Jul 032023
 


Henri Matisse The Dessert – Harmony in Red 1908

 

As France Rocked by Riots Again, Macron Looks Like ‘Spent Force’ (Sp.)
France To Shut Internet Services To Control Riots (R.)
Macron Asks Ministers to Restore Order in France (Sp.)
A Matryoshka of Psyops: General Armageddon Is Not Going Anywhere (Pepe Escobar)
Value of Wagner State Contracts Revealed By Russian Media (RT)
CIA Sees Ukraine Crisis As Unique ‘Opportunity’ (RT)
Ukrainian Commander Complains About French Tanks – AFP (RT)
Families Of Fallen Ukrainian Soldiers Demand More Cemeteries (RT)
US Congress May Need To Impeach Supreme Court Judges – AOC (RT)
Ukraine Could Become World’s First Cashless Economy – Official (RT)
Major Revaluation Of Gold & Precious Metals Is Imminent (Von Greyerz)
Nothing Can Stop Currency Crisis & War Crisis – David Morgan (USAW)
Jim Rogers: De-Dollarization Fuelled by Soaring US Debt (Sp.)

 

 

Happy birthday Julian

 

 

 

Caviezel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1675534694643904512

 

 

 

 

Tom Renz
https://twitter.com/i/status/1675189276995190784

 

 

Grossi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1675509498117586945

 

 

Vaccine, anyone?

 

 

Trump gender
https://twitter.com/i/status/1675403134133321728

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He still hasn’t declared a state of emergency.

As France Rocked by Riots Again, Macron Looks Like ‘Spent Force’ (Sp.)

France has already seen five consecutive nights of violence after the shooting of 17-year-old driver of Algerian descent Nahel Merzouk by a police officer. What do the immigrant riots mean for the country and Emmanuel Macron’s presidency? “Immigrant riots are an already old and frequent occurrence in France where a large legal and illegal population of mostly African and Near Eastern origin has not been successfully assimilated and does not regard itself as French,” Come Carpentier de Gourdon, geopolitical analyst and convener of the editorial board of World Affairs, told Sputnik. “The second or third-generation youth is troublesome, frustrated and aggressive as it has internalized grudges against the former colonizers and thinks it has a right to live by its own rules. Its educational level is generally low and work opportunities are few.”

“Drug dealing has become very prevalent in many low-income peripheral neighborhoods and brought much illegal wealth to the ring leaders of the local gangs (…) In one sentence, many of those immigrants belong to broken tribal societies where ethnic and religious solidarity is the main bond and where the values of civility and respect for a ‘foreign’ elected and bureaucratic state structure are largely meaningless.” Nahel Merzouk, the teenager of Algerian descent, was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop on June 27. As per the Daily Mail, the passenger who was with Nahel in the car at the time of the shooting, broke his silence on July 1, claiming that one of the police officers threatened the teenager and allegedly told him: “Don’t move or I’ll put a bullet in your head.” The passenger went on to claim that the second officer said: “Shoot him.” The first officer allegedly hit the teenager with the butt of his gun two times. After that Merzouk released the break and was then shot down.

The 38-year-old police officer who killed Merzouk has been put under investigation over charges of voluntary homicide. The policeman’s lawyer disputed claims that the officer had threatened to shoot the teenager in the head before firing. Meanwhile, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) subjected Paris to criticism, as Merzouk’s death became the third fatal shooting by law enforcement officers during traffic stops in France in 2023, and the 21st since 2020, according to the mainstream media. The teenager’s death became a pretext for nationwide protests. On July 1, around 45,000 French policemen were deployed throughout the country. The protests spilled over into Switzerland and Belgium. Over 100 rioters attacked shops and police officers Lausanne, while in Belgium’s capital Brussels, protests kicked off on 30 June and proceeded relatively peacefully.

Commenting on the unfolding havoc in France, leader of the right-wing French Reconquete party, Eric Zemmour, stated: “We are in the early stages of a civil war. This is an ethnic revolt…. The French are witnessing what it means to be the product of mad immigration.” “Police brutality is more of a pretext than a real cause for most rioters, despite real cases of abuse of power and unjustified violence,” said de Gourdon. “Lawbreakers of immigrant origin seek to use their identity to claim virtual immunity. They often refuse to obey police summons on the grounds that they are discriminated against and many threaten and insult the police. They thus put themselves in the situation of being suspects and dangerous and those who are law-abiding among them get painted with the same brush.”

If organized crime and drug-related gangs hijack the protests, it could pose a serious challenge to French national security, warned Paolo Raffone, a strategic analyst and director of the CIPI Foundation in Brussels. “The appearance in the riots of Kalashnikovs is not a good sign,” Raffone told Sputnik. “Many countries in Europe live under enormous economic distress that has left social scarfs and divide lines within the society. This situation is the result of the neoliberal privatization policies enforced by the EU and the governments over the past 30 years. After the terrorist legislation enacted in 2001 and the austerity policies after 2008, the pandemics and the central banks’ rise of interest rates to combat the inflation, the situation is generally steaming up in all European countries. Emulation processes may easily occur if triggered by an accident.”

 

 

GADDAFI (2011): “If instead of a stable government which guarantees security, these bands linked to bin Laden take control, the Africans will move in a mass towards Europe and the Mediterranean will become a sea of chaos.”

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How to get popular.

France To Shut Internet Services To Control Riots (R.)

The French government decided to shut down internet service in certain areas amid riots turned violent to prevent the spread of false information. Police officials quoting France Interior Ministry said the ban on social media is to secure the life and property of the citizens. The French Police said landline and mobile service will be restored. Rioting across France was less intense overnight, the interior ministry said on Sunday, as tens of thousands of police were deployed following the funeral of a teenager of North African descent whose shooting by police has sparked nationwide unrest. The government poured 45,000 police onto the streets to try to keep a lid on a fifth night of unrest after Saturday’s funeral of Nahel, a 17-year-old with Algerian and Moroccan parents, who was shot during a traffic stop on Tuesday in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.


Since then rioters have torched cars and looted stores, but also targeted town halls, police stations and schools – buildings that represent the French state. President Emmanuel Macron postponed a state visit to Germany that was due to have begun on Sunday to handle the worst crisis for his leadership since the “Yellow Vest” protests paralysed much of France in late 2018. He was due to meet his ministers on Sunday evening to review the situation, the presidency said, after the prime minister said on Friday the government’s “crisis unit” had been activated until further notice.

Cheap labor

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What can they do that he cannot?

Macron Asks Ministers to Restore Order in France (Sp.)

French President Emmanuel Macron, during a meeting with ministers on Sunday night, called on them to do everything possible to restore order in France amid ongoing unrest, local TV reported. Macron met with French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne and several other ministers at the Elysee Palace on Sunday evening to discuss the situation in the country. A local TV channel cited participants in the meeting who said that Macron had asked the prime minister, the interior minister and the justice minister to continue doing everything possible to restore order in France. Macron also said that the French government must continue supporting law enforcement officers and members of special services who have been mobilized over the past five days.


A source told the channel that Macron was planning to receive more than 220 mayors of the communes affected by the riots at the Elysee Palace on Tuesday. French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Friday that more than 45,000 law enforcement officers, including special units, were involved in the fight against riots in France, while over 300 police officers and gendarmes were wounded in the first three days of unrest in the country. France Info reported citing a government source on Saturday that French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne had urged all cabinet ministers to return to Paris and stay there amid ongoing unrest in the country. On Friday, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights urged the French government to “seriously address the deep problems of racism and discrimination in law enforcement” after a 17-year-old was killed by police in France.

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“..there are no heavy weapons to be confiscated. Already on Monday, June 26, Wagner had moved their heavy weapons to Belarus..”

A Matryoshka of Psyops: General Armageddon Is Not Going Anywhere (Pepe Escobar)

To clear the fog, let’s start with a roundup of the usual “winner” suspects. First one is undoubtedly Belarus. Due to the priceless mediation of Old Man Luka, Minsk is now gifted with the most experienced army in the world: the Wagner musicians, masters of conventional (Libya, Ukraine) and non-conventional (Syria, Central African Republic) war. That is already inflicting the Fear of Hell in NATO, which is suddenly facing in its eastern flank a super pro army, very well equipped, and de facto uncontrollable, and on top of it hosted by a nation now equipped with nuclear weapons. Simultaneously, Russia props up dissuasion on its western front. Like clockwork that is leading NATOstan to invest in ballooning military budgets (with funds it doesn’t have). That process happens to be a key plank of Russian strategy since at least March 2018.

And as an extra bonus Russia creates a 24/7 threat to the whole of Kiev’s northern front. Not bad for a “mutiny”. Way more complex is Russia’s internal dynamics. Putin’s current and subsequent difficult decisions may entail loss of popularity coupled with loss of internal stability -depending on the manner Kremlin-defined strategic victories are presented to Russian public opinion. Whatever 24/7 NATOstan mainstream media spin may come up with, the Kremlin’s official explanation for June 24 boils down to a Prighozin demonstration: he was just trying to shake things up. It’s way more complicated than that. There were strategic gains, of course, and Prighozin seems to have followed a very risky script that in the end favors Moscow. But it’s still too early to tell.

A key sub-plot is how the Dance of the Oligarchs will proceed. Independent Russian media was already expecting some – treasonous – players, including state functionaries, to buy their one-way ticket when the going got tough (or to say they were “ill”, or refuse to answer important calls). The Duma – fed by Bortnikov’s FSB – is already working on a hefty list. The Russian system – and Russian society as well – see people like these as supremely toxic: in fact much more dangerous than the demshiza (a term that mixes “democracy” and “schizophrenia”, applied to globalist neoliberals). On the military front, it gets even more complicated. Putin has charged Defense Minister Shoigu to compile the list of Generals to be promoted after The Longest Day. To put it mildly, for quite a few people, from many different persuasions, Shoigu has become a toxic element in Russian politics.

Wagner – rebranded, and under new management – will continue to serve Russia’s interests via Minsk, including in Africa. Old Man Luka, wily as ever, has already firmly stated there won’t be any provocations against NATO via Wagner. Wagner recruiting bureaus will not be opened in Belarus. Belarussians may join Wagner directly. As it stands, most of Wagner fighters are still in Lugansk. For all practical purposes, from now on the Russian government won’t have anything to do, militarily and financially, with Wagner. Additionally, there are no heavy weapons to be confiscated. Already on Monday, June 26, Wagner had moved their heavy weapons to Belarus. What remains – and had not been moved during The Longest Day – was returned to the Ministry of Defense (MoD).

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$10 billion is real money. Russia’s total defense budget is some $80 billion.

Value of Wagner State Contracts Revealed By Russian Media (RT)

Evgeny Prigozhin’s holding, which includes the Wagner Group, has enjoyed substantial benefits from working for the Russian government, securing contracts worth hundreds of billions of rubles, Dmitry Kiselyov, the head of the Rossiya Segodnya media group, said on Sunday. Speaking on air during his weekly news program, Kiselyov said that Prigozhin’s Wagner private military company “has received a little more than 858 billion rubles ($9.8 billion) under the contracts it signed with the state.” He added that under other contracts, Prigozhin’s holding Concord, which is also engaged in the catering and media business, had provided services to the tune of 845 billion rubles. “This does not mean that they have earned so much, but it is still indicative of the scale of the business and the scale of ambitions,” Kiselyov noted.

He went on to point out that Prigozhin’s company had a strong media clout, adding that some people might have had the impression that the Wagner Group was the most capable frontline unit Russia had. Stressing that he did not want to “detract from anybody’s merits,”Kiselyov recalled that regular Russian units had been faster in capturing the heavily defended city of Mariupol than Wagner troops were in seizing the Donbass stronghold of Artyomovsk (known as Bakhmut in Ukraine). His remarks come after Russian President Vladimir Putin noted on Tuesday that the Wagner Group was completely dependent on state support. He claimed that for the last year the Russian authorities had allocated 86 billion rubles to pay wages and provide incentives for Wagner fighters.

At the same time, according to the Russian leader, Prigozhin’s Concord company received 80 billion rubles from the state in a year for supplying food products to the army. Last month, Prigozhin accused the Russian Defense Ministry of staging a deadly missile strike on a Wagner camp, and vowed retaliation. The ministry denied the allegation. His troops proceeded to capture several military installations in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, with some forces driving on towards Moscow. However, Prigozhin stopped his advance as part of a deal mediated by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. According to the agreement’s conditions, the Russian government consented to drop a criminal case against the PMC leader, and permit him to relocate to Belarus.

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“..the spy agency was simply “wasting American taxpayers’ dollars” as attempts to divide Russian society from abroad won’t work..”

CIA Sees Ukraine Crisis As Unique ‘Opportunity’ (RT)

America’s top intelligence official has openly cheered the alleged internal discord that he claims is rising in Moscow because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, saying the CIA has been given an historic opportunity to recruit spies and undermine President Vladimir Putin’s government. CIA director William Burns claimed on Saturday at a Ditchley Foundation lecture in the UK that “disaffection with the war will continue to gnaw away at the Russian leadership beneath the steady diet of state propaganda and practiced repression.” “That disaffection creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity for us at CIA, at our core a human intelligence service. We’re not letting it go to waste,” he added.

Burns noted that the CIA launched a Telegram channel in May to recruit military officers, government officials and scientists who can provide intelligence on the Russian leadership and economy. “We had 2.5 million views in the first week, and we’re very much open for business,” he said. Moscow insisted at the time that the spy agency was simply “wasting American taxpayers’ dollars” as attempts to divide Russian society from abroad won’t work, according to Ambassador Anatoly Antonov. Washington is betting that the Ukraine crisis will stir enough division to help turn potential Russian intelligence sources against President Putin. Burns made his speech one week after private military contractor Evgeny Prigozhin ended his brief rebellion against Russia’s top generals.

The aborted mutiny was far less “bloody” than US officials had expected, according to CNN. Burns has insisted that Washington played no part in the uprising, but argued that Prigozhin’s short-lived revolt was “a vivid reminder of the corrosive effect of Putin’s war on his own society and his own regime.” Putin said last week that the Russian people reacted to the crisis by showing unity, spoiling the hopes of foreign enemies that the nation would be “split asunder and drown in a bloody feud.” Putin’s approval rating among Russians was little changed at 81% after the aborted insurrection, even according to the independent pollster Levada Center, which had been listed as a foreign agent in Russia since 2016.

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“This is what liberty, equality and brotherhood look like.”

Ukrainian Commander Complains About French Tanks – AFP (RT)

A Ukrainian military commander has reportedly raised concerns that light combat tanks supplied to the former Soviet republic by France aren’t suitable for attacks against Russian defensive lines because their thin armor can easily be pierced by artillery shells and other weapons. Touted earlier this year by Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov as a “sniper rifle on fast wheels,” the French AMX-10 RC armored fighting vehicle has proven “impractical” during Kiev’s current counteroffensive against Russian forces, Agence-France Presse (AFP) reported on Sunday. One four-man crew has died because of the tank’s thin armor, which can easily be pierced by Russian weaponry, a Ukrainian battalion commander told the media outlet. “Unfortunately, there was one case when the crew died in the vehicle,”said the 34-year-old Ukrainian major, whom AFP identified only by his call sign, Spartanets.

“There was artillery shelling, and a shell exploded near the vehicle. The fragments pierced the armor, and the ammunition set detonated.” Reznikov was filmed in April riding in an AMX-10 RC, which was among the Western weaponry rushed to Kiev this spring for a long-awaited counteroffensive that finally began in June. “These fast, modern machines with powerful guns will aid us in liberating our territory,” Reznikov said in a Twitter post thanking French President Emmanuel Macron and Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu. “This is what liberty, equality and brotherhood look like.” However, Spartanets said the French tanks have proven to be ineffective in front-line assaults. “The guns are good, the observation devices are good, but unfortunately, there is thin armor, and it is impractical to use them in the front line,” he said. Just sending out the vehicles so they get destroyed, I consider it is impractical and unnecessary because it’s primarily a risk for the crew.”

The Ukrainian commander added that the AMX-10 RCs also has been plagued by breakdowns in their gear boxes, possibly because of their use on dirt roads. Kiev’s troops received one month of training in France, which wasn’t adequate to master operating the vehicle, he said. The 20-ton AMX-10 RC travels on wheels, rather than tracks. It was developed in the 1970s for armed reconnaissance and attacks on tanks. The French military is in the process of replacing its fleet of AMX-10 RCs with the more modern EBRC Jaguar. Thousands of Ukrainian troops have been killed in the counteroffensive, which has failed to breach Russia’s defensive lines. Dozens of Western-supplied armored vehicles have been destroyed, including German-made Leopard tanks and AMX-10 RCs, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. The New York Times reported last week that 17 of the 113 Bradley fighting vehicles supplied to Kiev by the US have been damaged or destroyed.

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“..management of the site had decided to exhume unmarked graves from World War I, as it ran out of space..”

Families Of Fallen Ukrainian Soldiers Demand More Cemeteries (RT)

A small-scale protest, staged by families of fallen Ukrainian soldiers, including members of the notorious neo-Nazi Azov regiment, was held in the heart of Kiev on Friday. The protesters gathered in the Independence Square (the Maidan), urging Ukraine’s authorities to build a national military cemetery. The protesters carried portraits of their fallen relatives, as well as displayed several banners. One of them read “Government, where’s the Ukrainian Arlington?” while another said “Military cemetery cannot wait.” One large banner also stated “National military cemetery must emerge in Bykovnya in 2023,” referring to promises to create such a site in the aforementioned Kiev suburb, previously voiced by top Ukrainian officials.

“The construction of the national military cemetery, promised by the authorities this year, has not even started. The authorities must hear us and understand that the cemetery for the soldiers who died in this war cannot wait,” one of the event’s organizers, the head of civic group ‘Heart Out,’ Vera Litvinenko, said during the rally, as quoted by local media. Litvinenko’s son was killed during the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which has been raging on since February 2022. Lack of space to bury fallen soldiers has apparently been an issue for Ukraine for some time already. Multiple videos circulating online show rows of fresh graves emerging at the burial sites all across the country.

In some locations, authorities have to exhume old graves to make room for the newly deceased, the New York Times reported last month. For instance, a groundskeeper at one of the cemeteries told the newspaper that the management of the site had decided to exhume unmarked graves from World War I, as it ran out of space.Both Ukraine and Russia have been tight-lipped on their frontline casualties, each claiming that their opponent has sustained significantly more than they report. Moscow has repeatedly accused the collective West of pushing Kiev into waging war “to the last Ukrainian,” warning that the continuous flow of military aid to the country is only bound to increase the cost of war for Ukrainians.

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“..abusing its power with “authoritarian” rulings..” Nuff said.

US Congress May Need To Impeach Supreme Court Judges – AOC (RT)

US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) has accused the Supreme Court of abusing its power with “authoritarian” rulings on such issues as abortion, LGBTQ protections, and race-based college admissions, arguing that lawmakers should consider impeaching justices for breaking laws. She told CNN on Sunday that if Chief Justice John Roberts does not voluntarily testify in a congressional probe of alleged ethics violations by Supreme Court judges, lawmakers should consider issuing subpoenas to demand answers. The New York Democrat also called for imposing more stringent ethics guidelines to help maintain a proper balance of power among the nation’s three branches of government. “There also must be impeachment on the table,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We have a broad level of tools to deal with misconduct, overreach, and abuse of power.”

The congresswoman made her comments after a string of rulings last week in which the nation’s high court struck down President Joe Biden’s plan to wipe out $400 billion in student loan debt, blocked colleges from admitting students based on skin color, and upheld the free-speech rights of a Christian graphic artist who refused to offer her services for same-sex weddings. She also cited last year’s decision overturning Roe v Wade, a landmark 1973 ruling that had protected abortion as a constitutional right. “The courts, if they were to proceed without any check on their power, without any balance on their power, then we will start to see an undemocratic and, frankly, dangerous authoritarian expansion of power in the Supreme Court, which is what we are seeing now,”Ocasio-Cortez said.

For instance, the court’s ruling on refusing services for same-sex weddings stripped away “the full personhood and dignity of LGBTQ people,” she said. “These are the types of rulings that signal a dangerous creep towards authoritarianism and centralization of power in the court.” Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the far-left “Squad” group of Democrat representatives have called for expanding the court to 15 justices, arguing that “democracy is in crisis” because six of the nine current judges were appointed by Republican presidents. Biden, who would get to appoint six left-leaning justices in such a scenario, said on Thursday that expanding the court would harmfully politicize the judicial branch.

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That doesn’t seem to rhyme with corruption. How are you going to pay the 10% to the Big Guy?

Ukraine Could Become World’s First Cashless Economy – Official (RT)

Ukraine is considering imposing a complete ban on the circulation of cash in the country in a bid to stamp out corruption, the Deputy Head of the Presidential Office, Rostyslav Shurma, revealed on Wednesday. Speaking at the London Ukraine Recovery Conference, he said his government will present a roadmap on “whether we will do it or not.” The politician expressed hope that “the decision will be ‘yes’,” adding that such a measure would help prevent bribery. “These are very deep and serious discussions within our team, the prime minister and the president. We want to become the first totally cashless economy,”Komsomolskaya Pravda in Ukraine quoted Shurma as saying. The initiative could become a “very effective instrument for liquidation of 95-99% of all corruption cases”in Ukraine, according to the official.


Economists, however, have expressed doubts over the scheme. Ukrainian financial analyst Aleksey Kushch noted that a ban on legal tender would prompt a flow of the hryvna into dollars, triggering a collapse of the national currency. Moreover, he pointed out that hard cash becomes the only means of payment during power outages. In Ukraine “people have been paying bribes through offshore companies for a long time, so cash has no effect on corruption,” the head of the Ukrainian Analytical Center, Alexander Okhrimenko, argued. He claimed that Shurma was engaging in “meaningless publicity and just said something stupid.” According to the analyst, around 40% of settlements in Ukraine are currently conducted in cash.

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“I have never seen a more obvious situation during my soon 60 years in investment markets. ”

Major Revaluation Of Gold & Precious Metals Is Imminent (Von Greyerz)

We have been in the physical precious metals market for almost 25 years for wealth preservation purposes. During that time gold has gone up 6-12 times in most Western currencies and silver slightly less. As the premier company for bigger wealth preservation investors in physical gold and silver, outside the financial system, we have had a very exciting journey so far. But looking at the last 23 years I am very clear that in spite of greater returns in physical gold than most investment classes and much lower risk, the real moves haven’t even started yet. I have never seen a more obvious situation during my soon 60 years in investment markets.

Although some of the precious metals mining stocks will vastly outperform physical gold and silver, we will stick to what we know best in order to serve our esteemed clients as well as future wealth preservation investors. In coming years, most investors will lose a major part of their investments and net worth as they hold on to their conventional investments. For a quarter of a century I have been standing on a soap box, imploring investors to protect their wealth. During that time we have seen The Nasdaq lose 80% in the early 2000s and the financial system being a few minutes from implosion in 2008. But with the help of finger-snapping $10s of trillions into existence, most markets have remained strong. Still, the (almost) Everything Collapse is hanging over us and this time finger-snapping money into existence is unlikely to help.

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“..you cannot go from one fiat phony currency, lie-based system into another one that is digital only.”

Nothing Can Stop Currency Crisis & War Crisis – David Morgan (USAW)

Economic analyst and financial writer David Morgan went against the majority of financial gurus and predicted at the end of 2022 that there was no way the Fed was going to cut interest rates. He said on USAWatchdiog.com in December, “Cut Interest Rates & Dollar is Done, Toast, It’s Over.” Fed Head Jay Powell said this past week the Fed was raising interest rates at least two more times to “fight inflation.” This was a direct hit by Morgan. Morgan sees a coming currency crisis and a war crisis. Morgan explains, “Yes, we have both a currency crisis and a war crisis. Let’s start with the currency crisis. My favorite phrase for what is going on is ‘All fiat currency fails.’

We have never seen a time in all of recorded history that an unbacked currency does not go basically and effectively to zero. When you say that ‘All fiat fails,’ there is a subgroup that says, yeah, but not the U.S. dollar. . . .I don’t know how many people have given me pushback on that statement from all over the world. . . . When I say fail, I don’t mean it goes to absolute zero. What it means is a currency fails and a new system is implemented. . . . History is on my side. . . . The precursor to this is what takes place. Substitution. What is substitution? Crypto currency and gold and silver, of course. . . . and things like people going off grid. All of these are indicators of how to mitigate the end of the U.S. dollar or the end of the currency crisis. We have this all over the place. . . . Sooner or later, there will be a run for the exits. Where are the exits? Crypto currencies, gold and silver, barter clubs or the BRICS currency.”

Morgan contends you just cannot run into an alternative to the U.S. dollar because there are going to be supply disruptions for everything. You might not be able to get what you need no matter how much money you have. So, be prepared in every way you can. Morgan also says, “The Great Reset is what the bankers want, but the Great Reject . . . will come from many who will not want to go down that way. That’s what is going to be the most interesting because anyone who is awake, and there are more people waking up all the time, they will understand that you cannot go from one fiat phony currency, lie-based system into another one that is digital only.”

On the war crisis, the dark powers running the world want war. Why? Morgan says, “It covers up all the things that are wrong, and it also takes them off the hook. It was the war. The war did it. All wars are bankers’ wars, and they are on both sides. They make money regardless. . . . The main things are profit, but it also is mitigating their responsibilities. They can get most people to think that it was the war that caused all this poverty, and, of course, the war will do that. . . . They don’t have a real conflict with Ukraine and Russia. They just need a way out, and it is the most profitable way out. They are going to default on all this debt, and this is how they are going to do it.”

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“This is not a good time to be a young American. I’m an old American. It’s a good time to be an old American because I don’t have to pay the debt. But my kids are going to have to pay the debt..”

Jim Rogers: De-Dollarization Fuelled by Soaring US Debt (Sp.)

The US president declared on Wednesday in a Chicago speech that “Bidenomics is working.” Per Joe Biden, his economic policies have prevented the nation from sliding into recession, driven the strongest recovery among the developed economies, and managed to tame inflation. Nonetheless, just 34% of Americans believe that the country’s economy is in good shape, according to NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. One needs to be cautious when listening to politicians taking credit for taming inflation and saving the day, according to Jim Rogers, a legendary American investor. “I would concur that the worst is yet to come,” Rogers told Sputnik. “It always comes later after normal fluctuations and corrections. I do not agree with the White House that everything is okay now, and I certainly don’t agree that they should take credit for it. To look back at previous inflation anywhere in the world, you will see it goes up, down, up, down. This is the way markets work.”

The crux of the matter is that the US is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world, said the investor. Indeed, the US national debt has reached over $32.3 trillion, or $96,702 for every single person in the country. “Every nation in history that has gotten into that kind of situation has wound up having problems,” Rogers explained. “We have printed a lot of money, we have borrowed and spent a lot of money, which is wonderful for the short term, but eventually we have to pay the price. Inflation is going to get worse. The debt problems are going to get worse, and the US is going to suffer. This is not a good time to be a young American. I’m an old American. It’s a good time to be an old American because I don’t have to pay the debt. But my kids are going to have to pay the debt and they will have a lot of problems.”

Even though DC policymakers are insisting that the US economy is too big and too important to default, and so technologically advanced that it could keep growing despite soaring debt, the reality could be harsher than they dare imagine, as per the investor. To illustrate his point, Rogers referred to the 1980s, when inflation was similarly bad. Then Federal Reserve Chair Paul A. Volcker resorted to sharp interest rate hikes that exceeded 19% by January 1981. It worked at the time. However, in 1983, the United States was still a creditor nation, Rogers pointed out. “The inflation now is worse,” the investor said. “Now the United States is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world. So, sure, things are okay at the moment, but ‘at the moment’ is not going to last forever. Somebody has got to pay this debt. Somebody has to print more money. Somebody has to borrow more money. And when you borrow huge amounts of money, interest rates will go higher and higher, inflation will go higher because so much money has been printed.”

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In 1878, Isabella Bover, a renowned French model, was carefully selected to embody the spirit of the Statue of Liberty. This iconic statue, a gift from the generous people of France to their American counterparts, was intended to symbolize the enduring friendship and commemorate the momentous occasion of America’s centenary in 1876. Isabella Bover’s captivating presence became the face that would forever grace this monumental masterpiece, representing the shared values of liberty and freedom cherished by both nations.

 

 

Humpback

 

 

Leopard sleep

 

 

Great white
https://twitter.com/i/status/1675533770340855808

 

 

Swans

 

 


Canada is so big, it’s easternmost city (St. John’s) is closer to Venice, Italy (4833km) than it is Vancouver (5004km). Source:

 

 

 

 

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Jun 162023
 


Christopher Makos Andy Warhol piloting John Denver’s bi-plane 1977

 

US Demands Big Results From Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Soon – Politico (RT)
EU Rules Out NATO Troops Openly Fighting In Ukraine (RT)
Valery Zaluzhny, The Man Behind Ukraine’s Counter-Offensive (BBC)
The Government Keeps Lying to Us About Ukraine. Where Is the Outrage? (Tracey)
Biden Admin Weighs ‘Israel Model’ for Ukraine Instead of NATO Membership (Sp.)
Le Pen Says Crimea ‘Has Nothing To Do’ With Conflict In Ukraine (TASS)
A History of Ceasefires & Peace in Ukraine (Wright)
De-Dollarization ‘Could Happen Much Quicker Than Most Think’ (Sp.)
The Bidens ‘Coerced’ Burisma To Pay $10 Million In Bribes – CHS (Fed.)
Internet Ignites as Biden Laughs Off Bribery Question (Sp.)
The Biggest Coverup In Political History (GP)
Ex-Trump Attorney Claims He Witnessed 45 Instances of DOJ Misconduct (Med.)
Why Donald Trump Cannot Get a Top-Tier Lawyer (Dershowitz)
First Roger Waters, Now C.J. Hopkins (Matt Taibbi)
Joe Biden Announces By 2025 All Wildfires Must Be Electric (BBee)

 

 

 

 

Tucker ep 4

 

 

Rogan
https://twitter.com/i/status/1669483009383202818
https://twitter.com/i/status/1669464834453143552

 

 

 

 

Comer

 

 

Seymour Hersh: Panic at the State Department over Victoria Nuland. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman has resigned, and her last day in office will be June 30, noted journalist Seymour Hersh on his blog. “Her departure sent the State Department into near-panic over the person many fear will be her replacement: Victoria Nuland,” writes Hersh.

As he states, Nuland’s aggressive attitude towards Russia fits perfectly with the views of President Joseph Biden. The famous journalist cites a source with direct knowledge of the details of the situation, who says that various State Department bureaus are complaining that Nuland, currently the undersecretary for political affairs, is “going wild” while Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is on the road.

 

 

“I’m told that [the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Dam] was approved for demolition by Victoria Nuland. She’s been involved in everything happening in Ukraine for at least 14-15 years if not longer.” — Col. Douglas Macgregor

 

 

 

 

“..the Times wrote that “failure would look like a Ukrainian army that has not learned to fight, has lost the equipment given to them in recent months and gained no territory to show for that.”

US Demands Big Results From Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Soon – Politico (RT)

US officials are telling their Ukrainian counterparts that Washington’s support for their war effort hinges on the success of the ongoing counteroffensive against Russian forces, Politico reported on Thursday. The offensive has failed so far, with Ukrainian losses counted in the thousands. US President Joe Biden has repeatedly promised to back Ukraine “for as long as it takes.” However, when Ukrainian officials recently asked the US State Department and National Security Council whether they could count on this support to continue through next year’s election season and a potential change of power in the White House, they were told “let’s see how the counteroffensive goes,” Politico reported.

Ukraine’s former deputy prime minister, Ivanna Klimpush-Tsintsadze, told the US news site that these talks left her feeling anxious about the “continuation of the same level of US support to Ukraine after this financial year,” which ends in September. After months of mixed messages from Kiev – and reports of depleted stockpiles and general unreadiness in the Western media – Ukrainian forces launched their long-awaited counteroffensive against Russian forces almost two weeks ago. Attacking multiple sections of the frontline in Donetsk and Zaporozhye Regions, Ukraine has so far failed to penetrate Russia’s multi-layered labyrinth of defensive trenches, minefields, and anti-tank obstacles.

