Mar 012022
 


Rembrandt van Rijn Diana Bathing with her Nymphs with Actaeon and Callisto 1634

 

The Consequences of Humiliating Russia (Brenner)
Putin Slams West’s ‘Empire Of Lies’ (RT)
Bulgarian Defense Minister Fired Over Ukraine Comments (RT)
Zelensky’s Saakashvili Moment (Daniel McAdams)
London Takes Back ‘Putin Regime Change’ Claim (RT)
Putin The Apostate (Matt Taibbi)
Freeland Caught Holding Pro-Nazi Banner At Ukraine Protest (TNC)
Hunter Biden Business Associate Sentenced To Prison For Fraud Scheme (JTN)
Pfizer mRNA Does Indeed Integrate Into Our DNA (RioTimes)
Back to Reality: We are All Children of Oil (Ugo Bardi)

 

 

 

 

Ukraine army shelling its own people
https://twitter.com/i/status/1498224087822487556

 

 

No invasion
https://twitter.com/i/status/1498391194199592960

 

 

US expat

 

 

System pigs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1498280206766854144

 

 

Michael Brenner is a professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.

The Consequences of Humiliating Russia (Brenner)

The Mafia is not known for its creative use of language beyond terms like “hitman,” “go to the mattresses,” “living with the fishes” and suchlike. There are, though, a few pithy sayings that carry enduring wisdom. One concerns honor and revenge: “If you are going to humiliate someone publicly in a really crass manner, make sure that he doesn’t survive to take his inevitable revenge.” Violate it at your peril. That enduring truth has been demonstrated by Russia’s actions in the Ukraine which, to a great extent, are the culmination of the numerous humiliations that the West, under American instigation, has inflicted on Russia’s rulers and the country as a whole over the past 30 years.

[..] The West nostalgically celebrates the Yeltsin years as the Golden Age of Russian Democracy – an age when life expectancy dropped sharply, when alcoholism rose and mental health declined, when the tanking economy threw millions into poverty, when the oligarchs strutted their stuff, when the presidential chauffeur was the most influential man in the country, and when everyone was free to shoot his mouth off since nobody else heard him in the din of their own voices. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs – to coin a phrase. Vladimir Putin, of course, was made of sterner stuff. He put an end to the buffoonery, successfully took on the Herculean task of reconstituting Russia as a viable state, and presented himself as ruler of an equal sovereign in cultivating relations with his neighbors. In addition, he insisted that the civil rights and culture of Russians stranded in the Near Abroad be respected.

Still, he gave no sign by word or deed that he contemplated using coercive means to restore the integration of Russian and Ukraine that had existed for more than 300 years. True, he opposed Western attempts to sever the ties between the two by incorporating Ukraine into their collective institutions – most notably the NATO declaration of 2008 stating that Ukraine (along with Georgia) were in the alliance’s antechamber being readied for entrance. Putin’s restraint contrasted with the audacity of Washington and its European subordinates who instigated the Maidan coup toppling the democratically elected president and promoting an American puppet in his place. In effect, the United States has been Ukraine’s overseer ever since – a sort of absentee landlord.

Putin’s views about the preferred principles of organization and conduct that should govern inter-state relations have been elaborated in a series of speeches and articles over the years. The picture it draws is far different from the cartoonish distortion created and disseminated in the West. It clearly delineates ways and means to constrain and limit the element of conflict, above all military conflict, the requirement for rules-of-the-road that should serve as the systems software, the necessity of recognizing that the future will be more multipolar – yet more multilateral – than it has been since 1991. At the same time, he stresses that every state has its legitimate national interests and the right to promote them as a sovereign entity so long as it does not endanger world peace and stability.

Read more …

“All [the US] satellites not only dutifully agree, sing along to its music, but also copy its behavior, and enthusiastically accept the rules they are offered.”

Putin Slams West’s ‘Empire Of Lies’ (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the West an “empire of lies,” responding to a new wave of sanctions that hit the country over its special military operation in neighboring Ukraine. Speaking to top government officials on Monday, he said: “I invited you to discuss economic and financial issues … bearing in mind the sanctions that the so-called Western community — an empire of lies, as I called it in my address — is trying to implement against our country.” The “empire of lies” term was coined by Russia’s president last Thursday, when he announced the launch of the offensive in Ukraine. Since the US is a “system-forming power,” the whole collective West has become such an “empire,” he said then. “By the way, American politicians, political scientists, and journalists themselves write and say that, in recent years, an actual ‘empire of lies’ has been created inside the United States. It’s hard to disagree with that, as it’s true,” Putin stated.


