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Debt Rattle April 22 2024

Apr 222024
 
 April 22, 2024  Posted by at 8:36 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


Wassily Kandinsky Contrasting Sounds 1924

 

• Biden Asks Americans To Choose Between Freedom And Democracy (RT)
• Mobilization Law Condition For New Supplies Of Arms To Kiev By NATO (TASS)
• Ukraine Can Win – Zelensky (RT)
• French Party Leader Says US Aid to Ukraine Only Leads to New Casualties (Sp.)
• Musk Decries Lack Of ‘Exit Strategy’ In Ukraine Conflict (RT)
• Moscow Issues Dire Warning After Ukraine Aid Bill (RT)
• ‘No Consensus’ In West On Seizing Russian Assets – WaPo (RT)
• Trump Arrest Would Cause Nationwide ‘Civil Unrest’ – CNN Analyst (RT)
• $454 Million Trump Penalty Judge Set to Rule on Validity of Reduced Bond (ET)
• Michael Avenatti Flips, Willing To Testify On Trump’s Behalf (ZH)
• Judges Dismiss Disciplinary Effort by Texas State Bar vs Sidney Powell (ET)
• UN Plans Tyrannical Future for You – Alex Newman (USAW)
• US Lawmakers Scared Of Being Framed For ‘Kiddie Porn’ – Tucker Carlson (RT)

 

 

Still no internet at home. Getting it back is like a handicap race.

 

 


Llama3, king of LLMs (Large language model).Taking over from Chat GPT.

 

 

Tucker Rogan

 

 

Tucker Alex Jones

 

 

RFK

 

 

Freeman

 

 

Sheetz

 

 

 

 

“Are you ready to choose unity over division? Dignity over demolition? Truth over lies? Are you ready to choose freedom over democracy? Because that’s America..”

• Biden Asks Americans To Choose Between Freedom And Democracy (RT)

US President Joe Biden has implored his supporters to choose “freedom over democracy,” in the latest of a long series of gaffes and verbal blunders. Conservative pundits viewed the incident as more proof that the 81-year-old is unfit for office. Speaking at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Thursday, Biden rattled off a string of buzzwords as he asked voters whether they would choose him over former President Donald Trump in November’s presidential election. “Are you ready to choose unity over division? Dignity over demolition? Truth over lies? Are you ready to choose freedom over democracy? Because that’s America,” he exclaimed. Biden’s “freedom over democracy” line drew a mix of laughs and applause from the crowd, and ridicule from conservative pundits and influencers.

“When people were concerned about Ronald Reagan having cognitive decline near the end of his second term, it was nothing like this,” the Conservative Brief wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Look in the mirror and ask yourself, truthfully, if this is the man you want in charge of our security, our economy, and our country for another four years?” Biden has a long history of similar slip-ups, and was ridiculed for a 2019 campaign speech in which he declared: “We choose unity over division. We choose science over fiction. We choose truth over facts.”

Republicans insist that Biden’s cognitive faculties are declining, and that this decline has accelerated over his three years in the White House. Video footage of the president shaking hands with imaginary people, getting lost when out in public, and telling reporters that he had just met with long-dead world leaders have served to bolster their case. In February, US Justice Department prosecutor Robert Hur opted not to charge Biden for mishandling classified documents, noting in a report that the president suffered extreme memory lapses and didn’t possess the “mental state of willfulness” needed to commit a crime.

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They’re drafting men who are too old, too handicapped, too unmotivated. It doesn’t seem to matter.

• Mobilization Law Condition For New Supplies Of Arms To Kiev By NATO (TASS)

Passing of a harsh bill on mobilization in Ukraine to make up for the army’s losses was a condition for new supplies of arms to Kiev by NATO countries, a diplomatic source in Brussels told TASS. “Passing of a new harsh bill on mobilization in Ukraine was a condition for new supplies of weapons by NATO countries. Arms supplies are only reasonable if a large number of military personnel able to use those weapons in defense and assault operations is available, and if losses are swiftly made up for, for doing which new soldiers should be actively drafted into the military,” the diplomat said. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed the bill into law to tighten mobilization rules on April 16. The document tightens the mobilization procedure and penalties for draft evaders, and also refines the categories of those subject to mobilization. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are expected to be drafted.

On April 19, an online meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Council at the level of defense ministers was held, where Ukrainian Defense Minister reported about the situation on the ground and about plans to draft soldiers for the country’s armed forces. After the meeting NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told a press conference that he expected new statements by the alliance’s countries on arms supplies to Kiev, including air defense systems, cruise missiles and 155mm ammunition, in the near future. On April 20, the US House of Representatives adopted a package of bills, which includes $60 bln military aid for Kiev among other things. A joint meeting of foreign and defense ministers of EU countries in Brussels is scheduled for April 22. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has brought up the issue of urgent supplies of new air defense systems to Kiev.

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“..Maria Zakharova predicted that the US will eventually face a “loud and humiliating fiasco on par with Vietnam or Afghanistan.”

• Ukraine Can Win – Zelensky (RT)

Ukraine has a chance of victory in the conflict with Russia now that the US House of Representatives has approved more weapons for Kiev, President Vladimir Zelensky claimed in an interview with NBC on Sunday. The remarks came a day after a new aid bill, which authorizes an additional $61 billion in support for Ukraine, was passed by American lawmakers. The emergency spending had been stalled in Congress since last fall over concerns from Republicans that Washington lacked a strategy either for victory or a peace settlement. “I think this support will really strengthen the armed forces, I pray, and we will have a chance at victory if Ukraine really gets the weapons systems, which we need so much,” Zelensky said. He urged the US to wrap up final adoption of the legislation as soon as possible in order to start sending more weapons. The bill has yet to be passed by the US Senate, which is scheduled to vote on it on April 23. After that, it proceeds to President Joe Biden, who has said he will sign it.

“We want to help get things as fast as possible so that we get some tangible assistance for the soldiers on the front line as soon as possible – not in another six months,” the Ukrainian leader said. He specifically requested more air defense systems and longer-range missiles, arguing that the Ukrainian army is suffering losses due to the lack of both. “We need long-range weapons to not lose people on the front line because we have, we have casualties because we cannot reach that far,” he said, adding that another delay would mean more casualties. “If we get it in half a year… we’ve had the process stalled for half a year and we’ve had losses in several directions. Losses in men, in equipment.” Zelensky admitted that victory is far from guaranteed. “Now we have the chance to stabilize the situation,” he stated. “There are so many variables, so many factors.” He continued to rule out talks with Moscow, claiming that neither President Vladimir Putin nor any high-ranking Russian officials can be trusted.

The aid package authorized by the House is not solely intended for new weapons shipments. According to Politico, the biggest chunk of the money ($23 billion) will go to replenishing US stocks already used to provide arms to Ukraine. Only about $14 billion would go to the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which the Pentagon uses to buy new weapons systems for Kiev from US defense contractors, according to The Guardian. Another $10 billion in aid was designated as a repayable loan to appease some Republicans, the newspaper said. Moscow responded by reiterating that Washington is causing Ukraine to “fight to the last Ukrainian” with its weapon shipments. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova predicted that the US will eventually face a “loud and humiliating fiasco on par with Vietnam or Afghanistan.”

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Not every European is a warmonger. But those are nowhere near power.

• French Party Leader Says US Aid to Ukraine Only Leads to New Casualties (Sp.)

Another batch of US military assistance to Kiev worth nearly $61 billion will not change the course of the Ukraine conflict and will only lead to new casualties, The Patriots party leader Florian Philippot said on Sunday. On Saturday, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that will unlock $60.84 billion in Ukraine-related aid. The Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act was passed in a 311-112 vote, with one abstention. “This vote will not change anything, it will only lead to more casualties! To serve the interests of the financial predators who profit from this war!” Philippot said on X.

The politician also called on the French to stop sending money and arms to Kiev, saying that they were “destroying and endangering themselves.” He also suggested that France should withdraw from NATO, engage in dialogue with Russia and seek negotiations as soon as possible. Western countries have been providing military aid to Kiev since the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. Moscow has consistently warned against continued arms deliveries, saying this would lead to further escalation of the conflict.

French forces arrive in Odessa, Ukraine.

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Forever war.

• Musk Decries Lack Of ‘Exit Strategy’ In Ukraine Conflict (RT)

The parties involved in the Ukraine conflict need to work on ways to bring it to a close, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggested on Saturday. Responding to an X (formerly Twitter) post by fellow billionaire David Sachs, in which the latter commented on the House of Representatives approving a long-delayed emergency spending bill that includes new funding for Kiev, Musk noted that the conflict was turning into “a forever war.” “My biggest concern is that there is no exit strategy, just a forever war where kids die in trenches from artillery or charging machine guns and snipers through minefields,” Musk wrote.

Musk did not elaborate on his position towards the aid bill itself this time, but in late March he noted that it “should be contingent on proper accounting of how [the funding] is used and a plan to resolve the conflict.” Musk has not explicitly taken sides during the Ukraine conflict. He did supply Kiev with free Starlink internet terminals and access to the satellite-based network but later refused to activate the service near the Russian port city of Sevastopol in Crimea over fear that Ukraine could use the technology to escalate the conflict by attacking Russia’s Black Sea Fleet with guided drones. In February, Musk said the US should stop aiding Ukraine altogether as there was “no way in hell” Russia would lose the war.

“This spending doesn’t help Ukraine. Prolonging the war doesn’t help Ukraine,” he stated at a forum on X Spaces. Last month, Musk also warned that the “real question” in the conflict now lies in how much territory Kiev will lose before it agrees to sit down to peace talks with Moscow.Russia has repeatedly said that it was open to peace negotiations if Ukraine accepts the “reality on the ground.” Moscow also warned that Western aid and weapons shipments to Ukraine only exacerbate and prolong the conflict. The US, meanwhile, is getting closer to approving another $61 billion for Kiev. After being passed by the House, the Ukraine aid bill is set to be voted on by the Senate later this week.

Retaliatory strike

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“..Washington no longer betting on a Ukrainian victory against Russia, but hoping to keep Kiev afloat until the US presidential election in November…”

• Moscow Issues Dire Warning After Ukraine Aid Bill (RT)

The approval of a large aid package for Ukraine by the US House of Representatives is the same as funding terrorism, according to Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. In a post on her Telegram channel on Saturday, Zakharova said that the potential allocation of further military assistance to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan would only aggravate the crisis in the world. “Military aid to the Kiev regime is direct sponsorship of terrorist activities, funds sent to Taiwan is interference in the internal affairs of China, while aid sent to Israel is a straight way to unprecedented escalation of a conflict in the region,” she said. On Saturday, the lower house of the US Congress passed a $95 billion package that includes almost $61 billion in aid to Ukraine, including funds for the purchase of weapons and military equipment.

Most of the rest is allocated to Israel and Taiwan. The Senate is poised to vote on the bill on April 23 with final passage expected by the end of the week. Washington is driving deeper into a hybrid war with Russia, Zakharova said in a separate statement issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry, adding that the US would end up facing a “loud and humiliating fiasco on a par with Vietnam or Afghanistan.” The spokeswoman said “the US is ready to pump Ukraine with weapons so that Kiev could fight to the last Ukrainian, and continue to terrorist acts against civil objects on Russian sovereign territory and civilians, as well as sabotage attacks and killings of journalists.” Zakharova stated that ordinary Ukrainians were being “forcibly driven to slaughter as cannon fodder” with Washington no longer betting on a Ukrainian victory against Russia, but hoping to keep Kiev afloat until the US presidential election in November.

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How to make $6 billion out of $300 billion look like a victory.

• ‘No Consensus’ In West On Seizing Russian Assets – WaPo (RT)

EU officials are reluctant to bow to US pressure and transfer frozen Russian assets to Ukraine, fearing that Moscow’s retaliation would be aimed primarily at the bloc rather than America, the Washington Post reported on Saturday. As part of unprecedented sanctions over the Ukraine conflict, Western countries have frozen around $300 billion in Russian assets in a move denounced by Moscow as “theft,” with many Western officials suggesting the money could be used to help Ukraine. The bulk of this sum is located in European countries, while the US only holds around $6 billion. In recent months, there have been several proposals on how to use this money to help Ukraine. While the US has pushed for the more hardline option of outright seizing the funds, the EU has proposed using the profits generated by the assets to help Ukraine.

Another option under discussion is to use the assets as collateral to secure loans for Kiev. According to the Post, EU officials are reluctant to confiscate the Russian assets due to concerns that the move “could breach international law, discourage investors from trusting the euro and invite Russian retaliation.” They have also pushed back against the US proposal to seize the funds as Europe holds most of the frozen assets, and “any Russian retaliation will probably fall on Europe, not the United States.” According to an unnamed US Treasury official, both the EU and US agree that “more needs to be done for Ukraine, but there is no consensus on specifics.” He added that “we’re thinking of the Russian sovereign assets as a sustainable medium-to-long-term solution for this funding problem.”

The report comes as the US House of Representatives passed the Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity for Ukrainians Act (REPO) on Saturday, which could allow the administration of US President Joe Biden to seize Russian assets in US banks and transfer them to Ukraine for reconstruction. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has warned that Russia will not leave the potential seizure unanswered, adding that the move could undermine the principle of the “inviolability of private… and state property,” as well as causing “irreparable damage to the US image.”

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“The judge, Juan Merchan, will hear arguments from the prosecution on Trump’s alleged violations of the gag order on Tuesday.”

The gag order is illegal. We need the Supreme Court to confirm that.

• Trump Arrest Would Cause Nationwide ‘Civil Unrest’ – CNN Analyst (RT)

The possible arrest of former US President Donald Trump for violating his court-imposed gag order would trigger rioting and deal a potentially fatal blow to President Joe Biden’s re-election chances, CNN analyst Mark Preston warned on Friday. Trump is currently on trial in Manhattan for allegedly misreporting ‘hush-money’ payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels. Since last month, he has been forbidden from making public statements about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg or the jurors working on the case, and from uttering anything that could interfere with the work of the court. Nevertheless, the former president has spoken to reporters outside the Manhattan courthouse every day this week, and Bragg’s team claims that he has already violated this gag order at least seven times.

In one instance, Trump took to his Truth Social platform on Wednesday to share a quote from Fox News host Jesse Watters, who claimed that “undercover liberal activists” were “lying to the judge in order to get on the Trump jury.” However, if the trial judge were to place Trump in a holding cell “for a few hours,” the end result would be “civil unrest across the country, certainly in some cities,” Preston said in a panel discussion with CNN host Jim Acosta. “And two, politically, if I’m the Biden campaign, I don’t want to necessarily see him in jail, because that’s just going to get people more inflamed and more fired up,” he added. The judge, Juan Merchan, will hear arguments from the prosecution on Trump’s alleged violations of the gag order on Tuesday.

“People are allowed to speak about me, and I have a gag order, just to show you how much more unfair it is,” Trump said outside the courthouse on Friday. The former president blasted the order as unconstitutional, telling reporters that it “has to come off.” Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee to challenge Biden in November’s presidential election. Despite the ongoing trial in Manhattan and three other criminal cases in the works, he is currently leading the incumbent in most polls by between one and ten points.

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Thumbscrews. “The attorney general is requesting that President Trump be required to post a replacement bond within seven days.”

• $454 Million Trump Penalty Judge Set to Rule on Validity of Reduced Bond (ET)

After weeks of trying to secure a bond and arguing to an appeals court that a $454 million bond was “impossible,” former President Donald Trump secured a $175 million bond to stay judgment only to now have to make the case all over again why this should satisfy the New York Attorney General and stop her from seizing his properties. On April 22, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, the trial court judge who set the $454 million judgment, will hear the attorney general’s challenge to the sufficiency of President Trump’s bond. The $175 million figure had been set by the appellate division of the New York Supreme Court, and President Trump has frequently criticized Justice Engoron for “ignoring” appeals court orders, such as when he allowed evidence past the statute of limitations set by the appellate division during the trial.

The attorney general has sought to cast doubt on the stability of LA-based Knight Specialty Insurance Company (KSIC), calling it a “small insurer” and arguing it is not authorized to do business in New York. They argued that KSIC has never before written a surety bond, and has “a total policyholder surplus of just $138 million.” Amit Shah, president of the insurance company, demanded the court compel the attorney general to show cause, or prove the allegation that the insurance company is not sufficient. Mr. Shah submitted a sworn affidavit explaining that KSIC now has control over a bank account of President Trump’s that will maintain $175 million cash for the duration of the appeal. The insurance company entered into a collateral agreement with the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust. Mr. Shah submitted documents establishing that his company is in “good standing” and was approved for excess line eligibility in New York in June 2021.

