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Debt Rattle February 27 2023

Feb 272023
 
 February 27, 2023  Posted by at 10:17 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  87 Responses »


Édouard Manet Woman with a jug 1858-60

 

• White House Distances Itself From Covid ‘Lab-Leak’ Theory
• Covid Lab Leak Is A Scandal Of Media And Government Censorship (Turley)
• Elon Musk Accuses Fauci Of Funding Gain-Of-Function Research (TP)
• Ukraine Has ‘Total Dominance’ Over US – Trump (RT)
• Wall Street Has Its Eyes Set On Ukraine (Charles Gasparino)
• Much Of Global South Isn’t Automatically Supporting The West In Ukraine (Mehta)
• North African Nations Voracious Buyers Of Russian Oil Products – WSJ (RT)
• Hungarian FM Explains What Puzzles Him About EU (RT)
• Anti-NATO Protests Hit France (RT)
• Thousands Rally For Peace In Italy (RT)
• UN To Discuss Investigation Into War Crimes In Ukraine (Az.)
• GOP Lawmakers Vow To Unmask Hunter Biden’s Anonymous Art Buyers (NYP)

 

 

 

 

2 Zels

 

 

Putin Oliver Stone https://twitter.com/i/status/1629705190566776832

 

 

Oliver Stone

 

 

 

 

Tucker Macgregor https://twitter.com/i/status/1629739970184507392

 

 

Maher Woody

 

 

Jimmy Dore https://twitter.com/i/status/1630038638661861379

 

 

History also demonstrates something else: any collapsed empire buries half the world under its rubble.” – Dmitry Medvedev, February 2023

 

 

 

 

US Department of Energy says: lab leak. White House says: we have so many departments… We must study for years more.

• White House Distances Itself From Covid ‘Lab-Leak’ Theory

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan has dissented against a Wall Street Journal report which stated that a US Department of Energy study concluded that the Covid-19 pandemic was likely the result of a failure of safety practices at a laboratory in China, stating that there is “not a definitive answer” as to the true origins of the virus. The WSJ published a report on Sunday which said that the Department of Energy had viewed “new intelligence” which led them to believe that Covid-19 wasn’t naturally produced in the environment, but rather the result of a so-called ‘lab-leak’ – but it added that it has “low confidence” in its findings.

Responding to the WSJ report, Sullivan said that President Joe Biden has ordered a full investigation into the potential origins of Covid-19 but he stressed the various governmental bodies looking into the matter have yet to reach a unanimous verdict. “President Biden has directed, repeatedly, every element of our intelligence community to put effort and resources behind getting to the bottom of this question,” Sullivan told CNN on Sunday. “If we gain any further insight or information, we will share it with Congress, and we will share it with the American people. But right now, there is not a definitive answer that has emerged from the intelligence community on this question.” The virus was first reported to have been discovered in Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei province, an area which also features a prominent virology institute which is an active research center for the study of coronaviruses.

The FBI has also backed the lab-leak theory but four other US agencies have determined that natural transmission was the more likely source of the virus. Two other agencies are currently undecided, according to the WSJ. Last year, extensive studies conducted by the peer-reviewed ‘Science’ journal determined that the initial virus was very likely transmitted to a human from an animal at one of Wuhan’s wet markets. Further studies into the lab-leak theory are expected to take place in the US in the coming weeks and months, after several Republican lawmakers included investigations into the pandemic’s origins among the key pledges on the campaign trail ahead of last November’s midterm elections.

Read more …

Covid, Trump, Ukraine.

• Covid Lab Leak Is A Scandal Of Media And Government Censorship (Turley)

In early 2020, with little available evidence, two op-eds in The Lancet in February and Nature Medicine went all-in on the denial front. The Lancet op-ed stated, “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin.” We were also supposed to forget about massive payments from the Chinese government to American universities and grants of some of these writers to both Chinese interests or even the specific Wuhan lab. No reference to the lab theory was to be tolerated. When Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) merely mentioned the possibility in 2020, he was set upon by the usual flash media mob. The Washington Post ridiculed him of repeating a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.”

In September 2020, Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a virologist and former postdoctoral fellow at the University of Hong Kong, dared to repeat the theory on Fox News, saying, “I can present solid scientific evidence . . . [that] it is a man-made virus created in the lab.” The left-leaning PolitiFact slammed her and gave her a “pants on fire rating.” President Joe Biden accused Trump of fanning racism in his criticism of the Chinese government over the pandemic and his Administration reportedly shutdown the State Department investigation into the possible lab origins of the virus. When Biden later revived an investigation into the origins, he was denounced as “sugar-coating Trump’s racism.” The categorical rejection of the lab theory is only the latest media narrative proven to be false.

The Russian collusion scandal, the Hunter Biden “Russian Disinformation,” the Lafayette Park “Photo Op” conspiracy, the Nick Sandmann controversy, the Jussie Smollett case, the Migrant Whipping scandal. On the lab theory, media like the Washington Post piled on senators like Cruz and Cotton for mentioning the lab theory only later to admit that it could be legitimate. All of those experts and writers who were called racists or suspended by social media were simply forgotten in media coverage. That is why this is really about censorship. The media guaranteed that we did not have a full debate over the origins of the virus and attacked those who had the temerity to state the obvious that there was a plausible basis for suspecting the Wuhan lab. None of this has diminished demands for more censorship. Even after Twitter admitted that it wrongly blocked The New York Post story before the 2020 election, Democratic senators responded by warning the company not to cut back on censorship and even demanded more censorship.

Read more …

“Musk’s fiery accusation came in response to a tweet that aggregated the multiple occurrences where Fauci denied any gain-of-function research..”

• Elon Musk Accuses Fauci Of Funding Gain-Of-Function Research (TP)

Elon Musk accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan, China lab where COVID-19 is believed to have originated from. Musk said Fauci funded gain-of-function research “via a pass-through organization (EcoHealth)” on Twitter Sunday. Musk’s fiery accusation came in response to a tweet that aggregated the multiple occurrences where Fauci denied any gain-of-function research and counter-signaled the idea that COVID-19 originated from a 2019 Wuhan lab leak. “Dr. Anthony Fauci funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, lied to Congress about it, and now both the FBI & the Department of Energy have concluded that the coronavirus originated at the Wuhan lab. Does that mean Dr. Anthony Fauci funded the development of COVID-19?” the video’s caption reads.

Hours earlier the Wall Street Journal released a bombshell report which revealed the U.S. Energy Department is now considering it likely COVID originated from a Wuhan, China lab leak. The Energy Department’s update came in a classified intelligence report shared with the WSJ. Previously, the Energy Department was undecided on COVID’s origin and numerous public health officials like Fauci disregarded a lab leak theory. On Feb. 13 House Republicans formally requested Fauci, the former Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden, and the president of EcoHealth Alliance, Dr. Peter Daszak, come before Congress for an interview. Fauci and Daszak were cited by thousands of media outlets as truth-sayers when they claimed “the evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus” and “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”

Musk’s tweet referenced Daszak’s company. Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance is a U.S. National Institutes of Health grantee that “passed taxpayer funds to the Wuhan lab to conduct gain of function research on bat coronaviruses – research that may have started the pandemic,” the House Republicans’ request stated. Throughout the 117th Congress, Reps. James Comer (R-KY) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) have “sent numerous letters to the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.”

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“Well, it could have been us, and it could have been Ukraine, and it could have been some third-party country that wants to see trouble. The one group it wasn’t is Russia…”

• Ukraine Has ‘Total Dominance’ Over US – Trump (RT)

Ukraine has asserted “total dominance” over the US, former President Donald Trump said Friday during an interview with Glenn Beck. The ex-president also suggested that Kiev might be the real culprit behind the destruction of Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines last October. Commenting on the recent report by veteran American journalist Seymour Hersh, who suggested the pipelines were targeted by Washington in a clandestine operation ordered directly by President Joe Biden, Trump did not rule out US involvement but rubbished allegations that Moscow destroyed the installation itself.

“Well, it could have been us, and it could have been Ukraine, and it could have been some third-party country that wants to see trouble. The one group it wasn’t is Russia… This is a main source of massive income for them. They didn’t blow it up to make a point. That’s the one thing I can tell you for sure,” Trump stated, adding that “everything gets blamed on Russia” by the “sick” people. The US might have been “working in conjunction” with Ukraine to target the pipelines, the ex-president suggested, since Kiev has already asserted “total dominance” over Washington. “We’ve given them probably $150 billion, and Europe has given them almost nothing,” he added.

Earlier this week, Trump, who is seeking to get elected back into the White House in 2024, already vowed to end the Ukraine conflict within hours should he make it to the office again. “I would literally start calling, not from the day I took over, but from the night I won,” he told a campaign rally in Florida this week. The ex-president has also blamed the “warmongers and ‘America Last’ globalists” entrenched at the State Department, the Pentagon, and the “national security industrial complex” for pushing the hostilities forward. “I was the only president who rejected the catastrophic advice of many of Washington’s generals, bureaucrats and so-called diplomats who only knew how to get us into conflicts,” he said in a campaign video released Tuesday.

Read more …

Most of it Russia territory.

• Wall Street Has Its Eyes Set On Ukraine (Charles Gasparino)

Wall Street really wants to invest in Ukraine, and some of the top players are doing more than sniffing around at the prospects. The world’s largest money-management firm BlackRock continues to hold high-level meetings with the government, including President Volodymyr Zelensky. JPMorgan recently had bankers on the ground scoping the situation as they dodged Russian missiles, I am told. The country is ripe for massive private US investment to rebuild infrastructure destroyed in its conflict with Vladimir Putin. Zelensky is a rock star in the American media; the country is valiantly fighting off a foreign invader. The people are educated and resilient, which means returns could be as good there as any place on the planet. Banker talk has a private investment fund at between $20 billion and $100 billion at some point in the future.

So what s stopping the private money from coming in now? A war that shows no signs of ending anytime soon. Plus, for all of Zelensky’s obvious talents as a leader, he still hasn’t demonstrated an understanding or possibly a willingness to fight corruption on the scale necessary to make investors comfortable, bankers tell me. The meetings between some of Wall Street’s top executives (think Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan and Larry Fink of BlackRock) and Ukraine officials over the past month didn’t garner the same attention as President Biden’s surprise visit last week. The discussions have been going down mostly in private and without much fanfare when they conclude.But they are revealing. The perilous nature of our continued engagement with this country doesn’t just involve a possible nuclear war with Russia but also an economic sinkhole if we’re not careful.

For starters, in these meetings, Zelensky seemed unabashed in his request for billions of dollars in private capital to begin rebuilding his economy immediately. Yet he doesn’t seem to fully grasp what will prevent such an investment. First, money won’t flow to Ukraine (or any country) if it seeds the pockets of a Russian-style oligarchy. In Ukraine, that brand of crony capitalism goes by the names “systema” or “oligarkhiya.” It’s an alliance of government and big business that undermines the free-market forces of competition. Payoffs and graft are part of the systema, and that’s always a dead end for significant private capital. Zelensky said he understood the economic stakes of ending corruption. But deeds go further than words, which is why one banker involved in the process told me: “There are no guarantees here.”

Then there’s the war, and Zelensky’s so-far unyielding determination to keep fighting in order to retake all territory occupied by Putin’s forces. It’s a noble effort, to be sure, but it comes at a steep price. Bankers say private investment money won’t really flow until the war is over. They would love Zelensky to compromise on land to make that happen; maybe give up on retaking Crimea or allow Putin to save face and keep a few parts of the Donbas region in the east, which are nominally controlled by Russian separatists anyway. There was some talk on Wall Street about a Ukrainian spring offensive and, if it’s successful in reclaiming some Russian-held territory, then Zelensky offering a possible deal with Putin so the reconstruction can begin. For now at least, that was described as a likely no-go by Ukrainian officials; Zelensky’s approval rating is at 90%, the bankers were told. It sinks to 40% with a land compromise.

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“It is difficult for them to believe that two-thirds of the world’s population is not siding with the West..”

• Much Of Global South Isn’t Automatically Supporting The West In Ukraine (Mehta)

In October 2022, about eight months after the war in Ukraine started, the University of Cambridge in the UK harmonized surveys conducted in 137 countries about their attitudes towards the West and towards Russia and China. The findings in the study, while not free of a margin of error, are robust enough to take seriously. These are: For the 6.3 billion people who live outside of the West, 66 percent feel positively towards Russia and 70 percent feel positively towards China, and, Among the 66 percent who feel positively about Russia the breakdown is 75 percent in South Asia, 68 percent in Francophone Africa, and 62 percent in Southeast Asia. Public opinion of Russia remains positive in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, and Vietnam.

Sentiments of this nature have caused some ire, surprise, and even anger in the West. It is difficult for them to believe that two-thirds of the world’s population is not siding with the West. What are some of the reasons or causes for this? I believe there are five reasons as explained in this brief essay. 1. The Global South does not believe that the West understands or empathizes with their problems. India’s foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, summed it up succinctly in a recent interview: “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.” He is referring to the many challenges that developing countries face whether they relate to the aftermath of the pandemic, the high cost of debt service, the climate crisis that is ravaging their lives, the pain of poverty, food shortages, droughts, and high energy prices. The West has barely given lip service to the Global South on many of these problems. Yet the West is insisting that the Global South join it in sanctioning Russia.

The Covid pandemic is a perfect example—despite the Global South’s repeated pleas to share intellectual property on the vaccines, with the goal of saving lives, no Western nation was willing to do so. Africa remains to this day the most unvaccinated continent in the world. Africa had the capability to make the vaccines but without the intellectual property they could not do it. But help did come from Russia, China, and India. Algeria launched a vaccination program in January 2021 after it received its first batch of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccines. Egypt started vaccinations after it got China’s Sinopharm vaccine at about the same time. South Africa procured a million doses of AstraZeneca from the Serum Institute of India. In Argentina, Sputnik became the backbone of their vaccine program. All of this was happening while the West was using its financial resources to buy millions of doses in advance, and often destroying them when they became outdated. The message to the Global South was clear—your problems are your problems, they are not our problems.

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“If a cargo is 51% from Morocco, 49% from Russia, how would you referee that?”

• North African Nations Voracious Buyers Of Russian Oil Products – WSJ (RT)

North African nations have sharply increased imports of Russian diesel and other refined oil products, while petrochemical exports from the region have seen a significant uptick, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing trading analysts. Industry experts are reportedly raising concerns that Russian sanctioned cargoes are being blended with other oil products and re-sold. The procedure effectively disguises the ultimate origin of the products, undermining Western states’ efforts to oust Russian fossil fuels from their economies. Imports of Russian diesel by Morocco soared to two million barrels in January compared with some 600,000 barrels recorded during the whole of 2021, according to analysts from commodities market data firm Kpler, who stress that a further 1.2 million barrels will be shipped to the country this month.

Tunisia boosted purchases of Russian diesel, gas oil, gasoline and naphtha, which is traditionally used to make chemicals and plastics, to 2.8 million barrels in January and is projected to import another 3.1 million barrels in February. Kpler also recorded an uptick in imports by Algeria, Egypt and Libya. The volumes absorbed by North African countries are too much for them to take on their own, according to Viktor Katona, Kpler senior oil analyst, who predicts that some of the Russian products will make their way to Europe. “Trust me, we are not witnessing some renaissance in Maghrebi refining,” Katona told the Wall Street Journal, referring to the region of North Africa

North African ports are seen as convenient for Russian cargoes sailing from the Baltic Sea, as voyages are not much longer than the pre-sanctions trips to European ports. This allows Russia to keep shipping costs low, and prevents its limited fleet of tankers from getting tied up in lengthy voyages to Asia or elsewhere. “Even if you wanted to regulate that, how would you?” Andreas Economou, head of oil research at The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, was quoted by the paper as saying. “If a cargo is 51% from Morocco, 49% from Russia, how would you referee that?” Some of North Africa’s increased diesel imports from Russia have displaced the region’s typical suppliers in the Middle East and North America, suggesting some of the activity was bargain hunting, Jorge Leon, senior vice president at Rystad Energy, told the newspaper.

Earlier this week, EU sanctions envoy David O’Sullivan told the Financial Times that the bloc and its allies had begun investigating a surge in exports to countries in Russia’s neighbourhood. They suspected sanctioned products were entering Russia via the back door. The EU has introduced 10 rounds of anti-Russia sanctions since the beginning of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine. Kremlin has repeatedly said that the measures, supported by the US and its allies, are illegitimate and ineffective, and that the restrictions are causing cause more damage to the initiators. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the penalties “crazy and thoughtless,” saying that no country had previously changed its political course due to sanctions pressure.

Read more …

“If you look around in Europe, 98% of media is liberal, and the rest are the others..”

[..] in Hungary, the media is split roughly into two halves, between liberal and conservative outlets, but the West and the liberal media consider that to show a lack of press freedom.”

• Hungarian FM Explains What Puzzles Him About EU (RT)

The EU’s declared support for media freedom clashes with its actions in a “confusing” way, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said, commenting on the blacklisting of Russian journalists in the latest round of sanctions. In an interview with RIA Novosti news agency published on Monday, the diplomat also said the Hungarian government is criticized by Brussels for allegedly not protecting the media. “The only reason for this criticism is that unlike in every other part of Europe, in Hungary the media is really colorful. If you look around in Europe, 98% of media is liberal, and the rest are the others,” he claimed, while acknowledging that his words may be “a small exaggeration.” The foreign minister noted that in Hungary, the media is split roughly into two halves, between liberal and conservative outlets, but the West and the liberal media consider that to show a lack of press freedom.

“So those who are judging us for media freedom, those are [the people] putting journalists on a sanctions list. For me it’s a bit confusing,” he concluded. The 10th package of anti-Russian sanctions was adopted by the EU last week. It blacklisted Russian media organizations and individuals, in what the bloc described as targeting “disinformation outlets.” Among other things, Brussels added RT Arabic to the list of channels banned from broadcasting in the EU. In the interview, Szijjarto also reiterated Hungary’s commitment to vetoing any attempts to sanction the Russian nuclear industry, and urged a thorough investigation into last year’s sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, which he called a “terrorist attack” against EU energy infrastructure.

Read more …

We need a lot more of this.

• Anti-NATO Protests Hit France (RT)

Multiple mass protests against France’s NATO membership and its continued support of Kiev were held on Sunday in the capital Paris and at other locations across the country. The demonstrations, taking place for the second consecutive weekend, were organized by the right-wing Les Patriotes party, led by Florian Philippot, who personally attended the rally in Paris. The politician claimed the event on Sunday, dubbed National March for Peace, attracted even more participants than last week, when some 10,000 showed up for a rally in the French capital. According to Philippot, smaller-scale anti-NATO protests were held at some 30 other locations across France as well.

Protesters marched through the streets of Paris, carrying a large banner reading “For Peace.” The marchers called for the withdrawal of France from both the US-led NATO and from the EU, and urged a halt to supplying Ukraine with weaponry. The protesters also took jabs at the incumbent French President Emmanuel Macron, chanting “Macron get out!” – a slogan commonly used by assorted anti-government protesters throughout his presidency. Following the march, the protesters held a rally led by Philippot, who was filmed defacing NATO and EU flags alongside his supporters. Footage of the event was shared by the politician himself on social media.

The politician has been actively staging protests against French membership in NATO and the EU since last fall, while arguing against the supply of weapons to Ukraine. Between 2012 and 2017, Philippot was the deputy head of the biggest opposition party in France, the National Rally, led until last year by Marine Le Pen. After leaving the National Rally, the 41-year-old politician established his own right-wing party, Les Patriotes. France has been among the top supporters of Kiev in the ongoing conflict with Russia, which broke out a year ago. While Macron has repeatedly called for a diplomatic settlement of the hostilities, Paris has actively supplied assorted weaponry to Ukraine, including armored vehicles and advanced self-propelled howitzers.

Read more …

Thousands won’t change a thing. Try millions.

• Thousands Rally For Peace In Italy (RT)

Several thousand people turned up for peace demonstrations in the Italian cities of Genoa and Milan on Saturday. Union members and left-wing activists claimed, among other things, that authorities in Rome have breached national law by sending weapons to Ukraine. The rally in Genoa drew nearly 4,000 participants from across the country as well as from Switzerland and France, local media reported. Organized by the Collective Autonomous Port Workers (CALP) group with the support of the Italian communist party, the protest took place under the slogan “Lower weapons, raise wages.” CALP’s Riccardo Rudino was cited in the media as saying that the “conflict in Ukraine did not begin last year” but rather “in 2014, with the massacre of the Russian-speaking population in Donbass.

The demonstrators filed through the port of Genoa, demanding an end to the use of the facility for arms shipments destined for Ukraine. CALP spokesperson Jose Nivoi accused the Italian government of violating law 185 of 1990, which “imposed a ban on the import, export and transit of weapons from Italy to states at war.” The group’s representatives also described how they had been networking with like-minded “associations and activists in various European cities.” The procession went off without serious incidents, marred only by a few acts of vandalism at the hands of anarchists, who smeared and damaged several vehicles and broke windows in a bank.

A protest was also held on Saturday in Milan. Ruptly video news agency filmed several hundred people chanting slogans and waving flags, including those of Russia and the Donetsk People’s Republic. The demonstrations in Italy coincided with one in the German capital, Berlin. There, tens of thousands of people heeded the call of prominent Left Party politician Sahra Wagenknecht and author Alice Schwarzer. Named the ‘Uprising for Peace,’ the protest called for peace talks to end hostilities in Ukraine. The participants also urged the German government to stop shipping weapons to Kiev. Addressing her supporters, Wagenknecht criticized Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government for allegedly trying to “ruin Russia,” and described Saturday’s protest as the start of a new peace movement in Germany.

Read more …

Not the UN but the west.

• UN To Discuss Investigation Into War Crimes In Ukraine (Az.)

Days after the United Nations General Assembly in New York voted overwhelmingly to demand Russia immediately withdraw from Ukraine, Moscow’s war is expected to dominate the opening of the top UN rights body’s main annual session in Geneva. “We’re looking for this session to show, as the UN General Assembly showed… that the world stands side-by-side with Ukraine,” British ambassador Simon Manley said at an event Friday marking the one-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The meeting, which is due to last a record six weeks, will be the first presided over by new UN rights chief Volker Turk, who kicks the session off early Monday.

UN chief Antonio Guterres will also address the council on the first day, while nearly 150 ministers and heads of state and government will speak, virtually or in person, during the four-day high-level segment. Moscow will send Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov to address the council in person on Thursday. Despite calls from NGOs, observers said it was unlikely there would be a walkout like the one many diplomats took part in when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s video played in the council last year.

Read more …

“We’re investigating the Biden crime-family operations. They’ve moved a lot of very suspicious money,” Higgins said. “‘Selling’ Hunter Biden art is just a method they’ve employed.”

• GOP Lawmakers Vow To Unmask Hunter Biden’s Anonymous Art Buyers (NYP)

Republican members of the House Oversight Committee have vowed to reveal the identities of the mysterious buyers of Hunter Biden’s art one day after the first son missed a deadline to provide the panel records about his overseas business interests. Biden’s failure to meet the committee’s Wednesday 11:59 p.m. deadline to produce financial documents and other records dating back to January 2009 mirrors his art dealer’s refusal to provide the panel with the names of his clients. In response to a January request by the committee, William Pittard, a lawyer for Biden’s art dealer Georges Berges, wrote a letter to Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) earlier this month raising “concerns” about complying with the committee’s demands to see records about clients who have purchased Biden’s work.

In the Feb. 6 letter, seen by The Post, Pittard argues that complying with the Committee’s request to release the names of the art buyers “would defeat the efforts of Mr. Biden and the White House to avoid the ‘serious ethics concerns’ that you raise.” “If the White House was not aware of those buyers, it would seem impossible for the administration to grant the buyers any favors based on the purchases,” Pittard notes. GOP Oversight Committee members say Berges’ refusal to comply is only adding “fuel to the fire” of the probe. “Hunter Biden’s artwork isn’t worthy of hanging on the walls of a foreclosed motel, so why would anyone buy it?” Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) told Fox News Digital. “The answer is simple, to curry favor with the corrupt son of the president.”

“We need to know who purchased Hunter’s so-called ‘art’, and Georges Berges refusing to provide that information to Congress only adds fuel to the fire for our investigation,” she added. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) echoed McClain, telling the outlet that all “Hunter’s attorney is doing is delaying the inevitable.” “We will receive this evidence, one way or another,” Boebert said. [..] Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), another member of the Oversight Committee, told Fox News Digital that the scope of the panel’s investigation goes beyond Hunter Biden, and that nobody “cares specifically about Hunter.” “We’re investigating the Biden crime-family operations. They’ve moved a lot of very suspicious money,” Higgins said. “‘Selling’ Hunter Biden art is just a method they’ve employed.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Assange

 

 


In 2009, Nidhal Selmi combined the Sierpinski triangle with the Penrose triangle to create the M.C. Escher-like Selmi triangle

 

 


Clouded leopards live in forests at elevations of up to 3,000 meters and spend much of their lives in trees. Their strong tails help them to balance while perched on tree branches

 

 


Kyaiktiyo Pagoda, also known as Golden Rock, is a Buddhist pilgrimage site in Mon State, Burma, famous for its balancing rock which seems to defy gravity, as it perpetually appears to be on the verge of rolling down the hill

 

 


The roots of this tree in Hong Kong, photohraphed by Clément Bucco-Lechat in 2010, have grown over the paving stones and seem to follow the patterns that the pavers were laid in

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle February 7 2023

Feb 072023
 
 February 7, 2023  Posted by at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  63 Responses »


Georgia O’Keeffe Sunflower, New Mexico I 1935

 

• World Heading Into ‘Wider War’ – UN chief (RT)
• Ukraine Using Chemical Weapons In Donetsk – DPR leader (TASS)
• Ukrainian Refugees Are Becoming A Burden To The Baltic States (Milacic)
• FTX Demands Politicians Return Millions In SBF Donations (ZH)
• Why Shinzo Abe Was Assassinated (Chung)
• India Predicts 500% Increase In Domestic Natural Gas Demand (ZH)
• India and Russia Ditching Dollar In Energy Deal – Novatek (RT)
• ‘Doctor Doom’ Says US Dollar Reign Is Ending (RT)
• Welcome To the Death Spiral (John Rubino)
• Incentives Matter (Denninger)
• GB News Presenter Quits After Channel Tries To Make Him Pay Ofcom Fines (G.)
• Fauci Makes Absurd Amount of Money for “Speaking Engagements” (TP)
• Mind-Blowing Reality of Death after Injection (MOL)
• Chinese Spy Balloon Carried Explosives To Self-detonate (PM)

 

 

 

 

Putin

 

 

 

 

Ausexit https://twitter.com/i/status/1622679275466891264

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gonzalo: Zelensky going to Brussels? Now? Really. Just as Bakhmut is about to fall—and the Russians launch their offensive. Just as all his supporters have been purged from the government—and he might be next. I bet Zelensky doesn’t return to Kiev from this trip. I bet he’s running.

 

 

 

 

“We need to wake up – and get to work..” Well, what are you waiting for? Get a peace conference together.

• World Heading Into ‘Wider War’ – UN chief (RT)

The world has come close to a global conflict, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Monday. The global community is not “sleepwalking” into “a wider war” but marches towards it “with its eyes wide open,” he stressed in a speech to the General Assembly. “The prospects for peace keep diminishing. The chances of further escalation and bloodshed keep growing,” Guterres said, denouncing the lack of “strategic vision” and “bias” that prevent political decision-makers from taking steps in the right direction. “This near-term thinking is not only deeply irresponsible – it is immoral,” he argued, adding that politicians and entrepreneurs became too absorbed with clinging to power and their business cycles.

The secretary-general also blasted the erosion of international law and order based on UN principles, which, according to him, led to the present sorry state of affairs. “If every country fulfilled its obligations under the [UN] Charter, the right to peace would be guaranteed,” he noted, calling on UN members to “to transform our approach to peace by recommitting to the Charter – putting human rights and dignity first, with prevention at the heart.” “We need to wake up – and get to work,” Guterres said, adding that 2023 had placed humanity in front of a “confluence of challenges unlike any in our lifetimes.”

The UN chief also pointed to the fact that scientists have moved the symbolic “Doomsday clock,” which reflects the potential annihilation of humanity, from 90 seconds to midnight – the closest it has ever been to a possible Armageddon. The UN chief’s words came after the US and its allies vowed to send dozens of Western-designed modern battle tanks to Ukraine amid the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev. The Pentagon also announced supplying the Ukrainian forces with munitions that have a 150-kilometer range, adding that it would allow Kiev to use them as it sees fit. Moscow has previously repeatedly warned that continued weapons supplies to Ukraine by the US and its allies risk further escalation that might spiral into a direct conflict between Russia and NATO.

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There are videos floating around.

• Ukraine Using Chemical Weapons In Donetsk – DPR leader (TASS)

A search for additional ways to protect troops from the chemical weapons that Ukrainian forces are using is underway in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the region’s Acting Head Denis Pushilin said on Monday.”We currently seek to equip our units [with chemical protection suits]. Then again, we have some of the things that we need but it’s not always comfortable to constantly wear chemical protection suits while in position. Certainly, it makes it harder for our forces to perform their missions so we are looking for additional ways to protect our troops,” he told the Rossiya-24 TV channel. Pushilin pointed out that experts had not yet had the chance to figure out what substances the Ukrainian forces were using.

“They trigger coughing, followed by watery eyes and general discomfort,” he said, describing the effect of the Ukrainian chemical weapons. Yan Gagin, an advisor to the Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DPR) leader, said earlier that the Kiev regime’s forces had used chemical weapons along the Soledar and Artyomovsk frontlines on February 5. He stressed that it wasn’t the first time that Ukraine had used chemical weapons. Gagin added that the Ukrainian military made no secret that it had prohibited weapons, posting videos showing imported gas grenades and drones designed for discharging them. Pushilin said on Monday that evidence corroborating the use of chemical weapons by the Armed Forces of Ukraine had also been found along the Ugledar frontline.

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“Ukrainians feel like the masters of Lithuania here. No one talks about this, but in Lithuania, almost every administrative institution has a flag of Ukraine. In our parliament, the flag of Ukraine also hangs.”

• Ukrainian Refugees Are Becoming A Burden To The Baltic States (Milacic)

Every conflict, including this one in Ukraine, always leads to refugees. Considering the size of Ukraine, it is not surprising that a large number of Ukrainian refugees are in Russia and in Europe. Ukrainian refugees were the topic of an interesting online conference, where you could hear very interesting information from experts about Ukrainian refugees in the Baltics. The name of the online conference was “Ukrainian refugees in the Baltic States, social aspects of integration into society”. During the meeting, experts from the Baltic countries discussed the problem of Ukrainian refugees and their impact on the lives of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The conference was held in Russian. It is curious that even 32 years after the collapse of the USSR, the inhabitants of the Baltic countries prefer Russian rather than English in interstate communication.

[..] “Ukrainians feel like the masters of Lithuania here. No one talks about this, but in Lithuania, almost every administrative institution has a flag of Ukraine. In our parliament, the flag of Ukraine also hangs. This is very painful for us Lithuanians!” The Baltics are also annoyed by “imaginary” refugees who travel to European countries from regions where there are no hostilities. And they require special treatment and all kinds of support. Allan Hantsom, editor-in-chief of the Estonian newspaper Delovye Vedomosti: “There are people who are fleeing the war, but the majority quietly leave those regions where there are no hostilities or rocket attacks. Very different people. Some come on buses with trunks, others – on expensive cars, and they also demand free rations and free accommodation. Especially now there is a crisis in the countries and now the Europeans are more and more concerned about their own problems: inflation, shortage of fuel and housing.”

After all, Europe’s resources for accepting refugees from Ukraine are running out, which leads to the curtailment of assistance programs and the cessation of accepting new migrants. At the same time, the Baltics should be prepared for the fact that refugees from Ukraine will remain there for many years even after the end of the conflict. The inhabitants of the Baltics are increasingly tired of forced guests, but they can’t do anything, because the course of the authorities is the same: “Everything for the sake of Ukraine, and let their residents survive somehow on their own!

Because of that, Estonians began to object. Why does a person who came from a foreign country, who does not know the language and has nothing to do with Estonia, get everything, and local people from the provinces are forced to live in poverty, work at low-paid jobs? Why not provide them with conditions? A refugee arrives in the capital – here’s a ration for you, here’s your living allowance. A lot of people from the Estonian hinterland would also like to live in hotels and on ferries, so that the state pays for everything. Ukrainian refugees, instead of learning the language and considering the Baltic states as their “second homeland”, impose their customs and rules of behavior.

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They should ask for Ukraine’s money back too. That would make it real funy.

• FTX Demands Politicians Return Millions In SBF Donations (ZH)

Just when you thought the FTX travesty couldn’t get any more bizarre, the now bankrupt company is trying to claw back political donations and other spending that took place at the direction of former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. A press release made its way out mid-day Sunday that FTX’s debtors and the company had sent “confidential messages to political figures, political action funds, and other recipients of contributions or other payments that were made by or at the direction of the FTX Debtors, Samuel Bankman-Fried or other officers or principals of the FTX Debtors” requesting the funds back. “These recipients are requested to return such funds to the FTX Debtors by February 28, 2023,” the release states. It continues: “The messages follow the December 19, 2022, announcement by the FTX Debtors that they have established arrangements for such recipients to return funds voluntarily by contacting (FTXrepay@ftx.us).”

