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Debt Rattle September 20 2025

Sep 202025
 
 September 20, 2025  Posted by at 9:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  59 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Blue Trees (Your Turn Will Come, My Beauty!) 1888

 

• Charlie Kirk’s Tour To Continue, Including Stop At Utah State (CB)
• The Power of God Compels You! (James Howard Kunstler)
• Senate Passes ‘National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk’ Resolution (ET)
• The Real Story Behind Jimmy Kimmel’s Firing (ZH)
• Trump Requests Supreme Court Intervention in Lisa Cook Removal from Fed (CTH)
• Drone Attack Claims Meant To Derail Ukraine Peace Talks – Zakharova (RT)
• Poland’s Attempt To Blackmail China Will Hurt Itself Most (MoA)
• Trump Admits Possibility Of US Government Shutdown From October 1 (TASS)
• US Senators Introduce Bill To Transfer Frozen Russian Assets To Kiev (TASS)
• Medvedev Slams EU’s Ukraine ‘Compensation’ Plan, Vows Response (TASS)
• Kremlin Replies After Trump Says ‘Putin Let Me Down’ (RT)
• EU Names Member States Still Importing Russian Gas (RT)
• EU Spent €8.7 Billion On Russian Imports In Three Months (RT)
• India Ramping Up Russian Oil Imports Amid US Trade Talks (RT)
• How The West Screwed Itself In Energy Geopolitics (Doshi)
• Larry Ellison To Become Most Powerful US Media Mogul Ever – NYT (RT)

 

 

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1968878332008706498

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1969041696940859805

 

 

 

 

We’ve had 10 days for Charlie. That seems about right. Tomorrow’s funeral will be the spectacular culmination. In many religions, once the body is in the ground, it’s time to party, so the deceased arrives in a good mood.

• Charlie Kirk’s Tour To Continue, Including Stop At Utah State (CB)

Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk, announced that his “American Comeback Tour” would continue. “Our campus tour this fall will continue,” she said. “There will be even more tours in the years to come. AmericaFest here in Phoenix this December will go on. It will be greater than ever. The radio and podcast show that he was so proud of will go on. And in a world filled with chaos, doubt, and uncertainty, my husband’s voice will remain. And it will ring out louder and more clearly than ever. And his wisdom will endure.” Tyler Bowyer, chief operating officer of Turning Point Action, confirmed that the tour would continue this fall, including a stop at Utah State University on Sept. 30.

A new release from law enforcement suggests a political motive in the killing of Charlie Kirk. Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray said accused gunman Tyler Robinson, 22, texted his transgender roommate, urging him to “drop everything” and read a note he had left under his keyboard. “I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I’m going to take it,” the note read, according to charging documents. “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out,” he added in his texts, referring to Kirk. Furious Republicans have pushed back on the left-wing narrative that Robinson was somehow tied to President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement. They have also called out Democrats for days after Kirk’s assassination over their years-long use of harsh rhetoric to describe Trump and his supporters, calling them “Nazis,” “fascists,” “homophobes,” and “threats to democracy,” among others.

In that vein, tensions flared on Fox News’ The Five on Monday after co-host Greg Gutfeld forcefully rejected fellow co-host and lefty Jessica Tarlov’s attempt to frame political violence as a “both sides” issue in the wake of the assassination. Gutfeld opened by noting a one-sided trend. “What is interesting here is, why is only this happening on the left and not the right? That’s all we need to know,” he said. Tarlov interjected, pointing to other recent incidents of political violence, including the killing of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and other attacks that have targeted Democrats. Gutfeld immediately cut her off, raising his voice. “None of us were spending every single day talking about Mrs. Hortman. I never heard of her until after she died.

And the… Don’t play that bulls—t with me. There was no demonization, amplification about that woman before she died. It was a specific crime against her by somebody who knew her.” The back-and-forth escalated as Gutfeld rejected the premise of equivalence between Kirk’s assassination and other killings. “The both sides argument not only doesn’t fly, we don’t care. We don’t care about your both sides argument. That s—t is dead,” he said. He framed the dispute as one between reality and rationalization. “On your side, your beliefs do not match reality, so you’re coming up with these rationalizations, like, ‘What about this,’ or, ‘What about that?’ We’re not doing that, because we saw it happen. We saw a young, bright man assassinated and we know who did it. We are not coming up with rationalizations. We are calm, we are honest, and we are resolute. We’re not defensive.”

Gutfeld argued that left-wing rhetoric had created the conditions for violence. “If you sat around and you defended the mutilation of children, you’re not the good guys. If you sat 600, 700 cases of harassment against Republicans and you said, ‘But what about this? What about this?’ And then you see this murderer after calling somebody a fascist, you realize, ‘Maybe I’m not the good guy.’” He added that Kirk’s assassin, Robinson, had been influenced by what he called “direct-to-consumer nihilism” and radical ideologies. “He was a patsy. He was under the hypnotic spell of a direct-to-consumer nihilism, the trans cult,” Gutfeld said. “If you can decide that biology is false, you can agree that murder is okay and that humanity’s expendable.”

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“You have no idea the fire you have ignited.” – Erika Kirk.

• The Power of God Compels You! (James Howard Kunstler)

He was about as fine a young man as you could have dreamed up in a country so busy disgracing itself, Jesus-like in quality, if not in exact manner. Jesus, after all, was not a family man. But then there was nothing supernatural about Charlie Kirk. He was vividly of this time and place on earth. Now, in death, you can imagine him up on a mural in the post office. They’ve gone and turned him into legend, like Davy Crockett, Joseph Smith, Abe Lincoln. Yeah, it goes that deep. The Woke-Jacobin Left broke into a happy-dance when they heard the news, and I bet 90-percent of them didn’t even know what Charlie was about, except that their minders had painted a bullseye on him and somebody hit it. They have forgotten what their country is about, too. They have unwittingly acted-out Biblical-grade wickedness.

Jimmy Kimmel didn’t just tell a bad joke about the president — “This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish” — he made a Judas of himself. He demonstrated exactly what it means to betray whatever remains of goodness in this land. You are at a loss to understand how bad it got, years of officially enforced insanity, absurdities jammed down your craw, treasonous mischief, vile abuses under color-of-law (Tina Peters still rots in jail in Colorado!), and, lately, gunning down whoever stands in their way. You look at an old, established political party and you begin to see actual demons. You understand that destroying the country might not be enough for them. At this point, nothing will save the Democratic Party from itself. It will not fade quietly into irrelevance like the Whigs did in the 1850s.

No, you are witnessing something more like spontaneous combustion, a conflagration of the vicious and unholy. If you happened to watch Kash Patel in the Senate Judiciary Committee the other day going at Adam Schiff, what you saw was an actual exorcism. Mr. Patel said, “You are the biggest fraud to ever sit in the United States Senate. You are a disgrace to this institution and an utter coward. You continue to lie from your perch and put on a show so you can go raise money for your charades. You are a political buffoon at best! I challenge you to say anything credible to the truth. Go ahead and run to the cameras where you wanna go now!”

He might as well have just said: “I cast you out, unclean spirit, along with every satanic power of the enemy, every specter from hell, and all your fell companions. . . .” In the process, Mr. Patel reminded Senator Schiff that he is Director of the FBI now and, well. . . things have changed. Perhaps other Senators who have trafficked in sedition and malicious perfidy — say, Mark Warner on the Intel Committee — viewed these goings-on with a twinge of dread for what is coming. Notice that no one on the Judiciary Committee dared move to hold Mr. Patel in contempt, because what he said is self-evidently true, and they all know it. Senator Schiff is, of course, already under investigation for mortgage fraud, which is inconvenient enough, but before long he will have to answer graver charges for offenses against the nation, along with many co-conspirators in and out of office.

His over-speaking the witness (Mr. Patel) in committee the other day was the sort of climactic mummery you see in movies when the iniquitous are brought low in an official proceeding — think the babbling Bryan character in Inherit the Wind or Captain Queeg in the Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. Schiff knows he is cooked and Mr. Patel just flambéed him. If Mr. Trump had any qualms about turning the full force of the law on this party and its demonic confederates in government and the old news media, then you can safely assume that after Charlie Kirk’s murder every lever of power will be used to get them all into courtrooms under fair and correct proceedings with the basic aim of laying out the truth of what has happened to our country, so that everyone can see what it was.

By the way, and in case you missed it, Associate Deputy Attorney General Ed Martin, on or about September 5, visited Tina Peters in her cell in the Colorado State Prison at Pueblo. Peters (who turns 70 today), the former Mesa County Clerk convicted in 2024 of nine felony counts related to a security breach of voting equipment (stemming from efforts to “prove” 2020 election fraud claims), was sentenced to nine years in prison. The DOJ has filed a “review” of her conviction in federal court. I wouldn’t want to be Jena Griswold, Colorado Secretary of State, who spearheaded Tina Peter’s prosecution for daring to voice concern over election fraud.

Then, just this week, the same Ed Martin paid a call to the Fulton County, GA, election headquarters to initiate federal grand jury proceedings to access 148,000 ballots held under seal and unexamined in a county warehouse since the 2020 election. The ballots have long been suspected of irregularities and possible fraud. “Joe Biden” won the state by 11,799 votes out of 5,017,000 cast (a 0.23% plurality), and thus the national election — as did both of Georgia’s Democratic senators, Jon Ossof and Raphael Warnock.

The post -Charlie Kirk America is a new reality. Prepare accordingly.

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They need a Charlie Kirk Day under the same conditions as Martin Luther King Day.

• Senate Passes ‘National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk’ Resolution (ET)

The U.S. Senate passed a resolution on Sept. 18 expressing support for Oct. 14, 2025, to be designated a “National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk,” the conservative commentator who was assassinated during an event at a Utah university on Sept. 10. The resolution, introduced by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), recognizes Kirk’s contributions to civic education and public service. The date coincides with what would have been Kirk’s 32nd birthday. “Charlie was taken from us in a disgusting act of political violence on September 10, 2025, but his legacy lives on,” Scott told the Senate floor before the resolution’s passage. In his remarks, Scott described Kirk as a “good man” whose life was “shaped by his faith and the idea that in America, debate and discussion are crucial to the betterment of our country.”

“We have the opportunity to carry on his memory by believing in the power of our ideas, discussion, and the values of our nation,” he added. The simple resolution encourages educational institutions, civic organizations, and citizens to observe Oct. 14, 2025, “with appropriate programs, activities, prayers, and ceremonies” promoting civic engagement and the principles that Kirk championed. A simple resolution is used to express the sentiments of a single house and does not create a federally mandated holiday. Kirk’s death has been mourned at vigils and memorial services across the country, where students and community members have gathered to honor his life. This included vigils in Salt Lake City, Washington, Houston, Phoenix, Florida, and cities around the world.

A similar resolution was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Jimmy Patronis (R-Fla.). House Speaker Mike Johnson said the House will pass the resolution to honor Kirk and to condemn the “political violence that led to his untimely passing.” “Charlie Kirk was more than a conservative thought leader. He was a fearless warrior of free speech, faith, and the principles that make America the greatest country in the world,” Patronis said on Sept. 16. Kirk, who co-founded nonprofit organization Turning Point USA, was shot and killed on Sept. 10 while speaking to a crowd of students at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. He is survived by his wife, Erika Kirk, and their two young children.

Erika was appointed CEO and board chair of Turning Point USA on Sept. 18. In a live-streamed message on Sept. 12, she emphasized that her late husband’s mission would continue. “I will never let your legacy die,” she said. “I’ll make Turning Point USA the biggest thing this nation has ever seen.” Authorities have arrested Tyler Robinson, 22, as the suspected gunman. He faces multiple charges, including aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, witness tampering, and committing a violent offense in the presence of a child.

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Dying on the hill of a show that nobody was watching … Seems quite desperate.

• The Real Story Behind Jimmy Kimmel’s Firing (ZH)

After Wednesday’s decision by Disney / ABC to fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel for lying about the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the left (the architects of cancel culture) exploded with rage – saying that Kimmel’s firing was because major affiliate Nexstar needs the FCC to sign off on its $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna. To recap, during Kimmel’s opening monologue on Monday, he suggested that Tyler Robinson – the 22-year-old charged in the fatal shooting at Utah University – was aligned with conservatives. “The MAGA gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.” By Wednesday, he was fired – leading to cries of censorship and ‘free speech’ by the left, which is hilarious.

Yet, according to an insider report by the Wall Street Journal, Kimmel’s ouster was prompted by an immediate revolt by viewers and affiliate networks including Nexstar, and concerned advertisers. “Advertisers and affiliates soon called the network expressing concern about Kimmel’s show… -WSJ” “Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located,” said Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division. “Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show.”

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr blasted Kimmel on Wednesday, telling podcaster Benny Johnson that Kimmel’s comments were “truly sick,” and that there’s a “strong case” for legal action against both ABC and Disney (ABC is a Disney subsidiary). “This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” said Carr. “These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” Yet according to Nexstar, Carr’s comments weren’t a factor. “The decision to preempt ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ was made unilaterally by the senior executive team at Nexstar, and they had no communication with the FCC or any government agency prior to making that decision,” a Nexstar spokesman said.

Disney executives weighed whether Kimmel should address the controversy directly on Wednesday night’s program. According to people familiar with the matter, Dana Walden, co-chairman of Disney Entertainment, and Chief Executive Robert Iger decided his planned remarks risked inflaming the situation further. After the conversation between Kimmel and Walden, she and other senior executives thought that the star’s approach could make the situation worse, people familiar with their conversations said. Executives also discussed staff safety, including threatening emails staff on Kimmel’s show had received after Carr’s remarks and the posting of some of their personal information online, the people said. Walden huddled with her team and Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger before the two executives decided to temporarily take “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air, the people said. She then informed Kimmel of the decision. -WSJ

According to a person close to the show, Kimmel was planning to say that MAGA was purposefully twisting his words. So, another lie. Hollywood unions and producers criticized Disney’s move, calling it corporate capitulation. Damon Lindelof, co-creator of the ABC drama Lost, said he would not want to work for a company that sidelined Kimmel. Former late-night host David Letterman described the decision as “managed media” and warned of broader consequences. “We all see where this is going, correct? It’s managed media. And it’s no good,” David Letterman, the former late-night host, said at an Atlantic magazine event Thursday. Actor Ben Stiller said (and then blocked replies) “This isn’t right,” to which Elon Musk replied “He went full retard. Never go full retard.”

Democratic lawmakers and former President Barack Obama accused the Trump administration of censorship, while Trump applauded the decision and urged other networks to follow. “They give me only bad press, but they’re getting a license,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One. Some media critics said Kimmel’s benching, coupled with CBS’s recent decision to cancel its late-night show hosted by frequent Trump critic Stephen Colbert when its season ends in May 2026, will lead shows to self-censor. Kimmel’s removal comes as CBS prepares to sunset Stephen Colbert’s late-night program in 2026. Media critics say the combination of events could have a chilling effect on political commentary in late-night television.

“The degree of capitulation going forward will to some extent be a function of what kind of financial cudgel the administration has to wield,” said Lee Levine, a retired media lawyer. “Whenever the cudgel has been pretty significant, sooner or later the network caved in the recent past.” For Disney, the choice to take Kimmel off the air was the product of overlapping political pressure, regulatory risk, affiliate revolt, and advertiser anxiety – a convergence that left little room for delay. By late Wednesday afternoon, the decision was made: Jimmy Kimmel Live! would be “preempted indefinitely.” Of course, who was even watching?

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“..interest rates paid by the American people should not be set by a Governor who appears to have lied about facts material to the interest rates she secured for herself..”

NNB: I love this Modern English: “Cook maintains she dindunuffin.”

• Trump Requests Supreme Court Intervention in Lisa Cook Removal from Fed (CTH)

U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer has filed a motion with the Supreme Court requesting intervention in a lower court ruling that blocks President Trump from firing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.
As noted in the filing, “As her removal notice observed, before taking office, Cook had made contradictory representations in two mortgage agreements a short time apart, claiming that both a property in Michigan and a property in Georgia would simultaneously serve as her principal residence. Each mortgage agreement described the representation as material to the lender, reflecting the reality that lenders usually offer lower interest rates for principal-residence mortgages because they view such mortgages as less risky.

When her apparent misconduct came to light, the President determined that Cook’s “deceitful and potentially criminal conduct in a financial matter” renders her unfit to continue serving on the Federal Reserve Board, and at a minimum demonstrates “the sort of gross negligence in financial transactions that calls into question[her] competence and trustworthiness as a financial regulator.” App., infra, 29a. To this day, Cook has never attempted to reconcile these representations.”

“The Federal Reserve Act’s broad ‘for cause’ provision rules out removal for no reason at all, or for policy disagreement,” Sauer wrote. “But so long as the President identifies a cause, the determination … is within the President’s unreviewable discretion.”“The President may reasonably determine that interest rates paid by the American people should not be set by a Governor who appears to have lied about facts material to the interest rates she secured for herself — and refuses to explain the apparent misrepresentations,” Sauer wrote.

Cook maintains she dindunuffin.

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“Militants of the neo-Nazi Kiev regime are using drones to hunt defenseless people virtually around the clock, cynically targeting children, women, and the elderly”..

• Drone Attack Claims Meant To Derail Ukraine Peace Talks – Zakharova (RT)

Accusations of Russian drone violations of Polish airspace have been fabricated to demonize Moscow and derail the Ukraine peace process, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. Polish officials have claimed that 19 Russian drones entered the country’s airspace on September 10, describing the incident as a deliberate provocation intended to test NATO’s response. Several western European governments have summoned Russian diplomats in protest while NATO has announced additional military measures. In a statement on Friday, Zakharova stressed that the episode follows a familiar pattern and that Russia has again been blamed without any investigation or evidence. She added that Warsaw has refused Moscow’s proposal for consultations and has dismissed facts provided by the Russian Defense Ministry.

“This is clearly yet another element in a large-scale information campaign aimed at demonizing Russia and mobilizing additional support for the Kiev regime, as well as an attempt to undermine a political settlement of the Ukraine conflict,” Zakharova said. Russian officials have said drones used in operations against Ukrainian military targets could not physically have reached Polish territory, and have suggested that the incident may have been a provocation by Kiev designed to pit NATO directly against Moscow. Zakharova also drew attention to the 20-nation “drone coalition” supplying Kiev, accusing its members of ignoring the daily reality of Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian civilians.

“Moralizing and demarches by the coalition states regarding Russia’s alleged violations of international law are, in this context, blatantly hypocritical and inappropriate,” she said.According to the spokeswoman, Ukrainian drone attacks killed 16 people and injured 116 more in Russian regions over the summer and early September, with the victims including children. “Militants of the neo-Nazi Kiev regime are using drones to hunt defenseless people virtually around the clock, cynically targeting children, women, and the elderly” while deliberately targeting residential buildings, medical and social institutions, schools, and stores, Zakharova said. She added that by supplying such weapons, Western states have become complicit in the crimes committed by Kiev’s forces.

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“Poland is currently the recipient of the largest EU’s agricultural subsidies. Why should Germany and others continue to pay for those when Poland is impeding their trade?”

• Poland’s Attempt To Blackmail China Will Hurt Itself Most (MoA)

Over the last decade China developed the longest railway in the world running more than 8,000 miles from the east coast of China to Spain. The line crosses China, Russia, Belarus and Poland before splitting up into various European connections. Over the last year the railway has carried goods between China and Europe at a value of about $25 billion. The line is now blocked: “Poland’s decision to close its border with Belarus in response to thequadrennial Zapad-2025 military exercises and Russian drone incursion on September 10 has abruptly severed one of the fastest-growing trade arteries between China and the EU.”

“The impact of the closure of the Belarusian border is significant. The land corridor already represents 3.7% of all EU–China trade, up from 2.1% a year earlier. While that share remains small compared to seaborne shipments, its importance lies in speed and reliability.[..] Poland’s government underlined that the decision was driven by security imperatives rather than economics. Warsaw stated that “the logic of trade” was being replaced by “the logic of security,” underscoring the geopolitical risks attached to the Belt and Road corridors.” The Zapad-2025 military exerciss is long over but Poland continues to block the railroad. Its government is taking Europe’s trade with China as hostage to press China to change its policy towards Russia:

“Polish Foreign Minister RadosBaw Sikorski has said that during his meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in a suburb of Warsaw on Monday 15 September, he will insist that China put pressure on Russia to stop “a hybrid operation” on Poland s eastern border, which has led to the closure of Beijing s key trade route to Europe. [..] Tensions escalated in May last year, when a Polish border guard was attacked and killed by a migrant. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk accused Belarus and Russia of weaponising migration. Last year, Warsaw threatened to block the export route to the European Union to secure China’s help. Polish then-president Andrzej Duda raised the border tensions issue during his visit to Beijing, which “helped for a few months”, Sikorski said. “But unfortunately, this hybrid operation has intensified again. So, we need to talk again,” he added.

Interestingly the Chinese reporting on the meeting between Wang Ye and Sikorski did not mention the blocking: “At the 4th meeting of Poland-China Intergovernmental Committee on Monday, the two parties exchanged views on the importance of developing effective and economically competitive Eurasian transport corridors and the pivotal role of Poland in this process. The two sides recognized the benefits of providing mutually beneficial services for volumes of goods transported by railway, maritime and air means and of consolidating the existing and potential routes and logistical chains. Both sides expressed their willingness to ensure the safety and accessibility of the China-Europe Railway Express.”

I suspect that, behind the scene, less polite words were used by Wang Yi to express the Chinese view on Poland’s attempt the hinder the freedom of global trade. The migrants do not ride on Chinese freight trains. Blocking the railroad connection between China and Europe to prevent migrants from coming through Belarus is a very crude form of blackmail that will hit back. Should the blockade continue Poland will have to bury all hope of any future investment from China. Western European companies who depend on the railroad connection for their trade will also become more hostile to Poland. The coming defeat of NATO in Ukraine will contribute to the end of the military alliance. Poland’s outrageous behavior makes it more likely that the defeat in Ukraine will also help to break up the European Union. Poland is currently the recipient of the largest EU’s agricultural subsidies. Why should Germany and others continue to pay for those when Poland is impeding their trade?

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It’s all animosity as far as the eye can see. Perfect for a shutdown.

• Trump Admits Possibility Of US Government Shutdown From October 1 (TASS)

US President Donald Trump admitted that the federal government could shut down if Republicans and Democrats in Congress fail to reach a consensus on a bill to fund the government by October 1. “We’ll continue to talk to the Democrats, but I think you could end up with a closed country for a period of time,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We’ll take care of the military, we’ll take care of Social Security, we’ll take care of the things that we have to take care of,” he noted, adding that in the event of a shutdown, “a lot of the things that Democrats fight for, which in many cases aren’t very good, will not be able to be paid for.”

“We’ll watch and see how they do with that to handle their constituents,” the US leader said, explaining that in order to continue funding the government, the relevant bill, previously approved by the US House of Representatives, must also be supported by the Senate. “But in the Senate, we have 53 Republicans in total, and we need 60 votes. That means we need Democrat votes [in favor of the bill drafted by Republicans]. And I don’t know if you can make a deal with these people,” Trump concluded.

Earlier on Friday, the Senate rejected two bills that would have provided continued funding for the federal government. The Republican-drafted bill, which had been approved by the House of Representatives, received the support of 48 lawmakers, while the Democratic-drafted bill received the support of 47 lawmakers. Thus, the Senate failed to pass a bill that would have prevented a potential government shutdown on October 1. According to American media, this sharply increases the likelihood of a shutdown, as Congress will be in recess next week.

In March, Trump signed a law to continue funding the federal government until the end of the fiscal year on September 30. This prevented a shutdown that had been expected on March 15. Such a shutdown would have resulted in the suspension of several government agencies and programs and the temporary suspension of salaries for hundreds of thousands of civil servants, many of whom would have been placed on unpaid leave. Since 1977, funding has been interrupted more than 20 times due to disagreements between the administration and Congress. The longest shutdown, which occurred during Trump’s first presidential term, lasted 35 days, from December 22, 2018, to January 25, 2019.

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“Moscow will take immediate action in response to the possible confiscation of its assets in the West.”

• US Senators Introduce Bill To Transfer Frozen Russian Assets To Kiev (TASS)

A group of US senators from both parties introduced a bill that would require Washington to regularly transfer Russian assets frozen in the US to Kiev.According to a document published by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, several amendments must be made to laws signed by former President Joe Biden in 2024. These laws allow the US government to confiscate Russia’s frozen assets and provide military assistance to Ukraine. According to lawmakers from both parties, the Washington administration, in particular, should begin transferring the aforementioned funds to Kiev “every 90 days.” It is assumed that the top US diplomat would allocate at least $250 million to Ukraine during this period.

According to the bill, the Washington administration should “implement a robust, sustained diplomatic campaign to persuade US allies” to also start using at least 5% of frozen Russian assets in Ukraine’s interests. US lawmakers estimate that this would initially amount to approximately $15 billion. Senators believe that other countries should transfer funds to Kiev at least once every 90 days. In addition, senators want to require the Washington administration to report on the amount of Russian sovereign assets, including frozen assets, held outside the United States.

Since the start of the special military operation, the EU, Canada, the US, and Japan have frozen approximately $300 billion in Russian assets. Of these, about $5-6 billion are in the US, with most in Europe, including $210 billion held at the Euroclear international platform in Belgium. As the Russian Foreign Ministry has warned, Moscow will take immediate action in response to the possible confiscation of its assets in the West.

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“The boundless folly of the authors of this project will not absolve them from responsibility or retribution.”

• Medvedev Slams EU’s Ukraine ‘Compensation’ Plan, Vows Response (TASS)

Moscow will deliver a firm response to the creation of yet another Russophobic structure within the Council of Europe aimed at extracting “compensation” from Russia in connection with the situation in Ukraine, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said on his Max channel.”The closer we approach the moment of our ultimate victory over the Kiev neo-Nazis, the further into its own cosmos this strange and senseless organization – the Council of Europe – drifts. Our withdrawal from this discriminatory farcical entity was by no means accidental. A truly psychedelic draft convention has now emerged, proposing the creation of an international claims commission for Ukraine,” he said.

De facto, Medvedev continued, the initiative represents an attempt to establish, under the “umbrella” of the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers, “yet another anti-Russian quasi-judicial body aimed at extracting from [Russia] compensation for alleged ‘consequences of aggression against Kiev.’” He added, “our firm response to it will not be long in coming. The boundless folly of the authors of this project will not absolve them from responsibility or retribution.”

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“I’m willing to do other things, but not when the people that I’m fighting for are buying oil from Russia,”

• Kremlin Replies After Trump Says ‘Putin Let Me Down’ (RT)

The “emotional” attitude of US President Donald Trump to the Ukraine peace process is “completely understandable,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. The US leader has repeatedly expressed his frustration with the state of the process lately, admitting that he had previously believed Ukraine “would be easiest” to resolve given his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “He’s really let me down,” Trump said on Thursday. Asked for comment on Trump’s remarks, Peskov signaled that Moscow understands his frustration, given the US president’s personal investment in trying to settle the hostilities.

“We assume that the US and President Trump personally maintain their political will and intention to continue their efforts to facilitate a settlement in Ukraine. Therefore, of course, President Trump is quite emotional, so to speak, about this issue. This is completely understandable,” Peskov told reporters on Friday. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov touched upon Trump’s remarks in an interview with Russia’s Channel One, suggesting his disappointment stems from his business-like approach to politics. The US president is “a man of action, deals, and business, as he himself constantly emphasizes,” Russia’s top diplomat said.

“When President Trump says he’s disappointed… it’s partially explained by the fact that he wants quick solutions,” Lavrov stated. “In some areas, this may work; in others, it’s unlikely.” In recent weeks, the US president voiced his displeasure with the lack of progress in negotiations, threatening new sanctions on Russia. In the past few days, he has repeatedly reaffirmed his willingness to impose more restrictions on Moscow, but urged Washington’s European partners to halt their purchases of Russian oil first. “I’m willing to do other things, but not when the people that I’m fighting for are buying oil from Russia,” Trump said on Thursday.

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“..the economies of EU countries have already lost €1.3 trillion ($1.5 trillion) due to reduced Russian gas supplies..”

• EU Names Member States Still Importing Russian Gas (RT)

Eight EU countries continue to import Russian gas, media cited European Commission energy spokesperson Anna-Kaisa Itkonen as saying. Earlier on Friday, Brussels unveiled plans to ban Russian energy imports to the bloc. Belgium, France, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, and Spain are still receiving Russian supplies, either by pipeline or in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Itkonen added that the European Commission does not have data on the shipments’ ultimate end users. Despite repeated pledges to cut dependence, around 19% of the EU’s gas imports still come from Russia – down from about 45% before 2022.

Reuters noted that Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and France import LNG, while pipeline deliveries through TurkStream reach Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria. With Nord Stream pipelines disabled by sabotage in 2022 and transit via Ukraine halted this year, TurkStream remains the only direct route for Russian pipeline gas into the EU. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Friday that the bloc intends to end imports of Russian LNG from January 1, 2027, as part of new sanctions proposals. At present, there is no blanket ban, with restrictions limited to certain terminals and re-exports.

Earlier this year, Brussels dropped the idea of an outright LNG embargo after resistance from several member states, including Hungary and Slovakia, but in May set out a roadmap to phase out Russian oil and gas by the end of 2027.Moscow has maintained that every new wave of restrictions primarily harms the very countries that initiate them. Presidential aide on international economic affairs, Kirill Dmitriev, said in June that the economies of EU countries have already lost €1.3 trillion ($1.5 trillion) due to reduced Russian gas supplies.

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“..this is the true cost of the EU’s anti-Russian agenda.” “Russophobia is an expensive obsession..”

• EU Spent €8.7 Billion On Russian Imports In Three Months (RT)

EU member states imported €8.7 billion ($10.2 billion) worth of Russian goods in the first three months of 2025 alone, Bild has reported, citing data from the German Economic Institute. In the first quarter of this year, the EU-Russia trade balance was slightly skewed in Moscow’s favor, meaning that the bloc purchased more from its eastern neighbor than it sold. The German media outlet singled out natural gas imports, accounting for €4.4 billion, and crude oil at €1.4 billion as the top two items being imported by Russia to the EU In the wake of the Ukraine conflict escalation in February 2022, the bloc declared its intention to cut economic ties with Moscow. While imports of Russian gas and oil have dropped significantly since, a number of EU nations still source a large proportion of their energy supplies from Russia.

Several member states have watched their industries lose ground globally after switching to costlier alternatives. Also topping the list in early 2025 were Russian fertilizers, iron and steel, as well as nickel, according to Bild. Earlier this year, the European Commission proposed its RePowerEU Roadmap that envisages a complete phase-out of all Russian energy imports by the end of 2027. Hungary and Slovakia, both heavily dependent on Russian energy supplies, have strongly opposed the plan, saying that it would undermine their respective energy security. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto accused certain member states earlier this month of “hypocrisy,” claiming that they are still buying “Russian oil secretly” via Asian intermediaries.

In August, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz acknowledged that his country was “not just in a period of economic weakness, we are in a structural crisis of our economy,” citing falling earnings by Germany’s major automakers. Commenting on the bloc’s economic woes back in April, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that “this is the true cost of the EU’s anti-Russian agenda.” “Russophobia is an expensive obsession,” she concluded.

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They’re not going to stop.

• India Ramping Up Russian Oil Imports Amid US Trade Talks (RT)

Indian refiners intend to continue purchasing Russian crude to meet rising fuel demand, even as New Delhi restarts trade talks with the US for a bilateral deal, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. India’s imports of Russian oil are likely to remain strong for November and December deliveries, although volumes may fall short of recent highs, the media outlet said, citing people familiar with the procurement plans. Deliveries of Russian crude to India rose by 5.6% in August to 1.6 million barrels per day (mbd), according to data from analytics firm Kpler. New Delhi’s continued purchases of Russian oil have drawn the ire of the US, which has slapped 25% punitive tariffs on India, in addition to 25% levies imposed after the two countries could not arrive at a trade deal.

At a press conference with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday, US President Donald Trump said he had imposed “sanctions” on India, a country he claimed to have a close relationship with, in an effort to help bring an end to the Ukraine conflict. ”When I found out that the European nations were buying oil from Russia… And, as you know, I am very close to India, I am very close to the prime minister of India. I spoke to him the other day, I wished him a happy birthday. We have a very good relationship. He put out a beautiful statement, too… But I sanctioned them,” Trump said.

Before Trump’s comments on Thursday, India’s chief economic adviser, V. Ananatha Nageswaran, said he felt the US may soon scrap the penal import tariff on Indian goods and also cut the tariff to 10-15% from the existing 25%, according to a Reuters report. A delegation led by US Trade Representative for South Asia Brendan Lynch held a new round of negotiations with Indian officials in New Delhi on Monday. Following the talks, India’s Commerce Ministry characterized the discussions as “positive and forward-looking.”

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In 1,000 different ways.

• How The West Screwed Itself In Energy Geopolitics (Doshi)

The recent Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin, China, offered vivid optics of a shifting global order. Images of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping sharing smiles and warm embraces spoke volumes about a realignment that few could have predicted at the start of 2025. Against the backdrop of a “binding memorandum” for the Power of Siberia 2 (POS-2) pipeline supplying Russian natural gas to China, this summit was no mere public relations exercise. The summit marks a profound shift in global energy geopolitics, one that underscores Europe’s slide into irrelevance, the competitive headwinds facing US LNG exports and the spectacular failure of former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s vision of US strategic supremacy over Russia largely constructed during the tumultuous 1990s.

The United States, in its pursuit of Eurasian hegemony, has alienated a critical ally in India, pushed Russia and China closer together, and left Germany — once an industrial powerhouse — prostrate. This is a tale of hubris, miscalculation and unintended consequences. The Tianjin summit crystallised a new geopolitical reality. The warm camaraderie among the leaders of India, Russia, and China —three of the world’s five largest economies — signalled a growing alignment, not just in rhetoric and optics but in tangible energy partnerships. The “binding memorandum” for POS-2, a 50 billion cubic meter pipeline to deliver gas from Russia’s Yamal fields to China via Mongolia, is a cornerstone of this realignment.

Unlike the existing Power of Siberia 1, which draws gas from Irkutsk (north of Mongolia), POS-2 taps into the same Arctic reserves in Yamal that once fuelled Germany’s industrial might for half a century. For decades, German prosperity rested on a bargain: cheap Russian gas in exchange for high-value German manufactured exports. This was the essence of Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik and the foundation of Germany’s rise as Europe’s economic powerhouse. Russia’s pivot to Asia – accelerated by Western sanctions since 2014 (after the annexation of Crimea) and intensified after the 2022 Ukraine invasion – is now consolidating. With POS-2 and the expansion of existing pipelines, Russia could supply China with up to 100 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas annually after 2030 when the new pipeline would be up and running.

This is significantly less than the 150 bcm Russia once exported to Europe at its peak. Furthermore, the price for Russia’s natural gas sold to a price-sensitive China will be materially less than what it received from its European customers. But this re-orientation, while costing Russia lost revenues from lower prices and volumes, significantly alleviates Russia’s economic security after the Nordstream pipeline sabotage. It also reduces China’s reliance on seaborne LNG, which is typically two to four times as expensive as piped gas. Critically, this reduces China’s vulnerability to US naval dominance in chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz and Straits of Malacca through which all Middle East gas exports to China must pass through.

[..] The results of the sanctions regime have been contrary to what was predicted. In 2022, European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen said that the “Russian industry was in tatters” and it was “taking chips from dishwashers and refrigerators to fix their military hardware”. Von Der Leyen is eating crow now as Germany, France and the UK teeter on the edge of economic and political collapse while Russian shows little sign of being in “tatters”. Russia has pivoted East to forge energy and trade ties with China and India as well as other countries such as Turkey and Brazil.

The POS-2 deal, though not yet a finalised sales and purchase contract between buyer and seller, signals Russia’s success in finding alternative markets for its gas. The “binding memo” still lacks details on price, ‘take or pay’ terms, tenor of the long-term contract and relative contributions to capital costs. Nevertheless, the POS-2 memorandum signed in Tianjin shows that China is now willing to overcome its longstanding reservations over greater dependence on Russia’s energy resources. The gas that powered German factories and made the country the world’s manufacturing export powerhouse will now underpin China’s ambitions for continued economic dominance.

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“..giving Trump “an extraordinarily powerful media ally..”

• Larry Ellison To Become Most Powerful US Media Mogul Ever – NYT (RT)

Billionaire Larry Ellison, 81, is set to become the most powerful media magnate in US history, the New York Times has claimed. In a Thursday opinion piece, the outlet lamented that one of the world’s richest men, and a supporter of US President Donald Trump, is preparing to take control of major American media. The founder of Oracle already holds a large stake in CBS and Paramount through his son David Ellison’s Skydance Media, which closed an $8.4 billion merger with Paramount last month, creating Paramount Skydance Corporation. Within weeks of the merger, Paramount Skydance signed a seven-year, $7.7 billion contract to broadcast and stream Ultimate Fighting Championship events. UFC’s chief executive Dana White, a longtime Trump supporter, spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention.

”The effect of Mr. Ellison’s gambit could be every bit as consequential, if not more so, than what happened a generation ago when Rupert Murdoch… created what has become Fox News, intensifying our political polarization,” the NYT wrote. Ellison’s expected push into Hollywood and big media could go further than other tech moguls’ forays, according to the outlet. Plans also include joining a consortium with Oracle and Andreessen Horowitz to take a major stake in TikTok as part of a Trump-backed deal. The Ellisons are also reportedly preparing an all-cash bid of up to $80 billion for Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN, HBO and Warner Bros. studios.

Ellison could soon control “a powerful social media platform, an iconic Hollywood movie studio and one of the largest content streaming services,” as well as two of the country’s leading news outlets, giving Trump “an extraordinarily powerful media ally,” the NYT claimed. Trump has repeatedly argued that most mainstream outlets, including the NYT, are left-leaning, with bias against conservatives. He has accused them spreading false stories about him to undermine his presidency.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Elon

https://twitter.com/RickyDoggin/status/1968867510805021009

rfk

Putin

Banff

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle July 7 2025

Jul 072025
 
 July 7, 2025  Posted by at 9:16 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Still life with fruit basket 1942

 

• Trump Calls Musk A ‘Train Wreck’ (RT)
• Some In GOP Say ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Will Only Cost $441 Billion By 2034 (JTN)
• Bongino Drops a Truth Bomb Destroying the New York Times (Margolis)
• Bongino Drops a Truth Bomb Destroying the New York Times (Margolis)
• EU Trade Team Accepting Baseline Tariffs (CTH)
• Zelensky’s Latest Call With Trump Was ‘Most Productive’ He’s Ever Had (ZH)
• NATO Talk Becoming Toxic – Kiev (RT)
• Moscow Outlines Why Zelensky Wants To Meet With Putin (RT)
• NATO Chief ‘On Magic Mushrooms’ – Medvedev (RT)
• Slovakia ‘Ready To Fight’ For Russian Gas – Fico (RT)
• Superintelligence Will Never Arrive (Jim Rickards)
• Fresh Obama-Biden Feud Details Are Here And They’re Delicious (Margolis)
• Trump Lawsuit Exposes Uncomfortable Truths About Pulitzer Prizes (JTN)
• When the Drones are Coming, They Turn Off the Internet (CTH)

 

 

https://twitter.com/MustangMedicX/status/1941590425879576811

Butler
https://twitter.com/TheGabriel72/status/1941925223411884368

 

 

 

 

Is this even a real feud?

• Trump Calls Musk A ‘Train Wreck’ (RT)

US President Donald Trump has lashed out at Elon Musk over the tech billionaire’s plan to launch a new political party, accusing him of promoting “disruption and chaos” and undermining the stability of the American political system. In a post on Truth Social late Sunday, Trump criticized Musk for what he described as erratic behavior in recent weeks, calling the entrepreneur a “train wreck.” He claimed that Musk’s proposal to form a third party – dubbed the “America Party” – would fail and only serve to divide voters. “I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks,” Trump wrote. “He even wants to start a Third Political Party, despite the fact that they have never succeeded in the United States – the system seems not designed for them.”

“The one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS,” the president added, accusing the Democratic Party for already bringing “enough of that.” Trump also defended his recently signed multitrillion-dollar spending package, dubbed the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which has drawn sharp criticism from Musk. The president claimed that the billionaire opposed the legislation only because it eliminated federal electric vehicle mandates that had benefited Musk’s business. Trump also took issue with Musk’s alleged attempt to have one of his associates appointed to run NASA, noting that the candidate was a Democrat and that the appointment would have raised concerns over a conflict of interest, given Musk’s ties to the space industry.

“My number one charge is to protect the American public!” Trump wrote. The remarks follow Musk’s announcement on Friday that he is moving ahead with the creation of the America Party, pledging to “give freedom back to the people” and attacking both major parties for “bankrupting” the country. The billionaire did not elaborate on how much progress he had made with the plan but briefly outlined his strategy and hinted that the first move could be expected “next year,” during the US midterm elections in November 2026, when 33 of the 100 Senate seats and all 435 House seats will be up for grabs. “The way we’re going to crack the uniparty system is by using a variant of how Epaminondas shattered the myth of Spartan invincibility at Leuctra: extremely concentrated force at a precise location on the battlefield,” Musk stated.

Musk previously insisted that his criticism of Trump and his policies was not about subsidies but was triggered by a sharp budget deficit hike he had been recruited to reduce. The tech billionaire was one of the key figures in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a much-hyped temporary organization established to cut budget costs and excessive federal spending. Since the honeymoon ended, Musk and Trump have been locked in a recurring war of words, with the US president accusing his former close ally of receiving more US government subsidies “than any human being in history,” threatening to sic DOGE on him, and even mulling a potential deportation of the South African-born entrepreneur.

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“..which budgetary baseline is used: the current law baseline, always used to calculate tax cut impact on the deficit, or the current policy baseline, always used to calculate federal spending impact on the deficit..”

• Some In GOP Say ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Will Only Cost $441 Billion By 2034 (JTN)

Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” is under fire from budget watchdogs for permanently extending the bulk of the expiring 2017 tax cuts, a move that puts the total cost of the bill at $4.5 trillion and would lead to a primary deficit increase of $3.3 trillion by 2034. But Republican congressional leaders and the White House believe that a more accurate cost-analysis would zero out the impact of codifying the tax cuts, making the net cost of the budget reconciliation bill only $441 billion over the next decade. The drastic difference depends on which budgetary baseline is used: the current law baseline, always used to calculate tax cut impact on the deficit, or the current policy baseline, always used to calculate federal spending impact on the deficit.

Using the traditional current law baseline, however, would not allow Republicans to make the tax cuts permanent without having to find trillions more savings. So they adopted the current policy baseline in their version of the “big, beautiful bill,” breaking historical precedent. The Congressional Budget Office says this pivot merely papers over the true $3.3 trillion cost. Current law baseline assumes that extending tax cuts will directly cost the federal government however much taxpayers will save. But Republicans are arguing that maintaining existing tax rates should not be treated the same as a federal spending increase. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller noted in a social media post that “private money yet to be earned does not ‘belong’ to the government…CBO says maintaining *current* rates adds to the deficit, but by definition leaving these income tax rates unchanged cannot add one penny to the deficit.”

Miller and others also argue that the baseline disparity encourages fiscal irresponsibility by treating tax cliffs and spending cliffs differently. By using the current policy baseline for determining the cost of federal spending extensions, CBO assumes that perpetually reauthorizing expiring federal spending costs nothing, as it simply maintains the status quo. CBO also automatically accounts for inflation in appropriations spending, treating increased appropriations spending as an extension of current policy and thus having no impact on the deficit. The majority of budget analysts have countered that even if the scoring methods should be changed, it still won’t change the deficit impact of the “big, beautiful bill” and will set a dangerous precedent for future budget reconciliation bills.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget stated Wednesday that the Senate’s use of current policy baseline “poisons the environment for bipartisan budget and trust fund deals – by signaling that the majority party will unilaterally add to the debt by cutting taxes and pad their appropriations priorities.” House lawmakers are expected to vote on the Senate’s changes to the bill Wednesday. If they approve the Senate’s use of current policy baseline to score the tax cuts, they will open the door for any future majority party to use the same tactic.

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If so, name one reason why Ghislaine is in jail.

