Dec 312023
 


Camille Pissarro Rue Saint-Lazare, Paris 1897

 

2024 Could Be When West’s Liberal Elites Lose Control Of World Order (Lukyanov)
Will 2023 Be Known As The Last Year Of Global US Hegemony? (Fomenko)
Russia Enters 2024 In A Better Position Than It Was In 12 Months Ago (Timofeev)
US Wants to Use South Caucasus to Open 2nd Front Against Russia – Moscow (Sp.)
Argentina’s Choice Not to Join BRICS ‘Ideological’ – Top Diplomat (Sp.)
DC Deeply Concerned That Trump May Have Copies of His Declassified Binder (ET)
The Continuing Plot to Silence Trump’s 2024 Comeback (Attkisson)
Comer Says He Expects More States To Try To Boot Trump From Ballot (JTN)
CO, ME Just The Start Of Trump Ballot-Blocking (ZH)
Massie Warns States Barring Trump That House Will Certify Their Electors (JTN)
Tulsi Gabbard Says Democrats ‘Will Stop at Nothing’ to Keep Trump Off 2024 Ballot (ET)
Disbarred Michael Cohen Admits to Sending Fake Case Citations (Turley)
EU Governance Is ‘Anti-Democratic’: European Lawmaker (ET)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sachs

 

 

Former Israeli PM

 

 

Cali

 

 

 

 

Tucker Belfort

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..In the leading countries of the West, a serious battle is being fought between the “populists” and the establishment, the main arena being, of course, America itself..”

2024 Could Be When West’s Liberal Elites Lose Control Of World Order (Lukyanov)

The current proliferation of conflicts is a symptom of the weakening of the modern international power structure. This was exercised in the form of a “liberal world order” (more recently called a “rules-based order”). The basis of it was the confidence of a group of countries in their righteousness and the truth of their ideology, gained through victory in the Cold War. Liberal democracy and the market economy defeated the Soviet regime and its planned economy. But soon democracy as the power of the majority, taking into account the opinion of the minority, was transformed into a liberal scheme in which the minority is given more moral and political rights than the majority.

Case in point: in almost all G7 countries the ratings of ruling parties/coalitions are now extremely low, i.e. governments represent the interests of a smaller part of the population. Alternative forces that challenge the current government are labelled as populist. This term (which, incidentally, comes from the word populus – “people”) has become almost a swear word, and the mainstream is instructed to fight those who are tarred by this brush. The idea is that the current elites do not need to be changed. As a result, the establishment now presents almost every vote as a battle for democracy. The implication is that democracy is the victory of the forces that maintain the “correct” continuity. Accordingly, those who want to change course are declared enemies of democracy, even if they have a majority on their side.

The concept of the “world majority” (i.e. countries outside the Western community), which has entered the Russian political lexicon this year, fits with the delineation between processes in individual countries and at the global level. The role of the global establishment is played by the West. There is no single “populist” force opposing it. But there is a huge space (the very “world majority”) which believes that the minority (the West) is abusing its power. What is emerging is not a rigid opposition, but rather a coagulated – albeit growing – resistance that is reducing the effectiveness of the policies of the US and its allies. Within the Western community itself, we see increasing demand from “populists” to reduce involvement in world affairs because the costs outweigh the benefits. This does not have a direct and immediate effect, but rather a lasting indirect one. But as history moves faster and faster, the meaning of “lasting” is changing.

2022 was a turning point, because for the first time the ruling minority was directly challenged. Not by the majority, of course, because Russia has been in a kind of “neither here nor there” position. But a precedent has been set. This year was a time of getting used to the fact that the old restrictions, the very “rules” on which the order is based, are disappearing and the space of possibilities is expanding for everyone. 2024 will be “the year of the great decisions”. Literally, the majority of the world will vote (just add up the populations of India, the US, Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa, Indonesia, Russia, Egypt, and the European Union (there will be a vote for its European Parliament), etc. In the leading countries of the West, a serious battle is being fought between the “populists” and the establishment, the main arena being, of course, America itself.

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“..Washington’s decision to give Israel free rein to destroy Gaza is a strategic setback in multiple domains. The US will have to commit to a new chapter of violent struggle across the Middle East to sustain its position, whether it wants to or not.”

Will 2023 Be Known As The Last Year Of Global US Hegemony? (Fomenko)

[..] US unipolarity began to wane by the 2010s following the resurgence of Russia, as well as the rise of China. The years of 2018-2023 have been exceptionally consequential in opening a new period of geopolitical turmoil and struggle, as the US pivoted its foreign policies to confront both powers with a view to containing them and sustaining its dominance over the entire planet. No hegemony, of course, goes down without a fight. Britain fought both World Wars precisely for this reason but was exhausted to the point it was forced to pass the baton on to the US. Similarly, in the modern day, neither will America go down without a fight.

And this is why the year 2023 has been immensely significant in this regard. First, the war in Ukraine has continued, with the US aiming to encroach on Russia’s strategic space and impose a strategic defeat on Moscow with NATO containment. However, while Russia suffered initial setbacks in 2022, this year saw Ukraine fail to make any progress despite immense media hype, and the war has started to turn against Kiev as the West loses the political will to continue backing it in an unwinnable conflict. This will ultimately shape the future security architecture of Europe, and Russia will now be looking to impose nothing less than a total defeat on the far-right puppet state in Kiev.

But beyond this, what has been more important to this year, and ultimately what lies ahead, is the fate of the Middle East. In October, war broke out after Hamas decided to launch a full-scale assault on Israel from Gaza. The war was triggered by US appeasement of Israel’s hardline policies through the Abraham Accords, as well as the emerging multipolarity providing more political space for Hamas to resist. Israel responded with an overwhelming bombardment and invasion of Gaza, invoking strong condemnation from around the world. It aims to militarily occupy the strip, a series of decisions which will push the Muslim world’s relations with the Zionist state to the point of no return and therefore pose consequences for the entire region, which in turn will impact the West’s engagement with the Global South and the power struggle there with Russia and China. Ultimately, the war is also a marked failure of the hardline US policies on Iran and unsuccessful attempts to try and contain it by force.

Although Tehran is not a competitor for hegemony, it is nonetheless a formidable regional adversary for Washington, boasting significant power and population, with growing military capabilities, and is fighting to force the influence of the US and Israel out of the Middle East. To this end, Washington’s decision to give Israel free rein to destroy Gaza is a strategic setback in multiple domains. The US will have to commit to a new chapter of violent struggle across the Middle East to sustain its position, whether the it wants to or not.

Then of course, there is the top priority of American foreign policy, the ongoing struggle with China. Washington seeks to contain the rise of Beijing as a military and technological superpower, and militarily encircle it in the region it calls the Indo-Pacific. Although presently the two sides are undergoing a detente after Xi Jinping met Joe Biden in San Francisco, with the Taiwan issue likewise less critical in 2023, the relationship nonetheless remains the overall driver of the strategic environment we live in today, and there is little expectation the US will relent. Beijing is patient and prefers to play ‘the long game’ but is certainly rising to the challenge, which enables every other actor to assert its position, and thus further stretch the international order.

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“..Ideologically, Russia and the West have become principled rivals. There are no compromise solutions to their contradictions. Each side expects to impose its own conditions on the other.”

Russia Enters 2024 In A Better Position Than It Was In 12 Months Ago (Timofeev)

[..] what are the parameters of this new reality? The first is relations between Russia and the West. In 2022, they entered a format of acute confrontation. It was marked by the delivery of large-scale military and financial aid to Ukraine, a fresh expansion of NATO and a course towards the remilitarization of Europe. Right now, the bloc’s members fear direct military conflict with Russia because of the risk of nuclear escalation, but see little risk in increasing the quantity and quality of arms supplied to Ukraine. The deliveries include both Soviet-era weapons and ammunition left in stockpiles, and Western-made gear. However, the increase in stocks has so far been limited by financial and industrial capacity. As the conflict drags on, these may be overcome over time. Ideologically, Russia and the West have become principled rivals. There are no compromise solutions to their contradictions. Each side expects to impose its own conditions on the other.

The West does it by exhausting Russia with sanctions, sending direct aid to its military opponent, using information warfare and evoking its influence with neutral or friendly countries. Russia does it by inflicting a military defeat on Ukraine and demilitarizing Kiev, as well as by asymmetric retaliation. The parties do not have the capabilities to destroy each other, but they are counting on victory. The West assumes vulnerabilities in the Russian economy and the theoretical possibility of internal upheavals could lead to a radical change in foreign policy and the country’s defeat. Russia believes that the increasing number of conflicts in which the US, and the West as a whole, will be forced to become involved in will put too much of a strain on their resources, and it’s also counting on disagreements within the Western bloc itself.

The second is the military situation in Ukraine. 2023 began with much-hyped expectations from Kiev’s planned counteroffensive. It was fueled by informational and political statements by Western leaders and its success was supposed to justify, among other things, large military and financial injections by Ukraine’s Western partners. The failure of the offensive can be considered one of the most important military results of 2023. The Russian army did not opt for an immediate retaliatory attack, instead exerting pressure along the entire front line. Right now, Western diplomats have rational reasons for exploring the ground for ceasefire talks, even if their government’s positions have not officially changed. Moscow, on the other hand, has no good reason to agree to a halt in the fighting. A pause will allow Ukraine to rearm, increase the capacity of its military-industrial complex and resume the conflict at a moment favorable to Kiev. Obviously, Russia believes that only a painful and large-scale defeat of Ukraine can lead to the consideration of Russian demands and interests. Moreover, such a defeat can be either a crushing blow or from attrition. The second option appears to be the fundamental one.

The third is sanctions against Russia. The year 2022 was marked by a “sanctions tsunami,” when a wide range of restrictive measures were imposed in a very short period of time. These included the blocking of sovereign assets and financial sanctions against systemically important companies, export controls, import bans on oil, coal, steel, gold and other goods, transport and other restrictions. In 2023, all these measures were extended. They caused damage, but they didn’t crush the economy. The shock effect hung in the air in 2022 and was replaced by a plateau in 2023. The US, the EU and other sanctions initiators have tried to combat evasion of the restrictions. Secondary sanctions are being introduced and criminal cases are being opened against alleged violators, including Russian citizens. But even these measures do not radically increase the campaign’s effects. Also, Moscow shows no interest in raising the issue of sanctions relief in response to political concessions.

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“..the Kremlin underscored that “Russia is an absolutely integral part of this region, so it cannot go anywhere..”

US Wants to Use South Caucasus to Open 2nd Front Against Russia – Moscow (Sp.)

Amid the NATO-led proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, the United States is considering using the South Caucasus as a springboard for opening a “second front” against Moscow, Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin said in an interview with Sputnik. Washington has long made no secret of its plans regarding Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, he said, adding that “all this fundamentally contradicts the genuine interests of the people of the region.” After Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, the West’s pressure on Russia’s neighbors, allies, and partners has dramatically escalated. Thus, Washington has been muddying the waters between Moscow and Yerevan, especially in the wake of the recent Nagorno-Karabakh flare-up. In September 2023, Azerbaijan took control over Nagorno-Karabakh in a lightning offensive, prompting almost all local residents to flee to Armenia.