All [the US] satellites not only dutifully agree, sing along to its music, but also copy its behavior, and enthusiastically accept the rules they are offered. Therefore, with good reason, we can confidently say that the entire so-called Western bloc, formed by the United States in its own image and likeness, all of it is an ‘empire of lies.’ Russia’s operation in Ukraine has become the only option left to prevent further bloodshed in the country and stop Kiev from trying to launch an all-out assault on the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in the country’s east, the Kremlin has explained. Ahead of the offensive, Moscow formally recognized the People’s Republics there as independent states.

Peter Hitchens

Read more …

“Our suffering motherland does not deserve to be sacrificed in the game of the great powers.”

Bulgarian Defense Minister Fired Over Ukraine Comments (RT)

Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov has fired defense chief Stefan Yanev over his word choices in describing the Russia-Ukraine conflict, calling the situation a “military intervention” or an “operation” rather than a “war.” “My defense minister cannot use the word operation instead of the word war,” Petkov told reporters on Monday. “You cannot call it an operation when thousands of soldiers from the one and the other side are already killed.” The prime minister added that “the Bulgarian interest is not in bending our heads down.” Rather, “When we see something we do not agree with, something so obvious, we cannot keep quiet.” All four parties in Bulgaria’s ruling coalition agreed to call for Yanev’s resignation, Petkov noted. A new defense minister – reportedly Todor Tagarev, who held the position in 2013 – will be appointed in an extraordinary session of Parliament that will be held on Tuesday.


The firing came in reaction to a Facebook post by Yanev. Commenting on the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the defense minister warned against using the word “war.” He said there was no need for Bulgaria to side with Russia, the US, or European allies in the conflict, adding, “Our suffering motherland does not deserve to be sacrificed in the game of the great powers.” Petkov chided him for the post, saying, “No minister can attempt to do foreign policymaking on his own, especially on Facebook.” Yanev argued that he was being targeted for removal so the government could install a defense minister who will be more willing to serve foreign interests, in some cases at the expense of Bulgaria’s security.

Read more …

“Then later in the day, perhaps around cocktail hour, he demanded that President Biden enforce a “no-fly” zone over much of Ukraine..”

Zelensky’s Saakashvili Moment (Daniel McAdams)

Perhaps Putin is the apotheosis of evil after all, and everyone who dares challenge this modern-day golem is destined for madness. Or maybe not. Whatever the case, Zelensky is sounding a bit unhinged of late. No one will dispute that he’s a man of many talents… However, when the chips are down, as they are, he seems to be a tie-muncher at the end of the day. Take his frenetic activities yesterday, starting with his signing a formal application to join the European Union – about as likely as my being chosen “Miss Sweden.” Then later in the day, perhaps around cocktail hour, he demanded that President Biden enforce a “no-fly” zone over much of Ukraine, assuring Biden that Ukraine “can beat the aggressor if the Western allies do their part.”

At that point even hawkishly-unhinged Senator Marco Rubio had to descend from the ether of Washington’s war machine. Poor Biden drunk-walked across the White House lawn as reporters asked him legitimate questions about the threat of nuclear war. But the fact is quite plain: for the US to (attempt to) impose a “no-fly” zone over Ukraine would require that the United States military annihilate every single S-400 and S-500 air defense system located inside Russian territory. In other words, were Washington to abide the fake frontline warrior Zelensky’s request it would require the initiation of a civilization-destroying World War III. How many American sheeple who have subbed out their “Wear the damn mask!” Facebook profile pictures for “Save Ukraine” or “Pray for Ukraine” are willing to see the end of life on earth as we know it to “save” a country that nearly seven in ten Americans literally cannot locate on a map of the globe?