“As an eligible excess line insurer in the state of New York, KSIC is, therefore, properly authorized to issue the surety on behalf of Defendants,” he stated. This authorization stands as long as the insurance company meets the Excess Line Association of New York’s requirement of maintaining a minimum $47 million policyholder surplus, and Mr. Shah stated his company is maintaining a $48 million surplus minimum. He added that as of the end of 2023, the insurance company had $539 million in assets and $138 in equity, and its parent company, Knight Insurance Company, had on a consolidated basis $1 billion in assets and $1 billion in equity. The parent company also maintains $56 million in cash and $937 million in marketable securities to support reinsurance obligations. “At my direction, KSIC also performed diligence to confirm its legal authority to act as surety before issuing the subject bond,” Mr. Shah stated. “Although KSIC had not before placed a surety bond in New York, KSIC is an excess line insurer in the state of New York.”

The attorney general also took issue with the fact that KSIC does not have “exclusive right” to the account containing $175 million in cash, and highlighted the fact that it would need “two days’ notice” to move that cash. State attorneys urged the court to “not rely on KSIC’s financial summary” because the insurance company “sends 100% of its retained insurance risk to affiliates in the Cayman Islands,” which they argued “artificially bolsters its surplus.” They argued that excess line insurers are only authorized if the management is found “trustworthy and competent,” and KSIC did not qualify because “its management has been found by federal authorities to have operated affiliated companies within KSIC’s holding company structure in violation of federal law on multiple occasions within the past several years.”

Knight is under The Hankey Group of financial companies, which includes the affiliate Westlake Financial Services LLC. The attorney general argued that Westlake was found to have “violated numerous federal laws by pressuring borrowers through the use of illegal debt collection tactics, including using phony caller ID information, falsely threatening to refer borrowers for investigation or criminal prosecution” in 2015 by the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The company was fined and provided $44 million in restitution to consumers. The attorney general is requesting that President Trump be required to post a replacement bond within seven days.

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Serving a 19-year sentence. He’s in a bad spot.

• Michael Avenatti Flips, Willing To Testify On Trump’s Behalf (ZH)

Imprisoned former CNN demigod Michael Avenatti has come out in support of Donald Trump, telling the NY Post that he’s willing to testify on Trump’s behalf after being in contact with Trump’s legal defense team about his willingness to testify against his former client, Stormy Daniels. “The defense has contacted me,” Avenatti told the Post in a phone call from Terminal Island, a minimum-security federal prison in Los Angeles where he’s serving a 19-year sentence for extortion, tax evasion, fraud, embezzlement and other federal crimes.”I’d be more than happy to testify, I don’t know that I will be called to testify, but I have been in touch with Trump’s defense for the better part of year,” Avenatti continued. A person close to the former president confirmed the ongoing discussions.

While Avenatti made his name as one of Trump’s most ferocious critics — and even publicly called for Trump’s indictment in 2018 — the defense attorney sang a different tune from the clink. “There’s no question [the trial] is politically motivated because they’re concerned that he may be reelected,” Avenatti said. “If the defendant was anyone other than Donald Trump, this case would not have been brought at this time, and for the government to attempt to bring this case and convict him in an effort to prevent tens of millions of people from voting for him, I think it’s just flat out wrong, and atrocious. “I’m really bothered by the fact that Trump, in my view, has been targeted. Four cases is just over the top and I think there’s a significant chance that this is going to all backfire and is going to propel him to the White House,” he added. -NY Post.

According to Avenatti, “Depending on what happens, this could constitute pouring jet fuel on his campaign.” Avenatti captured national attention in 2018 while representing Stormy Daniels, the porn star who alleges she had an affair with Trump in 2006, and was paid $130,000 by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen in 2016 in order to allegedly buy her silence. In November 2018, however, Avenatti’s world began imploding after he was booked on charges of domestic violence. Less than 18 months later he was convicted of trying to extort Nike for up to $25 million. And in 2022, he was found guilty of pilfering $300,000 in book advance money from Daniels – and pleaded guilty to federal fraud and tax charges in the same month.

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Well, they did get her out of the way for years.

• Judges Dismiss Disciplinary Effort by Texas State Bar vs Sidney Powell (ET)

Sidney Powell, a lawyer who filed lawsuits after the 2020 election, got a win in Texas after an appeals court ruled that the Texas bar did not prove that she engaged in misconduct or fraud. A panel of judges on the Fifth District of Texas Court of Appeals in Dallas ruled Wednesday that the state bar’s arguments lacked merit and evidence. They found that state bar prosecutors “employed a ’scattershot’ approach to the case” that had alleged Ms. Powell did not have a reasonable basis to file lawsuits that challenged the 2020 election’s outcome in battleground states. “The Bar employed a ‘scattershot’ approach to the case, which left this court and the trial court ‘with the task of sorting through the argument to determine what issue ha[d] actually been raised,’” Justice Dennise Garcia wrote in the court’s ruling. “Having done so, the absence of competent summary judgment compels our conclusion that the Bar failed to meet its summary judgment burden.”

A separate court had sided with Ms. Powell in the case last year, finding “numerous defects” in the evidence presented by the State Bar of Texas Commission for Lawyer Discipline. The court also found that the bar couldn’t provide evidence that she filed frivolous lawsuits. “Under these circumstances and on this record, we conclude the trial court did not err in granting Powell’s no-evidence motion for summary judgment,” the appeals court wrote. The State Bar of Texas Commission for Lawyer Discipline has not yet issued a statement on the matter. A representative for the Texas State Bar told Reuters that the commission would meet to determine its next steps but declined to comment further. “The Dallas Court of Appeals has affirmed the Texas state court’s dismissal of the Texas Bar’s case against Powell. After three years of litigation, the Court of Appeals held the Bar had no evidence Powell violated any disciplinary rule in filing four federal lawsuits in the aftermath of the 2020 election,” she said in a statement this week after the court’s decision.

In court papers filed with the appeals court, Ms. Powell disputed the bar’s allegations that she provided altered evidence in her legal filings. She said the documents were provided by other attorneys involved in the case. The court appeared to agree with her arguments. “Regardless of whether the challenged conduct must be knowing, intentional, or otherwise, a question we need not resolve here, it is axiomatic that dishonesty involves some conscious perversion of truth,” the judge wrote Wednesday. Following the 2020 contest, Ms. Powell was among the most prominent attorneys to file lawsuits, alleging there was enough fraud in battleground states that swung it in favor of President Joe Biden. A federal judge in Detroit sanctioned Ms. Powell and other lawyers in 2021 over the lawsuits. The 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals largely upheld those sanctions, and the U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to hear Ms. Powell’s appeal.

Ms. Powell in October 2023 pleaded guilty in Georgia and took a plea deal with Fulton County prosecutors after she was charged with illegally attempting to overturn the 2020 election results. President Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive 2024 presidential nominee, has also been charged in the case. He and more than a dozen other co-defendants in the case have pleaded not guilty. President Trump has said the Fulton County case is an attempt to interfere with the 2024 election, describing the charges as baseless. Under the terms of her plea deal, Ms. Powell had to write an apology. “I apologize for my actions in connection with the events in Coffee County,” she wrote in the letter, made public in December. Fani Willis, the embattled Democrat district attorney of Fulton County who presented the charges to a grand jury, said that the apology letters needed to include “real contrition” but that they did not need to be long. Jenna Ellis, another lawyer who was charged and took a plea deal in Fulton County, also wrote an apology letter. However, she read hers aloud in court while pleading guilty.

In response to Ms. Powell’s apology letter, President Trump wrote on social media last year that Ms. Powell never worked for him in an official capacity. “Sidney Powell was one of millions and millions of people who thought, and in ever increasing numbers still think, correctly, that the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged & stolen,” he wrote on Truth Social. He added that Ms. Powell “was not my attorney and never was.” If she was, “she would have been conflicted,” the former president wrote at the time. “Ms. Powell did a valiant job of representing a very unfairly treated and governmentally abused General Mike Flynn, but to no avail. His prosecution, despite the facts, was ruthless. He was an innocent man, much like many other innocent people who are being persecuted by this now Fascist government of ours, and I was honored to give him a Full Pardon,” he added.

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“We are at war, and everyone needs to put on the full armor of God.”

• UN Plans Tyrannical Future for You – Alex Newman (USAW)

Award-winning journalist Alex Newman, author of the popular book “Deep State” and the new best-selling book called “Indoctrinating Our Children to Death,” says the UN’s quest for total tyrannical control of your life is coming sooner than you could imagine. Newman explains, “The bigger story here that people are not paying attention to is the UN is coming together in September . . . and they are having ‘The Summit of the Future.’ They are telling us they are going to bring out radical drastic reforms in the structure of the UN . . . and the power of the UN. Think of it as the biggest power grab ever at the global level. The Secretary General of the UN (António Guterres) has put out briefs where he is calling for the UN to be the one world global dictatorship with him at the helm.

In emergencies, the UN would have all power in emergencies and have all power to oversee emergency response. . . . They say the crisis could be a climate crisis, an economic crisis, environmental crisis, pandemic crisis, black swan crisis or maybe something from outer space. So, basically, anything could be a crisis, and when the Secretary General declares a crisis, all power and authority would go to the UN. This is like a blank check on the wealth and liberty on every person on the planet, and this is coming soon. It is eminent. This is coming in September at the UN, and it is a power grab of historic proportions. They know their time is short, and they are going for the big enchilada here. This is really a summit for a tyrannical future. . . . They want control of every aspect of your life.”

If you think the “depopulation” or murder program by the Deep State is some sort of conspiracy theory or myth, think again. Newman says, “One of the interesting things about going to the UN conferences is they are totally open and totally transparent about the fact that they think there are way too many of us on this planet. We are taking up their space and consuming their resources. They say this openly. They say there are way too many people having way too many babies, and we have to drastically cut back on the number of people on the planet. They have a whole agency dedicated to this called the UN Population Fund.” One sure fire way to kill a lot of people in a short amount of time is war. Newman says, “They have understood, the globalists, the Deep State, the evil doers and the sick cabal, have understood for a very long time that war was the best mechanism for bringing about their totalitarian one world government.

This is not speculation on my part. This is what they say. Their game plan is war, famine, energy crisis and economic crisis. These are all tools and catalysts for accelerating this agenda. If millions of people die in a third world war, and it does not matter if it is Iran and Israel, or China and Tiawan, or Ukraine and Russia, it really does not matter, they want millions and millions of people dead so people will give up their attachment to the nation state, self-government and individual liberty and give up anything, money or freedom, anything to make it stop.” Don’t lose hope because Newman also talks about all the things you can do to not comply with tyranny. Newman also points out what state and local governments can do and are doing to resist this UN total control of everything. Newman says, “We are at war, and everyone needs to put on the full armor of God.”

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“They’re afraid of the agencies,” he stated, adding: “That’s not compatible with democracy.”

• US Lawmakers Scared Of Being Framed For ‘Kiddie Porn’ – Tucker Carlson (RT)

Members of Congress consistently vote in favor of mass surveillance programs because they’re “terrified” that intelligence agencies will plant “kiddie porn” on their computers if they speak up, American journalist Tucker Carlson has claimed. Carlson appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast on Friday, hours before the US Senate voted to renew Section 702 of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Ostensibly created to allow intelligence agencies such as the FBI and CIA to surveil the communications of foreigners, Section 702 allows these agencies to access data ‘indirectly’ collected from millions of American citizens without a warrant. According to Carlson, a number of lawmakers actually opposed this renewal, but did not admit this publicly. “People don’t say that because they’re worried about being punished,” Carlson told Rogan.

“They’re worried about someone putting kiddie porn on their computer. Members of Congress are terrified of the intel agencies. I’m not guessing at that. They’ve told me that, including people on the [intelligence] committee, including people who run the intel committee.” “They’re afraid of the agencies,” he stated, adding: “That’s not compatible with democracy.” “It’s playing out in front of everyone, and no one cares and no one does anything about it,” Carlson continued. “I think the reason is because they’re threatened. And if you look at the committee chairmen who allowed this s**t to happen year after year… I know them. And they have all the things to hide. I know that for a fact.” Apart from the supposed threat of surreptitiously-planted child pornography, Carlson claimed that it’s “very common” for lawmakers to have “a drinking problem or a weird sex life,” which agencies could easily expose if these politicians refuse to do their bidding.

Carlson is not the first influential conservative to claim that elected representatives are being blackmailed. Back in December, Tennessee Representative Tim Burchett, a Republican, suggested that his colleagues opposed a motion to release the names of notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s clients because they would have been implicated in sex crimes. Unnamed forces in Washington use “the old honey pot” to blackmail politicians and force them to “vote for crazy stuff,” he told conservative podcast host Benny Johnson at the time. A year earlier, a nude video of Rep. Madison Cawthorn was leaked a month after he claimed to have been invited to drug-fueled orgies by older members of Congress. Washington, he said at the time, is rife with “sexual perversion.”

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Lion

 

 

Alligator
https://twitter.com/i/status/1782065990462775475

 

 

Collie

 

 

30 seconds

 

 

Cobra

 

 

Joey
https://twitter.com/i/status/1782098219826311633

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle March 26 2024

Mar 262024
 
 March 26, 2024  Posted by at 9:29 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  70 Responses »


Hieronymous Bosch The Haywain Triptych c.1516

 

• UK Court To Issue Ruling On Julian Assange Extradition Tuesday Morning (ZH)
• Trump Bond Reduced To $175 Million At 11th Hour (ZH)
• Trump Net Worth Tops $6.4 Billion On SPAC Deal (ZH)
• Musk Reveals Major Political Flip (RT)
• The Nuland – Budanov – Tajik – Crocus connection (Pepe Escobar)
• The American Explanation For The Moscow Terror Attack Doesn’t Add Up (Trenin)
• ‘Kill Them All’ – Medvedev Enraged By Moscow Terror Attack (RT)
• ‘Kill Them All’: Inside the Israeli Blockade on Gaza Aid (Loffredo)
• UN Security Council Demands Immediate Gaza Ceasefire As US Abstains (AlJ)
• Macron’s Punctured Balloon of a ‘Geo-Political EU’ (Alastair Crooke)
• Single EU Army Unrealistic – Borrell (RT)
• In Blob We Trust (Kunstler)
• January 6th Continues to be a Tragedy in the Eye of the Beholder (Turley)
• Weaponizing Reality: The Dawn of Neurowarfare (Pabst)

 

 

 

 

Dana White
https://twitter.com/i/status/1772322279566823708

 

 

Get Trump
https://twitter.com/i/status/1772331781724774609

 

 

Watters Trump

 

 

Tucker Trump

 

 

 

 

Tucker Tulsi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1772403117423829205

 

 

 

 

The ruling will come at about the time I post this. Say a prayer for Julian.

• UK Court To Issue Ruling On Julian Assange Extradition Tuesday Morning (ZH)

On Tuesday London’s High Court will finally rule on the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The court is expected to deliver a decision on if he can appeal his extradition to the United States, where he would face espionage and related charges for publishing state secrets. WikiLeaks has said the written ruling is expected to be delivered by 10:30 am London time (6:30am ET). After this, all his appeal opportunities in the UK legal system will have been exhausted. Stella Assange, his wife, has warned that if the court rules against Assange, he could be on a plane to US soil days following. He would be removed from the high security Belmarsh prison for a trial in the US on espionage-related charges and publishing state secrets, where a 175 year jail sentence would await him.

WikiLeaks has been urging all Americans to put pressure on the Biden administration to drop its case against Assange by calling House representatives and telling them to support H.Res.934. The bill, introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) requests that the Biden White House halt the proceedings against Assange. The bill reads: “This resolution expresses the sense of the House of Representatives that regular journalistic activities, including the obtainment and publication of information, are protected under the First Amendment and that the federal government should drop all charges against and attempts to extradite Julian Assange.” Editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks Kristinn Hrafnsson has commented on what Assange’s prosecution and possible extradition means for the future of press freedoms.”It cannot be underestimated, the effect that it will have,” he said.

“If an Australian citizen publishing in Europe can face prison time in the United States, that means no journalists anywhere are safe in the future.” However, as we detailed last week, the Biden administration might be looking for a way to bring the 14-year long legal drama to an end. A last Wednesday WSJ report said, “The U.S. Justice Department is considering whether to allow Julian Assange to plead guilty to a reduced charge of mishandling classified information, according to people familiar with the matter, opening the possibility of a deal that would end a lengthy legal saga triggered by one of the biggest classified intelligence leaks in American history.” A plea deal means the whole crisis for him and his family could finally come to an acceptable and peaceful end after all of these years.

