Oct 292022
 


Pablo Picasso Head of a bearded man 1940

 

Everybody Wants To Hop On The BRICS Express (Escobar)
Russia’s Move Away From Dollar ‘Irreversible’ – Leading Banker (RT)
Erdogan: Turkiye Will Ensure Distribution Of Russian Gas To Europe (Az.)
Russian Gas Supplies To EU Almost Halved – Novatek CEO (RT)
Putin Explains Western Economic Model (RT)
China Will Support Russia In ‘Overcoming Difficulties’ – Wang (RT)
Russia Suggests Alternative To Suez Canal (RT)
NATO Set To Attack Tiraspol? (Sant)
Nuclear blackmail. Escalation scenarios – Konstantin Sivkov (Saker)
EU Approves Gasoline Car Ban In 2035 (RT)
World Is Moving Into Phase Of Confrontation – German President (Az.)
They Will Blame WWIII On Germany Too (Pattberg)
An Election, If You Can Hold It (Kunstler)
EU Commissioner To Elon Musk: Twitter Will Play By Our Rules (Pol.eu)
“The Gates of Hell Opened” As Musk Takes Over Twitter (Turley)
It Looks Like Credit Suisse Could Be Failing (NC)
If You Got the Covid Shot And Aren’t Injured, This May Be Why – Ryan Cole (BLN)

 

 

“The world will ask you who you are, and if you don’t know, the world will tell you.”
~ Carl Jung

 

 

 

 

Free them

 

 

 

 

Tucker warming

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a number of articles that paint the picture of how the world is changing. No coverage in the west whatsoever. I hope those of you who come here regularly do grasp -part of- that picture.

Everybody Wants To Hop On The BRICS Express (Escobar)

Iran made known its interest to join BRICS even before Saudi Arabia. According to Persian Gulf diplomatic sources, they are already engaged in a somewhat secret channel via Iraq trying to get their act together. Turkey will soon follow – certainly on BRICS and possibly the SCO, where Ankara currently carries the status of extremely interested observer. Now imagine this triad – Riyadh, Tehran, Ankara – closely joined with Russia, India, China (the actual core of the BRICS), and eventually in the SCO, where Iran is as yet the only West Asian nation to be inducted as a full member. The strategic blow to the Empire will go off the charts. The discussions leading to BRICS+ are focusing on the challenging path towards a commodity-backed global currency capable of bypassing US dollar primacy.

Several interconnected steps point towards increasing symbiosis between BRICS+ and SCO. The latter’s members states have already agreed on a road map for gradually increasing trade in national currencies in mutual settlements. The State Bank of India – the nation’s top lender – is opening special rupee accounts for Russia-related trade. Russian natural gas to Turkey will be paid 25 percent in rubles and Turkish lira, complete with a 25 percent discount Erdogan personally asked of Putin. Russian bank VTB has launched money transfers to China in yuan, bypassing SWIFT, while Sberbank has started lending out money in yuan. Russian energy behemoth Gazprom agreed with China that gas supply payments should shift to rubles and yuan, split evenly.

Iran and Russia are unifying their banking systems for trade in rubles/rial. Egypt’s Central Bank is moving to establish an index for the pound – through a group of currencies plus gold – to move the national currency away from the US dollar. And then there’s the TurkStream saga. Ankara for years has been trying to position itself as a privileged East-West gas hub. After the sabotage of the Nord Streams, Putin has handed it on a plate by offering Turkey the possibility to increase Russian gas supplies to the EU via such a hub. The Turkish Energy Ministry stated that Ankara and Moscow have already reached an agreement in principle. This will mean in practice Turkey controlling the gas flow to Europe not only from Russia but also Azerbaijan and a great deal of West Asia, perhaps even including Iran, as well as Libya in northeast Africa. LNG terminals in Egypt, Greece and Turkiye itself may complete the network.

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The consequences of American overreach. Once Saudi goes, so does the dollar. And Saudi can’t stay away much longer, it’s very much against their own interest.

Russia’s Move Away From Dollar ‘Irreversible’ – Leading Banker (RT)

Russia is moving away from using the US dollar and euro in foreign trade, a process that is “irreversible,” claimed Andrei Kostin, the head of VTB Bank, one of Russia’s largest lenders. “Quitting the US dollar and euro is already an irreversible process for Russia. Taking into account the current trend, our main foreign trade partners in the medium term will be China, the EAEU countries, Turkey, India, Middle East, Latin America, and Africa. Switching to national currencies in trade with this particular group of countries is the top priority for us,” Kostin said at the Eurasian Economic Forum in Baku on Thursday.

Moreover, according to the banker, the decision made by the US and other Western nations to freeze Russia’s foreign exchange reserves earlier this year shows that no country is safe from such treatment, a state of affairs that will likely turn other nations away from the major reserve currencies. “No state can feel fully protected in the conditions of a dollar-centric global economy,” Kostin stressed. His words echoed statements made last month by President Vladimir Putin. In mid-September, while discussing measures for restructuring the country’s economy under Western sanctions, the Russian president called de-dollarization “an inevitable process.”

Russia approved a plan for the de-dollarization of the domestic economy back in 2018. A package of measures was introduced aimed at speeding up the process, with the goal of implementing the steps within six years. However, following the unprecedented economic sanctions imposed on Russia in the wake of its military operation in Ukraine, Moscow accelerated the process of moving away from what it calls the “compromised” dollar and euro. A ruble-based payment scheme for gas exports was implemented and national currencies started being used in settling Russia’s foreign trade with its trading partners.

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We all wanted Turkey to gain influence, right?!

Erdogan: Turkiye Will Ensure Distribution Of Russian Gas To Europe (Az.)

Ankara, through the Turkish Stream gas pipeline, will ensure the distribution of Russian gas to Europe, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told members of the ruling Justice and Development Party in Ankara, Report informs, citing Anadolu. “As a result of our negotiations with Russia, we will ensure the distribution of natural gas from Russia to Europe through the Turkish Stream,” Erdogan said. Earlier, the presidents of Russia and Turkiye instructed to work out in detail and quickly the issue of creating a gas hub in Turkiye, through which, in particular, the Russian Federation could move gas transit from the Nord Streams to the Black Sea region and Turkiye. During a speech to members of the ruling party, Erdogan also touched upon the country’s success in the field of energy, noting that Turkiye had discovered a field in the Black Sea with gas reserves of 540 billion cubic meters.

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“..Mikhelson suggested that the upcoming winter will be the easiest of the next three..”

Russian Gas Supplies To EU Almost Halved – Novatek CEO (RT)

Russian gas supplies to the EU dropped by almost 50% since May, while exports to Japan and South Korea remained at about the same level as in 2021, the CEO of Novatek, Russia’s second largest gas producer, said on Thursday. “Russian supplies to Europe decreased by nearly 50 billion cubic meters of gas (bcm) in the past four-five months. As of October 1, the slump has reached 47%,” CEO Leonid Mikhelson said at the Eurasian Economic Forum in Baku, adding that the EU has almost replenished the shortfall by boosting LNG consumption by 65%. According to his estimates, the EU has received a total of 43bcm in additional volumes of gas via its LNG terminals, with 29bcm arriving from the US.


Mikhelson suggested that the upcoming winter will be the easiest of the next three, given that the bloc has managed to build up its gas stocks. However, he warned that with restored demand in China, the global economy may need about 60-70 million tons of LNG in the next two years to offset reduced pipeline gas supplies. Mikhelson also pointed to the lack of new major projects until 2026. In his view, global GDP will struggle to grow amid skyrocketing energy prices, and the only way to rein in the inflation and stabilize the markets is to beef up investment in new large-scale energy projects. And this, according to Mikhelson, is only possible with international cooperation.

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” This is not progress, but enslavement, mixing economies to a primitive level..”

Putin Explains Western Economic Model (RT)

As soon as any market is opened for certain goods, the West seizes it along with all the resources, pushing away local manufacturers, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “They build relationships this way – markets and resources are captured, countries are deprived of their technological, scientific potential. This is not progress, but enslavement, mixing economies to a primitive level,” he stated on Thursday at a plenary meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club. According to the Russian leader, Western countries lay claim to all the resources of mankind as they aim “to strengthen their unconditional dominance in the world economy and politics.”


On the topic of world trade, Putin said the beneficiaries of this should be the majority, not the super-rich corporations. “Together everyone will gain more than individually,” the president said. He also criticized Western companies who are leaving the Russian market and supposedly selling their entire businesses “for merely one ruble.” They are doing this while whispering in the ear of their management: “we will be back soon,” Putin added.

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“It is the legitimate right of China and Russia to realize their own development and revitalization, which fully conforms to the development trend of the times..”

China Will Support Russia In ‘Overcoming Difficulties’ – Wang (RT)

China has pledged to support Russia as it faces the combined power of the West, Foreign Minister Wang Yi reportedly told his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov during a phone conversation on Thursday, in which the two officials vowed to back each other in their geopolitical endeavors. Beijing will “firmly support the Russian side,” assisting President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to “unite and lead the Russian people to overcome difficulties and eliminate disturbances,” as well as realize “strategic development goals” to bolster Russia’s status as a major power on the international stage, according to the readout posted by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“It is the legitimate right of China and Russia to realize their own development and revitalization, which fully conforms to the development trend of the times,”said Beijing’s press release. “Any attempt to block the progress of China and Russia will never succeed.” The top diplomats reaffirmed their “mutual trust and firm support” and vowed to work together to take both of their countries to the next level in such a way that would not only benefit both nations but “provide more stability to the turbulent world.” Lavrov also congratulated Xi Jinping on his recent reelection as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.

According the Russian Foreign Ministry, Lavrov thanked Beijing for supporting Russia’s efforts to achieve a “fair settlement of the situation around Ukraine” and derail Kiev’s alleged plans to set off a weapon of mass destruction in a false-flag provocation that could be used to demand more pressure on Moscow and additional military aid from the West. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has been contacting his counterparts in the US, UK, France, Turkey, India and China about the possible Ukrainian provocation this week. The top diplomats of the US, UK, and France issued a joint statement on Monday rejecting Moscow’s claims as “transparently false allegations,”however. Their Ukrainian counterpart Dmitry Kuleba also denied the accusations and blamed Moscow for waging a disinformation campaign that “might be aimed at creating a pretext for a false flag operation.”

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Not a new idea, but it gained urgency.

Russia Suggests Alternative To Suez Canal (RT)

The North-South corridor could become a safe substitute for the Suez Canal, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov said on Friday, adding that he expects the volume of Russian cargo via this route to double by 2030. Speaking at the Eurasian Economic Forum, he noted that the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC) and other alternative routes are gaining importance due to “global shifts of world markets” to China, South-East Asia and the Persian Gulf. Existing transport infrastructure which has been historically focused on the “East-West horizon ceases to meet global trends,” according to the Deputy premier, while the “North-South route may become a real competitor to the Suez Canal.” The route is currently the only deep-sea trade artery which connects Europe and Asia, and such “monopolarity” poses risks to the global economy, the official said.

He recalled an incident in 2021 when a container ship became stuck in the Suez Canal, triggering knock-on effects on global trade.The INSTC is a 7,200-kilometer multi-mode transit system that connects ship, rail, and road routes for moving cargo between India, Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, Central Asia, and Europe. Experts say the route could cut costs by about 50% and save up to 20 days of travel time. In an effort to build up new logistics chains and make the route viable, Russia has proposed establishing an international operator for the North-South corridor along with Iran and Azerbaijan, the minister said. The construction of the INSTC began in the early 2000s, but developing it further has taken on a new importance in light of Western sanctions, which have forced Russia to shift its trade flows from Europe to Asia and the Middle East.

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”If NATO desires to fortify Odessa against the Russian advance, or use Odessa as a base to engage Russian forces near Nikolaev, they have a serious logistical problem.”

NATO Set To Attack Tiraspol? (Sant)

Many years ago I was an officer in the National Guard sister Brigade to the 101st. Both Brigades are “air assault light infantry,” which was developed in the Vietnam War with the 7th Air Cavalry Division. “We Were Soldiers Once and Young,” tells that story. Though the 101st is called “airborne” in reference to its World War II days, today its soldiers are not trained to jump out of airplanes; the 82nd Airborne Division does that. The 101st deploys using UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters. Each division in the brigade has an aviation battalion with three companies of Blackhawk helicopters. Their primary combat mission is to secure a bridgehead. When deploying, an air assault infantry battalion goes to a designated pickup zone, and a company of Blackhawks comes in to ferry them to the landing zone.

Although they are trained to rappel out of the helicopters in a hot Landing Zone, in practice the helicopters usually land, and the troops jump out. It is much faster and safer. Two minutes later the chopper is back in the air and goes back for another squad at the pickup zone. Thus it might take the better part of an hour with two or three round trips to move an entire infantry battalion from the PZ to the LZ, longer if the distance is longer. While an air assault infantry brigade can move 105 mm light artillery pieces via helicopter, the main supply and logistics assets of the brigade must follow the main force on the ground in trucks. Therefore, unlike the 82nd Airborne Division, or the Rangers, both of which are designed to jump into areas far behind enemy lines, an air assault brigade like the 101st is limited in how far it can leapfrog ahead of its support assets.

If NATO desires to fortify Odessa against the Russian advance, or use Odessa as a base to engage Russian forces near Nikolaev, they have a serious logistical problem. Supply lines from Poland on main Ukrainian highways or railroads must travel 700 kilometers to reach Odessa. The shortest supply lines to Odessa for NATO would be from Romania, which has two segments of border with Ukraine. However, the best paved route would be through Moldova, which is not a member of NATO. Romania has state of the art NATO air defense batteries which can cover most of the route to Odesssa. Therefore, assuming they are effective against Russian cruise missiles, which may be a bad assumption, it would be safer to supply forces in Odessa from Romania than from Poland.

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Video transcript. Konstantin Sivkov (Navy Captain 1st Rank, retired) holds a doctorate of military sciences and is the deputy president of the Russian Academy of Missile and Artillery Sciences.

Nuclear blackmail. Escalation scenarios – Konstantin Sivkov (Saker)

“Only the West needs nuclear weapons. Only the west. And the West needs them for the following reasons. Because winter is coming. Western sanctions brought not just .. not led to the collapse of the Russian economy, but on the contrary put on the brink of collapse the European economy. And in these conditions the Europeans … if Russia persists through the winter. Now, when the “greenery” withers and falls, cold weather comes, winter .. Ukrainians will have it much worse than now. It will be easier for us to attack and act. Therefore, under these conditions, Western elites are in a position where they are about to die as result of the revolution, actually, inside countries, their own countries. This is brewing there.

Especially against the backdrop of cold weather this will be inevitable, in the apartments, in the houses, when problems begin with food .. with food supplies, with other goods. When their factories stop, completely shut down as the result of the lack of gas shortage, or rather its absense. And they – yes, they need a nuclear war now. Because they have not been able to mobilize their peoples to go to war, yet. A regular war. But to unleash a nuclear war and against the backdrop of a nuclear war and the resulting threats of radioactive contamination to wide, large areas on the territory of Ukraine, on the territory of Poland, Germany, other countries in Europe and then mobilize the European population to a war against Russia, this may well be part of their plan.

Therefore, they are extremely interested in doing this. Now, a natural scenario can be suggested to explain how this may be realized and why they scream [in the media]. Because Russia will use nuclear weapons. There are two clear options here. The first option is that .. the Americans, the americans themselves fire a missile MGM-140 ATACMS in the direction from East to West, in this direction [showing with his hand] – from East to West, from one territory controlled by the Armed Forces of Ukraine to a nuclear power plant located in the west of Ukraine, with it being destroyed. ATACMS missile. Not one, but several ATACMS missiles. As a result, a new Chernobyl is created .. Chernobyl is possible, by the way, Chernobyl might be hit. Cannot be completely ruled out. After that, Russia is blamed for this.”

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Due to the lack of sufficient cobalt, lithium, nickel, Europe (and California) will resemble Cuba with tons of old internal combustion cars.. And bicycles, mopeds.

EU Approves Gasoline Car Ban In 2035 (RT)

The EU has reached an agreement that would oblige carmakers to achieve a 100% cut in CO2 emissions by 2035. The measure would effectively ban the sale of new petrol and diesel-fueled cars in the bloc starting from that year. The deal was struck on Thursday between negotiators from EU member states, the European Parliament, and the European Commission, which all must agree when a new law is to be adopted within the EU.“The European Commission welcomes the agreement reached last night by the European Parliament and Council ensuring all new cars and vans registered in Europe will be zero-emission by 2035,” the Commission said in a press release following the deal’s announcement.


The agreement also included a 55% cut in CO2 emissions for new cars sold from 2030 against 2021 levels, which exceeds the existing target of a 37.5% reduction. EU climate policy chief Frans Timmermans said the agreement is a signal to all that “Europe is embracing the shift to zero-emission mobility.” According to the press release, the new regulation aims “to make the EU’s transport system more sustainable, provide cleaner air for Europeans, and marks an important step in delivering the European Green Deal.” The agreement is provisionary and now requires formal adoption by both the European Parliament and the EU Council. The timeframe for this is so far unclear.

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The German president is an absolute airhead. And that is scary. Telling his people they have no choice but to freeze and fight.

World Is Moving Into Phase Of Confrontation – German President (Az.)

The world is moving into a phase of confrontation, and harder years lie ahead for Germany, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Friday, according to Anadolu Agency. In a major speech, Steinmeier warned about the severe consequences of the Russia-Ukraine war, underlining that Germany will have to face new challenges, and calling for public solidarity in the face of ongoing crises. “The 24th of February was a turning point in history,” Steinmeier said, referring to the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine, adding that the war ended an era of peace and stability which Germans profited from greatly and reduced the European security order to “rubble.” “With his imperial obsession, the Russian president has broken international law, challenged borders, committed land grabs. The Russian attack is an attack on all the lessons the world had learned from the two world wars,” said Steinmeier.


Steinmeier said the consequences of the war, new security threats, the energy crisis, and inflation have greatly challenged Germany’s successful economic model. “I believe many of the concerns are valid. We are experiencing the deepest crisis since the reunification of Germany,” he stressed.Steinmeier underlined that Germany will cut its dependency on Russian gas and oil, and adapt to new challenges by taking the necessary steps, but will not end its efforts to promote international dialogue and cooperation.“A new bloc confrontation, a division of the world into ‘us against them’ is not in our interest,” he stressed.“Yes, we must reduce our vulnerability, reduce one-sided dependencies. But that doesn’t mean less networking with the world, but more,” he added.

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This is what you call a tirade.

They Will Blame WWIII On Germany Too (Pattberg)

Mr. Scholz will humiliate Germany in China so much, will offend the Chinese commentators so much, that all hell will break loose and hatred and bitter rivalry ensues. Hundreds of millions will suffer from lost trade, war, and poverty. Who gives. Scholzes don’t care if all goes to pot. As the Buddhists say: All life is suffering. Say the Germans: Done! Displacement, violence, and misery all equal eastward expansion, remember? If you are German, and you are already dead in 80 years, why not start World War III now while you can? The Americans arranged it, but they will probably say the Germans did it, because “Germany started World War I and II AND III”… is just the better story. The Germans are the perfect closet assholes because they have passion but no compassion. They lack empathy.

This lack of empathy passed on from generation to generation of surviving Huns and became the genealogy of Evil. Just read the archaeologists of Evil, from Hannah Arendt to Andrew Lobaczewski. The Germans are the world’s main source of Evil. Their own leaders say this much about themselves. Said former President of Germany, Joachim Gauck: “I feel ashamed to be a German” or “I am suspicious about the German language… because it breeds pride, hatred, and bestiality,” and… wait for it: “I hate and despise this country!” This is real, folks. It is what it is. We must deal with these murderous lunatics before they murder everyone or themselves. Evil oozes from their huge foreheads, streaking their oily white skin.

And if everyone says you are part of the historic Evil, you will probably turn out to be an asshole, just like Gauck and Scholz and the rest of them. Evil goes with German as the Devil goes with Dr. Faust. There is no Mao or Stalin in this world that could have existed without German Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche, verstehst Du?! The coming War will be blamed on the assholes in the closet. It is too awesome an award to be handed to the Russians, Chinese, or the Iews. “Germany did it once again,” will they all sing, the voices of doom. Or they’ll clap “The Death of Europe!” and all its rotten brains. Either way, the Germans will be the peons, the scapegoats, the blame race.

World War I and II kind of won our attention, remember? Blood, soil, women, and resources. If you are a small militant nation, you can always destroy more than you can build. World War III is the most progressive thing that could ever happen to Berlin and Europe. The world would be indifferent if China had never existed. But if the Germans had never existed, we would never have had Charles Bukowski, Klaus Schwab, or Donald Trump. Beijing knows that Evil always triumphs for the Europeans. This law of History must be obeyed. My God, what have the Europeans done! Why would China even cater to forgetful Mr. Scholz in Beijing where Germans murdered Chinamen in the past? Why would China tolerate another military German-Japan axis? Because Mr. Xi is wise and will go with the flow of History. That much attitude he shares with most world leaders: When World War III breaks out, it will be blamed in any way possible on Germany. You better believe it.

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“..it doesn’t have to resolve on the side of high-tech tyranny and super-centralized global governance by elitist maniacs. In fact, it can’t.”

An Election, If You Can Hold It (Kunstler)

Is there some penalty for running a shadow government, perhaps something in the sedition or treason folders of federal law? The degree of malign policy coordination throughout Western Civ also suggests that outside actors exert some heavy influence on our affairs. Is Mr. Obama running “Joe Biden” according to a WEF playbook, as appears to be the case with WEFfer implants Justin Trudeau of Canada and Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand? It would help explain how so many measures and actions outside our national interest have played out lately — the Gestapo-ization of the FBI, the overt censorship, the wide-open border, draining the strategic petroleum reserve, the drag queen shindigs, the foolish effort to “weaken” Russia in Ukraine, the climate change hysteria, the fiscal idiocy, and everything about-and-around Covid-19.

Of course, the rule-of-law has become a pitifully squishy thing in our time. Nobody is accountable for anything these days. The federal agencies can act however they like in the way of persecuting their political opponents, or inflicting immense harm on the public — like the CDC, FDA, and other public health agencies insanely pushing deadly mRNA vaccines on the public, despite massive evidence that the shots have killed and disabled hundreds of thousands. It’s likely that we will see aggressive hearings into all sorts or government misconduct come January, and it is important to determine who did what to drive America so badly off the rails, but that won’t mitigate the pitfalls and quandaries ahead. There is a re-set underway for sure with every teeter of industrial civilization, but it doesn’t have to resolve on the side of high-tech tyranny and super-centralized global governance by elitist maniacs. In fact, it can’t.

The bottlenecks of resources — energy, commodities, metals, all material things — plus the growing scarcity of real capital (as in representations of genuine wealth), guarantee that nothing organized at the gigantic scale will be able to continue — certainly not any global political administration. The WEF is a fantasy factory; all it can really produce is chaos and misery. Many national governments may not survive the great discontinuities ahead. Everything we do has to get finer, smaller in scale, and more local. Many, maybe most, of our high-tech systems will be crippled by energy shortages and supply line breakdowns. The business models for everything — from the oil industry to commercial aviation to running mega-cities — no longer pencil out. And as economist Herb Stein observed years ago: things that can’t go on, stop.

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A little man trying to puff up his little chest.

EU Commissioner To Elon Musk: Twitter Will Play By Our Rules (Pol.eu)

Elon Musk now owns Twitter but the EU is watching carefully lest the self-styled “free speech absolutist” turn the social media site into a platform for hate speech. After Musk tweeted “the bird is freed,” Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton responded with a wave emoji and “In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules.” Musk’s takeover — reported Thursday night — could have huge implications for the future of the site, especially if former U.S. President Donald Trump is allowed back on the platform, and if Musk loosens the rules to prevent the spread of hate speech and misinformation.


Musk promised Thursday that the platform would not become “a free-for-all hellscape where anything can be said with no consequences.” Breton’s tweet was accompanied by the hashtag DSA, a reference to Digital Services Act — which requires providers of digital services to take swift action against illegal online content, such as hate speech. The commissioner also tweeted a video showing him and Elon Musk in May after discussing the Digital Services Act. In the clip, Breton tells Musk “I was happy to … explain to you the DSA, a new regulation in Europe ” and Musk replies: “I agree with everything you said.” “That’s what he said,” Breton tweeted Friday.

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“Today on Twitter feels like the last evening in a Berlin nightclub at the twilight of Weimar Germany.”

“The Gates of Hell Opened” As Musk Takes Over Twitter (Turley)

Led by President Joe Biden, Democratic leaders and media figures have demanded corporate censorship and even state censorship to curtail opposing views on issues ranging from climate change to election integrity to public health to gender identity. The Washington Post’s Max Boot, for example, declared, “For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.” Many of those same figures are now apoplectic at the thought that others may be able to express dissenting views on subjects ranging from climate change to election regulations to gender identity. Journalist Molly Jong-Fast asked, “Can someone make a new Twitter or is this a very stupid question?” In other words, a journalist wants to recreate a social media platform where others can be routinely silenced.

The answer is simple: Facebook . . . and virtually every other social media platform. The freak out from the Musk-phobic was triggered by the prospect of a single social media company offering greater free speech protections. Just one. However, they know that the effort to control political and social speech will be lost if people have an alternative. These companies are only able to sell censorship because they have largely been able to bar free speech competitors. Now there may be an alternative. The panic over free speech breaking out on a single social media site is shared by journalism and law professors. CUNY journalism professor Jeff Jarvis wrote “The sun is dark” and “This is an emergency! Twitter is to be taken over by the evil Sith lord.” He previously wrote, after news of the likely purchase by Musk, that “Today on Twitter feels like the last evening in a Berlin nightclub at the twilight of Weimar Germany.”

He is not alone. We have been discussing the rise of advocacy journalism and the rejection of objectivity in journalism schools. Writers, editors, commentators, and academics have embraced rising calls for censorship and speech controls, including President-elect Joe Biden and his key advisers. This movement includes academics rejecting the very concept of objectivity in journalism in favor of open advocacy. Columbia Journalism Dean and New Yorker writer Steve Coll decried how the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was being “weaponized” to protect disinformation. In an interview with The Stanford Daily, Stanford journalism professor, Ted Glasser, insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.”

He rejected the notion that the journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality.” Thus, “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.” Likewise, in an article published in The Atlantic by Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith and University of Arizona law professor Andrew Keane Woods called for Chinese-style censorship of the internet, stating that “in the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong.”

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“..CS’s shares plunged a whopping 18.6% yesterday — their biggest daily fall ever.”

The too big to fail banks will be bailed out by central banks, governments and finally each other until that is no longer viable. And then think dominoes.

It Looks Like Credit Suisse Could Be Failing (NC)

Credit Suisse is one of 11 European lenders on the Financial Stability Board’s list of Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs). In other words, it is officially too big to fail, but it is teetering. Yesterday it disclosed a whopping third-quarter loss of $4 billion — almost ten times average estimates of $416 million. The loss was largely blamed on a reassessment of so-called deferred tax assets (DTA), which in turn was apparently a result of the company’s strategic review.* It is Credit Suisse’s fourth quarterly net loss in a row. So far this year, it has posted $5.94 billion of losses. Net revenue, at $3.8 billion, was up marginally on the last quarter but was down 30% from Q3-2021. Over the past ten quarters Credit Suisse has only managed to muster one quarter of actual year-on-year revenue growth. The value of its asset base has also shrunk drastically, from $937 billion in December 2020 to $707 billion today.

To steady the ship, the bank has presented a new strategic overhaul. It is the third attempt in recent years by successive CEOs to turn the bank around. At the core of the overhaul is a plan to raise $4 billion of fresh capital. The good news for CS is that it has already found a major backer: Saudi Arabia’s largest commercial bank, Saudi National Bank (SNB), which has pledged up to $1.52 billion of capital. That will give the SNB 9.9% of outstanding CS shares. Majority controlled by the House of Saud, the SNB (not to be confused with the Swiss National Bank) has also expressed an interest in participating in future capital measures of Credit Suisse to support the establishment of an independent investment bank in Saudi Arabia.

If nothing else, SNB’s participation will make for interesting boardroom drama given the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, a country that is locked in a diplomatic conflict with Saudi Arabia, has a 5% stake in the Swiss lender. The question now is whether or now CS will be able to secure the remaining $2.5 billion. The capital raise is already going to dilute existing CS shareholders, many of whom are miffed at having already poured $12.2 billion of additional capital into the lender — more than its current market value — since 2015. That was one reason why CS’s shares plunged a whopping 18.6% yesterday — their biggest daily fall ever. Those shares are now down an eye-watering 57% so far this year and over 95% since 2008.

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Pretty brilliant video. And a new angle for most.

“..5, 6, 7, 8, 9 years until you have a product pure enough..”

If You Got the Covid Shot And Aren’t Injured, This May Be Why – Ryan Cole (BLN)

Pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole, MD, explains why many vaccinated were lucky not to get injured by the dangerous Covid-19 mRNA shots during a panel discussion at the Better Way Conference in Vienna, Austria, September 17, 2022. Dr. Cole’s explanation came during a stellar panel discussion with other pathologists Drs. Sucharit Bhakdi, Arne Burkhardt and Andreas Sönnichsen, all speaking on the topic of Covid-19 “vaccine” injuries. Each participant gave an individual presentation before the panel discussion.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Zuckerberg lost over $100 billion in the past year. But at least Paul Pelosi is being treated in the Zuckerberg hospital in SF.
Lots of people don’t believe the Pelosi attack story. Don’t they have security there for the 3rd in line for US presidency, who’s worth 100s of millions? How can a guy wearing no pants, swinging a hammer, just walk in? Was Paul Pelosi also wearing no pants, and swinging a hammer?

 

 

Died Suddenly

 

 

 

 

Rogan Musk Alex Jones

 

 

 

 

Puppy butterfly
https://twitter.com/i/status/1585777213416218624

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Sep 202022
 
 September 20, 2022  Posted by at 8:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  75 Responses »


Salvador Dali Cadaques 1923

 

Russia Is Seeking Swift End To Ukraine Conflict – Turkey (RT)
Ukraine is Not a New Afghanistan (Batiushka)
German Politician Predicts Fate Of Nord Stream 2 (RT)
< Germany Boosting Russian Imports – Trade Mission (RT)
The European Union Is About to Rupture (Malinen)
French Warned Of Winter Blackouts (RT)
Dire Winter Scenario In Sight For EU (RT)
UN Chief Supports Moscow’s Aid Proposal (RT)
The Unintended Consequences Of The EU Energy Emergency Plan (OP)
Ukraine Claims Missile Hit Area Near Nuclear Power Plant (RT)
Why the World Economic Forum’s Plutocracy Should Be Dissolved (Shurk)
Whistleblower: FBI Uses Jan. 6 Cases To Create Illusion Of National Crisis (JTN)
A Walk on the Wild Side (Kunstler)
Why So Many Cling to Covid Panic (Oshinskie)

 

 

At least hundreds of Canadians have posted their life stories with the #TrudeauMustGo hashtag. He now calls them Putin puppets. It’s hard to show less respect for your own people. Twitter is now shadowbanning the hashtag.

