocks ended up chewed-up by the Russian meat grinder too. In other words, the Russians also destroyed this 3rd iteration of the “Ukrainian” military (in reality NATO military).

Read more …

“Every thread of the Covid-19 narrative promulgated by this ass, and the sachems of the CDC and FDA, are shredded, proved to be not only lies, but deadly lies..”

The End of Reality Consensus Disorder (Kunstler)

Elon Musk shocked the Twitterverse (and beyond) by confessing that he only took the vaxxes because international travel for business required it, and his second shot was a near-death experience (while his cousin developed myocarditis from it). Meanwhile, the UN issued a warning to him through a WEF mouthpiece, EU Commissioner for Values and Transparency, Vera Jourova: comply and regulate speech on the platform, or else…. We have the rules which must be complied with and otherwise there will be sanctions. I think that the confidence has been weakened, and I had quite a high level of confidence when it comes to Twitter. I have to say that we worked with knowledgeable people, with layers, with sociologists, who understood that they have to behave in some decent way. Not to cause really big harm to society…” she said.

Something tells me that Mr. Musk will invite these busybodies to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut. As the Tweeter @BlackFlagExpat explained: “Musk can simply set up the server capacity outside of EU jurisdiction (UK, Andorra, Switz, Russia?) and move all data to those physical and virtual servers. Then lay off all European employees and stop paying rent on all leases.” Nice! That old rats-from-a-sinking-ship feeling emanates from the hazy region where “Joe Biden” dwells. Chief of staff Ron Klain is handing over his duties to former Covid-19 “czar” Jeff Zients — who did such a swell job keeping Americans mis-and-disinformed through the heart of the “vaccine” campaign (January 2021 to April 2022). Every thread of the Covid-19 narrative promulgated by this ass, and the sachems of the CDC and FDA, are shredded, proved to be not only lies, but deadly lies.

Every angle of Covid policy was wrong, and treasonously wrong. This is who will soon be, ostensibly, leading the country — since you can be sure that “JB” is not. Nobody will believe a word that Jeff Zients utters. The mainstream media is even turning against this coterie of evil nincompoops. The sociopathic Political Left and its international managers have lost control of the ball in this game. They can insist on any sort of absurdity, but the people have stopped buying it. Resentment over all this is breaking out. Nobody wants any more boosters. The running dogs of official propaganda, such as Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, await their career executions. The years of Reality Consensus Disorder draw to a close. The counter-revolution finally begins.

Read more …

“Taxing wealth is no easy matter so the proposal seeks $660 million per year for administrative costs.”

California Lawmakers Move to Tax People Who Have Left the State (Turley)

California lawmakers appear intent on making the Eagles song Hotel California a reality .. . at least when it comes to taxes for those who try to flee the state. At the Hotel California, “you can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave!” With soaring costs and a massive $24 billion deficit, the state is also facing an exodus of people leaving the state. The solution? Not only impose a wealth tax (which will fuel even more departures) but pursue those who left the state. The new bill introduced by Democratic Assemblyman Alex Lee would impose an extra annual 1.5% tax on those with a “worldwide net worth” above $1 billion, starting as early as January 2024. The law has a cynical bait-and-switch provision. The billionaire tax is just meant for the initial packaging and passage. It can therefore be sold as a “billionaire’s tax.”

However, in two years, the threshold drops to a worldwide net worth exceeding $50 million. While billionaires would stay at 1.5%, those in the lower tax bracket would be hit by a 1 percent added rate on worldwide assets. It also includes the taxation on those who led the state . . . many due to the high taxes. California already has the highest tax burden in the nation. It relies on its top 1% of taxpayers for roughly half of its individual income tax revenue, but continually treats those taxpayers like game in a canned hunt. The result, not surprisingly, is that they are leaving for states like Texas and Florida. The new tax would arrange for payments to California’s Franchise Tax Board for years after a departure for those assets which are not easily converted into cash.

I have previously written how the wealth tax pushed by Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren are unconstitutional under the federal Constitution. States are not subject to the same limit. Not surprisingly, the highest taxing states are pursuing the most wealthy . . . who are leaving in droves. That includes Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York and Washington. Under the existing exit tax, businesses and individuals must pay a one-time tax to leave based on the value of the business or individual’s assets, including property, stocks, and other investments. For those who have earned more that $30 million, you can continue to pay for years after fleeing the state. The current exit tax is 0.4% of an individuals’ net worth over $30,000,000 in a tax year, including assets located outside of the California other than real estate. Taxing wealth is no easy matter so the proposal seeks $660 million per year for administrative costs.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

McCarthy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1618070257037643776

 

 

 

 

 

 


Taormina-Giardini Railway Station in Sicily.

 

 


A woodpecker’s tongue is so long that it wraps around its skull to protect its brain from over 1000g of acceleration when it’s hammering away

 

 

Weather Channel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1617864670844715011

 

 

 

 


The Giant Teratorn — Argentavis magnificens — was an absolutely enormous species of flying bird which lived in Argentina during the late Miocene, about six million years ago. it possessed a wingspan probably somewhere between 6-9 meters

 

 


Baby octopuses still in their eggs

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Nov 222022
 
 November 22, 2022  Posted by at 9:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  51 Responses »


Salvador Dali Nymphs in a romantic garden 1921

 

Zelenskyy Urges West To Support Ukraine’s Accession To NATO, EU (Az.)
NATO Assembly Calls On Members To Declare Russia ‘Terrorist Regime’ (RT)
Peace Talks Would Require More Weapons For Ukraine – NATO chief (RT)
Ukraine Quietly Abolished Corruption Rule (RT)
Duma Speaker Calls for ‘Nazi’ Zelensky to Face War Crime Charges (Celente)
Associated Press Fires Journalist Who Claimed Russian Missiles Hit Poland (CTH)
EU Hoarding Russian Diesel Before Ban – Reuters (RT)
UK Bypassing Its Own Sanctions On Russian Oil – Sunday Times (RT)
EU Struggles To Seize Russian Assets – Politico (RT)
Ukrainian Attacks Risk ‘Nuclear Disaster’ – Rosatom (RT)
UN Responds To Russian Nuclear Request (RT)
The Solemn Stillness Before Winter (Jim Kunstler)
The Perils Facing Trump, Garland, and Smith in DC Legal Arms Race (Turley)
New Trump Special Prosecutor Overturned By Supreme Court (JTN)
The Non-Existent European Identity (Remix)

 

 


Daily Active Users

 

 

CBS coincidence
https://twitter.com/TheLastRefuge2/status/1594759852043157521

 

 

 

 

 

 

Balenciaga
https://twitter.com/i/status/1594869537144336384

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why doesn’t someone shut him down when he utters such nonsense? Vladimir Zel simply declared there’s no corruption, but the EU can’t afford to accept that kind of BS. Bringing in the most corrupt country in -at least- the western hemisphere would end the EU. And they all know Russia will never accept NATO on its doorstep. We’re just wasting time -and lives.

Zelenskyy Urges West To Support Ukraine’s Accession To NATO, EU (Az.)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on the Western countries in a plenary meeting of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly to support Ukraine’s applications for membership in the European Union and NATO, Report informs, citing Ukrinform. “All of you can see Ukraine’s significant contribution to the protection of our community. Everyone sees how important it is that we really united in defense after February 24. So, due to this, you also see that Ukraine should become a full member of the European Union and NATO. And I urge you to support our applications for membership in the EU and the Alliance,” Zelenskyy said in his speech at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly via video link.

Read more …

Why does NATO have a Parliamentary Assembly?

NATO Assembly Calls On Members To Declare Russia ‘Terrorist Regime’ (RT)

NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly has adopted a largely symbolic resolution calling on member nations to label Russia a “terrorist” state, claiming Moscow represents a “direct threat” to “Euro-Atlantic security” while demanding more military support to Kiev and an end to restrictions on the “forward deployment of NATO forces.” The non-binding declaration was passed by the NATO PA on Monday, with the body warning that “the Euro-Atlantic area is no longer at peace and that the global security environment has deteriorated rapidly” amid continued fighting in Eastern Europe, going on to denounce Russia’s military operation “in the strongest terms.”