Over 100,000 people of Nagorno-Karabakh’s estimated 120,000 Armenian population had left the region by the end of September. The Nagorno-Karabakh authorities declared that the unrecognized state would cease to exist on January 1, 2024. During the flare-up of Karabakh tensions, senior US officials, including the chief of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Samantha Power, and Yuri Kim, acting assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasian affairs, were quick to converge on Armenia’s capital Yerevan to “affirm US support for Armenia’s sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and democracy.” The Armenian Defense Ministry announced in September it would carry out joint military exercises with the US, dubbed “Eagle Partner 2023,” that would involve “stabilization tasks between conflicting parties during the peacekeeping mission.”

Yerevan also signaled readiness to continue cooperation with NATO within the Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP), while Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, in an interview with Italian outlet La Repubblica, claimed Russia’s peacekeeping mission in Nagorno-Karabakh had “failed,” and that Russia was “leaving” the South Caucasus.In response, the Kremlin underscored that “Russia is an absolutely integral part of this region, so it cannot go anywhere,” with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov emphasizing that the US-Armenian drills caused concern, “especially in the current situation.” Earlier in the year, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova noted that Armenia has been demonstrating its intention to radically “reorient” its foreign policy.

“In my opinion, this is being done clearly at the suggestion or prompting of the West,” Zakharova said at a briefing in November. Commenting on a statement by Secretary of Armenia’s Security Council Armen Grigoryan, who said that Armenia “is not aware of Moscow’s proposals” on a peace treaty between Yerevan and Baku, as well as the delivery of military equipment such as Bastion armored personnel carriers to the country by France, Zakharova said that “Yerevan appears eager to negotiate a peace treaty in Washington, Brussels, although neither the US nor the EU can be considered bona fide intermediaries for a variety of reasons.” The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman emphasized that the actions of the United States and the European Union were aimed at “ousting Russia from the South Caucasus.”

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“If you participate in all organizations, then when do you find time to work?” Huh?

Argentina’s Choice Not to Join BRICS ‘Ideological’ – Top Diplomat (Sp.)

Argentina’s decision not to enter the BRICS bloc is an “ideological” one, the Foreign Minister Diana Mondino has acknowledged. “It is an ideological and practical decision, but more practical,” Mondino argued in an interview on LN+. According to the official, Buenos Aires already has trade agreements with all members of the bloc. “Argentina has very big economic problems and the BRICS states have one goal: trade,” she stated, adding that it was a “matter of simplification,” and optimization of the use of time. “If you participate in all organizations, then when do you find time to work?” she queried.

Weighing in on the move by President Javier Milei to reverse the country’s entry into BRICS, which was previously announced by former President Alberto Fernandez before concluding his term, Mondino noted that international blocs will be mainly with “Western democracies,” such as the United States, Canada, European countries, and Israel. “We will trade with those who pay more. This decision will not be made by the state. Our task is to create conditions for trade,” the minister said. Mondino also said that the government was working to promote the MERCOSUR agreement with Singapore, and another with the European Union, which is currently stalled.

Earlier in December, ministers from the four MERCOSUR member states – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay – and Foreign Minister Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan signed the MERCOSUR-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (MCSFTA). Argentine President Javier Milei officially rejected the invitation to become a member of the BRICS in a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Infobae news portal reported on Friday. Milei sent his letter to the Russian and Chinese leaders several days ago and also informed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of his decision, according to the news portal.

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Or files that are not yet in the binder.

DC Deeply Concerned That Trump May Have Copies of His Declassified Binder (ET)

A recent CNN article titled “The mystery of the missing binder: How a collection of raw Russian intelligence disappeared under Trump” discusses, albeit in roundabout fashion, former President Donald Trump’s declassified binder. According to CNN: “A binder containing highly classified information related to Russian election interference went missing at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, raising alarms among intelligence officials that some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed, sources familiar with the matter told CNN. “Its disappearance, which has not been previously reported, was so concerning that intelligence officials briefed Senate Intelligence Committee leaders last year about the missing materials and the government’s efforts to retrieve them, the sources said. “In the two-plus years since Trump left office, the missing intelligence does not appear to have been found.”

All very breathless and conspiratorial sounding. Which, of course, is the entire point. But the problem for CNN is that there never was any Russian collusion. It was all a giant hoax. Nor was there any real Russian election interference. No more so than any other year. And no more than what the United States does in Russia. It was all part of a giant fraud that CNN helped to perpetrate in order to hamstring the Trump presidency. So when CNN claims, “The binder contained raw intelligence the US and its NATO allies collected on Russians and Russian agents, including sources and methods that informed the US government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election,” what they are really referring to is the proof that Trump amassed of the FBI’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.

The “sources and methods that informed the US government” is precisely what they don’t want anyone to see. It was never Russian collusion. It was collusion on the part of DC’s entrenched bureaucracy. That’s where the real scandal lies. And the DC establishment is very worried that President Trump has proof of that collusion in his possession. And that’s what this is all really about—information that President Trump has in his possession that proves the involvement of the FBI, Department of Justice (DOJ), and other establishment agencies in their effort to tarnish him with their construction of the Russian collusion lie. Which is why CNN all but gave away the entire premise behind the DOJ’s directed FBI raid on President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in their article. As they note, “The binder was not among the classified items found in last year’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, according to a US official familiar with the matter, who said the FBI was not looking specifically for intelligence related to Russia when it obtained a search warrant for the former president’s residence last year.”

Their need to insert that disclaimer gives the game away. We didn’t find the binder when we launched a politically motivated shock raid on the house of a former president, but we also weren’t looking for it. Right.

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“The real meaning of what’s being done to Trump is: They think he’s going to win.”

The Continuing Plot to Silence Trump’s 2024 Comeback (Attkisson)

Donald Trump has been slandered and libeled thousands of times. Each time a news reporter, media commentator, or judge refers to Trump as an “insurrectionist,” or claims he’s guilty of “insurrection,” it’s another blatant case of defamation. Same with the other January 6 attendees and participants. Insurrection is a serious federal crime punishable by up to ten years in prison under Title 18 U.S. Code 2383. Even with Trump’s enemies in charge at the Department of Justice and other law enforcement bodies, and with all of the scheming and operations they’ve mounted against him, nobody has convicted him of “insurrection.” Under our system of governing, no judge or election authority has the power to unilaterally accuse and convict any American of a crime, let alone with the accused denied any opportunity to present a defense or to appeal. Yet that’s just what’s happening when courts and officials in Maine and Colorado remove Trump from presidential election primary ballots for “insurrection.”

It’s the ultimate defamation. And many are supporting it because, well, they don’t like Trump. Looking at the evidence today, it is reasonable to hypotheisize that, among all the other consipracies Trump’s enemies have proven to devise, they also conspired in advance to set up his January 6, 2021 rally as an “insurrection” that could serve as their insurance policy to provide grounds to keep him from ever running for president again. Such hypotheses might have been once far-fetched, but no more. Let’s not forget that then-FBI agent Peter Strzok and his alleged lover, FBI attorney Lisa Page, texted each other in 2016 that they could not permit Trump to be elected president. According to their messages, discussions about the threat of a Trump presidency had taken place with the FBI’s then-assistant director, Andrew “Andy” McCabe. “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected,” texted Page, “but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before 40.”

The theory that Trump’s enemies set the stage for January 6 to be called “an insurrection” as a spoiler for his 2024 run could help explain why all of the law enforcement agents and informants planted in advance and among Trump supporters on January 6 didn’t serve their usual purpose of preventing crimes and de-escalating events. Instead, by many accounts, they observed and even took part, let crimes happen, and declined to separate the instigators and organizers as they would ordinarily do to defuse tensions and control the crowd. The agents and informants served the odd role of standing down during the event, and identifying alleged perpetrators after-the-fact.Yet, in the end, there was no insurrection— at least according to prosecutors, who would be the ones to charge such crimes and haven’t. And Trump helped destroy the chance to officially charge him with insurrection by specifically directing his followers that day to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Trump’s opponents, found in both the Democrat and Republican ranks, are so delighted to see him persecuted, they are so utterly threatened by a repeat performance of a Trump presidency outside the traditional power and money interests, they are encouraging of the defamation and other acts against him. With few exceptions, like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., those who would normally criticize actions like the ones being mounted against Trump, remain silent for fear of being called a Trump supporter in an environment where that opens them to ostracization and worse. The media and those who control our information are so conflicted by their respective biases, nobody is left to stop the madness. The real meaning of what’s being done to Trump is: They think he’s going to win.

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“And I hate to say it….but I fear we’re gonna see more blue states pull stunts like this.”

Comer Says He Expects More States To Try To Boot Trump From Ballot (JTN)

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky. says he expects more states to try to boot former President Donald Trump from the ballot following the recent Maine decision. “Well, I’m not surprised. I fear we’re going to see this happen in more states,” Comer said during an interview with Fox News. He also alleged in the interview that the Maine Secretary of State’s move was “election interference.” On Thursday, Trump was removed from Maine’s primary ballot under the Constitution’s insurrection clause. The decision was made by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, whom Trump’s legal team requested be disqualified from ruling whether or not Trump is eligible for the 2024 ballot.

In other states, plaintiffs have sued regarding Trump’s eligibility, but in Maine, the Secretary of State first weighs in and the decision can be challenged in court. Comer predicted more Democrat states would attempt to remove Trump in order to disrupt the “GOP momentum.” “So I think that the Democrats are trying to do everything they can, in a last-ditch effort to disrupt the Republican momentum right now heading into the presidential election. I think this is another example of that,” he said, according to The Hill. “And I hate to say it….but I fear we’re gonna see more blue states pull stunts like this.”

Blacks for Trump
https://twitter.com/i/status/1740901218585887132

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“Together, the states where Trump’s status is under active challenge account for 269 electoral votes — in a game where you need 270 to win. ”

CO, ME Just The Start Of Trump Ballot-Blocking (ZH)

As jarring as it’s been to witness the anti-democratic, one-two punch in which a court in Colorado and an unelected bureaucrat in Maine decided Donald Trump cannot appear on primary election ballots, there are many more states where litigation is underway to ban the candidate who’s currently leading the national race. In addition to Colorado and Maine, there are currently active lawsuits challenging Trump’s eligibility in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming, according to a New York Times survey of the situation. Together, the states where Trump’s status is under active challenge account for 269 electoral votes — in a game where you need 270 to win.

While there’s a lot of red on that map, it understates the scope of the phenomenon. These are only the states where either officials have decided Trump can’t appear on a ballot, or where litigation is currently underway. Expect other states to turn “red” in a bad way. Some of them are states like Michigan and Minnesota, where challenges to Trump’s appearance on primary ballots have been dismissed. Those rulings didn’t cover the general election, so look for those plaintiffs to crawl out of their litigation graves after the GOP primaries. That is, unless a Supreme Court ruling first puts an end to all this madness, in which Democratic judges and officials are banning Trump on the bogus basis that he engaged in an insurrection against the United States government on Jan. 6, 2021, and is therefore barred by the 14th Amendment.

Written to block Confederate officials from US government service, here’s the full text of the provision at issue: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. ”

Trump has never been charged, much less convicted, of engaging in insurrection. Aside from that due process dimension, and the fact that Jan 6 didn’t even begin to approach an “insurrection” in the first place, there’s an argument to be made that the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply to the office of President.

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“..the U.S. House of Representatives is the ultimate arbiter of whether to certify electors from those states..”

Massie Warns States Barring Trump That House Will Certify Their Electors (JTN)

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., warned states acting to bar former President Donald Trump from the ballot that the House of Representatives will decide whether to certify states’ electors. “Maine, Colorado, and other states that might try to bureaucratically deny ballot access to any Republican nominee should remember the U.S. House of Representatives is the ultimate arbiter of whether to certify electors from those states,” Massie said on X Friday. Elon Musk, owner of X, replied to Massie’s comment, saying, “Interesting.”