 

 

 

 

Devine
https://twitter.com/i/status/1571879054936100866

 

 

 

 

Veneto, the richest region in Italy.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1570650331595542528

 

 

 

 

 

 

Erdogan the peacemaker. Lovely.

Russia Is Seeking Swift End To Ukraine Conflict – Turkey (RT)

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin wants to see a swift conclusion to the conflict in Ukraine, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday in an interview with the PBS NewsHour program. Erdogan said he held “extensive meetings with Putin in Uzbekistan” during last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit. “I realized that they are actually trying to finish this as soon as possible. This situation is a big problem,” the Turkish leader said, referring to the conflict in Ukraine. Erdogan, who is in New York for the UN General Assembly, said he wants Putin and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to talk directly, in order to find a solution to the conflict, which has been underway since late February. “We have a persistent desire to bring these leaders together. Let’s bring them together. I want to hear everything from them. We haven’t succeeded yet, but I’m not without hope,” he stated.


The Turkish president claimed to have told both Putin and Zelensky that a negotiated end to the fighting is needed because “nobody will be winning at the end of the day.” The Kremlin earlier said the Russian and Ukrainian leaders should only meet to sign concrete agreements prepared for them by their negotiators. Turkey has maintained contacts with both Moscow and Kiev throughout the hostilities. It condemned the use of force by Russia, but at the same time refused to join the international sanctions against Moscow and continued dealing with the country. Ankara was also involved in the UN-brokered deal to allow export of grain from the Ukrainian ports, achieved between Russia and Ukraine in July. Russia recently complained that the part of the agreement, which calls for removing obstacles for shipments of its food products, remained unfulfilled by Western countries.

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“There’s an east wind coming all the same. Such a wind as never blew…. It will be cold and bitter….and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it’s God’s own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.”

– His Last Bow, Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, October 1917

Ukraine is Not a New Afghanistan (Batiushka)

[..] we have two quite different and incomparable countries: Afghanistan at the centre [of the Eurasian Heartland] and the Ukraine on the Western margins – which is what its very name means. The Afghans live in inaccessible mountains, the Ukrainians on open steppes. The Afghans have a very strong identity, even if, like other mountain-dwellers, as in the Scottish Highlands or the Swiss Alps, they are divided into fiercely different and warring tribal clans and different languages according to the valley they live in. However, the Ukrainians in their open land are swayed one way and another, largely depending on who makes the best offer, on what way the wind blows and the tide flows.

The USA has constantly tried to chip off, occupy and control marginal pieces of Eurasia, islands like Iceland, the British Isles and Ireland, Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan, peninsulas like South Korea, South Vietnam and Western Europe. In 1975 it was humiliated and chased out of South-East Asia when Saigon was at last liberated. Other areas it occupies, like Taiwan and Korea, are under threat. In 2021, after it had dared to occupy not a marginal area, but the very centre of the Eurasian Heartland in Afghanistan, it was humiliated and chased out. It was a classic example of hubris and overreach. ‘We’re American, we can do anything’. Actually, you can’t.

Now the USA is trying to cling on to Western Europe by shoring up its literal borderland, the Ukraine. This is one of the last US attempts to keep power in Eurasia. The USA fears Eurasia, for Eurasia is much stronger than it and the USA is isolated on its big island, placed, as if for quarantine, between the Atlantic and the Pacific. One day it will reluctantly be forced to admit that Eurasia is geographically indivisible, however much it tries to divide it politically and occupy it militarily. Then it will retire to its isolation on its big island, rejected by Afro-Eurasia, Oceania and Latin America, and start doing some very serious soul-searching about its own history. It is called repentance.

The USA has been expanding eastwards across the Atlantic for over three generations now. It has controlled the UK since 1942, from where it invaded the rest of Western Europe in 1944 and invaded Central Europe since 1989, using puppet elites, making assassinations and fiddling elections. Portugal under Salazar, Spain under Franco, Italy under every possible fraudster, Greece under the Colonels, France after it deposed the Last Frenchman, De Gaulle, the UK under the Conservatives, are only examples of its manipulations. [..] Exactly a generation after taking over Central Europe in 1989, since 2014 the USA has been trying to expand into Eastern Europe. We are now at an irreversible point. History books will be written as events ‘Before 2022 and After 2022’.

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“..this cooperation is irrecoverably destroyed”. “..Stephan Weil said Berlin would never be able to trust Moscow again as a reliable energy supplier..”

But Berlin is a reliable customer?! Can you even hear yourself?

German Politician Predicts Fate Of Nord Stream 2 (RT)

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was intended to pump gas from Russia to Germany, is doomed to remain idle indefinitely, the head of Germany’s Lower Saxony region has suggested. Stephan Weil said Berlin would never be able to trust Moscow again as a reliable energy supplier. In an interview with Germany’s DPA news agency published on Monday, Governor Weil said the pipeline project would not be revived even after Russian President Vladimir Putin leaves office. “The loss of trust is so fundamental that there will never again be a situation in which a German federal government can rely on energy from Russia,” the official noted. According to Weil, the “Nord Stream 2 will never go into operation.” The governor claimed that the Kremlin has burnt its bridges and that “this cooperation is irrecoverably destroyed.”

Weil concluded by proclaiming that the “West will recover from [the situation] faster than Russia.” The construction of the second leg of the existing Nord Stream pipeline began in May 2018. The project was expected to double Russian gas supplies to Germany. Despite opposition from the US and some EU member states, the German government staunchly defended the project, and the pipeline was completed. However, Berlin put its launch on hold indefinitely on February 22, after Russia recognized the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, days before Moscow launched its offensive against Ukraine.

In July and August, Russia incrementally reduced gas supplies to Germany via Nord Stream 1, before shutting it down altogether in early September. Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom cited technical issues caused by Western sanctions. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has made it clear that the pipeline will not resume operation until Western sanctions are lifted. sMeanwhile, Berlin has accused Russia of weaponizing gas supplies. Soaring prices coupled with the closure of the Nord Stream 1 saw the German government put in place emergency measures to ensure the country has enough energy to survive the winter. Earlier this week, President Putin suggested the West should give the green light to the Nord Stream 2 “if it’s that bad.”

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Yeah, yeah: “..this cooperation is irrecoverably destroyed”.

Germany Boosting Russian Imports – Trade Mission (RT)

The volume of German imports from Russia has risen over the first seven months of this year by 32.6% in annual terms, amounting to $27.9 billion, the Russian Trade Mission in Berlin told RIA Novosti on Monday, citing data from Germany’s federal statistical office, Destatis. According to the Russian trade representative in Germany, Andrey Sobolev, the rise in imports of fuel and energy products through July was 40.5%. Purchases of Russian gold have risen more than tenfold, while the volume of silver imports jumped by almost five times. The EU country has also boosted purchases of other metals from Russia, including copper, aluminum, and nickel.


The report also indicated that German exports to Russia decreased by 43.6% to $10.2 billion compared to the same period last year. Declining exports caused a $17.7 billion trade imbalance for Germany. The trade representative explained that, despite the general decline in exports to Russia, “there was an increase in supplies from Germany of pharmaceutical products, seeds and fruits.” Russia accounted for 2.3% of total German foreign trade and was the fourth most important country for German goods outside of the EU in 2021. In April, US analytics firm S&P Global warned of a possible financial shock if there’s a “trade rupture” between the two countries.

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It has become a prison.

The European Union Is About to Rupture (Malinen)

The functioning of the EU has, until recently, been built on two political pillars that now appear to be crumbling. Primarily, German growth has made possible the joint financing (through low-cost debt, the EU budget, and the central banks’ clearing system) of unsuccessful economies without the EU forcing them to commit to politically unacceptable reforms. Beneficent global developments have made possible the concentration on economic integration while going slow on the much more contentious integration of cultural, social, and foreign policies. The deterioration of the global economy, together with EU policies, now threaten industry and living standards in EU member states, reduce the scope of joint economic support, and force member states to rapidly evaluate their readiness for possibly radical reductions in their political self-determination.

This is most evident in Italy. The yields of Italian sovereign debt have reached levels that can be considered unsustainable, given the country’s high indebtedness and low rate of economic growth. For example, the yield of the Italian 10-year bond breached the 4 percent line late this past week. The maturity structure of Italian debt is also rather unfavorable. At the end of June, for example, Italy had issued only 52 percent of its needs for external financing in 2022. In addition, 35 percent of her outstanding debt will come due already in 2024. Half of her total debt will come due within five years. Without active country-specific support from the ECB, which the newly introduced Transmission Protection Instrument is designed to facilitate, Italian debt is unsustainable at current yields.

Disagreements among member states on the wisdom of filling the ECB with Italian bonds is bound to weaken the glue keeping the EU together as before. The energy crisis is also sowing seeds of serious inner conflict. The politics in the EU are becoming less forgiving as difficulties mount. Both Hungary and the Czech Republic have objected to the plans for a price cap of Russian gas, which now looks unlikely to be enforced. The European Commission is also planning to cut funding for the Hungarian government of Victor Orban due to “rule-of-law concerns.” This is unlikely to increase the incentives of Hungary to stay in the union. More generally, as funding is made conditional on countries meeting the test of adhering to “European values,” one can expect the list of such essentially political requirements to grow as economic conditions worsen and demands for uniform policies grow.

For example, Poland is fed up with constant extra demands from the EU, like the demand to walk back from the changes Polish government was planning to the judicial system, considering the distribution of funds from the Recovery Fund to its government. Krzysztof Sobolewski, the governing party’s secretary-general, has warned that without a clear change in the actions of Brussels, “We will have no choice but to pull out all the cannons in our arsenal and open fire.” Since a number of contentious decisions still require unanimity, such a threat might be unwise to take lightly. [..] Reports state that Russia is preparing a first shipment from its new liquefied natural gas plant to Greece. Hungary, as an outlier, is buying additional gas from Russia in accordance with their new agreement. It will be interesting to see what Germany may choose to do if the impact of energy scarcity on its economy and population is as large as some reports suggest.


CPI lags PPI: “German Consumer Prices (CPI) are likely to rise further after Producer Prices (PPI) increased by almost 46% in August, the strongest increase since 1949.”

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“We thought that we could gradually replace nuclear energy with renewable energy sources, but now we understand that we will need more energy. We need both sources..”

French Warned Of Winter Blackouts (RT)

Private households in France may face power outages this winter in the event of severe frosts, the head of the energy regulator CRE, Emmanuelle Wargon, told France Info radio on Monday. “Under no circumstances will there be gas shutdowns in private homes. But on the electrical side, we may be faced with having to make difficult decisions about limited shutdowns,” she said, adding “These can last for several hours and will be very local – at the commune or district level – with prior notification to citizens.” The regulator noted that shutdowns would not affect critical infrastructure, including hospitals. Extreme measures could be avoided if the winter is relatively warm, she added.


Wargon also admitted that the decision to close the Fessenheim nuclear power plant, decommissioned in 2020, “could not have been taken in the current crisis.” “We thought that we could gradually replace nuclear energy with renewable energy sources, but now we understand that we will need more energy. We need both sources,” she stressed. France relies on nuclear energy more than any other European country, generating about 70% of its electricity that way. However, about half of its 56 nuclear reactors have been shut down for maintenance, notably to repair corrosion problems.

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“..70% of nitrogen fertilizer production capacities in the EU have already been stopped, aluminum production has been reduced by 25%, and steel production by 5%.”

Dire Winter Scenario In Sight For EU (RT)

Reducing dependence on Russian natural gas supply is impossible for the European Union in the coming year without a massive production halt, RBK business daily reported on Monday, citing a study by McKinsey’s former Russian division, consulting company Yakov & Partners. Their research showed that, despite reports that EU stores are full, the bloc has not yet overcome its reliance on Russian energy and will not be able to get through the coming winter and next year “without maintaining gas supplies from Russia or a [effecting] significant reduction” in consumption.

The report outlined that, in order to meet their needs until the end of 2022, European countries will either have to maintain imports from Russia or reduce gas consumption by an additional seven to 12 billion cubic meters, “which is possible only with a complete or partial shutdown of a number of industries.” The deficit may grow to 20-30 billion cubic meters if China’s demand for LNG recovers or if the winter is cold and long, or in the event of disruptions in supply chains, it adds. Yakov & Partners indicated that 70% of nitrogen fertilizer production capacities in the EU have already been stopped, aluminum production has been reduced by 25%, and steel production by 5%. The authors of the study suggested that the decline in production is likely to continue “even in the event of a mild winter.”

“In the perspective of 2023, the rejection of Russian gas means a deficit of 40-60 billion cubic meters for European countries even while maintaining the current rate of gas savings for the whole of 2023,” said Elena Kuznetsova, a partner at the company. She explained that 60 billion cubic meters of gas is comparable to the annual gas consumption of France and Poland combined, or the total annual gas consumption of such industries as fertilizer production, petrochemistry, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, and all engineering. Stopping these industries will further affect other related industries, from agriculture to services, Kuznetsova warned.

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Guterres is doing some good work.

UN Chief Supports Moscow’s Aid Proposal (RT)

The UN chief has pledged to help Russia donate some 300 tons of fertilizers stranded in European ports to developing nations. “If Russia wants to provide fertilizers free of charge to developing countries, I believe the World Food Programme will be able to implement that desire,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in an interview with the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, which was published on Monday. He acknowledged that EU nations will first have to be convinced to allow free the export of Russian fertilizers through their ports. The offer to donate an estimated 300 tons of Russian fertilizer, unable to leave EU ports due to anti-Russian sanctions, came last Friday from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In late July, the UN co-mediated an arrangement with Ukraine and Russia, which allowed the resumption of Ukrainian grain exports through the Black Sea. As part of the deal, the organization pledged to help ease Western restrictions on international trade that Russia says prevent it from exporting its food products and fertilizers. “This week I had an intensive series of contacts with the leaders of the EU. And I hope there will be a positive change with regard to the possibility of distributing Russian grain and fertilizers without obstacles through Europe to other markets,” Guterres told RIA Novosti in another part of the interview, which was published on Saturday.

Putin previously criticized the grain deal, saying that while it was touted as a way to help poor countries deal with surging global food prices, in practice Ukrainian exports mostly went to rich EU nations. The abundance of grain and other food products from Ukraine on European markets has apparently angered local producers, who are struggling to compete with the cheaper imports, the Wall Street Journal reported last week. The EU previously had quotas and steep tariffs for Ukraine trade, protecting its own farmers and forcing Ukrainians to export most of their produce to other places. But the restrictions were lifted after Russia attacked the country in February, and European governments rushed to support Kiev with various forms of assistance.

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“..the last three years included two pandemic years when a lot of companies in the oil and gas industries struggled to stay afloat, let alone post a profit..”

The Unintended Consequences Of The EU Energy Emergency Plan (OP)

This week saw the European Commission’s President Ursula von der Leyen do something that would have probably been considered the opposite of democracy just a few years ago. She proposed that governments impose a ceiling on certain energy producers’ revenues and add a windfall profit for Big Oil majors. Called “a solidarity contribution” or “a crisis contribution,” the windfall tax’s aim is the same as the aim of the revenue ceiling: manage energy costs in a runaway inflation environment and get some additional money to, according to the plan, distribute among those who most need it. Like all grand plans, however, unintended consequences abound with this one, and one of the gravest is the discouragement of oil and gas investments at a time when global oil and gas investments are already lower than they should be in light of demand projections.

JP Morgan’s head of global energy strategy said it this week in an interview with Bloomberg. “If you’re planning your capital budget, you have to think twice now that you have a new risk,” Malek told Bloomberg. “It encourages majors to return cash to shareholders as they use that free cashflow that could have been used in investment.” Per plans, the EU seeks to “raise” some $140 billion from windfall taxes on non-gas electricity generators and oil gas, and coal companies for their “extraordinary record profits benefiting from war and on the back of consumers,” to quote Von der Leyen. Reaction from the industry was swift. Austria’s OMV said the consequences of such measures could be huge, adding that it was unfair to base the windfall levy proposal on oil companies’ profits from the last three years since these were not normal times, Reuters reported, quoting CEO Alfred Stern.

“We will keep an eye on that, as it can already have a massive impact,” Stern told media, noting, however, that the exact impact was difficult to glean because the proposal has yet to be fleshed out. Per von der Leyen’s State of the Union speech, in which she listed the windfall tax among measures to cope with the energy crisis, the idea is to tax oil and gas companies with 33 percent of any current-year profits that were 20 percent above the company’s average earnings for the last three years. OMV’s Stern noted that the last three years included two pandemic years when a lot of companies in the oil and gas industries struggled to stay afloat, let alone post a profit, with oil prices falling as low as $25 per barrel.

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Different plant, same tactics.

Ukraine Claims Missile Hit Area Near Nuclear Power Plant (RT)

A missile has hit a location in Ukraine’s Nikolaev Region close to the South Ukraine nuclear power plant, President Vladimir Zelensky has claimed. The incident happened early on Monday morning, according to the president. The projectile landed some 300 meters from the facility, causing damage to windows and briefly disrupting power supplies to the grid, he wrote on social media. Zelensky posted surveillance footage purportedly showing the strike. The video shows a powerful explosion against the backdrop of the night skyline and was apparently filmed by a malfunctioning digital camera. The frames appear to be out of order, and the timestamps go back and forth. The president’s post also included photos of broken windows, presumably caused by the blast.


Zelensky accused Russia of “endangering the world” and said it should be “stopped, before it is too late”. The South Ukraine nuclear power plant is located near the city of Yuzhnoukrainsk, deep inside Ukraine-controlled territory in the south of the country. The facility has been operating since 1982 and has three VVER-1000 reactors. Zelensky’s accusations against Russia add to a long list of nuclear-related allegations. Kiev and Moscow have for weeks been pointing the finger at each other over attacks on the Russian-controlled city of Energodar, which hosts the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited the facility earlier this month, confirming damage caused by multiple shelling incidents, but declining to attribute them to either side.

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100 years ago, the battle was for sharing the surplus. Now, it is for sharing the lack of it.

Why the World Economic Forum’s Plutocracy Should Be Dissolved (Shurk)

Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, appeared with David Gergen in 2017 at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and openly boasted of his influence over many national leaders: “I have to say when I mention names like Mrs. Merkel, even Vladimir Putin and so on, they have all been Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum, but what we are really proud of now is the young generation like Prime Minister Trudeau, the President of Argentina and so on. So we penetrate the cabinets. So yesterday I was at a reception for Prime Minister Trudeau, and I know that half of his cabinet or even more are Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum…. It is true in Argentina and it is true in France now….”

When the chairman of an international economic body publicly brags about his leverage over the leaders of sovereign nation states, he can hardly be mistaken as defending the merits of “democracy.” In a somewhat farcical display of the World Economic Forum’s control over individual nations, it has become eerily commonplace these last two years to hear the leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States all parroting the same “Build Back Better” slogan propagated by Klaus Schwab’s economic club. With wealth and political power bonded densely into such haut monde cabals, the insular prerogatives of the WEF have succeeded in dominating government policies throughout the West.

Both in their immediate handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and their planned response to the harsh economic repercussions dovetailing from prolonged lockdowns, Western nation states have taken many of their cues directly from the World Economic Forum’s policy edicts. Whatever vestige of “democracy” still casts a shadow across North America, Europe, and the South Pacific, it has become unmistakable that plutocracy — rule by a wealthy elite — is fast assuming total control over the West’s future. Notably, today’s plutocrats have little interest in truly free markets. Unlike J.D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and other late-nineteenth-century industrialists and business magnates who made their fortunes in the heyday of economic growth before the massive expansion of the regulatory State, those with great wealth today often champion government intervention in markets.

The World Economic Forum, for instance, demands governments take urgent action to combat or address climate change, cybersecurity, online misinformation, artificial intelligence, overpopulation, the use of hydrocarbon energy, farm ownership, food supplies, the elimination of private vehicle ownership, and the imposition of citizen-control protocols to defend against future pandemics. Regulation of people and markets is now of paramount importance to those with wealth and power.

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“manipulative case-file practice”

Whistleblower: FBI Uses Jan. 6 Cases To Create Illusion Of National Crisis (JTN)

The top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee said Monday a whistleblower has come forward detailing how the FBI is manipulating cases related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to create “the illusion” that domestic violent extremism is a widespread problem in the United States. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray that the “manipulative case-file practice” was being conducted by the bureau’s Washington field office, which was instructing local FBI offices to open up cases on their books that were in fact simply related to the Capitol breach. “The FBI’s case categorization creates the illusion that threats from DVE are present in jurisdictions across the nation, when in reality they all stem from the same related investigation concerning the actions at the Capitol on January 6,” Jordan wrote.

“Such an artificial case categorization scheme allows FBI leadership to misleadingly point to ‘significant’ increases in DVE threats nationwide,” he added. The Republican lawmaker said the whistleblower’s description is “consistent with disclosures we have received from other whistleblowers that high-ranking FBI officials — including a senior WFO official — are pressing front-line agents to categorize cases as DVE matters to fit a political narrative.” The activity comes as President Joe Biden and his team try to make the case that supporters of Donald Trump are creating a crisis of extremism in the United States, a case he made in a widely panned speech in Pennsylvania a few weeks ago.

Jordan said the FBI’s shifted focus is coming at the expense of other crimes, including the investigation of child sex exploitation. “The whistleblower disclosed that the FBI is sacrificing its other important federal law-enforcement duties to pursue January 6 investigations,” Jordan wrote. “The whistleblower recalled, for example, being told that child sexual abuse material investigations were no longer an FBI priority and should be referred to local law enforcement agencies.

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“Ultimately, the Left will choke to death on its many crimes and we can return to being a people who confidently know the difference between right and wrong.”

A Walk on the Wild Side (Kunstler)

What is the answer when faced with a large-scale religious disturbance in society, especially one displaying all the earmarks of overt, archetypal evil? You call in an exorcist. That has been Donald Trump’s true role in this millenarian mega-crisis. He is seeking to cast out evil spirits afflicting this sore-beset national community and the evil spirits are frantic to stop his ministrations by any means. He is, of course, a most untoward avatar in this war of good against evil. He came out of the infernal circle of New York real estate development. The assumption all along is that he must be tainted by dirty dealing with the mobs who ran the construction unions, but after six years of relentless investigation by the Southern District of New York and the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, the legions of hell came up with… nothing.

How was this possible? Well, they tried their darndest, and now they’re trying again with some double-jeopardy maneuvers. The law, to these degenerates, is just an instrument of their own will-to-power. Chugging toward the 2022 mid-term elections, Mr. Trump is out there giving moral support and focus to so-called “domestic terrorists” seeking to crush the Woke demonic religious persecution. He leads the substantial demographic of Americans who are determined to not play along with Woke absurdities, and they love him for it. Mr. Trump may or may not be the Republican nominee in 2024, but he is helping the country with a literal House-cleaning in advance of that, and it will open the door to a deluge of corrective truth-telling about what has gone on the past several years, in everything from the Covid 19 scam to the Green New Deal aimed at wrecking what’s left of Western Civ’s economies.

Americans, except for the very old, are not disposed to attending church, meaning they are not reminded at regular intervals, and formal rituals, that good and evil exists in all of us, and that we have a duty to our sacred consciousness to tend to the right side, to “the better angels of our nature,” Lincoln put it. Ultimately, the Left will choke to death on its many crimes and we can return to being a people who confidently know the difference between right and wrong.

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For the same reason they cling to believing in Santa.

Why So Many Cling to Covid Panic (Oshinskie)

The government and media have spent the past 30 months disingenuously building Corona fear and implementing a range of talismanic measures like lockdowns, school closures, masks, tests and shots to convince us that they were magically—yet always “Scientifically!—” protecting us all from death. Just as any thinking six-year-old figures out that Santa simply can’t put all of that toy freight into one sleigh, any thinking adult should have known that none of the hoary Corona crew: neither the elfin Fauci’s, Birx’s nor Biden’s rhetoric or theater made any sense, either in theory or in real-life outcomes; nor did similar alarmism or interventions by younger, hipper “liberal” governors, mayors and prime ministers. But just like my parents’ efforts to preserve the Santa myth, governments won’t let go of the Corona theater—especially the shots—and the media desperately continues to portray as experts those who “masterminded” the mitigation.


All of the empirical data have corroborated what was known on Day 1 of the lockdowns—namely that this virus threatens almost no one but the very old and infirm, that none of these interventions works and that each of these have caused–and will continue to cause–widespread, terrible secondary and tertiary damage. Instead of admitting this, governments and media persist in their campaign of terror, lies and bogus zero-Covid measures. Because to stop lying now would be to admit that it’s all been a delusion. And politically and morally, they can’t bring themselves to do that. A five-year-old might not know a scam when they see it. But even a ten-year-old does. Or at least should. They’re counting on adults to be like five-year-olds. It might work.

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Biden 8.3

 

 

Stop calling it clean energy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sep 072022
 
 September 7, 2022  Posted by at 8:22 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  58 Responses »


Salvador Dali Cabaret scene 1922

 

Putin Has Pushed Europe Into Inflationary Depression, Currency Collapse (Every)
West Reluctant To Put Putin On Trial, Say Ukrainian Officials (G.)
US Shares Blame In Ruined Ties With Russia – Clinton’s Defense Secretary (RT)
Open Letter To Olena Zelenska – Stop The Slaughter (Roger Waters)
Salvini: Russia Sanctions Backfired, Citizens Are ‘On Their Knees’ (Celente)
Our Latest Interview with Jacques Baud (Postil)
Sanctioned Russian Bank Bypasses SWIFT (RT)
Gazprom Signs Gas Deal With China To Convert Payments To Ruble, Yuan (Fox)
The Case for a New American Civil War (Dmitri Orlov)
Stop Pretending US Is a Functioning Democracy (Chris Hedges)
Greece Braces For Tougher, Bolder Erdogan As Turkish Media Enters ‘War Mode’ (ZH)
Greece Tells Erdogan: “We Completely Reject Neo-Ottoman Bullies” (KTG)
Global Covid19 Vax Propaganda Means Mass Casualties – Dr. Pierre Kory (USAW)
BioNtech Sued For Vaccine Damage For 1st Time In Germany (R24)

 

 

 

 

Europe needs to find €2 trillion in energy costs. Good luck.

 

 

 

 

40% is like a war. Edward Dowd has almost entirely been banned, censored, disappeared. But not 100%.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1566995822616748032

 

 

 

 

 

 

US SPR at lowest level since 1984

 

 

Trump – A Nation in Decline

 

 

Barron Trump is reportedly considering getting into crack cocaine, Russian prostitutes, and corrupt international business dealings to get the FBI to leave him alone.

 

 

 

 

No, he has not. They did it themselves. That is elementary.

Putin Has Pushed Europe Into Inflationary Depression, Currency Collapse (Every)

As pointed out on Twitter, Russia’s move is so blatant there is no way Europe can fudge an agreement with it the way some might have over ‘technical issues’ with the pipeline. (As was Russian President Putin also approving a new foreign policy doctrine backing a “Russian world” covering all Russian speakers, including some in the EU, while building up relations with all the countries the USSR was friendly with to boot.) This is a gun to the EU’s head. So was OPEC+ agreeing on a token 100,000 barrel a day cut to production. So was Iran saying no to the nuclear deal unless the IAEA backs off from investigating the serious breaches of the last nuclear deal it didn’t stick to.

Assuming Europe cannot retreat, that means a severe recession with very high inflation, and if anything were to happen to gas flows via Ukraine, which could easily occur, Europe would need to make swinging cuts to demand in order to avoid unplanned ‘gas outs’. German Economy Minister Habeck just said: “Expect the worst.” As mentioned yesterday, existential choices now need to be made, because there may not enough energy to go round. The choices are obviously unappetising. First, Germany is to delay mothballing some nuclear reactors – so common sense at gunpoint. Yet Europe and the UK will not ration energy by price because it means the staggering bills already being seen, and then stagflation, incession, or ‘inpression’ (an inflationary depression).

They will instead subsidize businesses and households even if that means wholesale energy prices march even higher. Germany’s latest EUR65bn energy bailout will do just that; so will Sweden’s and the Netherlands’ measures, and France’s and Spain’s: and Brussels is talking about an EU-wide energy price cap. Only part of these subsidies will flow from windfall taxes (which also remove the industry capital needed to invest in new energy supply). New UK PM Truss, just selected with an underwhelming 57% mandate of a tiny Tory electorate, has also floated Covid-furlough sized spending to cap business and household energy bills; and huge tax cuts; and a 2.5% trend GDP growth rate target. Good luck with the latter.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1567315217935114241

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You would have to put Zelensky on trial, too. And a whole range of western leaders.

West Reluctant To Put Putin On Trial, Say Ukrainian Officials (G.)

Ukraine’s major western allies have yet to sign up to establish a tribunal to try Vladimir Putin and his inner circle for the crime of aggression, wanting to leave space for future relations with Russia, according to Ukraine’s top officials. “It’s big politics. On the one hand, countries publicly condemn the aggression but on the other, they are putting their foot in the closing door on relations with Russia so that it doesn’t close completely,” said Andriy Smyrnov, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, who is leading the country’s effort to establish the international tribunal. “They are attempting to keep some space for diplomatic manoeuvres,” said Smyrnov. “We know that agreements with Russia are not worth the paper they are written on.”

His claims come as the US president, Joe Biden, said on Monday that Russia should not be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism, something Ukrainian officials and some US politicians had pushed for. Russia had previously said such a designation would mean Washington had crossed the point of no return. Ukrainian officials say that since April, they have been trying to convince their western allies to establish an ad hoc tribunal which would hold Russia’s senior leadership responsible for the crime of aggression for invading Ukraine. Aggression is viewed as the supreme crime under international law because without the transgression of borders during an invasion, subsequent war crimes would not have been committed.

So far only the Baltic states and Poland have pledged support for the tribunal, said Ukraine’s officials. “We are expecting broader support,” said Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin. “For us, the support of the UK and the US is very important as well as the rest of the civilised world,” said Smyrnov. The UK’s newly elected prime minister, Liz Truss, told Times Radio in May, when she was foreign secretary, that she would consider supporting the tribunal. The Council of Europe is due to discuss support for such a measure on 13 September.

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Just 30 years ago, the official attitude was much less hawkish.