The resolution made a series of requests to NATO members, asking them to “state clearly that the Russian state under the current regime is a terrorist one,” and to “increase military, intelligence, financial, training and humanitarian support to Ukraine,” including by “accelerating” arms shipments. The NATO bloc must “sustain this support for as long as it takes for Ukraine to prevail,” the resolution added, also asking that any existing restrictions on the “forward deployment” of Western forces along Russian borders be declared “null and void.” Washington alone has authorized nearly $20 billion in ‘lethal aid’ to Kiev since President Joe Biden took office in 2021, with much of that approved after Russia’s military operation kicked off in February.

NATO allies have acknowledged concerns that the arms flooding Ukraine’s chaotic battlefield have not been properly tracked, with the new resolution stressing the need to ensure the “traceability of the weapons delivered.” Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky addressed lawmakers from NATO states in a video message before the latest resolution was passed, praising the alliance for its military aid and for helping his country to “defend [itself] in this war.” In addition to declaring Moscow a “terrorist” state and other symbolic measures, the Parliamentary Assembly said NATO countries should work to create an “international tribunal” to prosecute Russian officials for alleged war crimes and compel “full reparation of damage loss or injury” linked to the conflict.

The Parliamentary Assembly’s resolutions are not enforceable among NATO members and are intended to merely advise the alliance on pressing issues. The body has taken an increasingly harsh stance toward Moscow in recent months, with its newly elected president, French Senator Joelle Garriaud-Maylam, insisting on Monday that Russian leaders “must be judged as terrorists in front of international tribunals.” While Monday’s resolution was largely focused on Russia and the conflict in Ukraine, it took more than one detour to single out Beijing, urging the alliance to develop a “common allied response to the increasing assertiveness of China.” The document called for “constructive dialogue,” yet also went on to denounce Beijing’s alleged “systemic challenge to Euro-Atlantic security” and “attempts to subvert the rules-based international order.”

The NATO PA declaration came after a similar resolution was adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) last month. Russia left the European NGO in March, calling it a “convenient platform for NATO’s information and political campaigns.” While Kiev has repeatedly urged the collective West to declare Russia a “state sponsor of terror,” only a handful of countries – including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic – have heeded the call, and their actions have been limited to symbolic gestures. Those with the power to enforce anti-terror sanctions against other states, namely the US, have so far refused to take that step.

Read more …

“We need to realize that this war most likely will end at some stage at the negotiating table…” But that’s not what NATO wants. Or Raytheon.

Peace Talks Would Require More Weapons For Ukraine – NATO chief (RT)

The conflict between Ukraine and Russia will likely end in negotiations, which is why Kiev needs to be supplied with more weapons, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has claimed. “We all want this war to end,”Stoltenberg said in his speech at the 68th Annual Session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Madrid on Monday, adding that it matters to the US-led military bloc how exactly the conflict concludes. “We need to realize that this war most likely will end at some stage at the negotiating table. But we must also know that the outcome of those negotiations totally depends on strength on the battlefield,” the NATO chief argued. “So, if we want an outcome, which is acceptable for Ukraine… the best way of achieving that is to provide military support for Ukraine,” he said.

NATO members “must be prepared to support Ukraine for the long haul,”Stoltenberg said, urging lawmakers to keep advocating for more aid for Kiev in their own countries. Stoltenberg acknowledged that this assistance “comes at a price” for NATO members. “In our countries, many face cost of living crisis. Energy and food bills are rising. These are tough times for many,” he pointed out. However, the NATO chief argued that Western countries will have to pay “a much harsher price” if Russia is allowed to achieve victory in Ukraine, as it would signal to other “authoritarian regimes” that they can achieve their goals by force, which would “make the world more dangerous.”

Stoltenberg also warned that “it would be a great mistake to underestimate Russia” because Moscow “retains significant military capabilities and a high number of troops.” High-ranking Russian officials have repeatedly said that Moscow is ready to negotiate a settlement with Ukraine, while accusing Kiev of being unwilling to talk, and deliberately putting forward unrealistic conditions for dialogue. Russia has described the conflict in Ukraine as a “proxy war” being waged against it by the US and NATO. Moscow has consistently criticized weapons deliveries to Ukraine by Western countries, saying they only prolong the fighting and increase the risk of a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.

Read more …

“Ukraine had previously mandated lifetime financial monitoring of “politically exposed persons,” including government officials and lawmakers – until Zelensky signed an amendment last week limiting it to just three years.”

Ukraine Quietly Abolished Corruption Rule (RT)

President Vladimir Zelensky harmed Ukraine’s hopes of joining the EU by signing an amendment that reduced financial oversight of politicians, anti-corruption activists in Kiev said on Monday. The measure “practically kills” efforts to combat money-laundering, claimed the head of the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC). Ukraine had previously mandated lifetime financial monitoring of “politically exposed persons,” including government officials and lawmakers – until Zelensky signed an amendment last week limiting it to just three years. Officially, the law is supposed to “protect Ukraine’s financial system from Russia and Belarus,” but the AntAC says it will harm the country’s interests instead.

“With this law, politicians destroyed the system of financial monitoring of their loved ones, which means they actually blocked negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU,” AntAC head Vitaly Shabunin said on social media. The amended law “practically kills the system of preventing money-laundering by Ukrainian politicians,” he added. AntAC’s executive director Daria Kaleniuk pointed out that the law also breaks Kiev’s promise to the European Union, one of the seven commitments made by Zelensky to Brussels in June. “In order for us to be able to convince our European partners that we are serious about joining the EU and are implementing all the necessary reforms for this, we need to correct this,” she told Hromadske.

After signing the law on Thursday, Zelensky told the Bloomberg New Economy Forum – via video link – that he’d basically ended corruption in Ukraine. “No one will be able to forgive corruption in the future Ukraine,” he said, adding that all the corrupt officials had fled the country while those that remain will not be tempted to “interfere in business operations” because all government services had gone electronic. The old law provided for lifelong financial monitoring of the president, prime minister, ministers and their deputies, members of parliament, management of the national bank, senior security officials, key judges and prosecutors, as well as military commanders.

Read more …

The video is very clear, but of course they deny it. The claim is that the unarmed Russians fired first, and only then were executed. But executing unarmed soldiers is still as illegal as it comes.

Duma Speaker Calls for ‘Nazi’ Zelensky to Face War Crime Charges (Celente)

Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s lower house, called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to face war crime charges over a video that claimed to show Ukrainian forces opening fire and killing a dozen Russian POWs. “Everyone has seen evidence of Ukrainian Nazis shooting our soldiers lying down, without weapons. This is how the Nazis behave,” Volodin said in a statement posted to Telegram, The Jerusalem Post reported. “The Kyiv regime deserves the most severe punishment for its atrocities.” Video purportedly shows Ukrainian troops executing a dozen captured Russian troops has faced some media scrutiny in the U.S., which would have been unheard of at the start of the war.


The New York Times reported that the video was first circulated by news outlets in Ukriane in an effort to “laud the military prowess” of the country’s military. The paper said the videos sparked a “fierce response” in Russia and Moscow has called for an investigation. The paper said the killings occurred in Makiivka, in the Luhansk region. “Countries cooperating with the Kyiv regime must understand that they support the Nazi state, sadists whose hands are up to the elbows in blood,” Volodin said. Russian President Putin’s critics say the Kremlin is loose with the Nazi designation and uses it to win support from the public against adversaries. In fact, in his 9 May Victory Day speech, Putin said that the purpose of the military action was to purge Ukraine of its “Nazi” nationalist leadership.

Read more …

Official retraction? Apologies?

Associated Press Fires Journalist Who Claimed Russian Missiles Hit Poland (CTH)

The Associated Press received a lot of international scorn for reporting incorrectly that Russia fired missiles into Poland. As soon as the AP attributed the missile attack to Russia almost immediately other media outlets began promoting calls for a NATO led war against Russia. Additionally, the G20 summit was taking place and various international leaders began discussing an article-5 convention against Russia. However, the single source of the AP report was wrong, a senior U.S. intelligence official, if there actually was a source. It was the Ukraine military who fired the missile into Poland, not Russia. The Daily Beast notes today that the Associated Press has fired James LaPorta, the journalist who made the claim of Russian origin.