Colorado’s Supreme Court earlier this month determined that Trump engaged in an insurrection against the U.S. on Jan. 6, 2021, during the Capitol riot, which, the court decided, makes him ineligible for the 2024 presidential ballot under the 14th Amendment. On Thursday, Maine’s Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows removed Trump from that state’s primary ballot using the same reasoning. Trump has denied the accusations and vowed to appeal the decisions to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Colorado Secretary of State has said that Trump will be on the primary ballot. The GOPs of both Maine and Colorado are also appealing the decisions to the Supreme Court.

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“They have no qualms about doing whatever they feel is necessary to hold on to power..”

Tulsi Gabbard Says Democrats ‘Will Stop at Nothing’ to Keep Trump Off 2024 Ballot (ET)

Former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, responding to efforts to keep former President Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot, said Democrats “will stop at nothing” to maintain power. In a candid interview on Fox News’s “Hannity” on Thursday, the Democrat-turned-Independent former congresswoman raised an alarm over what she described as a concerted effort by Democrats to sideline President Trump from the 2024 ballot. She described the decision by Maine’s top election official, a Democrat, to remove President Trump from the state’s ballot as a dangerous precedent and urged Republicans and Democrats alike to “stand up for our democratic process” and the right of voters to pick their president. “This is the MO of the Democrat elite,” Ms. Gabbard said. “They will stop at nothing to try to maintain their power, even if it means taking away the right to vote of Americans.”

Furthermore, Ms. Gabbard charged that Democrats “have no issue taking Trump off the ballot,” including by “pursuing him and persecuting him through a weaponized and politicized Department of Justice.” “They have no qualms about doing whatever they feel is necessary to hold on to power,” she added. The former Hawaii congresswoman pointed out the “ridiculous” hypocrisy in the eagerness of some Democrats, whom she referred to as “war hawks,” to intervene in foreign countries when political candidates face similar actions to those experienced by President Trump. “We’ve seen how the war hawks in Washington, they will see this happen in another country, and they’ll be very quick to say we must go and intervene; we must go and topple this banana republic or this dictatorship,” said Ms. Gabbard. Many of the congressional lawmakers who advocate along those lines, she added, “are the people who are driving” these efforts against President Trump.

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“..Cohen asks for understanding that he is only a layperson, not a lawyer. He was, of course, disbarred as a lawyer after pleading guilty to various federal crimes..”

Q: how did this guy become Trump’s lawyer? What an awful choice. Right up there with Mike Pompeo and John Bolton.

Disbarred Michael Cohen Admits to Sending Fake Case Citations (Turley)

Michael Cohen, former President Trump’s onetime fixer and lawyer, has admitted to a federal court that he was the source of fake case citations used to support his effort to end his supervised release from his earlier criminal convictions. He blamed Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the error, he also seemed to throw his own attorney under the bus for not checking his work. U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman was a bit peeved when his clerks checked the authority cited by Cohen, including such cases as “United States v. Figueroa-Flores, United States v. Ortiz and United States v. Amato.” None existed. In fairness, Cohen is not the first person to be burned by AI. Of course, critics have noted that the faux authority is perfectly consistent with Cohen’s legal career, which is a litany of misrepresentations and outright lies.

Cohen now says that the culprit is Google Bard, an AI service, and that he was only the latest victim of AI invention. However, one of the most interesting aspects of the statement is that Cohen asks for understanding that he is only a layperson, not a lawyer. He was, of course, disbarred as a lawyer after pleading guilty to various federal crimes. Cohen told the court: “As a non-lawyer, I have not kept up with emerging trends (and related risks) in legal technology and did not realize that Google Bard was a generative text service that, like Chat-GPT, could show citations and descriptions that looked real but actually were not. Instead, I understood it to be a super-charged search engine and had repeatedly used it in other contexts to (successfully) find accurate information online.”

He then put part of the blame on his non-AI lawyer, David Schwartz, and emphasized that it was in the end Schwartz’ filing, not his: “It did not occur to me then and remains surprising to me now—that Mr. Schwartz would drop the cases into his submission wholesale without even confirming that they existed. I deeply regret any problems Mr. Schwartz’s filing may have caused.” Cohen’s current counsel E. Danya Perry, asked that his client “not suffer any collateral damage from Mr. Schwartz’s misstep.” The problems with AI are well-known, but so is Cohen’s checkered history with the courts. As I have previously written, Cohen has a long history of alleged lies and half-truths in dealing with the government or courts.

In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to various charges, including tax evasion, campaign finance violations, lying to Congress and several banks to obtain campaign financing and was sentenced to three years in prison. He unsuccessfully sued Trump on the basis of a verbal contract that again put his own dubious veracity at issue. As noted in earlier proceedings in Manhattan, Cohen has continued to misrepresent his criminal background and, after assuring the court that he was remorseful for his crimes, was regularly going on the air to deny that he committed tax fraud and suggesting that he was railroaded by prosecutors. Prosecutors cited his numerous media appearances as containing false accounts of himself and his case: “while Cohen is free to write and say what he wants, he cannot simultaneously distance himself from his conduct on cable news, while cloaking himself in claims of acceptance of responsibility in court filings.”

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“We need that if we want to save all the peoples around the world from this tyrannical system they’re about to impose on us.”

EU Governance Is ‘Anti-Democratic’: European Lawmaker (ET)

In a recent interview with The Epoch Times’s Jan Jekielek, host of American Thought Leaders, Christine Anderson, a member of the European Parliament representing the Alternative for Germany party, explained how the EU’s model of governance bypasses adequate representation for citizens. Ms. Anderson underscored the inappropriate division of power that member nations have experienced, saying it violates fundamental principles in democracies. Members of the government can bypass its democratically elected representatives and seek approval for laws at the EU level, the German politician explained. This is how it works: “Let’s say the German government wanted to pass a law, and the Bundestag, which is the democratically elected representation of the German people, said, ‘No … we will not vote for that.’

“The story wouldn’t be at an end right then and there. But now the German government, all it has to do is pretty much take that law [and] bring it to the EU institutions, because in the council … they will pass the law on EU level. She explained that this structure creates a system where “there is no division of power,” and officials are able to implement “the very same law” that failed to pass through the elected legislative body. This undemocratic structure raises questions about accountability, she said, as politicians can deflect responsibility by passing legislative authority to agencies and experts. Speaking about the options available to citizens, Ms. Anderson said, “The only way that I can change anything is by going after the elected officials. … I elected these people. They are responsible. “They’re accountable to me, but I don’t know who’s above that, whoever it is.”

To ensure that elected officials remain responsible for the laws and policies that impact their citizens, Ms. Anderson stressed the need for transparency and accountability in EU governance. A member of the European Parliament since 2019, she also discussed several other troubling trends that have been seen in her country and throughout the EU. They include labeling anyone who dissents from progressive ideology as “far right.” Mr. Jekielek asked whether the EU is seeing the same trend as the United States, where dissenting voices are maligned by legacy media. Several prominent names were brought up to illustrate the recent political mood, including newly elected Argentinian President Javier Milei and tech mogul Elon Musk. Confirming the mood of her home country and the EU, Ms. Anderson asserted that the term “right” was being misused. “Everyone that is not in support of whatever globalist agenda is being advocated for or pushed at the moment” is given that label.

[..] Part of her hope lies in the United States, Ms. Anderson said, despite the fact that the country is facing some of the same struggles within government. “My hope also lies actually with it, with the American people. Because the American people, they have [more] of a concept of freedom,” she said, adding what “an honor” it was to be asked to speak to the American people about freedom. Near the end of her comments, Ms. Anderson made a plea to Americans, saying, “I really need the American people to just stay American people and uphold that concept of freedom that is deeply rooted within the Americans. “We need that if we want to save all the peoples around the world from this tyrannical system they’re about to impose on us.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Denis Rancourt

 

 

 

 


Hugo Suíssas

 

 

Water dogs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1741179363205529641

 

 


Road To The Moon Argiris Karamouzas, Veria, Greece

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sep 042023
 


Claude Monet Japanese Footbridge 1899

 

A Comprehensive Ukrainian Defeat Is The Only Possible Outcome (Scott Ritter)
US Intelligence Sending Mixed Messages On Ukraine (Larry Johnson)
About 280,000 Individuals Enlisted By Contract From January 1 – Medvedev (TASS)
Hungary Calls For ‘Security Guarantees’ For Russia (RT)
G20: Last Waltz In A World Torn Apart (Bhadrakumar)
Ex-UK Defense Chief Sparked Rift With US Over Helicopter Deal (RT)
NATO May Collapse By 2025 – Academic (RT)
No Respite For France As A ‘New Africa’ Rises (Pepe Escobar)
US Dollar A ‘Very Problematic’ Currency – Zakharova (RT)
Gold’s Role Rises As Dollar Hegemony Falls (ZH)
Soros Vows to Stop ‘MAGA-Style Republicans’ From Winning 2024 Election (Sp.)
US Congress is Older Than Ever, But Reform is Unlikely (Sp.)
Biden Asserts Executive Privilege on Hunter Emails, But Waived Trump’s (GP)
Fani Willis Possesses Evidence Exonerating Georgia’s Alternate Electors (Fed.)
Ivermectin Is a Proven Cure for Covid (Paul Craig Roberts)

 

 

 

 

RFK BlackRock

 

 

 

 

Fauci masks

 

 

 

 

Macgregor

 

 

 

 

“Having articulated the Russian-Ukrainian conflict as an existential struggle where the very survival of NATO is on the line..”

Russians see an existential threat to their country.

In response, NATO pretends to see an existential threat to their power structure.

Not the same thing.

A Comprehensive Ukrainian Defeat Is The Only Possible Outcome (Scott Ritter)

First and foremost, Ukraine must reflect honestly about the causes of this conflict, and which side bears the burden of responsibility for the fighting. ‘Denazification’ is a term that the Russian government has used in describing one of its stated goals and objectives. President Vladimir Putin has made numerous references to the odious legacy of Stepan Bandera, the notorious mass murderer and associate of Nazi Germany who is feted by modern-day Ukrainian nationalists as a hero and all but a founding father of their nation. That present-day Ukraine would see fit to elevate a man such as Bandera to such a level speaks volumes about the rotten foundation of Kiev’s cause, and the dearth of moral fiber in the nation today.

The role played by the modern-day adherents of the Nazi collaborator’s hateful nationalist ideology in promulgating the key events that led to the initiation of the military operation by Russia can neither be ignored nor minimized. It was the Banderists, with their long relationship with the CIA and other foreign intelligence services hostile to Moscow, who used violence to oust the former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, from office in February 2014. From the act of illicit politicized violence came the mainstreaming of the forces of ethnic and cultural genocide, manifested in the form of the present-day Banderists, who initiated acts of violence and oppression in eastern Ukraine. This, in turn, triggered the Russian response in Crimea and the actions of the citizens of Donbass, who organized to resist the rampage of the Bandera-affiliated Ukrainian nationalists.

Mariupol

The Minsk Accords, and the subsequent betrayal by Kiev and its Western partners of the potential path for peace that these represented, followed. Ukraine cannot disassociate itself from the role played by the modern-day Banderists in shaping the present reality. In this, Kiev mirrors the militarists of Imperial Japan, whose blind allegiance to the precepts of Bushido, the traditional ‘way of the warrior’ dating back to the Samurai of 17th century Japan, helped push the country into global conflict. Part of Japan’s obligations upon surrender was to purge its society of the influence of the militarists, and to enact a constitution that deplatformed them by making wars of aggression – and the military forces needed to wage them – unconstitutional.