US Shares Blame In Ruined Ties With Russia – Clinton’s Defense Secretary (RT)

The US antagonized Russia by ignoring its post-USSR suffering and intrinsic security interests and needs to acknowledge this before ties with Moscow can be mended, William J. Perry, who served as secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton has said. Perry, a veteran advocate for the reduction of weapons of mass destruction, called for some introspection in Washington DC in an opinion piece published on Monday by the outlet Outrider. Subsequent US administrations pursued policies that antagonized the Russian people after the collapse of the USSR, Perry argued. The US didn’t care much about the suffering that Russia’s transition to a capitalist economy brought and ignored Russian concerns about NATO’s encroachment on its borders, he said.

“The combination of the West failing to act during Russia’s financial crisis, and ignoring their strongly-held views on NATO expansion, reinforced a prevailing Russian belief that we didn’t take them seriously,” the article said. “Indeed, many in the West saw Russia only as the loser of the Cold War, not worthy of our respect.” Perry, who headed up the Pentagon between 1994 and 1997, was a strong supporter of a program called Partnership for Peace. This was a compromise that allowed Eastern European nations and Russia to train with NATO troops but, in a nod to Russian objections, didn’t bring former Warsaw Pact nations into NATO.

The Clinton administration ultimately pushed for a formal expansion of the military bloc, setting the stage for an increasingly tense relationship with Russia that culminated in the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. The American attitude pushed Russians towards supporting Vladimir Putin, a person he describes as “an autocratic leader who would instead demand respect and power through force.” Perry said he considers the Russian leader an enemy of the US but argued that “there is no organic reason” why Russia itself should be one. “We must work to rebuild connections with Russia, treat the Russian people with respect, and rebuild our relationships, in the hopes that we can once again return to the path of friendship,” he concluded.

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“He stood on the election platform of the following promises. • To end the civil war in the East and bring peace to the Donbas and partial autonomy to Donetsk and Luhansk. • And to ratify and implement the rest of the body of the Minsk 2 agreements.”

Open Letter To Olena Zelenska – Stop The Slaughter (Roger Waters)

Dear Mrs Zelenska,

My heart bleeds for you and all the Ukrainian and Russian families, devastated by the terrible war in Ukraine. I’m in Kansas City, USA. Iread an article on BBC.com apparently taken from an interview you have already recorded for a program called Sunday with Laura Kuenssburg which broadcasted on the BBC on September 4th. BBC.com quotes you as saying that if support for Ukraine is strong the crisis will be shorter. Hmmm? I guess that might depend on what you mean by “support for Ukraine?” If by “support for Ukraine,” you mean the West continuing to supply arms to the Kiev government’s armies, I fear you may be tragically mistaken. Throwing fuel, in the form of armaments, into a firefight, has never worked to shorten a war in the past, and it won’t work now, particularly because, in this case, most of the fuel is (a) being thrown into the fire from Washington DC, which is at a relatively safe distance from the conflagration, and (b) because the “fuel throwers” have already declared an interest in the war going on for as long as possible.

People like you and me actually want peace in Ukraine, don’t want the outcome to be that you have to fight to the last Ukrainian life – and possibly even, if the worst comes to the worst, to the last human life. If we, instead, wish to achieve a different outcome we may have to seek a different route and that route may lie in your husband’s previously stated good intentions. Yes, I mean the platform upon which he so laudably ran for the office of President of Ukraine, the platform upon which he won his historic landslide victory in the democratic election in 2019. He stood on the election platform of the following promises. • To end the civil war in the East and bring peace to the Donbas and partial autonomy to Donetsk and Luhansk. • And to ratify and implement the rest of the body of the Minsk 2 agreements.

One can only assume that your husband’s electoral policies didn’t sit well with certain political factions in Kiev and that those factions persuaded your husband to diametrically change course ignoring the people’s mandate. Sadly, your old man agreed to those totalitarian, anti-democratic dismissals of the will of the Ukrainian people, and the forces of extreme nationalism that had lurked, malevolent, in the shadows, have, since then, ruled the Ukraine. They have, also since then, crossed any number of red lines that had been set out quite clearly over a number of years by your neighbors the Russian Federation and in consequence they, the extreme nationalists, have set your country on the path to this disastrous war.

I won’t go on. If I’m wrong, please help me to understand how? If I’m not wrong, please help me in my honest endeavors to persuade our leaders to stop the slaughter, the slaughter which serves only the interests of the ruling classes and extreme nationalists both here in the West, and in your beautiful country, at the expense of the rest of us ordinary people both here in the West, and in the Ukraine, and in fact ordinary people everywhere all over the world. Might it not be better to demand the implementation of your husband’s election promises and put an end to this deadly war?

Love,
Roger Waters

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Kim Dotcom: “The biggest army in the history of the world will soon achieve a decisive victory against the US proxy war in Ukraine: European protesters.”

Salvini: Russia Sanctions Backfired, Citizens Are ‘On Their Knees’ (Celente)

Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s far-Right League party, said Sunday that the economic sanctions that have been leveled against Russia are taking their toll on the average Italian and are leaving citizens “on their knees.” Daniele Franco, Italy’s economy minister, recently announced that the country’s net energy import costs will likely double this year and that Rome will not be able to “indefinitely to cushion the blow on the economy,” Reuters reported. “To keep offsetting, at least in part, rising energy prices through public finances is very costly and we could never do enough,” he said. “What matters is to bring the price of gas and energy back to sustainable levels.”

“Several months have passed and people are paying two, three, even four times more for their bills. And after seven months, the war continues and Russian Federation coffers are filling with money,” he told RTL radio. He tweeted earlier that “those who have been sanctioned are winners and those who put the sanctions in place are on their knees.” He called on the EU to “protect businesses and families” like it did during the COVID-19 outbreak. Russia’s Gazprom announced that it will indefinitely suspend gas flow on its Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which sent the price of the benchmark Dutch TTF hub up to €281 per megawatt hour, up 31 percent. Russia blamed technical issues that cannot be resolved due to sanctions that have been imposed.

EURACTIV said it obtained a leaked paper that outlines the European Commission plan to cap wholesale gas prices that would target Russia. The process would cap the price of imported gas from Moscow and would set up pricing zones for countries that are particularly impacted by the prices. The paper admitted that the pricing zones will be more challenging to implement and “would require significant regulatory and technical complex preparations,” the report said.

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Jacques Baud is a former Swiss army colonel, now intelligence & security consultant.

“..the exclusion of disabled athletes, cats, even Russian trees from competitions, the dismissal of conductors, the de-platforming of Russian artists, such as Dostoyevsky, or even the renaming of paintings..”

Our Latest Interview with Jacques Baud (Postil)

You have just published your latest book on the war in Ukraine—Operation Z. “The aim of this book is to show how the misinformation propagated by our media has contributed to push Ukraine in the wrong direction. I wrote it under the motto “from the way we understand crises derives the way we solve them.” By hiding many aspects of this conflict, the Western media has presented us with a caricatural and artificial image of the situation, which has resulted in the polarization of minds. This has led to a widespread mindset that makes any attempt to negotiate virtually impossible. The one-sided and biased representation provided by mainstream media is not intended to help us solve the problem, but to promote hatred of Russia.

Thus, the exclusion of disabled athletes, cats, even Russian trees from competitions, the dismissal of conductors, the de-platforming of Russian artists, such as Dostoyevsky, or even the renaming of paintings aims at excluding the Russian population from society! In France, bank accounts of individuals with Russian-sounding names were even blocked. Social networks Facebook and Twitter have systematically blocked the disclosure of Ukrainian crimes under the pretext of “hate speech” but allow the call for violence against Russians. None of these actions had any effect on the conflict, except to stimulate hatred and violence against the Russians in our countries. This manipulation is so bad that we would rather see Ukrainians die than to seek a diplomatic solution.

As Republican Senator Lindsey Graham recently said, it is a matter of letting the Ukrainians fight to the last man. It is commonly assumed that journalists work according to standards of quality and ethics to inform us in the most honest way possible. These standards are set by the Munich Charter of 1971. While writing my book I found out that no French-speaking mainstream media in Europe respects this charter as far as Russia and China are concerned. In fact, they shamelessly support an immoral policy towards Ukraine, described by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, president of Mexico, as “We provide the weapons, you provide the corpses!”

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Still relatively small amounts; $1.6 million. But that will grow.

Sanctioned Russian Bank Bypasses SWIFT (RT)

One of Russia’s top banks, VTB has become the first lender in the country to launch money transfers to China in yuan, sidestepping the global financial messaging system SWIFT. “The new reality is leading to a massive abandoning of the use of the US dollar and the euro in international payments,” VTB CEO Andrey Kostin said in a statement, highlighting the importance of creating and developing payment systems as an alternative to SWIFT. “We are the first Russian bank to install an alternative cross-border bank transfer service with China and plan to increase the volume of these transactions by five times by next year,”he added.


According to a VTB press release, the maximum amount of a single money transfer was equivalent to 20 million rubles ($325,000) with the maximum monthly limit set at 100 million rubles ($1.6 million). The bank also announced plans to begin lending in the yuan and other non-Western currencies later this year. “The launch of the yuan transfer system is expected to significantly simplify the work of Russian companies and individuals with Chinese partners, increasing the popularity of the yuan in our country,” Kostin added. Ukraine-related sanctions cut Russia’s biggest banks off from SWIFT, limiting their access to the dollar and euro markets. The drastic measures forced Moscow to develop its own financial infrastructure in cooperation with nations that haven’t imposed sanctions.

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As goes your gas, so goes your currency.

Gazprom Signs Gas Deal With China To Convert Payments To Ruble, Yuan (Fox)

Russia’s Gazprom on Tuesday said it had reached an agreement with China to start fulfilling its gas supply contracts with payments made in rubles or yuan instead of euros or dollars. The announcement on Telegram comes just six months after a 30-year deal was signed between Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation in early February, which said Russian gas supplies would be paid in euros as Russia looked to separate itself from the U.S. just weeks before it invaded Ukraine. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said the payment arrangement would prove “mutually beneficial” for both state owned energy agencies as Russia and China look to bolster their economies amid flagging relations with the West.


“I believe that it will simplify the calculations, become an excellent example for other companies, and give an additional impetus to the development of our economies,” Miller said. Russian President Vladimir Putin enforced a mandate in March that required all Gazprom sales to Europe be paid in rubles after the U.S. and NATO hit Moscow with steep international sanctions immediately following its invasion in Ukraine. Moscow has since cut gas to several European nations including Germany, Denmark, Poland, Bulgaria, Finland and the Netherlands after they refused to abide by Putin’s mandate. Gazprom, which has repeatedly staunched its supplies to Europe over alleged “maintenance” issues, said Monday it would not resume pumping gas until Germany energy company Siemens Energy adheres to its equipment repair demands.

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“To keep the US population at bay, the oligarchy must keep it supplied with vast quantities of junk food, liquor, drugs and pornography…”

The Case for a New American Civil War (Dmitri Orlov)

Will the USA hold together through 2024? Earlier this year Covid-related complications took the life of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the bombastic perennial leader of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party. He was known not just for his inimitable oratory but also for the uncanny accuracy of his predictions. For example, he predicted the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation in the Ukraine almost to the day—months before the fact and at a time when nobody else had much of a clue as to what would happen. Another prediction of his reads as follows: “There won’t be a US presidential election in 2024 because there will no longer be a United States.” Will he turn out to be prescient on this count too? Let’s watch!

Zhirinovsky is by no means alone with making such a prediction. Recent opinion polls show over 40% of Americans expressing apprehensions that a new civil war is likely to break out over the next decade or so. Perish the thought that the good people surveyed had performed an independent analysis, based on which they were able to compute the probability of a civil war! By now, the vast majority of the people in the US have been conditioned to perceive reality as a mosaic composed of short news clips, sound bites, scenes no longer than can fit between two television commercials and miniature narratives that present this or that imaginary object in a positive or a negative light. They think that a civil war is likely because that’s what they have been told through mass media or the invisibly yet relentlessly chaperoned social media.

The oligarchy, which controls all of the above, is toying with two alternative business plans. Plan A, which is more profitable and less risky, doesn’t feature a civil war while Plan B, risky though still profitable, does. In either case, the profits accrue from confiscating wealth from the population; with Plan A, less of that wealth gets blown up, hence more profit. But Plan A requires securing complete obedience and docility from an increasingly distressed and restive population. Paraphrasing Klaus Schwab, they have to put up with having nothing and pretend to be happy (as a condition for being allowed to stay indoors and fed).

To keep the US population at bay, the oligarchy must keep it supplied with vast quantities of junk food, liquor, drugs and pornography. And in spite of all the propaganda urging people to sort themselves into a rainbow of genders, most of them sterile, some women may still manage to get pregnant, refuse to have an abortion and actually give birth to children, preventing the population from shrinking as fast as the dwindling resource base. “Listen, women are getting pregnant every day in America, and this is a real issue,” quoth VP Kamala Harris. In spite of the politically incorrect term “women”—wombed men, that is—her message is crystal clear: her fellow-Americans should be spayed and neutered like the proper domestic animals she thinks they are. Your pets aren’t sterilized, don’t you now; they are transgender! Doesn’t that sound much more fashionable?

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“..the poorer and more vulnerable you are, the more you are exploited, thrust into a hellish debt peonage from which there is no escape..”

Stop Pretending US Is a Functioning Democracy (Chris Hedges)

The U.S. continues to posit itself as a champion of opportunity, freedom, human rights and civil liberties, even as half the country struggles at subsistence level, militarized police gun down and imprison the poor with impunity, and the primary business of the state is war. This collective self-delusion masks what America has become — a nation where the citizenry has been stripped of economic and political power and where the brutal militarism practiced overseas is practiced at home. In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union, economics was subordinate to politics. But under inverted totalitarianism, the reverse is true. There is no attempt, unlike fascism and state socialism, to address the needs of the poor.

Rather, the poorer and more vulnerable you are, the more you are exploited, thrust into a hellish debt peonage from which there is no escape. Social services, from education to health care, are anemic, nonexistent or privatized to gouge the impoverished. Further ravaged by 8.5 percent inflation, wages have decelerated sharply since 1979. Jobs often do not offer benefits or security. In my book America: The Farewell Tour, I examined the social indicators of a nation in serious trouble. Life expectancy in the U.S. fell in 2021, for the second year in a row. There have been over 300 mass shootings this year. Close to a million people have died from drug overdoses since 1999. There are an average of 132 suicides every day. Nearly 42 percent of the country is classified as obese, with one in 11 adults considered severely obese.

These diseases of despair are rooted in the disconnect between a society’s expectations of a better future and the reality of a system that does not provide a meaningful place for its citizens. Loss of a sustainable income and social stagnation causes more than financial distress. As Émile Durkheim points out in The Division of Labor in Society, it severs the social bonds that give us meaning. A decline in status and power, an inability to advance, a lack of education and adequate health care, and a loss of hope result in crippling forms of humiliation. This humiliation fuels loneliness, frustration, anger and feelings of worthlessness.

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Erdogan has elections next year. His base is nationalists. Inflation in Turkey is 90+%. Nuff said.

Greece Braces For Tougher, Bolder Erdogan As Turkish Media Enters ‘War Mode’ (ZH)

Both Turkish and Greek media reports over the last days have been filled by heightened speculation that the two Mediterranean powers (and NATO “allies”… ironically enough) could be headed to war. This follows Saturday comments from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wherein he issued a thinly veiled threat of military action against Greece. Charging that Greece is “occupying” islands off Turkey’s coast and militarizing them, Erdogan said in a fiery speech aimed at Athens that “When the time comes, we’ll do what’s necessary. As we say, we may come down suddenly one night.” He added: “Look at history, if you go further, the price will be heavy.”

An English-language publication covering Greece, The National Herald, observed on Monday in follow-up to Erdogan’s threat: “Greece is bracing for what’s expected to be an emboldened Turkish President Recep Tayyip drawing lines in the sea and becoming more aggressive in asserting his claims to areas in the Aegean and East Mediterranean.” Via Anadolu Agency: In his message, Erdogan mentions Izmir, a province on Türkiye’s western Aegean Sea coast that the Turkish army liberated from Greek occupation in 1922 during its War of Independence. The publication notes that something seems different this time compared to prior threatening rhetoric coming from top Turkish officials over the past two years: Erdogan typically mouths off against Greece with fiery rhetoric that frequently is followed by him backing away from threats but he’s been upping the ante and the volume, raising tension and growing worries of a conflict.

Seeing the European Union, NATO, United Nations and United States reluctant to provoke him, the hard-line Turkish leader has demanded Greece remove troops from islands near Turkey’s coast and said it would be a cause for war if Greece doubles its maritime boundaries to 12 miles. All of this comes also as Ankara has lodged a formal complaint with NATO headquarters, saying that Greece last month achieved radar lock on its F-16s which had been flying over the Mediterranean. Further, Turkey has charged that Greek jets have violated its airspace over 250 times in harassing maneuvers. “The ministry also informed that the Greek warplanes violated the Turkish airspace 256 times since the beginning of 2022,” Hurriyet reported. “In addition, they harassed the Turkish jets 158 times this year, the ministry said. On the sea, the Greek coastal guards violated the Turkish territorial waters 33 times, it added.”

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“We might come suddenly one night..”

Greece Tells Erdogan: “We Completely Reject Neo-Ottoman Bullies” (KTG)

“It is unacceptable for Greece to be receiving threats that reach the point of disputing Greek sovereignty from a country that is an ally within NATO, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said at noon on Tuesday as Ankara has increased his escalating hostile rhetoric and threats and thus via the president himself Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “Greece’s fixed position supports dialogue on the basis of international law, the international law of the sea and good-neighbor relations, the PM said during a meeting with the President of Slovakia, Zuzana Caputova who is officially visiting Greece. “Turkey creates tension undermining security and stability in the region,” the PM underlined.

Tuesday afternoon, it was the turn of Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias to respond to Erdogan’s unprecedented threats “We completely reject the Neo-Ottoman bullies,” Dendias stressed during a meeting with his French counterpart Catherine Colonna. The FM said that Greece daily faces a series of threats and statements that he described as “outrageous”, pointing out to “maps that are periodically published depicting Greek islands as Turkish territory.”

Recalling Erdogan’s latest threat “We might come suddenly one night” that is a clear statement implying an invasion of Greek territory, Dendias “advised” “anyone who dreams of attacks and conquests to think 3 or 4 times, adding “we are sufficient to defend the integrity and territorial independence.” He recalled also that Turkey threatens Greece with a casus belli if Athens exercises its rights as they derive from the International Law. The Greek FM sent a clear message to Turkey saying that Greece has faced much more serious threats in its history and stressed “we completely reject the neo-Ottoman bullies.”

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“We have never had this much power and this much propaganda . . . never the same story being told to the entire globe at the same time and the same lie.”

“..It’s not going to start in America because this is the United States of Pharma.”

Global Covid19 Vax Propaganda Means Mass Casualties – Dr. Pierre Kory (USAW)

Dr. Kory is actively trying to find treatments for people harmed by the CV19 vax, but that is not the biggest problem he faces. Dr. Kory says, “People are being told things (like getting CV19 booster shots) that are putting them at grave risk. I don’t know how to combat a global technological propaganda instrument. We have never had that before. I don’t think we have ever had the same messages and the same stories being shot out 24/7. I have been saying this for a while, and the world has gone mad because of unrelenting propaganda and censorship. We have never had this much power and this much propaganda . . . never the same story being told to the entire globe at the same time and the same lie.”


Dr. Kory says, “Not only no more shots, but I would say we need a national cry to stop the vaccine campaign. . . It’s not going to start in America because this is the United States of Pharma.” This is why cheap, effective drugs such as Ivermectin are being banned here in America and around the world. Dr. Kory says, “We are at war here. You cannot have Ivermectin in the marketplace. It threatens the vaccine, Paxlovid, monoclonal-antibodies and Remdesivir. Ivermectin is a drug that is the biggest financial threat to the biggest market in pharmaceutical history.”

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Google translate.

BioNtech Sued For Vaccine Damage For 1st Time In Germany (R24)

A Dusseldorf law firm has filed six-figure lawsuits against vaccine manufacturer Biontech for damage to health caused by their vaccine. The lawyers denounce the company’s disrespectful and irresponsible treatment of people who have been vaccinated. According to media reports, the law firm Rogert and Ulbrich stated that they could not reach an out-of-court agreement with Biontech. As a result, lawsuits in the six-figure range have now been filed in several matters. The lawyers sharply criticize the behavior of the vaccine manufacturer: Instead of reacting correctly to claims for damages and information and dealing with the respective facts, they merely referred to a Pfizer form. Marco Rogert stated: “The victims feel that they are not being taken seriously.

They are not only plagued by significant, life-limiting health problems since the vaccination. Now the company responsible is arrogantly giving them the cold shoulder instead of fulfilling their responsibility.” The lawyer’s clients had usually already described their tale of woe elsewhere, for example to the EMA or the PEI. “Especially in cases involving significant damage to health, the least the victims can expect would be for the facts to be dealt with seriously.” Tobias Ulbrich sees a clear connection between Covid vaccination and various diseases: “More and more vaccine damage is coming to light worldwide and many vaccinated people are only now beginning to realize that their current diseases are related to the mRNA injection,” he stated.

In fact, Ulbrich has already commented on this topic several times before on Twitter – he tweeted on August 28 that “VAIDS” is not a disease, but a description of the condition, because the values of those affected confirmed an impairment of the immune system after the vaccination. He sees the vaccine manufacturers as having a duty to prove that there is no connection between the health problems and the vaccination – and not the vaccinees. This is regulated in the Medicines Act. The law firm Rogert and Ulbrich in Düsseldorf has specialized in the legal processing of vaccination damage and its consequences. Those affected by the facility-related vaccination requirement are also advised and represented.

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Puzzle

 

 

 

 

Prophet 2020

 

 

 

 

Peacock
https://twitter.com/i/status/1567262158295076866

 

 

Kookaburra

 

 

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Aug 072022
 
 August 7, 2022  Posted by at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  41 Responses »


Edward Hopper Ground swell 1939

 

Vaccine Deaths Outnumber Covid Deaths in US Households (DS)
Russian MIL Declares Ukraine Origin of C19 (Clandestine)
US Prepares New Weapons Package For Ukraine (RT)
Pentagon Chiefs’ Calls To China Go Unanswered Amid Taiwan Crisis (Pol.)
Erdogan’s Diplomacy With Russia Alarms West – FT (RT)
Putin Says EU Should Thank Turkey (RT)
100s Of New Mines Required To Meet 2030 Battery Metals Demand — IEA (Mining)
Sanctions On Russia ‘Irresponsible’, Adviser To Brazil’s Lula Says (RT)
Elon Musk Accuses Twitter of Fraud: Countersuit (ET)
Elon Musk Says He Will Buy Twitter On One Condition (RT)
VP Joe Biden Met With Two Chinese Energy Execs In The West Wing (DM)
EDF Cuts Output At Nuclear Power Plants As French Rivers Get Too Warm (G.)
China’s July Coal Imports Surge 24% To Meet Peak Power Load (R.)

 

 

 

 

Roger Waters
https://twitter.com/i/status/1555989512353890304

 

 

 

 

MacGregor China
https://twitter.com/i/status/1555974674357440512

 

 

 

 

Haditsch

 

 

BREAKING: Alex Jones has been ordered to pay an extra $45 million in punitive damages by a Texas Jury.


Robert Barnes @barnes_law: By law in Texas, this is reduced to $750K per plaintiff, so it’s actually $1.5M not $45M. Also, like everything else in the trial, a product of a court that denied Jones any evidence on his side or any witnesses at this stage, and should be set aside by Texas Supremes.

 

 

 

 

Based on Steve Kirsch studies/polls. How can you justify a mandate is the vaccines kill more people than the disease they “protect” from?

Vaccine Deaths Outnumber Covid Deaths in US Households (DS)

Polls of the U.S. public continue to show that up to twice as many Americans have lost a household member to a Covid vaccine injury as have lost one to Covid. The pooled results of five surveys of the American public, now totalling over 2,500 people, show that while 4.4% of respondents reported that someone in their household had died from COVID-19, 8.9% said someone had died as a result of Covid vaccination. The results also showed that 8.6% said they had been injured by their vaccination, 4.9% that they had sought medical help and 3.2% that they had been hospitalised, while 3.6% said that as a result of vaccination they were no longer able to work a full day or at all.

These are percentages of all respondents. If we look only at the 74.0% vaccinated with at least one dose then the figures, as a proportion of vaccinated persons, are 11.7% injured, 6.7% needing medical help, 4.4% hospitalised and 4.8% unable to work. While these figures are self-reported and there is no control group, since the unvaccinated were not asked about adverse events, they are still alarmingly high. The results also showed that, among those who reported a Covid death in their household, more than twice as many reported that it occurred after the person was vaccinated than before (2.8% vs 1.2%). The proportion who said they had contracted Covid before their vaccination (13.1%) was very similar to the proportion who said they contracted it afterwards (11.7%). These figures are not indicative of a highly effective vaccine against either infection or death.

The people polled were randomly selected, representative samples of the U.S. public, of whom 74.0% were vaccinated, so the samples were not inherently biased towards or against the reporting of vaccine problems, though as in all opinion polls (especially online ones) there may be an issue of self-selection bias.

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FYI

Russian MIL Declares Ukraine Origin of C19 (Clandestine)

New briefing from Chief of Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defence Forces, General Igor Kirillov, on military biological activities of the United States in the territory of Ukraine. The Russian MIL have been studying biological samples from surrendered Ukrainian soldiers, and what they have been finding is beyond disturbing. Approximately 20% of them carrying West Nile pathogens, which were being studied “by the Pentagon as part of the Ukrainian UP-4 and UP-8 projects”. Suggesting that Ukrainian soldiers are being subject to involuntary biological experimentation and exposure to biological weapons (think Nuremberg). In addition to carrying pathogens, nearly all of the surrendered Ukrainian soldiers carried traces of a wide variety of narcotics and opioids, including Meth and Codeine.

Russia were sure to remind us of the Nazi’s usage of methamphetamines in WW2. I covered this 2 weeks ago, when the left-wing media tried to spin this reality as some sort of X-men mutant conspiracy theory. No, they are just Nazis, and historically, Nazis use drugs. Particularly as an advantage in war. Russia goes on to cite that this methamphetamine Ukraine are using, Pervitin, was also used by US soldiers during Vietnam and Korea. It’s designed to reduce the psycho-emotional burdens of war. However, an intended side effect is excessive aggression, which Russia alleges is one of the main factors for the Nationalist Ukrainian forces displaying “extreme cruelty” to civilians and the shelling of their own people in Donbas. Ukraine are using mind-numbing agents on their forces to make them more susceptible to carrying out heinous acts.

Next, we find perhaps the most explosive slide to date, in which Russia FINALLY comes out and DIRECTLY accuses the US of being responsible for the creation and release of Covid-19. What I have been saying from the beginning, is that this all leads to C-19, which will be the nail in the coffin and the red-pill that wakes up the world. The backlash the US are facing from Russia and the rest of Eastern world, is directly because the world found out THE UNITED STATES CREATED COVID. Specifically the “DNC/Liberal Globalists”, as the Russians allege. Not Trump. Russia clarifies they have record of over 16,000 biological samples, including blood and serum samples, transported from Ukraine to the US, Georgia, European countries.

[..] In conclusion, Russia have now DIRECTLY accused the DNC Globalists of: -creating and releasing new variants of Coronaviruses, and now Monkeypox, intentionally, for the purposes of political control and world domination. -using non-consensual experimentation on citizens of the world to create genome specific biological weapons for ethnic cleansing. -creation and usage of narcotics, such as methamphetamines, on Ukrainian forces to dehumanize them in order to carry out heinous crimes against humanity on civilians in Ukraine. Russia just confirmed my overall narrative; that the war in Ukraine is backlash for the Deep State’s creation and usage of C19. We are already in WW3 and C19 was the first weapon fired. The fact that Russia have now come out and openly called this spade a spade… suggests we are approaching the finish line. Russia claims final dossier will be complete in “Autumn”.

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Another $700 million straight down the drain.

US Prepares New Weapons Package For Ukraine (RT)

The US government is reportedly preparing its largest weapons transfer to Ukraine to date, with officials ready to authorize another $1 billion in military aid, including advanced rocket and missile platforms and additional ammunition. The new aid package could be announced as soon as next week, Reuters reported on Friday, citing three unnamed officials. It would bring the total US security assistance to Kiev to nearly $10 billion since Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24. While the officials said President Joe Biden has yet to formally sign off on the transfer, the current proposal would see $1 billion in arms shipped to Kiev, including additional munitions for the HIMARS rocket system, NASAMS surface-to-air missiles, and up to 50 M113 armored personnel carriers, allegedly the ‘medical’ variant.


A separate military aid package to Ukraine was announced on Monday, worth around $550 million, and also featured HIMARS rockets. Washington has so far sent a total of 16 HIMARS systems to Ukraine, longer-range platforms capable of striking targets inside Russian territory. Though Moscow has claimed to have eliminated some of the weapons from the battlefield, US military officials have disputed the Russian account, insisting Kiev’s HIMARS remain intact. The new massive arms transfer also comes after a Pentagon decision to allow US military personnel to treat wounded Ukrainian troops at a large US-run hospital in western Germany, though the logistics for that arrangement remain unclear, as the facility is more than 1,000 miles away from Ukraine’s capital and even further from active battle zones in the Donbass region.

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Thanks Nancy.

Pentagon Chiefs’ Calls To China Go Unanswered Amid Taiwan Crisis (Pol.)

Top Chinese military officials have not returned multiple calls from their American counterparts this week as a crisis erupted in the Pacific over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, according to three people with knowledge of the attempts. Beijing’s ghosting of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley comes as China continues launching missiles and positioning warships and aircraft in unprecedented military drills around Taiwan. Officials and experts say China’s silence is a shortsighted and reckless move that increases the risk of escalation in an already tense situation.

“If the [Chinese military] is operating more aggressively, and in closer proximity to U.S. forces with greater frequency, we’d need these mechanisms even more to promote a safe operating environment,” said Randy Schriver, who served as the top Pentagon official for Asia policy in the Trump administration. U.S. military leaders strive to maintain open lines of communication even with potential adversaries such as China to prevent accidents and other miscalculations that could turn into a full-blown conflict. But the last call Milley had with his Chinese counterpart, Chief of the Joint Staff Gen. Li Zuocheng, was on July 7, the Pentagon said. The two spoke by secure video teleconference about the need to maintain open lines of communication, as well as reducing risk, according to a readout from Milley’s office.

Austin, meanwhile, met in person with Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Wei Fenghe in June on the sideline of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. “The secretary has repeatedly emphasized the importance of fully open lines of communication with China’s defense leaders to ensure that we can avoid any miscalculations, and that remains true,” Todd Breasseale, the Pentagon’s acting press secretary, told POLITICO in an email. China on Friday announced that it was halting certain official dialogues between senior-level U.S. military commanders, including the regional commanders, as well as talks on maritime safety. The announcement does not specifically apply to Austin and Milley’s counterparts, and officials said they are still open to communication between those leaders.