With Ukraine’s Western-provided air defense systems degraded by constant Russian missile and drone attacks, Russian air support has acted with impunity, inflicting devastating losses on the Ukrainian forces. As of Wednesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry counted 7,500 dead or wounded Ukrainian troops, not counting those hit by high-precision missiles and airstrikes deep behind the front lines Videos of wrecked Western tanks and armored vehicles have circulated online, and Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed on Wednesday that Kiev has lost “at least 160 tanks and 360 armored vehicles.” The hardware destroyed by Russian troops accounts for between 25% and 30% of all Western military equipment supplied to Ukraine, the president estimated.

Publicly, Western officials have hedged their bets, leaving it up to Kiev to define what a victorious offensive would look like and downplaying expectations of a thrust to Crimea, as Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has promised. According to the New York Times, American and European officials would consider the offensive successful if Ukrainian forces cut off Russia’s land bridge with Crimea and managed to hold any territory seized in this direction. Citing European diplomats, the Times wrote that “failure would look like a Ukrainian army that has not learned to fight, has lost the equipment given to them in recent months and gained no territory to show for that.”

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Dead end.

EU Rules Out NATO Troops Openly Fighting In Ukraine (RT)

Western countries will not send their soldiers to fight Russia on behalf of Ukraine, Director General of the European Union Military Staff Vice Admiral Herve Blejean said on Wednesday. “To send ground troops to Ukraine is to be a party in a war, to be at war with Russia, and nobody wants that, neither the EU, nor NATO,” Blejean told the French TV channel LCI . “We are not at war with Russia. We are supporting a country attacked by Russia.” Blejean added that the ongoing Ukrainian offensive would “not be the end of the war, regardless of its results.” The French admiral’s remarks came after former NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen suggested that individual members, such as Poland and the Baltic states, could ultimately decide to deploy soldiers to Ukraine.


Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, however, said last week that there would not be foreign boots on the ground “before the end of the armed conflict” with Russia. Volunteers from multiple NATO countries are already fighting on Kiev’s side, including Polish nationals who were involved in an armed incursion into Russia’s Belgorod Region earlier this month. Moscow, meanwhile, has long insisted that by supplying Ukraine with heavy weapons and sharing intelligence, NATO countries had made themselves de facto direct participants in the conflict. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that NATO was “waging a war” against his country and that it was “ridiculous” to claim otherwise. Last month, the EU agreed to procure €1 billion ($1.08 billion) worth of artillery rounds and missiles for Ukraine. The US has committed more than $100 billion in aid to Kiev since Russia launched its operation in the neighboring state in February 2022.

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The BBC has this on Zaluzhny. Problem is, he hasn’t been seen in a long time. Maybe not that surprising given the state of the offensive, which he is “behind”.

Also: “The head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kirill Budanov, is in critical condition at a Bundeswehr hospital in Berlin after being wounded.”

Valery Zaluzhny, The Man Behind Ukraine’s Counter-Offensive (BBC)

Ukraine’s long-awaited attempt to take back the territories in the east and south of the country, occupied by Russia for the past 18 months, is now in full swing. A key figure in planning and executing this operation is Gen Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s 49-year-old commander-in-chief. Little known until recently, his popularity now rivals that of President Volodymyr Zelensky. Gen Zaluzhny, or “our Valera” as friends and old classmates like to call him, was appointed commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian military in July 2021. Those who know him well say the appointment, pushed through personally by President Zelensky, came as a surprise to the general and many others too as his promotion involved climbing several steps on the career ladder.

Zaluzhny was already known as an ambitious and modern commander, but also an unpretentious man who liked to joke with his subordinates and didn’t put on airs. Within seven months he was leading Ukraine’s defence against full-scale invasion. By 26 February 2022 it was clear that Russian troops were failing to “take Kyiv in three days”, which had initially seemed a likely outcome. But the reality remained grim and Ukrainian authorities were calling on the public not to panic. Russian troops were advancing in the north, east and south of Ukraine and posed a considerable threat to the capital. One idea floating among Ukraine’s top officials was to start blowing up bridges near Kyiv over the vast Dnipro river, to prevent the Russians crossing from the eastern left bank to the western right bank, where, among other strategic objects, the government quarter was situated.

They phoned Gen Zaluzhny for his view. “Under no circumstances are we to do that,” he is reported to have replied, at the time sitting in a smoke-filled bunker with other top brass. “This will be a betrayal of both civilians and the military remaining on the eastern bank.” The BBC has heard matching accounts from two sources involved in the episode that indicate this is what happened. Many other crucial decisions followed and by early April 2022 Ukrainian troops pushed the Russian army back to the north and east of Kyiv. Born into the family of a Soviet serviceman, Valery Zaluzhny once said he was always committed to distancing himself from the excessive hierarchy of the Soviet Army. By the time he went to military school in the mid-1990s Ukraine was already an independent state.

While his textbooks at military college may have dated back to the Soviet era, he learnt about the reality of war first-hand. In 2014 he was appointed a deputy commander in an area of eastern Ukraine where the conflict with separatists, backed by the Russian army, was getting under way. Colleagues we spoke to say that from the onset of his career he was keen on building relationships of trust with his subordinates as well as delegating command decisions.

Read more …

How they’re trying to sneak in NATO troops:

“..a cross-coalition bill was submitted to the Polish parliament which would make it legal for Polish nationals to fight in the Armed Forces of Ukraine..”

The Government Keeps Lying to Us About Ukraine. Where Is the Outrage? (Tracey)

On June 4, a group referring to itself as the “Polish Volunteer Corps” issued a boastful announcement confirming its participation in a series of cross-border ground offensives into Russia. News of these audacious raids was jarring enough, given the many prior assurances of U.S. and Ukrainian war planners, who insisted no attacks would be carried out inside Russian territory. It was all the more conspicuous that the incursion units were apparently comprised of Polish soldiers. Poland, of course, is not only a NATO member state, but the NATO member state with which the U.S. has most assiduously aligned itself since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine (Polish government officials deny any formal connection to the “Polish Volunteer Corps”). So the raids raised an obvious, yet oft-neglected question: Just what the hell is U.S. policy in Ukraine?

If you turn on the TV, you’ll find pundits on every channel loyally reciting from memory the broad parameters of the U.S. mission—at least as it’s being conveyed in daily rhetorical flourishes by Biden Administration officials, assorted Congressional chest-thumpers, and brave think tank warriors. Freedom and autocracy are locked in a great cosmic battle of good versus evil, or so goes the usual storyline—most often narrated with a degree of moral complexity that can be generously compared to a lower-tier Marvel Movie. But apart from this steady stream of heavily recycled platitudes, was it ever plainly disclosed to Americans—the chief financial sponsors of the Ukraine war effort, after all—that the scope of the war effort they’ve found themselves subsidizing would eventually expand to include platoons of Polish soldiers marching straight into Russia?

Did anyone back in Washington, D.C. sign off on this, or was there ever an opportunity granted for public consideration of its potentially foreboding implications? At least in theory, the U.S. is treaty-bound to come to the defense of Poland in the event of armed attack. And while Poland may nominally disavow the Polish Volunteer Corps, a Polish journalist writing for Poland’s largest digital publication says he was in attendance at a founding organizational meeting in Kyiv this past February, during which the unit was established not as a ragtag group of untested amateurs, but as an elite “sabotage and reconnaissance” force—which from the get-go was “reporting directly to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.” Per this account, the unit was to consist of Poland’s “most experienced soldiers,” with notable imprecision as to where specifically those soldiers hailed from.

Then there’s the fact that shortly before the formation of the “Polish Volunteer Corps,” a cross-coalition bill was submitted to the Polish parliament which would make it legal for Polish nationals to fight in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The war against Russia was to be recognized as “a special situation from the point of view of the national security of the Republic of Poland,” the text reads, “requiring non-standard political and legislative actions on the part of the state.” The “Polish Volunteer Corps” has been conducting joint operations with the “Russian Volunteer Corps,” another fully integrated “special unit within the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine”—euphemistically referred to in “Western” media headlines with plausible-deniability monikers like “Pro-Ukraine group of partisans.”

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“..opponents of the initiative argue it would escalate the Ukraine conflict and confirm Russia’s justification for the special operation..”

Biden Admin Weighs ‘Israel Model’ for Ukraine Instead of NATO Membership (Sp.)

In 2008, Ukraine was denied membership to NATO, with opponents to Ukraine’s membership citing potential effects on Europe’s relationship with Russia as a major issue. The Biden administration is reportedly considering proposing an ‘Israel model’ for Ukraine in NATO, a deal that would be a limited commitment and not include a collective defense guarantee. US media reports have indicated the Biden White House would pledge to continue providing more military aid to Ukraine, regardless of the outcome of its ongoing counter-offensive. The deal would likely be for a shorter period than the commitment to Israel, which typically runs in 10-year intervals. Kiev and some European allies have been advocating for Ukraine’s full NATO membership, including a collective defense guarantee.

However, opponents of the initiative argue it would escalate the Ukraine conflict and confirm Russia’s justification for the special operation, one of which was NATO’s encroachment across Europe since the start of the century. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has reportedly threatened to boycott the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, next month if he is not given a roadmap for Ukraine joining the military alliance as a full member. Last week, outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg reportedly suggested a “compromise” proposal when he spoke to US President Joe Biden. Part of that compromise stipulated a pledge to continue providing the Kiev regime with weapons, regardless of the level of success of its counter-offensive.

The deal would also ascend Ukraine to the council level in NATO, which is the status Russia maintained until 2014, when the relationship between Russia and the West collapsed. US media reported only Germany has so far sided with Biden in his plan for Ukraine; however, other members also have their doubts about Ukraine being ready to join the military bloc. Part of the Biden plan would be to commit the US to Ukraine for longer periods, limiting the amount of public debate in the US over Ukraine aid. Citing Biden administration officials, media reported the plan would “bleed some of the politics out of episodic debates about how much aid to commit to Ukraine in the next six months or a year.”

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“Residents in Crimea decided to join Russia. This position was also shared by former French Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Valery Giscard d’Estaing, and I stand with them, too, that this issue has nothing to do with today’s conflict in Ukraine..”

Le Pen Says Crimea ‘Has Nothing To Do’ With Conflict In Ukraine (TASS)

Crimea is an inseparable part of Russia and has nothing to do with today’s conflict in Ukraine, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the parliamentary faction of the National Rally party, told France Info radio on Thursday. “Crimea has nothing to do with the conflict in Ukraine,” she maintained. “Residents in Crimea decided to join Russia. This position was also shared by former French Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Valery Giscard d’Estaing, and I stand with them, too, that this issue has nothing to do with today’s conflict in Ukraine,” emphasized Le Pen, who was incumbent French leader Emmanuel Macron’s main rival in the presidential election in 2017 as well as last year. According to the parliamentarian, “the conflict in Ukraine is related to the Minsk agreements, which do not concern Crimea.”

Le Pen underlined that she views Crimea to be a part of Russia. “I have been saying this for 10 years already, and I have not changed my mind,” the far-right politician said. She insists that “the Donbass issue should be central at talks to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.” Taking questions from members of the lower chamber of the French parliament, the National Assembly, in late May, Le Pen said she considers Crimea a legitimate Russian territory. The politician said she had her own impressions from her trips to the peninsula, where she talked to Crimean residents and could see for herself that they are more inclined towards Russia.

Crimea was transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954 at the initiative of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. After a coup in Ukraine in February 2014, the governments of Crimea and Sevastopol held a referendum on the peninsula’s reunification with Russia. The overwhelming majority of voters supported reunification (96.7% in the Republic of Crimea and 95.6% in the City of Sevastopol, respectively), with turnout reaching 80%. Despite the convincing results of the referendum, Kiev and the EU have refused to recognize Crimea as being part of Russia.

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It’s been done before. Many times.

A History of Ceasefires & Peace in Ukraine (Wright)

Negotiations, ceasefires, armistices and peace agreements are as old as wars themselves. Every war ends with some version of one of them. Wars have been studied endlessly, but lessons learned on how to end the wars have generally been ignored by those conducting the world’s latest wars. To stop the killing in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, people of conscience must do everything they can to make negotiations for a ceasefire become a reality. That was the purpose of the International Summit for Peace in Ukraine held in Vienna last weekend. Over 300 persons from 32 countries attended the conference and participated in the robust program to discuss how to create conditions for a ceasefire and ultimately an agreement to stop the killing. The websites for the International Peace Bureau and the Peace in Ukraine summit were hacked the day after the conference but should be up and running soon.

[..] Using data from 48 conflicts between 1946 and 1997, political scientist Virginia Page Fortna has shown that strong agreements that arrange for demilitarized zones, third-party guarantees, peacekeeping, or joint commissions for dispute resolution and contain specific (versus vague) language produced more lasting cease-fires that provide conditions for dialogue for an armistice or agreement. Figuring out how to make the cease-fire be effective will be the key task. Despite its less-than-stellar track record, the U.S. as a co-belligerent should work with the Ukrainian government to figure out effective cease-fire measures. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has already described any new negotiations as “Minsk 3,” a reference to the two cease-fire deals that were brokered with Russia in the Belarusian capital in 2014 and 2015, after its annexation of Crimea and fighting in the Donbass region.

The Minsk 1 and 2 agreements included no effective mechanisms for ensuring the parties’ compliance and failed to end the violence. Minsk 1 and 2 were later acknowledged by NATO and the European Union as a ploy for “buying time” for the West’s buildup of Ukrainian forces and equipment. Having been in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves for 29 years and working as a U.S. diplomat for 16 years, I can testify to the results of endless studies of the consequences of war. One example is the year-long U.S. Department of State Iraq Study Group, being ignored by U.S. politicians and policy makers, and lessons learned on how to end deadly conflicts being ignored by U.S. military and national security experts.

I suspect that few Ukrainian, Russian, U.S. and NATO policy makers know of the United Nations’ 18-page guide to the Do’s and Don’ts of Ceasefire Agreements, based on their experience in conflicts. Therefore, for the record, I want to mention the main points of the “Do’s and Don’ts of Ceasefire Agreements,” so no one can say, “We Didn’t Know” such work has been done already and the pitfalls of ceasefire agreements well identified.

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De-Dollarization is happening now. Just not in one big leap.

De-Dollarization ‘Could Happen Much Quicker Than Most Think’ (Sp.)

Sanctions and trade embargoes have accelerated the movement of many nations, including Russia, to boost efforts to shed reliance on the US dollar, which has been increasingly “weaponized” by the West. Recent moves by BRICS countries offer hope that the dominance of the greenback in the world economy will eventually be uprooted. De-dollarization could happen much quicker than most people think, Michael Goddard, president of the Netley Group, said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). SPIEF 2023 entered day two on Thursday, and the unique global economic and business event focused on de-dollarization – a buzzword of late among countries seeking to ditch the hegemony of the American greenback. The BRICS group of countries has been spearheading the movement.

A common currency is one of the bold steps being mulled over among other tools that the bloc, which unites the world’s largest developing economies — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, has at its disposal to escape the hegemony of the US-dominated economic order. As a number of other countries have expressed desire to join the bloc, including Argentina, Iran, Indonesia, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, the trend towards dumping the dollar is likely to grow even stronger. “A new BRICS currency that’s backed by some kind of asset, gold or a basket of assets, as they’re discussing, from a trade basis, if all the BRICS countries and BRICS+ and others trade that way [it] will almost immediately depress the amount of dollars that are used in trade. And over a period of a few years, that will accelerate greatly,” Michael Goddard told Sputnik.

However, he clarified that that if one nurtures hopes of ditching the dollar, which is the global reserve currency, you “actually need reserve.” The tremendous advantage of the dollar at the moment is the US bond market, Goddard said, adding “One of the ways for the BRICS to replicate that, and then displace it, is to link their bond markets, and the governments and the populace actually start to buy the bonds which are denominated in the new currency. And I believe that if they do that, de-dollarization could happen much quicker than most people think.”To all those skeptics of the BRICS currency who warn of the vast differences of the economies of member-states, Michael Goddard enumerated ways that this “divide” could be overcome successfully.

One way is for BRICS to create a currency “backed either by gold or a basket of commodities that are trusted,” and then “trade with 80 percent of the world.” “And I believe that most people who are not in America, the UK, or Europe, would like an alternative to the dollar, don’t want to be at risk from being sanctioned, their assets being frozen. And I think the momentum of that will actually allow the currency to take root and then grow,” Goddard concluded.

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“Zlochevsky allegedly told the CHS he was dismayed by Trump’s victory, fearing an investigation would reveal his payments to the Biden family..”

The Bidens ‘Coerced’ Burisma To Pay $10 Million In Bribes – CHS (Fed.)

The Bidens allegedly “coerced” a foreign national to pay them $10 million in bribes, according to individuals familiar with the investigation into the FBI’s handling of the FD-1023 confidential human source report. What, if anything, agents did to investigate these explosive claims remains unknown, however, with sources telling The Federalist the FBI continues to stonewall. On Monday, Sen. Chuck Grassley revealed a foreign national — identified by individuals with knowledge of the matter as Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky — allegedly possessed 17 recordings implicating the Bidens in a pay-to-play scandal. While 15 of the audio recordings consisted of phone calls between Zlochevsky and Hunter Biden, two were of calls the Ukrainian had with then-Vice President Joe Biden, according to the FD-1023.

The Federalist has now learned the FD-1023 reported the CHS saying the Bidens “coerced” Zlochevsky to pay the bribes. Sources familiar with the investigation also explained the context of Zlochevsky’s statements, and that context further bolsters the CHS’s reporting. In the FD-1023 from June 30, 2020, the confidential human source summarized earlier meetings he had with Zlochevsky. According to the CHS, in the 2015-2016 timeframe, the CHS, who was providing advice to Zlochevsky, told the Burisma owner to stay away from the Bidens. Then, after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential contest, the CHS asked Zlochevsky if he was upset Trump won.

Zlochevsky allegedly told the CHS he was dismayed by Trump’s victory, fearing an investigation would reveal his payments to the Biden family, which included a $5 million payment to Hunter Biden and a $5 million payment to Joe Biden. According to the CHS, the Burisma executive bemoaned the situation, claiming the Bidens had “coerced” him into paying the bribes. The CHS responded that he hoped Zlochevsky had taken precautions to protect himself. Zlochevsky then allegedly detailed the steps he had taken to avoid detection, stressing he had never paid the “Big Guy” directly and that it would take some 10 years to unravel the various money trails. It was only then that Zlochevsky mentioned the audio recordings he had made of the conversations he had with Hunter and Joe Biden, according to the CHS.

The broader context of this conversation adds to the plausibility of Zlochevsky’s claims that he possessed recordings implicating the Bidens. And we already know from Grassley and House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer that the FBI considered the CHS, who relayed Zlochevsky’s claims to the FBI, a “highly credible” source. Further, according to individuals familiar with the investigation, the FBI admitted the CHS’s intel was unrelated to the information Rudy Giuliani had provided the Western District of Pennsylvania’s U.S. attorney’s office — the office then-Attorney General William Barr had tasked with reviewing any new information related to Ukraine. Sources told The Federalist that investigators out of the Pittsburgh office, in addition to reviewing Giuliani’s information, searched internal FBI databases and came across an earlier FD-1023 related to the CHS. That earlier FD-1023 then led to agents questioning the CHS on June 30, 2020, uncovering the details concerning Burisma’s alleged bribery of the Bidens.

[..] Biden family business. Those records provide concrete evidence of a pattern of public corruption involving foreign nationals, with Joe Biden at the helm. There are still more banking records to review, along with the many details recently discovered when the whistleblower came forward with the FD-1023. Apparently, Zlochevsky wasn’t far from the mark when he said it would take 10 years to unravel the complex payment path that led to Joe Biden.

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“Are there tapes that you accepted bribes, President Biden? Is that true?”

Internet Ignites as Biden Laughs Off Bribery Question (Sp.)

The US House Oversight Committee is investigating claims of a political bribery scheme involving a foreign national based on information provided to the FBI by a confidential source who alleges Joe Biden and his son Hunter received a total of $10Mln from Ukrainian energy company Burisma to help end an investigation into the entity. A host of internet critics have lambasted Joe Biden’s response to a question about the alleged bribery scandal in which he has been implicated. “Are there tapes that you accepted bribes, President Biden? Is that true?” a reporter asked the Democratic POTUS. The reporter was referring to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma bribery allegations dating to Biden’s time as vice-president, and the reported existence of audio recordings of his conversations with an executive proving the claims.

But the 80-year-old, who was on his way out of the White House East Room after an event with US diplomats, stopped, turned around, and smirked, while remaining silent. He then shook his head, and ambled down the hallway.
Columnist Miranda Devine tweeted that the president was “laughing in America’s face”. Others chimed in, deploring Biden’s “condescending” and “mocking” response. Republican Senator from Iowa, Chuck Grassley, revealed on Monday that a Burisma whistleblower who allegedly paid Joe Biden and his son Hunter retained 17 audio recordings of his conversations with them as an “insurance policy”. The senator cited the FBI’s unclassified 1023 form drafted in 2020 on the Biden family. The “foreign national” reportedly referred to Joe Biden as the “Big Guy”.

The US House Oversight Committee is investigating a possible political bribery scheme involving a foreign national. The investigation is based on information provided to the FBI by a confidential human source who alleges that Joe Biden and his son Hunter received a total of $10Mln from Ukrainian energy company Burisma to help end a probe into the entity. The president dismissed the allegations without elaborating on details. Earlier in the day, former President Donald Trump promised that if he were elected he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden, his family and others allegedly engaged in corruption that negatively affects the United States.

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While Trump was being impeached.

The Biggest Coverup In Political History (GP)

In 2019 One America News Network investigative journalist Chanel Rion released a three part made for TV series detailing Joe Biden and Hunter Biden’s criminal dealings in Ukraine. The evidence Chanel Rion and Rudy Giuliani brought forth was enough to start a corruption investigation into Joe Biden. Chanel traveled to Ukraine with Rudy Giuliani to investigate the money laundering schemes by the Biden Crime Family. What they came back with was a trough of evidence and documents that detailed bribes and payments to Hunter Biden for years and at least one bribe to Joe Biden for $900,000 from Ukrainian officials.


Chanel Rion and Rudy Giuliani interviewed several witnesses who destroyed Adam Schiff’s baseless impeachment case against President Trump. In the three part EXCLUSIVE report, Rudy Giuliani debunked the impeachment hoax and exposed Biden family corruption in Ukraine and Latvia. In the series Rudy and Chanel expose the numerous media lies told to the American public by the lemming media to protect Joe Biden The mainstream media is once again exposed as a very corrupt arm of the Democrat Party. Joe Biden should have been jailed years ago. Here is background material The Gateway Pundit published back in 2020 before the presidential election. The DOJ ignored this evidence against Joe Biden.

“Ukrainian Pariamentarian Andriy Derkach held a much publicized press conference last October in Ukraine. In his press conference Derkach revealed that Joe Biden was paid $900,000 for lobbying efforts from Burisma Holdings in Ukraine. Derkach even brought charts and images as proof during his presentation. This is the same organization that paid Hunter Biden over $50,000 a month to sit on their board in an obvious pay-for-play maneuver. Cristina Laila reported on this development back in October last year…” Former Vice President Joe Biden was personally paid $900,000 for lobbying activities from Burisma Holdings, according to Ukrainian MP Andriy Derkach.
Derkach publicized the documents at a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine agency Wednesday as he said the records, “describe the mechanism of getting money by Biden Sr.”


“This was the transfer of Burisma Group’s funds for lobbying activities, as investigators believe, personally to Joe Biden through a lobbying company. Funds in the amount of $900,000 were transferred to the U.S.-based company Rosemont Seneca Partners, which according to open sources, in particular, the New York Times, is affiliated with Biden. The payment reference was payment for consultative services,” Derkach said. During his press conference Derkach even displayed images and a timeline of Joe Biden’s nefarious dealings in the Ukraine. The entire press conference by Andriy Derkach was recorded and posted online. For some strange reason the liberal mainstream media had NO INTEREST in reporting on this story at the time. They totally ignored the information. In October 2020 Andrii Derkach announced a second laptop belonging to Hunter Biden’s business contacts in Ukraine has been seized by law enforcement. The Gateway Pundit is currently following up on this claim.

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“And I know, Andy, that you know, had it happened during a jury trial, it would be a mistrial, right there.”

Ex-Trump Attorney Claims He Witnessed 45 Instances of DOJ Misconduct (Med.)

Former Trump attorney Tim Parlatore argued on MSNBC Tuesday that “prosecutorial misconduct” could derail Donald Trump‘s federal trial. Parlatore claimed to a highly skeptical panel that he was in the room and witnessed misconduct during the grand jury proceedings. “What are the issues that you think would lead to this case never going to trial?” Andrew Weissmann asked during an MSNBC panel. “The biggest issue, of course, Andy, is prosecutorial misconduct,” Parlatore said, before laying out his accusations against the federal prosecutors. “This is a case where you have prosecutors who have consistently demonstrated lack of ethics and willingness to lie to federal judges in sealed proceedings.

Willingness to, in the grand jury, openly suggest to the jurors that they may take the invocation of constitutional rights as evidence of guilt. Willingness to meet with an attorney for one of the witnesses and suggest that his application for a judgeship is something that should be considered and is a reason to convince his client to change his mind. ” A skeptical Weissmann interjected to ask how Parlatore knew of the alleged misconduct since grand juries usually operate in secret. “Because I was in the room,” Parlatore said. “It happened right in front of me.” Parlatore was a witness before the grand jury considering the classified documents case against Trump. Weissmann then asked what Parlatore saw.

“Forty-five separate times — I know sounds like I made that number up — but 45 separate times they tried to get into attorney-client privileged information and frequently when the question was asked about conversations between attorney and client, they would turn to the grand jury and say, ‘so you’re refusing to provide that information to the grand jury?’ At a certain point, further exchange ensued where the prosecutor says, ‘well isn’t it possible to waive the privilege? And if President Trump is being so cooperative, why won’t he waive the privilege and allow you to tell the jury about his conversations with you?’ That’s totally improper. And I know, Andy, that you know, had it happened during a jury trial, it would be a mistrial, right there.”

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“..the threats to the lawyers are greater than at any time since McCarthyism. Nor is the comparison to McCarthyism a stretch.”

Why Donald Trump Cannot Get a Top-Tier Lawyer (Dershowitz)

Former President Donald Trump has now been arraigned and pleaded not guilty. He was represented by two lawyers, neither of whom he apparently wants to lead his defense at trial. He has been interviewing Florida lawyers, and several top ones have declined. I know, because I have spoken to them. There are disturbing suggestions that among the reasons lawyers are declining the case is because they fear legal and career reprisals. There is a nefarious group that calls itself The 65 Project that has as its goal to intimidate lawyers into not representing Trump or anyone associated with him. They have threatened to file bar charges against any such lawyers. When these threats first emerged, I wrote an op-ed offering to defend pro bono any lawyers that The 65 Project goes after.

So The 65 Project immediately went after me, and contrived a charge based on a case in which I was a constitutional consultant, but designed to send a message to potential Trump lawyers: if you defend Trump or anyone associated with him, we will target you and find something to charge you with. The lawyers to whom I spoke are fully aware of this threat — and they are taking it seriously. There may be other reasons as well for why lawyers are reluctant to defend Trump. He is not the easiest client, and he has turned against some of his previous lawyers, as some of his previous lawyers have turned against him. This will be a difficult case to defend and an unpopular one with many in the legal profession and in general population.

Good lawyers, however, generally welcome challenges, especially in high-profile cases. This case is different: the threats to the lawyers are greater than at any time since McCarthyism. Nor is the comparison to McCarthyism a stretch. I recall during the 1950s how civil liberties lawyers, many of whom despised communism, were cancelled, and attacked if they dared to represent people accused of being communists. Even civil liberties organizations stayed away from such cases, for fear that it would affect their fundraising and general standing in the community. It may even be worse today, as I can attest from my own personal experiences, having defended Trump against an unconstitutional impeachment in 2020. I was cancelled by my local library, community center and synagogue. Old friends refused to speak to me and threatened others who did. My wife, who disagreed with my decision to defend Trump, was also ostracized. There were physical threats to my safety.

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“disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization.”

First Roger Waters, Now C.J. Hopkins (Matt Taibbi)

It’s become axiomatic that the United States “lags far behind” Europe when it comes to hate speech law. Everyone from Joe Biden to would-be disinformation Czarina Nina Jankowicz to New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger have suggested the United States needs to move more in Europe’s direction, toward stricter rules and “illegal hate speech,” which “you will have soon also in the U.S.,” as European Commission Vice President for Values Vera Jourova put it at the Davos conference this year. It makes sense. After all, who’s for hate speech? What possible downside can there be to disallowing expressions of racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, transphobia? C.J. Hopkins can answer that. Following a similar case involving Roger Waters, the American playwright, Substack contributor, and editor of Consent Factory has been placed under investigation by a Berlin prosecutor for tweeting an image of his book, The Rise of the New Normal Reich. A scathing criticism of global pandemic policy, his cover features a white mask with a white swastika you have to squint to see:

According to German authorities, the author through this image is “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization.”] Here are some other books legally on sale in Germany:

As was the case with Waters, the Nazi imagery in C.J.’s book is used to make a satirical point. Unlike the Waters case, there’s absolutely nothing in C.J.’s outside-of-text history that even theoretically could be used to argue hidden/dangerous subtext. “It would take all of about 20 seconds of anyone looking at my actual work to see how absolutely opposed I am to anything resembling, totalitarianism, fascism, authoritarianism, anything,” he says. I first read C.J. at the outset of the Russiagate scandal, when from the amusing Statler-and-Waldorf remove of expat life he wrote witty columns about how far off the rocker America had fallen. A terrific comic prose stylist, he ripped our culture for obsessing over “Putin-Nazis,” noting the new Russophobia was just “a minor variation on the original War on Terror narrative we’ve been indoctrinated with since 2001.”


These columns are worth a re-read. C.J. was ahead of me, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, and others in seeing how Trump-era propaganda campaigns deranged the population. We had uncomfortable correspondence after Covid-19 hit, when I wasn’t so sure we were dealing with the same kinds of official lies this time, and worried about the wisdom, say, of writing “pandemic” in quotation marks. I rolled my eyes when I saw him cite an old quote from Hermann Goering, saying, “All you have to do is tell [people] they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.” But he placed it astride this real quote from California State Senator Richard Pan, about “anti-vaxxers”: “These extremists have not yet been held accountable, so they continue to escalate violence against the body public… We must now summon the political will to demand that domestic terrorists face consequences for their words and actions.”

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“Electric wildfires could burn millions of acres of trees with far less efficiency for only 10 times the price.!”

Joe Biden Announces By 2025 All Wildfires Must Be Electric (BBee)

Speaking from the White House, President Biden announced his administration’s bold plan to require all wildfires be electric by 2025. “My administration is committed to fighting pancakes, I mean climate change, and today we announce our boldest initiative yet!” mumbled the President to a group of dolls gathered in his closet he mistook for reporters gathered on the White House lawn. “By 2025, all wildfires will be powered exclusively by clean, electric energy. Gotta do it, folks! Not a joke! I wonder what that redhead smells like!” The Biden team unveiled details of the plan, including new statutes mandating all wildfires obtain permits for electric usage before being allowed to burn down acres of forest land.

“Electric wildfires are the future of climate technology,” declared Mark Patterson, a representative from the Bureau of Land Management. “I’m thrilled to see our president take a powerful position against destructive, gas-powered wildfires. Electric wildfires could burn millions of acres of trees with far less efficiency for only 10 times the price.!” The Biden administration told reporters they’ve spoken with wildfires across the country and have nearly reached an agreement with the fires, which includes provisions to convert current wood-burning fires into electric-only in just three years. The President hailed the move as another major step forward in his administration’s ongoing commitment to spend as many federal dollars on completely normal, practical, common-sense climate initiatives as possible. Critics say the plan could use up precious cobalt meant for iPhones and Teslas.