Banderism, in all its manifestations, must be eradicated from Ukrainian society in the same manner that Bushido-inspired militarism was removed from Japan, to include the creation of a new constitution that enshrines this purge as law. Any failure to do so only allows the cancer of Banderism to survive, festering inside the defeated body of post-conflict Ukraine until some future time when it can metastasize once again to bring harm. This is precisely the message that was being sent by Putin when, during the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum this past July, he showed a video where the crimes of the Banderists during the Second World War were put on public display. “How can you not fight it?” Putin said. “And if this is not neo-Nazism in its current manifestation, then what is it?” he asked. “We have every right,” the Russian president declared, “to believe that the task of the denazification of Ukraine set by us is one of the key ones.”

As the Western establishment media begins to come to grips with the scope and scale of Ukraine’s eventual military defeat (and, by extension, the reality of a decisive Russian military victory), their political overseers in the US, NATO, and the European Union struggle to define what the endgame will be. Having articulated the Russian-Ukrainian conflict as an existential struggle where the very survival of NATO is on the line, these Western politicians now have the task of shaping public perception in a manner that mitigates any meaningful, sustained political blowback from constituents who have been deceived into tolerating the transfer of billions of dollars from their respective national treasuries, and billions more dollars’ worth of weapons from their respective arsenals, into a lost and disgraced cause.

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“Putin and his team are seen in the West as weak, control freaks who block the military from taking off the white gloves and making the magic happen..”

US Intelligence Sending Mixed Messages On Ukraine (Larry Johnson)

The U.S. Intelligence Community is not a monolith. It is more like a feudal society. The big three Feudal lords for intelligence analysis are the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). All three produce “raw intelligence” — the CIA’s case officers produce reports from foreigners who have agreed to work in secret for the United States, the NSA scoops up all forms of electronic intelligence (e.g., phone calls, emails) and the DIA produces reports from U.S. Defense Attaches assigned to U.S. embassies around the world. Each jealously guards its own product and the employees of these three agencies can be considered the vassals. (Gots to have a vassal if you’re a feudal lord.)

Then there is the Director of National Intelligence (aka DNI). This position/office was created in the aftermath of 9-11 and is supposed to “manage” and “coordinate” all members of the Intelligence Community. The standard solution in Washington, DC is to create another layer of bureaucracy to solve a failure of already behemoth bureaucracies who rarely cooperate. The reality is something else — the Big 3 do not always kow tow to the DNI. I am hearing that the CIA and the DIA are doing a pretty good job of reporting honestly what is taking place on the ground in Ukraine — i.e., Ukraine is suffering terrible casualties and the counter offensive is failing. Unfortunately, as Sy Hersh has reported previously, Biden and his National Security team are ignoring those intelligence reports and are embracing “analysis” coming out of the Office of the DNI.

The DNI reportedly is proffering the meme that Ukraine is grinding down the Russian military and that the United States and NATO only need to be patient and wait for Russia’s inevitable collapse. Some of the U.S. military leaders — who are flat out ignorant of Russia’s recent history in dealing with a domestic radical Islamic insurgency — firmly believe that Russia cannot win a military victory over Ukraine, that the war is a stalemate and the Russia will be bogged down for years battling Bandera insurgents. The leaders of the USIC and the military still believe in their initial conclusion that Russia is weak because it did not steamroll through Ukraine and rout Zelensky off 12 months ago. They attribute Russia’s “failure” to inept and corrupt bureaucrats keen on reining in the Russian military.

Putin also gets a heavy share of the blame by these leaders for allegedly not listening to the Russian military leaders and Wagner chiefs to do what is necessary to achieve victory. Putin and his team are seen in the West as weak, control freaks who block the military from taking off the white gloves and making the magic happen. Because the US intelligence and military leaders are looking at the war in Ukraine through this prism, the analysts and their managers, for the most part, face enormous pressure to conclude that Russia is a feckless and incompetent near-peer adversary and cannot last.

I continue to believe that the assumptions about Russia’s alleged failure is ignoring the contravening narrative:
• The Russian economy is robust and healthy despite Western sanctions.
• Russia’s political influence in the world is growing, not shrinking. BRICS is a case in point.
• Russia is inflicting enormous casualties on Ukraine’s military and decimating infrastructure critical to the Ukrainian military campaign.
• Russia’s defense industry has ramped up to levels of production that the West cannot match.
• Russia’s seemingly unlimited access to natural resources, energy and rare earth minerals strengthens Russia’s military position in the world.
• Russia enjoys a massive technological advantage over NATO in terms of electronic warfare, air defense systems, mine laying vehicles and hypersonic missiles.
• Russian leaders and their people genuinely believe they face an existential threat from the West.
• Ukraine is totally dependent on the West to provide money and weapons to continue to fight.

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No forced conscription.

About 280,000 Individuals Enlisted By Contract From January 1 – Medvedev (TASS)

Around 280,000 individuals were enlisted by contract with the Russian Armed Forces from January 1, 2023, Deputy Head of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said. “Let us continue discussing the critical topic that gathered us here this time in the Far Eastern District. This time I meet heads of regions of the [Russian] Federation in person, in view of significant of the staffing work,” Medvedev said when opening the meeting. “According to data of the Defense Ministry, about 280,000 persons were enlisted by contracts to ranks of the [Russian] Armed Forces since January 1,” he noted. Some of them were in the reserve and the other ones are volunteers, Medvedev added.

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“..Russia does not pose a threat to Central Europe” because Moscow has not been able to accomplish a quick and resounding victory in the conflict..”

Hungary Calls For ‘Security Guarantees’ For Russia (RT)

A lasting peace following the Ukraine conflict can only be achieved if Russia receives security guarantees from the West, Gergely Gulyas, the minister in charge of the Hungarian prime minister’s office, has said. Speaking at a students’ event on Saturday, Gulyas stated that Kiev has no realistic chance of regaining the territories it claims as its own from Russia. He added that “it is also clear that Russia does not pose a threat to Central Europe” because Moscow has not been able to accomplish a quick and resounding victory in the conflict. According to Gulyas, peace talks between Russia and Ukraine are impossible without the involvement of the US.

He further stated that Kiev’s Western backers “must give security guarantees to Russia, but definitely not NATO membership to the Ukrainians,” adding that in the long run, peace between Moscow and Kiev could be maintained through the deployment of peacekeepers. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson last month that “without involving the Russians in a security architecture of Europe, we cannot provide a safe life for its citizens.” Hungary is not the only Western nation to call for Russian interests to be taken into account. Last December, French President Emmanuel Macron urged the West to think about how to provide security guarantees not only to Ukraine, but also to Russia, arguing that NATO must address Moscow’s concerns about the US-led military bloc “coming right up to its doors and deploying weapons that could threaten Russia.”

The debate over security guarantees for Russia heated up before the start of the Ukraine conflict when in December 2021, Moscow presented a list of demands to the US and NATO, asking the West to impose a ban on Ukraine entering the military bloc, while insisting that the alliance should retreat to its borders as of 1997 before it expanded. The overture, however, was rebuffed by the West. President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that Ukrainian neutrality is an issue of “fundamental importance” to Russia, arguing that Kiev’s push to join NATO was one of the key reasons behind the military operation in the neighboring country.

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“I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

G20: Last Waltz In A World Torn Apart (Bhadrakumar)

The Modi government is not perplexed by the absence of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the G20 Summit on September 9-10. Its intuitive cognition helps to be stoical. This is, arguably, a Shakespearean predicament — “I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” [..] One doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the common thread in the decisions taken in Moscow and Beijing is that their leaderships are not in the least interested in any interaction with the US President Joe Biden who will be camping in Delhi for four days with all the time at his disposal for some structured meetings, at the very least, some “pull asides” and the like at a minimum that could be caught on camera.

Biden’s considerations are political: anything that helps to distract attention from the gathering storm in US politics which is threatening to culminate in his impeachment that might in turn blight his candidacy in the 2024 election. Of course, this is not Biden’s Lyndon Johnson moment. Johnson made the tumultuous decision in March 1968 to retire from politics as a strong step toward healing the nation’s fissures, while agonising deeply that “There is division in the American house now.” But Biden is anything but a visionary. He was setting up a bear trap for Putin to reinforce his false narrative that if only the latter dismounted from his high horse, the Ukraine war would end overnight, whereas on its part, the Kremlin is well aware that the White House continues to be the strongest proponent of the thesis that a prolonged war would weaken Russia.

Indeed, Biden has gone to extraordinary extents that none of this predecessors ever dared to reach — aiding and abetting Ukrainian terrorist attacks deep inside Russia. In a way, Xi Jinping also faces a trap, as Biden administration is going to great extent to project itself as conciliatory toward China, as the beeline of US officials heading for Beijing recently would testify — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in June; Treasury Secretary and Climate Envoy John Kerry in July; and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in August. The New York Times on Tuesday carried a report titled U.S. Officials Are Streaming to China. Will Beijing Return the Favor? It chastised Beijing:

“China has much to gain from dispatching officials to the United States. It would signal to the world it was making an effort to ease tensions with Washington, particularly at a time when China needs to bolster confidence in its shaky economy. A visit could also help lay the groundwork for a potential, highly anticipated meeting between President Biden and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, at a forum in San Francisco in November. “Beijing, however, has been noncommittal.”

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… and lost his job.

Ex-UK Defense Chief Sparked Rift With US Over Helicopter Deal (RT)

Former UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace tried to derail a major deal to buy heavy military helicopters from the US, triggering a diplomatic row between the two long-time allies, The Times reported on Saturday, citing sources. The incident is said to have occurred after Washington reportedly shunned Wallace’s bid to become the next NATO secretary general, although the outlet’s sources insisted that the two issues were not related. According to the paper, Wallace, who resigned on Thursday, spent his last weeks in office trying to cancel the purchase of 14 Boeing Chinook H-47 two-motor lift helicopters. The former defense secretary reportedly had serious doubts about the £2.3 billion ($2.9 billion) deal and suggested canceling it to ease the pressure on the defense budget.

Wallace argued that Britain already has the largest heavy-lift fleet in Europe and favored investment in medium-lift support helicopters, which would have allowed London to save money, the article said. Another concern, according to the report, was that Britain lacked the communications, satellite technology, and transport means to carry out special operations involving US-designed aircraft. However, the initiative left many UK officials unhappy, with one describing it as “mad.” Another Times source suggested that Wallace “was trying to piss off the Americans.” As the diplomatic row was reportedly brewing, Karen Pierce, the UK ambassador to the US, is said to have warned London that canceling the deal would be a bad idea. UK officials reportedly scrambled to calm down their America counterparts, telling them that the tensions would be defused once Wallace was out of the government.

“There has been a lot of reconciliation, just to keep the US reassured,” a source told the paper. The apparent controversy comes after US President Joe Biden refused to endorse Wallace’s candidacy to succeed long-serving NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. According to a Daily Telegraph report in July, Wallace, who was once considered a front-runner for the job, failed to secure Washington’s backing because the UK announced a coalition to help Ukraine procure F-16 fighter jets without first consulting the US. A Times source categorically rejected the “pathetic” speculation that Wallace’s apparent attempts to cancel the helicopter deal were linked to his NATO ambitions. However, one source said that he was “deeply disappointed” that his aspirations to succeed Stoltenberg had come to nothing, which he is said to have blamed on the White House.