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“..a NATO member since 1952 and an EU applicant since 1987..”

Erdogan’s Diplomacy With Russia Alarms West – FT (RT)

Western officials are “increasingly alarmed” that Turkey, a NATO ally and prospective EU member, is deepening its cooperation with Russia, the Financial Times has reported. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently returned from Sochi vowing to boost trade after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Six unnamed Western officials told the newspaper that they were “concerned”about the plans of Russia and Turkey to cooperate on trade and energy. One EU official said that Brussels was monitoring relations between Ankara and Moscow “more and more closely,” given how Turkey seems to be “increasingly” becoming a platform for trade with Russia. Following a four-hour meeting with Putin on Friday, Erdogan welcomed Russia’s role in building a nuclear power plant in Turkey.

The two nations aim for bilateral trade turnover of $100 billion, and are cooperating against terrorism and toward peace in Libya and Syria. Putin pledged that Russia would supply Turkey with oil, gas and coal “without any interruptions,” after the two leaders agreed that Ankara would pay for some of this gas in rubles. Another official told the newspaper that Erdogan’s behavior is “very opportunistic,”adding that “we are trying to make the Turks pay attention to our concerns.” Although a NATO member since 1952 and an EU applicant since 1987, Turkey has broken with both blocs on several occasions, most recently over the conflict in Ukraine.

Erdogan has described his diplomacy with Kiev and Moscow as “balanced,” and has refused to sanction Russia over its military operation. Turkey is the only NATO country not to impose such penalties. Erdogan also took the opportunity to host peace talks between the countries in March, which ultimately bore no fruit. Since then, however, he has won acclaim for overseeing talks that led to the resumption of grain shipments across the Black Sea from Ukrainian ports. As the Financial Times’ article went online on Saturday, the first ship carrying Ukrainian corn arrived in Istanbul for inspection by Turkish, Ukrainian, Russian and UN officials.

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“The Turkish Stream, unlike all other routes of our hydrocarbon supplies, works properly, works smoothly, without any failures.”

Putin Says EU Should Thank Turkey (RT)

Turkey has ensured a reliable supply of Russian natural gas to Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday, adding that European nations should be grateful to Ankara for that. During a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sochi, Putin named the TurkStream pipeline as one of the most important arteries for delivering Russian gas to Europe. The Russian president praised the reliability of the pipeline, for which the Europeans should be grateful. “The Turkish Stream, unlike all other routes of our hydrocarbon supplies, works properly, works smoothly, without any failures. […] I think our European partners should be grateful to Turkey for ensuring uninterrupted transit of our gas to the European market,” Putin said.


TurkStream consists of two parallel lines running under the Black Sea from Russia and joins Turkey’s gas transportation network and sends Russian gas onward to Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary. The route has been unaffected by the developments around Ukraine and the anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the EU but rejected by Turkey. The main pipeline between Russia and the EU – Nord Stream 1, which carries gas to Germany – has been operating at 20% capacity recently due to equipment issues caused by sanctions. Meanwhile, additional routes via Ukraine’s gas transportation network have been restricted by Kiev. Deliveries via the Yamal-Europe pipeline continue, although Gazprom stopped using the Polish leg of the pipeline in May due to sanctions.

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Included the Charles Vance video again. It’s good.

100s Of New Mines Required To Meet 2030 Battery Metals Demand — IEA (Mining)

Global battery and minerals supply chains need to expand ten-fold to meet projected critical minerals needs by 2030, a report published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) has found. The report concludes the industry needs to build 50 more lithium mines, 60 more nickel mines and 17 more cobalt mines by 2030 to meet global net carbon emissions goals. Pressure on the supply of critical materials will continue to mount as road transport electrification expands to meet net-zero ambitions. According to the IEA, demand for electric vehicle (EV) batteries will increase from around 340 GWh today to over 3500 GWh by 2030.

“Additional investments are needed in the short-term, particularly in mining, where lead times are much longer than for other parts of the supply chain. In some cases requiring more than a decade from initial feasibility studies to production, and then several more years to reach nominal production capacity,” the report reads. The projected mineral supply until the end of the 2020s is in line with the demand for EV batteries in the ‘stated policies scenario’ of the IEA’s world energy model. But the supply of some minerals, such as lithium, would need to rise by up to one-third by 2030 to satisfy the pledges and announcements for EV batteries in the ‘announced pledges scenario (APS) of the same energy model.


“For example, demand for lithium – the commodity with the largest projected demand-supply gap – is projected to increase sixfold to 500 kilotonnes by 2030 in the APS, requiring the equivalent of 50 new average-sized mines,” according to the report. By 2030, nickel is facing the largest absolute demand increase as high-nickel chemistries are the current dominant cathode for EVs and are expected to remain so. For cobalt, the opposite is true as battery makers continue to thrift to lower cobalt content chemistries (and even potentially cobalt-free chemistries by 2030) to reduce costs and due to environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns. [..] “For the Announced Pledges Scenario, 60 nickel and 17 cobalt new mines are required in 2030, (assuming average annual mine production capacity of 38,000 tonnes for nickel and 7,000 tonnes for cobalt).”

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“..if he is elected, “Brazil will again become a protagonist on the international stage and we will prove that it’s possible to have a better world.”

Sanctions On Russia ‘Irresponsible’, Adviser To Brazil’s Lula Says (RT)

Celso Amorim, Brazil’s former foreign minister and current foreign policy adviser to presidential frontrunner Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has condemned the West’s sanctions on Russia and said that should Lula take office, Brazil would chart a different course. In an interview with Bloomberg published on Friday, Amorim claimed that the West’s response to Russia’s military operation in Ukraine – sanctions on Russia and billions of dollars worth of weapons for Ukraine – have made nuclear war a real possibility. “For the first time since the Cuban missile crisis we see articles about the risk of nuclear weapons published on a weekly basis,” he said, arguing that “it’s irresponsible not to seek peace.”

Amorim’s argument mirrors that of Lula himself. Back in May the former Brazilian leader toldTime magazine that he sees Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky as equally responsible for the conflict in Ukraine, and condemned Washington for encouraging him to oppose Russia. “The United States has a lot of political clout. And Biden could have avoided [the conflict], not incited it,” Lula argued at the time. From the perspective of the US, Amorim questioned the logic of driving Russia into a deeper partnership with China, another economic and military rival of America. “I have nothing against China,” he stated, adding that both are part of the BRICS group, but said that he “can’t understand the interest of the US in strengthening the China-Russia relationship.”

This relationship aside, Amorim told Bloomberg that an economy as large as Russia’s is “too big and strategic” to isolate, and that Lula’s administration would not pursue such policies if the two-term leftist president is elected in October. Speaking to Time in May, Lula said that “many different countries” are having to “foot the bill” for Washington’s hardline anti-Russia policies, and that if he is elected, “Brazil will again become a protagonist on the international stage and we will prove that it’s possible to have a better world.” Lula is currently polling 11 points ahead of incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro, according to an aggregate compiled by the US-based Americas Society.

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Hard to read how the judge will see this.

Elon Musk Accuses Twitter of Fraud: Countersuit (ET)

Elon Musk in a countersuit has accused Twitter executives of fraudulently presenting an undercount of fake users, known as bots. Twitter in July sued Musk for withdrawing from a $44 billion acquisition agreement, alleging he breached the agreement. In the counter-filing, entered under seal last month and obtained by The Epoch Times on Aug. 5, Musk says he relied on statements from Twitter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission about key components of the company, such as the percentage of fake and spam accounts and moderation practices. But once Musk entered the agreement, he found that the technology company refused to provide access to the company’s books and records to verify the information. “The more Twitter evaded even simple inquiries, the more the Musk Parties grew to suspect that Twitter had misled them,” the countersuit says.


One key statistic: 238 million monetizable daily active users (users who actually see ads on the platform and thus would be considered monetizable). But that number is an overcount because there are more false and spam accounts on the platform than Twitter says, according to the filing. There are just 173 million monetizable users and most ads are shown to less than 16 million, it says. Twitter has said under 5 percent of its users are bots. Musk, in a meeting in May, attempted to understand how Twitter reached that percentage. He “was astonished to learn just how meager Twitter’s processes were,” the countersuit says. Musk learned that human reviewers look at a sample of just 100 accounts, and that Twitter executives weren’t able to say how the accounts in the sample were selected.

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Clear that Twitter hasn’t been forthcoming with files. Less clear is if they had to.

Elon Musk Says He Will Buy Twitter On One Condition (RT)

Billionaire Elon Musk would go through with the deal to buy Twitter if the social media platform demonstrates how it checks the authenticity of user accounts, Musk wrote on Twitter on Saturday. Responding to a comment by another user, Musk said the deal to buy Twitter “should proceed on original terms” if the platform shares with him their method for sampling accounts to determine they are genuine. “If Twitter simply provides their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they’re confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms. However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then [the deal] should not [proceed],” he continued, referring to the regulatory documents that companies must submit to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the sake of transparency and to provide information on operations.


Musk previously warned he would personally authenticate 100 randomly selected accounts on the platform. In April, the entrepreneur announced his intention to purchase the social media platform, of which he is an avid supporter and frequent user, for $44 billion. Then in May, Musk said he was trying to obtain information that would confirm that fake accounts and those used to send mass advertising messages on the platform comprise less than 5% of the total number of Twitter users. In early July, Musk’s lawyers notified Twitter that he no longer wished to go through with the deal because the company had failed to provide him with this information. Twitter, although initially reluctant to agree to Musk’s acquisition plans, filed a lawsuit against him on July 12 in an attempt to compel him to complete the purchase. On July 29, Musk filed a counterclaim against the company

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A new scandal every day.

VP Joe Biden Met With Two Chinese Energy Execs In The West Wing (DM)

Two Chinese businessmen with ties to Hunter Biden’s company met with Joe Biden at the White House and followed up with the VP’s son days later with a fawning email and invitation, records reveal. The meeting is the fifteenth to be uncovered between Joe and businessmen linked to Hunter. Executives for Chinese energy company Wanxiang secured a meeting with the vice president in the West Wing in July 2014 with just one day’s notice, according to White House visitor logs. A client of Hunter’s company Seneca Global Advisors partnered with Wanxiang in 2012 on a $1.25billion natural gas plant in China. The ceremony for the signing of the deal between Hunter’s client GreatPoint Energy and Wanxiang was attended by then Chinese vice president Xi Jinping.

Wanxiang is a major Chinese company, and also partnered with the North Korean state for a giant copper mine. Through his firm Rosemont Seneca Partners, Hunter also invested in a car company, Fisker, that was later bought by Wanxiang. After the company went bankrupt in 2013, Hunter was listed as a creditor on its filings. He bought one of its electric sports cars for $142,300. According to the White House visitor logs, Wanxiang America president Pin Ni met with Joe on July 25, 2014. Four days later, Ni emailed Hunter offering help servicing his Fisker sports car. ‘Last Friday when we visited DC, I heard that your Fisker is out of order and could not get serviced. Sorry,’ Ni wrote. ‘It would be our honor to get your Fisker fixed… I would like to give you a call to see what we could do as next step. ‘It would be our great honor to welcome you to visit Fisker or Wanxiang at any time.’

Joining Ni for the White House visit was Wanxiang Resources Co. president Youhong Han. Records show his meeting was at 11am and he left at 12.15pm, after scheduling the meeting with VP just the previous day. Han, 57, appears in the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ offshore leaks database, with a British Virgin Islands company called Elegant Sky Investments Limited that has a registered address in Shanghai. Emails between Hunter and his business partners show them monitoring reporting around the $1.25billion Wanxiang-GreatPoint deal. Wanxiang bought Fisker in February 2014. The luxury hybrid cars it makes were bought by celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin Bieber.

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When it rains it pours.

EDF Cuts Output At Nuclear Power Plants As French Rivers Get Too Warm (G.)

The French energy supplier EDF is temporarily reducing output at its nuclear power stations on the Rhône and Garonne rivers as heatwaves push up river temperatures, restricting its ability to use river water to cool the plants. The majority-state-owned company, Europe’s biggest producer of nuclear energy, said it would extend output cuts at several power stations on the two rivers as the hot spell continues – but that a minimum level of output would be maintained to keep the grid steady. EDF warned of potential output cuts at its nuclear power plants Tricastin, St Alban and Golfech in coming days due to high temperatures in the Rhône and Garonne rivers. It started imposing production restrictions in mid-July at Tricastin, St Alban and Bugey on the Rhône and Blayais at the mouth of the Garonne amid sweltering temperatures.

A spokesperson told the Guardian that the company was lowering production “for a few hours” where possible but not shutting the reactors completely. After the 2003 heatwave, France’s nuclear safety authority (ASN) set temperature and river flow limits beyond which power stations must reduce their production, to ensure the water used to cool the plants will not harm wildlife when it is released back into the rivers. Temperatures in southern France are expected to reach 40C over the next two days, according to the forecaster Météo-France. Since 2000, production losses due to high river temperatures and low river flows have represented an average of 0.3% of annual production.

However, half of EDF’s 56 nuclear reactors are offline due to planned maintenance and work to repair corrosion which was delayed by the pandemic, just as Europe faces an energy crunch following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As a result of the maintenance work, EDF estimates its power output this year will be the lowest in more than three decades. The company issued its fourth profit warning of the year last Thursday when it reported a first-half loss of €5.3bn. The French government, which owns 84% of EDF, is in the process of buying out minority shareholders to take full control of the business.

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Maybe this happens every year?

China’s July Coal Imports Surge 24% To Meet Peak Power Load (R.)

China’s coal imports in July rose by nearly a quarter from June to near the highest levels so far this year as power generators increased purchases to provide for peak summer electricity demand. Arrivals of the fuel totaled 23.52 million tonnes last month, up sharply from 18.98 million tonnes in June but 22% lower than a year earlier, data issued by the General Administration of Customs showed on Sunday. Over the first seven months of the year, China imported 138.52 million tonnes of coal, down 18% on the same period of 2021. Daily coal consumption in major coastal regions hovered around 2.2 million tonnes in late July, a similar level to last year, according to Shanghai Shipping Exchange.


A temperature spike across the country drove up the use of air conditioning. The government has vowed to avoid power rationing this year and has urged coal-burning power generators, which supply about 60% of the country’s electricity, to enlarge coal stocks. Data tracked by Refinitiv showed China’s seaborne coal imports from Russia would hit a record high of 7.38 million tonnes in July. However, analysts have expected coal demand will soon begin to ease as temperatures moderate, while industrial activity remains sluggish amid Covid-19 restrictions.

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Bill Maher: Fat celebrattion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coke Machine
https://twitter.com/i/status/1555919490017288195

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Jun 162022
 


Caravaggio The calling of St. Matthew 1599-1600

 

Severe COVID-19 ‘Rare’ In Unvaccinated People (MD)
FDA Advisors Unanimously Endorse COVID Shots for Infants and Young Kids (CHD)
The World Is Looking At You (Batiushka)
First American Mercenary Contractors Captured in Ukraine (CTH)
The ‘New G8’ Meets China’s ‘Three Rings’ (Escobar)
Schiff: Evidence That Trump “Engaged in Likely Multiple Criminal Acts (Turley)
ECB Holds Emergency Meeting To Discuss Market Turmoil (ZH)
PPI: Smoking -AGAIN- (Denninger)
Today’s The Day…. (Denninger)
“Red Flag” Laws Put a Target on the Back of Every American (Whitehead)
Erdogan Issues Fresh Threats Against Greece (K.)
A Whistleblower’s Agony (Kiriakou)
Patel Responsible For Assange’s ‘Slow-Motion Execution’ If Extradited (DIss.)

 

 

 

 

Consumer feelings

 

 

 

 

Blink

 

 

 

 

DeSantis Musk

 

 

 

 

We’ve known for a while that the vaccines don’t protect against infection or transmission. The last thing they had left was protection against severe disease. That is now gone too. It’s over.

Severe COVID-19 ‘Rare’ In Unvaccinated People (MD)

A survey has found that people who did not get the vaccine had a lower rate of suffering severe COVID-19 amid the pandemic. The survey uploaded to the preprint server ResearchGate presented data from more than 18,500 respondents from the “Control Group” project with more than 300,000 overall participants. An analysis revealed that compared to those who got jabbed, unvaccinated people reported fewer hospitalizations. The international survey also found that the unvaccinated people from more than 175 countries were more likely to self-care to prevent and manage COVID-19 infection. They used natural products like vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc, quercetin, and drugs, such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.

Many participants experienced discrimination for refusing the administration of “genetic vaccines” and struggled with mental health burdens due to the stigma in the mostly “vaccinated” society. Since the participants were self-selected and self-reported, the survey findings had to be interpreted with care compared to statistics or studies based on randomly selected populations, according to the Alliance for Natural Health International. The participants admitted to avoiding vaccines due to their preference for natural medicine interventions and skepticism of pharmaceutical interventions. They also voiced distrust of government information and fear of the possible adverse effects of the vaccines in the long run.

The survey was conducted from September 2021 through February 2022. During the period, participants experienced mild to moderate COVID-19 infection and were infrequently hospitalized. A number of female participants suffered menstrual and bleeding abnormalities, prompting the researchers who analyzed the data to surmise that the issues might have been caused by spike protein exposure and shedding, as per The Epoch Times.


Well, no

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Read the article above and then explain this.

FDA Advisors Unanimously Endorse COVID Shots for Infants and Young Kids (CHD)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) vaccine advisory panel today unanimously voted 21-0 to recommend Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines for infants and young children, stating the totality of the evidence available shows the benefits of the vaccines outweigh the risks of use. Pfizer’s three-dose vaccine would cover children 6 months to 5 years old, while Moderna’s two-dose vaccine covers children 6 months to 6 years old. States have already ordered millions of doses made available prior to FDA authorization by the Biden administration. Depending on whether the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) accept the recommendations of their advisory panels, White House officials have said the administration of vaccines for these age groups could start as early as June 21.


The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) ignored pleas from experts, the vaccine injured and a congressman representing 17 other lawmakers to halt authorization until questions about the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines for the nation’s youngest children could be properly addressed. Many of the committee members, including pediatrician Dr. Ofer Levy, said the decision to authorize the shots was about providing a choice to parents who wanted access to COVID-19 vaccines, despite concerns by public commenters the panel was not adhering to the requirements for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) and that authorization would eventually lead to mandates — as it did with adult vaccines.

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“..the eyes of the freedom-loving world are turned to the Russian Federation..”

The World Is Looking At You (Batiushka)

As a result of this first War atheist Bolsheviks seized power in the former Russian Empire. Although well over 600,000 Russian troops had died in the two and half years up until February 1917, as they, unlike the Allies on the Western Front, had faced the vast majority of the forces of Germany, Austro-Hungary and Turkey, far worse was to come. Foreign-sponsored foreigners, like the brain-fevered Blank-Lenin and the evil genius Bronstein-Trotsky, killed millions in a civil war, including the Imperial Family, and through deliberate starvation. Many more would later die in concentration camps. And unlike in the First War when the enemy never even entered Russia, in the Second War the enemy reached the very gates of Moscow, Leningrad and the banks of the Volga, slaughtering 27 million, mainly civilians.

But then there was the American flu (called for propaganda reasons ‘Spanish flu’). Beginning in Kansas, it was brought to Europe in 1917 by American troops, who had entered the First War, as arranged, as soon as the treacherous ‘Allies’ (not Germany) had succeeded in overthrowing Imperial Russia. The Americans had come to conquer Europe. After the Great European Suicide of the First War, this flu may have killed another 50 million, though some say far more. But above all, exactly as the French Marshal Foch foretold at Versailles, the ‘Peace’ of 1919 led directly to the Second Great War that broke out twenty years later. And that murdered tens of millions and in 1945 made Western Europe into a conquered and occupied province of the USA, which then set about creating a USE (United States of Europe) in its own image.

And so came the Cold War, with its MAD (mutually assured destruction) phobia, bunker-building, wasteful spending on arms, and the new generation’s social revolution of the 1960s. In turn came the next generation of 1989, 75 years after 1914 and 50 years after 1939, and the occupation of Eastern Europe by the same US colonists, sending out their proconsul-ambassadors to the client states of the ‘New Europe’. In 1991, 50 years after Operation Barbarossa of Nazi Imperialism ravaged the USSR but was defeated, the latter fell to Nato Imperialism. And in turn, 100 years after the Great European Suicide began, the Evil Empire began its occupation of the Ukraine in 2014, turning it into a dependent vassal. The whole pattern of the hundred years, 1914-2014, had the same source.

Until 2022 there had never been any hope of justice and restitution for any of this. Then on 24 February began the Special Operation to liberate the Ukraine and denazify the world. This is the last throw of the dice and the eyes of the freedom-loving world are turned to the Russian Federation. Even with all its troubles, imperfections and treacheries, we have no other hope. The world is looking at you.

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“The traditional end result for captured mercenaries is execution; however, Russian President Vladimir Putin may not want to hang these two State Dept. conscripts.”

First American Mercenary Contractors Captured in Ukraine (CTH)

A contracted mercenary has no legal recognition or protection as a prisoner of war. Two American mercenary soldiers have been captured by Russian forces and now present a rather unique issue for the Biden administration. The traditional end result for captured mercenaries is execution; however, Russian President Vladimir Putin may not want to hang these two State Dept. conscripts. (Via Telegraph) – “Two former US servicemen have been captured during fighting with Russian forces in Ukraine, The Telegraph has been told. The pair were taken prisoner during a fierce battle outside the north-east city of Kharkiv last week, according to comrades who were fighting alongside them.


Alexander Drueke, 39, and Andy Huynh, 27, had been serving as volunteers with a regular Ukrainian army unit. They are believed to be the first US servicemen to end up as Russian prisoners of war. They join a growing number of Western military volunteers captured by Russian forces, including at least two Britons. Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner have already been told they face the death penalty as “mercenaries”. The capture of the two Americans will be diplomatically sensitive as the Kremlin may seek to use it as proof that America is becoming directly involved in the war. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is likely to demand significant concessions to release them.”

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“The new G8, instead, “does not impose anything on anyone, but tries to find common solutions.”

The ‘New G8’ Meets China’s ‘Three Rings’ (Escobar)

The speaker of the Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, may have created the defining acronym for the emerging multipolar world: “the new G8”. As Volodin noted, “the United States has created conditions with its own hands so that countries wishing to build an equal dialogue and mutually beneficial relations will actually form a ‘new G8’ together with Russia.” This non Russia-sanctioning G8, he added, is 24.4% ahead of the old one, which is in fact the G7, in terms of GDP in purchasing power parity (PPP), as G7 economies are on the verge of collapsing and the U.S. registers record inflation.

The power of the acronym was confirmed by one of the researchers on Europe at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Sergei Fedorov: three BRICS members (Brazil, China and India) alongside Russia, plus Indonesia, Iran, Turkey and Mexico, all non adherents to the all-out Western economic war against Russia, will soon dominate global markets. Fedorov stressed the power of the new G8 in population as well as economically: “If the West, which restricted all international organizations, follows its own policies, and pressures everyone, then why are these organizations necessary? Russia does not follow these rules.” The new G8, instead, “does not impose anything on anyone, but tries to find common solutions.”

The coming of the new G8 points to the inevitable advent of BRICS +, one of the key themes to be discussed in the upcoming BRICS summit in China. Argentina is very much interested in becoming part of the extended BRICS and those (informal) members of the new G8 – Indonesia, Iran, Turkey, Mexico – are all likely candidates. The intersection of the new G8 and BRICS + will lead Beijing to turbo-charge what has already been conceptualized as the Three Rings strategy by Cheng Yawen, from the Institute of International Relations and Public Affairs at the Shanghai International Studies University.

Cheng argues that since the beginning of the 2018 U.S.-China trade war the Empire of Lies and its vassals have aimed to “decouple”; thus the Middle Kingdom should strategically downgrade its relations with the West and promote a new international system based on South-South cooperation. Looks like if it walks and talks like the new G8, that’s because it’s the real deal.

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Schiff himself “Engaged in Likely Multiple Criminal Acts”.

Schiff: Evidence That Trump “Engaged in Likely Multiple Criminal Acts (Turley)

Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) went on CNN’s “Don Lemon Tonight” to tout the work of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6th riot. In that interview, Schiff declared that the Committee has enough evidence showing former President Donald Trump “engaged in likely multiple criminal acts.” While vague on the specific crimes, Schiff emphasized that the Justice Department did not have to wait any further to launch a criminal investigation based on what has already been disclosed. While the Committee has disclosed new evidence in the form of videotapes and testimony, it has not presented new material evidence of criminal acts in my view. That could still come but the first two hearings largely focused on a “conspiracy” to challenge the election certification and allegations that Trump knew the there was no compelling evidence of widespread election fraud.

If there is evidence of criminal conduct by former president Trump or others, most of us would support the calls for prosecution. It is also possible that the Justice Department is investigating such crimes or has undisclosed evidence. The hearings, however, have not established such a foundation. That can still come but these crimes have elements that have not been addressed in hearings that have lacked any opposing views or adversarial elements. The decision of Speaker Nancy Pelosi to abandon the long tradition of bipartisan members on such selection committee has robbed the investigation of credibility and legitimacy for many Americans.

Indeed, Schiff’s reference to evidence held by the Committee is likely to bring up memories of his highly controversial public statements that the House Intelligence Committee, which he chairs, had direct evidence of Russian collusion despite the countervailing findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. He never produced the evidence and later it was revealed that Justice officials and FBI agents had told his Committee that they did not find such evidence. Now, Schiff is maintaining that:

“I certainly believe there’s enough evidence for them to open an investigation of several people, and so did Judge David Carter of California believes the former president and others were engaged in likely multiple criminal acts. So if the Justice Department concurs with Judge Carter, let alone my own view or others, they should be pursuing that. So, yes, I think there is sufficient evidence to open an investigation. It would be of you up to the Justice Department ultimately to decide does that evidence rise to proof beyond a reasonable doubt such that they’re comfortable indicting someone. But there’s certainly, in my view, enough evidence to open up investigations.”

The reference to the Carter opinion has become a mainstay on cable news. I was critical of Judge Carter’s opinion when it was released. Much of the Jan. 6th hearings seem to be structured along the same lines as the Carter decision which was, in my view, strikingly conclusory and unsupported in critical parts of the analysis. Judge Carter simply declares that Trump knew that the election was not stolen and thus “the illegality of the plan was obvious.” Putting aside the court’s assumption of what Trump secretly concluded on the election, a sizable number of Americans still do not view Biden as legitimately elected. The court is not simply saying that they are wrong in that view but, because they are wrong, legislative challenges amounted to criminal obstruction of Congress.

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First Japan, then Europe, then the US. Russia and China will remain standing.

ECB Holds Emergency Meeting To Discuss Market Turmoil (ZH)

Last week, shortly after the ECB’s latest meeting disappointed markets and concluded without a discussion of Europe’s growing bond market fragmentation which has since sent Italian bond yields soaring above 4%, we joked that “at this rate the ECB would make an emergency rate cut” just hours after announcing an end to QT and guiding to a July rate hike. Once again, our jokes was not too far from the truth because on Wednesday morning, just hours before the Fed’s first 75bps rate hike sine 1994, and with Italian bonds in freefall, European Central Bank unexpectedly announced it would hold an emergency , ad hoc meeting of its rate-setters starting 11am CET in which it would “discuss current market conditions.”

The meeting, which comes less than a week after the rate-setting governing council’s last vote, raised investor expectations that the central bank is preparing to announce a policy instrument to stave-off another debt crisis in the region, which can only come in the form of more QE… which is ironic at a time when the ECB just announced it was phasing out all QE! Italian government bonds rallied in price following news of the planned meeting, reversing some of the recent sell-off that analysts said brought the country’s borrowing costs towards the “danger zone”. Gilles Moec, chief economist at Axa, an insurer, said the “stakes are high” for the ECB “now that everyone is dusting off their debt sustainability spreadsheets for Italy, they probably need to go up an extra notch”.

[..] ECB executive board member Isabel Schnabel indicated in a speech on Tuesday evening that the central bank was getting closer to the point where it would intervene in bond markets, saying “some borrowers have seen significantly larger changes in financing conditions than others since the start of the year”. She added: “Such changes in financing conditions may constitute an impairment in the transmission of monetary policy that requires close monitoring.” Schnabel, the ECB executive who oversees its market operations and one of the most influential voices on its board, said the central bank’s commitment to the euro had no limits. “And our track record of stepping in when needed backs up this commitment,” she added. But wait, this means… more QE at a time when the ECB just vowed… less QE!!??

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”Choose one and only one: Feel good or be able to afford food and basically everything else.”

PPI: Smoking -AGAIN- (Denninger)

Oh my look what we have here! “The Producer Price Index for final demand increased 0.8 percent in May, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This rise followed advances of 0.4 percent in April and 1.6 percent in March. (See table A.) On an unadjusted basis, final demand prices moved up 10.8 percent for the 12 months ended in May.” So…. two points, more or less, higher than CPI. PPI leads, I remind you, so the consumer inflation level has not peaked. Let’s look inside. “Final demand goods: The index for final demand goods moved up 1.4 percent in May, the fifth consecutive rise. Over 70 percent of the increase in May can be traced to a 5.0-percent advance in prices for final demand energy. The index for final demand goods less foods and energy moved up 0.7 percent, while prices for final demand foods were unchanged.”

Oh really? Only 5% eh? Well, don’t look at June, because gasoline, for example, has risen by more than 10% in the last two weeks which is all in June. Oops. “Product detail: Nearly 30 percent of the May increase in the index for final demand services can be attributed to prices for truck transportation of freight, which rose 2.9 percent.” No kidding? You mean $6+ diesel fuel turns directly into higher shipping prices? I just got back from a cross-country trip and saw lots of dead dinosaurs coming out of the stack of 18 wheelers and every one of them had better keep moving or you’re not eating, never mind being able to buy and consume anything else. The current Administration’s war on fossil fuels might make you feel good but it is also directly responsible for this insanity. Choose one and only one: Feel good or be able to afford food and basically everything else.

The really nasty is that the 12 month trend is unbroken and, as I noted, it all started right after Biden was inaugurated. He said he was going to do this during the campaign and he has. It takes time for the PPI to reflect down into the final shelf price and it has. But the 12 month final demand number, less food, energy and trade from 12 months prior stands at 6% which it has run at or above since August of last year. Shut it off now and it will be next summer before that has all worked its way through and there’s nothing you can do about the time requirement.

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“At the core what The Fed does is not the question. It’s what Congress does.”