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Loudest bird
https://twitter.com/i/status/1669317438574415873

 

 

Komodo

 

 

Eagle ray
https://twitter.com/i/status/1669383386832486402

 

 

Young ‘uns

 

 

Owl’s ear
https://twitter.com/i/status/1669363135294078979

 

 

Sequoia
https://twitter.com/i/status/1669357721030914051

 

 

Fuxi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1669391436557451267

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jun 122023
 


George Bellows The Lone Tenement 1909

 

NYT Reveals Western Definition Of Success For Ukraine’s Counteroffensive (RT)
Botched Start of Counteroffensive Likely Extremely Frustrating for Biden (Sp.)
Most Countries Side With Russia in Ukraine, US Credibility Slips – Hersh (Sp.)
More Than 10 of 31 NATO States Don’t Support Ukraine’s Bid – Kiev (RT)
West Has Zero Chances To Bring Russia To Its Knees, Says Top Senator (TASS)
Losing The War – What Comes Next On The Battlefield (Helmer)
Ukraine’s Propaganda Machine Is Vital For Zelensky (Lavrenin)
The Hegemon Will Go Full Hybrid War Against BRICS+ (Pepe Escobar)
Rand Paul: My Colleagues Are ‘Beating The Drums’ For ‘War With China’ (RS)
Imran Khan Claims US Plotted Against Him After Russia Deal (RT)
One Document Americans Should ‘Demand’ That Will Topple Biden (CB)
Schiff Complains About $16 Million Fine Over Trump-Russia Collusion Claim (CB)
De-Dollarization is Remedy Against US Militarism (Michael Hudson)
Europe’s Digital Services Act Puts Free Speech at the Mercy of Eurocrats (BI)

 

 

 

 

RFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1667826698476453889

 

 


4 U.S.Code Ch. 1, Sec. 7(e): “The flag of the United States of America should be at the center and at the highest point of the group when a number of flags…are grouped and displayed…”

 

 

RFK event 201
https://twitter.com/i/status/1667890309668192256

 

 

 

 

Ratcliffe

 

 

 

 

COP28

 

 

 

 

Xi Jinping: Stop blaming China. China does not help the Russian Federation, but if it decides to help, God will not help you. Almost the whole world helps Ukraine. If we see the threat of World War III, we will help the Russian Federation, but for now, relax and watch how Russia single-handedly defeats more than 50 countries of the world.

 

 

 

 

“..retake key areas lost to Moscow or deliver a “debilitating” blow to Russian forces..”

“..Kiev’s forces have been suffering far heavier casualties in those failed attacks than the “classic” three-to-one ratio..”

NYT Reveals Western Definition Of Success For Ukraine’s Counteroffensive (RT)

The West would consider Ukraine’s counteroffensive a success if Kiev were to retake key areas lost to Moscow or deliver a “debilitating” blow to Russian forces, the New York Times has reported, citing US and EU officials. “Much rides on the outcome” of the counteroffensive as it will likely impact further Western military support for Ukraine and future discussions on security guarantees for the country, the US paper said in an article on Saturday. Publicly, US and EU officials claim it’s up to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to decide what to define as a success in the long-awaited operation, the NYT noted.

Zelensky previously said he wanted his forces to win back all land lost to Moscow, which includes Russia’s newly incorporated territories – the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, and the Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions – along with Crimea, which became part of the Russian Federation in 2014 following a referendum, launched in response to a coup in Kiev. “Privately, US and European officials concede that pushing all of Russia’s forces out of occupied Ukrainian land is highly unlikely,” the NYT wrote. Two main outcomes are being discussed in the West as ideas of a success in the counteroffensive, according to the paper. The first is that “the Ukrainian army retake and hold on to key swaths of territory previously occupied by the Russians,” and the second is if Kiev’s troops deliver “a debilitating blow that forces the Kremlin to question the future of its military options in Ukraine.” On Thursday, news website Politico reported that the White House was “anxiously watching” the progress of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, as administration officials believe President Joe Biden’s reputation depends on its results.

Kiev was expected to launch a major counteroffensive at some point in spring, having been supplied with Western armor intended for the task, but the operation has been delayed on numerous occasions. On Saturday, Zelensky finally confirmed that Ukrainian “counteroffensive actions” were underway. This followed a week of intensified attacks on Russian fortified positions across the frontline by Kiev’s troops. They involved German-made Leopard 2 tanks and US-supplied Bradley fighting vehicles, some of which have already been destroyed. President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russia’s military has so far prevented all attempts to advance by Ukraine. Kiev’s forces have been suffering far heavier casualties in those failed attacks than the “classic” three-to-one ratio often expected during offensive operations, Putin insisted.

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“Destruction of Leopard stopped the US from sending Abrams tanks to Kyiv. Military observer, retired colonel Viktor Litovkin told the media that the destruction of Leopard tanks in Ukraine showed Washington the pointlessness of sending its Abrams tanks to Kyiv. According to the expert, the United States knew that Leopard tanks would “burn” in Ukraine, so they did not let Abrams into the special operation zone. Washington did not want the destruction of American tanks by Russian troops to deal a blow to the image of their military equipment.”

Botched Start of Counteroffensive Likely Extremely Frustrating for Biden (Sp.)

With Russia continuing its special military operation in Ukraine, it is safe to say that Kiev’s much-hyped counteroffensive kicked off with “not really a good start,” international relations and security analyst Mark Sleboda told Sputnik. President Vladimir Putin announced earlier this week that Kiev’s use of strategic reserves during recent attacks means it can be “stated with absolute certainty” that the much-anticipated counteroffensive had begun. He stressed that thus far, Ukrainian forces have failed to achieve their objectives and that their advance-related plans had been thwarted by Russian troops.

All this “has got to be extremely frustrating” not only for the political figures of the Kiev regime, but for US President Joe Biden as well, given his murky past regarding Ukraine, Sleboda pointed out, claiming that the POTUS “has been intimately involved with Ukraine since the Obama presidency.” The analyst was apparently referring to Biden facing allegations that he was purportedly engaged in a spate of corrupt activities related to the employment of his son Hunter Biden by the Ukrainian gas company Burisma while he was the US vice president under Barack Obama. Biden has repeatedly rejected the allegations that he withheld loan guarantees to pressure Ukraine into firing a prosecutor to prevent a corruption investigation into Burisma and protect his son.

Sleboda recalled in this regard that a US news outlet recently claimed that “Biden’s reputation is on the line in Ukraine,” which, he said, is “an interesting political salvo at POTUS considering the situation.” Touching upon the counteroffensive, the analyst said that while the Ukrainian military “hasn’t committed the majority of their forces yet, everything they’ve thrown so far has failed to breach Russian lines for any significant period at any place for an entire week now.” “That has got to have him [Biden] worried if his political legacy is on the line,” Sleboda underscored. “From everything that we have seen so far, I expect them to make some headway eventually, but they’re not off to a really good start. “I expect some dirty tricks, some cunning maneuver to be pulled out of the bag,” Sleboda concluded.

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“Much more than a half of the world’s population supports Russia in the war and not the United States. This was never the way it was..”

Most Countries Side With Russia in Ukraine, US Credibility Slips – Hersh (Sp.)

Most of the world’s population supports Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, while the United States lost its credibility, Pulitzer Prize-winning US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said on Sunday. “The percentage of the [countries], particularly of the African and Central Asian and South Asian countries, that have changed from being pro-America to being pro-Russia is really quite dramatic. Much more than a half of the world’s population supports Russia in the war and not the United States. This was never the way it was,” Hersh said in an interview with talk show host George Galloway. The journalist opined that “things are not as good as they used to be in Russia” amid Western sanctions, but “the idea that they are desperate is just wrong.”


Hersh also argued that Washington “lost so much credibility around the world,” citing Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic rapprochement with Iran as an example. “It’s happened because, I think, because of Ukraine and dislike of the war. Saudi Arabia, by the way, they’re selling 25% of [their] oil to China, as I have mentioned, but the Saudis immediately cut a deal. And the Iranians immediately responded … They have a lot of control in Yemen over the Houthi tribes,” Hersh said. Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, following calls for help from the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The world has split into those who support Moscow and accuse NATO of provoking the conflict, and those who condemn Russia’s actions and impose sanctions on the country, while also ramping up their financial and military aid to Kiev. Some countries have avoided taking sides in the conflict.

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“..another stage of preparation for the successful NATO Summit in Vilnius in July..” Huh?

More Than 10 of 31 NATO States Don’t Support Ukraine’s Bid – Kiev (RT)

More than ten NATO member states out of 31 don’t want Ukraine to join the US-led military bloc, Igor Zhovkva, the deputy head of Vladimir Zelensky’s office, has stated.Kiev already has 20 signed declarations of support for its NATO bid, Zhovkva wrote on Facebook on Saturday. This means that 11 member states have so far refused to back Kiev’s application. Zhovkva published his post hours after Zelensky and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signed a document in Kiev that signaled Ottawa’s consent to Ukraine becoming a part of NATO. “The joint declaration clearly fixes backing for Ukraine’s membership of NATO from the Canadian side as soon as conditions permit this. This is the strongest wording among all G7 countries that are NATO members,” Zhovkva wrote. A similar declaration has also recently been signed with the government of Romania, Zhovkva added.


According to the deputy head of Vladimir Zelensky’s office, those developments were “another stage of preparation for the successful NATO Summit in Vilnius in July” for Ukraine. Earlier this week, US envoy to NATO Julianne Smith told Politico that “a proper invitation” into NATO for Ukraine is “unlikely” as long as Kiev remains in conflict with Moscow. However, Smith pointed out that during the upcoming gathering in the Lithuanian capital, the bloc still wanted to send a message to Kiev that it was determined to keep helping it in the long term. There’s an “array of options” for NATO to do so, she added. Russia, which sees NATO’s eastward expansion as a major security threat, had singled out Kiev’s push to join the US-led military alliance among the main reasons for launching its military operation in Ukraine more than a year ago.

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“..it must be strong in all respects, technologically, economically, socially and morally and, what is especially important today, militarily and in the security sphere..”

West Has Zero Chances To Bring Russia To Its Knees, Says Top Senator (TASS)

The months that have passed since the start of the special military operation in Ukraine have shown that the West has zero chances to crush Russia and bring it to its knees, Chairwoman of the Federation Council (the upper house of Russia’s parliament) Valentina Matviyenko said on Sunday. “If we speak about our actions inside the country, the main conclusion is perfectly clear: Russia must be strong. Moreover, it must be strong in all respects, technologically, economically, socially and morally and, what is especially important today, militarily and in the security sphere,” the top senator said on her blog on the eve of Russia Day celebrated on June 12. “Today, 15 months after the start of the special military operation, it is perfectly clear that there are zero chances to crush our country and bring it to its knees. Russia’s victory in the conflict around Ukraine is inevitable,” Matviyenko stressed.


The Russian authorities have managed within the shortest time possible to adapt the state, society and the economy to new realities, she pointed out. “They have managed to do this without deteriorating the quality of people’s life, without any flip-flopping in the public and political sphere, without even the slightest restrictions of citizens’ rights and freedoms. Without abrupt changes in economic management, although there were plenty of calls for that,” the top senator said. “Of course, we are fully aware that we will have to face new serious challenges and we need to address them fully prepared, which will, undoubtedly, require a new quality of interaction between the authorities and society. We will ensure this because over the thirty years of Russia’s newest history we have put a reliable and strong foundation under our state and public system,” Matviyenko stressed.

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“..demilitarization will be run by the Russian General Staff until there are no strategic reserves left on the territory – not east of the Dnieper River, nor west..”

Losing The War – What Comes Next On The Battlefield (Helmer)

On May 30 Putin signaled that in the outcome of the war, the Ukraine will cease to exist. “Basically, the territory that is called Ukraine”, Putin said, using the geographic term instead of the political and legal one, “was virtually controlled from the very beginning by people who, being led by the West, took the path of not just confronting Russia, but creating an “anti-Russia” on that territory… We are striking at the territory of Ukraine, but with long-range precision weapons, at military infrastructure facilities only, either at ammunition or fuel and lubricants warehouses used for combat operations. We have talked about the possibility of striking at decision-making centres. Of course, the headquarters of Ukrainian military intelligence is one of them, and a strike at this target was carried out two or three days ago. In response, the Kiev regime has chosen a different path – attempts to intimidate Russian citizens with strikes at residential buildings. This is an obvious terrorist approach.” In short, the Russian campaign is not against a state but on a territory run by terrorists.

The terrorist operations, it was implied, include the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines on September 26, 2022; the Crimean Bridge bombing of October 8, 2022; the drone attacks on Russian targets, including the Kremlin, last month; and the subsequent operations against the Kakhovskaya dam and the Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline on June 5-6. Putin’s May 30 statement was followed by a second, also apparently impromptu comment on the evening of June 9. The novel elements in what follows are the references to Ukrainian “strategic reserves” and to the Russian General Staff. “First, we can safely state that the offensive has begun. We know this from the fact that the Ukrainian army tapped its strategic reserves. This is my first point. Second, the Ukrainian troops failed to achieve their goals in all combat sectors, which is clear as day…I cannot say that the offensive has got bogged down. All I can say is that the counteroffensive attempts that have been made so far failed. But the offensive potential of the Kiev’s regime is still there. I believe Russia’s military leadership is realistic in its assessments of the situation and will proceed from these realities as it continues to plan up our actions in the short term.”

Since the commander-in-chief is doing the talking, he’s saying that he is letting “Russia’s military leadership” do all the running now, and it will be the military “realities” which will dictate the politics of the outcome. This also means that the “realities” of the territory of the Ukraine will be decided by military operations which, on the Russian side, have yet to get fully under way until the Ukrainian “strategic reserves” have been fully committed and defeated on the battlefield. Putin’s reference to “strategic reserves” includes the US and NATO weapons which have been committed so far, and destroyed — and those still to come from stocks in Poland, Romania, Germany, and in the western territory around Lvov. Against them, Putin noted “the high effectiveness of Russian weapons, especially the latest weapons. Indeed, we still do not have enough of the latest weapons, but the arms industry, the country’s defence industry is making strides, and I am sure that the defence industry will, without a doubt, fulfil its goals. The production of modern types of weapons is going at a fast pace.”

What does this mean? In the first place, demilitarization will be run by the Russian General Staff until there are no strategic reserves left on the territory – not east of the Dnieper River, nor west. If the NATO summit scheduled for July 11-12 in Vilnius is planning to place the rump of the Ukraine under NATO protection – “a certain order of accession”, according to Deputy Defense Minister Vladimir Gavrilov — then Putin is warning that there will be a Russian military solution to ensure that this cannot happen.

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“Today, information warfare is the core structure of any war..”

Ukraine’s Propaganda Machine Is Vital For Zelensky (Lavrenin)

In more than a year of hostilities, Kiev’s use of symbols and memes to raise or maintain morale and help control the narrative has been streamlined to a surprising extent. Google’s ranking of top Ukrainian search queries in 2022 is more proof. For example, in the “person” category, Ukrainians most often Googled “Alexey Arestovich” and showed interest in the “ghost of Kiev,” a legend of a supposed hero pilot which The Wall Street Journal admitted was fake military propaganda intended to raise morale. In the “purchase of the year” category, the postage stamp “Russian Ship” was among the most popular search queries. This was a stamp issued in honor of the soldiers on Snake Island who, as the fake story went, responded in abusive language to an offer from a Russian ship’s crew to surrender and fought to the death.

These border guards were “posthumously” awarded the Hero of Ukraine decoration but later it was revealed that all of them had voluntarily surrendered and were alive. The triumph of these symbols, which have endured long after being confirmed as fake, is a result of the information bubble in which Ukrainian society and much of the West has found itself. In the past year and a half since opposition media was blocked, government-controlled outlets are often the only source of information for Ukrainians. “Today, information warfare is the core structure of any war. It is very important to have influence over a society that is involved in combat. Moreover, it is essential to convince the world community of the rightness of our actions in order to receive further support. Not only authorized persons can take part in this information war, but also regular citizens who ‘fight’ at their own discretion,” Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Anna Maliar said in February.

Information and Psychological Operations (IPsO) are intended to brainwash people and shape public opinion, and they are among Kiev’s most important strategies in the conflict with Russia. In combat conditions, these operations are primarily aimed at demoralizing and disorganizing the enemy’s front and rear and inspiring a hopeless, doomed atmosphere. Usually, their main task is to discredit the military and political command and highlight defeat and failure.

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“..the swing state manifesto..”

The Hegemon Will Go Full Hybrid War Against BRICS+ (Pepe Escobar)

U.S. Think Tank Land – inebriated by their self-created aura of power – always telegraphs in advance what they’re up to. That was the case with Project 9/11 (“We need a new Pearl Harbor”). That was the case with the RAND report on over-extending and unbalancing Russia. And now that’s the case with the incoming. It’s always painful to suffer through the intellectually shallow Think Thank Land wet dreams masquerading as “analyses” but in this particular case key Global South players need to be firmly aware of what awaits them. Predictably, the whole “analysis” revolves around the imminent, devastating humiliation to the Hegemon and its vassals: what happens next in country 404, also known – for now – as Ukraine. Brazil, India, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia are dismissed as “four major fence-sitters” when it comes to the U.S./NATO proxy war against Russia.


It’s the same old “you’re with us or against us” trope. But then we are presented with the six major Global South culprits: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey. In yet another crude, parochial remix of a catch phrase referring to the American elections, these are qualified as the key swing states the Hegemon will need to seduce, cajole, intimidate and threaten to assure its dominance of the “rules-based international order”. Saudi Arabia and South Africa are added to a previous report focused on the “four major fence sitters”. The swing state manifesto notes that all of them are G-20 members and “active in both geopolitics and geoeconomics” (Oh really? Now that’s some breaking news). What it does not say is that three of them are BRICS members (Brazil, India, South Africa) and the other three are serious candidates to join BRICS+: deliberations will be turbo-charged in the upcoming BRICS summit in South Africa in August.

So it’s clear what the swing state manifesto is all about: a call to arms for the American war against the BRICS. The swing state manifesto harbors wet dreams of near-shoring and friend-shoring moving away from China. Nonsense: enhanced intra-BRICS+ trade will be the order of the day from now on, especially with the expanded practice of trade in national currencies (see Brazil-China or within ASEAN), the first step towards widespread de-dollarization. The swing states are characterized as “not a new incarnation” of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), or “other groupings dominated by the Global South, such as the G-77 and BRICS.” Talk about exponential nonsense. This is all about BRICS+ – which now has the tools (including the NDB, the BRICS bank) to do what NAM could never accomplish during the Cold War: establish the framework of a new system bypassing Bretton Woods and the interlocking coercion mechanisms of the Hegemon.


As for stating that BRICS has not “packed much punch” that only reveals U.S. Think Tank Land’s cosmic ignorance of what BRICS + is all about. The position of India is only considered in terms of being a Quad member – defined as a “U.S.-led effort to balance China”. Correction: contain China. As for the “choice” of swing states of choosing between the U.S. and China on semiconductors, AI, quantum technology, 5G and biotechnology, that’s not about “choice”, but to what level they are able to sustain Hegemon pressure to demonize Chinese technology.

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“My goodness, shouldn’t we be talking about how to avoid war with China, not making it inevitable?”

Rand Paul: My Colleagues Are ‘Beating The Drums’ For ‘War With China’ (RS)

Senator Rand Paul acknowledged Thursday that his fellow Republicans are obsessed with China — war with China, that is. The Kentucky Republican told an audience at the American Conservative’s annual foreign policy conference that he is concerned that hawks on Capitol Hill are going to march the country right into a conflict. “You come to my Republican caucus and you’ll hear the beating of drums. These are drums for war with whomever, but primarily war with China. Everything is about war with China.” Not everyone is high on the idea of conflict, he added. “I was in Hawaii recently, talking with some folks from our military out there in the Pacific. One of the higher ranking members came up to me and said, ‘take this message back to your fellow Senators: war with China is not inevitable.’”

“My goodness, shouldn’t we be talking about how to avoid war with China, not making it inevitable?” “We have had an uneasy peace with China, we’ve have an uneasy relationship between China, the U.S. and Taiwan,” Sen. Paul noted, but in the Committee on Foreign Relations, where he holds a seat, “there’s a new bill out each week on Taiwan, which usually includes harsh language on China, on how we’re going to war-plan, and what we’re going to do when China does this or that.” Paul added: “My point is that the less ambiguous you make your policy, the more you rant and rave, the more you make your policy more explicit for war,” the more dangerous and less leverage the U.S. has in the situation. “Strategic ambiguity has kept the peace for 50 years,” Paul charged.

The senator reinforced the importance of seeing foreign policy through the lens constitutional conservatism, something that his colleague Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) espoused in his own remarks at the conference. Paul said he would continue to push for the repeal of the 2001 AUMF (Authorization for the Use of Military Force), and is poised to criticize any use of a future Ukraine aid bill or emergency spending to pad the Pentagon budget. He also doubted that there has been enough effort to end the war in Ukraine (he had signed a letter to President Biden earlier this year opposing new Ukraine aid without a strategy for peace). “That country is being destroyed. Give it another year and it will be more destroyed. There ultimately must be a peace. If you think wars are going to end by the good defeating evil you are not being realistic. You need a negotiated peace.”

Read more …

Pakistan is a nuclear power. These are dangerous games.

Imran Khan Claims US Plotted Against Him After Russia Deal (RT)

Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan, who was arrested last month on corruption charges, has claimed in a wide-ranging interview with Newsweek published on Saturday that the United States exerted diplomatic pressure to remove him from office last year. Speaking to the US publication, Khan said he visited Russia on the same day that Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine in February 2022 – and that while he didn’t agree with the motives behind the offensive, he refused calls to condemn the action, so as to not jeopardize a trade agreement. The US “wanted us, through the United Nations, to condemn Russia,” said Khan, who explained that his government had arranged an agreement to import “cheap oil”and wheat from Moscow. “If we condemn them right now, what about the impact it’s going to have on our population?”

Khan added that, after a meeting in early March of 2022 between Pakistani and US diplomats, he was informed that unless he was removed as prime minister, there would be “consequences.” “Next day, there’s the no-confidence motion tables in the National Assembly,” Khan said. “And before that, we see that the American Embassy is meeting our parliamentarians, our backbenchers.” He added that he was “puzzled” as to why the US would “object to a deal.” The US has said there is “no truth” to Khan’s repeated claims of a Washington-backed conspiracy against him. Khan has been accused of an array of charges, ranging from corruption to sedition, since he was ousted from power last April after losing a no-confidence vote. He denies all accusations of wrongdoing.

Khan, a former cricket star, has accused what he referred to as Pakistan’s “undemocratic” military chief as being behind his May arrest, which sparked a wave of protests among his supporters. He is accused by the authorities of exchanging political favors for cash while in office. Charges against Khan have inflamed what was already a precarious political balancing act in Islamabad, as the country of 231 million people grapples with soaring food prices, an extended economic crisis, and extremist violence. Discussions with the IMF over an economic bailout have also stagnated amid the political rancor. Earlier this week, Khan was named by Pakistani police in connection to a case against unidentified gunmen following the murder of a lawyer who was investigating sedition charges against the former premier.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1667889468672466944

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Wonder what Burisma is doing these days.

One Document Americans Should ‘Demand’ That Will Topple Biden (CB)

A former chief prosecutor from Ukraine identified a document he said Americans should “demand” that allegedly proves beyond any doubt that President Joe Biden is corrupt. The prosecutor, Victor Shokin, was targeted for dismissal by Biden when he served as Barack Obama’s vice president and was the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine at the time. On Friday, Chanel Rion, a White House correspondent for One America News, re-posted a 2019 interview she had with Shokin where he explained the allegation. At the time, the Democrat-controlled House was preparing to impeach then-President Donald Trump for the first time, alleging he engaged in a “quid pro quo” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Democrats charged that Trump threatened to withhold military aid unless Zelensky assisted in an investigation into alleged corrupt actions by Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, the latter of whom was serving a profitable stint on the board of a Ukrainian energy company that Shokin had once been investigating. The Senate found Trump innocent of the allegation. Biden, meanwhile, was seen in a video clip that surfaced explaining that he, as VP, actually threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid from then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko unless he fired then-Prosecutor General Shokin. Poroshenko did just that.

In his subsequent interview with OAN, Shokin told Rion that the transcript of a phone call between Biden and Poroshenko would allegedly prove he was using a quid pro quo bribe to force the Ukrainians to halt a corruption investigation into a company his son was serving on as a board member for a reported $50,000 a month. “The transcripts of Biden’s telephone conversations with Poroshenko is where the truth will show itself. Americans must demand it. And if they do, they will see, broad as day, Joe Biden was illegally influencing foreign officials in order to protect his son Hunter and shield illegal money laundering activities,” Shokin told Rion. In a tweet containing a video clip of her interview, Rion added: “Just 1 yr after this interview in Kiev, I found the recordings and reported on it. Shokin confirmed their authenticity.”

Meanwhile, on Friday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) noted that there are two additional FBI forms containing damning information about Biden besides the one that the House Oversight Committee has under subpoena. Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has said that the FD-1023 document, created by the FBI based on a “highly credible” source, indicates Biden’s involvement in a pay-to-play scheme during his tenure as vice president. In an exclusive interview with the Daily Caller, Greene disclosed the contents of the document that she read at a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF). She mentioned that she and fellow members were prohibited from making copies or taking notes, but she disregarded these restrictions and managed to take “very detailed notes” anyway.

Greene told the Caller that information in the subpoenaed document “implicates Joe Biden in a pay-to-play scheme bribery scheme to get a prosecutor fired that was investigating Burisma where Hunter Biden sat on the board.” In addition, she said the FBI informant is “extremely credible” and added that the document “implicates our national security” because it puts Americans “at risk” regarding the war in Ukraine. “This is an impeachable document. President Biden should be impeached. Secondly, he should be prosecuted. This is unbelievable. It’s a pay-to-play scheme. He took a bribe from a foreign national in a foreign country that paid millions of dollars,” Greene told the outlet. “He needs to be prosecuted for this, and I would argue that he should serve jail time.”

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“Back down from what Adam? Name one Republican that won’t vote to censure you? America and I are wondering,” she wrote, adding: “It’s not up to you.”

Schiff Complains About $16 Million Fine Over Trump-Russia Collusion Claim (CB)

Former House Intelligence Committee chairman and current U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Adam Schiff was blasted by Republicans after he complained on Friday about potentially being fined $16 million for falsely claiming for years to have evidence that then-President Donald Trump “colluded” with Russia to win the 2016 election. Last week, Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna discussed the House Oversight Committee’s ongoing efforts to hold former Schiff accountable during an interview with Fox News. “I will speak to Adam Schiff. Maria, I have a privileged resolution that I’m bringing to the floor, and we are going to fine that man 16 million dollars for using his position to lie to the American people and ultimately push something that not only destroyed our country but ripped us apart and I believe, maybe even permanently damaging foreign relations. He is a criminal, and Adam Schiff, you will be held accountable,” Paulina Luna said.

“And yet, he was privileged to information that not even I or many of my colleagues would be able to see,” Paulina Luna went on to say. “He used that position. He absolutely aided and abetted a corrupt FBI into investigating a sitting president.” That led Schiff to respond on Twitter: “Last week a GOP Representative filed a motion to expel me from the U.S. House of Representatives. Just now that same representative filed a motion to censure and fine me—to the tune of $16 million. They aren’t getting the message: It will not work. I will not back down.” His response, in turn, drew one from Luna, who roasted him for it. “Back down from what Adam? Name one Republican that won’t vote to censure you? America and I are wondering,” she wrote, adding: “It’s not up to you.”

Luna introduced her resolution in May to fine Schiff for making claims that she says triggered several pointless and unnecessary — and costly — investigations. “I just filed a privileged resolution, H. Res. 437, to censure, condemn, and fine Rep. Adam Schiff $16 million (1/2 the cost of Russia investigation) for his egregious abuse of trust. I, with my GOP colleagues, look forward to an imminent vote to hold this feckless man accountable,” she wrote on Twitter. Luna also introduced a measure to expel Schiff from the House of Representatives after Special Counsel John Durham’s report revealed he repeatedly lied about “collusion” between former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.

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“You have to make the American labor force the poorest labor force in the West..”

De-Dollarization is Remedy Against US Militarism (Michael Hudson)

Creating an alternative to the US dollar is the only way to prevent the world from the Washington-led militarization, Prof. Michael Hudson, a US economist and former Wall Street analyst, told Sputnik’s New Rules podcast. The de-dollarization trend is gaining momentum, with American scholars warning that there is seemingly no way back. Washington’s decision to freeze Russia’s Central Bank’s foreign reserves over Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine has seemingly became the last straw for the countries of the Global South, which have increasingly started to look for an alternative to the US dollar. “For the last year and a half, America has said, ‘if other countries hold their dollars and European banks or American banks and they do something that we don’t like, we have a right to grab all of their dollars and simply take them’,” Prof. Michael Hudson told Sputnik.

“For instance, Venezuela wanted to have a socialist government. So America told England, ‘Take all of Venezuela’s gold and seize it, and we will designate somebody we think should be president of Venezuela, Mr. Grito, or Guaido’. And so Venezuela lost its gold supply. A year ago in February, America simply grabbed all of Russia’s savings in the West. Americans told China, Iran, other countries: ‘If you don’t impose the sanctions against Russia and China, if you don’t commit economic suicide by letting America colonize you financially, we will just grab all of your money. Everything’s fair play. You’re holding dollars. We get to grab it’.” So, the US showed everyone in the world that the dollar is no longer safe, that the greenback is now a political currency, the professor continued. But that’s half the story, according to him. One might ask: how are these dollars being pumped into the world economy?

“Ever since the Korean War, the major factor in the American balance of payments deficit that sent dollars abroad has been military spending,” Hudson said. “So, when other countries keep their foreign exchange reserves in dollars – Europe, Russia, China – they hold these dollars safely in Treasury securities. Buying the Treasury Security has been the way of funding America’s 800 military bases surrounding them. So, foreign countries have paid for America to surround them with military bases and to fund America’s military, because the dollars that are in the world are the monetization of American military spending. That’s what my book ‘Super Imperialism’ was all about. This was a very conscious policy by the United States, by the Defense Department.”

[..] the New Development Bank (NDB), an international financial organization established by BRICS in 2014, could become a sort of clearing center that would simplify the issue of payments for mutual deliveries of goods, the minister explained. BRICS nations have also proposed that the new common currency might be secured not just by gold, but also by other groups of products, such as rare-earth elements. “When it is finished being discussed, people will not have to deal with dollars at all anymore,” Hudson assumed. “And in fact, of their trade with the United States, they can say, well, if you want to buy something from China, you pay in our currency. We’re not going to cut back our spending on the United States.

And all of a sudden, if the United States is unable to have other people keep their savings in dollars, meaning buying Treasury securities, then how are they going to pay the international balance of payments cost of their military spending? They won’t be able to spend it militarily abroad.” “The only way they can do it is drastically cut back imports in America. And to do that, you have to cut wage rates by 20%. You have to make the American labor force the poorest labor force in the West so that all of the balance of payments, money that’s spent, is not on buying goods and services to consume, but only for military spending.

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Civil servants that smell power. “..voluntary code of practice against disinformation.”

Europe’s Digital Services Act Puts Free Speech at the Mercy of Eurocrats (BI)

The European Union’s Internal Market Commissioner, Thierry Breton, was apparently miffed that Elon Musk withdrew Twitter from the EU’s “voluntary code of practice against disinformation.” He was sufficiently put out by Twitter’s withdrawal from the “voluntary code” that he felt the need to publicly reprimand Twitter for not gratefully submitting to the European Union’s expert guidance: “You can run but you can’t hide…Beyond voluntary commitments, fighting disinformation will be legal obligation under Digital Services Act as of August 25th.” The declared aim of the new Digital Service Act is “to contribute to the proper functioning of the internal market for intermediary services by setting out harmonised rules for a safe, predictable and trusted online environment that facilitates innovation and in which fundamental rights enshrined in the Charter, including the principle of consumer protection, are effectively protected.”

Who can argue against a “safe, predictable and trusted online environment?” Who would argue against “consumer protection?” And who would argue against Mr Breton’s commitment to the fight against “disinformation?” I certainly would, because when a person or institution in a position of great power endorses values like “predictability,” rails against “disinformation,” and promises to keep us all “safe” on the internet, you can be sure that it will be “safety,” “predictability,” and “disinformation,” as viewed from their self-serving ideological and political perspective. I am just as worried as Mr Breton about “disinformation,” but my chief concern is with disinformation coming from official sources, which can do an extraordinary amount of harm due to the extraordinary reach and prestige of official organisations.