“Justice Department officials and Assange’s lawyers have had preliminary discussions in recent months about what a plea deal could look like, according to people familiar with the matter, a potential softening in a standoff filled with political and legal complexities,” according to details in the WSJ report. “The talks come as Assange has spent some five years behind bars and U.S. prosecutors face diminishing odds that he would serve much more time even if he were convicted stateside.” In February of this year, Assange’s cause received a big boost when his native Australia issued formal request to the US and UK that charges against Julian Assange be dropped. The motion adopted by Australian parliament at that time emphasized “the importance of the UK and USA bringing the matter to a close so that Mr. Assange can return home to his family in Australia.”

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“The new order also stayed Engoron’s order barring Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump from serving as officers and directors of New York companies for two years..”

• Trump Bond Reduced To $175 Million At 11th Hour (ZH)

A New York court of appeals has significantly reduced the bond required to stop his properties from being seized by authorities from $454 million to $175 million, in order to appeal his New York civil fraud trial. The decision by a five-judge panel of appellate court judges, comes after the real estate mogul’s lawyers argued that it was “impossible” to obtain an appeal bond of $454 million after approaching over 30 surety companies without success. Trump also said he would have to sell properties in a “fire sale” to raise cash. Had the court denied Trump’s request, and he had failed to obtain the full bond amount, Trump was at risk of losing his bank accounts, followed by some of his properties.

His attorneys had asked the appeals court to either waive the bond requirement or reduce it, arguing that the $464 million judgement against Trump and his family was likely to be overturned on appeal.v In the Monday decision, the appeals court also stayed Engoron’s ruling barring Trump from serving as an officer or director of a NY company for three years, and which had barred Trump and his corporate defendants from applying for loans from New York lenders over the same period. The new order also stayed Engoron’s order barring Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump from serving as officers and directors of New York companies for two years. Trump has 10 days to post the bond.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1772318816485392427

Letitia
https://twitter.com/i/status/1772291761718882432

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“..it seems that Biden’s campaign staff – which even former President Barack Obama essentially admitted are total morons, need to go back to the drawing board..”

• Trump Net Worth Tops $6.4 Billion On SPAC Deal (ZH)

Former President Donald Trump’s net worth topped $6.4 billion on Monday following the completion of a 29-month-long SPAC deal involving his social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, as well as the reduction of the bond due in his NY civil fraud trial in order to appeal a $454 million verdict. And while Trump’s gains on the SPAC deal with Digital World Acquisition Corp may just be on paper (and any meaningful sales when his six-month lockup expires would likely tank the price), the $4 billion boost was enough to include Trump in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which tracks the top 500 wealthiest people in the world.

Earlier on Monday, Trump was granted a vastly reduced bond requirement of $175 million in order to appeal his NY civil trial over his real estate. In response, Trump quickly said he would post it. The completion of the SPAC merger came despite last-minute lawsuits from investors and executives, as well as a settlement with the SEC. The timing couldn’t be worse for Democrats – as the 2024 Biden campaign picked this moment in time to copy Trump’s name-calling strategy, dubbing the former president “Broke Don.” While that was based on a recent campaign finance report showing that Biden out-raised Trump in February, it seems that Biden’s campaign staff – which even former President Barack Obama essentially admitted are total morons, need to go back to the drawing board. Or not… as long as curbside voting and uncreased 2am ballot drops that nobody is supposed to discuss are a thing.

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“I think we need a red wave or America is toast..”

• Musk Reveals Major Political Flip (RT)

The US needs a red wave and will be finished if the Republican Party does not prevail in the 2024 presidential election, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday. The billionaire, who had previously revealed he voted for Joe Biden in 2020, has since criticized the incumbent US president and clashed with his administration. Musk has repeatedly criticized Biden’s handling of the Southern US border crisis and has accused Democrats of being “controlled by the unions.” “I voted 100% Dem until a few years ago. Now, I think we need a red wave or America is toast,” Musk wrote on X. According to media reports, the entrepreneur became increasingly critical of Biden after Tesla, the top-selling electric-car company in the US, was excluded from a White House summit on EVs in 2021.

Last year Musk revealed that he had doubts he’d be voting for Biden in the 2024 presidential election. As of yet, however, he hasn’t endorsed Biden’s rival Donald Trump. “I think I would not vote for Biden,” Musk told a DealBook summit in November, adding “I’m not saying I’d vote for Trump.” Earlier this month the New York Times reported that Trump had met with Musk in Florida, as the former US president seeks a major cash infusion for his reelection campaign. Musk confirmed the meeting but maintained that he is not donating to the Republican’s campaign. “I was at a breakfast at a friend’s place and Donald Trump came by, that’s it,” he told former CNN host Don Lemon last week, adding that Trump had not requested any financial assistance. “I’m not paying his legal bills in any way, shape or form. And he did not ask me for money,” Musk said.

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“A classic false flag, with the clueless Tajiks under the impression that they were working for ISIS-K..”

• The Nuland – Budanov – Tajik – Crocus connection (Pepe Escobar)

Ukrainian intel, SBU and GUR, have been using the “Islamic” terror galaxy as they please since the first Chechnya war in the mid-1990s. Milley and Nuland of course knew it, as there were serious rifts in the past, for instance, between GUR and the CIA. Following the symbiosis of any Ukrainian government post-1991 with assorted terror/jihadi outfits, Kiev post-Maidan turbo-charged these connections especially with Idlib gangs, as well as north Caucasus outfits, from the Chechen Shishani to ISIS in Syria and then ISIS-K. GUR routinely aims to recruit ISIS and ISIS-K denizens via online chat rooms. Exactly the modus operandi that led to Crocus. One “Azan” association, founded in 2017 by Anvar Derkach, a member of the Hizb ut-Tahrir, actually facilitates terrorist life in Ukraine, Tatars from Crimea included – from lodging to juridical assistance.

The FSB investigation is establishing a trail: Crocus was planned by pros – and certainly not by a bunch of low-IQ Tajik dregs. Not by ISIS-K, but by GUR. A classic false flag, with the clueless Tajiks under the impression that they were working for ISIS-K. The FSB investigation is also unveiling the standard modus operandi of online terror, everywhere. A recruiter focuses on a specific profile; adapts himself to the candidate, especially his – low – IQ; provides him with the minimum necessary for a job; then the candidate/executor become disposable. Everyone in Russia remembers that during the first attack on the Crimea bridge, the driver of the kamikaze truck was blissfully unaware of what he was carrying,

As for ISIS, everyone seriously following West Asia knows that’s a gigantic diversionist scam, complete with the Americans transferring ISIS operatives from the Al-Tanf base to the eastern Euphrates, and then to Afghanistan after the Hegemon’s humiliating “withdrawal”. Project ISIS-K actually started in 2021, after it became pointless to use ISIS goons imported from Syria to block the relentless progress of the Taliban. Ace Russian war correspondent Marat Khairullin has added another juicy morsel to this funky salad: he convincingly unveils the MI6 angle in the Crocus City Hall terror attack (in English here, in two parts, posted by “S”). The FSB is right in the middle of the painstaking process of cracking most, if not all ISIS-K-CIA/MI6 connections. Once it’s all established, there will be hell to pay.

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“..Moscow would be removing one of its most important self-imposed constraints – not to touch Kiev’s senior leadership..”

• The American Explanation For The Moscow Terror Attack Doesn’t Add Up (Trenin)

Ukraine, true to form, and alone among the nations of the world, has suggested that the Crocus City atrocity was an operation carried out by Russia’s own secret services, launched to facilitate a further tightening of the political regime and a new wave of mobilization. Clearly nonsensical, this interpretation invoked in many Russian minds the old proverb, “liar, liar, pants on fire.” Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his five-minute address to the nation on Saturday, refrained from rolling out the Kremlin’s own version. His words and his demeanor were calm, but the style of his remarks was stern. Those behind the attack “will be punished whoever they are and wherever they may be,” the president declared. The direction of Putin’s thinking was revealed by the two facts – not conjectures – he raised: that the terrorists, having fled the scene of the assault, had been apprehended not far (100km or so) from the Ukrainian border, and that “information” had been obtained that they intended to cross the border into Ukraine, where “they had contacts.”

At this point, nothing is firmly established. The results of the Russian investigation will be enormously important. If Moscow concludes that the attack was conceived, planned, and organized by the Ukrainians – say, the military intelligence agency GUR – Putin’s public warning would logically mean that the agency’s leaders will not just be “legitimate” targets, but priority ones for Russia. Since an attack of such gravity would almost certainly have required the approval of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, the “guarantee” that Putin informally gave to foreign leaders (including Israel’s then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett) that Russia would not target Zelensky personally, would presumably be lifted. If so, Moscow would be removing one of its most important self-imposed constraints – not to touch Kiev’s senior leadership.

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Two separate articles on two separate topics saying ‘Kill Them All’. Sign of the times.

• ‘Kill Them All’ – Medvedev Enraged By Moscow Terror Attack (RT)

The perpetrators and masterminds of Friday’s deadly terrorist attack at a Moscow concert venue must be killed without mercy, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has claimed. At least 137 people have been killed and over 180 were wounded when several men armed with assault rifles opened fire inside the Crocus City Hall and then proceeded to set the concert venue ablaze. Four men suspected of carrying out the attack have been captured. Two of them have confessed in court, and are set to remain in custody until late May. They all face life in prison. “Everyone asks me. What to do? … Should they be killed?” wrote Medvedev, currently deputy chair of the National Security Council, in a Telegram post on Monday. “It should and will be done,” he stressed, adding: “It is much more important to kill everyone involved. Everyone. Who paid, who sympathized, who helped. Kill them all.”

Medvedev earlier stated that “Terrorists understand only terror in response” and that “all of them must be found and mercilessly destroyed as terrorists – including officials of the state that committed such an atrocity.” The former Russian president vowed to “avenge each and every” victim of the Crocus City Hall attack, regardless of country of origin and status, insisting this “is now our legal and main goal.” Medvedev’s comments come amid growing calls among the country’s lawmakers to restore the death penalty, which has effectively been banned in Russia since 1996. While the Russian criminal code technically has a provision for capital punishment, courts are de facto banned from handing down such a sentence.

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Cultivated hatred.

• ‘Kill Them All’: Inside the Israeli Blockade on Gaza Aid (Loffredo)

Setting out on a bus caravan through illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, Loffredo arrives at the Kerem Shalom crossing to Gaza, filming Israeli citizens as they physically block trucks loaded with flour and other essential goods. There, a reservist who served in the military assault on Gaza confesses to an array of war crimes, including blowing up the offices of UN centers dedicated to providing food to the local population. Loffredo then joins nationalists on a march toward Gaza, where they hope to establish new settlements after the population is violently driven out.

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Too much pressure for the US.

• UN Security Council Demands Immediate Gaza Ceasefire As US Abstains (AlJ)

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) demands an immediate ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the release of all hostages as the United States abstains from the vote. The remaining 14 council members voted in favour of the resolution, which was proposed by the 10 elected members of the council. There was a round of applause in the council chamber after the vote on Monday. The resolution calls for an immediate ceasefire for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which ends in two weeks, and also demands the release of all hostages seized in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7. “The bloodbath has continued for far too long,” said Amar Bendjama, the ambassador from Algeria, the Arab bloc’s current Security Council member and a sponsor of the resolution. “Finally, the Security Council is shouldering its responsibility.”

The US had repeatedly blocked Security Council resolutions that put pressure on Israel but has increasingly shown frustration with its ally as civilian casualties mount and the UN warns of impending famine in Gaza. Speaking after the vote, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield blamed Hamas for the delay in passing a ceasefire resolution. “We did not agree with everything with the resolution,” which she said was the reason why the US abstained. “Certain key edits were ignored, including our request to add a condemnation of Hamas,” Thomas-Greenfield said. She stressed that the release of Israeli captives would lead to an increase in humanitarian aid supplies going into the besieged coastal enclave. The White House said the final resolution did not have language the US considers essential and its abstention does not represent a shift in policy.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the US failure to veto the resolution is a “clear retreat” from its previous position and would hurt war efforts against Hamas as well as efforts to release Israeli captives held in Gaza. His office also said Netanyahu will not be sending a high-level delegation to Washington, DC, in light of the new US position. US President Joe Biden had requested to meet Israeli officials to discuss Israeli plans for a ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, where more than 1 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering. White House spokesperson John Kirby said the US was “disappointed” by Netanyahu’s decision. “We’re very disappointed that they won’t be coming to Washington, DC, to allow us to have a fulsome conversation with them about viable alternatives to them going in on the ground in Rafah,” Kirby told reporters.

Tucker Israel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1772273844591489260

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“..Ukraine tries to retreat into unprepared and near indefensible terrain..”

• Macron’s Punctured Balloon of a ‘Geo-Political EU’ (Alastair Crooke)

The general view in Europe was that Macron was playing complex mind-games, firstly with the French people, and secondly with Russia. Nevertheless, it seems that there could be some substance to Macron’s sabre-rattling: The French Chief of Army Staff said he has 20,000 troops ready to be inserted in 30 days. And the Head of Russia’s SVR Intelligence Agency, Naryshkin, more modestly assessed that France seemingly is preparing a military contingent for sending to Ukraine, which at the initial stage, will be about two thousand people. Just to be clear however, even a 20,000-man division by standards of classical military theory is supposed to be able to hold at maximum, a 10km-front. An insertion of two or twenty thousand French troops would change nothing strategically; it would not halt the vastly larger Russian steamroller, grinding on westwards. So what is Macron playing at? Is this all bluff, then? Likely, it is part ‘grandstanding’ by Macron, pre-occupied to present himself as ‘Mr Strongman Europe’ – particularly toward his French constituency.

His posturing comes however, at a more significant conjunction of events for the so-called ‘Geo-political EU’: Clarity: Light has pierced, and has illuminated a space hitherto occupied by shadows. It is now as clear as it can be – after Putin’s overwhelming win in elections on a record turnout – that President Putin is here to stay. All the western shadow-play of ‘régime change’ in Moscow simply shrunk to naught in the bright light of events. Snorts of anger can be heard from some quarters in Europe. Yet they will subside. There is no choice. The reality, as Marianne newspaper, quoting a senior French officer, derisively noting in respect to Macron’s Ukraine’s posturing: “We must make no mistake, facing the Russians; we are an army of cheerleaders” and sending French troops to the Ukrainian front would simply be “not reasonable”. At the Élysée, an unnamed advisor argued that Macron “wanted to send a strong signal … (in) milli-metered and calibrated words”.

What pains the EU ‘neocon ever-hopefuls’ more is that Putin’s clear electoral victory coincides, almost precisely, with an EU (and NATO) humiliation in Ukraine. It is not just that the AFU appears to be in a cascading implosion, but that the retreat is accelerating, as Ukraine tries to retreat into unprepared and near indefensible terrain. Into this grim EU prospect is that second shaft of clarifying light: The U.S. is slowly but surely turning its back on the financing and arming of Kiev, leaving Europe’s impotence exposed for all the world to see. The EU simply cannot substitute for the U.S. pivot. Yet more hurtful for some is that a U.S. retreat represents a ‘punch in the guts’ for much of the Brussels leadership, who had fallen on the Biden Administration with almost indecent glee, upon Trump’s leaving of office. They used the moment to proclaim the cementing of a pro-Atlanticist, pro-NATO EU. Now, as former Indian diplomat MK Bhadrakumar perfectly defines it, “France [is] all dressed up – with nowhere to go”:

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You just take more EU taxpayers’ money and hand control over it to Americans.

• Single EU Army Unrealistic – Borrell (RT)

The EU must increase its military strength and internal cooperation, but that does not mean it should aspire to a single army, the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, has said. In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday, the foreign policy chief insisted there is a “strong consensus” among EU members on boosting the bloc’s defense capabilities, both in terms of its military industry and armed forces. “This is not a question of creating the singular European army,” Borrell said, adding that all 27 EU members are free to decide their own defense policies. Instead, the armies of EU members need to be “more interoperational” in order to strengthen the bloc’s defense, the diplomat argued.

“They have to create a European pillar inside NATO. Europeans have to take more responsibility for our defense,” Borrell stated, adding that this includes fostering a close partnership with the US within NATO. “We have to increase our military capacities… But it is utopical to believe that we are going to cancel the 27 armies to create a single one. What we have to do is to be more realistic,” Borrell said. The bloc is well aware of the harsh realities of the modern world and is preparing accordingly, he added. In January, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani publicly supported the creation of a joint European army, an idea that has been debated for several years, arguing that the force could be used for peacekeeping missions and conflict prevention.