• FBI Epstein Memo: No Clients, No Blackmail, Definitely Killed Himself (HUSA)

Deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein and his colleague, Ghislaine Maxwell, were both charged by the Justice Department with sex trafficking—and Maxwell was convicted. But according to the DOJ, the two apparently didn’t have any clients. In a bombshell FBI memo leaked to Axios and published Sunday night, officials said they’ve reviewed more than 300 gigabytes of Epstein evidence—and haven’t found any vast human trafficking or sexual blackmail operation. “This systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list.’ There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,” the unsigned memo said.

The FBI also reiterated its previous claim that Epstein did kill himself. In an attempt to demonstrate that Epstein’s cellblock was secure the night he purportedly killed himself, the FBI released footage from the once camera that was recording. However, the camera only showed a tiny sliver of a staircase leading to Epstein’s cell. According to a DOJ-OIG report released in 2023, only two cameras in Epstein’s housing unit were recording—and those cameras had numerous blind spots. The camera in Epstein’s cell block, which had at least three other inmates, wasn’t recording. Nor was the camera covering one of the elevator bays that led to Epstein’s floor. The DOJ-OIG report also revealed that prison officials actually knew about the malfunctioning cameras the day before Epstein died.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz said his staff interviewed an MCC technician, who started to repair the cameras on Aug. 8, 2019, but did not finish his work. The technician told the inspector general he had “no idea” why he did not stay at the facility to resolve the problem that day. Epstein’s death was ruled a suicide by hanging after he was found dead in his jail cell on August 10, 2019. But his lawyers contested that claim. Skeptics point to malfunctioning surveillance cameras, sleeping guards, and broken bones in Epstein’s neck as indications that his death was something other than suicide. Because of Epstein’s extensive fraternization with high-profile politicians and celebrities such as Bill Clinton, former Israeli PM Ehud Barak, Prince Andrew and Bill Gates and many more, some claim that Epstein’s death was actually a hit job to silence him. Proponents of that theory include Epstein’s former partner, Maxwell, who’s serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking.

“I believe that he was murdered. I was shocked, and I wondered, ‘How did this happen?’ Because I was sure he was going to appeal, and I was sure he was covered by the non-prosecution agreement,” Maxwell told British reporter Jeremy Kyle of TalkTV in 2023. The non-prosecution agreement referenced by Maxwell was a sweetheart deal Epstein signed with the Department of Justice in 2008, in which he pleaded guilty to a state charge of procuring for prostitution a girl below the age of 18. Epstein was housed in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade, and was reportedly allowed to leave the jail on “work release” for up to 12 hours a day. After the Miami Herald published an expose on Epstein and his non-prosecution agreement in late 2018, Epstein was arrested again on July 6, 2019, on federal charges for the sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York.

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From Bongino, whose office just released the Epstein memo: “..precisely why hard-working Americans simply do not trust the media.”

The media or the FBI?

• Bongino Drops a Truth Bomb Destroying the New York Times (Margolis)

On Saturday, the New York Times editorial board published an article claiming that Trump’s “politicized FBI” has “made Americans less safe.” That’s rich. I’m old enough to remember when the Obama administration and the Biden administration actually did weaponize the FBI against Donald Trump. And I’m pretty sure everyone on the NYT editorial board is, too. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino wrote a scathing response to the article, calling it “precisely why hard-working Americans simply do not trust the media.” Bongino’s tweet, which quickly gained traction online, took direct aim at what he described as a “poorly thought out hit piece” that misrepresented the sweeping reforms he and Director Patel have implemented at the Bureau.

Bongino’s frustration was palpable as he laid out his case point by point, lambasting the Times for what he saw as a glaring lack of evidence to support their central claim. “The conclusion of the piece is so ridiculous that a child could debunk it,” Bongino wrote. He noted that the article’s authors “comically assert that you are ‘less safe’ because Kash and I have aggressively reformed the FBI. Yet, they produce NO evidence whatsoever to backup that claim. And the reason they don’t produced any evidence, is because the numbers tell the opposite story.”

Backing up his rebuttal with a barrage of statistics, Bongino offered a “small snippet of data points” that he says prove the effectiveness of the FBI’s new direction. Among the highlights, he touted the Bureau’s violent crime initiative, “Summer Heat,” which he notes has the murder rate “trending to be the lowest in U.S. history by a longshot.” He promised that “Summer Heat is coming to a city or town near you soon as we assist your community in removing criminal predators from the streets.” Bongino didn’t stop there. He detailed that the FBI’s renewed focus on violent crime has led to the arrest of 14,000 violent criminals—a 62% increase from the same period last year. “We rescued over one hundred children from being preyed on, while arresting over 825 violent child predators, and 140 human traffickers,” he added.

The numbers continued to pile up. Bongino reported that agents had “locked up 51 foreign intelligence operatives for spying and smuggling dangerous substances into our country.” He also highlighted the Bureau’s work with federal partners, stating, “we apprehended, imprisoned, and deported over 18,000 illegal aliens. Many of these illegal aliens had violent criminal histories. As a result, last month, again, ZERO illegals were admitted into our country. The same partners arrested nearly 800 rioters for attempting to stop enforcement operations.” Drug seizures were another point of pride: “We seized 44,000 kilos of cocaine, 3,500 kilos of meth, and 1,210 kilos of fentanyl in just the last few months. This is a 22% increase from the same time period last year.

“In addition, we locked up one of the most dangerous gang leaders in the county, and we dismantled gang operations in nearly every corner of the country, including the largest TDA gang takedown ever.” Bongino also noted progress on the FBI’s most wanted list: “We locked up 3 of the ‘Top-Ten’ most wanted FBI targets, and we’re closing in on another.” He hinted at further successes in counter-terrorism, stating, “I’d like to talk more about some of the incredible work being done by our counter-terror teams, but the information, as you would imagine, is classified. But I promise you, it’s happening.” The successes that Bongino reported are what happens when the FBI is focused on fighting crime, not settling political scores as it did under Obama and Biden. Yet the New York Times doesn’t care about facts, just their anti-Trump narrative.

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“There is no level of countervailing tariffs the EU can announce that impacts the position of Trump. Even if the EU were to end all trade with the USA, that only feeds into the goals and objectives of the Trump administration.”

• EU Trade Team Accepting Baseline Tariffs (CTH)

The intransigent European Union are hitting a dead end with immovable Trump on the issue of tariffs. The resulting dynamic is what we would expect given 75 years of the Marshall Plan (European Recovery Plan) as part of the EU’s only point of reference. In order for the EU to maintain their socialistic form of government, they need to continue the economic benefits from one-way tariffs that exploits the American consumer market. President Trump’s plan to force reciprocity is against their entire economic foundation. The EU simply cannot fathom life without the status quo. In many ways the EU is in the same position as Canada. From their perspective, economic reciprocity is not sustainable; they would have to change their social compacts. This is the core of the conflict. The EU trade delegation hit a brick wall in Washington DC, as the U.S. trade team reiterated the baseline tariffs are not something within the negotiation dynamic.

BRUSSELS — “The European Union is weighing a provisional trade deal with the United States that would maintain a 10 percent tariff on most exports, the European Commission told EU ambassadors on Friday. The EU executive reported back after a crucial round of talks in Washington on Thursday, in which Trade Commissioner Mar os Sefkovic sought to head off a threat by President Donald Trump to impose a 50 percent tariff on all European goods from July 9 if no deal is reached.

In addition to the baseline tariff, conversations would continue on providing relief to specific industry sectors such as cars, two national officials cited top Commission officials as saying. The outcome fell short of expectations in European capitals after the Commission’s trade negotiating team had previously said the possibility of “up-front” tariff relief for some industries was under consideration. The U.S. levies 25 percent tariffs on cars and 50 percent on steel and aluminum. (read more)”

As we highlighted in term-1, these ongoing negotiations with the EU on the issues of trade are extremely challenging. However, in term-2 President Trump’s position is much simpler; why keep arguing about the same problem only to end up in negotiations of intransigence? Instead, if the EU is going to continue negotiations as a collective, President Trump is now favoring just sending the EU a letter informing them of the tariff rates applied to each of their industrial sectors. This is the most direct and impactful way to end the stalemate.

The EU cannot fathom the new level of ambivalence carried by President Trump, and by extension his trade team, toward the conversation. There is no level of countervailing tariffs the EU can announce that impacts the position of Trump. Even if the EU were to end all trade with the USA, that only feeds into the goals and objectives of the Trump administration. The EU has no power in this dynamic beyond their purchasing power, and if the EU doesn’t want to level the purchasing – thereby maintaining a trade deficit, then Trump will equalize the financial imbalance with tariffs. Canada is in the same position, hence their alignment with the EU.

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“..Trump said “It just seems like he wants to go all the way and just keep killing people. It’s not good. I wasn’t happy with it”..”

• Zelensky’s Latest Call With Trump Was ‘Most Productive’ He’s Ever Had (ZH)

The White House rhetoric on Ukraine could be slowly shifting, after President Trump said he was “very unhappy” with a Thursday phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. After a single night’s record drone attack of some 500 UAVs sent on Ukraine, Trump said “It just seems like he wants to go all the way and just keep killing people. It’s not good. I wasn’t happy with it” – in reference to Putin. But it should be remembered that the White House just days prior halted some shipments of defense aid, which speaks louder than words. European allies are predictably upset and Kiev is now dealing very carefully with Washington, and handling Trump with kid gloves, given it is in a precarious situation on the battlefield. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, announced Saturday that his latest conversation with Trump this week was the best and “most productive” he has ever had.

“Regarding the conversation with the president of the United States, which took place a day earlier, it was probably the best conversation we have had during this whole time, the most productive,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. “We discussed air defense issues and I’m grateful for the willingness to help. The Patriot system is precisely the key to protection against ballistic threats,” he added. Zelensky has also been asking Washington to slap more sanctions on Moscow, something Trump has so far resisted in order to give better space for peace negotiations to take off. Asked by reporters over whether Zelensky’s request for more Patriot missiles would be honored, Trump replied, “They’re going to need them for defense… They’re going to need something because they’re being hit pretty hard.”

Trump had further said of the Zelensky call, which happened Friday, “We talked about different things… I think it was a very, very strategic call.” This suggests that some new decision-making could be afoot regarding supplying Ukraine. There have been recent reports, however, that Trump is prioritizing defense of Israel, even diverting arms and ammo away from eastern Europe for that purpose. Trump has been expressing deep frustration at lack of momentum in US-backed peace efforts, for which he’s criticized both warring sides.

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Ukraine in NATO is a declaration of war.

• NATO Talk Becoming Toxic – Kiev (RT)

Discussions with the West about NATO membership for Kiev have become increasingly tense and unproductive, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Georgy Tikhy has said, describing the talks as “toxic.” Western nations initially backed Kiev’s aspirations to join the US-led bloc, but Ukraine’s military struggles and shifting American policies have led to a decline in support. The dialogue with NATO partners has now reached a dead end, Tikhy lamented in an interview on the YouTube channel of journalist Aleksandr Notevsky on Friday. “All the arguments and counterarguments have already been presented, and each new round of negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to NATO goes in circles,” he stated. The discussions “have become, to put it simply, very toxic,” he added.

Ukraine formally applied for fast-track NATO membership in September 2022, months after the escalation of the conflict with Russia. Although the bloc has consistently stated that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO,” it has never set a specific time frame for accession. At the 2023 NATO summit, the requirement for Ukraine to complete the Membership Action Plan was removed, thus simplifying the path to membership. However, the final communique only stated that an invitation would be extended “when allies agree and conditions are met,” without providing concrete timelines or criteria. Ukraine’s future membership was discussed at last year’s NATO summit and the joint communique explicitly reaffirmed that Kiev’s accession was inevitable.

Since then, however, a number of leaders of NATO countries have soured on the idea, weighing the risks of further escalation with Russia and the bloc’s long-term security priorities. US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has been more emphatic, stating that Kiev “can forget about” joining the NATO, noting that its attempts to do so were “probably the reason the whole thing started,” referring to the Ukraine conflict. At the recent NATO summit in June, Ukraine was barely mentioned in the final communique, while its leader, Vladimir Zelensky, failed to secure support for Kiev’s future membership. Russia has repeatedly characterized Ukraine’s attempt to join NATO as a red line and one of the root causes of the conflict. Moscow has demanded that Kiev legally commit to never joining any military alliance.

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It would solve his credibility issues.

• Moscow Outlines Why Zelensky Wants To Meet With Putin (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky is seeking a personal meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to defend his claims to legitimacy and resist Western attempts to push him out of power, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. Zelensky’s presidential term expired last year, and Moscow views him as illegitimate. In an interview with First Sevastopol TV released on Saturday, Zakharova was asked why she believes the Ukrainian leader is so insistent on meeting with Putin. “Because he needs to reaffirm his legitimacy, not through legal procedures, but by any other means to prove that he is in power,” she stated. Zelensky’s five-year presidential term ended in May 2024, but he refused to hold a new election, citing martial law.

Moscow has declared him illegitimate, insisting that under Ukrainian law, legal authority now rests with the parliament. According to Zakharova, Zelensky also seeks a meeting with Putin because he is driven by “a monstrous fear of being consigned to oblivion.” “He is insanely afraid of being forgotten, of becoming unnecessary for the West. That somehow the West will sideline him. And you can see he doesn’t step away from the microphones. I think he already sleeps with a webcam,” she said. Zelensky has on numerous occasions insisted that he wants to meet with Putin, describing this as a prerequisite for peace.

In May, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggested that a meeting between Putin and Zelensky could be possible, but only after negotiations between Moscow and Kiev reach “specific arrangements” on various diplomatic tracks. This year, Russia and Ukraine held two rounds of direct talks, which did not result in a breakthrough with regard to ending the conflict, but led to several prisoner exchanges.

In June, Putin said he was open to meeting with Zelensky, but suggested that the Ukrainian leader lacks legitimacy for signing binding agreements. “I am ready to meet with anyone, including Zelensky. That’s not the issue – if the Ukrainian state trusts someone to conduct negotiations, by all means, let it be Zelensky. The question is different: Who will sign the documents?” In autumn 2022, Zelensky signed a presidential decree banning talks with the current Russian leadership, after the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye voted in referendums to join Russia. Though Zelensky has not canceled the decree, he has since insisted that it only applies to other Ukrainian politicians, not to himself.

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“..these are simply attempts to create an artificial external enemy in order to justify such a militaristic line to militarize Europe.”

• NATO Chief ‘On Magic Mushrooms’ – Medvedev (RT)

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has mocked NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte for suggesting that Beijing might ask Moscow to attack NATO territory in Europe as a diversion if China decides to make a move on Taiwan. Rutte, speaking to the New York Times on Saturday, said Chinese President Xi Jinping may tell his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin: “I’m going to do this, and I need you to keep them busy in Europe by attacking NATO territory.” He also urged stronger NATO defenses, warning that “if we don’t, we’ll have to learn Russian.” “SG Rutte has clearly gorged on too many of the magic mushrooms beloved by the Dutch,” Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said on X on Saturday.

“He sees collusion between China & Russia over Taiwan, and then a Russian attack on Europe. But he’s right about one thing: he should learn Russian. It might come in handy in a Siberian camp,” Medvedev joked, hinting at the harsh conditions at the region’s remote prison camps. Beijing, which considers Taiwan its own territory under its One China policy, has repeatedly demanded that the US and its allies stop interfering in China’s internal affairs. Washington, however, continues to supply weapons to Taiwan. Russia supports the Chinese position, condemning Western arms sales and diplomatic visits to the island. Moscow has also repeatedly dismissed claims that it plans to attack NATO, calling such statements baseless and part of Western scaremongering.

The Kremlin has maintained that “these are simply attempts to create an artificial external enemy in order to justify such a militaristic line to militarize Europe.” Russian officials have also argued that European NATO countries are using the supposed Russia threat to deflect from their own domestic problems. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the “old horror story about the Russian bear” an easy excuse in light of economic stagnation and falling standards of living in Europe. At its recent summit, NATO members discussed increasing defense spending targets to 5% of GDP, though no formal agreement was reached. Some European nations expressed concern that such a level would be a heavy financial burden, potentially straining domestic budgets and public support for defense policies.

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“..the phase-out means “fighting for our households and businesses” so they won’t bear the costs of “harmful ideological decisions” from Brussels..”

• Slovakia ‘Ready To Fight’ For Russian Gas – Fico (RT)

Slovakia is “ready to fight” for its right to import Russian gas and will continue to block Brussels’ proposals to phase out Russian energy, Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Saturday. Fico stressed that energy security is a strategic priority for Slovakia, and that EU efforts to change its supply mix threaten national sovereignty. Slovakia vetoed the EU’s 18th round of sanctions on Russia for the second time on Friday, citing concerns over the RePowerEU plan, which seeks to cut Russian energy imports by 2028. The plan is being discussed alongside sanctions targeting Russia’s energy and financial sectors. Brussels is seeking to pass the phase-out as trade legislation – requiring only a qualified majority.

Fico insists, however, that the plan amounts to sanctions and must be unanimously approved. He previously warned that the move could jeopardize energy security, raise prices, and trigger costly arbitration with Gazprom over Slovakia’s long-term energy contract. Speaking during celebrations for Slovakia’s Saints Cyril and Methodius Day, Fico called the phase-out plan a “disruption” of Slovakia’s national interests.“We refuse to support another sanctions package against the Russian Federation, unless we know who will protect us, and how, and compensate for the damage that will be caused to Slovakia by the ideological proposal of the European Commission to stop supplies of Russian gas,” he said. “Slovakia wants to be sovereign and self-determined. And we must answer whether we are ready to fight for it. I am ready to fight this difficult battle. We are going to get through it.”

Fico added that vetoing the phase-out means “fighting for our households and businesses” so they won’t bear the costs of “harmful ideological decisions” from Brussels. He went on to say that Slovakia is at a crossroads – between giving in to pressure from “bureaucratic structures” in Brussels and defending its interests. He urged the public to choose the latter and accused the EU of ignoring national interests and violating international law by forcing harmful policies onto member states. Fico argued that Slovakia must pursue cooperation “based on equality and mutual benefit,” not external political agendas.

Hungary has also blocked the Russian energy phase-out plan, with Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto warning that it would “destroy Hungary’s energy security” and cause price spikes. Moscow has condemned the Western sanctions as illegal and counterproductive, particularly those targeting energy, noting that energy prices in the EU surged after the initial sanctions on Russia were introduced in 2022. Russian officials warn that the EU’s rejection of Russian supplies will push it toward more expensive imports or rerouted Russian energy via intermediaries.

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“.. I use the HiPerGator in connection with my work for the Florida Institute of National Security, which uses AI to explore kinetic and financial war fighting scenarios. I have built extensive neural networks that will be running on the HiPerGator.”

• Superintelligence Will Never Arrive (Jim Rickards)

Readers know at least two things about artificial intelligence (AI). The first is that an AI frenzy has been driving the stock market higher for the past three years even with occasional drawdowns along the way. The second is that AI is a revolutionary technology that will change the world and potentially eliminate numerous jobs, including jobs requiring training and technical skills. Both points are correct with numerous caveats. AI has been driving the stock market to record highs, but the market has the look and feel of a super-bubble. The crash could come anytime and bring the market down by 50% or more. That’s not a reason to short the major stock indices today. The bubble can last longer than anyone expects.

If you short the indices, you can lose a lot of money being wrong. But it is advisable to lighten up on equity allocations and increase your allocation to cash in order to avoid the worst damage when the crash does come. On the second point, AI will make some jobs obsolete or easily replaceable. Of course, as with any new technology, it will create new jobs requiring different skills. Teachers will not become obsolete. They’ll shift from teaching the basics of math and reading, which AI does quite well, to teaching critical thinking and reasoning, which computers do poorly or not at all. Changes will be pervasive, but they will still be changes and not chaos.

Artificial Intelligence is a powerful force, but there’s much less there than meets the eye. AI may be confronting material constraints in terms of processing power, training sets and electricity generation. Semiconductor chips keep getting faster and new ones are on the way. But these chips consume enormous amounts of energy, especially when installed in huge arrays in new AI data centers. Advocates are turning to nuclear power plants, including small modular reactors to supply the energy needs of AI. This demand is non-linear, which means that exponentially larger energy sources are needed to make small advances in processing output. AI is fast approaching practical limits on its ability to achieve greater performance.

This near insatiable demand for energy means that the AI race is really an energy race. This could make the U.S. and Russia the two dominant players (sound familiar?) as China depends on Russia for energy and Europe depends on the U.S. and Russia. Sanctions on Russian energy exports can actually help Russia in the AI race because natural gas can be stored and used in Russia to support AI and cryptocurrency mining. It’s the law of unintended consequences applied to the short-sighted Europeans and the resource-poor Chinese.

Another limitation on AI, which is not well known, is the Law of Conservation of Information in Search. This law is backed up by rigorous mathematical proofs. What it says is that AI cannot find any new information. It can find things faster and it can make connections that humans might find almost impossible to make. That’s valuable. But AI cannot find anything new. It can only seek out and find information that is already there for the taking. New knowledge comes from humans in the form of creativity, art, writing and original work. Computers cannot perform genuinely creative tasks. That should give humans some comfort that they will never be obsolete.

A further problem in AI is dilution and degradation of training sets as more training set content consists of AI output from prior processing. AI is prone to errors, hallucinations (better called confabulations) and inferences that have no basis in fact. That’s bad enough. But when that output enters the training set (basically every page in the internet), the quality of the training set degrades, and future output degrades in sync. There’s no good solution to this except careful curation. If you have to be a subject matter expert to curate training sets and then evaluate output, this greatly diminishes the value-added role of AI.

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“That’s all Biden ever was in that ticket: window dressing for a green senator trying to look presidential.”

• Fresh Obama-Biden Feud Details Are Here And They’re Delicious (Margolis)

It’s no secret anymore that Barack Obama and Joe Biden were hardly the BFFs that the latter claimed them to be. According to reports, Obama was a key player in the coup to force Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 election, and Biden is naturally very bitter about it. But the latest revelations about their toxic dynamic during the campaign go beyond personal bitterness. They expose a level of dysfunction within the Democratic Party that’s so raw and chaotic, it would make even veteran political insiders wince. A forthcoming book about the 2024 election has exposed what many conservatives suspected all along: Obama never really believed Biden was fit for a second term, and he wasn’t shy about letting everyone know it.

When the two met for lunch at the White House in 2023, Obama walked away “slightly incredulous” that Biden was even attempting another run, according to a report from The Guardian, which received an advance copy of the book. But here’s where it gets really good: Obama didn’t just keep his doubts to himself. After that lunch, the former president made a beeline for Biden’s senior staff, many of whom had previously worked under him, and delivered a brutal assessment that should have ended Biden’s campaign right there. “Your campaign is a mess,” Obama told them, cutting through any pretense of unity or support. This wasn’t constructive criticism from a concerned party elder—this was a public execution disguised as friendly advice.

The organizational chaos Obama identified was glaring. Biden’s team had split their operations between Washington and Wilmington, a decision that even Biden himself privately admitted was problematic. The Wilmington base was supposed to showcase Biden’s everyman appeal and Delaware roots, but Obama recognized it for what it really was: a logistical nightmare that would hamstring any serious campaign effort. The attempted fix reveals just how dysfunctional things had become. They shuffled Jen O’Malley Dillon to Wilmington as campaign manager while keeping Mike Donilon in Washington as chief strategist. This geographic split epitomized the kind of amateur-hour decision-making that Obama was calling out, and predictably, it solved nothing.

What makes this story particularly delicious is how Biden’s staff reacted to Obama’s intervention. According to the book, some of them thought Obama was being a “prick” and felt he “disrespected and mistreated Biden.” The irony is palpable—these same staffers who spent eight years watching Biden serve as Obama’s “loyal” vice president were now discovering what many had suspected: Obama’s respect for Biden was always conditional and largely performative. Let’s be honest—conservatives saw this coming back in 2008. Joe Biden was a non-factor in the Democratic primary, barely registering in the polls and flaming out after a humiliating finish in Iowa. He wasn’t chosen for his political prowess or popular appeal—he was picked because Obama needed an “elder statesman” to paper over his lack of experience. That’s all Biden ever was in that ticket: window dressing for a green senator trying to look presidential.

And that’s precisely what makes this behind-the-scenes drama so revealing. It underscores the same glaring weakness that’s followed Biden from the moment he sought the presidency. Even his own party’s most prominent figure couldn’t pretend he was up to the job—because deep down, they all knew he never was.

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The Pulitzer Prize will never be the same.

• Trump Lawsuit Exposes Uncomfortable Truths About Pulitzer Prizes (JTN)

President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board is forcing into the public eye uncomfortable revelations about how the news industry’s top prize giver handled the unraveling of Russia collusion allegations, exposing conflicts in testimony and an admission that people other than Trump complained about its 2018 awards to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their coverage of the now-discredited scandal. While the litigation in an Okeechobee County, Florida courthouse makes its way to the Florida Supreme Court, new admissions by the intelligence community have undercut the factual basis underlying some of the stories that won the two newspapers the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting.

One of those stories was a December 2017 report by The Washington Post that accused Trump of ignoring or trying to downplay U.S. intelligence claims that Putin tried to help him win the 2016 election. “Nearly a year into his presidency, Trump continues to reject the evidence that Russia waged an assault on a pillar of American democracy and supported his run for the White House,” the Post’s award-winning story declared. While there remains widespread consensus inside U.S. spy agencies that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee emails that embarrassed Hillary Clinton, the narrative the news stories spawned — namely, that Russia’s intent was to help Trump win the election — is disputed.

The claim that Putin was specifically trying to help Trump was included in a December 2016 Obama administration intelligence community assessment (ICA), but in fact there were concerns about that claim and the way that review was done inside the intelligence community, according to new evidence made public this month. CIA Director John Ratcliffe revealed last week that the two top career CIA officials for Russia directly objected to former Director John Brennan’s inclusion of the Steele dossier in the Obama-era ICA and that its conclusion that Russia’s intent was to help Trump was not strongly supported by the evidence. Ratcliffe’s new report directly assailed the Obama-era Russia assessment that anchored the Post’s December 2017 story, concluding it suffered from significant failures of spy tradecraft and other irregularities.

“The procedural anomalies that characterized the ICA’s development had a direct impact on the tradecraft applied to its most contentious finding. With analysts operating under severe time constraints, limited information sharing, and heightened senior-level scrutiny, several aspects of tradecraft rigor were compromised—particularly in supporting the judgment that Putin ‘aspired’ to help Trump win,” the Ratcliffe report concluded. [..] The new admissions by U.S. intelligence last week aren’t the only ones undercutting entries in the Times’ and Post’s award-winning submissions. Just the News reported in April that newly released FBI interviews with former National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers, a Navy admiral, show that the former spy chief directly refuted a Post article submitted in the Pulitzer-winning package that claimed Trump had “asked intelligence chiefs to push back against the FBI collusion probe” after former FBI Director James Comey “revealed its existence.” Rogers called the article’s assertions “wrong.”

“The interviewing team read to Rogers a quote from a media source that stated ‘President Trump urged [Rogers] to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion during the 2016 election’ and ADM Rogers responded that the media characterization was wrong, and the President had asked about the existence of SIGINT [signals intelligence] evidence only,” the FBI report quoted Rogers as saying. Former Special Prosecutor John Durham concluded there was never any evidence that Trump colluded with Russia or Putin to hijack the 2016 election, and that the FBI engaged in significant wrongdoing in pursuing the case, including falsifying evidence and misleading the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to get permission to spy on Trump advisers.

Despite Durham’s findings and the newly released FBI and intelligence documents, the Pulitzer Prize Board has stood by the Times’ and Post’s reporting and its decision to honor them as examples of journalistic excellence. In 2022, it issued a statement saying two separate reviews found no problems with the winning articles. “Both reviews were conducted by individuals with no connection to the institutions whose work was under examination, nor any connection to each other,” the Pulitzer Board stated. “The separate reviews converged in their conclusions: that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes. The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes in National Reporting stand.”

Read more …

“Can Russia beat Europe in modern warfare? Well, turn off the electricity, turn off the internet and see what happens to social society in Prague, Rome or any region in Europe when the sirens start.”

• When the Drones are Coming, They Turn Off the Internet (CTH)

Some thoughts on what I would call ‘modern warfare’ for citizen preppers. Some of this experience may pertain to urban areas, some perhaps pertinent overall. Dimitri’s wife is grabbing her purse to go to the grocery store, when he casually says “it’s 5:45.” She just as ordinarily replies, “I’ve got cash.” Dimitri sees the slightly puzzled look on my face and flippantly notes, “they turn off the internet at six thirty now,” shrugs, and goes back to reading his paper. Perhaps similar to London life during the blitz. Various municipal govts coordinated the shut down of lights and people wait. Others got about doing what they needed to do, sirens notwithstanding. There is a familiar life amid modern drone warfare, and with the similar control of electricity comes the need to add internet. When the drones are coming they turn off the internet.

As I contemplate the contrasts in social resilience, my most familiar reference point is life after a hurricane. In Florida when we are dealing with the aftermath of a hurricane, no power, no water, no internet, etc., you adapt to life without modern technological conveniences. If you’ve ever lived amid the aftermath of natural disasters, you understand the need for a plan and quick adaptation. Do it a few times and adaption becomes ordinary. Horrible in ways, yes; awkward, certainly. But you take things in stride; overcome, figure out the optimal solution and keep moving. However, not everyone is prepared to consider a disruption an ‘inconvenience’ and many people who need consistency to retain stability end up in panic. I think long term readers well understand the reference. As Dimitri goes back to the paper my mind shifts to stuff I’ve heard in bits and pieces but never given context before.

I think about this U.S. ‘Space Force’ thing, and now realize there are people who have gamed out modern warfare more than we discuss as a western technological society. My mind also thinks about those reports I read a few years ago about various western govt offices concerned about the ability of Russia to target U.S. satellites. Suddenly I realize cell phone and telecommunication is not their concern. There’s no internet; the problem is bigger than a temporary outage of Uber. I wonder how the commercial air traffic between Kazan, Moscow and St Petersburg is not disrupted. Old school stuff applies. Meanwhile, the kids, lots of them are playing outside as kids do – apparently life amid modern drone warfare is resilient. No one is staring at the sky.

It is very odd to see how quickly a non-technology driven society can adapt to no electricity and no internet as an ordinary part of daily life. An entire nation just figures out the optimal solution, in part because their time between analog and digital has been short. Russians have a totally different context of dependency. I’m also starting to realize how the flexibility within a non-technological society is an asset in modern warfare. Turn off the internet in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles or any major metropolitan area – how would life be impacted? I can only imagine the reactions from a generation who has never known life without wi-fi. It would be a very good intellectual exercise to think carefully about what your life would be like without cell phone coverage or internet services. There are more than a few people who have never learned to read a clock with hands.

In Russia when the drones are coming they turn off the internet and sometimes the electricity. Stores stay open; people do the ordinary things people do, the trains still run, the busses stay on schedule and you can still get a hot coffee and a sandwich just about anywhere, albeit sans Starbucks. Private taxis, Uber equivalents, switch seamlessly to line up at pick-up points without issue. Try to duplicate that rapid on/off precision in Boston, Miami or St Louis… see my point? Then extend those thoughts to Paris, Frankfurt, Warsaw or Helsinki. Dimitri is thinking about ordering a pizza, while I’m starting to realize why NATO countries are going bananas. Can Russia beat Europe in modern warfare? Well, turn off the electricity, turn off the internet and see what happens to social society in Prague, Rome or any region in Europe when the sirens start. Yeah, NATO is going bananas as Putin’s best non-discussed weapon just looms quietly.

Putin’s strongest weapon is essentially a social infrastructure akin to a nation full of people who can live in the aftermath of a hurricane without needing a digital screen to provide directions to the next six hours of their life. Again, somewhere, in some office complex deep in the bowels of some agency or bureaucracy, someone has ran models of this and yet I cannot find a reference anywhere to ordinary people talking about it. In the glovebox of every taxi in Russia you will find a paper map; when was the last time you saw one in the USA? When the drones come, they always turn off the internet and sometimes the electricity. How would we deal with that… Think about it.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Never

Renz
https://twitter.com/redpilldispensr/status/1941814607493878056

dog

Angels

Henry

https://twitter.com/TheFigen_/status/1941920348775010790

https://twitter.com/LangmanVince/status/1941796955937550392

 

 

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Debt Rattle January 30 2025

Jan 302025
 
 January 30, 2025  Posted by at 10:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  137 Responses »


Edward Hopper The Sheridan Theatre 1937

 

• RFK Jr. Warns ‘Chronic Disease’ Leading To ‘Sea Of Desperation And Debt’ (JTN)
• Midair Collision Over Nation’s Capital Preceded By Months Of Near Misses (JTN)
• OpenAI Finds “Substantial Evidence” DeepSeek Ripped Off GPT (ZH)
• OpenAI Promises Close Cooperation With US Authorities (RT)
• Ray Dalio Warns Of Brutal AI War Between U.S. And China (ZH)
• Trump’s DOGE Says It’s Already Saving Billion Dollars A Day (RT)
• Pentagon To Investigate Milley And Possibly Demote Him (ZH)
• Trump To Finish What Reagan Started, A Missile Defense System For The US (JTN)
• Trump To Send Deported Migrants To Guantanamo (RT)
• Kash Patel To Face Senate Hearing In Bid To Reform Scandal-Plagued FBI (JTN)
• Gabbard’s DNI Nod Walks A Tightrope Over The Precipice Ahead Of Key Hearing (JTN)
• White House Comments On ‘Mystery’ Drones (RT)
• Trump’s Fight Against Online Censorship Quickly Goes Global (RCI)
• Zelensky Wanted Protocol Signed Before Meeting Took Place – Slovak PM (RT)
• Jordan, Egypt Reject US Plan To Resettle Gazans As Trump Doubles Down (ZH)
• Trump Asks Musk To ‘Go Get’ Astronauts Stranded In Orbit (RT)
• The Democrats Who Stole an Election Must Be Held Accountable (PCR)

 

 

 

 

Leavitt

Homan

Ted Cruz

AfD
https://twitter.com/i/status/1884658882456203448

 

 

 

 

“..90% of health care spending goes toward managing chronic disease..”

I watched part of this. In disbelief. That the US health care system is about to collapse didn’t appear to be the priority. Or people’s health, for that matter. Liz Warren spent all her time demanding that RFK wouldn’t sue any party in the industry, suggesting he’s in it for profit. What are her interests, really? Is she on some payroll? But no-one can dispute he seems to be the best person for the job, to MAHA. And that should be everyone’s priority.

• RFK Jr. Warns ‘Chronic Disease’ Leading To ‘Sea Of Desperation And Debt’ (JTN)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday warned that the nation faced a “sea of desperation and debt” if it did not significantly address “chronic disease.” Kennedy faced questioning before the Senate Finance Committee. He will appear in front of another panel on Thursday. Long an advocate for reform to American federal health programs and a critic of chemical additives in food, Kennedy’s nomination has roiled lawmakers, some of whom have called him anti-vaccine. “Our country will sink beneath the sea of desperation debt if they don’t change the course and ask, ‘Why Are health care costs so high in the first place?’ The obvious answer is chronic disease,” Kennedy said during his confirmation hearing.

“The CDC says 90% of health care spending goes toward managing chronic disease, which hits lower income Americans the hardest,” he added. “The president’s pledge is not to make some Americans happy again, healthy again, but to make all of our people healthy again.” “For a long time, the nation has been locked in a divisive health care debate about who pays when health care costs,” Kennedy lamented. “There are no good options, only bad ones, shifting the burden around between government and corporations and insurers and providers and families, is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”

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Why are there Blackhawks on that airport?

• Midair Collision Over Nation’s Capital Preceded By Months Of Near Misses (JTN)

The midair collision between an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army Blackhawk helicopter over the nation’s capital was preceded by months of harrowing near misses at airports across America, as well as increasingly shrill warnings that the nation’s air traffic control and safety system is stretched to the limit. Just 14 months before Wednesday night’s fatal mishap near Ronald Reagan National Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration received a safety expert report that warned America’s air traffic control system is suffering from quality control issues and staffing shortages that put safety at risk. That report warned that “challenges, in the areas of process integrity, staffing, and facilities, equipment, and technology, all have ties to inadequate, inconsistent funding. Together, these challenges contribute to increased safety risk and should be regarded as incident precursor.”

The November 2023 report also warned that personnel shortages among air traffic controllers were forcing people to work longer hours and make sudden last-minute changes to flight plans that increased risks. “Overtime is at a historically high level and increasing,” the report warned. “High rates of overtime for extended periods introduces risk into the NAS. Several associated issues include absenteeism, lower productivity and fatigue. “When air traffic is rerouted, put into holding, or space is increased between aircraft to accommodate understaffed adjacent areas, the opportunity for mistakes in instruction is multiplied due to the abrupt change in the operation and the increased communications required to facilitate the irregular operation,” it added. “While each element of risk may not be material, the combined effect of irregular operations necessitated by staff shortages erodes the margin of safety.”

Regulators acknowledged that in 2023 there were 19 serious near misses at U.S. airports that could’ve been catastrophic, one of the largest totals in many years. This past October, the FAA followed up with an audit looking at the increased risks of runway incursions at the nation’s 45 busiest airports. While that audit was still underway, several harrowing near misses were reported at airports, including at Reagan in Washington, D.C. and with a men’s college basketball team. Just two weeks ago, the FAA opened an investigation of a near miss in the skies above Phoenix, Arizona. The agency said there was a “loss of separation incident” involving a United B737-900 and a Delta A330-300 arriving at Phoenix Sky Harbor on Jan. 11.

Back in April, a dangerous collision nearly occurred at Reagan. The FAA said an air traffic controller instructed Southwest Flight 2937 to cross Runway 4, while JetBlue Flight 1554 was starting its takeoff roll down the same runway.The JetBlue flight had to abort. Likewise, FAA began investigating an incident at Los Angeles’ main airport in December when a private jet carrying the Gonzaga University men’s basketball team nearly crossed a runway as a Delta flight was taking off. Audio from the control tower showed an alarmed flight controller yelling “stop, stop, stop.“

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Guess that’s what I would say if I were outperformed like that.

• OpenAI Finds “Substantial Evidence” DeepSeek Ripped Off GPT (ZH)

David Sacks, the White House’s AI and crypto czar, told Fox News on Tuesday that there is “substantial evidence” Chinese AI startup DeepSeek “distilled” knowledge from OpenAI’s models—an act he likened to IP theft. This poses a massive national security risk and might be critical for US AI firms to tighten IP protections. “There is substantial evidence that what DeepSeek did here is they distilled the knowledge out of OpenAI’s model. I don’t think OpenAI is very happy about this. One thing you will see over the next few months is that our leading AI companies will take steps to prevent distillation,” Sacks said.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1884344113488879732

On Wednesday, OpenAI confirmed to the Financial Times that evidence of “distillation” was found in how the Chinese AI startup used the OpenAI application programming interface (API) to siphon large amounts of data for building its model. “The issue is when you [take it out of the platform and] are doing it to create your own model for your own purposes,” a source close to OpenAI told FT. They noted distillation is a breach of OpenAI’s terms of service. Bloomberg reported that OpenAI’s partner Microsoft was also investigating distillation concerns and found evidence that DeepSeek researchers violated OpenAI’s terms of service last year. Meanwhile, DeepSeek’s research even admits its R1 model is based on other open-source systems:

“We demonstrate that the reasoning patterns of larger models can be distilled into smaller models, resulting in better performance compared to the reasoning patterns discovered through RL on small models. The open source DeepSeek-R1, as well as its API, will benefit the research community to distill better smaller models in the future.” AI experts told FT that DeepSeek’s model generated responses that indicated it had been trained on OpenAI’s GPT-4. DeepSeek claimed its latest model was only trained on 2,048 Nvidia H800 GPUs over two months, costing about $5.5 million, with 2.8 million GPU hours, far less than rival models by MAG7 companies that spent years and tens of billions of dollars.

On Monday, Goldman’s Rich Privorotsky told clients that DeepSeek’s model is allegedly “40-50x more efficient than other large language models,” and this “naturally raises the question of whether so much data center capacity is necessary.” Ironically, DeepSeek’s IP theft of OpenAI’s model through distillation comes as the US startup faces lawsuits for scraping training data from media outlets and other sources.

Read more …

You give me $500 billion, I’ll cooperate with you…

• OpenAI Promises Close Cooperation With US Authorities (RT)

OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has vowed to protect its intellectual property following the launch of its Chinese rival DeepSeek. The US government suspects that the new startup could have “distilled” data from the American company to build its product, according to White House AI advisor David Sacks.Earlier this month, DeepSeek unveiled an open-source AI model designated R1, which its creators said had outperformed leading products from US developers on some industry benchmarks. The launch has led to a decline in the stock prices of major US tech companies, erasing almost $1 trillion in market value. In a Tuesday interview with Fox News, Sacks claimed there was “substantial evidence” that DeepSeek had “distilled the knowledge out of OpenAI’s models.” He assessed R1 capabilities as comparable to those of OpenAI’s 01 model, released about four months prior.

Knowledge distillation is a method involving an AI student model using feedback from a teacher model to improve itself. In some cases, it may violate terms of use. Developers have imposed limits on data traffic and other restrictions to counteract such practices. Sacks suggested that US companies will be introducing stronger barriers to eliminate “copycat models” in the near future. Responding to Sacks’ remarks, OpenAI said it was aware that some Chinese and non-Chinese companies are distilling American models. The company is actively pursuing “countermeasures to protect our [Intellectual Property].” “We are working closely with the US government to best protect the most capable models from efforts by adversaries and competitors to take US technology,” the statement added.

According to Bloomberg, OpenAI and its primary investor, Microsoft, are investigating DeepSeek for potential violations. Software developers are normally required to pay license fees to use OpenAI technology in their own applications, the news agency explained. The report cited sources “familiar with the matter” who spoke on condition of anonymity. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called DeepSeek’s launch a “wake-up call to the American AI industry” during a regular media briefing on Tuesday. The administration of Donald Trump has designated AI development as one of its priorities. Last week, the president announced Stargate, an initiative to build data centers across the US to serve as the backbone of future AI projects, with an investment target of up to $500 billion.

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‘No Country Can (Afford To) Lose’

• Ray Dalio Warns Of Brutal AI War Between U.S. And China (ZH)

Billionaire investor and Bridgewater hedge fund founder Ray Dalio warned in an interview with All-In podcast co-host David Friedberg that neither the United States nor China can afford to lose the race for AI supremacy, stressing that this technological “war” is far more critical than “profits.” DAVID FRIEDBERG: I’m a productive asset guy. I like owning businesses that make stuff. In this environment, where do I own a productive asset—a business that can still see its revenue and its income grow as this inflationary effect and this devaluation occurs as we get through a debt crisis like this? What would be the best kind of productive asset? Is it a mining business? Is it a commodity trading business?

RAY DALIO: I’m with you. So, you know, that chart that we showed in the beginning has this line where productivity is going up. And it tends to compound on itself. And I think that’s where AI, and that is fantastic, but it depends where you’re referring to AI. I think the super scalers in this world have risk issues. You know, you think about the super scalers like Nvidia or others. I think that the tech war, certainly productivity, I’m with you man, but you want to invest in productivity. But there’s great disruption that’s going to take place, and there are going to be the disruptors and the disrupted. It’s not necessarily those who are producing the vehicles, but those who are implementing and changing as a result of having their big impact.

I think that the tech war, the AI war is more important. It is actually more important. It’s a war that no country can lose because it’s more important than profits. If you lose, if China or the U.S. really lose this war, it’s more important than profits. You have to play that war that way. It could be something like electric vehicles, or more in terms of Chinese electric vehicles, where they can produce them. But I think there are such high expectations. I think we are going to see applications. I think the Chinese are a bit behind in the chips, but they’re ahead in the applications.

DAVID FRIEDBERG: Did you see the DeepSeek announcement this weekend? RAY DALIO: Yes, and that was known for a little while now. The Chinese play is going to be chips—very inexpensive chips embedded into manufactured goods. You’ll see robotics. The Chinese are unbelievably [good] at making things inexpensively. They own 33% of all world-manufactured goods, which is more than the combined US, German, and Japanese manufactured goods. The Chinese produce more. You’re going to see that type of competition, and it may be like solar panels or something. Profit doesn’t matter. I think that where there’s productivity and innovation and disruptors to be. Essentially, being long those who are benefiting themselves through usage or creating the applications that are having the big effect is certainly one thing.

