Dec 112022
 


Paul Gauguin Tahitians at rest (unfinished) 1891

 

THE TWITTER FILES part 4: The Removal Of Donald Trump, Part 2 (ZH)
Elon Musk Should Probably Do A Little Housecleaning (NR)
Musk Forces A Free-Speech Reckoning For Politicians And Pundits (Turley)
US Republicans Pledge To ‘Roll Out Red Carpet’ For Musk (RT)
The EU Demands That The Balkans Pick The ‘Right’ Side (Marsden)
France And Germany Owe ‘Genocide Compensation’ To Donbass – Moscow (RT)
EU Nations Multiply Trade With Russia – RIA (RT)
Fascism in the EU (Vogel)
Catastrophic Losses, Failing Wonder Weapons, NATO Escalation (MoA)
Pentagon Gives Ukraine Green Light For Drone Strikes Inside Russia (Times)
Prejudice Against COVID-19 Unvaccinated Around the World (ET)
EU’s Oil Price Cap Creates a Price Cap… on Stupidity (Luongo)
Federal Judge Declines To Hold Trump In Contempt Of Court (Fox)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

McCullough

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shellenberger’s format is hard to do in the Debt Rattle format.

THE TWITTER FILES part 4: The Removal Of Donald Trump, Part 2 (ZH)

On January 7, @jack emails employees saying Twitter needs to remain consistent in its policies, including the right of users to return to Twitter after a temporary suspension. After, Roth reassures an employee that “people who care about this… aren’t happy with where we are” Around 11:30 am PT, Roth DMs his colleagues with news that he is excited to share. “GUESS WHAT,” he writes. “Jack just approved repeat offender for civic integrity.” The new approach would create a system where five violations (“strikes”) would result in permanent suspension. “Progress!” exclaims a member of Roth’s Trust and Safety Team.

The exchange between Roth and his colleagues makes clear that they had been pushing @jack for greater restrictions on the speech Twitter allows around elections. The colleague wants to know if the decision means Trump can finally be banned. The person asks, “does the incitement to violence aspect change that calculus?” Roth says it doesn’t. “Trump continues to just have his one strike” (remaining). Roth’s colleague’s query about “incitement to violence” heavily foreshadows what will happen the following day.

On January 8, Twitter announces a permanent ban on Trump due to the “risk of further incitement of violence.” On J8, Twitter says its ban is based on “specifically how [Trump’s tweets] are being received & interpreted.” But in 2019, Twitter said it did “not attempt to determine all potential interpretations of the content or its intent.” The *only* serious concern we found expressed within Twitter over the implications for free speech and democracy of banning Trump came from a junior person in the organization. It was tucked away in a lower-level Slack channel known as “site-integrity-auto.”

“This might be an unpopular opinion but one off ad hoc decisions like this that don’t appear rooted in policy are imho a slippery slope… This now appears to be a fiat by an online platform CEO with a global presence that can gatekeep speech for the entire world…”

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Twitter thread by Name Redacted.

“They were ALL hired since @realDonaldTrump was elected.”

Elon Musk Should Probably Do A Little Housecleaning (NR)

1. @elonmusk , Your new company @Twitter has many ex FBI/CIA agents in high ranks. Should probably do a little housecleaning.
2. Kevin Michelena – current Twitter Sr. Corporate Security Analyst. Ex FBI Intelligence Analyst 12 years
3. Doug Hunt – current Twitter Senior Director. Ex FBI Special Agent 20 years.
4. Mark Jaroszewski – current Twitter Director Corporate Security/Risk. Ex FBI 20 years
5. Douglas Turner – current Twitter Senior Manager, Corporate and Executive Security Services. Ex FBI 14 years. Ex Secret Service 7 years.
6. Patrick G. – current Twitter Head of Corporate Security. Ex FBI Special Agent 23 years.
7. Karen Walsh – current Twitter Director – Corporate Resilience. Ex FBI Special Agent 21 years
8. Russell Handorf – current Twitter Senior Staff Technical Program Manager. Ex FBI 10 years.
9. Michael B. – current Twitter Senior Corporate Security Manager. Ex FBI 23 years.
10. Vincent Lucero – current Twitter Senior Security Manager. Ex FBI Special Agent 22 years.
11. Kevin L. – current Twitter Corporate Security Manager. Ex FBI Special Agent 25 years.
12. Matthew W. – current Twitter Senior Director of Product Trust, Revenue Policy, and Counsel Systems & Analytics. Ex FBI 15 years.
13. Claire O. – current Twitter Senior Corporate Security Analyst. Ex FBI 8 years.
14. Bruce A. – current Twitter Director, Corporate Security. Ex FBI 23 years.
15. Jeff Carlton – current Twitter Senior Manager. Ex FBI & CIA Intelligence Analyst 3 years.
16. What do all of these Twitter employees have in common? They were ALL hired since @realDonaldTrump was elected. Why, after Trump was elected, did Twitter hire over a dozen ex FBI/CIA agents and place them in Senior Management roles?
17. @elonmusk – how many “Jim Bakers” are imbedded in Twitter, possibly working against you? or…..”watching” you. I’d advise you to do some investigating and clean house.

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“Twitter executives were praised for their speed to impose “visibility filters” so the tweet could not be “replied to, shared, or liked..”

Musk Forces A Free-Speech Reckoning For Politicians And Pundits (Turley)

What these files suggest is an utter license to control political speech on social media platforms. Twitter executives often sound like overlords determining what the public should be allowed to read or say. This is hardly surprising, given the constant stroking by many politicians and pundits who say they are saving democracy by limiting free speech. In speaking to media figures in April, former President Barack Obama called upon “our better angels” to shape voters’ opinions. Similarly, President Joe Biden has said social media editors are vital to protecting citizens from their own misguided values or assumptions. Without enlightened editors, he asked, “How do people know the truth?” Such comments show total contempt for the ability of people to make up their own minds on subjects ranging from elections to vaccinations.

Yet social media executives readily embraced their role in framing “the truth.” Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal pledged to “focus less on thinking about free speech” and more on “who can be heard.” While some of us denounced his anti-free-speech agenda, others rose in defense of Twitter maintaining one of the largest censorship systems in history. Now, these Twitter files show precisely what it means to manipulate “who can be heard” — a process that went beyond controversial suspensions of users to include a broader, secret effort to suppress disfavored viewpoints. The new documents show Twitter using blacklists and “visibility filters” to interfere with user searches or to shadow-ban individuals and prevent their tweets from trending.

The new material also indicates that “visibility filtering” was directed at various Republican campaigns, throttling or reducing candidates’ visibility before the 2020 election. Most striking in the latest documents is how Twitter censors knowingly discarded even their own policies to hamper then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. In one tweet, Trump referenced a mail-in voting problem in Ohio that was found to be true. Nevertheless, Twitter executives were praised for their speed to impose “visibility filters” so the tweet could not be “replied to, shared, or liked,” and the staff received a censorship “attaboy”: “VERY WELL DONE ON SPEED.”

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“This is an investigation of Joe Biden, and that’s where the committee will focus in this next Congress.”

US Republicans Pledge To ‘Roll Out Red Carpet’ For Musk (RT)

US Republicans want Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk to testify before the House Oversight Committee next year. By revealing how his predecessors censored stories damaging to the Biden family, Musk has already done “a great service” to the committee, incoming chairman Rep. James Comer told the New York Post. “I have reached out to Elon Musk through backchannels to tell him that we would love for him to come before the committee,” Comer told the newspaper. “I’m pretty confident he’s going to provide more information, but he is welcome to come before our committee. We will roll out the red carpet for Elon Musk.” In the final weeks before the 2020 presidential election, Twitter banned the sharing of links to a New York Post story sourced from a laptop belonging to then-candidate Biden’s son, Hunter.