The proposal, however, met resistance from several EU members, including Denmark and Poland. Copenhagen argued that “NATO is the cornerstone of our collective security,” and that defense remains a matter of national sovereignty. Warsaw insisted that EU action on defense must be complementary to NATO efforts. Since the start of the Ukraine conflict, EU member states have considerably ramped up defense spending, with plans to increase it to €350 billion ($380 billion) in 2024. In recent weeks, several Western leaders have also called on the bloc to prepare for a full-scale war with Russia, which they claim could break out within the next few years. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow has no plans or interest whatsoever in attacking NATO countries. Moscow, however, has for years voiced concern about the expansion of the US-led military bloc towards its borders.

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“..the blob is our government now; there is no government except the blob..”

• In Blob We Trust (Kunstler)

You’ve got to ask yourself: really, who seems to hanker more for a red-hot World War Three, “Joe Biden” or Vlad Putin? Since “Joe Biden” is only a figment of American politics, first you’d have to ask: a figment of what? Answer: A figment of our greater intel blob, led, of course, by the Central Intelligence Agency. Which is to say, the blob is our government now; there is no government except the blob. We are the United Blob of America! In Blob We Trust should be printed on our money. That being the case, blob policy rules. And since deception is one of the blob’s chief duties, we mere sniveling citizens should expect to be deceived at every turn about everything. So, when the blob’s news cut-out, The New York Times, serves up a comprehensive history of the gang known as ISIS-K Monday morning after the Moscow Crocus Concert Hall Massacre, you might suspect that some deception is afoot.

ISIS-K immediately took credit for the Crocus Massacre. K stands for Khorasan, a set of provinces in eastern Iran, leaking over into Afghanistan and Pakistan. ISIS-K supposedly evolved out of the original ISIS that sought to establish an Islamic caliphate out of Iraq and Syria. After Mr. Trump broke it up in 2019, the gang regrouped in K-land, deeper in central Asia. Curiously, this ISIS-K has carried out attacks against Iran, where it lives. Go figure. . . . Its progenitor, the plain old ISIS-no-K was responsible for the horrific Bataclan Theater massacre in Paris, 2015 and the suicide bombing of the Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena, UK, 2017. They’re sort of the Concert-Massacres-R-Us of terror orgs — you really couldn’t find a better patsy for the Crocus op.

Is it as simple as that? Not if you consider Scott Ritter’s theory that the first ISIS was a creation of the CIA, with the mission of ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, considered by the blob to be an uber-bad dude, largely for enlisting Russia’s help in ending Syria’s civil war. And if you can actually figure out what Syria’s civil war was about, other than a US blob op to gain control of Syria and its oil, you could win a MacArthur Genius Prize. But you might also ask: did the United Blob of America hire ISIS-K to slaughter 137 Russian civilians Saturday night? And also: did it do so directly or indirectly, through cut-outs?

One blob weakness is that it can’t resist the impulse to telegraph its plans ahead of some dastardly act. Both “Joe Biden” and State Department war-hawk Victoria Nuland verbally signaled the op to blow-up the Nord Stream gas pipelines well before the act. Before “retiring” (or getting cashiered) from State this month, Ms. Nuland warned Russia to expect “some nasty surprises” in the days ahead. Was she fired for opening her big mouth? Now, a photograph has surfaced of one of the captured Crocus perps, Shamsidin Fariduni, posing in the Crocus concert hall date-stamped March 7. A set-up? A deep fake?

In any case, on March 8 the United Blob State Department issued a warning to Russia’s foreign ministry that something wicked was coming their way, and likewise warned our diplomatic personnel to steer clear of concert halls and other public venues. Was the Crocus op already well in motion? And was the blob trying to cover for Ms. Nuland’s big mouth by warning about something that was too late to stop? Whatever else you think about the Russians, they are not dumb bunnies. You can be sure they are carefully putting together the puzzle pieces, having already been careful to take the suspects alive. They were, incidentally, all in one car driving toward the Ukraine border when apprehended by Russian police. That is being considered “a clue” as to who their handlers are. But then, who is Ukraine’s handler? (Cue: thinking music.)

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“To start to call opponents or critics terrorists has long been a problem on both ends of the political spectrum.”

• January 6th Continues to be a Tragedy in the Eye of the Beholder (Turley)

For years, I have maintained that January 6th was a disgraceful riot but not an insurrection. That issue came to a head with the litigation over disqualifying former president Donald Trump and similar calls to block dozens of Republican incumbents from ballots. Now, the protest that became a riot has been elevated from an insurrection to a terrorist attack. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and other democrats are using the description despite no one being charged with insurrection or terrorism. On Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez declared to CNN host Jake Tapper that “We’re talking about an individual who ordered essentially a terrorist attack on the Capital of the United States in order to retain power.” In fairness to Ocasio-Cortez, she is not alone in such characterizations. For example, many of us were surprised when FBI Director Christopher Wray condemned the January riot at the U.S. Capitol as “domestic terrorism.” From a strictly legal basis, it was wildly inaccurate, in my view.

Liberal publications like Politico have railed against the Justice Department for not charging terrorism. That has been supported by some law professors. Those charged for their role in the attack that day are largely facing trespass and other less serious charges — rather than insurrection or sedition. While the FBI launched a massive national investigation, it did not find evidence of an insurrection. While a few were charged with seditious conspiracy, no one was charged with insurrection. Trump has never been charged with either incitement or insurrection. The media has fueled these claims. One year after the riot, CBS News mostly downplayed and ignored the result of its own poll showing that 76 percent viewed it for what it was, as a “protest gone too far.” They argue that this riot could simply be treated as “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.” However, so could other protests that result in property damage and criminal acts.

We have seen other legislative proceedings shutdown by protesters with members removed from the floor. The question is where to draw the line to avoid the arbitrary classification of some protests as terrorism and others as unlawful access or trespass. Nancy Pelosi called protesters at her home Russian plants. Politicians called a protest on the Tennessee House floor “an insurrection.” Such rhetoric excess easily inflames the public, but it creates lasting erroneous views of the law. That in turn can pose a real threat to free speech as the line between demonstrations and terrorism are blurred. Ocasio-Cortez’s view of what constitutes the crime of terrorism is dubious for many, particularly after she declared that racketeering is not a crime. However, there is pressure to ramp up rhetoric as we approach the 2024 elections. To start to call opponents or critics terrorists has long been a problem on both ends of the political spectrum.

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“..the ethical ramifications of BCIs and other emerging neurotechnologies don’t stop at the consumer market or the workplace..”

• Weaponizing Reality: The Dawn of Neurowarfare (Pabst)

Billionaire Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface (BCI) company Neuralink made headlines earlier this year for inserting its first brain implant into a human being. Musk says such implants, which are described as “fully implantable, cosmetically invisible, and designed to let you control a computer or mobile device anywhere you go,” are slated to eventually offer “full-bandwidth data streaming” to the brain. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are quite the human achievement: as described by the University of Calgary, “A brain computer interface (BCI) is a system that determines functional intent – the desire to change, move, control, or interact with something in your environment – directly from your brain activity. In other words, BCIs allow you to control an application or a device using only your mind.” Developers and advocates of BCIs and adjacent technologies emphasize that they can help people regain abilities lost due to aging, ailments, accidents or injuries, thus improving quality of life.

A brain implant created by Swiss-based École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne (EPFL), for example, has allowed a paralyzed man to walk again just by thinking. Others go further: Neuralink’s goal is to help people “surpass able-bodied human performance.” Yet, great ethical concerns arise with such advancements, and the tech is already being used for questionable purposes. To better plan logistics and boost productivity, for example, some Chinese employers have started using “emotional surveillance technology” to monitor workers’ brainwaves which, “combined with artificial intelligence algorithms, [can] spot incidents of workplace rage, anxiety, or sadness.” The example showcases how personal the technology can become as it is normalized in daily life. But the ethical ramifications of BCIs and other emerging neurotechnologies don’t stop at the consumer market or the workplace. Governments and militaries are already discussing — and experimenting on — the roles they could play in wartime.

Indeed, many are describing the human body and brain as war’s next domain, with a 2020 NATO-backed paper on “cognitive warfare” describing the phenomenon’s objective as “mak[ing] everyone a weapon…The brain will be the battlefield of the 21st century.” On this new “battlefield,” an era of neuroweapons, which can broadly be defined as technologies and systems that could either enhance or damage a warfighter or target’s cognitive and/or physical abilities, or otherwise attack people or critical societal infrastructure, has begun. In this exploration of the race to apply the latest neurotechnologies to war and beyond, I investigated how the neuroweapons of tomorrow, including BCIs that may allow for brain-to-brain or brain-to-machine communication, have the capacity to expand conflicts into a new domain — the brain — while also bringing a new dimension to both hard- and soft-power struggles of the future.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

CO2 has never driven temperature changes in the past. Never.

 

 

Obamacare
https://twitter.com/i/status/1772279457711034482

 

 

Clock

 

 

Safe

 

 

Pelican

 

 

Cheetah

 

 

Kung fu master

 

 

Boop

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle November 9 2023

Nov 092023
 
 November 9, 2023  Posted by at 9:41 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  71 Responses »


Hieronymus Bosch Adoration of the Magi c1472

 

• Another Interview With Dominique De Villepin On The Conflict In Palestine (MoA)
• ‘Catastrophic’ Mistake for US to be Drawn Into War With Hezbollah and Iran (Sp.)
• The Nothingness of a War Consciousness (Dennis Kucinich)
• Russia’s Public Pivot To Palestine (Pepe Escobar)
• Israel Attempt To Destroy Hamas Will Breed More Radicalisation – UN Expert (G.)
• The Incredible Lightness of Barack Obama (Victor Davis Hanson)
• ‘Open War’ May Break Out Within Kiev Regime Leadership – Analyst (Sp.)
• Ukrainian Women to Be Zelensky’s New Cannon Fodder (Sp.)
• ‘We Have A Plan’ – Zelensky (RT)
• Ukraine Will Bring War To EU – Hungary (RT)
• Wife of NY Judge In Case Against Trump Attacking Him On Social Media (PM)
• US House Panel Subpoenas Hunter & James Biden (Sp.)
• AstraZeneca Taken to Court Over “Defective” Covid Jab in Landmark Case (DS)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trump Tucker

 

 

Tucker Greenwald

 

 

 

 

Watters CIA

Election theft

 

 

 

 

Translated By Arnaud Bertrand, who says: “Another masterful interview on Gaza of Dominique De Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, who IMHO is the best diplomat the West has produced in decades.”

“The wounds of history are awakening.”

• Another Interview With Dominique De Villepin On The Conflict In Palestine (MoA)

We are essentially dealing with a policy of vengeance from the Netanyahu government. Israel has the right to self-defense, but self-defense does not give an indiscriminate right to kill civilian populations. When you target an ambulance, you can always imagine that there was a terrorist in one of the ambulances, or not. But the result is that there are children, women who die. Every child, every woman killed, that’s more terrorists. Therefore, Israel’s objective, what Israel achieves, is exactly the opposite of what they wish. So, it is essential today to change this logic and return to a strategy that is sound. Hostages, everything must be done to secure their release. But let’s not forget: the Palestinian people are also taken hostage, by Hamas and by Israel.

And Hamas, we all know, cares little for the Palestinian people. So telling Hamas: “we will not lift the siege, we will not have a humanitarian truce until the hostages are released,” is a dialogue of the deaf. Benjamin Netanyahu is waging a war to do everything so that the political solution does not come to the table. And this is where the international community, Europe, the United States, must tell Benjamin Netanyahu that this war is not acceptable. It is not acceptable because it leads us directly [to escalation] – because we can see it well, from Hamas we will move to Iran, from Iran we will move to other targets, and we then enter into the logic of a clash of civilizations. When Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu says that on one side there is the people of light and on the other the people of darkness, we can see the kind of spiral we are getting into.

All the wars that have been going on for the past twenty years are wars that begin and do not end. These are frozen conflicts. We know how to start a war; we do not know how to end it. And Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu could control Gaza, it would change nothing. There will continue to be terrorist attacks, Israelis will continue to live in fear. We must get out of this. The second reason why this is yesterday’s war is that the war against terrorism has never been won anywhere. Force is not the answer, once again. Vengeance is not the answer. The answer is justice, and that is what all the peoples of the world, all those who today watch what is happening, call for justice. Today the direction we must follow is to prevent Benjamin Netanyahu from continuing his suicidal logic that will make Israel a besieged state. They can besiege Gaza, but they will be besieged. And do not think that tomorrow we will again have a pacified discourse with Saudi Arabia, with the Arab states that will normalize the situation: no! The wounds of history are awakening.

Israel’s interest is to have a responsible state at its side. And this responsible state, let’s stop splitting hairs, must clearly be the West Bank, all of the West Bank. It must be Gaza, with access between the two territories, and East Jerusalem. The problem, and this is the whole point of Benjamin Netanyahu’s escalation, is that Benjamin Netanyahu does not want it. And the policy of separation must be dignified. That is, it must confer to the Palestinians a state where they can live, a viable state, a true state, which can build itself and which will be all the more at peace… [Host: “Does that mean that the settlements in the West Bank have to be removed?”] Well, when we left Algeria, there were a million French who left Algeria. Today there are 500,000 Israelis colonizing the West Bank, and there are 200,000 in East Jerusalem. [Host: “They must leave the West Bank?”] Yes. Yes, that is history, that is responsibility, that is the price! I tell you solemnly, it is the price of security for Israel! And all those who today consider that it will never be enough are pursuing the worst policy.”

Read more …

“Netanyahu has asked three successive American presidents to either attack Iran or to join with Israel to attack Iran, and the answer has been ‘no’ three times.”

• ‘Catastrophic’ Mistake for US to be Drawn Into War With Hezbollah and Iran (Sp.)

In an article for Al-Mayadeen earlier this week, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter argued that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu is trying to escalate the situation in Lebanon in order to draw the US into a multi-front war against Hezbollah and ultimately Iran. However, Ritter also argued that such a maneuver would not succeed, because Hezbollah won’t be goaded into a conflict that will put it at a disadvantage on the global stage. Ritter said if Hezbollah takes the initiative and launches a full-scale attack on Israel, “people will stop talking about Palestine. People will stop talking about Israel’s aggression, and they will now focus on a new front that will probably include Iran.”

“This is again why [Hezbollah leader] Hassan Nasrallah speaks of perseverance. Perseverance means that you have to struggle through the difficult times to ensure that you are not distracted from the strategic vision,” Ritter said, adding that “Hamas is winning this fight. Israel cannot prevail. Israel cannot defeat Hamas on the ground. Israel has lost the propaganda battle globally; they have lost in the United States.” John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer and whistleblower about the US torture program, told Radio Sputnik’s “The Critical Hour” on Tuesday that Ritter and Nasrallah are right: the US cannot win a war against Hezbollah and should not get involved in such a fight.

“I think Scott Ritter is right. And, you know, I would remind everybody, too, if you recall a month ago, in the immediate aftermath, just in 24 or 48 hours after the Hamas attack on Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu said – and he said it definitively at the time – that the Iranians were behind it all, that that Iran was supplying weapons to Hamas, that Hamas couldn’t have pulled this off by itself, this had to be an Iranian operation. And it wasn’t an Iranian operation. But that was very consistent with Netanyahu’s thinking over the past two decades,” said Kiriakou, who is also the co-host of “Political Misfits” on Radio Sputnik. “Netanyahu has asked three successive American presidents to either attack Iran or to join with Israel to attack Iran, and the answer has been ‘no’ three times. And so now he sees this as an opportunity to bring the Americans in, to either help defeat Hezbollah while the Israelis focus on Hamas, or to defeat Iran, while the Israelis focus on Hamas. Because the truth of the matter is: Israel cannot fight a two-front war. It’s just not equipped,” Kiriakou said.

“Now, we heard from Netanyahu’s office today that the IDF is – their words – ‘deep in the heart of Gaza’. Well, good luck with that. Good luck with miles and miles of tunnels, good luck finding an enemy that is intertwined with the civilian population. Good luck. That doesn’t mean that the United States should be dragged into it. We have our own problems now with Ukraine and with what seems to be an overwhelming national desire to jump in on the side of the Israelis from a distance – but that doesn’t mean that we have to send American troops to help Israel fight its war.”

Read more …

“The America that could be, our own hopes and dreams for a prosperous and secure nation, lie alongside the bodies of the men, women and children in those ruins.”