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Funny, Tucker Carlson predicted the demise of NATO just a few days ago…

NATO May Collapse By 2025 – Academic (RT)

The return of Donald Trump to the White House could spell the end for US military aid to Ukraine, leaving a divided Europe to foot Kiev’s bills and ultimately ending the NATO pact, academic Phillips Payson O’Brien claimed in The Atlantic on Saturday. Opposition to arming Ukraine is now the position of Trump’s supporter base, who O’Brien estimated account for three quarters of the Republican Party’s electorate. Trump has repeatedly vowed to use military aid as leverage to force Ukraine into peace talks with Russia “within 24 hours” of his inauguration, while his two nearest competitors for the GOP’s nomination – Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy – have also discussed restricting support for Kiev.

Of the three potential candidates, Ramaswamy has gone the furthest, suggesting that the US recognize Russia’s territorial claims in Ukraine in exchange for Moscow distancing itself from Beijing. “If Trump or one of his imitators wins the presidency in November 2024, Europe could find itself faced with a new American administration that will halt all support for Ukraine,” O’Brien warned. In this scenario, he continued, European nations would be unable to make up for the loss of US military aid, resulting in a military defeat for Ukraine. With the US out of the picture, Europe would be divided on the issue too, he added, with the Eastern and Baltic nations eager but unable to keep the arms flowing to Kiev, and Western nations like France and Germany more likely to seek peace with Russia.

“The result could be a legacy of bitterness and distrust at best, and a permanent fracturing of European cooperation at worst,” he stated. A fervent supporter of Ukraine, O’Brien argued that European countries need to increase military production immediately to prepare for this possibility. However, with the Eurozone entering recession in the first three months of 2023 and industrial production down in Germany, European states are unlikely to be able to sustain the Ukrainian military on their own.

O’Brien’s predictions are based on the assumption that Ukraine will still be able to fight by 2025. According to Russian figures, Kiev lost 43,000 men in the first two months of its ongoing counteroffensive, without managing to penetrate the multiple layers of trenches and fortifications laid by Russia along the entire Kherson-Donetsk front line. Before the operation began in early June, multiple Western media reports suggested that continued US and NATO military aid to Kiev depended on the success of the offensive. Now, almost three months in, the counteroffensive is widely regarded as a failure.

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“..Over 30 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day, and in over 60 percent of regions have zero access to healthcare and drinking water.”

No Respite For France As A ‘New Africa’ Rises (Pepe Escobar)

Africa still lags far behind its Eurasian cousins on the road toward breaking the shackles of neocolonialism. The continent today faces horrendous odds in its fight against the deeply entrenched financial and political institutions of colonization, especially when it comes to smashing French monetary hegemony in the form of the Franc CFA – or the Communauté Financière Africaine (African Financial Community). Still, one domino is falling after another – Chad, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and now Gabon. This process has already turned Burkina Faso’s President Captain Ibrahim Traoré, into a new hero of the multipolar world – as a dazed and confused collective west can’t even begin to comprehend the blowback represented by its 8 coups in West and Central Africa in less than 3 years.

Military officers decided to take power in Gabon after hyper pro-France President Ali Bongo won a dodgy election that “lacked credibility.” Institutions were dissolved. Borders with Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and the Republic of Congo were closed. All security deals with France were annulled. No one knows what will happen with the French military base. All that was as popular as it comes: soldiers took to the streets of the capital Libreville in joyful singing, cheered on by onlookers. Bongo and his father, who preceded him, have ruled Gabon since 1967. He was educated at a French private school and graduated from the Sorbonne. Gabon is a small nation of 2.4 million with a small army of 5,000 personnel that could fit into Donald Trump’s penthouse. Over 30 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day, and in over 60 percent of regions have zero access to healthcare and drinking water.

The military qualified Bongo’s 14-year rule as leading to a “deterioration in social cohesion” that was plunging the country “into chaos.” On cue, French mining company Eramet suspended its operations after the coup. That’s a near monopoly. Gabon is all about lavish mineral wealth – in gold, diamonds, manganese, uranium, niobium, iron ore, not to mention oil, natural gas, and hydropower. In OPEC-member Gabon, virtually the whole economy revolves around mining. The case of Niger is even more complex. France exploits uranium and high-purity petrol as well as other types of mineral wealth. And the Americans are on site, operating three bases in Niger with up to 4,000 military personnel. The key strategic node in their ‘Empire of Bases’ is the drone facility in Agadez, known as Niger Air Base 201, the second-largest in Africa after Djibouti.

French and American interests clash, though, when it comes to the saga over the Trans-Sahara gas pipeline. After Washington broke the umbilical steel cord between Russia and Europe by bombing the Nord Streams, the EU, and especially Germany, badly needed an alternative. Algerian gas supply can barely cover southern Europe. American gas is horribly expensive. The ideal solution for Europeans would be Nigerian gas crossing the Sahara and then the deep Mediterranean.

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“..the US initially proposed the dollar as an international currency “to make everyone’s life better, easier, more comfortable.”

US Dollar A ‘Very Problematic’ Currency – Zakharova (RT)

Ever more countries are turning to national currencies for trade rather than use the US dollar, which has become a “very problematic” means of payment, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated in an interview with the Turkish news outlet Aydinlik published on Sunday. According to Zakharova, the US initially proposed the dollar as an international currency “to make everyone’s life better, easier, more comfortable.” “They were very insistent on this, saying that it would bring the world economy to a new level and simplify our transactions and relationships… And at the time, those who made such a policy in the US and abroad… probably wanted to take that first step towards globalization honestly.” Now, according to Zakharova, the dollar is used to pressure Washington’s political opponents.

“What we faced last year is something completely different,” she stated, referring to the numerous Western sanctions placed on Russia over the Ukraine conflict, including an effective ban on Russia using the dollar in international transactions. “There is no simplifying or making our lives easier. The currency is being used as a tool of hegemony and a new kind of colonialism, used to punish, segregate, and make our lives a nightmare.” According to Zakharova, the process of de-dollarization, which Russia and a growing number of other countries have been pursuing in cross-border trade, is not a goal in and of itself but a simple fact of reality.

“They say de-dollarization is a kind of ultimate goal of different organizations or some countries. But it is not. This is not our target. This is just a reality… The dollar is a very problematic currency these days. This is not my political view, it is an objective economic fact.” Zakharova noted that most global economic problems originate in the US, including the 2008 global economic crisis. National currencies, on the other hand, are more stable, which is why an increasing number of countries are opting for them, she believes. They want to establish and create a kind of a guarantee, a financial guarantee system in order not to once again be a victim of an American crisis… It is up to the countries to decide [how to do it], but as I understand it, more and more countries want to do something to avoid becoming another victim of the American financial system,” the official said.

Russia has been reducing the use of the dollar in foreign trade since 2014, but last year’s sanctions forced the country to step up these efforts. For instance, the share of national and ‘friendly’ currencies in the country’s trade with the Eurasian Economic Union grew to nearly 80% in 2022, and is expected to reach 90% by the end of this year. Last week, reports emerged that the BRICS group of emerging economies – which presently comprises Russia, Brazil, India, China, and South Africa, but is due to add six new members next year – is also considering switching all cross-border trade to national currencies.

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“.. this increasingly beleaguered, self-destructive, debased and less popular US currency.”

Gold’s Role Rises As Dollar Hegemony Falls (ZH)

Rickards noted, “It’s the weaponization of the dollar… you’re not just stealing our money with inflation, you’re actually telling us we can’t get it back,” emphasizing that while the BRICS countries might not fully trust each other, they are more likely to trust a “common trading currency backed by gold.” Rule described the U.S. dollar’s previous “exorbitant privilege” advantage is coming to an end, thereby making things more expensive for Americans. “The enemy of the U.S. dollar isn’t in Beijing or Moscow or Riyadh, it’s in Washington.” For Piepenburg, the end-game is clear. Debt drives policy and debt drives current market directions. This debt will not and cannot be sustained by GDP growth or tax revenues,… …which means ultimately money printers will continue to de-value that world reserve currency,… …and hence devalue the once hegemonic respect for the US holder of that currency.

Piepenburg states, “America doesn’t seem to be the America that it was in 1944 or the America that it was under Kissinger in the early 70s,” indicating a significant shift in global economic dynamics. While all experts seemed to agree that gold could play an increasingly important role, Piepenburg was skeptical that national leaders and central bankers would willingly give up their power to print money at will, dubbing this the “Nietzsche thesis,” questioning why leaders would want to “relinquish that ability to print at will.” Overall, the panel agreed that the weaponization and debasement of the dollar have diminished its credibility, setting the stage for other forms of currency or assets like gold to gain importance in protecting investors from this increasingly beleaguered, self-destructive, debased and less popular US currency.

Read more …

At your age, you’re supposed to be planting trees whose shade you’ll never sit in.

Soros Vows to Stop ‘MAGA-Style Republicans’ From Winning 2024 Election (Sp.)

The Soros family has waged a years-long political war against Donald Trump and his supporters, with George Soros calling Trump a “danger to the world” and characterizing his ideas as a “threat to democracy.” Trump has alleged that “district attorneys hand-picked and personally funded by” Soros are behind the ongoing effort to put him behind bars. Last month, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations soft power empire announced a dramatic scaling back of funding for operations in Europe, sparking an outcry from liberal activists, NGOs, and think tanks regarding the impact the end of the financial gravy train will have on their operations.

Alexander Soros, the 37-year-old son of the Hungarian-born US billionaire who took the reins at the OSF in June, responded with a manifesto-style appeal this week explaining the shift in focus under his leadership, assuring that the OSF isn’t really “leaving Europe,” and that the region “remains of huge strategic importance.” Rather, Soros indicated, the shift in funding is the result of a shift in focus, from Western to Eastern Europe and the United States. “The future of accountable, democratic government in Europe is now being determined not just in Paris and Berlin but also in Warsaw, Kiev and Prague,” he wrote. “This isn’t about funding levels – it’s about priorities as the focus of funding shifts back to the continent’s east,” Soros Jr. noted, recalling that, after all, his father’s soft power meddling in nations’ political affairs began in Eastern Europe in the 1980s.

Spending in Ukraine won’t be affected by the cuts, Soros assured, recalling with “pride” the $250 million in cash funneled into the country since the 2014 Euromaidan coup, and which played “such an important role in Kiev’s resilience” amid the ongoing NATO-backed proxy war against Russia. The OSF will also continue to “support” operations in Moldova and the Western Balkans, per Soros, and Central European University – the Vienna-based school booted out of Budapest in 2019 amid allegations of meddling in Hungary’s politics. The reorganization will also include a redoubling of Soros foundations’ efforts against Donald Trump and MAGA-style Republicans, Soros indicated, expressing concerns over the impact Trump’s possible return to power in 2024 would have on the OSF’s global agenda.

“As someone who spends up to half their time working on the continent and thinks former United States President Donald Trump – or at least someone with his isolationist and anti-European policies –will be the Republican nominee, I believe a MAGA-style Republican victory in next year’s US presidential election could, in the end, be worse for the EU than for the US. Such an outcome will imperil European unity and undermine the progress achieved on many fronts in response to the war in Ukraine,” Soros opined. Accordingly, he noted, the OSF is being “adapted” to “be able to respond to whatever scenarios might emerge, on both sides of the Atlantic.”

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Same here: plant trees your grandchildren will enjoy.

US Congress is Older Than Ever, But Reform is Unlikely (Sp.)