(Via Daily Beast) – The Associated Press scared much of the world last Tuesday when it alerted readers that “a senior U.S. intelligence official” said “Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, killing two people.” That report, which was widely cited across the internet and on cable news, was taken offline the following day and replaced with an editor’s note admitting the single source was wrong and that “subsequent reporting showed that the missiles were Russian-made and most likely fired by Ukraine in defense against a Russian attack.” On Monday, the AP fired James LaPorta, the investigative reporter responsible for that story, Confider has learned. The piece, which was originally co-bylined with John Leicester (who is still working at the AP), attributed the information to a single “senior U.S. intelligence official,” despite the AP’s rule that it “routinely seeks and requires more than one source when sourcing is anonymous.”

Read more …

“The EU will have to secure around 500,000 to 600,000 barrels per day of diesel to replace the Russian volumes..”

EU Hoarding Russian Diesel Before Ban – Reuters (RT)

European traders are boosting purchases of Russian diesel ahead of the EU embargo on the country’s oil products, which comes into force in February, Reuters reported on Monday, citing cargo tracker Vortexa. According to the report, Russian diesel shipments headed to the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) storage region surged to 215,000 barrels per day from November 1 to November 12. It is a 126% increase from October, according to Pamela Munger, Vortexa senior market analyst. Moreover, according to Refinitiv data, so far in November Russian diesel made up 44% of the bloc’s imports of the fuel, against 39% last month. This means that Russia remains the region’s largest diesel supplier, despite the fact that overall imports of Russian fuels to the EU dropped significantly over the past months due to Ukraine-related sanctions.


The EU embargo on Russian oil comes into force next month, while the ban on petroleum products will take effect on February 5. Analysts warn it will be difficult for the region to find alternative sources for diesel once this happens, as they are scarce and more costly, while Europe’s domestic diesel production falls short of the region’s consumption. “The EU will have to secure around 500,000 to 600,000 barrels per day of diesel to replace the Russian volumes; replacements will come from the US as well as east of Suez, primarily the Middle East and India,” Eugene Lindell, market analyst at energy consultancy FGE, told Reuters.

Read more …

“The UK has purchased at least 39 shipments of Russian oil since February, although the cargoes were registered as imports from other countries..”

UK Bypassing Its Own Sanctions On Russian Oil – Sunday Times (RT)

The UK has purchased at least 39 shipments of Russian oil since February, although the cargoes were registered as imports from other countries, the Sunday Times has reported, citing tanker traffic data and trade statistics. Russian-origin oil shipments, worth about £200 ($236) million, were reportedly delivered to UK ports after ship-to-ship transfers, a practice widely used when large tankers that are unable to dock due to their size transfer their cargo to smaller vessels. According to the Sunday Times’ findings, this practice gives the shipping companies a way to register their cargo without providing the actual origin of the shipments, stating instead the country of dispatch as the source of the cargo. In this way a shipment of Russian-made goods can be registered as originating in Germany if it is brought to a UK port by a German firm.

The news outlet was able to track dozens of shipments of Russian oil that have arrived at UK ports since March, logged as originating in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, France and other countries. At least 13 of those reportedly arrived in June and July. However, official figures on oil imports from the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed the country did not receive any oil from Russia in those months. According to maritime experts, ship-to-ship transfers have become more popular since Western nations began targeting Russian oil exports this year, as part of sanctions over Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine. “Ship-to-ship transfers have become a really useful method to obfuscate the destination and the origin of the cargo.

The Iranians started it, the Venezuelans perfected it, the Russians picked it up and ran with it,” Michelle Wiese Bockmann, energy and shipping analyst at the shipping journal Lloyd’s List, told the news outlet. According to Refinitiv, which monitors ship-to-ship transfers, there have been some 267 such transfers around the world involving Russian oil since March. A UK embargo on maritime Russian oil imports is scheduled to come into force on December 5. However, according to maritime experts, given the registration loophole and ship-to-ship transfer practices, it will be difficult for the UK to actually stop Russian oil from arriving in the country, even after that date.

Read more …

“Legal experts have expressed doubt it is possible to unilaterally confiscate another country’s assets under existing international law.”

EU Struggles To Seize Russian Assets – Politico (RT)

The European Commission is investigating how it might go about confiscating hundreds of billions of dollars in Russian state and private assets, according to a document seen by Politico on Monday. The initiative’s goal is reportedly “identifying ways to strengthen the tracing, identification, freezing and management of assets as preliminary steps for potential confiscation.” The bloc has its eyes on almost $300 billion in Russian central bank assets currently frozen, plus the assets of Russians on the sanctions list. The European Council last month reminded the Commission that it had been tasked with presenting “options in line with EU and international law” for using those frozen Russian funds “to support Ukraine’s reconstruction.” Legal experts have expressed doubt it is possible to unilaterally confiscate another country’s assets under existing international law.

With an eye toward changing that law, Brussels has proposed making sanctions evasion a crime in the EU, a decision which would require unanimous assent by member countries. However, even if that agreement was forthcoming, the bloc would have to litigate each individual seizure, proving a clear link between the owner of the assets in question and Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. Foreign investments are protected against confiscation without compensation under international law. In the document seen by Politico, the EC acknowledged that central bank assets were “generally considered to be covered by immunity.” While the seizing of the assets of state-owned enterprises would avoid violating such immunity “in principle,” the Commission noted that it would “need to demonstrate a sufficient connection to the Russian state” for every case.

Less invasive would be an “exit tax” targeting the assets of sanctioned individuals attempting to transfer their property out of the EU. However, University of Amsterdam professor Stephan Schill told Politico that those individuals could claim that, as a targeted group, their human right to non-discrimination had been violated, or invoke the human right to property. Under the current rules-based international order, the EC is unable to legally expropriate Russian property, according to Schill: “The EU and member states are trying to introduce new criminal law.” US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen acknowledged as much in May, pointing out that confiscating Russian central bank assets was “not something that is legally permissible in the United States” or many other countries. Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic states have nevertheless continued to push the EC to find a way to seize the frozen funds.

Read more …

Nobody’s talking about Russia doing the shelling anymore….

Ukrainian Attacks Risk ‘Nuclear Disaster’ – Rosatom (RT)

Renewed Ukrainian artillery attacks on the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (ZNPP) have created a risk of a nuclear disaster, Rosatom director-general Alexey Likhachev told reporters on Monday. Moscow has called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to name and shame the attacker so Kiev would stop bombing the facility. “We were in talks with the IAEA all night,” Likhachev told reporters during the Atomexpo-2022 in Sochi. After a “relatively calm” period since September, at least 30 projectiles struck the facility over the weekend, damaging the backup generators and the spent fuel storage facility, he added. Europe’s largest nuclear power plant has been under control of Russian troops since February 28.

While the reactor blocks are strong enough to withstand shelling, damaging the spent fuel containers risks a release of radioactive material into the atmosphere, with unpredictable consequences. The Ukrainian military has repeatedly targeted the facility with Western-supplied artillery, while claiming Russia was staging “false flag” incidents to make Kiev look bad. The Ukrainian general staff eventually admitted to striking the area around the ZNPP, however. The weekend attacks amounted to the first major incident since the IAEA established a permanent observation mission at the ZNPP in early September. On Sunday, IAEA Director-General Mariano Grossi called for an immediate end to the shelling, saying that the world “got lucky” that a “serious nuclear incident” did not happen this time. However, he once again did not name the culprit.

On Monday, both the Kremlin and the Foreign Ministry called on the IAEA to do its duty to the fullest and identify those responsible for the shelling. IAEA specialists completed their inspection of the facility on Monday afternoon and sent their report to headquarters, Likhachev’s top aid Renat Karchaa told Russia’s Channel 1 TV. “They were accompanied by a highly qualified ballistics specialist we provided, and once again it was convincingly shown that the origin of these artillery strikes was Marganets,” a city in the Ukrainian-held Dnepropetrovsk region, Karchaa said. Karchaa also told reporters that Rosatom was “taking steps” to fortify the spent fuel storage facility and other parts of the ZNPP, though he did not offer any details.

Read more …

…but the IAEA still claims they can’t figure out who’s doing the shelling, i.e. it could still be the Russians.