• The Nothingness of a War Consciousness (Dennis Kucinich)

We are now being presented, several times a day, with media examples of the effect of extreme violence visited on the captive people of Gaza. The images are heartbreaking. The reality unbearable. Bodies of Palestinian families strewn like refuse along a road that they had trekked as a path to safety. A car turns around at a checkpoint in Gaza, its occupants are hit with a shot from behind, from a tank and everything, the car and its occupants, disappear in a puff. A Palestinian journalist mourns his colleague, who only a half hour earlier, was reporting on air. After work, he went home, a bomb hit, killing him and his 11-member family. The video of his ruined house shows several children’s party dresses that lie amidst the rubble. The human family is in the rubble.

An ambulance convoy, filled with injured Gazans, under the supervision of medical authorities, headed to the Rafah border crossing, was struck by the Israeli air force with the stated suspicion that the vehicle, which was headed away from the battle, carried Hamas fighters. War reduces all nothingness. It is as if 10,000 Palestinians and more had never existed. But they did, just as the 1,400 Israelis killed on October 7 existed. They had birthdates, names, fragile exchanges of human emotion, of love of family, private moments in everyday life that confirmed their existence. Obliterated. Nothingness. Whatever media we consume, we see only a fraction of the massive display of inhumanity occurring in Gaza, the reduction of living, breathing, feeling people to objects. This is heartless. This is soulless. This reduces all of existence to the nothingness of smoke, human smoke.

The violence it is calculated. It is rooted in power politics, in racism, in apartheid, in twisted history, opportunism disguised as vengeance, statecraft as slaughter. We in America, are paying for the extermination of our fellow humans. Our weapons are creating carnage against helpless people. Our aircraft, our ships, our troops have entered the fray, greatly outnumbered. But we are not helpless. We must demand, now, that our government take a new direction, and soon, not only for a cease fire, but a ceasing of war, the end of arms sales to fuel war, the end of 800 military bases around the world; the end of the theft of our tax dollars for killing; the end of policies that pit people against each other, the end of the destructive psychology justifying violence to maintain “strategic balance,” the end of the false justifications for sending our troops into harm’s way.

It is an unfathomable, beyond the Orwellian, to commit ethnic cleansing and call it defense, to preach democratic values while practicing apartheid, to claim wholesale theft of property a right, to take Palestinians, their homes, kill their children, destroy their family, their culture, their history and deem it the fulfillment of a prophecy ordained by God. That this genocide is being visited upon the Palestinians by the descendants of those who suffered the utterly condemnable, indelible inhumanity of the Holocaust is incomprehensible. After all, who has suffered more than the Jews during the Holocaust? Entire families wiped out in a racist elimination plan. [..] Do not assume that it is only the artifacts of the humble, daily lives of Palestinians that lay buried in bomb craters. The America that could be, our own hopes and dreams for a prosperous and secure nation, lie alongside the bodies of the men, women and children in those ruins.

Leaving Gaza

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“This is not about Gaza, but about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The State of Palestine is an integral part of that solution.”

• Russia’s Public Pivot To Palestine (Pepe Escobar)

The Russian president made a direct connection between the American drive to extend “its global dictatorship” and the policy obsession with promoting non-stop chaos: “This chaos will help it contain and destabilize its rivals or, as they put it, their geopolitical opponents, among which they also rank our country, which in reality are new global growth centers and sovereign independent countries who are unwilling to kowtow and play the role of servants.” Crucially, Putin made a point to “repeat again” to both his internal and Global South audiences that, “the ruling elites of the United States and its satellites are behind the tragedy of the Palestinians, the massacre in the Middle East in general, the conflict in Ukraine, and many other conflicts in the world – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and so on.”

It is a vitally important point. By conflating the perpetrators of the Ukraine conflict and the war on Gaza – “the United States and its satellites” – the Russian president has effectively lumped Israel in with the western Hegemon and its agenda of “chaos.” Essentially, what this tells us is that the Russian Federation unequivocally aligns itself with the overwhelming majority of Global South/Global Majority public opinion – from the Arab world to all the lands of Islam and beyond, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Interestingly, Moscow aligns with the analyses by Iranian Leader Ayatollah Khamenei – a strategic partner of Russia – and Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, in his searing, sophisticated, Sun-Tzu tinged address this past Friday, on “the spider that is trying to entangle the entire planet and the whole world in its cobweb.”

Exhibit B on Russia’s official position, specifically on Israel-Palestine, came from Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, at a special UN General Assembly session on Palestine two days after Putin’s address. Nebenzya made it abundantly clear that Israel, as an occupying power, does not have “the right for self-defense” – a fact supported by a UN International Court consultative ruling way back in 2004. At the time, the court also established, in a 14 out of 15 judicial vote, that Israel’s construction of a massive wall in occupied Palestine, including East Jerusalem, was against international law. Nebenzya, in legal terms, nullified the endlessly evoked “right to self-defense” argument brandished by Tel Aviv and the whole NATO galaxy. The Hegemon, Tel Aviv’s protector, recently vetoed Brazil’s draft humanitarian UN Security Council just because it did not mention Israel’s “right to self-defense.”

Even as he underscored that Moscow does recognize Israel’s right to ensure its security, Nebenzya stressed this right “could be fully guaranteed only in case of a fair resolution of the Palestinian problem based on recognized UN Security Council resolutions.” The record shows that Israel does not respect any UN Security Council resolution on Palestine. Exhibit C on Russia’s stand regarding Israel/Palestine was provided by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a press conference with Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sabah Al-Sabah, two days after Nebenzya’s intervention at the UN. Lavrov reiterated Moscow’s priorities already stressed by Putin and Nebenzya: an urgent ceasefire, humanitarian corridors, and a return to the table to negotiate “an independent Palestinian state, as envisaged by the UN Security Council within the 1967 borders, which would coexist in peace and security with Israel.”

Lavrov stressed once again that several US-Israeli diversionary tactics are being employed “aimed at delaying (if not burying) the UN Security Council’s decision to establish a Palestinian state.” This, says the Russian foreign minister, implies condemning the Palestinians “to an eternal existence without rights. This will ensure neither peace nor security in the region, it will only drive the conflict deeper. And you won’t be able to drive it deep. The next ‘grapes of wrath’ will be sown, which will quickly ‘sprout.’” Lavrov’s analysis, as much as Putin’s, converges with Khamenei’s and Nasrallah’s: “This is not about Gaza, but about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The State of Palestine is an integral part of that solution.”

Russia is sowing the seeds to exercise the role of trusted mediator for all parties in Israel/Palestine – a role totally unsuitable for the Hegemon, especially after the tacit approval of the current Israeli ethnic cleansing of Gaza. It’s all here, clearly formulated by Lavrov: “It will be fundamentally important for us to know the unanimous opinion of the Arab world.” That is a message specifically targeting Sunni regimes vassalized by Washington. Then, when they get their act together, “we will support the Arab solution to this very difficult issue.”

Read more …

”They live with fear, and their major fear is not to see their mother and father any more, either because they are killed or because the children themselves get killed..”

• Israel Attempt To Destroy Hamas Will Breed More Radicalisation – UN Expert (G.)

Israel’s attempt to wipe out Hamas in response to the attacks of 7 October is likely to breed only further radicalisation, besides being unlawful, the UN special rapporteur on theoccupied Palestinian territories has said. In an interview with the Guardian, Francesca Albanese also said the international community was “reaping the whirlwind” of failing to heed the concerns of those, including herself, who had criticised Israel’s “systematic repression of Palestinian human rights”. “We raised the alarm in the international community, the human rights community, but no one has really listened,” Albanese said. “Now it has reached a dangerous point of no return where the chances of peaceful coexistence have dropped vertically off a cliff. In fact, we are staring into an abyss.” Albanese, an Italian academic, has often been accused by Israel of displaying pro-Palestinian bias, a charge she denies.

She challenged Israel to consider what is in its own self-interest. “Half the infrastructure of Gaza has been destroyed. 9,000 people have been killed, 3,500 of them are reported to be children, over 1,000 of them are still under the rubble. How on earth is that going to lead to peace?” She doubted it was possible to eradicate Hamas, which she described as “not just a military presence but a political reality”. “Even if it was possible to eradicate Hamas, if [Israel] was to exterminate everyone, everyone, so not just the militants, but anyone who works for Hamas including service providers, even if that was possible, but Israel’s occupation remained in place, all the grievances would continue to grow and another resistance will emerge. It’s natural, it’s almost a law of physics. History confirms that.” Her most recent report as UN special rapporteur was on children in the occupied territories, and she said she fears for the further psychological damage inflicted over the last month.

“When you see children there, a profound trauma has gone across their tiny bodies,” she said. “They can speak like adults, they speak of the rights, they speak of the world they know and the world they want. They live with fear, and their major fear is not to see their mother and father any more, either because they are killed or because the children themselves get killed. “The parents of these kids say that they’re scared because they see what it is like for them, that there are fewer alternatives to armed resistance. And it’s difficult to keep the kids away from that path because so many hopes have been destroyed. … When they resist peacefully, and use international law such as the International criminal court or the international court of justice, the international community has been deaf. People feel left with nothing and this is a huge responsibility for the international community to reflect upon.”

Read more …

X thread.

• The Incredible Lightness of Barack Obama (Victor Davis Hanson)

Joe Biden is caught in a quadfecta of corruption, cognitive decline, a failed agenda, and eroding polls. Amid this apparent vacuum, an opportunistic Barack Obama — who used to be more discreet in managing his third term—is reentering the arena. Last week, he came out as the overseer of the Biden administration’s AI agenda, even as his foundation’s “Democracy Forum” was warning Americans about the need for “inclusive capitalism” and the pathologies of “material consumption”—all this from a multi-mansioned multimillionaire. Now, Obama is weighing in on the Gaza war by undercutting his third-term presidential proxy.

Yet just as he seems somewhat clueless about the contradictions of an erstwhile “community organizer” turned into a hyper-capitalist, consumption-addicted elite, so too Obama has little self-awareness about how much of Biden’s unpopularity derives from his continuation of Obama’s own agendas on the economy, border, crime, race, foreign policy, and energy. His apparent obliviousness continues with his most recent odd assertion that, “The occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is [sic] unbearable.” But Obama surely concedes that Gaza has been autonomous and free of Israelis since 2005, and governed by a “one man, one vote, once” Hamas clique since January 2006. Obama added that, “If you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth, and you then have to admit nobody’s hands are clean – that all of us are complicit to some degree.”

In truth, Obama’s blanket accusation is absurd. Over the last 17 years, an autonomous Hamas has managed to create both a hierarchy of billionaires ensconced in luxury Qatari hotels, and the most sophisticated subterranean tunnel city in the world—but little else except corruption, poverty, and violence for all concerned. Obama again seemed unaware of his own confession when he lectured, “nobody’s hands are clean” and “all of us are complicit”. Not quite, Barack.

Those most culpable for the current catastrophe are Obama and his team, who invited in Robert Malley to be their point man on Hamas; cooked up the “Shiite crescent” misadventure; snubbed the grass-roots Green Movement that sought to overthrow the Iranian theocracy; invited the Russians back into the Middle East after a 40-year hiatus; fled Iraq and fueled the ISIS caliphate; lifted sanctions on Iran, giving it a multibillion-dollar war chest that armed to the teeth Hezbollah and Hamas; estranged the U.S. from Israel; and created the media echo chamber that empowered the disastrous Iran Deal.

Read more …

“What we can hear from what he’s saying and when he is giving some interviews, it’s seems the guy is losing his footing and he knows it.”

• ‘Open War’ May Break Out Within Kiev Regime Leadership – Analyst (Sp.)

The prospects of the 2024 presidential election in Ukraine taking place as intended seemed rather unlikely since the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict in February 2022, since the martial law imposed in the country around that time effectively bars elections. This week, the Kiev regime boss Volodymyr Zelensky has also announced that he thinks “the time is not right” for elections in Ukraine. Commenting on this development, independent journalist Sonja Van Den Ende suggested that Zelensky appears “freaked out all the time” as of late, seeing how his army suffers defeat after defeat on the battlefield and his Western backers seem skeptical about Kiev’s odds of winning the Ukrainian conflict. “He is desperate,” Van Den Ende said, arguing that in this situation, elections are the last thing Zelensky wants. “He doesn’t want it because he knows he will be out.”

She argued that Kiev’s inability to defeat the Russian military has become increasingly apparent today, and Ukrainian forces’ attempts to pretend otherwise by launching drone strikes against Russia’s Crimean Peninsula cannot change that. “When countries lose the war, like Hitler did, in the end they get desperate and more radicalized,” van den Ende remarked. “And I think Zelensky is more radicalized now. What we can hear from what he’s saying and when he is giving some interviews, it’s seems the guy is losing his footing and he knows it.” Meanwhile, international relations security analyst Mark Sleboda noted that the United States seems to be “pushing” for Ukraine to hold next year’s presidential election, “even though, according to Ukraine’s constitution, they should not be held” under the martial law.

“But then why is the US pushing for elections, especially since all the real opposition is banned in the country?” Sleboda inquired. According to him, there are hints that the US government wants to “switch horses”, so to speak, by replacing Zelensky with one of Kiev regime’s top generals Valery Zaluzhny, “without going through the embarrassment of another US backed coup in the country to replace the leader so quickly after the last one.” Sleboda also observed that there seems to have been a falling out between Zelensky and Zaluzhny after the latter recently told British media that the much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive turned out to be anything but a success.

Noting how one of Zaluzhny’s aides, Gennady Chistyakov, got killed by an explosion while celebrating his birthday earlier this week, Sleboda remarked that Ukrainian social media channels are just “full of speculation that this was a political hit. They also allege that this was a warning to Zaluzhny and taking one of his pieces off the board by Zelensky’s Chief of Staff Yermak who is seen as kind of a gray cardinal manipulating a lot of things within the regime.” “This seems a fairly credible version to me, considering the way they’re trying to cover this up and wash it away and the embarrassing feature of the whole thing. And that would indicate that we’re pretty much on the brink of open war between the Kiev regime’s political and military leadership,” Sleboda added.

Macgregor

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“..”a step towards equality”..

“.. It also raised the age limit for women eligible for conscription from 40 to 60…”

• Ukrainian Women to Be Zelensky’s New Cannon Fodder (Sp.)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky submitted legislation to the country’s Verkhovna Rada – the parliament – extending martial law and general mobilization in the country for another 90 days starting from November 16 this Tuesday. The move comes as the Kiev regime is struggling to increase the number of troops in the nation’s army after the botched summer counteroffensive claimed the lives of over 90,000 soldiers. A general mobilization in Ukraine was announced immediately after the beginning of Russia’s special military operation on February 24, 2022. Under the law, military reservists between the ages of 18 and 60 have been eligible for conscription. In September 2023, Kiev called upon EU member states to deport alleged Ukrainian “draft dodgers” – something which European countries have largely refused to do so far – while in August, Zelensky ordered a full review of all mobilization exemptions granted by Military Medical Commissions (MMCs) starting from February 24, 2022.

It was earlier reported that those Ukrainians who did not want to fight gave hefty bribes to MMC officials to get fraudulent passes. In the course of the conflict, reports and video-evidence have emerged showing Ukrainian men being forcibly grabbed by conscription officers in various part of the country. Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) report that morale is low and that many conscripts are pushed to the frontline as “cannon fodder”, without proper training, protection or ammo. Meanwhile, a US newspaper has drawn attention to the Kiev regime’s effort to fill its soldier gap by mobilizing more Ukrainian women. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, roughly 43,000 women now serve in the nation’s armed forces which constitute a staggering 40% increase since 2021. Accordingly, the Ukrainian military canceled restrictions which prevented female recruits from serving as machine gunners, tank commanders, snipers and truck drivers. It also raised the age limit for women eligible for conscription from 40 to 60.

The newspaper noted that while the Ukrainian Army’s decision to draw more women and lift restrictions is “a step towards equality”, it “also reflects the tremendous toll” the Ukraine conflict has exacted. In fact, female recruits are no news for modern armies. Around 40,000 Russian women serve in the country’s Armed Forces. Of these, roughly 5,000 are officers, including 44 colonels. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, 1,100 Russian military servicewomen are directly involved in the special military operation in Ukraine; a third of whom have received state awards. When it comes to Israel Defense Forces (IDF), women make up 33% of soldiers and 51% of its currently serving officers. Prior to Israel’s massive operation against Gaza, which brought together around 360,000 reservists of both genders, around 10,000 women served in the IDF in permanent service.