McConnell is not the only prominent member of US legislature whose health became a point of discussion. Last year, media reported US lawmakers questioning the mental fitness of long-time US senator Dianne Feinstein, who has served as a member of the US Senate since 1992, representing California. In 2023, Feinstein, now aged 90, announced that she will not run for reelection in 2024. This illustrates a trend of US political class becoming older compared with the past, with the 80-year-old incumbent president, Joe Biden, being the most prominent example as the oldest sitting US leader. His predecessor and likely opponent during the 2024 election, Donald Trump, is not that far behind, being 77 years old. According to the FiveThirtyEight polling website, both House and Senate are older than ever before, with the median age for US representatives and senators being 57.8 and 65.3, respectively.

Similar to Feinstein and McConnell, many of those people have been in Congress for decades. “The US Congress and the Presidency constitute a gerontocracy, and I see no chance that such graybeards will reform themselves on that score anytime soon,” John Seery, the George Irving Thompson memorial professor of government and professor of politics at Pomona College, summarized the situation. This development has triggered a conversation about whether it is appropriate for a senior lawmaker to stay in power well into their old age, especially since there is no mechanism to remove them similar to the Constitution’s 25th Amendment, which outlines the procedures for replacing the president or vice president in the event of death, removal, resignation, or incapacitation.

While the both chambers of Congress can expel members with a two-third majority, only 20 lawmakers have been removed this way since 1789, with a majority of those cases involving support for Confederacy during the Civil War.
There have been proposals to introduce age limits for elected officials, which is also not that out of the ordinary, considering there are already minimum age requirements for holding political office. “Now that Americans are living longer, and the consequences of having octogenarians running the country (specifically President Biden and Senator McConnell) are apparent, a conversation around age limits in needed. Public opinion polling has shown that a majority of Americans are in favor of this.

It could also be a consideration for the Supreme Court, as it tends to have the same issues around older justices becoming unwell in post and potentially leaving the bench short of a member,” Clodagh Harrington, a lecturer in US politics at University College Cork, said. When asked whether a version of the 25th Amendment for members of Congress could be passed, the expert noted that even that addition to the constitution has been controversial. “The few times in the modern era that it has been considered in relation to, for example, President [Ronald] Reagan, have caused significant unease. No-one wants to be the person informing the president that they are no longer considered fit for office,” she explained.

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You cannot have two different justice systems for long.

Biden Asserts Executive Privilege on Hunter Emails, But Waived Trump’s (GP)

On Wednesday, America First Legal (AFL) revealed they obtained “over 1,000 emails between Rosemont Seneca and the Office of the Vice (OVP) President” from the National Archives (NARA) via a lawsuit. AFL started the thread on X by saying “The sheer volume of emails exchanged between Hunter and his associates at Rosemont Seneca and the Office of the Vice President is telling in itself.” Joe Biden asserted executive privilege over 200 emails because “release would disclose confidential advice between the President and his advisors, or between such advisors.” Meanwhile, President Trump’s executive privilege was obliterated by Joe Biden. The Biden White House worked directly with the Justice Department and National Archives to facilitate the investigation into Trump’s handling of documents, according to memos reviewed by investigative reporter John Solomon.

Joe Biden’s spokeswoman has repeatedly claimed Joe Biden had no knowledge of the raid and that he found out about it in the media. According to the memos, the Biden White House instigated the criminal investigation by eliminating Trump’s claims to executive privilege. Joe Biden paved the way for his Justice Department to arrest his political opponent after he retroactively revoked Trump’s executive privilege. Biden revoking Trump’s executive privilege opened the door for the former president to be subpoenaed – the subpoena then opened the door for the Justice Department to charge Trump with federal crimes. “By May, [White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan] Su conveyed to the Archives that President Joe Biden would not object to waiving his predecessor’s claims to executive claims, a decision that opened the door for DOJ to get a grand jury to issue a subpoena compelling Trump to turn over any remaining materials he possessed from his presidency.” – John Solomon reported last August.

On May 10, 2022, Acting National Archivist Debra Steidel Wall sent Trump’s lawyers a letter revealing the Biden White House’s involvement. According to John Solomon, within two weeks of Debra Steidel Wall’s letter to Trump’s lawyers, the DOJ sent a grand jury subpoena to Trump’s counsel demanding he return documents stored at Mar-a-Lago. Shortly after Trump was subpoenaed, the feds showed up to Mar-a-Lago and retrieved some documents and told the former president to put an extra lock on the storage locker. Two months later the FBI descended on Mar-a-Lago and rummaged through Trump’s belongings without allowing any of his lawyers in the area.

By November 2022, shortly after the Mar-a-Lago raid, Jack Smith was appointed special counsel to investigate the documents stored at Trump’s Florida residence. By June 2023 Trump was indicted on 37 counts related to Jack Smith’s classified documents case – 31 counts for willful retention and the other 6 counts included conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheme to conceal, false statements and representations. Meanwhile, Joe Biden hasn’t even been interviewed yet by the special counsel investigating his stolen SCIF-designated documents and he was able to assert executive privilege over 200 emails related to his son Hunter.

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I don’t see Fani last for much longer. What a mess.

Fani Willis Possesses Evidence Exonerating Georgia’s Alternate Electors (Fed.)

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis possesses evidence that exonerates several Republicans she’s targeting in her legal crusade against former President Donald Trump and other Republicans for their lawful contesting of Georgia’s flawed 2020 election. In her Aug. 14 indictment, Willis alleged the existence of Republican electors for Trump constituted an unlawful “conspiracy” to overturn the Peach State’s 2020 election results. Among those charged for partaking in this so-called “conspiracy” are David Shafer, one of Georgia’s 2020 Republican electors, and Ray Smith, who served as one of Trump’s lawyers at the time of the contest. Specifically, Willis claimed Shafer and the other alternate electors “unlawfully falsely held themselves out” as Georgia’s “duly elected and qualified” presidential electors.

She further insisted these electors — with Smith’s assistance — intentionally attempted to “mislead” figures such as then-Vice President Mike Pence and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger “into believing that they actually were such officers.” However, among the documents Willis obtained during her years-long investigation of Republicans was a meeting transcript refuting her allegations. A transcript of the Georgia Republican electors’ Dec. 14, 2020, meeting, obtained by The Federalist, explicitly shows the intent behind casting alternate electors was not to impersonate public officers, as Willis alleged, but to lawfully preserve Trump’s legal challenge to the state’s election results. At the meeting’s outset, Shafer specifically noted how he and his fellow Republicans were acting as “Republican nominees for Presidential Elector,” not as “duly elected and qualified” presidential electors.

“[President Trump] has filed a contest to the certified returns. That contest — is pending [and has] not been decided or even heard by any judge with the authority to hear it,” Shafer said. “And so in order to preserve his rights, it’s important that the Republican nominees for Presidential Elector meet here today and cast their votes.” For context, Shafer and Trump filed a lawsuit against Secretary of State Raffensberger in Fulton County state court on Dec. 4, 2020, alleging tens of thousands of illegal votes had been cast in the state’s presidential election. The suit came after a recount, requested by Trump, deemed Biden the winner of Georgia’s 16 electoral votes by a margin of 11,779. The recount prompted Raffensberger to recertify the election on Dec. 7 while Trump’s legal challenge remained ongoing.

By the time Dec. 14, 2020, arrived — the day on which nominees for presidential electors are required by federal law to meet — Trump and Shafer’s lawsuit was still pending. As such, Georgia’s Republican nominees, including Shafer, cast their electoral votes for Trump while the state’s Democrat nominees cast theirs for Biden. During the Dec. 14, 2020, meeting, Shafer further clarified the legal rationale for filing alternate electors in a conversation with Smith, asking Trump’s then-lawyer: “And so the only way for us to have any judge consider the merits of our complaint, the thousands of people we allege voted unlawfully, is for us to have this meeting and permit the contest to continue?” “That’s correct,” Smith replied.

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Coming from a Reagan economist.

Ivermectin Is a Proven Cure for Covid (Paul Craig Roberts)

The Covid years taught me that relatively few doctors are competent, capable of independent thinking, and have the interest to find approved medicines, such as Ivermectin, that are effective against new pathogens. Those doctors saved patients lives to the great distress of the Medical Establishment, and the doctors who saved their patients’ lives are still being punished for doing so. In September 2021, the corrupt American Medical Association told doctors to stop prescribing Ivermectin for COVID-19. In a statement, AMA, along with the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) and American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), warned:

“We are alarmed by reports that outpatient prescribing for and dispensing of ivermectin have increased 24-fold since before the pandemic and increased exponentially over the past few months. As such, we are calling for an immediate end to the prescribing, dispensing, and use of ivermectin for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 outside of a clinical trial.” “In addition, we are urging physicians, pharmacists, and other prescribers — trusted health care professionals in their communities — to warn patients against the use of ivermectin outside of FDA-approved indications and guidance, whether intended for use in humans or animals, as well as purchasing ivermectin from online stores.”

Dr. Joseph Mercola asks. “How many died unnecessarily as a result of these commands?” Mercola’s question is a good one. Those who died from Covid died because of a lack of treatment. For an untested vaccine to be put into use under “emergency use authorization” there must be no cures. Therefore the Medical Establishment, which serves as a marketing agent for Big Pharma, had to deny that there were any cures and to prevent doctors from curing patients with Ivermectin and HCQ before the knowledge of the cure spread. Otherwise the agendas served by the Death Shot would be blocked.

Now that the Medical Establishment has a new Covid variant with which to scare people and an updated dangerous vax, there is talk of a new round of vax, mask, and lockdown mandates. These measures are very dangerous and totally unnecessary. But they maximize profit and control, and that is their purpose. My advice is that if you have a doctor who warns you away from Ivermectin, you have a dumbshit or corrupt doctor who is very dangerous to your life and health. Quickly find another one who has the interest to know the facts and the determination to put his patients ahead of Big Pharma’s profits. And certainly do not trust any corporate hospital.

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Lambs and birds

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Dec 192016
 
 December 19, 2016  Posted by at 9:23 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  2 Responses »


Oil wells in Venice, California, bringing oil up from beach area 1952

Amid The Bombs of Aleppo, All You Can Hear Are The Lies (Peter Hitchens)
Coup Or No Coup: The Electoral College Votes On Monday (ZH)
A Spy Coup in America? (Robert Parry)
Trump Wants To Hear Hacking Evidence Direct From FBI (WSJ)
The $12 Trillion Credit Risk Juggle (BBG)
Gone in 60 Seconds: Chinese Snap Up Dollars as Yuan Tanks (BBG)
As Yuan Weakens, Chinese Rush To Open Foreign Currency Accounts (R.)
China Central Bank Presses Banks To Help After Interbank Lending Freezes (R.)
China To Strictly Limit Property Speculation In 2017 (R.)
Italy Banking Crisis is Also a Huge Crime Scene (DQ)
Ireland Appeals EU Order To Collect €13 Billion In Back Taxes From Apple (AP)
Apple To Appeal EU Tax Ruling, Says It Was A ‘Convenient Target’ (R.)
India Has Less And Less Reason To Exist In Its Current Form (Bhandari)
Greek Migration Minister Eyes ‘Closed’ Facilities On Islands (Kath.)
The Seven Deadly Things We’re Doing To Trash The Planet (John Vidal)

 

 

Hitchens is a veteran. And western propaganda on Aleppo has gotten way out of hand.