It’s all fun and games until the world blows up. Soon it will become obvious that the comedian-president who has openly welcomed child soldiers, is forcing men from 18-60 to fight, has released hardened criminals from prison to fight on the front lines, and has called for foreign mercenaries to come fight for Ukraine is not currently scoring an overwhelming victory against the Russian military, as the Pravda-esque US mainstream media continues to report. America: you get the heroes you deserve. How do you like your tie?

Read more …

The first person I saw tweet about regime change in Russia was Carl Bildt, former Swedish PM and Co-Chair European Council on Foreign Relations.

London Takes Back ‘Putin Regime Change’ Claim (RT)

Toppling Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is the goal of the new wave of international sanctions introduced in response to Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine, a spokesman for Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson told reporters on Monday. Downing Street later clarified that the spokesperson had “misspoken”. “The measures we are introducing, that large parts of the world are introducing, are to bring down the Putin regime,” the unnamed official said. The restrictions, centered around Russia’s financial sector, are aimed to “inflict financial pain on Putin”, the spokesman went on. The sanctions are also meant to “stymie the Russian war machine as it attempts to subjugate a democratic European country,” he added, referring to the Ukraine conflict.

Further enquiry on the “regime” change remark, however, prompted the spokesman to somewhat quickly backtrack, insisting that London has not actually been actively seeking to do so. “We are not seeking anything in terms of regime change, what we are talking about here clearly is how we stop Russia seeking to subjugate a democratic country,” the spokesman said, warning “that businesses should think very carefully if they are still continuing to do anything that props up the Putin regime.” Downing Street then later said the PM’s spokesman “misspoke” when he claimed that the sanctions aimed “to bring down the Putin regime.”

The new wave of Western restrictions, that included personal sanctions against Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and against President Putin, come amid Moscow’s special military operation in neighboring Ukraine launched last week. The operation’s stated goal is to protect the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk from an allegedly imminent all-out offensive by the Kiev forces, Moscow has claimed. Days before the launch of the operation, Russia formally recognized the republics as independent states.

Read more …

And the president of the Council of Foreign Relations does it too:

Putin The Apostate (Matt Taibbi)

The president of the Council of Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, made an extraordinary statement over the weekend. “Just days ago much of the world was focused on the unwanted prospect of regime change in Ukraine,” he tweeted. “Now the conversation has shifted to include the possibility of desired regime change in Russia.” Senior Brookings Institute fellow Benjamin Wittes was even more explicit:

For anyone expecting me to be outraged about this — I am, after all, almost daily denounced as a Putin-lover and apologist, so surely I must want the Great Leader to stay in power forever — I have to disappoint. If Vladimir Putin were captured tomorrow and fired into space, I wouldn’t bat an eye. I would like to point out that we already tried regime change in Russia. I remember, because I was there. And, thanks to a lot of lurid history that’s being scrubbed now with furious intensity, it ended with Vladimir Putin in power. Not as an accident, or as the face of a populist revolt against Western influence — that came later — but precisely because we made a long series of intentional decisions to help put him there.

Once, Putin’s KGB past, far from being seen as a negative, was viewed with relief by the American diplomatic community, which had been exhausted by the organizational incompetence of our vodka-soaked first partner, Boris Yeltsin. Putin by contrast was “a man we can do business with,” a “liberal, humane, and decent European” of “alert, controlled poise” and “well-briefed acuity,” who was open to anything, even Russia joining NATO. “I don’t see why not,” Putin said. “I would not rule out such a possibility.” The New York Times Magazine, noting that the KGB of the seventies that Putin joined was no longer really a murder factory but just another “thinking corporation,” even compared him once to Russia’s first true Western-looking leader:

In him, Russia has found a humane version of Peter the Great, a ruler who will open the country to the influence of a world at once gentler and more dynamic than Russia has ever been. I’ve been bitter in commentary about Putin in recent years because I never forgot the way the West smoothed his rise, and pretends now that it didn’t. It’s infuriating also that many of us who were critical of him from the start are denounced now as Putin apologists, I think in part because we have inconvenient memories about who said what at the start of his story. The effort to wipe that history clean is reaching a fever pitch this week. Before they finish the job, it seemed worth getting it all down.

Read more …

She’s Ukrainian. She knows exactly what the banner is. In a 2nd photoshopped version the banner is gone.