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“..mostly from stopping the hiring of people into unnecessary positions, deletion of DEI, and stopping improper payments to foreign organizations..”

• Trump’s DOGE Says It’s Already Saving Billion Dollars A Day (RT)

The US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), created by President Donald Trump and led by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, claims it has already cut federal spending by approximately $1 billion per day. The agency announced the figure on Wednesday via its official X account, stating that it aims to reduce costs by more than $3 billion daily. DOGE was first proposed during Trump’s presidential campaign last summer and later formalized as a presidential advisory commission. Despite its name, the agency is not a full-fledged federal executive department but a temporary organization focused on reducing government spending. It aims to cut up to $2 trillion in federal expenditure by July 2026. “DOGE is saving the Federal Government approx. $1 billion/day, mostly from stopping the hiring of people into unnecessary positions, deletion of DEI, and stopping improper payments to foreign organizations, all consistent with the President’s Executive Orders,” the agency said, without providing further details.

The reference to “improper payments to foreign organizations” appears to relate to the Trump administration’s recent 90-day pause on virtually all foreign-aid programs, pending a review.Since taking office on January 20, the Trump administration has aggressively moved to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives across the federal government. On Tuesday, the president signed an executive order barring “radical gender ideology” from the US military, stating that service members must meet physical and mental fitness standards for duty. “This policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria,” the order states. “This policy is also inconsistent with shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex.”

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“In addition to pulling Milley’s security clearance and yanking his personal security detail, Hegseth will also ask the Pentagon’s inspector general to investigate his conduct..”

• Pentagon To Investigate Milley And Possibly Demote Him (ZH)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is about to drop the hammer on retired Gen. Mark Milley, Trump’s former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and one of the president’s favorite rhetorical punching bags. In addition to pulling Milley’s security clearance and yanking his personal security detail, Hegseth will also ask the Pentagon’s inspector general to investigate his conduct, and the probe could end in Milley receiving a demotion, Fox News reported Tuesday. The IG investigation will center on allegations that Milley worked to “undermine the chain of command” during the first Trump administration. The probe is certain to scrutinize two calls Milley made to senior Chinese officials in the last days of Trump’s first term.

First reported by Bob Woodward in his book, “War,” the calls were apparently made with the goal of diffusing military tensions between the two powers, and were said to have had the blessing of other Trump officials. In 2023, Trump used a social media post to say that, by giving China “a heads up on the thinking of the president of the United States,” Milley had committed “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!” Woodward also reported that, at a March 2023 reception in Washington, Milley told him that Trump was “fascist to the core!” Milley was still on active duty at the time, and Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice makes it a crime for commissioned officers to use “contemptuous words against the president.” Milley doesn’t have to worry about criminal prosecution: President Biden gave him a pre-emptive pardon that covers “any offenses against the United States” that were committed between January 1, 2014 and January 20, 2025.

Fox’s sources suggest that Milley could lose one of his four stars. In addition to humiliation, that would also put a dent in Milley’s rich military pension. However, as The Intercept reported last year, he has plenty of opportunities to turn his past service into stacks of cash: Since retiring from the military last year, former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley has become a senior adviser to JPMorgan Chase bank, joined the faculties of Princeton and Georgetown, and embraced the lucrative paid speaking circuit. From military pay of $204,000 a year, Milley is sure to skyrocket to compensation in the millions, especially because he is represented by the same high-powered speakers’ agency as Hillary Clinton.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1882163144866578657

Milley oversaw the long-overdue but disastrously-executed withdrawal of military forces from Afghanistan. The botched undertaking saw 13 US service-members killed, another 45 wounded, and the deaths of 170 Afghan civilians in a bombing at Kabul’s principal airport. It also resulted in the Taliban inheriting a huge arsenal of US weapons. In June 2021, Milley assured legislators that a withdrawal would look nothing like the US departure from Vietnam. “I don’t see Saigon 1975 in Afghanistan. The Taliban just aren’t the North Vietnamese Army,” he said. The first official manifestation of the new administration’s utter contempt for Milley came just hours after Trump was inaugurated. A brand-new painting of Milley that had just been unveiled on Jan. 10 was yanked from a Pentagon hallway. Fox reports that a second painting in a different hallway was to have been taken down as early as Tuesday night.

Until Trump took office, the Secret Service had continued to guard Milley, former national security advisor John Bolton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on the chance that Iran may seek to kill them to avenge Trump’s Israel-assisted, Neta assassination of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani via a 2020 drone strike in Iraq. Trump removed Pompeo and Bolton’s security details last week. Senior US officials frequently retain their security clearances well after they’ve left government, a practice that is supposedly aimed at facilitating transitions, enabling ongoing advice and counsel, and anticipating officials’ potential return to government.

Milley
https://twitter.com/i/status/1884368178886893847

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“U.S. Iron Dome”

• Trump To Finish What Reagan Started, A Missile Defense System For The US (JTN)

Just hours after Pete Hegseth was sworn in as the country’s Defense secretary, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Pentagon to begin the process of implementing a “next-generation missile defense” system for the U.S. aiming to complete the comprehensive project originally envisioned by President Reagan at the height of the Cold War. Trump dubbed the missile defense system – which the order says would be designed to protect the U.S. homeland from ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other new aerial threats – the “U.S. Iron Dome” after the highly successful Israeli conventional missile defense system. The executive order explicitly notes that the policy aims to achieve what was left unfinished by Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative – which critics dubbed “Star Wars” after the 1977 pop-culture film of that name – which endeavored to create a space-based defense shield against Soviet missiles.

Ultimately the intuitive fizzled out as scientists estimated the technology wouldn’t be ready for decades and the end of the Cold War reduced the urgency of the threat. But now, the old Soviet Union superpower has been replaced by China and Russia, which possess sizable nuclear arsenals and are currently in stiff competition with the United States. The Trump administration in the order specifically identified the threats from these “peer and near-peer adversaries” as the primary driver of a comprehensive missile defense system, which marks a major shift in policy documents from the first Trump, then Biden administration, which focused on using missile defense technologies to prevent attacks from smaller threats, namely North Korea and Iran. “The threat of attack by ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, and other advanced aerial attacks, remains the most catastrophic threat facing the United States,” the executive order reads.

It continues, “Over the past 40 years, rather than lessening, the threat from next-generation strategic weapons has become more intense and complex with the development by peer and near-peer adversaries of next-generation delivery systems and their own homeland integrated air and missile defense capabilities.”The shift to focus on the nuclear threats posed by China and Russia comes as both countries have developed more advanced weapons and have expanded their arsenals while also becoming close partners. This presents a hard problem for the U.S. to solve with the traditional nuclear deterrence doctrine that endured until the previous Biden administration.

“During the Cold War the United States had one nuclear peer to deter, the United States now faces two – Russia and China. This is a much harder problem and the United States has to make big adaptations to the programs we have to deter both countries simultaneously,” Rebeccah Heinrichs, senior fellow and director of the Keystone Defense Initiative at the Hudson Institute, told Just the News. “We must outsmart and out-innovate China in particular and no area is more important than in the protection of the American homeland. Both of those actors, plus North Korea (and Iran is a threshold nuclear state with a space launch program that could be leveraged for a long-range missile program) could coerce the United States with ballistic or cruise missiles if they believe the United States is vulnerable to them,” Heinrichs also said.

She continued, “By building a layered homeland missile defense system, the United States complicates the adversaries’ calculations and makes it harder for them to plan an attack on the United States with even a handful of missiles.” President Trump, appearing to recognize the need for modernization and new ways of deterring attacks from adversaries, directs the Pentagon in the executive order to develop a plan within 60 days for implementing the “next-generation missile shield.” The requirements outlined by the executive order are sweeping. The plans are to include defense-against-missile systems, the deployment of tracking lasers, development of space-based interceptors, development of new methods to intercept threats pre-launch and securing the supply chains for these new defense systems.

This marks a major shift from the policy of the Biden administration, which in its 2022 National Defense Strategy unequivocally stated that the United States’ existing missile defense systems “neither intended for, nor capable of, defeating large and sophisticated ICBM, air-, or sea-launched ballistic missile threats from Russia and the PRC.” The 2017 National Security Strategy promulgated by the first Trump administration also made clear that missile defense was not geared toward China and Russia. While calling for an enhanced missile defense system, it noted that it is “not intended to undermine strategic stability or disrupt longstanding strategic relationships with Russia or China.” Missile defense, which is not part of the traditional U.S. nuclear doctrine, has seen renewed interest as the nuclear arsenals and capabilities of China and Russia have grown in recent years.

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“..some individuals are “so bad, we don’t even trust the countries to hold them, because we don’t want them coming back.”

• Trump To Send Deported Migrants To Guantanamo (RT)

President Donald Trump has announced plans to expand detention facilities at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to accommodate thousands of deported immigrants as part of his intensified efforts to remove illegal aliens from US soil. The initiative was revealed on Wednesday during the signing of the bipartisan Laken Riley Act, which mandates the detention and potential deportation of undocumented individuals accused of theft and violent crimes, even before conviction. Justifying the use of Guantanamo Bay, Trump argued that some individuals are “so bad, we don’t even trust the countries to hold them, because we don’t want them coming back.” “So we’re going to send them out to Guantanamo,” Trump added, calling the facility “a tough place to get out of.”

Guantanamo Bay, best known for holding terrorism suspects, also hosts a separate migrant processing center. Trump said he would sign an executive order directing the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to expand and prepare the facilities for new arrivals. “Most people don’t even know that we have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people,” Trump stated. He added that the move would “bring us one step closer to eradicating the scourge of migrant crime in our communities once and for all.” Since his first day back in office, President Trump has enacted a series of executive orders aimed at overhauling the US immigration system.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have been carrying out raids across the country, detaining hundreds of people daily. Targeted cities include Boston, New York, Newark, and San Francisco, with agents focusing on arresting immigrants who had committed crimes after entering the US illegally, according to the agency. The Trump administration has also escalated deportation efforts, using military planes for removal flights and threatening tariffs and other repercussions for countries that refuse to accept deportees.

Guantanamo Bay has been a US naval base since 1903 and was transformed into a detention center in 2002 under President George W. Bush to house suspected terrorists following the September 11 attacks. The facility has long been criticized for torture and indefinite detentions without charge or trial. As of January 2025, 15 detainees remain at the site, many of whom have been imprisoned for over two decades without formal charges. The Cuban government has consistently denounced the presence of the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, calling it a violation of Cuban sovereignty and raising concerns over human rights abuses at the detention facility. On his first day in office, Trump reinstated Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, reversing an executive order issued by former President Joe Biden just a week prior.

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They’re very scared of him.

• Kash Patel To Face Senate Hearing In Bid To Reform Scandal-Plagued FBI (JTN)

FBI Director-designate Kash Patel will field questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, capping off a charm offensive that has seen most of the Senate Republican Conference warm to the Trump-aligned critic of the intelligence committee. A Trump advisor from the first administration, Patel has been a stalwart backer of Trump for most of his political tenure and a vocal critic of what he calls institutional rot in key American agencies. His 2023 book “Government Gansters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy” provided what President Donald Trump himself called a “brilliant roadmap” for uprooting a politicized bureaucracy.Trump picked Patel for the role in late November as grassroots supporters led #kashonly to trend on X.

The then-president-elect called Patel “a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People.” His nomination roiled FBI insiders, with reports emerging that the bureau could face mass resignations should he secure the post. But it landed better with the senators, who saw him as a far more conventional nominee than Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon. Patel has previously served as a prosecutor, public defender, senior advisor to the director of national intelligence, and as the Defense Department’s chief of staff.Even intelligence hawks and moderate lawmakers such as Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, have been optimistic Patel’s prospects in the narrowly divided Senate. Pressed in December on whether Patel would secure confirmation, Cornyn simply told radio host Hugh Hewitt that “yes, he will be.”

During the Trump administration and President Joe Biden’s subsequent four years, the FBI became mired in political controversy and scandal. It’s conduct was a leading factor in driving Trump’s claims of political weaponization. Among the earliest controversies were the anti-Trump messages of now-former FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, both of whom worked on special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian interference investigation. Those messages referenced “an insurance policy” should Trump win. The bureau also came under fire over a memo from the Richmond Field Office suggesting that attendees of the traditional Catholic Latin Mass might harbor extremist sympathies. FBI Director Christopher Wray’s tenure, also saw allegations of retaliation against whistleblowers, the abuse of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants, and politicized security clearance reviews.

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz in December published a report confirming that the FBI had secured Patel’s phone records, along with those of two members of Congress and dozens of other staffers. The move came as part of an investigation into leaks of classified materials to the media. Horowitz further found that the FBI failed to inform the court that the materials they sought “related to requests for records of Members of Congress or congressional staffers.” The report drew outrage from Trump supporters, as well as lawmakers, some of whom had warm words for Patel amid the revelations. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who leads the Judiciary Committee, said afterward that “Kash understands that cooperation with Congress is not optional and whistleblower protection is essential.”

“This report highlights exactly why Kash Patel is the perfect leader to reform and rebuild the FBI,” a spokeswoman for Patel said at the time. “Kash understands the critical balance between national security and protecting civil liberties. His commitment to accountability, transparency, and upholding constitutional principles makes him uniquely equipped to ensure the FBI serves the American people with integrity and fairness.”

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They have nothing on her. But Trump may still have to say “the only way you can get to her is to go through me first”

• Gabbard’s DNI Nod Walks A Tightrope Over The Precipice Ahead Of Key Hearing (JTN)

Tulsi Gabbard, the Hawaii Democrat-turned-Republican, faces a tense confirmation hearing this week as intelligence hawks raise concerns over her skepticism of surveillance practices and Democrats push narratives of pro-Kremlin sympathies. A stalwart privacy advocate and social moderate, Gabbard unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, earning attention for her exchanges with former Vice President Kamala Harris. She later left the party and helped President Donald Trump prepare for his own debate with Harris. Gabbard joined the Republicans during the 2024 campaign and received Trump’s nod to head the nation’s intelligence apparatus. Her nomination received cheers from privacy advocates and MAGA-aligned critics of the intelligence community, many of whom hope she will work alongside FBI Director-designate Kash Patel to substantially uproot the nation’s intelligence apparatus and end practices that raise serious questions about politicization in the agencies.

The Senate Intelligence Committee will question Gabbard on Thursday in what is sure to be a contentious row. The panel is stacked with intelligence hawks, including some Republicans who have expressed public concerns over her past opposition to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows for the warrantless surveillance of foreigners abroad. With the confirmation of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth concluded, Gabbard’s confirmation appears poised to mark the next battle between Trump’s MAGA disruptors and the old guard GOP of the Washington establishment. Gabbard has long been critical of Section 702, sharing the concerns of conservative Republicans on the Judiciary Committee that it allows for the collection of information on Americans in the process. An American speaking with a foreigner under surveillance, for instance, would see their half of the conversation swept up in intelligence gathering and ultimately entered into the Section 702 intelligence database.

The expiration of Section 702 led to a dispute between the House GOP Judiciary and Intelligence Committees last year, with the pro-surveillance Intelligence panel winning out and shutting the door on major reform. Gabbard’s opposition to Section 702 was such a point of concern for Republicans that she ultimately reversed her position amid the nomination process. “Section 702, unlike other FISA authorities, is crucial for gathering foreign intelligence on non-U.S. persons abroad. This unique capability cannot be replicated and must be safeguarded to protect our nation while ensuring the civil liberties of Americans,” she told CNN earlier this month. “If confirmed as DNI, I will uphold Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights while maintaining vital national security tools like Section 702 to ensure the safety and freedom of the American people.”

That about-face could serve to assuage establishment concerns, but she will likely need to persuade Republican members of the panel that she will be able to balance privacy and national security concerns in the post. The 9-8 Republican-led panel includes two potential swing votes: Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine; and Todd Young, Ind; according to The Hill. She is not expected to secure any Democratic support. Gabbard in 2017 visited Syria and met with now-ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose regime fell just weeks ago amid a surprise offensive from the Al-Qaeda derivative Tahrir al-Sham. She had previously insisted Assad was not an enemy of the United States and voiced opposition to American intervention in the Syrian Civil War. Gabbard herself is a veteran, having served in Iraq and was awarded the Combat Medical Badge.

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Still a weird story.

• White House Comments On ‘Mystery’ Drones (RT)

US authorities have dismissed speculation that mass sightings of drones in the past few months were linked to hostile activities. Last year, then-President Joe Biden’s administration faced widespread criticism for not identifying the origins of the objects. The UAVs were “not the enemy,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at the first press briefing of President Donald Trump’s new administration on Tuesday. She conveyed a message “directly from the president,” giving an update on a news story that made headlines throughout November and December. Sightings of unidentified aircraft were reported in New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, while arrests were made in connection with drone operations near restricted areas in Massachusetts and California.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorized the unmanned aircraft operating over New Jersey “for research and various other reasons,” Leavitt told the media, adding that many of them belonged to “private individuals that enjoy flying drones.” The Morris County Prosecutor’s Office first reported the aerial activity, leading to temporary flight restrictions, including at Stewart International Airport in New York. At the time, the FBI reported receiving thousands of tip-offs from citizens about drones they witnessed, and the Biden administration reassured the public that the objects posed no threat. ”There are thousands of drones flown every day in the United States, recreational drones, commercial drones,” then-Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas stated. According to FAA data, around a million civilian UAVs are registered nationwide.

In December, Trump accused the outgoing administration of withholding information about the unmanned planes, insisting: “Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!” Before his inauguration, Trump promised to provide information about drones “about one day” into his administration, during a conversation with Republican governors at Mar-a-Lago on January 9. He said it’s “ridiculous” that people are not being informed about what is happening with the aircraft. Amid public debate over the drones’ possible foreign origins, senior lawmakers have called for additional powers to be given to federal and state authorities, to tackle such situations.

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It’s ironic how hard it has become to fight censorship.

• Trump’s Fight Against Online Censorship Quickly Goes Global (RCI)

Flanked by some of the Big Tech executives whose companies had suppressed the views of his supporters throughout his predecessor’s term, President Trump on Jan. 20 declared the days of such speech policing over. Hours later, the president put action behind his words, signing an executive order prohibiting the federal government from engaging in, facilitating, or funding “any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.” The move was celebrated by those who see it as a blow against what they decry as the Censorship Industrial Complex. Others cast the executive order as giving dangerous license to “misinformation” and “disinformation.” What is clear is that this is just the latest salvo in an ongoing war over the digital public square, pitting the Trump administration and like-minded Republican congressional allies against not only domestic opponents but the global counter-disinformation eco-system.

The global speech-policing effort is looking like an early target. Trump himself seemed to convey that when he touted his order in a remote address last week to the World Economic Forum in Davos. The elite global conclave had recently declared “misinformation and disinformation” the leading short-term risk to the globe for the second-straight year, “underlining their persistent threat to societal cohesion and governance by eroding trust and exacerbating divisions within and between nations.” Two days after the inauguration, Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, released the “Priorities and Mission of the Second Trump Administration’s Department of State.” The short document included the charge that Foggy Bottom “must stop censorship and suppression of information.” Rubio continued: “The State Department’s efforts to combat malign propaganda have expanded and fundamentally changed since the Cold War era and we must reprioritize truth.

The State Department I lead will support and defend Americans’ rights to free speech, terminating any programs that in any way lead to censoring the American people. It is not yet known whether and to what extent Rubio’s approach will affect the reorganized successor to the State Department’s recently shuttered Global Engagement Center, whose efforts defenders had called essential to combating foreign propaganda. Critics have dismissed the reorganization – of an office that funded entities targeting disfavored domestic speech – as an effort to simply rebrand and persist. The global “counter-disinformation” ecosystem encompasses research centers at top academic institutions and think tanks, fact-checkers, news raters, and like-minded for-profits – often funded and/or promoted by government agencies and powerful foundations, and operating and seeking to influence governments both stateside and across the Atlantic.

RealClearInvestigations, which recently previewed the censorship fight, e-mailed questions to other United States agencies and departments believed to be involved, directly or indirectly, in speech suppression on social media or otherwise likely to have a role in implementing the order. These included the Department of Justice and the FBI; the Department of Homeland Security and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security sub-agency; Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services; National Science Foundation; and Office of Management and Budget.

[..] Trump has previously called for enacting “new laws laying out clear criminal penalties for federal bureaucrats who partner with private entities to do an end-run around the Constitution and deprive Americans of their First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment rights.” To that end, the Judiciary Committee spokesperson told RCI that the panel would “move quickly to reintroduce legislation that will protect Americans’ First Amendment rights, such as the Censorship Accountability Act and the No Censors on our Shores Act.” The former would provide a right of action against federal employees for First Amendment violations. The latter would render any foreign official who engages in censorship of American speech inadmissible and deportable. In the Senate, two days after the release of President Trump’s order, Kentucky Republican Rand Paul re-introduced the “Free Speech Protection Act.”

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“That protocol outlined what we would do for Ukraine, including supporting its NATO membership. Gas wasn’t mentioned at all..”

• Zelensky Wanted Protocol Signed Before Meeting Took Place – Slovak PM (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky wanted Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico to sign a protocol promising to support Kiev’s bid for NATO membership before meeting to discuss crucial gas transit through Ukraine, the Slovak prime minister has claimed. Fico had sought to meet Zelensky on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos following weeks of barbed messages between Kiev and Bratislava, in the wake of Ukraine’s decision to block the flow of Russian gas to Slovakia. The invitation was openly mocked by Zelensky, and the proposed meeting did not take place. Fico revealed details of the failed attempt to meet Zelensky with members of his SMER-SD party on Tuesday. “I was ready to meet [with Zelensky] in Davos. And what did he do? Zelensky sent me a protocol for the meeting, and I was supposed to sign it. The meeting hadn’t even taken place yet, but there was already a prepared protocol.

“That protocol outlined what we would do for Ukraine, including supporting its NATO membership. Gas wasn’t mentioned at all,” the prime minister said in a video posted on social media. The Ukrainian leader responded to Fico’s post, claiming that the Slovak prime minister “chooses Moscow over America and other partners.” “You have to pay for Russian gas not only with money but also with independence and sovereignty,” Zelensky wrote on his Telegram channel on Wednesday. “Many in Europe have already gone through this and chose to preserve their independence and sovereignty.” The Slovak prime minister had initially proposed meeting for negotiations with Zelensky on the border between the two countries, but the Ukrainian leader used a social media post to suggest he comes to Kiev instead. Fico narrowly survived an assassination attempt by a pro-Ukraine activist last year.

He warned earlier this week that Bratislava would veto any EU aid to Ukraine if the transit of Russian natural gas was not resumed, calling Zelensky an “enemy” and accusing him of causing “problems” for Slovakia. Slovakia, which had received up to 60% of its gas through a Soviet-era pipeline, has been badly affected by Ukraine’s decision to cut off the transit of Russian gas to Central Europe. The Slovak prime minister added that he plans to raise the issue with the European Commission on Thursday. According to Fico, the best resolution to the dispute would involve purchasing gas at Russia’s border and having it transported through Ukraine as Slovak property.

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“The Gaza ceasefire would likely collapse if Palestinians were suddenly pushed out in large waves into Egypt and Jordan.”

• Jordan, Egypt Reject US Plan To Resettle Gazans As Trump Doubles Down (ZH)

After last Saturday President Trump floated a plan to ‘clean out’ Gaza by conducting a mass resettlement of Palestinians in neighboring countries, namely Egypt and Jordan, he’s now doubling down on the idea. Egypt and Jordan are not happy, but are also feeling the pressure as a result, and it must be remembered that both are recipients of huge amounts of foreign aid each year – with Egypt receiving billions. Israeli media underscores there’s been wall-to-wall firm opposition by Arab leaders: “US President Donald Trump dug in his heels Monday over a controversial suggestion that large numbers of Gazans take refuge in Egypt and Jordan, shrugging off wall-to-wall opposition to the proposal from Arab leaders.”

“Fresh off what he said were calls with Egyptian counterpart Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi and Jordan’s King Abdullah, Trump insisted both leaders would take in Palestinians from the war-ravaged territory and said the issue would be discussed with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the two meet sometime soon, amid speculation in Israel that Trump’s gambit was being coordinated with Jerusalem,” the report details. “Egyptian media on Tuesday cited government sources as saying that Trump and Sissi had yet to speak. If they did, Sissi’s office would issue a readout, the Egyptian officials told local media,” it continues. This would involve these countries absorbing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees – something which Jordan has already done historically over the last some seventy years.

Here are the latest remarks from Trump which are driving the controversy: Asked about those comments, Trump told reporters on Air Force One Monday evening he would “like to get them living in an area where they can live without disruption and revolution and violence so much.”“When you look at the Gaza Strip, it’s been hell for so many years,” Trump said. “There have been various civilizations on that strip. It didn’t start here. It started thousands of years before, and there’s always been violence associated with it. You could get people living in areas that are a lot safer and maybe a lot better and maybe a lot more comfortable.”

Interestingly, the tiny Balkan country of Albania has entered the discussion after an Israeli Channel 12 media report said that Trump was in talks with Albania for it to take 100,000 Palestinians from Gaza. But Albania’s prime minister quickly batted this down, calling it false. “I haven’t heard something so fake in quite some time – and there’s been a lot of fake news lately! It is absolutely not true,” Prime Minister Edi Rama tweeted. If such talks actually did exist, the Muslim-majority population of this country would surely be outraged.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1883863689541132547

As for Egypt and Jordan, Trump may use the outsized US assistance provided to pressure their leaders to agree to his plan at least on some level. But the reality is that this is ultra politically sensitive. Past historic waves of Palestinian refugees and armed groups flooding nearby Arab countries have literally erupted in wars, which especially Lebanon can attest to. Jordan has also seen its country destabilized at times. There’s also the logistics – with Palestinians now rushing back to their largely destroyed communities in northern Gaza, they are defiantly telling the world they don’t plan to leave their homeland. The Gaza ceasefire would likely collapse if Palestinians were suddenly pushed out in large waves into Egypt and Jordan.

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“@POTUS has asked @SpaceX to bring home the 2 astronauts stranded on the @Space_Station as soon as possible. We will do so.”

• Trump Asks Musk To ‘Go Get’ Astronauts Stranded In Orbit (RT)

US President Donald Trump has asked SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to bring back two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been stuck on the International Space Station for nearly 200 days, instead of the originally planned eight. Return flights to Earth have been repeatedly postponed due to a combination of technical issues. In a post on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, the US president wrote: “I have just asked Elon Musk and @SpaceX to “go get” the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration.” The Republican added that “Elon will soon be on his way.” In a post on X that same day, the US-based tech tycoon confirmed that the “@POTUS has asked @SpaceX to bring home the 2 astronauts stranded on the @Space_Station as soon as possible. We will do so.” He also wrote, “Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long.”

In another message, Musk published a screenshot of Trump’s original post, accompanying it with a saluting face emoji. On Tuesday a NASA spokesperson acknowledged an inquiry about Musk’s statement and said the agency “will follow up as soon as we can.” Wilmore (61) and Williams (58) launched for the ISS on board the Boeing Starliner’s June 5 maiden voyage. However, NASA engineers soon discovered four helium leaks and thruster pressurization issues. After days of tests and discussions, NASA decided on August 24 to leave the two astronauts aboard the space station and bring the Starliner back without the crew, by remote control. The agency later reassigned two astronauts originally slated for the Crew-9 mission with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, to free up seats for Wilmore and Williams, extending their intended eight-day stay to more than seven months.

In December NASA announced that the Crew-10 launch was postponed to late March to allow SpaceX time to complete a new spacecraft. This delay was expected to push the Crew-9 return to early April. Industry rumors suggested further delays for Crew-10, which could lead to SpaceX using another Crew Dragon, possibly the one being prepared for the Ax-4 private astronaut mission, scheduled for launch as soon as April for Axiom Space. The astronauts themselves have maintained a professional stance on the situation. “Things that I can’t control I’m not going to fret over,” Wilmore said in a September briefing. Williams added, “You sort of turn to and just take on the next activity of the day. That’s what we do. We’re professionals.”

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“Is there to be no accountability for election theft and wielders of weaponized law and prosecutions?”

• The Democrats Who Stole an Election Must Be Held Accountable (PCR)

The release of the pardoned J6 political prisoners has, for the most part, gone well, but in a few instances vindictive Democrat officials still hold a few of the pardoned. It is a fluid situation, and my figures might be out of date by the time you read them. The worst offender is the black female mayor of D.C. who at last report has not released 12 of the pardoned. Kentucky is still holding 6, and there are a few others being held here and there. Democrats in Pennsylvania were looking for a way of duplicating the pardoned federal charges with state charges in order to continue the incarceration of the pardoned political prisoners. It is possible that some of the non released J6 political prisoners have outstanding state charges unrelated to the J6 fake charges. It seems that at the time of Trump’s pardon there were 242 J6 political prisoners still in prison and a number I don’t have in halfway houses.

The issue has been raised whether some of the J6 prisoners had chargeable offenses and should not have been pardoned. This is a red herring as rally attendees were arrested irrespective of whether they committed an offense. Before buying this argument, remember the facts. The only reason there was a rally on January 6 was that the Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election, refused the evidence to be investigated, instead bringing court cases against those who made evidence-backed charges of electoral fraud. The rally was held to support the Republican senators who intended to present evidence of theft at the January 6 meeting when Congress assembled to certify Biden’s election. To prevent the presentation of the evidence, the Democrats and RINO Republicans such as Mitch McConnell used the FBI and police to stage an “insurrection” in order to break up the meeting and prevent the presentation of the evidence.

Remember that President Trump wanted to send 10,000 National Guardsmen to keep matters under control, but this interfered with the insurrection plot and Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi prevented the deployment of the National Guard. Remember also that the FBI as revealed by FBI whistleblowers had agents embedded in the rally who incited violence at the Capitol. Remember also that the police began the violence by firing rubber bullets and teargas into the crowd of peaceful protesters. These acts of violence committed by corrupt police incited the rally attendees to push back police barricades, which the whore US media played to the hilt as an “insurrection.” Remember also that an appearance of violence was created by having a corrupt police officer fatally shoot US Airforce veteran Ashley Babbitt. The shooting was never investigated, and the officer was promoted for murdering an Airforce veteran without cause.

Remember that Democrats refused to release the videos of the alleged “storming of the Capitol.” After Republicans regained control of the House, the videos were released. The videos showed that there was no storming. The police opened he doors and escorted the rally attendees around the Capitol. There was no “invasion” of the Capitol. Remember also that Derrick Garland lied through his teeth that the rally attendees killed a police officer. The police officer’s family denied this. The officer died the next day from a heart attack. Remember also that the police attacked rally attendees with batons and bats, and attendees who raised their arms in defense were charged with “assaulting a police officer.” Remember also that a totally corrupt Justice (sic) Department violated privacy rights in order to hunt down and charge anyone who was present at the Capitol part of the rally. Instead of calling “suspects” in for questioning, FBI SWAT teams, reincarnations of the Nazi Gestapo, broke into Americans’ homes in the middle of the night terrorizing children while dragging handcuffed parents out of the house.

Remember also the false and invented charges were enhanced with serious felony charges for those who refused to self-incriminate with a plea bargain. The Democrats just wanted “convictions” for the whore media to hype to protect their rigged scheme from collapse. Remember also the instances of the wrongly incarcerated being held in solitary confinement, beaten, and imprisoned far from home in order to deny them support from visitations. Many were constantly shifted from prison to prison so that families did not know where they were.

The false indictments and convictions cost many their careers, their wives, their businesses, their homes. A young millionaire businessman lost his business and his wife. A medical student was disowned by his cowardly and stupid parents who fell for the bullshit fed to them. The abuses suffered by the J6 did not stop with their pardon. Had Gary Heavin and others not organized to meet the pardoned upon their release, some might have frozen to death. Some of the pardoned were released from prisons in the middle of nowhere in short pants into freezing temperatures without a cent and no ability to get to a safe place.

The stinking dirty Biden Regime and the gang of despicable criminals that comprised its Justice (sic) Department gave America FOUR YEARS of a Stalinist Gulag Archipelago. Pardons for their innocent victims is just the first step of restoring justice to America. All of those responsible for the “insurrection” hoax and convictions of innocent Americans must be hunted down, arrested, indicted, and convicted. If the Democrats’ criminal act of stealing a presidential election and then, in order to cover up their theft, refocusing attention on a concocted “insurrection” and falsely convicting 1,500 innocent Americans for something that never happened can escape accountability, Trump has no chance of making America great again.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Cholesterol

 

 

BLDG 7

 

 

Horns

 

 

Owl
https://twitter.com/i/status/1884126327134974095

 

 

Eye color

 

 

Glass
https://twitter.com/i/status/1884497763217355211

 

 

Petrel

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle July 27 2024

Jul 272024
 
 July 27, 2024  Posted by at 8:34 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  42 Responses »


Vasily Polenov Christ among the teachers (doctors) 1896

 

• Harris Coronation Demonstrates America’s Democratic Deficit (Manley)
• Trump Slams ‘Politicized’ FBI (RT)
• FBI Wrong About Assassination Attempt – Trump’s Doctor (RT)
• Saving Our Democracy (Kunstler)
• Trump Vs the Deep State: Would Former President Shift US Foreign Policy? (Sp.)
• Pompeo Tries to Hijack Trump’s Peace Push (Sp.)
• Secret Service Opted Out of Drone Surveillance Before Trump Shooting (Sp.)
• Zelensky Now Wants Peace, Or Rather Another Piece Of The Action (SCF)
• Zaluzhny’s Message Pleasing For Western Elites, Terrifying For Ukrainians (RT)
• Von der Leyen’s Legacy (Dionísio)
• To Hell With The Will Of The People (RMX)
• Netanyahu Angry After Meeting With Vice President Harris (ZH)
• China Throws Clout Behind Palestine (Pepe Escobar)
• Russian Central Bank Hikes Interest Rate To 18% (RT)

 

 

 

 

Border czar

 

 

Ben Carson
https://twitter.com/i/status/1816526225659019296


Full

 

 

Willie Brown

 

 

 

 

“We are now – the Democratic Party – going to have a presidential nominee who nobody voted for to be president.” “There’s not one voter anywhere in the country this year or in 2020 who said ‘I want Kamala Harris..”

• Harris Coronation Demonstrates America’s Democratic Deficit (Manley)

Over the weekend, US President Joe Biden bowed out of this year’s presidential race and in the same swift move endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris while transferring his campaign funds to her. While the VP is not the official Democratic nominee, many Democratic lawmakers and elites have already endorsed her candidacy. A recent article by activist and former Green Party vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka considers the Democratic Party’s substitution of Kamala Harris as its presumptive presidential nominee and the development’s significance within the US political system. “The gangster move by the oligarchs that control the Democrats stripped away any pretense that any real structures of democracy exist in that party,” Baraka suggests. The article argues that special interests appear to hold sufficient power to remove a presidential nominee and quickly fill that role with whomever they choose.

On Thursday, writer and activist Margaret Kimberley joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program to discuss the current crisis of democracy in the US as well as Nicaragua’s struggle against US intervention as they recently celebrate 45 years since the Sandinista revolution, which ushered in a government the United States deems to be undemocratic. “If this happened anywhere else in the world, we’d call it a banana republic,” Kimberly said of Joe Biden’s replacement. “We’d say it was authoritarianism. We’d say it’s not democratic. All of those things apply here, except we’re talking about this country. We see how undemocratic the system is, how undemocratic the Democratic Party is.” “They pushed Biden through, they rigged it for him four years ago. They lied about his health for the past four years. Told us not to believe our lying eyes when we could see his declining state of health.”

“And when they saw the failure of their plan, they unceremoniously shoved him under the bus. They have anointed Kamala Harris. Everybody fell into line. Millions of dollars for her campaign and all because rich donors, the people that Ajamu points out really run the Democratic Party, had a change of mind about who the nominee ought to be,” she concluded. Baraka argues that for nearly two years, it seemed obvious that “Biden would not be a credible candidate in 2024 due to his noticeable cognitive decline and the ineptitude of his administration”. Baraka suggested Biden was coerced into taking part in a debate against Trump in order to hasten his removal as the Democratic Party candidate. “They knew they could not go forward with him and they went along with this early debate to try to speed up the process and get rid of him before the convention,” Kimberley suggested. “I also believe they thought Trump would be out because of all these criminal charges.

I think they thought Trump would be out. He either wouldn’t run again or that Republican voters would turn to someone else, and they would be running against a Republican with less of Trump’s popularity.” “But, all of this happened because of corruption. And I think that’s the way we should discuss it, that these are the people who run everything, and the last thing they want is for the voters to have a choice,” she argued. “We are now – the Democratic Party – going to have a presidential nominee who nobody voted for to be president.” “There’s not one voter anywhere in the country this year or in 2020 who said ‘I want Kamala Harris,’” Kimberley emphasized. “Despite misgivings that many Democratic voters have about her, they’re going to go along,” she claimed. “The panic, the fear of a Republican victory, a Trump victory no less, is something that most Democrats will just get behind. So I think she has a chance to win, especially with the money, the corporate media, and all Democratic politicians being behind her.”

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He doesn’t accuse them (yet) of plotting the shooting.

• Trump Slams ‘Politicized’ FBI (RT)

Former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has slammed the Federal Bureau of Investigation as being politicized and incompetent at its job. Testifying before Congress on Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said he wasn’t sure whether Trump had been hit by a bullet or something else at a campaign rally two weeks ago. “I think with respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s [a] bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,” Wray told the lawmakers. Wray was unsure about the bullet but seemed sure that President Joe Biden was physically and cognitively fine, until Biden dropped out of the race, Trump said in a post on his platform Truth Social, late on Thursday. “That’s why he knows nothing about the terrorists and other criminals pouring into our country at record levels,” Trump continued. “His only focus is destroying J6 Patriots, raiding Mar-a-Lago, and saving Radical Left Lunatics, like the ones now in DC burning American flags and spray painting over our great National Monuments – with zero retribution.”

”No wonder the once storied FBI has lost the confidence of America!” the former president added. Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered in Washington on Wednesday to protest the address to Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Some of them publicly burned the American flag, while others defaced several monuments with pro-Hamas slogans. The FBI rounded up thousands of Trump supporters who protested outside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, as Republicans tried to object to declaring Biden the winner of the 2020 election, citing numerous irregularities. In August 2022, the agency raided Trump’s Florida residence in search of classified documents. The Supreme Court later ruled that prosecuting him for official acts was unconstitutional. The Mar-a-Lago raid and the crackdown on January 6 protesters were repeatedly brought up as reasons why local and state law enforcement around the US no longer trusts the FBI, according to a report compiled by a group of current and former agents.

The Bureau is increasingly viewed “as a partisan federal agency motivated by a political agenda,” said the report, which was presented to Congress earlier this week. Insisting that Wray was “wrong,” Trump said it was indeed a bullet that had nicked his ear at the Butler, Pennsylvania rally. “There was no glass, there was no shrapnel,” Trump posted, adding that the FBI “never even checked” into it. The idea that Trump may have been injured by something else, or not at all, has been a popular conspiracy theory among Democrats online. Some people have claimed that he faked the ear injury, while others speculated that a shard from the teleprompter broke off and nicked the presidential candidate. Such rumors have persisted even though a New York Times photographer captured the bloodied bullet as it streaked past Trump and into the crowd behind him.

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“..there is no evidence that it was anything other than a bullet,” and that “Director Wray is wrong and inappropriate to suggest anything else.”

• FBI Wrong About Assassination Attempt – Trump’s Doctor (RT)

The New York Times and Donald Trump’s personal physician have both concluded that the former president was struck by a bullet, and not “shrapnel” as FBI Director Christopher Wray suggested. In testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Wray told lawmakers that “there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that, you know, hit [Trump’s] ear” when a gunman opened fire on Trump at a campaign rally earlier this month. Wray’s statement appeared to validate theories circulating online since the shooting, which claimed that Trump was stricken by a piece of broken glass from his teleprompter rather than the would-be assassin’s bullet. After venting at Wray on his Truth Social platform on Friday, Trump shared a letter from his physician, Ronny Jackson, who stated that “there is no evidence that it was anything other than a bullet,” and that “Director Wray is wrong and inappropriate to suggest anything else.”

“Having served as an Emergency Medicine physician for over 20 years in the United States Navy…I have treated many gunshot wounds in my career,” Jackson noted. In an article published later on Friday, the New York Times concurred with Jackson. “A detailed analysis of bullet trajectories, footage, photos and audio by The New York Times strongly suggests Mr. Trump was grazed by the first of eight bullets fired by the gunman,” the newspaper stated. A 3D model of the rally grounds plus a “trajectory analysis show that the bullet traveled in a straight line from the gunman to the bleachers, clipping Mr. Trump on its path. This suggests the bullet was not deflected by first striking an object that would have then sprayed Mr. Trump with debris,” the newspaper explained.

The gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, killed one spectator and injured two others before he was shot dead by Secret Service snipers. Before he was led away from the stage by Secret Service agents, Trump rose to his feet and pumped his fist in the air, his ear visibly bleeding and his face streaked with blood. In the days after the shooting, Republicans fiercely criticized the Secret Service for failing to secure Crooks’ rooftop vantage point, despite it being around 150 meters from the stage where Trump stood, and for apparently disregarding reports of an armed Crooks crawling around on the roof minutes before opening fire. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday, a day after telling the Oversight Committee that she took responsibility for the “most significant operational failure at the Secret Service in decades.” “The biggest mistake they made is allowing me to go,” Trump told Fox News on Thursday “They shouldn’t have let me go on the stage. Different groups of people knew there was some nut job on the roof.”

Bullet?!

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“Joe Biden” will go down in history as the worst of all 46 US presidents.”

• Saving Our Democracy (Kunstler)

However it happened this week, “Joe Biden” passed the blowtorch to a new generation and got himself gone from the political battlefield. Delegates to the coming Democratic National Convention (August 19) were duly notified of the selected replacement, Veep Kamala Harris, and ordered to line up behind her. Not a peep of disagreement was heard among them. Amazing that no one had a different idea. Thus, is democracy saved. The curious details around this event remain shrouded in mystery. Reporters for The New York Times and the WashPo could not be bothered to inquire, and their readers are not inclined to ask how all this came to be. It just is. In a culture with no sense of consequence, things just happen or un-happen. It is your duty to recognize that the wind now blows from another direction and bend with it. One thing was obvious: the long-running prank of pretending that President “Joe Biden” is sound-of-mind fell apart after his mortifying appearance on the debate stage June 27th.

Apparently, every last captain and foot-soldier in the Democratic Party ranks was taken completely by surprise to see their champion flicker out in real time, like a forty-watt bulb that has done years of duty on the front porch and suddenly leaves you in the dark. Three weeks followed with “Joe Biden” boldly campaigning as if nothing had happened. (Perhaps his mind did not register that things had changed.) And then there was the weird tweet on “X” Sunday afternoon when the whole country was outside waterskiing, grilling weiners, carjacking, and yelling at ballparks, and the deed was done. Someone, possibly even “Joe Biden” himself, wrote a letter pasted into the tweet that declared he was bowing out of the race.

The White House staff didn’t even know until it was up-and-posted. Rumor had it that Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama read the riot act to “JB”, who was refusing to follow the script. There were plenty of carrots-and-sticks to finally lever his obdurate ass into motion: not least must have involved any pending legal outcome of the family’s influence-peddling operations, whispers of new whistleblower accusations about offshore bank accounts, perhaps with sweeteners in the deal as to how much schwag the clan could still hold onto in the end.

Then, the valedictory speech on Wednesday, sort of a proof-of-life exhibition, to verify that Sunday’s janky tweet to the nation was for real. You heard a Homeric recitation of “JB’s” signal achievements in office, every one of them demonstrably false. He did not keep our country out of war, or grow the economy, or keep inflation down, or beat Big Pharma, or build anything, or defend personal freedoms, or “make it clear there is no place, no place in America for political violence or any violence ever.” (In fact, the very next day, Thursday, pro-Hamas mobs attacked US Park police and vandalized federal property at Washington’s Union Station, and on Friday all charges were dropped against them — while scores of J6 Capitol trespassers rotted for years in the DC jail.)