Amid The Bombs of Aleppo, All You Can Hear Are The Lies (Peter Hitchens)

[..] the old cliche ‘the first casualty of war is truth’ is absolutely right, and should be displayed in letters of fire over every TV and newspaper report of conflict, for ever. Almost nothing can be checked. You become totally reliant on the people you are with, and you identify with them. If you can find a working phone, you will feel justified in shouting whatever you have got into the mouthpiece – as simple and unqualified as possible. And your office will feel justified in putting it on the front page (if you are lucky). And that is when you are actually there, which is a sort of excuse for bending the rules.

In the past few days we have been bombarded with colourful reports of events in eastern Aleppo, written or transmitted by people in Beirut (180 miles away and in another country), or even London (2,105 miles away and in another world). There have, we are told, been massacres of women and children, people have been burned alive. The sources for these reports are so-called ‘activists’. Who are they? As far as I know, there was not one single staff reporter for any Western news organisation in eastern Aleppo last week. Not one. This is for the very good reason that they would have been kidnapped and probably murdered. The zone was ruled without mercy by heavily armed Osama Bin Laden sympathisers, who were bombarding the west of the city with powerful artillery (they frequently killed innocent civilians and struck hospitals, since you ask).

That is why you never see pictures of armed males in eastern Aleppo, just beautifully composed photographs of handsome young unarmed men lifting wounded children from the rubble, with the light just right. The women are all but invisible, segregated and shrouded in black, just as in the IS areas, as we saw when they let them out. For reasons that I find it increasingly hard to understand or excuse, much of the British media refer to these Al Qaeda types coyly as ‘rebels’ (David Cameron used to call them ‘moderates’). But if they were in any other place in the world, including Birmingham or Belmarsh, they would call them extremists, jihadis, terrorists and fanatics. One of them, Abu Sakkar, famously cut out and sank his teeth into the heart of a fallen enemy, while his comrades cheered. This is a checked and verified fact, by the way.

Sakkar later confirmed it to the BBC, when Western journalists still had contact with these people, and there is film of it if you care to watch. There is also film of a Syrian ‘rebel’ group, Nour al-din al Zenki, beheading a 12-year-old boy called Abdullah Issa. They smirk a lot. It is on the behalf of these ‘moderates’ that MPs staged a wholly one-sided debate last week, and on their behalf that so many people have been emoting equally one-sidedly over alleged massacres and supposed war crimes by Syrian and Russian troops – for which I have yet to see a single piece of independent, checkable evidence.

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A real American Christmas comedy.

Coup Or No Coup: The Electoral College Votes On Monday (ZH)

With even Harvard’s Larry Lessig admitting that his efforts to flip the Electoral College against Trump have failed miserably, it’s a near certainty that Trump will, in fact, be elected President when the Electoral College casts their votes tomorrow. That said, there could always be surprises and, as such, The Hill has published a list of five things you should keep an eye on as electors get set to cast their ballots. First, here is how the 538 electors should cast their ballots if they all strictly follow the will of the voters in their respective states.

That said, we know that at least one Texas elector, Chris Suprun, has vowed to go rogue tomorrow and anxious eyes will be waiting to see if anyone decides to join him. As The Hill points out, there hasn’t been an election since 1836 in which more than 1 elector changed his vote, so even 2 defectors would make history.

There’s no evidence of a widespread number of Republican defections—just one Republican elector from Texas has gone public with plans to break from Trump. But there hasn’t been an election in which more than one elector jumped ship for reasons other than the death of a candidate since 1836, according to the nonprofit FairVote. So a defection by even one more Republican elector would make history.

The next thing to watch is whether any Democrat electors will cast protest votes. A small group of Democratic electors had vowed to join Larry Lessig’s coup attempt by throwing their support behind an alternative Republican candidate. While this now seems like a remote possibility, it is something to watch for.

Democratic electors are the ones beating the drums for the revolt, yet they’re largely powerless to change the outcome. A handful of electors are already planning on uniting around a Republican alternative as a protest, but it’s still unclear how many are willing to join the protest. In theory, a unified front of the 232 Democrats could join with 38 Republicans to elect an alternative president. But in practice, the anti-Trump electors will be lucky if more than a dozen Democrats break.

With 29 states and the District of Columbia binding their electors by law, it will also be interesting to see if anyone in those states choose to defect, and if so, what penalties will be levied upon them.

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Lots of info from Parry, but basically just confirms what we already knew.

A Spy Coup in America? (Robert Parry)

As Official Washington’s latest “group think” solidifies into certainty – that Russia used hacked Democratic emails to help elect Donald Trump – something entirely different may be afoot: a months-long effort by elements of the U.S. intelligence community to determine who becomes the next president. I was told by a well-placed intelligence source some months ago that senior leaders of the Obama administration’s intelligence agencies – from the CIA to the FBI – were deeply concerned about either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump ascending to the presidency. And, it’s true that intelligence officials often come to see themselves as the stewards of America’s fundamental interests, sometimes needing to protect the country from dangerous passions of the public or from inept or corrupt political leaders.

It was, after all, a senior FBI official, Mark Felt, who – as “Deep Throat” – guided The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their Watergate investigation into the criminality of President Richard Nixon. And, I was told by former U.S. intelligence officers that they wanted to block President Jimmy Carter’s reelection in 1980 because they viewed him as ineffectual and thus not protecting American global interests. It’s also true that intelligence community sources frequently plant stories in major mainstream publications that serve propaganda or political goals, including stories that can be misleading or entirely false. So, what to make of what we have seen over the past several months when there have been a series of leaks and investigations that have damaged both Clinton and Trump — with some major disclosures coming, overtly and covertly, from the U.S. intelligence community led by CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey?

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The WSJ headline is: “Donald Trump’s Team Tones Down Skepticism on Russia Hacking Evidence”. But all he does is say: “show us the proof, show me and the American people.” So let’s have it.

Trump Wants To Hear Hacking Evidence Direct From FBI (WSJ)

Fresh signs emerged Sunday that President-elect Donald Trump could embrace the intelligence community’s view that the Russians were behind a computer-hacking operation aimed at influencing the November election. A senior Trump aide said Mr. Trump could accept Russia’s involvement if there is a unified presentation of evidence from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies. This followed weeks of skepticism from the president-elect and his supporters that there is sufficient evidence that Russia was responsible for cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee or leak of stolen emails.

Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Mr. Trump’s incoming chief of staff, Reince Priebus, said the president-elect “would accept the conclusion if these intelligence professionals would get together, put out a report, show the American people that they are actually on the same page.” His statement follows an intensifying bipartisan push on Capitol Hill to launch a separate investigation into the matter. Mr. Trump has called for opening up new lines of cooperation with Russia, and some of his critics in both parties have said his refusal so far to say Russia tried to interfere in the election was a sign that he doesn’t believe that Moscow is a U.S. adversary.

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That’s quite the shift.

The $12 Trillion Credit Risk Juggle (BBG)

After the financial crisis, regulators were worried about too much risk being concentrated in too few hands.They are still concerned, but the hands have changed. The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research is devoted to worrying about everything and anything that could spur another financial crisis, and near the top of the list is the post-crisis explosion in corporate credit. This pile of debt is “a top threat to stability,” according to this Treasury unit’s latest report, as Bloomberg’s Claire Boston wrote on Tuesday. In particular, these researchers are wary of the changing composition of who owns these bonds. Big banks and hedge funds own a much smaller proportion, while insurers and mutual funds own much more of it.


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More specifically, banks and household and nonprofits, a category that includes hedge funds, have reduced their holdings of U.S. corporate credit by $1.6 trillion since 2008, while insurers, mutual funds and the rest of the world have increased it by $3.6 trillion, according to data compiled by Goldman Sachs that includes foreign sovereign debt and asset-backed securities. This is a salient matter. The Federal Reserve just raised rates for a second time in two years and predicts three rate increases next year, possibly marking the end of this era of financial repression that’s spurred a record pace of corporate-debt sales.

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With Goldman predicting the biggest fall for the yuan in 20 years, Beijing is in a bind.

Gone in 60 Seconds: Chinese Snap Up Dollars as Yuan Tanks (BBG)

Chinese savers, eager to convert their yuan before the currency keeps depreciating, are snapping up U.S. dollar investment products that offer options for keeping money at home instead of sending it overseas. The latest wealth management products from China Merchants Bank last week, paying 2.37% annual interest on U.S. dollars, sold out in 60 seconds flat. “You won’t be able to get it online because it’s gone in less than a minute,” said a branch manager, who would only give the surname Xu, and encourages customers to book a day in advance next time. A growing number of offerings of such U.S. dollar funds and how quickly they’re being purchased show the surging demand for foreign currency amid outflows that are estimated to have totaled more than $1.5 trillion since the beginning of 2015.

By shifting into dollars – U.S., Australian and Hong Kong are among the favorites – deposit holders are shielded from the yuan’s losses without having to take their money out of the country to seek returns. “It seems an attractive choice to convert the yuan into the dollar sooner rather than later,” Harrison Hu at NatWest Markets, a unit of RBS, wrote in a note. He estimates that household purchases of foreign exchange could double to $15 billion a month in the coming quarter, absent new controls. A more hawkish than expected outlook from the U.S. Federal Reserve after it lifted interest rates last week has helped accelerate a dollar rally, with analysts predicting further gains. As the yuan has declined, China’s authorities have tried to vigorously enforce strict rules on moving cash over the border, where it is often invested in purchases such as real estate.

In recent weeks, policy makers in Beijing have put the brakes on everything from companies buying assets overseas to offshore purchases of life insurance to stem the tide of cash outflows. The fresh measures include checks by the currency regulator on any capital account transactions involving foreign exchange of $5 million or more. That followed steps earlier this year to ban the sharing of foreign-exchange quotas. In November, banks sold 49% more foreign-currency denominated wealth management products, most of them in U.S. dollars, than in October, according to PY Standard. November’s foreign currency deposits increased 11.4% from a year earlier, more than double the 4.8% rise in October, according to the People’s Bank of China.

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If you’re really a market economy, what do you do?

As Yuan Weakens, Chinese Rush To Open Foreign Currency Accounts (R.)

Zhang Yuting lives and works in Shanghai, has only visited the United States once, and rarely needs to use foreign currency. But that hasn’t stopped the 29-year-old accountant from putting a slice of her bank savings into the greenback. She is not alone. In the first 11 months of 2016, official figures show that foreign currency bank deposits owned by Chinese households rose by almost 32%, propelled by the yuan’s recent fall to eight-year lows against the dollar. The rapid rise – almost four times the growth rate for total deposits in the yuan and other currencies as recorded in central bank data – comes at a time when the yuan is under intense pressure from capital outflows. The outflows are partially a result of concerns that the yuan is going to weaken further as U.S. interest rates rise, and because of lingering concerns about the health of the Chinese economy.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s threats to declare China a currency manipulator and to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese imports into the U.S., as well as tensions over Taiwan and the South China Sea, have only added to the fears. “Expectations of capital flight are clear,” said Zhang, who used her yuan savings to buy $10,000 this year. “I might exchange more yuan early next year, as long as I’ve got money.” Household foreign currency deposits in China are not huge compared to the money that companies, banks and wealthy individuals have been directing into foreign currency accounts and other assets offshore. All up, households had $118.72 billion of foreign money in their bank accounts at the end of November, while total foreign currency deposits were $702.56 billion. But the high growth rate in the household forex holdings are symbolic of a growing headache for the government as it struggles to counter the yuan’s weakness

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Liquidity is one of the things central banks do not control. Not in the way China sees control.