UN Responds To Russian Nuclear Request (RT)

The UN doesn’t have the capability to identify those behind the attacks on the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (ZNPP), a spokesman for the secretary-general said on Monday. Russia has called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to do its job properly and acknowledge that the shelling came from the Ukrainian side. Around 30 projectiles struck the ZNPP over the weekend, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. The nuclear energy corporation Rosatom said the damage caused to the facility’s spent fuel storage came close to triggering a disaster. Moscow said it was clear the fire came from the Ukrainian-held town of Marganets, but the IAEA has avoided naming any names. “We have no way to determine” who carried out the attacks, Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told reporters on Monday.

“We would like these attacks to stop,” Haq added, noting that the Secretariat “shares the concerns” of IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi and “joins him in calling on all parties to cease fire” around the ZNPP. Europe’s largest nuclear power plant has been under Russian control since February. Damage to the spent fuel containers risks a release of radioactive material into the atmosphere, with unpredictable consequences, Rosatom has warned. Both Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday that the IAEA should fully do its duty and name names. “As an authoritative and independent international body, [the IAEA] must finally move away from abstract condemnations and demands to stop the shelling of the ZNPP without addressing the culprit, and clearly and unambiguously point at those carrying out the attacks,” Zakharova said.

“This requires determination and responsibility. We really hope that they will be shown.” Zakharova also accused Western governments of giving a “blank check” to the government in Kiev for “continuing their reckless attempts to cause irreparable damage” to the ZNPP. This weekend’s attacks were the first major incident at the ZNPP since early September, when the IAEA stationed permanent observers at the site. According to Rosatom official Renat Karchaa, the IAEA inspectors surveyed the damage on Monday, accompanied by a Russian ballistics expert, and were able to see that the attack had come from the Ukrainian side. That report was transmitted to the IAEA headquarters.

Read more …

“By early 2023 the evidence of excess all-causes deaths and disabilities resulting from Pfizer and Moderna shots will be overwhelming..”

The Solemn Stillness Before Winter (Jim Kunstler)

Now Mr. Garland has activated one particular federal attorney, Jack Smith, with a long record as a partisan attack dog, as special counsel to finally get the job done against Mr. Trump, the proverbial indictment-worthy ham sandwich awaiting a DC District grand jury. Any cockamamie charge will do as long as it’s a felony. Mr. Garland’s strategy is two-fold: 1) to negate Mr. Trump’s remaining political career; and 2) set up a situation that will permit all DOJ attorneys and FBI officers to demur from questioning before Republican majority congressional committees about everything-under-the-sun on the grounds that the questions are germane to “ongoing investigations” that can’t be compromised. That’s the game.

By the time that game kicks-off, early January 2023, the country is liable to be punch-drunk and stumbling from a financial market crash that signals the start of an economic depression more consequential than the calamity of the 1930s. Meanwhile, Russia’s cleanup of the US-instigated mess in Ukraine will be nearly complete, to the ignominy of “Joe Biden,” at the same time that the putative president’s crimes of bribery and treason — should he still be among the living — get aired in Congress without any help required from Mr. Garland’s Justice Department — the evidence from Hunter’s laptop having already been well-perused and catalogued by an army of outside independent investigators. FTX will be in that mix somewhere.

This will all occur against the background of the now-unraveled Covid-19 story. By early 2023 the evidence of excess all-causes deaths and disabilities resulting from Pfizer and Moderna shots will be overwhelming and the nation will know it got played by a scheme between the corrupt public health authorities, the pharma companies, and the corporate medical establishment, including its discredited journals. Nobody in America will ever trust a doctor again. We’ll also probably know a good deal more about the dark and dirty deeds around the 2022 midterm election as the FTX scandal spools out and the probably hundreds of millions of FTX investor’s dollars that were express-delivered into Democratic Party coffers for ballot harvesting operations are revealed, along with the exact methods used to accomplish the mega-fraud.

Read more …

“There will be ample support for both sides to fulfill their respective narratives — and no shortage of legal weapons — in this political war of attrition.”

The Perils Facing Trump, Garland, and Smith in DC Legal Arms Race (Turley)

Smith faces the unenviable task of investigating a presidential candidate less than two years before the election. Given the advanced stage of prior investigations, he could bring charges before Sept. 5, 2024 (or roughly 60 days before the election under Justice Department guidelines for election year filings). It is unlikely, however, that a charge against Trump could be tried in that time. However, Smith’s first test will be to avoid the initial mistakes of a predecessor, Mueller. Like Smith, Mueller was considered a natural choice as special counsel, given his extensive experience as a career prosecutor. However, Mueller’s investigation was undermined by his selection of a team — starting with his top aide, Andrew Weissmann, a controversial prosecutor who was accused of political bias.

The investigation was further undermined by FBI personnel, including Special Agent Peter Strzok, who was later removed from the team and fired by the Justice Department; Strzok has since filed a wrongful termination lawsuit. Smith can avoid tripping a similar explosive wire by selecting a team that is defined by its prior professional expertise, not its prior political views or associations. He also needs to be wary of creative avenues to indict Trump. Smith was part of the prosecution team that convicted former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell (R) on federal corruption charges in 2014. The Supreme Court unanimously overturned that conviction as having stretched the law beyond its breaking point. If Smith is going to be the first prosecutor to indict a former president, he needs to do so with unimpeachable evidence of an unchallengeable crime.

Only one thing is certain in any of this: It will not end well. With both sides loading up staff and subpoenas, the start of the 2024 campaign season has all of the makings of an utter bloodletting. There will be ample support for both sides to fulfill their respective narratives — and no shortage of legal weapons — in this political war of attrition.

Read more …

Talk about a swamp…

New Trump Special Prosecutor Overturned By Supreme Court (JTN)

The special counsel named by the Biden administration to investigate Donald Trump oversaw a Justice Department unit rebuked by the Supreme Court for its prosecution of a prominent Republican and was linked by Congress to the IRS scandal that targeted conservative groups. Jack Smith, a war crimes prosecutor in The Hague and former chief of the DOJ public integrity section, was named Friday by Attorney General Merrick Garland to take over two investigations of Trump related to Jan. 6 and classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. In 2014, the House Oversight Committee concluded that during Smith’s earlier stint at DOJ he set up a critical meeting between his department and IRS official Lois Lerner that set in motion the targeting of conservative nonprofits that became one of the signature scandals of the Obama administration.

The Oversight Committee obtained testimony from a DOJ official named Richard Pilger in 2014 that showed Smith set up a meeting with Lerner to discuss more aggressive enforcement of regulations prohibiting tax-exempt groups from engaging in politics in the aftermath of the landmark Citizens United free speech Supreme Court case. “According to Mr. Pilger, the Justice Department convened a meeting with former IRS official Lois Lerner in October 2010 to discuss how the IRS could assist in the criminal enforcement of campaign-finance laws against politically active nonprofits,” the committee wrote in a 2014 letter to DOJ. “This meeting was arranged at the direction of Public Integrity Section Chief Jack Smith.”

The letter concluded: “It is apparent that the Department’s leadership, including Public Integrity Section Chief Jack Smith, was closely involved in engaging with the IRS in wake of Citizens United and political pressure from prominent Democrats to address perceived problems with the decision.” The letter, which sought a transcribed interview with Smith, was signed by then Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who is now in line to become House Judiciary Committee chairman when the GOP takes over the House in January. The Treasury Department Inspector General ultimately concluded that the ensuing IRS pursuit of conservative nonprofits was inappropriate. “The IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions instead of indications of potential political campaign intervention,” the report concluded.

Read more …

It can only hold in times of plenty and peace.

“What did Ursula von der Leyen say about Italy? If Italy elects the wrong parties during parliamentary elections, the EU “has tools” to coerce them, as in the case of Poland and Hungary.”

The Non-Existent European Identity (Remix)

A top-down approach to forcibly create a common identity has never worked, and it never will. Despite the spasmodic efforts of the leftist media dictatorship, its dominance has up until now failed to force the public opinion of European countries into believing the old continent is united. Few in the West dare to contradict this, while the opinions of the East are ignored. This pretentious outlook — detached from the reality of the world — is presented to Europeans on a daily basis, but it instead serves as clear proof that those who are pushing the cause the most aggessively do not themselves believe in the thesis they claim is their own. What did Ursula von der Leyen say about Italy? If Italy elects the wrong parties during parliamentary elections, the EU “has tools” to coerce them, as in the case of Poland and Hungary.