The story, and later articles that followed, alleged that Hunter Biden potentially earned tens of millions of dollars introducing foreign contacts – among them Mexican, Chinese and Ukrainian businessmen – to his father. Documents released by Musk last week showed that some of Twitter’s former senior executives – including legal head Vijaya Gadde, safety chief Yoel Roth, and General Counsel Jim Baker – deliberately suppressed the story and removed election-related tweets on behalf of the FBI and other government agencies. Musk’s disclosures also revealed that Twitter moderators regularly deleted content at the request of “the Biden team,” and planned the suspension of Donald Trump’s account months in advance.

“[Musk is] doing a great service to the Oversight Committee and America by disclosing all of the emails and correspondence between the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee and Twitter,” Comer continued. He added that Gadde, Roth and Baker have all been summoned to testify about their role in the censorship operation. Comer and incoming House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan announced last month that they will lead a twin-track investigation into the Biden family’s foreign business dealings and the alleged politicization of the Justice Department by President Biden, when Republicans hold the balance of power in the House of Representatives in January. “I want to be clear,” Comer stated at the time. “This is an investigation of Joe Biden, and that’s where the committee will focus in this next Congress.”

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“Von der Leyen rhetorically dive bombed into the region this week, pointing out that the world is divided between autocracies and democracies and that the Balkans needed to pick a side.”

The EU Demands That The Balkans Pick The ‘Right’ Side (Marsden)

The Russia-Ukraine conflict reflects on the Balkans as a struggle between “autocracies and the law of the strongest” and “democracy and the rule of law”, European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen said during an EU-Western Balkans partnership summit in the Albanian capital Tirana this week. The last Balkan country to actually ascend to European Union membership was Croatia, in 2013. And this year, the Balkans have had to contend with the spectacle of Brussels gushing over Ukraine and rushing to grant Kiev candidate status. For context, it took Albania five years to receive candidate status (which it did in 2014). It took Serbia three years (a candidate since 2012) and Montenegro two years (a candidate since 2010).

Just imagine: You’ve been waiting years for Brussels to make a commitment, or to even show signs that it’s serious about the relationship, and suddenly it only has eyes for Kiev and seems to have forgotten about your existence.So it’s not exactly surprising that the citizens of these countries would start feeling like maybe the bloc simply isn’t marriage material. At the moment, 55% of North Macedonians have a negative view of the EU, while just 21% of Serbs see the EU positively and a majority of them are now against joining the bloc. Even in Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina, confidence in European institutions has recently dipped. So it makes sense that the EU is running over there now for a big summit, worried about someone else stealing their loyalty – specifically Russia or China.

Serbia is a big friend of Russia, and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said recently that Belgrade’s ties with Albania and North Macedonia in particular have never been better – even though Albania has been viewed over the past couple of decades by the West as one of its staunchest allies, including militarily, by committing troops to its efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Serbia isn’t onboard with the EU and its anti-Russian sanctions and agenda, refusing to march in lockstep with Brussels on its foreign policy towards Russia. Vucic refused to sign the summit’s Tirana Declaration, whose top clause referred to Russia’s “escalating war in Ukraine,” and reiterated his disagreement with the bloc’s sanctions policy.

It’s not a stretch to imagine that Brussels could see a threat to its anti-Russia agenda in all of this, or be concerned that other Balkan countries that followed the Western sanctions lead could feasibly start comparing their economic and energy challenges to Serbia’s situation, which still enjoys the benefits of cheap Russian gas, comprising about 85% of its gas imports. So how does the EU handle this powder keg? With all the subtlety of a hand grenade. Von der Leyen rhetorically dive bombed into the region this week, pointing out that the world is divided between autocracies and democracies and that the Balkans needed to pick a side. “We notice very clearly that the Ukraine war is not only Russia’s cruel war against Ukraine, but also a question of whether autocracies and the law of the strongest will prevail. Or whether democracy and the rule of law will prevail. And this struggle is also noticeable in the Western Balkans,” Von der Leyen said.

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“..Putin said he was disappointed and shocked when he heard Merkel’s statement, adding that this was further proof that Moscow made the correct decision when it started its military operation in Ukraine..”

France And Germany Owe ‘Genocide Compensation’ To Donbass – Moscow (RT)

Berlin and Paris should pay reparations to the Donbass civilians who have been suffering Ukrainian attacks since 2014, according to Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the State Duma – Russia’s lower house of parliament. His comments came after former German chancellor Angela Merkel admitted that the Minsk peace agreements had been just a ploy to provide Kiev with enough time to build up its military. Merkel’s confession means that Berlin and Paris – who brokered the deal – “bear moral and material responsibility for what is happening in Ukraine,” Volodin wrote on Telegram on Saturday.

The premeditated failure to fulfill obligations under the accords constitutes “not only a loss of trust, but also a crime for which the signatories of the Minsk agreements – Merkel, [former French president Francois] Hollande, and [former Ukrainian president Pyotr] Poroshenko – must answer,” he stated. “They will have to pay compensation to the residents of Donbass for eight years of genocide and damages,” Volodin added. According to the MP, the ongoing Ukraine crisis has been brought about by “the deceitful policies” pursued by the French and German leaders. Volodin recalled that in 2014, Berlin and Paris also brokered a deal between the government of the democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich and the nation’s opposition to stop violent riots in Kiev. The unrest erupted in Ukraine’s capital after Yanukovich refused to sign an association agreement with the EU.

“It all ended with a coup d’etat in Kiev,” he stated, and “the genocide” of people in the Donbass. When the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics broke away from Kiev, Germany and France took part in signing the now-defunct Minsk agreements, which were supposed to pave the way for peace by giving the two territories a special status within the Ukrainian state. However, Russia has repeatedly accused Kiev of failing to implement the terms of the accords. Volodin’s comments came after Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was disappointed and shocked when he heard Merkel’s statement, adding that this was further proof that Moscow made the correct decision when it started its military operation in Ukraine.

Putin Merkel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1601240676905078785

Lukashenko
https://twitter.com/i/status/1601247988797837312

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“Russia’s trade with Bulgaria and Greece reportedly soared 240% and 230% respectively..”

EU Nations Multiply Trade With Russia – RIA (RT)

Three quarters of EU member states boosted their trade turnover with Russia in the first eight months of 2022, RIA Novosti is reporting on Saturday, citing data collected from the bloc’s various national statistics departments. Russia’s trade with Bulgaria and Greece reportedly soared 240% and 230% respectively, while trade turnover with Slovenia doubled during January-to-August period this year. At the same time, Austria and the Czech Republic boosted their trade with the sanctions-hit nation by 80%. Meanwhile, Russia’s trade turnover with both Hungary and Italy surged 70%. Belgium and Cyprus also registered increases, of 60%. All-in-all, 20 out of the 27 bloc members saw a year-over-year increase of 34% in mutual trade with Russia.