Then, the release threatens legal action to those who are unwilling to return funds: “To the extent such payments are not returned voluntarily, the FTX Debtors reserve the right to commence actions before the Bankruptcy Court to require the return of such payments, with interest accruing from the date any action is commenced.” “Recipients are cautioned that making a payment or donation to a third party (including a charity) in the amount of any payment received from a FTX Contributor does not prevent the FTX Debtors from seeking recovery from the recipient or any subsequent transferee,” the release says. We noted back in December that $73 million in political donations were now at risk as a result of the bankruptcy. SBF also donated to Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York, who last year was one of 8 members of Congress who lobbied against regulating crypto. “Nobody ends up looking great in this,” said University of Rochester political science professor, David Primo, at the time.

“While there’s precedent for forcing political entities to return contributions in cases of fraud, recovery prospects are unclear in FTX’s case. Recouping campaign funds as part of the bankruptcy proceedings is a complicated and lengthy process, and the scope of the total funds eligible for clawback depends on myriad federal and state laws. It is also subject to the bankruptcy lawyers’ judgment on what money, which may be long spent by the time the FTX trustees try to go after it, is worth the effort. Bankman-Fried is facing additional scrutiny for recently saying he gave equally to Republicans and Democrats, but funded conservatives through “dark money” groups that don’t identify donors. The claim is almost impossible to verify unless the recipients voluntarily disclose they received money from him.” -Bloomberg

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“..Abe was not willing to sell off Japan as a satrapy, however, that was exactly what the western diktat was essentially demanding of Japan..”

Worth reading the whole piece.

• Why Shinzo Abe Was Assassinated (Chung)

Former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe was assassinated July 8th, 2022, and though no longer in the position of Prime Minister of Japan at the time of his assassination (having served from 2006-2007 and 2012- September 16, 2020) he was the longest serving prime minister in Japanese history and continued to exert major influence on policy-shaping within Japan. News of Abe’s assassination was received around the world with an admixture of very strong emotion from both extremes. Some were horrified by his death and praised what he had done for Japan as something almost saintly. Others ecstatically celebrated his death, thinking no possible good could come from him due to his attempts to revive the dark side of Japan’s imperial past and his public displays of tribute to the Japanese fascists from WWII. When the news was still fresh and the frenzy of confusion at its peak, many even blamed China for the orchestration of Abe’s death, thinking they were clearly the ones to benefit from such an act.

It is true that Abe had a very dangerous and destructive mission to restore Japan to its status as an imperialistic empire. He was a corrupt insider who pushed for the dangerous privatization of the Japanese government and increased the gap between the wealthy and middle-class citizens. However, it is also too simplistic as to celebrate his death as an absolute triumph. As we can clearly see seven months after Abe’s assassination, Japan has not become more peaceful and ready for dialogue with its eastern partners but rather has become much more bellicose and stauncher in its cooperation with the increasingly war frenzied western demands. Japan has also greatly severed motion towards greater economic and political cooperation with Russia and China, which was still moving forward when Abe was alive.

It is also interesting to note that Abe was assassinated weeks before Pelosi’s Circus Tour to Taiwan. Although Pelosi’s provocation did not amount to any military confrontation, we cannot say that that was not its intention, nor that things could have played out very differently in terms of a military confrontation between China and the United States. The reader should be reminded that in 2014, Japan had changed or “reinterpreted” its constitution which gave more powers to the Japan Self-Defense Forces, allowing them to “defend other allies” in case of war being declared upon them. The United States, of course, fully supported the move. This “reinterpretation” of Japan’s constitution effectively entered it into NATO. In December 2022, Japan announced a new national security strategy. This new strategy would double defense spending. Japan also plans to invest in counter-strike capabilities, including buying U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles and developing its own weapons systems.

It was precisely Abe’s grand vision of Japan returning to its “glory” days as an empire that was problematic for the League of Nations vision, for if Japan saw itself on par with other great empires, or perhaps even greater, it meant that it did not ultimately intend to bend the knee. That is, Abe was not willing to sell off Japan as a satrapy, however, that was exactly what the western diktat was essentially demanding of Japan. Under this western diktat Japan was being ordered to accept its fate to collapse economically and sink into desperation, become increasingly militaristic and extremist and lead a kamikaze charge into a war with China and Russia which would lead to the ruination of the Japanese civilization. It does not look like Abe was going to go along with that stark vision for Japan.

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“I will be very frank,” Puri said, “we will play the market card …”

• India Predicts 500% Increase In Domestic Natural Gas Demand (ZH)

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday projected that the country’s gas demand would rise 500% due to the rapid pace of development, while its share of global oil demand would more than double. While the Indian prime minister did not offer a specific time frame for this major boost in demand, he said that the country’s energy demand would be highest in the present decade. Modi’s statement, delivered during the opening ceremony of India Energy Week 2023, coincides with a recent OPEC report that expects India to be the largest contributor to incremental demand, with the country expected to add some 6.3 million bpd until 2045. Overall, OPEC said it saw demand increasing to 110 million bpd in 2045, up from 97 million bpd in 2021. Modi predicts India’s share in global oil demand will increase from 5% to 11%.

The Indian prime minister used the occasion to highlight the country’s plans to boost exploration and production, which he said would provide opportunities for investors. Right now, India relies on imports for some 85% of its energy needs, with India and China being the largest importers of oil and gas in the world. With this in mind, India will remove significant restrictions on exploration, reducing “no-go” areas for E&P companies. India also plans to expand its refining capacity, along with its LNG import capacity by 2030. Asia is now the biggest buyer of Russian crude since the imposition of Western sanctions following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Some 70% of Russian Urals January loading cargoes were bound for India, according to Reuters data. India’s oil minister, Hardeep Singh Puri, also said on Monday that regardless of Western sanctions, the country would not shun Russian oil, which it receives at a discount to Brent crude. “I will be very frank,” Puri said, “we will play the market card …”

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LNG.

• India and Russia Ditching Dollar In Energy Deal – Novatek (RT)

Russia’s largest independent gas producer, Novatek, is in talks with India over long-term contracts on supplies of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the company’s CEO, Leonid Mikhelson, announced on Monday. Negotiations with several Indian companies are underway as Russia is keen to invest in the country’s energy sector and further expand cooperation, he told reporters on the sidelines of the India Energy Week forum. “We want to be not just LNG suppliers, Indian engineering companies are already taking part in our projects and there’s a certain share of Indian suppliers in equipment. We want to expand and increase it,” Novatek’s CEO pointed out.

Mikhelson added that his company was interested in a broader investment into the Indian market, including the construction of regasification terminals for LNG production. He also revealed that the sides were considering settling LNG supply payments in national currencies – rupees or rubles – bypassing US dollar transactions. “We discussed it with the energy minister [Hardeep Singh Puri],” Mikhelson confirmed without specifying exact numbers. Earlier, Reuters reported that India’s main gas distributor GAIL was discussing the terms of a long-term contract on LNG imports with Novatek. The companies are close to signing a preliminary agreement, according to sources in the industry.

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We’re all saying that. Question is the timing.

• ‘Doctor Doom’ Says US Dollar Reign Is Ending (RT)

The US dollar’s status as the world’s main reserve currency is in jeopardy, renowned economist Nouriel Roubini, who predicted the global financial crisis of 2008, wrote in an article for the Financial Times on Sunday. While no currency is yet capable of replacing the greenback on the pedestal altogether, the US currency is quickly losing its competitive advantage to the Chinese yuan, Roubini said. “Given the increased weaponization of the dollar for national security purposes, and the growing geopolitical rivalry between the west and revisionist powers such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, some argue that de-dollarization will accelerate…In a world that will be increasingly divided into two geopolitical spheres of influence – namely those surrounding the US and China – it is likely that a bipolar…currency regime will eventually replace the unipolar one,” the economist, dubbed ‘Doctor Doom’ by Wall Street for his tendency toward grim predictions, stated.

Sceptics note that the yuan cannot become a true reserve currency unless Beijing lifts capital controls, accepts permanent current account deficits, and the yuan’s exchange rate becomes more flexible. But the economist argues that such points are no longer valid, as Washington is actively undermining the allure of its currency with sanctions. “Complete exchange rate flexibility and international capital mobility is not necessary in order for a country to achieve reserve currency status…And while China may have capital controls, the US has its own version that may reduce the appeal of dollar assets among foes and relative friends. These include financial sanctions against its rivals, restrictions to inward investment in many national security-sensitive sectors and firms, and even secondary sanctions against friends who violate the primary ones,” Roubini argued.

The economist also noted that China has been stepping up yuan transactions with its foreign partners, and said this trend will likely continue, with more emerging market economies welcoming “the ability to trade oil in [yuan] and to hold a greater share of their reserves in the Chinese currency… given that they do a great deal more trade with China than the US.” He added that new technologies, like CBDCs, Alipay-like payment systems, swap lines between China and its partners and national analogs of the SWIFT messaging system, “will hasten the advent of a bipolar global monetary and financial system.” “For all these reasons, the relative decline of the US dollar as the main reserve currency is likely to occur over the next decade. The intensifying geopolitical contest between Washington and Beijing will inevitably be felt in a bipolar global reserve currency regime as well,” Roubini concluded.

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“This year the government’s annual interest bill will break $1 trillion. Combine that with the soaring cost of Medicare and Social Security as millions of Baby Boomers retire, and Washington is looking at $2 trillion a year just in just interest and entitlements..”

John Rubino has been a strong supporter of the Automatic Earth since the start. Which reminds me, I totally forgot that we had our 15th anniversary on Jan. 22.

• Welcome To the Death Spiral (John Rubino)

Gold bugs and other long-suffering critics of fiat currency and endless credit expansion have for decades been predicting that soaring debt would eventually blow up the financial world. As the story went, governments with unlimited printing presses would spend and borrow too much, forcing their central banks to keep interest rates unnaturally low to make interest costs manageable, which would encourage even more credit growth, causing inflation to spike, and so on, until everyone loses faith in fiat currencies and the misbegotten things fall to their intrinsic value of zero. That’s a bit hard to visualize when it’s explained in long, convoluted sentences. But it’s a lot clearer when you line up the relevant charts. So let’s start with US government debt, which has gone parabolic.

Ever-increasing debt is manageable if interest rates fall concurrently so the interest on that debt doesn’t change. And that’s what happened between 1980 and 2021. The Fed pushed down interest rates, which minimized interest costs, which lulled a shockingly gullible investment community and political class into the belief that this process could continue forever.

But of course it couldn’t continue forever. As the critics predicted, soaring debt required ever greater currency creation which eventually caused the cost of living to jump by 10% in 2022, leading regular people to demand that it stop. So the Fed now has to raise interest rates to counter inflation. You can see this happening on the far right of the above chart. As the US borrows more money and its existing debts roll over at higher rates, the cost of that debt is soaring. This year the government’s annual interest bill will break $1 trillion. Combine that with the soaring cost of Medicare and Social Security as millions of Baby Boomers retire, and Washington is looking at $2 trillion a year just in just interest and entitlements, which it will have to borrow to fund, which will send interest costs even higher, which will require more borrowing, and so on, until it all comes crashing down.

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Part of the death spiral.

• Incentives Matter (Denninger)

An interesting data point: A stunning percentage of those young people without children now never intend to have them. In fact one relatively recent survey found the number was as high as one third. The most-common reason cited? Its too expensive. Now you can try to point to this as some sort of selfishness but that’s a dodge on the real issue: You, that is us older people, made it too expensive. Specifically homes and medical care are two places where all the “older people” cheer; we get the “best” but the next can’t buy it at all. Our federal government tries to interfere in both markets and allows blatantly illegal activity when it comes to medical care, specifically as relates to price fixing, which has been a felony for over 100 years. Nobody cares and nobody will prosecute.

Since all criminal offenses in the United States are “the people .v. whoever” — that is, there’s no right of private prosecution as there is with a lawsuit, it never ends since nobody goes to jail and in fact there is a formal government policy not to indict large corporations for felony criminal acts (which could debar them permanently from government and some private activity) after Arthur Anderson. Health care has gone from about 4% to 20% of our domestic output; that is, it has multiplied in price by five. Just having a child is expensive, never mind the near-inevitable little thing here and there. Your kid breaking a leg playing a sport could bankrupt you in this country, and God forbid said child contracts a serious childhood disease such as Leukemia.

Then there’s the always-required housing. One or more kids means more bedrooms, of course; at least one more. When a one-bedroom apartment runs $12,000 a year exactly how am I supposed to pay for that if I don’t make at least $40,000 annually? Oh, we’ll just “subsidize” that you say? Uh, no you won’t because all that does is force the price even higher by throwing printed government credit at it, since the government refuses to tax what it spends first. The last two years have made clear what all the credit emission does: Food, anyone? And kids are hungry, especially teens. I had one; she was a vacuum cleaner in the fridge and pantry and boys are worse. That’s normal. How are you going to pay for it?

Of course nobody seems to think this is a problem, not even Jerome Powell at The Fed, who is saying that he has “the tools” to make inflation come down to 2%. Eventually. Note that what he didn’t say is that he will tighten credit until the price of houses returns to what it was before the 2006-2007 bubble, which was in fact still ridiculously expensive in terms of average wages which is why the bubble happened in the first place — people running up the price by using hinky financial engineering. No, importing millions of people from other lands, most with no skills, will not fix this. They come here with no skills but a willingness to pop out some kids — which makes it worse. That’s basic economics: No skills means low or no wages but demand for goods and services which of course makes the price go up even more.

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One more independent voice silenced.

• GB News Presenter Quits After Channel Tries To Make Him Pay Ofcom Fines (G.)

One of GB News’s leading presenters has quit after the channel tried to make him personally responsible for paying fines issued by the media regulator Ofcom. Mark Steyn, who presented the station’s 8pm peak-time slot, is already subject to two investigations by the media regulator after he used his show to cast doubt on the safety of Covid vaccines. The presenter’s departure has led some viewers of GB News – which has given airtime to conspiracy theorists warning of a globalist elite takeover – to suggest the channel has itself sold out to shadowy globalist forces. Steyn, who has been off-air since last year after suffering two heart attacks, told fans on his personal website that the station bosses initially insisted he could not return unless a defibrillator was fitted in the studio.

He said this was fixed with a call to “Defibrillators R Us”, only for Angelos Frangopoulos, GB News’s chief executive, to demand Steyn agree to personally cover the costs of dealing with Ofcom and paying any fines for breaches of the broadcasting code. This is a highly unusual situation given the fines are the legal responsibility of the broadcast licence holder, not the individual presenter. Steyn, who was employed on a freelance basis, said his response was that “you may be a homicidal maniac intent on bringing on a third fatal heart attack but you’ll have to do better than this”. The presenter said he used to call GB News’s in-house compliance officer “Ofcom’s bitch” when they argued about what he was allowed to say on air. “Well Ofcom’s bitch has had his revenge now,” said Steyn in his video.

Steyn said the proposal would be untenable. “I’m on the hook for Ofcom fines but I don’t have any say in our defence against an Ofcom complaint – that’s all done by GB News. Ofcom’s bitch, as I call the compliance officer, will be making the weedy defence to Ofcom and then I’m the one who has to pay the £40,000 fine,” he added. Although Ofcom has the ability to regulate the content of broadcast television and radio channels, it has no control over online streams – meaning Steyn is able to broadcast whatever he wants online to a potentially bigger audience without any intervention. The contractual terms offered to Steyn suggest GB News bosses are concerned about the impending judgment in the Ofcom investigations – which could scare away some of its remaining advertisers. Earlier this year all staff were put on mandatory Ofcom training.

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Time for a hearing under oath. In public.

• Fauci Makes Absurd Amount of Money for “Speaking Engagements” (TP)

Dr. Anthony Fauci faced criticism online on Sunday after reports emerged about his speaking fee. Critics were stunned to discover that the once highest-paid federal U.S. government employee is charging up to $100,000 for speaking engagements. This news has raised questions about Fauci’s financial motivations and independence in light of his high-profile role as a public health expert during the COVID-19 pandemic. The information was brought to light by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ rapid response director, Christina Pushaw, who tweeted a screenshot from the Leading Motivational Speaker’s Agency’s website. The screenshot showed that Fauci is listed as a motivational and healthcare keynote speaker, with a fee ranging from $50,000 to $100,000.

Many argued that his high speaking fee undermines his credibility and raises ethical concerns, regardless of the public response. On October 19, 2020, President Trump called Dr. Fauci “a disaster.” The chief medical adviser to Biden is scheduled to deliver the 2023 Yale Medical School commencement speech in May. He has also been a keynote speaker at several other university commencement ceremonies, including the University of Maryland, Roger Williams University, and The City College of New York. According to a Freedom of Information Act request, Fauci was once considered the highest-paid employee of the U.S. government, earning more than even the president. In 2019, Fauci’s income reached a record high of $417,608.00, and over the previous two years, he earned $384,625.00.

Between 2010 and 2019, Forbes reported that Fauci, as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, earned $3.6 million. Watchdog group OpenTheBooks found that the Fauci family’s net worth expanded from $7.5 million in 2019 to $12.6 million by the end of 2021, due to investment gains, awards, compensation, and royalties.

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“..approximately one-quarter of a million American lives were lost during the first year of the catastrophic COVID-19 vaccine campaign..”

• Mind-Blowing Reality of Death after Injection (MOL)

Many individuals around the globe appear to have fallen into a trance where those who have undergone COVID-19 vaccination do not recognize, nor do they care when large numbers of individuals are dying suddenly without explanation days or months also after taking one of the COVID-19 vaccines. In this issue of the Report, we have an excerpt from the Headwinds documentary “The Psychology of Totalitarianism,” where Dr. Mattias Desmet, Ph.D., gives a summary of mass formation and some of the behaviors it explains, including the fear-driven affiliation with a group who believes so strongly in the vaccine, that they will do unimaginable things to the unvaccinated. Broken families, job loss, and careers ruined for the unvaccinated by those in the formation who are hell-bent on every last person taking a COVID-19 vaccine.


Cumulative excess deaths Scandinavia.

At the same time, the United States is facing catastrophic casualties with the mass vaccination program. Several sources of data emerged in 2021, pointing to a biopharmaceutical public health disaster with the COVID-19 vaccine campaign. Pfizer recorded 1223 deaths occurring shortly after administration of their product within the first 90 days of use starting December 10, 2020. Pantazatos and Seligmann reported an excess in all-cause mortality from vaccine administration and US census data during 2021 between 146k and 187k, with a midpoint of 166k deaths. By the end of December 2021, the CDC VAERS system had reported ~8K with an under-reporting factor of 30; the casualty estimate from that source was 240k. In a recent paper published in BMC Infectious Diseases, Dr. Mark Skidmore used a valid representative survey to learn from population reporting.

A total of 22% knew of someone who was seriously injured by the vaccine, and the estimate based upon deaths attributed to the vaccine by respondents was 278K deaths. In the Skidmore analysis, the average age of death reported was 48 years. This paper is important since it triangulates with two other sources for the same time interval with a conclusion that approximately one-quarter of a million American lives were lost during the first year of the catastrophic COVID-19 vaccine campaign. During 2021 the Delta outbreak took an additional toll, with lives lost to the infection, and there was no evidence to support a tradeoff. That is, no randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of COVID-19 vaccination demonstrated a reduction in death as a component of a primary or secondary endpoint. The consent form for immunization does not list mortality reduction as an expected benefit, yet it mentions death is possible with the vaccine. I anticipate more direct sources of information will become available, including vaccine administration information from the CDC linked with the National Death Index.

Unvaxxed women https://twitter.com/i/status/1622705584435867648

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“..200 feet tall, weighed thousands of pounds, and its payload was the size of a jetliner..”

• Chinese Spy Balloon Carried Explosives To Self-detonate (PM)

Following the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon over the weekend, Pentagon officials have revealed that the balloon potentially was carrying explosives to destroy itself. According to the Daily Mail, Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, commander of US Northern Command, revealed in a Monday call with reporters that the Balloon, in addition to potentially carrying explosives, was 200 feet tall, weighed thousands of pounds, and its payload was the size of a jetliner. VanHerck’s comments came following a briefing by National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, who defended Biden’s decision to wait to shoot down the balloon until the weekend. “Because the president decided they wouldn’t shoot it down until he could do so safely, and that meant over water, that afforded us a terrific opportunity to gain a better understanding, to study the capabilities of this balloon,” Kirby said.

/

On the coast of South Carolina on Saturday afternoon, the US military, using an F-22 fighter jet, shot down the balloon with a missile. Shortly before the balloon was shot down, Federal Aviation Administration had issued a ground stop for three airports in the Carolinas located in Wilmington, North Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The balloon had entered US airspace on January 28 and was known to the Biden administration for nearly a week before its report in the news on Thursday, February 2. The White House reportedly tried to keep its presence secret to not disrupt Secretary of State Antony Blinken scheduled trip to China, which was postponed after the public’s discovery of the balloon.

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C seeds https://twitter.com/i/status/1621997452445229056

 

 

 

 

Ring https://twitter.com/i/status/1622408086081396737

 

 

 

 

Funeral sheep

 

 


A massive sculpture of a legendary bird has taken shape at Jatayu Earth’s Center in Kerala, India, in 2020. Jatayu, the noble bird of divine origin, as recreated in concrete at the Center is 61 meters long, 46 meters wide, and 21 meters tall

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle January 13 2023

Jan 132023
 
 January 13, 2023  Posted by at 9:42 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  108 Responses »


Steve Schapiro Muhammad Ali, Monopoly, Louisville, KY 1963

 

• Report Links Hunter Biden To Classified Files Found in Joe Biden’s Garage (KB)
• ‘This Is Election Interference’: House Oversight Veteran on Biden Files (ET)
• Key ‘Russian Bots’ Claim Was False – Twitter Documents (RT)
• Ukraine Suffered A Humiliating Defeat In Soledar (Ugolny)
• Where Might Russia Commit Forces On An Offensive? (Big Serge)
• Russia Reacts To Turkish Support Of Zelensky’s ‘Peace Plan’ (RT)
• Nord Stream Attack: The Case Nobody Wants Solved (Celente)
• 7 Facts Fauci Knew But Hid From the Public (CHD)
• Senator Questions CDC on Why It Expected 100s of Vaccine Adverse Events (ET)
• Former Employees Sue ESPN After Being Fired for COVID-19 Vaccine Refusal (ET)
• A Tale of Two Cultures -America and Russia (Moglia)
• Everything Upside Down (Dionísio)
• Britain and EU Enter Talks To Settle Brexit Disputes (RT)
• Nixon Threatened to Reveal CIA Involvement in Kennedy Assassination (Stone)

 

 

 

 

Russiagate https://twitter.com/i/status/1613730901946425346

 

 

Clown KJP https://twitter.com/i/status/1613389755374501889

 

 

Carpe https://twitter.com/i/status/1613700648218005506

 

 

 

 

Hunter’s garage?! What are the odds Joe is being set up?

• Report Links Hunter Biden To Classified Files Found in Joe Biden’s Garage (KB)

President Joe Biden has finally found himself on the wrong side of a special counsel investigation. On Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that is appointing a special counsel to investigate the classified documents found in President Joe Biden’s private office and home. “Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to take over the investigation into President Joe Biden’s potential mishandling of classified documents,” CNN reported. “The special counsel is Robert Hur.” “Two special prosecutors have been appointed,” CNN also reported. In contrast to Donald Trump storing the documents he declassified as president and storing them at a safe storage facility at Mar-a-Lago, Joe Biden took the documents while vice president and they remain classified to this day.

And to make matters worse, it came out that a second batch of classified documents were found at his Wilmington home garage. These are in addition to those found in a think tank closet at the Penn Biden Center office in Washington, D.C. There are even reports of a third batch of classified documents that have been discovered. Biden went off-script talking to Fox News’ Peter Doocy about the security of his garage by claiming that is where he keeps his “Corvette.” “Classified material next to your Corvette! What were you thinking?” Doocy said to the President in response. Biden defended himself by saying, “My Corvette is in a locked garage, OK? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street.” Biden was so brazen about his illegal activity that he actually filmed a campaign video with his corvette in 2021. One can see stacks of boxes in the back of the garage where the classified documents were reportedly found.

Legal analyst Jonathan Turley reacted to the development on the documents being found in Biden’s garage. “The President just said that the documents found in his garage are in a ‘locked garage’ like his corvette,” Turley said. “The corvette standard is actually not in classified protocols…” “The corvette statement was remarkably ill-considered,” he added. “It was a cringe-worthy moment. After being given a carefully worded statement by his lawyers and staff, the President ad-libbed and suggested that his locked garage was a secure space for classified material.” Miranda Devine, author of the “Laptop from Hell,” has added a new twist to the story: Hunter Biden claimed he owned the house where Biden kept the classified documents. Devine provides the document showing Hunter Biden claiming to own the house. The address also appears on a copy of Hunter Biden’s driver’s license.

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People suggesting a third batch was found.

• ‘This Is Election Interference’: House Oversight Veteran on Biden Files (ET)

A House Oversight Committee veteran said the delay in publicizing President Joe Biden’s retention of classified documents from his time as vice president amounts to election interference. “The documents were allegedly discovered on Nov. 2. The midterms are on Nov. 8. To me, this is election interference by omission,” Mike Howell said in a Jan. 11 interview with The Epoch Times.“Does anyone think if this had been President Trump or any other Republican, the news wouldn’t have been leaked immediately for political gain? We needn’t wonder—just look at all the affirmative updates, releases, and leaks in the Trump case,” he said in a Jan. 10 statement.

Howell was an attorney for the Department of Homeland Security under President Donald Trump. He previously worked as a lawyer on the House Oversight Committee as well as the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He now leads the Oversight Project at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Heritage Oversight is, in Howell’s words, “suing the Biden administration aggressively” over Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. “We’re gathering as much as we can and hoping that Congress makes use of it,” he said, noting that FOIA lawsuits are just one of the organization’s tactics. Notably, Heritage Oversight obtained an email to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas that shows that he knew Haitian migrants weren’t whipped by Border Patrol agents at Del Rio, Texas, by Sept. 24, 2021.

Yet during a press conference that same day, Mayorkas offered no clarification on the whipping allegations, instead saying that the images “painfully conjured up the worst elements of our nation’s ongoing battle against systemic racism.” “He [Mayorkas] chose to ignore the information to preserve the far-left narrative on this whole incident,” Howell said in a 2022 Heritage Foundation interview. Heritage Oversight filed FOIA requests with the Department of Justice and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) regarding the classified materials found at the Penn Biden Center. “Why was this information not made public prior [to] the election? It likely would have had substantial electoral salience,” Howell wrote in his FOIA request to the Department of Justice.

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“..one of the greatest outbreaks of mass delusion in US history..”

• Key ‘Russian Bots’ Claim Was False – Twitter Documents (RT)

Twitter executives knew that several hashtags denounced by leading congressional Democrats and corporate media as “Russian disinformation” were a product of authentic Americans, but chose not to say so in public, journalist Matt Taibbi revealed on Thursday. Taibbi has been publishing the “Twitter Files,” internal company documents provided by the company’s new owner, Elon Musk, since early December. Evidence published so far shed light on the censorship of key stories ahead of the 2020 presidential election, FBI pressure, direct White House interference on Covid-19 matters, and the banning of Donald Trump – the sitting US president at the time.

Thursday’s revelations concern the events of January and February 2018 and the memo by Republican Congressman Devin Nunes of California detailing how the FBI used the “Steele Dossier” to spy on Trump’s campaign and presidency. Democrats and major media outlets denounced Nunes in what Taibbi described as “oddly identical language,” while attributing the calls to #ReleaseTheMemo to “Russian bots” and “trolls.” Senator Dianne Feinstein and Congressman Adam Schiff – ranking Democrats in the Senate and House intelligence committees – wrote to Twitter on January 23, 2018, claiming that #ReleaseTheMemo “gained the immediate attention and assistance of social media accounts linked to Russian influence operations.”

Another Democrat, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, followed up with a letter denouncing as “reprehensible that Russian agents have so eagerly manipulated innocent Americans.” Twitter, however, “found no evidence, as in zero, that Russians were anywhere near this story,” Taibbi wrote on Substack. Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth personally reviewed the accounts that started the hashtag and found “none of them show any signs of affiliation to Russia.” The engagement was “overwhelmingly organic” and driven by prominent real people, Roth found. He also noted that Schiff, Feinstein and Blumenthal all pointed to the same source – the “Hamilton68 dashboard,” run by an outfit calling itself the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD). “All the swirl is based on Hamilton,” he wrote.

Documents show that Twitter executives eventually realized that Democrats weren’t looking for solutions, but were just using the Russia accusation to push them further. One executive even compared it to the children’s book ‘If You Give a Mouse a Cookie’. Yet for some reason, the company chose not to say so publicly, allowing Democrats and the media to continue blaming “Russian bots” for any problems in US society – government shutdowns, school shootings, gun control, etc. “By spreading the Russia collusion hoax, they instigated one of the greatest outbreaks of mass delusion in US history,” Nunes told Taibbi when reached for comment, referring to the Democrats. The memo itself was published on February 2, 2018. Justice Department Inspector-General Michael Horowitz confirmed its findings in his report, published in December 2019.

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Detailed history.

• Ukraine Suffered A Humiliating Defeat In Soledar (Ugolny)

Soledar is a conglomeration of several settlements established around salt mines and railway stations. In 2001, when Ukraine last conducted a census, around 13,000 people lived here. The town stretches along the right bank of the Bakhmutka River from southeast to northwest. In late 2022, it became an infamous urban warzone. In peaceful times, however, it was known as the largest source of mineral salt in Central and Eastern Europe, covering around 80% of Ukraine’s needs. Deep salt mines have also made Soledar a tourist and leisure destination with tours around the caves. There was, however, a second, military purpose to the city and its industries, as was typical for the Soviet Union. In the case of Soledar, several of its depleted mines were used as spacious and secure military warehouses.

Last year, this previously disregarded aspect of Soledar’s identity became its most prominent feature. Salt production stopped, and the gypsum plant ceased operating; the only visitors around were now Ukrainian soldiers – and developing asthma was the least of their problems. Soledar became the focus of Russian offensive operations last May, after troops seized Popasnaya and breached the first line of Ukrainian defenses. The Ukrainian command turned the town into a major piece of its second defensive line, a stretch of fortifications along the Dzerzhinsk – Bakhmut (Artyomovsk) – Soledar – Seversk line. Up until early August, fighting continued around Soledar: Russian forces were busy cutting off the pocket of Ukrainian forces near Severodonetsk and Lisichansk, and gradually advancing toward Soledar and Artyomovsk, seizing fortifications at Pilipchatino and Pokrovskoye along the way.

Wagner units and the 6th Cossack Regiment of Lugansk gradually moved into the combat area. Russian troops enjoyed uncontested superiority in terms of artillery, but there were some early signs of ‘ammunition hunger’ looming on the horizon. The Russians were unable to penetrate Ukrainian defenses in one burst. The troops, exhausted after a major operation to liberate the entirety of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), simply could not break through the numerically superior Ukrainian forces. Ukrainian defenses in the area consisted of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade, supported by numerous units of the Territorial Defense Forces. The second line was formed by the 24th Mechanized Brigade, which had suffered losses during the earlier fighting in Popasnaya.

Combined, these forces were sufficient to hold off the attacks along most of the Artyomovsk-Soledar-Lisichansk line, a stretch of fortifications that would not be breached until December – a development that would ultimately spell defeat for the Ukrainians.

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Twitter thread – with maps.

• Where Might Russia Commit Forces On An Offensive? (Big Serge)

Let’s do a quick parsing of the situation and examine the possibilities. Where might Russia commit forces on an offensive? Let’s do a quick parsing of the situation and examine the possibilities. Right now, the contact line is some 700 kilometers stretching from the Dnieper estuary in the south to northern Lugansk oblast. Troop concentrations and active combat are broadly present on four major axes. (Maps by me). The Svatove axis is where Ukraine’s Kharkov counteroffensive was stonewalled after crossing the Oskil river and struggling to break Lyman in a timely manner. Ukrainian efforts to continue the advance have been repeatedly defeated. The Bakhmut axis has been the subject of most attention lately, but there is a paucity of Russian regular forces in this direction.

Most of the work here is being achieved by the Wagner PMC and LNR forces, assisted by VDV. Most of the Russian army forces currently committed in Ukraine are currently on the Svatove and Zaporozhia axes in a defensive stance. Contrary to the impression given by western sources, the regular Russian Army has not been engaged in widespread attacking activity lately. Much of Russia’s combat power is currently uncommitted, and will be used to renew offensive operations in the coming weeks and months. The question is when and where. There remains a distinct possibility that there will be no “Big Arrow” offensive, and instead we will see lots of “small arrow” attacks with Russia going over to the offensive on all the existing Axes. This would mean forward progress, but no major new fronts being opened. )

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Erdogan playing both sides.