Today’s The Day…. (Denninger)

….. we “celebrate” The Fed decision on rates. Well, yeah, ok. The 13 week bill says the FFR should be 1.5% now. As has almost-always been the case historically (go look at FRED if you don’t believe me) the market leads and The Fed is not actually in charge of rates. Of course this runs counter to the “all-powerful Fed” which suits everyone on all sides. The politicians and conspiracy nuts get to blame someone else for an agency that follows what the market demands because if it doesn’t it is proved impotent and takes a huge loss on top of it. Unfortunately 50 bips will do nothing to cool inflation; to do that short-term rates must be higher than the inflation rate so that the real cost of borrowing is positive. That would mean putting about 700bips on the FFR right here and now – which we know won’t happen.

Then again this has been the problem for the last 30ish years. The slope of the interest rate curve has gone from the upper left to the lower right and thus serial refinancing at the corporate and government level, say much less at the personal level, has looked “free.” That’s the sneaky part of inflation which I explained back when I wrote Leverage with a nice graph. When you run a deliberate inflationary policy over decades the first years look like a free lunch because the apparent “wealth” initially goes up faster than the debt service (which is on a smaller base) and thus produces a “belly” (an area of expansion of the space between the two lines of available spending power and debt service.) This is a chimera and to intentionally run such a policy as a business or government is fraud because all exponential expansions eventually go vertical, and the debt service will eventually cross available funds at which point you’re screwed since you cannot spend 110% of what you have — ever — no matter what you do.

It’s happening now. At the core what The Fed does is not the question. It’s what Congress does. The Fed is constrained to use only Federal Government backed securities for its monetary operations and policy. Yes, it has shaved that repeatedly, most-egregiously with Fannie and Freddie paper during the housing crash which at the time was wildly illegal yet not one person in Congress called them on it nor did anyone from the Executive (e.g. DOJ) stop it despite its blatant illegality. Then Congress went even further and, for all intents and purposes, explicitly backstopped said paper on a retroactive basis which is also illegal, but heh, nobody cared because it was “too big to fail.”

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Total control is the goal.

“Red Flag” Laws Put a Target on the Back of Every American (Whitehead)

What we do not need is yet another pretext by which government officials can violate the Fourth Amendment at will under the guise of public health and safety. Indeed, at a time when red flag gun laws (which authorize government officials to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others) are gaining traction as a legislative means by which to allow police to remove guns from people suspected of being threats, it wouldn’t take much for police to be given the green light to enter a home without a warrant in order to seize lawfully-possessed firearms based on concerns that the guns might pose a danger. Frankly, a person wouldn’t even need to own a gun to be subjected to such a home invasion.

SWAT teams have crashed through doors on lesser pretexts based on false information, mistaken identities and wrong addresses. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have adopted laws allowing the police to remove guns from people suspected of being threats. If Congress succeeds in passing the Federal Extreme Risk Protection Order, which would nationalize red flag laws, that number will grow. As The Washington Post reports, these red flag gun laws…”allow a family member, roommate, beau, law enforcement officer or any type of medical professional to file a petition [with a court] asking that a person’s home be temporarily cleared of firearms. It doesn’t require a mental-health diagnosis or an arrest.”

In the wake of yet another round of mass shootings, these gun confiscation laws—extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws—may appease the fears of those who believe that fewer guns in the hands of the general populace will make our society safer. Of course, it doesn’t always work that way. Anything—knives, vehicles, planes, pressure cookers—can become a weapon when wielded with deadly intentions. With these red flag gun laws, the stated intention is to disarm individuals who are potential threats… to “stop dangerous people before they act.”

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I think he has elections coming up.

Erdogan Issues Fresh Threats Against Greece (K.)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has issued fresh threats against Greece, this time accusing the country of supporting an international campaign directed against his country. “We have sent a clear message to everyone concerned about developments in the Aegean,” Erdogan told MPs of his AK Party in the wake of the EFES-2022 military exercise near the Aegean port city of Izmir. “We have seen through the game being played at the expense of our country. They are allowing Greece to behave like a spoiled child as they have done in the past,” he said. “The problem is that Greece is not aware of this game, or it has voluntarily adopted a supporting role,” he said, adding that the country would pay a hefty price for “making the same mistake.”

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Joshua Schulte. Treated like an animal.

A Whistleblower’s Agony (Kiriakou)

A C.I.A. whistleblower languishes awaiting trial in a federal prison under inhumane conditions and almost nobody is paying attention. Joshua Schulte is a former C.I.A. hacker, one of those computer geniuses whose job it is to work his way into the computer systems of our country’s enemies in support of some of the most highly-classified operations the C.I.A. carries out. The government believes that Schulte was a malcontent who released to WikiLeaks in 2017 the equivalent of 2 billion pages of top secret C.I.A. data with code names like Brutal Kangaroo, AngerQuake and McNugget. These programs, collectively known as Vault 7, were custom-made techniques used to compromise Wifi networks, hack into Skype, defeat anti-virus software and even hack into smart TVs and the guidance systems in cars.

They were the C.I.A.’s modern-day crown jewels. One senior C.I.A. officer likened the revelations to “a modern-day Pearl Harbor.” The C.I.A. accused Schulte of stealing the data in 2016 and of sending it to WikiLeaks in 2017. He was eventually charged with 13 felonies, mostly related to the Espionage Act. He was later charged with a number of additional felonies related to child pornography, accusations that he has adamantly denied. Schulte went to trial in New York in early 2020 with the Justice Department accusing him of “the single biggest leak of classified national defense information in the history of the C.I.A.”

After four weeks of testimony and six days of jury deliberation, he was found guilty of contempt of court and making a false statement, both minor charges for which federal sentencing guidelines call for imprisonment of zero-to-six months. The jury deadlocked on all other counts, and the judge declared a mistrial. Schulte remains in prison awaiting retrial. He has been incarcerated since October 2018.

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“This dramatic deterioration of Mr Assange’s health has not yet been considered in his extradition proceedings.”

Patel Responsible For Assange’s ‘Slow-Motion Execution’ If Extradited (DIss.)

A coalition of over 300 doctors warned UK Home Secretary Priti Patel that she may be responsible for the “slow-motion execution” of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange if her office approves the United States government’s extradition request. Patel has until June 19, which is ten years after Assange entered Ecuador’s embassy in London and sought political asylum, to decide whether to approve the extradition. Assange faces 18 charges brought against him by the US Justice Department, 17 of which are under the Espionage Act. All the charges relate to documents WikiLeaks released in 2010 and 2011, which were provided by US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning.

Doctors for Assange” is an international coalition of medical doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists who have spoken up for Assange because of the toll the US government’s prosecution has taken on his health. Many of the doctors are from the UK and Australia, which is Assange’s home country. The doctors sent a letter to Patel on June 10, 2022, ahead of the Home Office’s extradition decision. “Should [Assange] come to harm in the US,” the group contends Patel “will be left holding the responsibility for that negligent outcome.” They add, “The extradition of a person with such compromised health, moreover, is medically and ethically unacceptable.” As the doctors recall, Assange’s health has deteriorated in UK custody at Belmarsh prison, where he’s been detained since April 11, 2019.

“In October 2021, Mr. Assange suffered a ‘mini-stroke.’” “This dangerous deterioration of Mr Assange’s health underscores the medical concern that the chronic stress caused by his harsh prison conditions, as well as his justified fear of the conditions that he would face in the case of extradition, leaves Mr. Assange vulnerable to cardiovascular events,” the doctors add. “This dramatic deterioration of Mr Assange’s health has not yet been considered in his extradition proceedings.” The doctors argue the basis for accepting US “assurances” was based upon “outdated medical information,” which should render the assurances “obsolete.” “Under conditions in which the UK legal system has failed to take Mr Assange’s current health status into account, no valid decision to approve his extradition may be made, by you, or anyone else.”

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Jun 112022
 


Robert Campin Portrait of a woman 1430-35

 

The Goal Is Not To Help Ukraine, But To Fight Putin – Jacques Baud (TP)
Biden Tries Blaming Russia for White House Energy Policy and Inflation (CTH)
Ukraine Is Blackmailing The Global South By Demanding Weapons For Wheat (Kol.)
Traitors and Patriots (Batiushka)
UK: 5,000 Non-Covid Excess Deaths in the Last Five Weeks (DS)
Funding of Promising COVID-19 Treatment Withdrawn Without Explanation (DS)
Get Your Monkeypox On (Jim Kunstler)
Primetime Jan. 6 Hearings Air To Dismal TV Ratings (JTN)
Liz Cheney Said Trump Had A ‘Seven-part Plan’ To Overturn The Election (CNN)
Trump Pentagon First Offered National Guard to Capitol on Jan 2 (JTN)
Perry to Cheney: Your Pardon Story Is An Absolute Shameless, Soulless Lie (JTN)
Erdogan Threatens Greece Over ‘Militarizing’ Aegean Islands (ZH)
Agreement In The Dispute Over Spying Attacks On Julian Assange’s Lawyer (Zeit)

 

 

 

 

Ryan Cole
https://twitter.com/i/status/1535169325610553344

 

 

 

 

Kerseboom
https://twitter.com/i/status/1535213684779548672

 

 

Original from Swiss journal, Zeitgeschehen im Fokus.

Baud is a former strategic intelligence officer in the Swiss Department of Defense.

“This is about supporting decision-making based on facts and not on the basis of divine inspiration.”

The Goal Is Not To Help Ukraine, But To Fight Putin -Jacques Baud (TP)

JB: It is also interesting that if one takes some distance to assess the conflict and does not immediately side with Ukraine, one is declared a ” Putin-Empathizer.” This is unbelievable. What I think about Putin has nothing to do with the assessment of the situation. That is the business of the Ukrainians. I have said this several times: if I were Ukrainian, I probably would have taken up arms. But that is not the point. I, as Swiss, will not give up my Swissness. In order to help Ukraine, I don’t have to become a Ukrainian; but I have to look at the big picture I have as Swiss to bring a less passionate but more constructive point of view. The journalists who criticize me are more Russia-haters than Ukraine-lovers.

JB: When an onlooker sees an old lady being attacked by a thug on the street, he does not encourage her to fight back, but tries to separate the two. We are in the situation of this onlooker; but our response is to give weapons so that Ukraine fights. For a Ukrainian it is legitimate to want to fight. But for a Swiss or another European, our role is to try to limit the damage. But no one is even attempting to do that in the West. When Zelensky was looking for a mediator, he turned to Turkey, China, and Israel. He did not choose a European Union country or even Switzerland. He understood that Switzerland is no longer an independent partner.

[..] JB: Paradoxically, everything we give to Ukraine today only highlights the help and compassion we have not given to those who have been unjustly attacked by the West in the Middle East and elsewhere. This will have consequences in the future. Many have noticed this with the refugees. The “blond, blue-eyed” refugees are gladly helped; the others are not. Maybe we can understand this, even if we cannot approve of it. But what is incomprehensible, remains the fact that we keep silent about one attacker, while another is punished with more than 6 000 sanctions.

[..] It also doesn’t mean that you have to be in favor of Russia; that has nothing to do with it. If you look at Justitia, she is blind and holds a scale in her hand. That is exactly what is missing today. Western countries are partial and biased. The same applies to the European Union. A modern state should not be guided by passion, but by reason. These principles were established by Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau in the 18th century. Our “woke” culture has forgotten them. We let our feelings guide us and we follow them. That is the problem.

[..] The rule of law means that decisions are not based on feelings or intuitions, but on the basis of facts. That is why modern states have intelligence services. This is about supporting decision-making based on facts and not on the basis of divine inspiration. This is a fundamental difference between enlightened governance and despotic obscurantism. Fighting a dictatorship does not entitle us to forget the principles of the rule of law. Since the Balkan War, the West seems to believe that the end justifies the means. It is irrelevant what individual ministers think as persons, they are allowed to hate Putin, that is their right as citizens —but not as ministers. Feelings cannot be the basis of their policy.

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Kissinger in 2014: “Demonizing Vladimir Putin is not politics; it is an alibi for not having politics.”

Biden Tries Blaming Russia for White House Energy Policy and Inflation (CTH)

It’s worth paying attention to where and when Joe Biden is standing when he makes his ridiculous economic claims today about Russia being the cause of the energy policy from the White House. Do not let it go unnoticed that it’s June, the last month of the second quarter for economic data. Do not let it pass your reference that Joe Biden is speaking from the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) as he spins his nonsense about the inflation, he alone is responsible for. And do not overlook the attendee mentioned in this subtle statement, “And, John, I can’t thank you. You’re — you’re the real deal. Anybody — well, I won’t get into — get you in trouble, but thanks for sticking up for me.”

“John” is the White House Port Envoy John D Porcari. A severely partisan former Obama official who was selected by Joe Biden to lead the fraudulent effort to improve supply chains when the White House was under assault in the fall of 2021. Porcari was the person who designed “operation hide the ships” to give the illusion of port efficiency improvement, and it is almost a certainty that it was Porcari who leveraged his influence with the POLA to hold back the December 2021 import data in order to try and improve the GDP statistics. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters with negative GDP growth. The first quarter of 2022 was -1.5% as detailed by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That means if April, May and June 2022 are also negative GDP then we are factually in an economic recession.

That makes this month, June 2022, critical for Joe Biden. The White House will do anything to avoid that label appearing on their economic policy when the reporting is released at the end of July. So it’s June, the last month of the second quarter…. and Joe Biden is giving a speech from the Port of Los Angeles….. and the White House will do anything and everything to avoid that “economic recession” label. What does that mean? That means it’s time for John Porcari to work his magic influence again and get the POLA import data held back and delayed so that it is not deducted from the GDP.

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Not how we prefer to see it.

Ukraine Is Blackmailing The Global South By Demanding Weapons For Wheat (Kol.)

Ukrainian Ambassador to Turkey Vasily Bodnar officially demanded weapons in exchange for resuming wheat exports by sea in what amounts to the blatant blackmailing of the Global South in the midst of the artificially manufactured food crisis. He said that “Effective security guarantees are required for maritime shipments to resume. These guarantees must be provided through the supply of appropriate weapons to Ukraine to protect its coasts from maritime threats and the involvement of the navies of third countries in protecting the relevant part of the Black Sea.” This comprehensively debunks the US-led Western Mainstream Media’s (MSM) fake news that Russia is the one that’s supposedly holding the Global South hostage by allegedly blockading Ukrainian ports.

The background context is that Russian Ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzya already explained the artificially manufactured origins of the global food crisis late last month. In short, he blamed it on the economic consequences caused by the West’s response to COVID (particularly with respect to spiking inflation and influencing food demand); Ukraine’s mining of its own ports; and the anti-Russian sanctions. President Putin later reiterated these causes in a TV interview that he gave a little over a week later on the same day that he met with Macky Sall, the Chairman of the African Union. His guest extended credence to the Kremlin’s explanation by declaring that “Anti-Russia sanctions have made this situation worse and now we do not have access to grain from Russia, primarily to wheat.”

All the while and in spite of the artificially manufactured origins of the food crisis that lie entirely beyond Russia’s control, Moscow has been doing its utmost to encourage Kiev to at the very least resume its wheat exports to the Global South. To that end, it proposed four potential corridors: the Azov Sea; the Black Sea; overland through Belarus en route to Baltic ports; and across Western Europe. Suffice to say, Kiev has flat-out refused to employ any of these means, though it’s also worth noting that Nebenzya mentioned in his speech late last month that Russia has “reasonable suspicions” to believe that Kiev is exporting wheat to those Western European countries that already have copious reserves of this commodity in exchange for arms exactly as happened with the Central Powers near the end of WWI.

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“..Putin has very slowly and very cautiously, but incrementally, been remedying the situation. It is his life’s work – to reverse treachery.”

Traitors and Patriots (Batiushka)

The prolific Russian nationalist author of 91 books, Oleg Platonov (born 1950), relates in his work on the fall of the Soviet Union how in the 1980s, on the eve of the country’s collapse, Westerners, whom The Saker rightly calls ‘Euro-Atlanticists’, betrayed the USSR. These ‘Euro-Atlanticists’ were the ‘Communists’ who in the 1990s overnight became super Capitalists, bought shares for almost nothing in valuable, about-to-be privatised national companies and so became ‘oligarchs’. Their shameful acts, in fact thefts of national property by those with insider knowledge, created an underclass of homeless. They reveal how these money-launderers sold out their own country and people and souls, often then going to live in Tel Aviv, New York, London, Nice, Marbella, Nicosia etc.

The Traitors were opposed by the Patriots, some of whom worked in the national intelligence services, where some of the best brains met. One of these Patriots, the future President Putin, was then a lowly colonel in Dresden in East Germany, working in the Soviet intelligence services (not a head of it, like so many US Presidents, heads of the CIA). When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, his office sought answers from Moscow as to what to do. And there was no answer. ‘Moscow is silent’. I believe the story is related in many places, among them in ‘The Putin Interviews’ by Oliver Stone. It was that paralysis and silence of the Centre in Moscow that was among the most decisive events in the future President’s life. He realised that Moscow was betraying the Soviet Union, that it had been taken over by the Traitors, the ‘Nomenklatura’. They believed in nothing, except in their own disgraceful gain. They were anti-Patriots.

Since coming to power in 2000, V. V. Putin has very slowly and very cautiously, but incrementally, been remedying the situation. It is his life’s work – to reverse treachery. In 19th century Russian history people like him were known as ‘Slavophiles’ and they were opposed by ‘Westerners’. These are very vague and rather crude terms, for there are many types of Slavophiles, from primitive and bigoted nationalists to genuine Patriots, who are well-educated realists and seek only the well-being of their people. Similarly, the term ‘Westerners’ can describe outright Traitors and murderers, like Litvinenko and Skripal, but also those who realise that if Russia is to defend itself against the West, it must fight obscurantism and make use of, and then improve on, Western technology. President Putin would probably not identify with either of these historical tags, but rather perhaps with aspects of both of them.

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We see this in lots of places. I added the New Brunswick chart.

Still, when Justin Bieber gets facial paralysis, it is reportedly from Covid….

UK: 5,000 Non-Covid Excess Deaths in the Last Five Weeks (DS)

New official data from the ONS released today add a further 730 non-Covid excess deaths in England and Wales to the total of the last five weeks, bringing the figure to 4,964. This means nearly 5,000 more people than usual have died in England and Wales in the last five weeks of causes other than COVID-19. The total deaths in the most recent week were 10.1% above the five-year average, as depicted in the chart below. The chart shows in blue that Covid deaths account for less than half of the excess deaths this week, though note that the chart over-counts Covid deaths as it includes any death with Covid. The 4,964 figure for non-Covid excess deaths quoted above is calculated using deaths due to Covid, i.e., where Covid is recorded as the underlying cause on the death certificate.

Private homes, care homes and hospitals are all experiencing excess deaths at present: 23.4%, 6.5% and 5.3% respectively in the most recent week. The ONS report does not comment on what might lie behind these worrying trends. The fact that it coincides with the spring vaccine booster campaign among older folk has raised worries for many, particularly in light of the ONS data showing hospitalisation rates for non-Covid reasons many times higher in the vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated, and the vaccine safety concerns raised by clinical practitioners who believe their vaccinated patients are at greater risk of disease and death.

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“..there did not seem to be enough support from the scientific community for a study on the benefits of fish liver oil against viral infections..”

Funding of Promising COVID-19 Treatment Withdrawn Without Explanation (DS)

In 2020 a cell culture lab-study performed by a group of Icelandic scientists led by Dr. Einar Stefánsson, Professor of Medicine at the University of Iceland, showed that free fatty acids found in fish liver oil can quickly destroy viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19. The study was conducted in collaboration with U.S. partners. Laboratory results showed fish liver oil with 1% and 2% free fatty agents destroyed 99.9% of SARS-CoV-2 within 10 minutes. According to an article in Vidskiptabbladid in November 2020, the research, in collaboration with fish liver oil producer Lysi hf. had been approved by the Scientific Ethics Committee and the first phase of the study was being planned with the participation of 30 infected individuals.


Icelandic daily Fréttin recently contacted Professor Stefánsson for news of the project, but he said the research project had to be discontinued due to lack of funds. According to Dr. Stefánsson, the Icelandic Centre for Research, RANNÍS, had approved a “substantial grant” to finance the study, but later the grant was withdrawn without explanation. He said there did not seem to be enough support from the scientific community for a study on the benefits of fish liver oil against viral infections, so unfortunately the project had to be cancelled. Related to this, it might be noted that in April 2020 the Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority banned an advertisement from Lysi hf. which claimed the consumption of fish liver oil might be beneficial against viruses such as herpes, RS and coronaviruses, preventing infection. The authority had shortly before warned consumers of advertisements for products that might strengthen the immune system, for example against SARS-CoV-2 infection, since information or claims of such product characteristics was “wrong and misleading” for consumers.

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“And now, the Party of Chaos is so keenly desperate to stay out of prison that they apparently seek to repeat the trick in the fall midterm..”

Get Your Monkeypox On (Jim Kunstler)

If the January 6th Committee show is short-and-sweet, say a few weeks, it will be quickly forgotten in the welling summertime heat as the great masses of America groan under $5… $7… maybe $10-a-gallon gasoline prices (or maybe no gas at all) while diesel prices at $6.50 today are already destroying the trucking industry — and thus the entire system for delivering all goods around the country. The zeitgeist is quivering with intimations of food shortages and the philosopher reminds us that any given body politic is just nine missed meals away from bloody rebellion. Have another look at that motley January 6th committee group photo and consider the lampposts along Pennsylvania Avenue.

It’s a dangerous game trying to beat down the population this way, and to what end, exactly? I doubt that even the Blue Team could articulate it… or would dare to… because at this point their sole aim, really, is to hide their many acts of criminality over a span of the past six years and escape prosecution, a compelling motive. And it’s getting harder and harder to conceal all that, especially their campaign to physically harm over 200-million people with mRNA “vaccines.” The body-count is rising — way higher even than deaths from the hypothetical “pandemic” that the “vaccines” were supposedly concocted to vanquish, and spectacularly failed to.

And was this Covid-19 “pandemic” itself cooked up tacitly to disorder the 2020 election with mail-in ballots so easily replicated, harvested, and stuffed by the bale into drop-boxes under cover of night? Kind of looks like it, more and more. And now, the Party of Chaos is so keenly desperate to stay out of prison that they apparently seek to repeat the trick in the fall midterm, which is otherwise quite certain to sweep them ignominiously off the game board like so many misplayed quoits.

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Outdone by a rerun of Young Sheldon.

Primetime Jan. 6 Hearings Air To Dismal TV Ratings (JTN)

The primetime hearings for the Jan. 6 commission’s investigation into the 2021 Capitol riot were broadcast live on almost every major station, yet failed to capture national interest and produced ratings far below other comparable national televised political events. Almost 20 million viewers tuned in for the hearings on Thursday night, according to The Hill. By contrast, President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address in March pulled in 38 million viewers. In 2018, then-President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union attracted over 45 million, per the New York Post. The 20 million figure did stand above a typical congressional hearing, The Hill noted, citing the roughly 9 million viewers for Trump’s first impeachment trial.


Members of the Jan. 6 Commission have sought to present a case blaming Trump for the violence that occurred at the Capitol amid congressional efforts to certify the presidential election results. Their narrative stands in contrast to growing sentiment among the American public who increasingly do not blame the former president for the incident. An NBC poll released Monday, showed that only 45% of Americans blamed Trump for the riot which, while still a plurality, marked a seven-point decline in that sentiment from January of 2021. Republicans have largely denounced the hearings as a “kangaroo court” and slammed the commission’s Republican members for their participation in it.

Tucker J 6

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Trump is certainly not squeaky clean, but this is ridiculous.

Liz Cheney Said Trump Had A ‘Seven-part Plan’ To Overturn The Election (CNN)

Former President Donald Trump had a “sophisticated seven-point plan” to overturn the 2020 presidential election over the course of several months, January 6 committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney said, detailing how the panel plans to use its future hearings to tackle each part of the scheme. “On the morning of January 6, President Donald Trump’s intention was to remain president of the United States, despite the lawful outcome of the 2020 election and in violation of his Constitutional obligation to relinquish power,” Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, said in her opening statement at Thursday’s prime-time hearing.

Cheney did not detail the specific points of the plan in her opening statement. She said that the rioters who breached the Capitol and fought with police were motivated by Trump’s actions falsely claiming that the election was stolen from him. “President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack,” Cheney said, echoing the statement she made in 2021 when she voted to impeach Trump. A committee source later provided CNN the following description of the “sophisticated seven-part plan”: “President Trump oversaw a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the 2020 election and prevent the transition of presidential power.

  1. President Trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information to the American public claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him.
  2. President Trump corruptly planned to replace the Acting Attorney General, so that the Department of Justice would support his fake election claims.
  3. President Trump corruptly pressured Vice President Pence to refuse to count certified electoral votes in violation of the US Constitution and the law.
  4. President Trump corruptly pressured state election officials, and state legislators, to change election results.
  5. President Trump’s legal team and other Trump associates instructed Republicans in multiple states to create false electoral slates and transmit those slates to Congress and the National Archives.
  6. President Trump summoned and assembled a violent mob in Washington and directed them to march on the US Capitol.
  7. As the violence was underway, President Trump ignored multiple pleas for assistance and failed to take immediate action to stop the violence and instruct his supporters to leave the Capitol.

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Trump himself said this too. But it was refused.

Trump Pentagon First Offered National Guard to Capitol on Jan 2 (JTN)

The Pentagon first raised the possibility of sending National Guard troops to the U.S. Capitol four days before the Jan. 6 riots, setting in motion a series of rejections by Capitol Police and Democrats that left Congress vulnerable as threats of violence were rising, according to government memos that validate Trump administration officials’ long-held claims. An official timeline of the Jan. 6 tragedy assembled by Capitol Police shows that a Defense Department official reached out to a Capitol Police deputy chief, Sean Gallagher, on Jan. 2, 2021 to see if a request for troops was forthcoming, but the offer was quickly rejected after a consultation with then-Chief Steve Sund.

“Carol Corbin (DOD) texts USCP Deputy Chief Sean Gallagher, Protective Service Bureau, to determine whether USCP is considering a request for National Guard soldiers for January 6, 2021 event,” the timeline reads in the lone entry listed for Saturday, Jan. 2, 2021. The following morning, the timeline states, “Gallagher replies to DOD via text that a request for National Guard support not forthcoming at this time after consultation with COP Sund.” The rejection came as the Capitol Police department was beginning to change its assessment, recognizing that the massive Trump rally to protest the November 2020 election results planned for Jan. 6, 2021 had the potential for violence.

Earlier analyses suggested such violence was unlikely and the Jan. 6 event was likely to be “similar to the previous Million MAGA March rallies in November and December,” police records show For instance, Capitol Police had determined that as of Dec. 16, 2020 there was “no information regarding specific disruptions or acts of civil disobedience targeting this function.” But by late December, Capitol Police internal emails and documents show, information began flowing in that some groups expected to attend were talking on social media or fringe websites about tactics like blocking tunnels leading to the Capitol. On Sunday, Jan. 3, 2021, just hours after Gallagher rejected the Pentagon’s initial offer, the Capitol Police issued a new and darker security assessment to its commanders and executives and to the two political appointees in Congress responsible for security, the House and Senate sergeants at arms, the timeline shows.

“Due to the tense political environment following the 2020 election, the threat of disruptive actions or violence cannot be ruled out,” the new assessment declared. “Supporters of the current president see January 6, 2021 as the last opportunity to overturn the results of the presidential election. This sense of desperation and disappointment may lead to more of an incentive to become violent.” Within 24 hours, Sund had changed his mind and began seeking permission from the political powers surrounding House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to deploy the National Guard as a preventive measure on Monday, Jan. 4, 2021.

[..] “The Capitol Police timeline shows what we have been saying for the last year — that DOD support via the National Guard was refused by the House and Senate sergeant at arms, who report to Pelosi,” Patel said. “Now we have it in their own writing, days before Jan. 6. And despite the FBI warning of potential for serious disturbance, no perimeter was established, no agents put on the street, and no fence put up.”

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“..shameless and soulless..”

Perry to Cheney: Your Pardon Story Is An Absolute Shameless, Soulless Lie (JTN)

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) blasted Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) for claiming he sought a presidential pardon because he thought he may have done something wrong on Jan. 6. On the John Solomon Reports podcast Friday, when asked if he did anything wrong on Jan. 6, Perry said, “No, of course not. I was in the Capitol doing my legislative duties on January 6.” Rep. Scott Perry: Liz Cheney’s claim that I sought a presidential pardon for Jan 6, ‘an absolute shameless and soulless lie’ “[T]he notion that I ever sought a presidential pardon for myself, or other members of Congress, is an absolute shameless and soulless lie,” he added.

“It’s just simply no surprise, considering this latest fabrications come from a sham committee using a breathtaking abuse of power to conjure up political theater to destroy their opponents and … distract the American people from the economic and national security nightmare. This is a nightmare created by their one-party rule and quite honestly, rogue Republicans — and you know, Republicans in name only — and their compatriots on the radical left. “This is a kangaroo court. And it’s more fitting to be aired with the filth of scripted reality TV than masquerading as a newsworthy item, which is why I’m using all my time as a member of Congress to try to address the fact that Americans can’t literally afford gasoline, groceries, their food, and … to suffer under the policies of those who control the sham committee.”

Perry asked where the primetime committee hearing was for the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle and the inflation, border, and drug crises. “[T]hat’s what I’m working on and that’s exactly what the American people demand Congress work on, not producing political theater to the tune of $8 million to destroy their opponents.” During the Jan. 6 committee hearing aired on TV Thursday, Cheney said, “As you will see, Rep. Perry contacted the White House in the weeks after January 6th to seek a Presidential Pardon.” She added, “Multiple other Republican congressmen also sought presidential pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.”

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A senior Turkish diplomat says Erdogan is full of it. The 1923 Lausanne Treaty simply states that all islands more than 3 km from Turkey are Greek. No more, no less. There are over 2,400 islands. No-one tried to name them all for the Treaty. No need.

Erdogan Threatens Greece Over ‘Militarizing’ Aegean Islands (ZH)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday accused Greece of militarizing its islands in the Aegean Sea with an eye toward threatening Turkey, in but the latest salvo in a series of tit-for-tat accusations between the two NATO members. Erdogan urged immediate demilitarization of the islands, stressing Turkey will never relinquish its “rights” in the Aegean Sea, statements which come weeks after he condemned Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for lobbying the White House to block impending US F-16 sales to Ankara. The fresh words also came on the final day of Turkey’s multi-national “Efes-2022” military drill, centered on the coastal city of Izmir. “We invite Greece to stop arming the islands that have non-military status and to act in accordance with international agreements,” Erdogan said.