In monetary terms the trade turnover surged to €177.3 billion compared to €132.4 billion recorded for the same period a year ago. At the same time, Russia’s mutual trade with Malta saw a dramatic decline of 80%, while both Denmark and Sweden reduced their trade with the nation by 49%. Luxembourg’s trade turnover with Russia also declined, by 28%. Drops in Russia’s mutual trade with Finland and Lithuania totalled 7% and 6% respectively. Portugal reduced its trade turnover with the nation by 3%. Trade between these seven countries and Moscow amounted to €14.2 billion, against €17.3 billion a year earlier.

As a result, Russia-EU trade turnover saw an increase of 28% in January-August 2022 compared to the same period a year ago, and amounted to €191.5 billion. Of these, EU exports to Russia totalled €36.2 billion, while imports from Russia amounted to €155.3 billion. Thus, the EU’s trade deficit for the first eight months of the current year amounted to €119.1 billion, reaching its highest since 2008, when it amounted to €151 billion for the entire year.

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“..filters out the vast majority of “crimethink.”

Fascism in the EU (Vogel)

Supreme command is in the hands of EU governments. Even though in most EU nations, the separation of powers is enshrined in the constitution, in practice that separation is not evident. Thus, EU governments are able to use a combination of often overtly abusive police action and the judicial system (judges also being dressed in black!) to subdue the citizenry and to control public opinion and public debate. The media, or the so-called free press, both private and public (with the alleged guarantees to ensure its impartiality, like in Germany), also plays a key role in controlling public opinion. Expressed in military terms, EU governments enjoy “full-spectrum dominance” in the entire public domain.

Under these conditions, it was not difficult to ban Russian media from the EU a few days after the beginning of the Russian Special Military Operation in the Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The few voices raised in protest against this massive and unprecedented censorship were easily silenced and suppressed. It is perhaps no coincidence that EU censorship was decreed by a German, namely the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. Germany is the European nation that has enjoyed the longest continuous censorship and strict media control anywhere: ever since Hitler ended press freedom in 1933, the Germans have been living with controlled media and the curtailment of speech. Free speech has now been banned in Germany for almost a century! Today, the very policies first applied by the nazis have become the norm and standard all over the EU.

An essential tool for managing and controlling public debate is to ridicule and frame the opposition. Thus anybody who does not buy into the official narrative is branded a “hater,” “denier” or “conspiracy theorist.” On that account alone, it is suggested such people are unfit to participate in the public debate. If they do so nonetheless, sharper weapons are produced. In that case, it is stated the culprit has “dangerous ideas” or that he is a “potential terrorist.” As such he needs to be taken care of, for instance thrown in jail or subjected to psychiatric treatment. Numerous EU journalists and others saying unwelcome truths have been indicted, thrown in jail or interned in a psychiatric ward. In case someone proves particularly difficult to deal with, he is eliminated by way of a car accident, a “lone wolf” or a suicide.

Fortunately, those violent methods rather rarely need to be applied. State censorship with the help of the police and kangaroo courts takes care of most cases. And even before that, the maintaining of “community standards” on social media such as Facebook, Apple (I-phone), Google, Youtube, Instagram, Amazon (until recently, Twitter as well) and other platforms filters out the vast majority of “crimethink.”

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“A unit that has 50% casualties is usually no longer able to fight and must be replaced. But the Ukrainians leave their units on the frontline until nearly nobody is left in them.”

Catastrophic Losses, Failing Wonder Weapons, NATO Escalation (MoA)

Newsweek spoke with a ‘former’ U.S. Colonel who, together with ‘volunteers’, trains Ukrainian soldiers. Here is what he says about Ukrainian losses: “Bakhmut is like Dresden, and the countryside looks like Passchendaele,” he said, referring to the German city destroyed by allied bombing in World War II and the infamously muddy and bloody World War I battlefield. “It’s just a horrible and miserable place. Ukraine closely guards its casualty figures, but its forces are believed to be suffering badly around Bakhmut. “They’ve been taking extraordinarily high casualties,” Milburn said of the units training with Mozart. “The numbers you are reading in the media about 70 percent and above casualties being routine are not exaggerated.”

Despite their “tremendous morale,” Milburn said the defenders “have an acute ‘regeneration problem,’ which means getting new recruits into the line as quickly as possible.” This means those being thrown into the fight have little beyond basic training. “Typically about 80 percent of our intake who are coming off of the line have never even fired a weapon before,” Milburn said. “We’ve got our work cut out for us.” A unit that has 50% casualties is usually no longer able to fight and must be replaced. But the Ukrainians leave their units on the frontline until nearly nobody is left in them. So the number of 500 casualties per day on the Bakhmut front seems realistic. Over the last months the daily report of the Russian ministry of defense listed on average some 300 Ukrainian casualties per day.

But the ministry does not report the casualties from Bakhmut as the operations of the private military contractor Wagner are not included in it. So the daily total over the last month, despite little movement of the front lines, must have been some 800 dead Ukrainians. In the 30 days between the two maps at the top at least 24,000 Ukrainian soldiers have left the battle field. It is no wonder that such high numbers can not be replaced. The mix of dead or wounded will likely be 1 to 1 as medical evacuation from the frontline trenches is extremely difficult. Most wounded will just die there. It is not only the men that are lost. The equipment they used is mostly lost with them. 24,000 men are the equivalent of 6 to 7 NATO brigades. The German army has now only 8 of those.

When I was it that army it had 36 brigades plus significant reserve units. The same large downgrade happened with the general state of NATO. It is not ready for a war with Russia. The western wounder weapons have done little for Ukraine. The Russians have update their air defense systems to now detect and shoot down HIMARS missiles. They report some 10 to 20 of such kills per day. The shooting down of small and medium sized Ukrainian drones has dropped from 20-30 per day in the summer to 2-3 per day. Either the Ukrainians have run out of drones or the weather has made theirs unusable.

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Escalate.

Pentagon Gives Ukraine Green Light For Drone Strikes Inside Russia (Times)

The Pentagon has given a tacit endorsement of Ukraine’s long-range attacks on targets inside Russia after President Putin’s multiple missile strikes against Kyiv’s critical infrastructure. Since daily assaults on civilians began in October, the Pentagon has revised its threat assessment of the war in Ukraine. Crucially, this includes new judgments about whether arms shipments to Kyiv might lead to a military confrontation between Russia and Nato. This represents a significant development in the nine-month war between Ukraine and Russia, with Washington now likelier to supply Kyiv with longer-range weapons. “We’re still using the same escalatory calculations but the fear of escalation has changed since the beginning,” a US defence source told The Times.

“It’s different now. This is because the calculus of war has changed as a result of the suffering and brutality the Ukrainians are being subjected to by the Russians.” Washington is now less concerned that new long-range strikes inside Russia could lead to a dramatic escalation. Moscow’s revenge attacks have to date all involved conventional missile strikes against civilian targets. Previously, the Pentagon was warier of Ukraine attacking Russia because it feared the Kremlin would retaliate either with tactical nuclear weapons or by targeting neighbouring Nato nations. However, Washington does not want to be seen publicly giving the green light to Kyiv attacking Russian soil.

Its position on Ukraine’s attacks inside Russia was defined this week by Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, who said: “We have neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia.” However, a US defence source said: “We’re not saying to Kyiv, ‘Don’t strike the Russians [in Russia or Crimea]’. We can’t tell them what to do. It’s up to them how they use their weapons. But when they use the weapons we have supplied, the only thing we insist on is that the Ukrainian military conform to the international laws of war and to the Geneva conventions. “They are the only limitations but that includes no targeting of Russian families and no assassinations. As far as we’re concerned, Ukraine has been in compliance.”