• Russia Reacts To Turkish Support Of Zelensky’s ‘Peace Plan’ (RT)

Türkiye’s stated support of the “so-called peace plan” formulated by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky does not change the fact that Russia considers it unacceptable, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday. Zakharova was asked about remarks made by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who stated that his country backed the ten-point proposal for peace in Ukraine promoted by Kiev. “It is unlikely that Ankara’s support of this project would promote the search for an optimal way towards peace in Ukraine,” she said, citing Russia’s previous rejection of the Ukrainian formula. “I don’t see any sense in any additional comments on it.”

The ‘peace plan’ was presented by Zelensky at the summit of G20 leaders in Bali, Indonesia, in November. It involves a full Russian withdrawal from territories that Kiev considers to be its own and long-term support of Ukraine by international donors. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who represented Russia at the gathering, called Zelensky’s virtual address “militant, Russophobic and aggressive” and dismissed his ten-point agenda as “unrealistic and inadequate.” The Kremlin called such proposals a non-starter, insisting that if Ukraine wants peace it should take into account “the new realities,” referring to the four former Ukrainian regions that voted to join Russia last fall, after Crimea did the same in 2014 following a coup in Kiev.

Cavusoglu expressed Türkiye’s positive stance towards Zelensky’s proposition on Tuesday during a press conference in South Africa. He touted Ankara’s role as a mediator between Moscow and Kiev and said his government wanted to see a resolution to the conflict “the sooner the better.” Zelensky floated the idea of a UN-sponsored ‘Global Peace Summit’ to discuss his ideas, suggesting that it could take place in February 2023. His foreign minister, Dmitry Kuleba, stated that Russia would have to be tried by an “international court” before being allowed at the table.

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“I, for the life of me, don’t understand why the EU doesn’t want to know who did it..” [..] “Is it because we know the answer? Or is it because it’s the wrong answer?”

• Nord Stream Attack: The Case Nobody Wants Solved (Celente)

The attack on the Nord Stream pipelines that run deep under the Baltic Sea in late September has all but disappeared from the Western media’s radar, but now Russia is demanding answers and formally accused Sweden of withholding damning evidence on the identity of the perpetrators. Maria Zakharova, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said Thursday that Stockholm’s decision not to release the investigation’s findings a a puzzling move and is evidence that they are hiding something from the public. “Russian experts in the course of an objective investigation may come to uncomfortable conclusions and, finally, reveal to the public the ugly truth about who committed these acts of sabotage and terrorist attacks,” she said, according to Russian outlet TASS.

“Sweden’s refusal to set up a joint group to investigate the sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines is perplexing. There are no doubts regarding the nature of the incident – this was an act of sabotage. Thus Swedish authorities clearly have something to hide,” she said. Russia has blamed UK special forces of carrying out the attack. Polish war hawk Radek Sikorski actually thanked the U.S. for the attack in a Twitter post. Mick Wallace, member of the European Parliament, posted a video on his Twitter account where he expressed dismay over the investigation. He said the attack resulted in one of the world’s worst releases of methane gas ever and called the incident “environmental terrorism.”

“I, for the life of me, don’t understand why the EU doesn’t want to know who did it,” he said in the video posted on 5 January. He continued, “Is it because we know the answer? Or is it because it’s the wrong answer?” Wallace also expressed confusion as to how quickly the news story disappeared from the news cycle. “Initially, of course, the Russians were blamed,” he said. “But common sense kind of prevailed and we kind of thought, ‘If the Russians don’t want any gas, they can kind of turn the tap off at their end.” DW, the German news outlet, also raised questions about the blast. The outlet tweeted on Tuesday, “Russia has made an initial estimate of the cost needed to repair the #NordStream pipeline. That raises the question: Why would Russia undergo the expensive process of repairing their own pipeline if they bombed it themselves?”

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“This does not bode well for Fauci and those involved in the cover-up.”

• 7 Facts Fauci Knew But Hid From the Public (CHD)

House Republicans on Monday commissioned a special investigative panel focused on the coronavirus pandemic during which they hope to press scientists and federal officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, about the origin of the public health crisis and the government’s response to it. The following is a paraphrase of the opening round — the warning shot — by U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) Tuesday in which he used his time to outline seven facts that Dr. Anthony Fauci knew, and, more importantly, what Fauci did, and did not do, when he was made aware of these facts. This does not bode well for Fauci and those involved in the cover-up.

1/ Fauci understood that American tax dollars went to EcoHealth Alliance and that money was then funneled to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) lab in China. 2/ Fauci knew EcoHealth Alliance was given an exemption from the pause on gain-of-function research. 3/ Fauci knew that the security standards at the WIV lab in China were deficient. 4/ Fauci knew that EcoHealth Alliance was not in compliance with its grant reporting requirements and wasn’t adhering to the contract. 5/ Fauci knew that gain-of-function research was in fact being conducted in the WIV lab in China. 6/ Fauci knew that the standard P3CO interagency review process wasn’t followed in approving the grant to EcoHealth Alliance. 7/ Fauci knew that the virus likely came from the lab where U.S. taxpayer dollars were sent … the very city where that lab is at, a deadly virus breaks out that would ultimately kill six million people around the world.

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”Without immediately providing complete and reliable information about COVID-19 vaccine adverse events, you are obstructing Congressional oversight..”

• Senator Questions CDC on Why It Expected 100s of Vaccine Adverse Events (ET)

A U.S. senator is questioning why a top agency was expecting hundreds of safety signals for the COVID-19 vaccines. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), claimed in 2022 that safety monitoring revealed no “unexpected safety signals” for the vaccines. But the results to which she was referring showed hundreds of safety signals, or adverse events potentially linked to the shots. The Epoch Times obtained the results through a Freedom of Information Act after the CDC refused to release them. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is now wondering why the CDC expected so many signals after vaccination. In a Jan. 10 letter citing The Epoch Times article on the results, Johnson demanded the CDC explain how it determined what is and is not an “unexpected safety signal.”

“The American people have a right to know the extent to which your agency was aware of and tracked COVID-19 vaccine adverse events. Your lack of transparency is unacceptable. Without immediately providing complete and reliable information about COVID-19 vaccine adverse events, you are obstructing Congressional oversight and leaving the public in the dark,” added Johnson, who was stonewalled when he requested the monitoring results. A CDC spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email that it received the senator’s letter. “A reply is forthcoming,” the spokesperson said, declining to comment further. The CDC has made multiple false statements on the outcomes found from a type of analysis called Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR).

The analysis involves comparing the number of adverse events reported to a system co-managed by the CDC after COVID-19 vaccination to the number of adverse events reported after vaccination with other vaccines. The CDC initially said that performing PRRs was outside of its purview, contradicting a government document that stated the agency “will perform” the technique. Dr. John Su, a top CDC official, then claimed it started performing the analysis in February 2021 and continued to do so as of July 18, 2022. Both statements turned out to be wrong. After being pressed by Johnson, the CDC later said that it did not start the PRRs until March 25, 2022, and stopped performing them on July 31, 2022.

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How many of these lawsuits will we see? Probably depends on the success of the first few.

• Former Employees Sue ESPN After Being Fired for COVID-19 Vaccine Refusal (ET)

Two former employees are suing ESPN for being fired over COVID-19 vaccine refusal, alleging the company violated their rights and state and federal law in the process. Beth Faber, a former producer with the network, and Allison Williams, a college football reporter, brought the suit on Jan. 11 in federal court in Connecticut, where Disney-owned ESPN is based. Faber was fired on Sept. 9, 2021, after ESPN denied her request for a religious accommodation to the company’s mandate. Williams was fired on Oct. 19, 2021, after ESPN rejected requests for exemptions based on disability and religious beliefs. ESPN officials claimed that no accommodation was possible because venues at which the employees would work would not accept unvaccinated people, according to the suit.

But plaintiffs allege the defendants made no effort to confirm that and pointed to how most NFL and college football teams had unvaccinated personnel, as ESPN itself reported. “Defendants impermissibly took adverse employment against Plaintiffs, including wrongfully terminating them, denying them of financial compensation, and in the case of Williams, pursuant to a contract, and intentionally harming their relationship in their industry, because they complained about the discrimination they suffered based on their religious beliefs, a protective activity,” the suit states. ESPN declined to comment or say how many workers were fired over vaccine refusal. The lawsuit came after the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunities Commission issued “right to sue” letters to Faber and Williams.

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“..what with Clinton was a matter of lying to save his bottom, with Biden lying seems actually a matter of pride.“

• A Tale of Two Cultures -America and Russia (Moglia)

As for the USA, the inaudible and noiseless foot of time, along with forgetfulness and dark oblivion, have erased from the collective memory the purportedly original reason that triggered the Vietnam war – and the consequent millions killed, the many maimed and the countless wounded on both sides. Namely the ‘Gulf of Tonkin’ incident. When, allegedly, North Vietnamese torpedo boats fired on a US destroyer that was in international water according to the US, and in domestic waters according to the Vietnamese. Nevertheless those involved on the US side still found it then necessary to invent a plausible cause. But not now. What changed or what happened then between 1965 and the present? And what identifiable original or ideological cause can be found for the Western so-called ‘rulers’ to disregard the Minks agreements and the agreement about the non-expansion of NATO?

Even the often quoted notion of so-called ‘plausible deniability’ has seemingly gone the way of all flesh. One socio-political interpretation may be perhaps found well over 20 years ago. That is, a related pattern-setting event can be traced back to the Clinton-Lewinsky business. When the president of the Unites States had the gall to tell the nation, in prime time, that ‘I did not have sex with that woman’ notwithstanding ample, legal and irrefutable evidence. That the president of the ‘exceptional nation’ would allow himself to be entrapped into an obvious and decidedly bawdy situation, while simultaneously showing himself as the lyingest knave in Christendom, should at least have raised some doubts about his qualifications for the position.

But it didn’t, and at the time various qualified voices expressed concern about the implications of the resolution. For when a preposterous lie to the public and parliament (by the highest representative of the state) is essentially endorsed by allowing the perjurer (for he was under oath) to remain in office, a pattern and precedent is established for others to follow suit in times to come. One obvious, recent and worthy fellow and follower is Giuseppe Biden along with his remarkable family. And we can see clearly an evolution. For what with Clinton was a matter of lying to save his bottom, with Biden lying seems actually a matter of pride. (E.G. “18 FBI agents have verified that Hunter Biden’s laptop is Russian disinformation!”)

Yet already after the Lewinsky business, the list of patent, unrestrained and preposterous lies excreted by subsequent US state department administrations would fill a long row of portable toilets and stink to high heaven. Beginning with Yugoslavia, followed by the very murky 9/11 affair, Saddam’s weapons of mass distraction, Gadhafi’s breach of human rights, Hassad’s ‘chemical poisons’ in Syria, bringing democracy to Afghanistan, Georgia, Ukraine, and the Middle Eastern terrorist groups that are enemies one day and freedom fighters the next, financed and supplied in either case by the exceptional nation.

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“..how is it that a country that spends $800 billion of its military budget [..] has practically the same firepower as a country that spends $65 billion?..

• Everything Upside Down (Dionísio)

8 years of fortified constructions, tunnels, bunkers and endless armament depots, two months of repositioning of reserves and military human losses, the structure finally begins to collapse. The human losses are in the tens of thousands of young people, not so young, national and foreign, and after all the inevitable happens. The comedian who is president, in his daily videos from some bunker or mansion, has always resisted in doing what the opponent does when he considers that the effort is too much for the gain: retreat to a more solid line of defense, saving men and equipment. The official narrative, shared endlessly over and over again, about “the most important victories since the second great war” for the domestic side, will not be despising, for the decision to fight to the last man.

After all, any decision, to call this major defensive fortification line as lost, implies a total reversal in the narrative propagated by the North Atlantic corporate press. It´s a must to first prepare the public who are the relentless followers of such narratives. Telling them the truth is not an option, as this would mean effectively saying the opposite of what has been said, namely regarding the inevitable outcome of the conflict. In yet another war used as a cycle of capitalist accumulation, a fact that can be clearly stated in the reversal of the trend in the world arms market until 2014, which placed the two indirect contenders (US and Russian Federation) in direct competition and with very close numbers, this situation has, as it were, reversed, with the USA today being the undisputed leader in world arms sales, with around 2/3 more in sales value than its largest direct competitor (Russian Federation).

It doesn’t mean that they sell more quantity…. They mainly sell more expensive. The data at hand brings light about the use of war and the military industrial complex as an instrument of the capitalist accumulation cycle, or, on the contrary, as an instrument whose fundamental objective is national defense. The “Global Fire Power 2023” which establishes the “Fire Power Index”, places the US in first with 0.0712, Russian Federation with 0.0714 and the RPC with 0.0722. In other words, the top two appear tied and the third is very close. The 4th place, India, is much further away, with 0.1025. What does this tell us about the role of each army?

The first question that comes to mind is, how is it that a country that spends $800 billion of its military budget (and we do not include here the “dark money” of the secret services, nor all the research paid for through federal programs that also goes to military ends), has practically the same firepower as a country that spends $65 billion, and little more than another that spends $290 billion? The answer lies in several aspects: 1) the North American military-industrial complex is private, therefore, it aims to pursue profit, the enrichment of an elite and the concentration of wealth, with the state being an instrument of this accumulation; 2) the other two have a military-industrial complex that is essentially public – not exclusively – mainly in the most sensitive areas, and is not intended to do more than fulfill its public role, i.e., to guarantee an effective national defense capable of defending the country’s sovereignty.

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Tempted to check what decade it is.

• Britain and EU Enter Talks To Settle Brexit Disputes (RT)

The EU and UK are gradually moving towards settling a longstanding post-Brexit trade dispute and are preparing to launch intense negotiations next week, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. On Monday, London struck an agreement with Brussels to share live data on trade with Northern Ireland, which was described as “a critical prerequisite to building trust and providing assurance” and laid “a new basis for EU-UK discussions.” British Foreign Minister James Cleverly and European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic said the deal was an important step towards further talks on the trading rules known as the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The dispute stems from the Brexit deal in which Britain agreed to leave Northern Ireland within the EU’s single market for goods in order to preserve a 1998 peace deal between Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, and EU member Ireland, thus avoiding instituting a land border between the two. However, the UK has so far failed to implement parts of those agreements and in response the EU has opened several infringement procedures. The aim of next week’s talks between Cleverly and Sefcovic is to prepare the ground for a negotiating “tunnel,” the outlet said, citing people who spoke on condition of anonymity. The CEO of Northern Ireland’s Manufacturing NI, Stephen Kelly, who has been outspoken on a number of Brexit-related issues, expressed hope that the UK and EU would announce “a deep scoping exercise, deep conversation – what’s traditionally known as a tunnel” after the meeting of the UK foreign minister and chief EU negotiator on January 16.

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Roger Stone.

• Nixon Threatened to Reveal CIA Involvement in Kennedy Assassination (Stone)

A stunning, long-overlooked Nixon Watergate-era tape shows Richard Nixon warning CIA Director Richard Helms that he knows of CIA involvement in the murder of John F. Kennedy- “I know who shot John.” This shocking new tape depicts Nixon increasingly besieged by Watergate but unaware that at least four of the Watergate burglars were still on the CIA payroll at the time of the break-in, and that the CIA had thus infiltrated the burglary team. Recently declassified documents reveal that Watergate Special Prosecutor Nick Akerman was aware of both the CIA’s advance knowledge and involvement in the break-in — but said and did nothing.

Senator Howard Baker, the Republican Leader on the Senate Watergate Committee and his counsel Fred Thompson himself, a future U.S. Senator from Tennessee, like Baker, stumbled on the CIA’s deep advanced knowledge and direct involvement in the Watergate break-in. Baker and Thompson both knew that at least four of the Watergate burglars were on the CIA payroll at the time of the break-in and that through CREEP Security Director James McCord, had infiltrated the burglary team. Senate Watergate Committee Chairman Sam Ervin stoutly refused to allow Baker and the Committee Republicans including Edward J. Gurney of Florida the right to publish a Minority Report which noted this stunning information regarding the CIA.

Nixon deeply distrusted the CIA because he knew that President Eisenhower had ordered the agency to give top secret briefings to both Nixon and Kennedy after both were the certain nominees of their parties. Nixon was sore that Kennedy utilized the information in their debates, attacking Nixon for being “soft” on communist Cuba, knowing full well that Nixon had chaired a working group as Vice President overseeing preparations for the “Bay of Pigs” invasion. Nixon, of course, could not reveal this upcoming attempt to topple Castro in the details. White House Domestic Policy Chief John Ehrlichman wrote that when he served as the White House Legal Counsel, Nixon ordered him to request that the CIA hand over all documents pertaining to John Kennedy’s murder. Nixon was furious when Richard Helms, the CIA Director, refused his presidential order to hand them over.

This stunning new Watergate-era tape captures an increasingly besieged Nixon desperately seeking to mobilize the CIA in his defense by threatening to expose their greatest secrets. Nixon also knew that Congressman Gerald Ford, as a member of the Warren Commission, had, at the explicit direction of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI Director, altered the official autopsy diagram for President John F. Kennedy; moving the marking from a bullet in his upper back to his neck in order to accommodate the single-bullet theory and to conceal the fact that Kennedy had been hit with more than the reported three shots.

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Bridgen https://twitter.com/i/status/1613555822705143814

 

 

Alice Cooper Jeff Beck

 

 


The last picture taken of David Bowie. By his wife, Iman, on his birthday, 8th January 2016 – 2 days before his death.

 

 

Employee

 

 


The rainbow lorikeet has a very bright plumage: the head is deep blue with a greenish-yellow nuchal collar, and the rest of the upper parts are deep green. The chest is red with blue-black barring. The belly is deep green & the thighs and rump are yellow

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle January 2 2003

Jan 022023
 
 January 2, 2023  Posted by at 10:03 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


Edward Hopper Burly Cobb’s House, South Truro 1930-33

 

• Drone Attacks Continue On Kyiv And Eastern Ukraine (BBC)
• Nancy Pelosi Is Stepping Down As US House Speaker, And Few Will Miss Her (RT)
• Twitter’s COVID-19 Censorship Led to Loss of Life – Dr. Scott Atlas (ET)
• Fauci Fibbed on the Day Everything Changed (Tucker)
• How China Changed Its Zero-COVID Policy to a ‘Zero Non-COVID’ Policy (ET)
• States Grand Jury to Hold Big Pharma Accountable for Covid Vaccines (BN)
• Elon Musk Says He Is ‘Open’ to Idea of Buying Out Major Media Companies (BN)
• In 2023 It Will Be All About The Dollar (Macleod)
• USD Exchange Rates Hit Foreign Exchange Reserves (WS)
• My Prediction On What 2023 Will Bring (Varoufakis)
• 1 Year On, EU Alternative To China’s Belt And Road Fails To Deliver (SCMP)
• New Year, New Things (Denninger)

 

 

 

 

Free Assange

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Difference between BBC and RT is remarkable.

• Drone Attacks Continue On Kyiv And Eastern Ukraine (BBC)

Air raid sirens sounded in Kyiv on Sunday night as the latest wave of drone and missile strikes from Russia continued. An attack which began shortly before midnight targeted critical infrastructure, Kyiv regional governor Oleksiy Kuleba said. One man in Kyiv was injured by debris from a destroyed Russian drone, the capital’s mayor said. The attacks have continued for several days over the New Year period. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Armed Forces said 400 Russian soldiers had been killed in on New Year’s Eve in Makiivka, in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region. In a rare move, pro-Russian authorities admitted to casualties. But Russia refused to confirm the number of deaths, and the BBC is unable to verify this.

It comes after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky wished for victory and a “return to normal” for Ukraine in 2023. In a new year address on Russian TV, President Vladimir Putin said Russia would fight to protest its sovereignty and independence. Kyiv’s military issued a warning of the latest attacks just after 01:00 (23:00 GMT) on Monday. “Air attack on Kyiv… Air alert is on in the capital,” it announced on the Telegram social media site. Serhiy Popko, the city’s military administration head, told people to stay in shelters. Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported an explosion in Kyiv’s northeastern Desnyanskyi district and said emergency services were attending. “An injured 19-year-old man was hospitalised in the Desnyanskyi district of the capital,” he said.

Mr Kuleba said the weapons were Iranian-made Shahed drones, adding that they were “targeting critical infrastructure facilities”. “The main thing now is to stay calm and stay in shelters until the alarm is off,” he said. It comes after a barrage of attacks on New Year’s Eve, which killed at least one person in Kyiv. Russia has been targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for several months, destroying power stations and plunging millions into darkness during the country’s freezing winter.

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“Yeah, we completely agree with Satan on everything.”

• Nancy Pelosi Is Stepping Down As US House Speaker, And Few Will Miss Her (RT)

The 118th United States Congress will be inaugurated on January 3, 2023, ushering in a number of changes, including Republican control of the House of Representatives and an attendant flip of the office of the speaker. That means that long-time Democratic Party leader Nancy Pelosi will have to give up her gavel and hand it over, most likely to Republican leader Kevin McCarthy. This has been Pelosi’s second tenure as speaker, as she served the first time from 2007-2011 and made history during that time by being the first – and so far only – woman to hold that title. Indeed, Pelosi’s record as the third-highest constitutional officer in the US has been historic – but maybe for some reasons that aren’t so savory. For one, the California Democrat is a notorious self-dealer. For instance, Pelosi was one of the most high-profile members of Congress implicated in a five-month corruption investigation by Business Insider.

She is reported to have deep holdings in companies such as Tesla, Disney, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), and Meta (Facebook’s parent company), which she is directly responsible for regulating as a member of Congress. And it should also not be a surprise that she has repeatedly come out against barring members of Congress from trading stocks and other financial assets, even if she did an about face when public pressure mounted. “We are a free-market economy. They (members of Congress) should be able to participate in that (trading),” she told reporters in December 2021. There is actually an argument to be made that indeed members of Congress should be able to engage in such investments. After all, they have to pay two sets of housing costs in their district and in the notoriously expensive Washington, DC area.

They also have to pay all of their own traveling expenses to and from their district. And they have to do all of that, plus probably also have a family, with a salary of $174,000. It’s not all that glamorous when you think about it. But if we look at Pelosi’s net worth of $114,662,521, according to 2018 data by OpenSecrets, then we can see that this argument hardly applies. In fact, if you look at the chart of her individual wealth over the years, you’ll notice that her wealth exponentially increased with her position as speaker. It’s like her power in Congress directly translates to her own personal wealth accumulation – which, I think we can all agree, would be the definition of corruption. Along with being greedy, the outgoing speaker is a devout war hawk. She once told reporters in Damascus in 2007, during George W. Bush’s presidency, that “there is no division on policy between us and President Bush, be it on Israel, Palestine or Syria.” For anyone familiar with Bush’s genocidal Middle East scheme, this is basically like saying, “Yeah, we completely agree with Satan on everything.”

[..] To put in perspective how unpopular Pelosi is, according to Public Policy Polling, a higher share of Americans believe that JFK was killed by a conspiracy (51%) and that Bush intentionally misled the public on Iraq’s WMDs (44%) than like Pelosi, with just a bit less (37%) thinking global warming is a hoax. For the sake of our country, it is to be hoped that the 82-year-old will retire from political life after her term as speaker comes to a close. But unfortunately, as is ever the case with Pelosi, her career might just outstay its welcome and drag on endlessly.

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Atlas was completely silenced by Fauci and Birx. Strange story.

• Twitter’s COVID-19 Censorship Led to Loss of Life – Dr. Scott Atlas (ET)

When discussing censorship, there are often “vague implications” on the effects of that restriction. But by censoring medical science and health policy, “you are killing people,” Dr. Scott Atlas firmly stated in an interview that aired on Newsmakers by NTD and The Epoch Times on Dec. 28. “Censorship of the correct science and medical information, during this pandemic, absolutely killed people. It prevented people from making intelligent decisions. It prevented people from making the appropriate use of caution,” Atlas alleged of Twitter censoring doctors such as himself. Furthermore, Atlas charged, Twitter’s censorship was particularly “harmful” and “shocking” because the United States was founded on freedom.

“This kind of censorship was, in my view, unheard of in the United States,” Atlas stated. “It’s reminiscent of everything that we, as a free society and democracy, abhor about countries that are authoritarian, like China, the former USSR and now Russia, North Korea. “This is the kind of censorship that occurs in those countries. And now it’s occurring in our country.” According to Atlas, censorship at the government’s behest isn’t limited to social media and is far more insidious than first imagined. “It’s not simply blocking information. It’s also—being less overt about it—it’s limiting the public’s access to information. It’s impugning people who are speaking correct information,” Atlas said.

In Atlas’s view, there was only one acceptable COVID-19 narrative at the height of the pandemic, and that was the one put forward by those in authority, specifically Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx. Consequently, when other health authority figures, such as Atlas, advanced conflicting information, the above authorities enlisted help from the media to squash that dissent. “Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, etc., went to their friends in the media and undermined people like me. Who, in fact, were saying what was correct, what has been validated as being correct this entire time. “But the reality is, yes, the censorship of science kills people. And it killed people during this pandemic. There’s no doubt about that,” Atlas stated.

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“..he threw around so much data confetti that a person could have easily believed that he was downplaying the severity to promote calm. His intention was the opposite.”

• Fauci Fibbed on the Day Everything Changed (Tucker)

Anthony Fauci is finally gone from his government perch. Let us recall that it was he who set this calamity in motion, squandering his credibility, while taking down public health and much else with it. More than anyone, he bears responsibility, even if he was acting on others’ behalf. That is especially true if he was carrying out a hidden agenda (take your pick of theories). There was already growing political and societal panic on March 11, 2020, when the House Oversight and Reform Committee convened a hearing on the new virus circulating. Fauci was the key witness. The only question on everyone’s mind came down to the most primal fear: am I going to die from this thing, like in the movies?

This was one day before Trump’s announcement of the travel ban from Europe, the UK, and Australia, essentially sealing the borders of the US to an extent never before attempted, thus separating families and loved ones and trapping billions of people in their nation states. It was five days before the evil declaration by all health authorities to immediately shut down all places where people could congregate. These few days will remain a case study in irrationality and crowd madness. Fauci, on the day of his testimony, however, seemed like a paragon of stability. He was calm and clear, nearly bloodness in his tone. The substance of what he said, at the same time, was clearly designed to generate panic and create the conditions for a full lockdown.

He had the countenance of a doctor who was telling the family that a beloved father was terminally ill with 30 days to live. In particular, and in contrast to the testimony prepared by CDC/NIH, Fauci spoke to the severity of the virus. To the average member of Congress, the answer here was crucial because it addressed the only two serious issues: “Am I going to die?” and “Will I be blamed and politically punished if my constituents die?” To this, he responded with what seemed like science but was actually completely wrong, dreadfully wrong, catastrophically wrong. He claimed that we knew for sure that at best Covid was 10 times deadlier than the flu. In fact, he threw around so much data confetti that a person could have easily believed that he was downplaying the severity to promote calm. His intention was the opposite.

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Pushing infection?!

“A local official in Shanghai told The Epoch Times on Dec. 27 that his office had received instructions to do whatever it could to push the city into the COVID peak status.”

• How China Changed Its Zero-COVID Policy to a ‘Zero Non-COVID’ Policy (ET)

“Zero non-COVID” is the name that people in China are calling the regime’s new pandemic management policy. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has aggressively pushed the whole country towards an all-COVID-positive state. China’s annual rubber-stamp legislature is usually in session during the month of March. It is widely expected that the coming session will focus on saving China’s economy because it is on the edge of collapse after the three-year long zero-COVID policy. Party leader Xi Jinping is clearly willing to pay any price to reopen the country. Government employees of Chongqing City and Zhejiang Province received notices telling them return to their offices to work even if they have tested positive for COVID-19, as long as their symptoms are mild.

The total population of Chongqing City is more than 31 million, and Zhejiang province more than 57 million. Rumors on the Chinese internet talked about local governments of Chongqing City and Zhejiang Province being criticized by Beijing because these regions were too slow to reach a high percentage of COVID positive patients. A local official in Shanghai told The Epoch Times on Dec. 27 that his office had received instructions to do whatever it could to push the city into the COVID peak status. “Let those who are supposed to become positive become positive, and let those who are supposed to die, die,” said Song Wen (pseudonym). All state-owned media are mute about the current situation in the country, and reports from different government agencies are conflicting.

The Zhejiang Provincial government recorded one million new COVID cases on Dec. 25, while the Chinese national CDC only reported 2,983 new cases in the whole nation for the same day. The regime announced that on Jan. 8, 2023, China will totally reopen travel in and out of the country, which has triggered concern in countries around the globe. Italian officials reported on Dec. 28 that 50 percent of passengers on two flights from China tested positive for COVID. China, a country with a population of more than 1.4 billion, moved from the zero-COVID policy to a zero non-COVID policy within a month. The sudden change has left health experts worldwide feeling uncertain, because the explosion in COVID cases in China may lead to the whole world being exposed to new variants.

The Western media have widely attributed the sudden policy change to the late November White Paper protests against the zero-COVID policy in China. However, according to World Health Organization (WHO) emergencies chief Michael Ryan, the COVID spike in China was not due to the lifting of the government mandated restrictions. Before the policy change, “the disease was spreading intensively because I believe the control measures in themselves were not stopping the disease. And I believe China decided strategically that was not the best option anymore,” Ryan said.

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Wonder if this can/will carry over into other states. Perhaps not even necessary, depending on what they find.

• States Grand Jury to Hold Big Pharma Accountable for Covid Vaccines (BN)

A states grand jury to investigate Big Pharma for civil and criminal wrongdoing related to its COVID-19 mRNA vaccines has been approved by the Supreme Court of Florida. “A statewide grand jury shall be promptly impaneled for a term of twelve calendar months, to run from the date of impanelment, with jurisdiction throughout the State of Florida, to investigate crime, return indictments, make presentments, and otherwise perform all functions of a grand jury with regard to the offenses stated herein,” the court order stated. “The Petitioner, the Honorable Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, has alleged that good and sufficient reason exists and that it is in the public interest to impanel a statewide grand jury, with jurisdiction throughout the State of Florida, to investigate crime, return indictments, make presentments, and otherwise perform all functions of a grand jury with regard to the offenses listed,” the court order continued.

The grand jury probe will have sweeping scope and will include many targets for investigation.Those include: “Individuals, persons, and entities, including, but not limited to, pharmaceutical manufacturers (and their executive officers) and other medical associations or organizations involved in the design, development, clinical testing or investigation, manufacture, marketing, representation, advertising, promotion, labeling, distribution, formulation, packing, sale, purchase, donation, dispensing, prescribing, administration, or use of vaccines purported to prevent COVID-19 infection, symptoms, and transmission.” The grand jury will also investigate “other criminal activity or wrongdoing that the statewide grand jury uncovers during the course of the investigation if it determines that pursuing the criminal activity or wrongdoing is in the best interests of the investigation.”

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“The legacy media should worry about its reputation,” Musk retorted. “We have only just begun.”

• Elon Musk Says He Is ‘Open’ to Idea of Buying Out Major Media Companies (BN)

Billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk is entertaining the idea of buying out top digital media companies. Journalist and media commentator Dave Rubin started a Twitter thread discussing the tremendous influence that Google and YouTube have on the nation’s politics. “Let me get ahead of this one right now…” Rubin tweeted. “I think YouTube’s (and Google’s) manipulation for political purposes is FAR worse than Twitter’s.” “And we might find out as @rumblevideo will get discovery in its lawsuit against Google…” Rubin added. One user suggested Musk should try to buy Substack, which is a subscription-based platform used by many influential journalists.“You would have the information layer with Twitter and the narrative layer. Corporate media would then have specialize on reporting government leaks, from ‘people familiar with the matter,’” the user said.

Musk responded by saying: “I’m open to the idea.” Earlier in December, Musk also suggested he could try to buy Wikipedia, but was informed it was not for sale by its founder Jimmy Wales. The “Twitter Files,” a series of releases on Twitter showing the prior regime’s coordination between Big Tech and U.S. government agencies, has been spearheaded by a number of notable journalists, such as Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger. The subsequent Fauci Files and forthcoming Covid Files have additionally spurred independent journalistic accountability that has been denied by corporate media and the U.S. Congress. On Wednesday, Musk dropped a ‘Fauci bomb’ that exposed Twitter’s extreme bias on Covid issues.

“Almost no one seems to realize that the head of bioethics at NIH – the person who is supposed to make sure that Fauci behaves ethically – is his wife,” Musk remarked. “‘Gain-of-function’ in this context is just another way of saying ‘bioweapon’,” Musk added. “Some good nuggets in article. Important to note that Fauci authored 2012 paper arguing for gain-of-function research! Obama wisely put this on pause, but Fauci restarted it.” “Despite these glaring issues, Twitter nonetheless had an internal Slack channel unironically called ‘Fauci Fan Club’,” he added. Dr. Pierry Kory in a Twitter Spaces on Wednesday praised Twitter for providing a forum for physicians and policy critics to discuss the pervasive bias in medicine, which would help correct the “information assymetry” that has been perpetuated by the mainstream media and in medical journals.