What “Joe Biden” actually accomplished in office was the near-total wrecking of the USA. He torpedoed the authority and legitimacy of just about every federal agency, turned the Department of Justice into a Gestapo, seeded the federal court benches with Woke lunatics, allowed an invasion of perhaps 20-million border-jumpers (including many thousands of professional terrorists), coerced injections of an ineffective and injurious vaccine into millions of citizens afraid of losing their livelihoods, promoted gross medical experiments on sexually troubled children, invited drag queens and mentally-ill degenerates to cavort in the White House, spent borrowed money at a rate that propelled the national debt past the event horizon into a black hole, made the seeking of incompetence the number one priority of the Pentagon, provoked a war in Ukraine that now teeters on the hazard of a nuclear exchange, and allowed the CIA to complete its takeover of the US government. “Joe Biden” will go down in history as the worst of all 46 US presidents.

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“..with hawks like Mike Pompeo and avowed anti-interventionists like Tucker Carlson each holding court..”

• Trump Vs the Deep State: Would Former President Shift US Foreign Policy? (Sp.)

The Republican Party’s apparent divisions were on full display during its recent convention in Milwaukee, with hawks like Mike Pompeo and avowed anti-interventionists like Tucker Carlson each holding court. A sea change has taken place in the way the US electorate discusses issues of foreign policy over the last decade. Former President Donald Trump spoke with distinctive brashness on subjects assumed to be beyond political debate in Washington, such as the United States’ fraught relationship with Russia and the country’s role as self-appointed “policemen of the world.” On the other side of the aisle Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders enjoyed a similar populist appeal, alleging “massive fraud” in US military spending and questioning former President Barack Obama’s effort to overthrow Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

The mandarins of the US foreign policy establishment have spent the last several years attempting to put the genie back in the bottle, returning to a time before the prerogatives of the “Deep State” were openly speculated and commented upon, but the influence of Trump’s candidacy and tumultuous time in the White House is still felt years later. As Vice President Kamala Harris solidifies her position as President Biden’s Democratic heir apparent, speculation has emerged over the possible foreign policy of her administration and how it would differ from that of a second Trump term. Former Ukrainian diplomat and whistleblower Andrii Telizhenko joined Sputnik’s The Backstory program this week to comment on the matter and discuss prospects for peace as fighting between Moscow and Kiev continues. “Everybody saw it coming,” Telizhenko said of Biden’s decision to end his candidacy for reelection Sunday amid concern over his age and mental acuity.

“The deep state in the Democratic Party used him and used his problems within his family [with] his son Hunter to keep him in place, to use him and his health to keep America in place, to bring this war with Russia.” “They don’t need him anymore,” he concluded. “That’s why they made the change from one lame duck for another lame duck that is going to be fully controllable.” Harris, who previously served as California’s state Attorney General before a four-year stint in the US Senate, has been noted for her relative lack of formal foreign policy experience. Some commentators have looked to her advocacy on immigration policy under President Biden to attempt to decode her broader outlook on global affairs. One analyst speculated she would initially rely on Biden’s foreign policy team, while others suggest she would continue her predecessor’s strong support for Volodymyr Zelensky, who has ruled Ukraine without an electoral mandate since the end of term in May.

Republicans frequently allege President Biden’s support for Kiev is influenced by his son’s financial ties to the country as a former member on the board of the troubled Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Others suggest he is simply too old to manage the task of overseeing complex matters of foreign policy. Biden is often considered a neoconservative, a term used to describe a muscular US foreign policy that has traditionally found favor in both major political parties in the United States. His promise to restore a more traditional approach to international affairs is perhaps best exemplified by his reliance on figures like Secretary of State Antony Blinken and former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland.

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“..let Ukraine borrow as much as it needs to buy American weapons to defeat Russia.” This, he claimed, would “send a clear signal to Mr. Putin that he will never win.”

• Pompeo Tries to Hijack Trump’s Peace Push (Sp.)

Donald Trump has bragged that he could end the Russia-NATO proxy war in Ukraine with a couple phone calls, saying his main priority is to stop “people dying.” The GOP nominee for VP, JD Vance, has talked about the conflict’s cost to taxpayers. But there are many figures in the Republican establishment looking to prolong the crisis at all cost. Former CIA director and secretary of state Mike Pompeo has outlined a neocon Republican playbook for the Ukraine crisis in the event that Donald Trump returns to office, calling for a rebranding of US military and economic assistance to Kiev as “lend-lease,” and inviting Kiev into NATO “as soon as possible so all European allies assume the burden of protecting it.” Pompeo’s proposal, entitled “A Trump Peace Plan for Ukraine,” assures that Trump’s return to the presidency would not mean stopping Ukraine funding or negotiating directly with Moscow to end the fighting. On the contrary, he suggested, a Trump administration would pursue a “strategy for victory” that’s lacking in the current administration.

The neocon plan proposes a global effort led by the US and partners in the Middle East to bring down energy prices and “squeeze” Russia out of energy markets, imposing “real sanctions” on Moscow to replace the current “good on paper but…hollow” ones Pompeo says are in place today, ramping up NATO defense spending to a minimum of 3 percent of GDP, and lifting “all restrictions on the type of weapons Ukraine can obtain and use” against Russia. Central to Pompeo’s plan is the proposal for a $500 billion “lend-lease” program for Kiev, which, in his words, “instead of saddling US taxpayers with more bills,” would “let Ukraine borrow as much as it needs to buy American weapons to defeat Russia.” This, he claimed, would “send a clear signal to Mr. Putin that he will never win.” Pompeo’s vision for a post-conflict Ukraine includes building up Kiev’s military potential against Russia, refusing to recognize Russia’s new territories, “demilitarizing” Crimea (whatever that means), giving seized Russian Central Bank assets to Kiev, and inviting Ukraine into the European Union.

Pompeo did not elaborate on how a second Trump administration might achieve any of these goals. Moscow has stressed that it would never accept Ukraine in NATO, and the recently leaked peace deal that was agreed in the spring of 2022 (and sabotaged by the West before it could be realized), signaled demands by Russia that Ukraine limit the size of its military, recognize the Donbass Republics, repeal discriminatory language laws, ban the glorification and propaganda of Nazism and neo-Nazism, and (together with its Western patrons) scrap sanctions. Pompeo’s treatise, penned together with lobbyist, CNN commentator and Trump 2016 campaign advisor David Urban, strikes a decidedly more aggressive tone than the former president or his pick for vice president, JD Vance, have taken on the campaign trail.

Trump has repeatedly promised to stop “the horrible war with Russia and Ukraine,” vowing to start the peace process on election night if he wins, but has remained light on the details of how he might achieve this goal. People familiar with the plan have reportedly said that it will include pressuring Kiev to give up territory, sparking panic among some at the Pentagon and neocons in both parties that such Ukrainian concessions would mean “Putin would win.”
Trump said last week that he had a “very good phone call” with Volodymyr Zelensky, and that Zelensky had “congratulated” him on becoming the Republican nominee and surviving his recent assassination attempt. “We agreed with President Trump to discuss at a personal meeting what steps can make peace fair and truly lasting,” Zelensky said in a follow-up social media post.

Zelensky got in trouble with Republicans earlier this month over comments in a CNN interview from earlier this year in which he suggested that JD Vance doesn’t understand the situation in Ukraine, and that Kiev doesn’t “need any rhetoric from people who are not deeply in the know.” Vance, who has positioned himself as an America First Republican, argued in an op-ed in the New York Times in April that the biggest reason the US shouldn’t continue to support Ukraine is a basic “math” problem revolving around the fact that “Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field, even with draconian conscription policies,” and “needs more materiel than the United States can provide.”

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“..US Secret Service repeatedly denied offers from a local law enforcement partner to utilize drone technology..”

• Secret Service Opted Out of Drone Surveillance Before Trump Shooting (Sp.)

The probe into the attempted assassination of Donald Trump has uncovered new details of the botched security operation at the Pennsylvania rally. Republican Senator Josh Hawley has submitted a letter to the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with shocking details that the Secret Service – responsible for ensuring the safety of the former president’s life – “repeatedly” turned down offers by local police to carry out drone surveillance of the area. “The night before the rally, US Secret Service repeatedly denied offers from a local law enforcement partner to utilize drone technology to secure the rally,” the senator wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, citing information from a whistleblower. The whistleblower also alleged that it was not until after the deadly shootout that the Secret Service went on to use drones to record the area, Hawley noted.

Hawley had previously quoted the whistleblower and spoken out against the officer who left the very spot from which the assassin targeted Trump. The officer allegedly left the roof of the warehouse because it was “too hot.”
“It is hard to understand why [the Secret Service] would decline to use drones when they were offered, particularly given the fact USSS [US Secret Service] permitted the shooter to overfly the rally area with his own drone mere hours before [the] event,” the Republican senator elaborated further. Hawley also went on to mention that the whistleblower believes that using drones would have helped neutralize the sniper. The shooting took place on July 13 at a Trump rally in Butler, the US state of Pennsylvania. Trump sustained a gun wound to his right ear and was briefly hospitalized. Thomas Crooks, 20, killed a member of the audience and injured two others in the crowd before the Secret Service neutralized him. The FBI is investigating the incident as an assassination attempt and potential domestic terrorism.

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“The NeoNazi regime has to be liquidated, Ukraine is never to join NATO, and all of the Ukrainian forces must fully withdraw from the five territories that are now legally part of the Russian Federation, including Crimea and Donbass. If the Kiev regime wants to negotiate this capitulation, then Russia’s terms are already on the table..”

• Zelensky Now Wants Peace, Or Rather Another Piece Of The Action (SCF)

All of a sudden, it seems, the Kiev regime wants to give peace a chance. This week, the so-called president Vladimir Zelensky was telling the Vatican envoy Cardinal Pietro Parolin that it was urgent to find a peaceful end to the conflict with Russia to spare further loss of life. “I think that we all understand that we must end the war as soon as possible, of course,” Zelensky told the Vatican secretary of state during a meeting in Kiev. Only a few months ago, Zelensky rebuffed calls from Pope Francis for a diplomatic settlement to the worst war in Europe since the Second World War. And earlier this month, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was similarly disdained when he visited Kiev to appeal for a negotiated end to the conflict. Suddenly, though, there is a decided change in tune coming out of Kiev. The day after Zelensky issued his purported concern for peace, the Kiev regime’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba flew to China to meet Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat.

“The Ukrainian side is willing and ready to conduct dialogue and negotiations with the Russian side,” Kuleba announced. “I am convinced that a just peace in Ukraine is in China’s strategic interests, and China’s role as a global force for peace is important,” he added, by way of ingratiating himself with Beijing. Earlier this year, China and Brazil jointly proposed a plan for peace negotiations. That proposal was dismissed out of hand by the Kiev regime. What’s going on here is a cynical move by the Kiev regime to extend its survival and corruption racket. Zelensky and his cronies have gotten obscenely rich from siphoning off the hundreds of billions in military and financial aid that the United States and its European NATO lackeys have showered on Ukraine to fight a futile proxy war against Russia. After two and a half years of war and more than 500,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers – many of them forcibly conscripted – the writing is on the wall. The NATO proxy war is a historic loss of monstrous dimensions.

Russia has gained the upper hand militarily – as many independent analysts had predicted – and it will not back down until all of its goals are achieved. The NeoNazi regime has to be liquidated, Ukraine is never to join NATO, and all of the Ukrainian forces must fully withdraw from the five territories that are now legally part of the Russian Federation, including Crimea and Donbass. If the Kiev regime wants to negotiate this capitulation, then Russia’s terms are already on the table, as outlined by President Vladimir Putin last month.

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“..he called on his audience to see Ukraine as a laboratory where the West can develop its future military technology..”

• Zaluzhny’s Message Pleasing For Western Elites, Terrifying For Ukrainians (RT)

[..] Zelensky’s Ukraine, as represented by his former rival and current ambassador Zaluzhny, is the wet dream of the West’s mobilizers: a personalistic, at best semi-authoritarian regime, with no free media or opposition. And the fact that they have no shame in calling that sort of state a “democracy,” complete with the usual “vibrant” civil society, proves that they would not hesitate to do the same at home. If Zaluzhny’s ideas about what should be done to society are stunningly imitative, his take on the military meaning of the Ukraine War seems at least more original, if a little bombastic. He believes that the “changes which were invented on the battlefields of the Russian-Ukrainian war” are very likely to “determine the outlines of wars and the art of war in the 21st century” and to “become the foundation of the entire global security system of the future.”

Zaluzhny is probably wrong on the facts there. As I have long argued, the genocidal slaughter committed by Israel in Gaza is more likely to leave a deeper imprint on the future of “warfare” (for want of a better term). We are already seeing attempts to derive “lessons” (all the wrong ones, rest assured) from it by Western think tanks such as the RAND Corporation and, indeed, the very same RUSI where Zaluzhny gave his speech. But let’s set that aside and focus on what the former commander-in-chief believes to be the main military lesson of the Ukraine War. Driven by the need to survive on the battlefield, Zaluzhny argues, Ukrainian forces have invented and applied new technologies while adapting their structure and tactics to them. For him, this war therefore marks a transition, starting and foreshadowing decisive future developments. In particular – and this is a key phrase in his sales pitch – these technologies are supposed to offer a way to “fight and win against stronger armies in the 21st century.” (By “stronger,” the general here clearly must mean “larger,” because if he literally meant “stronger” – as in also technologically stronger – his statement would be self-contradictory and absurd.)

Now compare this with what the new chief of the UK General Staff, General Ronald Walker had to say at the same RUSI Land Warfare Conference. Walker also delivered a stern warning about a dangerous world out there, i.e. Russia and China, and promised to triple the effectiveness (“lethality”) of British forces within a few years, without asking for more men. His miracle fix to do so: new technology that, Walker says, will enable his army to defeat much larger forces. See a difference compared to Zaluzhny’s promises? No? Exactly. Once again, the obliging Ukrainian delivered exactly what his Western listeners wanted to hear. By now, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has publicly agreed with Walker. Congrats, General Zaluzhny: bullseye in crowd-pleasing. Yet, once again, there is a less farcical side to Zaluzhny’s somewhat crude opportunism.

In essence, he called on his audience to see Ukraine as a laboratory where the West can develop its future military technology. Ukraine, he admitted, cannot “scale up” its inventions and innovations made in the midst of battle. Yet its Western “partners” – “users” would be a better, more honest term – have the resources needed for such upscaling, “but there is no applied and practical field to test them.” In other words, Ukrainians can keep dying, while the West can field-test new military technologies. And make no mistake: Zaluzhny does not believe that fewer Ukrainians will be needed because the new technologies will replace them. The whole meaning of his labelling the current war merely “transitional” and not yet one of “the future” is to strand Ukraine in the worst of both worlds where, as he admits, “the only way out may be to increase the number of human resources involved in hostilities.”

And there you have it. Ukraine’s real future, according to Zaluzhny, is one where more Ukrainians will be fed into the meatgrinder of a losing war, but on the upside, the meatgrinder will be constantly modernized and updated with the newest ways of killing and dying, compliments of the West. It is one thing that this fantasy of a forever war as a forever laboratory will not come to pass. It is another that it is the real message – if you pay attention – of Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief and current ambassador in London, and future who-knows-what, when speaking to an elite Western audience. One of Ukraine’s tragedies is being abused by the West; the other being betrayed by its own leaders.

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“Ursula von der Leyen is making Europe poorer, less independent and more dangerous. Much more dangerous.”

• Von der Leyen’s Legacy (Dionísio)

The mainstream political class of the European Union, and its member states, has predictably ended up prolonging the agony, decadence and subservience of European affairs to U.S. interests. And now, for another five years, we will have to live, again, with Ursula von der Leyen. Moreover, in the future, we will all remember her speeches on “value chain security”, in which Ursula’s great merit was to further reinforce the world’s dependence on Chinese value chains, demonstrating that, contrary to what she announces with as much anger as hatred, her tariffs, sanctions and conditioning cause us as much pain as they relieve the others. In the EU, in 10 years we will have given up the largest reserve of mineral, food, energy and raw materials in the world and, unless an uprising begins, we will also have given up the largest consumer market on the planet and the one that will grow the most in the coming years. These are von der Leyen’s great merits!

Given this record, you might think that the next five years would see a reversal of course. But no. Ursula von der Leyen will continue to infight against the EU’s own peoples, telling them one thing and doing the opposite, and one of the areas in which we can see, without any reservations whatsoever, that the European Union – this European Union – has given up on its indigenous peoples, is in relation to what is currently one of the main sources of social tension: immigration. Classifying the current situation of the European labor market as being affected by serious “labor shortages”, the European Commission’s communication, entitled “Strengthening the social dialogue in the European Union: harnessing its full potential to manage just transitions”, is clear about von der Leyen’s intentions in this regard.

Don’t let that the apparently rational discourse fool you: “strengthening the social dialogue” should be read as “guaranteeing social peace in the face of measures that will further squeeze wages and living conditions”; “harnessing its full potential” should be read as “increasing the reserve army of labor to contain wage growth”; and “managing fair transitions” should be read as “ensuring that everyone will be forced to adopt the EU’s economic and social model, without reservation”. As always, by wrapping her draconian intentions in occasional discursive flourishes, Ursula von der Leyen is making Europe poorer, less independent and more dangerous. Much more dangerous. Every time she opens her mouth, it’s best to interpret her words as having a hidden meaning, which is often the opposite of what she actually said.

On the road to increasing the exploitation of Europe’s peoples, the European Commission rightly begins by noting the demographic changes that have taken place in recent decades. Europeans are simply having fewer children. The result is that the native European working population has been shrinking and the forecast is that, today, being around 265 million workers, in 2040 this figure will be around 250 million and in 2050, 240 million. In other words, a reduction of one million per year. Faced with a problem of this magnitude, the long-term consequences of which will not only be the reduction of native peoples, but also the emergence of vast deserted and unused areas, the perishing of certain cultures and traditions, would require an in-depth study and measures capable of reversing the trend of population decline and falling fertility and birth rates.

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“The Ursulas announced that, in their opinion, the sovereigntist faction — largely created by Viktor Orbán— is far-right and, as such, anti-Europe, anti-progress and anti-humanity, and therefore should be quarantined, isolated and suffocated..”

• To Hell With The Will Of The People (RMX)

The globalist left is increasingly unscrupulous in its disregard for the voters’ choice. The third-strongest faction, the Patriots for Europe, will not have a single official in the European Parliament. It won’t happen, because the globalist-Jacobin majority —which, for the sake of simplicity, is mostly called “the left” — is violating all written rules and customary law and ignoring the will of the people and has now prevented it. The Ursulas announced that, in their opinion, the sovereigntist faction — largely created by Viktor Orbán— is far-right and, as such, anti-Europe, anti-progress and anti-humanity, and therefore should be quarantined, isolated and suffocated. There is no talk of their deportation yet, but based on the dynamics of events, this may even happen in a few years. So the Patriots get nothing, let alone positions — perhaps even eventually a few bullets, like Fico and Trump. This is how people’s representation “works” for the champions of democracy in Brussels.

In fact, one of the pillars of Ursula von der Leyen’s forthcoming five-year EU commission presidency will be to break down resistance to the imperialism of the EU, to remove the veto of small states, especially the meddling Hungary. If there is no veto, everyone will do what the big ones want. In other words: “Shut up!” Now, imagine for a moment that in the Hungarian parliament, opposition parties could not nominate vice-presidents to head the House, could not have committee chairs and vice-chairs. Obviously, the problem is with the Hungarian conception of democracy, but in this country such a thing has not even been thought of — neither during the period of left-wing nor right-wing governments did anyone think of such a despicable act, such disregard for the will of the electorate. But Brussels has done so without scruples. They take part in this disgusting act and in the meantime, act as if nothing had happened, as they continue lecturing us about democracy, the rule of law, checks and balances.

Where is the respect for the will of the voters? The rule of the people? The principle of popular sovereignty? Of course, we Hungarians have a dictatorship on the rampage, where even with a two-thirds majority from Fidesz, there is always an opposition leader (this time Zoltán Sas, a Jobbik member of the National Security Committee), not to mention the opposition deputy speakers of the National Assembly and many other officials. So goes the trampling of voters by the European People’s Party (EPP). In order to give the globalists a majority, Manfred Weber, with the spine of a snail, has teamed up with the Bolsheviks — as if he had just been ordered to do so by text message. He lured the more naive right-wingers to his side with blatant lies and nationalist promises, only to be swept away by the left’s agenda.

Even though his voters are fed up with illegal migrants, Weber and his crew do not care — with their approval they will continue to fly and ship millions of Africans and Asians into the continent because the population replacement must continue. Weber is like a hijacker: He has hijacked the right-wing vote. If I say that this figure is a fraud, a scoundrel traitor, a moral lunatic, I am certainly putting it too mildly.

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Think she’s already taking over?

• Netanyahu Angry After Meeting With Vice President Harris (ZH)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was angered by Vice President Kamala Harris’ on-camera statement following their Thursday meeting, and he now says the words threaten to sabotage any potential peace deal with Hamas. Diplomats speaking with Axios said Netanyahu’s criticism stems from Harris speaking as if a ceasefire and hostage exchange would mark the final end of the war in Gaza, whereas Israel’s position has all along been that counter-Hamas operations could resume even if a hostage deal is reached. Following the Harris-Netanyahu meeting which lasted about 40 minutes, the Vice President said “It is time for this war to end in a way where Israel is secure, all the hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity and self determination.”

She added: “And as I just told Prime Minister Netanyahu it is time to get this deal done. Let’s get the deal done. So we can get a ceasefire to end the war. Let’s bring the hostages home. And let’s provide much needed relief to the Palestinian people.” Israeli officials told Axios that the Biden meeting was much more constructive than the one with Harris, but that they were “caught off guard” by Harris’ follow-up statement: “The Israeli officials said Netanyahu and his team were caught off guard by Harris’ on-camera statement and taken aback by its tone, which they said sounded much more critical than Biden’s. “Harris’ statement after the meeting was much more critical than what she told Netanyahu in the meeting,” one Israeli official claimed. According to more, “The Israeli official also said Netanyahu was unhappy with the fact that Harris criticized Israel publicly for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and for killing civilians, especially at the current timing amid the hostage deal negotiations.”

But an aide to the vice president said he has no idea what the Israeli side is talking about and emphasized the private meeting between Harris and Netanyahu was “serious and collegial.” So for now, it appears Netanyahu is ready to blame lack of progress in a ceasefire on VP Harris, and the current chaos of American politics after Biden bowed out of the presidential race. Israeli officials have tried to push a narrative that says a truce deal is impossible if there is any daylight in messaging between Washington and Tel Aviv. But what Israel wants is a perpetual ‘blank check’ from the US taxpayer (akin to Ukraine’s Zelensky), and makes a lot of noise and complains bitterly in any instance where US leadership is not 100% on board, or issues some degree of criticism of Israeli military action.

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“Now compare China’s diplomatic coup with the US Congress giving 58 standing ovations to Israel’s psychopath-in-chief peddling the notion of genocide as a wellness treatment…

• China Throws Clout Behind Palestine (Pepe Escobar)

The Beijing Declaration, signed earlier this week, constitutes yet another stunning Chinese diplomatic coup, but the document goes far beyond affirming China’s pull. The gathering of representatives of 14 Palestinian factions to commit to full reconciliation showed the entire world that the road to solving intractable geopolitical problems is no longer unilateral: it is multipolar, multi-nodal, and features BRICS/Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member China as an inescapable leader. The concept of China as a peacemaking superpower is now so established that after the Iran–Saudi Arabia rapprochement and the signing of the Beijing Declaration, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba chose to tell his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing that Kiev is now finally ready to negotiate the end of the NATO–Russia proxy war in Ukraine. Palestinians who came to Beijing were beaming. For Fatah Vice Chairman Mahmoud al-Aloul, “China is a light. China’s efforts are rare on the international stage.”

Hamas spokesman Hussam Badran said the Palestinian resistance movement accepted the Chinese invitation “with a positive spirit and patriotic responsibility.” All Palestinian factions have reached a consensus on “Palestinian demands to end the war,” adding that the “most important” part of the declaration is to form a government that builds Palestinian national consensus to “manage the affairs of the people of Gaza and the West Bank, oversee reconstruction, and create conditions for elections.” Wang Yi cut to the chase: the Palestinian issue, says the Chinese foreign minister, is at the core of everything in West Asia. He emphasized that Beijing … has never had any selfish interests in the Palestinian issue. China is one of the first countries to recognize the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] and the State of Palestine and has always firmly supported the Palestinian people in restoring their legitimate national rights. What we value is morality and what we advocate is justice.

What Wang did not say – and didn’t need to – is that this position is the overwhelming BRICS+ position, shared by the Global Majority, including, crucially, all Muslim countries. It’s all in a name – everyone in the foreseeable future will note this is the “Beijing” declaration unequivocally supporting One Palestine. No wonder all political factions had to rise to the occasion, committing to support an independent Palestinian government with executive powers over Gaza and the occupied West Bank. But there’s a catch: this will take place immediately after the war, which the regime in Tel Aviv wants to prolong indefinitely. What Wang Yi left somewhat implicit is that China’s consistent historical position supporting Palestine may be a decisive factor in helping future Palestinian governance institutions. Beijing is proposing three steps to get there:

First, a “comprehensive, lasting and sustainable” ceasefire in Gaza as soon as possible, and “access to humanitarian aid and rescue on the ground.” Second, “joint efforts” – assuming western involvement – toward “post-conflict governance of Gaza under the principle of ‘Palestinians governing Palestine.’” An urgent priority is restarting reconstruction “as soon as possible.” Beijing stresses that “the international community needs to support Palestinian factions in establishing an interim national consensus government and realize effective management of Gaza and the West Bank.” Third, help Palestine “to become a full member state of the UN” and implement the two-state solution. Beijing maintains that “it is important to support the convening of a broad-based, more authoritative, and more effective international peace conference to work out a timetable and road map for the two-state solution.”

For all the lofty aims, especially when it is patently clear that Israel has de facto buried the two-state solution – as witnessed in the Knesset’s recent vote to reject any Palestinian state – at least China is directly proposing what the Global Majority unanimously considers as a fair outcome. Also important to note is the presence of diplomats from China’s fellow BRICS members Russia, South Africa, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, alongside diplomats from Algeria, Qatar, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Turkiye at the signing of the declaration. Now compare China’s diplomatic coup with the US Congress giving 58 standing ovations to Israel’s psychopath-in-chief peddling the notion of genocide as a wellness treatment. Bibi Netanyahu’s hero’s welcome in Washington takes the notion of collective psychopathology to new heights. And yet complicity in the Gaza genocide is not exactly an exception to the rule when it comes to American political leadership.

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That’s gotta hurt a little bit.

• Russian Central Bank Hikes Interest Rate To 18% (RT)

The Bank of Russia has raised its key interest rate from 16% to 18%, citing inflationary pressures. Domestic demand continues to exceed the economy’s capacity to produce goods and services to meet it, the regulator said in a statement on Friday. Inflation has accelerated and is running substantially above the bank’s April forecast, the statement added. The Bank of Russia has “substantially revised” its projection, predicting an overall rate of 6.5-7.0% in the current year. Inflation in June stood at 8.6%, more than a double the government target of 4%. If the interest rate had not been raised, Russia would have risked lurching into stagflation, central bank chief Elvira Nabiullina said at a press conference following the announcement. The term refers to the combination of slow economic growth, high inflation, and high unemployment.

The key rate will remain high “for as long as necessary” to bring inflation down to the government target of 4%, Nabiullina stated. A further tightening of monetary policy may be necessary, she added. The central bank said the latest rate hike will help bring inflation down to 4.0-4.5% in 2025.The Bank of Russia previously raised the key interest rate in December. A 100 basis points increase to 16% per annum was the fifth hike in a row since the summer of 2023, when the basis was at 7.5%. The central bank also cited economic indicators from the second quarter of this year as showing that the Russian economy continues rapid growth. Consumer activity remains high against the backdrop of significant growth in household incomes and consumer confidence, the regulator said. Russia’s GDP grew 3.6% in 2023 compared to the previous year. In April, the International Monetary Fund projected 3.2% growth for the country’s economy for 2024. The Bank of Russia will hold its next key rate review meeting in September.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Cow rope
https://twitter.com/i/status/1816692420752605399

 

 

Beware
https://twitter.com/i/status/1816754521940410795

 

 

Beethoven

 

 

Eagle crow

 

 

Blue whale
https://twitter.com/i/status/1816697594707411345

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle June 2 2024

Jun 022024
 
 June 2, 2024  Posted by at 8:26 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  60 Responses »


John French Sloan East Entrance, City Hall, Philadelphia 1901

 

• Tyranny Is Upon Us: Law And Juries Are Weaponized (Paul Craig Roberts)
• The Trump Trial Harkens Back to a Dark Period of American Law (Turley)
• The Democrats Just Sealed Donald Trump’s Victory In November (Bridge)
• DOJ: You Can’t Hear The Biden-Hur ‘Memory Interview’ Because of Deepfakes (Sp.)
• Desperate, Lying Biden May Abuse AI to Pull the Ultimate Race Hoax (Sellers)
• Artificial ‘N****R’ (Sellers)
• RFK Jr. Slams Biden’s Decision to Allow Ukrainian Strikes Inside Russia (Sp.)
• Ukraine Conflict Is Reshaping War For the 21st Century (DeMartino)
• The Popski Syndrome – Allied Defeat Turns Into Battlefield Fantasies (Helmer)
• Presidents Who Gamble With Nuclear Armageddon (Jeffrey Sachs)
• Russia’s Victory Over Ukraine Is Drawing Near (Scott Ritter)
• Ukraine Won’t Exist In 50 Years – Tucker Carlson (RT)
• Dave Smith Burns Chris Cuomo To The Ground In Epic Covid Debate (ZH)
• Mark Rutte, The Dutch Invader, Is Sinking In The Hungarian Goulash (Helmer)
• Huge Anti-War Rally In Budapest, Hungary (RT)

 

 

 

 

RFK Elon

 

 

Flynn/Macgregor

 

 

 

 

Eric Trump

 

 

JD Vance
https://twitter.com/i/status/1796593469546287378

 

 

 

 

Eva

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..a single accounting reporting charge, a misdemeanor, was magically turned into 34 federal felonies of election violations..”

“..legally this is a case for which there are no legal grounds for bringing it..”

• Tyranny Is Upon Us: Law And Juries Are Weaponized (Paul Craig Roberts)

Jury Finds Trump Guilty on All 34 Felony Charges in New York Trial. Keep in mind that these are 34 made-up felonies based on how an expense was recorded by accountants and attorneys. Trump did not record the expense.The expense was recorded according to accounting standards. Keep in mind that a single accounting reporting charge, a misdemeanor, was magically turned into 34 federal felonies of election violations, if memory serves, the argument being that Trump won the election by misreporting the expense. There are so many civil and criminal show trials going on against Trump that it is hard to keep track of all the absurdities. Keep in mind that it is a case without complainants, without harmed parties. It is a case brought by a prosecutor who can show no party harmed. What is frightening is that legally this is a case for which there are no legal grounds for bringing it. Yet, the bar associations, the law schools, the media said nothing.

Getting Trump was so important that law was sacrificed for the purpose. Trump’s demonization made a fair trial impossible, and few jurors can resist using their power against a rich person. The weaponization of law in order to interfere with an election –in other words the prosecutor is guilty of interfering in an election–the charge brought against Trump– means the future of America is tyranny. An appeal will be made, but a state where justice is as corrupt as New York is incapable of producing a decision based on law. If there is any fight left in Americans, and I am unsure, a prison sentence from the totally corrupt judge should launch a civil war. Many would say it is about time or past time. If not, the people have submitted to tyranny. The North submitted to Lincoln’s tyranny. The South did not. Little is left of the South. It is unclear what stands against the tyranny of Washington.

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The constitutional law professor: “Even after sitting in the courtroom watching the trial and the verdict, I still have no idea what Trump was convicted of in the case..”

• The Trump Trial Harkens Back to a Dark Period of American Law (Turley)

After years of trying — in the words of the judge — “to get the damned rascal in this court,” it was a conviction that many welcomed. But those words were not from Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, and the conviction was not that of former President Donald Trump. Rather they were from US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, at the end of the 18th century, when America embraced political prosecutions to target critics and opponents. The man on trial then was James T. Callender, a muckraking writer critical of President John Adams. For accusing politicians of corruption, Callender was charged with sedition, fined $200 and put in prison. It was one of the many political prosecutions carried out by the Adams administration. Political prosecutions are something most citizens associate with dictatorships. But the Trump prosecution has forced many to confront the undeniable reality of the politicization of our legal system. In many respects, President Biden and Democrats have re-created the Adams era.

Biden has led calls for censorship of political critics and his administration has coordinated the silencing and the blacklisting of those with opposing views. Democratic politicians have pressured social-media companies to serve as surrogates for the government in banning, throttling and defunding individuals and groups. Indeed, I have previously written that Biden is now the most anti-free-speech president since Adams. The Adams era also reflected the same blind loyalty of many media outlets. Federalist publications supported the crackdowns while echoing charges against political opponents as seditionists and insurrectionists. Jeffersonian publications, like Callender’s, attacked Adams for his “unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice.” The nation was divided down the middle as both sides accused each other of being traitors and insurrectionists. Sound familiar? Yet, it is the politicization of the legal system that is the most chilling return to the Adams era.

Even liberal legal analysts and figures have admitted that the case against Trump was unprecedented and would not have been brought against anyone other than Trump. CNN legal analyst Elie Honig recently wrote that there should be concern over a judge being appointed (not randomly selected) who is not just a Biden donor but someone who “has earmarked donations for ‘resisting the Republican Party and Donald Trump’s radical right-wing legacy.’” Adding to these concerns is the movement of the third-highest official in the Biden Justice Department to the staff of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to build the case against Trump. Before joining the case, Matthew Colangelo was also paid by the Democratic National Committee for “political consulting.” So Trump was convicted in a trial with a Biden donor judge, who has a daughter who is a major Democratic operative, a lead prosecutor previously paid as a DNC political consultant and a jury selected in a district that voted roughly 90% against Trump.

The trial itself was a travesty. Even after sitting in the courtroom watching the trial and the verdict, I still have no idea what Trump was convicted of in the case. The charges were built on a dead misdemeanor barred with the passage of the statute of limitations. It was zapped back into life by alleging that the falsification of business records occurred to unlawfully influence the 2016 presidential election. Merchan told the jury members that they did not have to agree on what those unlawful means may have been. Specifically, he allowed them to base their verdict on any one of three vaguely defined crimes of a federal election violation, falsification of business records or taxation violations.

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“The only thing better than that would be to witness the first president in US history to pardon himself as the Trump legacy goes full circle.”

• The Democrats Just Sealed Donald Trump’s Victory In November (Bridge)

Members of the Democratic Party continue to fail to understand that the more mud they fling at the former president, the dirtier they look by comparison. On Thursday, a unanimous decision from a 12-person jury declared Donald Trump guilty on 34 felony counts, which could see the former president sentenced to 136 years in prison. There’s just one catch: the notorious Orange Man will never spend a single night behind bars. The worst that will happen for the Republican presidential frontrunner is that he will enter the race with a criminal record. Because the crimes are nonviolent and Trump has no prior convictions, any chance of prison time is a long shot. What could happen instead is that Judge Juan Merchan could sentence him to house arrest – which would undoubtedly make ankle bracelets, much like the famous Trump ‘mug shot,’ the latest fashion accessory – probation or some other lighter form of supervised release.

Another option that would backfire in the Democratic Party’s face is the imposition of community service. While Democrats may relish the idea of Trump being forced to join a prison work gang as punishment, it’s too easy to imagine millions of Trump supporters turning out at some soup kitchen or animal shelter to throw their support behind the most controversial figure in American politics today. And then there is the question of New York, the site of the Trump case, which is only second to the state of California when it comes to liberal residents. Trump inveighed against District Attorney Alvin Bragg, calling him the “Soros-backed DA.” As The New York Times wrote of the Bragg-Soros connection, “Soros donated to a liberal group that endorses progressive prosecutors and supports efforts to overhaul the criminal justice system – in line with causes that he has publicly supported for years. That group used a significant portion of the money to support Mr. Bragg in his 2021 campaign.”

On November 21, 2022, The Times reported that the district attorney’s office “has moved to jump-start its criminal investigation” into Trump’s reported “hush-money payment to a porn star who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.” This was the first indictment of a former president in US history. Trump pleaded not guilty, yet was found guilty of all counts on May 30, 2024, making Bragg the first prosecutor in US history to win a conviction against a former president. Trump, who will be sentenced on July 11th, denies ever having had sex with Daniels. Another aspect of the Trump case that has rallied many to Trump’s defense is the political identity of the judge presiding over the case, Juan Merchan, whom Trump has criticized as “conflicted.” That may be an understatement when it is considered that Merchan donates to an organization called ‘Stop Republicans,’ as well as the Biden campaign.

Finally, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that Loren Merchan, the judge’s daughter, is president of Authentic Campaigns, a Chicago-based progressive political consulting firm whose top clients include Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who was the lead prosecutor in Trump’s first impeachment trial. Merchan’s daughter helped raise at least $93 million in campaign donations – and used the Trump case in her solicitation emails – highlighting a major conflict of interest that have Trump supporters demanding Judge Merchan recuse himself from the case. Finally, there is the question of fairness when it is considered that New York is major Democrat country. Can Trump seriously hope for a fair trial to take place in this prominent Blue state? He certainly doesn’t think so.

Merchan imposed the 10th contempt of court fine of $1,000 for an April 22 interview in which the former president said: “That jury was picked so fast – 95% Democrats. The area’s mostly all Democrat.” While the Democrats may be rubbing their hands in glee after finally getting Trump entangled in the judicial net, they continue to ignore the fact that every scandal has only served to empower the 45th president. In the worst-case scenario, should Trump be sent to prison, this will not stop the flow of campaign cash from entering the GOP’s coffers; in fact, it is practically guaranteed that the spectacle of the Orange Man behind bars – complete with mug shot in prison garb – will be the best campaign promo of all time. The only thing better than that would be to witness the first president in US history to pardon himself as the Trump legacy goes full circle.

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Anything can be deepfake, and now you can’t hear any of it anymore. Unless it’s about Trump.

• DOJ: You Can’t Hear The Biden-Hur ‘Memory Interview’ Because of Deepfakes (Sp.)

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is attempting to prevent the release of the audio of the infamous “memory interview” between US President Joe Biden and special counsel Robert Hur, arguing that “deepfakes” may appear as a result. Hur was investigating Biden’s handling of classified documents he obtained as a senator and vice president. While Hur wrote in his report that Biden likely violated the law intentionally, he declined to press charges because he thought Biden would appear to the jury as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” It also noted that Biden had trouble remembering when he was vice president and which year his son Beau died. The DOJ issued a filing on Friday that argued “The passage of time and advancements in audio, artificial intelligence, and ‘deep fake’ technologies only amplify concerns about malicious manipulation of audio files. If the audio recording is released here, it is easy to foresee that it could be improperly altered, and that the altered file could be passed off as an authentic recording and widely distributed.”

While the DOJ admits that there is plenty of “other raw material to create a deepfake of President Biden’s voice” available to unscrupulous actors, it argues that if the public became aware that the legitimate recording was released, they would be more apt to believe a fake recording is legitimate. The filing was first obtained by Politico. It is not known how the court will respond to the strange reasoning. If a legitimate copy of the recording were released, it stands to reason it would become easier –not more difficult– to disprove fake versions. As the DOJ admits in its filing as part of its argument that the release of the audio recording is unnecessary, the full transcript of the interview has already been released. It would be trivial for someone with AI experience to use the “raw material” already available of Biden to create a deepfake version of the interview and say it was leaked. A legitimate version being released would make that much easier for other internet users and the media to definitively debunk.

The filing also comes after Biden used his executive privilege to stop the release of the tape to House Republicans who had sought to obtain it as part of their investigation into the Biden family. The latest filing was in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The DOJ also argues that the release of the audio would be a violation of Biden’s privacy. However, since we already know what he said thanks to the transcript– and we have no reason to believe that the transcript is incorrect, the only thing that would be revealed is everything between those words. How long did Biden pause before answering? How many times did he stumble on his words? Did he sound confused or angry during the interview? These are the questions that could be revealed through the release of the audio and according to the filing, the DOJ doesn’t think it is in the “public interest” to reveal the answers, so much so that they are willing to resort to absurd fear-mongering over a new technology in hopes that the judge will be cowed into blocking its release.

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I split Ben Sellers’ piece in two. First, reality.

• Desperate, Lying Biden May Abuse AI to Pull the Ultimate Race Hoax (Sellers)

It is patently clear that 99% of what comes out of Biden’s mouth, and those of his surrogates is an abject, gaslighting falsehood. Many in the voting public have now woken up to this fact, which is why we’ve seen so many red-pilled ex-Biden backers suddenly flipping their support to Trump in protest of all—or even some—of the above. Taking a page from Adolf Hitler, Democrats already primed people for the so-called Big Lie, deflecting from the fact that they were in the process of committing it by, appropriately enough, projecting it preemptively onto Republicans Regrettably, we may now be on the cusp of what history will record as the “Biggest Lie,” if and when the truth ever comes to light—something so shamefully bald-faced, so transparently manipulative, that most will think, “They wouldn’t dare lie about that.” But indeed, Biden has proven nothing if not that he will lie about anything.

We are witnessing the remarkable confluence of several disparate factors that are leading us on the path to the biggest race hoax in recorded history—and yet, it seems obvious, like a black swan event, that something so dastardly would be the inevitable outcome of putting the declining Democrat ethos and the rise in artificial intelligence-generated disinformation together in a tinderbox that includes the bombastic Donald Trump.On Thursday, a former producer from Trump’s ABC television show The Apprentice drudged up a long simmering rumor regarding tapes of Trump having used the n-word to refer to contestant Kwame Jackson. Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung called it a “a completely fabricated and bullsh*t story,” Politico reported. Many critics have pointed out that President Joe Biden’s own troubled history when it comes to making controversial remarks about race often undermines his current posturing about being a champion of minority causes.

Nonetheless, Biden’s campaign—after recently botching the rollout on an eight-figure effort to win back black voters—made hay of the Trump smear, releasing an official statement to torque up the race-baiting allegation. “No one is surprised that Donald Trump, who entered public life by falsely accusing [b]lack men of murder and entered political life spreading lies about the first [b]lack president, reportedly used the N-word to casually denigrate a successful [b]lack man,” claimed Jasmine Harris, the Biden campaign’s director of black media. The campaign also appeared to have been coordinating with Pruitt on the story, which he released in a Slate op-ed, as it had canned footage ready to roll out of former Trump staffer turned critic Omarosa Manigault Newman leveling unsubstantiated ‘racism’ claims against her ex-boss.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1796222579759358116

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Second, AI.

“..a new low-water mark for America, as it faces a bombardment of structure tests from the radical Marxist subversives hoping to topple it for once and for all.”

• Artificial ‘N****R’ (Sellers)

Lost in the Trump Manhattan trial about his alleged falsification of business documents to pay off porn star Stormy Daniels was the fact that the $130,000 paid to Daniels by Michael Cohen did not fulfill its contracted purpose. Prior to the November 2016 election, the Wall Street Journal published a story that named Daniels and Playboy bunny Karen McDougal, alleging the two had received hush-money payments to keep quiet about their decade-old affairs with Trump. Within two years, some of the key players in the purported scandal were speaking openly about it. Suffice it to say, if Pruitt had the evidence at the time to support his allegation about Trump using the n-word on The Apprentice, those tapes would have found their way into the hands of interested parties somewhere along the way long before Trump’s third presidential run.

It is reasonable to infer that the absence of the tapes up to this point suggests they don’t exist. Frighteningly, what does now exist is a rapid surge in artificial intelligence technology that could allow the Biden campaign to produce fake tapes of Trump using the pejorative, sowing just enough suspicion among his nascent black supporters that they would flock back to the fold on the Democrat plantation. Already, we have seen the technology put to frightening use to imitate Biden’s voice in a fake robocall that went out to New Hampshire voters, telling them to stay home since he wasn’t on the ballot, despite an expensive write-in campaign to deliver him a victory in the Granite State. The deep-fake was traced back to the owner of a telecom company in Texas, who had previously donated money to Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.