“I’m not joking, I’m speaking seriously. This nation is determined.” “I warn Greece to avoid dreams, acts and statements that will result in regret. Come to your senses,” he said in a televised speech related to the drills. “Turkey will not renounce its rights in the Aegean and will not back down from using rights that are established by international agreements when it comes to arming islands,” he added. Erdogan further vowed that Turkey would continue its controversial hydrocarbons exploration of the region, which Greece, Cyprus, and some EU countries like France have condemned as violating Greek and Cypriot territorial waters. Erdogan claimed that Greece is violating the1923 Treaty of Lausanne and the 1947 Paris Treaty. He declared that Greece was previously given the islands on condition that they’d remain demilitarized.

“The agreements are there but Greece is violating them. It’s arming them. If Greece does not stop this violation, the sovereignty of the islands will be brought up for discussion,” he said. “It’s that clear. You will abide by the agreements.” In questioning the “sovereignty of the islands,” Erdogan appeared to suggest Turkish military intervention is on the table, also given he uttered the veiled threat on the occasion of major Turkish-led military exercises. Greece responded by saying Turkey has long deliberately misinterpreted and misrepresented the content of the historic treaties, and further that Ankara’s standing threat of war justifies that Greece take steps to defend itself. As The Associated Press reports: In Athens, Greek government spokesman Giannis Oikonomou said Greece was dealing with Turkish “provocations” with “calm and determination.””It is clear to everyone that our country has upgraded its geostrategic and geopolitical footprint as well as its deterrent capacity to be able at any time to defend its national sovereignty and sovereign rights,” he said.

Turkish ambassador
https://twitter.com/i/status/1535217612917026818

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Translation from Die Zeit.

Agreement In The Dispute Over Spying Attacks On Julian Assange’s Lawyer (Zeit)

A lawyer for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is in prison in the UK, has reached an out-of-court settlement with the UK government over allegations of spying. As the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg announced, the government in London recognized that the rights of lawyer Jennifer Robinson had been violated by spying attacks. Confidential journalistic material was also affected. Robinson received a payment of 1,000 pounds (around 1,170 euros), the statement said. The lawsuit before the Human Rights Court, which has now been dropped, was also about the disclosure of information to the United States, which wants to obtain Assange’s extradition.


How exactly the lawyer from the law firm Doughty Street Chambers is said to have been spied on is not known. The government is keeping it under wraps for national security reasons, Robinson said in an interview with the dpa news agency. “I’d really like to know that too, because it raises important questions about what information was shared.” After a court in London approved Assange’s extradition, Home Secretary Priti Patel is eagerly awaiting the decision. The US judiciary wants to put Assange on trial for allegations of espionage. He faces up to 175 years in prison if convicted. He is accused of having stolen and published secret material from US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan together with whistleblower Chelsea Manning, thereby endangering the lives of US informants.

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Gonzalo blame game

 

 

 

 

 

 

Art Gallery
https://twitter.com/i/status/1535209164376576000

 

 

kid+dog
https://twitter.com/i/status/1534956581321850880

 

 

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

 

 

 

Jun 092022
 


Pablo Picasso Rest 1932

 

Zelensky Vows “Full De-Occupation Of Entire Territory” (ZH)
For Europe, From Russia, With Love (Vilches)
Kyiv Keeps US in the Dark on War Realities: NYT (Celente)
Is US/NATO (with WEF help) Pushing For A Global South Famine? (Hudson)
Ukraine to Ban ‘War and Peace’ From Being Taught in Schools (SN)
Is Lasting Peace Possible? (Hathaway)
Healthy Young People Are Dying Unexpectedly From A Mysterious Syndrome (DM)
Fifth Jab Being Considered In Israel (JPost)
Moderna Says Omicron-containing Booster Outperforms Current Vaccine (Stat)
How Fake Is Twitter’s User Data? (ET)
Twitter Will Reportedly Give Its Full Data Stream To Elon Musk (Eng.)
168,000 Deleted Files Recovered From Hunter Biden’s Laptop (WE)
What is a Woman? (Laura Dodsworth)
This Is What Erdogan Promised (IS.fi)

 

 

 

 

Gervais

 

 

 

 

 

 

6G

 

 

Apart from Zelensky’s nonsensical claim (no. 1001), there’s “For eight years they have been killing us” and “Emmanuel Macron has warned that the West must not humiliate Russia”. And I haven’t seen one person point out that the West CANNOT humiliate Russia.

Zelensky Vows “Full De-Occupation Of Entire Territory” (ZH)

French President Emmanuel Macron has warned that the West must not humiliate Russia if it wants to avoid an unnecessarily prolonged conflict that could spread beyond Ukraine. Since making the remarks days ago, he’s stirred anger among different allies – both in Europe and the US and UK. And he’s again come under fresh criticism and condemnation for the statement. He said last Friday, “We must not humiliate Russia so that the day when the fighting stops we can build an exit ramp through diplomatic means.” As part of the comments he offered France’s role as a “mediating power” in the conflict. This after having reportedly held calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin on pretty much a weekly basis since the invasion began in late February.

Macron has come under criticism from some corners of the EU for even holding the calls where he’s attempted to gain diplomatic concessions, and jump start talks again between Moscow and Kiev. But he hasn’t exactly been alone in his push for a diplomatic solution, given two other populous European nations and their leaders – namely German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi – have done the same. Entirely to be expected, Macron immediately received pushback from the Ukrainians, with Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba writing on Twitter that “Calls to avoid humiliation of Russia can only humiliate France and every other country that would call for it.” But the Macron comments have stirred anger in the US as well, with Republican hawk Rep. Adam Kinzinger saying “Emmanuel Macron is humiliating himself,” in weekend statements.

“Russia has already been humiliated, and true to their reputation the French are trying to raise the white flag.” Kinzinger, it should be remembered, has gone so far as to push the Biden administration toward erecting a no-fly zone, which would assuredly push the two nuclear armed superpowers into a WW3 scenario confrontation. Meanwhile, at a moment that direct Russia-Ukraine negotiations are essentially dead, but with Turkey still attempting to intervene diplomatically toward the erection of a UN-backed ‘grain corridor’ on the Black Sea, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in media statements Tuesday that even with the latest Russian gains in Donbas his country will not cede any territory for sake of a negotiated settlement.

“We have already lost too many people to simply cede our territory,” Zelensky said in a virtual address to an event hosted by Britain’s Financial Times newspaper. He said neither is stalemate “an option” and that ultimately “We have to achieve a full deoccupation of our entire territory.” Asked specifically about Macron’s ‘don’t humiliate Russia comments’ from days prior, Zelensky reponded: “We are not going to humiliate anyone, we are going to respond in kind.” The Ukrainian leader’s comments came as the last major holdout city of Sievierodonetsk in Luhansk province could soon fall to Russian forces. Zelensky further commented: “I don’t really understand … humiliating Russia. For eight years they have been killing us. What are we talking about here?”

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“..the European success we all know was always based on superb and cheap Russian energy.”

For Europe, From Russia, With Love (Vilches)

The real ultimate EU problem is ´negotiating´ from a position of extreme weakness it has dug itself into and should have always avoided. But at the same time, Europe cannot be anywhere independent from Russia. So the above will affect current and future European production of fuels to fertilizers and everything in between, from kerosene to diesel to gasoline affecting cars, trucks, buses, plastics, pesticides, agricultural, mining and industrial machinery, foodstuffs, water quality and availability, pharmaceuticals, ships, inks, airplanes, polymers, medical and industrial gases, sealing rings & membranes, power transmission, transformer and lube oils, etc., etc., etc.,. Attempting to execute the above under the described terms – and others not mentioned but technically even far more demanding – would be outright engineering and economics madness.

But simultaneously attempting many impossible projects as now required throughout Europe within an ultra-narrow 6-month time-frame and everybody at the same time is sheer nonsensical stupidity, doomed to fail. Why do it then ? Because it´s mandated by the prevailing post-Brexit-US-Anglo-Saxon Russophobia that now hypnotized European leadership foolishly and irreversibly endorses. Henry Kissinger knows it, but do they?. Naturally, the EU leadership has made mistakes all along the 21st century, both technical and political, as fallible humans cannot avoid it. But the captains of the European ship this time around are going a long step further by unbelievably forcing its sailors to run around the deck like a bunch of beheaded chickens with no sense of purpose in rapidly approaching shallow waters in what seems to be a deliberate suicidal attempt.

This has never happened before in recent history as the European success we all know was always based on superb and cheap Russian energy. The plan and policies were led by former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder who thought it out bottom-up, top-down, sideways, from left to right, from right to left, crossways, you name it. Until finally in the late 1990s reached the conclusion and convinced the European family of nations that Franz should marry Natasha. And so they remained happily married with many healthy and ambitious children until 2022 whereby the post-Brexit US Anglo-Saxon axis achieved the unthinkable by turning Europe against Russia yet again for the third time in a century as Prof. Michael Hudson has correctly observed. Meanwhile, absurdly enough, Poland is now proposing yet additional sanctions against Russia as if they did any good

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Zelensky has claimed 30,000-40,000 Russian casualties. Nuff said.

Kyiv Keeps US in the Dark on War Realities: NYT (Celente)

The New York Times, citing current and former U.S. officials, published a report Wednesday that American intelligence agencies have “less information than they would like about Ukraine’s operations and possess a far better picture of Russia’s military.” Beth Sanner, a former senior intelligence official, told the paper: “How much do we really know about how Ukraine is doing?” “Can you find a person who will tell you with confidence how many troops has Ukraine lost, how many pieces of equipment has Ukraine lost?” she asked. The Trends Journal has pointed out since the beginning of the conflict that it was nearly impossible to find the number of casualties suffered by Ukrainian troops in Google searches.

But if you were interested in finding out Russia’s war dead, there were dozens of article links. Zelensky vowed to fight for every inch of his country, but how he plans on doing that — without NATO joining the war — is anybody’s guess. The Times reported that the U.S. has a better understanding about Russia’s military’s condition than Ukraine’s. Even Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate in May: “We have, in fact, more insight, probably, on the Russian side than we do on the Ukrainian side.” Why did the U.S. agree to send Kyiv advanced rocket systems when it did not have a clear picture about the war’s development, and why has the Biden administration been so positive about Ukraine’s chances against Russia?

Stephen Biddle, a professor of international affairs at Columbia University, told the paper, “I’m not sure it’s in the interest of the American public or Ukrainian public to have Ukrainians be upfront about their losses if the result is it strengthens the Russian war effort. But that means we don’t really know both sides of the story.”

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“To put it simply: we are facing a crisis on top of a crisis.”

Is US/NATO (with WEF help) Pushing For A Global South Famine? (Hudson)

U.S. Cold War strategy is not alone in thinking how to benefit from provoking a famine, oil and balance-of-payments crisis. Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum worries that the world is overpopulated – at least with the “wrong kind” of people. As Microsoft philanthropist (the customary euphemism for rentier monopolist) Bill Gates has explained: “Population growth in Africa is a challenge.” His lobbying foundation’s 2018 “Goalkeepers” report warned: “According to U.N. data, Africa is expected to account for more than half of the world’s population growth between 2015 and 2050. Its population is projected to double by 2050,” with “more than 40 percent of world’s extremely poor people … in just two countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria.”

Gates advocates cutting this projected population increase by 30 percent by improving access to birth control and expanding education to “enable more girls and women to stay in school longer, have children later.” But how can that be afforded with this summer’s looming food and oil squeeze on government budgets? South Americans and some Asian countries are subject to the same jump in import prices resulting from NATO’s demands to isolate Russia. JPMorgan Chase head Jamie Dimon recently warned attendees at a Wall Street investor conference that the sanctions will cause a global “economic hurricane.” He echoed the warning by IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva in April that, “To put it simply: we are facing a crisis on top of a crisis.”

Pointing out that the Covid pandemic has been capped by inflation as the war in Ukraine has made matters “much worse, and threatens to further increase inequality” she concluded that: “The economic consequences from the war spread fast and far, to neighbors and beyond, hitting hardest the world’s most vulnerable people. Hundreds of millions of families were already struggling with lower incomes and higher energy and food prices.” The Biden administration blames Russia for “unprovoked aggression.” But it is his administration’s pressure on NATO and other Dollar Area satellites that has blocked Russian exports of grain, oil and gas. But many oil- and food-deficit countries see themselves as the primary victims of “collateral damage” caused by US/NATO pressure.

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I notice Russian players shine in the NHL playoffs, and haven’t seen one word about banning them.

Ukraine to Ban ‘War and Peace’ From Being Taught in Schools (SN)

Leo Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ and other classic historical novels that portray the Russian military in anything other than a negative light will be banned from being taught in Ukrainian schools, it has been announced. “All these will be completely excluded from foreign literature,” first deputy Minister of Education Andrey Vitrenko said in an interview with the TV channel Ukraine 24. “So, for example, ‘War and Peace,’ this will not be studied in Ukraine anymore,” he added. Vitrenko said that his ministry was working on compiling a list of books that will be banned in line with an announcement last month by Kiev’s Ministry of Culture and Information Policy that works of literature “promoting Russian propaganda” would be removed from Ukrainian libraries and replaced by Ukrainian books.


Quite how banning a book that is revered the world over and was first published in 1869 will stop Putin’s war machine is anyone’s guess. We have previously documented the increasing intolerance and censorship of all things Russian, even if they have absolutely nothing to do with Vladimir Putin or the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Wimbledon tennis tournament has banned Russian players from competing this year even if they denounce the actions of their own country. There have also been calls for Russian athletes to be subjected to ideological purity tests before they are allowed to compete in international tournaments. In perhaps the most ludicrous example of Russophobia, Siberian cats were banned from competing in international cat competitions.

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“Since capitalism is a predatory social and economic system, predatory personalities rise to power.”

Is Lasting Peace Possible? (Hathaway)

Militarists point to history and say it’s just one war after another. But that’s the history only of our patriarchal civilization. The early matriarchal civilization of south-eastern Europe enjoyed centuries of peace. UCLA anthropologist Marija Gimbutas described the archaeological research in The Living Goddesses. No trace of warfare has been found in excavations of the Minoan, Harappa, and Caral cultures. Many of the Pacific islands were pacifistic. The ancient Vedic civilization of India had meditation techniques that preserved the peace, and those are being revived today to reduce stress in society.

Our society, though, has a deeply entrenched assumption that stress is essential to life. Many of our social and economic structures are based on conflict. Capitalism’s need for continually expanding profits generates stress in all of us. We’ve been indoctrinated to think this is normal and natural, but it’s really pathological. It damages life in ways we can barely perceive because they’re so built into us. We don’t have to live this way. We can reduce the stress humanity suffers under. We can create a society that meets human needs and distributes the world’s resources more evenly. We can live at peace with one another. But that’s going to take basic changes.

These changes threaten the power holders of our society. Since capitalism is a predatory social and economic system, predatory personalities rise to power. They view the world through a lens of aggression. But it’s not merely a view. They really are surrounded by enemy competitors. So they believe this false axiom they are propagating that wars are inevitable. In the past their predecessors defended their power by propagating other nonsense: kings had a divine right to rule us, Blacks were inferior to Whites, women should obey men. We’ve outgrown those humbugs, and we can outgrow this one.

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Aaron Kheriaty, MD: “New levels of systematic mendacity. Sudden Adult Death Syndrome (SADS) is not a thing. These are cardiac deaths. Stop pretending we don’t know why they are elevated. Just f***ing stop. Enough of this. It’s only a mystery if you are blind.”

Healthy Young People Are Dying Unexpectedly From A Mysterious Syndrome (DM)

People aged under 40 are being urged to have their hearts checked because they may potentially be at risk of Sudden Adult Death Syndrome. The syndrome, known as SADS, has been fatal for all kinds of people regardless of whether they maintain a fit and healthy lifestyle. SADS is an ‘umbrella term to describe unexpected deaths in young people’, said The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, most commonly occurring in people under 40 years of age.The term is used when a post-mortem cannot find an obvious cause of death. The US-based SADS Foundation has said that over half of the 4,000 annual SADS deaths of children, teens or young adults have one of the top two warning signs present.Those signs include a family history of a SADS diagnosis or sudden unexplained death of a family member, and fainting or seizure during exercise, or when excited or startled, reported news.com.au.


Last year a 31-year-old woman, Catherine Keane, died in her sleep while living with two friends in Dublin. Her mother Margherita Cummins told the Irish Mirror, ‘They were all working from home so no one really paid attention when Catherine didn’t come down for breakfast.’ ‘They sent her a text at 11.20am and when she didn’t reply, they checked her room and found she had passed. ‘Her friend heard a noise in her room at 3.56am and believes now that is when she died.’ Ms Cummins stated that her daughter ‘went to the gym and walked 10,000 steps every day’. ‘I take some comfort in that she went in her sleep and knew no pain and I’m grateful for that. I always worried about the kids driving in the car but never saw this coming. I never thought I’d ever lose a child in my life,’

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Oh f**king stop already.

Fifth Jab Being Considered In Israel (JPost)

Due to the increase in morbidity, the epidemic treatment team will convene on Wednesday to discuss the provision of a fifth coronavirus vaccine to at-risk populations, KAN reported. According to KAN, a third vaccine for Israelis ages 5 to 12 is also being considered for those who want it. Medical staff would be obligated to receive a second or third dose. Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz, who himself had tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday, is currently in quarantine and is working from home, Maariv reported. He had already discussed with senior officials in his ministry about the recent spark in COVID-19 cases.


After the meeting was over, Horowitz urged the general public to “use discretion and wear a mask when necessary, including on public transportation.” He recommended that those elderly or at-risk should wear a mask in closed spaces, “even if it’s not mandatory.” The amount of COVID cases reported yesterday was the highest in Israel in over a month and a half, with approximately 3,731 testing positive, the Health Ministry reported. The Health Ministry is also considering bringing back requirements to self-isolate for those who test positive for the virus. The ministry also intends to examine in the coming days whether the level of immunity in the population has decreased following the morbidity increase, Ynet reported.

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And again: Oh f**king stop already.

Moderna Says Omicron-containing Booster Outperforms Current Vaccine (Stat)

Moderna said Wednesday that using a new version of its Covid-19 vaccine as a booster led to a superior antibody response against the Omicron variant compared to its current shot. The company said it plans to submit its data to the Food and Drug Administration in the coming weeks and that it hopes that the new booster will be available in the late summer. Moderna’s booster, called mRNA1273.214, is a bivalent vaccine, meaning it contains mRNA coding for the spike protein for both the original strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the newer Omicron strain. The company had previously released data showing that a bivalent vaccine containing mRNA coding for the spike protein for the original virus and the protein from the Beta variant of SARS-CoV-2 provided better antibody protection than the original vaccine.


Moderna said giving vaccinated volunteers a boost with mRNA1273.214 increased geometric mean titers, a measure of antibody levels, eight-fold. The FDA has been holding public hearings on how to choose which strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus should be included in booster shots in the fall and who should receive those shots. Another meeting on whether and how the SARS-CoV-2 strain composition of Covid-19 vaccines should be modified is being held on June 28. However, companies have warned that choices will need to be made soon in order for vaccines to be available in the fall. In a statement, Stephane Bancel, Moderna’s CEO, said that the data mean this bivalent vaccine is “our lead candidate for a Fall 2022 booster.”

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Twitter likes the fakes and the bots, it’s all about the numbers.

How Fake Is Twitter’s User Data? (ET)

Over the last several weeks, the perception has grown that Elon Musk will not be the emancipator of Twitter, freeing it finally from its mysterious algorithms that throttle, block, and ban perfectly wonderful accounts solely based on the political vendetta of employees and management. It’s said that he has cold feet, as if Elon’s demand for better data is purely a cover for emotional doubt. That’s simply not true. What he has intuited—that Twitter underreports the sheer fake accounts and bot armies that use its platform—could in fact become another scandal for our age. Twitter says it’s only 5 percent. Elon has crowd-sourced the question and suspects it is closer to 20 percent. The truth is out there, but Twitter is not forthcoming. Why might this be?

Here is where we get to the core of the issue: the reach data provided by these companies—this pertains not only to Twitter but to hundreds of thousands of sites—form the basis of its pricing structure for advertisers and therefore drive the fundamentals of the business model. The business model is that these companies sell your content—which you provide because you want your views known—to advertisers so that they can sell to you. Advertisers are charged for access to your brain based on an overall estimate of how many users are on the platform and how broad is the reach. Accuracy is of huge importance here. But accuracy has not exactly defined the way these companies have long operated. The data are subject to manipulation in the extreme.

For example, Twitter has proven to be absolutely awful at policing the number of fake accounts that pretend to be some famous person with large followers. One might suspect that getting rid of such accounts should be part of Twitter’s main focus. I’ve dealt with it for years and spent far too much time getting rid of them. Who has such time? It’s ridiculous. But have a look at this problem which has been going on for many weeks now. Brownstone’s Martin Kulldorff has a famous Twitter account but I can easily search his name which turns up many fake accounts. Notice the slightly different spellings. This isn’t rocket science! Does Twitter do anything about it? Not in many weeks.

If this is any indication of the underlying realities, Twitter has a very big problem. Instead of focusing its energies on censoring good accounts, it might have applied its energies to solving a problem that affects all users.And yet there is more at stake. Consider that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has initiated an investigation into Twitter. If the company has falsely reported its real user base, that stands in violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Paxton has given the company until June 27, 2022, to produce evidence for how it calculates the numbers it has routinely touted to advertisers. We’ll see. It will probably end up in court.

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The full firehose. But Musk should first check how much of the data has been manipulated.

Twitter Will Reportedly Give Its Full Data Stream To Elon Musk (Eng.)

Twitter could comply with Elon Musk’s demand for more data about its users as soon as this week. According to The Washington Post, the company plans to give the billionaire full access to its full “firehose,” an internal database that includes details on the more than 500 million tweets posted to the service every day. In addition to representing a real-time record of what’s happening on Twitter at any moment, the trove includes device data and information about the accounts that access the platform. After Twitter accepted Musk’s $44 billion buyout offer in April, the billionaire announced in May the deal was “temporarily on hold” over concerns he had about fake accounts.

Twitter has consistently claimed that bots represent less than five percent of its daily users, a number Musk says he wants to confirm before moving forward with the acquisition. On Monday, Musk accused the company of committing a “material breach” of the merger agreement by allegedly refusing to disclose enough information about fake accounts. At the time, Twitter said it would “continue to cooperatively share information” with Musk as it worked toward completing the transaction. “We believe this agreement is in the best interest of all shareholders,” the company told The Post, reiterating its statement from Monday. “We intend to close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement at the agreed price and terms.”

How many bots and fake accounts there are on Twitter is important to Musk because that number would have a significant impact on his ability to monetize the platform through ads. Musk has committed about $33 billion of his personal wealth to buy the company, and he’s required to go through with the deal unless he can show Twitter misled him or that its value has changed.

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“..100% certainty that Hunter Biden “was the only person responsible for the activity on this hard drive and all of its stored data.”

168,000 Deleted Files Recovered From Hunter Biden’s Laptop (WE)

A cyber forensics expert commissioned by the Washington Examiner recovered over 168,000 deleted files from a copy of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop. Many of the deleted files were system files, application files, or duplicates of user files stored elsewhere on the laptop. Some of the recovered data, however, shed light on his financial dealings in 2018 and early 2019, as well as his personal dealings during that time frame. Also recovered from the drive were deleted pictures of government ID cards for two individuals linked to President Joe Biden’s son. Konstantinos “Gus” Dimitrelos, a former Secret Service agent who has testified in over 100 classified, criminal, and civil matters, retrieved the deleted files from unallocated space on the hard drive using a technique called data carving.

The existence of recoverable deleted user files adds another layer of authenticity to the hard drive, Dimitrelos said. “In order for user-created data — including personal photographs, bank records, invoices, business records, third-party data such as the driver’s licenses of other persons, chat conversations, and medical records, as examples — to exist within the unallocated hard drive space, the computer user would have had to manually delete the files,” Dimitrelos said. “Any Robert Hunter Biden recovered files in unallocated space was there as a result of deletions by the user ‘roberthunter.’” Dimitrelos has examined the Washington Examiner’s copy of the hard drive and determined with 100% certainty that Hunter Biden “was the only person responsible for the activity on this hard drive and all of its stored data.”

Many of the recovered user files were attachments to text messages that Hunter Biden sent to or received from his associates. The text messages contain markers indicating that an attachment was deleted. One of the recovered text attachments was a selfie he took in which he can be seen holding a vape pen. He attached the photo to a message sent to an unknown person Jan. 30, 2019. “That’s the weed vape pen that a Russian Escort left in my room before I came here this time,” Hunter Biden texted them.

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“..the doctor who prescribes hormones to children asked Walsh whether chickens cry..”

What is a Woman? (Laura Dodsworth)

It turns out that the best way to disrupt transgender ideology is to ask one simple question: what is a woman? Creator Matt Walsh asked each contributor the same question with purist focus in this brilliant and horrifying new film. The obstructions, circular reasoning and threats to walk off the set revealed that gender is like “a jenga tower”, as Walsh says. I spoke to Walsh about the film just a few days after its release. It has gone down a storm and Walsh was busy fielding interviews. He was also cautious; a publicist was off camera in our video call, and they recorded the interview. I don’t blame them for wanting to keep the record straight. What is a woman? is wildly controversial and successful, and that attracts peevish and disingenuous reviewers.

Transgender ideology is defeatingly complex and ever-shifting. The film’s success lies in its determined pursuit of the answer to one question. I asked Walsh why he focussed on this truth, whereas other activists have honed in on particular aspects, such as feminists arguing for women’s sex-based spaces and rights. “Philosophically it’s the best way to approach this issue,” he replied. “There are practical reasons why rights matter. I want to protect the rights of women and children, all those things matter and I care about them too. But the first thing is that it’s not true. That’s the important thing, first and foremost. Then we can establish all those other things. The loss of rights can be tackled after truth. Trans activists will ask why you care so much about what a woman is, but that’s sleight of hand.”

There was a palpable difference between the interviewees who were prepared to offer honest answers and those who would not. The first set seemed at ease. The trans man, in particular, was brutally raw, hiding nothing. In contrast, those who couldn’t answer the question seemed different – their body language was off, their answers evasive. They seemed to be thinking ahead, denial and defence almost visible on the surface, while cogs whirred just below. The social sciences professor replied with fallacious logic. In one of the more bizarre moments, the doctor who prescribes hormones to children asked Walsh whether chickens cry. A trans woman and a congressman flounced off camera. They didn’t just deny the simple biological truth (that a woman is an adult human female), they denied the concept of truth itself. The professor asserted that “invoking the word truth was condescending”.

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Google translate from Finnish.

This Is What Erdogan Promised (IS.fi)

The NATO process in Finland and Sweden has been at a standstill for three weeks due to opposition from Turkey. Not even NATO accession talks have been allowed to begin. There have been charges against Turkey, especially in Sweden. Turkey launched its publicity campaign on 13 May, five days before Finland and Sweden applied for membership in Brussels. “The Nordic countries are like guest houses for terrorist organizations,” said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan . Turkey’s violent drumming has raised the question of whether something went wrong in Finland’s diplomatic efforts in the spring. How did Turkey surprise Finland?

In an interview with IS, the president of the Republic Sauli Niinistö said that there was no reason to doubt Turkey’s position before Erdogan’s sharp exits. According to Niinistö, in a telephone conversation on 4 April, Erdogan clearly expressed his support for Finland’s efforts. – At the end of a rather long discussion, he said that you are applying for NATO membership, we will look at it favorably, we will assess it favorably , Niinistö says. Should the speeches have been treated with greater caution? – It is quite difficult to get started because it is not true if something is repeatedly reassured not only to me but also to our Foreign Minister and even to the Secretary General of NATO. It would have been difficult to justify a solution that we are not moving forward because Turkey’s positive position is not correct or we suspect it is not. Should this be the way to go? No.

Is it possible that there have been differences of interpretation between Finland and Turkey? – There is no possibility of misunderstanding. Besides, the continuation of the April 4 call is a bit ambitious. On 5 May, Foreign Minister [ Pekka Haavisto ] confirmed that he had a discussion with Turkish Foreign Minister [ Mevlüt ] Cavusoglu and stated that there were no problems. And NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg issued a similar statement on behalf of NATO in early May. – If there was still a clear perception in NATO on May 5 that there are no problems, then we have to believe it. That fact raises this issue more on the NATO table than on our table.

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Gonzalo: Whatever remains

 

 

 

 

 

 

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May 302022
 


Gustave Courbet The man made mad by fear 1844

 

Zelensky Hopes for Regime Change in Moscow, Plans To Reclaim Crimea (Antiwar)
Zelensky Signals Donbas Could Soon Fall (ZH)
Whose Lies Can You Trust? (Rothenberg)
EU Struggles To Break Deadlock On Russian Oil Ban Before Summit (ST)
EU To Block Seaborne Russian Oil Deliveries, Not Pipeline (ZH)
Erdogan Says Won’t Let ‘Terrorism-supporting’ Countries Enter NATO (R.)
Erdogan’s Revisionism (Rozakis)
Negative Views Of Russia Mainly Limited To Western Liberal Democracies (G.)
Everyone on Special Counsel Team Wiped Their Cell Phones (CTH)
Biden Falsely Claims Jan. 6 Rioters ‘Killed Two Police Officers’ (DW)
The Biggest Get-Rich-Quick Scheme in History (Root)
Amnesty Should Be Granted To The Unvaccinated (NP)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..Zelensky indicated he was open to talks but wanted regime change in Moscow first..”

“When Ukraine says it will be fighting to regain its territories it lost, it means Ukraine will be fighting until it gets all its territory back. It doesn’t mean anything else.”

Zelensky Hopes for Regime Change in Moscow, Plans To Reclaim Crimea (Antiwar)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he wanted talks with a Russian president; however, he hoped that person was someone other than Vladimir Putin. He also called for his country to reestablish its pre-civil war borders. CNN’s Fareed Zakaria hosted Zelensky for an interview at the World Economic Forum. The event was sponsored by the foundation of Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk. In his introduction, Zakaria framed the war in Ukraine as “Russia versus the world.” During the interview, Zelensky indicated he was open to talks but wanted regime change in Moscow first. “This war will be over sooner or later. I’m sure there would be some sort of peaceful process, some sort of talks, and we would be discussing the issues of who Ukraine will negotiate, with what president of the Russia Federation.”

He added, “I hope that will be a different president in the Russian Federation.” The Ukrainian leader said his counterpart was “living in a bubble of alternative reality,” and Putin was “not keenly aware” of the situation on the ground in Ukraine. Zakaria asked Zelensky, “will Ukraine fight until it takes all the territories it lost in 2014?” Zakaria is referring to the breakaway Donbas republics – Donetsk and Luhansk – and the Crimean Peninsula that was annexed by Russia. Zelensky responded affirmatively to the CNN host’s question. “When Ukraine says it will be fighting to regain its territories it lost, it means Ukraine will be fighting until it gets all its territory back. It doesn’t mean anything else.”