Within these limited constraints laid down by the Pentagon, Kyiv is now adopting a more aggressive, more persistent offensive against targets inside Russia. Ukraine has been careful to use its own drones, not US-supplied weapons, to carry out the strikes. The drones, based on Soviet Tupolev TU-141 Strizh surveillance systems developed in the 1970s, have been reprogrammed to give them longer range and a sizeable munition for launching at low altitude. The modified TU-141s were deployed this week in three raids against military bases 300 miles inside the Russian border and on fuel tanks about 80 miles across the Ukrainian border, in each case evading air defences. The drones can fly at 600mph at low altitude, like cruise missiles.

Putin counter strike
https://twitter.com/i/status/1601334569344856065

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Sheep.

Prejudice Against COVID-19 Unvaccinated Around the World (ET)

[..] participants were presented with brief descriptions of a series of fictitious individuals and asked to imagine that these are people whom one of their close relatives intends to marry. They were shown two profiles at a time, side by side, and asked to rate each profile by saying whether they agree or disagree with statements such as, “I would be unhappy if this person married one of my close relatives,” and “I think this person is untrustworthy.” One of the six attributes describing these targeted individuals has been their COVID-19 vaccination status, randomly varying between “fully vaccinated” and “unvaccinated.” The other attributes were age, occupation, hobbies, personality, and “family background,” which distinguished between people “born and raised in [the respondent’s country]” and people who “immigrated from the Middle East.”

Across six countries—Germany, India, Indonesia, Morocco, South Africa, and the United Kingdom—selected to represent both affluent Western and developing non-Western nations, the unvaccinated were found to be disliked among vaccinated people (14 percentage points) as much as people with drug addiction (15 percentage points), and significantly more so than people who had been in prison (10 percentage points), atheists (7 percentage points), or people with mental illness (6 percentage points). In addition, the overall dislike of the unvaccinated among vaccinated people (13 percentage points) was found to be two and a half times greater than that of Middle Eastern immigrants (5 percentage points).

In fact, according to the paper, unvaccinated people face significantly more hostility than immigrants even in 10 countries that are deemed unfriendly to immigrants. Interestingly, discriminatory attitudes against unvaccinated Middle Eastern immigrants were found to be just as strong as those toward unvaccinated natives. By contrast, researchers found that the unvaccinated respondents on average showed almost no discriminatory attitudes toward the vaccinated. “The results demonstrate that prejudice is mostly one-sided,” the authors wrote. “Only in [the] United States and Germany do we find that the unvaccinated feel some antipathy towards the vaccinated. But even here we do not find statistical evidence in favor of negative stereotyping or exclusionary attitudes.”

“The observation that vaccinated individuals discriminate against those who are unvaccinated, but that there is no evidence for the reverse, is consistent with work on the psychology of cooperation,” said leading author Alexander Bor, a political psychologist at the George Soros-funded Central European University (CEU).

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“..Janet Yellen may be stupid, but she’s not that stupid. She knows what this price cap she’s championed will do..”

“..push capital investment into competing energy technologies — like nuclear, hydrogen and unicorn farts.”

EU’s Oil Price Cap Creates a Price Cap… on Stupidity (Luongo)

The EU and the US went forward with their long-debated, long-telegraphed move to put a price cap on Russian oil at $60 per barrel. By believing they can pressure suppliers into not hauling Russian oil lest they run afoul of the sanctions that support the price cap, they believe they can take only Russian oil off the market for the long run. Because of the way oil is actually traded in the real world, versus the way it trades in Janet Yellen’s head, this policy is actually much harder to implement than it actually looks. You don’t buy oil at the crude oil counter at Target or Wal-Mart. There isn’t a price tag you can look at and say yes or no too. As Tsvetana Paraskova at Oilprice points out, crude contracts are written based on a discount or premium to a benchmark price at a particular moment in time.


“Physical traders rarely trade on a fixed price,” John Driscoll, chief strategist at JTD Energy Services Pte Ltd, told Bloomberg. “It’s a much more complex space where they trade on formulas and spot differentials to a benchmark crude for the trading of actual cargoes as well as for hedging that follows,” said Driscoll, who has more than 30 years of trading oil in Singapore. To complicate things further, the EU wants to remain flexible to change the cap at its discretion. “The price cap is not set in stone – it “is fixed for now but adjustable over time,” the EU said last week. If this sounds like a recipe for complete disaster, it is. No matter what happens here, the quantity of oil to be produced under this cap, even if it isn’t successful, will go down. Period. See chart below. If you disagree with this then you might just qualify to replace Yellen as Treasury Secretary of the US.

That said, Janet Yellen may be stupid, but she’s not that stupid. She knows what this price cap she’s championed will do. So, as always, with these people the question you shouldn’t be asking isn’t, “Will this work?” or “How will Russia respond?” but rather, “Is this the point of the exercise?” [..] If everyone involved knows that price floors and price ceilings always and without fail create production shortages, then why did they do this when the world clearly need more oil? Because this is a feature of the policy, not a bug. By doing this, like every other intervention into oil delivery since the start of the war in Ukraine, the goal was to take Russia’s supply offline and hope that other producers would see the opportunity to take market share from the evil Russians while simultaneously trying to push capital investment into competing energy technologies — like nuclear, hydrogen and unicorn farts.

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The Mar-a-Lago invasion.

Federal Judge Declines To Hold Trump In Contempt Of Court (Fox)

A federal judge has declined to take action to hold former President Trump in contempt of court during a closed-door hearing on Friday, according to two sources with knowledge of the proceedings. Friday’s hearing was in relation to a federal probe into Trump’s handling of classified material at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. Judge Beryl Howell urged lawyers from the Department of Justice and Trump’s team to work out the matter on their own during a 90-minute meeting in a Washington, D.C., federal court. The Justice Department has become increasingly frustrated with lawyers for Trump over the past few months for allegedly failing to comply with a subpoena asking for classified documents in Trump’s possession to be returned, sources tell Fox News.


[..] Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was the subject of a search warrant executed in August by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, where classified documents were allegedly found to have been in his possession. Steven Cheung, senior communications adviser to Trump, told Fox News Digital that the former president and his lawyers will continue to cooperate. “The President and his counsel will continue to be transparent and cooperative, even in the face of the highly weaponized and corrupt witch-hunt from the Department of Justice. Hillary Clinton was allowed to delete and acid wash 33,000 emails after they were subpoenaed by Congress, yet absolutely nothing has happened to hold her accountable. If the Department of Justice can go after President Trump, they will surely come after any American who they disagree with. President Trump is the only one who stands in the way of the un-American weaponization of law enforcement,” Cheung said.

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Ali

 

 

Gonzalo – Unconditional Surrender Is Now Russia’s Goal

 

 

Judge Nap/ Macgregor

 

 


Chief John Smith, a Chippewa Native American who was reputed to be 137 years old when he died.

 

 


U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service @USFWS
Important announcement: We’re designating the northern cardinal as the best holiday season bird. It just makes sense and we won’t be taking any questions at this time. Thank you.

 

 

Pigeon cat
https://twitter.com/i/status/1601689156182110208

 

 


Striped Indian mackerels open their cavernous mouths as they swim, sieving zooplankton with gill rakers like a net. Photo Alex Mustard.