The technology also has been misused to create pornography of high school students and to scam a company out of $25 million with a phony conference call. And oh yea, the CIA has admitted it is taking full advantage of it for undisclosed purposes. Most perniciously, it has already been used for at least one race hoax. A disgruntled high school athletic director in Baltimore was caught using deep-fake software to mimic the voice of his principal going on a racist and anti-Semitic rant in retaliation for a probe of his misappropriation of school funds. The rant appeared on Instagram and quickly began to circulate. Although AI was suspected almost immediately, Pikesville High School Eric Eiswert was subjected to negative publicity and an intensive forensic investigation that drew in the FBI and experts from the University of California, Berkeley, before he was ultimately vindicated.

The potential for AI abuse, paired with the Biden administration’s penchant and proclivity for it, would certainly lead one to wonder, should a tape of Trump using the “n-word” suddenly surface, whether its authenticity could be trusted. Would Biden, or another bad actor working on his behalf, be willing to stoop so low as to falsely smear someone with an entirely made-up tape in order to deceive and manipulate a particular class of voters into making a misinformed decision? Sadly, if past is prologue, one need no longer ask questions about the depths to which they will stoop. Will it work? If so, it would simultaneously be a breakthrough achievement in AI technology—the successful passage, perhaps, of a sort of Turing test on the road to singularity—and a new low-water mark for America, as it faces a bombardment of structure tests from the radical Marxist subversives hoping to topple it for once and for all.

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“..authorizing Ukraine to strike targets deep in Russia. Using our weapons, trained in their use by our trainers..”

• RFK Jr. Slams Biden’s Decision to Allow Ukrainian Strikes Inside Russia (Sp.)

US presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. condemned President Joe Biden’s decision to greenlight Ukrainian strikes using US-supplied weapons inside Russian territory. “More insane escalation by the Biden administration — authorizing Ukraine to strike targets deep in Russia. Using our weapons, trained in their use by our trainers,” Kennedy said on X. In a major policy shift, Biden authorized the use of US weapons against military installations in Russia. A State Department spokesperson insisted that the authorization was limited to what they called “counter-fire purposes” in Kharkov (also known as Kharkiv) region. The US has not authorized the use of long-range missiles, including ATACMS, inside Russia, the spokesperson told Sputnik.

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Drones. And the “turtle tank.”

• Ukraine Conflict Is Reshaping War For the 21st Century (DeMartino)

The weapons that shaped warfare in the 20th century: barbed wire, machine guns, tanks, long-range artillery, and battleships, still play significant roles on the battlefield in the 21st, but they are dwarfed in importance by one invention, from which multiple theaters have been affected: the drone. While specific numbers of their effectiveness are difficult to come by at this stage of the conflict (that will be a job for war historians) there is no doubt that it is the most significant innovation on the battlefield today, used by both sides to inflict large amounts of casualties on the other. During Ukraine’s failed 2023 counteroffensive, drones played a huge role in stopping that advance. With the possible exception of Russia’s distance mining equipment, which also took out large numbers of tanks, drones were pivotal in taking out NATO’s most powerful armor.

“[US media] admitted how useless the Abrams [tank] is when tens of millions of dollars per tank can be taken out by a $500 drone. It is a new model of warfare,” Mark Sleboda, a security and international relations expert told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Friday. “But it is an evolution of warfare that is occurring before our eyes. So, the Chinese and Americans are certainly paying very close attention,” he noted earlier in the interview. It is an opinion shared by former Marine and UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter. Speaking on the Danny Haiphong show, he explained how everything from tactics to logistics has been changed by drones. “When this war started, people were working off of Cold War-era doctrinal thinking. That is: you have tank columns, you have artillery that operates in battery or battalion sized formations flooding a zone, you have big arrow movements and things of that nature,” Ritter recalled. “[Then] drones started coming in, not just for targeting purposes, not just for deep strike purposes, but tactical drones on the battlefront. These FPV drones are a nightmare for soldiers.”

“If I tried to take Marines into combat using the tactics that I was taught,” Ritter continued “[With] two platoons online, basic fire etcetera, my base of fire would disappear because it’d be swarmed by FPV drones… then my Marines attacking would be hit by these drones and they’re all dead.” Much like Haig, this was a lesson that the Armed Forces of Ukraine failed to learn during their counteroffensive. Rabotino was intended to be the first minor step during that offensive that would lead to Tokmak which would serve as the staging ground for an assault on Melitopol. But as armor assault after armor assault was destroyed, it became apparent that the Ukrainians would never reach their goal. But, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky needed something to show his Western benefactors, so Rabotino became the goal. It took 71 days to capture the tiny village with a pre-war population of about 500 people, largely using the same tactics they began with. Ukraine lost dozens of expensive tanks and thousands of men capturing and then holding the village.

The Ukrainian offensive never went any further and in May, Russia recaptured the village. Just as the invention of the tank helped break the stalemate of the First World War, new technologies are emerging to counteract the drone and there it seems Russia has a decided advantage on that front. According to Military Watch Magazine, Russian electronic defenses have rendered Ukraine’s best artillery weapons all but useless, including the Excalibur GPS-guided artillery shells, the vaunted HIMARS rocket artillery systems and the JDAM precision-guided bombs. “Everything ended [in 2023]: the Russian deployed electronic warfare, disabled satellite signals, and HIMARS became completely ineffective,” one senior Ukrainian military official was quoted as saying. But the innovations on the battlefield aren’t exclusive to high technology, often they come from the soldiers on the ground. As tanks were increasingly taken out by drones, soldiers started adding cope cages in an attempt to protect them. This eventually led to the deployment of what is affectionately called the “turtle tank.”

Typically beginning with a T-72 tank, so-called turtle tanks are outfitted with a metal shell that covers almost the entirety of the tank, leaving only the very front and its cannon exposed to drone attack. While limiting the driver in visibility and maneuverability, those drawbacks have proven worth it. The Ukrainians who initially laughed at the turtle tank’s awkward appearance and low-tech solution quickly stopped laughing as they retreated from turtle tank assaults across the Western front.

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“..the Russian response will not be nuclear. That is impossible. There are a thousand options between doing nothing and going nuclear, and we can be sure the General Staff are working on all of them..”

• The Popski Syndrome – Allied Defeat Turns Into Battlefield Fantasies (Helmer)

In war, exaggeration is a killer. In the media, exaggeration is a bestseller. In the current war there is a dearth of military and political analysts who for truth or money will tell the difference. Instead, when the mentality of the war fighters is a combination of racial superiority and spetsnaz derring-do, what you get is the conviction that with one more brilliant operation and one more super-weapon, victory can be snatched from every indicator of defeat because the adversary will be persuaded to accept negotiations as he loses his nerve. This is the meaning of the Anglo-American publicity which burst over the long Bank Holiday and Memorial Day weekend, as summer campaigning began in earnest for the July and November elections in the UK and US — with the incumbent in the former running 21 points behind, and the incumbent in the latter trailing on an approval margin of minus-16 points.

The Reuters propaganda agency, based in New York, is claiming to have found four Russians from “a senior level in the political and business worlds” to be talkative about what they say they know of the Kremlin’s end-of-war plans. “[President Vladimir] Putin can fight for as long as it takes, but Putin is also ready for a ceasefire – to freeze the war… Putin would, however, be ready to settle for what land he has now and freeze the conflict at the current front lines, four of the sources said. ‘Putin will say that we won, that NATO attacked us and we kept our sovereignty, that we have a land corridor to Crimea, which is true,’ one of them said, giving their own analysis.” With just one more successful push from the Ukrainian side, Reuters and its four Russians believe, Putin will agree to give up his war. This push, which the western media have been amplifying this week, is the drone attacks on Russian radar stations for early warning of nuclear missile attack at Armavir, Krasnodar, and Orsk, Orenburg.

Although Russian military sources claim these attacks were pinpricks, and the second of them was shot out of the sky before detonation, western media are reporting that it is now the battle strategy of the US, the British, and the Ukrainians to provoke Putin into retaliation, crossing the red line of tactical nuclear warfare. That’s a red line, the allies are calculating, which Putin would rather negotiate end-of-war terms than cross. A retired Moscow military analyst warns against the exaggeration, not of the attacks themselves, but of Putin’s power to decide end-of-war terms over the opposition of the General Staff and the new Defense Ministry. “It is obvious the Ukrainians have had a string of successful breakthroughs,” the source acknowledges, “– against ships, airfields, refineries, and now this radar site. We also understand it is not the Ukrainians: all target selection, identification, guidance, and the hardware are American or European. Where the command control of these launch sites is, we do not know but it might well not be in Ukraine.”

“But the Russian response will not be nuclear. That is impossible. There are a thousand options between doing nothing and going nuclear, and we can be sure the General Staff are working on all of them. So when people say this is provocation for a nuclear strike and that [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky is provoking it, we understand that, first, NATO planners know Putin will not go nuclear because he and his generals are too rational and sane. And second, Zelensky is not the one making the provocations. So the real red line now is not the nuclear arms provocations from the NATO side. That’s a fantasy of theirs. Just so, in response, I think it’s time Putin stops making threats and strikes at the source of these operations.” When desperate weakness triggers battlefield fantasies, call this the Popski Syndrome.

Popski was the call sign and unit nickname assigned by the British Army headquarters in Cairo to a tiny unit of behind-the-lines special forces operating against the Italian and German armies in the Libyan deserts from late in 1941 until September 1943, when the war moved on to Italy, taking Popski with it. Popski’s unit numbered 24 men to start in Libya; in Italy, by the war’s end, it had reached 80. Vladimir Peniakoff was Popski, born to wealthy Jewish Russians who fled the Revolution to install their aluminium business and themselves in Belgium, then the UK. With London publisher Jonathan Cape, Peniakoff imagined he could turn his small guerrilla war in the Libyan and Tunisian deserts into something approaching the bestsellerdom of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E.Lawrence’s story of the war of the Arabian peninsula tribes against the Turks between 1916 and 1918; first published in 1926.

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A timeline.

• Presidents Who Gamble With Nuclear Armageddon (Jeffrey Sachs)

The Doomsday Clock was at 17 minutes to midnight when Clinton came to office, but just 9 minutes when he left it. Bush pushed the clock to just 5 minutes, Obama to 3 minutes, and Trump to a mere 100 seconds. Now Biden has taken the clock to 90 seconds. Most presidents, and most Americans, have little idea how close to the abyss we are. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which was founded in 1947 in part to help the world avoid nuclear annihilation, established the Doomsday Clock to help the public understand the gravity of the risks we face. National security experts adjust the clock depending how far or how close we are to “midnight,” meaning extinction. They put the clock today at just 90 seconds to midnight, the closest that it’s ever been in the nuclear age.

The clock is a useful measure of which presidents have “gotten it” and which have not. The sad fact is that most presidents have recklessly gambled with our survival in the name of national honor, or to prove their personal toughness, or to avoid political attacks from the warmongers, or as the result of sheer incompetence. By a simple and straightforward count, five presidents have gotten it right, moving the clock away from midnight, while nine have moved us closer to Armageddon, including the most recent five. Truman was president when the Doomsday Clock was unveiled in 1947, at 7 minutes to midnight. Truman stoked the nuclear arms race and left office with the clock at just 3 minutes to midnight. Eisenhower continued the nuclear arms race but also entered into the first-ever negotiations with the Soviet Union regarding nuclear disarmament. By the time he left office, the clock was put back to 7 minutes to midnight.

Kennedy saved the world by coolly reasoning his way through the Cuban Missile Crisis, rather than following the advice of hothead advisors who called for war (for a detailed account, see Martin Sherwin’s magisterial Gambling with Armageddon, 2020). He then negotiated the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Khrushchev in 1963. By the time of his death, which may well have been a government coup resulting from Kennedy’s peace initiative, JFK had pushed the clock back to 12 minutes to midnight, a magnificent and historic achievement. It was not to last. Lyndon Johnson soon escalated in Vietnam and pushed the clock back again to just 7 minutes to midnight. Richard Nixon eased tensions with both the Soviet Union and China, and concluded the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), pushing the clock again to 12 minutes from midnight. Yet Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter failed to secure SALT II, and Carter fatefully and unwisely gave a green light to the CIA in 1979 to destabilize Afghanistan. By the time Ronald Reagan took office, the clock was at just 4 minutes to midnight.

The next 12 years marked the end of the Cold War. Much of the credit is due to Mikhail Gorbachev, who aimed to reform the Soviet Union politically and economically, and to end the confrontation with the West. Yet credit is also due to Reagan and his successor George Bush, Sr., who successfully worked with Gorbachev to end the Cold War, which in turn was followed by the end of the Soviet Union itself in December 1991. By the time Bush left office, the Doomsday clock was at 17 minutes to midnight, the safest since the start of the nuclear age.

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UKiev.

• Russia’s Victory Over Ukraine Is Drawing Near (Scott Ritter)

By the time the counteroffensive ground to a halt, in December 2023, Ukraine was a spent force militarily. Its armed forces had used up their reserves of manpower. NATO had depleted its stocks of available military materiel. And the West had become politically exhausted at the prospect of a never-ending conflict which seemed destined to result in an endless cycle of throwing good money after bad, all the while failing to bring about the strategic goal of defeating Russia. Moscow, on the other hand, emerged from the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive in a good position. From a military perspective, the Russians had won the war of attrition with Ukraine and the collective West – basic military math had Ukraine consuming manpower and material resources at a far greater rate than they could be replenished, making Kiev grow physically weaker every day the conflict dragged on, while the Russians were able to accumulate manpower and material resources at a rate far greater than Ukraine was able to destroy, meaning Russia grew stronger every day te conflict continued.

Economically, Ukraine and its Western backers were exhausted. The blowback from the aggressive anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the West had severely curtailed the industrial capacity of the European members of the NATO alliance to sustain the scope and scale of its military support to Ukraine, while domestic political realities in the US, amplified by the fact that it was engaged in a hotly contested presidential election cycle, paralyzed the American ability to sustain Ukraine financially. The military and economic exhaustion of Ukraine and the collective West severely impacted the ability of this coalition to politically sustain support for a war that had no discernable prospect of ending well. While the conflict has not, by any stretch of the imagination, been without cost to Russia, the approach taken by the leadership, to create conditions on the battlefield designed to maximize enemy losses while minimizing their own, meant that Moscow entered 2024 in a much stronger position militarily, economically, and – perhaps most importantly – politically.

War, it has been said, is an extension of politics by other means, and this is no exception to the age-old adage. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s latest electoral victory has provided the leadership in Moscow with a political mandate that strengthens Russia’s hand considerably, especially contrasted with the weakened posture of Ukraine. It is within such a context that the Russian offensive north of Kharkov must be evaluated. From a military-political standpoint, the operation has a specific objective – to push Ukrainian forces back from the border with Russia so that Ukrainian artillery and rocket systems can no longer strike Russian territory. But there is a larger purpose for this offensive – to continue the process of grinding down the Ukrainian military, to complete the larger task of ”demilitarization” set by the Kremlin.

In this, Russia is succeeding. First and foremost, by attacking north of Kharkov, Moscow has compelled UKiev to commit not only the last of its mobile strategic reserves in response but, because these forces are inadequate in strength, to force Ukraine to strip away units on the eastern line of contact, in Kherson, Zaporozhye and Donbass, and to divert them to the Kharkov direction. The depletion of reserves is part and parcel of the overall Russian strategy of attrition. Moreover, as these forces displace to the Kharkov region, they are being interdicted by Russian air, missile, and drone strikes, further eroding their combat power. The result is that Ukraine is now defending a longer line of defense with even fewer forces than it started with.

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“They’re already selling off lands in Ukraine to foreign investors, and they will flood Ukraine with third-world immigrants and Ukraine will not exist in 50 years..”

• Ukraine Won’t Exist In 50 Years – Tucker Carlson (RT)

The US has “betrayed” Ukraine and will destroy the country by selling off its land and “flooding” it with third-world immigrants, American journalist Tucker Carlson predicted in an interview with former President Donald Trump’s son, Donald Jr. In a video interview published on Friday, Carlson and Trump Jr. both agreed that US President Joe Biden had brought the world to the brink of World War III, and that the US is essentially “at war with Russia.” “No-one’s articulated what victory in Ukraine looks like,” Trump Jr. said. “I don’t know what it means. Is it just like perpetual death of Ukrainians and Russians until they’re all wiped out and Blackrock comes in there and takes over all the farmland? That’s what it feels like to me.” Blackrock is the world’s biggest investment company, and controls an estimated $10 trillion in assets. The firm is one of Ukraine’s largest foreign bondholders, and in 2022 signed a memorandum of understanding with Kiev stating that it would manage Ukraine’s post-conflict reconstruction.

Several BlackRock alumni serve in the Biden administration, including Brian Deese, the head of the National Economic Council. After Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky signed a controversial package of land reforms into law in 2020, foreign investment firms like NCH Capital, BNP, and the Vanguard Group now control around 28% of Ukraine’s arable land, according to research by the Oakland Institute, an American think tank. Zelensky’s reforms were backed by the International Monetary Fund and US Agency for International Development. “They’re already selling off lands in Ukraine to foreign investors, and they will flood Ukraine with third-world immigrants and Ukraine will not exist in 50 years,” Carlson stated. “There’ll be no Ukrainian nation. We betrayed them like no other country ever.”

Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised that he would end the Ukraine conflict “in 24 hours” if re-elected this November, telling a Libertarian Party conference last weekend that he intends to “quit spending hundreds of billions of dollars to fight other people’s wars.” Trump has never fully elaborated on how he would do this, save for forcing Zelensky to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but recent reports by Bloomberg and the Washington Post suggest that he would leverage the US’ massive military assistance to Kiev to pressure Zelensky into accepting the loss of some of Ukraine’s pre-conflict territory. However, Trump’s rhetoric on Russia has toughened in recent months, with the former president telling donors last week that he “would have bombed” Moscow when Russia’s military operation began in 2022. Trump did not lobby his Congressional allies to block a $61 billion aid package for Kiev in April, and said at the time that he would support lending, rather than gifting, money to Zelensky in future.

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“..you ate up every piece of propaganda, repeated all of it without any thought to whether it was true or not..”

• Dave Smith Burns Chris Cuomo To The Ground In Epic Covid Debate (ZH)

For the legions of us who still carry righteous rage about the tyrannical and destructive Covid-19 regime, the planets aligned on Friday and gave us the enormous, vicarious pleasure of watching one of libertarianism’s most articulate voices repeatedly pummel one of the most visible villains of that dark era. In a debate hosted by Patrick Bet-David of PBD Podcast fame, “Part of the Problem” podcaster and comedian Dave Smith took on former CNN anchor and Covid regime propagandist Chris Cuomo. From lockdowns to masks, vaccines, Ivermectin and the vilification of resisters, the debate covered a lot of ground, with Smith dropping one laser-guided bomb after another on Cuomo.

Let’s dive right into the highlights…First, Smith opened the debate with a gentlemanly gesture, giving Cuomo a copy of the Tom Woods book, “Diary of a Psychosis: How Public Health Disgraced Itself During Covid Mania.” Tongue in cheek, he said, “I know you like following the science, and there’s a whole lot of science in that book.” Before the next clip, recall that, in an infamous segment on CNN, Cuomo and Don Lemon smugly battered Joe Rogan and others who used Ivermectin to battle Covid. Despite the fact that Ivermectin has been used since 1975 with great success against a wide variety of human maladies, Cuomo and Lemon ran hard with the regime narrative that referred to the wonder drug solely as a veterinary de-wormer.

Earlier this month, Cuomo revealed to Bet-David that he’s now himself taking a “regular dose of Ivermectin” for purported long Covid. However, In this jaw-dropping sequence, Cuomo stunned anyone with a memory of his exchange with Lemon by saying, “I don’t like what people did to Joe Rogan about Ivermectin.” A stunned Smith replied, “YOU did it!” Cuomo denied it and challenged Smith to “find the clips.” The PBD crew obliged, promptly rolling the damning video: Smith condemned Cuomo for failing to do his job, which was to “be skeptical of power and to shine a light against the propaganda…you ate up every piece of propaganda, repeated all of it without any thought to whether it was true or not, and then smeared millions of Americans like myself who were opposed to this stuff.” Cuomo said Smith was guilty of using “hyperbole” in referring to the Covid regime as “totalitarian.” An unwavering Smith had a pointed and compelling response: Smith elaborated, explaining why “it was completely criminal for all of these governments to lock down”…

Asked whether lockdowns were a net benefit — or instead erred on the side of catastrophe — Cuomo drew audience laughter when he said, “The people I talked to — who made these decisions — stand by them.” Smith quipped, “I’m sure Dick Cheney stands by the war in Iraq too!” Smith grew indignant when Cuomo suggested that Smith’s focus was on drawing attention to himself — to the detriment of society. Smith countered: “You’re attacking my motives…meanwhile, when those CNN checks were coming in, you said nothing that would have put them in jeopardy, but now that you’re here, you’re starting to tell a little bit of the truth.”

[..] Alas, amid the joy of Smith’s outstanding performance, there was a wistful element too, as many who’d hoped Smith would carry the flag of liberty as the 2024 Libertarian Party presidential candidate were reminded of what a remarkable champion he would have been — in stark contrast to the leftist, open-borders, drag-queen-promoting, kid-transing doozie the party ended up with. That said, far be it from us to end a feel-good story on a down note. Our highlight reel just scratched the surface: If you’re looking for weekend entertainment, here’s the entire debate, which also covers much more Covid ground, Trump’s trumped-up conviction and a lot more:

Dave Smith CNN
https://twitter.com/i/status/1796766419709022460

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“We certainly can’t support the election of a person to the position of NATO’s secretary general, who previously wanted to force Hungary on its knees..”

• Mark Rutte, The Dutch Invader, Is Sinking In The Hungarian Goulash (Helmer)

The Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte was the first leader of a NATO state to try to send his soldiers on to the Ukrainian battlefield to fight Russian forces directly. That was in July 2014, in the aftermath of the Ukrainian shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17. That Rutte scheme failed after it was vetoed by the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel; she insisted on more time to prepare the NATO forces in the Ukraine to fight Russia. Now that they are, Rutte is the US candidate to become the new secretary-general of NATO. For the first time, however, his appointment is being vetoed by a NATO member, Hungary, which has proposed an alternative candidate – the ethnic German Klaus Iohannis, who is President of Romania. Because NATO rules require unanimity on the secretary-general, the Hungarian objection puts the Rutte nomination in the soup — make that goulash.

Rutte’s plan to deploy up to 9,000 troops in the Donbass had been devised in the summer of 2014 with two other Dutchmen – David Petraeus, who is also a US national, a US Army general, and former CIA director; and Sandra Roelofs, a Dutch national who held Georgian citizenship because she was married to Mikheil Saakashvili, onetime President of Georgia. Their cover story was that the NATO military intervention force was required to recover the black boxes of the downed MH17 aircraft and the bodies of the passengers, most of them Dutch. Every one of Rutte’s attempts to go to war with Russia has ended in exposure of his personal lying; the collapse of the Dutch-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW); and the loss of almost €30 billion in bilateral trade – oil and petroleum products from Russia; Dutch pharmaceuticals, medical technology, financial services, cut flowers, seeds and plants.

None of these losses has had material or political impact on the domestic Dutch constituencies or the Dutch media, which have accepted the state propaganda line, and in the case of the Dutch media owner, Derk Sauer, the money to keep repeating it. The book documenting the collaboration of Rutte and his officials in fabricating the narrative of Russian culpability in the MH17 crash, concealing the role of Kiev president Petro Poroshenko, and manipulating the evidence at The Hague District Court show trial, can be read here. Defeated at the Dutch parliamentary election last November, Rutte has been replaced as prime minister by a coalition of parties led by Geert Wilders, who agreed this week to Hendrikus (“Dick”) Schoof as prime minister. Schoof is a Dutch deep-stater and career liar who was promoted by the MH17 affair into the Dutch equivalent of the FBI, and then into the top job of the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security.

According to a veteran Dutch political analyst, “the nomination of Dick Schoof is a terrible fact. He is the head of the secret services responsible for NATO agitprop on MH17, on OPCW, on the so-called Covid protective measures. Also, he was responsible for the protection of Geert Wilders [from Islamic attacks]. In a way Wilders has been his prisoner – Schoof has been the jailer who has held the keys to Wilders’s physical survival. Schoof has also been protecting Rutte from personal scandal. He’s the J.Edgar Hoover type of secret policeman.” The Russian reaction to Rutte’s nomination for the NATO post was muted until the Hungarian government announced that it is opting out of NATO operations, financial support and arms supplies to the Ukraine war; and that it will not accept Rutte at NATO. “We certainly can’t support the election of a person to the position of NATO’s secretary general, who previously wanted to force Hungary on its knees,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó said several weeks ago.

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“I’m saying this slowly so that Brussels would understand: we will not go to war. We will not go to the East for a third time, we will not go to the Russian front again.”

• Huge Anti-War Rally In Budapest, Hungary (RT)

Hundreds of thousands participated in a peace march in Hungary’s capital, Budapest on Saturday, denouncing the EU’s policy of escalating tensions with Russia. The event culminated with a speech by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who accused Brussels of bringing Europe closer to a global conflict. The demonstrators marched from the iconic Chain Bridge to Margaret Island on the Danube River. Many carried flags, chanted pacifist slogans, and held signs reading “No war” and “Give us peace, Lord.” “Never before have so many people lined up for peace. We are the biggest peace corps, the largest peacekeeping force in Europe,” the prime minister said, as quoted by Reuters. “Europe must be prevented from rushing into war, into its own destruction.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1796910522383704217

Orban said his country must draw lessons from the devastation it went through the darkest times of the 20th century. “In the two world wars, the Hungarians lost 1.5 million lives, and with them – their future children and grandchildren,” he told the crowd. “I’m saying this slowly so that Brussels would understand: we will not go to war. We will not go to the East for a third time, we will not go to the Russian front again.” Orban urged everyone to support the “pro-peace and pro-sovereignty” agenda of the ruling Fidesz party in the European Parliament election next week. “Do we want to shed Hungarian blood for Ukraine? No, we don’t,” he said. The pro-war [forces] have gone beyond common sense by wanting to defeat Russia as they tried to do during the First World War and the Second World war.

Since the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, Orban has repeatedly accused the EU leadership in Brussels of dangerous brinkmanship with Moscow and warned that the bloc must not allow itself to be dragged into a full-blown war. Budapest has refused to provide any military aid to Ukraine and threatened to veto financial assistance to Kiev. Orban heavily criticized the economic sanctions imposed on Moscow by the EU, arguing that the bloc had “shot itself in the lungs” by undermining trade and its own energy supply.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Moore Peterson

 

 

Oxdog
https://twitter.com/i/status/1796805027706621955

 

 

Giraffes
https://twitter.com/i/status/1796194713969537066

 

 

Thank you
https://twitter.com/i/status/1796891909656310164

 

 

Happiness
https://twitter.com/i/status/1797011583891116440

 

 

Fishing net

 

 

Emmanuel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1796791908389323179

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle May 10 2024

May 102024
 
 May 10, 2024  Posted by at 8:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


Carl Spitzweg The raven 1845

 

• Jack Smith Has Few Options in Trump Case, Say Former Prosecutors (ET)
• Trump Announces ‘Major Motion’ Filed in New York Appeals Court (ET)
• Democrats Attack Judge for Delaying Trump Florida Trial (Turley)
• Putin Doesn’t Bluff (Jim Rickards)
• US Defenseless Against Russian Hypersonic Missiles, Iranian Drones – DoD (Sp.)
• Boeing’s Setbacks Show Why US Industries Lose Competitive Edge (Sp.)
• Aging US Fleet and Drained Stockpiles No Match for China and Russia (Sp.)
• Biden Denies Economic Reality In Car Crash CNN Interview (MN)
• Tucker Carlson Interviews Biden Accuser Tara Reade (RT)
• Whole West Is Working To Supply Ukraine – Putin (RT)
• West ‘Trying To Distort’ History Of WWII – Putin (RT)

 

 

 

 

Fani more

 

 

Larry Johnson

 

 

 

 

 

 

Evidence tampering. Throw out the whole case. Not salvageable.

• Jack Smith Has Few Options in Trump Case, Say Former Prosecutors (ET)

A federal judge’s ruling this week that postponed former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case represents a significant legal win for the former president, legal analysts say. A former federal prosecutor, Renato Mariotti, wrote that there is virtually “nothing” special counsel Jack Smith can do to speed the process up. “Realistically there is nothing Jack Smith can do to move the Mar-a-Lago case forward to trial before the election. Judges have extremely broad discretion over their trial calendar, which is what gives Judge Cannon the ability to avoid setting a trial date at this time,” Mr. Mariotti wrote on social media. Another former federal prosecutor, Brandon Van Grack, wrote that Mr. Smith’s team will have “a bumpy ride” ahead of them because of Judge Cannon’s “numerous other scheduled hearings on pretrial motions” from President Trump and two co-defendants, which he indicates that Judge Cannon believes “have merit.”

Harry P. Litman, a law professor and a former U.S. attorney, echoed those claims, saying that the case is now in a “deep freeze” after the latest order. Meanwhile, multiple television legal analysts claimed that with her latest order, Judge Cannon is intentionally trying to delay the case. The Epoch Times contacted the court for comment. “This is news but it’s hardly unexpected. Judge Cannon seems desperate to avoid trying this case. This isn’t justice. defendants aren’t the only ones with speedy trial act rights, we the people have them too,” wrote former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance, who currently works for MSNBC, on Tuesday afternoon. But Tim Fitton, the head of the Judicial Watch legal group, wrote that complaints about Judge Cannon’s decisions are unwarranted, arguing that such a timeline “is normal and not surprising.”

“But the Left’s election riggers and civil rights abusers believe that Trump has no rights and will attack Judge Cannon for proceeding normally in this case and for not violating Trump’s constitutional rights,” he wrote on X, formerly known Twitter. In that post, he pointed out that Mr. Smith’s team last week submitted court papers to Judge Cannon essentially saying that his team misled the court because the contents of a box of documents were re-arranged. Prosecutors did not disclose the exact reason why the materials may have been shifted. “There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans,” Mr. Smith’s team wrote, adding that the update contrasts with what they told the judge several weeks ago during a hearing.

The boxes in question have “items smaller than standard paper such as index cards, books, and stationary, which shift easily when the boxes are carried, especially because many of the boxes are not full,” they added. After the disclosure, President Trump wrote his Truth Social platform that he believes Mr. Smith should be arrested before calling for the case to be immediately dropped.

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“‘I’ve been doing this for 60 years, and I don’t understand what crime he’s been charged with. Nobody understands this. I just don’t get the crime. There’s no evidence of any crime whatsoever..”

• Trump Announces ‘Major Motion’ Filed in New York Appeals Court (ET)

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday confirmed that his lawyers asked a New York state appellate court to issue a ruling on a judge’s gag order that prohibits him from speaking about certain individuals connected to his ongoing trial. His team filed a motion on Wednesday, which has been sealed and is inaccessible, according to the court docket. The Manhattan district attorney’s office filed a response to the motion, but it was also sealed. While speaking with reporters outside the courthouse on Thursday morning, President Trump confirmed the move. Anonymously sourced reports published Wednesday said that it was a motion to expedite the ruling. “I just want to let you know that we’ve just filed a major motion in the appellate division concerning the absolutely unconstitutional gag order, where I’m essentially not allowed to talk to you about anything meaningful that’s going on in the case. And many good things are going on with the case. It shouldn’t have been filed,” he said. During his comments to reporters, he did not go into specifics about the motion.

The former president is under a gag order that prohibits him from making public statements about potential witnesses, court staff, prosecutors’ staff, or family members. Judge Juan Merchan, who issued the order and later expanded it, ruled that President Trump violated his directive 10 times before threatening to jail the former president if he makes future comments that he believes violate that order. Previously, the New York Court of Appeals rejected the former president’s bid to pause the trial while he battles the gag order. They also rejected an attempt to pause the enforcement of the order, which was issued in March after prosecutors requested it. His lawyers have argued that the gag order violates the former president’s First Amendment right to free speech, noting that he is currently the leading Republican presidential candidate. But earlier this week, Judge Merchan fined the former president for a 10th time for an April remark that he made to a media outlet about the Manhattan jury pool, which he said was “95 percent” Democratic.

The judge then said that a $1,000 fine isn’t enough and that he might have to jail the former president, although he did not go into specifics about how that would look like. “Your continued willful violations of this court’s orders threaten to interfere with the … administration of justice,” Judge Merchan said before issuing a warning about possible jail time. The former president, in response, criticized the judge and wrote on Truth Social that he is now not allowed to respond publicly to “lies and false statements” made about him during the New York trial. It came after witness Stormy Daniels made salacious allegations about President Trump during her first trial appearance, which President Trump has denied. According to emails reviewed by The Epoch Times, the Trump campaign also used the judge’s threat as a means to fundraise for his presidential campaign. “The liberal judge in New York just threatened to THROW ME IN JAIL,” read one of the emails, adding that they want him “in HANDCUFFS.”

During his remarks to reporters on Thursday, the former president also quoted multiple legal analysts’ commentary on the case to say that it should never have been brought against him. Those analysts, which President Trump read aloud from a piece of paper, stated prosecutors revived the case after more than seven years in a politicized attempt to harm his 2024 reelection campaign. “‘I’ve been doing this for 60 years, and I don’t understand what crime he’s been charged with. Nobody understands this. I just don’t get the crime. There’s no evidence of any crime whatsoever. This is a sham,’” President Trump said, quoting retired Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz. The trial is expected to last another two weeks. On Thursday, Ms. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, again took the witness stand and was grilled by defense attorneys about whether she was using her allegations against President Trump to make money for herself and bolster her name recognition.

President Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up his former lawyer Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Ms. Daniels for her silence ahead of the 2016 election about the alleged encounter. President Trump has pleaded not guilty and denies Ms. Daniels’ claims. The case is seen by some as the least consequential of the four criminal prosecutions President Trump faces. But the chances of the other three, going to trial before the election are growing more distant. He has pleaded not guilty in all the cases. The former president’s cases in Georgia and Washington were paused by the respective judges overseeing them. Meanwhile, in a major legal win, a Florida federal judge suspended his classified documents case indefinitely after prosecutors revealed that the contents of an evidence box were inexplicably rearranged.

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” this is a case where justice delayed is justice.”

• Democrats Attack Judge for Delaying Trump Florida Trial (Turley)

While pundits, politicians and the press have long expressed outrage over attacks on judges by former President Donald Trump, many are now attacking any judge who delays any trial of Trump before the election. Democrats have accused Judge Aileen Cannon of being politically compromised, if not conspiratorial, in her delay of the Florida trial over the mishandling of classified documents. Yet, there is ample reason for the delay that many of us anticipated in this type of case when it was filed. For months, many of us have said that we doubt that this type of trial could be held on the rapid schedule demanded by Special Counsel Jake Smith. Smith has repeatedly sought to curtail trial review and even appellate rights of Trump to advance his schedule. His office has made convicting Trump before the election the overriding objective of its motion — a sharp departure from past Justice Department efforts to avoid trials to influence elections.

As a criminal defense counsel, I have handled classified material cases and they are notoriously slow. Smith could have prosecuted this case in the shorter time frame if he simply charge obstruction. That would have also eliminated the glaring contrast with the handling of the Biden investigation into the current president’s retention and mishandling of classified material. Smith decided to charge an array of document charges related to classified material. The defense must have access, review, and can appeal issue related to the classified procedures. Yet, Smith wanted both the array of document charges and a fast track to trial. The Supreme Court has agreed with Cannon that Smith desire to secure a conviction before the election is not the overriding consideration. Judge Cannon is faced with recent admissions that the government mixed up files in the boxes and staged the famous photos of document strewn over a floor with classified jackets. Most importantly, disputes over the relevant documents continue as expected in the case. Nevertheless, leading democrats are denouncing Cannon as a partisan hack.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on federal courts and oversight subcommittee, said accused Cannon of “deliberately slow-walking the case.” Ignoring the fact that similar cases have taken much longer to go to trial, Whitehouse simply declared “it is hard for me not to reach the conclusion that this [judge] is deliberately slow-walking the case to put it into a position where should [Trump] be elected, he can order that the investigation and prosecution be terminated.” His colleague Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) insisted that Cannon was “managing this case in a way that is making it highly unlikely that it will be resolved in a timely fashion.” Coons added “Justice deferred is often justice denied.” It is a bizarre statement. Classified documents cases routinely take longer to go to trial. The alternative is to cut off the ability of the defense to fully review the documents and review objections for resolution before trial. Yet, because the defendant is Trump and these Democrats want the trial to influence the election, such defense protections are now evidence of judicial bias.

They, of course, ignore that Cannon has ruled repeatedly against major Trump motions in the case. Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said Cannon’s “at it again, doing everything she can to delay.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), offered the most telling line. He said “I question whether this judge understands the magnitude or the legal import of this trial.”Indeed, it is the timing as much as the charges that makes this so important to the Justice Department and the Democrats. Smith has crafted this case to impact the election and the failure of the court to support that effort is apparently grounds for recusal. Blumenthal called for such a motion before the window is lost before the election: “It’s a classic dilemma for justice that a particular judicial officer may be conducting a trial that could be better done by somebody else.” Despite the statement of his colleague Coons, this is a case where justice delayed is justice.

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“You may assume that Houthi rebels in Yemen want to avoid attacks by the U.S., but they don’t care — they live in caves anyway, so you can’t bomb them into the Stone Age because they’re already there//”

• Putin Doesn’t Bluff (Jim Rickards)

One of the persistent problems in intelligence analysis is what experts call “mirror imaging.” This is jargon for an analytic flaw in which the analyst assumes that his beliefs and preferences are shared by an adversary. Instead of looking at the adversary as he actually is, the analyst is looking in a mirror while assuming he is looking at the adversary. This is an extremely dangerous flaw. You may be rational, but the mullahs who rule Iran are not. You may believe that leaders want economic growth, but Communist Chinese leaders elevate the party over all other considerations including the well-being of their people. You may assume that Houthi rebels in Yemen want to avoid attacks by the U.S., but they don’t care — they live in caves anyway, so you can’t bomb them into the Stone Age because they’re already there. Nowhere is this flaw more apparent today than in the U.S. intelligence analysis of Vladimir Putin.

In 2008, President Bush said that Ukraine and Georgia should join NATO. A few months later, Putin invaded Georgia, annexed part of its territory and destroyed Georgia’s chances of joining NATO. In 2014, the U.S. backed a coup d’état in Ukraine that deposed a duly elected leader. Three months later, Putin annexed Crimea from Ukraine and made it part of the Russian Federation. In 2021, NATO began formal processes to admit Ukraine as a member. In February 2022, Russia began a special military operation that’s resulted in 500,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers. Some estimates are even higher. Ukraine’s chances of joining NATO are now zero. In every case, U.S. analysts did not believe Putin would take the steps he did because they thought it might somehow weaken Putin or Russia. That’s mirror imaging at its worst. The truth is Putin doesn’t bluff. When he says he will do something, he does. When he says he will react to some Western act, the reaction takes place.

Putin said if the West steals Russian assets, Russia will retaliate by seizing billions of dollars of direct foreign investment in Russia owned by major European companies such as Siemens, Total, BP and others. And sure enough, just days after Biden signed legislation to authorize the theft of Russian assets, a Russian court ordered $440 million be seized from JPMorgan. The escalation in the asset seizure war has begun. Putin will win in the end. Unfortunately, escalation is also increasing on the geopolitical front. The U.S. and some of its European allies are becoming increasingly desperate about Ukraine’s ability to hold off Russia on the battlefield. The recent $61 billion aid package for Ukraine (about two-thirds of which will go to U.S. defense companies) won’t be nearly enough to reverse the tide. The U.S. and its NATO allies have already given just about all they can afford to give Ukraine without jeopardizing their own security. The problem isn’t a lack of money but a lack of weapons and ammunition. Before the aid package was approved, critics complained that Ukraine was losing because the U.S. was withholding desperately needed materiel. But that’s not really true.

The Europeans could have simply bought the weapons from the U.S. and delivered them to Ukraine. They didn’t. Why? Because the weapons simply weren’t there. Yes, there will always be a supply of weapons flowing to Ukraine — they’re not going to run out completely. But Ukraine won’t have nearly enough weapons and ammunition to undertake meaningful offensive operations against the Russians. They’ll just have enough to keep them in the fight, which is the goal of NATO. Unfortunately for Ukraine, the problems run much deeper than a lack of equipment. They’re also running out of trained manpower. Former commander Valeriy Zaluzhny has suggested Ukraine needs an extra 500,000 troops. But they’re having trouble finding new volunteers. An estimated 650,000 fighting age men have fled Ukraine. Meanwhile, the Russian army is even larger than it was before the invasion, and Russian industry is churning out weapons and ammunition at astonishing rates.

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“..could we knock down 99 percent of those missiles coming in?”

• US Defenseless Against Russian Hypersonic Missiles, Iranian Drones – DoD (Sp.)

The crisis in Ukraine and escalating tensions in the Middle East have demonstrated that the US’ $886 billion defense budget has not translated into real-world capabilities on the ground. Now, an explosive verbal exchange on Capitol Hill has revealed that North America’s skies are defenseless against not only Russian, but even Iranian missiles. An otherwise boring and formulaic briefing by senior Pentagon officials to lawmakers from the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces went off the rails on Wednesday after subcommittee Chairman Angus King took the floor and forced Department of Defense officials to reveal that North America is helpless against adversaries it has spent years agitating around the world. “The truth is we have no defense for hypersonic missiles – yes or no? Mr. Hill, any defense on the hypersonic missile?

You’re the commander of an aircraft carrier in the Greenland Gap. If we have a hypersonic missile launched from Murmansk [traveling at] 6,000 miles an hour, what do you do?” King asked, querying Deputy Secretary of Defense for Space and Missile Defense John Hill. “We have some systems to defend in the terminal stage but we need more, you’re correct, Senator King… that our hypersonic defenses are inadequate and we do need [more]. SM-6 is in the Navy’s terminal range [capability], the Patriot – I’ll let General Gainey speak to the specifics on that. Those are examples but no argument, we need to focus on hypersonic defenses,” Hill responded. “So why are we talking about 2029 and even stretching that out? This is next year kind of stuff. I don’t get your budget,” King countered, referencing the lack of focus on anti-hypersonic capabilities in current US defense spending plans.

“What we faced in the budget this year – it was a difficult year, particularly with the Fiscal Responsibility Act caps that we had to work with. There were must-pay bills that we had to work with for the personnel, the salaries, the health care, inflation costs. When you get down to the point of where you get down to the discretionary types of things where you can really control your choices,” Hill said. “But that’s your mission – your mission is missile defense,” King retorted. “The budget decisions are made at a higher level and so you’re trading off between readiness or your future investments,” Hill said. “Well let me put the question another way: let’s say what happened on April 14 [Iran’s retaliatory missile and drone attack on Israel, ed.] happened over the Arctic Ocean – 300 missiles, drones, UAVs came across the Arctic Ocean toward Canada and North America. Could we do what Israel and we and other countries did – could we knock down 99 percent of those missiles coming in?” King asked. “No chairman,” Air Force General Gregory Guillot, commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), responded.

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One major accident away from bankruptcy.

• Boeing’s Setbacks Show Why US Industries Lose Competitive Edge (Sp.)

Boeing’s problems keep piling up. The company faces a new inquiry over B787 Dreamliner safety inspections and is feeling the blowback from sanctions on Russia. Passengers and crew members have been evacuated from a Corendon Airlines Boeing 737-800 after one of the plane’s tyres burst during landing in Turkey. The accident occurred on Thursday at Gazipasa, an airport near the Turkish town of Alanya. It was the third serious incident involving one of the aviation giant’s aircraft in just two days, the Daily Mail noted. Bad news has dogged Boeing for the past few years, undermining its profits and driving down its share price. Earlier this week, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) opened a new probe into whether the Seattle-based corporation broke rules during inspections of its long-haul B787 Dreamliner passenger jet, and whether its employees falsified aircraft records.