Freeland Caught Holding Pro-Nazi Banner At Ukraine Protest (TNC)

Deputy Prime Minister and former Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland was photographed on Sunday with a scarf promoting a far-right Ukrainian Nationalist movement linked to Neo-Nazis and extremism. Remarkably, Freeland (or more likely, a member of her staff) posted the photo to her own official social media accounts, apparently ignorant of the radical far-right movement the scarf represents. Freeland posted the photo, which also shows Toronto Mayor John Tory, to her Twitter and Instagram accounts on Monday morning. These posts were deleted, without any comment or acknowledgement of why they were taken down. She reposted the same message on Twitter by mid-morning on Monday, but with a new photo where the scarf had been removed.

The red and black flag has historically represented the Bandera movement in Ukraine. Stepan Bandera was a Nationalist Ukrainian politician during the Second World War who is accused of war crimes and leading atrocities against Jewish and Polish people. He is an incredibly polarizing political figure in Ukraine, as some view him a national hero who fought for Ukrainian independence. Bandera helped create the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (UPA), an organization that legacy media reports have described as being “far-right” and “extremist” and who have been characterized as “Neo-Nazis.” In April 2021, Euro News described Bandera and the UPA as Nazi-collaborators and war criminals.


“Bandera, Shukhevych, and the UPA are controversial for several reasons. Critics point to the mass killings of up to 100,000 Jews and Poles and the fact that UPA cooperated with Nazi Germany at the beginning of WW2 until it became clear that Nazi Germany wouldn’t recognize Ukrainian independence.” Chrystia Freeland describes herself as a Ukrainian-Canadian and has recently begun speaking and sharing posts in Ukrainian. She presents herself as a politically savvy international player who is incredibly well-versed in Ukrainian politics and culture. It begs the question of why she would be willing to be in a photo, and then personally post it, with a flag representing a militant insurgency group and the Ukrainian Neo-Nazi-linked far-right.

Read more …

Small world.

“Five days later, Vice President Biden visited Ukraine..”

Hunter Biden Business Associate Sentenced To Prison For Fraud Scheme (JTN)

Devon Archer, a former business partner of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, was sentenced on Monday to just over a year in prison for defrauding a Native American tribe of $60 million in bonds. Manhattan Judge Ronnie Abrams, an Obama appointee, sentenced Archer to one year and one day in federal prison for “defrauding a Native American tribal entity and various investment advisory clients” of more than $60 million. From March 2014 to April 2016, Archer worked with others on the scheme that caused the Wakpamni Lake Community Corporation, a tribal entity, to issue a series of tribal bonds through “lies and misrepresentations,” the Department of Justice press release states.

Archer, who has maintained his innocence, was ordered to forfeit more than $15 million and pay over $43 million in restitution. He will also have one year of supervised release after prison. “There’s no dispute about the harm caused to real people,” Abrams said, the New York Post reports. She also noted that the fraud was “too serious” to let him out without prison time and that the victims are part of one of the poorest tribes in the nation, the Oglala Sioux. [..] Before being arrested, Archer served with Hunter Biden on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings. Biden has not been connected to the tribal fraud scheme that Archer was sentenced for. A 2020 report from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Senate Committee and the Senate Finance Committee shows Archer’s close ties to the Biden family.

Archer is mentioned in the second paragraph of the report, 42 times total. “On April 16, 2014, Vice President Biden met with his son’s business partner, Devon Archer, at the White House. Five days later, Vice President Biden visited Ukraine,” the report states, adding that within a month both Archer and Hunter Biden were appointed to the Burisma board. “Over the course of the next several years, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer were paid millions of dollars from a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch for their participation on the board,” the 87-page report alleges.

Read more …

Stop vaccinating. Start testing. See you in 5 years.

Maybe people will understand now just how experimental the mRNA vaccines are.

Pfizer mRNA Does Indeed Integrate Into Our DNA (RioTimes)

Swedish lab studies show that mRNA from the ‘vaccines’ does integrate itself into human cellular DNA. This means that a shot of the Pfizer vaccine, taken even once, permanently changes the DNA of affected cells. For over a year, we’ve been told that mRNA vaccines, including Pfizer and Moderna, don’t integrate with human cell DNA. What the article shows is that in vitro, using a human liver cell line, the Pfizer mRNA vaccine uses a natural reverse transcriptase enzyme called LINE-1, and the genetic code of the vaccine is reverse transcribed into the DNA. It also explains that vaccine mRNA actually does travel to the liver as one of the preferred sites (the other sites, as we heard, are ovaries and more).