Elon Musk also fired a warning shot to the corporate media about his mission to protect free speech and develop a forum for actual journalism. His response came after an attack by Axios reporter Hope King on CNBC, who said that his “reputation is in danger.” “The legacy media should worry about its reputation,” Musk retorted. “We have only just begun.”

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“Putin [..] probably has a greater influence on the dollar’s future than the US Treasury and the Fed combined.”

• In 2023 It Will Be All About The Dollar (Macleod)

One of the factors which supported gold in the final quarter, offsetting moderate ETF liquidation of about 300 tonnes over the year has been central bank demand, which the World Gold Council estimates to have been 364 tonnes by October. Including more recent purchases by China and others adds nearly 300 tonnes. The Chinese purchase was confirmed in recent days by Mark Bristow, CEO of Barrick Gold, the world’s second largest gold mining corporation, who claimed China had bought “tonnes of gold around the high 200-tonnes mark”. Why China has bought this gold, when it has ample bullion additional to its declared reserves, is an interesting question. The answer probably lies with President Xi’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia, where it was agreed that sales of oil would be paid in yuan, replacing the petrodollar with petroyuan.

According to Aljazeera, Saudi exports to China are worth $33.4bn equivalent, while its imports are $31.8bn, so the net surplus is $1.6bn. The official communiqué referred to “levelling up trade, investment and financial cooperation”. We know that China is keen to internationalise its markets, which is what investment and financial cooperation is about. The international section of the Shanghai Gold Exchange will be used by Saudi Arabia for its yuan to gold transactions. It is therefore likely that some of China’s purchase of nearly 300 tonnes in recent weeks will be to provide liquidity to backstop this market. With regard to prospects for next year’s gold price, it should be noted that the major factor will be the fate of the dollar. It appears likely that dollar oil prices will increase in the coming months, while foreign holders of dollars will continue to reduce their dollar exposure, which in the year to October declined by $3.8 trillion.

But a rising interest rate trend leading to falling financial asset values and the petroyuan replacing the petrodollar, events could coalesce into a perfect storm for the dollar. This is not how conventional analysts look at the gold price. They would argue that higher interest rates, if they occur, will drive gold lower. But that is an argument that denies the role of gold as money. Tell that to President Putin, who by cornering global hydrocarbon supplies probably has a greater influence on the dollar’s future than the US Treasury and the Fed combined.

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Still amazed at the strength of the USD in the face of so much opposition.

• USD Exchange Rates Hit Foreign Exchange Reserves (WS)

The last three years were complicated for the dominant reserve currency. At first there was the Fed’s $5-trillion money-printing orgy and interest-rate repression. Then there was raging inflation, which the Fed brushed off as “transitory.” Through this period, the dollar fell against other currencies. But then the Fed got religion and began to tighten: since March 2022, it has hiked rates by 425 basis points, accompanied over the past six months by $414 billion in QT so far. As a result, the dollar bounced off and shot higher against other currencies, particularly the euro and the yen – the #2 and #3 reserve currencies.

At the end of Q3, the share of US-dollar-denominated foreign exchange reserves rose to 59.8%, the third quarter in a row of increases, and the highest since Q3 2020, according to the IMF’s new COFER data on reserve currencies. Since the end of 2021, the share of the dollar rose by nearly 1 percentage point. But this increase came off a 26-year low at the end of 2021. Note that this does not include the dollar-denominated assets on the Fed’s balance sheet, but only dollar-denominated assets held by foreign central banks and foreign official institutions.

[..] The euro is the second largest reserve currency. The Eurozone encompasses 19 countries with a population of 340 million people. Over two decades ago, when the euro was being promoted to Europeans, they often talked about “parity” of the euro with the dollar on all levels: as global reserve currency, as trading currency, and as financing currency. This reserve currency parity made progress until the Euro Debt Crisis brought to light the euro’s structural weakness. And that put an end to this parity talk. Since then, the euro has had a share of about 20% of global reserve currencies (in Q3, 19.7%), about as large as all also-rans combined. But it was far below the dollar (black line, red dots in the chart below).

The yen (purple line at the top of the colorful spaghetti at the bottom in the chart) had a share of 5.3%. It became the #3 reserve currency in 2018, when its share surpassed that of the British pound. The British pound, the #4 reserve currency, had a share of 4.6% (blue line just under the yen in the spaghetti). The Chinese renminbi, the #5 reserve currency, dipped to a share of 2.8% in Q3 — only 2.8%, despite the huge size and global interconnection of China’s economy!

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“..the designed irrelevance of the European Union.”

• My Prediction On What 2023 Will Bring (Varoufakis)

This will be the year that Europeans realize the designed irrelevance of the European Union. The quagmire in Ukraine’s killing fields will bring on the realization of the need for a diplomatic process to end the war, but also the realization that the EU is radically incapable of playing any significant role in it. Who will represent Europe in these talks? The EU’s eastern and Nordic governments trust neither Paris nor Berlin – without whom, however, there can be no EU role.

On the economic front, the German mercantilist economic model will remain broken even as inflation abates – with dire repercussions for a eurozone still reliant on German surpluses. Europe’s deepening economic and geopolitical woes will, naturally, reinforce America’s hegemony and, with it, exacerbate its chosen policy of escalating a new cold war with China. Caught up in all this, humanity will be spending another year not investing in the green transition on which our species’ future hinges.

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Competing with the BRI is just a weird pipe dream. They wanted to do it in a year. China’s been building it for many years.

• 1 Year On, EU Alternative To China’s Belt And Road Fails To Deliver (SCMP)

In December 2021, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stood on a Brussels podium and confidently announced that the European Union’s new infrastructure drive would be a “true alternative” to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. “We are able to do that. Countries made their experience with the Chinese investments. They need better and different offers,” she said of Global Gateway, a spending drive that promised to mobilise up to €300 billion (US$318 billion) by 2027 for modern infrastructure projects outside the EU. With some blowback forming towards China’s trillion-dollar plan to connect China with the rest of the world after high-profile allegations of “debt-trap diplomacy”, both Europe and the United States were positioning to offer a different model, grounded in democratic norms, transparency of funding, and with sustainable objectives.

But one year on, observers are growing increasingly sceptical about von der Leyen’s claims. So far, Global Gateway has delivered plenty of hype, but little in terms of concrete projects, while confusion reigns in Brussels and beyond about what the initiative actually is. At a hearing in the European Parliament last month, lawmakers pressed officials for details, only to learn that none of the €300 billion would be “new”. “Global Gateway does not bring new financial means – there is no additional money when it comes to the EU level,” said Vincent Grimaud, an acting director in the commission’s department for international partnerships. The statement sparked incredulity from members of the parliament. “There’s no new money. And I’ve always held the view that if there’s no new money, there’s no new policy,” said Barry Andrews, an Irish lawmaker with the centrist Renew group.

“This is a communications exercise. It’s a strategy to put together what was already going to happen and present it as something new. And if our partners are tricked by this, then more fool them.” Hildegard Bentele, a German member from the centre-right European People’s Party, said she had been trying to find German companies who are “part of this adventure”, but had failed to locate any. “If I talk to journalists, journalists are asking me what are these Global Gateway projects? If I go on the website of the European Commission, I do not find it – this is really difficult,” she said. The commission’s efforts to promote the initiative have added to the bemusement. A recent gala event held in the metaverse to explain the Global Gateway concept to 18-35 year olds was lampooned online after just a handful of users logged on – despite the EU forking out €387,000 (US$410,000) to host it.

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“..the utter failure of the “green energy shift” in the face of real-world tests..”

TVA=Tennessee Valley Authority.

• New Year, New Things (Denninger)

So it is January 1st, 2023. Those reading this made it there. That’s good, I think. With that said here’s some “news” on The Ticker itself and my intentions going forward as to focus. You can take it for whatever you think its worth, but this, from my perspective, is the right way to look at things in the world. Of course there is room for plenty of other opinions all over the ‘net and so-called “traditional media” too, so it is what it is. If you remember a big shift occurred during the second Trump impeachment coverage, which I was doing on a daily basis, including most days a podcast. That of course was Covid, which showed up right on the tail end of that. That chapter has run in America and even the “mainstream media” is reporting that (like it or not, politicians) running stories about, for example, Atlantic City and its prospects forward – – and that they’re now returning to their regularly-scheduled debate (like, for instance, can you smoke in a casino?)

We’ve got plenty to talk about, such as, for instance, the utter failure of the “green energy shift” in the face of real-world tests. In a just world people would already be in irons and headed for prison; TVA, for example, was only able to produce 68% of its claimed capacity when all of it was required. WPLN tries to blame this on “natural gas being the bet” but in fact the reality of it is that TVA has shut down what was plenty of coal capacity and they did it on purpose over the space of years without replacing that with known reliable generation. In the summer the peak of demand tends to mostly-track with when the sun is up because its hottest and, while the peak shifts a bit off noon its not at 3:00 AM. In winter it is every time; its coldest when there’s no sun at all and thus the solar generation capacity is always zero at the times of peak demand in winter.

Thus any solar you put in must be counted as zero in the winter months when things get nasty, because it will either be snowing, icing (both of which wildly cut solar cell output) or at 3:00 AM when there’s no solar radiation available at all. Wind has similar issues; you can fit windmills with heating systems but obviously they require energy and they have both a lower and upper wind limit where they either produce nothing of value or must be intentionally shut down to avoid destruction. Thus you can’t count them as anything other than zero in the winter because you can’t count something that is less than 100% available, with proper maintenance and such, as “there.” We also know that in the face of such nasty weather EVs are worthless too. They’re nice secondary vehicles, basically, but when you must be able to rely on them they’re just not up to the job. People are figuring this out and that will continue; in short how you were sold these cars and light trucks was a lie and worse, the people selling them knew all that as they did the engineering on them.

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Richard Fleming

 

 

 

 

Bernardi WEF

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle January 1 2023

Jan 012023
 
 January 1, 2023  Posted by at 9:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  40 Responses »


René Magritte La belle captive 1946

 

• The End of 500 Years of Conquistador Civilisation (Batiushka)
• Hollande, Merkel Confessions ‘Formalization Of Betrayal’ – Russian Senator (RT)
• German Chancellor Merkel Has Just Declared Russia Was Never Pacified (Helmer)
• US Congress Urged To Assess ‘Risks’ Of Patriot Delivery To Ukraine (RT)
• Russian Oil Products Refined Abroad Exempt From Price Cap – US Treasury (RT)
• Elon Musk: Dr. Anthony Fauci ‘Cannot Be Regarded As A Scientist’ (DW)
• 10 Ways COVID Changed How People Think About Health–Part 1 (ET)
• The Shameful Suppression Of Pandemic Public Policy Dissidents (OCR)
• Age-Stratified Infection Fatality Rate Of Covid-19 In The Non-elderly (Ioannidis)
• Why It Isn’t Mad To Oppose The World Economic Forum (Gregg)
• In War for Control of Humanity (ET)
• Law Will Install Kill Switches In All New Cars (Y!)

 

 

Happy New Year!

 

 

54 states

 

 

 

 

Yeadon

 

 

 

 

Ed Dowd https://twitter.com/i/status/1609235208183726089

 

 

Just 5.5% of Americans aged 18 to 24 have received the bivalent COVID-19 booster, according to data from the CDC, while 66% of the same age group received the initial COVID-19 vaccine

 

 

 

 

 

 

This erudite priest has become one of my favorite writers.

• The End of 500 Years of Conquistador Civilisation (Batiushka)

[..] now we come to the end of the vital crossroads year of 2022 and a revolution that happens only once every 500 years. What we had been waiting for over so many years is now here. The date of 24 February 2022 has already gone down in world history. With the incredibly aggressive refusal of Washington to allow the Kiev puppet regime to grant freedom to the people of the Donbass, Russia has been obliged to turn to Defence Plan B, to partial mobilisation and the demilitarisation and liberation of all of the Ukraine and even beyond, as the suicidal attitudes of the Western world will oblige it to do. A limited operation has had to be turned by Western aggression into a full-scale war and the US/West/NATO has deprived itself of peace and prosperity through its suicidal sanctions. It means the end of Western Conquistador Civilisation.

Thus, we try to peer over the horizon into 2023 and beyond. What will come once the Ukrainian war is over? Some who follow the Western reporting of the conflict may be surprised by these statements. However, that reporting has been a strange mixture of delusional fantasies/wishful thinking and straightforward propaganda, organised by Western secret services and PR agencies, omitting truth, logic and reality. Venal journalists have been ordered to report such nonsense from on high – otherwise, they would have lost their careers and their income. Such reporting has essentially been destined to try and keep Western peoples under control in the hardships they are facing as a result of the suicidal decisions of their US-controlled political elites.

The US elite is making use of the meagre resources of its NATO vassals (so-called ‘allies’), using as its battlefield the Ukraine and as its cannon fodder Ukrainians and mercenaries. But Russian victory is inevitable, even if delayed because the US is deliberately and suicidally making the Ukraine into its Second Vietnam. The Western elite wants to fight ‘to the last Ukrainian’. (“We don’t care how many Ukrainians will die. How many women, children, civilians and military. We don’t care. Ukraine cannot take the peace decision. The peace decision can only be taken in Washington. But for now we want to continue this war, we will fight to the last Ukrainian.” Former US Senator Richard Blake). Therefore, it is immorally supplying all sorts of lethal arms for hundreds of thousands more of these hoodwinked Slavs to die or to be maimed.

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How are they ever going to negotiate peace after this?

• Hollande, Merkel Confessions ‘Formalization Of Betrayal’ – Russian Senator (RT)

Thousands of people have lost their lives in eastern Ukraine since 2014 because the West treated the Minsk agreements as scrap paper, the vice speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament said on Saturday. Senator Konstantin Kosachev was reacting to an admission by former French president Francois Hollande that the Minsk agreements were actually a ploy to buy time for the Kiev government to strengthen its military. This move should be credited for Ukraine’s “successful resilience” to Russia in the ongoing conflict with its neighbor, he added. Hollande was echoing a statement by former German chancellor Angela Merkel, who described the Minsk accords in December as “an attempt to give Ukraine time” to build up its armed forces.

The Minsk-1 and Minsk-2 deals were signed in 2014 and 2015 following mediation by Germany, France and Russia. They were designed to put an end to fighting between Kiev and the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk by giving them special status within the Ukrainian state. Kiev’s failure to implement those agreements has been cited as one of the reasons for Moscow launching its military operation on February 24. “For the West, the territorial integrity of Ukraine is all about control over land and not about achieving social consensus. It’s about territory, not people. It’s about violence, not negotiations,” Kosachev wrote on Telegram. This approach “directly contradicts so-called European values,” he said. The senator noted that Western attitudes towards the territorial integrity of the UK and Spain have been completely different in the face of Scotland and Catalonia’s push for independence.

“The confessions by Merkel and Hollande are a formalization of betrayal… The price of this betrayal is thousands of human lives lost over the past eight years of civil war in Ukraine. The civil war that the West didn’t stop by treating the Minsk agreements as scrap paper,” Kosachev wrote. According to the UN estimates, more than 14,000 people were killed in Donbass between 2014 and early 2022. The only co-author of the Minsk agreements that genuinely tried to act as a guarantor was Russia, the senator claimed. Moscow sided with the people and left the territorial issue aside for as long as “it was still possible to implement the Minsk accord,” he added. The People’s Republic of Donetsk and Lugnask, as well as Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, joined the Russian state in autumn after holding referendums. Kiev and its Western backers have called the votes a “sham” and refused to recognize the results.

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Merkel hated the Soviet Union and that is somehow supposed to make all this alright.

• German Chancellor Merkel Has Just Declared Russia Was Never Pacified (Helmer)

Angela Merkel, the chancellor who destroyed the Christian Democratic party in German politics always hated Russia and President Vladimir Putin most of all. She concealed this for as long as she calculated she needed to preserve the votes of East Germany, German businesses and unions for her re-election. But lie after lie she leaked through her staff to the German and English press. She even tried to promote a German candidate to rule the Ukraine in her war against Russia – until Washington installed their own in Kiev, and told Merkel to fall in line. She did. The outcome of Merkel’s rule between 2005 and 2021 is her 4-election failure to win a majority of votes or seats in the Bundestag; the defeat of every German voting bloc which had supported her in power in Berlin; the rebuilding of the Berlin Wall in the minds of the remaining Germans who disagree and who resist; and the return of Russia-hating and Adolf Hitler’s war aims for Germany against Moscow.

They are also the war aims of Joseph Kennedy, father financier of the US Democratic Party whose fascist line was tolerated by the White House until the fighting war started in earnest in Europe and Kennedy was gotten rid of. No comparable resistance to the alliance between German and American fascism exists today in the US, Europe, Berlin or London. The resistance, however, is worldwide; does not speak English as a native language; and the Russian armed forces are stronger than they ever were. The problem for them is how wide and deep the demilitarized zone must be drawn to defend Russia for the foreseeable future – how far west of the Dnieper River? To the Oder and Neisse Rivers of Poland and Germany, or to the Berlin Wall? With every new bombing, missile, and drone raid, the Stavka meeting daily in Moscow conducts its experiment in drawing the lines westward to the last Ukrainian, then to the last German.

In the Russian Foreign Ministry’s final briefing for the year, spokesman Maria Zakharova had not yet registered what Merkel said in Italian, in her interview with Corriere della Sera on December 27. That was: “ We all knew that it was a frozen conflict, that the problem was not solved, but this gave Ukraine precious time…the Cold War never really ended because Russia was never pacified.” For Merkel’s “problem to be solved” and “pacify Russia” read the US and NATO war to destroy Russia. “Today we act like this under the pressure of war,” she added, “which I approve of.” According to Zakharova, referring to Merkel’s earlier interviews in German with Die Zeit and Der Spiegel, “Angela Merkel’s confessions that the Minsk agreements only served to buy “time for Ukraine” leads to an interesting situation.

The Western countries prevented their media from visiting Donbass. At the same time, they needed time, as they say, for the Kiev regime to grow stronger. This is real evidence of what Russian leadership has been talking about. All this indicates that the Ukrainian army and the West are using unacceptable methods not only on the battlefield, but also in the information war that they have unleashed against Russia. The Kiev regime and its Western handlers are trying to hide their own crimes and the truth about what is really happening in Ukraine.”

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“..operation of the system requires dozens of trained personnel..”

“Training repair crews for the Patriot system alone takes some 53 weeks..”

“..estimated to cost about $4 million per missile.”

• US Congress Urged To Assess ‘Risks’ Of Patriot Delivery To Ukraine (RT)

The US Congress is facing issues “in both its legislative and oversight roles” over the planned delivery of Patriot anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) has warned. The research institute is a US government agency that provides expert support to members of Congress on a nonpartisan basis. The US government pledged to deliver one battery of the advanced MIM-104 Patriot anti-aircraft system to Kiev earlier this month, following an unannounced visit to Washington by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. The timeframe for the delivery remains unclear, as the operation of the system requires dozens of trained personnel. US media outlets have suggested that Ukrainian troops may be invited to America for training, which has yet to occur in the context of the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

Training repair crews for the Patriot system alone takes some 53 weeks, the CRS noted, adding that “there is a lot of learning to do before Ukraine will have a functioning Patriot system on the ground.” The research body also urged lawmakers to examine the exact source of the battery to be supplied to Kiev. It’s still unclear whether Washington itself or some of its NATO allies will provide the Patriot battery. The CRS warned that, ultimately, the “battery and associated interceptors being sent to Ukraine could be taken from existing army units and stockpiles.” “If it is withdrawn from other operational forces, such as US Central Command or US Indo-Pacific Command, transferring the system to Ukraine may create opportunity costs and potential risks in those theaters,” it said, adding that supplying a battery from the US homeland “could impede training or modernization cycles.”

The research agency also raised concerns over the “massive price tag” of the Patriot systems and their interceptor missiles, which are “estimated to cost about $4 million per missile.” According to available data, “a newly produced Patriot battery costs about $1.1 billion, including about $400 million for the system and about $690 million for the missiles,” the CRS said. Congress should therefore consider the question of whether certain “restrictions [would] be imposed on what types of hostile systems can be engaged by” the systems operated by Ukrainian troops, the agency suggested.

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They declare sanctions with big words…and then seek to undermine them.

• Russian Oil Products Refined Abroad Exempt From Price Cap – US Treasury (RT)

Seaborne deliveries of Russian petroleum products that are ‘substantially transformed’ outside Russia will not be subject to a price cap, the US Treasury Department said in preliminary guidance on the measure on Friday. The cap on Russian oil products is set to come into force on February 5. In order to be exempt from the price limit, Russian oil products must undergo one of a number of processes abroad, according to the document. These include distillation, thermal or fluid coking, catalytic cracking, hydrotreating, de-waxing, as well as other refinery processes involving chemical transformation, separation, conversion, or treatment. Previously published guidance confirmed that the same exemption applies to Russian oil if it undergoes deep refining outside of the country.

“Once Russian petroleum products or Russian oil are substantially transformed… in a jurisdiction other than the Russian Federation, they are no longer considered to be of Russian Federation origin, and thus the price cap no longer applies,” the document states. It noted, however, that blending operations, including gasoline, distillate and crude blending, would not be considered “substantial transformation” and therefore oil products resulting from them would still be subject to the price cap. The US Treasury Department has not yet provided specific figures for the price cap on Russian oil products. The price ceiling on Russian oil was set at $60 a barrel, but may be revised depending on market conditions.

It was introduced by the EU, the G7 countries, and Australia, and came into effect on December 5. Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree banning the supply of oil and petroleum products under contracts that apply or even mention the price cap. According to Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, Russia is ready for a partial output reduction that is expected as a result of the measure. Novak expects output to drop by between 500,000 and 700,000 barrels per day, or between 5% and 7% of the total production volume.

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Scientific method.

• Elon Musk: Dr. Anthony Fauci ‘Cannot Be Regarded As A Scientist’ (DW)

Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced Wednesday that the social media company’s new official policy will not penalize users for legitimately questioning scientific claims and narratives that are promoted in the media. The statement from Musk comes as he has taken multiple shots at leftists this week for buying into mainstream media narratives. “New Twitter policy is to follow the science, which necessarily includes reasoned questioning of the science,” Musk said. In a subsequent tweet, Musk responded to professor Gad Saad, who posted a video mocking Dr. Anthony Fauci and his decision to retire as Republicans are set to take over the House of Representatives next week.

“Anyone who says that questioning them is questioning science itself cannot be regarded as a scientist,” Musk said in response to the video about Fauci. Prior to Musk’s purchase of Twitter, users could often face suspension or permanent bans for questioning some scientific matters, especially those surrounding COVID, vaccines, and transgender issues. Musk called out other social media companies and Google earlier this week for alleged censorship on their platforms. Musk made the remarks in response to a tweet from left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald, who wrote: “For the crime of reporting that the US Security State agencies are heavily involved in Big Tech’s censorship regime, and for confessing that he found this deeply disturbing, liberals have spent a full week saying that @mtaibbi has mental health problems and needs therapy.”

Included in Greenwald’s tweet was a screenshot of one of journalist Matt Taibbi’s Twitter Files threads. “The government was in constant contact not just with Twitter but with virtually every major tech firm,” Taibbi said. “These included Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest, and many others. Industry players also held regular meetings without government.” Musk responded, “Most people don’t appreciate the significance of the point Matt was making: *Every* social media company is engaged in heavy censorship, with significant involvement of and, at times, explicit direction of the government.”

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Click the headline to get the other 9.

• 10 Ways COVID Changed How People Think About Health–Part 1 (ET)

1. Declining Trust in Vaccinations – Vaccines, once seen as sacrosanct in modern medicine, have begun to lose favor with the general public since the COVID-19 pandemic response. As early as June 2022, an analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that the uptake of influenza vaccine doses has fallen in states that also saw low COVID vaccine uptake. Authors of the study suggest that the two polarizing attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccines are influencing behavior toward other public health measures, and that those who approved of the COVID-19 vaccines readily took up the influenza annual vaccine, while those that declined the COVID-19 vaccines also declined subsequent vaccines.

“Safety concerns and mistrust of COVID-19 vaccines or government” may also have been associated factors, the authors wrote. The pandemic response to COVID-19 saw many changes to public health. For the first time in history, emergency-use products were mandated and heavily promoted by the government and social media with little to no disclosure of possible health risks and informed consent. Dr. Robert Malone, a biochemist and one of the inventors of the mRNA pharmaceutical platform, said mandating experimental drugs challenged basic bioethics. It has since resulted in “push back,” against Big Pharma by the public, said CEO of Progenabiome and gastroenterologist Dr. Sabine Hazan.

Despite the continuous “safe and effective” narrative from public health agencies on COVID-19 vaccinations, emerging reports of myocarditis, pericarditis, immunological, and neurological symptoms, as well as an unprecedented increase in vaccine adverse event reports suggest otherwise. A December poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports on COVID-19 vaccines found that 57 percent of Americans were concerned about “major side effects” of the vaccine. Hazan said that doctors are getting more and more of their patients coming to their clinics, asking why they are falling ill after vaccination, and have had to challenge the safe and effective narrative. “It’s hard to tell a parent who’s son was an 18-years-old athlete who died 4 days after a shot, that [the death] is not from the shot,” Hazan wrote to The Epoch Times.

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“It’s lucky that Twitter didn’t exist when Pope John Paul II proclaimed, “Be not afraid.” The Soviet Union might still be standing.”

• The Shameful Suppression Of Pandemic Public Policy Dissidents (OCR)

In March 2021, Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Martin Kulldorff answered a question on Twitter about whether younger age groups and people who had already had COVID needed to be vaccinated. “No,” he responded, “Thinking that everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed as thinking that nobody should.” Dr. Kulldorff recommended vaccination for “high-risk people and their care-takers,” but said it was not needed by children or those with prior natural infection. Internal emails at Twitter show that a moderator flagged the tweet by Kulldorff, a Harvard Medical School professor, as “false information” and a violation of the company’s COVID-19 misinformation policy. Twitter slapped a “Misleading” warning on the tweet and suppressed its reach. “This Tweet can’t be replied to, shared or liked,” the warning label stated.

Twitter flagged tweets as “misleading” if they diverged at all from the official government line, even if the tweets quoted or copied data directly from scientific journals or government websites. Dr. Andrew Bostom, an internal medicine specialist who was on the faculty of Brown University Medical School from 1997 to 2021, was permanently suspended from Twitter for tweeting a link to a scientific article on COVID-19 vaccines lowering sperm counts. Dr. Bostom’s account has been restored to Twitter under Elon Musk’s new regime, along with the accounts of many other distinguished, accomplished and frequently published scientists and medical doctors. One particularly revealing communication about content moderation unearthed by Zweig involves then-President Donald Trump’s personal experience as a COVID patient.

“I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 p.m.,” Trump tweeted on October 5, 2020. “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!” Twitter Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker, formerly a top attorney at the FBI, sent an email to two Twitter executives that read, “Why isn’t this POTUS tweet a violation of our COVID-19 policy (especially the ‘Don’t be afraid of Covid’ statement)?” One of the executives responded that the tweet is a “broad, optimistic statement” that “doesn’t incite people to do something harmful,” and so “doesn’t fall within the published scope of our policies.” However, the executive acknowledged that Baker might have a “different read on it.” It’s lucky that Twitter didn’t exist when Pope John Paul II proclaimed, “Be not afraid.” The Soviet Union might still be standing.

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It’s not the Infection Fatality Rate we’re worried about. It’s the vaccines.

• Age-Stratified Infection Fatality Rate Of Covid-19 In The Non-elderly (Ioannidis)

The largest burden of COVID-19 is carried by the elderly, and persons living in nursing homes are particularly vulnerable. However, 94% of the global population is younger than 70 years and 86% is younger than 60 years. The objective of this study was to accurately estimate the infection fatality rate (IFR) of COVID-19 among non-elderly people in the absence of vaccination or prior infection. In systematic searches in SeroTracker and PubMed (protocol: https://osf.io/xvupr), we identified 40 eligible national seroprevalence studies covering 38 countries with pre-vaccination seroprevalence data. For 29 countries (24 high-income, 5 others), publicly available age-stratified COVID-19 death data and age-stratified seroprevalence information were available and were included in the primary analysis.

The IFRs had a median of 0.034% (interquartile range (IQR) 0.013–0.056%) for the 0–59 years old population, and 0.095% (IQR 0.036–0.119%) for the 0–69 years old. The median IFR was 0.0003% at 0–19 years, 0.002% at 20–29 years, 0.011% at 30–39 years, 0.035% at 40–49 years, 0.123% at 50–59 years, and 0.506% at 60–69 years. IFR increases approximately 4 times every 10 years. Including data from another 9 countries with imputed age distribution of COVID-19 deaths yielded median IFR of 0.025–0.032% for 0–59 years and 0.063–0.082% for 0–69 years. Meta-regression analyses also suggested global IFR of 0.03% and 0.07%, respectively in these age groups. The current analysis suggests a much lower pre-vaccination IFR in non-elderly populations than previously suggested.

Large differences did exist between countries and may reflect differences in comorbidities and other factors. These estimates provide a baseline from which to fathom further IFR declines with the widespread use of vaccination, prior infections, and evolution of new variants.

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“..Schwab’s core commitment is to political and economic arrangements which used to be known as corporatism.”

• Why It Isn’t Mad To Oppose The World Economic Forum (Gregg)

A key concept for Schwab’s vision of a reset world is ‘stakeholder capitalism.’ In his 2021 book Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy that Works for Progress, People and Planet, Schwab defines it as ‘a form of capitalism in which companies do not only optimise short-term profits for shareholders, but seek long-term value creation, by taking into account the needs of all their stakeholders, and society at large.’ By value-creation, Schwab partly has in mind economic prosperity. But he also calls for the promotion of three other values: ‘People,’ ‘Planet,’ and ‘Peace.’ These rather broad concepts illustrate just how all-embracing Schwab’s stakeholder capitalism seeks to be.

So who are the stakeholders who will collaborate to usher in the four Ps? For Schwab, they are ‘governments,’ ‘companies,’ and ‘civil society’ (NGOs, unions, etc.). At this point we arrive at the essence of Schwab’s grand redesign. For all his invocation of the predictable woke pieties, Schwab’s core commitment is to political and economic arrangements which used to be known as corporatism. Schwab is quite explicit about this. In one article describing the origins of his present outlook, he writes: “This approach was common in the postwar decades in the West, when it became clear that one person or entity could only do well if the whole community and economy functioned. There was a strong linkage between companies and their community. In Germany, for example, where I was born, it led to the representation of employees on the board, a tradition that continues today.”

Corporatism is a broad concept. It can run the gamut from the hyper-authoritarian version embraced by Mussolini’s Italy to worker-boss structures of the type described by Schwab in postwar western Europe. All forms of corporatism, however, share some common themes. One is the necessity of limiting market competition in order to preserve social cohesion. Another is mandating cooperation between representative groups of different social and economic sectors – a process overseen and, if necessary, enforced by government officials for the sake of the common good. What, you might ask, could be wrong with this? The answer is: plenty.

For a start, corporatism – including its Schwabian expression – isn’t big on freedom. It’s all about forming and then maintaining a consensus on economic and social policies. For this reason, corporatism doesn’t cope well with dissent. Indeed, it discourages any questioning of the consensus, whether the issue is tax-rates or climate change. The language of corporatism, like that of Schwab’s WEF, may be one of coordinated consultation, but the agenda is one of control. For what matters is the harmonisation of views, no matter how absurd the idea and or how high the cost in liberty.

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The Gorgon Stare.

• In War for Control of Humanity (ET)

Inventor of mRNA vaccines Dr. Robert Malone, having worked with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) for many years, warns that a war is being waged by the government for control of people’s minds, and that social media platforms are being weaponized in this war and are “actively employed” by the intelligence community to influence what people think and feel. “This new battleground, in which your mind and your thoughts, your very emotions are the battleground. It is not about territory,” Malone said during a recent interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program. “Twitter, it’s clear now, has become the premium platform for shaping emerging global consensus about the topics of the day.”

During his work with the DOD, Malone became aware of companies researching multilingual programs that assess the emotional content of the language used on social media, which those companies then use to “map relationship clouds,” including what topics people are discussing, who the influencers are, and who is at the fringe of that cloud, said Malone. Phenomena like being deplatformed, shadowbanned, and a “tweet” going viral is a part of this weaponizing of social media. “By using these tools of manipulating what information, what tweets you put out, what messages you put out to your influencer cloud, they can modulate how those people behave,” he said. “You can actually very actively control what individuals are thinking, the information that they’re gathering, what they’re being influenced to do.”

The people who control information warfare weapons can modulate the messaging within the influencer clouds that can be readily mapped, Malone said. “Your current state of mind, based on the language that you’re using and the topics that you’re talking about, can be mapped very precisely, psychologically,” he said. “It can be tied into a web of influence relationships.” Members of a specific “influencer cloud” can be tracked using the military spy technology called the Gorgon Stare, said Malone. This spy technology is capable of detecting movements including what car you drive, who gets in your car, and where you go, he said.