This is what European unity looks like per the left-liberal authoritarian concept. We have heard many and varied answers to the question of why, but very few have tackled the question regarding the lack of European identity. Brussels, the left-liberal media, and the NGO networks that dictate EU policy are not the only ones who have tried and failed to forge a common European identity. Notably, Tito tried to forge a unified southern Slavic nation-state out of the diverse Yugoslavia, and his one-party dictatorship did its best to stifle dissent. The party leader, born a Croatian-Slovenian, even divorced his Serbian wife when she warned him that greater autonomy for the member republics — which Tito believed would quell the nationalist fervor that was smoldering everywhere — would tear Yugoslavia apart. The Serbian woman was right because Tito’s measures had inflamed rather than quelled nationalist sentiment.

The powerful leader forgot one thing. There was no real substance behind the party and state propaganda, which constantly talked about a united Yugoslavia. Indeed, Yugoslav identity had not emerged in the seven decades of the South Slav state. How did the philosopher John Lukacs put it? The most powerful builder of identity for people is belonging to a nation, and ignoring such basic truths in politics has fatal consequences. At the last census of Yugoslavia, only 20,000 people identified themselves as Yugoslavs. For a country of 23 million people, this is an extremely low number and would have a negligible social impact.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arizona voting

 

 

 

 

Peacock
https://twitter.com/i/status/1594925565781643265

 

 

Family Walk
https://twitter.com/i/status/1594652358658736131

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jul 222022
 


Pablo Picasso Dora Maar with green nails 1936

 

EU To Face ‘Infinitely’ Higher Energy Prices Because Of Sanctions – Banker (RT)
EU Proposes Voluntary Goal For Countries To Cut Gas Use By 15% (R.)
Sinking Germany (D’Eramo)
Why Nord Stream II Must Be Opened Immediately (MoA)
Russia Will Expand Goals in Ukraine Over Weapon Transfers: Lavrov (Celente)
Corruption Concerns Involving Ukraine Revived As War With Russia Drags On (AP)
Ukraine Uses Russian Invasion to Wreck Workers’ Rights (CN)
Ukrainian Official Continues Offending Germans After Losing His Post In Berlin (RT)
Ukraine War Must End To Prevent Nuclear ‘Abyss’ – Lukashenko (AFP)
South American Trade Bloc Snubs Zelensky (RT)
The Brutal Reality Of The US-UK ‘Special Relationship’ (Chomsky)
‘Emotion And Pain’ As Dutch Farmers Fight Against Huge Cuts To Livestock (G.)
The Media Starts the Spin on Possible Hunter Biden Charges (Turley)
Fauci, Biden Officials Subpoenaed Over Collusion To Suppress Free Speech (JTN)
1 in 5,000 COVID Shots Caused ‘Serious Side Effects’ (CHD)

 

 

 

 

Joe Trumpo
https://twitter.com/i/status/1550144764523077633

 

 

 

 

Weather channel classic
https://twitter.com/i/status/1549922559658848258

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The IMF warned on Tuesday that Germany, the EU’s chief economic powerhouse, risks losing almost 5% of its GDP if Russia completely shuts off its gas supply.”

EU To Face ‘Infinitely’ Higher Energy Prices Because Of Sanctions – Banker (RT)

The EU rushed to back Ukraine without asking its businesses or citizens for permission and now the European economy is suffering the most from the anti-Russia sanctions, French investment banker Philippe Villin has said. European politicians and bureaucrats in Brussels threw their support behind Ukraine “without a democratic debate,” Villin wrote in an op-ed published by Le Figaro on Monday. “What is worse, they did not even consider it useful to consult with us about the military escalation, or the terrible consequences of the sanctions for our economies,” he said. Villin stressed that the world economy had already been crippled by the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as tension between China and Taiwan, who are both vital to the global supply chain. The current crisis also spurred inflation, including energy price hikes and the risk of shortages.

“And the worst thing is that Europe is suffering from the increase of the prices of energy and raw materials far more than the United States or China,” Villin wrote. The fact is that, as a consequence of the sanctions, energy prices will be infinitely higher in Europe than anywhere else. The banker added that businesses would “lose huge shares of the market” and be forced to cut jobs if the crisis escalated. “I hope that, before our people eventually revolt, a quick electric shock will open up a political debate, in which we, citizens and business leaders, could challenge our blind politicians and Eurocrats, who are leading us to ruin by lying to us.” Many countries, including EU members, imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia after Moscow launched a military campaign against Ukraine in late February.

On Thursday, Russian gas giant Gazprom resumed the flow of gas to Germany through the Nord Stream 1 Baltic Sea pipeline following a 10-day shutdown for maintenance. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had previously urged EU nations to cut the use of gas by 15% between August and June in case Moscow decided to end deliveries. The IMF warned on Tuesday that Germany, the EU’s chief economic powerhouse, risks losing almost 5% of its GDP if Russia completely shuts off its gas supply.

Read more …

Greece, Spain and Portugal immediately said no. Others will follow. I’m starting to wonder if the EU will make it to Christmas.

EU Proposes Voluntary Goal For Countries To Cut Gas Use By 15% (R.)

The European Union set out emergency plans on Wednesday for countries to cut their gas use by 15% until March, warning them that without deep cuts now they could struggle for fuel during winter if Russia cuts off supply. Europe is racing to fill its gas storage ahead of winter and build a buffer in case Moscow further restricts supplies in retaliation for European support for Ukraine following Russia’s invasion. A dozen EU countries are already facing reduced Russian deliveries. EU officials say a full Russian gas halt is likely. read more The European Commission on Wednesday proposed a voluntary target for all EU countries to cut gas use by 15% from August to March, compared with their average consumption in the same period during 2016-2021.

The proposal would enable Brussels to make the target mandatory in a supply emergency, if the EU declares a substantial risk of severe gas shortages. The regulation needs approval from a reinforced majority of EU countries. Country diplomats are set to discuss it on Friday, with the aim of approving it at an emergency meeting of their energy ministers on July 26. “Russia is blackmailing us. Russia is using energy as a weapon. And therefore, in any event, whether it’s a partial, major cut-off of Russian gas or a total cut-off of Russian gas, Europe needs to be ready,” EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. The plan has faced resistance from some countries, which feel their contingency plans do not need reinforcement from the EU.

Countries would be required to update their emergency gas plans by end-September to show how they will meet the EU target.Among those opposed is Poland, which has filled its gas storage to 98% of capacity after Russia cut its supply in April. Others have less stored, such as Hungary, which is at 47% full.But EU energy policy chief Kadri Simson said countries have reduced their combined gas demand by just 5% despite months of dwindling supplies from Russia and soaring prices, with deeper cuts urgently needed. A 15% cut would save about 45 billion cubic metres of gas from August-March. Russia supplied 40% of the EU’s gas before its invasion of Ukraine, or around 155 bcm per year, but flows have since plummeted.

Read more …

“The new Iron Curtain has been raised, and won’t be crossed for years to come.”

Sinking Germany (D’Eramo)

Each day, then, we discover new difficulties in decoupling Russia from the global economy. This is partly because sanctions have proven less effective than predicted, despite the tenacious efforts of the US and Europe. To date, there have been at least six sets of successive sanctions, each more drastic than the last: the removal of Russia from the international financial system operated by SWIFT; the freezing of the Russian Central Bank’s foreign reserves, which amounted to around $630 billion; the freezing of $600 million deposited by Russia in American banks, and the refusal to accept these funds as payment for Russia’s foreign debt; the exclusion of Russia’s most important banks from the City of London; and the restriction of Russian deposits in British banks.

Western airports (and airspace) are now closed to Russian planes, and the Russian merchant navy is forbidden from docking in Western ports (Japan and Australia included). Technological exports to Russia are banned, as are many imports. The European Union has sanctions in place against 98 entities and 1,158 individuals, including President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov; oligarchs with ties to the Kremlin like Roman Abramovich; 351 representatives to the Duma; members of Russia’s National Security Council; high-ranking officers of the armed forces; entrepreneurs and financiers; propagandists and actors. All Western banks and a majority of Western companies have closed shop in Russia and sold their branches. Russia has responded by banning the export of more than 200 products, demanding ruble payments for oil and gas exports, and blocking provisions to Poland, Bulgaria and Finland when they refused to accept this stipulation.