The FAA announced last month that Boeing had “voluntarily” revealed that some of its employees had not performed required tests to confirm adequate bonding and grounding of the fasteners connecting the wings to the fuselage, and had then falsely reported the checks had been completed. Quoting a source familiar with the issue, CBS News said as many as 450 aircraft could be affected, including around 60 airframes still on the production line. According to the FAA, the aircraft still in Boeing’s possession are undergoing re-inspection, while the company maintains that the reported “misconduct” would not pose an “immediate safety-of-flight issue.” The FAA’s latest inquiry comes on the heels of a US Congressional investigation into the safety culture and manufacturing standards at Boeing. Sam Salehpour, a Boeing quality engineer, told Congress last month that the industrial giant was cutting corners to speed up production — which is fraught with acute safety risks.

The whistle-blower also complained that Boeing employees raising red flags over quality issues were “ignored, marginalized, threatened, sidelined and worse.” He told Congress that he was afraid of being subjected to “physical violence” after exposing the aerospace corporation’s flaws Two other Boeing whistleblowers, Joshua Dean, former quality auditor at Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems, and John “Mitch” Barnett, a former Boeing employee, passed away in May and March, respectively. Dean died after a short illness, while Barnett was found dead in an apparent suicide. Barnett and Dean both raised the alarm over manufacturing defects in Boeing’s 737 Max and other planes, after a series of crashes involving the aircraft. In January, all 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 planes were temporarily grounded by the FAA after a door panel blew out on an Alaska Airlines flight. The same month, an oxygen leak was discovered on board a Boeing 737. Remarkably, the aircraft was scheduled to carry US Secretary of State Antony Blinken from the Davos World Economic Forum.

At least ten more whistle-blowers, including former and current employees, are ready to testify against the aerospace company, the Independent reported, quoting lawyers for both Dean and Barnett. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Boeing is facing a new problem stemming from anti-Russia sanctions, imposed by the US over Moscow’s special operation in Ukraine. As a result, the industrial giant cannot deliver enough B787 Dreamliners. According to the WSJ, the trouble was caused by a lack of heat exchangers – temperature-regulating parts for the B787 – which were previously produced in Russia. Even though the production was shifted to the US and the UK, new factories have proven incapable of keeping up with demand.

Boeing’s inability to obtain enough heat exchangers disrupted the pace of Dreamliner manufacturing. The company was forced to warn investors that it will not deliver as many planes as anticipated this year. American Airlines blamed Dreamliner delays for its decision to suspend some international and long-haul flights this year and next. Boeing also severed ties with a major Russian titanium supplier and halted selling spare parts and maintenance services to Russian airlines that operate its passenger planes. The WSJ admitted that US anti-Russia sanctions significantly backfired on Boeing and jet manufacturing in general, naming Russia “a big player in the global aerospace supply chain.”

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China possesses approximately 370 warships, compared to the US fleet of 291 vessels. In 2023, China added 30 ships to its fleet [..] the US built only two warships last year..”

• Aging US Fleet and Drained Stockpiles No Match for China and Russia (Sp.)

The US Navy faces delays in vessel repairs and a sluggish pace in construction of new warships. The crisis was reported by the US Naval Institute (USNI) and the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), according to Asia Times. Diana Maurer, Director of Defense Capabilities and Management at the Government Accountability Office, testified to the Senate Armed Services readiness subcommittee on May 1. She revealed that fewer than 40 percent of US Navy ships had completed repairs on time, despite available space in shipyards. According to the GAO, “the Navy has not developed a full cost and schedule estimate for its Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program (SIOP) – an effort to improve its dry docks, facilities, and equipment – and reports that it will not be able to do so until Fiscal Year 2025.” Maurer signaled that shipyard conditions are second only to F-35 Lightning II sustainment costs, raising the alarm over the Navy’s readiness.

In his own congressional testimony, Vice Chief of Naval Operations Admiral James Kilby acknowledged that issues related to “ship production and repair” rank among the top challenges confronting the US Navy today. The US Navy’s ship design practices are largely outdated, which contributes to the slower pace, less predictable costs and performance outcomes of warship construction when compared to commercial shipbuilding. According to GAO, the Navy has been slow to embrace new design tools such as 3-D modeling and digital twinning, and still provides its contractors with 2D design data for legacy ship classes. Shipbuilders also complain that the Navy is usually slow to provide vendor-furnished information (VFI) – the documents that shipyards need as input to engineering and design products – to feed digital models. The Navy’s contractors want clearer technical tasks as well as funding for acquiring and implementing new digital tools.

The issue has been raised amid the US growing competition with China and the Biden administration’s saber-rattling over the island of Taiwan and the South China Sea. At the Senate panel’s hearing, Republican Senator Dan Sullivan from Alaska lamented that the building of new submarines and surface warships in the US is well below the pace set by China. Last July, a leaked US Navy intelligence briefing slide published by The War Zone revealed that China’s shipbuilding capacity is 232 times greater than that of the US. While the People’s Republic’s shipyards have a capacity of over 23.2 million tons, the US capacity is less than 100,000 tons according to the leaked presentation, which was confirmed as authentic in September 2023 by a US Navy spokesperson.

The US Naval Institute admitted in 2021 that China already boasted the world’s largest navy, while in February 2024, US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) commander Admiral Samuel Paparo warned that Beijing was winning the shipbuilding numbers game. According to Congress, China possesses approximately 370 warships, compared to the US fleet of 291 vessels. In 2023, China added 30 ships to its fleet, 15 of which were large surface combatants including cruisers, destroyers. and an additional aircraft carrier. By contrast, the US built only two warships last year.

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“..claiming that inflation was 9 percent when he came into office, when in reality it was 1.4 percent..”

• Biden Denies Economic Reality In Car Crash CNN Interview (MN)

During a brutal CNN interview aired Wednesday, Joe Biden looked shocked when host Erin Burnett reeled off a list of stats detailing how bad the economy is. Instead of suggesting how he is going to improve the situation, Biden denied any of it was real and claimed every poll showing Americans favouring Trump on the economy is wrong. “Voters, by a wide margin, trust Trump more on the economy,” Burnett noted, before listing possible reasons for that including the cost of buying a home having doubled, real income accounting for inflation being down, economic growth being way short of expectations and consumer confidence being near a two year low. “Are you worried that you’re running out of time to turn [the economy] around?” Burnett asked Biden. “We’ve already turned it around,” Biden bizarrely claimed, before adding that “the polling data has been wrong all along.”

When Burnett pointed out that Grocery prices are up almost a third, Biden shrugged it off and claimed Americans “have the money to spend.”

He repeated the tired lie about creating millions of jobs that everyone knows is complete rubbish because he’s including jobs that were reinstated from the pandemic:

Biden also told an absolute whopper, claiming that inflation was 9 percent when he came into office, when in reality it was 1.4 percent. After Biden took office, inflation surged to rates unseen since the early 1980s, peaking at an annual rate of 9.1 percent in June 2022, a full 17 months after he took office. Yet, he is claiming it was ALREADY at 9 percent. Since Biden took office, the average prices of goods and services have increased 19 percent, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. By comparison, during Trump’s four years in office, prices increased by 8 percent, or roughly 2 percent per year, which is the normal annual rate of inflation.

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Good thing he went to see her.

• Tucker Carlson Interviews Biden Accuser Tara Reade (RT)

American journalist Tucker Carlson has released a 22-minute interview with RT contributor and former US Senate aide Tara Reade, who rose to prominence after accusing Joe Biden of having sexually assaulted her back in 1993. The interview was recorded in Moscow, where Reade moved last year due to concerns for her safety in the US. In 2020, at the height of the US presidential election campaign, Reade publicly accused Biden of having subjected her to a “violent sexual assault” on the Capitol grounds in 1993. She was working on the Democratic senator’s team at the time. In a 2021 interview, President Biden said the incident “never happened.” In her interview with Carlson, Reade recounted how the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI had “harassed” her, claiming that she had even received “death threats. According to the former aide, US authorities built a case against her after accessing her email and social media accounts.

She added that, while the FBI and the DOJ had come close to indicting her, they wouldn’t disclose what her supposed crime was as the whole case was “sealed.” Reade suggested that the real reason behind the legal proceedings was her failure to ‘shut up’ about the sexual assault allegedly perpetrated by Biden. She claimed that the mainstream US media had lapped up “innuendos” about her, with most outlets working as “proxies of the US government.” Reade added that, in addition to her sexual harassment allegations against Biden, her recent criticism regarding the state of the US economy as well as the “proxy war against Russia via Ukraine” had made US authorities view her as a “traitor.” She said this was all the more “heartbreaking” because she had spent years working for the Democratic Party, and “believed in it wholeheartedly.” “I’ve never committed a crime. I’m not a traitor. I’m not a spy,” she told Carlson.

Tara Reade

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Who is the weak link?

• Whole West Is Working To Supply Ukraine – Putin (RT)

The collective West has been working tirelessly to arm Ukraine against Russia, seeking to destroy it in its present form throughout the conflict, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. He made the remarks while hosting a group of military commanders in the Kremlin who have distinguished themselves in the special operation against Ukraine. The meeting took place on Tuesday after Putin’s inauguration for his fifth term in office, but was released only on Thursday amid Victory Day celebrations. “We know, and you know this better than anyone else, the enemy has enough modern tools, since the entire Western community is working for our enemy, dreaming about Russia ceasing to exist in its current form,” Putin stated.

The collective West itself has created a “system of confrontation,” believing Russia to be a “weak link” in it, the president explained. The conflict with Ukraine, however, has already proven that is not the case and the West was mistaken, Putin stated. “I am sure they are now convinced that this was far from the reality, and rather the opposite is true,” he said. Putin underscored the need to further develop military technologies and be “one step ahead” of the country’s adversaries in order to be “successful.” Among other things, Putin commended on the efforts of Russian civil society to actively support the country’s troops and supply the military with assorted additional tools, ranging from mask nettings to sophisticated drones.

“In our country, as we often say, the so-called people’s military industrial complex is growing now. To be honest, when I meet with those who are in one way or another involved in such activities, the combat work in the civilian sphere, I, frankly, am surprised myself,” Putin stated. In order to be truly effective, however, civilian crowdfunded projects still require the state’s involvement and support, the president said. “Of course, all this must be concentrated in a certain way, everything must be sorted into the right places in a certain way, and supported at the state level. That’s what we are doing,” Putin concluded.

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“..based on the desire to justify current followers of the Nazis..
”

• West ‘Trying To Distort’ History Of WWII – Putin (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has used his address at the military parade in Moscow celebrating the 79th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany to accuse the West of “distorting the history” of the conflict. He also accused the US-led bloc of wielding “colonial policies” aimed at elevating a few nations by restraining the development of other sovereign states. According to Putin, Western nations “would like to forget the lessons of World War II.” “We see how they are trying to distort the truth about World War II – it interferes with those who are accustomed to building their essentially colonial policy on hypocrisy and lies. They demolish memorials to true fighters against Nazism and place traitors and Nazi collaborators on pedestals,” the president said. He called this revanchism policy a “mockery of history” based on the desire to justify current followers of the Nazis.

“These [actions] are part of the general policy of Western elites of inciting more and more regional conflicts, interethnic and interreligious hostility, and restraining the development of sovereign independent states,” Putin stated, noting that no country or military bloc has a right to do so, which World War II proved. We reject any state or alliance’s claims to exceptionalism. We know what the exorbitance of such ambitions leads to. This year’s Victory Day celebration is taking place amid a tense geopolitical situation due to the Ukraine conflict, in which most Western states have firmly taken Kiev’s side. Over the past two years, many Western leaders have been spreading what Moscow calls Russophobia, claiming that Russia may attack Europe if it secures victory in Ukraine. Putin emphasized that while Russia would do everything possible to prevent a global conflict, it will not allow anyone to threaten its own safety and sovereignty.

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Eva

 

 

17 million

 

 

1000s

 

 

Feather star
https://twitter.com/i/status/1788199677097091323

 

 

Bees

 

 

Break
https://twitter.com/i/status/1788300348085407848

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle April 21 2024

Apr 212024
 
 April 21, 2024  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  37 Responses »


Andrew Wyeth Christina’s world 1948

 

• House Passes $95 Billion Aid Package For Ukraine, Israel And Taiwan (ZH)
• American Aid ‘Keeps History On Right Track’ – Zelensky (RT)
• Who Gets What From Congress’ $61 Bln Bag of Goodies? (Sp.)
• David Sacks Warns Ukraine Will ‘Collapse Anyway,’ Despite Aid Bill (Sp.)
• US Aid Bill ‘Insufficient’ for Ukraine’s Needs, Bolsters US Military (Sp.)
• US Lawmakers Approve More Government Spying (RT)
• US Confiscation of Russian Assets Will ‘Supercharge’ De-Dollarization
• $500 Russian Drones Destroying $10,000,000 American Tanks – NYT (RT)
• ‘Pariah’ Israel Dragging US ‘Into Garbage Bin of History’ (Sp.)
• Trump Wants To ‘Kill His Opposition’ – Hillary Clinton (RT)
• Texas Is a Fading Conservative State (Paul Craig Roberts)
• A Collective “Common Enemy” Now Stalks Mankind (Karganovic)

 

 

24 hours without internet at home. A little bit of improvisation today.

 

 

 

 

Vivek Trump SS

 

 

Third eye

 

 

 

 

 

 

But not the border. Mike Johnson became speaker BECAUSE he said he’d protect the border.

• House Passes $95 Billion Aid Package For Ukraine, Israel And Taiwan (ZH)

The House on Saturday passed a set of foreign aid bills that would send $61 billion to Ukraine, $26 billion to Israel, and $8 billion to the Indo-Pacific region. In total, the foreign assistance package totals $95 billion – which only passed after Speaker Mike Johnson cut a deal with Democrats in order to force it through by a vote of 311 to 112. The Senate is expected to pass the package, which was negotiated in conjunction with the White House, marking a victory against conservative lawmakers who insisted on protecting the US border before sending money abroad to protect those of other countries. “We cannot be afraid of our shadows. We must be strong. We have to do what’s right,” House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, said. Democrats and some Republicans waved Ukrainian flags during the vote, a rare moment of bipartisanship in a bitterly and narrowly divided House.

“Traditional House Republicans led by Speaker Mike Johnson have risen to the occasion,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said. “We have a responsibility to push back against authoritarianism.” -Bloomberg. Earlier in the day, the House passed an $8 billion aid package aimed at countering Chinese aggression towards Taiwan, as well as a bill that would force Chinese-controlled ByteDance Ltd to divest from TikTok or face a US ban. The bill also allows for the confiscation of Russian dollar assets in order to help fund more assistance to Ukraine. Breaking down the Ukraine aid – of the $61 billion, $13 billion will replenish US stockpiles of weapons, and $14 billion will go towards US defense systems for Ukraine. $7 billion will go toward US military operations in the region. We assume the remainder will go directly to Ukrainian oligarchs.

The Israel bill, which passed by a vote of 366 to 58, includes $4 billion for missile defense. Notably absent was so much as a dime for the US border… “Nothing is done to secure our border or reduce our debt,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), whose outrage was shared with Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Paul Gosar of Arizona, who say they’re ready to boot Johnson from his Speakership. “Ukraine is not even a member of NATO,” Greene continued. Who would have known!

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The history of corruption, that is.

• American Aid ‘Keeps History On Right Track’ – Zelensky (RT)

The decision by the US House of Representatives to allocate tens of billions of dollars to Kiev will bring Ukraine closer to a “just end” in its conflict with Russia, President Vladimir Zelensky wrote on X (formerly Twitter), thanking Speaker Mike Johnson for his support. The nearly $61 billion package approved on Saturday contains funding for the purchase of weapons and military equipment, as well direct financial assistance to Ukraine. Passed after months of delays and political wrangling, the bill next moves to the Senate, which already indicated in February that it will approve it.“I am grateful to the United States House of Representatives, both parties, and personally Speaker Mike Johnson for the decision that keeps history on the right track,” Zelensky wrote, suggesting that the aid will “keep the war from expanding,” and “save thousands and thousands of lives.”

“Just peace and security can only be attained through strength,” he wrote. Zelensky added that Ukraine “will undoubtedly use American assistance to strengthen both of our nations and bring a just end to this war closer.” Republican lawmakers had previously refused to back the bill, tying their approval to demands for better protection of the border with Mexico and a crackdown on illegal immigration. Kiev was forced to deal with increasing ammunition shortages after aid from the US – Ukraine’s biggest sponsor – began to dry up. Biden blamed Ukraine’s recent setbacks on the battlefield, including the loss of the strategic city of Avdeevka, on “congressional inaction.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called Saturday’s vote “predictable,” adding that it will “further enrich the US and further ruin Ukraine,” and “cause more Ukrainians to die because of the Kiev regime.”

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“..very little change will be noted by those actually fightin..,”

• Who Gets What From Congress’ $61 Bln Bag of Goodies? (Sp.)

The House approved nearly $100 billion in assistance to Washington’s overseas allies, partners and client states on Saturday, with supporters of the aid managing to overcome opposition after a six-month deadlock in the chamber. Nearly $61 billion of the $95 billion from the proposed funding package is committed to fueling the conflict in Ukraine (at least $23 billion of that to be spent replenishing depleted US weapons stocks). Over $26 billion in additional commitments are made to Israel (nearly eight times what Washington normally sends Tel Aviv’s way in a given year). $8.12 billion is committed to stirring up tensions with China in Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region more broadly. Passing the House, the aid package is now set to be voted on by the Senate, where leaders from both parties have been clamoring for months for the foreign assistance to be urgently passed. If it passes the Senate, the legislation will end up on President Biden’s desk for signature.

Supporters and opponents of the foreign aid package gave stirring speeches ahead of the Saturday’s House vote restating their positions. “I often say it’s never too late to do the right thing. But waiting to do the right thing comes at a cost,” Maryland Democrat Steny Hoyer said. “We saw that cost in Israel this week as an emboldened Iran launched an unprecedented attack on our ally. For Ukraine the cost of our inaction is great if incalculable. It is measured in Ukrainian lives, towns and territory lost…Today we act. We act to make it clear to the world that America is still the defender of freedom, democracy and international law.” Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a staunch opponent of further US assistance to Ukraine, military or otherwise, proposed an amendment to slash support for Kiev to zero. “The United States taxpayer has already sent $113 billion to Ukraine, and a lot of that money is unaccounted for,” Greene said.

“The federal government continues to fund the military-industrial complex, and this is a business model that requires Congress to continue to vote for money to fund foreign wars. This is a business model that the American people do not support. They don’t support a business model built on blood and murder and war in foreign countries while this very government does nothing to secure our border. The American people are over $34 trillion in debt and the debt is rising by over $40 billion every single night while we all sleep. But yet nothing is done to secure our border or reduce our debt.” Pointing to polling indicating that a majority of Americans disapprove of new aid to Ukraine, Greene said Congress has chosen to vote to “protect Ukraine” instead of protecting “the American citizens that pay your paycheck.” “

Ukraine is not even a member of NATO. But the most important thing you hear in Washington, DC is that we have to send Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars over to Ukraine and keep the money going, to continue to murder Ukrainians, wipe out an entire generation of Ukrainian men…What kind of support is that? It’s repulsive,” the Georgia Republican said. The tens of billions of dollars in new US aid doled out via the legislation passed by the House Saturday may prolong the Ukrainian crisis, but won’t be able to secure a NATO victory in the proxy war against Russia, says former DoD senior security policy analyst Michael Maloof. “Now, the money that’s going to Ukraine for the most part will probably go to US defense contractors in various states, but to make newer equipment for our own stockpiles, which will then allow the US to unload older stuff for Ukraine,” Maloof told Sputnik.

“It’s not going to be enough for Ukraine to overcome its current geostrategic position at this point, simply because they don’t have a consistent ability to arm,” the observer added, pointing out that along with the weapons themselves is the ability to find the men to use them, something the Kiev regime is having increasingly severe difficulty doing as it is. “Other money to be provided to Ukraine is intended to pay government employees,” US Air Force Lt. Col. (ret.) Karen Kwiatkowski, a former DoD analyst, told Sputnik. “Thus presumably it will include meeting soldiers’ needs but it goes to Kiev bureaucrats first. Given how it will be allocated, very little change will be noted by those actually fighting,” Kwiatkowski believes, estimating that of the $61 billion allocated, $45 billion will remain in the US and $16 billion will be sent to Ukraine as so-called direct aid.

“Likely the $16 billion that makes it to Ukraine will be instantly absorbed to pay government bills rather than the war effort,” she said, pointing to Kiev’s massive budget deficit. “They have no means to undertake a counteroffensive, and just given the amounts of artillery that they burn through, what even the US is proposing probably wouldn’t last more than six months at best. And it’s undetermined what Europe is going to provide. So I think the Ukraine basically is over. It’s just a mop up [operation for] the Russians. And it’s just going to take time for that reality to sink in to Zelensky, who should begin considering getting out of there fast because I don’t think the country is going to politically last much longer,” Maloof said.

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“If you vote to send our money abroad while waving a foreign flag, you’ll be called an American patriot. If you vote to keep our money at home to fund domestic priorities like the border, you’ll be called a foreign agent.”

• David Sacks Warns Ukraine Will ‘Collapse Anyway,’ Despite Aid Bill (Sp.)

Previously, the US billionaire investor David Sacks underscored the need to “cut a deal” and seek a detente with Russia to avoid a third world war. He told a gala for the Republican think-tank American Moment in Washington that US involvement in the ongoing proxy conflict in Ukraine was only prolonging the standoff. The collapse of Ukraine is inevitable, despite the US House of Representatives having passed a foreign aid package that includes $61 billion in aid for Kiev, American entrepreneur David Sacks wrote on the X social media platform. “These scenes of celebration are going to look particularly foolish when Ukraine collapses anyway. The federal government can print more money; it can’t just print more artillery shells and air defense missiles,” the investor wrote, reacting to the jubilant scene in the House, where some of the lawmakers were seen waving Ukrainian flags. He continued by saying, “And I should have added, they can’t print more soldiers.”

The post by Sacks was in reply to a similarly deprecatory one by GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who posted footage from the House after the bill was passed, commenting that, “they vote to send more of your hard-earned money to a corrupt foreign regime. And just like that they shout ‘UKRAINE! UKRAINE!’ while happily working to secure Ukraine’s borders, not ours. The billionaire investor pointed out in his thread on X that, “It’s not “just” $61 billion. Ukraine will need massive annual cash infusions to stave off total defeat. So it’s $61 billion as the baseline for an annual appropriation in a new forever war.” He pointed out that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars also began with “annual appropriations in the $60B range. Those wars ended up costing trillions.” “Simple math,” the investor remarked, showed that the new funding bill could do no more than possibly buy Ukraine “precisely half of a Summer Counteroffensive.”

And, of course, everyone knows full well how that much-heralded counteroffensive attempt ended up last year – limited battlefield achievements coupled with massive manpower and hardware losses. According to Sacks, it is a bizarre world, where “If you vote to send our money abroad while waving a foreign flag, you’ll be called an American patriot. If you vote to keep our money at home to fund domestic priorities like the border, you’ll be called a foreign agent.” The entrepreneur recalled that according to US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, “CIA Director Burns had to warn [Ukraine’s President Volodymyr] Zelensky to stop stealing so much money. His subordinates were angry that he wasn’t sharing the spoils.” “Do you think that problem has been resolved and Zelensky will share more this time?” queried David Sacks.

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“Russia has been quite successful in its goal of ‘demilitarizing’ both Ukraine and NATO..”

• US Aid Bill ‘Insufficient’ for Ukraine’s Needs, Bolsters US Military (Sp.)

After more than 2 month of hard negotiations, the US House of Representatives has passed a multi-billion foreign aid package. However, the bill has sparked debate and criticism, with experts questioning its efficacy and allocation. David Pyne, a former US Department of Defense officer and executive vice president of Task Force on National and Homeland Security, offered a critical assessment of the aid package. He argued that the allocated funds are “woefully insufficient” for Ukraine’s wartime needs. The bill “will not change the outcome of the war which will inevitably end with a Russian victory and Ukraine being forced to accept Russia’s peace terms”, Pyne believes. Questions also arise regarding the distribution of the aid, since House Speaker Mike Johnson indicated that only a fraction, approximately $12-14 billion, would directly provide weapons to Ukraine.

However, Pyne raised concerns that a substantial portion, around 80%, would benefit US defense industries. He highlighted the potential for President Biden to utilize drawdown authority, enabling the redirection of additional funds from existing military stocks to Ukraine. Furthermore, Pyne shed light on Ukraine’s critical shortages of artillery shells and air defense missiles. He outlined Russia’s success in inflicting significant casualties on Ukrainian forces and emphasized the challenges in addressing Ukraine’s munitions deficits. “Russia has been quite successful in its goal of ‘demilitarizing’ both Ukraine and NATO, causing the US and its NATO allies to unilaterally disarm themselves of tens of thousands of its most modern weapon systems and transfer them to Ukraine”, stated Pyne.

Pyne highlighted the stark disparity between Russian and Ukrainian&NATO artillery capabilities, noting that “Russia produces over three times as many artillery munitions than all of NATO combined”. “Russian forces have been successful in inflicting half a million Ukrainian military casualties including about 250,000 killed in action and 250,000 seriously wounded with as many or more Ukrainian amputations over the past two years than France suffered… on the Western Front during World War One,” Pyne said. The assessment underscores the complexity of providing effective support to Ukraine amidst escalating conflict. As the aid bill moves forward, discussions surrounding its implementation, distribution, and broader geopolitical implications are likely to persist, as well as questions regarding US true purposes and intentions towards Ukraine as a nation.

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“..the FBI had illegally used its surveillance powers against American citizens more than 278,000 times in a 12-month period..”

• US Lawmakers Approve More Government Spying (RT)

The US Senate has passed legislation renewing and expanding an expiring law that enables the government to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans under the guise of protecting them from foreign threats. The bill was approved by a 60-34 vote in the early morning hours of Saturday, authorizing a two-year extension of the so-called Section 702 program of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). President Joe Biden is expected to quickly sign the legislation, renewing the spying tool after it expired at midnight on Saturday. Section 702 is ostensibly about surveilling the communications of foreigners for intelligence purposes, including detection of possible terrorist plots against the US. However, many of the phone calls and messages that are tapped by Washington’s spying apparatus occur between foreigners and US citizens.

The FBI has accessed the 702 database of intercepted communications to investigate targeted Americans, such as Black Lives Matters activists, journalists, members of Congress, political donors, and possible participants in the January 2021 US Capitol riot. Such searches normally require investigators to secure a warrant, meaning a court has found probable cause to suspect that the targeted person has committed a crime. Critics of the program had demanded that reforms be made before renewing Section 702 to protect US citizens from unconstitutional spying. A 2023 investigation by the US FISA court found that the FBI had illegally used its surveillance powers against American citizens more than 278,000 times in a 12-month period. Congress voted down an amendment that would have required warrants for probes of communications involving Americans.

“Section 702 has been abused under presidents from both political parties, and it has been used to unlawfully surveil the communications of Americans across the political spectrum,” said Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “By expanding the government’s surveillance powers without adding a warrant requirement that would protect Americans, the House has voted to allow the intelligence agencies to violate the civil rights and liberties of Americans for years to come.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) hailed the fact that the FISA program was reauthorized “in the nick of time,” just as it was expiring. Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) said that failure to renew the spying powers could cause US officials to “miss a key piece of intelligence,” such as a threat to American troops stationed overseas or a potential terrorist attack.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) lamented the fact that lawmakers declined to pass his amendments to the FISA bill, which would have enabled the government to continue spying on foreigners while protecting the civil liberties of Americans. His proposal was voted down by an 82-11 margin. “We could have ensured both constitutional rights and national security were protected,” Paul said. “Yet again, the Senate was asked to consider the question: ‘Can liberty be exchanged for security?’ And sadly, the majority of senators said, ‘Yes, it can.’”

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“..lack of control [by the owners] over assets is not a good basis of any currency.”

• US Confiscation of Russian Assets Will ‘Supercharge’ De-Dollarization

On Saturday, the US House of Representatives passed the cheekily-named REPO Act, which would enable US President Joe Biden to confiscate roughly $6 billion in frozen Russian assets held in US banks and send it to Ukraine.The provision is part of a package bill that also includes over $95 billion in aid to Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific, as well as a potential TikTok ban.The bill is expected to pass in the Senate and then be immediately signed by US President Joe Biden. While the $6 billion represents only a fraction of the more than $300 billion in Russian assets frozen by the G7 countries in 2022, most of that money is held in Europe and US lawmakers hope that it will encourage European lawmakers to do the same.

“We’re making good progress in how to access that funds on an agreed basis that I think we can take forward to the G7,” UK foreign minister David Cameron, whose government has already come out in support of seizing Russian assets, told reporters earlier this month. The decision to confiscate Russian assets and provide them to Ukraine represents a major escalation in the West’s sanction war against Russia. However, the move is short-sighted by the US because it will accelerate global de-dollarization, which will remove one of the most powerful tools the US has.

“It’s reinforcing the need to de-dollarize on the part of any third-party country. Be it Russia, be it China – be it anybody else, including any country in the G-7 that may be marginally supportive of the United States. This is pure and simple economic blackmail,” Paul Goncharoff, an analyst and management consultant at Dezan Shira & Associates in Moscow told Sputnik. “Now they’re wondering ‘Am I putting it into something that will be seized or frozen?’ So lack of control [by the owners] over assets is not a good basis of any currency.” “So it just supercharges de-dollarization. And that’s not good, especially when you have an America that is used to living on larger and larger debt raised by people placing the trust and buying treasuries and bonds,” Goncharoff added.

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“The drones’ accuracy exceeds 90%, the NYT said, adding that they are also capable of hitting heavy armor in its weakest spots..”

• $500 Russian Drones Destroying $10,000,000 American Tanks – NYT (RT)

Expensive American M1 Abrams tanks delivered to Ukraine are increasingly falling prey to Russian drones that cost only a fraction as much, the New York Times reported on Saturday. Even “one of the most powerful symbols of American military might” is not invulnerable to such attacks, it said. At least five US-supplied tanks out of the 31 provided by Washington have already been destroyed by Russia, the American media outlet said, adding that three others had been “moderately damaged.” In most cases, the tanks have been destroyed by first-person-view (FPV) kamikaze drones, also known as loitering munitions. Such drones are capable of actively maneuvering before hitting their target.

In at least one instance, though, an Abrams tank was taken out in a duel against a Russian T-72B3 main battle tank. The Russian military has published upwards of a dozen clips, mostly taken from drones, showing the destruction of US-supplied equipment. According to the NYT, the tanks turned out to be “more easily taken out by exploding drones than some officials and experts had initially assumed.” The media outlet cited an Austrian historian and military expert, Colonel Markus Reisner, who described such a situation as “unbelievable.” The paper also described the Russian UAVs as “highly-accurate, low-cost tank killers.”

The drones’ accuracy exceeds 90%, the NYT said, adding that they are also capable of hitting heavy armor in its weakest spots. The UAVs “can cost as little as $500,” the paper reported, are capable of “taking out a $10 million Abrams tank.” The paper also admitted that there was no “easy, or single” way to defend a tank against a drone attack. US-made Abrams tanks made their long-expected appearance on the front line in late February amid the Ukrainian effort to halt advancing Russian troops after the capture of the Donbass town of Avdeevka. A batch of 31 M1 Abrams tanks was pledged to Kiev early last year, ahead of the ultimately disastrous Ukrainian counteroffensive. The delivery was made in full only by mid-October, when the ill-fated push had already largely been exhausted.

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“The United States government for so long now, hasn’t seen a war they didn’t want to be a part of.”

• ‘Pariah’ Israel Dragging US ‘Into Garbage Bin of History’ (Sp.)

On Friday, the US vetoed granting Palestine full membership in the UN, which was promised to the Palestinians in 1948 when the state of Israel was created. The US has been Israel’s strongest supporter in the UN, previously vetoing three ceasefire resolutions before finally allowing a fourth to pass through abstention last month. Earlier, Israel struck Iran in response to Iran’s attack last week, which was itself a response to Israel attacking Iran’s consulate in Damascus earlier this month. The attack, which was described by both sides as minor, came after Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would not respond until after Passover, which runs from April 22 to April 30. Israel’s apparent insistence on launching a regional war in the Middle East is dragging the United States with it “Into the garbage bin of history,” and US lawmakers seem willing to watch it happen, journalist Esteban Carrillo, the head of news at The Cradle, told Sputnik’s Political Misfits on Friday.

While discussing the recent US vote against Palestinian statehood in the UN, Carrillo explained that it is working against US interests “It’s completely a case of the tail wagging the dog. And US politicians just seem so content to just go along with it,” he explained. “What does Netanyahu have over the heads of these people? Because it doesn’t seem like they are even willing to consider at this point stepping away from this pariah that is just dragging them down into the garbage bin of history.” Tensions between Iran and Israel seem to have cooled somewhat after Israel’s attack was so minor. Explosions were heard near an Iranian base outside of Isfahan, but Iran claimed there was no damage or injuries. A second attack against the city of Tabriz was likewise thwarted.

The attack, which Iran claims came from within its own territory, seemed designed to make Israel not appear “as weak as they are,” Carrillo explained. “After six months of flattening Gaza and killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, they have failed to achieve a single strategic objective against Hamas.” However, the small scope of the attack also seemed designed to allow Israel to “play tough guy” without igniting a larger conflict. “Iran’s response over [Friday morning’s] attack is essentially summed up in ‘what strike? What happened? Our air defenses took everything down,’” said Carrillo. But that doesn’t mean Israel is finished. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is still determined to keep the war going to ward off political and legal challenges facing him. “I don’t think that we’re out of the water yet in terms of [Israel] dragging the United States into a regional war,” Carrillo explained, adding earlier that it isn’t hard to convince US lawmakers to join fights. “The United States government for so long now, hasn’t seen a war they didn’t want to be a part of.”

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‘A vote for Trump is a vote for Putin’ – Hillary Clinton. Yawn…

• Trump Wants To ‘Kill His Opposition’ – Hillary Clinton (RT)

Former US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has claimed that the man who defeated her in the 2016 election, Donald Trump, is a wannabe strongman who aims to murder his political enemies. Speaking in a podcast interview posted on Friday by Democrat activist Mark Elias, Clinton said American voters had underestimated how “dangerous” Trump would be as president. She likened Trump, now the presumptive Republican nominee in this year’s US presidential election, to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Putin does what [Trump] would like to do – kill his opposition, imprison his opposition, drive journalists and others into exile, rule without any check or balance,” Clinton said. “That’s what Trump really wants.” Ironically, Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have themselves long been accused by some conservatives of eliminating people who pose a threat to their power or wealth.

In fact, investigative journalist Danny Casolaro coined the conspiracist term “Clinton Body Count” in the late 1980s, in reference to the allegedly mysterious deaths of people with connections to the Clintons. Casolaro was found dead in a West Virginia hotel room in 1991 with his wrists slashed 10-12 times. His death was ruled a suicide. Hillary Clinton also has made a habit of linking Trump to Russia and Putin. Her presidential campaign helped trigger allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 election by funding the since-discredited Steele dossier. She told Elias that Putin is just one of the US adversaries whom Trump would like to emulate, and that his other role models include Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

“We have to be very conscious of how he sees the world because in that world, he only sees strongman leaders,” Clinton said. “He sees Putin. He sees Xi. He sees Kim Jong-un in North Korea. Those are the people he is modeling himself after, and we’ve been down this road in our world history. We sure don’t want to go down that again.” If Trump is elected president again, Clinton warned, “it will be like having a dictator. I don’t say that lightly. Go back and read Project 2025. They’re going to fire everybody. The person in the government who knows about what may be the next pandemic? ‘Get rid of him, he didn’t vote for me, or I don’t like the way he looks.’”

She added: “It’s really important to think about what could happen to our world with Trump back in the White House – withdrawing us from NATO, not caring about what happens in Europe… the idea that he wants Ukraine to fail, the idea that he doesn’t want us to be able to surveil our enemies. I mean, this is a very scary prospect.” Clinton expressed optimism that Trump will not be able to defeat incumbent President Joe Biden in November because Democrats will be running the election in key states, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Arizona. Trump has maintained that all allegations against him are part of a politically motivated smear campaign. He dismissed the ‘Russiagate’ accusations as a hoax and witch hunt that aimed to sabotage his presidency and block him from forging better US relations with Russia.

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“Where there is no vision, the people are lost..”

• Texas Is a Fading Conservative State (Paul Craig Roberts)

Americans regard Texas as a Conservative state. It is not. The conservatism is only skin deep. The conservatism is limited to a small majority of the people. Professional organizations, such as the Bar Association, many city governments, the universities, and the public schools have been infiltrated and taken over by woke liberals. Texas universities are as crazed, corrupt, and anti-American as those in the Northeast and on the West coast. They serve the same agendas, such as indoctrinating white people that they are racist, legitimizing sexual perversity, redefining American patriots as Nazis and Trump Deplorables. The public schools teach that white people are racists and confuse kids about their gender. The Bar Association uses law as a weapon against Republicans, such as attorney Sidney Powell.

The Texas Bar Association disciplined Sidney Powell, first convicting her of misconduct and fraud for filing lawsuits challenging fraudulent vote counts in the 2020 presidential election, and revoking her license as punishment. The state appeals court found that the bar association had convicted her on the basis of zero evidence. It was just a vendetta by woke liberals devoid al all integrity against a Republican.This is America today. In the hands of blue cities and states and in the US Department of Justice (sic) law as law no longer exists. Neither does the US Constitution. What exists is a weapon to be used against Trump Republicans and dissenters from official narratives.

In America there are two systems of law. One system located in red states is a rule of law. The other in blue states is a system of law as a weapon to destroy opponents. We see this clearly in blue NY and blue Atlanta where show trials devoid of any evidence are being conducted against President Trump. We see it in the Justice (sic) Department’s continuing misuse of law to force attendees at the January 6 rally to incriminate themselves by pleading guilty in order to avoid a 20-year prison sentence for exercising their constitutional right to protest.

The totally corrupt Biden Regime has an open border policy for the explicit purpose of turning red states into blue ones by filling them with millions of immigrant-invaders in order to overload the voting rolls with Democrat voters. The Democrats assume that they have purchased the loyalty of the immigrant-invaders by allowing them in and supporting them on public welfare while giving them work permits so that they can underbid the employment of American citizens. Evidence was recently provided that Biden has flown at public expense 360,000 immigrant-invaders into Florida, and evidence was provided that the Biden regime has funded the Jewish NGO that is recruiting world-wide immigrant-invaders with $300,000,000. American citizens are helpless, because almost half of them are so utterly stupid that they vote for their own self-destruction by voting Democrat.

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“..Harari deserves credit for blood-curdling honesty, if not for the morality of his and his masters’ “visions.”

• A Collective “Common Enemy” Now Stalks Mankind (Karganovic)

Yuval Hariri, Klaus Schwab’s spokesman, recently made a statement that should send chills up everyone’s spine. “If bad comes to worse and the Flood comes,” Harari said, he and the likeminded cabal of shadowy world masters will “build an Ark and leave the rest to drown.” Elsewhere, Harari elaborates on the reasons for his fellow elitists’ cold-hearted indifference to the fate of the vast majority of Earth’s inhabitants: “If you go back to the middle of the 20th century …and you think about building the future, then your building materials are those millions of people who are working hard in the factories, in the farms, the soldiers. You need them. You don’t have any kind of future without them.” What he means is that you – referring to the dominant social and financial elites of that era – still “needed” the labour of millions in the various fields of economic endeavour in order to turn a profit.

Since then, how have things changed according to “futurologist” Harari? “Now, fast forward to the early 21st century when we just don’t need the vast majority of the population, because the future is about developing more and more sophisticated technology, like artificial intelligence [and] bioengineering, most people don’t contribute anything to that, except perhaps for their data, and whatever people are still doing something useful, these technologies increasingly will make them redundant and will make it possible to replace those people.” Elitist mouthpiece Harari deserves credit for blood-curdling honesty, if not for the morality of his and his masters’ “visions.” He is plainly signalling the view that this writer, the editors of this portal, its readers and the rest of mankind are expendable and apart from whatever economic utility they still might possess are bereft of any inherent dignity or value.

Harari and his immediate superior in the elitist nomenklatura, Klaus Schwab, technically are private individuals. Their organisational vehicle, the World Economic Forum, is a private NGO registered in Switzerland. Formally, they neither represent nor do they speak for any government or official structure with a proper claim to legitimacy. They have no licence to plan or arrange the future of humanity, beside the self-authorisation to do so which they and the oligarchical globalist power centres they commune and mingle with have arrogated to themselves. No one elected or empowered them to plan anybody’s future, other than their own, and even that strictly in their private capacity.= Yet disposing of the future of mankind is precisely what they presume to do, in Davos in plenary session once a year and the rest of the time in conspiratorial confabulation amongst themselves.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Catfish
https://twitter.com/i/status/1781592640623886517

 

 

Horses dolphins
https://twitter.com/i/status/1781559109487124859

 

 

King

 

 

Octopus
https://twitter.com/i/status/1781604985345606000

 

 

Resting sharks
https://twitter.com/i/status/1781720652241846625

 

 

Reflex

 

 

Piggy bank

 

 

Great white

 

 

Rhino

 

 

Aquarium
https://twitter.com/i/status/1781745912303251759

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle August 16 2023

Aug 162023
 
 August 16, 2023  Posted by at 8:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  30 Responses »


El Greco Dormition of the Mother of God 1565-1566

 

• Hunter Biden’s Lead Criminal Defense Attorney Asks To Withdraw From Case (ZH)
• Trump Attorneys Slam ‘Flawed, Unconstitutional’ Fulton County Indictment (Sp.)
• Justice Shrugged: The Persecution of Donald Trump (Miele)
• The Criminalization of Election Controversies (Turley)
• Trump Must Turn Himself In At Georgia Jail – Sheriff (RT)
• Ukraine Matters To Biden More Than Hawaii – Ron Paul (RT)
• Team Biden Hurts US Prestige and Credibility By Walking Into Ukraine Trap (Sp.)
• Ukraine Could Give Up Territory To Russia – NATO Official (RT)
• If Ukraine Agrees To Give Up Territories, It Will Lose Kiev – Medvedev (TASS)
• Western Military Dominance ‘Has Ended’ – Moscow (RT)
• Ukraine’s Military Resources Are “Almost Exhausted” – Shoigu (ZH)
• Shoigu Hails High Level Of Contacts Between Russia, Chinese Military (TASS)
• Why US Drones Prove Useless in Ukraine (Sp.)
• MI6 Plans To Send Ukrainian Mercenaries To Africa (RT)
• How Charities Secretly Help Win Elections (Thayer)

 

 

 

 

Ramaswamy

 

 

 

 

RFK Fauci

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greenwald

 

 

 

 

Longtime Hunter attorney (let’s see who paid his bills!) Christopher Clark for 5+ years got used to anything he wrote being accepted. But when he went for the ultimate sweetheart deal, where Hunter could have shot someone on 5th avenue (the Trump thing) without facing punishment, Judge Maryellen Noreika said: “I don’t like these terms”. Which were in the small print of the deal, of course. And neither Hunter nor Clark ever expected her to read them. She put their world upside down. Now Christopher Clark is trying to sneak out of the building, hoping no-one will notice he wrote the whole thing. Oh, and he may be called as a witness now….

Here’s Clark’s way out ?! “Biden attorney Abbe Lowell blamed prosecutors for drafting the agreements the judge wouldn’t approve..”

• Hunter Biden’s Lead Criminal Defense Attorney Asks To Withdraw From Case (ZH)

Hunter Biden’s top criminal defense attorney has asked a federal judge for permission to withdraw from the case after a plea deal unraveled in late July. Christopher Clark, Hunter’s longtime defense attorney, filed a motion with the Delaware judge overseeing Hunter’s case on the grounds that he could now be called as a witness in future proceedings, CNN reports. “Based on recent developments, it appears that the negotiation and drafting of the plea agreement and diversion agreement will be contested, and Mr. Clark is a percipient witness to those issues,” reads the Tuesday filing. Last week federal prosecutors announced that the had reached an impasse on Hunter’s plea deal related to tax offenses and a “diversion agreement” to take care of a gun possession charges.