 

 

 

 

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Nov 172022
 
 November 17, 2022  Posted by at 9:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  71 Responses »


Cimabue Christ mocked c1280 (Photograph: Charles Platiau/Reuters)

 

Ukraine Admits Firing Missile Near Poland Blast Site – CNN (RT)
Zelensky Doubles Down On Poland Missile (RT)
Gen. Milley Claims He Couldn’t Reach Moscow After Poland Missile Incident (RT)
Poland Should Guard Part Of Ukrainian Airspace – General (RT)
Missile Incident Was Ukrainian ‘Provocation’ – Polish Politician (RT)
Poland Wants Russian Oil Despite EU Embargo – Kommersant (RT)
Drone Strikes Deep In Russian Territory – Governor (RT)
The G20’s Balinese Geopolitical Dance (Escobar)
Eurozone Facing Deep Recession – Economists (RT)
Xi Roasts Justin Trudeau At G20 (RT)
Did SBF Buy Puff-Piece Propaganda? (ZH)
American Attempts To Preserve Hegemony Vs The New World Order (Kortunov)
US Congress Will Continue To Oppose Jet Sale To Turkey – Rep. Malliotakis (K.)
Sperm Counts Plummeting Dramatically – Faster Than Previously Thought (EHN)
Fauci’s Pandemic Leadership Needs to Be Investigated – Dr. Scott Atlas (ET)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kuleba before denials

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lots of RT today. Seems to be the only place for relevant information on Zelensky’s -and Poland’s- attempts to start WWIII.

“It doesn’t matter to Germany whose rocket fell in Poland, in any case, Russia is to blame, because it attacked Ukraine” – Olaf Scholz

Ukraine Admits Firing Missile Near Poland Blast Site – CNN (RT)

Ukrainian military officials told their American and other Western counterparts that they attempted to intercept a Russian missile near the site of a fatal blast in Poland on Tuesday, CNN reported. While Kiev initially blamed the explosion on Russia, Western leaders have since stated that it was likely caused by an errant Ukrainian air defense projectile. Citing a US official, CNN anchor Jim Sciutto said on Wednesday that the Ukrainian military has informed its Western backers that it “attempted to intercept a Russian missile in the same timeframe and near [the] location” of a “missile strike” at the Polish village of Przewowdow a day earlier. “It’s not clear this is [the] same missile that struck Poland, but this has informed ongoing US assessment,” Sciutto added.

The apparent admission by Ukraine’s military marks a dramatic climbdown by Kiev since Tuesday, when Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky called the incident a “Russian attack on the collective security” of NATO. In a video statement, Zelensky urged the West to put Russia “in its place” in response. However, in the time since the blast, Ukraine’s Western backers have all but confirmed that the missile was fired from Ukraine. US President Joe Biden, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Polish President Andrzej Duda have all stated that the blast was likely caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile, with Duda opting not to call for urgent consultations under Article 4 of the NATO Treaty.

The Russian Defense Ministry reported that analysis of debris at the site of the explosion showed that it was caused by a missile from the S-300 air defense system, a Soviet-era system fielded by Ukraine. Poland is currently leading an investigation into the explosion, which killed two people. The blast occurred during an intense Russian bombardment of Ukrainian command centers and energy infrastructure. Russia has pummeled Ukraine with near-daily missile and drone strikes since October, following what Russian President Vladimir Putin called Ukrainian “terrorist attacks” on Russian territory. Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushenko called Tuesday’s barrage the “most massive shelling of [Ukraine’s] energy system” since the beginning of the conflict in February.

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“Ukraine’s president Zelensky is pushing back against Western suggestions, including those of the US and Nato, that a stray Ukrainian missile was responsible for the deadly blast in Poland. ‘I have no doubt that it was not our rocket,’ he told reporters.”

Zelensky Doubles Down On Poland Missile (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky continued to insist his military did not fire the missile that killed two civilians in the Polish village of Przewodow. Ukraine wanted to be included in any investigation of the incident, he told reporters in Kiev on Wednesday. “I have no doubt that it was not our missile or our missile strike,” Zelensky said, according to Ukrainian media. Noting that this is what the Ukrainian air force commander told him on Tuesday evening, he added, “It makes no sense for me not to trust them.” The Ukrainian president also said the Przewodow incident was yet another argument for NATO to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, something he has been asking for since February.

Zelensky was quick to blame “terrorist” Russia for what he described as an attack on NATO and the concept of collective security itself. His foreign minister Dmitry Kuleba did likewise. Neither have retracted their claims, even after Poland announced the missile that struck Przewodow was from a S-300 air defense system. “There is a high probability that it was a Ukrainian air defense missile,” Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Wednesday morning. Meanwhile, CNN quoted unnamed Ukrainian military officials as saying the missile was indeed theirs. Zelensky, however, told reporters he disagreed with phrases like “high probability” and that Ukraine “has the right” to see the evidence and data from partner countries. So far, he said, Kiev has received nothing.

“We must participate in the investigation,” Zelensky said, according to the UNIAN news agency. “I want it to be fair and if it was the use of our air defense, then I want this evidence.” While the incident in Przewodow happened amid a Russian cruise missile attack on key energy and military infrastructure targets in Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry swiftly noted that the debris filmed in Poland had nothing to do with any Russian weapon. Nor had anything nearby been targeted by the Russian military, Moscow added. Even the US government acknowledged the projectile that hit the Polish village was not Russian. On Wednesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also said the missile had been Ukrainian and there were no indications of a Russian attack. He argued that the ultimate responsibility for the incident still lay with Moscow, however.

Candace

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Bad if he’s lying, bad if he’s not.

Gen. Milley Claims He Couldn’t Reach Moscow After Poland Missile Incident (RT)

US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley tried and failed to reach his Russian counterpart, General Valery Gerasimov, in the wake of a deadly missile incident in Poland, he revealed to journalists. “My staff was unsuccessful in getting me linked up with General Gerasimov,” he said during a joint press conference with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Wednesday. The failed contact happened after a missile hit a Polish village on the border with Ukraine and killed two locals on Tuesday. It came amid a Russian barrage targeting Ukrainian military and energy infrastructure. President Vladimir Zelensky claimed that the weapon was Russian and urged NATO to invoke its collective defense provisions in response. Western nations have since assessed that the projectile was most likely a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile that went astray. But the Ukrainian leader doubled down on his claim that it was not fired by Kiev’s forces.


During the media briefing, both US defense officials declined to comment on the difference of opinion. “We have full confidence in Poland’s ability to conduct this investigation in the proper way, and until that’s complete, again, I think it’s – it’d be premature for anybody to jump to conclusions,” Austin said. Zelensky named Ukraine’s chief of defense, General Valery Zaluzhny, as the source of his information about the projectile’s origin. Milley said he also talked to the general, but declined to say what he was told about the incident. The Russian military has denied responsibility and said images of the missile debris clearly identified it as Ukrainian. The Foreign Ministry accused Kiev of trying to gain more Western support under a false pretext and said that an impartial investigation would expose the Ukrainian “provocation”.

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In the middle of it all, Ukraine adds another call for a no fly zone. As if we forgot what that means. Trying to get NATO openly into the war.

Poland Should Guard Part Of Ukrainian Airspace – General (RT)

Polish General Roman Polko said that the country’s air defenses should assume responsibility for part of Ukraine’s territory, in the wake of a deadly missile strike on a village near the Ukraine border. Speaking to Radio ZET on Wednesday, Polko, who used to serve as the Deputy Chief of the Polish National Security Bureau, suggested that Poland should protect a “strip of airspace extending into Ukrainian territory and build air defense systems.” “We cannot allow Polish citizens to die,” he stressed, expressing hope that the incident would accelerate deliveries of defense weapons. The general went on to say that Polish authorities should ramp up defense capabilities as well as increase airspace monitoring.