The Gorgon Stare is a surveillance technology, originally created to target terrorist groups, that utilizes high-tech cameras mounted on drones to capture video images of large areas, such as entire cities. Then artificial intelligence is used to analyze the surveillance footage. Arthur Holland Michel, author of the book, “Eyes in the Sky: The Secret Rise of Gorgon Stare and How It Will Watch Us All,” called this technology the “pinnacle of aerial surveillance” during a 2019 interview with the CATO Institute and said the things he learned while writing the book were so troubling, they kept him up at night.

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Feel lucky?

• Law Will Install Kill Switches In All New Cars (Y!)

According to an article written by former U.S. Representative Bob Barr, hidden away in the recently passed infrastructure bill, the very one I warned before would negatively impact drivers across the country if it were to pass, is a measure to install vehicle kill switches into every new car, truck, and SUV sold in this country. The regulation likely won’t be enforced for five years, so maybe there’s time to do something about this. As we’ve seen both in this country and others recently, what constitutes “law-abiding” can change drastically overnight. For example, in September a car was pulled over in New Zealand and the occupants arrested when police discovered the trunk was full of Kentucky Fried Chicken meals. They were smuggling the fast food to customers in locked-down Auckland, against quarantine measures. Yet not too long before, delivering restaurant orders to people was considered a reputable, legal activity.

It gets even better: Barr points out that the bill, which has been signed into law by President Biden, states that the kill switch, which is referred to as a safety device, must “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.” In other words, Big Brother will constantly be monitoring how you drive. If you do something the system has been programmed to recognize as driver impairment, your car could just shut off, which could be incredibly dangerous. There is the possibility the kill switch program might measure your driving as impaired, then when you try to start the car up again the engine won’t fire up. That would potentially leave you stranded.

But wait, there’s more. This kill switch “safety” system would be open, or in other words there would be a backdoor. That would allow police or other government authorities to access it whenever. Would they need a warrant to do that? Likely not. Even better, hackers could access the backdoor and shut down your vehicle. Barr points out what a tremendous violation of Americans’ privacy this is, and he’s right. In addition, the term “impaired driving” isn’t defined by the legislation, so it would be open to interpretation by regulators such as the Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Do you want government regulators helping to write algorithms which might force your car to pull over and stop because you might be a little tired instead of tipsy?

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Last ever Calvin and Hobbes, Dec 31 1995.

 

 

Walters https://twitter.com/i/status/1609069514049880064

 

 

 

 

Brush strokes

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle December 31 2022

Dec 312022
 
 December 31, 2022  Posted by at 9:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  70 Responses »


Edvard Munch Ashes 1894

 

• Forecast 2023 — Get Out of the Way if You Can’t Lend a Hand (Kunstler)
• Ukraine Lashes Out At Orbán’s Pro-Peace Stance On Russia-Ukraine Conflict (ZH)
• Zelensky Gives His Government More Censorship Powers (RTN)
• Ukraine Is ‘First Multipolar’ Conflict – Dugin (RT)
• MIT Adopts Free Speech Resolution (Turley)
• Fauci Leaves a Broken Agency for His Successor (Makary)
• Trump Tax Returns Released By House Committee: He Paid Little In Taxes (NBC)
• Trump’s Tax Returns Reveal President’s Foreign Bank Accounts (Az.)
• President Bites Agent (Turley)
• Ex-Stripper Seeks To Change Name Of Hunter’s Child To Biden (RT)
• Biden Family Disowns Hunter’s 4-Year-Old Daughter (ZH)
• Uncharged J6 Witness Ray Epps Transcript Released (ZH)
• He’s Cooked… (Denninger)

 

 

 

 

Anti Energy

 

 

 

 

 

 

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life. – Charles Darwin

 

 

 

 

“Will mysteries be revealed in 2023? Personally, I think so. Things are lining up in that direction, though who knows whether the damage can even be reversed at this point.”

• Forecast 2023 — Get Out of the Way if You Can’t Lend a Hand (Kunstler)

“The powerful are panicking, and so they should. Their secrets are leaking.” —Miranda Devine

“It’s all just snake oil. We want to save the planet, and the life upon it, but we’re not willing to pay the price and bear the consequences. So we make up a narrative that feels good and run with it.” — Raul Ilargi Meijer

“2023 could be a pivotal year for USA if the pervasive lies can be exposed, digested, and believed. All that exposure has to happen amidst continuing boondoggles toward the Great Reset agenda.” – Truman Verdun

“More borrowing only ever makes sense if you are expecting a larger economy in the future. All economic expansion is based on energy. Countries with energy can expand, those without cannot.” — Chris Martenson

“To be an enemy to America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.” — Henry Kissinger

It’s hard to contemplate 2023 without spiraling into nausea, tachycardia, and cold sweat. But it is an inescapable duty here to lay out the probabilities ahead. I’ve been doing this forecast thing for some years now, and, of course, I am often wrong, so take some solace in that and relax. Maybe the new year will be all unicorns, rainbows, talking gerbils, and candied violets. 2022 sure was a cold shower. The long emergency I talk so much about finally got up to cruising speed, with the ectoplasmic “Joe Biden” revving our country into economic, political, and cultural collapse — a hat-trick of calamity — and he did it more swiftly and directly than any emperor managed in late-day Rome, with policies and actions 180-degrees contra to America’s public interest — cheered on by a thinking class that had obviously lost it consensual mind.

Was it simply to do the opposite of what the loathed and detested Mr. Trump would do? Could it be that simple or that automatic? The thinking class’s eyes have a zombified glaze these days. It’s obvious, you might agree, that “Joe Biden” is not in charge of anything, really. He’s an animatronic figure programmed to read a teleprompter and not much else. Half the time, he can’t even find his way off-stage after doing that one trick. The claque pulling his strings just may be the crew you see around him (you know, WYSIWYG): Susan Rice, Ron Klain, Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, and company. Ms. Rice has kept herself completely hidden backstage at the White House for two years. Nobody ever hears about her or sees her. Weird, a little bit, for the Director of the Domestic Policy Council.

Or else, are there puppeteers deeper in the shadows, say, “JB’s” former boss Barack Obama, Der Schwabenklaus and his WEF retinue, Bill Gates and other tech billionaires, the “systemically important” bankers, George Soros…? Or some coven of super-elite warlocks we’d never heard of? The US leadership dynamic is truly mystifying and has been for two whole years. Will mysteries be revealed in 2023? Personally, I think so. Things are lining up in that direction, though who knows whether the damage can even be reversed at this point. And now onto the shape of things to come….

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“Ukraine can continue fighting only as long as the United States supports them with money and weapons. If the Americans want peace, then there will be peace.”

• Ukraine Lashes Out At Orbán’s Pro-Peace Stance On Russia-Ukraine Conflict (ZH)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been harshly criticized by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, according to remarks published on the ministry’s website on Tuesday, Dec. 27, German news agency dpa reports. Orbán’s statements “demonstrate a pathological disregard for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people who are fighting against Russian aggression,” the Ukrainian ministry said, accusing the Hungarian leader of “political short-sightedness.” As Denis Albert reports at Remix News, the comments came in response to a statement by Orbán that the war could end if the United States stopped supplying arms to Ukraine. Orbán was working in this way towards Ukraine’s defeat, even if it would increase the danger of Russian aggression directed at Hungary, the Ukrainian ministry said.

“The Hungarian leader should ask himself if he wants peace,” the ministry said in a statement. In an earlier interview Orbán said, “Ukraine can continue fighting only as long as the United States supports them with money and weapons. If the Americans want peace, then there will be peace.” As Remix News reported, in a recent interview Orbán said that while it is important for his government that Russia poses no security threat, continued economic relations is essential for not only Hungary, but also for the entire European economy. “The answer to the question of whether we are on the right or wrong side of history is that we are on the Hungarian side of history. We support and help Ukraine, it is in our interest to preserve a sovereign Ukraine, and it is in our interest that Russia does not pose a security threat to Europe, but it is not in our interest to give up all economic relations with Russia. We are looking at these issues through Hungarian glasses, not through anyone else’s,” Orbán said.

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“A state that would apply such provisions simply has no place in the European Union..”

• Zelensky Gives His Government More Censorship Powers (RTN)

On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed off a controversial bill that substantially increases the government’s regulatory authority over the news media. The new law will give the government new censorship powers and is a fresh blow to press freedoms in the country. The legislation significantly increases the powers of Ukraine’s state broadcasting regulator to allow it to regulate both the print and online news media. Further, it allows for fines to be imposed on media outlets, their licenses to be revoked without due process, and even some websites to be temporarily blocked without going through the courts. Finally, it gives the regulator authority to order search giants such as Google and other social media platforms to remove content.

Zelensky’s actions are already being criticized by press freedom advocates. As this bill moved through Parliament, members of international organizations such as the European Federation of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists expressed their concerns about its provisions. “The coercive regulation envisaged by the bill and in the hands of a regulator totally controlled by the government is worthy of the worst authoritarian regimes. It must be withdrawn. A state that would apply such provisions simply has no place in the European Union,” said EFJ General Secretary Ricardo Gutiérrez. “Media regulation should be implemented by a body independent of the government and its objective should be media independence, not media control,” Gutiérrez added.

“Ukraine’s media bill seriously imperils press freedom in the country by tightening government control over information at a time when citizens need it the most,” remarked Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in a statement. “Ukrainian legislators should abandon the bill, or at least pause its progress in parliament until the European Union can weigh in with recommendations.” Members of Ukraine’s National Union of Journalists strongly opposed the bill due to its potential to reduce fundamental freedoms within the country. Nevertheless, Yevheniia Kravchuk, the deputy chairperson for Parliament’s Information Policy Committee contradicted those worries by stating that Ukraine’s media legislation had not been updated since the absence of the internet 16 years prior. This new broader bill was needed to bring their media laws up to date and provide greater access to accurate information and technologies.

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“Multipolarity is “not against the West as such,” Dugin said, but “against the claim of the West to be the model, to be the unique example” of history and human understanding..”

• Ukraine Is ‘First Multipolar’ Conflict – Dugin (RT)

The conflict in Ukraine is the world’s “first multipolar war,” in which Russia is fighting for the right of every civilization to choose its own path while the West wishes to maintain its totalitarian hegemonic globalism, Aleksandr Dugin told RT in an exclusive interview on Friday. Multipolarity is “not against the West as such,” Dugin said, but “against the claim of the West to be the model, to be the unique example” of history and human understanding. The current Russophobia and hatred of Russia, he argued, are a relic of Cold War thinking and the “bipolar understanding of the architecture of international relations.” When the Soviet Union self-destructed in December 1991, it left the “global Western liberal civilization” in control of the world, Dugin noted.

This hegemon is now refusing to accept the future in which it would be “not one of the two, but one of [the] few poles,” put in its proper place as “just a part, not the whole, of humanity.” Dugin described the West as “pure totalitarian liberalism,” which pretends to have the absolute truth and seeks to impose it on everyone. “There is inherent racism in Western liberalism,” the philosopher told RT’s Donald Courter, because it “identifies the Western historical, political, cultural, experience [as] universal.” “Nothing universal exists in multipolarity,” Dugin insisted, explaining that each civilization can and should develop its own values. Russia specifically needs to overcome centuries of Western ideological dominance, he said, and create something “new, fresh, creative” that would nonetheless stand “in direct refutation of the Western liberal hegemony, against open society, against individualism, against liberal democracy.”

He rejected the “dogmatic” approaches of Marxism, fascism or liberalism to politics and economics, saying that Russia ought to strive for a “holistic” approach in which the spiritual would be more important than the material. Obsession with material goods ends up enslaving people, Dugin told RT. Dugin lamented the December 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union as a “suicide” perpetrated by the power-hungry bureaucrats in Moscow. He echoed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s description of it as a “geopolitical disaster” and described it as a major victory for “Sea Power.” While the USSR was the polar opposite of the Russian Empire in terms of ideology, he explained, in geopolitical terms the two were one and the same, the strongest power in what English geographer Harold Mackinder described as the global Heartland.

While some Western observers have dubbed Dugin “Putin’s brain,” the 60-year-old philosopher and author has no official relationship with the Kremlin. He is an outspoken supporter of the current military operation in Ukraine – whose independence he considers a Western imperial project aimed against Russian sovereignty. Dugin’s daughter Darya, 29, was assassinated in August by a car bomb planted by Ukrainian agents. Though Kiev has officially denied it, US intelligence officials later said they believe someone in the Ukrainian government was responsible.

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MIT Adopts Free Speech Resolution: “We Cannot Prohibit Speech as Offensive or Injurious.”

• MIT Adopts Free Speech Resolution (Turley)

We recently discussed schools joining the University of Chicago free speech alliance. Now, the faculty of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have adopted a resolution defending freedom of speech and expression, including speech deemed “offensive or injurious.” It is a triumph for free speech. However, while 98 faculty voted for the resolution, 52 professors voted against the free speech principles. The Free Expression Statement is a balanced affirmation of the essential role of free speech in higher education. “A commitment to free expression includes hearing and hosting speakers, including those whose views or opinions may not be shared by many members of the MIT community and may be harmful to some. This commitment includes the freedom to criticize and peacefully protest speakers to whom one may object, but it does not extend to suppressing or restricting such speakers from expressing their views. Debate and deliberation of controversial ideas are hallmarks of the Institute’s educational and research missions and are essential to the pursuit of truth, knowledge, equity, and justice.”

What is unnerving is that a third of the faculty disagreed with the resolution despite the following reservation: “MIT does not protect direct threats, harassment, plagiarism, or other speech that falls outside the boundaries of the First Amendment. Moreover, the time, place, and manner of protected expression, including organized protests, may be restrained so as not to disrupt the essential activities of the Institute.” However, the statement makes the key acknowledgment that “we cannot prohibit speech that some experience as offensive or injurious.” That is clearly unacceptable for many in academic. Silencing opposing views or voices has become a core principle for many professors who now refer to free speech as an ever present danger on campuses. MIT has not always stood by free speech. As we previously discussed, the university yielded to cancel culture by barring a guest lecture to be given by University of Chicago geophysicist Dorian Abbot in 2021.

MIT also attracted criticism over abandoning standardized testing to achieve greater diversity. It later reversed that decision. The new resolution is a victory for the “MIT Free Speech Alliance,” which has fought to defend free speech against a growing number of faculty. University of Chicago emeritus biology Professor Jerry Coyne raised some good-faith objections on his Why Evolution Is True blog, including the resolution “calling for ‘civility and mutual respect’, as well as ‘considering the possibility of offense and injury’. You simply cannot have free speech without offense and injury. Abbot’s invitation provoked precisely such offense and injury, with many people supporting his deplatforming.” However, the references are part of a graph that refers to the personal responsibility of faculty to maintain civility and mutual respect. It follows an express protection for offensive speech:

“We cannot prohibit speech that some experience as offensive or injurious. At the same time, MIT deeply values civility, mutual respect, and uninhibited, wide-open debate. In fostering such debate, we have a responsibility to express ourselves in ways that consider the prospect of offense and injury and the risk of discouraging others from expressing their own views. This responsibility complements, and does not conflict with, the right to free expression. Even robust disagreements shall not be liable to official censure or disciplinary action. This applies broadly. For example, when MIT leaders speak on matters of public interest, whether in their own voice or in the name of MIT, this should always be understood as being open to debate by the broader MIT community.”

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“..we still don’t have randomized trials for so many drug recommendations, including the new bivalent vaccine, COVID vaccine boosters in young people, the optimal vaccine dosing interval, and even the antiviral drug Paxlovid in vaccinated people.”

• Fauci Leaves a Broken Agency for His Successor (Makary)

After 54 years at the NIH, tomorrow marks Dr. Anthony Fauci’s last day in office as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). While many were angered by his changing and conflicting recommendations, I am not. They are mere symptoms of a much larger and deeper problem. Dr. Fauci’s agency failed to promptly fund key research during the pandemic. That research would have abruptly ended many of the COVID controversies that divided our country. In a study of NIH funding published in The BMJ, my Johns Hopkins colleagues and I found that in the first year of the pandemic, it took the NIH an average of five months to give money to researchers after they were awarded a COVID grant. This should be unacceptable during a health emergency.

Consider the question of how COVID spread—was it airborne or spread on surfaces? (Remember all those people wiping down their groceries?) It lingered as an open question without good research for months, as Fauci spent hundreds of hours on television opining on the matter. Finally, on August 17, 2021—a year and a half after COVID lockdowns began—Dr. Fauci’s agency released results of a study showing the disease was airborne. Thanks for that. The announcement on the NIAID website, titled “NIH Hamster Study Evaluates Airborne and Fomite Transmission of SARS-CoV-2” came 18 months too late. Imagine if, in February 2020, Dr. Fauci had marshaled his $6 billion budget, vast laboratory facilities, and teams of experts to conduct a definitive lab experiment to establish that COVID was airborne.

On this question and many others throughout the pandemic, our problem was not that the science changed—it’s that it wasn’t done. NIH funding for COVID research was also erratic. The NIH spent almost $1.2 billion on long COVID research, but virtually nothing on masks, natural immunity, COVID in children, or vaccine complications. Ironically, the NIH spent more than twice as much on aging research as it did on COVID research in the first year of the pandemic, according to my team’s analysis. I’m all for aging research, but not when a novel virus is killing thousands of Americans per day. A randomized controlled trial is the gold-standard method to establish a drug’s effectiveness. Yet remarkably, for COVID, we still don’t have randomized trials for so many drug recommendations, including the new bivalent vaccine, COVID vaccine boosters in young people, the optimal vaccine dosing interval, and even the antiviral drug Paxlovid in vaccinated people.

More disturbing, our country has been deeply divided for years about whether to mask children. The partisan arguing and harm to children could have been avoided if a proper study settled the science early. Because the NIH moved at glacial speed, most of our COVID knowledge came from overseas. The critical discovery that steroids reduce COVID mortality by one-third came only after European researchers did a randomized trial that Fauci’s agency should have commissioned quickly. Similarly, a conclusive study showing that Vitamin D reduces COVID mortality, published last month, arrived two years too late.

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Zeroburger.

• Trump Tax Returns Released By House Committee: He Paid Little In Taxes (NBC)

A House committee on Friday made public six years of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns, which showed he paid relatively little in federal taxes in the years before and during his presidency. The House Ways and Means Committee had voted to make the thousands of pages of federal returns public in a party-line vote last week, but their release was delayed while staffers redacted sensitive personal information like Social Security numbers from the documents. Friday’s release, the culmination of years of legal wrangling and speculation, included both personal and business records. Trump on Friday blasted the release in a statement and on his Truth Social platform, saying “the Democrats should have never done it, the Supreme Court should have never approved it, and it’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people.”

He also maintained the returns he fought to keep hidden — despite modern precedent that presidents make their returns public — “show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises.” The panel’s top Republican, Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, called the release of the documents “unprecedented,” and said Democrats had unleashed “a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond the former president, overturning decades of privacy protections for average Americans.” “This is a regrettable stain on the Ways and Means Committee and Congress, and will make American politics even more divisive and disheartening. In the long run, Democrats will come to regret it,” Brady said.

The returns confirm much of what was contained in a 39-page report from the Joint Committee on Taxation released last week, including summaries from Trump’s personal tax forms and business entities, but also some new information as well. The returns show that in the 2020 tax year, Donald and Melania Trump reported $78 million in gross income from 16 foreign countries — including the United Kingdom, Ireland and St. Martin, where Trump has properties. The gross income also included a reported $1.2 million from “other countries” — abbreviated as “OC” — that were not specified.But the couple also appeared to owe nothing in federal taxes, after reporting large deductions and expenses that resulted in a net loss of $15 million. Trump then claimed a $5 million refund, according to the return.

Trump also reported zero charitable donations that year, the returns show. That was an outlier for Trump during his time in office — he reported $1.8 million in charitable giving in 2017, and just over $500,000 in charitable donations in 2018 and 2019, the returns show. Trump pledged to donate his $400,000 presidential salary while in office, money he gave to various government agencies.

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You can bet it’s all legal.

• Trump’s Tax Returns Reveal President’s Foreign Bank Accounts (Az.)

Newly released tax returns for former President Donald Trump have shed light on his business losses, complicated tax set-ups and tax payments during his White House years. However, they are unlikely to have a major political impact as he eyes another presidential run, experts say. The documents confirmed that Mr Trump paid no federal taxes in 2020 and only $750 (£622) in 2016 and 2017. He paid close to $1m in 2018, however. A long legal battle led to the release of the records, and Mr Trump criticised the disclosure, warning that it will deepen the US political divide. He added that the returns “show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises.”

Although there’s no law requiring it, it is tradition for presidents to publish their tax returns. US presidents are paid a salary like any worker, but many also earn income from their personal businesses and investments. The newly released documents include tax returns and related documents for Donald Trump, the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust and seven corporate entities. They represent only a fraction of the former president’s over 400 separate business interests. Previously released figures show that Mr Trump paid a total of $1.1m (£906,587) in federal income taxes from 2016 to 2019, all but $1,500 of which was paid in one year. He paid no taxes in 2020, the final year of his presidency.

The documents also show that Mr Trump, who had international business dealings, held bank accounts in Ireland, the United Kingdom and China for a period that ran from 2015-17. The overseas accounts were notable, as Mr Trump held the White House in 2017, giving him significant power over US foreign policy. From 2018 onward, Mr Trump only reported having an account in the UK.

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“The President is quoted as saying “Look, the Secret Service are never up here. It didn’t happen.“

“..female agents complained about his exposing himself to them by insisting on swimming in the nude..”

• President Bites Agent (Turley)

“It didn’t happen.” According to published excerpts, President Joe Biden is denying an account of the Secret Service about an agent being attacked by his German Sheppard, Major, at the White House. The statement from the President raises some interesting legal questions after he effectively called an agent a liar about an official report on one of many bite incidents with the Biden dogs. If the quote is accurate, the criticism could not only be viewed as defamatory but another unfounded attack on the integrity and veracity of federal employees by the President. This should not be dismissed as some sensational “President Bites Agent” story. It raises long-standing concerns over the lack of recourse for agents endangered or abused by protected individuals. Indeed, the controversy raises some of the issues litigated during the Clinton Administration over the status of Secret Service agents.

The book, “The Fight of His Life,” by author Chris Whipple details Biden’s continued mistrust of the Secret Service and his alleged avoidance of saying anything in front of agents. Biden has long had tense relations with the Secret Service, particularly after female agents complained about his exposing himself to them by insisting on swimming in the nude. The book claims that Biden has his own “deep state” conspiracy theories. Biden reportedly views the Secret Service as essentially the enemy within, suggesting that it is populated by “MAGA sympathizers” due to the fact that the service “is full of white ex-cops from the South who tend to be deeply conservative.”

However, this is a major escalation in that reportedly strained relationship. Some of us previously discussed the problem of the Biden dogs (including his other dog Champ) biting agents, attacks that would ordinarily lead to liability. In one eight-day period, agents were bitten every day. Indeed, outside of the White House, the Biden dogs would qualify for strict liability under the common law as displaying a vicious disposition. Under the common law, the Bidens could claim that Major and Champ were entitled to “one free bite.” The “one free bite rule” is a commonly misunderstood torts doctrine — suggesting that you are not subject to strict liability until after the first time your dog bites someone. In fact, you are subject to strict liability whenever you know or have reason to know of the vicious propensity of your animal. That can be satisfied by conduct such as frequent snapping or aggressive behavior.

[..] Now Biden is quoted as saying that he does not trust the Secret Service and believes that one agent is outright lying about one attack by Major. The President is quoted as saying “Look, the Secret Service are never up here. It didn’t happen.” The incident was reported by the agent and photos were taken to document that attack. The President’s denial of the location ignores the confirmed attack itself. Other agents complained about the disregard of the agents by the Bidens in the repeated attacks, including on agent who reportedly insisted that the president personally pay to repair a ripped coat after one attack on March 6, 2021.

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What a loser. No, not the mother.

• Ex-Stripper Seeks To Change Name Of Hunter’s Child To Biden (RT)

Lunden Roberts, the former exotic dancer who gave birth to Hunter Biden’s love child in 2018, is reportedly seeking legal permission for her daughter to use her father’s surname. The 4-year-old girl, who has never met her father or her paternal grandfather, US President Joe Biden, would “benefit from carrying the Biden family name,” Roberts said this week in an Arkansas court filing. The request, which was first reported by the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette on Thursday, was filed in a paternity case that Hunter Biden reopened in September to seek a reduction in his child support payments. The “Biden name is now synonymous with being well educated, successful, financially acute and politically powerful,” Clinton Lancaster, a lawyer representing the ex-stripper, said in the filing.

He added that while the daughter remains estranged from her father’s family, “to the extent this is misconduct or neglect, it can be rectified by changing her last name to Biden so that she may undeniably be known to the world as the child of the defendant and member of the prestigious Biden family.” Roberts, now 31, filed her paternity case in 2019, after Biden denied that he fathered her child. At one point, he claimed to have “no recollection” of meeting the woman, a former college basketball player who was performing under the stage name ‘Dallas’ at a Washington strip club. At the time, he was reportedly dating the widow of his deceased brother, Beau Biden. A DNA test showed that Hunter Biden was the child’s father. He agreed in January 2020, when his father was running for president, to pay child support to Roberts.

He married a South African woman, environmental activist Melissa Cohen, in May 2019, just six days after meeting her. The couple had a son in March 2020. Last September, Biden asked the Arkansas court to cut his child support payments because he could no longer afford them. He cited a change in his “financial circumstances, including but not limited to his income.” His young daughter currently goes by the name Navy Joan Roberts. President Biden reportedly refused to provide Secret Service protection for the girl, even after she and her mother received threats. The elder Biden has been criticized for refusing to acknowledge his granddaughter.

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A bit more of this. Because this may prevent Hunter from walking away.

Note: he denies being the father, despite the DNA, and the family even disowns the child?! What a graceful step.

“Roberts has requested a list of Hunter’s residences for the past 10 years, along with vehicles he’s owned or driven for the past five years in order to obtain evidence of his “well-established history of a lavish lifestyle.”

• Biden Family Disowns Hunter’s 4-Year-Old Daughter (ZH)

The woman who mothered Hunter’s secret lovechild, Lunden Alexis Roberts, filed paperwork on Tuesday requesting that an Arkansas court allow the child, Navy Joan Roberts, be given the Biden name, claiming that the toddler would “benefit from carrying the Biden family name” because it’s “now synonymous with being well educated, successful, financially acute, and politically powerful.” The Bidens, meanwhile, have completely ignored the President’s grandchild – striking her attendance from the 46th presidential inauguration and allegedly refusing to offer security aid to the mother-daughter pair, despite domestic violence threats from Roberts’ ex. The filing cites President Biden, Jill Biden and Hunter’s late brother Beau as examples of successful individuals bearing the last name, and says that the Biden family remains “estranged from the child.

To the extent this is misconduct or neglect, it can be rectified by changing her last name to Biden so that she may undeniably be known to the world as the child of the defendant and member of the prestigious Biden family.” Roberts, originally from Batesville and an Arkansas State University graduate, met Hunter Biden while she was living in Washington, D.C., and worked for him, Lancaster previously said. The child, initially referred to in the case as “Baby Doe,” was born in August 2018; the paternity suit followed in May 2019, days after Hunter Biden’s marriage to a South African filmmaker, the former Melissa Cohen. A DNA test showed, “with near scientific certainty,” that Biden is Baby Doe’s father, Judge Holly Meyer declared in a January 2020 order. That month the parties agreed on temporary child support until the issue was resolved. -Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette

Hunter Biden wrote in his 2021 book “Beautiful Things” that he fought Roberts’ paternity suit because, being a crackhead, he had no recollection of the incident that led to the pregnancy. “The other women I’d been with during rampages since my divorce were hardly the dating type. We would satisfy our immediate needs and little else,” wrote Hunter, adding “I’m not proud of it.” According to Roberts, Hunter has a “long, and lengthy, history of attempting to avoid discovery by filing endless and recurrent motions for protective orders. Additionally, this case was finally resolved the first time when this court denied the defendant’s motion for a protective order relating to discovery.”

Roberts has requested a list of Hunter’s residences for the past 10 years, along with vehicles he’s owned or driven for the past five years in order to obtain evidence of his “well-established history of a lavish lifestyle.” “[Biden] objects and refuses to provide all the requested information. Instead, [Biden] seeks a protective order,” reads a filing. She’s also requested information related to a federal investigation into Hunter’s “tax affairs.” “This information is relevant to determine if, as Federal authorities insinuated, the defendant failed to disclose all his income as this goes to earning capability and Mr. Biden’s credibility.”

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This case stinks like few others.

• Uncharged J6 Witness Ray Epps Transcript Released (ZH)

Ray Epps, the uncharged man identified as a key instigator behind the January 6, 2020 Capitol Breach for telling people to storm the Capitol, said in a text message to his nephew that he “orchestrated” things, according to newly released witness transcripts from the January 6th Committee. “At that point, I didn’t know that they were breaking into the Capitol,” Epps told Congressional investigators, adding “I didn’t know anybody was in the Capitol. … I was on my way back to the hotel room.” But the night before, Epps was seen going around to various groups of Trump supporters, telling them they need to storm the capitol. In two interviews with the FBI in 2021, Epps explained his actions on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6. He admitted he was guilty of trespassing on restricted Capitol grounds and confessed to urging protesters to go to—and into—the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Epps also told members of the Committee that he found himself playing peacekeeper between Trump supporter “Baked Alaska” and the police – who called Epps a Fed. “I was trying to find some common ground,” said Epps. “This guy was trying to turn people against me…he was calling me ‘boomer,’ and it’s his generation’s fault that we’re in the position we’re in.” Despite the admissions, the FBI never arrested Epps and he was not charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with any Jan. 6 crimes. The non-action has fueled a crop of theories that he might have been working for the FBI or another agency. Epps, 61, has repeatedly denied those suggestions through his attorney. Speculation that Epps was a ‘fed’ intensified after a Revolver News reported with the headline: “Meet Ray Epps: The Fed-Protected Provocateur Who Appears To Have Led The Very First 1/6 Attack On The U.S. Capitol”

“Revolver also determined, and will prove below, that the the FBI stealthily removed Ray Epps from its Capitol Violence Most Wanted List on July 1, just one day after Revolver exposed the inexplicable and puzzlesome FBI protection of known Epps associate and Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes. July 1 was also just one day after separate New York Times report amplified a glaring, falsifiable lie about Epps’s role in the events of January 6. Lastly, Ray Epps appears to have worked alongside several individuals — many of them suspiciously unindicted — to carry out a breach of the police barricades that induced a subsequent flood of unsuspecting MAGA protesters to unwittingly trespass on Capitol restricted grounds and place themselves in legal jeopardy. -Revolver News. As speculation over Epps grew, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) claimed that Epps had “cooperated with the Jan 6 committee,” and was removed from the FBI’s most wanted list “because apparently he broke no laws.”

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SBF.

• He’s Cooked… (Denninger)

Sam is done. Two of his chief lieutenants, including his former lover, have turned on him, pled guilty to criminal offenses that will almost-certainly lead to a decade or more in prison, and are cooperating against him. Among the offenses they pled guilty to are installing specific bypasses of the risk-control and auto-liquidation rules on certain accounts which were utterly essential to propagate the robbery of client funds. Absent that most, if not all of the loss would not have occurred, with Alameda being forced into liquidation before the damage was severe enough to implicate customer money. That’s an intentional act and the other two admitted to being involved in doing it so its perfectly legitimate to state it as fact rather than speculation.

How far down the rabbit hole this all goes is an open question, but the real underlying issue is that the sort of nonsense with so-called “stable coins” and similar games have repeatedly been exposed and the entire house of cryptocurrency “value” rests on said claims that this is not the case. It is the case, however, and only an idiot after seeing it happen several times sequentially has any reason to believe its not present in every single one of these instances. At the core of the issue is that somewhere everyone has to get paid for what they do. If you think you found an example where this is not the case you are being scammed; you just haven’t figured out how or why yet. If there’s enough indirection you can hide this for a good long time, but eventually the market will turn against you.

This is the essence of why “cryptocurrencies” are all valueless; each transaction has a cost, someone has to pay said cost, the more complex and secure the system is the higher said cost is and all of those costs exceed that of other currency systems thus without some means of cheating so your transaction “appears” to be inexpensive to process compared against the alternatives nobody would use it unless what they were doing is fundamentally illegal and thus to use any of the “legitimated” currency systems exposes said person to immediate arrest and prosecution. What’s possibly worse, however, is that all crypto systems by definition result in an indelible and immutable forensic transaction trail that fully meets all requirements to be admissible in court and therefore the claim that somehow they are “safe” to use for illegal acts is also both false and thus an active fraud.