Per the US Department of Defense, women make up 17.3% of the active-duty forces in the US Armed Forces (231,741 servicewomen) and women also constitute 21.4% of the National Guard and reserves (171,000). However, the problem with Ukrainian female recruits is not the quantitative increase in the number to fill the existing gaps, but the dire situation at the front that may quickly turn them into cannon fodder.

Read more …

Go away.

• ‘We Have A Plan’ – Zelensky (RT)

Ukraine has a strategy to continue its stalled counteroffensive push against Russia and will try to yield victories shortly, President Vladimir Zelensky has claimed. The president made the remarks on Wednesday as he appeared at the Reuters NEXT conference via a video link. “We have a plan. We have very concrete cities, very [concrete] directions where we go. I can’t share all the details but we have some slow steps forward on the south, also we have steps on the east,” Zelensky stated. While largely avoiding naming any exact locations where such activities are expected to happen, Zelensky promised certain “good steps near Kherson Region,”without elaborating further. Ukrainian forces have a plan for next year, but will “try” to show “battlefield results” by the end of 2023, Zelensky insisted.

“I am sure we’ll have success. It’s difficult,” he added. Zelensky’s remarks contrasted with the assessment given by his top general, Valery Zaluzhny, in an interview with The Economist published last week. The top military commander claimed the conflict between Moscow and Kiev had reached a WWI-style stalemate, with Russia having better chances given its far larger population and vast resources. This may “drag on for years” and“wear down” the country, with a“deep and beautiful breakthrough”unlikely, he warned. Zelensky has previously acknowledged the slow progress of the long-heralded counteroffensive launched by Kiev in early June.

While “some people”expected quick success, the drive ran into “certain difficulties,” Zelensky admitted. However, he somewhat shifted the blame for the lack of progress to Kiev’s Western backers, stating the country received less weaponry from abroad than it had originally hoped for. The botched counteroffensive has resulted in little to no territorial gains for the Ukrainian military, which sustained heavy personnel and material losses. According to Russian estimates, Kiev lost more than 90,000 soldiers in the push, with hundreds of military hardware pieces – including assorted Western-supplied vehicles – damaged and destroyed.

Read more …

It already has. Billions worth of it.

• Ukraine Will Bring War To EU – Hungary (RT)

Conditions are simply not right for the European Union to consider membership for Ukraine, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Wednesday. His words came in response to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s enlargement proposal earlier that day in Lisbon. She had said that that the EU should commence “accession negotiations” with both Ukraine and Moldova, while upgrading the former Soviet republic of Georgia to official candidate status. “By admitting Ukraine, the EU would also get war, which obviously no one wants to happen,” Szijjarto said, according to Hungarian media. “Enlargement should serve to spread peace, not to bring war into the EU.” He said it would be “absurd” for Brussels to assess Ukraine’s progress in implementing reforms or rule of law or any other membership criteria, given the ongoing conflict.

“Right, there is a war in Ukraine, so we can see that neither media freedom nor freedom of speech is enforced, we can see that elections are not held either,”Szijjarto noted. Budapest’s standing position is that Ukraine needs to restore the rights of the Transcarpathian Hungarian community to the level they had in 2015, before Kiev’s drive to disenfranchise the Russian-speaking population. “Since, according to the European Commission, Ukraine has not met the conditions set for membership, we do not consider any further steps to be timely with regard to the accession negotiations with Ukraine,” the foreign minister concluded. According to Szijjarto, the bloc is facing serious security and economic challenges and is getting weaker, so if it’s looking to admit new members as a way of regaining strength, it should look to the Western Balkans, first and foremost Serbia, instead.

According to an EC report, the talks with Ukraine should begin once Kiev satisfies the remaining demands involving the fight against corruption, adopting an EU-compliant law on lobbying and “strengthening safeguards” for ethnic minorities. The EU has not admitted any new members since Croatia in 2013. Earlier this year, Brussels outlined a vague plan to expand by 2030, eyeing the rest of the former Yugoslavia, Albania, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

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“This is incredible bias,” Loomer wrote. “Less than 24 hours ago she posted tweets in which she said ‘F*CK TRUMP.’ ”

The judge must recuse himself but seems to enjoy the attention too much.

• Wife of NY Judge In Case Against Trump Attacking Him On Social Media (PM)

It has been revealed that the wife of the judge overseeing the civil case against Donald Trump in New York has been attacking the former president and his lawyer on social media. Dawn Marie Engoron’s posts came just days after her husband, Arthur, expanded a gag order against Trump and his legal team in order to prevent them from speaking publicly against anyone involved in the case. Screenshots obtained by investigative journalist Laura Loomer showed that Mrs. Engoron created, liked, and shared a number of anti-Trump posts, many of which were directly related to the trial. One post included an AI-generated image of Trump bald in an orange prison jumpsuit next to one of an old lady scrawling “F*ck Trump” on a brick wall. Another was simply the latter.

In another series of posts, Mrs. Engoron took aim at Trump lawyer Alina Habba, retweeting someone who described her as someone who “doesn’t know how to act in front of a judge,” and replying to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) with a story about The View’s Whoopi Goldberg mocking Habba as a “whiny baby.”Loomer became aware of Mrs. Engoron’s online behavior after the judge’s wife posted about her interview with Rep. George Santos (R-NY), which focused largely on the trial. After being exposed, Mrs. Engoron locked her account. “This is incredible bias,” Loomer wrote. “Less than 24 hours ago she posted tweets in which she said ‘F*CK TRUMP.’

She posted photoshopped pics of President Trump in an orange jump suit, she attacked me during my Live show last night for exposing her husband, and she is openly attacking President Trump’s lawyer [Alina Habba].” Loomer’s sentiments were shared by many who called on Engoron to recuse himself or “dismiss this nonsensical case.” “Where are all of the leftists asking Justices to recuse themselves over the political leanings of their spouses?” one user asked, referring to the backlash Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas faced over his wife’s views. Engoron has already fined Trump for violating the strict gag order after the former president went after the judge’s clerk on Truth Social.

Loomer

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“The House Oversight Committee has followed the money and built a record of evidence revealing how Joe Biden knew, was involved, and benefited from his family’s influence peddling schemes..”

• US House Panel Subpoenas Hunter & James Biden (Sp.)

The US House Oversight Committee announced Wednesday that Chairman James Comer issued subpoenas for Hunter and James Biden, Rob Walker and others to appear for interviews as part of the investigation into the Biden family’s business dealings. “House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY) today issued subpoenas to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, brother, James Biden, and Biden family associate, Rob Walker, to appear for depositions,” the release said. Comer also requested additional members of the Biden family and their associates appear for transcribed interviews, including the US president’s daughter-in-law Hallie Biden and sister-in-law Sara Biden, the release said.

The Kentucky lawmaker plans to send additional subpoenas and transcribed interview requests later this week. “The House Oversight Committee has followed the money and built a record of evidence revealing how Joe Biden knew, was involved, and benefited from his family’s influence peddling schemes,” Comer said. “Now, the House Oversight Committee is going to bring in members of the Biden family and their associates to question them on this record of evidence.”In September, Comer issued subpoenas for Hunter and James Biden seeking to obtain their personal and business records. The Oversight Committee has disclosed since January that the Bidens and their associates had established more than 20 shell companies, amassing more than $24 million from sources in China and other countries.

Earlier this week, Comer said Joe Biden received a personal check for $40,000 in allegedly laundered money from China involving Hunter Biden’s companies. The latest comes after the top prosecutor in the Hunter Biden case told the House Judiciary Committee during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday that politics did not play a factor in filing charges against Hunter Biden. The meeting marked the first time a special counsel answered questions during an active probe before congressional lawmakers. Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty in October to three charges related to the possession of a firearm while he was under the influence of illicit drugs. The charges date back to gun forms from 2018.

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“Victims of VITT – a new condition identified by specialists – question the Government’s monitoring of the vaccine’s rollout and its efficacy”

• AstraZeneca Taken to Court Over “Defective” Covid Jab in Landmark Case (DS)

The Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine has been branded “defective” in a multi-million pound landmark legal action that will suggest claims over its efficacy were “vastly overstated”. The Telegraph has the story. The pharmaceutical giant is being sued in the High Court in a test case by Jamie Scott, a father-of-two who suffered a significant permanent brain injury that has left him unable to work as a result of a blood clot after receiving the jab in April 2021. A second claim is being brought by the widower and two young children of 35-year-old Alpa Tailor, who died after having the jab made by AstraZeneca, the U.K.-based pharmaceutical giant. The test cases could pave the way for as many as 80 damages claims worth an estimated £80 million over a new condition known as Vaccine-induced Immune Thrombocytopenia and Thrombosis (VITT) that was identified by specialists in the wake of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine rollout. …

The vaccine, which was heralded at its launch by Boris Johnson as a “triumph for British science“, is no longer used in the U.K. The Government recommends three other vaccines for its autumn booster programme. In the months following the rollout, the serious side-effect of the AstraZeneca jab was identified by scientists. Following this, it was recommend it no longer be given to the under-40s in the U.K. because the risk of receiving the jab outweighed the serious harm posed by Covid. AstraZeneca last night told the Telegraph that patient safety was its “highest priority”, that its vaccine, called Vaxzevria, had “continuously been shown to have an acceptable safety profile”, and that regulators around the world “consistently state that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of extremely rare potential side-effects”. It is understood AstraZeneca, in its legal response, denies causing Mr. Scott’s injuries.

Official figures from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) show at least 81 deaths in the U.K. are suspected to have been linked to the adverse reaction that caused clotting in people who also had low blood platelets. In total, almost one in five people who suffered from the condition died as a result, according to the MHRA’s own figures. … As many as 80 claimants could lodge legal cases with the High Court by the end of the year in a class action that threatens to undermine faith in the rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine that was developed jointly with Oxford University. In Mr. Scott’s claim, his lawyers argue that he suffered “personal injuries and consequential losses arising out of his sustaining Vaccine Induced Immune Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia (VITT) as a result of his vaccination on April 23rd 2021, with the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination”, which the legal claim alleges was “defective”.

They also argue that no warning of the risk of VITT was included in the product information on the date of supply of the vaccine. AstraZeneca issued press releases following clinical trials saying the vaccine – known as Vaxzevria – was between 62% and 90% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 depending on dosages, with an average of 70%. The legal claim states: “In fact, the absolute risk reduction concerning COVID-19 prevention was only 1.2%.” An absolute risk reduction measures how much the vaccine reduces an individual’s baseline risk of getting ill from Covid at a particular time. If Covid levels are low, the absolute risk reduction rate will be much lower too. This is different from a relative risk reduction, which compares the numbers of vaccinated people getting ill with those getting ill who did not receive the jab.

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CO2

 

 

 

 

Massie Kerry

 

 

 

 

Bigger boat

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle November 7 2023

Nov 072023
 
 November 7, 2023  Posted by at 9:52 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  70 Responses »


Hieronymus Bosch St. John on Patmos 1489

 

• Hamas Political Wing Offered ‘Clemency’ for Hostage Release – Sy Hersh (Sp.)
• US to Transfer $320 Million in Precision Bomb Kits to Israel (Antiwar)
• US Diplomats Condemn Israel Policy – Politico (RT)
• Israel To Take Over ‘Security’ In Gaza – Netanyahu (RT)
• The ICC Must Investigate The Crime Of Genocide In Gaza (Jeremy Corbyn)
• Arab States Condemn Israeli Minister’s ‘Nuke Gaza’ Threat (RT)
• The Four Wars (Jim Kunstler)
• Trump: “I’m The Only One That Will Prevent World War Three” (SN)
• Judge Tells Trump’s Lawyers To ‘Control Him’ (RT)
• Jack Smith Could Be on Shaky Ground in Trump Charge (ET)
• Legacy Media Readies American Public for Ukraine’s Defeat (Sp.)
• ‘Rational Actors’ Ready To Take Power In Ukraine – Moscow (RT)
• Ukrainian Army Has ‘Run Out of Cannon Fodder’ – Former US Envoy (Sp.)
• Demographics Is Destiny (Denninger)

 

 

 

 

Habba

Alina Habba response to the Judge saying I’m not here to hear what he has to say: “Then why exactly am I being paid as an attorney and why exactly are taxpayers dollars being used in this court room. The answer is very clear. Because Ms. James… ‘wants to’ make a name for herself. She said this morning that the numbers don’t lie and it won’t lie in this case. Ms. James I have a message for you. The number didn’t lie when you ran for Governor and that’s why you dropped out. And the numbers don’t lie when President Trump runs for office in 2024 and those numbers are loud and clear. This country is falling apart and if we don’t stop corruption in court rooms, where attorneys are gagged. Where attorneys are not allowed to say what they need to say to protect their clients interest. It doesn’t matter what your politics are. Everyone has a right in this country to get up and put a defense. “

 

 

 

 

Right to defend
https://twitter.com/i/status/1721516768659714477

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“We’re holding out clemency for the Hamas political leadership – giving them a chance to surrender the hostages and cling to life by moving them to the hospital..”

• Hamas Political Wing Offered ‘Clemency’ for Hostage Release – Sy Hersh (Sp.)

Israel, whose military claimed it has encircled Gaza City, and was poised to press on with its attack on Hamas despite widespread calls for a ceasefire or temporary pauses, has estimated that over 240 hostages are being held by the militant group. In secret talks with Israel, the political leadership of Hamas has been offered “clemency” in return for a release of the Gaza-held hostages, US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in an article on Substack. The offer was extended to the group’s political wing, who claim to have not been directly involved in the planning for the October 7 Hamas attack, sources told the journalist. “The thought was that if they agree to try their own people and order them executed, they will be given their lives while also exonerating Israel for the war,” an American official was quoted as saying.

As the Israeli military and political leadership hunt down members of the Hamas military “in the tunnels and rubble of Gaza City,” they have “orders are to shoot to kill on sight,” wrote the journalist. At the same time, the fate of the remaining hostages in Gaza has prompted Israel to come up with incentive for the Hamas political leaders to “save their own lives by arranging for Israeli hostages to be transferred to a basement in the besieged al-Shifa hospital.” Israeli military has insisted that the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip is a stronghold of Hamas. It earlier released 3D-rendered footage showing the alleged extent of a Hamas headquarters it says is burrowed deep underneath the Al-Shifa Hospital. Some Israeli officials “fear that time is running out” amid lack of understanding as to “how long the air in the tunnels will be breathable,” wrote the journalist, adding that there were hopes Israeli hostages could be moved to “safer, drier, and healthier quarters below ground in Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital.” “I was told that water and food would be available,” added Hersh.

“We’re holding out clemency for the Hamas political leadership – giving them a chance to surrender the hostages and cling to life by moving them to the hospital,” a source told the Pulitzer Prize-winner. In a “significant stage” in Israel’s war against Hamas, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have claimed it has encircled Gaza City, and divided the besieged enclave into two. It touted its looming operation to destroy the tunnels and Hamas’ military and civilian institutions. At the same time, it is estimated that militants are holding hostage over 248 soldiers and civilians, including foreign nationals. “Thirty-one of the hostages are seventy years and older—one is said to be a Holocaust survivor, and two are infants, aged four months and eight months, with no mother or father, and twenty-three under eighteen years of age,” an Israeli was cited as telling Hersh. The source added that the International Committee of the Red Cross “has not been pressuring Hamas to grant them access to the hostages, although it did seek almost immediate access to the two hundred Hamas prisoners in Israeli custody.”

Sy Hersh recalled that “a possible breakthrough” concerning the hostages “emerged in secret talks between Israel and Yahya Sinwar, a onetime prisoner of Israel who now directs the political wing of Hamas.” Sinwar issued a statement on October 28, that said: “We are ready to conduct an immediate prisoner exchange deal that includes the release of all Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails in exchange for all prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance.” Since then, the Hamas leader and his colleagues have been informed by Israel that if they want to survive, they must “release the Israeli hostages and agree to begin holding immediate war-crime tribunals.” Sy Hersh underscored that the Israelis were seeking the death penalty “for those Hamas combat leaders who encouraged and then did nothing to stop the war crimes of their fighters.”