It is these same organisations that Mr Breton would like to put in charge of policing “disinformation:” organisations like national governments, that have been among the most frequent perpetrators of false and misleading information, on matters of no small moment, from the efficacy and safety of Covid vaccines, masks and lockdowns to the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the true standing of climate “science,” and the potential harms to the economy and food supply chain of aggressive climate interventions such as the expropriation of farmland. The Digital Services Act is an endless maze of complicated regulations worthy of a team of lawyers. Seeing as I don’t have a budget to hire a team of lawyers, I decided to skim through the Act for myself.

It does not make for pleasant bedtime reading, not only because it is a morass of complicated legalese, but also, because what hides behind this legalese is an attempt by EU politicians to get social media platforms under their thumb, through • the obligation on the part of social media companies to periodically submit content moderation and “risk mitigation” reports to EU bureacrats • EU supervision of social media platforms’ policing of “harmful” information, which could potentially include health misinformation as well as “illegal hate speech” • the creation of new emergency powers in the European Commission to “require” social media platforms to take actions to “prevent, eliminate or limit” any use of their services that might “contribute” to a “threat” to public security or public health …and all backed up by crippling fines of up to 6 percent of a company’s worldwide turnover for non-compliance. Yes, you heard that right: up to six percent of a company’s worldwide turnover.

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‘The 9 Rules For All Roadrunner And Wile E. Coyote Interactions’ – a fascinating & fantastic guide by animation director and creator Chuck Jones for all the animators working on the Cartoon.

 

 

Great white

 

 


The takin is a large and now rare species of ungulate of the subfamily Caprinae found in the eastern Himalayas. Largely due to overhunting and the destruction of their natural habitat, takin are considered Endangered in China and Vulnerable per the IUCN https://buff.ly/2LTaRNS

 

 

Ants

 

 


Still one of the best results of bus advertising: a giant constrictor snake squeezing Copenhagen citybus as part of a campaign for the city zoo

 

 

Transfo
https://twitter.com/i/status/1667925448511160321

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

May 042023
 


Pablo Picasso The first communion 1896 (he was 14-15)

 

Medvedev Urges ‘Physical Removal’ Of Zelensky (RT)
Kremlin Accuses Ukraine Of Trying To Assassinate Putin (RT)
Zelenskyy: Ukraine To Receive Combat Aircraft After Start Of Offensive (Az.)
US in Talks on Establishing Military Bases in Finland (Antiwar)
Russia To Retaliate In Case NATO Uses Finnish Territory – Zakharova (TASS)
The ‘Clash Of Civilizations’ Is Already Underway (Fomenko)
EU Bans Ukraine Grain Exports To Five Members (RT)
RFK Jr Shares Opinion On Key US Mistake With Russia (RT)
RFK Jr Pledges To Pardon Assange (RT)
The US Dollar is Finished (Paul Craig Roberts)
Pepe Escobar: Global De-Dollarization Nearing ‘Crossroads Moment’ (Sputnik)
South American Nations Seek To Avoid Dollar (RT)
Asian Nations Sign Pact To Shift Away From Dollar (RT)
Who Is Winning The Scramble For Africa? (Fazi)
PacWest Craters 60% On Report It Is Seeking Buyers Or Capital Raise (ZH)
God Save Us All: Britain Is About To Get The King It Deserves (Marche)

 

 

 

 

Racist Biden

 

 

 

 

McLuhan

 

 

Gervais

 

 

https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1653654163388088320

‘The Anglo-Saxons have not abandoned their plans to build a unipolar world, they want to destroy or weaken Russia, but do not take into account its power;
‘Experiments to revive neo-Nazi ideology in the West must be harshly suppressed, they lead to a global catastrophe;
‘The situation in the U.S. is becoming turbulent and unmanageable;
‘The U.S. intends to use Ukraine only as a territory with resources and does not seek to preserve it as a state;
‘European politics is in the deepest moral and intellectual decline;
‘The U.S., using NATO mechanisms, in fact, occupied Europe, European officials obediently carry out the military tasks of the alliance;
‘The U.S. has not seen combat on its continent in nearly 160 years, so American elites easily talk about the need to arm themselves and prepare for the resumption of atomic testing;
‘The West continues to steadily increase political, military and economic pressure on Russia;
‘Many U.S. and European citizens feel good about Russia and could become Russian citizens if they wanted to;
Russia continues to uphold traditional values that have been trampled in the U.S., so the number of Americans wishing to move here is only growing;
‘The West uses terrorist and extremist organizations against Russia;
‘The U.S. is not shy about speaking about the use of Russia’s water resources by all nations of the world;
‘EU officials ignore the arguments of professional environmentalists about the benefits of cooperation with Russia in the field of energy.
 

 

 

 

They’re trying to make you believe Russia did this, like Nordstream. I was going to wait and see. And then I read this:

“The Ukrainian postal service has already released a stamp design showing the Kremlin in flames, however, just as they did after the Crimean Bridge bombing last October – also denied by Zelensky and his government.”

Medvedev Urges ‘Physical Removal’ Of Zelensky (RT)

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev drew a comparison between Ukraine and Nazi Germany on Wednesday, after two drones targeted the Kremlin. The vice-chair of the national security council urged Moscow to retaliate against President Vladimir Zelensky. “After today’s terrorist act, there are no options left but the physical removal of Zelensky and his clique,” Medvedev wrote on Telegram. “We don’t need him to sign [their] unconditional surrender. Hitler, as it is known, didn’t sign his either. There will always be someone like Admiral Doenitz to sit in as president,” he added, in reference to the Nazi officer who officially replaced Hitler after he committed suicide in April 1945 and presided over Germany’s capitulation. Medvedev’s ire was provoked by last night’s drone attack on Moscow, which Russia blamed on Ukraine. Two UAVs exploded over the Kremlin and the Russian Senate, with authorities saying they were brought down by air defenses. There were no injuries or reports of damage.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was not in the Kremlin at the time, working from another residence instead. “We consider this a premeditated terrorist action and an attempt against the Russian president,” the Kremlin said in a statement after the incident, adding that “Russia reserves the right to retaliate in a manner, place and time of its choosing.” City authorities in Moscow and St. Petersburg have already responded by imposing a ban on drone flights. Medvedev was president of Russia between 2008 and 2012, and then prime minister until 2020. Currently, he serves as the deputy chair of the national security council, which is formally chaired by Putin. Despite his prior reputation as a moderate liberal, he has been far more hawkish on Ukraine than the official Kremlin.

Last week, for example, Medvedev advocated “mass destruction of personnel and military equipment”and a “maximum military defeat” of Kiev once the much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive begins, arguing that the “Nazi regime in Kiev” must be “completely dismantled” and “former Ukraine”entirely demilitarized. Kiev has officially denied having anything to do with the drones. Zelensky insisted that Ukraine fights on its own territory and has no weapons to reach Moscow. His aide, Mikhail Podoliak, insisted Ukraine was fighting “an exclusively defensive war” and claimed the Kremlin attack was the work of “local resistance forces” in Russia. The Ukrainian postal service has already released a stamp design showing the Kremlin in flames, however, just as they did after the Crimean Bridge bombing last October – also denied by Zelensky and his government.

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If this had been the White House the US would strike hard.

Kremlin Accuses Ukraine Of Trying To Assassinate Putin (RT)

Russia says it downed two drones that were targeting the Kremlin in Moscow last night and accused Ukraine of attempting to kill President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin said the drones were disabled by special services using electronic radar assets. Mr Putin was not in the Kremlin at the time, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the state news agency, adding there was no material damage to buildings. Ukraine says it is making no comment. Unverified footage on Russian social media showed smoke over central Moscow in the early hours of Wednesday. In a statement, the Kremlin said: “Last night, the Kyiv regime attempted to carry out a strike on the Kremlin residence of the President of the Russian Federation with unmanned aerial vehicles.”


It said it regarded this “as a planned terrorist act and an assassination attempt on the president”, and Russia “reserves the right to take retaliatory measures wherever and whenever is deemed necessary”. Mr Putin had not been hurt and his schedule would continue as normal, the statement said. Fragments of the drones had fallen on the Kremlin site but no-one had been hurt, it said. The Kremlin also noted the incident had come shortly before Russia’s 9 May Victory Day parade, which foreign dignitaries were expected to attend. The Ukrainian presidential office told the BBC it was not commenting at this time.

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“But we like your planes…”

Zelenskyy: Ukraine To Receive Combat Aircraft After Start Of Offensive (Az.)

Partners will provide Ukraine with combat aircraft after the start of the offensive of its armed forces, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at a press conference with President of Finland Sauli Niinisto, Report informs referring to UNIAN. The president of Finland noted that the country is ready to provide its own fighter jets to Ukraine. He noted that Finland does not have F-16 aircraft, but there are Hornet fighters, but they are very old, and there are not very many of them. “The Finnish position is geographically significantly different from many European countries and NATO countries… Now we are replacing outdated Hornets with F-35s. These are very large purchase volumes for a country like us,” he said.


At the same time, the president of Finland added that his country could not give Ukraine its Hornets before it received new aircraft, and by that time the Hornets would already be unusable. “But we like your planes…” Zelenskyy replied. He once again stressed that Ukraine needs combat aircraft. Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal said in early April that the Ukrainian counteroffensive could begin in the summer.

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NATO on Russia’s borders.

US in Talks on Establishing Military Bases in Finland (Antiwar)

The US and Finland are working out a deal that would allow the US to establish a military presence in the Nordic country, as Helsinki is now a member of NATO. According to Newsweek, Finnish Foreign Ministry official Mikael Antell confirmed the two nations are negotiating a Defense Cooperation Agreement that may allow for the construction of significant military infrastructure on Finnish soil. The potential agreement would not include nuclear weapons, although Finnish officials have previously not ruled out hosting nukes. The US has nuclear weapons stationed in five NATO countries under the alliance’s nuclear sharing program but not in any nations that became members after the end of the Cold War. Antell said the potential DCA “enables troops to enter the country, stay on the ground, the pre-storage of material and possible infrastructure investments through the funds granted by the US Congress to the Pentagon.”


The US and Finland have been in talks on the DCA since last fall, and discussions on the deal took place in Helsinki last week. “The agreement also defines the facilities and areas where the cooperation would be focused,” Antell said. “They are basically military areas and garrisons. In principle, there can be more than one, but the discussions are still open in this regard.” Finland shares an over 800-mile border with Russia, and its ascension into NATO means the region will become further militarized. Moscow has plans to beef up its military presence near the border in western Russia and has said it will take more steps to respond to the expansion of NATO infrastructure in Finland.

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Finland has been warned.

Russia To Retaliate In Case NATO Uses Finnish Territory – Zakharova (TASS)

Russia will be forced to take military-technical and other retaliatory measures if NATO uses Finland’s territory, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. “We are closely following NATO’s plans regarding Finland. We confirm that Russia will be forced to take retaliatory measures of both military-technical and other nature to curb threats to our national security that appear in this connection,” the diplomat said at the briefing on Wednesday, commenting on the plans to conclude an agreement allowing the US military to use Finnish territory. The spokeswoman also pointed out that Moscow regarded such plans as Helsinki’s loss of sovereignty. “However, both Finland itself and NATO must realize that pumping Northern Europe with troops will only contribute to growing military and political tensions in this region as well,” Zakharova concluded.

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“The concept of “globalization” has shifted from being a West-dominated phenomenon, no longer synonymous with “Westernization,” to a more diverse one which the US and collective West realize they no longer control.”

The ‘Clash Of Civilizations’ Is Already Underway (Fomenko)

For the past 400 years or so, Western nations have dominated the world. European empires, as well as the United States, subjugated nations and built colonial states across the globe. This was done primarily for economic reasons, allowing these countries to enrich themselves at the expense of colonies and creating vast commercial empires which were enforced by military power. Such imperialists framed themselves as benevolent guardians who represented a higher form of civilization and values which they were “bringing” to the colonized. Thus, as they spread their empires throughout Africa, Latin America, the Indian subcontinent, Asia, and elsewhere. Westerners also sought to expand their ideology and value systems. It is because of this that “Westernization” and “globalization” have effectively meant the same thing, as the empires of old were the ones that brought the world together through the economic and trading system they created.

But starting in the 20th century, many of the countries which were colonized by the West started to resist their oppressors, and movements for independence and liberation surged. One such movement, of course, was the rise of the Communist Party in China led by Mao Zedong, and every movement he inspired. While the US triumphed in the original Cold War and ushered in a new wave of globalization, styled as Pax-Americana, that era has now come to an end. This is because the world has changed, specifically through the emergence of China as a global power. The concept of “globalization” has shifted from being a West-dominated phenomenon, no longer synonymous with “Westernization,” to a more diverse one which the US and collective West realize they no longer control.

In other words, “globalization” is no longer a one-way road whereby the West imposes its values unilaterally on the rest of the world in conjunction with economic dominance. Countries such as China, as seen through programs such as the Belt and Road Initiative, are able to benefit from it too. This is where the new “clash of civilizations” comes in, precisely because China has gained the ability to challenge the West’s vision for the world on a scale never seen before, and even surpassing that of the former Soviet Union. Contemporary China frames itself as a model within a multipolar order, seeking to reject the Western-centric version which has dominated the world for centuries and allowed these countries to exploit and change others. In doing so, China refuses “Westernization” and positions itself as its own “civilizational pole.”

Of course, it is not alone, and Beijing finds support from many nations that have similarly been “net losers” and subject to colonialism, and who all seek a fairer international system. For example, this has great appeal to countries in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, South Asia and, of course, Russia. Many of these countries see the onslaught of Western values not only as historical threats to their national sovereignty, but also to their own cultural identity. Why, for example, is a country such as the United Arab Emirates, a traditional Western partner, now so pro-China? As a highly conservative Arab state, it views the pursuit of Western liberalism as a threat to its own Islamic values, and sees support in a Chinese state which, even espousing a different ideology, encourages plurality and respect for different civilizations as opposed to Western evangelism.

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And then act like it’s their idea to begin with…

“exceptional and temporary preventive measures on imports” of the four items to “alleviate logistical bottlenecks”

EU Bans Ukraine Grain Exports To Five Members (RT)

The European Union has blocked the import of Ukrainian wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower seed to five member states for at least a month. The measure went into effect on Tuesday evening and is scheduled to expire June 5, unless it is extended. The European Commission announced the “exceptional and temporary preventive measures on imports” of the four items to “alleviate logistical bottlenecks” in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. The EU regulation supersedes the state-level bans enacted by some of those governments. Kiev can still use “a common customs transit procedure” to export the grain and seed-oil components to other EU member states or outside the bloc, but cannot sell them to the five “frontline” countries.

Sofia, Budapest, Warsaw and Bratislava had “committed to lift their unilateral measures” on the four items “and any other products coming from Ukraine,” the Commission said. In return the EU will provide “financial support” to their farmers. No number was provided in Tuesday evening’s statement, but media reports last week spoke of a €100 million ($110 million) package. According to the Commission, the measure was enacted to address the concerns of farmers in the five border countries, while upholding the EU’s “strong commitment to support Ukraine and preserve its capabilities to export its grains” described as “critical to feed the world and keep food prices down” in the face of “Russian aggression.” The same justification was invoked last year, when the EU suspended tariffs on imports of Ukrainian agricultural goods.

Kiev has argued that letting Ukraine export its grain via the EU and the Black Sea Initiative would help countries in Africa and Asia dependent on food imports. In practice, the arrangement flooded the EU with cheap raw materials, endangering the livelihoods of farmers in neighboring countries, whose work is highly regulated by Brussels.The EU did not mention any of that in its announcement, however, saying only that the imports resulted in “saturated storage capacities and logistical chains.” Meanwhile, Russian grain and fertilizer remain blocked from reaching the rest of the world, because the US and EU sanctions against Moscow’s shipping industry have closed off all avenues for their transportation. Russia has warned that, unless that part of the Black Sea Initiative is implemented, it will stop participating in the deal.

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“What is the purpose of NATO other than to oppose Russia? If you’re addressing Russia in a hostile way from the beginning, of course their reaction is going to be hostile back..”

RFK Jr Shares Opinion On Key US Mistake With Russia (RT)

Instead of listening to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s warnings about “red lines,” the US has repeatedly crossed them, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in an interview published on Wednesday. The Democrat running for US president also said Washington should have either invited Moscow to NATO or dismantled the anti-Russian alliance after the Cold War. “We should have listened to Putin over many years. We made a commitment to Russia, to Gorbachev, that we would not move NATO one inch to the east. Then we went in, and we lied,” Kennedy told the outlet UnHerd. Instead of offering to integrate Russia into the West, as many diplomats urged in 1991, the US expanded NATO to its borders. “What is the purpose of NATO other than to oppose Russia? If you’re addressing Russia in a hostile way from the beginning, of course their reaction is going to be hostile back,” Kennedy said.

He described what happened in Kiev in 2014 as “essentially a coup d’etat” supported by the US, recalling the infamous phone call in which Victoria Nuland was “handpicking a new cabinet” hostile to Moscow. “If Mexico did that and then started killing – they killed 14,000 Russians in Donbass, the Ukrainian government – if Mexico did that to expatriate Americans, we’d invade in a second,” Kennedy said, adding that Putin “repeatedly told us: these are red lines, you’re crossing.” American leaders should be able to “put yourself in the other guy’s shoes,” just like his uncle John F. Kennedy did during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, stepping back from the brink of nuclear war, which all of his advisers were pushing for.

Kennedy condemned the “barbaric and illegal invasion” of Ukraine and called Putin a ‘gangster’, a ‘thug’ and a ‘bully’, but said the conflict needed to be settled quickly, because the US had already “sacrificed 300,000” Ukrainians in battle. While the White House presented aiding Kiev as a humanitarian mission, “every step that we’ve taken has been to enlarge the conflict and to maximize bloodshed,” he said. “Let’s be honest: It’s a US war against Russia, to essentially sacrifice the flower of Ukrainian youth in an abattoir of death and destruction for the geopolitical ambition of the neocons” to see regime change in Moscow, Kennedy said. He added that the people who created the problem weren’t capable of settling it. Asked about his proposed solution, Kennedy said that something like the Minsk accords, agreeing to keep Ukraine out of NATO, and removing nuclear missile launchers from Russia’s borders might work.

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“The America I love doesn’t imprison dissidents.”

RFK Jr Pledges To Pardon Assange (RT)

US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has vowed to pardon “brave truth-tellers” including WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is currently being held in a British high security prison as he fights extradition to America. The US “actively persecutes journalists and whistleblowers” instead of championing free speech, Democratic contender Kennedy tweeted on Tuesday. “This isn’t the Soviet Union. The America I love doesn’t imprison dissidents.” The Australian-born Assange is effectively facing a lifetime sentence for his role in the leaks by US military whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Assange was arrested in Britain in 2019 after Ecuador revoked his political asylum, allowing police to enter its embassy in London, where he had been holed up for seven years.

Assange was then sent to Belmarsh prison, a facility ordinarily used to house some of the most dangerous criminals in the UK. Kennedy, who is seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for the 2024 presidential election, said he would pardon both Assange and Manning. The latter spent seven years in US custody after leaking troves of classified materials to WikiLeaks in 2010, but had her sentence commuted by then-President Barack Obama in 2017. The US government has accused Assange of encouraging and facilitating Manning and is aiming to extradite him for trial. Assange’s defenders have argued that his trial would set a dangerous precedent, and that his actions were no different from other publishers of classified documents who sought to protect their sources.

Kennedy named a number of “other brave truth-tellers” who deserve similar exoneration, including Edward Snowden, who now resides in Russia. Instead of prosecuting them, the presidential hopeful pledged he would “investigate the corruption and crimes they exposed.” Kennedy is among three people to have formally announced their bids for the Democratic nomination. While incumbent President Joe Biden is the frontrunner, Kennedy is polling at 19%, with author Marianne Williamson trailing at 9%, according to a recent Fox News survey. The Biden administration has said it has no plans to drop the charges against Assange, despite calls by media freedom advocates. Critics have accused Washington of hypocrisy, citing its habit of lecturing other nations over press freedoms.

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“Are You Ready for High Inflation and Collapsing Living Standards?”

The US Dollar is Finished (Paul Craig Roberts)

The decision to offshore US manufacturing was an economy-wrecking decision. The goods that Apple, Nike, Levi, and all the others make in China and Asia enter the US as imports when they are marketed in the US. The US, having moved its manufacturing offshore, has little to export to cover the trade deficit resulting from imports. By using their trade surpluses with the US to purchase US Treasuries, foreigners financed the US budget deficit and US wars. As countries increasingly settle their trade imbalances in other currencies, foreign demand for US debt is declining. The consequence is that the supply of dollars is increasing, but the demand for them is falling. This means a drop in the exchange value of the dollar, which means a rise in import prices. The worst inflations are caused by the decline in the exchange rate of a currency. It is an inflation that the central bank cannot fight by throwing people out of work.


This is America’s future, and I don’t mean in ten years. I have been warning of this development, but the presstitute media does not report any facts unfriendly to the official narratives, everyone of which is a lie. The US can hold on for a while longer by having the Japanese, European, and British central banks print their currencies with which to purchase dollars, thus cushioning the dollar’s decline. But the consequence is that these currencies also will fall in value relative to those outside the dollar system. In other words, the plight of the dollar will spread throughout the empire. Wall Street, greedy corporate executives and boards, and incompetent policymakers in Washington offshored US manufacturing and made the US import-dependent. Next they destroyed the dollar as world reserve currency and thereby doomed the dollar to devaluation against other currencies, and this will destroy US power.

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“The combination of aggressive US sanctions policy and reckless government spending have dramatically reduced the greenback’s international appeal.”

Pepe Escobar: Global De-Dollarization Nearing ‘Crossroads Moment’ (Sputnik)

De-dollarization is heading for a breakthrough due to rising global discontent with US ‘casino capitalism’, Pepe Escobar, geopolitical analyst and veteran journalist, told Sputnik News. “It’s a gigantic snowball all over the world. We cannot even keep up with it,” Pepe Escobar said in an interview with the New Rules podcast. “It’s very important what is going to be discussed at the BRICS summit in South Africa. This will probably be the crossroads moment where things are going to then go.” Escobar explained that a growing number of countries in the Global South were doing the math and concluding that the US dollar was not a safe bet. The combination of aggressive US sanctions policy and reckless government spending have dramatically reduced the greenback’s international appeal.

“If you want to analyze the patterns these past two decades, you need to understand the fact that, if you are rich in commodities and if you are a productive capitalist nation and you decide to issue a currency, it will be internationally respected because people will know it’s based on facts, actual provenance, actual wealth,” he said. “That’s contrary to the system that we have now, which I have been calling it ‘casino capitalism’ for years. It’s futures, it’s bets, it’s suppositions. It may go right or wrong. If you lose, you lose it all. The house mostly always wins because the house is the one who prints the currency. It’s backed by nothing, literally, by a country that owes $30 trillion [in national debt] now and it will never be able to repay it.” To make matters even worse, the US Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate hikes has made borrowing in dollars expensive for almost everyone in the world.

Prior to the Fed’s move, Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, warned in January 2022 that the US raising interest rates could backfire on the global economy and especially on countries with higher levels of dollar-denominated debt. The ongoing US banking crisis threatens to further destabilize international financial markets. No country in the world wants to “catch a cold” when the US economy “sneezes,” as memories of the 2008 financial crisis linger. “They say, ‘look, why do we have to be subjected to this kind of arrangement?’ And of course, before, as we all know, it was ‘the Empire of bases’, over 800 military bases all over the world, ‘the power of the financial markets’, ‘the power of soft culture’, ‘the power of cancel culture’, but the Global South is not intimidated anymore. I think this is the first [time] in this new millennium. We never had this before in the past two and a half centuries, at least,” Escobar said.

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“I made a commitment to my friend Alberto Fernandez that I will do every and any sacrifice so we can help Argentina in this difficult moment.”

South American Nations Seek To Avoid Dollar (RT)

The presidents of Argentina and Brazil have announced plans to continue working on the development of a mechanism allowing them to avoid using the US dollar in bilateral trade. Crisis-hit Argentina is seeking to rebuild its reserves to cover trade costs and future debt repayments as a key component of a major debt deal with international creditors. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his Argentinian counterpart Alberto Fernandez were expected this week to reveal the new mechanism allowing Argentine firms to continue trading with Brazil without draining dollars from the country’s reserves. However, the leaders announced following a meeting on Tuesday that the plan still needed to be fine-tuned.

“The meeting was long, difficult and we will carry out many more meetings,” Lula said alongside Fernandez, as quoted by the Associated Press. “I made a commitment to my friend Alberto Fernandez that I will do every and any sacrifice so we can help Argentina in this difficult moment.” The proposed scheme reportedly includes a line of credit to finance Brazilian businesses that export to Argentina, aimed at avoiding the use of US dollars in settlements. According to Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando Haddad, the two nations are studying possible guarantees in order for Brazil’s government to provide financing.

“They’ve made the decision to help make sure that Brazilian companies continue exporting to Argentina and they had asked us to do some homework, which we have already done, and have to do with the necessary guarantees,” Fernandez said. He added that Economy Ministry officials will be meeting their Brazilian counterparts next week to discuss the details. Earlier this year, Argentina sealed an agreement with China that allows companies in the debt-laden nation to pay for Chinese imports in yuan. Buenos Aires owes $44 billion to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The nation is currently renegotiating the agreement signed with the fund last year to restructure some of its loans.

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Lots of BRICS+ candidates.

Asian Nations Sign Pact To Shift Away From Dollar (RT)

The central banks of South Korea and Indonesia have signed a memorandum of understanding to promote bilateral trade in national currencies, moving away from the US dollar as an intermediary. The step is expected to help South Korean and Indonesian corporations to lower transaction costs and exposure to exchange rate risks, the central banks of the two nations said in a joint statement. The Bank of Indonesia and the Bank of Korea highlighted that they would continue to strengthen collaboration through information-sharing and regular discussions, as the two nations seek to boost financial ties. The agreement was signed on the sidelines of the 26th ASEAN+3 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors’ Meeting that kicked off in the South Korean city of Incheon on May 2.


The ASEAN+3 group consists of the ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which are joined by China, Japan, and South Korea. Attempts to shift away from the greenback in international trade have been gaining momentum among major economic blocs such as ASEAN and the BRICS group, which consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The step comes against the backdrop of sweeping sanctions introduced by Western nations against Russia, a major global energy producer and exporter. The head of the Indonesian central bank, Perry Warjiyo, said last month that his nation was implementing a shift away from the dollar with countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, China, and Japan. In March, Brazil and China signed an agreement to trade in their own currencies, dropping the greenback as an intermediary.

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“The West’s appeals for democracy and national independence, on the other hand, are perceived as hypocritical, given its history on the continent.”

Who Is Winning The Scramble For Africa? (Fazi)

Reports of violence breaking out in Africa rarely raise eyebrows in the West these days. Perhaps we feel it has little to do with us, whatever the West’s historical responsibilities for the continent’s problems. But as the recent events in Sudan demonstrate, this is no longer the case. The turmoil unfolding there is of far more importance to us than we might think. While the fighting in Sudan is, on the face of it, little more than a power struggle between the two rival factions that control the country, there is also an important international and geopolitical dimension to the conflict. At its heart is the great powers’ competition for influence over the continent — what has been called the “new scramble for Africa”. Given its vast natural resources, including gold, its agricultural wealth and its geopolitically strategic location, Sudan has long attracted regional and international power plays.

In recent years, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Israel have all been cultivating economic and political ties with the country’s leadership — and its two warlords in particular. One country, however, stands out for its “special relationship” with Sudan: Russia. Putin made sure to cultivate an alliance with the country’s former leader, Omar al-Bashir, deploying the infamous Wagner Group in 2017 to provide him with political and military support. More importantly, that same year, al-Bashir signed a military cooperation agreement with Russia which included allowing the Russians to establish a military base along the Red Sea, ensuring a permanent presence for the Russian Navy in a crucial region and easy access to the Indian Ocean.

Al-Bashir was overthrown in 2019, before the agreement came into play, but Russia maintained good relations with the new administration’s military leaders, especially Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, whose Rapid Support Forces control the country’s gold mines. The transitional military-civilian government confirmed the decision to allow Russia to establish a base in 2020, but backtracked the following year under pressure from the US. However, once the civilian members of government were purged in yet another coup, in 2021, the agreement was revived. Today, there is no indication that the issue of the naval base played a role in the recent outbreak of fighting, nor are any of the major foreign players openly backing either of the two warring factions. But if one side should explicitly align itself with, say, Russia, the conflict could easily turn into another front of the proxy war between the West and Russia, alongside Ukraine, with potentially disastrous consequences for the entire continent.

For Africa is already the stage of the New Great Game of the 21st century — the struggle between Western countries, China and Russia for influence over this immensely resource-rich, young continent predicted to be the next frontier of growth. In this game, Russia is particularly well-positioned. More so than the West, it enjoys strong historical and ideological ties with many African nations. The Soviet Union was the primary ally of several nations on the continent during the Cold War, and supported various anti-colonial and post-colonial movements; many countries are still ruled by parties that were supported by Moscow during their struggles for liberation from colonial or white supremacist rule, including Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC). The West’s appeals for democracy and national independence, on the other hand, are perceived as hypocritical, given its history on the continent. Hence Russia’s argument that the war in Ukraine is actually part of a broader struggle against Western imperialism resonates in Africa, which harbours strong grievances against the West over its colonial and neocolonial practices.

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And PacWest is not the only bank in trouble.

PacWest Craters 60% On Report It Is Seeking Buyers Or Capital Raise (ZH)

Earlier today, when Jerome Powell openly lied to the American People during the FOMC press conference stating without a hint of irony that the US banking system is “sound and resilient”… …we balked: how could this former lawyer lie so brazenly to the American people, the narrator wondered, when in just the past few weeks we had seen over half a trillion in bank failures, making the current bank failure episode even worse than the global financial crisis? Well, as usual, the narrator was right, because while Powell’s lies were still ringing in our ears, the next regional bank collapse was on its say. Shortly after the close, Bloomberg reported that another regional, California-based bank (of course), PacWest Bancorp., was weighing a range of strategic options, including a sale.

The Beverly Hills-based bank – whose financial conditions it appears has been far worse than the Fed, which just hiked another 25bps, thought – has been working with a financial adviser and has also been considering a breakup or a capital raise, according to Bloomberg sources. While it is open to a sale, the company hasn’t started a formal auction process. According to the report, “an outright sale has been hindered because there aren’t many potential buyers interested in the entire bank, which comprises a community lender called Pacific Western Bank and some commercial and consumer lending businesses, the people said.” And similar to SVB and FRC, “a potential buyer would also have to potentially book a big loss marking down some of its loans, the people said.”

On Tuesday, PacWest tumbled 28% as investors retreated from regional bank stocks following JPMorgan’s deal on Monday for the failed First Republic Bank, a transaction which did nothing to ease concerns about regional bank viability, which was to be perfectly expected since today’s rate hike would only make the regional bank deposit run even bigger, something which was obvious to everyone…… except the Fed!

And sure enough, following the Bloomberg report, PacWest – which had $28 billion in deposits at last check (far less as of this moment) and $44 billion in assets, saw its stock plunge more than 60% after hours… Bear in mind that just a week ago, PacWest shares surged 17% after the midsize lender said deposits stabilized toward the end of March and rose in April. “Importantly, deposits stabilized in the latter part of March and rebounded nicely in April, increasing approximately $700 million subsequent to quarter-end,” President and CEO Paul Taylor said in the release Tonight’s dismal news comes six weeks after PacWest said it had shored up its access to cash by raising $1.4bn via a lending facility from Apollo-backed investment firm Atlas SP Partners.

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“Say it out loud and try not to snicker: “The coronation of Charles the Third.”

”..you’re waking up in a country where a priest is going to smear oil – vegan oil from Jerusalem – on a rather pinkish, rather broad forehead to signify one man’s status as the Lord’s anointed.”