During an event last week at the WEF, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called on Kiev to cede territory to help resolve the conflict. Zelensky responded with harsh criticism of the former American official. “Mr. Kissinger has emerged from the deep past and said that part of Ukraine should be given to Russia to avoid the alienation of Russia from Europe.” Zelensky added, “it seems that Mr. Kissinger has 1938 on the calendar instead of 2022.” The actor turned president also used the platform to plead for more weapons. Since Russia invaded, the US has approved or transferred over $50 billion in aid to Ukraine.

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“..a notably pessimistic shift and negative tone..”

Zelensky Signals Donbas Could Soon Fall (ZH)

In a Saturday night speech Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave his most dire assessment to date of the status of Ukraine forces in the eastern Donbas region, where for over at least the last two months Russia has concentrated its forces, following the Feb.24 invasion of the country. Saturday marked the 95th day of the conflict. He described conditions there as “indescribably difficult” in what marks a notably pessimistic shift and negative tone for the Ukrainian leader, strongly suggesting the fall of Donbas – or at least whole regions such as Luhansk – could be imminent. He identified several intense ongoing battles in places with a large Russian force presence, including Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Bakhmut and Popasna. Sievierodonets in particular is scene of fierce up-close street battles.

“But our defense holds on,” Zelensky sought to assure the public. “It’s indescribably difficult there. And I am grateful to all those who withstand this onslaught of the occupiers.” As the AP describes of some instances of “close-quarter combat”:Ukrainian regional officials reported that Russian forces were “storming” Sievierodonetsk after trying unsuccessfully to encircle the city. The fighting knocked out power and cellphone service, and a humanitarian relief center could not operate because of the danger, the mayor said. Zelensky in the address also denounced what he called “absolutely senseless, openly barbaric strikes at the Sumy region,” which left at least one person dead and seven wounded and two in critical condition, saying further mortars struck close to a kindergarten.

“These are the enemies chosen by the Russian Federation,” he added. With this, he again called on the West and world leaders to official label Russia as a “terrorist state” – something US has thus far resisted doing, even after Biden previously described Russia’s actions as “genocide”. “This is fair and reflects the daily reality that the occupiers have created in Ukraine and are eager to bring further to Europe. And this must be legally enshrined,” he said. The Biden administration has meanwhile signaled the US is getting ready to ship long-range rocket systems to Ukrainian forces, a major first marking a significant escalation. But given what appears to be Russia’s steady progress over Donbas, it’s likely too-little too-late to turn the tide for the Ukrainians in the East.

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“People will instinctively choose peace over war. We are naturally possessed of that much empathy for others. You have to be marshaled into killing..”

Whose Lies Can You Trust? (Rothenberg)

Imagine if the public had had a say over the question, in 2003, of whether or not we should invade Iraq. No, forget that. That’s not a good example. The public was in favor of it. But why? For months we were the target of an intense propaganda campaign to sway our support for a decision to attack that had already been made. If you convince people that we’re fighting them “over there” so that we don’t have to fight them “over here”, well, that figures to be enough to win them over. Now go back to 1991 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Much talk about a “peace dividend”. Nice ring to it. The United States has had the lion’s share of the world’s wealth since WW2, and now it had the wealth and no viable rivals anywhere in sight.

However, it was considered to be in the “national interest” to expand NATO, an alliance solely formed to counter the communist menace of the Soviet Union, which no longer existed. There was to be no peace dividend. It’s a made-up thing anyway. Since then, 13 countries have joined NATO pushing east toward Russia’s borders. Russia’s leadership regards it as a provocation. You can argue against this but only if you wouldn’t consider it a provocation if Russia had formed a military alliance with Cuba, Mexico, and Canada, or any of the three. I suspect patriotic Americans will reject this dialectic. Imagine if the public had had a say over the question, in 1991, of whether or not we should expand our military alliance with its attendant costs, or whether we should reap the dividend by seeking a more cooperative relationship with the whole of Eurasia including the Middle East.

Missing was the propaganda campaign to win our support for a peace dividend so that we could spend “over here” instead of “over there”. People will instinctively choose peace over war. We are naturally possessed of that much empathy for others. You have to be marshaled into killing. That we identify with peoples’ suffering is evident in all the Ukrainian flag flying. That’s people, not states. States deal in straight power concepts. It is in the anarchist spirit to resist this. To declare that Ukraine is a pawn in a great-power game greatly overstates the country’s role. A pawn can force a win by checkmate or through progression. A better metaphor is Ukraine is the board the game is being played on. The main players are the United States and Russia.

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Slow suicide.

EU Struggles To Break Deadlock On Russian Oil Ban Before Summit (ST)

Ambassadors from the 27 European Union member states on Sunday (May 29) examined a compromise mooted to enable them to break the deadlock on a Russian oil embargo ahead of an emergency summit in Brussels. The bloc’s officials fear the absence of an agreement would cast a shadow over the two-day meeting starting Monday between European leaders. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will address the gathering by video link to press the bloc to “kill Russian exports” three months after the invasion of Ukraine. The latest round of proposed sanctions by the EU has been blocked by landlocked Hungary, which has no access to seafaring oil cargo ships. Hungary is dependent for 65 per cent of its oil needs on Russian crude supplied via the Druzhba pipeline, which runs from Russia to various points in eastern and central Europe.


Budapest has rejected as inadequate a proposal to allow it two years longer than other EU states to wean itself off Russian oil. It wants at least four years and at least 800 million euros (S$1.1 billion) in EU funds to adapt its refineries to process non-Russian crude and boost pipeline capacity to neighbouring Croatia. Slovakia and the Czech Republic, also supplied by the Druzhba pipeline, accepted exemptions of two and half years, diplomatic sources said. The compromise solution put to national negotiators on Sunday consists in excluding the Druzhba pipeline from a future oil embargo and only imposing sanctions on oil shipped to the EU by tanker vessel, European sources said. The Druzhba pipeline accounts for a third of all EU oil supplies from Russia. Maritime cargos account for the remaining two thirds.

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“..a mere month ago when its head Ursula von der Leyen said, “This will be a complete import ban on all Russian oil, seaborne and pipeline, crude and refined.”

EU To Block Seaborne Russian Oil Deliveries, Not Pipeline (ZH)

Last week EU leaders held what was deemed an “awkward” summit, as one diplomat attendee put it, given the don’t mention the Russian oil ban elephant in the room. Given Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Hungarian government recently likened a Russian oil ban to dropping a nuclear bomb on its economy (and with some smaller EU countries quietly agreeing with that assessment), there seems a growing consensus – at least behind the scenes – that a total embargo is completely unrealistic and untenable, especially amid steadily ratcheting energy prices. But the European Commission seems to have quickly changed its tune while facing certain ‘hard realities’, as many predicted, coming off a mere month ago when its head Ursula von der Leyen said, “This will be a complete import ban on all Russian oil, seaborne and pipeline, crude and refined.”

Now just weeks later, on Saturday the European Commission hinted it will move toward a ban only on seaborne deliveries, but not pipeline supplies as part of its “phased approach”. Bloomberg on Saturday cited EU officials privy to the ongoing discussions who pinpointed that this allows a broader ban without significantly impacting Hungary’s primary supply, which is transferred through the massive Druzhba pipeline, which is also the world’s world’s longest oil pipeline. Industry publications point out that in the month prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, some 750,000 b/d of Russian crude flowed through the Druzhba to various refineries in Europe.

Bloomberg writes of the impending modified oil ban that “The proposal would give extra time to Hungary, which has antagonistic the deal, to discover a technical resolution that satisfies its power wishes. It might additionally cope with the worries of different landlocked nations, together with Slovakia and the Czech Republic.” And further, “Bulgaria would get a transition duration till June or December 2024 and Croatia may get an exemption for imports of vacuum fuel oil. The fee additionally proposed proscribing re-exports of Russian oil provided by way of pipeline to different member states or 3rd nations.”

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Negotiating.

Erdogan Says Won’t Let ‘Terrorism-supporting’ Countries Enter NATO (R.)

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said talks with Finland and Sweden about their joining NATO were not at the “expected level” and Ankara cannot say yes to “terrorism-supporting” countries, state broadcaster TRT Haber reported on Sunday. Turkey has objected to Sweden and Finland joining the Western defence alliance, holding up a deal that would allow for a historic enlargement following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Erdogan’s latest comments indicated his opposition continued. “For as long as Tayyip Erdogan is the head of the Republic of Turkey, we definitely cannot say ‘yes’ to countries which support terrorism entering NATO,” he was cited as telling reporters on his return from a trip to Azerbaijan on Saturday.


Two sources previously told Reuters that Wednesday’s talks with Finnish and Swedish delegations made little headway and it was unclear when further discussions would take place. All 30 NATO members must approve plans to enlarge NATO. Turkey challenged the bids from Sweden and Finland on the grounds that the countries harbour people linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group and others it deems terrorists, and because they halted arms exports to Ankara in 2019. “They are not honest or sincere. We cannot repeat the mistake made in the past regarding countries that embrace and feed such terrorists in NATO, which is a security organisation,” he said.

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Tensions between Greece and Turkey are rising fast.

Erdogan’s Revisionism (Rozakis)

There is no doubt that Turkey has exceeded all precedent with its recent actions and statements – from official lips too. The recent violation by Turkish fighter jets of the airspace over Evros in northeastern Greece is a severe infringement that Turkey has never attempted before. This is not to dismiss other similar behavior – like the overflights above the eastern Aegean islands – but it is an unprovoked intervention into continental territory, which cannot be brushed off with the excuse of the jets’ excessive speed (though this is a thin excuse for the island overflights too, given the frequency of violations). It is an act that can be regarded as an invasion of sovereign territory and one that could justify the activation of Greece’s defenses.

That the Greek side chose not to treat it this way is evidence of the government’s good will and of a deliberate effort to deny Turkey the opportunity to use this incident as a precursor to something bigger. On the scale of seriousness, though, this brief incident appears more severe than those at sea in 2020; there, at least, Turkey seemed to be challenging Greece’s sovereign rights rather than its actual sovereignty, and that in non-delineated areas whose delineation is a condition for any legal claims for exclusive rights of exploitation. The overflight into continental territory has not been Turkey’s only infringement in recent weeks, of course. It comes on top of the overflights above our easternmost islands – which have become almost routine – as well as what appears to be a fresh attempt to instrumentalize the refugee crisis by allowing new waves of migrants to attempt the crossing into the country.

This is not to mention recent comments by the Turkish president shutting down any future discussion with the Greek prime minister. There is no reason to expand on this further, however, because the Turkish president is renowned for his inconsistency and has often made such statements in the past he then reneged on. Be that as it may, things are not looking good. Erdogan’s overall behavior indicates that he does not rule out the possibility of conflict with Greece; in fact, he may be courting it. And this is why efforts to modernize our armed forces are absolutely justified, as is the cultivation of stable alliances with countries that can guarantee our territorial integrity.

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Now do the same poll about the US.

Negative Views Of Russia Mainly Limited To Western Liberal Democracies (G.)

The sharp polarisation between mainly western liberal democracies and the rest of the world in perceptions of Russia has been laid bare in an annual global poll of attitudes towards democracy. Within Europe, 55% of those surveyed for the Alliance for Democracies said they were in favour of cutting economic ties with Russia due to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, whereas in Asia there was a majority against, and in Latin America opinion was evenly split. Negative views of Russia are largely confined to Europe and other liberal democracies. Positive views of Russia have been retained in China, Indonesia, Egypt, Vietnam, Algeria, Morocco, Malaysia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

The annual Democracy Perception Index, carried out after the invasion of Ukraine, covers 52 highly populated countries in Asia, Latin America, the US and Europe. Majorities in a total of 20 countries thought economic ties with Russia should not be cut due to the war in Ukraine. They included Greece, Kenya, Turkey, China, Israel, Egypt, Nigeria, Indonesia, South Africa, Vietnam, Algeria, the Philippines, Hungary, Mexico, Thailand, Morocco, Malaysia, Peru, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia. Colombians were evenly split. By contrast, among the 31 countries that favoured cutting ties, 20 were in Europe. Although Russian diplomats will point to the findings as evidence that global public opinion does not share western interpretations of events in Ukraine, the level of distrust of Russia in some countries was high.

The countries with a widely held most negative view of Russia included Poland (net negative 87%), Ukraine (80%), Portugal (79%), Italy (65%), UK (65%), Sweden (77%), US (62%) and Germany (62%). Even in Hungary – whose leader Viktor Orbán is an ally of Putin – a net 32% have a negative view of Russia. In Venezuela, often seen as propped up by Russia, the local population has a net negative view of Russia of 36%. Countries with a net positive view of Russia included India (36%) Indonesia (14%), Saudi Arabia (11 %), Algeria (29%), Morocco (4%), and Egypt (7%).

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It’s hard to do. The chances of it happening accidentally on 15 phones at once are zero.

Everyone on Special Counsel Team Wiped Their Cell Phones (CTH)

In the aftermath of the late summer 2017 Page/Strzok cell phone text messages, which started to identify the DOJ and FBI targeting operation against Donald Trump, the DOJ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) decided he better look at the communications inside the rest of the Mueller-Weissmann team. Early in 2018 IG Horowitz asked for all of the special counsel cell phones. Andrew Weissmann knew there would be trouble, the special counsel operation was at a critical juncture so he instructed the team to wipe them clean, quickly. Eventually records were released in 2020 showing how the Weissmann/Mueller special counsel team “accidentally” wiped 15 iPhones of all data early in 2018 after the phones were requested by the OIG office for review.

Mueller’s lead investigator Andrew Weissmann said he “accidentally” wiped two phones himself; through a lengthy process of entering the wrong passcode several times over a period of three hours; removing data to show his activity during the special counsel. Weissmann claimed to have entered the wrong password (takes ten attempts) and that erased all the data. Greg Andre, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s criminal division, made the same claim. Wiping your phone to hide damaging information only works if the other phone you are communicating with wipes the same data. Guess what happened? Yup, exactly that, all of the cell phones connected to the key participants in the Muller operation deleted their phone content rendering a review impossible.

James Quarles III, who worked with Mueller in private practice at the Washington office of Wilmer-Hale, claimed his iPhone magically erased itself. Before joining the special counsel team, Mr. Rush Atkinson worked under Andrew Weissmann in the DOJ’s criminal fraud section where he specialized in financial fraud. Atkinson claims he too entered the wrong password ten times and accidentally erased all the data. At least twelve other people assigned to the special counsel investigation had similar “phone wiped/erased” issues which blocked the inspector general from his review.

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“Well, that’s what the rest of the world saw. It’s not who we are. And now, we’re proving, under pressure, that we are not that country. We’re united.”

Biden Falsely Claims Jan. 6 Rioters ‘Killed Two Police Officers’ (DW)

President Joe Biden falsely claimed that January 6 rioters at the U.S. Capitol “killed two police officers” while giving the commencement address at his alma mater Saturday. Biden and several top Democrats have repeated the debunked claim previously, but the president’s latest assertion of it came at the University of Delaware, where Biden graduated in 1965. No police officers died during the riots, and one who died the following day was found to have died of natural causes. “A mob of insurrectionists stormed the Capitol, the very citadel of democracy,” Biden told the newly minted graduates. “Imagine what you’d be thinking today if you had heard this morning before you got here that a group of a thousand people broke down the doors of the parliament of Great Britain, killed two police officers, smashed and ransacked the office of members of the British Parliament or any other, what would you think? What would you think?”

Immediately after U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died on January 7, the department claimed he had been “injured while physically engaging with protesters” and “was taken to a local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.” The New York Times reported that Sicknick had been beaten with a fire extinguisher, another claim that has since been debunked. The Washington, DC, Office of the Chief Medical Examiner told the Washington Examiner in April that Sicknick’s death was “natural” and caused by two strokes. Two other police officers, Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith and Capitol Police Officer Howard Liebengood, killed themselves following the attacks.

The only people involved in the riots who died on January 6 were Air Force veteran and Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, who was shot in the neck by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd, who was cleared of wrongdoing; two protesters who suffered fatal heart attacks, and another who died of a suspected drug overdose. Biden claimed in a speech in Wisconsin in March that rioters killed five police officers. “Look, how would you feel if you saw crowds storm and break down the doors of the British Parliament, kill five cops, injure 145 — or the German Bundestag, or the Italian Parliament?” he said. “I think you’d wonder. “Well, that’s what the rest of the world saw. It’s not who we are. And now, we’re proving, under pressure, that we are not that country. We’re united.”

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“This turns Americans into paranoid hypochondriacs and hospital junkies.”

The Biggest Get-Rich-Quick Scheme in History (Root)

One of my close friends thought he was having a heart attack. He asked me to drive him to the hospital. Of course, I dropped everything and rushed him to an ER in Las Vegas. He was kept at the hospital for 22 hours. He was given a battery of tests. He passed them all with flying colors. The doctors could find nothing wrong. Thank God — there was no heart attack. He was given a clean bill of health. About two weeks later the bill came. Twenty-two hours in the hospital. Not even one full day. Nothing wrong, so no treatments of any kind were given. The bill was $115,000. What a great job former President Barack Obama did to “fix” the health care system. Now 22 hours in a hospital costs $115,000. The frauds in the media don’t dare talk about that story.

This also explains everything about the pandemic. This is why the reaction by the media, Democratic politicians and medical “experts” has been so hysterical. It’s all about the money. Here’s a simple explanation of the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme. First, Biden, Fauci, the CDC, FDA, Democratic politicians and the media scare people to death — over a flu with mostly mild to moderate symptoms with a 99.9 percent recovery rate. They whip Americans into a frenzy. “If it bleeds, it leads.” The more deaths on the front page, or at the top of the news, the more papers they sell, the higher the ratings — and of course, the billions more spent by Big Pharma on drug and vaccine ads as a “thank you” to the media. This turns Americans into paranoid hypochondriacs and hospital junkies.

It’s one big vicious cycle that makes everyone at the top filthy rich. Think of that $115,000 bill for 22 hours in the hospital. That’s for a person who wasn’t sick. What if you actually have the flu? They’ll admit you for a day, or two, or three, and you’ll go home with a $250,000 bill. What if you actually get seriously ill? That’s a trip to the ICU. Whether you live or die, someone gets a $5,000,000 bill. Multiply these bills by millions of scared-to-death Americans who rush to the ER at the first sign of a cold, cough, fever or sneeze. Most of them are poor and on Obamacare or Medicaid. And it’s all paid by OPM — other people’s money. The government pays, and pays, and pays some more. With your money.

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The choice of terminology alone shows how deep Canada has fallen.

Amnesty Should Be Granted To The Unvaccinated (NP)

With vaccine mandates lifted across the country — only the stubborn, ignore-the-science federal government is holding out — it’s time to stop punishing people with minority opinions on public health policy. Let them go back to work, let them visit their relatives, let them live as freely as people in Auckland and Amsterdam do. Public health measures must be prophylactic and not punitive, aimed at preventing the spread of disease, not administering a penalty to those who do not comply with all the dictates. I wrote that some seven months ago, in light of the federal government’s unreasonable vaccine mandate imposed on federal employees, which included dismissal for unvaccinated employees who work at home.

Seven months on, the unreasonable has become the absurd, with an unvaccinated federal employee able to happily attend a hockey game in a packed arena full of screaming fans, but fired for working alone at home. s each day passes, it becomes more clear that federal pandemic measures are punitive. Canada is one of the most vaccinated countries on earth. Thus it may be politically popular to administer harsh measures to the small minority of the unvaccinated, even if a year on from initial doses and post-Omicron, the effectiveness of vaccines to prevent infection and transmission is greatly diminished. Yet denying millions of Canadians the ability to travel in their own country, or to serve in the military, or to drive a truck across the border, is not something that mere political popularity makes legitimate.

Recent attention has focused on the only-in-Canada travel policies that are snarling our airports. The European Union dropped its mask mandate for flights almost two weeks ago; even New Zealand no longer has vaccine mandates for air travel, at home or abroad.

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May 252022
 


Vincent van Gogh Pietà (after Delacroix) 1889

 

America’s Ukraine Policy Is On A Collision Course With Reality (Moloney)
The Secret American Plan to Make Russia Great Again (Orlov)
Ukraine Official Blasts Kissinger Over Comment on Ceding Territory (Celente)
NATO vs Russia: What Happens Next (Escobar)
No Way Out but War (Chris Hedges)
Finland, Sweden Send Teams To Turkey After Erdogan’s ‘Don’t Even Bother’ (ZH)
Comey’s FBI Lied To Its Own Agents In Russia Hoax Cover-Up (Jarrett)
‘Fired Up’ FBI Leadership Pushed Trump Probe Despite Flimsy Evidence (JTN)
Individual Carbon Footprint Tracker (CTH)
Bill Gates Poured Millions into Dark Money Fund Attacking Elon Musk (BB)
One Billion People At Risk Of Power Blackouts As Global Grids Stretched
Biden Underwater On Almost All Issues Except Handling Of Covid (Hill)
Bayer Deploys Big Ag Buddies to Push Biden on Roundup Cancer Lawsuit (CHD)

 

 

 

 

Ricky Gervais is an absolute treasure
https://twitter.com/i/status/1529025826712391681

 

 

“..the holes in the upbeat Ukraine narrative have reached a point where the mainstream media no longer can credibly deny them..”

America’s Ukraine Policy Is On A Collision Course With Reality (Moloney)

If we accept the mainstream media narrative about Russia’s war in Ukraine, we are witnessing the emergence of the Biden administration’s greatest triumph to date. Under this roseate scenario, the Ukrainians are doing wonderfully well in their fight against Russia; the Russian troops are failing badly almost everywhere; NATO is enjoying a renaissance of unity not seen since the Cold War; and President Biden is being lauded globally for bold leadership and for proving once again that the United States is the world’s indispensable nation. Perhaps best of all is the narrative that Biden is delivering his long-promised bipartisan unity among Americans, as large numbers of Republicans sign onto his requests for more money and more weapons for Ukraine.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) are among the luminaries who paraded to Kyiv for coveted photo-ops with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In stark contrast to these upbeat perspectives about the war, however, a far less pleasant reality is forcing its way to the forefront of American consciousness: The U.S. economy is reeling through a historic crisis in the direction of an almost certain recession, with inflation far outpacing wage gains; income inequality soaring, as elites continue to prosper and the working class is crushed by the cost of living; frightening levels of violent crime plague large cities; and unprecedented numbers of illegal migrants are surging across America’s southern border.

In light of these less palatable realities, it cannot be surprising Biden’s approval rating and that of his Democratic Party are plummeting to new depths — including among bedrock elements of the Democratic coalition such as Hispanics, Black voters and, perhaps, educated suburban women. Traditional liberals such as Democratic strategist James Carville clearly see the looming electoral disaster of this fall’s midterms, but it’s being ignored by Pelosi and the party’s progressive wing, which continues to influence Biden’s policy initiatives. The disconnect between these two realities has become evident as new complications arise in Ukraine and America’s domestic disorders worsen. In particular, the holes in the upbeat Ukraine narrative have reached a point where the mainstream media no longer can credibly deny them, as John Walsh described in a recent Asia Times article, “NY Times shifts pro-war narrative.” Walsh draws attention to two items appearing recently in the Times: a front-page story about Russia seizing much of the East, and an opinion piece entitled, “America and Its Allies Want to Bleed Russia. They Really Shouldn’t.”

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“After the Soviet collapse, very little was needed to speed along the collapse of Russia itself. But none of these steps have been taken, and the steps that were taken (with the ostensible goal of weakening and destroying Russia) have done the exact opposite.”

The Secret American Plan to Make Russia Great Again (Orlov)

It is generally a good idea to avoid ascribing nefarious intent to actions explained by mere stupidity. But this is a case where mere stupidity cannot possibly explain the long, steady procession of foreign policy errors spanning three decades, all of them specifically aimed at strengthening Russia. It is not possible to argue that a surplus of hubris, ignorance, greed and political opportunism and a deficit of competent foreign policy analysts can produce such a result, for that would be essentially the same as arguing that some monkeys armed with drills, mills and lathes can produce a Swiss watch. But the only alternative would be to claim that there is a network of Kremlin’s agents ensconced deep within the bowels of the American Deep State and that they are all working in concert to advance Russia’s interests while meticulously maintaining plausible deniability all the while and at all levels of the operation.

Ostensibly, the plan was to weaken and destroy Russia; but then, following the Soviet collapse, Russia was weakening and destroying itself very well all by itself, no intervention needed. What’s more, every US effort to weaken and destroy Russia has made it stronger; had there existed even a most rudimentary feedback mechanism, so vast a discrepancy between policy goals and policy results would have been detected and adjustments would have been made. Superficially, this may be explained by the nature of America’s sham-democracy, where each administration can blame its failures on mistakes made by the previous administration, but the Deep State remains in power throughout, and it would simply be forced to admit to itself that there is a problem with the plan to weaken and destroy Russia after a few cycles of this unfolding fiasco. The fact that it hasn’t detected any such problem brings us full circle, back to the suspicion that there are Putin’s agents toiling tirelessly deep within the Deep State.

But that’s pure conspiracy theory and we shouldn’t want to go anywhere near that. Suffice to say, there is at present no adequate explanation for what happened. After the Soviet collapse, very little was needed to speed along the collapse of Russia itself. But none of these steps have been taken, and the steps that were taken (with the ostensible goal of weakening and destroying Russia) have done the exact opposite. Why? Below are listed 10 of the most successful initiatives of what appear to be a US Deep State MRGA campaign. If you have an alternative explanation, I’d like to hear it. b

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Turns 99 on Friday. Terrible legacy. But today’s crop are far worse.

Ukraine Official Blasts Kissinger Over Comment on Ceding Territory (Celente)

Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state, said Monday what The Trends Journal has been advocating since the start of the Ukraine War: President Volodymyr Zelensky should negotiate for a peaceful resolution and prevent thousands more from dying needlessly. “Negotiations need to begin in the next two months before it creates upheavals and tensions that will not be easily overcome,” Kissinger told the World Economic Forum in Davos. “Ideally, the dividing line should be a return to the status quo ante.” The 98-year-old said pursuing the war “beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself.” He said Ukraine should be willing to cede territory in the peace process. Ukraine has said it will not stop fighting until Russia retreats from the country.

Kissinger saw some success during his time as the U.S.’s top diplomat with the Soviet Union and played a role in arms control treaties like the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. He told the audience in Davos that it would be “fatal” for Western countries to disregard Russia’s position of power within Europe. “I hope the Ukrainians will match the heroism they have shown with wisdom,” Kissinger said. Kissinger’s comments were mocked on social media by “journalists” who -two months ago- didn’t know the difference between Kyiv and a quiche. One even suggested that he should die. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky, was critical of Kissinger’s remarks and said he would as easily “allow to take Poland or Lithuania away,” Newsweek reported.

[..] Kissinger’s comments follow nonagenarian Noam Chomsky’s earlier statements about the dangers of a prolonged conflict in Ukraine. Chomsky, correctly, stated earlier this month that Ukrainian leadership’s cry for more heavy weapons is actually the Western “propaganda system.” Chomsky was criticized after saying in an interview that former President Donald Trump is the “one Western statesman of stature” who laid out a “sensible” solution for Ukraine. He said Trump spoke about facilitating negotiations instead of “undermining them and moving towards establishing some kind of accommodation in Europe in which there are no military alliances and mutual accommodation.”

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“Herr Schwab stressed that an actor impersonating a president defending neo-Nazis is supported by “all of Europe and the international order.”

NATO vs Russia: What Happens Next (Escobar)

Three months after the start of Russia’s Operation Z in Ukraine, the battle of The West (12 percent) against The Rest (88 percent) keeps metastasizing. Yet the narrative – oddly – remains the same. On Monday, from Davos, World Economic Forum Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab introduced Ukrainian comedian-cum-President Volodymyr Zelensky, on the latest leg of his weapons-solicitation-tour, with a glowing tribute. Herr Schwab stressed that an actor impersonating a president defending neo-Nazis is supported by “all of Europe and the international order.” He means, of course, everyone except the 88 percent of the planet that subscribes to the Rule of Law – instead of the faux construct the west calls a ‘rules-based international order.’

Back in the real world, Russia, slowly but surely has been rewriting the Art of Hybrid War. Yet within the carnival of NATO psyops, aggressive cognitive infiltration, and stunning media sycophancy, much is being made of the new $40 billion US ‘aid’ package to Ukraine, deemed capable of becoming a game-changer in the war. This ‘game-changing’ narrative comes courtesy of the same people who burned though trillions of dollars to secure Afghanistan and Iraq. And we saw how that went down. Ukraine is the Holy Grail of international corruption. That $40 billion can be a game-changer for only two classes of people: First, the US military-industrial complex, and second, a bunch of Ukrainian oligarchs and neo-connish NGOs, that will corner the black market for weapons and humanitarian aid, and then launder the profits in the Cayman Islands.

A quick breakdown of the $40 billion reveals $8.7 billion will go to replenish the US weapons stockpile (thus not going to Ukraine at all); $3.9 billion for USEUCOM (the ‘office’ that dictates military tactics to Kiev); $5 billion for a fuzzy, unspecified “global food supply chain”; $6 billion for actual weapons and “training” to Ukraine; $9 billion in “economic assistance” (which will disappear into selected pockets); and $0.9 billion for refugees. US risk agencies have downgraded Kiev to the dumpster of non-reimbursing-loan entities, so large American investment funds are ditching Ukraine, leaving the European Union (EU) and its member-states as the country’s only option.

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“It will signal the death of Pax Americana.”

No Way Out but War (Chris Hedges)

The United States, as the near unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable Covid relief program. No respite from 8.3 percent inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion to fix the 43,586 structurally deficient bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student debt. No addressing income inequality. No program to feed the 17 million children who go to bed each night hungry. No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and mass shootings. No help for the 100,000 Americans who die each year of drug overdoses.

No minimum wage of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon. The permanent war economy, implanted since the end of World War II, has destroyed the private economy, bankrupted the nation, and squandered trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the US debt to $30 trillion, $ 6 trillion more than the US GDP of $ 24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spent more on the military, $ 813 billion for fiscal year 2023, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined.

We are paying a heavy social, political, and economic cost for our militarism. Washington watches passively as the U.S. rots, morally, politically, economically, and physically, while China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, and other countries extract themselves from the tyranny of the U.S. dollar and the international Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a messaging network banks and other financial institutions use to send and receive information, such as money transfer instructions. Once the U.S. dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, once there is an alternative to SWIFT, it will precipitate an internal economic collapse. It will force the immediate contraction of the U.S. empire shuttering most of its nearly 800 overseas military installations. It will signal the death of Pax Americana.

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Arms embargo.