There has been growing global condemnation of Israel’s retaliatory bombing of Gaza, with the Palestinian Health Ministry saying 10,022 people have been killed since October 7, including 4,104 children and 2,641 women. Hundreds of thousands of protesters have flooded the streets of Washington, London, Berlin, Rome, Santiago, other cities, demanding an immediate ceasefire, with many perceiving Israel’s actions as a “war crime.” While the “concept of an Israeli-instigated war-crimes tribunal amid a bombing campaign that has flattened much of Gaza may seem out of a bad novel,” wrote Seymour Hersh, he cited an Israeli expert with insider knowledge of the hostage talks as insisting that Yahya Sinwar “could be open to a deal.” “He is a fanatic and an ascetic… Dedicated to the cause. No family, very religious but got very friendly with Shin Bet [Israeli internal security] guys while in prison and was seen as not irrational. He will want a chance to give service to the cause. He will be open to a door,” the expert said. It was added that Sinwar and some Hamas officials “now in Qatar,” would hold out for a deal “to include a commitment that Israel would not come after them if a deal is made.”

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“..the Pentagon has refused to say how much weaponry, equipment, and other types of aid it has provided Israel since October 7..”

• US to Transfer $320 Million in Precision Bomb Kits to Israel (Antiwar)

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the Biden administration is planning a $320 million transfer of precision-guided bomb kits to Israel, a show of support for the Israeli onslaught despite the growing civilian death toll. The report said the administration notified congressional leaders on October 31 that it intended to transfer Spice Family Gliding Bomb Assemblies, which turn unguided bombs into precision-guided munitions that can be fired by Israeli warplanes. The bombs will be transferred from weapons manufacturer Rafael USA to its Israeli parent company, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. It’s unclear what funds will be used for the transfer or if Israel is purchasing the equipment.

Israel receives $3.8 billion in annual military aid from the US, and the Biden administration is looking to provide another $14 billion to support the Gaza campaign. In the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, the US began immediately shipping new military equipment to Israel. According to the Journal, the Pentagon has refused to say how much weaponry, equipment, and other types of aid it has provided Israel since October 7. Besides the material support, the US is flying drones over Gaza, has special operations forces in Israel, and has deployed an enormous amount of firepower to the region. The news of the $320 million bomb transfer came as the death toll in Gaza surpassed 10,000, including over 4,000 children. US officials claim they are pressing Israel about the civilian casualties, but the administration refuses to condition military aid or use other leverage it has.

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“When Israel supports settler violence and illegal land seizures or employs excessive use of force against Palestinians, we must communicate publicly that this goes against our American values..”

• US Diplomats Condemn Israel Policy – Politico (RT)

Lower- and mid-level diplomats at the US State Department have called on the administration of President Joe Biden to condemn Israel’s bombing of civilians and demand a ceasefire in Gaza, according to a leaked memo seen by Politico. The memo is the latest sign of division within the department over Israel. The memo calls on Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other senior diplomats to publicly demand that Israel agree to a ceasefire, and to align their public and private statements on the conflict, Politico reported on Monday. Criticizing Israel in private but not in public “contributes to regional public perceptions that the United States is a biased and dishonest actor, which at best does not advance, and at worst harms, US interests worldwide,” the memo reportedly states.

“We must publicly criticize Israel’s violations of international norms such as failure to limit offensive operations to legitimate military targets,” the message continues. “When Israel supports settler violence and illegal land seizures or employs excessive use of force against Palestinians, we must communicate publicly that this goes against our American values so that Israel does not act with impunity.” The memo was marked “sensitive but unclassified,” Politico noted, adding that it is unclear how many people signed it, and whether it was submitted to the department’s ‘Dissent Channel,’ which functions as a soapbox for employees to question policy decisions.

Several similar memos have been circulated since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7, and Blinken met with a group of dissenting staffers late last month, the Huffington Post reported. A week before the alleged meeting, the State Department’s arms-transfer chief quit his job in protest, writing in his resignation letter that Washington’s rush to arm Israel was “shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse.” While Blinken has criticized incidents of violence against Palestinians by Jewish settlers, he has spoken more vaguely about the mounting civilian death toll in Gaza. “We’ve engaged the Israelis on steps that they can take to minimize civilian casualties,” he said on Monday, after the Gaza Health Ministry reported that more than 10,000 people had died in the enclave since Israel’s bombing campaign began a month ago.

Despite an overwhelming vote in favor of a ceasefire at the UN General Assembly late last month, Blinken has repeatedly rejected calls for a halt to the Israeli operation. Any pause in the fighting, he argued last week, would give Hamas time to “regroup and repeat what it did on October 7,” referring to the group’s assault on Israel that left around 1,400 people dead. Blinken’s aversion to a ceasefire was echoed in a memo sent to US diplomats at the outset of the conflict. The State Department email urged diplomats and communications staffers to steer clear of phrases such as “restoring calm,” “end to violence/bloodshed,” or “de-escalation/ceasefire,” and instead to emphasize the Jewish state’s right to “self-defense.”

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“President Joe Biden said the move would be a “big mistake.” “It would be a mistake… for Israel to occupy… Gaza again..”

• Israel To Take Over ‘Security’ In Gaza – Netanyahu (RT)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country will have to manage “overall security” in Gaza for an “indefinite” period of time after the current war with Hamas ends. Speaking to ABC News for an interview published on Monday, Netanyahu was asked about Israel’s long-term plans for the territory should it succeed in dismantling Hamas, suggesting the need for a lengthy deployment. “I think Israel will, for an indefinite period, have the overall security responsibility [in Gaza] because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it,” he said. “When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine.” The comments appear to contradict past statements from senior Israeli officials.

In announcing a major ground assault on the Palestinian enclave last month, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant emphasized that Israeli troops must not be responsible for “day-to-day life in the Gaza Strip.” While the official said Israel would establish a new “security reality” in the area after the current war, he suggested it would seek to hand off post-conflict governance to a third party. Even while vocally supporting Israel’s military operation against Hamas, Washington has warned of the perils of another Gaza occupation. During a recent interview with CBS, President Joe Biden said the move would be a “big mistake.” “It would be a mistake… for Israel to occupy… Gaza again,” he said. “But going in… but taking out the extremists, the Hezbollah is up north but Hamas down south, is a necessary requirement.”

Israel first occupied Gaza during the 1967 Six-Day War with Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, and only withdrew its troops and settlers nearly 40 years later. It has maintained a tight blockade over the enclave in the years since, and has launched periodic bombing campaigns against Hamas since the group took control of Gaza in 2006. The latest round of fighting erupted last month on the heels of a Hamas terrorist attack which killed around 1,400 Israelis. The IDF has launched weeks of retaliatory airstrikes and gradually escalated a ground attack on Gaza, leaving more than 10,000 Palestinians dead, according to local officials.

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No Jeremy. The ICC lost all credit when it charged Putin for kidnapping children.

• The ICC Must Investigate The Crime Of Genocide In Gaza (Jeremy Corbyn)

My last visit to Al-Shati refugee camp was early 2013. Located on the Mediterranean coast in the north of Gaza, Al-Shati was otherwise known as “Beach Camp”. Vendors sold fruit under multi-coloured parasols. Cats slept in the middle of narrow alleys. Children jostled over skipping rope in the shade. Beach Camp was established in 1948 after 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced in the Nakba. Initially, the camp accommodated around 23,000 refugees. In the following seven decades, that number grew to 90,000, cramped inside 0.5 square kilometres (0.2 square miles) of land – 70 times more populated than London’s city centre. People in Gaza have been living under a blockade for the past 16 years and the Israeli occupation controls most of what goes in and out of Gaza.

Beach Camp was no different – and people there largely relied on aid and services from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to survive, including a health centre, a food distribution centre and several school buildings. Beach Camp Primary School was beautifully maintained. I was allowed up onto the roof, where I could see the fence with Israel on one side. Out to sea were several Israeli patrol boats keeping Palestinian fishermen from sailing more than six nautical miles out. The school was run by inspiring and hard-working teachers, whose philosophy was to create a calm atmosphere for discovery, music, theatre and art. Some of the students showed me their work. Many were drawings of planes, fences and bombs. But there were other drawings too: of their parents, their brothers, their sisters and their friends.

All of the children, obviously, had underlying trauma, but they also had a desire to learn, share and play. On October 9, two days after the deplorable attack by Hamas in southern Israel, there were reports of an Israeli air strike on Beach Camp. This wasn’t the first strike on the camp. In May 2021, at least 10 Palestinians, eight of whom were children, were killed in an air strike. Nor was it the last. Beach Camp has been repeatedly targeted in the past three weeks. When I hear news of bombardment in Gaza, I think about that school at Beach Camp. I don’t know if it is still there. I don’t know if those children and teachers are still alive. I don’t know.

The Israeli army has dropped 25,000 tonnes of bombs onto a tiny strip of land, populated by 2.3 million people. There is no meaningful sense whatsoever that they are trying to avoid civilian deaths. More than 9,900 people in Gaza have been killed, including more than 4,800 children. Survivors still under siege are running out of the basic means of survival: water, fuel, food and medical supplies. Doctors are performing surgery without anaesthesia. Mothers are watching their babies fight for survival in incubators running out of electricity. People are being forced to drink seawater. More than 1 million people have been displaced from their homes.

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“The Israeli military has dropped more than 25,000 tons of explosives on Gaza since October 7, equivalent in power to two of the nuclear bombs used on Hiroshima..“

• Arab States Condemn Israeli Minister’s ‘Nuke Gaza’ Threat (RT)

Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and other Arab states have all denounced Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu for suggesting that his country drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza. Eliyahu was suspended, but not fired, for his remarks. Speaking to Radio Kol Berama on Sunday, Eliyahu said that using nuclear weapons against the Palestinian enclave “is one of the possibilities,” after his interviewer said that this would “flatten” the area and “eliminate everybody there.” Eliyahu, a member of the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, was indefinitely suspended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later on Sunday. The minister’s comments “show to what extent extremism and brutality have penetrated the Israeli government,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The fact that Eliyahu was not outright fired, the ministry continued, “reflects the Israeli government’s disregard for all values of humanity, morality, religion and law.” “These statements constitute a violation of international law, as well as incitement to commit grave violations of International Humanitarian Law, such as war crimes, and raise grave concerns of an intent to commit genocide,” the UAE said. Jordan released a similar statement describing Eliyahu’s comments as a “call for genocide and a hate crime that cannot be ignored,” while the Qatari Foreign Ministry said that it “strongly condemns the threat made by an Israeli minister to strike Gaza with a nuclear bomb and considers it a serious incitement to a war crime.” Eliyahu’s remarks revealed that “Israel possesses nuclear weapons, which is an open secret,” Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit declared.

The comments also “confirm the truth of the racist view Israelis hold against Palestinians,” he added. “This is the true face of the occupation government.” Despite Eliyahu defending his comments as “metaphorical,” he faced heavy criticism within Israel. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant condemned his “baseless and irresponsible words,” while opposition leader Yair Lapid called on Netanyahu to fire the minister for causing “harm to the families of the hostages, Israeli society, and our international standing.” The Israeli military has dropped more than 25,000 tons of explosives on Gaza since October 7, equivalent in power to two of the nuclear bombs used on Hiroshima, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor NGO said in a press release on Thursday. More than 10,000 people have been killed and 25,000 injured in the strip as a result of the Israeli bombardment and ground offensive, according to the latest figures from the Gaza Health Ministry.

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“..We emerge from this catastrophe a nearly medievalized society with a steeply-reduced population, unable to resist China’s attempt to colonize us. Pretty scary, huh? Just let’s keep doing what we’re doing.”

• The Four Wars (Jim Kunstler)

Bringing us to War No. 3: The US Government’s war against its own citizens. This has been going on since Mr. Trump stepped onto the scene, and has included a semi-successful war against Mr. Trump personally — except that not only has it failed to put him out of business as a politician, it has substantiated many of the claims he made about corrupt and perfidious government that resulted in his election in 2016. All of that has only enhanced his polling numbers. And the lawless, bad faith court cases lodged against him have demonstrated the US government’s grievous fall into willful malfeasance that has the DOJ arresting and unfairly persecuting hundreds of innocent Americans that support Mr. Trump.

A big part of the government’s war against US citizens has been the bizarre Covid-19 episode and the long-running effort by public officials to deceive the population about it, including lockdowns and destruction of small businesses, the dishonest suppression of viable treatments, gross censorship about the harms of the mRNA vaccines, and trickery around the origins of the vaccines in the back rooms of our Department of Defense. Another front of this war is the wide-open Mexican border, a lawless state of affairs created as deliberate policy by our cabinet secretaries, and done at a time when there is tremendous animus against the US from many other nations who send thousands of sketchy young men into our country with no attempt by our border officials to determine who they are.

It looks like “Joe Biden’s” hash will be settled shortly when the House, reorganized under a young and vital new speaker, reveals the Biden family’s bank records and begins the process of impeaching the president for bribery. “Joe Biden’s” party pretends that this is not happening and appears to have no plan to deal with consequences. For the moment, they still stupidly tout him as their candidate for the 2024 election, another arrant falsehood you can add to the thousand-and one affronts against the public that this party has tried to put over. Many Americans suspect there will not be a 2024 election, specifically that whoever is president in the coming year will invoke yet another national emergency order to postpone it on spurious grounds. Many are also far from persuaded that the 2020 election that installed “Joe Biden” was honest and legitimate.

Which brings us to War No. 4: The American peoples’ war against a government gone rogue. Obviously, it is not underway yet, but it’s easy to see how it might develop. I think it could commence in the aftermath of a financial calamity that is visibly brewing in the debt markets. The net result will be a collapsed standard-of-living for everyone in the USA, the breakdown of supply lines and daily business, and a very sharp loss of legitimacy for the people who have been in charge of anything in this country. We emerge from this catastrophe a nearly medievalized society with a steeply-reduced population, unable to resist China’s attempt to colonize us. Pretty scary, huh? Just let’s keep doing what we’re doing.

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“..we have unbelievable technology. It can shoot a needle out of the air, it is incredible.”

• Trump: “I’m The Only One That Will Prevent World War Three” (SN)

During a speech at the Florida Republican Party’s “Freedom Summit” in Kissimmee Saturday, Donald Trump declared that he is the only candidate who can prevent World War Three, warning that “we are closer than anyone understands” to “obliteration.” Trump also told the crowd that “When you think of it, how important elections are, you’d have millions of people alive right now if the 2020 election was not rigged. They would be alive. Ukraine, Israel. The attack would have never been made. All of these people would be alive, the cities would be thriving.” Trump pointed to the global chaos that is now further unfolding, noting “For four straight years, under the Trump administration, I kept America safe, I kept Israel safe, and I kept the entire world safe.”

“I kept my promise and recognized Israel’s eternal capital and opened the American embassy in Jerusalem,” Trump continued, adding “I also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and really, probably most importantly, but they did nothing with it, I withdrew from the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, but they were supposed to do something with it. And you could have because Iran did not have any money.” “What is going on. What is going on now is shocking,” Trump urged, adding “All over the planet our enemies knew that if you tried to kill our citizens we will kill you. If you spill a drop of American blood, we will spill a gallon of your blood. That is what it was, and it was not a threat, that was just the way it was going to have to be. And we do it because we want to make sure we are not starting wars. We did not have to start wars.” Trump further noted, “In the debate with beautiful Hillary Clinton, she said, ‘Look at him. Look at the way he talks. He is going to get us into wars. He is going to start World War III.’

And I said, ‘No, no, it is the way I talked that will keep you out of World War III.’” He continued, “To every American is petrified that Joe Biden’s catastrophic weakness will bring our country to ruin, which he has a great chance of doing, he is close to that anyway. He’s close to economic ruin, I make you this promise, as your president, and nobody else can say it, I will restore peace through strength, and, yes, I am the only one that will prevent World War III, because we are very close to World War III.” Trump further warned, “this will not be a First World War or a Second World War. This will be obliteration, because the level of power, of weaponry of power you have never seen anything — you do not want to see it. When they talk about global warming, because in 250 years our ocean will be one inch higher, and they never mention the power of nuclear weapons, where one madman can do damage the likes of which nobody has ever seen before. It is just crazy. It is crazy to see it, it is crazy to talk about it.”

“But I will stop it, and it will happen very quickly. There will not be a World War III, and we are closer than anyone understands. To protect our citizens from foreign threats, I will build a state-of-the-art missile defense shield. We will build that. We will build that,” Trump vowed. He continued, “And it will be jobs for America. It will be built in America. We developed the technology, nobody else, by the way. A lot of people said we developed the technology. The technology was developed by us, and it works. You see it. Ronald Reagan wanted to do it, but at that time they did not have the technology. The concept was good, but we have unbelievable technology. It can shoot a needle out of the air, it is incredible. Would you feel a little safer, a little more comfortable if we can do that? And it is jobs, jobs in America.”