“We should inform Russia that Ukraine and… the border belt will be constantly monitored by the NATO alliance and Russian combat assets will be shot down,” Polko added. He also noted that the “unprecedented attack” should prompt NATO to “finally lift restrictions” and give Ukraine long-range weapons. According to media reports, the US, Kiev’s most prominent backer, has been reluctant to send these types of arms to Ukraine, fearing it would escalate the conflict. While Germany said that, along with its NATO partners, Berlin has no plans to try and close off Ukrainian airspace, noting that such a move could trigger a direct clash between Russia and NATO forces. “Together with all our allies we agreed that we want to avoid a further escalation of this war in Ukraine,” a government spokesperson explained.

Berlin had proposed to help Poland patrol its airspace, according to Germany’s defense ministry spokesman. It comes in the aftermath of a missile strike on the village of Przewodow, close to the Ukrainian border, which killed two civilians. While Poland initially claimed that the projectile was “manufactured in Russia,” later, President Andrzej Duda noted that it was probably launched by Ukrainian air defenses. The Russian Defense Ministry denied involvement, stating that its experts had analyzed the photos from the scene and identified parts of the projectile “as elements of a missile from the S-300 air defense system used by the Air Force of Ukraine.”

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“Instead of telling “fairy tales” about the missile, the Polish president should tell Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky that Warsaw “will no longer put up with this behavior” by Kiev.”

Missile Incident Was Ukrainian ‘Provocation’ – Polish Politician (RT)

Poland should rethink its position towards the conflict in Ukraine after a “provocation” on the part of Kiev that cost two villagers their lives, a former city councilman in Lublin said on Wednesday. Jaroslaw Pakula, whose term ended four days before the incident, said the missile that struck Przewodow was obviously Ukrainian and that the government in Warsaw needed to send a message to Kiev instead of telling “fairy tales” to its citizens. “Of course, this is a Ukrainian rocket. Of course, this is a provocation on the part of the Ukrainian authorities,” Pakula posted on his Facebook page. “The rocket could not be fired 100km in the opposite direction by mistake.” The purpose of the provocation was to scare the EU and get civil society support for sending even more weapons to Ukraine, Pakula added.

Instead of telling “fairy tales” about the missile, the Polish president should tell Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky that Warsaw “will no longer put up with this behavior” by Kiev. “I urge you to rethink Poland’s position [regarding] this war in the event that the red line is crossed again!” Pakula concluded. Pakula’s Facebook page still has a Ukrainian flag over his portrait photo, and lists him as chairman of the city council of Lublin, the seat of the region where Przewodow is located. The official city website, however, notes that he was no longer in office as of November 11. Zelensky was quick to accuse Russia of attacking Poland and the entire NATO after a missile exploded in Przewodow on Tuesday afternoon, killing two people.

The government in Kiev said the incident showed the need for NATO to “close the sky” over Ukraine, as they have demanded since February. While Zelensky continues to insist the missile was Russian, Warsaw and Moscow have both identified it as a S-300 air defense missile, with Poland calling it “Russian-made” and Russia pointing out it was in Ukrainian service. The US and NATO have also described the missile as an air defense rocket that strayed, seeking to minimize the incident while also arguing that Russia was the ultimate culprit for bombing Ukraine in the first place. The Russian military has pointed out that Tuesday’s missile strikes on Ukrainian military and energy infrastructure targets came nowhere close to the Polish border.

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And despite accusing Russia of attacking it.

Poland Wants Russian Oil Despite EU Embargo – Kommersant (RT)

Poland plans to continue buying Russian oil in 2023 via the “Druzhba” (Friendship) pipeline, despite vows from the country’s authorities to abandon imports from the sanctioned country, the daily Kommersant reported on Wednesday. Poland’s major oil refiner and retailer Orlen has sent a bid to Russia’s oil and gas transporting company Transneft to receive three million tons of oil through the Druzhba pipeline in 2023, the outlet reported, citing a source in the Polish oil industry. Transneft has confirmed the order without specifying which companies it came from and the requested volumes. On December 5, an EU embargo on Russian crude oil and petroleum products comes into force.

And even though it will not be applied to deliveries via the Druzhba pipeline, Germany and Poland, which receive oil through the northern branch of the pipeline, have officially announced that they will voluntarily give up Russian oil from the beginning of 2023. Kommersant has pointed out that the Polish oil company has active long-term contracts with Transneft and reminded readers that the country’s foreign minister Zbigniew Rau had said on November 14 that Orlen risks paying a penalty in case of a unilateral withdrawal from the agreement. At the moment, Orlen has stopped buying Russian oil on the spot market but continues to receive it under long-term contracts with Tatneft (2.4 million tons per year until 2024) and Rosneft (3.6 million tons per year), the outlet reports.

The contract with Rosneft was renewed for two years in March 2021 and, apparently, will still be valid in January and February 2023. Commenting on the issue, Transneft vice-president Sergey Andronov said that on top of the bids from the company’s clients, which use the southern leg of the Druzhba pipeline, there are “bids from Polish consumers for deliveries through Belarus in 2023.” Andronov added that he hoped that German buyers of Russian crude would be “equally reasonable about securing stable oil supplies” from Russia. Druzhba is one of the longest pipeline networks in the world and carries crude some 4,000 kilometers from the eastern part of European Russia to refineries in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

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Reeks a bit of Nordstream.

Drone Strikes Deep In Russian Territory – Governor (RT)

A drone has struck an oil terminal in Russia’s Oryol Region, some 200km (124 miles) from the Ukrainian border, Governor Andrey Klychkov said. “Around 4am today, an apparent drone struck an oil terminal in the village of Stalnoy Kon,” he wrote on his Telegram channel on Wednesday. “Nobody was hurt. Emergency services are working on site,” Klychkov added. Although the region does not share a border with Ukraine, it borders the Russian regions of Kursk and Bryansk where officials reported multiple Ukrainian attacks after Russia launched its military operation in the neighboring state on February 24.


News outlet Baza reported that the drone hit an upper section of a cylindrical steel tank, “a quarter” of which was filled with oil. The outlet added that there were no leaks or fires. According to news outlet Mash, the terminal is part of the Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline network, which delivers Russian oil to Europe. Oryol Region, together with several neighboring regions, was placed on a state of heightened alert last month.

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“The Americans suddenly interested in talking, and Macron and Scholz approaching Lavrov, point to the heart of the matter: the EU and the UK may not survive next winter, 2023-2024, without Gazprom.”

The G20’s Balinese Geopolitical Dance (Escobar)

The fog thickened because on the backdrop of the G20, the US and Russia were talking in Ankara, represented by CIA director William Burns and SVR (Foreign Intel) director Sergei Naryshkin. No one knows what exactly was being negotiated. A ceasefire is only one among possible scenarios. And yet heated rhetoric from NATO in Brussels to Kiev suggests escalation prevailing over some sort of reconciliation. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was adamant; de facto and de jure, Ukraine can’t and does not want to negotiate. So the Special Military Operation (SMO) will continue. NATO is training fresh units. Next possible targets are the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant and the left bank of the Dnieper – or even more pressure in the north of Lugansk.