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Phasmid https://twitter.com/i/status/1608822281496850432

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle December 14 2022

Dec 142022
 
 December 14, 2022  Posted by at 8:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  64 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Portrait of Dora Maar 1943

 

• Twitter Is Actually an Intelligence Gathering and Propaganda Tool (CTH)
• Twitter Disbands Trust and Safety Council Amid Child Abuse Criticism (ET)
• Jack Dorsey Responds To Twitter Files (RT)
• Zelensky Aide Accused Musk Of Hiding ‘War’ From Twitter Trends (RT)
• White House Defends Fauci From Musk (RT)
• Zelensky: Russia Must Withdraw All Forces By Christmas (ZH)
• NATO Chief Says Full-Blown War With Russia Is a ‘Real Possibility’ (Antiwar)
• US Patriot Missiles to Ukraine: Peace Continues to be Banned in DC (Celente)
• Peace Advocates Seen As ‘Traitors’ In EU – Former Austrian Vice-chancellor (RT)
• Biden Operatives Plan “Swat Force” on Hunter Biden Scandal (Turley)
• After the Ukraine Is Over, Many a European Heart is Aching (Batiushka)
• NATO Is Trying To Find A Pretext To Attack Serbia -Again- (Saker)
• EU Fails To Agree On Gas Price Cap (RT)
• DOJ Faces Questions After Preventing SBF from Testifying in Congress (Turley)
• The Seth Rich Case Gets Richer (Billingsley)

 

 

 

 

Laura Roth

 

 

 

 

DeSantis vaccine panel

 

 

 

 

Lapado

 

 

 

 

 

 

More from sundance.

“DHS doesn’t operate on the backbone of Twitter, Twitter operates on the backbone of DHS.”

• Twitter Is Actually an Intelligence Gathering and Propaganda Tool (CTH)

Tucker Carlson hits the bullseye in a late show segment discussing the framework of the Twitter social media company. Stunningly, Carlson is the first person to ask the question that we have outlined for years, it is the essence of how Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop evolved. “It’s all pretty weird. Could it be that while the rest of us imagined that Twitter was a social media site … could it be that Twitter was actually, maybe primarily, a propaganda tool and intelligence gathering apparatus for a variety of intel agencies?” ~ Tucker Carlson. Yes. Exactly this. Yes. It’s not that DHS had a portal into Twitter, it’s that DHS took over the operation of Twitter and controlled every element of it. That’s also why profits and losses were never part of the viability equation. DHS controls Twitter operations, that’s the essential baseline for Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop. Well done Tucker Carlson.

Once you change your reference point and review the data from a different perspective, things make sense. DHS doesn’t operate on the backbone of Twitter, Twitter operates on the backbone of DHS. The information and content on Twitter exist, or not, by the permission and authority of the national security state, DHS. Narratives can be enhanced or throttled. Public perceptions can be uplifted or deemphasized. Candidates can be boosted or dismissed. Control over the public conversation is not simply in the hands of Twitter executives, the platform content is shaped by the guiding hand of the controlling interest – the government. So why did they permit it to be sold? Again, control.

Every non-Twitter, non-DHS controlled, information and discussion site is a watering down of the influence of Twitter. The inability to influence a platform like Truth Social would be particularly troublesome. So, launder the handling of the DHS platform to Elon Musk and create the illusion of a refresh. Twitter 2.0 now rebrands with a renewed ability to influence. Not accidentally, a pro DeSantis shaping is part of the objective. In the eyes of the control state Rumble and Truth Social represent the threat that is Donald Trump, while Twitter and YouTube representing the controlled alternative, Ron DeSantis. There are trillions at stake.

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“As Twitter moves into a new phase, we are reevaluating how best to bring external insights into our product and policy development work…”

• Twitter Disbands Trust and Safety Council Amid Child Abuse Criticism (ET)

Twitter has disbanded its Trust and Safety Council, according to an email, after new owner Elon Musk criticized members over a lack of action to rid the platform of child sexual abuse material. In an email to the council’s members, Twitter said the Trust and Safety Council was no longer deemed the best way for the social media platform to “bring external insights into our product and policy development work.” “As Twitter moves into a new phase, we are reevaluating how best to bring external insights into our product and policy development work. As part of this process, we have decided that the Trust and Safety Council is not the best structure to do this,” the email stated.

“Our work to make Twitter a safe, informative place will be moving faster and more aggressively than ever before and we will continue to welcome your ideas going forward about how to achieve this goal,” the email continued. “We will also continue to explore opportunities to provide focused and timely input into our work, whether through bilateral or small group meetings.” The council was informed of the change before it was scheduled to meet with Twitter representatives on Monday night, according to The Associated Press. The webpage for the Trust and Safety Council is now blank. The group was previously made up of around 100 stakeholders, including independent civil, human rights, and other organizations.

The Trust and Safety Council has been criticized by Musk for not taking action to remove child sexual abuse material from Twitter. The council was established in 2016 to address problems such as hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm, and other issues on the platform. After three members of the council resigned in protest over allegations of increased hate speech on the platform on Dec. 8, Musk declared on Dec. 10 that it was “a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!” Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey replied to Musk, saying: “This is false.” “No, it is not,” Musk replied, adding: “When Ella Irwin, who now runs Trust & Safety, joined Twitter earlier this year, almost no one was working on child safety.”

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“..the right thing for the public company business at the time, but the wrong thing for the internet and society.”

• Jack Dorsey Responds To Twitter Files (RT)

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has issued a response to the recently leaked ‘Twitter Files,’ admitting to a host of major mistakes during his time as chief executive while warning of “centralized control” of the internet by governments and corporations. The tech entrepreneur addressed the leaked internal documents in a Tuesday blog post, acknowledging that Twitter failed to uphold its guiding principles near the end of his tenure, and that he “completely gave up” on his own vision for the site after “activist” investors bought into the company sometime in 2020. Though he did not elaborate on the new investors or how they might have swayed the platform, Dorsey said Twitter’s focus on controlling public dialogue was ultimately one of its greatest errors.

He cited the decision to permanently suspend President Donald Trump in the wake of the riot at the US Capitol in January 2021, saying it was “the right thing for the public company business at the time, but the wrong thing for the internet and society.” “The biggest mistake I made was continuing to invest in building tools for us to manage the public conversation, versus building tools for the people using Twitter to easily manage it for themselves,” he said. “This burdened the company with too much power, and opened us to significant outside pressure (such as advertising budgets). I generally think companies have become far too powerful, and that became completely clear to me with our suspension of Trump’s account.”

Dorsey was reportedly on vacation at the time of the Trump ban and had delegated decision-making to executives Yoel Roth and Vijaya Gadde – as revealed in the Twitter Files – but nonetheless said he bears sole blame for the errors in judgment. “The current attacks on my former colleagues could be dangerous and [don’t] solve anything. If you want to blame, direct it at me and my actions, or lack thereof,” he continued, also insisting “there was no ill intent or hidden agendas” behind Twitter’s more contentious decisions and that the company “acted according to the best information we had at the time.” Tuesday’s blog post also included a lengthy section warning of “centralized” power over the internet, stating that social media platforms should remain “resilient to corporate and government control” while suggesting Twitter had failed to do so under his watch.

The former CEO, who stepped down from the role in November 2021, went on to say that he welcomes the “fresh reset” brought by Twitter’s new owner, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, expressing hopes that the site will become “uncomfortably transparent.” However, he argued that the Twitter Files should have been released “Wikileaks-style,” or in full, rather than being leaked to select journalists by the site’s new management. Spearheaded by reporters Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, the documents have been published on a rolling basis with Musk’s blessing, shedding light on a number of controversial decisions made by the company. Five installments have gone public so far, including material surrounding Trump’s suspension, Twitter’s close cooperation with US intelligence agencies, the practice of ‘shadowbanning,’ as well as a site-wide ban on a New York Post report about the foreign business dealings of Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden.

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“..the biggest bot attack I’ve ever seen.”

• Zelensky Aide Accused Musk Of Hiding ‘War’ From Twitter Trends (RT)

Mikhail Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, has accused Twitter of hiding trends related to the ongoing conflict in the country. The official took to the social media platform on Tuesday, blasting the platform’s CEO, billionaire Elon Musk, directly. ‘War in Ukraine’ disappearance from Twitter trends. Radical curtailment of tweets mentioning ru-aggression coverage. Users aren’t allowed to register or log into accounts with Ukrainian phone number,” Podolyak wrote. According to Twitter, its trends are “determined by an algorithm and, by default, are tailored for you based on who you follow, your interests, and your location.” The algorithm “identifies topics that are popular now, rather than topics that have been popular for a while or on a daily basis.”

The presidential aide was apparently referring to Ukrainian media reports that users with Ukrainian phone numbers were no longer able to log in or register on the platform. While the social media giant has not produced any statements on the issue yet, Musk cryptically warned Twitter “bots” were “in for a surprise tomorrow” on Sunday. Podolyak was also critical of the recent release of ‘Twitter files’, which disclosed censorship practices on the platform amid the 2020 US presidential campaign. The official apparently hinted that Twitter’s new leadership was now censoring coverage of the Ukraine crisis. “Elon Musk, I wonder if we will ever see ‘Twitter Files’ about Fall/Winter 2022?” Podolyak wrote. In recent weeks, Musk has repeatedly engaged in a bitter back-and-forth with the pro-Ukrainian crowd on the social media platform, including the country’s top officials.

The spat began with a peace plan, floated by the billionaire, who suggested Ukraine should commit to neutrality and relinquish its claim to Crimea, while Russia “redo” referendums in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as in Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions “under UN supervision.” The remarks angered Kiev officials, who raided Musk’s feed in order to vent. The poll on the peace plan itself was subjected to what the billionaire called the “biggest bot attack I’ve ever seen.” The spat has been aggravated by Musk, who threatened to stop payrolling Starlink’s services, which are actively used by the Ukrainian military. In early November, Twitter also began labeling tweets from Ukrainian state-run media – in the same way it does with a number of Russian government-owned outlets – causing a new meltdown among Kiev’s backers.

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“..Fauci told Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky in May 2021 that NIAID and the National Institutes of Health “categorically” never funded such research..”

• White House Defends Fauci From Musk (RT)

The US government has come to the defense of President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 czar, saying that Dr. Anthony Fauci is a paragon of public service and that Elon Musk’s suggestions that the octogenarian bureaucrat should be prosecuted are dangerous “personal attacks” divorced from reality. The Tesla and SpaceX magnate took over Twitter in October and has been sharing details of the platform’s operations under the previous management. Teasing revelations about the pandemic-related censorship, Musk tweeted on Saturday that his pronouns are “Prosecute/Fauci.” The post went beyond viral, garnering more than 1.2 million likes so far – and attracting the attention of White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

“These attacks, these personal attacks that we have been seeing, are dangerous – on Dr. Fauci and other public health professionals as well. They are disgusting, and they are divorced from reality,” Jean-Pierre told reporters on Monday. Fauci has “given his almost entire career to civil service, public service, as a public servant. His work on infectious disease, from HIV/AIDS to Covid, has saved countless lives,” said Jean-Pierre, and America is fortunate he has devoted “his exceptional talent” to public health. “And that’s what should be discussed right now,” she concluded. Now 81, Fauci has been running the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984. He will retire from his government job at the end of the year, just before Republicans – who promised to hold hearings about his handling of the pandemic – take over the House of Representatives.

Fauci became an idol of Democrats in 2020, advocating for longer and tougher lockdowns when President Donald Trump wanted to see them lifted. When Biden became president, he named Fauci his chief medical adviser and followed his strategy of “shutting down the virus” through mask and vaccine mandates. Several prominent Republicans have clashed with Fauci in congressional hearings, accusing him of funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, where the pandemic supposedly originated. Fauci told Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky in May 2021 that NIAID and the National Institutes of Health “categorically” never funded such research. Documents published in September showed NIH and NIAID giving money to the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, which funded experiments with bat coronaviruses in Wuhan. NIH has continued to fund EcoHealth, however.

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N’importe quoi..

• Zelensky: Russia Must Withdraw All Forces By Christmas (ZH)

Ukraine now says that it has lost half of its energy system amid recent stepped-up Russian aerial attacks, which have continued to include suicide drones, some of which are believed supplied by Iran. President Volodymyr Zelensky communicated this in a Monday phone call with President Joe Biden, briefing the US leader on “the consequences of the Russian missile terror, as a result of which about 50% of the Ukrainian energy infrastructure was destroyed.” In the mid-afternoon on Tuesday (local time), air raid alerts have reportedly been issued all across Ukraine, with sirens blaring in the capital after Zelensky warned that the next major wave of Russian airstrikes are imminent.

Starting Friday Kyiv authorities began revising their estimate upward from the 40% they had been estimating in statements as of weeks ago. Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmygal recently described, “Unfortunately, Russia continues missile strikes on Ukraine’s critical civilian infrastructure, fighting against the civilian population and depriving them of light, water, heat and communications during the winter… Nearly half of our energy system is disabled.” The past month has witnessed some of the largest missile barrages targeting energy infrastructure to date, which has left whole cities, including Odesa and a number of cities in the south without power amid frigid temperatures.

Also on Monday Zelensky gave a virtual address before G7 leaders, wherein he urged more arms including “modern tanks” and “rocket artillery and more long-range missiles” while acknowledging his military is running low in the face of the more superior-armed Russian forces. He asked G7 nations for “about 2 billion cubic meters” of additional gas to help the population get through winter. Among the more interesting things he said was that Moscow must withdraw all forces by Christmas. “The occupier must leave. It will certainly happen. I see no reason why Russia should not do it now – at Christmas.” Vowing the counteroffensive will not stop even as the ground freezes, he appealed for Russia to avoid “further confrontation with the world.”

“Very soon we’ll have holidays celebrated by billions of people. Christmas – according to the Gregorian calendar or the New Year and Christmas – according to the Julian calendar. This is the time for normal people to think about peace, not aggression. I suggest Russia to at least try to prove that it is capable of abandoning the aggression. It would be right to start the withdrawal of Russian troops from the internationally recognized territory of Ukraine this Christmas. If Russia withdraws its troops from Ukraine, it will ensure a lasting cessation of hostilities,” the President said, speaking at the G7 Summit.

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“..the continent’s “peace and freedom” would be threatened if Putin wins in Ukraine.”

• NATO Chief Says Full-Blown War With Russia Is a ‘Real Possibility’ (Antiwar)

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned Friday that he fears a full-blown war between Russia and NATO is a “real possibility” in a rare acknowledgment of the dangers of backing Ukraine. “I fear that the war in Ukraine will get out of control, and spread into a major war between NATO and Russia,” he said, according to The Telegraph. “If things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong.” Russian officials have made clear that they believe they are fighting against NATO in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said recently that both the US and NATO are “directly participating” in the war in Ukraine, meaning Russia has the pretext for strikes on NATO bases in Europe if they choose to take that step. Despite the risk, Stoltenberg stressed that NATO countries should continue arming Ukraine and that the best way to deter Russia is to strengthen the alliance’s positions in Eastern Europe.

Stoltenberg said Russian President Vladimir Putin “knows it’s one for all, and all for one,” referring to NATO’s mutual defense commitments as outlined by Article 5. The risk of escalation rose last week after Ukrainian drones struck air bases hundreds of miles inside Russian territory, killing three Russian soldiers and damaging two Russian bombers. Citing unnamed US military sources, The Times reported Friday that the Pentagon has given Ukraine its tacit endorsement to launch such attacks. Stoltenberg said that he understands why some people in Europe are getting tired of supporting Ukraine as they face rising energy and food prices. But the NATO chief claimed that the continent’s “peace and freedom” would be threatened if Putin wins in Ukraine.

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“..It now seems apparent why Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was so giddy after a phone call with U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday.”

• US Patriot Missiles to Ukraine: Peace Continues to be Banned in DC (Celente)

The U.S. is about to approve a Patriot missile battery to counter Russia’s recent missile bombardments despite Moscow’s previous threat that these systems would be “legitimate targets” for its forces. CNN first reported on the Biden administration’s plan that could be announced later this week. The Pentagon and State Department did not immediately respond to emails from The Trends Journal. Washington has already provided Ukraine with short-range NASAMS anti-air systems. Ukraine has been asking the U.S. for these systems for months, but Washington knows that it would be a major escalation and risk a confrontation with Russia. Germany understands the significance of providing these systems.

Berlin refused Poland’s push to put Patriot missiles in Ukraine instead of Warsaw after the Ukrainian missile killed two in the country a few weeks ago. Germany offered Poland the Patriot missile system, and Warsaw insisted that these missiles be sent to Ukraine instead. Germany ended up refusing the idea. Germany presented Poland with these systems on Monday. Michal Baranowski, the regional managing director of the German Marshall Fund in Warsaw, told The New York Times that the brief tussle between Berlin and Warsaw was “like an X-ray of miserable Polish-German relations.” “It’s worse than I thought, and I’ve watched it a long time,” Baranowski said. CNN noted that these missile systems, one of the most advanced from the U.S., are effective in nailing distant targets but it requires about a dozen troops to operate and months of training. Ukraine does not have anyone trained to used the system.

The system is widely considered one of the most capable long-range weapons to defend airspace against incoming ballistic and cruise missiles as well as some aircraft. Because of its long-range and high-altitude capability, it can potentially shoot down Russian missiles and aircraft far from their intended targets inside Ukraine. It now seems apparent why Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was so giddy after a phone call with U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday. He thanked Biden for the “unprecedented” support from the U.S. “I had a phone call with U.S. President Joseph Biden and thanked for the unprecedented defense and financial assistance that the U.S. provides to Ukraine,” Zelensky said. NATO has been trepidatious to provide these systems because of the risk that Kyiv uses them to fire deeper inside Russia. Ukraine has been blamed for several attacks on Russian territory.

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“..a “global war” between Russia and NATO, into which European leaders have been “drawn.”

• Peace Advocates Seen As ‘Traitors’ In EU – Former Austrian Vice-chancellor (RT)

Former Austrian Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache has told RT that the EU’s sanctions policy has brought Ukraine no closer to peace, and those who complain are “branded and defamed” as traitors. Strache is a vocal critic of the EU’s sanctions on Russia, which he has repeatedly blamed for destroying the bloc’s economy, triggering rising inflation and unemployment, and potentially bringing a wave of “mass insolvencies and bankruptcies” in the new year. Speaking to RT on Tuesday after addressing a pro-neutrality rally in Vienna last weekend, Strache described the conflict in Ukraine as part of a “global war” between Russia and NATO, into which European leaders have been “drawn.”

“Unfortunately, I do not see any European political leaders who want to approach the negotiating table and call for a negotiated ceasefire agreement and a peaceful solution,” he lamented. “We Austrians in particular should adhere to our neutrality and our neutrality status could also play a decisive mediating role here. So far, this has not been practiced.” “Of course, the media in the European Union are silent about all this,” he continued. “And if you express criticism here today, you are often branded and defamed as a Putin and Russia sympathizer and also as a traitor to Europe.” While Strache condemned the lack of a “strong European peace movement,” he predicted that worsening economic conditions will eventually force citizens to demand an end to the Ukraine conflict.

“People are confronted with the catchphrase that they have to freeze for peace, and then you come to the conclusion: well, freezing doesn’t help, because unfortunately there is no peace…and then you become unemployed and unemployment has not brought peace because there are no negotiation initiatives – people naturally find [this] very, very repulsive and very questionable,” he stated. European leaders have presented the rising price of energy as a necessary cost of supporting Ukraine, with European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager famously telling people earlier this year to say “take that, Putin” as they turn off their hot water. Ultimately, Strache argued that the EU is bearing all the costs of the conflict while the US is “profiteering,” an assessment shared by European Council President Charles Michel and other senior Brussels officials. “More and more people are becoming aware of this,” Strache continued, adding that “Europe urgently needs to implement concrete peace initiatives.”

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“Generally, political operatives lay out scorched-earth campaigns in secret. But someone wanted this campaign to be public before the House can call any witnesses.”

• Biden Operatives Plan “Swat Force” on Hunter Biden Scandal (Turley)

Just when you thought our politics could not get more poisonous, a recent meeting in California suggests the past is mere prelude. The Washington Post, which revealed the powwow, described it as Biden family “allies” planning an offensive to blunt any investigation into the Bidens’ alleged multimillion-dollar influence-peddling schemes. Republicans will see it more like the gathering of the Legion of (Democratic) Doom. Some of the most controversial political operatives are involved in the all-hands-on-deck effort to protect the Bidens. The California meeting’s host was none other than Hunter Biden’s friend, agent and lawyer Kevin Morris. After Hunter was placed under investigation for, among other possible charges, tax evasion, Morris reportedly paid off as much as $2.8 million in back taxes for Hunter.

Morris, per The Washington Post, called for a “more aggressive” response to those seeking to investigate the alleged influence peddling. That plan includes hitting critics, such as Fox News, with possible defamation lawsuits. (For full disclosure, I appear as a legal analyst on Fox News.) The paper also reported Morris “outlined extensive research on two potential witnesses against Hunter Biden — a spurned business partner named Tony Bobulinski and a computer repairman named John Paul Mac Isaac.” “Spurned” is hardly the sole or most relevant description of Bobulinski: The businessman was recruited by the Biden family to manage foreign deals and later directly contradicted President Joe Biden’s claims he knew nothing of those dealings. His testimony could present a serious threat in the coming House investigation in establishing not only the president’s knowledge but his possible receipt of proceeds from the deals.

Morris’ plan could easily be taken as a declaration of all-out war on potential witnesses against Hunter Biden. What’s most interesting about the piece is why The Washington Post was given such access and such a detailed account. Generally, political operatives lay out scorched-earth campaigns in secret. But someone wanted this campaign to be public before the House can call any witnesses. For key witnesses like Bobulinski, the message is about as subtle as a two-by-four to the head. The Washington Post is viewed as one of the most pro-Biden newspapers in the country and only recently admitted the Hunter Biden laptop was authentic after pushing the false Russian-disinformation claim. Now the paper is detailing a plan that could create an open season on those who might try to substantiate the Biden family’s influence peddling.

Notably, the article stresses this effort is “operating separately from the White House. [David] Brock said his organization also remains independent of Hunter Biden and his team and is following its own strategy.” The separation is important to deflect any allegations of witness intimidation. Media and political figures leveled such claims against the Trump White House when impeachment witnesses were attacked in the press. Congressional Democrats denounced criticism of the witnesses as an effort to silence or deter witnesses from coming forward. (For the record, I also criticized the targeting of witnesses against Trump even if it did not constitute chargeable witness intimidation).

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“US-exploited Kiev regime territory, 40% of the whole, will be taken back without compensation.”

• After the Ukraine Is Over, Many a European Heart is Aching (Batiushka)

Northern Europe, as far south as northern Italy, is now in the grip of a wave of icy cold (no doubt, the result of global warming). As a result, observers are expecting the Russian winter offensive in the Ukraine to start all the sooner, though nobody knows when. This month or next? Maybe a dramatic entry from Belarus, cutting off NATO supplies? Nobody knows. For the moment, Allied forces are content to grind down the undersupplied and freezing Kiev regime conscripts and mercenaries in situ, hoping that perhaps they will simply surrender en masse, despite the regime’s guns poking in their backs. Conditions are such that this could happen with very few Russian losses. There is no hurry. Over 500,000 Allied soldiers and 500 winter camouflage tanks are waiting for their moment to move in and denazify the Ukraine. They will wait for the right moment.s

Russia could no longer allow a hostile, US-controlled, NATO-armed and soon-to-be-nuclear Ukraine to exist. Therefore, it is being liberated. It should have happened long before, but Russia was much too weak to do so before. When the Zelensky regime falls, billions of dollars of Western arms and supplies will fall into Russian hands. The Kiev regime’s Western-incurred indebtedness to the West for arms and supplies over the last nearly nine years will be cancelled. US-exploited Kiev regime territory, 40% of the whole, will be taken back without compensation. This will be a small measure of compensation for the destruction that the US and its European vassals, including the Minsk I and Minsk II liars of Germany and France, have caused in the Ukraine, especially in the much-tried Donbass.

Apart from completing the liberation of the four provinces that it has taken back so far, Russia may also take back four more Russian-speaking provinces, those of Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolaev and Odessa, so joining up with Russian Transdnestria. A coup in Kiev could take place, as the remnants of the Kiev Army collapse and the new Ukraine could then even become a Russian ally, like Belarus, part of the Union State. Whether the five far western provinces of the present Ukraine remain with the new Ukraine, or three of them return to Poland, and one each to Hungary and Romania, remains to be seen. It will all depend on what Russia allows. After this, the whole fragile Western European domino set, hastily stood up by the US-run NATO and its political wing the EU, could begin to tumble.

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“Pavelic, like Bandera, Franco or Petain, was a pure product of the Papacy, unlike Hitler and Mussolini who were, respectively, a pagan and an atheist..”

• NATO Is Trying To Find A Pretext To Attack Serbia -Again- (Saker)

Once the NATO defeat in the Ukraine becomes undeniable, the organization will quickly become irrelevant and unable to agree on yet another military operation. As for the USA, having lost the “fig leaf” provided by NATO, they are unlikely to have what it takes to attack Serbia, not after having being comprehensively defeated in the Ukraine (the collapse of NATO will also trigger a major crisis inside the USA). The problem for Serbia is that it will take time (many months, probably a few years) to fully defang NATO while not triggering a fullscale continental war in Europe. And, let’s be honest here, if the Russians can now take their sweet time “demilitarizing” Banderastan, the Serbian minority in Kosovo cannot.

So what can the Serbs do in this situation? Do nothing would only empower the KLA terrorist and their western bosses and leave the long-suffering Serbian minority in Kosovo defenseless. Move in forces, even if fully allowed by the UNSC Resolution, would risk triggering a major economic and military US/NATO/EU attack on Serbia. Evacuate Serbian civilians from Kosovo? In theory that would be an option, but we have to understand that for the Serbian people Kosovo is truly sacred ground and that many would refuse to leave. Also, emptying Kosovo from its Serbian minority would only embolden the KLA and their patrons. Finally, when the Russians evacuated their civilians from Kherson it was at least credible that this was a temporary move and that the Russian military would be back, sooner rather than later. But in the case of Kosovo, Serbia is the weaker party and will remain so until:

1/ Serbia regains her sovereignty (right now Serbia is basically administered by the West, hence the threats from EU politicians like Baerbock) 2/Reunites with historically Serbian lands in Montenegro, Bosnia and Kosovo 3/ The US/NATO/EU are demilitarized and denazified, at least in Europe. This will all happen, the problem is *when*. I sure don’t know. What I do know is that the Serbian nation has survived absolutely horrific and even overtly demonic persecutions by both the Ottomans, the Anglos and the Latins (Pavelic, like Bandera, Franco or Petain, was a pure product of the Papacy, unlike Hitler and Mussolini who were, respectively, a pagan and an atheist).

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“..any price cap must aim to “ensure the stability of the financial markets.”

• EU Fails To Agree On Gas Price Cap (RT)

EU nations have failed once again to finalize a bloc-wide gas price cap at a Council of Energy Ministers meeting, Hungarian FM Peter Szijjarto said on Tuesday. Some states want to lower the ceiling, while others say the measure could wreak havoc on the energy markets. “There was a lengthy debate at the Energy Council meeting. No agreement was reached at the plenary, so discussions will continue on a bilateral basis,” Szijjarto wrote on Facebook. Opinions regarding the measure proposed weeks ago differ greatly among the 27 EU member states, with some doubting its effectiveness in fighting the energy crisis, and others calling for the lowest cap possible.

Under the original plan put forward by the European Commission, the gas price cap should be triggered when prices on the TTF exchange, Europe’s gas benchmark, reach €275 ($292) per megawatt hour and are €58 higher than the LNG reference price for two weeks. The plan was met with criticism, with some member states worried it would only worsen market volatility, while others argued that the level was too high to be effective.

Last week, the EU Council proposed reducing the level of the cap to €220 and slashing the timeframe to five days, while also lowering the gap with global LNG prices to €35, according to a draft document seen by Reuters. However, 12 countries reportedly said this cap would still be too high, demanding it be lowered to €160 with a €20 spread. Earlier on Tuesday, France’s minister for energy transition, Agnes Pannier-Runacher, said that an agreement over the cap could be reached sooner rather than later. “I believe we have started to bring our positions closer,” she told the press ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, adding that any price cap must aim to “ensure the stability of the financial markets.”

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They’ve shut him down:

“Sam Bankman-Fried was denied bail. He will be held in this prison until February 8th, 2023 if he isn’t extradited to the US.”

• DOJ Faces Questions After Preventing SBF from Testifying in Congress (Turley)

The arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried yesterday was sudden and unexpected in light of Bankman-Fried’s plan to testify before Congress. As a criminal defense attorney, my reaction to the arrest last night remains unchanged: this is the first time that I can recall where prosecutors moved aggressively to stop a defendant from making self-incriminating statements. His testimony would have been entirely admissible and likely devastating at trial. I previously wrote how Bankman-Fried was doing harm to his case by speaking in the media and to Congress. So why would the Justice Department move to stop the self-inflicted damage? You have a major target who was about to voluntarily testify for hours.

That is ordinarily a dream for prosecutors, but the Justice Department moved quickly to prevent that from happening. At that stage, Bankman-Fried was not charged or in custody. He was not protected by Miranda or other constitutional rules from self-incriminating statements. Indeed, some of us had already warned that he was causing himself considerable damage in making such statements. This was a defendant with a large legal team facing possible criminal charges who seemed eager to speak about his actions and motivations. Most prosecutors would sit back, make popcorn, and watch this unfold. The curious move led many to question whether the Biden Administration was eager to prevent questions on Bankman-Fried’s political contributions and associations.

He was the second highest donor to Democratic causes in the last election cycle. His mother, a law professor at Stanford also heads a major Democratic campaign fund. It is also possible that the Justice Department simply wanted to show the public that it was moving aggressively despite his close Democratic ties. It may have secured sufficient evidence (including possible cooperating witnesses) to satisfy the basis for charges and an extradition request. Moreover, the charges are likely to make some Democratic figures uncomfortable as this matter enters the criminal process. Yet, that still does not explain why the Justice Department would not want to hear a full account from Bankman-Fried before effectively shutting him down as a criminal defendant. This is the first time that I can recall where the prosecutors, rather than defense counsel, moved effectively to muzzle a defendant.

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“..the body of Philip Haney, author of See Something Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad, was “found deceased” in Amador County, California..”

• The Seth Rich Case Gets Richer (Billingsley)

The FBI not only has possession of a laptop computer owned by slain Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Rich,” the Epoch Times reports, “but a report detailing forensic imaging of what’s being described as Rich’s work computer.” The revelation came in a three-page forensic report about an “outside entity” working on imaging Rich’s work computer, also a laptop. According to the Epoch Times, that report “was among four documents that had never been disclosed by the FBI in relation to Rich’s case.” Seth Rich was the DNC’s voter expansion data director. On July 10, 2016, the 27-year-old was gunned down in Washington, D.C. Police called it a street robbery gone wrong, but the shooters did not take Rich’s wallet, watch, or phone.

Weeks after the murder, as the BBC reported, “Wikileaks published 20,000 emails obtained from Democratic National Committee computers via an anonymous source.” According to prominent Democrats, that was all part of Donald Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia. With that ploy exposed as a hoax, the people have cause to wonder. With Rich’s personal laptop, the FBI wants 66 years—a proxy for “never”—to produce data the bureau previously denied it even possessed. With Rich’s work laptop, the bureau is taking obstructionism to a new level. FBI records boss Michael Seidel is claiming that the computer is only a physical object, not an “actual record,” and therefore not subject to the Freedom of Information Act request from Texas resident Brian Huddleston.

His attorneys want the Obama-appointed Judge Amos Mazzant to order the release of the information from the personal and work computers of murder victim Rich. As it happens, those are not the only devices the FBI is harboring. On February 21, 2020, the body of Philip Haney, author of See Something Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad, was “found deceased” in Amador County, California. He was killed by a gunshot to the chest. The Amador sheriff “reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to assist in analyzing documents, phone records, numerous thumb drives and a laptop that were recovered from the scene and Mr. Haney’s RV.

Those items and numerous other pieces of evidence were turned over to the FBI. The FBI has performed a forensic examination of these items. We expect to receive these reports within the next few weeks.” Two years later, the Amador sheriff reported no new information on the case, and the FBI has yet to reveal what was on Haney’s laptop, thumb drives, and such. As with Seth Rich, the material could be of great interest to the public. In early 2020, according to Kerry Picket of the Washington Examiner, Haney was “recently in contact with top officials about returning to work for the DHS.” So maybe he had new information on terrorists. The erudite Haney was good at finding such information, but it wasn’t always welcome at the Department of Homeland Security.

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Mountain goats https://twitter.com/i/status/1602359257319575561

 

 


Panulirus ornatus is a large spiny lobster with 11 larval stages. It migrates annually from the Torres Strait to Yule Island in the Gulf of Papua in order to breed

 

 

 

 

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A Tale of Two Narratives : Twitter Edition

Dec 122022
 
 December 12, 2022  Posted by at 6:16 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  10 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Autumn landscape 1885

 

 

We’ve done quite a few episodes of commenter TAE Summary’s “Tales of Two Narratives” through time. Let’s add this one, why don’t we. Reading through -especially- Twitter, the past 24 hours or so, it struck me how fitting this is. We’re talking narratives that are so many light years apart, never the twain shall meet. Interested in time travel? This is for you.