China Central Bank Presses Banks To Help After Interbank Lending Freezes (R.)

China’s central bank stepped in to urge major commercial banks to lend to non-bank financial institutions on Thursday afternoon after many suspended interbank operations amid tight liquidity conditions, Caixin reported. The People’s Bank of China intervened to help institutions such as securities firms and fund managers after banks, including the big four state-owned banks, became reluctant to make loans, the financial magazine said, citing traders and institutional sources. Caixin said that traders pointed to worsening sentiment among banks about market conditions and growing caution over interbank lending, especially after the U.S. Fed triggered a sell-off in the bond futures market on Thursday by signaling more rate hikes in 2017. Liquidity has become a major factor affecting the market after the central bank increased the cost of capital through open market operations in the past month, the magazine added.

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Don’t believe a word of it.

China To Strictly Limit Property Speculation In 2017 (R.)

China will strictly limit credit flowing into speculative buying in the property market in 2017, top leaders said at an economic conference on Friday, as reported by the official Xinhua news agency. “Houses are for people to live in, not for people to speculate,” Xinhua said, citing a statement issued by the leaders after the Central Economic Work Conference concluded. “We must control credits in the macro sense,” they said in the statement. China will also boost the supply of land for cities where housing prices face stiff upward pressure, they said. China must quickly establish a long-term mechanism to restrain property bubbles and prevent price volatility in 2017, Xinhua said. Top leaders began the conference on Wednesday to map out economic and reform plans. The annual event is keenly watched by investors for clues to policy priorities and economic targets in the year ahead.

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That’s what the country always used to be good at after all.

Italy Banking Crisis is Also a Huge Crime Scene (DQ)

The Bank of Italy’s Target 2 liabilities towards other Eurozone central banks — one of the most important indicators of banking stress — has risen by €129 billion in the last 12 months through November to €358.6 billion. That’s well above the €289 billion peak reached in August 2012 at the height of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis. Foreign and local investors are dumping Italian government bonds and withdrawing their funding to Italian banks. The bank at the heart of Italy’s financial crisis, Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), has bled €6 billion of “commercial direct deposits” between September 30 and December 13, €2 billion of which since December 4, the date of Italy’s constitutional referendum.

Italy’s new Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, who took over from Matteo Renzi after his defeat in the referendum,said his government — a virtual carbon copy of the last one — is prepared to do whatever it takes to stop MPS from collapsing and thereby engulfing other European banks. His options would include directly supporting Italy’s ailing banks, in contravention of the EU’s bail-in rules passed into law at the beginning of this year. Though now, that push comes to shove, the EU seems happy to look the other way. While attention is focused on the rescue of MPS, news regarding another Italian bank, Banca Etruria, has quietly slipped by the wayside. On Friday it was announced that the first part of an investigation concerning fraudulent bankruptcy charges, in which 21 board members are implicated, had been closed.

This strand of the investigation concerns €180 million of loans offered by the bank which were never paid back, leading to the regional lender’s bankruptcy and eventual bail-in/out last November that left bondholders holding virtually worthless bonds. The Banca Etruria scandal is a reminder — and certainly not a welcome one right now for Italian authorities — that a large part of the €360 billion of toxic loans putrefying on the balance sheets of Italy’s banks should never have been created at all and were a result of the widespread culture of corruption, political kickbacks, and other forms of fraud and abuse infecting Italy’s banking sector. Etruria is also under investigation for fraudulently selling high-risk bonds to retail investors — a common practice among banks in Italy (and Spain) during the liquidity-starved years of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.

Put simply, “misselling” subordinated debt to unsuspecting depositors was “the way they recapitalized the banking system,” as Jim Millstein, the U.S. Treasury official who led the restructuring of U.S. banks after the financial crisis, told Bloomberg earlier this year.

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Yeah, it’s unfair!!

Ireland Appeals EU Order To Collect €13 Billion In Back Taxes From Apple (AP)

Ireland will appeal the European Union’s order to force it to collect a record €13bn in taxes from Apple, the Irish government has said. The Irish finance department’s announcement on Monday comes nearly four months after EU competition authorities hit Apple with the back-tax bill based on its longtime reporting of European-wide profits through Ireland. The country charges the American company only for sales on its own territory at Europe-low rates that in turn have been greatly reduced by the controversial use of shell companies at home and abroad. In its formal legal submission, the Dublin says its low taxes are the whole point of its sales pitch to foreign investors — and said it is perfectly legal to levy far less tax on profits than imposed by competitors.

It accuses EU competition authorities of unfairness, exceeding their competence and authority, and seeking to breach Ireland’s sovereignty in national tax affairs. The ruling unveiled 30 August by the European competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager called on Apple to pay Ireland the €13bn for gross underpayment of tax on profits across the bloc from 2003 to 2014. Her report concluded that Apple used two shell companies incorporated in Ireland to permit Apple to report its Europe-wide profits at effective rates well under 1%. The scope of the order could have been even greater because EU time limits meant the judgment could include potential tax infringements dating only from 2003, not all the way back to Apple’s original 1991 tax deal with Ireland. But Irish specialists in corporate tax estimate that the EU’s order, if enforced, actually would total €19bn because of compounding interest from delayed payment.

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Everybody appeals.

Apple To Appeal EU Tax Ruling, Says It Was A ‘Convenient Target’ (R.)

Apple will launch a legal challenge this week to a record $14 billion EU tax demand, arguing that EU regulators ignored tax experts and corporate law and deliberately picked a method to maximize the penalty, senior executives said. Apple’s combative stand underlines its anger with the European Commission, which said on Aug. 30 the company’s Irish tax deal was illegal state aid and ordered it to repay up to €13 billion to Ireland, where Apple has its European headquarters. European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, a former Danish economy minister, said Apple’s Irish tax bill implied a tax rate of 0.005% in 2014. Apple intends to lodge an appeal against the Commission’s ruling at Europe’s second highest court this week, its General Counsel Bruce Sewell and CFO Luca Maestri told Reuters.

The iPhone and iPad maker was singled out because of its success, Sewell said. “Apple is not an outlier in any sense that matters to the law. Apple is a convenient target because it generates lots of headlines. It allows the commissioner to become Dane of the year for 2016,” he said, referring to the title accorded by Danish newspaper Berlingske last month. Apple will tell judges the Commission was not diligent in its investigation because it disregarded tax experts brought in by Irish authorities. “Now the Irish have put in an expert opinion from an incredibly well-respected Irish tax lawyer. The Commission not only didn’t attack that – didn’t argue with it, as far as we know – they probably didn’t even read it. Because there is no reference (in the EU decision) whatsoever,” Sewell said.

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A police state that bans gold and creates a huge underground market in it.

India Has Less And Less Reason To Exist In Its Current Form (Bhandari)

Assaults on people’s private property and the integrity of their homes through tax-raids continue. In a recent notification, government has made it clear that any ownership of jewelry above 500 grams of gold per married woman will be put under the microscopic scrutiny of tax authorities. Steep taxes and penalties will be imposed on those who cannot prove the source of their gold. In India’s Orwellian new-speak this means that because bullion has not been explicitly mentioned, its ownership will be deemed to be illegal. Courts will do what Modi wants. Huge bribes will have to be paid. Sane people are of course cleaning up their bank lockers. The secondary consequence of this will be a steep increase in unreported crimes, for people will be afraid of going to the police after a theft, fearing that the tax authorities will then ask questions.

At the same time, the gold market has mostly gone underground, and apparently the volume of gold buying has gone up. The salaried middle class is the consumption class, often heavily indebted. Poor people have limited amounts of gold. The government is merely doing what pleases the majority and their sense of envy, to the detriment of small businesses and savers. Now, the middle class is starting to face problems as well. This will worsen once the the impact of the destruction of small businesses becomes obvious. India has always had a negative-yielding economy. It has suddenly become even more negative-yielding. Business risk has gone through the roof. Savers will be victimized. It is because of negative yields that Indian savers buy gold. They will buy more going forward.

Sane Indians should stay a step ahead of their rapacious government and the evolving totalitarian society, which are less and less inhibited by any institutions or values in support of liberty. India will become a police state, likely with the full support of most Indians. Nationalism will be the thread that weaves them together. But it is a fake thread, devoid of any value. Eventually, there will be far too many stresses in the system, whose institutions are already in an advance stage of decay. India as it exists today is a British creation. With the British now gone for 69 years, it is an entity has less and less reason to exist in its current form.

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Yeah, let’s all get crazy when Brussels says so.

Greek Migration Minister Eyes ‘Closed’ Facilities On Islands (Kath.)

Despite widespread opposition in the ranks of SYRIZA to such a prospect, Migration Minister Yiannis Mouzalas has called for the creation of “closed” reception centers for migrants on Aegean islands, saying they will help minimize tensions amid local communities. A key reason for building tensions at existing centers on the islands is the slow pace at which migrants’ asylum applications are being processed. German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a pointed reference to the slow pace of migrant returns from Greece to Turkey last week. However, official figures show that an agreement signed in March between the European Union and Ankara significantly curbed arrivals in Greece. Of the 172,699 migrants that arrived in Greece from Turkey this year, only 20,457 have landed on the islands since the beginning of April, when the EU-Turkey deal went into effect.

Asylum officials on the Aegean islands have received a total of 21,314 applications, while 2,110 have appealed against initial rejections. The government hopes to create new facilities to accommodate migrants who have displayed delinquent behavior in a bid to curb the outbreak of rioting at larger centers and to stop thefts and other petty crimes that have been testing tolerance in local communities. “We propose small facilities for 150-200 people,” Mouzalas told Kathimerini, adding that authorities were not seeking the tolerance but the “solidarity” of islanders to help “normalize the situation.” As for the prospect of transferring some migrants from island centers to facilities on the mainland, Athens has asked EU officials about it but has failed to receive a response amid fears that such a move would constitute a violation of the EU-Turkey pact, Mouzalas said.

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There’s far more than seven, but hey, it’s John Vidal. Who spent half his life doing this.

The Seven Deadly Things We’re Doing To Trash The Planet (John Vidal)

A baby ibex on a precipitous cliff edge. The hyenas of Harar eating from a human hand. Leopards in Mumbai, whales breaching and baby turtles heading blindly away from the sea. We are amazed by images of wildlife seen in ever more beautifully filmed natural history documentaries. They raise awareness, entertain, inform and amuse. We weep when we hear there are fewer birds in the sky, or that thousands of species are critically endangered. But there are some metaphorical megafauna that the BBC and we in the media really do not want everyone to see. After half a lifetime writing for the Guardian about the decline of the natural world, I have to report that there is a herd of enormous elephants in the forest that are trashing the place. We avert our eyes and pretend they are not there. We hope they will go away, but they appear to be breeding. But it is now clear that they are doing so much damage that unless confronted, there is little chance that the rest of the animals, including us, will survive very long.

Hyper-consumerism is the dominant matriarch of this destructive herd and the dysfunctional economic model that supports it, generating waste and ecological damage on a massive scale. The average US supermarket offers nearly 50,000 products; in the UK we throw away millions of tonnes of food a year; mobile phones have an average lifespan of just over a year; computers and cars just a few years more. The free market economy that has been built around it celebrates speed, obsolescence and quantity over longevity and efficiency. But we know that hyper-consumerism leads directly to deforestation, over-extraction of minerals, the waste of natural resources and pollution. We simply have too much stuff that no one possibly needs. To avoid ecological disaster, it must be culled.

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