For their part, Russian military channels advance the possibility of a winter offensive on Nikolaev: only 30 km away from Russian positions. Serious Russian military analysts know what serious Pentagon analysts must also know: Russia used at best only 10% of its military potential so far. No regular forces; most of them are DPR and LPR militias, Wagner commandos, Kadyrov’s Chechens and volunteers. The Americans suddenly interested in talking, and Macron and Scholz approaching Lavrov, point to the heart of the matter: the EU and the UK may not survive next winter, 2023-2024, without Gazprom. The IEA has calculated that the overall deficit by then will approach 30 billion cubic meters. And that presupposes “ideal” circumstances this coming winter: mostly warm; China still under lockdowns; much lower gas consumption in Europe; even increased production (from Norway?)

The IEA‘s models are working with two or three waves of price increases in the next 12 months. EU budgets are already on red alert – compensating the losses caused by the current energy suicide. By the end of 2023, that may reach 1 trillion euros. Any additional, unpredictable costs throughout 2023 mean that the EU economy will completely collapse: industry shutdown across the spectrum, euro in free fall, rise of inflation, debt corroding every latitude from the Club Med nations to France and Germany. Dominatrix Ursula von der Leyen, leading the European Commission (EC), of course should be discussing all that – in the interests of EU nations – with global players in Bali. Instead her only agenda, once again, was demonization of Russia. No niskala here; just tawdry cognitive dissonance.

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2023-24.

Eurozone Facing Deep Recession – Economists (RT)

The 19 countries that use the euro are expected to plunge into a much deeper recession in the coming months than earlier predicted, CNBC reported on Wednesday, citing economists. According to the report, the euro area has been under “significant pressure” due to a combination of sanctions against Russia, an abrupt end to Russian gas imports, and the need to provide financial support to households and firms struggling with the energy crisis. CNBC cited data from the European Commission showing that consumer confidence across the Eurozone plunged to a record low in September. It has improved slightly since then, but households still fear for the future and their financial positions, the report says.

“Consumer confidence has plunged so badly that the recession will likely not be shallow,” Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank, told the news network. Preliminary growth estimates for the region suggest a slowdown in the third quarter from the previous three-month period – from 0.8% growth to 0.2%. According to Spyros Andreopoulos, a senior European economist at BNP Paribas, “It will be deeper than certainly what the ECB [European Central Bank] council expects.” Earlier this month, ECB President Christine Lagarde indicated that “the risk of recession has increased.” Andreopoulos told CNBC that he sees a risk the recession might drag into the second quarter of 2023.

Economists agree that even if the Eurozone emerges from a recession in the first quarter of next year, the subsequent months will still be challenging. s“I expect the recovery to be slow,” chief European economist at UniCredit, Marco Valli, told the network, citing higher interest rates as one of the main factors preventing a faster recovery. When asked if it was going to be an easy year for the euro area, Valli said: “No, absolutely not.”

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sundance: “If you have not watched this video, you really should. Justin from Canada leaked the content of a private bilateral conversation with Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping to the media. Chairman Xi was not happy with the breach of diplomatic protocol. What makes this video remarkable is the purposeful decision by Chairman Xi to confront Justin from Canada in front of a western audience. Xi never speaks directly in public and is always aware of cameras. The Chinese Chairman almost always goes through spokespeople to relay his public communication, reserving his voice for controlled and disciplined conversation with national leaders. However, not this time. Chairman Xi dresses down Justin from Canada publicly, in view of cameras and microphones. Watch, and stay with it to the end when Justin from Canada awkwardly looks for somewhere to hide. It’s quite funny.”

Xi Roasts Justin Trudeau At G20 (RT)

Chinese President Xi Jinping has publicly dressed down Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for leaking the content of their meeting to the media. Canadian reporters captured the exchange on video during the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia on Wednesday. Barely a minute long, the exchange opens with Xi, speaking through a translator, telling Trudeau that “everything we discussed has been leaked to the papers.” “That is not appropriate. And that’s not the way the conversation was conducted,” Xi added. “If there was sincerity on your part…” “In Canada we believe in free and open and frank dialogue, and that is what we’ll continue to have,” Trudeau replied, speaking over the translator still trying to finish relaying Xi’s words. “We’ll continue to look to work constructively together but there will be things we will disagree on,” the Canadian leader added.


“Let’s create the conditions [for that] first,” replied Xi, offering Trudeau a handshake. While the Chinese leader smiled and moved on, the Canadian PM walked away from the camera, by himself. What Reuters described as “a rare display of public annoyance” by Xi follows media reports about the contents of his meeting with Trudeau on Tuesday. In the course of the ten-minute meeting, Trudeau raised “serious concerns” about China’s “interference activities” in Canada, ranging from industrial espionage to meddling in the 2019 federal election, a “government source” told AFP. According to the same source, they also discussed the situation in Ukraine, North Korea, and the upcoming biodiversity conference in December, which Beijing and Ottawa are co-hosting.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1592876997117890560

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How can you write about him without mentioning the Ukraine-FTX-Democrats connection?

Did SBF Buy Puff-Piece Propaganda? (ZH)

As FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried faces extradition to the USA following his fund’s commingled asset implosion, one might be a bit confused about the gravity of the situation given recent press coverage. For example, the NY Times on Monday published a cowering puff-piece which mentioned exactly none of the major accusations against the well-connected Democrat mega-donor. Months before his firm imploded, Vox penned a slobbering review of SBF’s “Effective Altruism” program, painting him as a benevolent crime-fighter in his efforts to help ensure Joe Biden won the 2020 US election. But his motivations aren’t those of an ordinary Democratic donor — Bankman-Fried told Goldstein that fighting Trump was less about promoting Democrats than ensuring “sane governance” in the US, which could have “massive, massive, ripple effects on what the future looks like.” -Vox

Fast forward to Tuesday, when Vox proclaimed that SBF’s support of Democratic candidates to the tune of $40 million, second only to George Soros, is “massively overstated” and essentially no big deal. And what do we have here? SBF gave millions to corporate media outlets according to Tablet, and noted by @balajis, who suggests that it may have been done with “stolen customer funds.” Over the past two years, Bankman-Fried cultivated the media lavishly, if not carefully. Drawing on what then seemed like an unlimited pool of cash, SBF (as we’ll call the mythologized version of the real person) dispersed investments, advertising dollars, sponsorships, and donations to key news outlets—including ProPublica, Vox, Semafor, and The Intercept—with extraordinary effectiveness. -Tablet

And while some of said outlets (Semafor, and The Intercept for example) covered FTX without obvious bias, recent pieces from Vox suggest the investment has paid off in spades. On Wednesday, Vox must have realized how dumb they looked – leading to Vox’s Dylan Matthews (who oddly took the “Vox” reference out of his Twitter bio earlier today) dumping what appears to be incriminating texts with another Vox journo. And while the NY Times wasn’t on the list of outlets that received money, perhaps SBF’s deep-rooted establishment connections have something to do with it.

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“While US officials use the “politically correct” rhetoric of multipolarity and multilateralism, the Biden administration is determined to restore a unipolar world..”

American Attempts To Preserve Hegemony Vs The New World Order (Kortunov)

NATO was unexpectedly enriched by two promising members, and the American military-industrial complex entered very attractive new markets not only in Europe but also in other parts of the world. Unprecedented export opportunities have also opened up for US energy companies, which are increasing the supply of their expensive liquefied natural gas to Europe as an alternative to the cheap Russian pipeline variety. Among other things, the current crisis has shown that the intellectual and psychological inertia of the old unipolar world is far from being overcome and continues to actively influence the world’s politics and economics. The surprising unanimity shown by the countries of the European Union in their willingness to reject any form of “strategic autonomy” from the US makes one wonder how serious the desire for this very autonomy was in the first place.