Finland, Sweden Send Teams To Turkey After Erdogan’s ‘Don’t Even Bother’ (ZH)

Finland and Sweden on Tuesday confirmed they are sending delegations to Ankara in hopes of resolving issues surrounding Turkey’s publicly voiced vehement opposition to the two countries’ bids to join NATO. They formally submitted their applications in a ceremony attended by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg last week, which Turkey immediately sought to block. Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said the delegations will begin meetings with Turkish counterparts on Wednesday, even after days ago President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Finnish and Swedish diplomatic teams “shouldn’t bother coming” if they aren’t prepared to halt support for PKK terrorists.

Speaking during a panel discussion of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Haavisto acknowledged, “We understand that Turkey has some of their own security concerns vis-a-vis terrorism.” He added: “We think that these issues can be settled. There might be also some issues that are not linked directly to Finland and Sweden but more to other NATO members.” US Secretary Antony Blinken and the Biden administration say they’re “confident” the issues will be smoothed over, despite Ankara officials still showing no sign of stopping the denunciations. Turkey has also demanded that Sweden extradite “terrorists” being hosted in its midst, along with the Nordic countries immediately lifting an EU arms embargo which took effect in 2019 in response to the Turkish military’s anti-Kurdish operations in northern Syria.

According to the latest statements from Turkey’s foreign ministry, Ankara is waiting on both countries to take concrete steps. “Sweden, which has applied for membership, is expected to take principled steps and provide concrete assurances regarding Turkey’s security concerns,” a statement said. “Since 2017, our country has requested the extradition of PKK/PYD and FETO terrorists from Sweden but has yet to receive a positive response,” it added in reference referring to Syria’s main Kurdish party PYD and the Gulenist group FETO.

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“Testimony has shown that the FBI opened its probe of Trump because Hillary’s lawyer warned the Bureau that the media was about to report on it.”

Yeah, because “Hillary’s lawyer” fed them the story. That’s how it becomes a story. And then a probe.

Comey’s FBI Lied To Its Own Agents In Russia Hoax Cover-Up (Jarrett)

As if the FBI’s gross misconduct couldn’t get any worse, we learned Monday in court that top bureau officials actively concealed from their own field agents that it was Hillary’s lawyer, defendant Michael Sussmann, who was peddling phony Trump-Russia collusion claims to the FBI. Instead of telling their agents the truth of the information source, FBI brass lied by wrongly attributed it as coming from the “Department of Justice,” thus giving it the imprimatur of greater credibility than it deserved. As Monday’s testimony showed, had agents been told that Hillary’s campaign lawyer was behind it they would have recognized it for what it was –a politically motivated smear and immediately discounted it as a lie.

Monday’s testimony also revealed that the FBI eventually concluded as early as January of 2017 –just as the new president was about to take office– that the so-called “Alfa-Bank secret back-channel communication” between Trump and the Kremlin was a hoax. Yet, Comey hid that critical information from Trump, congress, and the American people. As a consequence, the media kept up its false reporting in the same way it continued to flog the fabricated “dossier.” Comey and others at the FBI like Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok knew that “dossier” funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign was a collection of exaggerations and made-up stories that originated from her own people. Comey could have told the truth and refuted all of the false media stories, but he didn’t. He and his acolytes exploited it as a pretense to escalate their investigation of Trump to drive him from office.

It’s not surprising that CBS, NBC, ABC, and MSNBC have refused to report any of the stunning revelations in the Sussmann trial. They are shameless cowards. They spent the better part of three years obsessed with the collusion story with their non-stop coverage portraying Trump as a Russian asset. They were reckless and wrong. But now, they don’t want to draw attention to just how wrong they were by reporting on the trial. The Washington Post is worse. On Monday, the newspaper published a “news analysis” with the title, “Again: There’s no evidence Hillary Clinton triggered the Russia probe.” Like much of the Post’s reporting, it is completely untrue. Declassified CIA documents show that Hillary invented the hoax by approving a plan on July 26, 2016 to frame Trump. She also gave her personal approval to leak it to the media, according to her own campaign manager’s testimony in court on Friday. Testimony has shown that the FBI opened its probe of Trump because Hillary’s lawyer warned the Bureau that the media was about to report on it.

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“..not opening an investigation was not an option..”

‘Fired Up’ FBI Leadership Pushed Trump Probe Despite Flimsy Evidence (JTN)

In explosive testimony Tuesday in the Michael Sussmann trial, an FBI agent said “fired up” senior FBI leadership insisted on continuing the investigation into now-debunked allegations of a secret Trump back channel to Moscow via a Russian bank despite learning the story was unsubstantiated. FBI agent Curtis Heide was the co-case agent on the investigation into the allegation that there was a secret communications channel between the Trump Organization and Kremlin-linked Alfa Bank. He testified on Tuesday in the Sussmann trial that the bureau’s top brass pushed for the investigation.

Heide was told in an instant message from FBI Agent Joe Pientka, who was the supervisor leading the Crossfire Hurricane investigation regarding Trump-Russia collusion allegations, that senior leadership was “fired up” about the Alfa Bank and Trump Organization email servers and not opening an investigation was not an option. He received this message two days after Sussmann met with then-FBI General Counsel James Baker to give him the underlying, allegedly pretextual data. Sussmann, a 2016 Clinton campaign lawyer, is on trial for allegedly lying to the FBI in his September 2016 meeting with Baker by saying he was not representing any clients in sharing information purportedly substantiating a Trump Organization back channel to the Kremlin through Alfa Bank.

Special Counsel John Durham has provided evidence that Sussmann was representing clients at the meeting — both the Clinton campaign and then-Neustar tech firm executive Rodney Joffe. Heide testified that he concluded the allegation was unsubstantiated based on the analysis by the FBI cyber division, review of the internet data logs, cybersecurity company Mandiant’s independent assessment corroborating the FBI’s findings, discussions with Spectrum Health about a TOR (The Onion Router) exit node, and his own training regarding previous Russian cyber investigations. By Sept. 26, 2016, Heide believed the allegation was a bunk report. In an Oct. 3 email, he asked to interview the anonymous source who relayed the allegation because he believed the investigation was reaching a logical endpoint as the claims appeared unfounded.

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“The 5G telecommunications network is designed to use geolocation and behavioral tracking that will connect your digital identity to your individual behavior and facilitate the carbon footprint tracing process..”

Individual Carbon Footprint Tracker (CTH)

It is important to remember the ultimate goal of the ‘climate change’ promotors (World Economic Forum) is not an energy system that changes the global climate. The goal of the ‘climate change’ group is to create a carbon trading system; a new financial mechanism (a global tax program) to control human activity on a world-wide basis. This system also needs a digital identity in order to work {hint-hint}. You cannot tax, or trade, things you cannot track. As a result, there was always going to be a need for an individual tracking and monitoring system that would connect to the global digital identity and determine the carbon footprint. The carbon taxing and trading system will be more financially lucrative than any stock exchange or monetary banking system. It is the ultimate human control mechanism, and the preferred way to redistribute wealth under the guise of global equity.


Of course, the system will beta test as a consumer demand product until the government steps in to take over the allocation and distribution equity part. In this video segment, Alibaba Group president J. Michael Evans boasts at the 2022 World Economic Forum about the development of an “individual carbon footprint tracker” to monitor what you buy, what you eat, and where/how you travel.

The individual carbon tracker is the baseline for a global carbon trading system that involves everyone; at least, everyone connected to the outlook of western government. Carbon allocation creates the financial metric that replaces currency. You buy and sell carbon credits allowing you to engage in specific functions within society, like dining, traveling, home ownership and type, vehicle or transportation type, even the clothes you can purchase. Hence, “carbon trading” is the term most people are familiar with. In essence, you are a parasite to earth; therefore, you must offset your derogatory footprint on the planet by paying a fee to exist. If you cannot pay for the carbon credits needed to engage in the transaction (travel, home ownership, cooling, heating, etc.) you cannot engage in the regulated activity.


The carbon exchange process is at the end of the slippery slope created by a digital identity. The 5G telecommunications network is designed to use geolocation and behavioral tracking that will connect your digital identity to your individual behavior and facilitate the carbon footprint tracing process. We are already passed the “if” stage.

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“..a shape-shifting nonprofit group that uses aliases to push an array of left-wing causes from a shell office in Washington, D.C.”

Bill Gates Poured Millions into Dark Money Fund Attacking Elon Musk (BB)

Research exclusively shared with Breitbart News identifies hundreds of millions of dollars flowing from Bill Gates’ foundation to 11 of the 26 organizations that signed an open letter last month urging Twitter advertisers to boycott the company if Elon Musk restores free speech on the platform. Breitbart News’ report, based on research and analysis from the newly-formed Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO), analyzed public filings to trace hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions from the letter signatories back to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In total, 11 of the 26 anti-Musk organizations received funding from a Gates-backed entity.

[..] The open letter’s connection to the billionaire Microsoft founder is significant, as Gates is in the middle of a public feud with free speech advocate Musk. Last month, Gates revealed his $500 million short position against Musk-owned Tesla, prompting Musk to call Gates a “b*ner” killer alongside a meme of Gates as a pregnant man emoji. Gates is also an outspoken censorship proponent, frequently calling on tech companies to do more to stop “health misinformation” spreading online. Musk threatens to reverse Gates’ strongly desired censorship policies — and now faces the wrath of Gates-funded NGOs. Recently, Musk asked his 94 million Twitter followers to uncover the funding behind the 26 NGOs who signed an intimidation letter threatening to destroy the company’s advertising revenue if Musk reversed its censorship policies.

Musk followed up his request by highlighting one particular shadowy group, Accountable Tech, musing: “I wonder who funds them”. His curiosity was prompted by a Washington Free Beacon investigation into Accountable Tech, which sought to get to the bottom of the nonprofit’s financial sponsorship. The Free Beacon visited Accountable Tech’s corporate office in Washington and concluded the organization doesn’t “actually exist.” Rather, “Accountable Tech” was merely a “registered trade [name] for the North Fund, a shape-shifting nonprofit group that uses aliases to push an array of left-wing causes from a shell office in Washington, D.C.”

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A crisis created for the good of mankind.

One Billion People At Risk Of Power Blackouts As Global Grids Stretched

This summer, power grids worldwide won’t produce enough electricity to meet the soaring demand, threatening more than one billion people with rolling blackouts. Grids are stretched thin by fossil fuel shortages, drought and heatwaves, commodity disruptions and soaring prices due to the war in Ukraine, and the failed green energy transition where grid operators retired too many fossil fuel generation plants. Combine this all together, and a perfect storm of blackouts threatens much of the Northern Hemisphere. The power crisis, affecting a large swath of the world and top economies, could be less than a month away when summer begins on June 21. Regions that concerned Bloomberg are Asia, Europe, and the US, where there’s not enough power to go around when cooling demand is set to surge as households crank up their air conditions to escape the sweltering heat.

“Asia’s heatwave has caused hours-long daily blackouts, putting more than 1 billion people at risk across Pakistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and India, with little relief in sight. Six Texas power plants failed earlier this month as the summer heat just began to arrive, offering a preview of what’s to come. At least a dozen US states from California to the Great Lakes are at risk of electricity outages this summer. Power supplies will be tight in China and Japan. South Africa is poised for a record year of power cuts. And Europe is in a precarious position that’s held up by Russia — if Moscow cuts off natural gas to the region, that could trigger rolling outages in some countries.” –Bloomberg

BloombergNEF analyst Shantanu Jaiswal says the combination of “war and sanctions” disrupting commodity markets, “extreme weather,” and “an economic rebound from COVID boosting power demand” is a “unique” situation that he “can’t recall” the last time a “confluence of so many factors” happened together. As we noted in the beginning, it’s a perfect storm of factors.

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Ha ha ha!

Biden Underwater On Almost All Issues Except Handling Of Covid (Hill)

President Biden’s approval rating continues to be underwater on virtually every issue, with the exception being on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new survey from Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll. Biden’s overall approval rating sits at 41 percent in the survey, and the numbers are not much better when broken down by each issue. Only 35 percent of registered voters approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, 44 percent approve of his efforts to stimulate job growth and just 33 percent approve of his handling of inflation. Thirty-eight percent of respondents say they support his handling of immigration, and his approval rating on foreign affairs sits at 40 percent.


However, 52 percent of registered voters said they approve of his handling of COVID-19, the lone bright spot in the survey for the White House. Yet overall, his sagging approval ratings portend a political atmosphere this midterm cycle that will heavily favor Republicans — and warn that a 2024 reelection bid could be a slog. “Biden continues to struggle with the job and is particularly being slammed by the voters over inflation and immigration. No president has been reelected with numbers like these on job performance,” said pollster Mark Penn.

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Monsanto has real power.

Bayer Deploys Big Ag Buddies to Push Biden on Roundup Cancer Lawsuit (CHD)

Two weeks after a top Justice Department official advised the U.S. Supreme Court there was “no sound reason” for the high court to review a loss by Monsanto owner Bayer AG in nationwide Roundup cancer litigation, a coalition of large agricultural groups is demanding that President Joe Biden withdraw the opinion. Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018, has looked to the high court as its last, and best, hope for putting an end to the ongoing litigation. Bayer has asked the justices to take up the case, which centers on allegations that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).

But Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar advised the court in a May 10 brief that Bayer’s arguments for seeking Supreme Court review were “misconceived,” and said there was no valid dispute for the high court to consider. The agricultural groups responded Monday with a blistering letter to Biden, alleging Prelogar’s brief established a “new policy” that “poses great risks to our science-based regulatory system and global food systems.” The letter urges Biden to withdraw Prelogar’s brief and “consult with the U.S. Department of Agriculture regarding the implications of this decision for food production, environmental sustainability, and science-based regulation.”

[..] Bayer filed its petition to the high court in August, asking the justices to review the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s May 14, 2021, decision that affirmed a district court’s judgment in Monsanto’s 2019 trial loss to plaintiff Edwin Hardeman. The jury, in that case, agreed with Hardeman’s attorneys that exposure to Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicide was a cause of Hardeman’s NHL and that Monsanto failed to warn of its product’s health risks, despite decades of science showing links between the herbicide and cancer. Hardeman was awarded approximately $80 million by the jury, though the award was cut by the trial court judge to roughly $25.2 million.

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Apr 052021
 


Piet Mondriaan Composition in color A 1917

 

Yet Again on Covid (Hoskinson)
The Great Covid Power Grab (Clark)
Kentucky Passes A Philosophical Exemption Law For Vaccines (ky.gov)
Covid Passport Trials Begin With Live Comedy Night (BBC)
Everyone in England to be Offered Twice-weekly Covid Tests (G.)
High Vitamin D Levels May Protect Against Covid-19 (UCM)
Republicans Dangle ‘Easy’ Win For Trimmed Biden Plan (F24)
US National Debt Passes $28 Trillion, +$4.7 Trillion in 13 Months (WS)
Turkey and the Suez ‘Heart Attack’ (K.)
Ten Retired Admirals Detained in Turkey as Erdogan Warns of New Coup (GR)
Hunter Biden Is ‘100% Certain’ DOJ Probe Will Clear Him Of Wrongdoing (JTN)

 

 

 

 

Barkley

 

 

Excellent.

Charles Hoskinson is the founder of Cardano and co-founder of Ethereum, two cryptocurrencies.

Yet Again on Covid (Hoskinson)

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“To compare Covid to the Second World War, as the 24 leaders have done, and argue that it needs a post-WW2 style settlement, surely redefines the word ‘hyperbolic.’ ”

The Great Covid Power Grab (Clark)

Johnson, Macron and Merkel have warned that the world needs a settlement to protect itself in the wake of Coronavirus. The question, as ever, must be: ‘who benefits?’ The answer, as ever, is ‘it’s unlikely to be you.’ “Out with nationalism and isolationism and in with international ‘Health and Security’!” That’s the cry from 24 world leaders, led by the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The call for a new global ‘pandemic preparedness’ treaty came in a letter to the Daily Telegraph and in papers across the world. The letter uses words and phrases such as ‘solidarity,’ ‘global community,’ ’international cooperation’ and ‘protect’ repeatedly, to make us all feel that what is being proposed is for the good of us all. But is it?

If we read between the lines, we can see quite clearly that, while the plan is supposed to be about post-Covid pandemics, it is really about making sure that the draconian measures introduced since 2020 are maintained as long as possible. The ‘nobody is safe until everyone is safe’ mantra which appears at the end of the second paragraph in the letter, is saying to us – as Merkel and other globalists have strongly hinted – that restrictions cannot and will not be lifted until everyone in the world has been vaccinated. If you have any doubts, just take a look at the very next sentence, which states: ‘We are therefore committed to ensuring universal and equitable access to safe, efficacious and affordable vaccines, medicines and diagnostics for this and future pandemics.’ Translation: ‘Africa, you’re going to take the vaccines we offer you whether you like it or not.’

To justify a ‘pandemic treaty,’ and other long-planned changes being implemented in its wake, they have to accord Covid a very special status. The first sentence of the letter boldly states: ‘The Covid-19 pandemic is the biggest challenge to the global community since the 1940s.’ But is that really true? Hong Kong flu claimed the lives of between one and four million people between 1968 and 1970. But it got a lot less coverage than Covid. There was no talk of a permanent ‘New Normal’ being established in 1970, or the need for a post-WW2-like settlement. Neither was there when HIV/AIDS hit in the 1980s. The UN says between 24.8m and 42.2 million people had died of AIDS-related illnesses by the end of 2019.

To compare Covid to the Second World War, as the 24 leaders have done, and argue that it needs a post-WW2 style settlement, surely redefines the word ‘hyperbolic.’ A reminder: some 75 million people died in the Second World War – including around 27 million citizens of the former Soviet Union. 60 million Europeans became refugees. By contrast, the current number of deaths ‘with’ Covid is 2.8 million. Yes, that’s serious –and all deaths are very sad– but the numbers alone can’t explain why it’s Covid –and not other diseases which killed many more and came before it– which necessitates a ‘Great Reset’.

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6 states have now passed similar laws: Wisconsin, Nebraska, Florida, Ohio, Missouri and Kentucky.

Kentucky Passes A Philosophical Exemption Law For Vaccines (ky.gov)

AN ACT relating to exceptions to mandatory immunization requirements and declaring an emergency.


Amend KRS 214.036 to provide exemptions from mandatory immunization for any child, emancipated minor, or adult who, personally or by a parent or guardian, submits a written sworn statement objecting to the immunization based on conscientiously held beliefs; prohibit any administrative regulation, administrative order, or executive order from requiring during an epidemic the immunization of persons who submit either a written sworn statement objecting to the immunization based on conscientiously held beliefs or the written opinion of the person’s physician that such immunization would be injurious to the person’s health; require the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to develop and make available on its Web site a standardized form relating to the exemptions from mandatory immunization and to accept the form after it is submitted; amend KRS 209.552 and 214.034 to conform; EMERGENCY.

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And so it begins.

Covid Passport Trials Begin With Live Comedy Night (BBC)

The government is to trial a series of measures in England, including Covid passports, to allow the safe return of sports matches, events and nightclubs. Passes would show if a person had been vaccinated, had a recent negative test, or natural immunity. Trial events in the coming months will also explore how ventilation and testing before and after could help crowds return. Any use of passes would be “time-limited”, the sports minister has said. The pilots, which will include the FA Cup final, will last until mid-May, and some of the listed events will not be trialling vaccination certification, including those taking place in Liverpool.


Sports Minister Nigel Huddleston described the trials as a “learning experience”, saying no decisions had yet been made on processes or vaccination certificates. He said the earlier pilots “almost certainly won’t involve any element of certification”, and that the government would also be looking at mitigations such as one-way systems and hygiene measures. Mr Huddleston said the PM would receive a report on the trials at the end of May, and suggested further events could be added later in the year.

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Give people back the responsibility taken away from them.

Everyone in England to be Offered Twice-weekly Covid Tests (G.)

Boris Johnson is to unveil a plan for routine, universal Covid-19 tests as a means to ease England out of lockdown, as the government faced a renewed backlash over the idea of app-based “passports” to permit people entry into crowded places and events. Six months after Johnson unveiled plans for “Operation Moonshot”, a £100bn mass testing scheme that never delivered on its stated aim of preventing another lockdown, all people in England will be offered two Covid tests a week from Friday. The prime minister is to announce the rollout of the lateral flow tests at a press conference on Monday afternoon, at which he will also outline a programme of trial events for mass gatherings, as well as proposals for potentially restarting foreign travel.

The testing scheme, involving kits for use at home or at test centres, workplaces and schools, is billed as a means to limit any continued community transmission of the virus, in parallel with the vaccination programme, and as a way to track outbreaks of potentially vaccine-resistant Covid variants. The test-and-trace phone app will also be updated so that when pubs and other hospitality venues reopen everyone in a group will have to register, not just the lead person, with those who test positive asked to share other places they have visited. Some scientists have expressed scepticism at the plan, noting both the possibility of false negatives with lateral flow tests, and the need for better support for people to self-isolate if they do test positive.

Civil liberties groups and many MPs will also be wary if the new testing system potentially feeds into a regime of Covid certificates, which would use recent tests, vaccination or the presence of antibodies to the virus to determine entry to pubs or mass events. Sometimes also called “Covid passports”, these would be purely for domestic use, and would be distinct from a vaccination record to allow foreign travel.

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There’s a research deficiency about vitamin D deficiency. “This supports arguments for designing clinical trials”?

High Vitamin D Levels May Protect Against Covid-19 (UCM)

A new research study at the University of Chicago Medicine has found that when it comes to COVID-19, having vitamin D levels above those traditionally considered sufficient may lower the risk of infection, especially for Black people. The study, published in JAMA Open Network on March 19, retrospectively examined the relationship between vitamin D levels and likelihood of testing positive for COVID-19. While levels of 30 ng/ml or more are usually considered sufficient, the authors found that Black individuals who had levels of 30 to 40 ng/ml had a 2.64 times higher risk of testing positive for COVID-19 than people with levels of 40 ng/ml or greater. Statistically significant associations of vitamin D levels with COVID-19 risk were not found in white people.

The study looked at data from more than 3,000 patients at UChicago Medicine who had had their vitamin D levels tested within 14 days before a COVID-19 test. The research team is now recruiting participants for two separate clinical trials testing the efficacy of vitamin D supplements for preventing COVID-19. This research is an expansion of an earlier study showing that a vitamin D deficiency (less than 20 ng/ml) may raise the risk of testing positive for COVID-19. In the current study, those results were further supported, finding that individuals with a vitamin D deficiency had a 7.2% chance of testing positive for the virus. A separate study recently found that more than 80% of patients diagnosed with COVID-19 were vitamin D deficient.

“These new results tell us that having vitamin D levels above those normally considered sufficient is associated with decreased risk of testing positive for COVID-19, at least in Black individuals,” said David Meltzer, MD, PhD, Chief of Hospital Medicine at UChicago Medicine and lead author of the study. “This supports arguments for designing clinical trials that can test whether or not vitamin D may be a viable intervention to lower the risk of the disease, especially in persons of color.” Meltzer was inspired to investigate this topic after seeing an article in early 2020 that found people with vitamin D deficiency who were randomly assigned to receive vitamin D supplementation had much lower rates of viral respiratory infections compared to those who did not receive supplementation. He decided to examine data being collected at UChicago Medicine on COVID-19 to determine the role that vitamin D levels might be playing.

“There’s a lot of literature on vitamin D. Most of it has been focused on bone health, which is where the current standards for sufficient vitamin D levels come from,” Meltzer explained. “But there’s also some evidence that vitamin D might improve immune function and decrease inflammation. So far, the data has been relatively inconclusive. Based on these results, we think that earlier studies may have given doses that were too low to have much of an effect on the immune system, even if they were sufficient for bone health. It may be that different levels of vitamin D are adequate for different functions.”

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“..not the more expansive spending Biden envisions to create jobs, fight climate change and stand up to a rising China..”

Republicans Dangle ‘Easy’ Win For Trimmed Biden Plan (F24)

Republicans opened the door Sunday to supporting a pared down version of Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan, saying concentrating on physical improvements would deliver an “easy bipartisan win” for the US president. Biden’s American Jobs Plan — the second massive spending initiative of his 10-week old administration, after a $1.9 trillion short-term Covid rescue bill — would modernize America’s public works and make its energy system greener. But the proposal announced last week faces major hurdles in Congress amid criticism from Republicans and business lobbies who oppose the higher corporate taxes that would pay the bill.

Roy Blunt, the chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, implored Democrats to focus on the traditional pillars of infrastructure — “roads, bridges, ports and airports” — and not the more expansive spending Biden envisions to create jobs, fight climate change and stand up to a rising China. Blunt spoke out as senior administration figures hit the Sunday talk show circuit to sell the policy to the American people as a vital component of sustained job growth. “I’ve reached out to the White House a couple of times now and said, you’ve got an easy bipartisan win here if you’ll keep this package nearly focused on infrastructure,” Blunt told ABC’s “This Week.”

That would not prevent the administration from later pushing through the other aspects of its plan on a partisan basis, he said. Blunt complained that the package contained more for electric vehicle charging stations than for physical improvements. “When people think about infrastructure, they’re thinking about roads, bridges, ports and airports,” he told ABC. Blunt, a senior member of Senate leadership team, struck a more conciliatory tone than the chamber’s Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who had earlier vowed to fight the Biden plan “every step of the way.”

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It’s become fully abstract.

US National Debt Passes $28 Trillion, +$4.7 Trillion in 13 Months (WS)

It finally happened, that glorious moment, when, after teetering on the verge for weeks – for reasons we’ll get into shortly – the incredibly spiking US gross national debt, after kissing the line a couple of times for a moment, finally, and suddenly by a big leap, jumped over the $28-trillion mark, with a $143-billion leap in one day on Wednesday, March 31, following some big Treasury sales. It gave some of that up on Thursday as some bonds matured. And it now amounts to $28.08 trillion, as per US Treasury Department on Friday. The US gross national debt has now spiked by $4.7 trillion in 13 months since the end of February 2020, in the days before this show started.

The flat spots in the chart are the visual depictions of a charade unique to American politics, the periods when the debt bounced into the Debt Ceiling. Those were the days when everyone in Congress was still trying to hijack the Debt Ceiling law to get their favorite spending priorities! If it looks like the trillions have been whizzing by a little less fast in recent months, that the growth of the debt has somehow slowed, that is correct. The chart below magnifies the daily debt levels since December. On March 3, the debt level touched $28 trillion but only barely and just for one day, before backing off, and then kissed it again on March 17, only to back off again and remain tantalizingly close, but no cigar, until Wednesday, when it did the deed with one huge $148-billion leap:

The reason for this slowdown in borrowing is that the government sold a gigantic amount of debt last spring, adding $3 trillion to its debt in a few months, and then didn’t spend all of it, but kept the unspent amounts in its checking account – the General Treasury Account or GTA — which ballooned to $1.8 trillion by July, from the pre-crisis range between $100 billion and $400 billion. During the final months of the Mnuchin Treasury, it was decided to start spending down the balance in the checking account by borrowing a little less, and by early January, the GTA had dropped to $1.6 trillion.

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Erdogan wants to dig a new canal and bypass the 1936 Montreux Convention.

Turkey and the Suez ‘Heart Attack’ (K.)

Turkey continues to threaten to depart from the 1936 Montreux Convention that governs free shipping through the Bosporus strait. The accident in the Suez Canal served as the excuse for the speaker of Turkey’s Grand National Assembly, Mustafa Sentop, to imply as much last week, even if he had to go back on his statement due to the tense situation between Ankara and Washington. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also proclaims this departure when he wants to utilize it geopolitically and when talking about his announced pharaonic intention of constructing a second canal in the Bosporus – one unregulated by international conventions. Could Turkey close the strait and block the passage of both merchant and military ships between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, depending on what serves its interests?

According to the Montreux Convention, merchant ships enjoy freedom of passage and navigation in the strait, irrespective of their flag and cargo. The convention allows Turkey to militarize the strait and permits the Black Sea countries freedom of passage for military ships provided they give a week’s notice, and substantially restricts the passage of military vessels that are not from the Black Sea states (notification of crossing, tonnage restrictions, armament restrictions, aircraft carriers cannot pass, and others). All of this in a time of peace, which, however, is threatened by Erdogan’s controversial views on the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as the atmosphere in the Black Sea, reminiscent of the Cold War, where Ukraine is the epicenter of looming dark clouds and, according to analysts, will likely remain a source of global tension.

The Suez “heart attack” brought up questions on safe passage into and out of the Mediterranean, as much for the merchant fleets as the navies that move between the Red Sea, Gibraltar and the Bosporus, with the latter crossing attracting the attention of military and commercial organizations around the globe, given the volatile geopolitical situation in the wider region. Turkey, if it deems necessary, does not need to bar the gate to stop traffic in the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. All it has to do is conjure up an accident by scuppering two ships in the straits, without being accused of violating the Montreux Convention. That is why the West is feverishly readying the “continental straits” between Alexandroupoli and Burgas as an alternative, while NATO equips the fleets of Romania and Bulgaria.

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And he really wants to. These guys sent an open letter warning about the Montreux Convention and he just has them arrested.

Ten Retired Admirals Detained in Turkey as Erdogan Warns of New Coup (GR)

Turkey detained 10 retired admirals on Monday, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned of a new coup following a letter signed by more than 100 retired admirals warning about a possible threat to a treaty governing the use of Turkey’s key waterways. The Ankara chief public prosecutor’s office said arrest warrants have been issued for the 10. Prosecutors also ordered four other suspects to report to Ankara police within three days, opting not to detain them because of their age. The development comes a day after the letter was sharply condemned by the government, which said the move is “reminiscent of coup times” in Turkey’s past. Turkey’s approval last month of plans to develop a shipping canal in Istanbul comparable to the Panama or Suez canals has opened up debate about the 1936 Montreux Convention.


The admirals said in their letter that apart from its environmental impact, the new canal venture could undermine the Montreux accord. The convention guarantees the free passage through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits of civilian vessels in times of both peace and war. It also regulates the use of the strait by military vessels from non-Black Sea states. The new canal would allow ships to transit between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea without passing through part of the straits that are covered by the treaty. The declaration has drawn strong reactions from the government and officials. Presidential Spokesperson Ibrahim Kalın said the statement is “reminiscent of coup periods” and made the former soldiers “a laughingstock.” “Know your place and stay where you are,” he added.

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Probe started in 2018 and he just found out yesterday?

Hunter Biden Is ‘100% Certain’ DOJ Probe Will Clear Him Of Wrongdoing (JTN)

Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, has expressed complete confidence that he will be cleared at the conclusion of the Justice Department’s probe into his finances. During a CBS Sunday Morning interview, Hunter Biden said that he is fully cooperating with the investigation. He said that he is “100% certain that at the end of the investigation, that I will be cleared of any wrongdoing.” “I learned yesterday for the first time that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs,” he said in a statement back in December. “I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.” Fox News reported that “according to a source familiar with the matter,” the probe started in 2018.

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What America does best is produce the ability to accept failure.
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