God Save Us All: Britain Is About To Get The King It Deserves (Marche)

Say it out loud and try not to snicker: “The coronation of Charles the Third.” In a time of post-post-colonialism, of anti-racist iconoclasm, a time in which the very notion of gender as a legitimate distinction is contested, and Christianity has been reduced to a scandal management system with costumes, a 74-year-old British gentleman will ride a fancy carriage to an old church where a few other elderly British gentlemen in gilded dresses will declare him emperor, patriarch and head of state because God says so. You might think you live in a time of truth and reconciliation, or perhaps even, if you’re feeling optimistic, progress. But this week if you’re British or a member of the 56 sovereign states that still, somehow, find themselves in the Commonwealth, you’re waking up in a country where a priest is going to smear oil – vegan oil from Jerusalem – on a rather pinkish, rather broad forehead to signify one man’s status as the Lord’s anointed.

The coronation cannot be described as a popular event. In April, various polls gauging the public mood around Charles’s ascension found that only 15% of the British population were “very interested” in the coronation. In Canada, where I live, the majority of citizens are in favor of severing ties with the monarchy altogether (up to 70% in Quebec). The crown itself seems embarrassed by all the fuss. The coronation ceremony has been curtailed, and will last a little over an hour, we’re promised, as opposed to the three hours allotted for Queen Elizabeth II. For Canada, the absurdity of the coronation is basic: we are not a British colony, but we have a British king. For the British, the national pride supposed to underlie a coronation has been exposed and harried: UK GDP cut by 4%, a lost £100bn a year in output, the pound losing a fifth of its value, all since Brexit. It’s hard to celebrate when inflation is at 10.1% and the Bank of England has to raise interest rates again, especially when it costs £100bn.

As of April, only 34% of Britons still believe that Brexit was the correct decision. And underlying the recognition of their error is a dawning realization of the failure at its root: the British people – not the press, not the politicians – failed to understand their place in the world. Nostalgia and vanity, and ultimately self-deceit, led them into a calamity which seems, at the moment, impossible to recover from. This week, on his fancy carriage ride, Charles will be surrounded by many preposterous objects. He’ll be holding the world’s largest diamond on the end of a stick. He’ll be wearing a hat with a ruby that Henry V wore into battle. He’ll be sitting on a chair over the Stone of Destiny, a stone English kings stole from the Scots almost a millennium ago. The real absurdity will be deeper, for both Canada and Britain. Charles is a symptom of twin identity crises: the man represents us, but it’s hard to think of anyone less representative. I mean, it’s all fun and games, but his face is going to be printed on my money. “God save the king!” I find myself shouting, absurdly.

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James Lindsay

 

 

 

 

Socotra

 

 

Turbine

 

 

Blue whale

 

 

 

 

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Apr 282023
 
 April 28, 2023  Posted by at 8:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  54 Responses »


Edgar Degas Danseuse au Tutu Vert 1887

 

Ukraine Peace Talks – A Grown Up Is Taking Charge (MoA)
Complicated Ukraine Crisis Must End By Negotiations – China (TASS)
Kremlin Explains Which Contact With Kiev Is ‘Welcome’ (RT)
China Shifting Away From Dollar In Cross-Border Transactions (RT)
FBI Claims China Has 50x More Hackers (RT)
De-Dollarization Kicks Into High Gear (Pepe Escobar)
Mr. Lavrov’s New York Shuffle (Pepe Escobar)
West No Longer Hides Planning Of Kiev’s Counteroffensive – Zakharova (TASS)
NATO Gives 1,550 Armored Vehicles, 230 Tanks To Ukraine – Stoltenberg (TASS)
Ukrainian Air Defense ‘Depleting’ – Minister (RT)
The EU Has Spilled Ukrainian Grain Meant For Africa All Over Itself (Marsden)
Zakharova: Why US and EU Fear Russian Media (RT)
In The Seeds War Who Is Burying Whom? (Helmer)
Pfizer & FDA Knew About Safety Concerns For Pregnant And Nursing Women (CR)
Biden Energy Secretary Wants All US Military Vehicles To Be Electric By 2030

 

 

 

 

RFK vaccines

 

 

 

 

Tucker ESG

 

 

Zelensky sells Ukraine

 

 

 

 

China sends their top diplomat. Everyone better take him seriously. Nothing else will be accepted.

Ukraine Peace Talks – A Grown Up Is Taking Charge (MoA)

The U.S. is unwilling to yet give up in its proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. Russia can not stop the war without securing its legitimate interest to keep NATO and/or the U.S. out of its neighbor state. A loss of the war would create an existential danger for Russia. With the two major powers engaged in a war a third party is needed to solve the conflict. In the spring of last year Turkey and Israel successfully helped to find a peace agreement. A good solution was found and Russia as well as Ukraine agreed to it. But the U.S. needed the war to continue. It sent the British prime minister Boris Johnson to Kiev to sabotage the deal. The Ukrainian president was told that the country would lose all ‘western’ support should it sign an agreement with Russia. As the somewhat neutral middle powers were unable to push any agreement through it became obvious that a third party with more heft was needed to seal a deal.

The time of moving towards a deal also needed to be right. On February 24, exactly a year after the war had started, China announced its Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis. This was not a peace plan but a lay out of things that will need to be understood and done to come to a sustainable solution of the crisis. A months later China took the next step that will be needed in the process. It introduced a high ranking diplomat who will hold the preliminary talks in Ukraine and Russia to find the potential ways to proceed. The announcement was made after a phone call between the presidents Xi and Zelensky:

“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he held a “long and meaningful call” with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday, a long-anticipated first contact between the leaders since Russia’s invasion 14 months ago. Xi appealed for negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv to begin, according to a Chinese government readout of the call, which Beijing said Zelenskyy requested. Xi pledged to send a “special representative” to Ukraine for talks about a “political settlement” — warning that “there is no winner in a nuclear war.” China hopes to become a neutral peace broker in the conflict, although the U.S. and others have questioned its impartiality given a “no limits” partnership in which it has lent Moscow rhetorical and financial support.”

[..] The Chinese special representative for Eurasian affairs is Lu Hui, a very senior diplomat. He has held several positions in China’s embassies in Moscow and Astana as well as within China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs: In 2008-2009 Mr. Liu Hui served as a deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the PRC. From August 2009 to August 2019 he served as an Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the People’s Republic of China to the Russian Federation. Ukraine’s readout of the call does not mention the envoy. The U.S. response to the announcement of an envoy was designed to put China’s efforts into doubt: “John Kirby, the National Security Council’s coordinator for strategic communications, said the U.S. welcomed the call as a “good thing.”

“We’ve been saying for quite some time that we believe it’s important for President Xi and PRC officials to avail themselves of the Ukrainian perspective on this illegal and unprovoked invasion by Russia,” Kirby told reporters, referring to China by the initials for its formal name, the People’s Republic of China. Earlier, Kirby, told NBC News, “We will let these two leaders speak to the details of their conversation.” A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was “way too soon after just getting word of this conversation to speculate about” whether the call should foster optimism about China’s peace plan. “Thus far, China has not shown itself to be unbiased when it comes to supporting Russia,” the official said.

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China starts to impose itself step by step.

Complicated Ukraine Crisis Must End By Negotiations – China (TASS)

No matter how complicated the conflict in Ukraine may be, it must be resolved at a negotiation table, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said during the meeting with foreign ministers of Central Asian countries in Xi An in northwestern China. “No matter how complicated the crisis may be, it must be resolved by negotiations; no matter how complicated a conflict may be, it must be resolved only by politics,” Qin Gang said, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry website. He added that “the significant historic background and complex real reasons have caused the Ukrainian crisis to develop to the current stage.”


“China and Central Asian countries have similar views and positions on the Ukrainian crisis,” Qin Gang noted. He added that Beijing is ready to work with the international community, including Central Asian states, in order to reach a “common denominator” for resolution of the conflict in Ukraine. On April 26-27, Qin Gang took part in the 4th meeting of foreign ministers of China and five Central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan). According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the top diplomats exchanged opinions on pressing international and regional issues.

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“We are ready to welcome anything that can bring the conflict in Ukraine closer to an end and, naturally, the accomplishment of all Russia’s goals..”

Kremlin Explains Which Contact With Kiev Is ‘Welcome’ (RT)

Moscow backs any foreign contact with Kiev that seeks a political settlement to the Ukraine conflict and as long as Russia’s interests are respected, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. His comments came a day after Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart, Vladimir Zelensky, for the first time since Moscow launched its military operation in the neighboring state more than a year ago. “We are ready to welcome anything that can bring the conflict in Ukraine closer to an end and, naturally, the accomplishment of all Russia’s goals,” Peskov told journalists. The spokesman added that conversations between leaders are the “sovereign [right]” of each country.

Russian President Vladimir Putin cited the need to protect the people of Donbass and Kiev’s failure to implement the 2014-2015 Minsk peace accords as reasons for Russia’s attack on Ukrainian forces in February 2022. He also said Russia was seeking the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Ukraine. Peskov pointed out that the Kremlin is aware of the 12-point roadmap for peace publicly unveiled by China in February. According to the proposal, the conflict must be resolved through negotiations and in accordance with international law, while the “independence and territorial integrity of all countries must be effectively upheld.” Moscow, however, has accused Ukraine of effectively rendering potential negotiations useless by demanding that Russia surrender newly acquired territories.

In 2014, Crimea voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia in the wake of the coup in Kiev that year. The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, did the same after holding referendums in September. Kiev considers these territories to be illegally occupied by Russia. Unlike many Western countries, China has refused to condemn Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Xi praised strategic partnership with Russia during a trip to Moscow last month. During his call with Zelensky, the Chinese leader reiterated that dialogue was “the only viable way forward.”

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First gradually, then all at once.

China Shifting Away From Dollar In Cross-Border Transactions (RT)

The yuan surpassed the US dollar to become the most-used currency in China’s cross-border transactions last month, Reuters reported on Wednesday citing official data. Cross-border payments and receipts in yuan surged from $434.5 billion in February to a record $549.9 billion in March, according to calculations by the outlet, based on data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. The Chinese currency was used in 48.4% of all cross-border transactions, reflecting a trend of shifting away from the dollar, as well as Beijing’s efforts to promote the use of the yuan. The share of the greenback in China’s international settlements dropped from 48.6% in February to 46.7% last month. The volume of cross-border transactions covers both current and capital accounts, the outlet said.


Although the share of the yuan in global settlements is still relatively low, it has been steadily on the rise over the past several years. China’s attempts to move away from the dollar in international trade have sped up against the backdrop of sweeping sanctions imposed by Western nations against Russia, a major global energy producer and exporter. Indian policymakers have also taken steps towards shifting away from the greenback to rubles and rupees in mutual trade with Moscow. Russia has been boosting its use of alternative currencies in transactions since last year. President Vladimir Putin has suggested that the Chinese yuan should be used more widely, not only in trade with China, but also in Russia’s transactions with countries in Africa and Latin America. The latest data from the Bank of Russia shows that the yuan has become a major player in Russia’s foreign trade.

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“..Chinese hackers outnumber US cybersecurity agents by at least “50 to 1..”

FBI Claims China Has 50x More Hackers (RT)

FBI Director Christopher Wray has claimed that Chinese hackers outnumber US cybersecurity agents by at least “50 to 1,” saying the People’s Republic operates a larger cyber program than all other world powers combined. Addressing lawmakers during a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday, Wray outlined the bureau’s recent cybersecurity efforts and its funding needs, stating the hackers are capable of inflicting “greater damage than ever before” while placing special emphasis on the “China threat.” “The scale of the Chinese cyber threat is unparalleled. They’ve got a bigger hacking program than every other major nation combined, and have stolen more of our personal and corporate data than all other nations, big or small, combined,” he said, adding that Washington is struggling to keep up with Beijing in the cyber realm.

“To give you a sense of what we’re up against, if each one of the FBI’s cyber agents and intel analysts focused exclusively on the China threat, on nothing but China, Chinese hackers would still outnumber FBI cyber personnel by at least 50 to 1.” The bureau head went on to warn of cyber attacks conducted by other foreign states, including Russia, Iran and North Korea, but said China posed the greatest danger to US privacy and security, pointing to its alleged “multi-pronged strategy” to surpass the United States as “the global superpower.” In addition to “nation-state actors,” Wray also noted the FBI’s concerns about private cyber criminals, saying the agency is now investigating “over 100 different ransomware variants,” referring to a common form of malware which seeks to hold user data hostage in exchange for payment.

The FBI has requested funding to create around 200 additional cyber positions at the bureau to address the purported threat from China, seeking just over $63 million, in addition to the $10.8 billion budget already proposed for the 2023 fiscal year. “There’s no country that presents a more significant threat to our innovation, our ideas, our economic security, our national security than the Chinese government,” Wray continued. “And that’s why we’ve grown the number of investigations into threats from China about 1,300%.” Chinese officials have denied US allegations of hacking and data theft, and instead leveled similar charges at Washington. Earlier this month, the Chinese Foreign Ministry claimed the United States is now the “biggest threat to global cybersecurity” which seeks to “maintain its hegemony in cyberspace,” urging the US to cease its “global hacking operations.”

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“Cue to Beijing linking crude futures in Shanghai to converting yuan into gold. And all that without touching China’s massive gold reserves..”

De-Dollarization Kicks Into High Gear (Pepe Escobar)

The collective west is reaching Desperation Row – now timed with the astonishing announcement of a Biden-Harris US presidential ticket running again in 2024. This means that the US administration’s neo-con handlers will double down on their plan to unleash an industrial war against both Russia and China by 2025. And that brings us back to de-dollarization and what will replace the hegemonic reserve currency of the world. Today, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) represents more than 25 percent of global oil exports (Saudi Arabia stands at 17 percent). More than 25 percent of China’s oil imports come from Riyadh. And China, predictably, is the GCC’s top trading partner. The Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange went into business in March 2018.

Any oil producer, from anywhere, can sell in Shanghai in yuan today. This means that the balance of power in the oil markets is already shifting from the US dollar to the yuan. The catch is that most oil producers prefer not to keep large stashes of yuan; after all, everyone is still used to the petrodollar. Cue to Beijing linking crude futures in Shanghai to converting yuan into gold. And all that without touching China’s massive gold reserves. This simple process happens via gold exchanges set up in Shanghai and Hong Kong. And not by accident, it lies at the heart of a new currency to bypass the dollar being discussed by the EAEU. Dumping the dollar already has a mechanism: making full use of the Shanghai Energy Exchange’s future oil contracts in yuan.

That’s the preferred path for the end of the petrodollar. US global power projection is fundamentally based on controlling the global currency. Economic control underlies the Pentagon’s ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ doctrine. Yet now, even military projection is in shambles, with Russia maintaining an unreachable advance on hypersonic missiles and Russia-China-Iran able to deploy an array of carrier-killers. The Hegemon – clinging to a toxic cocktail of neoliberalism, sanction dementia, and widespread threats – is bleeding from within. De-dollarization is an inevitable response to system collapse. In a Sun Tzu 2.0 environment, it is no wonder the Russia-China strategic partnership exhibits no intention of interrupting the enemy when he is so busy defeating himself

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“Let’s take a walk with him across the current wasteland. Mr. Lavrov, you’re the star of the show.”

Mr. Lavrov’s New York Shuffle (Pepe Escobar)

Now picture a true gentleman, the foremost diplomat of these troubled times, in total command of the facts and endowed with a delightful sense of humor, taking a perilous walk on the wild side, to quote iconic Lou Reed, and emerging unscathed. In fact, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s New York moment – as in his two interventions before the UN Security Council on April 24 and 25 – performed the diplomatic equivalent of bringing the house down. At least the sections of the house inhabited by the Global South – or Global Majority. April 24, during the 9308th meeting of the UNSC under the agenda “Maintenance of international peace and security, effective multilateralism through the protection of the principles of the UN Charter”, was particularly relevant. Lavrov stressed the symbolism of the meeting happening on the International Day of Multilateralism and Diplomacy for Peace, deemed quite significant by a 2018 UN General Assembly resolution.


In his preamble, Lavrov noted how “in two weeks, we will celebrate the 78th anniversary of Victory in World War II. The defeat of Nazi Germany, to which my country made a decisive contribution with the support of the Allies, laid the foundation for the post-war international order. The UN Charter has become its legal basis, and our organization itself, embodying true multilateralism, has acquired a central, coordinating role in world politics.” Well, not really. And that brings us to Lavrov’s true walk on the wild side, pinpointing how multilateralism has been trampled. Way beyond torrents of denigration by the usual suspects, and their attempt to submit him to an ice cold shower in New York, or even confine him to the – geopolitical – freezer, he prevailed. Let’s take a walk with him across the current wasteland. Mr. Lavrov, you’re the star of the show.

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“..once again are loudly confirming their direct involvement in the conflict.”

West No Longer Hides Planning Of Kiev’s Counteroffensive – Zakharova (TASS)

The West is no longer hiding that it is really behind the planning for Ukraine’s much-vaunted counteroffensive, and will pull out all the stops to ensure its success, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a briefing on Thursday. “The West openly states that it will do everything possible to make the counteroffensive of the Ukrainian armed forces, which is planned for the near future, a success. That is to say, as you can imagine, they do not even hide that they are behind all this military planning, not only tactical guidance, which we have repeatedly talked about, but also the ongoing disposition [of forces] according to their strategic plan,” she said.


Zakharova also stressed that representatives of Western countries, by openly demanding that the Russian side suffer the maximum possible losses, “once again are loudly confirming their direct involvement in the conflict.” On Tuesday, the New York Times, citing classified Pentagon and US intelligence documents that surfaced on the Internet, reported that the Ukrainian armed forces planned to launch a counteroffensive in the south next month. According to the newspaper, by the end of April, Ukraine is expected to have prepared 12 combat brigades with a complement of 4,000 servicemen each.

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“..providing as many weapons as possible to Kiev is the best way to facilitate peace in Ukraine..”

NATO Gives 1,550 Armored Vehicles, 230 Tanks To Ukraine – Stoltenberg (TASS)

More than 98% of the combat vehicles that NATO promised to Ukraine have already been delivered, the bloc’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday. “Overall, through the Contact Group led by the United States, NATO Allies and partners have provided unprecedented support to Ukraine. More than 98% of the combat vehicles promised to Ukraine have already been delivered. That means over 1,550 armored vehicles, 230 tanks and other equipment, including vast amounts of ammunition. In total we have trained and equipped more than nine new Ukrainian armored brigades,” he pointed out at a meeting with Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel in Brussels.


According to Stoltenberg, NATO believes that providing as many weapons as possible to Kiev is the best way to facilitate peace in Ukraine because it will allow President Vladimir Zelensky’s regime to be in a strong negotiating position. However, the NATO chief warned against underestimating the Russian army, and claimed that Russia was sending thousands of troops to attack the city of Artyomovsk (called Bakhmut in Ukraine). Bettel, in turn, noted that Luxembourg did not have weapons to send to Ukraine, which was why it was making a financial contribution, paying for what Kiev was asking for.

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“..the importance of showcasing foreign weapons on the battlefield..”

Ukrainian Air Defense ‘Depleting’ – Minister (RT)

Kiev is running out of Soviet-made anti-aircraft missiles and needs the US and its allies to provide more weapons, including fighter jets, to close the gap with Russia, Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov has said. “We have a Soviet [air defense] system, and its missile reserves are depleting. If we don’t produce them and only nations, from which we can’t get them, have more, we need to replenish them with something else,” Reznikov stated in an interview with national media on Thursday. The minister said Western-made anti-aircraft systems and an increasing number of missiles compatible with them are Kiev’s goals, as was acquiring fighter jets from NATO. “A modern generation 4++ plane is a fully-fledged part of air defense. Once we have them, they will close the gaps left by our soviet systems,” Reznikov said, expressing certainty that his nation will be able to work through Western resistance.

The US and its allies have been reluctant to send these types of weapons to Ukraine. Kiev needs sponsors to pledge to provide not only the fighter jets, but also all the munitions and maintenance services they require, the minister explained. “Some nations signed off on tanks, and what we see is them giving four or six, not 200 or 300.” Kiev’s problems with air defense were exposed by purported classified Pentagon assessments leaked online. A late February estimate predicted that most types of Soviet missiles would be gone by May, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month. The US military proposed covering the shortfall with supplies of German Iris-T and American NASAMS and Patriot systems, according to the leak.

In the interview, Reznikov stressed the importance of showcasing foreign weapons on the battlefield for Kiev’s effort to maintain the flow of arms into the country. He recalled how he used a photo of an Australian-provided Bushmaster armored vehicle for that purpose. “I said: ‘I urgently need a video with a thank you to the Australian people.’ The guys recorded a message of gratitude in English, and I sent [it] through our ambassador to Australia,” he stated. “We said we needed more Bushmasters.” Kiev has long promised to use Western arms and training to launch a major counteroffensive against Russia sometime this spring and reclaim territory, but so far it has failed to materialize. Reznikov said the expectations for the operation have been overblown. Several Western media outlets have also warned that Kiev’s military achievements during the future push against Russia may prove to be lackluster and undermine requests for more military assistance.

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“Apparently Brussels has an endless supply of taxpayer cash to toss at the problems that it creates for itself..”

The EU Has Spilled Ukrainian Grain Meant For Africa All Over Itself (Marsden)

Leave it to the EU to manage parlaying food hogging into a disaster. Well, for everyone except perhaps Spain, the recipient of 16% of all grain shipments under the deal, which is reportedly using it to increase its production and export of pork by feeding the food destined for humans to Spanish pigs. Other EU farmers now need bailouts. “This is support for the farmers affected by the increase of imports from Ukraine, not for the consequences of the war,” said EU Agriculture Commissioner Janus Wojciechowski. “We have a ‘reserve’ for the crisis and we used only €56 million for the specific situation.” What a bargain! Only a few tens of billions of euros to fix an entirely self-made problem. Yet another resounding demonstration of competence by the big-brained Brussels bureaucrats.

There have been blatant indications for months that the plan was veering towards disaster. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pointed out in January that 44% of Ukrainian grain was ending up in the EU. And with their own grains devalued as a result of their flooded markets, European farmers don’t seem happy about being made unwitting martyrs for Ukraine. They have been pushed out of their own markets in order to keep cash from grain sales flowing to Kiev. “In effect, prices in local/regional markets have dropped causing a significant impact on farmers’ income. The Commission is not reacting swiftly enough. Our members had already flagged the concerns about market disruptions last year,” said Paulo Gouveia, chief policy advisor for the European farmers cooperative, Copa-Cogeca. Apparently, the farmers just don’t have much of an appreciation for the amount of time it took for Brussels to amass the massive pile of cash required to cushion its policy disaster as it circled back and crash-landed on the EU’s own citizens and economy.

Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia have all sounded the alarm over the impact of the grain glut. “We have proven through statistical data and figures that Hungarian farmers are indeed incurring huge losses because of the grain going through the solidarity lane staying in Hungary instead of reaching its intended destination,” said Hungarian Agriculture Minister Istvan Nagy. Nagy says that Hungarian farmers have lost up to 37% of their income over the Ukrainian grain, driving down the price of local supply. But the EU initially denied Hungary’s and Slovakia’s requests for assistance and has only more recently considered another round of compensation that includes them. Nagy described the initial choice to exclude them as political, even though Slovakia has since evoked health concerns related to findings of unauthorized pesticides on Ukrainian wheat. And now Brussels is paying lip service to their concerns with another €100 million, which is couch cushion cash for the EU compared to the billions it regularly tosses around.

All this flooding of the EU with Ukrainian grain could have been avoided if it had simply ensured that the grain was used for its stated purpose. Russian President Vlaidmir Putin has been warning all along that the food was being misdirected. “From August 1, 2022, to March 20, 2023, 827 ships left Ukraine, of which only 3 million tonnes of grain were sent to Africa and 1.3 million to the poorest countries in Africa. As I said, almost 45% went to well-fed European countries, despite the fact that this whole deal was presented under the pretext of ensuring the interests of African countries,” Putin underscored at the Russia-Africa Parliamentary Conference in Moscow earlier this year.

[..] Apparently Brussels has an endless supply of taxpayer cash to toss at the problems that it creates for itself, bailing out everyone from farmers to businesses over its own backfiring efforts to stick it to Russia amid the crisis in Ukraine. It’s becoming increasingly clear that what the EU desperately needs is some adult supervision, but the available candidates seem few and far between.

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“Those who like these rules of the game have the right to play by them. We don’t. This is what we rebelled against.”

Zakharova: Why US and EU Fear Russian Media (RT)

The European Parliament’s insistence that Serbia censor RT Balkans and Sputnik in order to “harmonize” with the EU is absurd, evil, and a manifestation of imperialism and colonialism, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. On Wednesday, the parliament’s foreign affairs committee adopted the report by Slovakian MEP Vladimir Bilcik, criticizing Serbia for not joining the EU sanctions against Russia and demanding Belgrade shut down Russian “disinformation” outlets just as the bloc has done. The US State Department has also called for a ban on RT Balkans. “It’s an absurd situation,” Zakharova told reporters at the daily briefing in Moscow on Thursday. “These statements speak for themselves. The West isn’t even hiding, but saying the quiet part out loud.”

The US and the EU are now openly saying that Russia, Russian culture and language, or Russian media and journalists, simply shouldn’t exist, Zakharova noted. She compared the European Parliament’s demands to calls by Ukrainian officials to “exterminate” the Russian population in Crimea and Donbass, saying they can only be described as “evil.” “The only possible thing to say is that this is an imperialist point of view, a manifestation of neo-colonialism. Some countries, without any moral grounds, illegally arrogate to themselves the right to model the world and its development at their own discretion: who can live, speak, trade, produce, have children, and who cannot,” Zakharova told reporters. “This is a modern version of slavery, in which the colonial powers claim the right to be considered masters, and others – their slaves.”

“Those who like these rules of the game have the right to play by them. We don’t. This is what we rebelled against.” The US and its allies, Zakharova argued, want Russia to have no opportunity to speak, because the very existence of Russian media threatens the Western plans for narrative manipulation. “Our media, journalists and outlets report from the epicenters of world events, based on facts, encourage people to critically evaluate reality (as they should),” the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said. “Apparently, this goes against the plans that the American rulers have to ‘zombify’ their own population.”

American television, Zakharova noted, presents a “a one-sided, practically sterilized, filtered and adjusted picture of the world,” having reached an “ideological dead end.” Any airing of alternative viewpoints threatens to expose this media ecosystem as biased and contradictory. RT Balkans began operations in November 2022. The EU reportedly plans to blacklist the outlet as part of its 11th package of sanctions against Russia. The bloc had banned all broadcasting activities by RT and Sputnik in March 2022, calling them “Russian propaganda” that endangered Ukraine. Major social media platforms have blocked RT accounts in the bloc, while YouTube extended the ban globally.

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“Today we are buying seeds abroad, because during Yeltsin’s time all the seed banks were destroyed, and the seed breeding stations were closed..”

In The Seeds War Who Is Burying Whom? (Helmer)

This week Russian grain and berry producers went public with a warning that new regulations proposed by the federal Ministry of Agriculture to implement new legislation on seed production, due to come into effect in September, will lessen competition in the domestic market, raise seed and farm product prices, reduce crop yields, and lower production volumes. “The draft regulation, On the approval of the rules for the localization of the production of seeds of agricultural plants on the territory of the Russian Federation — allows foreign companies to do business on the territory of our country only if they work jointly with Russia’s scientific institutes. The share of the latter in joint ventures must be at least 51%, otherwise the foreign seed producers will not be able to work on the Russian market and supply products.”


This statement was authored by the Russian Grain Union and the Berry Union, and leaked to Vedomosti, a Moscow business newspaper. With imported seeds accounting for 97% of commercial beet plantings, 72% for sunflowers, 69% for potatoes, 56% for corn, and between 75% and 100% for berries, forcing the exit of foreign companies from the Russian market will cause scarcity, price inflation, and consumer protest.

[..] “The fact is that our seed production in Russia was destroyed back in the 90s,” tomato breeder Tatiana Tereshkova told an industry publication a year ago. “Once we had specialized farms with special equipment and people. But since they completely switched to import, the farms were overturned, and the specialists went to other areas. Now all this needs to be revived from scratch. If the state considers that this is really necessary, then everything can be resuscitated. There are the people; there is also the will. The main thing is that there should be no indulgence towards foreign manufacturers. It seems to me that in two to three years we will cope if necessary.”

After President Yeltsin and his US proxies, acting prime minister Yegor Gaidar and Kremlin chief of staff Anatoly Chubais had destroyed the Soviet seed research and development centres, Russian agriculture lagged far behind other countries. The commercial incentives were also transformed in favour of imports of foreign seeds, plant stock, and insecticides and herbicides. According to Vitaly Barakhtenko, founder of the Museum of Seeds and Plant Protection Products in St. Petersburg, “across the world seeds are usually harvested from the equatorial zone, because there are the most favourable conditions on the planet: constant sun, stable temperature. Imagine, in winter and summer about 28 degrees! Under these conditions, the seeds develop much better. Plus, you can grow three to four crops. No greenhouse in Russia will give such a result. But you can approach it.”

“Today we are buying seeds abroad, because during Yeltsin’s time all the seed banks were destroyed, and the seed breeding stations were closed,” Arkady Dudov, a Leningrad region farmer told an agro-industry website. “It takes decades to revive all this. Here in Leningrad we kept the seed bank for the country safely underground . Above, during the Great Patriotic War, the city population under the blockade were dying of hunger, but they did not eat the seeds. And then Yeltsin blew it all. As a result, all the seeds we have now are Dutch and American. They sell us the hybrids that we grow. But we cannot immediately cultivate a clean line from these fruits, it takes five years to do this. I took care of this problem for myself seven years ago, got the first seeds, the first results. But at the local level, this is not supported in any way; on the contrary, they are strangling the farmers by all sorts of checks.”

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Pure horror.

Pfizer & FDA Knew About Safety Concerns For Pregnant And Nursing Women (CR)

No wonder Pfizer and the FDA sought to hide these documents from the public for 75 years. To this day, the medical field is pressuring pregnant women to get these terrible shots, but now we know that Pfizer was tracking safety concerns for these women from day one. As we observe plummeting birth rates and skyrocketing fetal losses throughout the world, it is now clear that Pfizer and the FDA were aware that the vaccine could spread through the placenta and breast milk, as later studies seemed to confirm. Where is the action from Congress? This affects all of humanity, including a generation yet to be born. The eight-page confidential document was dated April 20, 2021, but tracked 458 pregnant women and 215 lactating women from the time the shots were released until February 28, 2021. That was the same date that Pfizer already recorded over 1,200 deaths and over 1,000 categories of serious adverse events. Here are the gory details, courtesy of Trial Site’s Sonia Elijah.


Pregnancy
• 54% of the 458 pregnant women reported adverse events. These included symptoms in line with AEs experienced by others who took the shots.
• 53 of the women (11.6%) experienced miscarriages, which is definitely on the high end of what we should expect.
• Most notably, six of the babies experienced serious AEs that Pfizer admitted were caused by the vaccine transferring “transplacentally.” This likely caused them to be born prematurely. So Pfizer knew from day one not only that the shots do not remain in the shoulder muscle and do indeed spread throughout the body, but that the spike protein could spread to the placenta.

• Two of the babies died after suffering from known respiratory ailments associated with the spike protein (severe respiratory distress and pneumothorax) after their mothers received the vaccine during the second semester.
• One of the infants was born at 24 weeks, which is extremely precarious, yet Pfizer never followed up on the outcome, even though the company seemed to think the baby was exposed “via transplacental route.”
• Another premature baby developed fetal tachycardia (rapid heart rate) just one week after the mother received her second dose. The baby was hospitalized, but the company never followed up on the outcome. Surveys have shown 8%-13% of people suffered rapid heartbeat after getting the shots.

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Are these people for real?