Paradoxically, though, certain sanctions have played into Moscow’s hands. The embargo on oil and gas has increased Russian revenues due to the price rises it has caused, while foreign observers note that Russian supermarket shelves still seem to be well-stocked. In the first four months of the year, Russia’s balance of trade ran its highest surplus since 1994, at $96 billion. Yet, after its initial collapse during the first days of the war, the ruble gradually recovered, such that it is now worth more than it was last year. In 2021, 70 rubles were needed to buy a dollar. On 7 March – its worst day – that figure had nearly doubled; but as of 18 July it dropped back down to 57.

The relative inefficacy of sanctions was predictable. If decades of economic warfare had proved incapable of bringing down effectively defenceless regimes such as Castro’s Cuba (by now targeted for over 70 years), Bolivarian Venezuela (30 years) or Khomeinist Iran (42 years of American sanctions, plus around ten years of international measures), it’s difficult to imagine them triggering regime change in a country like Russia, which has been preparing for this eventuality by revamping its industrial capacities. Yet the more ineffective the sanctions the more the war drags on, lurching from one escalation to the next, and deepening divisions that seem ever more irremediable. By now we can assume that relations with Russia will be interrupted for at least some decades (a regrettable situation for any Westerner who hasn’t had the good fortune to visit Moscow and St Petersburg). The new Iron Curtain has been raised, and won’t be crossed for years to come.

Read more …

“..when the public has no gas to even take a shower or cannot buy oil and flour at the supermarket, what is the meaning of the “security” the European politicians tout?”

Why Nord Stream II Must Be Opened Immediately (MoA)

The German and other European governments have pledged to suicide the German economy and the wealth of their citizens solely out of spite over the Russian government’s action in the Ukraine. They deny that it is THEIR action that is causing the crisis. [..] They, and their media, ignore that Russia has had, and has, sound reasons to defend the Donbas republics. They do not tell you that the Ukraine, in late February, had planned and was ready to attack the citizens of Donetzk and Luhansk with overwhelming force. Here is additional evidence for that: “OSCE Reports Reveal Ukraine Started Shelling The Donbas Nine Days Before Russia’s ‘Special Military Operation'”

They deny that Ukraine is controlled by extreme right wing elements. They deny that there are full fledged Nazis formations in control of Ukraine even as their own media have for years warned of those. They are lying to you. All German natural gas storage sites can be filled to the brim via Nord Stream II if the Germany government would allow for it. It does not do so. That is the reason why you in Europe will to have pay much more for heating and electricity in the months and years to come. Russia will win the war. It is only a question of time. Meanwhile the sanctions will impoverish Europe:

“[C]an the European public wait? Before the sanctions have a “desired effect,” it is the ordinary people that will suffer. Russia’s economy is still standing, but the crisis has cast a long shadow over European economies. Leaders of EU countries face low growth and record inflation. The euro is at parity with the dollar. According to a Bloomberg report, the European Commission is set to warn that a halt of Russian gas supplies to the EU could potentially reduce its GDP by as much as 1.5 percent. The EU is well in a position to find out that it is not that Russia cannot live without Europe, but Europe cannot live without Russia. EU’s sanctions against Russia serve as a boomerang. After all, it is the European public that is paying the price for the decision of policymakers. European politicians talk in high spirits about what kinds of sanctions would hurt Russia most and that aligning with the US makes them more secure. But when the public has no gas to even take a shower or cannot buy oil and flour at the supermarket, what is the meaning of the “security” the European politicians tout?”

It is on you to expose the politicians behind these sanctions and to force them to change course. Your well being depends on that.

Read more …

There is talk of Ukrainian counteroffensives in Kherson and Crimea. Bad idea.

Russia Will Expand Goals in Ukraine Over Weapon Transfers: Lavrov (Celente)

Russia’s top diplomat signaled Wednesday that Moscow will expand its goals in Ukraine due to Kyiv’s increased weapon capacity due to Western intervention. Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister, said in an interview with state media that Russia’s military is no longer “only” focused on the eastern part of Ukraine. He implied that Moscow’s strategy has changed after Western intervention with longer-range weapons, the BBC reported. He told Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of RT, that Moscow cannot allow the remaining region of Ukraine controlled by President Volodymyr Zelensky’s forces to “possess weapons that would pose a direct threat to our territory.” “The geography is different now,” he said. He now named Kherson and Zaporizhzhia as new objectives, the report said.


Kherson is considered valuable real estate and is a shipbuilding center. The New York Times reported that the area has been a Russian staging ground in recent weeks. There are reports that Ukraine could be staging a counteroffensive there. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said the window of opportunity for Ukraine could be closing before the Kremlin annexes that territory. Natalia Humeniuk, the spokeswoman for Ukraine’s southern forces, told the paper that Ukraine’s single goal is to reclaim all its territory. Lavrov took particular issue with the U.S.’s decision to provide Ukraine with HIMARS. He called out the “impotent anger” and a “desire to make things worse.”

French howitzers
https://twitter.com/i/status/1550047368782876672

Read more …

AP tries to connect the corruption to Russia. They should look at Zelensky and Kolomoisky.

Corruption Concerns Involving Ukraine Revived As War With Russia Drags On (AP)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s dismissal of senior officials is casting an inconvenient light on an issue that the Biden administration has largely ignored since the outbreak of war with Russia: Ukraine’s history of rampant corruption and shaky governance. As it presses ahead with providing tens of billions of dollars in military, economic and direct financial support aid to Ukraine and encourages its allies to do the same, the Biden administration is now once again grappling with longstanding worries about Ukraine’s suitability as a recipient of massive infusions of American aid. Those issues, which date back decades and were not an insignificant part of former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, had been largely pushed to the back burner in the immediate run-up to Russia’s invasion and during the first months of the conflict as the U.S. and its partners rallied to Ukraine’s defense.

But Zelenskyy’s weekend firings of his top prosecutor, intelligence chief and other senior officials have resurfaced those concerns and may have inadvertently given fresh attention to allegations of high-level corruption in Kyiv made by one outspoken U.S. lawmaker. It’s a delicate issue for the Biden administration. With billions in aid flowing to Ukraine, the White House continues to make the case for supporting Zelenskyy’s government to an American public increasingly focused on domestic issues like high gas prices and inflation. High-profile supporters of Ukraine in both parties also want to avoid a backlash that could make it more difficult to pass future aid packages. U.S. officials are quick to say that Zelenskyy is well within his right to appoint whomever he wants to senior positions, including the prosecutor general, and remove anyone who he sees as collaborating with Russia.

Yet even as Russian troops were massing near the Ukrainian border last fall, the Biden administration was pushing Zelenskyy to do more to act on corruption — a perennial U.S. demand going back to Ukraine’s early days of independence. “In all of our relationships, and including in this relationship, we invest not in personalities; we invest in institutions, and, of course, President Zelenskyy has spoken to his rationale for making these personnel shifts,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters on Monday. Price declined to comment further on Zelenskyy’s reasoning for the dismissals or address the specifics but said there was no question that Russia has been trying to interfere in Ukraine. “Moscow has long sought to subvert, to destabilize the Ukrainian government,” Price said. “Ever since Ukraine chose the path of democracy and a Western orientation this has been something that Moscow has sought to subvert.”

George Webb Kolomoisky

Read more …

Nice country.

Ukraine Uses Russian Invasion to Wreck Workers’ Rights (CN)

The Ukrainian parliament has passed two new radical measures on labour liberalisation, prompting fears of Ukrainians losing workplace rights permanently as Russia’s war puts huge pressure on the country’s economy. In two laws passed on Monday and Tuesday, MPs voted to legalise “zero-hours contracts” and made moves towards removing up to 70 percent of the country’s workforce from protections guaranteed by national labour law. The latter measure means the national labour code no longer applies to employees of small- and medium-sized enterprises; instead, it is proposed that each worker strikes an individual labour agreement with their employer. It also removes the legal authority of trade unions to veto workplace dismissals.