On the one hand, lots of people react to the following tweet by Elon Musk, by claiming Fauci saved millions of lives. On the other hand, just as many people (or so it seems) claim Fauci killed millions of people. It’s hard to get a bigger, and more consequential, chasm, than that. And apparently this Musk tweet got the most likes in Twitter history. What does that tell us? This chasm is not just on Twitter, this is the entire country plus anywhere else on the planet where people follow this. Despite the enormous 24/7 pressure to accept “The Science”, get a shot and a mask, and shut up.

 

 

Of all people, John Brennan tried. The ex-CIA director who was caught lying to the Senate in 2014, and in 2017 to the House Intelligence Committee (Steele Dossier) about Russian interference during the 2016 election, still appears to think he has some form of moral high ground. Which is remarkable in and of itself. But at least Brennan has “class”.

 

 

Elon Musk’s reaction has been loud and clear (note: this tweet is not a direct reaction to Brennan):

 

 

Elon Musk has promised us a “full” record of the decision making process behind the censoring and banning by Twitter’s former staff, of renowned doctors like Peter McCullough, Robert Malone, Pierre Kory, Robert Marik, Richard Urso, and many more. Many of these distinguished scientists have seen their careers and livelihoods hampered, even destroyed by Fauci -and Twitter- over the past -almost- 3 years. And, of course, anyone else who dared question “The Science”.

This was (is?!) a highly concerted effort. How many people died who could have been saved with ivermectin? Or just Vitamin D3, for that matter? HCQ? So many lives were lost to FDA, Fauci et al banning anything but Pfizer. Many more will perish because they now have mRNA in their bodies, and will never be able to get rid of it anymore.

The “full record” will be a spectacle. Even if some things still remain hidden. Elon Musk may not be a saint, I very much hope he’s not, saints scare me, but I’d take him over Tony Fauci any day of the week.

Here’s TAE Summary:

 

 

TAE Summary:

The Mainstream Narrative

– As a worldwide ‘public square,’ Twitter should be heavily regulated for misinformation and spamming by hostile interests. Twitter bears a responsibility to take action against disinformation and hate. Content moderation on platforms like Twitter is absolutely necessary to safeguard our democracy. As a private company Twitter is under no legal obligation to protect free speech and everything Twitter has done is within the law. Twitter and other social media platforms were instrumental in combating disinformation about Covid 19, climate change, election integrity and the war in Ukraine.

– Elon Musk is an arrogant, toxic person. He doesn’t really care about free speech. His goals in purchasing Twitter are political. His takeover of Twitter is the most terrifying development in recent history. His purchase of Twitter will destroy it by driving away advertisers and providing a platform for Neo-Nazis and other hate-speechers. Under Musk, Twitter is a scammer’s paradise. Elon Musk decimated the staff of Twitter (breaking Federal labor laws) while restoring accounts that spread disinformation. Control of Twitter involves national security risks and Musk’s takeover should be investigated by the US Government.

– The so-called “Twitter Files” are a feast for conspiracy theorists and have re-enlivened the influence of entities like QAnon. Journalists like Matt Taibbi writing about the Twitter Files are selling their souls to do PR work for the richest man in the world. The Twitter Files entries are sloppy, anecdotal and devoid of context. They are a nothing event about nothing event. The hysteria surrounding the Twitter Files is being used by Republicans for political gain.

– The Hunter Biden laptop story was difficult and the truth was not known early and so caution was justified. There is no evidence in the Twitter Files that the government was involved in the suppression of the Hunter Biden Laptop story. There is nothing on Hunter Biden’s laptop that actually implicates Joe Biden. James Baker took the careful approach and urged Twitter to weigh both sides of the Hunter Biden Laptop story before proceeding.

– Hate speech has dramatically increased since Must took over Twitter and these hateful tweets will lead to violence against the already marginalized. Right wing accounts such as those of Donald Trump, Project Veritas and the Babylon Bee should continue to be banned.

 

 

The Counter Narrative

– Twitter management was openly against free speech and used techniques such as “Visibility Filtering” to limit the reach of some posts. Twitter had secret blacklist files to limit the distribution of certain tweets specifically targeting right wing users. Twitter and other social media platforms have been instrumental in distributing disinformation and hiding the truth about Covid 19, climate change, election integrity and the war in Ukraine. Twitter censorship was used by the Democrats for political gain

– Elon Musk is a hero. He bought Twitter to restore free speech. Twitter, pre-Musk, was a major accomplice and enabler in selling-out America’s future. Twitter was bloated with excess and left wing employees.

– The Twitter Files show that the DNC and FBI were directly involved in suppressing free speech and prove that the 2020 elections were not free and fair. Twitter was clearly involved in election interference. The government interactions with Twitter were similar to Nazi propaganda methods. Twitter employees and their government contacts should be made to answer for their actions before congress. So-called journalists criticizing Matt Taibbi for his work on the Twitter Files are embarrassing in their uniformity and mindless support of a corrupt system.

– The files on Hunter Biden’s laptop prove that Joe Biden used his office to make money and Twitter’s suppression of the laptop story was done to help get Joe Biden elected. It is a bigger scandal than Watergate. James Baker was involved in RussiaGate at the FBI and the Hunter Biden Laptop suppression at Twitter. Baker deleted some of the content that should have been in the Twitter Files.

– The claims that hate speech has increased on Twitter since Musk’s takeover are utterly false. Hate speech is not tolerated on Twitter. Twitter largely ignored child trafficking issues until Musk took over. Lifting the ban on Donald Trump, Project Veritas and the Babylon Bee on Twitter are victories for free speech.

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle December 12 2022

Dec 122022
 
 December 12, 2022  Posted by at 9:35 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  50 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Landscape with black pigs and a crouching Tahitian 1891

 

• Musk Says Fauci Lied, People Died (RT)
• Zelensky Was Ready For Neutrality In March – Col. Macgregor (RT)
• How the Mainstream Media Misses the Money Quote (Antiwar)
• Twitter Files: Corporate Media Ignores The Biggest Story Of The Decade (ZH)
• Dupe or Designated Defendant? The Criminal Case Against Jack Dorsey (Turley)
• Jack Dorsey Defiantly States He Has Never Heard Of Twitter (BBee)
• 4 Minutes of Undiluted Truth on Mainstream TV (Mike Whitney)
• Merkel’s Ukraine Remarks Show Breach Of Trust – Serbia (RT)
• China Wants To Drop Dollar In Oil Trade – Reuters (RT)
• Western Price Cap Disrupting Global Oil Markets – Economist (RT)
• Sanctions On Russia Are Backfiring – Former Austrian Vice-chancellor (RT)
• FBI Reveals It Has More Information on Deceased DNC Staffer Seth Rich (ET)
• Are We Finally Reaching Peak Climate Hysteria? (Spiked)
• Dutch Gov’t Attempts To Forcibly Close 3,000 Farms For ‘Green’ Agenda (ZH)
• Viagra Lowers the Risk of Alzheimer’s By Almost 70% (GR)

 

 

 

 

Back to the future?!

 

 

Douglas Macgregor: Zelensky Has Made A Terrible Mistake By Trying To Pin Missile Strikes On Russia

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twitter files on censorship of doctors, and promoting Fauci, should be explosive. If they still exist. Musk has promised them.

• Musk Says Fauci Lied, People Died (RT)

The billionaire Tesla and Twitter boss, Elon Musk, has triggered a social media firestorm on Sunday after suggesting that US Covid-19 czar, Dr. Anthony Fauci, should be investigated and prosecuted for allegedly lying under oath about the funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab in China. In what initially appeared to be an ironic dig, poised to trigger an avalanche of criticism from the left, Musk also posted a meme showing the retiring White House chief medical adviser whispering “Just one more lockdown my king” in President Biden’s ear. But after Fauci’s name was propelled to the top of Twitter trends with over 600,000 mentions, Musk apparently felt forced to elaborate why he thought the controversial face of America’s response to the pandemic should be investigated.

“As for Fauci, he lied to Congress and funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people,” Musk said in response to one critic, adding “not awesome imo.” The 81-year-old Fauci, who plans to retire by the of the month, led a disjointed US Covid-19 response marked by his flip-flopping on issues such as the efficacy of masks and herd immunity targets. Shortly after Fauci announced that he would step down as Biden’s chief medical adviser and as director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) – Senator Rand Paul demanded that the US administration preserve documents and messages that could become evidence in the potential probe.

“Fauci’s resignation should not prevent a full-throated investigation into the origins of the pandemic. He must be required to testify under oath regarding any discussions he participated in concerning the Wuhan lab leak. His policies destroyed lives,” tweeted Paul. The senator previously accused Fauci of directing public funding to gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab and lying about it under oath in congressional testimony, as the two sparred repeatedly in Senate hearings. Gain-of-function is the modification of pathogens to enhance them in various potential ways, including transmissibility. The rationale is that scientists can study new strains and find ways to stop them before similar adaptations emerge naturally.

The ‘lab leak’ theory – that the coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab – was popularized by former US President Donald Trump, who made the allegation amid a trade war with China. Major US media organizations and tech platforms initially labeled it as ‘disinformation’ and tried to suppress the theory from public discourse. However, after Musk took over Twitter, the company stopped enforcing its Covid-19 “misleading information policy.”

Read more …

“Fiona Hill [..] wrote in September that an “interim settlement” had been agreed in Istanbul. In May, Ukrainian media linked the collapse of these talks to pressure imposed on Kiev by Johnson.”

• Zelensky Was Ready For Neutrality In March – Col. Macgregor (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky was ready in March to meet some of Moscow’s conditions for peace, retired US Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor has claimed in a recent interview. He blamed former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson for preventing a settlement. As Ukrainian and Russian delegations sat down in Istanbul in March, news surfaced of a potential deal that would have seen Kiev renounce its ambition to join NATO and agree to neutrality, in exchange for Russia’s withdrawal to pre-February battle lines. Days later, Zelensky said he had discovered evidence of war crimes in territory evacuated by Russian forces, and negotiations were called off. In an interview with military historian Michael Vlahos, published on Saturday, MacGregor claimed that the UK was responsible for the abrupt end of the peace talks.

“We have evidence that towards the end of March, Mr. Zelensky said ‘well, we could live with neutrality,’ and when that word reached Washington and London, people became incensed,” he said. “Boris Johnson represented Washington’s interests and said ‘absolutely not, we will support you to the bitter end. You must stand your ground and fight for every inch of Ukraine’.” MacGregor is not the first US official to suggest that Zelensky was ready for peace in March. Fiona Hill, a veteran US diplomat who served as the US National Security Council’s senior director for Europe and Russia in the Trump administration, wrote in September that an “interim settlement” had been agreed in Istanbul. In May, Ukrainian media linked the collapse of these talks to pressure imposed on Kiev by Johnson.

The prime minister visited Kiev on April 9, reportedly without warning, and according to the Ukrainskaya Pravda newspaper, told officials that “even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they [the West] are not.” Now, almost ten months into the conflict, Zelensky has forbidden negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and has promised to retake all of the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye – which voted to join the Russian Federation in September. The Ukrainian leader has also vowed to capture Crimea, which has been a part of Russia since a 2014 referendum. Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov has said Russia remains open to talks, but cautioned in October that Western powers must be involved, as an agreement with Ukraine alone could be “instantly canceled upon orders” from the West.

Read more …

“..there was a canyon between the leader of the US and the leader of the loyal European opposition. The canyon was so wide that it included disagreement over the causes and solutions of the war.”

• How the Mainstream Media Misses the Money Quote (Antiwar)

On December 1, French President Emmanuel Macron went to Washington for the first state visit of the Biden administration. After the pageantry, presents, hand holding and flattering words of fraternity and solidarity, Macron faced the gathered press. “We will never urge Ukrainians to make a compromise that will not be acceptable for them.” “That,” said Helene Cooper of The New York Times, “is the money quote.” But it wasn’t the money quote by several euros. The money quote came days later when Macron was not standing shoulder to shoulder with Biden in front of an American audience, but standing on his own addressing a French audience.

Macron told the French television network TF1, in an interview filmed during his visit to Washington but aired as he left, that “We need to prepare what we are ready to do, how we protect our allies and member states, and how to give guarantees to Russia the day it returns to the negotiating table.” Then Macron made his full meaning clear: “One of the essential points we must address – as President Putin has always said – is the fear that NATO comes right up to its doors, and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia.” The money quote was that, despite the display of solidarity, there was a canyon between the leader of the US and the leader of the loyal European opposition. The canyon was so wide that it included disagreement over the causes and solutions of the war.

Biden and Macron both “strongly condemn Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.” But for Biden, in the beginning, that war was wholly unprovoked, and, in the end, the settlement must reflect that and protect core US values. For Macron, though the war was illegal, Russia had legitimate security concerns that NATO had been pushing, and the settlement must reflect that too. Macron hinted at that crucial separation at the press conference with Biden. Even then, Macron said “We want to build peace and a sustainable peace means full respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.” But then, hinting at Russia’s demand to be included in a new European security structure that takes its concerns seriously, he added, “but at the same time [it means] a new architecture to make sure we have a sustainable peace in the long run.” But that didn’t make it into the money quote.

Read more …

“Twitter was participating in a form of treason, along with the agencies that they cooperated with. It’s a huge story, and one that should lead to punishment for those involved.”

• Twitter Files: Corporate Media Ignores The Biggest Story Of The Decade (ZH)

Twitter has long denied that they “shadow ban” users, but this was a lie. The data shows that small groups within Twitter called “strategic response teams” suppressed up to 200 accounts per day. Usually these were accounts of larger and more influential conservative politicians and celebrities. And, these teams operated in coordination with Democrat officials and agencies like the FBI. In some cases the goal was to mute a particular individual. In other cases the goal was to steer national elections. Internal Twitter communications show that SRT groups spent most of their time fabricating reasons why certain information was subject to TOS. In other words, if Twitter’s rules were not being violated, they made up new rules.

The exposure of Twitter is the biggest story of the decade because it provides proof of a hidden cabal. It shows the ugly mechanics behind the scenes and exposes a network of elites and their errand boys who were involved in direct operations to destroy the 1st Amendment for the sake of ideological supremacy. It’s the classic definition of fascism, a definition that Benito Mussolini reiterated when he argued: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” And, if this brand of Fascism was happening within the halls of Twitter, then there is little doubt it is also happening at companies like Google/YouTube, Apple, Facebook, etc. Before we had evidence, now we have confirmation.

The corporate media argues over relevance instead of morality because they benefited from the censorship. It’s important to remember that one of the first measures Big Tech companies applied after suppressing the alternative media during the pandemic was to then amplify the corporate media. These companies are floundering with dismal audience numbers and dwindling profits. No one listens to them anymore. Yet, as long as they promote the establishment narrative their opinions and disinformation are given priority on nearly every search engine and social media platform. Of course they aren’t interested in the Twitter Files, liars are often “bored” by honest commentary and factual information.

Also, their continued existence relies on the censorship of their competition in the alternative media. The bottom line is this: According to the Bill of Rights, it is illegal for agents of the US government to obstruct the free speech of law abiding American citizens. It does not matter if the action is done by using “private businesses” as middlemen. And, if a private business is colluding with government to implement political policy then it is no longer a private business. Twitter was participating in a form of treason, along with the agencies that they cooperated with. It’s a huge story, and one that should lead to punishment for those involved.

Read more …

“..lying in public is generally not a crime. However, when you repeat a lie to federal investigators or Congress or the courts, it becomes a federal offense.”

• Dupe or Designated Defendant? The Criminal Case Against Jack Dorsey (Turley)

The latest Twitter disclosures have raised potential legal liability for Twitter and its executives. No one appears more at risk than Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey It is an ironic turn of events since Dorsey supported the takeover by Elon Musk and has called for all files to be released without filtering. Dorsey has the feel of a “designated defendant,” someone who was pushed forward by others to take any legal hit. On its face, Dorsey has vulnerability after the latest release. He was repeatedly asked by members of Congress about censoring and shadow-banning, which has now been confirmed in these files. In September 2018, Dorsey testified under oath and denied what these files appear to now confirm. Rep. Mike Doyle, D., Pa., asked, “Social media is being rigged to censor conservatives. Is that true of Twitter?”

Dorsey responded, “No.” Doyle then asked “Are you censoring people?” “No,” Dorsey said. “Twitter’s shadow-banning prominent Republicans… is that true?” Doyle asked. Dorsey again said no. Dorsey was also asked about my prior testimony on private censorship in circumventing the First Amendment as a type of censorship by surrogate. Dorsey and the other CEOs were asked about my warning of a “‘little brother’ problem, a problem which private entities do for the government that which it cannot legally do for itself.” In response, Dorsey insisted that “we don’t have a censoring department.” It now appears that the entire company was operating as a censoring department. However, there were in fact super-censors.

Dorsey did not mention the Strategic Response Team-Global Escalation Team (SRT-GET), which operated above what journalist Bari Weiss described as “a level beyond official ticketing, beyond the rank-and-file moderators following the company’s policy on paper.” That group reportedly included Vijaya Gadde, head of Legal, Policy and Trust; Yoel Roth, the global head of Trust and Safety; CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, and others. Notably, others at the company made similar denials as Dorsey but may not have done so under oath. In 2018, Gadde and head of product Kayvon Beykpour expressly declared, “We do not shadow-ban. And we certainly don’t shadow-ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”

Even if untrue, lying in public is generally not a crime. However, when you repeat a lie to federal investigators or Congress or the courts, it becomes a federal offense. The question is whether Dorsey was left in the dark on these decisions. He was reportedly a member of SRT-GET. However, some of the files indicate that these decisions may have been made without his knowledge. That includes the decision on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, which Dorsey called a “total mistake.”

Read more …

“I’m not here talking to you right now. My name is not Jack Dorsey. I vehemently deny my own existence at this time.”

• Jack Dorsey Defiantly States He Has Never Heard Of Twitter (BBee)

In the aftermath of the second wave of what have come to be known as the “Twitter Files” — in which documented evidence is presented that Twitter engaged in systematic practices to suppress and “shadowban” conservative or otherwise dissenting accounts, despite previous claims to not do so — co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey has issued a defiant statement that he has, in fact, never heard of Twitter. “I have no comment on, and indeed, no knowledge regarding anything known as a ‘Twitter,'” Dorsey said. “Any claims to the contrary are untrue and a wholesale misrepresentation. The previous statements attributed to me regarding ‘shadowbanning,’ while made by me, were simply not made by me.”

Furor continues to grow in the wake of new Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk authorizing the release of large amounts of internal communications and descriptions of practices under the company’s previous regime. “Twitter and its former brain trust have very serious questions to answer,” said Senator Ted Cruz in comments to the media. “Mr. Dorsey testified before Congress and denied that Twitter had engaged in such practices. The American people demand the truth.” “I never appeared before Congress,” Dorsey said in response. “I’m not here talking to you right now. My name is not Jack Dorsey. I vehemently deny my own existence at this time.” At publishing time, investigations into Dorsey’s knowledge of secret Twitter practices were ongoing, as further questions sent to Dorsey remained unanswered as he denied ever providing his previous answers to the first questions.

Read more …

“..the best ‘easy-to-understand’ summary of the Ukraine War you’ll hear anywhere..”

• 4 Minutes of Undiluted Truth on Mainstream TV (Mike Whitney)

The last thing you’d ever expect to hear on a mainstream news channel, is the truth. But—strange as it might seem—that’s exactly what happened on Wednesday night on the Tucker Carlson Show. Carlson interviewed veteran journalist Glenn Greenwald in a 4-minute segment that provided the best ‘easy-to-understand’ summary of the Ukraine War you’ll hear anywhere. And what was so shocking about the interview, was how casually both men veered onto topics that are essential to grasping “How we got to where we are today” but which are entirely banned on all the other cable news channels. You are not allowed to know, for example, that Russia was “lured into the conflict in Ukraine”.

That does not fit the script that has been passed-along from the Biden State Department to their lapdogs at the cable news stations. You’re also not allowed to know that the US does not fight wars “to spread democracy” or that “the US has no vital interests in Ukraine” or that “Russia is not really our enemy”. All of those topics are verboten. You’re not even allowed to think about these things, which is why– for the most part– they have been completely scrubbed from any-and-all discussion of foreign policy in the corporate media.

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The EU also faces another problem with Serbia, which wants troops in Kosovo. Germany says no way. But there is a UN resolution.

• Merkel’s Ukraine Remarks Show Breach Of Trust – Serbia (RT)

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent comments on the 2014-15 Minsk agreements have cast the Ukraine conflict in a new light, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Saturday. Merkel stated that Kiev used the ceasefire to rearm its troops. The peace deals brokered by Germany and France eight years ago laid out a path for the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics’ (DPR and LPR) peaceful reintegration into Ukraine. However, they were never implemented because the government of Ukraine argued over the interpretation of the agreements. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko eventually admitted that Kiev mainly intended to use the ceasefire to rebuild its military and the economy. Merkel seemed to confirm this in an interview with German newspaper Die Zeit on Wednesday, saying that by signing the agreements, Ukraine won “valuable time” to muster a stronger army.

“We have witnessed a historically important statement by Angela Merkel. I am surprised and still checking whether it is possible that she has said such a thing,” Vucic told local media. “She is a woman whom I appreciate greatly, but for me this statement is almost unbelievable.” The former chancellor’s words “shed a completely new light” on the history of the conflict, Vucic said. “It cannot change the fact of who attacked whom, but changes a lot in terms of facts and relations inside what has been going on since 2014 … it is a clear sign for me that [they] cannot be trusted.” “It’s a lesson for us,” Vucic added, as his country now faces heightened tensions in Kosovo, Serbia’s breakaway region that the majority of EU and NATO members recognize as an independent state.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that he was disappointed by Merkel’s remarks that “nobody intended to fulfill any part of the Minsk agreements.”Earlier, Putin cited Kiev’s inability to stick to the Minsk agreements as one of the reasons Moscow recognized the independence of the two Donbass republics on February 21, three days before launching its military operation in Ukraine. The DPR and LPR, along with two other former Ukrainian territories, became parts of Russia after referendums in late September.

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Oil markets are global. The yuan is not a global currency. And China won’t make it one.

• China Wants To Drop Dollar In Oil Trade – Reuters (RT)

Beijing will work to make energy purchases in yuan instead of US dollar signalling another step towards shifting further away from the greenback, China’s President Xi Jinping told Gulf Arab leaders as cited by Reuters. China’s leader highlighted the necessity of the move while speaking at a Chinese-Arab summit that was hosted by Saudi Arabia earlier this week. Xi had held separate talks with the heads of the Persian Gulf states at the summit that reportedly brought together 30 leaders from across the region. The world’s biggest crude importer, China in November ramped up purchases of oil by 12% year-on-year, marking the 10-month high despite the severe pandemic-related restrictions. Chinese state refiners stepped up purchases of US crude oil, while maintaining high imports of Russian oil prior to the December 5 European embargo and imposition of an oil price cap.

China’s independent refiners also moved a record amount of deeply discounted Iranian crude passed off as oil sourced from Malaysia, which is commonly used as a transfer point for oil originating from the sanction-hit Venezuela and Iran. Saudi Arabia was China’s number one oil supplier in the first ten months of 2022, making up 18% of China’s total crude oil purchases, with imports totaling 73.54 million tons, or 1.77 million barrels per day, Chinese customs data showed. Keen interest in the yuan and other currencies from major oil importers have arisen in the wake of unprecedented sanctions introduced by Washington and the allies against Russia, one of the world’s biggest oil producers and exporters over Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine.

Read more …

“43% of EU inflation is related to energy prices, while only 17% of US inflation is due to energy prices..”

• Western Price Cap Disrupting Global Oil Markets – Economist (RT)

The latest EU sanctions on Russian oil exports will fail to strip the country of its revenues, but are already causing global oil supply disruptions, a senior energy economist at CER-Centro Europa Ricerche told Sputnik news agency on Wednesday. The EU embargo took effect on Monday and was accompanied by a $60 price cap on Russian crude, supported by G7 countries and Australia. Any transactions over this limit are now barred from receiving brokerage, shipping, or insurance services. Demostenes Floros said that although the price cap has not sparked an immediate surge in oil prices, severe consequences lie ahead. The economist predicts rising demand in China, which will inevitably affect the cost of crude. He added that higher energy prices will deal a blow to the EU at a time of spiraling inflation and an unfolding recession.

Floros explained that “43% of EU inflation is related to energy prices, while only 17% of US inflation is due to energy prices and this is a very big difference between the European Union and the United States,” adding that the price cap will deepen the split within the bloc. The sanctions may also result in serious problems with contracting necessary volumes of diesel in the EU once the ban on Russian refined oil products comes into force on February 5, he warned. “I think that prices will increase, especially if other OPEC+ producers will not compensate Russian output,” the economist said, cautioning that the “politicization” of energy supplies could further destabilize a market which has not yet recovered from the Covid crisis.

EU oil sanctions on Russia are already causing setbacks. Dozens of tankers carrying 23 million barrels of crude are currently stuck in the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, unable to pass, as Turkish authorities demand proper insurance guarantees. Most of the Black Sea crude stuck in the straits was from Kazakhstan, which is not targeted by sanctions, according to EU officials. At the same time, Russian insurance companies have already provided letters of confirmation to Turkish authorities in order to secure passage.

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“If it goes on like this, next year in March and April we will face mass insolvencies and bankruptcies..”

• Sanctions On Russia Are Backfiring – Former Austrian Vice-Chancellor (RT)

Western sanctions imposed on Moscow have failed to make a dent in Russia’s economy and ultimately only hurt Europeans, former Austrian Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache said on Saturday. He also accused European policymakers of turning a blind eye to the deadly fighting in Donbass, which he said served as a prelude to the current conflict for many years. Speaking at a pro-neutrality rally in Vienna, which was also a protest against sanctions on Russia, Strache claimed that Austria’s decision to join the restrictions had turned out to be a self-inflicted wound. “Austria has shown Europe how the sanctions are damaging itself,” he said, telling his audience that the measures have caused soaring electricity and gas prices, with more and more people feeling the impact.

“If it goes on like this, next year in March and April we will face mass insolvencies and bankruptcies,” he warned, calling the possibility “damn dangerous.” If the crisis is exacerbated and more people get desperate, “this could bring a dangerous development in the form of social tensions that we all do not want,” the former vice-chancellor added. At the same time, Strache continued, the restrictions have failed to undermine the Russian economy. According to him, “this year, the Russians have doubled [their] business,” raking in $220 billion in revenue. Strache also stated that Europe had found itself in the current situation because it had been “looking the other way” for many years when it comes to hostilities in Donbass, which started in 2014 after violent riots in Kiev overthrew the democratically-elected president, Viktor Yanukovich.

After Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine in late February, Western nations imposed new severe sanctions on Moscow, freezing half its gold and foreign currency reserves and targeting its energy exports. The restrictions, however, caused energy prices and living costs to surge, prompting numerous protest rallies across Europe. Earlier this month, hundreds of Italian activists gathered in the center of Milan to protest sending weapons to Ukraine and expanding the sanctions. In late November, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova insisted that EU policymakers have only themselves to blame for their ongoing energy crunch.

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”The agent claimed that disclosure of the records would harm an FBI investigation into the allegations that Russians had hacked into U.S. systems.”

• FBI Reveals It Has More Information on Deceased DNC Staffer Seth Rich (ET)

The FBI not only has possession of a laptop computer owned by slain Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Rich, but a report detailing forensic imaging of what’s being described as Rich’s work computer, the bureau revealed in a new filing. The FBI’s records office located the report while searching for the work computer, Michael Seidel, chief of the office, said in a sworn declaration filed with a federal court in Texas on Dec. 9. He described the document as “a three (3) page forensic report detailing the actions performed by an outside entity to image the work laptop.” The report was among four documents that had never been disclosed by the FBI in relation to Rich’s case.

Journalist Sy Hersh said in or around 2017 that he was told by a source about an FBI report on Seth Rich. He said, according to the source, that Seth Rich’s computer showed the DNC staffer had relayed DNC documents to WikiLeaks, a pro-transparency group. Hersh talked about the source’s claims during a phone call with Ed Butowsky, an investor who later retracted claims about Rich being a WikiLeaks source, and discussed the call during a deposition. Rich was gunned down in the early morning hours on July 16, 2016, near his home in Washington. The killing of Rich, the DNC’s voter expansion data director, remains unsolved. Authorities have claimed that the killing was a robbery gone wrong. Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, has suggested that Rich passed DNC files to the group, which released the DNC files in 2016. U.S. authorities have alleged that Russians hacked into the DNC systems, but those allegations were made before the FBI received images from the DNC’s server to determine their validity.

The Metropolitan Police Department has said it is the lead investigating agency into the death. It has declined to say whether the FBI was helping with the probe into Rich’s death. The new records were found after the records office contacted an unnamed FBI special agent during its search for Rich’s work computer, according to FBI Records Chief Seidel. The other records are a letter from a third-party that accompanied the work computer and two FBI chain of custody forms. None of the records were indexed to Rich inside of the bureau’s central records system and neither the forensic report nor the custody forms mention Rich’s name, according to the FBI. They were also not included in an electronic file created for Rich’s case. The agent claimed that disclosure of the records would harm an FBI investigation into the allegations that Russians had hacked into U.S. systems.

The FBI now wants the court to agree to keep the new records shielded from Brian Huddleston, a Texas resident who filed a lawsuit against the bureau over its ignoring a Freedom of Information request for records on Rich. Bureau officials initially claimed in sworn statements that the FBI had searched for records on Rich but did not locate any. In 2020, for the first time, the FBI admitted it had files from a computer belonging to Rich. Some of those files were then released to Huddleston and made public, including documents that appear to suggest that someone could have paid for his death. The FBI has said it has images from a second computer owned by Rich, which the bureau described as Rich’s personal laptop. A federal judge in September ordered the bureau to hand the images over to Huddleston, finding that the bureau improperly withheld them.

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No way.

• Are We Finally Reaching Peak Climate Hysteria? (Spiked)

The madness of the greens is peaking. This week a leading eco-politician in the UK, Caroline Lucas of the Green Party, referred to the building of a new coalmine as a ‘crime against humanity’. Take that in. Once upon a time it was mass murder, extermination, enslavement and the forced deportation of a people that were considered crimes against humanity. Now the building of a mine in Cumbria in north-west England that will create 500 new jobs and produce 2.8million tonnes of coal a year is referred to in such terms. Perhaps the coalmine bosses should be packed off to The Hague. Maybe the men who’ll dig the coal should be forced alongside the likes of ISIS to account for their genocidal behaviour.

We cannot let Ms Lucas’s crazed comments just slide by. We need to reflect on how we arrived at a situation where a mainstream politician, one feted by the media establishment, can liken digging for coal to crimes of extermination. It was in the Guardian – where else? – that Ms Lucas made her feverish claims. On Wednesday, when the government gave the go-ahead to the Cumbria mine, the first new coalmine in Britain for 30 years, Lucas wrote that the whole thing is ‘truly terrible’. This ‘climate-busting, backward-looking coalmine’ is nothing short of a ‘climate crime against humanity’, she said.

It isn’t though, is it? Sorry to be pedantic but it is not a crime to extract coal from the earth. If it were, the leaders of China – where they produce 13million tonnes of coal a day , rather putting into perspective the Cumbria mine’s 2.8million tonnes a year – would be languishing in the clink. I look forward to Ms Lucas performing a citizen’s arrest on Xi Jinping. It certainly is not a crime against humanity. That term entered popular usage during the Nuremberg trials of the Nazis. It refers to an act of evil of such enormity that it can be seen as an assault on all of humankind. Earth to Ms Lucas: extracting coal to make steel – what the Cumbria coal will mostly be used for – is not an affront to humankind. I’ll tell you what is an affront, though: speaking about the burning of coal in the same language that is used to refer to the burning of human beings. That, Caroline, is despicable.

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I still don’t know where the focus on nitrogen came from. Wasn’t it always CO2?

• Dutch Gov’t Attempts To Forcibly Close 3,000 Farms For ‘Green’ Agenda (ZH)

Dutch farmers protesting for months over the government’s radical ‘green’ plan to slash nitrogen emissions by 50% – 95% could soon face forced buyouts of their land. “For agricultural entrepreneurs, there will be a stopping scheme that will be as attractive as possible,” Christianne van der Wal, nitrogen minister, recently said in the Dutch parliament. The Dutch government plans to purchase 3,000 “peak polluter” farms via a €24.3 billion ($25.6 billion) fund. Van der Wal said farmers would be offered 100% value for their land, but if voluntary efforts fail, farmers will face forced buyouts. The country is attempting to reduce nitrogen pollution and will make farm purchases if not enough landowners accept buyouts. She added: “There is no better offer coming.”