After the deal unraveled, the feds asked Judge Maryellen Noreika to withdraw a late August deadline to renegotiate the plea deal, after she said she was not ready to accept it & asked both sides to file additional briefs explaining the legal structure of the revised deal. Noreika also called the deal federal prosecutors reached with Hunter over his gun possession offense “unusual,” and that it contained some “non-standard terms,” such as “broad immunity” from other potential charges. Under the original plea agreement, Biden intended to plea guilty to two misdemeanor tax crimes committed in 2017 and 2018, and would avoid prison on the gun possession charge. As part of the conditions for Hunter’s release, he must not consume alcohol or prohibited drugs, or possess a firearm, must submit to random drug tests as required, must actively seek employment and not violate any laws.

On Sunday, Biden attorney Abbe Lowell blamed prosecutors for drafting the agreements the judge wouldn’t approve. Biden’s lawyers said Sunday they believed the gun diversion deal was still “valid and binding.” Abbe Lowell, one of the attorneys, placed blame on prosecutors for drafting the agreements the judge took issue with. -CNN. After the plea deal unraveled, US Attorney David Weiss requested and was granted “special counsel” status by Attorney General Merrick Garland. According to prosecutors, there is still an ongoing investigation which may carry future charges outside the scope of the plea deal. Biden pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor tax crimes, and will avoid prison charge for possessing a gun while addicted to an illegal drug. The deal sought to cap a five-year investigation into Hunter’s tax affairs and business dealings, which federal prosecutors say Hunter failed to pay over $100,000 of income tax on at least $1.5 million in income between 2017 and 2018.

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“We look forward to a detailed review of this indictment which is undoubtedly just as flawed and unconstitutional as this entire process has been..”

• Trump Attorneys Slam ‘Flawed, Unconstitutional’ Fulton County Indictment (Sp.)

A 41-count indictment, including against former US President Donald Trump, approved by a Fulton County grand jury in the state of Georgia in an election interference case, is “flawed and unconstitutional,” Trump attorneys said, adding that they look forward to a detailed review of the indictment. A Fulton County grand jury indicted Monday night Trump with 13 criminal charges related to an investigation alleging he attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to a court document. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis later told reporters that the grand jury had issued arrest warrants for the 19 defendants named in the indictment, but they all have until August 25 to voluntarily surrender.

“This one-sided grand jury presentation relied on witnesses who harbor their own personal and political interests— some of whom ran campaigns touting their efforts against the accused and/or profited from book deals and employment opportunities as a result. We look forward to a detailed review of this indictment which is undoubtedly just as flawed and unconstitutional as this entire process has been,” the attorneys noted in a statement distributed by the ex-president in an email to his supporters.

The process leading up to the decision was “shocking and absurd, starting with the leak of a presumed and premature indictment before the witnesses had testified or the grand jurors had deliberated and ending with the District Attorney being unable to offer any explanation,” they stressed. “In light of this major fumble, the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office clearly decided to force through and rush this 98-page indictment,” the attorneys emphasized. The former US president was previously indicted on charges related to his supporters’ storming of the Capitol in January 2021, financial fraud in payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels and mishandling of classified government documents.

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“You either agree with the government’s interpretation of election results or else you risk going to jail.”

• Justice Shrugged: The Persecution of Donald Trump (Miele)

Trump’s refusal to accept the election results turns on his deep sense of individualistic ambition, his willingness to challenge societal norms, and his determination not to surrender his principles, even at the expense of public ridicule, political persecution, and now potentially years in prison. But you can’t view the 2020 election in a vacuum. Trump was no different than Rearden in fighting what he knows is a rigged system. For the preceding five years, Trump had been the victim of a series of vicious attacks by the Deep State and the media who never really accepted him as president. So Trump had no reason to accept the election results parroted by the same actors who had already tried to destroy him multiple times. And now, two and a half years after the 2020 election, as Trump has a fighting chance of returning to the White House in the greatest political comeback in history, his enemies have come for him again, with three separate indictments and soon to be a fourth.

The four-count indictment most recently brought against Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith is intended to make a victory in 2024 nearly impossible. The Deep State in this case represents the entrenched bureaucracy of the federal government as well as the individual states’ election officials. This is the same Deep State that gathered up 51 national security officials to sign a statement prior to the 2020 election that falsely claimed that Hunter Biden’s laptop “has all the classic earmarks of Russian disinformation.” It had none of them. No wonder Trump was disinclined to accept their conclusions that the election was secure and fair. Trump sought to prove his concerns about the legitimacy of the 2020 election by pursuing a vigorous legal strategy as was guaranteed to him under the First Amendment’s right “to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Biden’s weaponized Department of Justice is determined to deny that right to Donald Trump, and by extension to the rest of us. You either agree with the government’s interpretation of election results or else you risk going to jail. The indictment brought against Trump acknowledges that everyone has a First Amendment right to speak their minds and even to “formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means,” but it then avers that Trump’s right to believe he won the election is abrogated by a string of court losses and equally pessimistic assessments from so-called experts.

Here’s where it gets interesting, and where the Department of Justice has overstepped. The four counts in the indictment are based on what prosecutor Jack Smith calls three conspiracies: “A conspiracy to defraud the United States” by seeking to stop the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021; “a conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the Jan. 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified; and “a conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.”

All of these alleged conspiracies and the resulting four charges are directly related to the joint congressional session on Jan. 6, when the Electoral College votes were opened and debated to determine whether they should be counted. Moreover, when Jack Smith announced the indictment, he suggested that Trump was responsible for the riot that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on that day, yet none of the charges hold Trump responsible for the violence. Every charge in this dubious indictment could have been brought even if the protesters had marched “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol as Trump had requested. The charges in the indictment have nothing to do with the violence; they only relate to Trump’s insistence that he won the election, and that he would do whatever it takes to prove it.

In other words, these are not real crimes like insurrection or sedition; they are thought crimes. Smith’s “conspiracy” charges simply reflect that Trump consulted his lawyers to develop a legal strategy on how to right the wrong that he perceived. In its substance, from paragraphs 8 to 123, the indictment merely alleges over and over again that Trump refused to accept the conclusions of others that the election of Biden was legitimate, and that he had help from like-minded attorneys. How infuriating that must be to prosecutor Smith, who believes with all his heart that no one could doubt the veracity of what government officials (like him!) tell us.

Tucker 2020

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Every single word, even every thought, becomes a crime..

• The Criminalization of Election Controversies (Turley)

The long-anticipated indictment by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected in the coming days and will focus on alleged election tampering and related offenses in the 2020 presidential election. If indictments were treated like frequent flyer miles, Donald Trump would get the Georgia indictment for free. However, it will be anything but costless. Regardless of the merits, it will magnify both the cost and complications for Trump. Like the New York indictment, a Georgia indictment would not be subject to a presidential pardon. Not only have GOP candidates indicated that they would pardon Trump on any federal charges if elected to the presidency, Trump could pardon himself (including a preemptive pardon before trial) if elected — but that power does not reach state convictions.


As with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, many view Willis as a Democratic prosecutor pursuing the highly unpopular former president. However, given the three grand juries and the three years that have passed, Willis may have found new evidence or witnesses that could tie Trump to criminal conduct in seeking to challenge the results in the election. Thus far, the focus has been on the controversial call that Trump had with Georgia officials — a call widely cited as indisputable evidence of an effort at voting fraud. Yet, the call was similar to a settlement discussion, as state officials and the Trump team hashed out their differences and a Trump demand for a statewide recount. Trump had lost the state by less than 12,000 votes. That might be what he meant when he stated, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”


Mark Meadows was charged for asking for a politician’s phone number…

While others have portrayed the statement as a raw call for fabricating the votes, it seems more likely that Trump was swatting back claims that there was no value to a statewide recount by pointing out that he wouldn’t have to find a statistically high number of votes to change the outcome of the election. It is telling that many politicians and pundits refuse to even acknowledge that obvious alternate meaning. For Trump’s part, he is not helping with his signature, all-caps social media attacks. In addition to attacking Willis for a supposedly “racist” and “unethical” past, Trump recently declared that Willis “wants to indict me for a perfect phone call; this was even better than my perfect call on Ukraine.” I have previously disagreed with the claimed perfection of that Ukraine call, the subject of Trump’s first impeachment. However, neither call needs to be “perfect” to be protected.


The importance made of the call in the likely Georgia indictment will be one of the greatest “tells” as to what Willis has in terms of evidence. If the call is a critical linchpin to the prosecution, it will look like a political stunt out of the Bragg-school of prosecution. There have also been stories indicating that Willis is focusing on connections of Trump team members like Rudy Giuliani to a “breach” of the voting system on Jan. 7, 2021. The team was seeking access to the voting machines to show that they could be compromised or manipulated. Text messages state that the team secured an “invitation” to examine the machines in Coffee County.

Pipe burst

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The biggest show on earth. Brought to you by Disney…

• Trump Must Turn Himself In At Georgia Jail – Sheriff (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants on his racketeering case are set to be booked on their charges at a county jail in Georgia, a departure from the courthouse processing seen in his three other criminal cases. The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office announced the decision on Tuesday, saying that Trump and the other defendants could appear at the local jail to turn themselves in “at any time,” though noted the plan is still subject to change due to the “unprecedented nature” of the case. “At this point, based on guidance received from the district attorney’s office and presiding judge, it is expected that all 19 defendants named in the indictment will be booked at the Rice Street Jail,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement, pointing out that the facility is “open 24/7.”

That procedure would differ from Trump’s other ongoing criminal litigation, in which he has been processed inside courthouses. During booking, defendants are typically photographed and fingerprinted, and while Trump was not required to provide mugshots for his other lawsuits, Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat said he planned to snap a photo of the ex-president for the racketeering case. “It doesn’t matter your status. We have a mugshot ready for you,” Labat told reporters ahead of the latest indictment. “Unless someone tells me differently, we are following our normal practices.” Trump and a long list of his current and former allies were hit with a sweeping 41-count indictment earlier this week, with prosecutors alleging they worked to invalidate Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential race.

Among the charges is a felony racketeering count, as well as several counts for conspiracy to interfere in an election, perjury, and soliciting a public official to violate their oath. The latest round of charges mark Trump’s fourth criminal indictment this year alone, with federal prosecutors previously slapping him with dozens of felony counts for the alleged mishandling of classified material after leaving the White House in 2021. He has also been charged in New York for an alleged hush-money scheme with porn actress Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign, and faces a separate election-interference case led by special counsel Jack Smith, who is also spearheading the classified documents trial. Trump, who has announced his candidacy in the 2024 presidential contest, has denied all wrongdoing in each case, insisting he has been unfairly targeted in a politically motivated “witch hunt” which began during his own presidency.

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“..$900 from each and every US household, at a time when most Americans say they can’t afford a $1,000 emergency.”

• Ukraine Matters To Biden More Than Hawaii – Ron Paul (RT)

President Joe Biden is demanding another $24 billion for Ukraine while the US “disintegrates,”former Texas congressman Ron Paul wrote on Monday, pointing out the unprecedented devastation from the Hawaii fires. It’s “hard to look at recent footage of the devastation in Maui and then hear President Biden tell Congress that he needs another $24 billion for Ukraine,” Paul said. “How can this Administration continue to justify tens of billions of dollars for this losing war that is not in our interest while the rest of the United States disintegrates?” The US has poured “well over $120 billion” into the “proxy war on Russia,” Paul added. He cited a Heritage Foundation analysis that calculated this comes out to $900 from each and every US household, at a time when most Americans say they can’t afford a $1,000 emergency.

“How many Americans would rather have those $900 dollars back in their pocket rather than in the pockets of Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon, and Ukraine’s oligarchs?” Paul asked, noting that even the establishment media is now admitting that “Ukraine is not winning and cannot win.” “Continuing to pour money into a losing cause will just result in bankruptcy at home and more dead Ukrainians overseas,” Paul concluded. The Texas physician served in Congress for a total of 23 years and ran for president three times – as a Libertarian in 1988, and in Republican primaries in 2008 and 2012 – before retiring in 2013 to found the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Multiple fires broke out in Hawaii last week, devastating the island of Maui and practically destroying the historic town of Lahaina.

As of Sunday, the death toll was reported at 96, with at least 1,000 more people still missing. “This is the largest natural disaster we’ve ever experienced,” Hawaii Governor Josh Green said at a news conference on Sunday. Damages to homes alone were estimated at $6 billion. Biden spent the weekend on the beach in Rehoboth, Delaware. He said “no comment” when asked about Maui. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday confirmed there were no plans for the president to visit Hawaii. Last week, Biden sent Congress a request for $13 billion in “security assistance” and $7.3 billion for “economic and humanitarian assistance” for Ukraine, which has included paying the salaries of government employees in Kiev.

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“hyperbolic rhetoric”

• Team Biden Hurts US Prestige and Credibility By Walking Into Ukraine Trap (Sp.)

US observers have raised the question whether President Joe Biden could shift from his maximalist aims in Ukraine which threaten to turn into a trap for Washington. Prior to the much-anticipated 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive, American politicians and mainstream press had drawn a picture of what the endgame in Ukraine should look like, with Kiev forces seizing as much territory as it could to gain the upper hand in negotiations. Citing White House officials, the US media suggested that by the end of summer, Ukraine would tip the balance in its favor. However, the reality on the ground does not match expectations. The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a DC-based think tank, has raised the question as to whether Team Biden has a Plan B for a face-saving exit after it persuaded everyone in the West that anything short of Kiev’s victory would be a global catastrophe.

In fact, the Biden administration set a trap for itself by employing a “hyperbolic rhetoric” in order to sell the idea of Washington’s Ukraine war to the American public and the world’s community. President Biden raised the stakes as high as possible while claiming in February 2023 during his speech in Poland that “what literally is at stake is not just Ukraine, it’s freedom.” Another talking point of the US foreign policy establishment, lawmakers and academia was that Russia’s victory would not only “embolden” Moscow for new “invasions” but also encourage Beijing to “take military action” against Taiwan – something that has been repeatedly denied as nonsense by China which has always seen the island as its inalienable territory.

Republican presidential contender Chris Christie has even gone so far as to claim that China’s potential “invasion” of Taiwan would inevitably necessitate putting American boots on the ground. As a result, the hyped-up narrative deprived Team Biden of room for maneuver: should the US president decide to pull out, he would have to explain to the international community why he is “giving up” on democracy and human values, bowing down to “dictators”, and leaving the world in “danger.”

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Anathema.

• Ukraine Could Give Up Territory To Russia – NATO Official (RT)

Kiev could end up relinquishing some of its former territory in exchange for NATO membership, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s chief of staff, Stian Jenssen said at a debate on Tuesday. In his own statements on the issue, Stoltenberg has insisted that Kiev will set its own terms for “victory.” “I think that a solution could be for Ukraine to give up territory, and get NATO membership in return,” Jenssen said at the debate, according to Norway’s VG newspaper. This discussion is already underway within NATO, he said, suggesting that it could be a “possible solution” to the conflict. No NATO leaders have publicly endorsed the idea of Kiev giving up its claims to the territories of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, or Zaporozhye, which were incorporated into the Russian Federation following referendums last September.

Likewise, while Western officials have cast doubt on Ukraine’s ability to seize Crimea – an historical Russian territory which rejoined the Russian Federation in 2014, none have urged Kiev to abandon its claim to the peninsula. Such an idea has apparently been floated behind the scenes, however. Swiss outlet Neue Zürcher Zeitung claimed in February, citing sources, that CIA Director William Burns had offered Russia a “land for peace” deal in which Moscow would keep “20% of Ukrainian territory.” The White House, the CIA, and the Kremlin all denied that such a proposal had been made. Whether such a deal would be accepted by Kiev or Moscow remains doubtful. Russian President Vladimir Putin stated last year that securing the military neutrality of Ukraine was a key factor behind his decision to send troops into the country, and that having a NATO-aligned Ukraine on Russia’s borders would present an unacceptable security risk.

Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council chief Aleksey Danilov stated on Tuesday that Kiev will never negotiate with Putin’s government, that none of Ukraine’s Western backers are pushing for peace, and that “Russia must be destroyed like a modern-day Carthage.” Achieving this goal is proving extremely difficult for Kiev. Two months into its long-anticipated counteroffensive against Russian forces, the Ukrainian military has lost more than 43,000 men and nearly 5,000 pieces of heavy equipment, according to the latest figures from the Russian Defense Ministry.

Stoltenberg insists that NATO will “ensure that Ukraine gets the weapons it needs to be able to retake territory, liberate the lands and win this war and prevail as a sovereign, independent nation.” While he has delivered variations on this statement throughout the conflict, NATO has been more evasive on when Ukraine can join the military bloc. After a summit in Lithuania last month at which Kiev was denied an offer of membership, NATO’s 31 members put out a joint statement explaining that Ukraine can join only “when allies agree and conditions are met.”

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“..To enter the bloc [NATO], the Kiev authorities would have to give up even Kiev itself, the capital of Ancient Rus..”

• If Ukraine Agrees To Give Up Territories, It Will Lose Kiev – Medvedev (TASS)

Should Ukraine agree to relinquish disputed territories for the sake of joining NATO, it will have to give up even Kiev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, said on his Telegram channel. While commenting on a remark by the director of NATO’s Secretary-General’s Private Office, Stian Jenssen, to the effect that Ukraine might become a member of the alliance in case of territorial concessions to Russia, Medvedev wrote: “Why? The idea is curious. The only question is that all of allegedly ‘their’ territories are highly disputable. To enter the bloc [NATO], the Kiev authorities would have to give up even Kiev itself, the capital of Ancient Rus,” he added.


“Well, they (the Ukrainian authorities – TASS) would have to move the capital to Lvov then. If, of course, the Poles agree,” Medvedev remarked. The director of NATO Secretary General’s Private Office, Stian Jenssen, said earlier on Tuesday that Ukraine could become a NATO member if it agreed to cede territories that it currently refused to recognize as part of Russia.

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“..Kiev’s foreign advisers are essentially using the Ukraine conflict as a testing ground for various military strategies involving Western weapons, while President Vladimir Zelensky supplies the manpower for these experiments…”

• Western Military Dominance ‘Has Ended’ – Moscow (RT)

Asian, African and Latin American states have seen their role in the global arena increase as Western military dominance has started to wane, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has said. Speaking at the 21st International Security Conference in Moscow on Tuesday, the minister argued that Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has “put an end to the dominance of the collective West in the military sphere.” “Just as the defeat of fascism by the Red Army in Europe in the last century gave a powerful impetus to anti-colonial movements throughout the world, so will the defeat of the Ukrainian neo-fascists supported by the West serve as a factor in counteracting modern neo-colonialism,” Shoigu said.

The minister noted that Russia is currently fighting “not just the armed forces of Ukraine, but the entire collective West,” which, he added, has recently been joined by several states from the Asia-Pacific region. In its confrontations with Kiev’s forces, which have been provided with foreign weaponry worth billions of dollars, Russia has dispelled many myths about the superiority of Western military standards, Shoigu said. It has become clear that the use of Western weapons and supposedly advanced NATO tactics and training “cannot ensure superiority on the battlefield,” he added. The minister also claimed that Kiev’s foreign advisers are essentially using the Ukraine conflict as a testing ground for various military strategies involving Western weapons, while President Vladimir Zelensky supplies the manpower for these experiments.

Shoigu said the losses among Ukrainian military personnel are being disregarded by Ukraine’s Western backers. The Russian minister also claimed that Ukraine’s military resources are almost completely exhausted, according to preliminary estimates. Russia’s Defense Ministry had previously reported that since launching their counteroffensive operation in early June, Ukraine’s forces had lost some 43,000 soldiers as well as nearly 5,000 pieces of heavy equipment, including dozens of Western tanks and combat vehicles. Shoigu suggested that the US is using the Ukraine conflict to line the pockets of its defense industry by forcing its partners in Europe to procure new products to replace those they have sent to Kiev.

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“Under these conditions, bilateral relations between Russia and China have surpassed the level of strategic ties in all respects, becoming more than just allied.”

• Ukraine’s Military Resources Are “Almost Exhausted” – Shoigu (ZH)

Russia’s defense minister Sergei Shoigu in fresh remarks before a security conference in Moscow acknowledged that while the special military operation in Ukraine has been a real test for Russia, the reality is that Ukraine’s ability to fight and its resources have been “almost exhausted”. He further said the Russian military has learned much about the West’s advanced weapons systems in the process. “In the special military operation, the Russian army has debunked many myths about the superiority of Western military standards,” he said in the rare public speech, as cited in Reuters. “The preliminary results of combat operations show that Ukraine’s military resources are almost exhausted,” he emphasized at one point, but without providing further specifics.

Importantly, China’s own defense chief, Li Shangfu, was in the audience for the event. The Kremlin has recently said that a Putin trip to Beijing to meet with President Xi Jinping is “on the agenda”, to happen by year’s end. Shoigu during the speech touted the large numbers of Western-supplied tanks and armored vehicles that have been taken out on the Ukrainian battlefield. “We have data on … the destruction of German tanks, American armored vehicles, British missiles and other weapons systems,” he said. “We are ready to share our assessments … with our partners.” Likely he had China in particular in mind, also as he followed by comparing the West’s deep involvement in Ukraine to the Taiwan situation. He then said: “Under these conditions, bilateral relations between Russia and China have surpassed the level of strategic ties in all respects, becoming more than just allied.”

While time may soon tell whether or not Ukraine’s defenses are “almost exhausted” – it has become very clear that the counteroffensive is not going well, and Biden’s ‘all in’ support to Kiev is becoming politically unpopular and an additional liability for Democrats going into the 2024 presidential election. Another key part of the Russian defense chief’s speech touched on nuclear weapons. He blasted allegations by the West that Putin is ready to use them: “From a military point of view, there is no need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine to achieve the set goals,” Shoigu said at an international security conference in Moscow. He slammed media speculation that Russia could potentially use nuclear or chemical weapons to compensate for slow progress in its nearly six-month military campaign in Ukraine as “absolute lies.”

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As NATO eyes the Pacific.

• Shoigu Hails High Level Of Contacts Between Russia, Chinese Military (TASS)

Russia and China maintain communication between the two countries’ military at a high level and conduct joint land, naval and air drills, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Tuesday. “We are maintaining contacts at a high level, exchanging delegations, conducting joint exercises and drill – this is shown on all global channels – about our joint patrols on land, at sea, and in the air,” he said during a working meeting Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu on the sidelines of the 11th Moscow Conference on International Security. The Russian defense minister noted that cooperation with China is developed both bilaterally and within multilateral formats, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the ADMM-Plus (ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus).

“Russia and China are strategic partners, good neighbors and close friends,” he stressed. “During Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Russia this March, the leaders of our countries reiterated that Russian-Chinese comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation have reached the highest point ever in the entire history of bilateral relations. We are implementing our leaders’ agreements in practice.” Shoigu thanked his Chinese counterpart for taking part in the Moscow security conference, noting that Li’s speech at the conference opening and the analysis of international situation “deserve closer attention.”

The Russian defense minister noted that China traditionally takes an active part in the Army international forum and China’s products traditionally attract specialists’ interest. “Yesterday, I visited your exposition, which broadly represents China’s defense sector. I saw many new and promising things,” Shoigu said, adding that since the previous exhibition, where China also took part, “a serious step forward had been taken.” “Today, all companies, all countries taking part in the exhibition take into account the experience of the latest development, including in the zone of the special military operation,” he said. The Russian minister said he is confident that today’s meeting will help strengthen the traditionally friendly ties between the two countries’ defense ministries and enhancing regional and global security.

He noted that this is his third meeting with his Chinese counterpart this year and congratulated him on the 96th anniversary of the establishment of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, which was marked on August 1. The Army 2023 international military-technical forum is running at the Patriot Congress and Exhibition Center, the Alabino training ground and the Kubinka airfield outside Moscow on August 14-20. About 1,500 leading Russian defense enterprises and 85 foreign companies and businesses from seven countries are participating in the forum’s expositions and business program. The forum has been organized by the Russian Defense Ministry. TASS is the forum’s strategic media partner.

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“..despite “outstanding performance characteristics” their highly-sophisticated equipment couldn’t perform appropriately in Ukraine’s tough battlefield conditions.”

• Why US Drones Prove Useless in Ukraine (Sp.)

After China banned exports of long-range remotely-piloted aircraft to Ukraine, US military experts found that American arm-makers have nothing to offer the Ukrainian military to fill the gap. On one hand, US defense-tech firms produce drones with a price tag starting from $16,000, well above China’s DJI Mavic UAVs that cost around $2,000 or even less. What’s more, according to the US mainstream press, some US defense contractors who have spent months testing their drones in Ukraine have now decided to leave their drones in storage. The crux of the matter is that despite “outstanding performance characteristics” their highly-sophisticated equipment couldn’t perform appropriately in Ukraine’s tough battlefield conditions.

American arms manufacturers have long been focused on qualitative superiority of their systems while their Russian and Chinese peers concentrated on functionality and quantity, as per David T. Pyne, an EMP Task Force scholar and former US Department of Defense officer. “During the latter stages of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, the US focused on producing more expensive high-tech weapon systems that were qualitatively superior to Soviet systems in most areas while the Soviets more than compensated for US technological superiority by outproducing the US and its NATO allies by a wide margin. While Russia has caught up with the US technologically, I think the same Cold War-era mentality that quality is more important than quantity continues to hold true here in the US as we continue to prioritize more high-tech equipment even though it costs a lot more money to produce,” Pyne told Sputnik.

According to Pyne, Russia appears to have a much more cost-effective military budget than the US has “because its procurement, manufacturing and personnel costs are lower.” Russia’s electronic warfare (EW) systems, air defenses and aircraft reportedly pose yet another challenge to NATO-grade unmanned vehicles. “Russian electronic warfare capabilities remain the best in the world across the electromagnetic spectrum,” the EMP Task Force scholar stressed. “I think that Russian EW systems remain highly effective against US-built drones although media reports indicate that the US is helping Ukraine learn how to more effectively counter Russian GPS jamming equipment, likely reducing the percentage of Ukrainian drones it can successfully jam down to perhaps eighty percent.”

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“..a “sabotage hit squad” consisting of some 100 Ukrainian “nationalist and neo-Nazi militants..”

• MI6 Plans To Send Ukrainian Mercenaries To Africa (RT)

The UK foreign intelligence service MI6 has allegedly prepared a group of saboteurs to disrupt Russia’s growing economic cooperation with African states, a military-diplomatic source told the RIA and TASS news agencies on Wednesday. The British spy agency created a “sabotage hit squad” consisting of some 100 Ukrainian “nationalist and neo-Nazi militants,” the source claimed, citing “information confirmed by several sources.” London reportedly asked Kiev back in July to “provide maximum and prompt assistance to representatives of the British intelligence MI6 and SAS special unit” in order to select fighters with “significant combat experience on the ‘eastern front’.”

The source, cited by both RIA and TASS, claimed that the British-Ukrainian unit will be tasked with “sabotage of infrastructure in African countries, as well as the elimination of African leaders oriented towards cooperation with Russia.” The militant group, alleged to be headed by Kiev’s Main Directorate of Intelligence officer Lt. Col. Vitaliy Prashchuk, is expected to be deployed to the Sudanese city of Omdurman from the Ukrainian port of Izmail by a “chartered civilian ship” sometime during the second half of August, the source added. London has been deeply involved in the Ukraine conflict since its escalation in February 2022, supplying domestically produced and foreign military hardware to Ukraine, training Ukrainian troops in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, and sharing intelligence.

The Wall Street Journal reported in May that British special forces “are operating very close to the front lines” and that their “guiding influence on Ukrainian special-forces activity is evident in the sabotage operations Ukraine has conducted against Russian railway, airfield, fuel and other logistical nodes.” “We can’t rule out that the British participated in the planning, organization and support of terrorist attacks carried out by the Kiev regime on the territory of Russia,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said at the time, adding that Moscow reserves the right to respond to such conduct by the UK at a time and place of its choosing.

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“..charities and foundations are strictly forbidden by law to operate with the effect, much less the intent, of benefiting a political party..”

• How Charities Secretly Help Win Elections (Thayer)

This investigation reveals the shocking true story of the Everybody Votes campaign—the largest and most corrupt “charitable” voter registration effort in American history—that may have decided the 2020 presidential election and could decide 2024. Commissioned by Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, funded by the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, and coordinated with cutthroat Democratic consultants, the Everybody Votes campaign used the guise of civic-minded charity to selectively register millions of “non-white” swing-state voters in the hopes of getting out the Democratic vote for a 2020 presidential win. It worked. Our exclusive research reveals how a little-known organization called the Voter Registration Project (VRP) leveraged connections with billionaire private foundations, Sam Bankman-Fried’s mother, and foreign billionaires with a history of breaking U.S. election law to raise $190 million for the Everybody Votes campaign and register 5.1 million people.

Using data from leaked copies of the campaign’s secret plans, as well as 2020 exit polls, our researchers have discovered that the VRP’s 5.1 million new registrations provided Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden with somewhere between 1 million to 2.7 million votes across eight specially chosen swing states during the 2020 election. If the state-by-state projections of the campaign’s Democratic consultants held true into 2020, the Everybody Votes campaign’s “massive registration surge” would have provided Democrats more votes than the total margins of victory in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Biden ultimately won each of these states in 2020, netting him 53 electoral college votes.

Our investigation proves, once and for all, that Democrats used truckloads of money from private foundations and public charities to give their donors enormous tax breaks and pad their electoral margins in 2020, even though charities and foundations are strictly forbidden by law to operate with the effect, much less the intent, of benefiting a political party. The investigation also proves that the campaign’s supposed concerns for the “civic participation” of “underrepresented communities” were nothing more than a convenient lie. Unearthed drafts of the Everybody Votes campaign’s original partisan schematics prove that the campaign was designed to win elections first and worry about “civic participation” later. Changing the electorate’s racial composition was only ever a secondary concern.

If the Everybody Votes campaign was a political action committee (PAC) or a 501(c)(4) “dark money” group and if the organizers had just admitted they cared more about electoral results than inequality, then there would be no scandal. But it wasn’t, and they didn’t, and the result is an enormous scandal entangling some of the Left’s biggest political donors and many of its most powerful nonprofit activist groups. It’s not just a scandal of the past either. The operation was so successful in 2020 that the Everybody Votes campaign has announced it will continue on through 2024, registering millions more. New job listings suggest that this cycle’s operations will target Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin—each a must-win presidential swing state. Only time will tell if the campaign is a repeat success.

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Dig through earth
https://twitter.com/i/status/1691436302162345984

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle March 18 2023

Mar 182023
 
 March 18, 2023  Posted by at 9:16 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  44 Responses »


Leonardo da Vinci A Copse of Trees 1508

 

• Xi Jinping To Make State Visit To Russia On March 20-22 – Kremlin (TASS)
• US and Other Western Nations Wary Of Xi’s Trip To Moscow (SCMP)
• Kissinger Assesses China-brokered Deal Between Saudi Arabia And Iran (RT)
• International Criminal Court Issues Arrest Warrant For Putin (TASS)
• The Gathering Storm (Macgregor)
• Kiev Issues Warning To Countries That Don’t Support Ukraine (RT)
• US ‘Obviously’ Blew Up Nord Stream – French Politician (RT)
• US ‘Taking Close Look’ At Drone Operations – CNN (RT)
• Russian Forces Block Ukrainian Army From Leaving Bakhmut (TASS)
• EU States Using Ukraine To Dispose Of Old Weapons – Kremlin (RT)
• Putin Says Crimea’s Reunification With Russia Was Historic Event (TASS)
• ‘Foreign Agent’ Rules: The End Of Globalization As We Knew It (Lukyanov)
• Using NGOs In Hybrid Wars Favorite Method Of Russia’s Enemies – Medvedev (TASS)
• Twitter Pushed To Censor ‘True Stories’ On Covid – Twitter Files (RT)
• SVB + FTX + SBF = WTF? (Kunstler)
• Swiss Government Discussing Merging UBS & Credit Suisse (Az.)
• US Security Forces Brace For Possible Trump ‘Arrest’ (RT)

 

 

 

 

RFK military operation
https://twitter.com/i/status/1636817052710125569

 

 

 

 

Mappin
https://twitter.com/i/status/1636520757328064513

 

 

mRNA victims

 

 

Orthodox

 

 

 

 

Watters Hallie Schweizer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1636524966958039040

 

 

Orban peace

 

 

 

 

Xi arrives on the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq.

Labeling this an official state visit means documents have been prepared that are ready to be signed. By all parties, including US and Ukraine.

US and EU can say that China should join the world community vs Russia, but it’s Xi who speaks for the majority.

• Xi Jinping To Make State Visit To Russia On March 20-22 – Kremlin (TASS)

Chinese President Xi Jinping will make a state visit to Russia from March 20-22 at the invitation of President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin press service said in a statement on Friday. According to the statement, the two leaders will discuss “pressing issues related to the future of relations of comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction between Russia and China.” The parties are also expected to exchange views on ways to enhance Russian-Chinese cooperation on the international stage. In addition, the Kremlin press service specified that “a number of important bilateral documents will be signed” during the Chinese leader’s visit. Putin and Xi Jinping last met in person on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in the Uzbek city of Samarkand in September 2022.


In late December, Putin held a video conference call with Xi Jinping, inviting him to make a state visit to Moscow in the spring of 2023. Earlier in March, Xi Jinping was re-elected as Chinese president for a third five-year term. Putin said in his congratulatory message that Moscow and Beijing would continue coordination on key issues. The Russian president also expressed confidence that together with the Chinese president, he would be able to boost cooperation between the two countries in various fields. Following the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in October 2022, Xi Jinping was also re-elected as General Secretary of the party’s Central Committee for a third time. That said, this will be his first visit to Russia since the re-election.

Ritter Xi

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“If China brokers peace here like it just did with Saudi and Iran, it’s a new world order, instantly.”

• US and Other Western Nations Wary Of Xi’s Trip To Moscow (SCMP)

Washington and other Western capitals reacted warily on Friday to the announcement of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Russia next week, with the US “deeply concerned” Beijing could try to pose as a peacemaker by promoting an immediate ceasefire in the war in Ukraine. Both Beijing and the Kremlin confirmed on Friday that Xi will make a state visit to Russia from Monday to Wednesday to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It will be Xi’s first foreign trip since he secured an unprecedented third term as China’s president last week. His face-to-face talks with Putin are widely expected to have broad implications for the war, now in its second year, and China’s already tense relationship with the US.

But its significance grew further on Friday after pressure grew on Putin: the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Netherlands, issued an arrest warrant for him over the war crime of illegally deporting Ukrainian children to Russia. Additionally, Turkey, after blocking Finland’s application to join Nato in the wake of Russia’s invasion, agreed to support it. Putin has maintained that Nato is a threat to Russia. Beijing’s foreign ministry described the trip as a “visit of friendship, cooperation and peace”. Washington, though, sees it as a potentially harmful reframing of the conflict. The Chinese might promote a ceasefire and “try to couch themselves as peacemakers and as … the only ones calling for the fighting to stop”, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said. “We have deep concerns about that, because of what it actually means in terms of benefiting Russia at the expense of Ukraine,” he said.

“That’s why we’re expressing these concerns even before the visit.” The US position is that any ceasefire that freezes positions on the ground would validate Russia’s seizing of Ukrainian territory and give it a chance to rebuild its forces for further attacks. “We don’t support calls for a ceasefire right now,” Kirby said. “We certainly don’t support calls for a ceasefire that would be called for by the PRC [People’s Republic of China] in a meeting in Moscow that would simply benefit Russia.” He criticised Beijing for not joining the rest of the international community in supporting Ukraine. “We would certainly hope that they would. But we’ll see what comes out of this meeting,” he said. Britain also said that any peace deal not predicated on Ukraine’s sovereignty and self determination was no peace deal at all.

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“China has in recent years declared that it needs to be a participant in the creation of the world order. It has now made a significant move in that direction..”

• Kissinger Assesses China-brokered Deal Between Saudi Arabia And Iran (RT)

China has taken a major step towards its goal of becoming a participant in the shaping of the world order, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has said. The veteran diplomat was commenting on the recent landmark deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which Beijing mediated. Riyadh and Tehran agreed to restore diplomatic relations after a seven-year pause during talks in Beijing a week ago. In comments cited by the Washington Post on Thursday, Kissinger said the development is “a substantial change in the strategic situation in the Middle East.” The Saudis, who have been among Washington’s closest allies in the Middle East for decades, “are now balancing their security by playing off the US against China,” he explained.

According to Kissinger, Riyadh’s actions are comparable to what he himself accomplished in the early 1970s when, as secretary of state in the Nixon administration, he helped achieve rapprochement with Beijing amid its tensions with Moscow. The Saudi-Iranian deal will also complicate matters for Israel, as “pressure on Iran will now have to take into account Chinese interests,” he said. Israel remains increasingly concerned about Tehran’s alleged nuclear weapon program, and has warned of potential pre-emptive strikes against Iranian targets. “China has in recent years declared that it needs to be a participant in the creation of the world order. It has now made a significant move in that direction” by persuading Saudi Arabia and Iran to negotiate, Kissinger said.

The author of the article, Washington Post foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius, also acknowledged that “the US is no longer the indispensable power in the region – the only country strong or supple enough to broker peace deals.” “China has claimed a share of that convening power” by playing the role of mediator on this scale for the first time, he wrote. Another major regional player, the United Arab Emirates, is also “courting” Beijing, Ignatius said. Chinese President Xi Jinping stated earlier this week that Beijing should “actively participate in the reform and construction of the global governance system” and promote “global security initiatives.” In doing so, China will add “positive energy to world peace and development,” he added.

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Russia was (is) moving Ukrainian children out of the line of fire. Where Ukraine let them remain. The west now talks of “re-education camps”..

“Who would have thought 15 years ago, that taking care of children, saving them and treating them, would become criminally punishable in the West.” – Maria Zakharova

• International Criminal Court Issues Arrest Warrant For Putin (TASS)

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, the court said in a statement on Friday. The statement said they could be responsible “for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.” ICC arrest warrants are usually secret in order to protect victims and witnesses and also to safeguard the investigation. However, the court stated that it authorized the public disclosure of the existence of the warrants, the names of the suspects and the crimes for which the warrants are issued, because “the conduct addressed in the present situation is allegedly ongoing, and that the public awareness of the warrants may contribute to the prevention of the further commission of crimes.”


Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier, when he commented on potential ICC cases against Russia, that Russia doesn’t recognize the court’s jurisdiction. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, in comments on the information from the Hague, said decisions of the court have no consequence in Russia and any potential arrest warrants are null and void. The International Criminal Court was established by the Rome Statute in 1998. It’s not part of the UN and is accountable to the countries that have ratified the statute. The countries that aren’t parties to the statute include Russia (signed, didn’t ratify), the US (signed, then revoked signature) and China (didn’t sign). Putin signed an executive order in 2016 that stated Russia wouldn’t be a member of the ICC. According to a statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry, the court didn’t live up to expectations and failed to become a truly independent organization for international justice. The US expressed strong displeasure with the court in 2020, after ICC prosecutors indicated they would investigate crimes by US servicemen in Afghanistan.

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“Biden’s policy of forcibly pushing NATO to Russia’s borders forged a strong commonality of security and trade interests between Moscow and Beijing that is attracting strategic partners in South Asia like India, and partners like Brazil in Latin America.”

• The Gathering Storm (Macgregor)

The crisis of American national power has begun. America’s economy is tipping over, and Western financial markets are quietly panicking. Imperiled by rising interest rates, mortgage-backed securities and U.S. Treasuries are losing their value. The market’s proverbial “vibes”—feelings, emotions, beliefs, and psychological penchants—suggest a dark turn is underway inside the American economy. American national power is measured as much by American military capability as by economic potential and performance. The growing realization that American and European military-industrial capacity cannot keep up with Ukrainian demands for ammunition and equipment is an ominous signal to send during a proxy war that Washington insists its Ukrainian surrogate is winning.

Russian economy-of-force operations in southern Ukraine appear to have successfully ground down attacking Ukrainian forces with the minimal expenditure of Russian lives and resources. While Russia’s implementation of attrition warfare worked brilliantly, Russia mobilized its reserves of men and equipment to field a force that is several magnitudes larger and significantly more lethal than it was a year ago.Russia’s massive arsenal of artillery systems including rockets, missiles, and drones linked to overhead surveillance platforms converted Ukrainian soldiers fighting to retain the northern edge of the Donbas into pop-up targets. How many Ukrainian soldiers have died is unknown, but one recent estimate wagers between 150,000-200,000 Ukrainians have been killed in action since the war began, while another estimates about 250,000.

Given the glaring weakness of NATO members’ ground, air, and air defense forces, an unwanted war with Russia could easily bring hundreds of thousands of Russian Troops to the Polish border, NATO’s Eastern Frontier. This is not an outcome Washington promised its European allies, but it’s now a real possibility. In contrast to the Soviet Union’s hamfisted and ideologically driven foreign policymaking and execution, contemporary Russia has skillfully cultivated support for its cause in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. The fact that the West’s economic sanctions damaged the U.S. and European economies while turning the Russian ruble into one of the international system’s strongest currencies has hardly enhanced Washington’s global standing.

Biden’s policy of forcibly pushing NATO to Russia’s borders forged a strong commonality of security and trade interests between Moscow and Beijing that is attracting strategic partners in South Asia like India, and partners like Brazil in Latin America. The global economic implications for the emerging Russo-Chinese axis and their planned industrial revolution for some 3.9 billion people in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) are profound.

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“..while Kuleba was “trying to clumsily intimidate the world community,” he was simultaneously publishing announcements on his ministry’s website searching for “anyone who could represent the Kiev regime at the ambassador level abroad.”

• Kiev Issues Warning To Countries That Don’t Support Ukraine (RT)

Ukraine will remember those who backed it in its conflict with Russia and will hold those who did not accountable, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba warned in a BBC interview on Friday. The choices every nation made during Russia’s military operation in Ukraine will be “taken into account in building future relations,” Kuleba said, adding that countries that have “misbehaved in the course of this war and mistreated Ukraine” would pay a price. “If anyone in the world thinks that the way this or that country behaved – or treated Ukraine at the darkest moment of its history – will not be taken into account in building future relations, these people just don’t know how diplomacy works,” he stated, noting that “war is a time when you have to make a choice. And every choice has been recorded.”

The minister also blasted the West for not giving Ukraine weapons fast enough, pointing out that every day weapons are not delivered is a day some Ukrainian soldiers die on the frontline. Russia responded to Kuleba’s statement by noting that everything he said had already long been understood by Ukrainian citizens, which is why they are fleeing even from the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote in a Telegram post that while Kuleba was “trying to clumsily intimidate the world community,” he was simultaneously publishing announcements on his ministry’s website, searching for “anyone who could represent the Kiev regime at the ambassador level abroad.”

“Even though there is a foreign currency salary, it seems there is no one to be found,” Zakharova said. Meanwhile, Russia has pointed out that more and more UN member states are beginning to question the true nature of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev as they grow more skeptical of the West’s calls for peace in Ukraine. “Very quickly it has become obvious that it’s not Russia and Ukraine that are fighting in Ukraine right now. It’s a NATO proxy war against Russia with the hands of the Ukrainians, until the last Ukrainian,” Dmitry Polyansky, the deputy head of Moscow’s mission to the UN, said last week.

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Violent protests in France over Macron unilaterally pushing through pension reforms.

• US ‘Obviously’ Blew Up Nord Stream – French Politician (RT)

French party leader Florian Philippot believes it has long been obvious that the United States was behind last year’s sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, which were built to deliver Russian natural gas to Western Europe. “Even before the war in Ukraine, the US for years fought against Nord Stream, it was a permanent part of their policy,” he told RIA Novosti in an interview published on Friday. “In early February 2022, [US President Joe] Biden said the Americans could make it so that the pipeline was no more. That’s what happened. And it was in the interest of the Americans,” according to Philippot, who heads the right-wing ‘The Patriots’ party in France. Last month, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that Biden personally ordered the bombing of the pipelines, and that Norway assisted in the sabotage.

He cited an unnamed source and supported his case using some of the same arguments as Philippot. Biden remarked that “there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2” during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in early February 2022. Hersh also claimed that Biden allowed US special services to classify the operation in a way that justified not informing the US Congress about it beforehand. Nord Stream 2 is the name of the second, newer pipeline, which was meant to greatly expand the capacity of the original Nord Stream, but was never operational. Both were disabled by sabotage. Philippot said he considered US culpability “obvious” even before Hersh’s revelations, but was not sure about Norway’s role.