Pfizer 12% effective

What does it mean? Normally, our cells do the reverse: the cell nucleus, where the DNA is, expresses certain DNA code based on conditions of the cell and produces natural, human messenger RNA. That messenger RNA travels out of the nucleus, where it is expressed into proteins needed for cell building. This is how growing organisms express different genetic programs to grow muscle cells or brain cells, etc. This process is called “transcription”. For many years, Central Dogma of Molecular Biology stated that the “reverse transcription” — moving genetic code from RNA back into the sacred cellular nuclear and recoding the DNA — was impossible. Eventually, scientists realized that it is possible under various conditions. For example, the HIV RNA virus is able to do so and it reprograms our DNA to produce copies of it. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS.

To effect reverse transcription, enzymes called “reverse transcriptases” are needed. One of them is called LINE-1. Apparently, the Pfizer mRNA vaccine causes cells to produce that LINE-1 enzyme, says the study. After seeing LINE-1 reverse transcriptase rise, they tested for alterations to the DNA, making sure they are not picking up the RNA instead. Considering that Sars-Cov-2 “spike protein” has a cancer code from Moderna 2017’ patent 9,587,003, it is imperative to find out the implications of this reverse transcription, and whether the vaccinated now have any undesirable genetic code embedded into their DNA. Of particular interest is whether this mRNA-induced reverse transcription affects the “germ line”, such as eggs and sperm cells, and whether it also affects the fetus of pregnant mothers.

Read more …

“..when you deal with Nature, everything is up for negotiations. And Nature always wins the game..”

Back to Reality: We are All Children of Oil (Ugo Bardi)

In the early 2000s, Colin Campbell proposed that the peak of “conventional” oil production would come around 2012. It probably did, but the peak was masked by the production of non-conventional resources. “Shale oil” bought us another decade of growth, although at a modest rate and at a high cost. So, we had more than 20 years to prepare from when, in 1998, Colin Campbell and Jean Lahérrere had first flagged the problem with an article published on “Scientific American.” But, as we should have expected, nothing serious was done. On the contrary, the entity called “humanity” showed the maturity and wisdom of someone in the grip of convulsions, possessed by demonic forces. We have seen 20 years of a roller coaster in the desperate search for an enemy to destroy and turn the clock back, to when things were good.

The enemy has been singled out as Osama, Saddam, Assad, Qaddafi, and many others, destroyed only to be replaced by the new monster of the year. For two years, then, the monster was not a human being, but a microscopic peduncled creature that nicely played its role of bugaboo, until it was officially vaporized by the microscopic equivalent of carpet bombing. Now, it is over, and a new, more conventional monster is advancing: the soulless Vladimir Putin. Chances are that he will not be the last monster in the demonization chain. Every time we seemed to have destroyed our arch-enemy, it came back in another form, bigger and uglier than before. And each time, in the fight against the monster on duty, we lost something of our wisdom, our freedom, our humanity.

We never realized that what we were fighting was not a monster, but a reflection of ourselves in the desperate search for a way to continue a way of life that some of our leaders defined as “not up for negotiations.” But when you deal with Nature, everything is up for negotiations. And Nature always wins the game. Peak oil never reached the level of the official monster of the day, but it was also demonized. It could not be bombed, there was no vaccine against it. But we marginalized it, ridiculed it, and made it disappear from view as if we had bombed it to smithereens. Yet, it is returning, even though not mentioned, during the current crisis. We are 8 billion on this planet, and everyone is a child of crude oil. Without crude oil and other fossil fuels, most of us simply wouldn’t exist. And without crude oil, we cannot continue to exist. As a monster, peak oil is much scarier than any of the bugaboos that the mainstream media have been proposing to us.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Controlling what people think is our job
https://twitter.com/i/status/1497933106040344576

 

 

 

 

A New Global Treaty
https://twitter.com/i/status/1498223375264595968

 

 

 

 

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