Biden Energy Secretary Wants All US Military Vehicles To Be Electric By 2030

As if the US military was not already crippled by woke activism at the highest levels of the Department of Defense, the latest news suggests that the nation’s military vehicle fleet will be hobbled as well. Biden Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, a Canadian born lawyer with no military background, testified Wednesday to the Senate Armed Services Committee that she supported requiring the United States military to move to an all-electric vehicle fleet by 2030. That’s less than seven years. She added: “And I do think that reducing our reliance on the volatility of globally-traded fossil fuels where we know that global events, such as the war in Ukraine, can jack up prices for people back home – it does not contribute to energy security.” “I think energy security is achieved when we have homegrown, clean energy that is abundant, like you see in Iowa. We think we can be a leader globally in how we have become energy-independent…”

Her assertions rest on a number of fallacies. First, Granholm does not address where the energy would come from to power the lithium based batteries that an EV fleet would rely on. Generally, green energy options are highly inefficient and carbon based fuels are the primary source of electricity for much of the nation. They seem to think electricity is magic, but every time a climate activist charges up their EV they are most likely using “fossil fuels” to do it. Iowa is held up as a golden idol among climate activists for its large windmill farms that produce up to 40% of the state’s power, but such systems tend to fail under harsh conditions and are in no way portable, which makes one wonder why Granholm cited Iowa as a reference for justifying military EVs? The advantage of gas based vehicles over EVs is obvious – There is no long wait time for recharging, refueling is instant and access to a large energy producing source is not required.

In a war zone, there are few places to plug in your Tesla Humvee. Shifting to EVs would essentially bottleneck operations, making vehicles less independent with less range and easier to disrupt. Second, as a side note, gas prices were rising well before the war in Ukraine due to inflation caused by government mismanagement and central bank fiat money creation. Let’s stop trying to perpetuate the lie that Russia is somehow responsible for our economic troubles. Third, a few years ago the US was a net exporter of crude oil, and after Biden’s entry into the White House this advantage suddenly disappeared. This increased production along with the completion of the Keystone XL pipeline would have ensured US energy security for many years to come. That was until the government interfered with oil output and Biden blocked Keystone. He then began selling off US strategic oil reserves in order to artificially manipulate market prices down while depleting military resources.

It’s also important to realize that the lithium needed to create the batteries for EVs is primarily mined overseas in countries like China (often with child slave labor). How does switching to EVs reliant on lithium make US energy secure, let alone the military more capable? Fourth, there is no evidence of a “climate crisis.” It doesn’t exist. So why are we talking about this at all? There is no telling how much damage the climate agenda will ultimately do to US defensive capabilities, but the overall trend in energy is more and more centralization. Centralization, as opposed to redundancy, leads to weakness. The reduction of US carbon based energy and the over-reliance on a green electrical grid is expected to trigger skyrocketing consumer prices over the next several years. Transfer this dynamic of high cost and logistical uncertainty over to the military and you have a recipe for disaster.

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Giraffe
https://twitter.com/i/status/1651518468955467780

 

 

Parrot pump

 

 

Sea butterfly
https://twitter.com/i/status/1651570161965514752

 

 

DogCat
https://twitter.com/i/status/1651676706862690330

 

 

 

 

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Apr 262023
 


Vincent van Gogh Tulip fields 1883

 

Can a Woke Military Win Wars? (Kimball)
The Status Of Ukraine’s Much-hyped ‘Counteroffensive’ Against Russia (RT)
Ukraine Risks Losing Western Support If Counteroffensive Fails – NYT (RT)
British Depleted Uranium Already In Ukraine (RT)
West Turning Ukraine Into ‘Radioactive Landfill’ – Embassy (RT)
US May Be Preparing Biological War Against Russia – Patrushev (TASS)
G7 Ban On All Exports To Russia ‘Not Doable’ – FT (RT)
China Doesn’t Want Peace In Ukraine, Czech President Warns (Pol.eu)
Russia Lists Obstacles To Moving UN From New York (RT)
Lavrov: West’s ‘Schizophrenic Logic’ And UN Head’s Letter (TASS)
Will America Win From De-dollarisation? (Fazi)
Decision on Trump Indictment to Be Announced ‘In the Near Future’ (ET)
FDA: Vaccines Don’t Have to Prevent Infection or Transmission (ET)
Whistleblower: US Govt Is ‘Middleman’ In Child Trafficking Op (Fox)
Just 3% of Australians Know the Great Barrier Reef is at a Record High (DS)

 

 

 

 

Ed Dowd M2
https://twitter.com/i/status/1650984403202625536

 

 

Tucker Zelensky
https://twitter.com/i/status/1650651758249533441

Tucker JFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1650841641375223810

 

 

 

 

Biden by Trump

 

 

Rostov
https://twitter.com/i/status/1650760804923211776

 

 

 

 

Choice:
1) We want to win.
2) We only want to win if everybody uses the right pronouns.

Can a Woke Military Win Wars? (Kimball)

For a couple of years now, the U.S. military has had a serious recruitment problem. That isn’t really a surprise. Our leaders have injected the entire menu of radical “woke” ideology into the tissues of the military establishment. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, worries about “white rage” and supports teaching critical race theory to the troops. When Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin took office under President Joe Biden, he issued a 60-day “stand down” order to the entire military in pursuit of battling “extremism” and achieving “equity” in the military. In March 2022, the Biden administration announced a new policy under which people suffering from gender dysphoria would not only be allowed to serve in the military but also would have their “gender reassignment” surgery paid for by taxpayers.

Traditionally, conservative families, especially conservative working-class families, supplied a large percentage of military recruits. Those families aren’t thrilled by the intrusion of such politically correct sentiments into an institution hitherto marked by its commitment to traditional moral and martial values. They aren’t interested in sending their children to be catechized by anti-American Marxists or apostles of sexual exotica. The Biden administration seems blissfully unaware of this reality. At least, I assume it’s unaware of what two retired Army generals called “a major threat to our national security.” Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain Biden’s recent executive order regarding “environmental justice.” According to the White House, the new order is part of the administration’s “whole-of-government effort to confront longstanding environmental injustices and inequities.”

Of course, we live at a time when everything is potentially racist. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg even argued that highway designs in the United States are “racist.” So it should come as no surprise that “environmental justice” is really just an aspect of “racial justice.” “For far too long,” the executive order reads, “communities across our country have faced persistent environmental injustice through toxic pollution, underinvestment in infrastructure and critical services, and other disproportionate environmental harms often due to a legacy of racial discrimination including redlining.” And let’s not forget the other big-ticket item on the agenda of the left: “climate change.” “These communities with environmental justice concerns face even greater burdens due to climate change,” the White House stated.

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“..only 20,000 of the 100,000 troops assembled are actually combat-ready..”

The Status Of Ukraine’s Much-hyped ‘Counteroffensive’ Against Russia (RT)

So far, Ukraine’s planned military assault, originally announced for November 2022, has been postponed indefinitely. Foreign sources differ in their assessment of Kiev’s readiness for a counterattack against Russia and agree that it is difficult for the Ukrainians to gather enough forces. What is stopping the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) from advancing now? One of the main problems preventing the AFU from carrying out the announced offensive is considered to be a lack of experienced personnel. A large portion of the combat-ready, equipped and motivated cadre units of the AFU (as well as the NGU and Territorial Defense) have already been destroyed in Mariupol, Artemovsk, Soledar, Popasnaya, Lisichansk, Severodonetsk and during the battles in the Kherson and Kharkov regions in the summer of 2022. Meanwhile, a new grouping of equal professionalism and equipment levels has not yet been formed. However, NATO and US officials differ in their estimates of the number of AFU formations.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said after the Rammstein Contact Group meeting earlier this year that Western countries had managed to prepare nine armored brigades. This figure is questionable, however, as at least 837 tanks would be needed for that size of a deployment. After Rammstein, Austin reported deliveries of 230 battle tanks, suggesting a deliberate misrepresentation of the size of the Ukrainian group. How many reserves has the AFU built up? Michel Goya, a French army colonel and renowned expert on modern warfare and combat innovation, disagrees. He estimates that no more than three or four Ukrainian brigades could realistically be trained and armed by NATO and the US in the time frame allowed. At the same time, the recently popular estimate of the number of Ukrainian reserves for a counterattack at 200,000 looks doubtful, since in this case the AFU forces would have to exceed the combined US and NATO forces at the time of the attack on Iraq in 2003 by 30,000-40,000 (at that time it was 160,000 men).

The most likely figure is 80,000-100,000, which have been trained both inside and outside Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s military operation. There is an important caveat. Apart from the combat experience and capabilities of the grouping, it is not clear which forces are the combat-ready vanguard and which are support units (the so-called “tooth-to-tail” ratio). If the AFU is planning an offensive like the US in Iraq, only 20,000 of the 100,000 troops assembled are actually combat-ready, the rest are support and sustainment forces.

What difficulties does the AFU face? The conceptual problem of the offensive is the lack of surprise. AFU units are waiting in all directions – from Artemovsk to Kherson, so it is extremely difficult to surprise Russian forces in such a situation. Moreover, the movements of the Ukrainian army are well monitored, and it is almost impossible to accumulate a group of 20,000-150,000 troops unnoticed in such conditions. If they abandon massing their soldiers, and spread the forces across the front, all the advantages of large numbers are lost. An additional difficulty is time. Delaying an offensive means not only guaranteeing the loss of Artemovsk/Bakhmut, which is being cleared at the rate of two or three blocks every 24 hours, but also disrupting the plans of foreign partners and nullifying all the financial and military aid provided so far. Moreover, every day that the AFU’s offensive is delayed is an extra day for the Russian army to prepare and reinforce.

Prigozhin
https://twitter.com/i/status/1650908155440775188

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Ukraine never had a chance, but they got the support regardless.

Ukraine Risks Losing Western Support If Counteroffensive Fails – NYT (RT)

Ukraine is far from guaranteed to succeed in a counteroffensive against Russia despite receiving Western weapons, training, and intelligence support, the New York Times has stated. An underwhelming outcome would likely prompt Kiev’s backers to press it to negotiate for peace, the newspaper predicted. Kiev has long touted an upcoming push as the next decisive phase of the conflict with Russia. The NYT claimed on Monday that the offensive could be launched as early as May, although Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal recently assessed that it might not get underway until the summer. According to classified documents shared as part of the Pentagon leaks, Ukraine is planning to use 12 combat brigades of about 4,000 troops each in its renewed campaign against Russian forces.

The US and its allies have helped train nine of those units, with soldiers being taught to use Western-provided equipment and receiving tactical advice at American military facilities in Germany. Ukraine’s partners are also expected to provide it with intelligence for the proposed assault. “Everything hinges on this counteroffensive,” Alexander Vershbow, a former US ambassador to Russia and senior NATO official, said of the future operation. “Everybody’s hopeful, maybe over-optimistic. But it will determine whether there is going to be a decent outcome for the Ukrainians.” Kiev has ruled out negotiations with Moscow until it recaptures all the territories that it claims as its own. However, even with all Western help, “big gains are not guaranteed, or even necessarily likely,” the NYT warned.

The newspaper cited Ukrainian battlefield losses, heavy expenditure of munitions, and Russian troops digging in and preventing the enemy from using Western-taught warfare as working against Kiev. After the push is over, “there is little chance that the West can recreate the buildup… for the foreseeable future” the report argued. The US and its allies have largely exhausted their military inventories after flooding Kiev with military aid, causing gaps that are unlikely to be filled until next year, experts assessed. Meanwhile, Russia is ramping up pressure against Ukraine despite previous setbacks, meaning that “the window to make significant gains… may not remain open indefinitely,” the NYT stated. With larger reserves at its disposal, Moscow could emerge victorious in the conflict, it acknowledged.

Politico previously reported that the White House was bracing itself to mitigate the fallout from a potentially poorly-executed Ukrainian counteroffensive. A temporary truce could give Kiev time for a military buildup before another offensive at a later point, US officials claimed to the outlet.

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“Asked whether the government has a responsibility to “help clear up depleted uranium rounds” used in Ukraine after the conflict, the minister stated it has “no obligation” to do so..”

British Depleted Uranium Already In Ukraine (RT)

The UK government has already started shipments of depleted uranium ammunition to Ukraine, Armed Forces Minister James Heappey said, noting that the British military would not attempt to track where the weapons are used. In response to questions from Scottish MP Kenny MacAskill, Heappey confirmed on Tuesday that DU munitions for the UK-made Challenger 2 tank had already arrived in Ukraine, though declined to comment on Kiev’s “usage rates for the rounds provided.” “We have sent thousands of rounds of Challenger 2 ammunition to Ukraine, including depleted uranium armour-piercing rounds,” he said, adding the weapons “are now under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU)” and that the Defence Ministry “does not monitor the locations from where DU rounds are fired by the AFU in Ukraine.”

Asked whether the government has a responsibility to “help clear up depleted uranium rounds” used in Ukraine after the conflict, the minister stated it has “no obligation” to do so, instead stressing “Ukraine’s immediate needs.” While Heappey has claimed the health and environmental risks posed by depleted uranium are “low,” citing the “monitoring of UK military veterans” performed for a government study in 2007, more recent research suggests the munitions could carry health hazards after all. The United States used DU ammunition heavily during its two wars in Iraq, with some researchers claiming the weapons could be linked to a spate of birth defects later observed in the country. According to Doug Weir, an expert with the Conflict and Environment Observatory, when DU penetrators strike a target, “they fragment and burn, generating chemically toxic and radioactive DU particulate that poses an inhalational risk to people.”

Both the US and UK governments have long disputed the alleged dangers, however. In March, British and American advisers oversaw special training for Ukrainian troops for how to handle DU rounds, which will primarily be used for the Challenger 2 tank. London previously vowed to send a total of 14 of the tanks to Ukraine, though it is unclear whether any have reached the battlefield. Moscow has repeatedly urged against foreign arms shipments to Kiev, namely the British DU munitions, with the Foreign Ministry condemning London for “absolute recklessness, irresponsibility and impunity.” Last month, the Russian military also warned that the use of uranium shells is likely to “cause irreparable harm” to the health of Ukrainians and inflict “tremendous economic damage to the agro-industrial complex” in the region, citing the weapon’s impact in Iraq.

Tucker USnukes

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“..given the “chemotoxic and radiotoxic” properties of DU. Moscow has urged foreign powers to cease all weapons shipments to Ukraine..”

West Turning Ukraine Into ‘Radioactive Landfill’ – Embassy (RT)

Russia has condemned the UK’s decision to send depleted uranium shells to Ukraine, saying the move marks an “all-out escalation” after the British Defence Ministry confirmed the radioactive weapons were already in Kiev’s hands. Moscow’s UK embassy issued a statement on Tuesday after senior official James Heappey acknowledged that the British DU munitions had arrived on the battlefield, to be fired from Challenger 2 tanks also supplied to Ukraine. “James Heappey’s comments are a grim testament to the ruthlessness of the Anglo-Saxons’ policy of all-out escalation of the ‘proxy conflict’ they themselves unleashed in Ukraine,” it said. “He cynically stated that London is not monitoring the deployment of these weapons and has no obligation to eliminate the consequences of their use following the end of the conflict.”

“It has by now become self-evident that the West intends this country to become not only an anti-Russian military “shooting range,” but also a radioactive landfill – with all the ensuing grave consequences for the health of local residents and the environment in the region”. The embassy went on to say that the British government would be responsible for the effects of the “toxic ammunition” and could not escape accountability by passing them off to Ukrainian forces. In an interview with RT last week, Russia’s envoy to Britain, Ambassador Andrey Kelin, warned that DU munitions will be a “terrible thing… for the agriculture and for the people” of Ukraine, saying radioactive residue could contaminate the country’s water and soil “for at least six generations.”

Both UK and US officials have disputed the purported health hazards associated with DU shells – which use a dense uranium core to improve their armor-piercing capabilities – and deny allegations that the weapons were linked to a spike in cancer and birth defects in Iraq. Heappey has claimed depleted uranium carries only “low” health and environmental risks, pointing to a 2007 government study. He later added that the Defence Ministry would make no effort to track where Ukrainian forces use British-supplied DU rounds, and had “no obligation” to assist clean-up efforts after the conflict.

However, according to Doug Weir, an expert with the Conflict and Environment Observatory, uranium munitions generate “chemically toxic and radioactive DU particulate” when they strike hard targets, adding that the dust poses “an inhalational risk to people.”Other recent research has also indicated the weapons could produce “adverse health outcomes” given the “chemotoxic and radiotoxic” properties of DU. Moscow has urged foreign powers to cease all weapons shipments to Ukraine, arguing the aid would not deter its military aims but only prolong the conflict. After the UK announced its decision to supply depleted uranium rounds to Kiev last month, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Western nations would like to “see Ukraine completely destroyed” and are acting with “absolute recklessness, irresponsibility and impunity.”

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May sound a bit crazy, but Patrushev is not crazy.

US May Be Preparing Biological War Against Russia – Patrushev (TASS)

Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev urged Russia on Tuesday to counteract US efforts to launch a biological war against it and other countries. “Specific biological research being used by the United States in developing military programs requires the closest attention of our scientific community,” Patrushev said, urging proactive efforts to counteract preparations for a biological war against Russia and other countries. Patrushev elaborated on technological breakthroughs that he said “may affect the global balance of power further down the road.” He referred to “an avalanche-like increase in global research in the sphere of IT and quantum technology, as well as AI.” “Experts claim that the use of such technologies can [lead to] and has already prompted a social transformation,” the top Russian security official said, calling for a thorough analysis into the problem.

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Cut it out already..

G7 Ban On All Exports To Russia ‘Not Doable’ – FT (RT)

A US proposal for G7 nations to introduce a complete ban on exports to Russia has met with strong opposition from the EU and Japan, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed officials. According to the outlet, a draft statement prepared for a three-day G7 summit in Hiroshima in May includes a bold proposal to replace the current sector-by-sector penalties against Moscow with a full export ban, albeit with exemptions for areas such as agricultural and medical products. The US is reportedly pushing the plan amid concerns that existing sanctions contain loopholes that allow Moscow to continue importing technology from the West. However, lawmakers from Japan and EU member states reportedly suggested in a preparatory meeting last week that the measure would be impossible.


“From our perspective it is simply not doable,” said one official who spoke to the FT on condition of anonymity. Last week, Bloomberg reported that G7 nations were discussing a potential outright ban on most exports to Russia as part of a broader agenda to tighten economic pressure. Since February 2022, the EU alone has adopted 10 packages of anti-Russian sanctions in response to Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has warned against a blanket export ban, arguing that it could result in a full-scale global economic crisis. Former Russian president and current deputy chairman of the National Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, warned that Moscow could quit the Black Sea grain deal if the G7 imposes a total ban on exports to Russia.

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He’s literally straight out of NATO.

China Doesn’t Want Peace In Ukraine, Czech President Warns (Pol.eu)

China cannot be trusted to mediate peace between Russia and Ukraine, Czech President Petr Pavel is warning, telling POLITICO that Beijing benefits from prolonging the war. His comments come as China is trying to position itself as a peacemaker in Ukraine, recently floating a vague roadmap to ending the conflict. And while most Western allies have been skeptical of the overtures, some countries like France insist China could play a major role in peace talks. Pavel, a former general and senior NATO leader, was unequivocal, however. When it comes to Ukraine, he argued, China only wants what’s best for itself — and, for now, that’s more war. “I believe that it is in China’s interest to prolong the status quo,” Pavel said, “because it can push Russia to a number of concessions.”

Beijing, he said in an interview late last week, can get cheap oil, gas and other resources from Moscow — in exchange for its “no limits” partnership with the Kremlin. “It is also good for China that the West is probably becoming a little bit weaker by supporting Ukraine,” he added. Pavel’s remarks seemed prescient when, only hours after he spoke, China’s ambassador to France provoked indignation by proclaiming that former Soviet countries have “no effective status” in international law — a comment that came in response to a question about whether Crimea belongs to Ukraine. Although Beijing on Monday distanced itself from the remarks, the incident has stoked the heated conversation around whether China can ever help bring peace to Ukraine. “I don’t think,” the Czech leader said, that “China has a real interest to resolve the war in a short time.”

Pavel, who took office as president last month, said Beijing is using the war to learn. “China is taking lessons out of the conflict every day,” Pavel said. “They closely follow what Russia is doing, how the West is reacting.” Pavel, who chaired NATO’s military committee from 2015 to 2018, won the Czech presidential race earlier this year on a pro-Western platform. Now, he is using his knowledge of the alliance’s inner workings and his extensive military experience — highly unusual for a European leader — to advocate for more effective support for Ukraine and a more nuanced approach to NATO defense policy. During a visit to Brussels last week, Pavel floated the idea of creating a new proposal for extending defense companies’ production lines — possibly using a mix of national and European subsidies — so that they could have extra capacity to draw upon in times of crisis.

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“a lot of reasons” why national governments are reluctant to leave the largest city in the US, with one of them being that “they have real estate there..”

Russia Lists Obstacles To Moving UN From New York (RT)

UN member states are against the idea of moving the organization’s headquarters out of New York City mainly due to financial limitations, according to Pyotr Ilyichev, a high-ranking official at the Russian Foreign Ministry. “[Russia] would, of course, like to relocate [the UN HQ] to some other more neutral spot, like Geneva or Vienna, but many member states don’t want to leave New York,” Ilyichev, who heads the Department of International Organizations at the ministry, said on Monday. According to the diplomat, there are “a lot of reasons” why national governments are reluctant to leave the largest city in the US, with one of them being that “they have real estate there. It’s hard for them to sustain two [UN] missions, so they have everything situated in New York. Those are more of the financial and economic reflections.”

Russia is “thinking” about moving the UN headquarters out of New York, where it has been located since the formation of the global body in 1951, he said. “The Austrians and the Swiss are more neutral” compared to the Americans, Ilyichev stated. Besides its New York-based headquarters, the UN also has offices in Geneva, Vienna, and Kenyan capital Nairobi. A Russian delegation headed by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had difficulties with obtaining US visas to attend UN Security Council (UNSC) meetings in New York on Monday and Tuesday. The country’s journalists were denied permits to enter the US by the American authorities altogether, without any explanation.

Lavrov argued that such behavior by the US isn’t worthy of a UN host nation. The Americans have just “chickened out,” he suggested, while promising that the move won’t be left unanswered by Moscow. Russia, which currently holds the presidency of the UNSC, had planned some “major newsbreak events” in New York this week and barring the pool of the country’s reporters from participating was completely unacceptable, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said. When asked about the possibility of relocating the UN headquarters to another country on Monday, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov replied that it was “an issue of additional thinking, additional analysts.”

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“The Americans have started the de-dollarization process.”

Lavrov: West’s ‘Schizophrenic Logic’ And UN Head’s Letter (TASS)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has branded as schizophrenic the West’s statements that talks between Russia and Ukraine will be possible only after Kiev’s counteroffensive at a news conference in New York. The minister said that Moscow declared all its goals during the special military operation, but would like to learn what the West is up to in Ukraine. He also urged those who theoretize about the possibility of the Third World War to show responsibility. Among other things, the minister also spoke about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s possible response to a letter by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. Below are Lavrov’s main remarks, made at a news conference to sum up the results of his visit to the United States within the framework of Russia’s presidency in the UN Security Council.

“Now, this funny theory has emerged: let us we (Western nations – TASS) ensure Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive and then we will ask Ukraine, [President Vladimir] Zelensky to begin talks. But this is schizophrenic logic. We don’t want any threats to our security to come from Ukrainian territory and these threats have been accumulating there for years, especially after the state coup in February 2014.” Speaking about whether achieving peace in Ukraine is possible this year, he said: “Hopes and expectations are not what I’m paid for.” Russia declared all its goals during the special military operation, but would like to learn what the West is up to in Ukraine, and “would also like to hear from our Western colleagues, as a reciprocal move, what goals are they pursuing there.”

[..] Ukraine’s urgent accession into the European Union will expose the organization’s true goals, the Russian foreign minister said. It “will prove that its membership is not about meeting some kind of criteria, that it is a purely geopolitical game of grabbing as many territories as possible that are unclaimed or about to become unclaimed.” Meanwhile, the European Union “is militarizing on the double and is turning into an aggressive entity dead set on containing Russia.” This affects, among other things, the union’s admission policies: “This is what the European Union is like now: if you are conducting anti-Russian policies, your chances [of membership] are very good.”

In Lavrov’s words, “sanctions against Russia are indeed such that no one has ever seen and could hardly imagine, but for us it is a clinched question. We are well-placed for not depending on such behavior of Western colleagues that have proved the lack of deal-making skills.” “Preparations are underway for a new round of the global dominion war, or rather the war for an attempt to maintain global dominion. It may probably slow down the natural process of the formation of multipolar world order, but not for long.” “The shift to settlements in national currencies bypassing the dollar, the euro and the yuan, to digital currencies can no longer be stopped, and the future of the international currency financial system, including the IMF, the World Bank, remains to be seen,” he said. “”The Americans have started the de-dollarization process.”

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“As Wolfgang Münchau wrote, by weaponising international reserves, the US had “taken the biggest gamble in the history of economic warfare..”

Will America Win From De-dollarisation? (Fazi)

The most important element in the debate over the utility of Western sanctions against Russia, is also the most ignored. The sanctions regime mostly comprises of restrictions that have been deployed before, such as export bans and the freezing of certain assets. Even the controversial exclusion of a number of Russian banks from the main international banking message system, SWIFT, was not exceptional, having already been used against Iran. But the freezing of Russia’s foreign-exchange reserves, worth around $300 billion — about half of its overall reserves — was significant. While the US had behaved similarly with Afghanistan, Iran, Syria and Venezuela, none of these targets was remotely as powerful as Russia: a member of the G20, and the world’s largest nuclear power. Likewise, none of the 63 central banks that are members of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel — known as the central bank of central banks — had ever been the target of financial sanctions, not even during the Second World War.

At the time, the decision received relatively little attention. Future historians, however, will look back on it as the trigger that set in motion one of the biggest snowball effects in history, one which now threatens the very foundations of the American Empire. In our age of fiat money, reserves aren’t held in the form of physical dollars (or other currencies) stashed in the vaults of foreign central banks. They are simple IOUs — a credit recorded in the accounting sheets of the Federal Reserve and other central banks. In the dealings between countries, just as in the dealings between individuals or companies and commercial banks, trust is therefore fundamental: just as you would never deposit your salary in a bank if you had even the remotest fear that it might freeze or confiscate your money, no country wants to hold reserves which may be snatched away at any moment.

This move, therefore, violated an almost sacred principle: the neutrality of international reserves. The message was clear: from now on, the US would stop at nothing to punish countries that stepped out of line or defied Western diktats. And if this could happen to Russia, a major power whose central bank reserves were mostly earnings from sales to the West, it could happen to anyone. As Wolfgang Münchau wrote, by weaponising international reserves, the US had “taken the biggest gamble in the history of economic warfare”. In one fell swoop, he noted, the US had “undermined trust in the US dollar as the world’s main reserve currency”, and encouraged China and Russia to “bypass the Western financial infrastructure”. For non-Western nations — especially China, which is heavily exposed to US assets — disengaging from the dollar, and more in general from the US-led international monetary and financial system, acquired a sudden urgency.

De-dollarisation was not something that would happen overnight, that much was clear. But the wheels of history were set in motion. It is no coincidence that most of the world’s nations didn’t join the West in slapping sanctions on Russia, but quietly started strengthening their ties with Russia and China in an effort to reduce their dependence on the dollar-centric system. In just over 12 months, the world has undergone a greater tectonic shift, in geopolitical terms, than it has in decades: the long-heralded post-Western international order — comprising the BRICS and dozens of other countries making up most of the world’s population — has finally become a reality. The US, as former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers recently said, is lonelier than it has ever been.

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“Willis characterized Trump’s wording during the call as evidence of “criminal disruption” of the 2020 election, and has based her case on charges around that allegation..”

“The President participated in two perfect phone calls regarding election integrity in Georgia..”

Decision on Trump Indictment to Be Announced ‘In the Near Future’ (ET)

A Georgia district attorney wrote in a letter dated April 24 that she intends to announce potential indictments resulting from a probe into former President Donald Trump and his associates for alleged interference in the 2020 election with his calls for investigations. “In the near future, I will announce charging decisions resulting from the investigation my office has been conducting into possible criminal interference in the administration of Georgia’s 2020 General Election,” Fani Willis, District Attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, wrote in a letter addressed to Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat on Monday. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution first reported the letter. Willis wrote she would announce the charging decisions between July 11 and Sept. 1.

Willis’s Monday announcement was the latest update in the special-purpose grand jury investigation she launched in 2021 and led thereafter. While the grand jury proceedings had occurred behind closed doors, the probe is believed to center on a 2020 phone call between Trump, Trump’s legal team, and Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his team. “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state,” Trump allegedly told Raffensperger during the phone call on Jan. 2, 2021, a transcript of which was released by media organizations.

Willis characterized Trump’s wording during the call as evidence of “criminal disruption” of the 2020 election, and has based her case on charges around that allegation. The grand jury heard testimony from Trump’s former associates, including Rudy Giuliani and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Trump has denied all allegations of wrongdoing on his part. The grand jury was discharged in January. In early February, the Fulton County Superior Court released a portion of the jury panel’s report, which did not include the list of names to whom indictments were recommended. Emily Kohrs, the grand jury’s foreperson, told media outlets in February that the group recommended indictments.

“The long awaited important sections of the Georgia report, which do not even mention President Trump’s name, have nothing to do with the President because President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told CNN in a following statement in February. “The President participated in two perfect phone calls regarding election integrity in Georgia, which he is entitled to do—in fact, as President, it was President Trump’s Constitutional duty to ensure election safety, security, and integrity,” Cheung added.

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Redefine the redefinitions..

FDA: Vaccines Don’t Have to Prevent Infection or Transmission (ET)

Vaccines don’t have to prevent infection or transmission to be cleared in the United States, the country’s top regulatory agency said in a new document. “It is important to note that FDA’s authorization and licensure standards for vaccines do not require demonstration of the prevention of infection or transmission,” Dr. Peter Marks, a top official at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said in the document. Marks was writing as he rejected nearly all recommendations from a group of experts that advised the FDA to update the labels for the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. Vaccines are traditionally known as drugs that prevent an illness. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for years said a vaccine is a product that “produces immunity” while vaccination is an injection of an infectious organism “in order to prevent the disease.”

The agency changed its definitions after people correctly noted that COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent infection. The Coalition Advocating for Adequately Labeled Medicines, a group of experts, had called for the FDA to make clear that the COVID-19 vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission. “There is a widespread (but inaccurate) notion that efficacy against infection and transmission have been established by substantial evidence, and that these vaccines contribute to herd immunity,” the group said, pointing to claims from President Joe Biden, the head of the CDC, and Dr. Anthony Fauci that vaccinated people would not get sick or infected. Biden, for instance, falsely said in 2021 that “you’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.”

“To remedy this situation, language clarifying that phase III trials were not designed to determine and failed to provide substantial evidence of vaccine efficacy against SARS-CoV-2 transmission or death must be added to labels,” the coalition said. SARS-CoV-2 causes COVID-19. While it’s uncommon to include in product labeling what a product has not been proven to do, there are cases where it’s necessary due to inaccurate assumptions, the coalition said. They pointed to the FDA stating that the influenza medicine Tamiflu “has not been shown to previous serious complications of influenza” after the drug’s manufacturer said it reduced complications by nearly half.

Marks rejected the request, writing that the petitioners included “selected statements by U.S government officials suggesting that vaccination against COVID-19 may prevent infection or transmission” but omitted statements from Fauci and others that later acknowledged vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission. “In responding to your Petition, we are not agreeing or disagreeing with any of the statements that are selected in the Petition,” Marks said. “Rather, we are observing that the statements referenced by the Petition do not demonstrate a commonly held belief that the clinical trials provided substantial evidence of efficacy against SARS-CoV-2 transmission. We are not convinced that there is any widespread misconception about this.”

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“Today, children will work overnight shifts at slaughterhouses, factories, restaurants to pay their debts to smugglers and traffickers. Today, children will be sold for sex,..

Whistleblower: US Govt Is ‘Middleman’ In Child Trafficking Op (Fox)

A House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Wednesday will feature the testimony from a whistleblower who will warn lawmakers that the U.S. has become the “middleman” in a multibillion dollar migrant child trafficking operation at the border. The hearing, “The Biden Border Crisis: Exploitation of Unaccompanied Alien Children,” will be held by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement and will examine the surge in unaccompanied children (UACs) at the southern border. According to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics, the number of UACs who arrive at the border has swelled from 33,239 in fiscal year 2020 to more than 146,000 in fiscal year 2021 and 152,000 in fiscal year 2022. So far in fiscal year 2023, there have been more than 70,000 encounters of unaccompanied children.