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“When another Trump lawyer stood up to argue that Trump should be allowed to answer the questions in his own way, the judge shouted, “Sit down already. Sit down.”

• Judge Tells Trump’s Lawyers To ‘Control Him’ (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has taken the stand in the New York civil fraud case against him, angering the judge by criticizing the court and arguing that he is being attacked by politically motivated prosecutors around the country. The trial resumed on Monday with Trump testifying for the first time to rebut allegations by New York Attorney General Letitia James that he and other executives in his real estate organization fraudulently inflated the value of key properties to get favorable loan terms. James is seeking $250 million in damages in her lawsuit, which comes at a time when the ex-president also faces felony charges in four separate criminal cases against him. While being questioned by state attorney Kevin Wallace, Trump said, “You and every other Democratic district attorney, AG, US attorney were coming after me from 15 different sides – all Democrats, all Trump haters.”

He accused James of perpetrating a “political witch hunt” and claimed that Judge Arthur Engoron was biased against him. The judge repeatedly interrupted Trump’s testimony to complain that his answers were not directly responsive to the questions and veered off into political speeches. “This is not a political rally,” Engoron told Trump’s lawyers, suggesting that they “need to have a talk with him right now.” As the ex-president continued to offer his opinions on the case, the judge said, “I beseech you to control him if you can. If you can’t, I will. I will excuse him and draw every negative inference that I can.” At stake is the future of Trump’s real estate empire. The judge, who has already found Trump and his co-defendants liable for “persistent and repeated” fraud, will decide on penalties at the end of the trial.

He has said that he will dissolve some of Trump’s companies, which could result in the ex-president losing some of his most prominent New York properties. Trump, who is polling as the leading Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential race, has called Engoron a “deranged, Trump-hating judge.” The loans related to the disputed property valuations have already been repaid. Trump testified on Monday that although he lowered the valuations on two of his properties, his holdings were actually worth more overall than claimed on the financial statements given to lenders. “The most valuable asset was the brand value,” he said. “I became president because of my brand.”

Christopher Kise, one of Trump’s lawyers, told Engoron that it was only fair for the American people to hear the ex-president’s views on the case. “This is a situation where you have on the stand a candidate for president of the United States,”Kise said. “The court needs to hear what he has to say about these statements.” Engoron shot back, “No, I am not here to hear what he has to say.”When another Trump lawyer stood up to argue that Trump should be allowed to answer the questions in his own way, the judge shouted, “Sit down already. Sit down.” Undeterred by the judge’s interjections, Trump said, “This is a very, very unfair trial – very — and I hope the public is watching it.”

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“..everyone in this election is going to be talking about these cases,” the law professor said, “except one person under this gag order and that is Donald Trump.”

• Jack Smith Could Be on Shaky Ground in Trump Charge (ET)

Two analysts have noted that special counsel Jack Smith might be on shaky legal ground in his federal election-related case against former President Donald Trump. Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor, said that the Trump charge of corruptly obstructing an official proceeding hasn’t been “extensively litigated” over the past several decades, adding that a ruling could come on whether it is appropriate in the former president’s case. Multiple defendants who were charged in connection to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach have “argued that Congress certifying the electoral votes was not an ‘official proceeding’ and courts have universally rejected that argument,” she told Newsweek last week.

“This bigger question is, what satisfies the ‘corruptly’ requirement? Is it any criminal conduct, such as trespassing in the Capitol building or submitting fake electors? Or does the corrupt conduct have to relate to the other subsections of 1512, which prohibit destroying or concealing evidence?” she asked. She continued: “If the corruption requires consciousness of guilt, then Trump can argue that he genuinely believed the election was stolen. Either way, this issue will likely end up before the United States Supreme Court because it is a novel issue that affects hundreds of criminal defendants, including the former president.” Lawfare’s Roger Parloff wrote in a recent article that the Department of Justice (DOJ) recently won two “fragile” victories in two cases involving Jan. 6 defendants, and Mr. Smith has “relied on [a] statute” that was used by other prosecutors to charge at least 317 individuals in the Jan. 6 case.

“Smith has relied on that statute and its conspiracy equivalent, 18 U.S.C. § 1512(k), for two of the four counts in his indictment against former President Donald Trump for allegedly conspiring to overthrow the 2020 election,” Mr. Parloff wrote. “Those counts, whose legal sufficiency Trump challenged in a motion to dismiss this week, are the most serious leveled against Trump in that case, carrying a maximum 20-year term of imprisonment.” Three appellants in a Jan. 6 case are now petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to review a recent appeals court ruling that favored the DOJ, he noted, but he said that the D.C. appeals court judges “can’t agree about its holdings, and its holdings determine the viability of a 20-year felony that an ex-president and major presidential candidate now stands charged with violating.”

“Moreover, at the appeals court level, judges’ acceptance of the Justice Department’s interpretations of that law have been 100 percent correlated with the political party of the judge’s appointer,” he wrote. “If that trend continues, and if either case climbs one more rung up the appellate ladder, the department (and Mr. Smith) faces bleak prospects indeed.” The comments come as constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley warned that the gag order targeting President Donald Trump is “unconstitutional” and said that an appeals court ruling to rescind the order last week was a “quite significant” development. Several weeks ago, District of Columbia Judge Tanya Chutkan placed a gag order on the former president in the Jan. 6-related case, saying President Trump cannot speak about potential witnesses, court staff, or prosecutors. An appeals court in the district froze Judge Chutkan’s order late last week, with oral arguments being set for Nov. 20.

“They could have left it to continue, to continue while they reviewed it, but they decided perhaps in an abundance of caution to order this stoppage until they can give it a full review,” Mr. Turley, a professor for George Washington University, said on Fox News on Nov. 3. “The reason I think this could be quite significant is because I think the order is unconstitutional.” He added that it is “very odd” to issue the order because the same court “insisted on having this trial before the election, sort of shoehorned it in before Super Tuesday,” referring to the key GOP presidential nominating date. “And everyone in this election is going to be talking about these cases,” the law professor said, “except one person under this gag order and that is Donald Trump.”

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“Russian victory in Ukraine would be a terrible blow to US interests, but not terrible enough to risk nuclear war.. ”

• Legacy Media Readies American Public for Ukraine’s Defeat (Sp.)

A visibly agitated President Volodymyr Zelensky defiantly denied on Sunday that the NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine had entered a “stalemate,” assuring in an extensive interview with US media that Moscow has not “checkmated” Kiev, and that Ukraine still has many “different plans” to maintain the initiative. “Our military are coming up with different plans, with different operations in order to move forward faster and to strike the Russian Federation unexpectedly,” Zelensky said, in stark contradiction to Zaluzhnyi’s comments about the counteroffensive’s utter failure to penetrate Russian defenses. “As far as the situation on the front is concerned, of course I cannot provide all the details to you but nevertheless we are holding the initiative in our hands. You can imagine what over two years of a full-scale war is like.

Everybody gets tired. Even the iron gets tired,” Zelensky said. “I don’t think that this is a stalemate…We have done a lot,” he assured. Zelensky stressed that Ukraine could not proceed with its operations “barehanded,” “without relevant, proper weapons,” calling for more aid and assuring that money sent to Ukraine is “not aid to Ukraine,” but support for the US and the EU themselves, because Kiev is “defending our joint values.” The Ukrainian president rejected any possibility of negotiations with Russia, saying he didn’t “want to make any dialogue with terrorists,” and dismissing former President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to end the conflict in “24 hours.” Instead, the Ukrainian leader suggested, it would take him “24 minutes to explain [to] President Trump that he can’t manage this war.”

Western media have taken note of Zelensky’s shift in rhetoric, with one outlet pointing out that while the Ukrainian leader once assured the West of a speedy victory, now the message seems to be geared toward asking for more support to prevent the conflict from dragging on indefinitely, playing on the West’s fears of a protracted conflict with Moscow that cannot be won. But some observers have come out ahead of Zelensky, kicking off what seems like a carefully crafted campaign to prepare Western publics for defeat, or a least a “rethink” of what “victory” in Ukraine looks like. “Ukraine today finds itself worse off than it was last November. Its troops are exhausted and depleted, its weapons stocks are running low, and Western publics are more polarized over further support,” one pundit writing in a major US newspaper wrote.

“Ukraine’s counteroffensive was supposed to sustain political support for Kiev by proving that it could reconquer lost territory. Now, supporters of Ukraine might need to make the inverse argument: Ukraine is not reconquering substantial territory, and aid is needed indefinitely to forestall a devastating defeat.” Washington “might need to pivot from dreaming of victory to preparing to live with a stalemate,” since “there is virtually no appetite in the United States for direct war with Russia. Russian victory in Ukraine would be a terrible blow to US interests, but not terrible enough to risk nuclear war,” the observer stressed.

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“The government in Kiev treats its own people as something “alien”..

• ‘Rational Actors’ Ready To Take Power In Ukraine – Moscow (RT)

Not all Ukrainian elites and politicians agree with Kiev’s current belligerent stance against Moscow, Nikolay Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said on Sunday while speaking at the ‘Russia’ exhibition in Moscow. “Rational actors” do exist in Ukraine but are currently “suppressed” by the Kiev government, he added. These forces are already “standing in the wings” and are ready to take power when the time is right, the former Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) chief said, without elaborating who exactly he may be referring to. Patrushev also said that the Ukrainian governments after the Maidan coup, including the current one led by President Vladimir Zelensky, are “bound to answer” for all the atrocities committed in Ukraine since 2014, including the years-long persecution of the Russian-speaking minority and the people of Donbass, as well as the attacks on Russian civilians, public figures, journalists, and infrastructure.

“They will not be able to hide from a just people’s court like the former SS member Yaroslav Hunka,” Patrushev said, referring to a Ukrainian SS veteran hailed by Canada’s parliament during a visit by Zelensky in September. The incident sparked an angry reaction from Poland, Russia, and several Jewish organizations, and led to the resignation of Canadian House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota, who claimed that he was unaware of Hunka’s past. Russia has made it clear that it is not waging war against the Ukrainian people. President Vladimir Putin has said that Ukrainians have become the victims of Western political games and their own government’s policies. The government in Kiev treats its own people as something “alien,” Putin said during his annual address to the Russian parliament in February.

Ukrainians have been turned into “cannon fodder,” he argued, adding that the country had been pushed towards war with Russia since 2014, when Kiev sent military forces to confront the Donbass militias in the wake of the Maidan coup. “Responsibility for the incitement of the Ukrainian conflict, for its escalation and an increasing number of its victims rests fully with the Western elites and with the current Kiev regime,” he stated at the time. Earlier this week, Zelensky once again declared that Kiev will not talk to Moscow or make any concessions to Russia. He also denied reports that Western nations are pushing Ukraine towards peace talks with Russia. He did admit, though, that the country’s media and Ukrainians themselves were speculating about the idea of talks with Russia, adding that he was “surprised” by such sentiments.

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“..Putin said that the West no longer has enough Ukrainian cannon fodder and they are thinking about Lithuanians and Poles.”

• Ukrainian Army Has ‘Run Out of Cannon Fodder’ – Former US Envoy (Sp.)

The Ukrainian Army has run out of cannon fodder for an offensive, former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman said in an interview with the YouTube channel Dialogue works. “Ukraine is out of cannon fodder, and so NATO is out of cannon fodder too. If the whole program was to fight to the last Ukrainian, and you are running out of Ukrainians, you don’t have a policy,” he said. In his view, Ukraine “could lose” even more territory. As Freeman noted, the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ failures on the battlefield have exposed “serious disagreements” within NATO. Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the West no longer has enough Ukrainian cannon fodder and they are thinking about Lithuanians and Poles. In early October, Putin said that Kiev’s offensive had failed, that the enemy’s attempts to advance had failed, and that the Ukrainian military had been halted and pushed back to its original positions, with Ukraine suffering an estimated 90,000-plus casualties.

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“Run those fiscal deficits and you’ve told all the thinking adults that child’s standard of living, when they reach adulthood, will be one quarter of yours today assuming your children are as competent and intelligent as you are.”

• Demographics Is Destiny (Denninger)

Let’s face facts folks: Nobody who you want to have children will bring said children into a world where they believe said kids will get screwed. That doesn’t mean kids won’t come anyway; they will, for some. Some adults don’t care what happens to their offspring, some actually use them as meal tickets and more. Some people are also always going to be eternally optimistic and therefore none of this will factor into their decisions. And some will have “accidents” and for personal or religious reasons decide to bear and attempt to raise said kids. But none of that changes the basic facts: People who are of decently-competent intellect and of good character, in a world of technology where one can choose when and whether to reproduce, will only do so voluntarily if they believe it makes sense AND their offspring will get a fair shake.

Destroying the fiscal health of the nation by emitting 8% of GDP in unbacked credit via deficit spending is the exact opposite of such. Simple mathematics tells us that this results in you losing half your standard of living in less than ten years and it takes about 20 years to decide to have a kid, have said kid and raise him or her to adulthood. Run those fiscal deficits and you’ve told all the thinking adults that child’s standard of living, when they reach adulthood, will be one quarter of yours today assuming your children are as competent and intelligent as you are. Would anyone who has two IQ points to rub together have children in that situation, when the options facing said kid 20 years hence are privation to this degree or civil war (and the attendant risk of being dead!) to overthrow said government? NO.

Importing millions of unskilled workers who then drop kids who have parents with no skills, and thus no realistic means of learning much from said parents yet are citizens in the gambit to cheapen labor screws the next two generations sequentially. Oh sure, in two generations or so those kids having their own kids will “outgrow” that but then they are able to compute the same odds and they won’t have children either! Think I’m wrong? The data says I’m not; within two generations those who were the children of illegals stop having lots of babies too and its for the same reason, I’ll wager: They’re convinced their children will get screwed and have one quarter of THEIR standard of living — and they remember living eight to a one bedroom apartment!

You think all those glorious “vacation venues” bringing in H2 workers, and all those “tech” places with H1bs, mean parents have a great experience for their kids at lower cost? Maybe, but in addition they have seen the destruction it wreaks on said kids. Please explain how many of Americans you saw of college age working scooping ice cream or similar this summer to make enough money to go to college in the fall. Zero — or nearly so — right? That’s what I saw all over the country. Now if I’m 20, and thinking about making some kids, where are my kids going to be in 20 years? Unable to get a summer job and unable to afford college too. Many see this, keep their pants on and both Trojan and the birth control pill companies keep having decent quarterly reports.

Good jobs with nice pay tend to be concentrated around cities. How’s Chicago doing these days? Yeah, getting mugged while walking around North Michigan Avenue (assuming you don’t get shot, which is of course even worse) is great. Do you want to expose children you might have to that risk? Hmmmm….. probably not. Oh, and speaking of which how are you going to afford a place to live with said kids when the cost of housing and property taxes have skyrocketed by more than double over the last decade or so — and there’s a new round of screwing headed for you in this upcoming year’s bill, all so you can be a “sanctuary” for a bunch of Venezuelan fighting-age men who illegally came to the US! All of this is very conducive to choosing to bear children, right? I mean its not like you’re going to have to pay those property taxes at an ever-escalating rate for the next 20 years if you choose to have kids, right? Oh, wait…. you are!

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“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” – Michelangelo

 

 

Cashew

 

 


The Olive tree of Vouveson on the island of Crete, Greece, is one of the oldest olive trees in the world. Scientists from the University of Crete have estimated it to be 4,000 years old, which means that, when it sprouted, the last mammoths were still walking on Earth, someone in China was discovering bronze casting and the seventh Egyptian dinasty was declining.

The Minoan civilization was thriving and its monumental architecture was adorning the island of Crete. The first stones of the Palace of Minos at Knossos which inspired the myth of the Minotaur were laid. This tree saw the humans deeds for thousands of years, from the Bronze Age to the artificial intelligence and, possibly the most amazing thing, it continues to produce olives at every season.

 

 


Rangers discovered a one-year-old hippo, whom they have named Owen, alone and dehydrated near Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast after he became separated from his herd in 2004. They took him to a wildlife sanctuary in Mombasa, where he soon found a male tortoise with the same dark grey coloring as adult hippos. The tortoise initially hissed at Owen, warning him to stay away, but according to park officials the pair have since become inseparable.

The Aldabran tortoise, called Mzee, or “Old Man” in Swahili, now eats and sleeps beside Owen. Rangers say they could not have placed Owen with another herd of hippos as he would have been killed by an adult male. The park’s tourism manager, Pauline Kimoto, told reporters: “Since Owen arrived on 27 December, the tortoise behaves like a mother to him. The hippo follows the tortoise around and licks his face.”

 

 

 

 

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