Draft law 5371 had previously been criticised by the International Labor Organization, as well as Ukrainian and European trade unions, on the basis that it could “infringe international labour standards.” Ukraine’s ruling Servant of the People party argued that the “extreme over-regulation of employment contradicts the principles of market self-regulation [and] modern personnel management.” Red tape in Ukraine’s HR laws, it suggested, “creates bureaucratic barriers both for the self-realisation of employees and for raising the competitiveness of employers.” The Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine will now ask President Volodymyr Zelensky to veto draft law 5371 when it goes to him for signature — but will not make the same request over the proposed law on zero-hours contracts, Ukrainian MP Vadym Ivchenko told openDemocracy.

Nataliia Lomonosova, an analyst at Ukrainian think tank Cedos, warned that the two laws could further deteriorate an already difficult socio-economic situation for Ukrainians suffering from Russia’s military campaign. According to the U.N.’s latest numbers, Russia’s invasion has led to at least 7 million people becoming displaced inside Ukraine itself, which has been compounded by a severe economic crisis hitting families and individuals hard. At the same time, the World Bank has predicted that Ukraine’s economy will contract by 45 percent this year.

Read more …

“Melnik blasted Kretschmer, accusing him of “constant pandering” to Putin and calling his approach “disgusting.”

Don’t even mention peace!

Ukrainian Official Continues Offending Germans After Losing His Post In Berlin (RT)

The former Ukrainian ambassador to Berlin, Andrey Melnik, slammed the minister president of the eastern German state of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, after he said Europe should mediate a ceasefire between Kiev and Moscow instead of adding more fuel to the fire in the ongoing conflict. “Ukrainians are in favor of you sticking your head in a freezer to freeze your hot Russia fantasies,” the outspoken Ukrainian diplomat wrote in a Twitter post addressed to Kretschmer on Tuesday. The former ambassador’s rant was sparked by the prime minister of Saxony’s call for Europe and Germany to help ‘freeze’ the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev and not to abandon Russian energy imports.

The conflict is throwing Europe and the entire world into chaos, Kretschmer told journalists on Tuesday. He warned that Europe risks losing the economic strength needed to maintain security and remain competitive on the world stage, adding: “We have to work to ensure that this war is frozen.” He also characterized Europe’s position on the conflict as “very one-sided” – helping Ukraine win and completely abandoning Russian energy – which he said is a mistake. “I firmly believe that we need these supplies of raw materials,” Kretschmer said, adding that European leaders “must together try to … influence Russian President [Vladimir Putin] and convince Ukraine that we all have to freeze this conflict together.”

Melnik blasted Kretschmer, accusing him of “constant pandering” to Putin and calling his approach “disgusting.” The minister president of Saxony faced a barrage of criticism from fellow politicians at home as well. The general secretary of the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), Bijan Djir-Sarai, accused him of failing to understand the threat Russia supposedly poses. “Thank God this man is not responsible for our foreign policy,” he said. Green politician Jamila Schaefer told German tabloid Bild that Kretschmer’s suggestion “damages the reputation of the Federal Republic of Germany,”accusing him of “dangerous ignorance.” Kretschmer’s fellow Christian Democrats were just as critical. MP Matthias Hauer tweeted that his position does not reflect that of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Read more …

I said: Don’t mention peace!

Ukraine War Must End To Prevent Nuclear ‘Abyss’ – Lukashenko (AFP)

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko Thursday said Russia, Ukraine and the West must agree to halt the Ukraine conflict to avoid the “abyss of nuclear war” and insisted Kyiv should accept Moscow’s demands. “We must stop, reach an agreement, end this mess, operation and war in Ukraine,” Lukashenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top ally, told AFP in an exclusive interview in Minsk. “Let’s stop and then we will figure out how to go on living,” he said during the one-hour interview at the Palace of Independence. “There’s no need to go further. Further lies the abyss of nuclear war. There’s no need to go there,” he said, speaking on the 148th day of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine.

Lukashenko accused the West of seeking a conflict with Russia and of provoking the Ukraine war. “You have fomented the war and are continuing it,” he said. “We have seen the reasons for this war,” he added. “If Russia had not got ahead of you, members of NATO, you would have organised and struck a blow against it,” he said, echoing Putin. Belarus has served as a staging ground for Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, but Lukashenko has so far avoided becoming a party to the conflict. Analysts say that he is keenly aware of the fact that most Belarusians do not support sending troops into Ukraine. The 67-year-old leader, who has ruled Belarus for nearly three decades, insisted that Kyiv authorities can end the war if they re-start talks with Moscow and accept its demands.

“Everything depends on Ukraine,” he said. “Right now, the peculiarity of the moment is that this war can be ended on more acceptable terms for Ukraine.” He urged Kyiv authorities to “sit down at the negotiating table and agree that they will never threaten Russia”. Talks between Russia and Ukraine largely ground to a halt in mid-April. Lukashenko said that Ukraine must accept the loss of territory occupied by Russia in eastern and southern Ukraine. “This is no longer being discussed,” he said. “One could have discussed this in February or March.”

Lukashenko

Read more …

First Africa, now South America. They prefer BRICS.

South American Trade Bloc Snubs Zelensky (RT)

South America’s Mercosur trade bloc has declined a request by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to speak at its summit, host nation Paraguay said on Wednesday, according to the AFP news agency. Mercosur members Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay failed to reach an agreement on whether to invite the Ukrainian leader, Deputy Foreign Minister, Raul Cano said, albeit refusing to name the countries that opposed the move. “There was no consensus on such communication, that’s why the Ukrainian counterpart has already been informed that under current circumstances there are no conditions allowing to speak with the president of Ukraine in the Mercosur format,” the minister explained.


Earlier this month, Julio Cesar Arriola, Paraguay’s Foreign Minister, said that Zelensky had talked with Mario Abdo Benitez, the nation’s president, on the phone and asked for the opportunity to address the upcoming Mercosur summit. According to Arriola, Benitez promised to discuss the matter with his colleagues in the bloc. Mercosur is an economic and political organization that was established in 1991 to create a common market and incentivize development in South America. After Russia attacked Ukraine in late February, Zelensky has addressed a slew of national parliaments and major international forums, including NATO, the G7 and the UN in an effort to rally countries to Kiev’s cause and help it fight off Moscow’s offensive. However, in late June, when the Ukrainian president took part in a virtual meeting with the African Union, only a handful of leaders reportedly tuned in to listen to his speech. Following the conference call, the President of Senegal and African Union Chairperson, Macky Sall, indicated that Africa’s position of neutrality over the conflict in Ukraine remained unchanged.

Read more …

“..that the United States stands for something in the world – something of which the world has need, something which the world is going to like, something, in the final analysis, which the world is going to take, whether it likes it or not.”

The Brutal Reality Of The US-UK ‘Special Relationship’ (Chomsky)

The abject submission of British authorities to the Master in Washington in the case of journalist Julian Assange is painful to observe but – unfortunately – not difficult to understand. The roots go back to the Second World War, when Britain handed the mantle of world domination over to its former colony. The US had long surpassed the UK as an economic power and had displaced it from “our little region over here,” as Secretary of War Henry Stimson described the Western hemisphere. But it had not yet become a truly global power. At the time, British officials were well aware that the UK was becoming a “junior partner” to the US, now subject to its will, which was often exercised crudely.

Given their own ample experience with imperial arrogance, brutality and hypocrisy, British diplomats could easily read between the lines when their American counterparts protested that US global domination is “part of our obligation to the security of the world…what was good for us was good for the world”, as Abe Fortas, a leading figure in the New Deal administrations, put it. The British Foreign Office, parsing this apparent altruistic concern, concluded that Washington was, in fact, guided by “the economic imperialism of American business interests” and was “attempting to elbow us out…under the cloak of a benevolent and avuncular internationalism”.

UK officials continued that their American counterparts believe “that the United States stands for something in the world – something of which the world has need, something which the world is going to like, something, in the final analysis, which the world is going to take, whether it likes it or not.” What true believers in the historical profession call “Wilsonian idealism”. From then, Britain takes it, whether it likes it or not. Things could have gone a different way at various points in modern history, recently if Jeremy Corbyn hadn’t been destroyed by a vicious media campaign. But today’s British authorities just take the orders and Julian Assange is one of the victims.