When child migrants are encountered at the border, they are transferred into the custody of Health and Human Services (HHS) and then united with a sponsor – typically a parent or family member already in the U.S. According to Customs and Border Protection statistics, the number of unaccompanied children who arrive at the southern border has surged since fiscal year 2020. But the Biden administration has been rocked by a number of reports that officials have been unable to make contact with more than 85,000 child migrants; and more recently, administration officials reportedly ignored signs of “explosive” growth in child labor. A number have been forced into indentured servitude to pay back smugglers and have worked in dire conditions.

The Wednesday hearing will hear from three witnesses: Tara Lee Rodas, a HHS whistleblower formerly with an inspector general’s office; Sheena Rodriguez, founder and president of Alliance for a Safe Texas; and Jessica Vaughn, director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. Rodas will warn of a problem that predates the administration but has increased significantly during the recent migrant crisis, according to a copy of her written testimony obtained by Fox News Digital. “Today, children will work overnight shifts at slaughterhouses, factories, restaurants to pay their debts to smugglers and traffickers. Today, children will be sold for sex,” she will say. “Today, children will call a hotline to report they are being abused, neglected, and trafficked. For nearly a decade, unaccompanied children have been suffering in the shadows.”

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“For decades, scientists and their media messengers have hyped up the temporary loss of coral to secure grants and promote political causes..”

Just 3% of Australians Know the Great Barrier Reef is at a Record High (DS)

Three-quarters of sampled Australian green voters believe the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is doing worse than usual, with 44% stating the coral is at a record low. Overall only 3% of all Australian voters knew that the coral was at a “record high” – the correct answer following two years of record growth that has broken all previous records. These findings are not a surprise, since the true picture on the reef has been downplayed, even hidden, by mainstream interested parties in the media and in science. The results come from a survey carried out by the Australian Environment Foundation (AEF) and is the work of coral authority Dr. Peter Ridd and science journalist Jo Nova. They note that the poor scores reflect badly on media coverage that reports every local coral bleaching event, but rarely the rapid recovery.

“It’s almost as if Australians have been subject to years of misinformation,” they say. The silence on the health of the corals is “deafening”. Jo Nova has an idea why the media work so closely with the science establishment to suppress the real story: “Corals are thriving but Australians are spending half a billion dollars to save them.” As atmospheric scientist Richard Lindzen says, the climate narrative is absurd, but trillions of dollars say it is not absurd. It can be argued that few scientific propositions are more absurd than the suggestion that the recent gentle warming spell is leading to the destruction of coral reefs around the world. In a recent report, Dr. Ridd noted that the IPCC said in 2018 “with high confidence” that corals would decline worldwide by 70-90% if temperatures rose just 0.4°C.


Data on coral in many parts of the world are less reliable than for the GBR, but Ridd said it seemed that across the globe there has not been a major drop in coral cover to date. Corals grow in waters between 24°C and 32°C, and in fact often grow quicker in higher temperatures. But they dislike sudden changes in local water temperature caused by natural weather events such as El Niño oscillations. As a result they often bleach, but the evidence suggests they rapidly return to health as natural conditions become more stable. On the GBR, conditions have been testing until recently with powerful El Niños causing rapid temperatures changes, and cyclones smashing the shallow corals. For decades, scientists and their media messengers have hyped up the temporary loss of coral to secure grants and promote political causes surrounding climate Armageddon. It obviously worked – and is still working.

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White blood cells

 

 

 

 

Rotation

 

 

 

Different
https://twitter.com/i/status/1650581322640027648

 

 

 


Ospreys have vision that is well adapted to detecting underwater objects from the air. Prey is first sighted from above the water, after which the bird hovers momentarily and then plunges feet first into the water

 

 

Octopus

 

 


The Megalodon is an extinct species of shark that lived approximately 23 to 2.6 million years ago. Fossil remains suggest that it reached a maximum length of 20 meters

 

 


Secretary bird

 

 

High road
https://twitter.com/i/status/1650798507609972736

 

 

 

 

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Apr 152023
 
 April 15, 2023  Posted by at 11:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  4 Responses »


Brian Griffin Memorial to the Conquerors of Space, Moscow, Russia 1974

 

 

 

Andrew Korybko:

 

Brazilian President Lula was successful in reaching an agreement to de-dollarize his country’s trade with China, the significance of which was earlier explained in the context of his country’s grand strategy here, but failed to convince his counterpart to join a so-called “peace club” on Ukraine during their summit. This is no small shortcoming either since it was promoted by his Foreign Minister as one of the reasons behind his trip in an interview that he gave to the Financial Times (FT) late last month.

Globally prominent outlets such as Bloomberg, France24, the US Government-run “Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty” (RFERL), and others all accordingly reported that this issue would be high on the agenda during Lula’s talks with President Xi. His supporters on social media also went wild getting everyone’s expectations up about this as well, even though “Brazil & China Are Poles Apart When It Comes To Their Envisaged End Games In Ukraine” so it was never likely that anything would come of this.

While China, India, and South Africa have consistently abstained from anti-Russian UNGA Resolutions, Brazil bucked the BRICS trend by always voting against Russia except when it came to suspending it from the Human Rights Council. Lula became the first BRICS leader to personally condemn Russia in his joint statement with Biden back in February, after which he ordered his diplomats to vote in support of the latest anti-Russian UNGA Resolution later that same month.

Foreign Minister Vieira was obviously well aware of the sharp differences between Brazil and China’s officially envisaged end games to this conflict yet he still made it seem to FT like there was a chance that the People’s Republic would tacitly support his country’s position via participation in the “peace club”. That was nothing more than wishful thinking, which belied Brazilian diplomats’ refusal to acknowledge China’s principled approach to this conflict since they in hindsight seemed to assume that it was flexible.

Reality slapped them and their supporters in the face upon the publication of the joint Brazilian-Chinese communique on Friday, which can be read in English on the official website of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs here. The ninth paragraph of that document will now be shared in full so as to prove Lula’s failure to sway President Xi to his country’s side contrary to the unrealistic expectation that Vieira set for his trip when talking to the FT late last month:

“Both parties stated that dialogue and negotiation are the only viable way out of the crisis in Ukraine and that all efforts leading to a peaceful solution to the crisis must be encouraged and supported. Brazil received in a positive way the proposal by China that offers reflections conducive to the search for a peaceful solution to the crisis. China received in a positive way the efforts by Brazil in favour of peace. The parties made an appeal for more countries to play a constructive role in the promotion of a political solution to the crisis in Ukraine. The parties decided to keep in contact on this matter.”

As can be seen, absolutely nothing of tangible significance came from Lula’s over-hyped “peace club” proposal. This paragraph of their joint statement is purely perfunctory and simply acknowledges their shared interest in peace without touching upon their sharp differences in terms of how this should be achieved. The “positive way” in which China “received” “the efforts by Brazil in favour of peace” is similar in spirit to Russia’s reported support of the optics connected to Lula’s peace rhetoric.

What’s meant by this was explained more in detail here last week but just refers to Russia and China’s interest in showing the world that the international community wants peace as soon as possible instead of indefinitely perpetuating this proxy war. Their soft power interests in no way even remotely imply endorsement of Lula’s envisaged end game as articulated in his joint condemnation of Russia with Biden and the anti-Russian UNGA Resolution that he ordered his country’s diplomats to vote in support of.

China wasn’t ever going to be manipulated into de facto taking the US’ political side in this conflict against Russia by dint of joining Lula’s “peace club” and thus extending credence to his hostile demand that their shared BRICS partner immediately withdraw from all the territory that Kiev claims as its own. Doing so would have discredited President Xi’s signature peace proposal that his diplomats unveiled on the one-year anniversary of the conflict and which he discussed at length with President Putin in March.

Lula therefore failed in his function as Biden’s “Trojan Horse” for tricking the Chinese leader into informally adopting an anti-Russian policy, but this unfriendly gamble didn’t spoil their much larger success in agreeing to de-dollarize bilateral trade. About that, while it’s indisputably a positive development that’ll accelerate the global systemic transition to multipolarity, his Finance Minister Fernando Haddad made it clear that neither this nor the trip in general were aimed against the US.

In his own words, “It doesn’t make sense to get closer to China and move away from the United States. We want the best relations with the United States and the European Union.” This aligns with the insight that was hyperlinked to in the introduction regarding Brazil’s grand strategy, which was elaborated upon in this piece here from Friday that discusses the significance of Lula’s reported plans to launch a global influence platform in joint partnership with the US Democrats.

To summarize, he believes that Brazil can “balance” – however clumsily and imperfectly – between de-dollarizing with China and aggressively propagating liberalglobalism across the world with the US, thus enabling his country to preemptively avert potentially disproportionate dependence on either. Relations with Russia are limited in this paradigm to commodities (including energy investments) and cooperation on BRICS’ new reserve currency, which are important but pale in comparison to China and the US’ roles.

All told, the grand strategic significance of Lula’s de-dollarization success with China far outweighs his failure to trick it into tacitly adopting an anti-Russian policy by joining his proposed “peace club”, but the second-mentioned outcome still deserves to be discussed. Those who expected this to happen must cogently account for the fact that it didn’t occur, though without resorting to the conspiracy theories that have become popular among his supporters, if they want to retain a semblance of credibility.

 

 

 

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Mar 312023
 
 March 31, 2023  Posted by at 9:12 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  54 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Dora Maar au chat 1941

 

NYT: Donald Trump Has Been Indicted (Techno Fog)
The Impact of Sanctions on the De-Dollarization of Int’l Trade (Gonzalo Lira)
Saudi Arabia Makes Move Towards Russia-China Bloc (RT)
Brazil and China Sign Pact To Abandon Dollar (RT)
Russia, China Have To Take Measures To Protect Relations – Zakharova (TASS)
Beijing Demands That US Stop Provoking China (TASS)
Senior Orthodox Bishop Invokes Woe On Zelensky (RT)
Kiev Demands Cut Of Western ‘War Profits’ – Politico (RT)
Kuleba: If US Stops Supporting Ukraine, World Order Will Collapse (Az.)
Ukraine’s Military Losing 500 Troops Daily Near Bakhmut – LPR (TASS)
Russian General Staff Says No Plans To Hold Second Wave Of Mobilization (TASS)
Russian Central Bank Reveals How It Braced For Western Dollar Grab (RT)
London Totally Ruined Architecture Of Relations With Moscow – Ambassador (TASS)
The Most Dangerous International Treaty Ever Proposed (Kingsley)
Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century (Siegel)

 

 

 

 

 

 

PCR

Hoeg

 

 

 

 

Jordan Peterson
https://twitter.com/i/status/1641206079844483073

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How much longer will the States remain United?

NYT: Donald Trump Has Been Indicted (Techno Fog)

Breaking news from the New York Times today: “A Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Donald J. Trump on Thursday for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to four people with knowledge of the matter, a historic development that will shake up the 2024 presidential race and forever mark him as the nation’s first former president to face criminal charges. The felony indictment, filed under seal by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, will likely be announced in the coming days. By then, prosecutors working for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, will have asked Mr. Trump to surrender and to face arraignment on charges that remain unknown for now.”


A felony indictment. We’ll have more information and more analysis after the indictment is unsealed. But as we stated yesterday regarding the reported “delays” and the potential charges: “In New York, the falsification of business records is a misdemeanor that is subject to a two-year statute of limitations. Bragg, however, is supposedly pursuing felony charges against Trump for falsifying business records to conceal federal campaign finance violations. The felony has a five-year statute of limitations, one which Bragg can manipulate to perhaps apply to Trump.” The indictment is an absolute scandal, the banana republic on parade, the prosecutor using the weapons of his office to attack his political opponent.

Whitlock

Bragg and his predecessor’s slow-walking of the investigation, with its inception by Manhattan DA goes back to 2019, evidences both the dubious nature of the case against Trump and the political motivations for prosecuting Trump. Theoretically, this should be a simple case. Yet the investigation went on for nearly five years, despite what they’ve possessed: overzealous prosecutors who wanted to charge Trump with racketeering, the cooperating witnesses, the likely millions of pages of materials from the Trump Organization. Now suddenly, the insanely pro-criminal Manhattan DA, who demanded his prosecutors reduce charges for violent criminals, is prioritizing law and order. It’s hard to believe there are legitimate reasons – for prosecutors, that means seeking justice – for that transformation. Why bring the case now? It’s the start of the 2024 presidential campaign season.


[..] Don’t be surprised if the trial date is set for the first half of 2024. And don’t understate the danger to Trump, who will face a jury of Biden voters. Biden won Manhattan 86.7% to 12.3% according to the New York Times. The jury of Trump’s peers will be friendly to the prosecution. That’s all the Manhattan DA might need to secure a conviction. Trump could very well win on appeal but the damage – which carries national repercussions – might already have been done. And that’s the whole point of this dirty scheme.

Read more …

Twitter thread. Russian sanctions drive countries away from the dollar.

The Impact of Sanctions on the De-Dollarization of Int’l Trade (Gonzalo Lira)

The Russian sanctions have caused a worldwide de-dollarization, as countries are unable to use dollars to buy essential commodities from Russia. This has led to countries signing treaties to trade in yuan, as it is a more reliable currency. This de-dollarization has caused a decrease in demand for dollars overseas, leading to American domestic inflation and an inability to continue piling on debt, which will ultimately lead to dollar hyperinflation. Why are so many countries all of a sudden turning to the yuan to buy their essential commodities? Why is the world de-dollarizing so quickly? Simple — the Russian sanctions.

Russia is the biggest single commodity producer in the world — they have oil AND gas AND agro AND minerals AND anything else. But because of the sanctions, Russia CANNOT take dollars (or euros) for sales of their commodities. First, the sanctions disconnected Russia from SWIFT, meaning Russians can’t pay for things they would want to buy with dollars. So why would Russia take dollars for their commodities — if they can’t buy stuff with those dollars. Plus their dollar assets get confiscated in the West. So why hold dollars, and dollar assets to park them in, if they will be stolen? So because of sanctions, Russia has been FORCED to de-dollarize. Russia didn’t want to de-dollarize — they were obliged. By the West. But Russia still has to trade, because it still has to acquire things it cannot produce at home, and still has a surplus of commodities with which to acquire these foreign goods.

Apart from the West, Russia’s major trading partners are China and India. So it makes sense for Russia to sell its commodities in yuan and rupees: Sell oil/agro/gas in yuan, and buy Chinese goods with those yuan. Same with India. But why are OTHER countries signing treaties to trade in yuan, like France and Brazil in the last few days? They’re getting ahead of the curve. As more commodities trading takes place in yuan and rupees, the more demand for those currencies. Hence it becomes smart to cut a deal with China NOW — to fix an exchange rate of yuan. In essence, these deals are longs on the yuan. The effect is, these trade deals eventually lead to more de-dollarization—which becomes a self-reinforcing cycle, as dollars become less valuable (because they can buy less commodities) so more countries want yuan, leading to more de-dollarization, leading to a weaker dollar.

All this leads to the collapse of the dollar into hyperinflation. The dollar was valuable BECAUSE it was the currency in international commodities trade, which created the demand for dollars and dollar assets outside the US — thereby financing the enormous American debts. With trade de-dollarization, there’s no longer as much demand for dollars overseas, leading to American domestic inflation and an inability to continue piling on debt. Ultimately, the Federal Reserve will be forced to simply print — which will lead to dollar hyperinflation. BTW, Russia didn’t cause this. The sanctions which triggered this worldwide de-dollarization was just the final straw. It didn’t help that American leadership seems capricious and hysterical, making other countries very nervous that they might be sanctioned too.

Read more …

Minister of Foreign Affairs of South Africa, Naledi Pandor: “Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Algeria, Argentina, Mexico and Nigeria want to join BRICS.”

Saudi Arabia Makes Move Towards Russia-China Bloc (RT)

King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has signed the documents granting Saudi Arabia the status of “dialog partner” with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – the political, economic and security bloc currently chaired by China. The king signed off on the memorandum of understanding at the cabinet meeting on Tuesday, held at the al-Salam Palace in Jeddah, the Saudi Press Agency reported. In addition to formalizing the partnership, King Salman also approved the technical and vocational training with China. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman thanked Beijing for mediating the talks with Iran, which culminated in the re-establishment of “good neighborly relations” earlier this month. The Saudi state agency also said that Iran was set to join the bloc “soon.” Tehran had applied for membership in 2021.


The SCO was created in 2001 by Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. It has since expanded to India, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan as full members. The status of dialog partner was created in 2008, and includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Egypt, Nepal, Qatar, Sri Lanka and Türkiye. The bloc initially focused on security concerns, primarily terrorism, separatism and extremism. It has an agreement with the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) on jointly addressing security, crime and drug trafficking. Over the years, it began fostering cooperation in matters of trade, economics, and culture as well. In addition to taking a step closer to the SCO, Saudi Arabia is reportedly interested in joining the BRICS group – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – Russia’s ambassador to the kingdom, Sergey Kozlov, said in February.

Read more …

“25 countries are already making settlements with China in yuan.”

Brazil and China Sign Pact To Abandon Dollar (RT)

Beijing and Brasilia have signed an agreement on trade in mutual currencies, abandoning the US dollar as an intermediary, and are also planning to expand cooperation in the field of food and minerals. According to media reports, the deal will enable the two BRICS members to conduct their massive trade and financial transactions directly, exchanging renminbi for real and vice versa instead of using the greenback for settlements. “The expectation is that this will reduce costs… promote even greater bilateral trade and facilitate investment,” AFP quoted the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency as saying on Wednesday. The countries also reportedly announced the creation of a clearinghouse that will provide settlements without the use of the US dollar, as well as lending in national currencies.


The move is aimed at facilitating and reducing the cost of transactions between the sides, and getting rid of dollar dependence in bilateral relations. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) announced earlier that such arrangements will boost the usage of the renminbi for cross-border transactions between enterprises and financial institutions in the two countries, and further facilitate bilateral trade and investment. China has been Brazil’s largest trading partner for more than a decade, with bilateral trade hitting a record $150 billion last year. According to the Secretary for International Affairs at the Ministry of Finance of Brazil, Tatiana Rosito, 25 countries are already making settlements with China in yuan.

Read more …

“..both sides view the strengthening of relations as a “natural process,..

Russia, China Have To Take Measures To Protect Relations – Zakharova (TASS)

Moscow and Beijing have to take adequate measures in current geopolitical circumstances in order to protect their multifaceted cooperation from the harmful effect of illegal unilateral sanctions, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during a briefing Thursday. “In current geopolitical circumstances, Moscow and Beijing have to take adequate measures in order to protect the positive groundwork of multifaceted cooperation, which took many years to accumulate, from the harmful effect of illegal unilateral sanctions,” the diplomat noted.


Meanwhile, the spokeswoman underscored, both sides view the strengthening of relations as a “natural process,” defined by long-standing ties and geographical proximity. “Unlike the westerners, we seek to build cooperation with external partners exclusively based on principles of equality, mutual consideration of each other’s interests, instead of building some coalition or some exclusive clubs with an ‘anti-‘ prefix,” Zakharova noted.

Lavrov
https://twitter.com/i/status/1641539345101324288

Read more …

“The Chinese People’s Liberation Army will take all necessary measures to protect national sovereignty and security and will resolutely defend peace and stability in the South China Sea..”

Beijing Demands That US Stop Provoking China (TASS)

The US Armed Forces must stop provoking China in the South China Sea, otherwise they will bear responsibility for any potential incidents, Chinese Defense Ministry Spokesman Tan Kefei warned on Thursday. The comment was Tan’s response to a US Navy vessel that allegedly sailed near the China-controlled Paracel Islands in the South China Sea. “We sternly demand that the United States immediately stop such provocations, otherwise it will bear full responsibility for all the serious consequences of their causing a potential incident,” the Chinese Defense Ministry quoted him as saying on WeChat. “The Chinese People’s Liberation Army will take all necessary measures to protect national sovereignty and security and will resolutely defend peace and stability in the South China Sea,” Tan assured.


The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Milius passed near the Paracel Islands last Friday. China’s top brass claimed that the US warship did this without the Chinese government’s permission and had violated China’s sovereignty. The US 7th Fleet replied by saying in a news release that the US destroyer had acted in line with international law, while conducting a freedom of navigation operation (FONOP). Beijing has disputed the territorial jurisdiction of some islands in the South China Sea where large hydrocarbon reserves were found with Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia. The most disputed territories are the Xisha Islands, also known as the Paracel Islands, the Nansha or Spratly Islands and Huangyan Island (Scarborough Reef).

Read more …

“You’ll disappear like dew in the sun, because all who take up the sword will perish by the sword..”

Senior Orthodox Bishop Invokes Woe On Zelensky (RT)

A senior bishop in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) has issued a strongly-worded rebuke to President Vladimir Zelensky over his role in a crackdown that the country’s largest religious denomination is currently facing. “I am telling you, Mr President, and your entire pack, that our tears will not fall to the ground, but on your head,” Metropolitan Pavel said in a video address on Wednesday. “You think today that after taking power on our backs, [based] on our wishes, you can treat us like that. Our Lord will not forgive this action, neither to you nor to your family,” the bishop warned. Pavel heads the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, the largest Orthodox monastery in the country. The Ukrainian ministry of culture denied the UOC a renewal of tenancy in the property, which means that some 220 monks living there would be “kicked out to the streets,” as Pavel described it.

The deadline for the expulsion comes this week. The bishop blasted the president for refusing to meet senior UOC clerics to discuss the situation. This was particularly hypocritical, he remarked, considering that, as a presidential candidate, Zelensky had sought and received the blessing to run for office from Metropolitan Onufry, the Church leader. “You have failed to stop the culture minister, who is possessed by hateful malice and devilish fury. This means he is acting with your permission; Woe to you, have fear,”the bishop said. The minister, Aleksandr Tkachenko, has said that UOC monks could stay at Lavra if they agreed to defect to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), a rival schismatic organization backed by Kiev.

The OCU received recognition as a legitimate church in 2019 from the Constantinople Patriarchate, causing a major schism among the Orthodox faithful of the world. Metropolitan Pavel has also accused Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople of having given impetus to the crackdown with this move. “Woe and shame on you, so-called patriarch [Bartholomew], because everything done today is done with your ill-fated and evil blessing,” he said. The bishop also likened the current detractors of the UOC to the Bolshevik and communist leaders, who’d cracked down on all religions when they were in power. He expressed faith that his church will survive the new period of suppression, just like it had the previous one. “You’ll disappear like dew in the sun, because all who take up the sword will perish by the sword,” he said, quoting in the same sentence from the Ukrainian national anthem and from the Gospels.

Pavel

Read more …

“..the record profits had been achieved purely because of the conflict in his country..”

Kiev Demands Cut Of Western ‘War Profits’ – Politico (RT)

Major oil companies have made record profits as a result of the conflict in Ukraine and should pay to rebuild the country’s war-torn infrastructure, Ukrainian Minister of Energy German Galushchenko said on Wednesday in an interview with Politico. According to Galushchenko, oil and gas majors have generated windfall profits of more than $200 billion due to wild swings in global energy prices, and should transfer some of those funds to Ukraine. Western sanctions imposed on Russia over the past year in response to Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine have sent energy prices soaring. In 2022, oil majors Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and TotalEnergies posted a combined profit of $196.3 billion, marking an all-time high for the industry.


“I think it would be fair to share this money with Ukraine. I mean, to help us to restore, to rebuild the energy sector,” Galushchenko said on a visit to Brussels, adding that the record profits had been achieved purely because of the conflict in his country. According to the latest assessment by the Ukrainian government, the World Bank, the European Commission, and the UN, the estimated cost of the country’s reconstruction and recovery will be over $400 billion. The Ukrainian energy minister also called on the West to take further steps to plug sanctions loopholes that allow Russian energy producers to continue exports.

IAEA
https://twitter.com/i/status/1641206842415108098

Read more …

And the sun will stop shining too. Insert biblical reference.

Kuleba: If US Stops Supporting Ukraine, World Order Will Collapse (Az.)

If support for Ukraine does not continue after the US presidential elections next year, world order and security will collapse, said the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, Report informs via RBC-Ukraine. He said the matter is not only about the fate of Ukraine: “We must also consider international security. If the support for Ukraine stops, the countries will know that they can invade the neighboring country. If so, world security will collapse.”

Austria

Read more …

“It continues replenishing the losses that the Ukrainian army is suffering..”

Ukraine’s Military Losing 500 Troops Daily Near Bakhmut – LPR (TASS)

The Ukrainian military is daily losing 500 fighters in the area of Artyomovsk (called Bakhmut in Ukraine), Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) people’s militia retired Lieutenant-Colonel Andrey Marochko said on Thursday. “In my estimates, about 500 personnel daily [as casualties] there [in the Artyomovsk area]. These are both sanitary and irretrievable losses,” the retired officer said in a live broadcast on Komsomolskaya Pravda radio. The Ukrainian military experiences a shortage of fighters due to huge casualties and continues replenishing its troops, Marochko said. “It continues replenishing the losses that the Ukrainian army is suffering,” the retired officer said. Marochko told TASS on March 27 that the Ukrainian military had lost as many as 1,500 soldiers in battles with Russian forces in the Artyomovsk area over the week.


Artyomovsk is located on the Kiev-controlled part of the Donetsk People’s Republic and is a major transportation hub for the Ukrainian army’s supplies in Donbass. Fierce fighting for the city is underway. Yan Gagin, military-political expert and adviser to the acting head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), said on March 22 that the city had been practically sealed off by Russian forces and all approaches to Artyomovsk were under Russian artillery control. He earlier said that Russian forces controlled about 70% of the city. Acting DPR Head Denis Pushilin has repeatedly said that there is no evidence of the Ukrainian army’s plans to leave Artyomovsk. Meanwhile, Kiev claims that the city’s defense will be bolstered. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky earlier said that Ukrainian troops would not surrender Artyomovsk and would fight for it as long as they could.

Read more …

..”the number of citizens who decided to join the Russian armed forces under the enlistment contract has increased significantly as of lately.”

Russian General Staff Says No Plans To Hold Second Wave Of Mobilization (TASS)

The Russian General Staff is not planning to hold the second wave of mobilization, because the current number of volunteers and servicemen is sufficient for fulfilling the tasks of the special operation, said Rear Adm. Vladimir Tsimlyansky, the head of the Russian General Staff’s main organization and mobilization department. “I would like to assure you that the General Staff’s plans do not include the second wave of mobilization. The current number of conscripts and people who volunteered to participate in the [special] operation is sufficient for fulfilling the objectives,” he said during a briefing devoted to Russia’s spring draft. In his words “the number of citizens who decided to join the Russian armed forces under the enlistment contract has increased significantly as of lately.” This year’s spring draft in Russia will be held during its usual timeframe of April 1 – July 15 for a total of 147,000 Russians aged between 18 and 27.

Polish TV

Read more …

The need for dollars is already shrinking.

Russian Central Bank Reveals How It Braced For Western Dollar Grab (RT)

The Bank of Russia had been preparing for an escalation of Western sanctions since 2014 and was beefing up additional funds as a hedge against future restrictions on its foreign exchange reserves, the regulator revealed on Wednesday. Amid “increasing geopolitical risks” the central bank ramped up investments in assets “that cannot be blocked by unfriendly nations”and transferred part of its reserves to gold, Chinese yuan and foreign currency in cash, the regulator announced in its annual report. The central bank managed to stash billions of imported dollars “in volumes limited by logistics capabilities,” the report said without specifying the amount of accumulated funds. Alternative reserves in dollars and gold bars have been stockpiled in the vaults of the Bank of Russia.

“This safety cushion was created in the form of alternative reserves – less liquid and convenient in everyday life, but more reliable in the face of a tough geopolitical scenario,” the regulator explained. It was impossible to abandon reserves in dollars and euros, as these currencies were used for settlements in international trade as well as in the domestic financial sector, the central bank added. “Therefore the structure of foreign exchange reserves needed to take into account the needs of citizens and businesses,” the regulator concluded. The central bank could have “unloaded” part of this money to banks during the first wave of Western sanctions to stabilize Russia’s banking system and offset the withdrawal of dollars and euros by “panicking depositors,”the chief analyst from Ingosstrakh-Investment, Viktor Tunyov, believes.

According to some estimates, last year almost $20 billion was withdrawn by depositors from the country’s second largest bank, VTB, alone. In 2022, Russia was hit by sweeping Western economic sanctions, which included measures to cut the Russian central bank off from the international financial system, while around $300 billion of the bank’s foreign reserves were frozen. Moscow has criticized the seizure of its assets, saying it constitutes theft.

Read more …

“Because it leads to wrong decisions, to the wrong decision-making process. They need to hear what we say, our arguments, then they will have a broader perception of the real state of affairs..”

London Totally Ruined Architecture Of Relations With Moscow – Ambassador (TASS)

Russia and the UK have no political dialogue after London completely ruined the architecture of relations between the countries, Russian Ambassador to the UK Andrey Kelin said in an interview with RTVI television on Thursday. “We now in principle have no political communication, no political dialogue, unlike it was with the UK in the past, about key aspects of international affairs,” he said. The ambassador said “London ruined the entire architecture of bilateral relations.” “It broke it down in the economic area, the humanitarian area, the scientific one, the educational one and the political one first of all. It was purely its initiative – the destruction of that architecture,” Kelin went on to say.


“We are in contact with the Foreign Office. Russian diplomats, including the ambassador of the Russian Federation, are forbidden from going to parliament. This is so by a decision of the parliament’s speaker. This is very bad, because the British people, British officials, British lawmakers, they remain uninformed about the other side, uninformed about the situation as a whole,” the ambassador said. According to Kelin, this is a “categorical mistake.” “Because it leads to wrong decisions, to the wrong decision-making process. They need to hear what we say, our arguments, then they will have a broader perception of the real state of affairs,” Kelin said.

Read more …

“..there would be no requirement for an “actual” health emergency [..] it would be sufficient for the DG, acting on his or her discretion, to have identified the mere “potential” for such an event.::

The Most Dangerous International Treaty Ever Proposed (Kingsley)

Human history is a story of forgotten lessons. Despite the catastrophic collapse of European democracy in the 1930s, it appears that the tale of the twentieth century – in which citizens, cowed by existential threats, acquiesced in the rejection of liberty and truth in favour of obedience and propaganda, whilst allowing despotic leaders to seize ever more absolutist powers – is perilously close to being forgotten. Nowhere is this more evident than in relation to the apparent nonchalance which has greeted two international legal agreements currently working their way through the World Health Organisation: a new pandemic treaty, and amendments to the 2005 International Health Regulations, both due to be put before the governing body of the WHO, the World Health Assembly, in May next year.

As concerned scholars and jurists have detailed, these agreements threaten to fundamentally reshape the relationship between the WHO, national governments, and individuals. They would hardwire into international law a top-down supranational approach to public health in which the WHO, acting in some cases via the sole discretion of one individual, its Director General (DG), would be empowered to impose sweeping, legally binding directions on member states and their citizens, ranging from mandating financial contributions by individual states; to requiring the manufacture and international sharing of vaccines and other health products; to requiring the surrender of intellectual property rights; overriding national safety approval processes for vaccines, gene-based therapies, medical devices and diagnostics; and imposing national, regional and global quarantines preventing citizens from traveling and mandating medical examinations and treatments.

A global system for digital ‘health certificates’ for verification of vaccine status or test results would be routinised, and a bio-surveillance network whose purpose would be to identify viruses and variants of concern – and to monitor national compliance with WHO policy directives in the event of them – would be embedded and expanded. For any of these sweeping powers to be invoked, there would be no requirement for an “actual” health emergency in which people are suffering measurable harm; instead it would be sufficient for the DG, acting on his or her discretion, to have identified the mere “potential” for such an event.

Read more …

Fighting disinformation with ….disinformation. Long article.

Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century (Siegel)

No one thought Trump was a normal politician. Being an ogre, Trump horrified millions of Americans who felt a personal betrayal in the possibility that he would occupy the same office held by George Washington and Abe Lincoln. Trump also threatened the business interests of the most powerful sectors of society. It was the latter offense, rather than his putative racism or flagrant un-presidentialness, that sent the ruling class into a state of apoplexy. Given his focus in office on lowering the corporate tax rate, it’s easy to forget that Republican officials and the party’s donor class saw Trump as a dangerous radical who threatened their business ties with China, their access to cheap imported labor, and the lucrative business of constant war. But, indeed, that is how they saw him, as reflected in the unprecedented response to Trump’s candidacy recorded by The Wall Street Journal in September 2016:

“No chief executive at the nation’s 100 largest companies had donated to Republican Donald Trump’s presidential campaign through August, a sharp reversal from 2012, when nearly a third of the CEOs of Fortune 100 companies supported GOP nominee Mitt Romney.” The phenomenon was not unique to Trump. Bernie Sanders, the left-wing populist candidate in 2016, was also seen as a dangerous threat by the ruling class. But whereas the Democrats successfully sabotaged Sanders, Trump made it past his party’s gatekeepers, which meant that he had to be dealt with by other means. Two days after Trump took office, a smirking Senator Chuck Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that it was “really dumb” of the new president to get on the bad side of the security agencies that were supposed to work for him: “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you.”

Trump had used sites like Twitter to bypass his party’s elites and connect directly with his supporters. Therefore, to cripple the new president and ensure that no one like him could ever come to power again, the intel agencies had to break the independence of the social media platforms. Conveniently, it was the same lesson that many intelligence and defense officials had drawn from the ISIS and Russian campaigns of 2014—namely, that social media was too powerful to be left outside of state control—only applied to domestic politics, which meant the agencies would now have help from politicians who stood to benefit from the effort.

Immediately after the election, Hillary Clinton started blaming Facebook for her loss. Until this point, Facebook and Twitter had tried to remain above the political fray, fearful of jeopardizing potential profits by alienating either party. But now a profound change occurred, as the operation behind the Clinton campaign reoriented itself not simply to reform the social media platforms, but to conquer them. The lesson they took from Trump’s victory was that Facebook and Twitter—more than Michigan and Florida—were the critical battlegrounds where political contests were won or lost. “Many of us are beginning to talk about what a big problem this is,” Clinton’s chief digital strategist Teddy Goff told Politico the week after the election, referring to Facebook’s alleged role in boosting Russian disinformation that helped Trump. “Both from the campaign and from the administration, and just sort of broader Obama orbit…this is one of the things we would like to take on post-election,” Goff said.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Fact checkers
https://twitter.com/i/status/1641376196758847489

 

 

 

 

Candace

 

 

Fox
https://twitter.com/i/status/1641123059011817472

 

 


China High Speed Trains

 

 

Lions
https://twitter.com/i/status/1641192412356681731

 

 

Chromatophores

 

 

 

 

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Mar 112023
 


Henri Matisse Young Woman at the Window, Sunset 1921

Andrew Korybko:

Reuters reported on Wednesday that “India’s Oil Deals With Russia Dent Decades-Old Dollar Dominance”, which informed their audience that the growing trend of those two using national or third-party currencies like the UAE’s is something significant for everyone to pay attention to. To that outlet’s credit, it also reminded readers that IMF Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath foresaw in the month after Russia’s special operation began that the West’s sanctions “could erode the dollar’s dominance”.

Lo and behold, that’s precisely what happened, with India of all countries accelerating de-dollarization through its non-dollar-denominated energy deals with Russia. About them, Russia has since become India’s largest supplier over the past year and now provides a whopping 35% of that country’s needs, which is also the world’s third-largest oil importer and fifth-largest economy. Their new energy ties, and particularly the growing de-dollarization dimension of their deals, are thus globally important.

None of what was just described is driven by any anti-American animus on India’s part since everything is purely motivated by the pursuit of that country’s objective national interests. Delhi had no choice but to gradually diversify away from dollar-denominated energy deals with Moscow due to Washington’s illegal sanctions. Its multipolar leadership wasn’t going to let the world’s most populous country slip into an economic crisis just to please the US by eschewing the import of discounted oil from Russia.

By defying American pressure upon it to unilaterally concede on those aforementioned objective national interests, India’s economy ended up growing at twice the pace of China’s, which contributed to catapulting that country to the forefront of the global systemic transition to multipolarity. Amidst the impending trifurcation of International Relations, India is now poised to de facto lead the Global South in helping fellow developing countries balance between the Golden Billion and the Sino-Russo Entente.

Had India complied with the US’ illegal sanctions, then the New York Times wouldn’t have recently admitted that those restrictions failed just like the West’s efforts to “isolate” Russia did as well. It was largely due to that South Asian Great Power’s truly independent grand strategy that this latest phase of the New Cold War didn’t decisively end in the Golden Billion’s victory over Russia and the restoration of unipolarity, which would have been detrimental to India and every other developing country’s interests.

India therefore changed the course of history by remaining committed to the pursuit of its objective national interests, which to remind everyone, aren’t driven by any desire to harm the interests of third parties like the US. Its leading role in de-dollarization via its increasing number of non-dollar-denominated energy deals with Russia is also reshaping the global financial system by reducing that currency’s prior dominance and thus leading to a more multipolar state of affairs for everyone.

Even the US itself seems to have finally accepted that it can’t reverse this trend, which is evidenced by former Indian Ambassador to Russia Kanwal Sibal recently telling TASS that “Lately, the discourse from Washington has changed and India is no longer being asked to stop buying oil from Russia. In a recent visit to India, the US Treasury Secretary actually said that India can buy discounted oil from Russia as much as it wants so long as western tankers and insurance companies are not used.”

Nevertheless, radical liberalglobalist ideologues like Color Revolution mastermind George Soros are still desperately clinging to the dream of restoring the US’ rapidly declining unipolar hegemony, hence why he de facto declared Hybrid War against India during the Munich Security Conference last month. It remains unclear whether he and his network have enough support in the Western Establishment to advance that regime change agenda, but his threat is still worrisome and should be taken seriously.

Reuters’ latest report about India’s role in accelerating de-dollarization might fuel interest among likeminded “Western Exceptionalists” in supporting his de facto Hybrid War against that country so observers should closely monitor related developments in order to assess whether this happens. In any case, those who sincerely support multipolarity should loudly applaud India for its indispensable role in comprehensively facilitating this process, especially its financial dimension as described in this analysis.

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Jul 212020
 


LOOK Detroit’s 1960 look. Sneak preview of the new models, Dodge Polara 1959

 

Chinese and UK Vaccine Trials Produce Immune Responses (SCMP)
Reality Winner, 500 More Women Test Positive For COVID-19 in Texas Prison (D.)
US Autonomy Act Opens ‘Pandora’s Box’ For Hong Kong Dollar Peg (SCMP)
Jack Ma’s Ant IPO Signals Start Of De-Dollarization (Xe Yie)
EU Leaders Seal Deal On Spending And €750bn COVID19 Recovery Plans (G.)
No One’s Flying, Millions Of Jobs Might Be Lost as Airlines Took Billions (RT)
What Lies Ahead (CP)
NY Dems Created McConnell’s Corporate Immunity Template (SIrota)
The Left is Now the Right (Matt Taibbi)
Is Thinking Cancelled? (Jim Kunstler)
German Weapons Exports Have Flouted EU Rules For Decades (RT)
Alleged Salas Family Assailant Linked To US/Israeli Intelligence (Webb)
Steele ‘Primary Subsource’s’ Guide to Russiagate, as Told to the FBI (RCI)

 

 

I was waiting for the British RussiaRussia report, but the parliamentary committee had basically only this to say: “Committee members said they could not definitively conclude whether the Kremlin had or had not successfully interfered in the Brexit vote because no effort had been made to find out.” Though they do know that “Russia sees the UK as one of its “top targets” in the west”. Sure guys, you’re really important. Yawn.

The EU reached a €750 billion COVID deal (and a long-term new budget deal) by engaging in horse trading: European Commission head Michel offered Dutch PM Rutte an additional €350 million annual discount on the Dutch contribution to the EU from 2021-2027, and then all principles went AWOL.

Meanwhile, rumors about vaccines move entire “markets”, something PR firms for Big Pharma and the CCP are all too eager to encourage.

Oh, and after today there really is nothing at all left of the credibility of the Steele dossier. Which leaves us asking why Robert Mueller was ever hired as Special Counsel. Who was behind that?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bianco WA-OR

 

 

 

 

This infomercial was brought to you by Big Pharma and the CCP. Designed to move “markets”. And it worked.

Chinese and UK Vaccine Trials Produce Immune Responses (SCMP)

A coronavirus vaccine under early development by Chinese researchers produced a significant immune response for hundreds of volunteers, in one of two new studies offering hope as scientists race to develop a vaccine to counter the global pandemic. The Chinese scientists have completed phase two of their trial, published in The Lancet medical journal on Monday, which found that one injection of either a low or medium dose of the vaccine “induced significant neutralising antibody responses to live Sars-CoV-2”, the name for the novel coronavirus. An earlier phase-one trial of the vaccine had produced immune responses, but the latest trial was widened to include individuals aged 55 or older, given their higher risk of death from the Covid-19 virus.

“Single-dose immunisation with the vaccine induced rapid onset of immune responses within 14 days, and significant humoral and cellular immune responses within 28 days in the majority of the recipients,” the team of Chinese scientists, led by Zhu Fengcai from the Jiangsu Provincial Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Guan Xuhua from the Hubei Provincial CDC, wrote. [..] Most of the participants given the vaccine at a centre in central China’s Wuhan reported mild or moderate reactions, most commonly fatigue, fever and headache. Seventy-four per cent of the 129 individuals who received the lower dose and 72 per cent of those who received the medium dose reported at least one negative reaction but none had serious adverse reactions.

Scientists from Oxford University’s Jenner Institute also published findings from an early vaccine trial on Monday in The Lancet. In that trial 543 participants were injected with an experimental coronavirus vaccine, produced with the Cambridge-based pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. The vaccine produced both humoral and cellular responses against Sars-CoV-2, with antibodies for the virus peaking 28 days after vaccination and continuing to remain high up to two months later, the scientists said. The most common side effects from the Oxford vaccine included fatigue, which was reported by 70 per cent of participants, and headache, reported by 68 per cent. Other reactions included muscle ache, malaise and feeling feverish but there were no serious adverse events.

Read more …

Assange is not the only one.

Reality Winner, 500 More Women Test Positive For COVID-19 in Texas Prison (D.)

More than 500 women imprisoned at Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, have tested positive for COVID-19. The facility has the second-most cases out of all federal prisons in the United States, and one of the prisoners who has tested positive is NSA whistleblower Reality Winner. Last week, The Dissenter reported that COVID-19 cases tripled at Carswell in one week. The article included comments from Winner’s sister Brittany Winner. Staff at Carswell apparently read the story, and according to Brittany Winner, she is experiencing retaliation for our reporting. “Reality is being retaliated against for speaking out about the conditions in the prison, but she won’t stop fighting for better treatment for herself and her fellow inmates,” Brittany Winner declared.

“She will continue to update us, and I want everyone to know that we are watching and won’t stop being her voice.” Brittany Winner continued, “I am terrified that she will develop severe symptoms and require urgent medical care, but with the huge swell of cases in FMC Carswell and the likelihood that the region’s hospitals are already overwhelmed, I have no confidence that she will receive the care she needs.” “She belongs at home where she can be safely quarantined and receive medical care,” Brittany Winner contended. It took at least five days for Reality Winner to receive the results of her COVID-19 test, and fortunately, she has not exhibited symptoms of the virus yet.

Reality Winner is waiting on the 11th Circuit to rule on an appeal that she filed after a lower court denied her request for compassionate release. As her attorneys warned in May, “The entire basis for Reality’s motion—and so many like hers—is that she cannot afford to wait until she is removed from FMC Carswell in a stretcher, or worse, before she is afforded relief.”

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I think perhaps it’s more of a Schrödinger’s box.

US Autonomy Act Opens ‘Pandora’s Box’ For Hong Kong Dollar Peg (SCMP)

US President Donald Trump’s decision to take action against Beijing over its imposition of a new security law on Hong Kong is unlikely to undermine the city’s dollar peg system or its role as a financial hub in the short term, but escalating conflict between the US and China raises questions about the long-term outlook, according to analysts. Trump last week issued an executive order ending the city’s special economic treatment and enacted the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, which paves the way for punishment of Chinese and Hong Kong officials accused of curbing the autonomy of the ex-British colony, as well as the financial institutions that do business with them. The US State Department has 90 days to designate individuals or entities in contravention of the law, after which banks will have one year to cease business relations.

Only a few banks are expected to be targeted, and they would be allowed to appeal for removal from the US government’s sanctions list, analysts said. This has eased worries over a full-blown US-China financial war, as well as other extreme scenarios in the short-run, said Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief economist for Asia-Pacific at French investment bank Natixis. Carie Li Ruofan, an economist at OCBC Wing Hang Bank, said the biggest worry had been the threat of financial sanctions on banks. “But since the president has given leeway for a lot of time to identify these banks and to impose the actual sanctions, there isn’t a real market impact and there aren’t excessive concerns for the time being,” she said.

Trump’s executive order did not mention limiting Hong Kong banks’ access to the US dollar payment system as a way of punishing China, which would undermine the currency peg system that has allowed the city to remain a global financial hub. The Hong Kong dollar has been pegged to the US dollar since October 1983, but has been allowed to trade between 7.75 and 7.85 since 2005. Due to China’s draconian capital controls that restrict the use of the yuan globally, the freely convertible and stable Hong Kong dollar is especially important to China for attracting foreign investment and in turn allowing Chinese companies to easily raise hard currency in the city. Economists estimate that investment flows through the city account for more than 70% of China’s international funding.

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There we go again. Let’s see the HK dollar peg gone.

Jack Ma’s Ant IPO Signals Start Of De-Dollarization (Xe Yie)

Back in China, the biggest news overnight was that Jack Ma’s Ant Group is seeking a valuation of more than $200 billion as it goes public in Hong Kong and Shanghai. It could seek to raise more in its IPO than Saudi Aramco’s record $29 billion haul, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The significance of this deal is multifold:
• It would be the biggest IPO ever on mainland exchanges, smashing the record $10 billion debut by Agriculture Bank of China in 2010.
• It signifies the rise of New China in the form of private high-tech companies, as opposed to the Old China dominated by state-owned banks and energy giants.
• And it lends much needed credibility to the Shanghai stock exchange’s STAR board, which is designed to harbor tech startups.

More importantly, the choice of Shanghai and Hong Kong for listing signals China’s deliberate efforts to reduce its reliance on the U.S. capital market for fund-raising amid the tension between the two countries. Already, Chinese and Hong Kong exchanges accommodated the world’s biggest four public listings this year, including Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. and JD.com. In the debt market, China’s borrowing in foreign currencies seems to have also peaked. The external debt was little changed at $1.3 trillion last year, after rising 16% in 2018 and 22% in 2017. Dollar-denominated debt accounted for 83% of the total foreing debt outstanding, according to the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. Considering everything from the U.S.’s threat to delist Chinese companies, to moves to strip Hong Kong of its special status, it’s more than clear that China is starting its process of de-dollarization and furthering the internationalization of its own currency.

Read more …

Yes, there is some common borrowing. Yay! But in reality it’s just more raw horse trading. EC head Michel gave Rutte 100s of millions in incentives to sign up. Nothing to do with principles. You don’t find that in the Anglo press. But the Dutch report it, and with pride.

EU Leaders Seal Deal On Spending And €750bn COVID19 Recovery Plans (G.)

EU leaders have reached a historic agreement on a €750bn coronavirus pandemic recovery fund and their long-term spending plans following days of acrimonious debate at the bloc’s longest summit in nearly two decades. As the meeting reached its fifth day, the 27 exhausted heads of state and government finally gave their seal of approval to a plan for the EU to jointly borrow debt to be disbursed through grants on an unprecedented scale, in the face of an economic downturn not seen since the Great Depression. The end of the tortuous process was announced by the European council president, Charles Michel, who had been chairing the leaders’ long debates, with a single word on Twitter: “Deal!”

The euro rose against the dollar on the news to stand at $1.145. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, described it as a “historic day for Europe”. Ursula von der Leyen, the European commission president, said that the more than 90 hours of negotiations had been “worth it” and that the EU could not be accused this time of doing “too little, too late”. Negotiations for the hard-won deal pitted north against south and east against west as governments haggled over the terms of both the bloc’s seven-year budget and a one-off economic stimulus. The summit, stretching from Friday morning into the early hours of Tuesday, was so prolonged that two leaders, Xavier Bettel of Luxembourg and Ireland’s Micheál Martin, briefly returned home before coming back to Brussels.

Despite initial opposition from the so-called frugal states of the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden and Denmark, agreement was finally found, following a final 5.15am session of the 27 on Tuesday morning, to disburse vast sums in the form of non-repayable grants to countries most stricken by the coronavirus pandemic. The breakthrough followed a new proposal from Michel for the EU to pay out €390bn in grants and €360bn in loans from the new economic reconstruction fund. The “frugal” states had been pushing for the original proposal by the European commission for €500bn in grants to be reduced to €350bn, to the evident frustration of Macron and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, had at one stage warned his Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte, who led the way on reducing the level of grants, that he might become a hero at home but that he faced being blamed by the rest of Europe for his lack of solidarity. But Michel’s new formulation, emerging out of hours of bilateral talks with the leaders on both sides of the debate outside of the full plenary sessions of the leaders, finally received the unanimous support it required.

Italy vs Facebook

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Mitch Feierstein states the obvious.

No One’s Flying, Millions Of Jobs Might Be Lost as Airlines Took Billions (RT)

The airlines frittered away billions in stock buybacks – American Airlines alone spent $13 billion on share buybacks. Airlines received at least $50 billion in government bailouts that taxpayers will be on the hook for when they go bankrupt. As I explained (here), American Airlines’ CEO Robert Parker was paid 150 million dollars to crash the airline that will cost tens of thousands of jobs – jobs that will be gone forever. The mainstream media is reporting on the 25,000 jobs AA is preparing to furlough, but is failing – or refusing – to see the macroeconomic big picture and the reality that MILLIONS of jobs could be on the line. [..] It is clear that the business and the ancillary supply-chain businesses (leases and purchases from Boeing, airplane parts, airline maintenance, jet fuel, food services, employees to clean planes and airports) are not returning anytime soon.

We are talking MILLIONS of jobs across the airline supply chain that will never return. Will airlines go bankrupt? YES! Why wasn’t Parker fired and the board sacked? Why did the government fund $10 billion in bailouts when 25,000 people are about to be sacked? What caused the current global economic depression and are the governments being honest about it? The credit crisis that began in earnest back in 2008 was caused by too much debt, credit and leverage. Then it hit high gear with Boris Johnson’s top adviser shrieking “2.2 million Americans and over half a million Brits will die from coronavirus.” This statement was the shot that ended democracy around the world, and it came from Dr Neil Ferguson and his Imperial College “models” funded by Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

New York City’s economy is in the tank. It is estimated that over fifty percent of the small businesses that closed due to Covid-19 will never reopen. This means millions of jobs are gone forever, and it will cause more vacant commercial real estate to come onto an already over-supplied property market. Property prices in cities will collapse and, as job losses continue, we will see a catastrophic increase of defaults on residential mortgages that will cause a broader collapse in all property prices. The global economy is in an economic depression, illustrated and compounded by massive unemployment, contracting gross domestic product, staggering amounts of private and public debt and a wealth inequality gap that has rocketed to stratospheric new highs. Central Banks, aka rogue hedge funds, have printed trillions of dollars. These funds have re-inflated asset bubbles to wildly grotesque levels of valuation that have never been seen.

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“A second wave of job layoffs is going to strike at the same time that rent forbearance expires.”

What Lies Ahead (CP)

As of mid-July no fewer than 33 million are receiving unemployment benefits, with another 6 million having dropped out of the labor force altogether and no longer even being counted as unemployed. Unemployment therefore remains at what will likely be a chronically high number, at around 40 million—with about 25% of the US labor force unemployed—as renewed service-retail sector layoffs, plus new permanent layoffs, both loom on the horizon. Added to the growing problem of renewed service layoffs and the 2nd wave of permanent layoffs in the private sector is the growing likelihood of significant layoffs in the public sector, as states and cities facing massive budget deficits are forced to lay off several millions of the roughly 22 million public sector workers in the US.

[..] There is an imminent crisis in rents affecting tens of millions. At the peak in April, it is estimated that roughly one-third of the 110 million renters in the US economy had stopped making rent payments due to the COVID-related shutdowns of the economy. The CARES ACT, passed in March, provided forbearance on rental payments, although perhaps as many as 20 states failed to enforce it. That forbearance directive expires at the end of July, with as many as 23 million rent evictions projected in coming months. A major housing crisis is thus brewing, as well as the second wave of job layoffs.

A combined education-child care crisis is about to occur almost simultaneously. The K-12 public education system is approaching chaos, as school districts plan to introduce remote learning on a major scale in order to deal with the renewed COVID-19 infection and hospitalization wave. The heart of the crisis is that tens of millions of US working class families dependent on two paychecks to survive economically cannot afford to accommodate school district practices for remote learning—especially for young children in the K-6 grade levels. Even if such families could afford to pay for expensive child care, the current US child care system is far from being able to accommodate them. Many minority and working class households, moreover, lack the computers and networking equipment, or even the requisite skills to set it up, to enable their children participate in remote learning.

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David Sirota worked in Bernie’s campaign until the latter was thrown out again. Tulsi Gabbard was muzzled by the DNC and removed. Why do people like them still hang around this hornet’s nest?

NY Dems Created McConnell’s Corporate Immunity Template (SIrota)

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s controversial legislation granting nursing home CEOs legal immunity during the COVID-19 pandemic became a template this week for Washington Republicans, who are reportedly finalizing a national version of the liability shield for corporate executives. Now, new campaign finance records show that the landmark provision in New York was inserted into the state’s budget by Democratic legislators as they were benefiting from a boost in campaign cash from the health care industry lobbying group that sculpted the provision. Those same New York legislators may now face a vote on legislation to repeal the immunity language, or water down that repeal.

Meanwhile, the same health care industry lobbying group has been funneling millions to Democratic lawmakers in Washington, who could soon face votes on the federal version of the New York initiative. In the first half of 2020, the Greater New York Hospital Association — which said it “drafted and aggressively advocated for” the immunity provision — funneled $260,000 to Democratic state lawmakers’ that control the New York legislature, according to newly released campaign finance records. That represents more than double the amount the group gave those committees in the same reporting period during the 2018 election cycle.

In all, GNYHA delivered more than $450,000 to Democratic and Republican party committees in New York since the beginning of the year. The Healthcare Association of New York State (HANYS) — another lobbying group whose members benefit from the immunity law — delivered an additional $69,000 to New York legislators in the same time period. In an investigative report co-published in Jacobin and The Guardian, TMI previously broke open the news that when Cuomo first proposed the immunity legislation, state party committees that he controls had already raked in more than $1 million from GNYHA. This new data from the first half of 2020 show that the largesse extended to the state legislators whose support Cuomo and GNYHA needed in order to pass the provision into law.

New York’s immunity provision, which passed in April, is one of the farthest-reaching in the nation. It not only shields frontline health care workers from lawsuits during the coronavirus outbreak — it extends such legal immunity to the executives, board members and other corporate officials who operate health care facilities, and whose staffing and medical policy decisions govern entire nursing homes and hospitals.

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Matt’s stream of consciousness.

The Left is Now the Right (Matt Taibbi)

The old Republican right’s idea of “humor” was its usual diatribes against Bad People, only with puns thrown in (are you ready for “OxyClinton”?). As a result the Fox effort at countering the Daily Show, the 1/2 Hour News Hour — a string of agonizing “burns” on Bush-haters and Hillary — remains the worst-rated show in the history of television, according to Metacritic. The irony gap eventually spelled doom for that group of Republicans, as Trump drove a truck through it in 2016. However, it’s possible they just weren’t as committed to the concept as current counterparts. Take the Smithsonian story. The museum became the latest institution to attempt to combat racism by pledging itself to “antiracism,” a quack sub-theology that in a self-clowning trick straight out of Catch-22 seeks to raise awareness about ignorant race stereotypes by reviving and amplifying them.


The National Museum of African American History and Culture created a graphic on “Aspects and Assumptions of White Culture” that declared the following white values: “the scientific method,” “rational, linear thinking,” “the nuclear family,” “children should have their own rooms,” “hard work is the key to success,” “be polite,” “written tradition,” and “self-reliance.” White food is “steak and potatoes; bland is best,” and in white justice, “intent counts.” The astute observer will notice this graphic could equally have been written by white supremacist Richard Spencer or History of White People parodist Martin Mull. It seems impossible that no one at one of the country’s leading educational institutions noticed this messaging is ludicrously racist, not just to white people but to everyone (what is any person of color supposed to think when he or she reads that self-reliance, politeness, and “linear thinking” are white values?).

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How did the country ever end up in this mess?

Is Thinking Cancelled? (Jim Kunstler)

General Flynn, the American Dreyfus, remains twisting slowly in the wind despite the DOJ dropping charges against him. Judge Emmet Sullivan is busy destroying the credibility and authority of the federal bench with bad faith procedural shenanigans underwritten by Ben Wittes’s Lawfare claque of Beltway shysters maneuvering in the background to protect Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Is it not past time for the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to force Judge Sullivan to end the case, or admonish and remove him? Beyond all the legalese bullshit, an innocent man’s life is stuck unfairly and unjustly in limbo after three years of a malicious prosecution.

Why has the attorney general not preferred charges against Gen. Flynn’s chief prosecutor, Brandon Van Crack — or, for that matter, against Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann and the whole Special Counsel staff — for withholding evidence and plenty of other obvious prosecutorial mischief? Mr. Barr has stated plainly more than once that the agency he took charge over in 2019 “us[ed] the criminal justice process as a political weapon.” Is that against the law or not? Does it injure this society to leave that question unanswered, month after month?

In a better society, the newspapers would have rushed to Gen. Flynn’s defense. Except our leading newspapers are so vested in years of their own untruth that they don’t dare to cover the story. Where is the consequence for Dean Baquet, editor of The New York Times, since Times staffer Bari Weiss disclosed his failure to control the ideological bullying, coercion, and hostility to fair play in his newsroom? Mr. Baquet has not just wrecked an institution; he’s made the whole business of covering reality look like a hustle. Does The New York Times’s board of directors not care about its reputation? Maybe the message is: why should anyone care about his or her reputation? And what kind of culture grows out of that code?

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Arms sales are the best: profits are huge, and the press dare not touch them.

German Weapons Exports Have Flouted EU Rules For Decades (RT)

Berlin has systematically broken EU guidelines by selling weapons to bad actors across the globe, a new study says. It alleges that German-made arms and military hardware have led to more violence on the ground. Over the years, Germany has been selling both weapons and munitions to “countries affected by war and crisis, to countries with human rights violations and to regions of tension,” a new study by the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) says. According to the EU criteria, the recipient of arms must respect human rights and international law, as well as maintain peace and stability in the region. However, since 1990, Germany has repeatedly struck deals with nations with a poor human rights record, such as Algeria, Egypt, and Indonesia, oftentimes selling off old Bundeswehr hardware, PRIF notes.


In many instances, the equipment ended up in war zones, as happened in Indonesia, where German-made ships were spotted transporting soldiers during an insurgency in Indonesia’s Aceh region. The research raises particular alarm over Berlin’s long history of supplying military technology to Saudi Arabia and Turkey. In 2019, German-made Leopard 2A4 main battle tanks were used in Ankara’s invasion of Syria, and Riyadh has been waging a bloody air war in Yemen since 2015. Despite mounting reports of mass civilian casualties on the ground, the German government has approved arms sales worth €1.5 billion ($1.7 billion) to Saudi Arabia since its bombing campaign began, the study said. It noted that even the UK-supplied Tornado and Eurofighter Typhoon that carry out air strikes on Yemeni cities “contain parts produced in Germany.”

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And thereby Epstein.

Alleged Salas Family Assailant Linked To US/Israeli Intelligence (Webb)

The news of the shooting of the husband and son of Esther Salas, the judge recently assigned to oversee the Jeffrey Epstein – Deutsche Bank case, caused shock and confusion while also bringing renewed scrutiny to the Epstein scandal just a week after Epstein’s main co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, was denied bail in a separate case. The case Salas is set to oversee is a class action lawsuit brought by Deutsche Bank investors who allege that Deutsche Bank “failed to properly monitor customers that the Bank itself deemed to be high risk, including, among others, the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.” The case came after the New York state Department of Financial Services had settled with Deutsche Bank over the bank’s failure to cut ties with Epstein-linked accounts, resulting in Deutsche Bank paying a $150 million fine.

Deutsche Bank, unlike other financial institutions, failed to close all of its accounts linked to Epstein until less than a month prior to his arrest last year, even though the bank had identified him as “high risk” yearsbefore. Beyond the tragedy of Sunday’s shooting, which claimed the life of Salas’ only child, the quick discovery of the death of the main suspect, Roy Den Hollander, of a “self-inflicted” gunshot to the head before he could be arrested or questioned by authorities has led to speculation that there is more to the official narrative of the crime than meets the eye. With law enforcement sources now claiming that Esther Salas was not the intended target of the attack and some media reports now suggesting that Den Hollander’s motive was related to his dislike of feminism, it appears there are efforts underway to distance Sunday’s tragic shooting from Salas’ recent assignment to the Epstein case, which occurred just four days before the tragic shooting.

The most likely reason for any such “damage control” effort lies in the fact that both U.S. law enforcement investigations and mainstream media reports have consistently downplayed the connections of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual trafficking and financial crimes to intelligence agencies in the U.S. and Israel. Similarly, Roy Den Hollander previously worked for a New York firm has been described as a “private CIA” with ties to those countries’ intelligence agencies and, also, ties to Deutsche Bank.

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Without the Steele dossier, paid for by the DNC and FusionGPS, there would never have been a Mueller investigation. Both have now been more than fully discredited. Question remains: who drove this?

Steele ‘Primary Subsource’s’ Guide to Russiagate, as Told to the FBI (RCI)

Much of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Donald Trump was built on the premise that Christopher Steele and his dossier were to be believed. This even though, early on, Steele’s claims failed to bear scrutiny. Just how far off the claims were became clear when the FBI interviewed Steele’s “Primary Subsource” over three days beginning on Feb. 9, 2017. Notes taken by FBI agents of those interviews were released by the Senate Judiciary Committee Friday afternoon. The Primary Subsource was in reality Steele’s sole source, a long-time Russian-speaking contractor for the former British spy’s company, Orbis Business Intelligence. In turn, the Primary Subsource had a group of friends in Russia. All of their names remain redacted.

From the FBI interviews it becomes clear that the Primary Subsource and his friends peddled warmed-over rumors and laughable gossip that Steele dressed up as formal intelligence memos. Steele’s operation didn’t rely on great expertise, to judge from the Primary Subsource’s account. He described to the FBI the instructions Steele had given him sometime in the spring of 2016 regarding Paul Manafort: “Do you know [about] Manafort? Find out about Manafort’s dealings with Ukraine, his dealings with other countries, and any corrupt schemes.” The Primary Subsource admitted to the FBI “that he was ‘clueless’ about who Manafort was, and that this was a ‘strange task’ to have been given.” The Primary Subsource said at first that maybe he had asked some of his friends in Russia – he didn’t have a network of sources, according to his lawyer, but instead just a “social circle.”

And a boozy one at that: When the Primary Subsource would get together with his old friend Source 4, the two would drink heavily. But his social circle was no help with the Manafort question and so the Primary Subsource scrounged up a few old news clippings about Manafort and fed them back to Steele. Also in his “social circle” was Primary Subsource’s friend “Source 2,” a character who was always on the make. “He often tries to monetize his relationship with [the Primary Subsource], suggesting that the two of them should try and do projects together for money,” the Primary Subsource told the FBI (a caution that the Primary Subsource would repeat again and again). It was Source 2 who “told [the Primary Subsource] that there was compromising material on Trump.”

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The New York Times threatens to publish Tucker Carlson’s home address, after he was forced to move with his wife and four kids two years ago following severe threats.

 

 

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“Why do bad things happen to good people?”
Simple.
To even out the good things that happen to bad people.

 

 

 

 

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