He reasoned that Oslo had a motive since it “competes with Russia in gas trade, and many European nations replaced the Russian gas with Norwegian.” Both the US and Norway have denied any responsibility. Philippot also urged France to leave NATO, saying the military alliance “needs to be disbanded because it has no reason to exist.” “We have to stop this agenda of world war against Russia and China, it is absolutely insane,” he told the Russian news outlet, blaming the US for increasing global tensions. He also called French President Emmanuel Macron a deceitful leader. His government “prioritizes the US, and not its own people,” Philippot stated. He cited Macron’s decision to send billions of dollars worth of weapons and ammunition to Kiev, even as he is pushing through an unpopular pension reform, claiming a lack of money to fund social programs.

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“..the US is now “weighing the costs and benefits” of further drone operations..”

That took just one drone…

• US ‘Taking Close Look’ At Drone Operations – CNN (RT)

The US is weighing the benefits and risks of drone flights over the Black Sea after losing an unmanned aircraft there while being chased by Russian interceptors, CNN reported on Thursday, citing sources. On Tuesday, Washington claimed that two Russian Su-27 fighters dumped fuel on a MQ-9 Reaper drone conducting a reconnaissance flight in the area, with one jet later colliding with the US aircraft. Moscow’s Ministry of Defense, however, dismissed the accusation, insisting that its interceptors had neither come into contact with the Reaper nor fired a weapon, saying that the drone crashed due to “sharp maneuvers.” Several officials have told CNN that the US is now “weighing the costs and benefits” of further drone operations.

At the same time, Washington has not entirely halted flights while the review is underway, the report says, and another Reaper was sent to monitor Russian forces searching for the debris. Pentagon officials say they are “taking a close look” at US drone routes and at ways to reduce the risk of clashing with Moscow’s military in the area. They are also said to be analyzing the potential intelligence benefits of such missions compared with the danger of escalation. One senior official told CNN the US was concerned that curbing drone activities could adversely affect intelligence gathering related to the Ukraine conflict. However, the US could still rely on other assets such as satellites, the report states.

Despite the ongoing review, Washington is considering flying another drone over the Black Sea in the near future, US officials said, without providing further detail. The US has significantly ramped up intelligence operations close to Russian borders, seeking to provide Ukraine with valuable data. Moscow has repeatedly insisted that such activities make the US a direct party to the conflict. On Friday, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chairman of the Security Council, blasted the US for sending its drone into the restricted flight Moscow has imposed due to the Ukraine conflict. “To put it simply, the Americans went way out of line, and there is no need to stand on ceremony with them,” he said, while recognizing the value of contacts between the Russian and US militaries.

Nap/Ritter

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They can leave, but not fully armed.

• Russian Forces Block Ukrainian Army From Leaving Bakhmut (TASS)

Russian forces are steadily advancing in Artyomovsk (known as Bakhmut in Ukraine) having thwarted the attempted withdrawal of several Ukrainian army units, acting head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Denis Pushilin said on Friday. “We saw that several Ukrainian army units tried to get out of there, but they were thwarted by our forces,” he said in an interview with Russia’s Channel One. “The situation is steadily developing toward the liberation of this settlement.” Artyomovsk is located in the Kiev-controlled part of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). Fierce fighting for control of the city is underway. According to the latest data, Russian forces have blocked or taken control of all paved roads to the city while the nascent spring mud season is complicating logistics efforts to supply the Ukrainian army with fresh ammunition and personnel.

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“.. the jets were retired last year, and several reports suggested that they were mostly not in operational condition…”

• EU States Using Ukraine To Dispose Of Old Weapons – Kremlin (RT)

Plans by Poland and Slovakia to send Soviet warplanes to Ukraine look like attempts to dispose of antiquated equipment, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said during his Friday press briefing. “This is another example of how a number of NATO member states, including Poland, are raising their direct involvement in the conflict,” he announced, reacting to the recent announcements that Warsaw and Bratislava would send Soviet-designed MiG-29 warplanes to Kiev. Peskov added that it would not affect the outcome of Russia’s military operation but instead “may lead to additional suffering for Ukraine itself and its people.” “It seems like these countries [Poland and Slovakia] are just disposing of old equipment they no longer need,” Peskov said. The MiG-29 was designed in the 1970s and entered service in the 1980s.

Warsaw’s plan to transfer four of the MiG-29 fighters to Kiev “in the next few days” was announced by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki earlier this week. This makes Poland the first NATO country to pledge warplanes to Ukraine. The country has 28 MiG-29s, but it is unclear how many of them are in working condition, as the country has sought to update its air force with US- and South Korean-made fighters. Slovakia, also a NATO member, similarly announced on Friday that it would send 13 of its MiGs to Kiev. However, the jets were retired last year, and several reports suggested that they were mostly not in operational condition.

Ukraine has been requesting warplanes, specifically American-made F-16s for its military, but US President Joe Biden said in January that they were not planning to send any over. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz similarly stated the same month that Berlin was not even discussing transferring its own F-16s. French President Emmanuel Macron has sounded more vague, saying in January that he would not rule out sending fighter jets to Ukraine. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced in February that London would be training Ukrainian pilots, adding that there was still no decision on actually sending Western-made fighter jets to Kiev. Moscow has warned on numerous occasions that arming Ukraine was akin to playing with fire and that Western countries had practically already become a party to the conflict.

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9 years ago.

• Putin Says Crimea’s Reunification With Russia Was Historic Event (TASS)

Russian President Vladimir Putin took the opportunity on Friday to congratulate all citizens of Russia with the upcoming anniversary of Crimea’s reunification with Russia, calling it a historic event. “I want to congratulate the citizens of Crimea, Sevastopol and all citizens of our country with the Day of Crimea’s Reunification with Russia,” Putin said, opening a session on the socio-economic development of Crimea and Sevastopol. March 16, 2023 marks nine years since the Crimean referendum, where the majority of citizens of Crimea and Sevastopol voted in favor of reunification with Russia.


After Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich was ousted in a coup in February 2014, mass protests erupted in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. On March 11, 2014, Crimea’s Supreme Council and Sevastopol City Council adopted a declaration of independence. On March 15, 2014, the Crimean authorities held a referendum on reuniting with Russia. Most voters supported the idea (96.77% in Crimea and 95.6% in the city of Sevastopol), with turnout reaching 80%. On March 18, 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the treaty on Crimea’s reunification with Russia. Ukraine, the United States and the European Union refused to recognize Crimea’s independence and its decision to reunite with Russia.

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“..The idea that cross-border funding of NGOs is not only acceptable, but normal and necessary, has become a product and a feature of the era of liberal globalization..”

• ‘Foreign Agent’ Rules: The End Of Globalization As We Knew It (Lukyanov)

Georgia hit the headlines early this month over the government’s attempt to pass a law on “foreign agents.” The draft bill (there were actually two of them) was eventually withdrawn and the issue taken off the agenda for the time being. The case is unusual because the Georgian leadership – far from being pro-Russian and anti-Western – has suddenly been relegated to this niche by the international media. Of course, everything is black-and-white these days, but the general topic is interesting in a wider context. The concept of a “foreign agent,” which was introduced in the US on the eve of World War II to counter enemy propaganda, has found new life in the 21st century. Until recently, it was mainly used in polemics between Russia and the West.

The latter accused Moscow of using the status to remove dissenters from the public space. Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s argument that the public has a right to know about foreign money being spent domestically is dismissed as a mere justification for restricting freedoms. The argument goes that “civil society” has the right to be funded “independently.” Herein lies a fundamental contradiction that we are now likely to see everywhere more and more. The idea that cross-border funding of NGOs is not only acceptable, but normal and necessary, has become a product and a feature of the era of liberal globalization. This view of civil society has been logically derived from the conceptual approach itself. If the aim is to remove trade, economic and, ideally, political barriers and to create a single global regulatory space, then non-governmental structures must either have no national affiliation at all or be connected with international organizations as much as possible.

This contradicts the classical notion of civil society, the essence of which is precisely its bottom-up origin, i.e., that it should emerge domestically. However, the West believes the top-down approach is a good thing – when it suits it, of course. Five years ago, US doctrine enshrined the return of great power rivalry as the core content of international politics. It drew a line under the previous period, which was more open. If this is the essence of world politics, then all the instruments are in play, and all the old themes, such as “money has no nationality” and “let information circulate without barriers,” can no longer be understood outside this context. Over the past couple of decades, there has indeed been a high degree of openness on the part of states to both socio-political and information activities. This is partly due to the significant increase in the number of embassy staff after the Cold War – where the scope of work, including with civil society, has expanded.

The impressive scale of mutual expulsions of diplomats after 2018 is linked to the collapse of relations, but also has an objective basis. Embassies are returning to more classical, i.e., narrower tasks, and there is no reason to have so many staff present. The same phenomenon applies to restrictions on media activity, which was relatively freely tolerated after the end of the Cold War. However, the atmosphere in this area has changed as the dominance of Western sources in the information space has been challenged by other players. In Western Europe and the US, measures against Russian and, to some extent, Chinese news channels have been explained by the fact that they are state-funded, while many of those from the West are private, in addition to their own state media.

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“To create organizations under benign covers, which actually seek to destabilize the situation in the country, to undermine stability in civil society..”

• Using NGOs In Hybrid Wars Favorite Method Of Russia’s Enemies – Medvedev (TASS)

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev noted that using nonprofit organizations in hybrid wars is the favorite method of certain states that are hostile to Russia. The politician called “not to be shy” and to decisively thwart the operation of such structures. “We know that the favorite method of our enemies – all types – is to use nonprofits in hybrid wars. To create organizations under benign covers, which actually seek to destabilize the situation in the country, to undermine stability in civil society. We have seen many examples of this. These methods have been honed to perfection,” Medvedev said, speaking at a Ministry of Justice board meeting Friday. Medvedev noted that the Ministry has already created special measures for nonprofits, including publication of reports online.


“It is necessary to continue fine-tuning the law in this area, to prevent unfair competition, to introduce principles of openness and transparency, and streamline corporate management of nonprofit organizations,” he listed.Achieving balance and security in this area is of key importance, the official explained. “Thus, on the one hand, it is necessary to create comfortable conditions for normal, good-faith nonprofits, whose operation truly benefits the state and society. And, on the other hand – to brutally thwart the operation of structures, whose operation runs counter to Russia’s interests,” he noted. In this regard, one “should not be shy and should use all the necessary legal instruments,” Medvedev believes.

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“As Orwellian proof-of-concept, the Virality Project was a smash success..”

• Twitter Pushed To Censor ‘True Stories’ On Covid – Twitter Files (RT)

A government-linked academic group pushed Twitter to censor factually correct stories about Covid-19 if they risked “fueling hesitancy” about vaccines, according to the latest batch of internal documents released by the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk. Published by journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday, the documents show that from February 2021 onwards, senior Twitter management – including former trust and safety chief Yoel Roth – signed up to a Stanford University initiative that would alert them to the latest “vaccine-related disinformation narratives” spreading on the platform.

Titled ‘The Virality Project,’ the initiative was led by a former CIA employee and comprised academics from several universities, as well as researchers from organizations funded by the Pentagon, the National Science Foundation, and the US State Department. The Virality Project also stated on its website that it “built strong ties” with the Office of the Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Department of Homeland Security, among other agencies and departments. In its briefings to Twitter, the Virality Project recommended that “true content which might promote vaccine hesitancy” – such as stories of side effects and certain vaccines being banned abroad – be censored. Posts raising concern about vaccine mandates were viewed as “anti-vax” misinformation, while “just asking questions” was deemed “a tactic commonly used by spreaders of misinformation,” and posting about the “surveillance state” was deemed a bannable “conspiracy” theory.

It is unclear how often Twitter acceded to the Virality Project’s demands, though Taibbi said that within a month, the platform’s staff began using the project’s recommendations when evaluating content to censor. At the time, Twitter’s rules on Covid-19 “misinformation” required a specific post to be “demonstrably false,” while permitting “strong commentary,” opinion writing, and satire. The Virality Project, however, urged Twitter management to ban “repeat offenders” before they even made new posts. Sharing the leaked emails of White House coronavirus czar Anthony Fauci could “exacerbate distrust in Dr. Fauci and in US public health institutions,” the Virality Project warned in a June 2021 briefing, while a follow-up report highlighted the spread of “worrisome jokes” about harassing the door-to-door vaccine promoters deployed by the administration of US President Joe Biden.

“As Orwellian proof-of-concept, the Virality Project was a smash success,” Taibbi wrote on Friday. “Government, academia, and an oligopoly of would-be corporate competitors organized quickly behind a secret, unified effort to control political messaging.” Since purchasing Twitter in October and installing himself as the platform’s new CEO, Musk has been releasing regular batches of internal documents and communications in a bid to shed light on its previously opaque censorship policies. A tranche of files released in December revealed that Twitter censored “legitimate content” on Covid-19 at the direct request of the White House.

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“Money dies when it loses its direct connection to the generation of wealth from the real things of this earth..”

• SVB + FTX + SBF = WTF? (Kunstler)

As if all the operations around finance in this land were not already unsound and degenerate enough, the alleged president just cancelled moral hazard altogether. It’s now official: from here forward there will be no consequences for banking fraud, poor decision-making, fiduciary recklessness, self-dealing, or any of the other risks attendant to the handling other people’s money. Bailing out the Silicon Valley Bank and Barney Frank’s deluxe Signature Bank means that the government will now have to bail out every bank every time something goes wrong. The trouble, of course, is that the government doesn’t have the means to bail out every bank. Its only resort is to ask the Federal Reserve to summon new money from a magic ether where the illusion of wealth is conjured to paper-over ever greater fissures in the splintering matrix of racketeering that America has become.

That will quickly translate into US dollars losing value, that is, accelerating inflation, which is how nature punishes you when your government lies and pretends that it has a bad situation well-in-hand. Be advised: the situation is not in-hand and is going to get a whole lot worse as new and subsidiary shocks thunder through the weeks and months ahead, until the whole wicked business blows. Likewise, the reactions of our government will only get more tragi-comically pathetic. The harder this gang of feckless, wannabe control freaks pretends to control events, the faster events spin out of control. Money dies when it loses its direct connection to the generation of wealth from the real things of this earth: fuels, crops, metals, materials, labor, and the value-added products made from them.

Since that divorce has already happened, the need arises for something else that can function as money (a store of wealth, an index of value, and a medium of exchange). The government will pretend that a Central Bank Digital Currency is that something else. Since banking is now nationalized by the Federal Reserve backstopping everything and everybody, then theoretically all the wealth of the nation is under its command. That would be another illusion. This CBDC would not be “money” representing wealth because America’s wealth is going, going, gone, pissed away, falling apart, de-laminating, oxidizing, rusting in the rain, going up in a vapor. Think of all those mortgaged cars on the road racking up the mileage until they’re worthless and all those mortgaged suburban houses built out of particle-board and vinyl smeared all over the landscape, decomposing into their constituent chemicals — over time, a dead loss. And that’s what’s left of our American Dream: coldcocked by entropy and, by extension, the laws of the universe.

Yellen

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Credit Suisse was back tanking yesterday.

• Swiss Government Discussing Merging UBS & Credit Suisse (Az.)

UBS Group AG and Credit Suisse Group AG are opposed to a forced combination, even as scenario planning for a government-orchestrated tie-up continues, according to people with knowledge of the matter, Report informs referring to Bloomberg. UBS would prefer to focus on its own wealth-centric standalone strategy and is reluctant to take on risks related to Credit Suisse, the people said, asking not to be identified as the deliberations are private. Its smaller rival is seeking time to see through its turnaround after winning a liquidity backstop from the central bank, they said.


Credit Suisse arrested a collapse in investor confidence on March 16 after winning a 50 billion franc ($54 billion) credit line from the Swiss National Bank. That came after the Swiss lender had appealed to authorities for a public show of support following an unprecedented slump in the shares. With investors jittery after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, comments by Credit Suisse’s largest shareholder that it wasn’t willing to invest more in the bank were enough to provoke a deep selloff.

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They’re really scared of him. He’s polling well compared to DeSantis. And New York is as Dem as they come. But really? Stormy Daniels is all you got?

• US Security Forces Brace For Possible Trump ‘Arrest’ (RT)

Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies are reportedly discussing security preparations in the event former President Donald Trump is indicted on felony falsification charges sometime in the coming days, according to multiple media outlets citing anonymous officials. The agencies are carrying out “preliminary security assessments” in and around a Manhattan courthouse to prepare for a possible indictment linked to an alleged “hush money” scheme involving a woman who claimed to have been intimate with the ex-president, five senior officials told NBC on Friday. While the officials stressed that the discussions are “precautionary” given that no charges have been filed, they said preparations are being made for an indictment that could come as early as next week.


Four law enforcement officials reached by the Associated Press confirmed the interagency conversations, which they said involve “security, planning and the practicalities of a potential court appearance” by Trump. The agencies discussing security preparations reportedly include the New York Police Department, New York State Court Officers, the US Secret Service, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Manhattan DA’s Office. According to a “source in the courts” cited by Fox News, the Secret Service will determine whether Trump is handcuffed in the event he is charged. The former leader is under a grand jury investigation launched by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office over the alleged felony falsification of business records, and is accused of arranging a payment of $130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels through his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen.

Trump
https://twitter.com/i/status/1636890792051523585

Daniels claims she was paid during the 2016 presidential campaign to keep quiet about alleged sexual encounters with Trump in the past, though he denies such liaisons ever took place. Trump’s attorney, Joe Tacopina, told NBC News that if the ex-president is charged, he will “follow the normal procedures,” but has insisted on his client’s innocence. “The payments were made to a lawyer, not to Stormy Daniels. The payments were made to Donald Trump’s lawyer, which would be considered legal fees,” he said during a separate interview with MSNBC earlier this week, adding that Cohen “was his lawyer at the time and advised him that this was the proper way to do this to protect himself and his family from embarrassment. It’s as simple as that. That is not a crime.”


Cohen pleaded guilty to a federal charge related to the payment in 2018, and has since cooperated with the investigation into Trump after a public falling out with his former boss. He has provided hours of testimony before the grand jury probing Trump on the alleged felony charge, appearing for a second time on Wednesday.

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Canucks
https://twitter.com/i/status/1636546986601066496

 

 

 

 

Knots

 

 

Coral

 

 

Humpback

 

 

Amur
https://twitter.com/i/status/1636800272231190528

 

 

Best friends
https://twitter.com/i/status/1636696497025699843

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle Boxing Day 2022

Dec 262022
 
 December 26, 2022  Posted by at 10:07 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  61 Responses »


Saul Leiter Man in straw hat 1955

 

• Ukraine War Tolls Death Knell for NATO (Bhadrakuma)r
• Putin Says He’s Ready To Negotiate ‘With Everyone Involved’ Over Ukraine (Hill)
• Putin “Ready” To Negotiate, But West Wants To “Tear Apart” Russia (ZH)
• Only One Nation Benefits From Sanctions On Russia – Minister (RT)
• Erdogan Accuses West Of ‘Provocations’ Over Ukraine (RT)
• West Issues Ultimatum To Serbia – Media (RT)
• Ukraine Hits Airbase 300 Miles Deep into Russia (GR)
• GOP Senators Blast McConnell For ‘Arrogance,’ Voter Betrayal (JTN)
• Rand Paul Savages DC Elites With Epic “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” (DCE)
• Rep. James Comer Calls For Defunding the FBI (DCE)
• The Democrats are Now the War Party (Chris Hedges)
• Soros Behind Twitter Operation to Shut Down Hunter Biden Laptop Story (BN)
• In Post-Soviet Russia, New Years Remains A Bigger Holiday Than Christmas (RT)

 

 

What happened to us?
https://twitter.com/i/status/1607157558690676736

 

 

 

 

Musk


https://twitter.com/i/status/1606852465751629825

 

 

 

 

Stop now

 

 

Never leaves the human body
https://twitter.com/i/status/1606819520110538752

 

 

Control group
https://twitter.com/i/status/1606524791695237123

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..the nuclear triad. It is the main guarantee that our sovereignty and territorial integrity, strategic parity and the general balance of forces in the world are preserved..”

• Ukraine War Tolls Death Knell for NATO (Bhadrakuma)r

The defining moment in US President Joe Biden’s press conference at the White House last Wednesday, during President Zelensky’s visit, was his virtual admission that he is constrained in the proxy war in Ukraine, as European allies don’t want a war with Russia. To quote Biden, “Now, you say, ‘Why don’t we just give Ukraine everything there is to give?’ Well, for two reasons. One, there’s an entire Alliance that is critical to stay with Ukraine. And the idea that we would give Ukraine material that is fundamentally different than is already going there would have a prospect of breaking up NATO and breaking up the European Union and the rest of the world… I’ve spent several hundred hours face-to-face with our European allies and the heads of state of those countries, and making the case as to why it was overwhelmingly in their interest that they continue to support Ukraine… They understand it fully, but they’re not looking to go to war with Russia. They’re not looking for a third World War.”

Biden realised at that point that “I probably already said too much” and abruptly ended the press conference. He probably forgot that he was dwelling on the fragility of Western unity. The whole point is that the western commentariat largely forgets that Russia’s core agenda is not about territorial conquest — much as Ukraine is vital to Russian interests — but about NATO expansion. And that has not changed. Every now and then President Putin revisits the fundamental theme that the US consistently aimed to weaken and dismember Russia. As recently as last Wednesday, Putin invoked the Chechen war in the 1990s — “the use of international terrorists in the Caucasus, to finish off Russia and to split the Russian Federation… They [US] claimed to condemn al-Qaeda and other criminals, yet they considered using them on the territory of Russia as acceptable and provided all kinds of assistance to them, including material, information, political and any other support, notably military support, to encourage them to continue fighting against Russia.”

Putin has a phenomenal memory and would have been alluding to Biden’s careful choice of William Burns as his CIA chief. Burns was Moscow Embassy’s point person for Chechnya in the 1990s! Putin has now ordered a nation-wide campaign to root out the vast tentacles that the US intelligence planted on Russian soil for internal subversion. Carnegie, once headed by Burns, has since shut down its Moscow office, and the Russian staff fled to the West! The leitmotif of the expanded meeting of the Board of the Defence Ministry in Moscow on Wednesday, which Putin addressed, was the profound reality that Russia’s confrontation with the US is not going to end with Ukraine war. Putin exhorted the Russian top brass to “carefully analyse” the lessons of Ukraine and Syrian conflicts. Importantly, Putin said, “We will continue maintaining and improving the combat readiness of the nuclear triad. It is the main guarantee that our sovereignty and territorial integrity, strategic parity and the general balance of forces in the world are preserved. This year, the level of modern armaments in the strategic nuclear forces has already exceeded 91 percent. We continue rearming the regiments of our strategic missile forces with modern missile systems with Avangard hypersonic warheads.”

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“..Zelensky has laid out a series of 10 conditions that must be met for peace to be achieved..”

That’s what you do when you’re losing.. You come with conditions.

• Putin Says He’s Ready To Negotiate ‘With Everyone Involved’ Over Ukraine (Hill)

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he’s ready to negotiate “with everyone involved” in the war with Ukraine. Putin told a Russian news reporter in an interview that aired on Russian media on Sunday that the Kremlin is ready to negotiate but their enemy are the ones refusing to talk. The comments from the Russian leader follow intense Russian shelling on the Ukrainian city of Kherson on Christmas Eve that killed at least 10 people and injured more than 50 others. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced Russia as “absolute evil” on Saturday following the deadly strikes, which he said were for “the sake of intimidation and pleasure.” Zelensky and President Biden discussed what a “just peace” would look like when Zelensky visited the United States on Wednesday for his first international trip since the war started in February.


Zelensky has laid out a series of 10 conditions that must be met for peace to be achieved, including total Russian withdrawal from Ukrainian territory. This would also include a Russian withdrawal from the Crimean Peninsula under the Ukrainian demands. [..] Putin has previously called on Ukraine and the international community to recognize Crimea as part of Russia, which they have been unwilling to do. Putin said in the interview that Russia is defending its national interests and its citizens in the 10-month conflict, The Associated Press reported. But he said Russia is prepared to negotiate “some acceptable outcomes” with all participants in the conflict. Putin called the conflict a war for the first time in a televised news conference on Thursday, saying it is Russia’s goal to end it. He previously only referred to it as a “special military operation.”

Putin direct

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“..we are defending our national interests, the interests of our citizens, our people..”

• Putin “Ready” To Negotiate, But West Wants To “Tear Apart” Russia (ZH)

In a Sunday interview with Rossiya 1 state television, Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country is now ready to negotiate an end to the conflict in Ukraine. However, he once again pointed the finger at the West for making any dialogue toward an acceptable end to the fighting all but impossible. “We are ready to negotiate with everyone involved about acceptable solutions, but that is up to them – we are not the ones refusing to negotiate, they are,” Putin said. “I believe that we are acting in the right direction, we are defending our national interests, the interests of our citizens, our people. And we have no other choice but to protect our citizens,” he added. From Moscow’s point of view, a signal of Ukraine’s ‘seriousness’ about talks would likely hinge on Kiev’s willingness to compromise on territorial concessions, especially regarding the Donbas in the east.


Additionally the Ukrainians would likely have to acknowledge Russian control over the Crimea. However, President Zelensky on Wednesday in his speech before Congress pledged “absolute victory” and has of late been vehement in rejecting any talk of letting go of territory as a non-starter, especially as the months-long Ukrainian counteroffensive has met with some significant successes.Also in the interview Putin continued his theme of the US and NATO waging a proxy war using Ukraine as a pawn. He said in the Sunday comments that the West is attempting to “tear apart” Russia. “At the core of it all is the policy of our geopolitical opponents, aiming to tear apart Russia, the historical Russia,” Putin said. “They have always tried to ‘divide and conquer’… Our goal is something else – to unite the Russian people.”

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“..were orchestrated to provide Europe with more expensive liquefied [natural] gas from America.”

• Only One Nation Benefits From Sanctions On Russia – Minister (RT)

The sanctions the West has slapped on Russia over the Ukraine conflict are taking a heavy toll on the European economy, while the United States is the only actor profiting from the restrictions, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Saturday. Speaking to Asharq News daily, the minister claimed that Western sanctions had helped the Americans to achieve what they wanted, saying “their supplies of oil and gas to the European market have increased.” Energy shipments from the US, however, have proved costly for Europeans, resulting in skyrocketing inflation and decreased competitive power for European businesses, Siluanov said. According to the minister, both Western sanctions and the blasts that ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in late September “were orchestrated to provide Europe with more expensive liquefied [natural] gas from America.”

“America benefits, Europe loses,” he explained. Moscow has called the sabotage a terrorist attack, claiming that the US stood to benefit the most from the explosions. While Washington has denied any involvement, Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the incident as a “tremendous opportunity” for Europe to wean itself off of Russian energy. Siluanov went on to admit that sanctions have affected the Russian economy. “But they inflicted on the West no less, and perhaps even more pain,” he said, adding that the sanctions rhetoric has now become routine. The minister noted that the EU price cap on Russian oil “will certainly lead to price and market distortions,” reiterating Moscow’s position that it would not provide crude under contracts conforming to Western-mandated restrictions.

Russian oil companies are rerouting their oil shipments from the West in other directions, the minister said. “We will be looking for new markets, looking for new logistics. It is possible that this would be more expensive,” he stated. Earlier this month, the EU, the G7 countries and Australia introduced a price limit on Russian seaborne oil, set at $60 per barrel. The measure also prohibits Western companies from providing insurance and other services to shipments of Russian crude, unless the cargo is purchased at or below the indicated price. Following the move, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov warned that the restrictions would wreak havoc on global oil markets, while Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow was not planning to sell oil to nations supporting the price cap.

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Erdogan plays his cards.

• Erdogan Accuses West Of ‘Provocations’ Over Ukraine (RT)

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has praised Türkiye’s role in securing a grain deal between Russia and Ukraine, claiming in a speech on Sunday that unlike Ankara, Western nations did not make any tangible diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict. “Unfortunately, the West has only made provocations and failed to make efforts to be a mediator in the Ukraine-Russia war,” Erdogan said at a youth event in Türkiye’s eastern Erzurum province on Sunday. Türkiye has thus “assumed this mediator role in 2022” and is set to continue its diplomatic efforts next year, building up on the success of the Black Sea corridor created as part of an Istanbul grain deal in July, Erdogan said.

The grain corridor was touted as a way to secure food supplies to the neediest nations as a matter of priority, but Erdogan confirmed Russia’s long-standing concerns, saying on Sunday that some 44 percent of the grain exported from Ukraine went to Europe instead. In the meantime Moscow voiced its readiness to supply African nations with “large volumes” of grain and fertilizers out of its own stocks for free. Ankara adopted a neutral position early in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, refusing to take part in the Western sanctions on Moscow, while continuing its military cooperation with Kiev – including selling a number of Bayraktar attack drones. A preliminary peace agreement was reportedly reached in Istanbul as early as March, but was later rejected by Ukraine under alleged pressure from the West.

The grain deal, touted as a rare victory for diplomacy, was signed in July by representatives of Russia, Ukraine, Türkiye and the UN, with a Joint Coordination Center set up in Istanbul to oversee the shipments. In late October, Russia briefly suspended its participation in the agreement, after accusing Kiev of launching a terrorist attack on the Crimea bridge, and drone strikes on ships involved in securing safe passage for agricultural cargo. Moscow ultimately returned to the accord after receiving unspecified “written security guarantees” from Kiev. Last month, Moscow allowed “a technical prolongation” of the deal, but Russian officials have repeatedly voiced concerns that the deal is not meeting its stated goals, and have also insisted that the provisions on lifting the restrictions on Russian agricultural exports were not being fulfilled. The Turkish president expressed hope that the issue of fertilizer exports and Moscow’s other concerns would be resolved through “more intense” negotiations next year.

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Keep on poking…

• West Issues Ultimatum To Serbia – Media (RT)

Several Western countries have “sent an ultimatum” to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, demanding that Serbs in the northern part of breakaway Kosovo end their stand-off with local authorities, news website Pink.rs reported on Sunday. The outlet claims that ambassadors of the Quint group, comprising the US, the UK, France, Germany and Italy, are calling for barricades in the region be removed within 24 hours. If Belgrade fails to ensure this, the Western powers will reportedly let Albin Kurti, Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian prime minister, attack local Serbs. Earlier, Kurti warned that the “removal of these barricades cannot exclude casualties.”

Tensions between Belgrade and Pristina flared up earlier this month when Serbs, who make up the majority in the northern part of province, put up barriers to protest against the arrest of a former police officer, accused of attacking a Kosovo law enforcement patrol. After this, Vucic asked NATO’s KFOR peacekeepers for permission to deploy up to 1,000 Serbian troops and police officers in Kosovo, as it is entitled to do under UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which put an end to the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia in 1999. However, these plans were resisted by the US, with Gabriel Escobar, the State Department’s special envoy for the region, saying Washington had given Kosovo “very firm security guarantees.”

On Sunday, KFOR said that shots had been fired near a NATO patrol in northern part of Kosovo, close to the roadblocks, adding that there were no casualties. It stopped short of assigning blame. However, Serbian media, citing eyewitnesses, claimed that the incident took place when Kosovo’s special forces attempted to clear barricades near a town of Zubin Potok. With no sign of tensions abating, Milan Mojsilovic, Chief of General Staff of the Serbian Armed Forces, told local media on Sunday that the situation is complex, and requires the presence of the Serbian military along the administrative line which divides Kosovo from the rest of Serbia. NATO took control of Kosovo in 1999, after bombing Serbia on behalf of ethnic Albanian separatists. The province’s provisional government declared independence in 2008, which Belgrade has refused to recognize.

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They’re shot down but still kill.

• Ukraine Hits Airbase 300 Miles Deep into Russia (GR)

Ukraine attacked with a drone an airbase in Russia’s Saratov region which lies about 500km (310 miles) northeast of the border with Ukraine. Three Russian military personnel were killed at Engels bomber base Russian news agencies reported, citing the defense ministry. Russian state media agency Tass quotes the defense ministry as saying: “On December 26, at around 01:35 Moscow time (2235 GMT), a Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle was shot down at low altitude while approaching the Engels military airfield in the Saratov region. “As a result of the fall of the wreckage of the drone, three Russian technical servicemen who were at the airfield were fatally injured.”


Russia accuses Ukraine of carrying out a similar attack on the airfield, home to strategic bombers, on 5 December. In that attack three servicemen were also killed by debris from a downed Ukrainian drone, Moscow said at the time. Two aircraft were lightly damaged. According to Reuters, the twin strikes dealt Russia a major reputational blow and raised questions about why its defenses failed, analysts said, as attention turned to the use of drones in the war between neighbors. Ukraine has never publicly claimed responsibility for attacks in Russia, but has said, however, that such incidents are “karma” for Russia’s invasion. As CNN reported recently Ukraine’s state-owned weapons manufacturer Ukroboronprom has indicated several times in the last few weeks that it is close to finishing work on a new long-range drone.

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“..Unfortunately, our supporters aren’t going to buy it either.”

• GOP Senators Blast McConnell For ‘Arrogance,’ Voter Betrayal (JTN)

Conservative GOP senators blasted Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Sunday for shepherding with Democrats a $1.7 trillion year-end spending bill into law over the objections of House Republicans, saying it was an act of “arrogance” that betrayed promises to voters. “Our party leadership turned on Republican voters, turned on the Republican base, turned on most Republican senators,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, told “The Cats Roundtable” and host John Catsimitidas on WABC radio in New York. “It has happened before, but this is one too many times. For me, this is the final straw.” Lee called the omnibus spending bill signed into law Friday “the ugliest spending bill on record” and one that signaled “that voters don’t see much of a defining difference with Democrats.”

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., mocked those of his GOP colleagues who voted for the bill and celebrated its passage. “To declare that a victory, to say that’s a win, that’s like a football team that just lost the game 60 to 0, and they kick a field goal in the waning seconds and say the field goal is a big win,” Johnson told Catsimitidas. “No, we just got our you-know-whats handed to us.” Johnson said that McConnell’s maneuver not only betrayed conservative voters but also undercut House Republicans about to take over in January who had asked for a short-term spending plan. “Unfortunately, the arrogance of our leadership who said, ‘We know better than House members. We’re going to pass this.’ … I’m not buying it,” Johnson said. “Unfortunately, our supporters aren’t going to buy it either.”

Other senators took to Twitter to express their disdain for the spending law, warning it will worsen inflation next year. “I voted AGAINST the $1.7 TRILLION spending bill because I promised Florida families I’d fight every day to make Washington work for them,” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., tweeted. “This reckless inflation bomb is a disaster for our economy and a slap in the face to Floridians struggling to make ends meet.”

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“The Senators were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of pork danced in their heads. No budget was found, just mischief and debt.”

• Rand Paul Savages DC Elites With Epic “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” (DCE)

This Wednesday, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) posted a parody of the classic Christmas poem “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” to this social media, this time directed at the Democrat’s omnibus spending bill — which costs America a whopping $1.7 trillion dollars. “Twas the week before Christmas, and through the Senate and House, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The earmarks were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there,” Paul begins.= “The Senators were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of pork danced in their heads. No budget was found, just mischief and debt. While the taxpayers hung their poor heads and wept. When out on the lawn arose such a clatter — Senators sprang from their oxygen. What was the matter?” Paul added. “Away to the window, they flew like a flash, tore open the shutter when they heard the word cash.”

Then Senator Paul decided to name names — and he was genuinely bipartisan here, scorching high spenders on both sides of the aisle! Note: This article may contain commentary reflecting the author’s opinion. This Wednesday, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) posted a parody of the classic Christmas poem “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” to this social media, this time directed at the Democrat’s omnibus spending bill — which costs America a whopping $1.7 trillion dollars. “Twas the week before Christmas, and through the Senate and House, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The earmarks were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there,” Paul begins. “The Senators were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of pork danced in their heads. No budget was found, just mischief and debt.

“While the taxpayers hung their poor heads and wept. When out on the lawn arose such a clatter — Senators sprang from their oxygen. What was the matter?” Paul added. “Away to the window, they flew like a flash, tore open the shutter when they heard the word cash.” Then Senator Paul decided to name names — and he was genuinely bipartisan here, scorching high spenders on both sides of the aisle! “With a little old driver so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be Saint Nick. More rapid than eagles. His coursers they came, and he whistled and shouted and called them by name: Now, McConnell! Now, Schumer! Now, Pelosi and Vixen! On Biden! On Stupid! On Dumber and Blitzen! To debt! To bankruptcy! To free money for all”

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“We need to halt everything with the FBI, all funding, until they come forward and explain to Congress exactly what they were doing..”

• Rep. James Comer Calls For Defunding the FBI (DCE)

On Tuesday, Rep. James Comer, who is expected to be the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee, spoke to Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo about the recent revelations from the “Twitter Files” about the FBI’s influence in the silencing of the Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020. When asked about the latest releases of the Twitter files, which outlined the FBI’s cooperation with Twitter to counter “misinformation” and “disinformation” on the social media site, Comer emphasized that the initial discovery proves wrongdoing, but additional investigations will have to be conducted.“Well, it means a lot more evidence of wrongdoing,” he told Bartiromo. “You know, in the beginning, I thought that there were probably two or three rogue employees who were orchestrating this cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop story. But now we know the FBI had a division of at least 80 agents.”

“We also know that the FBI paid Twitter over $3 million for their time, all the time they took over the past couple of years in telling them who to suppress, who to ban,” the congressman explained. “You know, it’s just things that the government has no role in. The FBI was never granted the authority to create any type of disinformation task force that policed the social media sites.” “Now, this we know with Twitter, we’ve heard similar stories from Zuckerberg,” the Kentuckian explained referencing Zuckerberg’s admittance that Facebook deemphasized stories at the request of the FBI. “Who knows what went on at YouTube and Google? This is an agency that’s out of control.”

“And the most frustrating thing for me right now, Maria, is the fact that in this omnibus bill, there’s increased funding for the FBI, plus a $1.75 billion headquarters facility for the FBI,” he explained in reference to the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill currently being considered in the Senate. “We need to halt everything with the FBI, all funding, until they come forward and explain to Congress exactly what they were doing, why they were doing it, and who gave them the authority to do it.”

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“..No weapons system is too costly. No war, no matter how disastrous, goes unfunded. No military budget is too big..”

• The Democrats are Now the War Party (Chris Hedges)

The Democrats position themselves as the party of virtue, cloaking their support for the war industry in moral language stretching back to Korea and Vietnam, when President Ngo Dinh Diem was as lionized as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. All the wars they support and fund are “good” wars. All the enemies they fight, the latest being Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, are incarnations of evil. The photo of a beaming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris holding up a signed Ukrainian battle flag behind Zelensky as he addressed Congress was another example of the Democratic Party’s abject subservience to the war machine.

The Democrats, especially with the presidency of Bill Clinton, became shills not only for corporate America but for the weapons manufacturers and the Pentagon. No weapons system is too costly. No war, no matter how disastrous, goes unfunded. No military budget is too big, including the $858 billion in military spending allocated for the current fiscal year, an increase of $45 billion above what the Biden administration requested. The historian Arnold Toynbee cited unchecked militarism as the fatal disease of empires, arguing that they ultimatley commit suicide.

There once was a wing of the Democratic Party that questioned and stood up to the war industry: Senators J. William Fulbright, George McGovern, Gene McCarthy, Mike Gravel, William Proxmire and House member Dennis Kucinich. But that opposition evaporated along with the antiwar movement. When 30 members of the party’s progressive caucus recently issued a call for Biden to negotiate with Putin, they were forced by the party leadership and a warmongering media to back down and rescind their letter. Not that any of them, with the exception of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have voted against the billions of dollars in weaponry sent to Ukraine or the bloated military budget. Rashida Tlaib voted present.

The opposition to the perpetual funding of the war in Ukraine has come primarily from Republicans, 11 in the Senate and 57 in the House, several, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, unhinged conspiracy theorists. Only nine Republicans in the House joined the Democrats in supporting the $1.7 trillion spending bill needed to prevent the government from shutting down, which included approval of $847 billion for the military — the total is boosted to $858 billion when factoring in accounts that don’t fall under the Armed Services committees’ jurisdiction. In the Senate, 29 Republicans opposed the spending bill. The Democrats, including nearly all 100 members of the House Congressional Progressive Caucus, lined up dutifully for endless war.

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DNC, FBI, FTX, Twitter, Soros. Nice.

• Soros Behind Twitter Operation to Shut Down Hunter Biden Laptop Story (BN)

First Draft News, a now-defunct nonprofit that left-wing billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations funded, played a key role in Twitter’s preparation to shut down the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020, according to internal documents published by author Michael Shellenberger as part of Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files.” The Aspen Institute hosted a September 2020 training exercise for members of the media and social media leaders regarding the handling of hypothetical data leaks which were similar to the Hunter Biden laptop report that broke in October, according to Shellenberger. Claire Wardle, former executive director and co-founder of First Draft News, appeared to be an attendee of the exercise, according to an email published by Shellenberger.

The address that apparently belonged to Wardle was one of multiple recipients in an email to top national security reporters, Facebook’s head of security policy and others, according to Shellenberger. The Open Society Foundations, which left-wing megadonor Soros chairs, once funded First Draft News. The organization shut down in June. “Today we are announcing that First Draft is closing its doors to make way for the next chapter — its mission will continue at the newly launched Information Futures Lab, an initiative from Brown’s School of Public Health,” an announcement from Wardle reads.

The Aspen Institute training exercise, titled “The Burisma Leak,” involved a series of hypothetical leaks during October 2020 showing that Hunter Biden had made more money in his role at Burisma than previously disclosed and had communicated with his father about his work there, Shellenberger reported. The exercise was meant to shape how the media covered the eventual leak of the Hunter Biden laptop story and the way social media platforms carried it. The Aspen Institute, a left-leaning think tank funded by massive philanthropic organizations including the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation, runs the Commission on Information Disorder, an anti-disinformation project that’s drawn ire from conservatives for its alleged far-left partisanship. The commission has urged social media platforms to censor accounts it considers misinformation “superspreaders” through demonetization, the removal of what it considers inaccurate posts and penalties for offending users.

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Pretty brilliant history lesson.

• In Post-Soviet Russia, New Years Remains A Bigger Holiday Than Christmas (RT)

Present-day Russia is almost the only major Christian country in the world where New Year festivities are more prominent than those of Christmas. While Westerners are unpacking gifts on December 24th, Russians are still immersed in an atmosphere of their upcoming holiday, which, when it comes around, is filled with age-old traditions and lasts almost two weeks. To understand why the New Year has become a special celebration in Russia and what sets it apart from other countries, we must first dive into the history of the holiday. It was only in 1700 that Russia joined the pan-European tradition of celebrating the New Year on January 1, following a decree by Emperor Peter the Great. Before that, Russians had celebrated New Year’s on March 1, when it was time to prepare for the new season of agricultural work.

However, despite the will of the emperor, Russia did not fully synchronize with the rest of Europe – the country at the time functioned according to the old Julian calendar, while most European countries had already switched to the Gregorian one. Therefore, the new year in Russia began 13 days later. This became a key aspect that influenced the modern traditions of New Year celebrations. Thanks to Peter the Great, the New Year moved closer to the main Christian holiday, Christmas. For the next two hundred years, New Year and Christmas celebrations in Russia were a lot like those in Western Europe. The difference was only in the religious form – Russia followed Christian Orthodox canons, while the likes of France and Germany followed Catholic and Protestant ones.

Everything changed with the October Revolution, the overthrow of the emperor, and the creation of the new state – the USSR. The Bolsheviks carried out several reforms in the first years after the revolution that directly affected how Russia celebrates the New Year today, in the 21st century. On January 26, 1918, the Council of People’s Commissars of Russia issued a decree on the transition to the Gregorian calendar. As a result, the country celebrated the start of the year 1919 simultaneously with Western Europe. In 1929, the celebration of Christmas was officially ‘canceled.’ Although by this time the New Year had become a completely independent secular holiday, Christmas was privately celebrated in many homes.

Even in 1924, shortly before Lenin’s death, a Christmas Tree celebration was held for children. But, after 1929, the most important Christian date was erased from the calendar and remained exclusively in the homes of religious people. At the same time, the Orthodox Church did not switch to the Gregorian calendar, and therefore Orthodox Christmas is still celebrated on January 7, not December 25.

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