But the recurrence of systemic unipolarity is not unique to the West. For example, the threat of secondary sanctions by the US has in many cases proved to be a decisive factor in determining the opportunities and constraints for non-Western countries to develop economic and other cooperation with Moscow. Under US pressure, Turkey decided to refuse to service Russian Mir payment cards, and China’s Huawei was forced to begin winding down its activities in Russia. The new US National Security Strategy recently signed by Biden is steeped in outright restorationist pathos. The document speaks of the indispensability of American leadership, the unchanging task of “containing” China and Russia, the promotion of liberal values around the world, etc.

While US officials use the “politically correct” rhetoric of multipolarity and multilateralism, the Biden administration is determined to restore a unipolar world, exactly as it existed in the 1990s. To quote a well-known aphorism from the days of the Bourbon restoration to the French throne after the Napoleonic wars, one can state that Washington strategists “have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” Which is not surprising when you consider what age group Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump belong to.

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“We are always concerned when we really don’t know what Erdogan may say or do…”

US Congress Will Continue To Oppose Jet Sale To Turkey – Rep. Malliotakis (K.)

US representative Nicole Malliotakis appeared confident on Wednesday that both the Senate and Congress will ultimately uphold a provision banning the sale of F-16s to Turkey without a firm commitment that the fighter jets will not be used against America’s allies. “We feel that we are in a good place and we are going to continue to advocate for the protection of our allies,” Malliotakis told state broadcaster ERT in Washington, after signing a letter along with another 21 representatives urging US lawmakers to uphold the provision. Despite the fact that the provision was dropped by the Senate in its version of the defense spending bill last month, getting the amendment passed in the first place “played a very strong role and also sent a very strong message to the Administration that there is bipartisan opposition in both the House and the Senate,” Malliotakis, a Republican, said.

“We’re working with Senator Menendez as the chair of foreign affairs and I’ve been working with [Michael] McCaul, who I think might be the next chair of foreign affairs in the House, to ensure that there is a not a sign-off on such as sale,” she added, referring to Senator Bob Menendez, one of the original authors of the amendment. Asked whether support for the provision would continue should the Republican party gain control of the House, Malliotakis said that “a majority of the members of the House still oppose [the sale].” “When we had that amendment come to the floor, we were able to get the Republican votes, and they were the ones that actually passed the bill,” she said.

“We are always concerned when we really don’t know what Erdogan may say or do. He has been acting aggressively and his rhetoric has been disturbing, but that’s why we need members of Congress, we need the Administration to reaffirm its support for our allies in the region,” Malliotakis told ERT.

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“..a decline in sperm count in North America, Europe, Australia and parts of Asia of 28.5% between 1973 and 2011..”

“..average global sperm count in 2018 was 49 million per milliliter of semen. When a man’s sperm count drops below about 45 million per milliliter, his ability to cause a pregnancy starts dropping dramatically..”

Sperm Counts Plummeting Dramatically – Faster Than Previously Thought (EHN)

For years, scientists across the world have gathered evidence showing declines in sperm quality. Now, new research compiling the results of those studies has found that sperm count has dropped dramatically around the world, and the rate of decline is accelerating.

In a new analysis, researchers at Mount Sinai Medical Center, the University of Copenhagen, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, among others, found that sperm count globally dropped by more than half between 1973 and 2018, and that the decline is accelerating: Since 1972, sperm count has dropped by about 1% each year. Since 2000, the annual decrease has been, on average, more than 2.6%. The findings raise concerns that an increasing number of people will need assistance to reproduce, as well as concerns about the overall health of human society, since low sperm count is linked to higher rates of some diseases. And while scientists are still trying to tease out the reasons for the drop, chemical exposures, especially to pesticides, are a likely factor — and climate change may even play a role. Researchers are calling for urgent action to bolster more research into sperm count, determine the causes of the decline, and prevent further deterioration of male reproductive health. “We have clear evidence that there is a crisis in male reproduction,” Hagai Levine, lead author on the study and an epidemiologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told EHN.

The study builds on the team’s previous research, which showed a decline in sperm count in North America, Europe, Australia and parts of Asia of 28.5% between 1973 and 2011. Adding data from 38 studies to the new analysis has made the case for sperm decline stronger, Shanna Swan, an author on the paper and a leading reproductive epidemiologist at Mount Sinai, told EHN. “It’s really alarming,” said Swan, who is also an adjunct scientist with Environmental Health Sciences, which publishes EHN.org. Swan authored the book Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race. The research found that the average global sperm count in 2018 was 49 million per milliliter of semen. When a man’s sperm count drops below about 45 million per milliliter, his ability to cause a pregnancy starts dropping dramatically, said Swan.

She said the results could mean that in the coming decades, large swaths of the global population of men could be subfertile or infertile, or could require assisted reproduction techniques, like in vitro fertilization, or IVF, hormone treatment, or a technique called intracytoplasmic sperm injection, in which sperm are directly injected into an egg. In addition to the drop in average sperm count, Levine said it was surprising that the rate of decline was accelerating, rather than slowing down. “Is there a tipping point, that once you cross, you get an even worse situation?” he said. “That’s something to really pay attention to.”

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Well, they got the House now… Let’s go!

Fauci’s Pandemic Leadership Needs to Be Investigated – Dr. Scott Atlas (ET)

Former White House COVID-19 adviser Dr. Scott Atlas sees multiple reasons for an investigation into Dr. Anthony Fauci, the outgoing director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Such a probe has been discussed as Republicans inch closer to a House majority that would grant them subpoena powers. Some Republican lawmakers have accused Fauci of playing a role in misleading the public about the origins of COVID-19 and supporting pandemic mandates they describe as draconian. While Atlas, a vocal critic of the NIAID head, is “very skeptical” that an investigation like this could get away from politics or the perception of it being political, he thinks it’s warranted. Fauci’s changing stance on certain COVID-19 policies needs to be put under the spotlight, Atlas recently said on EpochTV’s “Newsmakers.”

“The real, clear public airing of exactly what happened needs to be done,” said Atlas, a senior fellow in health care policy at the Hoover Institution and contributor to The Epoch Times. “I personally am very skeptical that a political investigation, no matter who does it, is going to be done without politics, or if it’s going to be perceived as nonpolitical. I don’t trust people in government at all. They don’t deserve to be trusted, to be objective. “What was the motivation to flip flop multiple times with policy?” His question was referring to Fauci’s changing stance on pandemic school closures that drew criticism in late 2020.

He further questioned if there had been any “cover-up” of funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Fauci’s division, citing the awards to the Wuhan Institute of Virology through the New York nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance as an example. EcoHealth Alliance, which continues to receive millions of dollars in grants from the NIH, was subjected to scrutiny by multiple federal agencies over its partnership with the Wuhan lab. The Office of Investigations of the Department of Health and Human Services in late 2020 briefly opened a probe over alleged “major fraud against the United States.” The probe was closed in January 2021, according to internal documents, which had the reasons for the closure redacted. The allegation states that “the COVID-19 virus was generated in … China with the assistance of an NIH Grant.”

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Schwab Bali

 

 

 

 

Wray

 

 

 

 

Good morning bear

 

 

Deep Field: The Impossible Magnitude of our Universe

 

 

 

 

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