So, how did this happen? As we explained over the summer, farmers were livid with the Dutch government for following through with their green agenda to reduce nitrogen emissions on farms. Many of these folks took to the streets with their tractors and pitchforks and demanded the government reverse course on crushing the country’s agriculture industry. The Dutch government began implementing new rules on nitrogen activity on farmers and farm buildings as early as 2019. That halted the expansion of dairy, pig, and poultry operations for the last several years, which are significant sources of nitrogen pollution. One Dutch farmer spoke with ‘Fox & Friends Weekend’ to discuss the pressure from the government and their move to close down thousands of farms.

“I don’t know what we can expect. For my own family, I hope that one of my sons can continue farming if he wants,” Dutch Farmer Geertjan Kloosterboer said. The Netherlands is trying to reduce emissions and follow through with a green agenda, but it could jeopardize the nation’s food supply and put the world’s supply at risk. Recent data shows the country, which is the size of Maryland, is the world’s second-largest exporter of agricultural products by value behind the US. Their centrality in the global food supply is indisputable, and so-called green politicians want to destroy the industry in the name of climate change. It seems like the protests aren’t going away anytime soon.

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Brain health.

• Viagra Lowers the Risk of Alzheimer’s By Almost 70% (GR)

New research published recently suggests that Pfizer’s erectile dysfunction drug Viagra can decrease the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by up to 69%. The research, which was published in Nature, found that the medication has a direct effect on brain health and significantly reduces the toxic proteins that can cause dementia. The study’s findings are so promising that the drug may someday be used to counter dementia. A new team of experts is preparing to conduct another study that builds on this data but tests the generic version of Viagra — sildenafil — in patients suffering from early Alzheimer’s.

The team of researchers arrived at Viagra’s viability as a treatment for dementia after analyzing 1,600 approved drugs hoping to find one that could be repurposed to fight the root causes of dementia. “Sildenafil, which has been shown to significantly improve cognition and memory in preclinical models, presented as the best drug candidate. Sildenafil may have neuroprotective effects and reduce levels of toxic tau proteins,” said Dr. Feixiong Cheng, the lead researcher on the study, which was conducted by the Cleveland Clinic. Despite the excitement surrounding the study’s promising results, some experts are advising people to not get their hopes up quite yet, as clinical trials are still necessary.

Another recent study uncovered another unlikely weapon in the fight against dementia: coffee. Research suggests that coffee consumption may significantly decrease your chances of developing the disease. The study sheds light on the mysterious disease, for which there is no cure as of now. While coffee does not mitigate or fight Alzheimer’s like some medications do, the study found that people with no memory loss who also drank larger than average amounts of coffee were at less of a risk of developing mild cognitive impairment, which is considered a pre-stage of Alzheimer’s disease.

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Bout

 

 

 

 

Weaver

 

 

Blue-footed booby

 

 


Blue-footed booby (Sula nebouxii)

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle December 3 2022

Dec 032022
 
 December 3, 2022  Posted by at 9:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  47 Responses »


Salvador Dali Neo-Cubist Academy (Composition with Three Figures) 1926

 

• Elon Musk Releases THE TWITTER FILES (ZH/Taibbi)
• Russia’s Lavrov Repeats: US is Participant in War (Celente)
• Russia Withdraws From The Western Project (Khramchikhin)
• Stop the Empire’s War on the World (Batiushka)
• The Bleak Reality Of Service With Ukraine’s ‘International Legion’ (Livshitz)
• Finland PM Sanna Marin Says Europe Is ‘Not Strong Enough’ Without The US (G.)
• Russian Strikes In Ukraine ‘A Response,’ Putin Tells Scholz (RT)
• Scholz Wants Post-conflict ‘Agreements’ With Russia (RT)
• The Goldilocks War (Dmitry Orlov)
• EU’s Oil Cap May Result In ‘Violent’ Price Spikes – The Economist (RT)
• NATO’s Handling Of Ukraine Crisis May End In Disaster – Clare Daly (RT)
• Switzerland Considers Electric Vehicle Ban To Avoid Blackouts (OP)
• Trudeau Denounces China for its Failure to Allow Covid Protests (Turley)
• Rand Paul: Fauci Caused 7 Million People To Die (SN)
• Edward Snowden Awarded Russian Passport (Az.)

 

 

 

 

Yoel Roth

 

 

 

 

Suddenly https://twitter.com/i/status/1598569139630739456

 

 

 

 

Tucker Malhotra

 

 

 

 

Elon Musk gave the files to Matt Taibbi, who turned them ito a 42-tweet thread. More to come. James Woods is gold.

• Elon Musk Releases THE TWITTER FILES (ZH/Taibbi)

The release was telegraphed one week ago, when Musk acknowledged that revealing Twitter’s internal discussions surrounding the censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story right before the 2020 US election is “necessary to restore public trust.” Recall that the Post had its Twitter account locked in October 2020 for reporting on the now-confirmed-to-be-real “laptop from hell,” which contained still-unprosecuted evidence of foreign influence peddling through then-Vice President Joe Biden – including a 2015 meeting with an executive of Ukrainian gas giant Burisma. Users who tried to share the link to the article were greeted with a message saying, “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.”

Then, days after Musk’s tweet, Twitter’s former head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth, admitted it was a ‘mistake’ to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story. In his first public appearance since becoming an ex-employee, Roth suggested that the Hunter Biden laptop story was simply ‘too difficult’ for Twitter to verify. Alternatively, the company could have perhaps simply trusted the Post, one of America’s oldest publications that doesn’t have a reputation for fabricating bombshell stories – like Twitter does with countless anonymous bombshells from other major publications. “We didn’t know what to believe. We didn’t know what was true. There was smoke,” Roth said during an interview at the Knight Foundation conference, as noted by the Epoch Times. “And ultimately for me, it didn’t reach a place where I was comfortable removing this content from Twitter.”

“It set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 ‘hack and leak campaign’ alarm bells,” he said, referring to a notorious team of cyberspies affiliated with Russian military intelligence. “Everything about it looked like a hack and leak.” When asked whether if it was a mistake to censor the story, Roth replied, “In my opinion, yes.” Would Roth have suppressed the story if it was a Don Jr. laptop full of incriminating evidence?

Finally, it will be very interesting to see which “independent”, “impartial” and “objective” members of the Mainstream Media cover the Twitter Files, which unlike all that Russia collusion bullshit, was a real and actionable attempt to interfere with US democracy by covering up one of the most explosive political stories of a generation, not to mention an event that would have swayed the 2020 presidential election.

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WWIII.

• Russia’s Lavrov Repeats: US is Participant in War (Celente)

Russia’s top diplomat said Thursday what The Trends Journal has been saying for months: that the U.S. and NATO are parties to the Ukraine War by providing intelligence, weapons, and training to keep the war going in hopes Moscow emerges a weaker country. Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, told reporters in a video call that it was inaccurate to say that the U.S. and NATO are not “taking part in this war.” “You are directly participating in it,” he said, according to The Associated Press. “And not just by providing weapons but also by training personnel. You are training their military on your territory, on the territories of Britain, Germany, Italy and other countries.”

The U.S. and NATO allies have been pumping Ukraine’s military with an historic amount of artillery. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, a former Raytheon board member, told reporters early in the war that it is his hope “to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” In September, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council and the former Russian president, has been critical of NATO’s nearly unlimited support for Ukraine’s war effort. He said it is inevitable that the “military campaign” in Ukraine will move to another level if the support continues. Medvedev took to Telegram and said eventually “everything will catch fire.”

He said the West is intent on weakening Russia by proxy and won’t be able to sit it out. Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, told state television that Moscow has “repeatedly warned the U.S. about the consequences that may follow if the U.S. continues to flood Ukraine with weapons,” The Associated Press reported in September.

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“The West still has some purely quantitative advantage over today’s Russia in the living standards and quality of life, but even that can be claimed only with very large reservations.”

• Russia Withdraws From The Western Project (Khramchikhin)

Half a century ago, the West, with its classical democracy, was qualitatively superior to the then Soviet Union in all respects – both in terms of the living standards and quality of life, and in terms of democratic freedoms (competitive elections, real pluralism of opinions, equality of all before the law). If a Soviet person had the opportunity to emigrate, only two things could stop them – patriotism (in relation to the country and its culture, and not to the system) or sincere adherence to communist ideology (although there has been no smell of communism in the USSR for a long time). Today the situation has changed radically. The West still has some purely quantitative advantage over today’s Russia in the living standards and quality of life, but even that can be claimed only with very large reservations.

As far as the level of democratic freedoms is concerned, the West and we have now became practically equal, and in some ways, perhaps, we even surpassed the West. Therefore, today there are only two rational reasons for emigration – the guaranteed availability of a well-paid job in the West, or a fanatical adherence to the left-liberal ideology with its tolerance, the cult of “identities” and such things as the “cancellation culture” that have nothing to do with the real democracy. So, the Western model (even if taken independently of the current state of relations with the West) can no longer serve as a model or guide for Russia, thus reconciliation with the West becomes meaningless. At the same time, the reconciliation also became impossible due to the intellectual degradation of the Western political elites (which we will discuss later), due to their feminization and a significant presence of the representatives of sexual minorities.

Who are, in fact, hired according to the quotas – as it was practiced in the USSR for workers and peasants. Feminists and the representatives of sexual minorities make negative contribution to the politics of those states where they are allowed into the power structures. Moreover, all such people view Russia not so much as a geopolitical, but as an ideological adversary, reconciliation with whom is fundamentally impossible.In addition, the West has absolutely inadequately assessed its “victory” in the Cold War, assuming Russia was a country which lost and which has to to acknowledge its defeat and live with that knowledge forever, giving up protection of its national interests.

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“One of the reasons for centuries-old Russophobia, the Western elites’ unconcealed animosity toward Russia, is precisely the fact that we did not allow them to rob us during the age of colonial conquests..”

• Stop the Empire’s War on the World (Batiushka)

For millennia, civilisations have lived side by side. As we have said, they have from time to time spontaneously clashed and clashed violently about ethnic identity, territory and resources. However, Western Civilisation is quite unique. Western Civilisation, which has basically existed for a thousand years (meaning that it is quite recent in comparative historical terms) is the only one which claims to be unique and which has consistently implemented its supposed infallibility and resulting intolerance on a systematic and institutionalised basis via organised violence throughout its millennial existence. Thus, we had the First Crusade (1096-1099), which began by massacring and robbing Jews in the Rhineland and then went on to massacre Orthodox Christians and Muslims, shedding blood, which flowed up to their knees in what they claimed to be the ‘holy’ city of Jerusalem. Should we mention the Inquisition or the Spanish and Portuguese atrocities in what we now call Latin America?

Of course, in fairness, we cannot avoid mentioning the Protestant-Catholic European ‘Wars of Religion’ (sic), in which millions died. The Protestant sects also fought with each other, no doubt in order to prove which was the nastiest-minded and most bigoted. The Protestants, not the Catholics, had witch-hunts, in which they burned to death thousands of poor women, old and young. This was a form of social bullying of those who were in some way different. The Protestants went on to massacre the natives of North America and park the survivors in concentration camps, which they elegantly masked under the name of ‘reservations’ and enslave millions of Africans to work in their labour camps, which they called ‘plantations’. After all, ‘Arbeit macht frei’, ‘Work makes you free’. Though not if you are white, which is why you kindly allow non-whites to work for you.

Much of the witch-hunting goes back to the Protestant hatred and fear of women and so its obsession with sex (‘the only sin’), which it directly inherited from Papacy-imposed obligatory clerical celibacy in eleventh- and twelfth-century Western Europe. Today the old Puritanism of persecuting women has been transformed into the ‘green’ movement. Here, instead of abstention from sexual uncleanness, we now have the equally fanatical abstention from material uncleanness, sexual purity is replaced by environmental purity – ‘green is clean’, the only sin is not recycling. This is just the new Puritanism of such as the clearly clinically depressed and neurotic Greta ‘Funberg’. (What a laugh she is; it must be the dark Swedish nights). However, the ultimate deviation is the legitimisation of homosexuality: what could be more woman-hating than sodomy?

The great difference between the West and all other civilisations is its unique intolerance because it is convinced that it is infallible. (Papal infallibility may have been dogmatised only in the nineteenth century, but it had already been proclaimed by Hildebrand/Gregory VII in the eleventh century). The West has to impose. Conversely, President Putin accepts all, as did the USSR, as did the Russian Tsars. Listen again to two parts of his speech on 30 September this year: ‘What, if not racism, is the West’s dogmatic conviction that its civilisation and neoliberal culture is an indisputable model for the entire world to follow? ‘You’re either with us or against us’…. One of the reasons for centuries-old Russophobia, the Western elites’ unconcealed animosity toward Russia, is precisely the fact that we did not allow them to rob us during the age of colonial conquests and we forced the Europeans to trade with us on mutually beneficial terms. This was achieved by creating a strong centralised State in Russia, which grew and got stronger on the basis of the great moral values of Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism, as well as Russian culture and the Russian world that were open to all’.

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“..the greatest mystery of all is why he was hired by the International Legion in the first place, let alone sent to the front line on his very first outing..”

• The Bleak Reality Of Service With Ukraine’s ‘International Legion’ (Livshitz)

It’s been confirmed that Trent Davis, a 21-year-old US citizen who travelled to Ukraine to fight in the International Legion, has been killed in combat. The tenth American known to have met their end in the conflict, his premature death highlights the enormous dangers facing foreigners joining Kiev’s fight. Davis was an army veteran, having enlisted at just 17. However, he had no actual combat experience, having served as a chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) defense specialist, before leaving in December 2021. He reportedly travelled to Ukraine in March to join the Georgian Legion, a unit so notorious for executing Russian prisoners of war that even the Western media has been forced to acknowledge its savagery. The foreign mercenaries, however, considered Davis incompetent and insufficiently experienced to take part in hostilities, so he was sent home two months later.

Davis returned in October, and two weeks later was overjoyed to inform his mother that he had signed a contract and was now officially part of the International Legion, created on 26 February by Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky to attract foreign fighters. “Anyone who wants to join the defense of Ukraine, Europe and the world can come and fight side by side with the Ukrainians,” Zelensky said in a statement at the time, in which he eased visa restrictions to facilitate their arrival. Davis told his mother he would soon be heading out to fight in a counteroffensive in the south of Ukraine. His mother and father never heard from their son again. On 8 November, he was killed on his very first mission, as Ukrainian forces attempted to recapture Kherson.

The details of how Davis died are murky, although the greatest mystery of all is why he was hired by the International Legion in the first place, let alone sent to the front line on his very first outing. Officially at least, combat experience – which he of course lacked – and a “belief in freedom and democracy” are the basic requirements for enlistment in the unit. When contacted by the Military Times, the International Legion declined to comment on why Davis was sent to the front, only remarking that “recruiting decisions are made by officers in western Ukraine,” and amazingly alleging: “no commander takes on inexperienced soldiers who did not have the appropriate training and skills.” Clearly, a commander did in respect of Davis. And there is no reason to believe he is in any way unique.

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Poor girl.

• Finland PM Sanna Marin Says Europe Is ‘Not Strong Enough’ Without The US (G.)

Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin has called for Europe to build its own defence capabilities in the wake of the war in Ukraine, saying that without US help it is not resilient enough. “We should make sure that we are stronger,” Marin said in Sydney on Friday. “And I’ll be brutally honest with you, Europe isn’t strong enough. We would be in trouble without the United States.” Her remarks came in response to a question about China’s responsibility to “rein in Russia”. Marin said that while China could play a role, “We shouldn’t only rely on that.” Marin insisted Ukraine must be given “whatever it takes” to win the war, adding that the United States had been pivotal in supplying Kyiv with the weapons, finance and humanitarian aid necessary to blunt Russia’s advance.

“We have to make sure that we are also building those capabilities when it comes to European defence, the European defence industry, and making sure that we could cope in different kinds of situations,” she said. Marin said that when Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, the priority of most Finns changed “overnight” to security. Until Russia invaded Ukraine, Finland’s priorities were to have working bilateral relations with Russia and be close partners with members Nato, but not be a member, she said. “That was the best way to secure our nation.” Finland and Sweden applied to join the alliance in May, but are waiting on Turkey and Hungary to ratify their requests, which have been approved by the other 28 nations in the group.

In June, Putin warned that if Nato installed military infrastructure in Finland and Sweden, Moscow “would be obliged to respond symmetrically and raise the same threats for those territories where threats have arisen for us”. Asked what the likeliest scenario was in terms of threats posed by Russia to Finland, with which it shares a 1,300km border, Marin said: “We have extensive military forces, so we’re not expecting them to engage in that account and we’re not seeing any military action near the Finnish border.” “But of course we are prepared for different kind of hybrid attacks that we might see.” “We are preparing for different kinds of cyber-attacks … we’re preparing for different kinds of hybrid attacks, for misinformation.”

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Scholz is a mental midget representing a once great nation.

• Russian Strikes In Ukraine ‘A Response,’ Putin Tells Scholz (RT)

Russian precision attacks against Ukrainian infrastructure are a necessary response to Ukrainian sabotage on Russian soil, including the bombing of the Crimean Bridge, President Vladimir Putin has told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The two leaders spoke on the phone on Friday at Berlin’s request, according to a statement released by the Kremlin. Putin explained the logic behind Russia’s military operation against Ukraine and stated that the Western policy of arming and training Ukrainian troops was “destructive,” according to the readout. “It was noted that the Russian Armed Forces had been refraining from conducting precision missile strikes on certain targets in the Ukrainian territory for a long time, but now such measures have become necessary and unavoidable as a reaction to Kiev’s provocative attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure, including the Crimean Bridge and energy facilities,” the Kremlin said.

The “terrorist attack” against the Nord Stream undersea pipelines “stands in the same category” and requires a transparent investigation that would include Russia, Putin told the German leader. Scholz’s office said the conversation lasted for about an hour and that the “chancellor condemned the Russian airstrikes against civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and stressed Germany’s determination to support” Kiev. Russia changed its military tactics in Ukraine days after a powerful bomb damaged the Crimean Bridge in early October. Russian investigators accused Ukrainian military intelligence of masterminding the attack, which killed three people, including the driver of the truck that carried the disguised bomb.

In retaliation, Russian forces started targeting Ukrainian energy facilities, which the Defense Ministry believes to be instrumental for Kiev’s military logistics. The damage forced Ukrainian authorities to introduce rolling blackouts. The Ukrainian government and its Western backers accused Moscow of using terrorist tactics. The blasts that damaged the two undersea Nord Stream pipelines happened in late September, severing links that would have enabled Germany to get natural gas directly from Russia. Moscow said the obvious beneficiary of the sabotage was the US, which had long sought to force Berlin to reduce its energy trade with Russia and replace Russian fuel with more expensive liquified natural gas produced by American companies.

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Parroting Biden, he wants Russia to leave Ukraine and THEN talk. Never going to happen.

• Scholz Wants Post-conflict ‘Agreements’ With Russia (RT)

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has declared that peace in Europe depends on the revival of post-Cold War security agreements with Russia. Despite his apparent willingness to work with Moscow in the future, Scholz ruled out a return to the “partnership” of the past. “We have to go back to the agreements which we had in the last decades and which were the basis for peace and security order in Europe,” Scholz said at the Berlin Security Conference on Wednesday, according to a Times report. The chancellor explained that there was a “willingness” in Berlin to discuss arms control and missile deployment treaties with Moscow, but that building this “peace order” would depend on Russia making some significant concessions. Chief among these would be an acceptance that “there is no aggression coming from NATO.”

Moscow has argued since the 1990s that the eastward expansion of NATO threatens Russia’s security, and that Ukraine’s membership in the alliance – which Kiev insists will happen and NATO has not ruled out – presents an existential threat to the Russian state. Scholz also declared that Germany will “support Ukraine for as long as it takes,” a phrase that US, EU, and NATO leaders have repeatedly used when referring to their multibillion-dollar arms shipments to Kiev. The chancellor admitted that Germany will likely never return to the “strong partnership” it enjoyed with Russia before the conflict in Ukraine. This partnership – in which German industry achieved Europe-wide dominance with the help of inexpensive Russian gas – was scuppered first by Berlin’s backing of the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions regime, and then by the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, which preclude an easy return to the pre-conflict status quo.

Citing Germany’s economic reliance on Russia, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed last month that when Moscow sent its troops into Ukraine in February, the German government reckoned “it would be better for the whole thing to be over quickly, and for Ukraine to fold.” While Berlin has since written Johnson’s claim off as “utter nonsense,” Germany is currently paying a stiff cost for abandoning its partnership with Russia. Unemployment and energy costs have risen, and the German economy is forecast to enter recession next year. With an immediate return to pre-conflict relations with Russia off the cards, Scholz admitted on Wednesday that the EU’s continued support for Ukraine “will mean major adaptations for all of us in Europe.

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“..these Western organizations did whatever they could to drive the Russian people toward eventual biological extinction and replace them with a more docile and less adventurous race.”

• The Goldilocks War (Dmitry Orlov)

[..] allow me to introduce Goldilocks with her three bears and her porridge not to hot and not too cold. What Russia seems to be doing is keeping their special military operation moving along at a steady pace—not to fast and not too slow. Going too fast would not allow enough time to cook the various fish; going too fast would also increase the cost of the campaign in casualties and resources. Going too slow would give the Ukrainians and NATO time to regroup and rearm and prevent the proper thermal processing of the various fish. In an effort to find the optimal pace for the conflict, Russia initially committed only a tenth of its professional active-duty soldiers, then worked hard to minimize the casualty rate.

It opted to start turning off the lights all over the former Ukraine only after the Kiev regime tried to blow up the Kerch Strait bridge that linked Crimea with the Russian mainland. Finally, it called up just 1% of reservists to relieve the pressure from the frontline troops and potentially prepare for the next stage, which is a winter campaign—for which the Russians are famous. With this background information laid out, we can now enumerate and describe the various ancillary objectives which Russia plans to achieve over the course of this Goldilocks War. The first and perhaps most important set of problems that Russia has to solve in the course of the Goldilocks War is internal. The goal is to rearrange Russian society, economy and financial system so as to prepare it for a de-Westernized future.

Since the collapse of the USSR, various Western agents, such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the US State Department, various Soros-owned foundations and a wide assortment of Western grants and exchange programs have made serious inroads into Russia. The overall goal was to weaken and eventually dismember and destroy Russia, turning it into a compliant servant of Western governments and transnational corporations that would supply them with cheap labor and raw materials. To help this process along, these Western organizations did whatever they could to drive the Russian people toward eventual biological extinction and replace them with a more docile and less adventurous race.

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That wasn’t the plan?

• EU’s Oil Cap May Result In ‘Violent’ Price Spikes – The Economist (RT)

As the European Union’s sanctions on Russian oil are about to kick in next week, the measure could result in price shocks on the global market, The Economist reported on Friday. The EU has agreed on a $60-per-barrel price cap on Russian seaborne oil. According to the report, European insurers and shipping firms have long had a “vice-like hold” on energy markets. Fully 95% of property and indemnity insurance for all oil tankers has been handled by firms from the UK and the EU. This appeared to be a lever with which the West could control the sale of Russian oil globally. However, if Russian oil fails to make it to the market, then global oil prices may spike, hurting Western consumers, the outlet writes.

“Hence America’s Treasury Department has since devised a cunning plan to water it down: to let European firms continue to offer their services, provided the oil involved is bought at a suppressed price set by the West.” Everything depends on how Moscow responds, according to the Economist report, which warns the Kremlin could cut its oil exports, relying on a smaller group of non-Western tankers and insurers, and sending global prices spiraling. “The other uncertainty is how much power the West will ultimately wield over global oil markets.” The report noted that countries such as China, India and Indonesia want to avoid participating in Western sanctions and embargoes.

They are reportedly seeking alternative sources of day-to-day insurance–and, because the ban was announced six months ago, “have had time to prepare.” According to The Economist, the “true balance of power” in oil markets will become apparent after December 5, with a “violent price spike” possible. “Just as financial sanctions have energized attempts to evade the Western banking system, so the war will lead China, India and others to circumvent the West’s energy infrastructure. As weapons, sanctions and embargoes have their limits–and a finite shelf-life,” the outlet concludes.

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You don’t say…

• NATO’s Handling Of Ukraine Crisis May End In Disaster – Clare Daly (RT)

Irish MEP Clare Daly accused NATO of bringing “terror, death, lawlessness [and] rape” to Libya, and claimed that the US-led alliance’s strategy in Ukraine will yield similar results. Daly made her declaration after voting against a resolution calling for greater EU involvement in Libya. Daly, along with fellow Irish leftist Mick Wallace, voted last week against a resolution that called on the EU to play “a more active role” in rebuilding war-torn Libya, including by setting up police and military units under the command of the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA). While the EU as a whole supports the GNA, the rival Libyan National Army (LNA) has the backing of France and has reportedly hired private military contractors from Russia to bolster its forces.

Amid this ongoing power struggle, Daly sees NATO’s 2011 bombing campaign as the root of Libya’s problems. “I voted against this report,” she declared, in a video posted to her Twitter page on Wednesday. “Its timing is pretty appropriate coming, as it does, a few short weeks after the 11th anniversary of the day Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was killed during the NATO assault on Libya: sodomized with a bayonet and shot in the head.” “The NATO intervention in Libya, carried out in the name of protecting freedom, democracy and human rights, is one we’d do well to remember as NATO plays out its proxy war in Ukraine in the name of, you’ve guessed it, freedom, democracy and human rights,” she continued.

Gadaffi was deposed and tortured by NATO-backed militants in October 2011, with his mutilated corpse left on display in a meat market in the city of Misrata. Once an oil-rich and prosperous nation, Libya descended into anarchy following his murder, with an Amnesty International report earlier this year describing conditions there as “hellish.” “What happens after NATO intervenes in your country on this basis?” Daly asked EU lawmakers. “Terror, death, lawlessness, rape, poverty, starvation.” “Libya is a country riven by conflict, its economy shattered, its population – formerly the wealthiest in Africa – ridden and mired in poverty,” she continued. “Migrants are bought and sold in slave markets. It’s a country of mass graves, of crimes against humanity. This is NATO’s legacy.”

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Coming soon to a town near you. This will be a big story. First in Europe.

• Switzerland Considers Electric Vehicle Ban To Avoid Blackouts (OP)

Switzerland could limit the use of electric vehicles (EVs) in cases of electricity supply shortages this winter under a new four-step plan to prevent power cuts and blackouts. To ensure energy security this winter, Switzerland could become the first country to limit the driving and use of EVs, German daily Der Spiegel reports, citing multiple media reports on the Swiss four-stage action plan to avoid blackouts. Driving EVs could be banned in Switzerland unless in cases of “absolutely necessary journeys” in stage three of the power conservation plans. The country also plans a stricter speed limit on highways in the recently proposed action plan, which has yet to be adopted. Switzerland typically imports electricity from France and Germany to meet all its power demand, but this year supply from its neighbors is constrained.

In France, the nuclear fleet availability is much lower than usual, which has led to the country becoming a net importer of electricity after decades of being a net exporter. The French electricity grid is at higher risk of strained power supplies in January 2023 than previously estimated due to lower nuclear power generation. The country could face the risk of power cuts this winter when electricity supply may not be enough to meet demand, Xavier Piechaczyk, the head of grid operator RTE, said earlier this week. In Germany, the situation is similar, as utilities are having to make do with no Russian pipeline gas supply.

Switzerland’s power supply remains uncertain for the winter and troubles with enough electricity capacity cannot be ruled out, the Swiss Federal Electricity Commission, Elcom, said as early as in June. Due to the expected lower availability of French nuclear power generation and of France’s power exports to Switzerland, the Swiss imports of power generated in France is likely to be much lower this winter compared to previous winter seasons, Elcom said. Therefore, Switzerland may need to cover its electricity import needs of around 4 gigawatt hours (GWh) from imports from its other neighbors Germany, Austria, and Italy. However, the power export availability of those countries would heavily depend on the available fossil fuels, mostly natural gas, according to Elcom.

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Trudy, like Fauci, should henceforth only be allowed to speak in a courtroom. Under oath.

• Trudeau Denounces China for its Failure to Allow Covid Protests (Turley)

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau left many of us gobsmacked this week when he denounced China for its crackdown on protesters. Many of us denounced Trudeau for his authoritarian crackdown on truckers protesting Canada’s Covid policies. Trudeau used terrorist laws to freeze bank accounts, treat truckers as terrorists, and treat trucks as effective weapons. This is a continuation of Trudeau’s utter lack of self-awareness (and the media continuing lack of objectivity). He previously was praised for his stance against Cuba’s crackdown on protesters. Trudeau told the media Tuesday, “Obviously everyone in China should be allowed to express themselves, should be allowed to, you know, share their — their perspectives, and indeed protest. We’re going to continue to ensure that China knows we’ll stand up for human rights, we’ll stand with people who are expressing themselves.”

That is coming from the man who invoked the 1988 Emergencies Act for the first time to freeze accounts of truckers and contributions by other Canadian citizens. It was entirely unnecessary and, while the media is largely supportive of Trudeau, the powers have been condemned by civil liberties groups in Canada. The 1988 law is meant to address the greatest national threats when existing laws are insufficient. However, there are ample laws allowing the clearing of roads and bridges. Trudeau is using the Act to intimidate not just the truckers but anyone who supports them. That includes sending lists of names to banks for accounts to be frozen and going to court to prevent donations from reaching the truckers. Ironically, it was Trudeau’s father, who used the predecessor to the Act for the first time in peacetime to suspend civil liberties.

Former prime minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act on Oct. 16, 1970, after separatist terrorists calling themselves the Front de libération du Québec kidnapped British Trade Commissioner James Cross and Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte. The prior Act had never been used in peacetime and only twice before during prior wars. Justin Trudeau, like his father, has never been a strong supporter of free speech. Indeed, he has more often championed its limitations. He previously declared that “freedom of expression is not without limits . . . we owe it to ourselves to act with respect for others and to seek not to arbitrarily or unnecessarily injure those with whom we are sharing a society and a planet.”

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“..Fauci appeared in a fawning Washington Post interview, where he was labeled a “hero,” complained about being a victim, and couldn’t think of anything he did wrong.”

• Rand Paul: Fauci Caused 7 Million People To Die (SN)

Senator Rand Paul asserted Thursday that Anthony Fauci is directly responsible for funding dangerous research that likely killed millions of people, and that he “won’t get away.”“Likely there is no public health figure who has made a greater error in judgement than Dr Fauci,” Paul declared in a Fox News appearance, adding “the error of judgement was to fund gain of function research in a totalitarian country.”Fauci funded “research that allowed them to create super viruses, that in all likelihood leaked into the public and caused seven million people to die,” Paul declared.“This is right up there with decisions, some of them malevolent or military to kill millions of people,” The Senator further urged.

The Senator made the comments after Fauci appeared in a fawning Washington Post interview, where he was labeled a “hero,” complained about being a victim, and couldn’t think of anything he did wrong. Paul further noted that “It goes to judgement, talk about errors, you think he might apologise to the world… to support that kind of research then look the other way and say nothing to see here, and to cover it up.”“For the last two years he’s been covering his tracks, but we’ve caught him red handed and he won’t get away,” Paul asserted, adding “historically [Fauci] will be remembered for one of the worst judgments in the history of modern medicine.” Paul also commented on efforts he is leading to overturn the Biden Administration’s COVID vaccine mandate for military personnel.

“They deserve to have their religious freedom, as well as their medical choices and freedom to decide what goes into their body,” Paul noted.He continued, “We know this, and this is a scientific fact, the vaccine does not prevent you from getting an infection, it doesn’t prevent you from transmitting an infection, and for young people there isn’t significant evidence to show that it reduces the severity or hospitalisation.” “The military has become so ‘woke’ and they’re demanding you get a vaccine that you don’t need, so something’s got to change,” the Senator further urged.

Ryan Cole https://twitter.com/i/status/1598182715765198848

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Think of the contrast with Julian.

• Edward Snowden Awarded Russian Passport (Az.)

Former NSA (National Security Agency) employee Edward Snowden took an oath and was granted a Russian passport, his lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told TASS on Friday. “Yes, he received a passport. He took the oath,” Kucherena said in a response to a question as to whether Snowden has been given a Russian passport, adding that he personally met with Snowden yesterday. The lawyer also said that Snowden’s spouse is currently submitting the required documents for Russian citizenship as well. Snowden and American acrobat and blogger Lindsay Mills married in Moscow in 2017. Snowden’s US passport was annulled in 2013, but the White House explained back then that it was a routine legal procedure following the issuance of an arrest warrant and his citizenship status remained unchanged.

In late September, a Russian presidential decree was published stating that Snowden was eligible to be granted the Russian citizenship. In 2013, Snowden leaked information on the electronic surveillance methods used by American intelligence services, including illegally eavesdropping on foreign leaders’ conversations. Fleeing punitive consequences from US federal authorities, Snowden sent requests for asylum to several countries, including Russia. On August 1, 2014, he obtained a temporary Russian residence permit and later was granted an open-ended residency permit. Back in the United States, Snowden is facing two counts of violating the Espionage Act, and he risks up to ten years in prison on each count.

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Tucker Max Keiser 2,3

 

 

 

 

Nakamura

 

 

 

 

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