Read more …

10,000 Dutch farmers risk losing their farms altogether. This will not be accepted.

‘Emotion And Pain’ As Dutch Farmers Fight Against Huge Cuts To Livestock (G.)

Along roads and bridges in the Netherlands, people are hanging the Dutch flag upside down. It is a sign of solidarity with the Dutch farming sector, which will also be upturned by a radical 30% reduction in livestock numbers, a move being made to meet environmental targets. In recent weeks, farmers have blocked off food distribution centres with hundreds of tractors, blockaded major roads and turned up outside regional assemblies and ministers’ homes to protest. One late-night protest ended with a police officer accused of firing a gun at a 16-year-old farmer’s son. It comes as authorities in the Netherlands have released details of the cuts in ammonia, nitrogen oxides and nitrous oxide needed to protect more than 150 nature reserves in the country. And it is the farming sector that is going to bear the brunt of emissions cuts.

“This is not a democracy any more: it’s a dictatorship,” says Jeroen van Maanen, a farmer with 130 cows in Zeewolde, central Netherlands, who has joined the protests. Manure, when mixed with urine, releases ammonia, a nitrogen compound. If it enters lakes and streams via farm runoff, excessive nitrogen can damage sensitive natural habitats. The country has the seventh biggest livestock population in the EU but is comparatively small in size. This gives it Europe’s highest livestock density, with insufficient land to make good use of the waste from more than 100 million cattle, chickens and pigs. Van Maanen says farmers are being unfairly targeted: “If you come for us and our families, you come at a farmer’s soul,” he says. “We’ve proposed all kinds of solutions but we are ignored.

“And finally, they come up with a plan for a reduction in livestock. No other sector has reduced nitrogen in the last 30 years [as much as] we have. This is why there’s a lot of emotion and pain.” The latest government coalition has not, so far, been dissuaded by the protests from its drive to tackle the country’s environmental problems. After a landmark court ruling in 2019, it needs to reduce nitrogen emissions in order to allow building projects to go-ahead in the country. There is no choice, says Rudi Buis, spokesperson for the agriculture ministry. “Even if you stop with the policy tomorrow, the problem doesn’t go away. If you want to build a house or a road, a lawyer will say: first reduce nitrogen and then you get a licence. We have to do something. It’s not a luxury. It has to happen.” [..] “We know exactly what allowance each farmer has and what they produce, while a lot of industrial companies don’t need permission – but they emit nitrogen.”

Read more …

“..,the position of Attorney General Garland has gone from dubious to ridiculous..”

The Media Starts the Spin on Possible Hunter Biden Charges (Turley)

The media is reporting that the criminal investigation of Hunter Biden is at a “critical stage” with the grand jury considering an array of charges including various tax violations and possible foreign lobbying violations. I previously testified in Congress on possible criminal exposure for Hunter under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). There seems ample evidence for such charges but there remain some glaring questions in how the Biden Administration has handled the investigation of the Biden family. What is also striking is the initial response of pundits on cable channels like MSNBC that has long ignored or downplayed the allegations. The most glaring question raised by the report is, again, the refusal of Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a Special Counsel despite overwhelming justification for such an appointment.

For over a year, I have been writing on the obvious need for a special counsel in an investigation that not only is embarrassing for the Biden family but implicates not just Hunter but his uncle and his father. Given this mounting evidence, the position of Attorney General Garland has gone from dubious to ridiculous in evading the issue of a special counsel appointment. He continues to refuse to acknowledge these conflicts with the President. Federal regulations allow the appointment of a special counsel when it is in the public interest and an “investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States Attorney’s Office or litigating Division of the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances.”

It is hard to imagine a stronger case for the appointment of a special counsel. Attorney General Garland has failed in his duty to protect the Justice Department from such conflicts or the appearance of such conflicts. There will be lingering questions over the independence of the investigation. For example, if you are investigating lobbying violations tied to Hunter’s open influence peddling, why would you not ask to question the man referred to as the “big guy” who was purportedly cut in for a ten percent share of one of the most dubious deals? He is also the same man who reportedly received money from shared accounts and was referenced by Hunter to foreign clients as part of the inducement for giving him money. He is the object of the influence peddling. He is also now the President of the United States.

Read more …

“..information was requested in identifying all communications with any social media platform relating to content modulation and/or misinformation.”

Fauci, Biden Officials Subpoenaed Over Collusion To Suppress Free Speech (JTN)

Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, other Biden administration officials and five social media companies have 30 days to respond to subpoenas in a lawsuit alleging collusion to suppress freedom of speech. Missouri Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry were granted permission to proceed with the discovery phase of the trial last week in a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty. In addition to Fauci, who announced earlier this week he would retire in 2025, and Jean-Pierre, discovery requests were served to ask for information and documents from the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Jen Easterly and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and Nina Jankowicz, who led the DHS Disinformation Governance Board until it was disbanded.

Third-party subpoenas were served to Twitter, YouTube, Meta, Instagram and LinkedIn. A media release from Schmitt, a candidate for the Republican Party’s nomination for the seat of retiring U.S. Senator Roy Blunt, said information was requested in identifying all communications with any social media platform relating to content modulation and/or misinformation. The suit requests all communications with Mark Zuckerberg from Jan. 1, 2020, to the present. Also requested were any communications to any social media platform relating to the “Great Barrington Declaration,” a letter published in October 2020 in response to COVID-19 policies that recommended “focused protection” — an approach to reaching herd immunity by allowing those at minimal risk of death to live normal lives by building up immunity through natural infection while protecting those at highest risk.

“In May, Missouri and Louisiana filed a landmark lawsuit against top-ranking Biden Administration officials for allegedly colluding with social media giants to suppress free speech on topics like COVID-19 and election security,” Schmitt said in a statement. “Earlier this month, a federal court granted our motion for expedited discovery, allowing us to collect important documents from Biden Administration officials. Yesterday, we served discovery requests and today served third-party subpoenas to do exactly that. We will fight to get to the bottom of this alleged collusion and expose the suppression of freedom of speech by social-media giants at the behest of top-ranking government officials.”

Read more …

at least 38,000 severe cases

1 in 5,000 COVID Shots Caused ‘Serious Side Effects’ (CHD)

The German Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) on Wednesday posted a “stunning tweet” admitting 1 of every 5,000 COVID-19 vaccinations cause “serious side effects.”Although likely an “underestimation” due to voluntary reporting, according to Alex Berenson, the admission implies almost 300,000 Americans and Europeans have experienced a severe adverse event after receiving a Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine. Translated, the tweet says, “One in 5000 people is affected by a serious side effect after a COVID19 vaccination. If you suspect an adverse reaction, get medical attention and report your symptoms to @PEI_Germany.” The Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI), which uses the handle “@PEI-Germany” is Germany’s federal institute for vaccines and biomedical drugs.

The figure came from a PEI safety report summarizing suspected cases of side effects and vaccination complications that were reported to PEI between Dec. 27, 2020, when Germany launched its vaccination campaign, and March 31, 2022. During that time, 172,062,925 vaccinations were administered in Germany — of those, 17.1% were Spikevax, 7.4% were AstraZeneca, 2.1% were Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) and 0.1% were Novavax. During the same time period, PEI received 296,233 reports of suspected side effects. The reporting rate was 1.7 per 1,000 vaccine doses for all vaccines combined and 0.2 serious reaction reports per 1,000 doses. So, the 1 in 5,000 people experiencing a serious reaction is actually 1 in 5,000 doses.

PEI on Thursday corrected its tweet to reflect accurate numbers. According to @PEI_Germany, “the reporting rate for serious reactions is 0.2 reports per 1,000 vaccine doses,” the Tweet read. “The German admission today marks at least a small — and long overdue — step toward honesty from public health authorities on the COVID jabs,” said Berenson, a New York Times bestselling author who writes regularly on Substack. Reacting to the updated tweet from Germany’s Health Ministry, one person said, “It’s even worse, it’s 1 DOSE, not one in 5,000 people …”

Wolensky

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Vandana Shiva: “THIS Is Bill Gates’s Farming Agenda”

 

 


The Oriental dwarf kingfisher averages 13 cm (5.1 in) in length

 

 

 

 

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